Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Fantastic Four" (2015)

"Insert Fant4stic joke here*

Fantastic Four (2015)

Directed by Josh Trank
Produced by Gregory Goodman, Simon Kinberg, Robert Kulzer, Hutch Parker, Matthew Vaughn
Written by Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg, Josh Trank

Starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathy, Tim Blake Nelson

Budget: $120M

2015 was kind of a weird year for movies. Just the year before we had a slew of critically acclaimed films released, from The Spectacular Now to Whiplash to The Danish Girl, which were followed by hilariously awful movies like Jupiter Ascending and, of course, Fantastic Four.

A little bit of backstory on the catastrophe that is the adapted Fantastic Four universe...since the early 90s Fox has held onto the adaptation rights with an iron fist. Each time there's the risk that the rights would revert back to Marvel, the studio would pump out a half-hearted film to make sure they stayed in-house. When news broke that they were rebooting the series once more for 2015, response was understandably cool. This wasn't helped by the Internet Outrage Machine reacting to the casting of Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm, changes to the Victor Von Doom character (original plans were to have him be a 1337-haxxor named Victor Domashev), and numerous reports of drastic reshoots, drama on-set from director Trank, and several rumors that Trank would show up to set drunk after Fox execs essentially stonewalled him from production.

In fact, Trank went on a twitter rant around the time of the film's release (now deleted), stating that he'd had a fantastic version which would have received great reviews. Toby Kebbell, who played Doom, supported the statements, saying that Trank's original vision was much darker, and that we'll never see it.

Which is a real shame, because the thing which really ruins this movie is what might have been.

We start with a sequence in 2007 showing childhood Reed and Ben working on a Biomatter Shuttle to transport living matter through space. His asshole teacher makes completely unreasonable comments about his experiment before we cut forward to Teller and Bell showing it off at a science fair. Despite the fact that it obviously works the asshole teacher disqualifies them. But it's okay, because Freddy and Zoe from House of Cards show up to remind me how disappointing Season 2 was before we get into the real backstory of the F4.

Why don't you call me back, Kate? Is it the wig?

The evil government comes in to get the biomatter shuttle running because we've ruined Earth and need to start exploiting other places for resources. In a PSA warning against th e dangers of drunken teleportation, the F4 plus Doom go to the other world, show the same level of care as the idiots from Prometheus, and come back with crazy powers.

Skip to one year later, the evil government is selling the tech to the military, using the F4 as weapons, and have to hunt down Reed. Doom shows up, murders a whole bunch of people, a beam of light shoots into the sky, and there's a big dumb fight before the movie ends with a serious case of cinematic blue
balls.

The worst part about this movie is that I believe Josh Trank when he says he got screwed over. It's not really a secret that movie executives are the worst thing to happen to cinema since Michael Bay, and the marks of their grubby little hands are all over this movie. There's an interesting game you can play I like to call Spot the Reshoot, where you take a drink every time Kate Mara's wig turns into spaghetti.

And not a single "get your rocks off" joke to be seen.

As I've stated before, I'm totally in for a slow-paced origin story that treats the characters and powers like real-life people thrust into these situations. I'd absolutely be down for a Cronenbergian look at how the F4's powers mess with their bodies. Teller's reaction to his body stretching unnatural lengths is cool. It's presented in a manner that's actually pretty creepy. Bell does a fine job delivering his lines as someone who's woken up as a giant rock monster and gets used as a military weapon. Kebbell portrays Doom as a spoiled smart kid, and while he's given lines which are so bad they're not even worth a chuckle, he does his best.

Hell, I'm even almost okay with the portrayal of Doom's powers here. He's got this Scanners type of telekinesis where he pops people against walls with CGI blood spatters as he's calmly walking through the complex, and it's legitimately pretty cool. Of course, this is really the only cool area of the movie and should have been the end of the first act, or the second. Instead, we get a 90 minute origin story that ends before we get any sort of actual action. As I said the final fight scene is pretty weak, with a few exchanges and the worst use of the villain down-powering his attacks so the main characters won't get splattered against the ground in greasy smears.

This is a guy who can crack people's brains open like eggs, and all he does against Reed is throw him backwards. Weak.

It's one of those paper tanks that burns up completely on impact.

Now, while the effects might be better quality than the 2005 film, there's a lack of care evident throughout which made me laugh more than once. Check out this gif:

What the hell, Fox? This was released in theaters. That shot was used in the trailers. Someone was paid to go, "it's fine, no one will notice."

If I felt any one emotion during this movie, it was frustration.

The Mildly Entertaining
There's a better score here than you usually get in these Marvel movies. While it's not really anything special, it goes to highlight just how underutilized appropriate musical motifs are in the greater MCU. Give me unique themes for all of the characters, Marvel! Why can't I tell the difference between Thor's theme and Iron Man's?

The Outright Insulting
There are so many logical shortcuts in this movie. Why is the Baxter Institute crawling public school science fairs for the keys to interdimensional travel? How did four drunk engineers manage to sneak into the shuttle room and remotely teleport themselves? Why did Doom pick Reed up by the throat instead of vaporizing him when he's on his home turf? How often can we tell the same story over and over again before we riot and drag Fox executives from their beds at night? Am I taking this too seriously?

Not picture: the stakes.

How often do we have to watch a beam of light shoot into the sky, surrounded by a ring of debris, and highlighted by reverse-bass-booms?

Verdict:

Don't bother.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer"

"Should we bother making an interesting poster?"
"Nah, just slap their faces on it, it'll be fine."

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Directed by Tim Story
Produced by Avi Arad, Bernd Eichinger, Ralph Winter
Written by Don Payne, Mark Frost, Story by John Turman, Mark Frost

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Andre Braugher, Doug Jones

Budget: $130M

I'll fully admit to having somewhat unusual taste when it comes to superhero movies. I'm actually a fan of when it treats the characters like they're going about their super-heroism in the modern world, politics included. It's why I want a Superman where he has to deal with the fact that he's essentially an unstoppable tool of the American way. I want superheros to deal with their public image, whether vigilantes or not.

So you'd think the Fantastic Four would be a good fit. They're something like America's First Family of Superheros, considering they're "out," for lack of a better term. They're often treated like celebrities, and, to get off on a positive note, they deal a little bit with that in these two Story F4 movies. In the first one Johnny is trying to capitalize on their fame by prototyping action figures. In the second one he's selling ad space on the uniform. I'm totally cool with that.

However, when the story devolves into illogical, cosmic-stakes nonsense, that's when I lose interest. Call it oversaturation, call it an inability to relate to the idea of these people stopping the solar system from getting eaten, but that's about when I lose interest.

*sad trombone*

The movie starts off with a shot of a planet cracking open, a la Krypton, and a narration about something I didn't catch because I had already checked out. Cut to New York, where the F4 are having issues getting on an airplane, talking about the media circus wedding between Reed and Sue, and awkward comedy with the Thing.

Interspersed are shots of the Silver Surfer flying around, freezing stuff, snowing in Cairo, and causing black-outs across the world.

There's some manufactured drama between all the characters because we have to undo the development we had in the past movie, Andre Braugher shows up to tell Reed about the weirdness around the planet, and then the Silver Surfer shows up at the wedding to mess things up. Doom "escapes," though it's more like he walks outside. Johnny follows the Surfer around, almost gets killed but doesn't because duh, and we learn that Galactus is going to come eat the planet! Oh no!

Like I said, space scooter.

Now, this ties into my criticisms about the stakes in general, because Galactus is pretty much impossible to do well on film. You can either display him as a giant purple-helmeted guy riding around on his space scooter, or you can do something different, in which case why bother? Rise figures the best way to do this is to portray the planet-eater as a giant space cloud.

Weak. Even Ultimate Galactus (called Gah Lak Tus) was a swarm of spaceships. This one is literally an evil cloud.

There's some power-shifting shenanigans which aren't funny, nor clever, the Silver Surfer realizes the error of his ways, and Doom does some evil stuff that ultimately doesn't have any impact on the plot. Sue gets speared and brought back to life, the Surfer sacrifices himself to beat Galactus and comes back to life, and the credits roll.

The Silver (Surfer) Lining
Doug Jones does the motion capture for the Surfer, and it's always nice to see the guy getting work. The Surfer looks good throughout, and they do a fair job of making him look, at first, pretty powerful. His voice is provided by Laurence Fishburne, so he sounds appropriately cosmic.

Break it down, Chiklis.

At least the final fight is better than the one from the first movie, but that's not really saying much.

At least it gave us this scene --->

The Planet-Devouring Storm Cloud
As said above, the stakes couldn't be any non-existent. This movie doesn't have the tone of something that will actually do anything brave, from the Johnny's fall from orbit to the bloodless helicopter crash to Sue's death and resurrection literally five minutes later. The worst we see is a bit of relationship drama between Sue and Reed, which is resolved pretty immediately after.

Speaking of Jessica Alba, the first movie saw fit to bleach her hair and call it a day. In this one they put her in a bad blonde wig and over-saturated blue contact lens. Though Sue Storm is the epitome of blue-eyed blonde, it gives the unfortunate impression that Jessica Alba was too hispanic for audiences in the first movie. Maybe that's just me living in this post-Trump society, but whatever.

The Continuity What?
So...Stan Lee's cameo is during the wedding scene...as himself...and it's written and performed in such a way that makes it seem like Stan Lee recognizes these people as his characters. The theory that Stan Lee is playing Uatu the Watcher still holds water.

But really, what? I know it's done for comedy, but does that mean this version of Stan Lee has some sort of creative reality-warping ability? Now there's a movie, man.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Fantastic Four" (2005)

The jokes write themselves.

Fantastic Four (2005)

Directed by Tim Story
Produced by Avi Arad, Bernd Eichinger, Ralph Winter
Written by Michael France, Mark Frost

Starring Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon

Budget: $100M

The early 'Aughts were a rough time for superhero movies. Though we had movies like X-Men, Spider-Man 2, and Blade, we also had the disastrous Spider-Man 3 and X-Men 3: X-Men United to even things out a bit. Primarily most of these criticisms can be laid at the feet of Avi "Throw Venom in, it'll be awesome, come on" Arad, and since he's taken a backseat with the other Marvel movies most of them have come out alright.

Now, Roger Corman released a version of The Fantastic Four in 1994 which went unreleased and unnoticed until the internet brought  its wonder into the spotlight. That movie is an achievement in low-budget superheroism, with its $1M budget and classic Corman efficiency showcased to a...magnificent degree.

I remember when I started learning Macromedia Flash.

The 2005 version? Not so much.

I doubt anyone reading this is unfamiliar with the origins of the F4, but considering every single movie version covers it I figured I might as well, too. Scientists Reed Richard (Gruffudd), Sue Storm (Alba), and Victor Von Doom (McMahon), alongside pilot Johnny Storm (Evans, lol) and Ben Grimm (Chiklis) all encounter some cosmic space nonsense that gives them nonsense superpowers. The guy with the villainous name turns evil, they all fight, and the day is saved.

While this wasn't really stand-out bad back in 2005, watching this in a post-Winter Soldier world was absolutely bizarre. The lighting was so bright it made every scene look like a soap opera set. the acting is, to put it nicely, sub-par, and the acting is really not very good.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I list acting twice? That's to represent that whoever wrote edited this movie was a hack. Considering the director's last name is Story, you'd think they would manage some sort of logical progression of events, but all this guy has really done are the two (soon to be three) Ride Along movies and a bunch of music videos from the 1990s. Considering the soundtrack consists of various Sum 41 songs and similar fare, I wonder how much of that was intentional.

The Corman
There's really not a lot here to list as a positive. Maybe if you go into it expecting a bad movie, sure, but even then this isn't the kind of thing you put on to laugh at. Honestly it just makes me wonder whether we can actually do a good Fantastic Four movie. All it really brought to mind was that I want a proper Doom movie, where he's already ruler of Latveria and has to deal with some sort of crisis as a crazy supervillain.

Jessica Alba's hot, I guess.

The Fant4stic
Well...where to begin? I guess I could start by saying that picking any specific bad part of this movie could be contained in simply posting a link to the full film here and letting you experience it yourself.

The Thing suit looks like it's made out of brownie.

The directing is flat, and attempts at wit or clever film-making fall pretty flat. There's a moment when Ben wakes up after the accident and it's a point of view shot as Johnny fakes us out about him transforming into the Thing. It's not really funny at all, and the PoV looks unnatural. Stemming from this, there are bizarrely placed attempts at humor throughout, from Johnny messing with Benn to awkward one-liners from Johnny...actually, most of the bad humor falls squarely on Evans's shoulders.

Of course, where Corman's version had charm (cheap though it may have been), this version is just bland. The effects for the Human Torch and Mister Fantastic are really bad. Whenever Reed stretches it shows it from a really strange angle that doesn't so much convey his stretching as it does a misguided attempt at hiding your poor visual effects.

I'd be willing to let the poor effects go if the rest of the movie was competent, but it isn't. During the final action scene there are two Wilhelm Screams used within shots of each other. Even in 2005 that was a played out sound clip. Of course, the final fight scene is an example of how little any thought went into the logic of this film. After successfully freezing Doom in place, the damaged city square is immediately flooded by cheering crowds. If Doom had broken free he could have murdered everybody, but it was the end of the movie, so he's beaten!

And instead of putting him in some sort of prison, they stick him in a shipping container on a boat.

Verdict
This isn't a ha-ha-bad movie. Though it's closer in tone to the comics than Fant4stic, it's another in a line of failed adaptations of a property which should really just be given back to Marvel.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016 Bonus Round: Some Thoughts on the "Transformers: The Last Knight" Trailer

Gotta grab some of that social media blitz while the views are fresh!

Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

Directed by Michael Bay
Produced by Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Ian Bryce
Written by Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, Story by Akiva Goldsman (abandon all hope, ye who enter here)

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Isabela Moner, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, John Turturro

If you haven't already, I reviewed all four Transformers movies for this series last year. Here's a link, it's significantly less painful than sitting through all four in one day.

Insert Game of Thrones joke.

So the trailer starts with a promise of the best film idea ever, which is that of a damned medieval Transformers movie. Then it transitions between shots of Nazi Germany, a ruined football arena, and some other images of various Transformers hanging around.

By the way, these sequences are accompanied by narration by Sir Anthony Hopkins, because Westworld didn't contain enough robot shenanigans (go watch Westworld, though, for real).

"Akiva, some punk on the internet is saying mean things about us."
"It's okay, Michael, here's some cocaine to dry your tears."

Hopkins's narration is your standard high-minded Michael Bay fluff, talking about two species being at war, how two worlds are colliding, and how Optimus Prime left earth (because he flew away at the end of Trans4mers). We get some tease about why the Transformers keep showing up on Earth over shots of Omicron (!) eating the moon, then the standard Inception BWAAAAAAAA over action scenes and explosions. The trailer ends with Optimus Prime saying "Forgive me" as he seemingly kills Bumblebee, and then the promise of more mediocrity to come.

As far as trailers go it's fairly effective. It bears the standard stylistic choices of the current zeitgeist, from the quick-cuts, to Inception noises, to the editing synchronizing all the punches and gunshots to the score. Anthony Hopkins has a sufficiently sinister voice, but after seeing his stellar performance in Westworld that's really all this makes me want to watch.

Whether the movie is any good...ha! Got you. Let's not pretend this is going to be any different than the other four Bay-a-thons. Though the trailer was fine, I learned long ago from Man of Steel that a trailer is absolutely not an indication of the movie's quality.

However, let's be honest here and have some predictions:

God is dead, and we pulled the trigger.

Tomato-Meter: 23%

Box Office: $1.312B

Accolades:
Teen Choice Awards Choice Summer Movie nominee (award ends up going to Emojimovie: Express Yourself, releasing August 4, 2017)
Golden Raspberry for Worst Director (Michael Bay)

These violent delights have violent ends.

Verdict:
Oh, you know I'm going to sit and watch this trainwreck. Whether I pay for it or not is none of your concern.

But really, go watch Westworld on HBO. The first season just wrapped up so all you binge-watching babies have no excuse.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Devil"

And not a single "going down" joke.
What a waste.

Devil (2010)

Directed by John Erick Dowdle
Produced by M. Night Shyamalan, Sam Mercer
Written by Brian Nelson, Story by M. Night Shyamalan

Starring Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Geoffrey Arend, Bojana Novakovic

Budget: $10M

Is it safe to say you've lost all credibility when your name becomes a punchline? When I saw The Hangover in theaters, this was one of the trailers and the audience laughed when Shyamalan's name came up, despite the fact that he isn't the director.

The film starts with an upside-down flyover of the Philadelphia skyline as a narrator drones on about how the Devil likes to roam the earth looking for sinners. He takes human form, messes with them for a bit to taint their souls, then kills them. It's a pretty inefficient way to harvest souls, but who am I to question how Satan does things?

This time the big D's decided he's going to collect a bunch of awful people in an elevator, then contrive a bunch of ways to kill them. We meet...well, actually, we don't really meet our characters because we don't find out their names until partway through the movie. We're introduced to Detective Bowden (Messina) who's got a tragic past, as he investigates an apparent suicide. Turns out this building contains five sinners who get trapped in an elevator, and things unwind as, one by one, they Agatha Christie themselves to an unsatisfying anti-climax. A salesman, a liar, a mechanic, a security guard, and an old woman get Punked by Satan. There's not so much a twist as a lie, and the movie ends with an attempt to teach the audience a lesson about forgiveness.

Considering Spielberg's upcoming filmography,
this might have been a little prophetic.

Now, this movie was released in 2010, around the time Shyamalan's reputation had bottomed out on the curb of popular opinion. By this point he'd directed 9 films and had securely fastened himself as the Twistmeister of Hollywood, despite the fact that really only The Sixth Sense and The Village ended in actual twists, while Lady in the Water relied on a creator cameo and The Happening was lauded as the comedy smash-hit of 2008. Since Signs his Tomato-Meter has been in a pretty steady decline, and as of the time of this writing, he's still primarily considered a punchline.

Now, Shyamalan technically didn't direct this movie, but his mark is all over. There's a series of long, uninterrupted takes as the five board the elevator, some goofy point-of-view shots from within the actual car, and some admittedly clever use of mirrors in order to include everybody in the scene.

So credit where credit is due, a lot of this criticism can be leveled at Dowdle as well, but I'm going to address this as a Shyamalan movie because, let's face it, his name was plastered all over. Part of the problem is that this movie doesn't have any truly scary moments, it's just startling. Most of the scares comes from the elevator's sudden movement, or flickering lights. Someone should let the crew know that a pitch black screen accompanied by swooshing and meat-striking sounds is not creepy, nor clever.

Still preferable to going home with Justin Long.
Also, spoilers.

There's a cast here, and they do a fine job with what they've been given. Geoffrey Arend (Snozzberries from Super Troopers) puts on a good sleazy salesman before he's killed. Logan-Marshall Green (Not Tom Hardy from Prometheus) is fine as Third-Act Protagonist. Bojana Novavkovic (appearing with Frank Grillo in the upcoming Skyline 2! Awesome! Read my review of Skyline here!) looks sufficiently scared as things go to hell (metaphorically, the movie doesn't go that far).

Anyway, the movie ends up with everybody dying except Not Tom Hardy, the Detective, and Ramirez (Jacob Vargas), and it turns out the old lady was Satan all along! Despite the fact that she died partway through. Got yah!

The Unbreakable
I've said this before, but I don't mind Shyamalan when he's got some checks on him. In this case I think it's a better film than most of his others. There are some moments of actual dread accomplished through subtle direction and minimal effort in trying to fake out your audience. A falling pane of glass is a highlight early on, and throughout we see several deaths which we could conceivably chalk up to misfortune.

What surprised me most is that Shyamalan's input was primarily focused on the story, which is usually the touch of death for his projects. The idea that the Devil's presence makes things go bad and people get hurt is a fun one to play around with. Of course, if it had been delivered with some gravitas, rather than a piece of toast, it would have been all the more effective.

The Last Airbender

I don't care.

This film was released back when Shyamalan's name was (whether rightfully or not) associated with a third-act twist. As such, most people probably went in expecting some twist or another, and for a while I did too. The most obvious one was that the entire existence of the Devil would be chalked up to humanity being the real devil, because that's how hacks do. Instead, it was less a twist and more a lie, because the Old Woman is the second person to die and it turns out she's Satan. We're left with the question of whether Satan's taken her over, whether she was always the Devil, or whether it was poor screenwriting in an attempt to feel clever.

The Hellevator
This movie was supposed to be the first in a loosely connected trilogy called The Night Chronicles which focuses on supernatural encounters within urban environments. It's a fine idea, but after this movie underperformed (somehow), the idea was put on hold. Instead, Shyamalan dialed back a bit and released The Visit which I've heard is fine. His next upcoming film is called Split and is about a serial killer / kidnapper with 24 distinct personalities. It's supposedly a spiritual successor to Unbreakable which means it's going to be really, really bad.

Verdict
There's not enough here for horror fans, and there's most certainly not enough here for fans of Shyamalan's bad work. The religious stuff isn't compelling, the scares are minor, and ultimately it's not worth the 80 minutes it takes for this elevator to hit the floor.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"

"Do you under-deliver?
You will."

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Directed by Zack Snyder
Produced by Charles Roven, Deborah Snyder
Written by Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer

Starring Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg

Budget: $250M

Superheroes are played out.

Gee, you're saying that's a predictable start now one of these posts? Well shit, considering this movie starts off with the exact same scene we've already seen about half a dozen times it makes sense.

Odds are you were at least familiar with this movie, considering the insane marketing blitz and long production development it went through prior to release. Originally envisioned as Man of Steel 2 back in 2013, the pitch included Batman showing up for the first time in DC's attempt to ape the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As it neared release rumors circled that it would serve more as a Justice League: Year Zero with a whole mess of characters appearing, because we can't have self-contained narratives anymore.

The movie starts with the obligatory Batman origin flashback, then cuts into the best sequence in the film, when Bruce Wayne (Affleck) runs through Metropolis as the events of Man of Steel play out around him. Wayne, in his trusty Jeep Renegade © goes along and we see the ground-level destruction that played out over the course of that final action scene and serves as Wayne's motivation for disliking Superman.

Cut to Lois Lane and CIA Jimmy Olsen (what?) doing some sort of reporting on mean military guys in the Middle East when Superman comes flying in and involves himself in world politics. There's some nonsense about Lex Luthor designing an evil Krpyonian, some high-minded religious symbolism which fails to hold any weight, and multiple references to locations being evacuated, because it feels like parts of this were written specifically to mock criticisms leveled against Man of Steel.

Now, I don't have much of an issue with what DC is attempting as far as tone. Marvel does a fair job oversaturating the market with snarky one-liners and human-level heroics. I think DC had an opportunity to capitalize on the super aspect of the superhero, but in hiring Zack Snyder to direct they sacrificed any chance of it evolving into anything other than a special effects explosion across the screen. While I think turning Superman into a morose, screaming, neck-snapping alien probably wasn't the best choice, it's the direction WB has apparently decided is best.

However, I don't have a problem with a bitter Batman, I don't have a problem with young Lex Luthor, and I don't have a problem with exploring how a world would react to the appearance of a super man. What I do have a problem with is how each of these ideas is explored at the most shallow of levels throughout, and any attempts to actually discuss the effects of these individuals is delivered with over-written monologues regarding gods versus men.

Good lord there's so much wrong here. I'm just talking about what stuck out on this rewatch.

The Batman
Like I said above, there are certain things I think the movie covers well. The ground-level stuff is kind of neat, but I fully admit that's because I'm a little weird and I like my superhero stuff with real-world consequence and thought processes included. Now, there are absolutely better ways of doing this than as an attempt to add another explosion to the mix, but at least there was an effort made, right?

And personally, I liked Affleck as Batman. Not only does the movie go to lengths to show us that Batman can fight bad guys, but we see Batman doing investigative things. Something the Nolan movies really dropped the ball on was Batman's title as the World's Greatest Detective.

The Superman
Of course, Affleck can't make up for the rest of the miscasting. Amy Adams as Lois Lane was not only a poor choice, she was a waste. The character is a plot device used to shovel exposition at the audience, when she's not serving as a UPS agent to deliver plot devices to Superman. Alongside this is Eisenberg's delivery as Luthor, who seems to  have thought he was playing the Riddler. Gal Gadot actually does a fine job, but the writing for her is so bland and on-the-nose it feels, understandably, like she was shoehorned in.

As with most Snyder movies (though he didn't write it...supposedly) is that the plot is slave to the logic of the moment. We've gotta have Superman and Batman meet at a soiree! Well, we could do it organically, or we could pretend that Clark Kent, ace reporter, doesn't know who Bruce Wayne is. We need Clark to do a story on Batman, but there needs to be drama, so let's have Perry White micromanage his staff to the point where he dictates headlines to reporters. We want Lex Luthor to show that he's clever, so during his first encounter with Clark Kent let's have him joke about the movie title. These moments occur throughout with such startling regularity it's a shock there are only two writers credited. To list all of them would be to essentially summarize every character choice.

The MAAAARTHA THEY'RE GOING TO KILL MAAAAARTHAAAA
Enough has been said about this.

Verdict
Now, I haven't watched the Ultimate Edition, because I'm not a masochist. It apparently includes roughly 30 minutes of extra footage, but that's not the version that was released in theaters. First impressions are important, especially with movies like this which were released with bizarre dream sequences and montages at random spots (including, at one point, a time traveler sequel bait sequence in the middle of a dream sequence).

What a mess.

Mediocre Movie Month 2016: Some Thoughts on "Manborg"

Look at all the laurel wreaths along the bottom!
The true mark of quality.

Manborg (2011)

Directed by Steven Kostanski
Produced by Steven Kostanski
Written by Steven Kostanski, Jeremy Gillespie

Starring Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Meredith Sweeney, Conor Sweeney, Ludwig Lee

Budget: $1,000 (Canadian)

Nostalgia is kind of played out.

"But Dylan," you say, "you're just repeating yourself from the other day in an attempt to draw some cheap chuckles!"

Right you are, hypothetical strawman. But speaking of segues, let's talk about what happens when the inmates begin running the asylum.

Over the past five years or so, there have been a rash of films, television shows, and other media which aim to recapture the tone of science fiction as people remember it back in the 80s. The first time I truly noticed this was with J.J. Abrams's 2011 Spielberg love-letter Super 8. Depending on who you ask, it was either a functional tribute to films like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or a try-hard attempt that felt like a cheap imitation rather than a true homage.

This trend has really picked up recently, what with the success of the internet short-film Kung Fury, Netflix series Stranger Things, and goofy gore-fest Turbo Kid. That list is by no means exhaustive, but there's a reason I chose those three specific works: each of them managed to capture a specific tone while adding its own voice to the chorus shouting its way into the abyss.

Manborg seems to have slipped under the radar, and I think I understand why: restraint can be a wonderful thing.

At roughly 71 minutes, Manborg is by no means an epic. It tells the story of...well, Manborg. We start with a recounting of the final days of Earth's war against Count Draculon and his legions of Hellborgs as they invade and conquer the planet. Manborg (unnamed before his transformation) is killed by Count Draculon after the villain drinks his brother's blood. Uncounted years later he wakes up, having been transformed into a half-man, half-borg, all-hero. He teams up with a squadron of specialized heroes, including martial artist #1 Man, Aussie gun-toter Justice, and knife-babe Mina. These four fighters escape Draculon's clutches and wage a guerrilla war against the legions of Hell itself.

Sound familiar? It should, because the entire movie comes across as a very deliberate attempt to ape the Toy Line adaptations of the 80s, where groups of specialized weirdos with appropriately distinguishable characteristics take on an equally-marketable bad guy.

Look at that articulation!
Also, this is within the first two minutes.

There are certain things the movie does that I really, really like. The bad guys, when not played by rubber-masked extras, are stop-motion with surprising quality. There's a...not-quite-film grain filter overlaid over the entire movie that gives it the general appearance of a Command & Conquer cinematic, but after the first few minutes it blends into the rest of the movie with surprising ease.

And roughly 5 minutes later.

At least, I thought it was easy. Really, whether you enjoy this movie relies entirely on your level of tolerance, because this movie is most definitely not for those who demand crisp, high-def action movies. The production not only relies on greenscreen, it wallows in it. Visual effects are bare-boned, with just enough resolution to get things done. Sound effects for Manborg's whirr-stomp-gearclicks are recognizable to anyone who's downloaded a soundpack from a public domain website. Every single line of dialogue has been obviously ADRed over...

As a passion project put on for a shoestring budget with a production team obviously invested in making the best possible film they could, Manborg succeeds on pretty much every level, in my opinion. If you have a soft spot for goofy action schlock, it's worth checking out. Of course, at 71 minutes long it drags at certain spots, and serves as a fair example of why something like Kung Fury still holds the crown as one of the best nostalgia-kings; sometimes pastiches need to practice restraint.

The Man

Not shown: the jpeg compression on all the text

What surprised me most was the humor present at certain points of the film. The character of the Baron, commandant of Draculon's prison full of arena fighters, has several very funny moments where he's trying to flirt with Mina and the delivery, despite the low-articulation mask, works purely based on the voicework. Throughout the Baron proved to be the funniest part of the movie, with the exception of three lines from the end of the movie delivered by Manborg's brother's ghost (it makes sense in context).

Surprisingly, some of the composition and digital effects are actually serviceable. There's a hoverbike chase scene at the halfway point that's better put-together than most high-budget chase scenes today. There's some legitimate attempts to making the world look like a post-apocalypse, and the character prosthetics and makeup are pretty passable. Manborg himself looks fine, considering it's mostly just wires and metal slapped on a harness.

Finally, the gore and animation effects are pretty good for having such a small team and low budget. Various stop-motion baddies are integrated into scenes with live-action actors, and though the goofy filter is off-putting at first, I got over it pretty quick and admired the labor that went into this.

The Borg
The movie drags on, and its length is really the only mark I would hold against it. While Turbo Kid manages to maintain its momentum for the majority of its run and Kung Fury has a really good cheese-to-minute ratio, I can easily see Manborg wear out its welcome for those without a pretty high tolerance for goofball low-budget nonsense.

The Hero
Interestingly enough, Steven Kostansky's got a fairly impressive IMDB profile, with special effects work done on large-budget works like Suicide Squad and Mortal Instruments. Considering that list, alongside other movies directed by special effects and stunt coordinators (I'm looking at you, John Wick), maybe we should stop letting directors...direct.

Finally, there's a fake trailer after the end credits for a movie called Bio-Cop about a cop who's been made immortal...by making it so he can't die, no matter what happens. It's about five minutes long, and if you can find only a single thing to watch from this review, watch that.

Verdict
Does this look like something you'd enjoy?

Then go for it.