In the Lost Lands

We went to see this film in the cinema last week. It's the latest film from creative team Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich (who did the Resident Evil films) and it adapts a George R. R. Martin short story.

My wife and I didn't like it, but I'm not particularly interested in writing negative reviews here. I just thought there are some interesting creative decisions to unpack in it. For clarity I should say we left the cinema early, so there may be plot points revealed later that I'm not including because I was driving home when they came up.

Jovovich (who I think is a really underappreciated contributor to genre fiction - I might circle back to this) plays a witch called Gray Alys. A very odd thing about her character is her neutrality. She has a policy of accepting any task that someone pays her for. The central quest of the story is for her to acquire shapeshifter powers for the queen. The queen, who is already powerful and who is not portrayed as benevolent, wants additional power. Gray Alys agrees, and seems non-judgemental about it. Incidentally, when the queen leaves the room, one of her loyal men (who believes the shapeshifter plan is crazy) pays Gray Alys to make the previous thing she was just paid for fail, which she also agrees to.

This seems like odd storytelling - I'll come back to why I think so in a moment - but it also takes place in a setting where everything seems hopeless and corrupted. There isn't much indication that any particular outcome, of any particular action, would be favourable for anyone. There's a kind of neutral mushiness to the world.

Gray Alys enlists the help of a big fella to go on her quest and every few scenes we see a (quite cool) phases-of-the-moon countdown device which shows how they are running out of time. This is the weird part, for me. The countdown is tracking the time until Gray Alys misses the opportunity to collect a super power for a queen, which she has already agreed to sabotage in some way. The story has the trappings of tension (in the literal countdown, the pursuit by enforcers), but when you stop to think about it, does anything in it matter? I honestly had no idea what would happen if the queen did or didn't get her new power, nor whether Gray Alys was invested in either outcome.

From the little I know about George R. R. Martin, I feel like if I were to say to him that his story (albeit seen through an adaptation) has no heroes and everything is shades of grey, he might respond enthusiastically with "Yeah! Right?"

It is overly simplistic to say that a story needs to have someone good trying to achieve a positive moral outcome. I don't think that's true (though it's likely that that's the kind of story I'm in the mood for at the moment). But deviating from that age old format is a little tricky. If you stretch the neutrality of the protagonist to this extreme there's a real blurring of the stakes. What does it matter? A villain, using a witch who is magically compelled to obey, to achieve her aims might be an interesting story - is that what this story is? I don't know because I didn't see it all.

For balance, I should mention that there is an extra bad villain who tortures and kills innocents, and also keeps showing up. The main characters aren't really opposing her, particularly. They are mainly running away from her. Though I assume they kill her later in the film. 

Anyway, I mentioned to a friend last night that I think Milla Jovovich doesn't get the credit she's due, as an action star who has been hard at work for over 20 years. He said it best with "She's been in some bad films, but she is never the reason that they're bad." She has been a trailblazer for women taking on these types of roles in bigger, more successful movies, and I hope she gets the recognition for it. I like to imagine that she will eventually go up on the Oscars stage to accept a lifetime achievement award from Florence Pugh or someone, and then she'll have to do a spin kick to knock Pugh out of the way of a laser that skewers past her and cuts off Timothée Chalamet's arm. We can safely assume that this takes place in a future where reattaching Chalamet's arm would be a routine medical procedure.

I'm aware that I said I didn't want to write a negative review, and this might all sound pretty negative. I'm glad In the Lost Lands exists. Any film like this is a work by many people. They built a world and realised it on screen with visual flair. The actors are good. The opening scene, where Gray Alys escapes execution, is quite cool. It isn't a sequel or a remake, so there's a certain freshness to it. It takes a swing, which I appreciate.

Anyway, I guess I'm looking for some heroes at the moment. 🤷‍♂️