Category Archives: Reviews
I No Longer Fear for Marvel’s ‘Fear Itself’
This is the first comic book review on my blog, and I hope to do more in the future. I used to write comic reviews for a website called www.mutanthigh.com back when I was in college, but the workload became too much after graduation and I sort of just faded away. I haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to do comic reviews. New comics come out every Wednesday, but I don’t always buy them that day. I also never have the time to read a whole stack of new comics Wednesday evening to get reviews up in a timely manner. At any rate, we’ll see.
For those who don’t know, writing comic books is my dream job.
Some people want to be rock stars, some movie stars, sports stars, reality TV stars, janitors – I want to write comic books for a living. But like all these dream jobs, you don’t just jump in and get to do it. You’ve got to work hard towards the dream and hope you catch a big break. This blog is part of my journey, which is why I want to include more comics content.
And I think it’s a good enough place as any to start by reviewing issue #4 of Marvel’s Summer event ‘Fear Itself’.
The weird white-haired guy on the left is Marvel's Dracula. Marvel is head over heels in love with the vampire craze, and are trying desperately to make Dracula relevant - they are failing.
I’m sure that most people who read this blog know about comic books in general. Every month, new issues of your favorite superhero comic hit the stands telling stories about Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, etc. Well, along with those usual titles, the big companies also put out Event Comics, which are basically the stories where everybody has to team up to take on an even bigger threat. These Event Comics sell really well, and Marvel and DC have been churning them out over the past few years. A writer comes up with a big idea and gets to tell one story in the main mini-series, while other writers tackle tie-in comics to tell the side stories. I assume a lot of people out there buy the main mini-series and a lot o the tie-ins.
I don’t. I gave up on tie-ins a few Events back. Most of the time they’re just not interesting.
Fear Itself is a 7-issue story written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Stuart Immonen, both very big creators in this day and age. I actually got to meet Fraction once at a comic book convention. He signed a free comic for me and I got to ask him why he used The Mimic (one of my favorite obscure characters) in a big X-Men adventure he wrote. Cool story all around.
Fear Itself is about a villain called The Serpent, and it’s based a lot in the Thor side of the Marvel Universe. Hopefully you all saw the movie this Spring, or at least read my review. At any rate, the Nazis have uncovered a long lost Norse hammer frozen in the depths of Antarctica for centuries. Head Nazi Sin, the daughter of the Red Skull, uses that hammer to awaken The Serpent from his prison at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, where Norse All-Father Odin imprisoned him centuries ago. The Serpent then called upon 7 other long lost hammers to fall to Earth, transforming 7 Marvel Universe heroes and villains into avatars of his destructive power. These avatars have been raining mayhem down upon the world, spreading fear and empowering The Serpent. Marvel’s heroes have fought back valiantly but with futility so far.
Some of the 7 Worthy: Hulk, Juggernaut and Grey Gargoyle. Juggernaut, by far, looks the coolest and creepiest. He should keep this look after the event. Those bug eyes are awesome!
In issue #4, The Serpent has achieved enough world-wide fear as to reawaken his long dormant castle and make himself younger and stronger in the process. Meanwhile, Steve Rogers reclaims his role as Captain America and starts rallying he troops.
So far, Fear Itself has been very underwhelming. I remember putting down issue #3 last month and feeling very ‘ho-hum’ about it. Even though the issue ended with the lead Nazi Sin (now known as the avatar Skadi) killing the new Captain America, Bucky Barnes.
Poor Bucky...he's only been back from his previous dead for a few years now.
There have been a lot of big set pieces in the series so far, but they’ve been rather dull. It’s all a very basic show, with Fraction glossing over the big events rather than getting into the nitty gritty that would actually make the series great. Once The Serpent awoke, Sin led an army of giant Nazi robots to attack Washington DC. There were big splash page pictures of DC landmarks being destroyed. And Nazi Robots! But all we get are the pictures. We don’t see anybody reacting to the Capitol being blown up. We don’t feel the world shaking beneath the might of The Serpent.
We don’t feel the story – and that’s why it’s been dull so far.
The Serpent: old, but not yet very interesting.
Now, in theory, a lot of the reactions might be happening in the tie-ins. I’m sure a lot of those stories are getting into the more human aspects of the story while the main mini-series handles the big events. But I just don’t care. I’m not going to waste money on tie-ins about Speedball or the Black Widow. I buy comics, first and foremost, based on the characters. If there were a Multiple Man or Mimic tie-in, I’d buy that in a heart beat. But I’m not going to buy the Avengers Academy tie-in just to get a fuller version of Fear Itself. Besides, Marvel are always claiming that you don’t need to read the tie-ins to get a full story. The main mini-series should be enough.
But it hasn’t been so far. The story is pretty weird. Basically a new bad guy shows up, and his gimmick is giving a bunch of people their own version of Thor’s hammer. But this just turns them into mindless, rampaging brutes. When the Hulk got his hammer, there was a brief moment where he seemed to fight for control, and that could have been cool, but he soon gave in. I’d like to see the Hulk – the STRONGEST ONE THERE IS! – actually be able to shake off The Serpent’s control. But that hasn’t happened yet. The main series just shows a bunch of rampaging avatars, and it’s boring. We comic fans see rampaging super villains all the time. Not to mention that Norse hammers have a special purpose that is perverted by this story. Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, was specially crafted for him by Dwarven forgers. The Serpent suddenly being able to call on 7 magic hammers, as if everybody in Norse mythology uses hammers, takes away from the uniqueness of Thor’s hammer. So if everybody has special hammer, then nobody’s hammer is special. Everything becomes generic.
What makes a good story great is showing us the human reaction, the heart.
Fear Itself has not yet shown us the heart.
But they try in issue #4. Like I said, this is where Captain America starts rallying the troops. You may all recall the news story a few years ago where Captain America was killed. He wasn’t really, but everybody thought he was for about two years. Then he came back, but by then his old sidekick Bucky had taken over the Cap identity. So Steve Rogers stepped aside to be his own hero and let Bucky stay as Cap. But with Bucky dead, Steve puts on his old costume and becomes Captain America again in this issue.
But there’s no fanfare!
We don’t even see Cap standing over the body of his dead friend and promising him justice! We just see Cap already in costume sitting with his head down. Then the others come up to him and tell him it’s time to get going. None of the characters seem to care that Steve is Cap again, so why should I care? It’s cool that he jumps right back into the leadership role, and that provides a little heart. He gets Thor and Iron Man together and they each head off to take on a different aspect of the threat. Cap goes to join the Avengers in protecting New York City, Iron Man goes to try and reason with Odin and Thor goes to confront The Serpent head-on. We get a little bit more backstory about The Serpent, but not enough to make us care yet.
So issue #4 starts to put Fear Itself back on track. The first three issues were dull in that they were just mindless action for the sake of action. It was all build-up as the threats started getting worse, but they only showed us these threats in the most basic, glossed over sense. Sure some buildings blew up, some faceless extras got wiped out and a hero died, but so what? We’ve seen it all before. Some hero being sacrificed to give an Event Comic more depth has become cliche. Blowing up monuments no longer has any impact. And the villains just aren’t that interesting yet.
Sin as Skadi may look cool, but she's little more than just 'bad guy'.
But with the heroes coming together in issue #4, we’re finally seeing some more character-specific actions. That’s what I want to read about. Big fights, like the one teased at he end of this issue, aren’t as interesting if we don’t care about the characters involved. So let’s hope the next three issues of Fear Itself have more heart than mindless violence.
Explodey Transformers are explodey. With explosions.
They rock and sock! They rock and sock and rock! Rock! Rock! Rock! Sock! Sock! Sock! They’re Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon! And man do they ever inhabit the spirit of Rock’em Sock’em Robots! This movie is one massive ACTION GIANORAMA! It fulfills the action quotient for the entire summer! So to sum up: Transformers 3 is a pretty damn good action flick.
But the movie is senselessly chaotic, and with such odd pacing and side characters, it fails to become more than just a spectacle. Some spoilers to follow.
He will blow your freakin' head off, man!
As I’ve said so many times before, this movie is all action. And it’s good action too. If all you want is mindless explosions and running and dirty protagonists and smashing and KABLAM-Os, then this movie is perfect for you. Just like the first two Transformers movies were. The entire last hour of the movie has got to be the biggest action set piece I’ve ever seen! And it’s relatively exciting. There are even a few really good twists that keep the story moving along. Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a fine movie to see on the big screen.
But it’s not glorious cinema. There’s no deeper level on which to appreciate Transformers 3. It is what it is and that’s all that it is, and needs to be. It’ll make hundreds of millions of dollars and it will entertain hundreds of millions of people. There’s nothing wrong with that. It definitely improves on the mindless insanity of Transformers 2, but it doesn’t live up to the crisp, controlled excitement of Transformers 1. So it could be better, but what more were you hoping for?
Personally, I was hoping for a better handling of the titular characters. Once again the biggest flaw in this franchise is how utterly wasted the Transformers are, both good guys and bad guys.
The Autobots and Decepticons are at war again for the fate of the planet Earth, with Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) and a few other familiar faces caught in the middle. The Autobots suddenly discover that there’s some important stuff related to Transformers history buried on the moon, and when they go to recover the stuff, it sets of the Decepticons’ latest attempt to take over the Earth. It all builds to an epic battle in Chicago (though it might as well be any major city) where the Autobots and their human allies try to stop the Decepticons’ ultimate weapon.
And all the while, Sam’s new girlfriend (because the old girlfriend got into an off-stage catfight with the director) is being held hostage in Chicago, so he cowboys up and goes in to rescue her.
I refuse to show that bimbo. So here's the firetruck who isn't Inferno!
The action is phenomenal, even if it can be mindless. There is one scene where the (human) good guys are climbing to the upper levels of a skyscraper until they find a good floor from which to fire their rocket. They hope to take out the bad guy’s main weapon with that rocket. For some reason, the Decepticons start trying to cut the skyscraper in half, which causes the upper floors to start tipping over. The good guys jump out a few windows, start sliding down the side of the skyscraper and then shoot out some lower windows so that they drop into a lower floor. That’s pretty awesome! Action scenes like that are why we go to the movies!
But after all of that, they didn’t even fire their rocket. And they wind up back on the ground a few minutes later. So that entire adventure in the skyscraper was for nothing! They didn’t even have a scene where they lament failing to fire their rocket. The movie just keeps going. And the whole reason they had to jump out of the windows was because Decepticons had found them on that floor…but there was a brief scene where the Decepticons were searching that floor while the good guys hid behind office furniture. Out of all the floors on that skyscraper, why did the Decepticons pick that one specifically if they didn’t already know the humans were there? And why search for them? Why not just blow up that floor?
Epic skyscraper sliding scene!
It’s all incredibly nonsensical. Scenes are strung together haphazardly with little logic. Characters show up out of nowhere and then disappear again immediately after, leaving you wondering where the hell they’ve been this entire time. At one point in siege of Chicago, Bumblebee comes out of nowhere (after being offscreen for 20+ minutes), saves Sam from falling, and then is gone a moment later. Sam says Bumblebee’s going to join the rest of the Autobots up river. Next we see him, all the Autobots have randomly been taken prisoner in the middle of the street. When did that happen?
And towards the beginning, after the Government thanks Sam for uncovering the secret of the stuff on the moon, he’s told to be a good boy and just go home. Instead he recruits John Turturro and together they investigate a Russian Cosmonaut plot about that same stuff on the moon. And a few of the extra Autobots show up to randomly help Sam and Turturro, even though the Government told Sam not to do this kind of thing. Sure enough, Sam once again unlocks all the important info. Why wasn’t the Government investigating the Cosmonauts? Why can Sam all of a sudden rally all of the troops out of nowhere once he’s figured out the big secret?
Maybe because Sam Witwicky is a boss!
Do you want to know why this movie will make hundreds of millions of dollars, while Green Lantern bombed? Because when Sam freakin’ Witwicky sees a problem, he gets in its face and solves the damn problem! He doesn’t sit around and whine about not having the right stuff. Obviously the action will play a big part in the big bucks, but this franchise has always handled their protagonist very well.
Sam the man
I have enjoyed Shia LaBeouf’s performances through all three movies, even if he can get incredibly manic and shouty at times. He’s relatable, he’s heroic and he can be pretty badass at times. He’s saved the world twice now, and at the beginning of this movie, he can’t even get a job. He feels powerless because he has no real purpose with the Government and the Autobots, and it’s true. He just so happened to be the guy who met Bumblebee in the first movie. He’s not a soldier and he’s not a CIA agent, so he has no purpose with the Autobot/Army alliance. Yet he desperately wants to matter. That’s good character motivation.LaBeouf has always portrayed Sam’s down-to-Earth nature very well. One of the best aspects of Transformers 1 was the human element.
Sam even gets to kill a Decepticon! And not in an accidental sort of way. He straight up confronts the giant robot head-on and obliterates it! Green Lantern didn’t do shit!
All of the human actors who return to this film are handled well. Turturro’s role has improved, he’s treated with a lot more respect. The two soldiers, the white one and the black one, continue to be badass and soldiery. The black one even gets some pretty stand out moments. Sam’s parents are given a much smaller role, and they’re OK, but they don’t get much to do. They had the only good scene in all of Transformers 2, but they sadly don’t follow up on that emotion.
(It was the one near the end in the desert when they want to naturally protect their son, but he’s got to save the world. Awesome scene in the midst of complete and total crap.)
All of the new human actors are pretty much crap characters. We get a new hardass Government rep who once again thinks she’s the boss of all the Transformers and all the characters, but is quickly made irrelevant. They trot out John Malkovich for a stupid little part in the beginning. The Asian guy from the Hangover movies, and who plays Chang on Community, has a small but incredibly obnoxious role. He played his schtick too far and the movie was better for his departing early and painfully. There’s also a human villain who serves his role well as a Decepticon-collaborator.
The new bimbo provides pretty eye candy and is a rather nice character, but she’s bland and shallow and doesn’t establish the sort of action babe connection that Megan Fox did. She’s the hottie that Sam Witwicky managed to hook up with before the movie starts, so their relationship just is – and that relationship is then turned into the driving force behind a lot of Sam’s actions.
The firetruck we should have had: Inferno! My childhood favorite.
But the absolute worst character in the movie is Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) as Dutch, Turturro’s assistant. He’s the very definition of extraneous and ridiculous. He starts out as Tuturro’s effeminate publicist (Turturro wrote a book), then randomly becomes a repressed action fighter a la Jason Bourne, and then even later becomes a master hacker able to hack into cell phone cameras and bridge controls when the movie needs them. And he does so from the computers at the good guy’s base! It’s like the movie backed itself into a corner for no particular reason, then introduced a character who could simply get them out of that corner and then wrapped that all up into one new character. Ta da!
And to think, all of that time spent with Tudyk could have been spent getting to know the Transformers.
This is my #1 complaint about the Transformers movies. This franchise seems absolutely against fleshing out the Transformers as characters. In the first film, even though the main cast of Autobots get more lines and scenes, none of them have any meaningful interactions with any of the humans. They may as well have just been silent. It gets even worse in the second movie. None of the robots, with the slight exceptions of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, have any real interesting or meaningful moments or dialogue with any of the humans whatsoever. And after the first movie, they don’t even get anything meaningful to say to each other!
The only character who develops any sort of connection with a human, Bumblebee, is given the specific disability of being mute! He has to speak through crappy radio broadcasts and movie quotes. For all three movies! WHY!?!? In Dark of the Moon, they have him piecing together full sentences using radio quotes, so he’s essentially talking. But he’s not really talking! It’s insane! But at least Bumblebee is suitably heroic.
Bumblebee is a character in this movie
Just like Optimus Prime is suitably badass. He kicks a lot of butt in this movie, moreso than the others combined. So that’s pretty cool. But Prime might as well be off in a world of his own. He barely says two words to any of the humans, even Sam. But he gets to kill bad guys and have a jetpack for some reason. So that’s pretty cool. The rest of the Transformers who were in the first movie reappear, Ironhide and Ratchet, but they have just as much to do in this movie as they did in the second movie. They’re lucky to even get lines. You can just sort of recognize Ratcher as the green one. And thankfully I think someone says “Ironhide” when he appears on screen, so you can sort of remember him. They don’t do anything. At the very least they had one-note personalities in Transformers 1, but they don’t even get that in this movie.
I don’t think any of the Transformers introduced in the second movie come back. Other than that little guy who humped Megan Fox’s leg. He also gets a sidekick and they have wacky tiny Transformer adventures. It’s like Michael Bay desperately wanted to keep the two-man comedy team from Transformers 2, but didn’t want to use the Twins that everybody said were racist. So he just used these two.
Some new Autoboats are introduced in this film, but you’ll barely get a name, if even that. There’s a silver car and a red car, and the red car has some cool blades and an accent. That’s all you know about them. They drive around in car mode a lot in the beginning, like you’re supposed to remember that ‘oh right, there’s a silver and a red car on the team now’. Then they barely appear in the background during the siege of Chicago scenes. There’s some old guy weapons-maker Transformer who gets a brief scene at the beginning and then a brief scene towards the end. No name. I’m not even sure what he transformed into. They also introduce a team called The Wreckers, who are stock cars. They don’t get individual names, but at least someone always says “The Wreckers” whenever they’re around so you know it’s them. One of the Wreckers is fat, so he’s easy to recognize. Oh hey look, it’s that tubby Transformer again. Good for him.
None of these new Transformers matter. They don’t do anything besides hang out in the background and maybe do some confusing action stuff. And other than Megatron and Starscream, the Decepticons don’t even get vehicle modes! They’re just generic robots. (Except for one brief scene of a Decepticon taking the form of a Waste Management garbage truck. I assume that was just for the product placement, since he never returns. And I wanted him to return, dammit!) I realize that the movie has to bow down to the car companies, but couldn’t some of the Transformers take on cool forms? A garbage truck is unique. A tank is cool. Why not a school bus Transformer? Or anything other than similar looking cars or SUVs?
For all the fun of the movie’s action scenes and human characters, once again Transformers utterly wastes its titular characters. They might as well just be the voiceless aliens from Independence Day or the tornado from Twister.
Except, of course, for the Mountain Dew Transformer from the end of the first film! I love that guy! We need more of him!
I want an entire comic book tie-in about him!
Let’s All Go a Witchering 2!
After several weeks and hours, I have finally beaten Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for the PC, and it is one of the finest RPGs I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing – though it has a few faults here and there. The overall adventure is a blast, with an incredible fighting system that requires actual skill and balance, as well as a bounty of fun quests, side quests and fully-voiced characters. And not enough can be said about the gorgeous graphics.
The grim and the grimmer
Witcher 2 is the continuing adventures of Geralt of Rivia, monster slayer-for-hire. I never played Witcher 1, so I assume part of the story picks up from there, it’s never made particularly clear. Witcher 2 is a mix of the overall saga and a storyline just for this game, with a lot left over for Witcher 3 to pick up. I can’t wait.
A mysterious assassin is killing kings and Geralt has been framed. He and his companions must travel across the land to clear his name and get to the bottom of an even larger conspiracy that has plunged the world into war. Those kings who are still alive want more power, while those nations who have lost their heads of state have to find a way to maintain. Meanwhile, in each city he visits, Geralt can pick up monster-slaying jobs, help out the local townsfolk and get into fight clubs or arm-wrestling tournaments. So there’s plenty of fun things to do as the story moves along.
And it’s a fun story, though confusing at times. The game does not hold your hand and expects you to use their Journal system to read up on the different countries, kings and characters. You’re thrown right into a lengthy prologue and introduced to a myriad of characters right off the bat, all of whom remain important throughout the game. Even the naked chick. Then Witcher 2 is broken into three acts and an epilogue, and each act gets its own city and surrounding area for you to explore. And it’s simply beautiful to explore! The luscious forests and squalid towns create a rich atmosphere of medieval monster-killing and bottom-dwelling!
Pretty Forest
And the best part is that at the end of Act 1, you have to pick a side and stick with that side through the rest of the game. Which means once you beat the game, you can start a new game and have actual new content waiting for you by picking the other side! I know I can’t wait to start my next play through.
There are a lot of big decisions in this game, from that major game-altering decision to more nuanced choices that effect the story. Some of these choices pay off by the end of the game, and some, I assume, will pay off in Witcher 3. Several times you’re given the option of letting someone live or die, but both options have their pros and cons. One big distinction between this game and other RPGs is that the choices in this game aren’t necessarily good vs. evil, nice guy vs. jerk. Geralt and everyone around him seem to live in a perpetual shade of gray. I only wish some of these decisions had a more immediate impact. I let one guy live in the prologue, and then he shows up in Act 3 for a brief, pointless chat. And when everything is gray, the dialogue options aren’t very dramatic.
Especially when Geralt’s voice actor sounds lethargic and only semi-interested in anything he says. Talk about a droning monotone voice. But then it feels like they planned it that way to make Geralt more badass. Oh well. He’s a good protagonist, the strong and willful type. And you can play him as either altruistic or more concerned with getting paid. At least your friends and enemies are fun and exciting. Most of your allies are a delight to hang out with. In the storyline I picked, me and one of my allies became a sort of buddy-cop team kicking ass and taking names.
But you probably want to know more about that naked chick, right? She’s there in the beginning, and there are plenty more like her throughout the rest of the game. This is an adult RPG, with sex, swearing, drinking and epic violence. It’s low down and dirty, and I’m glad for that. It may be silly to giggle at naked chicks in a video game, but it adds an extra level of seriousness that I like. The sleaze and the raunch means anything can happen, and there were some truly disgusting and heart-rending twists. If the game makers are willing to show sex in their game, then they’re also willing to do a whole lot worse.
But they're definitely willing to show sex!
But you don’t care about the sex! You want to know about the gameplay, right? Right? Of course you do. The gameplay is great! It’s a keyboard and mouse control, of which I’m a fan. Sword-swinging is tied to the mouse, and spells get one button to cast. You just have to go into the spell selection screen (which slows down gameplay) to switch spells. It doesn’t ruin the pace of fights at all and is very easy to pull off. However, as much fun as the fighting can be, this is also one of the game’s biggest faults.
Witcher 2 is not your typical hack and slash. Yes, your main form of attack is the sword, but if you don’t add a variety of spells, potions and grenades/traps to the fight, you’re going to lose. You need to throw up a shield spell one second, then a stun spell the next, all while blocking, rolling and waiting for an opening to slice. The enemies will gang up on you to an annoying degree, and you’ve got to juggle them effectively if you hope to win. It can be frustrating at first (especially since the game just throws you straight into massive fights in the prologue), but once you get the hang of it, it can be fun and strategic.
It's on like Donkey Kong
So it’s a fun RPG with a nice story, great characters and a cool combat system, but it’s not without its flaws. Along with the ridiculously difficult (at times) combat, you also don’t get to heal during a fight. No drinking potions with the push of a button. What you have to do is predict when you may get into a fight and go through an elaborate inventory system to drink several potions in advance. But a lot of the time you don’t know when a fight is coming, or the cut scenes eat up the brief window that the potions last. And sometimes it seems that the potions are critical to surviving a fight.
Spells are difficult at first. There are only five and they all have weird names. For example, your stun spell is called Aard and your shield spell is called Quen. Who know why they need those complicated names, but once you figure them out and memorize their placement on the spell selection screen, it won’t be a problem anymore.
I also had a problem with a slow mouse at times, but I don’t know if that was design or a problem on my end. Not only during the heavy graphics scenes, but also in the simple menus and dialogue options. The mouse was just sluggish, which was annoying. My computer was able to handle the graphics for the most part, but slowed down in the epic army scenes or boss fights. Yet I managed.
The minor gripes do not ruin Witcher 2 by a long shot. It’s a great adventure with a challenging and fun combat system. I can’t say that you’ll fall in love with any of the characters, and the story is pretty thick at times, but you should be able to enjoy it nonetheless.
Now it’s time for my second playthrough! I hear you get to shag a cute elf chick in the other storyline!
It’s Not Easy Being Green…But it is Awesome!
Despite all the negative reviews, the crappy first trailer, the weird costume, the obvious Iron Man parallels and the vibe of desperation, the Green Lantern movie was pretty damn good. There were a lot of cheesy and crappy parts to it, but overall it’s a fun viewing experience. **SPOILERS** after the jump!
We're all about the logos
There is nothing spectacular about the Green Lantern movie – though there should have been. Here is a concept unlike anything else in comics – the Green Lantern Corps – and the movie absolutely wastes all that potential. For everybody who doesn’t know, the Green Lantern Corps are essentially an intergalactic team of space cops. So there are thousands of them, and a human just happens to get inducted. So whereas every other superhero movie (short of the X-Men) has dealt with that one superhero, Green Lantern could have featured themes about brotherhood and unity and camaraderie. Instead we’re treated to yet another solo superhero on Earth who must come to grips with his new responsibility all on his own in order to save the day. Green Lantern plays it safe when it comes to making a superhero movie, and that’s a terrible shame.
Though apparently there is something to be said for playing it safe. It’s a fun film. The lead hero is great, the costume looks cool, the powers are fun and the villains are appropriately evil enough. And along with all of the great segments in the movie, the overall makes for a good viewing experience. It’s definitely worth seeing. I liked it about as much as, if not more so, than Thor.
The best part of the movie are the horribly brief scenes with the Green Lantern Corps. Once Hal Jordan receives his ring, and after a few random scenes, he’s transported to Oa, the home planet of the Green Lantern Corps. Only three other Green Lanterns get speaking parts and there is really only one scene that features more than Hal and these three (this same crowd scene is repeated later in the movie, so I suppose two scenes). Seeing Hal interact with these other Lanterns and hang out in the big crowd scene is a blast. It’s different from all of the other superhero movies, and it really crackles with excitement. They could have pushed this feeling for the whole movie.
This should have been the whole movie
Of the three Lanterns, Tomar Re and Kilowog are really just afterthoughts. They’re pleasant, but you are immediately reminded of the actors who voice them and that takes away from making them complete characters. But they’re fun to watch on Oa, and it’s good to see them again at the end. Though they show up a few seconds shy of making their impact meaningful. Suffice to say, Hal is forced to fight all on his own at the end to defeat the bad guys. This movie should have had a dozen or so other Green Lanterns show up to lend him a hand in the final battle. That would have been new and exciting!
Sinestro is very, very good. The actor is brilliant in the role. He’s very regal and very sharp, like the edge of a blade. Sinestro is really the only reason I want a sequel. It seems that the filmmakers were confident that they would get a sequel, so they decided to save all of the best stuff for the second film. They used this one to tell the origin and get everybody familiar with the concept, and they’ll use the sequel to tell the really great stories with Sinestro as the antagonist. The post-credits scene definitely reveals that to be the case. So I’m glad that they were smart enough to take the time and develop Sinestro as a Green Lantern in this film. It should make his turn to the dark side all the more meaningful in the sequel.
Trying to cram both Hal’s origin and Sinestro’s turn from good guy to bad guy in one movie would have been a waste.
Ryan Reynolds is also very good as the lead. I’ve been reading Green Lantern comics since Hal Jordon was brought back from the dead, and I couldn’t really tell you anything about Hal as a person. I know what the writer would like me to think, but it never really sinks as much as the personalities of Peter Parker, Wolverine or some other Marvel characters. DC has never been very good on personalities. So Ryan Reynolds doesn’t so much play Hal Jordan as play the Green Lantern named Hal Jordan. The movie asks him to be smarmy and charming, and he does it splendidly. He’s a fun guy to root for.
And the costume looks really good. It looks bad in the publicity shots, but once it’s motion it really shines (literally). It looks even better when the black parts are black instead of dark green. The mask looks dumb though.
Hector Hammond as the villain also works out better than I had foreseen. Hammond is a stupid villain in the comics, and the images of Peter Sarsgaard with that giant forehead looked even stupider. But then Green Lantern doesn’t really have a lot of good villains. Hammond is creepy in a delightful way in the movie, and his powers are vicious – though they don’t do much with his telepathy. The fact that he, Hal and the love interest all knew each other growing up should have been given more emphasis. That could have raised Hammond into a bigger villain had they pushed that connection harder, though I think it was a good idea to tie him to Parallax. Hammond alone wouldn’t have been a good conflict for the space-faring Green Lantern. GL definitely needed something that threatened the entire planet because he is primarily a space-based character.
Which, again, is not something we’ve ever seen before in these superhero movies.
Sinestro
There are a lot of really cheesy parts to this movie, and a lot of missed opportunities. Blake Lively as Carol Ferris is only alright. I’ve seen some reviews where they say she’s wooden and bad. I suppose. I don’t really know acting well enough to tell. I thought she was alright. She doesn’t add much though. There’s no reason to swoon for her or for Green Lantern to really want her other than she’s really the only girl in the movie. They grew up together and have a history together, and that really seems to be the only reason both Hal Jordan and Hector Hammond want her. She’s nothing special, though I’m glad that she figured out that Hal was the Green Lantern right away. That made for a much better story than Hal trying to balance the two lives.
Most other side characters are as boring as Carol. Hal has a friend who helps him out with a ride now and then, and is in on the Green Lantern secret, but he isn’t good for anything. Amanda Waller is a pale imitation of the ball-buster she was in the comics, and has ridiculous hair. Hector Hammond’s senator father is just around to push Hammond’s anger into outright villainy. And Hal’s brothers and nephew show up in the beginning, and could have been a good subplot, but they’re never seen again.
There are a lot of little problems with the movie. When Hal shows up at his nephew’s birthday party, the local news is talking about him and his plane crash. The test flight was for some top secret super military jets on a private airfield, and nobody was hurt. Yet the local news station makes it their top story and uses Hal’s name. It’s one of those silly Hollywood scenes where the local news is always talking about something important to the plot, no matter how un-newsworthy it is.
All of the scenes of Hal doubting himself and his ability to use the ring are a waste, as are the scenes where Carol talks him into it. These minutes could have been better spent with Hal kicking ass. We’re told that Hal walks away from everything in his life, and so he’s now walking away from the Green Lantern Corps. Yet that’s not the case. He shows incredible initiative and guts in the test flight that opens the movie, and we have no idea how his relationship with Carol ended. Hell, they make it sound like they slept together a few times, and then Hal went on to sleep with more chicks. That’s one of the main aspects of his character, that he’s a ladies man. Carol just got caught up in that. Their relationship sparks back up in the film without any real reason why they are apart in the first place.
So seeing Hal ‘quit’ the Green Lantern Corps comes out of nowhere. When he’s on Oa, Kilowog trains Hal one-on-one for about 10 minutes by throwing discs at him and that’s supposed to stand in for all of his training. Then Sinestro shows him up and gives him a speech about needing to earn the ring. Rather than boost his pride, this just deflates Hal. He quits and goes home. Oh boo hoo hoo. Hal can’t handle a little light hazing as the new guy.
Of course he doesn’t give the ring back. He takes it back to Earth and uses its power to save the day at the first opportunity. So he really only ‘quits’ in word alone. But with so little time spent on Oa, his climactic scene where he confronts the Guardians of the Universe to put them in their place isn’t earned. It doesn’t feel like he has any right to be in that set piece. Though once he really gets into it, you really get a sense of what kind of Green Lantern Hal can become.
Like that old movie cliche: the chief of police tells the hero: “Dammit Hal, you caused thousands of dollars in property damage, you killed the crook so he can’t stand trial, I’ve got reams of paperwork to fill out and the Guardians are breathing down my neck. I should have your ring for this…but you’re the best damn Lantern I’ve ever seen!”
Also, what was with all the buildings and moving lights on the streets on Oa. Are there people living and driving around on the planet?
I didn’t have the best opinion leading up to the movie. I saw it as a desperate attempt to recapture the magic of Iron Man by taking the smarmy yet charming lead actor and having him learn enough humility to become a superhero. While I may still be right, it didn’t turn out as bad as I thought it would. I hope it does well at the box office and we can see a sequel, so that everything the filmmakers wanted to do can be done in the next chapter. Bring on the Sinestro Corps!
First Class Deserves Every X-Pun, Especially ‘X-Cellent’!
When I first learned of X-Men: First Class and watched the pre-production roll in, I scoffed at the obvious cash-grab. I knew that Fox Studios needed to keep making X-Men movies in order to hold onto the license, so I believed they would just churn out crap in order to keep making money. I thought First Class would be a bloated, stink-pile of the cheapest Hollywood tripe.
I was wrong.
X-Men: First Class is an incredibly emotional and action-packed superhero adventure. It never gets bogged down in all of its various plots and creates movie magic with its portrayals of Charles Xavier and Magneto. This movie is bloody brilliant.
This history, the depth, the friendship are all perfect.
This prequel is a triumph, and puts the other three X-Men movies to shame. While clearly part of the same movie continuity (for the most part), First Class carves out its own world with its own characters, and I want more. Leaving the theater, I wanted to see the sequel immediately. I want to see what happens next – and I don’t mean the original trilogy or the comics. I want to see more of the First Class world. Even though it covers the same ground as the original trilogy, and features a few of the same characters, it is a new and different beast all together. It’s a prequel in name only, creating its own franchise rather than worrying about fitting into the previous films.
At least I hope that’s the case. Though it does help deepen some of the stories and emotions in First Class if you’re familiar with the original trilogy, and vice versa. I imagine Mystique’s character and Beast’s appearance in Last Stand will now have an added depth.
At the heart of First Class is the friendship and eventual split between Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, the man who would be Magneto. Despite everything else that’s going on, this is the good stuff, and the movie does not disappoint. The acting is phenomenal. Xavier is a fun, lively character, and Magneto is hard, ruthless and yet incredibly human. Their friendship absolutely works. And when it all comes crashing down in the film’s climax, you feel the pain and loss between these two men. You feel their friendship as well throughout the film. They are a pleasure on screen together.
Hats off to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. They make you forget about Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, though it’s fun to link them with the older actors facing off from the original trilogy. I kept flashing back to the “We are the future Charles, not them. They no longer matter” scene from X-Men as I watched McAvoy and Fassbender together. That was a blast.
Yellow, blue and gray are not his colors.
Beyond the Xavier/Magneto stuff, there’s a lot going on in this movie. But despite that, it never got bogged down or bloated. I felt that everything and everyone got exactly the sort of attention that was deserved. Chief amongst these is the action plot, about Xavier and Magneto teaming up and stopping Sebastian Shaw’s plot to destroy the world. The tension builds nicely throughout the film, with both sides gaining in strength, power and understanding until we have an epic showdown in the very middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The historical context works, and the final battle stands on its own as an action-packed superhero adventure.
I will avoid spoilers since there is a lot happening that you may not expect. I know I was surprised and excited with certain scenes.
Shaw is a suitable bad guy, just don’t go expecting the Hellfire Club from the comics. He’s villainous and definitely dangerous, and Kevin Bacon plays him well. His link to Magneto and their final confrontation is especially good. Emma Frost does much more than look pretty, though I wasn’t floored with January Jones. Her performance was fine, but she wasn’t as drop-dead sexy or sultry as one might want Emma Frost. She looked kind of uncomfortable in the lingerie. Not impressive.
Nothing needs to be said about Azazel or Riptide. Despite being two of the oddest choices to make it into an X-Men movie (A plague upon The Draco!!), they serve their function as Shaw’s henchmen. Though I did feel the link to Nightcrawler in X2 was unnecessary and takes away from Kurt’s unique style.
The first class of the X-Men are all pretty cool. Banshee is a lot of fun, but none of the others stand out. The recruitment montage seems to come out of nowhere, as if someone along the way realized they needed an actual team of X-Men rather than just letting Xavier and Magneto handle everything. We’ve got Banshee, Havok, Angel Salvatore and Darwin. None of them are among my favorite X-Men, so there was no fanboy glee for me. They were all just cool and served their purposes. Moira MacTaggert was there too.
Here comes the yellow spandex...
As I mentioned before, two characters who really shine are Mystique and Beast. We learn where they came from and how they came to terms with who they are as mutants. Mystique has an especially fun character-arc, while Beast’s is more thought-provoking. Learning what we do about them in First Class, re-watching them in the original trilogy will be especially fun. One might even be able to say that Beast now has a fully-realized character arc from First Class to Last Stand, perhaps even including his tiny cameo in X2.
So in closing, X-Men: First Class is a fantastic film. It’s exciting and action-packed in all the right ways, and definitely has a special sort of feel to it for a superhero movie. It’s uniquely its own. The characters were all good, some more than others, and the character arcs are all delightful to watch on screen. I left the theater wanting more.
And though it may still be a cash-grab to hold on to the X-Men license, I’m perfectly fine with that now. As long as they keep making movies this good, I’ll be happy.
Henchman-4-Hire 