Could Crossovers Save Superhero Movies?

So okay, dig it cool cats.

For at least thirty years, the superhero comic book industry has been a smelly morass of CROSSOVERS! Every year, Marvel or DC does a big thing that involves all the titles where they have to team up to fight a huge baddie or there’s some international crisis that all the heroes have to sit around a table for. It cheapens the writing of the individual books, by having the writers conform to guidelines set up for them by editorial. Stop punching that bank robber, Spidey! Tony Stark would like you to make some political statements and reveal your identity to the masses!

Now, movies don’t have that problem. There’s no continuity to deal with and screenwriters can generally just do what they like to tell the best possible story involving the characters they’ve been given. Now, this generally lead to maybe not a fault, but certainly a personal niggle in many superhero movies of the past decade. The stories were very contained. Very few cinematic superheroes ever saved the world. It was usually just them and a supervillain duking it out over some real or perceived slight the hero had inflicted upon the villain. And honestly? It was getting kinda stale.

This changed when in 2008 Jon Favreau and Kevin Feige decided the first IRON MAN movie could use a little post-credits sting where Samuel L. Jackson showed up as Nick Fury, asking Tony Stark if he knew about the Avengers Initiative. With a $200mil US opening weekend, it’s safe to say most people know who the Avengers are nowadays. In 2008? Not so much. Who were the Avengers? Why has Shaft lost an eye? Why did you make me sit through the credits? It didn’t even have Nickelback over them!

Nerd Alerts went off all over the world. Suddenly, you could identify the real dorks in movie theaters by the guys who would tell their friends/dates about WHAT THAT REFERENCE REALLY MEANT.

Cross-pollination continued with Robert Downey, Jr. appearing in THE INCREDIBLE HULK. Marvel was now steaming full course ahead with making the first ever SUPERHERO TEAM-UP MOVIE. But it was very important that people knew every hero, and knew beforehand that they were all in the same universe. They weren’t entirely sure how to do that, though.

In THOR, this resulted in a complete derail from the main plot when Thor got apprehended by SHIELD agents for a while. Do you remember that acronym and that unremarkable bureaucrat looking guy from IRON MAN?

Well here they are in THOR as we… what? You don’t. God, uh… what are we gonna? Let’s put Hawkeye in there! But we already shot the movie and Chris Hemsworth is doing other shit! God what do we doooo??? We can have him… almost take a shot at Thor? And people will be like… who is that mysterious archer? Why does the government employ an archer? He must be very good indeed if he is hired in an agency where everyone else has guns. This is a plot strand I will certainly remember.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER wasn’t weighed down as badly by needing to remind the audience that HEY HEY HEY this is taking place in a larger universe!!!, but it did end on a less beautiful note than it could have, just to fit Nick Fury’s by-then requisite cameo in.

Cut to: THE AVENGERS (or, AVENGERS ASSEMBLE as it is delightfully called in the UK. Directed by a guy who had mostly done television and one less-than-successful movie, produced by Marvel Studios, an outfit by now renowned for its penny-pinching, and the very first superhero crossover movie in blockbuster history, things were looking unsure.

But they pulled it off! AVENGERS is the best comic book movie since SPIDER-MAN 2 in terms of sheer Silver Age joyfulness. It feels BIG (despite the “localized” final battle) because you have the idea that momentous events are really happening that forces all these disparate players onto the same stage. Everyone has had their own movie(s), so they all come with a certain weight to them, aided by actors who’ve gotten to know their characters over several years. I must add that Mark Ruffalo, first-time Bruce Banner/Hulk, is the best cinematic iteration of the character so far, and it’s also his first outing. Good show! The Hulk is basically a big, angry puppy in this movie; complete with people he likes (Iron Man) and hates (Thor).

(No, seriously, Hulk’s dislike and subsequent treatment of Asgardians in this movie is THE BEST.)

Even the why-are-they-even-there ones (Hawkeye, Black Widow) get great little moments. At one point during the final battle, Iron Man shoots a repulsor ray at Cap’s shield, who deflects it into a Chitauri’s face. In any other superhero movie this would have been the big money shot of the fight. Here, it just happened in a panning shot with a bunch of other cool stuff happening in other places.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that the very concept of team-up movies is going to refresh the genre. Big part of the reason AVENGERS works is cuz of Joss Whedon, a dyed-in-the-wool comic book guy. But what are the best parts of the movie? The big stars and heroes bouncing off of each other, shooting the shit, making jokes, squabbling. One of the things Marvel Studios really has done consistently well over all its movies is casting. Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and now Mark Ruffalo all perfectly embody their characters. By getting the best guys from each movie into one movie and putting them in a team dynamic, you’re getting a whole bunch of fun on screen for free, even if the script wasn’t as good as the AVENGERS’ luckily was.

Movies aren’t comic books. There’s a new one every two years, not every month. And the most Marvel Studios movies we’ve had in a year was two, so they won’t be tripping all over each other like with their printed brethren. Now that the public is VERY MUCH AWARE that all these heroes exist in a shared universe thanks to the Avengers’ amazing success, you can focus on telling the story you wanna tell without advertising movies that are coming down the line.

And you know what you can do now?

Well, not with Spider-Man, cuz the movie rights to Spider-Man are with Sony and not Marvel/Disney, but Team-Ups man! You really think people will come to see a Black Widow/Hawkeye movie? It’ll just be a Bourne rip-off! But put in the Hulk and you’ve got people’s attentions AND a hell of a co-star.

Marvel Studios now has that power. They basically have a stable of celebrities. It’s up to them to realize that they can make superhero Rat Pack movies or just continue to have heroes cleaning up their own messes in climactic fights in nocturnal warehouses.

In which I tune mine Lyre to Kratos

Born of ashes and forged in war, the Spartan Kratos sought to become the greatest warlord the ancient world had ever seen. Savage after savage fell under the steel of the Spartan’s phalanxes. Until one day, the barbarian hordes united and brought destruction to Kratos’ armies.

As the would-be conqueror drew his last breath, time stopped. Ares, the god of war himself, had descended from Olympus with a proposal for Kratos. The Spartan would get demi-godlike powers to vanquish his foes, if he became the agent of Ares in the mortal realm.

Kratos agreed. Not only the barbarian armies, but those of Hellas fell to the resurrected warrior as well. Little did Kratos know what cruel hubris Ares had in store for him.

The fires of Olympus burning within Kratos’ soul, he set upon a city like so many others that had resisted him. Ignoring the warnings of an old crone that his doom lay in this very city, he defeated its forces and sacked it. But as he came out of the warrior’s frenzy after murdering two shadowy figures in a temple, he knew he was damned; for at his feet lay his own wife and daughter.

As the temple burned to the ground, the ashes of their burning bodies seared themselves into Kratos’ skin, making him like unto a man deceased. He became the creature known as the Ghost of Sparta, swearing to destroy Ares, whatever the cost.

In this, he was aided by Athena, who secretly sought to overthrow her out-of-control brother, but was forbidden to do so directly by Zeus, who abhorred Olympian in-fighting.

And here’s where I’m gonna stop the faux-bro video game style epic-speech. That is, in a nutshell, the basic premise of 2005’s PS2 game God of War. The basic gameplay then consists of you, as Kratos, imaginatively dispatching all manner of mythological beasties until you meet the big cheese himself. Whom you then murder, obviously.

Kratos then wants to toss himself off a cliff, as he has nothing to live for anymore. Unfortunately for him, it was all a big set-up! Athena saves him from crashing against the rocks below, and Zeus sets him up as the new god of war. The credits show imagery of war throughout the centuries, with a downcast Kratos presiding over it all.

Now, Kratos is a bit of a jerk in this story, but nothing out of the ordinary for Greek mythology. He does bad shit, overreaches, and pays for it.

It was while playing 2007’s God of War 2 (also on PS2) that I realized just how fucking hilarious Kratos was. You see, Kratos is a very shitty god of war. He just starts random shit because fuck everyone he’s depressed. When his armies are besieging Rhodes, Zeus himself puts a stop to it.

That’s right, the king of the Greek gods comes down from Olympus to stab you for being such a huge warmongering aggressive prick. Zeus, the guy who turns into a bull to go score with teenage girls. He thinks you are just too much. Let that sink in.

Descending into the Underworld, Kratos is rescued by the titan Gaia, who infuses him with the omg WRATH OF THE TITANS. The Olympians cast them down into this hellhole eons ago, and they’d love to get their vengeance on those smug white-clad sons of bitches and obviously Kratos is just the guy.

Sent back to Earth once more, Kratos’ mission is simple. The plot is perhaps the most pure distillation of “video game story” I’ve seen since the days of Pong and Frogger.

You are at the foot of a mountain. There is a man at the top. Kill him.

Kratos takes to this assignment with… some gusto.

The last guy is Helios, the sun god. After ripping off his head, you can use it as a lantern in dark areas. It screams EVERY TIME you equip it.

So basically throughout 2 and 3, you just violently murder everyone who even puts a little toe between you and Zeus. And why? Because Zeus thought you were TOO SHITTY AND VIOLENT AT YOUR JOB OF WAR GOD.

Anything Kratos does after the first game is essentially just a whiny toddler with super strength getting back at his dad for taking his toys away. He stabs, punches, yells and kicks his way to the top of Olympus to get his vengeance. Everything he does is so incredibly CRANKED UP TO 11 that it’s impossible to take seriously.

Check out the first few minutes for TC Carson lolling his way through voicing Kratos. Bonus: Linda Hunt, Harry Hamlin and Michael Clarke Duncan!

Kratos is essentially the quintessential personification of the entitled, impotent, privileged male. Kratos IS gamers.

Neil Gaiman could probably write a very interesting tale with the premise “Whatever happened to the Greek gods?”, and the answer would probably be fascinating, enchanting, whimsically dark, and ultimately kind of moving.

God of War answers that question with “A crazy guy stabbed them all a million times.”

Game of Thrones: A Primer

A lot of people seem to like HBO’s Game of Thrones. Strangely, a rather large portion of those people seem to also be completely baffled as to what’s going on at any given time. This usually afflicts those who are only starting the show, but it doesn’t entirely go away for most people, since they just keep ladling on new characters that you totally get the feeling you… should know? Maybe?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that showrunners Benioff and Weiss do a bad job at telling the story, it’s just that there’s simply so much of it that it becomes difficult to relay it all without lazy, sweeping fantasy voice overs. So guess what?

I’M GONNA GIVE YOU THOSE FANTASY VOICE OVERS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW

For centuries, Westeros was ruled by Dragon Kings/Queens. They had come from the East on their dragons and basically were like lol you fucking Westeros peasants we are the kings now. How many kingdoms you got? SEVEN? lololol let’s make that one (but confusingly still call it the seven kingdoms)!

Besides riding dragons, the dragon kings also fucked their siblings. It made them super weird(er). Eventually, the dragons died out, and incest became their only gimmick. Being a regular guy in Westeros under the Targaryens (that is the name of the Dragon Kings) was a real crapshoot! You could either have a Dragon Hitler ruling you, or a Dragon Mother Theresa. SHIT’S CRAY

Okay so here is a thing you need to know about Westeros. Being a “ward” is a thing. It was a thing in our Medieval times too! It basically meant that if a kid became a ward he/she was gonna get adopted without his parents being dead.

Instead, it meant that his biological parents really wanted to make nice with his newly adoptive parents. Maybe bio-parents did some bad shit, and the more powerful adoptive parents wanted to make sure they didn’t pull it again – or maybe it was even HAY U MAH DAWG HAVE ONE OF MY KIDS TO RAISE I GOT LIKE SIX OTHERS DUN WORRY

If you start the show at episode 1 of season 1, two of our main guys lived their youths as wards. Eddard “Ned” Stark (this guy):

And Robert I Baratheon (this guy):

“WHAAAAAA????? But these seem to be pretty big dawgs with a lotta JUICE?? I mean these are guys I recognize from the show and that one guy even from movies!” I might hear you say.

Here is the tale how they went from “hostage” kids (aka wards) to the BIG HBO DAWGS we meet them as.

Ned and Bob were raised by Jon Arryn. Pretty much a nice old but powerful guy so if you got a kid in with him, you had a rich and powerful friend! Here is a picture of  Jon Arryn from the show.

Yup, you see him EXACTLY ONCE – as a googly-eyed corpse on a slab in the pilot. Ned, Bob and Jon (who says fantasy names have to be hard!) kinda lived out their lives in Jon’s castle as well as they could under the reign of Aerys II Targaryen,

a particularly crazy Dragon King. Here is Jon’s castle aka the Eyrie btw! There’s a few scenes in it in season 1!

You may recognize it as the place where they lock up our favorite midget for a while!

King Aerys’ HAND (sorta like a Westerosi prime minister) was Tywin Lannister, like the richest guy in all the land. This is him!

Tywin’s son Jaime Lannister was in Aerys’ Kingsguard aka his SUPAR ELITE bodyguards. On the show, they’re the knights around the king that’s in all white like pimps. Tywin was pissed about that cuz the Kingsguard can’t take wife or land and his other two children were a WOMAN and a MIDGET! Here’s Jaime:

That’s that Prince Charming from SHREK looking motherfucker! Tywin would also have loved it if crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen

married his daughter Cersei.

But King Aerys was like LOL my son is a PRINCE son why the fuck would I marry him to your broke ass daughter???? WE DRAGONS

So Tywin was like come on!!! His only siblings are babies and the oldest one is a boy so how you gonna get heirs dude??? It’s gonna take like a million years!

King Aerys was still all fuck you but ultimately still made Rhaegar marry a non-sibling – but NOT Cersei! Some Southern princess called Elia Martell of Dorne whom he made two babies with.

Tywin, being the stone-cold pro that he is, didn’t say shit but ON THE INSIDE he was like ooohhh you platinum haired motherfucker I’m gonna get you back for this. And he would!

One day, Aerys held a tourney cuz they didn’t have HBO back then. Rhaegar hit it off with Ned’s hot sis Lyanna, and they eloped. Here’s a picture of Lyanna from the show:

That’s right, a statue on her fucking TOMB in Ned’s ancestral crib, Winterfell! On the show, Ned and Bob take a stroll down to the tombs to greet Lyanna’s grave and kinda talk about all this stuff – but since it’s so early on in the season, you barely even know who Ned and Bob are, never mind who this dead lady is!

Ned’s dad and his older brother went to court to complain, but Aerys was all LOLOLOL fuck you guys for acting like my son can’t do wtf he likes! and basically torched Ned’s dad and older brother alive as he giggled.

Bob, who was TOTES into Lyanna, convinced Ned (now Lord of Winterfell by default!) and foster daddy Jon Arryn to not take shit anymore, this was the last straw and those incestuous fucking ex-dragon riders have GOT to GIT GOT

Oh btw Ned also inherited his older brother’s wife, as happened in THOSE DAYS, one Catelyn Tully.

They got along well though and immediately made like a bunch of babies, as the pilot will attest. Once the Baratheon-Stark-Arryn armies started to really gain some ground, clever ass Tywin thought to hitch his daughter to the (probably) new King, Robert. Lyanna had died under mysterious circumstances while she was with Rhaegar, so Bob thought he might as well marry Cersei why not. The deal was made public once Robert smashed Rhaegar’s face in during a battle on Catelyn’s home turf. Catelyn’s daddy, Hoster Tully, thought he might as well hitch his remaining daughter Lyssa to the last unmarried guy in that rising triumvirate: Jon Arryn. The age difference wasn’t really thought about, and you could say that it resulted in LESS THAN OPTIMAL family circumstances. Here’s a picture of Cat’s sis Lyssa from the show (oh you’ll remember) including her creepy ass son Robin:

I try to keep this blog (visually) safe for work but anyone who’s seen the show knows what’s going on under that cloak!

Bob sent Ned to Storm’s End, the Baratheon family castle, pretty much the last bit of leverage the Targaryens held over Bob, to liberate it from their siege. Inside were his younger brothers Stannis

and Renly (a big gay hence the beautiful Photoshop filter).

Ned and his boys got smuggled in via a smuggler named Davos, claiming to be just sailing by carrying onions.

Ned and his men broke the siege, and Stannis made Davos a knight, now SER Davos Seaworth THE ONION KNIGHT. But also he cut off Davos’ fingers on one hand for being a smuggler! One good deed doesn’t wash out the bad! Nobody really likes Stannis. Except Davos, weirdly, who became super loyal after that and even carries his fingers around in a pouch around his neck. Seems like a weird derail, but Davos is a guy we’re gonna be following around!

So Bob and the boys march to the capital, King’s Landing. King Aerys knows he’s pretty much done for and on top of that, Kingsguard Jaime suddenly stabs the old man in the back! Goodbye last Dragon King! Hello KINGSLAYER Jamie Lannister!

An old Kingsguard knight spirits off Aerys’ remaining two babblies to another continent in the chaos. The babbies are named Viserys

and Daenerys (or Dany).

Tywin who is happy to get some payback on those dragon motherfuckers, lets one of his henchlords and his minions loose on the city – the 7 foot tall horse-decapitatin’ Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane. He kills Rhaegar’s widow Elia and her two babies EXTRA hard. And she wasn’t even a Targaryen!

It takes Ned and Bob’s arrival to calm shit down. Bob becomes King Bob, Ned’s seen enough war and just wants to go back home to manage his wintery business, and oldie Jon Arryn becomes Bob’s Hand.

Stannis gets sent to Dragonstone; a shitty, creepy, damp castle off the East coast of Westeros and historically the Targaryen ancestral home. Bob dresses it up as OMG that is SO BADASS and GLORIOUS that you get to own these motherfuckers’ old home, but everyone (including Stannis) knows that Bob just wants his strict no-fun having ass out of the way. The fact that it’s a castle as creepy, remote and unfun as Stannis = gravy! Renly gets a seat on the council.

Lord Tully (Catelyn and Lyssa’s dad) also has a suggestion for Bob’s new council – his young ward who’s always been super good with numbers and money and stuff, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish.

Petyr has a lot of frustrations to work out, seeing as how his lifelong (unrequited) crush Cat is married off to some honorable northman (and even his consolation prize Lyssa – requited but not actually wanted – is gone)!

Another bannerman-suggested guy King Bob employs is Mountain’s brother Sandor “the Hound” Clegane.

This scarred dude doesn’t like his baby-killin’ big bro, nor does he seem to really even like the guy he’s protecting – crown prince Joffrey that piece of shit. Joff often calls him DOG on the show but not in a friendly hip hop way. The Hound is NOT a knight – and he pretty much hates them because he always lived in the shadow of his asshole brother who is a knight but definitely not chivalrous.

Ned comes back to Cat finally, but he’s brought a little bundle of sorrow. A babbly he names Jon!

Awww come on Ned! The kids used to look up to you, what happened?

A few years pass in relative stability. Queen Cersei has three suspiciously blonde kids. But oh no! Trouble!

There’s an island group called the Iron Islands, just west off the coast of Westeros. They’re ruled over by House Greyjoy and are basically just a viking pirate cove. The Iron Islands boss, Balon Greyjoy, decides that without Targaryens, he can be king again like it was before the dragons I guess and just starts fucking up Stark-owned coastal towns.

But I guess he’s really dumb cuz Ned Stark is good buddies with King Bob! His sons all get slaughtered, and he’s forced to give up his youngest boy as a ward to Ned. This is Theon Greyjoy:

A guy who was REALLY GOOD at killing Greyjoys was one of Ned’s boys Jorah Mormont (right, obvs).

Jorah had just recently become Lord of his castle cuz his dad Jeor stepped down (awwww) and went to the Wall to live his last days out in honor. This is Jorah’s daddy – omg Jon Snow’s boss!

But that sweet pirate loot didn’t last forever, and Jorah’s high maintenance wife had expensive tastes. So Jorah sold some poachers into slavery – which Ned found out and exiled him. His wife left him, and he became a bit of a desert mercenary until King Bob’s spymaster Varys

basically sent him a letter going AY would you keep an eye out on those two weird albino dragon kids that might come and bite us in the ass later? Pay ya for it! Kthx!

Then one day Jon Arryn dies under mysterious circumstances, and Bob comes North hoping to rope Ned into being his new hand. He’s surrounded by Lannisters or people paid by Lannisters and he knows he can trust Ned! And that’s basically where the show starts.

I haven’t introduced the Stark kids, or King Bob’s kids, or the concept of the Wall since I think those things are pointed out well enough on the show. The Wall gets enough explanation, and the Stark kids are young enough so as to be “context-free”. They haven’t been married off yet, or gotten up to shit that every character knows about but the viewer doesn’t.

Again, a lot of this stuff is actually SAID on the show, but it’s usually spoken between two characters who pretty much assume most of the above as fact – and therefore aren’t very explanatory in their dealings about it. And with so many characters, viewers are already happy to know just WHO IS TALKING!

Hopefully, this was enlightening for both people new to the show and those who’ve been watching it since last year. Maybe I’ll do updated versions as the show runs and confuses. Until then!

VALAR MORGHULIS

wait am i supposed to know what that m

Full House, Full Memories

Disclaimer: this one’s gonna be pretty stream of consciousness.

FULL HOUSE was a show that ran in the early 90s about a widowed sportscaster and his three daughters. Four people is not very full, you might say, but there was also a stand up comedian for babies in the basement and a Greek exterminator/Jon Bon Jovi wannabe in the attic. Occasionally the neighbor girl that everybody hated came by too. But wait!

Greek Bon Jovi also later married a lady sportscaster and had twin boys! Now the house was really pretty full.

The madness of San Francisco!

I have some very vivid memories of FULL HOUSE, as this was one of my preteen must-watches. At one point I was very conflicted because some bastard had programmed it right up against the MIGHTY MORPHIN’ POWER RANGERS, and I was only able to watch this on Wednesdays.

I remember my mother angrily demanding to know whether or not Lady Sportscaster ever had to clean cuz LOOK AT HER in her spotless white clothes FFFFFFFFFFFF

I remember Greek Bon Jovi having a big hit in Japan with a song about the youngest daughter of Guy Sportscaster. But when they got to Japan they never showed anything but the hotel room, which was distinctly low-rent for a show that had totally gone to Hawaii and Disney world previously.

What a classic!

Speaking of the DisneyWorld episode, the plot was that Michelle cut in front of the line at something, stealing Stephanie’s (the middle sister) title of Princess For The Day. A big ass Genie from ALADDIN popped up and everything, and it was totally shot on location. I remember thinking this all very unfair to the other kids at the park, since Michelle and Stephanie were already on Full House, so leave some cool stuff for the plebe kids, huh?

JOEY GLADSTONE – hoo boy. The comedian who lives in the basement and whose entire range of material consists of either Popeye impersonations, Rocky & Bullwinkle impersonations and this:

I mean, I’m pretty sure babies can’t go to comedy clubs cuz they’re all open way past their bedtimes.

DJ, the oldest daughter had a boyfriend named Steve. He voiced Aladdin in the Disney movie, and he was also dressed up as Aladdin when they went to Disney World. That was a pretty good in-joke.

I remember a Full House episode where Danny promises DJ an appearance by McHammer, which the crowd finds uproarious and Uncle Jesse has to haughtily corrected him with "It's EMM SEE Hammer!" Scandalous behavior for a mid 90s gentleman! PLEASE HAMMER DON’T HURT ‘EM indeed.

But you could also learn stuff on Full House! It was where I learned who Little Richard and the Beach Boys were.

Greek Bon Jovi wasn’t always Greek though. Before he was Jesse Katsopolis, he was Jesse Cochran. I have no idea why that change happened. Post it in the comments below! He became super Greek after that, inviting several of his relatives from the old country to The Full House. There was a grampa that conveniently died so we could learn about death, and CUSSIN STAVROS (hilariously played by John Stamos himself), a sleazy Balki/Borat hybrid who got handsy with Lady Sportscaster so we could learn about sexual harassment. I think maybe Jesse punched him which, if he did, no doubt got a WOOOOOOOOOOOOO reaction from the studio audience.

Stephanie’s catchphrase pre-puberty was HOW RUDE like Jar Jar Binks. Toddler Michelle may also have had one but I only remember her swaggerin’ out of the room, leaving the audience in absolute hysterics.

The three bachelors sang Elvis Presley’s My Teddy Bear as a lullaby.

My memory of the last episode is Steve picking up DJ for senior prom, but that feels so anticlimactic it can’t be true. Which is of course a perfect place to end this post!

Mars Needs YOU!

I’ve often noticed with this blog that I only really get to writing quickly and easily when I’ve got something to shit on. I’ll write about TWILIGHT, I’ll write about SUCKER PUNCH, I’ll write about Vin Diesel needing to get outta the FAST franchise already.

But not today. Today, I speak to you, O My Dozens Of Readers, to tell you about JOHN CARTER. You probably haven’t seen it (yet), and that’s okay. Here’s why.

JOHN CARTER is based on a series of early 20th century books by Edgar Rice Burroughs (yeah, Tarzan dude) about a Confederate Civil War veteran transported to Mars where he has crazy adventures with green six-armed monsters and marries a space princess. Now, the first book was called A Princess Of Mars. People have been trying to get a movie made for decades (John McTiernan almost did in the early 90s, and Robert Rodriguez came close in the early 2000s), but the technology was either not yet completely there, or the money fell through.

Now, in 2012, we finally have a 250mil+ adaptation, a scant century after the book was first released. Produced by Disney and directed by Pixar guy Andrew Stanton (FINDING NEMO, WALL*E), the movie that’s in theatres now is a delight. Oh yeah, I can already hear you say, so why haven’t I seen it yet? I can recognize awesome when I see it!

Probably because you have no idea that it is awesome. You see, in 2011, Disney released MARS NEEDS MOMS, an apparently (I haven’t seen it) really shitty CGI cartoon that bombed big time. Shit man, this got suits at Disney to thinkin’. P-people don’t wanna see Mars movies, r-right? It can’t be cuz it was shitty, people watch shitty movies all the time! Yeah, yeah, that’s probably what happened! MOMS just bombed cuz people don’t wanna see Mar… Oh. Shit. We’re making another Mars movie. God, what are we gonna do??? It’s already deep in production! Oh! Oh! Oh! Let’s, like, never mention Mars in the advertising. The title’s gonna have to go too. Psssh, who the fuck wants to see JOHN CARTER OF MARS, right? JOHN CARTER, people will pay for that.

Interestingly enough, the last Mars movie to make decent money was TOTAL RECALL. This was twenty years ago though, and it had no “Mars” in the title, and starred the biggest movie star in the world at that time.

The trailers didn’t help any. By not focusing on “Mars” and strangely enough ignoring the “Civil War veteran” angle as well, people just thought it was a weird, blandly named STAR WARS/AVATAR rip-off. As a friend of mine said:

“[JOHN CARTER] sounds like a movie that stars Denzel or Cage, but one of those movies that you always forget they made when you’re naming movies they starred in, you know?”

Initial reports of box office showings have already been pretty bad, with CARTER’s US debut barely beating out last week’s winner THE LORAX for the number 1 spot. But you know what, that’s fine. When a movie underperforms in its first week, but sorta comes back in subsequent weeks, that’s what gets interpreted as good word-of-mouth. If you’re gonna see CARTER, it’s best that you give Disney the impression you heard from someone who saw it that it was actually pretty good, and that was what swayed you, not the shitty marketing campaign.

Why the fuck would I go and see it though brah?

OKAY ASSHOLE HERE IS A LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE JOHN CARTER AWESOME

• JOHN CARTER is an earnest movie with lots of heart. It’s never winking at the audience, and the jokes it makes are jokes made by characters. No one ever comments on how dumb the situation is, or how silly an outlandish character looks. The movie just goes with its silly premise. When two green, tusked aliens get mad at each other, they literally go GRRR GRRR and butt heads and clank tusks together like mad elephants (scene pictured above). It looks silly as fuck, and my audience was giggling, but the music was telling us it was GRAVE and OMINOUS. I love that!

• JOHN CARTER is the anti-“STAR WARS prequel”. The acting in JC is broad, over-the-top, passionate; in short, perfect for such a big story. It is literally the opposite of the STAR WARS we’ve known for the past ten years, with emotionless robots reading boring lines. People yell and laugh and scream and hug and slap each other on the head for being dumbshits.

• JOHN CARTER’s effects work has CGI and mo-cap complementing amazing location shooting. Even though much of Mars, or Barsoom, as the natives call it, is desert-y, there’s constantly a sense of discovery, wonder and awe at seeing/learning new things about the place.

• JOHN CARTER stars Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, the aforementioned space princess. She is a woman in her early thirties with the tiniest bit of belly fat. She’s also absolutely gorgeous, and it’s kinda sad that this is a Thing That Should Be Remarked Upon. But good on you, Disney, for not casting a skinny 21-year-old in what I assume you wanted to be a franchise starter.

• JOHN CARTER is the kind of movie where a planet’s centuries-long civil war can be totally resolved by a Guy That Can Jump Real Far And Punch Things Good. Also, the bad guys were winning because GHOSTLY Mark Strong gave Barbarian King Dominic West a way awesome blue space laser that West mounts on his arm and shoots people with from his ship.

• JOHN CARTER is a bit slow to get going (in fact, I’d have scrapped the opening scene on Mars altogether), but it really excels at character relationships. The movie looks and sounds good, but unlike AVATAR, it actually makes you care about all of its principal characters the way any (good) Pixar movie would. Carter himself needs to shake off his BROKEN MAN VETERAN thing throughout the movie, and becomes pretty badass gradually. Dejah is smart, capable, sexy, and (dare I say it) someone little girls should find pretty cool. Tars Tarkas and Sola, Carter’s two green Thark friends have their own little personal subplot that resonates quite well with not much time devoted to it. And then there’s Woola. Pretty impossible not to love him.

I could go on, but this is already one of my longer entries. Point is, if you like movies like STAR WARS (you know, how it used to be) or INDIANA JONES (you know, before…), you will absolutely love JOHN CARTER. It’s a story seemingly belonging to another time and place, like its ‘”Suthun gennuwmun” main character. A story of adventure and discovery and chivalry and romance and six-legged dogs with top speeds of 250 mph.

“Evangelical” is not a mode I often assume when talking about a movie, but I, for one, would love to revisit Barsoom with the same people in front of and most definitely behind the camera. I hope I’ve managed to convince you as well.

Mass Effect Memories: 5 Badass Moments

With the release of its third installment this week, Mass Effect madness is hitting a fever pitch on the interwebs. Follow me and Matt down Memory Bank Lane and reminisce about the 5 most distinct, amazing, badass moments this side of Phoenix Massing. It’ll tide you over until EA fixes that face-importin’ bug.

5) Shepard, first human SPECTRE (ME)

Fairly early into the first game, you expose Saren for being a crooked ass SPECTRE. Despite his dastardly machinations and bald faced lies, Shepard manages to convince the council to throw him out on his Turian ass and in the meantime instate the very first human SPECTRE (aka Space Jack Bauer). It's the first in a series of expertly manipulative moments that give the player the idea that (s)he is pretty much the most important motherfucker in the universe, together with the appropriate pomp and circumstance to go with it, ending with the first launch of the Normandy. Are those two moments I smushed into one? I can do that, I'm a SPECTRE!

Hey! Listen!

4) Fuck you, Shadow Broker! (ME2 DLC)

Shepard has infiltrated the Flying Storm Cloud Castle of one of the most powerful and elusive information brokers in the galaxy. After having murdered your way through the Broker's elite assholes (in some cases making their corpses fall into an endless chasm, Wile E. Coyote style), you come face to face with the man himself. Although man may be too kind a word! Shepard, being the übermensch that (s)he is, immediately deduces what could have transpired to turn Space Bowser into Space Rupert Murdoch. The imposing creature rises up from the desk to ominous music, revealing an even bigger hulk than was previously imagined, with high tech shields to boot! But in an awesome display of why YOU, THE PLAYER, are fucking awesome, Shepard simply cracks his knuckles, goes "Let's do this the hard way, then," and simply decks the asshole. YES.

I MUST BREAK YOU

3) The Terminator Babbly (ME2)

At the end of ME2, Shepard and his crew have made the horrible discovery of exactly why the Collectors were abducting whole colonies of humans to their secret lair in the galactic core "where nothing can live." Reminding you that the MASS EFFECT franchise is a series of complex, human interactions, but also incredible pulp silliness. Were the Collectors torturing the humans for strategic information to aid their Reaper overlords? NOPE! They were grinding them into a fine mulch for their precious GENOME JUICE (mind on mah money and mah money on my mind) so they could make a HUMAN REAPER. And yes, it looks exactly like a Skynet foetus. It's ridiculous and retarded and amazing and awesome. I mean, were they just gonna attack the Citadel with a huge Beastie Boys robot?

2) Mordin of Penzance (ME2)

Bioware is well-known for their fantastic character interactions. In fact, a running gag among gamers is that flagship titles like Mass Effect and Dragon Age are nothing more than extremely elaborate dating sims where, instead of taking Mitsuko out for Ramen, you kill darkspawn with Morrigan to get in her pants. But it's not just the dating side of things! Bioware consistently manages to make the majority of NPCs interesting and worth talking to, even if they don't have quests. Fast-talking geneticist Mordin Solus is a pragmatist first and foremost, but a hell of an operette singer if you get to know him!

Shepard really should have clapped after that.

1) SHEPARD COMIN'! FUCK YO GRAVITY! (ME)

A Reaper is laying waste to the Citadel. The skies are aflame. The Council may be reduced to molecules at this point. Your nemesis and former colleague Saren is high up in the Council Tower and has overridden all nearby mass relays, effectively cutting off all possible reinforcements. Even as you race to confront him, he cuts the power and artificial gravity, trapping you in an elevator about a mile down from where you need to be. In perhaps the most cinematic moment of the series, Shepard simply goes "Fuck that", opens the elevator and just walks to the top of the building, blasting bad guys all the way. Seriously, if a movie ever happens, the gravity shifting and Shepard walking out of the elevator, with a space war brewing around him would be a HELL of a trailer-ending "whoa" moment. And it's just such a perfect moment of Shepard doing shit on his own terms, thinking outside the box, giving you that whole "baddest crew of the galaxy" feeling.

Moment’s at 4:40.

Here's hoping ME3 provides us with many more of these moments.

I chose the FemShep trailer cuz FemShep is best Shep.

Vin Diesel: the Millstone around Fast & Furious’ Neck

Let’s flash back a decade and change.

Yours truly was a fresh-faced teenager with hair on his face that he totally needed to shave once in a while. He’d also recently started reading up on movies in development (thank you, prequels). At one point, he read about a film called THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS. It was a car movie with no one in it that he knew, and the article (I’ve even forgotten the publication) deemed it a [paraphrasing] “spunky low-budget, much more charming than the soulless likes of GONE IN 60 SECONDS!”

“Sounds great!” I thought. I still do love a good chase movie. Skepticism about the unknown quantity that was, well, pretty much everyone involved aside, I was ready for this movie to wow me. It didn’t.

Now before we continue, here’s some “Millennial Teenage Cliques in Eastern Belgium 101”. For the purposes of this demographic outtake, “immigrant” means Mediterranean Person (Italian, Turk, Greek, Spanish, …)

Child of immigrants:

We had very few actual black people round our parts, no doubt to every reader’s great surprise.

Child of locals:

Luckily, we didn’t have any killer clowns around either.

My friends and I (mostly locals, I was a rather unorthodox Immigrant Child) went for the former, whose cartoony bullishness and exaggerated thuggery entertained us greatly.* The latter sort of music just seemd so dour and joyless: shouting and roaring punctuated with the occasional bout of self-pity (other bands that fell into the Slipknot mold: Papa Roach, Linkin Park, etc).

So an apparently badass, hip hop flavored, out-of-nowhere surprise hit was coming summer 2000! I still remember the exact moment I gave up on liking the movie.

About 45 minutes or so into it, Paul Walker is accepted into Vin Diesel’s racing crew and gets invited to a barbecue. I was already pretty grumpy at this point, since the film had only featured straight quarter-mile races and no awesome car chases. But mostly it was Paul Walker trying to impress Diesel/Diesel’s sister/Diesel’s crew of PG-13 hardasses**.

So at this BBQ, the autistic (I think? He’s kinda shy and awkward and they make it a point that “he can only talk to engines”) mechanic is bid by Vin to say grace. But you see, he is a special boy! So he thanks God for lugnuts and suspensions and NOS tanks and and and… I think I turned into Tom Cruise in MINORITY REPORT chasing my eyes down the aisle after they rolled out of my skull. Of course everyone at the table is SUPER CHARMED by this and they’re all like “Haha yeah those things are great we like racing so that is an apt prayer of thanks! *shoulderpat*”

So they were keeping any action from me, the rating guaranteed no profanity or nudity, and here was a scene completely dedicated to what a CLOSE-KNIT CHRISTIAN FAMILY UNIT the Torretto Crew really is.

Couple of years later, Vin Diesel returns in a different franchise, this one called xXx about some badass superspy. Alright, sweet, I plonk my ass down in the theater.

Opening scene: a spy is murdered at a Rammstein concert! I frown, as Rammstein is generally known in my environment as “pretty hip with the local racists”. But fuck it, it’s the bad guys’ intro, so I can dig it. Next scene: an expensive car pulls up. The camera shoots it all from low angles and shit, super-fetishy. Rims, exhaust, … bumper sticker with “Skateboarding IS a crime.”

That made me grin. “Skaters”, in the experience of my friends and I, were the kids who went for the Slipknot, who wore baggy pants but didn’t actually know how to skateboard, who were just full of teen suburbanite rage but didn’t really have much to complain about. This movie was promising me an action hero who didn’t abide by such whiny babblies! Right up until… it’s revealed that the car is actually owned by some grumpy old man senator and our hero XANDER CAGE pranks him somehow (involving a snowboard and parachute, I think). This movie lost me considerably quicker than F&F did.

Diesel was now, and has since been, a total dorkbag in my eyes. Contrast this to Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, whose first starring role I witnessed was in THE SCORPION KING. A pretty awful movie, at the level of quality of any Xena/Hercules two-parter, but Johnson was just bursting with charisma. He was having fun, not taking shit too seriously, and most importantly, I didn’t feel like he was so obviously pandering to a demo. I guess he was pandering to the wrestling demo by… fighting? But come on, it’s an action movie.

Diesel left the F&F franchise, only to return with the 4th instalment in 2009, nearly a full decade after its debut (barring a small cameo in TOKYO DRIFT). The second and third movies were campy fun, while the fourth movie was a dreary bore with characters mostly moping around being broody.

In 2011, FAST FIVE was one of the most fun movies of the year! What happened? Well, let me tell you that they certainly didn’t find some magical Diesel-B-Good potion: the subplot concerning his character Dom Toretto is (again) one of grief for a character we hardly knew, much less cared about. Meanwhile, Rock is turning half of Rio upside down, intimidating crooked cops and eyebrowing the shit out of anyone who disagrees with him. Tyrese is making vagina jokes. Two Jar Jar Binks latinos fall over a lot. But Vin’s the star! Somehow!

At one point in F5, Diesel and Walker go and pick up a car from the underground Rio racing circuit. The place pretty much looks like a neon-colored rap video from 2002. “Just like old times, huh?” growls Vin. It does, and it’s almost embarrassing***. Walker’s character is a married man, a soon-to-be dad, and Vin has… shall we say, never been super believable when asked to express desire towards a female. What are you guys smiling at?!

Mr. Moritz, ditch the Diesel. Walker and Tyrese work great together. The Rock works great with anyone. We just wanna see palm trees, explosions, girls in bikinis, car chases … we don’t really care about a monolithic and –syllabic grump mourning… anything.

Just give Vin his space movies and keep him out of everything else. I’ll gladly go and see them if it means I don’t have to suffer him in something I might potentially enjoy. I clamor for this… you might even say that…

om nom nom

*Disclaimer: there definitely was a very large, mostly-immigrant “2pac-is-god-even-though-we-can’t-understand-most-of-his-rhymes” category that made the Local Kids understandably skeptical of the whole genre.

**Liking hip hop made you very acutely aware of censorship. PG-13 is fine for any action/adventure movie, but it becomes really glaring when the movie is set in South Central or wherever, and the soundtrack is constantly playing RADIO EDITS of rap songs.

***Speaking of embarrassing, (white) Torretto crew member Vince keeps calling Walker a “busta” as a callback to when they originally met in the first movie, a term I’m not entirely sure is very current hip hop terminology anymore.