The X-Men: Days of Future Past 2o14

Prologue

As a little kid I remember my parents arguing over what kind of car they should buy. Seems like the old dependable ’54 Ford we had was about to pass on to that automobile junkyard in the sky. My mom, being the most practical in the Woods Clan, suggested buying a “used car.” I thought my dad was gonna have a heart attack. “Are you kidding? You buy a used car; you’re buying someone else’s problems!” I always agreed with my dad on that fine point of suburban living: NEVER buy a used car! It took a while for the used car industry to pick up on the prejudice people have about used cars. The title, USED CARS, was alarming to the consumer. It does sound like you’re buying someone else’s piece of junk. So, the used car industry decided that what they needed was a name change, a name change that was far less negative. And you know what they came up with? PRE-OWNED CARS. Yep. And it worked pretty well. It worked so well that others in the “used” industry picked up on it. It’s not used books anymore, now its pre-read books, or pre-listened to CDs, or pre-viewed DVDs! The movie industry was not so quick to join in on the name game. However, in the 21^st century the movie studios pumped out a slew of “remakes” of horror and sci-fi films, and for the most part the remakes were, well, pretty sucky. They even tried their hand at remaking a few of the successful horror genre franchises: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street . . . the audience pretty much rejected these tries and the word “remake” became a very dirty word. So, how did Hollywood solve the problem? Did they give-up trying to remake successful franchises? No, they just changed the name REMAKE to REBOOT. Reboot . . . does sound better than remake. It sounds  computer literate, more like you are actually creating a new story “based” on an old story that—

HEY! WHAT THE HELL DOES ANY OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR REVIEW OF THE X-MEN MOVIE, DAMNIT?”

X-Men: Days of Future Past

or

How to Reboot Your Failing Franchise

 

The newest X-Men movie is very much a reboot of the franchise started back in 2ooo using as its model the very successful reboot, Star Trek (2009). So, if you want to restart a franchise with a new cast you gotta . . . go back in time. Yep. And that’s exactly what X-Men: Days of Future Past does. It starts in the future where the war between human and mutant is about to end with the humans winning! Eek! So, what do you do? You send the most diplomatic character you have, Wolverine. The movie is all about Jackman's character going back to 1973 to "fix" history, change the outcome of the war, AND inadvertently create a whole new franchise. Smooth move. Einstein and the whole pre-owned car industry would be very proud.

If you are a fan of the X-Men franchise, the older one, then you will probably like the way they transition into the reboot. It’s nice to see all the actors who played in the original franchise on screen . . . at least one more time.

The whole script of Days of Future Past is really exceptional. Good enough, at least, that the few timeline mistakes that they make are not worth even mentioning. Dialogue is clean and exciting. The young actors are really outstanding. They make the material their own, and if you are going to create a whole new world for people to believe in, that’s exactly what you have to do. Make it work for you.

There are, however, a few problems with the CGI Sentinels. Both the future and the 1973 versions of the Sentinels are rather cartoonish with the future bots looking and moving about sort of like the Dementors from Harry Potter. However, the CGI guys redeem themselves with an outlandish hand-to-hand combat scene between the Pentagon guards and Quicksilver. Although the whole movie was great, that scene was a real crowd pleaser; people were actually applauding during and after it!

So, it’s a good movie . . .  no, a great movie, one that is definitely worth seeing on the big screen, and one to buy when it comes out on DVD. I'm going to miss the original cast, though. I hope there will be times when we get to see them all again . . . in the future!

rrw o5-25-14

Godzilla May 2o14

Godzilla! Godzilla . . .! Again?

 

1956. A warm summer night. My brother, me and my sister dressed in out pajamas scrunched into the backseat of my dad’s ’54 Ford, squishing each other as we push and shove trying the to get the best view we could from our tiny backseat balcony. Yeah, the drive-in movie family outing! And what were we getting ready to see? Godzilla: King of the Monsters. And sure enough, he WAS the king of ALL monsters. Biggest damn thing I had ever seen in a movie. And mean? Killing with his “atomic” breath any living thing that got in his way, destroying buildings with a swish of his enormous tail, squashing tanks, swatting planes out of the sky! Yeah, baby, one horrifying, big ass MONSTER!

Jump ahead about fifty-eight years and my eight year old self is really psyched to see a remake of Godzilla that little gem of a horror film that terrorized my dreams every night without fail! And my adult self gets a ticket, a medium popcorn and LARGE ice tea, and the best seat at the Warren ANNNNND . . . and . . . okay . . . the movie was . . . okay, but not really a remake of the first film. More like a conglomeration of the franchise that emerged AFTER the first movie. In those films Godzilla is less rampaging monster and more bumbling anti-hero. Sure, he still destroys a lot of stuff, but it’s all for a good cause, all of it to defeat the REALLY bad monster that threatens the poor antlike humans. He's a kinder Godzilla, one you could take home to mom and Sunday dinner. Yeah, he would probably destroy the house . . . but only by accident.  And that’s part of my problem with this movie. Well, that and the fact that G is hardly in the movie at all! That’s right! A movie called Godzilla and Godzilla is not the head honcho monster. This flick should have been titled: MUTO! (with a guest appearance by GODZILLA!) Everything about the advertising for Godzilla is misleading. Godzilla is a supporting character, not the main character.  And Bryan Cranston who is featured in EVERY trailer? Not the human lead! He’s just a blip on the monster movie radar, a bit of bloody goo on the bottom of MUTO's deformed foot! The trailers, the posters, all of it promises something that we, the audience, didn’t get . . . a remake of Godzilla. I understand the marketing strategy, not revealing what the film is really about. Let the audience experience the movie “for the first time.” Spielberg used the technique all the time by not showing us much in trailers or posters, making us wonder what we were going to see . . . but he didn’t mislead us. He didn’t advertise E. T. and then show us . . . SURPRISE! It’s Schindler's List.

The good news about Godzilla 2014 is that it does effectively recreate the “feel” of the Godzilla movies of my youth. Godzilla 2014 moves and fights just like the original, only a tad bit cooler and cleaner. It still seems like a human rampaging around in a “suitmation” suit! 21^st century tech, you got to love it. And the dialogue in the movie is just as clunky and awkward as the dubbed versions we got in America, and how about that acting? It’s just as awful as it was in the original! Well, maybe a bit worse. The problem with the acting  in this movie is that the actors just don’t seemed to relate  to the story or any of the other actors they are playing a scene with. Yes, they weep, cry, shake their fists in anger, “Damn, you MUTO!” But it seems fake, disconnected from the reality of the world of the movie.

So, did I hate this film? No, in fact I admire it a bit. I think it was an honest, sincere attempt to recreate a style of movie making that is long gone. It DID have the feel of a 50’s B-movie horror film but with better special effects. However, not sure it had the soul of those wonderful films of my youth. It was very high tech, of course, but it felt like the whole production team was just phoning it in. There has to be an intuitive understanding of the material if you want its soul to emerge. Not sure that Godzilla 2014 got passed the glitter and flash that most big budget action films settle for in this 21^st century. That’s a pity. The original, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, for all its faults had a soul that was bigger than its budget. And that’s what’s missing in this expensive remake . . . a soul.

rrw o5-19-14

 http://youtu.be/T65rW_SIzg0