Reviews

X-Men Legends is a good solid game, with a good plot, easy controls, and very fun to play. The cel-shaded graphics might not be your thing, but the CGI cut scenes are really well done.

The game play is similar to Diablo, where you run around beating up enemies for experience points, which they lets you level up to unlock more mutant powers. The huge cast of playable characters and hidden secrets also gives it some replay value.

My main beef is that the game gets progressively easier as you go along. By the latter half of the game, your X-team is so powered up that you rarely fight enemies, they just get blasted with mutant powers by your computer controlled teammates before you can even get to them. Some of the mutant attacks are so deadly that even the toughest non-boss enemies go down quickly. The only time it gets challenging is when you are literally swarmed with enemies. However, between a rampaging horde, four X-men who them constantly shooting off mutant powers whose graphical effects take up the whole screen, you can barely tell what's going on.

While the storyline is good, too many of the enemies are generic human soldiers. It would be nice to fight more recognizable evil mutants and classic X-men villains. One of the best villains of all time is barely used at all in the game (he got the same treatment in the movie, so I can't complain too much).

Almost worth renting for seeing Jean Reno's impression of an American soldier.

The rest...wow. Did they even bother to find out WHY Godzilla is so popular?

Look, people go to a Godzilla movie to see Godzilla smashing stuff, or fighting some giant monster.

Not Godzilla hiding underground for half the movie, nor fleeting glimpses of just his feet or his tail, in the rain, at night.

Not a bunch of 5 foot-tall Raptor rip-off baby Godzillas. If I wanted Raptors, I'd rent Jurassic Park. We want the big guy!

I read the original book a few years ago and looked forward to the movie treatment. I found the battle scenes technically outstanding, and full of tension and drama. However, some of the personal developments were lacking. I also was severely disappointed to see the Welsh Lt Rick Rescorla completely excised from the film, something that did not help overseas interest in the film. Lt Rescorla was a former British Army Paratrooper who fled his native Britain to be a mercenary in Africa, and later escaped to the United States. Besides SGM Plumley & LTC Moore, he was one of the few officers with combat experience. He was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in the battle, and was later killed on Sept 11th, 2001 in the World Trade Center attack.

As for the movie itself, it's good, but not great. During the combat scenes, Mel Gibson completely changes, becoming a commanding presence who is completely believable. However, I was disappointed in Galloway's portrayal. I think he could have been an excellent counterpoint to the gung-ho Moore, & Galloway's big scene was a ridiculous montage that was completely out of place in the movie. I was also pleased to see that the true origins of the Vietnam War, rampant European colonialism, was presented.

I find this is best looked at as a prequel to "Platoon." In "Platoon" Sgt Elias (Willem Dafoe) wears a combat patch of the 1st Cavalry Division, making him a possible veteran of the Ia Drang. During a conversation with Pvt Taylor (Charlie Sheen) character, Elias says that America is going to lose this war, and Taylor is shocked and told him that that isn't possible. Sgt Elias responds with something like:

"Yeah, back in '65 I believed that."

That's the problem, the people who have criticized this film as a whitewash don't know history. This was 1965, before years of Pentagon lies & bodybags soured America on the war, before the highly trained and motivated young recruits were replaced with sullen, unmotivated draftees.

Mixed feelings, but worth a look.

Well, it's out on DVD, and I finally saw this mess. It is a 2 hour movie bloated out to 3 hours because someone told the director that all epics must run 3 hours, whether or not they need to. If this movie didn't have such a serious subject, I would have been laughing out loud at its utter badness. I knew I was in for trouble when the movie names a Tennessee farmboy Rafe (yeah right) and the island of Hawaii contains not one native islander, especially before it was officially a state. The first third of the movie is totally out of place, directed more in tone with slapstick flicks like "1941" and "Biloxi Blues."

The love triangle is so poorly handled, the writers of soap operas would be ashamed. The infamous raid sequence is technically excellent, but it is shot so poorly you barely tell what's what, and it's been disgracefully cleaned up to a PG-13 rating. Men are hit with huge caliber bullets designed to rip apart planes and they just fall down. I also rolled my eyes at the American moron yelling about World War II is starting, when it's been going on in the rest of the world for years. By the time the final act, Doolittle's Raid over Tokyo kicks in, you stopped caring. This movie is a travesty.

Oh, and if you think that not liking this junk means I'm not patriotic, you can kiss the four stripes on my sleeve.

This movie was awful. I rented it, expecting a decent gangster flick and instead got this c**p. It is a lame vigilante "Punisher" type flick with 2 super intelligent orphaned Irish brothers in Boston who work in a slaughterhouse who decide to take down organized crime with their super-annoying, overacting bearded friend. Then there is Willem Dafoe, a gay FBI agent, who seems like a rejected character from "Twin Peaks." He is, of course, partnered with a crusty local cop who doesn't like him, yet in the end comes to respect him. Awwww! Gee, I've never seen that before in a bad cop movie! His role is to flounce around and re-enact the boys' shooting sprees while swooning to opera music. It's worse than it sounds. And of course, the local crime families can't stop them so they get together to hire some out-of-town heavy hitter with no name & a mysterious past. Could his mysterious past connect with the orphaned brothers??? Gee, I wonder! Could the boys be caught at the end and the hard-working people of Boston rally around them? Ugh. It tries to a clever and quirky, "indie" style flick and just seems like clich`ed low-budget Hollywood c**p.

The only reason I saw this movie is because I was an extra in it. A group of friends & myself saw this in the theatre, and knew it was a bad sign when, on a Friday night, we were the only ones in the theatre. After the "hey, look!" novelty of recognizing local places, this movie began to stink like week-old shrimp salad. Silly one-dimensional characters (the leader, the center, the addict, the ugly one) and "issues" handled about at realistically as a 70s after school special just made this howlingly bad. Note the awful acting of the pretty-boy boyfriend. While waiting for a scene to start, I overheard this exchange between him & the director. After the director was explaining the deep emotions his character was to supposed to be going through, the director asked him if he had any questions. "Yeah, do I have a close-up?" Truly awful.

This movie makes no sense. What was a neat little sci-fi crime story became blown up into a ridiculous "race against time, Save-the-world, get the girl, reunite with long lost relatives, etcetera" action movie. For those of you wondering where Molly was, somebody else has the movie rights to "Neuromancer" and all the characters in it & they wouldn't let her appear in this. Anyways, Johnny is a data courier who can carry data in his brain, safely without fear of it being detected or hacked. There is a problem with the upload of some Very Important Information & he now has 48 hours to live. He doesn't seem very concerned about this. I heard the previous director's body of work consisted entirely of music videos, and it shows, every line of dialogue comes out awkward and phony. The future doesn't look particularly futuristic, and a deadly, cybernetically enhanced assassin's implants are shown as silver dots glued to his skin. Ooooohhh. Johnny's female partner, is extremely unconvincing as a bodyguard. Her martial arts skills are non-existent. Watching her hobble awkwardly on one leg while launching a snap kick at roughly 3 miles per hour that launches bad guys across the room is just pathetic. Most of the "actors" in this steaming pile can barely speak English, let alone act. Here's a hint, hire real actors instead of washed-up rappers. Truly awful.

I was reading the reviews of this, and all the positive reviews claimed that "it was too deep" or "it was too different" for the rest of us to like. Allow me to retort. Basic plot: opressed peoples rebel against their opressers. Not too deep. I understand perfectly. Too different? The aliens look like 9 ft Klingons (my friend Jane said they look like the guys in GWAR) in platform shoes. They blow up the alien base by teleporting a nuclear warhead to their homeplanet. Right out of Stargate. Johnnie crashing through the glass? Blade Runner. Johnnie running between exploding pillars in slow motion? The Matrix. The basic idea of the movie? Planet of the Apes. The exploding head collars? The Running Man. A group of average guys flying fighter planes to save the day? ID4. The humans look like they stole their outfits from the "Waterworld" set. OK. Why this movie is awful. From the beginning, the titles look cheap and flat. The music is dull and forgetable. The Aliens look ridiculous, stumbling around on stilts and waving their puffy rubber hands. There is so much bad writing and inconsistencies I'll get carpal tunnel syndrome typing it all out. The aliens believe that humans are incapable of operating simple mining tools. Yet, all over the planet is evidence of a past great human society, which looks more like 50 years old than 1000. Terl himself mentions that all their technology didn't last 9 minutes against the Psychlo invasion. Some Psychlos have Klingon style head bumps, others don't. Why? Johnnie's girlfriend has perfectly plucked eyebrows and is obviously wearing make-up. Not only can caveman, who have no concept of geometry, physics, technology, or haven't even seen Top Gun are flying around in A HARRIER JUMP JET after a week of playing on a flight simulator, all of which somehow works after ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF NEGLECT. The Marine Corps Harriers are also inexplicably being stored, fully armed, fueled, and pre-flighted, at Ft Hood, an Army Tank base. This aircraft, with it's vectored thrust, is the most difficult aircraft in the world to fly. They are also flying around without G-suits making hard turns and they don't have radio headsets yet they can communicate with each other in fighter pilot slang. The Harrier isn't even an Air-to-Air Fighter. It attacks targets on the ground. By the way, there isn't a Eject button, they're eject handles. The camera work is just horrible. Everything is shot on a bad angle, and they change color filters to change moods (Green, blue, orange, purple). A guy gets his hand shot off and it doesn't seem to bother him too much. Huh? Entire pages of dialogue seems to consist of "leverage" "ratbain" "Foolish Humans! BWAHHAHAH!!!" John Travolta is overacting while everyone else looks embarrassed to be in this steaming pile. I also find it stupid that aliens would travel millions of light years just to steal gold. Dumb.