Ben 10: Alien Swarm

I was one of the few who enjoyed the cheesy first live-action movie of Ben 10, Race against Time. 2 years later, they produced another live-action movie, Alien Swarm. Alien Swarm is quite different from the first movie. This is more serious, has realistic special effects and better acting. I admit that in the first movie, the acting is horrible. Now, Alien Swarm is the more serious adaptation of the popular cartoon Ben 10.

The story: It is fairly simple so that kids will enjoy it and not care about anything else. Everything in the movie is quite good compared to the first one. The only thing disappointing is the lack of aliens. Even the first one which has a low budget can afford to have four aliens. This has a higher budget which is why the special effects look more realistic.

Overall: It is a fun ride. With a brisk pace and action, this is quite entertaining and enjoyable. Its' short runtime makes the movie faster pace. I am not a Ben 10 fan but I hope there will be another movie. This is so much better than the first one.

A very effective "B" movie, way better in every possible way than the previous live action "Ben 10." The directing, acting, production design and visual effects are considerably improved this time around, very nice indeed for a low-budget cable film. Clearly, the filmmakers actually tried to make a decent film (take note, Sy-Fy). Sure, the script is pretty much by-the-numbers and contains no surprises, but you can't really expect top-notch screen writing in a picture like this.

If this turns out to be a ratings success, I wouldn't mind seeing live action versions of some of Cartoon Networks other series, such as "The Secret Saturdays."

Much better than the first movie but? The director is Alex Winter. Yes, from Bill and Ted, he is a distinguished and very successful director, and he has succeeded in creating a wonderful work, as well as the scenario and visual effects, but the problem lies in the weakness of the actors, although they look identical to the cartoon, but they are unaware of how a cartoon character is represented in a movie. Another problem is that Kevin's visual effects are bad, but we can forgive that. One more thing, why does every action scene have people jumping like goons? I thought in a moment that I was watching Power Rangers. Anyway, I like Ben 10 and I love this movie, so I will give him a 9, so his rating increases a little because 4.6 is a trivial rating.

I used to be a humongous Ben 10 fan as a kid, constantly obsessing over the now classic cartoon from my childhood. However, it has no bearing whatsoever on my opinions about the live-action TV films because I'm not blinded by pure nostalgia, unlike some people. With that said, I guess it's now time to remove my "rose-tinted glasses" and get serious.

If I'm going to judge this movie on its own merits as a level-headed adult, and not as a mindless fanboy, then I'd have to say the plot is generic and bland, the position of camera-angles and lighting makes the whole thing feel flat, the music is forgettable, some of the cast members do a fairly decent job with their performances (for the most part, anyway), and the technobabble dialogue is standard for this type of schlocky sci-fi script. It's everything an average film needs to be even more mediocre than it already is, which is why most of the time it's such a tedious watch to get though.

Ryan Kelley's portrayal of the titular character himself can be best summed up as being like a less charismatic version of Tom Holland's MCU Spider-Man incarnation. Alex Winter's direction is severely uninspired, so much so that it makes me think about how this film would've turned out if a far-more talented filmmaker like let's say James Gunn or David F. Sandberg were to have directed the project instead, and maybe then it would of had a bit of personality injected into it.

This film also has the same main problem that the previous one had, in which there were no recognisable villains from the show incorporated into either of the films; like Vilgax, Dr. Animo, the Forever Knights... you get the idea. Another glaring issue they both share is that for movies entitled "Ben 10" he never seems to turn into more than like 3 or 4 of his alien heroes. The movie is called "Ben 10", isn't it? ... so why don't they ever show more than a handful of them?!

The only reason for any non-fan to watch this is the special effects sequences which, taken the fact it was produced for television into consideration, manage to hold up even to this day. After all these years, the way the CGI visuals interact with the environment of the real-life filming locations still looks pretty impressive. Almost makes me wonder why a made-for-television movie from over 10 years ago looks more believable than something like the big-screen Aquaman film from 2018, which had a mega budget of $200 million when compared to Alien Swarm's humble $40 million (how embarrassing is that for DC).

In short, Alien Swarm may very well be a marginally better improvement over A Race Against Time (a cringe-fest with awful CGI), but neither one of them is really all that great. So if I had to at least suggest one of them, I think I'd recommend you skip the first one and just go straight for this sequel.

The live-action is fun filled to follow although there are many errors in the scenes, it still proves to be effective.

One thing I also liked is the aliens' animation into real 4D creatures. However I was disappointed by the fact that he only went hero few times with less aliens.

It is better than the original tho .