Anyone see Bloodshot yet? I went on opening day (Friday) with my comic-book creator friend who is well-versed in the Valiant Universe. For a late afternoon showing, there were only four other people in the theater other than us (even lower numbers than Birds of Prey). This is almost certainly going to be a bigger flop, partially because of really bad promotion and partially because of extremely bad timing with COVID-19.
Which is too bad for Sony and their Chinese partner investors (Bona Films), because it was a very decent action flick. It established the origin of Bloodshot as being closer to the 2015 Valiant reboot than the version in the 90s which sold millions of copies (Valiant was a much more popular company back then).
Basically, the idea is that he's kind of Wolverine meets the Six Million Dollar Man: a military hero who dies and becomes the subject of an experiment to rebuild a super-soldier with self-healing nanites. He's super-strong and almost impossible to kill, so as a result, the conflict from Bloodshot has to be *internal*, as the story is about how he is mentally gaslighted with implanted memories (so maybe put a bit of Total Recall, Johnny Mnemonic and Minority Report in there and mix it around).
Here's what I liked:
- Vin Diesel was able to hold down his part pretty well.
- The special effects were pretty good, considering the lower budget.
- The climactic action scene was a bit cliched, recalling other cliffhanger thrillers from Die Hard onward, but it was still very exciting.
- The black computer geek was again quite a cliched character (think of the CW, with Lucius Fox and Curtis Holt) but the actor was quite engaging.
However, the single best aspect of the film was the gorgeous female lead, and of course this is the aspect that would appeal most to the members of this forum. It is worth seeing the movie along just to see Eiza Gonzalez portray her character, "K.T." (who is apparently created for the movie - she's not in the comics I don't think?). NBC just put out an article stating how the K.T. character proves that "a woman is more that just about her good looks" (like we still think that has to be proven in 2020?) but seriously she impresses on every level.
Not to spoil things too much, but here are some great K.T. moments:
- She does a very graceful 'water ballet' scene in a tight swimsuit in a swimming pool. Forum members who like heroines in underwater scenes should be very happy about that.
- Then she comes out of the pool dripping wet and looking very hot like Bo Derek rising out of the ocean in "10". It's pretty classic.
- She is also shown to be an excellent fighter, holding her own in combat against the enemy, and unleashing burning destructive
EMP pulses like Ripley burning through some alien xenomorphs in the Alien franchise.
- We get a peril scene where she is almost choked to death because of her one specific weakness (she must use a machine to breathe).
- In the final scenes, and in several other scenes throughout the movie, we see her gorgeous body, brightly lit or silhouetted, as a real work of art. And those lips are right out of a romantic telenovela (which she's starred in, in the past).
Gonzalez already has 5.5 million followers on Instagram and 1.4 million on Twitter just from her Mexican film career alone.
With more star turns (she was recently in Alita Battle Angel and Hobbs & Shaw), she could become another Gal Gadot or Angelia Jolie.
- eiza gonzalez photo.jpg (75.73 KiB) Viewed 624 times
So, big ups to Gonzalez and Diesel in this movie. Unfortunately, our faint praise isn't going to help things much, as it's not going to do well at the box office in these dire times, and the Valiant Universe itself is not going to have shared continuity either, because Paramount already bought up the rights to Harbinger. Not sure what the latest news on this is, but Sony may have retained the rights to Faith. However, that's going to be an unholy mess if they try to play it as a straight-laced superhero movie - imho it would work better as a screwball comedy.
Anyway if you feel like venturing out, check out Bloodshot this week in one of the theaters which probably won't be running it for very long.