Ranking X-Men Movies

It's the penultimate day of February and the last day of ranking stuff.  Hooray!  I'm all out of transitions, so let's just rank some X-Men movies.  But not Wolverine or Deadpool ones since those are solo movies.  We don't want this to be too long, do we?

7.  The Last Stand:  This tried to combine a recent (at the time) comics story of a mutant "cure" with the classic Dark Phoenix story.  And the result...meh.  The heart of the Dark Phoenix story was Jean and Scott's relationship, but since James Marsden was bailing on the franchise to jump to Superman Returns with Bryan Singer--and since Hugh Jackman was way more popular--they gave Scott's story to Wolverine.  And pretty much just have Jean-Grey stand around and kill people.  She kills Professor X and with Rogue written out early and Nightcrawler MIA, there wasn't much of the traditional X-Men team that people wanted to see.  We didn't pay to see Kitty Pride, Iceman, and stupid American Colossus!  It doesn't really introduce any interesting new mutants either, which is hard considering there are like hundreds of mutants they could have introduced instead of...whoever.

6.  Dark Phoenix:  This wasn't a terrible movie and as I mentioned when I reviewed it, it was a more faithful adaptation of the comic book story than the previous entry on this list.  The biggest problem was the Fox/Disney merger made this a lame duck movie.  It's no surprise that people didn't really care when they knew that in a few years the whole thing was going to be rebooted to be added to the MCU. Other than that it was kind of rushed.  Like I said before, the comics had years to build relationships that were given one movie and part of this one to build.  It just doesn't work.

5.  Apocalypse:  The problem for this movie is that it's pretty dumb (I mean Jean-Grey and Magneto put the mansion back together like it's made of fucking Legos) and it's not "fun" enough to get a pass like Thor: Ragnarok.  For whatever reason they decided to wait until the third movie of the soft reboot franchise to introduce (or re-introduce) some of the most popular characters like Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Jean-Grey.  Magneto kills thousands of people, but he's still a good guy at heart, so let's let him go!  Sure, great idea.

4.  First Class:  The soft reboot of the X-Men franchise.  It jumps back to the 60s to focus on a younger Xavier and Magneto.  Other than Mystique and Beast, the roster was composed of lesser characters like Havok, Banshee, and...um...there was someone else, right?  Emma Frost is largely wasted as a henchman of Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw and how Xavier gets paralyzed is sort of lame.  But I do really like the SR-71 they use to get around in, though I think it was a little early for that to exist.

3.  X2:  X-Men United:  A lot of people liked this better than the first one.  Not me!  I thought it was really packed with too many characters, so that there wasn't much for some of them to do.  What was the point of Rogue, Iceman, and "Pyro" for instance?  Having Xavier and Magneto's squads join forces just made for less for some characters to do.  Jean-Grey's sacrifice seemed kind of pointless; couldn't she just lift the plane from inside or something?  Or why couldn't she let Nightcrawler get her after they broke away? 

2.  Days of Future Past:  Eyeing some of that MCU money, this was the soft reboot of the soft reboot.  It brought back the stars of the original X-Men franchise like Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellan with the stars of the previous movie like Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, and Michael Fassbender.  In the two comics it was Kitty Pride who went back in time, but of course it has to be Wolverine in the movie since he's the most popular character.  Instead of stopping Senator Kelly from getting the government to use Sentinels, they have to stop Trask from building the Sentinels.  But then the final act becomes about Magneto lifting a stadium and trying to kill Nixon until Mystique stops him.  It was a pretty clever way to bring together the two eras of the franchise; it's just too bad the movies that followed didn't really live up to it.

1.  X-Men:  The OG X-Men movie!  Sorry, I just love the simplicity of this first movie in the franchise.  The number of characters on both sides is still pretty small, so it allowed the movie to develop some relationships, like the love triangle between Jean-Grey-Scott-Logan.  It could have developed the bad guys besides Magneto a little more, but for 2000, just 3 years removed from Batman & Robin, it was a revelation.  Blade got the ball rolling, but this brought the modern superhero movie to the masses with its PG-13 rating. And a shredded Hugh Jackman hanging off the Statue of Liberty.  Give it some respect.

There you go, that's the list.  Now maybe I should rank my ranking lists...

Ranking Spider-Man Movies

We're on our third series of Spider-Man movies now, so let's rank them!  I mean, why not?  I'm going to include Into the Spider-Verse but not Venom because it's not really a Spider-Man movie.

8.  Spider-Man 3:  Studio interference largely doomed this movie, though after 5 years maybe it was just running out of gas.  The Sandman and New Goblin were enough villains for a movie, but the studio wanted Venom, so they had to wedge him in.  And who better to play the person-eating monster than the dumbass from That 70s Show?  The movie gamely tries to make it work, but it just doesn't.  The tragic origin of the Sandman gives us a glimpse of what might have been if the studio hadn't interfered.  And Tobey Maguire attempting to be evil was hilarious, not scary or menacing.

7.  The Amazing Spider-Man:  Honestly I think I've only seen this one time.  I don't own it and it's never really been anywhere for me to watch for free.  Other than the chemistry between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, this rebooted origin doesn't have a lot going for it.  They brought in Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, but didn't really improve on the origin story.  Sally Field is an OK Aunt May and Denis Leary is OK as Gwen Stacey's father.  I guess.  And at least there was pretty much just the one villain.  I think.

6.  Spider-Man Homecoming:  I liked the first two original Spider-Man movies by Sam Raimi and didn't really care about the Andrew Garfield ones.  This one...meh.  It's put together all right, but as I said when I reviewed it the first time, there doesn't seem like many of the traditional Spider-Man elements in it, like the Daily Bugle, J Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn, Gwen Stacey, or Mary Jane Watson.  There's an MJ who's not Mary Jane Watson and a lot of Iron Man.  And a May who's an AILF and Michael Keaton as a blue collar version of the Vulture.  So that's something.

5.  The Amazing Spider-Man 2:  With Marvel doing so much business, Sony got dollar signs in its eyes.  This movie winds up doing too much too soon in a vain attempt to create a "cinematic universe" that wound up destroying the franchise.  The movie itself isn't terrible as Harry Osborn recruits Electro to help him get Spider-Man's blood.  That's what Spidey gets for being greedy with blood.  Electro's origin seems to borrow heavily from the Riddler in Batman Forever, which really wasn't a good movie to borrow from.  Dane DeHaan is creepy as Harry Osborn, making you yearn for the clueless rich boy air of James Franco.  Again Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have good chemistry, but her death is completely forced and Peter's grieving is given about five minutes.  Between that and trying to introduce a whole Sinister Six all at once, the movie just never works.

4.  Spider-Man Far From Home:  This would probably be lower if not for the cookie scene with J Jonah Jameson--played by JK Simmons even!  Between that and actually making Peter and MJ's relationship more like Peter and MJ's traditional relationship it felt more like a Spider-Man movie even with the globetrotting.  Mysterio was actually a better hero than villain, but the callbacks to Civil War and Iron Man were neat--the latter featuring Ralphie from A Christmas Story!  Still not as good as the first two Raimi movies.

3.  Into the Spider-Verse:  This movie combined two comic book storylines:  the Spider-Verse story by Dan Slott and the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot introducing Miles Morales by Brian Michael Bendis.  The movie focuses on Miles, who is bitten by a spider and gains most of Spidey's powers and some new ones.  When the original Spider-Man dies, Miles is left to try to find a way to save the world--until he meets an older, out-of-shape Peter Parker from another world.  And then he finds out his new friend Gwen is a Spider-Girl or Spider-Woman or whatever.  And then Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and some weird Japanese anime Spider-Man thing show up from other universes.  Since this was animated, it had a lot more freedom creatively than the live action movies.  So it could finally give us a big screen Spider-Ham, plus the others, plus Kingpin, and a gender-swapped Doc Ock!  The end result is a brilliant movie, whether you're a fan of Spider-Man or not.

2.  Spider-Man 2:  A lot of people would put this at #1.  Most of it is good as Peter struggles to balance his life as Peter Parker and Spider-Man and to deal with Mary Jane engaged to marry J Jonah Jameson's son.  Doctor Octopus is a sympathetic villain and James Franco is...there.  There are some good moments and a lot of soul-searching, but the weakness to me is that in the end the only way Peter's issues can be resolved is for Mary Jane to be kidnapped (again) and suddenly his powers are back so he can save her.  And to this day I wonder what the point of that scene where the landlord's daughter gives Peter some cake was.  Plus thanks to getting knocked out on a train, Peter reveals his identity to dozens of people.  I'm sure none of them will ever tell.

1.  Spider-Man:  The OG Spider-Man movie!  Sure this movie isn't perfect.  Mary Jane's wig looks like a wig.  Whenever Willem Dafoe talks as the Goblin I kept thinking of Power Rangers because you can't see a mouth moving.  And by today's standards the effects might not look great and even by 2002 standards they weren't exactly top-notch.  Still, does it get much better than the upside-down kiss in the rain?  No.  18 years and the franchise has never topped that.  Never!  The final battle between Spidey and Goblin was pretty awesome too--after that whole sadistic choice with the cable car that's foiled by the brave people of New York thing.  I loved it that the Goblin was actually kicking Spidey's ass until he finally found a way to turn it around.  Maybe you never realized it, but the final battle between the Scarlet Knight and Black Dragoon in A Hero's Journey, I had this movie in mind.  That and Empire Strikes Back.  So maybe that's why I like this one more than the sequel.

There you go, that's my list.  A little surprise at the top.  Or not.

Ranking Batman Movies

On my niece's 9th birthday, let's rank movies by one of her favorite superheroes:  Batman!  At least it was her favorite hero when she was 2.  I'd rank My Little Ponies or American Girl dolls but I don't really know much about them.  So let's do this!  This is only live action movies, not animated ones--which includes the Lego one.  And I'm not including the Adam West Batman one.

8.  Batman & Robin:  Unless you're Tony Laplume, maybe not even then, I think we can all agree that this was the worst Batman movie since Adam West took the shark repellent out of his utility belt to fend off that plastic shark.  I mean, nipples on the Batsuit!  Every line of dialogue is a bad pun.  They completely misuse Bane as a dumb henchman.  Arnold Schwarzenegger as a brilliant scientist?  Ugh.  George Clooney is a decent Bruce Wayne, but not believable as Batman.  When he says, "I'm Batman," I just snorted and said, "No you're not."  The most surprising thing about the movie is somehow George Clooney's career survived this travesty.  Probably because around the same time he did Out of Sight, directed by Stephen Soderbergh, who kept him in mind for Ocean's 11.

7.  Batman Forever:  It's not as bad as its sequel, but when I rewatched it not long ago, I realized it wasn't that much better.  Maybe fewer puns and fewer nipples, but still a lot of cheesiness.  Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face is pretty goofy and Jim Carrey's Riddler is more often like a demented Pee Wee Herman than a supervillain.  Val Kilmer isn't a bad Batman or Bruce Wayne and while he's a little old for it, Chris O'Donnell isn't a bad Robin--as far as movies go he doesn't have much competition.  A sad fact is that I think until Aquaman this was Nicole Kidman's most financially successful movie despite the Oscars and other awards she won in the interim.

6.  Batman v Superman:  It's not exactly a Batman movie, but let's face it, it's like 75% a Batman movie, 20% Superman, and 5% Wonder Woman.  The movie is ambitious, but most of it just doesn't make sense, most infamously the "Martha" scene.  I've written about it a lot already, so I don't think I have to go into it a lot more.  Ben Affleck is good as the Frank Miller-type Batman, probably better in this than the kinder, gentler version of Justice League.  It would have been interesting to see what he'd have done with a solo movie, but that's not happening anymore.

5.  Batman Returns:  After the success of the 1989 movie, the studio let Tim Burton follow some of his worst instincts.  Big mistake.  So we get the Penguin as some kind of mutant who grew up in the sewer like the Ninja Turtles.  Danny DeVito has the range that he could have played a more normal Penguin and been even more menacing.  The circus henchmen, oversized rubber duck vehicle, and robot penguins launching rockets all pushed the franchise towards the campiness of the Schumacher movies.  Like the Penguin, the movie doesn't really nail Catwoman either.  It doesn't mishandle her as badly as the Halle Berry movie, but it's not a lot better.  Michael Keaton tries to maintain some dignity as Batman and Bruce Wayne, but it's a tall order.

4.  The Dark Knight Rises:  I like this probably more than I should, mostly because it's the closest we might ever get to a Knightfall movie.  The plot is far less realistic than The Dark Knight with Gotham being cut off from the world and some guy punching Bruce Wayne's back to fix it so he can walk again.  But this version of Catwoman is a lot closer to the source material as she's actually a thief--and a brunette.  It would have been nice to develop the relationship between Bruce and Selina a little more before the whole disappearing until the final act thing, but I suppose it was long enough as it was.  The twist of Talia's secret identity was pretty good; the first time I watched it I suspected it but it got to the point where I was doubting myself.  And John "Robin" Burke was an OK way to sorta work Robin into it.  Some people complain about the end but seeing that Bruce's house becomes the Thomas and Martha(!) Wayne House for Disadvantaged Children (or whatever) almost brings me to tears for some reason.  And then Robin finding the Batcave to resume Bruce's work is so awesome.  It's an ending that's also not really an ending because the legend of Batman will live on.  It worked a lot better than Rey randomly deciding she's a Skywalker.

3.  Batman Begins:  After Batman & Robin the franchise was not in a good place.  Christopher Nolan came in and took it in a new direction, ridding it of the campiness of Schumacher and the neo-Gothic look of Burton.  Instead, Nolan attempted to show what Batman would look like in a real world--more or less.  The bad guy plot to dispense fear toxin is a little overwrought, but for the most part it's a great origin story.  Christian Bale is great as Batman and Bruce Wayne; Gary Oldman does a wonderful job of portraying Gordon as weary and yet still clinging to his integrity; Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine provide some needed levity as Batman/Bruce's allies; and Liam Neeson seamlessly pivots from mentor to villain.  I like Cillian Murphy in other things, but he's miscast as the Scarecrow and the less said about Katie Holmes, the better.

2.  Batman:  The 1989 movie changed the superhero movie forever.  It was dark and gritty, not like the Christopher Reeve Superman movies.  The dark, neo-Gothic city and the all-black Batsuit really set the tone early on that this isn't the Adam West version.  Jack Nicholson chews a lot of scenery as the Joker, using a partial version of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in that he fell into some chemicals, giving him the white skin, only there was no Red Hood in this.  Kim Basinger spends most of the movie in a daze as she's buffeted from Bruce Wayne to Batman to Joker.  Michael Keaton is a good Bruce Wayne and a passable Batman.  Then you have you Billy Dee Williams underused as Harvey Dent and Robert Wuhl as Vicki Vale's reporting partner.  Plus Bob, the Joker's Goon!  I always regret I never bought his action figure.

1.  The Dark Knight:  Not quite a perfect movie, but it really fulfills the Nolan vision of the realistic Batman.  It starts with Batman working with Gordon and Harvey Dent to take down the mob.  But this opens the door for a little known criminal known as the Joker.  Heath Ledger's Joker is as dangerous as the Jack Nicholson one, but less cartoony.  Maggie Gyllenhaal replaces Katie Holmes and does a little better job.  Aaron Eckhart is a great Harvey Dent, but I've always thought the Two-Face was the most unbelievable part of the movie.  Anyone with their face that badly burnt wouldn't be able to get out of bed, let alone go on a killing spree.  The only thing I don't like about the movie is the third act with that whole boat thing.  Otherwise I'd say this is the definitive Batman movie.

There you go, that's the list.

Ranking Terminators

We've ranked a lot of other stuff, so why not rank the Terminator movies!

6.  Salvation:  By 2009, after 3 movies in the franchise, it seemed they'd gone as far as they could go in present day.  So why not a sort of prequel about John Connor's adventures after Judgment Day?  They brought in Christian Bale, fresh off two Nolan Batman movies to play Connor.  What could go wrong?  Just about everything.  It wound up with a lot of subplots and while Bale is usually great, in this case he didn't do a great job of looking like an inspirational military leader.  This is notably the only movie in the franchise that didn't feature the actual Ahh-nold Schwarzenegger, just some CGI footage of an original T-800.  Bale's rant at an underling on the set also gave this some bad press before it aired, certainly not helping.  So more prequel/sequels were scrapped.

5.  Dark Fate:  Maybe you'd consider it ironic or something like that that bringing James Cameron back to the franchise didn't really help.  Of course Cameron was only one of like 20 people involved in the story and "produced" it, which I imagine him sitting in a chair counting his money like Gus Van Zant in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back.  The other irony is people didn't like the third movie, so...let's pretty much do the same thing as the third movie only worse.  So...we still have Judgment Day only now SkyNet is "Legion" and since John Connor is killed in 1998, there's some Mexican girl named Dani who's going to lead the resistance.  And we have a Terminator sent to kill her that's part liquid metal with an old-school Terminator underneath--just like the third movie!  Though it's like a Transformers Pretender in that the outer "shell" and inner robot can completely separate to create two attackers.  This time instead of a normal human or a Terminator to protect John Dani, we have an "Augmented" woman from the future to defend the girl.  Plus there's a geriatric Sarah Connor to provide life lessons like put your phone in a potato chip bag so the government (or Terminators) can't track you.  It's kind of funny that in this future you have robots who cover themselves with flesh and humans who implant themselves with metal--so we're kinda meeting in the middle to where if both sides didn't kill each other they might become indistinguishable.

It occurred to me about 2/3 through that movies like this are like their theme songs:  they can ape the iconic score and yet it's never quite the same.  In this case, it's because all those 1000 people working on the story and Executive Producing it seemed to forget that the Terminator movies that worked weren't just big stunts and catchphrases; there was heart too.  The first movie is a love story between Sarah and Reese.  The second movie was a boy and Terminator bonding.  Even Genisys had a half-assed relationship with Sarah and Reese.  This movie, because they wanted to go all "girl power" with it winds up not really having much heart at its core.  It takes far too long to get to the real relationship between Grace the Augment and Dani the future savior when that should have been the emotional core of the movie.  I guess they wanted to save that as a big twist when it probably would have helped to know it earlier.  That's why the whole movie winds up just feeling like a bad copy.

 If you can find it on YouTube, the "Honest Trailer" really nailed what was wrong with the movie.

4.  Genisys:  This was a soft reboot where everyone except Schwarzenegger was recast.  To explain why Arnold looks older, they had him go back in time to Sarah Connor's childhood to protect her, which had a creepy Time Traveler's Wife vibe.  The rest wasn't terrible as it brought in a lot from the previous movies, but in the end it just didn't work for people.  The one thing that didn't make sense was at the end Sarah and Reese are in 2019 and haven't had sex yet, so how can John Connor be born to lead the resistance?

3.  Rise of the Machines:  A lot of people didn't like this, but I thought it was good.  It wasn't quite as epic as T2, but it was far from a bad movie.  It focuses on a young adult John Connor and his future wife Kate Brewster.  Since the terminator sent to this time can't find John, she starts killing other future resistance leaders, which is how John and Kate wind up meeting.  Of course another terminator in the form of Schwarzenegger is sent back to fight her.  The evil terminator this time has a T-1000-like liquid metal skin over a metal skeleton that includes weapons like a flamethrower.  Sarah Connor is supposedly dead, but in her "coffin" are just a lot of weapons.  A fun part is that the good terminator takes its orders from Kate since she's the one who sent him back after he killed John in the future.  There's a good twist in the end as Kate's father tells them to go to a place where they think they'll kill SkyNet only to find it's an old bunker so they can survive Judgment Day.  So we went from "Maybe Judgment Day won't happen" to "Judgment Day is inevitable."  Kind of sad.

2.  The Terminator:  The OG Terminator movie!  It set up all the rules of the time travel and the back story of SkyNet, the resistance, and John Connor.  Plus it really made Schwarzenegger a movie star and forever gave us the catchphrase:  "I'll be back."  The love story between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese works, so long as you ignore his creepy obsession over his former leader's mom.  The effects, especially the terminator vision, don't look great in modern times but they were top-of-the-line in their day.

1.  T2:  Judgment Day:  Like the original Star Wars trilogy, the first movie laid the foundation, but the second is what built the house.  It features an epic story as the shape-changing T-1000 tries to kill the teenaged (I guess) John Connor.  John has been living in a string of foster homes because his mom is in a mental institution since she refuses to deny what happened to her in the first movie.  Since Schwarzenegger was such a star at this point, it made sense to have him return as a reprogrammed terminator who's sent back to protect John from the T-1000.  The bond between the good terminator and John becomes really touching as John teaches the "cybernetic organism" about being human.  Even Sarah Connor starts to respect the terminator by the end, finally accepting that it's not just a heartless machine.  About midway the story turns from just trying to protect John to trying to avert Judgment Day by destroying the technology that would become SkyNet.  It was a really great, epic story.  The only thing I haven't understood for a while is if the original is in 1984 and the second came out in 1991, how is it that John is like 13?  Judgment Day was supposed to be in 1997, so if he's a teenager, that'd mean Judgment Day was imminent.  Which means SkyNet should have been a lot farther along.  I'm just saying, the math doesn't make sense there.

There you go.  Not really a big surprise at the top.

Rankings Die Hard

Just for fun, let's rank the Die Hard movies.  I think you know what's #1, but let's decide on all the others.

5.  A Good Day to Die Hard:  This fifth and "final" entry was a low-rent production shot in Eastern Europe.  McClane goes to Russia when his son seemingly disappears there.  His son is a CIA operative who's trying to rescue some guy.  In true Die Hard fashion it turns out it's all a double-cross as the guy they rescue wants to steal some money from Chernobyl.  Still, watching it in the theater on a day I had nothing better to do, it never really felt as epic as the other movies.  I think I got this for like $3 on clearance at Big Lots.

4.  Die Hard 2:  This isn't one I've watched in a while because I haven't really seen it on anywhere to watch unless I want to pay, which I don't.  Instead of a skyscraper, McClane was running around an airport so his wife's plane could land before it ran out of fuel.  Maybe if I watched it again I'd like it better, but I really don't remember a whole lot about it.

3.  Live Free and Die Hard:  When this was released in 2007 it was originally PG-13 so McClane couldn't even utter his famous catchphrase:  yippy kai-yay, motherfucker.  If you wanted the MF-word, you had to wait for the unrated DVD release--which I did.  The movie is OK but it winds up feeling long--Justin Long.  Ha!  There were a lot of ridiculous stunts like McClane bringing down a helicopter by crashing a car into it and then later clinging to the back of an F-35 jet that didn't even exist in active service yet.  It wasn't a bad movie and there was the traditional twist where a supposed terrorist winds up really being after money.

2.  Die Hard With a Vengeance:  At the time this was released you had movies like Speed and Blown Away where some sadistic villain makes the good guy have to play some game in order to try to save people.  This movie at first seems like that as the brother of the first movie's villain, Hans Gruber, has some challenges designed to keep McClane busy.  And then Samuel L Jackson winds up getting roped into it when he tries to stop some locals from beating up McClane for wearing a racist sandwich board.  But the brilliant thing is that all of this is just a cover for a scheme to rob the Federal Reserve.  Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson have great chemistry as they first try to solve Simon Gruber's challenges and then try to stop the gold robbery.

1.  Die Hard:  The OG Die Hard movie!  It might not be a perfect film, but it's a great action movie.  If I simply ranked action movies, I'd have to put it in the top 5.  That the action all takes place in a skyscraper creates a claustrophobic setting and yet there's still a wide variety of action.  And it presented challenges to our hero as he had to actually worry about the quantity of bullets and that he had no shoes.  Really this seems like the inspiration for shooter games like Wolfenstein 3D and later Doom, etc. where you start out like McClane with almost nothing and have to find more powerful weapons and keep a careful eye on your ammo.  The movie launched Bruce Willis's career as a movie star and he provides a blue collar charm to keep you rooting for him to the end.  And it introduced us to Alan Rickman, who'd go on to play more great villains and not-villains, though I don't think he really ever got to play heroes, per se.  (The closest is probably the fake Spock-like character he played in Galaxy Quest.)  It's a true classic, whether you consider it a Christmas movie or not.  I can watch it anytime.

So there you go.  I think that was pretty obvious.

Ranking Presidents

It's President's Day and if I'm ranking stuff, why not rank presidents?

I'm not sure I can really rank all of them.  I mean some of them were pretty forgettable.  Some like Garfield and William Henry Harrison were barely in office before they died.

Worst:  These are the dumbest and/or most corrupt presidents in American History

1. Trump (How much time do you have?)
2. Nixon (Watergate)
3. Harding (Teapot Dome)
4. Jackson (Trail of Tears, destroyed banking system)
5. W Bush (Iraq, economic meltdown)
6. Reagan (anti-union, anti-social programs, anti-regulation helped put us where we are now) 
7. Hayes (corrupt bargain to take power ended Reconstruction)
8. A. Johnson (I probably wouldn't have added him until I read a thread on Twitter about what an absolute Trump-like racist moron he was, which helped derail Reconstruction in the South)
9. Hoover (mishandled the Depression)
10. Grant (administration was filled with corruption)

Best:  These are the ones who held our country together, moved it forward, and/or broke barriers.  Most of them you can say bad things about them, but no president is perfect; they are human after all.

1. Lincoln (Kept the union together, freed slaves)
2. Washington (Set good precedents, kept the fragile nation together)
3. FDR (New Deal, WWII)
4. T. Roosevelt (Created national parks, regulated industries, broke up monopolies)
5. Jefferson (Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the country)
6. LBJ (Mishandled Vietnam but also passed Medicare/Medicaid, civil rights law) 
7. JFK (Laid the foundation for the Great Society, civil rights law, and going to the moon)
8. Obama (Obamacare, economic recovery, killing bin Laden)
9. Wilson (Eventually won WWI and if not for a debilitating stroke his League of Nations might have spared us from Hitler/WWII)
10. Truman (Finished WWII and programs helped Europe rebuild)

*Honorable Mention 1:  On a History Channel show (when they talked about history) some experts talked about how Chester A Arthur was an important president because he fought the corruption that ironically helped him become president and also modernized the Navy.  Not bad for a guy named Chester.

*Honorable Mention 2:  I was really tempted to put Eisenhower in there because he gave us the modern highway system

Most of them in the 1800s aren't really worst or best because at that time the American presidency wasn't what it was today.  Most of that time the president didn't really have a lot of power to actually do anything, thus they didn't make a huge impact.  Even Founders like John Adams and James Madison didn't necessarily do a whole lot, unless you count surviving the War of 1812.

Just for fun, how many presidents can I name without looking them up?  And can I get the order right?

1. Washington
2. Adams
3. Jefferson
4. Madison
5. Monroe
6. JQ Adams
7. Jackson
8. Van Buren
9. Harrison
10. Tyler
11. Polk
12. Taylor
13. Buchanan? (Fillmore)
14. ? (Pierce)
15. Pierce? (Buchanan)
16. Lincoln
17. A Johnson
18. Grant
19. Hayes
20. Garfield
21. Arthur
22. Cleveland?
23. ? (Benjamin Harrison)
24. Cleveland (again)
25. McKinley
26. T Roosevelt
27. Taft
28. Wilson
29. Harding
30. Coolidge
31. Hoover
32. F Roosevelt
33. Truman
34. Ike
35. JFK
36. LBJ
37. Nixon
38. Ford
39. Carter
40. Reagan
41. GH Bush
42. Clinton
43. W Bush
44. Obama
45. Orange Dipshit

Hey I got most of them!  It's just a couple points in the 19th Century that I get muddled because those guys were fucking useless.  I don't know why I forgot Millard Fillmore.  I mean Millard Fillmore--what a terrible name!  I should have put him on my list just for that shitty name.

Ranking Rocky Movies

At its heart, the Rocky movies are about love.  Romantic love, love of family, love of country, and love of sports.  So makes sense for Valentine's Day, right?

Last month I finally got around to watching Creed II, which is the last movie (to date) in the Rocky Balboa saga.  And since we're ranking things, why not rank Rocky movies?  Because no one who reads this blog has probably seen them?  Meh, big whoop.

8.  Rocky V:  This was the one so bad it pretty much got retconned out of existence.  The idea was to take Rocky back to his roots by having him get brain damage and lose all his money so he had to move back to his old hood in Philly with Adrian and his teenage son.  Then he starts training a kid called Tommy Gunn, who winds up defecting to a Don King-type promoter.  When the media keeps badgering him about Rocky, he decides to go fight Rocky in the street.  So it's a movie about boxing without a real boxing match at the end!  Meanwhile Rocky and his son bond or something.  It's all boring and dumb and really you should never, ever cast your own real-life son as your son in the movie.  I don't think that has ever worked out:  Rocky V, Godfather III, After Earth...what are some other examples?

7.  Rocky II:  Not a bad movie, but it's mostly pretty boring.  After the big fight in the first movie, Rocky decides to retire and marry Adrian and knock her up.  Meanwhile, Apollo Creed is chafing that he didn't knock Rocky out and while he said, "Ain't gonna be no rematch" guess what?  Rematch! And while Apollo could have again won on points, he decides to go toe-to-toe with Rocky and loses.  Hooray!  The first movie was good despite that Rocky doesn't win because it was supposed to show that he had the heart to go the distance.  This then seems to tack on an unnecessarily happy ending by allowing him to become the champ.

6.  Rocky III:  It's not a bad movie so much as it's just pretty cheesy.  It features both Hulk Hogan and Mr. T!  You don't get much more 80s cheese than that.  And there's about as much homoerotic male bonding on the beach as in Top Gun.  But there is "The Eye of the Tiger," so that's pretty awesome. Besides the cheese, the movie doesn't really develop Mr. T's Clubber Lang much beyond that he was poor and angry.

5.  Rocky IV:  About as cheesy as the previous entry.  Maybe even more so thanks to the Vince DiCola synthesizer score and corny robot given to Paulie for his birthday.  Mostly it's old school vs new school, USA vs USSR as Rocky fights the big Russian Ivan Drago who's the product of the best training and steroids the Soviets can provide.  In an exhibition match, Drago kills Apollo Creed and so Rocky swears revenge and goes to Russia to train by cutting wood, dragging rocks, and running up snow-capped mountains.  That gives him the bulk and stamina to defeat Drago.  Hooray!  It pretty much follows the script of the previous movie, only it's Apollo dying instead of Mickey.  Drago doesn't get much development character-wise either. And there's another Survivor song that's not quite as good as "Eye of the Tiger."

4.  Creed:  I don't remember this movie all that well.  I've only watched it once I think.  Stallone realized he had gone as far as he could with Rocky as a fighter, so a spin-off was the only way to keep it going without doing a straight-up reboot.  Since Rocky's son wasn't interested in being a fighter, they bring in a son of Apollo Creed named Adonis or Donnie.  He's long lived in his dead father's shadow, but finally is able to claim his legacy with Rocky's help.  And he helps Rocky battle cancer while also falling in love with a deaf singer.  It put a fresh take on the Rocky formula without the cheesiness of the 80s movies.

3.  Rocky Balboa:  This was a soft reboot of Rocky V, only about 15 years after that movie.  The scenario is a bit forced as ESPN stages an imaginary fight between Rocky in his prime and the current champ.  And Rocky wins!  So what can the current champ do?  Fight the 60-ish Rocky, of course.  At first Rocky resists, but eventually decides he "has something in the basement."  Meanwhile he meets a woman, manages a restaurant called Adrian's, and tries to connect with his son, this time played by Milo Ventimiglia of This is Us.  At times it's slow, but it's a lot less cheesy than Rocky V and the fight scenes were filmed better than most of the movies.  It was a really great way to close the book on Rocky--as a fighter at least.

2.  Creed II:  I'm not sure if there will be a Creed III or another spin-off, but this would serve as a good send off to the Rocky saga as it's not just a sequel to the first Creed movie, but also Rocky IV.  As mentioned above, Drago killed Apollo Creed, Adonis's father.  About 30 years later, Drago has a son who challenges Adonis to a fight.  When Adonis accepts, Drago Jr. beats the crap out of him, but he doesn't "win" the fight since he's disqualified for hitting Adonis when he was down.  Still, Adonis can't bring himself to get back into the ring.  Meanwhile he marries his girlfriend and they have a baby who might be deaf like her mother.  Back in Russia, Drago and son were personas non grata before, but now that they humiliated the American champ they're welcomed back with open arms.  Even Drago's ex-wife Brigitte Nielsen is willing to see him and their son again.  Eventually Adonis decides he has to fight Drago Jr. again and so Rocky takes him to Mexico or somewhere to train.  The final fight is an epic brawl in the ring with Adonis slowly gaining the upper hand.  Seeing his son wobbling but refusing to give in--and seeing that his ex has bailed again--Drago ends the fight by throwing in the towel, finally realizing that winning isn't everything.  And so Adnois retains his title, but also proves to himself and the world he has what it takes while Drago and son finally move on with their lives.  And Rocky goes to Quebec or somewhere like that to track down his son--again played by Milo Ventimiglia--and grandson.  Pretty much a happy ending for everyone.  So if there's not another movie that was a pretty good way to end it, wrapping up most everything.

1.  Rocky:  The OG Rocky movie!  It is kind of slow through the first two acts as Rocky awkwardly courts Adrian, the shy pet store clerk, and shakes down people for the local mob.  Meanwhile, after the fighter he was supposed to fight has to pull out, Apollo Creed decides to fight a nobody and picks Rocky for the match.  It's the final act that really cements the film and the series's legacy as it introduces what we all came to know and love about these movies:  the training montage with Rocky running up the steps to "Gonna Fly Now," and then the epic 15-round bout with Apollo Creed--that he loses but manages to go the distance.  Yo, Adrian, he did it!  As far as opponents go, Apollo is the best fleshed-out of any of them.  He doesn't have the cartoonish qualities of Mr. T or Drago.  Unlike Rocky, Apollo is the champ and a successful businessman.  Maybe that's why it doesn't really feel too bad that Apollo actually wins the match.  It's pretty much a win-win!

And there you go, my list.  Not that anyone cares.

Ranking Trek: Movie Edition

Last week I did Star Wars movies and Monday I did Trek shows, so now let's rank Trek movies!  Because, why not?

13.  Star Trek (2009):  I get other people like it, but like Thor: Ragnarok it's one of those "fun" movies that I thought was just so, so stupid.  From building starships on the ground to Spock dating to promoting a failing cadet instantly to captain of the flagship, so, so much of this movie just didn't make sense, especially in context of the Star Trek universe.  I called it Star Trek for Star Wars fans and I stick by that.  This was incidentally the same kind of logic-defying storytelling that JJ Abrams then brought to two Star Wars movies.

12.  Star Trek: Into Darkness:  What makes less sense than building massive starships on the ground?  Starships underwater!  Then this desperately wanted to be Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but had done absolutely nothing to earn it.  When Kirk is dying to save the ship and Spock is talking to him you don't get the same feels as in Wrath of Khan because these two actors barely know each other.  Almost as pointless (and much more sexist) was the unnecessary Alice Eve in her underwear scene.  In this case the Nimoy cameo was also really pointless and forced.

11.  Star Trek: Generations:  After the Next Generation series premiered, people probably wondered:  what happened to Jim Kirk?  This movie attempted to answer that and also to pass the movie torch from the classic crew to the Next Generation crew.  The end result is one of those movies that felt more like an extended episode.  Malcolm McDowell plays a dull villain with some harebrained scheme that only Picard and Kirk can thwart by working together.  Though it's like one of those comic book team-ups where it probably wouldn't have been necessary in a regular book.  I mean, in a regular TNG episode, Picard probably could have done that himself.  And they probably could have saved the ship before it was destroyed.  Besides that, inconsistent uniforms (aren't uniforms supposed to be, you know, uniform?) and a chubby Shatner make this not really a good way to honor the classic crew or the new crew.  But the "Tuesday" bit was hilarious; it's something my siblings and I still reference from time to time.

10.  Star Trek:  The Motion Picture:  This was supposed to mark the new era for the franchise after the show and animated series were cancelled.  Instead it was a disappointment coming out on the heels of Star Wars.  It was slow, basically Gene Roddenberry's 2001: A Space Odyssey.  And featured Shatner with more costume changes than Padme in Episode I, ridiculous Atari 2600-style video games in the never-to-be-seen-again rec room, and the threat turned out to be old US satellites.  Um...really?  But it did have that great Jerry Goldsmith theme song that was later used on TNG and...

9.  Star Trek V:  The Final Frontier:  This probably gets an undue amount of hate because Shatner directed it.  The plot isn't really that ridiculous given some of the other movies that came before it.  But there was a lot of goofiness that would probably now be considered "fun."  The jet boots were pretty neat, though.

8.  Star Trek:  Insurrection:  This isn't really a bad movie.  It's just that it's one of those where it feels like an overstuffed TNG episode.  Essentially an alien civil war with some Federation corruption thrown in.  It just wasn't a big enough story to really compete with some of the more memorable movies.

7.  Star Trek Beyond:  The best of the reboot movies isn't a very high bar to me.  There was fun and less of the ridiculousness from the Abrams movies.  Idris Elba is cool, though the thing where he absorbs people and becomes more human was weird.  The "Sabotage" bit was funny, though really unrealistic that people in the 23rd Century listen to late 20th Century rap.  I mean, how often do you listen to lesser 18th Century composers--not Mozart?  It's the movie where Chris Pine is most Kirk-like and most of the other characters are more like their inspirations than the Abrams movies.

6.  Star Trek:  Nemesis:  The final Next Generation movie, this was not really as bad as people say.  The idea of a Romulan clone of Picard out to kill him and Earth gave it a little of the Star Wars operatic vibe.  It was a decent send-off for the TNG crew.  And the secret origin of Tom Hardy!

5.  Star Trek III: The Search for Spock:  Since Spock was the #1 or #2 character for most fans, of course they couldn't keep him dead.  So this movie brings him back to life with a story that deepens the familial bond among the crew as they defy Starfleet to steal the damaged Enterprise and rescue their friend.  It's kind of ridiculous that Spock would somehow regenerate exactly as he was thanks to the "Genesis effect;" I mean on an alien planet that's rapidly evolving, wouldn't he turn into some other form of life or something?  Or not.  Christopher Lloyd is a worthy adversary for the crew as the Klingon commander trying to steal Genesis for himself.

4.  Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home:  The conclusion of the trilogy within the Trek movies that follows the crew from Vulcan to Earth to stand trial.  After that the movie takes a ridiculous turn as they almost casually go back in time to 1987 to steal humpback whales from an aquarium to take back to the future to tell a probe to go home and stop fucking things up.  Um...what?  When I saw this (several times) as a kid, I just went with it, but as I get older, it makes far less sense.  There was a fairly unsubtle environmental message and a lot of 80s-ness that hasn't aged all that well.  And yet it does have a goofy charm.  And in terms of the movies, it's really the best romance Kirk gets to have.

3.  Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country:  Another not-all-subtle environmental message and a commentary on the end of the Cold War mix with a decent thriller to send off the classic crew.  There's a good supporting cast including Christopher Plummer, David Warner, and Kim Cattrall.  And Worf's grandpa or great-grandpa or something shows up as Kirk and McCoy's lawyer.  It ends with a decent space battle, the key to which is engineered by Uhura.  Agents of the Federation and Klingons working together to stoke the flames of war, are not too different from our time either.  Overall it's the movie that should have been Kirk's last appearance in Trek.

2.  Star Trek:  First Contact:  After the disappointing Generations, Berman and company decided to swing for the fences with a big, violent story.  And who better for villains than the baddest asses in the TNG universe:  the Borg?  Only now the Borg are going back in time to what's now our century in order to kill the creator of warp travel for Earth ships.  And only Picard and the sweet new Enterprise-E can stop them!  It then largely becomes like a zombie movie as more and more of the crew is assimilated into the Borg collective while many of our heroes have to hole up and try to survive.  Picard and Data get the best character arcs (of course) while Riker, Geordi, and Troi are largely underused on the surface.  There is a decent space battle early and a good supporting cast including James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard.  It was easily the best of the TNG movies.

1.  Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan:  I suppose you could say this was also Star Trek for Star Wars fans as this brings the space opera with both barrels.  What it does really well is take a battle for a weapon that could destroy and reformat all life in the universe into a small-scale personal battle between Kirk and Khan.  It features what I'd say are the best space battles in the series, not because of the size or number of ships, but because of the tension and intimacy.  The battle in the nebula is harrowing and that first ambush of the Enterprise is gut-wrenching, especially what happens to Scotty's nephew.  And those ear worms...nasty!  God, I still have to look away from the screen when Khan is inserting those things in Chekov and that other guy's ears.  And of course the dramatic final moments of Spock, sacrificing himself to save the ship.  The only thing bringing it down a little now is the 80s hair band look of Khan and his people.  Still, it's easily the best of the franchise because it found a way to tell a big story in a personal way we could all relate to.

Whatever Noah Hawley comes up with for the next reboot movie (or re-reboot?) is unlikely to challenge the first couple of movies on the list, but maybe it'll crack the top 5.  Probably not.

Ranking Star Trek Series

I already ranked Star Wars, so why not rank Trek too?  This will just focus on Trek TV series.  Discovery and Picard won't be included because I only saw the first episode of each.  On some distant day if I see them in their entirety then I might have to rejigger the list.

6.  Enterprise:  My late father and late sister and not-late sister wouldn't agree but I checked out of this series on UPN/CW after about two seasons.  I like Scott Bakula, but the whole prequel thing just never did much for me.  Like most people I didn't really care for that final episode either.

5.  The Animated Series:  It's really not as bad as you might think.  The animation sucks, but the stories are actually the same quality (if not sometimes better) than the original series.  Probably because many of the episodes were written by the same people, including Walter Koening, who doesn't appear in the series.  I mean since it was animated, why not have an actual alien-looking alien on the bridge crew?  And did you ever realize James Doohan had so much vocal range?  He was like the Frank Welker of that series.

4.  Voyager:  I never really liked this whole Lost in Space concept.  Most of the time it wasn't very realistic that a lone Federation starship could somehow survive in a different corner of space.  And really they rarely seemed to have stories about the real issues such a crew would face, like keeping it running.  Occasionally I guess they did that, but it felt kinda silly that all these Maquis rebels woulde agree to join the crew and wear uniforms and all that crap.  Anyway, I liked The Doctor and obviously Jeri Ryan was hot, but in the final years the show seemed to mostly revolve around them.  Other than Janeway, most of the other characters would only get one token episode a year.  And like any show of this type, you knew they'd never really get home until the show was cancelled.

3.  Original Series:  Of course this was what introduced the world to Trek and all those classic characters we know and love, but some parts of it have not aged all that well.  The effects, the sets, the smooth-faced Klingons are all pretty lame-looking now.  While the series was vocally anti-racist, anti-sexist...not so much.  I mean one of the final episodes was all about how women were too emotional to be captains.  For every great "City on the Edge of Forever" there were probably two clunkers, though perhaps none clunkier than "Spock's Brain."

2.  Next Generation:  At times this series was brilliant, and at others...not so much.  Seasons 1-2 the show was still finding its legs.  Seasons 3-5 are really good but it starts going downhill in Season 6.  Season 7 was far more misses than hits as it was really running out of steam.  Space might be infinite (or close enough) but decent stories are not.  Still, there were so many great episodes like "Best of Both Worlds" and some really well done smaller episodes.  Picard was a different kind of captain than Kirk, but in my universe there's room for both.  Really more than the Original Series, this series was able to develop all of its characters, even Wesley Crusher (unfortunately).  Probably because the syndication model allowed it to last longer than 79 episodes.

1.  Deep Space Nine:  Like TNG, the first couple of seasons of this the show was finding its legs, but starting in Season 3 it really started hitting on all cylinders with the introduction of the Dominion and then the war between them.  More than any other Trek series, DS9 let its characters grow and change over time.  Some like Dax and Odo literally changed when they replaced Terry Farrell in the final season and that brief period where Odo became solid.  Adding Worf in Season 4 at first seemed like a stunt, but he wound up meshing really well, even if I wasn't a fan of the Beauty and the Beast thing with Dax.  (I think mostly because I was jealous of him).  Sisko was kind of the best of both Picard and Kirk in that he could be diplomatic and reasonable, but when the time came to bring the whup ass, he was more than capable of that too.  Really there were no weak characters in that whole cast.  It's hard to even pick a favorite episode because there were so many good ones.

There you go, that's my list.  Wednesday we do the movies!

Ranking Transformers Movies

After ranking Marvel movies and Star Wars movies, let's rank Transformers movies...because they're like the 3rd highest grossing franchise in the last 15 years...maybe.  Or not.  But definitely in the top 10.

7.  Revenge of the Fallen:  When I saw this in the theater, an old lady's exasperated comment summed it up perfectly:  "This movie is so stupid!"  Yes, yes it was.  Even most of the robots looked stupid because almost all of the new ones had wheels for feet for some reason.  They made Jetfire (my favorite) a creaky old geezer who died.  Devastator, the first Combiner, was some kind of weird giant robot cat thing.  And a human Transformer?  WTF?  That's a Terminator, not a Transformer.  Oh, and Optimus does not kill and quip; he's not someone who enjoys killing.  Like The Last Jedi, this seemed determined to troll longtime fans on just about everything.

6.  The Last Knight:  If you put a gun to my head, I could not tell you what the hell this movie was about.  Optimus was evil because Cybertron wanted to eat Earth...or something.  And Transformers were in WWII?  And back in medieval times?  A three-headed transforming dragon thing?  A weird little scooter transformer?  Baby Dinobots?  What the fuck is going on here?

5.  Age of Extinction:  Again, it'd be hard for me to describe the plot of this.  Marky Mark Wahlberg is some kind of inventor who finds a truck in an old movie theater that turns out to be Optimus Prime, who's all broken up even though all he had to do was scan another vehicle to fix himself.  Meanwhile there's some kind of plot to make Transformers that goes awry.  And some dude called Lockdown hunting other Transformers.  It was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  The hapless new Autobots were kind of funny but Drift was way less cool (and more racist) than the original IDW comics version, Hound was not as cool as the original TV one, and Crosshairs was nothing like the original Crosshairs.  And the Dinobots don't talk?  No "Me, Grimlock, kick butt!"?  What happened to fan service, goddamnit!?

4.  Dark of the Moon:  The coolest thing about this was it used a plot from the original cartoon series wherein the Autobots are railroaded into leaving Earth, allowing the Decepticons to have free rein.  Of course it's done much, much worse than a 1985 two-part cartoon.  But it was also neat to have Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime since he voiced Galvatron in the original movie.  But Shockwave as a giant worm?  Lame.

3.  Bumblebee:  A Force Awakens-type movie as it largely follows the formula of the 2007 movie of a boy girl and his her robot car.  It simplifies the plot a lot more than the 4 previous movies on this list.  The robot designs also looked a lot better, with most of the existing characters on Cybertron actually looking like their G1 versions.  The new characters looked pretty good too.  I was disappointed that I couldn't find a toy version of the one that turned into a Harrier jump jet and another that turned into an F4 Phantom fighter plane.  The former they only seem to make in car mode and I don't know about the other.  The thing I didn't like about most of this movie were the almost constant music cues reminding us it was the 80s.  I mean, really, I got it the first time; I don't need you to drum it into my head 100 more times!

2.  Transformers (2007):  The OG live action version!  The junky robot designs aren't great and once it gets past the boy and his car part, it really starts getting muddled--a peek at the future of the franchise.  More than most of the sequels it tried somewhat to give the robots personalities, not just ethnic stereotypes, but Optimus and Bumblebee were the only ones that stuck.  It's a low bar, but it's easily the best of the Michael Bay movies.

1.  Transformers:  The Movie:  The OG Transformers movie!  It has a lot of flaws, like killing off pretty much everyone from the first two seasons of the cartoon--or at least the first season since most second season characters didn't even show up--but the death of Optimus Prime only showed how important he was to the Transformers mythos.  It did introduce some fun new characters:  Hot Rod, Kup, Arcee, Springer, and Ultra Magnus who all remain a part of Transformers toy lines to this day.  And I mentioned before somewhere that this was one of the first animated movies to use a lot of well-known actors in its cast like Orson Welles, Judd Nelson, Robert Stack, Eric Idle, and Leonard Nimoy.  And as 80s as the soundtrack is, I can't not hear "The Touch" or "Dare" and think of the scenes from the movie they were featured in.  So mostly for sentimental reasons this is still the top of my list.  You don't like it, get your own list!

And there you go.  More stuff ranked.

Ranking Star Wars

Another post Tony Laplume did at the end of the year on his Film Fan blog was ranking Star Wars.  Being a big fan of the prequels, of course he ranked those a lot higher than I would.  His ranking of The Empire Strikes Back was pretty rank too.

So because no one asked, here is my ranking list.*

*I haven't seen Solo, nor do I plan to, so it won't be included.  I'm also not including the animated Clone Wars movie  Just the main Star Wars saga and Rogue One.

10.  The Last Jedi:  Do I even need to delve into this?  I've spent plenty of blog space on why this movie sucks.  Yet of course people still think it's good.  Shame on you.  I mean sure it looks nice and there's diversity, but the story itself is absolute garbage that can only resolve itself through an obvious deus ex machina.  What it did to Luke Skywalker was only slightly less traumatizing than killing Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie.  If that's your best Star Wars, you're doing it wrong.

9.  Attack of the Clones:  A largely boring story and wooden acting ruin this middle part of the prequel trilogy.  The only thing to recommend it is that it minimizes the involvement of Jar-Jar Binks.  Some people think Yoda fighting with a lightsaber is cool, but to me it always looked ridiculous against a full-sized opponent.  The relationship between Anakin and Padme is about as well done as any James Nguyen movie.  (If you don't know who that is, watch Birdemic, Julie & Jack, and Replica on Rifftrax.)

8.  The Phantom Menace:  After about 15 years with no movies, the world was abuzz for a new chapter in the Star Wars saga.  and then we got this.  It tried much too hard to cater to the kids and push the merchandise.  The story itself gets bogged down in lame bureaucratic minutiae and unnecessary coincidences like Anakin having no father and creating C3-PO.  An overly long pod race, the most annoying child actor ever, Natalie Portman with more costume changes than a Cher concert, and of course Jar-Jar Binks and the largely racist Trade Federation Viceroys.  Liam Neeson tries to add some gravitas, but he's in the wrong movie.  Ewan McGregor would be the stand out of the next two movies but he's wasted here.  The only thing saving it from being a complete disaster is the epic lightsaber duel to "Duel of the Fates," the best John Williams piece since "Imperial March."

7.  Rise of Skywalker:  It tried hard to clean up after its predecessor and Make Star Wars Epic Again, but does it with needless plot complications:  Chewie "dying," C3-PO not being able to translate Sith to them, and that whole dagger thing in general.  Trying to give Rey an epic destiny and bring in a new Big Bad just makes things more of a mess.  A well-intentioned mess but hardly a satisfactory conclusion.

6.  Return of the Jedi:  Speaking of unsatisfactory conclusions...this was a lot better, but the movie itself is kind of a mess.  It keeps shifting tone from serious (Luke, Vader, the Emperor) to goofy (Ewoks!).  When you're a kid it's not so bad, but it doesn't age all that well.  I mean Ewoks killing armored Stormtroopers with rocks and sticks?  WTF?!  The space battle is pretty cool and Luke confronting Vader is pretty awesome; it just needed a more consistent ramp-up to that.  And Luke and Leia being siblings?  Weird.

5.  Rogue One:  Most of the movie is the typical prequel:  overly complicated and connecting dots that probably never needed connected.  The deaths of...everyone seem pretty forced, like the producers just didn't want to answer ComiCon questions about why Jyn Erso wasn't in the other movies for the rest of their lives.  Had it ended that way it would probably be a couple notches down on my list.  But the epic Vader scene at the end made up for it.  For the first time in a movie we really saw Vader as the Vader we imagined when he first came through the smoke on the corvette in Episode IV.  Why haven't we had a Darth Vader movie yet?  Get on it, Disney!

4.  Force Awakens:  After another 10 years without a real movie (just the Clone Wars animated movie) and the bad taste left by the prequels in general there wasn't a high bar for Episode VII.  Perhaps owing to how Disney rushed this into production after buying Lucasfilm, the story winds up being a faded copy of Episode IV.  There are a lot of things that don't make much sense:  Poe getting "thrown from the wreck" and somehow falling out of his jacket; the Millennium Falcon being there for years with no one noticing; Rey being able to fly it almost instantly; going to lightspeed inside a hangar and through a shield (why didn't they just do that in Rogue One?)...but there was potential, which Rian Johnson squandered because he wanted a gritty and "real" epic space opera--an oxymoron if there ever was one.  Don't get me started.

3.  Revenge of the Sith:  Like the other prequels it's not really great, but this tries hard.  There are a couple of great scenes to make you think what might have been, like the Jedi being slaughtered and Anakin's fateful decision to go to the Emperor's office that leads to Mace Windu's death.  The final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan was technically good but thematically it was just two guys jumping around a lot and whirling blue laser swords around.  All the CGI and green screen never really made it feel like a real thing.  As I said before, Ewan McGregor is the stand out of this series, especially in this movie.  Natalie Portman is again largely squandered and her death makes absolutely no sense.  Hayden Christiansen is better the second time around, but still doesn't have the chops to pull off what needed to be a nuanced character.  It seems none of the trilogies could ever pull off an entirely satisfying finish, but at least this didn't feature Ewoks.

2.  A New Hope:  The OG Star Wars!  I'll admit it's never really been my favorite.  I think in part because the raw look of it just didn't fit with the later movies.  Not really its fault.  It's a pretty basic story of good vs evil, without the operatic overtones of the rest of the original trilogy.  Which makes sense because no one knew it would become the biggest movie in the world when it came out and change the film industry forever.  It was designed as a one-off that also left room for a sequel...

1.  The Empire Strikes Back:  Unless you're some contrarian like Tony Laplume or Scott Mendelson, I don't know how you can not rate this as the best.  OK, not the best looking now, but in 1980 it was at the forefront of cinematic design and technology.  It really puts the opera in space opera with the epic twist that Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) is Luke's father!  The romance between Han and Leia is simply the best of any other movie in the franchise, with a real, unforced chemistry.  While not as technically proficient as Episode I & III, the lightsaber battle is the best.  You start with Luke seeming to hold his own and then ending with Luke throwing himself seemingly to his death to escape.  Not to mention Boba Fett!  Yoda!  Lando!  AT-ATs!  Super Star Destroyer!  All it lacks is a really cool space battle to be perfect.  The only other unfortunate thing is that saying Vader is Luke's father planted the seeds for the prequels.

There you go.  That's my list.

Ranking the Meh-CU

At the end of last year, Tony Laplume posted his ranking of the Marvel universe.  I couldn't agree with some of his choices, especially his mini-review of Black Panther that seemed really off-base to me.  But it got me thinking about how I would rank those movies.

The problem is that I don't really love any of them.  They pretty much rank from fine to OK.  Basically it's a universe of meh for me.  I think it's because I've almost always been a DC guy as far as superheroes go.  I grew up with Superfriends, Batman 66, the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and the Michael Keaton Batman movies.  So I was always more about Batman and Superman than any Marvel characters.  Captain America and Spider-Man were the only Marvel characters I really had any interest in.  The Hulk I didn't really like because it's basically the story of a smart guy who turns into a big, dumb monster.  Not really something I'd like.

I did like the first two X-Men movies and first two Spider-Man movies.  But if the whole "Marvel Cinematic Universe" never happened, I wouldn't have really given a shit.  But for the hell of it, let's try to sort the pile of meh that is the MCU into what's less meh than others.

23.  Thor Ragnarok:  A lot of people love this because it's "fun" but I found it a lame bastardization of the great Planet Hulk comic and a complete 180 in Thor characterization that continued into the last two Avengers movies.  It turned the character from serious into a parody.

22.  The Incredible Hulk:  It's not really a bad movie.  It basically follows the same overall formula as Iron Man that became the basis of most every Marvel origin movie.  There's the reluctant hero who faces off against someone who is his dark mirror opposite.  And mayhem ensues!  But since it only made like $250 million and not $500 it was viewed as a failure and largely ignored with Ed Norton being replaced by Mark Ruffalo.

21.  Avengers:  Age of Ultron:  This movie makes the same mistake a lot of imitators have made by worrying too much about setting up the future that it doesn't make all that compelling of a story in the present.  It's impossible not to see this as just a placeholder since Marvel wasn't ready for the whole Thanos/Infinity Gauntlet thing yet.  I guess the good thing for Marvel is it broke Joss Whedon enough that he left Marvel and tried to "save" Justice League.

20.  Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2:  I didn't see this in theaters and when I watched it on Labor Day weekend in a motel I found myself getting bored and reading stuff on my phone instead of watching the movie.  As far as Marvel movies go, was there any reason for this to exist?  If you don't watch it, you're not missing much, especially with Gamora being rebooted in Endgame.

19.  Doctor Strange:  This was the first Marvel movie I didn't watch in theaters.  Because...I just didn't care.  Dr. Strange was never a character I had any interest in.  As far as overall MCU stuff I guess it does matter with the Infinity Stone thing, but otherwise isn't important.

18.  Thor: The Dark World:  Like GOTG2, it's a pretty bland sequel.  And like Dr. Strange, except for the Infinity Stone stuff there's nothing important overall.  Like the first one, Loki really steals the show.  I guess that's why they felt they had to change Thor so much for the third one.

17.  Spider-Man Homecoming:  I liked the first two original Spider-Man movies by Sam Raimi and didn't really care about the Andrew Garfield ones.  This one...meh.  It's put together all right, but as I said when I reviewed it the first time, there doesn't seem like many of the traditional Spider-Man elements in it, like the Daily Bugle, J Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn, Norman Osborn, Gwen Stacey, or Mary Jane Watson.  There's an MJ who's not Mary Jane Watson and a lot of Iron Man.  And a May who's an AILF and Michael Keaton as a blue collar version of the Vulture.  So that's something.

16.  Avengers: Infinity War:  A long, dreary slog that's largely devoid of plot logic.  I went through all that in my grumpy review of it.  I mean, why not just use the Time Stone and go back to kill Thanos?  Or at least keep him from from getting all the stones?  At that point time travel wasn't really part of the MCU but...

15.  Avengers:  Endgame:  But now we have to fall back on that deus ex machina of time travel to fix things because otherwise how could we?  Another long, dreary slog with the forced death of Iron Man and the even more forced departure of Steve Rogers.  Some people have probably seen it fifty times by now, but once in the theater was enough for me.  And that was largely to avoid spoilers.

14.  Iron Man 3:  Like the other sequels listed so far it's not so much a terrible movie as it's just not great.  Tony Stark on the run in a small Tennessee town, cut off from his tech was a neat idea but could have been done better.  The twist with the Mandarin was kind of lame and the final battle just dragged on too long.  But it was cool to see Guy Pearce in a big superhero movie, though he probably could be playing a hero instead of a forgettable villain.  As far as the MCU this had a bigger contribution to the TV universe than the movies.

13.  Captain Marvel:  This might be higher (or lower) if I'd seen it more than once.  Marvel had ample chances to be the first one to do a big female superhero movie, but they didn't come up with this until after DC's much better Wonder Woman.  It's too little, too late, much like the forced "girl power" scene in Endgame.  And turning Nick Fury losing his eye into a joke was pretty lame after 11 years of movies.

12.  Iron Man 2:  I know Tony Laplume thinks this is the best MCU movie but rewatching it, I found it meh.  It did help launch the larger MCU by giving Nick Fury more than a cookie scene (just barely) and introducing Black Widow, but a lot of the MCU service feels forced.  Like I said to Tony, "Mostly what they actually contribute to the plot is giving Tony Stark a shot to alleviate his radiation poisoning and some old files of his father. A nurse and UPS driver could have served the same function." Not really a great movie in my book.

11.  Thor:  This introduction of Thor is pretty good, but Loki is the one who really steals the show.  Before Thanos, Loki was the only memorable villain Marvel had ever created.  Coulson and especially Hawkeye are wedged into the story though neither (especially the latter) is essential.

10.  Spider-Man Far From Home:  This would probably be lower if not for the cookie scene with J Jonah Jameson--played by JK Simmons even!  Between that and actually making Peter and MJ's relationship more like Peter and MJ's traditional relationship it felt more like a Spider-Man movie even with the globetrotting.  Mysterio was actually a better hero than villain, but the callbacks to Civil War and Iron Man were neat--the latter featuring Ralphie from A Christmas Story!  Still not as good as the first two Raimi movies.

9.  Captain America: Civil War:  What really should have been called Avengers 2 1/2 since it's only vaguely a Captain America movie.  Most of the movie is just MCU servicing by breaking up the Avengers and introducing Black Panther and Spider-Man.  But on the heels of BvS by less than 2 months it did a lot of the same things but in a far less clunky way.  The last-minute introduction of Spider-Man was especially forced, which made sense with how close it came to not happening at all.  Zemo is a decent villain, albeit an underused one.

8.  Ant-Man:  The long-gestating Edgar Wright movie finally came to the big screen--without Edgar Wright for the most part, though he got a writing and EP credit.  I saw a video on YouTube that hilariously compared this to Iron Man and it really does follow that formula, only the hero is an ex-con not a billionaire.  Like Iron Man succeeded largely thanks to Robert Downey Jr, this movie works mostly because of Paul Rudd being able to walk the tightrope between action movie and family movie and managing to make a criminal likable.

7.  Ant-Man and the Wasp:  A Marvel sequel that is fun and mostly focused on its own little corner of the MCU, though the cookie scene does have a huge impact on Endgame.  Bringing back Hope's mother was something I was surprised they didn't do the first time, but I guess they wanted to spend more time setting up that quantum realm thing.  And adding another old Batman movie alum to the MCU with Michelle Pfeiffer!  Ghost is less forgettable than most Marvel villains and in this case not even really a villain so much as someone trying to save herself.  I'm really trying to justify this but really this could have been a few spots down.  Whatever.

6.  Guardians of the Galaxy:  I didn't know much about this property beforehand, but a talking raccoon who shoots huge guns was enough for me.  It's a fun movie and obviously had huge implications for the MCU as the first "cosmic" movie to move things beyond Earth.

5.  Captain America:  The First Avenger:  This was probably higher until Wonder Woman.  This also largely revolves around a World War, only the second one.  But nothing in this movie really rises to the level of Wonder Woman crossing No Man's Land.  And the tepid, half-assed HYDRANazis were kind of lame.  Ooh, we wouldn't want to offend anyone by using actual Nazis.  You know, like all those failed movies like two Indiana Jones movies, Schindler's List, The Sound of Music, and so on and so on...But Chris Evans really does a good job of portraying Captain America as everything people associated with the character.  Someone compared it to the Christopher Reeve Superman and that seems apt.  Red Skull is an OK villain, following the Marvel formula of the dark mirror universe version of the hero.  

4.  Avengers:  This was an OK movie, but as I said when I reviewed it, it felt like a 2 1/2-hour team-building exercise.  There was really no deeper meaning to it.  Good guys fight largely faceless bad guys.  And good guys prevail.  Hooray!  Which is fine as a popcorn movie.  The scenes of heroes fighting each other were kind of pointless, but otherwise it was fine.

3.  Black Panther:  The first Marvel movie that actually had any social relevance.  Until then they all revolved around white males, many of whom with superpowers.  The only two black heroes, War Machine and Falcon, were sidekicks.  Like with female superheroes, Marvel got shown up by DC and so finally did what they could have done years ago.  And while the plot largely follows the traditional Marvel formula, it introduces us to the whole new world of Wakanda that seems like an alien planet even though it's on Earth.  Killmonger is one of the better Marvel "villains," a villain who is in a way a hero as he wants to right the wrongs done to black people over the centuries.  In the era of Trump and police shooting black kids routinely, who can blame him?  There's also some fun and humor provided thanks to the banter between T'Challa and Shuri and the hapless CIA agent played by Martin Freeman.  Andy Serkis chews a bit too much scenery, but overall it's definitely one of the best MCU films.

2.  Iron Man:  By itself this probably should be lower, but you have to give it props for what it started.  Had it failed, so many superheroes would still be largely forgotten, confined to only comics and maybe animated features.  The movie introduces the Marvel formula of a hero who's kind of a goofball and is forced to face off with the dark mirror universe version of himself.  In this case it's Obediah Stane, his longtime business partner.  Robert Downey Jr. doesn't have to do much more than play himself as a screw-up who becomes a hero.  Watching old shows like The Simpsons or MST3K, it's kind of funny when they make jokes about Downey Jr's drug problems.  Remember that?  Kids who've grown up with the MCU would probably never have thought this was a guy who would probably be in prison if he were poor and/or black.

1.  Captain America:  The Winter Soldier:  This is largely held as the best MCU movie.  It's a fairly good thriller more than a superhero movie.  Other than the unconvincing romantic plot it's a well-done movie that really brings Captain America into the modern era.  It's just too bad they couldn't have done it before the first Avengers so the character might have been better acclimated before taking on aliens.  As far as the MCU this had a much bigger impact on the SHIELD TV show but it did introduce the new Captain America, or the Falcon, and re-introduced us to Bucky.  And Robert Redford is probably the best Marvel villain to that point not named Loki.

So there you go, that's my list.  For as much as it really means.