Category Archives: Movies
Honestly, The Meg Was OK
It’s Monday. It’s supposed to be my day off, but I’ve got to run into work for a little thing. I should be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 right now. Looks like this is the perfect time to use this Honest Trailer for The Meg that I’ve been holding onto for just such a day!
Yeah, I thought The Meg was fine. It was what it was and now it has been properly parodied. The Internet has done its duty.
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The Live Action Lion Thing is Going to Be a Thing!
I guess we can’t really call it ‘live action’, considering there won’t be any people and it’s all animated. So…the realistically animated Lion King? Yeah, that sounds good. Teaser trailer incoming!
Looks neat! It’s just a teaser trailer, so we didn’t get to see everybody. But the animation looks pretty amazing!
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I Am Not Conflicted About The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
This trailer is amazing, this movie looks amazing and I can’t wait for The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part!
And you should be just as excited. The first The LEGO Movie was possibly the greatest film of the past 20 years, as far as I’m concerned. So I’m super excited for this super sequel!
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I’m Still Not Sure How I Feel About Aquaman
Looks like I’m just going to have to watch Aquaman in theaters and form my opinion that way. There’s one final trailer for Aquaman, and I just don’t know how to feel about this movie. The trailer seems cool…
…but then it goes and does things I don’t like. For example, it establishes the trident as a McGuffin in the trailer! There’s nothing inherently wrong with McGuffins, but I feel they’re kind of weak. And to establish it in the trailer seems tacky. For another example, the trailer also hits the viewer with a ton of awkward exposition. Like describing the antagonist in full as “your half-brother King Orm” or whatever they said. That name doesn’t mean anything to anybody, not even Aquaman fans. There’s no need to spell it out so much in the trailer. They don’t name Black Manta. There’s no need to name Orm.
Finally, the new trailer, especially, showcases a ton of CGI battle footage. It looks cool, and being filled with undersea monsters is unique, but movies that rely on nothing but overwhelming CGI battle footage don’t fair too well.
Still, I like the idea of a badass Aquaman movie. And I still like Jason Momoa in the lead role. And I’ve heard great things about director James Wan. And Black Manta looks cool. So I’m perched precariously over the prospect of this Aquaman films…
It doesn’t help that it’s coming out the same weekend as Mary Poppins Returns and Bumblebee. This is probably why Marvel doesn’t release movies the week of Christmas.
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The One Thing That Bugs Me The Most About Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald
I didn’t like Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindewald. I love the Wizarding World of Harry Potter as much as the next person, and I relatively enjoyed the first Fantastic Beasts movie. But the new sequel is baloney. It’s a hodgepodge of conflicting and confusing subplots, all attempting to pad out a movie that’s really only concerned with setting up the rest of the franchise.
But there’s one thing that really, really bugged me about the new film: the casual use of the killing curse.
Spoilers: Bellatrix kills Sirius
I’m not going to spoil anything in the movie, at least nothing important. It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the acolytes of the criminal Grindewald, among others, use the killing curse. It’s just how they use it that really annoys me, and how I feel it contradicts established Harry Potter canon.
Honestly, a lot of things in The Crimes of Grindelwald contradict Harry Potter canon. And as someone who enjoys the pedantry of Harry Potter canon, the detail that JK Rowling put into the Wizarding World, a lot of this really bugged me.
But what really sticks in my craw about the new movie is how casually the wizards flick their wands and administer Avada Kedavra, the killing curse.
Spoilers: Lucius kills nobody
In the books and the original films, we’re taught that Avada Kedavra is one of the three Unforgivable Curses. It’s a big freaking deal. We’re also taught that casting spells without shouting the incantation is a powerful magic that takes years of study. And I feel that it was heavily implied that you couldn’t just cast off Avada Kedavra without using the incantation.
You’ve got to really mean it when you cast Avada Kedavra. You’ve got to put your whole damn soul behind it. Even powerful wizards like Lucius Malfoy, Severus Snape and Vodlemort himself have to speak or shout the incantation out loud to cast it.
Spoilers: Voldemort kills Grindelwald
But in the film, wizards can casually stroll into a room, flick their wrists and people die.
The most egregious example, the one that really grinds my gears, involved an Auror, ostensibly one of the good guys. This Auror is standing there, wand down, when he’s startled by someone at his side. He quickly turns half around, barely raises his wand, says nothing, and a little plume of green magic comes out and the person at his side is dead. It goes that quickly and that simply.
Are Aurors just flinging around the killing curse all willy nilly? Does it really not take that much effort?
Granted, the film takes place in 1927, and the Harry Potter movies don’t happen until the 1990s. Maybe stuff like this is why the Unforgivable Curses were so established in the first place. But it always felt like those were old magical rules.
Perhaps all this casual killing, by good guys and bad guys alike, led to some new magical rules. Still bugs me though.
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Henchman-4-Hire 