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Rather than try to jabber out thoughts on this topic, I thought instead to just talk about and easy topic, the variety of movies I watched on the plane over and back from Europe. Watching these on a plane is really the only scenario in which I would watch them.
1) Rampage: I like Dwayne Johnson, pretty much everyone does. He is in a lot of god awful movies and this is not an exception. While there is plenty of fun things in this, and I must say, that alligator monster is one of the most intimidating things I have seen in a movie, overall this is a really dumb, over explained, really dumb, and kind of too long movie.
2) (Cock) Blockers: I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this movie. The dialogue is funny, the subversion of the whole teen boner comedy thing is funny, sure there are instances of goofy gross out humor that did not hit with me, but it hit far more than it missed and had much more heart to it than I was prepared for.
3) A Quiet Place: This is another one in which the sum of the parts are greater than the whole. Individual sequences and character moments and motivations work for me, especially a scene in which they fall into a corn silo, and there is some great planting and payoff for everything that makes it all hang together. Unfortunately, I am one of those guys for which the ludicrousness of the premise drags the movie down. I am sorry, it is just too silly a premise for my brain. I liked it in spite of that, I guess, but that kept it from working for me entirely.
4) Game Night: Being that playing games with friends is one of the core sources of fun in my life, and that being an exasperated white guy with a brother who is more likable than me… It is really like this movie was made for me. I wish I had a Rachel McAdams in my life. I liked this movie a lot, even tho the plane was showing the cut for content version with most of the cursing removed.
5) Justice League: I hated it the least of all the DC movies so far and kind of wish it was an even more aggressive reboot of the franchise. In fact, I wish it had been the first movie in the whole universe… Kind of. Since these characters are more recognizable than the Marvel Heroes (or were 12 years ago) they could have started with this movie, had them allude to some event that killed Superman and how it was kind of Batman’s fault, have all the League members off doing their own thing (but have it that everyone knows each other already).
Then have the plot be Batman bringing them back together to fight the coming super monster, resurrecting Superman with alien space magic along the way. As is, the movie is a slog of people over explaining everything, a really terrible backstory to the villain and the mother boxes, and it being too fucking long. I could write a whole thing about this… Maybe I will.
Other movie crap that was brought to my attention was that James Gunn, a writer I would consider a personal hero, because of how diverse, colorful, and meaningful his work is, GOT FUCKING FIRED BY DISNEY from working on “Guardians of the Galaxy” a franchise made great in large part because of his creative voice guiding it.
This was pretty universally seen as a bad move by Disney. The full details of what went down, in case you don’t know involve a targeted harassment campaign against Gunn by a group of online Nazi-Trolls, who dug thru the writers substantial backlog of shock humor nonsense and pretended to be offended by the off-color jokes to provoke Disney to fire Gunn. The Nazis won in this instance.
Being that Gunn was hired years ago now and all of this material has been in the public eye for longer (for example of how shocking his work can get, he wrote an incest parody of Romeo and Juliet for the schlock film company Troma, called “Tromeo and Juliet”) the fact that Disney acted on this now after Gunn had worked on multiple films that had each earned more than $800 million… This seems pretty fucking stupid and random.
People who aren’t stupid and don’t want Nazis to win took to Twitter with the #RehireJamesGunn logo and it is kind of working. The cast and crew on the films are rebelling against the change, Disney has delayed production on the 3rd film in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise (A SUPER PROFITABLE AND POPULAR PART OF THE MEGA MARVEL FILM FRANCHISE).
I do not know how this will shake out, obviously I hope it goes in a certain direction. But for the sake of mental exercise I tried to figure out which unlucky bastard might get stuck with the director chair after all of this is over if Gunn is not rehired.
1) Taika Waititi brought the Thor mythos very much in line with the Guardians look/feel, and we could see Korg and Meek in the Guardians. This seems like a fun swerve and I think that Taika could say something with the Guardians franchise in much the same way he and the rest of the creative staff said something with “Thor Ragnorok”.
2) Joss Whedon could do it, I mean, "Serenity" was about a team of outlaws on a spaceship saving the day, he has worked with Marvel before on multiple occasions and when given the freedom of the goofy and colorful outer space setting that Marvel seems okay with crazy shit happening in I think the burdensome production difficulties of “Age of Ultron” would be forgotten.
3) Jon Favreau is a frequent executive producer on Marvel stuff still and is comfortable with CGI stuff ("The Jungle Book" and “The Lion King”). Much like Whedon he has worked on multiple successful projects and would be given more creative freedom, that can be a big benefit. He might also like the chance to play a space character… Probably the Champion of the Universe because of Jon’s love of Boxing.
4) Rian Johnson could direct, the last space movie he made for Disney made a billion dollars, and assholes haven’t stopped talking about it since then. That will get movie twitter gabbing about things.
5) Patty Jenkins would be an interesting person to steal away from Warner Brothers. She directed Wonder Woman, a movie I disliked but that had good production values, I would love to see her introduce any number of characters to the series. AND fun fact, she was in consideration to direct “Thor the Dark World” and her not getting the role is why Natalie Portman decided to not come back… So, maybe have Jane Foster show up in Guardians having built her own wormhole machine?
6) Andy Serkis has been trying to direct more and could do stuff with mo-cap for some fantastic creatures. He has worked with Marvel in Black Panther as Klaue. Having him put together a cast for the Guardians fighting the High Evolutionary and an army of Animal-Men sort of a space variation of “The Island of Doctor Moreau” sounds cool.
Regardless of what likable and creative person they grab, and what interesting story or creative voices that allows them to explore it will still have this shit hanging over it. It is sad.
That basically wraps up my random movie thoughts. Again, this is just a practice/warm up for writing something more substantive in the future, so, take this disposable morass for what it is, mental junk food.
