When Pixar released Toy Story in 1995, they were able to capture our hearts and minds with one simple premise—What if all of our toys were sentient? Over the years, the franchise has explored themes of family, friendship, envy, love , loyalty, and did so without ever caring how or why the toys were alive. Whether intentional or not, the conceit of Toy Story 4‘s story—as well as a repeated gag throughout the film—establish new rules that seemingly govern all matter in the franchise universe.
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Does Rex Dangervest brick The Lego Movie universe?
In 'The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part', we're introduced to a new character (Rex Dangervest) who shows up early on in the story to help Emmet on his journey to save his friends. Emmet quickly begins to idolize Rex as he represents all the manly, heroic traits that he lacks himself. As a source of humor and meta-commentary on the career of Chris Pratt—who voices both characters—Rex is a welcome addition to the series. His backstory and arc throughout the film, however, introduce a huge problem into the world-building of the franchise. In my opinion, they kind of brick the universe.
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'Serenity' doesn't have a twist ending. At best the trailer is simply withholding information.
When reviews for 'Serenity' began dropping online, there was one common thread across every headline. Every single one exclaimed the ridiculousness of the films "twist ending". While I agree the film is ridiculous on the whole, it is consistently so and doesn't suddenly become the film it is at the end. The film telegraphs its reality so overtly from the [near] beginning, that you can't even call it foreshadowing anymore. To put it simply, there is no actual twist.
Read MoreAn alternate interpretation to the ending of Source Code
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the ending of Source Code. Since it’s release, I’ve listen to several different reviews of Source Code. Positive or negative, most reviewers seem to fixate on a specific aspect of the films’ ending. In the climactic scene Colleen Goodwin sends Colter Stevens back through the Source Code one last time, severs Stevens connection with the machine, and allows him to live out the rest of his life as Sean Fentress in the world in which he stops the bomb from ever exploding. In the last 2 minutes of the film, we then discover that in every trip Stevens took, an alternate reality was actually being created. What I’ve found is that most reviewers seem to share the common belief that Colter Stevens is killing Sean Fentress by taking his place in this alternate reality. I, however, see things a little bit differently...
Read MoreInterpreting a godless Adjustment Bureau
In The Adjustment Bureau David Norris (Matt Damon) discovers an organization of people devoted to controlling the destinies of the human race. The film follows Norris as he tries to thwart the organization and write his own path through the world. Given the subject matter of free will vs determinism, it’s easy to understand why viewers might interpret The Bureau (and it’s Chairman) as representing God within the context of the film. Not only do I believe this interpretation to be incorrect, but I believe that if you hold this opinion, you’ve missed the entire point of the film...
Read MoreForget rising ticket prices, where have all the showtimes gone?
With the economy the way it is, everyone has been feeling the pinch. For the average consumer, and business owner alike, this means cutting costs and doing whatever they can to make an extra buck. If you’ve been to the movies any time in the last year, you’ve probably noticed a pretty drastic rise in the cost of a movie ticket. While this has had many people up in arms, I’ve caught on to an even worse trend. Theater owners everywhere have been cutting back on their operating hours and even dropping all of their morning showtimes...
Read MoreMy first time being protective of a film
I’ve known several people over the years who will discover something new and make the mistake of thinking they’re the first person in the world to do so. They latch on to it as if it is uniquely theirs and get very defensive when they hear others talk about liking the same thing. I’ve seen it done with bands, songs, television shows, and especially with film. I’ve always been annoyed by this behavior, but recently I experienced it from the other perspective. For probably the first time in my life, I felt protective over a film and had an adverse reaction to someone speaking positively about it...
Read MoreHow this trend in video game films could actually improve future video gmes and future films based on them
Lets face it, the film industry is sort of hurting right now. They’re desperately searching for anything with a preestablished audience to turn into a crap film that millions of people are going to see regardless of it’s quality. They’re doing it with novels, older movies, comic books, and even video games. Now history has taught us that video games make really bad films (i.e. the Street Fighters, Mortal Kombats, Super Mario Brothers, Double Dragon, Resident Evil, Doom, etc). Recently, however, we’ve begun to hear of some video game to film adaptations that actually stand a chance of being decent (if not brilliant) films. If these films continue to crop up and do well at the box office, we could actually see an improvement in the quality of video games in general as companies shoot for film adaptations...
Read MoreSpoilers vs. Familiarity
If you’ve ever been excited about a film, only to have major plot elements ruined for you by some jerk, then you know that spoilers are one of the worst things you can possibly experience as a filmgoer. While a film may be worth repeat viewings, you’ll never be able to recreate that first time experience. Lately, however, I’ve been finding that my favorite filmgoing experiences are for films that I already have an intimate familiarity with.
Read MoreHow an audience ruined my film experience
This past weekend I went to a screening of Obsessed for the latest episode of The Spoiler Warning. When I first walked into the theater, I was surprise by how many people had brought their children (around 5 to 8 years old) with them. As I sat waiting for it to begin, more and more kids piled into the theater. As the show time drew nearer, I got the sinking feeling that I was about to have the worst film watching experience of my life. Little did I know, it was going to be far worse than I could ever have imagined.
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