My very first movie review for this site, Ratchet and Clank, existed mostly so that I could ask a question: why does this film exist? After all, the Sony video game-based animated feature film, as close as it was to its original source material, simply wasn’t going to have the exposure needed in order to propel itself, or the video game-based animated feature market to any particular type of visibility. Max Steel, a film based on a reasonably remembered, but not especially beloved toy and animated TV property, developed by two very small film studios, and dropped in an awkward October film space, perplexes me in the exact same way.
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Us late ‘90s kids remember Max Steel, the toy property that seemed to be Mattel’s answer to the original G.I. Joe: all the toys were 12 inch Ken-doll-esque action figures featuring a secret agent, available in everything from winter ski parkas to scuba gear. A TV series fleshed out his character as Josh McGrath, a teenager who, after exposure to a vat of liquefied nanotechnology, began to work as a secret agent, propelled by his ability to “Go Turbo,” raising his adrenaline to superhuman levels. The series ran on Kids’ WB, around the exact same time that the network had adopted Pokémon, and while it had tons of exposure, it was never a particularly huge hit in the United States. Mattel eventually got their money’s worth with the series by marketing it in Mexico and Latin America, where the series still re-runs regularly, and also boasts nine animated features exclusive to the region.

So, you would think that, if this film were to achieve some level of success, it would cater exclusively to that Latin American market. Regardless, it’s made here, and instead of following the plot of the original series, this film takes things in a radically different direction, utilizing a storyline from a lesser known 2013 reboot. In this version, Max McGrath (Ben Winchell) is the teenage son of a deceased scientist named Jim McGrath (Mike Doyle). When he moves back to the town that once housed his father’s destroyed science lab, he suddenly begins to emit electronic-destroying energy waves from his fingertips. A mysterious breakout at the lab and the presence of a few shady assailants in black vans leads Max to come to the conclusion that he’s being hunted. He soon encounters the subject of the lab breakout: a 5 inch tall CG floating sphere named “Steel,” (Voice of Josh Brener) and is slowly informed through the movie that he’s a half-breed alien, able to control Tachyon particles, (All the physics majors in the audience will roll your eyes here) and Steel has the ability to enhance those into “Turbo” particles (further eye rolls) to transform into Max Steel, depicted in a head-to-toe blue and black body armor. 

This film is very much in the mold of a certain other live action film based on a toy property, as it seeks to diminish the fantasy and sci-fi elements of its concept in order to keep the total package realistically grounded. Just as with Michael Bay’s Transformers films, the part of the plot reserved for awesome action-figure battles is reserved for the last eighth of the film’s 90 minutes. The rest of the film is focused on Max, his concerned and secret-keeping mother Molly (Maria Bello), his newly made and newly suspicious girlfriend Sofia (Ana Villafañe), and Jim’s former lab partner Dr. Miles Edwards (Andy Garcia), who is guarding the true secret to Max’s father’s disappearance. Given that Andy Garcia is the only A-list actor in this movie, it’s not a stretch to conclude that “Max Steel” would be fighting him in similarly-designed black and red armor by the film’s payoff scene.

The film seems to revel in its write-off nature at times. Despite some environment-appropriate CG being added to create Steel and display Max’s lightbulb-breaking superpowers, the whole movie is shot single camera, with close ups of the character’s faces happening so often, you think they were shooting themselves with their own cell phones. There’s stilted teenage dialogue, even among the adult characters, and a plot that seems believable until the moment that Steel, the comedy relief-inducing magic floating orb appears on the screen, then it’s “th-th-th-that’s all folks!” Most telling of its hammy nature is one barely noticeable instance that Max wanders onto the screen wearing a Masters of the Universe t-shirt, reminding the audience that Mattel has another movie with better characters, most likely being done by a mainstream studio and a much larger budget, coming out very soon. We promise.

Just as I had said with Ratchet and Clank, this is a movie for the Redbox set, a film that, while not particularly bad, is destined to receive its relevance in shrink wrap once He-Man, Stretch Armstrong, Trolls, LEGO Batman, and Emojis all hit the big screen in the coming months. The key difference, though, is that while the video-game based film is always going to have fans and appreciation bestowed upon it in the context of its native format, there’s nothing on the planet that’s ever going to make a scuba-diving Ken doll turned alien Iron Man appear to be anything cool. Hopefully Mattel will be able to shop this whole thing out south of the border as well as anything else related to the series. 

On September 30th, 2016 Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was released in theaters. Based on the young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, and directed by Tim Burton, this ambitious film was one of the first fantasy film bids of the fall theater season.

This film caused a bit of a shake-up among members of the blog. It was originally seen by fellow Nerds that Geek contributor, Shae Rufe, but the review was held up because….she didn’t know how to describe what she saw. I then decided to take a crack at writing the review, which was still held back because I also returned from the theater…having absolutely no idea what I saw.

In order to make sure we still had an impression of the film on the blog, though, I decided to try a little experiment: our review or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children would consist of a discussion between the two of us, featuring Shae’s opinion of the film, in hopes that my opinions, combined with hers, would result in a fully formed review of the movie. Here goes nothing….

Mike: So, first thing's first: we should make an attempt to describe the plot.

Shae: It had a plot? I kid, I kid.

Mike: Well, that is to say it had a plot that, foremost, belongs in a young adult fantasy novel: I'm a weird kid and my parents don't understand me, so I find a closed off world of even weirder people, and I like them more than normal life forever.

Shae: It definitely does speak to the young adult audience. I honestly think I would have fared better if I had actually read the novel it was based on before seeing the film. That being said, the plot was geared toward young children who don't fit in, which I do relate to as well with being legally blind. The idea of a safe place where different kids come together and form their own family was a real comfort and nice to see.

Mike: They also do that without, at least, completely, shunning the 'normals', at least in the revelation that Grandpa Abe Morton (Terence Stamp) might be making these stories up to prevent his grandson Jake (Asa Butterfield) from seeing the more realistic horrors of war torn England during World War II.

Shae: True, though I found that to be a cop out. I also felt that the lack of involvement of the parents was a little overboard.

Mike: I didn't, but perhaps that says more about me than it does the movie.....moving on. You'd probably agree that there's an awful lot going on with the fantasy element of this film. It doesn't work within the simplicity of the title: we've got strange children, caretakers who protect said strange children using stable time loops, a cabal of villains who experimented on themselves to be even stranger, and all the legitimate murder, re-animating death, and eerie Tim Burton fridge horror that happens in between.

Shae: It was more on the creepier side than I expected it to be, but it was kind of fun. The twins still freak me out.

Mike: I sailed pretty neatly through the entire thing without getting too uncomfortable, until about the third act with the patchwork mecha-elephant. If you have a phobia, you can be sure that Burton's got your number.

Shae: That is very true and he definitely exposes the weird and uncomfortable to his audience. I didn't care for the doll fighting scene at all.

Mike: You can allow or deny me this: the movie is nearly 130 minutes long. The building blocks of what was in the original book, which I haven't read but I understand it's written from Jake's first person point of view, all admirably exist...but all that seems to take a wayside to how absolutely bonkers Tim Burton can make the visuals. By the end of the movie, you feel as crazy as someone who is merely making this story up as well, and once you're done with the whole-rollercoaster, you may feel bad because after all that weirdness you still might assume...the book has to be better...

​Shae: I actually agree completely. Had we stayed with Jake's POV we would have had a solid story start to finish and a cohesive plot. That being said I do love the elements it brought to light and the family aspect. Especially between Abe and Jake; I wanted far more of that.

Mike: That's usually the other side effect of Tim Burton's direction though: the characters ultimately end up as coming up with heart, because otherwise you can't stomach the narrative. Particularly, that's how I felt about Miss Peregrine (Eva Green), who is justified in everything she does, including shutting off everyone from the reality of the outside world, and regularly wielding a crossbow, all for the greater good.

Shae: I have to admit I did really like her character. I also do feel there was a lot of potential to give us more character development, because it was barely there.

Mike: As for a few other actors. I liked Asa Butterfield. Usually young male actors in the angst-teen role drive me up the wall. He's able to play this one off as a person genuinely fascinated by discovering his own macabre reality. Ella Purnell plays Emma, as a love interest, but one who is equally as okay with letting Jake vanish into obscurity, which is refreshing. But then there's Samuel L. Jackson....

Shae: I loved that the romance wasn't the center of the film. Samuel L. Jackson will forever be my favorite character in ANYTHING he does.

Mike: Really? I wasn't too sure about this one. You hope that putting him in a movie with white hair and a whole mouth of fangs would extend his repertoire, and I'm usually a defender of that as well. I think he diversified nicely as....Mace Windu, or something.

Shae: I don't know, I oddly just like everything he does and I love him as a villain.

Mike: So, all in all, did you like it?

Shae: I thought it was just alright. I do want to read the book, but I felt Burton took this interpretation a bit too far.

Mike: I've certainly seen movies do worse things with their source material. I enjoyed it too, though knowing that there are three more books in the series I wonder if Burton and/or Fox would consider taking this series further.

Shae: I didn't know there were other books. But we will see if they decide to make to another one. If the plot confused us, it has to have confused others. But hey, if the kids love it and it does well enough. I'm sure we will see another one.

The ocean is still one of the most fascinating things on the planet, mostly because we still do not know everything about it. Being deeper than we can explore, it would be fascinating to see what creatures would be able to live in such an environment.  While the topside of the water looks beautiful and most of the time peaceful, what lurks under the waves is what truly piques our curiosity. Next to space, this is the exploration that we should follow through on, especially since it is our planet and we should know everything about it before it is too late.

Oil rigs are going missing off of the gulf coast and there does not seem to be any obvious reason as to why this is happening. As Admiral Hadley is being asked to investigate this, he calls in his M Bots that have been designed to search and rescue, but this is deeper than they have ever been before. Falling to the bottom of the ocean, the team of Red, Tracey and Jim stumble upon a ship graveyard like none ever seen before.  With images being sent back to the command center, the three detect something else on their radar, something big. Searching through the depths of the ocean, they see a large creature swimming around them and choose to pursue, but the Admiral orders their suits to be turned off so they can find out what they are up against. 

Getting out of signal range, Red chases the beast onto the main land, but he is too late. As the creature is much faster than him and normal firearms have no effect on it, Red is able to come up with a way to defeat it in his slower suit. Red is seen as a hero and now the suits have a new purpose, monster killing, but not everyone is happy with the outcome. Disobeying orders, Red gets reprimanded, but also earns a medal for saving the city. Still, nobody knows what exactly is going on in the depths of the ocean. While scanning the ocean bed where they located the first creature, a team of scientists find that there are eggs ready to hatch and unleash hell on earth once again. Attacking the Navy base, another creature is driven back into the water by a bombing run, but that only makes it angry and it moves up the coast line to a quieter place, Manhattan. 

With some calling for a nuclear strike to take place on this monster before it kills many more people, the Admiral wants to wait and see what happens with his group in the M Bots. With a new interface that will make the suits move faster and more efficient, the group is ready to go into battle once again. Red is fully prepared to lead his friends into what should be an incredible fight but knows that if something goes wrong, innocent people will lose their lives. With their weapons depleted and their suits running low on fuel, the group knows that time is running out and with word that a nuclear missile is being deployed their way, it is only a few minutes before they could all be killed. Calling upon their training to take the beast down is simply not enough as the group has found a nasty side effect of the interface that causes them pain as their suits get hit. With only minutes to spare, someone will have to step up and be the hero to not only save themselves, but the world from the beast that has decided it likes to tear down cities. 

At first glance, this movie really seems to be all about the battles between the M Bots and the sea monsters that have decided that now is a good time to surface and destroy things, but it does go a little deeper than that. With the battle for command between the Admiral and Geise who is wanting to end the fight no matter the cost, it seems like maturity might be a big side note when all is said and done. Then you have Red who never wants to have anyone tell him what to do, especially when it comes to celebrating his own victories. Even when he says that it is for everyone, it is really all about him and his needs. I must admit that I really liked Jim’s character throughout the movie, especially because he is the voice of reason that tries to keep the group grounded, even when he has bad news to pass on. Teamwork, Trust, Maturity, Monsters, Big Ass Robots, I don’t know what else to say, it is a fun little story.