Getting a second chance is something that we all want in life and sometimes we are lucky enough to get one. It is what we do with this chance that will make our lives easier, or worse, depending on what you do with it. There may not be a set way in doing something right, but if you know in your heart that it is the right way, I guess you should go with that feeling. Even with a second chance, not everybody is willing to change what they have done wrong, since sometimes it is the only thing that they know and even being able to live another day might not be as rewarding as most of us would think.

As his final day of being on parole comes to an end, Ben Garvey wants nothing else than to spend the rest of his life with his family. With his loving wife Lisa and daughter Katie by his side, there is nothing that can happen to take him away from them again. But when his little brother gets out of prison with an offer that seems too good to be true, Ben takes a moment to think about it, but with an actual job in place, he is forced to say no. Yet, Ben gets called into his boss’ office and finds out that he is being fired due to his criminal record and the loss of his paycheck is too much for him to just let go of.

Calling up Ricky to set up the score, Ben thinks that everything will go according to plan, but when a new member of the crew shows up in the car he is ready to call things off. Ricky comes clean about needing the money badly or he will be killed, and Ben cannot let any harm come to his little brother and decides to go along with the job once again. Getting inside is easy and while Ricky and his friend are watching over the floor, Ben is able to get into the safe and secure a payday that will take care of him and his family for years to come. But when Ben walks out and sees shots being fired and his brother and friend lying dead on the ground, he knows that his life is about to change. The court charges Ben with several counts of murder and he is given the death penalty for his involvement. Lying on the table, expecting to die, Ben is shocked that he has been given a second chance.

Trekking down the road on a rainy night, Ben is picked up by Father Ezra who runs the mental health facility where Ben has been given a job as the new grounds keeper. Getting set up, Ben wants nothing more than to see his family again, but there is a man keeping an eye on him in the form of Avery who will not let the convict leave. While working with his new friend Robbie, Ben hears that there are people watching his every move, but he dismisses it since he has a job and is not a patient of the facility. But when Ben sees an inmate kill himself, he knows that time is short and he tries to leave during the night. Waking up in restraints, Father Ezra tells the young man that his stay in the facility has been lengthy and that his family is dead. Ben is not willing to accept this as his reality, but is this an elaborate hoax to throw him off, or did he lose his family in a fire like the Father’s story says?

Not a bad little tale of redemption, but it is not for the person you would expect. I knew that there was going to be a plot twist to mess with our heads as soon as Ben started talking to another doctor at the facility in Julie Ingram as she is always trying to feel him out for more personal information. The addition of a dog in the story was key for me, as the dog was always digging for something that was never seen and would bark when someone was watching Ben in his new happy life as the groundskeeper. Not disappointed in this movie at all, as you have some great actors and a story that makes you second guess what is really going on and why Ben has been given a second chance.

This is a hard one right out of the gate. I admit that I was a fan of the original 1993 version of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. But, as a 12 year old soon-to-be film critic, I admit that I never saw it as a 'holy grail' or a 'sacred cow' franchise. For me it was simply a fun show. You got to see Japanese footage of dudes in multi-colored spandex air-kick monsters with visible zippers on their backs. It was simple Saturday Morning joy, although, as most people forget, there were a lot of parents groups that immediately swarmed on this show, and before long our pre-teen martial arts fantasy was intercepted on all sides by endless PSA's teaching much younger kids basic morals and the ability to tell fantasy from reality.
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I bring this up because there are only a handful of reasons that movies tend to get made these days, and this one is here to cash in on the obvious lucrative trend of creating a movie for adults based entirely on a nostalgic kid’s property, and continue the new tradition for franchises similar to this one in keeping the story dark and gritty. It was only a matter of time before this happened, but I can’t help but shake away a certain disappointment from my youth. I always wanted there to be a truly great Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers movie. Sure, I got one in 1995, but it was too full of cluttered plot points and non-canon weirdness that I couldn’t appreciate it even at the time. Then there was a second one in 1997 that was so far removed from the concept I most loved, that it wasn’t even worth seeing in theaters, and that’s a big statement from a teenager.

So now we have this film, and to be fair, it had a decent shot. The franchise has since linked arms with Viacom/Nickelodeon and they’ve acknowledged the appeal of the original series, if only for nostalgic reasons. This movie is also produced by Haim Saban, making it, to my knowledge, the first modern reboot of a kid’s property that is still manufactured by one its original creators. Is it the version of the movie that the young Mike always wanted to see?

Nnnnnno.

But hang on, because you still might find within this review a good reason to see this one. 

Like I already said, we’re making this one grittier! We’ve got a Jason (Dacre Montgomery) who is under house arrest for stealing a school mascot…and flipping a truck. We’ve got a Kimberly (Naomi Scott) whose been kicked off the cheer team for shooting off a sex photo of a teammate. We’ve got a Billy (R.J. Cyler) that is autistic, obsessed with different patterns of colors, and has a propensity for causing explosions. We’ve got a Zack (Ludi Lin) who always takes unnecessary risks, out of fear that he will soon lose his sick mother, and we’ve got a Trini (Becky Gomez) that is 'indicated' to be a lesbian, but is mostly just an angry loner.
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All five of these teens are brought together when, after sneaking into an arbitrarily restricted area, Billy sets charges and blows up the side of the mountain, revealing the five power coins. Absent of any aptitude towards the martial arts, they each take a coin and suddenly begin developing superhuman strength, incredible leaping abilities, and invincibility. They find themselves continually drawn to the same patch of dirt where they eventually reveal the command center, a UFO imbedded in the earth’s crust during the Cenozoic era. There Zordon (Bryan Cranston) and Alpha (voiced by Bill Hader) inform them of their ultimate destiny: defeat the newly resurrected and horror-movie hideous Rita Repulsa (Elizabeth Banks), before she robs the city of Angel Grove of all its gold, resurrects a giant faceless monster named Goldar, and destroys the earth by ripping the ancient Zeo Crystal from its place of burial, which will cause lots of explosions, or something.

We’re mercifully spared the concept of a great destiny battle when Jason uncovers the true scandal behind this ancient conflict: that Zordon and Rita were once Power Rangers on the same team when Rita first betrayed him, and Zordon’s attempts to train a new team of rangers was simply to resurrect the Morphing Grid and return himself to Earth. Problem is, this team is failing to morph because they’re virtual strangers to each other, and simply can’t pull together enough teamwork to tap into their full powers…there’s your 'very special message from the Power Rangers' right there.

Once everything can be resolved between the wholesome family-friendly concepts of their source material, and the modern day angst of their current cast, they can finally take the battle to Rita in the center of Angel Grove. Like the franchise reboot this movie most wants to be, (*koff*Transformers*koff*) the third act of this movie provides the ultimate payoff for the hours of teen angst and character self-doubt present in the beginning. Unlike that movie, however, the inevitable giant monster battle feels 100% like an installment of the Power Rangers TV series. The pacing and sequence of that payoff scene is done well enough to at least make you feel like you’re watching Saturday morning TV all over again.

This movie does all it possibly can in order to take it to the monotonously long-run Transformers series that birthed it. There’s even a 'take that' moment when Jason accidentally steps on a yellow car while learning to drive the tyrannosaurus zord. Sad as it is, then, that the CG zords don’t completely fail to resemble the overly cyberpunk-ish designs of the CG film version of the transformers, as do Alpha and Zordon. There are some shining moments amongst the cast characterization. R.J. Cyler’s Billy is the real standout; both because he gets a Triceratops’ share of the funny lines, and ultimately becomes the nucleus that pulls the team together.

Generally, though, the film is in a frantic search for a rhythm it can’t fully find. Jason goes from getting shushed from saying the word 'shit' in one scene, to later shouting 'Let’s save our shitty town!' in the middle of a motivational speech. Then there’s the issue of having the black and yellow rangers pushed into the background. There was obviously much more to say about a near-suicidal Zack’s need to bring control to the chaos he was dealt in life, and the necessity for Trini to ‘come out’ in order to fully accept her powers. It certainly seemed more important a thread to follow than it was hearing how sorry Kimberly was for sex-shaming someone.

If my review of this movie came down to a simple 'watch or don’t watch' rating, I would say, by all means, give it a watch. In the end, I appreciate the fact that, despite its need to provide direct competition to the Transformers franchise, it didn’t completely forsake the concepts left to it by the original series. Once the heavy-handed jaded pasts of the characters can be effectively pushed into the background, I might even actually learn to enjoy the inevitable sequels. It’s more likely, though, that I, and a lot of other people, will be taking the nostalgic spark this movie left us, and immediately retreat to Netflix to watch the reruns of the original series. 

I already kinda feel like I’ve spilled over a bit on this one. After all, I did do a review of Pete’s Dragon, which also contained a significant amount of complaints about Disney’s recent remake of The Jungle Book. I’ve made the firm assentation that there’s no point in Disney making live action remakes of their animated classics, merely because the most intriguing thing about all those previous movies is, you know, the animation. I felt the web was with me, since when this movie was announced, the very first thing a lot of people asked is…Why?' Compound that with an announcement a week before the film was released wherein the character of LeFou, played here by Josh Gad, has a moment where he realizes that he accepts being gay, and the subsequent yet somehow still meaningless fallout of that, and you ultimately still have a movie that’s worth reviewing just so you can unpack everything that’s there.

And that would be all there is to that, except for the fact that, by the time the final credits rolled on this unnecessary live action re-make of Beauty and the Beast, I have to admit, I actually enjoyed it.

I can’t pinpoint precisely why. I suggest that maybe a generation has gone past, and there might be a reason or two why we need to understand the themes of this film once again, but even then you have to look at the fact that, as a medium, live action cannot do what animation does with ease. Take a line from the now-standard Alan Menkin songs on the soundtrack, like 'I use antlers in all of my decorating.' In animation you can smash-pan to a whole room of Gaston’s trophies the instant he sings it. In this version you see Gaston, played by Luke Evans, belt out the same line, without the punch, except for the fact that the bar scenery around him already has quite a few antler chandeliers inside it.

But it’s all still here, note for note, shot for shot, scene for scene, and it is all pitch perfect. The sets are gorgeous and the timing and pacing runs like Cogsworth, er, clockwork. Emma Watson is the perfect Belle, as Dan Stevens is the perfect Beast, as is Evans the perfect Gaston, as is Gad the perfect LeFou. To my great surprise, Kevin Kline is the perfect Maurice…and that’s not even getting into the voice cast.

So….let’s get into the voice cast.

At first glance you’d suppose each of these individuals is here for star quality: there’s really no reason to throw out actors like Angela Lansbury and David Ogden Stiers. Nevertheless we have Sir Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, Ewan MacGregor as Lumiere, Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts, and Nathan Mack as Chip. Their transitions in the role are so seamless you’d swear you were still listening to the original actors. There’s a few expanded roles: Gugu Mbatha Raw plays Plumette the enchanted feather duster in a way that’s mercifully more consensually in love with Lumiere. Audra McDonald is the boisterous Madame de Guarderobe, who in this version is married to an original character, Maestro Cadenza, a talking harpsichord with the voice of Stanley Tucci.

The overall art style conveyed by the CG characters takes a little bit of getting used to, especially when it comes to the motion captured performance of Stevens as The Beast. It’s much more John Tenniel than it is anything previously made by Disney, which is a smart choice, since it all blends in well with the live action. When you feel immersed, you can appreciate how much effort is put into a movie that still needs to be at least 70% animation sometimes. A sequence in the middle of 'Be our Guest' actually reminded me quite fondly of Disney, that is Walt Disney, as they created for a split second a kaleidoscope image of several dishes and flatware betwixt the already frenetic dancing of that scene. 

The bulk of this movie really is an attempt to re-create everything found in the original film, from the scenery, all the way to the motions that the characters take when they move from scene to scene. There is a lot of new stuff in here, including three new Alan Menkin songs, but it all only exists to remind us that the animated film wasn’t perfect either, and succeeds in closing a few of the plot gaps left by that film. For example, Belle spends a lot of her time imprisoned in the east wing tower tying together bedsheets that she can hang out the wall to escape. Belle has a whole backstory that wasn’t present in the original movie, as does the Beast, and Gaston…doesn’t get a backstory as much as a subtext that explains why his cruelty and vanity seem to go hand in hand. The only part of the story lacking new context, ironically, was the widely advertised sequence with Gad as LeFou. Sure, I can see his misplaced affection at times, but I also did in the original film.

The live action remakes that came before this one failed because the live action somewhat detracted from what the animated films could do for plot. The Jungle Book failed because it went back to Kipling, only to toss in a few bars of 'Bear Necessities.' Pete’s Dragon doesn’t even resemble the movie it’s based on despite the fact that it too was partially in live action. Beauty and the Beast solves this problem by being 100% faithful and even respectful to its original animated source. It’s proof to even a stone-hearted film critic like yours truly, that a good film can be made out of even the simplest concept.  

This much anticipated live-action remake of the Disney classic has received more than its fair share of publicity (both good and controversial) but at last it has hit theaters. As the little girl who watched the original animated Beauty and the Beast as much as my parents would let me, I had high hopes and slight skepticism as the theater lights dimmed and the familiar first notes of Belle’s theme began to play. This film did not disappoint.

As with any film, there were moments that dragged, jokes that didn’t quite hit their marks, and characters that we could have used less of. And, if I’m honest, I’m still not sure what accent Ewan McGregor thought he was doing because it certainly wasn’t French. But as a whole, this film gives audiences everything that was beloved and enchanting from the original film while building upon that story to give us a deeper, more complex understanding of this classic fairytale. Belle is still a beauty, headstrong and kind. The Beast is still oblivious and hot-headed but capable of change. Gaston is still a total creep. And the castle’s staff/antiques are still the comedic heart the film. But in rising to the task of updating and expounding upon the story everyone knows, Disney made some incredibly smart, subtle, and inspired changes to give this tale more substance.

Firstly, Belle is also an inventor in this rendition. Her father, Maurice, is a painter and a clock maker with an obvious eye for tinkering, but Belle has also picked up the trade. She hands Maurice the tools he needs before he can even ask for them and some before he even knows he needs them. She then invents a more efficient method for doing the laundry, leaving her more time to read. In this film, Belle isn’t just bookish 'with a dreamy far off look and her nose stuck in a book.' She’s an innovative thinker and desperate to put her intellect to good use. This is evident when the townsfolk destroy her laundry invention and complain that she’s teaching other young girls to read (because apparently one educated woman is bad enough). Belle’s longing for something more than a provincial life becomes less about the boring and stifling life of a young girl in a small town and more about her hunger for more knowledge and more opportunities to actually DO something with her talents.

Then there’s Gaston. Anyone who saw the original film could tell you that Gaston is a conceited and petulant creep. But this film digs even deeper into what makes Gaston worthy of the title of villain. His first introduction in this rendition is just as humorous and awkward as in the original, but this time they make it all the more clear that he sees Belle only as a prize to be won rather than a woman with her own thoughts and desires. He specifically compares the other women in town to rabbits and claims that there’s no fun in hunting them because they’re not a challenge. In one line he manages to denigrate all women to the status of prey and places Belle in the dangerous position of being the prize stag that he’ll ensnare and keep as a trophy. This vile behavior only worsens with the way he treats everyone else.

​The original Gaston also tries to have Maurice locked away in an insane asylum and rallies the town into a mob to kill the Beast, but this Gaston does all of this after he punches Maurice and then leaves him to be eaten by wolves. When Le Fou (Gaston’s supposed best friend) speaks out against this behavior, Gaston threatens that he’ll be next. Then in the fateful standoff between Gaston and the Beast, Gaston pleads for his life. The Beast spares him, stating clearly, 'I am not a Beast', reminding the audience who the real monster is. And in case we needed more convincing, Gaston shoots the Beast in the back… twice. In this remake, Gaston’s hyper-masculinity is shown for the toxic danger it really is. It is his blatant sense of entitlement and penchant for anger that spreads hatred and reinforces society’s tendency to shun and punish those who go against the established order. And all the while, he believes himself the hero.

This film also gives us more background on our Beauty and Beast. In short, through well-timed flashbacks we learn more about how both were put on the paths that led them to one another. We learn that Belle’s mother died of the Plague in Paris which is why her father brought her to the little village where he believes she’ll be safe from the horrors of the world. Maurice has never spoken of it but Belle learns the truth and in a heart to heart with her father makes it clear that she is grateful for his protection but that she is not afraid of the dangers of the world. She is capable of facing them all head on. She is the one who can break the curse because she, like her mother, is fearless. And the Beast was not always so cruel and monstrous as he was when the Enchantress cursed him. His mother died when he was just a small boy and it was his cruel and abusive father that turned him into a 'beast.' The compassion he once had is allowed to resurface when he is once again shown the kindness he was so long denied, first by his father and then by the curse.
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Finally, in true Disney fashion, there are new songs that provide beautiful depth to the characters we already hold so dear. The song 'Days in the Sun' allows audiences to really feel for the other inhabitants of the castle who are as equally cursed as the Beast. They are days away from turning into inanimate objects completely and losing what humanity they had left but they still think only of helping one another and enjoying what time they do have. And in seeing this, Belle reflects on how sheltered and lonely her life has been. She is frightened of her current situation but grateful for the new experience and the way it has widened her understanding of the world and, in turn, her understanding of the Beast. The Beast is also given a new song, 'Evermore'. At first he laments at how Belle has disrupted the solitude to which he has grown accustomed and how her presence and eventual absence only makes his curse harder to bear. But he then goes on to muse on how she taught him to embrace his emotions and to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, curse or no curse. He is grateful to have met her because he has grown as a person and that is worth the pain he feels at losing her. With both of these songs, each character becomes a fully realized individual and their relationship seems less like an impossible fairytale and more like the actual love of two outcasts finding acceptance and growth in one another.

This is not the first of Disney’s live action remakes but, in my opinion, it is the first that feels truly worthy of the original. Beauty and the Beast is one of the most beloved Disney films of all time, with an Oscar for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture. The team that created this new edition had their work cut out for them and rose to the occasion marvelously. The magic of this familiar story leaps off the screen but the changes give audiences a new way to fall in love with a tale as old as time.

What can I say about King Kong? There is no single character that is more representative of American cinema than the great big ape, a fact that is made more interesting due to the fact that he’s only been in eight feature films, counting the two that used him as a Japanese “kaiju” import monster. Not to mention the fact that a somewhat loose interpretation of his copyright status has led nearly every one of those films to be produced by a different studio, from the duo of John Guillermin films from the early 80’s, to Peter Jackson’s wish-fulfillment project for Paramount.
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But this is a different Hollywood, and we know that any licensable movie property is destined for two things: remakes and in-universe sequels. This movie has only just been minted in theatres, and already Legendary has plans to move the franchise to Warner Bros., where he’ll do battle with the 2014 American film version of Godzilla.

So, for the sake of, I dunno, helping people get into that movie when it releases in two years, let’s look into what they did to King Kong in this movie.

It’s 1973. The very day before Nixon is about to drop the axe on Vietnam, and the representatives of a top secret government organization called “Monarch”; William Randa (John Goodman) and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins), petition a senator to grant them an expedition to Skull Island, explicitly to provide evidence of giant monsters. They are given a military escort in the form of Preston Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), ex-British special forces operative James Conrad (Tom Hiddleston), and military photographer Mason Weaver (Brie Larson). This version of Skull Island is conveniently surrounded at all times by a ring of giant thunderclouds and Packard’s platoon is all too happy to clear the storm clouds and drop the ‘scientific’ depth charges. 

Then Kong shows up, knocks all their planes out of the sky and kills twelve soldiers. The two sets of main characters, military and civilian, find themselves on separate parts of the island and need to head north where a military helicopter is scheduled to pick them up. Packard wastes no time in going full Captain L. Ahab, and begins a long, calculated plan to murder King Kong for revenge, while the civilian team, led by Conrad, runs across the inevitable band of natives, and a World War II era castaway by the name of Hank Marlow (John C. Reilly) who informs them that Kong is actually the good guy, protecting the island’s natives from a mass of bipedal Earth lizards called the “Earthwalkers.”
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While this film is more representative of one of the two ways someone can make a film about King Kong, the one that involves monsters battling monsters, the focus is more chiefly on the human actors, as they attempt to convey to the military their need to escape the island while not blowing up King Kong. In that respect, you get the feeling that there’s more of a movie in the minor details that get lost in the mist of...monstery-punchery-blowery-uppery action. You get the feeling that Hiddleston and Larson’s characters had grown together, but there’s nothing explicit about how their relationship got there. They don’t even kiss. Then, in the final moments of the film, they have a five-minute scene where they form a bond with Kong that seems sincere, but it is as brief as any other scene.

Generally everything else about the movie is fine. It runs at a good clip for an action film, with enough unique action to fill in the full 118 minutes; all the while providing its full sixteen person cast with enough humanity that you actually feel bad when they get stepped on, blown up or eaten. The monsters are all uniquely designed, and the CG for Kong and his kin is just convincing enough for you to appreciate every passing monster-fight. I couldn’t help but snicker at the fact that Kong seemed to be fighting a lot of big lizards in this one…as though he’s climbing the giant lizard UFC bracket.

Is Kong: Skull Island a good film though? On its own, I would say, absolutely. I spent the entirety of its two hours completely and thoroughly entertained. While it significantly strips away the classic film’s themes of humanity versus the wild, it exists as a window into an alternate reality where Kong truly gets to live up to his “King” moniker. It is certainly the Thor of what will soon be a rich American-made giant monster movieverse. 

This review starts out with my usual disclaimer: I was a kid of the 90s and I really like the X-Men. There. It’s a statement I always stand by, even when it provides about 60% of the reason I ended up giving a good review to X-Men: Apocalypse, seeing as that movie could not have possibly cast a net wider than the odyssey-like backstories of the original comic. In this case, I’m about to let you in on my personal opinion that, in my book, Wolverine goes right alongside Batman as one of comicdom’s most versatile characters.

Anyone who thinks of ol’ Logan as the gritty maverick loner of the comics we’re familiar with might be overlooking his original run in the late ‘70s, where he’d take on characters like The Hulk. His shtick at the time: he wore a yellow suit and was a Canadian. Deal with it. Then there are all his turns as a character on family friendly versions of the mutant mini-saga, like Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, and the Pryde of the X-Men pilot. I’d go as far to say his central role in the 90s X-Men animated TV series is more well-known than any version of the character as he exists in the comics.

This movie’s permutation of Wolverine was inspired by a 2008 Marvel Comics mini-series entitled Old Man Logan, which takes place in the post-apocalypse. Already, the film abandons this more lofty presence to illustrate an aged and dying Wolverine that exists several years in his own future. After an admittedly poorly explained event which killed nearly all of mutant kind, Logan has found a hiding place on the US/Mexico border, where he lives alongside the albino mutant Caliban (Stephen Merchant), and a senile and heavily medicated Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart).

Having understandably lost all sight of Xavier’s grand design, the man once called Wolverine is laying low and attempting not to draw any further attention to himself, but his intentions go awry when a woman named Gabriella (Elizabeth Rodriguez) introduces her to a little girl named Laura (Dafne Keen), who turns out to be a clone from Logan’s DNA fashioned by an underground genetics lab. It becomes up to Logan and Professor X to lead this girl to a mutant sanctuary code-named Eden, as they’re all the while chased by the secret lab’s robot-armed security honcho Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook).

Clearly, at this point, you can tell that this is intended to be a road film; albeit one that has connections to a well-established film franchise. It is…what most of us comic nerds pine for: stories about superhumans modeled after Australian mustelids that are simply living their lives. Logan knows that he still appreciates Xavier enough to protect him, but seems to have forgotten why, and Charles remains the sole moral center of his life despite his fading physical and mental health. Then there’s the presence of Laura, every bit the deviant, hard edged, and even violent type-a personality that Logan is, and the possibility that he could accept this random government-made clone of himself as a daughter.

Everything you’d expect from those aforementioned road films is in place, along with the necessary break for violent fight sequences that you naturally anticipate from a film about Wolverine. This one gets a hard R rating because, hey, it worked for Deadpool, but aside from the violence and the random F-bomb, the overall action doesn’t seem at all out of place for the character. Themes include several instances of right-to-live concepts, overtones of illegal immigration, the want to be accepted in simplistic terms despite being…well…a mutant, and the ability for a marginalized individual, like the young mutant in this story, to still be able to be given some sort of hope towards living a normal life. It’s amazing that this film is able to hit on all the same themes as the previous big budget X-Films without the city-monument destroying fights, or the need to shoehorn in a pointless second act as in Apocalypse.

It’s not a perfect film, mind you. There are some issues with having Boyd Holbrook as the most central baddie, as he often comes off as more grating than actually deadly. They make a bid to bring in another villain, played by Richard E. Grant, midway through the second act, but even that character isn’t well established enough to add to the malice-void. When Logan instructs his violent female protégé to attack a villain “you know when,” that “when” being unironically in the middle of a classical evil villain monologue, it becomes painfully obvious that the opposition in this movie is an afterthought to all of the cool road picture set-pieces they wanted to do.

After so many years of this comic-book film renaissance we’ve been having since, well, the first X-Men movie, there have been many analyses of films, and we’ve determined many different reasons why the best films in the genre seem to work. Logan is unique, though, since it manages to be an incredible film about the character of Wolverine without actually having to do much in terms of creating the overall spectacle. Like Unbreakable and Hancock, it is a movie about superhero-versus-self, and unlike those two previous attempts, it doesn’t SUCK!  

A robot killing, unprovoked for that matter, is a sign that the mechanical counterparts have developed free will into their programming. Experts are not comfortable with this as the robots are supposed to co-exist with the human race, not hunt and destroy them. As Christiane digs deeper into the current problem at hand, she finds that it is much more dangerous than just one machine going bad, but all of the robots in New Town are hunting and killing every person they can find. No longer being able to control the robots from home base, Standish tries to devise of a way to shut them down before his lifelong dream turns into everyone else’s nightmare. 

Robotropolis follows Christiane Nouveau and her new team as they stumble onto something more dangerous than a common robot malfunction. As her search gets more in-depth, she finds that there is not a solid answer as to what is happening, except that no place is safe with the robots on their current rampage. Gordon Standish was held in the highest regards for his work in bringing his dream, a symbiotic relationship between human and robots, to life, but seeing how fast his dream was taken away from him in just a few hours following a news report, is nothing short of devastating. Trying everything within his power to bring the robot uprising to an end, he finds that one of his own holds the answer as to why the robots have turned and why the failsafe’s were removed.  

This is one of those ‘what if’ movies that are fun to let play around in your mind. What if robots were so powerful that no one could control them? What if they received a virus that could change their programming and rather than help the human race, they try to exterminate it? These could be valid questions and that is what the movie takes a shot at. With some fun special effects and a robot uprising, this is a pretty good film even if all of your questions are not answered as it ends. As technology starts to grow and people continue to make their dreams come true, it is good to be prepared as these dreams will start to effect more than individuals, but the world.  ​