Madame Web Is Wrong

Madame Web is so bad I came out of unofficial retirement for this. It’s so bad it makes me want to write movie reviews again. It’s so bad it energized my lazy self to get typing. Sony, take a bow. That’s a feat that other terrible and many great films haven’t accomplished. Not even the amazing Across the Spiderverse or hype Spider-Man: No Way Home got that. I’ve seen plenty of trash too like Black Adam or Quantumania but didn’t feel like devoting my time to it.

I’ve relaxed in my rambunctousness as I’ve aged. I don’t get as worked up about bad stuff and I just am happy to enjoy good stuff. If something sucks, I just stop caring about it and move on. When it’s good, thumbs up baby.

But holy crap, man. This movie stinks. It’s just everything I find wrong with modern movies all into one movie.

This is everything wrong with comic book movies. When people meme on these movies it feels like this is the mess they consider everything to be (not that a lot of the recent offerings from Marvel or DC have been good). This belongs with Catwoman. You know, the one that didn’t involve Gotham or Batman or anything relevant to Catwoman? Because this is Madame Web but without Spider-Man.

It would be like making a Court of Owls or Lady Arkham story but they exist in a world where Batman does not. It’s just vomiting buzzwords out of an IP that people know for cheap pops.

A big personal wrong that this movie does is bad ADR, which stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement. It is a fancy way to say a character redubbed over their lines to make them more clear or emotional or whatever to try and better match the scene. This happens for various reasons but typically because on-set audio sometimes can be a little messy and muffled. Most movies have tons of this and you don’t notice.

Bad ADR ruins scenes for me and I swear the bad guy’s almost every line is ADR’d and done so in a way where the audio level isn’t matched to the rest of the scene. I love video games but he sounds like when video game mixing is bad. The Twisted Metal show has this issue where Sweet Tooth’s lines aren’t done by the actor on set, so everything is just off by 5%.

It’s also everything wrong with Big Hollywood’s obsession with blue/green screen so you can crunch non-unionized computer graphics artists by doing everything in post production instead of paying unionized set designers and cinematographers and prop makers and extras and so on. Does 80+ million dollars just get you nothing these days?

It bothers me in the same way that the Star Wars prequels are full of stilted performances. The characters physicality doesn’t match what is happening around them because they act first based off imagination or ideas from the director but then whichever graphics artist fills the scene in is working off a different idea or direction months later. The performance isn’t cohesive with the environment.

So I don’t even know how to rate the performances. Yes, there are many awkward line reads and reactions or non-reactions and parts where someone is pretending to touch stuff that clearly isn’t there and it looks awkward AF. But because it was such a blue screen obsessed production it’s weird to call it acting in any serious sense when the actresses self admittedly were acting off of nothing.

Ian McKellan is a phenomenal actor and he even struggled on The Hobbit movies working off nothing in many scenes. Blue/green screen overreliance made Gandalf cry on set!

Actors and actresses are talented people and a big part of their job is that physicality and interaction with each other and the set and selling the little things but those are lost when the most they often have are a couple of dots on a blue dummy in an empty sound stage.

There is just nothing here which sucks because I do think these actors have better in them. I haven’t seen much with Dakota Johnson but people seem to like her. Sydney Sweeney was great in Euphoria and the only other work I’ve seen was Anyone But You which I thought was a perfectly good romcom. I really liked Emma Roberts in Holidate. A bunch of the rest of the cast has faces I feel like I’ve seen elsewhere like Mike Epps, who I looked up and realized I must have seen him in Dolomite Is My Name. Good movie!

I guess the presentation of the bad guy is pretty neat. But I’m a decently dork pilled comic book loser and I have no clue who he is. I’ve watched my share of cartoons and read some volumes here and there. No clue who this Ezekial Sims guy is. I legitimately believe I have never seen him in anything Spider-Man before. But the suit is pretty neat? And he isn’t talking with his bad ADR most of the time in the suit. Big win.

What’s really wild is that Sony knows how to not suck at Spider-man related media. Across The Spiderverse is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years and it’s in my 2023 holy trinity with Barbie and Oppenheimer. That’s a movie filled with art and care and fantastic performances so much so that it can be overwhelming in how much style is flashing on the screen.

I’m a big fan of all three Spider-Man games for the PS4 and PS5. I think those are made well with care by people who know the characters and are motivated to tell good stories. I bought a PS4 for Spider-Man and I bought my PS5 for Spider-Man 2. Fantastic stories and games.

I even like the Venom movies! I think the first one is fun in a dumb charming way because Ed Hardy is doing such a good job. I thought for a PG13 movie they did a really good job with Carnage in the second film. But this movie nor Morbius (and unlikely that Kraven bucks the trend) have that weird charm that makes you sit through the crap to get back to the good stuff.

And that’s probably the core issue. Venom has enough material and presence as a character to be his own guy. You can figure out a Venom story with ideas without Spider-Man and it’ll be okay Frankenstiening bits together. Madame Web’s whole thing is Spider-Man’s fate is her weaving or whatever and Spider Totems and nonsense. But there is no Spider-Man in these Sony offshoot films.

Just… holy crap, man. This movie stinks. It’s just everything wrong with the stuff I dislike all into one movie. For my gamers, this is the Ride To Hell: Retribution of movies. I haven’t been so disappointed with a movie in ages. I think it might be Transformers 5: The Last Knight and that movie is a special kind of terrible.

Even when these super hero movies are bad, they’re still up my alley enough that I can enjoy them in some way. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and The Flash are nothing to write home about, but only 70% trash and I can be satisified enough with the 30% I liked to come away pleased.

So why did I go see it? I had a free movie voucher and no weekend plans. Did I go into it expecting bad and pre-hating? No, I was hoping for bad-good which are some of my favourite movies. Who doesn’t rubberneck at a car crash?

But this is one you can easily look away from.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

Godzilla vs Kong Is What It’s Supposed To Be

Godzilla vs Kong is everything it needs to be. It’s exaclty what you want and delivers perfectly on its premise. It’s a spectacle of big ass movie making where two giant monsters slug it out with all the roaring, punching, biting, smashing, pounding and stomping you could want.

In the best way possible, it feels like a child wrote the movie by smashing their toys together. What else were you expecting? It whips ass.

It’s Thicc Lizzy and Beeg Monke duking it out. Once. Twice. And then a third time! Plus some other great monster scenes and an expansion of this universe further into fantasy and wonder. Also wink wink ending wink wink.

Thankfully this movie is shot well. If it wasn’t it would die a death. Such a big part of the wonder of these movies is how well they’re shot and how intense the sound is engineered. There’s cinematography on display and some actual style. Director Adam Wingard did have a vision here and made sure you can understand it. They’re shot from far away to give you scale but in tight to keep things intimate.

They aren’t hiding these characters in darkness or rain. There aren’t cutaways to the humans reacting to things we don’t see happening. There’s no confusion during an action scene. This isn’t Michael Bay Transformers. It isn’t a bunch of visual mess.

When they fight at night you get them backlight by the neon lights of Hong Kong. It works excellently to illuminate every nook and cranny of Godzilla’s scales. It works perfectly in theme with Godzilla and his radioactive white-blue scales and breath.

Kong moves differently, fights differently and sounds differently. This all gives him is own character instead of just being Monster 2. He’s the hero character. This movie is as much about him than it is anything or anyone else. The humans can communicate with him and he can communicate back. He can smile and emote. Godzilla doesn’t do any of that.

Humanizing Kong relies on the best human character in the movie, Jia. She’s played by Kaylee Hottle and is the only human character that Kong can trust. They communicate using sign language and without her, Kong would never get on board or trust the humans enough to fight for them against Godzilla.

The humans are the human characters. You’ve got your conspiracy freaks, mad scientists, regular fellas, military dudes, evil business pricks and good folks. Are the characters deep? No. Do they need to be? Also no. Would it be better if they were? I don’t know. They don’t really do too much but they do help to move the plot along and serve the framework of a story as you take a breath between action scenes.

It’s Tyranitar vs Rillaboom. That’s why you’re watching. The human drama is always the downside to these movies but there has to be a plot to action along. The humans do the least this time out compared to the others and that rocks.

I won’t get too into the plot as it can easily become spoilers, but Godzilla is attacking science corporation military experiment bases. We don’t know why. Then we find out.

There is also some evil human plot about energy or whatever. Doesn’t really matter. It’s just an excuse to have the humans around to speak exposition and move the movie from setting to setting.

That’s how we get our fight on aircraft carriers on the ocean with boats and missiles. That’s how we get our crazy theme park VR ride where we see more monsters and the world expands into fantasy. It’s how we get to the night time fight and then the day time fight.

For the most part the humans stay out of the way. They’ve finally realized that rifles and F-22’s aren’t going to do anything to these titans. The humans do get their little victory moments but they are little.

We’re here to watch the Dragonzord fight Optimus Primal. The movie doesn’t forget that. This movie is far more sci-fi fantasy than it is realistic. That’s what I want, but I did appreciate 2014’s Godzilla because of how real world it felt. Kong in 2017 felt the same, relatively speaking.

But I don’t know how you do King of the Monsters and then this versus movie by keeping things so grounded.

My only complaint for this movie is that I wasn’t able to see it in a theatre. I bought it on demand, turned the lights off, turned up the surround sound and made a night in of it. But that won’t do this movie justice the way that a giant screen in a dark theatre with a booming sound system would. I’m going to keep my eyes open for a re-run showing of this in the cinema sometime.

It’s all this and a bag of chips in under two hours. There are no wasted scenes and nothing is drawn out artificially.

I don’t know how you could watch this movie and be unhappy with it. Did you not know what you’re sitting down to watch? Give me more monster movies. I’d love to see one of these with Guillermo Del Toro at the helm.

This movie isn’t playing tricks on you. Godzilla. King Kong. Wrestlemania.

Sit back and mark out.

@Adam_Pyde on Twitter, Adam Reviews Things on Facebook. CanadianAdam on Twitch.

Top 5 Worst Movies of 2014

These are my “tripped over their dick and faceplanted in a pile of turds” movies of 2014.

HM – Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – Talk about a freaking whiff. The first Sin City just had this aura to it, and it was really good. This movie is… okay? But it just doesn’t quite have that atmosphere the most of all. Eva Green gets plenty naked in it and she’s been in my top 5 since that James Bond movie. I just think this movie was a couple years too late. And it didn’t help that we’ve seen a bunch of movies imitate this style. This spot could’ve gone to the new 300 movie. 2/5

5. Boyhood – There isn’t a plot. There is a theme. And its also a pretentious pile of crap. Its not a movie. Its just an achievement. A fap project for Linklater is to say “Look what I did I’m so awesome”. It starts well enough because there is a plot, then there isn’t a plot after he starts to grow up. Felt tossed together in the later years. Bad movie. 2/5

4. Transcendence – This might be the most boring movie I’ve seen all year. Pretty sure I’ve seen this concept like 4 times already too, just in cinema and not video games/TV. 1/5

3. Transformers: Age of Extinction – Booooooooo. This movie was too damn long and it went back to the well too many times. You know how like once a movie there is the shot of the humans falling and the robot saves them? Happened like 6 times. Also all the creepy stuff with the daughter. And the fact it just sucks. 1/5

2. The Amazing Spiderman 2 – BOOOOOOOOO! Franchise killer. There is like 3 movies in here with a bunch of generic crap that makes no sense or has no purpose. You know how good movies do a scene early for a payoff later? Tons of that, but no payoff. The villains suck. The plot makes no sense at all. Motivations have no sense.  1/5

1. A Million Ways to Die in the West – Frustratingly terrible. Not funny. All the good jokes were in the trailer. Seth McFarlane isn’t a good actor. The script sucks. The jokes repeat themselves repeatedly over and over by being retold repeatedly over and over again and again. “Sequel” issue. “Wow the guy who made Ted! Here’s a bunch of money and ALL THE FREEDOM!” and oh boy it does not work. MacFarlane has no charisma as an actor. 0/5

Top 5 Disappointing Video Games of 2014

These were the games that I was interested in buying a new console for, but then just sucked and helped save me like $400+. I guess thanks is in order…

HM. WWE2K15 – It has nothing going for it. Bare bones and the character models still don’t look better than Smackdown vs Raw: 2009. I’d have it higher if it was a yearly purchase for me, but the WWE games are only ever-other-year purchases for me.

5. Murdered: Soul Suspect – Really cool concepts and the story is actually pretty interesting at the fringes. But the main character is boring and I can’t describe him with actual characteristics. He’s cop-man-ghost. But it did have some pretty neat stuff like the lady who was crazy but only because it was how her ghost sister could save her life by invading her brain. Gameplay got boring after like hour 6 of “go here, look at thing, go here, fetch quest”. The game ends with a whimper after starting off pretty darn well.

4. Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark – I quite enjoyed the previous Transformer games. They were fun. This one just totally whiffs. I don’t know what happened, but all the fun got lost.

3. NHL 15 – I don’t own it, but a friend does. I’ve played it a fair bit when I go to friends houses and play games while waiting to go drink, or when getting back from drinking. What a pile of trash. It basically has no modes and no ancillary features at launch. Also, the wind physics are a little nuts. I feel like the players are in a hair commercial at times because their sweaters are going nuts when they’re totally still.

2. Watch Dogs – There is a good foundation here for Ubisoft to improve on. The hacking is fun but it just kinda turns into GTA-but-not-as-good-as-GTA and the protagonist, whose name I forget – talk about memorable, was super bland. I couldn’t really describe him using anything besides physical features, which is an indictment of their ability to make me care. “He wears a trench coat and a hat.” Also, it’s a giant piece of shit on PC.

1. Destiny – This game is just boring. Thought it’d be the multiplayer game that’d make me buy a console. It controls well, but I never got the “itch” to keep playing. Played about 6-8 hours on my friend’s account and it was a pretty forgettable 8-9 hours. I was never a huge Halo fan, but I couldn’t deny the “woo!” you got from it. Destiny is just grindy, bland and the loot system BLOWS! Plus all that stuff about how the story was basically stripped out and placed in codexes you can only view ON THE INTERNET NOT EVEN IN GAME. Blech.

Summer Movie Review: Now with 100% more Monkeys

– Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 5/5

This movie is really good. Like really really good. I really really recommend it. The character dynamics between Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis Ape (Caesar) and Angry Ape (Koba) is terrific. It provides such a good balance and you are able to easily understand where each character is coming from.

Usually with extremist characters, you find yourself hating them because they’re cheap, but with Angry Ape and Gary Oldman you totally get it. They’re more anti-heroes than the antagonists. Like Magneto vs Professor X. More a clash of understandable ideologies than good guy vs bad guy.