Age of Extinction

               I know I said the a “Doing It Better” for Green Lantern would be next, but in all honesty I forgot that this was coming out this weekend. And yes, like Godzilla, Transformers aren’t technically superheroes, but Optimus Prime. If I need to say anything more after that they you probably shouldn’t be reading this post.

It takes a special kind of crazy to hunt Primes.

                So, the review. This time around Autobots and Decepticons are being hunted down by a covert ops branch of the CIA known as Cemetery Wind, led by Kelsey Grammer’s Harold Attinger. It's been five years since the last film and America was not happy about the attack on Chicago. While the Autobots were given Amnesty, Attiger has made it his mission to hunt down any Cybertronian refugee, be they Purple or Red. Assisting Attiger is a Cybertronian bounty hunter named Lockdown. At the same time Cade Yeager, played by His Awesomeness Mark Wahlberg, stumbles across a dilapidated semi-truck. Being an inventor and scrap collector he takes the Truck back to his workshop in the hopes of stripping it for parts. To his amazement he finds the truck is outfitted with odd metals and a hell of a lot of ammo. After a little tinkering he re-actives the mighty Optimus Prime.

                After a shootout with Cemetery Wind and Lockdown, Optimus, Yeager, and the really unnecessary tagalongs of Yeager’s daughter Tess and her boyfriend Lucas, must race to discover what Attinger is planning, what Lockdown is planning, and to stop the creation of Vehicon drones at KSI, a weapons company. (Vehicon drones is a term for mass produced and uniform looking Cybertronians, usually allied with the Decepticons. They don’t call them that in the movie but it’s what they are.)

                As always, the good first. The Autobots this time around are fantastic. Each one has a unique design to them so that the odds of replacing one Autobot with a look alike, ala Jazz in #1 being replaced by Sideswipe in #2, are minimum. I bet you didn’t even notice the difference unless you’re my kind of crazy. I especially like the look of Crosshairs, the green Autobot car who uses the parachutes in the trailer. He’s got a duster thing going on with his robot mode and it looks great. Optimus and Bumblebee’s redesigns are also pretty amazing. Optimus as more of an old school knight really works.

Dusters, cool on humans, cool on Transformers. Fact.

Also, the voice acting cast is amazing. We have the always amazing Peter Cullen again as Optimus Prime. He’s a little less optimistic this time around. Watching your soldiers being slaughtered by former allies will do that to a bot. John Goodman also does an amazing job as Hound, a heavy set Autobot who always seems to be smoking a cigar. Which in fact is a live round. Badass. He also has the best lines in the movie. Ken Watanabe is Drift, an Autobot triple-changer that converts into both a car and a helicopter. See, triple-changer? Has three modes, cool right? He often talks in haikus and is overall very Samurai-ie. Next there is John DiMaggio as Crosshairs. While sounding suspiciously like another Autobot from the last film, he’s still pretty awesome too. They also have Frank Welker in as the voice of Galvatron, a human made Transformer prototype. If you don’t know who Frank Welker is look him up, and you’ll see why I don’t want to say too much about him or ol’ Galvy in this no spoilers review. Oh, and Bumblebee still talks through the radio. I was over that in movie 2.

I have a man-crush on him
Not ashamed to admit it.

Mark Wahlberg is a national treasure. When I first heard he was going to be in this movie I thought “Oh great, they are going to use his star power in this film and he’s going to really phone it in.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. He’s charming and witty as ever, and you really believe his speeches about the human race and not letting his daughter date. At least I did. Kelsey Grammer is great as the half crazed CIA agent who is going out of his way to wipe out all Cybertronians. In his mind, the only good alien is a dead one, and at times I half believed it. And of course Stanley Tucci is great as the eccentric inventor and owner of KSI Joshua Joyce. He’s just great, words can’t describe.

The bad, and there are some pretty big ones. First, the Bayisms, they are all here. For those who haven’t noticed, Michael Bay has certain things he needs in his films. They seem to be in every one, at least. First, unnecessary slow-mo. Second, unnecessary close up shots. Third, unnecessary and poorly written romances. Four, kind of a confusing plot, it's like he was given three good ideas and said "Lets use them all!" even though they didn't mesh together well. And of course, an overabundance of explosions. If I missed any other big ones mention them in the comments. He holds off for a bit, but in the third act they are everywhere.

Ol' Galvy is a minor character overall but badass.

The daughter and her boyfriend are pretty bad too. Sam and Michaela in #2 were worse, but still a lot of their screen time felt unnecessary to me. If they wanted to motivate Yeager, just kidnap her in the first act like the trailer was hinting at and move on. Is one Transformers movie with zero over the top teenage romance too much to ask?

Also, the movie’s plot was a little confusing. This was due to the fact we had three evil plots thrown at us and they didn’t necessarily mesh together well. First we had Lockdown’s plot to capture Prime for his mysterious benefactors. Second, we have a combo plot involving the Attiger and Joyce. They want to create an army of Vehicon drones, and of course, make lots of money. Finally, we have one more plot laid by our old buddy Megatron. Not going to go into any detail here, but if you know any of the Transformer’s series you can probably guess what it is by now. The three mix together and get rather confusing.

Always a pleasure Grimlock.

Also, it has things that are just plain weird. Like I guess Optimus is a Cybertronian Knight, as are the Dinobots, but no explanations is given at all. Just, “Hey Optimus is a Knight, and so are the Dinobots. They have a history but all Autobots know it so I don’t need to go into further detail.” Why, I ask you, Why? And for some reason Swoop, the Pteranodon, is renamed Strafe which isn’t so bad I guess but they also give him a second head in dino-mode. No real reason, just has a second head. Oh, and like in the previous movies, they rarely mention Autobot names other than Prime and Bee. Hound is said a few times, Crosshair is called by name like twice, and I don’t think I heard Drift’s name at all. Why? An intro takes five minutes tops. Cut out two slow-mo scenes and one uncomfortable close up of a supposedly 17 year old girl and it’d fit.

Finally, and in my opinion the worst mistake of them all, is that Grimlock never roared “ME GRIMLOCK KING!” You had to do one thing with his character to make me happy, Bay, and you managed to flub it up. Thanks a lot.

Overall I give it a B. It has its good points and its bad points but was still fun to watch. The Transformers look spectacular and overall human involvement in the climax is left to a minimum. At times it’s a little clunky and the Bayisms are very noticeable, but it could have been worse. It’s a good movie and in my opinion the best Transformers yet.

I'd swear fealty to him.

And to be clear, Bay this had better be your last time up to bat and just because you didn’t flub up this movie entirely doesn’t get you off my list. I will mention your name often and with disdain for an unforeseeable amount of time.

 http://www.thefancarpet.com/newspage.aspx?n_id=9297

 http://hero.wikia.com/wiki/File:Transformer-AOE-Characters-Crosshairs-700x425.jpg

 http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000242/

 http://tformers.com/transformers-4-age-of-extinction-hasbro-confirms-galvatron-character-names-new-dinobots-more/22545/news.html

 http://transformers.wikia.com/wiki/File:Foc-grimlock-game-sword11.jpg

 http://wallpaperswide.com/transformers_age_of_extinction_optimus_prime-wallpapers.html

Green Lantern

Original design, and much better in my opinion.

So, where to begin? I guess with a quick summary. It starts with a short summary of the history of the Green Lantern Corps narrated by the greatest Green Lantern, at the time, Abin Sur played by Temuera Morrison. (The Clone troopers from Star Wars 2-3.) An unspecified time later a monster known as Parallax escaped his shiny green prison thanks to the combined fear of three stranded aliens. Parallax kills a few Lanterns before attacking Abin Sur, the Lantern that sealed him away. Sur escaped but is gravely wounded. He travels to Earth and his power ring is passed onto Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds. While Jordan trains with his ring, at the same time a friend from his childhood, Hector Hammond portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard, is infected with a bit of Parallax after autopsying Sur’s body. Jordan has to learn to use the immense power of the Lantern Ring in time to stop an insane Hammond and the monster Parallax.

This is a bad movie. I love the Green Lantern mythos. Hal Jordan is my favorite incarnation of the character. I think that Ryan Reynolds was a perfect choice to play Jordan. And despite this I can’t bring myself to like this movie. With its numerous problems in effects and storytelling, I could go on for days but I’ll focus on three of their biggest problems.

Such a waste of time.
Creepy, but a waste of time.

One, the storyline. This movie isn’t so much one story but three. The origin of Hal Jordan. The origin of Hammond. And the threat of Parallax. Maybe a really great director could have made this movie work but Martin Campbell isn’t that guy. Parallax is really a footnote at the beginning and end. Hammond is played up too much, and Hal Jordan as a GL is downplayed for Hal Jordan the guy with a fear issue. It’s just a mess. They set up Hector Hammond as a foil/rival for Jordan but 9 minutes in, the first scene their “childhood selves” share together makes it clear to me that he is 100% unnecessary. I read a movie review that stated that Sarsgaard performance is the only saving grace for the movie, but I couldn’t disagree more. He was a waste of time. I’d rather have had seen Jordan training on an alien world or seeing more of Parallax rather than this weird guy who wasn’t living up to Daddy’s expectations. That’s a plot point that has been done to death, please stop using it for a while. Also, they hammer the fear thing in worse than Batman Begins. After a while they use Fear in every other sentence. When you use a theme, symbol, or motif that much, it doesn’t strengthen it, it pisses the crap out of the audience that doesn’t want to hear that four letter F word one more time.

Earth GL's + Kilogow, it's a good group.

Two, the effects. The CGI is pretty bad for a late 00’s movie. Just about everything looks way too fake, and when the majority of the side characters are aliens of varying forms this is a problem. The worst offender is the guy that designed Hal Jordan’s GL uniform. I get that they were going for “the suit is part of you” BS which is why it kind of looks like muscle tissue, but it’s really bad. It just looks like Ryan Reynolds head, most of it any way, CGI’d onto a CGI body. And that stupid CGI mask. Would it have killed the effects team to go down to the nearest costume shop, buy a real green Domino mask, and bring it back? No, not it would not have. Same goes with his costume. Real black and green suit with CGI veining looks better than CGI suit. Also, making it so Hal doesn't get the suit until he gets to Oa is weird. In literally every other incarnation of any Lantern I've seen, the suit is automatic. Putting the ring on, when it's charged, makes the suits. Most Lanterns learn very quickly how to turn it on and off, but first time the ring is put on the suit comes with it. Can't even get the suit right. Though, I suppose when they can’t even get the Ring design right I guess can’t ask for much.

Finally, the changes to source material. Altering Hammond by changing his origin story so that his powers are connected to Parallax was a gigantic waste of time. It irritates fans, and just confuses non-fans. But it’s nothing compared to Parallax. Here, the immensely powerful cosmic entity that is the living embodiment of fear is retooled into a corrupted Guardian. Furthermore, they spliced his mind control though manipulating fear power with that of another GL villain, Larfleeze the Orange Lantern. The Orange light is the one that sucks up people’s souls, seriously it eats souls, and then gives its Lantern the power to make semi-intelligent construct clones of those it consumed. Sure, it makes Parallax look scary seeing all those bodies leaping out form him but look at the pic of the actual Parallax. Imaging that CGI monster, still scary right?

He eats fear, think about that for a second.

The good parts are few but worth mentioning. Ryan Reynolds is good as Hal Jordan, mostly. When they just let him be witty and charming he’s great. He’s serious when he needs to be, and he’s funny when he needs to be. It’s when he’s forced to make really bad speeches about Fear that he suffers. I think with a better director or script Reynolds would be to Hal Jordan as Robert Downey Jr. is to Tony Stark.

And while the characters didn’t look great, the choice of voice actors was very good. I liked Michael Clarke Duncan and Geoffery Rush as Kilowog and Tomar-Re, two of Jordan’s fellow Green Lanterns. Fish guy and mutant hippo, in case you aren’t great with names. In my mind the voices match better character designs as well as they bad ones.

This movie gets a D. It’s bad, really freaking bad, but has a few saving graces that keep it from complete refuse. The bad parts are awful and the good parts are…rare. I’m hopeful that when they finally get to the reboot it'll be a worthy adaption of the Green Lantern Corps, but I will have to wait for quite a long time. Until then, I suggest watching Green Lantern: First Flight. It is a much better GL origin story and even has Christopher Meloni, Eliot Stabler from Law and Order SVU, as Hal Jordan. Next time we'll see if I can clean this up a bit.

Not a good look man.

http://greenlantern.wikia.com/wiki/Green_Lantern_Power_Ring

http://movies.about.com/od/greenlantern/ig/Green-Lantern-Posters/Hector-Hammond-Poster.htm
 http://retcon-punch.com/2013/05/24/green-lantern-20/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lantern

 http://collider.com/green-lantern-movie-images-2/

No love for the Ladies.

                That might be a little harsh, what with Black Widow and Maria Hill in the Marvel-verse and Wonder Woman’s upcoming appearance in Batman and Superman, but aside from those three can you name any other lady Superheroes? Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique doesn’t count, because she’s an antihero at best. Aside from the DoFP she’s a villain and a sadistic one at that.
               The important question is why? Female characters are just as interesting as their male counterparts. Many also have a long enough history that no idiot could say "The character isn't established enough." And for a large Cinematic Universe one does need a few females to balance out all of the testosterone.

She's well known for a reason.

               Part of the reason behind this issue could be due to the supposed target demographic. You make a superhero/comic book movie and the majority of your audience is going to be dudes, right? Yes, but there is a sizeable female population of fans as well. Don’t believe me? Look up anything on Comic Con or a similar event. True the majority are dudes but the overall female contribution is noticeable, and growing. Why? Because loving people dressed in brightly colored costumes knows no gender.

                Another part of the problem is perceived content. Let me explain. As a man, do most of the films I see have a male protagonist? Yes, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t watch one with a woman lead. The problem is that the majority of the films that I find interesting have male leads, while most of the movies with ladies in the top spot are romantic comedies. I like rom coms every now and then but usually they aren’t my cup of tea. There in lies the problem. A superhero movie with a lady on the poster might make a nonfan think it’s going to be a rom com with super powers. My Super Ex-Gilfriend leaps to mind. But if the film execs make it clear in the promotional stuff that it is a serious female superhero with an interesting back story, I’ll guarantee you there will be plenty of dudes that will watch the crap out of it. Look at films like Bridesmaids, which did the reverse. It was promoted as a female equivalent to The Hangover, but what I saw was a standard rom com with more group scenes. Advertising is a powerful thing. The costumes wouldn’t hurt either. What can I say, we men are simple creatures and that doesn’t hurt the box office one bit.

                Now that I’ve brought up those silly things keeping super ladies off of the big screen, I’ll name four that I feel deserve their own movie. These are the best and brightest lady heroes that aren’t household names. So no, I won’t be mentioning the big big names, but the ones that could be big names. Two Marvel, two DC, just to keep things fair.

A beautiful blonde blaster.
The alliteration writes itself.

First up is Air Force Officer Carol Danvers aka Ms./Captain Marvel. She’s one of my personal favorites. Danvers gains her powers when she’s saved from a Kree (blue aliens, they are at constant war with the Skrull/Ch’itari) bomb by Kree scientist/super warrior Captain Mar-vell (mispronounced as Marvel). The bomb infused Danvers with Kree DNA, giving her superhuman strength, the ability to fly and absorb absurd amounts of energy and discharge said energy. Needless to say, she didn’t need to be saved anymore. She’s gone through a few different identities, the most well-known being Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel. She’s one of the most powerful Earthborn heroes of the Marvel-verse. And while she started off as the damsel in distress she’s evolved into one of the most iconic ladies of Marvel. In the Marvel animated series Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (2012), she’s introduced in season 2 and quickly makes up for lost time, becoming an instrumental part of the team. It also probably helped her popularity when DC’s Captain Marvel changed his name to Shazam. Little less confusion that way.

Classic and kind of...risque.

Second on this list is Kara Zor-l aka Power Girl. She’s a parallel universe version of Super Girl, Superman’s cousin. As such she has all the standard Kryptonian powers on our little blue ball under a yellow sun. Invulnerably, flight, various types of super vision from heat to x-ray, and of course a winning grin. Her biggest appearance outside of the comics is in Batman/Superman: Public Enemies (2009), as the only hero (other than the Dark Knight) that doesn’t believe that Superman murdered longtime nemesis Metallo. (Evil android powered by a Kryptonite "heart")

New and a little more reserved.

Of the two Kara’s, Super Girl is the more popular one, but I don’t know there’s something about Power Girl that I like more. Not that you pervs. It could be that while she’s rarely been shown in the expanded DC media, she just leaves a strong impression. Maybe it's the unorthodox design of her costume. I'm talking about the half over the shoulder cape thing, just so we're clear. Or it could be that while Super Girl is more popular, she is often shown at the "still figuring out stuff" part of the super alien thing while Power Girl is only ever shown when she's the confident super being. We didn't have to deal with the typical great power great responsibility style speeches because she'd already figured that out. At least that's what I thought when I saw Public Enemies. And let’s face it, her choice in superhero identity is a little less of an obvious rip off of her male counterpart. Way to be your own woman Power Girl.

Smaller but still leaves a big crater.

Next up is Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk. She’s the cousin of famed PhD. Physicist turned green rage monster Bruce Banner. Walters was in an accident and needed an emergency blood transfusion. Deciding that her life was worth the risk, Bruce gave her his blood. Shockingly, the radioactive cocktail running through his veins had unforeseen circumstances. Thankfully, radiation resistance seems to be in the Banner gene pool. Instead of dieing horribly Walters was morphed into the She-Hulk, a female version of the Hulk. Unlike her cousin, She-Hulk kept all of her mental faculties but her transformation is “more stable.” Meaning she’s seven feet tall and green all of the time. 24/7. As much as it sucks to be Banner, at least he can blend into a crowd so long as he’s calm. Walters doesn’t have that. That fact alone makes her story a bit more complicated. She-Hulk has been featured as a supporting character in a number of Hulk shows, namely The Incredible Hulk (1996) and Hulk and the Agents of SMASH (2013, and no SMASH doesn’t stand for anything). She fits well into the expanded Marvel Cinematic Universe, since in the comic’s she serves as the Avenger’s legal representative on the occasion the team is sued. Something about a big green defense lawyer really pushes up the wins.

Breaks your limbs and ear drums.

Last but not least is a heroine that fans of the Arrow series will recognize, Black Canary aka Dinah Laurel Lance. What is with ladies and the color black? It pops up a lot. Back on task. She’s a master hand to hand combatant and unlike her TV series counterpart she has the added bonus of a set of pipes that can shatter glass. It’s real useful in a number of odd situations. She’s a master tactician rivaling that of DC heavyweight Batman. Yeah, I said it, other heroes rival the brooding billionaire psycho in a bat costume. In the DC animated TV series Young Justice (2012) she’s able to take on much more powerful opponents like the Amazo Android (Evil robot that copies powers and fighting techniques as he is fought) and Superboy (Think if Lex Luthor and Superman had a baby, cause that’s what happened) while only taking moderate damage. The other big thing she's in is obviously Arrow (2012), where her identity is split between the sisters Laurel and Sarah Lance.

There you have it, four super ladies that would do well on the big screen. Sure, She-Hulk and Power Girl would need to be introduced in their male counterpart’s film first but they’d make excellent leading ladies on their own. They smash, blast, make witty retorts and all of the things we love about their male colleagues. Here’s hoping they get a movie deal sometime in the near future. Next time: Green Lantern why it sucked in some places but didn't suck in others.

 http://marvel.com/universe/Black_Widow_%28Natasha_Romanova%29

 http://marvel.com/comics/issue/49018/captain_marvel_2014_1

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Girl

 http://dcinfinite.com/directing-traffic-the-10-best-costumes-in-the-new-52/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She-Hulk

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Canary