The Arrowverse Part 3: Worldbuilding/ Legends of Tomorrow Pilot

Part 1
Part 2

So the real reason I got into the Flash and consequentially into the 2^nd season of Arrow was because I saw the set up and cast for Legends of Tomorrow, watched the first episode, and needed something to watch to keep myself in the same mood, while holding myself over until the next episode.

So I’ve discovered is that the characters of Legends of Tomorrow are all side characters we’ve seen in a couple episodes of either The Flash or Arrow.

I’ll do a full review of Legends of Tomorrow at the end of the first season, but I do have to comment on what it means for Arrow, The Flash, and the whole Arrowverse being created.

Since DC is deciding to make their movie and TV universe separate, they have the freedom to bring in any character from the DC universe, regardless of whether or not they have shown up or will show up on either medium, TV or movie.

This means that Grant Gustin can be Barry Allen and Ezra Miller can be Barry Allen too and no continuity is hurt or disrupted. Two different universes, not connected.

Now of course the TV universe is limited because of budgets. You’re not going to have a Superman show up in the Arrowverse because in the world we live in, Superman has the ability to destroy entire cities, something that is a little bit harder to do on TV. Furthermore, these stories surrounding Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman require big budgets to make their stories worth watching, something that can be done in movies, but not so much in TV.

On the other hand, the movies are limited because a Green Arrow character probably won’t work in a DC universe because it doesn’t fit with the realistic and gritty world being created by Batman v Superman. How can Oliver Queen go toe to toe with titans like Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, etc.

Furthermore, movies can’t delve into the lesser known characters as much because not everybody knows who Firestorm is, or who Captain Cold is. By the way I think it is absolutely hilarious that they were able to get both Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell as Captain Cold and Heatwave as they were brothers in Prison Break, one of my favorite shows back in the day. It works perfectly for a small scale like Legends of Tomorrow or other shows in the Arrowverse but it’s not marketable enough for a big budget movie.

Furthermore these shows can develop a lot of the villains that we haven't really heard of or perhaps want to market for future projects, most namely Suicide Squad in Arrow Season 2. 

What’s great for the TV shows is the fact that there are no shortage of DC characters that can be adapted for the small screen whereas movies can really only use the profitable ones that are going to get people in the seats at theaters.

In saying that, I don’t think Legends of Tomorrow is the last show that is going to show up in this Arrowverse. Supergirl is connected, Constantine is connected, and I can only imagine what they have in the pipeline over at DC for the future of their TV shows.

And from what I’ve seen, Legends of Tomorrow is moving farther and farther away from the CW drama and more into a full-fledged comic book show, and I’m excited.

The more content they develop, the more shows like The Flash that they make, the larger and larger this universe can be and the more fun it will be to have them all combine forces at the end of the day.

But what excites me even more is the possibilities of how the TV universe and movie universe could connect.

To be continued... Theories and implications

The Arrowverse Part 2: The Flash Season 1

Part 1.

That is in fact the very reason it took me so long to get into The Flash. I had watched the first season of Arrow and I only expected The Flash to follow in suit and just be the  standard CW superhero show that I’ve come to know from Arrow.

Boy was I wrong.

Arrow always seemed to stem from a sense of reality but with that CW stink added to it. It was like the CWs attempt at a Christopher Nolan-esc Batman TV show. Gritty…ish, comic book-y… ish, and full of your attractive rich people getting into shinanagans that we as Americans seem to enjoy.

The Flash is totally different.

The Flash centers around a young CSI investigator named Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin). Barry’s mother was murdered when he was young by what Barry says was a red flash. Of course nobody believes him and his father is wrongfully accused and found guilty of the murder of his mother. Barry spends his entire life trying to figure out the mystery behind his mother’s death until he is struck by lightning in the result of a super conductor explosion done by a science experiment gone wrong at the nearby STAR Labs.

Barry goes into a  coma lasting for 9 months and awakens with superhuman abilities of intense speed.

He is joined by the team at STAR Labs, led by the brilliant but mysterious Harrison Wells (played by Tom Cavanagh), and he makes it his quest to develop his abilities, fight crime in Central City, and

reveal the identity of his mother’s killer, all with elements of super human abilities, monsters, and even time travel surrounding his circumstances.

I cannot rave enough about The Flash. Where as in both seasons I’ve watched of Arrow, I’ve always felt it was a CW show that just happened to have comic book heroes in it, The Flash feels like a comic book show that just happens to be broadcasted on the CW.

The show just seems to have more fun and its not banking on attractive rich people carrying the show with their out of touch issues we can only dream to relate to, instead its focused on the characters and their struggles. They have a good cast of talented people, new and old, who while not ugly people, aren’t just there for their looks. And you have a compelling mystery throughout.

Grant Gustin is the ideal situation for the CW because the guy is a decent actor and he’s a good looking guy. He made an appearance on Arrow Season 2, (an episode I watched after I watched the first season of The Flash) and he’s just a likeable character. While he’s a good looking guy, you can buy that he was interested in science, was bullied as a kid, and ended up the way he is. The best comparison I have with this is Felicity Smoak. Maybe it’s a double standard, but I’m trying to imagine a backstory that ends with a smoking hot girl working on computers and still manages to look gorgeous doing it. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I just see it as too good to be true. On an unrelated note, The Flash actually made me like Felicity a lot more and made me question why her and Barry didn’t actually end up together, the show itself says they’re perfect for one another.

But back to the Flash, all the supporting characters for the most part are really good. Harrison Wells is a great character because he is shrouded in mystery the ENTIRE time. Cisco and Katelyn, while they could have turned into those annoying British idiots in Agents of SHIELD distinguish themselves perfectly and really become the heart and soul of this super team.

Barry’s adoptive father (played by an underrated favorite of mine, Jesse L. Martin) is the obligatory cop of the show but he’s a lot more relatable than Detective Lance is in Arrow because he’s a kind guy. He cares about Barry more than anything and when he eventually figures out he’s The Flash, he’s totally cool about it and that relationship is conducive rather than just another drama point.

The only characters I can really point to as the obligatory good looking people are Iris, Detective West’s daughter and Barry’s adoptive sister and secret crush, and her boyfriend Eddie Thawne. These two are the only people in the show that remind me that I’m watching a CW show because they are the really good looking people doing their best to give a good performance. And surprisingly, they’re not horrible. They’re not great and I want their time limited as much as they can be, but the show does that actually. The show is not focused on their drama as much as I’ve seen CW shows focus on that kind of stuff in the past. The show is on Barry Allen and his development as The Flash. 

Everything they do affects Barry and that is the focus. They’re not going to disrupt the story because Iris has a party to go to and she doesn’t have a date or some BS like that. Her personal problems directly affect Barry and his journey as the Flash and if they don’t they are given a very, very small role.

What’s more, because The Flash evolves the Arrow universe to make it a universe where there are super powered individuals, it feels more like a comic book. But what’s more, instead of just bringing in villains for the sake of bringing in villains, they’re bringing in villains to just have fun with them. For god’s sake, Mark Hamill was in an episode playing The Trickster. And it works perfectly because that episode was full of call backs to when Hamill played Trickster in an old Flash TV show, it had a really funny Star Wars reference, it was really fun and I had a lot of fun watching it. And I won’t give too much away but the show just goes all out comic book. It’s starting to use iconic DC characters that probably won’t get their due in the movies because they’re either so ridiculous or they’re not known enough. This was something that Arrow was starting to do once the show had its designated success but The Flash did it from the very beginning.

There are filler episodes in this season but I do feel like they are either good episodes, or they tie in, if not at least slightly in order to create a larger world.

If I had one complaint about the show, it would probably be the shoe horned in world building with the  Arrow universe. It kind of makes me wonder if the show runners knew Arrow was going down the tube and wanted to use The Flash to push more fans to go back to Arrow, but I just felt like Felicity or Oliver showed up too much and honestly, those aren’t my favorite episodes at all.

I of course only watched the second season and saw a couple of cameos from people in The Flash, but it seemed like those were more to help promote the show before it actually started up.

The other thing worth mentioning is that while it feels like a comic book show that just happened to be on the CW, I still do see the soap opera-ness that is very present in the show. Some of the acting isn’t phenomenal and there still is a little bit of that CW drama trying to sneak its way in.

However, that is overshadowed by the good characters, the fun and actually memorable villains, and the overall comic book feel of this show. It looks fun to film and I have to give them credit for that.

The Flash is the very reason I’m doing this 4 parter because it showed me that there might be some validity this this Arrowverse that is being created and makes me very excited for what they could do in the future.

To be continued... (World Building/ Legends of Tomorrow)

The Arrowverse Part 1: Arrow Season 2

February continues to be the month of 2 for ones on my site. Starting with Kill Bill, and now two seasons of TV, Arrow Season 2 and The Flash.

Now you may ask why I would combine these two shows, and the answer is pretty simple.

These two shows are the beginning of a really cool thing that DC has started on the CW. I have said a lot of bad things about the CW and I still don’t think it’s the right network for DC to really make a dent in the superhero world, however, I do have to respect what DC has created with their shows on the CW and it started with these two seasons.

These two seasons have created a world where Oliver Queen and Barry Allen can show up on each other’s shows more than Thor can show up in an Iron Man movie, or anybody from the movies can show up in Agents of SHIELD.

When they announced that The Flash was coming to the CW, I questioned whether or not this world was going to be connected to the DC cinematic universe being started by Batman v Superman. Since then, I have figured out that these world are totally different and they have casted a new Flash to be the Flash of the movie universe and Grant Gustin would be the Flash of the TV universe.

At first I thought this wasn’t a great choice, but now I think its one of the best choices that DC could have ever made and I will explain in the review.

So how this is going to work is I will do a brief overview of both seasons, tell you what I liked and disliked about both, and then I’m going to talk about the world building they are doing between these shows and others like it, and then I’ll talk about some theories and implications that could happen because of what these shows started.

I will actually do these posts in a series of parts. Stay tuned each one will come up soon enough. 

Even though I watched The Flash first, I will start chronologically and that starts with Arrow Season 2.

Arrow Season 2

Now, I was not a big fan of Arrow Season 1. You can go back and see why, but something that I don’t think I mentioned enough was the fact that it didn’t feel like a superhero show, it instead felt like a CW soap opera that just so happened to focus on a vigilante who shoots arrows.

Season 2 did a lot of the same thing.

Season 2 starts a little bit after the events of Season 1 and The Glades of Starling City have been decimated by the actions of Malcolm Merlyn in the first season. Oliver Queen (played once again by Stephen Amell) and the hooded vigilante have disappeared (coincidence?) and there have been a number of copy cat vigilantes in his wake.

Moira Queen is in prison for her involvement in the undertaking of the Glades from the first season. A new alderman named Sebastian Blood has risen to popularity in the high crime and low infrastructure of the Glades since the undertaking.

Probably the only person doing well is Thea Queen who has taken over Oliver’s club and has a good relationship with her boyfriend Roy.

Laurel Lance is still grieving the loss of Tommy from the first season and her father is now a patrol officer after losing his detective badge from events of the first season I had forgotten at this point.

Obviously Oliver comes back from his disappearance and he finds his family’s business at risk of being taken over by a new sexy business woman.

Now that I’ve caught you up with what has happened since the first season, its pretty obvious what happens.

Oliver returns as the vigilante but he has decided to honor the memory of Tommy and not kill the criminals he goes after. He is once again joined by Felicity Smoak and Diggle.

Throughout the season there are flashbacks to Oliver’s time on the island and his journey with Slade Wilson and the others he met on the island in the first season.

The first thing to say about this season is that it is a drastic improvement.

One of the biggest problems of the first season was I felt like there were a lot of filler episodes and a lot of them were populated by dumb soap opera bullshit that I was not interested in. I didn’t care that Thea was on drugs and all the drama between Moira and her new husband, I wanted to see how it connected to the larger story.

Season 2 is a lot more streamlined.

It however is not totally immune to the CW stink that still permeates in this show pretty badly. The show still feels like a CW show that just happens to center around a guy who shoots arrows… but it does do a little bit better of a job, and a lot of that comes with the comic book feeling this show has over its CW drama feel. They bring in superhumans in this season. They some out of the ordinary elements and it begins to feel a little bit more like a comic book show as opposed to a CW show.

The characters once again are navigated by whatever is profitable for CW audiences and the performances follow in suite, that being if the actor is attractive, there is a strange belief that because of that they can act too. However, there were a couple twists and turns that despite not being surprised by them, I did end up enjoying their pay out.

Instead of the flashbacks hurting the continuity created by the earlier season which I’ve seen a lot in Once Upon a Time, Arrow has created a good amount of time to play around with and while they’ve breach on breaking  that continuity, they have done a decent job at using flashbacks and introducing new characters because of it.

The heroes of this show are pretty good and they have been really forming into a good team. Stephen Amell still hasn’t impressed me as an actor but he continues to be a serviceable hero for this show. Other characters like Felicity, continue to annoy me because they only got the job because they were attractive, however some have begun to grow on me, like Felicity. One thing I will say about this season is that Oliver and his loved ones are always the subject of attack. It always seems like Laurel is being held hostage, or is in danger in this season and it gets a tad ridiculous and over the top.

Speaking of which, Laurel was actually kind of an interesting character in this. The show takes her to a pretty dark place, and while she’s not that great of an actress and is probably only there because of her looks, she does a decent job at it.

The romantic drama between Oliver and his girlfriends continue and they really bring out the dumb in people, however its not the worst I’ve seen. Can be dumb still, but not horrible.

Before I move onto the villains, I do want to talk about a character that they brought back that at first I was really skeptical about but ended up really liking and that is Sarah.

An essential part about Oliver’s redemption and journey was the fact that he cheated on Laurel with Sarah and Sarah paid with her life on the Queens Gambit. It was such a huge blow for the Lance family that it really defined the struggle and their eventual forgiveness of Oliver as they see he’s a changed person.

Then suddenly, Sarah turns up totally alive.

Now I actually figured this out not by watching the 2^nd season of Arrow, but by watching the first episode of Legend of Tomorrow (we’ll get to that later). I originally saw this as kind of a cheap ploy to add a character. I’m sure she existed in the comics but I thought it would have been better to keep her dead.

And to a certain extent, I still do think that. I think that having Sarah die because of Oliver’s choices was great choice and adds to the number of reasons why the Lance’s hate him and eventually get over that hatred.

But Sarah proves herself to be a really great character by the end of the 2^nd season. There’s so much in her backstory that I’m sure they will jump into in the third season, but her involvement makes things interesting. I still don’t think it was great to have her come back, but the way they use her after they poorly explain why she’s alive is done very well that I’m able to forgive it for the most part.

But I do want to talk about the villains of this season because it takes a good long while for the main villain of this show to eventually show up. This was the case for the first season and I think the show suffered because of this but the second season made things pretty interesting from the get go

And unlike the first season, everything seems to eventually connect and be apart of a larger story. And that story all centers around the plot of Slade Wilson.

Now I go back and forth my thoughts on Slade Wilson because on one hand, he looks like a badass. He looks like the Slade Wilson you see in pictures and different mediums he has been in. But on the other hand, he’s not the greatest actor in the world. I can’t say I’ve seen Manu Bennett in a lot of things and I understand why. Unfortunately he really falls into the categories of a lot of CW villains in that they look intimidating and there’s a certain level of attractiveness to them, but they’re horrible actors and that is the case with Slade Wilson.

I think at the end of the day, Deathstroke is more of an intimidating figure than he is a great villain. I thought the scheme he hatches throughout the show is really well done and it really is the crux of why the second season is done very well. Deathstroke is just an example of when good writing overrides a performance. It doesn’t matter how bad of an actor the guy is, as long as his actions affect the people who range from mediocre to good in this show, I actually don’t mind it at all. I’ve been reading things recently that have said that Deathstroke is involved with other DC projects and probably won’t be returning to Arrow for quite a while and that is a shame. But if they put the good writing into a villain that actually has a quality actor behind it, I think the future of Arrow is in good hands (however I have heard that the 3^rd season is not that good so I’m not holding my breath.

The big take away from Arrow Season 2 is that this season is done well. The writing got a lot better and it makes up for the crummy acting and the cheap budget of a CW show. But I still go back to the fact that haunts this show for me in that it still has that CW stink about it.

There’s still the family drama, there’s still the characters that are not relatable due to their social standing and their rich white people problems. There’s still the dumb situations that nobody in their right mind would get into, like Sarah bringing Oliver to a family dinner trying to keep the secret that they are sleeping together, because we all know that that’s going to get out. These dumb situations just lower the bar for me and again, it doesn’t matter how many cool pull ups or arrows Oliver Queen fires, there’s still a CW stink about this show and it hinders me from taking it seriously.

To be continued... (The Flash)

The Last Five Years

So this is a pretty big departure from the other movies that I have reviewed recently (Deadpool, Kill Bill, etc) , but I did feel like I needed to review something of a love story as it is Valentines Day.

I had heard about The Last Five Years when it came out in theaters and I actually really wanted to see it. I don't know exactly when it was but I think I had the memory of Into The Woods in my mind and when I heard it was a independent musical film... starring Anna Kendrick, I was in.

However I did not see it in theaters and kind of forgot about it until last night when I saw it on Netflix. Again, its Valentines Day, let's review a love story.

The Last Five Years is based on a musical of the same name. It follows the story of Cathy (played by Anna Kendrick) and Jamie (played by Jeremie Jordan), Cathy is a struggling actress in New York and Jamie is an up and coming writer.

If you're a fan of theater, you know that this is a textbook set up for any thespian. Every writer or actor sees themselves in this set up, hell I know people in this situation. I'm not saying anything against it, its just funny how manufactured this situation seems and how off-broadway this narrative is.

The thing that makes this story different is the format in which it is done.

The story takes place over a 5 year relationship between these two. It is taken from both the perspectives of Jamie and Cathy but from different ends of the relationship. Cathy's perspective starts at the end of the relationship while Jamie's starts from the beginning.

And of course, 98% of it is sung.

Now I don't claim to have a huge background in musical theater, however, I do feel like I know a little bit about it and because of that, the entire plot being sung is not a huge deal for me.

But if people had a problem with a big budget film like Les Mis being 100% sung, they're going to have an issue with The Last Five Years being 98% sung.

The other interesting part about the format is that the movie really only focuses on the two main characters. There are a few other characters in the film but they barely talk and they have very limited contribution to the story. This is a movie mainly focused on these two and the construction and demolishing of a relationship all at the same time.

And the performances are good. The interesting part about this movie is that its a lot of one on one conversations and its almost always one person singing while the other person listens and responds by just speaking.

Its a really interesting and different kind of movie and it makes sense to do this particular musical as an independent film in its adaptation.

Honestly, the story isn't that grandiose or epic, its just a very personal story between these two so it wasn't going to garner any huge crowds to see it so it made sense it had a small release and was a cheap independent film.

However, that doesn't really put aside the fact that the story is a little bit contrived. While Jordan and Kendrick do a good job with the characters they are provided, there's not much of a balance between these two characters. I don't think the movie was intending this but there is a clear good guy and bad guy in this relationship and you see it from the very beginning.

It does do a good job at creating a real-ish relationship between these two, especially with the kinds of struggles they go through and their ambition and dreams on the line, but at the end of the day, you're going to like one of them and kind of really hate the other one and I don't think it was as balanced as it could have been.

I suppose another thing worth mentioning is that at a certain point these stories collide and they are on the same time.

Not only do things get a little bit confusing for a hot minute, but I don't feel like the second half of the movie was as clear and concise as the first half way. This is mainly because these two don't sing together until that middle section and it takes a little bit to tear them apart again.

I'm sure that's just me not being as smart as other people might but I can imagine the middle section taking a little bit for people to understand what is going on and get them back on track with the format of the show.

The last thing worth really mentioning is of course, the music.

The music is... good.

Its not gonna blow your mind, its not awful, its just kind of forgettable. I definitely enjoyed the songs while they were playing but there's nothing that is going to stick in your head or make you want to come back for more.

Its a pretty standard musical and I will say Anna Kendrick and Jeremie Jordan are both very talented singers, they just aren't anything that you're going to want to rush out and buy the soundtrack to this movie for.

Probably the most memorable song is "Summer in Ohio" and my god is Anna Kendrick cute in that song, I just don't think she has the voice for a big show stopper which I kind of feel like that song was suppose to be.

Now I'm not saying she's bad, far from it. But even in a movie like Pitch Perfect, she's more likely to sing a song like the Cup Song, very personal, more quiet, not so much the huge songs. And it actually works for her in this musical because that's what a lot of these songs are.

Overall, The Last Five Years is a pretty standard love story musical. Its the kind of movie you'd watch if you wanted something a little bit different than your standard Nicholas Sparks novel, but were in a mood for music and had just watched Memento.

The format and the performances are good, but the story and the music are all pretty standard. You're not gonna have a worm in your ear for weeks after you see this movie but you might be entertained at least, and while it is pretty standard all around, its just different enough to be a good date movie. Happy Valentines Day.

Have you seen The Last Five Years? What did you think about it? Comment and Discuss below. You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on twitter you can also get updates on future movie news and reviews as well as live tweets (sometimes) of movies I'm watching live.

I'll leave you with this. I have no idea why Anna Kendrick and Kristen Chenowith did a performance of "For Good" from Wicked... but its on the internet. Might as well put it up! Enjoy!

Deadpool

So up until about two weeks ago, I was only kind of excited for Deadpool. It was a comic book movie yes, but I wasn't overly excited for it. I thought Deadpool was a fun character but I didn't really pay that much attention to it.

And then the marketing team struck. The marketing for this movie was probably the most perfect marketing that could ever happen.

But still I was just ready for a comedic romp, nothing over the moon.

And then the reviews started hitting. I was hearing nothing but good things about this movie. I was hearing that the only people who didn't like this movie are the people that just didn't get it. It just made me so excited.

And I may have oversold this movie to myself.

Little bit of a background.

This is not the first go around for Deadpool. Wade Wilson did appear in X-men Origins Wolverine and was turned into "Deadpool"

Now honestly, at the time, I really didn't have much of a connection to the character and didn't really know the implication of the actions that happen in Origins. In essence, the character who is known as "The Merc With the Mouth" has his mouth sewn shut.

At the time I just saw Ryan Reynolds turned into a creepy mutant bastard monster but I realize now, that really messed with the continuity of the character in a way that fans were not willing to forgive.

So X-men Origins just kind of fails and everything that was supposed to sprout from that movie was brushed aside, including Ryan Reynold's performance as Deadpool.

But then this showed up online... a quick test footage reel of a pretty cgi deadpool fighting a group of bad guys in an SUV voiced by Ryan Reynolds.

And after a long time of speculation on whether or not this movie was actually going to happen, they announced it, Deadpool was going to have his own single feature starring Ryan Reynolds again as "The Merc with the Mouth".

Now again, I don't really know the backstory of Deadpool, I don't know the comics that well and I'm not a die hard fan. But I did like the test footage and I was at least a little bit excited for this movie to come out.

Deadpool follows the story of Wade Wilson (played by Ryan Reynolds) who is a former special forces operative who is now a mercenary.

Right off the bat, Wade Wilson is not a good guy. He's basically the bad guy who is not as bad as other bad guys and kills and intimidates the actual bad guys. I would say anti-hero but that's not always the correct term and can be used in the wrong way a lot these days.

Wade meets Vanessa Carlysle (played by Morena Baccarin) and the two begin just a down right adorable relationship.

I won't say its as adorable as Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone as Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey in The Amazing Spider-man movies, but its just different. At first it seems these two are really into sex but you see their friendship and love for one another grow and grow and its just down right adorable...

And then sad when Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer.

This is all stuff you can see in the trailer but in short, he is offered an opportunity to cure his cancer and become a super hero but is instead tricked to be turned into a super slave by an evil mutant named Ajax (played by Ed Skrien) and his muscle Angel (played by Gina Carano).

Wade survives the torture and comes out with super human abilities but he also looks like an avocado had sex with another avocado...

The rest of the story is a raunchy, hilarious revenge tale of Wade Wilson tracking down Ajax and looking to find a cure for his ugliness before he kills him.

Along the way he is periodically joined by two X-men, Colossus (played by Stefan Kapicic) and Mega Sonic Teenage Warhead (played by Brianna Hildebrand).

And my god, this movie is just fun.

Its not trying to be anything its not, yes it has some tie ins to X-men but its not trying to force its way into some kind of expanded universe or cross over.

The movie has a lot of raunchy humor but at lot of it is pretty meta as well. Which is exactly what Deadpool is, he's a hero who knows that he's in a comic book, or he knows he's in a movie. This makes him just down right hilarious when he's breaking the 4th wall, making jokes about the movie while its going on, and just being a different superhero.

And that's what is refreshing about this movie.

I'm not at all fatigued by the number of superhero films out there.

And yes, I am going to watch all of these movies. Every single one of them.

But they're all going for a similar point, a hero is born, he fights the bad guy and he sometimes broods watching over the city.

With Deadpool though, there's just something different about the way he does thing and the way he's not a hero at all.

This movie is a hard R, its got a lot of gore, its got a lot of nudity, its got a lot of gross imagery, and dick jokes, and masturbation jokes, and the list goes on and on.

This is not a movie for the kids.

But you like Wade Wilson, you like his journey, you like his jokes, and this movie is just all around fun.

Now, I do have to see it again because I'm sure I missed a lot of jokes I should have picked up on and I'm sure its gonna be funny a second time. Honestly, I think the only thing that I didn't like about this movie was that it felt short.

The story, without flashbacks and flash forwards, is pretty straight forward and not exactly long. However, it is full of a lot of fun moments and jokes. I just wish that the movie was longer and had a little bit more meat to it.

A lot of that I think was because I was expecting more but the truth was, this movie was greenlit by Fox because they had money to spare from the X-men. It was made on a relatively small budget and for a lot of people, they thought this movie wasn't going to happen at all.

Overall, Deadpool just feels fresh.

Its a straight up comedy superhero film, its a hard R, and its a character that seems different. This is the kind of movie you want to see sequels to right away and its the kind of movie that if you have any doubts about it, seeing it again will probably make those doubts go away.

But have you seen Deadpool? What did you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts via Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get my updates on future movie news and reviews as well as live tweets sometimes to movies and shows I'm watching live.

I'll leave you with this. Here's one of the great viral marketing videos that came out for Deadpool. Enjoy!

Zoolander

Zoolander is a movie that for a long time I was very resistant to. There were a couple people that heralded this movie as a classic but I didn't really understand why? I watched a little bit of it a few years ago and I had to turn it off because it was so stupid. I just wasn't interested in the movie.

But with the new trailer for 2ooLander, and a lot of hype over this new movie coming out, I had to dig into Netflix and find this movie and figure out what the big hype was, and probably give this movie the chance it has earned.

Zoolander follows the story of Derek Zoolander, an incredibly feminine male model who is incredibly successful in his profession.

Of course the joke is that he builds his fame around the fact that he gives a great look when he's on the runway, whether its El Tigris, Ferrari, and of course Blue Steel. But the joke is that all these looks are the same look. Ha...

But Zoolander finds himself in a bit of a rough patch when he is beaten out for the award of Best Male Model by the new name in the fashion world, Hansel (played by Owen Wilson).

After a horrible accident involving a gasoline pump fight (which the first time I saw that I laughed so hard), Zoolander decides that he's going to retire from modeling.

But he is approached by famous fashion designer, Mugatu (played by Will Ferrell). He offers Zoolander an opportunity to fulfill his passion to teach kids who can't read good (get it cause Derek Zoolander is a dumbass) as long as he participates in Mugatu's new fashion show coming up. Secretly, Mugatu is making Derek a sleeper assassin to kill the Malaysian Prime Minister.

The majority of the movie is Derek discovering the conspiracy he's being put through with the help of Hansel and a reporter (played by Christine Jefferies).

Now I will concede a little bit and say, this movie made me laugh a lot more than I thought it was going to. When I realized that this movie is trying to be stupid and not a single line of dialogue is supposed to be taken seriously, the movie did get a little bit more entertaining then I originally thought.

That being said, this movie is really, really stupid. And I go back and forth on whether or not I think its stupid enough that I don't like it or if I think its the kind of movie that's just stupid enough but also a lot of fun that you don't have to think that much when you watch it, its just pure entertainment.

I don't know.

The truth is, I don't like Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson as actors. Its probably because I wasn't brought up on their movies like this one, but I've never been a huge fan. So there is a part of me that doesn't like it just because they're in it. However, at the same time, because this movie did make me laugh a lot more than I originally thought, I appreciate them a little bit more than I thought I was going to.

The funny part is of course watching Will Ferrell.

Its very hard for Will Ferrell not to get me with almost everything thing he does. However, what I've figured out recently is that I don't actually like a lot of his earlier work.

The first time I watched this movie I thought the only good part was Will Ferrell but watching it now I kind of realize that this was back in the day where Will Ferrell was more of a character actor and therefore was able to go off the handle more often.

What I've realized from this movie is that those Will Ferrell outbursts that I love are really only funny when they're used in moderation. If he's just screaming all the time, its not as funny every time he does it. So in this movie, he's this cartoon villain and its funny, but I've seen Will Ferrell be more subtle, even in cartoon roles like Elf, and I like those more subtle characters more than I like Mugatu.

Its weird because I went into this movie loving Will Ferrell and not really liking Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson, and coming out of the movie it was actually the reverse. I like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson when they are more cartoon characters and I like Will Ferrell when he's not always a cartoon character 100%. Its a weird shift.

What I'm beginning to understand with this movie is that it is a very quotable movie.

And actually watching it, I'm glad that I can actually say that I know where some of these quotes and references are coming from now.

The movie does have a couple of really random movie references in itself which was a little bit odd and just out of place because it never felt like that kind of movie.

And the more I think about Zoolander, the more I like it but by the same token, the more time passes the more I forget about some of the memorable parts of it, so it loses the charm and therefore doesn't really seem memorable for me.

I don't know, again, its that question of is it so stupid its its own brand of movie, or is it stupid enough for me not to enjoy it.

Honestly, I'm more excited about 2ooLander than I originally was after I saw this movie especially because some of the moments from the trailer make a lot more sense after watching the first movie (big surprise huh?)

I'm going to stop pontificating on this movie and just say it is what it is. Its a stupid movie that I think has a lot of funny moments in it and is very quotable. Is it a classic? I don't think so, at least not in my book.

The truth is, I'm so excited for DeadPool that I probably won't see this movie this weekend and then I'll just put it off for a long time that I won't really care anymore... and maybe one day I'll see it, and I hope its good. But Zoolander is not the movie for me, at least not totally.

It was a short review but what did you think about Zoolander? Are you going to see 2oolander or Deadpool this weekend? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for future movies I should review. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews as well as live tweets from movies that I'm watching live.

I'll leave you with this. I'm really tempted to leave a Deadpool trailer because I'm that excited for it, but I'll stick to the theme and give you the trailer for the second Zoolander in case you haven't seen it. Enjoy!