AppleQueso wrote:
I understand, I just was making a snide observation.
Oh, I agree and got that. I didn't want to complain about a problem without giving a solution.
And I'm dead serious. If the trailer was just a teaser that started with a black screen, played the William Tell Overture and then showed The Lone Ranger and Tonto riding on horses with guns blazing...man, I would have gone to the first showing. All the marketing efforts backfired as they made the majority of fans disinterested.
It's possible to do serious and silly in the same film—I think Iron Man 3 struck a good balance to compare it to another film from this year—but it would go from gruesome to "Look over there, Johnny Depp is being a silly Native American Jack Sparrow" at the drop of the hat.
The "sidekick is the real hero" angle reminded me of Seth Rogen's Green Hornet only worse. I admittedly got a few chuckles out of that film at least. I'm not the hugest fan of reducing old heroes to parody status in Hollywood films though.
Then you throw in the Princess Bride story framing with old Tonto and the kid and the mood change at the end where the Lone Ranger theme apparently finally makes the main character competent and a rich, white, womanizing old man villain for good measure and I had no idea what the hell I was watching.
I'm also not sure what the overall theme was, "Justice makes you a dweeb, revenge is cool?"
It's a real kick in the pants for Disney since they were hoping this would be the start of a new franchise but I doubt they'll be crying for long with Star Wars coming up. Maybe there will be a Johnny Depp, Captain Jack expy in that too?
Not terrible, but all I could think was "Hugh Jackman as a young Mel Gibson as Wolverine". Swear to God even his ticks and gestures reminded me of Riggs.
edit* Did anyone else here complain that everyone in Les Miserababble either spoke/sang with an Australian or South Ham accent when the movie is set in FRANCE? No one, no one, has even a hint of a french accent.
Still a good movie, but sheesh. I actually laughed when the Oliver Twist kid got shot.
The Wolverine - I've mentioned before that I thought the previous Wolverine film was fairly decent and that I liked that it told a well-paced, self-contained story with requisite set pieces (while also introducing other comic book characters I recognized and enjoyed in key supporting roles). I found that this one did much the same. The plot was a bit more plodding (and lacked the satisfactory explanation and definitive ending that its predecessor had), but the action scenes and much of the rest of the story were on the whole stronger. I'm sure that Jackman can basically do Wolverine in his sleep at this point, but nonetheless manages to bring some new notes to his portrayal of the character. Probably the best super-hero film I've seen all year.
Grade: 3/5
Number Seventeen - I'm still on a quest to see every Hitchcock film, and so tossed on this 1932 flick to notch another on the belt. Though there are some interesting things for the Hitchcock fan to see here (the use of lighting and the heavy focus on staircases in the first half), the film is an absolute mess of storytelling, effects, acting, and everything else. Probably the worst Hitchcock film I've seen, and is mostly interesting as a historical piece (and some out of place but fun screwball comedy).
Grade: 1/5
Brazil - This is one of those films that a lot of people see when they first decide that they are going to get "serious" about film, and this scenario was true for me on my first viewing. I'd last seen the film in late high school/early college when I was still working my way through the AFI 100, and the film absolutely blew me away. I hadn't seen it since, and while it still has all of the impressive visual grandeur and the cynically off-kilter view on the world that I found illuminating in the late-90s, I am sad to say that, for me, the film hasn't aged well. Perhaps it's the fact that I enjoy some of Gilliam's other work much more (12 Monkeys and The Fisher King are my faves) or that so many subsequent dystopian films have riffed on what Gilliam shows us here, but I found on this viewing I didn't have that same love for Brazil as I once did. That's not to say it isn't an important piece of film making and just as worthy of its accolades and reverence as it always was, but it's made such a huge impact on subsequent directors that I think it's hard to view it in the 21st Century the way that it could be viewed in the 20th.
Grade: 4.5/5
I saw The Wolverine and to be honest, I'm pretty disappointed.
It's not a bad movie or anything. There's a lot to like in it.
But I feel like ... Origins was garbage. And, we know that most of what was in that movie was there because studio execs put it there. The original Japan story they were going to make got scrapped for whatever that movie was saying. And, sadly, I think this movie suffers because of that. Studios don't seem to really throw anything away, so it sort of feels like The Wolverine is left over remnants of whatever Origins was originally going to be. And, I just feel like, it's a 2005 movie released in 2013. I think maybe my comic book movie tastes have matured beyond X-Men 1 and Daredevil. I want something with more substance and substantial characters that act as more than caricatures. I want plots that not only make sense, but are deeply thought out. I want character motivation that makes sense.
This movie ... is lacking a lot of that. And I'm just tired of those kinds of movies.
Cronozilla wrote: I think maybe my comic book movie tastes have matured beyond X-Men 1 and Daredevil. I want something with more substance and substantial characters that act as more than caricatures. I want plots that not only make sense, but are deeply thought out. I want character motivation that makes sense.
This movie ... is lacking a lot of that. And I'm just tired of those kinds of movies.
Again: comic book movies suck.
It's very, very far and few between that you'll find comic book films that do all those things you are looking for. I've argued many times in this thread that comic book films have only gotten more rote in the past 5-6 years or so, and I think The Wolverine is at least a better example of these "by-the-numbers" films (especially the Marvel universe stuff. Ugh.).
