Movies are awesome

[Sparky Prime]

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are set to write The Amazing Spider-Man 2. For those that might not know, they're the same writers behind the Transformers films and the 2009 Star Trek. So I guess we should expect some plot holes for the future sequel...

[138 Scourge]

Yeah, but they write Fringe, too, and that's pretty decent. At least what I've seen of it is. It's like a better version of X-Files.

But I'm not worried about Amazing Spider-Man 2, since I'm probably going to pass on the first one anyhow.

[Onslaught Six]

They can write well. I think they write for the director, honestly. That, and they have their whole big-screen "throw shit against a wall and see what sticks" style of writing. The only thing is, they sometimes don't have a good editor to go, "Hey, that doesn't make sense."

I wish Fox would finally lose the X-Men and Spiderman licenses so we could see these done under Marvel. Say what you will about the comics, the movies they've done are nothing if not at least competant in producing accurate (for the most part) adaptations of Marvel's characters. (Although I'll give Fox credit for First Class, I loved that.)

[Sparky Prime]

Avengers. Best. Comic. Film. Ever.


Other thoughts when they become coherent again.

[138 Scourge]

Wow. Sparky, I know you're not a big Marvel guy these days, so coming from you, that's saying something. I'll be seeing it in a few hours, and I can't fuckin' wait. So excited that there's finally a good movie with the Hulk in it. And with these really good movie versions of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor thrown in? Yeah, sounds about perfect. I'm so glad Marvel was able to pull this off.

[Sparky Prime]

Well if there is one thing Marvel is doing right these days, it would be the movies.

I'll try to avoid spoilers here...
I don't even know where to begin to describe this movie. Well I guess I should start with the films that lead up to it. Although I'd say Avengers stands on its own, as it does a fair enough job of covering what it needs to, it also heavily draws on the plots of Captain America and Thor in-particular. Seeing the Marvel films that lead into Avengers definitely augments the experience as they do touch on a lot of elements from all of the films.

The blend of humor and action in the film was excellent. And along that subject, it was great to see Hulk enjoying himself. There were some really funny moments with him. And I'd say the story balances out between all of the characters pretty well as it never felt to me like they ever focused too much on any one character.

Also, like all of the other Marvel films, there is a scene after the credits, so make sure to stay.
Edit to clarify: There is a scene during the credits and a scene after all the credits.

I just can't say enough about this film. It was awesome.

[andersonh1]

I'm not a big Marvel fan, but I have to admit that they've made some really good super hero movies. Iron Man has to be one of the best ever, honestly.

I'm not an Avengers reader, but I want to go see the movie. It looks pretty darn good to me. DC's crazy not to make a Justice League movie now that Avengers is showing that a well-done team movie will bring in the audiences.

[Onslaught Six]

Well if there is one thing Marvel is doing right these days, it would be the movies.

I'll try to avoid spoilers here...
I don't even know where to begin to describe this movie. Well I guess I should start with the films that lead up to it. Although I'd say Avengers stands on its own, as it does a fair enough job of covering what it needs to, it also heavily draws on the plots of Captain America and Thor in-particular. Seeing the Marvel films that lead into Avengers definitely augments the experience as they do touch on a lot of elements from all of the films.

I'd say Iron Man 2 is pretty important too, establishing Nick Fury, SHIELD, Coulson, and Black Widow.

But yeah, the movie is damn great. If you like superhero films; if you like Marvel 'at all,' go see this. Trust me on this. I don't read Avengers--never have, don't plan on starting--and it was honestly the best damn thing it could've been.

[Sparky Prime]

I'd say Iron Man 2 is pretty important too, establishing Nick Fury, SHIELD, Coulson, and Black Widow.

Well technically Iron Man 1 established SHIELD, Coulson and Nick Fury (after the credits). But I just meant in terms of the plot of Avengers, Thor and Captain America play a more direct involvement between Loki and the Tesseract being the focus of the film.

[Onslaught Six]

I posted this on Tumblr, and figured--what the heck, why not here?

ONSLAUGHT SIX'S TOP 6(ISH) MOVIES OF 2012 IN NO ORDER

Some of these may contain minor spoilers. None of these came out recently, so you had your shot.

1. Looper

Looper wasn’t the movie they were advertising, and that crushing disappointment hit me hard in the theater. Thankfully, once I got over it, I was able to see what a great fucking movie it was. It just wasn’t the two hours of Bruce Willis and JGL chasing each other and shooting at each other that I thought it was going to be. But that’s okay. I still feel like the movie loses its pace somewhere in the middle once we get to the farm scenes, but that’s just because I love cityscapes and I love it when action movies keep ramping up the pace right up until the very end. Looper is more about the characters than it is the action, and that’s a fine direction to go—I just wish the marketing hadn’t made it out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing as a blockbuster action movie. (For example, there plenty of scenes in the trailers that were basically taken from a montage that happens early on in the movie and is mostly ignored.) I also wish that they hadn’t used telekinesis in it, just because it also got used in one of my other favourite movies this year, Chronicle.

2. Prometheus

Shut the fuck up, I loved this. A lot of people were pissed off that we didn’t see a real Xenomorph, or a Facehugger, and to them I say: Did you watch the fucking thing? Yes, some of the characters were either profoundly stupid or insanely smart and managed to make jumps in logic that seemed to rely on information they didn’t really have—and those were all pretty much reliant on scenes that were shot and later deleted. I don’t know who to blame on that one.

But at its core, Prometheus is two things: It’s a great suspense/scifi movie the same way Alien is a really solid horror/scifi flick, it’s got fan-fucking-tastic designs all across the board, and it gives us our first real new terrors in the Alien universe since 1986’s Alien Queen. (Or, debatably, 1987’s Predator, depending on how much you like to think Aliens vs. Predator counts.) The Engineers (what were once the “Space Jockeys”), the big fucking vagina-octopus monster, the tendril things in the chamber, the Deacon at the end—all fantastic additions to the universe, and you can’t deny Fassbender’s fantastic performance as David the android. It’s also one of the only things I’ve seen Charlize Theron in that I didn’t want to punch her in the face in.

3. The Dark Knight Rises

Okay, okay. The Dark Knight was going to be really hard to follow up, especially with the shadow of Heath Ledger’s death overtop it. The Joker was a great villain and he’d be impossible to follow up with if they went with a guy who was going to go towards mindgames and fucking with Batman…so they went the complete opposite direction and put Bane into the game.

All in all, the movie actually feels much more like an almost direct sequel to Batman Begins than it does The Dark Knight, which feels like a weird, misplaced action piece in the middle. Bane’s much more visceral than any other villain in the Nolanverse and kicks a lot of ass. And a lot of people made fun of his voice, but I loved it. Bane’s voice ruled. They could have easily made him sound like a thug or a bruiser, but he sounded like a man of intellect who could both outwit ‘and’ outpunch Batman.

It has its technical problems, I’ll admit, but those really aren’t Nolan’s strongest points anyway. (Is it me, or does every movie this guy makes have a magic device that does whatever the plot needs it to, and is never explained? Microwave emitter, cloning device, sonar cellphone thing, dream-sharing briefcase…TDKR is worse because it actually has THREE: The earthquake machine, the bomb, and Bane’s mask.)

Despite its flaws, the performances are strong, and it’s a good note to end the trilogy on. I just wish that Heath Ledger had lived to be in it, though, and we could have seen a sequel that was more TDK than Batman Begins.

4. The Avengers

The ultimate good-guys-kick-the-shit-out-of-everything movie. You don’t go into this thinking that it’s going to challenge you in any way or make you really think. You go into it to see all your favourite superheroes from the last four years (since 2008’s Iron Man!) and also Hawkeye fight a bunch of aliens and crack one-liners for two and a half hours. And it hits on all those cylinders. Halfway through this in the theater, it dawned on me: I was seeing a comic book crossover movie in a packed theater, and nearly all of the characters in it had already been established in their own movie, AND I didn’t have to make any excuses for it—at least not that I wouldn’t make for any other movie.

Sure, the Chitauri are really underdeveloped. That’s fine. They don’t need to be. They’re aliens and they want to take over Earth, because that’s what aliens do. Fuck it, the Engineer’s motivations in Prometheus didn’t get explained either, and that was actually a plot point in that movie. Everybody performs great in it, the CGI is both convincing and spectacular, and I didn’t even mind having to see it in 3D.

5. Chronicle

The only movie this year that was so good that I wrote a song and stole the title for it. Chronicle is yet another “found footage” film, but it thankfully doesn’t insult us the way most of them do. Instead of simply relying on one camera’s footage, the movie instead portrays a world where we can look into any camera that’s currently covering the action—the same way a movie with traditional cameras would be able to switch to any camera that’s “covering” the scene, any camera that’s actually present can work. This leads to some super-cool stuff later in the movie where dozens of people are filming the action with their phones, and we intercut between that and TV coverage and security cameras (complete with no sound and shitty resolution!). It’s great, and really sets it apart from most “found footage” flicks that act like they’re the work of a single camera.

Also, the plot of the movie is part of what sets it apart. Three teens find a crystal in a hole underground that gives them advanced telekinesis virtually overnight. After a few weeks of screwing around and using it for pranks, party tricks and frivolous pursuits, the main character—an outcast who has an abusive father and is bullied at school—begins using his abilities to harm others and for personal gain. Things come to a conflict when the other two teens try to stop him, and things get messy.

It’s probably the best film adaptation of Akira that we’re ever going to get—and I mean that sincerely. It comes down to a story about two brothers (not really, but neither were Kaneda and Tetsuo), one which is oppressed and uses his powers to hurt those who hurt him. The final scenes all but scream “TETSUOOOOOO!” “KANEDAAAAA!” at you, and there’s no way it was a coincidence.

The movie was awesomely directed and is just a killer time, and was also written by the son of John Landis.

6. The Amazing Spiderman

A great way to reboot the franchise. Distinctly different from the Sam Raimi films, and better off for it. Raimi’s movies are Spiderman done straight—at least the first two—and that is, in some ways, their failing. It’s all so…predictable and straight-laced. Uncle Ben dies. Spidey starts off as a wrestler and kills the guy who robs his match. JJJ is an asshole. It’s all stuff we’ve seen done before, but before then it’d never been done on the big screen—so it makes sense to do it there.

This movie, though, is a Spiderman that can fit in 2012’s superhero flick landscape. The post-Nolan Batman, post-Avengers world. Andrew Garfield is a LOT more lithe and acrobatic-looking than Tobey MacGuire ever was—while Tobey was there, in the Spiderman suit, I never really felt like…like he ‘looked like Spiderman.’ Garfield’s Spidey is slender and sleek and looks like he can do all kinds of flips and tricks and shit—which thankfully are in much stronger supply in this movie. I like the new costume, for the most part—the only thing is that I wish his eyes were bigger, but I grew up on the Todd MacFarlane Spiderman, whose eyes took up 2/3s of his face, so maybe I’m biased.

Garfield’s Spidey is also the wisecracking dickhead we all know and love (or hate!) from the comics. Tobey’s Spidey would do a couple jokes, but they were BAD—perhaps intentionally so. Garfield’s Spidey will legitimately make you laugh throughout the movie. Lizard is a great villain and it’s cool to see him finally, after Raimi teased us for THREE FUCKING MOVIES with Curt Connors. They beef him up, though, from the comics incarnation, and instead turn him into a towering bastard that Spidey has to outmaneuver—a much better thing. While Raimi’s Spiderman almost never fought anyone who was any bigger than he was, this Spidey is a guy that I see fighting all of the huge motherfuckers from the comics—he’s a guy I can see fighting Rhino, and the Scorpion, and a bulked-to-shit Venom. I can see this because I see the huge-ass Lizard and I see Spidey manuevering around him like a goddamned dancer. It’s great to watch.

The only thing I can bitch about is some of the casting. I already said Garfield is great as Spidey, but he seems like he has a little trouble making Peter Parker as nerdy and outcast as he should be—he just looks too cool. It’s a shame, because he has the personality down great. I think a little change in wardrobe in the next film is in order. I can never, ever complain about Emma Stone, in anything, and this is no exception—although I think it’s hilarious that they got a redhead to play Gwen Stacey, the same way they got a blonde to play the redheaded Mary Jane in the Raimi flicks. Denis Leary as her father, Captain George Stacey, is magnificent. I could watch that guy read the fucking phone book. And more importantly, he manages to fill the shoes as a blue-collar Everyman Spiderman Hater—shoes that are left by the departure of JK Simmons and his awesome JJJ from the Raimi movies. I almost didn’t miss him. (Almost.) Curt Connors/the Lizard is portrayed awesomely by Rhys Ifans, someone who I’m not too familiar with, but he makes the role great. You feel for him, you really do, but when he’s evil, he’s fucking evil. The best part is how he’s done up to just kind of ‘look’ sinister, before he’s even done anything. It’s cool.

But I’m going to bitch about a pair of absolutely crucial cast members, and unfortunately I think they both fail hardcore—Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Sally Fields as Aunt May. Martin Sheen looks (and sounds) like he’s just here collecting a paycheck and isn’t into the role at all; it’s like he knows his character is going to die 45 minutes into the movie, so why give a shit? I also couldn’t stop myself from mentally ending every one of his lines with, “Shepard!” as if he was the Illusive Man from Mass Effect 2. “I’m very disappointed in you, Shepard! Go to your room, Shepard! With great power comes great responsibility, Shepard!”

Sally Fields is just too young to play Aunt May. Maybe they’re deliberately doing that to counteract the really old Aunt May from the Raimi movies, but it doesn’t work. She looked older when she was in Forrest fucking Gump! In this movie, she just ends up looking like the mom from the Transformers movies. I kept waiting for the scene when she asks Peter if he was masturbating, and then eats some pot brownies.

Despite this, AmSpidey is a great new reboot of the franchise and I greatly look forward to the sequels.

SPECIAL MENTION: Men In Black 3

This might actually be the best MIB movie. I’ve always loved these flicks just because of how cool and zany they are, and as a white person, Will Smith makes me feel safe and comfortable. I’d love for them to crank this franchise up and do one of these every two years, like Transformers. The mythos is right there!

This one, though, has a great heart at the end of it. I actually shed a tear. Yes, I’m serious, this movie made me feel emotions I didn’t think a fucking Men In Black movie could make me feel. On the flip side: Lots of hilarious jokes and shit, timetravel shenanigans, and also, TIM FUCKING CURRY in the biggest “What the fuck are you doing in this movie?” moment of 2012 for me. (Liam Neeson in Battleship would count, but he was in the trailers.) He’s the MAIN VILLAIN and completely took me by surprise that he was in there. He’s in a hilarious getup, but underneath he’s just still Tim Fucking Curry, smarmy and goofy as ever. He eats up the scenery in this movie like it’s popcorn, and I loved every second of it. Go see this one; I assure you, it’s good.

MOVIES I SAW BUT I’M NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT THEM AT LENGTH:

1. Brave: I didn’t like it. I think it’s because it’s about a mother and daughter, and I hate my mother, so I didn’t connect. Sorry, Pixar. Better luck next year with Monsters Inc. prequel!

2. Wreck-It Ralph: I liked this but apparently it was a fleeting like, since I didn’t talk about it at length like I did everything up there and only just now remembered it. Wondering if I legitimately liked the movie, or just like video game references.

SPECIAL MENTIONS: MOVIES I DIDN’T SEE:

1. 21 Jump Street

I’m not a fan of most modern comedies. Maybe I’m just getting old, but something about them just seems like the guys who are writing them are just putting as much dirty jokes on the screen to get a shock laugh as they can. Despite this, this movie/remake seemed like it might be funny, and I’ll admit that I have a soft spot for both Jonah Hill and Channing Tater. I was one of the only people who didn’t mind Tater as Duke in the GI Joe movies, so I feel like that helps him out here on my scale. And speaking of…

2. GI JOE: RETALIATION

BECAUSE IT DIDN’T FUCKING COME OUT. In a move of (IMO) unprecedented stupidity, GI Joe 2 got pushed back ‘eight fucking months’ to March 2013 from its original June 2012 date. The toyline also got pushed back with it, which means I have had no GI Joe product to buy for the last six months. I guess the failure of Battleship made Paramont gun shy on it.

The funny thing? GI Joe was going to come out around that time originally! They moved it up to June this year because Star Trek got delayed because JJ Abrams couldn’t decide if he wanted Bennerdick Cummerbuns to be Khan or not. (My money is still on him being Khan.) And then they delayed it and turned it right back around to where it was to be before! Jesus.

Despite all that, the movie looks like it’ll be a blast. A proper Cobra Commander, Zartan impersonating the President (although I guess there’s no Arnold Vosloo this time? Boo!), Firefly as the big bad henchman, and then you turn around and find out they’re fighting The Rock as Roadblock, Snake Eyes being Snake Eyes, and Bruce Goddamn Willis as Joe Colton, the original GI Joe from the 60s? That’s fucking awesome. My only wish is that they would’ve kept Joseph Gordon Levitt in as Cobra Commander, so we could get more Looper shenanigans. (Although it’s probably never getting out of the mask, so really, it’s the voice that’ll matter.)

3. Cabin In The Woods

I am a terrible person for missing this, and I’m sorry. Truthfully, it should have been held back for an October release, because I was all hyped up for a

4. Total Recall

Did this need to be remade? I heard they don’t even go to fucking Mars.

5. Expendables 2(: Expendable Harder)

I didn’t like the first Expendables—maybe I wasn’t in the right mood for it when I saw it, but it seemed like a clusterfuck that didn’t know what it was doing. Mickey Rourke was the best part of it, and I heard he isn’t in this one, so I didn’t see it.

6. Dredd

I am really sad I missed this one, and I wonder why the fuck they didn’t put it on DVD before Christmas. (The same thing with Looper, which technically isn’t out yet…although I was able to rent it?? somehow??)

7. Alex Cross

A friend of mine told me I need to see this, so I will when it hits DVD. Tyler Perry in a not idiotic role? A black dude who isn’t Samuel L. Jackson, Will Smith or Wesley Snipes in a cool action movie role? I guess I do need to see this shit!

(Is Wesley Snipes out of jail yet?)

8. Skyfall

…okay, so, a confession: I don’t really even like James Bond movies very much. I haven’t seen any of the Daniel Craig ones that I can remember. Yeah. But I like the…’idea’ of Bond flicks. I like the essence of the character and all that. It’s just that James Bond movies in reality often don’t live up to a James Bond movie in my head. A James Bond movie is a lot more like the most recent Mission Impossible flick in my brain, and they often…aren’t quite like that, for some reason. Despite this, I intend on seeing it.

9. The Hobbit (part 1 of 10)

Didn’t see it. Wanted to on Christmas Day, and uphold an (on and off again) tradition, but I suck so we didn’t.

10. Django Unchained

Okay, to be fair, this has been out for like four days. But I want to see it. I love Tarantino.