Seventh Son

                                               "To be no-good at a bad thing is good."

A wise and battle-weary Old Man is confronted by the greatest enemy from his past and recruits a young farm-Boy who slowly learns his destiny through interaction with a mysterious artifact he owns. As the boy grows, the Man, though grumpy, comes to respect and rely on the Boy, the Boy in turn slowly learns to accept the teachings of the Old Man and together the boy falls in love and they defeat the Evil and its Empire.

That's pretty much the basic plot outline of nearly every fantasy film made since Star Wars at the very least, whether it's Science Fantasy like Star Wars (or as TV Tropes dubs it, the Standard Sci-fi Setting), or the Standard Fantasy Setting from a popular book (see: Eragon). The latest incarnation of this tired trope is helmed by Russian director Sergei Bodrov, director and writer of Quickie, Prisoner of the Mountains, and Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan. Based on Joseph Delaney's 2004 fantasy novel, The Spook's Apprentice, Seventh Son follows Tom Ward, the seventh son of a seventh son as Jeff Bridges' Master Gregory, a Spook (basically a Monster Hunter Gandalf), recruits him to defeat the recently escaped evil witch Mother Malkin, played by Julianne Moore, who should know better.

Seventh Son is an awful, boring and completely unoriginal film in almost every way. The source material is apparently loosely based on Lancashire, the English county Delaney is from, and yet the film is shot in the lush wilderness of British Columbia, a Canadian province. Other sets range from Christian churchs to Meditteranean market-harbour-cities, and finally to an ancient Roman-themed deserted mountain fortress with Arabic interior decorations. The deluge of influences on the production design becomes so distracting that the first time you see Asian peasants carrying water buckets in the background you're confused, but by the time the Hindu protector god Vishnu appears alongside a giant salamander and a pair of dragons to destroy the harbour-city one no longer cares about a consistent universe. In terms of costuming it cannot be stressed enough how obviously this film wants the viewer to sub-consciously align it with Star Wars with the fact that Tom, Gregory and in one dream sequence Tom's mother all dress like fucking Jedi. It's more confusing than Lando Calrissian wearing Han Solo's outfit at the end of Empire Strikes Back.

Ironically, there's little to no magic used besides constant transformations into bear, dragon or salamander by villains, and besides those creatures and some worthless ghosts that are somewhere between a Dementor and the ghost army from Return of the King, there are no creatures or monsters in this magical world. Tom and Gregory's repertoire of magical ability is as extensive and interesting as their names are exotic as their main solutions to magical shape-shifter attack is throw glitter, light torch or swing sword.

On the performances, Ben Barnes is as handsome as a young David Wenham look-alike should be, but otherwise predictably bland white-bread protagonist. He offers no charm, no personality, and his character goes from gormless farmboy to trained warrior apparently by plot magic. His lineage that is the reason for his selection and the film's title is inconsequential, his father appears in one scene (you'd be mistaken for thinking the father of the seventh son would matter, but no), and any power he has comes from a magic amulet the audience is told his mother gave him that is ignored before the third act. His love interest is so worthless she only warrants mentioning for her AWFUL lines, but the actress' name is Alicia Vikander. Jeff Bridges must have been on another planet making this film, probably the one from Zardoz as he's doing a Sean Connery impersonation via his Rooster Cogburn character from True Grit. His constant goofy expressions and gruff demeanour only inflame the burning apathy in the hearts of the audience. Julianne Moore is utterly wasted in this role but is the one enjoyable aspect of it because she's Julianne Moore.

Seventh Son is a waste of time and money. That is the worst thing that I can possibly say about a film, that it is worth ignoring. There's no magic, no mystery, no personality and no care for this project. The amount of talent wasted on this project (Moore, Bridges, and writer Steven Knight) is damn near a criminal act, and if there's any film worth forgetting about this year, it's Seventh Son.