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Reviews
Ben 10: Omniverse (2012)
The Problem with Western Animation
There are times when I sit here and wonder why there are even attempts to make stories that are both funny and serious, because apparently as long as people get the same things they've had since the 60's, they'll be happy.
Many fans balked at the changes made between the Original and Alien Force/Ultimate Alien, and while I can understand that some of the stories in all three of the series were lacking, the fact that a story was being written that showed serious repercussions for the characters(i.e. seeing Ben break down after learning Gwen isn't dead in Secrets of the Omnitrix)but then Dwayne McDuffie passed away and the story has been passed on to others.
I'm not a fan and I pretty much expect that this series will end up in the same limbo as Thundercats when the final run is completed and with such gems as 'Nemetrix' I can't say it's not a good thing.
Alphas (2011)
Second season let down
I enjoyed Alphas first season, I really did, it did what Heroes constantly failed to do, it humanised the heroes problems. You sympathised with characters "because you could relate", then came season 2 and everything went skewed, if you've watched it there are plenty of reasons why it started falling apart. Gary becoming nothing much more than an anarchic blogger. Bill becoming an underground fighter. There are many more examples of failures in writing, but the one single shining point of light in the second series is Kat, because-well they did what they did in season one, made her relatable. I'm not sad there's not gonna be a season 3, I cant see anything good coming out of the "shocks" in Gods Eye, but I know I'm gonna be in the smaller camp here, it just got stupid and formulaic.
Star Trek: Voyager (1995)
Great Potential - Limited Vision
Star Trek Voyager is one of those shows where the premise of the show far exceeded the weight of the show. I'll give Rick Berman, Jeri Taylor and Michael Piller credit where it's due, the IDEA of Voyager was great, a starfleet ship stranded on the other side of the Galaxy with no easy way back, it's a real boon for ideas, but the problem was that they never really did anything with that. Where they had two very different crews joining together to survive the different and alien part of the galaxy they were in, nothing was done with that idea, nothing was done with anything in Voyager.
Where they had a problem with some part of the ship malfunctioning one week, there would be nothing spoken about anything like that a week later, it was like they ship had a big reset button to press after every major problem so no one would ever remember it.
That's what I mean with wasted potential, the creators had so many avenues they could have gone down, introducing new, alien characters to join the meagre crew, showing real enemies that make the current ones known to fans seem small by comparison, but they always played it safe on the show and that means boring.
Is Voyager all bad, No, definitely not, there are classic episodes where things happen as well, The Thaw, The Chute, Basics(Pt1), Scorpion(pt1), Before and After, The Gift, basically all the Robert Picardo centric episodes, Bride of Chaotica(though some disagree with me on this), Gravity. There are many more, but there are a heck of a lot of simple, meagre and downright bad episodes that unless you love Sci-fi and want to see everything, I wouldn't recommend this series. This is the tail-end of Star Trek on TV, it's the second to last show and it only got worse from here, yes there are good points, but not anywhere near enough to counteract the bad.
The Last Airbender (2010)
Long Overdue
A lot of people have railed against this for some of the more silly reasons (the name mispronunciation, the firebending, the 'racebending') and I'm going to try not to gripe on them too much, I mean they are pretty horrendous but they don't drag this movie down. It takes a lot for me to keep saying this, but I used to like Shyamalan's movies, I can remember watching movies like the sixth sense and liking the experience I had, I even like(to this day) lady in the water, even with the prophet of greatness bit. These days, if I see the name tagged to a movie or even hear it, I instantly go the way of everyone else. This movie was what did that to me. Back in mid-06' a friend of mine showed me the first DVD of Water and I was hooked, so when I'd been through the mess of DB:E, I felt the same feeling rise up in me: little to no actual shots of the movie, little to no promo's of other things in the movie, little to no actual stuff coming out about it, I was worried, so I chose to leave the movie alone and wait til it came on the TV. I have to say I was glad of it, because after reading and watching reviews of this, I felt elated that the most I'd have to pay was a TV license fee. Then I saw the movie. And I wanted my time back, I still do, it's an hour and forty minutes of my life I want back that I will never have.
Everything from this was so slipshod, simplistic and downright useless that I still wonder how this got past the initial script stages(it scares me that this could be the 'good' script left over after rewrites) because it feels like no-one had anything but a 'Meh' attitude to this project from the moment go. We have Noah Ringer as the titular character and nowhere does this movie show it's flaws more than this little... He doesn't perform any of the great qualities that people would allow to like a character, he's just there and he's 'so' hard done to that it makes me want to have Jake Lloyd's 'I'm a self-important douche bag' on the screen, at least with him he's being something. This is always going to be the problem when converting something like animation into live action, having a wise cracking character like Sokka that can go from insanely goofy to serious and world weary, to food crazy is going to VERY difficult to pull off, you can with animation because all you need to do is have separate sessions with the VA's, setting up scenes in where Sokka complains that he's hungry, see's a lemur and wants to kill and cook it, see's the enemy of everyone that had obviously killed everyone in the temple they're in, then see's his friend going through obvious and gut-wrenching grief is next to impossible, so most would lock onto one aspect and hope it goes well. Shyamalan merely chose to make him unemotional, like everyone else in this movie.
I've never liked Dev Patel, there I said it. I live in the UK, I see people like Patel on a daily basis and I grew up around a lot of that kind of personality, he's not special, he's a Londoner and that's not that special where I come from. Because he was in a movie that made everyone swoon and gawk, doesn't mean he was great, he had good direction and a good script, in this he is pretty much himself and-as I know he CAN act, I don't know why Shyamalan(that's a lie, I do)didn't use him to his full potential and explore Zuko's inner rage more and how that's messing with both his Firebending and his personality.
This movie is possibly worse than DB:E, but it's a fine margin and it's not really worth it to argue, the two recent movies adapted from much beloved Animation's have been terrible and that should be the warning light for anyone who thinks Hollywood can do justice to an cartoon.
Doctor Who: The Angels Take Manhattan (2012)
Stunned!
Ever since we first saw the level of writing that Steven Moffat brought to the whole Whovian Mythos, we've been stunned. He's created brand new and very terrifying enemies for the Doctor with the Vashta Nerada and the Weeping Angels, both sets of episodes ('Silence in the Library' and 'Blink') are on my personal favourites list alongside classics like 'Rememberance of the Daleks', what does this have to do with 'The Angels Take Manhatten' you ask? Well, I personally believe that Moffat has done something here that can be seen as possibly his best work in Dr Who, and it should instantly be on a Whovian's list of great episodes. The story, as we've all known is how Rory and Amy leave the Doctor, as the recent years have never really had his companions freely leave the Doctor(save for Freema Agyeman's Martha), with Rose and Donna they've done things to help and had the consequences hit them for it (it can be argued that most of the Doctors Companions have been collateral in his epic fights) does Moffat go the way of Davies? Nope, from the start of the episode the tension is building, we see shots of statues in the beautiful New York and know the Angels are back, it was thrilling to feel the tension build as we know Rory has been kidnapped by the Angels and thrown back in time, a thing that-until now, has meant we see the death of that person immediately afterwards. What Moffat has done brilliantly here is to pull the rug out from under us, you think you'll see a 30-something kid of Rory's appear and tell Amy that her Husband re-married and had a wonderful life? No, we get to where Rory is and find him looking at himself dying inside a pen for Humans that allows the Angels to constantly feed on their 'lost days'. From there Moffat scales up the tension with the Doctor stating that he's powerless to stop Rory living and dying as a captured slave for the Angels, then the masterful scene where Amy and Rory decide to try and make their own destinies by both jumping off the building to stop the whole event from ever happening. In a word:Stunning! This episode is by far the very best of the whole 5 thats been so far, notable scenes that I really loved were the Statue of Liberty becoming an Angel, the horribly creepy Smling Angel(Yes, we finally get one smiling and its scary as hell) and the wonderful scenes between the Doctor and River and Amy and Rory talking about marriage, though most new fans won't know this, there was (hopefully) a line in this episode that might be foreshadowing for the answer to the question (god I hope the BBC doesn't do it again-old fans will know what I mean) all-in-all this is going in my faves of all time along with the other greats of the whole series. Roll on 2013!!
Greystone Park (2012)
Possibly one of the worst things I've ever seen
I had to give a 1 because of IMDb but seriously, this movie shouldn't even have that, everything about this movie could have made it a great one, but sadly the idiot who wrote it (sean stone) didn't seem to either understand how to make a decent horror movie, or it was constantly played for $h!its and giggles, which it failed at-abysmally. When watching I constantly got the feel that it was supposed to be the "spirits" or whatever it was, was attempting to drive them insane, and if the movie had been played like that, the whole spiritual power thing was both messing with their minds and the camera as a sort of "its trying to drag the audience in as well" that would have worked out perfectly well, especially with the scenes at the end with 'crazy Kate' (again, as portrayed, doesn't make sense) but we're just supposed to believe that a story told to them at the start just happened to appear at the end? No, it doesn't work like that in storytelling, even if its supposed to be 'inspired by real events' it wouldn't work like that. Ah, getting off topic, this thing just feels draining, you don't like the characters and it never pays off with creepy moments or jump scares, so when you've had the built up feeling of adrenaline in your system flow out of you, you'll feel tired and bored, is that what you want in a movie experience? I just wish people wouldn't make things like this, its insulting, tired, lazy and trotted out, but most of all - a complete waste of money that you could spend on anything else to give you a better experience than this movie will give you.
Fainaru fantajî sebun adobento chirudoren (2005)
Good fulfillment
**SPOILERS for both movie and game**
As a Final Fantasy fan, I've felt like reviewing this movie quite a few times since first buying it back in '06, but other than fanboy squeeing I've not analysed the whole thing before. For any FF fan, the idea of seeing the story continue after the end credits is something they would probably deny wanting in public, yet dreaming what happened to their favourite characters and no more so than the fans of 7 (trust me in this) so a movie about the story set two years after the end gets most fans screaming how good it is. Well, I'm going to try not to-don't get me wrong I like the movie, I just want to give it a proper review.
Set two years after the end of 7, Advent Children tells the story of Cloud Strife, who has isolated himself from his friends and family through guilt over not being able to save two friends who died in front of him. This plot fits Clouds personality perfectly, I can see him wracked with guilt from his inaction over Zack and Aerith's deaths, it wasn't hammed up and his eventual realization makes his role workable? With all but Tifa, the rest of the cast is heavily underused, with a big cast from 7 available, having the majority of them turn up in the last half of the movie feels like a let down to me. The overriding theme in movie was a little shaky for me, geostigma just feels a little rushed and it has a shadow of the "black cloaked men" from 7 in it. I'd have liked to see a more detailed attempt made to destabilize Cloud and have his eventual defeat of that be the climactic scenes in the movie. And on a final note the musical score for the movie was done beautifully - something I think most directors just don't think about these days, Nobuo Uematsu you are a genius.
Dragonball Evolution (2009)
What to say that hasn't already been said?
Spoilers ahead here people, but really...do you care? It's Dragonball Evolution...
Let's get it out of the way first, eh. I'm a Dragonball Fan, I've got the whole collection on both DVD and Manga, so I was one of 'those' fan-boys who literally went apesh*t when this movie came out-though I'd been dreading it for over a year before hand, so you can guess what my opinion is of this. I've rarely thought that there's a movie out there that can be as bad as DB:E is, if not from a fan of the series, then as a fan of any of the genre's that they tried to stuff in there. It doesn't work as a group hero journey, it doesn't work as a martial arts movie(some of the worst choreography I've ever seen, including TV) it doesn't work as a reluctant hero movie. Nothing works for it, why you might be asking-well I'll try and explain without raging. Where-if you're adapting a movie from ANY other medium, you'll have to make compromises to get the movie to have a realism(as a fan, if I'd seen Goku with his hair from the Manga, I would have hated this more-if that's possible) and understanding the cuts and changes that need to be made shouldn't get the fan-boy/girl rage going on, it does but what can you do about it. Yet if you want the film to succeed, then-at some point, you'll need to acknowledge the success that gave you the green light to make the movie in the first place. And while some movies have chosen to emulate the themes in the original source, most just stick a label of whatever they want and write the worst stories possible( I mean, after the Original Batman, did it 'really' have that much to do with Bruce Wayne being the Dark Knight, or was it just the crazies that he just had to have try to take over his city?) this is the first major flaw with the entire theme of Dragonball.
For the uninitiated among you, Dragonball is set in a world that is-at both times, a futuristic fantasy world, and a prehistoric wilderness, where the young boy called Goku lives in the wild, hunting and feeding himself by killing giant monsters like T-Rex's(yes, T-Rex's) he meets up with a young scientist girl called Bulma, who is on a quest to find and collect the seven Dragonball's of the title, she runs into Goku because he has one of them and they decide to travel the world together to find the other five balls. It's a simple premise that has been used many times before and since and probably will continue to for a long, long time, which IMO is one of the reasons of Dragonballs huge success.
With the movie we have almost none of that, the whimsical journey is lost almost immediately when we see that the 'evil king piccolo' is also searching for them, so it's basically the plot of Lord of the Rings 1-3 all in one movie with a poorly written script. They took the plethora of story possibilities and just dumped a 'hero v villain' story that didn't make any sense in the context of the story chronology.
The acting-well, I'm not in agreement with most here, for what this movie is, the acting is pretty much on-par, nothing spectacular, nothing Uwe Boll worthy. The effects...eh, well with a budget of $30 million, you'd expect some of it to go on getting somewhere near decent effects, I mean District 9 had only that and it's effects were brilliant. Yet nothing about the effects shouts Dragonball-at all, it's terrible, there's better vidoes of Dragonball powers on youtube. The characters, oh the characters...where do I begin with the characters. Y'know, I wouldn't have mind some plot changes, some ideas missing, if there had been at least one part where you see interesting characters that actually seem like there comic/anime counterpart. If there's been-oh, 12 animated shows with four full movies about batman that fit his comic persona along and two movies about superman that fit the story, why not have some of the ideas in Dragonball fit? Well I doubt people will get an answer for that, because there's 'nothing' about these characters that fit the Dragonball counterparts.
This is a terrible movie, I don't know whether to say it's the worst that we're ever gonna see-as there's a Death Note and Bleach movie in the works-but if I believed in a God, I would pray to him that this remain the worst thing I ever see(well, apart from The Room).
Thundercats: What Lies Above: Part Two (2012)
Horrible Obvious Plot Shock
While my opinion of this series of Thundercats has been on the passable side from day three of the series, I've never thrown my hands up and been flabbergasted with the stupidity of the writers before(sure, I've had bad moments that are akin to ST:VOY scripts, but never this).
(OKAY SERIOUS SPOILERS FROM THIS MOMENT ON)
From the moment go with the Pumyra character add-on, I've said 'she's gonna turn evil', seriously I felt that was why the writers put here there, a little bait and switch with the replacement of the sorry 'love triangle' idiocy they forced down viewers throats two-thirds of the series only to 'pull the rug out from under you' to show "she's been evil all along, ha-Ha!" I can see the writer(s) nodding to themselves and saying 'yup, we've done a gud jobe there' with it, Please tell me this wasn't a shock for people, the writing was seriously obvious and sloppy, she was almost PMS'ing one minute and happy and contented the next, and the way it was explained why she was evil was even more convoluted than the force-job they did on the TygraxCheetara relationship. "I tried to fight the bad guys and failed, was trapped under a whole wall and saw my new king walking out of the city that had been levelled completely-AND I HATE HIM FOR ABANDONING ME!!! GRR.
Okay writers, hows this for an alternate. Pumyra was a young lieutenant working for Claudus, saw him killed and was captured. While held prisoner she saw Jaga being tortured by Mumm-Ra and was left behind after Lion-O and Tygra escaped. Held prisoner by Mumm-Ra and constantly being tortured and manipulated by him, she was eventually 'broken' by him and turned to his side. Y'know, instead of an easy 'oh, she's angry and bitter. Hate's Lion-O for not being what she wants' story.