The show takes place many years after 5Ds. Technically, it may not be in continuity, but there are enough nods that we can essentially place it in the timeline. Just in an unofficial way like Avengers Assemble. The story follows a kid named Yuma as he goes through his days striving to high five the sky. He is a terrible duelist, but he never gives up and has a lot of fun. One day, he gets a pendant and a spirit named Astral appears. The spirit has lost his memories and needs to recover the 100 Number Cards to get them back. Naturally, Yuma decides to help and Astral decides to make him a better duelist along the way.
The first arc mainly deals with a large tournament. Mr. Heartland is one of the organizers and it is safe to say that he is corrupt. His boss wants to do something shifty with the numbers and he coerces number hunter, Kite, to join the fray as well. Throw in a bunch of other characters and we’ve got quite a tournament. Can Yuma defeat all of these fighters!?
The second arc deals with the Barian Emperors. They have arrived on Earth and wish to destroy Astral and his world along with him. Yuma will have to level up his dueling abilities even more if he is going to defeat them, but things get personal when he finds out that there may be a traitor or two in his midst. His bonds of friendship are shaken to the core. How can Yuma fight for his friends when they may not even be his friends!? The stakes get higher in this arc and it is also a lot darker. I definitely can’t forget the arc opener…that was intense!
Zexal distinguishes itself from the other Yugioh series with how exaggerated the dueling is. Not that the stakes are the highest or anything like that, but you can do almost anything in a single turn. Need to summon 6-8 monsters at once? Not a problem! Need to do the triple fusion to build the overlay network and summon your favorite monster on the first turn? No worries, you can even deal some damage while you are at it. The combos are seriously overpowered here. It is to the point where you need a dynamite hand from the start or else you are doomed. Luckily, the duelists have luck and Shining Draw skills on their side.
To counter all of the monster combos, we have constant traps at the ready. There are likely more trap battles here than in the rest of the franchise. Duelists are constantly playing spell and trap cards so often that it feels like a classic DBZ fight! “Are you done?” “Almost, but first I activate…” This happens soooo many times during the series. I thought it was overdone, but I suppose that spell and trap cards are fun to use. It makes for sone great boasts during the duel.
There are quite a few deux ex machinas to be found as Yuma will unveil a new card at just the right time! He also got some new cards when he first leveled up into his Super Saiyan form. A pretty good bonus if you ask me! This is regrettable, but I know that it is pretty hard to avoid considering how strong the villains are at times. The new cards are typically fun, which is always good.
The new gimmick that is added to the actual duels is that you can now Exceed summon. It is similar to fusion and it’s almost the same thing. The main difference is that your monsters need to be the same level. You don’t need to tune them or activate a card to fuse the monsters, the levels just have to align and then you’ve got a new monster at the ready to help out! It’s not a bad gimmick and it’s fairly easy to use. It’s a lot better than Cardfight G’s gimmick, but it’s probably not quite as fun as Synchro Summoning. Also, the show’s exaggerated play style points out the holes in this technique as you can seriously take advantage of the new way of summoning. It was still a fun addition to watch while it was around though.
Zexal’s animation is big, bold, and bright. Similar to how the 90’s comics loved their exaggerated panels and colorful designs, Zexal takes a similar approach. Other anime that have basically done this include Saint Seiya Omega and Digimon Fusion. It is certainly not my favorite style and I prefer something more streamlined like Yugioh GX, but I suppose that it works well enough. The animation is still pretty good even if it is not great. Some episodes spared no expense like Kite’s first duel or some of the big budget battles that would pop up now and again. You certainly would not mistake this for being an older title and it took advantage of the many energy attacks that were present. Unfortunately, a lot of the monsters still manage to be in total CGI, which looks significantly less impressive. Nothing beats watching a hand drawn monster appear to take names and beat up on the opponents. It’s a lot more satisfying to watch after all.
Zexal’s soundtrack is certainly one area where it does not impress. Most of the themes are fairly generic and you will forget them very easily. Most of the tunes aren’t bad, but it just felt like no real effort was put into them. That being said, you will probably start to like them by the time you are done with the show. You will have heard them many times after all and since the array of themes is rather limited, they have to keep playing them for each battle.
Kite is the best character of the show so we may as well talk about him first. He is Yuma’s true rival in the show although you can make the case for Shark as well. Kite uses a Photon deck and what is unique about it is that he rarely exceed summons. He prefers to fight with more traditional techniques like tribute summoning. His Neo Galaxy Eyes dragon is a true beast and a worthy opponent to come up against. I liked Kite right from the start and his ability to manipulate the flow of time was excellent. He provided the show with a good enemy and he is probably the only human who was able to help a lot in the final battle while on his own. It doesn’t get much better than facing someone while in outer space!
Shark was Yuma’s first rival although I would argue that Kite fits the roll a little better. Shark duels rather early on in the series, but then he takes a backseat for a while. It is hard to say why, but if just felt like Shark wasn’t around as often as the others until the Barian arc. He did have quite a few important duels and he was in the climax so I am not sure why I get that feeling. Either way, by the end of the series he is easily in second or third as far as the most influential characters go. (Minus Astral)
Shark is a good rival. He lost rather quickly as a lot of shows like to have the hero beat the rival in the first episodes, but things went up for him from there. He was definitely one of the more likable heroes. Then, the final arc happened. Let’s just say that the “I fight for my friends” idea was thrown out the window. Shark was torn between his loyalties to Earth and his real home. Ultimately, he decides to choose the latter and that would have been ok if handled differently.
The problem is that there is no good reason for Shark’s last few decisions. He wants to protect some people, but he is conveniently forgetting that those people have been causing damage and mayhem in the city. He should also know that Yuma and co are not planning on doing anything drastic so they could all talk about this. Unfortunately, Astral is also very frustratingly extreme on the issue, which does not help. The whole climax could have been avoided if Shark had simply agreed with Yuma. That way everyone would coexist in peace. Astral’s clan wanted war as well, but it would be easy for Yuma to calm them down since he did save them a while back. Ah well, Shark still proves himself to be a very good duelist and he still did help out a lot. He is easily one of the best heroes for the first arc and he is an intimidating fighter in the final one. We can’t really call him a hero anymore though since he destroyed another hero and attempted to destroy an entire race.
Yuma is the main character of the show and he upholds the tradition of most Yugioh leads having a name that begins with a Y. Jaden may have not confirmed to this tradition, but he is Jaden. His skills allow him to write his own legacy. Yuma is pretty bad at dueling when the show first starts. He is probably worse than normal Yugi was at the time although it is probably debatable. As the series progresses, Yuma becomes a pro in his own right. I would certainly still consider Yugi, Jaden, and Yusei to be better duelists, but Yuma’s deck is probably better than Yugi’s (Minus the God Cards) and Yusei’s. Yuma’s many variations of Utopia will serve him well. Yuma’s deck has an incredible number of cards as new ones keep on popping up whenever he is in a pinch.
Yuma is the only lead in Yugioh who gets multiple super forms as the series progresses. His first form is probably the best as he becomes a Super Saiyan! That was definitely pretty awesome. Naturally, his forms come with their own special abilities like Shining Draw. Shining Draw is very useful as it allows you to draw any card that you want. This naturally shifts the balance of power in any duel. I am inclined to believe that Yuma also gets a degree of flight, super strength, and speed, but it is a little hard to verify.
As for his personality, Yuma is a decent lead. I prefer my main characters to be more confident and talented, but Yuma still has other good traits. He never gives up on his friends as shown in his final duels with Vector, Shark, and Astral. He’s definitely a hero and Yuma would never destroy a villain. He tries to see the good inside of every character. Yuma may take it to extremes, but at least you know that you can certainly trust him in a pinch! When he is serious, Yuma can be a real threat as a duelist and his skill progression was handled rather well. If he could have fewer comic relief scenes at times, he would be an even better lead.
Astral is a ghost who accompanies Yuma for the duration of the series. He lost his memories and he needs Yuma to get them back. The two heroes have a number of good adventures, but Astral still keeps his original goal in mind. He wants the complete destruction of Barian World. Nothing Yuma says will change his mind so they eventually engage in a duel. It is rather disappointing to see how low Astral has gotten in that final duel. There is a twist which suggests that Astral may have just been testing Yuma, but I still wonder about that. If Yuma had not that the proven the heart of the cards was with him, I think we may have had to say goodbye to Barian World.
Astral’s gimmick is that he’s new to Earth so he asks a lot of questions and makes observations. I don’t tend to care for a character like that and Astral may be a pro, but he’s the kind of guy who rarely makes his own decisions and simply listens to the corrupt men in charge. He never ended up being a good character for me, but he could have been a lot worse. At least he fought when the going got tough.
Dr. Faker was one of the first big villains of the series. He was never a favorite of mine, but he had a pretty nifty super form. He also gave us one of the best battles of the series, which was a lot of fun. That being said, he just didn’t have a great design and lacked the personality needed to make a villain really threatening. I would say that Vetrix was an improvement, but not really. Zexal really struggled with the villains in the first part of the series. Vetrix’s voice took away any mystery that he could have had. His deck was pretty handy though and it was certainly dangerous. That just didn’t make him a great villain.
I’m afraid that Yuma’s friends weren’t great. Bronk was your average bully who wasn’t good at dueling, but eventually became Yuma’s friend. Unfortunately, his skills never got better. Flip, Caswell, and Cathy were around, but they never helped out or became likable characters either. Tori is the main heroine of the series and she does her best to cheer Yuma on, but the show missed its big opportunity by never really letting her duel. This means that she was relegated to the background and never had much of an impact on the story.
Rio is Shark’s sister and she doesn’t really get to appear until the start of the second part of the show. She is a very good duelist and a nice supporting character to have around. Finally, we had a friend who could duel! Unfortunately, that was around when the twist about the Barian Emperors came around so her days as a hero were very limited. She was a tough duelist until the end though and her ice deck was fun.
Dextra was one of the allies/rivals from the early part of the series along with Nistro. They faded away in the final arc, but they still tried to help. Dextra was a good character although she never got to do all that much and her overall fight record wasn’t that great. Nistro talks a good game, but his actual skills aren’t quite as good as he would like to think. He still put up a good fight against one of the Barian Emperors, but he was doomed from the start.
Quattro tries to be like a rival to Shark in the series. He doesn’t duel the guy enough for us to really count it, but that’s what his personality is like. He mellows out after the first arc though and manages to be more likable than Trey, but not quite as cool as Quinton. It’s almost hard to imagine how he could have become so nice after he was so evil at first, but it just shows that he had some fast character development. He was a fun supporting character.
I didn’t really care for Trey though. He was the nice guy of the group, but he was tricked rather easily and this leads to disagreements with Yuma. He does help Yuma out of a few jams though so his helpfulness should not be overlooked. Most of the other heroes aren’t quite as useful when push comes to shove. Quinton is still the best of the group and it isn’t just because he has one of the coolest number cards. He’s a good duelist right up until the end and he puts up a good fight against Mizar, which is more than most of the other characters can say. He has an air of confidence about him and that makes Quinton a worthy hero to have on one’s side.
Dumon is one of the nicer Barian Emperors. He’s actually very reasonable and if the other emperors weren’t always looking for a fight, the heroes could have likely made peace through him. It wasn’t to be though and unfortunately, Dumon is also one of the weaker ones. His deck simply wasn’t very imaginative, but his design was cool. Mizar is easily one of the cooler Barian Emperors and I remember how epic his first appearance was. After having to watch Girag for so long, I was thrilled to have someone around who could fight. It was also the first time that Shark, Kite, and Yuma had gathered together in quite a while. Mizar’s Galaxy Eyes made for a great monster and while he may have been cannon fodder for the final boss, Mizar never backed down.
Girag is one of the Barian Emperors and he’s one of the main reasons why the show got off to a slow start at first. (Minus the first episode) It’s really hard to take him seriously and he’s actually a fairly weak duelist. His number isn’t very impressive and he spends a lot of time getting taken out or simply relying on minions. It’s a good thing that he had other emperors to back him up. Alito was a decent one who used to be a bit of a boxer. His deck was the most normal out of the emperors as he didn’t rely on a lot of fancy tricks to win. He simply hit hard and hit fast. Alito’s certainly a little gullible and it can be sad to see him turn on Yuma so suddenly, but he ultimately realizes that he has to fight to win. Behind Mizar and Vector and Nash and Rio……he is the best one…which is sort of saying something right?
We also can’t forget Dark Astral. He was a pretty fun villain to have. It was also a fun plot since we didn’t know that numbers could have a will of their own before that moment occurred. He got several power ups and proved to be a thorn in the side of the heroes for quite some time. I liked his character a lot and his ending wasn’t very satisfying, but you certainly can’t say that he didn’t have a lot of action before that. He got to fight quite a few times and he displayed a whole lot of power while he was around. He was a very threatening villain to be sure.
Eliphas was one of the big members of Astral World and the only one who could fight aside from Astral. His design was very good and you could certainly tell that he was a threat to any duelist. His cards weren’t very overpowered or anything, he was simply a very good duelist. It was fun to see him upgrade his monsters over and over again to be sure. He’s a rather unreasonable character and one of the main reasons why Astral ended up making some bad decisions. I certainly can’t call Eliphas a hero, but he made for a fun villain although his appearances were brief.
Mr. Heartland is one of those characters who will leave you in suspense for a while. He appears a lot in the show, but he rarely ever gets to duel. He gets an intriguing super form in Zexal II, but it certainly didn’t help me become a fan of him. He was another uninteresting villain. Meanwhile, Yuma’s Dad seemed like a good character, but his plot never really went anywhere. It seems like he’s still alive of course, but he just never checks in on Yuma. He prefers to help from the shadows, but he certainly could have helped the heroes save the planet if he had wanted too. I’m not sure how much of a duelist he is, but I’m willing to bet that he was a powerful one.
Vector is one of the biggest villains and also one of the best ones. He uses trickery to make the heroes lower their guards before striking. He’s an excellent duelist as well so you shouldn’t underestimate him either. In terms of raw power, he was easily one of the biggest threats that Yuma had to face. It’s a good thing for the hero that they’re just facing each other in a duel right? Vector spends most of the season pretending to be Yuma’s ally and his scheme works rather well. It’s pretty disheartening for the heroes to find a traitor in their midst, but that’s just how smooth Vector is. His Barian form was certainly cool. Shark should have been a little more alert when around this guy, but in the end, the heroes were ready for his tricks. Without him, it would have been very hard to have taken the Barian Emperors seriously. I’d say that Shark is still the best villain, but it’s between Vector and the upcoming villain for second place.
Don Thousand is the ultimate villain of this series and he was an epic way to end the series. He wasn’t the actual final boss that Yuma had to face, but he felt like it. His true form looks like something you would see out of Toriko and his deck doesn’t disappoint in how powerful it is. Don Thousand can actually rewrite reality thanks to one of his spell cards so he can change your card into another one. It’s the kind of ability that is almost impossible to stop and it’s a lot of fun to see how powerful a card can be. He can certainly hold his own against any other final boss in the Yugioh franchise and he’s also one of the cooler ones. It was seriously fun to watch him duel.
One area where Zexal surpassed the other Yugioh series was in how many filler or “filler” episodes that it had. Some of the battles may have technically been important for the number cards, but they were effectively filler. This happens for most of Yuma’s early tournament battles as well as his early days and even the Barian Emperor had some when Yuma had to fight random people who were taken over by Barian Force. The filler episodes certainly slowed the pacing down and weren’t as exciting as the big episodes. As such, you need to be a big fan of the actual dueling or that will hurt the experience for you a bit. We have a whole episode about Yuma dueling a guy who liked tomatoes and Yuma has to eat them during the duel. It’s pretty surreal.
As with most Yugioh series, the tone is very light at first, but then things get serious towards the end. It’s almost a tradition at this point that the whole supporting cast has to be eliminated towards the end. It happened in GX, and now it happened here. Okay…that’s two out of 4 series, but we’ll see what happens once Arc V arrives. Either way, the stakes were certainly very high. Perhaps not quite as much as GX, which was the original, but still higher than you would have guessed from the beginning.
The climax of each arc is also pretty great as you would expect. I actually preferred the first big battle as it was Kite, Shark, and Yuma against the villain in season 1. Season 2 couldn’t top that so it was just Shark and Yuma against the villain. Still really epic of course, but nothing beats a 3 on 1 duel. The animation and tension greatly improved in Zexal II so it really did put out all of the stops. One of the reasons why Yugioh always has such a great climax is because it already established all of the characters early on in the series. This means that you will be caring about each duel at the end and the stakes keep getting higher and higher. Also, I still have to say that the first episode of Zexal II was brilliant, so brilliant that it holds up against the climax as well.
Zexal is well over 100 episodes, which is a pretty good size. It’s shorter than 5D’s, which was shorter than GX, which was shorter than the original Yugioh, but I’m satisfied as long as we continue to crack 100 episodes. As I already mentioned, it’s not quite as good as the first three shows either, but it’s still a great show. It’s simply tough to top those legends as the first three Yugioh series were basically all stars. The main reason why Zexal can’t top them is because the soundtrack, animation, and duels are typically not as good as say, 5D’s. Ah well, it’s not the newest kid on the block now so a little pressure will leave it for a while.
Overall, Yugioh Zexal is a great show despite its flaws. It easily cracked the 8 stars rating and exceeded expectations that may have been had after the first episodes. We got lot of great duels. The animation was very good and the soundtrack had some good moments although it was certainly unimpressive. Zexal may be at the bottom of the hill for now, but once Arc V starts in America, it should be able to move up a spot. At the very least, I don’t see it passing Zexal until it has 50+ episodes. If you liked the other Yugioh titles, I recommend this one. The card fighting can be a tad exaggerated in their constant traps, but it will be a long, yet fun ride. Even if you just want a fun action title that is fairly light, this is a good bet. Watch out for the statue reference to GX.
Overall 8/10
It’s been a while since I checked out a Showcase Presents collection hasn’t it? Well, the Super Friends was one that I definitely needed to get and I was shocked to see it at the library. I loved the cartoon and still own one of the box sets, but I never really thought that I would see it in comic form. It certainly holds up well and the collection goes really quickly.
The Super Friends is mostly filled up with comics that act as stand alone issues. Typically, the adventure will be a multi part one so the adventure will last for 2-3 issues or more. That helps to make sure that each story isn’t rushed. The issues also tend to follow a very formulaic route. Each issue will have the Super Friends split up into 3-4 teams and then we see each of them try to stop a villain. Typically, you can guess what will happen to the other teams on the missions. If the first group succeeded, then the rest will, but if the first group lost, the rest of the heroes will lose. It does make each story a little predictable, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. Figuring out how the heroes will lose it typically the exciting part.
There is a plot in the background that is around…slightly. The first half of the collection features a pair of kids and their dog. They are being trained by the super friends and they eventually graduate as they become full fledged heroes. They leave the series at that point and are replaced by the Wonder Twins. I can’t say that I missed the kids because they felt out of place here. They are just kids so how can they hope to keep up with the actual heroes when it becomes time for serious business? The plot hax was a little too heavy when they were around.
The Wonder Twins aren’t much better I’m afraid. They arrived on Earth because they ran away from their home planet, but they are eventually freed from their charges. The problem is that they save the Super Friends several times to show us that they have certainly earned a spot on the team. I don’t mind them joining, but they are certainly weaker than most of the heroes so I don’t see why they got so much hype. They are also not familiar with Earth customs and that’s a trope that I’ve never cared for. They make mistakes when trying to utter Earth sayings and that gets old very quickly.
Luckily, that’s one of the only things that gets old here. It should also be noted that the Wonder Twins aren’t good characters here, but they would probably be a lot more likable in comparison if the super friends weren’t so likable. The Wonder Twins certainly aren’t nearly as bad as the average unlikable character. The art looks really sharp here as expected. Unfortunately, the collection is in black and white so it’s a little hard to say exactly how good it looks, but the art is clear and you can always tell what is happening. The action scenes always look good and that’s one of the most important factors for a comic book. You really feel it when a characters punches Superman around.
This took place during an interesting time where the Justice League was around as well as the Super Friends. This meant that most members of the Super Friends had to juggle their responsibilities. Some members like Green Lantern basically decided to be with the Justice League and to ignore the Super Friends. This is the kind of thing that probably wouldn’t fly nowadays, but it gave us an excuse to have our favorite heroes have more than one adventure at a time with the various comics on the shelves,s which was pretty neat.
Showcase Presents may take away the colorful aspect of the art, but at least it also bundles together a good amount of issues. This particular collection was a little over 400 pages, which is certainly a lot. You’ll be having a blast so the pages will be over in no time, but at least you can definitely be confident that you are getting your money’s worth.
As for the adventures in question, there are a bunch of them, but I’ll quickly mention some of them. One adventure has a villain robbing people by making circus animals tiny and then bringing them back to normal size when it came time for a heist. A monster woke up from its slumber in another issue and proved to be virtually unstoppable as even Superman could not defeat it. The Mirror Master came closer than most of the other villains to winning as he trapped the heroes in a mirror world. Unfortunately for him, Superman’s FTL so he just dragged the other heroes back to reality.
Naturally, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of adventures and by the end of them, you’ll certainly have bonded with the heroes. They’re all in character for the duration, which is always good. One scene where I questioned Flash though was in the Mirror Master plot. With the Justice League trapped, the Wonder Twins would have to fend off the villain on their own. Flash knew that they were a target, but he decided to stay on Watchtower duty instead of going to help them. That felt a little out of character as his speed would have enabled him to help right away. I know that he trusts the heroes, but it was still a bit much.
It’s always nice to see the classic Batman here. Robin is around as well and he’s always got some puns at the ready. He is always paired up with Wonder Woman for missions, which is a little dicey for him since he never really gets to help out as a result of this. At least he still has some puns at the ready and he always fires a few off. This was back when Batman was very chipper so it’s nice to see him throw in a pun once in a while. Superman is at his best as he is extremely confident. He’s still a nice guy of course, but he realizes that he is the strongest. Unfortunately, almost all of the villains have kryptonite up their sleeve, but this doesn’t stop Superman from getting serious when the time is just right.
As far as the Showcase Presents go, this is easily one of the best ones. I definitely can’t say that it is the very best of course. As long as Justice League and regular Superman is around, that will be extremely difficult. Nonetheless, Super Friends puts up an admirable fight and it reminds me why I’ve always been a fan of the series. It’s essentially the Justice League series, but with more of a light tone and a roster that tends to include Robin on the team. You can’t go wrong there!
Now, this collection is practically a comedy and it’s meant to be cheesy, but it’s still worth noting that there is a lot of plot hax to be found here. It’s always a stretch when someone like the Riddler is able to take out Superman, but that’s why we have Kryptonite right? I just feel like Superman isn’t as susceptible to Kryptonite as the comics would have you believe. He can still melt it or just stay away. There are also quite a few villains who are able to just overpower Superman, which is certainly surreal. Almost every comic has a moment that is a little iffy like when Batman or Superman is defeated, but the scenes are typically funny so I suppose that we can live with it. Aquaman fans may be sad as his weakness of being away from water for too long becomes a liability for him more than a few times. It’s tough being a fish guy before The New 52.
Finally, the comic has fun showing off guest star heroes as well. The Super Friends have to team up with global heroes on more than one occasion. This includes another Batman who doesn’t seem to be as cool and a guy who uses objects from biblical times to help him fight. The guest stars are pretty cool and while they all seem weaker than their Super Friend counterpart, it’s nice to know that the other countries aren’t completely defenseless. After all, it seems like the US area with Gotham and Metropolis is extremely secure with so many heroes helping out.
Overall, The Super Friends is a really fun collection to read. The comics will certainly keep you busy for a while and the cast is filled with well known characters. Batman and Superman are regulars along with the other heroes and it’s always neat to see how the villains will try to win against such odds. The art is very good as well. The original characters certainly weren’t great and I didn’t miss them when they were gone, but it’s not like they really hurt the comic either. All’s well that ends well right?
Overall 8/10
Time to review a film that’s a lot more fun. It still has its flaws to be sure, but Stealth excels in two areas to an extent that is almost unprecedented in live action world. That’s not bad eh? The poster looks pretty intense and it makes you wonder why more people didn’t see the film. It certainly could have used the extra cash so that it wouldn’t flop in the box office.
Ben, Kara, and Henry are the main characters. They’re the three best pilots that we’ve got and these guys don’t mess around! One day, their commander announces that they will be getting a new partner. The twist is that the partner isn’t actually alive and it’s just a sentient A.I. That was certainly pretty scary for the heroes and can they really get along with this thing. Even more important…can they trust it!?
First off, I have to say that the three main characters were not great. Henry seems to be sexist and you have to love how he quickly mentions the race card as one of his first lines. It’s very intriguing. Either way, any chance that he had of being a good character is quickly wiped out when he realize that he’s just interested in having affairs with as many people as possible. That’s a sure way to be an unlikable character. Ben isn’t much better. He’s also a womanizer who eventually starts to develop feelings for the heroine. It’s really unbelievable and it’ll just make you wince. It’s sad because he has some cool moments like when he almost attacks the drone and the ending, but it’s hard to ignore the traits that he had earlier. It was simply too late for him. It’s hard to see what Kara sees in Ben and she does realize that he’s a womanizer. There’s almost no way she can trust him emotionally. It’s better to just stay as comrades and not take the extra step sometimes.
Let’s quickly talk about some of the positives. The action scenes are some of the best in cinema. These are Matrix/Man of Steel type of action scenes. Everything moves by very quickly and I can honestly say that modern action films can still learn a thing or two here. Imagine how epic it would look if Iron Man vs Ultron looked like these scenes in Age of Ultron. The Jets are breaking the soundbarrier left and right and the scenes really get your blood pumping. I still think Man of Steel wins as far as action scenes go, but in terms of pure speed it’s actually close. That’s extremely impressive for Stealth and I could not get enough of the cool plane scenes. If the new Top Gun film coming out looks this impressive I’ll have gained a lot of respect for the plane fighting genre. Still, all movies need to take a look at this and apply it when necessary. At the very least, films like The Flash, Shazam, Ms. Marvel, and Superman should always look like this. Superman already pulled it off so now it’s time for the others to do so as well.
That was one big positive and now it’s time to look at the other one. This film has a dynamite 5 star soundtrack. It’s almost perfect and it’s easily a contender for best soundtrack of all time. The impressive part is that this film was able to reach those heights with lyrical songs. If you know me, you know that I tend to prefer instrumental because lyrical songs tend to be edgy at times or the lyrics are simply not engaging. Here, they only picked snippets from various songs so I can’t actually recommend the whole song, but the parts that were used (Minus the rap song) were very good. Ben actually gets a nifty action song when he appears in the jet and likewise for various fight scenes. As a nice change of pace, we also got a cool techno/stealth theme, which worked very well for the mysterious moments.
It’s certainly not every day that you get a film where the special effects are through the roof and accompanied with a great soundtrack. Man of Steel accomplished that, but the film is certainly legendary. The film also took the high road when it came to the animal violence issue. The dog ran away instead of getting shot and I can imagine that everyone in the theater stood up and cheered when this happened. It was simply an intense scene that was extremely epic and awesome.
All right, it’s time to look at the negatives. The romance is one of them for sure. We get some pretty sad scenes involving Ben and Henry as they flirt with various women. There’s no depth here and it’s all about physical attraction. The actual romance between Ben and Kara also isn’t handled well and I don’t see why it was included in the film. It was really only there to fill the quota that every film should have romance in it. That’s what Hollywood seems to believe at any rate and that’s pretty sad.
Stealth has a pretty boring moment where the heroes decide to head to an island for some R n R. They need the vacation at this point right? It’s really just an excuse for more romance and fanservice so it’s pretty sad. We really didn’t need a breather like that one. Some parts of the film also felt rather random like when some enemies took over a lab belonging to Mr. Orbit. Where did these guys come from and what do they want? It’s a good thing that Ben had his drone at the ready.
Speaking of which, the drone made for a great bad guy. He had an epic design and his strategic planning was intense. As a villain, he really knew what to do and how to keep things impersonal. He does have emotions unlike most A.I. which is also impressive. The whole film is basically on auto pilot so everything moves by very quickly. This is a good thing as the film gets to be more ambitious than usual. Typically, the A.I. will turn evil and the heroes will destroy it. What if, the A.I. turns evil, but then sees the error of its ways? It’s something that’s never really been done before and it’s nice to see this film take that approach. It may seem rather hollow since the A.I. destroyed around 1000 people with nuclear fallout though. I thought that part went by a little too smoothly. The people in that area certainly weren’t expecting to be dead so quickly. The drone ultimately tried to make up for this though and I think he really could have become a great hero for future films if he had stuck around.
I was also expecting Ben to try and avenge one of his comrades. (Who died in a pretty bad way. They told him to slam on the brakes, but he wouldn’t listen…at all. It was clear what the drone was trying to do and he simply didn’t listen) When he fired the missile, I thought it was game over, but Ben is just a forgiving kind of guy I suppose. He was against the drone idea from the start, but he seemed to warm up to the drone by the end. You could almost say that they became friends at that point. The drone does sound a little like Hal 9000, which is pretty cool. He also had character from the start and he adopted the name of “Tin Man” since the heroes kept calling him that.
The acting in this film could be rather bad at times like when the hero yelled at the drone not to make him repeat himself, but acting is an extremely low priority on what I’m looking for in a film so this isn’t too bad. If it’s something distracting or seriously messed up, then it’ll start to hurt the bottom line. One scene that was unintentionally funny was when the general called his politician. He made a crazy speech about what separates warriors from politicians and then he pulled the trigger. You can guess what he was essentially saying, but the scene just felt off. The general was probably insane by the end and he’s a villain to be sure, but it was still an odd end. The politician also got the shaft here as he barely got to appear.
One plot that was not quite as fun as the others was when Kara landed in North Korea. Naturally, there are still a lot of tensions between our two countries and it’s always satisfying to see the U.S. come out on top, but it was rather unnecessary. That bit of the plot really came out of nowhere. I have fun looking into how people predict World War III would play out and an unfortunately large group of people do believe that we would lose, but I’d invite them to watch this film. Perhaps this is how it would go. There’s practically a mini army after Kara and they still have a tough time trying to stop her. Imagine what a whole squad of U.S. troops could do. It’s sad that the government left her for lost there, but at least Ben manned up and went in to save the day.
This may not be a horror film, but there is a twist ending. I won’t say what it is, but let’s just say that it’s pretty intense and perfectly leads into a sequel. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never get a sequel. Ah well, at least the film got to go off with a bang. If it ever did get a sequel, I’d like to see the drone and Ben team up against aliens. That would make for a solid story and it would certainly be engaging for new viewers.
Overall, Stealth was a fun film. I definitely wish that the fanservice was gone and the romance wasn’t handled very well. Taking away those two features would have greatly helped the film. After all, the special effects were out of this world and the soundtrack was dynamite. That’s a winning combo for most films, but it’s one that is very hard to actually achieve. The pacing is also really good aside from the brief rest stop at Thailand. Everything just goes by really quickly, which allows the film to go through many plots and a lot of different action segments. We never got the fight between Ben and the drone that we wanted, but we came close in several scenes. The ring of fire that the drone made was cool and it was also neat to see him figure out how to attain fuel the hard way. I definitely recommend this film. You should be wary of the fanservice since it can be rather overwhelming, but once you get past that you are in for an action treat. I don’t think we’ll see any airplane film have better fights than this one for quite a while.
Overall 6/10
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