Prometheus (2012)

My God, We Were So Wrong…

When Samrizon recommended that I watch today’s movie, she seemed a little deflated that I said it may have to wait quite some time. As with most movies in theaters, I can’t really afford to go and see everything people want me to when it’s in theaters. I’d much rather wait until I can find it for a dollar on RedBox or on Netflix. But I did indeed want to see this movie, being a fan (to different degrees) of the quadrilogy that already existed. When Friendboss Josh heard the Who’s singing in Whoville and his heart grew three sizes this day, I was afforded the ability to go to a theater that was playing the movie for only $5. This movie is Prometheus, written by Damon Lindelof and Jon Spaihts, directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall, Kate Dickie, Emun Elliott, Benedict Wong, and Patrick Wilson.

In the year 2089, two archaeologists, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), find a cave painting in Scotland that, along with similar murals from groups that never met each other from around the world, points to a star like our own sun and a habitable planet. They take this as an invitation from a group they call “the Engineers”, who they believe created our species. The elderly CEO of Weyland Corporation, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), funds a ship called Prometheus to take the two archaeologists and a group of other people to the planet to see if they can find the Engineers. An android called David (Michael Fassbender) wakes up the crew as they arrive in the year 2093. They find a collection of non-artificial structures and start to explore them, soon finding dead bodies of the Engineers, which are more human than they originally thought. Also, there’s a black goo that they find that starts some bad things into motion. And also some good things. I mean, have you seen Alien? That’s a good movie!

I went into this movie REALLY wanting to be blown away, but try as it might, the movie never really resonated with me. It wasn’t a bad movie, but I was hoping for a major nerd boner that never arrived. And I need this, guys. I’m single and hurting. I’ll probably need to watch Avengers again to get my fix. This movie just didn’t excite me. It was pretty slow moving until the last half hour. At first it’s just archaeology, then it’s just space travel, then it’s just a mystery that’s not that mysterious. Not until someone gets infected later in the movie does shit start going down that captures my attention. The mystery part is somewhat excusable because I went into this movie know it was a prequel to a movie I’ve already seen, so this entire movie just becomes a waiting game until we get to see a Xenomorph. I got a little excited that shit was gonna go down when Shaw told one of the other crew members to leave the weapon behind when they were heading into the structure. I didn’t get excited because that’s a good idea, because it’s entirely not. Sure, it’s a scientific expedition, but better safe than sorry, right? But usually when a bonehead decision like that is made in the name of noble scientific enterprise, shit goes down and people start dying. That didn’t happen. Around the time when someone gets infected is when the movie starts to pick up, but I was also getting angry because some jerkfaces in the audience were talking and someone said, “He’s infected,” really loudly. Ya think? Are you basing that on what you’re seeing now or the part where we watched the guy cause him to get infected in a super obvious way? Later on, there’s a hurried surgery scene that is rich with thrills, and from that point on it doesn’t let up, but I wished it had happened sooner. For one more thing, I won’t spoil it directly so I’ll just turn it into a metaphor. If two people are running away from a hula hoop, should it really take that long to realize that you can side-step it instead of continuing to run in front of it? If you see the movie, that’ll make more sense.

I would say that, by far, the best thing about this movie is definitely the look. It’s a spectacular visual feast. The movie lets you know that much pretty quickly into the movie as they open with a big sweep over huge and gorgeous landscapes on the moon LV-223. Almost everything looks amazing in this movie. The Engineers (though they look like Powder on steroids) are great looking creatures that could look either benevolent or malevolent, so you never really know which way they’ll go with the story. The structure and the aliens are still heavily influenced by H.R. Giger, which means they’re going to be creepy and dark, but also awesome. The first version of the aliens that are encountered bummed me out for two reasons. First, they didn’t look like the facehuggers that we know and love. Second, they were REALLY phallic. And they go into the mouth. I can’t wait until they turn Prometheus into a porn. The holographic star map that David watches later in the movie is also a visual delight, but I couldn’t help but think that it was the futuristic version of a laser light show, without the benefit of REO Speedwagon. The only real visual problem with the movie was Peter Weyland. You could have actually hired an old guy instead of putting really unconvincing old guy makeup on a young dude. And you didn’t even try when it came to his feet!

The performances in the movie were good, but not what I’d call great. They were what the roles called for, but that usually left them being not altogether compelling to me. Noomi Rapace did a good job, but I was disappointed by her character. I think one of the things that’s been a staple in all of the Alien movies is a badass female lead. Sigourney Weaver was a boss. Ellen Ripley was always right up there with Sarah Connor as some of the most badass women to ever grace the screen. And it’s not like Noomi can’t do badass; she was the original Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. But in this movie, she was never a badass. She was pretty standard damsel in distress all the way through that was just a scientist and was only our heroine because we were watching the bad things happen all around her. I know it wasn’t really the character she was going for, but I missed it. Charlize Theron was kind of a badass bitch, but way more bitch than badass, so certainly no replacement for Ripley. I liked that apparently all it takes to have sex with her is to suggest that she might be a robot. Speaking of which, Michael Fassbender was good in his role, but it was totally ruined for me when Samrizon ruined that he was a robot. Okay, so you find that out pretty quickly, but Samrizon should shut her damned cake hole. Fassbender definitely acted like a robot, but a robot isn’t always the most impressive performance. You have to be stiff and robotic, which isn’t all that interesting to watch. And you kind of get the idea of where the movie is going from his performance because he doesn’t hide the fact that he’s not that big of a fan of humans.

I really wanted Prometheus to blow me away, but it didn’t really manage to do so. The story was fine, but it takes a while for it to get going. Once it does, it remains pretty awesome for a while, but I started to get bored waiting for that to start. The look of the movie was completely fantastic and worth seeing for just the spectacle alone. The performances were fine in the movie, but never blew my mind. I understand that you couldn’t put Ellen Ripley in this chronologically, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a character that’s just as awesome. The movie didn’t impress me, but I still think it’s worth seeing in the theaters. It’s a good movie, but not as good as I wanted it to be. Check it out, but it might help to have lower expectations. Prometheus gets “Big things have small beginnings” out of “WE are the gods now.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people. Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense. Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated. You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle). Don’t forget to leave me some comments. Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

Haywire (2012)

I Haven’t Closed My Eyes Since You Were Born

Against my better judgment, I’ve been super interested in seeing today’s movie since I first heard about it.  It’s the screen debut of an MMA fighter that I’m a fan of along with a pretty spectacular supporting cast.  But, even though I felt like I really wanted to see it, something always held me back.  I’m not sure if I was afraid of seeing a movie with this fighter in it because I expected that person to not be able to act or if there was just never a good time to do it.  When I was in Arizona a few months back, I occupied myself by going to the movie theater frequently.  This movie was still in the theater there at the time, but the one or two shows it had did not align with the times I would be able to see it.  The time to see it in theaters had passed, so I set my sights on its RedBox release.  It came out on DVD and at RedBox on the same day, and the first thing I did was put it on reserve.  The time has finally come for my review of Haywire, written by Lem Dobbs, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and starring Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Bill Paxton, Michael Fassbender, Michael Angarano and Anthony Brandon Wong.

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a mercenary of sorts that works for Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), who is also her former boyfriend.  She goes out on a successful mission to rescue a hostage named Jiang (Anthony Brandon Wong) along with another member of the private firm she works for named Aaron (Channing Tatum).  When Mallory returns home, Kenneth asks her to take a quick and easy assignment to pose as the wife of MI6 agent Paul (Michael Fassbender) on a stakeout.  At the party, Mallory sees Paul talking with his contact before entering a barn.  Later, she checks out the barn to find Jiang dead.  Mallory realizes that she’s been set up.  When they return to their hotel room, Paul attacks Mallory.  She whips that ass and kills him.  She then uses his cell phone to find out that Kenneth was the one that told Paul to kill her.  Mallory sets off to find out why she was set up, and make the ones who did it pay.

What a bummer.  I went into this movie with the expectation that Carano would not be able to hold up her end of the acting, but would make for some awesome fight scenes.  What I didn’t expect was that the only real problem I had with this movie would be completely at the fault of the director.  I found myself extremely annoyed with how slow this movie moved.  It was a complete artsy fartsy movie.  You may recall my complaints sounding similar in my review of the Ang Lee Hulk movie.  It seemed to me as if the director was really concerned about getting some interesting and stylized looks and camera angles, and not really concerned with making a movie that was interesting.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind my action movies having a nice artistic style.  But what an action movie needs above all that is pacing.  This movie chose to show boring and uneventful scenes in real time, as if I was watching a boring episode of 24.  During a chase scene on foot, the director uses footage of Carano running down an alley in a straight line for a good 30 seconds.  You can have really long foot chase scenes if you throw in a lot of things to break up the simple running, like jumping over cars or fences.  But when you just show me a lady running in a straight line I get to feeling like I’m watching track and field at the Olympics.  He also shows us about 10 minutes of Carano and Fassbender getting dressed for the party they’re going to and inspecting all their equipment.  I will take your word for it if you tell me these people are pros, so you don’t need to show me them inspecting their equipment.  I will also jump to the conclusion that they got dressed when they show up to the party with clothing on.  Later on, we get a long, drawn out scene of Carano walking down the street occasionally looking over to check that a guy is following her.  This goes on for like 5 minutes before it turns into a pretty boring chase scene.  I got to feeling like the director was doing all of these time wasting and boring things because he finished his movie and realized it was only 40 minutes long.  And, since it would make less money if they just put that version on TV, making it a full hour with commercials, he just decided to hit ‘Undo’ on all of the cuts that he made.

The action, when it happened, was very satisfying to me.  It was like watching an MMA fight, but in a more practical way because it was in a real life setting with no rules and some weapons in the mix.  But I like watching MMA, so I liked watching these fights too.  The fights smashed the hell out of the environments too.  The bulk of them were a little brief for my tastes, though.  The fight between Carano and Fassbender was particularly exciting, lasting for a pretty good stretch of fighting, using and destroying the environment.  The problem with this scene is that it probably would’ve been more impactful to see Fassbender attack Carano out of nowhere had they not spoiled it in every trailer I saw for the movie.

I had no complaints about the performances in this movie.  I would’ve assumed that Gina Carano wouldn’t have been that good of an actress, but I felt like she did good.  Some of the dialogue in the earlier scenes was a little flat, but I was more distracted by the fact that the dialogue was happening in scenes I had no reason to be watching to pay much attention to her performance.  Carano is a solid, good-looking woman, but never really made that much out of her looks in the movie.  She was there to whip ass, and she did.  I found it a little bit jarring at first to see fight scenes between a guy and a girl where neither one was holding back at all, but it would be ill-informed to hold back because Carano was a woman.  She’s a nearly undefeated MMA fighter!  Also, even though it was just made as a snide comment in the movie, I would completely endorse Carano to play Wonder Woman if they make a movie out of that.  It was surprising to me how many huge names they were able to get into this movie to support Carano, but all of the performances were fairly low key and didn’t give me much to talk about.

Haywire had the potential to be a solid action flick, but the director turned it into a stylized bore.  The action was great, but often too short and spread out too far.  The cast was fantastic, and Carano (though not fantastic) did manage to impress me for her first film.  This movie would’ve been fantastic if they had only edited about 40 minutes of boring scenes we didn’t need to see out of it.  As it is, I say you can skip it.  I look forward to seeing Carano in better action movies in the future, though.  Haywire gets “Bummer” out of “You shouldn’t think of her as being a woman.  That would be your first mistake.”

Let’s get these reviews more attention, people.  Post reviews on your webpages, tell your friends, do some of them crazy Pinterest nonsense.  Whatever you can do to help my reviews get more attention would be greatly appreciated.  You can also add me on FaceBook (Robert T. Bicket) and Twitter (iSizzle).  Don’t forget to leave me some comments.  Your opinions and constructive criticisms are always appreciated.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

Finally it has happened, the release of one of my most anticipated BluRay releases in recent memory.  Last Friday was the day when X-Men: First Class was released.  I had already seen this movie 3 times by the time I picked up the BluRay but that did nothing to quell my excitement.  I had put off watching it because I already had a back log of reviews, but it finally came time to watch it.  So I opened it up, popped it in, and my BluRay player on my computer promptly failed about 3 minutes into the movie.  Once I’m sure it’s not my computer and is, in fact, the program I use, I may post a scathing review of it.  But that’s a story for a different day.  Today I watched X-Men: First Class, starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon, January Jones, and Oliver Platt.

X-Men: First Class starts many years before the events of X-Men 1, though still starting at the same place with a shot-for-shot remake of the opening of X1, with Magneto as a kid in a Nazi concentration camp.  Here Eric Lehnsherr – later Magneto – meets a Nazi scientist that is later revealed to be Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon).  Having revealed himself as a mutant by messing up a gate, Eric has caught the interest of Shaw.  To attempt to help Eric find his powers, he threatens to kill Eric’s mother if Eric can’t move a coin.  Failing to do so, Shaw promptly kills Eric’s mother.  Turns out anger is a very good catalyst for Eric’s magnetic powers, which is shown by Eric trashing the room with his powers.  Jumping over to the states, telepath Charles Xavier as a child comes down stairs in his mansion to meet shapeshifter Raven Darkholme – later Mystique.  Years later, Raven (now played by Jennifer Lawrence) lives with Charles (now James McAvoy) in England where Charles is just getting his doctorate in genetics.  Eric (now Michael Fassbender) is spending his time hunting down Shaw.  Elsewhere still, Dr. Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne) stumbles upon Shaw and his Hellfire Club – comprised of telepath Emma Frost (January Jones), teleporter Azazel, and whirlwind creator Riptide.  Shaw threatens a general into voting to move nuclear weapons to Turkey, starting the Cuban Missile Crisis in hopes of getting both sides to nuke the Hell out of each other, leaving only the mutants.  No one believes Moira when she reports this because mutants are relatively unheard of at this point.  So she goes and gets Charles on her side and together they manage to launch a fairly unsuccessful assault on Shaw, which only becomes relatively successful at the intervention of Eric.  Shaw escapes and Eric joins up with Charles and Raven to create a team to take on Shaw in a facility run by Oliver Platt.  At said facility, they meet Hank McCoy – later Beast – who has created a machine that will amplify Charles’ powers.  Using this, they create a team with Angel, a stripper with wings who can spit hot fire like Dylan; Alex Summers, who can shoot destructive red circles as Havok; Sean Cassidy, who can scream real loud as Banshee; and a guy who can adapt to survive named Darwin.  This new team must now train to take on Shaw and stop the two superpowers from destroying each other.

My review of this movie?  I loved every bit of it!  THE END!  …Okay, I’ll do more.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that knows me to find this out, but here goes: I … am a nerd.  And not only am I nerdy about movies and video games, but I’m nerdy about comic books.  Though not all comic books.  My childhood was spent reading almost exclusively Marvel comic books, my favorite of which being the X-Men.  So one could say that my opinion is a bit swayed by my preexisting condition.  That being said, this movie rocks.  I’m not sure if it’s based on some version of the X-Men I haven’t read, but it doesn’t exactly fit the actual story of the X-Men as I know them.  The first official X-Men team was Cyclops, Jean Gray, Beast (not yet blue and hairy), Iceman, and Angel (though not female bug winged Angel, but male angel winged Angel).  But do I necessarily want to see a movie based on a comic book I’ve already read?  Heck no!  I already know that story.  Gimme some new stuff.  I’m not the type of fan that says they can’t deviate from the text.  I’m the kind of fan that says entertain me, and this movie does that in spades.  It pains me not to spoil them, but the cameos (2 of them in particular) are worth the price of admission alone.  The story was all around fantastic and left me with no complaints.  And (again, no spoilers) the climax of this movie is basically what all movies should take as an example.  It has a very poignant and significant defeat of the main antagonist, an epic showdown, the crippling of Charles Xavier (that’s not a spoiler to anyone that’s watching this movie), and the birth of Magneto.

I would say the biggest thing I had a problem with in this movie was the casting, though not all of it.  Michael Fassbender was the perfect Magneto.  A bona fide badass if ever there was one.  The problem with him was the kid who played him in the beginning.  I thought that kid was awful.  Most of what he did was laughable when it should have been heart wrenching.  Thankfully that kid grows into Michael Fassbender soon enough.  Also, as a side note, from being the coolest Spartan in 300 to being the guy that nearly fudged up the whole plan in Inglourious Basterds, I have not seen Michael Fassbender do something bad.  I even liked him in Centurion, though the movie wasn’t that good.  Next up was Professor X.  Going into the movie I was pretty sure I’d like Fassbender, but something about James McAvoy rubbed me the wrong way.  And since I had only previously seen him in Wanted, and I thought that movie blew, I’d have to blame that.  Thankfully he did a great job as well.  The only problem was that Professor X acted kind of like McAvoy was doing an Austin Powers impression in the beginning, but that was youthful indiscretion and he grew up pretty quick to be the Professor X I wanted, though I was constantly curious about when exactly Professor Xavier became powerful enough that he could stop holding his fingers to his temple to use his abilities.  Didn’t see Patrick Stewart doing that!  Rose Byrne was, as always, a stone cold hottie.  She was good in the movie too.  Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique was good as well.  My only problem with her is that I really don’t see what everyone’s on about with her being so hot.  She’s good looking, sure, and I wouldn’t kick her out of bed, but she doesn’t hold a candle to Rose Byrne for me.

Two big bads to the casting for me were Angel and Emma Frost.  Angel’s performance was fair enough, my problem was with the character.  Who the Hell is she?  As aforementioned, I’m a huge Marvel nerd and even I had to look her up after my first viewing.  Turns out she was a real character in the Marvel universe, but I don’t know if she was significant enough to be in the movie.  And then there was Emma.  At first I thought January Jones made an interesting, albeit tedious choice, to make Emma Frost seem constantly bored and disinterested in being in the movie.  Emma Frost in the comics is a bit stuck up, sure, but devoid of personality?  Not so much.  But I let it slide at first because I thought it was a choice and it just wasn’t the one I would have made.  Then my roommate tells me that she always acts like that and now I can’t watch the movie without seeing how bad January Jones is here.  She is DEVOID of personality.  Hell, her CG diamond form emoted more than she did!

January Jones was not, however, able to dampen my love for this movie.  If you don’t like comic books or comic book movies I: a) pity you, and b) could see this movie not being your cup of tea.  I would say I put this movie as number 3 in my all time favorite comic book movies; right behind Watchman and, of course, Dark Knight.  You should at least see this movie, if not own it.  I give X-Men: First Class a “MAKE ANOTHER ONE, QUICK” out of “THIS MOVIE RULES!”

And, as always, please rate, comment, and/or like this post and others.  It may help me get better.