Movies 2014, Good Super Heroes

Big Hero 6

            I liked this movie.  It does a lot to correct what I think are some issues with how Disney has been managing Marvel, 1) most of Marvel's animated properties are frothy mugs of poop, and 2) serious lack of diversity on the macro scale, especially considering how many diverse Marvel characters there are.

            This movie is colorful, has likable characters who have a lot of visual personality, with clothing and costumes that give the audience quick insights into their characters.  He's precise (and works with lasers), she is bubbly (and works with bubbles of strange chemicals), he wears a beanie and is clearly the stupidest person in the film.  It is all very clean and uncomplicated allowing for them to put in a lot of action, gags, and cool inventions.  And I really liked the robot, I like pretty much all robots in fiction, but this one especially.

I love Baymax.  I feel his existence is damn near an absolute good.,

            That being said there are a lot of little things about this movie that drag it down.  The bad guy is so obvious that the red herring they threw out seemed insulting to my intelligence. There is also some clunky dialogue that tells the audience explicitly what they already knew by implication, they live with their aunt so their parents are gone, he bult a robot so he is really smart and wastes his genius... but one brother tells the other brother, "Our dead parents would not want you to waste your super smart brain, dur, dur, dur".  That is lazy writing.

            There are sections that I think missed a gag (at one point a character has to spin at super speed to escape a slowly crushing space, she gets out and is then fine... I wanted her to say, "Yeah, I am *Hurk*" and puke, that would have been a good punctuation to the scene).  Even in a world of super science some of the things the characters do stretch believability (the main character whips up about 7,500 lbs of tiny robots in his garage in two weeks... Bull shit, even writing the soft ware for such a program... THAT READS THOUGHTS would require more time than that) when your movie starts to make Iron Man look like a drooling buffoon you might want to dial things back toward reality. 

            And now for some SPOILER discussion because I want to talk more about the bad guy.  In them movie the college professor who I consider to be too obvious a villain is a villain, he does this because his daughter was ostensibly killed while testing a teleportation device.  Except that is not foreshadowed, he is working with numerous young geniuses and not once do you see him wistfully look at them like they were his own kids, not once does he let slip a remark about missing his daughter, and at no point do you see a picture or memento that would hint to the audience that he had any personal tragedy.  It is revealed at the end of act two.  That is weak writing.

            STILL SPOILERS: Also, the professor is a weak pick for the bad guy.  The main character only knew him for two weeks, not long enough to form a bond, so when the opportunity for bloody revenge comes along (the professor having caused the death of the main character's brother) of course the protagonist attempts to kill him without moral consideration... and in most instances he would be totally right, the bad guy has a doomsday weapon and is a real danger to lots of people, and it could be argued that he deserves to die for his reckless violent behavior causing the deaths of others.

            STILL SPOILERS:  Here is a better idea for a villain: make it the main character's brother.  Have it so the fire at the beginning kills the professor and it is revealed that the reason the brother went bad is that the rich guy of the movie caused the death of he and the main character's parents in a reckless experiment.  So now you have the brother (who built a healthcare robot) using the main character's robots as a weapon for evil, and the main character using the healthcare robot to fight back.  You have parallels, and a moral question as to whether you stop you brother from avenging your family.  There is complexity.

            In a way this movie fails the same way "Rise of the Guardians" failed in that there is just a much better, deeper, richer movie that could have been made from the same parts... and they didn't.

Overall: 7/10 

I actually find this poster to be rather awesome.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

            Bryan Singer hated all the movies following his departure (with good reason) so he killed them... and the original movies he made that spawned them.  This thing has so much going on that I wrote a trillion random thoughts down in a mild haze and am trying to connect them together into a coherent whole... Like this movie tried to do with the rest of the franchise.

            (So are spinal injuries a super power in this universe?)

            It felt like two movies... The final two movies for the franchise.

            The first was "Wolverine sent back in time to stop an assassination" it has the stakes (multiple X-Men murdered by robots in the future), it shows the means (psychic time travel to rewrite reality), it has the players (Magneto who is in prison and Charles who has no powers will need to convince Raven from killing Bolivar), Wolverine goes into the past, finds Charles, they gather allies (Beast, and more importantly Quicksilver), they spring Magneto, go to the assassination, stop it, and then the climax happens (Wolverine freaks out, Magneto takes the practical unethical measures, Charles is the powerless idealist, and Beast is a blue wolf man), then that movie ends, with the bad guys getting away, the group broken up and the assassination stopped.

Think about this for a second.  The cast is so large, that Emmy Winner Kelsey Grammer is an uncredited cameo.
It is so big that Anna Paquin has an Oscar, but no lines.  They got talent coming out of their ears and ass over here.

            (Why did they kill all the villains from the first movie off?  Why did they do that off screen?)

            Then the next movie starts.  They show the stakes (still killer robots), they have the means (Raven's DNA which will ultimately make for deadlier robots), they have the players (Raven, Magneto, Xavier, Wolverine, and Trask), they rally their forces (Xavier commits to using his telepathy, Magneto gets his helmet and sabotages the original Robots), then they collide, and then that movie ends with half the "bad guys" getting away and the killer robots defeated.

            Seriously, its like they had two movies and just put them together.  Like they were going to have trilogy of First Class films and this is the last two of that series combined.  It erases a lot of continuity (thank the gods) and makes things smoother and all tied up.  You could end the entire franchise here because it shows the brighter world of tomorrow at the end, all of the sins of the first few movies got resolved.  There is nothing left to say.  Really, if they wanted to shake things up they should have just killed Wolverine for real and left the future up to interpretation.  That would have shaken the franchise to the core.  Wolverine dying would have changed everything and been a lot more ambiguous.  Instead, not only does he get a happy ending.... Everyone does including a lot of people who died.

            (Why were there so few returning characters from "First Class" [Banshee is gone, Moria is gone, White Queen is gone], and so many new ones that had nothing to do?)

            This movie has the exact same themes as "Captain America: Winter Soldier".  Drones in the sky killing extraordinary people who would upset the status quo.  Wolverine and Cap are the heroes of different eras (though Charles is really more the hero than Wolverine toward the end).  Bucky and Mystique are the wild card middle men who need to be stopped/saved.  Beast and Falcon are the ones encouraging the hero to just take out the bad guy rather than save them.  Black Widow and Nick Fury take the role of Magneto, more ambiguous characters who are about practical mission objectives.

            (Why would Mystique's DNA help make robots that can steal powers?  She can't mimic powers... And ROBOTS DON"T HAVE DNA!)

Just for your knowledge, this type of Sentinel is called a Nimrod.  In the comics they were damn near unstoppable.

            Magneto's plan would have worked better had he just covertly used the sentinels to kill President Nixon, his staff, and a lot of civilians, and then just let the humans eventually kill the robots.  People would have blamed the MUTANT TARGETING SYSTEM as being unable to tell the difference between humans and mutants and then scrap the idea of robot soldiers altogether.  And he wouldn't of declared war on behalf of mutants like a crazy asshole.  Also, all humans are mutants, blonde hair, dimples, webbed toes, and nearly any genetic trait is a mutation... so is dwarfism.  The main villain is a dwarf and the idea that he creates a robot apocalypse because he got stunted growth rather than laser eyes and well defined abs is an interesting idea left bubbling under the surface of the movie, but it also asks the obvious question of how a mutant detector would work and why it doesn't kill everyone.

            (Why did they write the movie to send Wolverine back to the past?  Yeah he is a popular character but the last movie did fine with only a cameo by him.  Why not send back some of the cool new characters and Ellen Page' Shadow Cat?  Would have done a lot to further the idea of minority rights by having some characters who are minorities in the picture.)

            This movie has both a great ending, and a bad one.  Because, they clearly want sequels, but you already know what is going to happen ultimately as it shows a future with the X-Men triumphant in a utopia... so I guess the next movie is not going to have any affect on that?  Is Apocalypse not going to do anything?  That is not good.

            The movie holds together so well though, and has depth and themes explored by skilled actors with good effects, and a sense of scope and creativity that makes it so good that I forgive the flaws (mostly).

Overall: 8/10

 

I would also like to point out that several of the predictions I made for this movie were right.  Though I cast a wide net and thus was bound to catch something.  (Poster)

Guardians of the Galaxy

            I do not know why everyone thought this movie was going to be a huge gamble.  Everyone kept saying that an obscure comic book would never be able to carry a movie... But let's be honest, pretty much 99% of comics are obscure, and 99% of movies are adapted from books or TV shows and other mediums that have audiences of less than 1,000,000 people.  And original movies have no audience till release.  So why would something like Guardians be seen as so out of the box?  Because it has aliens?  Shit, that has been around since the silent era.  Because it is more of a comedy?  I think there is a clear track record in modern history that comedies can be about anything ("Galaxy Quest", "Shaun of the Dead"... hell, look back to the 80's and you have "The Princess Bride").  I was looking at it assuming it would be an interesting addition to the Marvel movies and guess what: IT WAS!

Look at this.  It is the severed head of a god that floats in space and is a city.  How is my life not enriched by this?

            This movie is gorgeous.  The dialogue pops.  It is funny.  It has heart.  It has broad appeal with a big diverse cast of characters traveling thru beautiful living environments dealing with a villain that is clearly out of their weight class.  Leading a rag tag group in resistance to a total planetary genocide.  It is awesome.  Even the cheezy part where they use the power of friendship to beat the bad guy like it is a freaking "My Little Pony" episode (Though I guess Nightmare Moon was more like Malakith in "Thor: The Dark World" with the eternal darkness and all).

            I am not going to say this movie touched me on some deeper level, but it did its job well, and I am glad that Marvel feels that space is a much more creatively free place for the Marvel universe to be silly and strange.  I look forward to the sequel which I am sure will be even better.  (Here is my pitch for it, they are employed to break into Asgard and steal the Tesseract in hopes of keeping it out of Loki's hands... and inadvertently put it into the hands of Thanos.  It could be a heist movie, "Guardians of the Galaxy: The Asgardian Caper").

Overall: 8/10

This is a third party poster.  One of many alternate designs that these people whipped together.  Check them out.

Movies of 2013, Crime, pt5

Mud, or "Talented child actors?  The hell is this?"

Overall: 9/10

Oh for the halcyon days of McConaughey being in nothing but shit.

            Perhaps the most misleading trailer I have seen since they jokingly recut "Game of Thrones" as a romantic comedy.

            Kind of dripping with visual personality, especially Matthew McConaughey.  The whole movie explores with subtly this small southern town, how complex family dynamics can be, romance, crime... This movie has depth and pacing and is really cool.  There are clever things that show you exactly where the characters are and what they do.  Characters have clever little ideas, like in one scene kids are trying to find a lady in a motel, so they go door to door selling fish so nobody knows that they were there looking for her, that is a simple and clever little plan.

            I don't know why this is so hard to do, but I am giving this movie credit for just being clear and explaining itself well.  Why is that something that deserves an accolade?  Just the idea that a character has a cool name, "Neck Bone", and when he meets someone new they compliment him on his cool name.  You would compliment a kid named Neck Bone, cause that sounds hardcore.  But in a way you have to give credit when a movie does that (some movies... *cough* "Mortal Instruments" *cough* can't do the simple task of just having the characters talking civilly about what the hell is happening).

            The teenage actors act and talk like teenagers, Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland deserve credit in that regard.  Reese Witherspoon plays an emotionally destructive cock tease well, and Michael Shannon plays a nice and laid back guy (complete opposite of General Zod) showing his range of being curious but not having the gall to actually question the kid he is responsible for.

Prisoners, or "I actually did not call the ending.  Good job movie."

Overall: 10/10

There is a thing with Mazes in this movie.

            This is my movie of the year.  It has the look and feel of a David Fincher movie, with a dark and oppressive atmosphere and a plot that unfolds to tension and more mystery rather than just tidy little answers.  It makes good use of foreshadowing, has visual motifs, and themes about cycles of violence and acting with certainty on imperfect information.

            Everyone involved does an excellent job with their parts, and they have a lot of visual personality, you can tell things about them just from a glance and listening to them enriches their characters rather than just confirming what you can tell from looking at them.  Gyllenhaal had a hard time growing up and enforces rules in his adult life, Jackman had a hard time growing up and commits to the ideas of self reliance.  The ending is also really good, with a good bit of ambiguity as to what will ultimately happen.

            There are things in it, like police procedure, that are not by-the-book, and from your personal perspective that would make them more real or less real.  I just thought it just got the story moving well and having everything play out in a not-wholly-procedural-not-wholly-loose-cannon way made things a little more dynamic.  I also can't say the movie was fun, it is about missing children, torture, and murder, it is a less boring "Zodiac" not "Sherlock".

            If you like the HBO series, "True Detective" then watch this movie.

Movies of 2013, Superhero, pt4

The Wolverine, or "Really?  Have we not had enough of Wolverine yet?"

Overall: 6/10

Hugh, buddy.  Can you stop looking amazing?  Kind of setting the bar for guys like me a little high.

            I enjoyed this movie a hell of a lot more than I thought I would.  They give Wolverine a sidekick to play off of, though the actress' hair is weird (I like the color, but her bangs are sideways or something, and her eyes are super wide, I don't know why, she just looks odd).  They give him an enemy with a clear motivation and resources to pose an actual threat, they have tertiary villains with interesting and distinct looks, action sequences that are varied in execution (if not color scheme, metal and black are the colors of this movie to the point of being kind of annoying).  Now to the real complaints.

            Problem 1: The love interest.

            Wolverine does not need a love interest, he is a knight errant, he does extreme violence to serve his personal code of honor but never feels tied down (that is his character).  Yeah, sure he beds women when the opportunity presents itself, but the love affair in this movie does not work.  There is no chemistry and the speed of the situation does not behoove the development of feelings.  He is a violent, headstrong, culturally insensitive thug who kills people by the bus load in this film... There is no reason for the woman who he bangs to be attached to him.  Also, he is old, like 100+, he should not be banging a 20 something unless she shows real emotional depth and maturity (this one does not).  It is the Edward and Bella problem of modern romantic subplots.

            Problem 2: This movie has terrible gameplay.

            The movie is ordered like a video game, Wolverine fights hillbillies, then mobsters, then mobster hit men on a train (boss fight), then ninjas, then a master sword fighter (boss fight), more ninjas on their home turf, a snake lady, and then a giant mecha (that can cut thru his bones and drain his powers, bigger boss fight).  He even gets a lot of his powers toned down to add tension (as if the protection of the various vulnerable squishy humans was not enough to add tension... It doesn't because they are paper thin characters, but it could have).  I am not even sure this can be considered a complaint, because I thought the variety of fights worked to a benefit, but it is oddly structured for a movie narrative.

            Problem 3: Dulling of claws.

            There are plenty of scenes in which Wolverine kills people who are actively harming other people.  LOTS OF MOBSTERS DIE POINTY DEATHS.  But there is a scene which I felt was really bad and kind of dulled the movie.  Wolverine captures a police official who is helping the mafia, then interrogates him in a cool funny scene, he then throws the asshole off a hotel balcony.  That is awesome.  But (and I am sure this is what happened), since you can't have the hero of a PG-13 movie kill a helpless guy in an awesome fashion (unlike, say, "DREDD"), we instead see that the guy fell into a pool that Wolverine claims to have not known about.

            Here is the thing.  If you are going to not kill the bad guy, having the hero say, "What pool?" makes him seem dumb in addition to ruthless.  Either have him kill the guy to show he means business, or have him throw the guy into a pool just to scare him.  Trying to have your cake and eat it too doesn't work.
           Problem 4: Wolverine is played out.

This follows what I consider to be the best scene in the movie in which he cuts out his own heart.
Similar to that only good scene in "Prometheus".

            I like Wolverine a good bit, he has a distinctive power set of indestructible man with knifes for hands, he has a cool back story of mysterious soldier of fortune, and he is part of a disaffected minority (Canadians).  But he has been the star of 5/6 X-Men films, and we have seen nearly every aspect of his life and all the interactions he has had between numerous characters, be they romantic rivals (Cyclopes), kid side kicks (Rogue), professional rivals (Sabretooth), authority figures (Prof X, Stryker), and comrades in arms (Storm, Wraith).  Can we get a movie that focuses on the actual main conflict of X-Men... in addition to "First Class"?

            The end of this movie is actually a microcosm of the issues, the movie ends with Wolverine getting on a plane with his new sidekick with no direction.  Then the after the credits sequence skips ahead a couple years (his sidekick now gone, we never learn of her fate.  Dead?  Back in Japan?  Who knows?)  And there is Magneto (with his powers returned) and Prof X (now no longer a pile of dust).  Wolverine has no reason to be a part of their story, and his story is so unimportant that it is dropped so he can be pulled into X-Men drama.  Why?  Let him go.  If you want to make Wolverine movies, then make them and let the X-Men do their thing, they have enough interesting characters that are thirsty for screen time that you don't need Logan to be there.

Kick-Ass 2, or "Rape isn't funny.  How about attempted rape?  Wait, why are we trying to make that scene funny?"

Overall: 5/10

Ironically if Hit Girl were real and watched this movie she would probably call it pussy footing bullshit.

            This movie skull fucks my sense of reason because it is really hard to evaluate on its own.  I have to look at it as both a sequel to the first movie, as an adaptation of the book, and how it stands on its own, but I don't know how to reconcile all of those parts in a meaningful way.  There are lots of things about it I would like if it were in a different movie, and there are lots of things I hate because they are in this movie, or because they short change the books.  I don't know.

            The first "Kick Ass" was alright and had a lot of problems, mostly with the subject matter itself.  And this continues that grand tradition.

            In regards to being a sequel to the first movie, there are issues with continuity, like how they ditch Kick-Ass' girlfriend (who knows he is Kick-Ass in the movies, and should trust that he is not fucking the now 14 year old Hit Girl, but for the sake of the story calls him a pervert and ditches him).  And the movie has lots of little things like that, especially in the glorification of Big Daddy who should be seen less as a hero and more of a complex figure, if not an outright monster like he was in the comics.

            This movie does something the books did not do, attempts to show the villain's journey in addition to the heroes'.  I don't think that works.  Trying to rape a female superhero and failing because he is so impotent isn't funny.  Either have the guts to have rape, or don't.  Being too flaccid to actually follow thru just serves as metaphor for the movie as a whole.  Constantly backing away from the violence of the comic in favor of soft and goofy action that doesn't work.  It Feels weird to call it soft when you consider the amount of murder and blood in this.  I would compare it to "the Walking Dead" TV show, which is so loosely based on the comics that I find it to be odd to watch, the violence in it is just not hard enough, it lacks the shock and terror it could have.  It is 'meh'.

            On its own, as if I had not read the books or seen the first one, I still have issues again with Hit Girl being too grown up on certain subjects.  She is a psychopath.  Just because she has the ability to kill the bad guy does not make her "mature" or capable of healthily expressing emotion, but if anything they make her far too dutiful and reasonable.  She should be a broken person, but instead they play her up as a hero or role model.  That does not work.  They almost show her as she should be, but again they dial it back.  It fails.

            I can't believe I am saying this, but "The Wolverine" fits better into his crazy and poorly thought out mythos than this movie fits into its own.  Which considering it is the second movie and is based on a comic series that only consists of "Kick Ass" and "Kick Ass 2" how is that possible?  How can you eschew things so completely?  How is it this jumbled?

            There is also the controversy of Jim Carrey, who plays an interesting character rethinking his stance on violence in the media because of the recent mass shootings.  Jim believed that he should not promote the film because of its violence (even though his character in the movie is a staunch opponent of gun violence being a former hitman turned born again Christian).  If I had to guess Jim made this known to do two things: one, settle his conscience for participating in a movie that both glorifies violence while portraying it as not terribly dangerous; and two, stir some controversy because he did not want to torpedo the work of his costars.  Cause things are complicated.