Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 25

Expendables 2
A group of for-hire mercenaries race to find a stockpile of Cold War-era refined plutonium before the villain, named Vilain, does. I think every 80’s and 90’s action movie guy was stuffed into this, maybe even more than the first one, so it kind of makes it fun in that regard for middle-aged dudes like me. It’s a dumb, fun, unapologetic, chaotic action flick, which makes it even funnerer.

Iron Man
An arrogant, womanizing, boozy war-profiteer turns his life around after nearly getting killed by one of his own weapons. This isn’t a superhero sci-fi movie, it’s a morality tale. Besides maybe Avengers, Iron Man is probably one of the best superhero movies in the last 30 years, I contend because of Downey’s “loveable jerk” portrayal of Stark. The first five minutes is a textbook example of good storytelling, even before the biographical montage at the charity event: we find out the type of personal Stark is and his life situation was upended in the inciting incident.

Iron Man 2
Ivan Vanko, the son of a Russian scientist who used to work for Tony Stark’s father, tries to get revenge on Tony for stealing Arc reactor technology; a “sins of the father” scenario. Was interesting to see how the consequences of the technology in Iron Man has had time to spread, though I think in the universe’s timeline it was only maybe half a year after Tony fought Iron Monger at the end of Iron Man. Always fun to see bureaucrats lose their cool, even if it’s fiction.

Iron Man 3
A terrorist named the Mandarin blows people up with some red crackly psoriasis stuff called Extremis. This felt like the weakest Iron Man film, maybe because there was a different director of the three. Who knows? I don’t like “choose the woman or your career” conflicts, either. It smacks too hard of soulmate-ism. There’s no conflict for Tony because he can get any woman he wants. Why not just pick one that doesn’t have an issue with him doing his thing? Was interesting, though, to see someone genuinely struggle with panic attacks/PTSD, since this takes place sometime after the events of Avengers.

Thor
A powerful, flippant, arrogant god gets his powers revoked and is banished to Midgard (Earth), but has to figure out how to keep his brother Loki from ascending the throne, and defending against the whatever this thing was, from killing him. Another great set up for a conflict, just like Iron Man. The banishing scene is rather weighty, but I felt like Thor should have reacted much more to it. The credits, showing the Yggdrasil, the universe-tree of Norse mythology, and the zoom into Asgard, were a fascinating touch, but I have a thing for cosmologies.

Thor: The Dark World
Thor has to deal with the æther power and the Dark Elves or something. This was…okay. Thor just had a “finish the task” struggle, and didn’t have the crisis of character that made Thor a better film. The only real important thing that happened in this film was that the Reality Stone ended up with the Collector. I mean, the Earth wasn’t destroyed…that, too.

The Avengers
A bunch of superheroes and two normal people attempt to stop Thor’s brother from invading Earth via New York City. Since this is superhero stuff and basically act three of phase 1, you could reasonable guess there’s a huge battle somewhere. There was. It didn’t break any ground (heh) but it was rather well done, and it must’ve been a writer’s nightmare to make sure everyone had the right amount of screentime and the right interactions to bring out their character and motivations.

Goku Midnight Eye
A private investigator stabs himself in the eye to avoid being lethally hypnotized, and he is given a prosthetic that allows him to Google and perform all these high-tech feats. He’s also given—not a mystical, flame-shooting sword, not a machine gun arm, not impervious alien mithril armor—but a baton. It sounds ridiculous, but it somehow works (the baton extends out and does other things, though). This is a Yoshiaki Kawajiri film, so there’s all sorts of similarities to Wicked City, and preludes to what he would do with Ninja Scroll. Hyper-violent 1980’s action and horror with near-supernatural villains, the story is just ridiculous enough to make me stay. You know a protagonist is going to win out in the end, because it’s a movie, but also because he has the chutzpah to wear a jacket and tie, with no shirt, over a singlet.

The Midnight Sky
A terminally-ill scientist in the Arctic attempts to contact a spacefaring vessel and tell them not to return to Earth, after a worldwide extinction event. The writers used the most reprehensible of handwaves here, in the hallucinatory companion trope, but this one was bearable because it wasn’t mental torture porn; the hallucination served some narrative purpose other than getting someone riled up to do something crazy to move the plot forward. Thanks, Pandorum and Battlestar Galactica!

I Am Mother
A baby is raised in a high-tech bunker by an advanced robot, after an extinction event renders the outside world uninhabitable. Or has it? The was pretty good, but the third act was shat upon by the protagonist’s “fix.” In Hollywood, advanced intelligences, even if they are artificial, are suspiciously susceptible to the magic spell of one person proving them all wrong about the depravity of humanity.