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Old 01-04-2017, 01:31 AM   #1101
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Neither Kurtz nor Lucas' takes were ideal, a middle ground should have been found between them. I actually think Lucas was closer to what should have happened - an ultimately happy ending with a few bittersweet moments. The Vader/Luke resolution was good, as was the appearance of Palpatine. Lando being redeemed was good, although Han really should have died in the end of Empire. Recreating the Death Star was stupid, dumber than the Ewoks. The Ewkos should have been Wookies, as was originally planned, and Endor should have been Kashyyyk. It would have been a good motivation for Chewbacca to live on without Han.

Even if Force Awakens could have been said to follow the plot of the original Jedi trajectory, by not showing that development (growing distant from Kylo, Luke abandoning everyone, the New Republic crumbling under ineptitude) it merely implies character development, unlike what that original Jedi prototype would have done.
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Old 01-19-2017, 02:08 AM   #1102
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Scott Pilgrim vs the World

So my boyfriend and I have this weird habit of watching movies that like we hadn't seen in a few years, usually movies we like to see if they remain the same in our eyes and this one was no exception to that rule. I hadn't seen Scott Pilgrim since it originally came out and he told me he was about the same. In all honesty we both thoroughly enjoyed it, we loved how it remained true to the comics, had a good blend of action and comedy and is just in general such a fun movie to watch.

Honestly, I could totally throw it on my top 10 movies list, if I haven't already.

9/10 man.
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Old 02-03-2017, 11:51 PM   #1103
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The Last three movies I watched were, " Finding Dory, Force Awakens and Nine Lives" all good family movies I have to say but cannot wait for the Power Rangers movie to come out ( I saw the trailer the other day and Fing screamed in joy cause I think its awesome)
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Old 02-13-2017, 08:54 PM   #1104
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12 Angry Men

Finally saw this. It was a pretty good movie. It deals with a super important topic, but as entertainment value goes I feel I'd be lying if I said it was top-notch. It's a fine movie. It's not a waste of anyone's time to watch, and on the contrary is the sort of movie that every American should probably see at some point in their lives before taking on the responsibility of a juror themselves. But I wouldn't say it was, like, super enjoyable or super re-watchable or anything.
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Old 02-18-2017, 01:59 PM   #1105
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The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Studio Ghibli's take on the thousand-year-old Japanese folk story, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. This took several sessions to get through. I'm not the biggest fan of even the original tale (though I appreciate it for what it is and for what it means to Japanese culture), so sitting through a 2-hour adaptation that weirdly shortens some areas while stretching out others and inventing some new material out of thin air ... yeah, I wasn't the biggest fan.

The plot, I felt like you're simply best off with the original tale. No ifs, ands, or buts. The movie tries to make the tale more "real" / "happening in real life" I suppose by way of various mundane conversations (and the introduction of several new characters), but at the end of the day the padding doesn't add much of benefit in my opinion, and instead simply takes what could be read in 30 minutes and transforms it into a 2-hour-11-minute slog.

The soundtrack, it has transient moments of greatness but is largely plain, unassuming, and unnoticed. This can be chalked up to artistic license but it is what it is -- I'm not humming any tunes from this movie right now and can't see myself rushing out to download any of its songs. Spirited Away it is not.

The animation, more than anything else, is what the film puts its stakes on. The idea seen here is, "We have an ancient tale told to children, so let's animate it using very simple art that looks like it belongs in a children's picture book." Lots of colored pencil, lots of very simple shapes and forms, very little in the way of actual animation. It's a gamble, but one which seems to have largely paid off for the team judging by the Internet's opinions. For me personally, I felt it was hit or miss. I enjoyed the scenes where Kaguya tears through the castle / fields / wherever she is, beast-like, like a primal force of nature ... those scenes were a really fun opportunity to look at what pencil art can look like on the big screen. But for the average scene, where nothing much is visually happening ... I dunno, while I get and respect that the colored pencil look is meant to evoke both the feelings of the tale's bedtime story-ness and its ancientness, it was just bland and boring to look at for me.

In the end, this one wasn't for me. Satisfied to have seen it, but that's about it.
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Old 03-05-2017, 01:24 AM   #1106
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Watched Logan:

One of the best movies out currently. Wolverine and Prof X are played well and it is a fitting swan song to the actors whom have stated that they would be retiring from their characters prior to the films release
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Old 03-07-2017, 11:55 AM   #1107
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Watched Logan:

One of the best movies out currently. Wolverine and Prof X are played well and it is a fitting swan song to the actors whom have stated that they would be retiring from their characters prior to the films release
OMG I cannot Wait to Watch that!!!! EEEK
Anyhow I watched the Angry Birds movie for my fourth time with my little brothers again. God, Naughty Chuck!
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Old 03-07-2017, 04:42 PM   #1108
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Get Out (2017)

Wowie, this movie is great. It's probably my second favourite movie I've seen in theatres (slightly behind Gone Girl, and above The Gift). It has a whole bunch of symbolism which was so good to be like "hey, did you see that?" to my mom. The plot was fantastic, it takes a good amount of time to set itself up before it jumps right in to the nitty gritty of it all. It also has a really good sense of humour and although the subject matter is very serious (especially the symbolic undertones) it never takes itself too seriously. We're actually given an off-screen comic relief character pretty early on in the movie, sometimes it shifts focus to him but it never feels forced nor does it really take anything away from the movie as a whole. The main character also has a pretty good sense of humour through all of it, and it makes him quite relatable and a pretty good character to boot.

My only complaint with the movie, is it's reliance on jumpscares. I'm not a person that absolutely hates jumpscares but... they kind of have to have a point? For instance, a jumpscare that was created by something characters saw in screen with little noise or buildup is fantastic; or a jumpscare triggered by a loud noise MADE BY THE CREATURE/PERSON on screen is great. However, although it is done very little in Get Out (only twice if memory is serving correctly), the jumpscares are very forced. Without giving too much away, there's a scene where someone runs behind the main character and it makes that god awful loud sound to attempt to make people jump.

This in itself doesn't take away from the movie as a whole, but it is a minor nitpick I have with it. (And multiple films that have done something similar).

Overall, I'd give Get Out a solid 8.5/10 and a big recommendation to go see it.
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Old 03-11-2017, 11:14 PM   #1109
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X-Men: First Class

(Warning: post has soft spoilers outside of spoiler boxes and only hard spoilers inside of them. Going to assume you won't read this wall of text unless you've either seen the movie or are comfortable with soft spoilers.)

Watched this for the first time. IT WAS VERY GOOD! I quite enjoyed it. I remember people praising it back when it first came out, but I was always pretty skeptical. Well, I'm glad to say I was wrong on this one. I enjoy Bryan Singer's X-Men (the first film only), and I feel like First Class has a lot of similarities to X-Men only it's set in the '60s and telling the story of how Xavier joined the X-Men (or founded it, really, of course) rather than set in the '90s/'00s and telling the story of how Logan joined the X-Men. Friend lent this to me on DVD, but not gonna lie: if I wind up wanting to watch this again some time soon, I'll probably go out and buy my own copy. It was that enjoyable to me.

One thing I really liked about the film was how the writer(s) managed to cram so much material into the first hour without it feeling rushed or bogged down with too much information. This was a script that successfully managed to deliver a three-hour amount of information in a two-hour viewing experience. Very well done. I was never bored or impatient. I never felt lost, though there were a couple of times I'd learn something later that I'm sure now I must've missed earlier on. (Moira's name, for example. Didn't catch that she was Moira until the Blackbird!)

I imagine a lot of people wouldn't like the fanficcy nature of this script, how it retcons a lot of relationships and events. (For instance, the out of frickin' nowhere BUT I FUCKING LOVE IT! history that Xavier and Mystique share.) But me personally, I was a-okay with all of it. Didn't mind the retcon for Charles and Erik. Didn't mind the retcon for Mystique and Erik. Didn't mind the retcon for Mystique and Beast. Didn't mind the retcon for how Beast became blue. Didn't mind the retcon to Beast's personality pre-blueification. So on and so forth.

One particularly praiseworthy thing about this script imo is ...

Spoiler: show
... how it abruptly terminates the villain's plot when Erik kills him. Like, that's how it'd happen in real life! But because they had been building up this guy to be "ohmuhgod I'm the energy-absorbing man" and because they had introduced that he had a grandiose plan to not only instigate WW3 (and that one I'm okay with being abruptly terminated) but also to absorb the energy from a nuclear reactor and make himself like some sort of energy demigod, I was expecting shenanigans that ... then didn't get to happen because LOL ERIK FUCKING KILLED HIM right then and there. No back from the grave bullshit, which I was frankly expecting all the way up until Charles got hit by the bullet. No "you thought I was dead but joke's on you you just happened to give me a corpus callosotomy!" Just dead. Plain dead, corpse slumped on the sand and soon forgotten by all.

Another thing I genuinely enjoyed about the script was the real complexity given to Mystique's relationships with Charles, Hank, and Erik.

Spoiler: show
Charles, who always saw her as a sister, who she thought always saw her as a pet, but whom she had always dearly loved as something much more ...

Hank, who was head over heels in love with Miss Jennifer Lawrence, whom she liked back a little bit notgonnalie, but who in the end broke her heart when he told her that he couldn't find her blue form attractive and wanted her to always look like Jennifer Lawrence ...

Erik, who she had no real chemistry with initially whatsoever and yet who proved to be the only man who would accept her for who she is as she is, no transformation, no costumes, just a naked blue woman with scales and red hair ...

It was a real pleasure to watch her interactions with these characters. And not just because this is probably the Internet's Crush at her hottest and most adorkable.

There are a few things I'll admit I didn't care for -- Emma Frost looking like she's fifteen years older than the oldest-looking X-Man takes the cake, fuck -- but for the most part I enjoyed this film just fine.

For me personally, X-Men: First Class gets a tentative 8/10. I could see it dropping to a 7, but no lower. It's a good movie. So long as you don't know the source material or are not bothered by how much this movie retcons it. ^^;; Lucky me! Didn't know half, and didn't mind the retcons to the half I did know.
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Old 03-13-2017, 08:33 PM   #1110
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X-Men: Days of Future Past

Just finished watching this tonight. I enjoyed it! It was, for me, less entertaining / less exciting than its predecessor, X-Men: First Class. Hard to pinpoint exactly why, although I think it has something to do with the respective scripts. Regardless, it's a fun sequel to First Class with a rather ... curious ending ...

Spoiler: show
... SO CAN WE TALK ABOUT JEAN GREY WITH PHOENIX-FORM HAIR AND HOW SHE'S STILL ALIVE? What is going on here? Please! Someone explain to me.

I had been told by others that Days of Future Past is intended to bridge into the first three X-Men films, but like ... I don't see how that works at all here. Mystique is clearly a hero to the humans by Future Past's end. And she's clearly chosen Team Charles over Team Magneto. It doesn't make any sense why we'd return to Bryan Singer's original film trilogy's setting in which Mystique is a mysterious femme fatale who bears no special love for Charles Xavier. Similarly, Jean and Scott are VERY MUCH ALIVE and that's VERY MUCH AN IMPOSSIBILITY in Singer's first three X-Men films' universe. Not unless, of course, we've changed the future. Which is the easiest and most sensible interpretation of Future Past's plot.

The way I would personally see it, Future Past's original grim future leads out of X-Men 3, with the passing of some decades in between, whereas its modified bright future is a Back to the Future-style rewrite of history that allows for a bright and sunny future in which everyone is happy and very much alive.

BUT STILL -- this leaves unanswered the question of how Jean could have entered into her Phoenix form and yet still be on Earth, be very much in control of her situation, still be in a love triangle between herself, Scott, and Logan ... I just don't get it. ^^;; Comic book fans! Help me out!

I had forgotten about my softcore crush on Ellen Page. She's so cute! I don't think I've really seen her in anything though since frickin' X-Men 3 way back when ... back before the world knew she was a lesbian, breakin' straight guys' hearts ...

Okay, more spoiler discussion:

Spoiler: show
I was disappointed by Kitty's diminished role in this story, but pleasantly surprised by just how important of a character she was to the story. Still: I had mistakenly understood (from pre-production, years ago) that Kitty and Logan would both be traveling into the past together, Kitty because comic canon and Logan because Wolverine sells movie tickets. Oh well! ^^; Every scene she was in was still very enjoyable.

And I enjoyed having Logan in the past, too. Not gonna lie: it was a fun, solid rewrite. The writers had a lot of fun exploring how he'd be bony back then and not yet adamantium-laced, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was also a lot more enjoyable to see Logan be the one interacting with Xavier et al, with whom he shares so much cinematic and even source material history, over Kitty Pryde who has barely any cinematic history at all with the group and nowhere near Logan's level in the comics either. Where Kitty could serve only as a messenger, Logan felt much more believable as a mentor and kick-in-the-pants character for the young, depressed 'n' drug-addicted Charles Xavier.

Seeing as Mystique appears to be a good guy minutes before she fishes Logan out of the river, but seeing also how she is impersonating Stryker and smiles kinda twistedly ... are we to believe that Logan:
  1. is bony in the Good Future? Because he never gets Weapon X-ified?
  2. is adamantine in the Good Future? Because Mystique delivers Logan into the real Stryker's hands?
  3. is adamantine in the Good Future? Because Mystique is the mastermind behind the Weapon X program in the Good Future? O-o;;;;
Not really sure what was going on there, and the lack of any claws on display in the Good Future makes it hard to know otherwise.

I really enjoyed having Peter Dinklage aboard. This is my first time actually seeing him act, not counting bit appearances on shows like Saturday Night Live. I was impressed and entertained thoroughly. As much as I was enjoying the movie, I periodically thought to myself, "Man, I can't wait to watch Game of Thrones!" Maybe I'll try for that some time later in 2017.

Overall, I would give X-Men: Days of Future Past either a 7 or an 8 out of 10. Where with First Class I leaned instantly more to the 8, here I'm leaning more to the 7. It's a good movie. I enjoyed it. But whereas First Class I fantasized about purchasing some day soon, Days of Future Past had a more "That was a fun rental " feel to it. I dunno. I can see myself buying all three of First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse if they're sold in a conveniently less-expensive trilogy boxset, but buying them on their own the only one I think I'd care to buy at this time is First Class.

-----------------------------------

Speaking of which ... Time to ask! Do I need to see Apocalypse before going to see Logan? I assume the answer is "No." I'm personally comfortable with skipping over X-Men Origins: Wolverine as well as The Wolverine before I go to see it, but Apocalypse I figured I should at least ask about since I can see First Class and Days of Future Past having obvious tie-ins to Logan's backstory in Logan and it's questionable, then, for me if maybe Apocalypse won't have some tie-ins too. I dunno. For right now I'm assuming the answer is, "No, go see Logan. " And that's pretty much what I plan to do.
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Old 03-18-2017, 12:04 AM   #1111
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I've actually seen a lot of movies recently. I've been on kind of a binge. I'm not sure what triggered it.


Hell or High Water - A movie about bank robbing brothers and the sheriff trying to catch them. A modern day western. Jeff Bridges absolutely kills it in this movie. It was a decent romp, kept me engaged throughout. Music and atmosphere was spot on, portrayal of Texoma/rural middle America was spot on. It was nominated for Best Picture; I'm not sure I'd go that far personally, but it's a pretty good movie.

Hacksaw Ridge - A retelling of the battle of Okinawa in WWII, but from the perspective of a conscientious objector who enlisted as a medic, but refuses to touch a gun. Aside from a few minor parts of the story that were adjusted for the sake of Hollywood, it's otherwise a fairly accurate retelling. I will say the first 1/4th of the movie of so did nothing for me, but when it turned around, boy did it really turn around. This movie is not for the faint of heart; intense gore is extremely prevalent as it does its best to portray the horrors of war in as gruesomely accurate detail as possible. Andrew Garfield really surprised me, here. Didn't think he had it in him.

Spotlight - very straightforward, the movie is a docudrama about the making of this news article that blew open the catholic church's widespread child abuse scandal. It's intense, heavy, dark, and real. The pacing isn't typical of many movies; the movie has a story to tell, and it fucking tells it how it is sans the bullshit. It was very refreshing. It didn't feel artificial, it didn't feel like it was intentionally creating drama to make the story more interesting. The stakes were high in writing this article, and the movie shows the viewer exactly why that's the case, and how the team managed to pull it off despite an overwhelming amount of odds. There's a reason it won best picture last year.

Argo - Another one based on a true story. Ben Affleck is a government agent who disguises himself as a Canadian filmmaker to save six Americans in hiding in Iran during the hostage crisis. A lot of it was clearly padded with artificial drama to Hollywood-ize it, but it was nonetheless interesting. Out of the movies I have listed here, Argo was probably my least favorite, though it was by no means bad.

Arrival - Actually, I take it back. If any movie on this list was a letdown, it was Arrival. For making a feature length adaptation of a short story, they didn't do too bad. Unfortunately, the movie's pacing is questionable and the story gave the impression it was created in the first place to simply be a catalyst for the plot twist the author came up with. Without going into detail and spoiling it, have you ever seen a plot twist that felt like it was created before the story itself was, and so the author wrote a story around that twist? That's how Arrival came off to me. I doubt that's actually what happened, but nonetheless it sure did feel like... well, it felt like... yep, that certainly was a science fiction movie I just watched. Do not think this was worth a 'best picture' nomination. It wasn't AWFUL, but I'd probably give it a solid 6.5/10.

Logan - Extremely dark. I hope Hugh Jackman gets a goddamn Oscar for this. I really fucking do. That's all that needs to be said.

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Old 03-18-2017, 12:23 AM   #1112
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Speaking of which ... Time to ask! Do I need to see Apocalypse before going to see Logan? I assume the answer is "No." I'm personally comfortable with skipping over X-Men Origins: Wolverine as well as The Wolverine before I go to see it, but Apocalypse I figured I should at least ask about since I can see First Class and Days of Future Past having obvious tie-ins to Logan's backstory in Logan and it's questionable, then, for me if maybe Apocalypse won't have some tie-ins too. I dunno. For right now I'm assuming the answer is, "No, go see Logan. " And that's pretty much what I plan to do.
I did not see Days of Future Past or Apocalypse. Logan does a good job as a standalone. I will say that DoFP apparently does clarify a few things specifically where Logan falls chronologically (I had to look this up, though).

Skip Origins and The Wolverine for sure. Origins was, as I'm sure you're aware, trite garbage, and I skipped The Wolverine because of this as well. Seeing Logan requires no knowledge of these films, or of Apocalypse.

If you want to know how Wolverine has any bearing on Apocalypse (based on what I have learned), then click the spoiler. I promise, it is not a plot spoiler or anything huge and will clarify whether or not it has a tie-in.

Spoiler: show
Wolverine's only role in Apocalypse is as a cameo during an action sequence.


So basically: At this point, if you haven't already (and I know it's a week later, but...) go see Logan. Now.
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Old 03-18-2017, 02:41 AM   #1113
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Logan also takes place outside the normal timeline of the X-Men movie franchise. If you have any small amount of information about Wolverine, Charles Xavier, and the idea of mutants and the X-Men, you should have no big problem understanding it.
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Old 03-20-2017, 08:48 PM   #1114
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The Wolverine

So I just finished watching The Wolverine. A.k.a. "X-Men: Weeaboo Edition." It was alright! A lot of little things about it impressed me, and there was nothing severe which set the film back. It wasn't the greatest movie of all time -- in fact, it's easily the weakest of the three X-Men films I've watched these past few weeks -- but it was a perfectly fine movie to spend two free hours with. I might've been a little more miffed if I'd spent $10 on it, but hey.

For those who might not know this -- I didn't -- the film is set some time after the events of X-Men 3 and, owing to a mid-ending credits scene, is meant to lead into a first viewing of Days of Future Past. You most definitely do not need to see DoFP first (though it helps one to appreciate that ending credits scene a little bit more!), but you do need to see X1, X2, and X3 first. The film makes constant references to Logan's relationship with Jean, including multiple references to the events of X3.

I suppose that's a good segue into spoiler discussion, so here we go!

Spoiler: show
First, let's get this out of the way: Famke Janssen is spectacularly gorgeous and the world could've used a lot more of her in the late '90s and all of the '00s. Oh well. Now it's 2017 and she's gotten old. Still very pretty. But facing similar problems as Hugh Jackman, only nobody's interested in Old Woman Jean. But man. Ignoring one scene where her hands are in focus and are noticeably aged (as they well should be, barring Hollywood's intervention!), Janssen reprises her role here as the beautiful forever-20-something Jean. She plays the part of the deceased telepath relatively well here -- her material's limited, but she does a good job of balancing the sensual allure of her beauty with the heartbreak and emotion of her demise. It serves the purpose of having her here perfectly -- she is tormenting Logan, who yearns for the woman he loved, the very woman he killed. She flips the switch from "adoring dead waifu" to "tormenting demon" very well in a couple of scenes. It's the closest thing I've seen in memory to what anime fans have with Irisviel von Einzbern in the Fate/stay night universe.

Okay. Famke gushing out of the way, we have our Japanese waifu for the movie, Mariko. Her acting -- and, if I'm to be perfectly honest, the acting of the entire Japanese cast -- was a lot less impressive. I appreciate Hollywood's desire to go authentic here, and to cast Japanese (and mostly Japanese American) actors for the Japanese character roles. But ...
  1. the American accents are noticeable, even on those actors for whom you can tell lines are being spoken "natively" and not through rote memorization
  2. and then there are the actors who are delivering rote-memorized lines, whether because they're not Japanese in the first place or because they are but don't speak the language
  3. Japanese accents (or lack thereof) aside, there are other issues with the line delivery as well. Issues I don't expect from the world's best actors.
That's okay, though, because I can't act worth a damn and these guys' acting was perfectly passable. It's fine. I'm just being critically honest here -- watching these guys perform is the difference between a freebie movie I'd watch on TV over the weekend and a movie I'd be perfectly happy to pay $10 just to see.

One of the things I really enjoyed about this movie is, it doesn't make apologies for newcomers. It dives right into the story it wants to tell, and expects its audience to have familiarity with any and all references or backstories. Logan's powers of regeneration? Tangentially and quickly explained. His adamantium-laced skeleton? Shown numerous times but never explained. "Mutants"? Never explained. The fact that Viper, Yukio, and Logan are the only mutants we're seeing and everyone else, even the ones who perform larger-than-life feats, are ordinary humans? Never explained. Logan's backstory with Jean and the other X-Men ... why he isn't with the X-Men right now, why he's on a self-imposed exile in Canada ... why Canada, of all places ... None of this is explained. And that's perfectly, 100% fine by me. I think it allows the movie the best chance of being a solid tour de force novella ... which you can tell is what it wants to be, but unfortunately for this viewer falls short of. ^^; Point is, it doesn't get bogged down by Gotta 'Splain It All-itis. Either you've watched X1 thru 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (or have otherwise come into knowledge of their stories) or you haven't and fuck you.

Another thing I enjoyed was the authentic shooting on location. This provided an unfortunate takes-me-out-of-it aspect as well ^^; -- the fact that every time they showed a Tokyo city street, it only had like 20 or 30 people on it instead of the usual jam fucking packed it would be. It took me out of the moment and drew attention to the fact that this was a movie and that they likely cordoned off the street to film the scenes. But of course they did, and it wasn't that bad. The benefits were greater. It was nice to have authentic Japanese architecture (rather than cheap imitations). And it was priceless to have authentic Japanese geography for the cities we were meant to be in at various times in the movie. Nagasaki really felt like Nagasaki, and not at all like Tokyo. Tokyo really felt like Tokyo, and not at all like upper central Honshuu. And of course the Canadian Yukon really felt like, well, not Japan. That one I could easily see being fake, but there is something about the color of the sky and the ground and all of it when it comes to world locations that Hollywood can't quite fake perfectly yet, and you could tell -- the Japanese scenes were truly filmed on location. It helped to sell the story 10 times more than any distraction caused by streets being too empty.

Mixed feelings on the more weeaboo side of the film. On the one hand, and to the filmmakers' credit, they didn't explain Japanese culture too too much here. We get Mariko's lecture about honor, and in that same exact scene her lesson about upright chopsticks. Perhaps it's because those two came back-to-back that that particular scene stands out to me as jarringly weeaboo-ey. But like ... there weren't many other such instances in the film. The all-black attire at the funeral is depicted but never explained. The only attention drawn to the Shinkansen is Logan's quick throwaway line of, "Is this the train that goes 300 mph?" Mariko explains to Logan that they are entering a love hotel, but beyond that the Western viewer is given no tutorial about what love hotels are and how they differ from anything in the West you might wish to compare them with. So I dunno. I'm glad for the cultural presentation -- if you're gonna go weeaboo, you may as well do it! -- but at the same time ... yeah, it's a little weeabooey at points, I feel. ^^; "WOLVERINE IN JAPAN! ^-^"

The plot was fine. The single greatest plot twist of the film was unfortunately spoiled for me whilst researching whether I should even bother to watch this film -- sigh :') -- but I didn't find that that knowledge ruined the film for me. Yeah, it robbed me of a good opportunity to be stunned, but I still enjoyed the movie just fine, I feel. The plot is ... it's not bad, but it's not great either. There are much better-written bodyguard movies out there. The case for Mariko to fall in love with Logan was weakly made, I feel, and Logan's case for falling in love with her was even weaker. In fact, I leave the film believing he wasn't in love with her, so much as he "loves" her and will always value his time spent with her but Jean (to whom he just finished saying good-bye ) even NOW ranks ahead of Mariko in his heart, to say nothing of possible future love interests now that he's allowing himself to move on and let go of Jean.

Would I recommend that an X-Men fan check out this movie? Yes, but for free or at low cost.

Would I say that this film is a "must-see" for anybody, X-Men fan or otherwise? No. I wish it would have been, but it's not, I'm sorry to say.

The Wolverine gets a decent 6/10 - "Fair" from me.
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Old 03-21-2017, 02:57 PM   #1115
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That movie has tie-ins with Logan as well oddly enough. Although, at the time, everyone though it was a throwaway line.
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Old 03-25-2017, 01:33 AM   #1116
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I watched both X-Men: Apocalypse yesterday and Disney's Moana tonight. I'll save Apocalypse for the next post since I started it last night and it's going to be long, but let's go ahead and discuss Moana, eh?

Moana

This was a pretty good movie in all of the small ways, and a decent enough movie overall. Story's a solid 4/5, the two main characters are each 5/5's, there are at least two songs worth keeping and which the movie recognizes as keepers and thankfully recycles the leitmotifs for over and over again ("How Far I'll Go" and "You're Welcome") ... On the other hand, the story's not the coveted 5/5, the supporting cast of characters leaves little for me to treasure, and the movie bills itself as a Disney musical (boasting Mr. Hamilton himself, Lin-Manuel Miranda, as its composer) yet is sorely lacking for memorable, sing-alongable songs outside of the aforementioned two. So like ... we're in a weird spot here. It's a good movie and one worth owning ... but it's not the next Toy Story or Lion King either. It's not a movie I'd want to watch more than, say, two or three more times this year and then that's it for the next couple of years. But it is good.

And the thing is, Moana and Maui have such wonderful chemistry on screen, it's just ... I don't even know the word to describe it. Is it "chemistry" after all? The movie keeps things purely platonic -- and critically, I think that was the admirable choice here, much as it pains me as a romantic :') -- but I'll be damned if the movie won't have you loving the impacts these two mutually leave in each other's lives.

Maui is a wonderfully complex antihero (at first, and hero later) character for a children's movie. The team does a wonderful job of showing every side of him honestly, and of never trying to simplify him for kids. He's ... left complex, but he works so well as is and I'm glad they made the choice they did.

The closest thing the film has to an antagonist proper ... on into the spoiler box!

Spoiler: show
This was a good "Babby's First The-Big-Bad-Was-Actually-The-Big-Good/The-Big-Good-Was-Actually-The-Big-Bad Plot Twist". While not as powerful or traumatizing as some others -- *eyes a certain early '90s anime* -- it still caught this 32-year old viewer off guard. And I was even waiting for something like this to happen! (Not the full extent of what turned out to be the actual plot twist, but at least that the magma deity wasn't a bad guy ...)

The movie packs a surprising amount of narrative density for the duration. I didn't feel that way necessarily as the ending credits rolled, but when I actually sat there and thought about it, I had no choice but to conclude that sure enough this movie has quite a few events or plot points to it and that it forms a pretty good template for a legend -- which is of course exactly what they would want to be aiming for here!

The one thing I heard from everyone before seeing this film was -- "The animation! " Sure enough, the animation is really quite pleasant to watch. While the people have the same Pixar 3D Play-Doh feel to them that the humans in Wall-E had, it isn't unpleasant to watch. And everything else is even more wonderful to look at. I'm not sure how fun it is to be a 3D animator vs. a traditional one, but had this been the product of traditional animation I would be certain that this movie was just plain fun for the animators to create.

Moana receives a 7/10 from me, with a possible bump up to the 8 but I'm not sure.
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Old 03-25-2017, 10:50 AM   #1117
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Lil' Bluey

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
Moana

This was a pretty good movie in all of the small ways, and a decent enough movie overall. Story's a solid 4/5, the two main characters are each 5/5's, there are at least two songs worth keeping and which the movie recognizes as keepers and thankfully recycles the leitmotifs for over and over again ("How Far I'll Go" and "You're Welcome") ... On the other hand, the story's not the coveted 5/5, the supporting cast of characters leaves little for me to treasure, and the movie bills itself as a Disney musical (boasting Mr. Hamilton himself, Lin-Manuel Miranda, as its composer) yet is sorely lacking for memorable, sing-alongable songs outside of the aforementioned two.
I think people are a bit hard on movies that bill themselves as musicals nowadays. Beauty and the Beast had only two really standout songs (unless you count the opening number, which I'd say is on par with the "coconut song" - or I guess Gaston's song, if only bc of how lovably meme-able my friends have made it). Frozen had that one runaway hit (which I personally don't see the huge appeal of to begin with) and the rest are just "there". So I'd say Moana matches up fairly well in the music department. "You're Welcome" is insanely catchy (who knew the "Rock" could apparently sing?), and "How Far I'll Go" is basically your discount "Let It Go". (Although it bugs me that it comes right after Moana learned of her father's tragic backstory. Show some respect, girl.) The native "exploring" song is cute too IMO, and I'm not a big fan of the Bowie-esque villain song myself, but I know it's got some supporters. Aside from that, another that I feel truly deserves a shoutout is dat heavenly almost-acapella during the slow-mo walk at the end when Moana confronts

Spoiler: show
Te Ka/Fiti. Such a magical moment.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
So like ... we're in a weird spot here. It's a good movie and one worth owning ... but it's not the next Toy Story or Lion King either. It's not a movie I'd want to watch more than, say, two or three more times this year and then that's it for the next couple of years. But it is good.
I already wrote a sort of mini-review in the suggestion box, but Moana is very much a "paint-by-the-numbers" affair; while it tries to be coyly tongue-in-cheek by constantly acknowledging it, that doesn't stop it from being a fairly predictable stock story (although I'll admit I didn't see the final twist coming). Still, it knows exactly who/what it is, and is easy to enjoy it as such: a feel-good, family fun film.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
The one thing I heard from everyone before seeing this film was -- "The animation! " Sure enough, the animation is really quite pleasant to watch. While the people have the same Pixar 3D Play-Doh feel to them that the humans in Wall-E had, it isn't unpleasant to watch. And everything else is even more wonderful to look at. I'm not sure how fun it is to be a 3D animator vs. a traditional one, but had this been the product of traditional animation I would be certain that this movie was just plain fun for the animators to create.
My only regret about watching a camrip rather than waiting for a DVD release/seeing it in theater is not being able to see the final "transformation" scene in HD.

Spoiler: show
Te Fiti got some lush locks, man. Seriously gorgeous.
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Old 03-25-2017, 12:23 PM   #1118
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Originally Posted by lilbluecorsola View Post
I think people are a bit hard on movies that bill themselves as musicals nowadays. Beauty and the Beast had only two really standout songs (unless you count the opening number, which I'd say is on par with the "coconut song" - or I guess Gaston's song, if only bc of how lovably meme-able my friends have made it). Frozen had that one runaway hit (which I personally don't see the huge appeal of to begin with) and the rest are just "there". So I'd say Moana matches up fairly well in the music department.
You and I are coming at this from very different places. You're comparing Moana with recent Disney outings like Frozen. I'm comparing it with my childhood of Disney musicals, the Disney Renaissance masterpieces -- The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, Aladdin, and above all else The Lion King. For a man like Lin-Manuel Miranda whom Broadway fanatics can't seem to get enough of, I found his Moana score to be severely underwhelming compared against The Lion King, a musical so great Broadway practically begged for Disney to let them perform it on stage.
  • The Little Mermaid heavyweight songs
    • Part of Your World
    • Under the Sea
    • Poor Unfortunate Souls
    • Kiss the Girl
  • Beauty & the Beast heavyweight songs
    • Be Our Guest
    • Beauty and the Beast (a.k.a. "Tale as Old as Time")
    • Gaston
  • Aladdin heavyweight songs
    • A Whole New World
    • Never Had a Friend Like Me
    • Prince Ali
  • The Lion King heavyweight songs
    • essentially the entire score, but let's do this honestly ...
    • Hakuna Matata
    • Be Prepared
    • I Just Can't Wait To Be King
By the numbers, you can argue that Moana isn't doing too badly with its two memorable songs vs. the Renaissance films' typical three. But like ... I don't think anyone's fooling themselves that Moana is on par with any of the Renaissance musicals. For every "Poor Unfortunate Souls" or "Hakuna Matata," the Renaissance films tend to boast three additional "Les Poissons", "Arabian Nights", or "One Jump Ahead".

And what really kills Moana's songs for me is ... they're not easily sing-along-able to. You have to really commit to memorizing their lyrics if you want to sing along with them. Melody-wise they're great! Melody-wise they're solid and instantly hum-along-able to. But lyrically, they're like ... I spent as much time on my first viewing trying to decipher what I was even hearing as I did enjoying the melody. And even on repeated listenings, as I'm starting to get the lyrics down, they're not ... ... They're not anywhere near on par with what was written for The Little Mermaid. Maybe that's just bias and personal opinion talking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lilbluecorsola View Post
"You're Welcome" is insanely catchy (who knew the "Rock" could apparently sing?)
I'm in the middle here on the adorable Dwayne Johnson's performance. On the one hand, like a lot of the critics, I could instantly tell that this was a song written for a man with very little range. It is instantly, instantly palpable how little range the song covers. On the other hand, like most of the fans of the performance, a) I don't care! It's a great song! Hats off to Lin-Manuel for making such a catchy tune on such a tight budget of notes! And b) I thought The Rock did great. I don't get the harsh criticism at all. No, he doesn't have good range. But no, that doesn't also mean "he can't sing" like so many people are saying. The Rock does without noticeable AutoTuning what Disney's hired pop princess can't fuck her way out of a wet paper bag at the end of the production without mountains of AutoTuning. (Click for a "performance" that is 90% AutoTune! Stupidly inferior to the in-film version performed by Moana's voice actress. Embarrassing for this "pop star", really. ) So yeah. I don't get the Rock hate at all either. I think he did great. Wonderful as Maui talking, and equally fine as Maui singing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lilbluecorsola View Post
"How Far I'll Go" is basically your discount "Let It Go".
Still haven't seen Frozen so I can't compare, but I got the impression that it was trying really, really hard to be the next "Let It Go" and that this would be transparent to most audiences. Didn't think it was necessarily inferior though -- rather than Mr. Pibb vs. Dr. Pepper, I thought it was more like Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola in an alternate dimension where Pepsi, despite being just as good as Coke, doesn't catch on. Because clearly I haven't seen people going nutso on the Internet over "How Far I'll Go" the way they did over "Let It Go", and so clearly the song didn't grip audiences the way that Frozen's most popular song did.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lilbluecorsola View Post
I'm not a big fan of the Bowie-esque villain song myself, but I know it's got some supporters.
I did not like it at all either. In fact, I hated it. ^^; I thought it was an idiotic song performed by an ugly and stupid character with moronic lyrics and just ... I thought it was the absolute low point of Lin-Manuel Miranda's score. If "How Far I'll Go" was his greatest achievement, "Shiny" was his worst.

And no -- not even the post-credits scene could redeem that lame minor villain for me.
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Old 03-25-2017, 12:52 PM   #1119
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X-Men: Apocalypse

I watched this film two nights ago. Going into it, I had been warned by the Internet that it was both a poor film and the weakest of the three "prequel" films starring the First Class actors. I honestly don't believe this information biased my perception too badly, but out with it: I, too, found the film to be pretty dissatisfactory.

I wrote up some of my thoughts shortly after finishing the film, because I was thinking over what the film did wrong and I realized it would make for great post material. I'm going to go ahead and copy and paste it below. Spoilers!

Spoiler: show
Apocalypse & Power Ups: The screenplay is inconsistent with how Apocalypse's ability to "supercharge" other mutants' powers works.

In several instances, the film clearly indicates that Apocalypse is able to give mutants a permanent power boost. A young Storm is shown in an Egyptian market creating tiny little dust devils and gusts of wind -- pathetic, really; Apocalypse later touches her, telling her she is to become his "goddess"; and the next thing we know, she's the Storm everyone's familiar with, the one who's a virtual goddess of the weather. Angel is shown with his tattered angel wings; Apocalypse touches him; and boom, he's Archangel now, with an extra pair of wings and with all four now being made of metal. With both of these mutants, the changes are clearly permanent. While Archangel dies in this film, he's shown plenty of times in full body armor and is never shown reverting to his old state. (On the contrary, he seems to only gain more metal as time goes on.) Storm of course survives, and her powers stay with her even after Apocalypse's apparent demise.

In the case of Magneto, the film is slightly less clear. Like Storm and Archangel, Magneto is the clear recipient of a power-up gift from Apocalypse. First Class made a big deal out of Erik's ability to move a faraway satellite dish and to lift a military submarine out of the water. Days of Future Past ups the ante by having him lift a baseball stadium off its foundations, keep it hovering in the sky for a good ten minutes, and simultaneously control a platoon of Sentinels. The Erik we meet in this film, we're to believe he's gotten no stronger than before. Maybe a little stronger? But he certainly doesn't show it even if he has. Well, Apocalypse touches him ... and tells him he now has the power to move the very planet Earth itself. And sure enough, when Erik touches the ground now, he can feel himself moving the Earth's molten core. He's gotten that good now, thanks to Apocalypse. Later on in the film, serving as one of Apocalypse's right-hand men, Erik is shown bringing heaps of metal from all over the world -- Sydney, New York, you name it -- all to downtown Cairo where he's helping to build Apocalypse's new capital. But then something strange happens ... At the film's climactic finish, where the X-Men are trying to take Apocalypse out, Erik is shown bombarding him with a never-ending cascade of metal ... and yet ... isn't the amount of metal on display rather tiny? Isn't this the sort of thing we would've expected of First Class Erik? And not to poo-poo on it! It's still really impressive when you think about it, when you compare it with real life! But like ... this guy was just bringing in kilotons of steel per second from all over the world, and now he's ... only throwing less than half a car's worth of metal at Apocalypse every second or two? What the heck, man? Is it because Magneto has suddenly "powered down"? And if so, why has he? If not, why is he not attacking harder? The film doesn't really provide an answer for this.

But the worst offender by far is Charles, and the clearest example too of a power downgrade subsequent to a power upgrade. For with Charles, we have a mutant who the previous two films have firmly established cannot scan the entire planet telepathically on his own but can do so with the help of the military's project, C.E.R.E.B.R.O. And in X-Men: Apocalypse, we see Charles using this very Cerebro to try and track down Erik Lehnsherr. Xavier alone, cannot do it. Xavier with Cerebro's help, he can track Erik down and even have a man-to-man conversation with the guy. But then Apocalypse gets inside of Charles' head, even remotely, and using the combined powers of Charles's mind and Cerebro, Apocalypse is able to get Charles to telepathically connect with every nuclear keyholder on the planet and get them to fire their missiles straight up into outer space. Then, Apocalypse gets to meet Charles in person. And when he asks Charles to send a message to every human on Earth -- all 4 billion of them in 1980-something -- Charles says he can't do it without Cerebro's help. And what does Apocalypse say? (Paraphrased) "What do you have need of a machine for, Charles -- when you have me?" And the next thing we know, bam -- Charles is inside the minds of every single human on the planet, even penetrating anti-mutant power forcefields like Stryker's. The film clearly suggests that a) Apocalypse has granted Charles a power upgrade and b) it's one hell of a doozy, allowing him to do on his own what previously he could only dream of even with Cerebro's help. But then what happens? At the film's climax ... Charles is depicted as being right back to his perfectly ordinary, pre-Apocalypse self. What the fuck, man. Talk about inconsistent writing! I could get the argument of, "Well, the power boosts wear off after a time ..." if we were shown this with Storm or Archangel. But we were shown the exact opposite. There's no reason to believe that Charles should have lost his Apocalypse-granted power boost. Even if you were to say, "Well Talon, Xavier lost his gift some time between his betrayal of Apocalypse and when we next see him inside the pyramid," I would point out that Xavier is both smart enough and, now, powerful enough to have staged an attack on Apocalypse even in the Cairo outskirts where our initial gifting scene took place. For instance, why doesn't he mind control Psylocke and the others to fuck Apocalypse's shit up? Apocalypse himself could barely keep Charles out before the power upgrade; even if I buy that he can still do it after the power upgrade, that should only be for him himself, right? Shouldn't Charles be able to get inside of the four Horsemen's heads and wage war against Apocalypse? He doesn't even try ...

Olivia Munn & Psylocke: Not gonna lie -- half the reason I gave this film a chance was the shameless opportunity to enjoy the eyecandy that is Olivia Munn cosplaying as Psylocke. And I must say -- I enjoyed it! She was very attractive and the costume was one of the best we've seen yet, in any of the X-Men films, that synthesizes Fox's desire for realistic-looking costumes and the fandom's desire for source material-faithful costumes. It was basically the uniform Psylocke is frequently shown wearing in the comics rendered in as realistic and practical a choice as possible for the clothing's material and cut.

I was disappointed by how little Munn was in the film though. And not because of the eyecandy. I had actually been looking forward to seeing her act and show off her swordplay. I had learned from the Internet that she took the role very seriously and spent months training on swordsmanship just to make sure she got everything right. I thought that was super cool, and I really wanted to see her hard work pay off for her. Sadly, she's barely in the film and half the time she is it's a five-second shot of her standing around looking pretty for the camera as one of three/four Horsemen of Apocalypse in the background. (There's a pretty striking example in the Cairo outskirts scene where the camera zooms out, in order for us to see all four Horsemen stationed around Xavier and Apocalypse in the center, and while the others are all assuming realistic poses it's Munn's character who has to stand with her legs in a very stark /\-shape for MAXIMUM THIGH-AGE.) I enjoy looking at pretty women as much as the next straight guy or lesbian, but c'mon, guys -- she worked really hard on this, the least you can do is give her more to do besides a) one single fight scene near the end of the movie and b) a fight scene in which even then she doesn't do sword stuff all that much.

Forced Writing & the Four Horsemen: There were a lot of forced connections or forced writing in this movie, and one of the ones that distracted me badly was who the four Horsemen of Apocalypse were assigned to be. Storm (because Fox has a hard-on for retconned origin stories), Psylocke (because fan-demanded character to include in a live-action X-Men movie), Archangel (because THE TOKEN CANON ONE), and Magneto (because THE TOKEN "even idiots will understand he's a big deal addition to the roster" CHARACTER). But break that list down again and you get -- Storm, Psylocke, Archangel, Magneto. It's just ... such a weird and bizarre list. I could focus on any one of them, but for brevity's sake I'll focus on just the one I want to discuss most: Magneto.

Why is Magneto a Horseman of Apocalypse? I mean, I get why Fox Studios did it. "He's someone the people who have seen the other movies recognize," "he's the bad guy of the returning characters," "he's super powerful so having him join Apocalypse should scare viewers." But like ... no, Fox, it's a terrible choice and here's why!

First off, Magneto is not the sort to take orders from anybody. He would have resisted Apocalypse and his goons or else died trying. Apocalypse is not depicted as having powers of persuasion so great that he can hypnotize people without a touch. He seems to require that physical connection to really get into people's minds. Before that could've ever happened, Magneto would've been chucking the entire steel plant at him.

Second, Magneto's power level doesn't line up. You made it work with Storm by saying, "Pre-Apocalypse? She's a C-rank mutant. Post-Apocalypse? She's the Storm you knew from the movies. Super powerful ... but still not a match for Apocalypse." Similar things go for Angel/Archangel and Psylocke. But with Magneto ... you have two previous films which establish what fans already knew about the guy -- he's an alpha-rank mutant. He's a master manipulator of metal, one of the greatest and most powerful mutants the world has ever known. And now you want to make him greater? By powering him up through Apocalypse? Dudes ... do that, and you have yourself an omega-level Magneto on par with the Phoenix Force! The moment Apocalypse super-charged Magneto, Magneto should've been like, "Surprise, bitch!" and crushed every inch of that guy under the weight of his armored suit and every molecule of metal in his body. He should've fried his brain by fucking with the positive and negative charges in his synapses. He should have used ore deposits to open a hole in the ground that leads straight to the Earth's mantle, dunked Apocalypse inside, and sealed the hole shut. There's a million and one different ways I can think of for him to defeat Apocalypse, and all of them involve his having suddenly become omega-class. Just ... nyo, guys. ^^; This is why you don't take an already-broken mutant like Professor X or Magneto and say, "Okay -- now you're a Horseman of Apocalypse! :3"

Forced Writing & Origin Stories: Fox seems to have a real hard on for the origin stories in these prequel movies. I was okay with it -- enthusiastic about it, really -- with First Class. I don't mind them wanting to show how Charles and Erik met, or retconning a backstory for Charles and Mystique. That's fine. But by the time we get to Apocalypse, it's just ... ... Let me list for you only some of the things the writers felt the need to depict in this movie:
  • Apocalypse
  • Psylocke
  • Storm's origin story
    • and a retconned one at that
  • Wolverine escaping from Stryker's Weapon X R&D facility
    • also retconned because WHY NOT -- here's the true story of how Wolverine escaped!
    • a retcon of how Wolverine and Jean actually first met
    • a retcon of how Scott and Wolverine actually first met as well
  • how/when/why Professor Xavier went bald
    • this too, retconned
  • Scott and Jean meeting for the very first time
  • Scott arriving at Professor X's school for the gifted
  • Quicksilver's relation to Magneto
    • both the spelling it out for the slower audience members who were too ignorant or dumb to get it from Days of Future Past
    • as well as the actual having the character (Quicksilver) discuss it and make actions based on it
  • throwbacks to earlier films, primarily Days of Future Past
    • and further primarily, references to Mystique's actions at the end of DoFP
This is just a partial list. But good golly, Miss Molly! This film tries to do way too much! And worse still is how it tries to tie everything into everything else! So like, Wolverine at the Weapon X research facility? That's tied into a prisonbreak scene. That prisonbreak scene? Screentime for Jean, Scott, and Nightcrawler. Oh wait, you mean Jean's here? Well let's go ahead and have her and Logan have an intimate moment together (that's totally not bizarre or creepy-gross! >_<). How about Apocalypse? Fuck, his very presence in this film is tied into Psylocke and Storm's origin story. The film just constantly does this shit -- both the having lots and lots of story arcs crammed into one 2˝-hour film and the having them all be intertwined. And it's too much. It's just too much.

Now, I'll go ahead and finish up with some additional thoughts that didn't make it into that session:

Spoiler: show
Jennifer Lawrence's Acting: Alright. If you've seen First Class, you know that she can act just fine for a beginner. And I don't mean that insultingly. I'm just saying, First Class Jennifer Lawrence isn't goddam Peter O'Toole, alright? But she can act perfectly fine for someone who's only been professionally acting for a couple of years. Fast forward to X-Men: Apocalypse and yowza! It's bad. It's so bad. The acting on display here is somehow worse than her earliest performances, despite the benefit of additional years' worth of performances and training. I don't get it. Some say it's because she was disinterested in the role. Others say it's because she can't act. I'm not sure what it was: all I'll say is, it was a distractingly poor performance.

The writing & plot holes: I've already addressed several plot holes in the spoiler box above. But let's discuss a few additional ones which really annoyed me.

Magneto and his family in the woods. Why oh why should I believe that Magneto was powerless to save his family just because the armed men didn't have metal badges? Do they not have iron in their bodies? (See: X2.) Does the forest not have metal all throughout its trees and soil? DOES NOT HIS FAMILY HAVE METAL ORNAMENTS ON? The very same metal locket of his daughter's that he uses to kill the army men in rage ... why doesn't he think to use it sooner?

Apocalypse and his millennia of slumber. Given what we're later shown with his scene alongside Professor Xavier, this makes absolutely no sense. Before, we're asked to believe that maybe, just maybe, he has to be roused from his stasis by somebody else and that that's why, when the rocks crumble down on top of him, he doesn't wake up and do something about it. But then when Charles Xavier runs away and leaves the bride at the altar, so to speak , Apocalypse wakes up on his own and screams in rage. Soo ... why didn't he wake up similarly quickly on his own 3,000 years ago? Dumb.

To the extent that he can brainwash Storm, Psylocke, and Archangel, why doesn't he brainwash Magneto? Magneto seems to very much be a man who is in control of his own destiny but who has decided consciously to follow Apocalypse. The others have to have serious challenges to their worship of Apocalypse present themselves before the spell can be broken (e.g. Storm witnessing Apocalypse killing Mystique); but Magneto? He seems to be under no spell whatsoever. ... Why?

I could keep writing, but I've already written the equivalent of two Talon-Posts™ on this film, so let's put it to rest, shall we?

X-Men: Apocalypse gets a 4/10 - "Bad" from me. It's not the worst movie ever, but it's certainly a movie that I'd feel pretty pissed about wasting $10 on at the theater. Would not bother to buy it other than for completionist's sake. Don't intend to watch it again any time soon if ever.
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Old 03-25-2017, 02:44 PM   #1120
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Moana wasn't going to have a romance due to a real or perceived age gap. Huge guy, small girl, or older guy/younger girl ain't gonna cut it a militant era of age gap and hypergamy shaming.

That said, I was curious about the title's box office because I saw a display at Wal-Mart for Sing, which has horrifically atrocious character designs. Anthro animals are not that appealing to me (see: Zootopia) but Sing looked possibly even worse.

Illumination however has consistently been able to produce huge grosses, shaming Disney, on small budget films. Sure enough, Moana and Sing had a show-down last Fall and Sing won big:

Sing
Budget: $75 million
Gross: $590.1 million

Moana
Budget: $150 million
Gross: $606.9 million

Illumination actually outperformed Frozen with The Secret Life of Pets, looking at Gross/Budget. Frozen topped out at a ratio of 8 something, while Secret Life was 11+.
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Old 03-25-2017, 03:41 PM   #1121
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Moana wasn't going to have a romance due to a real or perceived age gap. Huge guy, small girl, or older guy/younger girl ain't gonna cut it a militant era of age gap and hypergamy shaming.
It's funny bc I've heard complaints Maui wasn't made a teenager like in the original legend. *shrug* Personally I don't mind Disney's reinterpretations of fairytales/mythology. Keeps it fresh and interesting IMO.
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Old 03-26-2017, 12:53 AM   #1122
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Moana wasn't going to have a romance due to a real or perceived age gap. Huge guy, small girl, or older guy/younger girl ain't gonna cut it a militant era of age gap and hypergamy shaming.
I don't think it was that. That sounds like an after-the-fact explanation.

And if what Yuki says is true and Disney really did rewrite Maui from being a teenager as he is in Polynesian legend to being a 28-year old as depicted in the movie, then that's all the more reason to think that they were concerned about romance way ahead of screening the very first trailer to the public and that they were looking for ways to solidly write it out of the script. In other words, it's not the public that thinks a 28-year old can't pair off with a 17-year old -- it's Disney themselves that think that, and his very being a 28-year old is proof that they changed his age on purpose to ensure that audiences wouldn't be trying to pair the two together. (Too bad! XP You gave them too much "chemistry"!)

I think the studio was genuinely trying to produce a film where, for once, a male and female protagonist can be partners in heroic deed-doing without falling in love with one another. It's just unfortunate, in my opinion, that the one time they try to do this deliberately ... they write two characters who are so real / life-like and who go so well together. I dunno. It's complicated. They're complex characters, the both of them, and it's hard for me to put into words how I perceive their relationship by film's end.

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It's funny bc I've heard complaints Maui wasn't made a teenager like in the original legend. *shrug* Personally I don't mind Disney's reinterpretations of fairytales/mythology. Keeps it fresh and interesting IMO.
Huh. I did not know that. (That Maui was originally a teenager in the myths.) It makes sense, sort of. I mean ... I think both versions make sense. But they make sense in different ways. And the adult version makes better sense in some particular ways, whereas the teenage version makes better sense in others. One particular example where I can really see Teenage Maui better is our story's prologue: Maui stealing the Heart of Te Fiti. That scene makes so much more sense depicted as a teenage scamp stealing a treasure (and he can't even begin to comprehend the consequences of his actions, etc.) than it does as an adult miscreant stealing it. But I dunno ... he's Maui. #sawthemoviefirst #biases He's supposed to be a big, strong adult.

I do think it's possible (see above discussion) that one reason they had for changing his age was to draw a thicker, bolder line in the sand between Maui and Moana. If they had kept both Maui and Moana as teens, and you kept the rest of the story identical to what we got, the chemistry would have been WAY too strong and audiences would have begged the question of why these two are not hooking up. Their interactions work much better on a deity/mortal or a paternalistic/daughter-istic level when you have Maui being this demigod who looks like he's somewhere in his late 20s or early to mid 30s. Make him a 17-year old and it's "You ... complete me."
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Old 03-26-2017, 03:44 PM   #1123
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Just finished Logan less than an hour ago. Let's cut to the chase: the film's an easy 9/10. It's the best X-Men movie to date. It's not the best stand-alone X-Men movie to date. And in my opinion ... it's not the best superhero movie to date. But it is great.

Spoiler: show
It is perhaps both easier and quicker for me to list the few problems I had with the film than it is to write at length about all that the film does so well. So I'll start off with the criticisms, and then we'll circle back around to the praise.

Criticism 1. I don't like that neither Logan nor Xavier seem concerned about the danger their presence presents to the corn farmer family. They know that they're being followed. They can surmise that the people following them might choose to leave behind zero witnesses of X-23's existence. So it should be a no-brainer that accepting the dinner invitation was already a bad idea -- thanks a lot, Granpda! -- and that staying past dinner is a terrible idea. While I understand out of universe that the characters had to make this decision in order for us to get the scene that we got, in universe it just doesn't make any sense -- which takes me, out of universe, out of the moment.

Criticism 2. I don't like that this movie makes literally zero mention of either Cyclops or Magneto. I understand (and appreciate) not name dropping eeeeeeeevery single mutant the films have ever shown. But like ... I feel like you have to mention Scott and Erik at least once. Whether they're alive or dead. Whether they're good or evil. Scott's absence of mention is especially striking, because you've got Logan here who is taking care of the senile Professor X the same way that you'd expect a son to take care of his senile father. And like ... that should be Scott's job. Scott should be there. So if he's not there, explain it.

Criticism 3. It seems pretty silly of the bad guys to have had Laura undergo the adamantium-bonding process when she's still a growing girl. It makes a lot more sense for Logan who is done growing at the time he's transformed. Laura still has the body of a child. It could be years, possibly even decades, before she becomes the same sort of adult woman that Logan became as an adult man. I get wanting to have your killing machine but shouldn't you hold off on the procedure for now? I dunno. There's something to be said for the bad guys not caring and that they see Laura as disposable ... but like, even so, encasing her skeleton in adamantium ensures that her bones can't grow beyond the dimensions of a child's, no?

Criticism 4. I don't like that Logan died. Nyeh. XP

Okay! So two legitimate criticisms, one tenuous criticism, and one tongue-in-cheek criticism out of the way, let's talk what the film does so right.

Realistic display of powers: This goes down the whole gamut, but the one specific aspect I really have in mind is the gore factor with Wolverine. I never really noticed it before in the previous movies, but they really did dumb down his slashing to avoid R ratings, didn't they? Because the Wolverine on display here is the Wolverine I've always pictured yet never realized, until now, we weren't getting -- a Wolverine who goes for quick killing blows right through the head, a Wolverine whose claws are so sharp he constantly decapitates or (literally) disarms people without even trying to ... I'm neither a gorefest guy nor an action nut, but the fights in this film are very satisfying to watch because they fit perfectly your imagination of who Wolverine is, who we're told he is, what we're told his powers are ...

Doesn't feel like a cash grab: While it's obvious that the people behind Logan were not wanting to not earn back their investment, you can feel it at every level of this movie that they were looking to make the X-Men franchise's version of a Rain Man or a Juno rather than a Mission Impossible 4 or a Despicable Me. You can really, really tell. The film feels at once "art housey" and normal, "good boring" and exciting. It's kinda hard for me to explain in words, but I'm sure I've described it well enough that people who have seen the film will know what I mean.

A tight-knit family: Previous X-Men cinematic outings have either suffered for a cast of main characters that is too large (e.g. X-Men 3) or else too small (e.g. The Wolverine). Logan's numbers are pretty perfect. We're asked to care about Logan, Laura, Charles, and kinda maybe sorta Caliban, and that's it. Three main main characters, and if you spin Charles off then it's just two main main characters. It's a good number for this story. It works well here.

Wolverine's daughter: It's enjoyable from start to finish watching these two interact. A tragically short crash course on parenthood for Wolverine and the opportunity to get to know her father for the little X-23.

Superior to any source material: I avoided spoilers before watching the movie, but in writing up this post I decided to check in on the source material that inspired this movie and YEESH! The movie's screenplay is sooooo much better than the canon of the Old Man Logan comics. It's a nice change of pace to have a film that fucks over canon for the best.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Some misc thoughts and observations ...

I didn't like that Wolverine died at the end of the movie. I was actually kind of hoping to see them explore the idea further that the adamantium is what's been poisoning him and that they will extract it from his body and then suddenly he'll start becoming young again. THAT STATED, of course I enjoyed the pathos of the scene and I agree that this is one of the better, if not objectively the best, send-offs the character has ever gotten.

As far as my having to watch previous X-Men movies in preparation for watching Logan, it feels like this:
First Class, I really didn't need to see before watching this.

Days of Future Past, pretty much the same. Was really surprised to see no references to Jean or Scott in this movie but hey what can you do.

The Wolverine, the only real benefit I see here was that I was primed to think of Logan as "a character waiting to die" / "a soldier looking for a glorious and honorable death." That idea of Logan wanting to die is revisited here, of course. He's confronted by multiple characters -- Caliban, Xavier, and finally a human doctor -- who increasingly clue us in that something is interfering with Logan's healing factor and that he needs medical intervention to deal with it but he won't do it.

X-Men: Apocalypse, strangely enough, is the film with the most benefits to the Logan-viewing experience. One, it exposes you to Caliban ahead of time. Two, it primes you to understand where X-23 came from by showing you that post-credits scene of the men in black fetching Logan's DNA.
For the most part, though, I feel like you can watch Logan blind without missing out on much. Like ... I am glad to have seen what I saw beforehand, but I think the benefit to my viewing experience was only like a +5% bump or something. 5% is still something. I'll take it. But I don't know that forcing people to sit through hours of other movies first is always going to make that trade-off worth it. If a parent or friend really wants to see Logan today, I think I'd probably allow them to without any fuss. My only real requisite would be, "Are you familiar with the character?" as the film does little to formally explain Logan's powers and loses half of its emotional appeal if you don't care about the character.

All in all, this is the best movie I've seen in theaters since Watchmen. (Yes, it's even better than Star Wars Episode VII.) Like Watchmen, I look forward to owning this one on home video soon. But I think I'd still place both Watchmen and The Dark Knight ahead of it as far as the title of "best superhero movie ever" goes.

One last time, Logan receives a 9/10 - "Great" from me.
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Old 03-26-2017, 06:14 PM   #1124
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Huh. I did not know that. (That Maui was originally a teenager in the myths.) It makes sense, sort of. I mean ... I think both versions make sense. But they make sense in different ways. And the adult version makes better sense in some particular ways, whereas the teenage version makes better sense in others. One particular example where I can really see Teenage Maui better is our story's prologue: Maui stealing the Heart of Te Fiti. That scene makes so much more sense depicted as a teenage scamp stealing a treasure (and he can't even begin to comprehend the consequences of his actions, etc.) than it does as an adult miscreant stealing it. But I dunno ... he's Maui. #sawthemoviefirst #biases He's supposed to be a big, strong adult.
Tbf, I'm pretty sure the whole story of Te Fiti was made up for the sake of the film/to explain why the Polynesians stopped voyaging for a period. Maui did accomplish a lot of legendary feats though, as expositioned in his song, and I believe is generally depicted as a cheeky/mischievous young boy, in line with his "trickster" persona.

I did read that he was originally designed to be bald, but the native consultants they brought in kept insisting he should have "MORE HAIR" since it's a source of magic(?). So that's how he got "the hair" in addition to "the bod". (There was also a lot of controversy over the latter, with people saying he was perpetuating the stereotype of Polynesian men being obese.)

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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post

Just finished Logan less than an hour ago. Let's cut to the chase: the film's an easy 9/10. It's the best X-Men movie to date. It's not the best stand-alone X-Men movie to date. And in my opinion ... it's not the best superhero movie to date. But it is great.

Spoiler: show
Criticism 1. I don't like that neither Logan nor Xavier seem concerned about the danger their presence presents to the corn farmer family. They know that they're being followed. They can surmise that the people following them might choose to leave behind zero witnesses of X-23's existence. So it should be a no-brainer that accepting the dinner invitation was already a bad idea -- thanks a lot, Granpda! -- and that staying past dinner is a terrible idea. While I understand out of universe that the characters had to make this decision in order for us to get the scene that we got, in universe it just doesn't make any sense -- which takes me, out of universe, out of the moment.

Superior to any source material: I avoided spoilers before watching the movie, but in writing up this post I decided to check in on the source material that inspired this movie and YEESH! The movie's screenplay is sooooo much better than the canon of the Old Man Logan comics. It's a nice change of pace to have a film that fucks over canon for the best.
Reading scans of the source material is admittedly what sold me on seeing the film even though I have very little familiarity with the X-Men franchise outside of Evolution and First Class. Namely the scene in the comic where

Spoiler: show
it's revealed Logan slaughtered all the X-Men while under mind control, hence why he became a pacifist. (Seriously, brainwashing ain't cool, man.)


For that onus to be transferred to Charles was an interesting spin, and made the story much sadder for him IMO. (Personally I feel like he stole the show for the first half.) It also lends a weight to his desperation to hold onto a fleeting "family moment", even though we all know what the result will be. In regards to your second criticism, you ask where

Spoiler: show
Scott is, and I can't help but think that he was one of the casualties of poor Charles' accidental massacre. It's one of the reasons I appreciate seeing Logan first before going back to watch the original trilogy, as every time Scott or Jean or one of Charles' other charges express their love for the headmaster, I wonder if the kind professor/father figure they look up to didn't ultimately lead to his students' demise. (Even though Last Stand took both Scott and Jean out of the picture anyway. But meh, timeline shenanigans.)


I do agree the movie did better than the comic - especially in terms of that mini-plot arc - in getting you to feel sympathy for the secondary characters.

Spoiler: show
I'm glad we got to spend some time with the family before they inevitably became victims, as I can see how it was meant to mirror the comic where Logan comes home to find his own family killed by his "landlords" (after having just gone on a mission to try and earn money for them to pay the rent). In the comic though we barely see his wife and children beyond a panel or two in the beginning, and are simply told he settled down on a farm/ranch in the desert (hence the "Old West" theme) to try and raise his kids in peace. Without further backstory/exposure there's not a lot for the reader to connect to them though, so they simply serve as plot devices to make Logan despair more.

On the subject of secondary characters: Poor, poor Caliban. =( One moment he's being all cute and snarky, then WELP suddenly he's a prisoner being tortured into doing the bad guy's bidding... Totally doesn't sound familiar at all, nope. *shot* And in the end not even his heroic self-sacrifice accomplished much, since the main baddie still survived. *sigh*


Oh, one other thing that carries over from the comic to the movie is the gore, as you mentioned. It's kinda jarring for a "superhero story" to contain so much killing and blood for me, especially coming straight from the Batman universe. I'm so used to the "no killing" rule that seeing someone with no qualms about it (not to mention children decapitating others) made for a weird whiplash lol. (Yeah yeah, I know Batfleck used guns and probably murdered a bunch of people, but at least there weren't any graphic on-screen deaths like this.) But I guess it's rated "R" for a reason. (Not that I mind the realism, but of course I had to look away from any neck wounds. x.X Whee irrational phobias.)

Laura is still a sweetheart though. That last scene where she

Spoiler: show
turns the cross into an "X" was so cliché but also super-cute. <3 (Honestly it reminds me of the "Martha" moment of BvS. XP) Also d'aw at the Wolverine doll that one kid had~


Man, as much as I hate the trope of "scientists experimenting on kids to give them mutant powers", it's seriously just not a cool thing to do. Glad the bad guys got their comeupppance at least in the end. >.>

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Old 03-27-2017, 04:02 AM   #1125
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I don't think it was that. That sounds like an after-the-fact explanation.
Had you asked me if Moana was going to have a romance prior to this discussion, I would have said "no" just because the age, height, body type differences between the two leads were going to create problems with closed-minded American audiences.

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I think the studio was genuinely trying to produce a film where, for once, a male and female protagonist can be partners in heroic deed-doing without falling in love with one another. It's just unfortunate, in my opinion, that the one time they try to do this deliberately ... they write two characters who are so real / life-like and who go so well together. I dunno. It's complicated. They're complex characters, the both of them, and it's hard for me to put into words how I perceive their relationship by film's end.
This isn't surprising due to the recent string of agenda-pushing films have been doing. There is a real perception that "millennial" want issue transparency in whatever food, media, or clothing they're consuming, regardless of how irrelevant it is.

To the point that it's superficial at times. For example, the new Power Rangers film features a gay character. A lesbian. A hot lesbian in skin-tight armour. With a hot lady friend.

See where I'm going with this? The intent to pursue transparency to attract millennials is so superficial, rather than actually try and make a political statement (which would require featuring a hyper sexual gay male), they end up showcasing fapbait fetish fuel.
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