Movies are awesome

[138 Scourge]

Weird. Sort of reminds me of the Ben Reilly Spider-suit. Looks okay, though.

[andersonh1]

Green Lantern

My wife and I went to see Green Lantern today. Not bad at all. A movie like this simply could not have been done well prior to CGI to depict the aliens and lantern constructs. A lot of it is very obvious CGI, but it's still great eye candy and looks pretty good.

Story: yet another variation on Hal Jordan's first days as a Green Lantern, with ideas drawn from the recent Secret Origin, along with a few changes to certain villains and characters. And my habit of sticking around to watch the closing credits paid off, as we're treated to a scene about halfway through the credits that we all knew was coming.

Spoiler

Sinestro puts on the yellow ring and reacts quite strongly to the power it affords him

. Parallax is the main villain, and it has a very different origin than the one from the comics. Hector Hammond is a secondary villain as well, and the character is just as whiny and pathetic as he is in the comics. The action sequences are good, and Ryan Reynolds does a nice job making Hal Jordan both arrogant and reckless, while humble and sympathetic when he needs to be. He definitely carried the movie.

In my opinion, they did a great job. This movie is the opposite of the "grounded in the real world" Batman Begins and Dark Knight. Green Lantern goes all out with aliens and planets and cosmic monsters and larger than life personalities. They don't hold back, and it works well.

[138 Scourge]

You know why Hammond's whiny and pathetic? Other than the fact that he looks like John Merrick's stunt double in the movie? Dude is a second-rate MODOK and knows it. Sure, he may be all "evoloutionarily advanced" like MODOK, and may, in fact, have come first (don't know). But he's got the suckier gigantic head, the suckier flying chair, and he doesn't have a snappy acronym for a name like MODOK.

All that aside, I'm likely to pass on this movie, it sounds like it's influenced by the more recent comics, and if I don't enjoy those, no reason for me to check out the movie. Still, it's kind of amazing, if you'd told me in 1993 that there'd be a movie that had Kilowog in it, but when it came out, I wouldn't want to see it, I'd never have believed it.

On the other hand, when Captain America comes out, I'll be in for that so hard.

[andersonh1]

All that aside, I'm likely to pass on this movie, it sounds like it's influenced by the more recent comics, and if I don't enjoy those, no reason for me to check out the movie. Still, it's kind of amazing, if you'd told me in 1993 that there'd be a movie that had Kilowog in it, but when it came out, I wouldn't want to see it, I'd never have believed it.

It's very much a product of the more recent take on Green Lantern. As for Kilowog, the few scenes he gets are fun, but he's not in it enough. If you've seen the scene where he creates a "star" with his ring, you've seen half of everything he does in the movie. The other training scenes are good, but too short.

[Sparky Prime]

I saw Green Lantern today as well. I also thought they did a wonderful job with this movie. Loved that there are so many things for fans to pick up on. And it does a good job of explaining things for people who know nothing about Green Lantern (as a friend of mine I saw it with told me). The scene mid-credits was great. I was wondering if they'd revisit that in this movie after they'd introduced it and glad to see they did.

[Onslaught Six]

Green Lantern

Really? You guys actually liked GL?

Here's the thing--I liked it when I watched it. I thought, "Oh, this is fun." But then the next day, I was thinking, "That really didn't do anything."

Parallax is a shit villain in this movie (as if he's any better in the comics). He shows up, the Guardians spout some vague shit about him feeding off fear, and he axes a couple no-name guys. (Literally, they are never named and we never see them for more than three seconds. For all we know they're as new to the Corps as Hal is.) Then he goes to, I guess, eat Earth, which is apparently all of one city. Hal punches him into a sun and that's the end of that. At no point during the movie did I feel threatened by Parallax, at all. Seriously, he's the suckiest villain.

I feel like the movie isn't paced well. We have our typical hero-gets-superpowers-and-learns-to-use-them-while-facing-a-small-scale-threat thing with him and Hammond, and then every so often we switch to these random-ass scenes with dudes in space who literally do nothing. Kilowog and the bird guy are in like two scenes. Sinestro hits Hal with swords at one point and stands around looking sinister the rest of the time. It is literally no surprise at the end when he puts on the yellow ring because the entire movie, we've been given almost no indication that he's got any character beyond a mailman for the Guardians. (And I know this is a comics thing, I know, but his name is fucking Sinestro. There is no way that he wasn't going to be the bad guy at the end.)

There's a romance that's even more tacked-on to the movie than the one in Thor (at least there I kind of felt like the actors had a connection, here it's just boring) that it barely deserves mentioning. Also, apparently Hal has a kid but it's never directly stated (merely implied) and honestly I don't remember Hal Jordan ever having a kid (seems like it might be an important thing, and for that matter superheroes with children could actually be a great plot point if they bothered using it for more than one scene to illustrate that Hal is kind of a deadbeat dad, sort of) and it's never brought up past that one scene so why is it even there? (Also we've got some total Transformers-style entire-day-passing-in-seconds going on when Hal gets swept away by the Lantern energy, it's daytime when that happens and when he lands it's suddenly night. This is just sloppy.)

I think the film's worst offense is that it's just really really shallow. When Parallax is headed for Earth, Hal busts in on Sinestro and the Guardians and goes "Hey! I know humans are a young race or whatever but there's good in them! Totally! Trust me on this!" The problem with this is we're never actually shown any reasons why humanity is worth saving. Hal just kind of says they are and everybody nods. For that matter, Hal is also the only one who ever really brings up "Humanity is a young race/has much to learn." Everybody else just kind of writes them off as sucking and that's that--which I guess is what they're going for, give us a few throwaway lines about humans being weak (which are probably to goad Hal into bucking up and training hard more than anything else) and the fact that Hal is human and just expect us to sympathise. Of course humans are worth saving--we're humans, we're supposed to agree with that, yeah? But the movie never actually gives us any reasons for that. Everybody (with the exception of the tepid love interest and Hal's possible lovechild) treats Hal like the piece of shit he is, so he should just as well be totally fine with Earth being destroyed and hanging out with his bitchin' new alien friends.

Despite this, Ryan Reynolds does a fine job in the role. I think Hal's being written here more as Kyle Raynor than Hal Jordan but that could change in a sequel after he's going some more time under his belt. In spite of my problems with the film, I think a sequel could work out well.

My biggest problem with the movie is that it just feels like wasted potential--it doesn't know if it wants to be small-scale Earth Superhero or Cosmic Green Policeman, so it tries to do both at the same time, and neither is particularly successful. One thing I noticed about the film is that, if you watch the trailer (like I did the next day when I saw X-Men First Class), you basically know the entire plot of the movie, beat for beat. The fact is, the animated Green Lantern: First Flight is a better Hal Jordan origin story than this is, and that's sad.

Hangover 2

I saw GL at the drive-in and this was playing next. $12 for two tickets, and you get two films with that? Considering I paid that much just to see X-Men the next day (although that was in a very nice theater) it's a great deal.

If you liked the first Hangover a lot, or you go see comedies in theaters a lot (possibly while under the influence or with friends) then this is probably worth it; otherwise wait for a DVD rental. This isn't to say it's a bad comedy. It takes everything that was good about the first Hangover and ups it to eleven; although unfortunately a couple tropes from the first one are kept intact in this one when I'd hoped they'd be inverted.

Spoiler

Zack Galifinakis' character Alan is once again inadvertantly responsible for them being drugged and unable to remember the events of the previous night; their missing friend (Doug in the original, a 16-year-old Asian guy in the sequel) is found at their hotel in an obvious place they didn't even think to look before--the rooftop in the original, a broken-down elevator in the sequel.

But the severity of the crazy situations they get themselves mixed up in is definitely amplified this time. I'm not sure if it's a better comedy than the original, but I laughed a lot.

X-Men: First Class

My girlfriend had seen all the trailers and actually been looking forward to this; I'd seen the Wolverine origin movie and that obviously didn't fill me with a lot of hope for this one. I think originally this was slated to be X-Men Origins: Magneto, which would probably be a depressing film about Magneto growing up in a concentration camp, so they obviously changed that. I didn't think the dude from Wanted would play a good Professor Xavier but I'll be damned if he didn't make it work, and work well.

In fact, the entire cast of this film is fucking great. I hope we get a sequel to this just so I can see this cast again. Many of the X-Men are basically unknowns but they all manage to look and feel very distinctive--the actors playing Beast and Banshee especially. Kevin Bacon makes a goddamn triumphant return to serious acting and totally pulls off Sebastian Shaw, speaking three languages (English, German, Russian) and making a great villain with all sorts of layers of complexity. In fact, that's probably a key word to this film--complexity. Almost every character's got some good layers of complexity to them and everyone gets their piece. (With the exception of a few of the villains, like the White Queen, Azazel and Riptide, who basically make up Shaw's gang of cronies. In fact, I don't think Riptide is ever referred to by name; the whole time I kept having to call him "That dude who shoots tornadoes out of his hands." I only just now found out his name from the Wiki page on the movie.)

Spoiler

Oh, and Darwin doesn't really get any development either, but that's because he's playing the role of Morph from the 90s animated series, only without the part where he comes back later and is evil. His death looked really cool, though!

Mystique is given a decent explanation as to why she would still be smokin' hot some 30-40 years later (the movie takes place mostly in 1962) by Hank McCoy telling her that her cells regenerate faster or something like that, so she doesn't age as fast. Hank is a well-meaning guy but sensitive about his (and Mystique's) appearance, which leads him to some drastic measures that backfire in an obvious way--in spite of us already knowing the resolution (he becomes a furry and rapes animals, according to Dom) it's still engaging. Havok and Banshee are probably given the least development but each of them individually see more character moments and development than most of GL's cast combined. Where Hal Jordan simply says, "Humanity is worth saving! I said so!" X-Men's entire cast's actions and words really show us the line--we see Magneto's viewpoints in actions. Whereas the mainstream X-Men films mostly were content to have Magneto fly in the air and go "Humans are totally gonna turn against us one day!" and have some SWAT guys invade the X-Mansion, here we see both America and Russia put aside their differences in the Cold War to make a calculated strike against all the (known) mutants at the time. The tacked-on romance subplot here isn't tacked on at all and is given just the right amount of focus--at no time does Xavier go "Hey girl, I obviously love you, we should make out for five minutes," it feels more like they're still getting to know each other even though there's an obvious attraction there. The Mystique/Beast/Magneto love triangle is essential to the character development of all three involved, and putting it the way I did there makes it sound much worse.

Spoiler

Hugh Jackman shows up as Wolverine in a hilarious cameo. Xavier and Magneto are travelling around the world, recruiting mutants. They walk up to Wolvie in a bar. "Hi, I'm Professor Charles Xavier, and this is--" "Go fuck yourself." "....Right." And they leave.

If you're going to see one of these and you're on the fence, go see X-Men, it's a superior film. The fact that I've written so much about it (and that there's that more to tell about it) shows that I liked it a hell of a lot more.

[Dominic]

The Cuban Missile tie-in kind of bugs me. Historical fiction tends to strike me as kind of fan-ficcy.


Dom
-is given to understand that Professor X blows is pretty comprehensively.

[Onslaught Six]

The Cuban Missile tie-in kind of bugs me. Historical fiction tends to strike me as kind of fan-ficcy.

Dom
-is given to understand that Professor X blows is pretty comprehensively.

Not being familiar with it much to begin with (shame on me, I find military history boring), the film does a decent enough job of simplifying (?) the thing. Sebastian Shaw strongarms his way into getting Russia to move nuclear missiles to Cuba, they do it,

Spoiler

a ship is about to cross into American waters or something and Michael Ironside gets all pissed off, Professor X controls some Russian dude's mind to make him fire a missile on the Russian ship about to cross the line, blowing it up, preventing war. Then we basically cut to the Pentagon and they go, "Hey, Russia agrees--fuck mutants, we should kill them all here." They all fire missiles, Magneto stops them and turns them around on the humans, the X-guys hit Magneto a couple times, the love interest starts shooting a gun, Magneto deflects the bullets and one of them paralyzes Xavier, finally breaking Magneto's concentration enough to let the nukes fall into water.

[andersonh1]

Green Lantern

Really? You guys actually liked GL?

Here's the thing--I liked it when I watched it. I thought, "Oh, this is fun."

If that's all it was (and I don't necessarily agree, but for the sake of argument), that's fine. It was a fun super-hero movie about a character I like. I've never watched any of the X-Men movies, and don't care how good they are because I don't care about the characters. The same goes for Iron Man. I'm surprised I actually enjoyed the first two Spider-Man movies, since I'm normally uninterested in him as well. I like Green Lantern, and this movie would really have to have screwed up big time to make me dislike it. But it didn't. The made a pretty faithful adaptation of the character and the concept behind him, and they kept me interested and entertained.

I liked the movie. I"m probably going to go see it again on Saturday, maybe even try out the 3D version this time.

Parallax is a shit villain in this movie ...Then he goes to, I guess, eat Earth, which is apparently all of one city.

Uhhh... he had just arrived on Earth. How much destruction was he supposed to have accomplished in that short amount of time, before he chased Green Lantern off the planet?

Kilowog and the bird guy are in like two scenes.

Yeah, I'll agree with you on this one. There wasn't enough Kilowog in the movie. What we saw was good, but I'd like to have seen more.

[Sparky Prime]

Really? You guys actually liked GL?

Why wouldn't I? I thought they did a great job with it. Like andersonh1, I think I'll probably see it again at some point.

You got a number of things wrong with your analysis of the movie by the way...

and he axes a couple no-name guys. (Literally, they are never named and we never see them for more than three seconds. For all we know they're as new to the Corps as Hal is.)

They may not have been named in the film, but Sinestro had requested to be allowed to take some of the best Lanterns with him to fight Parallax. That wouldn't be rookies.

Also, apparently Hal has a kid but it's never directly stated (merely implied)

I do believe that kid called him uncle Hal. That was Hal's brother's house and family.

Hal just kind of says they are and everybody nods.

And yet still refuse to help Hal save Earth...
They are the Guardians of the Universe. I don't think just letting planets get wiped out is their ideal scenario here, even if they are willing to let it happen for what they believe to be the greater good of the universe.

For that matter, Hal is also the only one who ever really brings up "Humanity is a young race/has much to learn."

No he isn't. Tomar Re mentions how young humans are just after Hal woke up on Oa.