What The Film!? – 2012 In Review

What The Film?! is a weekly column exclusive to Under The Gun Review that brings to light the plot holes Hollywood hoped you’d never notice. Written by comedy writer Dane Sager, this column shows no mercy to films that try and pull the proverbial wool over our eyes.

If you know a film with major plot holes that you feel needs to be exposed, tell us! Email utgjames@gmail.com with the subject “What The Film” and we’ll try to get your suggestion featured on the site.

I had a lot of ideas of where to go with my final What The Film!? of 2012. Do I do a countdown of my most popular posts in a recap? That couldn’t work, because I couldn’t tell you why the hell Alien 2: On Earth is the most popular thing I’ve ever written for this site (off the site however, the most popular thing I’ve done is this). Do I do an awful movie that has haunted me for the majority of my life as being a hollow sad disappointment? That couldn’t work either, I already did Jurassic Park III a few weeks ago. What if I decide to analyze and destroy a movie that I’ve helped created? The zombie/werewolf “horror” movie that a handful of friends and I made before we went off to our separate colleges? The movie that continually shames all of us to this day, almost seven years later? No, I’m saving that one for my last What The Film!? ever. Whenever I finally leave the website (which won’t be for a long time, everyone) I’ll write up about everything we did wrong on that movie (“White testing is the key to film making” said one of us during production). Ultimately, I decided on a format similar to Justin’s For The Love Of Film post last week: a quick recap of the biggest issues and problems I had with movies this year.

Don’t worry, you guys will hear everything there is about Panjake and Danish Fight The Terror someday.

Men In Black 3

I liked Men In Black 3 more than James did. I felt it did justice to the franchise, proving that a very 1990’s styled action/comedy could still work in this day and age. I didn’t realize the problem with the plot until much later, which is a good sign that the movie makers did their job correctly. In fact, almost all of these grievances were realized after the movie, almost never during.

The climatic battle consists of Will Smith trying to get a Earth saving device on the Apollo 11 rocket so it would be launched into space. There is a huge sequence of trial and error of him trying to achieve this while being attacked by the alien antagonist. Except that earlier in the movie, we find out that there are MIB agents that work for NASA and are aware of how important this device is. No one tries to delay the launch or make this easier for Will Smith. It’s his battle and his alone because MIB agents are kind of dicks.

Also Pitbull did the theme. Not Big Will, the Dr. Pepper guy.

Prometheus

Prometheus got some bad reviews. Yes, it has a 73% percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which by all means isn’t bad, but it wasn’t what audiences were expecting from Ridley Scott’s return to the universe that birthed Alien and Blade Runner (shoot, does that put Soldier in Alien canon too?). I loved it, even though it wasn’t the prequel I was expecting. Also it gave my girlfriend a panic attack, which was awesome.

About halfway through the movie, a mohawked character who signed up for the two year scientific expedition who doesn’t give a shit about science (and is generally a dick to everyone) gets infected with a weird black goo. Later in the movie, they discover Mohawk outside the ship, curled up into a pretzel shape, waiting for the door to open. Once discovered, he unties himself and kills a bunch of people with superhuman strength before he’s subdued. Why did Mohawk become a zombie and why did he sit in a pretzel formation outside the ship?

Pictured: Suspense.

The Amazing Spider-Man

I’m aware I already wrote about this movie, but to call it a movie is insinuating that it wasn’t just a two hour series of plot holes that were never resolved. This movie was a colossal waste of time.

The game was also a huge step back.

The Avengers

So what is the plot of The Avengers? You don’t know? It’s the most successful movie of the year. Between this and Cabin in the Woods, 2012 has become the year I forgive Joss Whedon for Alien Resurrection. How have you not seen it? Well, the IMDB summary is “Nick Fury of SHIELD brings together a team of super humans to form The Avengers to help save the Earth from Loki and his army”. Basically it’s about how Earth is totally screwed and needs to put together as many people as possible to help fight an alien invasion. It’s a group of six, one being an alien/god, one being The Hulk, one being a super soldier, one being a rich guy who has a robot suit, and two secret agents.

Not once does anyone even entertain the idea of suiting up more people with Iron Man suits. Hell, Stark has a lot of free suits laying around his house and tower that he never even thought of giving one to someone else to help fight. If you think they can only be used by him, like some sort of DNA connection like in Avatar, you’d be wrong because his best friend stole one of the suits in Iron Man 2. He upgraded the suit with better weapons and helped fight in that movie, but not The Avengers. The world had a soldier, loyal to the country, who wasn’t going to court regularly to prove that he should keep the suits, who could lead and do exactly what SHIELD would want, but they decided to have the team led by an alcoholic narcissist who didn’t share his super weapon when the Earth needed as much help as it could get. Was there some sort of racial element? I have no idea.

No one gets an Iron Man suit to help, despite having half the team be totally mortal normal humans, and the only other person to have one of the suits doesn’t even get asked to help.

“That guy that helped me put down Mickey Rourke? Nope. No help at all. None. Can we get shawarma now?”

My Biggest Grievance of 2012.

I’m going to link you to another website right now that has compiled a list of every movie this year that could have been made better if Nicolas Cage was cast in it. You can see this list here.

Would have nailed it.

Nicolas Cage as The Avengers picture by Reddit user C4TS3.

Dane is done with this year. Unless this year is some weird Groundhog’s Day styled loop, which in case he’ll know what movies to avoid this time. You can follow him on Twitter and Tumblr!

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