Tag Archives: unnecessary sequels

F9 The Fast Saga

The Fast and Furious franchise has now entered its meta-parody stage.

The Premise: Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew, who were mere street racers when this whole thing began in 2001, are now somehow responsible for taking down an international terrorist who just happens to be Dom’s estranged brother, Jakob (John Cena). Jakob’s really angry – angry enough to align himself with the group’s former nemesis Cipher (Charlize Theron), who revives a horrendous haircut if not the same level of threat.

The Verdict: F9 will not be winning any new fans to the franchise. It has finally gone balls-to-the-wall bat-shit bananas. Fans knew this was coming. The franchise hasn’t been shy about amping up the stakes in previously thought to be impossible increments from film to film. It was only a matter of time before they drove their cars in space. F9 continues to evolve Dom’s concept of family, leaving less time for driving and street stunts. Not to despair: what they do manage to fit in is larger than life. It wasn’t even the trip to space that had me complaining “I’m not sure who’s more offended, me, or physics.” John Cena can’t act, making him a perfect match for Vin Diesel, who has managed not to improve one iota in the past two decades of the film’s franchise, despite acting alongside such Oscar winners as Theron and Helen Mirren. From its inception, Fast and Furious has made diverse casting look easy; Dom is surrounded by a bunch of colourful characters that we have come to know and love over the past 9 films, most of whom have stayed the course, including founding member Brian, even though Paul Walker has been dead since F7 (his character lives, always on the periphery, just out of sight, just a little late to the party). Fans will undoubtedly find something of merit in F9, even if it’s just an appreciation for the franchise’s willingness to push the boundaries of incredulity. They are shameless, which makes their antics all the more fun.

Godzilla vs. Kong

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If nothing else, Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. Pictures have been surprisingly persistent in trying to make their MonsterVerse into a successful franchise. This is the fourth film they’ve released since 2014’s Godzilla reboot, and as the title boldly announces, this is the one where the new version of Godzilla meets the new version of King Kong. Of course, by “meets”, I mean “fights to the death in the middle of a bunch of skyscrapers”.

Like the previous films in the MonsterVerse, Godzilla vs. Kong is exactly as advertised. It is essentially plot-free, because that would get mean less time for the monsters to try to murder each other. And monster fights are why this film exists. In between fights there is a small amount of filler in the form of serious science-talk about the origins of these monsters and the “hollow earth”, but feel free to ignore it as I did. Because all the science-talk in the world won’t explain why these giant monsters are saving the environment through killing each other, or why the hollow earth is as bright as day when it is literally the centre of the earth. And the next monster fight is just around the corner anyway.

No one will ever mistake Godzilla vs. Kong for a good movie, but it is a movie that you have to respect if only for its self-confidence. This movie is just so damn sure of itself. So damn sure that you have paid to see monster fights and so damn sure that you do not care about plot or character development or anything else that a normal movie contains. And at least in my case, it was right. I did not miss that other stuff one bit. If you have read this far and still want to see this movie, it will not disappoint. Just pick your favourite monster, sit back, and enjoy the show!

The Craft

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Confession: I had never seen this movie before tonight. Sean thinks this is shocking, like I had somehow missed out on some pivotal 90s moment and I’m not a fully formed human adult because of it. I think it’s more shocking that he DID see it, considering that in 1996, he was not a teenage girl.

The Craft in question is witchcraft. Like many young girls before them, social outcasts Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell), and Rochelle (Rachel True) are tempted by the dark arts. It’s a phase that attracts many teenage girls; witchcraft offers a sense of control over your own life that a lot of girls are seeking, a feeling of empowerment and self-actualization that is often denied them. Nancy is oppressed by a cruel step father, Bonnie is covered in scars, and Rochelle is bullied by a swim team-mate. They all wish things could be different, but nothing changes until their coven finds the all-important fourth, new girl Sarah (Robin Tunney), who completes their circle and actually summons some power.

Being teenage girls, they exact revenge on those who have wronged them, but that first taste of power goes to their pointy-hatted heads and things get out of hand.

I always imagined that this was a scary movie and it’s really not, which I should have guessed because my imagination is nearly always much worse than reality (last week I had a dream that I was being chased by a serial killer and it wasn’t a nightmare – what is wrong with me???). But I don’t regret missing out because I really wasn’t. Turns out, this is kind of a crappy movie. I did not need it in my life and chances are you don’t need it in yours. If you’ve seen it – heck, even if you loved it – that’s cool, I get it. Sometimes a movie is just exactly what we needed at that time. It’s not likely to win over any new fans, but that’s okay because *dramatic drumming of the cauldron, please*: there’s a sequel!

Yes, it’s 24 years later, but that’s what we do now. We drop in on movie characters a generation later just to see what’s shaking. We recently got reacquainted with Bill and Ted 29 years after their Bogus Journey. Heck, we recently revisited Mary Poppins 54 years after we first made her acquaintance. Except this time we’re not catching up with old friends so much as making new ones. The Craft: Legacy takes place 20 years after the first one, with all new teenage girls forming a coven, one or some of whom are tangentially related (via photograph anyway) to Nancy (Balk) of the first film. It’s a loose sequel, let’s say, but you don’t have long to wait: you can stream it October 28th.

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Terminator: Dark Fate

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After so many disappointing sequels, I had given up hope that there would ever be another good Terminator film. So I skipped Terminator: Dark Fate in theatres last year, figuring that there were far “better” movies that I would want to drag Jay to in the coming months, rather than another convoluted time travel story of undoing a life-changing apocalypse. Judging from the paltry box office numbers for Dark Fate, I was not the only one who stayed away.

01TERMINATOR-3-jumbo-v2 Since then, of course, a life-changing event of a different sort has occurred. With theatres being shuttered for four months and counting due to the pandemic, Jay and I have seen most of what’s available, especially lately when new digital releases have slowed to a trickle. Even as we were running out of movies and Dark Fate kept begging us to rent it for 99 cents, I passed repeatedly. But when it popped up for free on Amazon Prime this week, I figured I’d give it a shot, and Jay was on board.

Jay remained on board for less than five minutes. I hadn’t even gotten to the end of my Terminator 2 recap when gave up on the movie and the franchise. I pressed on alone, hoping for the movie to not suck. And if the bar is not sucking, Dark Fate can be considered a success. But shouldn’t the bar be a lot higher?

Dark Fate is likely to be the last of the series (though I thought that before) because it has shown that Terminator has nothing new to offer. It may be that the series feels stuck in the past because the original Judgment Day came and went almost 23 years ago without incident. But the real problem is that the series hasn’t evolved at all in response. The new apocalyptic futures provided by the franchise’s ever-changing timeline have just been copies of the original Terminator’s bone-filled landscape, and neither the villains nor the action have come close to any part of the consistently brilliant T2.

Dark Fate was wise to ignore all the other entries since T2 but despite its best efforts it ends up sharing their fate. Dark Fate is not a bad movie but since it doesn’t offer anything new, this franchise still is stuck in the past. In the end, Dark Fate made me wish I had asked Jay to watch T2 last night instead. I bet she would have lasted longer than five minutes with that one.

Jumanji: The Next Level

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I admit I was pleasantly surprised to have genuinely laughed during Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. Even the first (Robin Williams) one didn’t appeal to me but I was happy to take the win. I was expecting significantly less this time around and that’s exactly what it delivered – but The Next Level wasn’t entirely without its charms.

Now, you would think that after last time, Spencer (Alex Wolff) would have learned his lesson: a very definitely do NOT play Jumanji. Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t keep it around for a rainy day. But there’s one little flaw in the plan. Spencer is a dude. And you won’t have failed to notice that every single person who has played and failed at Jumanji is, in fact, a man. Men are stupid. They do not learn. Spencer’s tenuous reason is that life was going just a little too swimmingly, which caused him to lose confidence. As you do. So to cure his insecurity, he goes back into the game. What, it doesn’t make sense? Doesn’t matter! He’s a white male: he doesn’t need one, no one will ever really question him, and don’t you dare to start to think you’ll be the first.

The thing is, last time Spencer got to be Dr. Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) but this time his avatar is Ming (Awkwafina), a master cat burglar even though Spencer’s an anxiety-riddled little mouse. And once his loyal friends jump into the game to save him, they too will get assigned avatars they aren’t prepared for and never could be. And it’s not just the original foursome, but Spencer’s arthritic Grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his longtime frenemy Milo (Danny Glover) as well. It’ll be a real challenge to survive the game with these two dead weights slowing things down, but what choice do they have? The game’s afoot.

Jack Black is very good at pretending to be inhabited by all manner of teenager. Kevin Hart does an entertaining Danny Glover impression. Even Nick Jonas does a passable Colin Hanks. But The Rock? Poor Dwayne Johnson, he CANNOT do a DeVito. Like AT ALL.

The movie attempts to justify itself by being more, and it is – more characters, more whackadoodle scenarios, more adventure – but it’s also considerably less – less funny, less sensical.

By all rights Sean should be reviewing this movie but the poor guy had to leave the theatre at exactly the film’s climax (our sweetheart dog Gertie has been ill, and we were expecting a call from her vet; Sean held his phone in his hand the whole film, waiting for the merest vibration, whereupon he dashed out of the cinema to get the news). If you think it was difficult for him to tell me her results, you don’t know how hard it was for me to tell him how the movie ended. I’ve never felt more idiotic reciting simple facts.

Anyway, there are a few laughs to be had in this Jumanji, but not even enough to fill a 30 second trailer, so multiply that level of discomfort by 246 and you’ll have a general idea of your tolerance for this film.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

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Remember when the Fast & Furious gang were street racers who dabbled in highway robbery? Because the franchise’s writers seem to have totally forgotten. The street races are long gone, replaced with international espionage, world-devastating weapons, and an ever-growing cast of action heroes.

Two of those additional action heroes, Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) and Shaw (Jason Statham), are now spinning off from the main storyline and saving the world without any help from the rest of the franchise’s former street racers. This time, Idris Elba plays the unstoppable cyborg bad guy who’s racing against Hobbs and Shaw to track down a supervirus that Shaw’s superspy sister (Vanessa Kirby) injects herself with. Luckily, the supervirus takes 72 hours to take effect, giving Hobbs and Shaw a chance to find a way to extract it…if only they could put aside their differences and find a way to work together.

Of course Hobbs and Shaw will find a way to work together, but it takes longer than you’d expect. Probably because Vin Diesel isn’t around to remind everyone that they’re family. That’s Hobbs & Shaw in a nutshell: a very competent (though brainless) action movie that more than anything will make you miss Diesel and the rest of his Fast & Furious family.

No matter how many explosions or dune buggies are involved in a showdown with the villain’s helicopter, Hobbs & Shaw doesn’t measure up to the other instalments in this franchise. At best, it’s a teaser trailer for Fast & Furious 9, but the energy that went into Hobbs & Shaw probably would have been better spent on something involving the whole crew. Because when it comes to big, dumb action films, bigger is better, and that’s a lesson I thought this franchise had learned a long time ago.

Men in Black: International

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When did aliens become so boring? In Men in Black: International, everyone is trying to out-deadpan Tommy Lee Jones, and succeeding. There is no excitement, no awe, just a bunch of bored white men joined by a bored diversity hire, all bumbling around England, Paris, and Morocco trying to save the world from an unseen alien menace after an alien prince is killed but not before delivering a MacGuffin to MiB’s newest agent (Tessa Thompson).

As the first three MiB films showed, it can be fun to have one disinterested agent in our lead duo. But those films worked because Will Smith’s junior agent brought enough energy and wonder for the two of them. They worked because Smith’s Agent J was the audience’s stand in, who marvelled and freaked out at the marvelous and freaky stuff onscreen. And also, they worked because for all his surface gruffness, Agent K was actually quite an interesting character, and Jones let us see that just enough to make us invest in him. Unfortunately, MiB:I’s H (Chris Hemsworth) and M (Thompson) both have seen it all before, and even worse, so has the audience. So everyone ends up being disinterested, including the viewer.

The aliens and events in MiB:I simply don’t measure up to what the franchise has previously offered us. The aliens are bland and the stakes are surprisingly low consindering our heroes keep telling us their job is to save the world. Basically, it’s the opposite of what is expected from a summer blockbuster. The only joy in the film comes from Kumail Nanjiani’s pint-sized sidekick, who has all the best lines and whose hilarity highlights the disappointing blandness of everything else.

MiB:I simply has nothing to offer and no reason to be. That’s a particularly damning critique when this franchise’s defining trait has been ridiculousness. MiB:I didn’t need to be a good movie, but it did need to be silly, loud, and campy. Instead, it’s forgettable and unoriginal to the point that I’d have been better off rewatching any of its predecessors. I’m sure they’d have offered more surprises on a rewatch than MiB:I did on my first (and undoubtedly only) viewing.

Glass

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Glass tries to be a different type of superhero movie, it really does. M. Night Shyamalan’s concept of real-world heroes is a solid one. Unbreakable proves that. As far as I’m concerned, Unbreakable is Shyamalan’s best, one of only two very good (i.e., not quite great) movies he’s made. By making Glass an explicit sequel to Unbreakable, Shyamalan invites me to compare the two, and Glass doesn’t measure up. Call it a Glass that’s about a quarter empty. Of course, that’s still three-quarters full.

32ef47e0-1afb-11e9-b6e9-9c4bb39de67f Much of Glass is an extended superhero therapy session for Unbreakable’s David Dunn (Bruce Willis) and Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) along with Split’s Horde (James McAvoy), after the three are apprehended and institutionalized at the start of the film. These therapy scenes, led Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), are very slow. We know something is going to eventually happen, but the pace seemed wasteful because every minute in therapy is a minute less for the showdown between Dunn and the Horde that I’ve been waiting for since the last minute of Split. Even with their slow pace, the therapy scenes are still enjoyable, though, in large part because of McAvoy’s amazing performance as he gives us 24 distinct personalities without falling into ridiculousness.

When the showdown between Dunn and the Horde finally comes, it feels like an afterthought. I wish that Shamalan’s previous movies had been better, not only so less of my time had been wasted watching that trash, but also because it seemed a lot of the missing flash in the showdown was due to Glass’s limited budget. Since realism is an essential part of the film, I didn’t expect fireballs or eye lasers, but I did expect to see something special, even before Price expressed a desire to have the fight televised to show the world that superheroes were real. The YouTube footage of Spider-Man from Captain America: Civil War made me feel like I was watching something amazing. Glass’s footage just wasn’t up to that level and it needed to be for this movie to have a satisfying payoff.

The lack of a satisfying payoff is particularly disappointing once we see how the story plays out. Without getting too spoiler-y, I think it’s safe to say that Shyamalan’s ending pisses away any goodwill left over from Unbreakable. Which is a shame because Shyamalan clearly intended to leave room for more sequels, but in getting there he shattered my desire to see any of them.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

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Well it’s 5 years later and these jerks are ready to go again. I mean, it’s been 10 years since the last movie was released, but it’s been 5 movie years, and the gang’s all here, except not.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has refurbished her mother’s Greek hotel, finally. Too bad her husband Sky (no I cannot believe that’s his actual name) (Dominic Cooper) isn’t around to see it. Is there trouble in paradise?

No matter. She’s planning a huge party to unveil the new space. Everyone’s invited: the MV5BNzU2N2NkMDEtN2IxZS00NjQ3LWI5MGUtOTVmOGIzMjEwN2Y5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNzk5MTY4MTU@._V1_ three dads (Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard), Mom’s best friends (Christine Baranski, Julie Walters) – even Grandma (Cher)! But because one party full of old people is pretty lame (could someone tell Sophie that?), the movie is 80% flashback. Meryl Streep’s character is now played by the lush and nubile Lily James, and we get to watch her have all the unprotected, close together sex with three different men (at least!) alluded to in the first movie, which resulted in all the daddy confusion.

If you liked the first movie, you’ll probably find it in your heart to like this one. If you like ABBA but not their overplayed radio hits, which all sound the same, you’re going to love this sequel, which contains all the songs that were too shitty to make the first cut, plus a couple of weak recreations of the title song, which they just can’t get enough of. Plus, who doesn’t love the spangly, bell-bottomed costumes that go along with it? This second movie is even more contrived than the first, amounting to a less satisfying story. Basically, you’ve got a handful of unknown ABBA songs from deep in the back catalogue, and you’ve got to contort the script to make them fit (see ‘Waterloo’ for an excellent example of this).

Everyone else in the world has been swept away by the sheer joy of a second ABBA musical while I’m still not over the first. Call me grumpy cat – I don’t get the appeal.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

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4129b10ddb987ee9-600x400 Shouldn’t a sequel feel twice as big as the first movie? And shouldn’t the fifth Jurassic Park and the second Jurassic World feel at least five times bigger than a T-Rex and double the size of the giant fish/dino that ate the Indominus Rex? And shouldn’t Chris Pratt have twice as many raptors on his strike force? And shouldn’t Bryce Dallas Howard be running around in even higher heels than last time? Well, yes, all of that should be happening in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but instead, JWFK feels really small.

Part GMO cautionary tale and part dinosaur conservation dissertation, JWFK takes too long to get going and then when it does, there are almost no dinosaurs to be found! Okay, every once in a while a dino pops up and eats one of the bad guys or nearly bites a good guy, but more often then not, the danger facing Howard and Pratt is of the non-dino variety, which as everyone knows is the most boring kind of danger there is.

JWFK is not a terrible movie but it’s also not a good one. It’s more forgettable than anything, fading from memory only an hour or so after I left the theatre, mainly because it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be. For my part, all I wanted it to be was a bunch of loosely-connected dinosaur set pieces, and strangely that is something that JWFK didn’t go for.

One thing JWFK does succeed at is in setting up a whole bunch more sequels, so the studio execs are probably happy with the end product. But for those of us who aren’t getting a cut of the box office, it isn’t nearly as satisfying. Maybe next time.