The Incredible Hulk Retrospective Review - Un-credible (Black Widow Bound)

Marvel will kick Phase 4 off in a couple of months with Black Widow (hopefully) so I figured it’s about time to go back to 2008 and rank all of the MCU movies in the Infinity Saga in preparation. These will be spoiler reviews, as you’ve had plenty of time to see these movies by now and they’ll be actual review reviews, not “why this is great” or “why this sucks”. Reviews will go up every couple of days and we will move through the franchise chronologically and today we continue with the oft-overlooked, The Incredible Hulk.

This was a disappointing movie. I’ve never had the urge to go back and watch it after the first viewing, but I don’t remember it being this bad. Let’s start with the positives before I start ranting. The opening credits sequence does a solid job catching us up on Bruce Banner’s (Edward Norton) backstory, even if it really dates the movie (not that the effects or anything about it is necessarily bad, it just doesn’t look like something you’d see today) and the heart monitor is a clever way of building tension even before you fully understand that at a point, Bruce Banner will turn into a monster. The biggest praise I can give it is in Tim Roth’s The Abomination. The portrayal by Tim Roth is naturally great, Roth has a way of elevating even trash material that is given him, but honestly the material he’s gotten isn’t complete garbage. Emil Blonsky is actually a pretty great villain all things considered (he doesn’t quite fit into the story, but we’ll get to that). His pre-Abomination story is pretty solid, an aging soldier looking to become more powerful and coming face to face with this unstoppable force and wanting to be like it so he unrelentingly pursues that power is an interesting set-up for a villain because it makes him the underdog but still a threat, I only wish that he had more characterization once he became the Abomination other than CGI monster for the Hulk to fight.

Unfortunately that leads into the biggest problem with the movie, that final fight. Not only is it just a rather boring and bad-looking CGI monster fight (I get that other people like it but honestly, it’s just not bad, name one other MCU fight that’s as bad as this) but it just doesn’t work with the story of the movie (yes, they did set-up Blonsky earlier on, but you could cut him and the first two acts remain the same). Here’s the problem, the central conflict of the story is that Bruce is running from the government because the government wants to create Hulk-soldiers, now his problem with this as he states multiple times is that the government can’t make Hulk-soldiers because they won’t be able to control them, Emil Blonsky is an example of a Hulk-soldier that they can’t control and so the final thesis of the movie is that no one can control the Hulk, fine. However, Banner’s big arc of the movie is to stop running from the Hulk and accept control over it. You see the problem here? Now theoretically this could be fixed by Bruce never gaining control of the Hulk, but then that fight can’t happen because the Hulk wouldn’t be fighting the Abomination in that scenario, and plus even if they did find a work around, that means that Bruce Banner isn’t ready to join the Avengers because he’s still running from the Hulk. However, if they did the Civil War or Winter Soldier route and made it clear that the government was not worthy of control over a Hulk (which is an easy point they could have made, the army does attack a college after all) and they changed the final fight so that it wasn’t just a rando army guy running around with super-powers but an actual government sponsored enemy, then the story makes so much more sense.

However, even then the story has major problems. Stanley the pizza guy (Paul Soles) and Doc Samson (Ty Burrell) exist only as plot devices to create specific situations and really could have just been cut. And Martina (Debora Nascimento), who by the way I don’t think is named in the movie, exists for literally no reason as I can tell, she’s just kinda there to look hot for a bit which is really weird considering how important a couple shots at the beginning make her out to be. Then Liv Tyler’s character is tacked on to be a love interest with no other purpose and we already mentioned how Tim Roth, while great, is unnecessary and that’s a lot of unnecessary. And I’ve not even mentioned that the second act campus battle is just there to have another CGI fight and adds nothing of value to the story. A couple days ago I praised the relative consistency of the patched together Iron Man but this movie, which had less production problems (although there still were some) just feels like an absolute mess.

Then we get to the acting, while not bad, isn’t great. Frankly speaking, Mark Ruffalo is a better Banner than Norton is and I’m glad that things with Norton didn’t work out. I realize that sounds horrible, but Edward Norton is just very boring in this movie and I don’t enjoy his Bruce Banner at all. William Hurt is fine as General Ross, he’s kinda uninteresting, but I don’t mind that he reappears in Civil War and Black Widow. Liv Tyler is, as I mentioned earlier, pointless (I guess you could argue that she shows that Bruce can control the Hulk but that’s kinda vague and they could have worked around that) and it really doesn’t help that Tyler gives a paper-thin performance that does what the script needs her to do in a breathy voice. To be clear that’s not to say that any of these actors specifically are bad, it just seems like no one wants to be doing this.

Frankly, this movie can and really should be skipped. There’s not much to enjoy and although it does really cleverly tie into the MCU, it’s unnecessary to watch in the context of the Infinity Saga. Maybe one day Tim Roth will come back and wow us all with Abomination, making this movie seem better in retrospect but until then I don’t see much to like about this movie. Now let’s move on to the other bad phase 1 MCU movie... joy.

P.S. This didn’t naturally come up in the review, but the comedy in this is god-awful. I don’t remember a single time where I enjoyed a joke and I definitely don’t remember laughing.

P.P.S. Mr. Blue’s (Tim Blake Nelson) sequel set-up is so annoying, not just in the fact that it never panned out but also that it happens in the movie. I’d be fine if it was an after credit sequence but the fact that it happens right before the climax was such a bad idea. Also, his line before that “I hate the government just as much as anyone else” is such a weird line. Like I get that the government is generally bad in the MCU, but really? I don’t even know what to think about that line. It just makes me wonder why the writers hated the government so much.

Personal Rating: 6/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Iron Man Retrospective Review - Empire Starter-Pack (Black Widow Bound)

Marvel will kick Phase 4 off in a couple of months with Black Widow so I figured it’s about time to go back to 2008 and rank all of the MCU movies in the Infinity Saga in preparation. These will be spoiler reviews, as you’ve had plenty of time to see these movies by now and they’ll be actual review reviews, not “why this is great” or “why this sucks”. Reviews will go up every couple of days and we will move through the franchise chronologically starting with the movie that started it all off: Iron Man.

Iron Man is a good movie. I’m not sure if there is anyone who wouldn’t contest the point. The dialogue is snappy, Robert Downey Jr. is at the top of his game and the movie just looks good. It’s always an impressive accomplishment when a good movie is released but very few movies are this impressive. Sure, there are movies with bigger cinematic scope and greater filmmaking feats, but this movie should not have been as good as it was. Robert Downey Jr. was cast despite of the fact that he was a recently recovered alcoholic with a questionable track record, there was no script and the movie was being made up as it went along. And yet, twelve years later, this movie goes down as one of the greatest movies of the 2000s. How impressive is that?

There are a number of things that made this possible. For one, the script is as straightforward as possible. Where other Iron Man movies will get too convoluted and complicated for their own good, this one keeps it simple and focuses the movie around one idea: the man Tony Stark. It is clear from the very start of the film that both director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. know everything there is to know about Tony Stark, never for a second do you doubt that this is a real person. This is not a plot-based movie, if it were it would have very likely gone the way of The Hobbit movies, all style and no substance, however because the story is entirely focused on the growth of Tony Stark, we get a clear narrative from start to finish.

And now we get to perhaps the most crucial reason as to why this movie was a success: before this, there had never been a hero like Tony Stark, and frankly, we still haven’t got one. In any other movie, Tony Stark would have been the villain. He would have been the careless billionaire profiting off of war because it made his life fun that the hero would have to take down. For the ordinary viewer, there is nothing to empathize with in Tony Stark. However, Jon Favreau cleverly finds one detail that changes the way we think about him, as Yusuf says: “so you are a man who has everything, and nothing”. While Tony Stark was never unlikable before this revelation (Robert Downey Jr. doing an excellent job at being charming while also being an a**hole) this makes him empathetic and gives the audience a reason to root for them. Heroes are supposed to be good people and Tony Stark isn’t, but the fact that he still tries to do the right thing shows just how great of a character he is.

And now we get to the supporting cast. They’re all fine. Most likely because of the messy production they never get as fleshed out as Tony more than what the plot needs and what the actors bring. Terrance Howard is Robert Downey Jr.’s straight man best friend who’s there to help out when needed and there to lecture Tony when he’s being unreasonable, Gwyneth Paltrow is RDJ’s love interest because she’s a female and she’s in the movie and she’s there to be worried about Tony Stark (though, to give the movie credit, they don’t force the romance story farther than it needs to) and Jeff Bridges is there to be the bad-guy. That’s about it. There’s also Phil Coulson who literally serves no purpose to the plot other than to set-up SHIELD but it’s small and justified enough that it’s forgivable. But even though the characters in writing are flat, all of the actors do an admirable job at making these people feel alive (side note: I do think Terrance Howard is better than Don Cheadle, not that Cheadle is bad, but Howard feels like a military man that happens to be Tony’s best friend and Cheadle just seems like one of the dudes that drinks at the bar with Tony on the weekends (okay, he’s not THAT relaxed, but he does seem more quippy and less strict)) and the story doesn’t even really need them to be that complex. This is Tony’s movie, and he deserves the focus.

Speaking of Tony’s story, the biggest complaint often lobbied at this film is that Tony’s arc ends at the end of act II and that after that there’s a fight scene. Defenders of the movie will often point out that Obadiah Stane represents what Tony Stark was and could be if he hadn’t become a pacifist and while that’s true, I also think there’s more to it. See, everybody know’s that Tony’s arc in this movie is to stop being an irresponsible weapons manufacturer and take responsibility for the damage that he’s done, but the thing is, his arc doesn’t end when he destroys his weapons that are being used by terrorists because he’s still using the Iron Man armor as a weapon. During that entire battle, the Iron Man is shot to look like a monster, whether he’s hanging on to the bottom of a US military jet like some sort of parasite, being hit by a missed, falling into a large hole and then climbing out with a menacing look on it’s face, or punching through a wall behind a guy to grab him. Sure, we root for it because we know who’s underneath and he’s doing good things, but without context Iron Man could easily look like a villain. But then in the third act battle between him and the Iron Monger (cleverly shot like some monster as well, mirroring the second act), he’s not going to war against terrorists, his only goal is to protect as many people as possible from the Iron Monger. He begins the movie creating weapons, then he becomes a weapon (Obadiah “you tried to rid the world of weapons, you gave it it’s greatest one yet”), and then finally he becomes a protector.

That’s not to say that the movie is without it’s faults. As I mentioned earlier, Phil Coulson and the rest of SHIELD serve no real purpose to the plot other than to provide some cannon fodder for the Iron Monger (which Phil Coulson survives off screen to pop back up afterwards) and did we ever learn why SHIELD wanted to talk to Tony? Because I was waiting for some sort of reason other than “we need to talk to you about what happened”, but that never happened. Then there are some strange cuts and the timeline is a bit strange, it’s kinda hard to figure out if this all takes place in a couple of days or over several months or whatever. The first act does feel a bit slow. And even though thematically it makes sense, Obadiah Stane is revealed to be the bad guy kinda sloppily and there doesn’t seem to be much motivation to him other than keep the company alive which is kind of a small goal and doesn’t really explain why he just starts throwing cars with families in them. But even still this is a good, impressive movie.

P.S. The MCU has a tendency to be more comedic nowadays so it was strange to watch this movie and see how grounded it is. All of the jokes come from Tony Stark and none of them really get to the banter that the MCU is known for now. In fact this could really be called a gritty origin story. The people feel like they could be real and the story feels like it could happen and it’s dealing with a real-world problem with very little glamour. People said that at least the DCEU was trying something new by being gritty, but Iron Man is pretty dark and gritty but it’s still a super-hero movie and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. This is how to do a realistic super-hero movie.

P.P.S. Well that was my longest review ever. I had to use TWO pictures so it wouldn’t just be a block of text. Let’s see how The Incredible Hulk does...

Personal Rating: 8/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Writing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ⭐️ ☆

Doctor Who Season 12 Review - Well No One Can Say That It Was Boring

Alright, huh. So that was interesting. Was this season good? Yes. It didn’t have amazing episodes but none (except for Orphan 55) were anywhere close to bad. In fact there were a lot of things that got me really engaged. Right up until the big revelation in the finale that I’m... not a big fan of right now. On the other hand it’s not the worst. I don’t know, let’s get back to that.

I’ve already reviewed the early episodes of the series: Spyfall Parts 1 and 2, Orphan 55, and Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror, but all of the other episodes were pretty good. This is the kind of season that’s going to be impossible to talk about without talking about spoilers but suffice to say the second half of the season has about the same quality as the first half. I still maintain that Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror is the best episode of the season but the other filler episodes are harmless enough and are still very engaging. Then there are the episodes that push the story forward and these are all pretty good. The writing can be all over the place but the twists and turns of those stories are often enough to compensate. Ascension of the Cybermen especially was really exciting stuff and got me really excited for the finale. Then after some massive reveals lore-changing reveals in the finale and a cliffhanger unlike any series closer in the show’s almost 60 year history and you’ve got a pretty solid season. Whether or not you come away from the season liking it or not will depend on your opinion of the major twist in the finale, but I think that I can fairly say that this was a pretty great season of television all things considered. Not an outstanding one, but it’s definitely more than just good.

I’m going to put the rating here now because I’ll be talking about spoilers below.

Personal Rating: 8/10

Entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Depth: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ 

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Alright, spoiler time. DO NOT READ IF YOU DON’T WANT THE SEASON TO BE SPOILED

I won’t start with the big twist here so we’ll start with episode 5, Fugitive of the Judoon.

I thought that despite the fact that the writing often felt kinda horrid, and the acting from the supporting cast left a lot to be desired (seriously, I don’t get why people love Jo Martin so much, she was fine, but she wasn’t great). However JACK HARKNESS IS FRICKING BACK!!! I don’t think it was possible to not be excited in that moment and it feels so good to have John Barrowman back, I wish that he was a larger part of the series other than a glorified exposition dump of a cameo, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. The other turn in the episode worked less well in my opinion, the reveal that Jo Martin was actually some other iteration of the Doctor was an interesting one, but one that felt like a very easy reveal to make and one that didn’t feel like it could really pay off well (which it didn’t really, but we’ll get to that). However, I was intrigued as to how it would work out even if I wasn’t excited at the prospect of this person being the Doctor (I just don’t think she was that engaging).

Then there are two very filler-y episodes with the exception of Can You Hear Me?’s rather pointless name-drop of the timeless child again just to get us ready for the finale and then we have The Haunting of Villa Diodati which was set up as filler but ended up being very crucial to the plot. Ignoring the episode’s wanting dialogue, it was a pretty great episode. It created the fantastic villain Ashad or The Lone Cyberman, who was a very effective Cyberman villain that actually made them pretty terrifying again. The Cyberium was a fine enough plot device and the Doctor sacrificing the Cyberium, starting a second Cyber War, to save one man was a pretty effective way to get us into the finale, even if the episode botched it a bit with the Doctor seemingly sacrificing the Cyberium twice for no apparent reason and the writers cramming in a weird monologue about how important writers are (which is especially weird because the important writer that it’s talking about is Percy Shelley when the more important Mary Shelley was right there for the writers to use). This episode neatly transitioned into Ascension of the Cybermen which was pretty short on reveals (and a bit on writing quality too (I promise that’s the last knock on writing (I should add a writing score to my reviews))) but was otherwise pretty fantastic and I was very excited for the finale.

And then there’s The Timeless Children, which isn’t a bad episode, in fact, it’s quite good, however the reveal that they cram into it is, well I don’t like it. I’m assuming that if you’ve read this far you know that it reveals that the Doctor is actually not Gallifreyan but some other entity that can regenerate indefinitely and gave the Time-Lords their regeneration ability. Which, on the one hand, I do kinda like the idea of the Doctor’s background being even more mysterious, not only do we not know what happened to them as a little First Doctor child on Gallifrey, but we also don’t know what they are or where they came from. However, I’m still not sure how I feel about them being this super important being. I think I like the reveal more than most people, and it is growing on me. We’ll just have to see how the next season turns out. However, everything else in the episode was solid enough. The Master is great, the Lone Cyberman is great, the companions are there and all that. And that cliffhanger is pretty cool. I would love to see a Doctor Who jailbreak.

Writing: ⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Invisible Man Review - Edge-Of-Your-Seat Terrifying

The Invisible Man, starring Elizabeth Moss as Cecilia and written and directed by Leigh Whannell, is a retelling of the H.G. Wells story of the same name. And wow is it effective. The story follows Cecilia as she escapes her abusive relationship and then finding shortly after that her ex-boyfriend, Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), has killed himself. However, Cecilia begins to believe that Adrian is still alive and has found a way to turn invisible and is now stalking and tormenting her. What follows is an exceptionally directed and exceptionally acted thriller.

Elizabeth Moss is naturally fantastic in this role. At this point it’s impossible to expect anything less than her. This movie would not work if the lead wasn’t believable and Moss is believable and is still a bit more believable in case you weren’t sure. The rest of the cast is pretty great too. None of them stand out the same way that Elizabeth Moss does but then again, they shouldn’t have too. If there is one weak point it’s the portrayal of one of the characters at the end but I’m not sure if that’s the actor’s fault or the story’s fault or my fault for not quite liking what I got.

Following up on that, I personally felt that the ending was kinda not great. That’s not to say that you’ll think that watching it, the person I watched it with liked it fine enough. But it feels like director Leigh Whannell wanted to add a curveball to the end while also wanting to follow through with what he had been building towards and it didn’t quite work for me. The third act in general was the weakest part story wise. The first two acts set up this really clever, really engaging story, using the titular Invisible Man as both a very dangerous physical threat and also an extremely effective metaphor for the aftermath of domestic abuse and how (I assume) survivors damage the people around them in a way where it feels like their abuser is damaging them (if that makes sense, you kinda have to watch the movie to understand it) but after a very surprising second-act twist, the story kinda becomes a bit more predictable. It’s still very engaging but it just isn’t where the first two acts were.

Speaking of the first two acts, that’s where Whannell really shines behind the camera. He cleverly uses shots of what should be nothing to imply the presence of the invisible stalker, keeping you on edge the entire movie even during happy scenes. The Invisible Man could be anywhere, and it feels like he’s always watching. The score is also fantastic. Very few movies can combine cinematography, acting, directing and score into this sort of edge-of-your-seat tension that this movie effortlessly pulls off. This movie is terrifying, in a way that very few horror movies, even ones that are better than this movie, are.

P.S. For such a tiny budget, the stuff that they’re able to do is amazing, the invisible suit can look kinda CGI at some points, but it still looks fantastic.

Personal Rating: 9/10

Enjoyment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Depth: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Story: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆

Directing: 💫💫💫💫💫

Acting: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Comedy: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ☆ ☆

Tension: 💫💫💫💫💫