EPT
It seems according to Rotten Tomatoes, a lot of the Top Critics took a pass and did not see Seventh Son and so into the breach I go.
Warning: Spoilers Abound- this is not a typical review in the sense that it should be used to see or not see the film. Rather this is an exploration what did and did not work and most interestingly for me, what could have worked.
When I was trying to evaluate the film at the end, I was drawn to compare it to the fantasy films of the 80's, but I was having troubles placing it. It wasn't the horrible 80's fantasy films, but neither was it the good, but flawed fantasy films like Ladyhawke and Dragonslayer. My cousin had the perfect summary for it: Underdeveloped. That may seem strange considering the film was stuck in development hell for years, but underdeveloped doesn't refer to the film's creation, but the story and the ideas within the stories.
The Beginning
The film starts with some surprisingly efficient exposition in the form of a prologue of Jeff Bridge aka Master Gregory hammering shut the iron gates over a pit, apparently locking away Julianne Moore's witch character Mother Malkin. While it was efficient exposition, I actually think including a prologue was a misstep. Lord of the Rings has a giant backstory and two giant info dump chapters in Fellowship. The prologue in Fellowship film was necessary. In contrast, Seventh Son has so little backstory, info dumping at the beginning eliminates the mystery of the enemy. Stories with dark forces such as witches, I think are enhanced by at least starting with the unknown threat. The full threat and backstory can be hinted at and the viewer's imagination can fill in the rest. Seventh's Son closed off that potential. There was a witch and she was captured. Then she escaped. Neat. That could be easily be revealed later in the story.
We are then introduced to a drunken Bridges (Gregory) who for some reason gets in a fight with a local guard who is angry that Gregory won't help them from a witch attack. Gregory handily beats the guard drunken master-style and is led away by Kit Harrington, his apprentice. This sequence is played for comedy. But next is one of those creepy possessed girl scenes, followed by Kit taken hostage by Mother Malkin and Gregory burns both. Kit abruptly perishes and Malkin escapes.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aEybnJr.jpg)
This is an odd whiplash in tone- the drunk fight seems comic in tone, then we get creepy. Kit's death, I think is supposed to be tragic, but Gregory responds to his apprentice's death with “A waste of ten years.” I'm not sure if that was supposed to be comic- it seemed to be playing for laughs with a one-liner, but I didn't find it that funny. Or is Gregory supposed to be a darker, callous sort of character? But we are introduced to Gregory with the drunken master fight that definitely felt comic.
In either event, I think they almost had something. If they doubled down in portraying Kit as the main character, and then killed him immediately after, it could have been potentially shocking. That might have been the intention, but it didn't quite fit- certainly not with Gregory's callous comment. If HE doesn't care about Kit's death, it rather makes it hard for the audience to care.
Alternatively, if they started with the actual main protagonist, Ben Barnes aka Tom Ward and later brought in the idea that Gregory had killed his last apprentice, I think that could be a powerful way to sow doubt in the mind of Tom Ward and even the audience. Who is Gregory and is he actually good? But the way it was portrayed lacked the emotional punch or suggestion of Gregory dark side- what Gregory did was dark, but it didn't feel dark because the film went into one-liner territory.
So then Master Gregory paddles across a lake to find his new apprentice, Tom Ward. And my goodness- truly the best part of the movie is the on location shots. It came as no surprise that most of it was shot in British Columbia. More fantasy films- and better ones at that- need to be shot here.
Tom Ward's mother is very clearly hiding her pendant from Gregory= suspicious. Ward is quickly recruited and takes off with Gregory, but not before his mother gives the pendant and told to keep it secret. No explanation on what it is or what it does.
The Chosen One
Here comes a large underdevelopment- Gregory's looking for a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son to replace his last apprentice. Why exactly? They are The Special. What makes them special? I had no idea. The movie didn't say. Ward is apparently a disappointing Seventh Son to Gregory because he doesn't fight very well. Okay, so they are supposed to be naturally good fighters? That still doesn't explain why they only recruit Seventh Sons- the order of witch hunters is so depleted that Gregory is the only one left. So why not open the gates to anyone willing? Well looking up a summary of the novel this movie was based on (very loosely), it turns out that only Seventh Sons of Seventh Sons can see ghosts and other evil creatures.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/47HixrK.jpg)
THAT seems like some rather important piece of information to include. It would be like Obi Wan seeking out Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi. . . and then include no mention of the Force. Without the Force, why wouldn't Obi Wan also train Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and heck even all the droids to become Jedi?
This is basic storytelling. If your story revolves around The Special, the Chosen One- you must establish what makes them special or chosen. Even if you aren't The Boy Who Lived, you need to establish the difference between wizards and Muggles, those with and those without the Force.
Speaking of Jedi. The Trailer has a little blurb on what Tom Ward is joining: An order of noble knights combating the forces of darkness. . .It says here there were a thousand of you.”
“They all died.”
You would expect you would learn a little more about the order and what happened to them, but no. That actually IS all there is to know about the order. The trailer revealed it all. The movie has nothing more to say on the matter.
There is actually an intriguing concept- that they aren't just witchhunters, but caretakers- they tend the creatures of the dark. Some are harmless like ghasts. The most dangerous (witches) they trap and kill. Most they live and let live. A little bit like the Men in Black to be honest. However, this is said in passing and never developed further.
Then there's this scene:
They actually have a “She's a witch” scene. I honestly don't know how you have this and play it straight. Monty Python did their sketch too well and it's so hard to have a 'burn the witch' scene without evoking Monty Python. (Actually, The Last Valley with Michael Caine pulled it off, but that was also pre-Python, if only just.)
Point of View
This is an impatient film with its mysteries. Ward saves the girl Alice from the witch burners and there's a bit of is she or isn't she a witch. . .and then the next scene shows Alice with Mother Malkin and the other witch. . .so yes. Yes, she is a witch. No mystery for you, audience.
I really think this film has a problem with it's choice in Point of View. Very little is gained by showing the witches' perspectives and a LOT is lost by showing. I understand a film that wants to create a complex villain and therefore needs to show the story from their perspective. We really don't gain complexity in the villains. Mother Malkin is evil. There is this hinted past between her and Gregory, but the film doesn't use much of her perspective to explore this anyways and it would be just as easy to drop the same information in another way. Furthermore, Malkin kind of pulls a Ganondorf. Once she has her castle, she doesn't really DO anything. She sends her minions out to attack once, but that's about it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nWPby8s.jpg)
It would have been far more intriguing for Gregory and Ward to travel from city to village, learning about tending the dark creatures and discovering that evil is being loosed on the land, then realizing that Mother Malkin has escaped, and then realizing that she is freeing other evil creatures. (I liked the pit prison at the beginning, it would be cool for them to stumble across a couple more of those- maybe one still filled, then broken soon after.)
But the worst part of having the witches' perspective is the Alice reveal. I think the movie could have strung along Ward and the audience for a very long time on whether she was a witch or not and then after confirming she's a witch, then string along whether witches are bad or not. The movie brings up the wrongful persecution witches for a little bit, but then quickly drops the idea.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JX7aeSl.jpg)
Imagine if it was Alice driving the wedge between Ward and Gregory, revealing Kit's fate, revealing Gregory's romantic connection to Malkin. There are hints of this in the movie, but it needed to do a stronger job of playing Gregory and Alice against each other in the minds of the audience. What if the witches simply got backed into a corner by bloody-minded men like Gregory? That's an interesting twist in itself- it's always the last of the good order that goes around recruiting The Special. What if the evil order almost got stamped out, but they recruited Ward as their Special? Imagination the revelation that you got recruited and have been training for the baddies, tasked with stomping out the wild Fae. Even if the twist turned out to be false, it's those sort of questions that Alice could have been planting in Ward's mind and the audiences mind. The film almost tips that direction, but then back away and never ventures their again.
These questions could be compounded with that animated evil armour that attacks Ward in Gregory's workshop-fortress. It was supposed to be some sort of lesson, but it didn't really feel much connected to anything else. Evil animated armour and other random creepy things stuffed away in Gregory's lair could have been grounds for being suspicious of Gregory himself, but nothing much is made of it.
But none of these questions comes into play because five seconds after the movie presents this question, it answers it with Alice's scene with Mother Malkin. So much for that mystery.
Of Monsters and Men
The ghasts and boggarts were neat creatures and I wish the film had been built more around those sorts of creatures. The ghasts and boggarts felt like they were native to the forests they were bursting out from rather than a menagerie of fantasy characters rolled for a random encounter. They felt a part of the world as if the forests of British Columbia existed in a mythic past. However, I still hate the film for a jump scare with the ghasts. Startling someone is not the same as scaring them. But those two creature designs were cool, and I wanted more of that.
In regards to underdeveloped, we really got little sense of what people of all the dark entities they come into contact with. As much as Two Towers is big Hollywood action, Jackson gave us these little scenes- the burning of the Rohan, the terror of the common people during the siege. In Seventh Son, so little is shown from their perspective, it's difficult to gauge their reaction, which I think is important to establish that the days are becoming more evil. What is it like living in a land full of ghasts and boggarts and witches. A land where unknown entities can rip through and destroy an entire city in less than an hour? At least it might demonstrate that not everyone can see what is haunting them, thus showing the importance of Seventh Sons. That massive attack on the city, shown in the trailer, is a big action piece. But nothing much is shown of the survivors and the impact of the devastation.
The actual fighting of evil creatures felt somewhat of a letdown considering the giant wagon they towed around. They even have a scene where Gregory quickly explains what sort of metals were good against what. However, while there was a little bit of powder thrown on the bear to get him to turn back into a human, I wish there were far more tricky and trap methods to deal with the evil- rather than just swinging a sword or torching it with a flame-staff. Again, based on their combat methods, I hardly see why they need a Seventh Son of Seventh Son. They just need people hardy enough to take a lot of blows and then train them with conventional weapons. Considering the wagon, I was expecting a jack of all trades, rogue-priest. A gadgeteer, a batman-witch hunter. Knowledge, rituals, and tricks, combined with fighting prowess.
The film is very cluttered with individual enemies. That might sound like an arrogant thing to say- like critics of Beowulf saying that there were either too many or not enough monsters. However, hear me out. Mother Malkin escaped. She healed her sister witch (Bony Lizzie) and re-established her old castle. They can both turn into small dragons. We are introduced to Alice who is daughter of Bony and niece of Malkin. So far so good. If this were an 80's fantasy film, that would be sufficient and Mother Malkin would be played by Michelle Pfeiffer. But baddies, need evil minion, so fair enough, evil minions Malkin shall have.
Malkin is supposed to be growing in power until the Blood Moon and then something is going to happen. Not sure what except she will be most powerful. As she is growing in power, we are individually introduced to her minions. Each one has their own special power, which kind of makes them feel like evil X-men. They have enough introduction that it seems like they should be significant, but contribute so little to the plot that the introductions feel over-much. They all attack exactly once on the city- that attack they keep showing in the trailers. And then one of them captures Gregory. The rest are there to die in the end battle to a flame-thrower staff.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2Z52zIQ.jpg)
One of the introductions was particularly bad. Djimon Hounsou's Radu is the commander of these supposedly deadly assassins. He tries offering them to protect Malkin. Malkin walks down their line, one of the assassins looks her in the eye, so she promptly stabs him to death with her metallic/skeleton dragon tail. THAT's the introduction of these mighty, mighty assassins: killed instantly. Malkin says she doesn't need them, Radu tries offering again and she refuses. I get the feeling that nobody wants these guys and Radu's trying to pawn them off to any sucker that will have them. I think it's supposed to show that Malkin is super powerful, but because we've hardly seen her fight and we've never seen the assassins fight, it tends to denigrate the assassins rather than make Malkin look like a badass.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uLDnW6B.jpg)
Thereafter, the assassins turn out to be very good at jumping from trees like some sort of tree-jumping kungfu movie and then promptly dying to Gregory or Ward. They manage to knock Gregory's troll-like sidekick Tusk off a cliff. . . by using a tree for a battering ram! I was half expecting Tusk to step aside and watch them charge off the edge of the cliff. So bizarre. The film spoke loudly of the assassins skills, but they carried a very small stick.
There was some guy that jumped on walls and had a long tongue. He was useless. He reminded me most of that toad X-man baddie and I didn't much care for him either.
Leopard-lady and King of Swords, four-armed sword guy had little to do. . .except for that brandishing you saw in the trailer. There is far too much of the enemies gathering and getting introduced then of them actually going out and doing wicked and threatening things.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/87gaJ0G.jpg)
A lot of the enemies could have work fine in sequels, but considering the length of the film, the film could have used half the special baddies and there would be little difference except less things to show in the trailer. Furthermore, a lot of the minions feel like CS Lewis' smorgasbord of mythic creatures all thrown together in the same geographic place- they don't all seem to fit together.
Geography
The geography made little sense. My cousin figured it would only make sense if everything was based around the same lake. That certainly would make sense of their bell system that summons the Spooks aka Gregory. Sound travels well across water, so a bell system could call for help all around the shores of the lake... They certainly kept on bumping to each other despite getting separated. They lamp-shaded it with Gregory constantly running into his side-kick half troll? Tusk at random, but it still felt like they were running around the same 100 acres. Ward's mother randomly appears in the desert city just in time for Malkin's minions to attack and just in time for Malkin to kill her.
It seemed like the witches' fortress was far away and would need some travelling to. . .and then Ward just appears in the middle of the fortress in time for the climatic battle to assist Alice and rescue Gregory. Welp. That was easy. Someone looking at a map from time to time would've been nice just to establish where things were. There's a lake, lots of forest, a giant waterfall, a witches' fortress, and a desert city. But I had zero idea where anything was in relation to anything else. In some movies that doesn't matter. I think in this film, it would've helped.
Ignorance is Bliss
Turns out that pendant hidden by Ward's mother and subsequently given to Tom Ward with little to no explanation is a pendant stolen from Mother Malkin and the one thing that can make her even more powerful. This seems a very odd choice for Ward's mother- Mam Ward. Why would she send the pendant with her son, who will be fighting witches, but not tell of its importance aside from 'keep it with you always.' That seems akin to Gandalf giving Frodo the One Ring before he goes off to fight Ringwraiths, but give no explanation of the Ring's importance to Sauron, the Ringwraith's master. Seems a rather glaring oversight on the part of the giver.
Underdeveloped- Story Moments and Character
Some parts of Gregory's character felt disconnected. For instance, he drinks a lot. This is mostly played for comedy. He also seems rather nonchalant his apprentices dying- he might also feel bad about it. Is the drinking related? That connection is never really made. It's just something he does, whereas it could have been used for character development- that he's self-medicating to deal with the continual loss of apprentices. But Gregory feels mostly comprised of quirky quirks rather than built as a cohesive character. Bridge's voice was an odd choice.
There was an early moment where Alice and Tom Ward touch hands and there's a blue spark. Alice says that a blue spark occurs when a witch first touches a person in moonlight who she is destined to walk hand in hand. Then later she says sometimes it's destiny, sometimes it's just dust in a witches fingers. But then the film does nothing with this. No talk of destiny, fighting against it, free will, or anything. Blue spark happens. It might mean this, it might mean that. Issue dropped. No real sense of why this was included- perhaps it was in the book? But the movie did nothing with it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/o2qFCW9.png)
Again, the film is impatient. Gregory is captured. Tusk has been knocked off the cliff. Ward is all alone part way down the cliff on the ledge. By rights, this should be lowest point for the Ward and the film should create some space so that the audience can feel the depths of the valley, to taste the defeat. However, with hardly a pause, Ward's dead mother appears like a Kenobi apparition to pick up his spirits and giving him a rousing “You can do it.” It's so bizarre on so many levels.
1) that we're not allowed to feel the defeat for even a moment.
2) It feels like a Kenobi-ghost moment, only not as well done
3) After the entire pick-me-up speech, it turns out Tusk was just below, hanging on for dear life THE ENTIRE TIME. I burst out laughing at that point.
The End
Perhaps one of the bizarre exits for a Mentor character. Ward got maybe two weeks of training. Then after defeating the enemy, Gregory says, welp. Cheerio. I'm off and retiring, so best of luck. The Tommy Jones' exit from Men in Black made a lot of sense. I don't feel the same thing in Seventh Son. It just feels random. What makes it more random is Gregory's exit speech: “Remember all that I told you. Ignore it. No rules Tom. Do not be bound by them. Live in your own way. Live your own life.”
wat. Two weeks of training, then the Mentor bogs off and says. Forget everything I taught you. Do what you want. You'll figure it out.
This could make sense if Gregory was a sham. In fact there is a rather funny part where Gregory seems to know nothing about boggarts- everything he says about them turns out to be false. So that would be a rather funny twist if the Mentor was a fake and knew nothing and so it makes sense to ignore everything. But, it's not true across the board. There's a lot that he does know and he can be quite competent at capturing witches and does have a lot of useful skills and knowledge. Maybe it was supposed to be in reference to Gregory's views on witches- that they were all bad. But he said to forget everything. That's a lot of things. Furthermore, it's not even like Ward has become a Master- he hardly had time to become competent, never mind gain mastery.
As a side note- Alice's costume for the end battle seemed out of place. The switch from long flowing dresses to a leather corset and leggings 'armour' seemed bizarre at best. At the very least it felt like something from a different film altogether.
Conclusion
I couldn't say that it's a good film. But it's not a particularly bad film- when it comes to fantasy, I've seen much worse. But it's a very silly film. Sometimes intentionally so- there are some genuinely funny moments. But it really is quite underdeveloped.
So was I the only crazy person who saw Seventh Son? It did very poorly on its opening weekend so I suspect a lot of people haven't. Any other thoughts on the Seventh Son?
(And yes, I do intend to write that Part II to my last blog.)
