What is it? An Adventure Time/Mad Max crossover. What did it do? Made my life complete!
Constantine Is Resurrected On In Arrow!
I was bummed when NBC canceled Constantine, but just like in the comic books dying can’t keep the jerky Brit down. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Matt Ryan has signed on for at least one episode of Arrow this coming fall! I hope he gets more than one episode, but with three CW DC Comics shows the Hellblazer might be able to lend his expertise to several in his words ‘costumers’. I am excited to see Constantine’s return to the small screen! Hopefully he can bring Zed and Chas along for the ride!
Shmee Hangs Out With An Insurgent!
When I watched Divergent, I found it to be a fine film. Not great, but not something that I regretted watching. The Divergent Series: Insurgent (roles right off the tongue) follows in that mold: solid acting, okay action, cool destroyed Chicago, average dystopian world, but where Insurgent changes things up is that its plot is terrible. So this movie is not an upgrade.
The Divergent Series: Insurgent picks up soon after the events of Divergent with Tris (Shailene Woodley) and her cohorts in hiding. Jeanine (the evil tyrant played by Kate Winslet) has blamed her attack on Abnegation (doctors and leaders I think, who knows) on the divergents which give her an excuse to hunt them down. You see Jeanine needs a person that is 100% divergent to open a box for her and Tris may be her only option. Yes seriously Tris is the only person special enough to open it.
The problem with this story is that the hero, Tris, has no agency of her own. She is just in hiding dealing with her post traumatic stress disorder, and she would have happily (moppily?) continued to do so if Jeanine didn’t keep looking for her. Maybe if Tris would have known about this box too it would have given her something to quest for, but when some guy tries to tell her about the box she literally (I don’t me figuratively) shuts him up. It goes something like this, “Hey guys there is this thing you need to know about!”, and Tris responds, “Shut it old man we hate you!” That may not be word for word, but it is closer than you would think. So with this plot setup the evil Jeanine is the protagonist, and everyone else is just along for the ride. Which is less than optimal since we are forced to follow Tris.
The acting is all fine. There are a lot of good actors just going through the motions here, but they are pretty good at those motions. It is a shame they didn’t have anything better to chew on, but they all have crying and stopping each other from walking away from each other down pat (seriously they got a lot of practice at that). Nothing to highlight on a resume, but nothing to be ashamed of either.
It is unfortunate that the writers couldn’t have found more to do with The Divergent Series: Insurgent’s plot otherwise they would have had another okay movie on their hands. As it stands however this movie can’t quite make it over mediocre. If you liked the first movie it is not unadvisable to see this film, but I can’t quite recommend it either. I hope our “heroes” are given more to do the third and forth times around.
The Last Witch Hunter Trailer Makes You Ask Why People Still Like Vin Diesel!
I know another trailer this week, so sue me! Well don’t that would be terrible. Speaking of terrible, you should watch The Last Witch Hunter trailer. That way you won’t watch the movie in October. I mean what were these seemingly good actors thinking? At the very least they could try and make this film look like it was fun ala Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and not some dreary mess. I mean it looks like Elijah Wood has got the right idea, over the top cheese. Everyone else though, WOW, it looks like they are going to try and play it straight (that is a way to go I guess). It seems like every time Vin is going to become the action star people predicted he makes another odd looking awful film. <sigh> Well it looks like Michael Caine’s character drinks his way through the movie, so maybe that is the key for the audience to get through this dreck. Why Vin? Why?
So About That New D&D Movie…
Warner Brothers after much legal wrangling has gotten the rights to make a new D&D Movie. I am less than excited. I love that another big budget fantasy movie being made, but not one based off the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. Sure there have been a couple of good D&D books written to base the movie off of, people swear by The Legend of Drizzt for instance, but most of the books are more like The Dragonlord of Mystara. Which is to say terrible. I may get in trouble for saying this (some people love their D&D lore), but you don’t play D&D for the great stories that were written about the D&D universe, you play D&D for the stories you and your friends make in the D&D universe.
D&D is about having a good time with your friends and trying to brake the GM’s will. To see if you can take the story he is building somewhere completely different, and to try random stupid things with your character’s skillset. Now there is a good movie you can make about that, and the movie The Gamers: Dorkness Rising comes close, but that is not a movie Warner Brothers is going to throw a bunch of money behind. The number of people who want to watch a bunch of nerds play D&D and then zoom in to the action in their minds is limited. Like pretty much me, and the guys making the “The Gamers” movies. They could even try and make a Jumanji style movie where the players were sucked in to their story and they had to complete the campaign to return home, but that would still will not sell to the masses.
So instead we are going to get another attempt to try and turn the D&D universe in to some giant sweeping epic with people quoting their dialog like Shakespeare, and other people Wayansing it up to try and add life to the picture. (As an aside I don’t blame Marlon Wayans for the D&D movie, he was doing what could with what he had. Which was nothing. Maybe less than that even.) I will no doubt watch the production of the D&D movie with interest, but Warner Bros is going to have to role an 18 or better to make a decent film, and after the last two outings their dice seem to be producing a lot of natural 1s.