All posts by Stephen Sanchez

Movie Trailer #2 – Wrath of the Titans

Clash of the Titans was a decent enough movie. I went into the theater to see it, knowing to only expect a dumb action movie, and I was well satisfied by it upon leaving. It wasn’t a movie that got better the second time you watch, but you just have to take it for what it was. The next installment entitled Wrath of the Titans looks to outdo it’s predecessor in every way. Even though we saw Medusa and the Kraken in Clash, now we get to see the titans whom the Gods imprisoned as they are breaking free to wreak havoc on the world, and Perseus seems to be the only one who can stop them. He’ll fight a hydra, the cyclops, a minotaur and many other mythological beasts in this one and the action throughout the trailer looks pretty phenomenal compared to the first one.

Much of the cast returns including Sam Worthington (now with more hair!), Liam Neeson as Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as Hades. I’ve noticed in the trailers that Hades has lost his raspy voice which so vexed me in the first one. Did they hear complaints about this or is it just the fact in the movie that Hades is growing stronger through everyone’s mistrust and dissent? Among those returning are also a few new faces to grace the Titans scene. The obviously beautiful and terribly underutilized Rosamund Pike will play warrior Queen Andromeda  and Billy Nighy takes a turn at Godhood as Hephaestus.

 

The movie promises at least to be entertaining due to the crazy amount of action and visuals shown in all of the trailers up to this point. But do we really just want another dumb, action popcorn flick out of the filmmakers? The first movie was entertaining but lacked the heart and soul of a movie you care to watch more than once. I’m hoping they do a little better job with story and character development in this movie rather than waste time with 3D conversion and constant mindless action.

Transformers 4: A More Serious Approach on Mass Robot Mayhem

It would seem that Michael Bay may be seeing the error of his ways. I remember by the time that Revenge of the Fallen had found it’s way out of theaters that I would ask questions like- “Why do we need the human characters?” “Can we just have a movie with only Transformers in it?” “Why all the forced toilet humor?” And even though it seemed like Bay had started to tone it down a little and just focus on his craft of blowing shit up, Dark of the Moon still had that wasted human element to it. I liked the character of Sam Witwicky and think that Shia LaBoeuf is a great actor, but after three movies of the character, his parents and his girlfriends, I’m kind of ready for a Transformers movie just about…. Transformers. It seems like the movies are at least 70% CGI with the Autobots and Decepticons onscreen for the majority of the movie so why not just have a movie focusing on their war against one another? I don’t mind the human characters acting as support but I don’t need a lovesick kid running around trying to prove his self worth to everyone.

Now come reports that the next Tranformers movie will still indeed be a sequel to Dark of the Moon, but will feature less comedy and not so many human characters. Josh Duhamel has been pretty candid about the fact that neither himself nor any other actors have been contacted in regards to the fourth Tranformers movie, courtesy of E! Online:

“I don’t think anybody’s doing it,” Josh Duhamel told us last night at the launch party for Sony PlayStation’s new PS Vita portable entertainment system. “I know Shia [LaBoeuf]’s not doing it. I don’t think Tyrese or Rosie [Huntington-Whiteley] or anybody else is doing it.”

“Whenever these movies make that much money they’re going to make as many as they can,” he said. “[But] I haven’t heard anything about it. They haven’t called me.”

 If there were human characters that I didn’t mind, it would have been the soldiers including those played by Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson because they were all business about killing Decepticons and not how their girlfriend thought about their socioeconomic status.

I’d love to see the Autobots engaging the Decepticons on different planets throughout the galaxy as they did on the cartoon and the Transformers animated movie in the 80’s. I honestly doubt that the budget would be affected by having less “real” shooting locations, especially with how much money the studio knows that it’s going to make off the franchise. They could make the fourth movie about Optimus Prime trying to find his inner human whilst also looking for a female Transformer to settle down with and the movie would still gross almost a billion dollars worldwide. We can only hope that Michael Bay remains serious about toning down the cheesiness and five year old humor in his Transformer movies until the movie is finished. Am I expecting some sort of Academy Award winning performance from Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime? No. Nor am I looking for a deadly serious movie with the complexity of something like Inception because we all know that Transformers is a popcorn summer action flick. Just give us something true to the Transformers mythos and we’ll be happy.

John Carter Sequel Already in the Works: Too Soo

As it goes with many of Hollywood’s potential blockbuster films, Disney hopes to make John Carter (of Mars) a very successful trilogy that will fill up their coffers even more. After the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise took off and started murdering box office records, Disney began developing new movies to add similar success to their name as Pirates and even National Treasure. Tron: Legacy was one of those movies, which despite underperforming for Disney is still on it’s way to sequel-dom. Prince of Persia didn’t fair so well and will more than likely not garner a sequel.

Continue reading John Carter Sequel Already in the Works: Too Soo

Star Trek 2 Set Photos: Benedict Cumberbatch!

So here’s a couple of quick little glimpses of Benedict Cumberbatch on the set of Star Trek 2, as he is playing the new supposed mystery villain in the forthcoming (And eagerly anticipated) sci-fi sequel. But then again maybe it won’t be such a mystery once his name is revealed. I’m sure some mindless Trekkies will blurt out a dozen theories about which character he is supposed to be from the old show. Check out the first picture with Cumberbatch feeling the wrath of the Vulcan Death Grip:

Our next photo shows him being held at phaser point by the beautiful Zoe Saldana who plays Uhura in the new Trek films:

One can only hope that we’ll soon have a trailer for this bad lad. 2009’s Star Trek was by far one of the best movies that year. It re-invigorated that franchise and brought in tons of new fans, myself included. I always hated Star Trek, but absolutely loved the new one. Not to mention Benedict Cumberbatch from BBC’s Sherlock is in it to play the newest villain. I’ve not watched any of Sherlock, but Dr. Kronner talks like he would totally make out with Buttercup Cumberbatch because the show is so amazingly awesome. I’m sure in the coming days more and more set photos will begin hitting the web and eventually plot details. Stay tuned for more info as we get it!

Star Wars: The Clone Wars 4.19 -‘Massacre’ Review

The Clone Wars is wrapping up its fourth season with a bang as the first of the last four episodes airs in the form of “Massacre“. We see Ventress making her return to Dathomir and swearing full allegiance to the Night Sisters of Dathomir, forsaking the Sith. Count Dooku in the meantime has ordered General Grievous to strike hard at the planet and rid the galaxy of the witches. These rich Sith types just tend to hold a major grudge ya know?

https://youtu.be/zFcZd2502ik

It was actually kind of hard to decide which group of scumbags to root for. I mean, Grievous and the Separatists are a no brainer, they suck. But the Night Sisters are equally as shady, with the hairless harpy leading the charge of laser bow-wielding Night Sisters and even a contingent of zombie Night Sisters. Yes, you heard me…. zombie Night Sisters. They were definitely creepy as hell, but nowhere near as creepy as the wrinkled old Night Sister who is even older than Mother Talzin. I thought Talzin’s double-layered voice was unnerving enough but the oldest Night Sister blew it away with all of her crazy chanting.

So, even though the battle itself was pretty awesome there was no indication of why it would be best if one side or the other was to win. I’m actually a little sick of Grievous being bested over and over again in combat, but even as he lost to Ventress after a short spar he went on quite the killing spree and savagely killed the super old Night Sister and her guards. One might wonder what happened to Mother Talzin but I’m sure we’ve not seen the last of her.

Clone Wars - Zombies

The force magic of the Night Sisters was an interesting thing to see, albeit some was a little ridiculous. I find it curious how Talzin was able to procure a lock of Dooku’s hair, but it’s a minute detail. The episode certainly did live up to its name. It truly did turn into a massacre as not one Night Sister except Ventress was left alive by the episode’s end. Again, I’m not too broken up about this and I can’t feel much sympathy for Ventress being left all alone. We’ll certainly see where she lands next episode as it appears she may be taking on the role of a bounty hunter!

Stayed tuned next week for the continuation of the Clone Wars ending arc. I give the episode 2 out of 5 grizzlies, great visuals but I just couldn’t find myself caring who won this round on the Clone Wars. Bring on the Maul Bros in a couple weeks!

Spartacus Season 2: Vengeance – Episode 5 “Libertus”

*FULL SPOILERS FOLLOW*

This episode of Spartacus reminded me a whole lot of the finale of season one, Blood and Sand. It starts off with Oenomaus, Crixus and Rashko facing death in the arena Ad-Gladium…. at the hands of Gannicus and several other gladiators. Yes Gannicus is back and the episode begins with him and Oenomaus exchanging sword blows and then the screen cutting away to days earlier as the Blood and Sand finale started with Spartacus and Crixus fighting before it showed us events of the day previous. I always thought that was a very cool aspect of that season and I am glad to see they brought it back in this season. However let’s not see that it gets overused or anything.

One storyline that I thought wouldn’t come to a head so soon was that of the game being played by Illythia against her husband Glaber. Thanks to the crafty machinations of Lucretia and Ashur, Glaber comes to find out that Illythia’s plans to abort their child and her further plans of dissolving marriage to get with Verinius soon follows. It’s clear that Glaber isn’t going to let this pass and it would seem even with Lucretia playing both sides, for the moment she will help Glaber out to somehow get back at Illythia. I still think that Glaber is going to get with Seppia after sufficiently humiliating Illythia and Verinius. Glaber is actually becoming a proper villain thanks to his “loving” wife after what he did to her father. I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the moment when Glaber told him that he wasn’t the fool that him and his daughter believe him to be. I believe this leaves Illythia in a bit of a tight spot after revealing her plans to Glaber. TOO BAD!

The plan of Spartacus and the others to infiltrate the arena to save Crixus and the others was predictable, yet awesomely done. I love the arena scenes in the show. The music combined with the visuals of the crowd and the frantic camera work make for quite the adrenaline rush while watching. There was plenty of suspense and tension during the rescue scene too and poor Rashkos was a casualty. Sure the guy was a savage bastard but I was starting to get used to him in this season, but someone was bound to buy it in that scene. The best part besides all of the arena action was most definitely Gannicus being back in the show. Gods of the Arena was a great fill in for our wait for Season 2, and Dustin Clare was definitely a big part of how great that mini season was. Gannicus is by far not the same laughing warrior we saw in Gods of the Arena. Sure, he still loves drink and whores but he is clearly haunted to this very day by what happened to Melitta in the house of Batiatus. He certainly was a little thrown and the tension was palpable in the arena when Oenomaus confronted him about it. One would wonder how they’ll get along in the next episode. If they survived! But come on, they had to survive.

This was an excellent follow up to the awesomeness of episode 3 and I give it a 5 out of 5 bears for sure. I can’t wait to tune in next week and see where Spartacus and the boys stand in their road to war with the Romans. And not to mention the preview for next week showed Gannicus fighting Spartacus! Madness!