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<\/a>On the face of it, you might think Elizabeth: The Golden Age<\/a><\/i> would not have to deal with the same sorts of problems that plague other sequels. While the creators of fictitious franchises have to walk a fine line between recycling their earlier movies and offering something new, the Elizabeth<\/i> movies are supposed to be based on history, and you might think that each film, by focusing on a different part of the reign of the original Queen Elizabeth, would be somewhat unique. But alas, that is not how it turns out. Yes, The Golden Age<\/i> has a sea battle and one or two other new bits, thanks to its presumably bigger budget. But for the most part, it plays like a pale retread of the film<\/a> that earned Cate Blanchett her first Oscar nomination nine years ago.<\/p>\nOnce again, Elizabeth is beset by suitors and advisors who tell her that she needs to marry and produce an heir if she is to secure the throne; however, since the film begins in 1585, when Elizabeth was 52 years old, it is doubtful whether it would even be possible for her to have a child. (Blanchett is 38, but she plays the character \u2014 who worries about the toll that time is taking on her body \u2014 as though she were older.) So when the suitors do show up \u2014 some of them sending only their portraits, which Elizabeth studies with a magnifying glass \u2014 they are played for laughs. The sense of urgency that marked Elizabeth\u2019s courtships in the earlier film is gone.<\/p>\n
And once again, Elizabeth has to deal with conspirators and would-be assassins \u2014 all of them Catholic, some of them Spanish, and one of them a woman with ties to the Scottish and the French. But for some reason the conspiracies are less interesting this time, too. Perhaps it is because Mary Stuart (Samantha Morton), the Queen of Scots, is holed up in a castle almost every time we see her, with little or nothing to do except write self-incriminating letters. Perhaps it is because Rhys Ifans, as a psycho killer known only as \u201cthe Jesuit,\u201d is already beginning to seem like a typecast clich\u00e9 when he is cast in these sorts of roles (in his last film, Hannibal Rising<\/i>, he introduced the young Hannibal Lecter to the fine art of cannibalism).<\/p>\n
Or perhaps the villains seem so tepid now because the forces loyal to Elizabeth have also been watered down. Chief among these is Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), the spymaster who was introduced in the earlier film as a murderous, agnostic and sexually ambiguous figure who enjoyed manipulating the political scene behind Elizabeth\u2019s back, but who is now portrayed as a quasi-sympathetic family man who, on one occasion, is slapped by Elizabeth and thus put back in his place. Yes, he still tortures conspirators, but he doesn\u2019t relish it the way he used to.<\/p>\n
Part of the twisted genius of the earlier film was the way it treated the royal families as rival gangs, almost rival mafia families, right down to a climactic montage that was pretty much ripped off from The Godfather<\/a><\/i>. But the new film isn\u2019t interested in making Elizabeth\u2019s men look as \u201cbad\u201d as their opponents. Instead, it harps on the idea that Elizabeth and her country stand for freedom, including the freedom to follow whatever religion you like \u2014 which, historically, wasn\u2019t true. As Victor Morton<\/a> has put it, every Catholic child in England knows what a \u201cpriest hole<\/a>\u201d was.<\/p>\n The new film also follows a template that seems to owe a fair bit to The Lord of the Rings<\/a><\/i> (in which Blanchett played the elf-queen Galadriel). The Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Moll\u00e0, taking over for the first film\u2019s George Yiasoumi) says he is \u201csacrificing Spain\u2019s forests\u201d to build his mighty armada \u2014 echoes of Saruman tearing down the trees around Isengard, perhaps? And when the Spanish ships appear on the horizon, the watchmen light towers on mountain peaks across the country, just as we saw them do in Gondor. And it all leads to Elizabeth clad in solid armor and riding a horse and rallying her troops, just like Aragorn did.<\/p>\n Somewhere in all this, Elizabeth finds time to become embroiled in a sort of love triangle with Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), an explorer who has just returned with potatoes and tobacco leaves from an American colony that he named \u201cVirginia\u201d in honor of the Virgin Queen, and her lady-in-waiting, Elizabeth \u201cBess\u201d Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish). Elizabeth is too firmly ensconced in her throne, and too conscious of her duty, to pursue her relationship with Raleigh very far \u2014 but this does not prevent her from lashing out when she hears of his involvement with Bess, in a scene that seriously robs the character of her dignity, both as a royal and as a person.<\/p>\n Showing the \u201creal woman\u201d behind the icon is, of course, partly what director Shekhar Kapur and screenwriters William Nicholson (Shadowlands<\/a><\/i>, Gladiator<\/a><\/i>) and Michael Hirst (TV\u2019s The Tudors<\/i>) are trying to do here. But do we really get a sense of who Elizabeth was? The previous film\u2019s fictionalizations could be excused, to some degree, because it was making a thematically provocative point or two. But The Golden Age<\/i> recycles much of the same basic material without offering any real insight into the woman or the times in which she lived. And where the previous film drew our attention to the way religious sentiments are manipulated for political purposes, the new film ultimately plays like an old-fashioned propaganda movie, in which the breath of God ensures that \u201cour\u201d side wins and the other side loses.<\/p>\n 2 stars (out of 4)<\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n Talk About It 1. \u201cFear\u201d is a recurring theme in this film. Which characters feel it? How do they deal with it? What is the film trying to say about \u201cfear\u201d in this day and age?<\/p>\n 2. What does the film say about divine involvement in human affairs? Note how the Spanish king speaks of \u201cmiracles,\u201d and how Elizabeth hopes for \u201cthe impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Does the film imply that God took a side in the battle between Spain and England? Do you think God ever prefers one side over the other when nations go to war, in these post-biblical times? If so, what part do human actions play?<\/p>\n 4. Elizabeth says she will not be pushed around by the Fates; does the film indicate that she was successful in this, or was her success itself fated?<\/p>\n The Family Corner Elizabeth: The Golden Age <\/i>is rated PG-13 for violence (a naval battle, a knife is pushed down a man\u2019s mouth, spikes pierce the skin of a man kept in a cage), some sexuality (a man unlaces a woman\u2019s blouse in bed) and nudity (we glimpse a naked woman from behind as she studies herself in a mirror). The villains are relentlessly portrayed as fanatical Catholics, and Elizabeth also consults an astrologer.<\/p>\n \u2014 A version of this review was first published at Christianity Today Movies.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the face of it, you might think Elizabeth: The Golden Age would not have to deal with the same sorts of problems that plague other sequels. While the creators of fictitious franchises have to walk a fine line between recycling their earlier movies and offering something new, the Elizabeth movies are supposed to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[1865,2964,2965,2968,2967,2970,452,2969,2963,2971,1930],"class_list":["post-31386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianitytoday","tag-cate-blanchett","tag-elizabeth-1998","tag-elizabeth-i","tag-elizabeth-the-golden-age","tag-francis-walsingham","tag-mary-stuart","tag-michael-hirst","tag-rhys-ifans","tag-shekhar-kapur","tag-walter-raleigh","tag-william-nicholson"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nDiscussion starters<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
\nFor parents to consider<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n