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- The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.1 ‘Days of Future Past’ (2014)
- Marvel’s Doctor Strange 2 May be Banned in Saudi Arabia
- From Sci-Fi to the Battlefield: How Autonomous Drones Are Becoming a Reality
- Another Day, Another Comicbook Film Actor Arrested
- Watch: Doc Ock Gets His Own Featurette for ‘No Way Home’ Release
- The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.2 ‘The Wolverine’ (2013)
- Jason Momoa to Star in ‘Minecraft’ Movie for Warner Bros.
- Christopher Priest Exploring Vampirella’s ‘Year One’ at Dynamite
| The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.1 ‘Days of Future Past’ (2014) Posted: 23 Apr 2022 03:25 PM PDT
#1 in my ranking of the X-Men franchise
This is probably the best the X-Men franchise is going to get, especially considering the ensemble approach most of the films take. I think there's some unfocused storytelling going on that keeps it a hair's breadth away from greatness, but overall this is the best balancing act the franchise ever pulled off, managing two different casts and timelines with shocking style and seeming ease. Bryan Singer really brought his A-game, making possibly his best movie here.
This franchise fits best together when you don't think about it too hard, keeping up generalities about relationships in mind without demanding specifics. In a surprisingly bold move, the movie starts by skipping ahead into the future to give us the X-Men version of a Terminator future where mutants are chased down by Sentinels that can detect them, adapt to their powers, and easily dispatch them if caught. The opening is nearly on par with the Nightcrawler attack on the White House that opened X2 in terms of cinematically introducing the audience to the world and the threat. This is a shockingly good action scene with almost no dialogue to explain who's what, the stakes, or the overall purpose, but it's still amazingly good edge of your seat entertainment with a handful of very specific goals: the danger of the Sentinels, the overall world, the minor characters, and the basic power that they will use to send Wolverine back in time.
In 1973 Mystique killed a man named Bolivar Trask who was developing a mutant hunting weapon called the Sentinel. The assassination convinced the world that anti-mutant weapons were the best course of action instead of stopping development, and decades later they perfected and implemented the weapons, creating the dystopian vision the movie starts in. Professor Xavier, Magneto, Storm, and Wolverine find our minor characters led by Iceman and Kitty Pride in order to use Kitty's power of sending a person's consciousness into their younger self, how they were able to undo the attack that started the film. The plan would be to send Xavier back to 1973, but the length of time would be particularly difficult on the physical body, something his elderly frame couldn't take, so they send back Wolverine, ageless and able to heal instantly. Now, all of this is explained very quickly through clunky exposition, its only saving grace being that it's done so quickly. We don't have a couple of ten minute long scenes to explain it, it all comes out in a couple of minutes and then we're off. So, I can wish all day long that it was explained more elegantly, but at least it's done quickly.
Sent back in time, Logan searches out Xavier who is taking a serum to suppress his powers and give him the ability to walk at the same time. Guarded and accompanied by Beast, who takes the same serum to suppress his new blue visage, Xavier has become jaded from his mission after the saving of the world from nuclear war at the end of First Class only led to a temporary understanding with humans and the Vietnam War robbed him of many of his teachers and students. Disillusioned, he refuses to listen to Wolverine at first, but mentioning Xavier's childhood friend, Raven/Mystique, is enough to get him out of the house. In order to convince her, though, they decide that they need to free Magneto from his prison several hundred feet below the Pentagon. In order to do that, Wolverine points them in the direction of Peter Maximoff, a young man in 1973 that Wolverine knew as an older man in the future but is a kleptomaniac youth who can run faster than the eye can see.
The breakout is a fantastic sequence, told with energy and humor. It's the absolute standout moment of the movie as Xavier and Beast mess with the video surveillance, Maximoff takes a guard uniform, speeds Magneto from his cell, and then takes out a room full of guards as they fire guns at the group in a kitchen with the sprinkler system on. The use of "Time in a Bottle" fits perfectly with the scene, also providing an auditory counterpoint to the action that helps sell the comedic aspects of what's going on.
This movie does a better job of including the overall political climate than First Class did. Trask is brought into a Senate hearing early. Xavier is jaded by Vietnam. Trask goes to Paris to participate in the Paris Peace Accords where Mystique plans on assassinating him, needing to use her ability to mimic people by copying a Vietnamese general. The mutant team arrives just in time, and Magneto just has the most amazing moments. He bend a bullet's path to shoot Raven in the leg. He uses the bullet in her leg to drag her towards him. He's going to kill her to protect their future. I'm a broken record on this, but Michael Fassbender is the best casting choice made in the X-Men movies.
Everything comes to a head in DC where, at the same time in the future, the Sentinels have found the mutant hideout and both confrontations happen at the same "time". Now, that's just solid story construction right there, but it falls apart slightly on a second viewing. First of all, Magneto pulling Robert F. Kennedy Stadium up off the ground, flying it over to the White House, and plopping it around the Executive Mansion to cut off any police or military support from the ground while he uses the first generation Sentinels to provide air support is just great stuff. Xavier using his powers to plea with Raven as she gets within striking distance of Trask, who's on stage with President Nixon, is very good. Wolverine, though, he doesn't have a whole lot to do, and when Magneto throws him away from the scene into the Potomac River he's done with the scene. Where this ends up mattering is how it interacts with the future segment as the mutants steadily lose ground and people to the incoming threat. It's unclear at what point Wolverine has set the future on the right course, but it's long before Kitty Pride breaks the connection with him. His lack of involvement in the third act where he is a lynchpin of dramatic tension undermines that really well done third act a bit.
Every character is going through different emotional arcs that aren't really related. Xavier is learning to re-embrace his powers after being jaded. Raven is learning that violence won't solve everything. Wolverine is learning, well, not much. The movie's focus isn't on these journeys and they're done well enough on their own, all tied together through the machinations of the plot so we never feel like they're unrelated scenes just plopped in out of nowhere, but I can wish that they were more in line with each other thematically. However, in a big spectacle driven action movie, that's not a huge problem at all when the focus is mainly elsewhere.
Overall, this is a rousing fun time at the movies. An intelligently constructed adventure through time that uses special effects and action filmmaking tools to propel the audience the whole way through the two hour experience. This is comic book filmmaking on a grand scale, and while it may not be perfect, it's really enjoyable.
Rating: 3.5/4
Originally published here. The post The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.1 'Days of Future Past' (2014) appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Marvel’s Doctor Strange 2 May be Banned in Saudi Arabia Posted: 23 Apr 2022 12:55 PM PDT
Disney/Marvel's upcoming big global blockbuster Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is currently not getting a theatrical release in Saudi Arabia, according to Deadline, who has confirmed the news.
The site reports that Doctor Strange 2 hasn't technically been banned, it simply didn't receive a distribution certificate.
This follows in the wake of Marvel's The Eternals not playing in Saudi Arabia, that pic forbidden there over its same-gender couple romance and the MCU's first gay superhero. Quite often movies with LGBTQ content don't make it past censors in the Gulf, and Doctor Strange 2 features America Chavez (portrayed by Xochitl Gomez) who is gay in Marvel Comics.
Doctor Strange 2 was scheduled to be released across the Gulf as part of the day-and-date theatrical debut on May 5. The sequel is expected to be released in United Arab Emirates. Kuwait and Qatar's release for Doctor Strange 2 remain up in the air. The post Marvel’s Doctor Strange 2 May be Banned in Saudi Arabia appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| From Sci-Fi to the Battlefield: How Autonomous Drones Are Becoming a Reality Posted: 23 Apr 2022 10:25 AM PDT On April 5, the U.S. Army released a short film touting flying, autonomous drones. And once you see what these autonomous pack hunters are being designed to do, you might be surprised by how science fiction is now on the verge of becoming reality on the battlefield.
Immerse yourself in a video game set in the future and you might face off against a killer robot or an AI-controlled vehicle. Flip through the pages of a comic or turn the pages of a book and you might find your favorite characters in the same situations. But all of that is fiction, of course, and you'd never encounter anything similar in real life—until now.
The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center (seriously, it's actually called that) released a short, CG movie that showcases planned, future tech. It's called "Army Aviation Launches Autonomous Pack Hunters," with the autonomous pack hunters being featured as drones capable of operating without any human input.
There is no dialog in the film and that's probably quite intentional. But from the scenes we can see that a Black Hawk helicopter launches the APH that then scout an area as directed by the helicopter crew. Once the drones obtain enemy targets, they relay the intelligence back to the crew, which then calls in an indirect fire strike. The IDF destroys the enemy and the drones perform a battle damage assessment. Troops on the ground subsequently advance and the operation carries on.
One of the big things that stands out in the film is that the drones are not armed and are not able to call for fire on their own. A human is always in on the loop when it comes to lethal action. It doesn't appear that the Army has fielded APH yet. And based on its history, we can't be certain if it ever will. (The Army is always hit and miss when it comes to fielding tech that it says it's developing.) But the possibility of seeing this particular system some day isn't far- fetched. After all, according to some reports, other nations may already be using lethal autonomous drones—killer robots—on the battlefield.
So watch the Army film on autonomous pack hunters (check out higher-resolution versions here). And the next time you play a future-tech video game or read a sci-fi story, just remember, the tech and situations in them may not be as futuristic as they seem. The post From Sci-Fi to the Battlefield: How Autonomous Drones Are Becoming a Reality appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Another Day, Another Comicbook Film Actor Arrested Posted: 23 Apr 2022 07:55 AM PDT
Variety reported on plans by AT&T to overhaul DC, both in movies and comics, as though that’s never been done before:
Wasn’t this already done over a decade ago, when they were preparing to move the comics publishing to California? Clearly, they’re ignoring past attempts, for all the good they did, and pretending it’ll literally work again, even though they’ve already been hit by scandals, most recently Flash actor Ezra Miller’s latest disorderly in Hawaii, for which he was arrested. When stuff like that happens, it sours the milk about to be poured. And since we’re on the topic of DC’s movie machine, Breitbart reported some bad news came up about one of the co-stars of their planned Black Adam movie, Joseph Gatt:
According to Entertainment Weekly, Gatt’s also had a few more comics-related films/TV programs on his resume:
So again, we have a sad case of famous pop culture products being tarnished by scumbags. As though it weren’t bad enough Stephen Collins will taint the 1st Trek movie from 1979 for years to come, since he played the role of a commander named Willard Decker there. Gatt played the role of a Frost Giant in 2011’s Thor, and now, the accusations against him by police will freeze over people’s perceptions of his previous screen roles. What good does it do to overhaul DC Entertainment if they’ve failed to overhaul morality first? There’s just no point in a repeat reworking of DC’s management when they clearly aren’t trying hard enough to improve their morality clauses with hired actors and writers first. That they’ve gone quadrupled the woke in comics publishing under Marie Javins doesn’t help matters either.
Originally published here. The post Another Day, Another Comicbook Film Actor Arrested appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Watch: Doc Ock Gets His Own Featurette for ‘No Way Home’ Release Posted: 23 Apr 2022 05:25 AM PDT
Everyone knows that Spider-Man: No Way Home topped the charts when it released in theaters on December 17, 2021 and the central focus was Tom Holland's Peter Parker. However, another character deserves his time in the limelight: Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus. Straight out of Spider-Man 2, starring Tobey Maguire as the titular superhero, Molina's Doc Ock made a welcome return in No Way Home, initially introduced as Spidey's enemy, but later joining forces with Maguire, Garfield and Holland's Spider-Men (Spiders-Man?).
Molina made his debut as Doc Ock in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and was the famous archenemy to Spider-Man. He was turned evil by his mechanical tentacles, which feared for their own survival and thus invaded Doctor Octavius' mind. The villain once again claimed the spotlight, when the actor returned to reprise his role in No Way Home alongside Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx's Electro, Rhys Ifan's Lizard and Thomas Haden Church's Sandman.
The official Spider-Man: No Way Home Twitter account tweeted the following featurette that gives the spotlight to Molina's villainous scientist
The post Watch: Doc Ock Gets His Own Featurette for ‘No Way Home’ Release appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.2 ‘The Wolverine’ (2013) Posted: 22 Apr 2022 03:15 PM PDT
#2 in my ranking of the X-Men franchise
Finally, an X-Men movie with a hint of narrative focus. An offshoot film placed in the hands of the strong directorial hands of James Mangold, this individualized tale of Wolverine facing his immortality is surprisingly a heartfelt affair that may or may not give into ludicrous CGI by the end. However, pretty much everything up to that point is very good, solid storytelling with a surprising focus on character while putting a well-worn character in a new setting like Japan.
Taking place after the events of The Last Stand where he stabbed his love, Jean Grey, in order to save the world, Wolverine has become secluded from civilization, living in the Pacific Northwest as an animal, only occasionally coming into the nearby small town for supplies like batteries for his radio. On one trip in, he sees some reckless bow hunters getting ready to go into the woods, and when he discovers the dying bear, wounded by a poisoned arrowhead, he knows exactly who to go after. However, before he can exact revenge for the poor bear's painful death, a young Japanese woman with red hair stops him and whisks him away to Japan.
Logan was captured during the Second World War and held in a special hole in a POW camp just outside of Nagasaki. When the Bockscar drops the second nuclear bomb of the war onto the city, Logan protects a young Japanese officer, Ichiro Yashida, using his healing body to absorb the fire, radiation, and heat to protect the young man. Now, the young man has become one of the most powerful old men in modern Japan, and he has sent for Logan to say goodbye before he dies. Logan walks into a new world, not just the contrasting visions of the dark, rainy woods of the Pacific Northwest versus the bright and colorful buildings of modern Tokyo but the contrast between his simple life of just existing to the complex political situation of a powerful family in turmoil as it awaits the death of its patriarch.
What Logan means to be a short visit extends when Yashida dies and Logan attends the funeral. Something happened to him, though, and when the Yakuza attack, Logan gets repeatedly shot but can't recover. He's bleeding and won't heal. This extended action scene gets kind of crazy with Logan fighting Yakuza with knives on top of a bullet train, flying around to avoid signs, move down the train to attack other opponents, and just general insanity. In a more grounded, character-focused take on a super hero movie, it's nice to see Mangold still embracing ridiculousness in action sequences. It's smaller scaled, for sure, than what we've seen before within this franchise, but it is no less ridiculous. And it's fun to watch.
Logan ends up running away with Yashida's granddaughter, Mariko, who has been told will be the sole heir of the Yashida empire, bypassing her father. The two run off to the southern tip of the island where they convalesce together and Logan slowly heals.
Now, my main gripe through the first bulk of the film is the politics of the Yashida family are unclear, muddy, and not all that necessary to Logan's emotional journey. I think it's the addition of the ninja warrior that Mariko was childhood friends with that mucks it up the most. It's unclear what he's doing or why until the very end of the movie (designed that way, surely, to hide the big twist at the end), he's supposed to have some kind of emotional relationship with Mariko, and he's a driver behind a lot of the action against Logan. It's muddled at best, and I'm unclear what his presence is supposed to add. Finding a way to cut him completely would have improved the film.
The real antagonistic focus, though, is on Dr. Green, a mutant who is immune from any poison and spits her own brand while having certain reptilian traits like a forked tongue and the ability to shed her skin. She was in Logan's vision the night before he lost his healing power. She has mysterious conversations with the ninja. She's generally just all kinds of suspicious, is what I'm saying, and when it's revealed that she's actually still working for the patriarchal Ichiro Yashida, who faked his death long enough to weaken Logan so that Ichiro could jump into a giant suit made of adamantium in order to cut off Logan's claws and extract necessary life force stuff from his bone marrow in the exposed claws (it sounds really stupid when I type it out), she gets her moment to shine. She's a thin antagonist overall, but the moment she pulls her skin off late in the film (including the hair on top of her head but not her eyebrows for reasons) is great. The problem is that she's not actually the bad guy, that's Ichiro, and the movie hides this for most of its runtime to get the twist ending it wants.
And the twist ending works against the film, Ichiro spends most of his reappearance explaining things. Granted, it's in another ridiculous CGI fight with its stylistic and spectacular charms, but the lack of focus around the antagonist blunts a lot of the emotional impact of the final confrontation.
However, for all my gripes, Logan is really the focus here. Most everything else is a sideshow as he learns to find purpose in his life again, starting the movie as a pariah, self-exiled from the world through his pain, to deciding to step back into the world as a soldier. He is considering giving everything up with nothing to fight for anymore, but the fight to protect Mariko from her father and the machinations of the competing Yashida interests (not all of this is unnecessary, but it's just overcomplex for how it all relates to Logan) helps focus him back to a more humanist look on life. The relationship he develops with Mariko may end up feeling a little pedestrian (I would have preferred a noble warrior protecting a princess take rather than a romantic one), but it ends up working by giving him purpose again. That basic change of character is what underlies everything in the film's ridiculous action scenes, especially the third act against the Silver Samurai, giving it more emotional effect than one might expect.
Hugh Jackman made Wolverine his own in his extended take on the character, and this is where he first made Wolverine interesting beyond just the plot mechanics of having no memory of his past. He's a wounded animal at the beginning, just having enough control over himself to extract some vengeance on the hunter before he tries to murder them (stopped by the young woman), and Mariko softens him, bringing him back to civilization. However, he's still an animal to a certain degree, and it comes out when threatened. It's a strong performance, and it's actually backed up by a script that deserves it.
Sure, the film isn't perfect. The CGI stuff probably goes too far in the ridiculous direction for the more grounded emotional take on the character while the political stuff around the Yashida family is too opaque for what the movie needs in service of a twist the movie doesn't do enough with. However, the core is there. It's really well made, well performed, and well written where it really needs to be. This is the best X-Men movie up to this point.
Rating: 3.5/4
Originally published here. The post The X-Men Franchise Ranked: No.2 'The Wolverine' (2013) appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Jason Momoa to Star in ‘Minecraft’ Movie for Warner Bros. Posted: 22 Apr 2022 01:15 PM PDT
Aquaman and Dune star Jason Momoa is lining up another tentpole with Warner Bros. The actor is in final negotiations to star in the studio's live-action Minecraft movie, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. Napoleon Dynamite filmmaker Jared Hess will direct the project, based on the popular video game. Dune producer Mary Parent and Roy Lee will produce, with Jill Messick receiving a posthumous producing credit for developing the film before her death in 2018. Executive producers include Jon Berg, Cale Boyter and Jon Spaihts. The video game hails from Sweden's Mojang Studios, with Mojang's Lydia Winters and Vu Bui also producing the film.
Minecraft debuted in 2011 and allows players to use blocks to create structures and worlds. The game became a sensation, reaching 100 million users just a few years after launch and helping spark Microsoft to acquire Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014. Warners has been developing a project based on the game for years, with Shawn Levy and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhenney among those who have been attached to direct.
Gaming movies have been on a hot streak in recent years, with 20th Century launching a hit franchise with Ryan Reynolds' Free Guy last year, and Paramount finding success with its Sonic sequel earlier this month. The post Jason Momoa to Star in ‘Minecraft’ Movie for Warner Bros. appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Christopher Priest Exploring Vampirella’s ‘Year One’ at Dynamite Posted: 22 Apr 2022 10:55 AM PDT
In July 2019, the boundary-breaking and acclaimed Christopher Priest kicked off Vampirella’s 50th anniversary celebration. Now, three years later the next chapter begins – by going back to the beginning! Vampirella: Year One debuts this summer.
This limited event series is not only an exploration of the Daughter of Drakulon’s earliest days, but also a follow up to the explosive conclusion of Vampirella / Dracula: Unholy. Our vampiress is now wanted for murder, with every demon, vampire, whack-job zealout, reporter, and law enforcement officer on Earth hunting for her. As she takes refuge hidden away, Vampirella begins to recall and question how and why she came to this planet in the first place.
Priest shared, "I'm actually a bit surprised this hasn't been done before. There are vast areas of Vampirella's life, especially her childhood on Drakulon, which remain largely unexplored. Half our series will be a kind of 'pilot' episode to gauge interest in artist Ergün Gündüz's amazing reinterpretation of Drakulon and the new history we created during our 'Interstellar' story arc in Vampirella #18-21.”
“The remaining issues will take an odd turn on the E.T. story, examining the plight of many refugees who come to America seeking asylum and freedom. Vampirella leaves Drakulon on a mission of mercy, unaware that, due to the crude state of Earth technology, it will be a one-way trip.”
"Stranded in a strange land, Vampi is a literal illegal alien, immigrant and lost soul in 1969 New York City–a far more dangerous city than it is today. Vampirella does not understand our language, our culture, our politics. We land her squarely back in the pages of her original Warren Publishing book, with cameos from some of the original cast. The book is a lot of fun while also exploring important themes of who we are as Americans and how to live up to our core values." The post Christopher Priest Exploring Vampirella’s ‘Year One’ at Dynamite appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
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