Lucy and Guardians of the Galaxy are largely unmemorable

TWO of the more consequential films of the year are released this week. And by consequential, I don’t mean artistically so.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy takes an irreverent tone in a fully realised world.

TWO of the more consequential films of the year are released this week. And by consequential, I don’t mean artistically so.

First Luc Besson’s Lucy (MA15+, UniversalSony, 85min, $39.95), which was a glorious mess of a thing that resonated with a broad audience.

Besson, the director of La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element, specialises in making, and producing for others, quite good bad movies.

Lucy is one of his better bad films, and is all the more notable because it stars Scarlett Johansson in the lead role of an action jaunt.

Hollywood gasped that a female-led action film could make money. Besson yawned. He has been elevating women in his action films for years.

In the silly plot, Johannson’s Lucy moves from being a fancy-free traveller in Taiwan to an unwitting drug mule and then — via a convoluted exploration of a particular drug’s brain-altering potential — a hypersensitive killing machine bent on cleaning up.

Besson leaps from being violent and regressive to quaint and thoughtful before throwing in his requisite Parisian car chase. Despite pretensions of intellectual inquiry, the film barely stands up to scrutiny beyond being a fitfully memorable popcorn movie.

Another consequential movie is Guardians of the Galaxy (M, Disney, 121min, $29.95) which, for all the rapture on its release, was thoroughly unmemorable. And I say that having loved the sci-fi adventure film. My son loved it even more.

But despite its irreverent tone, fully realised world and a soundtrack aimed directly at this gen X-er, it didn’t stay with me.

Overall, the film is a success yet there is no particular gag or scene or shot that resonates or that I would consider essential as we muse about the cinema year just passed.

Ultimately, the Marvel films are grand achievements but arguably hollow. Have any of them touched you?

It is hard to argue The Avengers, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America don’t provide value for your ticket price, but I’m concerned the success of this new franchise has consigned cinema to another decade of Marvel Comic adaptations.

The Marvel studio, now part of the Walt Disney Company, has announced a line-up of 10 more movie releases through to 2019, including a Black Panther film and, shamefully, its first female-led adaptation, Captain Marvel, bringing the Marvel film universe to 21 offerings.

Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth noodlings look subtle by comparison.

And no matter how good they are, the films’ relentless success can’t be good for cinema.

They’ll squeeze other movies out of multiplexes, editorial and marketing space.

You have to hope the Bessons of this world are allowed to continue their loopy ways as Marvel takes over our cinema universe.

Twitter: @michaelbodey

THIS WEEK

The Mule (MA15+)

eOne, 103min, $29.99)

The Inbetweeners 2 (MA15+)

Roadshow (92min, $39.95)

Clarke and Dawe: Operational Matters (PG)

ABC (364min, $29.95)