Ranking the DCEU

1. Wonder Woman (2017)
2. Aquaman (2018)
3. Shazam! (2019)
4. The Suicide Squad (2021)
5. Suicide Squad (2016)
6. Birds of Prey (2020)
7. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
8. Justice League (2017)
9. Man of Steel (2013)
10. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
11. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

This one is kind of hard, because honestly, none of these movies are as good as the MCU.  That really pains me, because I grew up liking DC more than Marvel.  I'm hoping the upcoming Flashpoint movie reboots things in a way that allows future DC movies to be, well, fun.  That's not asking for too much, is it?  Superhero movies that actually make me smile?

I've already blogged about most of these movies, but here's some specific notes.  In release date order, with links to my original blogs (if I blogged them):

Man of Steel (2013) - Not terrible, but it was overly long and dull.  Superman is supposed to be full of optimism, but this movie shoots for more gritty realism.  But the bigger sin is that it set the tone for this entire series of movies.  Want to know why the DCEU never reached the heights of the MCU?  Bad foundation.  

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) - AAAAAAAUUUUUUGGH!  'nuff said.

Suicide Squad (2016) - Fun, quirky, but suffered a lot from bad editing and the lackluster ending.

Wonder Woman (2017) - The closest the DCEU comes to a perfect movie, but it kind of runs out of steam halfway through.  I wish the villain had been cooler.

Justice League (2017) - Kind of fun, but full of flaws.

Aquaman (2018) - I debated on whether this should be number one.  Both this and WW are strong movies, maybe the only two A-list movies in the series, but Aquaman felt sort of silly in ways Wonder Woman did not.  It was a tough call.

Shazam! (2019) - Again, DC just can't make a perfect movie.  Who is this for?  On the one hand, it's light-hearted and feels like a kid's movie.  On the other hand, it has some of the scariest scenes in the entire DCEU.  But it is fun, like a Shazam movie should be, and a lot more entertaining than most of the movies on this list.

Birds of Prey (2020) - A beautiful mess.  This has the distinction of being the last movie I saw in a theater, and isn't that sad?  Overall, I liked it, but they really didn't know what they were doing here.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - I really wanted this one to be better, but there's just too many flaws.  Gal Gadot is as amazing as ever, but the story just isn't very good.

Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) - Of the two Justice League cuts, this one is the better movie.  But it's less fun than the theatrical cut, and that's why it's farther down the list.

The Suicide Squad (2021) - I'm not even sure if this counts as a DCEU movie, as it's sort of considered a soft reboot.  But there's no reason it can't exist in the same universe as the films that came before it.  Anyway, it's worth seeing.

The Suicide Squad

I don't know, I kind of liked the first Suicide Squad movie.  It had a dull "final boss" and it wasn't edited very well, but it was fun and had a quirky charm.  But most people didn't like it.  Go figure.  

2021's "The Suicide Squad" seems to have a lot more fans.  I can see why.  If nothing else, the final battle is a lot cooler.  But the two movies are similar enough that it's hard to review one without comparing it to the other.  So, a quick comparison:  

I like the characters better in the second one.  King Shark beats Killer Croc, hands down.  

I like the dialogue better in the second one.  Some of the comedic exchanges are pure gold.  However, it reminded me a little of Joss Whedon, in that it was obvious that all the dialogue was written by the same person. 

I like the soundtrack better in the first one.  Which is funny, because James Gunn usually nails soundtracks.  Though the first Suicide Squad kind of used up most of its soundtrack in the first half hour.

One of the problems I have with most people's opinions, is that they tend to only remember the last half hour of a movie.  When I saw "Attack of the Clones" with one of my relatives, she went on and on about how the movie was just jam-packed with non-stop action.  But that's not true, AotC is actually a pretty talky movie until about halfway through.  But the last 45 minutes is very exciting, and that's what you tend to remember most.

And that's kind of how I felt watching The Suicide Squad.  I'd already heard positive buzz about it, so I went in expecting a non-stop thrill ride.  But about halfway through I found myself thinking, "So, when does it get good?"  I mean, it wasn't necessarily bad up to that point, it just wasn't the laugh-a-minute actionfest I was promised.  But when the movie finally paid off, it really paid off.

And that's another way it contrasted with the first Suicide Squad movie.  I thought the first movie had a really strong opening, and gradually got duller and duller toward the end.  

Anyway, I like both movies, but the new one is definitely better.  Neither one is perfect, but they're both pretty fun.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations (Netflix)

I just binged the first five episodes of "Masters of the Universe: Revelations" on Netflix.  It's not bad.  

Background: I loved the He-Man cartoons when I was a kid in the 80s.  They weren't quite up there with the Holy Trinity (Star Wars, G.I. Joe, and Transformers), but I still watched the cartoons and owned a lot of the toys.  I haven't paid much attention to the franchise since the 80s, though.  I know there have been a few attempts at bringing it back, but nothing ever caught my eye.

The new series is a sequel to the 80s cartoon, and it even makes direct references to some of the specific classic episodes.  But it takes itself a lot more seriously.  That's a point of contention with me, honestly.  I mean, MotU has always been sort of silly.  With goofy characters like Clawful and Stinkor, I'm not sure it deserved a darker, more serious tone.  But it works, in its own way.

He-Man himself doesn't get much screen time, and the story is more focused on Teela.  So of course, it got review bombed by tons of misogynistic trolls.  Keep that in mind if you see it has a low rating somewhere - some of the ratings don't actually reflect the quality of the show, but rather the politics of the reviewers.

If you're reading this blog, then you probably know that I prefer female antagonists.  But it goes beyond that.  Even when I was a kid, I thought He-Man was the least interesting MotU character.  He was basically Conan with Superman's personality, and there just wasn't much to him.  I was a big Stratos fan myself, but I also had a thing for Trap-Jaw.  In fact, the show's focus on He-Man might be one of the reasons it never reached the aforementioned "Holy Trinity" status for me.

So downplaying the He-Man character was probably the most interesting thing the new MotU could have done.  It gave some of the other characters a chance to shine for a change.  To be fair, some of the review bombers complained that He-Man was prominent in the trailers, and accused it of false advertising.  It's a legitimate complaint, but they had to do it that way to make some of the twists more surprising in the show itself.

The voice cast is pretty good.  Mark Hamill's Skeletor kind of gives me an uncanny valley feeling, since it's sort of like the Joker but without the humorous edge.  I'm not crazy about Sarah Michelle Gellar as Teela, because it sounds like a weak character's voice coming out of a much stronger character.  It made sense for Gellar to play Buffy, because that show's concept was about a powerful fighter in the body of a waif.  But Teela's appearance and voice just don't really match up, IMO.

The art is pretty good.  Cartoons have come a long way since the 80s, and the animation is a lot smoother.  Some characters look better than others.  I love that Prince Adam actually looks different from He-Man this time; it's more believable that his disguise fools anyone.  Orko kind of creeps me out, with his mystical eyes and scrawny blue arms.  The only part I really don't like is the obvious CGI in places.  I thought cartoons had gotten better about that.

It throws in a lot of Easter eggs for long-time fans, including an entire episode set in "Preternia" - a prehistoric setting from a cancelled toy line, but now repurposed as the Eternian afterlife.  The series features several characters and vehicles that were relatively obscure in the original run.  In fact, in some ways it feels more like a toy commercial than the original series did, even if it's no longer easy to buy these toys.

The fifth episode ends on a very big cliffhanger, with a twist far gutsier than anything seen in the original cartoon.  I do hope they aren't too slow about posting the rest of the series.  I'm ready for more.

Invincible (Amazon Prime)

I just finished season one of Invincible.  Wow, that's some powerful stuff.  I went into this show without having read any of the comics, but some of the twists had already been spoiled for me.  There seems to be a certain genre of comics that exists only to subvert our expectations.  The problem is, edgy subversions are becoming so common, that "wholesome" is becoming the new edgy.

I think the real problem is that there's only so many plots (at least, only so many that readers find entertaining), but a seemingly unlimited number of writers.  Now that the internet can make anyone a writer (just sign over most of your profits to the Kindle store), we're seeing more copycat works than ever.  Amazon is bursting with books about vampire romance or wizarding schools.  It takes an amazing mind to come up with something truly original.

Unfortunately, Invincible isn't it.  The show is full of clever observations on the realities of super hero crime fighting, but they're not so clever that I hadn't seen these tropes before.  But at least it combines these tropes in an entertaining way.

When I first saw the trailer for Invincible, I thought, "great, another modern take on superheroes that uses graphic violence to be edgy."  But the actual show is pretty good about only using gore to make a point.  

Saving Private Ryan used violence to show the horrors of war.  The Passion of the Christ used violence to make Christ's pain seem more real, instead of the "fairy tale" quality most Biblical films have.  They weren't pandering to teenage slasher fans, they were serious movies that used violence to make serious points.

Invincible seems similar in its intentions, though it's going to appeal to the teenage edgelords as well.  When the title character enters his first mass battle against some alien invaders, he sees citizens getting blasted into pieces.  He ends up covered in blood and gore from those slain, and it rightly freaks him out.  He tries to save an elderly woman, but he ends up injuring her more in the process.  

The whole scene is there to show that being a superhero isn't as neat and clean as he thought.  Invincible (the character) had grown up reading comics and watching other heroes (including his father) fight bad guys on TV.  But that didn't prepare him for how real things would get when he became a hero himself.

When it's not making a point, the violence isn't any worse than an episode of Justice League.  The first episode's opening scene has a team of Justice League expys defending the White House from a pair of criminals.  Barely any blood is spilled, innocent lives are saved at the last minute, and on the whole it could have been a kid's cartoon.  The plot of the first episode rips a lot from Sky High, and it looks like the episode will end on a high note.  

And then, the subversion comes.  I'm not going to spoil it here, but when the tone changes, it really changes.  That said, I really wasn't surprised much.  The season had a few twists, none of which were really twisty.  Some of the so-called surprises were spoiled by memes, but they're also pretty well telegraphed in the show itself.  I mean, even my wife knows that a certain character is secretly evil, and she hasn't even watched a full trailer.

But that might be on purpose.  Maybe they want you to know certain twists going in, so you'll be even more surprised by later subversions of subversions in season two, I don't know yet.  All I can tell you is that while none of the show's tropes scream "original" to me, this combination of tropes is still pretty fresh.

I'm a little afraid to keep going, though.  It was written by Robert Kirkman, the same guy who wrote The Walking Dead.  I read the first 100 or so issues of TWD, and while it was pretty good, I don't like "anyone can die" style writers.  Kirkman's the kind of guy who will develop a character for 75 issues, then unceremoniously kill them off because he thinks it makes his penis look big.  

If I keep watching Invincible, sooner or later a character I like will die.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not so fragile that I can't handle the death of fictional characters.  But I still don't find it entertaining when a character I like is killed.

Do I recommend the show?  That's hard to say.  I'm not even sure why I like it.  But if you like superheroes, and graphic violence doesn't churn your stomach, then you could do a lot worse.  

Black Widow

Note, there will be spoilers for previous MCU films, but I'll try to save Black Widow-specific spoilers for the footnotes.

Let's get this out of the way - Yes, it's weird that they waited until after the character died to give her a solo movie.  Yes, the movie feels like an apology to Black Widow fans for not making the most of her character before killing her off.  And yes, all of this makes it difficult to judge the movie on its own merits.  But give me a break.

In a world where people have fantastic powers and supernatural abilities, it's a little weird to watch a movie about (mostly) unpowered people.  It's like watching a Star Wars movie that doesn't center on Jedi.  But Rogue One (and even Solo) proved that such a thing does work, and so does Black Widow.

So, a quick, "spoiler light" summary.  After Civil War, Natasha Romanoff is on the run from the US government.  She finds out that the assassin organization that trained her is still in business, and decides to shut it down for good.  She teams up with her former family, and faces off against an enemy who can mimic her fight patterns.  The plot is actually pretty light.

Thematically, Black Widow reminds me more of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" than any other MCU film.  Taskmaster is very similar to the Winter Soldier (see "spoiler 1" footnote), both movies involve a hero bringing down an organization they used to work for (spoiler 2), and they even both have similar climaxes (spoiler 3).  But overall, both movies just feel more like spy films than superhero films.

I don't like spy films.  I'm not a huge fan of The Winter Soldier, because it reminds me too much of the Bourne movies (which I pretty much despise).  But somehow, Black Widow works for me.  Maybe it's just because I prefer having a female protagonist.  Maybe it's because it's newer.  I do tend to like brand new MCU movies more than ones I've seen a lot, so who knows if Black Widow will age well.

Every once in a while it struck me that Natasha wasn't in any real danger, because we already know how she's going to die.  But that really didn't make the action scenes any less intense.  I tend to rewatch MCU movies a lot, so most of the time I already know the main character isn't going to die.  Hell, the first Captain America movie was told mostly in flashback, and we still didn't find it any less exciting knowing he wasn't going to die.

One thing that annoyed me:  While the majority of the Black Widow takes place between Civil War and Infinity War, the post-credits scene takes place in the current time, which leads me to a bit of a Star Wars-esque conundrum.  In the future, should new MCU viewers watch Black Widow in timeline order or film order?  The movie works better if you watch it sometime before Infinity War, but then the post-credits scene goes and spoils her death in Endgame.

Bottom line:  Black Widow isn't bad.  The action scenes are top notch.  The plot is pretty basic.  It's a little too similar to The Winter Soldier.  I can't quite rank it in the top 10 MCU movies, but it's close.  It's not going to blow your socks off, but it's a worthy addition to the series.

Spoiler Footnotes:

1. They're even both mind controlled. 

2. Hydra-infested SHIELD vs the Red Room.

3. In that they both involve fighting on an air vehicle while it crashes to the ground.

On Star Wars and Planning Ahead

I just thought this was funny:

J.J. Abrams Reflects on 'Star Wars' and When It's Critical to Have a Plan

Uh huh.  Look, now is not the time to realize, "Maybe you should plan trilogies in advance."  The time for that would have been at least six years ago.  And it's not like it was some major philosophical question with no right answer.  If they had polled 100 Star Wars fans with the question, "Would you prefer a trilogy that was planned out in advance, or would you prefer we have multiple directors make up the story as they go along?"  I bet nearly 100% of them would have agreed that a planned trilogy is best.

I apologize in advance, some of this is going to be a repeat of things I blogged before, and most of it will be incoherent ranting.

Look, I'm one of the biggest Star Wars apologists out there.  The truth is, I like all the live action theatrical Star Wars movies.  I love The Force Awakens, on its own.  I like The Last Jedi, on its own (somewhat).  I like Rise of Skywalker, on its own.  I find all three installments of the sequel trilogy to be enjoyable in their own way.

But as a trilogy, it sucks.  And the reason it sucks?  It doesn't tell a cohesive story.  To be fair, that's not necessarily a requirement for a trilogy.  I mean, look at the prequel trilogy.  Episode 1 is a standalone story telling the origin of Anakin, then parts 2 & 3 are their own two part story about the Clone Wars.  But The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi set up plotlines that never really paid off in the end.

The Force Awakens is a great opener, and if the rest of the trilogy had actually followed the story it set up, the trilogy would have been awesome.  Yeah, TFA is a little bit too similar to A New Hope in story structure, but it has a certain modern crispness that makes it the superior movie.  It's like "A New Hope 2.0".  It's the same way I feel about Jurassic Park and Jurassic World.  The sequel is basically a high definition remake, and sometimes that's all it takes to make me happy.  It may be lazy writing, but it makes the old feel new again.

The Last Jedi is flawed, but it does a great job of subverting our expectations, and it takes the trilogy in a new direction.  It's my least favorite of the three, mostly because it doesn't really feel like a Star Wars movie.  But it does have a few great battles and some amazing visuals, just enough to keep me happy.  I'd put it on par with The Phantom Menace - it has two or three stellar scenes, and the rest is boring.

The Rise of Skywalker spends too much time fixing The Last Jedi's mistakes, but it's so crammed full of action, I don't have time to care.  Palpatine's resurrection comes out of nowhere, and it would have been nice if it had been foreshadowed earlier in the trilogy.  But that's what happens when you write a trilogy by passing a baton.  RoS feels closer to TFA than TLJ, making TLJ the oddball entry in the trilogy.

Some people say that Episode 9 would have been better if it had run with the threads set up by The Last Jedi, but I disagree.  TLJ's ideas just weren't that great, and if they had kept going in that direction, I think the trilogy would have just sucked in a different way.  It's easy to say, "If they'd used my ideas it would have been a better movie," when there's no way to prove it.

Yes, I'm aware of that "Duel of the Fates" script floating around the internet, and no I haven't read it.   So I can't yet comment on whether it's a good alternate for Episode 9.  But even if it's awesome, having a good script is still no guarantee of a good movie.  (Though it definitely helps.)  Let me remind you that both versions of Psycho are practically shot-for-shot identical, and yet one is a masterpiece while the other tanked.

As it is, The Force Awakens is a decent standalone film.  The Last Jedi feels like the first part of a two-parter that never got finished.  Rise of Skywalker is a fun standalone film, though it's a little bit overpacked with TLJ's baggage.

If I were to remake one, it wouldn't be Rise of Skywalker.  I would remake The Last Jedi so that it explored who Snoke was, finally revealing that he was one of the failed clones of Palpatine, and hinting that more cloning attempts were still happening.  I would allude to the shipyards of Exogol, so people wouldn't be so confused about where all these new Star Destroyers came from.  I'd also throw in some hints that when Kylo tells Rey that she's no one, he's either lying or doesn't actually know.  

In fact, these scenes could be added to TLJ with little effort, and a lot of other content could be cut.  I, for one, could do without the mutiny subplot.  With the right edits to TLJ (and a few minor cuts to RoS), we would have a cohesive trilogy that actually feels like it was planned.

Some people want to go so far as to declare the sequel trilogy non-canon.  I see no reason to go that far.  I look at it like a big budget TV series.  Every series is going to have bad episodes.  That doesn't mean we need to declare that the events of the episode didn't happen.  "Thor: The Dark World" is arguably the worst of the MCU films, but it sets up some of the events in Infinity War and Endgame, so it's not like it should be declared non-canon.  The events still happened, they're just not entertaining enough to rewatch as often.

Overturning canon should only be done if the events limit future installments.  For example, 2018's Halloween sequel ignores most of the films in the franchise, because they contradicted the new story they wanted to tell.  I would be delighted if somebody did the same for Aliens.  Alien 3's plot actually prevented the series from going forward the way it should have.  If they hadn't killed off the survivors of Aliens, there were a lot of possibilities in the future adventures of Ripley, Hicks, and/or a grown up Newt.  

But whether you liked or hated the last couple of Star Wars movies, there's nothing in them that interferes with future installments.  Yes, most of the main cast from the original trilogy died, but most of them were too old to be having a lot of sci-fi adventures anyway.  A new trilogy would be set far enough in the future (or the past) that it would have a whole new cast, and there's nothing in the sequel trilogy that prevents that.  

I still mostly blame the fans for the failure of the sequel trilogy.  Everyone hated The Last Jedi when it came out.  Don't deny it.  You hated it.  I know this because I was the only one who didn't hate it, and at the time, I searched all over the internet looking for people like me.  I didn't imagine this.  Heck, they say that one of the reasons Solo tanked is because people were still pissed about The Last Jedi.

Admit it:  You hated The Last Jedi until the minute you saw Rise of Skywalker.  Then suddenly you were like, "WHAT?  But I LOVED The Last Jedi!  Why didn't they use any of the ideas set up by The Last Jedi?"  You fucking liar.  If you really meant it, then you would have stood up for the movie when it actually mattered, and you would have gone to see Solo.

In general, I don't care if people agree with me about movies.  Live and let live.  If you like a movie I didn't, fine.  If you hate a movie I like, fine.  Sometimes I get a little annoyed if people hate one of my favorite movies, especially if their reasons for disliking it are based on a misconception.  But I try not to hold it against them.  And yet... people who hate Rise of Skywalker because it didn't follow The Last Jedi - honestly, that's one of my berserk buttons.

You had your chance to declare your love for TLJ.  YOU.  HAD.  YOUR.  CHANCE.  You chose to remain silent while the rest of the internet raged against the movie.  You sat quietly by while the studio took in audience input, and used that data to make a sequel that bowed more to fanservice.  We can complain all we want about J. J. (which I assume stands for Jar Jar) Abrams not planning the trilogy ahead, but you're guilty too.  By allowing Disney to think everyone hated The Last Jedi, you didn't plan ahead.  You didn't stop to think about how audience reactions would shape the third film.

So I'll say it again - if liked The Last Jedi, but you didn't like Rise of Skywalker, it's your fucking fault, and I'd like to invite you to shut the hell up about it for good.  At the very least, you could have gone to see Solo a few extra times.  Maybe if Solo had done better, Disney wouldn't have panicked about the direction of the sequel trilogy.

But I digress.  Here's the thing... before he got involved with Star Wars, J. J. Abrams was best known for his work on Lost.  Everybody knows that Lost was full of setups without payoffs.  They spent season after season throwing random crap at the wall to see what would stick, and while some of it looked planned, the writers really had no idea where they were going most of the time.

So when they handed The Force Awakens over to Abrams, it seems like somebody should have checked up on him.  Maybe one of the higher ups at Disney should have called him once or twice and said, "Um, you do have a plan for the entire trilogy, right?"  Look, I like Abrams.  He's pretty good at making entertaining movies.  But for a trilogy as important as Star Wars, he should not be left unsupervised.  This "pass the flashlight" method of storytelling is fine for some franchises, but not for Star Wars.

But hopefully the article above means that they've learned their lesson.  If they do film another Star Wars trilogy (as opposed to standalone films), maybe they'll plan out the story in advance.

We can only hope.

Retro Game Review: Bionic Commando

Bionic Commando hit the arcades in 1987, followed a year later by an NES adaptation.  I only played the arcade version a few times, but I loved it.  Or at least I thought I did.  When the NES version came out, I enjoyed it a lot, but I also found myself wishing it was closer to the arcade version.

While I did get to play a (really bad) adaptation of the arcade version on the Commodore 64, the arcade game didn't get remade a lot.  So aside from a few quarters I spent in the 80s, I haven't really gotten to play the arcade version until now.  Bionic Commando is now featured in the recently released "Capcom Arcade Stadium".  

This collection is pretty cool, but it only has a few standout games I'd play again today.  The problem is that the best games in the collection were previously released either in the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection or the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle.  So of the three packs that make up Capcom Arcade Stadium, I only purchased the first one, which contains Capcom's earliest offerings.   

I was excited to finally get a chance to play the original Bionic Commando again.  I've always considered it one of my top 10 classic arcade games, and I was excited to finally see what some of the later levels were like.

I was wrong.  It sucks.  For starters, it's impossibly difficult.  It is designed to be a quarter muncher.  There are dangers heading towards you in every direction, and sometimes there's just no way to avoid them.  In fact, the easiest way to get past certain areas is to die, so that when your next life parachutes in from the top of the screen, you land farther up than you were before.  

Secondly, it's short.  If you have unlimited quarters (as you do in this retro collection), you can beat it in 15 minutes.  It only has five levels, and they aren't very long.  I always assumed it was longer, but that's because the difficulty stretched out the play time.

Finally, the controls just aren't as tight as I remembered.  While the NES version did a great job of getting the most out of your bionic arm, the arcade version feels primitive by comparison.  The biggest annoyance is that once you're in the air, you can't use your arm again until you land.  This eliminates the Tarzan-like strategy you used in the later versions, where you could swing repeatedly to get past a long area of dangerous terrain.

So at this point, I would like to apologize to the NES version of Bionic Commando, which was clearly the superior version.  I've spent too many years wondering why they didn't just make a direct arcade conversion, and now I know.  

The arcade version of Bionic Commando started with a wonderful idea.  The bionic arm was truly innovative at the time, and it's a pity they didn't do more with it.  I'm just glad that Capcom's NES team was able to see the potential and turn it into a truly wonderful game.

Mortal Kombat (2021 Film)

I loved the 1995 Mortal Kombat film at the time, but it hasn't aged well.  The 1997 sequel was simply terrible, though it did have a couple of decent fights.  

So how does the new one hold up?  Well, it's a solid movie, with decent fight choreography, much better special effects, and less of the campy tone that plagues the '95 version.  But I don't know, I think the 90's cheese actually helped original movie.  Let's face it, the MK universe is hard to take too seriously.

The 2021 movie can't seem to decide whether it's serious or light-hearted.  If you judge it by the opening scene, it could be a serious martial arts film with a Mortal Kombat skin.  But the more the movie goes on, the sillier it gets, with characters learning how to fire their signature energy blasts and eye lasers.

I'm not fond of the selection of characters.  It has a fairly small cast, and ignores several popular fighters like Johnny Cage and Kitana.  And yet it has room for more obscure fighters like Nitara and Reiko.  Of course they're saving some characters for the sequel - the movie doesn't just imply this, it outright says it.

It's a lot bloodier than the 1995 film, and it isn't shy about killing off characters.  Some of the fatalities and special moves are right out of the games, and they look great.  You will have to turn off your brain, though, as the laws of physics don't apply here.

It's just, I don't know, maybe I'm the one who changed, but... I still remember a lot of lines from the original movie, even though I haven't seen it in years.  I've already forgotten large parts of the new movie, even though I watched it a couple of hours ago.  

It just feels like it's missing something.  Not enough happens; it feels too short and anticlimactic.  I don't want to spoil anything, but it feels like they picked a weird place to end the movie.  It almost feels like the pilot for a TV series instead of a movie.

All in all, it's not a bad "turn your brain off and enjoy the violence" action movie.  It has a lot of Easter eggs for fans of the games, and references a lot of characters who aren't in the movie.  But even non-gamers might find something to enjoy here, if they're into bloody fight scenes.  Just don't expect it to make sense.

Ranking the Aliens/Predator Movies

1. Aliens (1986)
2. Alien (1979)
3. Predators (2010)
4. Predator (1987)
5. Predator 2 (1990)
6. Alien vs. Predator (2004)
7. Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
8. Alien Resurrection (1997)
9. Prometheus (2012)
10. Alien: Covenant (2017)
11. Alien 3 (1992)

I was waiting to post this until I'd seen all of them.  I just watched Alien: Covenant today.  I still have not seen 2018's "The Predator", but I doubt I ever will, so I just left it off the list.  No big loss, from what I hear, it would be toward the bottom of the list anyway.

Some specifics:

Aliens is still one of my all-time favorite movies.  But I've already gushed about it on several blogs already, so 'nuff said.

Alien still holds up as an excellent horror film.  Smart, suspenseful, and genuinely scary.

Predators is the best Predator movie, even outshining the original.  The action, special effects, pacing - it's just an all around good time.

The original Predator is basically "Alien set in the jungle," and that's okay.  It still does a better job of being an Alien movie than the later Alien movies do.

Predator 2 is kind of forgettable, but I still enjoyed it.

AVP and AVP Requiem are pure fanservice.  They don't even pretend to make sense if you're not a fan of both franchises.  I wouldn't call either one a good movie, but "versus" movies don't have to be.  Nobody went to see Freddy Vs. Jason expecting Shakespeare.

Alien Resurrection is just... okay.  Nothing I'd watch over and over, but it's solid.

Prometheus and Alien: Covenant... Okay, here's the thing.  In 1979, budding director Ridley Scott filmed an excellent sci-fi horror movie.  It was his second film, and it put him well on his way to being one of the big names in movies.  Now, I have a theory - Now that Scott is such a big name serious director, I think he's a little embarrassed that one of his most popular movies is basically a slasher movie.

Like I said above, Alien is a smart movie.  But when you really look at it, it is basically Friday the 13th in space.  There's nothing wrong with that... unless you're a pretentious director who doesn't want to admit he ever did anything lowbrow.  So what if, instead of disowning such a well-known movie, he tried to lend legitimacy to it with a couple of heavy-handed prequels?  

The Alien prequels try to hit you over the head with deeper themes about the origins of life, but the truth is, they're also still slasher films.  Ridley Scott does what he does best - makes movies much slower than they needed to be, and tries to give them meaning.  But I don't need Alien to have deeper meaning, I just want to watch xenomorphs eat people.

The worst part about the prequels is they don't fit the rest of the series.  Alien can either belong in the same universe as its sequels, or it can belong in the same universe as its prequels, but not both.  And the Cameron version of the Alienverse is much cooler than the Scott version.  I hope I live to see the day when someone like James Cameron gets their hands on the franchise again.

Alien 3 is still crap.

GI Joe: Operation Blackout

My two biggest loves as a kid - after Star Wars, of course - were GI Joe and the Transformers.  Unfortunately, neither property had enough video games when I was growing up.  I owned a GI Joe game and a Transformers game on my Commodore 64, both of which sucked even by the standards of the time.  But I still played the hell out of them.

The GI Joe game was especially fun with friends.  It was basically a one-on-one deathmatch between two players (or 1 player vs CPU).  You each picked a character (12 Joes, 8 Cobras), and you would just wander around the screen shooting each other.  After each shot, you had to wait several seconds for your weapon to reload.

The different characters had different walking speeds, weapon speeds, and weapon power.  It was balanced so that the characters with the slowest weapons did the most damage.  There was also a vehicle mode where you picked one of four different Joe vehicles, and just drove/flew around shooting at Cobra vehicles.  

Honestly, it was a bad game.  The load times were excruciating, the gameplay was simplistic, and the only reason my friends and I enjoyed it was because of the toy tie-in.  And yet, I think I'd still rather play it again than the newest GI Joe game, Operation Blackout.

Now, I knew going in that Operation Blackout wasn't very good.  I'd read several negative reviews, and really wasn't expecting much from it.  I'd already played the beautiful but underwhelming "Transformers: Devastation" a few years ago, and was expecting something about on the same level.  The trailers for Operation Blackout at least looked kind of neat, with cel-shaded graphics reminiscent of the 80s cartoon.

Where do I begin.  For starters, somehow the graphics look better in the videos than they do while you're playing.  While Devastation did a great job nailing the look of the Transformers cartoon, Operation Blackout looks like an early attempt at cel shading from the mid 2000s.  

The controls are serviceable, but I have to question some of the gameplay choices.  Like, you have a reload button, which you end up having to use every 10 seconds.  I mean, this isn't Call of Duty, this is G.I.-frikking-Joe here, based on a cartoon where nobody ever ran out of ammo.  I don't need simulationist gameplay in my 80s nostalgia.

The mission objectives are sometimes unclear, the boss fights take forever, and the difficulty is... well, I won't say it's hard, but I will say that the easiest setting still wasn't as easy as one might expect.  Also, I played through one of the blandest vehicle levels I've ever seen in a video game.

But I think the worst part is the overall presentation.  Between levels the story plays out in cut scenes that are supposed to look like a comic book.  Unfortunately, they don't.  Instead, they just look like early storyboard sketches, as if they intended to animate them eventually and and never got around to it.  

And the voice acting is so inconsistent.  I swear the voice actors kept changing their minds on how they wanted to play certain characters.  Destro starts out sounding like a generic Doctor Doom voice, then switches to a Scottish accent, which gradually fades into a more generic foreign accent.  And don't get me started on Storm Shadow, whose voice would probably get them accused of racism if this game were good enough to get noticed at all.  At least Cobra Commander was... okay.

Now, I don't regret my purchase.  For one thing, I waited until the game was on sale.  For another, I used reward points to buy it, so it was practically free.  I knew what I was getting into, and it was worth the money to play it for myself.  I don't mind bad games if they tickle the right nostalgia button, but this game doesn't quite reach it.

Here's a longplay of Operation Blackout (not mine): 

The New Captain America

So, we're three episodes into Falcon & The Winter Soldier.  Audiences hate the new Captain America, John Walker.  So much so that the actor is getting death threats.  The character has been the source of all kinds of memes, complaining about how much they hate this guy taking the shield.

Look - it already takes a special kind of crazy to go after an actor for playing a character you don't like.  But complaining about this guy being the new Captain America... can you just wait until all the episodes are out, please?

John Walker getting the shield sets up some of the conflict in the series.  But it seems pretty obvious that he won't be Captain America at the end of the series.  Maybe Walker will become a bad guy, maybe he'll get killed, maybe he'll give up the shield to be USAgent.  Maybe Falcon will end up with the shield, maybe Bucky, heck, maybe even Sharon Carter.  

My point is, wait until all the data is out before whining.  I seriously doubt the MCU intends Walker to be the new Captain America going forward.  If I'm wrong, fine, but at least wait until the end of the series to complain.

Justice League: Does Whatever A Snyder Can

When they announced the Snyder Cut of Justice League, I did not think it was the best idea.  Despite my misgivings, I promise you I went into the Snyder Cut with an open mind.  Even when some early reviews said it was overly long and devoid of humor, I was determined to make up my mind for myself.  How often do I agree with professional reviewers, anyway?

Well, the Snyder cut is overly long, and it really doesn't have enough humor.  But honestly?  It is the better version of the film.  It's more coherent, it's fixes some plot holes, and overall, it just feels more complete.

So I was wrong, I'll cop to that.

That said, I still can't say I love it.  Zack Snyder really Snyders his hardest here, and if I was a Snyder fan, I would be in heaven.  But Snyder is simply the wrong fit for this property.  It takes itself way too seriously.  I'm not saying comic book movies shouldn't be serious, but Snyder is going for a "Lord of the Rings" level of epic here, and it's more than I ever needed out of a comic book.

I won't lie, I laughed way too hard at this.

Watching Snyder try and squeeze profoundness out of such goofy characters is like watching a Spongebob Squarepants movie directed by Stanley Kubrick.  He overuses slow motion - I mean, like, seriously overuses it.  It's justified when it's the Flash, showing his perception of the world while he runs around.  But it's used for dramatic reasons way too often.  An early scene has Lois Lane buying coffee in slow motion, which is a bit much.  I have to wonder how much shorter this movie would be if it took out even half of the slow motion.

And I really can't stand how much Snyder hates color.  He uses a sepia-esque style similar to what he did in 300.  It's supposed to be artsy, but everything just looks washed out.  And guess what, he's also releasing a black & white version.  People who hate color shouldn't be making comic book movies.

Left: Aquaman.    Right: Snyder Cut

Side note:  I'm probably one of the few original generation Star Wars fans who actually prefers the Special Editions.  They have their flaws, but I do like the new content.  But it is obvious that George Lucas was "fixing" things that bothered him, not things that bothered fans.  For example, making the ewoks blink in the Blu-Ray release.  I don't think I'd ever heard a SW fan complain that the ewoks didn't blink, but apparently it bothered Lucas.

An even better example is in the Empire Strikes Back.  It always bothered Lucas that in one scene we see Vader in Cloud City, and shortly thereafter we see him back on the Star Destroyer.  I doubt any viewer ever said, "How did he get back there so quickly?"  But it bothered Lucas, who saw it as a plot hole.  So in the Special Edition, he went full overkill, showing way too many shots of Vader's shuttle trip back to the Star Destroyer.

Well, Snyder does the same thing here.  Why were Batman's gauntlets able to block Parademon blasts?  Nobody ever wondered that, ever, because we all know Batman's a master of gadgets.  But Snyder felt the need to explain it, with a scene of Batman and Alfred constructing the gauntlets.  Anyway, while some of it was unnecessary, a lot of the additions really do make the story work better.

Bottom line?  It's a solid movie.  Objectively, it's much better than the theatrical version.  However, I would happily watch the theatrical version again and again.  It's not perfect, but it's kind of fun.  I do not intend to watch the Snyder Cut ever again.  It's an endurance test, and it's not why I watch superhero movies.

I think Snyder's style works when he has the right subject.  I liked Watchmen.  But I grew up with these characters, and all I want is a decent Justice League movie made in the same spirit as the MCU.  Bright, colorful, optimistic, and most of all, fun. 

Still, I do hope that the Snyder fans now have the movie they want.  This movie may not be for me, and I'm sad that it will probably be decades before another reboot gives us a Justice League movie that does the team justice.  

Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie

First things first.  I'm really glad that they spent all that money fixing Sonic's appearance, because the charming visuals are about the only thing that made this movie enjoyable.  If they'd kept his original design, Sonic would have been the next "Cats".  

Okay, so I was never a Sega fan.  And the Sonic games, while beautiful, never really did it for me.  The controls just weren't as tight as Mario, and therefore the games just weren't as fun.  I know basically nothing about Sonic's personality, so I have no idea how faithful this movie was to the original media.  So in case that's not clear enough: I am not this movie's target audience.

So anyway, Sonic has your basic "E.T." plot.  A creature comes from another planet or dimension or exotic location, befriends a human, and the human has to hide them from the rest of society, while they try to find a way to get back home.  There's really more movies that fit this format than you might think.  It's not just E.T. and Mac & Me, and it's not always a space alien.  It could be a sasquatch or a fugitive robot, basically any creature you'd want to keep away from the FBI.

Garbage Pail Kids, Masters of the Universe, Beastmaster 2, Howard the Duck, The Smurfs... Most of these movies could have taken place in the title character's home planet/dimension/environment, but they had them come to Earth and meet a human instead.  Maybe it was for budget reasons, maybe the writers wanted a human connection to make you care more, or maybe it's just easier than writing a real plot.  

I mean, who knows how to write a Sonic movie that takes place on Sonic's own homeworld?  I guess it's too much trouble to pick up a Sonic comic book and find out what kind of plotlines they have there.  Instead, let's just throw Sonic at Earth and have a standard "fish out of water" story.

There's nothing wrong with the Sonic movie (except the scene with the obligatory fart joke - I know kids love that stuff, but I hate easy humor).  It moves at a solid pace, it has a few cute jokes, and the cast seems to have fun with it.  Like I said in my blog about "The Stand", James Marsden is the perfect everyman.  Jim Carrey leaves no scenery unchewed, as expected.  The other actors... exist, I'm almost sure of it.

Anyway, Sonic is an okay movie, but nothing you haven't seen before.  When compared to other E.T. movies, it's one of the better ones, but that's a low bar.  When compared to other video game movies, it's still one of the better ones, but that's an even lower bar.  It runs rings around the Mario Bros movie, but that's the lowest bar of all.

 

The Stand

One of my favorite high school memories was being allowed to read a Stephen King book for class.  Our Sociology textbook had book recommendations at the end of each chapter.  Our teacher told us that we each had to read one of the recommended books, and deliver an oral report about it.  We could pick any book we wanted, but no two students could pick the same book.

My fellow classmates weren't interested in reading.  As soon as she gave the assignment, most of the students started looking at the end of each chapter, looking for books that sounded short or easy to read.  In the hopes of getting dibs on something interesting, I started at the back of the textbook.  A few chapters from the end, one of the recommendations was "The Stand" by Stephen King.  

I didn't look any further.  I quickly claimed it before anyone else could, though given that it's over 1,000 pages, I probably wasn't in any danger of someone else wanting it.  It was the first full-length Stephen King novel I read, though I'd read a lot of his short stories in "Night Shift" and "Skeleton Crew".  

If you haven't read The Stand, here's a quick summary.  A highly-infectious deadly disease (informally called "Captain Trips") escapes from a military base, and quickly spreads across the world.  A tiny percentage of humans are immune, and these few survivors start gathering together to rebuild society.  But there's also supernatural forces of good and evil at play, and survivors start having dreams and visions directing them to gather in certain cities.  Good people are called to Boulder, CO, while bad people are compelled to settle in Las Vegas.  But the evil entity drawing people to Vegas has plans to eliminate the Colorado citizens.

When it came time to give the oral report, we were allowed to write as much as we wanted on a 3x5 index card.  Other students wrote out their entire reports in tiny letters on their cards.  On my card, I wrote a single quote I wanted to remember:

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society’. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.” - Glen Bateman

Beyond that, I didn't prepare for the report at all.  I had enjoyed the book so much, that I was able to just treat it like I was describing the book to a friend.  I usually hated giving oral reports, but this was one of the few times I actually enjoyed it.  Not to brag, but I'm pretty sure my report was one of the best in the class, simply because I actually cared about the book I'd read.

A few years later, I read the unabridged version.  Then in 1994, there was a TV miniseries based on it.  I really enjoyed that miniseries.  Parts of it were cheesy (especially Randall Flagg's demon forms), but it was well cast (for the most part) and did a great job of telling the story.  We've since owned the miniseries on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray, and we've watched it many times.

We're currently watching the new version on CBS All Access.  We're four episodes into it, and for the most part, I like it.  But it's not getting very good reviews.  Here's the thing... I think this version is made specifically for people like me.

If the new version has one flaw, it's the way it jumps back and forth in time.  It's already such a long story with so many characters that it can be hard to keep everyone straight.  If I wasn't already so familiar with the story, I'm pretty sure I would be lost.  It's presented well, but it just bombards you with so much information, I just can't imagine newbies keeping up.

Honestly, I'm not sure how good a job it's doing in presenting all the relevant information, because I keep filling in the gaps with my own knowledge.  Do I know a certain thing because they showed it on the screen, or because I remember it from the other versions?  Sometimes I don't even know.

The casting is pretty good, though I miss some of the 1994 cast.  Like, I just can't imagine a better Glen than the late Ray Walston.  The original Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec) struck me as "Hollywood Homely", and never really felt like the social outcast presented in the book.  But the new Harold (Owen Teague) is a big improvement.  He has a creepy quality that really suits the character.  The 1994 Harold was just a jealous nerd-turned-sociopath, but 2020 Harold is a true incel.

I'm not sold on the new Tom Cullen, it feels like such a different interpretation of the character.  Not bad, just hard to get used to.  The new Randall Flagg is a lot scarier than the last one, but he hasn't had a lot of screen time yet.  I like the new Larry Underwood better than the old one.  Whoopi Goldberg is a pretty good Mother Abigail, and I haven't made up my mind about Nick Andros.

James Marsden (I can never remember which one is Marsden and which one is Marsters) is fantastic as Stu Redman.  He has an "everyman" quality that works for the character.  I don't think he's as good an actor as Gary Sinise (who played Stu in the 1994 version), but Marsden is perfect for this role.  Unfortunately, he feels mismatched with love interest Frannie Goldsmith (played by Odessa Young).  

The new cast is also more diverse than the original.  In fact, looking back at the original, I almost wonder if only white people had the gene that resists the disease.  I love Stephen King, and for the most part he is a very progressive individual.  But a lot of his most well-known works only feature minorities as magical beings.  It's one of those tropes that looks "woke" at first - after all, the most righteous character in the book is black, how can that be racist?  But it's still a type of "othering" that keeps the races divided.  But I digress.  

Overall, I think it's a great interpretation of the novel.  But again, the presentation is confusing.  I don't mind it jumping back and forth some, but I wish they'd divided it by season.  Have the first season all take place before everyone gets to Boulder, jumping back and forth as much as they want within those months.  Then let the second season take place after people start reforming society.  

I wish they would make a re-edited version with the events in the right order.  But since that won't happen, I highly recommend reading the book before watching the CBS series.  It's worth your time.

Update:

We've now watched the rest of the episodes.  Overall, I didn't like as much as the 1994 version.  It started out strong, but each episode was just a little bit worse than the previous one.  

One problem is, despite having more overall screen time than the 1994 version, it never really gave the audience time to fall in love with certain characters.  So when those characters end up in danger later, you don't really feel anything for them.  

This is partly a side effect of the way it jumps back in forth in time.  You see how each character started their journey, and how they finished their journey in Boulder, but you don't see enough of the journey itself.  And that's when we learned to love them.

The only place it drastically deviates from the novel is the final episode.  Note that the climax of the series happens in episode eight, so the ninth episode feels like a bonus short story.  Think of it as getting to spend a little more time with the characters you love.  Except they weren't developed enough to love them in this version.  There's some good tension in that episode, but the tension goes on so long that I wanted to shout "Get on with it!"  

Bottom line:  While the 2020 version is less cheesy than the 1994 version, it's just not as entertaining.  I love comparing and contrasting remakes, so I'm glad I got to see this.  But when I get in the mood to watch the Stand again (as I do every couple of years), it will still be the 1994 version I pick.

3D Printing

As I've mentioned on my RPG blog, a couple of months ago I got a 3D printer.  While I've mostly been using it for D&D stuff, I thought I'd post some pictures here of some of the non-D&D things I've printed.

Build-A-Viper Kit

Build-an-Enterprise Kit

Pencil Holder

2 Sizes of Grogu

My Desk

Medusa Pendant

Samus Aran - Still needs some touch ups.

Life is Strange characters

Life is Strange pendants

Life is Strange fridge magnet - 3D printed the figures, cast in resin in a pickle jar lid.

Life is Strange fridge magnet

Cats (2019)

It was so hard to decide whether or not to see Cats.  When the first trailer hit, the internet exploded with memes making fun of the special effects.  When the actual movie hit the theaters, most of the reviews were scathing.  But when I actually read the reviews, they didn’t really say anything that sounded so bad to me.

Here’s the thing:  Most of the movie’s reviewers haven’t seen the play.  Most of them wouldn’t like the play.  Most of the complaints I saw in the reviews could just as easily have described the play.  The play is long.  It is operatic, with very little dialogue.  It is surreal.  It is silly and weird.  It is oddly sexual in places.  I really can’t imagine most people liking it, but I love it.

Of the reviewers who actually mentioned that they hadn’t seen the play, 100% hated the movie.  But I don’t care about them.  The only ones I took to heart were the ones where the reviewer mentioned being a fan of the play.  Out of those, roughly half of the reviewers loved it, and half hated it.  Those that hated it mentioned changes they’d made from the play, a cast that just doesn’t put their heart into it the way the stage actors do (which could just be the difference between recording in a sound booth vs. projecting yourself to a live audience), and of course everyone mentioned the special effects.  The few people who loved it said the same things I’ve been saying: It’s supposed to be weird.

So now that I’ve finally seen it, I have to say…

*sigh*

Cats is not good.  As a fan of the play, I have to side with those who say that they changed too much.  I was in high school the first time I saw the play, and I liked the soundtrack so much that I bought it (on cassette tape, if that dates me), and often listened to it in the car on the way to school.   Yes, my friends thought I was weird, but what else was new.

For the most part, the theatrical versions of these songs aren't performed well.  They are hard to enjoy, because they're often broken up to make room for spoken lines or bad slapstick.  There was only one song in the theatrical version that I enjoyed, and that was "Macavity" (performed by Taylor Swift - her only song in the movie).  They also fiddled with the melodies.  One of my favorite songs in the play, "Mungo Jerry and Rumple Teaser", is almost unrecognizable in the movie.

They also tried too hard to give the movie a plot.  The play has almost no plot, it's mostly just unconnected songs about different cats.  There is an overall theme about how only one cat gets to go to their version of Heaven, but this is only touched on in two or three songs.  There's also a mini-plot about Old Deuteronomy getting kidnapped, but he's rescued in the very next song.

The movie milks those two subplots for all they're worth, at the price of decent performances.  In the movie, Macavity has this master plan of being selected to go to Heaven, so he's kidnapping the other cats in the running.  It's like they hoped a more fleshed-out story (still thin though it is) would appeal to a larger audience.  Instead, they slapped the core audience in the face, while failing to garner a broader appeal.

I could throw out more minor nitpicks, like how they made Growltiger (an in-unverse fictional character) into Macavity's partner, or all the failed attempts at humor using slapstick and fat jokes.  But overall it just wasn't fun, and didn't have any of the magic of the play.

The one thing I liked was what everyone else hated - the visuals.  I'm not saying they were good, not even remotely.  But they were strange and surreal enough to appeal to the weird part of my mind.  The characters reminded me of that Dreamcast game, Seaman.  

But I'm like that.  Give me something new and bad over something good that I've seen 1,000 times.   I don't care that the matting was terrible - it's a play.  You don't go to a live play expecting amazing effects; even the best plays often have the actors interact with papier-mâché horses.  And given how few people like musicals, you don't expect a movie based on a play to have a huge CGI budget.  Nothing on the screen was supposed to look realistic, it was supposed to give you a sense of wonder.  

Sense of wonder: Successfully tickled.  Everything else?  Meh.

Perfectly Cast Roles

In 1993, while in the theater for Jurassic Park, I saw the first teaser trailer for the 1994 Flintstones movie.  Note that this was before the internet was ubiquitous, so it wasn't common knowledge who had been cast for which upcoming movies.  The teaser didn't show any actual movie footage, it just played the theme song before cutting to Fred Flintstone's chest.  When the camera scrolled up and revealed that it was John Goodman, the audience cheered.

It's not that the movie looked like a "must watch", it's just that it was such a perfect casting.  I can't think of another actor in Hollywood history who would be a better match for that character. 

This is crazy, but just rewatching that teaser, and remembering the cheer, it almost brings tears to my eyes.  It was one of those perfect moviegoer moments, when everyone in the audience was equally delighted.  I won't say it reached "Cap grabs Thor's hammer" levels of audience camaraderie, but it was still a significant moment.  I don't usually like seeing movies with large crowds, but it's moments like that which make it worth it.

I got home from the theater and told my stepmother about it.  I asked her, "Guess who's playing Fred Flintstone?"  She thought about it for a moment, had a minor epiphany, and guessed correctly.  Because once you knew they were making a live action Flintstone movie, there was only one actor in that era who remotely fit the bill.  

For this blog, I'm not necessarily looking at actors who performed their role well.  I mean, Johnny Depp was the perfect Jack Sparrow, and no one else could ever do that role justice.  But Depp had the freedom to make that role his own, since it wasn't based on a previous character.  

I'm more looking at actors who had to play cartoon characters, or characters previously established by other actors, things like that.  And it doesn't matter if the end movie turned out to be good or not, or even if they played the role well.  It's the casting decision that I'm praising here, not the end result.

For example, Matthew Lillard did a great job as Shaggy in the Scooby-Doo movies.  But I can't say it counts as a perfect casting choice.  You'd never see Lillard in another movie and think, "He looks like Shaggy."  Honestly, his Scream costar Jamie Kennedy looked more like Shaggy at the time.  Lillard put his heart into the role and his Shaggy impression was spot on, but he still doesn't meet my qualifications for this blog.

But for an opposite example, Walter Matthau played Mr. Wilson in 1993's Dennis the Menace.  I have not seen this movie, and you probably haven't either.  It's got a 27% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which probably tells me all I need to know.  But I don't care how bad the movie was, casting Matthau was genius.  In other movies he looks and acts so much like Mr. Wilson, that there really couldn't have been any other choice. 

The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) might fit both categories.  Certainly some of the actors are doing their damndest to mimic the original show, while others are just perfectly cast and being themselves.  This is probably true for a bunch of movies based on old TV shows.  

Men in Black 3 had Josh Brolin playing young Tommy Lee Jones.  His impression is spot on, and I think he was perfectly cast.  But you want to hear something funny?  I had to look that up on IMDB, because I could have sworn it was Joaquin Phoenix, not Josh Brolin.  To be fair I haven't seen the movie since it came out in 2012, but I can't believe I got the two actors confused.  Brolin was well cast, but I think Phoenix would also have played the role really well.

I'd love to list more roles I consider perfectly cast, but then I'd never get this blog posted, because I'd keep waiting to think of more.  But the granddaddy of them all, the king of perfectly cast actors, has to go to... 

*drumroll please*

J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man franchise.  He is perfect, the rest of you can go home now, the award for best casting has been won forever.  QED.

Unfriended: Dark Web

As my wife and I get older, our tolerance for certain film tropes is waning.  She has a problem with sex scenes and with realistic gore.  As far as the gore is concerned, I don't think she's really changed, it's just that special effects got so much better, and it grosses her out.  Regarding sex scenes, her morals haven't changed - she still believes in the right of consenting adults to do whatever makes them happy - she just doesn't want to watch it.

As for me, I'm developing more empathy, and it makes it hard to enjoy horror movies the way I once did.  I don't mind if a few characters get killed, but I feel a lot better about it if they've done something to deserve it.  Watching innocent people get killed is starting to feel less and less like entertainment, and more and more like torture porn.

When I watched the first Unfriended in 2016, I was impressed.  It was an original concept, as fresh as Blair Witch felt when the "found footage" genre was new.  I liked how Unfriended was presented as if your TV screen was the protagonist's laptop.  I liked how you could tell what she was thinking by which tabs she opened, and what searches she made.  I liked how sometimes she would start to type something, then erase it, then type something else - giving us more insight into her thought process than you usually get in a movie.

But something else I liked, though it didn't really dawn on me at the time.  (Spoiler alert)  Everyone who got killed was guilty.  All of the characters were complicit in the events that led to the ghost's suicide, at least to some degree.  In a way, the ghost was the protagonist, and the movie was a revenge story, a la Death Wish.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying that all the characters in Unfriended deserved the death penalty for their part in the girl's suicide.  But their deaths do sting less knowing that they're bad people, and the world isn't any worse off for their absence.

Which brings us to the sequel, Unfriended: Dark Web.  Warning, spoilers follow.  

First off, U:DW is only a sequel in the sense that it uses the same format.  Once again, the TV screen is the main character's laptop.  Once again, the characters are killed off one by one.  Once again... no wait, that's it.  That's pretty much where the similarities end.

For one thing, it's not a vengeful spirit this time.  It debatable whether there's anything supernatural in U:DW at all, but more on that in a minute.  For another thing, this movie's victims didn't do anything wrong.  Well, okay, the main character stole the laptop from a coffee shop's lost and found, which is what gets the plot going.  But the other characters are innocent and, for the most part, likable.

I don't like that.  The twist at the end (major spoiler) is that the laptop was lost on purpose, by Dark Web hackers, as part of a game.  Apparently they wait until someone takes the laptop, then hunt them down and kill them, along with any potential witnesses.  This is all done for entertainment, with sadistic viewers all over the Dark Web watching this online cat-and-mouse game for fun.

Okay, but what about all this am I supposed to find fun?  If the Dark Webbers are presented as evil for watching this kind of thing, what does that say about me if I find the movie enjoyable?  Granted, to me it's fiction, while to the story's fictional viewers, real people are getting killed.  I get that.  But still, it almost feels like the movie's meta statement is, only evil people enjoy watching this kind of setup.

Another complaint I have has to do with continuity.  It feels like the writers couldn't decide whether the killer was going to be supernatural or not.  For 99% of the movie, I'm confident that the bad guys are just super hackers.  But there's this special effect that happens whenever they're on camera.  Their presence causes the cameras to glitch.  

Okay, so maybe they're carrying some sort of device that plays with camera frequencies.  But there's one scene that challenges that theory.  It's filmed from the ground, when a bad guy pushes someone off a roof.  Even from that distance, the killer glitches and warps in a way that really shouldn't happen if nothing supernatural is involved.

But who knows.  Regardless of whether the killers are using high technology or a pact with demons, this movie just didn't do it for me the way the first one did.  The interface is still cool, but I've already seen it.  There's nothing really innovative here, nothing that improves on the original, and nothing that would make me want to see it a second time.

Bottom line:  It's not terrible, but I'd rather just rewatch the first one.

The Witches

This week we watched both versions of The Witches.  I had only seen bits and pieces of the 1990 version, so this was a great opportunity to catch up on a missed gem.  Long story short, I like the 2020 version much better than the 1990 version.

I'm already seeing reviewers tear into the 2020 version, calling it a bland remake of a classic, and comparing it to the 2005 Willy Wonka remake.  To such reviewers - 1990 was only 30 years ago, you freaking fetus.  The original movie isn't some timeless classic, it came out when I was in high school.  And it's dull.

The 1990 version has one thing going for it:  Jim Henson's puppetry.  The mice in that version are delightful, and much more charming than the CGI in the 2020 version.  I probably just have a soft spot for puppetry, though.  

The witches, though...  

To me, the 1990 version of the Grand High Witch just looked goofy.  Yes, it was great makeup at the time, and it still holds up.  But I don't find it scary, with the long rubbery nose and all.  Meanwhile, the Baraka-esque 2020 version is wonderfully nightmarish.  I'll admit the CGI looks a little cartoonish, but cartoony fits the tone of the film.  Both actresses do a great job hamming up the role, and while some viewers will find them annoying, that is the way the character was written in the original book.

Both movies have the same basic plot, and in both cases the thin plot feels stretched to fill a full-length movie.  Honestly, not a lot happens in the story.  The first act sets up the universe, then the movie really gets rolling when the witches have their meeting and turn the protagonist into a mouse, then it wraps up with the mouse-child using the witches' own potion against them.  The 1990 version had a Hollywoodized megahappy ending that pissed off author Roald Dahl, while the 2020's bittersweet ending is closer to that in the book.

But the main difference, the make-or-break difference between the two movies is the pacing.  I just find the 1990 version slow and boring.  The 2020 version, while pretty much showing the same events in the same order, manages to do so in a way that made me excited to see what happened next.

The only thing I didn't like about the 2020 version is the narration.  Chris Rock voices an older version of the main character, telling the story in retrospect.  While this narration sped up the movie's intro, beyond that the voiceovers felt like an unnecessary intrusion.  

Overall, I have to say that the 2020 version is a lot more fun.  But the younger set considers the 1990 version to be a cult classic, and I doubt the newer version is going to replace it any time soon.

Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix

I like to think I'm an RPG enthusiast, but I haven't played one in a very long time.  I just can't bring myself to start a 50+ hour game when I know I won't find time to finish it.  These days I'm more into games that don't require a commitment.  I'm a sucker for two things:  Button masher fighting games, and halfway decent kart racers.  

Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of the latter.  Of course the best kart racer starts with an "M", and requires a Nintendo system to play.  For those of us who don't keep up with the latest Nintendo systems, it's hard to find a kart racer of similar quality.  Impossible, actually.  But until I break down and buy a Switch, I'm making do with what's out there.

You wouldn't think my needs are hard to meet.  All I want is to race vehicles while throwing objects at each other, and the physics need to "feel right".  But that's the hard part, apparently.  The people who design budget kart racers just don't put the same effort into the physics as the people who design NASCAR/Formula-1 racing simulators.  You end up with a lot of games where driving doesn't feel much different than walking in an action game.

But it gets worse.  For a kart racer to really stick with us, my wife and I have to agree on the feel.  We've been playing Beach Buggy Racing for a couple of years now, and we're really itching for something new.  (Shameless plug:  Subscribe to KJ's Twitch Channel where we play at least a couple of times a week.)  We tried Crash Team Racing a while back, but it didn't click for us.

Most recently we tried Nickelodeon Kart Racers 2: Grand Prix.  It's not bad, but it's probably not going to replace Beach Buggy Racing in our household.  At least not yet.  

I never played the first Nickelodeon Kart Racers game, but all the reviews say it was terrible.  The recently-released sequel is considered a vast improvement, but it's still not getting stellar reviews.  

But here's the thing:  The biggest complaint I keep seeing in the reviews?  It rips off Mario Kart too much.  Seriously, why do reviewers assume that everyone already owns a Nintendo system?  I'm desperate for a Mario Kart rip-off.  For me, the plagiarism a feature, not a bug.  

NKR2 is a solid kart racer, despite what other reviewers are saying.  It has more than enough characters and tracks, it's colorful and fun, and you can tell a lot of love went into it.  It has unlockables galore, and every race gives you coins you can use to buy items, so it always feels like you're making progress.

The customization is pretty insane.  Before you race, you pick a driver, which also determines the shape of the car.  Then you pick three members of your pit crew, tires, engine, tailpipes, and paint job.  The first crew member determines your car's special weapon, and the other two crew members give you passive effects, like automatically getting a second item each time you pick up a power up.  There are a whopping 70 pit crew members to pick from, though most of them have to be unlocked.

It has a decent roster.  Not being ten years old, I was afraid that there wouldn't be enough characters I recognized.  However, its roster of 28 drivers spans several decades, including the Ninja Turtles, Ren & Stimpy, CatDog, Hey Arnold, The Last Airbender, Spongebob, Rugrats, and a few others.  Heck, the Ninja Turtles alone are enough for me.

It also has a decent number of tracks.  Eight cups, four tracks each, making thirty-two tracks total.  It has the standard types of tracks you see in every racing game, along with tracks themed after certain cartoons, and a few slime-filled Double Dare style courses.  It also has an arena mode with two arenas, a time trial mode, and a challenge mode where you complete challenges to unlock more goodies.

Some reviewers complained that the graphics aren't up to current gen, but honestly they're as good as I need a kart racer's graphics to be.  It has better graphics than Beach Buggy Racing, which, as I've mentioned, I've been playing weekly for more than two years.  

So it's better than people are giving it credit for.  Still, all is not perfect.  I have three complaints:

1. Drifting.  I'm not the only reviewer to mention this.  NKR2 tries so hard to copy Mario Kart's controls, but it just doesn't get drifting right.

2. Chaos.  Sometimes there's just too much going on.  Brightly animated courses, dripping slime, constant items flying by...  It's like driving through a neon circus.  Trying to figure out what's going on during the more frenetic races makes me feel old.

3. Physics.  It gets it a lot closer than some kart racers, but it still just doesn't "click" for me the way Mario Kart does.  It took me a few races to really get used to how much pressure I needed to put on the stick, and when I went to play Beach Buggy Racing again, it took a few races to unlearn NKR2 so I could get back in the BBR groove.  Also, even on the fastest setting, NKR2 doesn't feel as fast as I would like.

Despite those drawbacks, I still think NKR2 is a solid kart racer, easily worth $15 to $20.  Unfortunately, it's being sold for $40.  So if you like kart racing, I'd say add it to your wishlist, and hope it goes on sale.