Feb 03
AndrewMovies Blockbusters, Films, Movies, Previews, Summer Blockbusters
Question: If you had to pick a movie right now to be the blockbuster of the summer, would it be Star Trek or G.I. Joe?
Answer: What, we are already giving up on Harry Potter and the Half-Finished Film?
So, here is the short list films that I would wager have the potential for being crowned the champ:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Trek
Angels and Demons
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May 1)
Leading off the summer, we can only hope that this is a better representation of the X-Men franchise than The Last Stand. It’s directed by Gavin Hood, a relative unknown with few films to his credit. But it stars Hugh Jackman, who can carry a film without the claws, and includes an assortment of mutants from the Marvel Universe.
Liev Schreiber takes a run at a more cerebral version of Sabertooth, there’s Gambit, the Blob, and Deadpool to round out the new characters. It looks stunning. And Wolverine certainly came out of the franchise as the most popular of the X-characters (in no small part to Jackman). All signs of a dominant summer run.
Star Trek (May 8 )
The past was the only way to go with the franchise, having bottomed out with Enterprise series and the dreadful installment Nemesis. So back to the future we go, with a hot cast and slick production, and fanbase rapid for some new blood. This one is the pick of the summer. They will come in droves to see this film. J.J. Abrams has a good track record (with Lost especially) and the trailers have fans salivating for opening weekend.
Angels and Demons (May 15)
I’m including this one because films about religious nuttery tend to attract the crowds (like The Passion of Christ) even more so when they have sprinkled with Hollywood glitter and star Tom Hanks.
The trailer looks murky and seems fixated on said demons of the title without giving away much of the plot. But if you’ve read the Dan Brown book it is based on, you can be well-assured that any changes will be minimal. Brown has managed the daring feat of turning sensational religious revisionism into a mainstream fodder, made his character Robert Langdon an icon and transformed what are really a pair of trashy, vacant novels into an industry (many Langdon spin-off novels to come, no doubt). Chances are good the movie will suck. Chances are equally good that it won’t matter.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 17)
On the one hand, this installment of Harry Potter is based on the weakest book in the series. The trailers look confused and unhappy. But Harry Potter has two things going for it. 1) Nobody will want to miss this installment if nothing else to set up the next two films. 2) It’s dead in the middle of summer and is not in competition with any of the other blockbuster films on this list. So yeah, I guess it has a chance.
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (August 9)
Until the trailers went mainstream this week during the Super Bowl, buzz about this film was mixed. But frankly, the trailers sold me even though I already hate the cast.
Nov 06
AndrewMovies Adaptations, comic book, Comic Book Adaptation, Comics, Films, Heroes, Marvel, Movies
Let’s face it, Hulk never translated on to the big screen (call it the Lou Ferrigno ® curse) and the Uncanny X-Men films were brilliant in the hands of Bryan Singer but lackluster in the hands of director Brett Ratner, despite cranking up the action quotient in the third installment. (It’s funny because among Ratner’s other directorial credits is Rush Hour and Madonna’s music video for Beautiful Stranger. Or is that just funny to me?) The Punisher? You couldn’t even decide which version was worse, Dolph Lundgren’s or Thomas Jane’s (who by the way, I love but even he couldn’t rise above this one.)
But for all the Marvel adaptations that have flopped (Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Elektra) or just been [shrug] (either Fantastic Four, Spider-Man 3, Howard the Duck) there have been some shining moments. Among them Spider-Man, X-Men and, of course, the most recent blockbuster Iron Man.
Iron Man is the news these days, along with the now-confirmed first Marvel team-up of Avengers headed for theaters in 2011. The first hero movie of any franchise is a bit of a hit or miss affair. For people not familiar with comic books, the director and screenwriters have to infuse enough of the legend for people to understand the characters without completely alienating the fanbase that have obsessed about them since elementary school. Singer managed to walk the fine line (though notably at the expense of the action sequences, as I mentioned and with judicious use of Professor Xavier voiceovers.) Iron Man, directed by Jon Favreau, did it too, and better.
So it’s understandable now that the Iron Man mythology is firmly established in the Hollywood milieu (and by that, I mean that it is profitable,) the buzz is building around the sequel and Iron Man’s eventual starring role in The Avengers.
It’s easy to conclude that a good film really lies in the hands of the director (I’ve already skewered Ghost Rider for such things if you care to revisit that travesty.) So for whichever installment Favreau signs on for, there is a good chance the film is going to be worthwhile. (He is currently slated to direct Iron Man II and executive produce The Avengers.) And given the studio’s track record of releasing three hero films a year (except for 2006 but that was obviously a glaring mistake in scheduling) whether the films are good or bad doesn’t make much of a dent in the future of Marvel hero films.
Coming Attractions
Punisher
First up is the Punisher reboot Punisher: War Zone. A reboot just means the first origin film flopped, so they are telling the origin story again with a different creative team. Marvel already tried this with The Incredible Hulk which flopped but established Edward Norton to play Bruce Banner/Hulk in The Avengers film (including a brief appearance by Iron Man’s alter ego Tony Stark hinting at an Avengers team.)
The Punisher has been done before, and not well. Lundgren’s Punisher was a product of decade it was made in (the film was released in 1989) but Jane’s Punisher was just painful to sit through from start to finish. The fact that movie sucked had little to do with Jane himself, but that’s not really a consolation for anyone who made the mistake of watching it.
Punisher: War Zone, as a comic book, was grittier storytelling than the mainstream Punisher comic, and we should expect about the same between The Punisher film and the upcoming War Zone. Sadly, the story is going to sound remarkably familiar to anyone who has ever seen a hero movie: Mob boss is disfigured by superhero vigilante, adopts a supervillain persona and seeks revenge against said superhero. There is little to no buzz about the film despite a December 5 release date (though the film was pushed back from its original release date on September 12.) But here’s the question? The plot sounds wholly unoriginal, what is going to distinguish this from the past Punisher flops or any other retread hero flick? My guess: not a damn thing.
Wolverine
The X-Men franchise was handed over to Wolverine, care of Hugh Jackman, which is a good thing if you ask me. Jackman personified Wolverine in a way that still sends chills down my spine. Oh, but this is an origin story and features a veritable who’s who in the Wolverine universe. So many characters that you might be tempted to ask, who is going to direct the menagerie to make it work? That would be Gavin Hood (who?) Yeah, he is virtually unknown, whose directorial credits barely warrant him an inclusion in the imdb database.
Jackman himself had a hand in the script and supposedly pushed to emphasize a character-driven storyline. My guess: Jackman pulls it off.
Thor/Captain America
So in order to launch an Avengers franchise (with Robert Downey Jr. and Edward Norton already on board) Marvel Studios is bouncing around ideas for films that establish Thor and Captain America in Hollywood. The Cap film was delayed because of the writer’s strike but has been tentatively slated for a May 2011 release, sans any real details (though it is supposedly set during World War II.)
There is no real information about the possibility of a Thor film except that it has been in pre-production for several years. My guess: It will be interesting, assuming both films are released, to see if setting up the characters in their own films helps or hurts The Avengers. I would love to see The Avengers spawn infinite sequels -- it was always one of my favorite comics -- but I’m not sure how long Marvel can keep cranking out films and keep people engaged (particularly when their success rate is generously 50%.)
Future Film Adaptations
Sequels for Iron Man and Spider-Man are confirmed. Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, Daredevil, Black Panther and…Ant Man? Confirmed in development at least. (There were reports a while back that Ghost Rider’s creator Gary Friedrich was appalled by the misuse of his creation -- though from the lawsuits that followed it may have been motivated more by money than anything else.) And there has been some spin around films for Nick Fury (inconceivably played by Samuel L. Jackson in the Iron Man flick) and Dr. Strange, in addition to spin-offs for Silver Surfer, Venom and Magneto. My guess: Good or bad, Marvel will keep the pace going for the foreseeable future. There is no way to run out of characters when you can always make a sequel or a reboot out of established film heroes or dig up some obscure character and try to make a bonafide box office hero out of him.
Sep 05
AndrewMovies Ghostbusters, Movies
Um, they may be old and they may be fat, but are the Ghostbusters back in town?
Apparently, according to a Variety report that simultaneously announced the development and then downplayed it in the same bit. Two writers, of The Office fame, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky have been tapped to hammer out a script. Who knows whether Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis would sign on again (but let’s face it, none them are exactly box office gold these days -- it might be their chance! In fact, do you remember when Bill Murray made waves as a “serious” actor in Lost in Translation? No, me neither.)
As proof positive of a new film in the works, a Ghostbusters video game voiced by Murray, Aykroyd and Ramis (hello, Ernie Hudson!) is actually moving forward, despite currently lacking a distributor. Note to Columbia: don’t play cagey. This has all the makings of a summer blockbuster like it was in 1984.
Aug 15
AndrewMovies Harry Potter, Movies, Warner Bros Studios
Script problems on the last two installments of Harry Potter (both from the same book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) has forced the studio to move back the release date of the next installment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. A strange move, chalked up officially to a desire to release the flick during the summer rush.
Clearly, that explanation is just fluff. Usually when studios move movie releases, it is because they either don’t want to compete with a movie opening at the same time, or they do want to compete with another movie opening at the new release time. But any Harry Potter flick would blow any movie out of the water regardless of the time of year, even if the film sucks.
The script problems were attributed to the writer’s strike that last 3 months (and didn’t affect the Half-Blood Prince), but maybe the real story is that Warner Bros. is having a harder time than expected of dividing Deathly Hallows into two fully-formed movies. It’s been done (Kill Bill comes to mind) and done well, but there was already a lot of consternation about splitting Deathly Hallows in two. Even more interesting, the release date for the first movie installment of Deathly Hallows is unchanged. It’s still November 2010 (though that date is officially “tentative”).
Another plausible reason for the delay: Half-Blood Prince the film isn’t as strong as they would have liked (the book is a bit of a throw-away) and they need another 8 months to shore up some of the editing.
Jul 14
AndrewMovies Movies, Sequel
Every summer brings a crop of popular movie franchises back to the big screen, and this summer is particular ripe with sequels. Though summer is still sizzling, the sequels themselves are winding with only a few more to go, and it seemed a perfect time to grade the sequels starting with
Spider-Man 3 full review
What’s Good?
Sam Raimi continues to treat Peter Parker, and the Spider-Man franchise, as if these are real people. His endeavor to make the super hero genre about the people and not the action hero made the original film revolutionary.
What’s Bad?
The third installment has way too many characters who get substantial screen time, detracting from the story we wanted to see: Mary Jane and Peter Parker.
Grade? 6 (out of 10) It was easy to see what Raimi was going for, but 3 lacked the finesse of either of the two previous films. And how many times will Mary Jane be a damsel in distress for Spider-Man to rescue before she ditches New York for somewhere more anonymous like Smallville, Kansas. Oh wait…
Shrek the Third
What’s Good?
Donkey and Puss put on a show, stealing Shrek’s thunder from start to finish in this one. Another sequel without Shrek? I’d see it.
I thought Artie was a good foil for Shrek, and the middle third of the movie is vintage Shrek.
What’s Bad?
Shrek’s reaction to being father is totally believable, but the fact that Fiona is pregnant seems irrelevant to the what’s going on.
Merlin’s appearance, though brief, was excruciating to sit through. Prince Charming is so annoying in this one, I was hoping he was heading for a beheading. No suck luck…
Grade? 5 (out of 10) The film had its wickedly funny moments (particularly rescuing Artie from prep school) but the energy and humor that made the first installment a joy loses its flavor towards the end of the third.
Ocean’s Thirteen
What’s Good?
Every scene inside the casino was thrilling. That’s where the heart of the franchise resides (and has a lot to do with why Ocean’s Twelve was such a disaster) and it’s good to see Ocean’s Thirteen return to its roots.
What’s Bad?
The set-up is both convoluted and rushed, not a good combination. We get that it’s largely irrelevant why Ocean’s band of brothers is robbing casino baron Bank but rarely it is ever this obvious that the director cares as little as we do about the whys. The design of The Bank (the casino) was so distracting that it made me squirm.
The real criminal of this film is its lack of a sense of humor. The first film was tongue-in-cheek, the third takes itself and its premise way too seriously for its, or our, own good.
Grade? 7 (out of 10) What’s a little contrivance among friends? Ocean’s Thirteen is vastly more entertaining than Twelve , the casino scenes are delightful and George Clooney and Brad Pitt have a chemistry that is fun to watch.
Live Free or Die Hard
What’s Good?
Everything. From start of finish, this movie is worthy of being in the Die Hard franchise. The plot takes all of three minutes of the film, and the rest of the 130 minute flick is spent watching John McClane kick ass and take names. Die Hard has always taken the most over-the-top approach to action sequences and even in this modern age of digitally created action, managed to be thrilling and stay true to the franchise. The fight scene at the power plant is brilliantly choreographed. The action is relentless, and the interplay between Justin Long and Bruce Willis keeps the humor quotient cranked throughout. Even Kevin Smith’s cameo appearance worked.
What’s Bad?
This movie is so improbable on every level, be prepared to leave your disbelief at home. It’s not the black hat stuff -- it’s all in the details. Like why is a power plant that controls the eastern seaboard grid only guarded by three armed security and one useless technician. Don’t ask, like I said, it doesn’t matter.
Grade? 8 (out of 10) Look, I’m not going to say it’s better than the original, but Live Free or Die Hard gets major props nonetheless.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer full review
What’s Good?
The visual effects. The relationships between the members of the FF are more believable, and far more enjoyable to watch, in this installment.
What’s Bad?
It’s just not a very good movie.
Grade? 3 (out of 10) Rise of the Silver Surfer is at least as good as the original.
Harry Potter
As a movie franchise, Harry Potter has only improved on the original. But as we go deeper into the series, the comparisons to the books (particularly because each book is longer than one movie can contain) inevitably turn the books’ fans into the movies’ harshest critics.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
What’s Good?
Harry Potter films are consistently visually compelling, and Order of the Phoenix convincingly offers us the magical world within our own.
What’s Bad?
This movie is going to leave a lot of casual fans behind. There is virtually no exposition, and the screen is crowded with a lot of characters. The longest book is condensed to the shortest film, creating a movie that never stops to take a breath. The story assumes we know a lot about what has happened off screen, and if you haven’t read the books, it’s entirely possible that you don’t.
Grade? 6 (out of 10) For the first time in the franchise, the film feels too short.
Coming Soon
The Bourne Ultimatum
More of the Same? Previews seem to indicate that the third installment is a carbon copy of the first two. That’s a good thing.
Rush Hour 3
More of the Same? The preview emphasized the humor of the films and downplayed the action. Which is fine, as long as Rush Hour 3 doesn’t turn into one of those films where all of the good jokes are in the preview.
Jul 05
AndrewMovies Movies, Transformer
G.I. Joe the movie? Another He-Man and the Masters of the Universe remake? Because once those are reality all of my favorite childhood toys will have be re-envisioned for the 21st century. Transformers was just a harbinger of the destruction to come.
Along with comic book adaptations, cartoons to live-action films have always been the desiccation of some of my most intimate youthful imaginings. I lived in those worlds for chunks of time, and when I watch the films, I am rarely able to watch them without some serious, butt-kicking nostalgia. That said, I think it was inevitable that I left the theater after Transformers with mixed feelings.
The best part of Transformers is Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LaBeouf. LaBeouf is extraordinary in this role. He perfectly captures this quirky, obsessed kid and convinces us that he would react just the way he did when he discovers that his car can transform into a robot and that it has a personality. For the first half of the movie, he takes us along for the ride and it’s a good one. We meet his crazy-ass parents, get two car chases -- one where he’s chasing his Camaro, and the other where the Camaro is chasing him -- and we get some wonderful, bumbling scenes with Megan Fox, who plays the hot chick Mikaela Banes.
But the movie quickly disintegrates by trying to pass off an improbable and inexplicable plot. I’m embarrassed to try and repeat it. The film is overloaded with unnecessary exposition and inane backstory, details that don’t make sense of the past and don’t help us make sense of the story in the present. Michael Bay holds our hands through every step, as if he’s afraid we won’t be able to accept the Transformers for what they are. We get it; they are alien and they can adapt into our vehicles in order to disguise themselves. It’s cool. It’s almost besides the point that they are chasing the Allspark (believe me, you won’t care and it doesn’t seem to matter by the end anyway.) The whole Sector 7 thread could easily have been missing from the story and it would have been at least as good a movie. Bay would have been better served to stick to what he does best: blow things up.
Bay damages his reputation as an action heavy in the first hour by spending most of the time on Sam and giving us a very richly developed hero to cheer for. Then the second hour plus is about the robots. My friend summed it up best after the film when he said, “It could have been about any robots. They just happened to be called Transformers.” And that is the fatal flaw in Michael Bay’s adaptation. This was an okay robot story, but it was a seriously bad Transformers movie. There was only scant introductions to the Autobots, none at all for the Decepticons. They had zero personality beyond good vs. bad, and Sam’s fealty for Bumblebee aside, the scripts presumes that humans would embrace the Autobots like buddies.
I think this plays off of the fact that we are supposed to embrace the Autobots like buddies. That’s why a prolonged scene at Sam’s house involving the Autobots in a game of hide and seek runs over 10 minutes. It’s the only time in the film that we get to know the Autobots as autonomous personalities. The rest is just Decepticon butt-kicking. And even there, the action happens so fast across the screen, you never get a very good sense of what’s going on. Optimus Prime is absent for most of the final battle until he zooms into the final scene for the sole purpose of taking on Megatron, a battle that is short-lived and anti-climatic. Maybe while the Transformers were surfing the internet to learn about Earth-culture, they could take in a little Matrix-style fighting. Now wouldn’t that have been something.
I have to brace myself for every cartoon to live action movie because inevitably it ends up flat. But it’s impossible to separate the ingrained knowledge of my youth when I watch the film. I want it to be exactly like I used to imagine it. At the same time, it’s always a little awe-inspiring to see those things on the big screen. Transformers doesn’t quite pull it off at either end.
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