Cars 3

Cars 3 ~ Once you get past the truly dark first teaser trailer that led children, and some adults, to believe Lightning McQueen was dead, this isn't a bad film, and on par with other Disney Pixar flicks, unlike the other Cars sequel and spin-offs like this and this.

Cars 3 does what all good third installments of trilogies do best, it brings the story full circle, and to a lesser extent not only closes the circle but also introduces a new beginning.  As Lightning McQueen finds himself falling behind younger and faster cars with newer and higher technology after a near crippling accident in track, he trains a new contender - just as Doc Hudson, the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, did for him in the first movie.

Speaking of Doc, there is wonderful use of Paul Newman's voice acting from the first movie used in flashback and memory.  It's almost as if Paul was here in this one.  Larry the Cable Guy is back as are all the regulars from the town Radiator Springs, but in greatly reduced roles.  Even Lightning's girlfriend is back, but not as his girlfriend so the story can concentrate on his trainer Cruz. 

This is a good movie, with all the proper Disney Pixar buttons for emotional targeting.  We get new characters aplenty including Armie Hammer's smug rival Jackson Storm, Lightning's smarmy new boss voiced by equally smarmy Nathan Fillion, and a killer school bus from the demolition derby.  Yeah, this one doesn't kill Lightning as the teaser suggested, but it does get dark in places. 

And there're none of those weird human dwellings in this film that made Cars 2 seem so creepy, and made me wonder what happened to the people.  I still maintain that Cars happens in the same universe as Stephen King's "Trucks," just after all the humans are gone. 

All that said, this was a good flick, and better sequel, well worth seeing. 

Stan Lee's Mighty 7

When Stan Lee jumped to editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he cut his writing down quite a bit. Letting go of Fantastic Four, Thor, and finally Silver Surfer, by the middle of the seventies when he moved to the west coast, Stan Lee wasn't really writing anything any more. Every once in a while he'd pop up for projects like the creation of She-Hulk, Ravage 2099, and when he recreated the DC Universe, but for the most part he was done writing.

More or less a figurehead, a promotions guy, a pitch man, and the godfather of modern comics, when he does write any more it's not really up to snuff, at least in my opinion. He's still a great concept man, but as far as execution… well, it's hard to be original when everyone else is already doing what you pioneered. He still does come up with great ideas however. Mighty 7 is a case in point.

Done initially for Archie Comics and animated for the Hub Network, Stan Lee's Mighty 7 does have an intriguing twist if old hat characters and execution. The twist is that it stars Stan Lee as himself. While trying to figure out a new comic idea for Archie he comes upon space refugees from outer space, who he teaches to become superheroes. His writer's block is solved.

As I said, the characters are kinda cookie cutter and indistinguishable other than their super powers, mostly unoriginal, but the Legion fan in me does like the idea of another hero with Bouncing Boy's abilities. The best part of the feature, and the reason to watch, is that Stan gives himself all the good lines, or rather the writers do. He is the star here. And that's saying something considering the voice cast includes Armie Hammer, Sean Astin, Teri Hatcher, Mayim Bialik, James Belushi, Flea, and Michael Ironside. Nice. Worth watching for Stan. The jury is still out as to whether this pilot will generate a series or not.

The Lone Ranger 2013

The Lone Ranger ~ When the film was over I turned to The Bride and said that if Walt Disney was alive and found out his company had obtained the rights to make a Lone Ranger movie he would be so happy, and if he'd seen what his company had done with it - it would kill him.

I have a long association with the Lone Ranger, although I can't remember where it began. I recall the cartoons of the 1960s by Format Films. The Ranger wasn't quite a superhero, but the bizarre Ralph Bakshi meets "The Wild Wild West" style of these shorts mesmerized me. I also remember being introduced to the radio show at an early age, and seeing Clayton Moore in reruns of the 1950s series. And when I learned that he was related to the Green Hornet, to me, that just made the Lone Ranger even cooler.



In the superhero movie boom (a firecracker compared to recent decades) of the 1970s, they tried badly to put the masked man up on the big screen, but that ended horrifically with the mess known as The Legend of the Lone Ranger. That dud, along with the bad publicity of not allowing Clayton Moore to wear the mask in public, was enough to bury the character for years to come.

This 2013 movie production, starring Johnny Depp as a mentally ill, delusional Tonto, along with Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski, his behind the scenes pals from the Pirates of the Caribbean films, just seems like a bunch of guys got drunk, had money to burn, and decided to 'play' Lone Ranger. And the kid who had all the toys wanted to play Tonto as an idiot.

I'm sorry. I just can't abide this rape and mutilation of beloved childhood characters. First, we are meant to sit through another longwinded origin story. Let's get this straight, if an origin story can be told in two sentences or less - we don't need to see it. Just say it, and get on with the movie's story. This is one of my biggest pet peeves with superhero films. Stop wasting time with origin stories. Superman's origin was told in seconds at the beginning of every episode of the George Reeves TV series. DC Comics of the 1970s featured a one paragraph origin of the title hero on the first page of every issue. Let's go back to that.



I can't understand the premise of making this movie honestly. Was the point to destroy a lot of trains and ruin childhood heroes? Poor Armie Hammer is given very little to do, hardly any of it heroic, as the title character. What he does do is kill, which is something the real Lone Ranger would never do. The writers made Butch Cavendish into a cannibal, and not subtly either. I personally thought this should have had an R rating, just for that.

The only thing worse than Butch's cannibalism would be the way Johnny Depp chews up scenes and spits them out like steaming vomit. Taking his character cues from Kirby Sattler's painting, "I Am Crow" rather than the character Tonto, Depp is unforgivable. From his halting stereotypical speech to the dead bird on his head, his Tonto is an absolute disgrace.

I hated this movie, and I hated even more that my childhood heroes were destroyed in the making of it. I will get through it. There are still the movies, TV series, cartoons, and especially the radio shows to preserve the legacy. I will survive this travesty, but will the Lone Ranger?