Avengers: Age Of Ultron Review

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the feel good success stories of the past decade. A large corporation takes the bold step of not only making movies, but also having them take place in shared universe. To the surprise of many, this turned out to be a massive hit and Marvel are now churning films out as regularly as, well comic books.

But surely this run of success will have to end sometime. There has to be a time when the quality starts to dip and the money train runs out of steam. Is Avengers: Age of Ultron the point in the franchise where things start to go bad?

The answer to that is surprisingly complex but the short answer is no, Avengers 2 is a fun movie. It’s just that there are some issues with that prevent it from being great.

The film continues on the storyline from the Winter Soldier, where the organisation responsible for keeping the world safe (S.H.I.E.L.D.) has gone to pot and the Avengers are having to work overtime to keep the peace. This inspires Tony Stark to invent a bunch of robots to do the work for him. Seeing as it is impossible to create an artificial intelligence without having it then try to destroy you it should come as no surprise that this plan goes titsup almost immediately. Forcing the Avengers to clean up their own mess.

If that sounds familiar, it is because it is also the plot of a large number of other sci-fi movies and a bunch of TV series. The whole “things rebel against their creators” thing has been played out and Avengers adds nothing new. This would pretty much sink the film if it were not for the characters. With the pieces already in place, there is more time to go into each character and it is here where the film really shines. There are some great character moments, especially with the people who don’t have their own movies. Their backstories are fleshed out further and there are many touching scenes. In essence this movie has the same problem The Amazing Spiderman 2 had, the acting is top notch but the plot is superficial and pointless.

Ultron is not a particularly good villain (but better than most in the MCU). He has plenty of personality, but no substance. He spouts plenty of witty one liners but we get little of his motivations or his ideas. This is maddening because there are a couple of places where it looks like they are really going somewhere with his character but the movie does not follow through on it.

The biggest issue I have with it is that the new avengers don’t get much to work with. Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson do a good job with what they are given and one early scene with them adds a lot pathos to the movie but they are little more than a side quest for the main team for most of the movie. Quicksilver gets the worse of it, with his character pretty much stopping and starting with the word “fast”. This is a shame as they really added a lot to the film and it might have been better if the plot had more to do with them rather than Ultron. I really hope they get their own movie.

Having said that, the action is top-notch and there are plenty of nods to what’s been going on so far in the series and it has some awesome cameos. It also does a great job of setting up phase 3 of the MCU.

There is nothing wrong with Avengers: Age of Ultron. It is a perfectly good action film. The problem is that it has all of the pieces to be fantastic but does nothing with them. Given the high standards of Marvel films and especially coming after Guardians of the Galaxy, this falls a little flat.

P.S. There is a great payoff to the “lifting the hammer” scene shown in the trailers that may surprise you.

Background: Batman

Before 3D

Batman appeared in a lot of movie tie-in games. Most of them were terrible.

He made up for this by also appearing up in a series of Lego games, which were surprisingly good.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman cruises into Arkham Asylum in his nice shiny Batmobile. He is there to return his arch-enemy, The Joker to the least secure place in Gotham City. Sensing that he is in a computer game, Batman decides to personally escort him to his cell in case there are shenanigans afoot. Along the way the player is introduced to a variety of villains as just about everybody is being moved to a different cell when Batman shows up.

Things start to go wrong almost immediately as it turns out that the Joker’s sidekick, Harley Quinn takes over the security and locks the doors leading outside and unlocks the cell doors. Unleashing a horde of angry inmates on Batman. Not wanting to make him feel left out, Commissioner Gordon is kidnapped during the attack.

Batman manages to survive and his first priority is to rescue the commissioner. However while tracking him down he starts to hallucinate, he sees his parent’s corpses and they begin talking to him, calling him a failure. Batman does not take this well and his state of mind is not improved when he finds the commissioner murdered. However, it turns out that it was all a dream thanks to the Scarecrow. He had earlier attacked Batman with his fear toxin. Batman manages to shrug off the effects of the toxin and runs off to his backup batcave (first rule of batman: have a backup for everything).

While there he learns that Gordon is alive and being held hostage by Harley Quinn. Batman is not having any of this and wastes no time running over there to knock her on her arse, rescuing the commissioner. With that side mission done, Batman can now start the main quest. The Joker wanted to get into Arkham because a scientist there was developing a new drug which gives people superhuman strength. He wants to give it to all of his henchmen to create an powerful army. The scientist in question had no idea a drug that turns people into inhuman monsters could be used for evil and tries to stop the Joker from getting the drug, called Titan. This goes about as well as you would expect.

With half of Joker’s army now looking like the Michelin man, Batman must find a way to revert them back to normal. He goes to see Poison Ivy, who tells him that there is an antidote but it can only be made from a plant located in the sewers.  The journey to get this plant is perilous. With Batman having to deal with another drug attack by The Scarecrow and an enraged half crocodile/human known as Killer Croc. To top it all off, Poison Ivy herself was injected with titan while Batman was away. Causing just about every plant in the vicinity to go berserk.

After defeating her, Batman has finally had enough and decides to deal with The Joker. Luckily, The Joker wants to be found and challenges Batman to a fight. Aware that he has no chance of beating Batman in a fair fight. The Jokers gives himself a massive overdose of Titan to beef himself up. Batman beats him anyway and the day is saved.

Batman: Arkham City

Set one year after the events in the asylum. Things have become a bit darker in Gotham City after one Hugo Strange somehow managed to persuade the citizens to allow for a third of the city to be walled off to create a massive jail. Batman is against this and uses his alter ego, Bruce Wayne to speak out against it. His efforts lead to him getting kidnapped and placed into the jail by strange, who knew about the identity of Batman all along.

It appears that Batman has been slacking in the past year as there is no Batcave for him to use inside the city. Instead, Batman must have his suit and gadgets parachuted in. Once tooled up he gets down to business. His first port of call is a hideout used by two-face. He is about to execute Catwoman to gain some respect until Batman intervenes. The Joker then makes his presence felt by trying the same thing. Batman saves Catwoman again and tracks down The Joker to a steel mill. Batman believes that The Joker is responsible for his capture and that he is behind something called “protocol 10”. A mysterious plan that Strange constantly talks about over the radio.

Once there however, Batman discovers that The Joker is ill, suffering the side effects of the Titan drug he took in the last game. Batman quickly surmises that without a cure he will die. Not only that, The Joker has no idea what protocol 10 is. In an attempt to force the issue, The Joker captures Batman and injects him with some of his blood meaning that he will die too if a cure is not found.

Now desperate to find a cure, Batman heads over to the lair of Mr Freeze in the belief that he can find one. As luck would have it, It was exactly what Freeze was wqorking on but could not complete it before being captured by the Penguin.  After going through a massive amount of palarva to free Freeze, he sadly tells Batman that he has already made the cure but it is too unstable to use. Batman realises that he can use Ra’s al Ghul’s blood to provide the stabilising element he needs. It is at this point that even Batman can’t keep up with of all this and has to use a flow chart.

After a brief fight with Ra’s al Ghul, Batman gets the blood and Mr Freeze is able to use it to perfect the cure. However, the almost forgotten about protocol 10 now kicks off. It turns out that strange’s grand plan was to level jail and remove all criminals from the city. Batman puts a stop to this by climbing up a huge tower and punching Strange in the face.

Now free to go after The Joker, Batman is told to go to a theatre where The Joker proposes a trade, the cure for the life of Batman’s love interest, Talia al Ghul (it’s complicated). Talia manages to break free and kill a body double of the Joker and gives Batman the cure, which he uses. After a massive fight, Batman and The Joker face off. Batman is in two minds about curing The Joker but is attacked by him before he can decide. With the vial containing the cure smashed there is now no hope for The Joker. Batman decides to rub salt into the wound by telling The joker that he would have given him the cure before The Joker expires. This saddens batman and he carries out the corpse to an astonished commissioner Gordon before leaving without saying a word.

Batman: Arkham Orgins

A prequel, a villain known as the Black Mask puts out a bounty on Batman’s head. Seeing as this is set before the previous two games, you just know that The Joker is gonna show up at some point.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

The Marvel universe has a lot to answer for. Not least of which the sudden rush by film companies to find any old book with pictures in it and make a movie out of it. The latest in this new fad is The Secret Service, an obscure comic book written by Mark Millar. The author of Kick-Ass, another series that has ridden the comic to movie gravy train.

The plot could be seen as a parody of every spy film ever made. Harry Hart (Colin Firth) is a secret agent who has his life saved by the sacrifice of a member of his team while on a mission. Overcome with emotion, he offers the family of the deceased a favour should they ever need it. Seventeen years later that favour is called in, resulting in Gary (Taron Egerton); a boy who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks getting involved in the world of high action espionage, world saving and most of all, being a gentlemen.

This fish out of water story is not new (in fact it was the basis of the sublime Men in Black a few years ago) and the film seems well aware of this and has fun with the concept. Expectations are routinely subverted and at no point does the debate on Gary’s upbringing ever overshadow the narrative. There is even a funny scene where Harry gives a list of other movies with a similar plot.

Things come to a head when celebrities start going missing, and billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) is the main culprit. Jackson is having so much fun in this role that I am not even sure he is acting. Here he has perfected the art of being funny and horrifying at the same time. His performance is really unsettling at times and he is the perfect counterpoint to Firth’s extremely polite and dignified persona.

His scheme is a thinly veiled allegory on the 1% and message is not very subtle. He wants to stop climate change in a way that is great for the rich (and the people he admires) but kinda sucks for the average person. Early on the theme is the perception of how the perception that the rich have it easy and that the poor lack the resources to make anything of themselves. Thankfully, the film never becomes preachy about this and drops it from the story once it has made the point.

Where Kingsman really shines is the way it uses its violence. The fighting is short and brutal with no gratuity. Being a spy is no picnic and the movie does no attempt to hide that fact with quips and double entendres, here the fighting serves a purpose and most fights are over in seconds. If anything, the fight scenes are a little too short making it hard to tell what happened.

At its heart Kingsman is a comedy, albeit a comedy with some extreme violence. There are some great laugh out moments throughout the film. Most of the heavy lifting is done by Egerton, although Jackson’s overacting almost steals the show. The script is sharp and gets a lot of mileage out of worn out spy tropes like weird gadgets and the like. Most of the gags hit home perfectly and it is increasing funny to see the stoic Kingsman get involved in wacky antics.

Sadly the secondary characters do not get much love. The worst of which is the villainous sidekick Gazelle. She gets no real motivation and seems just to be here to do evil. This was a common problem with Bond sidekicks and it initially looks like she was a parody of that type of character but there is no indication that it is the case. The good guys fair little better. Sophie Cookson is good as the “not” love interest but is given little to work with and just fades into the background. Michael Caine gets a similar treatment, with only a few scenes to showcase his character.

It is tempting to just label Kingsman as a James Bond parody with a chav in the main role. However, it is more than that with some excellent social commentary and really funny lines. It won’t win any awards but as the Kingsman say, a gentlemen never seeks to have his name in the paper. Now, if only they would do an adaptation of Groo the Wanderer.

Background: Rush

This time we have a different format as Rush is based on real life events. As such everything written here can be considered a spoiler for the film.

The players

James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth)

The playboy of Formula one. Frankly this guy makes the antics of modern-day footballers look like Bill & Ben. He joined Formula one in 1973 with mixed results but he was making a name for himself and was regarded as the best British driver at the time. He joined the front running McLaren team in 1976.

Nikki Lauda (Daniel Brühl)

Lauda had a tough start in Formula one with several bad seasons. He was signed up by Ferrari in 1974 at the recommendation of an ex team-mate. A sterling drive that year saw him finish fourth that season but it was the following year where he shown what he was capable of when he won the championship. Lauda remained with Ferrari for the 1976 season and many people thought he was a shoe in for another title.

The others

The trailer makes it seem that those two were the only ones racing but there were a lot of other racers involved, notably Jody Scheckter who would go on win the 1979 championship and future Formula one and Indy car champion Mario Andretti. All in all seventy drivers competed in the 1976 season.

The situation

The film tells the events of the 1976 Formula One season. A season which started in Brazil and ended in fairly anticlimactic fashion in rain-soaked Japan. Lauda had a fantastic start to the season and had built up a huge lead in the standings over Hunt before disaster struck and he crashed at the Nürburgring in Germany. The injuries he suffered were horrific and he was fighting for his life. Despite this, he only missed two races and was back racing six weeks later at the Italian grand prix.

Thus the stage was set for a showdown, Hunt had reduced Lauda’s lead and was only three points behind going into the last race. However the rain in Japan was so heavy that many drivers thought it unsafe and Lauda decided to retire from the race early on. Hunt continued and despite getting a puncture, he finished third and won the championship by one point.

What happened next?

Hunt never attained such heights again, the following year he finished fifth in the championship and opted to leave the McLaren team in 1979. He raced for one more season with the Wolf Racing Team but struggled and announced his retirement. After giving up racing, Hunt became a respected commentator for the BBC.

Nikkia Lauda regained the championship the following year but did not participate in the last two races after leaving his team, Ferrari. Joining the Brabham team in 1978 he had two unsuccessful seasons before retiring to manage an airline he had set up. He made a comeback in 1982 and even won another championship in 1984 before retiring again the following year.

Background: Riddick

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

Escape from butcher bay was released after Pitch Black as a tie in to The Chronicles of Riddick but is chronologically the first story. It was a console game in which Riddick must escape a dark and foreboding prison planet. A later version was released containing and extra chapter, Assault on Dark Athena.

Things start off when we see a sedated Riddick arriving at the prison accompanied by his jailer, Johns. After a brief sequence where Riddick dreams he is escaping he is taken to “single max” security area. Things are pretty lax there so Riddick wastes no time in starting a riot and legging it. He heads for the sewers but gets injured by a mutant but luckily comes across a preacher who can heal him in return for a radio. While the preacher is working, a voice in Riddick’s tells him he has been blind to long and Riddick gets an upgrade to his eyes which allow him to see in the dark.

After a fair bit of bumbling about he is recaptured and sent to “double max” level. Here Riddick participates in a series of brutal hand to hand fights before killing the current champion, a guard. This pisses the other guards off so they lead him into a room and ambush him. Of course this fails, allowing Riddick to escape into a mining facility. While there he attempts to make a break for the spaceport but is stopped by Johns and recaptured.

The warden, who by now has realised that going easy on the most wanted man in the galaxy was mistake, puts him in suspended animation. This stops Riddick for a while but soon he finds a way out and is soon back on the run. This time, he heads for the warden’s office and beats him into submission and leaves the planet with Johns. He had helped Riddick as the warden had angered him by paying him less than they agreed.

Assault on Dark Athena

While in suspended animation after escaping Butcher Bay, Riddick’s ship is picked up by a large mercenary vessel called the Dark Athena. Riddick and Johns are captured but Riddick manages to break free and starts to make his escape. Along the way he discovers that the current owners of the ship took it from someone else, who are being held prisoner themselves.

Riddick doesn’t like this one bit so he helps them retake the Dark Athena and goes back on his merry way, pausing only to pick up Johns (who was unconscious the entire time to save on voiceover costs).

Pitch Black

The first film of the franchise and the first Riddick story released. Set a short while after Dark Athena.

Riddick is once again in trouble as the ship he is in crash lands on a planet with three suns (Superman would love the place). The high amount of sunage means that it is always daylight so the place is hot and ashy. Riddick and the rest of the survivors (which includes Johns) find the remains of a small base some distance away from the crash site. There they find a space ship that could get them off the planet but there is a snag, it has no power. That isn’t a problem as the crashed ship has plenty of power cells, they just need to go and get them. Of course as soon as they figure this out the suns start setting, it turns out that there is an eclipse every 22 years and when it gets dark, the monsters come out to play.

Riddick takes charge, using torches to keep the creatures at bay. This is not sufficient however and they get picked off one by one. This sets of tension within the group and Johns and Riddick argue over leaving a girl named Jack behind as bait. In the ensuring fight, Johns is killed by the monsters. They make it to the crashed ship and manage to get the power cells. On the way back some more of the group perish but Riddick manages to start the start-up and leave with the two remaining survivors, a priest and Jack.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury

A short anime film designed to link Pitch Black with The Chronicles of Riddick.

Eager to cash in his “get your ship captured three times, get a free haircut” coupon, Riddick’s ship gets picked up shortly after the events of pitch black. This time it is by a mercenary who likes to collect mighty warriors. Riddick is chased down but evades capture. He is nearly killed by the captain but is saved by Jack. After his escape, he decides to ditch his two companions and go it alone.

The Chronicles of Riddick

Riddick is getting fed up of being captured all the time so he spends the next five years hiding. However he just can’t be gone for and a hunt by a mercenary he met in Dark Fury means he has to leave. He heads for another planet and bumps into the priest he saved in Pitch Black. The priest believes that Riddick is a member of a long lost race of warriors known as the Furyans. Before he can process this information the planet is attacked by a race known as the Necromongers. A group who put the goth into gothic.

Riddick gets captured and learns three things.

1. Riddick is indeed a Furyan
2. It is prophesied that the leader of the Necromongers will be killed by a Furyan.
3. Anyone can see where this is going.

Riddick is brought up to the Necromonger ship but easily escapes. Once free he gets the itch to engage his favourite passtime of prison breaking and allows himself to get captured by some mercs so he can be sent to Crematoria. A harsh world where the half of the planet facing the sun is on fire. He goes there to meet up with Jack, who decided that a life of crime was a good way to go.

However the Necromongers are still on his tail and believe they have killed him when he seemingly gets burnt by the fire side of the planet. They also take Jack.

Riddick goes off to rescue Jack and ends up in a fight with the Necromonger leader. There, Riddick fulfills the ancient prophesy and kills him. Which means that Riddick becomes the leader himself as “you keep what you kill” is their method of career advancement.

Riddick

Riddick decided to take a break from being emperor by hanging out in a deserted planet, presumably making sure to check there are no mercs there, or that it never gets dark.

The Star Wars Holiday Special

A while ago I was reading about the old Fantastic Four movie, no not the one with Jessica Alba in it but the one made in the eighties. It was so bad that Marvel took one look at it and buried the master tapes underneath two tonnes of unsold comics out in the Nevada desert. Today it survives only in the form of poor quality bootlegs found at conventions (seriously, is there nothing those guys can’t dig up? I keep expecting to find footage of Lord Lucan whenever I go to those things). Still, at least Stan Lee has publicly acknowledged that it exists, which is more that can be said of another forgotten creation that was so terrible that the creator has desperately been trying to airbrush it from history ever since it was made. The Star Wars Holiday Special.

Created a year after the hugely successful Star Wars movie it was obviously designed to tie people over until the sequel could be made and it certainly succeeded in that, at least before people actually saw it. It was originally broadcast in December 1978 to a very excited audience but after a few minutes, most viewers switched channel. This was probably because quite frankly, a show about watching paint dry would have had a better plot and most certainly will have featured better acting that the ridiculous drivel that was on display here.

Now I was just a nipper back then so I can’t say that I watched it when it was first shown. However, even if I had been old enough I would not have been able to watch it as it never made it onto UK screens.  In fact the show was never rebroadcast after its initial airing at all. Largely because of the ridicule it received and the fact that George Lucas hated it. Let me break that down for you, this is the man who ok’ed a cartoon about Ewoks yet he loathed this. That fact alone should tell you just how bad this thing was.

The plot of this thing centers around the wookie tradition of “life day” a celebration for which Chewbacca is very eager to get to his (never mentioned before, will never be mentioned again) family. The empire is aware of this fact so they send a squad to Chewbacca’s house to be ready to nab him when he gets home. We briefly follow Chewbacca and Han Solo try to evade the empire  but the bulk of the show is dedicated to comedy segments including,

Chewbacca’s father using a Virtual Reality machine to watch porn.
A cooking show.Detailed instructions on how to build a radio.

If you are thinking that none of this sounds like star wars then you would be right and the less said about that porn segment the better.

The best (and that is a relative term) is a revisit to the Mos Eisley cantina, which much have hit financial trouble since the events of the movie as it has now shrunk by about 75% and looks completely different. No there is no explanation for this but at least they got most of the alien puppets out from storage so it looks kinda authentic. It turns into a sad musical number at the end as the bar owner sings a farewell song after her bar gets closed down by the empire.  although  why the empire, who have recently lost a death star to the rebels, would be concerned by tiny bar in the middle of nowhere is beyond me.

There is also a music video by Jefferson Starship, a then popular rock group. It is not bad in a seventies kind of way.  At they had the sense to prerecord their bit so they wouldn’t have to visit the set.

It also features a cartoon that like the rest of the show, is of such bad quality that it looks like it was drawn by a dog.  However it does feature the voices of the original Star Wars cast and actually has a small bit of value as it contains the first appearance of Boba Fett. This character has become extremely popular among Star Wars fans but his introduction is not anything to write home about. The plot is silly and the voice actors sound like they recorded their lines during a coffee break. Thanks to YouTube you can watch it here (Warning: I am not responsible for what may happen if you watch the rest of the show).

Speaking of the original cast, they are all here, appearing whenever the plot can tear itself away from all the wookie action. The Chewie and Han sections are the best as they show parts of the battle scenes from the movie with some overdubs and a couple of new bits to make it seem like new footage. The other cast members don’t fair so well, Luke is wearing so much makeup that he looks like CGI and Leia is incredibly patronizing.

When this special was made, Star Wars had yet to top become the mega franchise it is now.  Perhaps that would explain why this was allowed to be made. Whatever the reason one thing is for certain, the prequel trilogy could have been far worse.

Background: Saints Row

Saints Row

While wandering around in the city of Stillwater, an ordinary person is attacked by one of three gangs that control the city. Their life is saved by the timely intervention of a group of guys belonging to a rival gang, known as the Saints.

Grateful for the help, the person then joins the Saints and helps them fulfill their quest to rid Stillwater of the other gangs and take over. This team up is tremendously successful with each gang falling in turn to the Saints advances. The actions of the player impresses the leader of the Saints, the charismatic Julius Little

Once the whole city is theirs, Julius starts to think about retirement and names the player as his chief lieutenant. Soon afterwards, Julius gets arrested by an uncover cop meaning that the player takes over the Saints. Things get serious when the police chief uses Julius to blackmail the Saints into killing the mayor. They do so but then also take out the chief when he refuses to release Julius.

In the aftermath the player then gets an invite from a mayoral candidate to join him on their yacht. There he gloats to the player that he will do anything in his power to destroy the saints once elected but it seems he spent too long monologuing as a bomb destroys the yacht, killing both him and the player.

Saints Row 2

Having been left for dead, the player awakes from a coma to find that five years have passed. The explosion also required extensive plastic surgery to help recover from the bomb blast at the end of the first game (a clever way to allow the player to change the look and even gender of the character).

After breaking out of prison, the player then discovers that the Saints had disbanded after the disappearance of Julius and the apparent death of the player. This left the city below gang quota so another three groups moved in and now run the place. The player can’t let this stand, reforming the Saints and driving each of the newcomers out-of-town in turn.

Given what happened last time, it should be no surprise to find out that something bad happens once the Saint completes their takeover. In this case it is the Ultor corporation try muscle in but the Saints take no guff and neutralise them before the can put their plans into motion.

While looking around the player can stumble upon tapes which give the revelation that it was Julius who bombed the yacht. His motivation was to force the Saints to disband peacefully, thus freeing Stillwater from gangs completely. The fact that a bunch of other gangs showed up after he got his wish must have annoyed him a bit. The player uses the tapes to track down Julius and get revenge.

 

Saints Row the Third

Right about now things head off in crazy town. In the time since the events of Saints Row 2, the Saints have become a multinational conglomerate with clothing lines, a range of toys and even an energy drink. Despite this, the Saints decide to rob a bank to aid an actor who is researching a role in an upcoming saint movie but things go wrong when it turns out that the bank was being protected by an army of goons and they end up in prison.

Once there the gang are given an ultimatum to work for the Syndicate, a shadowy crime group who clearly did not read the script and decided not to wait until the Saints were weakened by a three-way gang war before attacking. The Saints don’t take kindly to the threats but can do little to prevent Stillwater being taken over. They get stuck in the nearby city of Steelport while escaping the Syndicate.

The core group of Saints are trapped in Steelport and find themselves without any money or weapons. It becomes clear that they need to get back to Stillwater but the three other gangs in the city stand in their way. Seeing no other option, the Saints rebuild and remove the gangs one by one. Of course once the gangs are no longer a threat, it is time for the real bad guy to show up.

With the Syndicate having already used up their action points this turn it is up to the government anti gang unit (STAG) to step in. They cause almost as much mayhem as the gangs do and seem to revel in the violence. Things come to a head when STAG kidnap the mayor and several Saints members. The player must rescue them and stop a bomb going off at the same time. Luckily, a ridiculously over the top rescue attempt goes off without a hitch and the day is saved. The Saints become heroes and even find time to star in a movie based on them.

 

Saint Row IV

After waking up from a siesta, the player finds that he is president of the United States and three countries have invaded and need to be taken over….just kidding aliens invade.

Face in the Crowd – Linkin Park at the O2

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Review

It was a very different world when Sir Peter Jackson first started working on a trilogy of films which would make him a major player in Hollywood, The Lord of the Rings. The “geek” genre was still in its infancy and a film based on elves and fantasy was still considered a huge risk meaning there was opposition to getting it made. Despite this Jackson persevered and the movies were a huge hit. This made a sequel inevitable and so after seventeen years and more shenanigans than at  a Halfling Christmas party we have the last movie of the Hobbit trilogy.

Straight away, the problem of the series being stretched into three movies becomes apparent. The movie starts where the last one left off, with a huge dragon bearing down on the small fishing settlement of Laketown. This is a great scene but is wasted here at the beginning, not to mention the whole thing is over in ten minutes. It is puzzling why the dragon attack scene was not used to close out the second movie as it would have served as a fitting climax. Still they get a lot of credit for not splitting that last movie into two parts like every other trilogy these days.

With this being the last movie, there are many things to resolve before the battle promised by the title shows up. The plot starts by dealing with the pretty grievances and arguments that have been building up throughout the trilogy. This rockets up the tension and there are several points where you think that the dwarves will lose everything and that is before the orcs make an appearance.

When they do arrive the battle scenes are glorious, they are a massive improvement over the similar scenes in The Lord of the Rings. There are still plenty of shots of the battle as a whole to get a feel for what is going on but they are simply there to show the wider context. The film mostly zooms in to show the individual fights of main characters instead. This works brilliantly. The viewer cares about the outcome because the fights have two and a half movies emotional weight to them. Each fight is well choreographed and visually interesting.

The actors have had plenty of time to get used to their roles so each of them puts in a great performance but it is Evangeline Lilly who gets the gold star. Her portrayal is excellent and single handedly makes the rather silly love triangle plot from the previous film far more believable and emotional than it has any right to be. She plays perfectly alongside the stoic Legolas, with Orlando Bloom conveying with his face far more than his few lines allow.

Richard Armitage is given the chance to subvert the action hero cliche and relishes the chance to cut loose and show Thorin’s dark side, something only hinted at in the previous films. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves and none of the main characters lets the side down when they are given their moment to shine.

It seems like they struggled to make this make this feature-length and this shows in the pacing. The beginning is a bit to brisk with many issues resolved quickly and it seems that it simply wants to get to the fighting ASAP. Some plot points are brought up and then disappear which lead me to believe that they will reappear in the extended edition. Everything then slows down for the battle thanks to a fair bit of padding. However, this is not really noticeable thanks to the excellent acting.

The “dream team” of Galadriel, Elrond and Saruman finally get the chance to do something useful but it is a cameo appearance at best and gives very little payoff. There are many references to the Lord of the Rings which makes sense as this is a prequel but we really did not need so many reminders that certain characters were also in that movie. It will probably work well when they are played back to back but in the cinema it falls flat.

This movie marks the end of a journey through Middle Earth. It is an enjoyable standalone film but is easily the best of the trilogy. It builds upon the foundations of the previous two films and uses them to soar to new heights emotionally. A fitting end to the trilogy.