This isn't a bad film by any means. But I was expecting a lot more from the launch of the new DCU. To keep it brief, Good action, too many characters, Lex steals the show and that suit is still meh. Felt like I'd already seen all the good parts in the trailer.
This film gets a pass from me. After the absolute **** up which was The Last Jedi, they were never going to be able to salvage anything with part 3 of the sequel trilogy. JJ Abrahams returns to try his best, but it ultimately falls short. For some reason, Palpatine is back. Mary Sue goes to fight him, then the third act rips off aspects of the far superior and far more successful Avengers: Endgame. I liken this entry to a Fast and Furious esqe film in the SW universe.
The single worst entity to ever be produced in the Star Wars universe. Imagine, if you will, someone being given the reigns to the most known movie franchise in the world. Then imagine that someone just completely ignoring everything that came before that, changing all of your beloved characters for the worse and defying dumbness and logic both at the same time. Do that and you have The Last Jedi. Not only did this film cripple any future plans for this trilogy, it was so bad it helped the Han Solo origin film flop. Legendary characters are killed off screen, iffy force powers are used and the most cringe inducing side quest ever recorded on film takes place within this three hour mess. I felt bad for Laura Dern, who makes her debut here in the franchise by portraying the dumbest character to ever appear in these films, which is saying something when Jar Jar Binks is a thing. Instead of watching this, Youtube videos about the cast complaining about this movie. It's far more entertaining.
Like Jurassic World six months prior to this, The Force Awakens softly remakes and reboots an original film in modern times and it comes off as a success. This is basically A New Hope, just shot with modern equipment. A loner stuck on a desert planet leaves their home to go fight a black masked bad guy who has an entire Empire at his back with the assistance of a smuggler, his furry companion and a rebellion. Sound familiar?
I don't like it when films recast iconic characters, so when I heard the money churning Disney was going to do a Han Solo origin film, I died a little inside. Now to this films credit, it isn't that bad. There are a couple of good moments here and there. However, due to the backlash surrounding The Last Jedi, the Disney/Star Wars error was on it's arse only four films in. This film was apparently a production nightmare, it is far too long and has too many moving parts.
When it was announced that Disney had bought LucasFilm and would now be churning Star Wars content out like no tomorrow, my heart sank. When this film was announced, I thought to myself why the hell would we need to see a film about how the Rebels stole the plans for the Death Star, something briefly mentioned in the original film 40 years prior. I could not have been more surprised. Great acting, great script and great action including a now iconic hallway scene. The CGI faces of deceased actors in this film is a little off putting, but never the less Rogue One is one of the better Star Wars entries.
The best of the three prequels, Revenge finally brings an end to the Clone Wars, the Jedi and births Darth Vader in spectacular fashion. The opening sequence alone is incredible and one of the best I have seen in the history of Cinema. This film also has the greatest lightsaber fighting out of the entire franchise.
Some cool lightsaber fights save this from being totally and utterly horrific. Hayden C's acting in this film combined with George L's writing is something to behold.
This was the first Star Wars film I ever watched and it did make me fall in love with the franchise. I'm a 90s baby, so the OG trilogy wasn't know to me at this point in my life and this film was everything. Years later, I now understand some of the hate. But it's no where near as bad as people make out.
I know a lot of people feel this is the best of the three from the original trilogy and I can't fault their argument. It contains one of the most well known scenes in Cinema history.
It's almost as if FOX knew Disney owned them now and thought "**** it, lets bury this franchise once and for all". A hopeless money grab which yet again fails the Dark Phoenix arc. 0-2 when it comes to that. This was the final nail in the coffin for the FOX X-Men franchise. I know New Mutants was technically the last, but this was the last with the cast we had become familiar with.
Marvel/Disney finally purchased FOX studios and acquired the rights to any and all X-men films. While a few mutants had already popped up, this was the first major film featuring them inside the MCU. Jackman returns to the character that made him after his sombre exit in Logan years prior. This is an improvement over the second Deadpool film but is once again full of fan service, as this is where we are now at with the MCU. However, its fan service done right and is entertaining from beginning to end.
As good as a super hero film as you will ever see. This was originally Hugh Jackmans last ride as Wolverine and it was a fitting ending for him and his character.
The hot streak had to come to an end at some point. Back with the younger cast, Apocalypse introduces the X-men's big bad. Unfortunately, it seems they based him on Ivan Ooze from the 1995 Power Rangers movie. The plot is it's downfall.
Deadpool was the first big budget R rated movie to come along in a very, very long time and one that Fox didn't seem to determined to get behind. That changed after a trailer "leaked" and the fandom went insane at the possibility of a Deadpool film being done right. It isn't a perfect film by any means and stands alone from the rest of the series for the most part. It also undoes some of the retcons done in Days of Future past, but overall is a really entertaining film.
I really enjoyed Days of Future Past and believe it's one of the better X-Men films. Blending both the original and new school casts together in a time travel scheme, the results are entertainingly good. It also retcons a lot of the previous films in a good way, which sets the slate clean for the franchise moving forward.
Better than X-men Origins: Wolverine, but still not an amazing film. This time we see Logan in Japan. I feel this film was most centred around the post credit scene. MCU was in full swing by this point, and the competition was rife.
Originally intended to be an origin story for Magneto, Fox changed direction after the release of X-men Origins: Wolverine. And they made the right choice in doing so. The best film in the series since the first two, a new cast of actors taking on younger versions of the originals gave this series a much needed revival
Post the original trilogy, it was determined that Origin stories were the route to go (Thank you, Chris Nolan), with the first one being the most popular X-men character, Wolverine. However, this entry had a terrible script, terrible recasts along with terrible CGI and character choices. We got our first live action performance of Deadpool by Ryan Reynolds here, even thought he is nothing like the Deadpool we love and know (to the point they actually zip his mouth shut). The film also leaked online prior to it's release, which damaged its box office even more.
The first two X-Men films were incredible and rounding out the trilogy is this absolute mess of a film. Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two movies had left to go and make Superman Returns (one of the most boring superhero movies ever made) and Brett Ratner took over director duties. It's pretty much more of the same, a world ending event in the midst of things that the X-men need to thwart, but it just isn't as good. And it wouldn't be the first time this Dark Phoenix arc would be butchered on film.
It's something of a rarity when a superhero sequel is better than the original, but somehow X2 managed to pull this off. A better story and a lot more action packed than it's predecessor, it's probably one of the best X-Men films ever made.
The first Superhero team up movie I ever watched and what a film it was! Launching what would become a 13 film franchise, X-Men dominated the early 2000's and rightfully so. This film was a great introduction to a whole host of mutants we would be seeing over the next couple of decades.
If you'd have told me a super hero film directed by Andy Serkis featuring Tom Hardy and Woody H would be mediocre, I would have laughed in your face. However, some how it happened. The early 2000s superhero quirk of the original Venom is lost here as it tries to build and expand it's Sony Universe. This is the issue Sony seems to always fall short on (Exampe: Amazing Spiderman 2 being more about setting up a universe than actually focussing on Spiderman). It was all down hill from here.
I actually quite enjoyed Venom. It's was some what of a call back to the early 2000 super hero film, before the MCU format came along. The first film in the so called "Sony Spiderman Universe", it unfortunately never got any better than this. But then again why would it, how can you have a Spiderman Universe without Spiderman? These films were made purely for Sony to keep the rights to Spiderman and his rogue gallery.
James Gunn jumped ship to DC after being cancelled and dropped in an instant by Disney (ironic now as he is running DC Films) and his first entry was The Suicide Squad. A light sequel to the terrible original, this one is far superior out of the two films. It's basically an R Rated Guardians film.
Without a doubt the best entry in the DCEU, even if it isn't classed as cannon. This is Snyder at his best. A solid story, character development all around and setups for future projects. It's a shame we got the Whedon drivel before this one. This didn't need to be 4 hours long either, but WB had a streaming app to launch and needed money to make!
Margot joins the list of DCEU actors that are fantastic as their character but displayed in piss poor films. This girl power, feminism slog of a film just added to the misery of the DCEU. It also followed in Shazams footsteps of showing us characters we have been introduced to, without showing us their face because the original actor had current beef with Warner Brothers. Ewan McGregor has a great turn out however as the bad guy Black Mask!
The DCEU was once more trying to follow the MCU movie format and what we got as a result of this was Shazam. It has some funny moments here and there, but again. Nothing we haven't seen before.
It always baffled me how this film made over a billion dollars at the box office. It's stunning to look at, but it isn't really anything new. The most MCU film of the DCEU at the point of release might have contributed to it's success.
Once again Warner Brothers screws the pooch. After the tragic death of Zack Snyder's daughter, they brought in Avengers Director Joss Whedon to finish the film (still leaving Snyder on the credits as the director however). Whedon and WB then decided to reshoot the entire film, bloating the budget to around the 300 million mark. It's terrible, far too campy and bright compared to previous entries (like it went too bright if that makes sense) and who can forget the horrific moustache removal on Cavill's Superman. The is absolutely no character development to be had here and when you finally watch Zack Snyder's Justice League, you will see why.
I remember being pleasantly surprised by this film after viewing it for the first time. Gal Gadot is for the most part, a terrible actress. But her best work was always with the lasso in hand.
Warner Brothers will never learn their lesson. Admittedly, when I first saw the trailer for Suicide Squad I thought "Oh great, another dark and gritty DCEU entry". Then due to the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool, WB decided to stop chopping, editing and reshooting this to try and make it something it wasn't. Which just doesn't work. The plot is a mess, the reshoots are obvious (the haircuts changing in the final battle sticking out particularly well) Jared Leto's Joker just might be the worst comic book adaptation to hit the big screen in recent memory. Following Ledgers iconic performance which would never be topped was always going to be difficult, but this, this is just bad. The Joker in this film is nothing more than a common gangster, who acts like Ace Ventura in makeup.
Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck have similar legacies in the superhero drama. In the DCEU, they both played their respective characters really, really well, just in bad films for the most part. Made to try and play catch up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, BvS should have been so much more. Again, it's too damn dark and gritty, something I believe Snyder never quite figured out. The theatrical release had major plot points cut out of it just to save half an hour, so if you do watch this please watch the Ultimate Edition.
It took me a while to appreciate Man of Steel. S Goyer informed Nolan during the filming of The Dark Knight that he had "figured out how to do Superman" in a realistic setting. For the most part, that is correct. Snyder as director perhaps wasn't the greatest choice. He is an excellent cinematographer by all means, but as a director, I feel he always does the opposite to what the fans actually want. It is a good film. It's Superman in the real world. But there are some parts in here that just don't make sense. Its dark. Almost too dark.
The first Nolan film I ever watched was Insomnia and it had me hooked right from the beginning. Williams and Pacino are both fantastic from the start to the finish.
With the death of Heath Ledger shortly before the release of The Dark Knight, the future of the series was always up in the air as to what they would do next. Some how, Nolan manages to bring the best super hero film trilogy of all time to a fitting close. Don't get me wrong it isn't perfect, but on it's worst day it's still better than most.
The single greatest super hero movie ever made. Game changing, genre changing. There hasn't been a super hero film as good as this since. Heath Ledgers performance of The Joker is in my eyes, the single greatest piece of acting I have ever witnessed.
I genuinely believe this is one of the most underrated superhero films to ever grace the big screen. This was the beginning of Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy and the first glimpse at where the genre was heading, in a gritty, realistic setting.
One of the better war time films made in recent years, which looks and sounds incredible. The only thing I could do without is the constant jump between scenes Nolan seems obsessed with here. But other than that, a really good film!
Sonic 2 is a surprisingly good sequel to what was a surprisingly good debut film. It appears that Hollywood might have finally figured out Video game adaptations.
Surprisingly good to say the film was bullied into a delay (rightly so!) by the internet over the original design of Sonic. Jim Carrey is back to his best here.
Sonic 3 isn't a perfect movie by any means. But it does what its here to do - entertain. Keanu Reeves is a brilliant casting choice as Shadow the Hedgehog along with the returning Jim Carrey pulling double duty. This is as close to 1990s Jim Carrey as we have been since 1990s Jim Carrey!
I didn't think it would be possible for them to make a film worse than Fallen Kingdom, but good lord they managed to do so. The original trio are back for the first time since 1993 and this is an absolute slap in the face to their legacy. Pratt phones it in. Howard looks like she would rather be somewhere else but the star of the show is without a doubt DeWanda Wise. I have never seen such porno level acting in a big budget film like this before. This cargo smuggling, all dinosaur knowing wannabe bad ass is horrific from the moment she graces the screen till the moment she leaves. There's a reason she's only acted 5 more times since this came out. JW: Rebirth is on the way, and good lord does it need one.
