marathoning all the ocean’s

Watched Ocean’s 8.

Since it was the first Ocean’s film I have seen and had no points of com­par­i­son, I start­ed watch­ing all of them …
 

oceans 11 (1960)
The orig­i­nal one. My guess no­body is go­ing to watch it, so I will be spoil­er­rif­ic. I also as­sume that you have seen the 2001 re­make.

The 1960 ver­sion fea­tures Dan­ny Ocean played by Frank Sina­tra, he and ten of his friends rob a casi­no vault us­ing black­out, and Ocean has an ex-wife, which are about the only com­mon el­e­ments be­tween it and the re­make. The eleven men are all old com­rades from the same unit in WWII, and Dan­ny is not a crim­i­nal. The num­ber 11 comes from the plan that five pairs rob five casi­nos si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and one col­lects the mon­ey. Be­cause of that, most mem­bers play iden­ti­cal roles in the heist and you see the same sim­ple heist re­peat­ed five times (al­beit be­ing edit­ed fair­ly snap­pi­ly). Some char­ac­ters re­ceive more de­vel­op­ment than oth­ers, but gen­er­al­ly the in­tro­duc­tion for each is very brief. The film has a good chunk of af­ter­math af­ter the heist, be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by one of the men’s rel­a­tives who con­ve­nient­ly hap­pens to be a de­tec­tive. To cut the sto­ry short, the men failed to re­trieve the mon­ey they hid and the heist end­ed in vain.

It is an un­der­whelm­ing film, and the rea­son is the amount of con­trived plot lines. Ocean has an ex-wife and a new girl­friend, both of whom he flirts with but are not at all in­volved in the sto­ry. They are mis­used red her­rings. And the afore­men­tioned de­tec­tive is not only con­ve­nient­ly a fam­i­ly mem­ber of one of the eleven, but also hap­pens to be in one of the five casi­nos at the time of the rob­bery. And even though he is very good with his de­duc­tion skill, he does not catch the men when he has a chance to do so (there’s no rea­son, he just doesn’t).

The amount of naive sex­ism is some­thing I no­ticed but does not of­fend me per­son­al­ly, par­tial­ly be­cause it’s an old film and I can ac­cept the naivety of the time, but it is very much that of the ‘60s and would eas­i­ly come across as dis­taste­ful to­day. I will save that dis­cus­sion for Ocean’s 8.

In con­clu­sion, the orig­i­nal Ocean’s 11 was a great idea of a film that went to the kitchen too ear­ly, as Sina­tra seemed to have hur­ried into pro­duc­tion since he liked the idea so much. The heist was too sim­ple, the eleven did not have dis­tinct enough per­son­al­i­ties, the ro­mance plot had no pay­off, and while I like the bit­ter twist end­ing, the build up to it was shaky. Hav­ing said that, I may be look­ing at this from mod­ern lens, and if some­one grew up with it and like it very much, I can to­tal­ly see why. I can also to­tal­ly see why some­one would want to make a bet­ter ver­sion of it, which speaks to Soderbergh’s keen eye. I give it ⁴⁄₁₀.

At least every­one can agree that Saul Bass did a great job with the open­ing an­i­ma­tion, which is eas­i­ly the best part of the film (if not the only good part).
 

oceans 11 (2001)
Wow, Soder­bergh nailed it!

I had nev­er seen the film and I thought I was go­ing to be on the mi­nor­i­ty side, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. It does al­most every­thing bet­ter than the orig­i­nal, ex­cept for the open­ing cred­its.

Dan­ny Ocean, played by George Clooney this time (one of Soderbergh’s favourite ac­tors, like Kurt Rus­sel is to John Car­pen­ter), fin­ish­es his 4 year im­pris­on­ment and im­me­di­ate­ly starts plan­ning a heist, re­cruit­ing his old friends. Un­like the orig­i­nal, the ex-wife plot is used to the film’s ben­e­fit and gives pur­pose to the macguf­fin more val­ue than its mon­e­tary one. Clear mo­ti­va­tion, check.

Also each of the eleven men plays dif­fer­ent part in the heist. Leader, sec­ond in com­mand, card deal­er, me­chan­ic, ac­tor, de­mo­li­tion, ac­ro­bat, fi­nancier, pick­pock­et, and two dri­vers. Unique roles, check. (Ac­tu­al­ly the fi­nancier was the twelfth guy in the orig­i­nal, which was an­oth­er wast­ed char­ac­ter)

In or­der to make the ex­e­cu­tion part thrilling, it helps to un­der­stand through ex­po­si­tion if the char­ac­ters are per­form­ing as planned or mak­ing mis­takes. To make that hap­pen, the heist plan needs to be elab­o­rat­ed to the au­di­ence be­fore­hand. For ex­am­ple, the 1996 Mis­sion Im­pos­si­ble’s fa­mous CIA heist scene looks goofy out of con­text, and know­ing that Tom Cruise – or even his sweat, must not touch the floor and not make a noise ei­ther – makes the scene nail-bit­ing. It seems ob­vi­ous, but it’s not al­ways done well. Ocean’s 11 checks that.

And wait, we have a bad guy now! I love Andy Gar­cia and he is great in the film, though he is too dumb to con­nect so many odd things hap­pen­ing in one evening. He has what Ocean wants, and his mo­ti­va­tion, abil­i­ty, weak­ness are all clear. A well-de­fined bad guy, checked.

The snap­py pac­ing and clas­si­cal fil­mog­ra­phy is also a big plus. The mu­sic se­lec­tion is per­fect­ly fit for the film. The orig­i­nal had a pro­fes­sion­al singer in the eleven, per­form­ing on screen. So, when it comes to mu­sic, I would call it a draw.

Though, it is not emo­tion­al­ly strong film, it is a great light-heart­ed heist film that per­fect­ly hits the note it is sup­posed to, and is prob­a­bly close to the best you can with the set­up of eleven-men heist. I think the prob­lem with the orig­i­nal is still there, which is weak char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and the chem­istry of some mem­bers, but that could only be solved with few­er heist mem­bers, longer run­time, or in a se­quel in which you do not need to build all char­ac­ters from scratch. 8.5/10.

As a de­sign­er who re­vives past works reg­u­lar­ly, I strive to make failed but good ideas back to life. And I be­lieve Ocean’s 11 is a the­atri­cal em­bod­i­ment of my taste. I do not want an­oth­er in­stal­ment of some­thing al­ready great and pop­u­lar, just so that Hol­ly­wood can milk more mon­ey out of it un­til it runs dry. I do not want an­oth­er Star Wars, Ter­mi­na­tor, and Ghost­busters (which the mil­len­ni­al Ocean’s se­ries is also a vic­tim to). Re­makes have to have cre­ative heart too, and I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the choic­es of failed good ideas and the bet­ter mod­ern re­sults of films like The Fly, The Thing, Scar­face, and of course, Ocean’s 11.
 

oceans 12 (2004)
Twelve. The di­rec­tion and act­ing are just as good as the pre­vi­ous film, and the new an­tag­o­nist is cool. The prob­lem is the twist end­ing that ex­plains the true events in flash­back that makes the main heist mean­ing­less.

The de­tails of the events of the film are not well thought out, and the script does not make good use of the char­ac­ters. Not sure if it’s worse than the 1960 orig­i­nal, but I was re­al­ly unim­pressed.
 

oceans 13 (2007)
It’s an­oth­er se­quel not so well con­ceived plot-wise, but I ap­pre­ci­ate that each film has dif­fer­ent theme and fo­cus more on the char­ac­ters, in­stead of re­peat­ing the first film. Some de­tails of the plot don’t make sense in hind­sight but only ex­ist to give a false ten­sion, but com­pared to 12 which the plot hole did ruin the sto­ry, it’s much more bear­able.

This time, the fi­nance guy gets ripped off by a ri­val casi­no and the team pulls off the ‘heist’ as a re­venge. It doesn’t mat­ter how much they win, it’s about how much their en­e­my los­es. They are even joined by their for­mer en­e­my, which is a great twist; more Andy Gar­cia is al­ways wel­come (he is in the Mam­ma Mia se­quel, but I refuse to watch it even with him in the cast). Ocean’s 11 was 8.5/10, 12 was 6, and I give 13 7.5/10. Next is the fi­nal en­try of the se­ries, Ocean’s 8.
 

oceans 8 (2018)
So, fi­nal­ly Ocean’s 8.

While it’s per­fect­ly watch­able, its artis­tic mer­it is nonex­is­tent; it is a car­bon copy of both the 1960 orig­i­nal and 2001 re­make, re-pack­aged in a fe­male box. Your opin­ion of the film will vary, de­pend­ing on if you re­act to su­per­fi­cial girly stuff, if you have seen pre­vi­ous Ocean’s films, and how fa­mil­iar you are with heist films in gen­er­al.

In terms of di­rec­tion, this movie does a good job copy­ing Soderbergh’s style (Gary Ross is cred­it­ed as di­rec­tor). The pac­ing was snap­py and I was nev­er bored, and the main ac­tors have good chem­istry. I was wor­ried about cast­ing and act­ing, but it was ad­e­quate for what the film need­ed. Anne Hath­away is usu­al­ly not some­one I give cred­it for act­ing, but her role was per­fect. He­le­na Bon­ham Carter’s char­ac­ter was bor­der­line com­i­cal, but she man­aged to pull it off. San­dra Bul­lock wasn’t at her best, but the film does not call for emo­tion­al in­vest­ment any­way. Ri­han­na, play­ing a char­ac­ter called 9 Ball (be­cause there was 8 Ball in the orig­i­nal), was also pos­i­tive­ly un­ex­pect­ed.

In terms of the sto­ry, the first half was al­most ex­act­ly the same as the Soderbergh’s ver­sion, even start­ing with the jail. It comes with girly sug­ar coat­ing, how­ev­er; in­stead of mon­ey, the macguf­fin is a jew­ellery de­signed by Carti­er, and the heist takes place at a fash­ion gala din­ner where you see tons of fe­male celebri­ty cameos. Like in the Ghost­busters 2016 which de­pict­ed all male char­ac­ters as ei­ther su­per mo­ron or su­per evil, Ocean’s 8 also treats men neg­a­tive­ly; it’s a re­venge on Bul­lock character’s ex boyfriend, and she also re­fus­es to hire a man for the team sim­ply be­cause he is a dude. Is that what fem­i­nism is about? The past Ocean’s films were not sex­ist to­wards women, well, ex­cept for the 1960 orig­i­nal which did have mo­ments which would come across as sex­ist to­day. But that’s how things were back then and peo­ple didn’t know bet­ter. By the lev­el of in­tent, I would say that Ocean’s 8 is more sex­ist. It is not of­fen­sive­ly so, com­pared to the dis­as­ter known as Ghost­busters 2016.

The qual­i­ty of the heist is av­er­age. Usu­al­ly in heist films, the ob­jec­tive and strat­e­gy will be ex­per­i­ment­ed and ex­plained in de­tail be­fore, so that the au­di­ence un­der­stands the stake and what con­tributes to suc­cess or fail­ure. The thrill comes from the ex­e­cu­tion part, es­pe­cial­ly when things are about to go wrong, ei­ther by ac­ci­dent, con­flict be­tween the law en­force­ment or com­peti­tor, or dou­ble cross with­in the team (again, you can spot the dan­ger only if the plan is ex­plained to you). Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Ocean’s 8 is rather slop­py on this front. The brief­ing part is too short, and no­body fails any­thing in the ex­e­cu­tion, and if any­thing hap­pens, dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy fix­es every­thing. It is a safe auto-pi­lot with too many mir­a­cles (I can tol­er­ate the lat­ter some­what). It is at least a bit bet­ter than 12, not too bad among the five Ocean’s films.

The biggest sto­ry el­e­ment tak­en from the orig­i­nal in­volves the last act, and it’s al­ready get­ting quite long, so I’ll skip it.

The film is fine, it’s en­joy­able enough. My gripe is that nev­er be­comes its own thing and be­comes clear that they just want­ed a gen­der-swapped ver­sion of an ex­ist­ing film, shit­ting on men along the way. In the light of fem­i­nism, there are lots of great films with fe­male leads that de­serve more praise. This film, as well as Ghost­busters 2016, do not em­pow­er fem­i­nism, they just want fem­i­nists’ mon­ey. I re­al­ly think fe­male adap­ta­tion is a wrong ap­proach and rather an in­sult to women. Is a less­er ver­sion of men’s film the best Hol­ly­wood can give to women? You do not need to ral­ly around stuffs like this. It’s a girls’ guilty plea­sure at best, and shouldn’t be tak­en any more se­ri­ous­ly than that (to its cred­it, the pub­lic doesn’t seem to). ⁵⁄₁₀ for me, with a room for up to +2 large­ly de­pend­ing on if you en­joy cur­so­ry chick flicks or not.
 

I have now watched
three fran­chise fail­ures this sum­mer: Solo, Juras­sic World: Fall­en King­dom, and Ocean’s 8 (at least fail­ures in my book). What is com­mon in the three are that they all feel like de­ci­sions by the stu­dio ex­ec­u­tives who only know how to milk a cow but not how to raise one, as op­posed to some­body gen­uine­ly want­i­ng to cre­ate some­thing new out of the fran­chis­es. Be­ing an in­com­pe­tent pres­i­dent of a com­pa­ny must be fun (e.g. Kath­leen Kennedy, who ac­tu­al­ly has a lot of ex­pe­ri­ence), hav­ing no un­der­stand­ing of the core val­ue of the com­pa­ny as­sets, fail­ing to val­ue cre­ativ­i­ty, screw­ing over the fans, burn­ing the com­pa­ny rep­u­ta­tion to hell, and still get­ting paid by the mil­lions.

Not all hopes were lost though, as I’ll re­view The In­cred­i­bles 2 next time.
 
 

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2018 Toshi Oma­gari.

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