Movie Review: Transformers One

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back for my Movie Review.

As a kid, there were three toys that I love to playing with, Hot Wheels, Lego and even Transformers. In case for the latter, its pretty cool to see a toys involving giant robots with their abilities to transforming into cars, jets, boombox, animals and more, its all about the good like Autobot fighting against the evil Decepticon for their power hungry to tanking over either Cybertron or even Earth for taking energy sources, they’re the flagship on Hasbro toy series, sitting next to My Little Pony (another favorite, but back when it was fun in 4th Gen with Friendship is Magic) for their ongoing run for competition next to Mattel with Barbies and the aforementioned Hot Wheels. Though unlike Mattel, Both Transformers and My Little Pony in the 1980s, while the ponies were introduced first in 1981, Transformers were debuted in 1984, three years after MLP. But I was born late as 1995 that I wish I could watching the first generation Transformers, instead I remember watching the anime Transformers from “Robots in Disguise” to “The Unicron Trilogy” from Armada, Energon to Cybertron (The latters are… Pretty cool, but a bit rich). But when Michael Bay shown up to giving us his take on Transformers, I felt underwhelmed for how BORING it is, which I was pretty much ignored them like nothing happened, or perhaps I should’ve watch more Transformers cartoons like “Tansformers Animated” or Prime. Though as I grown, I really want to get myself back into Transformers, not just for looking for toys, but also watching the shores in their different lore. But what they never have been is to have a theatrical animated Transformers after over decades.

“Transformers One” is a 2024 animated movie that was directed by Josh Cooley (the director of Toy Story 4), produced by Don Murphy, Tom DeSanto, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Michael Bay (Yup, its him again), Mark Vahradian and Aaron Dem, and written by Eric Pearson, Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari.

The idea of this movie cam after the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, Paramount had a discussion with one of the writer Akiva Goldsman to do the work of Transformers for hope of its promise to Michael Bay’s version, but once he worked on Transformers: The Last Knight, it was a bust. Despite that, it seems Paramount wanted more when another writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari joined in. BUT, rather than making another Bay’s Transformers, they wanted to have a prequel story of Transformers, not just a prequel, but an animated film, which is something that we’ve never expected to having a theatrical animated movie based on Transformers, but it wasn’t the first. Back in 1986, when the first two seasons of Transformers was such a big deal, so much so they the people behind the show decided to go all in to making their own movie as a tie-in from the show with new characters and sadly, killing off Optimus Prime. Which despite it had a potential, it didn’t turned out both the reaction and the box-office, leaving the idea of animated Transformers movie left a shadow that made the G1 into a decline, despite of selling new toys for the sake of introducing new characters, but its a long story. Anyway, once Paramount has accepted to having an animated Transformers movie in a prequel story, it had a lot of promise, especially when they hired Josh Cooley as a director.

So, with all that said, will this movie will give us more than meets the eye, or is this film felt like it was created by Decepticon?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

Just to head up I may not be familiar of Transformers in Hardcore level, but I did learn for some since I briefly watched the G1 Transformers show. So with all that said, will the origin has a pretty good story? Well, for the most part, yeah, I definitely think so, sometimes for the writing.

The movie begins where it briefly explains Cybertron was born from the original kind name “Primus”. But due to Primus’s life came to at end, it transforms into a planetary form as Cybertron that we all know, along with birth of the population kind as “Cybertronian”, as well as giving cogs to the heroes that they were called “Primes”, but alas, they were gone without the most important thing in Cybertron what its called “The Matrix of Leadership” in order give more powers from planet’s energy resource called “Energon”. After the origin, we introduced Orion Pax (betefore he’ll be named Optimus Prime that we all know) who found the small documentary about the aforementioned origin, but after got himself into a hot water from being chased by Darkwing to get lost, he reunites his pal D-16 (before he’ll be named Megatron), even if they’re both working as miners to digging out Energon with Elita-1, despite after their freak accident with injuring one of worker Jazz, and weirdly demoting Elita (despite she didn’t do anything wrong). But after Orion and D been accidentally participating the race in celebration (despite they lost the race) they given a respect to heroic of Cybertron named Sentinel Prime, only didn’t last long that they’ve been thrown out by Darkwing and meet the eccentric B-127 (Even though he was named named “Bumblebee” in the movie, which il call him “Bee” for short) from down bellow. Despite thrown out, Orion found a map from Bee’s weirdly imaginary friend to finding the location that he assume there’s must be the way to seeking The Matrix. Its up to Orion Pax, D-16, Elita and Bee to find the way to finding The Matrix, along with hopefully having special cogs to transform and learn more truth.

I will say, its pretty nice to bring us back to the past where it all begin before we have Autobot and Decepticon, especially when our unlikely heroes are going out to seeking The Matrix, along with their character development build up. However, while I enjoy the origin, though it can be too simple and kinda cliché with some elements, such as being the chosen ones, the dark secret Sentinel (yeah, SPOILER ALERT, its a villain’s plot twist cliché) and it can be a bit complex in the movie throughout the movie. Even if I can be a bit nit-picky with some moments didn’t make any sense like why Elita got fired when she’s done nothing wrong, how Bee found the map without realization and why Sentinel congratulating Orion and D for nothing in Transformers version of Indy 500. Yeah, the writing can be questionable for some logic. But of course, what’s not better way to have a humors, which will say, I find some jokes are chuckle worthy that I laughed at some moments, but if only the jokes won’t get too much on Bee, sure I did chuckled some Bee’s humors, but once a limit needs to give him a limit than forced, not to mention, even though the movie is meant to be made for kids, but most of the jokes are kinda mature that we should’ve know that its a PG animated film, based toys involve robots turning into vehicles or others. However, while its not perfect, the movie also has a chemistry between Orion Pax and D-16, which I find the development between of two are like the focus and I can see why, since can feel these two are meant to be good friends, but the more you watch, the more separation build up they’re about to, which is exactly the difference between of two is day and night, you can fee Orion wants to be help in his lighter path, while D-16 is on a verge of losing respect and potentially twisted by the dark side. Especially with an appreciation about the world building about Cybertron from the aforementioned origin.

While the writing aren’t as perfect, and some jokes are mixed of chuckle worthy or forced, the story is pretty nice to bring us to the prologue that, while a bit slow, but the more we watch, the more fun and action impact it gets.

The Animation

The movie’s budget costs between $75M to $147M (though its estimated) and I will say, it looks pretty good and of course, for a theatrical film based on Transformers, its worth of update with going back to the old route.

For starter, the background is no stranger to going 80’s-like detail and the colorful chrome either inside or outside of Cybertron and I gotta say, they look colorful and amazing, the city in Cybertron looks pretty cool and probably creative for being a cite from normal side or weirdly upside down (kinda like the Hollow Earth in Monsterverse, but in futuristic city). Of course, outside of city, it also has a creative with a mix of metallic mountain formation, nature overgrown and other fascinating location design, sure it may not look vibrant, but the colors and even some effects are fascinating.

One thing that I give an appreciation is the character designs. First, I like to pointing out the animation of this movie is done by “Industrial Light and Magic”, they used to be involved with the live action character designs in Bayverse. This time, gone is the clutter with gears, pieces and stuff all over for the cheap sake of realism in Bay films, here, since this is an animated movie, they went back to the old route by having the character designs look more like they came from toys (You know what they said, movies or shows are made to selling toys since the 80s.), and I gotta say, not only its a right decision, but also the character designs are pretty good, almost like a mix of 80s and modern, sure their faces are metallic human-like, which is odd design, unless some of your are like “Hey, this is like the modern facial animation of Transformers: Beast Wars”, and you know what? By looking between of two, they kinda do. Though il give also a credit for the effects, for the characters, whether be their eyes with iris, a glowing chest once they have cogs to of course, seeing them transforming into vehicles that we love to see for obstacles and action. There’s also the Quintesson aliens, though these guys have nothing to do with the plot, but I will say, even though im not familiar with Quintisson aliens (even if they have nothing to do with the plot), but having born as an alien robot from its appearance, they look unique and kinda disturbing.

Of course, since this is Transformers movie, its no stranger that we have action scenes, I will say, those action scenes are fun to to watch, while we start out slow from Orion Pax chasing away from Darkwing, a racing with Orion and D-16, and even avoiding obstacles. But of course, like the story, the longer you watch, the more intense action impact we gotten into from creative battle with transformation, the impressive use of cinematography, to even some moments are brutal that some are either getting injured or even body counts. Keep in mind, while they gave us some cool action for kids, but its still rated PG, MCU style, but at least its a lot fun to watch than the current MCU.

Like I said, gone is the clutter and cheap stake from Bay’s films, the animation of this movie is outstanding for its bringing back to the old route, fun action and colorful design and presentation.

The Characters

When it comes to the characters, a lot are pretty much in a minor roles or minor developments, but I do enjoy the voice acting (even if its another one of those animated movies with all-star casts) along with some giving us a promising character development. I know when we saw them in a trailer, we were pretty doubtful for their roles, but keep in mind, this is the origin story of Transformers, which again, the longer we watch, the more fascination it goes.

Starting off with the main protagonist in the movie, Orion Pax, aka Optimus Prime (voiced by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth), when we first introducing him, he’s more of a curious and adventurous miner, which he could causing troubles for being cocky that he wants to help, but as it goes on when he learns about The Matrix, he becomes mature and brave for his honor to Cybertron for peace, I know it sounds I like spoiled the movie, but easy to predict how our familiar characters will become after they learned, which is exactly how Orion grows, even though his development is more like an unlikely chosen one to be the hero, but il give a credit what they’re trying, sure its not like the same voice as legendary Peter Cullen, but Chris did a pretty good work of his role of Orion.

Next, we have D-16, aka Megatron (voiced by Brian Tyree Henry, aka Bernie Hayes from Monsterverse, and aka Jefferson Davis in Sony’s Spider-Verse), at first, he’s more of a regular Cybertronian who’s not looking for trouble, despite he’s more irritated from his fella Orion without hesitant to punishing and can be hotheaded, but unlike Orion, once he learned by about The Matrix, he’s potentially going down to the dark side, becoming injustice and menacing for his potential battle in genocide. He’s like Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars, but instead of being cocky or childish, he starts out rather realistic and down to earth to becoming ruthless and evil that we all know. Like before, sure its no stranger its not like the legendary Frank Welker, but Brian is really surprising me for his impressive role of Megatron, he goes from normal and sorta tragic to becoming pure evil after the secret is revealed.

After that, we have Elita-1 (voiced by Black Widow herself, Scarett Johansson), she’s more of a no-nonsense discipline and the only female ally of Orion’s group, despite she’s been wrongfully victimized. I find her to be not bad, she’s more of a strong and serious former superior of mining towards Orion and D-16, even if she has no problem to punishing some (without harmful). She’s almost like the Cybertronian version of Black Widow, I mean, what do you expect they’re both played by Johansson, but il give a credit for her voice as Elita, she did a nice role.

Lastly, there’s B-127, aka Bumblebee (voiced by Keegan-Michael Kay, aka Toad from The Super Mario Bros Movie, and aka Ducky from Toy Story 4), he’s pretty much the eccentric Cybertronian from bellow and the obvious comedic relief in the movie in KMK standards. Like I said, he did gave me chuckling moments, but its just the comedy is a bit too much on him in, again, fashion from Keegan-Michael Kay, sometimes it works like his hilarious rightful option of running away from mountain formation to “Badass-atron”, but other times, its too much and questionable development from the start, either that or maybe Michael Bay is not a fan of Bee, but that’s just me.

As for the rest, a lot of them are having a minor developments, some are fascinating, but some that I wish they could’ve give us more. There’s Alpha Prime (voiced by Morpheus himself, Lawrence Fishburn) who’s the last living Prime who gives us the truth about The Matrix and partially about his group and world building, Sentinel Prime (voiced by Jon Hamm) who’s the great hero of Cybertron right before we found out his dark secret. Yeah, like I said, he’s another one of those villain with a twist, though I wish they could’ve give us more screen like he’s watching over our main heroes, but again, its just me, Starscream (voiced by Steve Buscemi) is the leader of his High Guard that he’s surprisingly less cowardly and less selfish, nice touch to make him badass, then again, I would love to see him more, along with Soundwave (voiced by Jon Bailey) and Shockwave (voiced by Jason Konopisos-Alvarez). And there also some I appreciate their appearance, but in cameos (though with potential) like Jazz (voiced by Evan Michael Lee) and Arcee (voiced by Jinny Chung). If only we would like to see them in their cameos like Hotrod, Ultra-Magnus, Ironhide or some of the Decepticon’s Seekers. Aw well.

While most of almost all of them have a minor roles, but its nice for their casting, and even giving us the character developments, especially for two main characters.

And now for my final opinion of this film

Overall, Transformers One is surprisingly a pretty good Transformers movie that they gave us.

The story is pretty good for the build up of the secret truth, the writing is good, the characters are good too, especially for the main characters’ build up, the animation is outstanding and colorful, the action are great, the humors can be good and it has a nice heart.

Sure, while I like some, but the writing is nowhere perfect with some flaws with clichés and some nonsensical logic, some humor is forced and aside the main characters, I would like to see their build up that I like, for the most part.

And to be fair, I think its safe to say that I’d rather watching this more than those godawful Michael Bay versions, sure Bay’s version can be fun, but its just flat out boring and absolute cringe. The difference is day and night, which im glad both Paramount and Industrial Light and Magic have learned after what Bay gave us to bringing Transformers back to its old route.

Despite the problems, its no stranger to be a Must-Watch film for Transformers fans and even non-fans. as a fan of animation (unlike the godawful Bay ones), I think I enjoy this movie, not perfect, but at least I enjoy this movie for all the good reasons and even appreciation to both Paramount and Industrial Light and Magic. If you’re curious about Transformers, I’d say give this one a watch, and maybe you’ll love Transformers for either actions or learning about the origin.

For my rating, im gonna give this one an 8.5/10. This is movie is so close to earning the Trophy of Success, but if it doesn’t have flaws, it would’ve been either 9 or 10. Aw well, better luck next time.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out and Happy early Canadian Thanksgiving though.

Movie Review: The Wild Robot

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

Remember last year when I was hoped when Dreamworks are going to giving us a promise, before they were tripped when they gave us Ruby Gillman? Yeah, last year was like a roller coaster ride, they gave us promising with The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, but then they went down to facing their own punishment when Ruby Gillman’s box-office got flopped. That is until when we have the next movie to giving us a hope for their return.

“The Wild Robot” is a 2024 animated sci-fi survival film that was written/directed by Chris Sanders and produced by Jeff Hermann.

If the name Chris Sanders sounds familiar to you all, its because he had been worked with classic movies, he started working at Disney as visual works and even character designs, he worked on a classic renaissance films like Beauty and The Beast, The Lion King and Mulan. Then in 2002, while Disney was in bad shape, he gave one his best work, Lilo and Stitch. But after the negotiation of American Dog didn’t go well, Sanders left Disney to Dreamworks for his passion project of The Croods (though with mixed result), he also gave us another one of his best, How To Train Your Dragon. Sanders’s next movie wouldn’t be until we have here today. Back in September 2023, they were announced to adapting from the book series with the same name by Peter Brown with Sanders brought in as both writer and director. Though this film’s idea came from Sanders’s curiosity when he found the book, he wasn’t sure at first, until he think that this will be the opportunity make a movie with Dreamworks, it wasn’t just a survival movie with a lone robot, but also feel that this will be fitting to have a heart to connect between robot and nature.

So, with all that said, will the robot lives in nature in peace, or is it unwelcoming to the wild life?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

While this movie is gonna be similar to Cast Away, but with a robot, but the story of this movie is actually both fun and actually heartwarming.

Taking place in a fictional future, we introduce the main robot named ROZZM unit 7134 who’s washed ashore to an island of wildlife from a typhoon (while unfortunately, the other ROZZUMs are broken in pieces), but after got activated by one otter out of nowhere, ROZZUM wakes up that, before discovering island, she’s pretty much in full on assistant mode with advertising services and asking for task to wild animals, which she unfortunately scaring them off and getting herself at risk from obstacles, getting attacked by a predator and worse, accidentally crushed a nest with a mother goose with one egg left. After it cracked open in birth, she’s curiously meets a baby goose as “Brightbill”, at first, she wasn’t so sure to figuring out how she’s being called a mother, until she meets a fox name Fink (despite she saw him before) to helping her for being adoptive mother to Brightbill for three task, eating, swimming and flying. However, due to bring a robot, its not easy to start to first meeting the other animals, especially for her chemistry with her and the wild animals, while at the same time, she wants to found out who she is. Its up to Roz to discovering nature to connect them and asking herself whether or not if she lives with nature or going back to the futuristic company called “Universal Dynamics”.

I find the story of this movie, again, while its similar many survival films like say, Cast Away, but the execution is actually pretty impressive and of course, well written. The movie goes to focus of Roz trying to connect with nature for her both curiosity and befriend with them without putting herself as risk, even if she’s a robot from greeting in advertising and assistant mode from the start. But the longer she stay to hanging out and helping the more emotion she’s developing that she’s interested live with, especially for her chemistry with herself, Brightbill and Fink, especially to have a mix of humor and heart. Especially with the latter, while I do have a chuckling moments, but the heart is the key to this movie, and I will say, they did a pretty good job how we can relate to her for both both outcast and castaway, along with a subplot that she needs to know who she’s supposed to be when her relationship with wild animals goes pretty difficult when they treating her as a monster, despite she’s meant to helping them without putting a harm, even if she didn’t even meant to kill Brightbill’s mother, even if without telling the terrible truth to him. Its easy to feel sorry for her that she just wants to be friend rather than being badly treated, even if when she found that she’s meant to be part of “Universal Dynamics”, leaving her an uneasy decision if she stays or got back where she belongs. Especially where she wants to be an adoptive mother to helping Brightbill for how to be like geese to eat, swimming and flying. However, if there’s a downside I have of this movie, is that the movie started pretty short when she’s quickly washed ashore of the island, which its been heard about a cargo ship was caught in a dangerous typhoon that left her, along with 5 others (but broken into pieces) left to the island, which find the opening is rather a rushed start, even if I understand that the movie’s length is less than 2 hours, but again, the opening is kinda rushed.

Aside of botched opening, the story and its writing are both outstanding for adventure to survive, a chemistry with wild animals and difficulty life with ROZZUM, especially for her developing her feeling towards animals for both helping and friendship.

The Animation

The movie’s budget is $78M, and by looks of this film’s animation, my god, its beautifully well done.

For the background design, they look pretty amazing for a movie taking place in an island of wildlife, though as I know, the forest and the landscape is done via inspiration from Claude Monet’s painting with all the nature with forest, river, a shore and others for concept background, making the background looking like painting comes to life, its beautifully amazing what they pulled with all the textures and even the effects.

Speaking of the animation and the effects, its no stranger that by looking at it, they took the same technique from previous films like The Bad Guys and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, based on a CG with 2D-like animation that they took inspiration from Sony’s Spider-Verse, and out of the same technique they pulled, this is probably the strongest one they ever pulled. The effects of this movie is pretty good with the water effect its much more of a natural in 3D to even some lighting action like lightning and laser gun blast are like in 2D.

For animation, it goes like two roles, on one side is the full futuristic 3D with some robots, the future town, the vehicles to maybe even some humans, they’re looking pretty nice, especially with ROZZUM design. Though I know I kept saying “im not gonna do a comparison between the book and the film, cause I didn’t own a book”, but this might be an exception. If you look at the book version’s design, it looks way too simple and robotic, which I find this one to be… Too simple and kinda boring. The movie’s ROZZUM design is completely different, sure it has a same ling arms and legs, but they made her a round design and also made it simple, but also giving Roz a special ability like detachable limb and even developing her emotion, which I find Roz’s movie design look, while simple, but also giving innocent looking, which I find her pretty cute as a robot.

On the other side, there the nature and the wildlife are done in 3D with 2D concept comes to life, sure there are some may look like if they’re from other movies outside of Dreamworks, but il give a credit that they did this as an inspiration from classic Disney films to even Hayao Miyazaki films. Specically while Chris Sanders said, its an inspiration from both Bambi and My Neighbor Totoro. And I gotta say, for inspiration of the animals design and the animation, they look pretty good for the deisgn and even cute looking. Sure some action scenes with geese are done with 2D, but I can’t help but enjoy how the animation of the animals are pretty good, kinda like a Disney inspired concept arts comes to life.

Sadly, despite they did the best work and effort for the animation process and the same technique, this will be the last film when Dreamworks made their animation on their own, meaning that because of the flop from Ruby Gillman, they won’t be able to make another movie from scratch with laying off employees, which means Dreamworks need a helping hands for the outsiders for their future projects. Like I said in my list of worst movies in 2023, its pretty sad for what could’ve been their redemption, but because they’re losing money and their employees, gotta shifting away to making animated movies on outside studios at the end of 2024. Back then, Dreamworks used to be great for making best movies on their own hands, but for now on at the end of 2024, they gotta work with the outsiders for their helping hands for their future projects. Thanks a lot, Ruby Gillman…!

Despite this will be the last film that Dreamworks made an animated movies on their own, but they still did their best job for beautifully well crafted animation from the background and their inspired animation technique.

The Characters

In typical Dreamworks fashion, it has an all-star cast with past and modern names on, but based on a beautifully, fun and emotional writing, it makes the characters actually enjoy to hear and heartfelt.

Lets starts off with the wild robot herself, ROZZUM Unit 7134, or Roz for short (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, aka Maz Kanata, aka Raksha, aka Nakia), the main robot who’s washed ashore to the wildlife island to discovering the environment to hanging out with wild animals to befriending to becoming adoptable mother, even if she may have a hard time to either live with wildlife or going back to futuristic city. While I find her design look simple, but cute, I find her pretty fascinating for her character driven, she started out as an unwelcoming outcast that they’ve name-calling her as a monster that left her difficult to get along from the start, especially when she wants to finding out who and what is she supposed to be, leaving her, again, questioning herself to either stay or go. But of course once she learns further, along with developing her emotion in her robotic mind, the more emotional and believable she’s become. That’s what makes her memorable for all of fun and tragic reason, she’s alone and being the only robot in a wildlife that she just wants to be welcomed and looking for friends or being a mother to the animals, but isn’t easy from the start in her Assistant mode, but the longer she stays, the more more character driven she’s become, and that makes her memorable and yet we feel sorry for being an outsider, and Lupita did a great job for her voice acting. Plus, this is Lupita’s first voice acting in animated film, so good for her.

Next we have Fink (voiced by Pedro Pascal, aka Mando from The Mandalorian), the red fox that, at first, when Roz tries to saving the egg, he wants to eat the newborn goose, since he’s a carnivorous like any foxes (for the most part), but he eventually get along with her to helping her for learning about the wildlife and kinda even teaching her to be an adoptive mother when she protects Brightbill. At first, we thought he could be a hostile fox from the start, but after seeing her adopting Brightbill, he chooses for not only being bad to good, but also helping her to discover the environment, which is actually pretty nice to help her as a robot. Though its also funny that he sounds almost like Nick Wylde from Zootopia, they’re both mischievous and well, they’re both red fox, though whereas Nick is being a small-time con-artist for her quick money goal before Judy Hopps shows up, while Fink is a typical carnivorous to teacher show Roz a whole new world in the island of wildlife. Which I find Fink being another memorable, he’s both funny and helpful to Roz to discover the world outside of future city. And of course, Pedro did a fun work of his voice acting.

Then there’s Brightbill (voiced by Kit Connor) a young goose who’s adopted by Roz follow her incident of her bumping and crushing ride on her discovering the land. At first, we may have a cute and sad start when Roz made a fatal accident of killing a mother goose (even though she didn’t even meant to) which Roz have not choice to be his mother to taking care of. At first, I find him to be a passable orphan that Roz teaches him with three tasks, but like Roz, he has a character driven for his build up finishing task to unfortunate revealing the dark truth for why he lost his original mother. At first with the truth revealed, it feels like he has no hope with Roz, which at least once he learns about flight and even migration, he has a motivation to live like geese with the help of Thunderbolt and even Longneck. He may have a typical cute and kinda boring starts, but once he’s developed, he eventually got motivated once he’s able to finishing the tasks from Roz to understand to be like geese and migration, which is actually nice, even I gave a pass, but again, still nice for his character driven from the execution, and Kit did a nice work of his voice role that we can rooting for and feel sorry for him for being an orphan.

As for the rest of the characters, even though they’re not much else to say, but at least they have a nice character developments to giving advice to our main wild robot as well with some surprising developments and even fun voice acting.

There’s Pinktail (voiced by Catherine O’Hara, aka Kate McCallister from Home Alone, and aka Delia Deetz from Beetlejuice) she’s the mother of her own Virginia opossum family to giving Roz an advice for how to be a mother of Brightbill and jeez, how many times Catherine plays a mother role in movies? Longneck (voiced by Bill Nighy, aka Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean), an elder goose to gives an advice to Roz for teaching Brightbill to fly by having Thunderbolt (voiced by Ving Rhames) to be a strong coach to teaching Brightbill to flying (pretty interesting to having an advice given from freakin’ Davy Jones than finding souls), Thorn (voiced by Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill) who’s at first, a menacing grizzly bear before, like a teddy bear, changed his heart for Roz (despite he slashed her…), Paddler (voiced by Matt Berry) who’s a busy beaver for the river (like any beavers) and finally, there’s Vontra (voiced by Stephanie Hsu, aka Alma Milan from The Fall Guy) is a robot who’s looking after Roz to bring her back where she’s belong, she sounds pretty friendly, despite being strictly menace against nature.

While some have a minor appearances, but these guys are both good and well-written with humors, plot development and even characters driven for how we’re rooting and our sympathy. Along with great voice acting.

And now for my final opinion of this film.

Overall, The Wild Robot is probably the best Dreamworks’ film they’ve ever made and this film is probably my new favorite next to Shrek and even Kung Fu Panda.

Despite it has a minor flaw, but this film is impressive from its beautiful animation, a very good and emotional story based on writing’s execution, memorable characters, the voice acting is great, its has its humor and its also rather emotional for our heart to a main character and rooting for one of the geese.

While its a damn shame that this is the last film that Dreamworks worked the animation on their own hands before working with the outsiders, I mean, I think those people did the best job of this while they sacrifice their business before the end of 2024. I know its sad for their changing, they did their best work for this film.

This is no stranger that its a Must-Watch film for everyone and the fans of Dreamworks. So if you guys wanna see it, get your friends and family together to watching, im sure some of you guys will love it if you eventually watching it, cause this one is probably the biggest animated film of the year. Again, highly recommend to watch it, my friends.

Because of all of good reasons that I enjoyed of watching this for fun and heartwarming it is, im gonna give this one a PERFECT 10/10, along with earning the Trophy of Success.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.

Movie Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

You know, being dead is both tragic and terrifying fate for something unexpected or to the future. But sometimes, even we have to dealing with death, we may also have spirit in our mind, seeing ghost that we miss so much in our daydream or even looking back in either the dream or even old video tapes. However, it wasn’t just a looking back, there are some who have an unusual ability of talking to dead people, even though it didn’t make any sense, but sometimes ghost can telling us for the order for revenge or even asking the way to reviving, that is unless if there’s a bio-exorcist from modeling background to go crazy in action to call upon the name, Bloody Mary style, without the disturbance and violence ways.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is a 2024 fantasy horror-comedy that was produced/directed by Tim Burton, co-produced by Marc Toberoff, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Tommy Harper, then written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith.

Before we have this movie, here’s a brief history about Beetlejuice.

Following the success of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure”, at first, Tim Burton is going to working on his take on Batman since he’s a bankable filmmaker back then, but it was an opposite that Burton is willing to pay with the writer Sam Hamm, causing a Burton’s caped crusader being less green-lit, which Burton wasn’t so keen for his vision, but that’s a long story, but then came Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson, when they came in to have a new concept about Beetlejuice, which Burton liked that idea, despite he had to putting his projects (including Batman) on hold work on it. Though it was originally going to be much darker and probably violent with graphical car crash and few others in their concept, while some are kept in a cut, though while some concept are kept, but Warren Skaaren stepped in when they had to changing the tone to be less violent to more focus on horror-comedy for various reason like having R&B music, the chaotic climax and even Michael Keaton as the titular character, and the rest, as they say, was history, its beloved by critics and the audience and the box-office was an instant hit, which of course, it eventually brought us a cartoon in 1989 to 1991 with Burton also involved the show as the executive producer. (As for me, yes I watched it from like, a months ago, it was insane, but I like it, maybe il review it in my future.)

Anyway, to the sequel’s origin. In fact, the sequel’s origin came back when Beetlejuice was a huge deal. So much so that the late production company called “The Geffen Film Company” were opened to have, not one, but two sequels, from “Beetlejuice In Love” which is like a horror romantic comedy when after the boyfriend died, the titular character goes after a girlfriend, and “Beetlejuice goes Hawaii” which a vacation movie with a mix of German Expressionism. However, despite Burton was interested to having another Beetlejuice movies, he’s been pretty busy with other projects with or without WB, ranging from working on Batman Returns or unfortunate canceled “Superman Lives”, leaving all of those crazy projects are pretty much thrown out with no hopes at all, even when they trying to get some new writers, including Kevin Smith. But it wouldn’t be until on February 2022, a new company “Plan B Entertainment” (founded by Brad Pitt, yes, THE Brad Pitt) came in to working with WB for second chance to having a new Beetlejuice project, though Tim Burton he had nothing to with Plan B, but he’s interested to coming back as a director, along with reuniting like Danny Elfman and even some casts, despite its all about next gen first witness Beetlejuice, due to having a new casts.

So, with all that said, will Beetlejuice deserves a welcome return for more chaotic journey, or should we not chanting his name ever again?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

While we have a welcome return to our old friends like Deetz family and the Juice, we expect to having something new and more chaotic as the first one? Well, for the most part, yes.

The movie begins where (after a nice replicating the first movie’s intro with Danny Elfman’s welcome return to compose) Lydia Deetz appears as a host of her own talk show called “Ghost House” to talking guest and showing a supernatural videos, while secretly having a relationship with the producer Rory, despite she lost her late husband Richard in his Amazon trip. Despite going on a new life, she still has psychic ability of seeing dead, including her old pal Betelgeuse, which is why she’s taking pills for clearing her mind, even if she sounds she has a trauma view from the past 36 years. She reunites with her mother Delia, while being the hostess of real art show at Soho, New York, she shares her struggling experience about her past, which Delia did shares the same problem from the past when her late husband Charles had a plane crash before gets eaten by a shark (Damn…!). So, they wanna going out to reuniting Lydia’s estranged daughter Astrid, however for Astrid, she’s not in a mood to believing about ghost stories, since she just wants to be in normal life. Even when they revisited the old house at Winter River, Connecticut, Astrid isn’t helping that she still refuses to believing ghosts, while at the same time, Rory goes to proposing Lydia for a new family life, while Astrid bikes away before she meets Jeremy, without realizing the dark secret about him (talk about a red flag for Wednesday).

While in afterlife world, Betelgeuse running his own office business of Bio-Exorcists, even though at the same times, he really misses Lydia for reuniting. However, the afterlife world got into a hot water when Juice’s late ex named Dolores has returned to going on a rampage, sucking souls of the dead to gaining her life ever since back in their good’ol days, they used to be together during the epidemic of Black Plague, right before they were killing each others from Dolores’s poison to Betelgeuse murdering her (though it was before he became ghostly immortal).

So its up for the Deetz family to get themselves back while also dealing with the return of Betelgeuse in a good’ol chaotic journey in real world and afterlife.

Basically, the movie goes into a double plot, one is where Lydia tries to get her family back to gathering like a lovable family, despite their tragic announcement of Charles’s passing with Rory becoming her new husband, while the other is when Betelgeuse wants to see Lydia again while also trying to hiding himself from vengeful Dolores. It sounds like an interesting idea to having a family reconciliation while having a funeral of Charles’s death until dealing with an evil spirit to reuniting Betelgeuse. It sounds like a good idea, if the execution could’ve done right, since this movie is mainly focuses on Deetz family for their gathering along for both the funeral and proposal from Rory, despite some doubts, along with a subplot when Astrid is getting along with Jeremy, but again. Without realizing the dark secrets, while the second plot with Betelgeuse is unfortunately didn’t get a focus, since we would love to see him trying to do a wacky setup in attempt to fighting against his ex Dolores, but alas, we never get a chance of a screen time, especially with Dolores (more on that later), especially it would’ve been great if its a little longer than less than 2 hours long film, im just saying for the length, but its the execution for what would’ve been for the idea of this movie, it has a promising idea, but didn’t get what I was expected. Im not saying its that bad, I like the story for the most part and the writing is good, but again, for the most part from the execution.

While its not as perfect, as for the dark humor in this movie, I will say, its quite of chuckle worthy that I enjoy, from surprise to laughing. I like some humors what it pulled, but its not as fresh as the first one, again, not saying its bad, its good with chuckle, but not as laugh out loud as the first one.

While I enjoy some humors in chaotic natures, but the story, while it has a promising idea for the chemistry and some development, but the execution could’ve been better what we have in this movie.

The Presentation

When it comes to the budget, its surprisingly quadrupled, in comparison, the first one costed $15M, here, it costed $100M. That’s quite of updated budget after 36 years. But does it looking great? Well hell yeah, it does for a bigger and better budget.

For the filming, they filmed on both US and UK, such as East Corinth, Vermont (the same location from the first film) and even Melrose Massachusetts (the latter was resumed in filming after the Hollywood Labor Strike in 2023) in US, then in UK, they filmed in Princess Helena College in Preston Hertfordshire, England. And I will say, their filming location with props setting are pretty good what they put. For real world, its a pretty nice place to film, especially for filming in Vermont that happens to be the same place when it was first filmed in the first Beetlejuice, which I though its just a replica, but nope, its the same location they filmed (especially I thought like “Its only a model” much like in the Maitlands’ house, but again, I was wrong.), but it looks beautiful for welcoming back, even the new location are also pretty nice. In the world of afterlife, they’re quite of trippy with colors all over with neon lights and random locations, like some kind of messed up dream world. Not to mention, along with the ways they’re built, they kinda remind of German Expressionism from the 1920 like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or even Nosferatu.

The effects of this movie is pretty good, freaky in Tim Burton’s fashion and well made. Aside the props in outdoor filming (instead filming on set) and of course, done with practical effects. Sure there were some part are done with CG, but practical effects are the most important things what Tim Burton (as well his crew) likes to pulled off, which is a good thing what we like to see to bring us back since the first film. The designs of the costumes in afterlife like the shrunken head employees are done in practical costume, which they’re quite unique and freaky looking with frown mouth and eyes wide open, then again, what do you expect of Tim Burton’s style, along with some others what they pulled for the costume design are pretty nice looking, as well as a nice reference from the past. But of course, they can also brought back one of my favorite animation style next to hand-drawn, which is the good’ol stopmotion ranging from the flashback of Charles’s death to return of Sandworm Titan, one of Saturn’s moons (still freaky as the original, eat your heart out, Dune’s sandworms…).

Another thing that I also like is some of the Easter Eggs, though I had a minimal of recognizable moments, but im sure some Beetlejuice fans will easily pointed up with several references, either from the first movie, the cartoon from 1989 to 1991, or even the musical from 2018.

Lastly, another welcome return is the soundtrack from our old friend Danny Elfman for giving us some spooky to chaotic moments, but of course, they add more fun to play with some songs from the reminder of Day-O to even chaotic music video with like Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting, a theme song of Carrie (based on a reference that, again, not gonna SPOILING it) and even MacArthur Park by Richard Harris, along with the cover version by Donna Summer.

The presentation of this sequel is quite of chaotic work, but I enjoy it with the references, a welcome return to Vermont, and even the work of practical effects.

The Characters

Its no stranger that the reason why we have this sequel, we like to have a reunion of our familiar casts, but of course, in typical sequels, there’s gotta be a new characters, but sadly some that we all know won’t coming back.

So lets start off with Betelgeuse himself (played by Michael Keaton, aka Batman, aka The Vulture from Spider-Man Homecoming), before Beetlejuice, Michael had been into comedy movies from Night Shift and Mr. Mom, sure there are others that were mixed results, but those are two famous titles examples. But when he first played the Bio-Exorcist, he took a one heck of a comedic performance, both creepy and cartoony, its no stranger that he stole the show that he gave me a chuckle. As for this sequel, while he remains the same as before, but after 36 years, he’s like an old ex that he wants to see Lydia again, while also being the boss of his own office, and probably have a slight paranoid when her ex Dolores has returned. But he’s still being darkly humorous, which I will say, even Keaton’s pushed to his age of 70s, he’s still doing fun work of his performance for his delivery and even some timing. Sure, he had been away of comedic performance back then, but its nice to do his comedic performance, and again, Keaton did a fun work for his welcome return of his memorable role, especially reuniting with Tim Burton since two Batman movies.

Next up, we have Lydia Deetz (played by Winona Ryder), from before, Winona was around in teenage age to playing as Lydia (after having her debut from Lucas to Square Dance), she used to be a young Gothic daughter with her ability to talking ghosts to helping the Maitlands couple and made Betelgeuse attention to be with her so bad. Here in this sequel, while she’s working as a host of her own talk show, she’s pretty much a struggling mother, ever since she can’t stop seeing a familiar Bio-Exorcist in her mind, her struggling connection to her daughter and her unfortunate tragedy that she lost her husband Richard. Gone from being a Gothic little girl in her odd family, but as a mother who tries to moving on, sure she has a Gothic appearance, but her feeling has been changed that she cares about family, even if Betelgeuse is still in her mind. I will say, its quite of nice return for Winona for her role since her teenage life, sure she had been a difficulty life from losing her respectful young actress Polly Klaas to getting herself into legal trouble. But after many years, it feels like she made a comeback with successful film like Black Swan, a successful show like Stranger Things and even reuniting Tim Burton in Frankenweenie, and this film is the second reunion with Burton and I will say, its good to see her again after been in struggling life and Winona did a great job of her upgraded role of Lydia since her younger days.

Finally, we have Delia Deetz (played by Catherine O’Hara, aka Kaye McCallister from Home Alone), from before Home Alone, Delia started as a sculpture artist and probably an uneasy mother that she tries to connect for all of chaotic reason from her husband Charles to her daughter Lydia with all the arguments to overprotecting her daughter (talk about the earliest example of her motherly panicking role before Home Alone, eh?). In this sequel she got herself a sense of humor (since after the first film) and became a hostess of real art show, even though she likes to reuniting with Lydia, but she’s still an over-dramatic mother when something isn’t going on her way, especially for her loss of Charles. Even with her update and kinda remains the same, Catherine did a fun work of her performance as a mother/grandmother of Deetz family, especially for probably her overacting (though not as over the top, but still).

So what about the new characters in this movie? Well, they’re are good, despite there are some didn’t get well.

Lets start off with Astrid Deetz (played by Jenna Ortega, aka Wednesday Addams from Netflix’s Wednesday), she’s Lydia’s daughter in the movie. But unlike Lydia, Astrid wants to life in her normal day ever since she doesn’t want to hearing about a ghost story from her mother and/or even her grandma. Though sure, she tried to befriend with resident in Winter River, but again she should’ve picked the right person before the red flag some of them are… Too good to be related. Im not saying she’s a bad character, I’d say she’s just misunderstood and she probably taking it too personal she runs away with a bike before gets worse. But of course, Jenna did a great work of her performance and between this and her memorable role of Wednesday, I think Jenna is possibly my new favorite actress based on her delivery in her acting style.

Next, we have Rory (played by Justin Theroux) who’s Lydia’s new boyfriend for his wishful marriage to her, despite there’s probably a doubtful whether or not he’s a respectful TV producer or a manipulative man that he wants her to be with himself. I find him an okay character, I think he’s just another one of those rich villain who wants to using his advantage to marrying Lydia, despite she’s having a struggling experience of both Betelgeuse and her loss of Richard. Cause you know what they said “You can’t buy winning”. Anyway, I find him to be an okay new character due to predictable reason for why he wants to be with Lydia, but again, not gonna give you a SPOILER detail, even though he’s rich, but its easy to know his prediction. Despite the predictable, Justin did a fairly nice role, but even if he probably has less screen time in the second act.

Speaking of villain, we have Dolores (played by Monica Bellucci), an evil spirit who came back from the dead to absorbing souls for revenge on Betelgeuse since the days with Black Plague pandemic as a cult member. I think I find her to be a promising and beautiful villain in this movie, having an evil spirit is a promising concept to see her trying to hunting down the Juice in their deadly battle with ritual and poison. But sadly, we never get to see her more, due to the focus of a Deetz family struggle to re-connection, we’ll never be able to see her more in her rampage or maybe even coming out from Afterlife to murdering living people by absorbing souls, but alas, we never be able to see her more. Its just a shame that, again, I find her to be both beautiful and promising that she could’ve been a main villain, especially that I can’t help but thinking that she looks like Morticia Addams from The Addams Family (kinda ironic that Tim Burton really wanted to making his own take of The Addams Family, but then again, we have Wednesday. Aw well). Especially Monica did a nice work of her beautiful and villainous role.

After that, we have Wolf Jackson (played by Willem Dafoe, aka The Green Goblin), the late B movie actor turned ghostly detective for giving us a plot development about the origin of both Betelgeuse and Dolores, as well as giving us a warning about her, for the most part. Though he’s yet another minor appearance, but I also finding him fascinating, seeing to poke fun of B movie character and even film noir detective, nice touch. But of course, Dafoe is no stranger for my memorable performer for his delivery and some monologue, he always kicks ass.

Lastly is Jeremy Frazier (played by Arthur Conti), a teenager who we assuming to be a nice and innocent resident of Winter River when Astrid meets him. I find him okay, but easy to predict that when he meets someone like Astrid, this must be a dark setup who he is behind his normal teenage life, but again, no SPOILER detail further about him. I mean, that’s like three villains in the movie, cause we all know that having three villains is just too much to bare and confusing for who’s the main villain instead of mixing up to three (sounds like somebody has never learned since I covered Spider-Man 3… No offense). Even though he’s new since GOT’s House of the Dragon, and I think did a good work for say the least, il give it a pass.

Although one character that I do wanna give a factoid, is this blue skinned Janitor, played by Danny DeVito, has shown in a cameo for being Dolores’s first victim, which im guessing its meant to be an in-joke made that, from im aware, DeVito has been in Burton movies a couple times from Batman Returns as The Penguin or Mars Attack as a gambler.

And yes, im aware that two characters were originally intended to bringing back, are the Maitland couple Adam and Barbara (played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in the first film), but because Burton wanted to make a sequel in practical effects, it will be unlikely to bring back in the cut, especially for their ages and/or even the focus of the Deetz family. Aw well.

While some characters are a welcome return for changing or remain the same that we enjoy, while the new characters are mixed bag from fascinating, could’ve been promising to predictable.

And now for my final opinion of this film

Overall, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a fun movie for its welcome return, although its not as fresh as the first film.

The filming presentation looks amazing, the jokes are chuckle worthy, the old casts are welcoming, the new casts are good, the characters of some are good too, its chaotic that its silly and fun and even soundtrack and the songs are a nice use, especially with Danny Elfman’s return.

However, despite of its welcome return, the movie has problems from too much villains that its hard to which one is the focus, despite I like Dolores as the main villain, but barely shown, some characters are too predictable and some of the writing is poorly executed what we’d hoped for.

Even though its not a greater sequel that we expected for Tim Burton’s passion to bringing our favorite Bio-Exorcist back from the grave, but at least he tried with all due respect. For recommendation, I think its definitely for the fans of both Tim Burton’s projects and even Beetlejuice. As for me, while I may like this sequel, but its not as great as the first one, I’d say give it a watch for once if you like it or not, il let you draw your conclusion, despite I like the idea for what would’ve been.

For my rating, im gonna give this one a 7/10.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.

Movie Review: Friday the 13th The Final Chapter

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

Back in October of last year, I covered the 3rd part of Friday the 13th, while I like the kills, a disco theme song, and even Jason’s look that we all know and love, but everything else is just felt flat of boringness. However, as I said in my review in Part 3, it was originally intended as the last one as a trilogy, but because Friday the 13th franchise is a money making success at the box-offices, its no stranger that Paramount made yet another as the “Final Chapter”. Well, so what they think at the time.

“Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter” is a 1984 slasher film that was directed by Joseph Zito, produced by Frank Mancuso Jr., and written by Barney Cohen (for screenplay) and Bruce Hidemi Sakow (for story).

As I said before, with the success of Part 3, they wanted to make another one. However, despite the three previous installments came out, they didn’t received well from critics and non-horror audiences, this maybe resulting some slasher genre was fading for a bit, even though Paramount wanted more, Frank Mancuso Jr. is hesitant for more because nobody seems to liking nor caring about Friday the 13th, and so, Mancuso Jr. declared the fourth one will be the last one (so what we think) before he wanted to working on the other projects. Upon start working on Part 4, Joseph Zito was hired by Mancuso Jr. as a new director when Part 2 and 3 director, Steve Miner, declined, this was thanks to Zito’s own slasher film called “The Prowler”, which they would hoped that Zito will making it to possibly being bigger and better. Despite what they hoped for, working with Zito was an unfortunate struggle due to his attitude of demanding and perfectionism, not to mention if its not going on the way, that would cause a physical fight for all the wrong reasons. But of course, similar to the first Friday the 13th with Kevin Bacon, Part 4 would be a breaking point of then upcoming famous actors like Corey Feldman in his child acting days in the 80s and Crispin Glover for his unique and eccentric actor.

When Friday the 13th Part 4 came out on April 13th 1984, its a same result as previous films, it didn’t received well by the critics and some audience, but it made a lot of money at the box-office with $33M over $2.2M at the budget. But as time went on, many fans considered Part 4 as possibly the best installments at the series, whether its the kills, Jason’s performance or even some memorable characters from the aforementioned build up actors after this.

So, with all that said, will the Part 4 is gonna be like my favorite what the fans enjoyed, or is this film should’ve been the ending based on a cheap slapping title like “The Final Chapter”?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

While its pretty much the same thing as we saw the previous films, but surprisingly, its actually pretty nice for the writing.

Picking up after Part 3 (which means in third installment, its Saturday the 14th and now its Sunday the 15th), aside of obvious reminder with stock footage of three previous movies, the ambulances arrive for clearing dead bodies in a camp site what we saw before, including a reminder of Jason Voorhees got axed in a head. While brought in a morgue, Axel is signed to put the body frozen, but Axel is busy for being horny perv over dead “Cute girl” (“She still is!”) and wanting to having affair with a nurse name Morgan in front of TV plays an aerobic movie, despite he got overly infuriated by being touched by laid out Jason (“JESUS CHRISTMAS!! HOLY JESUS GODDAMN! HOLY JESUS JUMPING CHRISTMAS SHIT!!”. Amen, Axel). After being rejected by Morgan from hilarious fake jumpscare, Axel gets himself back to watching aerobic dance, only he got SAWED and head twisted off by revived Jason out of icebox, then Jason goes after Morgan to pinning her from the wall and stabbed her with scalpel. The next day, we introduce the Jarvis family, older daughter Trish, Mrs. Jarvis, and young son Tommy Jarvis (who introduced himself by wearing alien mask while playing PC game? Who does that?), they have home next to a camps (Yeah, Crystal Lake is confusing for its location, these days), what they didn’t know is that another horny teen campers are going out for, you guessed it, camping and sexing (Can you imagine if they’re having affair in a campsite when you’re in a house next to a camp? That will be awkward experience). But what both Jarvis Family and teen campers didn’t know is that, once again, Jason is out there for his killing business, while the campers prefer doing their own business, its up to Jarvis Family (along with a lone camper name Rob) to watch out over revived killer in hockey mask.

Like I said, its a same old plot like we’ve heard from three previous films, but at least the movie goes to a sorta connection between Jarvis Family and even the campers, since again, weirdly have a house next to a campsite on Crystal Lake, but again, we’ve seen before like meet the campers, have a sharing true story about Jason Voorhees hidden in Crystal Lake to of course, campers sexing. Especially for the latter, campers are quite possibly the horniest in the movie, ranging from various relationships, some sex jokes and one time, watching a stag film (aka the early 20th century porn films). I think what makes the movie possibly better its the writing, I think the writing is actually good and probably funny, ranging from a fun chemistry between Jimmy and Ted for their opposite personalities, a build up of Tommy Jarvis (since Zito wanted to have a young kid in a horror movie) and even a connection from previous installment, like when Rob mentioned one of the victim from Part 2, Sandra, was murdered, which it was revealed that Rob is a missing older brother of Sandra, which I assuming its have a build up when Rob is trying to hunting down Jason for revenge, but sadly, despite what they’re trying for the connection, it sadly felt like an afterthought. Of course, I like to mention it has some dialogues that are either good to even funny, especially with the aforementioned opposite personalities between Jimmy and Ted, despite there’s some dialogue from Ted that I questioned his desperation to get along.

While its not perfect, but its the writing that I enjoy for some character developments in this movie.

The Presentation

The movie’s budget is surprisingly the same as the previous film, mainly that Part 3 and Part 4 are costed $2.2M. But unlike the previous one the presentation is surprisingly gotten better for various reasons.

But much like Part 3, it was filmed in California, whereas Part 3 was filmed Saugus and Green Valley, here, it was filmed on Topanga Canyon and Newhall. But the way they filmed are surprisingly pretty nice like a steady camera that moves smoothly thanks to the use of crane in the beginning, a different angle in the morgue when Jason was “dead” to what better way to do the slowmotions, but some slowmotions are smooth but others are a slightly dropping frames per-seconds. Despite some flaws, the filming is pretty good, at least they don’t wanna do another 3D gimmick ever again.

The filming set is no stranger to be away from the studio for not-so low budget, aside the forest and a morgue (which is a nice inclusion, but only in the first act), but the weirdest part of the movie is the buildings there were set in, there’s the Jarvis Family’s house is a pretty cool house and it surprisingly still with us to this day and the house has been recycled from several movies, while camping building were build from scratch by the Friday’s crew, which is a pretty nice building.

Of course, the movie’s highlight are the design, a makeup effect and of course, the kills. After two previous films, Tom Savini came back to pulling a nice practical and makeup effects with some creatives and memorable kills, ranging from sawing and neck twisting death in the morgue, a backstabbing through the throat at hitchhiking banana girl (where Jason was briefly played by Tom Savini himself, but without him wearing a hockey mask), Jimmy got corkscrewed on his hand to head stabbed from meat clever, Tina thrown out on the top of station wagon (with windows crashing, unexpected, but memorable one), to even Jason himself with brutal death of stabbed on the side of the head with machete. Those kills that I mentioned are either the most notable and probably my favorites, even though you can briefly see what’s going on, because once again, the MPAA was very sensitive to forcing them to toning down the presentation of the kills and sexing.

Despite the flaws, there also some kills are the weakest, like when Samantha is relaxing in a cold night raft before gets impaled from bellow, while the kill itself wasn’t that bad, its the way how they filmed, Judie Aronson was forced to swimming in a cold water in birthday suit (which it was filmed on December in California), she’s unfortunately having hypothermia, which cause Ted White (who played Jason, more on that later) was pissed at Joe Zito for being neglectful at Judie, especially on his verge of quitting, which I can’t blame White that he always wanting to be protective towards actors to have a respectful treatment, for the most part. Another weakest kill is Mrs. Jarvis, which when she looks around, she makes a gasp before cuts out, we never see her what’s happening, though it was originally planned to having her getting decapitated similar to what happened to Mrs. Voorhees, but with this and a planned nightmare scene, was cut, cause honestly, we don’t want another fake out kills like what we saw in three previous films.

Though sometimes, some kills can be funny, aside of Samantha’s kill from her weirdly and hilarious scream of death, but the one that stuck to me, is when Rob gets hacked to death by Jason with cultivator while yelling “He’s killing me! He’s killing me!! HE’S KILLING MEEEEE!!!”. I get it was meant to be disturbing, but his last bit is laughable before he dies, which it gives me a chuckle from its repetition.

While some part might have some flaws, but Part 4’s presentation is pretty good with some creative and gnarly kills and a welcome return to Tom Savini.

The Characters

While most characters have those typical tropes in many horror films, here however, we got ourselves from some memorable characters in the franchise.

Lets start off with once again, Jason Voorhees, this time played by the great late Ted White. He’s quite surprising for the way he moves in his action, unlike the previous role of Jason who’s just wandering and finding the victim, Ted’s Jason is more of the brain for his smart decision and moving faster (Heh, who says Slasher Villains can’t run, eh?), making him quite believable and nearly impossible to getting away from his brutal and fast paste, which is actually pretty nice for his minor changing and Ted White did a pretty good job to be a bit creative in his role of Jason. In fact, he was in his age of 50s, since he did plenty of stunt double of various roles from the past, pretty fascinating of his experience, and its a damn shame that he passed away in 2022 in his age of 96, that’s pretty close to be 100 year old. Rest in Peace, Ted, you were amazing as Jason.

Now lets get to the survivors, like I said, unlike most of them are generic, they have some are memorable.

Lets start off with the main boy in the movie, Tommy Jarvis (played by then 12 year old Corey Feldman), he’s the main kid who’s somehow smarter of creating arts like creating a monster themed mask and a puppet. I was first reacted “Im calling it Bullshit, there’s NO WAY you created those masks and puppet when you’re just a kid!”, although his was given after Tom Savini (who also did those masks and puppets), so its a nice reference. I find Corey’s Tommy Jarvis is fascinating character that, even though he’s a kid, he’s somehow changing his life when first saw teens, which is pretty much he has a puberty of seeing teens in naked, im not sure how puberty works, but that’s just me. But as we all know, when Jason is upon us, he’ll probably trying to find the way to fight back, which Tommy Jarvis would later getting more attention for being a survivor against Jason, but we’ll get there in future, but then again, he’s just getting started as a kid. Plus, Corey did a great work of his role and of course, this will lead his beginning point of his young career from Gremlins, The Goonies, Stand by me and my underrated favorite, The ‘Burbs. However, in behind the scenes, despite he has a respect with some casts (including Kimberly Beck, more on her later), but one person that they didn’t get along was Ted White. Corey said he doesn’t trust him for culture reasons, while Ted hated him as a mean little devilish kid in guts, especially there’s one scene when Jason breaks through the window to literally scaring the bejesus out of poor kid, and I mean literally, he was terrified when this happened after filming this, which im pretty Ted was taking too personal on him, even if when looked back he probably admit his action and forgives his performance, which I agree, again Corey had fun of his performance, even if yes, im aware Feldman had a very sad and troublesome history outside of acting form childhood to grown up.

Speaking of Jarvis, we have the main final girl, Trish (played by Kimberly Beck), she’s the older daughter of the family that she likes to going out with her mother Mrs. Jarvis. Even though she also loves her young brother for family, even if she can be too protective when the campers are arrived to go horny, especially when Tom got distracted from their skinny dips that she doesn’t want him go way too distracted. Well, its not just in movie but in behind the scene as well, in fact, Kimberly Beck, who had an experience with child actors, liked to taking care them like a sister figure, which is exactly how she likes to taking car with then 12 year old Corey, which actually pretty sweet for Kim, especially that I think she also did a pretty good role.

After that, we have Jimmy Mortimer (played by Crispin Glover), he’s one of horny campers, but unlike most of the groups, he’s an awkward and stressed out member of the group that he just wants to get along so badly in his life, which you probably tell he’s uneasy until he eventually give a chance to shine when hanging out with one of the Moore Sisters. But of course, who could ever forget one scene, in particular, when he dances with one of the Moore Sisters while playing the music “Love is a Lie” by Lion, his dancing is all over the place, the way he pulled the dance is crazy, but also both chuckling and probably the most GIF-able moment ever. And I bet some people either in behind the scene or even outside of the movie (which he pulled the same dance when he was in clubs in LA) are trying not to laugh when Crispin danced like this. I guess its not hard to see his performance is quite unique (literally as Joe Zito called him, which I agree), and like Feldman, I guess its not hard to see how he’ll later making a breakthrough eccentric career with Back to the Future and couple others.

And lastly, we have Rob Dier (played by sadly, the late E. Erich Anderson), unlike the young campers to going wild, Rob is an older camp that, at first, he’s just there for camping on his own and welcomed to the Jarvis Family, despite he has his depth he’s looking for revenge for the aforementioned Sandra from Part 2, again, sounds good on paper for having a chronological order, sadly, this subplot is pretty much left to nothing. And not to mention, he barely showing up until the third act that we expected he can fight back, but alas, he didn’t give a chance to shine. And I really mean, which for those who’re unaware when I was researching, Erich Anderson, despite had a nice role in Part 4, sadly passed away on June 1st 2024 (Yes, this year as im writing this) due his diagnose of Esophageal cancer in his age of 67. Rest in peace, Erich…

As for the rest, they are there, either I enjoy some, or some who’re just there for both typical depiction and for obvious sake of body counts.

There’s Doug Bell (played by Peter Barton), who’s… Just there, without giving us something special of his personality (talk about wasting appearance when Pete was famous in the show called “The Powers of Matthew Star”), Paul Guthrie (played by Alan Hayes) who’s a distracted man, even if supposed to be in relationship with Samantha Lane (played by the aforementioned Judie Aronson), there’s the Moore sisters, Tina and Terri (played by identical sisters Camilla and Carey More) who’re there for obvious set up of bring campers to go horny (because this is slasher film, horny teens like to do whatever they want, otherwise, better planning myself to watching and reviewing Scream for going full meta), Ted Cooper (played by Lawrence Monoson) who’s a silly best bud to Jimmy, which its actually nice for chemistry between of two, despite he ranges from poor pickup line of tasking a kiss with teddy bear or going high while watching oldest porn movie, even though in behind the scene he was actually high in his method acting, which I guess it might be explained why he had red eyes that he was drugged up, even Lawrence himself admitted it was a worst idea he ever been, sucks for him, but at least he did a fun role, despite his trouble moment. Anyway, there’s Mrs. Jarvis, who’s like the opposite version of Mrs. Voorhees, but unlike Pamela Voorhees, she disappeared in a lamest kill ever that we’ll never know, aside of scrapped ending scene, and there’s Axel Burns (played by Bruce Mahler), a perverted coroner who find dead girl to be cute (Eww…) and enjoying aerobic dance video, along with giving us his memorable overreact from Jason’s loose hand, which I can’t help but laughing and replaying his clip of “HOLY JESUS JUMPING CHRISTMAS SHIT!” (man, what an underrated delivery).

Even though most characters are typical, but at least some that I enjoy or even some are memorable, along with the aforementioned future success.

SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t seen it or don’t care.

The final act is meant to be like a grand finale as we expected, but… We already know after Part 4. Anyway, while it a heck of a chase, but its more like a cat and mouse on Point A to Point B, and back to Point A.

After the campers are all gone (including mommy Jarvis), Trish, Tommy and Rob (along with golden retriever dog name Gordon, but running away, never seen ever again) noticed both houses and camp are empty, while Tommy is forced to stay in a house safe, Trish is feared to discovering Rob is murdered by Jason in front of her (“HE’S KILLING MEEEEE!!!!”), resulting Trish running away and being by Jason who’s like playing chicken at our final girl between two buildings. Once she’s in her house to protecting Tommy again, to running back to the camp (again, playing cat and mouse on two buildings). That is until Tommy, thanks to retrieving a cutout newspapers about Jason Voorhees from the late Rob, he proceeds to shaving his hair out. As Trish runs back to her house, she tries to fight back at Jason with machete (despite Jason wants his number 1 favorite toy back with due to his left hand split in half from his favorite toy). Once Jason had enough in attempt to strangling Trish, Tommy calling out at Jason, revealing himself bald (And by that, I mean wearing a bald cap, which Zito likes Tommy got shaved, but Corey don’t wanna do that, much a resentment in his mind) to replicating Jason, with distraction succeeded that Trish gets machete back, but ended smacked Jason’s mask off to revealing the most gnarliest Jason’s face ever. But his face reveal won’t be last long as Tommy finishes him by taking a hard hit on his head with machete, collapsing and slides his head down from machete to death (Man, quite brutal, bloody and satisfied, for awhile). But not for long (for a bit) that Jason is waking up slowly that Tommy has reaching his limit to hacking him over and over while repeating “DIE!!!” over and over, like any heroes do in every medias (Remember when Corey had a resentment in his mind, while he prefers to wearing a bald cap, he hated that idea of literal bald, when he yelled “DIE!!!” to wishing himself to beating Zito, while hacking Jason at the same time. Yeah, Joe Zito could be a walking nightmare to working with at the time).

In the end, Trish is recovered in a hospital, Tommy reunites with Trish for their thankfully survival and they live happily ever after. Or so we think when Tommy is seriously looking at the camera.

I should also like to briefly mention that there was an alternative ending planned that Tom Savini suggested his idea involves Tommy crafting a battery scanner and a microwave gadget to connecting at Jason’s head to explode, but that idea was shut down that if Part 4 is a success, it will be a setup that Jason won’t be killed off instantly. Sounds like perfectly dated to calling it “The Final Chapter” to pretty much bringing him back in a future.

The final act’s chase scenes can be dumb for running back and forth in two buildings, but it has a fun moments with the ways of attacking Jason and satisfied kill at Jason (but again, he will be back for a now).

And now for my final opinion of this film.

Overall, while it maybe another forgettable one (at least what critics said), but to be honest, its not that bad that I think, its actually good.

While its a standard slasher film, but its the writing made a good execution that we actually like the characters like Tommy, Jimmy and maybe even Trish, the casts are good too, especially some will make a breakthrough in their future, Jason is one heck of smart and brutal thanks to top notch stunt from the late Ted White and the kills, while edit is unfair because of MPAA, are both impressive, bloody and creative.

But sure, it has problems with some characters didn’t have any special, I can be dragged on (but again, some have a good characters and its fun) and one subplot is worthless.

Like I said, I know some said its another lame Friday the 13th one, but I don’t think so, I probably enjoy it with some future breakthroughs that made yourself saying “Yeah, I remember some will make a promising careers”, the kills and maybe even well executed writing. So if you guys like to see Friday the 13th, I’d say check it out, you won’t be disappointed

For my rating, im gonna give this one a 7.5/10.

So this ends of my Movie Review Friday the 13th Edition, but next time, we’re gonna have a new chapter, without Jason what Paramount was thinking of. There is Friday the 13th on December, but I don’t think its a good idea to review a horror film like Friday the 13th on Christmas month, so im gonna pushing my plan for next year’s Friday the 13th. Sorry guys.

But as always, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.

Movie Review: Deadpool and Wolverine

 

Hey everyone, my name is Anthony and welcome back to my Movie Review.

Last year the one and only MCU film I watched is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which was a pretty good and emotional film to concluding to our unlikely guardians, along with James Gunn moving on to becoming the co-CEO of DC Studio and, as im writing this, he’s currently working on his own DC cinematic universe New 52 style to starting with Superman, but I digress. After GotG3, MCU was already went downhill from flop after flop from Ant-Man’s 3rd movie in QuatumnMania to a worthless teaming up with different variation of Marvels. At this point, between this and DCEU’s dying, 2023 was a pretty bad year that its pretty much a Superhero films fatigue (except for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, its pretty good.), leaving not only DC going full on New 52 (which is a reboot style) and MCU feels like its about to die. That is until when there’s after years of won’t they won’t they, we have our old mercenary back on the big screen.

“Deadpool and Wolverine” is a 2024 MCU superhero film that was written/directed by Shawn Levy, produced by the repeat MCU producer Kevin Feige, and co-written by Ryan Reynolds Deadpool (Okay??), Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick and Zeb Wells.

Deadpool: Sorry kiddo, even though he looks like me if im a walking cancer, unlike that little life person with a parasite--

Anthony (me): Its Venom, thank you very much.

Deadpool: Heh, whatever you say, I like to be credited to be involved with the project. And im sure this will be the biggest superhero R-Rated film I’ve ever involved with me and my bub Wolverine Your welcome, Canada. *zips away*

Okay…? Anyway, following the success of Deadpool 2 (which I considered as an improvement after the first one), the then 20th Century Fox (before replacing “Fox” as “Studio” for lame reasons) were open minded to have yet another Deadpool movie, which, I will admit, since I love Deadpool, I wanted to see more, which they confirmed it at November of 2016 (even though it was two years before Deadpool 2 was released). However, the project was on hold for couple reasons;

1: The acquisition of 21st Century Fox was started on December 2017 for full purchase of entertainment assets of many companies like the aforementioned 20th Century Fox, Fox Television, Fox News and many more, along with many movies and shows. This resulted in to a bidding war between Walt Disney Company and Comcast for who’s going to buying the major company, the bidding went on for two years until Disney is the winner at March 2019 with $71.3 Billion. At first, the project of Deadpool was in hesitation that its gonna be toning down to PG-13 when Deadpool (along with X-Men universe) are going into MCU, but Disney decided to respecting the project to keeping it R-Rated, even though this was before MCU are accepted to dropping one F Bomb in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. This resulted into a changing story in the original plan, since MCU is now focusing on Multiverse, Levy and Deadpool saw it as an opportunity to be part of it, and in a big surprise (aside the rumors of who’s replacing Wolverine’s role like Daniel Radcliff), Hugh Jackman, even though he was meant to retiring his role of Wolverine, was changing his heart to coming back his iconic role after his death in “Logan”. I guess I could say, his death will be retconned for… Multiverse reason. Aw well.

2: While they’re start filming in August of 2022, we’re hoping that this will be Deadpool’s and MCU’s biggest film, as Deadpool said. But it will be stopped again, this time, due to the Hollywood Labor Strike in 2023, when both union groups, the writers (WGA) and actors (SAG-AFTRA) went in protest for saving their business for the sake of better pay, safe working conditions and staying low those AI generates, but it was thankfully only lasted for 6 months. Despite we still have a problem with companies like Sony wanting to using AI for future projects, but that’s a long different stories. Despite the delay that it was originally planned to be released on 2023, they pushed it on late July of 2024.

So, with all that said, will both Deadpool and Wolverine have a great experience in MCU, or is it the journey is so bad they’ll go back to their home universe?

Well, lets find out.

The Story

Since this is MCU, you think that they’ll giving us yet another simple but also complex story? Well, yes, but for R-Rated movie, its definitely insane, sure it may not be as perfect, but its fun.

It all started at 2018 where Deadpool travels from his home universe (Earth-10005) to MCU’s universe (Earth-616), despite of Sacred Timeline (even though im not familiar of that, but il let you MCU fans can explained to me what happened if I missed any parts of MCU), our familiar Wade Wilson (aka Deadpool) came to the Avengers HQ to asking Happy Hogan to be part of the Avengers, but sadly, it was rejected. And so, 6 years later, Wade decides to retiring his mercenary role to working as a used-car salesman after broke up from Vanessa Carlysle. However, when he’s celebrating his Birthday, the party is interrupted from TVA (Time Variance Authority) that they kidnap our hero (despite his effort to killing the TVA soldiers). Upon arriving in TVA from kidnap, Mr. Paradox explains Deadpool’s home universe’s timeline is starting to deteriorating due to the death of the important figure of his universe, Logan Howlett (aka Wolverine), as we saw his tragic death in “Logan” (my apology for SPOILER if anyone haven’t seen Logan). So Deadpool decides to snatching Tempad (which like multiverse traveling device) to picking which Logan, until he picked up our Logan with his classic yellow and blue outfit. However, despite brought Logan in (which happens to be the worst version of Wolverine), Deadpool realizes Mr. Paradox believes he has no knowledge about the superiors (or so what we think), resulting tossing both Deadpool and Wolverine into trash. And by trash, I mean The Void. Its up to Deadpool and Wolverine to find the way to escaping Void to saving Wade’s home universe, while also facing against Cassandra Nova, who’s Charles Xavier’s long lost sister.

While its yet another simple MCU story with complex elements with continuity in MCU’s timeline (mainly taking place in Multiverse era, even if im gonna miss the Infinity era), But instead of fighting against bad guys for any wills, here, its all about saving the universe before the threat and the time is running out, which is a nice story, for a typical multiverse story. However, one plot element that have its downside is the universe has its important figure to keep the universe safe, in particular, Wolverine from X-Men to Logan, who’s considered as the anchor being, but without the important being, that could cause the end of the universe, which begs to my question, what about the other people in this universe, isn’t one of them like Deadpool or Laura (aka X-23) are meant to taking Logan’s torch? Which it makes no sense that there’s a remaining people in the universe can protect it instead of an important figure with saying “without the important one” your universe is on a verge of deterioration, I mean, Deadpool deserves better to be the new important figure (or as Deadpool calling himself “Marvel Jesus”) instead of treated as an afterthought. Despite the problem of the plot element, what makes this movie to be fun (along with emotional heart moment) is the chemistry between two unlikely buddies between Deadpool and Wolverine, they share some fun actions and even the humors (but more on characters later), they always arguing from Deadpool’s talking too much or even Wolverine aren’t familiar about Wade’s home universe whenever it didn’t going on their way, along with foul mouthing all together, which I can’t help but both surprised and laughing. Speaking of the latter, what better way to not forget the humor, and I gotta say, this quite possibly the funniest MCU movie and funniest Deadpool movie yet, the movie has a lot of humorous moments from pop culture references (with good execution how its done for Deadpool), a 4th walls breaking (either from flipping out in front of camera in TVA scene or a reminder for Fox is bought by Disney if anyone didn’t know, true story as I said at the start) the aforementioned chemistry between our two heroes to even some fight scenes, one of which is when both Wade and Logan are beating each others up in Honda Odyssey, while the car’s radio played “You're the One That I Want“ from Grease, even though its out of place, but it makes it fun.

While the plot element about the important figure part is the weakest part of the story, but at least the main story, the chemistry and the humors are both pretty good from the get-go.

The Presentation

The film’s budget is $200M, and is just like any big budget MCU film with simple fun action and nice costumes? Well, this is probably the first MCU’s R-Rated film and it looks pretty good and also has nostalgia feel what they gave us.

For starter, the filming location was done both indoor (either in the building somewhere or in sound stage) or outdoor. They pretty much filmed in England from outdoor like London and Norfolk to indoor like Pinewood Studios at Buckinghamshire. Although it wasn’t just filming in England, but they also filmed in Canada, specifically Vancouver much like what they did in Deadpool 2 (I guess filming in Vancouver is always the place for cutting costs). And I will say, the sets and the filming locations are pretty good and probably creative what they came out for the settings. One location that I like is The Void, where you can see so many stuff were dumped out has some familiar Easter Eggs, ranging from 20th Century Fox logo (due to changing to Studio instead of Fox, thanks a lot, Disney), a CN Tower (a believe) Helicarriers from The Avengers (Seriously, since when we need the aerial version of Aircraft Carrier, that thing looks pretty cool). Despite the junks in the Void, it looks beautiful for a mix of desert, the field to the forest, even if the Void would cause the end of time.

Speaking of design, another part that I also like, are the costumes in the movie. While Deadpool looks pretty much like what we all know either in two previous movies or even in the comics, but still done a nice and faithful design. Though without the mask, he’s still looking good while disfigured in makeup. Though the weird part about his unmask is when Wade Wilson retires, he’s wearing a wig with staples, I guess he wants to make a new look for clearing out from his mercenary (though he’ll always coming back as you-know-who) but also pretending he doesn’t have a terminal cancer (even if he still has TC, but he has healing factor), but that’s just me. But easily the best costume will have to be Wolverine, gone from a generic black outfit in the X-Men movies (Yeah, im sorry to say, X-Men movie fans, but im probably a not a fan of those, I mean, where’s the colors?), giving him a signature yellow and blue costume that its based combination on comic (Astonishing X-Men) and the show X-Men: TAS (Between this movie and the successor show X-Men 97’, 2024 is a big year for X-Men, eh?). Sure, we can see some other have either follow faithful from the comic, or even references from other movies, again, a lot of Easter Eggs, especially with the cameos (more on that later, but considered my SPOILER WARNING, but brief). One last part that I like to mention is the movie also has a pet star Dogpool, who’s played by “Peggy”, a crossbreed dog called “Pugese” who’s famously for her ugly appearance, which at first, I though the long tongue part is part of CG, but this is how she lives with it, as a dog mixed between Pug and Chinese Crested Dog.

As for the action scenes with either practical or CG, they’re pretty fun to watch, but again, because this is R-Rated movie, there’s always gotta be bloody fight with either gun shots, slashing and brutal ways, or even some are shocking like the constant nut shots from either hands or even blades. However, it wasn’t as brutally gory compare to two previous films, with all those stabs, decapitations to even head blown off of blood and chunks out. Sure, the effects of the movie are pretty cool to see from practical like Wolverine claws (You’re taking notes, X-Men Origin: Wolverine?) and some others. Sure, some could also done with CG, either from the gory kills to even one with Cassandra Nova’s giving her hand in a head (No sexual pun attended tho) effect (Yeah, the CG effect can be either okay to mediocre, these days).

While some effects can be flawed, but they’re pretty good with the actions, some effects, the settings and even the suits.

The Characters

While its nice to see our old friends back and my god, the characters are all over with cameos, despite some returns are minor due to the focus on our unlikely main heroes.

Lets starts with my favorite return of our mercenary, Deadpool, aka Wade Wilson (reprised by Ryan Reynolds DEADPOOL), if you already know about Deadpool, good for you, but If you haven’t heard, here’s my brief origin on him. He’s a Canadian born human (at first) before having a terminal cancer, which lead him to the experiment that he ended turning into a mutant with his skin became hideous, but thanks for becoming a mutant, he has a healing factor (Wolverine style), wearing black and red suit for killing bad guys on his way. This time, he’s in danger of his universe is a brinks at the end thanks to his original Wolverine’s death that he’ll teaming up with different universe version of Wolverine. According to Rhett Reese, he said that while Deadpool is going to have a chemistry to Logan, but he described him in the third installment as “Fish-out-of-Water” character, outside is probably sums up for him since he’s introduced in MCU for his first dealing with multiverse, cause after all, this is Deadpool’s first journey in MCU after Disney bought the major corp who owns X-Men movies and Fantastic 4 (And yes, im possibly looking forward for it next year). As always, I enjoy Deadpool since two previous for his chaotic humor, his actions and a fun performance from Ryan Reynolds.

Deadpool: Hehe, thanks, I enjoy my experience with MC-F(bleep)in’-U, especially for my performances. Back to you, little Canadian!

Anthony (me): Um… Thanks…

Anyway, our next title protagonist is Wolverine, aka Logan Howlett (reprised by surprisingly Hugh Jackman), who, as we’re all familiar with him, a man who’s born with adamantium skeleton (infused that is) with claws out of his hands, a healing factor and berserk. But this time, we have the alternative universe one when Deadpool was looking for, after Logan is left alone as a former member of X-Men (Talk about a mean lone wolf for not having friends...), making him acting like the mix between the animated Wolverine and Bryan Singer’s Wolverine, with extra dose of foul mouthing, a lot foul compare to Deadpool. This is what makes it fun in this movie, whereas Deadpool plays like a Good Cop to saving his universe, while Wolverine has probably too much testosterone in his Bad Cop role. Even though back then, it was unlikely to see him coming back as his iconic role to end with Logan, but since MCU is currently focuses on multiverse, its quite surprising to bringing Jackman back in the movie, but he definitely did a great work of his alternative role of Logan, especially with a chemistry between our two heroes.

Though the last talk about, and the main villain in this pic, is Cassandra Nova (played by Emma Corrin) a long lost sister from Charles Xavier with mind-reading ability, but unlike Charles, she’s unfortunately villainous to making people stuck in The Void and her hope to taking the plan of the end of time. The best way to describing her is if you mixing Professor X in her spoiled behavior with mischief, unpredictable and dangerous with her mind manipulation with her unique acting ability as Gene Wilder. I find her fairly descent, even if she can be over the top for her sabotage and her delivery, but il give a credit to Emma’s performance, which I heard she really wants to playing the villain in this movie, so good for her.

As for the rest in the movie, there aren’t as much to say for either plot developments or even a fun cameos (just considered a SPOILER WARNING, but won’t tell how they appeared), there’ our fellow X-Men members like Colossus (reprised by Stefan Kapcic), Negasonic Teenage Warhead (reprised by Brianna Hildebrand) and her girlfriend Yukio (played by Shioli Kutsuna), there’s Blind Al (reprised by Leslie Uggams) who’s Deadpool’s roommate and Dopinder (reprised by Karan Soni) who’s Deadpool’s Indian chauffeur in his taxi cab.

Sure, we do have a couple of MCU characters in a movie like our old friend Happy Hogan (played by my favorite filmmaker Jon Favreau) and Mr. Paradox (played by Matthew Macfayden), the secondary villain and agent of TVA. Sure, they also introduced the alternative Deadpool (aside Dogpool), there’s Nicepool (also played by DEADPOOL) and eventually, Ladypool (voiced by Blake Lively, who’s Reynolds’s wife, but the actress behind Ladypool’s outfit is uncredited).

But of course, this movie has so many cameos that we’re familiar with, there’s Laura, aka X-23 (reprised by Dafne Keen) from Logan (who I assuming she’s gonna be the new Wolverine based on similar mutant abilities, I wonder if MCU gives her a chance), Elektra Natchios (played by Jennifer Garner, not the MCU one who’s Elodie Yung) who’s a trained and deadly martial arts from 2003 Daredevil and her own movie in 2005 (the less talk about the latter, the better…), Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) who’s a badass and deadly Dhampir who kills vampires for revenge, Gambit (played by Channing Tatum) who’s kinetic card user of X-Men that there was planned to having Gambit movie in part of X-Men Origins, but didn’t happening when X-Men Origins Wolverine was a complete embarrassment that left into cancellation, Human Torch (played by Chris Evans, aka Captain America back in MCU’s Infinity saga) who’s a cocky man with fire form from radiation back in Fantastic 4 in 2005 and Rise of the Silver Surfer in 2007. But of course, aside Ladypool, they also have more celeb cameos like Cowboypool (voiced by Matthew “alright alright alright” McConaughey), Headpool (voiced by Nathan Fillion, aka The Detachable Kid) and the one and only alternative Wolverine is played by Henry Cavill, aka Superman in Snyderverse (no offense to Jackman though), sounds like he’ll possibly coming in as the MCU version of Wolverine, despite that I heard a rumor when Cavill likes to coming back as Superman in the future.

Even though there are SO MANY characters in cameos, at least they’re pretty good and fun to watch, its a one big fat Nostalgia fest, eh?

And now for my Final Opinion of this film

Overall, Deadpool and Wolverine is, while it may not be the perfect Deadpool movie, but it is a one heck of a fun movie.

While the story is just an average saving the universe til the end of time and some plot hole bothering me, but its a fun one with fun acting, bloody actions, its funny, the presentation looks good, the costumes are good to follow and inspired and the characters, along with the cameos, are enjoyable, especially for the welcome returns.

Like I said, while its not as greater than Deadpool 2, but this is definitely a Must-Watch film for both Deadpool fans and some MCU fans. Sure, im pretty much burnt out on MCU films, but this one is that I enjoyed and recommend to watch. Sure, there are some are considered pretty bad, but I disagree (if they taking it too personally), I think its a pretty good MCU that maybe, just maybe, the multiverse saga could be good? But then again, I enjoyed the Infinity saga, but multiverse, could’ve gone better in my point.

For my rating, im gonna giving this one an 8/10.

So this ends of my movie review, if you guys have your opinion or any suggestions, let me know at comment bellow and support me on KO-FI.com/blackevil.

Thanks for reading, and im Anthony, signing out.