(no subject)

[geebs]

Okay, I managed to hear the big twist (although twist isn't the right word, maybe revelation?) in the latest M Night Shyamalan movie, Split. And I'll have to say, its actually a pretty good one. So the mysterious 24th personality of James McAvoy's character emerges, and its super strong and bulletproof and whatever, and I guess it takes on some cops so there's a news report about it. And who do we see watching this news report about it? David Dunn, Bruce Willis' character from Unbreakable! And it seems like he decides to take this new threat on. Ida know, the idea that this movie is a sorta sequel to Unbreakable is kinda neat.

Anyways, for some reason I decided to see XXX: Return of Xander Cage today. And its existence confused me. And not in a, "How do these movies keep getting made!?" Its like whatever, its LCD ridiculous over the top action interspersed with scenes of people "living large" and sexily dressed hot chyx dancing. I mean, more, why is Vin Diesel reviving XXX and basically turning it into more of the same post-FF5 stuff we've come to know from the Fast and the Furious franchise? Like if FatF was done, I could understand, but this latest movie is the same premise as the current state of the series, Vin Diesel leading a rag tag band of rebellious types, only instead of being a street racing enthusiast, he's an extreme sports enthusiast. But now he's the head of two franchises that are basically the same thing, and that's weird because they're both still currently active.

So his team is Nina Dobrev as the cute perky geeky tech support girl, Ruby Rose as the butch lesbian sniper, the Hound from GoT as the driver guy, and Kris Wu (who I guess is big in Asian actor circles) is... the DJ? Like I was totally confused about his qualifications. Like, his introduction (and the team all gets introductions with funny title cards in a total rip off of Suicide Squad) I guess establishes people like him. Which would work if he was the Face, but he's not, Vin Diesel is the one interacting with everyone. I guess he provides distraction at the clubs by going into the DJ booth and starting up some "sick beats" which gets the crowd moving and thus distracting the opposition?! Like what does he do when they're not in the club?

Also, what the hell, so one of the local is in the Phillipines, but the "club" the scene takes place at hardly has any Filipino looking people in it!

But I digress. The plot is a tad confusing. I mean, I mostly get it, except for Donnie Yen's motivation. Actually, there's another hole I just thought of. So in the beginning, Samuel L Jackson's character, Gibbons' is for some reason trying to recruit Brazilian footballer Neymar Jr (and no, not a character he's playing, the ACTUAL Neymar Jr) into the XXX program, when a satellite gets dropped on them from outer space.

The attack was due to a sophisticated computer thingie called "Pandora", which Toni Collette's character, Marke, presents to a bunch of CIA dudes, saying the device was recovered soon after the attack and the possessor killed. Donnie Yen's team, consisting of Deepika Padukone, Tony Jaa, and UFC guy Michael Bisping, break into the meeting, kill a bunch of dudes, and steal it. Just like the original XXX had a dig against James Bond, this one throws shade at Bourne by having some guy attack Hawk with a book Jason Bourne style and him laughing it off all, "You're trying to attack me with a book?!" and beating the guy down.

So Marke gets Xander to come out of retirement to take them on and get back Pandora, not telling him what it does, only saying it killed Gibbons.

So, he meets Becky the tech support girl, but dislike the special forces guys assigned to work with him. So he throws them off the plane and recruits Adele, Tennyson and Nicks. There's a ridiculous scene where Xander goes to a hot London hacker contact to find Xiang and his people, and to get the info, he has to bang her team of hot hacker girls.

It leads them to the Philippines, where the two teams meet. Xander quickly learns they are also agents of the XXX program. The confrontation is interrupted by a Russian special forces team, and Xander and Xiang's team work together to get away. Xander manages to get Pandora from Xiang, but Serena destroys it. But they discover its actually just a prototype, and someone has the real Pandora, which they just used to attack Moscow.

So Xander goes back to the security footage of the attack, and sees the head of the CIA guy didn't flinch when Xiang attacked, so they figure out he's the perpetrator. And this is where things don't make sense. So I can believe Xiang's team were the current XXX-ers working for Gibbons, and when he died, they went to recover the device to stop it from falling into the government's hands, because that's too much power for any government to have. But if they weren't working with the CIA guy, why did he not flinch, since shouldn't he also be surprised since they're not together?!

Also, Serena wants to destroy it, obviously, but Xiang, doesn't... because of reasons? Reasons that disappear when Xiang and Xander catch up with CIA guy and Adele takes the guy out. I mean, one could believe Xiang's motivation is so it wouldn't fall in the wrong hands, and since Xander is working for the government, it would end up with them. But then why didn't he just destroy it when Serena wanted to?! Or rather, the thing he had since he didn't actually have Pandora.

So yeah, Xiang's arrested to take the fall since they'd rather have a random terrorist blamed for an attack on Moscow rather than the head of the CIA. Also, Marke gets orders to disavow the entire XXX program. And so Xiang and Xander team up on the plane to get Pandora back from Marke before she uses it to drop a satellite on the others, while the others hold off an attack by waves and waves of Spec Ops guys. But yeah, I should've expected Xiang's team were okay guys and they would all team up since Xiang's team never did anything awful that would make you root against them. Like, they killed a bunch of random CIA guys, but since they ended up being the enemy in the end, it was fine. Also, just when it seems all is lost for the folks on the ground, Ice Cube's character Darius Stone from the second movie shows up to save the day because XXX takes care of their own.

Anyways, the good guys win, destroy Pandora, and of course at Gibbons' funeral he secretly shows up to Xander and tells him to continue "fighting the good fight" with his new team consisting of Darius, Becky, Adele, Tennyson, Nicks, Xiang, Serena, Talon, and Hawk since they all survived. And he's basically become Nick Fury without the facial hair since he also is missing an eye due to getting a satellite dropped on him. Also, soccer guy is his new protege.

So like I said, its weird that they set things up for him to make more movies with his new team, when that's the exact same thing he has going in the FF movies.

Comments

[clevemire.livejournal.com]

I also heard the Shyamalan twist and I thought it was completely terrible. "Surprise! This schlocky looking horror movie is secretly a sequel to one of the few decent movies I ever made! Which wasn't a horror movie so this crosses genres in a weird way that doesn't really make sense!"