Jeremy Roth Travels

This is another totally dull forgettable film. There's nothing about this film that's embarrassing enough to make it interesting or good enough to entertain you, it's just kind of there. The movie chooses to follow a very standard assassin with a heart plot line, but then mix it with supernatural elements, and the mix just doesn't work right, so the whole thing just kind of feels off. If you want a weird movie about people with powers it's not enough of that and it's also too weird if you just want an assassin movie. The movie also feels overly directed, like the director really wanted to impress you with his style. So like in the final fight of the film, there's like sheets flying in front of the screen the whole time so you can't see the fight, but you can see the director trying to show off. In the end this is a movie not talked about a lot since there's nothing to talk about with the movie giving off.

This is a flavorless x-men film that doesn't do justice to any of its many plot lines. There's a last-minute director swap, Brett Ratner stepped in at the last minute and it shows as there's nothing distinct about the direction of this film, the movie also has one too many main plot lines. You've got a story line about the mutant cure, which goes pretty well with the plot line about Magneto's evil Brotherhood, but then it tacks on the Phoenix saga. So they take one of the most iconic x-men storylines and create it into just like an extra subplot in the film. The movie also basically shrugs off the death of Cyclops to an unforgiveable level, beyond that the movie's incredibly light on action until the last 45 minutes of the film, put all of this together and you just get this very underwhelming x-men film.

Their second take at the Phoenix saga corrects a number of mistakes that the last stand made and it spends a lot more time on the Phoenix plot line itself, but it also makes a whole new set of mistakes. The big problem here is that a bunch of our x-men, specifically Charles Xavier and beast, are acting totally out of character. Charles is written to be so egotistical inside of this film that he's insufferable, another big part of the problem here is that like last stand, there's simply too many plot lines. It does spend a lot of time developing the Jean Grey Professor X backstory that ties into the Phoenix saga here, but everything else just feels rushed, and these aliens might be the most generic shape-shifting planet invading aliens ever put into a film. With all of that said there's some really cool action in this movie, the third act on a train actually works pretty well and originally was supposed to be in space but they thought it's gonna be too much like Captain Marvel so they did reshoots to put it down on a train and it turns out that's one of the best sequences in the movie. All of our different characters get some moment in the spotlight and as I mentioned before the movie does have some powerful moments exploring Jean Grey's backstory, but it's just so drab, it's so dark, that it kind of chokes the fun out of the franchise and it doesn't pay off nearly as well as it should.

This is a professionally made disaster much like Wolverine in the bathroom sequence everything that this movie touches it destroys. The x-men continuity DESTROYED, Sabretooth DESTROYED, Wolverines origin DESTROYED, the Merc with the mouth Deadpool DESTROYED. And then as this is a prequel it has all the common prequel problems. You have them showing us characters before they're the heroes that we enjoy, So we're seeing them do things that we don't really want to see them do. The tone and humor all feel off, the big plot twist in the third act doesn't make a lot of sense and for as expensive as this entire movie looks, the effects could look shockingly bad, especially Wolverine's claws. There's bad marvel movies because of budget constraints or because of drama behind the scenes, this movie doesn't have any of that. It had the budget. It has no excuses, just the creator's and the producers had some really bad ideas.

This is just not a good movie. The action is handled pretty well, Ryan Reynolds is kind of doing this prototype of Deadpool and it seems like Reynolds and Biel are having a lot of fun on set. But when it comes to the story the movie has no shortage of plot lines and absolutely no clear plot. Each scene seems to set up a subplot inside the film, delivers exposition, and then it goes absolutely nowhere. And the next scene gives us more plot lines, more exposition, and they don't tie together at all and they're not moving towards anything in particular. Apparently Wesley Snipes was an absolute disaster on set to work with. So while I do have some fun with this one, it's not good.

After the first Ghost Rider wasn't particularly well received, they decided to do a kind of reboot, kind of sequel. So it's like a requel, it's a reset but we still got Nicolas Cage and there's a decent set up for a movie inside of the film. The script comes from David Goyer of Blade and Dark Knight theme, but then they got the directors of crank to create it and those two creative forces don't feel like a particularly good fit. It feels like you can tell where David Goyer is trying to write this movie with biblical types and symbolisms, and then the guys from crank are like "And let's have ghost riders start peeing". The movie starts and closes energetic enough, but the middle section slows to a halt when they go and visit some monks. I feel like this movie could have been quite a bit better in the hands of a different director, probably a more horror based director, but as is this movie feels like eating ice cream covered in ketchup.

I was late to the party on this one. I saw it a year after it came out. So I'd heard from audiences, from critics, and from the director himself how bad this movie was. So when I first started watching it, I actually thought "this is pretty good", and then you get to the midpoint of the film when they get their powers and this whole thing just crumbles. The movie basically skips over the second act of the movie. It's about ten minutes long of jumbled storytelling in time jumps and we go straight to the third act that's totally generic including even a sky beam and garbage flying over a city. Supposedly Fox slashed the budget at the last minute and Josh Trank had to cut out multiple action sequences with just weeks before shooting. Then on set he supposedly was having meltdowns, who knows what the second half of this movie was supposed to be, well besides Josh Trank, but what we got was a disaster of reshoots, bad wigs, and incoherent storytelling.

In one of the most cynical moves in all of Hollywood history, this movie was made exclusively so that the studio could keep the rights to the Fantastic Four, this is documented in the film. Doomed, the movie was never intended to be released and the worst part, they didn't even tell the director or the cast. In fact wizard magazine even ran articles about this film, as a child I read articles in that magazine, saw pictures from the sets of this film, and waited for it to come out, and it never did. The film is amateurish on almost every single level, except the score, I actually kind of dug the score to the film, but the costumes by today's standards look like bad cosplay, there's also effects in this film that are essentially the equivalent of a glove on a broomstick being reached towards the screen, and even the plot gets weird, there's a strange subplot about sewer people and a wedding. In the end this is a fantastic con job, that's really tough to sit through.

Like most films in phase 1 it still feels like they're trying to find their footing. As their first foray into the cosmic realm it doesn't feel like they totally nail it. Branagh brings his extensive background working on Shakespearean stories to this film and you get some nice deep rich themes about family, betrayal, and legacy and as soon as the story gets to the earth there's some real nice fish out of water comedy. While Hemsworth and Hiddleston are still very good in this film clearly Hemsworth was still trying to figure out Thor's bravado and humor, and Tom Hiddleston plays his role very low-key. The tonal shifts between asgard and earth never fully gel for me and as the central conflict deals with Thor's character arc the movie lacks a certain sense of forward momentum and urgency. While it is pretty good it never quite makes you go "I like It" "I know it's great right?" "Another!"

Given that Edward Norton never returned in the title role with new tonal differences as well certain plot lines in this movie are never continued in the rest of the MCU. This film is often treated and seen as the black sheep of the MCU, But I honestly think that most of the hate directed at it is misplaced. Granted it's low on my list so I don't think it's a great movie. But I do think it's pretty enjoyable. First off I think all the Hulk action in the film is handled really nicely, you get three big action sequences with the Hulk. The first one almost has a horror vibe to it, the second is this daylight sequence against the military, and then you get a full-on boss fight in the end of the film against abomination and each of these deliver the experience that they're supposed to, and William Hurt as the convinced military man as well as abomination as the evil version of our hero, feel like underrated villains to me. Still certain parts of the plot line are pretty clunky and certain storylines are abandoned randomly. This is probably due to the fact that the film was extensively reworked in the editing room. It's not as strong as some of the later films on this list, and it doesn't smash your expectations, but it's not an abomination either.