Escape to the Movies: Red 2

[Vedli]

Bob is now just nostalgic for own things and let's his personal nostalgia prevent him making an honest judgement on what are actually pretty good films.

Translation: honest judgment = liking, pretty good films = films I like. But hey if you need emotional validation from your critics that badly by all means stop watching Bob. Personally I don't feel the need to make passive aggressive insults at the man just because we have different tastes on some things.

On another note when did this idea start knocking about that Bob doesn't like The Dark Knight franchise? Because he said Dark Knight Rises was a bit of a disappointment? Because he sometimes makes jokes about the dark tone in order to contrast them with other movies in the genre? My god you people must be very thin skinned if you can't handle even the smallest joke been made about those movies. For the record I was (having read and watched all his stuff here) under the opinion he thought the first one was good, the second one great and the third so-so (bad when compared to the second one but which even Bob felt was unfair since the second one was "Lightning in a bottle". If someone can point to the article where he said I thought the Dark Knight franchise sucked I read it and update my opinion.

It's not that he's said it's bad...he just keeps bringing things up OVER and OVER and OVER again in every episode and it's clear he doesn't like it just for the fact he brings the films up so much. And the fact that it's brought up so much goes from "okay Bob, I respect your opinion" to "will you please shut the fuck up that you don't like TDK/TASM/MoS ffs this is the 50th time you've told" and his reviews are just becoming annoying, irritating, fanboy rants.

I can respect that he doesn't like something, I can't respect that he has to bring it up in every single review and being an arse about it. Either way, my problem is more about his treatment of Spider-Man than TDK.

And film Bob enjoys, I think are average, and ones he hates, I enjoy...so why should I be watching his reviews then?

Ok, again, I don't get that impression when he mentions TDK and even if he doesn't like them hate might be too strong a word but to each his own. As for the final point you probably shouldn't be watching his reviews if there just going to piss you off. I know I wouldn't.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

All I took from this was: Disney Planes.

WTF?

And apparently it is just the first installment of an EPIC trilogy. God help cinema and god help us all

Also the main character is voiced by Dane Cook.

I don't understand... weren't both Cars and Cars 2 more or less universally panned by critics? Isn't the franchise considered Pixar's worst?

Why would Disney accept a new franchise in a very similar vein?! I'm assuming they made more money on merchandising than the actual movies, that's usually how Disney rolls these days. /cynicism

 

[endtherapture]

Bob is now just nostalgic for own things and let's his personal nostalgia prevent him making an honest judgement on what are actually pretty good films.

Translation: honest judgment = liking, pretty good films = films I like. But hey if you need emotional validation from your critics that badly by all means stop watching Bob. Personally I don't feel the need to make passive aggressive insults at the man just because we have different tastes on some things.

On another note when did this idea start knocking about that Bob doesn't like The Dark Knight franchise? Because he said Dark Knight Rises was a bit of a disappointment? Because he sometimes makes jokes about the dark tone in order to contrast them with other movies in the genre? My god you people must be very thin skinned if you can't handle even the smallest joke been made about those movies. For the record I was (having read and watched all his stuff here) under the opinion he thought the first one was good, the second one great and the third so-so (bad when compared to the second one but which even Bob felt was unfair since the second one was "Lightning in a bottle". If someone can point to the article where he said I thought the Dark Knight franchise sucked I read it and update my opinion.

It's not that he's said it's bad...he just keeps bringing things up OVER and OVER and OVER again in every episode and it's clear he doesn't like it just for the fact he brings the films up so much. And the fact that it's brought up so much goes from "okay Bob, I respect your opinion" to "will you please shut the fuck up that you don't like TDK/TASM/MoS ffs this is the 50th time you've told" and his reviews are just becoming annoying, irritating, fanboy rants.

I can respect that he doesn't like something, I can't respect that he has to bring it up in every single review and being an arse about it. Either way, my problem is more about his treatment of Spider-Man than TDK.

And film Bob enjoys, I think are average, and ones he hates, I enjoy...so why should I be watching his reviews then?

Ok, again, I don't get that impression when he mentions TDK and even if he doesn't like them hate might be too strong a word but to each his own. As for the final point you probably shouldn't be watching his reviews if there just going to piss you off. I know I wouldn't.

That's what the point of my post was...

 

[Strain42]

All I took from this was: Disney Planes.

WTF?

And apparently it is just the first installment of an EPIC trilogy. God help cinema and god help us all

Also the main character is voiced by Dane Cook.

I don't understand... weren't both Cars and Cars 2 more or less universally panned by critics? Isn't the franchise considered Pixar's worst?

Why would Disney accept a new franchise in a very similar vein?! I'm assuming they made more money on merchandising than the actual movies, that's usually how Disney rolls these days. /cynicism

Well A. It probably doesn't hurt them that the Cars franchise probably makes more money than any Pixar movie ever (possibly even Toy Story) in terms of merchandising. I doubt any of the companies are complaining there, and

B. We have to remember that while fans and critics may not have loved them, John Lasseter has made it quite clear that he heavily enjoys the Cars franchise. A lot of people (not necessarily you) seem to think that Cars 2 was just the product of Disney forcing them to make a sequel, but if you really read the interviews with John, it's pretty clear that this was a movie he really wanted to do.

And Pixar has ALWAYS been a company that's said "We make movies that we'd wanna watch." So that, coupled with all the money and merchandising does a pretty good job of explaining how the film ended up being.

And since Lasseter is also acting as Executive Producer on Planes, despite it not being a Pixar film, he clearly has some interest in the project.

 

[Nimcha]

I don't understand the thing about The Conjuring. I'm unfamiliar with how the American rating system works, R is apparently the highest restriction? Is that a good or bad thing? Why would you then review it? Nothing makes sense!

 

[Corran006]

Yeah summer 2013 has been pretty lackluster so far as movies goes.

Also now with earthbound out no one has no reason "not" to own a Wii U.

I would never touch The Wii U with a 10 foot pole. All Nintendo does not is grind its gears over and over on Mario/Zelda and metroid. One game is not going to make a system. Let me know when Nintendo does something new for a change. now we got
3
Super Mario 3D World give me a break and some up with something new.

 

[ShadowHamster]

I don't understand the thing about The Conjuring. I'm unfamiliar with how the American rating system works, R is apparently the highest restriction? Is that a good or bad thing? Why would you then review it? Nothing makes sense!

It's really not good or bad. R means that it is restricted from viewing by people under 17, but that they can still see it with a Guardian present. My parents let me see plenty of R rated movies in my youth, but it was a warning for them to watch it first, and see if it was appropriate in their view for their children. The entire rating system is like that, not really summarized into pure censorship, but rather a system to tell you where a movie is going.

R is also not the highest restriction, that would be NC-17 for normal films, with a final rating of X(also known as XXX) for films that are made for pure pornography.(although we get into a debate here, because there have been movies with an X rating who's content wasn't complete smut, and were actually fairly good movies. The original Lolita comes to mind off the top of my head, which is a dark comedy.) AS for why someone would or wouldn't give a review of The Conjuring based on rating? I have no idea and I'm from the states.

 

[ellers07]

The original superman movies:
-Are blatantly sexist! Lois gets a Pulitzer for what? Being a woman superman likes? It's never explained, and is instead lazy exposition, but even better, it's exposition superman will use to do stupid stuff. How stupid? The original superman(and the only good one by my account) has superman fly around the world to reverse time to save Lois from an earthquake. He saves NOBODY ELSE in that time! We watch a gas station blow up, we watch cars hit water, and where as Superman gets to the scene and saves who he can, he only goes BACK IN TIME FOR THE GIRL! It gets steadily worse every film after that, even including Superman Returns which tried hard to pander!
-Has superman erase Lois's Mind with a KISS!
-Superman still kills Zod. He kils Zod, Zod's girlfriend, and a retarded gentlemen. Superman uses Texas Justice!
-Has Lex Luthor scheme up a Land Trade by sinking part of america! -_-
-In Superman Returns, superman has still erased Lois's mind, but Lois is still total down with her baby obviously being superman's even though she can't recall them ever doing the nasty! She's in fact happy they did it even though SHE CLEARLY CAN'T RECALL IT!!!!!!

The new Superman is not perfect, it's far from it. It's symbolic, expositional, and showy. It's still the best Superman that has hit film...sorry.

Don't be sorry when you're absolutely correct. Man of Steel may not be a perfect movie, but it seems to be getting a lot of undeserved hate. You're absolutely right that it is the best of the Superman movies and I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

On topic, I'm a little confused why Red and Red 2 are given the ok for being fun action movies with a cool cast, when Bob hates the Expendables films for doing pretty much the same thing. Aren't both series really just excuses to get an unlikely cast together to have fun with? Maybe I'm missing something.

 

[Cpt. Slow]

Lately Bob starts to sound more and more like Bill Lumbergh. When it comes to films he doesn't like nor doesn't really hate, is going to be a benchmark with this film from now on.

Maybe time to quit your job at the Escapist, because trust me. As long as Hollywood starts to squeeze out unnecessary sequels like RED 2, it's only going down hill from there.

Retarded films like Epic Movie are going to be blasted in batched numbers in about 5 years, creativity will be lingering around small budget Indie flicks.

In other words: Mike Judge his vision [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/] of the future is coming closer to us, sooner than we think.

 

[CelestDaer]

I had two problems with Man of Steel: 1) It was way the heck too loud. There was no reason for the insane level of noise just to fill the noise. Heck, I'm partially deaf in one ear and it was still so overbearingly loud...
2) The scene where Superman goes to talk to the preacher, and then we get that pan up to the stained glass window of Jesus. Subtle!
Those being said, I still enjoyed the movie, just... gonna wait until I can control the volume myself to see it again.
Oddly enough? I had no trouble with how loud Pacific Rim was, but it wasn't just loud for the sake of loud. It fit the moments.

Actually, had the same problem with both scenes. I liked his talk with the preacher as so much as the preacher gave a good answer, but the whole scene wasn't just cheesy, it was literally bending over backwards to be smermily nice to everyone...
Similarly, I had a friend go with me who missed 15 minutes because the noise was too much.

Still loved the hell out of this movie. Every scene could be filtered into a Comic scene, it was stylized and cool, and I thought they got the humble goodness of the big blue space jesus down. I don't understand what people were wanting. I really don't know what you were expecting from this film?(This message is not to quoted poster, I fully agree with him/her)

The thing about that church scene, for me, was just how out and out blatant it was being, it's like, "Hey, just in case you didn't know already? Superman is one big Jesus allegory!" I actually leaned over to my roommate during that scene and said out loud, "Subtle!" And there were a couple of moments like that, to me, that were just hammering a bit too hard on the blatant side of the movie making/story telling. Almost as if the writers didn't really know how else to handle the scene, so they went straight for the easy route.

 

[ShadowHamster]

I had two problems with Man of Steel: 1) It was way the heck too loud. There was no reason for the insane level of noise just to fill the noise. Heck, I'm partially deaf in one ear and it was still so overbearingly loud...
2) The scene where Superman goes to talk to the preacher, and then we get that pan up to the stained glass window of Jesus. Subtle!
Those being said, I still enjoyed the movie, just... gonna wait until I can control the volume myself to see it again.
Oddly enough? I had no trouble with how loud Pacific Rim was, but it wasn't just loud for the sake of loud. It fit the moments.

Actually, had the same problem with both scenes. I liked his talk with the preacher as so much as the preacher gave a good answer, but the whole scene wasn't just cheesy, it was literally bending over backwards to be smermily nice to everyone...
Similarly, I had a friend go with me who missed 15 minutes because the noise was too much.

Still loved the hell out of this movie. Every scene could be filtered into a Comic scene, it was stylized and cool, and I thought they got the humble goodness of the big blue space jesus down. I don't understand what people were wanting. I really don't know what you were expecting from this film?(This message is not to quoted poster, I fully agree with him/her)

The thing about that church scene, for me, was just how out and out blatant it was being, it's like, "Hey, just in case you didn't know already? Superman is one big Jesus allegory!" I actually leaned over to my roommate during that scene and said out loud, "Subtle!" And there were a couple of moments like that, to me, that were just hammering a bit too hard on the blatant side of the movie making/story telling. Almost as if the writers didn't really know how else to handle the scene, so they went straight for the easy route.

To give maybe a different perspective on this, consider how Snyder does all his work. He uses big hulking symbology like a club because the visual of it is what is being showcased. He's probably fully aware that that scene wasn't at all subtle, nor did he want it to be. I imagine in his minds image he wants it to be more blatant than a sore thumb. He's literally pulled things like that in every movie, and usually uses it to emphasize the moment. Zach Snyder makes movies like there is a guy off to the side taking photos at opportunistic times so that they can make a graphic novel out of it simply by applying that silly sketch filter. This is why I hope Warner Bros lets him do other superhero movies, because I feel that style lends itself to the medium considering it's roots.

I like the exposition. Think about the part where the Kryptonians destroy smallville, imagine the scene where his lieutenant hits like three soldiers as a comic panel and it pulls off being a classic "flash" scene.(where he beats up multiple guys at once, but all you see is the blur.) A lot of people compare it to Dragon Ball Z(both possitively and negativelY), but I think he just looked at fight scenes in comics and said to himself "How do I put this up there?". He is not a subtle film maker, but subtlety isn't everything.

Joss Whedon is a subtle film maker. He throws three or four "in" jokes into every scene he can, and the only reason it works is because the characters flow naturally and the jokes come out naturally. Zach Snyder(and to some extent Nolan) are about exposition. That is what they do well.

 

[RTR]

Wasn0t Lee Byung-Hun also Storm Shadow?

 

[Falsename]

Bob... You didn't grow up in the 'Golden Age' of video games. You were there during it's infancy,and hardly can be considered a 'golden age'. That's why no one takes what you say seriously, because you're more biased than a Jehovah's Witness.

Reviews should be: "This is why"

Your reviews: "I'm right!"

 

[Gallyrat]

I gotta say that I'm also getting tired of all the hate Bob is throwing in the direction of The Amazing Spider-Man and Star Trek, and I guess I can add Man of Steel to that list as well. Pacific Rim was entertaining, not great, and Iron Man 3 was just...the definition of meh.

Star Trek was fun! It was exciting! I could never get into any of the shows, so you can all throw fruit at me I suppose, but I remember walking away from the movie with a profound sense of wanting more - and if that isn't the best thing you can say about a movie, I don't know what is. Say what you want about JJ Abrams, but he's done a great job with revitalizing a franchise that was pretty much dead until his involvement.

The Amazing Spider-Man? I've got to admit to never liking the Raimi films. They focused on the worst aspects of Peter's character to me, and I sat through those movies thinking that this guy, who I've loved and admired ever since I was a little kid and picked up "Spider-Man Essential #1" is an unlikable whiner. The Amazing Spider-Man brought back some much needed levity to the character, and stayed closer to the comics than Raimi's Spider-Man ever did.

Iron Man 3 was just...I got halfway through the movie and suddenly realized that it felt like the movie had never really started. It was just so bland, especially when compared to the 1st.

Pacific Rim had some of the best action scenes I've seen in a movie, and I admit to being on the edge of my seat whenever the Jaegers and the Kaiju were fighting. But everything in between was a slog. The plot was cliche, the dialogue was just as bad, and the characters were flat and uninteresting. Quirky scientist guy is smart! And quirky! And tough, battle-hardened main character is tough, and battle-hardened! And asian girl is...well, she really wants to fight giant monsters! But she sucks at it! But now she's good, inexplicably! Don't get me wrong, it was a good movie and I hope it gets sequels, but it's hardly deserving of the massive praise Bob seems intent on giving it.

Just my $0.02

 

[ShadowHamster]

I gotta say that I'm also getting tired of all the hate Bob is throwing in the direction of The Amazing Spider-Man and Star Trek, and I guess I can add Man of Steel to that list as well. Pacific Rim was entertaining, not great, and Iron Man 3 was just...the definition of meh.

Star Trek was fun! It was exciting! I could never get into any of the shows, so you can all throw fruit at me I suppose, but I remember walking away from the movie with a profound sense of wanting more - and if that isn't the best thing you can say about a movie, I don't know what is. Say what you want about JJ Abrams, but he's done a great job with revitalizing a franchise that was pretty much dead until his involvement.

The Amazing Spider-Man? I've got to admit to never liking the Raimi films. They focused on the worst aspects of Peter's character to me, and I sat through those movies thinking that this guy, who I've loved and admired ever since I was a little kid and picked up "Spider-Man Essential #1" is an unlikable whiner. The Amazing Spider-Man brought back some much needed levity to the character, and stayed closer to the comics than Raimi's Spider-Man ever did.

Iron Man 3 was just...I got halfway through the movie and suddenly realized that it felt like the movie had never really started. It was just so bland, especially when compared to the 1st.

Pacific Rim had some of the best action scenes I've seen in a movie, and I admit to being on the edge of my seat whenever the Jaegers and the Kaiju were fighting. But everything in between was a slog. The plot was cliche, the dialogue was just as bad, and the characters were flat and uninteresting. Quirky scientist guy is smart! And quirky! And tough, battle-hardened main character is tough, and battle-hardened! And asian girl is...well, she really wants to fight giant monsters! But she sucks at it! But now she's good, inexplicably! Don't get me wrong, it was a good movie and I hope it gets sequels, but it's hardly deserving of the massive praise Bob seems intent on giving it.

Just my $0.02

I can agree with you on everything but two topics. Star Trek, the original JJ Abrams movie, was indeed my favorite movie of that year. It was exciting, well shot, properly updated, payed service to it's roots. It was genuinely fun and good, Star Trek II I did not feel this way about. I found it pandering frankly, using sound bits directly from 9/11, and including an ode to the victims at the end, that part felt fake to me, and pandering. I did NOT like adding this shadey element to what is supposed to be the best of us in the future. Star Trek is a mature story that talks about a hope that smart people wish for. A world where we get along and just get out there and explore! The first one touches base with this concept, briefly, in it's world building, and the second one takes all that and rips it down to explain a conspiracy that wasn't needed in the face of what you already had.

To me, they messed up a sure-fire thing. They found the PERFECT Khan actor in Benedict Cumberbatch(IMHO) and they could have run with that, but instead they try to complicate the story with another fucking military coup. I do not begrudge you liking the movie, but wanted to state where it fell away from me, because I ALMOST agree with you as long as we are talking about the original.

Pacific Rim? Well first, the Asian girl didn't suck at fighting giant monsters, she was incredibly talented at it, but suffering from PTSD from the attack that probably took her family as a little girl. Getting into the suit was facing a mental injury, and although I'm not going to tell you this exposition was perfect, I will say that it was serviceable. Serviceable is what I found Pacific Rim's non-fighting scenes. It was a movie that didn't WANT to be more than that, and I thought it delivered exactly what it needed to. I know you said you didn't hate it, and found the action amazing, but I'm okay with a giant ode to old cinema taking archetypes that belong to those old stories and reusing them. It's a context thing for me. I'd rate Pacific Rim 4 stars for WHAT IT WAS but what it was wasn't even trying to be the best thing ever.

It's characters serve a purpose, and they move on. I don't know how many people complained about the Russians, when they are in there for, what, 5 minutes? They were used to establish the identity of other pilots who were throw away enough to die later, because Pacific Rim is paying homage. Something we have trouble doing today. In fact, Bob is pretty steady with his opinions, because that is what I assume he wanted from Superman, homage. He wanted Superman to actively remember his roots, although I personally believe this is a problem with MoS I also don't think it's as BIG a problem as a lot of Critics do in the face of WHAT they did, which was bring it to the forefront. I had fun with what they showed me, and enjoyed the whole movie as an over the top, larger than life romp. I understand some of the criticism but feel it's over-exagerated.

Lots of people want to quit out on Bob, I can watch someone with differing opinions, and then state why I differ from theirs without hating on them or feeling insulted. Bob didn't say people are dumb for liking MoS, he said he had major issues with it. Perspective is a beautiful thing.

 

[Gallyrat]

*Snip snip*

I'll focus on your Pacific Rim comments because I agree with most everything you said (I was in fact referring more to the first Star Trek more so than Into Darkness, but Bob wasn't exactly heaping praise on the first one either.)

I get what Mako was going through the first time she drifted, but at the same time...there needed to be more. There really needed to be a scene in between the test drift and the Sydney fight where Raleigh talked to Mako and maybe helped her through the Tokyo incident. Or maybe they could've helped each other, I don't know. It would've been some much needed character development. As it stands, the first time she gets into a Jaeger she can't go five minutes without severely screwing up, and then the second time she works perfectly. It's just...it needed a scene to show us Mako getting over it. That's all I'm saying. At a little over two hours adding stuff might be pushing it a bit, but there were some parts that could've been chopped down, I think.

I'll still watch Bob, as I still enjoy his opinions, but it's getting tougher to watch, as he seems so intent on continuously trashing the things I enjoyed. I don't expect him to cater the show to me specifically, don't get me wrong, but at some point enough is enough already. We get it, you hate JJ Abrams, you hated TASM.

 

[daibakuha]

trashing the things I enjoyed.

Why do you care? Why aren't you just content to enjoy the things you do? I don't care if a movie gets bad reviews if I enjoyed the movie, and there are a lot of legitimately bad films I love to pieces.

 

[DugMachine]

Still waiting for a review of This is The End...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/10430-Apocalaughs

He did review the movie though. Gave it mostly positive review. I still need to watch it.

 

[Tormuse]

I find it kind of funny that there are almost no posts about RED 2 in the RED 2 thread. Well, I'm gonna post on-topic, dammit!

A while back, I saw the first RED movie [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.238869-Escape-to-the-Movies-Red?page=5#8637968] on Moviebob's recommendation and I wasn't that impressed. That experience made me reluctant to watch the sequel, but I had an evening to kill and it was cheap movie night and nothing else playing interested me. (that I hadn't already seen or wasn't only available in 3D) Overall, the movie was... okay. It wasn't great, but I liked it better than the first one.

I still found Mary-Louise Parker's character a little annoying, but at least she actually got to do stuff this time and didn't feel so much like the cast was dragging her around as dead weight that did nothing but get in the way and make me wonder why they bothered to keep her around. Aside from that, I'm finding that I have the same difficulty that Bob has that I can't remember what the plot of the first movie was about. It was an utterly generic and forgettable movie. Admittedly, RED 2 is also fairly generic, but it at least has interesting and likable villains and some pretty cool action scenes. (I particularly like the bit where Byung-hun Lee's character is cornered by police in the shop and has to use improvised weapons to escape)

Some things that bugged me, though: The heroes in this movie kill an *awful* lot of innocent people this time around. I mean sure, the people they are killing are armed guards, but when you consider the fact that the heroes are breaking into places, the guards have every reason to try to stop them. These aren't henchmen of the "bad guys;" they aren't in on the plot; they're just ordinary people doing their jobs as security guards and getting killed because they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I recall from the first film, the "good guys" made a point of incapacitating guards without killing them, but this time around, they just seem to stop caring about that any more. It's not that I'm troubled by morally ambiguous protagonists so much as the fact that there don't seem to be any consequences for it. No one mentions it or even so much as bats an eyelash at the fact that the supposed heroes are randomly murdering anyone who gets in their way.

Spoiler: Also...

It also bugged me that Catherine Zeta-Jones' character died without any fanfare. (Sorry, I'm better at remembering the actor's names than their character's names) This was Bruce Willis' femme fatale, the love of his former life, his "kryptonite," and there's barely any reaction to her being shot and then she's completely forgotten about and not mentioned for the rest of the movie. I thought maybe she wasn't actually dead, (an abdominal wound in an action movie is usually a sign that the person will survive) but we never see her again, so I guess she really was dead. I would have expected more of a death scene, or at least more of a reaction, if they're going to write out such an important character.

 

[Darth_Payn]

RED2 looks like the mindless funtimes I miss about action movies, and I 1/2-expected Bob to jam his personal politics into this review, like he did with White House Down, and was pleasantly surprised and relieved he didn't. The way R.I.P.D. was advertising all over the place, I thought Bob would take that as a challenge to review it.
And enough with the MoS bashing, Bob and other commenters. It's getting old and gets in the way of talking about the topic at hand.
At the end, I was expecting that to be another "Animal Crossing is Super Addictive!" joke, but is that Earthbound?