Chris Vs. Summer - Weeks Eight, Nine & Ten: Shrek The Third and Die Hard 4.0
- 11 Jul 07
Film Film Features
Ten weeks in, and still not a single blockbuster that hasn't been a sequel. It's gotten to the point where 'sequel' no longer stands as a distinct category in its own right, and has to be split up even further into specific sub-genres. So far this year, we've had Surprisingly Good (28 Weeks Later), Surprisingly Not-So-Good (Spider-Man 3), Improvement On A Crappy Forerunner [Large] (Ocean's Thirteen), Improvement On A Crappy Forerunner [Barely Noticeable] (Pirates Of The Caribbean) and Hard To Justify On Any Level, Artistic, Commercial Or Otherwise (Fantastic Four). Well, this week, Pretentiously Named In-Joke Craptacular Extravaganzas just gained two new members, courtesy of Shrek The Third and Die Hard 4.0.
Chris Vs. Summer - Week Seven: Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer
- 21 Jun 07
Film Film Features
A confession: I haven’t actually seen the original Fantastic Four movie. By all accounts I didn’t miss much (“unwatchable” is a trusted source’s verdict), but I was worried it might put me at a certain disadvantage when it came to seeing the sequel (now with 100% more Silver Surfer). After all, who would want to go into X-Men 2, Spider-Man 2 or the forthcoming Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight without knowing anything about the complex back-stories established in the first films? I’ve never even read any of the comics, my sole serious foray into the world of illustrated-panels-with-speech-bubbles being Daniel Clowes’ Ghost World which, brilliant as it is, probably won’t be of much use here. All I know of the Fantastic Four is what any self-respecting pop-culture-junkie does - Marvel’s very own dysfunctional family unit, Stretch Armstrong for a leader, “it’s clobberin’ time!” etc. etc. - and I don’t like going into any sequel blind, much less one with a half-century’s worth of carefully-established mythology.
Turns out I needn’t have worried, ‘cause this thing’s dumber than a bag o’ hammers.
Chris Vs. Summer - Weeks Five & Six: Ocean's Thirteen
- 16 Jun 07
Film Film Features
Alright, I give up. Let the naysayers have their moment of schadenfreude, I concede defeat after a mere six weeks. I thought I could beat the system, but the system beat me, and so today, I come before you and say: I'm ditching the rigid Context-Inner Child-Bitter Cynic structure of Chris Vs. Summer. Mainly to allow myself more flexibility, but also because I can already sense the opening preambles and 'Chris Would Rather Have Seen...'s running low on inspiration, and it's only June. Not giving up the blockbusters themselves, though. No danger of that happening any time soon. Like I say - it's only June.
So: Ocean's Thirteen, then.