Zootopia: Hollywood, Quit Stealing My Ideas!

Zootopia was a lot of fun.  It's well-written, full of easter eggs and casting jokes, and has a great message about racism.  They put so much work into the little details, with all the billboards and magazine covers and so on.  The only thing I didn't enjoy was all the screaming kids in the audience, but that's unavoidable when seeing a matinee of an animated movie.  I can't wait to see Zootopia again on home video, so I can hear all the dialogue.  I'm probably going to wear out my pause button trying to read all the signs in the background.

One thing that bugs me as I get older, is that a lot of my unrealized ideas keep getting made by other people.  No, I'm not accusing anyone of plagiarism, it's just that there's 7 billion people in the world, sooner or later we're going to come up with similar thoughts.  I keep sitting on my ideas for decades, while other people are more motivated to publish their work.  On the bright side, a lot of these works end up being better than mine would have been.  So I'm glad the idea made it out there for the world to see.  On the downside, if I were to finally publish my old ideas, it would look like I was the plagiarist. 

My "Bounty Hunters" story, about a small team of bounty hunters that live on a spaceship?  There's a popular anime that uses the same concept.  The two stories are nothing alike beyond the initial theme, but still it's kind of annoying.  One member of my bounty hunting team is Raven, a woman with short hair who wears a trench coat.  Not long after I created her, the Highlander TV series created a spin-off called "Highlander: The Raven", featuring a protagonist who looked similar to my Raven.  The characters were nothing alike beyond appearance, but it was still a weird coincidence.  I mean, if they'd called it "Highlander: The Mockingbird" I wouldn't have even noticed the similarities, but they had to pick a Raven.

And there's more, and I'm not saying I was always first.  I once wrote a short story about a woman who gains skills by remembering past lives, only to find out there was already popular comic book with a similar plot.  When it happens in that order, I'm never quite sure if I actually came up with the idea, or read about the other comic first and forgot about it.  Another example is The Cat Club.  When I was a kid in the early 80s, I drew comics by that name.  Later I found a series of children's books in the library, called "Jenny and the Cat Club." 

My Cat Club was basically GI Joe, but all the good guys were cats and the bad guys were dogs.  In later years, I put a couple of evil cats on the dog team... but not vice-versa.  I didn't go into too much detail about the civilians of this universe, but usually they were shown to be cats.  There were a couple of examples of dogs betraying their kind to help the cats, but for the most part it seemed like all the dogs in the world were evil.

After I graduated high school, I started thinking about modernizing the idea.  But when I really looked at the subject matter, I thought, "Man, that's racist."  So I started writing out ways to make it non-racist.  Or better yet, make racism the central theme of the universe.  In my modern, unwritten version of the Cat Club, only dogs and cats evolved into more humanoid forms (there is an in-universe reason for this).  Dogs and cats live together in shaky harmony.  There are some racial supremacists on both sides, but most citizens believe in equality.  Still, a lot of dogs and cats are nervous around each other, and tend to hang around their own species. 

A lot of racism issues would be touched upon.  There would be some inter-species dating, but some groups would be against it.  Some retailers would refuse to sell to the opposite species.  Some sports would only allow one species or the other.  Legal or not, some employers would more readily hire one or the other.  I'd try to avoid any direct correlation between dogs/cats and real-life races.  In some ways life is better for the cats, in some ways it favors the dogs.  Neither would be inherently evil or good.  They have a lot of biological differences that make them more suited to certain jobs, but society tries (and often fails) to treat them as equals.

My main character was Midnight, an ex-military cat who is constantly at odds with his own racism.  He had a dog-related tragedy in his past, and has distrusted them ever since.  On an academic level he believes dogs and cats should have equal rights, but on a personal level he doesn't want anything to do with dogs.  That's as much detail as I'll go into for now, but you see where I'm going with this.  Zootopia has a lot of the same themes.  Instead of cats vs dogs, it's carnivores vs herbivores, but the racism theme is very similar.  Mine's different enough that I could easily release it without being sued, but a lot of people would still read it and say, "He got that idea from Zootopia."

I suppose that's not the worst thing in the world.  There's a lot of popular media right now where it's obvious where the authors got their inspiration.  It just bugs me that I could be accused of copying when I had my idea more than 20 years before Zootopia.  All that proves is that I'm lazy.  Still, if someone was going to read my mind and run with it, I'm glad it was Disney.  Zootopia is awesome.

Batman v Superman: How Do You Screw That Up?

I really wanted to like this one.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is dull.  It's not terrible, it's not unwatchable, it's just incredibly dull.  Too many shots are filmed in slow motion, there's too many pointless dream sequences, and there's just too much exposition.  I think it could possibly have been saved through editing, but even some of the "good" parts were a letdown.  Let's break it down:

Superman - As in Man of Steel, this is a more realistic, less idealistic take on the character.  This is a guy who doesn't always know the right thing to do, and isn't the World's Oldest Boy Scout we've seen in other incarnations.  His motivations are real and human, and he does his best to be a good person. Unfortunately he's also just plain boring most of the time.  I still love his costume, and it looks even better now because this time it's in color. 

Batman - Ben Affleck is a perfectly acceptable Batman.  Unfortunately he's written as a big thug with lots of good tech.  There's a couple of scenes that show off his ninja skills, but his detective skills are blatantly absent.  His reasons for wanting to stop Superman are absolutely nuts, not the conclusions of a professional thinker.  The movie has an Idiot Plot where at least an hour could have been shaved off just by having people talk to each other, or even think a little bit harder.  "World's Greatest Detective" my ass.

Personal nitpick:  There's way too much imagery of Batman using guns, which is a big no no for the Batman mythos.   Okay, arguably he doesn't technically fire an actual gun at any point, but between dream sequences, tracking devices fired from normal-looking guns, Batmobile weapons, etc... it's like the writers really wanted to use the Punisher instead.  All the theatrical Batman costumes have had fake muscles, but this one takes the cake.  Batman's look is obviously taken from The Dark Knight Returns, and that's fine, but this suit is so bulky it takes out the "lithe" aspect out of his character.  

Lex Luthor - I love the concept.  Lex as a young genius is great, it reminds me of the older comics when he was a mad scientist instead of a millionaire.  But his performance comes out more like the Joker than Lex Luthor.  His motivations make no sense, except that he really is just insane.  Okay, there are reasons for the things he does, if you're invested enough to pay that much attention, but still... surely there are simpler ways to entertain himself.  And his voice grated on my nerves.

Wonder Woman - Truly the high point of the movie, every scene with WW was spectacular.  I can't think of a single complaint about this take on the character.  I'm looking forward to the Wonder Woman movie, partly because Zack Snyder isn't directing it. 

The Plot - Most of the movie builds up to the fight.  There's lots of misunderstandings, with Supes and Bats each thinking the other responsible for things they didn't do.  It tries its hardest to show why these characters feel they need to hurt each other, but we've already seen these characters fight in other media, for much more believable reasons. 

When the actual fight finally happens, it's a bit of a letdown.  It's just not a very well-done fight, I'm sorry. But - once B&S stop fighting and become friends (if that's a spoiler, you're an idiot), the movie actually gets pretty good.  I would not mind watching the final 20 minutes a few more times, but the rest of the movie is too plodding to ever slog through again.

There's several scenes that foreshadow future movies, and some of those look pretty interesting.  I'm not going to give up on the DC cinematic universe.  If they'll just get some different directors, give up on that "humor embargo", do more editing, and maybe take some inspiration from the Justice League animated series... who knows?  All the ingredients are there, they just need some better cooks.

NES Remix vs What I Really Want In A Retro Game

NES Remix is a series of games for the Wii U and the 3DS, which allow you to play snippets of 8-bit Nintendo games.  So far there have been three games in the series: NES Remix 1 & 2 for the Wii U (available for download separately or as a compilation disc), and Ultimate NES Remix for the 3DS (which is basically a "best of" compilation of the Wii U games).  The bulk of each game is a bunch of minigame challenges, where you try to get the best time while performing a task in a classic game.  For example, you might have to collect 10 coins in level 4-1 of Super Mario Bros, or you might have to counter Bald Bull's charge in Punch-Out!, or you might have to find a secret cave in The Legend of Zelda.

Completing these tasks earns you stars, which unlock the Remix levels, which is where the game really shines.  The Remix levels mix up elements from classic games.  You might play a level of Donkey Kong using Link (who can't jump), or try to collect coins in Super Mario Bros while controlling Samus Aran, or control Toad in a Zelda II level.  But it's not all about crossovers, some of the Remix levels just take normal levels and play around with the formula.  You might play a level of Super Mario Bros in reverse, or at a super high speed, or with the screen constantly going dark.  The game forces you to remember muscle memory you haven't used in 30 years, then it mixes it up so you can't even rely on that muscle memory.  It's very creative and always keeps you wondering what the next level is going to be.

But is it fun?
Well, I love nostalgia.  Playing these games brings me back to the 80s, and the Remixed levels are especially neat.  But I can't tell you how many times I've gotten 3 stars on a challenge, and thought "Thank goodness I never have to do that again."  When a video game has you thinking things like that, something is wrong.  I love the concept, and it's something I really wanted when I was a kid.  But the challenges I really like are few and far between, and there's very little replay value in the others.

Here's what I would have liked to have seen:
Something along the lines of the browser-based game "Super Mario Bros Crossover".  Instead of microgames, I'd like to see a full platform game, where different levels are based on different side scroller games.  You'd have a few Mario levels, a few Metroid levels, a few Zelda II levels, and so on.  At the start of each level you'd pick a character, so you could have any Nintendo character/level combination.  The different characters would control differently and have their own skills and abilities.

But I run risk of judging Remix based on what I want instead of what it is.  As it is, the NES Remix games are nostalgia-filled fun, but more remix challenges could have made it a lot better.