So yea. My first submission to Giant Bomb is an epic failure. I added the character "Elliot Maslow," who is the main character of Lost: Via Domus. It was approved a little after two days in waiting
Ooh, look! A light! "Where's the problem?" you may ask. It's simple. I misspelled the character's first name. It's "Elliott," not "Elliot," apparently. Ah, how dumb am I. Oh well...haha.
Anyways, I have two days left here in my home before I hit the road to meet up with my fiance. About a week and a half from now I'm getting married, for those of you who don't know, and I'm heading over there to help with ironing out the final plans and such. Should be loads of stress-filled fun. Right.
So in my gaming news, I'm two levels away from getting Halo 3 finally beaten on Legendary, and many more levels away from the meta-game achievements (like 6 I think...geez.) So yea, making slow but sure progress. I'm giving Crackdown a break, but I'll be coming back to it soon. Currently hitting up some Fifa, and soon I'll try my hand at Madden. I'm kind of in a miniature sports game mood...which doesn't come often. So I'm playing while I can :D. Anywho, that's about it for now. Uh oh. Broke his ankles. Oh yea, I almost forgot. When I get to my fiance's, we're going to rent Batman Begins (she hasn't seen it yet), and shortly thereafter go see The Dark Knight. I know you all are tired of hearing about this movie, but hey, if it's good, it's good. So, I know it's kind of a long ways off, but if you're interested, be looking for a review from me around a week from now. Yes, I'm well aware that you won't remember. I just felt like telling you all :D Oh, and thanks to everyone who read and commented on my last review. I really appreciate the support and also the differing opinions. Really encourages me to write more.
10 Comments
Pretty Review Graphic. (As a note, the topic title is a repeated quote from the movie.) Now before you get all up in arms about my score, hear me out. I feel like I have valid reasons for it.
I'll just jump straight to the main reason behind the score, and then I'll dive into some further analysis. The reason for the 4/10 is this: the trailers ruin the movie. There are no "maybes." The trailers show about 80% of all scenes that can be considered funny in this movie. I noticed scenes from the trailers flooding the screen until the halfway mark in the movie, 45 minutes, and then it started showing fresh material. Seeing as how the movie is only an hour and a half long and that I had literally seen half of the movie, albeit abbreviated, I took off half the potential score of the whole movie. It seems fair to me because I essentially watched the first half for free by accident via the TV ads. The second half was like a completely different movie altogether. Half a movie, half a score.
What's also unfortunate is that the second half of the movie is a bit worse off than the first. What begins as action-comedy (if you want to call it comedy) turns into another all-out action-fest. The funny parts were funny the first few times I saw all the punchlines on TV. Seeing them again on the big screen didn't make things any funnier. In fact, I didn't laugh the entire movie. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of the time I already knew what was coming. I think I cracked a kindhearted smile twice. That pretty much sums it up on the comedy side. It's not that Hancock doesn't manage to be funny at all, it's that this movie was ruined for me by advertising. As such, it was by no means funny. You might laugh a couple times if you've somehow managed to avoid this plague of movie-spoiling-trailers. Choo choo. Anyways, onto the rest of the analysis. The story is this: Will Smith stars as John Hancock, who is "the last one of his kind," a superhero. He sort of saves the day sometimes. Mostly, he breaks and smashes things. If you picture a lazy and drunk Hulk, then you might get the right idea. He meets up with this guy in public relations, and off they go. There is a plot twist or two, but when those bombs were dropped I think I just rolled my eyes. The story leaves much to be desired. It is paper-thin and simply can't stand up well among today's standard of storytelling. It comes off contrived and desperate, as if they couldn't think of anything, so they just took some ideas, put them in a hat, and drew one out.
As for the acting, Will Smith is good as usual. No surprise there. He was good, but there was a lot of room for improvement. Overall, I just don't really think he fit that character. But that's purely opinion and didn't affect the score. Charlize Theron as the wife of the PR guy...well, she just seemed awkward to me. She seems too much of a manly chick for me to view her as a simple housewife. And the PR guy himself, Ray (played by Jason Bateman) just didn't mesh. I just didn't see them working all that well together. It seemed more like a mishmash than anything else. Simply put, the three of them combined just didn't much suit my tastes. Love the eagle in the background... Truly, the only thing this movie has going for it is special effects, which it utilizes often. Hancock flies and smashes things with superhuman strength. And all of it looks pretty good! But it is unfortunate that his powers are so generic. So, yea, he can fly. He has super strength, and, well, he's invulnerable to bullets and his wounds heal. That's about it. I wasn't really a big fan of the action scenes on the whole. I didn't feel involved in the action, or like I was really rooting for Hancock. This particular feeling (or lack thereof) is hard to explain.
Another thing I'd like to complain about (sorry folks it seems that's all I'm doing) is the choice of music. There was so many different songs! It's like they just turned on the radio, found a couple songs they deemed "hip", and plugged them right in. While I can understand how some may like the selections, I found them distracting and mostly just out of place. There were too many songs, and most of them didn't fit. Dude must be a good driver if he has an Uzi in one hand. Finally (this is the last thing I'll complain about. Ok, scratch that, no guarantees), the movie tries to be funny with its running gag of people calling Hancock asshole Simply put, it's not funny. This joke just goes on and on and never stops. Oh, how I wished it would end. But it didn't, even up until the last scenes of the movie. The sheer amount of cursing in this movie on the whole surprised me for a PG-13 movie.
On the whole, the trailers is what made me dislike this movie so much. I left the theater feeling as though I had wasted my time, though I was thankful it only ate an hour and a half of my life. The most unfortunate thing is, however, that the movie doesn't even deliver on the second half, the part which *wasn't* spoiled for me. Go figure! Of course they put all the good scenes in the ads! I didn't have too much hope for Hancock from the beginning, but I had at least some. Now, I'm thoroughly disappointed with it. Bottom line: Please, don't waste your time. ---------------------------------------------- As a side note, I am no longer utilizing "half" marks for reviews (i.e. anything with ".5" tacked onto it, such as "8.5" or "6.5." Just straight-up whole numbers.)
I'm sure there is something else I'm forgetting to say here. But I don't remember. x.x 12 Comments
Yea, I was tired of all the bad puns, so I chose to make fun of them. Now, everyone point and laugh at the silly peoples' blog titles. I'm joking, by the way.
So yea, Giant Bomb launched. It looks pretty and it seems extremely promising. So I'll spare you all and stop talking about it now since you've heard it a hundred times before.
Anyways, lately I've been going back and getting some more bang for my older-video-games' buck. I've been hitting up Halo 3 co-op nightly, going for that Legendary achievement, even getting some 4-player action in. It's great fun, actually. Honestly, this is the first time I've played Halo 3's co-op. I know, I know, I've been missing out. But now I've experienced it, and boy is it fun.
Ka-freakin-boom.Also, I have actually been playing some more Crackdown. That is a game I thought I would never touch again, to be honest. Been playing that co-op as well, and I am now finding myself hooked on co-op. I don't like playing games without it, it seems. But I'll have to make due. I picked up some more achievements in Crackdown, and I think I'm finally done with it for good (ok, maybe I can eek out another achievement or two). I'll turn back to GTA IV for my free-roaming goodness.
Also, tomorrow I'll be at work which means I'll be able to make a graphic for my Hancock review, which I will subsequently be posting tomorrow. Be on the lookout for that if it interests you at all! 5 Comments
Cause this Bomb is hot! Man it looks so pretty. It's confusing to use so far, granted, but that's only because I'm not used to it. Anyways, for those of you who failed to learn how to connect dots, this is therealtorb from Gamespot.
I'll just repost what I posted last in my blog on there. I suppose at least for a while, these will both carry the same content.
Ridin' dirty.
Well there you go, folks. If you are interested in reading the whole review, you can do so by scrolling down to my recent reviews and it's conveniently placed at the bottom of the page. It's probably longer than it should be, but I don't know what to cut out. If you find any typos, feel free to point them out cause it's like 2:15am here and I'm too beastly tired to really care about them at the present moment, but I will be happy to read and/or edit my review tomorrow. . Hope you enjoy it if you take the time to read it, and if that's the case, thanks also for reading it. And if you do read it, please recommend it if you like it. Thanks again!
Hopefully Hancock review later, but no promises 2 Comments
. Hope you enjoy it if you take the time to read it, and if that's the case, thanks also for reading it. And if you do read it, please recommend it if you like it. Thanks again!
Log in to comment