Movie review rant 2019

Hate to be Devil's advocate, but I'm kind of glad, because Disney's getting utterly humiliated. Homecoming was a bit bland IMO.

 

Homecoming was great, I wasn't as sold on Far From Home but it was great having a comic accurate Peter Parker interacting with other heroes. If he goes back to Sony then more crossovers, wich would suck because if they fold Deadpool in (as rumoured) then they could rival Thor & Hulk in Ragnarok!

 

Yeah, thought the film was very good. The illusion scene had my skin crawling.

Still, look on the bright side. At least Sony's Marvelverse will get to use Peter.

 

That's the bright side?

 

The why and how are probably something to do with a) money or b) an old man who doesn't know when to call it a day... See the following for another example.


If you mean plot-wise then not a clue?

 

It's definitely not. Sony has always been vocal about wanting to either force Venom into the MCU or pull Tom Holland and force him into their Venomverse (that's right, the Sony universe isn't even named after Spiderman). Sony promised that if FFH made over $1Billion they'd keep Spiderman in the MCU, and then when it made over that they pulled him anyway. Of course, there's Disney asking for more money from the deal to consider and I've seen a lot of people pointing the finger at Disney over this but I really don't think that's fair. The MCU Spiderman films are some of the highest grossing movies Sony's ever had, yet Disney has only been allowed 5% of the profits despite being the ones who actually make the movie. Sony fronts the cash, Disney actually does everything else. Disney has suggested a more fair deal where they split the production cost 50/50 and then split the profits 50/50. There has even been word that Disney were open to letting Venom join the MCU like Sony wanted. This, of course, means slightly less money for Sony despite them doing virtually none of the work, so they walked and have openly blamed Disney ever since (initially they blamed Kevin Feige for being "too busy" to produce the movies before the real story came out).

I think people need to be aware of what this means for the Spiderman franchise. Sony is not rebooting Spiderman again, their plan is to just keep making Tom Holland Spiderman movies but simply pretend nothing from the MCU movies ever happened. All of the character's development is wiped, his history wiped, his motivations wiped, and even some of his characters wiped. Sony plans to give us Tom Holland Spiderman movies without any reference to the MCU or Tony Stark/The Avengers or the origin of his suit (he'll likely just randomly have a new one) or even the past events. Villains like Mysterio and the Vulture can only return in a limited fashion because the origins are so tied up in the MCU. Villains that were being set up like Prowler and the Scorpion will probably have to return under entirely different circumstances and maybe different actors-- if they even return at all. The cliffhanger that Far From Home ended on literally cannot be addressed because it's from an MCU movie, they have to pretend it just didn't happen which will make zero sense. Additionally, characters like Happy and MJ (this version of her anyway) will have to just disappear with zero explanation. After an entire movie setting up Parker and MJ's relationship, she'll just be gone without a word moving forward. And all of this is on top of this Spiderman being shoehorned into Sony's lackluster Venom franchise.

I think it's pretty clear that Sony thinks people will still flock to their movies as long as Tom Holland is the face of Spiderman as it'll trick most people into thinking he's still in the MCU. It's disingenuous if you ask me. People accuse Disney of just being greedy and ruining everything but honestly, I couldn't disagree more here. I really don't know if I even want to financially support these new Venomverse movies.

~Thylo

 

That's even worse!

~Thylo

 

Funny enough: the more Terminator movies are made, the better T3 starts to look (which, unlike the first two Terminator films, does not mean that it's a great movie). A bit like how SW: Episode 1 - 3 are not the mess which is SW: The Last Jedi...

 

I've spent a decent portion of my day arguing with people who insist that ships need to constantly use fuel or else they'll grind to a halt and sink... IN SPACE

~Thylo

 

Totally agree, it is embarrassing watching Sly Stallone try to relive the eighties and it really takes the shine off all the good he did back in the day. Just retire gracefully, we won't hold it against you.

Should be Last Blood (For The Time Being)

Nope, that would be the screenwriters...

 

I've just watched Dark Phoenix and it was pretty underwhelming to be honest. I wasn't expecting much from the movie and it didn't disappoint, it was really bland. If Endgame was a freshly made BLT on a toasted baguette , and even if Shazam! was a ham and cheese toastie then Dark Phoenix would be a piece of lightly buttered toast.

The film does have a few good action pieces but it's all tied up in so much exposition that you find yourself wondering whether it's actually worth the effort. The actress who plays Jean Grey is really not my cup of tea, I found her quite wooden in parts, but unfortunately she gets the most screen time by a long shot. Whilst she gets the limelight Quicksilver gets about 10 minutes onscreen, and you don't even see Magneto (Michael Fassbender gives the best performance by far.) until 45 minutes in... But Nightcrawler does get a chance to shine in the finale, it's a genuine shame we won't get more of this portrayal of the character.

Overall I enjoyed the film more than I expected, but since I really expected to hate it then that's faint praise indeed. I'm quite glad that, after seeing this, Fox will no longer be in charge of the franchise. And it also means Fassbender can join the MCU as Doctor Doom! (Well I can hope! ) An unfortunate 4 out of 10. I prefer it to X-Men: The Last Stand but not by much.

 

So were just going to ignore the new Star Wars trailer, huh?



I will admit, I am slowly becoming more and more cautiously optimistic for this film after the most recent trailer. I actually enjoyed TFA more than most - even if it feels a bit too much like A New Hope with a fresh coat of paint - but there is no denying that TLJ was a complete mess for many, many reasons.

• The main villain was killed without getting any explanation on what or who he is or why he wants to do his villain stuff.
• The old characters barely got any screen time and when they did they were practically useless
• The entire casino subplot was really just a whole bunch of nothing, and the new character Rose adds nothing positive to the movie besides filler and ruining what could have been a fantastic scene where Fin sacrifices himself.
• Rey continues to not develop her character in the slightest and is somehow learning how to use the force without doing anything special.
• Luke is the exact opposite of his character in the original trilogy and even Mark Hamill himself disliked the he was potrayed in this film.

So why am I so cautiously optimistic about Rise of Skywalker? Well, JJ didn't make the Force Awakens perfect, but it was a significantly better film than its sequel. Now that JJ is back in control I really am hoping this movie will be good. The trailers are already giving me hope, as 3PO, R2, Chewbacca and Lando all seem to actually go on the main adventure this time around, Rose is nowhere to be seen and visuals actually look really great. I appreciate how the majority of the movie is clearly being kept a secret in the same way Endgame was. Will this be as great as Endgame? Incredibly unlikely, but surely this has to be better than TLJ right?

...

right?

 

Yeah but he wasn't the main villain in the original trilogy, Darth Vader was. The Emperor was never much more than "the guy in charge" and yeah he didn't do much and we knew very little about him-- although the scenes we do get with him are very impactful. Meanwhile, TFA and TLJ both build up Snoke to be the ultimate Force-user, the big baddie, and villain to end all villains... then he just dies almost comically completely out of left field. Additionally, The Emperor (and Vader) both die at the end of the last movie in their trilogy, whereas Snoke is abruptly killed off early in the third act of the middle movie in his trilogy leaving ROS without a main villain. Kylo has not been developed enough to count and he's been portrayed as a conflicted, possibly redeemable antihero and Hux was made into a complete joke in TLJ. Now they've had to resurrect the rotting corpse of The Emperor himself just to add some villainy to the film. There are major differences between why people cared about Snoke's backstory vs The Emperor's, and why killing the former is a bigger deal than the latter.

As for the trailer itself, aside from the shameless attempted manipulation of our nostalgia to try and pump us up for this movie while also lumping in the disasters of the sequel trilogy thus far with what came before, it looks completely bonkers. Luke will be back to some capacity, The Emperor will be back to some capacity, Darth Vader will be back to some capacity, the Death Star will be back to some capacity, Kylo's helmet will be back, another super weapon will be added, Chewie and R2-D2 are still relegated to background non-characters, more random but utterly pointless characters and creatures are being added to try and boost flopping toy sales, we're getting another pointless lightsaber duel (Rey has beaten Kylo twice now in two movies sp what are the stakes to this one?), we're going to get another "Rey might not be perfect" fake out, and the First Order continues to randomly grow exponentially. I mean, for an outersystem radical group that supposedly was just barely hanging on at the start of TFA, their numbers just keep growing and growing in each new movie. Fun fact, the size of TFO in TLJ is between 2-3 million personnel. From what we know about ROS, they have over 4 million personnel now. Looks like they still haven't had any kickback for destroying the capital of the Republic even though Lucasfilm themselves confirmed the Republic had more fleets stationed elsewhere across the Galaxy that I guess just decided to take the war off.

~Thylo

 

What does everyone else make of 'Battle at Big Rock' (an official Jurassic World short film)?