Movie Catch-Up
Aug. 31st, 2023 03:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Super Mario Bros Movie - I loved the parts that were specifically for me (the commercial at the beginning, the dozens of direct video game references) and thought Jack Black was spot-on as Bowser. Chris Pratt was forgettable but acceptable as Mario, which is better than I feared. I was mildly annoyed that the Leaf gave Mario a full Tanooki suit.
Nimona - Though it was streamlined and formula-ified, I discovered on re-reading the original book that it did hew pretty closely to the source material. And it managed to make it even gayer—the main pairing is explicit in the movie and there’s an easy reading that there are no straight people in the entire film. And it’s very cute and the animation is very good, especially in the big shapeshifting battle sequences.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods – A lot of the shenanigans can be forgiven by the fact that the characters are all teenagers and the Wisdom of Solomon is explicitly on the fritz. And they do an entertaining job of writing around the fact that they can’t call the character “Captain Marvel” but he can’t introduce himself as “Shazam” either—the news reports call the six of them the “Philadelphia Fiascos”, which is really delightful. This is nothing brilliant; it’s fairly formulaic, but it’s got some wit and it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s entertaining. But this should never have been a movie; this should have been a streaming miniseries so they could actually dedicate time and a subplot to each of the six kids. As it stands, they have time for the A-plot with the Daughters of Atlas, Billy’s growing up/being a leader crisis, and Freddy’s love life. Everybody else is a one-note side bit at best. If they ever made a sequel (they won’t), I don’t care about Mr. Mind’s evil plans or Billy joining the Justice Society and confronting Black Adam. I care about whether Pedro gets a boyfriend or if Mary finds college friends or if Darla turns Tawny the kitten into a magical talking tiger.
The Flash – This movie was, what, a decade in the making? And in the interim, Grant Gustin’s Flash did everything we see here, better on a lower budget. (It’s Flashpoint, just with a bunch of the details changed. Barry goes back to save his mom, totally breaks history, and has to come to terms with it.) The CGI is…not actually that great. (And the extensive random lightning raises more questions than it answers.) This Barry goes for “sporadically-competent goofball” and the tone doesn’t really work because you never really get to like him but you also don’t admire him. Ezra Miller doesn’t have the charisma Zach Levi uses to pull off the goofy superhero thing (and Barry doesn’t have the excuse of being a teenager than Billy Batson does), but he also lacks the heartfelt, deeply hopeful stupidity Grant Gustin presents. I think Keaton was doing his best trying to save this movie with his extremely competent Batman, but none of the other supporting characters I would have liked to see more of (Supergirl, Iris, Patty, the Justice League, even Zod) got enough to do because 90% of the movie’s interactions are just Barry and himself. And the multiverse twist (despite my appreciation for various Superman cameos) has been thoroughly done to death at this point. I hope that whatever DC movie continuity they come up with next, they figure out that everybody’s tired of the current formula.
Nimona - Though it was streamlined and formula-ified, I discovered on re-reading the original book that it did hew pretty closely to the source material. And it managed to make it even gayer—the main pairing is explicit in the movie and there’s an easy reading that there are no straight people in the entire film. And it’s very cute and the animation is very good, especially in the big shapeshifting battle sequences.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods – A lot of the shenanigans can be forgiven by the fact that the characters are all teenagers and the Wisdom of Solomon is explicitly on the fritz. And they do an entertaining job of writing around the fact that they can’t call the character “Captain Marvel” but he can’t introduce himself as “Shazam” either—the news reports call the six of them the “Philadelphia Fiascos”, which is really delightful. This is nothing brilliant; it’s fairly formulaic, but it’s got some wit and it doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s entertaining. But this should never have been a movie; this should have been a streaming miniseries so they could actually dedicate time and a subplot to each of the six kids. As it stands, they have time for the A-plot with the Daughters of Atlas, Billy’s growing up/being a leader crisis, and Freddy’s love life. Everybody else is a one-note side bit at best. If they ever made a sequel (they won’t), I don’t care about Mr. Mind’s evil plans or Billy joining the Justice Society and confronting Black Adam. I care about whether Pedro gets a boyfriend or if Mary finds college friends or if Darla turns Tawny the kitten into a magical talking tiger.
The Flash – This movie was, what, a decade in the making? And in the interim, Grant Gustin’s Flash did everything we see here, better on a lower budget. (It’s Flashpoint, just with a bunch of the details changed. Barry goes back to save his mom, totally breaks history, and has to come to terms with it.) The CGI is…not actually that great. (And the extensive random lightning raises more questions than it answers.) This Barry goes for “sporadically-competent goofball” and the tone doesn’t really work because you never really get to like him but you also don’t admire him. Ezra Miller doesn’t have the charisma Zach Levi uses to pull off the goofy superhero thing (and Barry doesn’t have the excuse of being a teenager than Billy Batson does), but he also lacks the heartfelt, deeply hopeful stupidity Grant Gustin presents. I think Keaton was doing his best trying to save this movie with his extremely competent Batman, but none of the other supporting characters I would have liked to see more of (Supergirl, Iris, Patty, the Justice League, even Zod) got enough to do because 90% of the movie’s interactions are just Barry and himself. And the multiverse twist (despite my appreciation for various Superman cameos) has been thoroughly done to death at this point. I hope that whatever DC movie continuity they come up with next, they figure out that everybody’s tired of the current formula.
