1) I haven't written since before "The Hunger Games," but after nearly a year in release there's nothing more to be said. It was surprisingly adequate for a director with only three movies under his belt. Lenny Kravitz was wasted (as in, he should've been given more to do). The director did not trust his own camera work, and would frequently cut away from something really interesting... the finale made it look like the entire games took place in a holodeck, and sending the contestants all together in the same shuttle, only to enter the field from different rooms, makes absolutely no sense. RE: THE BOOK. IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT. (though the twitter controversey was worth a headshake or two).
2) Let's just jump right to it: JJ Abrams directing Episode VII. That means the same man controls both Star Trek and Star Wars. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. This is not okay. As geeks we should rail against it. As "not geeks" we should not give a single FUCK, because the only non-SW or ST things JJ has directed are (1) Mission Impossible 3, (2) Super 8, and (3) Lost. Two of the three were total shit. Discuss amongst yourselves.
It'll be adequate, depending on the screenplay. Except for the fact that they have no story other than the one written by Timothy Zahn. (Heir to the Empire). Were any of us really clamoring for a sequel to "Return of the Jedi?" No. No, sir, we were not.
3) The Dark Knight Rises. From a non-geek perspective, it was quality entertainment with some grand characters and the style we've come to know from Christopher Nolan. From a Geek perspective, it was disappointing and a kick in the teeth. Look:
The ending of "The Dark Knight" raised many a possibility. Now he's not a mysterious crimefighter-- he's a vigilante, on the the run from the cops. This will make his job harder, this will truly test him. Four years later (and ten years later, in the context of the movie), we find out that... Bruce Wayne handled it by.... DOING NOTHING. This is the worst possible option. I recognize that Nolan probably didn't want to direct any more of these, if indeed he even wanted to do the third. But while the movie was fine, the premise was a cop-out. And Bane's death was incredibly, incredibly anti-climactic. Also Batman died. I don't care what Alfred saw in the restaurant-- it was the same restaurant from earlier in the movie, and there's no way he walked into it on accident. It was a fantasy sequence, and in making it real Nolan is essentially saying, "That's the whole story. Riddler? Penguin? Superman? None of that shit happened. He fought Joker, Bane, then he died." No, fuck you, he didn't. Read a comic book.
4) "The Justice League." ... There are two kinds of superhero movies. "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer," and "Batman Begins." The fact that anyone even uttered the words 'Ben Affleck' should answer you pretty fucking well which category this will be in.
5) The Man of Steel. I don't care how good the trailer is, it was directed by Zack Snyder. And while I will forever be wowed by his visuals in "Dawn of the Dead," he has become so lazy since then, his every movie has been underwhelming and embarrassing. And before you mention "300," go back and watch it again. Take a drink every time you hear Gerard Butler slip back into his Scottish accent. If you finish the movie sober, I will give you $1,000,000 dollars. And no, you can't cheat by muting the entire film. I tried that once, and I passed out from masturbating.
6) The Avengers. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
7) DAT. EVIL DEAD. TRAILER.
8) The Amazing Spider-Man: Andrew Garfield has no screen presence, and Marc Webb is a music video director who got lucky. I feel about it like I felt about "Batman and Robin" ... yes, there are people who will like it. These people never read a comic book. History is on my side here, people.
BUT THEN AGAIN, WE ARE LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE THE SAME MAN CONTROLS BOTH STAR WARS AND STAR TREK.
The state of being a geek is........... bad. Even with that White House response to the Death Star petition. Let's one of us make a billion dollars and buy back the rights to something, eh?
.... oh, and I know there's no trailer for the second Wolverine movie, but do we really want to live in a world where THAT gets a sequel, and "John Dies at the End" isn't even playing in theaters? C'MONNNNNNNNNNNNNN.......
*Warning, this blog makes references that not even Google may know, you have to be a GEEEEEEK
Showing posts with label batman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label batman. Show all posts
Friday, January 25, 2013
Saturday, March 19, 2011
I Will Not Apologize for Disliking Halo
NOT GEEK
I suck at video games. I used to be good-- when the NES was still a thing-- but then I got distracted for a few years by college and girls and learning to drive. Also beer. Suddenly I pick up a controller again and I'm supposed to know complex military tactics. Fuck you. THAT'S why I have Uno and Pac-Man on my XBox.
GEEK
The XBox has been in my apartment about two years, and the games I have enjoyed most, INITIALLY (I stress that point), are....
1) Wet
2) Borderlands
3) Left 4 Dead (both)
I am aware-- Anyone who knows anything about games, knows that "Wet" sucks. A hardcore gamer here in town told me it reminded him of John Woo's "Stranglehold," which I then checked out just to see if the comparison was apt. Strangehold came out when I was still working at Borders (so 2004-5 roughly), and by 2010 standards, it was pretty crap. Your character hit more targets only if you were jumping through the air in slow-motion. That got repetitive and boring after five minutes. I quit the game after ten and sent it back. "Wet" was exactly like this, except you could also run up walls and do flips. That only took about 10-15 hours to tire of, or maybe I kept expecting boobs.
Borderlands was spectacular, with a levelling system, and a crazy variety of guns that actually forced you to think about what you were going to keep vs. drop. I played it for like a month straight, then I went back to start again with a second character, since you're given four to choose from. The second time through, it felt boring and frustrating, because I'd already beaten all those levels, and it took so long to level up. So.... I went back to my original character. Soon after, I don't know if the game got too hard, or if it reached the upper limits of my skill, but I had to quit. Still, really, really fun up until that point.
I don't play Halo, because going online, it's even harder to find a good game than it would be on a PC. I've beaten 1 & 2, but Halo seems to be more about the culture than the individual gameplay. It's all about going online and playing versus other people in an arena mode, and I spent college doing that with Counterstrike (which had a superior vs-mode, because it contained actual objectives, not just 'kill or be killed'). Halo online is just point and blast. It reminds me of Quake. Which was also repetitive and dull.
Left 4 Dead is more co-op, which I appreciate. The game's AI decides whether or not you're getting a grenade here or more ammo there, so after over a year I haven't tired of it.
The gaming industry is more interested in safely making lots of money, than being innovative or creating something interesting, but ultimately they'll have to listen to the geeks-- not the accountants-- if they want to remain successful. For every big, stupid, shallow money-maker like the "Bayformers" movies, it's always something with actual thought put into it, that drives the genre forward and spawns new creative ideas for both the artists, and the consumers, to enjoy.
I'm not going to claim "Iron Man" or "Batman Begins" were great intellectual achievements, but in the case of the latter, literally no one previous had ever had the balls to take the comic book genre so dead seriously, and make a movie as dark as they could. It worked. Because it's all about taking risks.
"Call of Duty Five: Modern Warfare Seven: This Time With Grenades 3" is not taking a fucking risk.
There's a reason Pac-Man single-handedly spawned this industry in the first place. And to do so, it didn't need an online option to let your friends play as ghosts.
I suck at video games. I used to be good-- when the NES was still a thing-- but then I got distracted for a few years by college and girls and learning to drive. Also beer. Suddenly I pick up a controller again and I'm supposed to know complex military tactics. Fuck you. THAT'S why I have Uno and Pac-Man on my XBox.
GEEK
The XBox has been in my apartment about two years, and the games I have enjoyed most, INITIALLY (I stress that point), are....
1) Wet
2) Borderlands
3) Left 4 Dead (both)
I am aware-- Anyone who knows anything about games, knows that "Wet" sucks. A hardcore gamer here in town told me it reminded him of John Woo's "Stranglehold," which I then checked out just to see if the comparison was apt. Strangehold came out when I was still working at Borders (so 2004-5 roughly), and by 2010 standards, it was pretty crap. Your character hit more targets only if you were jumping through the air in slow-motion. That got repetitive and boring after five minutes. I quit the game after ten and sent it back. "Wet" was exactly like this, except you could also run up walls and do flips. That only took about 10-15 hours to tire of, or maybe I kept expecting boobs.
Borderlands was spectacular, with a levelling system, and a crazy variety of guns that actually forced you to think about what you were going to keep vs. drop. I played it for like a month straight, then I went back to start again with a second character, since you're given four to choose from. The second time through, it felt boring and frustrating, because I'd already beaten all those levels, and it took so long to level up. So.... I went back to my original character. Soon after, I don't know if the game got too hard, or if it reached the upper limits of my skill, but I had to quit. Still, really, really fun up until that point.
I don't play Halo, because going online, it's even harder to find a good game than it would be on a PC. I've beaten 1 & 2, but Halo seems to be more about the culture than the individual gameplay. It's all about going online and playing versus other people in an arena mode, and I spent college doing that with Counterstrike (which had a superior vs-mode, because it contained actual objectives, not just 'kill or be killed'). Halo online is just point and blast. It reminds me of Quake. Which was also repetitive and dull.
Left 4 Dead is more co-op, which I appreciate. The game's AI decides whether or not you're getting a grenade here or more ammo there, so after over a year I haven't tired of it.
The gaming industry is more interested in safely making lots of money, than being innovative or creating something interesting, but ultimately they'll have to listen to the geeks-- not the accountants-- if they want to remain successful. For every big, stupid, shallow money-maker like the "Bayformers" movies, it's always something with actual thought put into it, that drives the genre forward and spawns new creative ideas for both the artists, and the consumers, to enjoy.
I'm not going to claim "Iron Man" or "Batman Begins" were great intellectual achievements, but in the case of the latter, literally no one previous had ever had the balls to take the comic book genre so dead seriously, and make a movie as dark as they could. It worked. Because it's all about taking risks.
"Call of Duty Five: Modern Warfare Seven: This Time With Grenades 3" is not taking a fucking risk.
There's a reason Pac-Man single-handedly spawned this industry in the first place. And to do so, it didn't need an online option to let your friends play as ghosts.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Trilogy Principle
This is the third blog. The second one got a bit long, but a writer I trust told me, "It doesn't matter if you're not in the mood to write-- write. Writing will put you in the mood."
You know what puts me in the mood to write? Physical labor.
NOT GEEK
What? Last week was fine. We need more scary movies. "Paranormal Activity 2" is destined to suck, though. Accountants remain stupid.
GEEK
Speaking of that, the worst movies I've ever seen are Short Circuit 2, Problem Child 2, Blair Witch 2... I didn't see Speed 2, but I have it on good authority that's pretty awful as well. Human stories are just built to be told in three acts. Shakespeare went with 5, but he had a lot of time to fill; no one in his audience was in a rush to get home and tweet about how good/bad the play was. Three acts, in and out, bam bam bam. Star Wars. Matrix. Back to the Future. Um... the Godfather. And let's say Alien. Good thing there were only three Alien movies, yep yep. And only three Superman movies. SHUT UP.
A good sequel isn't "What's next?" it's "What else?"
The greatest sequel of all-time, The Godfather Part II (with apologies to the New Testament) did not simply say, "Well the first movie was from A to B, so this next movie is B to C." No. Fuck that. Mario Puzo was a goddamn genius of 20th century literature, and yanked the rug out from under us before we even noticed there was a rug. "Bite me," he laughed. "The first movie? Fooled you. THAT was B to C. The Godfather Part II shall be A to D. DID I JUST BLOW YA MIND???"
Yes.
Which is why that's the only exception; every other example of a Part 2 just feels tacked on; we dealt with the aftermath of the ending of the first move... that gets talked about in the first ten minutes. Then it's 90 minutes of who-gives-a-crap. Which is why you'd need a third movie to tie everything together-- three-act structure.
Lord of the Damn Rings.
Friday the 13th.
No seriously, hear me out. I've never bothered to write this down, but you can actually seriously annoy someone at a cocktail party with this:
Friday the 13th isn't mindless rambling sequels into infinity. IT'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Okay, not really. Sort of. LOTR was one story ("The Hobbit"), followed by a trilogy that used the first book as a jumping off point, but told its own story within that universe. It's not that different from Greek literature (Tolkien was a professor, if THE MAN is to be believed), where you'd have three serious dramas and then one light-hearted comedy, just to give everyone something to laugh about. Which is not to say "The Hobbit" was a comedy, but it sure did have a lot of singing and dancing. And dragon-incinerations. But I digress.
Friday the 13th - This is a standalone story. The killer is Jason's mother (spoiler alert!). At the end of the movie she dies; the final shot of the movie may or may not be a dream sequence in which her drowned son, Jason, jumps out of the lake and kills our heroine. Credits.
Friday the 13th 2-4 -- TRILOGY. Jason is some kind of freak of nature who goes around murdering teenagers for violating core conservative principles (see previous blog). You even see his face once or twice, under the hockey mask... he looks sort of like a Garbage Pail Kid crossed with Sloth from The Goonies. He even laughs like some 8-year-old. In one of the movies, one of the kids finds Jason's room, a shrine to his dead mother. At the end of part 4, Jason dies. No, not ha-ha, wink wink, maybe a sequel... but he DIES. He's fucking dead. The end. Game over.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning -- Spoiler alert! That's not Jason. It's some copycat douchebag. Despite the plot still being the same, this remains the Halloween III of the series. Let us never speak of it again. Standalone movie. Copycat gets killed, and we presume buried in an unmarked grave, under an Arby's.
Friday the 13th 6-8 -- ZOMBIE TRILOGY. Part 6 (the most technically well-made film of the entire series) opens with our hero from part 4, all grown up (and played by a different actor) checking Jason's grave to make sure he's really dead. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Jason is now no longer an idiot manchild, he is now ZOMBIE JASON, as is evidenced when he rises from the grave and kills Horshack. I am not making this up. He dies once, he dies twice, he goes to Manhattan, he melts in toxic waste. The end. He's fucking dead. Game over.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday -- In theory this is a sequel to part VIII, just because it was released next chronologically, but they make zero effort to explain how Jason got from toxic waste to back at the lake killin' folk. I don't mean, they give a lame excuse, I mean THEY NEVER EVEN MENTION IT. Jason is just there, like girl scouts in the fall. How'd he get there? We don't know. Just ACCEPT IT, BITCHES. He is Jason, your own personal lord and savior, and MAN ARE HIS STANDARDS HIGH.
So that's a standalone movie, with the film that takes place both immediately before and after not linked to it in any way, other than a hockey-mask, some obscure legend of some dude named Jason, and maybe a Crystal Lake, if you feel like mentioning it. Then comes "Jason X" in which Jason is mysteriously alive AGAIN (despite being forever definitively killed at the end of JGTH), and then goes to THE FUTURE. I can't even be bothered to wiki that one, but sufficed to say, the movie doesn't end with Jason 2.0 being sent back to the past. And yet, "Freddy vs. Jason" is back in the present. WHAT THE FUCK EVER, HOLLYWOOD. It's this kind of lack of attention to detail that got us from "Batman" to "Batman & Robin" in 3 easy steps. And Tim Burton from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" to "Planet of the Apes."
So post Jason in Manhattan, how many standalone films is that? THREE. That's THREE movies of essentially well-funded fan-fiction (seriously. the writer of Jason X named characters after his friends from Diablo Online. Google that shit). One standalone. One trilogy. Another standalone. One different yet upgraded trilogy. Then a trilogy of standalones.
Even Freddy got in on that action, with part 1 being a great standalone, part 2 being a really gay standalone (I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, I mean it in a "this movie is about a young man's homosexuality" way, and the lead actor agrees with me), and part 3-5 actually were a trilogy of their own, containing their own continuity and even keeping some characters in common alone the way. Freddy's Dead was just a standalone to wrap it up; Jason Goes to Hell same story. Pity no one ever sent Freddy into the future... but then Wes Craven came back and made "New Nightmare," which is not only the single most underrated movie on his resume, but it completes the second trilogy. Three movies of fanfiction once again, but one of them was actually written by the creator of the damned character. And when we can cast them onto the trash heap of history; it's time for Chucky vs. Leprechaun, bitches.
See? Everything's a three-part structure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish up my screenplay for Speed 3: Anti-Lock Brakes.
You know what puts me in the mood to write? Physical labor.
NOT GEEK
What? Last week was fine. We need more scary movies. "Paranormal Activity 2" is destined to suck, though. Accountants remain stupid.
GEEK
Speaking of that, the worst movies I've ever seen are Short Circuit 2, Problem Child 2, Blair Witch 2... I didn't see Speed 2, but I have it on good authority that's pretty awful as well. Human stories are just built to be told in three acts. Shakespeare went with 5, but he had a lot of time to fill; no one in his audience was in a rush to get home and tweet about how good/bad the play was. Three acts, in and out, bam bam bam. Star Wars. Matrix. Back to the Future. Um... the Godfather. And let's say Alien. Good thing there were only three Alien movies, yep yep. And only three Superman movies. SHUT UP.
A good sequel isn't "What's next?" it's "What else?"
The greatest sequel of all-time, The Godfather Part II (with apologies to the New Testament) did not simply say, "Well the first movie was from A to B, so this next movie is B to C." No. Fuck that. Mario Puzo was a goddamn genius of 20th century literature, and yanked the rug out from under us before we even noticed there was a rug. "Bite me," he laughed. "The first movie? Fooled you. THAT was B to C. The Godfather Part II shall be A to D. DID I JUST BLOW YA MIND???"
Yes.
Which is why that's the only exception; every other example of a Part 2 just feels tacked on; we dealt with the aftermath of the ending of the first move... that gets talked about in the first ten minutes. Then it's 90 minutes of who-gives-a-crap. Which is why you'd need a third movie to tie everything together-- three-act structure.
Lord of the Damn Rings.
Friday the 13th.
No seriously, hear me out. I've never bothered to write this down, but you can actually seriously annoy someone at a cocktail party with this:
Friday the 13th isn't mindless rambling sequels into infinity. IT'S THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
Okay, not really. Sort of. LOTR was one story ("The Hobbit"), followed by a trilogy that used the first book as a jumping off point, but told its own story within that universe. It's not that different from Greek literature (Tolkien was a professor, if THE MAN is to be believed), where you'd have three serious dramas and then one light-hearted comedy, just to give everyone something to laugh about. Which is not to say "The Hobbit" was a comedy, but it sure did have a lot of singing and dancing. And dragon-incinerations. But I digress.
Friday the 13th - This is a standalone story. The killer is Jason's mother (spoiler alert!). At the end of the movie she dies; the final shot of the movie may or may not be a dream sequence in which her drowned son, Jason, jumps out of the lake and kills our heroine. Credits.
Friday the 13th 2-4 -- TRILOGY. Jason is some kind of freak of nature who goes around murdering teenagers for violating core conservative principles (see previous blog). You even see his face once or twice, under the hockey mask... he looks sort of like a Garbage Pail Kid crossed with Sloth from The Goonies. He even laughs like some 8-year-old. In one of the movies, one of the kids finds Jason's room, a shrine to his dead mother. At the end of part 4, Jason dies. No, not ha-ha, wink wink, maybe a sequel... but he DIES. He's fucking dead. The end. Game over.
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning -- Spoiler alert! That's not Jason. It's some copycat douchebag. Despite the plot still being the same, this remains the Halloween III of the series. Let us never speak of it again. Standalone movie. Copycat gets killed, and we presume buried in an unmarked grave, under an Arby's.
Friday the 13th 6-8 -- ZOMBIE TRILOGY. Part 6 (the most technically well-made film of the entire series) opens with our hero from part 4, all grown up (and played by a different actor) checking Jason's grave to make sure he's really dead. LIGHTNING STRIKE. Jason is now no longer an idiot manchild, he is now ZOMBIE JASON, as is evidenced when he rises from the grave and kills Horshack. I am not making this up. He dies once, he dies twice, he goes to Manhattan, he melts in toxic waste. The end. He's fucking dead. Game over.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday -- In theory this is a sequel to part VIII, just because it was released next chronologically, but they make zero effort to explain how Jason got from toxic waste to back at the lake killin' folk. I don't mean, they give a lame excuse, I mean THEY NEVER EVEN MENTION IT. Jason is just there, like girl scouts in the fall. How'd he get there? We don't know. Just ACCEPT IT, BITCHES. He is Jason, your own personal lord and savior, and MAN ARE HIS STANDARDS HIGH.
So that's a standalone movie, with the film that takes place both immediately before and after not linked to it in any way, other than a hockey-mask, some obscure legend of some dude named Jason, and maybe a Crystal Lake, if you feel like mentioning it. Then comes "Jason X" in which Jason is mysteriously alive AGAIN (despite being forever definitively killed at the end of JGTH), and then goes to THE FUTURE. I can't even be bothered to wiki that one, but sufficed to say, the movie doesn't end with Jason 2.0 being sent back to the past. And yet, "Freddy vs. Jason" is back in the present. WHAT THE FUCK EVER, HOLLYWOOD. It's this kind of lack of attention to detail that got us from "Batman" to "Batman & Robin" in 3 easy steps. And Tim Burton from "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" to "Planet of the Apes."
So post Jason in Manhattan, how many standalone films is that? THREE. That's THREE movies of essentially well-funded fan-fiction (seriously. the writer of Jason X named characters after his friends from Diablo Online. Google that shit). One standalone. One trilogy. Another standalone. One different yet upgraded trilogy. Then a trilogy of standalones.
Even Freddy got in on that action, with part 1 being a great standalone, part 2 being a really gay standalone (I do not mean that in a disrespectful way, I mean it in a "this movie is about a young man's homosexuality" way, and the lead actor agrees with me), and part 3-5 actually were a trilogy of their own, containing their own continuity and even keeping some characters in common alone the way. Freddy's Dead was just a standalone to wrap it up; Jason Goes to Hell same story. Pity no one ever sent Freddy into the future... but then Wes Craven came back and made "New Nightmare," which is not only the single most underrated movie on his resume, but it completes the second trilogy. Three movies of fanfiction once again, but one of them was actually written by the creator of the damned character. And when we can cast them onto the trash heap of history; it's time for Chucky vs. Leprechaun, bitches.
See? Everything's a three-part structure. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish up my screenplay for Speed 3: Anti-Lock Brakes.
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