Plague Doctor “. Batment Forever – review

Frankly speaking, on “Major Thunder” I personally did not have high hopes. First, the phrase “Russian kinokomiks” immediately triggers flashbacks about “Defenders” and “Black Lightning”: after all, Andreasyan and Bekmambetov pretty much poisoned the soil for any further experiments in the genre. Secondly, the short prequel about Thunder, which was released back in 2017 and was supposed to warm up the audience before the short film, gave the impression of a very expensive fan movie, but nothing more. And thirdly, the “Plague Doctor” arc, which formed the basis of the picture, is simply bad, like, in general, all the early comics published by Bubble. This is an utterly formulaic detective story about catching a maniac, with terrible dialogues, flat jokes and characters whose good design covers the lack of characters. Over the years and the advent of sensible screenwriters, the situation has improved, but if the Bubblets were going to move the first story about Thunder close to the text, a catastrophe would not have been avoided.

In general, there were enough reasons for fears, but somehow not very much for optimism. However, the filmmakers have proven that it is sometimes helpful to set aside negative experiences and, like Batman in League Snyder, trust for once.

Thunder is by no means Bruce Wayne, and therefore lives in a shabby apartment that literally falls apart

Igor Grom is Peter’s coolest cop. He opens the door to any bandit lair from his feet, is not afraid of a fight and alone drags the statistics on detection in his own department. But there are two things that the detective cannot cope with. The first is his own eccentric character, because of which Grom cannot get along with his colleagues and regularly brings the chief under the monastery. And the second is corruption that permeates the city through and through. The oligarch demolishes an architectural monument to open a casino, the outskirts are suffocating from the stench of a landfill placed against all norms, and the insolent major remains unpunished after he knocked down a little girl to death. How can a simple tracker fight this? No way. But suddenly an avenger in the mask of a medieval plague doctor appears in St. Petersburg. In his manifestos, he claims that lawlessness is a disease, and there is only one medicine – fire. The trouble is, the more charred corpses the police find, the more the townspeople support the killer. Thunder needs to catch the psychopath before it comes to popular riot.

The plot of “The Plague Doctor” goes far enough from the original source so as not to repeat his mistakes, but at the same time it is loyal enough to it to please those who still liked the comic. It’s all the same free retelling “Seven” David Fincher, but if “Batman” Matt Reeves can, why can’t Bubble? In addition, the deliberately dark story about catching a maniac moralist is so generously flavored with humor and action that neo-noir automatically turns into a family comedy action movie. And it seems that this scheme has not yet had such a variation. Yes, the main detective intrigue can be unraveled at the very beginning, and in principle, the plot, if desired, can be predicted move by move – the creators love cliches. But here it is not what is important, but how.

“Major Thunder” is, perhaps, not so much an adaptation of a specific line of Bubble, as a kind of concentrate of a kinomics. It was filmed as if with the understanding that there may not be a second attempt, and therefore it is necessary to pay tribute to everything at once. In “The Plague Doctor” there is something from Nolan, and a little from Snyder, a little more from Schumacher and a lot from Sam Raimi. But if the same “Black Lightning” just insolently poked at the first Spiderman plot, then “Major Thunder” borrows tone. This is a movie that is not shy about its brightness, cartoonishness and naivety. It fully acknowledges its comic origins and squeezes the most out of it. Here Peter looks more like Gotham than the real northern capital, the police station looks like a site from some “Lethal Weapon”, and the rich asthmatic man carries with him an oxygen cylinder made of pure gold. Moreover, all this eclecticism, a wild mixture of French and Nizhny Novgorod, looks surprisingly organic. Yes, here it is – the Russian cinematic universe, born of the same love for both Western blockbusters and national flavor. And neither a bear-man with a machine gun, nor a Volga with wings are needed in it.

The Plague Doctor’s costume is so similar to Batman’s outfit that even the characters in the film notice it.

In Thunder itself, you can see the features of Gleb Zheglov, Danila Bagrov, and John McClane. He is stubborn, but principled, boorish, but charming. Tikhon Zhiznevsky is an unambiguous find. He is much more charismatic than Alexander Gorbatov, who played the same role in the short film, and makes the major more expressive than he was in the comics. Instead of a fearless knight with lightning eyebrows, we see a slightly tired, rather cynical, but persistent cop. The image is also not new, but it is played nicely.

Grom is complemented by a rookie Dima Dubin – not so much Robin or Sharapov, as Jiminy’s cricket from “Pinocchio”… It is through his lips that all the key messages of the picture are voiced, and the actor Alexander Seteikin manages to pronounce them with the necessary share of pathos, drama and naivety. Well, he looks like Dubin from the comics just phenomenally.

What can not be said about Lyubov Aksyonova in the role of journalist Yulia Pchelkina, but it is for the better. From a busty dummy for practicing rescue tactics, she finally turned into a full-fledged character. Now Pchelkina is a real Russian Lois Lane with an admixture of Catwoman performed by Anne Hathaway. She is smart, resourceful, even more sarcastic than Thunder, and, unlike her comic prototype, she is in no hurry to fall into the arms of the major. This is a clear advancement from Bubble.

But with the villain, everything is ambiguous. In fact, the Plague Doctor is still the same hybrid of Light from Death Note and the Green Goblin, only now in a cool tech suit. But without a mask, he is not at all impressive. All the actors in the film play with a deliberate inflection, like Burton and Reimi, and only the performer of the role of a maniac openly overestimates, although the image, it seems, should be thinner and more complex.

The main decoration of Major Thunder is Alexei Maklakov as Colonel Prokopenko, a kind of St. Petersburg commissar Gordon

Filmed “Major Thunder” excellent. Of domestic films over the past decade, only “Duelist” and “Silver skates”… Sounds good too, even if one cover of the classics of Russian rock makes you frown. Fortunately, it sounds on the final credits. Yes, and there are no special complaints about the staging, except that the fights came out a little chaotic, and by the middle the tempo dropped slightly.

But it’s time to pay attention to the elephant in the room: the film came out at the wrong time. Even though the story itself is nine years old and has been stripped of the most controversial aspects such as the political ambitions of the villain, Major Thunder still rhymes too much with recent news headlines. Anyone who wants to see loyalist propaganda in The Plague Doctor will see it easily. After all, here on one side of the barricades is a militant idealist from the Internet, calling people to the streets (albeit not to peaceful protests, but to pogroms – this is an important detail), and on the other – kind of like a positive policeman who, nevertheless , pummels people how much in vain and does not really care about any rights there. As they say, oil painting.

However, there is also a third party: the disgusting FSB officer from Moscow, who was sent to hush up the unrest and sew up the case as soon as possible, but louder. And he doesn’t care who to plant and whose lives to break. Here is a portrait of the system, and by no means flattering. The only idea Major Thunder is really promoting is that violence is not an option for either side. You can’t burn anyone alive, but it’s not recommended to just beat up – this will not solve the problem. And there are plenty of problems, and changes are needed, as is said in the Russian language.

“The Plague Doctor” is very easy to over praise, because he is essentially an anomaly – a Russian film comic strip that does not make you shiver with shame, and sometimes gives even more emotions than some Marvel and DC films. Yes, they even argue over him almost as zealously as because of Batman v Superman… Regardless of whether it launches the Bubble cinematic universe or flies at the box office, Major Thunder is already doomed to cult status, at least in narrow circles. As proof that sometimes Russian filmmakers can still be trusted.