The Avengers (1998)
Avengers discussion points:
- Word is this thing lost $40 million in early 90’s dollars. DAYUM, that’s rough as it does seem like it cost a lot. There are a lot of nice set pieces and some early CGI work that could not have been cheap.
- I kept thinking to myself, was the idea here to make the movie dream-like? It feels like how dreams feel, fragmented and logically illogical. You’re always, as a viewer, playing catch-up; trying to understand the characters and how they eneded up wherever they end up.
- And I kept wondering what it would be like if David Lynch had taken a shot at this – like, would it have worked?
- David Fincher was once in talks to in write and direct this movie with Charles Dance starring as John Steed. That would have been neat!
- That cheeky 60’s dialogue, pulled right from the TV-show felt like it could have worked… if the cast understood it better or could work it into the mix better. Instead it just comes off horribly awkward and stilted.
- Jeremiah Chechik filmography: What the actual fuck?
- Hall and Oates and Van Halen music videos!
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
- Benny and Joon (1993)
- Diaboligue (1996) Uh-oh. Sharon Stone, Chazz Palminteri, Kathy Bates and an often naked Isabelle Adjani who, despite being gorgeous, cannot save this lurid remake of a 1955 French mystery thriller.
- Neat cameo from JJ Abrams!
- And then… Avengers.
- Chechik went on to do nothing but TV work after Avengers and is still working today! Previous credits include episodes of Burn Notice, Gossip Girl and Leverage.
- Eddie Izzard was in this, playing a kind of droog-like character and I found it wild how stocky he looked. Throwing serious Oliver Reed vibes without saying a word until he falls to his death while screaming “Fuuuuuuck.” Hilariously, it wasn’t Izzard and was dubbed by someone else due to a scheduling conflict.
- What did you think Connery was doing here? Izzard says he did the movie exclusively to meet the legend.
- Mrs. Peel… interesting that an ENTIRE plotline that would have explained why she always insisted to be called Mrs. was cut.A
- I kept hoping for a reveal near the end of the movie that Feinnes’s character, John Steed, was actually Thurman’s husband the whole time and the interplay between them – the flirting and such – were a game between them.
- I guess the mistreatment of their characters, and specifically the flirtiness and romance angle between Steed and Peel really upset fans of the original show. It’s a good thing fanbases learned how to play nice after that ugliness, huh?
- Apparently a ton of stuff was cut after the preliminary viewing by Warner Bros. brass. They hated the movie and demanded a much shorted cut from Chechik that led to the movie not making any sense. This is why the thing plays in such a dreamlike manner, going for scene to scene with tenuous-at-best logic.
- RELEASE THE CHECHIK CUT – why give Zack Snyder the opportunity? He didn’t direct Christmas Vacation or anything remotely as good. Warners owes Chechik!
- The initial screenings went terribly – evidently it was shown to a largely spanish-speaking audience in Arizona as a test screening and it went as well as one would expect. (Very poorly)
Bottom Five Agents:
My Approach, I tried to stay away from really obvious parodies or comedies that play super broad. So stuff like Inspector Gadget or the Austin Powers movies are out the window because the whole gimmick is that the spy sucks at what he or she does. There’s no Melissa McCarthy, Bill Murray or Steve Martin on here.
5.) Agent Cody Banks (2003)
Cody Banks (Frankie Muniz) – Directed by Harald Zwart
It’s not that this is necessarily a terrible movie or that it’s worse than many of it’s ilk, but more that I’m using it to represent this idiotic subgenre of movies about Kids becoming spies. Spy Kids, The Spy Next Door, My Spy, etc… they all stretch credibility beyond belief by having kids somehow become powerful, gifted spies with amazing gadgets and fighting skills. But this one? It has Frankie Muniz, and honestly? I can’t. He doesn’t look like he could throw a baseball, never mind a punch. He’s just so aw-shucks, golly gee, wide-eyed and it’s PAINFUL, painful to watch him as he tries to be cool. The kid is goofily charming, a trait that worked really well for him as Malcom in Malcom in the Middle. But here, he’s just… not believable in the slightest in a movie that wants us to accept that he wouldn’t have been killed in the first ten seconds that shit got real. Maybe I’m just jealous because he got to flirt with Angie Harmon who I have been thinking of in private moments since Baywatch Nights. Whatever. Not even Keith David saves this mess, or this entire genre of crap cinema about kids that survive super-agents.
4.) The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018)
Drew (Justin Theroux) – Directed by Susanne Fogel
Not exactly the same kind of thing as my first pick, so before I get pegged for being unoriginal and picking a movie that’s representative of an entire genre of movies where average people somehow outwit secret agents, just know that’s NOT EXACTLY why I picked this movie. Most of these movies with adults that “become” agents typically aren’t as dumb as the Kid movies because, well, they’re for adults and not many are dumb enough to accept Paul Blart mall cop becoming Ethan Hunt. But, what’s weird about this genre is that the secret agents that surround the inept adults frequently as JUST as idiotic as the non-agents. In this flick, Mila Kunis and the always hilarious and awesome Kate McKinnon play two normal ladies who get embroiled in a spy-versus-spy game when it’s discovered that Kunis’ s recent ex was a spy who had some kind of McGuffin or another. The whole thing plays out in a surprisingly violent and funny way, but at the end of the day, you’re supposed to accept that Justin Theroux’s character is somehow a criminal genius spy, yet could not somehow overcome these two clumsy chicks who spend 90% of the movie screaming through insane gunfights, elaborate martial arts combat and completely bonkers car and motorcycle chases. What kind of secret agents miss THIS often? Were they trained by stormtroopers or something? I liked the movie, for what it’s worth, but these were some seriously dumbass spies (which I guess makes it acceptable at the end when Kunis and McKinnon too become spies… because it’s THAT easy, apparently.)
3.) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
‘Mac’ (Ray Winstone) – Directed by Steven Spielberg
The turncoat spy is one that appears in so many movies, but rarely has there been one that’s as confusingly inept as Mac from the much-reviled Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. While I’m overall pretty positive on the movie, I have to confess Mac, who is well-played as smarmy and self-preserving by the great Ray Winstone, is a character that works in service only to keep the plot going. His selfish interests are cartoonish, and his constant flipping from one side to another makes him hard to follow. WInstone is charismatic and goofily likeable, but I had a REALLY hard time believing this oafish fool could have been a Cold War Era super-spy that rode shotgun on Indy’s 1960’s adventures. At the end of the movie, he’s cramming jewels and gold into his pants and shirt like a silent-film era comedy villain and it’s mockish and stupid enough to land him on this list. The most offensive part – that last wink he gives to Indy as he’s sucked into the spinning mechanism of the ancient Aztec aliens or whatever the Hell. “I’ll be awwright,” he says as the temple crashes into ruin around him. And yeah, maybe he will be because nothing else about him made sense either.
2.) Mission: Impossible (1996)
Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) – Directed by Brian DePalma
Agents get killed in the line of duty. It happens. And in 1996, director Brian DePalma rebooted the Mission: Impossible franchise to a level of success that no one could have foreseen. And how’d he do it? He introduced a team of spies filled with terrific, charming personalities and then killed all but one of them, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. I like Mission: Impossible a lot, both the original movie and the franchise as a whole, but man… Emilio Estevez was used as bait and wow, did he prove to be a bad agent. Not one for the field, Emilio’s Jack Harmon was more a behind-the-scenes kind of guy and while working on top of an elevator, the thing – controlled by double agent Jim Phelps (played Jon Voight) – thrusts upward forcing poor Emilio in a spike. It’s the kind of death usually reserved for a bit-part player, but man, it comes off as overly complicates and contrived, especially for a smart guy like Harmon. Maybe this is a cheat. Maybe I’m just too big a fan of Repo Man, but seeing Emilio go like just didn’t seem right. He’s essentially the Drew Barrymore of the MI series but unlike her in Scream, being a razor-sharp secret agent, he deserved better. ANd unlike her, he didn’t get a talk show. In fact, after 1996, Emilio largely shrunk from the spotlight, largely moving behind the camera with the exception of Mighty Ducks sequels (and a series). Had he not died, maybe things would be different. Maybe he’d be Simon Peg in MIssion: Impossible 37: GRINDFORCE WIND. JUSTICE FOR EMILIO!
1.) The Tuxedo (2002)
Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs) – Directed by Kevin Donovan
This is another one I like, honestly, but wow… it perfectly represents the final of my archetypes and probably the most dumb: the agent that relies on gadgets to be an agent, exhibiting little else in the way of skills or smarts. Because of James Bond’s Q-created weaponry, there have been a number of spy movies with heroes that would be otherwise average Joe’s were it not for a particular device, a super suit or a tricked-out car (ahem, Michael Knight.) In The Tuxedo, we get the ultimate Supersuit, a ludicrous creation that turns Jackie Chan’s cab driver into an agent supreme. And that’s ok! Because it’s Jackie Chan! I will buy Jackie in any role as long as at some point he kills somebody accidentally with a soap on a rope or a vacuum cleaner. But in The Tuxedo, he obtains the titular suit while driving for an alleged superspy played by British actor Jason Isaacs, whose best known to Harry Potter fans as Lucius Malfoy. Here, without that Edward Winter hair, he’s a third-rate Bond knock-off, the kind of guy that might have been considered for the role in 2002, didn’t get it and then tried to console himself by taking this part. The movie gives Devlin nothing to do but spout bad dialogue while appearing debonaire, but really he just looks bored. At one point, he’s in a hospital completely covered in bandages and it’s so obvious that Isaacs isn’t in the scene that it’s laughable. Jennifer Love Hewitt, at the time only 22, puts up with a lot in The Tuxedo and many would argue she’s the “worst agent” in the movie, but her character is a n00b and she manages to KO plenty of people. Isaacs? He didn’t even get out of the way of a bomb on a remote-control car. Sheesh.