Jan 9, 2017

Max Steel made me fear for MOTU...

The movie never made it to PR theatrically, and it has a 1/10/17 street date. Some retailers accidentally released it earlier and a friend of mine managed to snag a copy before the retailer realized. So, we got together and decided to watch this thing. No, I shall not do a play by play since it demands me to watch it again, something I don't want to do.

This movie is like Raditz... which is a lot more disappointing than Yamcha.
They even dragged Andy Garcia to this. I'm not going to blame the actors here. (But Andy has been a magnet for bad 2016 movies) The flaws lie in 4 places:
-Mattel: (Because I have to blame them for something...) All jokes aside, the lack of care from Mattel for the end product shows. Their mentality is eh, looks good enough, we have toys to sell.
-Direction: The director has only done like short films and a web series and the lack of experience shows.
-Writing: (It's the writer from Thor: Dark World... That explains it.) It has awful pacing, Barely there villain, and the plot is a hodgepodge of cliches.
-Budget: (It kinda looked like a SyFy movie.) Well, $10 Million-ish is a bit on the lower end of the spectrum, seeing that MOTU got $22 million back then (about 4.6 times the budget Max Steel got.) 2 times we get to see Max in the suit and we barely see the Elementor. Then again, they went to the 21st century Cannon Films version of Lionsgate.

The movie feels like a Generic Superhero movie for SyFy. The pacing, oh God, the Pacing!!
92 minutes and by the 25-30 minute mark, Max and Steel FINALLY are together. Around the 50-55 minute mark, he KINDA fights an Elementor. Around the 70 minute mark Andy Garcia appears in an armored suit to fight Max. By the 75 minute mark Max kills Andy Garcia... By letting Mr. Garcia absorb Max's power. Around the 85 minute mark, the credits start.

Did I mention, the movie is BLAND? I mean, so bland that it makes Danny Tanner be Bob Saget Edgy. This movie would scare DC out of making a Blue Beetle film. (And Mattel out of making a He-Man movie, seeing that a lot of the things that made He-Man unique were grafted to Max)

I wanted this movie to NOT SUCK, but it's bad... Had it had a bigger budget, to hire a more experienced Director, a more competent writer, (Christopher Yost isn't THAT BAD, but his dialogue and pacing issues did hurt the movie... Not to mention how much was axed due to budget.) and if Mattel bothered to nurture the project enough to make it successful, MAYBE, just maybe, they'd have something...

I mean, the Original Transformers got a $150 Million Budget (about 15 times what Max got) Rise of Cobra got about $175 Million, but then again, the directing and writing there wasn't that great. Retaliation got only $135 and it did a lot better than Max Steel. Jem got half the budget that Max Steel got and it only did SLIGHTLY WORSE than Max Steel.

Max Steel only did 6.27 million Worldwide. Jem did 2.33 Million Worldwide. These two movies flopped bad because both Mattel and Hasbro quarter-assed things. Seeing that they couldn't get something as simple as Max Steel to be successful will probably make Mattel want to abort everything, including He-Man... Especially He-Man, since "they fear me..."
Hopefully, Monster High, Ever After High, and Barbie will not suck in order to GET MOTU done.

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