The MARVELous Movie Blog

Tuesday, 5 August 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy Spoiler-Free Review

Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy, the newest entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has just been released in cinemas and has proven to be a critical and commercial hit. As the first Marvel film to be released since this blog began, I thought I should break from the established pattern and take a quick look at this film. However, I appreciate that this is a brand new film, and some readers may not have had the chance to see it yet. With that in mind, this will be a quick and spoiler-free review.

I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot. I am Groot.

I am Groot? I am Groot! I… am…. GROOT!

I hope you appreciate my compassion in protecting you from spoilers. As a parting gift, here is a fanfiction detailing an encounter between Groot and Hodor from Game of Thrones. I should warn that due to scenes of a sexual nature, it is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. I read it and had to stop half way through, though that was because I laughed so hard that I couldn’t see anything through my tears.

More importantly, there will be a real Guardians of the Galaxy review later on, though it probably won’t be for a while.

Wednesday, 30 July 2014

The Top 10 So Far

The Top 10 So Far

Having now covered ten films, I decided that this would be a good time rank the films in order, with a little quote from the review to summarise. Think of this as a quick recap.

10. Blade Trinity

“Blade Trinity is a metaphorical wooden stake through the heart of what used to be an entertaining little series.”

Yay or Nay? Nay!

9. Hulk

“At times, it almost feels like Hulk is ashamed to be based on a comic about a big green rage monster.”

Yay or Nay? Nay!

8. Daredevil

“Ultimately, Daredevil is a disappointing film that is made more watchable whenever the focus of a particular scene is Kingpin or Bullseye.”

Yay or Nay? Nay, unless you can get hold of the Director’s Cut. In that case, yay.

7. The Punisher

“This film does a better job of sticking to the darker tone than Daredevil did, due to the toning down of the sillier elements, and reining in suspension of disbelief.”

Yay or Nay? Nay if you dislike action films, otherwise yay.

6. Spider-Man

“The film doesn’t hold up quite as well as it used to, because the story beats have become so familiar from so many other films taking notes. That doesn’t mean the film is bad though. It’s still worth watching.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

5. Blade

“Blade is a highly stylish, though occasionally dated, action film that doesn’t let a lack of substance get in the way of being a fun time to watch.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

4. X-Men

“While there are no shortage of cool effects and fight scenes, the secret to X Men’s success is the cast of characters. They’re easy to like, even the villains, and they show us that there is more to them than just their powers.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

3. Blade II

“Blade II is better than the original. It’s faster paced in both action and storyline, the fight scenes are more exciting to watch and the villains pose more of a threat this time. This one is recommended for those with a strong stomach.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

2. X-Men 2

“X-Men 2 manages to improve on the first film by exploring issues of tolerance and peace in greater depth, as well as improving on the already good action scenes from the first film.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

Number 1. Spider-Man 2

“Spider-Man 2 is like Spider-Man 1, but bigger and better. The stakes are higher, the conflict is more personal for both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and the villain is stronger. This improves on the original in every way.”

Yay or Nay? Yay!

I will be doing another list like this after 20 films. Will Spider-Man 2 still be on top then? Where will the newcomers fit on the list? We’ll find out when the time comes.

Blade Trinity (2004)

Blade Trinity (2004)

Release Date: December 8, 2004

To answer the question posed at the end of the last entry, no. The Daywalker cannot go 3 for 3, as Blade Trinity is a disappointing step down from the first two films.

This time around, a group of vampires led by the dastardly Danica Talos have revived Dracula, who celebrates by making the screen flicker and giving the viewer a seizure. Dracula’s true form is, to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, “One ugly motherfucker!” so he takes a human disguise and changes his name to Drake. Drakeula, if you will.

Blade is doing the same thing he always does, killing vampires, but Whistler is concerned that Blade is getting reckless and sloppy. He’s proven right when the FBI trick Blade with a fake vampire and follow him back to his hideout. Whistler is shot in the chaos, and he decides they’ll never take him alive, so he presses the self-destruct button and blows up the hideout. Blade doesn’t take the opportunity to escape and instead comes quietly. Quick assurance, Whistler died in Blade 1, but came back in Blade 2. That doesn’t happen this time. He really is dead now. The reason why will become apparent soon.

The FBI handlers interviewing Blade are all familiars working for Drakeula and Talos who plan on handing Blade over to them, but their plans are put on hold when Blade is rescued by Whistler’s daughter Abigail and her annoying friend Hannibal King. They are members of the Nightstalkers, a younger and sexier group of vampire hunters here to replace the distinctly old and unsexy Whistler. Blade is miffed at being shoved out of the limelight in his own movie, but he reluctantly works with them anyway, secretly planning to sue their asses later. Vampires and FBI goons give chase, but the former give up when resident big tough vampire, WWE wrestler Triple H, re-enacts the scene from Terminator 2 where the T-1000 runs after a speeding car and gets an arrow to the eye for it (must… resist… Skyrim joke…), while the FBI give up after Abigail tells them she’s a Katniss cosplayer; an impressive feat, given the Hunger Games didn’t exist yet when this film came out.

The Nightstalkers announce that they have created a virus that can kill vampires, but the virus needs Dracula’s blood for maximum effectiveness. To draw him out, Blade and Abigail go to a vampire blood farm and turn off the machines keeping the victims asleep. They don’t stick around to open the bags though, so I don’t really want to imagine the scene once the hundreds of people wake up to find themselves slowly suffocating in giant plastic bags. The plan has the desired effect, and for his move, Drakeula goes to the Nightstalker hideout and kills everyone there except Hannibal King and a little girl who is kept around for the purposes of being adorable, who are taken hostage.

Drakeula, Talos and Triple H take turns beating up Hannibal King in what is the most enjoyable scene in the movie, but unfortunately all good things must come to an end, as Blade and Abigail arrive to rescue King, and fight the vampires. Blade fights a horde of mooks before fighting Drakeula, leaving Abigail to deal with the rest of the nameless horde. For his part, King gets to fight vampire dogs.

Bender enjoys laughing at mutated dogs and will continue to do so whenever they appear.

He then gets to fight Triple H and eventually defeat him, but Talos attacks him while he’s distracted. Abigail and Blade work together to inject Drakeula with the virus, which goes on to kill every vampire in the world, saving King’s bacon since Talos succumbs to the virus before she can finish him off. Drakeula takes his defeat surprisingly well, and disguises himself as Blade to get the FBI off his back. Of course, he then drops the disguise upon reaching the autopsy table, which makes the disguise rather pointless and implies Drakeula is not actually a vampire, but a troll.

The key problem with this film is that most of the characters are weak. Talos is a terrible villain. The only thing she does after reviving Drakeula is get angry and shout a bit after being thwarted. While doing this, she doesn’t come off as intimidating or frightening the way some people can when they lose their temper, she comes across as a three year old throwing a temper tantrum because they’re not allowed ice cream. Sidelining her in favour of Drakeula is a sensible decision, but he isn’t that much better himself. Dracula is a blatantly obvious opponent for a vampire hunter to fight, and this portrayal isn’t unique or interesting enough to make up for that. He comes off as a repeat of Deacon Frost from the first film, with elements of Novak from the second film, but lesser than both of them.

The protagonists are just as bad. Blade sleepwalks through the film. The unprofessional on-set antics of Wesley Snipes during the film’s production (which are well documented elsewhere, so I won’t go into that in depth) suggest he didn’t want to be there, and it shows in his quarter-assed performance. Blade’s reluctance to work with the Nightstalkers is mean-spirited, even taking Whistler’s recent death into account. At least he had a good reason to be reluctant to work with the Blood Pack in the second film. He was smart enough to see that they were going to betray him the first chance they got. Blade not working with the Nightstalkers comes off as him being a prick for no reason. Whistler is equally bored for the brief amount of screen time he has, which causes his death scene to lack emotion, even though they managed it in the first film well enough. Having this second death be an explosive set-piece may have also had something to do with that. Hannibal King is an obnoxious tool and extremely annoying. Scud in the second film was obnoxious, but at least it was funny then because Whistler disliked him as much as the audience did. Not so this time. When the character’s most enjoyable scene involves him being beaten up, you done goofed. Thank goodness for small mercies then, as Abigail is at least tolerable. She doesn’t steal the show or particularly stick out, but she is definitely the least worst character here.

The plot could have done with another draft to streamline things, as several elements are introduced, only to never come up again or not be used to their full potential. For example, the vampire virus could possibly kill Blade since he’s half vampire himself, but nothing happens to him over it. He doesn’t become even slightly ill when it is activated, and he doesn’t address the possibility of his death when the point is first brought up. Drakeula is immune to sunlight because of reasons, and Talos wants his help to make all vampires immune. This never comes up again after the initial mention. Talos has vampire teeth in her vagina, if a passing mention is anything to go by. Fortunately, someone out there decided a vagina with teeth was too good an idea to waste, and made their own film about it.

The psychologist familiar character is wasted when Drakeula kills him for a disguise. He could have been used to turn the populace against Blade, as well as keeping them in the dark about the existence of vampires, which could have helped the vampires feed and advance their agenda in secret. A possible angle of Drakeula’s disgust at vampire merchandise, also goes nowhere, which is disappointing as there could be something to the idea of seeing a traditional vampire’s reaction to something like Twilight. The scene doesn’t seem to be played for laughs either, like when Disney’s Hercules did it.

Speaking of laughs, there aren’t any. Unfortunately, that isn’t for lack of trying, as there are plenty of inane jokes throughout, many of which are courtesy of Hannibal King. Not only are these jokes not funny, they are actively unfunny, testing one’s patience with every punchline. Any humour came from unfortunate lines in the script having reality subtext applied to them, and are therefore entirely unintentional. For example, Blade complaining about being replaced by Abigail becomes funny as Blade was demoted to extra thanks to Wesley Snipes’ behaviour, with Abigail and King’s roles being increased to compensate. This film isn’t as gruesome as the first two, but there’s a significant increase in profanity to make up for that. King and Talos in particular use the word Fuck every other sentence, which doesn’t make them look any better. The word loses all meaning thanks to their abuse of it and becomes just another means of annoyance.

Blade Trinity is a metaphorical wooden stake through the heart of what used to be an entertaining little series, what the Resident Evil movies could be if they weren’t terrible. The only thing Wesley Snipes being sent to prison for tax evasion did was make the death official.

Next Time: A Fox executive’s dream comes true.

Bonus: The ending used in the film was one of three planned endings. The director’s cut ending had Blade give up fighting his nature and go full vampire, while Drakeula escaped. The novelization ending had Blade start fighting werewolves since there no vampires left. This ending was scrapped from the film because the filmmakers feared that audiences would see it as a ripoff of rival movie franchise, Underworld, which has vampires dressed in black leather fighting werewolves.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Release Date: June 30, 2004

Spider-Man was the first of the films I’ve looked at for this to have been eagerly anticipated prior to release. When the first film proved to be a success, expectations were even higher for the second film. In this regard, it’s a good thing that the film turned out so well.

Two years have passed since the events of the first film, and to put it bluntly, things aren’t going well for Peter Parker. Being Spider-Man is putting pressure on his relationships with his friends, his grades are slipping, he’s behind on the rent and Aunt May’s house is being repossessed by the bank. Harry Osborne hates Spider-Man and blames him for the death of his father, which strains his relationship with Peter, who takes pictures of Spider-Man for a living. However, they’re still close enough pals for Harry to let Peter accompany him to an Oscorp financed experiment performed by Peter’s hero, Doctor Otto Octavius. Mary Jane on the other hand, has finally had enough of Peter’s unreliability when he doesn’t come to see her in a play she’s performing in, and gives up on him, instead dating the astronaut John Jameson. Peter wanted to go to the play, but stopping on the way to do Spider-Man things resulted in him arriving late to the theatre, and the usher not letting him in. That’s right, out of all the crooks, criminals and supervillains in New York, Spider-Man is defeated by an usher. He should put that on a business card.

Octavius’ experiment goes disastrously wrong when the machine he’s working on overloads, and the building in which the experiment is being performed starts being destroyed, with Octavius’ wife being killed when the windows break. Spider-Man is able to stop the machine, but Octavius is electrocuted in the process, bonding the harness of four robotic arms he was wearing at the time to his spine, and destroying his mind, making him into the sociopathic Dr Octopus. Doc Ock hides in an abandoned warehouse in the docks where he resolves to redo his experiment bigger and better. Unfortunately, making the experiment bigger and better runs the risk of destroying New York, but who cares? Ock doesn’t, because he’s got a more immediate concern.

Doc Ock robs a bank to fund his experiment. Spider-Man challenges him to a money fight, but Ock doesn’t want to play and leaves with several bags of cash. A disappointed Peter visits the planetarium to take pictures for the Daily Bugle, but it’s a very bad night for him, as Mary Jane gives him an earful, he is attacked by a drunk Harry and John announces that he and Mary Jane are getting married. The stress Peter is feeling from his recent failures causes him to lose his powers, which proves to be the last straw. He is Spider-Man no more.

Without the pressures of being Spider-Man, Peter is much happier. His grades improve, he can concentrate on his work again, and he is able to patch things up with Mary Jane, though she refuses to dump John and get back together with Peter, since there’s a little thing called an engagement getting in the way of that. However, Peter doesn’t feel quite right about not helping people, and eventually he breaks his new promise to rescue a child from a burning building. With some words of encouragement from Aunt May, who may or may not know that Peter is Spider-Man, Peter decides to come out of retirement. Meanwhile, the next thing to tick off Doc Ock’s shopping list is tritium, which he gets the same way he did last time – asking Harry Osborne for it. Harry agrees to provide the tritium on the condition that Ock brings him Spider-Man alive. Ock goes after Peter and kidnaps Mary Jane, with the determination to rescue her restoring Peter’s spider powers. The two battle on a train, but the cunning villain plays dirty by attacking the train’s mechanisms, watching Spider-Man exhaust himself stopping the runaway train, then coming back to finish him off when he’s in no shape to fight back.

Doc Ock hands Spider-Man over to Harry and gets his promised tritium, before leaving to perform his experiment. Harry decides to unmask Spider-Man before killing him, and is horrified to find that it’s Peter Parker under the mask. Peter is able to persuade Harry to let him go by telling Harry that Mary Jane is in danger and that he needs to go to Doc Ock’s lair to rescue her. After another battle, Peter knocks some sense back into Doc Ock and convinces him to stop his experiment as it is going haywire and threatening to destroy New York. Octavius tells Peter that the only way to stop the experiment at this point is to drag it underwater, and sacrifices himself in order to do that. Mary Jane ditches poor John at the altar in order to be with Peter, leaving John to cry himself to sleep and maybe become a werewolf or something. Meanwhile, Harry finds his father’s stockpile of Green Goblin weaponry, setting things up nicely for the next film…

A surprising thing about the film is how funny it is. There is quite a bit of humour, mainly from JJJ, though there are other funny scenes too, such as Doc Ock ruining a lovely moment where the train passengers defend Spidey by pushing them aside, and the awkward scene in which Spider-Man takes the lift.

Then came the fart...

You may recall from the entry for the first Spider-Man film that I was torn on Green Goblin as an antagonist. Specifically, I liked the Norman Osborne half, but was less pleased with the Green Goblin half. Dr Octopus is a big improvement in that regard. By making him into Peter’s idol, the film gives him a personal connection to Peter like Norman Osborne had, which is something Octavius did not have when he was first introduced in the comics. The Dr Octopus half of the character is a physically imposing foe with a visually appealing design, whose traits pose more of a threat to Spidey. Thanks to the tentacles, Ock is also better able to keep up with Spidey than the Green Goblin was, since the tentacles can be used to climb around, which the Goblin couldn’t do, leaving him depending on his glider to move around. Having four big metal arms sticking out of your back is also a valuable asset in battle when aiming to lay the pain on an opponent. His design for the film is also a better fit than the Green Goblin’s was, with the tentacles being particularly impressive looking.

Doc Ock in the film...

And the comic appearance for comparison's sake.

The supporting cast is still as good as ever. Aunt May provides the emotional core of the film in how she copes with living alone since Uncle Ben died last time, and Peter has since moved out. Some of her scenes are actually quite upsetting to watch, particularly the one where she snaps at Peter to accept money from her, even though she needs the money as badly as Peter does. On a lighter note, J Jonah Jameson gets a lot more screen time in this film than he did in the first one, and he still steals every scene he’s in. A scene of him laughing from this film even went viral. His son John is also the most pleasant romantic rival in any film ever, acting like a smug prick to Peter a grand total of zero times. In fact, he may have been a little too nice, because I felt bad for him when Mary Jane left him on the altar. He didn’t deserve that, poor guy.

The action scenes have also improved this time, because Doc Ock is almost as agile as Spidey, which allows him to keep up. The tentacles allow him to climb about the rooftops like Spider-Man, which opens up the battleground instead of limiting it to somewhere that the Green Goblin can stand vertically upright. The train sequence in particular deserves praise, as it is thrilling to watch, thanks to Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus being able to fight on the roof and along the walls and every which way.

Spider-Man 2 is like Spider-Man 1, but bigger and better. The stakes are higher, the conflict is more personal for both Peter Parker and Spider-Man, and the villain is stronger. This improves on the original in every way.

Next Time: Can the Daywalker go three for three?

Bonus: Doctor Octopus was originally intended to appear in the first film alongside the Green Goblin, but it was decided that he should be held back for the sequel, because having to stuff in three origin stories would draw attention away from the main conflict. Good call film. You get the...

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee appears as a man who drags someone out of the way of some falling rubble during one of Spider-Man and Doc Ock’s fights. Originally, he was going to play the man who says "Spider-Man stole that guy's pizza!" The Usher who defeated Spider-Man is played by frequent Sam Raimi collaborator and B-Movie icon, Bruce Campbell, who also narrated the tie-in game.