Movies I Grew Up On: Strange Brew

One of the movies my family would always use as a rainy day movie was Strange Brew.  I'm not really sure how to describe this movie, though.  Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas play two unemployed Canadians who love two things: hockey and beer.  When going to a beer factory to get beer (by stuffing a dead mouse in a bottle and saying this is how it was when they bought it) they get hired to help bottle the beer.  Then things get weird with some sort of scheme to take over the world with mind control and hockey that these two bumbling idiots stumble into and there's a digital ghost at some point.  It's kind of like Dumb and Dumber the Canadian Version.

Honestly, I really don't know what else to say about this movie...it's weird, it's silly, it's dumb, and you should watch it.

Review: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2

Once again, the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs series has gone above my expectations.  I wasn't expecting much from the first and really enjoyed it.  Based on the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 trailer, I was expecting to really enjoy it and I'm pretty sure I was smiling and laughing the entire time.

The plot is essentially Jurassic Park 2 and 3: the science that went wrong in the first one has gone ever further wrong creating an ecosystem of its own.  Instead of dinosaurs, however, it's food animals (or foodimals).  And even better than Jurassic Park 3, all the new types of creatures are actually well designed.  Just about every foodimal is created solely to be a pun (Shrimpanzee, Peanut Butter and Jellyfish, Mosquitoast, etc.), but beyond the awesomeness of that, they are all really beautiful and well thought out.

The entire movie is also incredibly well animated with lots of little subtle (and some not so subtle) visual jokes going on almost all the time.  There was one scene that totally reminded me of Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing where the scene and dialogue were about one thing, but the entire time, there's something happening visually that was way more entertaining.  There were also a couple characters who had me smiling pretty much the entire time they were on the screen just because of how their arms moved or the random stuff they were doing while they talked.

The following is a non-comprehensive list of who I think would like this movie:

• People with kids
• People who love puns
• People who love good animation
• People who love food
• People who love food puns
• People who love animated food puns
• People who love to laugh
• People looking for something lighthearted
• People who secretly (or not so secretly) wished they had a living Strawberry, Pickle, or Tacodile Supreme
• People who were told not to play with their food
• Probably you

Coming Attractions: Fall 2013 Movies

• September
• Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2
• Looks punnier than a Piers Anthony book in his Xanth series
• I hope there are more jokes than what was in the trailer

• October
• Escape Plan
• Sci-fi(ish) prison escape movie starring Rambo and the Governator, need I say more?
• I'm hoping for some good twists (a staple of prison escape movies) and good action (a staple of Rocky and Conan)

• November
• Ender's Game
• An amazing book they hopefully treat well and stars Harrison Ford
• I'm hoping it's not terrible...
• Thor: The Dark World
• It's a Marvel comic book movie
• I'm hoping it starts to make the weirdness that is Thanos a little more palatable to the masses
• The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
• The book series is great (I think the 2nd one might be my favorite) and they did well enough with the first one
• I'm hoping they use less stupid action camera work where you can't see what's happening

• December
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• I want to see how beautiful they make Smaug and to see why they think a third movie is warranted
• I'm hoping I can make it through the Mirkwood section to see an awesome looking dragon
• Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
• I love lamp
• I'm hoping for another giant battle between the various news channels

Movies I Grew Up On: Batman

This movie is a strange, but fond Christmas memory of mine.  I remember my family had went up to Canada to visit my grandparents and other family on my dad's side and someone got the VHS of Batman, so we watched that together.  This was the first Batman movie in 23 years and decidedly darker than the so very awesome Adam West Batman.  Unlike the even darker and more "realistic" Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton still embraced the comic book source material and kept the characters fairly faithful (e.g. Joker wasn't just a crazy killer, but wanted everyone to die laughing/smiling).  It stars Michael Keaton as Batman, who in my mind is the best Batman, but not a fantastic Bruce Wayne.  It's also the the only Batman movie to only have a single villain (which really should be the norm for comic book movies, not the exception).

If you haven't seen it, this movie serves as both an origin for Batman and the Joker.  Jack Napier, second in command to Gotham's current crime lord, is set up to take a fall during a crime at the Axis Chemical factory.  While trying to stop the criminals, Jack falls into a vat of chemicals, partly due to Batman.  Instead of dying from the chemicals, Jack Napier is instead transformed into a deranged killer who uses chemicals in every day hygiene products to cause people to laugh to death.  Things escalate to a very climactic fight up at the top of a cathedral bell tower.

Unfortunately, this movie starts the trend of comic book movie villains dying in their first (and only) movie appearance.  I'm not talking about random villains created specifically for that movie (like the Superman movies), but one of the villains from the hero's gallery of villains.  I've never quite understood this since not only do the heroes only have a small number of villains that could actually hold up a movie by themselves, but usually the villains they do kill (like The Joker) have so many more stories that could be explored and character depth that could be done.  This can only lead to more future reboots that (for some reason) must retell the hero's origin story again and again.

Review: Despicable Me 2

The world needs more minions.  Fortunately, Despicable Me 2 has them all over the place.  Admittedly, the movie is mostly about Gru and his quest to discover the identity of another villain threatening to destroy the world and stop them.  However, the movie does a great job of alternating between silly scenes involving the Minions, scenes that move the plot along, and scenes filled with zany supervillain antics.  The three girls that the plot revolved around the first Despicable Me are no longer the focus.

As well as trying to find and stop the mysterious other supervillain, Gru has to deal with both a neighbor and his daughters trying to set him up with single women, and trying to stop his eldest daughter, Margo, from seeing a boy.  It is a kid's movie, so the actual plot is fairly predictable, but the humor in the movie is top notch.  Even the obligatory fart joke is funny (someone gets a 21 fart-gun salute at one point).  But by far, the end of the movie is, in my opinion, the best movie ending ever.  I haven't laughed that hard and that long in a long, long time.  Because of this, I'm not too surprised that there's going to be a movie focused solely on The Minions.  I am curious how the dialogue in that movie is going to work, though...

Review: Man of Steel

This movie has me all sorts of conflicted and confused about what I really want out of a movie.  Nearly every opinion I formed than got contradicted later on in the movie.  For example, the movie starts with a very long sequence on Krypton explaining its end of days.  I both loved this sequence for showing so much bizarre alien-Krypton stuff (some Kryptonian creatures, some tech, some weapons and armor, etc.) and hated it because it was so long and I've seen Superman's origin so many times.  However, a friend of mine who I went with isn't as into comics as I am and really appreciated the rehashing of the origin story.  So I can just suck that up and move on.  The two things that I find a hard time moving on with are the odd camera quick-zooms and Superman's supposed care for human life that doesn't really manifest until it's convenient to the plot.

I'm not sure which modern day film technique I hate the most: unnecessary slow-motion (i.e. bullet time), purposefully shaky camera work when the action isn't being filmed by a character in the film, or these really bizarre quick zooms to something in the distance.  It doesn't really matter, though, because they're all super distracting and don't add a thing to the film.  This movie was the first instance I can recall so far that has done a double zoom both in and out in succession.  So a spaceship is off in the distance.  Start from a super wide useless shot, zoom to a normal medium shot of the spaceship, zoom again to a random section of the spaceship that I guess is important, but I can't tell because you zoomed WAY too much, zoom back out to the good shot, now zoom back to the original shot.  This happened multiple times in the movie.  Overall it made all the action very hard to track.  It definitely had a Hunger Games feel to it where I know there's action going on the screen, but heck if I can tell who is what or where and who just got punched or shot or thrown through a building...is Superman winning?  We won't know until they stop punching each other so they can get up and look menacing at each other for a second or two.  (More on this later).

They did a really good job of actually making Superman's big conflict (am I a man or a Kryptonian?) a big deal, through the flashbacks of his childhood growing up in Kansas.  Despite humanity's shortcomings, Superman decides to side with us.  However, this decision doesn't seem to come out during any of the fight scenes.  Not once does he try to pull the fight AWAY from people.  Instead, he keeps throwing bad guys into populated areas he hasn't destroyed yet.  He can't even keep the fight into one contained area.  So does he really care about humanity at all?  The only time it seems to matter is when the plot dictates he needs to watch people in trouble.  So does he just not like seeing people getting hurt, but once it's out of sight, it's out of mind?

Other random thoughts:

• One of the other conflicts with my opinion I had was the first half of the movie I was wondering if there was going to be any action in the movie.  The second half of the movie, I wondered when the action sequence was going to end.  I guess that's what's called pacing?
• Superman started the movie with a full beard, then went to a scruffy face, then clean shaven.  I really wish he would have kept one of the first two.  I'd totally root for Super Beard way more than Super Man.
• I think secretly this movie is a live action Dragonball Z movie, but they couldn't call it that because they wanted people to see it.  You've got two aliens from another planet that ultimately they are meant to bring their species to.  One alien is a trained warrior who knows his destiny is to conquer, let's call him Vegeta.  The other alien grew up on this planet with no knowledge of where he came from and so only knows that he's different from everyone else, but he likes the planet and people he's with, I think we can call him Goku.  There's lots of fighting in the air, lots of quick dashes to fight from one spot to the next, and apparently these aliens can just will themselves to fly.  I'm pretty sure I saw Superman even go Kaioken x10 at least once...

Review: Much Ado About Nothing (the Joss Whedon version)

Much Ado About Nothing is a modern retelling of the Shakespearean play by Joss Whedon and his crew coming out as a limited release (one theater in San Francisco, two in LA, and two in NY) for a couple weeks until June 21st.  I was fortunate enough to have a group of friends to go with to watch a viewing in San Francisco.  All of the dialogue in the movie is the exact dialogue from the original play.  So if you've already read/watched the play or seen the 1993 version then you know the plot.  If not, it's mostly about two different couples: a pair of people jaded and cynical of love whose friends conspire to get them to love each (Beatrice and Benedick) other and a pair whose love is put to the test by a villain spewing a string of lies to tear them apart (Claudio and Hero).

So, the reason to watch this movie is because the actors are all top notch and the modifications to the scenes outside of the dialog are great.  For example, when Benedick starts to try to woo Beatrice, during the entire conversation he's just doing super awkward workout exercises/poses to try to show off.  And of course, there's Nathan Fillion, who plays the not so intelligent policeman, Dogberry.  I really don't want to describe much because words can't express the humor of how good Nathan's comedic timing and delivery of the lines works.

I was definitely surprised by how much I ended up liking Alexis Denisof (the actor who plays Benedick here, Sandy Rivers on How I Met Your Mother, and Wesley in Buffy/Angel).  His performance is spectacular and even further makes me want to actually watch Angel.  This is surprising because Wesley was one of my least favorite characters on Buffy.  But other than Dogberry, Benedick was my favorite character in this movie and as much as that can be attributed to the dialog written by William Shakespeare, I would be remiss to not give much of the credit to Alexis himself.

Things I'm Looking Forward To This Summer

• Movies
• Much Ado About Nothing - June 7th
• Joss Whedon does Shakespeare, need I say more?
• Monsters University - June 21st
• Prequel to Monsters Inc.
• Despicable Me 2 - July 3rd
• Sequel to the amazing movie Despicable Me
• Pacific Rim - July 12th
• Essentially King of the Monsters the movie
• The Wolverine - July 26th
• Another Wolverine focused movie, this time set in Japan
• Percy Jackson: Sea Of Monsters - August 16th
• Another movie based on the Percy Jackson books that I really want to read at some point because I liked the previous movie a lot
• Riddick - September 6th
• Another Riddick movie
• Television
• MasterChef - Started May 22nd
• Cooking competition between more average people than Top Chef
• Arrested Development - New Season released May 26th
• If you have not seen this series before, do it.  You must watch from the beginning for full effect.
• Video Games
• Fuse - May 28th
• Co-op sci-fi adventure with a couple buddies of mine
• Remember Me - June 4th
• Cyberpunk adventure about rewriting people's memories
• The Last Of Us - June 14th
• Survival horror after a fungal infection has taken over most of humanity
• Pikmin 3 - August 4th
• Control an army of little vegetable creatures to gather amazing "treasures" on a distant planet
• Mario and Luigi Dream Team - August 11th
• Another amazing RPG adventure for Mario and Luigi
• New Super Luigi U - August 25th
• Redoing of New Super Mario Bros. U focused on Luigi
• The Wonderful 101 - September 15th
• Control an army of superheroes to save the city (essentially another Pikmin!)
• Batman: Arkham Origins - October 25th
• A prequel to the two other amazing Batman Arkham games
• Other
• Pacificon Game Expo - August 30th-September 2nd
• Playing games all weekend and demoing Suspicion to complete strangers
• Suspicion Demo at Game Habitat - Tentatively June 1st
• Suspicion Demo at Illusive Comics and Games - Tentatively June 15th

Movies I Grew Up On: Night of the Living Dead

I always thought I watched this when I was like 5 or 6, but clearly that couldn't have happened since it came out in 1990, but I completely blame Night of the Living Dead for my aversion to watching anything zombie related.  I did watch this when I was little and ever since then, zombies have become one of those things that if I let my mind stick on it, I'll start getting jumpy, and if it's at night...well...that's going to be a miserable night.  I'm fairly certain it was the 1990 version and not the original 1968 version, but I haven't gone back and watched either of them to confirm this.  I honestly don't even remember much from the actual movie.  There were zombies, there was a farm, people were boarding up a house, there was yelling, there was glass breaking, etc.

Because of this movie and the effect it had on me, I now flat out refuse to watch zombie movies (every once in awhile I get convinced to break this rule and almost always suffer for it), read zombie books (I do really want to read World War Z, but I can't imagine that going well for me), or play zombie focused games (broke this rule to play Dead Island, but could only play it in short bursts when there was daylight outside).  Sometimes people will try to convince me to watch zombie things to get me over my fear, but I'm not really sure I see the point.  Everyone is afraid of something.  If the worst thing I'm afraid of are zombies, then I'm pretty well off, since I'm highly unlikely to ever see them, and if I do I almost guarantee I'll be one of the first to die or else I'll be the guy that helps someone else hide their zombie wound and gets us all killed.

Review: Die Hard - It's A Good Day To Die Hard

Apparently Die Hard 5 is yet another movie that proves to me that I never seem to agree with critics.  To me, Die Hard 5 solidifies the pattern that every other Die Hard movie is awesome.  None are as great as the first, but this one feels much more like a Die Hard movie than the previous installment: namely a terrorist plot with a clever twist, John McClane getting involved without meaning to, and even a few awesome homages to the original.

The action definitely is over the top, but not as completely ridiculous as Die Hard 4 where John jumps on to a jet and flies a car into a helicopter.  Also, John's partner in this outing, his estranged son, is equally capable of killing bad guys and being nigh invulnerable.  It's like what Indiana Jones 4 was going for with Indy Jr., but with someone that actually matches the father a little better.  Plus, no aliens in this one.  The bad guys aren't nearly as awesome or memorable as the Grubers and their crews, which is probably why this one isn't on par with 1 and 3, but they didn't bother me as much as Timothy Olyphant.

So with all that said, I'd say this Die Hard is ranked 3rd below 1 and 3 and above 4 and 2 and definitely worth a watch.

Movies I Grew Up On: Elm-chanted Forest

My family had an RV growing up and we would go on a lot of trips.  I vaguely remember on one of those trips watching the movie Elm-chanted Forest while my parents were away at some church related event.  I also remember watching this with my sister when I was a little older and we'd both crack up at how ridiculously cheesy a movie it is.

The movie is about a painter, Peter Palette (clever) who falls asleep under an enchanted Elm tree and wakes up to find he can talk to animals and his paintbrush has magical abilities (I don't remember what exactly, but briefly watching a clip on YouTube, it can't instantly paint an animated picture of a fox on a canvas).  The forest is being threatened by the Emperor Spine (basically a big round cactus guy) who wants to turn the forest into a desert , first by trying to burn it down and later by trying to flood it.  If I remember right (spoiler alert) it ends with Peter making Emperor Spine's flowers bloom and then he becomes as horribly cheery as everyone else.

If you have super young kids, they may enjoy this movie, but I think for your sanity's sake it's probably not a great idea to go and find it.  Not to mention there are plenty of other far better options to distract your kids with.  If you have 83 minutes to kill and love watching bad movies, though, then maybe this will float your boat.  :)

Suspension of Disbelief

The crux of any story in any non-modern, real world setting, is suspension of disbelief.  If there is anything at all that isn't exactly how it is in real life, then at some point the viewer/reader/gamer needs to accept that that is the way that works in your world and things will continue to operate within the bounds set unless given some explanation to cause an exception.  If these bounds are ever broken with no explanation, then the viewer/reader/gamer's suspension of disbelief will be broken, the illusion will be shattered, and your content will be seen as the ridiculous nonsense that it is (or maybe I'm just really harsh about my SoD being broken...).

One example of where my SoD has been broken recently is the new J.J. Abrams show, The Revolution.  The premise is that for some reason unknown to everyone, all power has gone out in the world and no one can generate more.  That's pretty fantastical and unrealistic, so it gives the show fairly large bounds within which they can set up the world 15 years later.  I'm fine with not knowing why there's no power, I accept that as a fact, so it would make sense that the ability to manufacture much of what we have today would be difficult or impossible.  My suspension of disbelief is broken when some of the militia has working civil war-era musket ball style guns.  They would have had to manufacture those guns somehow, which begs the question what happened to all the other guns in the world?  Did they stop working?  Are modern bullets really THAT hard to make without electricity?  You still have fire, metal, and gunpowder...do I just not know how bullets are made?  Even if you accept that, I guarantee there will be some technological dissonance for every person.  Some technology that can still function or be adapted with modern knowledge.  It's not like humanity got stupider, just we have no access to electricity.  So in 15 years no one was able to adapt any of our current technology to a powerless world?

Another example is the movie Inception.  In the very beginning of the movie, Leonardo Decaprio explains the rules of the dream world to Ellen Page.  He has set in stone the bounds of the world, so I know what to expect.  Problem is that those rules are very quickly broken and tossed out.  So the world does not work at all how I was told it would, so my SoD is broken.  If they had said that they think the dream world works a certain way and it didn't, then I could have accepted that no one had dove that many layers down (which they established) so the rules changed from what was known.  However, they were very adamant that the world did work that way, so what am I supposed to think when it doesn't work the way it should?

One last example is the anime Samurai 7.  I touched on this in my review, but let me go into more detail.  Throughout the show, it was shown that the seven main Samurai could perform fairly ridiculous feats defying normal laws of physics (swords that could cut through buildings, being able to jump giant robots in a single bound, being able to catch arrows, slice bullets/missiles in half, etc.).  They were very consistent with these rules, so I gladly accepted them as how this world worked.   However, in the final two episodes, they were suddenly able to perform feats that made me wonder how the leader samurai had never won a war (as he claimed).  The engineer samurai converted one of the robot samurai's limbs into a flying ship (sure whatever, ridiculous, but I'll accept it).  The capital ship they are attacking shoots a giant laser beam at them through their own arm.  The enemy robots all blow up in this beam, but somehow this robot limb the samurai are flying can ride on top of the laser beam like a surfboard.  Ummm....what?  It's as if they project an aura of samurai-ness to whatever they touch.  Too ridiculous for me.

The Journey

I just finished reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (still going through classics thanks to the fact that they are all free on the Kindle) and it started me thinking about the journey characters take during epic quests.  I googled for tropes to see if I've once again inadvertently stumbled across one and the closest I can seem to find is The Hero's Journey - warning TVTropes link.  Whereas that trope is all about the events of the journey that the character goes through, my thought was more about the location.  In many stories - Wizard of Oz, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Kingdom Hearts to name a few - the characters start in an ideal world.  Actually, Wizard of Oz is slightly different because she starts in Kansas, which is described as incredibly grey and flat, so hardly ideal, but I'm thinking more about the Munchkin's land she really starts her journey on.

So they start in this super nice area they'd be crazy to leave, but they must for some reason (they're determined to get back to the land of the grey and flat, a tall man with a pointy beard and even pointier hat told them to, they fall into a black hole and end up in a different place, etc.).  The next step is always safe with the illusion of danger (like a Disneyland ride) - a forest with the feeling of danger, but either no real danger or some guardian to keep the character safe, a strange town full of strangers, but no one really threatening and usually there's a guide to help the character out.  As the journey continues, the locations get darker, scarier, and more dangerous directly proportional to the character's growth level.  The journey ends somewhere either completely gothic, demonic, or void.  Basically, there will be lots of spike and/or fire or there will be lots of nothing.

My favorite part is that once the quest is completed, the characters usually just appear back at the beginning.  Story-wise it makes sense, the climax has happened, another climax is not what a reader really wants, but if the characters were struggling to reach their destination (running low on food, sneaking past armies, etc.) then that should still be an issue on the way back, right?  And if they do get magically apparated or taken home by giant eagles, then why didn't those take them to their destination in the first place?  Definitely food for thought when coming up with the ending of the journey.

This transition from idyllic settings to terror can be something really interesting to play with when designing games, especially if you make the transition slow and subtle so the player doesn't even realize it's happening. I'd especially love to see this concept played with in a board game.  Somehow the board itself changes as the game continues on and gets darker and more twisted (mostly just the art, not so much the components).

Why Are Video Games Based on Movies SO BAD?

It's a fairly well-known fact that movies that are based on video games are terrible.  I was going to write on how the conversion going the other way is equally terrible, but after doing some research, I'm not quite sure that's true.  I already knew a bunch of examples of games based on licenses (but no particular movie) that were successes (Transformers: War for Cybertron, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Ghostbusters, and countless Star Wars and Indiana Jones based games).  So I figured I'd narrow it down to tie-in movies - video games that are required to come out at the same time as a movie that are known for being rushed and given too many publisher requirements to be a fun and creative experience.  But after looking into that, I found out there are more decent to good movie tie-ins than I thought.

I knew from personal experience that I enjoyed a few myself.  But since the critics didn't always agree with me (I liked the Iron Man game personally), I did a search that was less biased (or rather the bias is based on multiple peoples' opinions and not just my own).  The following games received 75+ Metacritic scores: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Toy Story 3, Kung Fu Panda, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  So what this tells me is that it is possible to have a video game based on a movie and release at the same time with the chance that it's not terrible, but I think that unless the IP is something for typically nerdy people (comic book fans and high fantasy fans) or for their children, you're going to have a rough time of it.  And even that isn't a guarantee of quality.  I think just like the movies themselves, the creativity required to make a truly amazing gaming experience cannot be stifled by the movie's deadlines or limiting the game to the movie's content.

I was glad to find in my search that movie tie-ins seem to be few and far between recently (the only ones released I could find this summer have been Battleship, Brave, and The Amazing Spider-Man), so maybe someone is getting the message that rushed games just aren't worth it?  I am all for bringing movies into the video game realm, but the source needs to be treated with respect just like any other translation.  Also, unless the movie feels like a video game (e.g. you can distinguish levels, bosses, action sequences that would be fun to play, etc), the video game adaptation should expand on the movie, not just rehash it.

Also, during my research, I was very intrigued to discover that one of my favorite movies growing up, Darkman, had an apparently successful tie-in game associated with it.

Grudges and Archenemies

If you have never seen the cartoon Gargoyles, I would highly recommend you watch it (even if you're an adult).  Not only is it made by some pretty amazing people, but it has incredibly well done continuity and character building.  One of the aspects I loved the most is that each one of the main gargoyles had a grudge against a different one of their villains that persisted throughout the show and heavily influenced their interactions with those characters.  Goliath and Xanatos, Brooklyn and Demona, Lexington and The Pack, Broadway and criminals with guns, and Hudson and the Archmage.  Any time one of these villains showed up, the appropriate gargoyle would start acting very different.  Goliath was always quick to mistrust David Xanatos.  Lexington was always eager to go out and fight if The Pack was involved.  Broadway would go in a rage to destroy the firearms because of a bad experience he had with one in the past.  These recurring attitudes really helped to give a strong depth to the gargoyle's characters because you would slowly see them overcome the grudge to win the day.  Goliath kept being forced to team up with Xanatos.  Lexington kept getting caught when he stupidly rushed out to fight The Pack, so he eventually learned to fight smarter (which made sense since he was the smartest of the gargoyles).

Star Trek: The Next Generation had a similar thing going on, but not so tangible.  Almost every time a character had an episode revolve around them, they would have to struggle with the same issue.  Geordi would time and again have episodes about bad relationships.  Riker kept dealing with problems caused by his career (either focusing too much on it in his past or refusing to advance to Captain).  Crusher dealt with being alone.  Picard kept dealing with opening up and not being such a stoic Captain.


I want to say I'm just illustrating some examples of a foil, but with Star Trek, they were situations and not characters and with Gargoyles, they weren't the opposite of the character, they were just an archenemy developed from the gargoyle's first experience with them.  I guess this is much harder to do if your story just has a single protagonist since he'll just seem really bitter if he has a strong grudge against all of his villains.

Review: Dark Knight Rises

Personally, I like this image over the movie poster.

The third and final installment of the Dark Knight Trilogy is a wonderful conclusion to yet another take on the Caped Crusader.  The purpose of this trilogy is to try to add more realism to Gotham City and its denizens.  So no Smile-X gas, no Sugar and Spice, and no bombs you can't get rid of.  At least that's mostly true...both the first and third movies in this set have some Hollywood science that breaks apart easily if you actually stop to think about it, so it's best to just ignore those parts.

Following the end result of The Dark Knight, this movie starts off with Gotham City living in peace and free from organized crime due to the lie that Batman killed Harvey Dent, thus saving his spotless image, which was somehow needed to put away the crime lords...because I guess trials in Gotham City are based on popularity contests between the defendants and prosecutors and not evidence...or something...anyway, since Batman is no longer needed to clean up Gotham City (and he's a wanted man) he has disappeared and Bruce Wayne has become a recluse, feeling he has nothing left to live for with the loss of Rachel (who could also be called Two Face).

In steps Bane to mess up the peace and Catwoman to make things awesome (seriously, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman is amazing).  This movie has plenty of twists and turns and ups and downs, so I don't really want to wreck anything.  The only things of note are the aforementioned Hollywood science and Bane's character really has no depth whatsoever.  He's kind of just a mercenary leader who is strong.  And likes to hold the lapels of his jackets.  A lot.  But I'm actually kind of okay with the lack of depth because he's definitely better than previous Banes and I'm not sure if Bane really needs much depth.  It was weird that the whole Venom steroid thing that Bane usually has going on is completely MIA in this movie, but just like the lack of Joker's killing with a smile, it's probably for the best for this series since those are harder to suspend disbelief for given the level of realism.

Other than that, the only flaw is that the movie needs more Anne Hathaway, but I don't think I'd be satisfied unless the entire movie was just her.  That'd be way more watchable than a certain other "Catwoman" movie.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

Just like video games based on movies, movie reboots are typically things people fear.  While trying to come up with a list of examples, I could only actually come up with two bad examples, however: The Karate Kid and Land of the Lost.  Every other reboot/remake/rewhatever I've seen has been great (and usually better than the original).  Ocean's Eleven, Bedazzled, Batman Begins, The Incredible Hulk, Star Trek, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, among others.  The Amazing Spider-Man definitely falls into that latter category.

I love Sam Raimi (especially because he puts Bruce Campbell somewhere in everything he does) and the first two Spider-Man movies he made were entertaining, but the characters were a far cry from the characters in the comic books.  Peter Parker was nerdy without any intelligence to back it up.  Mary Jane was not in those movies at all, just some whiny damsel-in-distress redhead.  And I'm not even going to talk about the atrocity that was "Venom".  The new movie, on the other hand, got things much more spot on.  Well before Peter Parker was ever bitten by anything, there were various examples of his obvious intelligence.  Not only could he instantly diagnose a broken refrigerator just by looking at it, he had a remote-controlled mechanical door lock on his room, he talked shop (i.e. science!) with Curt Conners as if it was second nature to him.  He studied textbooks.  So it made a heck of a lot more sense when he made his web shooters (instead of having webbing come out of his arms just like spiders do...wait...) and he figured out how to stop the Lizard with brain power instead of brute force.

Ultimately, that's what makes Spider-Man what he is.  Sure he has the agility and strength of a mutant spider and he can shoot webs, but he almost never wins his battles merely by fighting.  He always out thinks his opponents.  He quips all the time to get his opponents angry so they stop thinking clearly (that and because it's hilarious).

On top of getting Peter Parker right, they also had a lot of little things that made the movie more believable.  After every single time Spider-Man went out and fought, Peter Parker would come home bruised.  Sure, he's strong enough to get sideswiped by a bus and survive, but he's still going to show the impact on him somehow.  When he was swinging around as Spider-Man, he'd wear a backpack to hold (among other things) his phone and his camera because there was no room in his unitard for it.  Along with his spider powers, he also showed subtle signs of acting more like a spider.  He was twitchier, he liked sitting in corners, etc.  Curt Connors also displayed subtle hints that the lizard DNA was affecting his personality as well.  Both a sign of great acting and direction in my opinion.  It was a little strange he never ran out of webbing mid-battle/patrol, but the rest of the movie was logical enough that I can just assume he carried extra cartridges with him and swapped them when we weren't looking.


So all in all, this was an amazing movie all on its own.  It respected its source material and brought those characters to life while changing things enough to clearly indicate this is its own story line and universe.  I very much look forward to seeing more Spider-Man movies along these lines and hopefully someday I'll get to see Venom done right.  And then see him fight Carnage.  And then see both of them fight Toxin.  Symbiotes are awesome.

Crossovers

I rewatched the Spiderman 90's cartoon recently thanks to Netflix and realized just how many crossovers there are throughout that show.  For those who don't know, a crossover is when two different IPs in the same universe intersect.  So when Spiderman and Daredevil team up to take down the Kingpin, that is a crossover.  Crossovers help to broaden the scope of a universe you've built and help make it feel much bigger than just the single entry point the consumer is enjoying.  On a business side of things, it also helps introduce people to another IP that they might start buying into now.  Maybe Daredevil seemed intriguing so they'll find out if there's a Daredevil cartoon or buy the comic.

To be done well, crossovers have to make sense (the two IPs have to exist in the same universe and time, so Naruto meeting Edward Elric is probably not going to happen believably any time soon) and they should be more than just a cameo (although that can be hilarious if done well).  So when Spiderman's mutant genes start going out of control and changing him, he goes to Charles Xavier for a cure because he has heard that's what he does.  He knows nothing about the X-Men because they are not common knowledge at that time.  So obviously when he invades the mansion, the X-Men protect him and BAM!  Crossover.  Tony Stark is showing off some amazing new technology, of course Peter Parker would be there because he's both a scientist and a news photographer.  So when someone tries to steal the technology, Iron Man and Spiderman both happen to show up?  BAM!  Crossover.

Crossovers don't necessarily need to be characters either.  An event in one IP that affects the entire universe should be brought up from time to time in the other ones because it was a big deal.  So when Deep Space 9 starts during the battle of Wolf 359 or when Voyager encounters the Borg who have some drones from the same battle, that is a well placed crossover from another series.  Of course, Voyager has its share of awesome character crossovers as well.

Crossovers are understandably hard to pull off unless one IP is a spin-off of another because both IPs have to make sense in each other's universe (Dr. Horrible will probably never be visiting McClaren's Pub since super heroes and super villains would make no sense in modern day New York).  The tones of the two shows have to mesh well together as well (the members of Sacred Heart Hospital would probably never have a murder to solve..well...actually maybe they could...).  It's a shame crossovers aren't done more frequently, but it is fairly hard to set up.  What's your favorite crossover moment?

The Magic of 3

Three has always been my favorite number.  I've never been able to explain, it just has been for all time.  So maybe this is why I notice the abundance of threes in my world.  The Trinity of God that I believe in (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), the three seasons of Monterey (foggy, rainy, and sunny), three meals a day, the third season of TV shows tend to be where they start to get awesome (The Office, Buffy, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc.), you must count to 3 when using holy implements, it helps you avoid time loops, trilogies tend to be better overall than just two movies in a series or four, you start with 3 lives, it takes 3 hits to kill a boss, there are 3 related items to find, there are 3 enemy categories (grunt, miniboss, boss), ninjas run around in 3s, primary colors come in threes (blue, red, yellow or red, green, blue), final bosses have three forms, at least three items are required to determine a pattern, and at least three items are needed to form a proper list.

I don't really have a point, I just like seeing the 3 in Three.

Review: Prometheus

Prometheus is a prequel (of sorts) to the Aliens series of movies.  Although it takes place before the other Alien movies, it's more of a side branch of that story.  In many ways, however, this movie mirrors the original Alien.  There are a group of people aboard a spaceship that don't know each other previously that each have specific jobs, people get separated and killed, and by the end the main female character grows a backbone and learns how to fight to survive.  At least I think that was the idea.  Instead, the main female character constantly looks freaked out and panicky and among many plot holes, the reason the initial redshirts get separated makes absolutely no sense.

Some things (like that) I can forgive because I know the trope and I know someone has to get separated to get the ball rolling with the aliens.  However, it's much harder to forgive the movie when you stop caring about everything for the last 30 minutes of the movie.  Not to mention when at the end of the movie, you realize Charlize Theron's character was completely pointless and therefore the only reason she was there was to add Charlize Theron to the list of cast to try to get more people to watch it.  This was no fault of Charlize herself by any means, she was fantastic at her role.  The role itself was just unnecessary.  On the positive side, this movie does add some very interesting things to the lore of the Aliens series and it is entertaining for the most part.  Ultimately, I would say watch it if you're a big fan of the Alien series, otherwise you can skip it.