Okay, about X-Men Origins: Wolverine…
Whenever Hollywood takes a “comic book project” (takes comic characters and bring them to big screen), it’s a given rule that they will “butcher” the product to make it work as a movie. Sometimes, this works…sometimes it doesn’t.
In the case of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the results are mixed.
Yes, they changed the characters (and in the case of Gambit, Blob, and others…put them in the story even though they weren’t involved in the original Weapon-X storyline, but that’s a different topic). However, I thought the movie wasn’t that bad and I even enjoyed it…
UNTIL we get to the end.
I’ll admit, when I saw the original teasers with Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, I was thinking “oh crap, he’s going to ruin it”. Surprisingly, he actually did a really good job as Wade Wilson and I thought “Okay, I can buy that…”
Then we get near the end of the movie; the climatic battle, and what happens: [spoil]THEY TURNED DEADPOOL INTO A CHARACTER FROM THE OLD MORTAL KOMBAT VIDEO GAME!!![/spoil]
That made me start screaming for my money back.
Okay, I didn’t scream. It was more of a grumble and annoyed that two super-hero movies failed to live up to their hype this year (Watchmen being the first).
Now, moving on to the next BIG movie that opened up this last week.
The new Star Trek. I’ll confess…never liked Star Trek, never understood the Trekkie phenomenon, never will. Every time I watched any of the shows (particularly Voyager and Enterprise), I felt like I was watching a politically correct message being overly sugar coated and forced down our throats courtesy of Rick “I-love-to-steal-other-people’s-work-and-claim-it-as-my-own” Berman and Brannon “I-have-no-story-telling-ability-but-will-cast-my-wife-as-the-hot-borg-chick-and-well-snag-the-Baywatch-demographic-to-save-our-raitings” Braga.
Or, as some people like to refer to this duo…“Bermaga”.
Thankfully, J. J. Abrams had the decency to distance himself from Bermaga, telling them flat-out to stay away (Hey, this is the guy who gave us Lost. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had brandished a .45 and threatened to shoot them if they so much as tried to approach him with offers of “assistance”).
That being said, I still wasn’t sure what to make of this movie. The stills and photos they leaked out, especially of the bridge shot had me thinking “Oooookay, so the bridge of the USS Enterprise is being furnished by IKEA…not a good sign.”
Then they hinted that the original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) was going to be in it and again, that got a mixed reaction out of me (“Hey, I thought Abrams was going to ‘reset’ or distance himself from the crap of the previous Trek franchise…no offense, Mr. Nimoy”).
Then again, maybe I tend to be anti-Trek because I have a pro-Stargate/pro-BSG bias (it’s hard not to when they filmed down the road from you on a semi-regular basis).
Okay, getting off track here.
The new Star Trek movie…I had some expectations and, well, it failed to meet them.
I was expecting the movie to suck…guess what, it didn’t!
I was actually impressed and I think Abrams has got a good thing here and pretty much makes up for the disappointment of Cloverfield.
Oh,and Abrams, to his credit, managed to carry out his promise and yet did it in the way that even most die-hard Trekkies will appreciate it.
[spoil]Spoiler: The Leonard Nimoy version of Spock is the only survivor of the “original reality (that covers all the previous Star Trek shows)”…this, for all intents and purposes, is an “alternate reality”.[/spoil]
Anyway, that’s as far as I’m going to spoil you on that one.
Here’s my ratings:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: 3/5 (lost a point when Deadpool turned into a character from an old 90s arcade fighting game)
Star Trek: 4/5 (some cheezy factors prevented me from giving it a 5)