Yes I know that this is the fifth negative review in a row, but anyone that I can convince not to see this movie, well their two and a half hours is more important than me trying to mix it up a bit. Then again if I can find some good and interesting things to say about The Walking Dead game then I can use that next time.
Directing (Non-action scenes): The fact that I'm singling out the direction that doesn't involve the action isn't to inadvertently praise the action scenes. The scenes themselves are stupid and predictable and the direction is average, it looks exactly like a Pirates movie, nothing more or less. That being said, why am I talking about the direction? Well, it is just kind of weird. There are several scenes that don't have any kind of transitionary... anything. No sound effect, no similar backdrop, no characters engaging in a similar activity. And I'm not just saying that it doesn't include those traditional ways of transitioning between scenes, there are scenes that just cut to another one without any transition. This breaks the flow of the film, snapping the audience out of the movie entirely. This combined with numerous scenes drenched in bloom and lens flare, and it feels like a weird hybrid of Verbinski post-Pirates 1and Liebesman.
Hatred of the source material: I try, not always succeed, to not make crazed rationalizations. Saying things like "Gore Verbinski hates the Lone Ranger!" seems too hyperbolic for you readers to take it seriously, even if I think its true. But when you jettison much of the character's history/personality/key traits, and the ones you keep you mock... constantly! Well I don't consider the filmmakers fans at that point. I can understand wanting to alter the character, I can even understand trying to make the whole thing this morally ambiguous "dark" film (which it totally isn't by the way). But when the ONE time in the entire movie that the main character utters his catchphrase and gets reprimanded for it. When the original score is used twice, and all of it during the last thirty minutes. And when you make a big deal about the whole "no-killing" thing only for both of the main villains to meet fairly gruesome ends. Well you clearly have some issues.
Lonnnnnnnggggggggg: This movie is really long. And boring. Yes these are criticisms that pretty much every single critic on the planet, even the ones who defend the film, have leveled at it. The only reason that I bring it up, is because it really is a problem. You see they have this whole two and a half hour space to fill, and almost none of it is with the title character, doing what he does. Hell he doesn't even decide to become the Ranger for real until nearly forty minutes from the end of the damn movie. That's right you only get a little over thirty minutes of the actual title character, doing what he does.
Grimdark slapstick: How many films am I going to see this summer that have tonal problems? Seriously I'm asking here. Man of Steel, Equestria Girls, and now Lone Ranger. Is it really so hard to create a consistent tone? Or at least to create transitions between the comedy bits and the dramatic stuff. In this movie one of the main bad guys eats a human heart, that he just cut from the body of a character that had been characterized for a while. A few scenes later, Johnny Depp is stealing from dead bodies, and they want us to consider this funny. And later still, Depp drags Hammer through horse poop. People, myself included, gave Pirates 3 a lot of stick for its inconsistent tone. But this... this is a whole other level of stupid.
Occasional funny moment/cool character: I would be lying if I said that the film didn't make me laugh at least once or twice. A couple of the ways that The Lone Ranger screws up and yet still comes out on top are decently funny. Special props should also be given to Johnny Depp, who tries his damnedest with a radically redesigned Tonto. The script still kills the part, but it was at least a good effort. Helena Bonham Carter also does have several fun moments as Red, the friendly neighborhood prostitute. She also cares far more about her minor supporting role than Hammer does about the lead character, so those two do elevate the film slightly. And this is all coming from someone who usually dislikes them for appearing in every awful Tim Burton movie outside of Planet of the Apes.
Conclusion: After the disappointment that was Man of Steel. And now the triplet horrors that are After Earth, World War Z, and Lone Ranger I wonder what the film watching audience did to deserve this. I mean really, it makes me want to see Equestria Girls again. I mean yeah that movie was only mildly above-average, but that is better than absolute garbage. Yeah the movie was barely the length of three episodes without commercial breaks, but that's better than teeth-grindingly long. Pacific Rim... its all up to you now.
1/5
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Saturday, June 8, 2013
The Purge: Release the Crap
The Man Cave scene: I'm going to start with one scene in the movie that I thought was freaking awesome. At one point in the movie the bad guys start breaking into the main characters house. Ethan Hawke goes down to his Man Cave, a collection of pinball games, pool tables, and various other Man things. So Ethan goes down into his Man Cave and fights three guys in Strangers masks with the contents of his Man Cave. This scene is amazingly stupid, doesn't flow with the tone of the rest of the film as its more focused on action. But this scene rocks. It is amazingly fun to just watch Ethan Hawke kill yuppies with a pinball machine, it just is.
Terrible character stupidity: One of the worst problems a horror movie can have is to have its characters make bad decisions. If your character acts stupid then it takes your audience out of the film and makes them less likely to be scared by it. This is one of the problems that absolutely destroys The Purge. Ethan Hawke has numerous chances to try and reason with the crazed maniacs outside, and try to get more time to give them what they want, and he never does. The villains also do this quite frequently, they never seem to do very thorough checks of the house to make sure that no one is still lurking about, and it gets them killed, a lot.
The Directing: Okay to once again stem the flow of hatred I do like the direction here. Shots during the scenes of characters wandering through the house are tight on the characters. It gives a sense of claustrophobia to the audience, as it restricts their field of vision down to something similar to the characters themselves. This would make the film very scary, even during jump scares if it weren't for one tiny little problem.
Predictability: This is one of the most predictable horror films ever made. Now just because an audience guesses that certain items in the background are going to be important later doesn't automatically become a knock on your film. What you are supposed to do in that situation is upend the audiences expectations, and use the item in a more interesting way. Once in the entire film does this happen, only once. In regards to one of the numerous foreshadowed items during the films overly winking first act, only one. Everything else plays out exactly as you would expect, right down to the final villains for the films "subversive" climax. But considering the films premise I think that the thing that pisses me off more is...
Complete lack of ambiguity: This is a film with a bunch of potential. The idea that once a year all crime is legal for 12 hours, allows for a number of different stories. The problem is that the movie doesn't have the balls to go to the dark places that a premise like this allows. The villains, even the final ones, are completely irredeemable monsters. They treat the homeless veteran that they are pursuing as nothing but a "swine" in their words. This makes it perfectly okay for you to root for Ethan Hawke to kill them. Hawke sells security for people during The Purge, so he's "part of the problem" and needs to be taught the error of his ways. The whole film is littered with pieces of 1% revenge material, especially in the films ending, which I won't spoil, which takes this to the only moments that feel like they live up to the premises promise.
This is the true killing blow for The Purge, how naively it perceives its own world. The overly predictable screenplay, the obnoxiously stupid characters, the constant foreshadowing in the prelude, much of it could be forgiven if the movie explored some of the themes that it brings up. The potential for economic stagnation in a world that kills off poorer and noncontributing members to society. The political motivations, or even party, of The New Founding Fathers. The parts of the country where the reverse to what we see in the film would be true. Places where the poor would rise up against the richer, or at least attempt to. The implications that The New Founding Fathers are the ones keeping The Purge around. What would happen if they were voted out? Are there now Pro-Purge and Non-Purge parties, again which ones? The film answers none of these questions, because it only sees things in black and white, and that is its real problem.
Conclusion: I wanted to like The Purge. It has an amazing premise that I want to see another movie use properly. It has some really fun moments, and some pretty good acting. It shows promise in certain things, like not focusing in on the homeless mans dog tags to try and evoke sympathy. But in the end the movie is too stupid to live up to its own potential.
2/5
Terrible character stupidity: One of the worst problems a horror movie can have is to have its characters make bad decisions. If your character acts stupid then it takes your audience out of the film and makes them less likely to be scared by it. This is one of the problems that absolutely destroys The Purge. Ethan Hawke has numerous chances to try and reason with the crazed maniacs outside, and try to get more time to give them what they want, and he never does. The villains also do this quite frequently, they never seem to do very thorough checks of the house to make sure that no one is still lurking about, and it gets them killed, a lot.
The Directing: Okay to once again stem the flow of hatred I do like the direction here. Shots during the scenes of characters wandering through the house are tight on the characters. It gives a sense of claustrophobia to the audience, as it restricts their field of vision down to something similar to the characters themselves. This would make the film very scary, even during jump scares if it weren't for one tiny little problem.
Predictability: This is one of the most predictable horror films ever made. Now just because an audience guesses that certain items in the background are going to be important later doesn't automatically become a knock on your film. What you are supposed to do in that situation is upend the audiences expectations, and use the item in a more interesting way. Once in the entire film does this happen, only once. In regards to one of the numerous foreshadowed items during the films overly winking first act, only one. Everything else plays out exactly as you would expect, right down to the final villains for the films "subversive" climax. But considering the films premise I think that the thing that pisses me off more is...
Complete lack of ambiguity: This is a film with a bunch of potential. The idea that once a year all crime is legal for 12 hours, allows for a number of different stories. The problem is that the movie doesn't have the balls to go to the dark places that a premise like this allows. The villains, even the final ones, are completely irredeemable monsters. They treat the homeless veteran that they are pursuing as nothing but a "swine" in their words. This makes it perfectly okay for you to root for Ethan Hawke to kill them. Hawke sells security for people during The Purge, so he's "part of the problem" and needs to be taught the error of his ways. The whole film is littered with pieces of 1% revenge material, especially in the films ending, which I won't spoil, which takes this to the only moments that feel like they live up to the premises promise.
This is the true killing blow for The Purge, how naively it perceives its own world. The overly predictable screenplay, the obnoxiously stupid characters, the constant foreshadowing in the prelude, much of it could be forgiven if the movie explored some of the themes that it brings up. The potential for economic stagnation in a world that kills off poorer and noncontributing members to society. The political motivations, or even party, of The New Founding Fathers. The parts of the country where the reverse to what we see in the film would be true. Places where the poor would rise up against the richer, or at least attempt to. The implications that The New Founding Fathers are the ones keeping The Purge around. What would happen if they were voted out? Are there now Pro-Purge and Non-Purge parties, again which ones? The film answers none of these questions, because it only sees things in black and white, and that is its real problem.
Conclusion: I wanted to like The Purge. It has an amazing premise that I want to see another movie use properly. It has some really fun moments, and some pretty good acting. It shows promise in certain things, like not focusing in on the homeless mans dog tags to try and evoke sympathy. But in the end the movie is too stupid to live up to its own potential.
2/5
Sunday, June 2, 2013
After Earth: RAIGE against the Machine
Pointless Backstory: One thing that a lot of amateur filmmakers, and it really sucks to throw that label on the director of The Sixth Sense, get wrong is over thinking aspects of their movie. Take for example the Ursa. In After Earth the Ursa essentially acts as the final boss, its a big monster that hunts by sensing fear. So what is the films explanation for them? They are the foot soldiers of an alien race designed to kill us. Setting aside the fact that these things meant to kill us only showcase any kind of intelligence when the plot calls for it, and other times are as dumb as a rock, (even if it can no longer sense him, it should be pawing around his last known location, not rocks several feet away!) Why can they only sense fear? The movie states that they were bred to kill us, so why are these the final product? Why can they only smell this one pheromone? When Kitai meets up with the Ursa he hasn't bathed in several days, shouldn't that be enough?
But this all ties back to the biggest question, why the weapon of an alien race? The aliens don't show up for the entire movie, and they really don't seem to be a threat, just the Ursas. So why couldn't the Ursa just be a native species to Nova Prime, that the humans only ran into once they had settled and colonized a section of the planet already and it would be too inconvenient to move. You can still use the same reasoning for why its on the ship, you can still use the stupid "ghosting" stuff, but you don't mention things in the first act that aren't important to the rest of the story.
Lackluster Aesthetic: At first I was going to put the awful direction down for this slot, but then I really thought about how generic the sets and creature design was. The sets are just generic greenery, generic chasm, generic waterfall location, Scotland, and volcano. There really isn't anything new or interesting in the way that Earth has evolved without us that makes it stand out. Or should I say that none of the new evolutions make any sense. Why, if the planet goes glacial every night, is there any plant life? How did plants evolve to survive this sudden temperature drop, the first two or so times it happened they should have all died. Why are birds and animals just bigger now? Evolution doesn't just add shit for no reason, it adapts creatures to a certain environment. If it did work that way then the Ass-Blasters from Tremors 3 wouldn't be stupid now would they?
Laughable Dialogue: One of the difficult aspects of a story like this, that focuses around the relationship between characters, is believable dialogue. You have to make it seem natural when the characters interact, or you suck the audience out of the experience. This is a problem that has constantly plagued late-period M. Night. The Happening became a cult-classic for its horrendous dialogue, and the expository nature of 99% of the cast of The Last Airbender was even more distracting than the dodgy effects. So I completely understand if people don't believe me when I say that After Earth has worse dialogue than either of them. Characters explain everything that they do, and all of the restrictions and effects of the incredibly convenient technology. But after that then all bets are off. One part in particular where Cypher Raige, yes that is Will Smith's character's name, asks his son to come back, is atrociously written. I swear its one of those moments where the actors seemed to skip a page in the script. The problem is that the dialogue isn't as funny-bad as it was in The Happening, largely because of...
Atrocious Acting: Again this is a problem that late-period M. Night has in every one of his movies. But this is part of what led The Happening to be so funny, the terribly over-the-top acting of Marky Mark just exacerbated the bad writing. On the other hand the terrible acting in Airbender was more stiff and unnatural, causing the films bad dialogue to just be terrible. This is one of those cases, where the absolute worst aspects of Shyamalan's screenplays come to the forefront. His late-period work is almost like the earlier work of Tarsem, where the style overruns the substance and the filmmaker seems to think that the audience is a stupid child who needs to be woken up with a loud noise every once and a while, and won't understand the "deepness" of your script.
Will Smith is playing things flat, completely the opposite of his normal persona. This seems like a stylistic choice to allow his kid a chance to shine, but it actually makes things more distracting. It actually makes him kind of miscast, Will Smith isn't a growling, raspy, military captain, he just isn't. Jaden was good in the remake Karate Kid, I say that to karmatically justify me calling him an untalented whelp in this movie. He seems to think that serious people pout constantly, which is pretty much his facial expression for the entire movie. He's unable to convey the wonder that the director seems to take in the changed Earth, instead he seems confused and half-asleep. And while this couldn't all be forgiven, some of it could be except for...
It's Boring: One of the worst things that you can say about a Fantasy movie or a Science Fiction movie is that it is boring. But that is the worst thing about this film, it is boring. This is partly because the film's sets are dull and uninspired as mentioned above, meaning that you don't have anything cool to look at. The two leads, who are the only actors in the movie for the entire second act, are being overly-serious and boring as tar. And it is exacerbated by the complete lack of transition shots of any kind. Instead when one scene ends the other just starts. This leads to several jarring shifts in location and several jarring shifts in time. In one moment Kitai could have just begun his journey, in the next scene, without any shots in-between, it is now nightfall and he has to find a checkpoint. Coupled with a lame final action scene, and boring half-resolution, and the fact that the movie just kind of stops, makes this the most boring movie I have seen all year.
Conclusion: I didn't think that I would see a film worse than Star Trek Into Darkness so soon. Barely two weeks have passed, and already its seat as one of the worst movies of the year has been overtaken. I wish that I could say that this was the nadir of filmmaking this year, or even this summer, but with Hangover III behind us and Despicable Me 2 ahead, I don't think that statement is completely true... yet.
0/5
But this all ties back to the biggest question, why the weapon of an alien race? The aliens don't show up for the entire movie, and they really don't seem to be a threat, just the Ursas. So why couldn't the Ursa just be a native species to Nova Prime, that the humans only ran into once they had settled and colonized a section of the planet already and it would be too inconvenient to move. You can still use the same reasoning for why its on the ship, you can still use the stupid "ghosting" stuff, but you don't mention things in the first act that aren't important to the rest of the story.
Lackluster Aesthetic: At first I was going to put the awful direction down for this slot, but then I really thought about how generic the sets and creature design was. The sets are just generic greenery, generic chasm, generic waterfall location, Scotland, and volcano. There really isn't anything new or interesting in the way that Earth has evolved without us that makes it stand out. Or should I say that none of the new evolutions make any sense. Why, if the planet goes glacial every night, is there any plant life? How did plants evolve to survive this sudden temperature drop, the first two or so times it happened they should have all died. Why are birds and animals just bigger now? Evolution doesn't just add shit for no reason, it adapts creatures to a certain environment. If it did work that way then the Ass-Blasters from Tremors 3 wouldn't be stupid now would they?
Laughable Dialogue: One of the difficult aspects of a story like this, that focuses around the relationship between characters, is believable dialogue. You have to make it seem natural when the characters interact, or you suck the audience out of the experience. This is a problem that has constantly plagued late-period M. Night. The Happening became a cult-classic for its horrendous dialogue, and the expository nature of 99% of the cast of The Last Airbender was even more distracting than the dodgy effects. So I completely understand if people don't believe me when I say that After Earth has worse dialogue than either of them. Characters explain everything that they do, and all of the restrictions and effects of the incredibly convenient technology. But after that then all bets are off. One part in particular where Cypher Raige, yes that is Will Smith's character's name, asks his son to come back, is atrociously written. I swear its one of those moments where the actors seemed to skip a page in the script. The problem is that the dialogue isn't as funny-bad as it was in The Happening, largely because of...
Atrocious Acting: Again this is a problem that late-period M. Night has in every one of his movies. But this is part of what led The Happening to be so funny, the terribly over-the-top acting of Marky Mark just exacerbated the bad writing. On the other hand the terrible acting in Airbender was more stiff and unnatural, causing the films bad dialogue to just be terrible. This is one of those cases, where the absolute worst aspects of Shyamalan's screenplays come to the forefront. His late-period work is almost like the earlier work of Tarsem, where the style overruns the substance and the filmmaker seems to think that the audience is a stupid child who needs to be woken up with a loud noise every once and a while, and won't understand the "deepness" of your script.
Will Smith is playing things flat, completely the opposite of his normal persona. This seems like a stylistic choice to allow his kid a chance to shine, but it actually makes things more distracting. It actually makes him kind of miscast, Will Smith isn't a growling, raspy, military captain, he just isn't. Jaden was good in the remake Karate Kid, I say that to karmatically justify me calling him an untalented whelp in this movie. He seems to think that serious people pout constantly, which is pretty much his facial expression for the entire movie. He's unable to convey the wonder that the director seems to take in the changed Earth, instead he seems confused and half-asleep. And while this couldn't all be forgiven, some of it could be except for...
It's Boring: One of the worst things that you can say about a Fantasy movie or a Science Fiction movie is that it is boring. But that is the worst thing about this film, it is boring. This is partly because the film's sets are dull and uninspired as mentioned above, meaning that you don't have anything cool to look at. The two leads, who are the only actors in the movie for the entire second act, are being overly-serious and boring as tar. And it is exacerbated by the complete lack of transition shots of any kind. Instead when one scene ends the other just starts. This leads to several jarring shifts in location and several jarring shifts in time. In one moment Kitai could have just begun his journey, in the next scene, without any shots in-between, it is now nightfall and he has to find a checkpoint. Coupled with a lame final action scene, and boring half-resolution, and the fact that the movie just kind of stops, makes this the most boring movie I have seen all year.
Conclusion: I didn't think that I would see a film worse than Star Trek Into Darkness so soon. Barely two weeks have passed, and already its seat as one of the worst movies of the year has been overtaken. I wish that I could say that this was the nadir of filmmaking this year, or even this summer, but with Hangover III behind us and Despicable Me 2 ahead, I don't think that statement is completely true... yet.
0/5
Friday, May 17, 2013
Star Trek Into Suckness (Wasted Potential: the movie)
The Visuals/The Music/The Majority of the Acting: Yes the things that were good in the first movie are still good in this one. The first film's visuals were pretty but not exactly living up their potential. The visuals in this movie are even better, and the camerawork during the space battles is slower, which makes the damage feel more visceral. The music continues to be quite good. My mother has listened to the soundtrack from the first one all the way through more times than I can count and she'll have a new one to play quite soon. And yes the acting is pretty good. All the people who were good in the first are good here, and the new additions do a pretty good job. With those few points in the film's favor out of the way, let's go on to how this film sucks.
Characters/Sub-plots: Yes I am going to list the sub-plots different from the overall story, because I hate how lazy they are. There are a couple of sub-plots introduced in the first act that don't affect the story in the slightest, mostly because they are forgotten well before the end of the second act. There is a sub-plot about Spock and Uhura's relationship, which seems to be building to some interesting character interplay... but is resolved within ten minutes of its introduction. No seriously they introduce a conflict at the end of the first act, have it take shape on the actual plot within five minutes, then resolve it. This is terrible screenwriting, and I mean worse than the dumbness of the first film, which at least knew how structure worked.
But worse is how none of these little pieces affect the story in the slightest. There is another one that also is brought up in the first act involving Kirk that I won't spoil, but God is it stupid. And the best part is that it barely registers in his character, mostly because it feels like a retread of his character arc from the first one. Scottie is the only one who's character arc actually has any real bearing on the plot, until you find out that its just a cheap ploy to get him off of the ship in the first act, so that they can use the "its malfunctioning" excuse of generating tension. Hell it probably needed it though considering how bad the film is at generating tension. In the beginning Kirk does something that gets his Captains license revoked. You want to know how long it takes them to resolve that? One scene before he's back on a ship, Three before he's captain of the Enterprise again.
Story (More specifically the references to previous Star Trek continuity): The story and writing in this film are atrocious. The first film was largely let down by a general sense that the filmmakers didn't like or respect the original source material outside of its Wikipedia entry. Turns out, I really should've counted my blessings. It turns out that the only thing thats worse than J.J. Abrams not even trying to please Trekkies, is him trying to pander to them. I'm only a casual Trekkie, but I did see this with two hardcores who have been going to the films on opening day since Wrath of Khan. For the last film they were kind to it, accepting of the ways that it was trying to be more of an action film than a Star Trek film, even they didn't like this one. The problem with the references though is how they are used. X-Men making references to the more outlandish costumes of the original was short and sweet, even though post-Avengers it seems insufferable. The references in Star Trek into Darkness are plot points or even entire scenes.
Direction/Action: This is just inexcusable. The first film's action scenes, while stupid, were at least exciting and actually engaging on a "Woo this is fun" aspect. The action in this movie is just plain badly filmed. This is entirely Abram's fault, as the choreography seems lame and stiff, the sets look more like a Video Game than a movie, and the editing is crap. There is a fight scene pretty early on when the group gets to Kronos that is literally populated by Cover Walls straight from the awful Video Game, and it even spawns new bad guys constantly. Don't even bother trying to follow any of the fight scenes on the Dreadnought, it is literally one of the most confusing fights scenes I have seen in quite a while. The camera zooms in and out, cuts last barely a few seconds, you can't tell who anyone is let alone where they are. Eventually you just give up, and treat the action scenes as a snooze break.
The last thirty minutes: I AM NOT SPOILING THE TWIST. It would be easy to do so, since I literally scoped out the twist from the first ten minutes, but I will not. Instead I will simply say this, it is the stupidest thing that this entire franchise has ever done. Not even because it does't work because of the stupid way it gets resolved. Not just because the pacing grinds to a halt, making thirty minutes seem like seventy. Not simply because of the fact that it misuses potentially interesting characters and plot elements from the old continuity. No, it is stupid because the twist is poorly written, just like everything else it really comes down to the fact that the writers at work here are just awful at their chosen profession.
Conclusion: I absolutely loathe this movie. I waited nine hours after watching it to write this critique, discussing it with several others to iron out my opinions. What began, as the film started, as annoyed indifference turned into seething agony, prolonged by an atrocious third act with terrible action scene after terrible action scene and shitty writing. When I left the theater I was angry, confused, and sad, tenfold than I had been at the last movie. I like Star Trek V: The final frontier better than this, I like Star Trek Nemesis better than this. I like Star Trek Insurrection better than this. And yes, I like Star Trek: the motion picture better than this. This is my most hated Star Trek film. And I apologize for all that I disliked about the first one, I didn't know what my alternative was, and I'm sorry. God I hated this movie.
1/5
Characters/Sub-plots: Yes I am going to list the sub-plots different from the overall story, because I hate how lazy they are. There are a couple of sub-plots introduced in the first act that don't affect the story in the slightest, mostly because they are forgotten well before the end of the second act. There is a sub-plot about Spock and Uhura's relationship, which seems to be building to some interesting character interplay... but is resolved within ten minutes of its introduction. No seriously they introduce a conflict at the end of the first act, have it take shape on the actual plot within five minutes, then resolve it. This is terrible screenwriting, and I mean worse than the dumbness of the first film, which at least knew how structure worked.
But worse is how none of these little pieces affect the story in the slightest. There is another one that also is brought up in the first act involving Kirk that I won't spoil, but God is it stupid. And the best part is that it barely registers in his character, mostly because it feels like a retread of his character arc from the first one. Scottie is the only one who's character arc actually has any real bearing on the plot, until you find out that its just a cheap ploy to get him off of the ship in the first act, so that they can use the "its malfunctioning" excuse of generating tension. Hell it probably needed it though considering how bad the film is at generating tension. In the beginning Kirk does something that gets his Captains license revoked. You want to know how long it takes them to resolve that? One scene before he's back on a ship, Three before he's captain of the Enterprise again.
Story (More specifically the references to previous Star Trek continuity): The story and writing in this film are atrocious. The first film was largely let down by a general sense that the filmmakers didn't like or respect the original source material outside of its Wikipedia entry. Turns out, I really should've counted my blessings. It turns out that the only thing thats worse than J.J. Abrams not even trying to please Trekkies, is him trying to pander to them. I'm only a casual Trekkie, but I did see this with two hardcores who have been going to the films on opening day since Wrath of Khan. For the last film they were kind to it, accepting of the ways that it was trying to be more of an action film than a Star Trek film, even they didn't like this one. The problem with the references though is how they are used. X-Men making references to the more outlandish costumes of the original was short and sweet, even though post-Avengers it seems insufferable. The references in Star Trek into Darkness are plot points or even entire scenes.
Direction/Action: This is just inexcusable. The first film's action scenes, while stupid, were at least exciting and actually engaging on a "Woo this is fun" aspect. The action in this movie is just plain badly filmed. This is entirely Abram's fault, as the choreography seems lame and stiff, the sets look more like a Video Game than a movie, and the editing is crap. There is a fight scene pretty early on when the group gets to Kronos that is literally populated by Cover Walls straight from the awful Video Game, and it even spawns new bad guys constantly. Don't even bother trying to follow any of the fight scenes on the Dreadnought, it is literally one of the most confusing fights scenes I have seen in quite a while. The camera zooms in and out, cuts last barely a few seconds, you can't tell who anyone is let alone where they are. Eventually you just give up, and treat the action scenes as a snooze break.
The last thirty minutes: I AM NOT SPOILING THE TWIST. It would be easy to do so, since I literally scoped out the twist from the first ten minutes, but I will not. Instead I will simply say this, it is the stupidest thing that this entire franchise has ever done. Not even because it does't work because of the stupid way it gets resolved. Not just because the pacing grinds to a halt, making thirty minutes seem like seventy. Not simply because of the fact that it misuses potentially interesting characters and plot elements from the old continuity. No, it is stupid because the twist is poorly written, just like everything else it really comes down to the fact that the writers at work here are just awful at their chosen profession.
Conclusion: I absolutely loathe this movie. I waited nine hours after watching it to write this critique, discussing it with several others to iron out my opinions. What began, as the film started, as annoyed indifference turned into seething agony, prolonged by an atrocious third act with terrible action scene after terrible action scene and shitty writing. When I left the theater I was angry, confused, and sad, tenfold than I had been at the last movie. I like Star Trek V: The final frontier better than this, I like Star Trek Nemesis better than this. I like Star Trek Insurrection better than this. And yes, I like Star Trek: the motion picture better than this. This is my most hated Star Trek film. And I apologize for all that I disliked about the first one, I didn't know what my alternative was, and I'm sorry. God I hated this movie.
1/5
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Sleeping Dogs needs to be put down...
(Okay so the way that these reviews will work is I will list five things that I think are important about the game and whether they are good or bad. Basically its an out-of-five but where you know exactly what makes up those five stars, or lack thereof.)
Sleeping Dogs
Combat: The combat in this game reminds me of the Yakuza series, in a good way. The fisticuffs require a decent amount of skill and is actually pretty damn fun. This engine is pretty much just Arkham Asylum but frankly I can't say that I don't enjoy that engine and anything that rips it off, so far. The only real new addition is the environmental kills. If you grab an enemy, and some enemies can't be grabbed for precisely this reason, then you can bring them over to certain objects and instigate an auto kill. These are pretty fun, despite the fact that they basically just delete an enemy.
The ending: I'm not going to spoil this one, even though this game came out a while ago and I probably could, but I don't like the ending. Why? Simple, it's too clean. Throughout the game characters are constantly double crossing one another, lines are being crossed, people die. And yet there are no consequences faced, not even a little. The bad guys are taken down, and one of them completely out of the main characters hands so that he doesn't need to dirty himself even a little. The criminal organization that he worked for throughout the game is perfectly fine, and not in the control of any of the evil masters that we met throughout the game. Even the main characters buddy is given a pardon, or at least its assumed.
Story: The story actually starts a lot better than most GTA clones. Most of the GTA games turn me off because the story is really slow, and this is coming from someone who likes JRPGs. But the storyline in Sleeping Dogs is much better in terms of pacing... sort of. From a relatively good starting position the plot gets really unfocused after a wedding scene at around the mid-point. From there the main character just sort of wanders around until the story has set up the remaining characters and can lurch towards the boring final mission and way to easy final confrontation. Not terrible, since the beginning is still pretty good, but pretty bad by the end.
Music: The music in this game ranges from dull as The Cutting Crew to just weird. Most of the general in-game music is fairly forgettable, largely just what you would expect from a GTA clone with a china theme. But the in-game radio stations are pretty weird... I can't even really describe what it is that weirds me out, but its just odd, and unsettling.
Graphics: The graphics in the game are pretty gorgeous, very realistic looking while at the same time being quite stylish. The stylishness is largely due to the location being more interesting to walk around than New York, so the game really shouldn't earn points for that, but screw it, I will anyway. The character models are what I would particularly like to give attention to. The characters actually look pretty realistic looking, albeit only during cutscene, as during gameplay they look like they came from Mortal Kombat, and their death animation is literally just 'you fall down'.
Overall recommendation: I wish I could recommend this game, I really do. With so many god-awful generic sandbox games like Mafia, and Grand Theft Auto 4 I really wish that I could say that this one is great. It does do quite a bit different from the rest of the market, but not enough. Overall if you want to see it and judge for yourself I would rent it, see if you like it, feel free to argue with me in the comments section.
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