There is a scene in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" where Cate Blanchett stands heroically on deeply green, oversaturated cliffs, looking off wistfully into the distance at burning Spanish gallions, as a stiff wind rips through her tent, blowing away (hopefully unimportant) maps and papers in slow motion.
Afterwards, she gallops ahead of her army on a brilliant white horse, dressed in full shiny metallic battle armor, her fake ginger hair flowing out behind her. At this point my mind wandered, and I started to think about Robocop. I then started to think about how awesome "Elizabeth" would be if, instead of two hours of period banter festooned with fantastic set pieces, costumery, and computer animated ships, it had run wild with director Shekhar Kapur's sci-fi/fantasy ambition.
What if Queen Elizabeth, wearing her armor, had for the last twenty minutes of the movie transformed into a giant flying robot who could fly, and shoot lasers, and ride on the backs of genetically mutated Tyrannosaurus-rexes, and had annihilated Philip's armada with heat-seaking missiles and other technology impossible even today, let alone in 1588.
Why, that would be a truly original cinematic acheivement, something heretofore unseen in any film. It would have taken every audience-member and critic by surprise, and would have become not only the most absurdly ridiculous but also probably the most talked-about film in decades.
But, alas, instead of breaking phantasmagorical boundaries, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" rides poorly on the coattails of its predecessor, and remains unoriginally grandiose, beautiful, and haughty. Oh yeah, and Clive Owen plays Jack Sparrow for some reason. And later, a horse swims underwater in slow motion for about a half hour. Also, there are midgets.
The film wants us to question the necessity of Elizabethan values and opulence, but ends up forcing us to ask the same question of this sequel itself: "Now, was that really necessary?"
No comments:
Post a Comment