Star Wars: Episode VII and beyond

I honestly never planned on ever posting anything other than reviews of movies I've personally watched, but I guess since this related to movies, I should post this brand new news in here. I supposed I just wanted to remember the day they killed the Star Wars franchise.

Disney just bought LucasArts and LucasFilms for a bit over US$ 4 billion and they already announced Star Wars: Episode VII for 2015. And they'll make Episode VIII and IX as well, not to mention they plan on making a new Star Wars movie every 2-3 years after Episode 9.

George Lucas had this to say about the acquisition: "I've always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime. I'm confident that with LucasFilm under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy, and having a new home within the Disney organization, Star Wars will certainly live on and flourish for many generations to come..."

It seems like Star Wars is going to be just like James Bond, sticking around forever with new characters every couple of new years. Would you have a problem seeing a new face associated with being "Luke Skywalker" every couple of years, like we already do with James Bond?

Disney is on a roll. It spent $7.4 billion on the purchase of animated movie studio Pixar in 2006 and also $4.2 billion with the acquisition of comic book giant Marvel in 2009, and now $4.05 billion with LucasFilms/LucasArts.

I like Star Wars, not as much as Star Trek or Star Gate, and I can't help but wonder how good the future Star War movies will end up being without having George Lucas directing/producing them. A new actor being Luke or Vader every couple of years? Or perhaps they'll completely remove any reference to Luke and Vader and every beloved character and add new ones? It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Does George Lucas seem like a happy man after having sold his company to Disney? You decide:

 

EDIT: Someone posted this comment in some website and I thought it was an awesome casting possibility (/sarcasm off):

Episode VII: Douchebag Reunion
Directed by Michael Bay

Ashton Kutcher is Han Solo (the sad part is that it's got a REAL chance of that happening)

Miley Cyrus is Leia

Justin Bieber is Luke Skywalker

Jaden Smith is Lando Calrisssian

Michael Cera is C3P0

Honey Boo Boo is R2D2

and Snooki as Yoda

 

EDIT #2: Someone posted the best argument ever to counter the whole "Lucas sold my childhood for 4 billion dollars" comments, and it was:

 

No matter what, George Lucas just won every argument ever. He's donating the money from the sale to charity.

"Oh, you're sad because I made movies that didn't live up to your childhood memories? Well I just gave enough money to charity to educate every child you'll ever know."

The Amazing Spider-Man

Watched the Blu-Ray of The Amazing Spider-Man, and what a great movie it was.

I thought it was a bit weird making a remake so soon after the last Spider Man movie, but I figured if they can make Batman look bad-ass on Dark Knight, let's see what they could do for good old Spidey. Emma Stone was great, much better than Kirsten Dunst for the part of Peter's love interest. Then again, doesn't really take much to outperform Kirsten Dunst.

It follows the same story line obviously, with a few changes. Uncle Ben doesn't say "with great power comes great responsibility", but he does say that you have a "moral right" to help others if you are a position to do so, and it's your "responsibility" to do so. There's no Mary Jane, but there is still a chick that Peter is interested in. Uncle Ben still dies in his arms due to a robber that he could have stopped but didn't. In this movie however the webs don't come out of his own body, but rather from a canister that contains super strong spider webs, just like in the original comics designed by Stan Lee. Speaking of Stan Lee, as with every movie that was based off one of his comics, he has a little scene in this one too.

You know exactly what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, after all there has been so many other movies about Spider-Man before, but somehow this one managed to do it much better than its predecessors. It's a very moving movie, especially towards the last 30 minutes or so unlike its predecessors.

The movie was absolutely awesome. IMDB has it rated at 7.4 for some reason, but I give my own personal rating of 9.0.

The Day

Watched the Blu-Ray of The Day today.

It's a movie depicting a post-apocalyptic scenario. We follow a group of survivors in their journey to try find a place to finally call home in this post-apocalyptic world. One can only imagine it's after WW3, which sadly is bound to happen someday.

No zombies or anything like that. Just how bad people will become once all rules are tosses out of the window, and what people will do to survive, including resorting to cannibalism. The world has now 2 factions, the cannibals and their pray. The cannibals are branded, and even if they're not from the same "clan" they still respect others from other clans, but if you aren't a cannibal you are screwed. Even if you are a cannibal but end up with a broken bone or too weak or slow down the group in any way, you will become food.

They ended up pinned in a house that is actually a cannibal trap, and while in that house as the cannibals make their move, they end up discovering one of their members is a cannibal and they start to interrogating her looking for answers. They know a lot of cannibals are heading their way, they know there's no way to outrun them, so they decide to make their final stand in the house.

The movie was alright although predictable, and the ending was good, especially the last minute of it.

IMDB has it rated at 6.0 and I give my own personal rating of 7.0.

ATM

Watched the Blu-Ray of ATM today. It's a small indie movie with a bunch of no-name actors with the exception of the chick which was in Men In Black 3 and The Raven, both movies which I've watched fairly recently.

The movie is about a group of people that get stuck in an *drum roll* ATM!

Two guys from the financial institution, and 1 girl that had her last day working there, go to an ATM to pick up some cash and they ended up being stalked by a creepy and mysterious person that's outside the ATM. In the beginning of the movie it shows how 1 of the guys lost half of some person's 401K money and also someone plotting something involving that parking lot where the ATM is located, thus one could only assume it might be that guy that lost his half of 401K that gone mad and wants to kill them? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You'll have to watch out to find out for yourself.

While he is stalking the group, 1 random person comes near the ATM and he kills him, and the group knows that the weird guy means business. The group tries to bribe him with money and jewelry but he doesn't want anything, and tosses away everything. It's clear that it's personal but how could he have possibly have predicted that the group would have stopped at that precise ATM for that plan to unfold? Or perhaps he just wanted to stalk anyone and they were just the unlucky ones? They start to wonder why this is happening to them, and what each one of them could have done to have upset the mysterious man so much.

When you think things can't get any worst, it turns out they can. That mysterious man really is one mean psycho son of a bitch.

The ending gives you a little insight as to who the mystery man and why he did what he did, as well as to provide us with an idea to what will happen to the survivor of the group. Really fucked up ending, but cool shit.

It was a good movie. IMDB has it rated at 4.7, but I give this movie my own personal rating of 7.0.

Safety Not Guaranteed

Watched the Blu-Ray of Safety Not Guaranteed. It's an small independent movie starring Jake Johnson (the guy that plays Nick on the TV Show "New Girl"), Kristen Bell makes a small appearance  and a bunch of other no-name actors/actresses.

A news magazine reporter chases a story about a guy that wants to go back in time and he's looking for a partner, and he drags along 2 interns, or as he called them "the Indian" and "the lesbian". They stalk the allegedly time traveler and the reporter tries to go undercover but the "time traveler" shot him down. So he sends in one of his interns, the female one, to go undercover and she succeeds.

This "time traveler" is completely paranoid and it might be with a bit of a reason since there's apparently someone else besides the reporter and the interns chasing him around. There's also some side stories going on that don't involve the main plot and they're cool too.

Overall it was a fun movie to watch and the ending was pretty damn cool.

IMDB has it rated at 7.2, and I give it a 8.0. Not a bad indie movie at all.

V.H.S.

Watched the Blu-Ray of V.H.S. (2012) today.

It's about a group of delinquents that are hired to break into a house and steal 1 VHS tape. After they break into the house, it turns out that there's lots of VHS tapes around so they bag a lot of them and watch some of them.

You can't think of this movie as 1 continuous movie because for every VHS tape they watch it's actually a little short story completely independent of the main movie and there's lots of them. All in all, you are watching just a collective of short movies. Some of the short movies are really freaking cool and they're all meant to be really scary. The short movies have different directors as well, so you get to see lots of movies and different directors' works within 1 movie.

The entire movie, including the short movies, are all shot in a 1st person perspective, which I absolutely hate when movies do that but this movie was really cool and I endured through the 1st person perspective aspect of it.

Really creepy and scary at times, other times funny and other times just plain wrong. It has little nudity here and there.

IMDB rates it at 6.0 and I give my own personal rating of 8.0. Definitely worth watching it just for the short movies. The main story line outside the short movies is stupid, but the short movies (the VHS tapes they watch while in the house they broke into) really makes up for it.