Marvel Marathon- Iron Man 2

Let me get the obvious out of the way: I was really excited to see this one. The first one was brilliant and I wanted to see what they were going to do this time. I had plenty of reasons to be hyped, not the least of which being that director Jon Faverau was returning to direct, and that Terrence Howard had been recast and replaced with Don Cheadle, a great actor who gave an amazing performance in Hotel Rwanda. I went on opening night, with huge anticipation, and..... huh. Well now. Let's see.

First off, I know this movie has gotten a very mixed response from fans, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't get why people are mixed towards this movie. It has a ton of problems, and is a letdown in that sense. There's not point in tiptoeing around it: Iron Man 2 is nowhere near as good as Iron Man was. There seems to be a sentiment among fans that not only is this movie disappointing, it downright sucks. I wouldn't say I agree with that. I think this movie is okay. Let me be clear: there is good stuff. Robert Downey Jr. is once again brilliant as Iron Man, and there is a great twist this time. The reactor in his chest is poisoning his blood, slowly killing him. It's interesting to see the fun loving billionaire playboy humbled by his own mortality. We see him trying to cram everything he wants to do with his life in a short period. We also get to see more of his father in this movie. He is presented as a Walt Disney style visionary genius who dreamed of the world of tomorrow. Another strength to this movie is the excitement. The actions is excellent and plentiful, and the set pieces are terrific. The Stark Expo is an amazing visual accomplishment in its own right. The villain, Whiplash is also cool, or at least his portrayal is. Mickey Rourke gives an interesting performance, or at least tries to. We'll get to that. Finally, there is the ongoing friction between Tony and Pepper. I like how the romance develops here, and I look how they take their time in getting them together. Now, for the problems. First off, Don Cheadle REALLY disappointed me as Rhodey. He was boring, boring, boring. I found myself looking at my watch (or cellphone, whatever) every time he is on screen. I was begging to have Terrence Howard back: he is that bad. The movie is also too cartoony throughout. The first one was fun, but took itself seriously. This one took a lot of cues from Transformers. It never does get to that level of stupidity, but it does come close at times. There is also the villain's motivation. He swears revenge after his father dies and attacks Tony. It's implied Tony's father cheated him at one point, but it's never really explained. I don't need everything spelled out for me, but this was way too underdeveloped. I couldn't hate this guy because I didn't get what he was after. The other villain, Justin Hammer is almost played for laughs. Sam Rockwell was clearly having fun with the character, but he did not seem anywhere near as threatening as Obidiah Stane in the first movie. Now for the biggest problem: Marvel's involvement. It was clear this was not Jon Faverau's movie. Marvel had their hands deep into this movie and it prevented Faverau from creating the film he wanted to make. Now let me be clear: Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk both had their share of buildup for The Avengers. It was clear that an Avengers movie was the eventual prize we would get, but both of them were allowed to be their own movies. This movie? Not so much. Black Widow is introduced kind of pointlessly and Nick Fury literally just appears late in the second act. Agent Coulsen is also given a bigger role. I would be okay with this if the connections were less jarring, but the movie does not do a good enough job of blending them in. It feels as if Faverau filmed his movie, and then Marvel went and reshot most of it and edited it in. It's sad, because there was potential. Just ask Mickey Rourke if you need proof that Marvel was wearing the pants on the set:

"When I did Ivan Vanko in Iron Man, I fought... You know, I explained to Justin Theroux, to the writer, and to [Jon] Faverau, that I wanted to bring in some other layers and colours [to the character], not just make this Russian a complete murderous revenging bad guy. And they allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, the people at [Marvel] just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy, so most of the performance ended up on the floor. It's too bad, but it's their loss. If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don't want to be a part of that." 

So that's Iron Man 2, the first disappointment to come out of Marvel. But this movie had a great post credits scene, involving Thor's hammer. That was the movie that fans hoped would get them back on track. Were they successful? Next time....

Marvel Marathon-The Incredible Hulk

Let me start off by saying that out of all the Marvel Studio movies, this is the one I have seen the most. It was one of the first Blu-Ray Discs I ever got, and I watched the hell out of it. Does it hold up well? Yes and no.....

First off, let's get something out of the way: this movie is not as good as Iron Man. But that was a tough act to follow. There are a number of things I like about this, especially the story. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's what I wanted. It's very much the story of the desperate scientist wandering the planet, looking to cure the monster within while being hunted by the military. You do feel for Bruce Banner a fair bit. There is no dumb subplot with his father and there are no fights with poodles (I'm looking at you, Ange Lee) It's Hulk stripped down. Edward Norton is decent as Banner, but not Robert Downey Jr. levels of good. He does the job that's given to him. The rest of the cast is mixed. William Hurt is fine as General Ross,  although he is not at all memorable. As always, Tim Roth is good in this movie and Tim Blake Nelson is fun (C'mon Marvel, let him be the Leader!) But the problem comes with Liv Tyler. Oh boy, is she bad. Bad isn't the word: she is downright atrocious, giving a performance on par with Keanu Reeve's worst day. She does nothing but stare blankly at the camera with her mouth wide open in fake surprise. She doesn't say a word with a hint of emotion. There's one point where she and Norton are in a taxi which is driving way too crazy. She gets out and screams at him. The scene is unintentionally funny because of her terrible delivery. She is completely hollow throughout the entire movie, which she admits, and tries to defend. I heard her say in an interview she tried to play Betty Ross as caught like a deer in the headlights when Banner re-enters her life. Well I'm sorry, if you openly admit you did nothing but stare blankly at the camera for two hours, then you know you sucked and you're just trying to rationalize it. And if you're going by that logic, she gets a scene before Bruce meets up with her, and guess what? She sucks there too! Liv Tyler was never a good actress, but this features her at her worst. She does not care at all about the role or the lines she's saying. She just wanted to be in a summer blockbuster. That's it. Well, that little rant kinda wiped me dry, but I'll do my best. The Hulk looked great. I liked how they trimmed him down a bit so he could move fast. The Abomination was nothing at all what I expected. He was much more of a mutation here, and the name is fitting. He was actually scary to look at. The final battle between Hulk and Abomination was great, as was Hulk's entrance. Banner thinks he has been cured, but sees the Abomination from a helicopter and knows he has to do something (I can talk about the terrible forced goodbye Liv Tyler gave him, but I'll refrain) He jumps out and crashes through the pavement. We know he's not dead, but it's still really cool to see Hulk's arm punch out of the pavement.

This is a really good movie, but not perfect, mainly thanks to Liv Tyler. It's a fun flick, and gives us a good enough Hulk movie. It's too bad that this movie is going to be the only Marvel movie to not get a sequel. It deserves it, but the movie did not do as well at the box office as it could have. Overall a good flick, but not Marvel's best. And Liv Tyler? You suck.

Marvel Marathon- Iron Man

This was the beginning of everything. Originally, Iron Man was seen as its own thing. It would be released, hopefully get a trilogy, and that would be all. The idea of including SHIELD came later in production and was cemented when Samuel L. Jackson was cast as Nick Fury. But enough about that, let's talk about Iron Man on its own.

It's pointless to talk about this movie without bringing up one key thing: Robert Downey Jr. He is one of the biggest reasons this movie became a hit. Why? Simple: casting RDJ as Tony Stark was one of the best casting decisions since Francis Ford Coppola thought Marlon Brando would make a good Don Corleone. Too steep praise? I don't think so. Downey owns this role in every possible way an actor can own a role. He is not giving a performance: he IS Tony Stary. He doesn't play a billionaire playboy who comes to realize the destruction he has caused with his weapons: he IS that character. Every nuance is perfect. Every joke connects, every dramatic moment is spot on. I can perfectly believe this man's transformation. I totally buy him as a guy who wants to save the world and have a great time while he does it. I'm a big film snob who can nitpick things to death, but I have absolutely nothing negative to say about this performance. He is perfect. Oh yeah.... this isn't just Robert Downey Jr. being awesome for two hours? There is a movie here? Well yes, and it's a damn good one. The plot moves along very well. Tony Stark goes on a huge journey throughout this movie and the plot guides him well. We buy his personal change. He saw terrible stuff in the Middle East, and saw a man who saved his life die in front of him. I can see why he would want to stop making weapons and step up to put a stop to what he caused. On the other end of the spectrum, the movie has a great villain. Obidiah Stane basically helped raise Tony and nurtured him after his father died. He would never expect him to become a traitor which just makes the final battle more emotional. He is fighting someone he has come to love. Jeff Bridges is very good as Stane. He can play a warm and kind hearted man one moment and then reveal his true colours as a bloodthirsty maniac the next minute. In case you haven't noticed, we already have a very good movie here. The story is good, and the actors are brilliant. But I'm not done. There is also a very fitting love story here that is different from other love stories because it is implied, not stated. There is tension between the two and some flirtation, but an actual love story does come until the sequel. It works because of the natural onscreen chemistry between Downey and Gwyneth Paltrow, who is also very good here. Visually, the movie is spectacular. Iron Man's armours look great. They are shiny and metallic, looking very photorealistic even if they are largely just CGI. There is a satisfying amount of time spent with him in the suit and one very good fight involving an exploded tank. If I had one negative thing to say about this movie, it would be Terrence Howard as James "Rhodey" Rhodes. He's kind of bland and speaks in a very high pitched tone that got on my nerves after a while. I didn't believe him as the tough solider who acts as Tony's moral compass. But that doesn't ruin the movie. It's an excellent film that gets better every time you see it. This movie served as an excellent beginning to a franchise unlike any other.

Announcing My Marvel Marathon

I am here to announce the beginning of my Marvel Marathon, a nice little run where I will write a little review every single Marvel Studios movie up until The Avengers. I'm only going to review the movies Marvel has made by themselves, meaning Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Punisher, Daredevil are off limits (I do want to review Howard The Duck sometime....) I feel these are in a class all in their own. For example, Spider-Man was not made by Marvel, it was made by Sony in association with Marvel. Iron Man was made by Marvel and distributed by Paramount. I will probably review those "other" movies at some point, but for now I'm just going to look at the true Marvel movies.

Now for a little history lesson. Marvel Studios has technically been around since the 1990's, but they got beaten through the dust for a while. They really only co-produced movies like Spider-Man and X-Men, while the studios took over the actual creative duties. The result was a mixed bag. The first Spider-Man movie was not perfect, and neither was the first X-Men. But both were still good movies. Spider-Man 2 remains one of my favourite comic book movies. I think it's a shame how it was treated. Everyone loved this movie when it came out. Then Spider-Man 3 came out, and suddenly everyone hates the Sam Raimi movies, something I heard all the time when the reboot was coming out. I also think X-Men 2 is a good movie, but I do find it a bit overrated. Outside of that, the movies kind of sucked. Ang Lee's Hulk was a disaster. It went off on tangents, it was boring and had a terrible villain that was basically an insult to the Hulk's comic book origins, something I read religiously as a kid. I hate the Fantastic Four movies, but I won't say any more: that's another review. After the hatred spawned from the crap-tastic Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3, Marvel decided to make a change. Marvel Studios decided they were going to make their own movies, and they would be distributed by Paramount. They were going to feature characters from the Avengers in their own films and finally tie together into an Avengers movie. Many doubted it would happen, simply because such an idea was crazy. Crossover movies are few and far between. How would they get all of the actors back together? Well, it did happen. I've already said I love The Avengers, but the same is not necessarily true for all of the movies. I'm going to review them all in the next few days, so stay tuned.                    

The Walking Dead

This show and I have a love-hate relationship. The first season was overall really good. It was spearheaded by the great Frank Darabont, the man who brought us The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. The storytelling was strong, the acting was good, and it was an overall good show. So make a blog post off of a show I clearly have little to say? Well, season 2 ain't so good. And we're going to take a look. Please note: SPOILERS!

First off, there is some behind the scenes stuff to take care of. Immediately following the season finale, Darabont insisted on firing the entire writing staff. Why? No idea. The staff created six episodes of quality television. Frank Darabont is not known for his modesty, but even this was a weird play from left field. Even now, no explanation was given as to why this happened, but it was a factor working against the quality of season 2. Next up was a huge shock: the firing of Frank Darabont. It was originally thought Darabont had quit the show, but it was revealed that AMC had fired him. The budget was cut as well, even though this season was going to have 12 episodes instead of 6. Then it was reported that a cast member had asked to be written out of the show (the events of the season do not to contradict that report) Needless to say the odds were against this show to follow up with a good second season. But, with the highly competent Glen Mazzara hired to replace Darabont, there was hope. How did the show work?

To be honest, the season is largely very boring. But wait! How could a show about zombies possibly be boring? Even if the story is good, at least there will be some good zombie action, right? Well no. There were zombies, but they were often few and far between. Let me go on record and say no of this criticism applies to the last two episodes of season 2. They were great and restored my faith in the series. The rest of the season suffered from deadly slow pacing. In the first episode, Sofia, a little girl runs away from the group. Six episodes later, she is found (spoilers) as a zombie. The problem was that the search for her was so tedious and borderline non existent. Only one character really looked for her. A character which fell off a cliff looking for her and suffered hallucinations, only to come back to camp  later. What was the point of that episode? Good question. The next problem was the setting. The first season showed the group living somewhat of a nomadic existence. They went from camp to camp, and even went to the CDC building. This season puts them on a farm where zombies apparently don't like to go. I was bored of this farm three episodes in. Little did I know, I had thirteen more episodes to endure. I kept waiting for them to leave, and they refused. It was here you can see the behind the scenes trouble. There was just no direction and there was a clear emphasis on saving pennies rather than making good television with what they had. My TV broadcasting professor even used season 2 of The Walking Dead as an example of a TV show "doing it on the cheap." Finally, the characters. They get real annoying this time, especially Lori. The whole series featured a love triangle between Rick, Lori and Shane. In one episode, Lori tells Rick it may be best to kill Shane, because he poses a threat. And Rick does that, and tells Lori. And, in my one criticism of the season finale, Lori hits Rick and starts crying.

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...Did they actually READ that part before they filmed it? He does exactly what she says and she hates him for it. Lori is the worst character this season. Here is a scenario. Hershel takes off from the farm and Rick goes after him. Lori starts to worry and drives in pursuit of him. She hits a zombie, and her car flips 360 degrees in the air and crashes. Rick knows what's he doing. And if he was gone a while, he was probably dead. Looking for him will not bring him back and will only put you in danger. Oh, and drivers in cars which flip like that generally die. Just sayin'. Carl is also annoying. They could have picked a competent child actor but noooooo. They picked a kid who seems like Keanu Reeves' less talented baby brother. Hershel gets on my nerves, as does his family. At the very least, they could have had zombies, but as I said before, they were few and far between. Sometimes they were cool and threatening, but other times they were just filler. A zombies shows up, kill it, move on. There was no drama, and no stakes at all. But as I said, the last two episodes restored my faith, that above flaw aside. Season 3 premieres next month, and I will review every episode of it, warts and all. It will be fun, it will be painful. Let's just hope this season continues the tempo from the last two episodes. Don't let me down Glen Mazzara.

The Summer In Review-UPDATE

The Amazing Spider-Man

All right, I forgot this one. Not surprised, it is kind of forgettable. Don't get me wrong, I liked a lot of it. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were great, as was Rhys Ifan. The plot worked well and I thought it was a good alternate look at Spidey. But this movie was lazy. We never find out what Peter's father was working on (that good ol' "save it for the sequel" pet peeve again), the Lizard, one of my favourite villains was weak with bad CGI. The 3D, which was supposed great was weak, and they killed George Stacey too early in the series. They also forgot to include Spider-Man's quips. He didn't make jokes in the last series, he was supposed to here, and they didn't really do that, except for that one scene. Uncle Ben's death scene was bad. It happened too quickly and didn't really affect me emotionally. And the crane scene sucked. Overall a moderately good reboot, but left a LOT to be desired. 2.5 Stars

Planet Of The Apes (2001)

I was channel surfing this morning and noticed this turd was showing on FX. There's something about this awful movie that intrigues me, probably the fact that Tim Burton could direct something this laughably bad. I don't know why but whenever this movie is on TV, I just HAVE to watch it. The original movie, while cheesy still carried some weight. It was a social commentary first, and an action movie second. This movie is nothing  but a summer blockbuster, and a weak one at that. 

The movie stars Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg as Captain Leo Davidson,  an astronaut who crash lands his small pod on said Planet of the Apes after going through a wormhole in space. He sees that humans are dominated by apes on this planet, lead by a chimpanzee named General Thade (Tim Roth) Now that's all well and good, but the biggest problem is the apes themselves. They are absolute morons, and Tim Burton has them act very weird. The prosthetic makeup is excellent, but the actors are completely over the top to the point where it's laughable. They hoot and holler, bounce around, quip about absolutely nothing and overall make idiots of themselves. The worst part is that a lot of the actors playing the apes are capable of better. I'm a huge fan of Tim Roth, and truth be told he's the only one who escapes with some dignity. The rest, not so much. Michael Clarke Duncan, Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Giamatti do not demonstrate much of anything. Marky Mark really gives no effort. I used to be critical of him, but I've come to recognize that he can act when given the right script. In the movie, he realizes that his crew went through the wormhole  after him, but after crash landing the apes on board their ship revolted, which began their conquest of the planet. Through this whole explanation, Marky Mark shows no emotion. He just wears a blank Keanu Reeves style face the whole time before starting the human rebellion. Estelle Harris is his love interest. This was her first movie and she sucks in it, and sucks hard. She never had a career in acting: probably for the best. Oh, and that kid was so, so terrible. The story is also dumb.The ending is pretty infamous in the worst way. It comes out of nowhere, and makes no sense at all. It was used to set up a sequel, which is a pet peeve of mine. I understand wanting to set up a sequel, but that should not be how you end your movie. Create a satisfying, sensical conclusion to your story, and hint at future trouble. The Hunger Games did it right. Peeta and Katniss are together, and both win the Games. They go home, but there is a hint of trouble from President Snow. Done. The story is over, but there is a setup for more material. This movie doesn't have that. A sequel was never made, so we have no clue what that ending meant. Finally this movie was straight up boring. The stakes didn't work because you don't care about the characters. The direction is shoddy with random scenes just popping up and the apes making random noises and doing random things because Burton thought it was funny. Well, there is nothing funny about this mess. It's a lame and uninspired remake which isn't even good for a few thrills. Thankfully, we have 2011's excellent Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, which proved this franchise still has fire. I took the CGI apes in that movie much more seriously than the actors playing the apes here because the filmmakers took it seriously. They didn't try to be cheesy, they told a serious dramatic story which worked very well. I have no more to say. This movie is a black stain on Tim Burton's career, but the movie is oddly watchable. It must be seen to be believed. The corniness and cheese are heaped on, making a movie that's so bad it's awesome. If you want to see it, prepare to laugh. It's a very funny movie, but for all the wrong reasons. Take it away Charlton Heston: