So here is Spider-Man: Homecoming’s first trailer, and it is pretty good. Peter is back in high school, doing high school stuff, and oh, Iron Man is around, so that should be fun. Michael Keaton’s Vulture looks pretty sweet. He should be a good first villain for this new young Spider-Man. Anyway it looks like Sony will finally get the web-slinger franchise they have been after.
I Give Jupiter Ascending One And A Half Flesh Colored Beards Out Of Four!
There are a lot of really good ideas in Jupiter Ascending: a girl on a Wizard of Oz adventure through space, ancient humans leading Anne Rice style houses, and generic modification just to name a few, but those ideas just never come together. Which is a shame because I am always on the look out for good original Sci-Fi.
The story follows a young woman named Jupiter (Mila Kunis) who finds out that she is the exact genetic copy of the most powerful person in the universe. Turns out that in space if you are the exact genetic copy of someone and they die, you get all their stuff. Of course a lot of powerful people do not want some random person rising to power, so it is up to Caine (Channing Tatum), a dog person, to keep her safe while she completes the paperwork necessary to become the ruler of the galaxy.
There is just too much going on in this plot to allow for a coherent story. Someone needed to take a hatchet to just about everything and then streamline this movie on the one or two best ideas. Sadly that did not happen, so we don’t get to spend enough time with what is important, and then waste time watching a bunch of random other stuff. This probably would have made an interesting TV show because then they could have expounded on everything.
Much like the plot, the actors all seemed lost in this movie as well. Mila Kunis tries her best, but her script must have just read, “act confused”. Channing Tatum tries to channel an action hero, but I was too distracted by his odd fake flesh colored beard. I know it was supposed to mimic dog fur or something, but it just looked odd. Despite the fact Eddie Redmayne won a Razzie for worst supporting actor for his role, his over the top performance at least added interest.
The special effects and makeup could have saved parts of this movie, but they all looked cheap and dated (fake flesh colored beard anyone?). Had I not known the movie’s budget I would have thought that The Wachowskis ambition outstripped their funds, but it turns out that the budget for this movie was north of $170 Million, so there is no excuse for everything to look as bad as it did.
I wanted to like Jupiter Ascending, but it ended up being boring mess. A fun mess I could have respected. The Wachowskis continue to have interesting ideas for their films, but they need someone to come in and help them edit them. Though after three large box-office bombs in a row, I am not sure how many more chances they will get.
There Is A Lot Going On In The Transformers: The Last Knight Trailer!
Clearly Michael Bay has decided that if you can’t write a coherent plot you just need to cram the movie full of more stuff so audiences can’t tell. In the first Transformers: The Last Knight trailer alone we got the Arthurian Legend, Unicron, Bad Optimus Prime, and a dragon that is probably Nemesis Prime. I mean you spend thirty minutes with each of those plot lines and you get a two hour movie. Will it make any sense? No.
I can only hope that much like Transformers: Age of Extinction that none of the plot lines truly intersect. Like the Robodragon from the Author timeline is a totally different dragon from the one they have to fight in the future, and that the Unicron killing sword has nothing to do with Excalibur. Then when we are all scratching our heads trying to figure out what just happened, we will get Rodimus Prime because why else would Hot Rod be in this movie. Plus he can put a bow on everything to get us ‘excited’ for Transformers 6.
Hey Remember The Mummy? It Is Back And More Tom Cruise-y And Serious Than Ever!
Remember how The Mummy was fun in an old school campy adventure sort of way? What if they ditched all that, made it serious, and then added Tom Cruise? You are in right? No… Well, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, you are getting it anyway! Man, The Mummy’s brand is already in the drain due to too many poor sequels and spin-offs, so this teaser does nothing to help it. Maybe the real trailer will interject the fun this series needs so desperately, and for all Tom Cruise’s faults, he is a decent action star. As of now though I am staying far, far away.
Telltale Batman Episode 4 Is The Episode You Have To Play To Get To Episode 5
It seems like all Telltale series have to have the ‘setup’ episode. All they do is serve to set up events so the ending can knock them down, and Batman: The Telltale Series Episode 4 is that episode. That is not to say there is nothing good in episode 4, there is, and I am very excited to see where all this setup leads, but it seems like it could have all been handled with a cutscene.
Though I will say their version of The Joker is very interesting, and the choices that you have to make in this episode are much less clear. Which was proved at the end when I got to compare my decisions to everyone else’s because they were all pretty much 50/50. Other than that though, Batman was spinning his wheels and ignoring pretty obvious clues and character motivations.
Despite Batman: The Telltale Series Episode 4’s flaws, I still enjoyed myself, and it is still one of the best Batman Year 2 stories ever made. If you are on the fence about Batman: The Telltale Series, you shouldn’t be. It is a great story that is a lot of fun to play through. I just hope everything pays off well in Episode 5.