My Top 10 HORRIBLY-MISCAST Movie Characters

1. Topher Grace as Eddie Brock/Venom in Spider-Man 3 (2007)

2. Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern in Green Lantern (2011)

3. Aasif Mandvi as Zhao in The Last Airbender (2010)

4. Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

5. Megan Fox as April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

6. Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider in Ghost Rider 1-2 (2007-2012)

7. Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in The Fantastic Four (2015)

8. Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom in Fantastic Four 1-2 (2005-2007)

9. The Entire Cast of Dragonball Evolution (2009)

10. Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears (2002)

Quick Review of 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'

Last weekend, I thought it was the BEST X-MEN MOVIE I've ever seen! Really blew the previous 6 films away! An excellent redemption in the X-Men movie franchise! Officially the second best Marvel movie after The Avengers! I am so happy that it erased X-Men: The Last Stand and/or X-Men Origins: Wolverine from the original timeline besides stopping the creation of the Sentinels! At least the Days of Future Past storyline in this latest blockbuster movie isn't all messed up like the Dark Phoenix Saga in The Last Stand! The performances in Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence (*whistles*), and Hugh Jackman were outstanding! So proud that X-Men 1-2's Bryan Singer is back at the helm after departing the X-Men series to direct the overrated financially-disappointing Superman Returns. This movie really went back to the roots of the 1st two X-Men films thanks to the amazing dark tone and better writing compared to the lackluster direction of Brett Ratner in X3!
The time-traveling is one of the interesting, yet dangerous or convoluted, concepts in movie history. Having experienced time-traveling in Back to the Future and Men in Black 3, never knew what it would be like in X-Men: Days of Future Past. So Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde was able to send the future Logan/Wolverine's consciousness straight back to the year 1973 where Logan would wake up in his younger body to meet up with the young Charles Xavier in the time period set a decade after X-Men: First Class, and that their main goal is to stop Mystique from killing Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask which could only cause full retaliation from the U.S. government and immediately fast-track the development of the giant mutant-hunting robots that could cause total extinction to every last mutant on Earth.
Yes, the Quicksilver scene is certainly one of the biggest highlights in X-Men: Days of Future Past! The song "Time in the Bottle" made it so darn hilarious! Love that he's casually altering everything in slow-motion! Sure wish that he IS the "son of Magneto" if Fox would at least take the entire concept of X-Men a bit more seriously! Let's see if Kick-Ass and Godzilla's Aaron Taylor-Johnson can handle the other Quicksilver in next summer's Avengers: Age of Ultron!
Academy Award-winner Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique is awesome the way she fights! Like she has the same fighting skills as Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow! I think she handled it as good as Rebecca Romijn's before Rebecca made her anti-climatic exit as our favorite blue shape-shifting, cunning mutant in X3! She is just so hot and beautiful! I am glad that I recognized her completely since X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games!
The ending sure had me on the edge! Sentinels killing Storm, Colossus, Iceman, Bishop, Blink, Warpath, and Sunspot in cold blood was brutal and sad! Love how the young Magneto would lift up an entire football stadium to surround the White House with the reprogrammed Sentinels at his command! Wow! Amazingly awesome! Guess that's where they got the $200 million budget! By the time the movie comes to a close end, Logan would wake up in the future where there never was a war with the Sentinels. Every mutant that were killed by the Sentinels are all alive again. However, the events that occur after The Last Stand were changed as well, since they, along with The Wolverine, all count as events that lead to the dystopian future war. So that means that… Jean Grey is back from the dead! So the young Xavier did become aware of what would happen when he recruits Jean into the X-Men. That means we'll finally reimagine the Dark Phoenix event anytime we want, an event that should have been exactly like in the comic book unlike how it was handled on the big screen! But when Logan finally sees the resurrected Jean Grey (who appeared as a ghost to him in last summer's The Wolverine), a hand came to stop Logan from touching her face. And there it was! drumroll… Scott Summers, A.K.A. Cyclops, is alive! YES! Just what I have been expecting for 8 years after his upsetting abrupt death in X-Men: The Last Stand! It's never X-Men without the REAL LEADER at the top of chain of command! So this oughta be a lesson to James Marsden that he will NEVER agree to sign up for Superman Returns, making his underrated X-Men character's appearance in the threequel short-lived! It was the happiest moment that I have ever seen! With everything after 1973 in X-Men Origins: Wolverine supposedly altered, I hope this means that we'll finally have the proper Wolverine origin story told exactly the way it should be for us fans, this time remaining faithful to the dark and violent tone in the X2 Weapon X flashbacks! Even so, no more of that Weapon XI fiasco and say hello to the REAL Deadpool! I hope Ryan Reynolds would be happy, if his own Deadpool movie is already happening! Wonder what's gonna happen to the past Logan if Stryker, actually Mystique in disguise, will "take it from here"? Is this gonna lead to the Weapon X procedure already, when it shouldn't have happened until like the early to mid-1980s? Is that what the 3rd Wolverine movie (out until March 3rd, 2017) is going to be about? Or something else, rather?
I'd say that X-Men: Days of Future Past is the REAL X-Men 3 after leaving us hanging on with the way X3 ended by releasing 3 standalone prequels/spin-offs! It's good to see that Fox is getting the 14-year-old X-Men movie franchise back on track and made a movie that will truly relieve us of our bad tastes to X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine! Can't say the same for the Fantastic Four reboot films, as I only wish that Fox did gave their rights back to Marvel already like it did with Daredevil. I am so pumped up for X-Men: Apocalypse, coming May 27th, 2016! Let's see what the Age of Apocalypse looks like in a movie after we never get to see it in the abruptly-cancelled Wolverine and the X-Men (which only ran for one season and 26 episodes on the NickToons channel) except in a comic book. But nothing will absolutely top the original X-Men animated TV series, as well as Kids' WB's X-Men: Evolution, in terms of very faithful treatments to our favorite mutants and better storytelling compared to the movies!

Transformers: Age of Extinction Official Trailer Analysis

This… is the best Transformers movie sequel trailer I've ever seen! I am loving how this is going now that Shia LaBeouf is gone, and that there doesn't seem to be that many non-action stars, other than T.J. Miller (as Cade's friend Lucas), that are better off in a comedy movie! "After all we have done, humans are hunting us." Gotta hand it to ya, I agree with Prime. I thought the people of Earth would finally accept the Autobots as HEROES once the Decepticon threat appears to have finally ended in the last film. I mean, as Optimus stated before, "Your leaders will now understand. Decepticons will NEVER leave your planet alone." So is that really PROOF enough that the Autobots are NOT the reason the 'cons still attacked Earth after the AllSpark's destruction? This is precisely why I made a final video project of my own DOTM epilogue for Ms. Sowa's computer class last fall. Especially the canvas painting that I made at Prof. Madden's Painting I class. A painting of the face of AOE Optimus Prime with the words "Freedom" and "Respect," like it was a propaganda poster to remind all human oppressors that the Autobots deserve to be thanked for saving Chicago instead of getting put down.

Did I just see Galvatron lying there, only incomplete? How was he built by the humans? Does he have anything to do with the fallen Decepticon leader Megatron, according to his Hasbro bio? I hope it's true! 'Cause then it would be an excellent redemption for the movie version of Megatron if his remains are being used to create a supposedly tougher Galvatron who initially lacks a free will! I can't wait to see him develop a sentient life of his own the moment the human-made Transformers, including the red Bumblebee-knockoff Stinger, start turning against their own creators and attacked the city of Hong Kong! But what is this "rare, molecularly unstable metal" that Stanley Tucci's Joshua is talking about? Something that these non-Cybertronian robots are made of? How did they find such a precious, unknown element? Only one way to find out if this rare metal has anything to do with something back on Cybertron, long after the original Primes and the Dinobots (existed way before there were sentient Cybertronian beings?).

Seriously, what are these ships? Decepticons? Or are they ancient Cybertronians after the reign of the ancient Primes came to an end when they gave their lives to protect the Matrix of Leadership? Are these ships connected to the primitive-like Dinobots? I so hope that the movie will explain the Dinobots' presence before Optimus and his crew meet up with Grimlock and the Dinobots for the first time. If not, then an AOE prequel comic book about the Dinos would be nice.

Optimus Prime vs. Lockdown!

And Lockdown, oh wow! He sure looked like a bad boy! Decepticon or not, this is not the first time Lockdown has ever been aligned with neither one faction since he is a bounty hunter. Lance Henriksen would have been perfect to voice Lockdown again after Cartoon Network's Transformers Animated. Have to see how Mark Ryan (voices of Bumblebee (TF1 only) and ROTF Jetfire) will pull it off. Love that hook he is wielding! Certainly a nod-in to his Animated counterpart! He also has such an impressive transformation and a sick Lamborghini vehicle form! Am really looking forward to see an amazing robot-only scene where Lockdown begins to interrogate the imprisoned Optimus Prime inside his "Nightship." Now, for Optimus Prime vs. Lockdown. Wow-ee! Just exactly the final fight I need to see in a TF movie sequel! A Decepticon or whatever enemy fighting against the leader of the Autobots! Instead of a rogue traitorous Autobot, like Sentinel Prime, who unfortunately STOLE Megatron's spotlight like he makes the Decepticons obsolete (not to me they aren't!) he's really so "great"! "Who sent you here?" 'Bout to ask the same thing. Why was Lockdown here on Earth? Did Unicron sent him? What was his bounty? Can't stand the suspense!

Do I sense a perfect chemistry going on here!? Optimus and Mark Wahlberg's Cade look like they're going to have the best human-robot interaction ever! Them sharing what they have in common, like their beliefs in whatever race they sought to protect and what it means to do what is right and necessary (ergo, a reminder why Optimus HAS to kill Megatron and Sentinel Prime)! Optimus would make an excellent Autobot guardian to Cade, like how Bumblebee is to Sam and Soundwave is to Dylan! Everyone should know that this is where Cade's going to convince Optimus to have faith in the humans again! It's not Prime's fault that he has to shoot at Savoy's men back in Texas (shooting at the ground, if you look carefully) when they were about to hurt Cade and his daughter! Perhaps the humans hunting and maybe killing many of his surviving Autobots except Bumblebee is what led Prime to immediately lose faith in humanity despite what he did to save Earth in Dark of the Moon! Age of Extinction had better prove the haters wrong about Optimus' "aggressive" killing when he is in a WAR that involves a lot of killing and usually take no prisoners of war! So glad that this movie's starting to treat the robots like REAL CHARACTERS when they're anything BUT CGI props, regardless of "budget issues"! As long as they have better pacing without any abrupt transitions!

The biggest highlight, however, is Optimus Prime riding on Grimlock charging towards the city to attack the Decepticon-turned human-made Transformers! Gonna be a WHOLE LOT BETTER than what we saw in TF3! Hopefully now, the Autobots get to have their moment to shine if the NEST soldiers are no longer at their aid! I wonder how this fourquel is going to end? Casualties for both Autobots or Decepticons? Is Bumblebee really going to talk since TF1, even without Ratchet (assumed to be dead) repairing him? What will become of Optimus Prime when the Battle of Hong Kong is all over? I will find soon enough in 6 weeks! The Bayformers are back… better than ever! Autobots, transform and ROLL OUT! Do not disappoint us like 2 and 3 did!

NOVA Spring Semester of 2014 is Finished!

"For the first time in forever" (from Disney's Frozen)… IT IS OVER!!! My entire year at NOVA is complete since 2011! In this semester, I got all A's in Drawing II (Knapp), Animation I (Treadway), Intro to Graphic Skills (Natrella), and Painting I (Madden) and one B in History II (Porter)! I am ready to graduate the Northern Virginia Community College next Sunday!

Quick Review of 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'

In preparation for this year's X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2 weeks, I saw this 1st Wolverine prequel spin-off on my iPad last month. Now I understand why everybody disliked this film as much as X-Men: The Last Stand, even if I initially enjoyed it 5 years ago. Despite exploring more of Logan's past, it unfortunately failed to live up to the concept and completely lacked the violent nature that made Wolverine the most popular X-Men character in Marvel history. The only good part in X-Men Origins is the beginning with Logan first discovering his claws as a Canadian child in 1845 before he ran off with half-brother Victor Creed (soon to be his archenemy Sabretooth) to participate in the coming battles from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. Another only good scene is the part with Team X led by William Stryker, the main enemy of the "greatest X-Men movie of all time," X2: X-Men United. The end of the Weapon X procedure was like my least favorite scene ever. While it felt awesome the way Logan awakens after being injected with a seemingly-powerful metal called adamantium, he just didn't kill enough of Stryker's guards to make him as violent as he was in the flashbacks seen in X2. I mean, seriously, "the production team not satisfied with the Weapon X facility design"? I thought that was perfect as it is in one of Logan's memories in the 2nd X-Men movie! Why change it!? What Wolverine did upon receiving these metal claws is EXACTLY how he should be! Especially how the facility is designed compared to this! Very dark and gritty! Precisely why I see X-Men Origins: Wolverine first and THEN X2: X-Men United just to make me FORGET the poorly-handled Weapon X procedure! That part should NOT be "officially canon" in the X-Men movie universe! Treat this movie as a STANDALONE spin-off prequel (not "directly linked" to the other predecessors) like how Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is treated as a standalone sequel with NO DIRECT CONNECTION to the 2007 one. To make Wolverine fans happy, the X2 flashbacks of Weapon X should be OFFICIALLY REAL, NOT as "distorted memories." I can see why the action and the overall tone in the video game version of X-Men Origins is way more intense than the movie.

Now as for the "Merc with the Mouth," I wasn't completely upset with how Deadpool, played by Ryan Reynolds, was handled in the end for I am unaware with this character. But once I realized that "Weapon XI" and Wade Wilson/Deapool are the same person, I actually like him better when he was still Wade in the Team X Mission to Lagos sequence. The only part that made Ryan Reynolds THE Deadpool is his non-stop chattering with his fellow teammates and the way he fights with his man-made swords to kill the guys guarding the precious metal (revealed to be adamantium) that Team X were actually after. But at least that the post-credits scene (now mostly paired with the movie in DVDs/Blu-rays) shows that he is still alive despite having his head cut off by Wolverine. And the way he shushes at the audience thus "breaking the 4th wall," this is a perfect opportunity to see more of him (IN COSTUME, THIS TIME) in his very own Deadpool movie starring Ryan Reynolds once again! That is if Fox has the guts to get it into immediate production due to the graphic violent content. But for now, the only non-comic book media that features Deadpool we will have to stick with is the 37-minute long animated film Hulk vs. Wolverine, his underrated titular video game, and the infamous Ultimate Spider-Man TV episode starring his namesake.
So overall, it feels like we've already learned how Logan got these adamantium claws in the 1st two X-Men films. X-Men Origins: Wolverine is basically a movie with VERY FEW plot points that live up to the title and has too many superfluous characters (like Fred Dukes/The Blob, Gambit, and young Scott Summers) and subplots (mutant prisoners and combining powers to create Weapon XI) with no importance to the story. And because of the Three Mile Island Accident scene, it makes it very hard to decide whether this film IS set "15 years" before Logan ever met the X-Men in the "not too distant future" (specifically the 2000s). It's almost as if this Wolverine movie may have to be completely ignored by fans, no matter how "canon" it is. However, the only X-Men Origins: Wolverine details that I can respectfully honor to join the X-Men movie continuity is Logan's first mutation as a kid, his participation in the wars and Team X, the source of adamantium, and his relationship with Sabretooth (before their last encounter in the 1st X-Men) and Kayla. But at least we have the X-Men 1990s Animated Series episodes "The Repo Men" and "Weapon X, Lies, and Videotape" that will tell the origin story of Wolverine a whole lot better than this so-called Wolverine movie! Glad that last summer's The Wolverine, set after X-Men 3 while taking Logan straight to Japan, made up for that mistake and truly shows how Hugh Jackman is awesome as the claw-slashing mutant who knows that "he is the best at what he does, and what he does isn't very nice"!