Bloodshot and Other Tales - Free For All podcast #2
In the latest Free For All podcast, Kristal, Josh, Keona, Mike, and Jacob discuss the most recent film releases on VOD, including Emma, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Trolls World Tour, Onward, Birds of Prey & the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Bloodshot. We also saved some time for a quick foray into Final Fantasy VII Remake at the end of our two-hour long show!
Whew! That’s a lot to talk about! What I really want to dive deep into, however, is the film adaptation of Bloodshot, so without further ado, here’s my take on Vin Diesel’s latest action film, directed by David S.F. Wilson and distributed by Sony Pictures.
First, let’s take a look at the movie itself. Bloodshot tells the tale of a soldier named Ray Garrison, who dies in combat and is resurrected by a clandestine paramilitary organization called Rising Spirit Tech, led by a smarmy doctor named Emil Harting, played perfectly by Guy Pearce. Harting has saved Garrison’s life by injecting him with nanites, or microscopic machines capable of healing virtually any injury sustained by Garrison. They also provide him with enhanced, superhuman strength, speed, and agility, which makes him a force to be reckoned with. Think of him as a combination of The Punisher and Wolverine, and you have a good idea of who Bloodshot is.
The film is stylized to the point that it seems like a Michael Bay movie, with color saturation turned up to eleven and droning music straight out of Transformers. Vin Diesel is his usual Vin Diesel-y self, and Eiza Gonzalez does a good job with the material she has and is a welcome presence in the movie. The highlight is, of course, Guy Pearce, who keeps it from falling into self-parody, and the action sequences are decently shot and fast-paced enough to keep hold of your attention. The film never slows down enough to give its characters a lot of time to breathe, and the ending fight reminded me a little too much of Universal Soldier, but overall, I don’t regret my time watching it. I’d say it’s worth a watch for the action sequences alone.
All that said, I want to discuss something that perhaps slipped through the marketing cracks here, namely that Bloodshot is a comic book adaptation. The character belongs to the Valiant Comics universe, which originated in 1989 with such licensed characters as Solar, Man of the Atom, and Magnus, Robot Fighter. In 1991, Bloodshot was created by Kevin VanHook, Don Perlin, and Bob Layton, and soon joined the previous books, along with many others, to form the initial version of the Valiant Comics stable. In the mid-’90s, the publisher was purchased by Acclaim Entertainment (yes, the video game company), which itself went bankrupt soon afterward. For years, the Valiant characters lay dormant until the publisher was resurrected in the mid-2000s.
In 2012, writer Duane Swierczynski and artists Manuel Garcia and Arturo Lozzi rebooted the Bloodshot comic and rewrote his origin, turning him into a paramilitary assassin working for Project Rising Spirit, a shadow ops organization which had been attempting to turn soldiers into enhanced operatives since World War 2. This time around, Bloodshot had been stripped of his identity completely, implanted with false memories (as his cinematic counterpart also discovered), and his nanite-infused bloodstream also gave him optical camouflage and limited shapeshifting abilities, which were extremely useful in infiltration and espionage missions. Too bad we didn’t see those in the movie.
As in the film adaptation, Bloodshot also fought to gain control of his own destiny and sought freedom from his corporate masters. The comic’s storyline evolves, however, and there are times when he must work with PRS to ensure the safety of the world, which complicates matters and adds far more intrigue to the narrative than the movie ever does. There’s a part of me that wishes someone else had been cast in the main role in the film, as the comic book version of the character is more tragic and vulnerable than the man Diesel portrays.
That said, comics are a distinct medium from films, and the fact that they can utilize long-form storytelling allows them to add more depth and complexity to the narrative than an hour and forty-five minute film ever could. There are things I would have loved to see in the movie that I get to see in the comics, but just seeing Bloodshot brought to life on screen is pretty cool in and of itself. I mean, who would have thought we’d ever see a movie version of a Valiant character in the first place? That’s pretty cool, if you ask me.
Still, after the critical drubbing this movie took and the way it underperformed at the box office just prior to the COVID-19 worldwide shutdown, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the only Valiant universe film we see for a while. Paramount has acquired the rights to Harbinger, my favorite series in the publisher’s line of books, so I hope we get to see that property come to life soon. There’s such potential here that I’d love to see Hollywood adapt, but only time will tell if that’s a viable option for studios when this is all over.
As it stands, Bloodshot was a decent effort, but it could have been so much more. I’d have loved to see a reference to Rising Spirit’s history, as well as a cinematic version of H.A.R.D.Corps or Harbinger itself, but maybe that’s too esoteric for mainstream audiences. I’ll just have to recommend that everyone check out Swierczynski’s run on the Bloodshot comic, and if you do, post your thoughts in the comments!
