The Summer of Trequels

The Summer of Trequels Every year, my son and I go to see a comicbook movie. Just us. He loves super heroes. I like action flicks. Comicbook movies are great. This year we saw Spiderman 3. And to make it more special, I spent the couple extra bucks to take him to the IMAX and see it. The IMAX is neat. Comfortable seating, no excess lighting, and quite possibly the best surround sound system you'll ever hear. However, it is designed for showing movies that make you feel like your in them. Spiderman 3 is not one of those movies. So the overall effect of the IMAX was rather wasted on it. I went in with warnings of a very bad movie and therefore had low expectations. I still left disapointed. If you haven't seen it yet, save your money. It's a piece of shit. The plotlines fine. It heavily lacks on action (a major no-no for a comicbook movie), and Venom (the big bad guy!) is only in it for a few minutes before being beaten to death by a hollow pipe. The CGI is excellent and if they weren't nobody would have even showed up. But my biggest bitch is that they made it into a musical. I've never read a Westside story comicbook. I don't intend to. And I certainly wouldn't pay to see the movie version in theaters. Let alone in an IMAX. Peter Parker dancing and snapping his fingers and twirling around is gay. But its just a little more gay on a 70ft screen. My son liked it. But normally he talks about a superhero movie for monthes after he sees it. This one he talked about it for give or take... 10 minutes. The final fight sequence is really good. Infact, its about the only reason to go see the movie. If they had lengthed the final scene and just cut out all of the intro and plotline and well the entire rest of the movie, it would have been fantastic. But they didn't and it wasn't.

This weekend my wife and I went and saw Pirates. It shared about as equally bad reviews as Spiderman did so I was a little sceptical going in. Add that to my usual distaste for sequals and I was expecting crap. I was wrong. And so are the reviews. This was quite possibly the best of the three pirates movies. The major complaints on the reviews I read were that it was too hard to follow the all subplots and not enough Jack Sparrow. Well, both are true to some extent. There are a lot of subplots and if you haven't watched the other two AND have an IQ below 65, then they probably were hard to follow. Unfortunately the average IQ is like 100-110 or something like that, so you shouldn't have too much trouble. Besides... isn't backstabbing what being a pirate is all about? As far as not enough Jack, well he does have less time in the movie linearly speaking, but I think he has a lot more screen time and lines as a whole. It'll make sense once you've seen it. The acting is by far the best of the three. Geoffry Rush as Capt. Barbossa is fucking amazing. Tiamanda (the soothsayer) gets a lot more screen time though she has one scene near the end that I think could have been done differently. Supersize me FTL. Will and Elizabeth are a lot more distant throughout this movie (another critic complaint) and with good right if you bothered to watch the second one. And Depp? Well he's fucking Captain Jack Sparrow. What else need be said. There is a scene after the credits. It's short and predictable if you don't feel like staying. I hate fighting the parking lot so I stayed. It does leave open the possibility of a fourth, but I don't think that was the intention. The only way not to would have been to kill Jack. I think its an excellent ending. There are times when the movie seems a little slow but in retrospect I can't place when and where they were or why they seemed slow. Still plenty of humor, fun and swordplay. Definately a 5 outta 5 wombats.

There are at least two other trequels out this summer. Shrek the Third and Ocean's 13. I've heard rave reviews about Shrek, but it's kinda hard to fuck up a Shrek movie with that many good voice actors and an infinite pool of movies, television and current events to spoof. Ocean's 13 doesn't sound as impressive. 12 left a really bad taste in my mouth, and it looks like Julia Roberts has left the team as well. Hard to say, it still has a lot of good actors and if they decide to take it seriously this time instead of romping around on vacation in Europe maybe they'll put together a good film.