Super Hero Summer

Covering three:

The Avengers
I didn't bother blogging this one when it came out, because it was just too obvious.  I simply can not imagine a better super hero movie, unless Avengers 2 is just two hours of Black Widow making out with Pepper Potts. If you haven't seen the Avengers yet, you owe me $5 stupidity tax.  By the way, I've seen it with and without 3D, and it was beautiful both ways.  The 3D is great but not required, so use your own judgement there.

Amazing Spider-Man
This was fun, but I liked the other trilogy better.  And that's really the hardest part of sitting through Amazing Spider-Man - the fact that I'd seen most of it before.  Generally I don't mind remakes or reboots, in truth I think it's fun seeing how different people tackle the same story.  But in this case I wish they'd just summed up his origin story in the opening credits.  Instead, this movie actually spends more time on his origin story than the 2002 version.  We all know Spidey's origin, and while I appreciate the differences (the return of web shooters, intrigue involving his parents, Uncle Ben's accident playing out differently), they didn't need to draw it out so long.

Andrew Garfield does a decent enough job, but it really got on my nerves the way he always took so long to speak.  "How are you, Peter?"  "................................Fine."  They could have shaved 15 minutes off the movie's running time if they'd removed all the awkward conversational pauses.  You could tell a lot of the dialogue between Peter and Gwen was meant to be cutesy and clever, but it fell flat on my ears.  Maybe I'm just too old.

I loved the Lizard.  He looked great, and the fight scenes were a lot of fun, even if they did look a bit like video game cutscenes.  The part of the movie's climax involving cranes - you'll know it when you see it - was so cheesy that I can't decide whether I love it or hate it.  It was reminiscent of the "don't threaten New Yorkers" bridge scene in the 2002 movie, only much more over the top.

Overall I'd have to give it a thumbs up, but understand it really doesn't do much that wasn't done ten years ago.  I try not to judge movies based on other movies, but the bottom line is that if the earlier trilogy didn't exist, I would have been much more impressed by Amazing Spider-Man.

By the way, we saw it in 3D, which was fine, but they really didn't do much with it.  Save a couple of bucks and see it in 2D instead; you won't miss much IMO.

The Dark Knight Rises
It was really hard for me to get interested in seeing DKR.  Sure, Batman Begins was a great way to cast away old shames and restart the franchise.  And The Dark Knight was as good as a Batman movie could ever hope to be.  But none of the trailers for Dark Knight Rises really pulled me in.  After the flashy, colorful Avengers movie, I wasn't sure if I really wanted to see another gritty, realistic Batman.  

But I loved every minute of it.  And I do mean every minute, which kind of blows my mind.  The movie is nearly three hours long, and I'd heard that it lags in the middle, but I never felt bored.  There were a couple of subplots that could have been left out without affecting the movie's overall quality, but nothing that really bogged the movie down.

Bane was great.  I wasn't expecting much out of him, but he really captured the spirit of the comic book character.  But predictably, the character I liked most was Selina Kyle.  She was clever and funny...  yeah, there wasn't much there that we hadn't already seen from Black Widow, but I'd rather see it from Selina.

The movie seemed to pick bits of its plot out of several comic story arcs, such as No Man's Land, Son of the Demon, and of course Knightfall.   It's as if Christopher Nolan scoured the history of the Batman universe to find the bits that would be most believable.  In some ways it felt like a direct sequel to Batman Begins, with Dark Knight just being an interesting extra story thrown in the middle.  It ended perfectly, wrapping up all the right details and really capping off the trilogy well.

Awesome as it was, I am glad this is the last one.  It's a great trilogy, but it doesn't need more.  I hope the next Batman reboot is more on par with the 1989 movie.  The Nolanverse is awesome, but I'm ready for something a little more comic-booky again. Not silly like Batman & Robin, but just fanciful enough that it could exist in the same universe as the Justice League.  I'm tired of Marvel having all the fun.

By the way, DKR also shows the new teaser for Man of Steel.  I don't think I've ever seen a more pointless trailer full of random images.  I'll withhold judgement on the movie itself, as a lot of great movies have rotten early teasers.  But seriously, who thought this teaser was a good idea?

Random Sci-Fi Thoughts

I have often said, "There is a fundamental difference between a normal person and a sci-fi fan: a normal person actually likes sci-fi".  If I take my mom to see a Star Wars prequel or an odd-numbered Star Trek film, she'll come back saying, "That was a pretty fun space movie."  But if I take a true sci-fi fan - even if it's to a really good movie - for the next few hours I'll be subjected to diatribes about the technical mistakes, followed by rants about how modern science fiction isn't as good as the works of Isaac Asimov or Phillip K. Dick.

There's a reason people like this get ostracized.  It's not because they're smarter than everyone else; there's plenty of popular smart people.  It's because it's just not fun hanging around people who hate everything.  It's a simple rule; when even the nerds want to kick you in the nuts, the problem is you. 

A friend posted this webcomic declaring Star Wars to be fantasy, not sci-fi.  For the most part, I agree. However, he's never going to be able to hold a job at a video store.  To quote his accompanying blog:

Hugo Gernsback, considered by many to be the father of sci-fi (and whose name you can see in, you know, the HUGO Awards) established the criteria a work had to meet to be considered science fiction:

1) The author must know science.
2) The author must be able to play with breakthrough theories and delve into how they would affect society.

So yeah,  I can totally agree there, but it's just a semantic argument.  For one thing, Gernsback actually pushed for the cumbersome term "scientifiction", so clearly he understood science more than marketing.  My personal take?  There's "Science Fiction" and there's "Sci-Fi".  Science fiction" refers to stories that actually speculate about unknown aspects of science, attempt to predict science related things (the future of technology, the biology of alien species, etc), and in general are written by people who know what they are talking about.  Sci-fi refers to stories that happen to take place in space and/or in the future, or deal with futuristic elements like aliens or robots, but that concentrate more on entertaining you than getting their facts right.

Or for a more cynical take:  If they're on a spaceship and it bores you, it's science fiction.  If they're on a spaceship and stuff blows up, it's sci-fi.

There's plenty of room for overlap there.  You can easily be more than one thing.  Star Trek is both science fiction and sci-fi, depending on the episode or the writer.  Star Wars is both fantasy and sci-fi, but rarely really touches science fiction.  Alien is both sci-fi and horror. Aliens is both sci-fi and action. Alien 3 is both sci-fi and garbage.

What bugs me is when people try to shy away from the "sci-fi" stigma. You know, the ones who say, "Don't call my book sci-fi!  Sure, it's set in space and has robots, but it's a love story, dang it!"  Twenty years ago, sure, but today?  Right now there is not a single intelligent person on Earth who doesn't love sci-fi.  Be proud of your work!  Such a tiny percentage of people actually manage to get anything published.  No matter how hard you work, becoming a well-known author or director is still like winning the lottery.  You just sound whiny when your work doesn't get reviewed and categorized exactly the way you wanted.

I do think it's weird that the Sci-Fi channel didn't seem to mind the stigma back when it was considered nerdy, but then changed their name to SyFy after sci-fi became mainstream.  That might not be why they actually changed it, but I still think it's a funny observation.

So anyway, you can rationalize all you want about how Star Wars is technically not science fiction, and I probably won't disagree with your points. But you have to admit when you're browsing Netflix and want to watch Star Wars, you're going to head for the sci-fi section.