Rated PG-13 for violence, terror/peril and strong language.
Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) were lucky to escape the hands of the sinister corporation Minos, who creates elaborate and deadly escape rooms for unsuspecting victims to fight for their lives in for the amusement of ultra-rich patrons. While Ben is just happy to be alive and wants to move on, Zoey is determined to enact justice for the innocent people who died alongside them. Having tracked down a possible location for the Minos headquarters, the two arrive in the heart of Manhattan. Though they think they have the upper hand, it isn’t long before they are tricked into entering another series of deathtraps. But this time, their fellow players are all people who have survived the company’s escape rooms before. They’ll all have to use their skills to find their way out of this new maze and try to end Minos’s reign of terror once and for all. The first Escape Room, released in 2019, wasn’t anything original. It was basically just Sony’s attempt to create a Saw-like franchise, only open to a wider audience with a PG-13 rating. Though the film itself was nothing groundbreaking, its use of the escape room trend made for some really thrilling sequences. If you can get past the characters being nothing more than a means of up the body count, it’s fun if disposable horror fun. So I wasn’t exactly expecting much when it came to this sequel. There isn’t really a way to expand on the concept, only to bring in new victims and come up with new death puzzles. It’s actually surprising that they decided to make a direct sequel and bring some characters back rather than just giving us an entirely new group of one-dimensional victims. They at least tried to offer some development. But despite the returning characters, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is basically more of the same. Even with the twist that all the players are returning champions, it’s still the same formula used by the first film; putting more effort into the puzzle rooms than the people forced to survive them. However, while it may be more of the same, I actually found myself enjoying more than the first film. A lot of this comes from the new collection of escape rooms our characters are forced to face. They are much more elaborate than the puzzles from the first film, and are a lot more thrilling to explore. Even when some aspects defy the laws of physics, they do a good job at twisting our perceptions and keeping us on the edge of our seats. The film does still suffer from the same problems as the first, mostly due to the characters. They may share the same trait of having dealt with Minos before, but that doesn’t mean they’re fully fleshed out as human beings. The new players really are just there to up the body count. While Zoey and Ben do get their moments to develop, we are never given any reason to connect with the newbies. It’s hard to tell if Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is an improvement over the first film, but it is more fun than its predecessor. Taking what worked from before and giving us more of it, the film has more suspenseful sequences that make it more thrilling overall, even when it fails to improve on much of what little lies underneath its elaborate surface. While it still seems to be finding its footing as a franchise, it’ll be interesting to see where the series goes from here.
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Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence/action, some language and thematic material.
Now Playing In Theaters and Streaming on Disney+ for $30 Premium Access After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords. Attempting to live a solitary life in Norway, it isn’t long before her past comes back in a violent way. She’s become a target of a masked hunter named Taskmaster, who is linked to the mysterious Red Room, where women like her are trained to be merciless spies. Natasha now must find a way to shut down the program once and for all. But she knows she won’t be able to do it alone. She’ll have to bring together those who acted as her fake family from her childhood, her “sister” Yelena (Florence Pugh), their “mother” Melina (Rachel Weisz), and their “father” and Russian super-soldier Alexei, a.k.a. the Red Guardian (David Harbour). They have to work together to bring an end to the evil organization that has defined their entire lives. Black Widow is the first Marvel movie to come out in about two years after several pandemic-induced delays. Now 24 films in, the franchise has crafted a particular formula that they never veer too far from. So when the trailers first dropped for this latest film, it really seemed like they were trying something new. It gave off more of a Red Sparrow vibe rather than that of a normal MCU film. Unfortunately, this potential change in style only amounted to clever marketing. Black Widow merely hints at some new directions, but never does anything with them and falls back on the same tired clichés as every other film in the franchise. And even when it’s not being a generic Marvel movie, it’s being a generic Russian spy film. There are no surprises to be found at any point in the film. At this point, Marvel’s constant teasing of new styles without ever following through is starting to feel less like consistent mediocrity and more like cheating the audience. Fans of the franchise will certainly get, and probably enjoy, what they’re expecting, and it’s clear that those are the people Disney cares about. But for people like me, who are tired of sitting through the same movie over and over again, we’re most likely going to get left in the dust. Along with the same style, the film also fails to do anything with its deeper themes. Much like Cruella just over a month ago, Black Widow attempts to confront social themes like free will and others, but never incorporates them into the narrative. They feel more like talking points designed to push certain buttons in viewers with limited perspectives. In the end, the film cares more about the action and easter eggs rather than its grander ideas. The film also suffers from Disney’s classic “Rise of Skywalker effect.” Various elements of the script never happen due to natural story progression, but because they are forced to happen at certain moments. Many feel shoehorned in, while others just make no sense. It’s becoming infuriating how telegraphed Marvel movies, and really Disney movies in general, are starting to be. The performances of the cast also feel average. While no one is generally bad, none of them are all that compelling either. Pugh, Weisz, and Harbour sound more like Americans doing Russian accents rather than truly sounding Russian. They never really nail their accents, and the more we’re forced to listen to them, the more annoying they sound. As for Johansson, even she seems bored in her role after doing it for so long. They way she and the story portray the character never make her appear as her own individual superhero. She just seems like any given character in the franchise, never charismatic enough to really engage. There’s really no reason to root for her because we know she’s perfectly fine no matter what kind of deadly situation she’s in. Black Widow is nothing but the same rusty formula that Marvel has been following from the very beginning, with nothing to really justify its own existence other than to be a belated cash grab on a popular character. It’s getting harder to forgive Marvel for constantly teasing possible new directions only to fall back on the same things we’ve seen too many times before. Hopefully someday they’ll reinvent themselves, but let’s face it, with billions of dollars from people who love watching the same stuff over and over again, they probably won’t. |