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Anyone see the new 300? Is it any good?
Well, I’ve now seen the first two Hunger Games movies, and… I’m not impressed.
Sorry, I know some of you guys are fans, but I don’t quite get it.
For starters, the whole Evil Regime is clearly run by a bunch of morons. Because only the stupidest and most cliche of villains would actually pull a suspected rebel out of a crowd for a big publicity event and execute him on the spot. Seriously, it’s like they want these people to rebel. And it’s hard to be afraid of people when they’re this laughably incompetent.
Not that I really feel all that much for Katniss either. I mean, is she supposed to be this emotionless sociopath? Because if so, Jennifer Lawrence does a great job pulling that off.
And honestly, Katniss is kind of a boring character. In the first movie, I’m far more interested in pretty much every other person in the eponymous games than her. Partly because they’re actually doing something, rather than pretty much just hiding in a tree for two days. Which also makes her sudden PTSD in the sequel all the harder to swallow. I’m really not getting why this whole rebellion is forming around her, except as a Joan of Arc thing (i.e. she’s a symbol, but doesn’t really do much actual fighting, leading, or strategizing).
So, yeah. Hunger Games. Not impressed.
I mean, is she supposed to be this emotionless sociopath?
Kind of. This comes out most in the third book and tends to annoy the fans who think Katniss is like a perfect angel or something, which amuses me.
But then again I’ve yet to see the movies so I can’t really judge how they handle that.
Basically this. Eating the berries made people think she was someone to follow, so the rebels are using her because everyone likes her and thinks she’s something she’s not. She’s not actually a good leader. The government is incompetent though.she’s a symbol, but doesn’t really do much actual fighting, leading, or strategizing
Okay. Good to know I’m not misinterpreting anything.
I also think the names for all the genetically engineered critters are kinda stupid, but that’s a whole separate issue.
^^Most of the names in general are kind of stupid.
The third one (which will be two movie because Harry Potter set a precedent that will never stop being abused) gets into a lot of how Katniss is just a figurehead for the movement, which I liked.
I found a movie called Mysterious Skin, looked interesting and it starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and he’s always been very good.
... do not watch this if you have a weak stomach. Seriously, I feel physically ill.
on the other hand, the acting and directing was incredible, I can appreciate that at least.
sounds like a good movie
Cross Posted.
Just watched Frozen.
Good.
And since there’s no sub-discussion of Frozen in this thread yet, I’ll get it going.
SPOILERS
I thought Frozen was cute, and I would have been absolutely obsessed with it if I’d watched it when I was 5, during my Disney Princess craze. But I thought Anna was kind of annoying (then again, it is a Disney movie, so I won’t complain too much)...my favorite was Kristoff, just because he was pretty much the only person with common sense. So yeah, I liked it, but I think I would have liked it more if it hadn’t been SO HYPED as the best thing ever. It was better than Tangled, definitely, but the songs and everything were nowhere near The Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. But I loved the sister relationship angle…I liked it so much I wish they had played it up even more than they had.
EDIT: Sat next to two guys on the plane back to school who were talking about how much they loved ‘Let It Go’. Maybe this is my punishment for being so grouchy about it, but it was very interesting that two college guys were so obsessed with what is essentially a Disney Princess movie. :D
Saw The Lone Ranger a few days ago through Netflix. Honestly, it wasn’t all that bad, if viewed as an action-comedy, with more focus on comedy than action. And I sort of excuse a lot of the plot holes/weirdness with “Tonto’s telling the story, and he’s crazy”. That’s also the excuse I have for a lot of Johnny Depp’s behavior (though I probably would have had the actual Native Americans say that he’s not really one of them, and is just some crazy white guy, but that’s me).
It might also help that I’m mostly unfamiliar with the source material, so I’m not getting upset about any comparisons between the two.
So yeah, it’s actually not that bad a movie, if you’re willing to give some leeway. And maybe overlook some casting interesting casting decisions.
On Frozen,
Legend, 1985, directed by Ridley Scott:
“I am the lord of darkness! I require the solace of the shadows and the dark of the night.”
... Said while sitting in a chair directly facing a massive roaring fireplace.
LOL.
“Is not your heart black, and full of hate?”
“Black as midnight, black as pitch, blacker than the foulest witch.”
Not even 5 minutes in, this dialogue is GOLD.
“There is only one lee-ure for such disgusting goodness, one bait that never fails”
“What is this bait? Please, you teach me.”
“INN-NO-SENSE. INN-NO-SENSE.”
“It’s time you start acting like the princess you are. You should be out looking for a handsome prince on a white charger, not visiting poor people like us”
OMG young Tom Cruise with no pants (just a well-positioned raggedy tunic).
“As long as [unicorns] roam the earth, evil can never harm the pure of heart.”
I should stop with the quotes every few seconds, but this is like the epitome of terrible 80s fantasy. And it’s hilarious!
I’m eating dehydrated apple chips instead of popcorn, but this is my face right now
So apparently killing a unicorn will make the world instantly become deep winter, and also all the people are frozen except for Princess and Forest Boy, and of course the baddies. Baddies who speak only in rhymed couplets.
“Mortal world turned to ice, here be goblin paradise!”
“ You only shot it because the Princess was there! Twas beauty brought the beast to bay!” — This, from an otherwise barely coherent half-pig goblin minion.
This face…
THE LORD OF DARKNESS SEXY-DANCING TO WOO THE PRINCESS
WTF were they thinking, I mean WTF seriously.
It’s a really weird film. I somehow like it for some undefinable reason. It’s not the worst of the 80’s fantasy films, though it isn’t as good as Lady Hawke or Dragonslayer. But there’s something to its quirkiness that I like.
Plus it has Tim Curry in it. You can’t go wrong with that.
@Falling – Oh, man, Dragonslayer. That movie is both awesome and incredibly depressing. Dark fantasy before that was thing.
Yeah, I couldn’t help but hear Rocky Horror Picture Show when Curry-Demon was speaking.
Saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Awesome movie, as expected. It’s also probably the closest we’re going to get to a S.H.I.E.L.D. movie, which is good (though Hawkeye was absent, which kinda stank).
I do have one small complaint, though:
I saw Divergent. Like the book, it was, well, not very good. But it was one of those movies I just had to see because the trailer made the part where they jump out of trains seem really cool.
Captain America holyshitbananaballs.
I completely agree, Rocky. Mirkwood was the most disappointing Peter Jackson thing since cigarettes were found to be harmful.
^ In the theater, I was laughing my ass off at Lee Pace flamboyantly invading other people’s personal space. I’m hoping that Thranduil rides into battle on a party elk, but otherwise, no big expectations for part 3.
I also hated how the love triangle was handled, but to be fair to PJ, it does seem that it was something the studio forced on him. You would think that someone who’s made the studio bazillions of dollars would have a little more pull on something that minor, but apparently not. If Tauriel had been the guard that got drunk, allowing the dwarves to escape, that would have given her much more narrative purpose.
Tried to post this earlier, but my session timed out. Ah, well.
@Rocky hidden:
As for Hobbit 2 being weird, I think part of it might be because they needed to put in all the stuff that’s not in the book somewhere, and putting all that in the third movie along with the Big Climactic Battle scene would just be too much. Besides, not all that much really happened between Biblo & co escaping the goblins and them reaching the mountain in the book. Yes, I wish they’d spent more time with Beorn, and the bit in Mirkwood was too short, but there’s only so much that could be fit into the allotted time limit. Maybe some of that stuff will be fixed in the Special Edition (because you know there’s going to be a Special Edition).
Yes, I wish they’d spent more time with Beorn, and the bit in Mirkwood was too short, but there’s only so much that could be fit into the allotted time limit.
How about prioritising the actual story first? That would be an interesting new concept.
Yeahhhhh. Hobbit 2 pissed me off for the same reasons.
but to be fair to PJ, it does seem that it was something the studio forced on him. You would think that someone who’s made the studio bazillions of dollars would have a little more pull on something that minor, but apparently not.
Unless we know this is true, I think we should be careful what amounts to critical fiction. From what I’ve read, most of the adaptations had a movie reason that Phillipa or Peter chose.
I dunno. I was the biggest Tolkien purist when it came to LotR’s. It took me awhile to get over it (enjoyed them temporarily and then refused to buy them, but wound up liking them.) But for me, it’s simply interesting to see what, how, and why they adapt what they do.
I agree that I miss the Mirkwood sequences. I suspect we’ll get some of that in the extended, but it did feel truncated. However, one thing that is very consistent in all of Jackson’s films, LotR’s included is a tremendous time compression. Fellowship, Gandalf takes off from the Shire and arrives at Orthanc in seemingly days. Here, I’m pretty sure Azog travels to Dol Guldor in half a night. A 17 year interval turns into not much time on screen with Frodo-Gandalf’s reactions. So time compression doesn’t bother me too much. I wish they did more with the Faerie elements of Mirkwood, but they did play a bit with weirdness of Mirkwood- them going all loopy.
I’ll admit, I’m not too keen on the forge fight, but I really liked all of Smaug and Bilbo’s interactions prior to. I also really liked how they fleshed out Laketown, establishing who Bard was (rather than getting the ‘grim-voice’ a page before Smaug get’s shot.)
I like contrasting Tauriel vs Thranduil perspectives with Legolas in the middle. And little things like the hidden dragon scars on Thranduil. That was very Faerie (things are not what they seem), even if we missed out on the disappearing feasts.
Maybe having Gandalf running around loses the focus of the film, but I expected it would be included and I absolutely wanted it to be, so I can’t complain on that front.
The barrel sequence was goofy, but fun. The book version wouldn’t have been particularly cinematic- all the dwarves stuffed in barrels and the main character invisible for the entire trip. Actually an interesting change is how little Bilbo uses the Ring- very much influenced by the retroactive knowledge of what the Ring is. Bilbo has a moment of crisis after killing that ?grub? and seems to recognize that something overtook him, something was off. And from then on he only wears the Ring when he must.
This works on two fronts- one, having Bilbo invisible so long on screen doesn’t work so well. And two, this is just the sort of thing you would think the Ring might do had Tolkien gone back to rewrite the Hobbit with LotR’s in mind(something he tried and was convinced to abandon.)
I disagree with Movie Sin 3. That flash back was taken verbatim from Tolkien’s Quest of Erebor. Maybe in movie terms it’s unnecessary. But it does answer the question of why a hobbit of all things, plus puts things into a wider context beyond a ‘there in back again’ adventure. I would also argue it builds a little more on Gandalf’s badassness (very funny imagery imagining bandits jumping Gandalf.)
Eagle issue. Originates from Jackson’s decision to excise Radaghast from Fellowship. Butterfly taxi service problems all originate from his first film. Also, the decision to have no talking animals makes this more difficult.
Ah! All the Beorn stuff is super nitpicky from someone that has already become disillusioned by the film. I suspect 1000 sins broke the film in these guys eyes, but those particular ones are pretty snarky/ fluffy. (Are there any forests that aren’t Dark.)
Some of these problems exist in the book- the colony of spiders for instance. They acknowledge that they exist in the book. But that sort of complaint comes from someone already broken out of the secondary world. Who is to say a giant spiders in middle earth don’t live in colonies? At least you have to pin that one on Tolkien, not Jackson. Same with the whole noise thing.
Complaining that Legolas is in the film completely misunderstands what the film makers are doing (or for that matter the sort of revision that Tolkien was involved in.) In Fellowship it is revealed that Legolas is the son of the king of Mirkwood. It follows that he would have been in Mirkwood at the time of the dwarves. Jackson purposefully approached the telling of the Hobbit through the lense of the wider context given by the LotR’s and the appendices. Not to excise all that knowledge and tell a story as though he was Tolkien before he even thought what the Ring was and what it could do. Jackson COULD have told that story, but this sort of criticism is asking him to tell a different story altogether. It’s like wishing Night of the Living Dead or Last Man on Earth to dump the slow pace and add fast walking dead because that’s scarier. They COULD, but it’s not at all the story they decided to tell.
Ah! I’m going to stop the running commentary and just watch it. Suffice it to say, I don’t think very highly of this sort of criticism.
edit.
Bah. This snark drives me nuts. “Unlikely elf dwarf romance” Counts as a sin? Just a premise? Intrinsically? It doesn’t say why, whether it was poorly executed, how it was poorly executed. Just on the face of it. Elf. Dwarf. Romance = unlikely and therefore sin.
It’s a laundry list of dislikes, but only some are actually explained where it can actually be justified as a sin. (As opposed to personal dislike.)
/edit
If you get a chance, this is Professor Corey Olsen’s part 1 podcast on common criticisms on The Hobbit films. It is more in line with my sentiments and well worth the listen if you have the time.
Now don’t mistake me. I do have issues with both Hobbit films. But not this sort of criticism.
And now for some quick movie impressions:
Winter Solider was pretty fun. I’m so used to having good Avengers based Marvel movies that it didn’t really leave an impression though.
Transcendence was terrible, even worse than I was expecting. It somehow managed to take what could have been a really intense, dramatic movie and made it boring while drowning itself in it’s own pseudo-science.
Oculus was actually not bad. A very different movie than I was expecting, even if it was still pretty standard in it’s own way. It had it’s flaws, but over all I liked what it did.
Akira
Probably one of the most stylistically beautiful films I’ve ever seen. I am a little confused, though.
The new cast looks great! Hopefully we won’t have a Hayden Christiansen repeat. My only problem is that out of 7 new actors, only 1 is female. :P
I never got into The Clone Wars TV show but at least they had more equal representation.
I’m honestly not bothered by a lack of representation on Star Wars. Granted, I’m also not a very big fan of the movies and I think the prequel trilogy had exactly as much merit as the original trilogy in terms of dialogue, story telling and set design.
I’m not in love with it either, but that doesn’t mean that it gets a free pass for certain fundamental principles. :P
I think the prequel trilogy had exactly as much merit as the original trilogy in terms of dialogue, story telling
no
set design.
lol what
e: I mean it’s totally cool to not like the original trilogy or whatever but this opinion is some serious horseshit
Maybe it’s because I was the only person out there who didn’t actually grow up on Star Wars or see any of the movies until I was 13, but I honestly thought both movies were clunky in how they presented their dialogue as well as the plot points. I also think the prequel trilogy had some interesting designs going for it in costume, set and monsters. I don’t see the gap in quality a lot of people seem to attribute to the two even though I still like them both.
Yeah, I’m going to have to go with sansa here, at least as far as dialogue is concerned. The Leia/Han romance, while not the greatest ever, is certainly miles better than ‘I hate sand’.
On the plus side, Leia has a friend to talk to now! :D Do you think they will pass the Bechdel test?
edit: In terms of acting, the prequel series were far clunkier than the originals. Some of the acting reminded me of high school drama class, all awkwardly-positioned blocking and unnatural pauses.
Maybe it’s because I was the only person out there who didn’t actually grow up on Star Wars or see any of the movies until I was 13, but I honestly thought both movies were clunky in how they presented their dialogue as well as the plot points. I also think the prequel trilogy had some interesting designs going for it in costume, set and monsters. I don’t see the gap in quality a lot of people seem to attribute to the two even though I still like them both.
The prequel trilogy barely even had any sets so I don’t know why you keep saying “set design” unless you just mean “backgrounds.” It was all soulless blue screen shit.
I don’t see how you can say they’re on the same level of clunk in plot point delivery either. The storytelling(both in a visual sense and a structural sense) is almost always simple, clear, and effective in the OT. You know who’s doing what, why they’re doing it, and what’s trying to stop them. It’s basic drama. The prequel trilogy is just convoluted and arbitrary in turns. Characters move from story station to story station for the vaguest reasons, taking breaks between video game cutscenes to have static conversations while sitting down. Shit almost never builds off itself so there’s little sense of propulsion, and combined with all the empty CG it makes all three prequel movies inert in their bones.
I mean I don’t even really consider it a matter of opinion. The prequels just do not execute basic fundamentals.
Some of the acting reminded me of high school drama class, all awkwardly-positioned blocking and unnatural pauses.
Part of that is the writers’ fault. Natalie Portman can act, but there’s not much you can do with ‘Anakin, you’re breaking my heart’.
For the record, I love the idea of Padme as a pacifist senator involved in political intrigues, but the execution didn’t work out.
I may have found the only movie that would actually be improved by the “it was all just a dream!” twist. It is called Mio In The Land Of Faraway, and it is absolutely dreadful in every respect. The script, the dialogue, the acting, the premise… everything about it is either almost satirically wooden, hackneyed beyond measure, or written from an omniscient perspective that the characters cannot have shared with the author.
(hidden for spoilers, in case you want to watch) :
It starts out fairly promising, if a bit ham-handed, but everything after he ran away from home fits firmly in “fever dream” territory, from the greenscreen effects to the surreality of the characters who act just naturally enough to drown in the Uncanny Valley, to the kid knowing exactly what questions to ask to advance the plot, ignoring several more immediate questions that would be far more logical to ask first.
Anyway, just… Have a look for yourself. Am I being unfairly pessimistic?
I finally watched Frozen... and I had to leave the room within the first half-hour. Why? Because in the first 18 minutes of the movie (I know because I looked at the clock), there were not one, not two, not three, but I believe four musical numbers. The first two actually served some purpose – setting the mood, and establishing the relationship between the two main characters, respectively. The third one I was okay with, but the fourth? No. No, movie, now you’re just padding out your run-time. And it’s only about 100 minutes long, so that’s a bad sign.
Yes, the songs themselves were good, but you need to space them out a bit more. You do not need to sing about every little thing.
And you want proof of this? I came back about half an hour later, in the half of the movie with significantly fewer musical breaks, and you know what I noticed? The plot actually moved! Stuff happened, and no one felt the need to sing about it! Amazing!
Also, I can’t help but think, “Gee, maybe if ice-girl (no, I didn’t bother to learn her name) had actually tried to figure out how to control her powers, none of this would have happened. Maybe if her parents had actually bothered to help her figure out how to control her powers instead of locking her in her room for years on end, this whole situation could have been avoided.”
And don’t tell me “well, that’s addressed in another song”, because this problem is blatantly obvious. I don’t care that it’s marketed to children, Disney has already shown that they know kid’s aren’t stupid.
(And I can’t help but feel that it’s treading a bit on Bobby Drake/Iceman’s sub-plot from X-Men 2. Only X-Men 2 actually addressed that issue. And without singing, too.)
I just have to add in it never stops making me giggle when I remember that one of the composers of Frozen was the same guy who did Avenue Q and The Book of Mormon.
I know the monochrome doesn’t help, but this reeks of excessive grimdark.
Nono, I don’t like the suit’s design.
Those ears.
Is he a bat, or a fox?
KITTY!
I don’t know, every time I see the short eared Batman I think of
In all seriousness, I actually don’t mind the ears. They look fine. But they still look like kitty ears.
(and I find semi-retired Batman to be incredibly boring, so we’ll see how I feel about this thing. The Dark Knight Returns worked really well—once. I really don’t care to see it again.
Which is, by the way, why Arkham Asylum was great, because it wasn’t like OH ORIGIN STORY or OH RETIREMENT OLD BATMAN DRAMA, it was just you are Batman, here are lots of bad guys, you are awesome, go punch everyone. Which is what we all really want here.)
New topic: I keep hearing Amazing Spider-Man 2 was kinda a muddled mess, but it’s very very pretty. Should I watch it anyway, or will I just be disappointed? Is the pretty enough to distract me from the plot?
I’m getting really burned out from all the superhero/comic book movies
Yup. But they’ll keep making them until they end up like westerns.
Just got back from the new X-Men movie. Overall, pretty good – not quite First Class good, but certainly better than probably every other X-Men related move since the second.
I liked that it’s at least something of a period piece, because bringing at least part of the cast from First Class was great. Also, they managed to have Logan be a major part of the plot, without making it all about him. So much so, in fact, that (minor spoiler) he’s actually absent for the film’s resolution. Also, this film once again retcons X-Men 3 out of existence (along with any movie with “Wolverine” in the title), which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
But there were a few things that bugged me.
Gravity alternative title: Sandra Bullock and the Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Space Mission.
Saw Maleficent yesterday. I…really didn’t care for it. How they handled Maleficent and other characters just really dissatisfied me.
The thing that might bother me the most is that this could have served as an interesting plot…had they not made it about Maleficent and the Sleeping Beauty.
This. I really hate villain movies that just turn the heroes into one dimensional villains instead of injecting shades of gray into a black and white story.
And since I’m already posting, I’m a bit torn on what I’m hearing about Into the Woods. Apparently the changes aren’t as big as they were first made out to be, but I’m still a bit iffy about what all’s going to change to make it a more family friendly experience. I’m also iffy about Johnny Depp’s presence in general, but then I have to remember I didn’t hate his singing in Sweeney Todd.
Just watched Bad Company (the movie that inspired the song). Pretty good, but seeing young, baby-faced Jeff Bridges was kinda weird.
Transformers 4 is glorious.
I mean, it’s a horribly incoherent story that went on way too long, should’ve cut out half the characters, didn’t explain the backstory at all, and had plot holes you could drive a Transformer through, but it also had Optimus Prime with a sword riding a fire-breathing robot dinosaur, which was the point I turned to my sister in the theater and said, with tears almost coming to my eyes, this is the greatest movie that has ever been made.
Definitely something to watch once, and then never watch again.
Transformers 4 is glorious.
Probably the silliest movie I’ve ever seen.
Probably the silliest movie I’ve ever seen.
I would have to agree with you there, on the other hand it did have, as Swenson so eloquently put it, Optimus Prime with a sword riding a fire-breathing robot dinosaur. Ultimately, I think a lot of a movie’s quality is largely in the eyes of the beholder. Some films are complete trash, yes. On the other hand, even the trash has it place.
Oh, I’m not disappointed because I went in fully intending to see a mindless and stupid summer movie with friends, and that’s exactly what I got.
I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.
I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.
Pretty much all of the Transformers films in a nutshell.
Snowpiercer was excellent. Go see it; it’s an unusual film, very different that the usual apocalypse genre. Very good acting, very tight cinematography.
I couldn’t ever recommend it to anyone in good conciseness, but I don’t regret seeing it.
An excellent way to put it.
I’ve spent the last few days trying to sum up my feelings for Edge of Tomorrow, and have only arrived to the conclusion that I liked it munch better than Transformers 4. The monster design was pretty generic, but the movements themselves were interesting to watch. The main characters weren’t particularly interesting (even if I loved Rita for being so ruthless through the entire movie), but they didn’t make me cheer for their deaths during their entire time on the screen. The beginning was really strong, but the ending felt like they had no idea how they wanted to end it and just picked up the first thing they could think of. I guess I have the same sort of fondness for it that I have for 80s action films and have some appreciation for the fact it’s not another movie about a manly man protecting his family or seeking out revenge against the baddy bads.
I’m really looking forward to the Boxtrolls. I don’t know anything about it or about the production, but the fact it’s by studio Laika is enough to put my butt in the seat.
The Raid 2
It was way better than I expected, and an overall completely beautiful and kickass movie.
Hercules
Short, non-spoiler-y version:
Not bad. Not great, but it’ll kill about 90-odd minutes (plus previews), and you probably won’t regret spending the money to see it, especially if it’s a matinee. If you enjoyed 300, you’ll enjoy this.
Longer, semi-spoiler-y version:
Lucy was pretty good, albeit weirdly obsessed with its version of fantasy science.
I just can’t bring myself to care about that movie. In 2014, we’re still throwing around the stupid “10% of your brain” thing? No matter how good the rest of the movie is, if it thinks I’m that stupid up front, I just don’t know that I can deal with it.
Apparently the movie DELIBERATELY DOES NOT CARE. The idea is WHAT IF. What if we only used part of our brains?
It’s a dumbass concept, but there’s some very cool effects and some interesting existential ideas. Honestly, I went to see it because I wanted to support a female driven film, regardless of the sketchy racism and lack of secondary female characters.
I’ve heard that it’s actually pretty decent despite the dodgy science. We are able to put aside scientific oddness for so many other movies (Elysium comes to mind at the moment), why not this one? Willow, how did your willing suspension of disbelief cope? Were the characters and story elements enough to carry the movie?
Sometimes I had to eyeroll, but the elements were interesting enough to carry it. The film is a little choppy at times, but again, it’s neat.
NO IDEA WHY, BUT THERE’S A 7 PM SHOWING OF GUARDIANS OF THE MOTHERFUCKING GALAXY TONIGHT AND I AM FUCKING GOING. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Have fun! I’m jealous!
Going to see Hercules tonight. I’ve heard it’s a kind of eh movie, but knowing that now, I can go and have fun with it.
Saw Guardians of the Galaxy. Good stuff, as always. Still, I had a few problems:
1) Since it’s a team movie, with no build-up, they have to establish all the characters in the movie. Including the villains. They did alright, but I still think the villains could have been developed more.
2) Kinda worried about how they’ll connect this up with the other Marvel movies. Not much connecting it to the other ones as is, aside from a brief appearance of Thanos and his chief minion from Avengers (and no, I don’t consider that a real spoiler), and that guy Benicio del Toro played at the end of the last Thor movie. Apart from that, this is pretty stand-alone. Not sure how to feel about that.
I’m just saying that, because just about every important character has to be introduced, some of them don’t get much development. For example, I get the impression that the relationship between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillian) is supposed to be important. But since they share a grand total of two scenes, you don’t get to see that. Same for the big villain – I sort of get his motivation, but it’s still pretty simple.
I guess my point is that the movie could use a little extra run-time.
the last thing we need is some ignorant ubiquitous push to make sure ensemble flicks have their own handful of build-up movies.
Just imagine an entire prequel intro/build-up movie for each member of Ocean’s 11.
I watched The Godfather part I and II today. Yeesh, I just feel sad now.