Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Seeing the Summer Blockbusters

I’ve seen both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness on their opening weekends. I saw them at the Regal Cinemas at Gallery Place. I’ll talk more about each movie but first a little about getting into the place.

Both times I saw the films I picked the first show of the day on Sunday. I thought there would be fewer people and for Iron Man I had to meet someone for brunch. Both times I get to the theater about half an hour early. Both times the doors are locked. Now the way the theater is set up it is a very small mall. The box office for the theater in the lobby of the mall. The theater itself is on the third floor.

I don’t understand why the doors were locked. Sunday morning some of the theaters are rented out for church services. When I saw Iron Man I was let in by someone from the church. I then went over to the other side of the building and let someone in. We had looked at each other across the lobby earlier and had both shrugged our shoulders as to why the doors were locked. I think we were both thinking why can’t we get in. The second time I was let in by the security guard. Now sometime after being let in all the doors were unlocked. But again you think half an hour before the movies starts the doors should be open.

One more quick comment. For both movies I saw between 7 and 10 previews lasting close to 20 minutes. First thing how do you remember that many previews. Ask someone the previews they saw and very few people remember one let alone 10.

Now on to the movies.

Iron Man 3
I enjoyed the film. It was fun. Robert Downey has the wise-cracking Tony Stark down. There are some very funny exchanges with a kid, Harley, (Harley tries to ask all sorts of questions the worm hole Stark went through in the Avengers which causes Stark to have a panic attack and well there are a few couple of scenes with this theme) about in Tennessee where Stark has gone to trace down a lead about the evil villain the Mandarin. Turns out the Mandarin is not all that he seems or actually more than he seems. I won’t give away this very interesting twist but will say that Ben Kingsley is very menacing and well funny at the same time.

The final climatic battle scene in the ship yards is nothing sort of spectacular. Make sure you stay until the very end of the movie. Yes that means after all the credits role for another very funny scene. That’s all I’ll say on it. Stay until the end.

I saw the movie in 3-D. It did add to some of the battle scenes but I’m not sure it is totally necessary to see the movie in 3-D.

Star Trek into Darkness
First off I think 3-D really added to the film. Especially when Kirk and Khan are shot from the Enterprise to attempt to board the Vengeance. Very very effective film making here.

It’s not all that easy to tell who the good guys are from the bad guys. Or maybe how bad the bad guys are. There seems to be two levels here.

There is a very funny scene where Kirk, Spock and Uhura are descending to Kronos. Uhura makes a snide remark toward Spock (it seems they’ve been fighting). Says she doesn’t want to talk about and then proceeds to talk about it. She brings Kirk into the discussion as well. What adds to the humor is they have their backs to each other as they man their posts on the ship.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the evil Khan. Or at least we think he is the evil villain until we find out a little more on what is going on and how he’s been used. Kirk ends up being played by both Star Fleet and Khan.

There is homage to the Wrath of Khan which I will only mention but it is very well done.

In all a really good movie. All the actors are very good. The building of friendship and trust between the characters is wonderful to watch. This is especially true of Kirk and Spock. Highly recommend this one.

I think I’m going to have to see it again.

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