X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)



Holy shit! Remember how good the last movie was?! This one is really getting set up to be possibly the best film of the franchise! Wait, Bryan Singer is leaving the project? And wait, he’s leaving to do a fucking shitty Superman movie?! Superman sucks! Well, I’m sure they’ll get someone equally as talented to fill his shoes. Wait…did you say Brett Ratner? Brett “Rush Hour” Ratner? Oh, well, that makes sense, considering the relationship between Cyclops and Wolverine is so similar to the dichotomy between Christ Tucker and Jackie Chan. And you said Halle Berry threatened to leave the franchise because she wasn’t used enough in the previous two films?  Thank Cthulhu, there really is hop for the franchise! Wait, you said they want her in the series, so they are making her MORE important?! Well, fuck me, this movie is going to suck.



It’s funny, because right now EVERYONE in this scene is trying to pretend that that’s not just Frasier with blue hair


We see Professor X walk out of a car, yes, you read that correctly, he WALKED out of a car, that’s how you know things are wacky. Who else walks out of the car? Magneto! They are friends?! What is this wackiness?! Apparently it was the past, and we see the happy couple visiting the home of Jean Grey as a young child, where we see how she’s even more powerful than we were led to believe previously. We then see a young boy in a bathroom, doing something he isn’t supposed to. Not masturbating, no, rather he is grinding his newly developed mutant wings off of his back. Gross! Then there’s that whole intro thing and we cut to our familiar X-Men in the heat of battle, where we notice a lack of Cyclops, yet the addition of Colossus, Iceman, Rogue, and Shadowcat. By the way, Colossus can give himself a metal exoskeleton and Shadowcat can pass through walls, and we see them defeating a mutant-hunting Sentinal robot, only to realize this was all part of a Danger Room simulation. Both the Sentinals and the Danger Room are things found in the comics and cartoon series, so clearly Brett Ratner is giving the fans what they want! Haha, just kidding. Cyclops is still distraught over the death of Jean and he goes to the lake where she dies, only to see her come back to life, and, well, kill him. Sorry dude. We then see a big blue furry guy who is Hank McCoy, who is the X-Man known as Beast. The funniest part? We see him reading a magazine…only to pan out and see that he’s reading it while hanging from the ceiling! We had no idea!



What else is funny is that James Marsters had a tiny part in this movie because he was busy filming Superman Returns with Bryan SInger instead. What’s not funny? Making Famke Janssen less attractive by giving her shitty red hair.



The plot centers around a mutant who “leeches” powers off of mutants, and through research, he is studied and doctors have created a cure. This is good for some people, bad for others. People like Rogue, who are embarrassed of their mutation, are all for it, and people like Magneto are pissed. Magneto being the typical pissed off Magneto forms a gang of mutant fighters, a “Brotherhood”, if you will, to put a stop to it. Really the only new character that is at all worth mentioning is Juggernaut,whose mutant power is that once he builds up momentum, nothing can stop him.More importantly, Jean Grey is back, and more powerful and crazy than ever. She leaves Xavier’s mansion and heads back to her home, where she is found by both the good guys and the bad guys. These guys fight and the fight ends with Jean Grey disintegrating Professor Xavier. Whoops! Magneto runs to the woods to build up a big army of mutant bad guys to storm the facility where the cure is being developed, and then the X-Men show up to stop them. In the process, the doctor developing it gets killed, and but Magneto still gets stabbed with the cure by Beast, thus losing his mutant powers. Jean Grey sees this and is pissed, and she starts disintegrating everything and everyone, with the only one able to get through being Wolverine, who stabs her and she dies. Back at Xavier’s mansion, we learn that Rogue was able to get the cure so she can now touch her boyfriend. The movie ends with seeing Magneto sitting by himself with a chess set, staring at one metal piece, and just as we see it move slightly, the credits roll. Don’t worry, after the credits there is a scene where we here Professor X’s voice comes from a dead guy or something, paving the way for a hopeful Ratner return! Fuck my life.



The real Juggernaut is much more veiny in the arm areas



Let me try to get the “positive” things out of the way, which, well, are up for debate on whether or not they actually are positive. Two of the more well received X-Men titles, by both fans and critics, were Astonishing X-Men, by Joss Whedon, and Ultimate X-Men, by, I think a bunch of people. Considering Brett Ratner had no idea what he was doing, he clearly stole things from these titles. For example, the first storyline from Astonishing X-Men is titled “Gifted”, and is about a cure being created for mutants. Also, in the Danger Room segment, Wolverine and Colossus perform a “fastball special”, where Colossus throws wolverine at something, which isn’t something only found in Astonishing X-Men exclusively, the framing of that sequence looks like it was ripped right from the pages of that book. As far as Ultimate X-Men goes, he stole Storm’s shitty haircut, as well as ripped a scene directly from it where Shadowcat and Iceman bond by having Iceman freeze a pond on the campus and the two of them ice skating. Sure, I suppose you could say these were his attempt at paying homage, for which he could have chosen worse titles to do that with, but to most readers of the comics, I think it was obvious that he was just stealing.



Oh yeah, and that little kid in the beginning ends up becoming Angel when he gets older. Good for him.



How fucking terrible was Beast in this movie? He was played by Kelsey Grammer, who actually sounds like a good choice. So what’s the problem? I guess just the way he looked in every scene, as well as every fucking line of dialogue. We get it, Beast is smart, he wears a suit, but do you have to make him sound like a pretentious douchebag even while fighting everyone? Fuck, he sucked so bad. Now let’s talk about Juggernaut…boy oh boy, motherfucking Juggernaut. First off, this guy is supposed to be HUGE, I mean, fucking massive, so you get the guy to look like he is 7 feet tall? Okay sure, that’s big, but not big enough. I’m also willing to forget the fact that there’s a scene where Leech takes away Juggernaut’s power, despite the fact that he isn’t a human and actually gets his powers from a magical crystal. But I mean, as if Beast’s dialogue wasn’t bad enough, Juggernaut’s made him look like a fucking genius. I kid you not, there is one bit of dialogue that was taken right from a funny internet video…yes, a Hollywood movie looked to viral videos for inspiration for the line where Juggernaut says “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I saw on the DVD that the scene immediately following that had a line that they deleted where he says “Heeeere’s Juggy”. Here’s Juggy. Goddammit, I feel dumber just typing that.



You’re thinking that her red wardrobe is symbolic, don’t you? Well, you’re right. Not symbolic of the Phoenix, but symbolic of this bitch acting like she’s on her period.



I know that a movie shouldn’t be judged by what’s on the DVD deleted scenes, but as previously mentioned with the Juggernaut dialogue, it couldn’t be made more apparent how Brett Ratner knew NOTHING about how to make this movie. There are multiple deleted scenes where we see the opposite of what happened in the official release, such as a filmed alternate ending where Rogue doesn’t get the cure. And another alternate ending involving Wolverine going back to the bar we met him at in the first film. And another alternate ending where we see school starting back up at Xavier’s mansion. Obviously he had no idea what would be the best for the story, or any of the characters, so he just shot a whole bunch of shit, threw it together, and waited to see what test audiences disliked the least. Not to mention the fact that he included two different versions of a scene where Pyro comes down the stairs to tell Magneto about the cure, Magneto looks up and says “Thank you.” One version says “clean shaven version”, and the other says “bearded version”. The difference? The clean shaven version shows Magneto looking up and saying “Thank you” while clean shaven, the other, he looks up and says “Thank you”, and has a beard. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! WHAT COULDN’T HAVE BEEN GAINED OR LOST BY THE AMOUNT OF FACIAL HAIR ON HIS FACE AS HE DELIVERS THE LINE “THANK YOU”?! GODDAMN YOU BRETT RATNER, YOU FAT FUCKING IDIOT. Despite Brett Ratner’s best efforts to ruin everything, it’s still an X-Men movie, and it’s still better than Elektra.


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Fantastic Four (2005)

I think it’s a combination of having just gone to C2E2, knowing that there was going to be a new comic book series called “FF” because Johnny Storm recently died, and, spoiler alert, because Johnny Storm recently died in the Fantastic Four series, I decided to give this movie another shot. And by give it another shot, I meant watch it recently, because I have it on DVD and have watched it a few times. When it first came out, I was driving cross-country with Ryoji, Moussa, and Bremalin to go see the Carry On reunion. We were at such a loss for what to do, we considered using one of our nights to watch this. Thank fucking Cthulhu, we didn’t. However, I do remember working at a movie theater at the time and making sure to poke my head into the theater at the scene where Jessica Alba was in her underwear. Some things never change!



GET THAT FOREIGN SHIT THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!! Err, I mean, it’s clobberin’ time!

 

Reed Richards is played by Ioan Gruffudd (who?) and his best friend, Ben Grimm, is played by Michael Chiklis, and these two dudes really want to go into outer space. They rely on an old classmate named Victor Von Doom, played by Julian McMahon, to try to get some money for their project. Problem is, Victor Von Doom is kind of a dick, and he is dating Reed’s old girlfriend! What a cock! Victor agrees to the mission, and brings his girlfriend Susan Storm, played by Jessica Alba, up into space with all of them. How could things get more awkward? Well only is Susan has her younger brother, Johnny Storm, played by Chris Evans, as the pilot!  What a bunch of jerks! Well, guess what happens when they go to outer fucking space? THEY GET BLASTED WITH SPACE RADIATION RAYS! OH NO!!! What the fuck did they think would happen?!


One difficulty in reviewing this movie was finding pictures that weren’t Jessica Alba. So, well, here ya go.

 

Back on Earth, these magic space rays have given them super powers. Reed can get really stretchy, Ben has been turned in a big rock monster “thing”, Susan can become invisible, Johnny can catch on fire, and Victor now has a metal skeleton and electric powers? Or something? That part’s a little unclear. They end up using these powers a few times to save the day, but mostly Ben is just pissed because he’s a fucking rock, so Reed tries to figure out a way to change him back. While doing this, he invents some super energy machine thing that will change him back, but Victor finds out about it first. Victor watches Ben change back to human, then sucks out all the super power from the machine or something and then is an asshole trying to kill other people. The rest of the team joins together to make Victor melt, because he’s metal, and then cool him off, to make him solid, which makes no goddamn sense at all. Reed then tells Ben that he can change him back, but Ben arbitrarily changes his entire opinion on being a rock because he has found a blind chick, which apparently makes it okay to be a fucking rock the rest of your life. Oh, and Reed steals Victor’s girlfriend back. Nice.


See that? Over there? yeah, that’s the idea of you ever playing a role that isn’t the lovable sidekick going down in flames. Sorry!

 

To a slightly lesser extent, this film has suffered the same fate as the Daredevil movie, which means it was rushed into production with “hot” actors, thinking that will translate to charisma. Julian McMahon was hot because of the Nip/Tuck popularity, Jessica Alba was hot because, well, she is hot, and Ioan Gruffudd…who the fuck knows where he came from. All those people kind of sucked in their roles, there’s no two ways about it. Were they as bad as the first Fantastic Four movie from the early 90′s (review here) that had no budget? Not at all. They came in and read their lines, they just didn’t really bring much to the movie. Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans, on the other hand, were awesome. Chiklis has experience playing a character like Ben Grimm/The Thing, in being the muscle, being the big guy, being the guy you have sympathy for, and he played that role as good as anyone. Johnny Storm is cocky, annoying, a smartass, you almost don’t even like him, but always manages to pull through that all so you like him deep down. The chemistry between these two characters, constantly bickering and mocking one another, also played well, or at least as well as their relationship in most comics. And when you add those two to the other two, creating four, the “family” dynamic that was always so important played out pretty well.


The blonde hair was tolerable, but I got creeped out by those dead fucking blue eyes, knowing there wasn’t anything behind them. Yes, she does have eyes. They’re just a couple of inches above her tits.

 

Other than that, pretty much everything else kind of sucked. It just seemed like it might as well have been a kids film, or maybe a cartoon or something. I think they were going for the fun family adventure of something science-y happening and them using their smarts and teamwork to sort out the problems, but everything was just sort of half-assed. There is a bit about them wearing special spacesuits that, as Johnny Storm says, “Keeps the hot stuff hot and the cool stuff cool”, which was so fucking stupid. Oh, but of COURSE that explains why they can wear these superhero suits back on Earth, because they were hit with the same cosmic radiation! Whoa! There were some moments that were about as lame in the science content as the scene in X-Men when Storm asks what happens when a toad is struck by lightning, with the response of “The same thing that happens to everything else”. I mean, Reed Richards was apparently frozen to make sure he couldn’t stretch, Johnny Storm grabbed a girl to protect her from fire, despite him being fire himself, and bullshit like that. Some of the effects were cool I guess, but really not all that memorable.


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30 Days of Night: Dark Days (2010)

 

The first time I read 30 Days of Night I really enjoyed myself. When I enjoyed the second book in the series? Not as much. Just didn’t have the fear or terror as the first one, so I think I traded it back to the store I bought it from. The film adaptation was really entertaining. The visuals were interesting and they really seemed to capture the tone of the book. These “vampires” weren’t some twinkling romantic pussies, they were brutal monsters ready to rip your fucking face off. I always described the art of the first comic as someone using water colors to paint something abstract, and then lines were drawn over the figures to make a more cohesive image. Every panel looked like it was made on accident, but a very lucky accident. Hopefully that makes sense, because I liked the art, that was just my shitty way of explaining it. Anyways, since I liked the first movie, I was hoping to like this one, and well, why don’t I just get started.

 

Some of you will be dead soon, some of you won’t be dead soon enough, and some of you are wearing flannel. YOU BE THE JUDGE!

 

One of the survivors from the original film, Stella, who was actually recast from Melissa George to Kiele Sanchez, is determined to let people know her story. Vampires are real, and they killed the people she loved. Guess what? This brings her to the attention of both vampires and vampire hunters alike! Who woulda thought?! Three self-proclaimed vampire hunters ask her to join them, seeing as how she has witnessed what they’re capable of firsthand. She reluctantly accepts, and meets another member of their team, who happens to be a vampire himself. He tells them inside information on the woman responsible for orchestrating the attacks across the world, Lilith, played by Mia Kirshner. There’s lots of running, yelling, blood, and eventually these vampire hunters find their way onto a ship that Lilith is using to get back to Alaska for another 30 days of murder and mayhem. The team also sees wounded vampires, who appear to be dead, coming back to life by having other vampires pour blood into their mouths. While on the ship, all the vampire killers die, except for Stella, who is able to surprise Lilith and chop her head off. Stella then goes back to Barrow, AK, where her dead vampire husband is, and digs up his body. In a hotel room, she cuts her own arms to bleed into his mouth in hopes of bringing him back. Congratulations, she does, but only to have him bite her on the neck. CREDITS!

 

Where’d ya get that machete, Mexico?! HAHAH GET IT?! From that other review I did?! Oh man, I’m great.

 

I think I enjoyed this film more than I enjoyed the comic book version, but that’s not saying much. Also, the plots were quite different. Yes, they both featured Stella trying to find people responsible, but that’s really about it. One of the reasons these vampires are so enjoyable is that because even though you know they’re vampires, they can still fuck with your expectations. The vampire hunters aren’t armed with wooden stakes or holy water, they just have whatever weapons they can find. When they try to kill them, they pretty much just try to destroy their brains, which they did in quite a few awesome ways. The first time, a vampire gets pinned to a wall and three people fire full clips from handguns into its head until it pretty much disintegrates. When one of the vampire killers turns into one himself, they smash his head open with a cinder block…repeatedly. I think there are also a few decapitations. I think there must have been a sale on prosthetic heads at a body parts warehouse.

 

Not actually sure if this is from the film or from her eHarmony page, but either way, I’m both aroused and terrified, which are pretty much the same thing.

 

I’m going to do something a little different and talk a little bit more about the casting and character development, something rarely talked about with horror films. Kiele Sanchez did a good job as Stella, but her character was so different in this film than it was in the first film. No discredit to her, it just seemed as though the writers flipped a switch from her being a very vulnerable character in the first film to a Milla Jovovich level asskicker with a heart of steel. It made a few moments of the film awkward. Harold Perrineau, also known as Michael from Lost, was awesome. Any movie he is in, he is great in it, and you want to see him more. The bad thing? He was the first vampire killer that dies, and it’s only about 45 minutes into the film, and it was just really disappointing. The male lead, Rhys Coiro, existed. He served as the male lead of the film, and that’s what he did, nothing more, nothing less. Well, maybe a little bit less, but whatever. It was nice to see Diora Baird playing a slightly different role than she normally does. Normally, she gets cast as the token female eye candy that will be on the receiving end of all male attention in a film, and mostly likely she dies. Her role in this was a lot more like Bill Paxton in Aliens, albeit a much more toned down version that wasn’t really comedic. She didn’t agree with the female lead and wanted to do things her way, but not in some “damsel in distress” kind of way. There were points where you almost didn’t like her, which was a fun role to see her play. Mia Kirshner played the weirdo vampire that is good-looking, but even if you didn’t know she was a vampire, if you had seen her on the street, you might think she was one. All of the individuals did what they needed to do, but it just felt like something in the story was missing, and ultimately just felt like the producers wanted to cash in on the success of the first film. But hey, if you like vampires and hate Robert Pattinson, this is head and shoulders above that Twilight bullshit.

 

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Deadpool

You might not recognize who you’re looking at, but I’m sure the name is certainly familiar. Deadpool is working his way up the ranks from D-list Marvel superhero to C-list, possibly even B-list status. This is mostly thanks to the fact that he was involved in the Wolverine: Origins movie, as well as the fact that he is currently the star of three, about to be four,  titles at your local comic book store. By the time you finish reading this sentence, there will probably be another title. And I’m sure you have been reading the blogs and websites talking about development for the Deadpool movie, starring Ryan Reynolds. With this post, I will give a little background on the character as well as review the three more popular titles that currently have his namesake so that when you finally see a trailer for this movie, you can act like you have been down since the beginning.

“NEEDS MORE POUCHES!” – Rob Liefeld

The absolute worst part about Deadpool is the fact that he was created by an absolute idiot named Rob Liefeld, who is absolutely insane. Not so much in any type of cool “Oh my god, look how cool the things are this artist is doing, he must be INSANE!” kinds of way, but in the sense of “Has this man ever seen a human woman, let alone human ANYTHING?’. It’s like Liefeld was sitting around thinking “Hmmm, if only there was a way I could have a character whose super power was the use of guns, samurai swords, and a plethora of pouches! And he should wear black and red, and probably have DEATH or something like that in the name…”. To get a better understanding of the insanity of Rob Liefeld, please consult this website: http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html

That is one shiny sword

ANYWAYS, the simplified backstory involves Deadpool, a.k.a. Wade Wilson, having Cancer and being experimented on with the Weapon X program. Specifically, Wolverine’s healing factor was extracted and applied to Deadpool, which gave him regenerative power, as well as made the Cancer super strong. This means he is powerful enough to grow back limbs or heads, but also covers his body in tumors and makes him horribly disfigured. In an issue of Cable & Deadpool quite a few years back, Deadpool actually described himself as a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a shar pei. In addition to being nearly immortal, he generally relies on his super agility and reflexes, exploiting them as an assassin. One of his nicknames is the “Merc with a Mouth”, Merc being pronounced like mer-k, despite the fact that it is short for mercenary.

And the hilarity ensues…

One of the more interesting aspects to Deadpool’s abilities are the fact that the experiments have driven him absolutely insane. Not Rob Liefeld insane, but the wacky kind of insane, which is probably the reason he has become such a fan favorite. He is constantly making jokes and quips to his counterparts in the comics, and has even taken advantage of the comic book format and their tendencies to have thought bubbles. Deadpool constantly has multiple conversations and arguments between his different personalities, as well talking to the reader of the comic book directly and breaking the fourth wall. To give an idea of his “humor”, it’s like if you were to say Spider-man was Patton Oswalt, Deadpool would be like Zach Galifiankis. Instead of actual jokes, it’s just a constant stream of non-sequiturs.

Merc With A Mouth

If you were to only read one Deadpool title, I would definitely pick this one up. Before you even open the issues, you would see that all of the covers are parodies of famous movie posters, which make the cover price worth it alone. Once you open up the issue, you get just what you pay for…a wacky mercenary blowing things up and saying insane things, as well as babes with huge boobs in various levels of undress. I believe the current storyline also involves traveling between dimensions with his partner in crime, which happens to be a zombified version of his own head. I would also like to point out that the art is done by a guy named BONG DAZO. That’s right, his name is goddamned BONG DAZO. Now, if that name alone isn’t enough to draw you in, take a look at this:

Dinosaurs, zombie heads, and babes. Looks like the inside of my head.

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Deadpool

The beginning of this series was pretty good, up until around issue 13. He was doing classic Deadpool stuff, running around, blowing stuff up, saying silly things, and it was a lot of fun when he started getting into fights with Bullseye (who if you remember your Marvel universe, was actually posing as Hawkeye). Once the whole X-Men Utopia event happened, things got a little weird with Deadpool trying to join the X-Men (again), and I don’t really remember where it ended up going, because I was bored with it. However, the last couple issues involved teaming up with Spider-man to take down a mysterious character referred to as Hitman Monkey….who is a hitman, that’s a monkey. Hopefully things pick up and it gets better again.

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Deadpool Team-Up

I feel like this series was either a joke or a bet that someone won/lost, thus resulting in a series that is being released in reverse chronological order? Yeah, my thoughts exactly. A few months ago, some flagship Marvel series were reaching pivotal issue numbers, thus causing them to start renumbering their issues. Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and The Amazing Spider-man all hit issue number 600, as well as Daredevil reaching issue 500. Shortly after that, they released Deadpool, issue #900, which I thought was going to be a one shot book poking fun of all those other titles. Little did I know it was a starting point for Deadpool Team-Up to start releasing the following month, starting with issue #899, with numbers decreasing since then. Most of these issues involve Deadpool teaming up with a D-list character to take down some characters you’ve never heard of. Really not worth it, but come on, look how cool that black and red guy with all the guns look!

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