grimmfilment

The visual difference was evident from the first trailer. Snyder went with gritty, grounded, thematic, the "what if he was real" approach. Gunn went with Gunn approach, flashy, colorful, popcorn dialogue, great for PG-13 audience.

Nerdrotic said it best, this is Superman's James Gunn, a quintessential Gunn movie with all the bells and whistles which that entails... if that's your thing, I'm glad you got the Superman movie you've always wanted. Enjoy.

While I'm no Snyder cult member, the man has his hits and his misses (more latter than former) and just about as many gimmicks as Gunn, Man of Steel was a far deeper movie. Deeper in the sense that it tackled far more potent exploration of identity, purpose, choice and consequences while still being a superhero movie.

Gunn's Superman gets depressed when he realizes his parents sent him to bang as many chicks as he can and spread the Kryptonian seed. Like, dude, you're a grown a** man, make you own decisions. But it's Gunn so... simple is as simple gets.

Snyder's Superman was torn between two fathers and two paths, each with their own merit and their own perils. Snyder's Superman went on a journey of self discovery, examining his past here on Earth to try to find an answer for the answers plaguing him today. What am I supposed to do? Alien or not, we've all been there.

The difference between the movies is so glaring that I'm wasting time writing this, since most people won't read it the moment they glance at the title.

I AM GLAD that a lot of people got to enjoy a Superman movie just as much as I got to enjoy Man of Steel... and can simply bow out by saying "to each his own".

Expect colorful, campy and stripped down version of Superman... a cartoon made into a movie. Brain off, look at the pretty colors and enjoy.

A fairly simple science fiction story about a man who survives a crash landing and has to trek across unknown terrain to find another survivor and hopefully figure out a way to stay alive. Along the way he has "adventures" of the predictable nature, carries trauma that you'll guess long before it's fully revealed and grows as a person... or at least he's supposed to. It's that that deep a story and the lead actor isn't talented enough to show it, so there's that.

While it looks very B movie, very low budget, it is actually very well produced. The location is a barren world, not hard to pull off, but the elements sprinkled throughout the movie are brilliantly done, so much so that the saying "more is less" works like a charm here. CGI is good because there's not much of it and kudos to the producers for that.

What doesn't work is Anthony Ramos. I don't know who's telling people otherwise but the guy is not a lead material, doesn't have the chops or the charm to carry a production. That's about the only peeve I have with the movie, it probably would have been a little better, although still very predictable, with someone else running point. I find it hard to care about a guy who doesn't know who he is every other scene.

Naomi Scott, far more talented performer, is reduced to a voice in his ear but she actually pulls her weight and then some... with everything from happiness, concern and fear and dread carrying in her voice with the right amount of depth.

Long Distance will scratch that little science fiction itch and give you something to watch for an hour and a half without bombarding you with messaging about politics or gender or any other BS Hollywood is plagued with these days.

The first two minutes are the only good thing about this movie. While we are never directly shown, the implication of what happens when the infected storm the house full of kids watching that horrible children's show helps set the tone for what I (and I'm assuming everyone else) thought would be an equally difficult to stomach movies.

And then the typically asinine man of the cloth comes up who misreads the signs around him for the prophesied end of days and fails to protect his child from the horror because he's both a brainwashed idiot and a coward.

That kid, by the way, will make an appearance at the end of the movie that will make you utterly baffled and wonder if some mistake was made in the editing room.

This whole movie presents a world in which the world has successfully fended off the Rage virus and contained it on the British mainland, as if it's an army to be held back and not a disease to be studied and countered. That's the first of many brain farts this movie will treat you with.

You mean to tell me that for 28 years, not a single ally of England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland came to aid what are clearly survivors of the Rage virus? You mean to tell me that not a single air drop of supply was delivered to make their lives somewhat easier? That at not point in time did anyone figure out a way to screen people for traces of the virus and, oh I don't know, extract those who are clear of it?

You know, COMMON SENSE stuff?

Instead, we're lead to believe that the world quarantined British islands and left the people to fend for themselves. All that to present a small community of people who were forced to build their own small society on a small island that's separated from the mainland by a narrow causeway.

There was a story right there and a simple one. After years of hiding on the island, barely surviving, some emergency forces a father to venture to the mainland to seek something or someone to help his child/wife/community. To be the first to set foot on the mainland in over a decade and rediscover the world that is now owned by the infected who have evolved into something even more terrifying.

Instead, we see a father practically force his kid to go to the mainland as some rite of passage, the whole community cheering him on and after failing utterly to function on the mainland (which is the only common sense set of sequences, because a grown man would be terrified let alone a kid), his father goes on to wax lyrical about his son's prowess as a warrior. I mean, what in the actual...

Cutting footage with rapid discolored weird scenes of shrieking people accompanied by those cringe slasher style sounds meant to jump scare you into thinking you're watching something scary... when there's nothing really happening on screen.

So. Much. Wasted. Potential.