Author: Shmee

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Steal Some Stuff With Ant-Man!

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I have to admit Ant-Man was the first Marvel movie that I was worried about.  After loosing a director, and then going through massive rewrites, I thought this was going to be Marvel’s first major flop since the Incredible Hulk.  Somehow though they still pulled it off.  Ant-Man is an amusing addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and while I don’t think this will be anyone’s favorite Marvel movie, I do think most people will enjoy themselves.

Ant-Man is about cat burglar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), and how he learns to be the Ant-Man from the man who used to carry the mantle for S.H.I.E.L.D, Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas).  Scott is tasked with keeping Dr. Pym’s shrinking technology out of the wrong hands.  In other words Hank needs Scott to steal some stuff for him.

While Ant-Man is yet another superhero origin story, this time it has the twist of being a teacher/protégé scenario.  Honestly, anything they can do to mix things up a little is appreciated.  Though I think the real reason for this is that Scott Lang in the comic books is the wisecracking and fun Ant-Man while Hank Pym is a mean jerk.  Wisecracking and fun works well with the current Marvel movie hero mold.

Which is one of the main issues with this film.  While it is more of a heist movie than a straight-up superhero versus supervillain movie, it doesn’t really try to break out of the current set of Marvel movie conventions.  When watching this film there is no doubt who is responsible for it.  My other issue with this flick is that this really should have been a Wasp movie, or whatever they are going to call Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) when she suits up, and she will.  I mean she helps train Scott for crying out loud.  They try and explain/hand-wave it away, but never to any real satisfaction.  Though I guess the real reason is that they wanted Ant-Man not Wasp.

Paul Rudd showed why Marvel is going after all the likable comedic actors for their films.  He is instantly charming and easy to root for even though his character has a somewhat checkered past.  Michael Douglas works well as the frustrated ex-superhero trying to impart his talents on his replacement.  While Evangeline Lilly does a good job with her role, her character as mentioned above is kind of wasted, or at least misused.

Ant-Man isn’t going to be thought of as the greatest Marvel movie ever, but the fact it is as good as it is, is a testament to how well the Marvel movie formula works.  It is an action-packed often silly adventure.  If you like what Marvel has offered in the past, you will like Ant-Man.  If you were never a fan or have superhero fatigue, Ant-Man will not be for you.  I however, had a great time.

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Luc Besson Shows How To Join Twitter!

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Luc Besson joined twitter and announced his new movie all at the same time.  That is how it is done.  The movie will be “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” which will be based off of the popular French Scf-Fi comic book “Valerian & Laureline”.  This is the same comic book that “The Fifth Element” was very loosely based off of, so for all of us Fifth Element fans this exciting news.  If only my first tweet would have been as awesome!

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What If Uwe Boll Had $200 Million?

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While watching Transformers: Age of Extinction, I remembered a part of one of the many rants of infamous director Uwe Boll saying something to the effect if he made a movie with the budget of Michael Bay his would be better.  That seems like a very low mark to aim for, and to Bay’s credit I think he is very smart and knows exactly what he is doing, but it made me ask the question, “What would a $200 Million Uwe Boll movie look like?”  I mean what cinematic horrors would he unleash?  I am going to give my best guess as to what this movie would look like.

First off, Uwe would need a video game to base his movie off of.  It couldn’t be something small, with this budget he would get one of the top franchises.  Halo and Call of Duty are too controlled by their publishers, and Boll has too much of a reputation for them to take the risk on him, but one publisher would relish the theatric destruction Boll would bring.  That would be Take-Two/Rockstar.  That’s right, I am betting Boll would make a Grand Theft Auto game.

Now part of the fun with Grand Theft Auto is it knows it is over the top, and everything is very tongue and cheek.  Uwe Boll would miss all that and play it straight.  His movie would follow a man as he murdered and slaughtered his way to the top.  He would think he was making a new version of Scarface, but in reality it would just be stupidly violent.  Now with $200 Million he could pay a script writer to write something decent, and he probably would pay someone to do it, but then he would say it was garbage and then write his own worse version.  It would all be part of the process.

Since this is Uwe Boll we are talking about I am guessing he would try and ‘sex’ it up a bit.  He would do that the only way he knows how: adding naked women.  They would be everywhere.  He would put them in like a home decorator adds in lamps.  He would get an actual actress do strip down too.  He was very proud of himself for saving money in BloodRayne by hiring prostitutes, but with this budget he would get real SAG actresses.  I am guessing he would set a record for the amount of skin on screen in an ‘R’ rate movie.

Now all that money would finally get him the special effects budget that he has always wanted, so I am pretty sure that to prove he is better than Michael Bay he would try to beat him at his own game.  This movie would be nothing but slow motion pans and explosions.  He would level Detroit, or some other cheap-to-film-in US city.  Everyone would be shooting at any given moment just because he could afford it.

So what I am saying is the movie would be gloriously bad.  It would be a violent, incoherent mess with a bunch of naked ladies.  So pretty much a Michael Bay movie, but without any of the marketability.  I think Uwe Boll would fall very short of Michael Bay, and give us one of the worst movies ever made.  Something that would be talked about for ages.  Rockstar Games would love it.

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Why Did I Watch Transformers: Age of Extinction?

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When scrolling through Netflix Mrs. Shmee saw Transformers: Age of Extinction, and said, “Hey let’s watch that!”, and I inexplicably agreed.  I shouldn’t have, but I did.  I will say this: Michael Bay knows how to make his type of movie.  His finger prints are all over it: The slow motion camera rotations, actors group posing in front of amazing backdrops, creepy floor height shots of every woman on set, and about a million American flags.  To his credit, his movies sell, but they sure aren’t good.

I was going to try and give you the plot, but I am not sure that I have figured it out yet.  I can at least give you the setup.  Transformers: Age of Extinction takes place after the destruction of Chicago in the last movie, so the Autobots are no longer working with the US Government, and worse for Transformer kind that means they now are being actively hunted and killed by the Government with the help of a new alien robot.  You know because the Government can’t trust alien robots…

Quite a switch I know, but the real reason for this is so we can get new Transformers, and you would think with the voice acting talents of John Goodman and Ken Watanabe that would be okay, it isn’t.  The new Transformers are all terrible.  Not that it is Goodman or Watanabe’s fault, they just look ridiculous, and are given just completely rubbish dialog.  They don’t have conversations, they just say things.  Odd things, mostly about wanting to kill humans.  Which I guess given that we are hunting them down it makes sense, but they are supposed to be the good guys.

The rest of the actors don’t fair much better, so they just do their best to chew through screen time.  I mean it is like Mark Wahlberg just decided to play the SNL talking to animals version of himself.  I half expected him to tell Optimus Prime, “Say hello to your mother for me!”  Stanly Tucci similarly seems to just throw his hands up and act as crazy as he can.  The rest of the cast just gets to stand around and react to things.  I would love to see a copy of the script for Age of Extinction just to see if there is dialog on it, or just vague direction like, “act surprised”, or “say something about murdering humans!”  It was all so bafflingly poor.

Now all of this would be somewhat forgivable if the robot action was at least good, but Transformers: Age of Extinction is the worst of the bunch.  Yes, I know what you are thinking.  Yes, there are robot dinosaurs, but they are at very end when the movie moves to China for some reason.  They can’t save it, the action just isn’t very good.  Plus there are long (very long) stretches of time were nothing with a robot happens.  We are just left watching confused humans attempting to try and make this movie watchable, but for a movie with a two hour and forty-five minute running time, they were never going to succeed.

Now all my ranting about Transformers: Age of Extinction is for nothing, Transformers 5 comes out next year, and it is probably going to be worse given the downward trajectory of this already low quality franchise, but it will still make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, so we will get Transformers 6.  Mind blowing.  Don’t watch this movie (unless it is the RiffTrax version).  It isn’t good, and it is just encouraging Michael Bay.  In the words of Mark Wahlberg, “Get me my alien gun!”