Thursday, February 28, 2008

Hulk (2003)

This one is a mixed bag as I both loved it and hated it. It was very long, very drawn out, too stylistic, and very few action scenes. However at the same time they did a great job of telling the Hulk’s origin by going beyond it being a guy hit by gamma radiation. They delved deep into the psychological reasons for Bruce Banner’s (brilliantly played by Eric Banna) repressed rage, which is something that has become very important in the comics. However they also added in a somewhat silly idea of his father planting the seeds of the transformation by performing genetic experiments on himself before impregnating his wife.

The entire casting was perfect and they did a tremendous job of fleshing them out effortlessly. However the inclusion of Josh Lucas as the slimy, money loving military contractor made it impossible for them to portray General Ross properly. In the comics, Ross has nothing but hate for the Hulk right from the get go, and is thoroughly convinced that the only option is to kill the Hulk. Now in the movie he does come across as a no nonsense kind of guy, but he treats the Hulk like a human, wanting to save Banner if possible but ready to kill him if that’s the only option, of course with him being played by Sam Elliot you immediately want him to be likeable. But this does have a lot to do with the fact that General Ross’ daughter, Betty (played by the ridiculously beautiful Jennifer Connelly) is Bruce’s co-worker/ex-girlfriend. Here’s where things start getting tedious as Betty tries to help Bruce figure out what’s going on inside his mind and we’re walked, or rather dragged through what feels like hours of flashbacks where we already figured out what happened.

As mentioned before there are very few action scenes, but when there was one it was awesome. Though it was a little dark, I can watch the scene of the Hulk fighting those dogs over and over again and never grow tired of it. In a fight against the US military they addressed the fact that once he gets moving, the Hulk can run fast and jump far, something a lot of people don’t know about (I’m not sure about now, but in the beginning he could jump three miles with no running start). And then there’s the last fight scene against his father…

Another silly idea was to make David Banner transform himself into the Absorbing Man of sorts. But on the plus side this did lead to an amazing climax with David attempting to absorb the energy created by the Hulk’s rage only to discover that there was too much, causing David to explode. I immediately translated this as awesome because I know that the Hulk’s rage is infinite and uncontainable and this was a great way to show that.

Marvel Movie Score = 7

Why That?: I enjoy the movie, I really do, but it is really long, drawn out, and in no way as filled with action as a movie about the Hulk should be. However I do believe that spending so much time delving into the Hulk’s origin opened the ability to make a sequel pretty much all action. Marvel has instead decided to do what people are calling a “requel,” with The Incredible Hulk (now staring Ed Norton), starting the story with Banner on the run so that in ways it feels like a sequel, but at the same time it technically will have nothing to do with the original. Got that?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

X-Men 2 (2003)

By the time X-Men 2 (aka X2, aka X-Men 2: X-Men United, but sadly not aka X2: Electric Boogaloo) rolled around, I had not yet become as disillusioned with the first one as I am now. Sure it was starting to form, but barely, so opening night I was there with my gal and my friends waiting to be blown away again.

In it’s first viewing the movie suffers the same way the first movie did, where the ending just doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll work my way to that. The movie opens up with Wolverine searching the area that Professor X had told him about at the end of the first movie, where he discovered information about an abandoned military base in Canada. But now there are just ruins so Wolverine heads right back home. The problem here is there is still a very active military base within walking distance of the old one, they’re even connected by underground tunnels, yet somehow Wolverine with all his military training and heightened senses, is completely unable to pick up on this.

Fortunately between that and the end of the movie things were pretty good, including Wolverine stabbing soldiers (resulting in guys sitting next to me in the theater acting shocked that Wolverine, a trained solder, was killing people breaking into the mansion) and even a cool fight scene with Cyclops to show off that he is a trained fighter (note: I’ve always been a Cyclops fan so this made me gitty).

Midway downfalls would be the Storm Nightcrawler sappy crap, which was only beefed up because Halle Berry was complaining about wanting a bigger part, and a moment where Rogue tries to stop Pyro by absorbing his powers which takes WAY too long and barely took the guy off his feet. The second one wasn’t that big a deal, but really the sappy crap with Norm (see what I did there?) was just annoying.

So we wrap up the movie with the X-men trying to make their get away, their jet engines not starting up while it’s parked in a valley beneath a cracking damn. Jean Grey, who’s been showing signs of the Phoenix throughout the movie, hobbles out of the jet on an injured leg to save her friends. She simultaneously holds the water back with a force field, starts lifting the jet out of the way, blocks Nightcrawler from teleporting to save her, and projects her thoughts through Xavier to communicate her goodbye to Cyclops. So for dramatic purposes they seemed to ignore a couple more logical endings. For starters there seemed no reason that Jean had to get off the jet to do this. Secondly, and way more importantly, Iceman was on the jet. A kid who less than an hour ago made a two foot thick wall of ice out of air molecules in a second’s time, and now there’s solid water rushing at them. I’ve said this many times; Iceman could have frozen the whole thing solid and the X-Men could’ve celebrated by playing a game of hockey (they were in Canada after all).

As far as sequels go, it was a good follow up with everyone and everything feeling and looking like an expansion of the first movie. Unfortunately that’s where the problems stemmed from.

Marvel Movie Score = 6.5

Why That?: While the action scenes stepped it up, and it did have a good story, the ending was just so horribly botched that I can’t get over it. It has really made me start to question Bryan Singer and his writing team’s (as he works very closely with him) actual talent as they seem to just forgo logic for the sake of telling their story. This becomes way more apparent in Superman Returns, which can not be reviewed as a Marvel movie.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Daredevil (2003)

It is true what they say; all good things must come to an end. And so ends Marvel’s streak of great movies (from the POV of not being annoyed with X-Men just yet) with Daredevil. The funny thing is the acting was very good all around (Sidebar time: I’ve never understood why people don’t like Ben Affleck so much. I don’t think he’s the greatest or anything, but I do enjoy him), the visuals were fantastic, and I even enjoyed the costume design. However everything else is so tragically flawed that it makes my head spin.

It feels almost as if Mark Steven Johnson (writer/director) thought the people in the theater would be blind just like our hero, as the first half hour or so is a flashback to a young Matt Murdock with a voice over from the elder version describing to us exactly what we’re looking at. Movies are a visual medium, Mr. Johnson, I trust that when I see a kid looking for his dad, that he’s indeed looking for his dad. Included in the flashback is a scene of bullies thinking a blind kid is a coward for not fighting them and yes they know he’s blind. Now I’ve met my fair share of bullies, but even the dumbest of them isn’t that dumb. He’s f’ing blind!!! And then there’s the name dropping, oh the name dropping, with a crooked boxing promoter naming off boxers who all happen to be named after people who’ve worked on the Daredevil comic at one point or another. Get it? It’s clever.

Fast forward to by far the dumbest scene in the entire movie, where our blind hero, Matt Murdock, spars with Elektra, who walked into a coffee shop smelling nice so Murdock went to talk to her, she then got up as if she was just leaving anyways and leaves so he follows her to get her name. Yes, basically she walked in, sat down, and walked out. Now back to the fight. They’re on a play ground full of kids and Matt, who the world thinks is completely blind, spars full force with this woman. Yeah, cause that won’t draw ANY attention to Matt. Oh, and of course this eventually leads to them taking the meat boat to tuna town later that night after they’ve known each other for maybe four hours, thanks Hollywood (this comment will make sense soon, just not in this review).

I can’t think of a good way to segue over to the supporting cast, so I’ll just use the awkward sentence I just typed. The supporting characters are cast perfectly. Michael Clark Duncan does a great job as the Kingpin, Colin Farrell basically plays himself but is a murderous psycho, and John Favreau as Foggy Nelson is hands down the only thing in the movie that is without flaw.

Want to read about more insipid things in this movie? Good, I have plenty.

So Kingpin decides to kill Elektra’s father for betraying him. He succeeds. He then sends Bullseye after Elektra because, “the Kingpin doesn’t just kill you, he kills your whole family.” Way to really stick it to the guy. Kill him and THEN take away what matters to him most in the world.

And then there’s the line that actually challenges Storm’s “Toad that’s hit by lightning” bit from X-Men:

Kingpin: How do you kill a man without fear?
Bullseye: By putting the fear in him.

Really? That actually makes sense to someone? Seriously there is no more expansion on that idea, they change topics of discussion after that to killing Elektra.

And while the effect of how he sees looks cool, it’s wrong. Clearly how he sees in the movie is sonar, in the comics it is clearly a radar sense that he has honed through a lot of meditation and training. But with the way it is in the movie, he is ridiculously susceptible to sound interference, which one would think his sensitivity to would just lead him to being deaf by now.

Lastly, Daredevil’s a ninja, not a brawler, oh and he doesn’t kill people!!! @$$holes.

Marvel Movie Score = 3

Why That?: The fight scenes were pretty cool, and like I said the acting was good. Also to be honest, Jennifer Garner got the movie two good points all on her own. Booyah! But there is hope in the near future… Stay tuned.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Spider-Man (2002)

In the wake of 9/11 America got a pick-me up in the form of Spider-Man (but deprived an awesome trailer featuring the WTC). Directed brilliantly by Sam Raimi (an all time favorite of mine) and staring the second best casting since Patrick Stewart as Prof. X, Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker.

This movie is near perfect. The power of the origin story is undeniable with Peter growing up so fast from a nerdy high school kid who desperately just wants to be considered cool and admired by the girl next door to accepting full responsibility for what happened to his uncle and using that as his motivation every day of his life from there on out. Sure a lot of people complained about the organic web shooters, but I agree whole heartedly with Raimi in that it helped make Peter a little more normal and relatable. Yes he’s a science whiz, but he’s not so smart that he can build a high tech piece of equipment that no one in the world has ever thought of before or since, and then never invent anything else.

The casting was superb even with Kirsten Dunst’s mediocrity as Mary Jane Watson. But to be honest, with the way they wrote the character it didn’t really matter who was cast. Willem Dafoe was amazing as always, the scene of him talking to himself in the mirror is absolutely brilliant and a sign of why so many people love DeFoe as an actor. But hands down the show stealer was JK Simmons as J Jonah Jameson (that would be the third most perfect casting ever).

I realized something in writing this review, when a movie is amazing it’s very difficult to flesh out a review without feeling like you’re just rambling about all the things you liked about it. I'm sure after I post this I'll think of some things I could've said to make it longer, but that's just how this stuff works.

But to be fair, my only complaint for the entire movie comes from when Spider-Man goes back into the building to save the woman screaming, who turns out to be the Green Goblin, but his Spider Sense never goes off and he gets punched in the face, though now that I read that sentence it sounds pretty funny.

Marvel Movie Score = 10

Why That?: No matter how many times I watch it, I still think it’s perfect. I didn’t even mind the mock up of the Gwen Stacey/Green Goblin thing now including Mary Jane (and her surviving). The action scenes were perfect, including rarely seen scenes of the super-hero taking out just random criminals on the street. But most importantly beginning to end it was ridiculously fun.