A Minecraft Movie and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures
Directed by Jared Hess
I’m getting too old for this. I’m sure I’ve said that before, but it’s only getting truer with time as the generation after me starts to come into its own. I suppose Minecraft was something of my own generation, but it had never clicked with me back when it was new, and I’m certainly not about to dive back into it now; even if it would bring a bit more insight into what the heck is going on in this movie. Besides, I brought my seventeen-year-old cousin to the theater with me, so he was able to explain quite a few of the references. Now Millennials are no strangers to irreverence and inanity as we grew up with Internet 1.0 and Newgrounds, but rarely has that aspect of our pop culture been put on the big screen; especially with such an exorbitant budget and big name stars. Is there enough juice to squeeze out of this franchise to make an entertaining movie for all ages, or will I finally understand what my grandma went through when I dragged her to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie all those years ago? Let’s find out!!
Stuck in a rut and yearning for more in life, a Man called Steve (Jack Black) ventures into the mines to dig out his destiny, and wouldn’t you know it! He finds a cube that takes him to a land of square shaped geometry and similarly boxy creatures! Some of them are friendly like the villagers and his pet wolf (), but others have bad attitudes such as the pigs from the Netherworld who wish to take over the Overworld where Steve now resides. Seeking to protect his new home, he sends the magic cube to his world so it will stay out of rich of the pigs, and it winds up in the possession of Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (Jason Momoa) whose entire personality revolves around a video game tournament he won in the eighties. With the help of the new kid in town Henry (Sebastian Hansen), he haplessly uses the power of the cube to go to the Overworld along with Henry’s sister Natalie (Emma Myers) and the local real estate agent Dawn (Danielle Brooks). Now that the cube is back within the reach of the pigs and their leader Malgosha (Rachel House), these four must unite with Steven and find a way back home to keep the Overworld safe once and for all! Will this call to action turn these misfits into heroes, or will this journey simply reveal how much growing up they still have to do? What wonders does this world contain, and are there enough of them to fill a ninety-minute movie? Wouldn’t the audience for a Minecraft movie much rather see the movie recreated in Minecraft?
After taking a month off to recharge my batteries, which mostly involved playing retro games and reading Sonic the Hedgehog comics, I’m back just in time for a double feature of Dwayne Johnson vehicles with a number at the end of them! I’ve been a huge fan of Dwayneson The Rockson Johnson for many years, but his misguided attempts at joining the fledgling DCEU left him in perhaps the lowest point in his career since making The Tooth Fairy. Hopefully the fact that he not only still gets roles in big tent pole movies, but that studios are willing to put two of them up against each other at the same time bodes well for his future endeavors, and hopefully they are great movies as well. Let’s find out!!
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Moana 2
Moana 2 is owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Directed by David Derrick Jr, Jason Hand, and Dana Ledoux Miller
After saving her island and calming the seas, Moana (Auliʻi Cravalho) has spent the last few years exploring the various islands around her in hopes of finding more people to connect with. Evidence is rather scarce, however, and it seems that there’s another god throwing another tantrum that is causing the various peoples of the world to stay far apart, and Moana is once again called to adventure for the fate of the world. Maui (Dwayne Johnson) is sadly unable to join her on this quest as he’s stuck dealing with the demigod Matangi (Awhimai Fraser), so Moana puts together a crew of villagers (Hualālai Chung, Rose Matafeo, and David Fane) who she hopes are up to the task which only looks more daunting as the stakes get ever higher.
When I wrote my review of the first Moana, I lamented the fact that it was stuck being a simple movie and couldn’t expand into something broader in scope to make the most of its interesting mythology. Oh, how naïve I was back then. In so many ways, the first film was a product of an entirely different world and a media landscape that has been turned entirely on its head. In 2016, the idea of Disney putting this kind of budget and star power into a TV show was laughable. Nowadays, it’s almost quaint to see one of their biggest money-makers staying firmly in one space and not being spread across a dozen different projects, though I guess we’ll see if they get a guest spot in whatever Kingdom Hearts game Nomura is cooking up next. Still, this movie didn’t escape the New Disney Machine unscathed, and a lot of the charm of the first film is lost in an attempt to turn this into yet another franchise for the Mouse House. In that sense, it’s not just fighting one uphill battle; it’s fighting two at the same time, as it already has many of the obvious problems you run into while making a sequel while also shouldering the responsibility of being a lead in to more Moana content in the future. The end result is a movie that pantomimes the beats of the original film without any of its heart; so, much like Te Kā, it’s a shadow of its former self as it stumbles to find what’s gone missing. First and foremost are the character arcs, as we’ve already overcome all of Moana’s struggles. In the first film, her story was personal and relatable as she was in opposition to the rest of her culture’s values and had to struggle to find who she truly was while going on this journey; even failing at critical junctures due to shortcomings in her character. She grew over the course of that first movie, which was great, but now that we’re post-hero’s journey and the lack of any character development is the gaping black hole that sucks all the tension and drama out of this story. She’s on another epic quest, but it hardly feels like one because there’s no adversity. There are challenges, sure, but nothing that isn’t resolved by acrobatics and proper swimming technique, and without any moments of doubt, even when Moana fails at something, the conclusion feels almost inevitable. Perhaps a radically different quest for her to go on would have given her new depths to plumb, but instead we’re just going through the motions of the first one and what few things are new are, at best, a lateral move as they fail to elevate the material or drag this bore of a storyline out of the mud. She’s got a proper crew this time which would have been a refreshing change of pace from the first film, but they aren’t particularly interesting, and it also means that Maui gets less screen time, which is a shame as he is still the most fun character in this series. The songs sound okay, but they’re little more than echoes of the original film’s soundtrack and only add to the hollow feel of everything. The most interesting development in this movie is the introduction of other gods, as it’s a genuine elevation of the stakes, with Matangi being the standout of the entire movie. She has an interesting dynamic as her allegiances remain ambiguous throughout, and she has the only song on the soundtrack that doesn’t sound like a half-hearted rehash. Unfortunately, even this bright spot is marred by the film’s ultimate goal of being an advertisement for future installments, and so it fails to integrate naturally with the story they are trying to tell here. It’s disappointing how little of an identity this has given how much personality we got in the first film, and if you’re spending the entire running time begging me to stick around for the sequel, why am I even bothering with this one at all? Perhaps everything I have to complain about here is just an old man yelling at clouds and that the target audience will adore this much like they did the first one. I wouldn’t even call it a huge betrayal, as there’s just enough humor, action, and solid animation to keep you occupied the whole way through. For those reasons, I’m going to give it the most lukewarm of passes imaginable, but this franchise has spent all its goodwill on this mediocre outing and is gonna have to really step up its game for the next one if it wants to be more than just another bland franchise to add to the pile.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures
Directed by Adam Wingard
We’re five movies deep into the Monsterverse, plus one TV series I haven’t bothered to watch yet, and excepting Kong: Skull Island, none of them have left much of an impression on me. A bit of an odd thing to say when it comes to movies about giant monsters getting into fist fights, but something’s always felt missing that kept me from engaging with it beyond a very rudimentary level, and it seems unlikely that we’ll be pulling things back to see what can be fixed when they can just go bigger with each movie. Then again, we’ve come quite far since the dreary days of Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla feature, and if nothing else the addition of a robot arm for Kong and pink highlights for Godzilla show that they aren’t afraid to escalate the goofiness which could be just enough to get me back on board. Will the pieces finally fall into place in this latest monster mash, or has this franchise simply left me behind without even glancing in the rearview mirror? Let’s find out!!
With the discovery of the Hollow Earth, the world has somehow managed to keep on trucking with Godzilla on the surface to bash any monsters that start giving humanity funny looks, and Kong enjoying an early retirement in the Hollow Earth; chilling under waterfalls and basking in whatever the equivalent of sunlight is in the Earth’s core. Still, retirement can be a lonely thing for the last of one’s kind, and Kong can only talk to his awesome warrior axe so many times before it gets weird. Thankfully, the Hollow Earth is like an ogre in that it has many layers, and he stumbles into the home of a race of giant apes like himself. Before we can throw Kong a family reunion, however, it seems these apes are not too friendly towards the big guy and something about their reemergence has put Godzilla into butt-kicking mode as he powers himself up for whatever happens next. What are these apes up to in their own little corner of the world, and will it spell doom for the surface world? Can Kong show these apes a path towards peace, or will he be forced to take them down alongside his frenemy Godzilla? Seriously, who had the foresight to make Kong a power glove? What, did they think he’d have to win an arm wrestling tournament to save humanity!?
Thor: Ragnarok and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Directed by Taika Waititi
After the rather disappointing Thor: The Dark World (HOW DO YOU WASTE THE BEST DOCTOR WHO IN SUCH A BLAND VILLAIN ROLE!?) I wasn’t really looking forward to what they’d do with this character in his solo films and was more interested to see if he’d show up in a bunch of the other movies instead. Once those initial trailers hit with the heavy emphasis on fantastical Jack Kirby inspired designs and the rocking Led Zeppelin soundtrack, there seemed to be hope in this franchise digging itself out of the pit the sequel left it in. At the very least, it LOOKED a lot pretty with much more vibrant colors, and it even manages to drag Jeff Goldblum into the MCU which in and of itself would make this movie worthy of existing even if everything else ends up being awful. Does Thor’s third chance at the plate end up being one of the best films in the entire MCU, or did they just throw a lot of flash and money at a franchise that is just unable to find its place after telling the origin story? Let’s find out!!
The movie begins with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) trying to find out what the heck Ragnarok is which was hinted at ALL the way back in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Remember when he left the team to take a bath and saw some visions? Yeah, apparently it was all foreshadowing of the destruction of Asgard in a calamity known as Ragnarok, so Thor is basically trying to find a way to stop it… whatever it may be. In the meantime though, he manages to find out that Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has taken the place of Odin (Anthony Hopkins) who is actually alright as Loki basically stuck his ass in a retirement home on Earth, but when Thor goes down there to bring him back to the throne it turns out that he’s all out of time and disappears in a cloud of energy or something. If that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that one of the things he was doing when he was alive was keeping a hereto unknown daughter of his named Hela (Cate Blanchett) in some sort of magic prison which breaks as soon as he’s dead and so she’s come back for revenge against her family and all of Asgard. Both Loki and Thor are dealt with rather quickly with the latter losing his famed hammer Mjolnir and landing on some mystery planet where he is captured by a mysterious woman (Tessa Thompson) and dragged to the planet’s ruler known as THE GRANDMASTER (Jeff Goldblum). The once mighty God of Thunder and son of Odin is now put in chains and is forced to fight in gladiatorial matches in order to somehow earn his freedom and eventually find his way back home before Hela puts it inextricably under her vengeful thumb. Can Thor find a way to escape the barbaric society run by the most fabulous of dictators? What familiar faces will he find on this planet that can hopefully help him on his journey home? How the heck is Thor gonna get around now that he doesn’t have his magic propeller hammer!?
“THE GOD OF THUNDER DOESN’T NEED A HAMMER! I JUST NEED TO FLAP MY ARMS REALLY FAST!!” “Okay… well good luck with that!”
The Reviewers Unite 