Cranky T-Rex's Blog

The DC live-action movie universe hasn't exactly gotten off to a great start.  After two movies featuring some of the most well-known heroes in the history of planet Earth (that pretty thoroughly sucked), they put together one that goes in an entirely different direction. This time they gathered up some of the lesser villains of the DC universe for an anti-hero flick called Suicide Squad, where a ragtag bunch of rogues gets turned into a team of extraordinary yet entirely expendable people Amanda Waller can throw at any problem that suits her. Early critics absolutely savaged this movie, even worse than Batman v Superman .  Sure it's a Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe, but is it really as bad as Fant4stic like they're saying?  Because, to quote Jared Leto's new Joker, that movie hurt people really, really bad. Well, pull up a chair and I'll tell you whether or not this is just another gallon of gas on the DCU dumpster fire or an actually fun time at the cin...

One city shall stand, one shall fall. (Image by Sarjex - Check out her  store ) Much has been said about Michael Bay and the Transformers franchise under his watch, and I’m certainly no stranger to opining about the writers that normally are in charge of these films. Fortunately Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have gone on to ruin somebody else’s franchise, and Ehren Kruger who previously played third fiddle to them has taken the reigns. With them gone, we finally get to see how much the dreaded duo influenced the direction of these movies, and how much stemmed from Michael Bay just wanting to blow stuff up. At the core of Transformers: Age of Extinction there’s a really great movie about an altruistic alien race of transforming robots whose spirit has been broken by the willingness of humans to screw them over, and the single dad who restores that spirit after a chance encounter with their leader. Or there’s a story about a cynical government bureaucrat stuck in an “us...

Bet that knee's starting to hurt.   So DC and Warner Bros. have finally gotten around to re-rebooting live-action Superman with Man of Steel , and it's taken me about a week to figure out how to sum up my thoughts on this movie because I didn't hate it, I was entertained most of the time, and yet I didn't like it either. Ultimately, the  redlettermedia.com  guys crystallized it for me with a part of their discussion of the movie. They were talking about how one of the scenes felt like it was just trailer fodder, and to me, the whole film feels like it was made just so they could then cut really awesome trailers from it. Everything looks great.  The cast fits and acts well.  The score is excellent.  ...if you cut it into a 2 minute trailer of the highlights.  The fantastic bits are perfect out of context, but in context they are unearned, disconnected, and undermined by the rest of the movie. I lay that problem at the feet ...