I love this movie. Best depiction of God actually showing up in media. I don’t agree with much of the dogma in Dogma, heh, but it’s fun.
I think I’ve only gone out to the theaters twice this year. I missed one movie because I kept putting it off and I knew it would be streaming soon, so no big deal. I saw its companion movie later and I’m thinking about seeing the third in this particular unintentional trilogy shortly. (Official trilogy, no. Unintentional trilogy, yes.)
But the second I saw I did want to see in theaters. I could have seen it in IMAX, but after the last experience with War of the Rohirrim and a sound system that felt (yes, felt) like they thought cranking the dial to 11 was inadequate, I kind of realized I don’t want to be immersed in the sound of a movie. I want to be immersed in the story.
Thus did I see the live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon in a standard theater. No RPX, no 4D, no Smell-o-Rama or Shadowramma, no powered reclining seats that suddenly move if your leg happens to bump against the controls. Just me, the standard screen, the standard sound system, Hiccup, Astrid, Stoic, Toothless and the rest, here on Berk Isle.
I know the story. I know what happens. I know the music. “Forbidden Friendship” when the flute floats in just before the two minute mark, “Test Drive” from start to finish, and the bouncy “See You Tomorrow” are among my favorites. I agree that How to Train Your Dragon is a MASTERCLASS in Theme Writing.
What I really wanted to know is could this version be different? Would it be different? Or would it just be a shot-for-shot remake? The answers are kinda, yes and mostly.
For perspective, the only Disney live-action remake I’ve seen is some of The Jungle Book. I can’t remember how much. More than half? Snow White? Hard pass. Any others? Lilo & Stitch probably, but later. As one person said, Lilo & Stitch has the benefit of the animated original being your parents’ favorite movie instead of your grandparents’ favorite movie like Dumbo, Snow White, etc.
Nor have I seen any shot-for-shot remakes. I know there’s one for Psycho, which got tagged as an interesting experiment, but what was the point if it was going to be an exact shot-for-shot remake?
Regardless of what the movie ended up being, I wanted the soundtrack. John Powell was back as composer. I wanted to hear for myself how he would adapt it. As he said, it was either going to be the easiest job he’d ever had, or the hardest.
I kept checking Amazon. The movie will premiere in a couple of weeks. Where’s the soundtrack? They’re always available just before a movie hits theaters. Then it’s days. Still missing. Okay, it’s in theaters, surely it will be available now. No? Um, maybe a few more days? Still no? What’s going on? And don’t call me Shirley.
Okay. Disappointments galore on that front. Guess it’s time to see it. Dean DeBlois is back as director. Gerard Butler returns as Stoic the Vast, in body this time instead of just voice, wearing a 90 pound costume befit a Viking chieftain.
This movie has a completely different logo. The animated movie’s logo had a textured look like it was dragonskin. This time, the logo looks like it was hand-forged or cast with molten metal.
Also different is the actor playing Hiccup. Mason Thames may have had almost exactly the same dialogue as Jay Baruchel, but they didn’t force him to speak like Jay. In contrast, when a live-action movie was made of Kim Possible, the story was quite different than the TV show, but the actor playing Ron Stoppable was saddled with having his Ron sound like Will Friedle’s Ron. Mason’s reaction to being told he got the role embarrasses him now, but it shows how much of a fan he is of the franchise and how much he appreciated what he earned.
Likewise, Nico Parker isn’t a blonde-haired blue-eyed Viking like Astrid is, but a difference added to the movie explains it. To paraphrase Odin from the MCU, Berk isn’t a place, it’s a people. In this case, a people made up of more than one phenotype.
Other differences come from some characters getting a little more development and/or lines than in the animated movie, such as Gobber and Gothi. To my disappointment, David Tennant did not follow Butler and step out from behind the microphone and into physical form as Snotlout’s father. That role was taken by Peter Serafinowicz, whom you may remember as the Sommelier that showed John Wick the benefits of the new breed of Austrians over the German varietals. To my not-disappointment, there was no trace of T.J. Miller in this movie’s Tuffnut, apart from the inevitable lines and what happens when you underestimate how dangerous a tiny Terrible Terror can be.
I don’t remember the point where I started noticing the times this wasn’t an exact shot-for-shot remake, or when I stopped noticing them. I was immersed in the story, the one that I know, the one where I already know what happens. For any I did spot, it was more like, “Oh. That’s different than before. Okay.” and that was as far as it went. But (and you knew this was coming), there is one difference that shouldn’t have been there. Something was left out that was key to a scene in the animated movie. Its absence means that scene in the live action version didn’t provide the explanation of why what happened happened.
Filming the film in Ireland and on practical sets as much as possible brought Berk to life. That helped me get immersed in the story. I was watching it as if I’d never seen it before.
It’s good. I recommend seeing it for that exact reason: You may find yourself so immersed in this version of a movie you’ve seen before that it’s like you haven’t. And as a bonus, a live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon 2 is already in the works. If they get Cate Blanchett to be the live-action version of her animated role as Valka, it will be even better.
Oh, and about that soundtrack? The reason why Amazon doesn’t have it is because Mondo has it. The 2-CD version and the 3-LP version will be released in October. So not only can you get a soundtrack that is art in its own right from how skillfully crafted it is, the physical material it comes on is also art, whether in CD or even moreso in vinyl.
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You may know Bob Odenkirk as the comedian and comedy writer for late night TV. Or you may have seen him in dramatic roles like Saul Goodman. Or seen things he’s directed or have watched him on Broadway in the 2025 production of Glengarry Glen Ross.
I think the surprising way we may come to know him is as an action hero. When he was done filming Nobody, he kept up the training and made it a part of his life. So when it came time to make Nobody 2, he was more than ready to go.
James Gunn’s Superman is the Superman film I have been wanting to see for over a decade. I’m going to split this into two messages because we need a recap of how we got here.
After years of making unconnected movies and Marvel blowing them out of the water with their Cinematic Universe, DC tried to make their own version called the DC Extended Universe, which is their multiverse where anything can connect to anything else, be it comics, short films, novels, video games and movies, but each item can be connected or completely separate. They had to rethink things after Ryan Reynold’s Green Lantern failed in 2011, then officially abandoned it after the failure of Justice League in 2017 and said the directors can do whatever they want. Don’t worry about whether it connects to anything else.
These starts and stops were due in no small part to DC not having a Kevin Feige to keep things cohesive. Now they do, in the person of James Gunn. The surprising thing I just realized is this wouldn’t have happened if those jerks that were trying to hurt and discredit him hadn’t gone back through his old messages and dug up the ones he had already addressed a few years before. If Marvel hadn’t pulled a #MeTooFar and fired him, giving DC a chance to see what he could do on their team, he might not have been in a position to be selected for co-leading DC Studios with its new DC Universe.
The DC Universe is a soft reboot of the DCEU, picking a few things and characters to keep or modify, such as casting a new actor for a role. The DCU is a shared universe, and any other things being made not in it are officially tagged as “DC Elseworlds”, eliminating the wishy-washy “it could be connected or completely separate” stance from before. It’s defined. It’s planned. As DC Studios co-leader Peter Safran (he’s the money side, Gunn’s the creative side) said in an interview with io9 in 2023, “The DCU is a multiverse, but we’re going to be focusing on one universe from that multiverse. And if something isn’t DCU, we’re going to make that very clear.”
Though it technically began with last year’s Creature Commandos animated series, Gunn and Safran say this new Superman is the true beginning of the DCU. It’s the start of Chapter One, titled “Gods and Monsters”. There will be a second chapter during this next decade, and the potential for further chapters, all of which are part of an overall story. So, it’s a bit like the MCU with its “Phases”, but Gunn says more is planned out from the beginning, with “a group of writers together to work that story out completely”.
I’m happy to say that all of the background above and what you’ll read in the next reply addresses the problems I’ve listed before:
- The inconsistent nature of what DC was trying to do.
- Trotting out yet another Superman or Batman movie every decade or so.
- A new director comes in, so that means we have yet another origin story for the first film out of however many they make.
I said at the start of the previous reply, James Gunn’s Superman is the one I have been wanting to see for over a decade. That doesn’t cover it. It’s the the one I’ve been needing to see for so long.
While we do have another Superman movie, it’s way different than being “yet another” Superman movie. To begin with, Gunn did not tell an origin story. He said he wouldn’t. Gunn delivered what I said six years ago was needed:
DC, we get it. Been there, done that. Pick a setting, pick your villains, plunk Batman down in it already as the Batman and go.
It’s Superman instead of Batman, but when it comes time for The Brave and the Bold, I hope we can skip Batman’s origin story in that, too. We might have to have some for how Damian Wayne becomes Robin, however.
James Gunn skipped the origin story, and go he did right from the get-go. Superman’s origins are kept to a minimum, as small an amount as was necessary to cover a few points. This Superman has been on Earth for 30 years at the moment we see him, which is just minutes after getting his butt kicked. He is able to partially recover and gets back in the fight, and finds out what happens when you go back to work too early.
This is the consequence of his efforts to help people whenever and wherever he can, something Lois Lane grills him on later. Who gave you the authority to do this? The people that needed help, that’s who!
It isn’t just Lois that doesn’t like what Supes is doing. Lex Luthor is even more honked off at it, and he’s going to do something about it. Luthor is also an already-established character in this world, so the something he uses has been in development for a very long time. He is also able to find something that shatters one of Superman’s long-held beliefs, which also shatters how others view him. It’s very effective, made more so by a variant of the “infinite monkey theorem”, though I wonder why Luthor didn’t just use A.I. instead. Actually, I do know. Seeing monkeys at work is infinitely cooler than watching status reports and messages on monitors.
Let’s see. What else we got?
There’s Guy Gardner, picked to be a Green Lantern, though he wasn’t happy about it at the time. Obnoxious and annoying, with the bowl cut haircut that made him (in)famous. (Nathan Fillion was on “team bowl cut” when collaborating on Guy’s appearance.) I would have said he’s no-nonsense, but he’s got his own brand of nonsense going on.
We saw Hawkman in the Black Adam film, but Hawkgirl in this one seems to be more of a warrior than he does. If nothing else, her hawk-like scream while fighting is impressive.
At first, Mister Terrific look like a guy who just rides on a floating chair and uses technology, much like Megamind, Syndrome or Dr. Robotnik from the recent Sonic movies used technology, but he’s got a lot more going on. He became a bit more impressive as the movie went along. This is the Michael Holt version instead of the original Terry Sloane version.
We also get a smidge of Maxwell Lord, who, very thankfully, is not the Donald Trump-like version from Wonder Woman 1984. Sean Gunn’s got that role, which will be expanded in season 2 of Peacemaker.
In another nice callback, a version of John William’s “Superman March” from the 1978 film was included in this film.
And now we come back to Lex Luthor. This is really important and a very striking difference than the last time we saw him in a film. I’ll be blunt. Jessie Eisenberg’s Luthor in Batman v Superman was a goofball. What I said nine years ago is spot on. It was the same reaction as seeing Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2: “What is this guy doing being in charge of a company?”
In extreme contrast with that Luthor, this one leaves no doubt he’s in charge of his company, and more importantly, he earned it instead of being there via an inheritance. He’s a thinker, a planner. He’s smart, very smart. He’s confident in his abilities, but any arrogance from being the smartest guy in the room is muted. He knows what he is and even freely admits one of his faults.
Because Nicholas Hoult and David Corenswet are almost the same height, when Luthor stands nose to nose with Superman, you can see the menace behind the confidence. This is the Lex Luthor that’s been missing too long. For as good as Gene Hackman was in the 1978 movie, there was comedy in his portrayal. None here.
This is a good movie and it’s worth seeing. In theaters would be better, but seeing it afterward on streaming or home media is also worth it.
There’s one last thing I need to address. There’s a point in this movie where Superman says he’s not motivated by politics. Which he shouldn’t be. That’s not who this character is.
Politics forced itself on this movie after James Gunn said something that was obvious but somehow completely slipped the notice of a certain group of people until he said it. But I think it was handled very well by James and Sean Gunn and by Nathan Fillion when they were asked about it.
What’s got this group’s panties in a bunch and clutching their pearls is Superman cares about other people and he’s an immigrant. They liked him right up until the moment those two things were pointed out.
To this, I’m going to say what Nathan Fillion said: “Somebody needs a hug.” I’m also going to say, “Superman has always been an immigrant. He wasn’t born in the United States of America or even on this planet. He learned from a young age to care about other people. You’re just now upset by this? Why haven’t you been upset about this for the last 87 years?”
But of course, those are logical questions, and logic is too often absent in situations like this. The upside is that sometimes all it takes is a little bit of logic to cause cracks in situations like this.
Upcoming movie: Good Fortune, in theaters sometime this fall.
Going strictly by the two trailers, it’s Bill and Ted meets Trading Places, with Seth Rogan forgetting he already did that laugh when he played B.O.B. (Bicarbonate Ostylezene Benzoate) from Monsters vs. Aliens back in 2009.
I saw the third movie in this unintentional trilogy a few days ago and I have a slightly clearer picture of how they connect to each other that is at the same time a slightly fuzzier picture of that connection. The movies are Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts* and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
The slightly clearer picture is calling this an unofficial trilogy is due to how close together they were released: Brave New World on February 14, Thunderbolts on May 2 and First Steps on July 25. That’s 3 months and 1.75 months apart, respectively. Three films being released within 6 months comes from Disney pushing Marvel and the Star Wars side very hard to go for quantity over quality so they can put everything onto Disney+.
This backfired in several ways. The first is Brave New World and First Steps had the biggest and second biggest Friday-to-Friday drop, respectively, of the superhero films released in 2025 so far. The second is complaints about the quality of what is being stuffed into Disney+. The third is Disney may have rushed to get Guardians of the Galaxy over to Disney+ too quickly, deliberately short-changing the actors on what they were owed due to how the contracts were written, sparking a big law suit that other movie studios are paying very close attention to lest they get caught in the same situation.
Because I’m tying three movies together, the review and recap for each one is going to be much shorter.
Brave New World (BNW) is about Sam Wilson’s struggles to be accepted as Captain America and differentiating himself from Steve Rogers, working with a new partner that is the new Falcon, and dealing with a new threat years in the making.
For as much as Marvel might want to forget they made Eternals, that movie provided the source of conflict in BNW. The conflict is about resources, which up to that time were skewed in a different direction, but now may pit two groups against each other. We’ll have to see if that’s addressed in a future movie.
Thunderbolts*, with the asterisk previously being teased as meaning “*Avengers not available”, has a lot to do with mental health. It was supposed to be a second Black Widow film, but was restructured to be much more.
Yelena Belova is still dealing with the death of Natasha and the thrill is gone from the assignments she’s given. John Walker is still dealing with having the title of Captain America taken away from him after he goes too far. Bucky Barnes is finding that a life in politics isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Ava Starr is doing better as the Ghost since Janet van Dyne helped stabilize her after being rescued from the quantum realm a few movies back.
The Red Guardian still longs for the glory days and drives a limousine, and when he hears about an upcoming attack on Yelena, goes on what could be called the worst possible version of “Invite Yourself to Your Daughter’s Work Day”.
And then there’s Bob, a guy who’s there and yet not all there. He’s played by Lewis Pullman, who played LT Robert “Bob” Floyd in Top Gun: Maverick. He wanted to be called Robert in this film to differentiate from Maverick, but came to appreciate being called Bob in this one. “What about Bob?” is a question much asked in this movie.
And now we get to First Steps. Like James Gunn did with Superman, it skips the origin story and goes with “pick your villain, pick your setting and go”. Instead of the origin story, we get a montage on the fourth anniversary of the cosmic storm that changed them and how they used their new superpowers and Richard Reed’s genius intelligence to improve lives across the globe. They’re so good at it and Sue Storm is so good at diplomacy that the team achieved world peace by the mid-1960s.
But it doesn’t take long for them to learn they’re not alone in the universe, and first contact comes with a warning: Vogons are on their way to destroy the Earth to make way for a new hyperspace express route.
Just kidding. It’s Galactus. Earth is his next meal. The Fantastic Four are going to stop him, but attempting diplomacy results in being told there’s a price to save the planet that’s too high to pay. For the first time in his life, Mr. Fantastic has to face that for as smart as he is, he doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t have all the answers. He learns there’s more to learn, including that Sue’s brother, Johnny, has his own set of skills that creates a new step on the way to defeating Galactus.
A little background info to wrap this up. Thunderbolts was praised for having limited CGI in the fight sequences and for Florence Pugh doing the stunt on top of of the Merdaka 118 building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that I teased a few months ago.
Ralph Ineson didn’t put on a motion capture suit for playing Galactus. It’s a full costume. Julia Garner did do mocap as the Silver Surfer, but did research so that her movements would be elegant, “like a dance”.
The slightly fuzzier picture of how the films relate to each other comes from the commercials for upcoming films Marvel puts in the credits. There’s a hint about First Steps in BNW. There’s a more obvious connection to First Steps at the end of Thunderbolts, but after seeing First Steps, we’ll likely have to wait to see exactly how that connection happens since right now, there’s a bit of a contradiction in what was shown.
First Steps teased Avengers: Doomsday, Marvel’s replacement for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty after the problems that happened with Jonathan Majors.
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I’m going to be lazy and refer you to two other reviews of Amazon’s new version of War of the Worlds. I thought the premise was interesting when I first heard of it: data and information is food for the aliens. But after watching the first and reading the second, I think I can safely skip it. You probably can, too, unless you want to see if “the movie is… not good” can turn into “so bad it’s good”.
At the very least, the movie is an example of when you shouldn’t use a greenscreen or a bluescreen, because you have to get the SFX team to digitally erase the green or blue from all reflective surfaces, like the glasses Ice Cube is wearing. Because if you remember, sometimes digitally erasing something doesn’t always work.
“The Thursday Murder Club” on Netflix. I watched this yesterday, and absolutely loved it. Definitely a “curl up on the couch and enjoy” movie. The cast is brilliant - Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley are the leads, but you also get David Tennant, Tom Ellis, and Richard E. Grant rounding out the cast in supporting roles.
Based on the book by Richard Osman, the movie follows three senior citizens (Mirren, Brosnan, and Kingsley) at the poshest retirement home I’ve ever seen. They solve cold cases fed to them by a former police officer as a hobby. When they need medical advice on their current case they enlist Imrie, a former trauma nurse, to help them out.
When a murder occurs close to home - both geographically and emotionally/situationally - Imrie’s character talks them into investigating with the help of a fresh-faced and undervalued police constable. And then a second murder occurs.
I loved this movie, partially because of the cast, but also because it was very well executed. It reminds me a lot of the British mysteries - Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie, etc., that I watched growing up.
I also think there’s great potential to turn this into a series - either a limited run “TV” series or a series of movies like the “Knives Out” franchise. Richard Osman has written several other TMC books (which I’ll have to pick up at least the first one to see if the book is a good as the movie) so the source material is there.
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Sounds like a British Only Murders in the Building.
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Exactly what I said when we were watching it. It’s a model that works. Cash in while it’s working.
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Have you been impatiently waiting for a live action version of Shaun the Sheep? What if I told you it’s not only a live action version, but it’s a murder mystery with the entire flock solving the murder? And what if I told you Hugh Jackman was the victim?
Well, you’ll have to impatiently wait another five months for “The Sheep Detectives” to premiere. Have a preview to nibble on.
I saw the trailer for this last night and laughed so much! And the voice cast for this is great.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
Perfect for a snowy afternoon. I liked the first two in the series, but this one surpasses them by a lot. A fantastic cast including Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Thomas Hayden Church, and, of course, Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. I think part of the reason I liked this one better than the other two is that Craig plays Blanc a bit more subdued and less over the top in this one. And I have to give a shout out to Mila Kunis, who plays the lead police officer in this one. She is quite wonderful in the role.
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We loved this one.
Watched Tron: Ares yesterday on Disney. I have to say, Mr. TM and I went into it with low expectations and were happy to be wrong. About halfway through there’s a set of scenes that took me from really enjoying it to actually getting a little teary-eyed. If you’re a fan of the original Tron and have seen this one, you’ll know the scenes I’m talking about. And I was pleasantly surprised at Jared Leto’s performance. He was actually pretty good in it.
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As a massive Tron fanboy, Ares was fun, worst part is how much of a shit person Leto is. It could have been literally any other actor and it would have been better. But leto didnt suck and the movie was solid!
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