Deadpool tries to make a big deal about how this is "a different kind of super hero movie". He backs this up by pointing out how he just turned a bad guy into a bloody kabob, and by dropping F-bombs and explicit sex jokes every other line of dialogue. True it isn't exactly the typical super hero movie, but it wasn't anything that we haven't already seen in the larger field of comic book movies. Adaptations of graphic novels like Watchmen, Kickass, Sin City, and 300 are loaded with plenty of gratuitous, graphic violence, foul language, sex, and even some impressive glowing blue penises. Heck, even within the subset of Marvel superhero movies, there's already the R-rated Blade.
So I thought it was a bit pretentious for Deadpool to make his movie out to be "unique" for its hard-R rating. It isn't. And it certainly isn't that unique in its plot, which is a pretty standard, cliched origin story with love interest female lead, complete with the hero trying to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend from an arrogant villain. Nothing new there. It is a little bit more unique in its sense of humor though. If you didn't already know, Deadpool is pretty infamous for being a fourth-wall-breaking meta character. In his appearances in comic books, he routinely jokes or comments about being in a comic book, and his appearances in video games also usually include references to comic books or to video games.
So this movie is trying to sell itself on its wit, and it both succeeds brilliantly, and fails miserably. The opening credit sequence and other digs at the studio system (including a dig at the studio being too cheap to afford any other X-Men cameos) work very well. Other pop culture references fall a bit flat and will only serve to date the movie in the future. I was also very disappointed that Deadpool didn't comment on the absurdly cliche plot twist of the villain kidnapping the hero's girlfriend. That's like a violation of cardinal rule #1 for movie supervillians: don't kidnap the hero's girlfriend. Unless her name is Gwen Stacy, then I guess you've got a case for the kidnapping.
Ryan Reynolds pulls the character off with pitch perfect execution, and his performance isn't hurt at all by the occasional poor joke. He inhabits the role with the same dedication as Robert Downy Jr. in Iron Man, and Reynolds and Deadpool will likely be inseparable from each other for the future.
Despite the cliche plot, Morena Baccarin's character is surprisingly relevant to the protagonist's development.
The villain is pretty lame though, with paper-thin motivation that really does prevent the cliche plot from really transcending the banality of the genre. And really, that's probably the greatest weakness of the movie. Despite taking [what the studio apparently perceives as] risks with the R-rating and over-the-top violence and sex, the actual plot is so "safe" and cheesy. It probably would have worked a bit better for me if it had stuck to being a revenge movie, but once it became apparent that the bad guy was going to kidnap the girlfriend, I kind of sighed and sunk back into my chair, "Oh, another one of these."
At least the romance is much more integral to the movie's plot than in other super hero movies in which the love interest feels tacked on and just there... [More]
c31ecfb9-14cb-4234-96ec-7542f0c8446b|1|5.0
Tags:Deadpool, X-Men, 20th Century Fox, Ryan Reynolds, Ed Skrein, Morena Baccarin, Ajax, Colossus, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, R-rating, nudity, violence, sex, romantic comedy, mutant, Marvel, Marvel Comics, comic book, fourth wall
Cover of Uncanny X-Men #141: Days of Future Past.
So, what's the deal with the "Days of Future Past" X-Men story, anyway? Sure, it's a great storyline, but other comics also have similarly great storylines. Yet, I can't think of any other comic story that is treated with as much reverence as this particular one. No other comic book story that I can think of has been directly adapted as often as this one. Not "The Night Gwen Stacy Died", not "The Death of Superman". These comic stories have been reference in numerous media, particularly Gwen Stacy's death, but rarely are they adapted. But I've yet to see an incarnation of X-Men that does not include a version of the "Days of Future Past" storyline. It's been featured in multiple animated series, video games, and novelizations.
Of course, all of the various retellings of this story take their own creative liberties, and the new movie from 20th Century Fox is no exception.
This film is designed to be a sequel to both the First Class and Last Stand movies in the X-Men franchise. I was kind of surprised that the studio took this particular approach, since there were some nagging inconsistencies and continuity issues with the two timelines. But I guess Hollywood never cares as much about continuity as the nerdy fanboys do... Fortunately, these continuity issues don't come up or interfere with this film.
In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. The creative liberties were generally positive, and the combination of the two timelines actually works surprisingly well. I wasn't terribly thrilled with the depressed, brooding depiction of the younger Xavier, but I don't know enough about the character's comic book history to know whether this is anachronistic, and it definitely wasn't to the movie's detriment. [More]
373265b4-b07a-40b4-a101-2f0b77442750|1|4.0
Tags:X-Men, Days of Future Past, Bolivar Trask, sentinels, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Quicksilver, Bishop, Blink, Charles Xavier, Magneto, Mystique, Beast, 20th Century Fox, Bryan Singer, comic book, time travel, 1970s, Peter Dinklage, Evan Peters, Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Omar Sy, Bingbing Fan, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen
I did not at all care for The Amazing Spider-Man movie that was released last year. In summary, the movie was too dark, it lacked the light-hearted fun that I expect from Spider-Man, and the romantic dynamic between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy just didn't work in my mind. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was disappointed in the movie because of these issues. At this year's San Diego ComicCon, the creators and cast of the sequel, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, revealed a lot of information about the new movie that actually impressed me! It just might be possible that the creators swallowed their pride, and took the criticism of the previous movie to heart.
This movie might actually look like a Spider-Man movie
The most noticeable and immediately obvious change in the overall look and feel of the new movie is the color palette. Most of the images from the film are sequences that take place during the day, so the images are bright and colorful. But the most important change is the complete redesign of Spidey's suit.
The new Spider-suit is "amazing"!
The new suit design is absolutely gorgeous! They totally nailed it this time around!
NAILED IT!
First and foremost, it is actually a direct adaptation of the comic book suit (minus the armpit web). It actually looks like something Peter Parker could have put together with the limited resources at his disposal rather than some kind of military-grade commando outfit. It looks like a spandex suit. The eyes are bigger and buggier and actually white instead of gray or silver, which just looks great and adds just the right amount of "cartoonish-ness" to the character. The colors could have been a little brighter, but I can live with that. Put simply: this is the best looking movie Spider-Man suit so far, hand down! [More]
ae5fd622-ba46-4adc-bcb7-8ea65547ff37|0|.0
Tags:Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Electro, Gwen Stacy, Andrew Garfield, Jamie Foxx, Emma Stone, Marc Webb, Sony, Marvel, comic book, movie, ComicCon, San Diego ComicCon, sequel, Bugs Bunny, comic
I have very mixed feelings about Iron Man 3.
On the one hand, the movie throws some very unexpected curve balls at the audience, and departs from other big-budget action movies by being a very thoughtful and introspective movie. It provided everything that Star Trek Into Darkness failed to deliver. If the people who wrote Iron Man 3 had been involved with writing Into Darkness, then that movie would have benefited greatly. Iron Man 3 succeeds because the writers are really trying to say things with their movie, even if they have to twist the audience's expectations and break a few eggs to do it.
On the other hand, the movie suffers from some pacing and script issues, and it blunders with its primary villain(s).
The core of the plot is about Stark coming to terms with the events of The Avengers and deciding if he can truly hang with genuine supermen and gods. It's a very introspective film (which is something that the Iron Man movies have been very good at). In fact, most of the movie revolves around Stark being forced to solve problems as a regular person, rather than being able to rely on a fancy, weaponized suit of armor.
Stark has reexamine his goals and objectives and try to figure out where he wants to draw the line regarding problems he can deal with, and problems he can't deal with, and also with whether or not he should deal with them. The internal conflict within the character is the primary moving for much of the movie's plot, and Robert Downy Junior pulls it all off with the grace and style that we've come to expect from him with this character.
 Tony Stark is going to be stuck solving problems without his fancy armor throughout most of the movie.
[More]
daaa20e7-d060-4232-a199-6b3f66ac6388|2|4.5
Tags:Iron Man 3, Iron Man, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Tony Stark, the Mandarin, War Machine, Iron Patriot, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Stan Lee, James Bond, terrorist, the X-Files, Star Trek Into Darkness, fanboy, Cliff Notes, introspection, comic book, movie, comic
Prerelease promotional material really soured my interest in this game to the point that I waited over 6 months to pick up a used copy cheap off eBay. And the movie ended up being sloppy and wrong on numerous levels. And Edge of Time had caused me to lose faith in Beenox’s competency as a developer of Spider-Man games.
So there was a lot stacked up against this game, and I went into it gritting my teeth and ready to be furious. Maybe I set the bar a little bit too low, but I ended up enjoying Amazing Spider-Man. It cut a lot of corners and is easy and boring, but there’s enough good ideas in here that I’m actually excited to see if Beenox gets another chance to hopefully knock one out of the park.
Table of Contents
Spider-Man can swing without anything nearby for his webs to stick to, including over the tops of parks and the city skyline itself. This instantly pulls me out of the game experience everytime it happens.
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59c86de3-4f8c-41f5-ac74-a016bac6309a|1|4.0
Tags:The Amazing Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Marvel, comic book, Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, Curt Connors, the Lizard, Allistair Smythe, Spider Slayers, rhino, scorpion, genetics, physics, Sony, Sony/Columbia Pictures, PlayStation, PS3, Microsoft, XBox, XBox 360, Wii, action, beat-em-up, movie tie-in, comic
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