Movies 2: Electric Boogaloo

Captain America: civil war, considering I don't like the Cap'n very much this was top quality and it has got me stupidly excited for the upcoming Black Panther & spiderman films.

I knew I wasn't wrong to side with Team Iron-man.

I was Team Cap... and ashamed of being so by the end. Not the very end, though.

The only saving grace about team cap was antman, buy yeah it tied up nicely at the end.

I am, and have always been, Team Cap. But I think Tony is a bit of a knobber, and you all know my attitude towards authority. . .

I thought Iron Man was the pretty obvious bad guy to be honest.

Rogue One, Zero (blast off - sorry, couldn't resist )? It wasn't bad - some aspects of the CGI were considerably worrying, to be sure, but there was a neat enough story and some good performances. A mild recommend.

From the outside, I think Team Iron Man would appear to be right. The Avengers are running around the world unchecked, Ultron did cause a disaster and this is a mostly American team acting like they're above the law all over the world.

Knowing the team, though, we know Cap is committed to doing good and will be more effective doing whatever he needs to instead of waiting for the authorities to order him around. It's a real shame Spidey didn't get to change sides like in the comics, as Cap's whole deal here seemed to be "With great power comes great responsibility." He can save people, so he must.

Saw passengers on new year, its one of those that isn't bad or good just okay and something you would watch on Channel 4 one evening as nothing else on.

Just finished up with Zoolander 2. What a bizarre misjudgement that was. Maybe two genuine laughs. There's only one (two) comedies good enough to take away the bad taste in my mouth: Zoolander! (And Dodgeball!)

I've deliberately put off watching Zoolander 2 or Anchorman 2, knowing they'll never live up to my memories of the original. That said, I understand Pop Star does a very good job of filling the Hot Rod shaped hole in my heart.

I saw Anchorman 2 as a treat to myself the day I finished work for Christmas the year it came out. You were right to avoid it, Drunkario - another film that should never have had a sequel.

I saw Anchorman 2 in the cinema. One of the worst films I've ever seen, lacking any redeemable qualities besides the fact that it isn't 101 Ways to Die in the West, the Seth McFarlane wank piece that really is the worst film ever made.

Doesn't tell us much; the previous film literally ended with Rey going and meeting the last of the Jedi.

If I'm honest that is quite a poor name.

Forces of Destiny was rumoured for ages, that better or worse Jas?

Much worse but "The last Jedi" is still a bad name.

Over the last three nights, I watched the three Hobbit films. This was my first time re-watching the Battle of Five Armies since the cinema. They're alright!

My dad reading the Hobbit to me is one of my earliest memories, and anticipating a Hobbit film after LOTR must have been what waiting for episodes 1-3 of Star Wars felt like for 80s kids.

I don't think the Hobbit films are as bad as the Star Wars prequels by any stretch. They kind of suffer from the opposite problems. Whereas Star Wars was ruined by George Lucas being allowed what he wanted with no oversight, I think the Hobbit was ruined by the studio insisting on another three-film epic while the book is really more of a short children's adventure.

Sliced down to one film, just concentrating n Bilbo's adventure as shown in the novel, I think the Hobbit would be pretty much perfect. Where things are changed, it's to accommodate retcons Tolkien made when he decided the Hobbit would be part of his wider epic world (things like the Wargs being ridden by orcs, and the various animals not talking and behaving in a very fairy tale way). There is still lots of levity, and slapstick, and singing and comedy, marking this out as more of a children's story than LOTR.

On the other hand, there are sections which just drag. The stuff with the Necromancer is given a passing reference in the original book, but Tolkien realised kids like spooky stuff like that so he expanded it into Sauron and Morgoth and all that in his other books. The battle lasts one chapter in the book, and Bilbo misses it. Here, Azog pursues them all three films long and the battle takes up the whole second disk of the final films. I understand this decision was made to sell these films to people who liked all the Aragorn action in the original, but I can't help feeling it detracted from the tense and character driven stories that really made the book work.

It's telling that the very best bits in each film are Gollum and the riddles, Bilbo meeting Smaug and Bilbo trying to free Thorin from his madness. These are the sequences taken straight from the book and concentrating on Martin Freeman's brilliant, grounded performance. He really does elevate these films, and one day some nerd is going to hack together a single-movie, just the Bilbo, version of this and it's gonna be amazing.

And before Muss says it: I'm really gutted we never got the Guillermo Del Toro version. That would have been amazing.

Drunkalilly wrote:

One day some nerd is going to hack together a single-movie, just the Bilbo, version of this and it's gonna be amazing.

You know that has been done by a few people already with this one being the most talked about.

masofdas wrote:

You know that has been done by a few people already with this one being the most talked about.

I'll give that a watch at some point, I reckon.

*Crawls out from under rock*

Huh, so they released the next sw name. Not a fan of it I must say, sounds too on the nose.

Drunkalilly wrote:

It's telling that the very best bits in each film are Gollum and the riddles, Bilbo meeting Smaug and Bilbo trying to free Thorin from his madness. These are the sequences taken straight from the book and concentrating on Martin Freeman's brilliant, grounded performance. He really does elevate these films, and one day some nerd is going to hack together a single-movie, just the Bilbo, version of this and it's gonna be amazing.

I read a critique about the film saying that it'd be near impossible to have a Bilbo centric edit of the film. That's because when most of the characters are talking in the trilogy, they're talking about Thorin and how cool he is/how doomed his quest is/how small he is (delete as appropriate) and Bilbo is relegated to being a side character in the story.

You'll have to watch the cut, I linked to Mr Jay.

Athrun888 wrote:

*Crawls out from under rock*  

Huh, so they released the next sw name.  Not a fan of it I must say, sounds too on the nose.  

To be fair, most of the Star Wars names are crap. The only good ones are the first in each trilogy (Phantom Menace, New Hope, Force Awakens).

God bless the person who made this.