X-Men Origins: Wolverine

There are aspects of this movie that make it seem like it might not be that bad. The director and at least one of the writers have both been involved with some good or at least interesting projects. The last X-Men film was pretty bad, but it could have been the influence of Brett Ratner rather than a trend for the franchise. Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber are both good actors, and do some solid work in this movie. And really, there are parts that aren't bad at all. Honestly. But then there's everything else. Basically, anything actually related to the fact that this is a comic book movie.

After the opening scene which recreates the most startling moment from Origin but robs it of any emotional weight, they ignore the rest of that story, put Logan and Sabretooth farther back in time so they can fight through a bunch of major wars in the opening credits, and then have them hop on a team of super powered special forces. The movie then embarrasses the shit out of itself with a sequence where several of them show off their powers in ludicrous ways that just look silly rather than the cool effect I'm sure they were going for. Agent Zero still uses guns but is apparently magic now, Wade Wilson is not only skilled with swords but capable of manipulating them faster than the speed of bullets (he's not a mutant yet what the fuuuuuuuck), and instead of a pilot they have Dominic Monaghan playing a dude who can control the plane with his mind because uh... they think it's cool I guess.

So anyway Logan leaves the group after some differences and meets a telepathic chick, but a while later someone starts going around and killing his teammates and blah blah it's Sabretooth obviously and Stryker recruits him for Weapon X. I don't really get it... this movie's supposed to be a prequel for the existing movie series, but they sort of change and ignore things for some reason, changing the cast, adding in the bone claws, mixing up the reasons for things to be happening, et cetera. So then some more stuff happens, a lot of it totally stupid looking, and Logan, now Wolverine, confronts Stryker in his secret lair. There's a pointless plot twist that just adds some artificial drama for a few minutes, a bunch of cameos by some other mutants, and Stryker reveals what he's done to Wade, now Deadpool, for Weapon XI.

Oh my god that is not Deadpool. Yeah they did use what they got from Wolverine to experiment on him, but that was it. What they make him into is completely ludicrous and not Deadpool and I just don't understand the point of changing what a character is THIS much. Who is it serving? It's an uninteresting villain, and one unfaithful to the memories of people who actually know and possibly care about who he is. What an amazing combination of wasting my time and spitting in my face. Also, in case you were wondering, even if you have an incredible accelerated healing power, if you fall from a high enough distance your head will pop off, and any skin grafted over your mouth will be removed. Good to know. So they take away Wolverine's memory as necessary and the movie ends without much of a resolution to anything. God, this could have been a pretty decent movie. Why did this come out of it?

FlashForward

Well, that was a big waste of time. FlashForward was a show that lived off building a mystery that span years, and now it's been canceled. So all that really happened was a bunch of people saw their futures, worried about the implications of their visions for a few months, and then their futures (mostly) came true. In really irritating ways, too. They push the idea that no matter how hard people fight it, they can't avoid their fate. Except when they do. Demetri was supposed to be killed, but he wasn't. Some FBI guy managed to kill himself to prevent a woman from dying, but she gets hit by a car... and the show doesn't bother to say whether she actually dies or not. A guy who saw himself uniting Somalia gets killed.

In terms of people's visions coming true, Mark was drinking in his flash despite being sober... and a few hours before a random guy on the street hands him a flask, which he promptly starts drinking. Good job, dude. It's a miracle how you managed to Die Hard a room full of bad guys while sauced. Olivia and Simon seemed to get closer together for no other reason than their visions said they should. No real romantic chemistry, no real reason for her to cheat on her husband... it was just sort of like, "Well, okay, let's do this. It's our future, right?" If Keiko does end up finding Bryce after all, why doesn't her mom remember being detained in an American airport? Ugh. If all that complaining seemed like a mess, welcome to the experience of watching the show.

Despite a premise that can't actually decide what it's really about and a muddled collection of undirected subplots rather than a direct story arc most of time, the show's biggest problem is that the characters are all terrible. They're not likable, their problems aren't interesting, they do stupid stuff for no reason... it's hard to enjoy a show when you don't have fun watching the people on it. And I'm seriously not exaggerating. Every single character is bad! How does a show get this far with a boring, angsty protagonist surrounded by boring, angsty supporting cast?

I will say, I liked the pilot. Its portrayal of the destruction caused by the whole world blacking out for two minutes was impressive and exciting, and the beginning of the mystery was intriguing. But it was only downhill from there. Without the bad guys having a clear reason for anything they do makes it hard to be interesting in their schemes, and simply too much time is spent on characters whose problems they forgot to make interesting in the context of a world that knows its future. You have a pretty high concept here, do something with it. Instead, it was pretty traditional, uninteresting melodrama. There were a couple episodes and bits I liked, but they were few and far between. There were some particularly bad bits I could pick on, but I don't really feel like it. The show is dead, no reason to keep poking the body.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

This is the one that got all the awards and the highest praise and is my personal favorite, but I'm not sure if it's really deserving of all that. It certainly wasn't head and shoulders above the other two enough to win eleven Oscars when they averaged three. All those awards were probably appreciation for the feat of the trilogy as a whole, which I'm fine with, since the Academy so often seems to pick the better story over the truly deserving winner. I still really love the movie, and it's the biggest and grandest of the trilogy. It also happens to be the only film I saw for the first time after reading the book version first. There's fewer changes than the last time, though still some notable ones. Some bits are cut, like the Riders of Rohan being escorted around a blockade by strange men of the forest and most of the real dramatic thrust of Eowen and the development of her relationship with Faramir. There's one key detail that I feel they lost a lot from by having to cut, and it's removal was sort of necessary after cutting the Barrow-Downs from the first movie. Since the Hobbits just get their swords unceremoniously handed to them by Aragon instead of finding them in a tomb, they would be less justified in explaining why Eowyn was really able to kill the Witch King. It's not because "Hur hur no man can kill you but I can because I'm a woman", it's because Merry's sword had some magical essence and was able to break the spell that made the king invulnerable when he stabbed him with it.

I'm also not a huge fan of how Denethor and Gimli are handled. Throughout the movies Gimli is more of a comic relief than he ever was in the book, and it's brought to a head here when his presence in the Paths of the Dead turns them into a joke rather than a spooky setting. Look, he's trying to blow away the ghostly hands and wincing when he steps on any of the absolutely insane number of skulls that litter the place! Seriously, where are the rest of the skeletons? And Denethor is transformed from a depressed, grieving father who has seen doom coming for a long time into a crazy old man who is able to run about half a mile while completely immolated so he can jump off something and look all cool. Wow, I'm really complaining a lot here. I really do like a movie, and moments like Pippin's song as men of Gondor ride to their deaths and the riders charging into the Battle of Pelennor Fields are some of my favorites in any film. They really went all out with the effects for the battle to make up for the main characters not really being there, and it's still an exciting spectacle to watch. The only real change in Frodo and Sam's part of the story is Sam getting sent away for a while, which is another case of adding dramatic tension so there's more of it, but it doesn't have a major effect on the story. When the two stories finally converge at the end is suitably dramatic and epic, and you really feel the love the members of the fellowship have for each other. After the final conflict ends, the movie takes its time ending, and more or less culminated with the departure at the Grey Havens. I was surprised at how much that scene moved me this time, when it hadn't as much before. I can't think of why it would affect me differently now, all I know is that it did. Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's greatest work is far from perfect, and I can't say that most of its departures were that well considered. Still, it was an admirable effort, a labor of love, and definitely worth watching.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Just looking at Amazon, they're taking preorders for the Blu-ray version of the trilogy, which is cool I guess, but it also seems like they've discontinued manufacture of the DVD sets, which is... weird. Oh well. The Two Towers is a frequent pick for the worst of the three films, and mine as well, though I've seen some claim that the extended edition elevates it to the best, which I find a bit odd. It's certainly better, though that's true for all three films. In any case, it probably made the most severe alterations to the plot of any of the three, some aspects of which were justifiable, others less so. The whole structure is rejiggered to make the battle at Helm's Deep the focus, with a lot of time spent building to it when they just sort of went there and fought in the book, and the film ends shortly after, whereas the break was originally after a few other plot points that migrated to the third movie. Things like that are acceptable so the story has a normal dramatic arc to it. What's stranger is pretending to kill off Aragorn during an innocuous warm-up battle and having a legion of Elves show up in time to help instead of Éomer and the Riders of Rohan. It's not that having Elves and changing who Gandalf shows up with really hurts the story, you just wonder why they bothered when previously the only changes were trimming fat that affected the pacing. The battle itself was pretty well executed, and besides a couple dumb moments like Legolas skateboarding down a stairway on a shield, one of the best large scale clashes in recent cinema. I liked how they were able to add small things like the contest between Legolas and Gimli, even if the resolution of it was cut out of the theatrical version.

It was smart to edit that stuff together with Frodo and Sam's journey instead of keeping them separate, not only because it would have been strange that way, but it allowed them to make Helm's Deep the climax instead of the fight with Shelob, which in turn allowed them to shift that into the third movie as well, and keep the timeline straighter. Looking back, I'm not sure I support the decision to make Gollum a computer generated character. Serkis' performance is impressive and shows through the effects, and there are moments where the work they did is still extremely convincing, but for the most part whenever he's on screen I'm noticing that he's not really in the scene, and paying attention to the work that was done and not his presence as a character. It's still going to be a while before that stuff is totally convincing. I just got a feeling of déjà vu like I've written this before. Making Faramir more like his brother initially and unwilling to just let Frodo and Sam walk away with the ring is another choice that I mostly support, because after taking out Shelob there's really not a whole hell of a lot for them to do. I'm not sure they really captured his character as well as they could have, because there's more to him than just being the less favored son. Still, they did what they had to to make the story work, and sacrifices will sometimes have to be made to do that. Movies in the middle are usually a tough situation, and I thought they did well enough here when they were mostly putting things in place for part three.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I rewatched the movies in unison with rereading the book. I read The Hobbit years earlier, but seeing The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters was my first experience with The Lord of the Rings, and it totally grabbed me. One of the main complaints I heard about it was the overly long and slow beginning, with the extended version lasting over an hour before they even leave The Shire. I enjoyed that, though. Part of what makes the books interesting is how much detail Tolkien put into the world, to a nearly ridiculous degree. They might not have needed to spend so much time establishing the setting in the movie, but since it was filmed as a trilogy from the beginning they were able to take their time and show whatever they wanted. I think the extended introduction before the adventure really begins helps make the film work as an introduction to the series for new fans while at the same time appeasing long-time devotees who fear any changes at all. Besides chopping out a couple sections and ignoring details that would affect casting (Frodo sets out at about age fifty to destroy the ring, some seventeen years after receiving it initially), it's probably the most faithful of the three films.

I think the book had a slightly different feel than the latter two, and the same is true of the movies. The last two thirds of the story are more intertwined and fuzzy about the break point, plus share a more epic war-movie feel to the battles. The Fellowship of the Ring is more of a smaller-scale cross country trip, almost like a chase movie. Nine dudes travel together and fight small skirmishes against manageable hordes. I actually kind of like the smallness of the fights, you really remember every cool thing that happens, giving them more of a memorable personality than thousands clashing against thousands. The fellowship itself is only whole for about a sixth of the series' running time, but I still mostly identify the story with the image of them all together. Boromir is one of the story's best characters, but he's not around for long, and his death more or less marks the point where the tone changes and things get dark and serious. I still think the third movie is my favorite with this second, but it still gets extra credit for getting me into it. Plus it's a good thing it performed so well at the box office, because if it set the tone by not doing so well, that could have been a ton of money wasted on three huge films, and we certainly wouldn't be getting an extremely exciting pair of Hobbit movies from Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. Also, can you believe this came out seven and a half years ago? Time is a bitch.

Lost - Seasons 1-3

This post will have spoilers, okay? It's hard to talk about Lost without talking about the story.

I wasn't watching much television when Lost burst onto the scene along with Desperate Housewives within a couple weeks of each other and catapulted ABC up in the ratings. The premise seemed cool, but I just wasn't interested much in the medium. In the last year I've gotten much more into some of the more prominent shows, and finally blazed through the first three seasons, catching up just as the last one ended. Lost was a huge hit during the first season, and it's still popular, although the ratings have dipped and some have stopped watching because they aren't answering any real questions or they just don't like where it's going. I haven't minded the constant mystery too much, although maybe the fact I watched it in about a month and not spread out over a few years helped me there. Regardless of the lack of answers, I think I'll see it through to the end, just to see where they're going. It's seemed like maybe they didn't know what they were doing for a while, but now that they know when it's ending, I think we'll see a more solid plan and some real truth at some point.

Lost is always interesting even when not a lot is happening on the island, because of the flashbacks. They're kind of a contrived way to develop your characters, but it's not a problem since they're just so intriguing. One of the strangest things about them is how often characters show up in the background of other characters' flashes. Sometimes they're hints of things that have already been revealed, and sometimes they're just seemingly crazy coincidences, although maybe they will be explained. My favorite example is Hurley being on someone else's TV, a clue before we find out he won the lottery using those mysterious numbers before crashing on the island. The most notorious coincidence in my mind is how often Jack's dad seems to appear in everyone's stories, sometimes prompting them to do things they shouldn't. All of these appearances are one of the more strange things of a show filled with them. They're rather mundane compared to the smoke monster, but there's just too many for it to be normal.

The writers claim that everything in the show can be explained with science, but I have some trouble believing that. They haven't really done anything yet to back that up, and some of the explanations would have to be pretty out there. The smoke monster, for one. And why Desmond is able to predict the future after the electromagnetic discharge. Can he still do it after Charlie's death, or was it just for him? Why does the island have seemingly magical healing powers, and allow some to age but not others? How is an uncharted island apparently so hard to find, yet so many things crash on it? Flight 815 going down seems to have been caused by another discharge, but that doesn't exactly explain it getting torn apart, and everyone inside surviving. Was the drug plane brought down for the same reason? How can they actually explain everything without it being science fiction, and will they even bother to actually explain it all? Some things just seemed random and thrown in because they're weird, like the statue of the four-toed foot. After the crazy finale, can they really add anymore questions before they start answering some? Are they going to bother explaining some things, like Libby's presence in Hurley's mental hospital, or are they just letting that go since she's dead?

Even when the plot is so convoluted, it's easy to keep watching because the characters are so good. In the beginning, Jack seemed like the typical reluctant leader-hero-guy, but over time he's been built up as more and more of a jerk. He's not always fair, and we see in flashbacks that he's a mean drunk and too often pushes people into doing what they don't want to. He is way too stubborn and often closed-minded. He's usually honest, but that's not all it takes to be a good person. Locke kind of pisses me off. His backstory is kind of awesome and at first he seemed like a unique old-guy badass, but he's gone off the deep end and done some truly ridiculous things. He's causing a lot of destruction and death out of his selfish desire to stay on the island. Sawyer's an interesting case. At first, he seemed like a bad guy with a criminal past, but as time's gone on he's become more sympathetic and done a lot more defensible things. Definitely a bit enigmatic. Kate's got a really cool history, although she makes a lot of decisions with really suspect reasoning. The rest of the cast is generally intriguing, sometimes funny, and well acted. The deaths have been around, and they keep things fresh and exciting. I think the number of characters is pretty good right now, and we'll see how the show goes from here. After the reveal at the end of season 3 that at least Jack and Kate made it off the island, I'm really curious about what happens.