Update on the 2013 Big Summer Movies

I had expected to be posting a review of either The Lone Ranger or Pacific Rim today, but I found that neither movie was good enough for me to recommend it to others.  I decided to do an update on which of the 2013 big summer movies I have and have not recommended so far, for those of you who have not been referring to my parent post that contains all of these.

Here are the films that appeared to be the biggest ones coming at the start of May:

Iron Man 3 – May 3^rd

Star Trek into Darkness – May 17^th

Fast & Furious 6 – May 24^th

The Hangover Part III – May 24^th

After Earth – May 31^st

Man of Steel – June 14^th

Monsters University – June 21^st

World War Z – June 21^st

Despicable Me 2 – July 3^rd

The Lone Ranger – July 3^rd

Pacific Rim – July 12^th

The Wolverine – July 26^th

Elysium – August 9^th

Kick-Ass 2 – August 16^th

(=Not yet released)

The ones I have recommended so far have links in the names that will take you to my full reviews of them.  For the rest I have shorter comments that you can find below.

Title:  The Hangover Part III

I thought the first one was hilarious and the second one okay.  I literally did not laugh once during this entire third movie.  There are some attempts at humor, but they fall flat.  Instead they try to focus more on the adventures the guys get into, but those really don't hold much entertainment or suspense in them.  This is just an all around not very good movie.  Of all the ones I have seen so far, this is the worst movie of the summer.

Title:  After Earth

This movie is not as horrible as you may have heard.  Much of that is backlash against M. Night Shyamalan in general, and against Will Smith trying to push his son on the movie-going public in particular.  People expecting to see a "Will Smith movie" instead get a "Jaden Smith movie".  The son is the star and Will just speaks instructions to him. 

Unfortunately, Will Smith seems to see his fearless military leader character as someone who would speak and act like a robot and Jaden just doesn't have the acting skills yet to carry a movie as the lead.  This isn't a bad movie plot-wise, but there's just not enough there to recommend it.

Title:  World War Z

The plot was okay up until it reaches the point where they apparently decided to completely change things and head to Wales. From that point on it was completely nonsensical. Combine this with the fact that another director has been infected with the shakycam virus and most of the action scenes were impossible to follow. Making matters worse is that three major action scenes are shot in very low light, combined with shakycam, just to make sure you can't see what is happening.  

There is an unintentional laugh out loud moment when Pitt, right in the midst of dodging zombies, stops to get a can of cold refreshing Pepsi out of a vending machine – perhaps the single most blatant product placement in a movie where the filmmakers were not winking about the product placement.

This film is trying really, really hard to be 28 Days Later, but it ends up being 28 Weeks Later.

Title: The Lone Ranger

There is a very good action sequence involving two trains at the climax of the movie. Unfortunately, it takes two hours to get to that point and it's about the only thing positive I can say about the film.

Most of the attempts at humor do not work and pretty much every single white man in the film is evil, for no other apparent reason than that they are white men. The one that isn't (the title character) is an idiot. A few other white men who have not yet had a chance to show how they are evil are quickly killed. Every single Indian, Chinese, and black man, however, is noble, brave, and good, all while being betrayed, beaten, and killed by white men. Gee, I wonder why this movie failed at the box office in a country whose large majority of the population is white?

Oh, and Depp simply plays Capt. Jack Sparrow again, just with a "me big heap Indian" accent.

Title:  Pacific Rim

This movie is really silly. In fact, it actually moves into the "so bad it's good" territory for large stretches. I was laughing at several scenes in this film (and not the few that were supposed to be funny.)

A bunch of giant monsters come out of a trench in the ocean so mankind's response is to build 300 foot tall robots to punch them really, really hard? I knew this going in, of course, but I was hoping it would entertain my inner 8 year old boy. Even an 8 year old was rolling his eyes at this.

They say at the beginning that planes, tanks, AND MISSILES (my emphasis) took six days to stop the first monster. As the movie shows, though, pretty much anything can stop them - except being punched by a giant robot. After eventually giving up on the punching, the robots kill them by electrocution, swords, bombs, and...wait for it...missiles launched from the robots.

Another solution is to build massive walls around tens of thousands of miles of Pacific coastline to keep the monsters out...instead of building a thousand feet of wall cap over the trench they are coming out of?  And mankind waits for the monsters to approach shore and destroy cities before trying to stop them instead of just positioning defenses right outside the trench the monsters are coming out of?

But maybe there's a good human angle to the film? Nope. Every character is either bland or an asshole, except for the Japanese pilot played by Rinko Kikuchi, who was also the best thing about 2006's Babel.  The CGI is good, but you don't get to enjoy it much since almost all of the major action scenes take place at night and/or in the rain/water so you can't see much of what is going on.

Pacific Rim is this summer's Battleship - big, loud, incredibly stupid...and unintentionally funny in so many places that you may still enjoy yourself. If you must see it I'd wait and rent it for a buck when it comes to DVD.