Hits & Misses: Doom

DISCLAIMER: This movie is a bit of a guilty pleasure to me. Yeah it's flawed as fuck but there were some enjoyment I got from it.

Miss: Narration.

Miss: *A bunch of scientist running in a dark as fuck corridor.*  Pro tip to all filmmakers, just because your movie's suppose to be dark doesn't mean it has to be visually dark.

Hit: Movie uses the same title font design from the games.

Hit: The Rock!

Real Talk: Good to know that in the future 8-bit video games still exist.

Real Talk: Portman, the correct term you're looking for is Ladyboys, get it right.

Hit: I'll be honest, having an ensemble characters kinda helps the movie rather than being just the one main protagonist who shoots demons and doesn't talk at all.

Miss: OK is this a rookie thing, why's the new recruit called "The Kid"? Compare to the nicknames of the other marines "The Kid" just sucks.

Hit: Duke: "It goes like this see, if it's trying to kill ya it's a threat." Make sense to me.

Hit: Pinky

Hit: "Killcams"

Miss: *Portman being a perv to the ladies.* How did this dude got in to the R.R.T.S. (Rapid Response Tactical Squad)?

Real Talk: *An armed team moving around in dark areas with creatures lurking about.* With an overhaul of rewrites this can be a better Resident Evil than the ones we ended up with.

Hit: The BFG!

Miss: Sadly it's behind a locked door....for now.

Miss: Why would Sam Grimm ever work at the same dig site where her parents died? Either she has some excellent therapy or she doesn't give that much of a fuck about her parents?

Miss: Just saying it right now, instead being a gate that unintentionally becomes a portal to hell it's alien chromosome experiments gone wrong. Why exactly they went with this when they have good source materials? They could've still have the portal-to-hell plot going for them.

Miss: *Portman gives Kid a couple of drugs.* Again, how did this dude got in to the R.R.T.S.?

Miss: *Goat cuts a cross in arm for "taking the lord's name in vain"* Now how did this dude got in to the R.R.T.S.?!

Hit: Naked, Genetically, Crazed Zombie Chick!

Miss: *Dr Carmack keeps repeating "shut it down" to Sam* That line would've made sense if there was a hell-portal in the movie. But since there isn't one it just comes off as misleading and pointless.

Miss: They shot the shit out of that poor little monkey.

Miss: Carmack is practically mutating in the open yet Sam and another scientist don't just quarantine him.

Miss: Mutating Carmack pulls a Batman without being Batman.

LOL: Sewer Level!

Miss: Wanna know if one of the main characters gonna die? If they're all by themselves after being split up.

Miss: Goat sees some creepily lit eyes and the first thing he does is calling out to see if it's one of the missing scientists.

Hit: *Duke hitting on Sam* At least Duke got some game unlike Portman who is just a creeper.

Miss: Portman: "It's standard operating procedure to call in reinforcements." Sarge: "We are...the reinforcements." You are? Was there already a R.R.T.S. team before you guys? The fuck are you talking about Sarge?

Miss: Jump Scare....   

Miss: *Mac literally gets his head knocked off by a creature* Farewell Mac, I barely knew your character.

Hit: BFG Acquired!

Hit: That music when the BFG's revealed.

Hit: Destroyer vs Hell Knight

Hit/LOL: Oh Pinky, you cheeky bastard.

Miss: Oh yeah let's inject a murder convict with some alien chromosome. What could possibly go wrong?

Miss: Reaper: "It's this place, it's hell, it always has." Well if Mars had a hell-portal you'd be right but it doesn't.

Miss: *The Hell Knight cutting through the Arc door with just a chainsaw.* That chainsaw must be made out of Adamantium, otherwise that shouldn't work.

Miss: Sarge has been told that not everyone can get infected but he still kills anyone in sight. Lazy heel turns are lazy.

Miss: So the Hell Knight followed Pinky through the arc yet he wasn't the first to get killed/infected. How fucking convenient.

Miss: Bye Duke....

Hit: First Person Shooter Action Scene! I don't care if it looks cheesy as fuck this is the closest thing to an actual Doom movie.

LOL: Mutating Sarge: "Semper Fi...Motherfucker!"

Hit: Reaper vs Mutating Sarge

Real Talk: The funniest thing, despite the flaws I'm still waiting for a sequel.   

Hits & Misses: X-Men Apocalypse

Hit: I see that the Fox logo still does that thing when it fades to black except for the X.

Hit: Still using the theme music from X-2 I see, good for them.

Hit: Ally Sheedy? Is the rest of the Breakfast Club cast here too?

Miss: Why is Storm’s hair started off black but then goes white by Apocalypse? Did the filmmakers really had to explain why her hair is white? It’s not dye she’s naturally born with white hair. STORM’S HAIR GOES WHITE OUT OF NOWHERE!

Hit: Although I will give credit to the actress portraying Storm attempting at a decent African accent.

Miss: Apocalypse learns to speak English and what the world has become via mind-melding with a TV. Discount Ultron?

Miss: Charles Xavier is a pervert.

Real Talk: Moira MacTaggert has a son….. Proteus? Fingers crossed.

Hit: This is the only movie where Cyclops and Havok have a few scenes together, better enjoy it while it last.

Hit: Hi Blob

Miss: Bye Blob

Miss: When did Warren (Angel) ever have these claw thingies coming out of his wings?

Hit: This is the only movie where Mystique and Nightcrawler share some scenes together. And yes I understand that in the movie-verse it’s never established that Mystique is Nightcrawler’s mother, I’m not that nitpicky.

Hit: Caliban

Real Talk: I was skeptical about Olivia Munn as Psylocke mainly because I’ve never seen her act outside of Attack of the Show. But in all fairness she was OK at times, although I think she could’ve use some more development than just being Caliban’s bodyguard before joining Apocalypse.

Hit: Discount Beastmaster

Miss: Magneto just can’t get a break at a normal life.

Miss: If Magneto can manipulate the magnetic fields on a global scale why the hell he could’ve do that in the first X-Men trilogy? He would’ve got the world on its knees within hours.

Hit: Professor X: “Wreak Havok”

Miss: Havok is dead and that sucks.

Miss: Colonel Stryker had all of these mutants rightfully for the taken after the school explodes but only takes Beast, Mystique and Quicksilver.

Miss: They have Jubilee in the movie yet she has next to nothing to do nor is she in the final battle of the movie. UNACCEPTABLE!

Hit: Weapon X is unleashed and cleans house.

Hit/LOL: Cyclops: “Hope we don’t see him again” If you only knew Scott, if you only knew.

Miss: It’s been spoiled in the trailers that Quicksilver is Magneto’s son yet Quicksilver never tells him.

Miss: Apparently Apocalypse doesn’t have mind-control powers when he imbues his disciples. Because how else Magneto and Storm were able to betray him on a whim?

Hit: Nice to see the filmmakers learned their lesson from X-3 by having actual effects for the Phoenix Force instead of just making Jean Discount Evil Willow…..again.

Miss: Throughout the movie Apocalypse is never referred or called Apocalypse. I mean yeah it’s not exactly his real name but En Sabah Nur just doesn’t sound as menacing as Apocalypse.

Miss: This better be the Danger Room because where the hell did they get these Sentinels.

Hit: Sinister approaches…...

BONUS ROUND: Now I know the new trilogy doesn’t necessarily connect with the old one, but I gotta get this off my chest.....just for fun.

Miss: If Scott, Jean and Nightcrawler have been at the Alkali Lake base before then why don't they remember back in X-2?

Miss: If Wolverine has met Jean, Scott and Nightcrawler back at the Alkali Lake base then why doesn’t he remember them back in X-1 and X-2?

Miss: If Nightcrawler and Mystique met each other before why don’t they remember each other back in X-2?

Miss: Jubilee must have the same Wolverine Anti-aging Factor because how else can you explain how she’s able to stay so ridiculous young from the 80s all the way to the early 2000s (the first X-Men Trilogy)?

Hits & Misses: Wonder Woman

DISCLAIMER: Now this movie could've gone either way character wise with Wonder Woman. They could've made her another hard ass uber-bitch with an "I don't need no man" attitude stereotype. Thankfully they didn't take that route. All I'm saying is that you can have a story featuring well developed female characters. It just takes this little thing called EFFORT and not just throwing in one dimensional characters while using diversity as an excuse.

Hit: Trying to out cute Laurel (X-23) with Diana as a child, huh? Well played movie, ballsy move but well played.

Hit: They must've got some real budget going for them when it comes to Themyscira. Sure there were a few scenes with CGI but everything else makes you believe that Themyscira may actually exist in real life.

Miss: So this invisible barrier makes Themyscira unseen from the world but it doesn't keep anything from getting in. That's a bit of a design flaw.

Hit: Ancient Amazons vs 20th Century Soldiers on a beach.

Miss: So it appears that Diana is the only one who can repel bullets while the rest of the Amazons just get shot.

Miss: The movie doesn't show a title card that it's WWI going on. You pretty much have to pay attention to what's going on.

Hit: Diana's naivete of the outside, something about that gives her more character.

LOL: Steve thought she was asking about his penis.

Miss: Dude you're not in Star Trek, put some pants on please.

Real Talk: There are some comparisons between this movie and Captain America The First Avenger. Although those comparisons are rather small, noticeably but small.

Miss: There's a war going on yet nobody's stopping the one woman carrying a sword in a clothing store.

Hit: Diana's and Steve's interactions to each other.

Hit/LOL: It's hilarious to see Steve explaining certain topics to Diana.

Miss: Discount Red Skull

Hit: I've looked up this character and apparently there was an actual German General Ludendorff.

Miss: Discount Arnim Zola

Miss: Discount Howling Commandos

Miss: Diana comes to the conclusion that Ludendorff is Ares, even though Ludendorff hasn't demonstrated that he is. Not to mention she hasn't met him yet. So how could she know that?

Hit: Diana casually walks across No Man's Land like she doesn't give a f**k.

Hit: Diana vs German Soldiers

LOL: Diana calls dancing swaying.

Hit: Diana and Steve "Swaying"

Hit: Diana vs Ludendorff

Miss: Surprise, Ludendorff is not Ares!

Miss: Ares does fight Diana in his true form, it's just beforehand he keeps throwing objects at her like he's Discount Magneto.

Real Talk: Ares: "Only a god can kill a god" Kratos will gladly dispute on that statement.

Hit/Miss: Diana finishes Ares with a Mortal Kombat move.

Miss: Diana doesn't fly in the movie, yeah I'm sure that's depending which comic era Wonder Woman they're going with. But still....

My Problem with Identity-bending Established Characters

I'm not an advocate of race/gender/sexual orientation-bending established characters. Mainly because it doesn't have a narrative affect on the characters or the overall story. There's a difference between changing characters' identity based on cosmetic decisions and changing characters' identity based on the decisions of the plot/story. The problem is most creative studios would change characters based on the former category. If a character's identify is changed for the sake of just changing said character then there's a possibility this decision won't make the character any better. An identity change of a character holds no baring if there's not any narrative reasons for it. If there's not a plot point that results a character going through dramatic changes that affects them throughout the story then these changes mean nothing. Or even worst, a character's identity is changed to the point of being a token stereotype.

Good example of identity-bending in a narrative fashion is a Netflix show called Altered Carbon where the concept of "stacks" and "sleeves" is established. Furthermore, it has established that people can place their stack (their consciousness) into different race, gender and age of sleeves (synthetic human bodies). Therefore, the identity change of  Takeshi Kovacs from Asian to white makes sense to the story. Rather than having the main protagonist being Asian in one episode then magically being a white guy in the next.      

Also I'm rather tired of people getting excited about how "progressive" these studios are all because they did a simple identity-bending on characters. You do realize that the reason they identity-bend characters is because... A. It's a lot cheaper for them to do than just create new characters/IPs. B. They don't wanna take risks of creating new characters/IPs. Or (optional) C. They're just really lazy to make new characters/IPs. Take points A and B, why else is there so many reboots/remakes in movies, comics and cartoons? Because it helps studios save money while making profit from reused IPs.

Hits & Misses: Alien Covenant

Hit: Opening Title sequence does a call back to the first movie.

Hit: This movie's soundtrack.

Miss: Guess having James Franco in the movie was pointless considering that his character dies a few minutes in.

Hit: A touchy scene from Daniels and Walter.

Miss: The new captain doesn't pay respects to their fallen captain.....dick.

Miss: *The Covenant crew walks on an alien planet without wearing suits.* And right away this crew is dumber than the Prometheus crew.

Hit: Hi David. Now there's two Michael Fassbenders.

Hit: It's a nice contrast between Walter and David.

Miss: Oh yeah, just locked in your crew mate with a newborn Zenomorph....what a bitch.

Miss: Death by Spray and Pray stupidity.

Miss: David is essentially Discount Roy Batty with a god complex.

Real Talk: If they wanted Fassbender to play Roy Batty just make a Blade Runner prequel.

Miss: When did David developed this complex between Prometheus and this movie? As soon as he reached the Engineer Planet he kills everyone, why?

Miss: David: "It's safe, I promise"

LIAR!

Miss: Elizabeth Shaw is dead but the movie hints that David did something to her. Doesn't show what or why.

Miss: How was David able to create facehuggers without any tech?

Hit: One jump scare.....somebody's learning.

Hit: Walter vs David

Miss: This movie feels rather short.

Miss: The Sargent had a facehugger on him for roughly a few seconds and yet he still had a chestburster implanted in him, how?

Miss: Oh no that's not Walter it's really David the whole time. Which I saw it coming from a city block away, also bye Walter.

Miss: Most of the scenes that were shown on YouTube are nowhere to be found in this movie.

Real Talk: I'm under the impression that this movie and Prometheus are going a different direction from the Alien series.

Hits & Misses: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Hit: This movie's soundtrack.

Hit: Gotta give this movie credit of de-aging what Kurt Russel looked like in the 80s. I don't know if I should find that impressive or weird.

Miss: So Peter's mom knew about his alien dad yet didn't mention it in the first movie.

Hit: Baby Groot steals the first few minutes of the opening.

Hit: Drax is as Drax as ever.

Hit: Hi Nebula!

Hit/Wait What: BEN BROWDER!

Hit/Wait What: SYLVESTER STALLONE!

LOL: "Wasn't ripe yet"

Hit/LOL: Mantis

Hit/LOL: Mantis and Drax

Miss/LOL: Drax can be kind of a dick to Mantis.

Hit: Suddenly I'm getting Big Trouble in Little China flashbacks. Now if only Peter or Ego made a reference to that film.

Hit: Hi Howard!

Miss: The Ravagers are dicks to Baby Groot.

Miss: Sad Baby Groot

Real Talk: I don't wanna know where Groot got that severed toe.

Hit: Baby Groot gets pay back.

Hit: Apparently Yondu has a prototype fin that almost makes him look the character from the comics.

Real Talk: This movie breaks the 4th wall more times than Deadpool.

Miss: Ego almost has Peter on his side and for no reason he out right confess that he killed Peter's mom! WHO THE HELL DOES THAT WHEN THEY'RE THIS CLOSE OF WINNING?!

Hit: Hi David Hasselhoff!

Miss: An omnipotent god-planet is easily put to sleep by Mantis.....WHAT!? That's like Galactus getting beat up by Squirrel Girl, it's just......WHAT!?

Hit: Most of the characters' backstory.

Hit: The Watchers!

Hit: Yondu gets a character arc.

Hit/Wait What: VING RHAMES!

Hit/Wait What: MICHELLE YEOH!

Real Talk: Not gonna lie if next The Expendables movie takes place in outer space, I totally watch it.

Miss/Meh: I don't like Teenage Groot, he's not as adorable.

Hit: Yes we are Groot Mr Hasselhoff, yes we are.

Hits & Misses: Maximum Ride

Miss: This movie is like if Stephanie Meyer wrote a shitty X-Men script and Fox just went with it out of pity.

Miss: “The School” Well this isn’t the most vague as fuck of a location ever.

Miss: Hi creepy bearded guy, care to back the hell up from my personal space?

Miss: Creepy bearded guy in a SUV filled with kids; this doesn’t scream potential child molestation at all.

Miss: Creepy bearded guy leaves his own son behind, what an asshole.

Real Talk: Jenna Marbles is one of the Executive Producers but giving how bland this movie is she needs to make some MAJOR improvements. That or just stick to YouTube.

Miss: Narration…..

Miss: A few minutes in and already I find Max incredibly boring, unimpressive and has a weak presence.

Miss: Max, eating two cookies is not a meal let alone a breakfast. You could at least have some cereal.

Miss: I would care for these characters’ crisis if none of them didn’t sound like they came from a CW soap opera.

Miss: Angel can mentally hear the Erasers approaching the house but doesn’t bother to tell Max and the others.

Miss: Discount Sabretooth or Discount Jacob Black, take your pick.

Miss: “Max and Ari in a flashback” Yeah Ari could you say your lines without sounding like a speakonia robot.

Question: “Max and Ari in a flashback” Now why would Jeb (the creepy bearded guy) brings his son to a top secret facility?

Real Talk: Any person (fictional or otherwise) who’s named Gazzy has all of my sympathies. Because that name is such a low hanging fruit that’s practically begging for fart jokes.

Miss: Nudge makes a point that “The Nest” is no longer safe but Max is certain that the Erasers won’t be back. Although it’s too bad that the movie proves how wrong Max is later on.

Hit: I gotta be honest here some of the visual/special effects do have decent quality in some scenes.

Miss: However, the visual/special effects in other scenes have qualities that reminds me of some of the Asylum films that I had the unfortunate pleasure to watch.

Miss: Max was doing fine being a bad ass until the guy pulls out a gun and shoots her. Apparently being shot at makes her forget that she has wings and could’ve just flown out of the way or just simply dodge.

Miss: The woman who was just being sexually assaulted is not all that bothered of two people whom happened to have wings as she helps them out. I get that they saved her and all but still she should at least shown some unease towards them.

Hit: Max having actually breakfast.

Miss: Well Nudge has shitty priorities, Angel is kidnapped and their house is gone after Sabretooth Jacob Black Ari came by. But sure Nudge go scoop out some clothing store with no fucks given to your current situation.

Miss: I know what this movie’s doing with the whole “people with powers surviving while hiding from the fearfully, normal society” trope. The problem is this has been done to death since the X-Men. At least with the anime series Tiger & Bunny and My Hero Academia tried something different with people born with powers.   

Miss: Obvious forced romantic interest is obvious.

Miss: “Max and Ari in a flashback #2” Seriously what is with Ari as a kid, acting somewhat normal when he first met Max. Then he acts like a complete creeper psychopath to her later on. And again why is this kid at a top secret facility, ever heard of babysitters?

Miss: Ari: “We’re the good guys!” You are, because I don’t see it as much as I see you as a psychopath. Also whoever this organization is have not displayed that they are the good guys. So yeah Ari you’re full of shit.

Hit: Ass shot.

Miss: Jeb’s the one who captured Max and the others, even though he was the one that let them out years ago. I would be surprised if I wasn’t too busy of not caring.

Miss: “For the greater good” cliché.

Miss: Ari must be blind as a bat or as dumb as the bat nipples because how could he not see Max obviously going for the keycard. And it’s not like she’s even trying to be sneaking about it.

Miss: “Max running away from the Erasers” What is with these weird ass, quick as fuck cuts, they’re practically giving me seizures!

Miss: Obvious sequel baiting is obvious.

BONUS ROUND

Miss/Sarcasm: “The Institute”, “The Nest”, “The School”…. Clearly the pinnacle of creativity this movie has.

Miss: Apparently Iggy’s met to be blind but given the actor’s performance through the movie it was rather choppy to notice that.

Miss: What exactly are the motives of the Institute, what was the purpose of creating these children? Creating new species of humanity, for profit, for power? Maybe the movie should’ve taken the time to give out important details rather than having vague ass speeches that don’t explain anything.

Miss: This movie’s ability of being boringly mediocre with its story and characters reminds Speed of Thought. And I don’t need to be getting flashbacks of that pile of garbage.