Eh, close enough to a month to do another one of these. So I have spent my time watching numerous movies just to justify having “movies” in my little slogan but in reality, I’m not a movie guy. I don’t go out of my way to watch certain movies and I never particularly had strong opinions or knowledge in movies unless I put my mind to it and just nitpick which I hate doing. If you were to ask me about Kaiju movies, especially Godzilla ones, we would be game and the same could be applied to some chick flicks but everything else, unless it’s that good or bad, it’s not going to be noteworthy enough for me. In an effort to change this, I went out of my way to go and watch some popular movies in the hope of finding something to write about (and also attract more readers) and what I mean I went out of my way, I just streamed some movies and all I got was nothing worth talking about so welcome to our third entry for “The Undiscussables” which also the first entry where not everything is a manga this time. Isn’t that depressing?
First up we have “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” from 2002 which is a labeled as a romantic comedy and I can tell you right now, I didn’t find this funny. The story is pretty much greek woman falls in love with non greek man, greek family gets both excited or angry (depending on who) and we follow these two until we reach the titular wedding and that’s why I feel like it’s boring. The plot is just the standard, point to point romcom with Greek elements and that’s why I find it hard to understand why this is a sleeper hit. The only thing that made me laugh was me just doing a horrible Greek imitation accent (I’m 17 years old, I’m allowed to do inappropriate things in the privacy of my room) so unless everyone else who watched this movie did the same, I don’t see how this became to be popular. Maybe because of the romance elements but that’s probably one of the few things I can praise about the movie and even that’s just standard schlock. The only thing I can take away from this movie is the fact that the movie serves as a representation of the Greek American community. While I’m not a greek myself, I found the way they represent greeks and their culture in the movie to be interesting and if this movie was more promoted as a documentary, I think this would be overall a great movie but this is still a romcom and I have to judge it as a romcom so 5/10 for this. There isn’t much else to talk about since there is no other real complaints since the movie does its job as a movie. It’s well shot and the actors are great but I didn’t find it funny or interesting enough to write a 1.5K review about so he it is. You might say that I’m too young for the movie or I am not the target demographic for this movie and to that I say firstly, thank you for the compliment because I do feel like I have been becoming too much of a grouchy old man recently and secondly, does it matter? No matter the target audience, there is going to be outside of the target audience who will watch the movie and have their own opinions plus I do love rom coms so I do feel like I fall into the general target audience. Just go watch the movie if you really want to and since it’s been over a decade since it was released in theatres, you can probably pick up the DVD for bargain bin prices if people are still using DVDs.
Secondly, we have 2017’s “Thor: Ragnarok” and this might as well represent how I feel about all MCU movies and to a degree, all comic book movies moving on in my reviews (barring a couple ones which may be the subject for later solo reviews) because my god, does this feel standard. I know there is going to be a lot of you that are going to think this is going to be a butt hurt DC fan just ranting on about how bad all MCU movies are or that I’m just going against the grain to provoke a reaction and to that I say, what a rather standard response. I’m not a comic book geek (if the numerous manga reviews hasn’t tipped you off to that) and comic book movies don’t excite me so if you were to attack me for watching a movie that I know I wouldn’t enjoy, you would have a slightly more valid point but the other two aren’t valid at all. I will say it now, I think the MCU movies are better than the DC movies but only because WB doesn’t know what they are doing with their cinematic universe right now so I wouldn’t take that as a compliment for MCU movies. Thor: Ragnarok is the supposed “final part” in the “Thor Trilogy” and is considered the best Thor movie in the trilogy which is an easy feat when compared to the other two movies and I still think the movie is standard. It’s just the MCU formula now with next to zero risk taking and that’s why it feels standard. I can’t come up with anything witty because it’s just standard. It has jokes, it has action, it has character development, it has super heroes and it has set up for future MCU movies and this is every single MCU movie now. What else is there to say apart from the fact that the only thing that I found really funny is the character of “Korg” who is voiced by the director of the movie, Taika Waititi, so he has this thick New Zealander accent (or kiwi for all us Australians) which is just so fun to listen to him because to me, Kiwis are funny but like, holy crap, there is no real difference in these movies. It feels like they literally just slot in characters, plot devices and conflicts into the standard script and with a little bit of CGI and maybe a bit of director’s vision, you have your MCU movie which is now ready for general consumption and guaranteed 7/10 reviews from critics as well with the bonus of massive box office return. This is just ridiculous to me how society has decided to let stuff like this happen but what’s more ridiculous is the fans. I mean, Black Panther was getting 100% reviews on Rotten Tomatoes by its fans before it was even released in theatres and when someone broke that overall 100%, everyone lost their minds at this poor guy. The culture around MCU movies now is like any mass fandoms these days. It consists of the sheeps who love the MCU to bits and the trolls who just do troll stuff to get an reaction and then you have the standard audience who thinks anything is a good movie these days. Before angrying any more MCU fans, here’s a 6/10 so let’s stop stroke the flames of misplaced rage now and move on with our lives.
Now for the third slot, we have “Spiderman: Homecoming” from 2017 and yeah, following up a rant about MCU movies with another MCU movie is probably a bad idea but it’s the only other movie I watched this week so let put it out there, this is a 7/10. This does seem hypocritical but even if it follows the same painting by the numbers formula, I still think this is one of the better MCU movies. Yeah, Ragnarock was funny but I couldn’t relate to anything in that movie. It seemed like an excuse to show us where Hulk disappeared to and end Thor’s trilogy while I think Spiderman is a great start for a new Spider-Man trilogy. I am not a big Spider-Man fan but I grew up with the original trilogy and while I hated the amazing Spider-Man series, I feel like Homecoming is a solid movie by itself but that’s probably only because I found Spider-Man more relatable. I mean, I can relate to a nerdy teen more than I can to an Australian actor trying to imitate a Norse god but still, this is an MCU movie so it has all the MCU trappings. Watch it if you want to since I do think it’s slightly better than the usual but it will never stand up to the original trilogy (excluding emo Peter dancing) but if I was able to slightly divert away from Spider-Man for a bit, what is Sony thinking with the Venom movie. I mean, they sold their rights for Spider-Man back to Disney so do they think Venom, who is primarily a bad guy, can carry a movie on its own because apparently the script has such little fate in Venom, the movie will have next to zero of Venom in it. God, that’s going to be a fun one to review when it comes out.
So for a bonus review, I want to quickly talk about a manga called “Gate: Where The JSDF Fought” and before you walk away in disappointment because I couldn’t stop myself from talking about manga, this is only going to be brief and I can promise you that there won’t be any more manga reviews for a while (as long as “a while” can be translated to two weeks). The manga follows this event where a fantasy world crosses over with our reality via an portal gate and after an army slaughtered and kidnaps people within Japan’s Ginza district, Japan sends in its own army to learn about the enemy and delegate their way to peace with this new found empire. This is a manga that explores how governmental, technological and social trends can influence a fantasy empire as well it’s consequences which is a very interesting concept which is why I hate how it’s handled. This is so boring on top of being stupidly frustrating. It’s literally just checking all the checkboxes on the fantasy checklist but it adds guns and while I like exploring the implications of modern weaponry in fantasy settings, they just go “here’s guns and now we will use guns to kill things” and it’s a waste. What also bothered me to no end was how stupid the names of all the fantasy characters are called. Like, they named the princess who is revealed to be a pretty important character “Princess Pina-Co-Lada” and I hate it. Was it too hard to make an authentic name for a character with royalty so decided to name her after a type of drink and then name the emperor “Malt Sol Augustus” I’m sorry but you are taking the piss. There is other stuff like the failed comedy and the massive cast that the author expects you to all remember and feel for but I’m just going to throw my 4/10 score before this degrades into the second rant of the review.
So there’s the make up for the lack of movies reviews on this blog. Next week might be another game review or just a retrospective on a movie series but that depends on what gets finished first and the following week, I will be releasing a far more longer and slightly more in depth review of a manga that is as old as anime’s memelord and maybe after that, I will be probably releasing my old one shot reviews known as “Death By Gameplay”, don’t quote me on that. So that’s my plan for at least the next month so have fun enjoying those while you can because I’m certainly not going to.
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