Film Review: Warcraft: The Beginning

"Is War The Only Answer?"

When it comes to past live-action video game adaptations that have made it on to the big screen within the past, let's say the record has not been the best so far. I mean look at Hitman: Agent 47 last year, what a load of rubbish that was and whilst others have trembled in the wake of mediocrity or downright awfulness, 2016 was tapped as the year for the reinvention of the genre with not only Assassins Creed hitting the big screen but Warcraft too, helmed by self-proclaimed fan Duncan Jones, director of sci-fi greats such as Moon and Source Code. Although I can admit to never playing a single second of Warcraft in the past, Jones' behemoth of a summer blockbuster was a surprising popcorn romp, one that indeed has a wide range of flaws and weaknesses, but one that was never challenging or seemed to be verging on the edge of boredom throughout its' questionable two-hour plus runtime. CGI galore and Flash Gordon esque costume design. What more does one want?

Amidst unpronounceable locations and names, Warcraft essentially focuses on the battle between Orcs and humans, coincided with some pretty funky CGI magic and featuring warlocks, wizards and flying eagle bird things within the realm of what is essentially a rip-off of Middle Earth. The Lord of the Rings comparisons do not stop there however, with similar themes and even similar characters resulting in a fundamental likeness on the surface but Warcraft falters on the scale of the latter's depth where even though there were some characters worth caring about, others simply acted either as canon fodder for giant hammers or as a tent-pole for extraordinarily polished suits of armour. Warcraft is set to be the starter pistol for another heavy-hitter of a blockbuster series and although it is indeed not perfect, far off in fact, Warcraft does the job and does it solidly, smashing humans to pieces as it traverses the world of humans in the 21st century. Over to you Assassins Creed, let's see if you can do better. 

Overall Score: 6/10

The Fantastic 4 - Sinking Faster than The Thing on the Titanic

Dan - With my local multiplex offering the chance to watch a preview screening of Marvel's new Fantastic Four, a reboot of the widely panned Chris Evans/Jessica Alba films released ten and eight years ago respectively, it was one of the rare occasions in which I went into a high-profile release without a sense of whether it was set to be a masterpiece or a complete turkey due to the miracle that is social media, something of which I believe results in a much more reliable and fresh opinion in one's opinion of that film. One thing that has always impressed me about the abundance of Marvel movie releases and the subsequent Cinematic Universe, harking back to the release of Iron Man in 2008, is that throughout its long list of releases, all the films within such a universe have always tended to be in the positive spectrum when it comes to a critical stance, where although some are much better than others (The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy), nearly all have also been rather solid, if rather formulaic, without one seemingly sticking out and declaring itself as the black sheep of the bunch. With the release of Fantastic Four however, although not being a part of the MCU in terms of the bigger picture, it seems that this particular run of good Marvel fortune has seemingly come to an end, with Josh Trank's reboot being a complete mess from beginning to end, resulting in a movie on par with the widely panned original releases ten years previous.

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When boy genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller, Whiplash) is given the opportunity to further his studies into the boundaries between parallel dimensions by Professor Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey, House of Cards), he and his team of like-minded scientists including Sue Storm (Kate Mara, House of Cards), Johnny Storm (Micheal B. Jordan, Chronicle) and the reluctant Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell, Dead Man's Shoes) successfully gain access to the parallel world known simply as "Planet Zero". One drunken night, Reed, Johnny, Victor and close friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell, Jumper), decide to be the first to venture into the unknown plant and inadvertently witness Victor seemingly fall to his death, whilst bringing back with them a range of powers that have not only changed their own genetic structure, but that of Sue who was attempting to help them return from Planet Zero. With their new-found powers and abilities, the team not only must adjust to their radical changes, but the threat of impending doom from something they thought they had once lost but has now returned with a vengeance. So, in terms of the premise of Fantastic Four, it is pretty much what we all expected, with a redesign of the origin of our four main heroes and an influence of their biggest enemy, Doctor Doom, in an attempt to give them their first taste of heroism, all of which was given away in the rather overplayed trailers. So with a solid, if rather unsurprising, story to helm it, Fantastic Four was never set to be anything as good as previous superhero entries but the completed picture can only be classed as something of a complete disaster with a wide range of faults and issues that succeed only in making it one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far. 

With recent superhero movies attempting to redesign the notion of what such a film entails, helped by the success, both critically and financially of The Dark Knight trilogy, Fantastic Four seemingly has decided to completely disregard such ideas, with the added depth that has been highly prevalent in recent comic-related movies missing entirely, resulting in characters that I don't overly care for and a story that is completely off the chains to say the least in terms of its' narrative structure and discipline, evidenced by a final act that not only is rushed completely off its' feet, but has no dramatic or logical impact whatsoever aside from the fact that a big-budget Hollywood movie like this has to have at least some sort of scene whereby destruction and only destruction is the key concept. I mean come on guys, did your editing or production team simply bypass watching the film as a whole before releasing it, or were they just not bothered about the critical appeal of such a film and instead took the Micheal Bay approach in that big explosions and fire results in making big money? Well if that is the case, unfortunately for you, Fantastic Four will not take Avengers-like levels of cash and instead will only be seen for what it is; a fantastic disaster from start to finish which not only will anger cinema viewers who will no doubt pay to witness such drivel, but the Marvel fans who were waiting for at last a solid take on one of their most beloved comic creations, something of which they definitely did not get this time around. 

Adding to the mediocrity of Fantastic Four is its' fundamental contradictory in what it wants to see itself as. Is it a dark, adult, comic film in similar vein to Watchmen, or instead a light-hearted, comedic take on the superhero movie like Guardians of the Galaxy? Too many times the film seemingly flipped in and out of its' true intentions with cheesy one liners being offset with scenes of shocking violence whilst the calm and collective beginning being transposed with a shoddy collapse at the films' conclusion all resulting in a film, which although must have had good intentions, seemingly being made without a care in the world, something of which angers me deeply as lover of film. The one saving grace of the film? The cast, with Miles Teller leading the way in doing the best he can with the script he was handed, whilst it is good to see Reg E. Cathey getting more of a shot in Hollywood after his heart-braking performances in House of Cards. But in terms of the good, that's just about it. Ironically, director Josh Trank has come out this week stating that the reason for Fantastic Four sucking so much is due to the input and influence of 20th Century Fox, and that his version would be receiving much better reviews if not for their desire to edit and change. Well Mr, Trank, if that is the case then you have my sympathies, but for now we are left with a shoddy, out-of-place, disaster-ridden raspberry that not only will be quickly forgotten, but will hopefully be lost in the vaults of cinema completely and left to die along with its' equally as bad predecessors ten years previous. Want my advice? Watch Ant-Man again.

Overall Score: 3/10

Pete - Lets put it this way, Fantastic 4 is as fantastic as an empty bottle of Fanta filled with lukewarm piss. Its as if Josh Trank wanted to make the worst Marvel movie in history. How someone can actually enjoy this, I will never know. We can't even class it as a child's entrance film into the MCU because there is so little substance, you may as well let your kid watch paint dry.

Let me make one thing clear, these actors suck. They suck more than Kim Kardashian. The casting was just awful. Pretty much every incarnation I've seen of FF source material has involved adults. The group were of a serious age to be taking part in space age opportunities, not borderline psychopathic children that where clichés from High School Musical. The teen angst drips from this and it has to be one of the most painful experiences I've ever had the displeasure of watching. Oh, big spoiler here, Doom dies. Deader than a doornail. Sucked into some power hunger hole that tore him into pieces and it was probably for the best. Hopefully he will never come back to grace the screen with his awful costume that looked more like a morph suit than it did the real Doom. Don't insult the source material with such an awful depiction. Although, this is honestly the only action that happens in the film. The last 10 minutes of the film is occupied with it while the rest of the experience is tortuous attempts at storytelling.

Dan speaks of the indecisiveness of the plot from gritty and dark to 'comedy' and I couldn't agree more. Every attempt at character development was removed, deaths were played off as something not relevant and these "incredibly smart children" are fucking morons. I've watched many movies in my time and more so with the creation of this blog but I don't think I've ever felt like throwing faeces at the screen and swinging out like fucking Tarzan 10 minutes into a film. Sure, The Counsellor was bad, like real bad; but Christ, at least they tried.

You know what made it worse? The acting. Even the extras were awful. Often you would catch one staring at the camera lens like its some sort of mythical creature with a creepy grin slapped across their face. Obviously they're just extras who somehow landed a quick role in the flick but when the main cast can't type on a keyboard in a convincing manner, is almost an indefinite sign that they have no idea what they're doing. At least put a little effort into what you are 'doing'. Perhaps write an essay on how you're such a terrible actor and that you really don't want to be on a film that everyone will see because you don't want your reputation to sink any further into the precipice of Josh Trank's vacant mind than it already has.

I'm not going to argue against Dan. I'm in fact, going to congratulate him on such restraint. The awful composition, shots, music, story, acting, character development, design and visuals were trash for a Marvel film. Perhaps if 20th Century Fox actually worked with Marvel on this, we could have finally got the FF we deserve but noooooo. I'm almost tempted not to give this a score. Giving it score would acknowledge is actually exists and I don't feel like it even deserves that. Dan's score says it all and heed these words, we do not want another. I saw you had it scheduled, stop it. Now. For the love of god, kill it off now and please don't fuck up X-men...

OVERALL SCORE - 3/10 - DO NOT WATCH

Duo Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Dan's Review

It's that money-making, mind-blowing, blockbuster time everyone and with the simply unbelievable performance of Furious 7 over the course of the past few weeks, where I believe it is now into the top ten of highest-grossing films EVER (Seriously?), it is time for Avengers: Age of Ultron to firmly push it, and many others in the top ten, out of its place. In terms of the money-making side of movies this year, one of the conundrums of 2015 is what will take more; Avengers or Star Wars?  After watching the latest addition to the MCU however, I think the one true question is whether they will match each other in terms of quality. After returning from the midnight showing on Thursday morning, slightly knackered but still rolling on, I think it's fair to say that Star Wars has a lot to live up to. Avengers: Age of Ultron is pretty fab. 

The real winning formula of the first Avengers movie was that each and every character got their own decent share of screen time, and although Downey Jr. and Hiddleston as Iron Man and Loki respectively, were the stand out performers, not one of the actors and actresses in such a huge ensemble cast felt left out in any way. Fortunately for Age of Ultron, this formula is pretty much adhered to, even with the inclusion of a bunch of new characters, where, sloppy Russian accents aside, Olson and Taylor-Johnson as Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are a fantastic addition to the MCU, whilst Bettany's portrayal of The Vision was a wonder to behold, although there should have been a rain-check on that cape. No capes. Top marks for best newcomer however has to go to big baddie Ultron, magnificently voiced by James Spader, who walks away with the award for best CGI robot-thing in a MCU film so far, not only due to the stark realism of the characters' presence on screen, but because Ultron felt like a proper character, someone who you could believe in, and someone you felt afraid to the bone of, something of which is rare in a lot of CGI characters. 

With the first Avengers being one of the standout pictures in the MCU, Age of Ultron kind of needed to change direction, if only slightly, in order to sway away from the dreadful curse of being only "more of the same", and the way in which Whedon and co. have decided to do this is to make Age of Ultron a much darker film than the first. Yes, the banter between the team is still rife as ever, but the darkness stemmed from Ultron himself, who came off as a much more cold and malevolent presence than I ever thought Loki was, as brilliant as he is as the bad guy of Asgard, to the whole sterialisation story of Black Widow, which was pretty damn depressing to say the least. In the case of Age of Ultron, the step into the dark-side worked and the threat of impending doom was always there, particularly in the final battle, cemented with the death of one of the supposed key characters of the Avengers, which although was teased throughout the film, had a sickening, yet cleverly finessed, twist to cap it all off.  

Yes the film does have faults. The whole MCU cross-ins and cross-overs, mixed with interwoven stories and plot points would obviously be confusing to the lay movie watcher who just happens to have not seen any of the previous installments and decides to watch Age of Ultron, but my question to that person would be, why watch it without seeing at least the first Avengers previously anyhow? Even as a keen follower of the MCU (not the comics however), even I at times tend to get lost and confused regarding what Infinity Stone is what, who is where etc. etc. so the level of confusion for someone oblivious to the stories previous is going to pretty high. The film also had an awful knack or rushing certain plot points, with it sometimes just resorting to another jumping, action, blowing up scene, which is always good fun, but seemed a bit too much at certain points. I mean, don't even get me started on what Thor did at the pond thing. I have no clue whatsoever. My usual moan of runtime however, cannot be adhered to this time, with the film's 140 minute runtime surprisingly flying past, something of which hasn't happened since last years' Interstellar. 

So in conclusion, yes, the film does have flaws, but the positives overwhelmingly outweigh the negatives, with a stellar cast being put to great use to continue the fun of the MCU which doesn't seem to be in danger of crippling anytime soon. Is it better than the first? On first watch, probably not, but the beauty of a blockbuster is that there are a ridiculous amounts of chances to watch it again (I think it is showing 30 times a day in my local multiplex) and a second watch is something of which I am looking forward to already. Age of Ultron is a solid and spectacular farewell to the directorial duties of Joss Whedon too, who has supplied the Marvel fans with two of the finest superhero films of all time. Farewell Mr. Whedon. Its' been emotional, 

Overall Score: 8/10

Josh's Review

Once again I’m back to feeling half my age, hyped up for the new Marvels’ Avengers: Age of Ultron movie where the cinema staff obviously did not want to calm me down when handing me a free action figure with my coke! But I digress, the film was amazing and was all I could want from an Avengers film, but that’s not to say there wasn't a few disappointments.  (SPOILER WARNING)

Let’s start with the first scene with the Avengers going against a Hydra base. I would have liked a bit of context on how all of the Avengers assembled (LOL), for example, at the end of Iron Man 3, correct me if I’m wrong but didn't Tony Stark blow up all of his Iron Suits? Yet here he is flying around! Don’t get me wrong, I love Iron Man but just a bit of context would have been nice, unless I missed something.

Now, I don’t know if any of my fellow reviewers here on Black Ribbon watch Marvels Agents Of Shield, but it was awesome seeing Dr List and Strucker, the Hydra Villains at the beginning, which have been seen in the TV show and now appear on the big screen. Having Dr List introduce Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch fitted well with the back story of Agents of Shield, with Hydra kidnapping people with powers.

The interactions, mainly the wit, between the characters were in my opinion top class. The cinema audience laughed at the characters’ banter and gasped at the shock of the Vision handing Thor his hammer which made the film all that more enjoyable to watch. I did enjoy seeing some back story into Hawkeye and Black Widow which was well deserved and did lead me to anticipate one of their deaths but was gladly mistaken. I would have liked some more scenes with Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch where although you get a brief description of them telling Ultron about their past, it felt like there was very limited dialogue between them and the Avengers which I would have much  preferred to see.

In terms of the fighting choreography, being an Avengers film I think we all expected some amazing action and I was not the slightest bit disappointed. All of the fights seemed original, well- paced and made full advantage of the surroundings. The combos between the characters were clever, however I would have liked if they mixed up the combination of characters. I lost count the number of times Thor did a combo attack with Captain America.

To me what makes a good action film is a good villain. In the case of Ultron, he is good and has character, despite being a robot. With an understandable motive and evil plan however I was slightly let down. In the trailers he seemed more malicious, giving off an evil Pinocchio vibe giving that awesome line “There are no strings on me” where just thinking about it gets me hyped up! However, in the movie he just felt less impressive but this could be due to him being out-shined by the Vision. I would have liked to see Ultron kill an Avenger with his hands or at least a bit more close quarters rather than random shootings with a helicopter. Sure he cuts off Klaw’s arm but who cares about Klaw? Hardly jaw dropping stuff! 

Like every Marvel film there is always a teaser at the end of the credits and this time we see Thanos pulling out the Infinity Gauntlet saying “I will just do it myself”; F*!& yeah! This small clip has got me psyched up like a bat out of hell! I can’t even imagine the amount of carnage which is going to occur, however I am slightly worried about the new Avengers they showed at the end (War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Falcon) as they hardly seem like replacements for their predecessors but maybe I read that entire scene wrong.    

I know I have listed many negative points throughout the review but believe me when I say this; I loved it and I’m very much tempted to go watch the film again which for me never happens. I loved seeing the character interaction between the huge roster of heroes with all of them getting a fair amount of screen time whilst the action scenes were creative and fast paced whilst showing constant humour, and all of this is setting up for another huge film in the future with Thanos. I’m sure most of you will go see this film regardless, however for those on the fence, go see this film! 

Overall Score: 8/10