RIPD 2 review: a surprise Netflix prequel improves on the original

The team behind the surprise spin-off RIPD 2: Rise of the Damned Understands a basic rule of prequels: they should stand on their own rather than endlessly recalling the films that spawned them. It’s the only way to avoid that. Rise of the DamnedThe creators of the likely understand this. RIPD won’t Have any fan. Enough time has passed since its unannounced release in 2013 that it may be nothing more than a dim memory for anyone on the planet. Or understandably easy to forget.)

If RIPD It provokes a flicker of memories, but it most likely has to do with Ryan Reynolds’ buddy action pairing.dead pool Looking to jump into a comic book-based franchise, Jeff Bridges said his true grit cowboy persona.premise taken from dark horse comic series,Basically man in black overlap and intersect Ghost Busters: In the afterlife, a modern-day cop (Reynolds) teams up with Old West sheriff Roy Pulsipher (Bridges) to return to Earth to track down “Deados,” capricious souls possessing human bodies. To do.

Clearly, these stars won’t be returning for this direct-streaming prequel. It just leaves this cosmic lore as a draw for the viewer, which is kind of like Roy’s Origin his story. Beware of burns, really makes no effort at all to imitate Bridges’ cottony, cigarette-stained drawl or fake 19th-century cowboy influences. While Oldroy was the gunslinger in the Saturday morning cartoons, Youngroy is the type you would see on his commercials on local television between the commercials of the cartoons. Donovan seems only momentarily committed to the part. RIPD.)

Murdered in an 1876 train robbery, Roy is sent to the afterlife to be paired with sword-toting badass and veteran Deadbuster Jeanne (Penelope Mitchell). Roy doesn’t seem too upset about his fate, but he wants revenge on Slim (Jake Choi), who is responsible for his death. (Which doesn’t quite match what the original movie says about Roy’s demise, but who’ll notice?) Roy and Jeanne’s RIPD mission is set in motion by Otis Clairborne (Richard Brake), an angry soul. Roy’s personal revenge is intertwined with the stakes of ending the world.

It’s all nonsense, but it’s nonsense to improve on its predecessor, at least aesthetically. RIPD Western countries are man in black A imitation while giving the action some novelty and a baseline tactile feel. When the special effects arrive, they’re mostly generic smoke and light squiggles, but the film doesn’t fall into a green-screen nightmare populated by ugly CG characters like the first film did. Screenplay by Paul Ryden (chick fight) sets the scene using traditional set design, costumes and lighting, rather than excessive computer gunk. It’s not exactly eye candy. This is still a direct-to-video prequel to the franchise non-starter.

what Rise of the Damned What it shares with both its predecessor and its various junkpile ancestors is a misunderstanding of its human angle. The nasty hook is Roy’s posthumous acceptance that his perfectly lovely future son-in-law, Angus (Richard Fleishman), is…as lovely as he first appeared. , and befits Roy’s daughter Charlotte (Tilly Keeper). This is true despite Charlotte spending most of the movie off-screen and seemingly barely crossing Roy’s mind when he dies. The result of Roy’s distrust of Angus is in the sense that viewers may not believe that a movie would spend so much running time on such a narrative dead end, especially if the relationship between Roy and Jeanne is more interesting. Only doubtful. She has a backstory of historical importance that the movie reveals later in the game.

Image: Universal Pictures

Not all of the movie’s other quirks work so well. Rachel Adedeji and Evelyn Oyedkun are given the impossibly thankless role of playing the earthly bodies that Roy and Jeanne inhabit. (Jeanne, who’s been dead for hundreds of years, shouldn’t have this problem. Each ubiquitous character actor James Hong. This version is more questionable and even less funny, as Leyden casts two black women as a site gag, so much so that he and co-writer Andrew Klein are skeptical of the actual outcome. You can make wink jokes about racism without including black characters.

So it can be argued RIPD2 in the first place. This is the kind of project that would lie to other films described as “no one asked for this.” (Ah, ‘nobody asked for’ the beloved and enduring Buzz Lightyear spinoff. toy story series?The film seems essential compared to this decade-after prequel of a critically panned flop that vaguely resembles its fellow flop. Jonah Hex.) Given how unnecessary Rise of the Damned So it’s Raiden’s choice to shave the original RIPD‘s summer movie blast turned into a comfortable, fast-paced supernatural western that was wildly successful.On the other hand, whoever works there RIPD The universe also needs to understand the value of just being dead.

RIPD 2: Rise of the Damned Available to stream on Netflix or rent digitally from Amazon, budu, and other platforms.you can see Watch the first 8 minutes of the movie online for free.