Avengers: Powerless

[Part of Superhero Stories]

Advanced Idea Mechanics, the same group currently waging war against Wakanda. What were they doing having a hidden outpost right in the middle of the city and why did this information come from digital data pulled from a lone arrow near the crashed Helicarrier? Natasha Romanoff's questions would soon be answered as she casually made her way right past security under the guise of a lowly laborer. Hawkeye had been missing off comms for awhile now, could he be in here somewhere?

A quick side step down an unpatrolled corridor she wasn't meant to be in and a flash of a security card she had lifted from the goon outside was all it took to find her answers. There in an isolated cage was her friend - Hawkeye, beaten and broken. He had a clear line of sight to the tables against the opposite wall atop which were the stripped corpses of the Winter Soldier, Kamala Khan, Kate Bishop and what was left of Captain America. Quickly composing herself, Natasha forced herself forward to unlock his cell as she whispered a reassuring "Let's get you out of here."

"Nat? Is that you?" Barton said weakly. "I failed them Nat. I failed them. I... I told MODOK how to open the Tesseract box." Romanoff looked at him in disbelief as he continued. "Yeah. They pried it from T'challa's cold dead fingers, but they couldn't open it... not until I... I told them how. They used Steve's hand Nat. Only four people could open that box and they... they..."

"Then we'd better go get it back," Natasha said sternly as she offered Clint one of her Glock 26s. With an exchange of silent nods, Hawkeye took the firearm and followed her lead deeper into the facility. 

He's always happy to see her.

Snake Eyes and Black Widow

Movies with black clad protagonists!

Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins

More talkative, makes less sense.

When someone kills his dad, Snake Eyes (Henry Golding) dedicates his entire life to vengeance at any cost. This involves betraying a number of people many times and killing a lot of other people -because they were in his way- out of self defense *cough*. There are some nice action scenes (I particularly enjoyed the ones with Iko Uwais) but there are loads of over the top ones too.

It's one of those flicks where most of the bad guys keep forgetting to bring firearms and the only surprise in the plot is that they remembered to somehow link in G.I. Joe and Cobra to it, because if you don't see the title you can watch most of it without knowing it was a GI Joe flick. Anyway, this isn't something that I'd watch again or recommend and give it two disguise sheets out of five.

That would have been a twist!

Black Widow

Takes place after Captain America: Civil War.

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) has no problem being in hiding due to her stance on the Sokovia Accords, but she doesn't actually get much downtime as a surprise mission comes up that involves reuniting with her "family". There are a few flash back segments to establish this newly revealed past and the story, humor and action segments are quite good. I do have to question Natasha's resilience though as some damage she takes during this film makes me wonder if she too took the super soldier serum.

Definitely a flick for Avenger or Scarlett fans, and one I'd watch again. I give this "passing the torch" three tight fitting suits out of five. It's pretty telling that whatever the next threat the entire Avengers team will need to face, whenever that rolls around there's going to be a drastically different line up based on what's happening in the MCU series as well.

Jojo Rabbit

Heils everyone!

10 year old Johannes (Roman Griffin Davis) is a Nazi fanatic, to the extent that his make believe friend is Adolph Hitler himself (played by Taika Waititi, who also directed this movie)! What is he to do when he finds out that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a jew in his house? While there is a heavy emphasis on comedy, there are also suitably dark and dramatic moments in there to balance them out.

Imaginary Hitler is hilarious!

Cinematography and acting wise, everything is good though the plot does seem to slow down a lot midway prior to picking up the pace again in the third act. Still very enjoyable and one I would recommend and watch again. I give it 3.5 rabbits out of 5.

Jungle Book (2016)

Where wolves are American, cats are English and giant monkeys are Christopher Walken.

I've always been interested in seeing this Disney adaptation of the Jungle Book, which has the orphaned boy Mowgli being raised by the generally very compassionate creatures of the forest as one of their own, which is a problem to only the villainous tiger Shere Khan who harbors a hatred for humans.

Bad kitty!

It would be ok if this was just a regular tiger, but Shere Khan is feared by pretty much everyone else and rightly so. Only when Mowgli starts adventuring does he run into other not-so-friendlies. Guess the wolf pack did a good job keeping him safe!

All the CGI creatures are amazing, and damn the mommy wolf actually made me tear up with some of her lines and emotion. In contrast, Scarlett Johansonn as Kaa didn't really work too well for me. Ironically the weakest actor is Mowgli himself, though he does make up for it with all the action pieces he gets.

Being a Disney movie there are some musical numbers but they are very toned down and cut short during the film, with full versions in the entertaining credits. It's definitely an entertaining movie, one I wouldn't mind watching again. I give it three and a half, giant red flowers out of five.

Ghost in the Shell: The Scarlett Johansson Version

There must be no jails in the future, because Section 9 is all about killing.

Based on an anime of the same name this movie cherry picks a bunch of stories from the original content and mashes it up into one narrative, much like how the previously Asian protagonist is put back piecemeal with a pinch of amnesia into Scarlett Johansson. There are certainly worse bodies to get resurrected into!

I'm kinda glad none of the others wear a white, form squeezing body suit. :P

As expected from a GITS story it has a terrorist group, a corrupt company, a bunch of fight scenes and a lot of eye candy. I mean other eye candy, apart from Scarlett. Section 9 is well represented too, with a good choice for Batou, an almost cameo for Saitou and Togusa, and an elderly yet authoritative Aramaki. Who only speaks Japanese, while the rest of the cast speaks English. Yeah that did bug me a bit. The meshing of stories also made for some plot holes.

Also, by making trying to make this somewhat kid friendly by removing the gore and nudity (and blood) featured in the animated counterpart - it does make it fall short to GITS veterans. The futuristic capacity also had some ludicrous looking moments with things that don't translate well into real life. Keep your eyes open for people wearing ridiculous bubble helmets filled with ads. Even the opening surgical staff could probably not see where they were going at all.

So, not as entertaining as the originals but still worth a watch if nothing better is on. I give it 2.5 spider tanks out of 5. Would I watch it again? I'd probably give my consent, but not anytime soon.

Lucy

The more of your brain you use, the less of a person you become.

That's kinda the premise in this film which follows a girl named Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) whom by a series of bad choices ends up with the power to unlock the full potential of her mind with a solid message from the movie that "drugs are good". It's good that she gets all her acting skills in at the start because she becomes more and more "robotic" as the film goes on. There's also a lot of artsy (in a good way) CGI and special FX here, as well as an insane driving segment which must have been pretty crazy for the stunt folk.

Tripping balls.

Unfortunately this is not really enough to make it a good movie. It's passable, but since there's no one who can match Lucy it becomes pretty boring pretty fast. I also find it amusing that the writers couldn't think of a better way to introduce and integrate Morgan Freeman's character, without having him spend 60%(?) of his screen time just giving a lecture. Speaking of which, whoever had the idea of editing in National Geographic wild life shots is a moron. That's being artsy in a bad way. It's a shame that such a potentially good plot was wasted on what this became. I give Lucy one and a half pills out of five and don't really recommend it to anyone other than Scarlett Johansson fans. Even then, it's not worth a second watch.

Artistic Deviation

Managed to pull off two Mabinogi related works this week, unfortunately the Mighty Mugg one is not one of them. Simply didn't have enough time nor motivation to win the chance to "build" a mighty mugg. Especially as I'm trying to concentrate on flash-based art where as that one specifically was looking for real world works.

Both pieces were for player-run things and I used them as exercises in changing the cutesy anime style of Mabinogi into "altered" versions.

Really happy with how the second one turned out, especially as it was a last minute thing I decided to do. Also worked on Flash Game #1 briefly, but still no word from Mike at Newgrounds about API's for flash 5 which is a bummer. Must follow that up this week. I intend to hammer out game #1 to at least half way by next week because it's really getting in the way of the second one I have in mind. :P

The mysterious book laughs at me again, as instead of having any progress I've been playing Left 4 Dead 2 with my brothers. Incredibly fun game. I wonder how Dead Island compares to it? I'm sure Juris (one of my guildies) is finding out right now.

Speaking of artistic deviations, what about Scarlett Johansson ey? The incredibly stunning actress has been in the news recently as she has supposedly set the FBI to track down whoever it was that hacked her phone as she doesn't want you to see her "comprimising" pictures. Ironically, the majority of people now looking for said photos would not be doing so had that article not been published in the news. Also, I would be more concerned with what other data could have been pulled from the phone. Pictures are a good distraction, but birthdays, addresses, private messages and the like are more useful to creative minds.

Were you looking for a link to those leaked Scarlett Johansson photos? Try google. :P