The LEGO Movie

Of all the places you'd expect to find an exploding helicopter, The Lego Movie (2014) is perhaps not the most obvious - a surprise moment in a surprisingly enjoyable film. This is despite, on the face of it, looking like it's a recipe for disaster.

Littered with cameo appearances, parodies of much-loved film characters, and a repeatedly-played annoying sounding song, this looked like it was going to be a gruelling 100 minutes.

Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) is just an everyday generic Lego construction worker. He lives in a world where every day is the same and everything operates like clockwork. Everyone follows the instructions of their overly-chirpy leader, President Business, watches the latest episode of a repetitive sitcom and joins in a daily singalong of 'Everything Is Awesome'.

But all is not as it seems. President Business is actually the evil Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell), who has grown tired of a rogue band of rebels (led, sort of, by Vituvius, voiced by the Almighty Morgan Freeman) that like to construct Lego in their own more interesting way.

Business plots to end the plastic brick universe as we know it by unleashing an ancient relic - the Kragle - to cement all the Lego blocks in place - permanently. The only thing that can stop this evil OCD plan is The Piece of Resistance (a seemingly plain bit of red plastic) that a prophesied special one will pick up. That someone turns out to be Emmet.

With the help of Vitruvius, Wyldstyle (voiced by Elizabeth Banks), Batman (voiced  by Will Arnett) and other Lego characters from the last few decades, Emmet must escape capture by Business's two-faced cop (voiced by Liam Neeson) and save the universe.

The plot is so utterly bonkers it's like a child wrote it, but it actually holds together extremely well. The screenplay and direction come courtesy of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the minds behind the similarly mad Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.

It's easy to dismiss the film just as a cynical money generating exercise to get kids' to mass-purchase Lego (which they certainly will), but the film is full of heart and subtle comedy. And frankly it was a great film for nostalgia too. As someone that grew up with Lego (pirate ship and governor's fort, Robin Hood set, random spaceman set etc), the appearance of past Lego characters were a nice addition.

Crazy plot, a world made of Lego, engaging characters, and an exploding helicopter to boot? Yes indeed, everything is awesome. The helicopter explosion occurs when Emmet is pursued by Bad Cop's police squadron. Making for what appears to be the edge of their world (a big wall) it seems there's nowhere to escape to. But wait! A gateway appears just at the right time for the escapees to speed into. This promptly closes - with the pursuant cars smashing into the wall. A moment later, the police helicopter follows them into the wall, before falling on top of the cars - causing a smattering of flaming wreckage.

Artistic merit

This fireball marked the end of a decent chase scene, where Lego pieces fly everywhere. The explosion is pleasingly understated - just a simple crash and fall into some other Lego pieces, with a dash of flames.

Exploding helicopter innovation

This is undoubtedly the inaugural cinematic Lego chopper explosion.

Do passengers survive? 

Inconclusive. For starters, there didn't seem to be any resultant melting, which from my childhood experience usually happens with the addition of fire to Lego. There is death in the film though, with one character returning as the classic ghost Lego Man, however there were no other ghosts visible on screen.

Positives

Chris McKay, who is best known for his work on Robot Chicken, was also involved in the film which might help to explain why I found it so hilarious. There are some particularly good scenes where Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill voice Superman and the overly attentive/annoying Green Lantern, notoriously one of the lamest of superheroes. Superman' discomfort is a pleasure to watch. But really Batman steals the show - Will Arnett is straight in above Kilmer & Clooney on the Best Batman list.

Negatives

One of the random highlights features a scene where the Millennium Falcon pops up. It's a really small scene, with a really small number of lines. Anthony Daniels voices C3P0, and Billy Dee Williams voices Lando. Han Solo is disappointingly not voiced by Harrison Ford, who the directors described as "too busy" to record one or two lines for that scene. Sadly, Ford wasn't too busy to appear in last year's woeful Ender's Game.

Favourite quote 

Batman: "I only work in black...and sometimes very, very dark grey."

Interesting fact 

It's Morgan Freeman's very first appearance in an animated film. Which given he seems to add his voice to virtually everything is rather surprising to find out.

Review by: Joseph Clift

White House Down

Action movies set in the White House are like buses: you wait ages for one then two trundle along virtually at the same time.

Following the lamentable Olympus Has Fallen, in which Gerard Butler saved the free world largely by stabbing people in the head and neck, here comes an altogether breezier take on the kidnapped President trope.

The plots of the two films are spookily identical. Both boast a washed-up hero, traitorous agent, ‘cute’ kid and secret bunkers. Even the fake money demands to mask dastardly nuclear ambitions are carbon copied. But where Olympus was set in rainy darkness and gloried in its wearisome uber-violence (there’s a lovely scene where a pension-aged lady is repeatedly kicked in the stomach), White House Down takes place on a sunny day and is, for all intents, halfway to being a comedy.

Certainly, Channing Tatum is much more likeable than Gerard Butler. (Having said that, Pol Pot was more likeable than Gerard Butler.) Normally, one should never trust a man whose neck is wider than his head, but Tatum lollops around the White House like a big, enthusiastic puppy and, between the cartoony fight scenes, gamely plays along with the film’s fromage-laden tone.

President Jamie Foxx, it turns out, is planning to withdraw troops from the Middle East so baddies storm the White House. Absolutely everyone is either killed or taken hostage – except Tatum and his precocious young daughter, natch.

While Tatum creeps stealthily around the corridors, still getting into scrapes at every turn, his tweenie offspring blunders around the entire building for ages without being spotted. She even records the baddies on her smartphone and posts the clips to news stations.

Tatum: owner of Hollywood's most ripped neck

(Incidentally, it’s a chief failing of action movies that kids are always plucky, resourceful and insanely tech-savvy. One longs to see a kiddie hostage just sobbing in a corner in a puddle of their own urine, which is clearly what would actually happen.)

It quickly transpires that President Foxx has been betrayed by his head of secret service, James Woods. (Presumably, Brian Cox was busy). Tatum manages to spring the First Dude and, with the pair trapped in the building among hordes of terr’ists, all is primed for a classic buddy action movie. Which, against the odds, is broadly what you get.

Of course, this being a Roland Emmerich movie, half of Washington has to be destroyed first. Bye, bye, Capitol Building. So long, White House roof. (There’s also a self-reverential quip about buildings going up ‘like something from Independence Day’, which no-one but the director will have enjoyed.)

There’s a weird mixture of acting chops on display. Jamie Foxx, aware that this won’t be the movie to bag him a second Oscar, has fun with his faux-Obama role. Lance Reddick, a former big hitter from The Wire, puts on his best game-face and frankly brings more gravitas to his lines than they deserve.

Indie darling Maggie Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, barely bothers to hide how bored she is with her role. In Secretary, she became famous for having her bottom spanked. Here, it’s just her face that looks like a slapped arse.

Most weirdly, Jason Clarke – who spent the first 30 minutes of Zero Dark Thirty exuding genuine menace as he water-boarded an Iraqi captive – is here stared down by the 13-year-old moppet. (Many in the auditorium may have been wishing someone at this point had handed him a bucket of water, flannel and small plank of wood.)

James Wood: Brian Cox was unavailable for this film

One thing is certain: White House Down contains the finest collection of cod-military jargon to grace a screen in some time. Rather than merely see something, this is a world where people ‘have a visual’ or ‘have eyes on’ them. No-one wearing a uniform seems capable of getting through five words without mention of ‘wetwork’, ‘black ops’ or ‘payload delivery’. People with straight faces say things like: ‘Eagle is 30 seconds from the vault: we are coming in hot’.

Of course, not everything is good. The moppet daughter, Scrappy Doo in human form, is allowed to squander way too much screen-time. The fight choreography is ropey: numerous bad guys can be spotted patiently awaiting their turn to get shot or punched. Worst of all, while tussling over the nuclear button at the climax, super buff Jamie Foxx is comprehensively banjoed by 66-year-old James Woods, playing a man who’s terminally ill with cancer.

And yet, it works. Most action movies either play it straight or lazily point to their own crapness with a post-modern wink, as if that excuses everything. (Snakes on a Plane, anyone?) It takes genuine skill to make the audience guffaw at the daftness of the whole endeavour and yet still root for the good guys.

Happily, the film’s producers also seem to have put some thought into the exploding helicopter scene. It occurs when the reliably useless military bigwigs, unaware that the baddies are armed with ‘Javelin’ surface-to-air missiles, send in three choppers under the radar. (‘We have Black Hawks!’)

I hope this isn’t spoiling things, but they all get blasted to smithereens. Once hit, the first casualty careers in low over the White House roof and clips off the American flag, which flutters broken and twisted to the ground. (See what they did there? That’s called a ‘metaphor’, fact fans.) As tradition dictates, the second chopper then hovers around politely waiting to be hit – but it too crashes in a winning fashion, splurging into the White House pond to serve up a rare explosion and big splash combo.

That’s good, but it gets better. The third chopper has time to hover directly over the White House roof, and a dozen marines are already shimmying down long ropes when, oops, the final missile hits. Cue splendid shots of a huge Black Hawk swirling helplessly with flailing marines hanging on to the ropes like its some demented fairground ride, before the whole thing crashes into the roof and explodes.

Exploding helicopter innovation 

It appears that some people actually sat down and spent time debating how they could most entertainingly splatter a few helicopters over the White House. Compare with Olympus Has Fallen, where the cinema audience literally couldn’t tell what was happening for most of the chopper scene.

Positives

Probably the most innovative thing about the whole scene is that Emerich has the brass nuts to let it unfold during a bright, sunny day. Most action directors, painfully self-conscious about the limitations of CGI, hide their chopper conflagrations behind cover of rainstorms or murky darkness. Our Roland has the sense to realise that if you only serve up the explosions in a fresh and quirky way, no-one’s going to be arsed about a bit of unlikely-looking pixilation.

Negatives

When the third chopper crashes through the White House roof, its back rotor blade ends up spinning dangerously up against someone’s face and then stopping…just in time. This tired old trick, first deployed in Mission Impossible and repeated in countless films since, should surely now be allowed to see out its final days in the Exploding Helicopter Rest Home for Overused Scenes.

Interesting fact

Despite creaking unsteadily towards his seventh decade, James Woods turned up at the film’s premiere slobbering all over his latest girlfriend: a 20-year-old moppet. That wasn’t creepy at all.

Review by: Chopper

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

It’d be easy to hate this film. Existing solely to help sell children’s toys, it is the most cynical of marketing ploys. But, if you put aside your objections to this crass commercialism, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra is actually an enjoyable film.  

The plot sees Channing Tatum, and the rest of his GI Joe team, try to stop new nanotechnology weapons falling into the hands of a global terrorist group called Cobra.  

While the dialogue is horrendous and the characters as flimsy as the toys that inspired them, the viewer does get to enjoy regular dollops of glossy action told within a clearly delineated good vs evil story. You could complain about the simplicity, but Star Wars is one of the beloved films ever made and its plot is similarly straightforward.  

All of this, though, tells us nothing about the exploding helicopters. The film opens with Cobra stealing the super-weapon. Tatum and his men are transporting it when they come under attack by Cobra’s forces.  

A futuristic shuttle craft fires a sound-wave weapon on one of the helicopters guarding the convoy. It squashes the front of the chopper and forces the rotor blades off before the fuselage bursts into flame.  

The second helicopter attempts to continue the fight, but its weapons are useless against the enemy. The Cobra craft fires another round of its odd weapon. The helicopter pilot has just enough time to say, “Oh my god” before his aircraft is destroyed.  

Artistic merit 

You can’t beat a good “What the….” moment when someone realises they’re about to die and this film serves up a doozy.  

Exploding helicopter innovation 

Is this the first known destruction of a helicopter using a sonic-gun? Certainly, the crumpling of the front of the helicopter is a *ahem* wrinkle we’ve not seen before. 

Number of exploding helicopters 

Two 

Positives 

The film finds a decent role for Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje who played the fearsome Simon Adebisi in gritty prison drama, Oz.  

Negatives 

The script. It really is an atrocity. 

Favourite quote 

“You’ve really tossed the caber out the park with that one.” 

This bonkers line is uttered by Christoper Eccleston who plays the villain McCullen. Presumably, the original line was something like “Hit that out the park.” I’d like to hear more common idioms given Scottish makeovers. 

Interesting fact 

Apparently, Channing Tatum was initially not keen on taking the role in GI Joe because he didn’t want to glamorise war. Fortunately for the makers of the film he had no moral objections to shamelessly glamorising children’s toys. 

Review by: Jafo