Month: June 2014

The Dark Knight Review

Posted on by John Hayeck

Not only is The Dark Knight the greatest superhero movie ever made, but also one of the greatest crime-thrillers; and not to mention my 2nd favorite movie of all time.

So after Batman Begins changed the game for superhero movies to follow, The Dark Knight was somehow able to do even better. At the end of Batman Begins, you see Jim Gordon give Batman a Joker card and give a brief description of the havoc this new criminal is wreaking, which sets up for this movie. The first move I have to admire is waiting to put the Joker in the second movie. It can be so easy for an origin story to do the main villain first (1990 Batman and 2002 Spider-Man) that Christopher Nolan actually thought it through to wait. Because in this movie, it actually makes sense: the Mob is still tearing Gotham apart, and the universe feels like it’s expanding as more aspects are explored (such as Gotham’s D.A., who we’ll get to later).

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Why I’m Excited: Star Wars Episode VII

Posted on by John Hayeck

Guys let’s face it: Star Wars Episode VII is probably gonna be pretty awesome.

It’s funny because we have every indication it won’t be, yet I, and most of the Internet, are still rooting for it. Seriously, if you break it down there are a lot of reasons this movie couldn’t succeed.

First let’s examine the prequel trilogy. I was one of those kids growing up who saw A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi first, so I could recognize that the prequels weren’t good. I, as a kid, knew Jar Jar Binks was the most annoying thing ever and that Hayden Christensen was a horrible human being. This could just be a repeat of the prequels!  (For a fun picture that completely summarizes the prequels, scroll all the way to the bottom!)

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Why I’m Worried: Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice

Posted on by John Hayeck

When I’m not reviewing shows or movies, or there’s no breaking news for you about what’s going on in the entertainment industry, I’ll bring a post entitled Why I’m Excited or Why I’m Worried: (Insert Movie Title Here). I was originally going to discuss the year of 2015, then the year of 2016, but while writing the 2016 post, I realized how much there is just to talk about for the sequel to Man of Steel alone.

Now when they announced there would be a sequel to Man of Steel I said: well duh.

This was meant to completely jump start DC’s film universe, and a month later, they actually found an even more clever way of doing so: putting Batman in the movie. I understood at that time that Christian Bale wouldn’t be in the sequel or Justice League, which was a bit of a loss, but I said: alright, this is DC’s chance to prove me wrong, maybe Bale isn’t the definitive Batman forever and ever.

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3 Superhero Movies that Revolutionized the Genre

Posted on by John Hayeck

X-Men (2000)

After the 1997 building-jump that was Batman and Robin (more on that later), there was a slight lull on superhero movies. Up to this point, we had never seen X-Men on the big screen before, so if you add this to the Batman and Robin train wreck, you have a pretty large potential to fail with X-Men. I believe that if X-Men was a piece of crap, then not only would X-Men have stopped right there, but most superhero movies would have ceased for another few years. However, X-Men set the stepping stones to what is still being expanded upon today. X-Men took real-looking characters and made them actually exist. They established a universe in which all of these X-Men existed and where they would actually grow and be real. Comic book-ish movies are fine for comic book-ish fun, but X-Men really took the initiative to begin definitive growth, and a successful franchise, leading us into the superhero worlds that every other superhero film sets up today.

 

Batman Begins (2005)

So I think of Batman Begins a lot like I think of the PLOT to The Dark Knight Rises. Batman has been gone for eight years in both, and he now has to rise up and prove who he truly is. I wasn’t around for Batman and Robin when it was released, so I don’t have the “praise God in heaven, Batman’s back!” thing that most fans did when seeing this, but I do have an equally valid point. Not only did Batman Begins revolutionize what it meant to be a superhero movie with its dark and realistic story, but it also was a revolution for movies in general. After Batman Begins and its successor the Dark Knight, films started to add a grittier and more bitter feel for added realism. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s overkill, in either case, you can thank Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight Trilogy’s realism has inspired countless film series to do the same in adding a darker tone and film method techniques. What Batman Begins sets up, and what the entire Trilogy continues, is not only the future of the superhero genre, but it’s the future of most crime-thrillers. And for launching that, we can thank Batman Begins.

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Now You See Me Review

Posted on by John Hayeck

Now You See Me is one of those movies that can described in just one word: cool.

This 2013 film has some of the most clever writing and witty dialogue I’ve seen in a movie in a long time, maybe ever. And that writing is really what makes this movie worth while. So many films nowadays have less-than-superior writing and that overall less-than-superiority brings those films down as a whole. Now You See Me, though, reminds us that some movies still have great writing, in the sense: nothing is irrelevant. You see this more in TV shows, but it can still happen in movies, where there’s a plotline that goes NO WHERE. Dexter Season 8 is an example where the entire thing is one useless plothole after another. Now You See Me really shows that there is no extra frosting on the cake: everything is important and it’s just the right amount.

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