Hulk is Love, Hulk is Life

I looked back at the Hulk review and saw that it shared it's opening sentence with Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life. This gave me the silly idea of plagiarizing that story with Hulk instead. I should warn you due to the explicit nature of Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life, it is not advised that the easily offended read any further. The story will start after the cute kitten.

I was only nine years old. I loved Hulk so much. I had all the merchandise and comics. I pray to Hulk every night before bed, thanking him for the life I have been given. "Hulk is love," I say, "Hulk is life."

My dad hears me and calls me a faggot. I knew he was just jealous of my devotion to Hulk, so I call him a cunt. He slaps me and sends me to go to sleep. I'm crying now, and my face hurts. I lay in bed and it's really cold.

A warmth is moving towards me. I feel something touch me. It's Hulk. I'm so happy. He whispers in my ear "Hulk smash." He grabs me with his powerful Hulk hands and puts me on my hands and knees. I'm ready.

I spread my ass cheeks for Hulk. He penetrates my butthole. It hurts so much, but I do it for Hulk. I can feel my butt tearing as my eyes start to water. I push against his force. I want to please Hulk. He roars a mighty roar as he fills my butt with gamma rays.

My dad walks in. Hulk looks him straight in the eye and says "Puny human." Hulk leaves through my window.

Hulk is love, Hulk is life.

The original.

Ghost Rider (2007)

Ghost Rider (2007)

 

Release Date: February 16, 2007

For the next review, Ghost Rider, the literal Hell’s Angel, blazes into action. Alas, his cinematic debut is closer to film Hell than Film Heaven, and not in a good way.

The opening narration sets up the backstory. Mephisto (Marvel Satan essentially) appoints various people across history to work for him as the Ghost Rider. 150 years prior to the film’s events, the Ghost Rider of the time was tasked with acquiring the contract of San Venganza, worth 1000 evil souls, but he keeps it for himself instead of handing it over. He doesn’t outrun the Devil as the narration claims though, Mephisto just stands there and watches him go.

Teenager Johnny Blaze and his father work as motorcycle stunt riders at the carnival, but Johnny finds out one day that his girlfriend Roxanne is moving away, and that his father is dying of cancer, which isn’t a surprise since his dad’s response to choking on cigarette smoke is more cigarettes. A desperate Johnny encounters Mephisto and sells his soul to cure his father. In a stunt that would make Calypso from Twisted Metal proud, Blaze Sr’s cancer is cured, only for him to die in a motorcycle accident almost immediately afterwards.

 

Years later, Johnny remains a successful motorcycle stunt rider, but the deal with Mephisto weighs heavily on him, with his roadie pal being particularly concerned by his interest in the occult. Johnny meets Roxanne again when she interviews him for the news before one of his jumps, but before they can reconcile, Mephisto arrives and decides to be a cockblocker. He explains that his wayward son Blackheart is trying to take over the world, possibly because he’s angry at looking like a younger, less scruffy version of Tommy Wiseau from The Room.

 Ohai Gost Raidur!

 

Instead of encouraging him to carry on, my wayward son, Mephisto decides only he can take over the world and orders Johnny to defeat Blackheart and his Clichéd Elemental Henchmen. In order for Johnny to do this, Mephisto rekindles memories of Johnny’s past life. Johnny Blaze used to go by the name Edward Malus, a policeman who burned to death inside a giant wicker man, and this memory causes Johnny to transform into Ghost Rider, he of the flaming skull. He takes his anger out on Clichéd Earth Henchman, causing extreme vandalism in the process. The next day, Johnny meets the Caretaker, who provides some valuable exposition about Carter Slade, the previous Ghost Rider, who he totally isn’t by the way, why would you even think that?

After leaving the cemetery, Johnny is arrested by Captain Dolan for extreme vandalism and murder, but he quickly escapes prison and leads the police in a chase, killing Clichéd Wind Henchman while he’s at it. Meanwhile, Blackheart visits the Caretaker and beats him up for not explaining where the Contract of San Venganza is besides Carter Slade was buried with it. “You are tearing me apart, Caretaker!” He then decides to kidnap Roxanne and go to San Venganza to wait for Ghost Rider. Having shaken off the police, Ghost Rider asks the Caretaker nicely for the Contract, who hands it over. When he said Carter Slade was buried with it, he meant that it was inside the shovel used to bury Carter Slade.

Real talk, I'm a sucker for that kind of wordplay.

The Caretaker then admits that okay, yeah, he is Carter Slade, and he and Ghost Rider go to San Venganza together on the Last Ride. On his way to San Venganza, Ghost Rider runs into Clichéd Water Henchman, who tries to drown Ghost Rider. He gets his ass kicked following the realization that Ghost Rider has magic fire that works underwater, like they have on Spongebob. Ghost Rider tries to use his Penance Stare attack on Blackheart, but it doesn’t work because Blackheart doesn’t have a soul. Blackheart then copies the end of Blade 1 by using the contract to absorb the 1000 evil souls and become more powerful… but also vulnerable to the Penance Stare X1000. Oops. I can only assume that he was suicidal. “I fed up wid dis whirl! Everyone betray me!” Mephisto arrives and gives Johnny’s soul back as a reward, but says that he wants Johnny to give up the Ghost Rider powers. Johnny accepts his soul, but tells Mephisto to shove it otherwise.

Where are they now?

Johnny Blaze travelled the world battling evil and injustice. He eventually started calling himself Big Daddy, and sired a daughter to help him fight crime.

Roxanne was ridiculed by the press when she reported about the events on the news. She later found success as a televangelist.

Blackheart was grounded for three weeks for trying to cause Hell on Earth.

Mephisto moved into reality television after his joke pitch was taken seriously and became Jersey Shore. Now you know who to blame whenever you complain that MTV doesn’t show music videos anymore.

After unsuccessfully denying his true identity, Carter Slade tried to deny that Star Trek: Into Darkness was a remake of The Wrath of Khan, and that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan. Nobody believed him for a second.

Captain Dolan was fired from the force for letting Ghost Rider escape prison so easily. He begged for his job back to Chief Gooby, who started receiving daily post-it notes with “Gooby pls” scribbled on them. These attempts proved unsuccessful.

The Clichéd Elemental Henchmen formed a band, but Clichéd Water Henchman was soon replaced, with creative differences cited as the reason. Earth, Wind and Fire went on to achieve great success in the music industry.

Like Daredevil before it, the tone of Ghost Rider is inconsistent from scene to scene, switching between serious and cheesy. While there are times where the film achieves its desired effect of being cool or scary, there are others when it ends up being unintentionally funny instead. For example, the scene in which Roxanne consults a magic 8 ball in a restaurant is seemingly played straight, despite its absurdity. Having said that, the scenes that try to be funny, like Nicolas Cage watching a monkey karate chop wooden planks, are generally funny.

It can be difficult to take Nicolas Cage seriously as Ghost Rider at times thanks to his cheesy overacting, particularly when the one-liners come out. Despite that, he is endearing enough in the role that there is a charm to it nonetheless. Mephisto is the star of the show. He’s a great example of smug and confident, and it’s a shame that he doesn’t get more screen time, appearing only at the beginning and end. Roxanne and the Caretaker are the stock love interest and mentor characters and not that interesting, but they’re not bad. The weak link is Blackheart. He isn’t very threatening or intimidating at all as a villain, coming off as a bored emo teenager throwing a temper tantrum for the lulz. Until his encounter with Ghost Rider, he goes around poking defenceless people who can’t fight back to death, which makes him look like a bully, and the climax shows that he can’t compare to anyone who stands up for themselves. In the comics, Blackheart (and Mephisto for that matter) have appearances befitting of demons, which is pointed towards with Blackheart doing the occasional screamer face, but perhaps he would have posed more of a threat if he did a full transformation at some point.

 Comic Blackheart, for reference. Here he is throttling Spider-Man.

The effects are a mix of the good and not-so-good. The fire effects and the transformation of Ghost Rider’s bike between its normal and hell forms are the best, and Ghost Rider looks decent from a distance. When he’s up close however, his skull has an odd white sheen to it, as if it’s made of plastic. The best of the set pieces are Ghost Rider driving his bike up the side of a skyscraper and the Last Ride, but the latter poses a bit of a problem. It is established that Ghost Rider’s transformation happens at night in the presence of evil, but that rule is ignored for this scene in order to have two Ghost Riders at the same time. More seriously, it’s done again in the climax, which makes a big deal out of the battle taking place at dawn, undoing the transformation, except Johnny transforms back into Ghost Rider seconds later. Maybe these rules shouldn’t have been established if they weren’t going to be abided by.

Ghost Rider shares its director with Daredevil. This can be seen in the two films, as they have a similar tone and atmosphere. Unfortunately, Ghost Rider fails to improve on Daredevil. Despite its efforts, the cool concept just isn’t enough to make up for the film’s flaws.

Ever feel that you need more Tommy Wiseau in your life? It's your lucky day! Here's a soundboard for The Room's many popular quotes.

Bonus: Nicolas Cage is a huge Ghost Rider fanboy, so much so that he has a Ghost Rider tattoo on his arm, which had to be covered up for the film.

Next Time: The Webslinger goes through his goth phase.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Release Date: May 26, 2006

Fun fact: this was the last film that I saw at the cinema in Bangor before it closed down. At the time, I thought it was great, but alas, time has not been terribly kind to it.

The mutant lot in life has improved since the last film. The new president is more sympathetic towards mutants, and a mutant has a prominent position in government: Beast, who’s mutation (he’s covered in blue fur) is as visible as you can get. The X-Men aren’t feeling too good about that though, since they’re still coming to terms with the death of Jean Grey. Cyclops took her death particularly hard, but he starts to hear Jean’s voice again. He rushes off to Alkali Lake and finds Jean, having somehow survived drowning. They celebrate by kissing like horny teenagers, but Jean can’t handle the excitement. Professor Xavier senses a great disturbance in the Force, and sends Wolverine and Storm to follow Cyclops. When they get to Alkali Lake, they find an unconscious Jean and take her home. Poor Cyclops has been unceremoniously killed off-screen, angering his fans who are mad at Cyclops getting shafted.

Back at the Mansion, Xavier explains that he sensed Jean’s extreme power level when he first met her as a teenager (she is the only known Class 5 Mutant apparently,) and the power gave her a more malevolent personality called the Phoenix that has no control over its massive power. Xavier responded by building mental blocks to lock away the Phoenix, preventing Jean from using her powers to their full potential.

Pretty much this, except it would be called Jean and have Famke Janssen in it instead of Scarlett Johansson.

Wolverine gets angry at Xavier for not giving Jean a choice in the matter and prevents him from putting the mental blocks back. Jean thanks him by trying to have sex with Wolverine (Way to shaft Cyclops again guys,) but she gets upset at remembering she killed Cyclops and runs away. Angry as he is at Wolverine, Xavier is still too classy to say “I told you so.”

Meanwhile, another plot runs alongside the Phoenix storyline. A pharmaceutical company has managed to create a mutant cure, using the DNA of a young boy named Jimmy, who can neutralize mutant DNA when near other mutants. Mystique infiltrated the pharmaceutical company to find this out for Magneto, but was captured and arrested. Magneto and Pyro break her out of the prison convoy, along with two new recruits for the Brotherhood in the form of Mystique’s fellow prisoners: Multiple Man, who can create clones of himself, as the name suggests, and the Juggernaut Bitch, who is the Juggernaut Bitch and is unstoppable once he’s gathered momentum. In the chaos, Mystique is shot with a cure gun, making her human. Magneto coldly leaves her behind, but the cure gun is the last straw. Magneto builds an army of mutants to prepare for open war.

Meanwhile again, not everyone is as against the cure as Magneto. Rogue wants to be able to touch people without almost killing them, and she feels that Bobby is drifting away from her and towards fellow trainee Kitty Pryde. When Bobby and Kitty go ice skating after Bobby asks “Do you want to build a snowman?” a heartbroken Rogue leaves.

Back to the Phoenix plot. Jean has been tracked down to her old house by the X-Men, but Magneto is there too, thanks to his new pal Callisto, who can sense energy. Magneto derails Xavier’s attempts at calming Jean down by persuading her to use her full power (“Get outta my head, Charles!”), while the Juggernaut Bitch battles Wolverine to stop him from interfering. (“Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me. I’m the Juggernaut Bitch!”) Wolverine gets away from the Juggernaut Bitch just long enough to see Jean lift her house up into the sky and disintegrates Xavier with mind bullets. On that note, Jean becomes Dark Phoenix and joins the Brotherhood. Her role is to stand in the background looking moody, have an affinity for red leather, and of course mind bullet disintegrations.

With Xavier gone, Magneto puts his plan in motion. Fancying himself as a bit of a fixer-upper, Multiple Man acts as a decoy to lure away the army, while Magneto’s real forces attack Alcatraz, where the cure is being manufactured and kill Jimmy. That job falls to the Juggernaut Bitch, but he is stopped by Kitty Pryde. Before he can threaten to kill her and rape her and eat her fucking costume, Kitty Pryde and Jimmy trick the Juggernaut Bitch into knocking himself out. (If only Pimp Cane Padrino or Ketchup had been there, the Juggernaut Bitch would have stood a chance...) Callisto and Storm get into a fight outside, which ends when Storm throws Callisto onto a fence and electrifies it. “Do you know what happens to a power-level-detecting goth when it’s struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else! LOLXD #YoloNoob”

Bobby knocks out Pyro with his strengthening ice powers overpowering Pyro’s fire controlling powers. With the rest of Magneto’s named lackeys running inside to bully some defenceless scientists, only Maggy himself is left to deal with. Colossus throws Wolverine towards Magneto to act as a decoy, while Beast sneaks up behind him and injects him with the cure. The army arrives after everything’s been sorted, and start shooting the place up anyway.

Jean gets mad and decides to let it go. She can’t hold it back any more. Her disintegrating mind bullets wreck the collective shit of the army, the island, Magneto’s cowardly minions who were beating up scientists instead of helping fight the X-Men, and even gravity.

(As far as we know, the Juggernaut Bitch is still in the building when this happens. “And in this corner, the welterweight champion, The Juggernaut Bitch! Why the fuck is this shit fallin’?”) However, thanks to the wonderful technology of indestructible trousers, Wolverine is able to get close enough to Jean to kill her. For the first time in forever, the X-Men have a time of peace ahead of them. The now-depowered Rogue gets back together with Bobby, who has realized that his relationship with Kitty Pryde isn’t going anywhere because she’s a lesbian. Luckily for him, love is an open door and Rogue is willing to forgive. While everyone else is getting back on their feet, Xavier has somehow transported his consciousness into a comatose body, and Magneto is in the park playing chess against himself. As he reaches for one of the metal pieces, it shakes ever so slightly…

The main problem with the film is how crowded it is. The Phoenix plot and the cure plot would both be sufficient material for their own films, but squashing the two together does neither story justice. It doesn’t help that this film is actually shorter than the first two, despite having so much material to go through. It could have really done with either being at least half an hour longer to give the two stories more breathing room, or staying at the current length and dropping one storyline to concentrate fully on the other. There’s little crossover between the two plotlines, which means they’re mostly separate from one another. The most noticeable example would be the finale, where Dark Phoenix doesn’t go nuts until after the cure plot and Magneto are resolved. It doesn’t connect to the cure and instead feels like a second climax, which isn’t a good thing in this case, as we haven’t had a chance to breathe after Magneto’s defeat yet, causing fatigue to start to set in. The reason for using two A-story tier plots may be that this was originally intended as the grand finale, and they were both used because there wouldn’t be another chance to use the unused storyline. This also explains the rampant character death/depowering. Of course, this left Fox with egg on their faces when the Marvel Cinematic Universe hit big and they had to furiously backpedal to get the franchise to a point where they could carry on with it.

The bloat can similarly be seen in the cast roster. There are a lot of new characters introduced here. Beast, Angel, Kitty Pryde and the Juggernaut Bitch are just the newcomers the marketing focused on. There are plenty more besides, and even among those four, Angel is a minor character in the grand scheme of things. His role is minor enough that I didn’t mention him in the plot summary. As a consequence, most don’t get much screen time or plot relevance, preventing them from standing out. While the newcomers allied with the X-Men are pretty good (Kelsey Grammer as Beast is a wonderful piece of casting), the new Brotherhood members are laughable. Multiple Man is wasted, as the film forgets about him almost as soon as he appears. Seriously, he’s gone halfway through the convoy scene. Did he go outside for a smoke while Magneto and Pyro let out Mystique and the Juggernaut Bitch or something? He only comes back to act as a decoy later, and be cured off screen. Callisto, Arclight and Psylocke are difficult to tell apart, and Psylocke doesn’t do anything, so there’s no reason for her to be there besides ticking a popular character off the checklist. Not to mention that Multiple Man and Psylocke are usually protagonists. At least Multiple Man has the excuse of being a villain in the Ultimate Marvel continuity. Psylocke on the other is Psylocke in name only, with everything else being based on another character, Kwannon, who switched bodies with Psylocke. It’s a long story. Despite all that, the Hedgehog Guy stands out as the worst of the bunch. He has the power of making tiny little spikes on his body, which is honestly useless. The one time it proves of any use is stabbing a scientist that he had to hold up next to his body, yet he’s constantly bigging himself up as being so great. Since no attention is drawn to his attitude by any of the other characters, and there are no jokes at his expense, I can only assume the Hedgehog Guy was supposed to be taken seriously, yet I can’t do that. This guy being one of Magneto’s top henchmen makes Magneto look bad, as if he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for Brotherhood applicants. I’m sure he’s missing Toad and Sabretooth right about now. The Juggernaut Bitch is the only one who stands out as being in any way a threat, and even then I’ve spent the entire review making a mockery of him.

 One more for the road.

Another problem is that time that could have been given to developing the new characters is instead used to show off how great Wolverine is. The franchise is often accused of showing favouritism towards Wolverine, but this is the first time the Wolverine shilling is blatant. Characters like Cyclops and Professor Xavier are shown as being wrong or incompetent while Wolverine is always right and always involved in whatever’s happening, and Wolverine is the one who saves the day at the end. True, giving Jean Grey Phoenix-resistant mental blocks without her consent is not okay, but as Xavier points out, it was the lesser of two evils, and Jean goes on to show in the climax that Xavier was justified in his concerns. If Xavier had properly explained what could happen if her powers were left unchecked, Jean may well have agreed to the blocks herself, but he can’t do that because it would prove Wolverine wrong, and we can’t be having that now, can we?

On the plus side, the special effects are phenomenal. At the time of the film’s release, it was among the most expensive films ever made, and every bit of that money can be seen on screen. The standouts in this regard are Magneto stealing the Golden Gate Bridge, and anything to do with the Phoenix. You’re getting a lot of bang for your buck, that’s for sure. The performances are also as good as ever. Special praise goes to Ian McKellen as Magneto, who lifts the film whenever he’s on screen. Some of the film’s best scenes are small scenes with Magneto talking to other characters, such as chastising Pyro for speaking ill of Xavier after his death, or the marks and needles discussion. While Anna Paquin as Rogue sits out the action sequences this time around, she gets a moral dilemma over whether or not to take the cure. Her chat with Wolverine about the cure is heartwarming, and given their friendship established in the first film, Wolverine having the answers actually is appropriate here, as it isn’t shilling him by making Rogue look bad.

To conclude, X-Men: The Last Stand is a film of two halves. There’s certainly plenty to talk about, as this is the longest entry yet. The overall package may not be as satisfying as the first two films, but there are great scenes here that are on the level of the first two films in quality. The prologue showing a young Angel self-harming is a good example, and I’ve pointed out others as well. The cure storyline is the logical progression for the themes of the series in general, so it is disappointing that it has to fight for limited screen time with another plot. This may be a controversial opinion, but while I do agree that it isn’t as good as the first two, I suspect that I liked X-Men: The Last Stand more than most.

Here's the deal with the Juggernaut Bitch, in case anyone's wondering.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears in the prologue as a man watering his garden. Chris Claremont, who wrote the Dark Phoenix Saga in the comics, is his neighbour, who is mowing the lawn. R Lee Ermey, Hollywood’s definitive army actor cameos as – you guessed it – an army officer. He orders the soldiers to collect their plastic weapons and get ready to fight Magneto.

Next Time:

Bonus: The novelization is a bit more merciful with regards to the body count. Pyro is shown to survive as Bobby carries his unconscious body away with him when Alcatraz is evacuated, and when Jean starts going crazy, Psylocke says “Sod this, I’m outta here” and teleports away, leaving Arclight and the Hedgehog Guy to be disintegrated by Jean’s mind bullets. In the film, Pyro’s fate is left ambiguous after Bobby knocks him out, while Psylocke dies along with the other two members of the Terrible Trio.