Michael Kyle

Awful, bad film. Was fun to take the mick out of it as we watched it though, so bad it’s funny at times. Gyllenhaal is supposed to be this tarnished, undefeatable former UFC fighter Dalton, who is reluctantly heroic. Honestly he just comes off as a poser with no personality. He’s so dull. At a point he gets really, really angry and gives some speech about how he’s scared, but no not of the bad guys, of what he’s going to do to the bad guys! It’s so terribly predictable and cringe inducing, but again hilariously bad. He’s also got the thickest plot armour you can imagine. And it’s like his character knows it or something, because he walks around with this air of smug plot armour satisfaction about him. He gets seriously challenged twice, everything else is a breeze, like he knows what’s coming. No challenge at all, nothing to overcome, no meaningful character development or any reason to even care about his character to begin with. The fights are pretty poorly choreographed at times, with obvious wide punches and weird janky cuts between angles and these weird type of shots that look like uncanny valley CGI. The speeding car CGI is also really weird, and kinda a jump scare too tbh 😂 The dialogue and writing in this film is overall terrible. The good guys are a total snooze fest and the bad guys are cartoonishly written and acted. It’s a weird contrast between the two, with slow meaningless dialogue taking itself too seriously one moment and then goofiness bordering on parody in the next scene. None of it is funny or generally entertaining for what it is, but it is funny to laugh and make jokes at. The one part I was actually looking forward to were the shots taken in an actual octagon ring during a live event. However they totally butchered this. They showed only a few brief clips and then, (maybe spoilers…), there’s a climatic moment in the octagon flashback where the fight gets intense but it’s totally ruined by the bizarre choice to have Gyllenhaal act like a cartoonishly rabid animal, with crazed zombie like sound effects, and it’s so overdone it has no weight or gravity to the moment. It’s THE missed opportunity of this film. There have been some wild UFC moments and instead of drawing some realism from these examples they decided to make it so unbelievable it becomes a UFC parody. There’s so much more that is bad about this film but those are the main highlights from my memory. It’s definitely that type of film that all will be forgotten soon enough.

It’s alright. Not a fan of the ‘cute’ characters and dialogue that contrasts poorly with the grittier and edgier tones. Some dialogue is cringe and tries way too hard - such as the ‘bro’ and ‘dude’ drops, which goes hand-in-hand with side characters (excluding the guardians) not really acting and speaking as if actually part of and integrated with their planet and culture. Thus, it feels kinda like parody at times. Same applies to other Marvel films, but definitely not all of them. A lot of the older films paid more attention to these things. Visuals are great I have to say. But like with most other post-infinity war films it’s still somewhat flanderised, but certainly not as much as Thor Love and Thunder. So that’s a plus.

I can formally say Spider-Man is a lot cooler here than he has been for years and I’m suddenly very inclined to try out the new Miles Morales game.

This film is dull, unfunny, boring, with annoying and cringey characters. And it’s two hours. Two. Hours. Whoever watched the final cut and thought “nope, no filler to shave off here” is a true Hollywood starlet. 0/5