Borderlands is the latest film at the butt of cinemagoers’ jokes, along with Harold and the Purple Crayon if anyone was even slightly passionate about that one. Being described as laden with bad acting, directing, and action sequences all topped off with ho-hum box office returns in its opening weekend, Borderlands adapts the titular video game to the worst of its ability. Even early on, the film was notorious for its troubled production. The most infamous “fun fact” the movie’s production has to offer is that Eli Roth’s direction and changes were so polarizing that screenwriter Craig Mazin refused to have the film on his record, crediting his contribution to the alias of “Joe Crombie”. Now that the film has released and everyone is calling it worse than Madame Web of all things, we had to check it out to see if that much really was true.
It wasn’t.
Listen, Borderlands is definitely one of those “nothing” movies. It feels uninspired—ironically, too, being an adaptation—the writing has issues for sure, and a lot of the direction feels messy and all over the place. If you’re looking for problems with the film, you’ll definitely find them, whether or not you’ve actually indulged in or are a fan of the Borderlands series going in. But aside from that, there’s nothing in the film that feels like it actively harms the medium or genre and how far both have come. Madame Web was special in that absolutely NOTHING about it was working. For people who love to see absolute trainwrecks at the theater, its release was a dream come true. What’s special about Borderlands, weirdly enough, is that it ISN’T special. It’s a bad movie, but not unwatchable in the way some of the more recently shunned releases have been.
In spite of its sloppy direction, the palette of the movie can be pleasant to look at, which is a good explanation for how the movie as a package feels. Interesting to look at, but boring to watch. Some of the characters’ motivations, even that of the main cast we follow, aren’t as clear as they should be for a film where all these rogues are together for a reason. Adding onto that, it’s not entirely entertaining watching the main cast’s interactions, as they’re not written to have the chemistry required for film like this where a bunch of morally grey strangers band together against a much bigger evil. James Gunn’s original Guardians of the Galaxy had it figured out, as well as his take on The Suicide Squad (the standalone follow-up to the similarly titled original that ALSO couldn’t do much right). It’s not like it’s an easy task to pull off, especially when most of reviewers’ comparisons to a group that does this dynamic better usually comes down to comparing to Gunn’s work. What I find hard to believe, though, is that Craig Mazin’s script didn’t do this a whole lot better.
A lot of this film felt rushed and troubled, from the CGI to the marketing to the line deliveries, we could definitely go on. After how mediocre a lot of the other loadbearing terrible films were this past year, though, it’s hard to say this one breaks the mold. It’s just a generic action movie that doesn’t do anything all too inventive or impressive that you could probably just throw on if you need something to watch. Again, you’ll find problems no matter if you’re actively looking or not. But with the reputation the film has already accrued, it’s pretty hard to go in expecting anything anymore if you happen to find it on digital in the future, or in the bargain bin.
Borderlands is now playing in theaters worldwide.
Exploding Kittens is a name any player of party games has at least heard in passing. The breakout Kickstarter hit has become a full franchise with expansions, spinoff games and ports, and now an entire TV series since its launch in 2015. The series feels a bit like it came out of nowhere, since I’d hardly heard anything much about it before the entire season release this past July. The first looks posted to Twitter seemed not to garner much attention—though, to be fair, that’s not exactly the series’ or Netflix’s fault so much as it might be its notorious owner’s for driving everyone away.
A lot of Netflix’s animated sitcoms tend to blend together for me. Paradise PD, Farzar, and Hoops (to name a few) all have these shared stylistic traits so prevalent in attempted new animated sitcom programming that they seem a bit creatively limited and fail to stand out from themselves. Netflix’s new sitcom, Exploding Kittens, escapes this stylistic box with its best attempt at blending rigged animation and the original artist Matthew Inman’s style for the game. While it’s not the most thrilling to look at, it’s easy to understand that as being the point of the series’ stylistic choices. This is where the show gets a bit divisive in its choices, because it feels less like an adaptation of the Exploding Kittens game and more like an animated successor INSPIRED by the game.
When God and the Devil are booted from their respective afterlives in order to live among humans for a bit to learn how to work managing them into their actual jobs, they’re sent to the planet in the form of small felines, Godcat and Devilcat respectively. These two now have ACTUAL cards with the help of a tie-in spin-off game, Good vs. Evil. The only pre-existing Exploding Kittens character who takes on a recurring role in the show is Marv’s boss, who oddly enough appears on one of the Alter the Future cards.
The household Godcat and Devilcat meddle with, the Higgins household, is home to an interesting family of four. Marv, an avid tabletop gamer whose day job is at a big bulk store, Abbie, a former Navy SEAL, Greta, a scientific sister who can often be the voice of reason, and Travis, a passionate content creator trying to retroactively undo his online reputation of being in an embarrassing viral video. These four are quirky on paper and have loads of character building potential, but their writing at times can be a bit sloppy and feeds into a lot of problems there are with modern animated sitcoms. A lot of the jokes come down to on-the-nose dark humor. No matter how dark the humor might get in the show, it is an adult animated series after all, the problem comes down to how shoehorned in these quips feel at times. After not even the full nine episodes of the season, that type of writing can get pretty formulaic, and in the essence of party games, the last thing you’d want is for every joke to be as predictable and played-out as it can get.
However, it doesn’t feel like these are just tortured souls that are vessels for Godcat and Devilcat and the world around them to toss around like toys. There are occasionally actual stakes with interest and plot backing to drive them. Travis’ constant talk about the internet and online content creation often feels dated and like there’s no commentary behind it (which, honestly, is hard for almost every animated sitcom to do right), but when he and Marv travel back in time to try and stop his viral video from being made, you can feel some of the regret and embarrassment he feels that isn’t just exclusive to the online experience. When he finally discovers the identity of his most relentless online troll, it doesn’t exactly feel the most crushing, but it most certainly doesn’t feel empty. The writers are trying to do something more with these characters than it would seem, which is a great direction for this series to take that isn’t just “another animated sitcom”, which works to their benefit.
Again, there isn’t a ton that’s Exploding Kittens-y about the Exploding Kittens TV show, but it’s not like they’re not trying with anything but the series name alone. Some of the cats’ expressions mirror that which appears on the cards, with more cards’ elements (such as Marv’s boss) being incorporated as well. In addition, the original artist of the game is heavily involved in the show’s production, so it doesn’t feel like an attempt to revive an IP that makes people go, “Oh, that game? It got a TV show? NOW?” You could actually make the argument that this show represents the output of the titular company BEHIND Exploding Kittens, as Marv plays a game in one episode that seems strikingly similar to another of their releases. The series is by no means a love letter to the game, but it is doing its best with what it has and comes out just fine. Which, given the factors at hand here, is an achievement worth stating. Exploding Kittens isn’t going to light the world on fire like it once had, but this is a series worth watching if you have fond memories of the game or if you just like cats. Don’t worry, there wasn’t a single kitten that actually exploded in this series.
Exploding Kittens is now available to stream on Netflix.
To start, it needs to be said that it’s hard to expect anything but the bare minimum for some of Netflix’s animated releases. Some of the service’s releases (such as Vivo, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Nimona) are picked up from other companies that are pouring much more love into their craft than thinking about having to get a film out on a certain date. Netflix is certainly more than capable of distributing excellent animated features, but often gets a bad rap for the output of quantity-over-quality films it’s often pushed for. Speaking of which, Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie not only harms the reputation of Netflix’s better animated films, but the Spongebob franchise as a whole.
Upon the announcement of several Spongebob character films being greenlit for a streaming release in 2022, responses were understandably mixed. Saturation of the franchise was a common fear at the time, especially with the polarizing reception of the television spinoffs Kamp Koral: Spongebob’s Under Years and The Patrick Star Show, the former of which just recently finished its two-season run. Part of what made Spongebob so universally enjoyable early on was how far it could push its premise on television and in theaters without needing multiple series to do so. Following the messy release of the sponge’s third film Sponge on the Run in 2020, most wrote off the series as having lost its charm and direction, trying to figure its identity out again with flanderized characters and unengaging premises.
However, this announcement’s potential being drowned out by a vocal reluctant crowd failed to allow others to see the bigger picture. This could be a great soft reboot of the franchise’s direction, allowing for new worldbuilding and storylines to take form. Maybe a break from Spongebob himself while focusing on the other main characters would help usher the franchise back into shape.
Don’t get your hopes up.
It would be one thing if the problems started and ended with the somewhat stiff animation and the off-model appearance of some of the characters. And again, this is something I can often find reasoning for with the budget almost certainly being lower than the other Spongebob films that have released. I think what makes this in particular so jarring is that there’s proof these characters can work better in 3D than this film implies, and have well into the past. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water released nearly ten years ago from this new film, and proved that when given the time and effort the franchise deserves, the characters can take shape in 3D while retaining their expressiveness greatly. 2020’s Sponge on the Run perfects this approach as well; in spite of that film’s writing and pacing flaws, the visuals are absolutely gorgeous and the best the series has ever looked in 3D. The visuals of Saving Bikini Bottom are such a dramatic step back that the entire game almost feels like a long cutscene out of one of the sponge’s early platformer video games, with the only thing breaking that immersion being the incorporation of live-action elements.
Let’s not act like the presence of live-action harms this film in concept. Every single Spongebob film has incorporated live-action to some degree, whether as memorable as Shell City in The Spongebob Squarepants Movie or whatever the hell that Snoop Dogg scene was in Sponge on the Run. The execution of these scenes varies in quality, though I fear it’s only gone downhill since the release of the first film in 2004. To the film’s credit, I think Sandy’s reasoning for having traveled to Bikini Bottom is a great element to incorporate into the franchise. It surprisingly makes sense and is a great piece of worldbuilding, and it’s a question I feel like many people have passively wondered but never thought too hard on until this film.
The B.O.O.T.S. plot had a lot of potential, but its execution is home to loads of missed opportunity. Should the abduction of Bikini Bottom have been as easy as scooping a chunk of land out of the ocean? We could have seen deep-cut characters and locales such as Rock Bottom and Atlantis being studied prior to the capturing of the series’ main location, which would make sense in the context of learning the most about their bizarre way of life. Instead, the abduction happens abruptly less than ten minutes into the film, under which the stakes feel practically nonexistent as a result. The scientists in the B.O.O.T.S. facility aren’t half bad as far as direction and acting goes either, but their performances are bogged down by the sloppy visual effects of the film and the downright confusing motivations for almost every character’s actions.
With all this being said, it’s best to try to keep an open mind for the Squidward and Plankton spin-off films announced alongside this one. They’re sure to be of similar low quality and budget, but they’ll almost certainly be led and worked on by different people and be entirely different movies as a result. Almost. There is a small chance they’ll blend together with this one into a dark, nothing trilogy for America’s favorite cleaning tool turned cartoon.
Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie is now streaming on Netflix.
Sony’s newest release, Harold and the Purple Crayon, released to less than pleasant reception last week. The film, based on the classic children’s book of the same name, stars Zachary Levi in the title role as a grown Harold who travels to the real world with his two friends, Moose and Porcupine. Interestingly enough, the latter two are animated animals who become live-action humans upon traveling to the real world with Harold, played by Lil Rel Howery and Tanya Reynolds respectively.
Keep in mind, however, the competition. Deadpool & Wolverine released in late July to absolutely electric success appealing to both Fox and Disney Marvel fans, and is on track to break even more records than it already had in its first weekend. The disaster film Twisters is still doing extremely well given its revival of a long-dormant IP, and Inside Out 2 was reported to still be selling enough tickets this past weekend to have outsold sales of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Things are looking rough for the guy.
Columbia Pictures’ output through Sony this year has been lackluster for the most part. With the exception of June’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die, the division hasn’t distributed many big hits this year that have gotten people talking. Incidentally, the films that HAVE gotten people talking haven’t been all too good. Interestingly enough, the linked film also underperformed. Hopefully the studio will see another hit sooner rather than later when Venom: The Last Dance releases in October.
Director Carlos Saldanha isn’t new to directing animated features, being a prominent alum of the late Blue Sky Studios. However, this is his first theatrical film to incorporate live-action elements as are prominent in the film’s marketing. It seems from most reviews that Saldanha’s direction shines a bit more when it comes to fully animated features rather than hybrids. When he’s directed past films with as much expressiveness and life as Ferdinand, it’s clear his career shouldn’t be written off because of one bad egg.
Harold and the Purple Crayon is now playing in theaters.
With a superhero film franchise as unorthodox as the Deadpool films, it’s important for them not to overstay their welcome. As much charm as Ryan Reynolds’ delivery brings to the character in motion, as hilarious and meta as the writing tends to be, it would have gotten old quickly if not for the great spacing between films. While 2018’s Deadpool 2 was a fun surprise after a short two-year wait, Deadpool & Wolverine caps off the trilogy after six years in development hell. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but in a way, the film serves as the perfect Deadpool movie. Now that the character is owned by Disney’s Marvel Studios (as are the X-Men and the Fantastic Four among others, but more on that later), Deadpool has a lot more room to play around and break comic book movie conventions far more faithfully than ever before. Playing into long-time rumors, dreams, and iconic moments throughout the Marvel franchise’s cinematic history, Deadpool & Wolverine makes the most of the empire the titular characters spend the movie’s runtime disrupting.
With this new installment, the creative team behind the trilogy is firing on all cylinders. Despite the ownership being transferred to Disney from Fox, the film’s writing is emblematic of Deadpool in his prime with no corners cut, with the absence of cocaine being the exception. It’s an all-star writers’ room for a Deadpool movie, with Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick returning as well as Ryan Reynolds himself. A new addition to the team is Zeb Wells, a seasoned Marvel comic book writer. This isn’t Wells’ MCU debut, having written on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and The Marvels recently. In addition, Wells is penned as the head writer on the upcoming Marvel Zombies for Disney+, the first TV-MA animated series for the franchise. To cap off the team, we have Shawn Levy, who also directed the film. Many know Levy as the director of Free Guy and The Adam Project, both of which starred Reynolds as well. In a sense, this movie’s release completes Levy’s own Reynolds trilogy.
While the film occasionally runs into modern Marvel’s problem of sloppy CGI/VFX usage (not that it’s exactly the VFX studios’ fault), it can often be excused as part of Deadpool’s charm. With how often the movie and Deadpool himself pokes fun at the current state of the MCU and its recent hiccups, I was honestly expecting a joke or two about that. However, fans of the franchise know Deadpool is at his prime when you can’t expect what will happen next. Case in point: the opening credits sequence. Each Deadpool movie opens with a subversive opening credits sequence that lets the audience know the movie’s gonna be a little different than the usual Marvel flick. The first film in the trilogy opens on a free-roaming still shot of Deadpool in a car fight, occasionally zooming into nooks and corners to show the names of the cast and crews. Deadpool 2 is a bit more traditional, with cast & crew title cards accompanying emotional and hilarious shots of Deadpool himself set to Celine Dion’s “Ashes”. Both of these title sequences poke fun at the cast & crew shown by referring to their other works, bashing them, or even just bringing up unrelated nonsense in their place. However, Deadpool & Wolverine (in its meta nature) takes these sequences THEMSELVES and flips them on their head.
The title sequence for Deadpool & Wolverine is traditional in the sense that it actually shows the names of the cast, crew, and production companies with no caveats. However, the sense of tradition ends here as these namedrops are intercut with footage of Deadpool himself passionately dancing to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” from 2000. As heads fly, blood spills, and bones break, Deadpool finds a way to interact with the name cards that show up throughout the fight and dance scene. Of the three movies, I find that this intro in particular best shows off what the merc with a mouth is all about the best, and that it works perfectly as the grand finale of the Deadpool title sequences.
We’re staying a bit hush-hush on the plot, understandably so. There’s so many cameos, references, and jokes throughout the movie that shouldn’t be spoiled but seen on the big screen as Wade would want you to. However, without giving away too much, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman’s history of the two title characters soars in how their chemistry makes for one of the most anticipated team-ups in cinematic history that stuck the landing and then some. Deadpool’s depiction in film has almost always been flawless. Almost. The energy Reynolds brings to the character transfers his comedy over from the comics super well, but also has its own unique flavor only witnessed on camera. However, Jackman’s portrayal of Wolverine has always been much more grounded, action-packed, and gritty, whether you think as far back as X2 to as great of a capper as Logan was. When you put two of these Marvel characters who should never be in the same room as each other in the same film as starring protagonists, it makes for a campy, bloody, love-hate dynamic that just makes all the sense in the world as much as Wade made it out to be back in 2016.
Deadpool & Wolverine is now playing in theaters worldwide.
SPOILER WARNING FOR SEASON 4 OF THE BOYS!
This past Thursday brought the highly-anticipated season 4 finale of Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys, and what a high note to end on. As polarizing as the fourth season’s contents have been for the show’s fanbase, many seem to agree its final episode was packed to the brim with great pacing, conclusions, and setup for the show’s final season.
Before getting into much of what was executed in yesterday’s finale (both cinematically and literally, but we’ll talk about that later) we need to address the elephant in the room. As close as The Boys can veer to reality and current world events at times, the conclusion to season 4 was preceded by a very unfortunate coincidence. The season finale, fittingly titled Season Four Finale at the moment of writing, was originally set to be titled Assassination Run, which would have fallen in line with how the Victoria Neuman & Robert Singer plotline was set up to conclude narratively. However, no one could have predicted in the time between the penultimate and final episodes of the fourth season a real assassination attempt on former president and currently running candidate Donald Trump. To distance themselves from the incident while assuring viewers all acts of political violence portrayed in the episode were fictional and coincidental, Amazon chose to rename the episode and insert a disclaimer beforehand. However, to our knowledge, no actual contents of the episode were removed, changed, or added as a result of this.
The political violence in question doesn’t exactly mirror the incident either, for what it’s worth, though it did remain surprising as far as its portrayal went. Everyone seemed to have their theories on which characters wouldn’t make it out of the season alive, as its narrative seemed to set up some of the highest, darkest stakes for a lot of the main cast to date. However, the originally titular assassination is only one of two major deaths actually shown onscreen by the time the credits roll. Sure, much of Vought’s employees with dirt on The Seven were mass murdered by the superhero group, as well as the head of the CIA, but the real danger lies in the death of Victoria Neuman by none other than Billy Butcher. Throughout the season, we’ve watched Butcher grapple with whether he wants to leave his mark on the Supes before he expires, or if Ryan’s straying off Homelander’s path could redeem some of them in his eyes. However, when Butcher witnesses Ryan kill Grace Mallory in front of him (the second major death in the finale) he decides enough is enough; if going bad is what it takes to save the world, he’ll have to work quickly and on his own terms before time is up. Armed with nothing but a car and a shot of Frenchie’s virus, he rides off into the night with the mirage of Kessler in the backseat as the credits roll.
The resolution of Homelander’s conquest for control of his nation is much different in direction than he had it drawn out, though its implications are perhaps even more chilling than initially thought. When marshal law is declared, we’re treated to every single member of the Boys minus Annie getting apprehended and taken into federal custody by the Supes that Homelander’s deployed on day one, specifically targeting Starlighters.
A lot of information about the season’s contents leaked beforehand through the now defunct Instagram account @voughthq, though the account’s credibility is thrown into question when looking at a lot of the little details as well as scoops that just flat-out weren’t true at all. Annie did fly away from the scene Hughie was apprehended at, though it wasn’t symbolic of her “leaving him” nor was it the final scene of the season. Their claim that A-Train wasn’t “use[d]…enough” is more than a little misleading as he was the Vought leak and a central storyline of the season was his attempts to leave the Seven and redeem himself in the eyes of Hughie and the rest of the Boys. In addition, Starlight never even got high with Frenchie as they claimed, nor did Ryan’s season end “with him covered in blood”. Even with an ACTUAL Vought leak rapid-firing on social media, the season managed to deliver with plenty of surprises, shocking resolutions, and intense setup for a final season undoubtedly set to be one of the biggest moments in pop culture and streaming history.
All eight episodes of The Boys‘ fourth season are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Get Some Strange!
