Iron Man 3: met expectations. I don’t walk into a Marvel superhero movie looking for artistic excellence, but I want a story with no big holes; three or four dazzling SFX sequences; and three or four killer one-liners. A shot or two that makes me legitimately fantasize that I could be with Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t hurt. Delivered, delivered, delivered, and delivered.
Star Trek Into Darkness: exceeded expectations. The reboot succeeded. That wasn’t a small task. Its sequel threw absolutely everything at the screen, and by God, almost all of it stuck. Total blockbuster. Can’t wait to own it. Best science fiction action flick in a decade.
Man of Steel: TBD. Seeing it with my nephew in the next week or two. Hope it’s worth a damn, ’cause Superman Returns sucked.
There are a couple more I thought were at-the-theater slam-dunks, but I’m not so sure now. We’ll see.
I hope you’re having a good weekend.
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Agreed on Iron Man and Star Trek. I enjoyed both with the same resulting “I knew what to expect” with Iron Man, and being very pleased with Into Darkness.
Man of Steel will not disappoint. It’s unlike any of the previous Superman movies. The original Christopher Reeve movies were quite cheesy, wreaked of the 80’s (not necessarily a bad thing), and were true to the earlier years of the comics with subtle morality and political undertones.
Superman Returns might as well be in a box set with Batman & Robin and Batman Forever, buried in the landfill right next to the ET Atari games. I honestly don’t remember much of the plot from that movie… it was so forgettable.
Man of Steel is a whole new game. It definitely has the feel of the Christopher Nolan and Zach Snyder. Some of the best action scenes I’ve ever seen, many I only imagined would ever be possible in non-live-action media. It was the first time in a while I was actually leaning into the movie just amazed at what was going on. The presentation of the plot is also masterfully presented.
As with any movie, I went into it with a mindset of what to expect and I was spot on: A dark derivative of a classic American comic book that would be immensely action packed. I didn’t expect a lot of character development from the secondary characters, but given what I had seen in the previews, I was expecting some interesting back story for Superman.
Summary in one word: Delivered.
Tahm, I’m very glad to hear that about Man of Steel. I’m a little bit concerned about the “dark,” but we’ll see. That was the part the bad Batman movies never got: how tortured, how almost morally ambiguous, he was. That’s a big part of what made him Batman. I’m not sure how much of that I think is in Superman.
In any case, I’m looking forward to it all over again.