Now there is a definitive end to the Golden Age of comic cinema.

The exact moment Sylvester Stallone makes an appearance on screen. 

Silvester Stallone- formerly Sly Stallone before the filming of Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Once the Pinnacle of 1980s masculinity is now  in a space movie featuring talking raccoon in a tree?.

Rocky Balboa perhaps quite literally took a few too many as his appearance. I cannot stress this enough was actually completely/absolutely/totally incomprehensible. 

The reason for that is that Rambo was never meant to be on Star Trek.

The revenge of the Nerds is now complete.

The Revenge of the nerds [a series of movies].  Of which I have only seen 76 minutes of the sequel (Because that is the exact amount of time to watch a revenge of the Nerds movie). Can only be viewed in the greater context of rising nerd culture.

The rise of the nerds closely paroling the rise of computing as such. Can first be spotted in the aforementioned Star Trek with the transition from Kirk to Picard.

This is a transition so hallowed in Dorkdom that it was part of the pilot of the Big Bang Theory highlighting two Dorks meeting in their natural habitat.

Kirk or Picard one mutters.

Picard over Kirk.

But original over Next Generation

Why?

Because the king of the dorks the head dork himself-Mr Spock. A character who the dorks believe to embody logic. Is actually a character of repression.

A repression, which led him to make out ironically with a member of the cast of the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 in 2009’s Stark Trek. (This made the nerds very upset.)

Now it is worth comprehending that the United States is a place in time and space seemingly devoid of it-it is about the now. America does sometime fall in love with its past as can be seen by the success of the Barry Crockett Disneyland shows.

This makes it a very special place, as it is about the only culture in existence who could have produced the Kobayashi Maru.

Kobayashi Maru or the Impossible situation is a tail straight out of the old country.

But only in the USA can there be a hero who beats the impossible (by cheating).

Kirk is better thought of as a  Space Cowboy resembling American action movies heroes of yore. Than stage actor Jon Stewart who basically stayed in character throughout the duration of the X-Men franchise. Stewart brought let’s just say a less red blooded performance, but still with some iconic moments

After all 

“The line will be drawn here. No further. “

Now we seem to be at the peak of nerd culture, like I said before comic movies are now a thing.

However it is hard to understand when this exact point in cinema actually started.

The creators of 2003’s Hulk called each other worried after having seen Sam Rami’s Spider-Man. Saying that their Hulk movie wouldn’t do well because Spiderman created a genre. Seemingly ignoring the fact that the climax of their movie consists of the Hulk (the embodiment of physical rage) fighting a cloud (which also happens to be his father at the same time). Yes, really.   

Crediting the birth of the comic movie genre to Spiderman has more to do with the critical success of the film. Spiderman being the Apex of Amy Pascal’s reign as head of Sony Pictures than the actual truth of the matter.

However if you wanted to say when this golden age started I would say with Hugh Jackman’s original X-Men franchise (starring captain Picard as Professor X).

The Dark Knight:

If you ask me-what the Joker is?

I would reply chaos. 

If you ask me who the Joker is?

I would tell you the Anti Christ the anti-christ. The anti-christ, specifically, the mimetic ideal which undergoes the prisoner’s dilemma reality.

if you ask me why the Joker is?

I would tell you that he heard a joke.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

The Killing Joke exactly.

The Killing Joke being Alan Moore’s take on the Joker’s origin story.

Where an unfunny comic loses his wife and baby in addition to being dropped in a chemical (quite the day). 

That comic (the Joker) then tries to share the same feeling within Jim Gorden. 

The Joker wants to prove a point. 

All people need is one big push. 

Before they themselves start their descent into madness.

He is trying to say that, all crazy people just people who have been chosen by fortune.

You are not crazy because you are have not been touched by fortune.

Technically said, in the parlance of option finance-life is high gamma. Gamma being the second order of the derivative. Acceleration in a physics. Nassim Taleb shows us that high gamma objects are fragile. 

Now David Hackworth gives an analogy.

“Man is like a bottle. Some bottles are smaller than others. When his bottle fills up, when it overflows. It’s time for him to get away to get the fear to drain out. But even then. There is a catch: that man is a spent cartrage and no amount of gun powder will make him a real fighter again”.

In the case of the Joker.

His bottle broke.

All he is left with is the structureless structure of self.

As was portrayed in the 2019 movie of the same name, the Joker is just someone who has seen too much. Nolan’s Joker, theorised to be a PTSD’d vet. Disillusioned that nobody seems to care about the war a continent away. 

The Joker tries to reveal humanities’ nature to itself. 

He does this by rigging a boat filled with explosive. One with convicts and another with good Samaritans.

The plot of the Dark Knight is straight out of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

This is Dostoevsky’s attempt to say that there’s more to life than the selfish gene. Dostoevsky spends the first half of Crime and Punishment setting up a selfish, but not necessarily guiltless murder. Despite the supposed righteousness of his cause, the protagonist eventually turns himself over to the police.

This point, the greatest point that Christopher Nolan is trying to make. Is sort of lost in the climax of an action movie (sort of like interstellar).

What Nolan gets wrong, but the 2019 Joker movie of the same name so perfectly encapsulates.

People follow the Joker.

That’s what makes the Joker so dangerous.

He changes other people’s behaviour.

What Nolan gets right. 

What Heath Ledger so perfectly understood. 

Is given words by Alfred. 

“Some men just want to watch the world burn” 

The pople were meant to eat each other.

And after all they did.

 and after all day did no one told the Killing Joke to those on the boat. 

The only one who heard it.

Not the hero they deserve.

The hero they needed.

Harvey Dent.

This is the greatest movie of the golden age of comic book cinema As it managed to overcome the original sin of comic movies-too many stories and characters.The most egregious offender being the Batman vs. Superma boasting (by my summation) seven distinct story arcs.

The Winder Solider:

This is the best movie Marvel ever made.

And will ever make.

Because the thing about Marvel is that they make movies.

Mass outputs begets mass standardization.

The first Avengers movie was shot in colour, not the dripless drab that we call digital.

Directed by the directors of Marvel’s supposed climax (but their biggest disapointment)-Infinity wars. 

Perhaps this is to be expected as the Russo brothers made their bones on community. Community a niche TV sitcom, is quite the shift of scale from the biggest movie of the year.

However, the reason why this movie is so good has little to do with the Russo Brothers something to do with Scarlett Johansson and most to do with Chris Evans’ Silver Age Superman impersonation. 

A lot of time (and steroids) have passed between Chris Evans role as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four. In fact you cannot write more different characters. Chris Evans’ acting chops sort of get lost in the spandex.

He’s such a good actor in fact is almost the only one not doing a Robert Downey Jr (RDJ) impersonation. 

Marvel’s original Iron Man was the best and worst thing to happen to the studio. 

Not everyone is RDJ. 

Let RDJ be RDJ. 

So far the best RDJ impersanation came from (also Sherlock Holmes) Benedict Cumberbatch. So much so, I basically make the argument they are the same person in my Doctor Strange review below. 

The worst impersonation comes from the Hulk.

He is the Hulk, not Robert Downey Jr.

Marvel has characters in name only. There’s a complete lack of Personality saved for one Steve Rogers.

Logan:

I’ve probably spent more time thinking about where Logan ranks in the comic book pantheon than literally any other movie. This is because I tend to give more weight to movies which are historically significant and help push the genre forward. This is why X1, Avengers, and Iron Man are ranked so high. So regarding historical significance at first I thought that Logan was just the greatest movie that Fox has ever made (no disrespect to Rising of The Silver Surfer) but provided very little regarding innovation towards comic movies. But then the more I thought about it, the more important I thought this movie to be. This is not to say it oozes innovation, but it’s innovative enough for me to justify it being ranked so high (plus it gets bonus points for being the only good Wolverine movie).

Logan did what no superhero movie has ever done in the history of the medium. It killed off the protagonist and by extension the hundreds of millions of dollars which come from it. I know Cyclops died in X3 but who really cares about  Cyclops anyways. But other than that, every single body who’s ever been killed in comic movies, comic shows and comics period has come back to life, and it sucks for us. We know that nothing bad is going to ever happen to Robert Downey Jr so every time he gets into a fight, we as the audience, are never anxious about his survival. But I knew this was Hugh Jackman’s last movie (more on that later), so I was shitting bricks throughout. I know this is not going to be a wave in the genre because killing off a character is the literal equivalent of burning a pile of money. And that the only time this will probably ever happen again is when Chris Evans is done making Captain America movies.

So for doing what nobody has ever done before, I would just like to tip my proverbial hat to thee, Logan.

Now time for the jokes.

We know that this movie takes place after the events of Days of Future past where the world is devoid of Mutants and that robots are killing all of Charles Xavier’s friends. It must fucking suck to know that after all that. The world is still devoid of Mutants and that Charles Xavier killed all of Charles Xavier’s friends.

Also, to be honest, I thought I would catch this movie slipping a little regarding the timeline. So after some research, I found out that this film takes place six years after Days of Future past. Which kind of bugged me because I thought I could get off a couple jokes from that. So again I would like to tip my proverbial hat to thee Logan for making this movie almost comic pedant proof, almost. 

So we know what an Adamantium bullet does to Wolverine’s head from Wolverine Origin. In this gutter trash movie, Striker shoots Wolverine in the head multiple times. These bullets make small holes in his head that erase his memory but by no means does it blow it clean off. So suck it, James Mangold, there is no movie which is logically safe from me. I am the Wolverine of the blogosphere. By that, I mean a curmudgeon who will probably die fighting an evil version of himself.

Also, are we going seriously not going to hold Professor X directly responsible for the murder of that family? The entire thing was his fault but hey. This is the leeway you get when you were on Star Trek.

PS: You know how the boat that Charles Xavier and Logan wanted to get was called a sun-seeker. The HL Language and Literature try hard in me thinks that it had a double meaning. Sunseeker kind of sounds like son seeker. And because Legion is not currently part of the X-Men universe Logan was the son Xavier never had. Either that or I am missing something completely.

I know a lot of people think Magneto is the main villain in the X-Men universe but even if you consider him a villain, he was only fully “bad” for 2 full movies (X1 and X3). The real villain is the entire Striker family. For those keen nerds, the first appearance of the Striker family can be traced all the way back to X-Men First Class to where grand papa Striker was hostile to mutants. His son would then go on to be the big bad for Wolverine Origin, X2 and a slight bad guy in the abomination which was X-Men Apocalypse. And his grandson would go on to be the man who made X-23 and X-24 in Logan. I don’t really know why these guys are so agro vis a vis Mutants, but they’ve been the full-time bad guy in 3 and a half movies.

Also, I really didn’t think I would like the film because who wants to see their favorite superhero become a scrub? When Wolverine could barely beat up a couple of dudes, my brain quickly went to Kobe Bryant’s last year in the NBA. Where what was otherwise routine would not be impossible. And like Kobe before him Wolverine never adjusted to taking less damage, he just did what he always did. Which is getting stabbed and grunting. Unlike Kobe Wolverine died in great agony and was buried in the middle of nowhere and did not score 60 points in his final game.

I would just like to end this review, by paying homage to the most important figure in modern comic book history, Hugh Jackman. It is he, not Robert Downey Jr who is to thank for this golden age that we are currently experiencing. All of that stuff about there being no Marvel without RDJ is overblown. Hugh Jackman was the one that showed the studios that there is big money in formulaic movies and for that he deserves our praise.

Iron Man: 

Iron Man is the second most important comic movie in the history of this glorious sub-genre of cinema (after X1 of course).

The reason as to why I hold this movie in such esteem is because without Iron Man there would be no Marvel. And without no Marvel there would be talking raccoons in movies.

Now ask yourself do you really want to live in a world like that?

In all seriousness, Iron Man was the first character that Marvel Studious introduced (the incredible Hulk is the second one but we don’t like to talk about that here). Without the success of this movie some may argue that Marvel Studios wouldn’t be a thing. Personally, I don’t know how much I buy this argument because Marvel did receive financing for 10 movies by Merrill Lynch. Which in their mind is probably penance for the financial collapse that they helped facilitate. Iron Man’s success was not only in how much money they made  (1.2 billion to be precise), but in reintroducing credibility to comic movies. Critics and people alike loved this movie (for once) and that gave Marvel a bit of rope in their next 5 movies:

-The Incredible Hulk was bad

-Iron Man 2 wasn’t good

-Captain America was average to good

-Thor was quite meh

So until the Avengers came to save the day Marvel was kind of on the downside and Iron Man helped steady the ship and helped keep the genre afloat. I personally subscribe to the theory that Marvel being so good is a tide that raises all ships. Which is a fancy way of saying that because Marvel movies are great. People believe other superhero movies are as well making them more likely to watch. It would be very problematic if I didn’t believe in this notion because I just made it up as I am typing this.

Although this may seem far fetch think about it this way. Since the day the Avengers were released the only great non marvel movies are:

-X-Men Days of Future Past

-Deadpool

-The Dark Knight Rises

The decent ones are:

-Man of Steel

-The Wolverine

Yet all other movies make a ton of money. Which on it’s own wouldn’t be a credible argument as to why Marvel is so important for the genre. Because crappy movies where stuff explodes are always going to make a lot of money just ask Michael Bay. But if we look at this in conjunction with the sudden uptick in movies since Iron Man, Marvel’s impact starts to show.

Pre Iron Man 2000-2007 mean average is 2.75

Post Iron Man 2008-today mean average is 4.33

Also, it’s worth noting that a lot of the movies before were really bad before Marvel actually forced people to try.

It’s also important to remember that although Iron Man is “relevant AF” today before Marvel did their whole thing he was a B/C rate comic book character. The last time he was this culturally relevant was when he looked like a condom:

The reason why they even went with Iron Man as their first character is because they sold off all their cool ones before. That’s why X-Men and Fantastic 4 are Fox and Spiderman and friends were Sony.

So not only did Marvel change the culture, they did so with characters that nobody wanted.

And that my friends is real power.

Even though Iron Man’s plot is very typical. It involves a trusted yet jealous who has been trying to freeze you out for more power. Who not only kicks you out of your own company but he uses your own technology against you.

But hey, not only movies (expect the Captain America: The Winter Soldier) is perfect.

PS: Iron Man was one of the first comic movies who really tried to organically cooperate humor in their movies. But that’s a conversation for another time.

Batman Begins:

Ranking this movie was really hard for me because I’ve literally seen Batman Begins about 7 times. As I am sure, you are all aware you aren’t going to feel the same type of way watching a movie for the 7th time as you did the first time (unless you are watching Kick Ass). This is especially true for someone like me who remembers everything. So I don’t know how accurate my ranking of this movie is going to be. But in my humble opinion, Batman is the greatest fictional character ever conceived since someone came up with the idea of an all-powerful, benevolent monotheistic deity (that one is probably my fav tbh).

It’s also very important to look at this movie regarding its place in history. This is actually the first good Batman movie no disrespect to Michael Keaton, all the disrespect to George Clooney.  It’s worth remembering that Batman operates on a sort of continuum. Where he alternates from serious, to campy to serious to whatever George Schumacher did to whatever Zach Snyder is doing. So it’s essential to look at this movie as the first serious Batman. And it’s not a coincidence that Robin has been MIA this either time (you don’t count Joseph Gordon Levitt). This is because in the comics Robin was first introduced to make Batman lighter and appeal to younger fans (and so that Batman has something to talk to).

Saying that this movie saved the Batman franchise is beyond hyperbolic, but it did fundamentally change the way the average person looks at Batman. It changed the Batman mythos by taking it from the campy (the old movies and the old TV show RIP Adam West) to the more serious (any of the animated shows).

This pivot in the tone of Batman has actually caused Warner Brothers a lot of problems because they’re trying to do this with all of their characters. Even though Batman is literally the only goth kid in the Justice League.

Even though everyone knows who Batman is this was still for all intensive purposes an origin story. I currently have this ranked under Iron Man because Iron Man did more for the culture than Batman Begins did. But if we were looking at this in a vacuum, make no mistake, this is the single greatest origin story of all time. Origin Stories can be tricky to make because they quickly devolve in flashback sequences and faux grit that no one really cares to see. Batman Begins is so good it even managed to survive the original sin of comic movies. Which is when you try to jam too many story arcs and villains in one movie (see Dawn of Justice). Almost all Batman movies save for Batman and Robin (because of course) follow a two villain model. Which is for everyone else a terrible idea, but Batman makes it work.

Why?

Because he’s Batman.

This movie came out in 2005, but in comic book movie terms it might as well have come out during Triassic Period (shoutout to archeology). As much as I love the new wave of comic book movies they can quickly devolve into a bad plot which is interrupted by one liners and cool action scenes. Which is of course in stark (pun intended) to a comic movie which actually tries to be a movie first. The most prominent themes that Christopher Nolan chose to hit was fear and fatherhood (more on this soon).

Batman movies can go one of two ways depending on which dead parent the filmmaker wants to focus on. This is literally one of the most important choices a director can make when it comes to a Batman movie.

If the point of emphasis were on Batman’s mother (Martha), you get a movie where Batman is screaming at a nearly dead Superman intoxicated by Krypto-farts. (I kid I kid). We would see Batman trying to overcome his dark side and show more compassion. Christopher Nolan chose to focus on Batman’s dad (Thomas Wayne).

The fact that Nolan chose to focus on Thomas is even more significant if we incorporate Freud’s identification theory (I am just going to focus on primary identification). Identification theory postulates that boys will to become more like their fathers to better get along with them. They do this by solidifying his super ego, his moral core so that it is congruent with that of his father.

So in Batman begin Bruce tries to embody all of the things that his father stood for and try to become the man his father was. For those of you who are still familiar with the movie, when Ra’s Al Ghul challenges Bruce’s father he proceeds to lose his shit. In addition to the identification, Bruce also holds his own father up as a moral exemplar of how a good man is supposed to behave. Because Thomas died when Bruce was so young, he didn’t really know his father (because who really knows their parents at 6?). So this makes him hold Thomas in a much higher esteem than he otherwise would have had he lived.

PS: There’s a lot wrong with identification theory that I am not going to get into because this is still a comic book movie ranking at the end of the day. And it is also worth noting that Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant, so I don’t know how seriously we need to take him anymore.

The second theme that this movie hits that I thought was important for Batman was that of fear. Batman is famously not afraid of anything. He’s looked into the abyss, let the abyss gaze back and didn’t blink. Batman, more so than any other hero, is indomitable. He makes no excuses (see the first volume of the Knightfall comics). This movie really showed us Batman’s evolution both physically (regarding his training) then mentally in terms of his self-talk.

Also, I don’t know if anyone noticed, but this movie is also a prequel to Game of Thrones.

It’s no surprise that kid in a dysfunctional family would be the ruthless ruler of Westeros.

X-Men:

We have our first upset of this evening because I am here to tell you that the first X-Men movie aka the first modern super hero film is better than the Avengers for a couple of reasons.

First of all, if it wasn’t for the catalyst which was this movie super hero movies wouldn’t be as prevalent as they are today. I’m not saying that they would never be as popular but the golden age of these movies wouldn’t be happening right now.

I know this movie can be very dated with the CGI, the sound effects that come with every hit get very annoying 30 minutes in, the rope work looks like something out of a high school play but everything we love about comic movies come from this exquisite work of cinema.

Gee you like your comic movies dark and gritty a la Christopher Nolan’s Dark Night? This movie did it first.

Gee you like your movies funny with quips a la Joss Whedon’s Avengers? This movie did it first.

Gee you like it when super hero teams fight a la Russo brothers’ Civil War? This movie did it first.

Gee you like it when super hero movies are thought provoking and reveal a greater truth in society?

Damn, I sound like Ray J.

Also fine the last one is only me, but still this movie laid the foundation for every one of its successors.

Think of the time in history when this movie was released. George Clooney almost killed Batman A FEAT NOBODY NOT EVEN ANY BODY has ever done. This movie saved this genre and will be rewarded in my rankings for it because without it, what would I be doing with my life?

Also if you disagree with this:

Captain America Civil War:

Loyal fans of thezscore (which there are many of) probably remember what I wrote about Civil War via the prism of political theory and if you haven’t you should because it’s interesting. So interesting in fact I am going to steal a portion of the article because like in Monopoly you don’t pay rent on your own hotel.

So the following is an excerpt of the article that you can read here:

For all three people who haven’t seen the movie, Iron Man wants the Avengers to be part of the UN to allow for greater oversight and Captain America doesn’t like that because he’s an ideological microcosm of American culture and values (and we know how they feel about the UN telling them what to do *wink* *wink* Iraq). This quarrel puts us, the viewer, in a sort of moral quandary because both Cap and Stark are both, as the kids say, “bae”. They are both the flagship heroes of the MCU and choosing between basically comes down to who you like more, which is a bad way to take a side in a civil war.

So the point of this is to explain from a political theory perspective why you should be on team Cap and why Iron Man secretly supports his former bestie.

The main argument for the Avengers to go under the UN supervision is that they cause too much damage to the rest of the world. The Hulk’s best friend Thunderbolt Ross shows them a couple of videos where the Avengers caused unprecedented harm and wanton destruction.

The first one is New York the scene of the first Avengers. Because of actions which took place even before the inception of the group New York was under attack by a bunch of aliens. If we do the counterfactual, we would realize this had nothing to do with the Avengers and that if the Avengers never existed earth would probably under Thanos’s rule (on the bright side at least we get to see more than 10 seconds of him). If we go even deeper, we would remember that the World Security Council ordered nukes to be dropped on New York which would have been way worse and according to Nick Furry was a “stupid ass decision.”

No civilians were hurt in the Winter Solider and if the Avengers weren’t in Lagos everything would have been a lot worse.

The last part which describes the events of Avengers 2 is probably their case in arguing than the Avengers need supervision. This is because of Ultron, unlike other threats was built at the hands of Iron Man and therefore all damage he does falls on Tony Stark. But again let’s do the counterfactual. What would the Avengers be under UN supervision change in creating Ultron? I would venture to say not much.

Under all those scenarios the only thing that the UN would do would be to get in the way of the Avengers because all of those scenarios are emergencies. So are you going to tell me that every time something big happens the Avengers need to wait for people to convene then vote on what to do. That would only make the Avengers less efficient and wouldn’t cause less damage.

So regarding the causation, the Vision is talking about I don’t see (because there is none).

So now that we’ve established why you should be on team Cap let’s talk about the movie itself.

Civil War starts out with Bucky being asked to kill Tony Stark’s parents. Which to me feels like a bit of overkill because why do you need to send the best assassin in the world to kill a bunch of old people?  

The movie then picks up in Lagos, Nigeria (which #funfact is the 3rd time an MCU movie either takes place in Africa (South Africa, Avengers 2)  or is referenced (Ivory Coast, Avengers). This is where the most unrealistic scene in the movie takes place because since when is there no traffic in Lagos? Other than that, we get to see Crossbones for like 2.5 seconds even though they hyped him so hard at the end of Winter Soldier and he killed Captain America in the comics.

At the end of the day, I think that Civil War is going to go done as the second most important movie in MCU history after Iron Man because this is where Marvel has fully pivoted into being the most accurate representation of comic books which may or may not be a good thing in the end, but we will have to find out.

We got introduced to Black Panther who I feel is going to be one a core pillar in the new age of the Avengers who say’s cool things like this:

I also love how at this point Marvel are fully aware of the fact that they have no idea how to make compelling villains. So they just said screw it, and made a movie with barely a bad guy (with a very complicated plan) in order to have enough screen time for the rest of the squad.

In any estimation Civil War has the greatest fight scenes in comic movie history by far and some of the most iconic moments we’re ever going to see in the genre that I could write 1000 more words on but because I can’t do that I am going to limit it to these two scenes that give me chills everytime I see them:

The second one is a bit hidden to loyal fans of Captain America:

Avengers:

This movie is ubiquitous.

If X1 introduced the modern superhero movie. The Avengers provide the archetype of what the modern comic movie is meant to be. This movie ushered in a new phase in the genre, and for that, it deserves major props (like being on an obscure blog, congrats Joss Whedon).

Besides the plot, this movie is almost perfect even when you’re watching it for the 6th time (no judgment). The rift between Captain America and Iron Man can already be seen forming. The movie actually has a compelling villain, which we know isn’t always a given in Marvel movies (actually Loki is the only compelling villain). The fight combos are sublime and the banter is the foundation that Marvel built it’s cinema empire on.

This movies beauty lies in its simplicity. We don’t have to worry about moral quandaries and be forced to pick sides like in Civil War. We don’t have to worry about the existential threats that is artificial intelligence. And we don’t have to watch a movie where every single character is struggling for screen time like in every single upcoming comic movie.

This movie is a product of a simpler time where a big green giant rage monster, a Norse god, a man in a robot suit, a super soldier, a super spy and Robin Hood fought against an army of mindless aliens whose deaths are inconsequential to us.

This movie forced everyone else to step their game up. Without it we wouldn’t have Days of Future Past, we wouldn’t have whatever Zach Snyder is doing with DC and we wouldn’t be in the Golden Age of comic movies. This movie will forever be remembered in the annals of history not only for what it was. But for what it did for the genre as a whole.

So yes this movie and great and the scene bellow will go down as the coolest scene in Marvel Cinematic History.

[Insert Hulk Scene]

Kick Ass:

I am here to tell you that Kick Ass, yes Kick Ass not Deadpool is the greatest superhero comedy movie of all time. And I’m not just saying this because Kick Ass beats up bad guys in a pair of Tims (but it’s a really big reason why). If you have trouble wrapping your head around this, think of Kick Ass as Nicolas Tesla and Deadpool as Tomas Edison. One did all this cool stuff that nobody knows about and the other person got all the credit because he cast Ryan Reynolds.

This gem of a movie paints the most realistic picture of what would actually happen if someone decides to put on a mask and do the whole superhero thing. Which obviously entails fun things such as getting stabbed a plenty then beat to a pulp (which is always great).

Kick Ass did the whole making fun of superhero trope things 6 years before Mr.Pool. Like the time he tried to jump from building to building (which was an homage to the first Spiderman movie), or the way he rips his shirt open like the way Superman does or the way he makes fun of young blood Bruce Wayne. And unlike Deadpool who had a typical superhero plot which consists of exciting things like saving a damsel in distress from a generic bad guy with little to not depth as a character. Kick Ass didn’t actually fall in any of the cliches. His love interest was not kidnapped or naggy she was just there being a normal human being which given all the history of superhero and girlfriends is probably a good thing. His parents were not murdered by some bad guy prompted him into a life of protecting the weak and innocent nor was he motivated by the need to help people. He just wanted to matter because like most kids his age “he just existed”.

This movie is a coming of age story at its simplest and finest. We see the most typical human being transform himself in a few weeks from a normal kid to a serial murderer and that my dear friends is character development. Kick Ass also took the young side kick archetype and subverted completely with Mindy. They actually showed us how insane in the membrane a child sidekick must be. I mean really instead of playing Halo they’re beating people to an inch of their life, so how sane can they really be?

I also want to give Mathew Vaughn a special shoutout because I think he is one of the most under appreciated directors. He made Kick Ass, Kingsmen and X-Men first class all 3 of which had no business being as good as they were. I don’t see why DC or Marvel don’t throw a suitcase full of money at him to make a movie for them. I mean I like Zach Snyder and all but he’s scheduled to make almost all of DC next upcoming movies and Vaughn can’t get a single tittle? The soundtrack in this movie is beyond perfect, dito for the cinematography and the casting. He even managed to get Nick Cage in a good movie. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since we say Nick Cage in a good movie? The actions scenes were superb and we even got to see that 1st person shooter camera angles that Vaughn loves so much.

This movie was really great and I know I crapped on Deadpool a lot but I loved Deadpool. My hatting is more of a testament to how superb Kick Ass than an indictment on the Merc with a Mouth (which is one of the worst nicknames of all time don’t even @ me).

Deadpool:

You know what they say, you never forget your first.

So yes, I will never forget Deadpool. My first R-rated, meta superhero movie (expect this wasn’t my first more on that later).

This movie ranks so high in the power rankings, because it is the most unique movie to ever be included in this sub-genre and it may pave the way for future niche movies just like it. That’s not to say that Batman will be making chimichanga jokes anytime soon, but it’s nice to different types of comic movies in order to escape the monotony.

After the success that is this movie, is it safe to say that Ryan Reynolds is in the clear with the comic nerds? I mean he still was in Wolverine Origins and the Green Lantern. But none of those movies were bad because of him and this movie was really good. So Ryan, if your listening and I know you are. Just know your in the green in my book, or blog or whatever.

The funnest part of this movie was probably all the meta stuff and 4th wall breaks that is synonymous with the Deadpool character. All the making fun of Hugh Jackman stuff was great but was eclipsed by all of the making fun of Ryan Reynolds stuff.

Even though the villain is highly forgettable and the plot typical. This movie was the second best comic movie of the year and that my friends is no small feet.

X-Men Days of Future Past:

In the immortal (paraphrased) words of the Notorious B.I.G

“This movie is dedicated to all the people who watched the original trilogy and remember the struggle of Wolverine Origins”.

This movie Fox’s answer to the Avengers because (as we all know by now) the Fantastic 4 is never going to be the answer to any question.

“Besides what is the most disappointing movie franchise ever?”

Which even then goes to the Hulk. So congrats Fantastic 4, you even suck at sucking.

Now back to the Mutants.

Days of Future past was great because it not only allowed us to reboot the entire X-Men universe and allow us to forget all the crapy movies they made after 2003. But it also showed us the evolution of the original trilogy cast. Mystique is not a murderous super spy but only a person looking for justice. Professor X is no longer Yoda but someone whose trying to cope with the harsh realities of life. But of course Magneto is still the same but let’s forget that for a moment.

We got introduced to probably the funnest X-Men in the form of the speedster Quicksilver and the mandatory seen in every foreseeable X-Men movie where he goes really fast and does some stuff.

X-Men 2:

As we know the sequel is never as good as the original, which also happens to be what I tell my younger brother. This is true in all walks of life with the sole anomaly that is comic movies. In this niche sub-genre of cinema, we have a history of these movies with the sequel being far better than the original (The Dark Knight, The Winter Soldier) but we also have examples of them being a lot a lot worse (Iron Man, the Fantastic 4). Sometimes we have sequels which are just at the same level (Avengers) and in this case X2.

It had all the bits we liked from the first movie but added a few interesting permutations. For instance, now Mystique actually speaks #feminism!  The first scene of the movie with Nightcrawler is probably after the two Quicksilver scenes the best in this universe.

I thought it cool that the focus of the movie shifted from mutant on mutant violence toward the greater chasm between mutants and the rest of the world. I know I’m in the minority of this but the way they portrayed the fear and resentment, is what I would deem, an accurate representation of how this would transpire in real life.

This movie, like Scooby-Doo, taught us a valuable lesson.

Humans are the real monsters.

Guardians Of The Galaxy:

Guardians of the Galaxy, or the more appropriately named JV Avengers is probably the funnest movie that I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch ( a non Starclose second being the Lego Movie). Never before did a superhero movie fully embrace comedy and made it the main focal point of this movie.

But necessity is the mother of invention and boy oh boy this movie may have been responsible for creating a whole new sub-genre within this awesome field of cinema. If you think about it, ever since this movie came out we were graced with even more movies of this ilk like Ant-Man and Deadpool.

Movies like this show us that our heroes don’t have to scream the entire time (word to X-Men), or solely rely on quips (word to Iron Man), or have to be so darn dark (word to Superman). Not that there is anything wrong with that. I want my movies to be differentiated, I want all these movies to be as different as possible because that’s what keeps everything fun. So in Economics as well in cinema product differentiation is a good thing and as a result of this I’m happy we found a new way to make a good movie.

The power of humor is so great and so prevalent in this movie that it took an obscure comic that nobody has ever hard of. With derivatives of the Avengers, a typical plot of strangers coming together before being defeated but this defeats only strengthens their resolve and they come together and defeat a very stereotypical villain. But with the irresistible allure of Chris Pratt and group shots, we forgot about all that.

But before I let you go on all happy and full of life I’d just like to point something out:

PS: If Dave Batista (Drax) doesn’t Batista Bomb someone in the next movie I am going to be very disappointed (he didn’t and I was very disappointed).

Avengers 2:

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru or non-StarTrek lovers how there, the “no win scenario”. This is because this movie had the lofty expectations of trying to rival the first Avengers movie. The only problem with that is that nothing rivals the first Avengers movie (expect Civil War, the Dark Knight, the Winter Soldier and Iron Man).

Make no mistake this a solid if not downright great movie. But given all the hype surrounding it. Just being a great movie isn’t enough to appease all the fan boys. But that’s fine because nothing will ever appease the fan boys. Save for a good DC movie.

This movie is the natural extension of the first movie. So much so it basically has the same plot plus a few notable editions in the form of Mutants (but we can’t call them that) and a sentient android robot thingy. I couldn’t help feel cheated though by Ultron though. In the trailers he looked like he was meant to be Marvel’s second competent villain but he was just meh. Because if there was one thing the Marvel algorithm hasn’t included yet is how to make good villains. Because if they do nothing will stop their quest for world domination.

But hey we got to see Iron Man fight the Hulk!

But hey we got to see Captain America and Flacon set up Civil War!

But hey we got to see Captain America and Iron Man set up Civil War!

But hey we got to see Thor set up Ragnarok!

But hey we got to see Thor set up Infinity Wars!

Yes like a good wingman this movie did a lot of setting up. To fully appreciate this you need to think about Avengers 2 not as the next stage in Marvel evolution put merely as the last of a dying breed. Marvel will never have another movie with the core 6 heroes as the focal point. Every single movie from here on out is going to focus on the new Avengers and less and less on the old guard. So with that in mind I would like to salute the giants on whose shoulder we stand and thank the OG Avengers for what they did for comics.

PS we also go to see this:

Watchmen:

This movie was probably the hardest one I had to rank yet because it’s just so weird.

I remember watching this movie when it came out with my friends. I liked it and everyone else hated it. I went online, it had a terrible rotten tomato score. So with that in mind it must be very shocking to have this movie ranked so highly.

When I was re-watching all these movies for these rankings (yes I re-watched everything because at the Z score we don’t cheat the fan) I stumbled upon the three our and a half ultimate edition of this movie. Because if we know one thing, we know Zach Snyder loves his director’ cuts. But this is a normal Snyder superhero flick in which everything is as morbid than the dark side of the moon. But, hey ! I can like both Guardians and this! The two aren’t mutually exclusive. We give movies like Deadpool credit for attempting to break the uniformity of comic movies yet we shun a movie like this for attempting to subvert the entire genre.

This movie has no “bad guy” that we can identify before the movie has even started. There is no generic evil super villain who wants to watch the world burn just because he feels like it. This movie doesn’t attempt to paint it’s protagonist in shinning light. Most of the members of the watchmen killed or have killed in cold blood. The most powerful being in their universe has little to no empathy and or regard for human life. Another one of them is a rapist and murderer. These are your heroes and yes that’s depressing. But it’s a much needed palate cleanser.

Watchmen, seemingly unlike any other movie today allows it’s protagonist the men drivers of the movies narrative to be wrong. For once the person who is trying to destroy the world succeeds and the world is seemingly better for it.

On a quick aside I was intellectually fascinated by the alternative reality that there is an American victory in Vietnam and the ramifications of such an event. Also, Dr.Manhattan is making his way back into DC comics and I can’t wait to see how that plays out.

Food for thought:

Who watches the watchers?

 X-Men First Class:

After the abomination which was X-Men Origins: Wolverine and the widely disappointing Last Stand this is the movie that showed us that the world of the Mutants is not entirely dead, buried, imputed, burnt and cast asunder (yes in that order).

If you think I am exaggerating, in the five years since an X-Men movie was good the Iphone wasn’t invented yet, the Lakers were winning championships and Sudan was still one country.

So it was nice to see this universe stay relevant in the increasingly diluted market which is comic movies.

This isn’t 2005 anymore!

You actually have to try to now!

And try they did.

This movie was great from the beginning. I thought it fun that they used the exact same scene frame by frame from the original X-Men movie to start it.

*Queue shameless cross promotion*

There were some fun easter eggs like William Stryker’s dad who is just as insufferable as he is.

We got a nice look at the still mouldable and dynamic characters which stay pretty much static in the original movies.

And like I said before, Jennifer Lawrence is the best.

Captain America:

As you guys can probably tell I’m not the biggest fan of cliches. Actually, I despise them because it’s lazy and easy writing that subtracts from the depth of a story. But there is just something about this movie that gets me so hyped and it’s not Peggy Carter (RIP AGENT CARTER). When I first saw this movie 5 years ago I was injecting myself daily with Human Growth Hormone (HGH) because my body wasn’t a fan of producing it. So you can imagine why a story about a lil dude who took steroids (like me) was so captivating and at the same time it was a solid movie.

So even though this movie has no business being this high on any objective list, I don’t care make you own list.

Captain America has almost always been my favourite Avenger even though he is a square and a walking propaganda tool because the dude’s got heart filled and I respect that. And even though this is worse movie by far, that’s because his two other movies are among the best ever made.

This movie also did write by the comic books which is always appreciated here at the z score and it appeased by inner comic movie nerd by foreshadowing everything.

Foreshadow #1:

This one is fairly self-explanatory.

Foreshadow #2:

A man in a read suit at a Stark Expo, that sounds awfully familiar.

Foreshadow #3: 

Bucky rambling half dead in a foreign language rings a bell or two.

Foreshadow #4: 

Bucky becoming Captain America will sound very familiar to the comic nerds.

So yeah I love this movie.

Spiderman:

Fun Fact when Stan Lee first came up with the idea of a Spidered Man (I meant to right it that way) his editors laughed him off because everybody hates Spiders.

But 54 years after Spiderman made his comic debut in Amazing Fantasy #15 he’s now the highest grossing superhero in the world today (Batman is second… because of course Batman is second).

Even though Spiderman has always been popular, it’s fair to say that Spiderman 2002 helped remind people why Spiderman is so amazing (sorry).

Granted that the Amazing Spiderman was probably a better all around movie than this. But I still love this film. Don’t get me wrong Spiderman 2002 was very much a product of its time. The fighting sound effects are rather extravagant to say the least. Which was a la mode at the turn of the century (see X1). The CGI sucked, but everything sucked in 2002 (I mean Nickelback was top of the charts for goodness sake).

Spiderman 2002 is a minimalist interpretation of Spidey. There is no convoluted origin story regarding Peter’s dad. There is no cumbersome plot to turn the entire city into giant lizards. There is just a dude who’s insane who does stuff because he’s insane. There are no moral quagmires for the audience to digest. It’s just a dude who’s also a Spider trying to save the world from a person on an actual hover board and not this crap.

Even though Tobey Maguire doesn’t quite capture the essence of Spiderman he was alright. I thought that Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin was superb. Plus, we got to see James Franco way back when he was living an independent life from Seth Rogen.

Plus this was the most iconic scene in comic movie history:

Now time for some reverse Easter eggs:

This scene in Kick Ass:

Was inspired by this scene in Spiderman 2002:

Also:

Captain America Civil War:

Now that all the hype surrounding civil war has essentially died down. It’s time to talk about the more intellectual side of a movie which mainly consists of people hitting each other with magic, arrows, shields, magic fingers… you get the point.

The movie was good, and one of the reasons why it was so good (to me at least) was that they actually gave us a semi-decent explanation behind why this great chasm is being formed in between earth’s mightiest heroes.

For all three people who haven’t seen the movie, Iron Man wants the Avengers to be part of the UN to allow for greater oversight and Captain America doesn’t like that because he’s an ideological microcosm of American culture and values (and we know how they feel about the UN telling them what to do *wink* *wink* Iraq). This quarrel puts us, the viewer, in a sort of moral quandary because both Cap and Stark are both, as the kids say, “bae”. They are both the flagship heroes of the MCU and choosing between basically comes down to who you like more, which is a bad way to take a side in a civil war.

So the point of this is to explain from a political theory perspective why you should be on team Cap and why Iron Man secretly supports his former bestie.

The main argument for the Avengers to go under the UN supervision is that they cause too much damage to the rest of the world. The Hulk’s best friend Thunderbolt Ross shows them a couple of videos where the Avengers caused unprecedented harm and wanton destruction.

The first one is New York the scene of the first Avengers. Because of actions which took place even before the inception of the group New York was under attack by a bunch of aliens. If we do the counterfactual, we would realize this had nothing to do with the Avengers and that if the Avengers never existed earth would probably under Thanos’s rule (on the bright side at least we get to see more than 10 seconds of him). If we go even deeper, we would remember that the World Security Council ordered nukes to be dropped on New York which would have been way worse and according to Nick Furry was a “stupid ass decision.”

No civilians were hurt in the Winter Solider and if the Avengers weren’t in Lagos everything would have been a lot worse.

The last part which describes the events of Avengers 2 is probably their case in arguing than the Avengers need supervision. This is because of Ultron, unlike other threats was built at the hands of Iron Man and therefore all damage he does falls on Tony Stark. But again let’s do the counterfactual. What would the Avengers be under UN supervision change in creating Ultron? I would venture to say not much.

Under all those scenarios the only thing that the UN would do would be to get in the way of the Avengers because all of those scenarios are emergencies. So are you going to tell me that every time something big happens the Avengers need to wait for people to convene then vote on what to do. That would only make the Avengers less efficient and wouldn’t cause less damage.

So regarding the causation, the Vision is talking about I don’t see (because there is none). Of course, we know the reason all of this stuff happens because Marvel makes them happens, but making the Avengers part of the UN doesn’t change that and it just makes them ill-prepared to handle it.

The real reason countries want to assimilate the Avengers is because of power. Power is the linchpin of our current belief structure. Power is also a zero sum game meaning that the more power the Avengers have, the less everyone else has. For most of the lower powers that isn’t so much of a problem because they maintain their sphere of influence. The problem comes because the Avengers are now a threat to the world hegemon, the United States of America.

Obviously, the United States cannot just roll up into Avengers mansion and arrest them because for the first time in centuries the US military is simply not powerful enough to contend with the likes of demigods, Iron Suits and whatever Vision is (I made this joke before Screen Junkies). Didn’t you wonder why Ross was so eager to put them in superhero hero Guantanamo? So since the use of force is no longer a viable option, they turn to a softer form of power.

So the world hegemon does what it does best, coerce Global Civil in order do their bidding for it. They force the UN to use diplomacy and put the Avengers in a place where they cannot threaten American interests.

We currently live in the age of the individual, no other time in human history was the action of a single person so valuable. The Avengers is just taking this new age to the nth degree. The last time the US tried to take control of an Avenger was in the terrible Iron Man 2. They did so via the use of force which didn’t turn out so well. During this time Iron Man, yes Iron Man gave the best argument as to why he and he alone should be allowed to do whatever he wants.

“The world is experiencing it’s longest period of uninterrupted peace because of [him]”.

“Because [Iron Man] is your nuclear deterrent, it’s working, we’re safe, America is secure”.

He is right.

For the first time in human history, there is a force so far beyond the realm of existence it is literally science fiction. The point of global civil societies which the Avengers are is supposed to facilitate the interactions of states. Usually, because these global civil societies have no military force or hard power as it were, they cannot enforce their ideals efficiently and universally. We do not need to mention all the times that UN peacekeeping groups failed in their mission and the other times where government intervention was either too slow or didn’t work at all.

The world is anarchical in nature and if tomorrow North Korea wanted to nuke everyone in North Korea they could and technically legally we couldn’t do anything, and neither would people want to do anything. This is where the Avengers come in, they have structural power. They have the ability to control how things are done. They have the potential to break international law (rightfully so) and disregard the current balance of power in the world in order to do what is right.

The only reason you would be for the Sakovia Accords, in the paraphrased words of Kanye West, “No [team of heroes] should have all that power”. But if you think about it corrupting the Avengers is much more complicated than corrupting a member state of the United Nations. Think Winter Soldier, think how easy it might be for a malevolent party to continue to block the attempts of the Avengers.

Guardians Of The Galaxy:

Guardians of the Galaxy is like cocaine. Fun every once in a while. But shouldn’t be done regularly and shouldn’t be mixed with other substances.

PSA: Don’t do drugs kids.

PSA Part 2: Cocaine is not a suitable alternative for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the funnest (I know that’s not a word) movie I’ve ever seen. But under no circumstances should they take an iota of screen time from the Avengers in Infinity Wars.

Yes, I’m aware of the fact that they’re probably going to be a big part of it. But that doesn’t mean they should.

The opposite of debt is redundancy and dare I say it. Guardians may, in fact, be redundant in the greater MCU. As much as this pains my heart to say, Guardians are the JV Avengers. Every member of Guardians (except Chris Pratt, whose unique in every sense of the word and is an international gem) is a lesser derivative than their Avenger counterparts.

I’m not breaking news in saying any of this. Because in the grand scheme of things, a bit of redundancy can be helpful. But in the same movie, it becomes, well, a hindrance.

The reason why Guardians and the Avengers both thrive as mutually exclusive franchises is because they can be the same apart. Naturally, every movie the team of superheroes grows and the differentiation between characters decreases every time. But, as a whole, we’ve yet to reach a saturation point.

But, if we combine both franchises there is going to be a lot of unnecessary duplicates. And if given the choice between either the Avengers or Guardians. I’m taking the Avengers every time.

No offense but, I’d rather have the Norse God of Thunder instead of Dave Batista (no disrespect to the Batista Bomb, though). No offense but, I’d rather have the physical embodiment of rage than a tree, no matter how cool that tree is (no disrespect to Vin Diesel, though). No offense but, I rather a master spy than Uhura from Star Trek (no disrespect to Star Trek, though). No offence but, I rather have the ideological representation of the modern maligned industrialist than a fucking racoon (all disrespect to racoons though).

This isn’t meant to diminishing how awesome Guardians of the Galaxy is. On their own Guardians is the most surprisingly good franchise in recent movie history. But, even if we ignore the power differential between them and the Avengers. There is still so many times I want to stop watching Black Panther destroy everything to hear the word Yondu.

So yes I love Guardians of the Galaxy but by comparison to the rest of the MCU they’re small potatoes (no disrespect to small potatoes though).

Ant-Man:

This movie should serve as a case study as to how these giant studios handle the more obscure characters. Yes, I’m aware that Ant-Man is one of the founding members of the Avengers. But the last time he was culturally relevant I was -30 years old and since then he’s been pretty much absent from our comic book volksgeist.

This movie should serve as a monument to Marvel’s dominance. They didn’t make this movie super complicated like Suicide Squad because it didn’t need to be. They kept it simple by making it a heist movie and relied on the cast to carry a movie about a Man and his best friend ANThony. I mean they got Michael Douglas aka 2 time Oscar winner Michael Douglas to be in this film. If that’s not power, I don’t know what is.

The reason why Marvel is the second most powerful entity on earth (after the US government) is because they not only understand the dynamics required to make a good movie, they understand the dynamics required to make a string of good movies with the same character.

Not using Hank Pym as Ant-Man, although somewhat subtle, makes a huge difference in the subsequence interaction between this character and the greater MCU. Marvel realised that they are kind of heavy on the impossible smart department with Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Peter Parker and hopefully Reed Richards (if we’re lucky). Instead of  another ultra nerd we had a fun jokester who’s a nice beta superhero and meshes with almost any cast.

So I tip my proverbial hat to thee Marvel, for you know more than Warner Bros and FOX.

The Amazing Spiderman:

Spiderman unlike almost any other superhero in our comic volksgeist can be rebranded just by changing the adjective before his name.

So in true Spidey fashion it should come as no surprise that all they had to do to reboot one of the most influential and important comic franchises in human history was to add a 2 dollar word next to it and presto chango everything is forgotten.

Also I need some clarification on this matter:

Now that I have been outcasted by the children of the 90’s let me explore this topic in depth. Outside of Batman we’ve never had a good superhero franchise recast the protagonist in such close succession. The operative word in the previous sentence so sorry Superman and the Fantastic 4 you don’t count.

The reason why Garfield is the superior Spiderman is more of a function of time than the actual actors themselves. Meaning than Garfield managed to study the previous Spiderman and improve upon it. Also the current comic movie zeitgeist allows their heroes to be more quirky and coloquial in their humour. Which is especially prevalent when it comes to Spiderman. The synergy between Emma Stone and Garfield was by far and away a million times better than anything couple we’ve ever seen in this genre outside Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.

Also I love how this movie is about a someone who uses a gas machine to transform themselves into something green before fighting Spiderman. Because if that sounds familiar, it should because that’s the plot of the first movie. Plus I love how this movie is about a scientist who in trying to save the world invents technology which controls him. Because if that sounds familiar, it should because that’s the plot of the second movie.

Spiderman 2:

Welcome to the real world kiddos. Where being a superhero has actual real life consequences. Nowadays, being a superhero is a full time job. You don’t see Captain America working part time as a financial analyst, nor do you see trying to get a degree. Steve Rodgers just kicks ass, saves the world and gets his.

Spiderman on the other hand isn’t so lucky. He needs to work, go to school, get the girl all while trying to be your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. Also, Peter Parker has to keep his cool at all times because if he gets too emo he loses his powers. Think of him as an inverse Hulk.

It’s really worth noting that in both of the original Spiderman movies the villains are equally if not more compelling than the heroes. Which when compared with todays film would be considered anomalous. Most of today’s film all about the heroes which results in the villain being an afterthought. Think about it, Marvel have only had one great villain in all of the movies they’ve made.

Because there is such a dearth in villains in today’s climate it’s nice to see one as complex as Dr. Octopus. He’s not evil in nature, but in his quest toward scientific revolution let his mind fall victim to a bunch of metal arms (it happens more than you think).

Guardians of the Galaxy 2:

This is the second movie in a row where Marvel continue to play their stupid new intro which is so much lamer than their old intro. We need to come together and #MMIGG (make the Marvel intro great again!).

I knew we were in trouble at the beginning of this because the director felt the urge to specify that the opening scene of this movie took place in Missouri, Earth which is often confused with Missouri Alpha Centauri.

I mean as far as Marvel movies go this one was really sucked (even though the last act was really strong).

The reason why this movie sucked was because Marvel actually dared to deviate from its proprietary algorithm and make an original movie (crazy I know). Instead of a generic space villain with unknown/unclear motivations controlling a giant army of faceless and interchangeable bad guys (which get brutally massacred every movie) we had one specific space villain with just unclear motivations fighting parallel to a giant army of golden faced interchangeable bad guys. The movie calls them the Sovereign (they’re gold because if they were Yondu they would die).

The reason why this movie isn’t as good as the first partly due to the higher expectations we had. No one really thought the first movie was going to be good partly because the movie poster featured a raccoon and a tree.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 felt a little bit weird primarily because all of the movie and its characters seem to revolve around Chris Pratt. And the few times where there is some sort of interaction between other characters is when Chris Pratt is not there. Which goes to show you that no matter where you are in the universe everything still revolves around the white man #staywoke.

Another reason why this movie wasn’t good was that of Chris Pratt’s facial hair. I mean bro come on how are you supposed to be in the same movie was Dr. Strange and Iron Man with the mustache of a barely pubescent white supremacist.

Also Marvel keeps doing its thing where they take our most beloved actors of yesteryear and make them say stupid space shit. I mean when I first heard Stallone’s voice (before we saw his face) I almost shed a tear. Because seeing Rocky Balboa say stupid space shit was sadder than the movie Rocky Balboa. And seeing Stallone mispronounce stupid space shit was sadder than Rocky 5.

Other than that Micheal Rooker (Yondu) was the star of this movie and I actually like the fact that he died because someone has to. This movie was still funny, the cast is still great. Batista is in this movie, but there were still 0 Batista bombs to be found (#sad!).

Batman VS Superman The Ultimate Geek Review

This review contains spoilers.

I was so excited to watch Batman vs. Superman, I mean Dawn of Justice, I mean Batman vs. Superman for a bit then it’s Batman with Superman and Wonder Woman vs. Lex Luthor feat Doomsday.

Yeah, this movie has a lot going on.

Before I give you guys my review, I feel it is worth mentioning that these superhero movies are the only movies I watch and have become a pseudo-obsession of mine. So it’s good timing that we live in the so-called Golden Age of comic book movies with at least four coming out each year for the foreseeable future.

I enter each movie the same way a film snob would enter a movie; I’m a connoisseur of the genre if you will. I’ve broken down these movies into a precise science with the knowledge of all the previous comic book movies both animated and live action dating from the late 70’s (when I was approximately negative twenty years old at the time) until the present day.

So with this knowledge, I’m not only going to tell you what fundamental yet fixable flaws this movie has, but I’m also going to tell you guys why this was a very okay movie and not nearly worth all the hate its been getting.

First of all, this movie has a sort of subtle brilliance to it that you seldom see in projects of this ilk. I saw this movie a few days after it came out and someone sent me the Rotten Tomato score, so I knew this movie wasn’t going to be great. But if you only watched the first act of the film you’d have no idea. Starting off the movie with the events of Man of Steel from Batman’s point of view was incredible. Zach Snyder also managed to weave seamlessly allusions to Batman’s Mask of the Phantasm, the God’s Among us game, references to the Joker and the destruction of Wayne Manor (which may be an homage to Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins) in the first few minutes.

Furthermore, the way this movie foreshadowed its sequel by showing Darkside’s giant Omega symbol and altering his minions from their normal appearance to winged humans was beyond brilliant.

With that being said although the pacing of this movie was, at first, slow and deliberate it suddenly moved into frantic and borderline illogical by the end.

I’m going to start off by talking this film in its own right before talking about its place in the on going feud between Marvel and DC.

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This movie has too much stuff happening: 

One of the biggest reasons why these superhero movies fail is because the writers try to incorporate too much of the comic book cannon into it.

For instance, this movie incorporates three of arguably the most important storylines in the DC lore. Each of which has the clout to warrant their own feature film.

It’s borderline impossible for Zach Snyder to be able to weave together the Batman Returns storyline, while juggling the birth of the Justice arch and also the death of Superman comic.

The degree of difficulty in pulling off a single character story is high enough as is. But adding two more makes the margin for error almost minute.

If Warner Bros were adamant, they wanted to go for the home run and try all of these different things they were better off putting Lex’s plot to kill Superman parallel to the actual Batman vs. Superman confrontation. The movie spent the first act trying to build a real moral chasm between these two heroes only to abandon it a few minutes later (more on that soon).

The moral quandaries each have with the other is too great for it to be thrown to the wayside for them to fight for such silly and petty reasons. If this movie wanted to stay faithful to the characters, they would have let them fight over the way each believes justice should be done. This is beyond logical as both of these heroes are in direct philosophical opposition to the other, with the Bats believing fear is the best way to stop crime and with Big Blue resolute in the notion that hope is the only way to lead. This way of executing this movie would be similar to what happens in the source material, The Dark Knight Returns.

While their bro-off is taking place, Lex can do his thing trying to resurrect Doomsday. Once the beast is unleashed Wonder Woman can stop their little fight and get them to take on the ultimate killing machine.

After Superman dies the world mourns and Batman sees that Superman was right all along blah blah superhero cliche yet still a good movie.

The dichotomy of Ben Affleck’s Batman:

Although this is obviously paradoxical, I honestly believe that this rendition of the Caped Crusader was both the best and worst I’ve ever seen. Ben Affleck managed to grasp fully the physical force of nature that is Bruce Wayne yet at the same time neglect his indiscernible ethos. I am not talking about the fact that this Batman kills and uses guns. Unfortunately, I am talking about Batman’s psyche, something I never thought I would.

The Batman we saw in this movie was the closest thing we will ever get to the Batman in the Arkham franchise. Zach Snyder borrowed the game’s signature “from above” takedowns, the infamous group fighting scenes and some of its weapons. Even the Batmobile got pimped out Arkham Knight style.

The biggest difference with this version of the Bats and others is that we got to see how physically imposing Batman is when he’s not duking it out with demigods. The best microcosm of Bruce’s physical might is the time when he picked up random henchmen #86 before reverse choke-slamming him wrestle mania style.

With that being said this movie completely missed the mark with Batman rationale. The point of Batman in both culture at large and comics, in particular, is that he is the ultimate manipulator. He’s the person with a plan B for everything and just like every underdog in history; he manages to out-think his opponents. He’s a sort of warrior Spock whose brute force and infallibility makes the ideal hero to root for.

But of course, the Batman we saw in this movie wasn’t cold and calculating, he’s emotional and xenophobic, but worse of all he’s scared. He ceases to be the chess player and is now a pawn. Think about how easy this was for Lex, all he had to do was frame Superman for a massacre, and all Superman had to do was emasculate him by tossing his car around. And voila the world’s greatest detective reduced to the role of a brute.

Even though the reason behind the conflict with Superman is deplorable in its own right, the way it’s resolved has to be one of the most ludicrous scenes in movie history. All Superman had to do was say Martha few times then Batman is suddenly all in on the Soups ban wagon and is ready to go and save his mom.

Even though I enjoyed the fight, it was cool and all, it felt almost hollow, though. There were no real consequences to it because we knew, the reason behind their rift was ridiculous, and we knew that for the movie to be resolved nothing of significance was going to happen.

You would think in another life this version of Master Wayne would have spent his billions endorsing Trump as opposed to being the modern day Machiavelli.

But, this movie biggest mistake was showing us the man in Batman. I thought it very symbolic that after his fight with Big Blue half of Batman’s cowl was ripped off, he was both man and bat. But as we know, in the words of his predecessor, The Dark Knight cannot be both:

As a man, I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol…as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.-Batman Begins

The Doomsday Question: 

The fact that Doomsday was included in this movie took me by surprise because I don’t watch trailers at all.

So when I first saw Lex trying to unleash the abomination (I thought the lightning was a cool homage to Frankenstein), I thought this would be the saving grace of the movie.

After all, how many people can say that they’ve “killed” the man of steel?

But, after I saw how they designed Doomsday I wasn’t too enthused anymore.

First of all the way Doomsday looks in the comics is amazing as is, so I don’t see why they needed to change that. Secondly, electric powers or whatever he had never works in live action. The end of the movie was just a CGI show with random bolts of lighting exiting Doomsday’s body for no apparent reason (is he meant to Symbolize the modern day Doomsday an EMP?). It was annoying to watch, and it was unnecessary because the Doomsday in the comics doesn’t have these powers.

This is very pedantic on my part, but I’m not a fan of when the hero and villain are radically different in size. I think it doesn’t make for a good fight scene when one is five times bigger than the other because they can’t actually fight in combos, they resort to throwing haymakers flinging one to the other side of the scene each time.

Also, it would have been cool if Wonder Woman and Batman actually could fight him as opposed to annoying him until Superman is back.

So I really hope they don’t make the same mistake with Darkside in the sequel because some of my favorite moments in the comics are when Batman goes toe to toe with the New God and manage to evade his Omega Beams.

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe vs. the DC Cinematic Universe: 

For better or for worse just like Batman vs. Superman everything one does is compared to the other. These are the two alphas of the industry (sorry Fox). But, even though they are a sort of big two in the nerd market it hasn’t been much of a competition between them. TV and animated movies aside, Marvel has whipped the floor with DC, and the biggest winner of this film is by far the MCU.

But there are real reasons why Marvel movies are consistently better than DC’s. Although stuff like casting and directors make a big difference in the long run. Marvel’s real success comes from creating a series of core pillars that form each movie. This turns the MCU into a machine of sorts where they’ve discovered the optimal algorithm, and each of their movies are just derivatives of the other.

Their first pillar is that they usually stick to one story arc and don’t try to fit all of the characters story lines into one movie because they understand the delicate balance of maintaining the substance necessary for future projects yet at the same time giving each movie enough to keep us entertained for the next.

The second pillar of the MCU is that unlike DC they make their movies humorous for the most part. Marvel realized a long time ago that it is way easier making a superhero movie funny than making it serious. This works especially well for their model because they release tons of movies each year, so they rather hit a few doubles in a row than try to go for the home run every single time.  Think about it, the only time the MCU attempted a dark movie was Captain America The Winter Soldier, which was the greatest superhero movies of all time by the way.

But, with DC every since the early success of the Christopher Nolan’s gritty Batman franchise they’ve only made depressing movies. DC made Superman, the most uplifting and inspiring of heroes, sad and dark. To be honest, I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing, but it’s much harder to do effectively.

What I feel we should give DC credit for is that they are taking the most laborious route and are trying to make the way humans would embrace heroes as realistic as possible. In Marvel, we get a bit of huffing and puffing by a bunch of extras or TV characters talking about how dangerous these super people are. But in DC, the filmmakers attempt to decipher what it would be like if Superman actually existed. The montage in which they show prominent figures in real life having a nuanced debate and asking each other esoteric questions regarding the notion of a ubermensch, his role in government and his role in society in general.

The third pillar is something more intrinsic to Marvel and DC and less of a choice that they can make. DC was designed to be a pantheon of gods among men while Marvel is meant to be man’s finest. If you remove Thor from the equation, all Marvel characters are relatively small potatoes compared to their DC friends.

Take Flash and Quicksilver for example. The former created and is part of a supra-galaxy entity which allows him to travel the universe and time at incomprehensible speed. The later is just really fast compared to a normal person. Another seemingly good fight I hear from my friends would be the Hulk vs. Superman. The Green Goliath is strong, but his greatest accomplishment is picking up the New York bedrock underwater. The other managed to punch universes together and can destroy planets on a whim at his peak.

This is not to say that one is way easier to make that the other, but Marvel has somewhat of an advantage making a movie about Spiderman who is just like you minus a radioactive Spider than it is to make a film about the king of the mythical city of Atlantis.

What I found rather interesting about this movie is that DC was too slow to mobilize and as a result had to adopt a sort of anti-marvel model. Because DC was so far back behind it had to come out guns blazing with their super team to stay relevant. Marvel’s 6th movie was the Avengers, and each of their team’s characters had, for the most part, their own movie. So we got to see the maturation of the characters in their stand alone films, and when it came time for the super team, all they had to do was show up and kick ass. If DC took this approach, this movie would have been a lot cleaner, and they might have actually gotten to make a movie focused only on the Batman vs. Superman fight.

Side Notes: 

Beast Mode Superman: 

When Superman took a Nuke to the knee, I really wished he did what he does in the comics.

Which is going to the sun, chilling there for a few minutes, before coming back beast mode.

Jokerfying Lex: 

I think it was a deliberate choice by the film crew to make Lex less like his comic book self and more like the Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight.

Both have long hair, both are trying to take down the resident superhero because of ideological reasons, both kidnapped two separate people to get the others attention, and both have no regard for human life.

Was this the best choice?

That depends on your own view of the movie, but this vision was executed as best as possible.

Also thought it was cool when he was talking about how he was foreshadowing Darkside at the end.

Superman Vs Batman fight scene wasn’t long enough: 

Despite its advertising, this movie wasn’t meant to be a versus movie. But having said the 8 minute whatever fight we got between these two titans was woefully lackluster.

If you forget about all the traps Batman set for Superman, the majority of the fight consists of Superman poking Batman across buildings, and Batman shooting Kryptonite farts at his face before beating him down.

We didn’t need the entire movie to be a boss battle between these two, but at the very least we should have gotten some legit sparing between the two characters.

Boss Battles usually disappoint: 

As is the case in most movies it’s much better when the protagonist has to mow through a group of people as opposed to fighting an individual boss.

Think about all the good comic movies you’ve seen, how many of them involve the heroes fighting ONLY against an equally power super villain. Both Marvel’s Avengers movie, the Winter Soldier, and the Dark Knight consists of the main heroes destroying hordes of lesser opponents as opposed to one ultra adversary.

The ideal scenario, especially in a team format, is that you have one of the heroes destroy mere mortals, whilst the other engages in the boss battle.

The Flash problem: 

I think I am in the side of the majority when I say I love the Flash TV show.

So in the spirit of honest, I have to admit that I was a bit salty seeing someone else take up this role.

But I get why DC did it.

Unlike the MCU, they want don’t want the TV shows complicating their cannon.

Think about it, if something happens why won’t Arrow and Supergirl come to the rescue right?

Conclusions: 

Like I said before, this is a very okay movie and it dosen’t deserve whatever score it has on Rotten Tomato or IMDb or whatever.

The reason why this movie didn’t do well because it was over hyped and I thought it was hard on the non-comic book fan.

This is not to say that if you don’t like comics you are less likely to enjoy it, but people who are really into this genre will forgive some of its shortcomings because the movie has Batman and Superman.

Wonder Woman:

This movie starts off innocently enough as we join the Amazons aka queens of the unnecessary backflips.

Where a young Diana wants nothing more in this world than to fight in a war. Call me crazy. But when a 6-year-old wants nothing more than to destroy her enemies in battle they are 100% of the time serial killers.

At the beginning of this film, we see a conflict brewing between Diana’s aunt and her mom. Because her mom under no circumstance wants her daughter to be a soldier. She’d rather die than let her child fight in a war. But after saying all that she changes her mind in like 2 seconds with very little convincing. Diana’s mom also said that Zeus created man to be “fair and good in his image.” Which is dumb on two levels. The first level is that there was a generation of gods before Zeus and co which created the universe and everything in it (so he didn’t create man). And also because Zeus is credited with raping about 60 women throughout his reign. So tell me again how is he both “fair and good”? Queen Hippolyta, get it together girl.

Diana is then trained by her aunt who is probably an insane person. As when the Germans show up to Themyscira, she can be seen smiling from cheek to cheek. Even though she knows conflict will surely result in the death of dozens of her fellow sisters. Are we sure she is not the real god of war?

She is also horrible at dialogue:

Allow me to transcribe this for you

Amazon 1: Very Good

Amazon 2: Very Good

Amazon 1: How is she?

Amazon 2: She is good

From that point, Chris Pine lands on an island surrounded by what seems to be filled with only beautiful women. Which is great until you remember that in real life Amazons used to cut off some of their boobs so that they could be better archers. And instead of being 6’2 like Diana were most likely 5 foot nothing.

From that point, we are flooded by a litany of immature jokes and lame sexual innuendos that would have made me laugh from ages 9 through 14. Not only are these jokes dumb beyond comprehension, but they also continue throughout the entire movie. We are 90 minutes into this, and people look like they are Jonah Hill in this scene from the Wolf of Wall Street.

SHE’S HOT WE GET IT.

I really do not understand how I am the only that was super grossed out by this.

When Diana isn’t being ogled. She is trying to track down on, the very aptly named, Doctor Poison (who is a woman). Which is very feminist of the movie. It tells us that women too are capable of committing unspeakable horrors and developing weapons of mass destruction!

After taking out Doctor Poison and her hubby, Diana is now confronted by the Greek god of war, Ares. But instead of looking, you know, Greek. He looks like he just came off set from Downton fucking Abbey.

Again somebody needs to explain to me how nobody lambasted this movie for white washing by casting this tea and crumpet eating motherfucker, this sunscreen wearing when it’s 20 degrees, dude. This man with is supposed to be the GREEK GOD OF WAR. Which should indicate that dude should, in fact, look Greek. But something tells me Plato didn’t sport that kind of mustache.

The only reason that this guy’s outfit is so dark and well shaded because it’s the only way that Ares can avoid a tan. Because he’s whiter than unseasoned chicken.

Ares spends the entire fight trying to explain to Diana that men are the bad guys and he is just taking his rightful place as their ruler. Diana disagrees and thinks humans are good. But considering the fact that another World War happened maybe Ares was right?

During Wonder Woman’s climactic fight with Ares, an American sweet called Steve sacrificed himself on a plane during a World War to save a major city from destruction, AND HIS NAME WAS STEVE RODGERS GODDAMIT. Put some respect on Captain America’s name (also both actors are called Chris you can’t make this stuff up).

At the end of the day, this movie has about a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

For context, this movie had a higher critic score than:

Batman Begins a movie that arguably saved Batman from George Clooney

Captain America: The Winter soldier the greatest comic book movie of all time.

X-Men (2000) which defined the modern comic book genre.

The fucking Avengers.

Wonder Woman was a good movie. I enjoyed watching it. But there is no way it should have a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I get that Wonder Woman has some sort of historical significance because the average person thinks it’s the first comic book movie with a female lead in it. But I am here to tell you that (insert mandatory dick joke from a Wonder Woman movie) am above average. The God awful Elektra which has a 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes (also overrated) was the first comic movie with a sole female lead (Cat Woman was technically the first, but I have erased all memory of it from my mind). The reason why nobody has ever heard of it because it was so bad it made Ben Affleck’s Daredevil look good in comparison.

At first, I thought Wonder Woman was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread because I went to watch it a week after it came out and everyone was losing their mind over this movie. So when I walked into the cinema, I managed to arrive right after all of the ads were finished. Which is really important for me because I haven’t watched a single movie trailer in 5 years.

FYI: There is no way to say that you don’t watch movie trailers and not sound like a pretentious ass. I know this because multiple people have called me a pretentious ass multiples times.

At the end of the day, movies are art and therefore subjective. But there were things which were objectively terrible. The CGI in this film was the worst I’ve seen in the past 10 years, the dialogue was really bad at times, and 3 different pockets of people were laughing at some of the more dramatic scenes because they were so cringe worthy.

But hey, at least it’s not Batman vs. Superman.

Doctor Strange:

Are you interested in watching a movie about a narcissistic genius with an incredible goatee?

If the answer to the question is above is yes. Then go watch Iron Man 1 and if you hate yourself watch the other two.

After you’re done doing all that you can watch my least favorite Marvel movie since Thor 2.

*my comment section after I slander Dr.Strange*

This doesn’t mean Dr.Strange was a bad movie. Saying this is not your favorite movie in a list which is comprised of Avengers 2, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man isn’t akin to blasphemy. It’s kind of like saying that Hawk-Eye is the worst Avenger. That doesn’t mean Hawk-Eye isn’t cool, but it just means that he’s less cool than the coolest.

So before I’ burnt at stake for heresy by the fanboys hear me out for a second.

The MCU has become so large and complex that they need to start updating their proprietary algorithm that they use to make all of these films. I wrote about how Guardians are the JV avengers. Now I am going to write about how Dr. Strange is Iron Man 2.0.

The reason why I call the Doctor Iron Man 2.0 is because of the fact that they are both the same person expect one is in a metal suit and the other one has a sentient cape (both of which are red #staywoke). Like I said up top they both are huge dicks that think they’re the center of the universe that were severely physically impaired. In addition to this, they both share a will they won’t day sexual tension with a fair-haired assistant that endures them even with their sever character flaws. If the fans are curious as to how Tony Stark would look if Marvel ever wanted to go with his alcoholic story line (which they never will) it would look exactly like the first act of this movie.

The second piece of evidence that I’d like to submit to the court is a picture of both the goatee’s worn by both characters.

(yes I am being serious)

It’s very obvious that they both sport a goatee, that much is true. However, upon further inspection, you can see that they both have their goatee’s don’t stop upon connection with their mustache. They go beyond this point which is something that has not oft been seen outside these two fine gentlemen. Which can’t be a coincidence because after looking through some of the Dr. Strange comics he either has a normal goatee or a mustache. So, at this point, it’s fair to say that Marvel is trolling us.

In all seriousness, Strange and Stark share the same rebellious and curious nature which leads them to miss trust people in a position of power. Iron Man does this when he hacks S.H.I.E.L.D and Strange does this when he reads more books than he should (#badass).

Because these two hombres are so alike, I am just going to call Benedict Cumberbatch from now on Strange Man.

So Strange Man along with his trusted sidekick 12 years a spell is trained by the last Airbender to fight yet another underdeveloped and underwhelming villain. But unlike those other stooges before him [insert generic bad guy here] this dude has some wicked eyeshadow.

To save the world, Strange Man has to use the plot of Edge of Tomorrow to beat another weird space looking person. By channeling the power of Vine, Strange Man manages to annoy the bad guy into submission. Which really goes to show you that the most powerful force in the universe isn’t an infinity stone, nor is it greed, lust or rage, but merely pure unadulterated annoyance.

The Green Lanterns should really make a ring for that.

To be fair, this movie had some nice things going on. I like how some of the fight scenes were just inception on steroids. I really thought the last battle was the most original one that Marvel has ever made. All the actors in this movie were great even though 12 years a spell was overacting just a tiny weeny bit at times. I really enjoyed the character development of Strange because most of the MCU characters are relatively static. So seeing someone hit rock bottom was a nice change of pace. The plot was solid, and this movie was solid, but it’s not nearly as great as the other MCU movies in recent years.

Okay now that I’m done kissing babies time to get into what everyone is talking about. We know who won the Civil War but there is another war in the MCU that has been raging on that hasn’t received even a modicum of attention.

The War of goatees.

The answer is, of course, Hank Pym.

Things I like and don’t like: 

The world is in danger all the time: The world has an extinction level event every three weeks or so in the MCU. If you extend this to Agents of Shield as well in the span of just a couple of years, the world was in danger of being destroyed on six different occasions.

Subtle references: Before Strange got his hands destroyed he was asked to do the operation on someone with spinal damage in a weird armor suit. Which as you guys probably know is War Machine. A couple of seconds after rejecting this case he got into a car crash. Which goes to show you. Don’t fuck with Don Cheadle.

LSD trips in movies: That trip that strange went on was 3 minutes longer than it should have been. We get it the universe is not what we think it is.

This new logo intro: The times they are a changing but man, can’t we stick with the old one?

Dredd:

Dredd just about sneaks onto this list because it has one person who can read minds. But, other than that it’s a lot of people with guns shooting at other people with guns (which is always fun).

In this movie, we have Cersei Lannister (or at least the actor that plays her) reprising the role of the most despicable human being alive. Which as we know from her time in Game of Thrones is a role that is very familiar to her.

We have the doctor from Stark Trek being an uncompromising bad-ass which is the exact opposite of Dr. Bones.

Besides all that this was a pretty good movie that I suggest everyone sees.

Hellboy:

Before we get started I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Ron Perlman who went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

I mean let’s be honest with ourselves. The commitment it took for that #transformationTuesday is greater than anything I’ve ever done (besides writing this list of course).

This was a good solid movie all round. Even though I’m not a fan of this whole supernatural superhero genre, but I thought they did as good of a job as any making a movie out of a human fish, a human matchstick, and a humanoid fire hydrant.

Ron Perlman brought some panache to the whole thing by making a literal demon child likable and relatable.

This movie was also ahead of it’s time regarding it’s humor but very much in its time when it came to the CGI.

PS: Hellboy is the now the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world at being a superhero who spends the entire movie getting his ass beat. He recently usurped Wolverine.

The Amazing Spiderman 2:

The Amazing Spiderman was the reboot everyone needed to we could just pretend that the not so amazing (sorry) Spiderman 3 never happened.

So one would surmise after the success of the first movie adding two actors with a combined 3 Oscar nominations and one Oscar win would vault this franchise into the rare air which is usually reserve for the best comic movies of all time.

But the only problem is that Paul Giammati (or as I like to call him Pauli G) was in the movie for 5 minutes in the beginning and 5 in the end. And in these 10 minutes which were allocated for his Oscar winning talent, he managed to make a complete buffoon out of himself. Which given his screen time is really saying something. He put on the worst fake Russian accent of all time and when he wasn’t speaking English random noises would protrude from his mouth for no rhyme or reason.

Now on to Mr.Jamie Foxx whose character in this movie casts a sympathetic figure. You, as the audience member, will spend the entire movie feeling sorry for a total societal outcast. Who because of an undiagnosed mental condition will go crazy and become a human battery or whatever.

Then we have Harry Osborne who’s also known as the ugliest Green Goblin of all time. I mean I get the fact that he is a Goblin and all but does he have to look like this?

I mean come on he isn’t even green. Which is kind of a prerequisite if you want to be the GREEN Goblin.

Besides all that the action was pretty cool. Andrew Garfield is still the best Spiderman to me (no disrespect to Tobby). Emma Stone is the best after (Jennifer Lawrence and Idris Elba). I thought it took a lot of guts to actually kill off Gwen Stacy because that never seems to happen anymore.

As much as I enjoyed the banter between Peter and Gwen they couldn’t save this movie. I’m kind of sad that we didn’t get to see a third movie (RIP) because they were clearly trying to build toward something here.

PS: They slide an homage to the first Spiderman movie, and it made my little nerd heart happy:

PS part 2: The guy who directed both the Amazing Spiderman movies is called Marc Webb which I find to be very poetic.

Thor The Dark World:

Everyone’s favorite son of Asgard is back with a brand new rap. Joined by his consistently inconsistent bro Loki who are teaming up together to fight a hostile race of aliens, defeated a long time ago, trying to steal an infinity stone to take over Asgard and then the universe.

Does that sound familiar?

It should because that is the exact same plot as the first movie plus the same twist as the first G.I Joe.

I mean if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Actually, that’s not fair for me to say. There was the main difference between these two movies, and it’s a really big one at that. Instead of the bad guy aliens being blue they are white and instead of liking the cold they like the dark.

But that’s fine because Thor is back doing Thor things like swinging a hammer around and bludgeoning people to death with it (but it’s cool because they’re faceless bad guys).

He is aided by his super squad in committing treason with the aid of little bro Loki who is still being trusted even though he really shouldn’t be trusted.

But, this movie is very meh. Marvel understand that not everything they do can be the greatest comic book movie all time. Because to paraphrase the immortal Ted Mosby:

“Every [movie] can’t be legendary. If all [movies] are legendary, no [movies] are legendary”. These are very wise words from a man from a show that lasted 3 seasons longer than it should.

Transformers:

Allow me to review the best rated Transformers movie with a whopping 55% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes! This was back in 2007 when Micheal Bay was just in the process of losing his mind and did not spend his nights pleasuring himself to the sight of unnecessary explosions and underdeveloped female leads.

This movie starts off good enough with Tyrese calling himself “the black Jordan in his prime.”

However, it does not take long for Michael Bay to turn into Michael Bay. As he thinks it’s standard military protocol to allow an unidentified aircraft the right to land on a military base.

Michael does teach a few things in this movie, however. Like what a robot would sound like when it orgasms:

Not once!

But twice!

If we are being honest with ourselves, I probably spent more time breaking down this movie than Michael did thinking of it. Transformers is 140 minutes long which should be illegal. I could spend hours talking about all the little mistakes they made in this movie. Like the time Sea Leboeuf and Megan Fox fell from a bridge, hit their head on Optimus Primes foot (which should be the equivalent of 14 concussions per person) before being caught before hitting the floor.

Or the time where Sea fell from a building before being caught by an Autobot but didn’t die because in comic book movies it doesn’t matter how far you fall, you’re G as long as you don’t hit the floor.

Or the time where after being invaded by aliens Michael Bay thought a rational response would be to disband the unit which was in charge of monitoring aliens.

And again I would just like to remind you guys that this is the best Transformers movie. But fuck it, Transformers was the first franchise I ever loved, and 10 year-old-me would definitely have tried to fade (emphasis on try) to fade 20-year-old me. But, Transformers does have some redeeming qualities.

For one Mark Wahlberg isn’t it which is always a plus. Sea was very convincing as a socially awkward teen. Optimus’ will and forever will be the G.O.A.T.

I also think that it’s really important to look at this franchise in two parts. The ones with Sea (aka before Micheal Bay lost his mind) and the one after Sea (where Michael Bay became the Nick Cage of directors).

I am just hoping that the franchise survives long enough until it is rebooted by JJ Abrams because is it really a beloved franchise if it not rebooted by JJ (Mathew Vaughn is welcome as well).

And again I would just like to say that this movie does not have Mark Wahlberg in it.

X-Men Last Stand:

Let me just start off by saying that:

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you start a movie review.

Results are a function of expectations.

This is true in cinema and in life in general.

This movie wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t bad by any means. This movies biggest problem is that it came after the first two X-Men movies and unless this movie was incredible it was always going to end up being a disappointment.

But killing off Cyclops, Professor X (but not really though) not including Nightcrawler only made everything wrong with this movie so much worse. This is somewhat mitigated by the inclusion of the JV squad of X-Men, but I prefer the OG crew.

This movie had its moments as can be seen bellow:

But after 3 movies this franchise just kept shoving the same themes down our throats each time by raising the stakes and eventually I feel as though it stopped resonating with the audience.

PS: Relationship Goals

Spiderman 3: 

Superheroes really need to work on their communication skills. If Batman knew how to speak to Superman maybe BVS wouldn’t have happened (and we could all be happy in life). If Tony Stark was eloquent enough maybe no Civil War would have occurred.

In the case of Spiderman 3, if Peter Parker could explain to Harry Osborne that his father was a murdering psychopath who tried to kill him this movie would have gone by a lot quicker.

Spiderman 3 is probably the worst out of the original trilogy for a bunch of fundamental reasons.

One such reason is that this film committed the original sin in comic movies. Which is when they try to jam down too many story arcs into one movie. Sam Raimi tried to fit in the whole Green Goblin part deux stuff, with the entire Venom symbiote storyline whilst bringing up the whole Uncle Ben thing. All of that plus Mary Jane’s mandatory tantrum results in a log jam which causes the movie to have no clear sense of direction. This high wire act is hard to pull off so naturally, today’s movies try to stay away from them. Sadly, nobody told Zach Snyder this.

Other than that, I really disliked Raimi handled the whole Peter and Harry thing. They’ve been building an epic fight between these character for two entire movies. So for them to completely ignore all the set up wasn’t great.

Spiderman 3 was still fun though. The fight scenes were great because Spiderman fighting style is both indirect and aesthetically pleasing. Even though the end of the movie quickly degenerated in bad superhero clichés I still enjoyed watching this.

In the end, even though Spiderman fought of the Green Goblin, Sandman, Venom, and others his most challenging fight was with hubris and by extension himself. So always remember kids, your ego is not your amigo.

Kick Ass 2: 

As you can tell with this high ranking, that I’m very biased in favor of Kick Ass.

Everyone agrees that the first movie is great and almost everyone agrees that the second one isn’t so great.

Well, everyone besides me because I still enjoyed it.

I get that this movie has a lot of flaws.

This film tried to be funny as well as gory which doesn’t always work too well. I understand that it’s hard to maintain a consistent comedic tone when people are being beaten to death and then decapitated.

It makes sense that people weren’t a fan of this movie (at times) trying to be the lovechild of both Mean Girls and Scary Movie. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but this film really missed Nick Cage.

The principal difference between both Kick Ass movies is that the first one is a coming of age story at it’s simplest. This gives the movie an uplifting tone even though people are being killed left right and center.

The second Kick Ass movie can’t be a coming of age story again. So the filmmakers tried to preserve all the aspects which make the first film so endearing whilst trying to increase the stakes in the film.

We still got all the overt superhero name drops as well a few quiet ones too.

We still got all jokes which make fun of the superhero comic genre as a whole.

And the soundtrack is still awesome.

I understand why people didn’t like this movie and that’s okay.

But I liked and this is my list so…

Unbreakable: 

Yet another movie I was not familiar with before starting this list. Can you blame me though?

I was four when this movie came out.

When I was four the world looked rather different.

Cell Phones were still a new thing, the internet just started booming, the Lakers were winning championships and nobody hated M Night Shyamalan.

How the times have changed.

This is probably one of the slowest movies I have ever watched in my life. Literally, nothing happens until an hour and fifteen minutes into this movie.

But hey Unbreakable has some cool cinematography, Sam Jackson is in it and Bruce Willis is actually acting in a semi-respectable movie.

Even though this is not really a spoiler, this movie was super mediocre until the end. Because if we know one thing Bruce Willis and M Night is that they love plot twists (shout out to the Sixth Sense).

Iron man 2:

The way I feel about this movie can be perfectly summed up by this incredible piece of cinematic brilliance:

To be I think this movie is just okay. It’s nothing too bad and definitely isn’t great. There is almost no action scenes save for this:

Well that was cool.

I get that the story follows the most obvious superhero movie archetype where the main villain was a person shunned from the past whose now out for revenge. But this movie was funny in a way only Iron man can be and the banter between Tony and Pepper was phenomenal.

I get that the first act of the movie is boring and watching Iron Man slowly die isn’t fun but it managed to introduce Black Widow really well and Hammer was really funny.

The reason I like this movie more than most is because it never tried to be something it isn’t like Iron man 3. It’s going to stay in its line, mildly entertain you for a bit then you’re going to be excited for the Avengers.

Man of Steel:

Producer: Zach, you know how Superman was designed to be this bastion of hope for humanity.

Zach Snyder: Yeah.

Producer: Well, screw that. We want you to make this Superman movie as morbid and dark as possible.

Zach Snyder: I got you bro.

I don’t mind me a gritty comic movie but my oh my is the first act of this movie a snooze fest. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an instant gratification junkie who has the attention span of an overzealous dog. But, this movie could have been better off with a lot more Kryptonian on Kryptonian fighting on earth and a little less backstory.

This movie is ranked so poorly not because I cared that Superman killed Zod. Because if we take the time to think about it for a second is sending people to the Phantom Zone like what Superman does in the comics/cartoons any better? No, it isn’t! Zod even says so himself and I’m happy that this movie went full on dark mode and had Superman snap a neck and not send someone into oblivion for the rest of eternity without a trial. Just cause you want to feel happy at the end of the movie.

I don’t mind that this movie is dark because not every superhero movie can be Ant-Man and we need this variation in the genre to escape the monotony. So Zach Snyder PSA if you like your movies morbid please make sure to pace your action scenes a bit better. Because the Superman vs Zod fight at the end of the movie was absolutely superb and I wish I as a little more invested before we got there.

You guys are probably just depressed thinking about this movie. So here is a funny (meant to say it that way) I came up with:

When she won’t send nudes:

Hellboy 2:

I did not like this movie at all.

Even though I am always down for Guillermo del Toro’s weirdness and I was a fan of the first movie I just can’t deal with all these typical movie tropes that are highlighted below.

Annoying cliche #1: People falling in love after 5 minutes and little to no conversation. This homie Abe held hands with this girl one time (granted it was intimate af) and now he’s ready to risk the rest of the world to save her. Because a healthy reaction to meeting someone is for you to be willing to FORGO THE LIFE OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE BECAUSE SHE SMILED AT YOU ONE TIME.  

Annoying cliche #2: People sacrificing their lives when we don’t care about them. It’s one thing for let’s say Tony Stark be willing to sacrifice his life for the Avengers because we know Tony Stark, we care about Tony Stark, Tony Stark matters. Nobody, I mean nobody gives half a crap about this white walker princess whose sacrifice we’re supposed to care about.  

Annoying cliche #3: Can we stop hating on people for doing their jobs. I mean this poor director of this agency tries his best to deal with a demon child, a fish, a human lighter and a living fart and in return the “heroes” (and therefore by extension the audience) hating him.

Annoying cliche #4: Why do all nonsuperhero people have to die and why do they all have to be white males. These very nondescript males always die in these movies and I always feel bad because we really don’t care but still shoutout to all these extras.

I like the camera work that was done in this movie, it was funny, the fight scenes were choreographed nicely but were a bit too reliant on useless flips and weird swords twirls. Also, this movie was 2 hours long so minus points for that.

Superman Returns:

Let me take you back to 2006 where Superman still served as the bastion of hope and optimism. Clark Kent was still super goofy and the first, person to ever be considered adorkable. Superman actually smiled and was beloved by everyone. As opposed to now where people are scared of an all-powerful alien deity who can destroy entire cities at a whim (the times they are a changing).

This movie is basically an homage to all the old Superman movies that everyone pretends to love and if you still believe that these movies are the bomb.com (sorry) I challenge you to watch them again. This movie tries so hard to be like the old ones so bad that Marlon Brando is back as Jor-El even though he died 2 years before this movie was made but he was the OG Jor-El so I guess that’s cool.

Kevin Spacey is back being a bad guy, because what else would Kevin Spacey be? Someone should get him checked out because no sane person can play the bad guy in every movie. I mean being a bad guy only in movies must not be enough for him because he’s a bad guy in a freaking video game. A very bad video game nonetheless but still! The dude’s got some serious issues.

Time to talk about the Man of Steel himself. He’s being played by Brandon Routh, which for you who don’t know is currently the Atom in the DCTV universe. Which if you ask me is a serious downgrade. One second you’re the most recognizable superhero of all time the next you play a character to insignificant and so inconsequential that you’re literally the size of an atom.

To be honest this movie was the very definition of meh, which surprisingly actually has a formal definition. It was a bit boring and had no business by 2 hours and 30 minutes long. I mean I took a couple breaks because really some of these scenes drag on much longer than they need to.

I know I am being somewhat controversial here ranking this under Man of Steel but I like the new way Superman is going and I’ve seen the same old goody 2 shoes (I don’t know what 2 shoes have to do with being good btw).

But hey this song is still pretty cool:

The Wolverine:

The Wolverine is back (again) in his own solo movie which was a million times better than Wolverine Origins, but that’s setting the bar a little to low. I saw this movie when it first came out and didn’t like, but upon a second viewing it grew on me a little bit. The reasons for this is two part:

The first reason is that I probably matured over the years to truly understand intellectual and physical vulnerability which allowed me to better appreciate this latest variant of the Wolverine.

I’m just kidding I liked this movie because of all the train wreck DC movies that have been coming out recently, so I really lowered the bar on my expectations.

Having said that, I do miss the old days where the only thing Wolverine couldn’t recover from was a broken heart. I mean come on he really gets hung up on these girls.

At the end of the day this is a Wolverine movie. Meaning that there is going to be a lot of grunting, jumping and people flipping and that’s fun. But there is also going to be a lot of grunting, jumping and people flipping and that gets a bit repetitive (expect the people flipping that gets me every time).

At the end of the day I like this movie because Hugh Jackman is probably the most important comic movie actor of all time at this point. He’s been in all the X-Men movies and Deadpool too if you include a mask of his face. What he’s done is incredible. Think about it, he’s been in 9 freaking movies as the same character since the inception of the modern superhero genre. So I just wanted to take a moment to thank Hugh Jackman as the grandfather to all these movies I know and love.

Iron Man 3:

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of blue balls. And for all the people who don’t know what blue balls is. Consider yourself among the lucky few.

Let’s go back to 2013 to give you guys a bit of context as to why I hated this movie so much. Marvel just changed the game with the Avengers, cinema will never be the same. Their next movie would be dedicated to the character to which they owe all their success to and without they wouldn’t be halfway to world domination. That character is of course, Iron Man.

In the trailers we were promised Iron Man’s greatest villain, the Mandarin. He was gunning for life, liberty and the American way. He was a terrorist looking to instill fear in the world. He was all that and more. Untill you know untill we realised he was an immense dunce whose sole purpose was to be a distraction.

So that is why I say this movie gave me cinematic blue balls. Because Marvel’s formulaic movies have never been able to throw out a compelling villain outside Loki. And this was their best chance to do so. But instead of Iron Man’s greatest foe, we got generic mad scientist #23. Who hates Iron Man because he swerved him at a party and wants to bang his girlfriend for reasons unbeknownst to us. He does this of course by turning into a person who spits hot fire (not in the proverbial rap sense but he really spits out fire) and manages to super heal. Also if you don’t think this villain is a joke already this is what the leader of A.I.M is supposed to look life in the comics:

 

In order to fight this giant testicle. Tony Stark who now has PTSD relies on his infamous suits who are suddenly as durable as a half-baked marshmallow (that’s what you get for trying to outsource manufacturing) in order to accommodate the plot.

Also at the end of the movie Tony Stark removes his palladium core and seemingly gives up being Iron Man. Which, naturally, raises a series of questions:

-If we could move the core and still be alive, what was the point of Iron Man 2?

-Why does he give up on being Iron Man only to become Iron Man again in the Avengers? Did they forget about this movie?

Suicide Squad: The Ultimate Geek Review

Another movie, another L for the DC Cinematic Universe.

Some of these L’s are unwarranted.

This is because when you have names like Batman/Superman and or both in the title lofty expectations are bound to arise and said expectations are bound to go unfulfilled.

Every time you deal with such storied and historic characters any slight change in the mythos and ethos of these pillars of the genre is bound to cause backlash with the culture at large and the comic nerds in particular (and the nerds are a spiteful bunch). For instance, when the next Spiderman movie comes out, we will not only judge on its merits in a vacuum but against every other Spiderman movie that has come out.

Is this unfair?

Yes.

Nonetheless, we come into these movies with too many preconceived notions of what this film should have been that we don’t appreciate what it is.

But as we know, Deadshot is no Batman; Harley is no Superman, and Suicide Squad definitely isn’t the Justice League. With this movie, DC had the opportunity to take a page out of the Marvel playbook and make an obscure character relevant in our comic volksgeist. This was DC’s chance for an easy win, all they had to do was make a fun movie with characters that everyone outside nerd city (not as entertaining as rack city) had no idea even existed. This was their chance to make their versions of Guardians of the Galaxy, a film where a bunch of rat tag outlaws come together and accomplish incredible things. Which in the case of Marvel, saving an entire people from interplanetary genocide. But, in the case of DC, to solve all moral quandaries that we have when it comes to government sponsored murder.

But in all seriousness, this movie like BVS started out great. Will Smith’s opening scene was great and encapsulated this new humorous Deadshot in a nutshell. The Batman and the Flash cameos were incredible, and I was hoping to see a bit more of the Batman vs. Waller confrontation that we see in the comics/cartoons/animated movies. But all the good will this movie sows with us in the opening hour gets run to the ground in the final act (almost like BVS). The boss battle (like with Doomsday) was anti-climactic, to say the least, plus the way the fight scene is resolved was such a letdown. Which, obviously, is not how you want your movie to end. You want it to peak at the end, like the time where Superman killed Zod.

But hey! Margot Robbie and Will Smith should be contractually obligated to be in the same movies till the end of time. They’re back doing Margot Robbie and Will Smith things. These two (with help from Viola Davis) put this film on their proverbial back and almost made this movie good. Never since the days of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” and its infamous sequel “Return of the Killer Tomatoes” both featuring George Clooney were such great actors been subjected to such a terrible plot (as discussed bellow). But truly, this version of Harley is not only comparable to the animated precedent it surpasses them in every way shape or form.

The Low hanging fruit:  

DC opted to punt on this desired anonymity by trying to include the Joker in this film. This movie wasn’t terrible because Jared Leto’s Joker was bad (which he was). He was in the movie for like five total minutes and no matter how out of the place those minutes were they weren’t going to tank the film. But still, there is not point in adding such a legendary character in a movie whose whole point is that there are no storied characters (more on him later).

Also, the beauty of a title like Suicide Squad with minute cultural precedent is that it is a sort of blank slate which gives filmmakers unparalleled opportunities to do whatever they want with it. David Ayer did this to a certain extent because he is the first one to introduce the DC executives to the notion of humor. But again he made the movie more complicated than it needed to be.

DC could have just grabbed the low hanging fruit, got a B+ and went home happy. But for some reason, DC isn’t a big fan of the low hanging fruit and insist on making all of their projects as hard as possible.

Which is admirable, but not advisable.

Marvel built an entire movie empire going for the low hanging fruit and occasionally when the stars and the moon align they make a superb film.

Bad Villains:

Although the villains in Marvel movies are beyond basic, they’re at least consistent and allow for a clear and easy to follow plot. Most Marvel ensemble movies consist of Aliens trying to take over the world or Robots trying to take control of the world. These are concepts as old as cinema itself.

Suicide Squad didn’t have to do either of these things. But they could have chosen an easier concept than a transforming underdeveloped belly dancing witch, who has a heart that you can stab in order to control her sometimes unless she is with her annoyingly ugly brother who has the ability to channel the power of the machines from the matrix. She then tries to build a “machine” (for reasons unknown) which destroys the world with the power of lightning (also what is up with DC lighting fetish, they did this in Man of Steel and Doomsday in BVS was a laser show).

All of these things I just described isn’t Cara Delevingne fault because she didn’t write this incredibly silly script. But she was bad executing this morbid vision, and if you committed her character entirely from the movie it’s rotten tomato score would rise by 40 percentage points.

Again Suicide Squad isn’t shackled by a deep mythos like other mainstream franchises. They could have easily have made this a heist movie (not unlike Ant-Man) like it’s animated counterpart “Assault on Arkham” which is the perfect Suicide Squad movie. Although that movie features Batman for a bit, they could have easily have included him for more than the 3 seconds he was featured here. This would allow us to get to know this new rendition of the Caped Crusader before his individual film. If for whatever reason, Ben Affleck didn’t feel like it, he easily could have been written out, and the movie would still be a million times better than whatever we got.

Things I like and don’t like: 

Are we unfair to Jared Leto?: 

I’d like first to start this off by saying that Will Smith (aka the coolest human being alive) doesn’t like him and doesn’t invite him to parties.

And to paraphrase the immortal Future “If Will Smith don’t trust you…”

So there’s that.

But are we kinda being unfair to him?

We’re not but still…

The Joker is one of the most storied roles in cinema. Almost everyone who’s played/voiced it from Jack Nicholson to Mark Hamill (yes Luke Skywalker is the Joker) came away with rave reviews. Even that kid in Gotham actually gave me chills. But that doesn’t mean it was easy. This Joker, unlike its predecessors, was tasked with giving him a love interest. Which seems fair enough, but I don’t think that the greatest performance in this subgenre’s history Heath Ledgers Joker would have been as momentous if he had a love interest. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but merely the degree of difficulty has been elevated.

Also, this new hip hop twist that they tried to put to the entire franchise worked for almost everyone else besides the Joker. Because the Joker is perfect the way he already is and should never be changed.

Another bad boss fights: 

Boss fights are one of those things that live in Extremistan. Either said fight scene is the greatest thing you’ve ever seen (a la Neo in the Matrix), or it’s the worst thing ever which is the case in this movie. This fight scene was bad for a multitude of reasons. The first of which is that the main villain was silly, the second reason is that the obscure character in the franchise was the one to fight him.

Cara Delevingne’s annoying brother:

I refer to him by that title because we have no idea who he actually is and or know anything about him. This X-Men Sentinel looking, dude, has got to be one of the worst villains in comic movie history.

I still can’t go over how ugly he is and how bad the CGI was. When will people learn that CGI costumed villains are mostly bad, and we should stop doing them.

The soundtrack was cool: 

That’s fairly self-explanatory.

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.

.

At the end of the day. I don’t like writing bad reviews for the sake of bad reviews. Because making movies is hard, and being pretentious for the sake of being pretentious is sad. But I love DC and hope they figure it out. But until then I’m just going to have to wait and hopefully not for too much longer.

X-Men Apocalypse:

I’m just going to be honest and say I didn’t like this movie, at all, actually save for two scenes. The first of which, was the Quick Silver mansion scene, which doubles as one of the greatest scenes in comic movie history. The second of which, was the Weapon X Wolverine. 

But they were two scenes and one of them just came right after the killing of my favorite Summers brother and after Xavier was just stolen.

But besides that I really hope we stop with this whole Magneto is he good or bad? Because first he was bad then good then bad then good then bad, all of which usually in the span of a single movie. If he had a bad breakfast is he evil? After chocolate cake does he become Mother Teresa?

Also this movie spent a legit 20 minutes in the beginning trying to establish characters who don’t say a word. Like Olivia Munn, I get it your hot and that’s cool but I know from Ride Along 2 (don’t judge me) that you can speak so how about you say a couple of words.

Seeing young Storm was cool, but the only problem is that she is pubescent and clearly a good guy, but we’re going to believe she is supposed to help Apocalypse?

Also Angel don’t you dare think you’re going to escape this roasting session. This man was one of the founding members of the X-Men and his Arch Angel transformation was pivotal to the actual comics. But yeah he too doesn’t say anything. This Apocalypse squad with their mean glares would be better suited in Mean Girls and not an X-Men movie.

Now I’m coming for you Apocalypse, the first mutant aka the real OG. I hated his power set because they don’t make for good fight scenes and good fight scenes are what keeps our instant gratification generation engaged.

Also this is a serious question and I want some answers:

What makes this movie particularly frustrating is that it had the foundations to be a great movie. Jennifer Lawrence is always the best, Nightcrawler was great, Cyclops was great everyone that I didn’t roast already was great. It was one of the few origin story movies which at least attempted to maintain a semblance of originality.

Also I know this movie is filled with easter eggs and got really meta at one point. But probably my favourite Easter Egg of all time has to be when at the end of both this movie and the first X-Men Magneto and Xavier have the same exact conversation:

Magneto: Doesn’t it wake you in the middle of the night that someday […] and they will come for you and your children.

Xavier: It does indeed.

*Ultra dramatic pause*

Xavier: I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to that school looking for trouble.

In the original Xavier walks away from Magneto and in the prequel Magneto walks away from Xavier.

This stuff is cool.

(wrote this before the honest trailer stuff you can time stamp my tweets)

Also, this movie attempts to make fun of the far superior X-Men: Last Stand by saying that the third movie is always the worst. Well, jokes on you Bryan Singer because this is the third prequel movie.

Fantastic 4 (again):

The Fantastic 4 was once the premiere superhero squad, now they’re at the bottom of some bloggers ranking. In the words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a changing.

The first act of this movie merely served as a vessel in which a multitude of Fantastic 4 related innuendos was shoved mercilessly down our throats:

(and those are just the verbal ones)

After we were finally put out of our misery this movie goes down the most typical cliche superhero route. Which entails great twists like when a jealous person from your past seeking revenge on you, having the main hero win the girl instead of the bad guy (who said good guys finish last?) and best of all thwarting your enemy through teamwork. Because if there is one thing these movies want you to take away from them, is that teamwork really does make the dream work.

Even though this movie was terrible it came at a time where we were devoid of any other superhero movies, so this terrible movie got a terrible sequel. So I just want to ask everybody to appreciate the times we are living in, and if you don’t… well I you’re probably reading the wrong blog post.

But every terrible movie gives us some great things. For instance the world was introduced to my favourite Chris, Chris Evans (the American one of course). He went from playing a selfish, reckless narcissist to being the bastion of life, liberty and the American way. That my dear friends is called range:

Insert

It’s hard to believe he’s the same actor.

This movie also served as an influencer of culture. If you don’t believe me, without this scene right here:

we would not have had one of the greatest tweets of all time:

And this dabbing dog of course:

Yes, this movie was one of the first proponents of the dab.

Fantastic 4 Rise of the Silver Surfer:

The Fantastic 4 vs the space fart would have been a more apt name for this less than riveting portrayal of the original superhero team. This super low ranking may have something to do with the fact that I watched both the original and this movie in the same day (because I hate myself). But still this movie sucks but I can’t really put my finger as to why.

Yes, the story is typical with the villain turned martyr sacrificing himself because a girl loolikeiked “bae”. Because if there is anything more powerful than superheros is a pretty girl smiling. But anyways when the Silver Surfer is not too busy ogling the invisible lady he can be seen doing riveting things like talking (sometimes) and flying on his surfboard (fun).

They also brought back Von Doom for no apparent reason than they had to fill an extremely shallow movie with 15 extra minutes of fantastically bad (sorry) fight scenes.

This movie franchise died and I like to think this is what FOX to realise that all their movies have been pretty much trash, outside the original X-Men trilogy. Even if you weren’t a fan of last stand (which you should) one could argue that Fox didn’t make a good movie from 2003 (X2) till 2011 (First Class). Which is an embarrassment and a joke and we should count our lucky stars that Marvel exists.

The Punisher (2004):

You would think after 3 tries they would make a good punisher movie. All they would have to do is hire Liam Neeson and copy almost everything there is from Taken and voila you may (finally) get more than 50% on Rotten Tomatoes (#greatsuccess).

This movie unlike the one that came after it actually showed you how and why Frank Castle’s family was murdered because I am guessing they realised that this movie has no depth whatsoever and they just needed some filler. The only good moment we got out of that entire first seen is that after Frank’s family was murdered in Puerto Rico he rolled up two shotguns in a carpet and went back to Miami.

Bro what?

Does airport security not exist in this universe? How am I not allowed to take shampoo on a plane and this homie thinks he can sneak in two 12 shotguns in a carpet.

Also:

This is something most directors don’t seem to get. Which is that if your movie is bad in 90 minutes it’s probably going to be even worse in 123 minutes. Just take the L, collect the movie check and move on with your life. You don’t need to punish me (sorry) by making me watch a terrible movie with 1/12th of my day.

Plus the Punisher himself has no idea what he is doing. He has to be the first hero of all time whose hideout is exactly the same as his house. Which means that everyone he knows is endanger which is something he doesn’t seem to mind too much.

Lastly, can someone please explain to me what kind of sound this is:

Green Lantern:

This movie started out promising enough. We got Ryan Reynolds climbing out of bed after spending the night with a hottie and being late because of course he’s Ryan Reynolds. After that we got to see Hal Jordan own version of the Kobayashi Maru where he beats the impossible scenario by cheating. Which goes to show you kids, when at first you don’t succeed usurp the system.

Speaking of the Star Trek I am seriously bummed the Chris Pine wasn’t already cast as Steve Trevor in the Wonder Woman movie. Because he already has experience playing a know it all reckless smart ass who has no regard for authority and does whatever he wants in order to keep the universe at peace. So if you really think about it the only difference between Captain Kirk and the Green Lantern is one terrible CGI costume.

Also after Jordan defeats I-robot he crashes a plane, which wouldn’t be a big deal if the plant didn’t cost 95 million dollars.

This movie was terrible to see and I can imagine it was even worse for Reynolds to shoot because he’s spending his entire day in a room by himself dealing with a bunch of CGI space people and Blake Lively who isn’t that much of an improvement (I kid she was actually pretty good in this).

This movie two villains of yellow Harry Potter looking Dementor/space fart who manages to turn a human being into a giant pimple which for reasons unknown gives him telekinetic powers. I really wanted to be in that meeting when they agreed on having a pimple man be a villain even though there was no reason for him to be in this movie in the first place.

This film got almost everything wrong on the margins too. Amanda Waller is not supposed to be this spiffy person who is happy and stuff. She is supposed to murder a room full of interns just because they didn’t have clearance.

There was also some things which I find borderline hilarious:

Like the time were Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds suddenly turn into a bunch of MLB outfielders. If this doesn’t look like a big deal, I just wanted to remind all of you that she threw ultimate Frisbee style a ring 30 meters and Hal caught it with one hand.

Or the time when as soon as Hal Jordan and Paralax cleared the asteroid belt on Uranus (which is the blue planet on the right side) they arrive at the sun which is about 2.877 billion km away:

At the end of the day I’ve seen a million terrible movies and I’m probably going to see a million more. But never in my short life on this green earth did I watch a movie for the first time and had an allergic reaction to what I just saw. At the age of 13 after watching this piece of cinematic brilliance I left the theatre with some nasty rashes and other stuff. It was probably more to do with my seat but still I thought it symbolic.

At the end of the day even though this film will leave an indelible mark on Ryan’s career (not in the good way) I don’t think he cares about it much because he got a wife and two kids out of this. So good for you Ryan.

Last thing on this I promise. At the end of this movie after Sinestro gave this whole motivational speech about being a Green Lantern he just becomes a Yellow Lantern just for jokes? The reason why he wanted to be a Yellow Lantern was to fight Parallax whose dead. So why is he now a Yellow Lantern? Anyways let’s just be glad that we never found out.

The Green Hornet:

Before I start this review I’d like to ask a simple question?

Is there so sort of green fetish that makes one more likely to write comics? Do people just like the colour?

Now back to the Green Hornet, the worst green coloured character there is. This movie gives us a nice look into the world of an anti hero. If said anti hero was a bumbling buffoon who probably played by Seth Rogen.

To be honest guys I don’t have much to say about this. I almost didn’t watch it again, I mean can you blame me? Would anyone have batted an eye if I completely excluded this movie from my rankings?

Probably not.

But here at the Z Score we watch every movie, no matter how bad it is.

The Green Hornet is funny sometimes and I didn’t hate the movie. Bloodnofsky was a cool bad guy and the action scenes were fun. But still, this is the pineapple express of comic movies (minus all the weed).

X-Men Origins Wolverine:

This movie did what no man has done before. It almost killed Deadpool and for that my dear friends I tip my proverbial hat to thee. 

Before I continue, in the spirit of full disclosure I feel that I am compelled to tell you that I’ve watched this movie 8 times (yes that really happened and no I wasn’t on drugs). Not because I hate watched it (which apparently is a thing) and definitely not because I liked it. But I was once a young middle school lad with nothing better to do over a school break.

So after watching this movie several times to many I feel as though I am the resident expert when it comes to this particular entry in the power rankings.

For the sake of originality I am not going to touch on the usual reasons why this movie is terrible. Obviously, we have the Deadpool stuff, the terrible claws/CGI, all the yelling and all the mutant on mutant fights which should be much cooler than they actually are.

But hey Wolverine is back doing Wolverine things. Which includes but is not limited to sniffing, screaming and the inevitable death of people he cares about. Also you get to see Wolverine as you’ve never seen him before, literally he’s naked a lot.

But hey 13 year old me was a fan and as much as we like to kid ourselves in our elevated age. These movies are for kids and I’m sure the kids enjoyed it.

The Punisher War Zone: 

Punisher War Zone is the third attempt to make a punisher movie that’s you know… actually good. But alas the third wasn’t the charm and we got another bellow average movie.

Don’t get me wrong, the fight scenes were phenomenal. It never gets old seeing the protagonist of a movie plow through dozens of “bad guys” like he’s playing Call of Duty on easy. Expect for the part where you reload because the Punisher ain’t nobody got time for that. Besides all that Frank Castle suit is really at the zenith of ergonomic design. The guy has more guns than Doom Guy (shout out to all the people who got that reference).

Besides all that, the bad guy in this movie was fantastically bad and annoying.

At the end of the day, this was a bad movie and we should thank our lucky stars that Netflix can now save the Punisher, because he deserves better.

Fantastic 4 (2015):

True story after this movie I bumped both of the original Fantastic 4 movies up a couple of spots, just out of appreciation as to how bad this movie was. Which if you really think about it, it really shouldn’t be.

All of the best young actors in hollywood are in this movie, and compared to the original cast they are much better actors in their respective roles (expect Doom). Even you Chris Evans, as much as you’re my fav Michael B. Jordan once called me “homie” during a basketball game so he wins.

But these great actors had little to no chemistry together and say what you want about the original they at least had some synergy. But still, I am willing to give all these guys the benefit of the doubt. It is a little worrying however that  I couldn’t tell where the bad acting started and the putrid script stopped.

All of this is a real pity because I was really digging the whole adorkable thing they had going in this movie in the first act. Before Von Doom turned into a green sex doll I was digging his whole hacker/anarchist vibe. I also really dug how they forewent the whole pants thing when it came to the Thing (#freetherock).

At the end of the day, this movie sucked because the second act was kinda boring and the third act was a downright abomination. I get that they wanted to over correct for the whole campy version of the Fantastic 4, but they didn’t have to turn everyone so moody. I really wish this movie did a better job with Von Doom because he is the greatest Marvel villain of all time. But until Marvel puts us all of out our misery and acquires the rights to this, I doubt we will see a studio do Victor right.

Having said all of that this movie is currently dubbed to be half as good as Transformers: Age of Extinction (which is the worst thing ever) on Rotten Tomatoes. Which, in my humble opinion, is more impossible than going to an alternate dimension and getting superpowers for no reasons whatsoever.

We can discuss all the reasons why this movie was an abhorrent disaster. They didn’t let Stan Lee have a cameo. It has been scientifically proven that no Marvel based movie can be a success without a Stan Lee cameo.

Hancock: 

“What if superheroes are dicks?”

Is the question this film is trying to answer. And for the first act of this movie we got a good idea of what an alcoholic Superman would be like.

But after Hancock finally redeemed himself the story of the movie changed and it was pretty much downhill after that.

I give the writers of Hancock props because this is the most atypical of superhero plots which is always nice. But at the same time if it wasn’t for Will Smith and Charlize Theron this movie would be even more forgettable than it actually was.

To be honest, this movie is so removed from our public consciousness I originally didn’t even have it on this list.

But hey, it’s still better than After Earth.

Blade 2:

Is anyone surprised this movie sucked?

Comic book movie history tells us if the first movie is terrible, every subsequent movie is going to be terrible.

But hey, they manage to make a better movie than the first even though the everyone hated Wesley Snipes so much they had to film his parts separate from the rest of the crew.

So Blade 2 was released four full years after Blade 1 was released so you would think there would have been some improvements in CGI. But apparently not:

So in the first Blade movie, Blade needed to kill a bunch of vampires which threaten humanity. He does so by fighting off hoards of random vampires before fighting the main bad guy. In Blade 1 the enemy manages to capture Blade when he is emotionally vulnerable. One caught the bad guys drain his blood. In order save the day, Blade needs to drink blood which he dosesn’t like to do because he is conscience of HIV or something. After drinking the blood he fights a near invincible vampire then saves the day before the sun comes up.

In this second Blade movie, Blade needs to kill a bunch of different scrotum-shaped vampires which threaten humanity.

He does so by fighting off hoards of random vampires before fighting the main bad guy. In Blade 2 the enemy manages to capture Blade when he is emotionally vulnerable. One caught the bad guys drain his blood. In order save the day, Blade needs to drink blood which he dosesn’t like to do because he is conscience of HIV or something. After drinking the blood he fights a near invincible vampire then saves the day before the sun comes up.

If those paragraphs read the same, it’s because the two Blade movies have the exact same plot.

For those of you guys who’ve not had the pleasure of watching this movie, the following scene will sum it up for you perfectly.

Like Blade, nothing really happens in this scene for a couple of seconds. We don’t really know why the characters are going into the water and why they needed to get out. Blade yells a couple of things then all hell breaks loose. And because of all the noise and kicks, we are supposed to forget that nothing in the movie makes any sense.

I know I’ve been hard on Blade 2 but it did manage to do one of my favorite things in all of cinema. It managed to incorporate a wrestling move in a fight scene.

So because the movie went up 5 spots in the rankings.

Other than that this movie is still very Gif-able and clip-able. I won’t go overboard with it like I did with the last blade review but this is just too funny:

This is what your mom tells you after she just whooped your brother and you’re next but she got to go to Yoga.

I know this is a stupid movie and all but it raises some serious questions. You know how vampires are only allowed to go out at night so they sleep all day. But at night all vampires do is go clubbing which means they don’t really have a job. So how do vampires make money? Do they have a pension plan? Are they communist? If they are communist why hasn’t there been a Ronald Reagan the vampire slayer like there was with Abraham Lincoln? What would Reagan hate more the fact that they’re vampires or Commies?

Daredevil: 

Boy oh boy am I glad Netflix is a thing because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate how bad this movie really was.

On the other hand, this movie did follow the Golden Rule of superhero movies. Which decrees that it doesn’t matter how far down you fall, as long as you don’t land on the ground you will survive:

Eat your heart out nerds.

In this film we have Colin Farrell putting what is probably the worst performance of his career. Which is say a lot, if you ask me, because on the set of Miami Vice he was so addicted to drugs he didn’t remember a single frame of the movie. So for his sake I hope he was on drugs because this is probably the worst performance in a comic movie of all time. I am not even hyperbolizing it; this man was Adam Sandler level bad.

Beside that we have Ben Affleck who was preparing for his role as Batman 13 years before Batman Vs Super (#dedication). Think of Daredevil like a JV Batman. Actually Robin is JV Batman so think of Daredevil like JV JV Batman. Because instead of wearing a cool high tech black suit, he’s in some red spandex (do you even camo bro?). Plus, instead of having a utility belt he has a couple sticks that have the ability to change into different sticks (because swag). To boot, instead of having one of the most iconic logos of all time 2003 Ben Affleck leaves his initials at a crime scene.

I mean come on. Not even the most overzealous of adult actresses flaunt their double D’s this much.

In addition to all this lame stuff 2003 Ben Affleck is also in possession of the most removable mask of all time:

Which if you ask me is a little bit counterintuitive.

But hey, on the flip side instead of pretending to be a bat Daredevil actually has echolocation. So suck it 2016 Ben Affleck.

Blade:

The reason why Blade is ranked above Elektra is not because it’s any better plot, story or even CGI was. It’s ranked higher because it was bad in a make fun of it type of way. So even though I hated watching this movie I was entertained by its garbage cinema aspects.

In any case including Blade in this ranking is kind of cheating because the point of this article was to rank every superhero movie since X1 (the birth of the modern comic book movie). Blade came out before X1 (in 1998) but Blade 2 and 3 came out (sadly) after X1.

You can tell it came out in that year because is anything more 1998 than these glasses:

So in order to not cheat the loyal Z-score readers, I had to watch Blade 1. And after watching the first couple scenes I couldn’t not write about it.

So the movie starts out with a vampire girl bringing a regular human guy to a vampire techno club which is just like an ordinary club except that human blood occasionally falls from the ceiling, because ya know, vampires. Because the opposite of garlic for vampires is techno for reasons unclear to us.

The normal human guy isn’t too bright because what kind of disgusting person puts random blood in his mouth?

But before the vampires can eat this moron Blade shows up, and then hilarity ensues.

Blade is such an adept fighter that he is the first person in human (and vampire history) to nut punch a girl before shotgunning her in the face:

A true martial artist if you ask me.

After ruthlessly murdering almost everyone Blade has a chance to showcase that he uses Colgate:

This is the same face you make when a girl asks if you got a condom.

After not being able to murder Donald Logue (more on him later) he discovers a woman who was bitten by a vampire but not a vampire yet because like Amazon it takes like one to two business days to turn or something. This woman (unsurprisingly) becomes the female protagonist, but she is so flat, unemotional in her performance that you would think that Blade was about vampires fighting zombies (which would be a great movie btw).

After a bunch of lame and boring stuff, we learn that the main bad guy (Deacon Frost) is trying to revive a “blood god” which would turn everyone into a vampire just by looking at them. You know how people say that Chuck Norris was so potent that you could get pregnant just with eye contact. Well this blood god is just like Chuck Norris but instead of making you pregnant, you gain emortal youth (which is the opposite of parenthood). Deacon wants everyone to become a vampire which dosesn’t make a lot of sense because in order to survive vampires need to drink the blood of humans. So if there were no humans left what would vampires do for food?

Another thing vampires make out funny:

So everyone is a vampire does this mean everyone will make out like this?

I mean it’s not like Blade himself is any better:

It looks like Blade is giving a hickey for the first time.

You see this face. This is the face you make when you are realized that you are in the worst comic book movie franchise of all time.

As you guys can probably tell the plot and actors aren’t so great, so surely the fighting must take this movie to the next level:

I swear I didn’t edit that to make it look like that. Blade looks like he’s trying to show his friend his new pair of J’s.

Okay so the plot is bad, the action is terrible, but surely the CGI is like next level stuff:

In the last one check out how only his left leg doesn’t change.

I mean I get the fact that this movie came out in 1998, but the Matrix came out a year later.

I hope you guys were entertained by this but I now want to talk about a very serious thing that is near and dear to my heart. Which is, of course, the career of Donal Logue. As we saw already in Ghost Rider the man pours his heart out in mediocre films. He’s the Rudy Gay of the movie world. He puts up good stats on a bad team. Just look at some his Rotten Tomato Page:

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And none of this is his fault! He is literally the Forest Gump of Bad films.

I am so happy the dude that I always confuse Micheal Rapaport with has finally found a home in Gotham. One day soon, brother, you will be rewarded with a supporting role in a good comic book movie. This much I promise you.

Also this movie was 200 minutes long in case you thought the world was already cruel enough as is.

Ghost Rider:

Nicolas “keep getting them checks” Cage is back at it with the terrible movies and sub-par acting. Three things may be prompting Nick Cage to take crappy movie after crapy movie:

-He might have a terrible agent who has no idea what he is doing (not likely).

-He is suffering from severe financial debt and the only way out of this is by being in every movie known to man. This is not very likely but cocaine is expensive these days so you never know.

-He in the most sadistic ways enjoys being in these movies. He loves having a terrible script and plot to work with. He enjoys the look on everyone’s face when they realize that the movie they’re making is a piece of crap.

I personally reason that the last scenario is the most plausible.

Think about it.

Why would anyone in their right mind want to be in this Ghost Rider movie let alone two?

The CGI in this is almost comically bad (sorry) the plot is so typical. Everyone in this movie is phoning it in expect my man Donal Logue whose trying his hardest to try this elevate this horrendous movie.

Nick Cage also put in one of his worst performance of all time which is really saying something. His southern accent came, went and never came back. He had one of the worst fake laughs in the history of cinema:

But hey there is always some good in the bad. This is the movie where Fat Amy made her debut in the world. If you really think about it without this dumpster fire there would be no Fat Amy which means there would be no Pitch Perfect which also means there would be no Pitch Perfect 2. We can’t allow that can we?

This movie should serve as a testament as to why Sony should not be allowed to make comic movies anymore. I am glad they finally sold Spiderman to Marvel and I hope Ghost Rider ends up in the MCU sometime soon. He’s a cool antihero and if there is one thing the MCU is lacking is a cool antihero.

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance:

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance is the movie which pretty much killed Sony’s comic movie dreams and aspirations. Although they did have a brief renaissance with the Amazing Spiderman stuff. This movie put the nail in the coffin in Sony’s comic escapades. So for that, I would just like to thank Nick Cage. Because I believe that he took this movie with the sole goal of making them as terrible as possible.

This sounds crazy but think about it?

Do you think a Hollywood actor of good repute would be not one but two of the worst movies in recent memory?

I mean with an acting performance like this, which other conclusion are you ready to accept:

I mean come on:

Nick Cage has been miscast after all these years. Everyone thought of him as an actor as a fool. But really he’s a mad genius who almost sacrificed his acting career for Sony’s sins. I mean, how else are we going to justify his laugh: 

It’s also worth noting that I really hope Idris Elba was in on this conspiracy because the only other explanation is that he was drunk the entire time (like the character he’s playing). I say this with a heavy heart as well. Idris Elba (after Jennifer Lawrence) is the best.

Also PS: I don’t know how they got a video recording of my podcast:

Weird.

Elektra: 

So let me get this straight.

The second most annoying character in one of the worst comic book movies of all time gets a sequel, but Young Justice still doesn’t have a season 3 (#freeyoungjustice)?

(this was written before the new young justice season was announced which shows the power I have. Where my unpublished ramblings have the power to change the world).

Who’s in charge of all time stuff?

Anyways, back to this horrible wannabe Kung Fu movie which managed to accomplish something impossible. Make a movie worse than Daredevil.

Elektra is back like you’ve never seen her before. I mean really you’ve never seen her like this before. She has OCD now, went from black leather to red leather because she’s super edgy.

The first act of the movie starts off with Elektra killing everyone who looks her way. Only to 360 that whole premise 15 minutes into the movie because she had a nice conversation with the person she was supposed to murder. To be honest, if there is one antihero cliché that can’t die fast enough is when the antihero falls in love after one social interaction. Causing them to change their entire view on the world and by extension go rogue.

Call me a cynic. But I’m sorry no one (expect Jennifer Lawrence or maybe Nelson Mandela) can change your life with one conversation.

Besides that, I forgot to mention that some dialogue in Elektra is even worse than its CGI:

Which is really saying a lot:

Lastly, the second superhero cliché that I can’t wait to die. Is when the hero experienced a traumatic event as a child we have to watch the same scene every 10 minutes just in case we didn’t think it was annoying and unnecessary the first time.

The Incredible Hulk:

This movie is so bad on so many different levels. There is a very specific way to make a good Hulk movie and this isn’t it. The reason why this movie is so bad has very little to do with the execution and more to do with the set up of the movie.

We spend almost the entire movie with emo Banner who probably says 10 lines in 2 hours of film. Liv Tyler merely exists in this movie to scream in the highest pitch humanly possible. You can take away the entire first act of the movie and it would be of very little consequence.

This movie isn’t fun in the slightest and it wasn’t good as well. This combination of ineptitude makes for the worst type of movie.

This movie could have at least saved itself with a cool fight scene at the end. But like the rest of the movie, it was an abject disappointment.

Where better to showcase the awe-inspiring power of the Hulk than a densely populated area of New York City. How better to resolve a Hulk fight by letting one Hulk choke out another Hulk, you know instead of something about cooler?

I hated watching this movie the first time, I hated watching it the second time and I really hated writing about it.