**MAJOR PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD**
As far as action films G.I.JOE is every boy’s dream. As far as a story is concerned, it falls by the wayside – but honestly who was going to G.I.JOE for the storyline??
Not Me.
I went purely to see the action, with no expectation of a real storyline so I got what I expected to see albeit there was a shallow story there but not really enough to engage you in really caring for the characters, although the predictability of the film did not really leave any doubts about the end result of a fight. I was pleasantly surprised with the identity of The Doctor, that was well played in comparison to The Baroness who I really thought they could have played on that mystery more than they did. With Sienna Miller looking radically different as a brunette to a blonde I think they could have used the flashbacks in a different way to build mystery around her identity and relationship with Duke more.
Actors from The Mummy films provided a heavy presence; Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Arnold Vosloo featuring heavily as Heavy Duty and Zartan respectively. Cameo’s from Kevin J O’Connor and Brendan Fraser were quite well played, especially Fraser. He was so insistent in being in the film I feel that his cameo was one of the better cameo’s I have seen in the past few years.
The special effects targeted the hyper-real look, which was at times painfully obvious – some scenes standing out more than others. The action scenes were well presented with a lot happening in a very manageable fashion (unlike Transformers). Overall I quite enjoyed the film, getting a little more than was expected with some great action sequences, but no story whatsoever definitely let the film down.
I saw the new Star Trek film the other week and must confess that I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am by no means a Trekkie in fact best a self-confessed Star Wars nut, which is perhaps why I liked this film more than its predecessors.
The main issue that I have had with Star Trek is that there is far too much talking and technical jargon that unless you are familiar with the universe there is no chance of your understanding completely what is occurring and taking much from the film. The generally agreed upon difference between Wars and Trek is that Star Wars is ‘cooler’ because it is for a wider audience and Star Trek is just too nerdy.
In my opinion the latest Star Trek film is far more a Star Wars movie than your typical Trek adventure – fast paced, a lot of action and no getting bogged down in unnecessary scenes that involve the characters talking about doing something that they should really be doing right there and then.
The story was solid, the special effects were amazing (ILM out did themselves once again) and the sound and score worked very well. The moments of silence I the space battle scenes as crew members were sucked into the vacuum of space (where there is no sound) worked perfectly as a quiet moment, allowing the audience to regather their senses from the overload of the initial fight sequence and take a quick breather before again diving headfirst into the action.
Chris Pine’s performance was reminiscent of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo or Indiana Jones as it was William Shatner’s Kirk (Pine has stated that he looked to Ford for inspiration on how to make the character his own) and Zachary Quinto finally stretched his acting talents beyond Heroes and proved that he is (as we thought) a talented actor who throws himself completely into a role (shaved his magnificent eyebrows for the role, as well as cutting his hair to Spock-styling). Oh and Eric Bana!!! I think I’ve said enough there.
Since I have not seen enough Star Trek films to perform an adequate comparison, this film is definitely better than Star Wars Epsiodes I-III but not quite to the standard of IV and definitely nowhere near V and VI.
