Suicide Squad- The Slipknot of DC

So I just saw the latest addition to the controversial DC cinematic universe that was David Ayer's Suicide Squad and damn was it hard to come into this film without hearing someone complaining about or violently defending this film. As DC comic book films go this had the biggest divide between critics and fans, the main difference being that critics were looking for fun, interesting game changer in DC's filmmaking and fans just wanted to see 15 minutes of music videos and Harley Quinn being quirky. Now before people take this review and expect me to bad mouth this film simply because I'm a marvel fanboy who dislikes anything with DC's name on it then I guess I'm also a misogynist for not liking the comedic choices in the Ghostbusters remake. My point is that I treated this film the same way I view any other film, as a work of cinema. Not a product of a giant cinematic universe or a reflection of a brand. It feels like most of the fans of this film were validating their obsession over a product which is not how a film should be treated. And this goes to a level were some fans are so obnoxious that they cant just enjoy a movie and cant handle when people have different opinions to their own. If you don't believe this just check the petition by butt hurt fans who want to shut down rotten tomatoes because they cant deal with professional critics who get paid to watch films for a living, have different opinions to their own. Now of course if you aren't one of these incredibly sensitive crazy people and you still enjoyed this film then I have nothing against that. But I didn't enjoy it.

So like most people who saw the news surrounding this film throughout the year, this had a lot of changes regarding its overall tone and setting. Originally, director David Ayer who has done lots of gritty and dreary work in his previous films like Fury and Dark Blue had made this film very serious and dark with only a few jokes here and there. However when the fans saw this they wanted something with more of a dark comedic aspect and this is where the film lost track entirely of what it was going for. Because of this new demand from the fans, the movie had to make a number of reshoots and it definitely shows with a number of sharp cuts and edits in weird areas especially in the first half of the film, which honestly was the worst part of the movie. The use of vibrant colours in the opening credits and posters were laughable since the entire film seemed to be shot on the worst ISO setting where I couldn't see anything, even when there was a fire in a building it was still visibly dark. The first 10 minutes of the movie starts of with not 1, not 2 but around 7 different songs in a row. Now obviously when I first saw this I knew they were trying to emulate the success with Guardians of the Galaxy's soundtrack however where Guardians had an in movie explanation for its choice of songs that connected with the characters, this movie had no connection with its songs other than we need to sell our soundtrack so please buy this song. Not only that but these songs were playing every minute so I didn't have time to enjoy any of them. It felt like this was the pinnacle of a try hard film because it kept trying to shove all these millennial aspects every second in order for you to enjoy them all which I just found off putting. 

So in this opening we were introduced to our hero's (or villains) of the story. Now when I first saw the casting choices for this film I was moderately excited, these were all reasonably good actors who I had seen in other great works of cinema and had never portrayed a comic book character before, which would of been great if they had a confident writer who wasn't in his 40's and who was working on the till at Cex. Will Smith's portrayal of Deadshot was reasonably entertaining but when compared to his previous work of Men in Black and Fresh Prince it seems like he undersold it a lot, which can equally be said for most of the characters in this movie who didn't seem like they were enjoying themselves at all, almost as if they phoned it in throughout the whole film. The one exception I found was probably Margot Robbie's performance as Harley Quinn which was pretty much my perfect casting for a live action right hand woman for The Joker. However her performance was also ruined thanks to her being turned from one of DC's greatest female villains to a punchline dispenser and in the cinema that I was in, 9 out of 10 times no one laughed at any of her jokes. As for the criticism around her oversexualised representation I didn't mind simply because I understood that as part of her character which is more than I can say for the villains over sexualisation which made no sense. As for the rest of the Suicide squad, like most DC characters they seemed rushed and had little backstory. Captain Boomerang who was marketed as one of the main members of the team was given only 30 seconds of character development, Killer Croc was introduced as a heartless monster but turned out to be a hooded bouncer you'd find at your local nightclub. Even Katana who had enough well done backstory to warrant her own film was condensed into less than a minute. The movie time was instead given to slow boring scenes in empty streets where nothing happens for minutes on end.

So what about the main attraction of DC's list of villains that being Jared Leto's portrayal of the prince of crime, The Joker?. Well people can say whatever they want about how the Joker should be represented but the one thing I know for sure is that the Joker is not an attention seeking millionaire instagramer who drives Lamborghini's. Leto's performance reminded me of Eddie Redmayne's role in Jupiter Ascending as being so ridiculously stupid that it must be seen to be believed, what Leto try's to show as crazy and discomforting feels like an eccentric rich teenager trying to be edgy and cool. Probably the main reason for why this is the worst portrayal of one of the greatest villains of our generation is the fact that the Joker is meant to be scary and I think that Michael Sheens Twilight Villain was more intimidating than him. As for the actual main villain of the story, Enchantress, I felt like she was a character with a great design and loads of potential but ended up being just as silly and goofy as The Joker. Cara Delevingne who plays the Aztec villain spends half of the film dancing in front of an energy beam making snake like motions and I didn't know whether I was meant to take this seriously or not. This along with her weird incestuous relationship on screen made her one of the most awkwardly placed villains of comic book movie history.

So with all of these faults I have to ask where this film went wrong. For me this was meant to be DC's chance to show that they can introduce characters well without resorting to over exaggerated metaphors and pointless symbolism. I would of been ok if the movie took its original plan and made a dark and serious superhero film like Watchmen. However when you take into account the failure of Batman vs Superman, you realise that they put too much effort into making it what the fans want instead of making what the director had intended. And while people will watch this film and it will most likely make more money than its previous DC films, in the long run it will probably just be remembered as the film Jared Leto won a Razzie for, it would look good next to his Oscar. Overall this is not the worst film in the DC's cinematic universe but it wasn't the game changing film I was hoping it could be, and who knows maybe the new Wonder Woman film will fix those problems, 3rd times the charm.                  

Can a good movie be ruined by hype?

Hi everybody, are you sick of Frozen yet? 

Well I hope your not, because this summer, disney will bring back one of their most famous franchises of all time in a special short film called 'Frozen Fever', probably because their remake of Cinderella will bomb at the box office if it doesn't. So for kids and child minded adults around the world this is probably the best news you've heard all day. For me, its less so.

Now before you start typing your angry death threat email towards me, let me say upfront that I don't hate this movie, but at the same time its not the greatest film disney has ever come out with. I think its characters are well put together, the animation is smooth and great to look at and the overall plot is decent at best. So why am I not excited for this? Well its a little thing I like to call 'The backlash effect'.

This repercussion usually happens when a film becomes so popular with its audience that people don't stop talking, singing and praising the film for years, this causes people like me to start tearing our hair out in insanity, and frozen is a big example of that. Even after more than a year from its release, you still see the movies merchandise in every shop window, you can still hear people singing the songs from the soundtrack over and over. Which then results in people saying its over hyped, over praised and that the movie itself isnt even that good to begin with, which in this movies case in my opinion isn't true. So this leads to the ultimate question, can a good film be destroyed by its popularity?

Now this isn't the first time we've seen something like this before. When Skyfall was released it was a massive success with its audience and critics, but after a while people started getting tired of the popularity and that had the same effect. The same goes to Slumdog Millionaire, it used to be admired by anyone who saw it but now people just want to forget about it. Perhaps this is because the original enjoyment of the product came from the fact that no one knew about it. Slumdog Millionare used to be the small independent film that only those critics and fans of Danny Boyle would know about, but when it won big at the oscars, everyone knew about it and it lost its sense of mystery. So when the film became more well known, it became less personal to the viewer, but this doesn't change the film itself since its still an incredible movie.

This is also the same with adaptations of books. For example, when The Hobbit was released in cinemas I didn't know what to think of it. Sure the visual where stunning and it was a treat for the Tolkin geeks, but the idea that I read the books before, made the idea of reading the story less rewarding. Back when the hobbit films did not exist, it would be quite a shock to find someone else or also read it as well, and it would be that much rewarding when you find someone else to talk about them with. Now however, everyone has seen the hobbit films and everyone knows the story. This makes the idea of knowing the story of The Hobbit less rewarding since everyone knows about it now.

So it seems that while hype and over exposure can help a movie, it can also bring it down too. This affects us in ways that we are not even aware of,  by changing our thoughts on a film even if the movie itself hasn't changed at all. But this usually happens with any film that is popular whether it be good or bad. So really, there's always going to be a film that people would obsess over for a while, just pray that its something worth watching. I would rather see a really good popular film like Frozen over a really bad popular film like Transformers.

So in the end hype can sometimes make a film annoying, but we are always going to go through a love and hate relationship over anything that's popular. But if your going to be sick of something you're going to see everywhere, just hope that its something that you enjoyed to begin with.

Tokyo Ghoul review, Horror has never been so fabulous

When this years summer anime season began, I had all of my viewing plans sorted out and had my expectations. Now that summer is over I can say that while some of these expectations have lived up to their name, others have been quite a disappointment. But there was one very important show that when it was announced, I didn't expect anything from it, I thought it would either be a terrible adaptation or studio Perriot trying to relive the good old days of Bleach popularity. Well, after the first episode it was the best first episode to a series of the season, and that includes Zankyou no terrors first episode. This was the highly controversial horror anime Tokyo Ghoul.

Since this anime is an adaptation of the very popular manga series, Tokyo Ghoul had a lot to do to impress not only the new viewers but the die hard manga fans as well.
For the most part this show was very entertaining as it had brilliant animation, interesting characters and some kick ass action scenes.The first two episodes of the show were the best first episodes of any anime this year so its a big shame at how vague it became. Now while some people loved the ending to this anime, I thought it was tedious and predictable since we all knew that it would happen eventually but the rest of the fighting was pretty awesome 

The characters were definitely the strongest element in this show. Seeing Kaneki becoming the new Shinji Ikari was quite annoying sometimes but he was well developed all the same. Also, the supporting characters like Touka and Nishiki had their moment in the spotlight which was good to see as they were very engaging and compelling characters throughout. But my personal favourite character throughout the entire series had to be Tsukiyama, simply because of how ridiculously fabulous he was constantly and how he was always so striking in clothing and posture (probably because he was bat shit crazy).

Now obviously Tokyo Ghoul is getting a season 2 since it ended on a clear to be continued so luckily its not gonna be just 12 episodes. But overall while it has some gaping problems Tokyo Ghoul is a show worth watching if you love the horror/psychological genre. Its dark, its intriguing and it has lots of cool looking masks, so check it out now.

Haikyuu review, Volleyball has never been this awesome

Recently in the world of Anime a new genre has stolen the show in terms of story, character development and ridiculous amounts of slow motion action. This is the rising success of the sports anime genre, which has taken the world by storm. While being in the dark for many years, this genre has recently come back in style with brand new popular shows. From the brilliant shonen action of Kuroko no Basket to the emotional slice of life roller coasters of Free. Now with Kuroko having reached the end of their second season a new show has been released to try and continue this success. This is of course Production IGs brand new hit anime adaptation, Haikyuu

STORY-The story of Haikyuu is pretty much similar to most sports animes but with a small twist. Now with most shows of this genre the story centers around the two new comers who join the sports team who at first seem the polar opposites of each over but slowly over time they use that to their advantage and their friendship grows from it.Now while I wont say that this is not this shows main plot, it does go through it in a different way. The story follows two young volleyball players Hinata and Kageyama as they train together with their rag tag bunch of friends as part of the Karasuno volleyball team to become the best volleyball team in japan. As you could probably tell, this plotline is very similar to Kuroko no Baskets plot as the two main characters seem completely opposite but they work together very well. What makes this anime different from it is that Kuroko focused on the team working together to beat a single player (the generation of miracles), in Haikyuu it focuses on working as a team to beat another team that is similar to them and to be honest I prefer Haikyuus method.When watching a sports anime you should treat the team in the show as a team and not as a single character.The whole context of the sport of volleyball is something that has never really been done before so when I came into this series I was a bit worried that nothing would make sense to me. But the series makes it quite clear about the rules involved and the positions involved, even if you join in the series a bit too late you will still understand the rules quite well. Another example of its relation to sports is how it describes certain aspects about not just volleyball but all sport in general. In one episode in particular when Karasuno win a match against a low league team it talks about how to certain people deal with losing at a big tournament and it handles it very respectfully. It treats the idea as a key point in any sport which is something not many sports animes look at in an adult manner and it works very effectively.

CHARACTERS-If there's one thing that this show had that got me hooked on it for 25 episodes, it was the characters. When it came to developing characters for a sports show, they needed to be very powerfully developed and engaging characters so that when they perform a big move in the anime you are cheering them on in real life, and Haikyuu did this beautifully. There is no character in the entire volleyball team that someone wont like.Each character appeals to a certain audience member whether it be the hyperactive one,the serious but secretly nice team leader and even the silent one who never gets involved with the teams mess, whatever character trait you want its there.This became incredibly effective as when the show continued to the last few episodes in the final match it was like I had become a supporter of that team and that I desperately wanted them to win whatever the cost. Whenever Asahi made a spike I would shout out loud, whenever Hinata did the quick play with Kageyama I would freak out.This is done by the show taking its time by making certain episodes about one character and developing them from their. For example, when we meet Nishinoya for the first time, no one really expected much from him, but as his charisma improved over time we started to understand and fall in love with his antics. This was the same for most of the characters as they were all enjoyable in the end, even Tsukishima who at first seem like the most pompous jerk in the story became slightly more enjoyable near the end. But the one character who I cheered for the most was probably Yamaguchi since he didn't do anything throughout the entire first half of the series and all it took was one episode of him playing for only one turn to make him one of the best characters in the series, while Kuroko also had this down with some of their players the didn't develop as much as Haikyuu did as their were some characters in Kuroko that even after two seasons I still didn't recognize on the team where as I recognize everyone on the Karasuno team.

ANIMATION- Production IG has been well known for not cutting down quality when it comes to animation so you will be pleased to know that they didn't hold out on this one. While the regular animation is smooth and well put together, it doesn't seem ground breaking. There are some moments were the animation goes out of its way to make your eyes explode, especially when someone is about to make a spike. This use of holding back animation is common but I might of preferred something different from someone like Kyoto animation who could make it seem more beautiful.Also there were certain uses of chibi animation that worked very well to convey the childlike essence of the show which at times made the show far more amusing.All in all the animation was average which is a shame considering how great the story is but hopefully it will improve over time.

So overall, this is defiantly up their with the greats of sports anime and if you are a fan of this genre I highly recommend watching it. while it is a bit silly at times and doesn't take itself nearly as serious as other anime, it is lovable, enjoyable and action packed. While this year has seen some amazing new releases this might not be named as the anime of the year but if you are ever in the mood for a heartfelt show about a bunch of friends playing a sport you thought was for beach lovers, then give it a go. Since this series ended with a clear sign that it will continue, a second season is bound to be in the works so if you want more afterwards you might just be lucky This is a great story of friendship and love of sport and should not be missed.