The Flash Season 3

It is becoming more and more difficult for me to sit through a 23 episode season like that of The Flash. That's not saying anything bad about the season itself, but I have just grown so accustomed to the 13 episode arch done really well in shows like The Newsroom, House of Cards, or Stranger Things. However, I have enjoyed the first two season of The Flash so much that it wasn't really a question whether or not I was going to watch the third season when it made it's way onto Netflix.

If you're not familiar with the premise of CW's The Flash, it follows the story of the famous DC Superhero, the Flash. It's the story of Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) a young attractive (it's the CW people) CSI who when he was really young, his mother was murdered by a yellow flash. Of course since that sounds crazy, his father was accused of the murder of Barry's mother and went to prison for it. Barry's life is changed when he is struck by lightning and is endowed the power of super speed. He joins a group of scientists at STAR Labs, the epicenter of the lightning that gave Barry his powers and he and his friends work together to take down criminals who have powers of their own.

I have reviewed the first two seasons of this show and if you read them, you'll know that I love this show. What I liked about the first and second season was that they really seemed to build off of one another really well. The first season established a universe where Barry would be able to build his skills and become the powerful superhero that we now love to watch just go and do his superhero thing. The second season built off of that and expanded the universe to other worlds. No longer was Barry and his friends confined to their world, they could fight bad guys on Earth 2, 3, 4, 19, wherever. And these alternate universe provided for some really fun characters and it also gave the actors opportunities to do something different with the characters they had already established.

The second season was also really great because it was streamlined with very few filler episodes. The filler episodes worked to explain character motivation and develop a more personal story. But the story was streamlined to center on The Flash developing himself as a hero against an absolute evil like Zoom. The second season did a really good job at balancing conflict of Zoom with the personal struggle that Barry is going through throughout the season. It really does become a personal story and that personal story brings us into the third season seamlessly.

The second season ends with Zoom tragically killing Barry's father right in front of him. Barry is eventually able to defeat zoom but he is incredibly distraught by the loss of his father, especially after he had just been released from prison. Although Barry seems to have won and possibly has a great future with Iris, in his grief he runs back in time and prevents the murder of his mother at the hands of The Reverse Flash. I remember watching the last episode in awe because having Barry go back and make this change is a drastic choice. It felt like a drastic choice at the last episode and it feels like a drastic choice throughout the third season.

The third season begins in the alternate universe that Barry created by saving his mother that he calls Flashpoint. Things are pretty great for Barry. His parents are still alive, he starts to hit it off with Iris despite having not grown up with her. But then he starts to lose his powers and his memory. Along with that, tragedy starts to hit and he realizes that this is not his world and he needs to go back and fix what he tried to change. While he does, he realizes that the world he left is not exactly the same and there have been multiple changes.

And really the rest of the season is Barry dealing with the consequences of this monumental change. The interesting way that they manage to bring in more people with powers in this season is the blending between the universe Barry created, Flashpoint, and the regular universe. A mysterious villain named Alchemy starts giving people powers and their personalities are blended with the personalities of their alter ego from flashpoint. Now this is only loosely explained and there are points where it doesn't exactly make sense. I will get to that when I start talking about particular characters, just know that while that part is kind of cool, it also is a little bit confusing and poorly written at times.

Another downfall of this choice was that The Flash is starting to develop a little bit of the Arrow syndrome in that they start developing characters who originally didn't have powers and weren't superheroes into partners to the main character. I haven't watched past season 2 of Arrow so I assume it's a little more complex than I'm making it out to be, but eventually Barry's friends all start developing super powers and then there's alternate versions of The Flash fighting with him. You've got Kid Flash, and Jessy Quick, and the Jay Garrick version of The Flash from Earth 3.

I don't think it's done horribly, but I think there is merit in a show maintaining its focus on one hero and I felt as the third season finally met a critical mass where every other character has super powers. If everyone has powers, suddenly the people who do start to lose their uniqueness and it becomes more and more about people's powers instead of their personalities. Again, I think they have a little bit more time before it gets to that point, but there are red flags throughout this season that make me think the show might be headed towards a down turn.

The other issue with this season is the repetitive villains, especially the main one. Remember in my season 2 review where I mentioned that the appearance of Zoom was good, but a little bit of a retread from what had happened before. A new speedster shows up and beats the living crap out of Barry. He has some time of self doubt, there's a loss of someone close to him, but Barry eventually gains the physical and emotional strength to vanquish his enemies.

Well they freaking did it again!

While I mentioned that Alchemy was the villain starting off, it shouldn't be a surprise that he was the front for the larger villain that is Savitar. And if you're looking at that picture and saying, hugh that guy looks like a transformer, well yeah, until you figure out who Savitar actually is, it's basically like Barry is fighting a giant transformer and it's the exact same story we saw in Season 2. For some reason, the Flash doesn't really seem comfortable pitting Barry up against a big bad villain that isn't a speedster and it's starting to show in the show.

Savitar proclaims himself as a god and Alchemy is giving people powers to be apart of his cult of darkness or some kind of bullshit like that.

Eventually when it is revealed who Savitar is, I will say it is kind of interesting, but it was also something that I called from the beginning. You actually don't really need to be paying that much attention to figure it out pretty quickly which was a little bit disappointing. Three seasons in and this show is not very good at setting up stories that are not predictable.

HOWEVER!

The predictability and formulaic nature of Savitar is offset by the direction that the season goes into by the 9th or 10th episode.

At a certain point, Barry runs into the future for the first time and sees a horrible future of Savitar brutally murdering the love of his life, Iris. Barry is already dealing with the consequences of changing the course of time after Flashpoint and then the rest of the season it becomes Barry's personal mission to do just that, change the course of events that lead up to Iris's death.

That is the meat and potatoes of the season. It's done, really, really well.

Honestly, the first 8 or so episodes are really filler and reintroduction episodes and those episodes were the most difficult to get through. I felt like I did when I was watching Arrow, just slugging through each episode very slowly and not really feeling the true purpose. But when you see Savitar murder Iris, suddenly all bets are off. The focus of the turns directly towards the goal of Barry trying to save the love his life.

And it works because these two have been cooking since episode one. And this is the first season they actually get together, and it actually really works. I really like these two together and you definitely see the love between them.

So when you see Iris die in the future, you know that Barry will stop at nothing to assure that she is safe and survives.

And yeah, it still falls a little bit under the melodrama that is almost a requirement if you're going to try and get a show on the CW. The one bad part about season three is that unlike Season 2, where I felt like the filler episodes were used to build the characters and make you love them even more, I did feel that, with some of the filler episodes, to which there are many, there were a couple where drama was created just for the sake of drama being created. And these dumb conflicts didn't even last for an extended period of time, they would really only last an episode and things would go back to the way things were before.

For example: the big reveal at the end of the first episode where Barry comes back from fixing Flashpoint is that he comes back to the house and figures out that Joe and Iris don't talk to one another. GASP. But literally in the second episode, that conflict is quickly resolved and by the third episode, there is really not sign of Joe and Iris ever having any kind of bad blood between them.

One of the other continuous conflicts that arise is the drama that occurs because people start to realize that Barry went back and mess with the timeline.

On a separate note, one of the best things to come out of this season was the fact that I now knew what memes like this meant...

But here's the issue with the timeline drama. Barry goes pretty much the entire season with people giving him shit for going back and changing the timeline for his own purposes... and they're not wrong. Pretty much all of the issues that come up in this show is caused by Barry. It becomes a little bit difficult to really defend the hero when the people who have qualms with him are totally justified.

One thing I did like about this season was how the roles of the members of Team Flash changed from what they were like in seasons 1 and 2.

First, the team expands. You've got Wally West (played by Keiynan Lonsdale) who actually takes up a pretty important part of the team for just being introduced in the past season. Cisco (played by Carlos Valdes) starts to develop his vibe powers and he actually goes out and takes part in the action. But he also takes up a little bit of a leadership role with a change up from Harrison Wells (played by Tom Cavanagh. Caitlyn Snow has her own personal drama that actually changes up her role quite a bit. She still is pretty prevalent in the season and she actually has a pretty big part, especially near the end of the season. Joe's (played by Jesse L Martin) role doesn't change a lot. He's still the father figure for Barry. He has his own little romance in the show which was cute but really was only filler in the grand scheme of things. And Iris changed her role from the supportive adoptive sister and really good friend of Barry's to the girlfriend. It's not a bad role, just not a lot has changed besides the fact that Barry comes home to her.

I do have to talk about one character in particular that I think was a little bit divisive. If he wasn't divisive to other people, he was definitely divisive for me because I could never really decide if I liked him or not.

And that is H.R. Wells or as I like to call him, Hipster Wells.

I have to give the writers credit. Somehow they managed to continuously give Tom Cavanagh work despite his initial character dying. In this season, the previous Harrison Wells decided to return to his Earth with his daughter. He did however work with Cisco to find a suitable replacement and that ended up being this guy. At first, it really only seems like the difference between the two is that one Wells wears a fedora and plays with drumsticks wherever he goes and the other one is stoic and creepy.

And at first, I didn't love this idea. I didn't really see the reason to get rid of old Harrison Wells and I thought the reasoning to find another Wells was really random. But I'll admit it, eventually I started to enjoy H.R. He had a lot of heart and while it's revealed he's not the brightest bulb on the tree, he still does contribute to the group and he does help. But if you've watched the whole third season, you'll know that the end of the season does not leave this character on a high note and I'm thinking it might be time for Harrions Wells to be reduced to a guest star role when Harrison Wells from Earth 2 comes to visit. But overall, we just don't really need another variation of the character.

The other character worth mentioning is Caitlyn Snow. I apologize if this is a spoiler but yes, she does get freezing powers and she does run the risk in the season of becoming Killer Frost.

However, for the casual observer, there is a difference between Caitlyn taking on freezing powers, and her straight up becoming Killer Frost with her horrible, HORRIBLE wig.

There is a slight explanation and it has a little bit to do with Alchemy and Savitar bringing the personality of Caitlyn's alter ego back from Flashpoint, but if you're not paying attention, you can quickly forget about that and it becomes very confusing why Caitlyn becomes this Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde character. Literally, her evil alter-ego cannot be reasoned with and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Remember how I said there were a lot of valid reasons why people become pissed at Barry because he messed with the timeline? Well there are a lot of reasons why Caitlyn shouldn't become Killer Frost, but we're supposed to just sit there and accept the plot convenient storyline like there's nothing wrong with it. That was a little bit annoying.

If you want to talk about extra characters, a familiar face if you're a fan of the Harry Potter films is a constant guest star on the show.

Tom Felton, AKA Draco Malfoy, joins the cast as the arrogant crime scene investigator that Barry created with the creation of Flashpoint. I always thought his sudden appearance was really random and it's never really explained, but hey, they wanted to create a new character and he's not the worst thing to ever come out of the show.

In the beginning of the season, Felton's character Julian is mainly just a thorn in Barry's side. He's not portrayed as a bad guy, just an annoying obstacle that Barry has to overcome as one of the many consequences of Flashpoint. But eventually Julian becomes a bigger part in the story and they use him pretty well. I can't say I'm totally happy with how they used him but because Tom Felton is a pretty decent actor, it was kind of fun having him in the show.

The one issue that arises with Julian is that at a certain point when his arc is somewhat complete, he kind of takes a back seat and all the great back and forth him and Barry have kind of goes away and he just becomes more of a love interest for Caitlyn Snow. And I wouldn't be bothered by that if this wasn't the season where everyone seemed to be hitched off by the end. Cisco, Caitlyn, HR, Joe, EVERYONE seems to be paired up to a love interest and these romances are just not really done that well.

Seriously, a certain point, a character by the name of Gypsy shows up (played by Jessica Camacho). We don't know much about this character except that she is some kind of bounty hunter from another dimension and she has basically the same powers as Cisco, and for some reason that is reason enough for him to say, "SHE IS THE ONE, SHE IS SOOOO INTO ME!". It really has to be one of the most forced relationships I've seen and it doesn't help that these two really don't have much chemistry. And this isn't the only situation like this in this season. I can't go into them all but there were a few more hints of The CW in this season that made me a little bit annoyed. The Flash was always a show that while it had the attractive people, it never felt melodramatic. And even the times where it was melodramatic, it was okay because we liked these characters and they deserved relationships and the little drama that came out of it. 

But even Barry and Iris fall to some really dumb drama at a certain point.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This season benefits because it takes something that was already being built up for two seasons, a relationship that was fine, and made it actually really genuine and sweet.

So when stupid shit happens and Barry and Iris's relationship seems like it's at stake, it doesn't have much of an impact because with the show's track record and how normal people would act in a situation like the one they describe, we know they're going to get back together or move past this obstacle in an episode or two. And I get it, you gotta keep thing interesting and there's only so many new villains you can introduce before the villain of the week routine gets boring, but the show seems to be getting into a mindset that they can do no wrong... and this season proves they can do wrong.

I'm going to end the regular review here because I want to do a review on the ending. I also want to talk about the future of Flash films and what I am expecting of the 4th season. But for now, I will keep it at that and say that Season 3 of the Flash hopefully showed the creators that there are holes in the armor. This was not a bad season. With a couple of mishaps and a kind of botched ending, The Flash Season 3 was pretty solid. But I worry about the future of the show and that they might be stepping away from the comic book elements that made this show great and falling back into the comfortable CW drama. They're not there yet but Season 3 shows that they could potentially be on their way.

But what did you think? Have you seen Season 3 of The Flash? Are you excited for Season 4? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as your requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. If you haven't watched Season 3, this trailer is going to give some spoilers away so that is your warning. I'm going to make mention of this trailer when I do my part 2 of this review. But for now, Enjoy!

The Longest Yard

I have actually never seen this entire movie before. I've seen the majority of the film, but I guess I've never seen the entire movie. The scenes that I did see prior to this viewing, I thought were really funny and it kind of gave me the impression that this was one of the last good funny Adam Sandler movies did. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really great things in the movie... but there's also a lot to talk about.

The Longest Yard is a remake of the 1974 film of the same name starring Burt Reynolds. And that is the only reason that Burt Reynolds was in this movie. Really, he serves little to no purpose and he looks like he's bored out of his mind. Now that I got that out of the way...

The remake follows the story of Paul Crewe (Sandler) a former NFL player who ends up in prison following a drunken binger involving the always gorgeous Courtney Cox with an incredibly low cut blouse. I know that detail is not totally relevant to the overall story but that's an example of things that this movie decided to focus on instead of good storytelling or letting us get to know Crewe in a way that makes us like him at all, so I'll make mention of it... Courtney Cox looks great in the 5 minute cameo she has.

Crewe goes to a penitentiary in Texas where the Warden wants him to coach the semi-pro football team the guards have set up. Now I'm not totally sure how he goes from being propositioned to being the coach of the guards team to being the coach of a team of convicts in the prison. There was something about how he wanted to set up a game with the guards and the prisoners so the guards could get an easy win, but somehow that turned into a full time coaching position for Crewe and that's really the focus of the movie. Crewe, with the help of a kind inmate named Caretaker (played by Chris Rock) who knows how to get things, starts coaching a rag tag group of hardened inmates who just want to beat the crap out of the guards.

The best parts of this movie, besides the final game obviously, is Adam Sandler trying to recruit convicts from a wide variety of groups. Yeah you've got a lot of stereotypes and let's be real, Sandler is not exactly your go to person when you're trying to not do an offensive stereotype. However, he does get a good group of funny characters and at least with Chris Rock next to him, it doesn't look like Sandler is just a normal white guy in a sea of racial stereotypes.

But the main struggle of the film is Crewe trying to get all these angry convicts to work together and actually make a half-way decent football team. Of course they play dirty but so do the guards and it's a pretty fun romp if you're not thinking about it too hard.

The main appeal of the movie is the physical comedy, and yeah there's a lot of it.

The movie is not really based in any kind of reality as a lot of the hits and tackles in this movie would kill certain people. But the physical stunts used in the film are actually pretty funny and the timing is also really fun. Like a lot of comedies, The Longest Yard is probably funnier if you watch it with a group of people instead just by yourself. But I think you'll still probably enjoy the film for the physical humor.

The part where the movie starts to flounder a bit is in the dialogue and the actual story.

I already mentioned how I'm not totally sure how Crewe goes from being a potential coach for the guard's team and instead becomes the coach for the convict team. At a certain point, I think the movie kind of forgot what the purpose of the game was supposed to be. And if it didn't, the audience definitely does.

But the end of the film, the final game between the convicts and the guards feels like they've been building up to this one game when in reality it's not that important of a game and not even the reason that Crewe was brought in in the first place.

But what's more in this film is that fact that I'm supposed to be rooting for Crewe as he is the hero of the movie. But the truth is, Paul Crewe is an asshole and it's really not until the end of the movie that you actually start to see him change. The majority of the film, he's just got this entitled look about him and there's not really a point in the movie where I didn't really feel like he wasn't just doing this to save his own skin. And because the characters are such hyperboles, you don't really get a sense that Crewe is friends or has much of a connection to these convicts.

The only relationship that gets any kind of genuine development is that of Crewe and Caretaker. I suppose in a way, that's the only one that really mattered. But that's the issue with the movie. It really wants to get to the parts where a bunch of convicts are beating the shit out each other and the guards that it really doesn't focus on any characters development or even introductions.

I know I said the only reason Burt Reynolds is in this movie is so they can have a callback to the original movie that this one was remaking, but he's also a great example of one of the most rushed introductions ever.

Crewe and Caretaker are sitting feeling overwhelmed by the giant task of getting these convicts to work together and then Burt Reynolds comes in like a streak of mustached lightning, says I'm a former Football player, I'm gonna coach the team, and Crewe and Caretaker are like... okay.

And that happens with almost every character. Another example of this is the Warden and all the characters that surround him.

James Cromwell plays your typical corrupt, evil Warden and that's pretty apparent from the beginning. I guess it's something to applaud the movie for, they kind of assume the audience knows the tropes of the evil Warden, his corrupt head of the security (played by William Fitchner) and his crony political advisor, a random guy who is dressed like a plantation owner. It's like they scream, "I'M THE BAD GUY" without saying a word.

But again, the movie doesn't really develop these characters at all, so when dramatic things happen like Fitchner coming to respect Crewe near the end of the film, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But hey, it's an Adam Sandler movie, what did I expect?

The unfortunate thing is, piecemealing this movie together with the best scenes, assuming that all the character development and story structure was set up prior, I actually thought this was a good movie. I thought that maybe if you take away all creative control from Sandler and just put him in a property that has worked in the past, maybe you can get a halfway decent movie and actually get one of these movies to have a point instead of just being mindless raunchy comedy like all of other Sandler's films.

But as a whole, the movie is not saying anything. It doesn't have anything to say about prison corruption, or really any kind of good triumphing over evil story. They never even question at any point that maybe some of these guys are innocent or that they're actually good guys despite their criminal record. It totally owns the fact that all these guys deserve to be in prison so let's just watch them beat the crap out of one another.

And I'm not saying this movie really needed to have some deep message. That's obviously not Sandler's style. Adam Sandler movies are turn off your brain comedies where you just watch raunchy comedy with people getting hit in the nuts over and over again.

This movie was directed by Peter Segal, the same guy who directed Tommy Boy, 50 First Dates, and Get Smart. While these aren't phenomenal movies, they do manage to tell a story with halfway decent characters you care about while still making you laugh.

What happened here? I don't care about any of these characters, I don't care if they win or lose, and I don't care about why they're in prison.

The only person I slightly cared about was Caretaker and (spoilers) he randomly burns alive in this movie. Yeah, a mindless physical comedic romp with Adam Sandler has a scene where Chris Rock, playing one of the only really likable characters, who about 15 minutes ago was telling us about his wife and kids back on the outside, gets burned alive...

I think there was a version of this movie that had a lot more heart and where something like the death of the heart and soul of the team would actually trigger some emotion and would be a real rallying cry. But as it is, Crewe carries on like Caretaker was never really in the film and Sandler just gives the I don't give a shit style of acting.

There legitimately was a time where I only had seen the last 40 minutes of the film which is basically just the final football game after Chris Rock had burned alive horribly. There was a time I had no idea that Chris Rock was in this film. And to be honest, I never felt like I was missing something. I like Chris Rock in this film, like I said he's one of the only likeable characters. But just watching the last game, you would think that this was just a buddy movie with Sandler and Reynolds. That's a perfect example of how the heart of this film is so minuscule that you don't really recognize that it's gone.

I don't think The Longest Yard is a bad movie. Of all the Adam Sandler movies there are in the world, it actually probably ranks pretty high. But that is saying something about the kinds of movies you're getting when you go into an Adam Sandler movie. When a really forgettable mediocre film like this is one of his better ones, maybe Netflix should stop giving him multiple picture deals.

But those are my thoughts on The Longest Yard. What do you think? Have you seen the original? How does it compare to this one? Comment and Discuss Below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. It's a little bit strange to think how old Burt Reynolds is. It was a big deal earlier this year when he made a rare appearance for the new movie that came out earlier this year, Dog Years. I mean the guy is 81... good for him you know. Enjoy!

War Machine

For some reason I have been really focused on Netflix originals over the past few weeks. I guess there's a lot of original content that has come out of the streaming service and I've wanted to check some of it out. I personally love the idea of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and other streaming services coming out with their own content because you get a whole lot of strange movies and TV shows. Some of them are good, some of them are not so good, but you still get something different.

War Machine was a film that really came out of no where for me. Of course the big draw of the film is the fact that Brad Pitt stars in it, but when I did more research, I figured out that the movie is loosely based on the career of General Stanley McChrystal. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I'm interested in politics and the military just as much as I am interested in film so War Machine definitely was multiple interests coming together.

War Machine follows the story of General Glen McMahon (played by Pitt). He is appointed by President Obama to go to Afghanistan, take over the Joint Forces, and end the war. With him, he takes an entourage full of colorful generals and colonels, some of them are based off of actual people the same way McMahon is based off of McChrystal.

The film takes a look at a man who really only knows war and has the ambition to be the one to end a war that had been going on for close to a decade. His plan to do that though requires a surge of troops and a whole lot of money and attention coming directly from the President, someone McMahon doesn't get a lot of face time with.

The great part about the film is that it is a satirical film. The acting and the characters are over the top and ridiculous, nothing like the people that they are portraying. While the mannerisms and characteristics might be hyperbolized, it still brings home a couple of really interesting points about the War in Afghanistan on both sides of the argument.

The truth is that the movie has a pretty anti-war message, especially near the end, but it does point out a lot of the hypocrisy and poor decisions and outlooks made by both McMahon and his men, AND the Obama administration.

Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off actually has a role as a member of the Obama administration and he's one of the biggest assholes of the movie because they do point out that the administration had no intentions of winning the war as much as they did getting the United States out of it. There's even a scene where McMahon is straight up stiffed by the President of the United States. For someone who is supposed to be put in charge of the War in Afghanistan, they do make a point to how infrequently the President met with his top general. Now I don't know how much of it is true and how much of it is leaning into the satire, but the movie does pull some truth dropping humor throughout and it really hinges on Brad Pitt.

There are a lot of fun characters in this movie and there are a lot of celebrities involved. Ben Kingsley plays an incompetent version of Hamid Karzai the President of Afghanistan and it is hilarious!

But the obvious star of the film is Pitt. McMahon is a bit of a goofy guy. He walks funny, he doesn't seem very bright at times, and he never really gets the message that the movie is trying to flaunt in front of him. And yet you get really connected to him and there's a lot of sympathy you start to feel towards his character. There's actually another cameo where it's stated to his face that he's a good man, but his methods and his ambition may get in the way and cause a lot of violence and deaths in a war that was very unpopular around the world.

As stated before, as much as they try to throw in some jabs about Obama and his handling of the War in Afghanistan, this movie has a pretty one sided message and it's pretty anti-war.

But the thing that makes War Machine really stand out from other war films is that with the exception of a really great scene near the end where they follow a Marine platoon in a mission in Afghanistan (with members played by Will Poulter and Keith Stanfield), the majority of the movie focuses on the generals that are making decisions at the top for these Soldiers.

Now I will say that their representation of war isn't exactly accurate and it's done that way to make a point, however, I did find it interesting that the majority of this movie was centered on Generals who barely go anywhere near combat. There does seem to be a disconnect between the troops and the generals pushing for more war efforts in the country. Again, it goes into the idea of McMahon having a perspective that isn't exactly bad or evil, just misguided. It's part of the reason the character is sympathetic and funny.

And that's another thing I appreciated about this film.

I remember when McChrystal was fired. The media coverage on the firing was not flattering and it kind of painted McChrystal as insubordinate and unprofessional. I don't know how much of the facts of McChrystal's firing carried over into the depiction in War Machine, but it made me wonder how much of the firing was McChrystal being unprofessional, and how much of it was political and just poor media coverage. War Machine gives a little bit more fair look at the entire career of the 4-Star General. It doesn't really paint him as unprofessional, it just paints him as out of his league when it came to the politics of war and how it was never really about winning or even fighting a war, it was about the politics of it.

I don't know, maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but it made me want to read more into the McChrystal firing because while the movie does not pull any punches on the character of McMahon, it also doesn't paint a great picture of Obama's foreign policy and his handling of the War in Afghanistan.

But all politics aside, I thought that War Machine was a really funny and poignant movie. It had a great message and it executed it in a way that was very enjoyable. If you're a fan of satire, you're definitely going to like War Machine. I've discussed this film with liberals and conservatives and heard praise on both ends. Regardless of political affiliations, I get the feeling most people are going to enjoy, War Machine.

But those are my thoughts, what did you think? What do you think of Netflix's original content? Are they creating the right stuff? Is it high quality to you? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Like I said, I've been watching a lot of Netflix originals as of late. Here's what I'm looking forward to later this month. Enjoy!

Sense8 Season 1

Sense8 has always been a combination of something very original and intriguing, and something poorly written and over pretentious. This was my sentiment even before the July 4th weekend where I binge watched all 12 episodes of the first season. This has been my and many other people's sentiment of the Wachowskis for many of their projects in the past. 

The directors of The Matrix and it's lesser sequels, the Wachowskis have had a long career spanning multiple movies, two gender transitions, and a wide range of critical reception. Looking at their IMDB page, I realize that their careers were defined early by the expansive universe of the Matrix. These two were involved with The Matrix for so long and not just in the movies but in the video games, and animated pictures that went along with it. I can understand that they would want to transition to something different. And to be honest, they haven't had as nearly as toxic a career as someone like M. Night. Shyamalan or Michael Bay. V for Vendetta is a great movie and the Wachowskis were involved with writing the screenplay. I've written two posts on Cloud Atlas and it continues to be a movie I like to re-watch, not necessarily because it's a phenomenal movie but because the ideas ad way it's portrayed is so interesting. There is of course Jupiter Ascending... I'm gonna be honest, there's not a lot I can do to explain that dumpster fire but one bad movie doesn't necessarily destroy a director's career, maybe Sense8 is something different. 

Sense8 is a TV series on Netflix. It follows the stories of 8 individuals from different parts of the

world who, after a tragic death by a mysterious woman, start to realize that they are connected telepathically. They can communicate with one another from miles away and they can even call upon the skills and expertise of one another to help out each other in time of need. The story mainly centers on the personal struggles these two are going through, all with an underlying plot concerning a deeper conspiracy to capture Sensates by a mysterious man (played by Terrence Mann).

All these characters are different and have their own struggles they go through in their own part of the world. You've got Will (played by Brian J Smith) who plays a cop from Chicago. Then there's Nomi (played by Jamie Clayton) a transgender hacker and blogger. Sun (played by Doona Bae) a Korean business woman with a family in the midst of corporate crimes. Lito (played by Miguel Silvestre) a Mexican actor who is still in the closet about his sexuality despite having a romantic relationship with another man. Wolfgang (played by Max Riemelt) a safe cracker trying to score big with his friend in the criminal life of Germany. Riley (played by Tuppence Middleton) a DJ from Iceland dealing with a shady and tragic past. Capheus (played by Amel Ameen) a taxi driver from Nairobi trying to help his mother who is dying of AIDs. And Kala (played by Tina Desai) a pharmacist from India who is going into a marriage to a man who she does not love.

If it sounds like those are a lot of characters with a lot of plot lines that really don't connect to a larger sci fi plot, you wouldn't be wrong. Good sci fi is never fully about the science fiction plot, it takes in the characters, their problems and trials, and ties it into a larger goal or conflict. An example of when this is done right is Stranger Things. The main story was the disappearance of Will Byers and while the entire show was trying to find him and uncover the mystery of his disappearance and the upside down, the show still took some time to develop the characters outside of the supernatural and sci fi elements of the story. Sense8 takes that time... and then some and at a certain point you kind of forget what the overarching plot is while you're watching these people live their lives.

And that wouldn't bother me so much... if not for a couple of reasons.

1. The science fiction plot is actually kind of intriguing. The opening scene focuses on Daryl Hannah's mysterious character as well as Naveen Andrews. It's obvious there's something supernatural happening and as the scene ends, you know that there is something bigger going on. But while most sci fi shows would continue to remind you of the over arching science fiction plot that a lot of people, like myself, came to watch this show for, Sense8 really puts that on the back burner and because of it, I'm still not totally sure what Naveen Andrew's whole deal is, what Terrence Mann is doing in this show, and how it all connects these 8 people. All I know is the individual stories of these 8 people. And I'll be fair, the actors in this show are pretty good and I did start to care about these characters because of the acting. But each one of these people could be the focus of their own Netflix drama. I would watch a 10 episode series on Capheus, a poor guy from Nairobi who gets caught up in some dangerous people to get his mother AIDs medication. The list goes on. But for some reason the Wachowskis thought that it was necessary to have all these random people on this show for what reason? There's supposed to be some big message about empathy and the interconnectedness of humanity. And I get it, but it's a really thin moral to tag onto this very original sci fi and cast of very good actors.

2. The script is not very good. I'm just going to put it out there. And a lot of it is because of this heavy handed message the Wachowskis are trying to get across throughout 12 episodes that they really only needed one for.

A lot of people who praise this show on the internet make mention that they love how diverse the cast is and how it's such a multicultural cast. And don't get me wrong, I think having multicultural casts is a good thing. But I don't think they should create this multicultural cast only for the sake of having a multicultural cast. Having diversity doesn't necessarily make good stories. And again, we're getting beaten over the head with their message for 12 episodes when one episode was really enough. The thing is I think I know why the Wachowskis do this, because it's not just Sense8 that does this. Heavy handed messages happened in V for Vendetta, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending. For some reason the Wachowskis really want to push for some big philosophical message because that's where they've seen their biggest success.

The Wachowskis have had a pretty successful career all things considered. Yes there is Jupiter Ascending (and I honestly don't know if Speed Racer was good) but overall, I can't say I've hated more than half of their movies, which is a lot more than you can say for a lot of directors. In every movie where they have had to write dialogue, it has been bloated with philosophical exposition and beats the audience over the head with really heavy handed messages. It was definitely the case with

the Matrix with long winded speeches from characters who are obviously religious allusions, and philosophical rants that sound really smart but in reality aren't. In V for Vendetta, this worked for the advantage of the movie because that was an overly political movie and the philosophical dialogue about the follies of a government that takes too much power actually worked towards the revolutionary themes and atmosphere. But the Wachowskis really started to hedge their bets with Cloud Atlas where there were long winded philosophical speeches that felt unhinged and out of place. It's very much like Shyamalan where something is clearly an allusion to some kind of religious figure or philosophical belief that the Wachowskis obviously believe in but it's almost like we got hit in the head with that philosophy and the Wachowskis are in the background yelling, "ASK ME WHAT IT MEANS!!!!!"

I think because the Matrix blew up in such a huge way where there were philosophy books written about the universe the Wachowskis built, they believed that success is defined by large universe building and philosophical impact instead of cohesive and comprehensive story telling. They started to take a downturn with Cloud Atlas, they really missed the mark with Jupiter Ascending, and they went full bananas with Sense8.

So going back to the script. This show is written really, really horribly. Almost every single episode is so preachy with some kind of reference back to how we're all connected and we need to find the beauty and connection in life. And this is a shame because the characters are well written. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but the characters are created so that you do care about them. That is difficult as you have 8 very unique characters and yet they are able to create stories that made me care about these people and how they were going to deal with their problems.

How they deal with their problems is another story.

First off, these characters start seeing each other in very awkward and strange places. Instead of freaking out that there's a naked German guy in front of her, Kala immediately falls in love with this guy but yet continues to string along this really nice Indian guy who just wants to take care of her.

And that was the thing that confused me the most was you had these characters seeing the supernatural, seeing things that in reality aren't there, and just kind of shrugging it off.

And here's the thing. If the Wachowskis just wanted to do a show about people dealing with their problems and having a sci fi element to it, I think that would have been okay. This should would have done okay just having these people go about their business and eventually call on one another in their struggles.

But then you've got this overarching plot line with Naveen Andrews and Terrence Mann.

I like both these actors. I loved Andrews in Lost. He's probably one of my favorite characters in the show.

Terrence Mann doesn't have much of a filmography but that's because he's more of a theater actor. He's been the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and he's been Javert in Les Miserable. If anything, he has a really great singing voice. And while that isn't really relevant to his performance in Sense8, it did make me interested in his contribution to the show.

Unfortunately, these two really take a back seat to a Korean lady getting her period and a Mexican actor feeling it. And I'm saying that that's not an interesting concept, but from the beginning I was promised some kind of big conspiracy that started with these two and even at the end of the first season you're still not totally sure what Terrence Mann's deal is or what else is to come. Instead I am shown an orgy scene with basically the whole cast. Not kidding, there's an orgy scene in this show. On a side note, that scene really came out of no where and it happened with a bunch of characters who hadn't really met one another yet. In reality, things should have been SUPER awkward after, like so much that these people would probably never want to sensate with one another again, and that happened in the 3rd of 4th episode so it would have made this series a lot shorter.

Did I hate Sense8? No. For a show with a lot of exposition and long winded speeches, I did have a couple of moments throughout the series where I was genuinely entertained.

With the exception of Wolfgang and Kala which I thought was just a really pointless relationship with no foundation whatsoever, I actually thought the relationships were pretty genuine. I'm not just talking about the sexual ones, there were a lot of genuine moments between the characters and you can see a connection starting to form between them in the first season. There are heterosexual relationships in this show but there are also homosexual relationships, and trans relationships, and I do have to agree with some of the reviews I've read where they do portray all types of relationships pretty equally. Lito, the Mexican actor who is gay has a female friend who he had been using as a girlfriend to hide his relationship with his boyfriend Hernando. Not only is his relationship with Hernando genuine, but the relationship he and Hernando develop with this woman when she figures out Lito is gay. Erendira Ibarra by the way is absolutely gorgeous. And that's another thing, maybe this is just a hollywood thing but everyone in this show is really gorgeous people. Some may criticize the Wachowskis for doing that, I personally think it's a trick of the trade and you really can't get too worked up about that.

The action is pretty good in the show. I was actually surprised how violent and gory this show actually is. If you're squeamish around blood or don't like a lot of violent action, you may want to skip Sense8. This does however create a little bit of a problem because you've got these characters who don't know how to fight and they find themselves in situations where they need to fight. And this actually happens a lot in the show. So because they're all connected, they can call upon the skills of one of the other sensates to help them out. Now the problem comes with the fact that Sun is very proficient with martial arts. Because of this, I felt multiple moments where I was just yelling at the screen saying, just call on the Korean lady! And this happens a lot! Sure, near the end they start showing some of the other skills from the other characters, but in all actuality, this probably could have been a show with the cop, the korean lady, and the hacker.

The other thing I will praise the show on is the cinematography. This show is very well shot. The Wachowskis are a lot of things, but I would never say they're bad at shooting a scene. That being said, the opening credits to this show are probably the worst opening credits I have ever seen. They do not tell you at all about the show, they're just random clips from different parts of the world. Sure it looks pretty and with the music you are looking for some kind of hidden meaning... but there is none. It's absolutely pointless. I honestly couldn't stand these opening credits. Just watch them and tell me how they're related to anything that happens in the show.

I am not going to continue watching Sense8. The main reason I wanted to check out the show was because it recently got cancelled. This caused a huge uproar from a fan base I didn't know existed. I knew a couple of people that posted on Facebook that they loved Sense8, but they were very few and far between. But the uproar when the show got cancelled was so big that Netflix decided to give the fans a two hour film conclusion to the show that may have been left on a cliffhanger at the end of season 2? Regardless, I wanted to binge watch the show and see what all the fuss was about and the truth is, it didn't hook me.

The main reason I made it through all 12 episodes was because I wanted to write something about this show and usually if I make it past the 3rd episode, I get a little irate if I don't know the conclusion to something. So that says something about the show.

But the main praises I've heard of this show is that it has a multicultural cast, it's very inclusive, and the message is powerful. In essence, everyone who loves this show loves it because it is social justice theater. It has transgender actors in it so it must be good right? It has a diverse cast so it must be good right? It portrays heterosexual and homosexual relationships equally so it must be good right? Wrong. The best parts of this show is when its genuine, not when it's trying to be grandiose or super meaningful.

There's a scene late in the season where Lito is talking about the first time he met his boyfriend and Nomi talks about an incident when she was a young boy in school. The scene takes place in two stories of the two remembering these particular experiences. Lito's story full of exposition and almost poetic descriptions of his experience, while Nomi's story is simple and pretty much to the point. While both are annoying in that they're monologues that freshmen in college are going to be doing in their acting classes for years, Lito's story really bored me while I actually felt the emotion and heart break in Nomi's story. One was genuine and one was not and it's very obvious in this show when something is being explained for the sake of having that philosophical higher meaning to it, and when actual storytelling is happening.

I'll give the credit to the Wachowskis for being able to pull it off some times, but the amount of times where they're just loving the smell of their own farts is just too much for me. And if you identify with this show, that's fine, to each his own. But I personally thought the show as pretentious and more focused on the fluff rather than the substance.

But that's what I thought of Sense8. What about you? Did you enjoy the show? Are you sad about it being cancelled? Am I missing out by not going and watching the 2nd season? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for movies and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog as well as occasional live tweets from movies and shows I'm watching.

I'll leave you with this. Totally different note, did you know that Rick and Morty Season 3 is starting up later this month!!! I'M SO PUMPED! Enjoy!

Injustice 2

So before I go on, I should make mention that I really love this game. As far as gameplay goes, not only did they keep the fighting styles and high intensity that was so great in the first game consistent in the sequel, they also improved upon the game, allowing for more customizable and easy to access characters. I could do an entire post on all the needless money that is spent on down loadable content and how some games really don’t deserve that extra money spent on them, but the Injustice Games, whether I think they should be doing so much DLC or not, I will spend pretty much as much money as possible to get the best experience in this game and think it’s totally worth it.

For those not tracking, Injustice 2 is the sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us. A fighting game set in the DC superhero universe. It pits your favorite DC superheroes and villains against one another. Since I don't review games as much as I review movies, this review will be centered more on the story rather than actual gameplay. I have already mentioned how the second game improved on the first and that is one of, if not my favorite game on the PS4 right now.

Injustice 2 takes place five years after the events of Injustice: Gods Among Us. Superman is imprisoned after his defeat in the first game but the world is still trying to recover from his regime. Bruce Wayne is trying to put the pieces of the world back together. To cause trouble, Gorilla Grodd is putting together a team of supervillains and Bruce Wayne is having a hard time getting enough heroes together to defeat them. Things get worse when the mastermind behind Gorilla Grodd and his "Society" is the alien Brainiac who has come to Earth to harvest the best Earth has to offer in his collection of worlds across the galaxy and then destroy the rest. 

Batman must bring together as many heroes, proper and fallen, together to defeat this new threat, and when it isn't enough, he must consider releasing Superman, his arch rival, as well to help him defeat Brainiac. 

There are a lot of really great things about this game's story. Like the first game, I was drawn in from the beginning and there wasn't really a need for a lot of backstory on the characters because the game assumes the audience knows about The Justice League. And if you don't, it's alright because it's a game, not a full movie. 

Something that I found to be really interesting in this game was how good of a continuation of the story set up by Gods Among Us it was. The first game was intriguing because it mainly followed the Justice League from the universe we are most familiar with in a new alternate universe. This game took a turn and decided to have the entire game centered on the alternative universe and it worked out really well. The first game was a good introduction to those versions of beloved characters and this one goes all the way.

They continue the exploration into a legitimate difference of ideology between Batman and Superman that began in the first game. While Superman is the villain, he does bring forth the interesting possibility of what would happen if Superheroes crossed that line and took ultimate power. I mean every hero we watch in movies has the ability to create just as much destruction as they do good, what would happen if Superman crossed that line. It’s also great because the best villains are the ones who believe that they are the good guys and doing the right thing. Superman definitely doesn’t see himself as a bad guy, he just sees himself as taking it to the level he should have taken it a long time ago.

Not to mention that they form an uneasy alliance to fight Brainiac and I really like that dynamic. Superman and Batman are already two sides of the same coin, light and dark, alien and human, hopeful and dower. Imagine if that already tense relationship was pushed to a point of antagonism and yet the two had to work together. That is exactly what happens in the game and it’s done very well. And when Brainiac is defeated, all bets are off and that fragile relationship goes away quick, but it’s still a tragedy for both of them because they recognize what they’ve lost.

The villain in Brainiac is actually pretty good in my opinion. He is a villain that needs a live action appearance pretty quickly as he is cold, calculated, and in the comics, he’s not necessarily one with a plan that is a direct result of the existence of a hero, something that is continuously done in Marvel movies today. In Injustice 2, he’s an invading force trying to collect and analyze the beings of the galaxy, keep the strongest and the most unique as prisoners and discard the rest. I didn’t necessarily understand why he aligned himself with The Society, but hey they needed to give an excuse why Gorilla Grodd was in the game so I’ll give it a pass.

I’m going to talk about the amount of unnecessary characters later on and why a lot of them are pointless, but there are a couple of characters I actually really liked. If you haven’t figured out already, I really enjoyed Batman and Superman and their dynamic. But Supergirl was also a welcome addition to the games. I understand why as Supergirl is a really popular show on the CW right now, one that this game has made me want to check out even more, but throughout the game she was actually a really interesting character and necessary to the plot. 

In this alternate universe, Brainiac is the one that destroys Krypton and Kara saw the destruction first hand. She is sent in a pod to Earth like she is in the normal universe but she is set off course and doesn’t make it to Earth until after the events of Injustice 1. When she does make it to Earth, she is intercepted by Wonder Woman and Black Adam. Those two harbor her in secret and train her to eventually fight Batman and free Kal-El. That idea is phenomenally interesting and really turns the idea of bad guys and good guys on its head as Wonder Woman is actually one of the more evil people in the game. (Something that was really interesting considering the character from the movie and how different those two are).

Wonder Woman is a good example of characters in this game that really take a back seat to the main characters like Superman, Batman, and Supergirl. She kind of falls in between the line of important characters and characters who were just there to change characters as she is slightly developed and interested me as a character, but there wasn’t quite enough to make her super memorable or make her actions have quite as big as an impact as they should have.

The Flash is a good example of this too. In the first game, the Flash was a part of Superman’s regime but eventually changed sides when he realized how far Superman had fallen. In this game, he’s been pardoned by Batman and he’s trying to regain that title of Hero. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough time to focus on that redemption story because it’s just not as pertinent as the main story of an invasion by Brainiac and the duality crisis happening between Superman and Batman.

The same goes for Aquaman. Atlantis is lost off screen and that should have been a bigger deal but the reason it’s not is because the only time we’re in Atlantis is when we’re playing as Green Lantern and he’s having his own issues that really pan out to nothing. While we’re wasting time fighting Atrocitus, a character that shows up once in the entire story of the game, we could have been playing as Aquaman and figure out what he’s been up to since the last game. And he wasn’t even a big part of the last game either so we really have no idea what the Aquaman of this universe is like. That’s why when Aquaman does such a malicious act in killing Gorilla Grodd in cold blood, it really doesn’t have much of an effect on the player.

There are so many useless characters. There are the characters who are only there to give the player people to play as or fight (Deadshot, Poison Ivy, Bane, Captain Cold). In that same category are the people who you think are going to have larger impacts on the plot but really have no bearing whatsoever (Doctor Fate and Atrocitus). But also there’s the storylines that just get discarded and we just forget about them (Firestorm, Beetle, Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Black Canary). Even the characters that had legitimate roles in the story are often forgotten about and really just used to get the shit beaten out of them. Harley Quinn had a decent set up in the beginning where she faces the demons of her past (or the poor excuse to include the deceased Joker in the game) but after her four battles are over, literally has three moments where she gets knocked out by other characters so that the character you’re playing as can fight them.

The biggest problem this game has is that while the first one utilized characters in support of the story, this game had it's story work in support of the different characters they wanted to put in the game. The only reason Deadshot is in the game is because he was popular in Suicide Squad. The only reason Captain Cold was in the game was because he's a character in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. The only reason the Joker is in the game is because the Joker is DC's best villain at the moment and god forbid you do any kind of game or set up any kind of universe without him involved in one way or another. 

Unfortunately, this is the reason that Injustice 2's story is not nearly as good as Injustice God's Among Us. Gameplay-wise, Injustice 2 is as good if not better than its predecessor, but since I mainly focus on the story, I must say that the story definitely has things to improve on.

So what can the DCEU learn from the good and the bad of the Injustice games? 

1) Doing something with the characters is a good thing, you just have to know where you're going with it - Injustice took a risk in taking the hero who is most well known for being a symbol of truth and justice and turning him into a villain and they did it well. So doing something different with a character is fine. If you want to make Batman an older more experienced Batman who is okay with killing, that is fine, but make sure it's consistent and there's an explanation as to why this is something different than the character we've come to know. 

If Superman is not the bright and hopeful hero we remember him as, then give him dialogue and motivation for why he's so dower and depressing. If Superman is evil in a nightmare, maybe that nightmare should have a little bit more bearing on the movie at hand instead of just being a set up for future movies. Get the plot for the current movie set in stone and solid before you start setting up the characters and motivations for future movies. Look at Wonder Woman, that is a movie that focused on the task at hand, making Wonder Woman a compelling character and telling a great story about her. It didn't waste time trying to set something up in the future, it just gave you a solid story and that's it. 

2 A lot of characters does not always mean better stories - This is not necessarily a trope that can be learned just from the Injustice games but from a lot of movies. Injustice 2 had so many characters that the moments with the main characters got short changed and their emotional moments were not as powerful. 

So DC, don't do what you did with Batman v Superman and just throw familiar characters at the wall and hope that it sticks. Focus on the important ones, build their stories, and write them well. Yeah it was cool to see Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg in Batman v Superman, but it didn't really fit well in the cut of the movie. If you have a good story and there's time to throw in easter eggs, fine. But focus on the story at hand. 

3 Don't assume the audience knows every single character - Atrocitus did not need to be in this game for so many reasons. But part of the reason I hated that he was in this game so much was because I have no idea who he is. The only thing we really know about him is that he's a member of the Red Lantern Corp. Red Lanterns are like Green Lanterns except instead of Will, they utilize their rage. 

But there are so many questions I have about Atrocitus. What's his story? Is he a bad guy just because he's red? What's up with the cat he travels and fights with. There are so many things I was really confused about when it came to Atrocitus. And here's the thing. In the game, it doesn't really matter. They understand that they're not going to have the audience that movies get and while there's still a lot of people who don't know who Atrocitus is, they're going into a video game with different intentions than a movie so it doesn't matter as much. 

But you know another character who we knew just as much if not less about in one of the DCEU movies? Katanna.

The only thing we know about Katanna is that perfectly stupid line, "This is Katanna, she's got my back. I would advise not getting killed by her, her sword traps the souls of it's victims..." That is it. We never know anything more about this character and all she does is just swing a sword and look cool. 

If you want to add cool characters, they have to be an actual part of the movie and not just there to look cool and be fan service to the few people that have actually read those comics. I have no doubt that the Katanna comics are great, but not a lot of movie going audiences have read them so you can't assume that when you introduce a character, and give her a vague introduction, that we all know who she is. If you do, you get made fun of for the rest of that year because that line was one of the most iconically stupid lines of all of 2016. 

4 Embrace how weird DC comic book characters and stories can get - Superheroes are weird. They're people in costumes fighting bad guys and trying to save the day with crazy powers or abilities. These are not things that take place in the real world, so stop trying to Nolan-ize this stuff and just embrace how strange these characters are, but also how rich of a mythology they have. 

This is something that the CW TV shows have actually embraced pretty well. They have managed to create a world with a guy who shoots Arrows like Robin Hood, a kid who melds his mind with a professor to create a nuclear reactive man, as well as incorporated a criminal mastermind with a freeze gun. Sure these things are explained in a way that makes sense for the world that they live in, but they don't really betray the essence of the characters. Not to say Christopher Nolan wasn't great in his creation of the Dark Knight universe, but the current DCEU's first scene in their first movie Man of Steel took place on an alien planet and two of their main characters are super powered beings, one from space, and the other is a demi-goddess. Also there's a guy who dresses up like a bat. Have fun with the mythology a little bit. You don't have to go full Marvel and crack a joke every scene, you can take the subject material a little bit seriously because we are definitely going to, our money at superhero movie box offices have told you that very clearly. 

I think that if DC utilizes the storytelling talent they used in Wonder Woman and use some of the imagination and creativity they used in the Injustice games, I think the cinematic universe could be something really great. 

But on a simpler note, Injustice 2 is a fun game with a good story, but not as good as the one from Gods Among Us. I think Injustice 2 is a case study we can all learn from and hopefully DC can learn from the mistakes of both their previous movies and Injustice 2 and this cinematic universe can keep on going and be better than ever. 

But those are my thoughts. What about you? What do you think of Injustice 2? Comment and Discuss below! you can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me your requests for future movies, TV shows, and games I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog as well as live tweets I put out while watching TV or movies sometimes. 

I'll leave you with this. I give Marvel a lot of crap these days because I've seen a slight decline in their movies and felt as though they have become formulaic and predictable. However, they did begin a franchise, something that DC (and many other movies) are trying to replicate. This gives a slight look into how that began and maybe we can learn something from it as well.