blockbusted

three highly anticipated blockbusters of hollywood’s summer are currently running in our theaters. so far, two and a half of them are duds. ho-hum…

mi:iii

sweet potato: phil hoffman’s davian, a very efficient four-man IMF team, good action scenes, and… that’s about it.
rotten potato: tom cruise’s ethan hunt, unbalanced storyline, too “alias”-y, rabbit’s foot

whereas brian de palma used elements of the thriller/spy/conspiracy movie genre in translating and updating mission impossible from tv to movie; and john woo practically made face/off twice: the one with travolta and cage (a cool trip, doves and all) and the one with cruise and bean; jj abrams basically just turned alias the tv series into a movie. he substituted sydney bristow with ethan hunt, the cia/sd6 with imf, rimbaldi’s artifacts with the rabbit’s foot. good thing he tossed phil hoffman in the mix.

see where i’m going with this?

the da vinci code

sweet potato: ian mckellen’s sir leigh teabing, paul bettany’s silas (the few minutes we see him)
rotten potato: really, do you want me to spell it out?

the book is better than the movie. and book is badly written. that's all that must be said.

x-men iii: the last stand

sweet potato: badass magneto, badass phoenix, badass wolverine, badass beast, racism/the otherness of the other
rotten potato: angel, cyclops, storm, rogue, very short 140-minute movie, underdeveloped narrative and ideas

this should really be a 220-minute movie, so that (1) the other mutants can have more time to flex their muscles, dialogues, and storylines [angel just flew! that's it!] and {2} the weight of the issues and drama can be developed more, hence justifying the violence of the action scenes.

instead, we have a 140-minuter, a quickie.

make no mistake my brothers, the action was good. but the movie was rushed; it had bad lines (that could’ve been remedied with 40-50 more minutes), and carelessly placed scenes and subplots (that could’ve also been remedied with the missing 40-50 minutes). rushed, rushed, rushed. by the dude who made rush hour 1 & 2.


of the three movies so far, only x-men iii had substance, albeit not fully developed.

i guess superman (and bryan singer) will have to come save this summer.