The Losers: Inconsequential Fun At Its Best

As a new fan of The Losers, which I picked up specifically so I'd be properly prepped for the film adaptation, out today, I was nervous, but hopeful, about Sylvain White's take on the Diggle/Jock collaboration. But just a few minutes into the opening sequence and I was sold. Light on emotional involvement, but heavy on light shoot-em-up fun, The Losers is a solid good time at the movies.

Beginning with the event that propels the Losers into the adventure that opens the comic, we see right off the bat that true, this is no frame for frame remake, but thank goodness for that fact. White's adaptation manages to turn the first volume of The Losers into a concise, well told, easy to follow tale, while losing none of the high octane action or proper development of the characters. If anything, we get to know the presumed dead crew even more in the film than we do during the read of the first volume and feel more connected to them as a unit thanks to the fantastic chemistry all six actors have with each other. Loving the characters so much on the page, it was a true delight to see them interacting in the flesh with such familiarity & ease.

There's Clay, played stoically and sexily (just me? nomnom) by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the leader, who has no one and nothing but his Losers, Idris Elba's intimidating explosives expert, Rouqe, the last guy on the face of the planet you'd ever want to get into a disagreement with, Pooch, played with an undeniable sweetness by Columbus Short, the lighthearted transportation specialist with the most to lose, Cougar, the silent but deadly sniper (with only about 4 lines, Oscar Jaenada manages to make Cougar possibly more captivating & intriguing than any other character) and Jensen, the tech guy, played masterfully by Chris Evans with spot on comic timing, who goes through enough geek t-shirts to clothe an army. The x factor in the group is Zoe Saldana's Aisha, the badass who may or may not have a heart, who comes to the Losers with a mission that, should they choose to accept it, may save the world, but also may result in an early experation date for them all...and also may be a crock of shit to begin with.

The script does a nice job of adding enough elements to keep the suspense alive for readers of the comic without straying too far from the story and only dips into the cheese in one or two, blink and you miss it, moments.

That is, unless we're dealing with the main villain of the story, Max, played by Jason Patric doing his best Nic Cage impression. Or maybe that was just me wishing it was Cage chewing the scenery instead. Patric's attempt is a brave one, very hit or miss, unfortunately, for me, it was mostly a miss. His Max is almost...too creepy, too without a care, too glib, too mean. He comes across less an actual villain and more a troubled guy playing dress up. The elements for genius are all there - ridiculous lines (including one jab at an unusually short business partner which is one of the few moments that works for Patric), an unexplained scarred left hand, constantly covered by a glove, and a bridging on non-sensical quest for world domination and gosh does Patric try to do the part justice. Instead, most of his scenes are, simply put, cringe-worthy. I found myself just wishing they'd cut back to the Losers themselves as quickly as possible. But Patric really is the only weak link in terms of performances.

The actors, perfectly cast to such a degree that their resemblence to the drawn figures is almost frightening, totally embody their characters. My personal favorite was Chris Evans. Jensen is easily the most quotable of the film and I could do nothing but smile every time he opened his mouth. Or dropped his pants. ... You'll see. I am now somehow even more excited for his turn as Lucas Lee in Scott Pilgrim this summer, which, let me tell you, I didn't think was possible.


Overall, the film is fun, cool, often hilarious, at times nail-bitting and a wholly good time at the movies. Granted, I never felt particularly...emotionally connected to anything in the film, which is what prevents it from crossing over from good to great, but I also didn't miss it very much. Not every movie can be genre-elevating and that's okay with me. The Losers is a well done adaptation of a solid comic and a guaranteed enjoyable movie going experience. Chris Evans alone is worth the price of admission, but luckily you also get 5 other top notch performances, a lot of great action, and if you haven't read the comic, hopefully you'll walk away with the impetus to pick up the first volume.

Grade: B


Other Losers related posts:
Coverage of Wondercon Panel, from Loquaciousmuse
Interview with the cast at Wondercon, from Eruditechick See full post

What a Bunch of Losers

Wonder Con has come and gone, and I got to interview The Losers. Was it awesome? As awesome as the footage they'd shown directly beforehand!
So, yes. It was awesome. This interview also went up over at Screen Rant, so feel free to make me look good and check it out there, as well.
As cast members Columbus Short (Stomp the Yard), Chris Evans (Sunshine), Oscar Jaenada (Trash), Zoe Saldana (Star Trek), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (P.S. I Love You) and director Sylvain White (Stomp the Yard) filed into the press room, the journalists were told in no uncertain terms by Ms. Saldana, “‘We were sweating Oscar all summer, you guys."


Mr. Jaenada proceeded to sit in absolute silence for the rest of interview, seemingly content to emit a never-ending wave of mystery. He may in fact be the coolest man you will ever meet.
From the get go, the camaraderie of the cast members was palpable, and the sit down was filled with as many inside-jokes and as much rapport as the audience had just seen during the panel. Along with a sharp and interesting visual style, the promise of a dynamic cast with great chemistry seems a guaranteed part of The Losers experience.
Many projects here have what could be diplomatically describe as a tenuous link to comic books. How does it feel to be a part of a project that is steeped in them?
Chris Evans: Comic books can suck it.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan: It’s great to be here. You know, this is a great world to be in, and as actors you get all these scripts and what’s great about it is, the stories are original. There’s this kind of ebb and flow in Hollywood, you get the same scripts over and over, every romantic comedy reads exactly the same, and in the world of graphic novels there’s originality there, and some great characters.
Zoe Saldana: You get to expand your craft and be more creative.
JDM: Yeah! So it’s way groovy to be here, we’re all happy to be here, or we wouldn’t have done the movie. That was a crazy question!
Sylvain White: I think particularly for me as a filmmaker and a graphic novel fan since I was a kid, it’s an absolute delight to be here among my peers and present what I’ve done with a graphic nvoel that’s so cool like The Losers and that’s so original in tone. And I think that’s what Jeffrey’s saying, is there’s a lot of derivative material out there and now graphic novels are kind of re-boosting Hollywood in that sense, kind of giving them original stories that are sort of untapped.


SW: There’s two things that I focused on that I knew worked extremely well in the graphic novel, the first thing is the tone: the graphic novel has a unique tone combining really gritty visceral action with a really strong humorous tone. The characters are really fun to navigate the action with, so that’s the first thing. The second thing is that aesthetically, the graphic novel is amazing. And I really wanted to reflect that in the movie. You know you can’t necessarily replicate frames out of the graphic novel, I don’t think that helps anybody, but there’s certain things that I talked about with Jock in terms of the use of colors and the graphic design of the novel that I really wanted to translate into the movie, so we have a kind of comic book aesthetic, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with it. It sort of eases you into that world.
Jeffrey- how much of the original comic do you bring to the role?
JDM: With Watchmen, that was so kind of iconic, that needed to be exactly so close to the comic or people would have ripped us a new one. With this, this was a great foundation to use. For Sylvain, invaluable. For us as characters- invaluable! Because it gives you a really great place to start and jump off. Jock and Diggle did such a good job with defining these characters, and Sylvain allowed us as actors to kind of take what we gathered out of those graphic novels and bring to life what we thought of those particular characters, and relationships, and so we got to play around a little bit more than say I did in Watchmen.
Chris, could you talk about your connection to comic books?
CE: I’m not a big comic book reader, I don’t really have a big history and a love for comic books, I didn’t grow up reading them. But they’re fantastic for films! I was saying earlier in the giant room that they’re great for films in the sense that it’s an intangible thing, you have all these different creative people coming together, trying to make something, and the director is the quarter back, trying to bridge the gap of all these different artists, together, with words. And a lot of times the message can be lost in translation, not all the time, but the beautiful thing about comic books are, even movies based on novels, you have like a blueprint. You have a tangible thing to say this is the world we’re going for, especially in comic books, you have like a color palette, you have a visual home base to kind of root yourself in. As an actor, it’s knowing at least that the people that are behind the visual element of the film have this kind of blueprint to work off of, and as an actor you have something to go off of too, so it’s a treat, it’s always nice working off a comic book because you know what you’re getting into beforehand.


Chris- CAPTAIN AMERICA CAPTAIN AMERICA CAPTAIN AMERICA? (This question paraphrased from necessity due to a glitch in the audio.)

CE: [Flummoxed sound that defies transcription]. Aaaaah, I don’t know, I really don’t know. It was… eeh. It was just. Ah.
[The other cast members collapse into laughter.]
CE: I think Marvel is doing a lot of good things right now. And it’s a fun character- I think, even if it wasn’t a comic book, I think just the story of Steve Rogers is great, he’s a great guy. Even if it was just a script about anybody, I would wanna do it. It wasn’t necessarily about the comic itself, it was about -
ZS: It was about the tights.
CE: Any time I can get in blue tights. Um- it’s just, he’s a great character to play. Just so happens to be a comic book.



Is there less pressure to do something like The Losers which is not as well known as opposed to Watchmen, Star Trek, FF, something more iconic?
SW: I didn’t necessarily see t that way. I think the pressure comes from the fact that it’s really great source material and you want the translation to a movie to be at least as good if not better. The pressure came from there. But in terms of how aware or not people are of the graphic novel, it was pretty inconsequential for me. I just wanted to make a great movie that can reflect the graphic novel as best as it can.
The forward in the first volume of the collected works talks a lot about the filmic influences on the comic series. How much going back, then, and doing the movie did you look at that- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, some of the other things listed- how did you incorporate that into your performances and the filming of the movie? (Hint: This question asked by me.)

Columbus Short: …uuh, one of the- one- Hmm.
ZS: ….Wow.
CS: One of the reasons I wanted to do this movie- as an actor I, personally, want to do things that are grounded in some sense of reality. And this is one of the graphic novels that I think, in the last five years, is a) one of the best ones I’ve ever read- and it’s grounded in a sense of reality. They’re not fantastic, they’re not in tights, they’re not flying and have superpowers, but they’re anti-heroes, they’re real guys.
CE: You got a problem with that?
JDM: Ruining half my career, right now.
CS: No, no no, it’s what I like to do. That what I like, and Sylvain is using a grounded material like this, you know what I mean, so it helped in our performance, like Jeffrey was saying, having some freedom, some liberties because it’s not Captain America or Superman. We know what Superman is, we know what Batman is, but we’ve had some liberal ability to change up our characters and give our own take on it, which comes across great on screen, the chemistry with us. Because we all have… we’re all close to our characters in this film, I think, in a real way-
JDM: Blaguyver.
ZS: [laughs loudly.]
CS: I can turn these glasses and this cup into something special.
Sylvain- Can you confirm or deny the rumors about Robotech?
SW: What are the rumors?
That you’re directing.


SW: Well it’s not a project that’s green lit or anything like that, so. It’s a great cult series, you know, when it came out I actually saw it in France, growing up. I saw it in French and it’s a pretty amazing cartoon and I’m hoping it’s going to come to fruition. I actually read a draft that was really good, so-
JDM: Are there any parts for us?
CE: I need a job.
So that’s a yes?
SW: I’m interested in doing it, but you know the project is not fast-tracked or anything like that, so there’s no official things, there’s no DL or anything like that. They sent me a draft, I liked it, I think it’s a work in progress.
Is it about the Macross saga? Or does it go through to Southern Cross, or… (Nerd alert- that would be me.)
SW: It’s the first generation. I’ll say this, what’s really cool about The Losers, as well, is that we didn’t try to jam pack all the comics into one movie, we really went back to the source material, started with Ante-Up, which is volume one, and follow the story lineally. So the cool thing is that it’s really an origin story how these guys became the Losers, and hopefully leaves a lot of room, from the source material, for sequels. So hopefully people will like movie and we can keep on enjoying the adventures of The Losers.
JDM: You’re amazing.
CE: That was very well said!
SW: When I came on this film it was an R, the studio perceived it as an R film, and I thought that’s ludicrous, because the tone of the graphic novels - that’s what important, it’s not the violence, it’s how intense and visceral the action is. So I went for that instead of how gory and graphic the violence is. The good thing is it still feels hard, hard as hell. It still feels gritty and realistic.
CS: What does R and PG-13 even mean, anymore? Cuz you can shoot a baby in the face and still-
JDM: F@#!.
ME: R has bad words.
JDM: You can’t say f@#!. Sorry, anyone under 18.
SW: The rules were pretty easy to navigate with this film, particularly, and I don’t think you miss [the language]. Like you watch the movie and [don't] think ‘oh, this is a pg-13 movie’ and I think that’s a good accomplishment. See full post

A Very Fangirl Take On Warner Brother's Wondercon Panel: The Losers, Nightmare on Elm Street, Splice, Inception

The Warner's panel on Saturday rocked my socks, as Warner Brothers tends to do on a regular basis. The movies we learned about were The Losers, Nightmare on Elm Street, Splice, and surprise entry, Inception! Here's some tidbits from the panels and our take on said tidbits:

The Losers

-Director Sylvain White describes the movie as cool gritty visceral action with incredibly fun characters & moments. 

-He was really impressed by the design work in the comic, especially with primary colors & brought that to the film

-New benchmark in boy girl fight scenes. (If the footage is any indication, hell yeah it is)

-Extended trailer was fucking awesome, Hilarious, great action, great chemistry right off the bat. And look EXACTLY like the characters. Like. Exactly. Wtf.

-Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays Clay, the leader of The Losers. Black suit, big guns.

- JSM calls Calls Zoe, Zo! Aweee

-Zoe Saldana plays Aisha, little lethal weapon, don’t know what card she’s playing, lots of secrets

-Columbus Short puts the Reserved for Nic Cage sign in front of him and it’s awesome. His character, Pooch, is the emotional glue of the story

-Chris Evans is Jensen, the group's tech support, and destined to be my favorite character

-Oscar Jaenada plays Cougar, the team's silent sharpshooter, who stayed pretty silent during the panel and Eruditechick's interview. When our intrepid reporter pointed this out to him, he replied in his thick, sexy accent,"Just like my character"

-Cast has tons of chemistry and they clearly get along well. That's a set that must have been fun to work on.

-On putting the cast together - White got everyone he wanted, his first choices with this “crazy group of kids.” Characters are so difficult, each brought a different facet to the movie, and the actors needed to reflect that.

-“Chemistry was majestic from the beginning Can only make magic cause you are completely comfortable.” - Zoe

-Zoe is turned on by “no”

-Zoe insisted on doing scenes that required lots of physical activity. Zoe and Jeffrey Dean Morgan call each other hot. It’s hot.

-Does Chris Evans prefer comedic or dramatic roles? Both are fun to play, at the end of the day its about the director and making a good movie. Half the satisfaction is on set, but it’s sullied if the movie comes out and isn't good. ... I wonder what he could be talking about.... :)

(HOTNESS ------------->)

- Will Jeffrey Dean Morgan be making an appearance on Supernatural this season? Right now he is concentrating on the Losers, but maybe, if it’s the last season, he would love to go back and made it perfectly clear. He was pretty amused with the fact that someone asked about Supernatural at all, while not a single question was directed toward Zoe about Trek or Avatar or Chris about Captain America.

-They are all obsessed with Nicolas Cage signs. As are we. Win!

-It was easy for JDM to fall for Zoe. Clay & Aisha are very attracted to each other but don’t trust each other and are a bit on the violent side in the film. Zoe thought the fight scene was very romantic. Matched up to the personalities they have. JSM said fight was on a turn on…to the characters…he then gave an ACTUAL winky face

-Characters stay very true to the characters in the comic series

- To Chris Evans - Why the comic book films? Its such a great well. Films are tricky. Such an intangible world, making something out of nothing. Lots of weight on a directors shoulders. Comics provide an amazing map. Its fun for not just directors, but actors too. Good modern comic like the Losers translates well.

Interview with the cast snagged by Eruditechick coming soon! For now, here is some video from the panel. Non HD I'm afraid, but still fun!

Nightmare, Splice & Inception after the jump!

See full post