Avengers: Infinity War reaction (spoilers)

As I sit in the movie theater waiting for the usual end of credits scenes that Marvel likes to put in their movies I sit in shock at what I just watched, unable to really think straight all I can this is wow. Marvel pulled out all the stops in this the latest Avengers Movie. The best possible scenario played out for thanos, not only were the Avengers completely separated they weren't even on speaking terms making picking them apart that much easier.

From Iron man's unwillingness to make a phone call to his unwillingness to go home regroup and gameplan... Obviously if they did this in the first place there would be no need for two movies and I wouldn't be writing this post but I digress.

Thanos got everything he could ask for, the avengers all separated, easy access to the infinity stones(though the soul stone kicked him where it hurts) and no one who could really stop him, like all his wishes came true... Not cool... Really glad Thor got a badass axe and the use of both eyes, if only he could've finished of Thanos but alas.

Oh the questions so many questions... What happens next? How? Why? Are the guardians really gone along with Spiderman, Wanda, vision, black panther, Bucky, Dr. Strange, falcon, and even Loki??? Marvel can't just kill them all like that can they? I mean they just did but will they really stay dead?? How is there supposed to be a Spiderman sequel with no Spiderman?? How does marvel continue screw with us like this??

Obvious answer is just wait for the next installment of infinity war and everything will work itself out. How they'll do it? It's marvel it'll be fucking amazing!

Man do I love super hero movies, marvel did yet another amazing job putting this thing together and deserve all the credit they always get... I can't wait to see what happens in the next one but first we get another fun adventure with everyone favourite non hero Deadpool which I'm super excited for, oh and that gap between marvel and DC is just getting wider.

Wonder woman: Review

First reaction: wow I'm starting to think DC might just be getting it.... Just a little... Maybe... After nearly falling face first with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and then d with Suicide Squad, it would appear as if DC is finally starting to get on its feet.


   The question still remains, is DC trying too hard to be like Marvel?!?! I say yes and no at the same time. Yes because of how they're making their movies and whose in them. I also say no in that I believe that DC realizes that they will never be Marvel... Marvel is ridiculously far ahead of DC in the movie making department and DC (I hope) knows that.

   Wonder woman is by far the Best DC has done in recent memory. Everything about this movie is awesome! Ok maybe not everything, but just about everything. Chris Pine did amazing and I loved the end fight scenes. Gal Gadot did an amazing job as wonder woman continueing her strong performance from Batman V Superman. Ye

   Yes the movie has its rocky points and points where you wonder "does this really need to be in this movie" then it all comes together and yes they belong there, unlike Dawn of Justice where you felt like a ton of the movie could've been cut out Wonder Woman Didn't really have that issues which shows DC is learning.

   Overall well done by DC and all involve with this movie and I'm building excitement now for Justice League where we will see if DC keeps progressing. Discuss.

3 Short Issues About Ghost in the Shell (2017)

It took me a while to even decide on if I wanted to write about this movie.  Then, I wrote about it, but didn't finish it and now I'm writing a novel about Mass Effect Andromeda so...this is for me.  I just wanted to put something out there.  Abrupt ending and all.  

I keep jumping back and forth on if I want to write about Ghost in the Shell.  I kept leaning toward not writing about it because I couldn't get my thoughts organized in this incoherent mess of a movie.  It's like the film has a buckshot of ideas that it fires out of a shotgun 500 feet away hoping some might hit the target.  Even worse, was that I couldn't really tell if my bias was effecting why I thought the movie was bad.  Is it bad only because I am a fan of the classic 1995 anime movie and the TV series, or, would I still think the movie was bad even if I knew nothing about GitS before hand?

To try to solve this question, I did what I normally don't do before writing about a movie, which is look up reviewers I like for their thoughts.  Well...solving this question only got more complicated as reviewers I like had a "it wasn't that bad, it was okay" opinions from those who knew nothing of the franchise to another review "really liking it" despite being a fan of the franchise.  The overall reviews were pretty bad though according to Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, especially from old media sources.  The few I skimmed weren't particularly helpful either but now that the movie is bombing, it has led to a few think pieces.

Those think pieces has helped me.  Most of them talk about 1 or 2 issues but I think it's a combination of 3 issues that explains why I didn't like this movie and maybe why it bombed.

1.  The Movie Tries to Appeal to Fans, while...

Ghost in the Shell borrows from the manga, the 1995 classic anime, several different TV series, and even a little from the "semi-official" sequels to the 95 anime.  This leads to a movie that looks like it went through 17 rewrites and has wayyyyy too many plots going on.

This movie is about The Major, who is a police officer/soldier for Section 9, a counter-terrorism task group (the movie ignores this but Tokyo is a police state in this future.  The police and military are sort of the same thing).  She has to investigate high profile assassinations among executives of a robotics company.  Intercut with that, she also has 2 different self-discovery plots, one about her role in humanity and another about her lost memories.

That is a lot to deal with for a movie that doesn't need extended action sequences, never mind an action movie like GitS.  It was apparent that the multiple plots were too much to handle as the main plot ends with a completely unnecessary Captain America: Civil War style plot twist, the role in humanity plot is not resolved, and her lost memories thing suddenly becomes important for no reason.  At no point does the Major seem to give two flying fucks about her lost memories but hey, lets resolve that anyway.  The audience isn't going to care about a plot if the character doesn't even care.

Ghost in the Shell has always been about heady topics like what it means to be human when AI, cyborgs, and other Deus Ex like features exist.  (Can you tell I like this genre?).  The movie tries to be that but instead goes into a character centric amnesia arc.  GitS has never been a character driven story.  It's about its themes and ideas.  Major is by far the most fleshed out character in other versions but even then, only barely*.  The characters are baseline archetypes for a reason.  You can't be faithful to the source material and do a character driven story unless the movie is 4 hours long.

*The GitS TV series' does flesh out other characters more, true, but that's only because you can't have every episode be a Philosophy 101 class.

2.  ...Also Trying to Appeal to a Mass Audience.

The movie explains it's title like 5 times.  Major, at the most basic level, isn't human or an AI robot.  She is a human consciousness inside a robot body, the first of her kind.   The movie likes to call it a human spirit or soul, which muddies the cyberpunk theme a little, but yes, she is literally a "ghost in a shell".  Her former human life had a near death experience, her consciousness was put into a robot for reasons unknown, and it wiped out her memory.

If you know anything about The Matrix, Deus Ex, or fucking Blade Runner, you don't need to explain this over and over.  The audience gets it.  Yet for some reason, "The Net"* is completely ignored.  The role of the internet is maybe mentioned off hand but that is it.  Why this is left out is mind boggling because it explains the unexplained.  Since I'm a fan, I know why her consciousness was put into a robot body, but the movie doesn't say.  The villain, Hideo Kuze, kind of dances around that with vague dialogue but never clearly explains what a new person to the franchise is going to want to know.

*Yes it's called "The Net".  This franchise was made in the 90's yo.

The inexplicable mess of storytelling and editing probably didn't help either.

3.  The Whitewashing.

There has been a weird Hollywood trend in the last few months of movies looking to cash in on the Asian market.  Remember The Great Wall starring Matt Damon (no, you didn't, but you do now)?  That was only a couple months ago.  Hmmmm....if I had to take a guess, it's that these projects saw Asia as their profit, but needed a big name actor to make the movie so that the West would cover the costs of the movie.

Almost NOBODY sees a movie for the actor or actress anymore.  Why is this still a thing?  Johnny Depp did a bunch of movies that flopped after Pirates because Hollywood thought people wanted to see Depp.  The movie Aloha! is so shit it was sold only on its actors and still flopped.  Movie 43 is a bomb, and grossly incompetent, that promoted its high number of A-list actors as it's only selling point.

This movie probably does not get made without Scarlet Johanssen.  Yet, the "progressive" mind set of Hollywood has not seemed to realize this movie would be better with a Japanese actress, even an unknown one.  ScarJo is horribly miscast in this movie because the Major is supposed to be contemplative, down to business, and empty looking.  She is supposed to act like a robot who says human things....NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.

The movie tried to defend itself against the controversy by showing that the cast is actually multi-ethnic.  This is true, but besides Beat Takeshi Kitano*, they are barely in the movie.  Togusa, a major character in every GitS adaptation, has 1.5 scenes.  The 0.5 is from a 2 second long shot of him getting ready for the final battle only to disappear from the movie all together.  He doesn't show up for the movies climax.  Have fun...Japanese actor with almost no screen time.

*The scenes with Beat Takeshi and ScarJo are a microcosm of how this movie sucks.  Whenever they speak together, Beat speaks in Japanese with subtitles, ScarJo in English, both understand each other, but THIS IS NOT HOW PEOPLE CONVERSE.  It's extremely jarring and takes you out of the movie.  Also, because of the way these conversations are shot, I don't think Beat and ScarJo were ever in the same room together.  Like Beat refused to do shooting outside of Japan.

Just please stop Hollywood.  I'm exhausted about this topic so here is John Oliver.

That is all I got.

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Rogue One Review (Spoilers)

Since I'm writing this well after release....spoiler warning.  The whole post.

Anybody that follows me on Twitter may have seen my angry-ish rant (it reads angrier than I actually was) about Rogue One.  Honestly though, it's okay.  I was having a pretty shitty day and Rogue One was just kind of mediocre so I judged the movie pretty harshly.  Also, some of my old Star Wars fandom came out a little because the movie had a couple head nods to extended universe fans.  It was a nice gesture but all I could think about is how the context was all wrong.

I think because of my past super fandom, Star Wars is super hard for me to critique until it has aged for a while.  I too was in denial after first seeing The Phantom Menace many years ago.  I initially thought it was good!  It probably took me a full month to admit that not only was it not good but not even average.  Star Wars just has that effect on some people (me).

Rogue One gave me the opposite feeling at first because a. It's not a main series Star Wars movie and therefore, b. Doesn't feel like a Star Wars movie.  I knew this going in and it still threw me for a loop.  100% objective, I am not.  My fandom got the better of me.

Having gotten figuratively over it, I think Rogue One is between average and sitting on the fence of being a good movie.  It's certainly not great but not bad either.

(Note - Not everything in this post is going to be me complaining.  Trust me.)

The movie has 2 big flaws, the first being characterization.  Uh...why can't I remember any new characters name outside of Jan...Orzo?

Pictured here.

I mean Jyn Urso and WOW does that name look like a name I came up with while writing my own Star Wars short stories when I was 12 years old.  That's the problem with Sci-Fi names.  It's a fine line between acceptable and laughable.

Anyway, Jyn Ursa Major...

Pictured here.

...is orphaned at a young age because Star Wars has never had a protagonist like that.  Also, she is a criminal to the Empire, which makes the Rebels look into her, even though the Rebels themselves would be criminals ah fuck it nevermind.  Actually, they want to talk to her about her dad because he is the chief architect of the Death Star and whyyyyyyyy?

What is it with this universe and everybody important being related or at the very least, met at a younger age?  The twist at the end of Empire Strikes Back is one of the most shocking in movie history but it certainly doesn't feel like it now.  And I know this "everybody knows everybody" complaint is a nitpick but it's one that has annoyed me endlessly.  When the young Han Solo movie comes out and he ends up being an orphan who is raised by Chewbacca I will fucking burn down a theater*

*I won't actually do that.

Galen, Jyn's father, is actually one of the better acted roles in the movie.  His purpose is pretty cool too as most of his existence is to fill the Death Star weak point plot hole from A New Hope.  I like that the weakness was there on purpose now rather than an accident that the Empire never found but the Rebels did while looking at Sci-Fi blueprints.  It...doesn't explain Return of the Jedi but whatever.  The other reason for his existence is to give Jyn motivation and that works.  I'd prefer something different but okay.

The other characters include Cassian Andor who is there to spout exposition, be Jyn's friend, and not really be a character in his own right.  I have no idea what this dude's deal is.  The movie also had blind warrior monk named, uuugh, Chirrut Imwe, and machine gun guy named after a Warcraft raid boss, Baze Malbus.  Those guys are badass and wish the movie had more screen time for them.  Forest Whitaker is in the movie too.  His character's name is Plot Device because that's all he is.  He saves young Jyn and gives her her father's message about the Death Star.  That's it.  He also doesn't leave with the rest of the crew when the Empire attacks his town because his purpose is over.  He's done.  It's fine.  I'm fine.*  I don't even care.  His character could be completely removed from the movie and basically nothing would change.  Who cares?

*I'm very not fine.

Also, I wasn't too keen on the acting from Jyn and Cassian.  I don't think the fault is with Jessica Jones and Diego Luna though as flat acting is usually the directors fault.  9 out of 10 times, directors have to dial an actor back from overacting.  In Rogue One, emotion from these two was not allowed.  Every moment that should have had an emotional moment like Jyn's father dying or, THE TWO OF THEM dying at the end just landed with a thud.  This might have to do with keeping the movie somewhat kid friendly but that doesn't explain like half of Pixar's movies.  Emotion, even sad ones, are fine for kids.

This is the only face she makes.  It's weird.

The main villain is Imperial General #1964, or, that dude who wore all white.  He's fine.  He is there only to move the plot forward and I'm okay with that.  He's not really the star of the show because Grand Moff Tarkin is in the movie.  Also, Grand Moff Tarkin is in this movie....why is Grand Moff Tarkin in this movie?

Peter Cushing died in 1994.  In this movie, he is completely CGI and while I will say it was great (and it better be since this movie has Star Wars money) there was still some uncanny valley shit going on.  I get him being there since the Death Star was kind of his baby but come on.  He's in like 4 scenes.  Is this what the reshoots were about?  Wanting to get their monies worth?  I still think CGI should be a last resort for impossible shots but this was unnecessary.  Just give him a cameo and be done with it.  His scenes could have been filled with Darth Vader instead.  Fuuuuucking NOBODY is going to complain about too much Darth Vader* and he wears a mask.  You could have anybody in that suit.

GAH!

*James Earl Jones must be feeling like Alec Guinness cause that line delivery....oof.  I don't think he wants to do that voice anymore.  It still could be directing with him too though cause even his acting was off.

The characterization of this movie ties into it's 2nd major flaw.  2/3rds of this movie is just kinda filler.  The first act is meh, the second act is uuuugh, and the third act is awesome (Note - I told you not everything in this post was going to be me complaining).  I expected more character development because this story is mostly known already.  We didn't need to check in with how the building of the Death Star is going.  We know already.  We didn't need to check in with the Rebel's and how wishy-washy they were about actually getting the plans.  We...actually we didn't know that.

It bugs me that the team had to "go rogue" in order for the Rebels to get the plans in the first place.  Why?  What is the reasoning here?  They tested it on a planet already at low power.  Even if you don't think it can actually destroy a planet are you at least not concerned that it can take out a continent?  And even if you think getting the plans is a suicide mission, isn't it worth the risk?  I know they change their mind but still.

I will say though, that last battle scene was fantastic.  From an audience perspective, this climax was fantastically directed (making the dull acting even weirder).  Ever since, damn, Revenge of the Sith, space and/or air battles have seemed too chaotic.  Just a bunch of ships, lasers, and explosions overwhelming the screen.  The eye doesn't know where to go.  Here, you actually have shots following specific fighters allowing the action to take place in front of you as if you were the pilot....kind of like the original movies.  And even the ground battle has a, dare I say, Saving Private Ryan vibe with the camera often focusing on our heroes.  The camera is close to head level as if somebody is running along side the soldiers with a camera on their shoulders.  It seems like a camera man is actually there and that's really cool to do in a Star Wars movie!  For once, the intensity of the battle is actually felt instead of just looking like pretty fireworks.

Why did it take so long for a Star Wars battle scene to look this good?

Regardless of how I feel about any other part of this movie, there is a scene, when Darth Vader boards a ship and.....it's the best Vader scene ever made.  Not kidding.  He just destroys everyone.  It's like joining an Overwatch game and finding a pro player on the other team and they pick Genji.  They just....you're done son!  And I love how the scene lets him fling motherfuckers with the force while also letting him use his lightsaber...it's so well choreographed.  I have a slight boner right now.  Why can't movies have good villains?

Despite spending most of this post complaining, Rogue One is okay.  Wish it did something else with its characters but holy crap were those action scenes good.  It's like a bizarre Marvel movie where the action scenes are nonsense and the character development is solid (with flaws here and there).  I need to let my Star Wars fandom adjust to this new spin-off movie idea and maybe I won't fly off the handle right out of the gate.

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A quick side note that didn't fit into my post.

I saw this movie the day after Carrie Fisher passed away and I was not expecting a stand-in with CGI touch up Leia to be there at the end.  My wife and I let out an audible "Owe" and we cried a little.  Not full on sobbing but it was a jolt to the system enough that I had to wipe away tears.

Other than David Bowie, Carrie Fisher is the biggest celebrity death I'm sad about in 2016.  Like many a thousands of boys and girls, she was my first crush.  Yes, yes, slave costume but even without that, she was great.  Leia was an excellent character in an era when strong female characters were kind of rare.  Okay...A New Hope isn't that great for her but Empire and Jedi are, slave costume* and all.  I hope Disney doesn't CGI her character in future movies extensively.  Also...if she has scenes in Episode 8 already filmed....I don't know man.

I mean, the costume didn't hurt.  Cut me some slack I was 12.

*One of the best moments from Jedi is when she strangles Jabba the Hutt to death with her own chain.  Cold - fucking - blooded.  The barge was gonna blow up anyway and she straight murders her captor.  It's Jabba so, you know, fuck him, but in repeat viewings it's almost like insult to injury.  I fucking love it.

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Ghostbusters (?) Review.

Taking a break from playing Overwatch (and not writing about it sorry will soon), and being horrified at the number of people supporting a literal fascist for president, I decided to take some time to write about something not the least bit controversial.  Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters is a movie starring 4 women who fight ghosts and it in no way resembles any other movie.  It's a completely original movie that is shockingly not even an adapted screen play!  This isn't even a movie based on a comic book, or cartoon, or even any other movie because I've seen nothing like it.  The CGI was FANTASTIC and really reminded me of the army of the dead that had to serve the real king of Gondor or whatever from Lord of the Flies: Return of the Jedi.

The movie takes place in the fictional city of New York City and features a supporting cast of Norse thunder god and whoa!  Bill fuckin Murray from Zombieland!  Side note: I never understood what they were talking about in Zombieland.  Why are they pointing that vacuum cleaner at a chandelier?  I liked the theme song to that movie Jesse Eisenberg and Abigail Breslin was watching.  What was it called?...Caddyshack!  Great movie.

The characters fight ghosts with something called a neutron pack. It uses magic (the main characters are 2 wizards, an alchemist, and a rail conductor) to trap ghosts and then they send them to the farplane where they boringly stare at Tidus.  A demonic rift opens up in the sky in the 3rd act and the ladies shoot magic at leader ghost until dead the end.  But wait!  Ripley from Aliens shows up in the credits sequence so, yeah, this movie is actually a prequel to Aliens, which is not a sequel to any other movie.

So in summation, Ghostbusters was a great movie/Aliens prequel/Zombieland sequel/original screenplay based on Shakespeare's MacBeth.  May the force be with you.

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Follow me on Twi - okay.  I know what you're thinking.  "Jason.  That Final Fantasy X joke was really forced."  You got me there.

I love the first Ghostbusters.  I like the 2nd Ghostbusters (which makes me an oddity).  And the new Ghostbusters fails because it just isn't an instant classic OMG holy shit what kind of expectation is that sadiofjagkgnjfjkf!

The new Ghostbusters is fine.  I thought it was really good but has some flaws.  Is it an all time great comedy with action elements?  No, but hardly anything is.

So many people were against this reboot (a hard reboot too apparently) that the only way it could win those people over is it can't.  It can't.  Why am I even trying?

And that's what I think of this review.  I'm not even going to try.....okay fine.

McCarthy and Whig are fine.  I usually find them "meh" but here they are slightly better than "meh".  Leslie Jones is great and totally worth all that Twitter hate you lovely individuals out there put out.  There was zero things she did in that movie to deserve that you, you, wonderful examples of human beings.  You're just, the best.  #FreeMilo.

Kate MacKinnon is my favorite and makes the movie.  I know some found her irritating but I love quirky characters who always win and I'm going to marry her. Well, not her IRL, but her character whatshername......

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Fuck it.  I've now tried twice and still can't write a proper review of this movie. I followed the controversy, even wrote about it, and all I know is I wasted a fuck load of time on pointless bullshit.  I mean, I know the feels man.  In a previous blog, I repeatedly wrote about upcoming remakes of classic movies and how it was so....just, the worst.  But then, I remembered, every movie ever has been remade, some quite well, and my complaints seem hollow.  I've mentioned this before, but I think The Seven Samurai is one of the best movies ever made and it's only been remade oh, 4,769 times (citation needed).  That movie was made in 1954.  Remakes are not a new thing.  They've always been around.  

So, In all honesty, here is what I thought of Ghostbusters in quick form.

• The characters are really all fine.  I wasn't lying about Kate MacKinnon though. She's the best.
• Chris Hemsworth is the "dumb female eye candy who is pointless to the plot" only in reverse.  He actually is important to the plot....as a damsel in distress.
• The CGI is annoying but I liked the use of color in the 3rd act fight scene.  So I give it a wash.  (I'm still anti-gratuitous CGI and wish more "camera trick" style ghosts were in the movie). 
• Speaking of that 3rd act, it's obvious Paul Feig doesn't direct action movies because that pacing was a garbage fire.  Yes, me of all people, complaining about PACING.  
• I also hate that "hero shows up at the last second to save person despite all reason and practicality" trope.  Whig is not with the other ladies when shit goes down but somehow finds them on some random street in New York Fucking City just in time to save MacKinnon.  I know they would be somewhere near the portal but come on.
• Yes the characters are fine.....even if I can't remember any of their names.  
• Finally, the villain is SHIT.  What was his motive?  To release ghosts captured from his machine....and open a portal for more ghosts.....because he wanted..........uh.......what?  Did I miss something?  Why did he do any of this?  Was he just a crazy person?  Also, nice bait and switch on the main villain.  I thought it was going to be the ghost lady from the mansion.  Why even?  This villain problem is more severe than just superhero movies.

And, there you go.  I enjoyed the movie.  I won't remember it.  It is VERY rooted in modern humor (awkwardness, non sequiturs, awkwardness, one gross out, awkwardness, trope satire, wink wink nudge nudge jokes, and more awkwardness) as opposed to the more subtle jokes and self referential jokes of the original.   But it's fine.

Expecting a remake of a classic to live up to or heaven forbid, surpass the classic is ludicrous.  Classics get remade and can often have unique visions for the same story.  This one mostly didn't (Chris Hemsworth's character satire was more based on the industry as a whole).....but it did feel updated.  If a previous Ghostbusters never existed, would the haters still hate this movie?  Mmmmmmm, I think yes and no.  The obvious women haters would still hate it, but those insisting that an all female cast has nothing to do with it, I think some (not all) would like it.  But yeah, nobody is going to say, "this movie is an all time classic."

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X-Men: Apocalypse Review (Spoilers).

I wasn't going to write about this movie but I'm surprised to see a lot of "It wasn't THAT bad" opinions going on.  May I present, a dissenting opinion.

IT WAS GREAT!

Ha, just kidding, this movie sucks.

I really liked X-Men: Days of Future Past for two reasons.  It mixed the old cast with the new in a "this is not entirely fan service" kind of way, and it retconned the godawful X3: The Last Stand.  (Christ even the title of that movie is shit).  It was also an enjoyable all around movie with solid themes, good acting....etc.  But yeah, it fucked up the continuity of the X-Men movies so badly that it's starting to rival its own source material.

Now X-Men: Apocalypse comes along, decides to fuck with the continuity even more, and just lose all sense of what made previous X-Men movies good.  Hell, the X-Men movies have been better at villains than Marvel's total control of the MCU, so it had that going for it too.

Apocalypse is a villain I've wanted to see in a "Marvel" movie mostly because I think Marvel villains have been terrible so far.  (Along with Thanos and Venom.....What? What are you talking about?  Venom has not been featured in a Spider-Man movie yet.  I THINK I would have remembered that).  I mean, Whiplash?  Yuck.  Red Skull?  Nazi.  Loki?  Daddy issues.  Ultron?  Stupid.  Fuckin Baron Zemo?  He's in Civil War.....I guess.  The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies?  They all personally know Peter Parker and are defeated by their own hubris.  Even Venom......SHIT.

Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse desperately needed a monologue.  For reals.  Yeah he has one while launching all the nukes into space but it's just "I'm evil bow before me mere mortals for I am the one true god blah blah blah."  He always had a....genocidal tone in the comics and was pro eugenics and.....yeah okay.  Can't really go there without an R rating but you know what I mean.  This was diet Apocalypse.

Captain Grumpy Pants.

Also, his ability to grow into kaiju size only happened in his mind fight with Xavier.  Lame.

I have more issues with the rest of the characters.  It was obvious Jennifer Lawrence wanted nothing to do with this.  She was not going to put on that blue make-up for more than 3 scenes tops.  The dialogue had to point this out and Mystique's reasons for not being blue were "I'm hiding"....."despite also being the Mutant and Proud person that a lot of people look up too and saved a president and  mutants are more accepted in this time why am I doing this?"  It's dumb as shit and flies in the face of her character.  There is no reason for Mystique to be here other than, it happens to be Jennifer Lawrence.  Apocalypse should have disintegrated her.

The new-ish characters are fine.  I liked Sansa Stark as Jean Grey.  Cyclopes kid was fine (I don't care enough to look up his name).  But....why did the movie spend so much time establishing these characters when we already know who they are?  It was a ton of wasted time and I find it funny that the basics where explained, but Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix bullshit is glossed over?????  What the fuck?  That was cheap, cheap, cheap.  I don't even care if that is a spoiler.  Fuck that noise.

Miss Grumpy Pants.

This movie commits a cardinal sin in being boring.  Nothing happens for an extremely long time so that new characters, who are also old characters, can get backstory.  New characters who are not old characters, like Psylocke, gets maybe three lines of dialogue and....thanks for stopping by I guess.  Also, she's the only one who is still evil in the end in case fuck it.  I don't care.  Angel, who is sorta old but that movie got retconned, is a douche and MIA at the end.  Storm is fine and oddly enough, I LIKE this characterization of her.  Funny how we get a cool Storm character now that Halle Berry has nothing to do with her.  I'd watch that spinoff.

The two big ones, Xavier and Magneto, are fine.  James McAvoy is my favorite as I don't think he's ever been in a bad role (Yeah I liked Wanted fucking fight me).  Micheal Fassbender can do almost no wrong, that one wrong being Prometheus which fuck that movie while I have a chance to say so.  Xavier is basically the Professor X we all know and love finally.....which has the downside of making him boring.  Yes he rekindles his love with Moira but come on.....

APOCALYPSE DOESN'T HAVE HIS POWER AND THAT'S WHY HE WANTS TO SWITCH INTO HIS BODY YET XAVIER LOSES IN THE MIND FIGHT?!?!? Did everybody miss this?  The mind battle is in Apocalypse's head, I think, even though it shows the school and Jean Grey jumps in.  Xavier gets his ass kicked because, apocalypse is better at everything, but in the universe this CANNOT HAPPEN.  It's the reason Magneto wears a helmet.  Xavier should have been able to jump into Apocalypse's head and immediately put him into a coma.  How can Apocalypse fight Xavier in his own head, or if it is actually in Xaviers head, IF HE DOESN'T HAVE THE SAME POWER GODDAMNIT this is stupid.  Literally every other mutant and human has no control over Xaviers god like powers.*

*There is a distance thing hence Cerebro and the airport scene in Days of Future Past, but Xavier is close enough to the battlefield one would think.  Actually, he's in the Blackbird....which is doing what during that final fight?

Magneto is okay but weird.  Did anybody really see him trying to live a quiet life in Poland after Days of Future Past?  Yeah.  No.  Also, Apocalypse bringing him to Auschwitz was a little on the nose.  Plus....what exactly was he doing during that final fight?  Ripping up the earth from Cairo to...destroy Cairo only?  Or was this Man of Steel like terraforming the entire Earth which by how long it was taking, would have taken years.  I assume he was building Apocalypse's base in which to launch his wars but....this is dumb.  And in that final, FINAL fight when he betrays Apocalypse, why is he still throwing earth at him instead of dropping a building on him?  You know, like the baseball stadium he picked up IN THE LAST MOVIE.

First Lieutenant Grumpy Pants.

This movie is a mess.  It's boring.  Nothing makes narrative sense.  The movie makes a big deal out of Xavier going bald (wha????????).  Cerebro is AGAIN used against the X-Men.  Jean Grey doesn't try to murder everybody when going full Phoenix.  Nightcrawler is on the team when nobody knows who he is in X2.  There is a Wolverine cameo......I ALMOST FORGOT.

That whole Stryker detour is there only to justify a Wolverine cameo and it's bullshit.  Why is this scene in the movie?  It has nothing to do with Apocalypse, it REALLY fucks up the continuity even more, it should have been cut for a shorter less boring movie, and even the actors seemed to be spinning their wheels.  The writing in the Weapon X scene is fucking garbage.  Nobody can use their powers on the helicopter because of a MacGuffin and NOBODY sees the stowaways just hanging out in the back?  Get, the, fuck, out, movie.  Jean Grey can't hide them there.  She can't!  ITS IN THE MOVIES OWN RULES I AM NOT NITPICKING.  And when they do get to the base, still nobody finds them until they have already tried to open the cell door.  (There isn't a camera pointed at THAT door?  Really?).  Also, that base is in Canada.  How did they get home?  Also, also, at the end of Days of Future Past, it's shown that Mystique is impersonating Styker WHY?  Fuckin.....what.....why?  That went no where.  No, fucking, where!!!!!!!!!

This makes me "General Grumpy Pants".

This movie isn't quite as bad as X3: The Last Stand but it tries.  It really tries.  A for effort.  It's funny that Days of Future Past would bring so much hope to a franchise that really only wanted to fix that one movie and do nothing else.  Why even tease Apocalypse if you're not going to give a shit about it?*  Bryan Singer made X-Men good, left it, X-men got shitty until the very underrated First Class, then Singer came back, made one good movie, then made it shit again.  This franchise needs an extended break.  Maybe then, somebody can make a fucking X-Men movie with Gambit in it.

*Here is a nitpick.  Why did the movie completely abandon the Age of Apocalypse storyline from the comics?  I know they didn't want to use more time travel, even though the comics treat time travel like a drunk starting a knife throwing circus act with his wife, but why not?  If the movies wanted to stay grounded, which they did a very poor job of in this movie, while also not giving a shit about continuity, what's the point?  Why not go all out?  Make a movie that is nothing but alternate timeline shit.  I'm not saying this would make a good movie, but there is potential for a better one.

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3 Footnotes:

1.  The Quicksilver scenes were cool.  I'm not entirely sure how he found out Magneto was his dad but that is the least of my complaints.

2.  I could sum up this movie in one sentence.  "Jubilee has a cameo and doesn't even shoot any fucking fireworks".  It's perfect.  She's in the movie for Jubilee fans, all two of them, then doesn't even get to show her power.

3.  X-Men movies ranked, including spinoffs.

Deadpool (I'm counting it).
X2: X-Men United (dumb name)
X-Men: First Class.
X-Men
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The Wolverine

big drop.

Wolverine: Origiiiiii.....hmmmm, wait.

X-Men: Apocalypse
Wolverine: Origins (forgot how bad this was)
That time I shit my pants and it looked like Magneto's helmet.
X3: The Last Stand.

5 Problems I Have With Captain America: Civil War

Before I get to complaining, I thought Captain America: Civil War was okay.  They did a good job with Black Panther, every character other than Captain America and Ironman was just fine, and the movie handled a large cast shockingly good...most of the time.

So why can't I get a few things off my mind?  This movie got great reviews from the professionals so I can't help but wonder if this is a bit of fanboying or nitpicking or what.  Here are my five issues.

5.  Why did anything happen?

I know the impetuous is on governmental oversight but come on.  We all know the plot turned it into Martha Bucky.  It should have stayed on the Governmental oversight but that would have required a 3 hour movie.

Kudos for a Marvel movie FINALLY slowing down it's pacing at times...until the airport scene to the end...but it's a start.  It was mostly to give development to Black Panther, explain how the overpowered Scarlet Witch and Vision is secluded for the start, and to remind the audience that Cap and Bucky are just the best of friends (even though they shouldn't be).  All of that is fine, but some of those slower scenes could have been spent on the nuance of "how much power should the Avengers have"?  That is a cool question.  That is a similar question (albeit, extended to the entire Marvel Universe) to what the comic storyline is.  Why not explore that?

Oh, right, the MCU just wants to stay comic action for comic actions sake. Dare it to ask tough questions and Marvel wrongly points to the DC movies and laughs.*  Instead, we get Bucky the Martha plot device taking over the plot about half way through.  Couldn't, I don't know, couldn't Cap and Stark just....talk this over?  You're going to war over a dude who was brainwashed, Cap knows this, and, Stark just doesn't care?  No, Stark doesn't know.  So......oh god this is stupid.

*DC movies at least try to tackle tougher/headier/philosophical questions. Weirdly enough, those are often their best moments.  It's all the other stuff DC movies suck at.  

I KNOW they're being manipulated by "Totally Not Baron Zemo" but....how?  We get next to nothing showing him manipulating the heroes.  He just says at the end, "Yeah I totally did this."  Uh, okay.  Is Marvel so bad at villains it decided to almost completely ignore the villain from this one because they knew they couldn't do "Zemo" justice?  Ultron is a TERRRRRRRIBLE villain and he is ten times better than "Zemo".   I'm not even a Baron Zemo fan!  The fuck is this?  I may write a post JUST on Marvel's villain problem.

He's in this movie.  Get...the fuck....out.

BTW, the motivations for most of the other superheroes get basically one line of dialogue (which I thought was REALLY well done by the way) yet Captain America gets the entire movie and his motivation never seems to be more than wanting to help his bro.  He has NEVER been convincing in hating or not liking or even distrusting the governmental project that created himself.  Yeah, he's pissed he ended up in the future because he should....have....died when Red Skull's plane......what?!?!?!  The fuck does that have anything to do with the project that created YOU?

4. Tony Stark.

War Machine:  "Didn't you refuse to work with the Government before?"

Ironman:  "Well, that was before anybody died from my weapons."

(Still better reasoning than the NRA in my opinion).

Okay, I liked that Stark has a more human reason for suddenly embracing governmental oversight.  It actually made him seem right for once and, well, #TeamStark.

BUT, his character wouldn't linger on that for as long as this movie needs for a Civil War, a Civil War that is just as much his fault as Caps.  Tony Stark is still Tony Stark.  I can easily see him being upset after a mother tells the story about how her son was killed in their collateral damage but to have it haunt him enough to go through with everything in this....UGH, 2 weeks?  A month?  Again Marvel.  Why is it so hard to pinpoint a time frame in your movies?

Ironman wanted to get Shwarma at the end of Avengers 1.  Is this the same character now?

3. Vision and Scarlet Witch going MIA.  

...............When did this happen?  

A buddy of mine already pointed this out but, what were they doing through most of the airport scene?  Yeah, Vision shows up occasionally after he's done staring at the clouds.  Scarlet Witch is missing through almost all of it then has Team Stark Get Rekt.  I'm sorry but better fight scenes have their OP characters knocked out at the start by science/magic/whatever so that they have a reason to be missing for a bit and can turn the tide at the end.  Here, Scarlet Witch is just doing....something.  Vision, I assume, was just confused.

Maybe she took off to get a latte cause goddamn is this civil war stupid.

2.  The Fight Scenes.

I am SO goddamn sick of the Christopher Nolan, rapid fire, shaky cam fight scenes.  It's especially atrocious in the first scene.  I.....have no idea who punched what.   The airport scene was okay because they actually toned the rapid fire edits back shockingly enough, but the final Cap, Winter Solider, Ironman fight went back to this and I thought Cap decapitated Stark.  He didn't, and hey.....

Fuck you directors/editors if that was on purpose.  Tricks like that are just to make the audience think they saw a thing and in slower edits, it works.  Not when you IMMEDIATELY show that didn't happen with the rapid fire edit.  There was no time to process anything.  A fake-out isn't very effective when it lasts less than a second.

(I knowwww a lot of people have just accepted this rapid fire editing as the way fight scenes/action scenes are now.  Even Mad Max:Fury Road did this at times, but not always.  We need more Bruce Lee's.  It could be SO MUCH BETTER).

1.  WHY WAS SPIDERMAN HERE?

I hate everything about this picture.

Unlike the rest of my Twitter friends, I actually like Spiderman.  Well....I did until the Clone Saga, and the holy fucking shit this is literally the worst story ever told One More Day storyline.  Anyway, regardless of his age, he's supposed to be awkward, annoying, and short sighted because he's perpetually stuck being a teenager.  Teens are dumb you guys.  Have you talked to one recently?

Spiderman plays a HUGE role in the comic storyline because he's kind of neutral while also being Team Stark.  He actually reveals his identity in an effort to stop the Civil War.  It's not necessary here as this movie altered the comic plot from "Superhero Registration Act" to "This is totally real you guys we swear UN oversight".  If he isn't going to be the sorta neutral party.....why is he here?

I know the answer to my own question (to appease comic fans sorta) but he's here because....the teams needed rebalancing after Cap won 6 vs 4?*  His CGI-ness really stuck out and while you can't really MoCap the absurdly agile Spiderman, it still seemed - WHY DID HIS COSTUME'S EYES MOVE?  Is his costume magic?!?!?!  I know Stark gave him one but no, nnnnnnno!  There is no science for, the fuck that is.  It drives me nuts.  His eyes should be static goddamnit.

*Vidya garme reference, whaaaaaaaat?

Although, for as "qwipy" as every MCU movie is, I didn't mind Spiderman slinging jokes and one-liners because that is kinda his thing.  Also, Marvel is owned by Disney, which also owns Star Wars, Spidey makes a Star Wars reference......

Captain America: Civil War is a fine movie, I swear.  But I kind of hate it.  Its got Jurassic World syndrome.  Why does this movie exist?  I'm so confused.

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Captain America: Civil War immediate reaction review

WARNING: IF YOU INTEND TO SEE THIS MOVIE AND PREFER NOT TO HAVE IT SPOILED DO NOT READ!!


OH. MY. GOODNESS!! I am thoroughly impressed, stunned, in anticipation of what's to come next! Marvel has seriously got this thing down so well its impossible not to love anything they put out (sans that awful fantastic 4 retry lol) I swear they're going to make me sound like a homer but damn Marvel just gets it! they know what buttons to push and when and they get it right 99 times out of a 100!

      Excellent job with integrating the Black Panther and now Spidey himself as well... I still love Paul Rudd as Ant Man that pick is still so absolutely brilliant on Marvels part, I liked the kid they picked to play Spidey but at the same time would've liked keeping the other one as well, his name escapes me forgive me its late and I'm lazy.... anyway Black Panther is going to be epic! cant wait for that movie to come out!! and now I want more dammit give us more!!!!

Friendly reminder than your friendly neighborhood Deadpool movie comes out on bluray and dvd IN 4 DAYS!!!

enjoy,
UtesAvsfan