Month: April 2019

Released: April 2019

Director: Meir Zarchi

Not Rated

Run Time: 148 Minutes

Distributor: Deja Vu, LLC.

Genre: Horror/Thriller

Cast:
Camille Keaton: Jennifer Hills
Jamie Bernadette: Christy Hills
Maria Olson: Becky
Jim Tavare: Herman
Jonathan Peacy: Kevin
Jeremy Ferdman: Scotty

As a fan of horror movies, I often have a tendency to look far and wide for horror movies that most people would never hear about.  When I was younger, I heard whispers of some horror movies that were banned in multiple countries and edited all to hell because of their graphic content.  In the UK, these films were put on a “Video Nasties” list which listed every movie during the late 70s and early 80s films that had graphic sexual and violent content.  Some of those films included The Evil Dead, Suspiria, The Last House on the Left, and The Hills Have Eyes.  There were two films, however, that were more notorious than anything on that list: Cannibal Holocaust and I Spit On Your Grave.  These are the movies that your parents warned you about.  They are the boogeymen that hide in the dark.  When I was younger, I had no way to get a hold of these movies.  You couldn’t just walk into a video store and pick these off a shelf.  In most video stores at the time in other states, these two movies would be found in the “adult” section.  In Utah, we didn’t get the adult section in our video stores…..dammit.  Over the past few years, I managed to get a hold of these films and……wow.  They weren’t kidding.  These movies didn’t mess around, especially I Spit On Your Grave.  Well, 40 years later, we finally get a sequel to Meir Zarchi’s original film.  Was it really a good idea?  Nope.

Deja Vu picks up 40 years after the events of the original I Spit On Your Grave.  Jennifer Hills had survived her horrendous ordeal of being gang-raped and left for dead.  She eventually took her vengeance on her attackers.  40 years later, after being acquitted of murdering her attackers, Jennifer has a best-selling book detailing her ordeal while she does therapy groups for rape victims.  She also has a daughter, Christy, who is a supermodel.  Shortly after lunch, Jennifer and Christy are kidnapped by the relatives of the men who attacked Jennifer 40 years prior.  Their intent, to deliver their own brand of justice.  I’ll be honest:  The set up to this film sounds really good on paper.  Having Jennifer having to deal with the consequences of her vengeance is a pretty nifty idea, if not original.  However, the execution is terrible.  Instead of delivering on what made the original film so notorious, Zarchi manages to make the whole affair dull as ditch-water.  There’s talking, a kidnapping, more talking……..more talking, Christy escapes, MORE talking, ad nauseum.  It’s boring.  That should never happen in a movie like this.  You want it to be a slow-burner?  Fine.  Do some proper build-up and some proper characterization.  That’s not what we get here.  It’s a bad joke.

I’m going to lay it out straight:  I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu is a very bad movie.  I’m not saying that the original film was a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but the original had a few things going for it that this movie doesn’t.  For one: The time in which the original was released.  The original was released in 1978 and it made a ton of waves, not necessarily in a good way, but the film basically went after the audience with claws.  It was a vicious film with a rape scene that lasted 30-40 minutes.  As horrible as it sounds, and that scene was horrifying, it was one of the more recognizable elements of the film, but I don’t think that was what got it banned.  It was the level of violence that was unleashed towards Jennifer’s attackers.  Two: It was better paced and it was unflinching in its brutality.  Again, those were some of the qualities that attracted a certain section of the audience.  This being an I Spit on Your Grave movie, there’s got to be a rape in there somewhere, but it feels cheap and more like an afterthought.  I honestly don’t know if it was supposed to be in there originally, but it feels tacked on as if to try and shock the audience.  Yeah, it’s not a pleasant scene to watch, and no rape scene should be, but I don’t think it was taken as seriously as it should have been.  As “in-your-face” and over-the-top as the rape in the original film was, it was very devastating for Jennifer Hills, as it would be for any woman.  The actual blood and guts aspect of the film is also very tame.  There’s nothing really shocking here.  It’s utterly predictable and there’s no real payoff.

I’m not a creep.  I don’t watch these movies for the rape scenes.  Those are very hard to sit through, even for a white guy in his mid-30s.  No, you sit through that so you can get to the vengeance part of the film….but it doesn’t really deliver here.  Everything is very restrained, which is bizarre considering that the 2010 remake went full-bore with its violence, as did the sequels.  It’s a bloody movie, and there’s a decapitation, but overall, I’m disappointed in the actual revenge aspect of the film.  For one, Christy manages to become a complete bad-ass the day after she was assaulted.  There’s nothing earlier in the movie that would indicate that she had any sort of weapons training.  The original film had Hills take her time to recuperate and plan out her vengeance.  Here, Christy picks up a gun and she immediately knows how to use it.  There’s a lot of things in this movie that don’t make a lot of sense.  On top of that, the acting is really bad.  The only two that manage to “act” are Camille Keaton and Jamie Bernadette.  Look, it’s really cool to see Camille Keaton back in the role that infamously made her famous.  Jamie is a lovely woman and she definitely delivered.  Everyone else, though?  Good grief.  I haven’t seen acting THIS bad in a horror movie in years.  I’m not saying that the performances in the original film were Oscar-worthy, but at least they were competent and committed to what was going on.  Here, the rednecks are completely over-the-top to the point where they are not even funny-bad.  They’re just bad.  I don’t know if I can blame the actors for their performances, but I am going to lay the blame at Meir Zarchi’s feet.

Meir Zarchi has directed only three movies in his lifetime: The original I Spit on Your Grave, Don’t Mess With My Sister!, and this film.  You can absolutely tell that he really doesn’t have much experience in the way of making movies, as he’s also only really written four.  This was a movie made by an amateur.  It is no surprise that the original film developed a cult following, but I find it surprising that it was Meir Zarchi that got it made.  I generally don’t like coming down so hard on movies with an ultra-low budget, but this thing is bloated and could have been trimmed by about an hour, and you wouldn’t have lost anything.  Yeah, the movie is two and a half hours long.  It had no right to be.  For movies like this, you really don’t want to drag it out.  The subject matter in the original film was horrifying enough, but trying to stretch that over two hours, let alone 2.5, was a really bad idea.  The film was dull, uninteresting with mostly irritating characters that were poorly acted and violence that was watered-down.  Ultimately, this feels more like an inadvertent comedy of sorts, and when you’re dealing with a subject that is as horrific as rape, that is NOT the direction you want to take a movie like this.

I’m planning on doing a post about rape in film and television in the near future, but I want to get all my ducks in a row before I do it.  I will be using I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu as an example of what NOT to do in a rape/revenge thriller.  It’s going to be a tough post to write, but I think it’s a discussion that needs to happen.  If you are a fan of the original I Spit on Your Grave, or have an appreciation for what that film was trying to do, skip this mess.  It’s boring and it’s extremely tame by comparison.

My Final Recommendation:  NOT worth the 20 bucks I spent on it.  Stay away from this stinker. 2/10, and that’s because of Camille Keaton and Jamie Bernadette.

Released: April 2019

Directors: Anthony and Joe Russo

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 3 Hours

Distributor: Disney/Marvel

Genre: Action/Fantasy/Science Fiction

Cast:
Robert Downey, Jr.: Tony Stark/Iron Man
Chris Evans: Steve Rogers/Captain America
Mark Ruffalo: Bruce Banner/Hulk
Chris Hemsworth: Thor
Scarlett Johansson: Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Jeremy Renner: Clint Barton/Hawkeye
Don Cheadle: James Rhodes/War Machine
Paul Rudd: Scott Lang/Ant-Man

When it comes to film franchises with multiple entries, there is always a certain level of expectation when it comes to a sequel of a beloved movie.  Usually, the first sequel in a film franchise tends to be very good, sometimes even eclipsing the original film.  It’s happened on multiple occasions: Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes, and Terminator 2 just to name a few.  If the first film in a series is really good, then the expectations for the follow-up film are going to be that much higher.  Most of the time, sequels aren’t able to reach that bar, except for the ones that I just mentioned.  It doesn’t mean that all sequels are bad, it’s just that the previous film set the bar too high.  With Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, every single movie was building up to Avengers: Infinity War.  It took them 10 years and 20 movies to do it, but it happened.  When the film was released last year, already high expectations were blown out of the water.  Now, the second part of the story, Endgame, has expectations higher than ever.  Does it meet those expectations?  Let’s find out.

After 11 years and 21 movies, we finally come to the end of the current iteration of the MCU.  After Thanos’ victory snap destroyed half of all life in the universe, including a large chunk of the Avengers, the remaining members are left in disarray, not knowing what to do next.  Tony Stark is stranded in space with Nebula and Rocket Raccon, while the rest of the universe is trying to pick up the pieces.  Scott Lang/Ant-Man, who was left in the Quantum Realm after Hank and Hope Pym were disintegrated, escapes the Quantum Realm 5 years after being trapped there, not realizing what had happened.  He shows up at the Avengers HQ with a possible solution to bring back the lost.  That’s where I’m going to end the story description for fear of spoiling the entire film.  This is one that you have to see.  What I will say, though, is that the story is fairly easy to follow, but it is also one of the most compelling stories in the MCU.  Going in, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy tackling a story that would rival Infinity War.  In all honesty, the actual story and pacing isn’t quite as good as Infinity War.  That’s not to say the story is bad, it isn’t, but Infinity War felt tighter.  The pacing here is different, but not in a bad way.  The first act is pretty down-beat, and considering the aftermath of the previous film, it was to be expected.  You needed to build-up to the final conflict, so you had to slow things down and show the main characters in a situation that you’ve never seen them before.  It is a very solid and satisfying conclusion to the MCU as it stands, although there will be more stories in the future.

In terms of expectations, mine were already very high going into this film, and it still managed to exceed them.  Not just in terms of action, but also in character development.  We see these characters that we’ve come to know and love in a very different way.  Natasha is struggling to keep things together while trying to find Thanos, so they can attempt to undo what he did.  Some of the characters that died in Infinity War are still dead.  Thor basically became depressed and let himself get out of shape while Hawkeye became a vicious vigilante.  Steve Rogers basically became a grief counselor as a result of The Snap.  Again, I don’t want to go into much more detail, because it would be spoiling things for folks who haven’t seen the film yet, so I’m not going to.  In terms of the action, Endgame turned up the dial to 11, as if it wasn’t already high enough in Infinity War.  This is one of the most epic comic book movies that I have ever seen.  The majority of the third act of the film is basically one big battle sequence and it is TOTALLY worth it.  Once more, no spoilers, but if you’ve come for the action, you are going to get it in spades.  It’s mind-blowing what they do here.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to feel after watching the movie.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to get as emotional as I did, and I wasn’t the only one in the theater.  There was a lot of sniffling going on and I can’t blame them.  We spent 11 years watching these characters and connecting with them, so when a movie comes along that is going to be the final film for some of these characters and actors, it does sting a little bit.  I’ve invested so much time into these films that to see it all finally come to an end hit me pretty damned hard.  There weren’t a lot of Marvel’s films that made me feel the way that I did with Endgame.  That speaks volumes about the quality of the characters that we’ve seen grow and evolve over the years and the quality of the writing in the MCU.  Ultimately, I feel that Avengers: Endgame was the perfect way to wrap up most of these stories.  There will be certain characters that will continue on in future films, and there will be some that won’t.

When it was announced that Endgame was going to be 3 hours long, some people were apprehensive.  Let me put that to rest by saying that those 3 hours don’t feel that long.  Again, proper pacing and writing help make the whole thing worth sitting through.  While I don’t think Endgame is better than Infinity War in terms of story, the emotional impact that Endgame has is greater than the previous film.  So, does the film exceed expectations?  I think it does.  I really do.  There are a handful of films that define each generation: Gone With The Wind, Godfather, Star Wars, and Terminator to name a few.  Avengers: Endgame is one that will define the current generation.  Yeah, we’ve got Star Wars: Episode IX coming in December, but I don’t think that film will come close to what Endgame has achieved.  So…yeah, I definitely recommend this movie, especially if you’ve been with the MCU for the past 11 years as I have.  It is an incredibly satisfying experience that you will want to see again.  I’m already planning to see it again.

My Final Recommendation: Part of the journey is the end.  10/10.

Released: March 2019

Director: Sam Liu

Rated PG-13

Run Time: 77 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros. Animation/DC

Genre: Action/Fantasy/Animation

Cast:
Elyes Gabel: Starboy
Diane Guerrero: Jessica Cruz/Green Lantern
Kevin Conroy: Batman
Susan Eisenberg: Wonder Woman
George Newbern: Superman
Daniella Bobadilla: Miss Martian
Kevin Michael Richardson: Mr. Terrific
Peter Jessop: Tharok
Tom Kenny: Bloodsport/Salaak
Matthew Yang King: The Persuader
Sumalee Montano: Emerald Empress
Philip Anthony-Rodriguez: Mano

Here I am again, talking about DC superheroes and their movies.  While DC movies have seen their ups and downs, I’m still a huge fan of those movies, ever since I first saw Superman: The Movie.  While the live-action films have definitely seen their fair share of bumps over the past decade or so, the animation side of things has been….less rocky, even though some of the animated films aren’t as good as others.  Even so, the quality of the animated films tends to be a bit more consistent than their live-action counterparts.  The first animated DC film that Warner Bros put out was back in 1995 with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm.  While it wasn’t financially successful, as it went up against the live-action rendition of Batman Forever, Phantasm has since garnered a huge following and many people consider it to be the best Batman film ever made.  Since then, we’ve seen a lot of animated films based on DC’s superheroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and the Justice League.  Yesterday, I watched the latest and one of the best entries in DC’s animated film line-up: Justice League vs. The Fatal Five

Opening in the 31st century, the film sees three members of the notorious Fatal Five gang, Tharok, Mano, and The Persuader travel back in time to the 21st century to find Earth’s Green Lantern so they can free their remaining members, Validus and Emerald Empress.  One of the members of the Legion of Superheroes, Starboy, manages to follow them back in time so he can help prevent them putting their master plan into motion.  The overall plot of the movie is pretty simplistic at its core.  It’s basically another “group-of-super-powered-bad-guys-trying-to-destroy-the-world” routine.  It’s one that we’ve seen time and time again.  While the main plot is what I consider to be the weakest part of the film, you really can’t do anything less than a potentially apocalyptic story-line when it involves the Justice League.  Those two concepts tend to go hand-in-hand.  There are aspects about it that are pretty good.  First of all, these guys can’t get their comrades without the aid of a Green Lantern, and the only Green Lantern in this film is Jessica Cruz, who is relatively new to the whole superhero gig, as a result, the film actually revolves around her, and that actually makes it far more compelling.

One of the best things about the new DC movies, both live-action and animated is that the superheroes are flawed characters, even Superman.  Everybody knows Batman is flawed, because he’s strictly human.  Everyone knows about his problems.  The writing in this film is surprisingly strong, especially when it comes to characterization.  While the film has Justice League in the title, the film actually focuses more on Green Lantern and Starboy.  Jessica Cruz is the latest Green Lantern, but the character went through a very traumatic experience in her past, so she’s struggling with that.  Throw superpowers into the mix and you’re already adding to a list of stressful things that the character has to contend with.  As a result, she struggles with anxiety, admitting to Wonder Woman that most days she fights just to get out of bed.  On the other side of the coin, we have Starboy, a 31st century superhero that was diagnosed with acute paranoid schizophrenia so he has to have medication in order to keep his head clear.  Having superheroes that actually have to live on a daily basis with these issues makes them far more relatable as people.  Ultimately, I think most people will relate more to Cruz than Starboy, because not everybody is schizophrenic, but everybody has dealt with anxiety issues stemming from PTSD or some other trauma.  Putting these issues into a superhero movie is a pretty risky thing, as the film-makers could inadvertently have their “issues” be front and center.  Thankfully, the folks behind Justice League vs. The Fatal Five acknowledge that these characters have these issues, but focus more on the characters themselves and their struggle to overcome these problems.  There is also humor to be found here as well.  Miss Martian bugs the hell out of Batman at every chance she gets and it’s kind of funny.  Each superhero gets a few of their own one-liners that feel natural.  Batman has one that’s my absolute favorite when he’s taking on Mano, the guy that burn things to bits when he touches them: “Bring it on, Skeletor.”  It was awesome.

For the characters to work, you need to have a strong cast, and this film definitely has that.  Diane Guerrero is the voice of Cruz/Green Lantern, and she’s absolutely fantastic.  She brings a real vulnerability to a character that should be confident, but Cruz isn’t.  Susan Eisenberg and George Newbern voice Wonder Woman and Superman respectively and they’re pretty good.  Kevin Conroy IS Batman as far as I’m concerned.  He’s been voicing the character for well over twenty years, so he knows the character inside and out.  While the character is straight-faced throughout the whole movie, some of those moments tend to be some of the funniest moments in the entire movie.  I can’t say for sure that I care for the villains though.  I have nothing against the actors that portray them, as I’m not overly familiar with the Legion of Superheroes comics or TV show, but overall the acting is pretty solid.  I also like the way the movie looks.  Instead of the New 52 universe, the character designs are based on older and more familiar look that most people would be familiar with.  The action is also pretty solid, with stuff blowing up and people doing superhero-y things.  Some of the best fights are towards the end of the film when the Justice League goes up against the Fatal Five.  While the film is PG-13, it does get a little bloody.  The pacing in the film is perfect.  While it is action-packed, Fatal Five does slow a bit to give us some more character development.

Make no mistake about it, despite the fact that the film has Justice League in the title, this is definitely a Green Lantern story.  More specifically, it’s Jessica Cruz’s story.  Having a character that’s dealing with some pretty heavy stuff and having her overcome that adversity makes for a very strong and more humanized character.  That’s even a lot more than I can say for somebody like Superman, who for the 70+ years has pretty much been invincible and have to deal with any form of mental illness.  I really do like the way they approach mental illness in this film.  Cruz’s reaction to her past, and the fact that she’s a superhero adds on to an already overbearing stress load.  Everybody experience anxiety at some point.  Sometimes it CAN be crippling or at the very least, overwhelming.  I know.  I’ve dealt with it, which makes me relate to Jessica Cruz’s plight that much more.  Starboy’s schizophrenia is also approached fairly seriously and in an honest fashion.  When Starboy doesn’t take medication, he has problems remembering things, saying stuff that makes absolutely no sense and seems out of touch with reality.  When a superhero suffers from schizophrenia, it makes for a far more unpredictable and intense situation, because you have no idea what he’s going to do.  It’s the same thing with a relatively normal person that deals with the same condition, except they’re less likely to destroy the world.  Mental illness is not something that can be easily diagnosed or even talked about, because not everybody suffers from the same kind of disease, if at all.  It’s a discussion that needs to be brought up, but I really like the way that director Sam Liu and his writers approached it here.  Putting it in a superhero film not only brings attention to the issue, but it can also be entertaining while treating the audience and folks who suffer from some form of mental illness with respect.

Justice League vs. The Fatal Five is one of the best animated films in DC’s line-up as far as I’m concerned.  It’s not perfect, as no film is, and the overall plot feels pretty same-y when put up against other films of this type.  That being said, the film’s focus on certain characters and their internal struggles is a welcome change of pace.  I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

My Final Recommendation: 9/10.

I’ve been a huge movie buff since I can remember.  I’ve seen my fair share of good and bad movies.  I’ve seen amazing sequels like The Empire Strikes Back, Godfather Part II, and The Dark Knight.  I’ve also seen some pretty bad ones like Superman IV, Batman and Robin, and Sicario: Day of the Soldado.  Likewise, I’ve seen some really good remakes and reboots, as well as some of the bad ones.  Sometimes, though, you come across a sequel or reboot that had so much hype built up that it just completely shits the bed.  For this post, I’m going to go over the sequels/reboots that completely missed the mark, despite all the build-up and hype.  Before I begin, I should mention that not all of these movies are going to be bad movies.  Far from it, some of them are pretty good from my perspective, they just failed to understand what the original film tried to do.  I’ve written posts about best sequels and reboots and some bad ones, but this one is a little different.  So, let’s get this train-wreck off to a good start, shall we?

Hellboy(2019)

This one is very recent, and you can check out my review by hitting the reviews tab.  I went into this one with pretty low expectations, considering all the negative things that I’ve heard and read about it.  Is it as awful as everybody says?  No.  In fact, there’s a bit about it that I actually really like.  The level of violence is pretty cool, along with the creature designs, but all the good stuff is hampered by really lousy writing as well as some questionable casting decisions.  Everybody is in agreement about the fact that Guillermo del Toro should have been allowed to do his third and final film in the Hellboy films starring Ron Perlman.  Sadly, the only way they would be able to do that would be to animate it.

The Godfather Part III

This is one film that a lot of film enthusiasts wish didn’t happen.  It certainly didn’t need to happen.  The first two Godfather films are masterpieces in their own right, with each one winning multiple awards including an Academy Award for Best Picture.  How could you top two of the most iconic films in cinematic history?  Simple answer:  You can’t.  It’s not a terrible movie, and as far as third entries go, it’s still better than a lot of films, but in the Godfather series, Part III is woefully inadequate, with some really lousy performances.  Al Pacino is still fantastic as Michael Corleone, but even he goes over the top sometimes, and it ain’t pretty.  Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter, Sofia Coppola is horribly miscast and delivers one of the worst performances of the decade.  Unlike the first two films, Godfather Part III plays like a typically generic gangster movie.  It doesn’t work, at least, not in the context of the previous stories.

Ghostbusters 2016

I don’t think it would surprise anybody that this one would find its way on to this list.  The concept behind this film was pretty good with having female characters take on the role of the Ghostbusters, but the execution was all over the place.  The performance of the female leads, especially Kate McKinnon were pretty good and they save the movie for me, but the overall writing and direction by Paul Feig tanked the whole damn thing.  He didn’t really have a clue how to write a Ghostbusters film that wasn’t self-referential.  The reason that the original film worked was because the film played it straight.  This one takes time out of the film to remind you that it’s a Ghostbusters film.  Ultimately, I thought it was a fun film that worked when it was doing its own thing and not being a Ghostbusters movie.  As it stands, an official Ghostbusters III is now in the works and is going to ignore the 2016 film entirely, as it should.

Psycho 1998

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is considered by many to be one of the quintessential thrillers of 20th century film, and they aren’t wrong.  The 1960 film is an absolute classic in every sense of the word and was the pre-cursor to the modern-day slasher film.  So, would a remake be a bad idea?  On paper, no.  If done right, it could work if they changed up certain things.  Somebody forgot to tell Gus Van Sant that, because he remade Psycho shot for shot.  As a result, anybody who had seen the original film would know exactly what’s coming, when it’s coming, and how it’s coming.  This was so ill-advised on so many levels.  Vince Vaughn was no Anthony Perkins and as a result, the film failed on every single level.

Martyrs 2016

I don’t know what it is about American film-makers trying to remake foreign movies for American audiences, especially when they don’t need to be.  Martyrs was a French horror film from 2008 that was unflinching in its brutality and its message.  It was very bleak and had a mean streak a mile wide.  I’ve only seen the film twice since I picked it up ten years ago, that’s how impactful it was.  When I learned that the film was being remade for American audiences, I was legitimately curious.  I wanted to see if the film-makers would retain the level of intensity and sheer viciousness of the original film.  Sadly, that isn’t the case.  It’s a very watered-down horror film with an ending that it didn’t earn and feels out of place in terms of the story.  The way the original Martyrs ended was shocking, but there was a reason for it.  The movie was a commentary on the dangers of religious zealotry and fanaticism, but that message got lost somewhere in translation.  I didn’t hate the American version.  I thought it was fairly well shot, if not well written.  If you like your horror movies with a serious mean streak, stick with the original Martyrs, it’s far more meaningful and stays with you much longer.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I really like the new Star Trek films.  I think they’re a lot of fun and are extremely well-made.  There were a lot of problems with the second movie, Into Darkness.  The first problem was the worst-kept secret in cinematic history: Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan Noonien Singh, the legendary villain from the origin series episode, Space Seed and subsequent film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  The problem with Into Darkness, as a whole, is that it’s nothing more than a glorified remake.  It follows a lot of the same beats as the original film, especially in the third act.  Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Cumberbatch is fantastic as Khan, but the film doesn’t really do a whole lot new with the character, and some of the writing was awful.  I still had a lot of fun with it, but this was a sequel that needed to be a lot more than it was.

Quantum of Solace

James Bond has been a fixture in cinema since the early 60’s.  Played by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, James Bond is one of the most iconic characters ever written.  Quantum of Solace is the first direct sequel to a James Bond film, which makes for some interesting possibilities.  Quantum of Solace was a victim of bad timing.  There was writer’s strike back in 2007-2008 and that affected a lot of movies during that period.  As a result, a lot of the film had to be re-written on the fly by the film’s director and Daniel Craig in an attempt to get something out to audiences.  While I don’t think it’s a bad movie at all, you can tell that the writer’s strike had a negative impact on the quality of the film.  That being said, in terms of quality, it’s still better than Moonraker.

The Predator

This one hurts.  A lot.  The film was being directed by Shane Black, who starred in the original film and wrote other films like Lethal Weapon.  He was also a pretty decent director with films like Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, The Nice Guys, and Iron Man 3.  So…what happened?  Fred Dekker and Fox Studios are what happened.  Going by his filmography, Dekker didn’t have a lot to his name outside of some TV shows.  This was not a guy that really understood the franchise whatsoever.  The whole thing was a massive misfire that that ended up being nothing more than a CGI monster fest.  Granted, some of the action was pretty good, and some of the characters were somewhat interesting, but the whole film felt amateurish at best.  This is not the kind of film the Predator franchise needs.  I don’t hate it, as I found it to be fairly entertaining, but when stacked up against the last three movies, it lowers the bar so far to the ground that it trips over it.

The Mummy 2017

If you really want to talk about a misfire, look no further than 2017’s The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise.  Oh, man.  This was going to be the first movie to launch the new Dark Universe series of films, but it ended up killing the Dark Universe instead.  It was going to be a new cinematic universe featuring the classic monster from the early days of cinema: The Invisible Man, The Mummy, Dracula, and Frankenstein.  In fact, the next movie in the series was going to be The Bride of Frankenstein, a remake of one of cinema’s most celebrated sequels and monster movies.  Is it going to happen?  Most likely….not.  The decisions made with this movie were really, really stupid.  The first mistake was announcing the Dark Universe before even having a first movie to see if it would work.  Nope.  Alex Kurtzman and five other writers couldn’t come up with a compelling story or reason why this movie should even exist.  I liked Sofia Boutella as the villain, as she was the most compelling part of it, but the film spent too much time trying to be self aware.  The humor didn’t work and the action was average at best.  The visual effects weren’t even that good, although the plane sequence was awesome.  It’s got that going for it.  This one missed the mark by a thousand miles.

Alien Covenant

When Prometheus was released back in 2012, it was an unexpected film.  People were anticipating a legitimate prequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien, but what they got was something very different.  I loved Prometheus, so when a sequel was announced, I was looking forward to seeing the further adventures of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw and the android David as the searched for the Engineers, aliens that created humanity.  Was that what we got?  Nope.  We got a film that was attempting to be both a sequel to Prometheus and a prequel to Alien but failing at both.  Not only that, Ridley Scott had the fucking audacity to kill off Shaw between movies, effectively sweeping Prometheus under the rug.  This film was a massive disappointment to so many people.  We got this one instead of Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5, which would have been a direct sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens.  To that, I say this: Fuck you, Ridley Scott.  I love his movies, but at this stage in his life, his ego has gotten the better of him.  Now that Fox Studios has been bought by Disney, there might be a possibility that we’ll get an Alien film that’s actually worth a damn, if Disney lets the property continue to be R-rated.

Well, those are some of the sequels and remakes that I feel just blew it.  Again, I don’t necessarily hate these movies, but in terms of their respective franchises, the completely missed the mark.  Hopefully, they didn’t do any permanent damage.