Double Review: BvS: Ultimate Edition & Batman: The Killing Joke

                Hello, everyone and welcome to another entry of Coffee With The Cynic’s movie reviews!  Originally this was going to be a video but Windows 8.1 isn’t cooperating and won’t let me open Movie Maker to edit the raw footage so I will provide you with a transcript here.  Sadly, this will probably be the case until we get upgraded to Windows 10 but we hope to get that done as soon as humanly possible.  Now, on with the show…article…whatever.

                Tonight we’re going to be doing a double bill review, starting off with the Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice Ultimate Edition, or as I like to call it, Batman vs Superman: Bat-Ass Edition as well as the animated film Batman: The Killing Joke.

                Batman vs Superman: Bat-Ass Edition

                Okay, so if you’ve been watching my videos, you’ll know that I really did not care for the theatrical cut of BvS and up until I watched Gods Of Egypt, BvS was actually the worst movie I had seen all year (so far).  When I heard that the Blu-Ray was going to feature an extended, “R” rated cut, I figured, “Alright, we never got to see the complete picture.  I’ll give the director’s cut a chance, maybe those extra thirty minutes will add something and who knows, maybe even knock it down a few spots on my ‘Worst Of 2016’ list.”  So I got around to watching it and I gotta say, “My eyes!  Ze thirty minutes, they do nothing!”

                The only thing I really noticed that the director’s cut “improved” the theatrical version was how it made it more coherent, dare say obvious, that someone was framing Superman.  Sadly, that was about it.  What was good about was still really good (Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons) and what was bad about the movie was still really bad (still way too many plots that would’ve been better as their own films, Jessie Eisenberg, the title fight comes in too late and ends too quickly).

                As for the “R” rating?  This movie didn’t need it.  Oh, you drop two “fucks” throughout the film?  Fuck-a-doodle-doo.  Extra CGI blood thrown in?  Wasn’t that intense, even when the thug’s head leaves a streak of blood on the way down after getting smacked by a crate.  This was a waste of an “R” rating.

                I was hoping that the extra thirty minutes would clear a few things up, that it would make the movie better and I would sit there like, “Okay, yeah, that’s a step in the right direction, guys!”  Sadly, my opinion of BvS still has not changed.  How can a movie add so much to the runtime without adding anything to the story?  It’s still a jumbled clusterfuck of a mess, focusing too much on catching up with other and more successful competitors rather than on being a good movie in its own right.  It’s still the second worst movie I’ve seen this year and it’s still a Throwaway.

Get the fuck outta here!

GOD, this is disappointing.  Like I said, I liked things about this movie but the things I didn’t like did so much damage that this just leaves me frustrated and hurt!  This hurts!  These characters deserved better.

Batman: The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke is the long-awaited animated adaptation of the famous comic written by Watchmen scribe, Alan Moore.  Prior to watching this film, I had only read the comic once and thought, “Yeah, it was alright.”  I didn’t get really attached to it or fall in love with it the way that it seems almost everyone else did but I was up for reading it again.

What got me interested in this one was the casting with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill returning to reprise their roles as Batman and The Joker, respectively.  In our household, Kevin Conroy is Batman and Mark Hamill is the best Joker.  Period.  I gotta say that these guys still got it as they are both amazing in their roles, be it Conroy’s powerful yet stoic voice or Hamill’s ability to sound both amusing and chilling at the same time (a couple of parts actually did make me shudder a little).  It never fails to amaze me how these two have been playing these roles for over twenty years and they still truly love being in these characters’ shoes.

A lot of people seem to have issue with the first half an hour of this movie involving Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (voiced by Tara Strong), whether it be they found her annoying or just because it wasn’t in the original Killing Joke comic.  I can understand why they feel this way but it didn’t bother me so much because, like I said before, I’m not strongly attached to the original comic and the film did need to flesh her out before the events of The Killing Joke so that she can be a full-fledged character instead of just a plot device.  That being said, I would be outright lying if I said I didn’t think it went on a little too long or if I didn’t say it felt like another movie added to the beginning of The Killing Joke but good things come to those who wait.

As far as adapting the comic goes, once it actually starts into The Killing Joke, it is pretty much the comic word for word and somewhat frame for frame.  It was like the executives were wondering, “Okay, how do we adapt this comic to animation,” and one of them flipped open the book, showed it to them and said, “Do this.”  Granted, the color scheme of the film is closer to the rerelease of the comic where the color palette was more modern as opposed to the flashy, carnival color palette of the original comic.

As for the rating?  This is DC’s first animated “R” rated feature so that was exciting in its own right and I will say this: this film earned its “R” rating more than BvS: Bat-Ass Edition did.  That being said, it isn’t a hard “R” like Heavy Metal or anything like that.  Probably closer to a 14A, if we’re being entirely honest.

I really like the DC Animated Universe and the movies and series released therein so I was interested to see how the animation in this one fared against the animation from previous entries.  The animation by no means is terrible but I did find it a bit stiff in some areas when a character would turn their head or one shot in particular when the CGI animation blended poorly with the 2D stuff.  It’s not a deal breaker but don’t expect animation as smooth as Batman: The Animated Series here.

Final Verdict: Basically, if you like the comic, you’ll probably like the movie or at least once the movie gets to the comic’s story.  I personally didn’t mind the extra stuff at the beginning but I can get why others might.  My feelings for the movie mirror my feelings for its source material: I liked it, I’m not head-over-heels in love with it the way many others are but after watching this movie, I read the comic again and watched the movie again, putting them both at two views and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the idea of revisiting either in the future.  I love watching Conroy and Hamill reprise these roles and I had fun and felt good watching The Killing Joke (which is kind of morbid, I know) and in the end, I will say that Batman: The Killing Joke is A Fun Ride and I would recommend checking it out.

 Wheeeee!

So folks, let me know in the comments: what did you think of either of these movies, for better or worse?  Also, keep your ears to the ground on this blog as we are seeing Suicide Squad tomorrow and will be doing a review of that, as well as a review of a film I never got to see as a kid, Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm.

Thanks for your time and if you like what you see on this blog, you be sure to nudge that “Follow” button and stay cynical!

-The Cynic

-The Cynic

Dual Review: Jurassic Park: Dangerous Games 1 & 2

I'm a little behind because of the move and the almost five months it took to get the internet back, so I'm a little late with this one, hence why I'm reviewing two issues instead of one. I've had a couple people ask me what I think of IDW's latest romp in the Jurassic Park universe, Dangerous Games.

Plot: An undercover agent named Daniel Espinoza is trying to take a down a drug cartel from the inside and everything had been going fine until he's found out and taken to the cartel leader's private island. There's just one problem...said island is Isla Nublar aka Jurassic Park. The cartel's leader leaves Espinoza in the jungles with only a hunting knife and gives him 24 hours to survive before the leader's right hand man hunts down Espinoza for himself. Espinoza then witnesses a dinosaur attack and takes down a Parasaurolophus with his knife. Unfortunately, his would-be meal is interrupted by an Allosaurus coming to eat him, but when Espinoza trips on a log and is knocked out, a pack of Velociraptors come and kill the Allosaurus with someone announcing that they have a guest. He comes to in the Raptor's nest where there is a redheaded woman, Dr. Frances White, nursing his wounds and offering him food. She explains that she was hired to study how the dinosaurs behaved, and even grew quite attached to the Velociraptors with them imprinting on her as their mother. However, White was growing tired of how the men used brute force to handle the dinosaurs and when she approached Peter Ludlow about it, he basically went Chris Brown on her, so she uncaged her Raptors to stop him from hurting her. Ludlow pulls a gun and begins firing at the Raptors, one of the bullets grazing White's cheek and they escape into the jungle with White vowing never to live amongst humans again. Espinoza insists that he has a job to do and if he has to do it alone, so be it, but White says that she'll help but they need guidance first. They go to a boneyard and White hides as the fucking T-Rex steps out and eyes Espinoza. Taken aback by the Rex's size and intimidation, Espinoza freezes, so the T-Rex looses sight of him and walks off. White then explains that the T-Rex judges the souls of everyone on the island and needed to see if Espinoza was worth helping. Meanwhile, the leader's right hand man decides to start hunting down Espinoza early and White's pack of Velociraptors attack them. White runs in to help but is caught in a net, so Espinoza tries to cut her down only to find himself looking down the barrel if the right hand man's gun as the goon insists they begin the hunt.

My apologies for the wall-o-text there, but I did just have to sum up two issues of a five issue series. So...what do I think of it? Well...let's see...first off, I'm not too crazy about the fact that this story is on Isla Nublar and not Isla Sorna for I am in the crowd that considers the deleted scene from The Lost World where they explain the first island was destroyed canon, so unless Dangerous Games is a prequel to TLW, which it gives no indication that it is, then I'm not impressed. However, the argument can be made that the comics do not follow the film canon. Fine, then I'm not terribly impressed that Dangerous Games sticks a middle finger to the Topps comics from the mid-90s where the U.S. Military assumed control of Isla Nublar and was using it as a research facility. Another thing that sorta makes me scratch my head is that supposedly this drug cartel leader is paying off someone in the U.N. and that's how he was able to buy the island so easily. If the U.N. knew what was on the island and consider it a big enough deal that, I dunno, the fucking U.N. needs to be involved with it, wouldn't they be a TAD suspicious that it suddenly dropped off their radar of importance?

Another thing that I don't like is the Frances White character. Sure, my inner teen's tongue is wagging at her flowing red locks and super-heroine figure, but this lady is fucking insane. I mean, living with Velociraptors? Creatures that have been dead for how many millions of years that we have little to no idea how their brains worked, and she's just shacking up with them?! Let me remind everyone of something: the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are wild animals, creatures that operate on their own natural instinct, which at times, is really goddamned unpredictable! You know that film Grizzly Man? Here's the sequel: Raptor Woman, and I won't be the least bit surprised if they turn out to have the same ending. I think writer Erik Bear was watching Godzilla: The Series when he came up with this idea.

Now let's talk about that bit with the T-Rex. Another reason that goes to show you that White is either insane for a really stupid scientist. "She judges the souls of everyone on the island?" "Only the ones she deems worthy survive?" Really, folks? This is the angle they're going with? Yes, dinosaurs are fascinating and what was accomplished at Jurassic Park was nothing short of a scientific miracle, but let's not make them out to be things that they aren't! There's nothing magical or godly about the T-Rex, save for its size and power. The only reason why the Rex didn't chomp down on Espinoza is because he stood perfectly still while facing the T-Rex because he was in awe of it. Good for him, because the laws of Jurassic Park dictate that the T-Rex's sight was based on movement; freeze and you'll be okay, provided she doesn't smell you. If White really was hired to study the behavior of the dinosaurs on the island, either she just didn't get to the T-Rex before she ditched humanity or living alone with a pack of Dromaeosaurs has really screwed with her head.

There's two last things I want to discuss. 1) If this story takes place on Isla Nublar, why is there such an inconsistency with not only what dinosaurs were on the island going from the first film to this comic, but with how said dinosaurs actually look going from first film to this comic? I say this because in Dangerous Games, there are appearances from Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Pterosaurs (very faintly, but they're there), as well as a couple of dinosaurs that I have absolutely no idea what they hell they are due to their overabundance of feathers and odd color patterns. I know that the whole feathers thing goes with current paleontological theories, but if this is supposed to be on Isla Nublar, shouldn't the dinosaurs actually LOOK like they did in the film? There were no feathered dinosaurs in the first Jurassic Park, so what the hell are they doing here? Has so much time passed since the first film that the Velociraptors evolved feathers? Can such an evolutionary twist occur in 18 years or less (if this does turn out to be a prequel to The Lost World)? Furthermore, where in the blue hell did all these other dinosaurs come from? Did the drug cartel hire a team of geneticists so they could breed the other embryos in the lab so the goons would have something to shoot at? What in the fuck?!

Finally, the last thing that I want to talk...nononono, lemme rephrase that, the last thing I want to rant about (that's better) is the artwork. Just take a look at it. While it's not Redemption bad, although that's not hard, Dangerous Games still takes the same trend that most Jurassic Park comics do by having pretty good cover art but questionable interior art. This thing looks like a Jurassic Park anime, which is just as much fail as manga Wolverine. Not only did I keep thinking that one of the characters was gonna shout "OVER NINE THOUSAANNNNNNND" at any second, but the art has these weird proportion issues where the size of some of the dinosaurs will vary from panel to panel which certainly doesn't help with the fact that they look like shit to begin with.

The first time I read issues 1 & 2 of Dangerous Games, I thought it was okay, but then again it was like 7am and I hadn't gone to bed yet. Upon reading it again from an analytical point of view, I am thoroughly unimpressed with this story arc. As much as Jurassic Park: Dangerous Games has failed to wow me but has pissed me off instead, this comic still isn't as bad as Jurassic Park: Redemption. Thankfully, Dangerous Games hasn't raped my childhood and then spat on the quivering remains...yet. Here's hoping the next three issues turn it around, but something in the back of my head is telling me not to hold my breath.

-The Cynic

EDIT: Turns out that this comic takes place in 2012, 11 years after the events of the films, so yeah, this book can suck it. Also, I'm not reviewing the final three issues because they bring nothing new to the table. I wouldn't invest in this story unless you are a hardcore JP fan, and even then, I'd be having second thoughts...