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banjodanger · 4 years ago

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X-Men:First Class(2011) Afterthoughts

Oh boy, I’ve been dragging ass posting this. Honestly, I’m just going to start by saying this is, so far, the best X-Men film. I can’t imagine it will slip that far in my personal rankings after everything is finished, either. This is might actually be the best one of the whole series, and therein lies my problem. How am I supposed to be funny when things are good? “Oh no, this movie is just TOO competently directed and acted! The shame!” I’m not setting this up to say this is a perfect movie, but as far as the X-Men series this movie stands as damn close to the pinnacle. And this franchise needed this movie too, remember that this movie was doing clean up duty for five years of misfires. X2 had been the last well-received movie, and that came out nine years previous to this one. They definitely needed a win and they got it with this one.

I want to begin by saying I’m not always a big fan of prequels. I feel like a lot of prequels don’t add a lot to the story we already enjoyed and a lot them rely on our familiarity with the characters to carry them through by-the-numbers plots. We already saw that with Origins, it was very easy to tell who was going to survive and who wasn’t. And while I won’t argue that this movie isn’t revelatory in terms of plotting, at least the revenge story comes to a more logical conclusion. The movie succeeds on that point by making the focus of the revenge not the character, but transforming Erik into Magneto. It’s one of the many reasons I love that shot of him forcing the coin through Shaw’s head tracking through Xavier’s at the same time. It’s him severing his connection with that path.

I’d argue that the main cast is easily the biggest key to the success of this movie. Moreso than any of the movies that came before it, this cast actually looks like they might spend time around each other once the cameras stop rolling. Look, I think the first two movies are good but if you told me James Marsden and Famke Janssen met at a bus station catching a ride to the movie shoot I wouldn’t have much of an argument. Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence have more chemistry in one scene than Cyclops and Jean Grey show in three whole movies. Well, two and a half. Ratner did him super dirty.

James Mcavoy does a great job as Charles Xavier. I think the first trilogy tried to make him too much of an altruist, then finally crammed some classic Xavier dickishness into the third film while still making him out into a martyr. This movie does a better job of presenting him as a flawed character, a guy with big dreams and ideas who still makes mistakes. I appreciate that the movie draws special attention to the fact that he argues for mutants while at the same time being visibly disgusted by Mystique’s natural form. I really appreciate the movie showing his own biases and not making him the pure hero the first trilogy mostly painted him as.

I could praise each actor individually but I’m not looking to make this post fifty pages. However, I’d like to single out Michael Fassbender simply because he most resembles his counterpart in the first trilogy. Poetic and unforgiving, rage and intelligence, he makes an absolutely perfect Magneto, and throughout his next four appearances he is always watchable. His scene on Genosha is one of the few things i can still recall over a year after seeing Dark Phoenix.

I want to get into it with this movie, by which I mean Darwin’s death. I mentioned it in my previous post, and I got a couple things wrong. Angel doesn’t defect after his death, she defects before, and he attempts to stop her. So instead of a completely senseless death it’s only kind of senseless. And it still doesn’t feel right. I sat through two consecutive viewings of this one and this was one of the hardest scenes to sit through, simply because it brings the movie to a halt, and not in the way the filmmakers intended. It feels wrong in a property that is supposed to be an allegory for racism and oppression.

About that...this whole movie takes place in the sixties, a few years before the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act. Yet we don’t see so much as a glimpse of either Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, who theoretically should have been hot topics of discussion. It took some repeat viewings but the absence of any discussion stands out more and more, especially because Jack Kirby and Stan Lee based Xavier and Magneto on King and Malcolm. I’ll give the movie some credit, mutants are unknown to the larger world for ninety percent of this movie, so there’s not a whole lot of room for parallels to be drawn. There’s a lot of ignorant people out there that deny racism, but you’ll find considerably fewer that deny the existence of black people outright.

I’m also going to mention that had they tried to include footage of King or Malcolm X, or had actors play them, that it would have been at best a horrific mistake. Absence is preferable to tone-deaf misfire.

On a much smaller scale, Shaw’s plan isn’t really given a whole lot of screen time, and that’s a very good thing because Shaw’s plan is fucking ludicrous. Actually, let me rephrase; his plan is fifty percent ludicrous. To summarize, Shaw is playing both Russia and the United States against each other in order to escalate the Cold War. He’s goading both sides into placing missiles in nearby territories. That’s a good plan, he’s playing both sides to come out on top, he probably stands to make a bunch of money of the construction of those...oh, no, his plan is for the ensuing nuclear fallout to create more mutants. Look, I know the X-Men are nicknamed “Children of the Atom” and a few of the original origin stories involve nuclear radiation. But those are also fifty years old, when kids were hiding under their desks for bomb drills. In 2011, that plan is dumb, all Shaw is going to do is kill a lot of people and make a lot of land uninhabitable. He should be thanking the X-men for showing up and ruining his plan. Except he can’t because Erik drove a coin through his brain.

Which is probably the point, Shaw’s plan doesn’t matter. He could be planning to steal cable for all his plan matters. We’re not here to see the X-Men defeat the bad guy, we’re here to see Charles and Erik become Professor X and Magneto. We’re here to see the great fall out between two friends that became bitter enemies over the future of their entire species. We’re here to...watch Beast and Mystique flirt? Honestly didn’t know that’s what I bought the ticket for but yea, I’m into it.

So far, I’d call this one of the best X-Men movies, if not the best. There’s just about everything in this movie that I look for in an X-Men story. There’s great action, there’s romance, there’s Xavier and Magneto giving each other steamy looks. The movie isn’t without problems, but no movie is perfect and certainly not in this series. Oh, and since I haven’t done this yet...

Budget: 160 Million

First Weekend: 55 Million

Total Gross: 352 Million

Coming up next, the only movie that directly addresses the aftermath of Ratner’s Mistake is Wolverine’s second solo film. It’s..pretty good?

#xmen #xmenmovies #Movie Critic #xmencomics #x men first class #movie review

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xavierfiles-blog · 6 years ago

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When Will Marvel Stop Being Cowards And Let Nightcrawler Be Amazing?

In AGE OF X-MAN: THE AMAZING NIGHTCRAWLER #1 by, Seanan McGuire and Juan Frigeri everyone’s favorite blue and fuzzy mutant is the most popular and famous figure in the world. This is the best indication we have that this alternate reality is actually the utopia it is claimed to be. Over forty years past his introduction and it still shocks me the Kurt Wagner isn’t the biggest name, not just in comics, but in media as a whole. Nightcrawler possesses the winning combination of an incredible and visually exciting design alongside a charming and likable personality. He has been beloved by X-Men fans for generations but has not been able to teleport himself out of that bubble and into solo success.

It isn’t that Kurt has been ignored, writers pretty much immediately got the appeal. Nightcrawler was a pet character for his creator, Dave Cockrum. While Dave was drawing UNCANNY X-MEN and Chris Claremont was writing, Nightcrawler seemed to be the break-out character, pulling a lot of focus. This lessened after John Byrne began drawing the title and wanted to focus on the Canadian Wolverine. Still, Nightcrawler remained a popular mutant. He was the second X-Man to get a solo mini-series and briefly led the X-Men in the mid-80s. During the mutant madness of the early 90s, Nightcrawler was positioned as the lead character in Excalibur. But as time went on it became clear that no one was able to figure out what to do with the character.

Credit to Marvel, it hasn’t been for lack of trying. Nightcrawler just started his 5th solo series, but none of them have lasted past issue #12. While the jury is still out on THE AMAZING NIGHTCRAWLER (it had an enjoyable but imperfect first issue), only one of his solo series actually got to the core of what works about the character. Dave Cockrum’s 1985 NIGHTCRAWLER limited series sees Kurt on a swashbuckling adventure where he gets to become a pirate, save a princess, and live out his Errol Flynn fantasies. It isn’t a self-serious character piece or an examination on the human condition, it is just a beautiful drawn romp by way of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is the sweet spot for Nightcrawler.

Other attempts to kick off a story about the character fell on their face by looking at the wrong aspects of Nightcrawler. Chris Kipiniak and Matthew Dow Smith’s 2002 NIGHTCRAWLER for the Marvel Icons line examined a relatively recent (at the time) development for the character, his ordination into the Catholic priesthood. Ignoring the fact that no one involved in this story knew how priest work, it is an interesting angle, but one that fundamentally changes the character and his appeal. Up until around 2000, Nightcrawler’s faith was an aspect of the character, but not the defining one. He was religious in the way most religious people are. It was part of his life sure, but it didn’t define every action he made. Kurt wasn’t one to go on moody diatribes about the existential nature of faith. This series focused on that at the expense of the joy and energy that normally comes when Nightcrawler is on the page.

I’m curious why external media choses to play up this aspect of the character. In both his appearance on X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and X2: X-MEN UNITED, Kurt’s defining characteristic is his piousness. Perhaps the creators see the appeal of exploring the duality of a demon on the side of angels, but in execution it never goes deeper than that. I wouldn’t advocate for eliminating his faith, it is an interesting dimension to the character, only to balance it with other aspects of his personality.

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Darick Robertson tried again in 2004 with a book that leaned really hard into the supernatural. This is post-Draco, a horrible story when Kurt was revealed to be the son of a satan. It mixed those ideas with the well-established concept that his adopted mother, Margali Szardos, and his sister/lover were both powerful sorceresses. Again, this could be a fun concept if it was just Nightcrawler plus magic. Instead it became an overly dark and serious story about exorcism, abuse, and the destruction of relationships.

The crux of this twelve issue series deals with Nightcrawler’s brother Stefan Szardos. Kurt was forced to kill a demon possessed Stefan to prevent his brother from murdering children. This led to the formation of the mob the chased Kurt in GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1. It’s a dark origin for the character, and one most writers tend to leave in the past. It doesn’t play to any of the swashbuckling strengths that Nightcrawler has and doubles down on some of the worst tendencies of mid-00s comics. The last issue is Nightcrawler having an existential crisis while talking to Mephisto. It isn’t what anyone wanted from the character and that tone is a big reason why it didn’t resonate with readers.

The closest we have gotten to a Nightcrawler ongoing that actually worked was Chris Claremont and Todd Nauck’s 2014 series. It came in the aftermath of Nightcrawler fighting his way out of heaven and hell to come back to life in Jason Aaron’s AMAZING X-MEN. Tonally, the book hit a sweet spot, while probably leaning into the X-Men elements of the character too much to make it stand out. The first arc dealt with magic thanks to the return of Margali Szardos, but it was done in a whimsical, Excaliburesque way. Claremont smartly built up a unique supporting cast around Kurt, including the students Ziggy and Scorpion Boy, and an antagonistic love interest in the form of The Crimson Pirates’ Bloody Bess. Nauck’s artwork elevated the series by providing a joy that is essential to the character.

Unfortunately, the series had several roadblocks to success. Claremont’s tone and character voices were as good as his plots were bad. It was a mishmash of canon that was better left forgotten with a writing style that never evolved out of the 80s. The market dynamics at the time did little to help the book last. AMAZING X-MEN had just recently begun, and it was already marketed as the “Nightcrawler book”. Many customers weren’t going to double dip on the character. At the same time, Marvel was starting solo series for MAGNETO, CYCLOPS, STORM, and DOOP. Those existed in tandem with five other X-Men team books, two Wolverine books, and two books featuring secondary X-Teams. The market was flooded with X-Men and Nightcrawler didn’t stand a chance.

Even with these failures, Kurt Wagner remains beloved and his current mini speaks to that. In the Age of X-Man, the only intelligent thing Nate Grey did was make Nightcrawler the biggest star in the world. He is a celebrity in every sense of the word. He is beloved and iconic as a movie star and the premier superhero. It is no coincidence that the book is titled THE AMAZING NIGHTCRAWLER, or that the logo is a riff on Spider-Man’s. In the Age of X-Man, Kurt is as loved and well known as Spider-Man is our world. The trick is replicating that adoration.

Nightcrawler should be a slam dunk as a solo hero outside of the X-Men. If writers can lean into the swashbuckling adventure and away from existential questions of religion, they have a shot at making Nightcrawler a world-wide phenomenon. Let Kurt fight The Spot or Kraven The Hunter to get him out of the bubble of the X-Men. Let him join the Avengers and prove his mettle against the biggest threats. Let my dude be what Spider-Man is, the iconic character of the Marvel Universe. He deserves it.

PS: Give him his damn beard back!

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sharksfood · 8 years ago

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so this thought just came into my head and i want to explore it.

in my life i’ve only seen 3 films so far that i read as books before they became movies. im not counting comic books/graphic novels that became movies bcs thats a little different, books that became tv shows, or plays that became movies. but its interesting to think about that.

i didnt read harry potter until well after the films (all of them lmao) were released, i’ve never read how to train your dragon, i’ve never read the hobbit/lotr, the animated alice in wonderland came out in the 50s, i have only recently read the last unicorn, i read World War Z after the movie came out (and ive never seen all of the movie), and i read the neverending story when i was cast in the play.

the books that i read before they came out in film are; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Warm Bodies, and Goosebumps.

Goosebumps kind of fits but it was made into a tv series first, and im not sure if i read the books or saw the shows first. i did both, i know that much.

I read Warm Bodies only bcs I wanted to see the movie but thought the book would be cool to read (its amazing and has a completely different feel from the movie), and Lion Witch Wardrobe was bcs my dad read it to me when I was younger. That and The Magician’s Nephew are the only Narnia books ive ever read.

I was going to try and read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children before the movie came out, but that work out for me.

if you want to count comics and graphic novels, then the list gets bigger. but comics already have the characters drawn out, so unlike books, you dont have an idea in your head on what the character looks like. that is so often changed in film, plus you loose so much detail and nuance when you go book to screenplay to film (this is also true with comics, but its still different)

However, and the biggest reason as to why I’m thinking about this, two movies will be coming out in the next few years, and both of them are based on my favorite books of all time (aside from the alice books of course).

The first is Captain Underpants! I know that this is a book series with words and pictures, so technically its a graphic novel series, but they’re kids books! and those tend to have an awful lot of pictures. This series was my FAVORITE (other than the alice books) as a kid!! they were fun, hilarious, relatable, and just all around super great. So when i saw the trailer for the animated film that’s coming out this year based on the series i was ECSTATIC!! Were it live-action i would be bummed out since kids picture books usually fair better when animated (im not a fan of the diary of a wimpy kid movies....) but this animation is handled a lot like The Peanuts movie. The animation look like a color and 3D version of the exact art style!! its wonderful and im SO EXCITED

The other one, and this i am VERY VERY nervous about, is Ready Player One. that is my favorite sci-fi novel ever. i often say its my favorite book ever bc it deserves more love! and i do so much love it. ive reread it i dont even know how many times. and what do you know, they’re making it into a movie!! when i heard about this i had so many mixed feelings, and most of it has to do with the style of the book and the characters.

-Ready Player One Spoilers-

In Ready Player One the protagonist starts out as a dirt poor, fat, unattractive teen boy, and later he gets more physically fit/healthy and rich. he claims to still be unattractive at this point (mostly bcs he jues doesnt like how he looks and he looses all his body hair). this is very important to the character! i’m afraid that in this movie hollywood will do as they always do and make him a skinny conventionally attractive teen from the get-go. people will probably pull the Holes excuse of “the filmmakers didnt want to make the actor gain a bunch of weight and then loose it all” BULLSHIT they can cast a fat actor! and through his training and as they film the movie he can loose some weight or they can use movie magic (like when they made chris evans a scrawny little thing). its not that hard, people.

Another character, and this was super important to me and was a big subplot, is that Wade best friend, Aech, whom he only knows through the game (OASIS) plays as a white, straight, guy avatar, but they’re actually a black lesbian named Helen. And she plays this avatar to protect herself and to get a job and be taken seriously within OASIS. is super sad she has to do this, but its a big part of her character. she’s also fat as well, and im REALLY worried that in the movie she’s going to be a skinny straight white girl.

Two other characters who have important characteristics are Art3mis (Samantha) and the creator of OASIS James Halliday. Art3mis is Wade later love interest and GF. She is notable bcs her avatar is just like her, a chubby girl with black hair, but sans her port-wine birthmark. I know they’ll keep her birthmark, since its an intimate reveal, but they’ll probably make her skinny and i hate it. Now it’s only half canon in the books, but i’ve chosen to go with it, but at one point Wade talks about James Halliday’s childhood and his personality and all that, and mentions that he might have been autistic. Now, since it’s only he “might have been” in the books, the filmmakers will probably not make him autistic. That’s fucking sad to me, I mean, it would be amazing!! This character is one of the smartest, most famous, most prolific video game programmers/designers in history!! And he’s autistic! That is some wonderful representation and the filmmakers should jump on that opportunity. It’ll inspire so many autistic people who have a passion for video games to pursue their dreams. But, i have a hunch they wont go with it.

Two other characters, Daito and Shoto, are Japanese young guys who claim to be brothers (and their characters are) but are just friends in the real world. My initial hunch was that the filmmakers would keep them Japanese, but given the recent whitewashing of important Japanese characters, I have my doubts.

My few other concerns are that this movie won’t have 80s pop culture as the main style and focus of the era they book is set in, not to mention OASIS and most of people’s interests. It’s incredibly important to the novel, but so many dystopian movies choose to go with gritty, futuristic, edgy stuff. The other concern is how they will handle the real life vs OASIS look, since over half of the book takes place inside a VR video game. I’ve seen news that they are utilizing VR technology, but i havent read too much. I’m wondering if they’ll animate all of OASIS and the avatars and action and anything in the video game! That would be awesome.

So these are all my thoughts. I havent looks at who they’ve cast yet, so I’m going to do that right now. I do know that Steven Spielberg is directing it, which could be fantastic or terrible. Okay, cast time.

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So the IMDB doesnt say who is cast as Daito and Shoto, but Wikipedia says that Win Morisaki of PrizmaX will play him, which is great! I hope that’s what happens.

Art3mis/Samantha will be played by Olivia Cooke, who in my opinion is way too old. She’s older than me! The character’s age (i think) isnt mentioned in the book, but she’s got to be 17-20, and Olivia Cooke looks older than that. She’s also not chubby, but hey, maybe they’ll fit that. She also doesnt have the birthmark, but that’s gonna be makeup. (wouldve been cool if they found an actress with a port-wine stain on her face...)

Parzival/Wade will be played by Ty Sheridan. He was Cyclops in X-Men Apocalypse. He’s the right age, but way too fit and attractive. DAMN IT Well, I guess there’s always makeup and special effects, but i’m 80% sure now they wont make Wade fat.....

Aech/Helen will be played by Lena Waithe who is almost PERFECT. She’s much older than Aech, who is around 18, but like Samantha i imagine they’ll have make up and acting to cover it. My biggest concern is that she’s not fat like Aech, which means they’ll use a body suit or effects or Lena will gain weight, or they wont do anything.....

T.J. Miller will be playing I-r0k, who is another OASIS player and a bigtime douchebag jerk. This is perfect. We don’t know his age, or really anything other than his personality and avatar, and T.J. Miller is hilarious so this/ll be great.

Mark Rylance will be playing James Halliday, witch is fine by me. He’s not quite what I imagined, but thats what makeup and wigs are for. He’s worked a lot with Steven Spielberg, so that makes sense as to why he’s cast here. I just hope he can portray an autistic character well and with respect.... (would be better if he IS autistic but ya know.....)

Simon Pegg will be playing Ogden Morrow, the co-creator of OASIS, and thats perfect. No complaints.

Nolan Sorrento (the antagonist of the book and head of operations at Innovative Online Industries) will be played by Ben Mendelsohn, who was Director Krennic in Rouge One. He is much older and not quite and slimy as I imagined him, but this can totally work. I pictured Nolan Sorrento as Andrew Scott in my head, since he seems like the perfect evil, charismatic, slimy, attractive but ugly inside business man.

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So, after looking at the current casting choices im a little let down, but still excited! I’ll have to wait patienly for the trailer, since this thing is coming out in 2018. Dang, this turned into a Ready Player One post, but its been on my mind recently.

If you read through all of this, good job! let me know what you think! i probably dont talk about Ready Player One very often but thats bcs i dont know anyone in real life (other than my dad) who has read this book, and the online fandom seems nonexistent. Who knows?

But yeah, I guess I made this post bcs I wasn’t able to share the collective nervousness, complaints, and excitement of Harry Potter or LotR or Percy Jackson fans when their fav books became movies.

#babble #i talk a lot about books and movies #mostly ready player one lmao

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ostermahaus · 8 years ago

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It’s Morphin’ Time! Eventually... Power Rangers Review

Saban’s Power Rangers opens darkly. You see a blasted torn up landscape of prehistoric Earth with the Red Ranger dragging himself across it, obviously injured. He crawls to the Yellow Ranger, also lying prone who morphs into an alien and hands her coin to him, telling him to hide it before dying in his arms. Yikes. He morphs into Zordon (Bryan Cranston) and puts his coin with the others he’s carrying, instructing Alpha via communicator to fire a meteorite at his current location. He turns to find himself face to face with a female Green Ranger named Rita (Elizabeth Banks) who he accuses of being a traitor and killing his team. She boasts that she’s won when Zordon informs her it’s too late and a meteor comes crashing down on them sending her to the bottom of the sea. Also wiping out the dinosaurs, I presume. I guess nuking from orbit was the only way to be sure. Smash cut to a bunch of jocks leading a bull into a locker room as a prank and we meet Jason Scott (Dacre Montgomery) who informs us that he calmed the cow down by milking it. Womp womp. Your protagonist can’t tell an udder from a dong, not a great start. The cops show up and after the most nausea inducing go-pro car chase I’ve ever encountered (Seriously, I saw Gravity on the UltraScreen in 3D and this almost made me vomit) he gets in a horrific wreck and we have a title screen. Go go Power Rangers? If you never watched the show this may seem exciting. If you did, well here’s why it might not be what you were expecting.

Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers hit children in 1993 with a blast of popularity that overpowered the Ninja Turtles and kept kids riveted until Pokemon came along at the end of the decade! A Japanese import, it was cheesy, silly, campy and formulaic and pre-teens ate it up! As well as some teens. I was just hitting the age where I felt like I was outgrowing Saturday morning/after school shows (Thank God that phase didn’t last) so I was never a die hard fan, but I knew enough people that were that I kept abreast of the original shows run. I watched a fair number of episodes with my friends more due to our love of riffing it a la Mystery Science Theater 3000 than anything else… Although I will admit that Kimberly (Amy Jo Johnson) kept me on board a bit as well. The premise was simple. Five teenagers from Angel Grove are given magic coins that allow them to morph into Power Rangers. Spandex clad ninjas with full coverage helmets who can summon robot dinosaurs called Zords and merge them Voltron style into a giant Mega Zord to win the day. They answer to Zordon, a giant holographic head, and fight the monsters that Rita Repulsa repeatedly sends down from the moon. Ninjas, dinosaurs and giant robots. It was famous for the obvious cut between the American actors doing their day to day thing and the original Japanese footage being used once they were in costume. Ever wonder why Kimberly was the only Ranger wearing a skirt? Because the Yellow Ranger in that Japanese footage is a dude. (The more you know!) That’s all you needed and it’s still on the air in some iteration to this day! Why mess with a good thing? If it’s not broke, right?

Unfortunately Hollywood is following a current and overused trend of trying to make things dark and gritty when they reboot them right now. That’s not to say it can’t work, but it really feels like a forced excutive decision by the movie companies some times. This new Power Rangers update has a lot of things that work really well for it as they try to make a serious and less campy approach to one of the most popular cheese fests ever. They also make some big missteps. I know that Zordon famously asked for “teenagers with attitude” in the original and wound up with the nicest kids in town, but this version makes an over correction by having three of them meet in detention and one of them just not go to school at all. Turns out Jason has to wear an ankle bracelet now and report to detention for the rest of the year and lost all sorts of football scholarships. As soon as he walks in he sees Billy (RJ Cyler) being bullied for OCD behavior arranging things on his desk. Jason puts a stop to it and Billy immediately declares him his new best friend for sticking up for him! I really liked Billy in this movie, but they make a very clear point early on to have him state that he’s on the autism spectrum and they play it pretty well until he becomes a Ranger. Then it just seems to disappear and he’s merely giddy all the time. He’s adorkable, sure, and probably the most likeable character but it would have been nice to see them stick to his spectrum tendencies. Jason is fairly dismissive until he offers to use his skills to hack Jason’s ankle bracelet in order for them to hang out. How all true friendships begin!

Next we meet Kimberly Heart (Naomi Scott) who was set up by her cheerleader ‘friends’ for an incriminating picture that’s been circulating around school and they show up to inform her that she no longer gets to be a plastic. It makes her so angry that she gives herself a kicky new haircut in the bathroom that Jason is immediately smitten by when she returns from the restroom! After Billy hacks the ankle device, he and Jason go into a restricted area of the gold mine outside Angel Grove because apparently Billy likes to blast there. Even though it’s an active mine with security. Shrug While Billy is setting his charges, Jason goes off to hike around and spies Kimberly cliff diving while We get Zack (Ludi Lin) and Trini (Becky G.) dropped in as just random kids who are also hanging out in an active work zone after dark. Her to practice her Karate Kid poses and him to watch her through binoculars. Like you do. Anyway, Billy’s blast draws them all and they discover 5 glowing coins embedded in the rock. After cutting them out, they each grab one and then alarms go off, summoning security and another slightly less vomit inducing chase that AGAIN ends in a horrific crash, this time with a train. The next morning they all wake up at home with no injuries and no knowledge of how they survived the wreck, plus sick abs and super strength! Wanna know how they managed that without being seen? Or what Billy’s mom’s reaction is to the destruction of HER van? (You see the wreck later on being pulled off the tracks) You’re out of luck! Anyway, they get together and decide to go back to try to find answers about the coins and discover a buried spaceship manned by Alpha 5 (Bill Hader) and Zordon’s memory in the ship’s computer. He informs them that they’re the Power Rangers and they need to learn to defend the universe once they can learn to morph! Eventually…

I don’t know if it came with the casting of Bryan Cranston but the biggest drawback of this film is that at 2 hours almost every minute of the Rangers suited up has been shown in the trailers because it only happens in the films final action scene, similar to my beef with Godzilla not having enough Godzilla. There are training montages aplenty and I really did appreciate the effort it made to give the core cast some substance behind there characters that wasn’t there before, but it’s pace could best be described as deliberate. The film seems to work the best when it’s trying to have some fun and not brooding so much, which is all too often. The scene of all the nerd kids idolizing Billy after he knocks out a bully without trying and then being in awe when he gets pulled from the table by Kimberly? Great! Fun little scene, use more moments like that as opposed to repeated instances of people mispronouncing Trini as DeeDee. ??? I assume it’s a joke but I just don’t get it and boy do they keep pushing it. I wish they had done more with Zack as he had a lot of potential in his backstory. He doesn’t attend school any more because you find out he’s caring for his terminally ill mother but aside from that reveal he just gets all the “I’m gonna shout quips!” style lines. Don’t try taking a drink every time he calls Trini “Crazy Girl”, it won’t end well. Jason is fine in his role as the leader, but as is the curse of the leader role (Cyclops, Leonardo), is pretty bland. Kimberly and Trini are both solid female role models although I wish they would have come right out with Trini’s sexuality/crush on Kimberly rather than just heavily alluding to it. Although I was disappointed by him dropping the autism traits halfway through, I thought Billy in the second half was the most relatable character. He’s just so giddy every time they bring up the fact they get to be Rangers!

I was not a fan of the design choices for Alpha and the Zords. Alpha was thankfully less obnoxious than the original, but his super long arms on the tiny body just looked weird and creepy. Props to Hader for making me not hate him! The Zords… I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. I’ll be honest, aside from the T-Rex and the Pterodactyl they could have been anything. I had to go online after the movie because I couldn’t remember if the Triceratops was Blue or Black because I couldn’t tell them apart. Turns out it’s Blue. For as many montages as we were dealt and given the movies run time, I’d have preferred to see them learning their suits and Zords right off the bat as opposed to trying and failing to Morph a half dozen times and then finally getting it right just in time for the final battle where they go in operating things they’ve never used before. I know I’m overthinking it, but I hate when people just innately know how to use things like that.

Lastly we come to the villains. I’ve got really mixed feelings on this part. I appreciate they wanted to take it more seriously, and I like what they did with Rita but DAMN. They may have made her a bit too intense for the audience that’s generally associated with Power Rangers! Banks is great and and she is wonderfully creepy and terrifying but there is a scene where she’s killed some police officers and you see that she’s ripped the teeth out of one and has dismembered/is CANNIBALIZING the other. This is while she’s still in her slightly mummified state after a fishing boat pulls up her body and it’s horror movie levels of creepy as she gets her power back to create Goldar. Because he’s made of gold, see? I don’t quite get her power set because at first she’s brutally murdering people for their gold, then eating it (WTF?) then just pointing at it and drawing it to her in liquid form. At least she gets to say “Make my monster grow.”

Overall, it’s not bad. It’s not as action packed as you’d expect, but what references do show up are all well placed and fun. You get some cameos and throwback lines. Ay-yi-yi and what not. My favorite reference was when two boys were arguing who got to be the Red Ranger while they’re playing and Trini tells them, “Why not Yellow?” “That’s a girl!” “How do you know?” lol Love the message and the nod to the original Yellow I mentioned earlier, but unfortunately undercut by the obvious sculpted boob armor on Pink and Yellow… Best moment, bar none, was when they played the original theme. Unfortunately it’s just one refrain then back to generic orchestration, but the theater I was in was electrified when it came on! I’m not made of stone, that riff is freaking amazing. You could tell everyone was a bit bummed when it didn’t continue throughout the fight. As usual anymore, stay through the credits. There’s a mid credit scene that I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to call before it happens but it’s there. LOL at the guys behind me talking loudly throughout the film complaining about the very thing the scene was about and leaving before it happened. That’s what you get for being terrible movie attendants! If you were a fan of the show as a kid, I think you’ll have a great time! If you’re bringing your kids because of how much YOU loved it… Just be aware it gets really dark and creepy in places and might move a bit slow if they have to wait over 90 minutes to see any Morphin’ Time.

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xavierfiles-blog · 6 years ago

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When Will Marvel Stop Being Cowards And Let Nightcrawler Be Amazing?

PS: Give him his damn beard back!

When Will Marvel Stop Being Cowards And Let Nightcrawler Be Amazing? was originally published on Xavier Files

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