If you needed your Godzilla, Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, or even Power Ranger itch scratched, then Pacific Rim does the trick.
Monsters and giant robots are the subject for this movie.
I saw this movie utilizing the D-Box vibration chair. It didn't add anything to the movie. it was like watching the movie while sitting in a broken massage chair that would cut on and off.
Does the black guy live?
SPOILER ALERT!
Nope. He lasts for a while, but he has a good death.
The premise of the movie is a dimensional rift opens in the Pacific Ocean and gigantic monsters (we name them Kaiju) emerge from it to terrorize humanity. Giant robots called Jaegars (Japanese for hunter) are constructed to fight the threat. Who doesn't love giant robots? The robots prove to be too much for one person to pilot. So dual pilots are used.
The story has lots of giant robot action as well as political machinations. Governments shut down the Jaegars program in favor of building a wall. The wall proves to be ineffective. So a military commander takes a few of the remaining robots in a last ditch effort to end the threat.
The special effects were spot on and impressive. I may see the movie again in I-max. The fights were for the most part dynamic although at times a little hard to follow as the battle scenes were usually very dark.
Ron Perlman played a small but extremely awesome roll as a criminal that dealt in black market Kaiju body parts (oh yeah there's a huge market). His gold tipped shoes were what sealed the deal.
The story wasn't bad although it did have several cliches. Our main character was a hot shot who burned out after the death of his brother in combat. And of course he's sought out as he's "wasting" his potential. There is also the cocky pilot who needs to be taken down a peg and he ends up respecting the main character and the tragic hero who is dying as a result of his being an early Jaegur pilot. The plot also mimics Independence Day as aliens are trying to take over Earth and there's a ton of destruction. Still with all that, it was a good movie.
First, I need to say a few things. The Lone Ranger and I have a little history. I've always been a fan of the Lone Ranger, whether it was the cartoons or the 80's movie Legend of the Lone Ranger. There were a few reasons why I wanted to see this film. Sorry, gotta take you through some back story...
I grew up in Flint,Michigan and as a young black boy unfortunately Mother/Father homes weren't the norm. Well I was blessed with one (not saying if you had a single parent home you weren't blessed). And as a family, my father, mother, sister, and I would go to the movies. I remember going to see The Legend of the Lone Ranger as a family. It is one of my fondest memories. Today, parents are so busy either working, or not caring, that family activities seem to be a rarity. Now as an adult, I treasure those times when my family did things together.
My daughters are too young to sit through a movie, but I plan to do things with them when they're older.
Plus, I'm a huge Johnny Depp fan.
Does the black guy live?
SPOILER ALERT!
Yes and no.
Its probably not a coincidence that the Lone Ranger and the Green Hornet were created by the same guy(s). Because both movies had a similar premise, put a lot of emphasis on their mode of transportation (Silver the horse and the car Black Beauty respectively), both movies bombed at the box office and unfortunately for me...I liked both movies. Yes, I cry a little on the inside when I think about it.
Already going in, I figured that this was going to be the Tonto show. Johnny Depp is the headliner and he's playing Tonto. Still my love for the basic concept of the Lone Ranger and Depp let me look past it. Just as in the Green Hornet movie with Seth Rogen, in The Lone Ranger, we see the sidekick doing most of the heavy lifting. While our title character bumbles through things. I honestly like that to a certain extent. Still you can't have a headlining hero that bumbles through the whole movie. And for these 2 movies that was pretty much the case.
Let's swing our focus back to the Lone Ranger. I did love Tonto's character. This treatment of the Lone Ranger gave Tonto's character depth, something that I've never seen done. We see Tonto as a tragic hero who is an outcast due to a mistake that he made as a young brave. You could almost call the story the Lone Ranger and the Lone Brave. The story dabbled in Native American mysticism; calling the Lone Ranger a spirit walker, calling the bad guy of the story a Wendigo and needing a silver bullet to kill him. I really liked and appreciated the Wendigo turned out to be something that Tonto made up as a child to make sense of the mistake he made and the evil of men. Red as the one legged madam was awesome! She walked around with her artificial leg made of ivory that also was a shotgun. Red was too cool. The special effects were done well.
Now onto what I didn't like. Our Lone bumbling Ranger has multiple opportunities to take out the bad guy and doesn't because of his overactive moral compass. It takes him most of the movie to discover that fighting fair and the law isn't going to work, so he becomes an outlaw. This was fine, but it took most of the movie for him to find this out. I understand tis is the origin story, but we lose a lot of time waiting for John Reid to become the Lone Ranger. While I appreciated the fact that John Reid wanted to stop the "war" between Native Americans and the White man's army, I didn't like the futility of their fight or watching all of them getting mowed down by the gatling guns. But I do understand the argument that some might make that it was neccessary. Tonto saved the two white men who wold ultimately massacre his village. I'd like to think that it would take more than two white men to kill that many Native Americans, but the movie didn't go into how they did it, so it might have been implied that they got help. For all the time it took our hero to make his journey from laywer to outlaw, you'd think there would've been time for a training montage. I would've appreciated it.
The movie was campy, draw out, and in some parts badly written. And I loved it. Still while I loved it, I am not blind to the fact that it had a lot of issues and thus it was a box office disaster.
The after credit scene was a little funny, but didn't add anything!
C grade for Lone Ranger!
As much as I love superheroes, this show would have to be pretty bad for me not to watch it. Although I have an issue or two with this show, that is not the case. After watching the first four episodes, there's no reason why I won't be watching every other episode. Avengers Assemble takes up where the Avengers movie left off. We see our six heroes get back together to face all kinds of new threats. And we also have a new member, Sam Wilson aka Falcon.
This is the second Avengers cartoon to air on Disney XD channel and frankly I have to say that I liked the first one Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes better. Allow me to explain by doing a little comparison.
Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes was more comic based as opposed to following the movie. This gave the series a rich history to draw from as well as a bigger cast of characters. We're given Ant-Man and Wasp from the start and we later get the Black Panther, Ms. Marvel, and Vision. Seeing the Masters of Evil, Yellow Jacket, and the Scott Lang Ant-man was cool. The show was drawn well and had excellent voice acting. As I watched the series, I enjoyed the action as well as the multiple and dangling plotlines. The Skrull invasion was extremely well done and fun to watch.
The current series Avengers Assemble is as I said more of a follow up to the Avengers movie. So we get the limited cast of Cap, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor, Hulk, Iron-Man and the rookie Falcon. My only real issue with the show is the non serious nature of the show. I don't mind comedy in my action, but I think this show goes a little too far. The third episode starts the team arguing over cookies that Falcon brings to their HQ. After the villian(s) are defeated, Hulk finds a single cookie left and the episode fades out with the Avengers arguing over who gets the last cookie. While that is a little funny, the first show gave me drama, mystery, and intrigue. I tend to only see a multitude of punch lines from the newer series. There is no sense of urgency with the team. Everyone is so cocky that I never feel that the world is in peril or that anything is at stake. Although it's only one issue, it's a pretty big issue.
The current series has nice animation and I like Falcon. He comes in as this rookie who is in awe of the Avengers. Falcon is the rookie of the team. He even speaks about geeking out being with them. I like his character. Adrian Pasdar does a good job bringing Iron-Man to life as well.
Its still early in the series; it has a solid base but there's still room for improvement. If I didn't have Avengers, Earth's Mightiest Heroes to compare it to, I'd probably wouldn't be so critical of the current series. Only time will tell if Avengers Assemble will last or not.
On my quest to Comic Con 2014, I am not going to dress as this guy!
This is Augustus Freeman IV aka Arnus aka ICON
He is an alien a la Kal-El that came to Earth in 1839 and he was raised by African-American slaves. His ship conformed his appearance to look like the first life-form that discovered him. Unlike Superman, his world wasn't destroyed, and he's been stranded on Earth. He's was waiting until Earth's technology could allow him to return home.
Icon has an array of powers that rival those of the Man of Steel. In fact DC comics had a crossover and they fought. Although he is not as strong as Superman, Superman did comment about hard hard Icon hit him.
First Appearance Icon #1 (in Milestone Comics which later was merged into DC) and he was created in part by the late Dwayne McDuffie.
I found these pics online of someone that
already did a pretty good job with an Icon costume.
