Hello & welcome to The Comic Shop! It's been awhile as I look back and realize that my last post was about Suicide Squad which I received on Blu Ray for Christmas. So yeah it's been a few days.
Summer movie season is kicking up into high gear with the big, loud, dumb movies that I love so much. It started early with the phenomenal "Lego Batman Movie" and if you haven't seen it go check it out. There are so many sight gags & inside jokes that it takes more than one viewing to catch them all.
Anyway on to the heart of the thing with Logan (please be aware that I will be full out using spoilers since it's been out for a few weeks at this point). Also my thoughts on this are quite unorganized so I apologize.
This is the first movie that I have seen in awhile that I can say that I really enjoyed; however, I also found extremely difficult to watch. I was initially blown away by just the sheer viciousness of the film with Logan opening by lopping of limbs & tearing people apart it was visually stunning. I loved it that we finally had a movie worthy of his long time catchphrase "I'm the best I am at what I do but what I do isn't very nice".
There is a lot of violence, gore, and death in this movie. There is no way around that when you are telling a story like this. That said the biggest death in the movie is the concept of hope. Every time it looks like our titular hero is going to turn a corner from this dark place that we find him in something profoundly shitty happens.
For instance he gets to have a "family dinner" with the Soul Glow guy from Coming to America & his own ersatz family only to have everyone fucking butchered at the hands of the surprise villain. He gets the kids to the border and then chooses not to give them safe passage and instead take a fucking nap until they get in trouble.
(And I'll just say this the experimenting on kids shit is rough to watch. I understand it and I get it was a focal point of the X-23's origin I'm just saying it was hard to watch).
I will say that part of my own thoughts on this film were shaped by one of my favorite YouTube personalities that happens to be an X-men freak, and her review was profoundly heart breaking as her life experiences made her more sensitive to the films subject matter than I had even considered. She also pointed out the heart breaking thing that several ex-servicemen tweeted her to say that Logan's unwillingness to fight, that too tired to pick up arms again that was what PTSD is. And that is the most heartbreaking fucking thing to think that people that go and fight for our freedoms feel broken and defeated in that nature.
I'm not going to say I didn't like the movie because I had a different frame of reference than the person above. In my mind the message of the movie is hope, but its burgeoned by all of these profoundly shitty things happening. In my mind this is X-23/Laura's story and it is one of hope. Hope that there is an Eden where she will be safe, hope that her father will do the right thing, and with all children there is a hope for a brighter tomorrow. This is where being a dad gives me this frame of reference because my son gives me hope, because I know he can be a better person than I could ever try to be. He gives me hope for a brighter tomorrow and to tie it back that's what Laura and the kids in this movie are. So I think Director James Mangold made the choice to make this movie gut-punch after gut-punch to set up a fulfilling albeit open-ending.
As you can see I have two minds on this film, and honestly that speaks to how wonderful it is. It was a reprieve from the trite superhero stories that we've been given over and over. It's a complex movie with so many different layers that it makes you think. In this instance Fox let director James Mangold make a movie about something (a lot of things to be honest) and then put a superhero character at the heart of it. That's what makes it fantastic in my mind. In a world where every other movie is 2 hours of loud drum beats & action figures pounding into one another this is a movie that has legs to stand on it's own.
I'll say this it's not a popcorn flick and it's not a movie that you're going to enjoy everything about, but it is simply fantastic.
Now on to trite popcorn flicks with a less emotional review of Power Rangers.
I have to say I was very surprised by this movie. It was almost like a mash-up of two very distinct ideas. The first is this brilliant coming of age story with Breakfast Club elements while the other is your standard superhero fare. Obviously the two ideas converge and it's actually done pretty well to be honest. I don't want to say a whole lot about it as it did just come out, but I really enjoyed the tweaks to the characters as it gave them more depth and was a central point to them being able to harness the power.
The villains, I will say, were quite lame. While I liked the new iteration of the putties, I was not crazy about Green Ranger Rita eating gold and becoming a serial killer, and I was less crazy about whatever the hell Goldar was supposed to be (made me miss the blue dog puppet).
I thought the kids were great. Billy was quite great, and Kimberly was a smoke-show so that was nice. Jason was the most fleshed out, but they all had pretty great compelling backstories.
At the end of the day it's a pretty good movie about people from different backgrounds embracing who they are and working together to save the world and fight evil. And that's all you can really ask for I guess.
That's all folks! Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again soon at The Comic Shop!
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