Month: April 2019

Released: April 2019

Director: Neil Marshall

Rated R

Run Time: 120 Minutes

Distributor: LionsGate Studios

Genre: Action/Fantasy/Horror

Cast:
David Harbour: Hellboy
Ian McShane: Professor Broom
Milla Jovovich: Nimue/The Blood Queen
Sasha Lane: Alice Monaghan
Daniel Dae Kim: Major Ben Daimio

People make mistakes.  Actors, engineers, diplomats, scientists, and even cashiers make mistakes from time to time.  It’s a part of life; nobody’s perfect.  However, sometimes even the smallest mistake can have serious consequences.  In the film industry, mistakes can be very, very costly.  Some of the biggest box office flops were a result of somebody screwing up.  Usually it’s not necessarily the actor that screws things up, but sometimes it’s the casting director, producer and film director that can cause some serious damage.  Even a movie studio can really screw things up.  I’ve seen it happen with movies like Alien 3, Justice League, and The Lone Ranger just to name a few.  I’m a huge fan of the Hellboy films with Ron Perlman, both the live-action films and the animated ones, so when it was announced that LionsGate would be rebooting Hellboy with a different actor in the lead, David Harbour.  Let’s just say that Guillermo del Toro, the director of the first two films, should have been allowed to do his third film, as this new film really was a mistake.

The film opens in the Dark Ages with a brutal sorceress, Nimue, unleashing a monstrous plague across the land.  A handful of brave knights including King Arthur(yes, that one), confront Nimue, and using Excalibur, cut her into several pieces to be spread across the country.  This was done to prevent her from devastating the world.  In modern day Tijuana, Hellboy was sent to retrieve an agent of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense who had gone missing tracking down a nest of vampires.  Returning to England, Hellboy is informed that somebody is trying to bring resurrect Nimue in order to destroy him and the world.  Teaming up with a psychic, Alice and a soldier, Major Ben Daimio, Hellboy races to defeat the forces of evil before they destroy the world.  The new Hellboy isn’t the first film to bring King Arthur into the mix, but it’s been done better in so many other movies.  I don’t know how much time they spent trying to write this story, but it needed a few more re-writes.  This was not a very good story to reboot the franchise.  It’s your typical “stop the bad guys before they destroy the world” setup, but again, I’ve seen it done better.  It literally goes through the motions, checking off each box for a movie of this kind.

Speaking of writing, let’s talk about the characters:  They are all assholes.  There’s nobody here that’s actually worth giving a damn about, not even Hellboy.  If you’re going to have a story about trying to stop the apocalypse, you need characters that you care about and can relate to.  There’s none of that here.  Even the bad guys aren’t given enough to really sink your teeth into.  It all devolves into stereotypical motivations like, “This guy wronged me at some point in the past, so I must destroy him.”  That’s it.  Even Nimue isn’t given much beyond wanting to destroy humanity.  The acting isn’t awful by any stretch.  Milla Jovovich is clearly having a blast hamming it up as the main villain, and I actually get a kick out of Sasha Lane as Alice.  Ian McShane is always a delight to watch, even in bad movies.  I’m just not a big fan of his portrayal of Professor Broom.  My issue here is with David Harbour as Hellboy.  I’m not blaming the actor at all.  He’s giving it everything he’s got, but the character was written in a way that kind of forced Harbour into doing his best Ron Perlman-as-Hellboy imitation.  I just wasn’t buying it.

Whoever did the soundtrack for this film needs to be taken out and beaten with giant wooden stick, because the song choices in the film make absolutely no sense, whatsoever.  They don’t fit at all, and the main score of the film is generic trash.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying the soundtrack for this one.  Let’s talk about some of the good stuff now.  From a visual standpoint, this film is very interesting.  The creature designs and the sets are absolutely fantastic.  The Baba Yaga witch was genuinely creepy.  Some of the bigger creatures and demons that show up later in the film are pretty damned cool.  It’s also really cool when Hellboy first touches Excalibur when he has visions of a world that’s been destroyed.  Some of the practical and gore effects are pretty good too.  Also, this is a very violent movie.  It’s got a bit of a mean streak and I kind of appreciate that, but was it really necessary to see people torn to shreds every 20 minutes for no reason?  I’m not opposed to a good blood bath, but considering that we had two movies that were PG-13, they didn’t really need to rely on the level of violence that we got in the new film.  That’s just the film-makers compensating for a lousy script.  The action is pretty good and really fun at times, but it rings a bit hollow.  Again, it goes back to the writing which wasn’t very strong in the first place.

After Hellboy was released on the 12th, it came to light through various industry insiders that the production of the film was severely problematic.  According to Dark Horizons, it was revealed that there were clashes between the director, some of the actors and a number of the producers.  From what I understand, David Harbour and Ian McShane re-wrote some of their lines without Neil Marshall knowing about it; Harbour himself walked off the set a number of times, while Neil Marshall’s cinematographer was fired, and there a number of interruptions between Marshall and the rest of the crew.  Apparently, Neil Marshall wasn’t even allowed a final cut for his film.  This explains a lot of the problems with the movie.  Does that mean that everything was true, though?  It’s hard to say.  When you’ve got multiple perspectives on the matter, it’s difficult to know who is telling which version of the truth, but there was obviously problems behind the scenes.  You can tell just by watching the movie.

Is Hellboy the complete disaster that everybody says it is?  No.  At least, I don’t think so.  There were aspects of the film that I really dug.  I liked Hellboy’s look, the action sequences and creatures like I stated before.  While the CGI is questionable at times, the quality seems strangely appropriate for a film like this.  It also moves pretty quick and isn’t really boring.  That being said, this is one of those cases where the film-makers should have held off on the reboot and gave Guillermo del Toro the resources that he needed to do a third film with Ron Perlman.  Both del Toro and Perlman really wanted to do it, but the under-performing second film didn’t make it feasible.  Will we get another Hellboy?  I doubt it.  The box-office stats for this film are dismal as are the reactions from critics and audiences.  I don’t hate the film, it’s just not the film that it needed to be.

My Final Recommendation: This one is on nobody’s side: 5/10

As many of you may be aware, the teaser trailer and title of Star Wars: Episode IX dropped on Friday during the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.  The title is The Rise of Skywalker.  After watching the Episode IX panel and the subsequent teaser for the next film in the iconic franchise, I’ve had some time to process the whole thing.  This post is going to be filled with a lot of speculation, which is one of the funnest things to do when a new Star Wars film is announced.  While I’m going to hypothesize on what the main title means for the film later on in the post, I want to address the elephant in the room:  Emperor Palpatine.  At the end of the teaser, you hear a maniacal cackle which can only belong to one person: Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious.  If you saw the Episode IX panel which I believe is currently available on YouTube, then you will know that after the teaser played, Ian McDiarmid appears and says “Roll it again.”  This was significant because it cements the fact that the main villain of the Skywalker saga, Palpatine is indeed in Episode IX.  In an interview with Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, she revealed that the Emperor’s presence in Episode IX was always part of the plan.  From a story-telling standpoint, this actually makes a lot of sense.  Darth Sidious was/is a master manipulator.  He orchestrated everything from the Clone Wars to the battle at Endor, and I do mean everything.  While it was certainly shocking to see that Sidious makes a return in the new film, it’s not actually a surprise that he’s here or that he’s behind the events of the last two films.  But how could Palpatine be in this new movie?  We all saw him get tossed into the reactor shaft by Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. So, he should be dead, right?  Right?  Not necessarily.

In the old canon before Disney acquired Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise, there was a Dark Horse graphic novel called Star Wars: Dark Empire.  It took place about 6 years after the Battle of Endor where the fledgling New Republic was still fighting the remnants of the Empire.  However, the Empire was putting up a much stronger fight than the Republic had anticipated, leading to people to speculate that a new Dark Side user had taken control.  As it turns out, it was Palpatine.  How did he survive?  He did, but his body didn’t.  See, in Dark Empire, Palpatine used clones to prolong his life by infusing those new bodies with his spirit and power.  As Lucasfilm and Disney have been so thoughtful as to not discard everything from the old Expanded Universe, it is entirely feasible that the film-makers would take that element from Dark Empire and apply it here.  So, what about Supreme Leader Snoke?  As we all know, Snoke was killed in the last film by Kylo Ren, leaving him in charge of the First Order.  Or so we thought.  If Snoke was not a clone of Palpatine, he was most certainly just a puppet.  Palpatine was a puppeteer, doing his own dirty work from the shadows, so it makes sense that the rise of the First Order was Palpatine’s plan from the beginning.  He probably saw his own death coming and planned for it.  So, the last two movies were essentially distracting the Resistance and the audience from Palpatine’s return to power.

So, if the Emperor is coming back, where does that leave Kylo Ren?  As we all know, Kylo killed Snoke to take his spot.  Do we honestly expect Palpatine to just let Kylo Ren run the First Order?  Oh, no.  Darth Sidious does not share power and will eliminate any force that could oppose him, which puts Ben Solo at serious risk.  This could possibly lead into the title’s meaning: The Rise of Skywalker.  What if Kylo Ren, in a bid to redeem himself for the terrible things that he’s done, finally embraces the light side of the Skywalker bloodline?  Also, are we finally going to find out who Rey is, or is she just someone that the Force has chosen to balance things out?  In The Last Jedi,  we see a connection of sorts between Rey and Ben, one light and one dark.  They are two sides of the same coin, so it may make sense that they would team up again to destroy Palpatine once and for all.  Luke is dead so it falls on the last of the Skywalkers, Ben, to really bring balance back to the Force.

So…what about everybody else in the film?  What role will Leia play in The Rise of Skywalker?  It’s hard to say at this point, things had to be re-written when Carrie Fisher passed away.  This film was initially going to have a focus on Leia and her relationship with Ben, from what I remember.  Poe Dameron is still a pilot, but he’s probably been re-promoted to Commander or has become a general after The Last Jedi.  We know that Episode IX takes place a few years after the events of The Last Jedi, so things will have changed.  Rey has most likely become a Jedi in her own way, while Finn will take a more prominent role in the Resistance, committing himself fully to the cause.  General Hux is probably still the scheming and slimy dirt-bag he’s always been.  The one’s that I want to see are the Knights of Ren, which were referenced only in Episode VII.  Lando Calrissian is obviously making a big comeback as one of the allies that the Resistance is seeking.

For a teaser trailer, this one had quite a bit of stuff in it, but it only gave us a small glimpse at what’s to come just to get people talking and asking questions.  Believe me, there are a lot of questions that the trailer raised that the final film will have to answer.  There has to be answers, especially concerning the last two movies and the fact that The Rise of Skywalker is the final film in the Skywalker story-line.  This is a film that has to connect all three trilogies and I hope it does.  As a huge fan of Star Wars, I’m getting more and more excited for this one.  People are going to be understandably cautious after The Last Jedi and Solo split audiences down the middle.  So, yeah, I’m hopeful that this will be amazing and that it will be the perfect send-off for those involved, especially Carrie Fisher and her character.  December 20th, fellow Jedi and Sith Lords, mark your calendars.  This will be a December to remember.

When George Lucas released the original Star Wars film back in 1977, he had no idea the impact that the film would have.  He was hoping that some people would go and see it, but he didn’t realize that his film would change everything.  Star Wars has become so much more than just a movie.  For 42 years, Star Wars has become a major fixture in many people’s lives as well as the film industry.  The way the special effects were used and how the cameras moved not only flipped the entire industry on its head, but it made people all around the world pay attention.  The story of Luke and his quest to become a Jedi has become one of the modern-day myths.  After 40 years, not only does the original film starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher still hold up, it’s still influencing film-makers today.  If it wasn’t for George Lucas’ film, we probably wouldn’t have directors like James Cameron, Peter Jackson, or Guillermo del Toro.  For 40 years, Star Wars has been a house-hold name, even for those that haven’t seen it.  That is the reach that the space opera has on pop culture.  The franchise has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, both in film and in other media, but the enduring strength of Star Wars simply can’t be contained.

The story of the Skywalker bloodline, which includes Luke, Leia, Anakin/Darth Vader, and Kylo Ren, is set to conclude this December with Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.  As for what the story of the new film entails, we don’t know.  We’ll have to wait and see this December to see how it all plays out, but what we do know is that it’s going to be epic.  Obviously, we are going to see the return of characters like Poe, Finn, Rey, Kylo Ren, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and BB8, but we also get to see the return of a beloved character from the Original Trilogy, Lando Calrissian as played by none other than Billy Dee Williams.  The big question was how Carrie Fisher’s character was going to be in the new film, considering that the actress tragically passed away in 2016.  The answer is simple:  They implemented unused footage from The Force Awakens.  That was probably the best option.  Now, I watched the Episode IX panel live on YouTube this morning in anticipation of the new teaser trailer and title drop for Episode IX.  The Rise of Skywalker is an interesting choice.  Every episodic film in the franchise had a name that played on the themes of that particular entry.  The title, at least to me, suggests that there will be a member of the Skywalker family left standing at the end of the film.  Again, we’ll have to wait and see, but I’m genuinely interested to see how all this comes together.

Star Wars has seen it’s fair share of bumps over the years.  I’ll be straight with you:  The Last Jedi had some serious problems.  I loved the movie when I first saw it.  I enjoyed its unpredictability, but having had some time to think about it, Episode VIII spent too much time trying to pull the rug out from underneath the audience.  This is the issue that I have with Rian Johnson as a director.  He spends so much time trying to be unpredictable that he failed to make a compelling narrative.  The entire film was essentially one long chase sequence with The First Order on the heels of the Resistance.  While I loved what they did with the Force and the relationship between Kylo and Rey, the film felt both bloated and shallow at the same time.  Again, I don’t hate the film, it’s a fantastic action film, but as a Star Wars sequel, it’s not very good.  Episode IX seems to be a bit of a course correction, but hopefully it will still maintain its own identity.  Everything Star Wars, right now, is riding on the success of The Rise of Skywalker.  Considering the audience’s split reception to The Last Jedi and the tepid response to Solo, J.J. Abrams and company can’t afford to make another mistake.  From what I understand, the Star Wars films will be taking a bit of a hiatus after Skywalker’s release, rolling back plans to release a film every year.

So, what are my expectations for The Rise of Skywalker?  I think it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun and I think it has the potential to be better than The Last Jedi.  The issue is if they can get it right.  Aside from Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars is going to be the biggest event of the year.  It’s hard to say if people will forgive Disney for Solo or The Last Jedi, so that may factor into the film’s overall performance.  I’m hoping the Skywalker saga goes out with a bang, not a whimper.  Come on, Disney, you can do it.

Ever since I started doing The Best, I’ve tried to keep it as positive as possible.  Too much negativity can have a surprisingly….negative impact on one’s health.  Now, the main reason why I started doing The Best was to highlight the best aspects of films and the film industry.  I didn’t want to focus on the bad stuff that’s come out of the industry.  It worked for a while, but sometimes you have to recognize the fact that life ain’t all sunshine and rainbows.  Occasionally, you have to take in the bad with the good.  That’s reality.  As a result, I’m going to make a slight adjustment to The Best page.  It will no longer be just The Best.  It will be The Best and The Worst.  I would do separate pages, but these two concepts are basically two sides of the same coin.  Besides, I think it’s a healthy thing to talk about negative stuff every once in a while.  Since I’ve been on a comic book movie binge lately, I want to talk about the worst of the worst of these films.  Oh….boy, it’s gonna be a ride!

Fant4stic

It’s not very often that a movie fails so badly that it can tank a director’s career.  That’s exactly what Fant4stic did to Josh Trank’s career.  He hasn’t done a thing since this movie came out back in 2015.  This is the fourth attempt to bring the Fantastic Four characters to the big screen, and it failed spectacularly.  I had my issues with the last two Fantastic Four films starring Chris Evans and Ioan Gruffudd, but at least they were entertaining.  This one is just flat-out boring, which is one of the worst sins that a comic book movie can commit.  The writing was awful and the apparent studio interference made this film a chore to sit through.  Josh Trank’s response to the film’s final cut was….interesting to say the least.  He came out swinging against it.  It’s hard to know who to blame for the state of the movie.  They still couldn’t get Doctor Doom right.  This should have been a knockout punch for Fox at the time, but it ended up being one of the worst comic book movies ever made.  Of all the movies that I’m putting on this list, Fant4stic is the one that I hate the most.  The rest of the films on this list are pretty much guilty pleasures of mine, but they are still pretty bad.

Supergirl

I’ll be honest:  I actually kind of like this movie.  Is it good?  No.  But there is definitely some good stuff in here.  Helen Slater was fantastic as Supergirl and Peter O’Toole just hammed it up as Zaltar.  The acting wasn’t actually bad.  Some of the visual effects were pretty nifty as well.  Unfortunately, the bad stuff outweighs the good.  This is an overly campy film that spends too much time with Supergirl in disguise at a local school, even though she’s supposed to be in a hurry to save her people.  There’s a lot of logical inconsistencies peppered throughout the film.  How did the main villain even know how to send people to the Phantom Zone?  Why was she obsessed with brainwashing a local lumberjack?  This movie makes no sense!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Boy, they really screwed the pooch with this one.  As much as I love the X-Men films, this one is beyond redemption.  Not even Hugh Jackman’s performance could save this one.  This is what happens when you throw crap at a wall and hope something sticks.  Of all the X-Men characters to get an origin story, Wolverine really didn’t need one, especially since you already know how he ends up.  The story is all over the place, and the visual effects are god-awful.  I mean, look at Wolverine’s claws.  That is some of the worst CGI I’ve ever seen.  Even the claws from the first movie back in 2000 were infinitely better than what we saw here.  The action was alright and so was the film’s score, but this one couldn’t be salvaged.  Oh, yeah: I can’t forget about what they did to Deadpool in this movie.  Let’s just say that Ryan Reynolds finally got to play the character as he was meant to be in 2016’s film and 2018’s sequel.

Green Lantern

Aaaand here’e another one that got needlessly butchered.  While I can’t say that this movie was the worst ever made, it was not planned out very well.  Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan?  Brilliant.  CG-animated super-suit?  Not so much.  The movie isn’t necessarily boring and it’s got some pretty interesting visuals.  Mark Strong as Sinestro was brilliant casting.  But he should have been the main villain, not Parallax.  In fact, it’s obvious that the film-makers didn’t pay attention the comics or they would have realized that Hal Jordan becomes Parallax at a certain.  Add on top of that, Parallax ended up being nothing more than a giant fart cloud.  This is another case of the film-makers blatantly ignoring the source material.

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Superman has been a staple of comic book movies since his inception in 1938.  He’s literally been the face of DC Comics for 80 years.  When the 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve was released, it was a smash hit.  Superman: The Movie is one of the greatest comic book movies of all time.  Superman II was a good sequel, but not without its faults.  Superman III had lots of issues, but it was still a decent enough experience that it’s worth watching.  Superman IV: The Quest For Peace?  This movie is undiluted garbage.  The concept behind the film was pretty good, dealing with the threat of nuclear weapons.  It could have worked, had Warner Bros. not given the license to the Canon Film Group.  See, Canon was notorious for their low-budget schlock.  Apparently they took a good chunk of money that was to be spent on Masters of the Universe, but they spent it on this film, damaging both movies.  In fact, Superman IV was so bad that it basically helped shutter the Canon Film Group for good.  Bad visual effects, ham-fisted acting, and not even Reeve could save this film.  In fact, word got out that Mr. Reeve was extremely disappointed with the film.  As a result, Superman would not get another film for 20 years.  In case you haven’t noticed, I really hate this movie.

Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider was a movie that should’ve been really good.  The character is interesting as are his villains, but the folks behind this film clearly didn’t understand.  The casting of Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze was another strike against the film.  Now, I’m a huge fan of Nic Cage as an actor, but this film didn’t do him any favors.  Aside from some decent effects, the god-awful writing, characterization and story just stuck this film into a cannon and shot it directly into the ground.  The entire movie was miscast, and despite Cage claiming to be a huge fan of the comic, his performance indicates other-wise.  Now, the film would get a sequel/re-boot of sorts, but even that movie wasn’t any good.

Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad is the poster child for marketing that promises too much and not delivering.  The trailers to this movie were fantastic, and the concept could have worked….if it weren’t for studio interference and David Ayer’s incompetence at bringing these these characters to the screen.  There was a lot of re-writing to make this film a lot less….bleak.  Warner Bros. didn’t want another Batman V. Superman so they tried to lighten it up.  Here’s what works: Margot Robbie, Will Smith, and Jai Courtney as Harley Quinn, Deadshot, and Captain Boomerang respectively.  What doesn’t work: Jared Leto as the Joker….and everything else.  They really didn’t need to do the whole “save-the-world” gimmick here.  That’s not what these folks were brought together to do.  It ended up being more generic than it should have been.  It comes as no surprise that the next Suicide Squad film is going to ignore this one entirely.  With James Gunn at the helm, the next film has a much better chance of being good.

Batman And Robin

It goes well without saying that most people think that Batman And Robin is the worst comic book movie ever.  It’s really hard to disagree with that, even though I think that Superman IV is quite a bit worse.  That being said, there really is nothing that redeemable about this dumpster fire of a film.  Aside from the HORRIFIC miscasting, which includes Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, the film suffers from the fact that it was made only to sell toys.  There’s no other reason.  George Clooney has gone on record saying that his role in Batman And Robin was one of the worst decisions he’s made.  Joel Schumaker, the director has also gone on record apologizing for the film.  This movie did some serious damage.  Alicia Silverstone’s film career never recovered, and Chris O’Donnell has basically been relegated to doing TV shows.  He’s been successful there, but his movie career is pretty much shot.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Clooney’s careers managed to survive.  In fact, they’re doing better than ever.  Yeah, this movie was a complete disaster.  Also: Bat-nipples?  REALLY?!  Although, if it wasn’t for Batman And Robin, we probably would never have gotten Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.  Silver lining, folks.  Silver lining.

You know what?  That was actually kind of fun doing that post.  I really enjoyed writing and it makes me feel a hell of a lot better now.  It’s pretty therapeutic.  So…I will most likely be doing more of The Worst….probably.  I hope you enjoyed reading that as much as I did writing it and…I’ll see you back here soon.  Same Bat-time, same Bat-Channel!