I was always planning on seeing Iron Man 2, since 2008's original showed itself to be that rarest of movies — an action/adventure flick with brains and even a little heart. (Also I will buy a ticket for anything that RDJ does, no questions asked.)
But after the $100 million marketing tie-in blitz from no less than 12 companies, I'm already sick of Tony Stark, and the movie doesn't even come out until midnight.
Frankly, a superhero has to drive something, so I don't care if someone pays for his ride to be an Audi RB Spider. And it doesn't make any difference to me if Stark asks for a hamburger or a Whopper. But at some point, there's got to be an over-saturation effect.
So while Audi and Burger King and Dr. Pepper might be getting their money's worth, will anyone remember Diesel, Symantec, Sony Music, Oracle, Reese's, 7-Eleven or Royal Purple Motor Oil?
And while all the commercials are giving us plenty of Iron Man, there's not a lot of brand recognition in some of them. Sure, this commercial is pretty funny ("Jen, you're really not good at this.") and it showcases many awesome things phones can do, but can you name the device? It's the LG Ally, but don't ask me what service provider it works with.
So, attention Paramount Pictures and MarvelEntertainment: I surrender. I will see the film.
Kaitlyn Santa Juana in Final Destination: Bloodlines.
On the surface, the Final Destination films really shouldn’t work. There is no villain other than the concept of death itself, and nearly every death that occurs is foreshadowed so heavily that it removes the normal suspense that comes in horror films. And yet the franchise was successful enough to spawn five films over 11 years in the early 2000s, and now a reboot, Final Destination: Bloodlines.
A fantastic opening sequence set in the 1960s sets both the tone and the plot of the film, in which Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has a recurring nightmare about a disaster that her grandmother, Iris (Gabrielle Rose), helped to avert. A visit to the reclusive Iris convinces Stefani that she and her family should not exist, and that each one of them is destined to meet a grisly end in the near future.
Met with resistance from her family members, Kaitlyn is unsurprisingly proven right as the film goes along, with different people dying in a variety of bizarre ways. A visit to William Bludworth (the late Tony Todd), a mortician who’s been the one constant in the series, provides a glimmer of hope that they can cheat death. But will they figure it out before it’s too late?
Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, and written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, the film does not try to reinvent the wheel for the concept. The entire point is to get as creative as possible with the death scenes, and the filmmakers take that mandate seriously, with each successive death becoming increasingly gruesome. The Rube Goldberg-like manner in which each death occurs makes the scenes come off as entertaining instead of off-putting.
The idea of Death hunting down an entire family line due to the actions of the family elder is a solid twist on the series’ central premise, and that change keeps the film from feeling repetitive. The story also introduces the possibility that the entire series is connected due to Iris’ actions, with the character possessing a scrapbook that references well-known incidents from previous films, a fun Easter egg for longtime fans.
The creativity of the kill sequences does not carry over to the overall story, though. Almost every character in the film only exists in order to meet a horrific end, so anything that they have going on outside of being stalked by Death is purely window dressing. Consequently, it’s hard to really care about anybody, even if they are all related to one another.
Because characters are so easily dispatched in the film, the cast is devoid of well-known actors. This is by far Santa Juana’s biggest role to date, and she does well enough to want to see more of her in the future. Adults like Alex Zahara and Rya Kihlstedt are character actors who bring some history with them, while the younger group is composed of people still trying to make names for themselves.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is a solid return for the franchise, even if it feels more like a one-off film rather than a justification for more stories in the future. But given how easily the concept can be adapted into new circumstances, don’t be surprised if another movie pops up in a couple of years.
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Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.
