Age of the Geek

Ten Movies For 2014

                Another year has come and gone and, like everybody else in the media, I’m celebrating with a Top 10 list.

     These movies are by no means the best movies of 2014, as there are definitely movies out there that would have made the list had I gotten around to seeing them. Likewise, these aren’t necessarily my favorites of 2014. I would watch “Big Hero 6” again over some of these entries, but that movie was exactly what I expected it to be and I’m giving extra points for surpassing expectations this year.

     So, in order of release, let’s begin.

The Lego Movie

     I went into “The Lego Movie” expecting a creatively bankrupt cash grab trying to distract the audience with endless pop culture references. What I got was a thoughtful and entertaining story that really captured what it’s like to play with Legos, with endless pop culture references.

     The Hero’s Journey story of the plastic figures is nicely blended with the behind-the-scenes story of a child trying to reconnect with his father, introducing a layer of complexity I didn’t expect from a movie that features a character named “Princess Unikitty.”

300: Rise of an Empire

     The long awaited (at least, by me) sequel to the hyper-stylized, testosterone fueled action epic was well worth the wait. Set both before and after the events of the first movie, “300: Rise of an Empire” manages to be both more of the same and yet completely different from its predecessor.

     Where the first movie focuses on the proud Leonidas and the supreme awesomeness of his highly trained Spartan warriors as they rush into impossible odds, this film takes the opposite approach.

     This time our hero, Themistocles, values tactics over brute force and his army is made up of scared volunteers, not professional soldiers bred for battle.

     For fun I edited the two movies together into a single film. The result is three and a half hours of bloody entertainment.

Captain America:

The Winter Soldier

     Where the Iron Man and Thor movies are generally pretty similar to each other, the Captain America sequel jumped genres entirely. The first film was a World War II era war story with a guy in a blue jumpsuit. The sequel is a modern day espionage thriller with a guy in a blue jumpsuit.

     “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” wasn’t just a good movie. It was so good that it even made “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” a better television show through proximity.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

     This movie has gotten a lot of flack, some of it well deserved, but I still really enjoyed it. From casting to action scenes to special effects, the rebooted Spider-Man franchise does so many things right that the Sam Raimi trilogy didn’t.

     Some people complain that the movie has too much going on. With two super-villains, romantic struggles, and a conspiracy around Peter’s father, I can see their point. However, as someone who has read a great deal of Spider-Man comics, I can assure these critics that’s pretty much par for the course.

Godzilla

     Here’s the thing about “Godzilla.” Yes, Bryan Cranston is criminally underused. In fact, you could almost argue that the promotional campaign borders on false advertising.

     And yes, the Big G himself is also absent for far too much of the movie. I can only assume that Gareth Edwards knew exactly what he was doing when he cut away from the first big monster fight to show a little kid playing with toys.

     At the end of the day though, it doesn’t matter. Because when Godzilla and the MUTOs really start going at it, that alone is worth the price of admission.

X-Men: Days of Future Past

     Desperate times call for desperate measures and you couldn’t get much more desperate than Fox was with the X-Men franchise before the return of Bryan Singer. The success of “X-Men: First Class” marked a turnaround, but it was “X-Men: Days of Future Past” that really set the franchise back on track.

     Plotting each movie to be set in a different decade was an ambitious plan, but it’s paying dividends. “X-Men: Days of Future Past” wasn’t just the first truly great X-Men movie since X2, it also proves that people will watch a period piece about mutants during the Nixon Administration.

     And, as an added bonus, the movie officially wipes out the events of the third X-Men movie. What more could you want?

Guardians of the Galaxy

     Speaking of love letters to the 70s, you’d be hard pressed to find a better one than “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

     Although it didn’t hit the billion dollar gross I predicted, its $772,000,000 is nothing to scoff at. More importantly, it proved that Marvel Studios can safely branch away from its high profile characters and make superstars out of an anthropomorphic tree and raccoon.

     Additionally, “Guardians of the Galaxy” set a new bar for the next Star Trek and Star Wars films. One would hope that the movie’s success will inspire J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin to step up their game, but they’ll probably just see it as a sign to toss in a talking badger or something.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

     I did not hate this movie. There, I said it.

     I should hate it. After all, it’s a Michael Bay produced reboot of a beloved 80s franchise. No good can come of that. Can it?

     Well... as it turns out. Yes, some good can. Not a lot, but some.

     Yes, the movie was dumb, loud and stupid, but it wasn’t offensively bad. Certainly no worse than some of the other Ninja Turtle movies to hit the big screen.

     Chalk it up to low expectations, but I walked out of the theater reasonably entertained.

Dracula Untold

     Another film I went into with low expectations, “Dracula: Untold” had the potential to be yet another in a series of disappointing vampire movies. What we got instead was a pretty decent origin story for the prince of darkness.

     Part vampire horror movie, part video game cut scene, instead of hating this movie I ended up hoping for a sequel. Really, what more can you want?

The Hobbit:

The Battle of Five Armies

     Finally, the big event. One last visit to Middle Earth before New Line Cinema is officially out of material to adapt. For all the complaining about turning a single book into three movies, I’ve yet to walk out of the theater of a Hobbit movie without wishing it were even longer.

     The Hobbit trilogy hasn’t been as well received as its predecessor, but I still love every second. And to be fair, adapting “The Hobbit” was always going to face insurmountable challenges. The stakes aren’t as high and the material isn’t as in-depth. After all, in the book Bilbo gets knocked out mid-way through the battle and doesn’t regain consciousness until it’s all over. The climax of the fight is simply told to him after the fact. That’s pretty anti-climatic for a book, and would never work in a movie.

     Were The Hobbit movies as good as The Lord of the Rings movies? No. But the worst of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations is still better than most movies out there.