Movies are awesome

[andersonh1]

All-Star Superman
The animated adaption of Morrison and Quietly's series gives us essentially the silver-age version of Superman's last days of life, as Lex Luthor figures out a way to kill him by overexposing his cells to sunlight. The series gets a lot of acclaim from fans, and I think the reason why may be that All-Star features a Superman who loves his life and avoids angst, even with the knowledge of his impending death. He flies to distant planets in weeks, arm-wrestles Samson, fights off lizard-men invasions from the center of the earth, and keeps a baby sun-eater in his fortress of solitude. All of this makes for a fun series of incidents as Superman ties up all of the loose ends in his life. It's a fun movie to watch, with some classic moments, such as Lois with super-powers for 24 hours, or Superman disgused as Clark Kent, having to stop the Parasite and a prison riot without giving away his secret identity. Highly recommended.

[andersonh1]

I dunno. If the Guardians had said yes, and Hal failed, what do they really lose? It seems like Parallax's only real motivation is going after Abin Sur, and since he's dead he uses Hal as a surrogate since he's the successor. It feels weak, and Parallax has almost no motivation besides I AM HUNGRY, HUNGRY FOR FEEEEAAAARRR! He's not a cosmic threat, he's a boring non-villain. He's like Unicron in TFTM, whose sole purpose seems to be "I want to eat Cybertron. Why? I don't know either."

It's explained quite clearly just who Parallax is and why he's acting as he does. The Guardians explain most of it to Sinestro in one scene. Parallax is essentially a Guardian who tried to harness the power of fear rather than willpower, and was corrupted by it. Abin Sur captured this Guardian and imprisoned him, implying that this was a recent event. The Parallax-Guardian escapes and goes looking for revenge on both Abin Sur and the Guardians. Consuming individuals en route causes Parallax to grow in size and power... note how small he is in the first scene, and how much larger he is later. He only comes to Earth because he becomes aware that Hal has Abin Sur's ring. Otherwise he'd have kept on eating aliens until he thought he was powerful enough to destroy the Guardians and the Green Lantern corps.

It boils down to revenge. That's his motivation. Simple but effective.

[Onslaught Six]

It's still a pretty shallow motivation, I guess, but it's comics so I dunno what I was expecting...

[Sparky Prime]

It's still a pretty shallow motivation, I guess, but it's comics so I dunno what I was expecting...

Haven't you ever seen any crime drama's? Revenge is a common motivation for a lot of bad guys, regardless of the medium.

[Dominic]

It is not limited to fiction actually. Just sayin'......

[andersonh1]

X-Men 2 and 3

I'm not really much of a Marvel comics fan, but I've never failed to enjoy the movies featuring their characters. Up until recently I'd only seen a few: Spider Man 1 and 2, and both Hulk movies. My wife bought me the second and third X-Man movies for Christmas, and I finally watched them this past week. I was somewhat surprised by how much I enjoyed both, since I have zero interest in the X-Men and Wolverine (hence the fact that it took me seven months to pop these in the DVD player). I'm sure they're a long way plot-wise from the comics, but for someone only passingly familiar with some of the characters and concepts, I found each one presented in the movie easy enough to identify and understand. Each movie has a lot of characters on both sides, and yet it keeps them distinct. I expected Wolverine to get the most screen time as Marvel's Most Popular and Overexposed CharacterTM, and I wasn't disappointed. But if anything, Hugh Jackman underplays him and makes him sympathetic and likeable. And of course, the whole thing is elevated by the presence of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, two grand old British actors who are always enjoyable to watch.

So yeah, some Marvel comics movies were very much enjoyed by this non-Marvel reader. Enough so that I'll have to go look into the other movies that I haven't seen, particularly Iron Man which I'm told is one of the best of the bunch.

[Onslaught Six]

I saw Cowboys & Aliens. I promised I'd go into my main flaw with the movie here, so I'm doing that. There will be spoilers but I'll keep major ones in tags.

As a summer popcorn flick, Cowboys & Aliens is actually awesome. It makes a premise with its name alone and it totally delivers. We didn't really see much in any of the trailers so I was worried this was going to be kind of a cop-out think where the aliens chase Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford for two hours and then we see one alien at the end. This thankfully doesn't happen and we get to see plenty of them. The human characters (well, most of them) are all well-developed and all the major characters have their own awesome moments (although there's a subplot between the preacher

Spoiler

who dies about a half hour or so in

and the doctor about the doc basically not believing in religion that never really gets resolved*). Everyone acts their part and the movie 'looks' great. The alien designs even manage to be mostly original in a world where alien designs are really easy to come by--they kind of resemble a cross between the Krogan and Turians from Mass Effect, in that they're very bulky and topheavy but also still very fast. They actually kind of look like the Cloverfield monster, too. (And unlike that thing, we actually get a lot of really good looks at these.)

I have two main problems. First off, we're never really given any significant motivation for why the aliens are on Earth. There's a woman

Spoiler

who, it turns out, is part of another alien species who can apparently shapeshift

who acts as an exposition machine who tells the good guys that the aliens are after gold. When they ask why the fuck aliens want gold, she just says "It's as rare to them as it is to you." That doesn't answer anything! Why do they need it? Humans use it as currency. Is that what they're doing? When they get inside the aliens' hideout, we see they're actually melting down all the gold they're stealing, but we're never given an explanation why they need it, just that it's apparently rare to them also. Is it an energy source? Does it power their spaceships? Do they eat it? Is it ammo for them? Why do they need it?

Which, naturally, leads me into my next point: The entire ending is played entirely straight, and nothing is really learned from the end of it. The cowboys don't see the way the aliens are invading their land as an allegory for how they're overtaking the Native American's land. (Which, by the way, a bunch of them show up to help the cowboys 2/3s of the way through the movie. There's a lot of well-done tension there but it never quite gets resolved to my liking.) We don't get any kind of real exposition for what they're doing here, or anything about them, besides from the mouth of the Exposition Girl.

Spoiler

Also, we never see what she actually looks like. We only really know she's an alien because she dies, they burn her body, and she comes back to life from the flames, and then tells us "Yeah, I'm a different alien."

Exposition Girl takes Daniel Craig's alien bracelet cannon (which is awesome in every scene it's in) and can apparently blow up the aliens' spaceship with it

Spoiler

sacrificing herself in the process

. Why can it do this? We're never told. She simply knows how to do it. Can all of the bracelets do this, or is it just the one Daniel Craig ended up with? Dunno.

Here's what I would have liked to see instead: The woman takes Daniel Craig's bracelet cannon thing...

Spoiler

and then reveals that she's one of the aliens they've been fighting the whole time. She's their leader. She took on a human form to seduce Daniel Craig and convince him to give her the bracelet cannon because, with it, he's the only one who can actually do any real harm to the aliens.

Then I guess Daniel Craig could shoot her and blow up the spaceship. That'd be a little bit better! At least then we would have 'something' interesting in the end besides just...cowboys killin' aliens. I mean, it looks cool but we learn nothing.

Another plot twist that would have worked: Daniel Craig gets into the spaceship and 'meets their leader,' who can speak English. Or maybe even speaks telepathically, that'd be neat! And Daniel Craig is all "Why the fuck are you here?" and he could have been all "We're just trying to survive. These other aliens destroyed our planet and we're just looking for a way to survive." "What, by coming into a place you don't belong and killing all the people who live there?" "Isn't that what you guys are doing to the Indians?" "Oh fuck, you're right." That would simultaneously make everything the aliens (and the cowboys) have done end up in a much different light; and also the aliens that wiped out their planet could be

Spoiler

the race that Exposition Girl is part of.

*And that's another thing! At the end, everybody's just like "Welp, that spaceship is blown up, everything's great!" There's no discussion about what the fuck everyone just saw. There's nobody reasoning that maybe there really isn't a God anymore, or wondering if those things are out in space, what the hell else is out there? Which would be a decent sequel hook.

So yeah. Overall my problems with it approach something more like "I wish the plot ended more interestling." I just feel like, with a movie that's already taking a perfectly straight trope (cowboy movie) and throwing aliens into it, you can stand to take a chance on an ending that isn't basically Humanity Rules And Aliens Suck. It's a missed opportunity. I still recommend the movie, though!

[Sparky Prime]

When they ask why the fuck aliens want gold, she just says "It's as rare to them as it is to you." That doesn't answer anything! Why do they need it? Humans use it as currency. Is that what they're doing? When they get inside the aliens' hideout, we see they're actually melting down all the gold they're stealing, but we're never given an explanation why they need it, just that it's apparently rare to them also. Is it an energy source? Does it power their spaceships? Do they eat it? Is it ammo for them? Why do they need it?

Gold is one of the least reactive solid chemical elements, and it's a good electrical conductor, making it very useful for all sorts of technological applications. NASA uses gold for a number of things in spacecraft, such as in the aforementioned electronics, but also a gold-coated polyester film on the space craft to help stabilize the temperature as well as a gold lubricant given organic lubricants would break down from exposure to radiation in the vacuum of space. Being a highly technologically advance race capable of interstellar space travel, it would make sense if they also used gold for a number of technological applications.

[Dominic]

Why do we need an explanation for why the aliens want it. Maybe they have utilitarian reasons like Sparky describes. Or, maybe they want it for space bling. Or, maybe some other reason. They are aliens who are marauding on Earth. Their motives are less important than how the main characters dispatch them.


And, I saw....

Rise of the Planet of the Apes:
The title is a bit misleading, as the uprising shown is more of an undermining. The movie retcons some of the earlier "Ape" movies. But, it does flow in to the original. There are a few heavy handed "look how bad these people are" moments, but over-all the movie does a good job of presenting the apes as rational, instead of as monsters. Actually, considering that the bulk of the apes in the movie are chimps, they are actually very gentlemanly in their conduct. There are a few stupid action movie bits, though far less than one would expect of the genre.

Misc thoughts:
-I am not sure if the pattern in Caesar's window was an Easter Egg. Anybody else notice it?

-One guy sitting next to me *really* enjoyed a few scenes a little too much. He was laughing and laughing and laughing during the uprising scenes.

Grade: B/C Worth seeing.


Dom
-seriously. The laughter was a bit disturbing.

[Onslaught Six]

Unrelated note: Who's seen the trailer for Battleship?! It played before Cowboys & Aliens last night. It started off and I swear, me and my girlfriend were like "Wait, is this the Top Gun remake?" but then we realized it was more about naval warfare than anything else. Then the mysterious f'in alien ships started coming out (which leads me to another point--EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE TRANSFORMERS NOW.) and everything went nuts and then right on the screen--BATTLESHIP. I don't think I've laughed that hard since I saw that trailer for that awesome movie where Hugh Jackman trains a robot to fight.

When they ask why the fuck aliens want gold, she just says "It's as rare to them as it is to you." That doesn't answer anything! Why do they need it? Humans use it as currency. Is that what they're doing? When they get inside the aliens' hideout, we see they're actually melting down all the gold they're stealing, but we're never given an explanation why they need it, just that it's apparently rare to them also. Is it an energy source? Does it power their spaceships? Do they eat it? Is it ammo for them? Why do they need it?

Gold is one of the least reactive solid chemical elements, and it's a good electrical conductor, making it very useful for all sorts of technological applications. NASA uses gold for a number of things in spacecraft, such as in the aforementioned electronics, but also a gold-coated polyester film on the space craft to help stabilize the temperature as well as a gold lubricant given organic lubricants would break down from exposure to radiation in the vacuum of space. Being a highly technologically advance race capable of interstellar space travel, it would make sense if they also used gold for a number of technological applications.

But none of that's really gone into. Harrison Ford's character even points this out! "That's ridiculous. What are they gonna do with it? Buy something?"

I just wish it was explained a little more, is all. Even if the Exposition Girl outright said, "I don't know why they want it either, it's just really rare," then that would at least handwave it away. As it is, Exposition Girl is just very vague about it. (After all, the cowboys don't know all that about gold. They don't even have electricity.)

Why do we need an explanation for why the aliens want it. Maybe they have utilitarian reasons like Sparky describes. Or, maybe they want it for space bling. Or, maybe some other reason. They are aliens who are marauding on Earth. Their motives are less important than how the main characters dispatch them.

One could easily say the same about the Transformers films, and I don't think any of us would like that very much...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes:
The title is a bit misleading, as the uprising shown is more of an undermining. The movie retcons some of the earlier "Ape" movies. But, it does flow in to the original. There are a few heavy handed "look how bad these people are" moments, but over-all the movie does a good job of presenting the apes as rational, instead of as monsters. Actually, considering that the bulk of the apes in the movie are chimps, they are actually very gentlemanly in their conduct. There are a few stupid action movie bits, though far less than one would expect of the genre.

I want to see this just because of how ridiculous it looks. Also, I can't ever take James Franco seriously as an actor. He hammed it up in Spider-Man 3, and then there was Pineapple Express and Green Hornet...