Man of Steel (2013)

Tags

Action, Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Drama, Henry Cavill, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne, Man of Steel, Michael Shannon, Movie, Russell Crowe, Science Fiction

only ONE american flag in this shot? c’mon…

What do you get when you take Superman, sprinkle in a little Jesus, pour in a few cups of Battlestar Galactica, and then smother it with Matrix Revolutions?  You get this…mess of a movie.

Superman has always been a problematic hero since he’s just too powerful.  Thus, either his powers have to be taken away, or he has to face a villain with equal powers.  This movie basically combines the 1978 and 1980 Superman movies into one, but layers even more convoluted plot lines on top of those stories.  Oh, and more explosions and stuff.  There’s more of that too.  A lot more.

Would someone please make a Superman movie where we see what being Superman would really be like?  The emotional turmoil experienced by someone who could easily just take over the planet and be its ruler in the name of creating real peace.  Yeah, Superman IV touched on this a little with his “quest for peace”, but that movie was awful in ways that most movies could never dream of, so…it doesn’t count.

Or maybe we could see how frustrated Superman is by not being able to save everybody all the time.  He’s only so fast.

I dunno…something besides…this.  This is just indestructible people throwing each other through buildings over and over again.  It lacks…humanity.  Superman doesn’t really seem to care about people in this movie the way he does in the first couple with Christopher Reeve.  If he did, he would have led these villains away from the big city and out into the country somewhere.  But no, he’s happy to throw them through populated buildings and city streets causing incredible amounts of damage.

Just one of the many things in this disappointing movie that doesn’t make sense.

Oh, and the special effects are pretty crappy at times.

4.9/10 

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Robin Hood (2010)

Tags

Action, Cate Blanchett, Drama, Kevin Durand, Mark Strong, Max von Sydow, Movie, Oscar Isaac, Robin Hood, Romance, Russell Crowe, William Hurt

fortunately for you, I just love boring men...

PG-13

Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt, Mark Strong, Kevin Durand, Oscar Isaac, Max von Sydow

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Milking a dried udder gets you nothing but kicked off the milking stool!
Prince John: Mother, spare me your farmyard memories.  You have none, and I don’t understand them.

After King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) is killed, his younger, more obnoxious, brother John (Isaac) takes over the throne.  He is immediately duped by a traitor, and French loyalist, in his court into inciting a civil war that will weaken England and allow the French army to conquer it.  Meanwhile, Robin Longstride (Crowe) is returning the sword of Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge), who was killed in an ambush, to Loxley’s father, Walter (Sydow).  Walter requests that Robin pose as his dead son, which leads to Robin’s involvement in all kinds of action and battles and stuff.

If I were to review this movie based on the reaction to it by the person sitting directly to my left in the theater, I would have to call it the best movie of the year.  There was laughter, there were tears, and there were several fist pumps.  She loved it.  But this is not my friend’s blog, it’s mine, so I have to write about my own reaction to it, which was much more subdued.

Sure, it had a few good triumphant moments, and a laugh here and there, but I think it was just too derivative for me to get too excited about.  There’s some Braveheart, some Gladiator, Lord of the Rings, and even some Saving Private Ryan.  The romance is predictable, the battles are routine, and I don’t recall anything else that really surprised me.

Lack of originality is more easily forgivable, though, than the fact that Robin Longstride is a dull character.  They try to give him a touching past involving his father, but that comes off as derivative as well.  Robin really has no personality at all.  I’m not sure how much of that is Crowe’s fault and how much is the writer’s fault.  It’s probably a combination of both.  Crowe seems to be sleepwalking through the role a bit, and doesn’t bring the fire that he did to Gladiator.  But then again, he doesn’t have any cool “My name is Maximus” type speeches in this one.  Instead, Robin has to yell about unfair taxation, people’s rights, and getting some sort of charter, or something, signed.  It just doesn’t quite have the same impact.

The most interesting characters in the movie are Marion Loxley (Blanchett) and King John.  Starting as a Prince before having the crown forced upon him by his brother’s death, John goes through the most interesting character arc in the movie, though ultimately they make him too cartoonishly evil in the end.

The battle scenes are Braveheart-light, as there’s only a PG-13 level of blood and dismemberment.  I think that adds to the movie’s overall feeling of being just lukewarm.  The whole thing just seems toned down and flat.

It’s not a bad movie really, but it’s not a memorable one either.  That’s especially true of its lead character, which is a shame because this is a guy that’s supposed to be legendary…and I can barely even remember any of his dialogue.

Maybe you wanna wear some armor around your neck if you think there will be arrows used in the battle you’re entering…

10 – 2 for a boring lead character – 1 for a lot of derivative scenes – 1 for a generally flat/dull tone = 6.0