Four Movies in Three Days

I've been putting off seeing the so-called summer blockbusters because I had heard bad things about them, but my friend, Jacinta, came to visit me on Monday, so on Tuesday, we decided to go to the movies and see, "Shrek the Third."

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail or analysis about Shrek (or two of the other movies). It was enjoyable - not as good as the first two. My favorite part was the running joke of whenever the princesses (Fiona, Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Sleeping Beauty) were together: There would be a shot of most or all the princesses, the camera would cut to someone else in the scene, and when it returned to the princesses, Sleeping Beauty was zonked out, snoring. That never failed to make me laugh.

After the movie, Jacinta felt we should sneak into another one, and the only available one was, "Fantastic Four 2." The first FF movie wasn't all that great in my opinion. Fortunately, it looked like the first movie was a warm-up. FF2 was a lot better, and it really paid tribute to the comics in various ways like Stan Lee being turned away from Reed and Sue's wedding (happened in the comics), Doom stealing the Silver Surfer's powers, the introduction of the Fantasti-Car, etc.

Spoilers: What was one of the nicer references was the Human Torch basically becoming the Super-Skrull. Towards the climatic battle at the end, the Torch (whose molecules are behaving weirdly due to his first encounter with the Surfer) absorbs all the powers of the team so he can beat the snot out of the Silver Doom (Doom Surfer?). So he still had his fire powers which allowed him to fly up to Doom, hit him with the Thing's fist then stretch out ala Mister Fantastic to grab him and pull him back in for another smack. The Invisible Woman's powers might have slid by me as there was a lot of action at that point. Unfortunately, Galactus was a giant cloud instead of a giant humanoid, but at the end, when the Surfer is rebelling against him, you can see a firey part of the cloud shaped like his helmeted head.

More Spoilers: That was Tuesday. Wednesday saw me back for, "Spider-Man 3." Better than I expected. I'm not a big Venom fan so I hope his death in this one is permanent. Tobey Maguire got to stretch a bit as an actor in this one - particularly the scenes where he's being affected by the evil alien symbiote/costume. Best line (when Spidey is "evil" and fighting Harry Osborn, the new Green Goblin): "Aw, is Goblin Junior gonna cry?" Sandman was definitely a good character. Kind of tragic, not overly so. In the comics, he eventually goes good(er), and as he's the only Spidey villain in 3 movies to not die, hopefully we'll see him in the future.

Today (Thursday) was, "Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At My Patience's End." I'll have to start a new post to unleash my venom at this... film.