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- Lethal Weapon Films Ranked no.4: Lethal Weapon 3 (1992)
- Indie Comics Showcase #175: Balor, Capsules & Tales of Abuse
- Watch: Sonic & Tails Crash a Wedding in ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ Clip
- So is the Netflix Version of Daredevil Officially Part of MCU or Not?
- Why Kevin Smith Should Just Stay Out of Comics Altogether
- Watch: ‘Picard’ Season 3 Turning Into a ‘Next Generation’ Reunion Show
- Retro Review: Schwarzenegger’s ‘Last Action Hero’ (1993)
- Watch: Steven Has ‘Moon Knight’ Action Figure in New Teaser
- Obi-Wan Kenobi Premiere Delayed for Double Episode Launch
| Lethal Weapon Films Ranked no.4: Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) Posted: 06 Apr 2022 03:25 PM PDT Not a great series, but it has its amusements. What started as a rather serious look at a policeman with suicidal depression finding reason for life quickly became a corporate product, driven by opening weekend grosses hinging entirely on recognizable elements and the charm of its leads.
I can easily see why Shane Black found a way to direct his own scripts with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. His script for Lethal Weapon 2, supposedly some kind of masterpiece, was rewritten to the point where it barely looked like the script that started the production.
Oh well, it's done, four movies long, and ready for the listicle treatment. The definitive listicle treatment, no less.
#4 in my ranking of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
In retrospect, I was probably a tad overgenerous to Lethal Weapon 2. It was a made by committee mess, but it still managed to entertain me. Well, the second sequel in the franchise continues the heavy downward trend, becoming pretty much nothing more than an interconnected series of ideas that never actually gel in any way, shape, or form. It relies heavily on charm and chemistry from the actors, but that really only goes so far when the scenes of chemistry between our two stars end up feeling like they're from a completely different movie than the one around them. And what's around them is a hodgepodge of different stories and set pieces that simply do not come together in anything approximating a satisfying way.
Neither of the first two films were great. Both were compromised in some way, taking supposedly great scripts and diluting them to one degree or another. The uncredited script doctor of the second film, Jeffrey Boam, got the job to write the third, and I have a distinct suspicion that it wasn't because he was a great screenwriter. I believe it's because he was able to follow the orders from Richard Donner, the director, and Joel Silver, the producer, with minimal fuss. Because of that experience, he was given the similar assignment on Lethal Weapon 3, and it's pretty obvious he was just collating different ideas together into one script without really trying to smooth everything out into anything that even resembled a cohesive whole.
I get the sense that someone really wanted these movies to be American James Bond films. The previous film and this one start with an action scene, and this one even has a somewhat elaborate credit sequence with fire making the three in the title. The opening sequence feels like an excuse to blow up a building because it never ties to anything else in the movie. Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) are just trying to survive Murtaugh's final week before retirement (I'm honestly surprised it took three movies to get to the retirement trope). And, of course, it's going to be action packed. After the meaningless bomb in the building, they are demoted to patrolmen again, complete with blue dress, and they end up in a chase with an armored car that leads to the arrest of one of the perps while the other gets away. Both were working for Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson), an ex-cop who's stealing guns from police warehouses and…building a housing development in the middle of nowhere? How do these things connect? They don't. Why have the housing development at all? Because they found the real location (damage from a financial bubble burst a couple of years before), and they had a great idea for an ending action sequence. See what I mean when there's simply no effort in actually getting these different elements to gel?
Another element is that Murtaugh's eldest son, Nick (Damon Hines) is friends with a low level gang member working for a guy working for Travis. This is where the idea of black genocide at the hands of white perpetrators ends up popping up, and…it goes absolutely nowhere other than the only bit of real police work in this whole series where Murtaugh angrily threatens to blow off several people's heads until they find Travis. Which they don't do. The actual police work in these movies have always been a joke, but the decision to include Leo Getz (Joe Pesci) highlights the overall issues even more. Getz was not a great part of the second film, but the studio was entering quality proof financial returns. They just threw everything up at the screen from last time in a hope that something in there was what people liked, and so Getz comes back to give two random clues (that could have come from anywhere, including actual police databases, making Getz's inclusion feel shockingly unnecessary). And Pesci is just kind of annoying here.
The best part of the film is Rene Russo's Lorna Cole. I wouldn't go so far as to say that she's great or anything, but she's a fun foil to Gibson's Riggs, giving him someone to bounce off of that's not Murtaugh and recapturing some of the character based charm of the first film. Their best scene, that was apparently cut from the theatrical release, is their comparison of scars that's actually quite charming. No other scene between them is as good, but it's certainly more than what we got with the romance in Lethal Weapon 2.
The other good thing is simply the action. Richard Donner didn't seem to understand storytelling all that well, or at least he couldn't get his storytelling concerns addressed under Joel Silver in the late 80s and early 90s (I lean towards the former, to be honest). He did however understand the mechanics of staging an action scene. The bomb sequence that starts the film is clearly filmed and thinly entertaining, even if it never connects to anything else. The chase with the armored car is replete with James Gunn-esque undermining of tension with jokes (the black lady driver is smitten with Murtaugh, and she appears later in one scene and it goes nowhere like pretty much everything else in this movie), making it the least of the actions sequences. The finale, despite the fact that it pretty much makes no sense from a storytelling perspective, is kind of great. There's the unfinished houses, the truck leaking gas, lots of fire, and some explosions in the middle of the gunplay. It's neatly filmed with clear lines of action, and it works from a purely technical point of view.
Everything else is terrible, though. Riggs and Murtaugh are separated for long stretches of the film, so the appeal of the buddy cop dynamic disappears for about half the movie. The idea of black on black violence being a genocide brought upon by nefarious white figures is half-formed, at best, and disappears completely. The villain's plot never really makes a whole lot of sense. Subplots appear and disappear at random. Murtaugh's retirement gets forgotten for reels at a time, and there's only one scene, that comes out of nowhere, where Riggs deals with it in a way that even resembles how the first film would have dealt with it, and in a much jokier film that ends up feeling weird at best.
This film is a disaster. A mess of committee filmmaking backed by guaranteed financial returns, killing any need for the story to actually come together as long as certain checkboxes were marked. The actors returned? Check. There's action? Check. There's banter? Check. Donner gets in all of his social justice digs? Check. Silver gets his big action set pieces? Check. There's comedy? Check. There's a romance to help attract more women? Check. Does it make sense? It doesn't need to because it's guaranteed to open (which it did).
I can't lay all of the blame for terrible corporate franchise filmmaking at the feet of Lethal Weapon 3, but I can lay some of it on Richard Donner's mess of a film, a film so ridiculous it feels more like a prequel to Last Action Hero than a sequel to Lethal Weapon.
Rating: 1/4
Originally published here. The post Lethal Weapon Films Ranked no.4: Lethal Weapon 3 (1992) appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Indie Comics Showcase #175: Balor, Capsules & Tales of Abuse Posted: 06 Apr 2022 01:15 PM PDT
Welcome back to another installment of Indie Comics Showcase, the weekly blog where we signal boost a few truly independent comics that are currently crowdfunding their projects, crowdsourcing their funding in some way, or just completely self-publishing on their own. Every little bit of support for these creators matters, from a single dollar pledge to the twenty-five dollar bundle, and of course the higher tiers are usually fun too! Even if you can’t back a campaign or buy a book, you can share or tweet about these projects to your friends and followers.
On Indie Comics Showcase, we interview the creators, show off some art, and tell you how you can check out the product for yourself. Below we have some outstanding crowdfunding campaigns this week for you to learn about, enjoy, and hopefully support by backing one or more of them! Thanks for checking these out and for being the best part of Indie Comics Showcase. Let's jump in!
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| Watch: Sonic & Tails Crash a Wedding in ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ Clip Posted: 06 Apr 2022 10:55 AM PDT
Paramount Pictures has released a new clip from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that sees Sonic and Tails unintentionally crash a wedding.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is currently set to release in theaters on April 8th. The post Watch: Sonic & Tails Crash a Wedding in ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’ Clip appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| So is the Netflix Version of Daredevil Officially Part of MCU or Not? Posted: 06 Apr 2022 08:25 AM PDT
The answer to whether or not the Netflix Daredevil series is canon is still just as murky as it was last week, but yesterday it was different. An article from ComicBook.com recently talked about how fans were using the Daredevil listing on Marvel.com to officially tie the series into the MCU.
It seems if you read the encyclopedia entry for Daredevil and read through the "On Screen Full Report" all they way to the bottom, you'd find an additional paragraph that talked about Matt Murdock's (Charlie Cox) whereabouts during Spider-Man: No Way Home, where he helped defend a young Peter Parker (Tom Holland). Now, we don't know if it was Doctor Strange's spell or someone at Marvel Studios saying, "Not so fast," but when you visit the site today, it ends with the ending of Daredevil season three, no mention of the events of No Way Home at all.
Which means that the answer to whether the series is canon continues to be a mystery. But you can watch the series on Disney+ now. The post So is the Netflix Version of Daredevil Officially Part of MCU or Not? appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Why Kevin Smith Should Just Stay Out of Comics Altogether Posted: 06 Apr 2022 06:15 AM PDT
In some news I’d almost missed, Bleeding Fool reported a few weeks ago that overrated filmmaker/occasional comics writer Kevin Smith is going to launch his own line of indie comics at Dark Horse:
I find this laughable. To say Smith’s got a passion for comics is but a huge exaggeration we could do without, recalling the time he wrote – and delayed his completion for a year and a half – of a Black Cat miniseries in the early 2000s with an awfully gratuitous retcon to Felicia Hardy’s origins, establishing she was a rape victim. And years later, Smith was involved in a new take on the old Masters of the Universe cartoon broadcast on the one and only Netflix, which saw He-Man speared to death by Skeletor, so Teela could substitute for him. You’d probably think that was intended to apologize for his ill-advised direction with Black Cat, but I doubt it, if only because Smith never seemed to apologize for his earlier mistake. And he sure didn’t promote the cartoon in a respectable way.
At least here, Smith is dealing with his own creations, but it’ll be no shock if they come off as overrated and pretentious as several other film and comic projects of his in the past. And what next, will we learn this is all another stunt to create material that can almost instantly be adapted to film? That too would make things silly.
Originally published here The post Why Kevin Smith Should Just Stay Out of Comics Altogether appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Watch: ‘Picard’ Season 3 Turning Into a ‘Next Generation’ Reunion Show Posted: 06 Apr 2022 04:45 AM PDT
Jean-Luc is getting the old gang back together.
"Star Trek: The Next Generation" stars LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner will join Patrick Stewart for the third and final season of the Paramount Plus series "Star Trek: Picard."
Spiner has played several characters on "Picard" in Season 1 and 2 (which is currently streaming), including his original role of the android Data; Frakes and Sirtis appeared in one memorable episode of "Picard" in Season 1 as William T. Riker and Deanna Troi. And Whoopi Goldberg reprised her role as Guinan in the Season 2 premiere. But this will be the first time the main "TNG" cast — including Burton as Geordi La Forge, Dorn as Worf, and McFadden as Dr. Beverly Crusher — has performed on screen together since the 2002 feature film "Star Trek: Nemesis."
However, based on the previous seasons, and the social justice plotlines and politics they’ve included so far, this brings little hope of improvement for the Trek series.
The announcement — featured in a video of all the "TNG" actors talking about getting back together while Picard regards his old uniform — came yesterday, April 5, which also happens to be known to "Trek" fans as First Contact Day, the day aliens (namely, Vulcans) first made contact with humanity in 2063, as depicted in the 1996 "TNG" movie "Star Trek: First Contact."
You can watch the Season 3 announcement video here
via Variety The post Watch: ‘Picard’ Season 3 Turning Into a ‘Next Generation’ Reunion Show appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Retro Review: Schwarzenegger’s ‘Last Action Hero’ (1993) Posted: 05 Apr 2022 03:25 PM PDT
It's often said that the mark of a good parody is that you could take out all the jokes, and it would still play well as a straight genre film. The best parodies start with that ingredient and add a deep love for the source material.
Due in part to those multiple points of failure, and because comedy is the most difficult genre to write well, it's easy for a parody to misfire. The results can be career-crippling, as no less a star than Arnold Schwarzenegger attests.
That's right. Arnold himself pinpoints Last Action Hero, the 1993 parody of his bread-and-butter action film genre as the start of his movie career's decline.
True, the movie was a critical and commercial disappointment. But does Last Action Hero deserve its dismal reputation? Revisiting the movie three decades later puts its legacy in perspective. First, a heads up. This movie is 30 years old, so no effort will be made to avoid spoilers. Besides, if you've ever seen an 80s action flick, you already know the basic plot structure.
Last Action Hero's perspective character is a teenage kid named Danny. Raised in a bad New York neighborhood by a widowed mom, Danny seeks escape in schlock action movies. And he seeks a father figure in Jack Slater (Schwarzenegger), a pastiche of every trigger happy movie cop from Harry Callahan to Marion Cobretti.
One night after getting mugged, Danny flees to a midnight showing of the latest Jack Slater flick. The aged projectionist of the even more aged theater gives Danny a magic ticket claimed by Harry Houdini to be the key to another world. During the screening, the ticket activates and transports Danny into the fictionalized Los Angeles of Slater's world.
In an unintended parallel with contemporary manga, this plot hook may qualify Last Action Hero for the isekai genre. It's even unclear at first if Danny wasn't transported to Jack's world by dynamite that flew from the screen and which may have killed him.
Anyway, Danny leverages his special power–encyclopedic knowledge of action movie tropes–to carve out a niche in Jack's world. In particular, his having overheard the villains' plot while watching the opening scene prompts Jack's hotheaded lieutenant to deputize Danny as Jack's new partner.
While working with Jack to stop an evil yet dimwitted mob boss from killing off his competition, Danny's bigger challenge is convincing his hero that they're both in a movie. The stock actioner plot takes a meta-level turn when Benedict, the mob boss' much more evil and far more intelligent enforcer, gets a hold of Danny's ticket and escapes into our world. Jack and Danny leap back through the screen in a race to stop Benedict from unleashing a horde of other movie villains on New York.
Where Jack learns the hard way that in real life breaking glass hurts, bullets can kill heroes, and the bad guys can win.
Last Action Hero was panned on its first release. It's gone down in cinema history as a career-tarnishing blunder. But does it hold up better in retrospect?
Nope.
Part of the reason the years haven't improved Last Action Hero's rep much is that it wasn't that bad to begin with. It was never awful, just middle-of-the-road when the studio needed it to be a blockbuster. They wanted Ghostbusters and got Mystery Men.
Here are Last Action Hero's besetting vices:
Now, so you don't think I'm just hating on the movie, it's got quite a lot going for it, including:
Not reflecting on the movie's inherent merits, but of special interest to members of Gen Y, Last Action Hero marked a milestone where Hollywood reached a crossroads. It bid a bittersweet farewell to the action flicks of the 80s and gave a foretaste of Cultural Ground Zero dead ahead. The movie captures a slice of the High 90s culture that turned out to be the zenith of postwar optimism before the West's steep decline.
Perhaps it's fitting that the fall of Arnold's star tracks with that of our civilization.
****
Originally published here. The post Retro Review: Schwarzenegger’s ‘Last Action Hero’ (1993) appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Watch: Steven Has ‘Moon Knight’ Action Figure in New Teaser Posted: 05 Apr 2022 01:15 PM PDT Marvel just released a new teaser for Moon Knight this morning, and while the majority of it contains footage we've seen before, there is one new bit that stands out.
First we see Oscar Isaac as Steven Grant running out of his bed, being tripped by his ankle restraint, and falling to the floor. Then it appears we cut to an all-white room with Steven wearing all white and a Moon Knight action figure has fallen out of his hands. The feel of the room has that "institution" vibe and in earlier trailers we've seen the character in a padded room.
But also, in the clip we see him in Egypt and the look on his face is very much NOT Steven. Is that Marc? Are we seeing what led him to his death and rebirth as the avatar of Khonshu? Episode two of Moon Knight will be released tomorrow on April 6th on Disney+. The post Watch: Steven Has ‘Moon Knight’ Action Figure in New Teaser appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
| Obi-Wan Kenobi Premiere Delayed for Double Episode Launch Posted: 05 Apr 2022 10:55 AM PDT
"Star Wars" fans will have to wait just a bit longer to see Ewan McGregor back in action as Obi-Wan. The upcoming "Obi-Wan Kenobi" series is pushing back its premiere from Wednesday, May 25, to Friday, May 27, McGregor announced last week.
However, the first two episodes of the limited series will drop on Disney+ that day. In a battle of galactic proportions, "Obi-Wan Kenobi" will now go head to head with Netflix's "Stranger Things" Season 4, which is releasing Part 1 of its latest season that same day, May 27.
Since Marvel Studios' "Loki" series last year, Disney+ has stuck with Wednesdays to launch its major TV series, like Marvel's "Hawkeye" and Star Wars' "The Book of Boba Fett." Before that, "The Mandalorian," "WandaVision" and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" released weekly episodes on Fridays.
McGregor's announcement only included the first two episodes of "Obi-Wan Kenobi," so the remaining four episodes may stick with releasing on Wednesdays.
via Variety The post Obi-Wan Kenobi Premiere Delayed for Double Episode Launch appeared first on Bleeding Fool. |
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