“Arrival” is directed by Denis Villeneuve and stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Forest Whitaker in a movie where 12 aliens touch down to Earth in several locations and this film mainly focuses on the US’s efforts with the one that landed in their territory to try to communicate with them, learn their language, understand them, etc.

Right off the bat, let’s talk about Amy Adams in this movie. She plays the main character of Louise and this is one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. All of her acting feels very natural and I felt like I was watching a real person in a unique situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Adams snabs an Oscar nomination. Do I think she’ll win? I’m not sure, but I do think she’ll at least earn herself a nomination.

Jeremy Renner plays a character named Ian and he is also great in this movie. His chemistry with Louise works incredibly well and if he gets an Oscar nomination for Best Actor I probably wouldn’t be shocked. Whenever he is in the movie he is working with Amy Adams to interpret the aliens’ language and for what this character gives I thought it was superb.

Forest Whitaker was also in this movie, and no, not the Forest Whitaker you’ve seen in “Rogue One” if you already saw it, “Save the rebellion, save the dream!” This actually sounds like a normal guy and his role isn’t as big when it comes to this interpretation scenario, but for what I remember most about this character, he’s pretty big when the characters are inside the shelter. Would I say his performance is Oscar material as well? No. It’s good, but it’s not Oscar material.

In case you want to know, going into “Arrival”, I thought this movie was going to be a lot like 2014’s “Interstellar”. When I saw the ads for this film, they reminded me of the ads I saw for “Interstellar” back in 2014. First off, I was able to tell this was a sci-fi film, the color pallette of both films looked rather similar, and the transitions from clip to clip gave me the feeling I did when I watched ads for “Interstellar” or even the actual trailers or movies for it. Just a reminder, “Interstellar” is my favorite movie of 2014 and one of my favorite movies of all time, so you can probably tell I was excited to see this film. You want to know something? The “Interstellar” vibe doesn’t stop there! The movie, from a storytelling perspective, reminded me of a good portion of “Interstellar.”

In “Interstellar”, there were some scenes where Matthew McConaghey’s character, Cooper is having flashbacks to a certain important moment of his life. Specifically, when he told Murph, his daughter, that he was going to leave Earth in order to find another planet. That flashback played a key role in that movie and it goes on to a point which I won’t spoil because if you see the movie, you’re really going to end up impressed and understand why I didn’t ruin this for you. In “Arrival”, the movie cuts away from the present much more often, not like this summer’s “Suicide Squad”, but it does so quite a bit. This is specific towards Amy Adams’s character, Louise and it plays a bit of a key role into the film much like “Interstellar’s” cutaways. I won’t say much more about them because I feel if I blurt anything out about it you possibly might not have the same impact I got out of this but it kind of made a movie that was already good, better.

I’m gonna tell you a story, I suck at learning foreign languages. I suck so much that I decided to take Latin as a language. People tell me it is a hard language, and oh were they right, but I heard it basically will help you understand a good number of other languages without exactly learning them. When I was watching this film, and as I was watching everyone interpret what the aliens were saying, I felt confused, yet amazed at the same time. I mean, I understood what the aliens were saying throughout the film, in fact there was even a point where English subtitles were put in, but it amazes me how much work went into learning this language. Also you want to know something? You know how some people watch films, watch TV shows, or read books with foreign languages in them and they were made specifically for that particular film, TV show, or book? You know how some people might want to learn the fictional language that was spoken in that material? Languages such as Elvish from “Lord of the Rings” or Klingon from “Star Trek”? If someone working behind this movie made a dictionary or some sort of program online that would allow me to learn this language, I’d scour for it until I find it.

On that subject, I can’t help but say that the overall concept of this movie in itself is brilliant. You have probably seen movies where we have tried to communicate with alien life forms, but I think that a film like this tries to take it to a whole different level. Why? One thing I notice is that when it comes to movies with aliens in it, they usually are just meant to invade. People try to communicate, but the main concept is to make sure everyone survives. Sure, that element is in this movie too, but the movie focuses so much on trying to communicate with alien, teaching it English, learning the language of the aliens and what they want that a concept like making sure everyone will turn out fine and dandy isn’t the biggest focal point of the film. When you add it all up, it just goes to show how important language is to society and despite how poor I am at taking foreign languages, I felt like I was invested in learning a foreign language and using my brain throughout the entire movie.

In the end, “Arrival” was excellent and it lived up to the hype I heard all about. I definitely see this movie winning numerous awards in the near future and after watching it once, I want to see it again, because I feel like I have questions about the movie and they can be answered in future viewings considering how much I used my brain in this movie. I’m going to give “Arrival” a 10/10. I loved this movie from start to finish, I don’t remember any flaws from it and I can’t wait to see it again. Just a reminder, pretty soon I’m going to be doing my top best and worst movies of 2016, so stay tuned for that and more reviews, I’m gonna have lots of fun making those lists and I can’t wait to show it to you guys. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

“Patriots Day” is directed by Peter Berg (The Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon) and stars Mark Wahlberg (Ted, Shooter), Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13, Footloose), John Goodman (Monsters Inc., The Big Lebowski), JK Simmons (Whiplash, Spider-Man), and Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye, Gone Baby Gone). This movie is based on the true events of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, and it mainly revolves around Mark Wahlberg’s character of Tommy Saunders. The movie starts off by showing the marathon itself, along with the bombing incident that took place, followed by the quest to find the bombers.

Earlier this year I saw “Deepwater Horizon”, a film based on true events also starring Mark Wahlberg, which is also directed by Peter Berg. That film came out in September, I reviewed it, I stated that I really enjoyed the film. I have not seen “The Lone Survivor”, however I heard positive things about it. This film however, is a gem compared to “Deepwater Horizon”.

Depending on how well you know me, I may sound biased because I actually happen to live in the Boston area so in a way this event kind of affected me, but I am not solely judging this on how this film is on something that affected me, I am judging it primarily as a movie. I mean, sure, the film made me feel emotions, but regardless of where I live, whether it be Boston, New York, out of this country, or perhaps on a planet like Mars, I’d probably feel said emotions no matter what because if you hear me out, you’d probably realize how excellent this movie is.

As mentioned before, Mark Wahlberg plays the main character in this film named Tommy Saunders. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the background behind this event, Saunders is actually not involved with the real-life event whatsoever. This is actually a fictional character made specifically for this movie, but in the end, I’m fine with it, it added some weight to the overall experience and story and I thought Wahlberg portrayed him well. There’s even a moment that I’d call Oscar-worthy that came out of this character, which is kind of cool because there’s an Oscar-worthy moment that came out of Wahlberg’s character in “Deepwater Horizon”, so Wahlberg has been showing serious skills lately in my book.
As far as all the other characters go it’s kind of hard to explain them all one at a time, because as far as this movie goes, I kind of have a thought about this movie that I share with “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, characterization doesn’t matter as much in this movie. What really matters in this movie, is the impact. After all, this film is based on true events, and for what I will say based on all of these characters played by John Goodman, JK Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, etc, I feel that some of these characters are more necessary to talk about than others.

One highlight for me in this movie was JK Simmons’s character Sergeant Jeffery Pugliese. As you may or may not know already, I love JK Simmons, if you ever asked me who my favorite actor is right now, I’d say JK Simmons. And he does a fine job in this movie. There’s this pretty cool shootout scene with JK Simmons in it and he was probably one of the best parts of the whole thing.

Speaking of that scene, that does lead to something I want to bring up and I believe this is cliche in several based on true story films and this has to do with the Watertown shootout scene in general. In the scene that was primarily a shootout, there were plenty of explosions going on all around. Granted it wasn’t like a Michael Bay extravaganza kind of like in “Pearl Harbor” but it doesn’t change the fact that this movie kind of did the Hollywood thing where they’d take something that was serious and try to make it incredibly epic. Am I against what they did in this movie? Not really, I think it works, but I think each person will have a different opinion on this.

Another one of my favorite parts of the movie is Dun Meng’s primary side of the story. To be clear, Meng was being carjacked by the bombers while everyone was searching for them. I thought Jimmy O. Yang (Silicon Valley) did a splendid job with this role and I could feel his pain even though it wasn’t as much pain as the when the bombs went off during the marathon. It just goes to show even little things go a long way. This is especially true when he was trying to flee from the bombers by going into a gas station mini-mart.

 

 

 

 

Another thing I really loved is how much archive footage this movie used. I have no idea if to some people that the amount of archive footage these folks used would make them look lazy but I thought it would have been the right thing to do. It just goes to show how everyone came together in a time of crisis and I am not just referring to Boston or Massachusetts but the country of the US and perhaps even the rest of the world. I can’t remember but I think some of the news broadcasts shown throughout the movie may have been in either Chinese or Japanese or some other language I can’t interpret at the top of my head without pulling out my hair.

In the end,”Patriots Day” was phenomenal. If this hasn’t come to your area yet, hopefully it does soon so you can see it. But if it has, go see it now because it is worth your time and money. If I had to choose between watching this and “Deepwater Horizon” I’d choose “Patriots Day”, and with that being said, I’m going to give “Patriots Day” a 10/10. This movie hit me where I live and wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Once again, I’ll restate to all of you that I live in the Boston area, so this movie is kind of a big deal for me. There are a few flaws in the movie but they are so minor that they are forgettable and may come off as nitpicky in the long run. Not too long from now I’m gonna have my top best and worst movies of 2016, but before that I’m gonna have a review up for”Arrival” so stay tuned for that and reviews coming up later on. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

“Passengers” is a film directed by Morten Tyldum, which stars Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, and is primarily about these two folks who are on a 120 year flight to another planet that is similar to Earth. They wake up from their slumber earlier than anyone else, there is nobody on the ship other than themselves which they can talk to, and this movie covers what these two do along the way along with how they interact with one another.

When I was going into this film, I was thinking I was going to watch some sort of science fiction thriller, and maybe a romance in between as well. While this is a science fiction thriller this movie has such a huge focus on its romance plot. Is that a bad thing? I wouldn’t say so considering it is executed well. Anyway, lets move onto the characters.

Chris Pratt is the movie’s lead actor and he plays a character named Jim Preston. At the beginning of the movie, I was surprisingly interested in everything he did, because the beginning of the movie was mainly just exposition and while that is a case here, it was done in a way that made Chris Pratt somewhat down to Earth, and it even gave me some chuckles. Yes, the movie has humor, not much, but it has some. At what I believe is somewhere around the 20 minute mark of the movie’s runtime, Pratt does an action that I won’t reveal to avoid spoilers, and I almost thought he was moronic for doing it, but after analyzing, I understood why he did it, if you saw the movie you’d probably know what I’m referring to.

Jennifer Lawrence plays the character of Aurora Lane. I kinda like the name Aurora, sounds somewhat sensual. I digress, but still a nice name. This isn’t in the trailer, but I probably won’t be spoiling much. In the movie, Aurora is a journalist, and the fact that she is a journalist kind of made her character ten times as interesting as I thought she would be. When she is talking to Jim and mentions her occupation she says that she wants to go on this 120 year flight to Homestead II (the destination planet the which the movie’s ship is cruising to), analyze what’s there, and come back to Earth in order to write all about it. That right there is an interesting character, and one of the better character motivations I’ve seen this year.

As a romance, this movie is pretty solid, and I’d say it did its job. The romance overall is kind of like James Cameron’s “Titanic”, and this is especially true towards the end of the movie because that’s when some of the heavy stuff happens. If there are any problems with it however, there are quite a few cliches that you may have seen before once it starts off but that’s a minor issue in my book.

One character in the movie that I’ve yet to talk about is the android bartender known as Arthur, played by Michael Sheen. The characters of Aurora and Jim spend a good amount of time in the ship’s bar throughout the movie so this character has plenty of screen time. It was kind of charming to see him on screen, if I had any complaints about him however, it’s just a minor one, but give him some funny lines and make him some sort of comic relief character. Although it’s a robot so I would probably think twice on that one. Also the sound that was going off whenever this android moved was music to my ears, so good job there!

One thing I want to talk about is the ending, I’m not gonna spoil anything, but I’m still trying to process it. There’s a part of me that’s like, “Huh, that’s kinda neat.” Although there’s another part of me that’s like, “Hmm, I don’t buy it.” While the ending itself was somewhat satisfying, and I can imagine myself not liking the movie ending the way I thought it was going to end as the ending was happening, there was a part of me that thought it would be more logical if the movie ended the way I thought it was going to end, for now, this is going to lower my score for the film, but this could change. You never know.

In the end, “Passengers” had an interesting romance, likable characters, great CGI, but based on everything I saw, I wouldn’t by this movie once it comes out on Blu-Ray. In fact, I can only imagine myself watching this again if I found it free on Amazon video, or if it happened to come on TNT or TBS or some network like that. I’m going to give “Passengers” a 5/10. Keep in mind, this IS a positive score. It’s a watchable 5, I might bump it up to a 6 in a bit but who knows? Just a couple announcements, I already saw “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, in fact I actually saw it on premiere night, so if you want to read my review of it, click the link below this paragraph. Also, this Thursday I’m going to see “Patriots Day”, the movie which is based on the true events behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing so stay tuned for my review of that film coming soon and stay tuned for more reviews coming soon. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

“ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY” REVIEW: https://scenebefore.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-a-movie-built-on-hope/

If you have not been living under a rock for the past few years, you probably already know what an emoji is. It’s those things on a smartphone that can show emotions on (mostly) yellow faces. There’s also food, signs, and random objects included with this as well. At some point, I heard they were making an Emoji movie. I saw some picture art for the movie and while I thought the idea was completely absurd, I was willing to give some props because what I saw in the picture did appear to look pleasing to my eyes. Then… I saw the trailer.

When I saw this abomination Sony Pictures Animation calls a trailer, my cringe levels raised to infinity. Do you remember that piece of crap “Ghostbusters” trailer that came out in March? This is probably just as bad, if not worse. The trailer at hand here is only a teaser so maybe I’m a little hard on it because I haven’t seen much, but if you watch this trailer, you may even agree with me when I say that even for a teaser, this looks deplorable.

This trailer starts off by showing a Meh Emoji standing in front of a white background. Half the trailer is spent with this fellow talking in a depressed tone saying things like “Hello, as you can see I’m an Emoji, a “Meh” to be exact.” What else does he do in front of this white background? Well, he stands there, basically promoting the movie just by saying “It’s my pleasure to announce our first movie. Yay. It’s almost too thrilling for words. So bring the family, doesn’t have to be your family.” And that’s literally it! Although if you watch the end, he is not in the trailer anymore and there is a cupcake saying that he cannot work in the conditions he’s in and if he does, he’ll melt, and he just goes on saying this: “This is a load of–” and suddenly the poop Emoji you may be familiar with comes in saying “Oh, no, go ahead, finish that sentence.” While I do admit, I did get a minor chuckle out of that, that really wasn’t enough to sell me after the other portion of the trailer which in my opinion, is one of the laziest teasers I’ve ever seen!

Earlier this year I’ve had an encounter with a teaser for the Warner Bros Animation Group film “Storks.” That teaser also had a character talking to the audience for a minute, but the difference between this and that, is that Storks was funny in its delivery as a teaser. This however was just lazy. Speaking of laziness, this brings a huge question, does the world need an Emoji movie?

My answer to that, hell no! This, in my view is Hollywood running out of ideas. Are there worse possible ideas for movies than this? Sure, but you have to admit this is pretty stupid. First off, this is literally based off something you use on your phone. And I’m not talking about a game like “Angry Birds”, which, by the way, was actually a movie made by the same company making this movie. Second, I have not seen anything creative or coherent to make me think I’m going to like this movie. Everything I have seen is either unoriginal or bland. The music in the teaser doesn’t even sound like this movie is trying. Sure, you can argue that they put in the song “Express Yourself” because that’s a purpose of Emojis, but the overall tune the song provides factors into the trailer’s overall laziness.

How can this movie be good? I wouldn’t be able to give a phenomenal answer to that, but I can scratch the surface a bit. This movie can take place in someone’s smartphone, and maybe the smartphone can affect the story of these Emoji characters. If it is just going to be a movie about Emojis, dealing with drama among one another, then I say this movie could be good, but it’s much more likely that it’ll be crap.

This movie just goes to show you that Hollywood is more than likely running out of ideas, that they are just taking anything no matter how classy or unoriginal it may seem. I hope this movie’s good, but to me, it’s gonna have to take a miracle to hit a home run with this idea. Maybe the actual trailer will be better, maybe I’m rambling over nothing, maybe I am judging this movie too soon. We’ll see what the future brings us. Also, coming soon I have more reviews planned for this week, I am going to see “Passengers” tomorrow at 1:30 so I should have a review up pretty soon on that movie, and I’m also going to be seeing “Patriots Day”. After that I might do one more review which will probably be for “Office Christmas Party” but I’m not sure yet. However, I mentioned before I have two lists coming soon, which are my top best and worst movies of the year. Look forward to those and stay tuned for more reviews. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

OK guys, before we get into Rogue One, I just want to let everyone know that I will do my best to not spoil anything. Granted the effects won’t be as hard as trying not to ruin anyone’s life by spoiling last year’s “The Force Awakens”, but knowing the Star Wars fanbase, not to mention, knowing myself as a part of such a sacred fanbase, I will make sure spoilers are nonexistent throughout the review. Anyways, it’s time to go rogue!

“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is the newest installment in the Star Wars saga. This installment takes place between episodes III and IV and throughout the movie it shows the construction of the Death Star (as seen in the original movie). While this happens, a team of rebels are taking investigation into this superweapon and they need to know how to destroy it. Essentially, this movie can be summed up in the opening crawl of “A New Hope” (above).

I love Star Wars in general, and I say that as a fan, and on this blog, I see myself as a critic. How so? I’m able to recognize when a movie’s bad. I mean, there have been two Star Wars movies that sucked balls in my opinion (“The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones”). I even think the special editions of the original trilogy somewhat ruin parts of what made those movies good. Hey kids, do you guys remember the cantina scene? Remember when Han Solo confronted that bounty hunter named Greedo? You know, the blue guy with black eyes? Can you tell me who shot first? Did you say Greedo? NO! It’s Han! They just changed it in the special editions just to make him appear more child friendly! Why George Lucas? Why? Well, at least he isn’t around to disappoint me with this movie, because the director of this movie, Gareth Edwards, didn’t disappoint me at all! I loved this movie from beginning to end and I had a fun time watching it, not just as a fan, but as a critic. Let’s continue onto some of the characters.

The main character in this movie is a girl named Jyn Erso. She’s played by Felicity Jones (“The Amazing Spider Man 2”, “The Theory of Everything”) and after seeing her performance in this movie, I cannot imagine anyone else playing her. One thing that I really love about her character is that her father has a huge connection to the story so it only makes seeing what Jyn does during the movie feel more engaging.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about Jyn’s father. Throughout the movie it is stated that this guy is crucial to the development to the death star. His role in the movie was pretty great and there’s one scene where a message is sent via hologram which Jyn happened to see, it basically explained his main role in the movie which is a solid idea overall.

Forest Whitaker is in this movie, and while his role wasn’t really as memorable as some other ones in this movie, I still enjoyed what this guy had to offer for this movie. Also, just a reminder to everyone in case you didn’t know or forgot, this guy is not a new character. If you are familiar with the Cartoon Network series “Star Wars: The Clone Wars”, you may remember this guy. I was able to buy the chemistry between him and Jyn at a certain point in the movie and whenever I saw him on screen I thought this guy has seen some s*it. I have not seen enough of “The Clone Wars” TV series to know what happened to him but if you see this movie and never seen “The Clone Wars”, you’d probably think to yourself, “Wow, what did this guy go through?”

Up next is the character of “Baze Malbus”, played by Wen Jiang. This guy wasn’t the character I was into most of the time while watching this movie. Does that mean I don’t like him as a character? No, I just think other characters stood out more compared to this guy. Although I will bring this up, do you remember from the teaser trailer, as it was coming to a close, they were showing this land battle and this guy was running toward this AT-AT and it was shooting everywhere? This guy was in scenes kinda like that and those scenes were intriguing.

One of the characters I was really looking forward to see in this movie, in fact, of all the newcomers in this movie, I believe I was most excited to see this guy, was Chirrut Îmwe. This guy is strong with the force, in fact throughout most of the movie he’s praying a lot, based on the prayers, it’s easy to tell how much this guy believes in the force, and believes it will make him succeed. By the way, if you saw this guy in the trailers and thought he looked cool, wait until you see the movie, he’s AWESOME, especially when he’s introduced.

When I saw this movie, one of the characters that happened to steal the show is the droid you may remember from the trailer, AKA, K-2SO. Just about every line that came out of this character’s mouth was a gutbuster to me and just about anything he said made just about the entire theater laugh. Let me just say right now that the odds of liking this droid are very high and if you don’t laugh at even one thing the droid says, we probably need to talk.

Let’s move on to Orson Krennic, or as I like to call him, Grand Moff Tarkin wannabe. This is not the most memorable of the Star Wars villains I’ve seen. Did I like him? Yes. Did I think he had some great moments? Yes. However he was not the strong point of the movie and I wouldn’t call him as memorable as other villains in the saga such as Darth Vader or Palpatine or Kylo Ren. What was the biggest flaw I had about this guy? He looked just like Grand Moff Tarkin. To me, I consider my complaint to be somewhat justified but also abnormal at the same time. Why do I have this complaint? I knew from the beginning that Grand Moff Tarkin was going to have a big role in this movie, and basically if you have seen the original “Star Wars” you would already know he is in that movie and he is probably one of the most vicious people in the entire film. To make this go even further, there was a trailer which this character was in, and when I saw him I kept saying to myself “Oh my gosh! Look at Grand Moff Tarkin! Yeah!” However when you see the movie it is easy to tell which character this is compared to Grand Moff Tarkin. Because this character is in white, Tarkin is in green.

If you have seen some of the trailers of this movie, you’d probably already know that Darth Vader is in the movie. As you may already know, according to who knows how many people, Darth Vader may be the most iconic and perhaps the greatest villain in all of cinematic history. So you’re like me you probably hoped he would be up to his full potential in this movie. How is he in this movie? Well, he’s OK. Not too great, not too bad, just OK. That’s all I’m gonna say.

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What the heck am I saying?! THIS GUY WAS AWESOME! Let me just give a warning right now that he is not in the movie for long, but he didn’t need to be, because the time that he was in the movie was short but sweet. For the scenes Vader was in I couldn’t help but get ecstatic and as a fanboy and critic, I loved what Disney did to this villain. Let me just tell you something right now, the first scene Vader is in, is incredible. The final scene he’s in, EVEN BETTER. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that this scene, may be one of the best scenes in the entire Star Wars saga. Is it my all time favorite? That’s something I have to think about, but it was excellent nonetheless! I’m not kidding! This is what Darth Vader is supposed to be, and I would like to thank Disney for not screwing him up!

When it comes to the Death Star in this movie, along with the ships you see in the movie, they all looked great and for the ships that were shown in prior films, they didn’t change much at all so I’m going to give props to the people behind this movie for making them look similar. Speaking of the Death Star, the scenes in which it was used to destroy planets were very similar to those you see in “A New Hope” and “Return of the Jedi”. Fun fact, there were more easter eggs I caught in this movie that I recognized, and if you have seen the Star Wars films made prior to this, you may recognize them too.

One of the things I was looking forward to in Rogue One, in fact, I think many people were looking forward to in Rogue One, was the land battles. There’s like a long sequence on a beach and it entertained me all the way through. Speaking of battles, there’s a ship that wasn’t really seen in the Star Wars universe until now and that’s the U-wing (above). I thought it looked like a Y-Wing if it had flamethrowers in the back of it, by the way, it doesn’t.

If you have seen any prior Star Wars movie, chances are you might remember some of the music. That was all done by legendary movie composer John Williams (Jaws, Jurassic Park, ET). In this movie, he’s actually not the one composing this time around. That position belongs to Michael Giacchino, who has also composed the music for my favorite animation of all time, “The Incredibles”. When it comes to the music throughout the movie, I wouldn’t say it is as memorable as John Williams’ work, although I would say the music playing throughout each scene worked.

I would just like to remind everyone reading this right now that this movie is from Disney, and they haven’t had the rights to Star Wars for too long. So far they have done a few seasons of the Disney XD show “Star Wars: Rebels” and last year’s hit movie “The Force Awakens”. Everyone makes fun of Disney for being incredibly lighthearted and straying away from darkness so their movies can be as kid-friendly as possible. Let me just say right now, this movie is dark, and I mean DAAAARRRK. This is especially true with the end of the film, which may be my favorite part of the movie, and I really think I should keep in suspense that way the flavor is savored for when you go see this movie, because, let’s face it, a lot of people like Star Wars, you may be in that chunk of people. Maybe you haven’t seen the movie yet, if you haven’t, go see it NOW!

In the end, “Rogue One” was everything I wanted and more. Is it better than last year’s “The Force Awakens”? In my opinion, no. As a movie, I enjoyed “The Force Awakens” slightly more than I enjoyed this. However, this movie overall was awesome, I want to see it again, and hopefully since I don’t have any 70mm IMAX screens near me, I can go see it in IMAX laser sometime soon. Also, before I announce my rating, let me just say that coming up with a final rating for this movie was HARD. There were some problems I had in the beginning of this movie, some of which I mentioned, but in the end, the positives outweighed the negatives by a high amount and the flaws I mentioned are undeniably forgivable, so that means I’m going to give “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”, a 10/10. I would like to have you know that this rating could change, part of me while watching this movie thought this was a 9 the whole time based on some parts of the beginning feeling jumpy and everything, but in the end, I got what I wanted so that makes me happy. I hope to go see Rogue One again sometime soon, maybe by the end of the year, or if there are no good movies next January and everything sucks, I can make up for it by watching this. Guys, it’s not much longer until the end of the year, I’m hoping to see a couple more movies this year, I’m not gonna review all of them though. Some of the movies I hope to see are “Arrival”, “Now You See Me 2”, “Criminal”, “Office Christmas Party”, “Jason Bourne”, “Equity”, and “Sully”. I’m trying to get as many movies as I can under my belt before I officially unleash my top best and worst movies of the year, I cannot wait to show this all to you and if you do go see Rogue One this weekend, depending on which theater and time you choose, GOOD LUCK FINDING A SEAT. It wasn’t that hard for me because so many theaters in my area have reserved seating and the theater I went to did not, however it did have an IMAX, so I imagine so many people were apprehensive of going to this theater just because finding a seat in general must be a pain. Anyways, stay tuned for more reviews, and please go see Rogue One this weekend, it’s amazing. Scene Before is your click to the flicks!

Today I saw the new teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Homecoming. What did I think about it? Well, I’ll tell you right now. If you have seen Captain America: Civil War this summer and another part of you happens to live under a rock, let me just remind you that this is taking place in the same universe as that movie so that means this movie takes place in the same universe as The Avengers.

What is my number one highlight from the trailer? Well to me it’s obvious, Tom Holland as Spider-Man. First off, this is the first on-screen Spider-Man played by an actual teenager, and not just some adult playing a teenager. Although don’t get me wrong, for adults playing teenagers, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield did a fine job. At the very beginning of the trailer there was this little joke that Spider-Man made because he was in front of these guys, supposedly thieves, that had masks on, and each of these masks was an Avenger. For example there was one guy that was Thor and I noticed one that was the Hulk. Spidey spun his web towards these guys engaging in a fight with them and at the end of the clip I hear him say “You guys aren’t the real Avengers, the Hulk gave it away.” Based on this quote, I was able to tell that the writers understood Spider-Man humor, so good job writers!

While I do think Tom Holland is great casting choice as Spider-Man I will say that there is one casting choice that I may declare as one of the worst casting choices in superhero movie history, and that is Zendaya as Mary Jane Watson. Over the previous summer, I made a post saying that this was not a good choice, and I said this in defense of what several fans would think. In case you don’t know already, Zendaya is black, and I have nothing against black people, but I don’t see how a black person would fit as Mary Jane. And you know what? That actually may be the LEAST of my problems right now with this character. You know how Mary Jane is a redhead? SHE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE RED HAIR! You can argue with me saying that Kirsten Dunst from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies wasn’t a natural redhead but her hair was artificially red for the films! Like, I don’t even know what happened on set. Did the makeup department say no to hairspray or something? Like, what’s happening?! I don’t want to cause a big rant here, so let’s get my next positive, and that is Robert Downey Jr, AKA, Iron Man.

Yes, Iron Man will be in this movie and he seems to be Peter Parker’s mentor per se. Although I seriously wonder how this is going to work. In Captain America: Civil War, I don’t recall any sort of establishment that before that one scene where Tony Stark goes to Peter’s apartment in Queens that Tony and Peter even had a single interaction with each other. However, in Captain America: Civil War, it did show some videos of Peter flying around as Spidey in a rather poor looking suit (which I don’t have a problem with because I could tell Peter was just starting out as the web slinger) on a tablet. So from this, he more than likely just started out. But did he defeat anyone important along the way before he met Stark in Civil War? That’s a question I want an answer to. Maybe he saved lots of people before meeting Tony, and he didn’t defeat anyone prior to that, and that’s where Civil War comes in to fill the gap, maybe after he’s forced to go home, he meets his main antagonist of this movie, and that would make sense because then Tony can be Peter’s mentor and help him in taking down this bad guy. By the way, the main villain of the movie is Vulture if anyone is curious.

Do I have anything else to say? Well, if there is one thing, I think this would probably be a lot like Spider-Man 2 in terms of story. In Spider-Man 2 it made me think that Peter, a guy in college was struggling not only with his studies, but his personal life, along with his hero life. I can imagine the movie would have some elements with that, but the only difference is that Peter is in high school and Iron Man just so happens to possibly be his mentor.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about the “Spider-Man: Homecoming” teaser. I hope this movie’s good, I go into every movie wanting it to be good, but I seriously don’t think it’ll be GREAT. With MJ, I get it if you want to be progressive and change this white girl to a black girl, but the thing about that is while you are taking a progressive move, it is also unoriginal at the same time. It’s like when they changed the genders of the ghostbusters, I don’t hate them because they are women, I hate them because the idea of swapping something such as race or gender lacks originality. Also, on a more serious note, this is not a Marvel Studios movie. Sure, Marvel Studios has the right to use Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the Marvel Studios logo does show up in the trailer, but this is really from Sony, and I was not a mega fan of “The Amazing Spider-Man.” In reality, I’m just a thousand times more excited for the upcoming “Wonder Woman” film, Gal Gadot ACED it as Wonder Woman in “Batman v. Superman” and I will go as far to say that I think she is so much better as a character than Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Stay tuned for more reviews and just a reminder, ROGUE ONE IS OUT NEXT WEEK! Scene Before is your click to the flicks!