Tag: winter soldier

Why real fights are far cheaper—and far better–than fake CGI cray-cray

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Yes, every movie and TV show can now afford to use CGI, which they do. Way too much.

And you can’t watch a Marvel or DC movie without noticing how every frame is packed to the gills with CGI: fake set, fake hero suits, fake explosions, and fake fights.

The fake fights are what kill me.

Every action film and superhero movie is required to end in a final brawl, hero vs. villain. Usually at night and in the rain. Hey, I don’t make the laws.

Here’s the thing: these fights are the absolute climax of these movies. If you nail them, the whole movie works. Screw them up and the audience remembers forever.

I loved the hell out of BLACK PANTHER, but couldn’t buy the cartoonish final fight, which made me feel nothing.

The scene right after, with real human actors doing this thing called acting, generated tons of emotion.

This is an old problem. Way back, THE MATRIX looked revolutionary, and every fight felt real. In the horrible sequels, they poured all kinds of money and effort and CGI into fights that should have been epic yet looked like cut-scenes from a video game.

Here is an old-fashioned final battle that completely avoids CGI and completely works. It also avoids the modern problem of blurry action with a camera that never stops moving. You can see the whole fight and it’s glorious.

And I’ll end with the best fight from a Marvel movie, one that’s very real and human that makes you think Sebastian Stan is the baddest man on the planet.

VERDICT: Save a few million and step away from the CGI, directors. Hire fight choreographers and film real fights with real human beings. Because that’s how you generate real human emotions.

Top 7 ways SUICIDE SQUAD went epically wrong—and could have gone right

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suicide squad cast

Marvel and DC have taken comic books for kids and turned them into an unstoppable machine, designed to entertain the masses while making massive profits.

When all the pieces fit together, it’s memorable and magical.

When they don’t, as in SUICIDE SQUAD, everybody notices. (Warning: this is packed full of spoilers.)

It’s like making chocolate chip cookies: Marvel and DC have well-known, well-liked ingredients that people have loved consuming for decades.

Mix it up, put them in the oven and serve them warm and hot. People are going to eat them. It’s not rocket science.

HOWEVER: your average person has eaten a lot of chocolate chip cookies, and seen a ton of these comic-book movies. They’ll know, right away, if Marvel burns the whole batch or DC forgets to add any chocolate chips at all.

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Quirky and Fun versus Weird for the Sake of Weird

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In my sacred quest to watch Every Decent Thing on Netflix, I’ve seen a lot of quirky movies that make fun of the action and superhero genres.

All good, right?

Well, no.

Let’s watch three trailers, then take apart two movies with huge promise that both fall flat and one film that nails it.

Spoiler Alert: This entire post is one giant spoiler. Sorry. Can’t help it. Palpatine told me, “Do what must be done.”

First up: TURBO KID

Good trailer, right? And it seems like it’s not trash, since critics apparently blessed it.

SUPER

Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page are the best. Come on. This should be amazing.

KUNG FURY

This is a production with no-name actors and virtually no budget. But the trailer looks funny.

Dissecting all three movies

TURBO KID and SUPER both suffer from trying to be two things: they both want to be cartoonish and child-like while subverting the whole comic-book genre with massive amounts of gore, violence, nudity and profanity.

You expect blood, bullets and every one of the FCC’s Seven Dirty Words in an R-rated action movie. No big deal.

These two movies are trying to be two things at once, though. You can be innocent and fun or you can be gritty and gross. Pick one.

The worst B movies splatter you with f-bombs and blood. The best pick their shots.

How you end a movie also kinda sorta matters, if you care about the audience.

TURBO KID jumps the shark in the end when it turns out not only is his sidekick / girlfriend a robot, but so it the bad guy, despite there being no hint of this at all. The bad guy just isn’t believable as an evil machine. I can completely buy a friendly robot that’s programmed and designed to be a companion. I can’t buy a bizarre, twisted villain actually being a robot beneath all that flesh. How did he get to be that way? It doesn’t fly as a last-minute revelation with no setup.

SUPER lost me in the climax when Ellen Page, playing the sidekick, Boltie, gets shot in the face and killed. She was the heart and soul of the movie, the best part. This film felt like a French existentialist number, with the hero killing the bad guys and saving his wife, but not really winning. It’s not a true a tragedy, either.

You can do stories with mixed endings, if you do them right. A hero can get what he wants, then decide he doesn’t want it. A boxer can lose the championship while earning self-respect and a girlfriend named Adrian.

You can do it. But it has to be carefully constructed.

TURBO KID and SUPER both felt weird for the sake of weird.

KUNG FURY is happily retro, cheesy and creative. There’s still swear words and nuttiness, but it remains fun instead of weird or sad.

With TURBO KID and SUPER, there was a mix of cartoonish surrealism and gritty realism, as if the writers and directors couldn’t choose which direction to take. KUNG FURY has the same tone throughout, but it still surprises you again and again.

VERDICT: Go ahead and fast-forward through the boring bits of TURBO KID and SUPER, if you’re curious about either, but skip the stupid endings so you don’t throw things at the screen. Watch all of KUNG FURY.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR does the impossible

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What’s hard? Ice skating uphill. What’s impossible? Flying to the moon in a Cessna or making people love a character who’s about as inherently lovable as AquaMan, which is saying, not lovable at all.

Batman is easy to love. Captain America, not so much.

Never read his comics. Never liked him.

So more than anything else, I’m impressed with how Marvel has turned Captain America into one of the most likeable and enjoyable characters on screen today.

This is just about impossible. Robert Downey, Jr. is an incredible actor playing a great part. Iron Man is far more fun on paper. I’m pretty sure Chris Evans hasn’t been nominated for Oscars and he’s a pretty good bet to never be seen as a Serious Actor.

Yet he’s perfect as Captain America.

Instead of taking a role that could easily come off as self-righteous, he makes it human.

WINTER SOLDIER was the darkest and deepest Marvel movie, yet it still had humor and joy. And of all the Marvel movies, it had the most developed relationships. They didn’t feel like cardboard characters reciting lines before more things exploded.

More than the fights, I remember moments like Cap doing laps around Falcon in the beginning, and driving with Black Widow in a stolen truck. The whole thing was beautifully done.

With CIVIL WAR, the Russo brothers out-did themselves.

It would’ve been easy for a movie with so many Avengers to fall apart from the weight of all those characters. Everybody got their time on screen, with interweaving setups and payoffs.

And the relationships are the strong point. Any film or TV show can have amazing special effects today. But can you make us care about the characters?

I cared about all of them.

And one of the best moments in this film is a kiss, I kid you not. That’s an achievement.

CIVIL WAR brought up big questions that don’t have easy answers. It was surprising, fascinating and fun.

Fun is the most important part. As a huge fan of the Batman movies, I have to say Marvel beats DC in the fun department. Every single Batman movie (except for the George Clooney disaster) has been dark and grim.

WINTER SOLDIER and CIVIL WAR prove that you can mix dark moments, tough choices and betrayals while still having an incredibly fun movie.

It’s an impressive achievement for what’s really an Avengers movie, since everybody except Thor and Hulk are in this thing. And I liked it better than either of the Avengers films.

Verdict: A+. I’ll buy it on Blu-Ray and would happily watch it again tomorrow.