Tag: movie

Long Movie: Batman v. Superman Ultimate Edition #movie #Superman #Batman #DCEU

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I liked Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, but because it currently has a 62% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I can’t say it’s a Guilty Pleasure. I do hear a lot of hate from my social media connections, though, and many of them have told me that they actually liked the Ultimate Edition because of the additional information it provides. (One suggested that the same thing could be said about the Watchman Extended Cut.) I agree that the additional scenes improve BvS, but that raised a question for me: Why not keep them in the cinematic release?

The Ultimate Edition is 3 hours and 3 minutes long (including credits). I’ve seen 3-hour movies in the theater, so if the scenes are already filmed and modified in post production (i.e., paid for), why waste them? Give people their money’s worth, improve the movie, and your reviews will be better. I can think of three responses to my question.

Response 1: You want some deleted scenes to make the home release more enticing.
Counterpoint: If people don’t like your movie, nothing will entice them to buy your home releases.

Response 2: I’m operating from hindsight. There was no way to know that the deleted scenes would have improved the movie.
Counterpoint: Does anyone really think that the test audiences didn’t like the deleted scenes? They made the movie much better. Aren’t filmmakers professionals? Why can’t they figure out how to use test audiences to get the right result, especially for movies with such huge budgets?

Response 3: Three hour (or more) movies are too long.
Counterpoint: Bring back the intermission so that people with short attention spans and weak bladders can handle it. Oh, snap!

Who’s got a response #4? I’ll defeat that one too.

I can’t believe they cut Jon Stewart. At this point, I suspect that cutting scenes is simply a strange sort of tradition among filmmakers. 

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Shit @RobertDowneyJr #MCU #movie

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Sundays are now lazy days for me. Going forward, I’m just going to re-post other people’s work or just do something silly. Today, it’s both: One of the cutest scenes in the MCU.

 

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No Small Parts: Captain Robau from Star Trek 2009 @chrishemsworth #StarTrek #FaranTahir #movie

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If you enjoy this post, please retweet it. Other posts in this series can be found here: No Small Parts.

Great Shatner’s ghost! I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted about Star Trek. It’s my favorite entertainment property, yet I’ve been so focused on the superhero stuff and random Netflix movies that I haven’t watched any Star Trek recently. Ironically, it was the Iron Man quarantine watch party on June 30, that inspired this post (as well as this one and this one).

I haven’t seen a lot of Faran Tahir, but I’ve been impressed by everything in which I’ve seen him, including his role in Iron Man. That role wasn’t small, but this post is about Captain Robau from the 2009 reboot of Star Trek. George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) gets the credit for his sacrifice, and that’s fair, but it’s clear that he was following the teachings of his captain, played by Mr. Tahir. Captain Robau set the tone for the scene, and the entire movie, by remaining completely calm during the brief negotiations and immediately complying with Nero’s demands despite the danger. He didn’t do this because he was without fear – his bio signs indicated an elevated heart rate, rapid breathing, and other signs of emotional distress – but because leaders don’t have the luxury of personal considerations. If you take responsibility for other people’s lives, you need to live up to that.

Captain Robau was a strong character, and his leadership set the tone for a movie that was as much about leadership as it was about friendship.

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Pepper Potts Sucks! @ComicBook @BrandonDavisBD @Rowaenthe @RobertDowneyJr #IronMan #QuarantineWatchParty #MCU

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June 30 was the first ComicBook.com quarantine watch party in quite some time. As always, I made a few more Twitter connections through the conversations that came from it. These conversations inspired three posts for my blog. This is the second one that in some sense serves as a sequel to the first one.

I must admit that I’m a little out of my element. As I said in the prior Iron Man-related post, I don’t analyze these movies from the perspective of an expert in screenwriting. I focus on themes that are important to me. This post eventually strays into an analysis of moviemaking and human relationships, so I have far more questions than I have answers, and my affirmative claims are often mere speculation. My primary question is: What purpose to the larger story did Pepper’s naivete and/or stubbornness serve?

Here’s what I’m talking about:

In other words, there are several incidents throughout the MCU where Pepper makes the same mistake that many people make in the real world. She tries to interfere with a strong person doing what’s necessary because she doesn’t understand what strength of character is, or at least why it’s important. As shown in Shazam!, attitude is often far more important than actual ability, which is why even in the non-caveman, modern world, strength is an important feature. While Pepper is a hard worker, intelligent, and portrayed as strong in other ways, that’s not a realistic portrayal. She’s simply serving a plot, so the script has her acting both strong and weak at different points.

While we all have our strengths and weaknesses, this paradox is far more profound than that. She doesn’t get a simple reality that, again, I’ve seen a lot in the real world: Telling Tony not to act because it places him at risk is counterproductive. If he doesn’t act, the bad guys will win, and Tony will die anyway (along with many other people). This is absolutely maddening, and it happens during Paltrow’s entire tenure in the MCU. At the end of Iron Man 3, Tony temporarily gives up being Iron Man for her. Fortunately, real world economics prevail, and the screenwriters quickly send Tony back into the fray to save half the universe. But the point is that, if you’re weak, that’s fine, but don’t stand in the way of the strong. They have a job to do, and it’s generally saving your ass.

How Did the Relationship Work?

Sorry, but my writing gets a little choppy here because I’m suddenly shifting gears.

I’m light years from my area of expertise, but perhaps Stark latched onto a person with such a silly outlook because her motivation was seemingly unconditional love, and that’s what he was searching for. According to Captain America: Civil War, he lost that relationship for a while, but as soon as he could, he grabbed her and didn’t let go. As I speculated in the prior Iron Man-related post, that’s probably because Tony’s lack of a family was haunting him (as it often haunts me). Or maybe it’s far simpler: Opposites attract. Because it’s just a movie, they were able to write the script anyway they wanted, so the resulting relationship with Pepper worked even if it wouldn’t in the real world, which wouldn’t be so generous. (For the record, Civil War screenwriter Stephen McFeely stated that her presence would have calmed Tony, but he needed to remain dark and angry in order for the events to play out as they did.) Tony never got “fixed’ by anything we saw on screen; the script just pushed him in that direction leaving the details to our imagination (other than the unwitting therapy session with Bruce Banner in Iron Man 3). Figuring out why is merely speculation. As complex as some of these MCU characters are relative to other movie characters, they’re still not real. They’re just two-dimensional characters driven more by dramatic forces than by real, psychological or logical ones.

It appears that Pepper’s behavior always served to advance the plot. She could hold Tony back or push him forward as needed, but she usually held him back. When she did so, her thought processes were wildly illogical, and that grated on me.

I don’t want to hate Pepper Potts, but I do. There. I said it.

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Dysfunctional to Functional Family: Tony Stark, Obadiah Stane, Spiderman, and Morgan Stark @ComicBook @BrandonDavisBD @Rowaenthe @TheJeffBridges @RobertDowneyJr #IronMan #QuarantineWatchParty #MCU #Spiderman

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June 30 was the first ComicBook.com quarantine watch party in quite some time. As always, I made a few more Twitter connections through the conversations that came from it. These conversations inspired three posts for my blog, this being the first one.

My posts aren’t about getting clicks. If no one read any of my posts, I wouldn’t really care. Writing them is more about catharsis than fame. Moreover, I’m no film student, psychologist, or sociologist, so I can’t break down the science of movie-making or human behavior. Instead, these posts are about analyzing the themes used within the movies due to my personal connection to their messages (accordingly, YMMV). As a result, my favorite posts have been about Nebula’s Redemption, my comparison of Shazam! and Guardians of the Galaxy, and others dealing with a particular theme. That theme is realizing and accepting that your idealized vision of family is complete nonsense, breaking away from those abusive relationships, and appreciating the family you didn’t realize was in front of you the whole time (though for me personally, the third has been elusive). Not everyone has these experiences, but it’s a recurring theme in superhero movies. I never considered that the first Iron Man movie implicitly raised issues related to this theme.

Father Figure

Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey, Jr.) father died, and then Tony disappeared for a while. This isn’t surprising considering how self-absorbed he is, but when he returned to Stark Industries, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) must have served as a father-figure for him. Before I go forward, I want to mention . . .

Tony didn’t show as much respect for Obadiah as you would want to see from your own child, but Tony didn’t ever show much respect for any authority figure, so it’s still fair to assume Obadiah acted as an adoptive father to him. That is, Obadiah wasn’t merely a coworker, boss, or even family friend. Assuming that, it must have been absolutely devastating for Tony when he realized Obadiah had called for his removal from the company, and even worse, his death. That betrayal would hold back Tony’s growth, which became a slow burn throughout the Infinity War saga. It helps make Tony’s grief over Black Widow’s death as believable as that of any other character despite his never overtly expressing that grief or deep feelings for her. It wasn’t until the first Avengers that Tony showed a willingness to “lay down on a wire” for his allies, but his ego made sure that no one would forget that. Somehow, it was still about him . . . until he started to understand fatherhood in Captain America: Civil War.

Peter Parker and Morgan Stark

In Civil War, Tony latched onto Peter Parker/Spiderman. At first, he was looking for a little more firepower to take down Team Cap ®©TM℗SM, but by Infinity War it was clear he had a genuine emotional attachment to Peter.

By Avengers: Endgame, he was devastated because he “lost the kid,” but he got a second chance in that film. Tony’s life became about Pepper and their daughter, Morgan. He was reluctant to restore the Vanished because doing so threatened what he had finally found after a lifetime of searching, even if it meant giving up on his filial figure, Peter.

Tony’s progression from self-absorbed brat to the guy who’d “make the sacrifice play” was 22 movies long probably because of Obadiah more than anything else we saw, but Tony made it there, and that wound up saving half the universe.

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Okay Watch: He Never Died @henryrollins @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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This movie has been sitting in my Netflix queue for years, but until the pandemic, I never bothered to watch it. This movie is weird. Henry Rollins plays an cannibalistic immortal (I’ll leave it at that) with the personality of a lump of clay. (This isn’t a slam on Mr. Rollins; it’s by design.) He gets involved with a waitress, his estranged daughter, and the mob. All three of those come together in a finale that doesn’t give us closure, instead relying on a reveal of his identity as the major source of dramatic release. This is a weird one, probably worth my two hours, but just barely.

As always, YMMV.

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Lawyer Battle: Harvey Dent v. Harvey #Birdman @KesselJunkie #Batman #AdultSwim

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I have a request!

My cousin, kesseljunkie, asked me to address a burning question.

This is a simple question with a simple answer: Harvey Birdman seems to be in over his head, but the fact is that he always wins in the end. Harvey Dent, on the other hand, is the chief officer for justice in the most corrupt city on Earth. He’s completely ineffective, and in hindsight doesn’t have the emotional or moral strength to withstand his disfigurement. Did Harvey Birdman go on a crime spree during his cancer scare? I don’t think so.

Okay, so that was four sentences. I dragged it out because I didn’t want you to feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth.

Birdman!!!

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Good Watch: White Lines @laurajhaddock @martamilans @TomRhysHarries @DanielMays9 @netflix #GoodWatch #QuarantineLife

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White Lines is the story of a search for answers. As the characters find their answers, it opens old wounds and creates new ones.

Twenty years prior, the older brother of Zoe Collins (Laura J. Haddock) was murdered and dumped in deserted land, and now she’s ensnared in a web of drugs, assaults, and other assorted crimes. The first episode was uneven, but once you’ve got the basic premise explained, it picks up. At times, I was squirming in my seat. Episode 8 is a killer in that regard.

White Lines also stars Marta Milans of whom I’ve become a fan of late, Nuno Lopes, a perfectly-cast Daniel Mays (Tivik!), and Tom Rhys Harries as the long-deceased Axel Collins. The only thing I don’t like about the show is that characters often speak in Spanish (it takes place in Spain), so I can’t take my eyes off the screen for a second (at those times). However, I blame myself for having never learned Spanish. I’d say I deserve that pain in the ass.

Season 1 is on Netflix. As always, YMMV.

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How I Watch Movies @KesselJunkie #movie

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Yesterday my cousin, kesseljunkie, was mulling over second chances. Specifically, he was theorizing as to why we give things, especially movies, a second chance. He gave two reasons (you’re going to have to click through to read them); I responded in the comments with a third (edited for spelling).

Here’s a third option that may very well be unique to me (or extremely rare; I dunno). By way of example, leading up to the Dark Knight Rises, I heard lots of rumors that Marion Cotillard was playing Talia al Ghul. I read up on who that character was. Nevertheless, SPOILER ALERT the moment she stabbed Batman, I was shocked for an instant. That’s because my brain purposefully blanks out everything I’ve heard so that I can watch a movie as it unfolds with no preconceptions, spoilers, etc. As a puzzle nerd, it also allows me to solve the mystery if there is one.

This comes from my copyright background, or perhaps my attraction to copyright is based on this personality quirk (i.e., chicken and egg). When analyzing for infringement, you do both an intrinsic (how does it feel?) and extrinsic (let’s break down the science) analysis of a song to determine whether it’s infringement. My first run at a movie is intrinsic — I either like it or I don’t — and each subsequent viewing is extrinsic. I try to figure out *what* made me like it (or hate it in the rare occasion I watch a hated movie again). I also try to discover things I missed, and perhaps experience the two things you mention. They probably apply to me as well.

But that’s just me, and there’s nothing wrong with that. YMMV.

This may explain why my rating of movies is so eccentric.

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A Summary of the #MCU Leading up to #Endgame @MarvelStudios

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Sundays are now lazy days for me. Going forward, I’m just going to re-post other people’s work. Today, it’s one hour and 14 minutes of some of the most important moments in the MCU leading up to Avengers: Endgame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxgf6RU98Y

Maybe watch it at double speed.

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