Unnecessary Prequel Shows

I'm gonna level with you guys, it's getting to the point that I am really starting to hate prequels. Mostly because they don' tell us anything that we really needed to know. In the end, they just share stuff with us that we were fine not knowing. For example, that newest Planet of the Apes movie? We don't need to know how the apes took over, in fact that was part of the fun of the original and how it ended, people were speculating as to how it would be possible that apes would subdue the entire human race. And now that movie has killed it for us.

So why am I talking about this? Well, I've noticed recently that networks have been making shows that are prequels to famous movies, two of them being The Silence of the Lambs and most recently, Psycho. Much like Planet of the Apes however, I think the Psycho show just doesn't need to exist. Apparently, it is supposed to cover Norman's relationship with his mother when he was growing up and how he got to be so messed up. In other words, it's taking the surprise of the ending of the original movie and just throwing it out the window. And again, I have to ask "Do we really need to see this?" Is this something that, if we didn't have a film or television show about it, the universe would be thrown out of balance? Much like Planet of the Apes, I have to say "NO". Again, part of the fun of movies like Apes and Psycho is that we got to speculate for ourselves how A led to B and everything in between. By making a show or a movie explaining it to us, it just ruins all the fun. Now, the show that they have for Silence of the Lambs is not a prequel show by my understanding, but rather it's a show where Hannibal Lecter helps Clarice Starling solve crimes... So basically, it's Lambs but in show form and over and over again. What really irks me about this one is that if you've seen the movie, you'd know that they only knew each other for a couple weeks before he broke out of prison, and they only solved the one case together. So basically, they are contradicting the movie for the soul purpose of making money. If you really wanted to make a show about Hannibal, why not make the show about his relationship with Will Graham? In Red Dragon, it was made pretty clear that they had a mentor/student relationship and he helped Graham out a couple of times before he was caught and arrested. Even though I find the whole idea of this show repulsive, I would say that that sounds like a better idea than taking a very disturbed relationship and turning it into this crime solving team. Alright, so this doesn't count as a prequel show considering that it does take place I guess during the events of the movie itself. But that still doesn't make it any better in my eyes.

What's my point in all of this? Well, I've already said why making prequels makes no sense to begin with, but making a show that I'm assuming you want to last several seasons rather than one movie which will be around 2 hours? It's like stabbing fans in the knee cap and then twisting it over and over and over again.

The Expendables 2

We might as well just call it The Expendables because I think it was everything the first one should have been. Quick review of the first one, I think it had its cool moments, but overall, it was pretty underwhelming. You have all of these action stars and yet the focus seemed to be on mostly Statham and Stallone. Plus, if you are going to have a scene with Arnold, Sly and Bruce Willis, you'd better sure as shit have them blow something up... Which they didn't. This movie took all of the problems that I had with the first one and remedied them. Now Arnold and Sly are in it more, and they were even nice enough to give us Chuck Norris and the Muscles from Brussels, Jean Claude Van Damme. The one thing that I have heard people say a lot is that all of the people mentione above are all of the "has-beens". While that may be true, this movie proves that there is still room in everyone's hearts for each of these badasses. I know this because when I saw the movie with a friend of mine, the whole theater cheered when each person had their own introduction scene. They even cheered when Jean Claude Van Damme kicked a knife into a dude's chest. However, I will say that there is one last thing that bothered me. You know how there's that cliche that if a guy is either fresh from the academy or on his way to retirement, he is usually the first to kick the bucket? Or at least their death is more dramatic than the other characters? Well, in the case of Expendables 2, they managed to squeeze in a character who is both a rookie and pretty close to retirement, and guess what? They kill him off in the first 15 minutes. I know that may be a spoiler to some of you, but if it doesn't happen in the second half of the movie, I figure it's in safe territory for me to spoil.

Final Grade: B+

The Bourne Legacy

The first question you are all probably asking yourselves is "What did he think about the other Bourne movies?" And while none of them really rank amongst my favorites of all time, I would definitely say that I really liked all of the other Jason Bourne movies. I would say that the first one is my favorite however, being that the second and third employed a technique that drove me to insanity. The technique that I am talking about is the shaky cam. God, I really freaking hate the shaky cam. It's one thing in a movie like Saving Private Ryan where it is used to give you the feeling of charging up the beaches of Normandy while gunfire and explosions are all around, but when two people are sitting and having a calm conversation, I just felt this urge to yell out "Dude, buy a fucking tripod or something. Set it down on a table if you have to! This shit's getting old!"

So right off the bat, I'm going to say that Legacy movie deserves points for one thing: Hiring a camera man that doesn't have Parkinson's*. Secondly, I would say that this movie is kind of like Wicked in that it showed what else was going on during the events of the third Bourne movie. The story is that Jeremy Renner plays an agent that is also a member of the program that Jason Bourne was apart of before he lost his memory. After the events of the first two Bourne movies and prior to Jason Bourne resurfacing in New York, the powers that be (one of them being played by Edward Norton) decide that the entire program needs to be gone and buried, so they go around killing off all of their agents and their scientists in order to ensure that this doesn't reach the public. The only two survivors of the cleansing are that girl from The Mummy (whose name I am too lazy to look up right now) and Jeremy Renner. And from then on out, it's pretty much just them trying to surviving the agency and a convoluted plot that took me a while to get because I hadn't seen any of the other movies in quite some time. Once I did get a grasp on what was going on, I actually got really roped into what was going on. And thankfully, they had gotten rid of the shaky cam effect so I could actually take in what I was watching. I would give this movie a higher rating, but I'm not the biggest Jason Bourne fan, so I'm just going to say this was a fun action flick.

Final Grade: B