The Incredibles 2

Originally written for OutLoudCulture.com

    The Incredibles 2 has been teased ever since the cliffhanger at the end of The Incredibles back in 2004. I'm 21 years old at the time of writing, and it's been almost 14 years since the first movie in the series was released. I have literally been waiting for this film for two-thirds of my life. Finding Dory only took 13 years, Monsters University took 12 years, meanwhile Cars sees a new movie every 5-6 years. I have a DVD copy of the first movie I've been watching with my parents about every six months since it came out that's older than some of the children in the audience for this movie. It's become a family tradition to watch the first movie and I can quote back almost every line in the movie as rote. Needless to say, that makes me fairly qualified to tell you, the reader, whether or not this movie is any good. Thankfully it is. I wish we'd gotten it 11-12 years ago, but it's a solid installment and a worthy follow-up to one of my all-time favorite movies. Now we just have to hope it won't take another 14 years for them to make an Incredibles 3.
    Before we start talking about the movie, I'd like to go over my theater experience first. I try and keep comments about the theater experience out of the review, but there were a few egregious problems with the showing I went to at The Grand 18 in D'Iberville, Mississippi. First off, there was a string of commercials for apps and augmented reality games played with cellphones before the movie, and then when trailers started, they told everyone to put away their cell-phones. Then there was the fact that the screen had clearly been cleaned improperly as there was this shimmer effect I've begun to notice on a lot of poorly-maintained projection-screens. Then there's the fact that there was a speck of dirt on either the projector, the window the projector was projecting through, or there was a much larger spot of dirt on the projection screen itself. Not enough to be detrimental, but enough to be unprofessional. Add to that the fact that the recliner seating was a tad difficult to adjust properly and my theater experience wasn't quite perfect.

Spoiler warning for the movie.

    As one would expect given the ending of The Incredibles, The Incredibles 2 picks up immediately after the first film's cliffhanger ending. The Incredibles and Frozone manage to take on The Underminer (John Ratzenberger) and win, but The Underminer escapes, The Incredibles (Bob, Helen, Dash, Violet and Jack-Jack Parr, played by Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Huck Milner and Eli Fucile respectively) are picked up by the police because superheroism is still illegal, Frozone (AKA Lucius Best, played by Samuel L. Jackson) is given a business proposition by a superhero fanboy who isn't a complete psycho (Winston Deavor, played by Bob Odenkirk) and the guy Violet asked out, Tony gets his memory of her erased. The Superhero Relocation Program, which was established fifteen years prior to clean up superhero messes and keep heroes under wraps whenever possible, gets shut down, and the Parrs have two weeks to sort their situation out or they're homeless, since their house was blown up in the previous film. Fortunately for them, the offer Deavor extended to Frozone is extended to Bob and Helen as well, and the three of them go to Deavor's place where he introduces them to his sister, Evelyn (Catherine Keener) who invents the stuff his company sells and markets. The idea is to hire Helen to be the "pilot hero" to get the public convinced that Superheroes are a positive influence rather than a negative one. Bob, who's spent the last fifteen years seething over the stupidity of the public and government, is naturally cheesed by this. If one can recall the first film as well as I can, then one remembers how Bob jumped to do hero-work, because it's an inherent part of his being. He's supportive of his wife, but it gets to him that he's not out there doing hero-work. Granted, someone has to take care of the kids and that duty falls to him.
    Elastigirl is given a new suit and motorcycle for use in superhero work while Bob is stuck trying to figure out why they changed math and how to organize all of the children, which is pretty relevant for fans of the first movie since they're old enough to have kids of their own and wonder what the hell is going on with Common Core now. Which on reflection, is probably why this is in the movie at all.
Helen goes to one of the big cities to monitor crime and winds up stopping a runaway train hijacked by a new supervillain called "ScreenSlaver." ScreenSlaver uses hypnosis on the engineer to make him run the train backward, but Elastigirl manages to avert disaster. This grants her a lot of good press, and an interview with the local news. Meanwhile, Jack-Jack has a fight with a Raccoon and Bob finds out that Jack-Jack has powers. For those of you wondering why they didn't know he had powers, it's because he was too far up when he was going lead-baby, human-torch and demon-baby for them to see it properly, Kari probably got her memory erased of the entire incident, and Syndrome is dead, so nobody else really knew he had powers. Speaking of which, as part of the project, Winston lets the Parrs stay in one of his extra houses, a mansion I suspect he bought from Syndrome's estate-sale given the technologically-advanced gadgets, the secret entrances, the hidden trap-doors, and all of the other crap in the house. There's nothing in the movie to confirm or deny that, but it makes perfect sense.
    During the interview, ScreenSlaver hijacks the signal and the helicade of a foreign ambassador who was leaving the studio. Helen manages to save the Ambassador and the studio, then concocts a plan to track down ScreenSlaver with the help of some tech from Evelyn. She tracks him to his lair, and he puts up a pretty good fight, but Elastigirl apprehends him. Something I feel I should comment on is the fact that the theater had posted notices that the movie contained sequences of rapidly-flashing lights and I was not prepared for how rapidly they would be flashing. I'm normally unphased by strobe-effects in films and real life, but this gave me a headache to watch. I'd like to request that Pixar tone down the flashing for the home-media release, but I won't be too put-out if they don't. It's very brief, but for the number of times I know I'm going to watch this movie I get the distinct feeling that I'm either going to get used to it or it'll become the single most irritating part of the film that I'll dread every time I watch it.
    Elastigirl's capture of ScreenSlaver is celebrated, and helps to spur the re-legalization of superhero action. However, at the victory party, Helen starts analyzing the footage captured from her body-cam and realizes that ScreenSlaver had tapped into her bodycam, and may indeed have just been mind-controlled as well. Evelyn confirms this when she slaps mind-control goggles into Helen to keep her from breaking the story. I have to admit, I didn't see that one coming. I thought the brother was gonna be the villain.
    Evelyn explains that she basically sees her father's Superhero obsession as the thing that killed him, and she despises how her brother obsesses over them, and she sees the heroes as a crutch that humanity is expected to lean on when she thinks that humanity needs to move on otherwise we'll be held back. So she's basically Lex Luthor. I have a feeling that she and Syndrome would have gotten along very well.
One may also note some similarities between this scene and a scene from Fantastic 4, but since this is the better movie and indeed the better movie series and also Fox is soon going to be owned by Disney, there's not really much to say about that here.    She calls Bob to lure him to the ship the superheroism legalization accord will be signed on, so Bob calls Lucius to watch the kids while he goes after Helen. Evelyn sends a bunch of rookie heroes her brother found and she subsequently mind-controlled, to apprehend the kids, but between Lucius and Dash summoning Bob's Incredibile, the kids manage to escape, but Lucius gets mind-controlled. Bob faces off with Helen, but Evelyn uses the mind-control to catch Bob off-guard and mind-control him, so it's up to Dash, Violet and Jack-Jack to save the day.
    Evelyn has the Supers issue a threat to the world after the accords are signed, but Jack-Jack frees Helen and Helen frees Bob and Lucius. They face off with the other mind-controlled heroes, and Winston disables the mind-control screens on the boat. Helen takes out Evelyn while Bob and the kids stop the boat crashing into the city. Evelyn is arrested, and The Incredibles are hailed as heroes once more.
    If like me, you've waited a long time for this movie to come out, it may be worth seeing in theaters, but if you suspect you'll have a similar theater experience to the one I had, I'd recommend waiting for The Incredibles 2 to come out on 4K and spending what you would have spent on the tickets on that. It's easily as good as the first one, so one will certainly wish to watch it again and again, and unless you catch it at a dollar theater you're likely to pay just as much, if not more for tickets for the whole family as you would to just buy the 4K version. If you absolutely cannot wait, then go for it, but you'd probably be better off waiting for the 4K Blu-ray release.
Speaking of which, why exactly was The Incredibles $30 on 4K? It's a fourteen-year-old film that everyone owns on either DVD or 2K Blu-ray, so Disney shouldn't be expecting to make their typical amount on it. It's not like the old VHS releases, or the first DVD releases of most of their films, the remastering was already done back when they issued the DVD and Blu-ray versions. Why exactly do they think they'll make the asking price on this? For $30 I'll wait until it's discounted or stick with the DVD version I've had for the last fourteen years.
    All in all, this movie did everything it needed to as a sequel. It had new ideas left and right, wasn't just a straight carbon-copy of the first film with minute differences and managed to capture the heart and soul of the original. What they need to do now is make another movie before all of the actors are dead, because almost all of the cast is getting up there. That brings me to something I feel I should mention. Aside from Helen, Lucius, and The Underminer, the only voices that don't sound like they've changed are Dash and Dicker, the two who had to be recast because the voice actors were either too old or dead respectively. The returning cast sounds generally like they are who they're supposed to be, but Craig T. Nelson's voice has aged more audibly than Albert Brooks's had in Finding Dory, and Sarah Vowell sounded like she was straining to maintain her Violet voice throughout the first two-thirds of the film before settling back into the groove by the end of the film. In fact, Craig T. Nelson also sounded like he'd figured it out by the end as well and that made me wonder why they didn't go back and retake the rest of their lines. You know you could have just pushed it back another few months to clean up the voice-acting, right Disney? You made us wait fourteen freaking years for the movie as it was, you could have made us wait a little longer and we wouldn't have hated your guts any more than we already do. Although there's a reason for it being somewhat rushed, considering the fact that Toy Story 4 got pushed back and The Incredibles 2 had to fill its release-date. I'm actually surprised the shaky voices are the only problem with the movie given that it had to be released an entire year earlier than planned. I was somewhat disappointed there wasn't much Underminer in the movie, but I was satisfied with the film we got.
    As with the last film, Michael Giacchino's score is absolute perfection. Best work from Giacchino since his Doctor Strange score. Would definitely listen to on its own given the opportunity.
In the end, it's a solid installment that I wish I hadn't had to wait two-thirds of my life to see. As a suggestion, maybe they could make an animated TV series out of the Glory Days from the first movie? They briefly namechecked some of the events of the Glory Days, and I think there's a lot that could be gotten out of the pre-Relocation days. All I want is more of The Incredibles in my (and preferably the actors) lifetimes.

Image from impawards.com

Top Five Best Movies of 2015

Yeah, it's late but at this point, I've been sitting on this too long to just delete it, so here we go.

#5: Ant-Man
Right off the heels of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man was a surprisingly good movie when the MCU was taking such a horrible turn for the worse. This film was better than it had any right to be, especially considering how bad Age of Ultron turned out to be.

#4: Kamen Rider Drive: Surprise Future
What can I say? This was a good year to be paying attention to anything but the big Hollywood films. In fact, I probably spent more of 2015 watching Kamen Rider movies and episodes than I spent thinking about the mainstream films of the year. I don't know, Kamen Rider Drive connected with me better than Age of Ultron did, and I'd been following the MCU for almost a decade by the time that film came out.
While Surprise Future ties rather heavily into the plot of the corresponding television show, it's a very good movie regardless. Part of that has to do with the fact that it had a large general development of the characters over the course of the series, but it all comes down to the amazing writing, acting, and directing in this movie. It's all up to the standard of the rest of the series, and all of it falls together rather perfectly with the preceding and succeeding episodes.

#3: Straight Outta Compton
I knew as soon as I saw this film that it was going to end up on my best of the year list. This film is an emotional journey through the lives and careers of the members of NWA, and it bloody rules. If you're a fan, it's a good movie. If you're not, you'll be a fan by the end.

#2: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Another movie I knew was going to be on my best list as soon as I saw it. The Force Awakens is the best Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi, easily. But then again we already knew that from my review.

#1: Blood Punch

Like this is any real surprise. Blood Punch is easily the best film to come out of the wasteland year that 2015 turned out to be.  Blood Punch turned out to be one of the most unique, funniest horror films I've ever seen, and it deserves all the praise it can possibly get. After some consideration, I finally decided it was better than my #2 pick. If you haven't seen it, buy it on Blu-ray, it's a movie you'll want to see over and over again to pick out the details.












The hardest thing about putting this list together wasn't deciding the top spot, I had the top four spots solidified by the end of January of 2016. The tough part was remembering a fifth good movie from 2015 that I'd watched, and eventually, I remembered Ant-Man.

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American Ultra

Sometimes movies can surprise you. For instance, American Ultra looked like it was going to suck based on the trailers. Surprisingly, it was pretty damn good.
To explain this, I'll ask you a question. What do you get when you cross The Bourne Identity and Blood Punch with a tad of classic Bond thrown in for good measure? You get American Ultra.
Look at that poster. First, there's Jesse Eisenberg, who can be really good in some movies and really bad in others. Next, there's Kristen Stewart, who has acquired a rather undeserved reputation for not being able to act. Funnily enough, Eisenberg has that reputation in some circles too.
Let's break this down based on this movie, BvS, Now You See Me, and The End of the Tour, the later two of which had trailers included on this film's DVD. In BvS, Eisenberg played an egomaniac with a commanding personality. He had the air of a supervillain to him, the kind of thing you'd expect out of Lex Luthor. He carried himself like he owned the place, and spoke like he expected to be heard. Then there's Now You See Me, where he plays a cocky son of a bitch. A smirking, cocksure, swaggering douchebag who feels like he can do anything he wants, while also acting detached from his environment. Then there's The End of the Tour, where he basically seems like any guy you'd expect to meet on the street. He acts like a background element, someone who just sort of blends in, while interacting rather effectively with his co-star, Jason Segal. Then there's this movie, where he's got perfect command of his characters' insecurities and quirks. Not only that, he constantly shifts back and forth between the passive, nervous stoner and his Bond-esque combat persona. To say that Jesse Eisenberg can't act is blatantly untrue. He doesn't change up his voice much, but he completely overhauls his mannerisms and the way he speaks for almost every role.
Then there's Kristen Stewart. Thanks to the Twilight movies, and Snow White & The Huntsman, she's been painted as a pretty face without much talent. Namely, a blank expression with very little obvious interest in what she's doing. Having seen Tara Reid in action, not only is Kristen Stewart not a bad actress, by any means, but she actually manages to carry her end of the film. In fact, if not for her expressionism and her expressive acting, this movie would have easily fallen flat. Stewart plays the straight-man to Eisenberg's wise-guy, in what is essentially a duo-comedy film.
Eisenberg plays Mike Howell, a stoner with anxiety issues living in Liman, West Virginia. He wants to propose to his girlfriend, Phoebe Larson in Hawaii, but at the airport Mike has a panic-attack and they miss their flight.
Mike and Phoebe go back to their lives of doing small things in a small town. Mike as a clerk at a local convenience-store and Phoebe at the bail-bonds office. Mike begins freaking out that he's holding Phoebe back, but decides to try and overcome his failings to make a spectacular statement. So he talks to his drug-dealer, Rose (John Leguizamo) to get ahold of some fireworks.
At the CIA headquarters in Langley, an agent named Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) is called on a secret phone and told that one of the experimental agents she oversaw, codenamed "Wise Man" is about to be terminated by "Tough Guy." Lasseter headed up Wise Man, while her colleague, Adrian Yates (Topher Grace, better as a villain here than he was in Spider-Man 3) headed up Tough Guy. Lasseter tries to get Yates to back down on killing the last Wise Man, (Who happens to be Mike) but he refuses. She decides to activate Mike so he can have a chance at not being killed, but he doesn't seem to be phased by his trigger-words as much as the guys from The Manchurian Candidate were. She decides to bug out before Lasseter's men show up to kill Mike, and leaves him to his fate. Naturally confused, Mike makes himself some soup for dinner, but notices a pair of guys messing with his car. He goes out to try and stop them, but they pull guns on him. Mike's training then re-activates itself, and he kills the two with a spoon and a gun he stole from them. After this, he freaks the hell out and calls up Phoebe to tell her what happened. Naturally, she's freaked out by all of this. Then a plastic-bag lands on Mike's car and the bombs the two guys he killed planted, explode. Fortunately, he took the fireworks out first. The two are then arrested because of these killings, and tossed in jail. Because two guys planting a bomb on your car and attacking you with guns doesn't justify killing them in West Virginia somehow. Before the cell-door is closed though, two more Tough Guy operatives, Crane and Laugher, lay siege to the Sheriff's Office. Mike's training then kicks in once more, and he manages to keep them from killing him. Laugher is left with broken teeth, and Crane is dead as a doornail.
Naturally, this brings up a few red-flags with Yates, who has already found out that two of his men have been killed. He works up a ridiculous cover-story and begins his siege. He blocks off the town so Lasseter can't escape, but she calls in an airdrop from one of her associates and gets herself a shotgun and pistol.
Mike and Phoebe get to Rose's house. Rose has tons of guns and an armored house, so they figure it's a good place to lay low. Rose and his henchmen have some pretty funny dialogue exchange with Mike, before Rose locks him and Phoebe in his rave-room after seeing Mike and Lasseter on TV as part of the coverup. Yates's men begin pumping poison gas into the house and kill Rose and his goons. They try to kill Mike and Phoebe, but thanks to Mike's skills and Phoebe's theft of one of their gas-masks, they manage to escape. Phoebe grabs a syringe from the body of one of the soldiers and injects the bleary Mike with it. She knows a bit too much about the gas and what it does, while Mike flashes back to various aspects of their relationship before coming back to reality. He realizes that she's probably a CIA agent, and she admits it. She was his handler back when he was with the CIA, but they fell in love. After he was brainwashed into amnesia, and dropped off in the town. She stayed behind rather than be reassigned, and we find out that all of his anxieties, all of his phobias and shortcomings were a product of the CIA suppressing his training. The whole reason Yates wanted to kill him was because he was slowly finding the ability to leave the town.
The two of them are then assaulted by Laugher, and Phoebe's car is set on fire, seemingly killing Mike. However, Lasseter manages to get him out before the flames get to him. Phoebe is taken back to Yates's base of operations, where he finds out that Lasseter and Mike are headed back to his house. Yates tries to call in an air-strike on Mike, but the guy he threatened into authorizing it, Lasseter's old assistant, Petey backs out, so Yates orders one of his men to take one of the Tough Guys out and take out the two of them. Meanwhile, Petey reports Yates' activities to their superior officer, Raymond Krueger, who sets into motion actions to shut Yates' operation down.
Mike takes out the guys who try to kill him and Lasseter, and takes their vehicle and his fireworks to Yates' base at the local superstore. Phoebe manages to get out of her handcuffs while Yates sends the last of his men after Mike. Mike kills most of them, but his fight with Laugher comes to a standstill when both of them are too heavily injured to continue, and when Laugher manages to gain enough lucidity to explain to Mike what the hell Yates did to him. Yates and his crew took mentally-ill people and screwed with their brains so they would obey orders they were given. The extent of Mike's brainwashing just blocked off his memories and gave him massive issues with anxiety. Mike gets to choose what he does, while Laugher is basically The Winter Soldier, but without the mental stability to be able to cope with what he has to do.
Mike lets Laugher get away, and Phoebe helps him get out of the building. They're then set upon by Krueger's men. Mike proposes and Phoebe accepts. The two are then tasered, Yates is executed, Lasseter convinces Krueger to make Mike into an agent, Mike accepts the gig, and he and Phoebe take up work traveling the world, killing people in unusual ways.
To put it bluntly, you could easily have told me this was a Hollywood remake of Blood Punch and I would have believed you. Despite lacking the supernatural elements, the plot of American Ultra is almost beat for beat the same as that of Blood Punch. Main-character doesn't know things about his situation, does drugs, has a hot girl who also does those drugs, the girl knows more about the leads situation than he does, there's a villain who wants to kill the lead and mess with the girl. Dark humor, kick-ass action, and a drug-dealer who turns on the leads after initially being friendly. Hell, both films start out with flashbacks, both are open-ended and both could either have a sequel or not and be perfectly fine. I could have pictured Milo Cawthorne as Mike, Olivia Tenent as Phoebe and Ari Boyland as Yates in a pinch.
There are plenty of differences, however. For one thing, American Ultra lacks the downer-ending of Blood Punch and some of the (no pun intended) punch of the action. Not to say that it isn't visceral, but Blood Punch had a lot more focus placed on the kick of the action, while American Ultra is filmed like a more-loose, less shakey Bourne movie. Not that that doesn't work, the cinematography and editing is basically perfect in framing the characters actions. On top of that, American Ultra lacks the incredibly poorly-choreographed wide-shot of the final battle-scene that could have been cut entirely that was my one major complaint about my favorite film of 2015. American Ultra also has far-better audio-effects editing and mixing than Blood Punch does. On the other hand, Eisenberg and Stewart are clearly breathing out CGI smoke in the beginning of the film, while Blood Punch relied far more heavily on practical effects for small things like that. Something they both share is the ability to sell the action no matter how ludicrous it might seem, and the use of either practical effects or very good CGI for most of the important scenes. You're not going to see any effects-failures on the level of The Expendables in this film. Hell, you don't see anything as cringeworthy as the parade from The Hunger Games despite the fact that this movie had about a third of that films budget. Just goes to show that it comes down to how you make a film and not how much money you've got.
All in all, while this film was a bit shaky in some aspects (Namely it's not paced quite as well as Blood Punch was) it's a damn good action-comedy with punchy writing, editing and acting alike. Just a shame it didn't make its budget back at the box-office. I would urge anyone who liked Blood Punch, or likes black-comedy action-films to buy this movie on Blu-ray or DVD and watch it. It isn't quite on the level of the suicidal brilliance of Blood Punch's morbid humor, but it's well worth watching to the end. Hell, it might even be worth a sequel. For that matter, the comic Mike wrote in-universe sounds pretty good as well. I'd like to maybe see a comic-book or some animated shorts about Apollo Ape.
In the end, I give American Ultra a 9.0*. It's a fun film to watch, and if you want to laugh at some punchy jokes, this is a good film to do that with. Plus, the ending-sequence is well worth watching.

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Attack The Block

Every now and again, one way or another, some cult-film crosses my path somehow. Either by total accident, or because I just couldn't ignore it any longer. This time, Netflix was out and the PSN wouldn't connect to download the Amazon Prime app while the free trial is valid, so we wound up browsing through YouTube looking for something to watch. Eventually, we stumbled upon this film somehow, and I recommended that we keep watching because it has John Boyega in it. I wasn't really expecting much, since I'd never heard anything about the film except that it existed. What I got was possibly one of the best horror-comedies of all time. Not exactly Blood Punch levels of hilarious and brutal, but still pretty damn freaking good, especially for a directorial debut. The directors of The Angry Birds Movie could learn a thing or two from Joe Cornish. Not that these movies share a genre or anything, but if someone made an Angry Birds horror-comedy I would watch it. Probably wouldn't be that great, but it'd be interesting to see.
Spoilers inbound as usual, let's go!
While walking home on Guy Fawkes Night, Samantha Adams (Jodie Whittaker) is robbed by a gang of hoods, consisting of Pest, (Alex Esmail, not the second Gorgoroth front-man) Dennis, (Franz Drameh) Jerome, (Leeon Jones) Biggz, (Simon Howard) and the leader of the gang, Moses, (John Boyega). They steal some things from Samantha, but a meteorite crashes into a nearby car, allowing her to get away.
Moses goes to check it out and loot the car, but is scratched by a creature that emerges from the wreckage. The thing runs away, but the gang gives chase, and kills it. If you've seen Ben 10, just picture a hairless, miniature Wild-Mutt.
The gang hauls their prize back to the council-estate (Government-funded public housing) they live in, nick-named "The Block" and get high at their drug-dealer, Ron's (Nick Frost) apartment while they discuss their plans to get rich off the corpse of the alien.
They ask Ron and his boss Hi-Hatz (Jumayn Hunter) if they can store the alien in the weed-room while they sort things out. Hi-Hatz agrees, but only if Moses will sell some weed for him. They go back to their weed for a bit, and then more creatures start falling from the sky. Feeling confident in their abilities, they head out to hunt more of the creatures. Armed with swords, bats, fireworks, a machete, and a dog, they head out on bicycles and a mo-ped towards the park. There, they find that the other creatures that have landed are big, brawny, and have glowing teeth. The dogs runs off and is presumably eaten by the creature, and the gang flees the scene.
Meanwhile, Samantha has told the police about her encounter with the gang, and the two officers who responded intercept Moses, and arrest him.They find the weed that Hi-Hatz told him to sell, and confiscate it. They throw him in the van, but both of them are killed by two of the monsters. The gang drops a smoke-bomb into the fray and Dennis dashes to the van and drives it away from the monsters.
Eventually they crash into Hi-Hatz' car, who doesn't believe that Moses and them were attacked by gorilla-sized aliens before losing the weed until him and his goons are attacked by one of them. The gang flees back to the block, but Pest is attacked by a monster and bitten, and Biggz is separated from the group, and winds up hiding in a dumpster.
Moses and company make their way through the building, eventually finding Samantha. Having found a hospital nurses ID in her wallet, they force their way into her apartment and make her treat Pest's injured leg. She doesn't believe them about the monsters until one of them forces its way into her apartment and Moses has to kill it with the Katana Dennis was using earlier. The gang flees the compromised apartment, and Samantha joins them since she's more likely to be safe with them than on her own, taking a kitchen knife to defend herself with.
They go to the apartment of... I think the sister of one of the gang members, who have a gate on their door. The gate doesn't protect them since the monsters climb up the side of the tower and break in. Moses tries to fight back, but the Katana gets stuck in the wall. Samantha stabs the monster going after Moses in the neck, and the other monsters get zapped, chopped and generally beaten to death by the girls who live in the apartment. In the hallway, the gang get attacked by Hi-Hatz and his crew, who have armed themselves with heavier weapons to kill the monsters faster. Fortunately, one of the monsters goes after Hatz and his crew after being attacked, giving the gang time to escape.They decide to barricade themselves inside Hatz's weed-room and wait the invasion out. On the way up, they meet up with one of Ron's customers, Brewis (Luke Treadway). Brewis was the one whose car the first monster smashed into at the beginning of the film. He's high off his ass on weed, and is kind of useless, but they take him with them back up to the penthouse. On the way they run into some monsters, and pull out some more fireworks to distract then. The hallway is filled with smoke, and the gang gets disoriented. Dennis smashes into a wall and gets jumped by a monster. Pest goes back to look for him, but a monster bites Dennis's head off, and the gang flees to the penthouse.
Meanwhile, Biggz is saved by a couple of local kids who kill a monster with a super-soaker full of gasoline and a rocket. Biggz calls up the rest of the gang to tell them the monsters are vulnerable to fire as well as bullets and swords. A good thing to know, since they can tank lots of bullets.
They come up with a plan to blow up the monsters, but can't figure out how to lure all the monsters to one place until they notice some stains on Moses's clothes under the black-lights. Brewis suggests that the smaller creature they killed earlier might have excreted pheromones onto the gang that cause the others to come after them, with Moses having the vast majority of the stains on him, since he encountered the creature first. Moses has Samantha go into his apartment and turn all the gas on in the place, and then to flee to the outside. They pack all the contaminated clothing and the corpse itself into Pest's backpack, and Moses makes a mad dash for his apartment. With the katana, a lighter, and two remaining fireworks in-hand, he rushes through the horde, blows them up, and saves the world, presumably. None of the other monsters really show up in the ending, and I'd prefer to think of this as a happy-ending. Yeah, there's the question as to why all of them landed in Britain in that one spot, but if you can believe it for Doctor Who you can believe it for this.
Moses is blown out of the open window, but catches himself on a Union Flag. He and a few other members of the gang are arrested by the police, but hailed as heroes by the crowd and defended by Samantha. I presume that they get commendations and knighthoods because of this, before being recruited by UNIT or Torchwood, depending on who gets to them first. Possibly both depending on who's running UNIT.
All in all, this is one damn fine movie. It more than filled the gap between Star Trek Beyond and Suicide Squad. I would have watched the last Bourne movie, but I completely forgot that the new one was coming out. I wasn't even aware that Jason Bourne was the films final title. I thought they'd go for the name of one of the novels. Jason Bourne makes me think of Rocky Balboa or John Rambo, same-name sequels that aren't reboots.
The Anglosphere seems to do horror-comedy the way nobody else does. Visceral, punchy, and humorous in a way that's darker than the fur of the monsters in this film. As I said before, while the movie isn't quite as visceral and punchy as Blood Punch, it makes up for it with the moments of sheer laugh-out-loud absurdity that it does have. It's also got better visual and audio effects than Blood Punch, but that alone can't make it a better movie. I will say this though, at least there's no bizarrely-shot, poorly choreographed gun-fight towards the end of the film.
In the end, as much as I can compare it to Blood Punch, they are two very different films trying for very different feels. I give it an 8.5* rating.

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Image from Impawards.com

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

A new Star Wars movie came out earlier this month, and I finally saw it over the weekend. I figure I should probably review it. Seeing as it's well on its way to breaking into the top ten highest grossing films of all time. The Force Awakens is already the biggest Star Wars movie of all time, and is currently ranked at number five on the top ten films of 2015. Star Wars has broken records across the board this year, and this is a year that's broken records across the board. Amazing how what started as a little space-opera, with a nightmarish production history became the biggest science-fiction franchise of all time. And if you're wondering what I'm using to gauge that, it's Boxmojo's franchise index. From film alone, Star Wars is bigger than Terminator, Star Trek, and Transformers, and it's set to overtake all of them combined. And The Force Awakens has almost grossed more than the entire original trilogy combined. I certainly hope everyone is in agreement that this movie was good, because there's no stopping Star Wars anymore. The Prequels were really successful, but not very good, and The Clone Wars was really good, but not very successful. Now, after a seven-year gap, without any news on the multitude of Star Wars projects that were supposedly in development, we've finally got a new Star Wars movie. Announced November of 2014 and released in December of 2015, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens is here to show everyone that Star Wars is back, and it's here to stay.
For those of you who don't know, Disney said that they were completely discounting the Expanded Universe when making the Sequel Trilogy. Personally, I've got mixed feels about this. On the one hand, some of my favorite novels come from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but on the other hand, at least we don't have to deal with The New Jedi Order and Legacy of The Force anymore.
However, there are plenty of things in Episode VII which seem to me, as a fan of the EU, to have been inspired by or copied directly from the EU. It's just that they use different names for the characters, technology, and locations. Almost like they realized at the last minute that they'd shot themselves in the foot when they said that they weren't taking anything from the EU and just decided to rename it. Or maybe the crew was working on an EU inspired movie and were then told once the script was finished that they had to remove all references to the Expanded Universe. Even so, there's still plenty of fanservice, for both casual and hardcore fans alike. Personally, there are plenty of things in the movie that I would have called something else, but that's just a petty quibble. On the whole, The Force Awakens is freaking awesome. I'll try to avoid spoilers for the first half of the review. Spoiler territory will be clearly marked.
One of my major gripes with the prequels was the fact that they over-used CGI. Don't get me wrong, it looked really freaking good for the most part, but those weren't animated films, they were live-action. And even if you've got Industrial Light and Magic working on the visual effects, it's hard to make the CGI look like it belongs in the shot with the human actors. Or to make the human actors look like they belong in the shot. But everyone pretty much knows this by now.
The good thing about The Force Awakens is that they've kept the usage of CGI actors and environments to a minimum, and what's there blends in with the rest of the shots extremely well. Episode VII is amazing from a purely technical standpoint, just like most of J .J. Abrams work. If you've seen Abrams' Star Trek movies, then the space scenes in this movie will certainly remind you of those films. Not to say that they're totally unlike space-scenes from Star Wars, they're just slightly different. I don't find them quite as engaging as the space-combat scenes in the original trilogy, but they're more coherent than the space-combat scenes in Episode III. for instance.
Then we get to the planet-based combat in the movie, which feels a lot more engaging. For the most part, it's reminiscent of the combat in the original trilogy, with the best elements of combat from the Prequels. The Lightsaber fights are more like they were in the original trilogy, IE actual sword fighting and not freaking dance-routines like they were in the prequels.
The Lightsaber fights bring me to a rather major issue I had with the cinematography, namely the fact that there are way too many close-ups of the characters during lightsaber fights and not enough wide views of the fighting. By the way, spoiler warning, a Star Wars movie has lightsaber fighting in it. The original cut of The Force Awakens was apparently around four hours long, and I'd love to see extended/alternate takes of the lightsaber combat where they used much wider shots, where the screen isn't filled with the actor's faces. Otherwise, the cinematography is fine. Unless it's the last lightsaber fight, everything pretty much looks clear, and each scene flows into the next very well. The editing is incredibly well-done, and I wasn't left confused by any of the cuts.
Then we get to the story. It might be a little bit simplistic, but it's not predictable, and it's doesn't rely on cliche like some movies do. I'm looking at you, Jupiter Ascending. It's almost an homage to the original Star Wars, but there's enough that's different that I wouldn't call it a direct homage. More like a loving tribute, with its own original spin to put on things.
The characters are good, the acting is good, and I can't really say much else without delving into spoiler territory.
From this point onwards, we'll be discussing potential and outright spoilers, so if you haven't already seen the movie, go out and watch it now. Or wait until April when it comes out on home video to finish reading this review. Whatever you want to do. If you read beyond this and you haven't seen the movie then you've got nobody to blame but yourself. Seriously, you should go watch the movie.


Right off the bat, I wished Disney hadn't shown anything from the film in the run-up to the release, because as soon as I saw the Stormtrooper hesitating in the opening, I knew he was Finn. I didn't even watch the trailer before I'd watched the movie, and I already knew who Finn was thanks to all the hoopla around the film. Fortunately, thanks to my incredibly isolationist attitude when it comes to movies I want to watch, I didn't know much else about it.
There are plenty of minor quibbles I can bring up with the locations. For instance, they introduce way too many new locations that are similar to previously established ones. The planet the movie starts on is called Jakku, but it sure looks like Tatooine, and when I originally saw the stills from the trailer, I would have sworn that it was Tatooine. Really, there's no reason for it not to be Tatooine from a narrative perspective. Jakku wasn't even around in the original trilogy, and it's depicted as having crashed wrecks of Imperial Star Destroyers on it. That implies some kind of space-battle occurred between the Empire and the Rebellion, which means Luke Skywalker would have likely been present for it. But for some reason, Luke Skywalker has become a legend despite the fact that he was the most wanted man in the galaxy for years on end. It's essentially the same issue with the Jedi and The Force being mythological in Episode IV when the Jedi were at the forefront of The Clone Wars. You know, the same Clone Wars that a kid from Tatooine, the single most remote planet in the freaking galaxy, would know about. If it was a major battle in the Rebellion against the Empire, Rogue Squadron was probably involved, and who's the person in charge of Rogue Squadron? Luke freaking Skywalker, Rogue Leader himself.
The next planet they introduce is basically Naboo, but it's called Takodana. Takodana has a bar on it managed by Chewbacca's girlfriend. Personally, I think Takodana could have been cut entirely, since there's nothing unique about it. Like I said, it's essentially Naboo.
Then we get to D'Qar, the site of the Resistance base in Episode VII. I'll get to my issue with "The Resistance" later, but my main gripe with D'Qar is that it's basically Yavin 4, but they don't bother calling it Yavin IV. Like all the other planets they introduced, it doesn't really need to be there, since they have previously established planets they could be using instead.
Really, this all comes back to my complaints about Mos Espa in The Phantom Menace, it wasn't different from Mos Eisley in any significant way, so why bother calling it anything else? Do we need another desert planet? Or another jungle planet? Or another forest planet? Not really. There's already an established galaxy,
Now that we're done complaining about the new planets, let's start talking more about the story.
It's been around thirty years since The Battle of Endor, and Luke Skywalker has gone missing. Princess Leia sends out Poe Dameron to track Luke down, but he gets ambushed by a group of Stormtroopers from The First Order, led by Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma. He gets captured, but he sends his droid off into the desert with the map chip locked inside. The droid's name is BB-8, and he is one of the cutest things in Star Wars. I'm serious, BB-8 is great. His comic-timing is perfect, he's cute as a button, and best of all, he's actually a useful character.
During Poe's capture, the Stormtroopers torch the village he had traveled to, and killed the old man who gave Poe the map to Luke. They then slaughter the entire village. Except for one Stormtrooper, who hesitates, and doesn't shoot anyone.
Kylo Ren brings Poe onboard his ship, tortures him, and then uses The Force to extract the rest of the information from him. The Stormtrooper who didn't shoot anyone in the village rescues Poe and they escape in a Tie-Fighter. Poe asks the troopers name, but he only has a serial-number. So Poe calls him Finn, after the first two letters in his number. Poe explains that he needs to go back to Jakku and get BB-8. They then get shot down and crash-land on Jakku. Finn wakes up in an ejector-seat on the surface of the planet, and only finds Poe's jacket on the Tie-Fighter. Then the Tie-Fighter is swallowed by a sinkhole. Finn strips off his Stormtrooper armor, because it's hot, and he's in the freaking desert, and tries to make his way towards town.
We cut to a girl named Rey scavenging parts out of a crashed Imperial Star Destroyer. She loads up her old cruiser with the scrap, and rides into town to trade the parts for food. On her way, she runs into a fellow scrapper who's captured BB-8. She talks the guy out of it, and takes BB-8 with her into town to find Poe.
In town, she runs into Finn. BB-8 points out to her that Finn is wearing Poe's jacket and thinks he must have stolen it. Rey attacks Finn, but he explains what's going on, telling her that he's with the Resistance, and that BB-8 has the map to Luke inside him. Jakku is then attacked by The First Order, and the three of them flee in a stolen spaceship. Did I mention that it's the fastest ship in the galaxy? Yes. They stole The Millennium Falcon. They escape the Imperial blockade and jet off into lightspeed.
Then The Falcon breaks down like it usually does, and after Finn, Rey, and BB-8 fix it, they get hauled into a Corellian Cruiser. Lo and behold, that Cruiser is commanded by everyone's favorite lovable rogue, Han Solo and his first-mate, Chewbacca. Finn convinces BB-8 to show Han and Rey the map to Luke, and Han explains to Rey and Finn about why Luke left, and that all the old legends about The Force and the old Jedi Order was true. Apparently Kylo Ren betrayed Luke and went over to the Dark Side.
Unfortunately, Han's ship gets boarded by gangs he owes money to, and Rey attempts to seal the gangs inside the ships air-locks, but accidentally lets out the monsters Han was smuggling. It turns out for the best though, since the monsters eat the gangs and buy the gang enough time to get to The Falcon and warp off. Han takes them to Takodana to meet with Maz Kanata, who's basically Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation, right down to her being really freaking old. She's able to get BB-8 on a clean ship to Coruscant, so he can get the map to Leia. Rey wants to get back to Jakku so she can keep waiting for her missing parents, and Finn just wants to get as far away from The First Order as possible.
Unfortunately for everyone, The First Order and The Resistance alike have been notified about the presence of BB-8 and the rest of the fugitives on Takodana.
Rey's called to the Lightsaber Luke lost on Bespin (The one Anakin lost on Mustafar), and it gives her some disturbing images. And instead of turning to the Dark-Side, she just leaves the Lightsaber where it is and flees into the forest. Seeeeeeee Anakin? This is the logical reaction to having nightmares like that.
The First Order attacks the planet, and Han, Chewie, Rey, and Finn are forced to fight their way off the planet. Unfortunately, Rey gets captured by Kylo Ren, and The First Order retreats to their mobile battle station, Starkiller Base.
The guy in charge of The First Order, Supreme Leader Snoke, orders the Imperial Commander, General Hux to use Starkiller Base (Called such because it uses stars as fuel) to annihilate The New Republic. He also orders Kylo Ren to kill his father, Han Solo. This was the point in the film where I started to suspect that they were adapting the EU despite their claims to not be doing so.
Princess Leia escorts Han, BB-8, and Finn to their base, and there they meet up with Poe Dameron.
Apparently, Poe was ejected from the Tie-Fighter as well, and he reunites with BB-8, and they show their portion of the map to the New Republic's armed forces. I'm glad to see Admiral Ackbar is still around.
Han and Leia discuss their relationship and history. Apparently they drifted apart after Kylo betrayed Luke, Han went back to smuggling, and Leia went back to leading the military.
Apparently R2-D2 has fallen into a deep depression after Luke left, and hasn't powered on since then.
Starkiller Base fires on the New Republic capital, destroying every single planet in the Hosnian system. Which is a little odd, since I thought The New Republic was housed on Coruscant, and I've never heard of the Hosnian system. It seems like they just invented Hosnian just so they wouldn't have to blow up Coruscant.
Anyways, Kylo Ren interrogates Rey with The Force, but she's able to resist it, and then mind-tricks James Bond into freeing her from her and giving her his gun.
Leia and the rest of the Resistance's military leaders work up a plan to take out Starkiller Base, which involves sending Han, Chewie, and Finn onto Starkiller to take down the shields so what's left of the New Republic Starfleet can try and blow it up. Before departing, Leia urges Han to bring Kylo back to them alive.
They manage to land The Falcon on Starkiller, find Rey, blackmail Phasma into lowering the shields, and set explosives around the armor-plating on the main reactor.
Han confronts his son, Ben Solo, now known as Kylo Ren. This confrontation was amazing, and incredibly powerful. It ends with Kylo killing Han, which is something I wasn't expecting, but it's handled incredibly well, and it actually seems like something that was done for the sake of the story, as opposed to the way Chewbacca's death in Vector Prime was handled, which was purely there for shock-value.
Chewbacca goes crazy when Ben kills Han, and manages to get in a few good shots at Ben, kills a ton of Stormtroopers, and triggers the explosives. This gives Poe's Black Squadron an opening to destroy the base.
Chewbacca, Rey, and Finn flee to the surface of Starkiller and attempt to escape, but Kylo Ben ambushes them. Finn takes up the Lightsaber given to him by Maz, and duels with Kylo. He puts up a good fight, but Kylo manages to gain the upper-hand long enough to injure Finn and disarm him.
Rey then takes up the Lightsaber and duels Kylo to a standstill before they're separated by a canyon formed by the destruction of Starkiller. Chewbacca and Rey load Finn into The Falcon and fly out with the rest of the remaining New Republic's space-fleet.
Captain Phasma, Kylo Ren, and General Hux flee Starkiller as it explodes under the orders of Snoke. I don't know where they go from here, I suppose we're gonna find out in the next movie.
The New Republic mourns the death of one of their heroes, R2 wakes up finally and shows them the rest of the map to Luke's location. Rey joins Chewbacca and R2 on The Falcon, tracking Luke to a distant planet, finding him on an island.
Yes, this was an awesome film. It's freaking amazing, and it's a damn good film. I'm just gonna bring up a few things I noticed though.
"Starkiller Base" is a reference to the original name of the protagonist of Star Wars, Starkiller. Which was later used as the name of one of Darth Vader's many, many secret apprentices in the EU. And the concept of the base itself, as something which can destroy a star and an entire planetary system at once is straight from one of my favorite EU series, the Jedi Academy Trilogy. The Sun Crusher was a secret Imperial project which would destroy a sun to destroy an entire planetary system. There are differences in execution, certainly. Starkiller Base is essentially a glorified Death Star, since it still uses a laser-canon to target and blow up planets directly, while The Sun Crusher dropped torpedoes into stars, turning the star into a literal bomb, which then goes on to annihilate the planets orbiting it. As you can see, the end result is the same, a dead sun and a bunch of vaporized planets.
Then we get to the fact that Ben in essentially Jacen Solo from the EU with a different name. His origin, his personality to a certain extent, it all seems so much like Jacen that I wonder why he's not just called Jacen. Probably to make good on what they said about not adapting the Expanded Universe.
Then there's Luke's quest to find the first Jedi temple, which he actually did in the EU. Except that. You know. That temple was the Rebel base on Yavin 4. This is one of those situations where I hesitate to take the word of the author on what they're contradicting from the EU, since if you look at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in the Prequels and the Rebel base in Episode IV, they look pretty damn similar. So since there's evidence in canonical material to support what was stated in Lost City of the Jedi, that leaves me to wonder where they're taking this. But this is just my brain on the Expanded Universe, I still haven't completely accepted that it's not canon, due to the fact that they haven't really contradicted much, they've just changed some names around and added some planets.
There's a hypothesis running around that Rey is Luke's daughter, and I'd say there's plenty of evidence to back that up. There's the fact that she's good with machines, like Anakin and Luke. She's an awesome pilot, just like Anakin and Luke. She's drawn to the Lightsaber used by Anakin and Luke. Then there's the fact that her theme-song is essentially identical to Anakin's and Luke's. Plus she's drawn to Han Solo through some pretty weird circumstances, just like Luke was. I'm almost certain at this point that Rey's last name is Skywalker.
So, let's talk about the actors. Harrison Ford is good as Han Solo as he always is, Carrie Fisher is good as Leia, and Mark Hamill is Mark Hamill, he's always good, even though he's barely in the movie. We can skip over all of the returning actors, since everyone already knows who they are, and they're still great.
Let's get to the new actors, starting with John Boyega, who's great as Finn. He portrays a conflicted soldier who winds up turning against his own to do what's right. Finn's character arc is great, and it's nice to see a character who was conditioned from birth to obey orders and kill mindlessly rebel against that conditioning to do the right thing. However, this backs up what I say about the Clone Troopers in the prequels, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to rebel against their orders like Finn did.
Enough tangents, Boyega's performance is great, and his accent is perfect. I couldn't even tell he's British from his voice. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was American.
Then we move on to Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren. Back in The Original Trilogy, we never saw Darth Vader's face until the very end of Episode VI, which was partially to maintain his intimidating nature. I bring this up because Kylo Ren's mask comes off at multiple points in the film, but that doesn't serve to make him less intimidating at all, and this is down to Driver's performance. His expressionism makes Kylo Ren as intimidated without the mask as he is with it, and sometimes more so.
Then we get to Oscar Isaac, who plays Poe Dameron, who feels like a mostly useless character. Not the same kind of useless as Qui-Gon Jinn, just useless in the fact that he's left out of most of the important events in the film, and the character seems to know that he's being left out of most of the important goings-on.
There's a difference between knowing very little about a character, and them not being interesting. Poe Dameron is a character we don't know much about, and he's not particularly interesting, while characters like Rey, Captain Phasma, or that Stormtrooper Finn was dueling with on Takodana are characters we don't know much about, but are interesting. Phasma due to her voice and armor, the Assault Trooper because he popped out of nowhere and was awesome, and Rey because we've traveled with her from planet to planet, through good circumstances and bad. Rey is played by Daisy Ridley, and while there's not much to go on for the character at the moment, I think that Daisey Ridley did a good job. She's suited to the role, for one thing, and for another, I think she captures the same sort of innocence that Luke Skywalker embodied in Episode IV. This is how Anakin Skywalker should have been written back in the day.
Now we move onto some random thoughts I had while writing this review and watching the movie.
It's funny how Rey's staff is quite obviously a double-bladed Lightsaber, but we never actually see it in action. Maybe the power-source is dead or something. I didn't know you had to recharge Lightsabers, but who knows?
Personally, I thought the movie started out strong, stayed strong in the middle, and then the climax seemed pretty empty. Destroying Starkiller Base in the first film seems like they were just trying to parrot the way A New Hope ended, but forgot that they needed a little more build-up, and a lot more tension to pay it off the way Luke making his shot in the Death Star trench paid off. Part of that might be the fact that we don't know jack about Poe Dameron or any of his team, and therefore have no reason to care about them. I think a much better ending would have been for Starkiller Base to be severely crippled, with it being destroyed in Episode VIII or IX.
I think that Luke needs to spend almost all of Episode VIII training Rey in the ways of the Jedi, but be reluctant to come back to the fight. Over the course of him training Rey, he comes around to the idea of returning to battle. As the tide turns against the New Republic, Rey has to return to the battlefield to confront her cousin Ben, and uses every single technique she learned from Luke in the battle. She almost succeeds, but Ben manages to get in enough good hits to cripple her. Possibly with her losing her right hand in the process. Duel of the Fates should definitely be playing during this fight as well.
As the outlooks seems bleak, and Captain Phasma's army closes in on the Rebel base, in the direst of circumstances, when all hope seems lost, BAM! Right out of hyperspace comes Luke Skywalker, in his X-Wing, with R2-D2 in the navigation pit. He takes command of Rogue Squadron and they turn the tide of the battle. As the Star Wars theme-song swells to a crescendo, Luke flies down to the surface of the planet where Rey and Ben are having their duel, leaps out of the cockpit of his X-Wing, lands between Ben and Rey, igniting his Lightsaber. With the green glow illuminating his face, he out-duels Ben, forcing him to retreat. The battle over, the Rebel Alliance re-forms. The war may not have been won, but the New Republic's greatest hero has returned, and they've dealt The First Order a crippling blow.
After all that wild mass guessing, I figure I should probably wrap this review up, and give you a score.
All in all, I really liked this movie, and I'm oh so happy that Star Wars is back to being the greatest thing on the planet. The cinematography is great, the acting is great, the effects are great, the action is great, the story is good, the comedy is actually funny (Take note, Nickelodeon) and it's just freaking good.
In the end, I give Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens a 9.7* rating. I think this is probably my second favorite Star Wars movie at this point. Possibly third, but it's definitely at the top of the list.

Updated on 7/11/2018 for spelling issues.

Kung Fury

When I originally heard about Kung Fury, I was completely on-board with it. If I'd had the cash to back it on Kickstarter, I probably would have. I thought the premise was cool, I thought the trailer was cool, and I was freaking stoked for this movie. When the theme-song debuted earlier this year, I was even more on-board. But by the time the movie came out, I was working flat-out on reviewing books and games. I wound up forgetting about Kung Fury for a few months until one of my friends mentioned it a little whole ago.
I tracked the video down on YouTube, saw that it was only thirty minutes long, and decided I'd watch it on the weekend, since Power Rangers: Dino Charge was taking a break that week.
What was my reaction? Weeeeelll.... It's not bad. Not totally great, but I'd rather spend thirty minutes watching this than most of what's on TV these days.
Not to say that it didn't deliver on what it promised, it's a welcome homage to the '80s. It's a good comedy movie that has some damn fine jokes in it. It's not as earnest as I'd like, but that's not really what we're here for, we're here for the comedy.
Before we get into the rest of the review, you should click here and watch the movie. It's only a half-hour long, and it's free to watch. Go ahead, I'll wait. No, I'm not being paid by Laser Unicorns, they're far more popular than I am, and they don't need my help to get traffic.
You done? Good. Let's get to that summary shall we?
Kung Fury is about a cop named.... Kung Fury. Kung Fury (No, we're never told if he's got a regular name) is a detective with the Miami-Dade Police Department. He's a lone-wolf because his partner was killed by a ninja back in the day. Before the ninja could kill Kung Fury, he got struck by lightening and bitten by a cobra, fulfilling the ancient Kung-Fury prophecy.
After beating-up an arcade-machine that came to life, Kung Fury is assigned a new partner, Triceracop. Since he doesn't want to lose another partner, he turns in his badge. But then Adolf Hitler starts shooting up the police-station through the phone, and Kung Fury is back on the job, getting sent back in time by his buddy, Hackerman. Hackerman is a computer-hacker who uses an NES Power Glove and some classic computer-hardware to hack Kung Fury back in time to kill Hitler, known as The Kung Fuherer in this film. The Kung Fuherer is here to kill Kung Fury and take command of the Kung Fury powers.
Unfortunately, Kung Fury overshoots the 1940s by a few thousand years, and he winds up in the Viking-age, where he runs into laser-dinosaurs and machine-gun wielding viking women, who take Kung Fury on a giant wolf to go meet Thor, who sends Kung Fury to where he needs to be by quoting MC Hammer at him, and sends him to the right time-period.
We then cut to Nazi Germany, where the Nazi's are having a Hitler lookalike contest. Kung Fury beats them up, busts into the Nazi base, and starts going all Mortal Kombat on the Nazi's. It's all a very wholesome experience.
Unfortunately, Kung Fury gets shot by Hitler, and dies.
Fortunately, Hackerman hacks himself, Thor, the viking women, some laser-dinosaurs, and Triceracop back into the 1940s, and they kill all the Nazi's, and defeat The Kung Fuherer. Then, after Kung Fury almost arrests the angel of death for obstruction of justice, Hackerman hacks away Kung Fury's wounds, and brings him back to life. They then travel back to the 80's, and live happily ever after.
Except that The Kung Fuherer used his time-travelling golden bird robot to transport himself into the 80s in a fork of the Kung Fury timeline to corrupt the criminals of 1980s Miami into being Nazi's, ending on a cliffhanger.
Now that we've gone over the plot, it's time to start on some analysis.
Personally, I thought that the whole Viking section of the movie was completely unnecessary. Aside from making a couple of decent jokes, it doesn't serve any real purpose. Maybe if the movie was longer, I could possibly excuse its presene. Even then, it's still detrimental to the overall pacing. Maybe if they cut out the vikings, the movie could have had a proper climax, rather than sputtering out and leaving us on a cliffhanger until the theatrical Kung Fury movie comes out.
All of the scenes that take place in Miami are all fine, if I'd been making the movie, I would have left all of those in. For the most part, I also like the Nazi-Germany section of the movie, right up until the anticlimax.
See, I'm the kind of guy who likes to see an awesome action-scene accompanied by a piece of kickass rock and roll. Optimus Prime breaking the Decepticon line accompanied by The Touch, Rocky pulling off an awesome victory while Eye of the Tiger plays, Kurt Sloane knocking out Tong-Po as Never Surrender starts up, Goku going Super Saiyan while Bruce Faulconer's awesome score plays in the background, Sonic standing up to fight after being beaten-down while It Doesn't Matter starts up... You know the drill.
So, if you know anything about any of the stuff I just mentioned, you'll notice most of those examples came from the 1980s. Considering that Kung Fury is inspired by the '80s, and has an '80s star performing the theme-song, you'd think that Kung Fury would embrace the rock-anthem action-scene that you tend to think of when you think of really good '80s movies. Which begs the question, why didn't it do that? It had the awesome music, it had the potential for an amazing climax to accompany that music, but it didn't put those two things together.
If I had been making this movie I would have cut out the stuff about the vikings and put all of the effort that went into that sequence into the climax of the film. Have True Survivor kick in as Kung Fury makes a mad dash towards Hitler's podium. Have Kung Fury and Hitler have a massive climactic showdown with giant robots, some awesome hand-to-hand combat, and the best final showdown that the budget could possibly allow.
I'm not saying cut out the jokes, I'm just saying to relocate the effort that was put into the Viking sequence (And yes, I thought their version of Thor was freaking awesome.) into the climax of the film.
But that's just as a short-film. If you added another thirty minutes to the movie, tighten up the comedy and direction in the viking sequence, and then it'd be fine. But you'd still need to fix the ending. You could even leave the cliffhanger in if you wanted, but I'd still personally prefer a stronger ending.
Now, let's talk visuals. Kung Fury is presented as if it's being played on an old VHS tape, and they manage to make it look pretty convincing. The effects are gloriously archaic, while also looking really good as well. I love the use of the dog as a giant wolf, and I generally love the look and feel of the movie. However, at some points in the movie I wonder if the effects were intended to look as they do. For instance, in Germany, Kung Fury picks up a tank to smash Nazi's with, and the effects of him lifting the tank look slightly janky, and not in an '80s way, in more of a Sci-Fi original movie way. Although that doesn't take away from the humor of that scene in my opinion.
All in all, Kung Fury is a good movie, and I look forward to the upcoming full-length movie that they're working on. Unfortunately, I've got a bad feeling about the theatrical movie, since Kung Fury seems like a concept that should stick to shorts on the internet as opposed to a feature-length film. It's an idea that seems fairly easy to corrupt, and the final product could wind up being about as funny as a Seltzerberg movie.
In the end though, Kung Fury was an awesome little short, and it's definitely worth watching if you've got a half an hour of free-time. It's definitely a step in the right direction if they keep up the momentum they've gained. I give it an 8.7* rating. I'll see you next week with The Consuming Shadow, hopefully!

Image from Kungfury.com