Should You Choose To Accept It.. For The Fifth Time

Tom Cruise might be my favorite actor of all time. He's just so good. He's the true Hollywood star of our times. He's so recognizable. If I say Chris Pratt or Christian Bale to some random people, they might not know them. But names like Tom Cruise or Leonardo DiCaprio are the ones that keep Hollywood running. So, Tom Cruise is back this year after last year's sci-fi action spectacular Edge of Tomorrow with Emily Blunt. He's now in his flagship franchise's installment number five, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. He's joined with his frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie who directed him in Jack Reacher. The returning cast include Ving Rhames, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg. Newcomers here are Rebecca Ferguson and Alec Baldwin. I'm pretty excited to see this film although my excitement isn't going through the roof. We're still pretty surprised it got moved five months earlier than the original date.

Ethan Hunt and his crew are on a mission to track down a rogue organization called The Syndicate who's main objective is to infiltrate and destroy spy and intel agencies such as IMF (not the International Monetary Fund). In the meantime, the IMF are undergoing an inspection from CIA for its missions that had ruined things, causing mayhem all over the globe. Ethan Hunt is then, once again,  disavowed and became an international fugitive for CIA while also doing his own mission to stop The Syndicate once and for all.

I'd like to think the Mission: Impossible sequels peaked with J.J. Abrams' installment number three. That is still my favorite apart from the first one. We do not go to Mission: Impossible for a very intricate spy story right? You go for the thrill and spectacle, which Ghost Protocol delivered. Rogue Nation, in my opinion, laid out its story really well. Kudos to McQuarrie, he always write the good stories. However, I think this installment lacked the spectacle and thrill. John Woo's M:I-2 also suffered the same thing. The great stunt was at the beginning, Woo's no-harness rock-climbing is this movie's hanging-on-a-flying-plane sequence. After that, the movie could only hang on to story and below-Mission: Impossible-standard action scenes. I'm not bashing the movie, it has its moments. McQuarrie's really good at staging and directing chase scenes like the one we previously saw in Jack Reacher. The underwater computer thingy-sequence was also thrilling, although the actual technicality of the computer is so over-the-top. The opera scene is also top-notch. Sadly, for a Mission: Impossible movie those are not enough. I think Ghost Protocol made up its lack in plot with the action scenes, like 70:30 for action and story, while this one has an 40:60 ratio of action and story

Tom Cruise delivered his best as always. The rest of the cast too, although not enough action for both Renner and Rhames, (it's probably either more in Age of Ultron or in this movie for Renner) and Pegg isn't as funny as before. The breakout star here is Rebecca Ferguson who played Ilsa Faust. Also commendable is the composer Joe Kraemer whose works are mostly on television but amazingly mixed the iconic Mission Impossible theme with action score that really works. I like this movie for the fact it doesn't rely on the characters hanging on a rope or just hanging two inches from the floor. The first three movies have Tom Cruise doing that and the fourth has Jeremy Renner doing it. Also after being criminally unused in Ghost Protocol, it is the return of the masks! YES (Oops probably that's a spoiler). Also Tom Cruise name-dropped Jakarta! Movie number six, go there! I like the very well-directed action scenes, the locations, the casts. It's a very good movie actually, but it's just a few steps shy for being a great Mission: Impossible movie. The best sequel is still M:I:3. But still, thank you Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie for giving us a blast this summer. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation: rated 3.5/4


Oh, and I also watched Jurassic World for the second time and I am not bored yet!
PS. might disappear for like two weeks. But will return in gloryyy
[cue John Legend and Common's Glory]

The World Is Yours

If you ask me, I will claim that I was the biggest dinosaur fan that's ever lived. I used to know all the species of dinosaurs spanning from the Triassic Period to Cretaceous Period. That's all thanks to my parents' shoving me Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park during my early ages. That film remains one of my favorite movies up until now. Ergh enough with this introduction. I can't contain it. Jurassic World is unexpectedly very good. Probably you saw me bashing the trailers some eight months ago. The trailers were shit. They make the actual movie seems bad but in fact it didn't. I would totally be sold to watch the movie if it's just a montage of people staring at things and being scared with the haunting piano rendition of the theme song. This installment of the Jurassic Park franchise is now directed by Colin Trevorrow, whose film Safety Not Guaranteed is, for me, quite an unbearable experience although that's mostly because of my dislike of Aubrey Plaza. The movie stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in the main roles, and also adding pleasant surprises like Jake Johnson, Vincent 'Kingpin' D'Onofrio, and Omar Sy from The Intouchables.

The film starts with us following the two brothers, Zach and Grey(?--yeah, they're just these two boys), whose on an independent trip to the now-very popular theme park, Jurassic World. Their aunt, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is working at the park trying to unveil a new addition to the park: a genetically modified hybrid dinosaur. Owen (Peter Quill), who's also working at the park as a raptor wrangler, is concerned about the fact that this hybrid species might be dangerous as an attraction.

As I've said before, I love this movie. Let's be honest, it probably won't be as iconic as the original. But they're not trying to match it. It's a very notable addition to the franchise. They treated the original material respectfully, unlike that other franchise which has killer robots from the future in it. It really feels that this movie is made with love and care from the people who admire and respect the previous films. I like the easter eggs in the film with Ian Malcolm's book, the vibrating cellphone scene, inGen squad, Spinosaur skeleton, etc. Trevorrow even politely said that the events in the two sequels before are sidelined, instead of disregarded. The music by Michael Giacchino is also one of the indicators. It evokes nostalgia while also infusing new ideas. And don't you just love Giacchino's track names? For example, "Gyrosphere of Influence" or "Nine to Survival Job". The trailers released for the film didn't do the film justice. The good story ideas from the film were mixed without care for the trailers making it nonsensical to see within two and a half minutes. The movie mixed and nurtured all the plot points really nicely. Like Chris Pratt's raptor hunt together or the fact that we need a genetically modified hybrid. It has a very light tone to the film which makes it fun and not boring despite all the science talk. It infuses the right amount of jokes also at the right place. Unlike say, Iron Man 3 which most of the jokes didn't work at all. The effects are awesome in overall, but at some parts it still felt like a bad render that only passes for Terra Nova. It is mind-boggling the fact that the effects in Jurassic Park still holds up up until today.

Indominus Rex, despite the silly-ass name (Unobtanium-level of dumb name-giving), is pretty awesome and terrifying in all the right ways. The attractions shown in Jurassic World are crazy good. The Mosasaurus is so cool, despite passable vfx. The characters are awesome. I like Chris Pratt's Owen Grady, he's cool and Chris Pratt infuses a considerable amount of persona to make that character alive--not just a tough guy. And finally Bryce Dallas Howard gets the fame she deserves. She deserved it since The Village and also after her brief role as Gwen Stacy in Spider-Man 3, although Emma Stone kinda stole Gwen Stacy away from her. I always like her in every movie, like The Help or even Terminator Salvation. Jake Johnson is also another star in the movie. Nick Miller finally finds work! And he's just so funny. He also has the best lines about Jurassic Park being way better than Jurassic World. The last battle between the dinosaurs is so good it even put last year's Godzilla to shame. Probably for the fact it is better lit. Bottom line, I like this movie more than I should. It's thrilling, it's funny, it's awesome, it's up there with Mad Max: Fury Road as one of the best movies of the summer. Jurassic World: rated 4/4

Should you choose to accept it, Rogue Nation review is coming up next.

[cue theme song]

Don't Tamper With My Fried Chicken!

I love chicken. I love fried chicken. I love Kentucky Fried Chicken for its finger-licking goodness. I love A&W's fried chicken for its amazing taste that's so original. I love the Indonesian McDonald's fried chicken for its artificial taste. I love the traditional Indonesian fried chicken. I love the Japanese karaage. Bottomline, fried chicken is one of my favorite food of all time. Imma let you finish, but it is one of the best food ever created by mankind. But I wouldn't eat fried chicken everyday, that's unhealthy and it makes you sick. Unlike pizza which I would happily eat everyday. Fried chicken's' a guilty pleasure, much like The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

I feel bad for TASM 2, really I do. Don't you? No one asked for The Amazing Spider-Man and I personally hate people who think that Tobey Maguire is a bad Peter Parker/Spider-Man. When I was researching for this post (yes guys, even blog posts need research), Andrew Garfield just scored major respect points from me. During TASM2 Comic-con panel in 2013, he said and I paraphrased that Spider-Man would forever be Tobey's role no matter what. YES. Huge respect. The young actors involved in the rebooted franchise are the reason you go to see the films despite them being lackluster.

Let's start in 2012, I hated TASM so much. It was actually well-filmed and it has its own unique moments (I counted two) but the repetition and unnecessariness of the whole film bogged it down big time. But come TASM2 in 2014, it was tasked with the job of world-building and setting up future installments. It was doomed from the start but the film turned out pretty fine. The action scenes are amazing and Spidey's new costume is just so beautiful. Remember that set-piece in Times Square when Electro faces Spider-Man for the first time? I'd go out on a limb and say that scene is a master-class in superhero blockbuster filmmaking. But how was the rest of the film? I'd like to plagiarize my old post to proceed.

TASM2's positives
1. We've warmed up to this hipster version of Peter Parker.
2. Trifecta of great young actors: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Dane DeHaan. Also add the now-Oscar-nominated actress Felicity Jones in the mix. I once tweeted that this group is The Social Network cast equivalent of superhero movies. And this film should've featured Shailene Woodley also. That would be mind-blowing.
3. Marc Webb's more assured direction. His web-slinging scenes are way better than before and action scenes are pretty flawless. The death of Gwen Stacy is also handled masterfully. I still jumped in shock everytime she hit the ground even after three times watching the movie.
4. Hans Zimmer & Co.'s new hopeful theme and Electro theme are killerrrr.
5. The film is lighter than Marvel and even DC. See how Spidey's gleeful persona influenced the other characters to also be comical, whether intentionally or unintentionally. For example, Max Dillon, The Rhino and Dr. Kafka, yet people complained about this. why..

TASM2's negatives
1. Too much important scenes that are deleted. Go search on YouTube for those scenes because they make the movie way better.
2. Too much Peter & Gwen. It goes to the point where it's boring. They have chemistry yes, but do you want to see two lovers going on a date all night? No.
3. Chosen one-type of storyline. Peter Parker's supposed to be you, me, us. In this movie, he's like Neo or Harry Potter. Even Harry Potter has more relatable traits to people than this Peter Parker.
4. Cramming too much backstories. Like, Harry Osborn is actually a long lost childhood friend or Electro's sudden shift from Spidey fanboy to hater or that Peter's dad's hulaballooo.
5. False advertising, like featuring The Rhino like he's one of the main villain. Or more precisely, bad advertising for revealing too much in the trailer.
6. Being a flop and eventually rebooted by Marvel.

I actually want to see this franchise completed. At least, let them resolve some of the stuff that are happening, like Peter's hunt for Uncle Ben's killer, that Pierce guy, the villains gallery. I could write a story that makes them finish at installment number three. At least give us, audience, closure. I'd like to see Felicity Jones as Black Cat. I'd like to see more Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man. Those Marvel guys, they only think about themselves. They could work Andrew Garfield's Spidey into MCU, they're just too lazy, too arrogant. They can address this film's flaws and still make a decent tie-in to Civil War.

I hate it when you tamper with my guilty pleasure. This is like eating half of a fried chicken and then some cleaning lady threw your chicken away and the store's already closed. Look at this Marvel, I can even work my way to making metaphors using fried chicken for a movie. Why can't you? (Work TASM's universe to MCU, not inserting fried chickens to MCU.. Shawarma's good although overrated).

Still coming: Jurassic World review. In fact, I'm gonna take a bath and go to the cinemas..NOW

Editorial Stuff

Let's just point to the fact that I have done a shitty job at maintaining this blog this year. Let's face it. Bring on your criticisms. Bring on your hate. Rain down those hate on me!

......Like anyone's gonna.

I'm going to confess to whoever reading this. I love statistics. I love data. I like comparing them. This is what probably 12 years of school made me do. The only thing they successfully made me do. So, to justify how I fucked up at my sole and only job: keeping this blog alive, I'm going to compare and contrast with the previous years. Bear with me. I know, this is probably the worst post on this blog since the 2012 London Olympics withdrawal post. I mean, who has a hard time withdrawing from the Olympics? Not even the Greeks do. To my defense, it was not a withdrawal post, it's just a normal, self-absorbing post with too many Olympics reference in it. I have a picture of Kate Middleton to prove it on that post.

So let's do the comparing and contrasting thing.
So far, this year I have posted 21 posts, including this it makes 22 until the end of July. 22 posts means an average of 3.14 (a phi!) posts each month. I posted 25 posts in 2014 (avg: 3.6 posts per month), 24 posts in 2013 (avg: 3.4 per month) and 21 posts in 2012 (3 per month). So all that growth in two years have amounted to nothing! I'm a lazy bastard.
To my own defense, I have three drafts to date. With the one most prospectful is the one about my all-time favorite/guilty pleasure TV series Heroes, particularly the third season. I have a great title to go with the posts and I was writing it because Chapter III in Season 3 was way better than I remembered and also I was going to write the post based on Chapter III and IV, but then I couldn't get my hands on most of the episodes on Chapter IV so that post became abandoned.

Also, let's see how many movies that I managed to review up until July. From American Sniper until the most recent Terminator Genisys, I have reviewed 19 films until July 2015. In 2014, I also reviewed 19 films until July, starting with a very late Ender's Game review to the equally late Godzilla review. In 2013, I reviewed 17 films. In 2012, I reviewed 15 films. So movie-review wise, I'm actually doing good. Yeah niceee.

But how's my audience doing? 2015 has been pretty dull in terms of click. I, myself, is anti-clickbait, so you won't see my writing 'This Guys Did This To A Girl, The Girl's Reaction Is Priceless' bla bla bullshit. I stay true to my title and ideals. I'm not selling out. But that probably got to do with my viewers going down. But views aren't fair, because obviously the posts in the previous years have had more views. But this ain't a dissertation and no one's judging. Up until this post, the most viewed post in the blog is not even movie-related (the irony!). It's about me going to Taylor Swift's concert in Tokyo, it got 72 views to date. Not even 100. The second is my year-opener post, titled Benvenuto 2015! with 38 views. Pretty sad. In 2014, I have six posts passing 100 clicks up until July. First one is Divergent review with 334 views and second is Sherlock Series 3 review with 275. In 2013, I have three posts passing 100, with one indisputable champion, my review of Oblivion which surprisingly had 1044 views to date and still is the biggest one on this blog.

Bottomline, this is a bad year for this blog with me being a lazy-ass than ever before and also the crappy posts don't even get any audience. Well it's just the middle of the year, who knows it will get better. This is not a big deal anyway. My blog suffers clinical depression and has been getting the prospect of abandonment since time immemorial. I just don't have that many stuff to do, so I keep getting back to this blog.

On a groundbreaking note, this post marks the first time ever since the very first post in 2009, that it has no image whatsoever. This year also mark a first non-English post, which was written in my native language Indonesian. Another mark is that this year is the first one that I wrote about a concert instead of a movie, which is the aforementioned Taytay concert. Pretty daring and bold 2015 so far.

Next up is still Jurassic World--next week!

How To Nurture A Franchise

We've seen so many franchise now. Every summer tentpole is a franchise, except for Dwayne Johnson's surprise hit San Andreas. However, we've seen desperation that calls old franchises to be revitalized in the new era. Like, Jurassic Park or Terminator or Mad Max. Some are really dear to some audience's hearts and it's insulting to us to see something valuable ruined for the sake of money. So, I think I've seen quite a lot to show those Hollywood exec on how to continue/reboot/remake/restart a franchise.

1. Continuity
Continuity matters. Like a lot. This problem happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They have stand-alone films and then an event Avengers film. They have different directors in it, therefore different vision. I really like Joss Whedon but he's the biggest culprit in this matter. I mentioned this one before, Whedon likes Black Widow/Natascha Romanoff in short hair. So, despite her being incredibly sexy in her long hair in The Winter Soldier, the hairstyle changes again in Age of Ultron. Also the costumes, being rebooted each time without any explanation, save for Iron Man because he's rich and he can change it anytime.




2. Admit Mistakes
If you made really bad movies in the franchise, man up and own it. Don't be lazy and just say these movies don't exist. I haven't seen Jurassic World but I heard that the movie disowns The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, which means: fuck you Trevorrow. Terminator Genisys recently did so as well, they disowned Rise of the Machines and Salvation which confused me from the first five minutes of the film. If they stayed true to Judgment Day, it means that the subtitular Judgment Day has been averted but why is it still happening in the backstory of Genisys. The new Judgment Day should be in 2003 as per RotM's storyline. But then Genisys moved it again to 2017 for no fucking reason. While I'm not a fan of RotM (I liked it because it still has a badass Arnie, the killer T-X and Claire Danes in it), I thought Salvation was quite awesome for bringing us to 2018 during the actual war.

The only franchise that owned up to their mistakes is the Fast and Furious franchise. They chose an ingenious way to do so, where they jumbled up the order of the movies but still making sense of them all. Delaying the events of Tokyo Drift to make way for installments 4, 5, and 6 is smart. Not only it brought back the original cast but also maintaining Tokyo Drift's breakout character Han. The X-Men franchise did a quasi-admission to their mistakes. They know The Last Stand and Origins was an unfortunate addition so they did a hard reset with Days of Future Past to erase that movie. However, it is still a shame because it means erasing the whole original trilogy and Wolverine's solo storyline.

3. Know When to Stop
Well, no franchise has known when to stop. Even Harry Potter which has a definite ending, has to be milked out with Fantastic Beasts and J.K. Rowling's inability to fucking move on. Yes, Rowling, it's not cute anymore for you to spill 'new' information about the wizarding world. Maybe there are some franchises that know when to stop, but they needed to be slapped with the hard truth when their movies have become intolerable and bad. No one goes out with a bang. Examples: The Matrix franchise (if you think Revolutions is awesome then you need to submit yourself to a mental hospital), Saw (I never watched any of it but pretty sure it's not even downhill anymore when it gets to installment number seven). I believe Resident Evil franchise will stop after the upcoming movie, but that's after the box office numbers have became really low. So many movies that should have ended a long time ago. For example: Indiana Jones franchise with The Last Crusade, Pirates of the Caribbean franchise with At World's End, Middle Earth films with LotR: Return of the King, Transformers franchise with Dark of the Moon, Die Hard franchise with With A Vengeance (although Live Free or Die Hard is pretty awesome).

This is also relevant to those YA movies that has to split their ultimate chapter in to two parts. It worked for some movies but not all of them. Yes I'm looking at you two for now, Mockingjay and Breaking Dawn. Man, but both of ya still managed to make me pay for both chapters. Shit.

4. Stop Picking Up Old Franchises
Okay, how many franchises are built upon an original movie that happened 20 years ago? So many. Tron Legacy is the trendsetter I guess for I guess setting the record for mainstream sequel with 28 years gap. This one kind of similar with point number three above. Sometimes they pick up these old franchises because they think they still have some steam. Like Star Wars franchise. I love the movies but making them again after a perfect ending with Revenge of the Sith seems pointless. Even with J.J. Abrams as director. After the announcements I have been quite excited for The Force Awakens but do we really need Star Wars standalone films? Why does no one on the Internet object to this idea? Only me? Having some steam in the franchise doesn't mean it will be good. Gamble all you want but when it backfires, write down them checks.

5. When You Reboot, Do It Cleanly
Terminator Genisys is a reboot that was done dirtily. It wanted to be a new reset but it still wants to homage/drag the original films. The cleanest reboot is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy but that's not fair because bad movies that couldn't go nowhere prompted that reboot. Genisys still has some work to continue but decided to reboot. I guess the cleanest reboot for this matter would be Mad Max with this year's spectacular extravaganza Fury Road. No time for nostalgia because it's all fire and blood! Witness that movie! The other good reboot is J.J. Abrams Star Trek alternate timeline, which should be in the same case with Genisys. Abrams' films still provoked nostalgia with the late Leonard Nimoy showing up in the two movies and Into Darkness was basically a remake of Wrath of Khan. But at least it does not rely on the amazingness that was in the original series.

I hope this is useful for you, Hollywood. Take notes from this guy who should be writing his final essay instead of doing bad photoshop jobs and doing this.

Next:
they just went and made a new dinosaur. is it a good idea?