Right from the get go, Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" carries us from the Marvel logo into the opening shot. We open the movie in a bar. Not totally a dive, but nowhere special, either. Still, Alison Blaire is nervous, having a drink and listening to music (hence Journey) before she goes onstage. But she quiets her nerves. Steps up to the stage and sings her heart out. When she’s up on that stage, there’s nobody but her. And then the set ends. She looks out at the crowd.
Nobody even noticed she was there. Everyone’s drunk or too busy talking to each other. Applause from one guy in the back, and probably just because he feels bad. Alison says nothing, tries not to show how much it bothers her. She just packs up her guitar and leaves.
She talks over her frustrations the next day with her acting “manager,” her best friend MICK. Mick doesn’t have to tell her she’s talented and she has what it takes, but he does because he feels bad. He says not all is lost, though. That place is a dive bar, there’s nobody going to notice her there. She can’t just play any bar or lounge that will take her. She can’t only do open mic nights, not if she really wants to make it.
But he has just the thing that might help her out. It’s a major venue, not the biggest club in the world, but he promises that there will be a lot of important people there looking for talent like hers. It’s exactly the kind of opportunity she needs.
Alison is nervous. The place draws a crowd. This is the largest audience she’s ever performed in front of, and there’s so much pressure on her doing this well. People applaud her once she’s done. She feels a sense of victory, but she’s still nervous. There are a lot of talented people here.
It also doesn’t help that she doesn’t really know how to mingle. She gets complimented on her performance, but it’s so jarring that she can’t really follow it up. She doesn’t know how to sell herself.
Luckily, she’s caught someone’s attention. An attractive, white-haired young woman named Rita. Not much older than Alison, but clearly all business. She says that she was very impressed by the performance. And she can see that Alison is new at this, but that’s fine. There’s something… special about her.
She admires that. Rita says she works for an agency that is all about recruiting young talent that have gone previously undiscovered. No rock star daddies, no singing competition shows. Just pure, raw talent that nobody knew existed. And Rita says that she can just look at Alison and see that she’s more talented than anybody realizes.
She’d like to give Alison a shot. Meeting in the city. Monday morning. It’s the deal of a lifetime, so she doesn’t recommend being late.
Alison goes. She’s in over her head but excited beyond all measure. It’s a very business type of place, very professional, absolutely looks like the kind of place she always dreamed of. She’s just a girl in over her head who is experiencing something she never believed she would experience.
Rita brings her up to the office of her boss, talent manager Morgan Jordan, a large man with his head tied back in dreads. He’s eccentric, wears a dark suit and sunglasses. Some kind of pigmentation issue she doesn’t want to draw attention to, but Alison suspects that under those glasses Jordan is an albino.
He promises to sign her with the deal of a lifetime. But he wants to know one thing. He suspected, he’d heard about her and that’s why he actually sent Rita to the show to see her, but he needs to ask her himself: is she a mutant?
Alison freezes. The question takes her off guard. What does that have to do with anything? They ask again. She says that she is. Jordan smiles, and there’s something sinister about it that she can’t quite place. But she’s known that about producers. He says there’s a market for showcasing mutant talent. A whole new audience that people in their infinite bigotry are refusing to tap. White people have always loved black music. Straight people have always loved gay musicians. She could be the thing that helps bridge the divide between humans and mutants. Not only will she be a singer living the dream, going on tours, but if she signs with them, she could help bring an end to prejudice.
It sounds a lot like selling out to her. But she doesn’t see any other option. Most people only get one shot in their lives, and that’s it. Jordan readily reminds her of that. Alison feels the pressure and agrees.
It begins a career built on exploitation. Alison is building a fan base from her very first album and in no time she’s going on tours around the world. It’s the dream. But she’s a fad and she knows it. She’s being promoted as a mutant first and an artist second. The quality of the music is almost inconsequential. It doesn’t feel right to her. But she can’t turn away.
Thrown onto a press tour, Alison has no idea how to handle herself, but is saved from embarrassment by another mutant represented by Jordan, Nolan Long, star of intense reality survival series LONGSHOT.
Alison and Long hit it off right away. But when they go out for lunch, he looks around to make sure no cameras are on him and he tells her that she needs to find some way out of this. She needs to run. These guys are bad news.
And that’s when a bunch of people in suits show up on the scene and insist on escorting Longshot away.
Alison is stunned. She doesn’t know what to make of this. But she can’t run from the company just yet. Not even when Rita brings her in to meet with Jordan and Jordan explains that she needs a rebranding. It will go over huge with the kids. She’s already getting fans just for the mutant light show she puts on at her performances. But Alison insists that she doesn’t want to be known for being a mutant, she wants to be known for being a musician. She worked all her life to get to that point.
Jordan barely hears her. Sure, he says. That’s great. Whatever. “We want you to wear this.” It’s a silver outfit we don’t get a very good look at.
“What the hell is that?”
“Your outfit. You wear this when you perform. People associate you with it. It’s a whole new persona. Hence the new name.”
“what new name?”
“Dazzler.” He insists it will be huge and tells her to “think Hannah Montana.” And that’s it. She flat out tells him she can’t take it anymore. All this time she’d been kicking herself for selling out, for exploiting herself and her powers, her people… but this is too much. She can’t do this. She quits.
Alison starts to leave the office, but Rita stands in her way. Always having a bit of an attitude, Alison remains unimpressed and tells her to get the hell out of the way. Rita stands her ground. At the end of her rope, Alison actually tries to force her out of the way and that’s when Rita throws off her coat. Four extra, mechanical arms grow out from her torso and knock Alison across the room.
This is not just Rita Donner, assistant. This is the cold-hearted mutant SPIRAL.
Alison picks herself up and tries to fight. Jordan just tells Spiral to watch the furniture and Spiral nods, always obedient. But Alison is less so. She puts on a hell of a light show and starts tearing the room apart. And it starts to ripple around her. The illusion is being broken. The room is changing to reveal its true shape. It’s not an office. It looks more like the inside of Skynet. Morgan Jordan is changing in appearance as well. We see his true form now and it is monstrous. Grossly fat, gangrenous, his whole body just looks diseased. He’s so huge to the point that he can no longer get around on his own and so he has encased himself in a futuristic, robotic chair with spider limbs. We finally reveal him as MOJO.
Alison is frozen in fear. She has no idea what to do to get out of here. Mojo tells her there is no getting out, especially now that she’s seen the true face of the Agency and what it represents. This is what happens to their talent. The ones that find out, the ones that misbehave… they’re imprisoned here. Alison was allowed to go free on the streets because she was obedient. She did whatever they told her to. Now that’s clearly going to change. She’ll be like all the others. Kept here in containment under lock and key, only brought out to perform and then thrown right back into their cell. They have no connections, no friends because they’re celebrities, no private life outside of what Mojo manufactures for them.
He welcomes her to the rest of her life. And then Spiral throws her in a cell. Alison screams and struggles to get out and this pretty much carries us through a montage of what could be days, but might be weeks. It’s a time-lapse of Alison screaming, throwing herself at the wall, frantic and feisty and trying to blast the door off its hinges with everything she’s got, slowly winding down until she’s just lying on her cot and staring at the wall. Completely and totally beaten down.
Then, one night, she hears a ruckus in the hall. People (or robots, more likely) getting thrown to the ground. She backs into a corner, on alert and ready to fight.
The door bursts open. It’s Longshot, wearing a leather jacket and a black shirt/pants combo looking much more closer to the comics than we’ve previously seen him at this point in the film. He smirks, surprisingly cocksure, and says “Come with me if you want to live.”
Alison immediately grabs his hand and they start making their run for it. He explains on the way that he’s been studying how to take this place out for a long time. A buddy of his helped him design this device on his wrist that helps him mess with the frequency of Mojo’s building. He’s been wanting to take the building down for a long time, free himself and the others, but he wasn’t properly motivated until he heard they’d taken her.
He tries to set the device to unlock every cell, but it’s not working. Something isn’t right. And more cybernetic henchmen are closing in on him. They don’t have time to set everyone free, they need to get out while they still have a chance. Alison says she’s not leaving without the others and stands her ground. He promises they’ll come back when they have a better plan, but if they get caught now it’s all over. With that, he blows the outward wall, grabs Alison in his arm and they leap from the tower onto the fire escape of a nearby building.
Longshot takes Alison to his safe house where she’s introduced to the buddy that built his tech, FORGE. Longshot and Forge have both been prisoners of Mojo who have freed themselves and they’ve been looking to take him out for a long time. Alison is very confused as to everything that’s happened to her. How could that building look like any other in New York, but actually house some kind of futuristic, bad Terminator sequel type of prison?
Well, Forge explains, it doesn’t. Mojo’s prison isn’t a part of the building. It’s a part of his world. It’s a small pocket dimension, almost an accidental rift in time and space that Mojo—cockroach that he is—somehow found his way into and decided to declare home. It’s barely a blip in the universe, but he’s made it his own. He’s built himself on the illusion of power, but his whole world is really meaningless. It’s nothing. And they think it’s time they showed him that.
Longshot tells Alison that he got her out because he needed to, because he felt he had to, but if she doesn’t want to be a part of this fight, she totally understands. But she has no intention of backing down. Mojo took everything from her, from her life to her integrity. He exploited her and made her believe that that exploitation was okay, that it would help her somehow, and for that she does not plan on letting him go unpunished.
Forge hands Longshot his new gun and then tells Alison that he’s very happy to hear that because, seeing her power on stage, he made her these; and he hands her two small gauntlets that look more like stylish wristbands. He explains that they’ll focus her power, direct into a more concentrated beam. She’s happy to have them. But if she’s going in for a fight, there’s one more thing she needs.
They break back into Mojo’s office. Alison goes into the huge wardrobe room. She sneaks in and grabs something off the rack. Silver jacket, silver pants, yellow emblem on a shirt… the whole ensemble she refused to wear. She applies some metallic makeup to her eyes to complete the full DAZZLER look. Now she’s ready for war.
She regroups with Longshot and Forge, who explain that someone’s been alerted to their presence. It’s now or never and if they go in, if they take the full leap into this other dimension, this… uh… Mojoworld… they’re not stopping until the job is done.
Longshot presses the device on his wrist and the world ripples around them again. They’re here. Forge sets up a reasonably safe place to do his work and find a way to open up the prison cells while Dazzler and Longshot make their way deeper.
Beyond the prison, as they draw closer to Mojo’s lair, its ridiculous. This is a Tron-style city, but built entirely out of screens. Monitors and tablets of all shapes and sizes, but mostly the futuristic, free-floating screens we see so often in movies now. Every inch of this place is a grid with each individual square broadcasting something.
They’ve made it in pretty deep without getting noticed, but Longshot says that’s just dumb luck. The last thing they want at this point is to get cocky. Dazzler thinks she can hear Mojo up ahead. That’s how this works, right? Kill the bad guy and everything’s good?
Before he can even answer her question, SPIRAL appears in front of them, knocking Longshot off the platform, leaving it down to her and Dazzler. While Dazzler’s thrown off by Spiral’s ability to teleport, initially giving Spiral the upper hand, she’s still putting up a fight. Spiral’s not faster than light itself, Dazzler just needs to concentrate. She just can’t get a shot off. She’s never been in a fight like this. Because of Spiral’s close range, most of the fight is actually hand to hand. But that’s where Dazzler takes it. Once Spiral gets in close, ready to finish her off, Dazzler simply grabs hold of her and charges herself up with light energy, channeling a full blast into Spiral and sending her flying from the walkway into a void where her fate remains unknown.
Longshot, meanwhile, has been discovered by the makeshift cybernetic prison guards. This fight, luckily, is more his style. He uses everything Forge gave him to keep them at bay, but they just keep coming.
Forge, meanwhile, manages to get the prison cells open and begins leading everyone back toward safety.
Mojo watches this from his hub at the center of this complex and calls out for Spiral to stop him, but she doesn’t respond. Instead, Dazzler steps into the room. He likes that she’s wearing the outfit. He made it special just for her. She better not damage it, though. That’s his property after all. And so is she.
Her eyes narrow at that. She blasts Mojo right in his blubbery belly. He takes the hit and looks very angry, and given the state of them, she expects the fight to end right there. But Mojo’s exoskeleton comes equipped with a lot of defenses she was not remotely prepared for. He starts smacking her down. He is more than ready to kill her. Pretty blond singers are a dime a dozen. One fades away and the next is chosen. These days, pop idols are lucky if they’re famous for a year before someone comes along and replaces them, he tells her. So really, who’s going to care if she’s dead?
The words sink in. He keeps knocking the hits into her. A deep cut on her forehead bleeds down into her running makeup. She’s bruised all over. We don’t pull punches with this, either. She really looks hurt. Mojo sees that it’s eating at her. He just needs to take it one step further.
A scorpion-like tail rises out of the suit, long sharp blade at the end of it, ready to deliver a killing blow. “Face it, kid,” he says, preparing to strike. “You’re deader than disco.”
That does it. Dazzler forces herself to her feet. Her eyes begin to glow with light from within. “It’s coming back, you son of a bitch.” And she rips the gauntlets off, letting him have it with everything she’s got, incinerating him and frying the hub, shutting down every single screen. Which, of course, leads to the structure beginning to crumble.
She turns and runs. Along the catwalk, she rendezvous with Longshot and they head back toward the breach. Forge is getting the last of the prisoners through. The place is collapsing and he can’t wait any longer. He has to start closing the breach. Dazzler and Longshot run, racing against time and make it back through the breach just before it closes.
They come out the other side. The building is empty and dead. But they’ve saved a lot of people. People are thanking her, looking up to her as a hero. It might not be because of her music, but it’s a good feeling nonetheless.
As they’re walking away from the fight, Longshot pats her on the back. Told her she was amazing in there. “And, you know, I’m a pretty famous TV star. I think I can hook you up with some strong connections.”
“Thanks.” She says it sarcastically. Tells him she’s going to be her own agent for awhile.
We end similar to where we began. Dazzler is prepping herself up for a show. But now she’s drawn a crowd. People are there to see her, and she steps out onto the stage fully confident and gives it her all. Her body conducts a virtual light show as she just rocks it, getting the audience into it and carrying us into the end credits.
CAST:
Taylor Momsen as Alison Blaire/Dazzler
You can tell when an actor is lip-synching in a movie and the actor to play Alison is going to have to be doing quite a bit of singing on stage, so I think you have to cast a musician in the part. For me, Momsen is the perfect pick. She's the right age, she is exactly the kind of icon Dazzler should be, she has a unique look and energy that I think would be a great fit and also has some serious acting experience in a way that a lot of other famous musicians don't.
Alexander Ludwig as Longshot
For me, Ludwig has the right look, is around the same age as Momsen, can handle all of the action as well as the more dramatic elements of the character, so I think he would stand out as a good choice. He can handle those cocky, Han Solo-esque moments as well as bringing a serious intensity. I think Longshot as a character is a combination of both of those elements.
Raoul Max Trujillo as Forge
Trujillo is a solid actor, given his performance in Apocalypto and many other films. Usually he's relegated to playing a medicine man type of figure, but I think it would be excellent to see him branch out as Forge. Not only does he match the character's ethnicity, but you need a good dramatic actor to be able to sell all the exposition Forge would have in the movie and I think Trujillo does that.
Teresa Palmer as Spiral
Teresa Palmer, at 30, is a little older than Momsen and Ludwig, as I think she would need to be as a colder, more professional type. She's done films of this size, so she can handle the action, but I think she'd also be able to tackle that strange mixture of coldness and well-buried vulnerability that I think Spiral would need.
John Goodman as Mojo
It's not just about casting a larger actor. For Mojo, you need someone who can be funny as well as intimidating and I think Goodman encompasses that perfectly. His freak out scene in The Big Lebowski is a perfect example. He's hilarious in that film, but really imposing and kind of scary in that moment. If you mix a larger-than-life Hollywood type of character like the one he played in Matinee with the fierceness he's already bringing to the trailers for 10 Cloverfield Lane, you've got a perfect Mojo.