The Pros and Cons of Modern Action Films and Directors.

[Red Dave Prime]

Dont think Nolan would be good for Transformers to be fair. Much as I like his stuff he works better with smaller scale.

Its a tricky one to think of who might do a good job of it to be honest. Whedon would be interesting - almost like More than meets the eye on the big screen

[Cliffjumper]

Whedon's probably too busy blowing his new-found box office cred by making a pilot starring Amy Acker as a mentally unstable high-kicking cyberpunk assasin from a future where everyone's a pirate (featuring Jonathan Woodward as her nervous pop-culture reference dropping handler and a black guy who's in it the whole time but never actually does anything).

[inflatable dalek]

What's Uwe Boll doing these days?

[relak]

What's Uwe Boll doing these days?

Now that u mention it, there are a lot of similarities between uwe boll adapting games and Michael bay adapting tf.

Both threw out everything except some names and the core concept.
Both included crude sexual humor.
Both favor style over substance
Both impose too much of their own style into the story thus making the narrative suffer.
Both love jitter cam, slo mo and pyrotechnics
Both have extreme egos

The only difference is that bay gets bigger budgets

[Skyquake87]

I wonder if the reason i didn't like DOTM so much was beacuse it was just more of the same. Nothing had really moved on from the first two films, they followed the same formula - introduce characters/backstory/ early showpiece action sequence/ some more plot/ silly humour/ fighty bit/ plot/ toilet humour/ jeopardy/ action sequence/ fighty bit/ collateral damage/oh no its looks like its all over...for everyone!/ oh no its not we've managed to win through/ sunset/ the end.

It would be nice if Bay could refresh his formula a bit and work a bit more collaboratively with writers and whatnot, instead of 'no, you do action films like this ad nauseum'.

[numbat]

Not really anything to be added to the general discussion. Some people don't like Bay because it's trendy to hate him, some people genuinely dislike him, the films are a fair step removed from everyone's childhood memories, they include simple plots with simple humour and human relationships so as to appeal to a wide audience to justify the mammoth budget. Sorry but there's no real chance of an intelligent take on TFs at this scale - but frankly, how well could an intelligent take work, and would you really want it? I for one wouldn't - Transformers are extraterrestrial robots that turn into cars and trucks. The only way I see that working is in a light fun way. Otherwise you'll have three people sat in the cinema, and I doubt the critical reviews would be any better.

Anyhoo...

I enjoy the Bay Transformer films - they are good fun. They do very well (DOTM was the fourth biggest blockbuster of all time last time I checked), so it makes good business sense to keep him onboard and, if not, to keep a similar overall style.

After DOTM delivering such an awesome finale, I'd like to see the story develop a bit along new lines, but would be happy for this to be in the Bay style. Worst case I'd happily settle for more of the same. I'll go to indie directors / films for intellectual stuff. (Nolan comes close to a big budget intellectual, sure, but it's still pretty simple blockbuster plot, formula and stuff - I doubt a truly intelligent blockbuster will ever come along because it will totally tank at the box office and the studio will catch that way before it becomes clever - look what happens when you inject a modicum of intelligence with say John Carter or Dredd 3D [US response - Europe got it at least!] this year. And no, Avengers isn't clever or new - it's just a well executed popcorn film as shallow as the next blockbuster [don't get me wrong, love it, but am under no illusions as to how clever it is!]).

Roll on TF4 - can't wait to see the next set of formulaic epic set pieces!

[Blackjack]

Eh, the Avengers is basically the same plot with Dark of the Moon with the characters and plot devices and order of events switched around a bit, innit? Except they've got Thor and Iron Man and Captain America instead of Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and Sam Witwicky, and since each and every one of them have their own movies...

I'm still very very surprised Transformers made the fifth highest-grossing film (checked like two minutes ago, Avengers snuck up and made the third). Hell, we beat Lord of the Rings and the Nolan Batman films!

Sure, it's just mindless robots beating the crap out of each other through a fun cookie-cutter plot, but I have to be honest and that's what I expect from the Transformers movie the first time I watched the first movie when I don't even know who Optimus Prime was. Come the third movie when I'm already a hardcore fan who knew who Astroscope was, I still expect big flashy explosions and Optimus Prime hacking Decepticon heads off.

[Cliffjumper]

God knows what Prime's going to kill this time seeing as he keeps topping himself. About the only way up is for him to stab the sun.

[Red Dave Prime]

I have no problem with it being a big dumb movie - in fact I think its all the better if it can be. Avengers was great because they didnt try and make it like Batman. Just not hot on Bay in general or a fourth movie by the same director regardless.

Whether its Bay or not I think the film would benefit from slimming down the cast. Since part 2 I've found the films full of characters who really add nothing. I'm sure they are there to sell toys but I still found it takes time away from the main cast who should get the love.

But yeah, dont fall into the usual blockbuster sequel trap of trying to get all deep, "epic" and twisty a-la prequel star wars/ Matrix 2 & 3, Pirates 2, 3 and 4 etc. etc.

[Cliffjumper]

I have no problem with it being a big dumb movie - in fact I think its all the better if it can be. Avengers was great because they didnt try and make it like Batman. Just not hot on Bay in general or a fourth movie by the same director regardless.

Having now seen Avengers I can't see what the fuss was about. It's workmanlike and has some good action but it's absolutely nothing special and Whedon's constant unamusing quips do it considerable damage, especially as everyone pauses for laughter. It falls into a common recent Whedon trap of being not quite as clever as it thinks its being. Its' main advantage over the Bay films is being a hipper concept and having a hipper director.

[Red Dave Prime]

Having now seen Avengers I can't see what the fuss was about. It's workmanlike and has some good action but it's absolutely nothing special and Whedon's constant unamusing quips do it considerable damage, especially as everyone pauses for laughter. It falls into a common recent Whedon trap of being not quite as clever as it thinks its being. Its' main advantage over the Bay films is being a hipper concept and having a hipper director.

Completely disagree. Sure, Avengers has a muddled start and there are some big plot holes/ jumps in logic but its action scenes have much more drama and suspense. Its a great feel good movie. Dont know if it has a hipper concept though. Sure, Iron Man is hip and Hulk is a crowd pleaser but I think he did well to get Thor and Cap America across as well as he did. That wasnt an easy sell in my eyes and he makes it work.

With Whedon and his quips, I suppose its similar to the bay thing. You like the humour or you dont. I'm a big fan of his style (probably why I like roberts stuff so much is because it is similar to Joss)

Seen it twice and loved it both times. Saw DOTM twice and didnt. make of that what you will.

[Cliffjumper]

Whedon carpet-bombs the film with weak quips, very few of which are actually funny - Iron Man's dialogue being a prime example, largely just making him look like a twat. It's actually quite sad to see someone of Downey's ability reduced to that sort of thing; I get that it's his pension plan, but still. It was nice to see Harry Dean Stanton, though - shame 99% of the audience probably didn't notice one of the great actors of the past 40 years because he didn't have his own film before.

Suspense? Seriously? Suspense? Is there a single second where it looks like one of Marvel's big box office darlings aren't going to make it through all those repetitive battles with the Chitauri? At least with Transformers there're character deaths. (I'll give it a pass on the Chitauri's nicely sanitised assaults on empty cars and restaurant umbrellas as apparently the DVD has been edited, even if it does strike me as ironic that Avengers undermines itself to appeal to children whereas a film based on a toyline is pulling fewer punches).

Captain America is dead weight for 90% of the film. A slab of formica with an expression of mild confusion carved onto its' face wandering around in pyjamas. The only moment he's actually Captain America is when he calls the play in the final battle. He was probably the biggest disappointment of the whole thing given the character's dynamite in Ultimates. Though Thor being relegated to being a B-lister (presumably his film did less box-office than Iron Man's, therefore Iron Man can fly into him at several hundred miles an hour without just blowing up, right?) with a hammer he uses like a Repulsor does at least give him some competition.

The Helicarrier sequence was excellent (apart from the level breaker of Hawkeye's magic haXX0r arrow) but the battle in the city was about three times as long as it needed to be considering it had nothing to bring to the table beyond "a non-specific number of aliens are pouring through a portal using visuals lifted directly from Dark of the Moon and getting beaten up by indestructible superheroes and Legolas off Lord of the Rings".

There isn't a script. There can't have been a script. No-one would write a script without a plot and with so many holes in it. No-one making that film gave a **** which is why no-one's actually sat through the mechanics of the scenes and actually rationalised why things are happening. They happen because something needs to happen, be it a lame sight gag or an illogical action sequence or whatever.

It's one of the least original films I've ever seen. I get why it works as popcorn fodder for the morons, masking its' many inadequacies with telegraphed post-modern jokes and mediocre violence - like Rise of Cobra or something equally terrible (I don't watch many modern action films because they all seem to be this bad). But it is not a good film. It is a striking example of how acclaim and reception now depends on who you are rather than what you do.

[inflatable dalek]

I liked it.

At least with Transformers there're character deaths.

In fairness there is one Ironhide-in-Dark-of-the-Moon secondary character level death, though as that's what was affected by the editing the film might well have him just go for a nap now for all I know.

It's a pity most of Captain America's solo stuff got cut out, he's by far the most anaemic character in a film dominated by Stark and the Hulk. Evans was actually very good in his solo film (a nice straight arrow but likeably so rather than dull). I think the problem is Whedon's main flaw is he can't do sincere- so Cap wound up Riley Finn mark 2 and pretty much ignored. Poor costume as well. I suspect you'd like the Cap film though, despite a phoned in Hugo Weaving it's basically The Rocketeer 2.

Considering I've been reliably told this film is less sexist than the Bay Transformers films I'd still like to know why Hill wears a skin tight catsuit to work when she seems to do the same job as the normal clothes wearing Coulson of being an exposition sounding board for Nick Fury. I mean, at least Bay seems aware that there are some women over forty out there...

Mind, I wasn't entirely convinced by the "Carley is a disgusting sexist male fantasy stereotype unlike Black Widow who may start the film in a tiny black dress before switching to a skin tight leather catsuit (her arse being the main selling point of the poster) and doing all sorts of leg twirling martial arts moves that basically combine to make her a slightly different male fantasy but I'm sure any teenage boys wanking over photos did so respectfully" argument at the time.

Edit: Fully agreed the Helicarrier bit was the action highlight...

Sod it, my review at the time *PLUG*

http://thesolarpool.weebly.com/1/post/2 ... ilers.html

[Skyquake87]

I don't watch many modern action films because they all seem to be this bad.

Cheap joke: And yet you liked Dark Of The Moon?!

In all seriousness, the plot and structure of Avengers and DOTM are pretty similar, so why is DOTM the better film? Is it because for Transformers, you know its Bay film so its never going to be Pulp Fiction (as a loose comparrison for a generally well regarded action film)?

I think the reason Avengers was so well receieved and successful was because each of the main characters gets something to do (how well that something is done is a matter of personal preference) and it brought together audiences whom might have only seen one of the previous films starring one of the big four in their own right. That it also works without prior knowledge of the preceding 'lead in' films is also a minor miracle.

Yes, Wheddon's dialogue is quip heavy, but because he seems to have set this template to make audiences accept genre stuff they perhpas otherwise wouldn't have through the use of such dialogue (seriously - how many people were turned onto Buffy not because it was about Vampires and such, but because it was funny?), i don't mind it so much. Unfortunately, everyone else has now picked up on this so now everything is a non-stop quip-o-rama, especially in genre tv. Looking at Stark's interaction with others in his two Iron Man films - this is how he interacts with others, he really does deal in a constant series of pithy put downs, so his dialogue in Avengers didn't strike me as unusual in anyway. Perhaps there weren't enough straight scenes for Downey in Avengers, but then this is an ensemble film and I think Wheddon was pretty good in keeping Iron Man/ Stark slightly out of focus so that Downey Jr's obvious charisma didn't end up dominating the film (which it could have very well of done). As fo IM's fight with Thor, he could just about hold his own as his armour absorbed the lightning bolt Thor hit him with boosting his armour's system capacity by 400% (er, apparently).

Didn't mind Hawkeye's magic arrows, and frankly its a bit disingenuous to pick holes in a flim like this for stuff like that, when the source material, exists in a sort of similarly hieghtened and fanciful tehcnological present (the f**king Helicarrier for God's sake! That was the bit i thought was a bit silly - much like the Valiant in Doctor Who), particularly when you have cosmic maguffins and whatnot in Transformers. Likewise, there was a story and driving narrative to the film, yes its one we've seen a gajillion times before, either in DOTM or Independence Day or whatever, but if you're going to pit Earth's Most Powerful Heroes(tm) against a threat, then it needs to be something suitably epic, and what's wrong with that? Hell, if wasn't Loki and the Chitauri, then it would have been, what, Kang or Ultron and I can't see them working as well without some lengthy introductory narrative for them, which this film would have struggled to accomodate without cutting down screen time for the main cast. Maybe that is a failing, but few ensemble action films do well giving everyone adequate screen time.

Really, its the characterisation that made Avengers the better film. All the characters in the Transformers films are interchangeable ciphers, even the 'bots - whom despite being the main reason for going to see the film are lucky if they get more than ten lines of dialogue amongst them.

[Cliffjumper]

In fairness there is one Ironhide-in-Dark-of-the-Moon secondary character level death, though as that's what was affected by the editing the film might well have him just go for a nap now for all I know.

The joke-dispenser in the suit who was obviously going to die because he doesn't have a solo film lined up? Yeh, that was a real shock.

I think the problem is Whedon's main flaw is he can't do sincere- so Cap wound up Riley Finn mark 2 and pretty much ignored. Poor costume as well.

I do think compared to everyone else the costume was terrible - great design and I realise it's probably some sort of excuse that he's from the 1940s and, I dunno, hasn't changed clothes since because [POP CULTURE REFERENCE]. But it really did look like he was cosplaying. I'm guessing the newsreel shit at the end where some guy in Brazil or where-****ing-ever is wearing a homemade costume that's more convincing is some sort of crazy post-modern joke or something.

The problem is Cap doesn't have to be sincere - the Ultimates proved that, all you need is a writer with some sort of imagination who isn't just going to take things at face value. I get that this is all tied into Disney wanting to sell Happy Meal toys of the guy and that if a failed TV producer is told to make him as bland as possible or he'll be fired and replaced by some other hired hand who can follow orders compromises are going to be made, but I don't think having excuses actually makes the finished problem disappear.

To me the most striking comparison is Optimus Prime, a character who had largely been bland in previous Transformers outings and is basically the Captain America of the franchise. The films moved him in a different direction drawing on some lesser known material (either intentionally or unintentionally; I doubt they read "Crisis of Command" or watched "Prime Target", but the charge in TF:TM is a possible) and whichever way you look at it put their own stamp on him.

The Black Widow can't have been sexist because she kicked a donkey, or something. Joss Whedon's proved women aren't just eye candy if they kick a few people - it's a mere coincidence that all the women he casts in strong female roles (usually involving jumpsuits and leather) just happen to be prime FHM wank-fodder.

I'm actually watching the Emma Peel Avengers sets you gave me at the moment and the contrast couldn't be more striking... Diana Rigg 1) is possibly the most beautiful woman ever to grace the Earth 2) always dressed in some fetishistic outfit and 3) knocks people around, but the reason why she's like no-one else is the care that's gone into the scripting and executing the characterisation, making Emma a genuinely fabulous person that a tired action hot chick trope. It makes my blood ****ing boil to hear people claim Whedon writes strong female characters when Brian "The Professionals" Clemens was doing it forty years ago. There is nothing to the Black Widow beyond her physical attributes (oh, and that deeply obvious "interrogation" thing she does - if you didn't guess that the second she started talking to Loki have fun watching the new series of X-Factor) and it doesn't make much of a difference whether we're talking kicks or tits.

The thing with Carley is she's a damsel in distress in an action film and not much more. No-one pretends she's much else. The Black Widow in this film (and I stress in this film; the character's got a rich history including a stint leading the Avengers) is a nerd's wank fantasy lifted from Alias or something.

As for Captain America or any of the other Marvel superhero films, or the Nolan Batmans for that matter, no ****ing way. If the quality threshold for what makes a film good is this low, no ****ing way. That was over two hours of my life gone. I could've watched For a Few Dollars More in that time. Or Twelve Monkeys. Or The Stunt Man. Or The Eagle Has Landed. Or Angel Heart. Or Dog Day Afternoon. Or Robin & Marian. Or Raging Bull. Or any of hundreds and hundreds of films that are actually good.

What is it with people these days and just settling for whatever shit is shovelled on their plates, munching it all down and going "more please"? Comics, toys, films, TV all ****ing ruined by people taking something as badly put together and thought out as this and turning around and thanking the people who made it for ****ing them in the arse.

[Skyquake87]

Was Black Widow wank fodder...? Well, I suppose if you're actively looking for that then possibly so, yes. But! She was better served here than in IM2 where she really was a bit superfulous, to say the least. I'd agree that the skin tight suits the female characters wear are silly and that his how they appear in the source comics, but that shouldn't be an excuse. That said, Black Widow wearing a skin tight suit is no differrent to Cap. I wonder if we got a BW film, we'd get to see more of what makes the character tick.

EDIT: Maybe its years of comics reading, but I didn't find Black Widow gratuitous. Perhaps I'm disentisized to how women tend to be portrayed in comics and whatnot and look beyond that and see what the character brings to the table. But i guess a good portion of the audience wont be, they'll just be thinking 'she's hot' or whatever. Black Widow's MO as a spy has seen her use her feminine whiles before, but on screen you don't get any of that and it doesn't really compare with , say, Bond in his dinner jacket talking to a baddy to get information. It is rubbish how women are presented in the media, which is why i hate all these Celebrity Piffle magazines (largely edited by women, oddly) that rip celebs to shreds for perceived physical flaws. I'd like to think stuff like 'The Killing', where the lead female isn't all T&A and wears big jumpers might improve things, but there's a long road ahead. Still, at least Marvel have stopped doing their swimsuit specials. No one needs to see Nick Fury in his Speedos...

Was Caps costume that bad? I didn't think so. it's a difficult costume to not make look silly. He looked better without the mask on durting the end sequences.

I would agree that consumers need to demand more clever and smarter things from films and TV. I would also argue that TV has started to expand its horizons as a result of apparent demand for more varied television. Thanks to the success of Doctor Who, we've had MisFits, Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, Being Human, The Fades, Bedlam, Demons, Merlin, That Dinosaur Thing ITV did. With any medium and telly in particular, executives need to have it proven to them that there is an appetite for something that isn't cop dramas or soaps or reality telly. During the '90s, telly like this was exceptionally rare - the only shows that were a bit different were Neverwhere (hamstrung by a budget of 5p) and Gormenghast (an overwrought folly).

Films are more questionable. the Harry Potter series and LOTR seemed to have managed to balance story with spectacle, and to a lesser extent, so have Marvel's films. But when you've got stuff like Transformers, which is largely rubbish, raking in billions with a story written on the back of napkin, is it any surprise to see similar stuff cluttering up the box office (cf. GI Joe and Battleship), with studios thinking they've suddenly hit on a 'winning template'.

[Cliffjumper]

In all seriousness, the plot and structure of Avengers and DOTM are pretty similar, so why is DOTM the better film? Is it because for Transformers, you know its Bay film so its never going to be Pulp Fiction (as a loose comparrison for a generally well regarded action film)?

The Transformers do help because the film's doing something other films haven't, yes. Special effects done that well are an art form in themselves and - in general - the Bay films don't get enough credit for their continuing ability to make that stuff look convincing.

Avengers does actually knob a large amount of DotM - the fleet of big spiky spaceships coming through the portal over a big American city is borderline actionable, even the designs are similar. But it doesn't do it as well - the climactic fight scenes are a faceless brawl filled with cribbed Return of the Jedi and Lord of the Rings references. It's cookie-cutter stuff.

Bay has more vision and personality in his films. Whether you agree with that vision and personality is personal preference, but any Hollywood camera monkey could have directed Avengers. Whedon was a name got on board to win groundroots acclaim in the comic continuity and in ten years' time we're going to find out just how little influence he had in the final product. By which I mean in ten years' time someone's going to actually say it; we've already found it out by the committee focus group result that ended up on screen though currently we're stuck in that weird little hole where everyone overpraised the thing on release, have now seen it without being bludgeoned by surround sound and the E-numbers in their cinema popcorn and realised it's not all that but can't show how fickle, pliable and gullible they are. You can see the creeping in this thread.

That it also works without prior knowledge of the preceding 'lead in' films is also a minor miracle.

Seriously? The basic gist of all the characters (zany billionaire, WW2 super soldier, angry guy, Norse God) is all you need to know and no-one went to see these films not knowing it. That's like praising a Bond film for working without prior knowledge of him being a British secret agent.

Perhaps there weren't enough straight scenes for Downey in Avengers, but then this is an ensemble film and I think Wheddon was pretty good in keeping Iron Man/ Stark slightly out of focus so that Downey Jr's obvious charisma didn't end up dominating the film (which it could have very well of done).

Ha, no, it was pretty obvious Iron Man was the studio's favourite (the division of the script among the various heroes is another thing that was nothing to do with Whedon - this is work for hire and Whedon probably needs the money by now and the industry cred on working on something that doesn't get cancelled sharply). The nuke, the office confrontation with Loki, the drooling tracking shots, the action figure friendly suit upgrade, the endless stream of one-liners that are intended to show, hey, he's wacky but actually make him look like a complete ****, et cetera.

The main reason Downey's charisma doesn't overwhelm the film is that he doesn't get out of second gear at any point. Boy can act but he's not going to do it in a summer movie in which his co-star is a Disney computer or when he's taking direction from someone who voluntarily works with Gina Torres.

As fo IM's fight with Thor, he could just about hold his own as his armour absorbed the lightning bolt Thor hit him with boosting his armour's system capacity by 400% (er, apparently).

Didn't that bit happen after Iron Man flew into him?

Didn't mind Hawkeye's magic arrows, and frankly its a bit disingenuous to pick holes in a flim like this for stuff like that, when the source material, exists in a sort of similarly hieghtened and fanciful tehcnological present (the f**king Helicarrier for God's sake! That was the bit i thought was a bit silly - much like the Valiant in Doctor Who), particularly when you have cosmic maguffins and whatnot in Transformers.

Oh, Hawkeye's arrows in general were a positive for me; after they got him back off the bus he was one of the high points (partly because like Jan, Hank, Wanda and Pietro he's part of the Avengers rather than the Marvel Legion of Box Office Superstars) and the trick arrows were generally squee-worthy. But the HaXX0r arrow was moronic, because if you fire an arrow into the front of a PC it totally stops a precise fraction into the thing because PCs are made of the same stuff as walls or wood, right? It wouldn't just shatter the casing or anything like that. It's nothing to do with the tech, it's to do with no-one stopping and thinking it through because dude, that effect is totally cool.

Re: the Helicarrier, full agreement. IIRC I've done the same about the Valiant before so I won't go into how practically stupid the concept of a flying aircraft carrier is (short version - the massive vulnerability far outweights the tiny gains of the mobility).

but if you're going to pit Earth's Most Powerful Heroes(tm) against a threat, then it needs to be something suitably epic, and what's wrong with that?

The big problem is that it wasn't particularly epic, IMO. We had a large number of easily beaten generic grunts Zerg rushing the invincible box office golden geese while Loki wandered around by that stage doing very little and having no real connection to the Uruk-Hai hordes he was nominally working with. Wow, suspenseful, fills me full of hope for the sanitised Disney Kang War we've got coming Summer 2014.

Really, its the characterisation that made Avengers the better film. All the characters in the Transformers films are interchangeable ciphers, even the 'bots - whom despite being the main reason for going to see the film are lucky if they get more than ten lines of dialogue amongst them.

Where was the characterisation again? Stark's a quipping twat, Cap's a plank, Hulk's a special effect, Natasha's Sidney Bristow, Thor's... just there, Fury's Samuel L. Jackson (how hilarious was him running after that jet with a bazooka? I do love the way that bit was completely explained too).

[inflatable dalek]

The joke-dispenser in the suit who was obviously going to die because he doesn't have a solo film lined up? Yeh, that was a real shock.

Though presumably anyone who was paying that much attention to announcements on the sequels would have fallen for the bluff he was signed up for two more films.

I did think going in the Hulk was going to be a wild card who could easily die as they'd seemingly lost all interest in doing anything solo. About five minutes after he came on screen I pretty much came to the conclusion he was too bloodly awesome for them to kill him off. Loved how they finally sodded off all the angst that made the previous two films (especially the Lee one which is just tonally all over the place) so dragged out and turned the character into something fun whilst still keeping that slightly dark edge.

The problem is Cap doesn't have to be sincere - the Ultimates proved that, all you need is a writer with some sort of imagination who isn't just going to take things at face value. I get that this is all tied into Disney wanting to sell Happy Meal toys of the guy and that if a failed TV producer is told to make him as bland as possible or he'll be fired and replaced by some other hired hand who can follow orders compromises are going to be made, but I don't think having excuses actually makes the finished problem disappear.

It did work in the previous film though, he had a very Chris Reeve vibe going on that was charming and sweet. Certainly sincere isn't the only option the makers of that film had, but it was still a valid one and they knocked it out the park.

Not so here where the one scene where he got anything to do by himself with the villain saw him go up to a Loki acting blatantly as a Hitler analogy and actually saying "Hey, does this remind anyone of Hitler? Come on, see what we did here, look, there's even an old Jewish man being all defiant! It's symbolic".

Diana Rigg 1) is possibly the most beautiful woman ever to grace the Earth 2) always dressed in some fetishistic outfit and 3) knocks people around, but the reason why she's like no-one else is the care that's gone into the scripting and executing the characterisation, making Emma a genuinely fabulous person that a tired action hot chick trope.

I would love to know how the hell they got away with the Hellfire Club episode. Especially the "How do you handle the big boys" line. Was anyone else disapointed that when the last X-Men film did the Hellfire club they didn't bring Wyngarde out of retirement to play Wyngarde rather than getting Kevin Bacon to play Shaw?

Oh. just me then?

I think how she plays of Pat Macnee plays a lagre part in the equality between the characters, absolutely perfect chemistry from the off.

What is it with people these days and just settling for whatever shit is shovelled on their plates, munching it all down and going "more please"? Comics, toys, films, TV all ****ing ruined by people taking something as badly put together and thought out as this and turning around and thanking the people who made it for ****ing them in the arse.

I blame Michael Bay.



@Skyquake: I don't think there were that many close ups of Cap's arse in his costume in the film.

In fact, oddly enough, unlike Thor and Cap's solo films there were no gratuitous topless shots of any of the men to counterbalance all the female crumpet.

I'd actually say Thor handled it's female lead the best, she's dressed entirely sensibly throughout and she's generally strong and sensible without any attempt- a so often happens in action films- to give her kick ass abilities that would seem unlikely in her job.

Though this does sound like moaning, I did enjoy both films greatly as big dumb summer fun. It's just neither one is perfect by any means.

[Cliffjumper]

Was Caps costume that bad? I didn't think so. it's a difficult costume to not make look silly. He looked better without the mask on durting the end sequences.

It didn't have the right... weight and texture to it. They should have gone with the John Cassidy chain-maily scale-type and desaturated it a bit - though my personal preference would have been the WW2 one from Ultimates #1. Agree that it's a difficult one to make work, but they didn't manage it. They did seem to de-emphasis it at any given opportunity (like you say Cap spent very little of the film wearing the mask and he's shot at shoulder level or moving very fast much more than the other characters; they also use the shield to cover his torso in a very large number of shots) which would seem to show someone at least realised it. They didn't care enough to sort it out but then what do you expect from a film with so little thought put into it we get a stupid sight gag with six punchbags?

[inflatable dalek]

It doesn't help his 40's costume in the last film was much better as well.

I didn't have a problem with Sammy L Playing Sammy L. when that's almost literally what the Ultimates (and are they planing to give the main Universe Nick Fury a black son called Nick Fury who looks like Samuel L. Jackson as well or was I drunk when I read that?) version was. Him seeming stronger faster and more invulnerable than Captain America and Thor in places was more of an issue for me.

Knowing nothing about exercising I didn't have a problem with the multiple punching bags, in my ignorance I just assume they need to have a certain firmness (to stop the fist just sinking into them) that had been lost on the one he punched.