All the Disney princessesPhoto: Olga Thompson (Walt Disney World Resort via Getty Images)
Now that another Disney+ Day has come and gone, we can get on to the meat of Disney’s big weekend: The D23 Expo, where the greatest fans in the world can get a look at the stuff they’ve already seen before but now reimagined.
Kicking off the day was Cynthia Orivio, our new Blue Fairy, who reminded the audience that there was a new version of Pinnochio currently being memory-holed on Disney+. Continuing the theme that these sorts of things were now the order of the day, Disney Studios chairman Alan Bergman took the stage to remind us that these reimaginings, such as The Lion King, Beauty And The Beast, Cinderella, and Cruella, were “iconic.” We assume he meant that the movies use “iconic imagery,” but regardless, more of these iconic reimaginings and sequels are coming down the pike.
Bergman then brought Walt Disney Studios president Sean Bailey out to take us through the upcoming ways they’re reviving old brands.
Don’t worry: Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted are still coming
First up were the sequels. Hocus Pocus 2 debuts later this month, and since we already shared the trailer, we’ll move on to the other big sequel announcement: Disenchanted. Don’t get it twisted with Matt Groening’s Netflix comedy Disenchantment. This is a sequel to the wonderful Amy Adams comedy Enchanted from 2007. The whole cast is back, including Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Adele Dazeem Idina Menzel, and James Marsden. They’ve upped the ante by adding a Maya Rudolph, too. And now, there’s a trailer.
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Disenchanted lands on Disney+ on November 24, 2022.
Disenchanted | Official Trailer | Disney+
Reimagining the past is Disney’s future
The presentation was done round-robin style, with Bailey shuffling VIPs on stage for about five minutes, playing a clip, and then shuffling them off. So next up, Jude Law and the cast of Peter Pan & Wendy took the stage.
Directed by David Lowery, who directed one of the best films of 2021, The Green Knight, and Disney’s delightful remake of Pete’s Dragon, Peter Pan seems a bit more stylish than the other movies announced today. It’s still filled with nostalgic images pulled straight from the Disney vault, but also a distinct visual style, location shooting, and a fish-eye lens that won’t quit. So how will this differ from literally every other revisionist PeterPans fromthe last 20 years? Those got theatrical releases.
Our new Captain Hook, Jude Law, said that this version gets into the “backstory a little more” when Peter and Hook “were once friends.” But, again, it remains to be seen how this one will differentiate itself from the numerous other Peter Pans.
Perhaps the trickiest aspect of the movie is Tiger Lily, a character that hasn’t been treated with much respect by Disney in the past. Nevertheless, newcomer Alyssa Wapanatâhk said she was very “excited to have the honor” of playing Tiger Lily. “To be able to tell the story for her, that was phenomenal for me.”
Peter Pan & Wendy [sigh] hits Disney+ next year.
After pushing Peter Pan back to Neverland, Sean Bailey introduced the trailer of The Haunted Mansion and announced that Winona Rider was joining the cast. Director (and former Disneyland employee) Justin Simin also mentioned that “according to TikTok,” Jared Leto is playing the Hatbox Ghost. We await the horror stories from his fellow castmates about how hard he tried to fit into a hatbox for the role. But really, this one is for the real Hatbox heads.
“That script was funny and filled with interesting characters, but it had a little bit of like a dark edge to it,” Simin told the crowd at D23. “I just really related to it. I felt like I knew how to make it. I felt like I understood New Orleans. And, of course, I’m a fanboy. So I felt like I understood the ride, and I felt like I got a responsibility here to make sure all the little details, all the Easter eggs are there because I’m a nerd for real.”
Bailey brought out Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins for a sneak peek of Mufasa: The Lion King. Jon Favreau’s The Lion King made over a billion dollars, so that means people liked it. However, the “live action” animation in Mufasa probably won’t convert anyone turned off by the last trip to Pride Lands. Still, then again, Barry Jenkins is very good at making movies. Here’s what Barry Jenkins said about the film:
Mufasa is the origin story of one of the greatest beings in the history of the alliance. Mufasa, all caps. It’s a story told in a few different time frames. Rafiki, Timon, and Pumbaa, who we all know and love, are relating the story of Mufasa and how he came to a very beautiful, awesome, fantastic young cub. It’s a story about how Mufasa rose to royalty. We assume he was just born into his lineage. But Mufasa was actually an orphaned cub, who had to navigate the world alone. And in telling this story, we get to experience the real journey of how Mufasa found his place and the circle of life. It is pretty awesome.
I felt I had to make this movie because when I was 14, I was helping raise two nephews. And there was a VHS tape that we watched maybe 95 times in the span of 20 days. So I really knew this character. I loved him. But then as I was reading this wonderful script, I was thinking about Mufasa and why he’s great and how people become great. And it’s crazy. I am not a king, but when I make my movies, I was on stage at the Oscars with Moonlight, and I was there and five of my best friends from college were also there. And what you are learning the story is that Mufasa is who he is. He is great because of the family and the friends he has with them. And so I saw myself in that. I thought, this is a really beautiful story to tell.
For Marc Webb’s Snow White, Gal Gadot and Rachel Zegler took the stage to show some footage. There are no dwarves yet—and seeing as they were cut from the title, who knows what their role will be. Thus far, it looks similar to the other remakes, recreating the look of the animated classic. But we’ll need to see Dopey to know how scary this thing is going to look.
Similarly, Rob Marshall invited Halley Bailey on stage to show off The Little Mermaid teaser and a clip of “Part Of Your World.” It doesn’t look like all the effects are done yet, but right now, it’s reminiscent of Avatarand the “merman” commercial from Zoolander. On the other hand, Marshall did promise four new songs from Alan Menkin and Lin Manuel Miranda, so that’s something.
Pixar on Disney+
The director of The Good Dinosaur, Peter Sohn, is back, and he brought some clips and concept art for the next Pixar movie Elemental. Sohn described the film as “very personal” and that the germ of the idea came from his parents. “We immigrated to the U.S. from Korea in the early seventies,” Sohn said. “They had no money, no family, no English. But they managed to create a life in New York.”
Similarly, Elemental files a “fire family” assimilating in Element City, “where Earth, air, water, and fire are characters in our community.”
More Pixar is coming in 2023 as we got a little more information on Win Or Lose, the studio’s first television series. The show stars Will Forte as the coach of a ragtag little league baseball team, the Pickles, and the week leading up to their big game. Each episode will focus on a different character’s perspective, allowing for various animation styles.
Pixar also announced two new features Elio and Inside Out 2, which we wrote about here.
Wait! Disney also has some cartoons to share
Disney Animation Studios will not be outdone. Today, they showed clips of their upcoming series Zootopia+ and Iwájú.
Zootopia+ is a six-part series that, like Win Or Lose, focuses on a different character and genre in each episode with various animation styles—some of which look really cool and others like Pixar.
On the other hand, Iwájú is a downright historic collaboration between Disney and an outside animation studio. Jennifer Lee, the Chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, retold the story of how she had read about a Nigerian animation studio that was going to take down Disney. So she did like many Disney execs before her and bought the competition.
With the team from Kugali, Disney will premiere the futuristic sci-fi series Iwájú next year.
Finally, Lee brought out the cast from their upcoming 61st animated feature, Strange World. Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, Jaboukie Young-White, and Lucy Liu star in an outer space adventure about a dysfunctional group of explorers. This one comes out on November 23.
Strange World | Teaser Trailer | Walt Disney Animation Studios
“Our film is inspired by some of the great adventure stories that we grew up with,” said co-director Don Hall. “Specifically stories about a group of explorers that stumble upon a hidden world.”
What are we most excited to discover? Jaboukie Young-White’s character, Ethan Clave, which Young-White described as “the vibe master” who makes “the vibe great.”
And that’s everything from the D23 Expo Disney Animation Studios and Pixar presentation. Check back tomorrow when Disney tries to bury us under a mountain of Star Wars and Marvel announcements.
Sony and Marvel’s Morbiushas become an internet meme over the last few weeks, and for the most part, they’re hilarious. Seeing this, Sony came to the conclusion of re-releasing the Jared Leto film this weekend in the hopes that all the internet goofs would translate to a bigger box office haul. And if you were among those wondering if the joke had gone too far and we’d irony’d ourselves into a Morbius 2, somehow, let this serve as good news to allay your fears.
To be quite blunt about it: the movie bombed hard on its first day back at the cinemas. According to Forbes’ Scott Mendelson, Morbius’ Friday returns only came to a meager $85,000, leading to an overall $73.6 million domestic take home. Saturday’s earnings have yet to be revealed at time of writing, but the odds aren’t exactly in its favor. All those jokes were merely about the idea of Morbius rather than the film itself, something that Sony learned the hard way. Their attempt to get in on the joke didn’t just backfire, it exploded in such a way that even Michael Bay found himself impressed by the sheer, stupid spectacle of it all.
The thing about Morbius and its rise to a meme is that it all took off because no one had much faith in the film to begin with. We’re all actively aware that Sony’s basically throwing darts at a wall to figure out what people want to see with Spider-Man’s supporting cast, a roster that’s basically kneecapped from the jump because they inevitably have to brush shoulders or acknowledge the teenage webhead in question. Tom Hardy’s Venom movies have enough going on to make you temporarily forget he could ever try to devour Tom Holland’s Spidey, but that’s only because the comics have spent years giving the character his own weird, gooey mythology in the hopes of giving future films enough material to avoid having to strike a deal with Holland’s agent. Meanwhile, other characters such as Morbius, Kraven, and Madame Web have yet to be afforded a real, consistent opportunity to distance themselves from the amazing arachnid in the source material.
Yes, Sony lucked out extremely well with Venom and Miles Morales’ Spider-Versefilms, but both of those characters already had strong, built-in fanbases to begin with, to say nothing of what each of their respective films set out to accomplish. The Spider-Verse movies have a unique animation style and a genuine earnestness that puts just about all other superhero content to shame, and Venom has Tom Hardy talking to himself and getting beaten around by a passive aggressive goo monster. Morbius has neither, and it couldn’t even make the most of its lead actor being a musician. Say whatever you want about Venom, at least it managed to summon a cheesy song to play over the end titles that later winds up on you Spotify for longer than you’d care to admit.
RIP in Morbius, Morbius. You died as you lived, as a joke who realized too late that you yourself were the punchline.
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Oh, how droll! What an unexpected turn of events! Jared Leto, the eponymous “living vampyr” from Sony’s latest “We have the rights to make movies about Spider-Man that do not contain any spidered men” picture Morbius, has now put his personal stamp of approval on the internet’s beloved “It’s Morbin’ Time” meme!
That’s right, folks: The meme culture surrounding Morbius has now officially hit the “Wendy’s making its own ‘Sir this is a Wendy’s’ joke” inflection point, as Leto posted a video of himself yesterday evening with a fake script for Morbius 2subtitled It’s Morbin’ Time. This arrives just as Sony makes a weird little push to put Morbius back in theaters this weekend, jumping from less than a hundred screens over Memorial Day Weekend back up to a number that’s been reported to be more than 1,000.
All of this, in turn, has apparently been propelled by the internet’s adoption of Morbius as the latest thing to get ironically hyper-fixated on, and which has followed the same curve that all internet obsessions tend to these days: Early amused irony begets a culture of people making Morbius jokes as a way to show connection with each other, which begets corporations noticing there’s money in them thar internets, which begets a video of Jared Leto demonstrating that he’s “in” on the joke. As per the norm, any actual connection to Morbius, the fairly dull superhero vampire movie, sloughed off the whole thing about three permutations back.
And that, of course, is sort of the whole point of meme culture, as far as we can tell: It reduces the entire concept of comedy down to a set of simple LEGO-esque building blocks that are so easy to use that… Well, we were going to say “that even Jared Leto can successfully employ them,” but that seems a little too mean, so we’ll just let that sentence trail off instead.
It’s now clear, in any case, that Sony is running some sort of bizarre experiment here with this whole “Bring Morbius back to theaters” project: Pick a fairly weak box office weekend—sliding in between the debuts of Top Gun: Maverick last week and the U.S. debut of Jurassic World: Dominion next week—and figure out exactly how many dollars 8 million “Morbin’ Time” memes actually translate into. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t have our fingers crossed for “None, please, for the love of god, no money for meme movies, Christ.” But we’ll have to see what the box office reports hold next week to know for sure.
In 1883, Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt attended her sister-in-law’s famed masquerade party in a dazzling gold-and-silver gown, custom from Paris, dubbed Electric Light, complete with hidden batteries that illuminated a torch she held above her head.
Today’s A-listers hope to generate their own electricity at Monday night’s Met Gala, the dress code for which is “gilded glamour.” Yet instead of cutting-edge frocks like Mrs. Vanderbilt’s, some insiders fear that attendees will embrace the tackiest aspects of late-19th-century Manhattan society. Will dresses resemble the costumes on the popular HBO series “The Gilded Age,” in which Carrie Coon’s social-climbing Bertha swans around her Fifth Avenue mansion in couture?
While flamboyance has helped make Anna Wintour’s annual Met Gala the most anticipated red carpet of the year — “It’s a bigger deal than the Oscars,” said Christina Pacelli, who has dressed celebs such as Laverne Cox for the big evening — some observers say the get-ups have gotten too garish.
In 1996, Princess Diana attended the gala in a sleek Dior slip dress. Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images
“It’s turned into a costume party,” designer and frequent gala chair Tom Ford told journalist Amy Odell in her book “Anna: The Biography,” out Tuesday.
“[It] used to just be very chic people wearing very beautiful clothes going to an exhibition about the 18th century,” Ford continued. “You didn’t have to look like the 18th century, you didn’t have to dress like a hamburger, you didn’t have to arrive in a van where you were standing up because you couldn’t sit down because you wore a chandelier.”
Ford may have a slightly idealized view of the galas of yore — at least one person showed up to 1981’s ball, themed for the exhibit “The Eighteenth-Century Woman,” dressed in knee breeches! But the clothes and themes have gotten kookier in the days since Princess Diana attended in a sleek Dior slip dress.
Designer Gianni Versace and model Naomi Campbell at the benefit in 1995.Gene Shaw/Getty Images
Recent years have seen Rihanna don a pope hat for 2018’s “Heavenly Bodies,” Jared Leto carrying a replica of his own head for 2019’s “Camp” and Lil Nas X model a sexy C-3PO costume for last year’s “American Independence,” which he shed to reveal a sparkly Versace catsuit underneath.
And lest you think Ford was exaggerating, Katy Perry did wear a chandelier and a hamburger costume — on the same night.
Katy Perry wore a hamburger costume in 2019.Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
‘It’s very Halloween’
“Some of the things that Kim Kardashian has worn — I mean, it’s very Halloween,” said John Tiffany, a fashion historian and brand consultant who once assisted Eleanor Lambert, the legendary fashion publicist who dreamed up the Met’s first Costume Institute benefit, then called the Party of the Year, in 1948. Back then, Tiffany said, the party was a fund-raiser dinner, but in the 1970s, when freshly fired Vogue editor Diana Vreeland started manning the Costume Institute, the gala became linked with whatever fashion exhibit was opening at the museum, “which were always completely over the top.”
“It’s always been a creative party,” said Dennita Sewell, a fashion professor at Arizona State University who worked at the Costume Institute in the 1990s — when lower-rung staffers could actually attend the party. “People always dressed up, but it wasn’t so extreme … No one would have done something that wasn’t graceful and elegant.”
Kim Kardashian in Balenciaga in 2021.Justin Lane/EPA
“The themes were noted,” she added, “but it wasn’t like the whole party was competing with the exhibition.”
Sometimes it can feel that way.
“It’s gone from an industry event celebrating the history of fashion to one celebrating celebrity,” stylist Tracy Taylor told The Post. “Designers were really the focus of the galas in the 20th century and early 21st century: Alexander McQueen, Halston — Halston would have never designed something that you couldn’t sit in! But lately, the focus is on themes, and I do feel like it’s encouraging more extreme interpretations and outfits.”
Last year, Lil Nas X sported a sexy C3PO costume, for “American Independence,” which he shed to reveal a sparkly Versace catsuit underneath. Mike Coppola/Getty Images
The invite list has changed to include more celebrities — particularly, in recent years, musicians, who are used to wearing costumes onstage and often treat fashion as performance.
“When you’re a musician like Rihanna, it’s not such a huge stretch to look outlandish,” Taylor said. “They’re expected to be a bit more flamboyant or really be creative and show who they are through how they dress.” And that translates to the red carpet.
Jared Leto holding a replica of his own head in 2019. The theme that year was “Camp.” Karwai Tang/Getty Images
Gilded controversy
“Gilded glamour” is a dress code that allows for lots of different interpretations — from a corset gown with a huge bustle and swaths of sumptuous taffeta to a slinky gold lamé slip to a sequin frock — and plenty of ways to up the ante.
The Gilded Age was one of “enormous growth and wealth due to industrialization and real estate, and the dresses reflected that opulence,” Taylor said. “It was about these new celebrities and peacocking, and that’s what the Met Gala is about.”
Yet it could read as tone deaf. The era, which spanned from 1870 to 1900, was also characterized by extreme poverty — with exploited immigrant families living in crowded, unsanitary tenements on the Lower East Side while Fifth Avenue’s titans dined on oysters and lobster in their Parisian couture (modeled, perversely, on 17th-century French court fashion).
Rihanna donned a pope hat for 2018’s “Heavenly Bodies.”Carlo Allegri/REUTERS
“The world is in a state of flux,” said Bronwyn Cosgrave, host of the podcast “Fashion Conversations,” citing the war in Ukraine and the uptick in violence in the US. “In New York City, where the Met Gala takes place, there’s huge problems with homelessness, problems with mental health … I’m not sure gilded glamour is what we need.”
Others argue that it’s exactly what’s needed right now.
“When times are tough, people turn to fantasy,” Phyllis Magidson, a fashion curator who worked with the Museum of the City of New York, told The Post.
Carrie Coon plays social-climbing Bertha in the popular HBO series “The Gilded Age.” Photograph by Alison Rosa/HBO
“Everybody’s battered, and what better way to escape than through period fashion?”
Some attendees, too, are embracing the gala’s gloriously gaudy theme.
“I think that dressing on theme is part of the fun of it, personally,” Katy Perry’s stylist, Tatiana Waterford, told The Post. “Katy always dresses on theme. But she’s always had a distinctive sense of style that lends itself to an over-the-top Met Gala look.”
That said, even Perry plans to tone things down this year. “She won’t look kooky, but it’s Katy, so there will be no shortage of drama,” Waterford said. “I wish I could reveal more but you’ll just have to wait and see!”
Jared Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius in Daniel Espinoza’s MorbiusPhoto: Sony Pictures
No one wants to watch a lousy movie, but an unmitigated disaster can often be more interesting than something that’s just mediocre. Morbius falls into the latter category, a run-of-the-mill origin story that’s capably acted and professionally mounted, but mostly lifeless up on screen—and feels more disappointing after two years of anticipation for its release. Jared Leto delivers an adequately creepy and conflicted take on the eponymous scientist opposite a scenery-chewing Matt Smith as his surrogate brother and sometime adversary, while director Daniel Espinoza (Life) stages the action like his latest project is cosplaying as a series of classic horror movies. The result is a bland, competent, and safe superhero adventure that seems destined to be forgotten before its end credits finish rolling.
Leto (House of Gucci) plays Dr. Michael Morbius, a scientist who devoted his life and career to curing rare blood diseases after contracting one as a child. Bankrolled by his surrogate brother Lucien (Smith), a rich orphan who was alternately raised and monitored by their shared physician Nicholas (Jared Harris), Morbius takes increasingly risky and ethically questionable chances to alleviate the fatigue and physical disability from which they both suffer. After harvesting the organs of vampire bats in the search for a crucial anti-coagulant, Morbius administers an experimental treatment to himself which restores his health and strength—but not before he succumbs to an inexplicable bloodlust and murders the team of mercenaries shepherding his laboratory through international waters.
When his lab partner Dr. Martine Bancroft (Adria Arjona) is injured during the excursion, Morbius summons the authorities on her behalf and flees the scene before being apprehended. But while he tries to figure out what to do about his newfound condition, Lucien contacts Morbius and demands his own dosage of the treatment. As two detectives close in on Morbius, seeking answers about his role in a gruesome string of deaths, he races to create a cure for this insatiable appetite. Before long, Morbius finds himself at odds not only with the cops, but with Lucien after his former friend embraces becoming a bloodthirsty, superhuman monster. That makes Morbius more determined than ever to find a cure for the violent and all-consuming affliction from which both he and Lucien suffer, while recognizing that doing so may cost both of them their lives.
Working from a script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, whose first credit was on Luke Evans’ 2014 vampire film Dracula Untold, Espinoza shuffles through a familiar series of bloodsucker cliches that are frequently joked about but are otherwise reduced to the symptoms of a superhero’s curse, a la the Hulk. It’s hard to remember the last film that treated these fictional creatures with any real dignity. This one is all too happy to exploit their violent and dangerous impulses for set pieces, then undercut the more interesting elements of addiction or biological need to let Morbius, Lucien and his costars prattle on in increasingly tedious, expository exchanges. Essentially, when it isn’t standing on the shoulders of genre giants to elicit scary moments, Morbius wants to be the Batman Begins of Sony’s supervillain franchise, and it’s unafraid to borrow liberally from its predecessors to evoke the same atmosphere or tone.
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Morbius’ first attack on the mercenaries, for example, unfolds like he’s the xenomorph in a better-lit, earthbound version of the Nostromo and/or LV-426, decimating space truckers and automatic-weapon-wielding Marines with swift brutality. A later fight between Morbius and Lucien, meanwhile, conjures the tube chase from An American Werewolf In London, but with less style and more computer-generated imagery. One supposes there are only so many locations that filmmakers can use for action scenes that haven’t already been shot in some iconic fashion, but it takes little imagination to make those cinematic connections while they’re happening. Moreover, Jon Ekstrand’s score functions in precisely the kind of same-y, nondescript way that so much film and TV music seems to these days. The few moments that stand out do so because they sound so similar to Hans Zimmer’s wall-of-sound work on Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, especially when they’re accompanying a scene where, say, a man is looking skyward as a swarm of bats flutter around him in obedience.
While close-ups of Jared Leto’s vibrating ears feel unnecessary, the effect of Morbius’ “radar” as he scans his environment—from his elegantly appointed laboratory to the entirety of Manhattan—actually offers a neat visual, as the buildings dissolve beneath expanding waves of mist. But endlessly transforming faces and colored trails that trace these monsters’ progression across a cityscape quickly grow repetitive, and by the time Morbius and Lucien are hammering each other from one rubble pile to the next, the action becomes an empty placeholder for the hero’s resolution that Espinoza telegraphs. His instincts to try for something semi-tragic, even operatic are admirable, and occasionally work when he slows things down to create a single, tableau-like moment, but the rest of the time the movie ebbs and flows without excitement between dopey character motivations and reams of technical jargon about blood.
If he’s not quite winging it like Tom Hardy is in the Venom franchise, Leto thankfully doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously to prevent a little bit of fun from creeping into the film. But his character’s journey is too obvious, predictable and oddly impatient to get to its resolution for audiences to care much about whether or not he becomes a superhero or succumbs to his disease. Especially since there’s no particular inclination for Morbius to help ordinary people without the enormous financial resources of Lucien, it’s hard to imagine him doing much of anything for anybody after acquiring his powers and apparently learning how to control them. Smith, on the other hand, seems to relish his chance to turn heel opposite Leto, but he also seems to be well aware that however viewers receive his performance as the film’s bloodsucking super-baddie, his face will be covered more often than not with wildly uneven computer-generated effects.
Without spoiling anything, a couple of post-credits sequences set up a future for Leto’s character in a larger world that you understand why Sony would try and telegraph, but given the failures of past Spider-Man spin-offs (particularly those from the Amazing films) it’s hard to believe they have really thought any of those next steps through. But until then, Morbius feels like exactly the kind of second-tier superhero adventure audiences will accept in between ones that they actively want. Admittedly, it’s odd to want a movie like this to have been worse, but that would mean it failed as bigly as the swings it took; by comparison, Morbius is a walk, or at best a bunt. That may qualify it as a hit for Leto, Espinoza and Sony, but that doesn’t mean it’s much fun to watch from the stands.
Nominations for the 42nd Annual Razzie Awards have been announced — and it’s not good news for Bruce Willis.
The action hero, 66, has been given his own special category at the upcoming awards show — which will name “the worst movies” of 2021 —after he starred in eight critically-panned flicks in the space of a single year.
The special category is titled “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 movie” and includes every single film the actor appeared in over the past 12 months.
The aging star — who was once a box-office drawcard thanks to lead roles in “Die Hard” and “Pulp Fiction” — made seven direct-to-video movies last year, including “Out of Death,” which has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Willis also appeared in “Midnight In The Switchgrass,” which was released in cinemas but was similarly lambasted by critics.
“Excruciating musicals, thrill-free thriller rip-offs, a nearly 2-hour product placement flick, and more Bruce Willis than any starving viewer could stomach,” Razzies organizers said in a press release promoting the nominations on Monday. “In other words, 2021 did not fail the Razzies!”
It’s embarrassing news for the star, who previously won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for “Dallas Buyers Club” However, he’s in good company, with fellow Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Mel Gibson also named and shamed in the same category.
Affleck was nominated for the box-office bomb “The Last Duel,” while Gibson got his nod for starring in the stinker “Dangerous.”
Elsewhere, Amy Adams was nominated for Worst Actress for her role in “The Woman In The Window,” as well as Worst Supporting Actress for her role in “Dear Evan Hansen.”
But the Razzies’ most reviled film of 2021 is “Diana the Musical” — a Netflix version of the Broadway stage play which closed after just 33 performances.
The film nabbed a whopping nine nominations, including “Worst Film.” In that category, it’s up against “Karen,” “The Woman in the Window,” “Space Jam: A New Legacy” and “Infinite.”
The ceremony will take place on March 26. The full list of Razzie nominations can be found here.
Worst Picture
“Diana the Musical” “Infinite” “Karen” “Space Jam: A New Legacy” “The Woman in the Window”
Worst Actor
Scott Eastwood / “Dangerous” Roe Hartrampf/ “Diana the Musical” LeBron James / “Space Jam: A New Legacy” Ben Platt / “Dear Evan Hansen” Mark Wahlberg / “Infinite”
Worst Actress
Amy Adams / “The Woman in the Window” Jeanna de Waal / “Diana the Musical” Megan Fox / “Midnight in the Switchgrass” Taryn Manning / “Karen” Ruby Rose / “Vanquish”
Worst Supporting Actress
Amy Adams / “Dear Evan Hansen” Sophie Cookson / “Infinite” Erin Davie / “Diana the Musical” Judy Kaye / “Diana the Musical” Taryn Manning / “Every Last One of Them”
Worst Supporting Actor
Ben Affleck / “The Last Duel” Nick Cannon / “The Misfits” Mel Gibson / “Dangerous” Gareth Keegan/ “Diana the Musical” Jared Leto / “House of Gucci”
Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 movie
Bruce Willis / “American Siege” Bruce Willis / “Apex” Bruce Willis / “Cosmic Sin” Bruce Willis / “Deadlock” Bruce Willis / “Fortress” Bruce Willis / “Midnight in the Switchgrass” Bruce Willis / “Out of Death” Bruce Willis / “Survive the Game”
“To me, one man’s over-the-top is another man’s engaged performance.”
“I’m not an actor, I’m a [very, very intense movie] star!!”
Willem Dafoe jokes several times in his monologue about people thinking he’d make a great Joker. He’s not wrong, although here I’ll just say—enough with the Jokers. We’ve had enough Jokers. Heath Ledger was the best, Mark Hamill is a strong second, Jared Leto remains in last place, forever. That bafflingly misbegotten and overrated Joaquin Phoenix thing was not a Joker movie, I don’t care what anyone says.
Ahem. Still, Dafoe’s Joker-obsessed fans have a point. As Dafoe himself noted, he’s not an unexpressive actor. As I’d add, Willem Dafoe has a crazy devil face whose alternately bulging and slitted ice-blue eyes, tombstone teeth, and deeply etched lines are the craziest toolbox a major star has had to work with since probably forever. Dafoe pretended to be hurt by the idea that he’s only thought of on the street as the physical embodiment of outsized, gleefully performative evil, but, hey, it’s worked for the guy so far.
Leading up to Dafoe’s hosting gig tonight, I cast my mind back over Dafoe’s roles to imagine what a sketch comedy Willem Dafoe might be like. His comedies are few and stranded amidst a vast sea of unsettling kooks, killers, and the occasional supervillain. He deadpans exquisitely for Wes Anderson, was game (and, yes, unsettling) in his two Simpsons guest roles, and I’m never going to watch American Dreamz, so there’s not a lot to go on.
As it played out, Dafoe was game for Saturday Night Live, too, his up-for-anything enthusiasm the best thing about what were a handful of genuinely indifferent sketches. And if Dafoe isn’t going to springboard into a late-career comic swerve out of the gig, here’s to watching him lighten up and have fun. That said, Willem Dafoe is not really built for comedy, with his performances a combination of stilted and exaggerated that was—I’ll say it—kind of unsettling.
Onscreen, there’s precious little Dafoe hasn’t done, or won’t do, a fearlessness that carried over tonight into spanking himself with a riding crop, doing a couple of weird dances, and a whole lot of boner and blowjob jokes. The writing tonight was almost uniformly corny in its broadness, which can’t be laid at Dafoe’s feet. Still, there was a fair amount of host-protecting going on (most of his monologue was Aidy Bryant and Mikey Day doing Wisconsin accents), with Dafoe wheeling out for a short ensemble piece or plunked down as framing device. The whole show tonight had a sprung rhythm, with lots of dead spots in the pacing and clunky direction and blocking. (Punkie Johnson crosses right in front of camera on one exit.) That’d be a lot for even a comic powerhouse of a host to overcome, and Dafoe was left stranded much of the night, not that he seemed anything but delighted to be there.
Best/Worst Sketch Of The Night
The Best: Woof. And, no, I’m not putting the dog show sketch here. That’s just the sound I made when casting over my notes and trying to think of a sketch that didn’t make me feel blank and sort of logy. The music video sketch, “Now I’m Up” gets the top spot tonight, simply by being the most professional and polished, if not the funniest such pre-tape the show’s ever done. Also, Chris Redd is always outstanding in these musical numbers, here bringing a truly fine voice to what was an otherwise standard musical list of the sort of thoughts that keep you up at night. He and Kenan made an unremarkable piece of observational comedy into a serious bop—I would listen to this anytime, honestly. Dafoe was used well, too, his late-night commercial pitchman intruding into the bleary-eyed mix for a nifty song and dance riff. Honestly, if those intrusive insomniac thoughts that keep you awake and edgy had a spokesperson, it’d be Willem Dafoe, telling you that you have to die someday.
The Worst: While no sketches tonight were outright dire, so many of the live pieces jerked along to the same busted comic rhythm. Speaking of jerking, the returning joke about a news report gone wrong thanks to some accidentally ribald chyrons was all about the blowjobs, as anchor Bowen Yang calling self-help guru Dafoe’s book Blowing Yourself (instead of Knowing Yourself) sees things play out in exhausting, one-joke hackiness. There are lots of lines like, “That’s a lot to swallow,” and “Hopefully I don’t suck here,” if that’s your bag, is what I’m saying. It’s like a Carol Burnett Show sketch if Harvey Korman were allowed to make self-fellatio jokes. (Just as an aside, for no reason: Willem Dafoe is exceptionally limber.)
The Rest: The Badminster Dog Show continues to suggest that, if a show is flagging during rehearsals, a pack of adorable doggies are kept behind some emergency glass. I love dogs. Dogs are cute. And dogs can be freaking hilarious. That said, this one seems to have been turned over to guaranteed audience “awwww”s to make up for the fact that nobody wrote much of anything after coming up with the whole “Badminster” instead of “Westminster” title gag.
I laughed at Aidy being Aidy, her co-host (along with Dafoe) noting that the contest’s crappy dogs are “just like us—some of them bite kids.” And Redd was great as the owner of the eventual winner, a little critter whose enormous penis necessitates vet visits every time it gets aroused. “I hate saying that, and I say it a lot,” Redd states upon explaining the elaborate penile de-escalation procedure. But even though I joined in on the “awww” train when the supposed meanest dog in the pageant turned out to be a cuddlebug, tenderly licking Kate McKinnon’s judge and Andre Dismukes’ owner while everybody tried to keep a straight face, I felt manipulated and dirty. But I ”awwww”-ed all the same. Dafoe’s into-it but stiff presence didn’t help, I have to say, as a list of one dog’s increasingly absurd list of fears (pineapples, the Netflix startup sound) got trampled by Dafoe’s comically tone-deaf delivery. Cute pooches, though.
The other pre-tape, a commercial parody of those ubiquitously targeted Frank Thomas testosterone-booster ads, was as full of boner jokes as the news report sketch, but at least they were better, weirder boner jokes. With Kenan’s Big Hurt, Kyle Mooney’s Doug Flutie, and Dafoe (as himself) all coming out to cheerfully embarrass middle-aged Mikey Day for supposedly not being able to “get hard” anymore, the gag is that the three celebrity spokespeople are both really into the product, and unashamedly enthusiastic about the fact that they once couldn’t get hard, but now can get very hard, indeed. Making these dad-focused commercials’ subtext text, the sketch playfully skewers the euphemistic pitch behind all these suspiciously unregulated man-potions, stripping Day’s manly insecurities down to the bone. (You get it.) And there are enough weirdo touches to give the initial joke some legs, as its eventually revealed that the product in question is less a pill than some sort of whirring, hiccuping motorized gizmo that sees all three enthusiasts doubled over in artificially induced pain-pleasure. Dafoe, triggered into exquisite torture by the innocent attentions of Day’s wife, Melissa Villaseñor, is used to his best advantage, pounding his chest and screaming in startlingly intense orgasmic delight. (And no, nobody’s making a “Dafoe face” joke.)
The Please Don’t Destroy guys miss with this one, a one-joke premise (Martin Herlihy has a 10-year-old best bud) that escalates in noisy chaos more than cleverness. I like these guys, even if the show’s naked pitch to make them the next viral superstars keeps pointing out that The Lonely Island only made this specific type of absurdist backstage stuff look easy.
In the SNL oral history, many tales are told about Lorne Michaels’ expensive insistence on realistic and often elaborate sets in comedy. “Gilda will know,” he’s quoted as stating in response to an NBC exec asking why a wardrobe sweater had to be real cashmere. So I don’t get bent out of shape watching the show invest so much time, energy, and money in creating, say, a quartet of meticulously movie-accurate costumes for the minor characters in the Beauty And The Beast sketch. I’m a little more irritated that SNL keeps thinking that we’re all as convinced a lavishly mounted Disney setting propping up a middling premise is comedy gold.
Here, Pete Davidson’s Beast (no complaints about his costuming, since he’s a main character, and those lower-jaw fangs are ingeniously crafted) whips out his magic mirror to show Chloe Fineman’s Belle just what her elderly father is getting up to in her (kidnapped) absence. Dafoe’s gameness is on display as his home alone papa gets down to some dirty, if indifferently realized and staged, behavior. (Here’s where that riding crop figures in.) With Kenan (Cogsworth), Mikey Day (Lumiere), Punkie Johnson (Mrs. Potts), and Kyle (Chip) all getting into the voyeuristic fun to varying degrees, the sketch is awfully thin. Partly that’s down to Dafoe, who, I’m just calling it, isn’t a naturally funny presence. While his lonely old man lamenting how much he misses all the things his late wife used to do to his ass exhibits an admirable degree of commitment on Dafoe’s part, the guy just doesn’t really speak the comic language. Mostly, though, it’s that these Disney-fied sketches all seem to have the same joke. (Stuff isn’t as rosy and innocent as these animated kids films would have you believe.) And while we all have our own rosy memories of these movies, it’s really time to move on from seeing them as go-to sketch fodder.
Weekend Update Update
Is it a good sign when Peyton Manning gives the best comedy performance of your sketch comedy show? No, no it is not, even if, yeah, the former NFL QB (and former SNL host who did slightly better than most athletes) was genuinely pretty great as he revealed that his newly discovered love for binge-watching Emily In Paris trumped watching any of last weekend’s mail-biting football highlights. It’s the specificity of Manning’s ably rat-a-tat catalogue of the Netflix series that makes the joke, as Manning can barely be coaxed into talking NFL highlights (“All the touchdowns were in the end zone”) amidst his in-depth analysis of what makes Emily’s adventures in love and work so darned thrilling. His reading of “a fresh take on feminism—finally!,” was easily the best delivery of the night. (Even if, you know, that’s sort of questionable, coming from him.) Throw in a surprise beret reveal shot, and you have one of the most unexpected highlights of this season. I know, I’m as baffled as you are.
Jost and Che were, once more, fine. With tonight’s co-hosting gig, apparently they are now the longest-tenured Update hosts ever, and as long as SNL wants Weekend Update to stay a cheeky, largely disposable showcase for personality rather than biting fake news, then they should have a few more years to really put their records out of reach.
Aidy Bryant and Bowen Yang had some fun as a pair of effortfully outré trend predictors. There’s not much to the bit than watching Aidy and Bowen almost crack up as they go unaccountably harsh on their fashion and lifestyle pet peeves. For guys who use posters as decor, Aidy’s hissing, “Pulp Fiction poster—grow up and be a damn painting!” made me laugh in her and Yang’s tag-team hostility. Aidy is so outstanding at what she does that she’s in danger of being taken for granted sometimes. Here, there’s a level of knowing absurdity yoked to ultimate, wild-eyed sincerity of purpose that’s just irresistible.
“What do you call that act?” “The Widettes!”—Recurring Sketch Report
The wacky news blooper sketch can go gather dust as a concept. Way, way back in the filing cabinet graveyard.
While the tenant’s association meeting sketch wasn’t exactly a recurring bit, the change of setting (from school committee, town meeting, etc) roll call nature of these pieces as a template sure is. Here, it’s Alex Moffatt and Chloe Fineman riding herd on the assorted weirdos and cranks taking the mic, allowing us to see who, of this overstuffed and underused cast, is actually in the building this week.
As a conceit, these sorts of sketches serve the purpose of letting nearly everybody get some airtime, while usually zipping by without making much of an impact. Here, the high notes are muted by brevity, and the fact that most don’t really bring an especially well-realized characterization to the party. Kate kills, naturally, as her diminutive final speaker pokes her head barely over the podium to, once more, suggest raising the allowable cat limit from three to seventy-five. Kate McKinnon can land a character with a look, a pause, and a shuffle of prepared notes. Redd does fine, too, as the building’s doorman, smilingly but beseechingly trying to nip in the bud the fact that the building’s mostly white tenants think his name is “Jamarcus.” (It’s Robert.)
Aristotle Athari scores big, too, his Google translate-dependent tenant securing his phone’s help to ask, “I need to milk faucet so make destruction.” (Apparently, he’s planning to tear down a wall. Again.) Athari has slyly asserted himself as someone who can make a small role pop memorably, as has James Austin Johnson, whose barely contained rage about Verizon emerges in a strangled, funny voice. Dafoe is funny enough, channeling his own past living rough in NYC to portray the self-proclaimed “pain in the ass” who bought the top three floors of the building in 1971 for eleven dollars. His “What the hell happened to this city?” reminiscences about hellhole 70s New York include the joys of Iggy Pop puking into your face at CBGB’s, something Dafoe makes especially vivid by suggesting that that is precisely what happened to him at one point. Heidi Gardner, too, excels in these ensemble parades, here inhabiting her irately clueless (about her son’s jackoff habits) mom explode with impeccable Karen energy. These sketches are much of a muchness, but they have their uses, I suppose.
“It was my understanding there would be no math”—Political comedy report
Just stop. Sorry, that’s not helpful. Just stop it. Dammit. Deep breath…
Okay, so what happens when SNL decides to combine its traditionally unfocused and watery political cold open with its penchant for name-checking what those darned kids are up to these days? You get this—thing—where James Austin Johnson’s Joe Biden brings in a youth consultant to counter Russian misinformation tactics with (another deep breath) memes and TikTok videos. I saw the warning signs with that TikTok-centered sketch earlier this season, the mini-movie app’s virality proving a shiny allure for SNL to prove just how old and creaky its sensibilities can look when it tries to get down with the youth of today.
And here, as with the Biden Spider-Man cold open, Johnson’s still canny and well-observed Biden is saddled with a non-premise and asked to react. The “Biden, ain’t he old?” jokes are proving as tiresome a writers’ crutch as Alec Baldwin’s Trumpy fish-face already, and we’re only a year in. Here, confronted with the bewildering array of Russian meme warfare on display, Johnson’s Biden is called on to blurt “Malarkey!,” and otherwise look benignly puzzled at all this newfangled disinformation and GIFs and whatnot, and it’s all too irrelevant to be truly annoying. A draggy exercise in doing the least possible with seven minutes of valuable and potentially fruitful network airtime is an ill-advised way to kick off your 90-minute comedy show.
I Am Hip To The Musics Of Today
In contrast to my gripes about those Disney costumes, I say, give Katy Perry all the giant mushrooms she wants. Any initial conception of SNL’s musical element being co-equal with the comedy/variety portion of the show went out even before it began, really, so I’m here for any time the show allows a performer to go full performance art. Is Katy Perry in a vacuum-sealed dress, flanked by identically kitted-out mushroom dancers art? Well, it’s certainly more interesting than the usual rushed and perfunctory musical slots, and Perry’s perfectly pleasant pop meshes just fine with a swirling, Alice In Wonderland backdrop of psychedelic imagery and “Eat Me” fans. Honestly, I have to admit that sometimes I check out a little during the musical guests, but I didn’t do that tonight.
Most/Least Valuable Not Ready For Prime Time Player
I keep stumping for you, Melissa, and god knows you deserve more than the two nothing roles you got tonight. But fluffing lines in both ain’t helping, even as I acknowledge that the stress of only getting a line or so every two episodes only ups the pressure.
I’ve been helpfully informed by you kind commenters and Twitter types that Cecily’s absence can be attributed to her tagging out to star off-Broadway. Break legs, Strong.
Aidy gets the top slot tonight, and, no, it’s not damning with faint praise. The episode wasn’t anything special, but Aidy Bryant is.
Too abrupt and yet too drawn-out is a comic mix that’s tough to pull off, so, kudos, I guess? Here, though, the office sketch was all setup, a feint toward a whole new direction, and then a clumsily truncated payoff. Dafoe’s office temp is reentering the workforce, has bought a whole lot of pizzas for the law firm’s all-nighter, and then disastrously joins in on the lawyers’ bored finger-tapping and glass-pinging impromptu musical screw-around by hurling an office chair out a 15th-story window. “I thought it would bounce off the window and make a cool sound!,” Dafoe’s abashed Jeremiah exclaims. I like a sketch not beholden to a pat formula, but this really could have used a stronger center than Dafoe, as hard as he tries to imbue the sketch with a live-wire energy. Blame that expressive face, I guess, but watching an actor not known for comedy furiously mugging to sell a joke is more squirmy than funny. (He really does nail Hedi Gardner with that stapler, though, with a solid, blind, over-the-shoulder hurl.) That does sort of describe Willem Dafoe’s traditional effect on me. So, well done?
Stray observations
Telltale pandemic detail: The decelerating whirring of fans or air purifiers each time Dafoe introduced Katy Perry.
Poor Ego Nwodim had two exposition-heavy, explaining-the-joke roles tonight. Yup, she got double Mikey Day-ed.
Fineman’s consultant, introducing herself to the President: “I’m Mikayla, spelled the worst way.” (I guessed on the worst way to spell Michaela.)
Aidy’s irate tenant wants to ban all teens from her building, since they “huff White Claws and do 69-ers” right outside her door.
Aidy’s dog show co-host banters, “Now, Judas, it says here that you and I are married!”
One of the dogs is said to be allergic to “anything that is or isn’t duck.”
We’re off for a while, but return strong with John Mulaney joining the Five Timers Club (alongside musical guest LCD Soundsystem) on February 26. See you then.
John Wick: Chapter 4 just made a really fun addition to its cast. The Boys’propaganda news network has released more stories and the Dune cast gathers on a new poster. Plus we’ve got updates from the season finale of Superman & Lois, Legends of Tomorrow, and more. Spoilers away!
John Wick: Chapter 4
Deadline reports Clancy Brown is the latest to join the cast of John Wick: Chapter 4 in an undisclosed role. According to director Chad Stahelski, “I have been a fan of Clancy Brown’s since I can remember. To have him be a part of this project is an honor. He will make a perfect addition to the World of John Wick!”
By All
THR has word Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will star in By All, a “dystopian crime thriller” at Warner Bros. from director Steve Caple, Jr. set in “a world without police, where justice is crowd-sourced.”
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Morbius
Chances were already pretty good considering, but director Daniel Espinosa seemingly revealed Tom Hardy’s Venom appears in Morbius during a recent interview with the Swedish website, MovieZine.
It usually feels strange before the day begins, when you look at the schedule and stand on the set yourself. When you walk around there, the recording looks just like a Swedish production, but then when you look at the schedule and read names like Michael Keaton, Jared Leto, Tom Hardy, then it feels cool and very exciting. But once you start working, it’s exactly the same thing. An actor wants a director and actors want to be directed.
[Comic Book]
Avatar 5
In conversation with Collider, Stephen Lang revealed the script for the fifth and final Avatar movie left him “weeping.”
When I finished the last script, I was weeping. I just thought it was so beautiful. Yeah, the final script, because he’s telling a great, great story, an original story, a beautiful, beautiful story, and I was just incredibly moved by it. I hope and I trust and believe that audiences will be too, because one of the things that he does really, really well is he moves it from the page to the stage in a way that that is very literal. You know what I mean? You really see it. What you read is what you get from him, I think, and more.
Candyman
Bloody-Disgusting has a new photo of Michael Hargrove as Sherman Fields, a previous incarnation of the Candyman wrongfully accused of inserting razor blades in Halloween candy.
Photo: MGM
Dune
There’s a new cast poster for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.
Photo: HBO Max
Cube
The Japanese remake of Cube finally has a trailer.
C.I. Ape
Meanwhile, the C.I.A.’s top agent is a chimpanzee in the trailer for Lionsgate’s new family comedy— C.I. Ape.
The Return
We also have a trailer for The Return, a new horror film from Canada about a college student haunted by the spirit of his recently deceased father.
Muppets Haunted Mansion
Entertainment Weekly has new photos of Gonzo, Pepe, Kermit, and Miss Piggy as they appear in the new Halloween special, Muppets Haunted Mansion.
Photo: Disney+
Photo: Disney+
Superman & Lois
Superman and Lois enjoy a barbecue at the Lang-Cushing’s in new photos from the CW’s pulse-pounding season finale. Head over to Comic Book for more.
Photo: The CW
Photo: The CW
Photo: The CW
Legends of Tomorrow
Spoiler TV also has photos from “Silence of the Sonograms,” the August 22 episode of Legends of Tomorrow. Click through for more.
Photo: The CW
Photo: The CW
Photo: The CW
Photo: The CW
The Boys
Finally, a new video tying into the latest season of The Boys presents five full minutes of Vought’s 24-hour news network.
It’s heavy competition, but few people on Earth seem to hate Jared Leto’s face more than Jared Leto. What else can we make of the Suicide Squadstar’s ongoing efforts to utterly goof up his features, a pursuit of prosthetic face junk that has now extended to the just-released first-look poster for Ridley Scott’s new film House Of Gucci? Dude looks like he got bit by a radioactive Jeffrey Tambor.
Kudos to the marketing team on Scott’s movie, at least, who understandably decided to stick Leto’s picture right in the middle of the composite shot we’ve seen of all five leads, lest an unbalanced arrangement send the entire photo set sloughing off into the sea. Because while it’s not like Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jeremy Irons, and Al Pacino—as, respectively, Patrizia Reggiani, Maurizio Gucci, Rodolfo Gucci, and Aldo Gucci, respectively—don’t look plenty weird here, it’s just that none of them can match the spectacle of Leto’s Paolo Gucci, who looks like a high school senior who has started to apply old age make-up and somehow forgotten to ever stop. We half-expect him to mumble “I’ve got too much shit on me” and mutter about how he doesn’t want to be around any more.
Scott’s latest tells the story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, who was killed (spoilers) by his ex-wife Patrizia in 1995. And, credit where it’s due: These posters have gone a long way to selling the lurid, weird tone that Scott is hopefully aiming for in this tale of intra-family fashion warfare. (Given that the director is working from a screenplay adapted from a book whose subtitle is “A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed,” we’re guessing we’re in for neither a stolid nor a sober ride.) House Of Gucci is out on November 24, 2021; meanwhile, its inevitable trailer has just immediately jumped to the top of our “Gotta get a load of this” list whenever it eventually arrives.
Update, 7:54 p.m.: Well, speak of the puffy-faced devil: Said trailer has now arrived, slamming into our senses with a lick of Blondie and a lot of fancy jackets. As one might have predicted, Leto’s face is just as distracting in motion as it is in still images. But Gaga and Driver both look genuinely mesmerizing—and not in a “dear god, why” sort of way—suggesting that Scott’s film might be just flashy enough to make all these big make-up shenanigans work.
