I didn't care for it, really. I went in hoping for a new, modern age Black Hawk Down, but this shit wasn't anywhere close to BHD's greatness. Mark Wahlberg can't grow a full beard to save his life, and it's just jarring to watch him taking orders from Taylor Kitsch, a guy 20 years his junior.

I mean, some of the forest battle scenes are legitimately pretty good, but then some of them just look incredibly fake and CGI. Probably because they were.

Look at this screengrab. It looks completely green screened. And the sun is apparently shining like it's a Lifetime movie.

Peter Berg unfortunately overplays the important scenes and makes them completely overdramatic and glossy, when what was needed was a strong dose of realism. Look at an auteur like Paul Greengrass, who always treats the story as a real life event and can weave together a satisfying and grounded narrative that rings true with authenticity. Berg doesn't have that self restraint and this leads to more and more empty spectacle that tears through one's suspension of disbelief.

The tumbling-down-the-mountain scenes are a perfect example. Now obviously, this really happened, so I'm not questioning that at all. But the way it's filmed and presented in the movie is so over the top and exaggerated that it turns what must've been a grueling ordeal into something akin to comedy. Time after time, we watch these men hurling themselves off the mountain and apparently hitting every single boulder on the way down, with gruesome sound effects of bones breaking. After a certain point, the overkill sets in and the audience starts getting the feeling that they're watching a Looney Tunes cartoon, because how could you possibly live after so many falls and hits? Any trace of realism is gone and you're no longer able to feel for the men, because it's all been so overblown.

When the Chinook gets taken down by the RPG, it was a nice special effects shot. But you don't really feel that much for the men onboard, because you haven't gotten to know them. Eric Bana is pretty much playing the same character from BHD, but we get even less screentime and dialogue to know him. And then there's the rookie, who's just... the rookie. So those two die but it leaves very little impact because the movie hasn't really fleshed them out and made them characters to care about.

Did I get sad and teary at the end when they showed the montage of the real life Navy SEALs? Oh sure, absolutely. Those warriors are amazing and I couldn't thank them enough for their service. I just wish they'd had a better movie to honor them.

3.5/10

Well, just finished Old Man Logan. Umm. It's dark. It's got that twisted Mark Millar sensibility to that. I don't understand why he felt like adding in that incest angle to it, other then hey... it's something fucked up and gross and shocking. I guess we've come to expect as much from Millar, and he's just rising to the expectation.

But as a future dystopian tale, it really doesn't rank up there with TDKR or Kingdom Come. Millar doesn't try and weave anything profound or thematically rich into the story. There aren't even any internal narration boxes, from what I noticed. It's much more of a simple yarn, with some shock value. The emotional payoff, where you finally discover why Logan gave up his claws, is actually effective and completely surprising. It does satisfactorily explain why someone that violent would turn around and become a pacifist for 50 years.

I did enjoy it and would be interested in seeing a sequel series, if only to see what other twisted developments Millar would come up with for this Marvel Universe.

Oh boy. Just watched Godzilla last night, and I have to admit… the movie left me pretty underwhelmed. There was a great opportunity to finally make an American Godzilla film that would really show off the appeal of the Toho movies, but I can’t say they got it here. The movie we got from Gareth Edwards seems much more interested in playing up the human drama, which is laughable, and cockteasing the audience to the point of frustration and annoyance.

So the movie starts and Bryan Cranston’s wife inevitably dies. Besides being a complete waste of Juliet Binoche, the whole thing felt incredibly heavy and overwrought. This is the first fifteen minutes of the movie, guys… I don’t think it’s really a good time to break out the water works just yet? I mean, the torture and angst on Cranston’s face is tough to take, and you’re just wondering why they’re leading off with something this draining and tragic right from the beginning. There’s something to be said for giving a movie some gravitas, but this went a little overboard. The audience isn’t really sunk into the movie world just yet and you’re already trying to yank vigorously on our heartstrings? It felt a bit too artificial and needy to my sensibilities. And the whole sequence itself looked rather silly, as Juliet Binoche is being chased down hallways by this cloud of radiation that seems to have a mind of its own. For me, it harkened back to Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow, where you had Jake Gyllenhaal being pursued through a museum by this sinister mist of… freezing temperatures. Of course, I also started wondering exactly why a heavy duty containment door at a nuclear power plant would have a structurally weak transparent window to look through? That doesn’t really seem like a terribly good idea for providing maximum protection.

Now, Bryan Cranston is reliably great and gives a good energetic performance for… ya know, the first 30 minutes of the movie. He’s stomping around angry and confused and delivering delirious diatribes like someone’s taken off with all his meth money, and it feels legitimately serious. We’re supposed to care about what’s going on, and we really have no choice but to, because the camera’s all up in Cranston’s grill showing him gnashing his teeth angrily and spitting vitriol every which way but loose. So that’s fine and all, but his storyline doesn’t actually go anywhere. I mean, it bridges the gap between the 15 years and leads to the movie’s revelations about what actually happened, but his death is abrupt and seemingly senseless and leaves us with incredibly limp characters for the remainder of the film’s running time. We were all invested in him and his tortured guilt and now that’s all thrown away by the script. It feels incredibly lame and unfulfilling and seems to be a foreshadowing that this movie intends to tease the audience with hints of greatness that never fully resolve satisfactorily.

Aaron Taylor Johnson now becomes the main protagonist and uhhhh… I found his on screen presence somewhat lacking. He seems to spend most of the film staring blandly at the camera. I’m not saying that he goes and gives a terrible performance… he doesn’t out and out embarrass himself like Hayden Christensen did in the prequels, for example. But it’s a middle of the road, dialed down, workmanlike effort. There’s none of the energy and spontaneity and righteous anger of Cranston’s performance. Instead we’re treated to bland, lifeless scenes of him pointing his rifle at something in the distance, or comforting a small child, or… well, that’s pretty much it. Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins are likewise wasted. I have absolutely no idea why they even got Hawkins, an Oscar-nominated actress, for this role. She’s basically just playing the intern role. Hell, Kat Dennings gave us a better intern performance in those two Thor movies. At least she gave us some good laughs with her comedy relief. Hawkins just delivers exposition with a dour expression on her face.

Elizabeth Olsen does a fine job, though what she’s given isn’t much. As soon as she’s shuffled off into the shelter, we lose her until the end where she reunites with her family. I admit, I cringed mightily everytime someone spoke her name, but that’s just because her character has the same name as my ex. I fucking hate that bitch. But hey, that’s my own personal baggage. That’s not Olsen’s or the movie’s fault.

The movie suffers from generic ass generic scenes. These bugged me to no end. If you’re not going to show Godzilla, then you damn well better show us something interesting instead. Jaws accomplished that in spades. But this movie seemed determined to trot out tired ass generic scenes. We get the scene of Johnson tucking his little boy into bed, tenderly promising he’ll be there tomorrow. We get the scene of Johnson and his wife cuddling and being lovey dovey. We get the scene of the random dog barking at the oncoming tsunami, because dogs have a sixth sense about these sorts of things. We get the scene of this random little girl at the luau, looking cute and adorable. Then she’s whisked away by her dad and escapes, never to be seen again. Same with the cute little boy that Johnson suddenly befriends on the train. Then there’s a scene of all the kids on the school bus staring wide eyed out the window as it’s crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. Wait, didn’t this exact same scene happen in Superman 1? Just a torrent of utterly generic scenes that we’ve all gotten sick of and roll our eyes at. Or at least I do.

The movie goes and tries to inject some cheap sentiment about nuclear weapons and the tragedy of the atomic age, but never gives us a meaningful theme or throughline with it. Serisawa simply hands the Admiral his father’s broken watch from Hiroshima. Well, okay. That’s ummm… that’s really not enough, Mr. Scriptwriter. You need to actually do some work and tie it into the storyline somehow, instead of jamming it in between scenes randomly. Later on he gives a line about how “the arrogance of man is in believing he can control nature.” That’s not bad, that’s a pretty good line I suppose. But how does that tie back to Serisawa’s broken watch? One scene is about the destructiveness of atomic power unleashed by man, while the other is about man’s hubris in his relationship with mother nature. Do they connect together in any meaningful message or idea? I don’t believe so. It feels like some vague hand gesturing without a well thought-out purpose.

The military is going to be a big part of any Godzilla movie and this was no different. Yet they acted incredibly strangely in how they treated Godzilla. For example… they seem to be okay with sailing alongside Godzilla for a large chunk of the film. Where did this come from? Why aren’t they attacking Godzilla? Had they reached a peace accord with Big G? Some sort of treaty in place here? You see aircraft carriers and destroyers sailing literally 50 feet away from the giant monster. This is ridiculous to me. And mind you, this is right after his visit to Hawaii where he created a tsunami. So I’m not sure what they were thinking here. And at a minimum, it seems incredibly perilous to sail so close to something that could easily change direction and suddenly capsize you.

So I don’t know why they weren’t trying to kill Godzilla with torpedoes and other weapons. They’re just sailing alongside it like they’re escorting it. That seems silly to me, but maybe they’re just gonna listen to Dr. Serisawa and leave it alone as some sort of way to balance nature or something. I think he said something about Godzilla acting as a way to restore equilibrium. Let’s go with that. So if they’re just gonna be cool with Godzilla… then why do they suddenly fire on it as soon as it enters San Francisco Bay? What changed? And why would you park a dozen navy destroyers right in the path of a giant monster? Wouldn’t you know that it would collide with your fleet if you park them all about 40 feet from each other? This seems like the dumbest naval formation ever. And when you open fire… why would you do it from point blank range, so that your missiles all go haywire and strike the Golden Gate Bridge instead? I’m fine with the military attacking Godzilla, that’s after all what they’re supposed to do in Godzilla movies… I’m just not sure why they’re doing it in this idiotic, ill conceived manner.

The MUTOs are the primary antagonists in the story, since Godzilla is mainly treated as a hero of sorts. I thought they were okay. I mean, their whole schtick about consuming radiation and radioactive reactors and bombs… that’s fine with me, that’s how these Godzilla movies have always been. I can suspend my disbelief and go with it. But appearance-wise, I didn’t think they looked all that interesting. Their basic silhouette is quite smooth and angular and featureless, which makes the creatures look like a low polygon video game model at first glance. It’s not a big deal, but it did make me long for the traditional Toho adversaries like Rodan, Mothra, or King Ghidorah, which had colorful and varied features and skin characteristics. You can sense a thriving imagination at work with those fantastical creatures, while the MUTOs simply had a smooth, bland exterior with no real distinguishing traits aside from their burning red eyes.

The military’s plan makes no sense. I mean, I keep trying to think about it, and see if I remember any details… but no, it makes no sense. You’re going to arm the nuke right near San Francisco with a 2 hour timer, and then hope that you’ll be able to take it far away from the area while two MUTOs and Godzilla are all converging on it, trusting that none of them will get their hands on it before it blows? Why would that plan ever work? They already know they can’t stop the MUTOs with anything conventional. So wouldn’t it seem obvious that the MUTOs would simply snatch it up and keep it in the populated area? Maybe I missed something in the exposition. But this plan seemed real dumb right from the get go.

Why transport the nuclear missiles by train? Surely it’d have been faster and safer to transport them by plane or helicopter. In fact, that’s exactly what they do with the one lone missile when they find it in the rubble of the train wreck! They fly in and haul it off with a helicopter. So why use the easy to locate and incredibly vulnerable railway system? Especially when all you can protect it with is one or two squads of soldiers with rifles? What good will that do against a giant MUTO? And why did the MUTO gobble up one nuke, but not the other? It finds the train and there are two nukes, but it just decides to leave after one? Why not eat both? Well, I suspect the answer is that the script required the other one to survive so it could be used in the final setpiece of the movie, that’s why.

What is the point of pointing your assault rifle at a giant monster? This question was haunting me all throughout the movie. Aaron Taylor Johnson and his Hispanic soldier buddy on the railway bridge. Those soldiers on the roofs of the hotels in Hawaii. The special forces squad sent to locate the Akula submarine in the dense forest. They’re all decked out with gear and pointing their guns with purpose. What exactly are you hoping to accomplish with that M4A1 with the ACOG sight, Mr. Military Man? The monsters are all enormous and don’t really feel anything from missiles, rockets, and tank shells. Yet over and over again, we get to see these idiotic soldiers firing their rifles. Firing them from the boat with the nuke. That doesn’t work. Then the camera pans over and there’s a bunch more of em firing at the MUTO from the pier. That doesn’t work. The MUTO just bends down and eats the whole pier. Then Aaron Taylor Johnson gets on the boat and he pulls his pistol at the MUTO. Really? This is why it’s a mistake to focus on the little people… the little people don’t do jack shit. It’s just one scene after another of nonsense that feels tired and empty. There’s no entertainment value in watching soldiers with M16s firing at Godzilla or MUTOs.

Gareth Edwards must be the world’s biggest cocktease. That thought kept circling around my head throughout most of this movie. Now, the first time it happened, I decided to cut him some slack. When the camera reveals Godzilla for the first time in Hawaii and then cuts to an SD television feed of it battling the MUTO, I guess I let it slide, since he probably needed to save money on CGI. I figured that’s why we didn’t see more of the fight from a normal perspective. But then he keeps doing it, over and over and over again. We’d get to see Godzilla battling, and just as we’re getting into it… he cuts away to some utterly dull human drama. Give us a little taste, then cut away. Finally show us his atomic breath, then cut away. That shit gets frustrating after a while… Jesus H Christ. That’s just being an utterly huge cocktease to the audience, and I could feel the theater growing increasingly restless as the movie wore on.

Take the example of Godzilla showing up to battle the MUTO in San Francisco. Elizabeth Olsen sees the flying MUTO perched up on one side of her. Then Godzilla arrives in a swirl of smoke and dust on the other side of her. They charge forth into a climactic clash for all the ages just as she descends into the shelter and… then we cut away. No more, Gareth Edwards says. Well that right there is something that no true Godzilla movie would do. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about what a Godzilla movie should deliver and appreciating his splendor and awesome power. Edwards seems to revel in shoving him into the background instead. Plenty of shots where Godzilla and the MUTOS are simply background set dressing, while the camera follows Johnson’s squad in the foreground. In fact, the whole movie might as well be retitled “Godzilla in the Background.”

Now, I did think the smoke and debris swirling around the monster battles looked cool. That was always something which you never got with Toho’s old man in the rubber suit movies, simply because you can’t really create the realistic smoke and dust conditions when you’re using miniature cardboard buildings. But having witnessed 9/11, we know now that buildings crumbling and collapsing will indeed create tremendous plumes of smoke and dust. So it felt appropriately realistic and lifelike to see such conditions in a Godzilla movie. I thought there was some real artistry in how they employed these large CGI clouds with the creatures’ movements in melee combat. It’s an impressive sight, and gives us something we’ve truly never seen before in a Godzilla film.

Godzilla’s atomic breath is another element that I did enjoy in the movie. I was legitimately curious to see how they’d pull it off with the CGI that we have today in 2014, and it turned out looking just fine. Instead of a pure blue pillar of energy, Edwards seems to have elected for something that more resembles a wind, or a gust of blue. Which is definitely appropriate for an “atomic breath.” The spines also do light up, though not as much as in the older movies. Here, it’s a more subtle effect that doesn’t call as much attention to itself. The signature moment where Godzilla draws himself up and summons up the breath from deep within looked very realistic and animalistic at the same time. Kudos to the animators.

So the final act of the movie basically plays out like a Call of Duty mission. I’m serious, that’s exactly what I felt like they were showing us. You have the whole squad of soldiers HALOing into the city and navigating through the smashed rubble to their objective, which was the nuke. And always in the background is this tremendous scripted sequence of Godzilla fighting the MUTOs. And this focus on the Call of Duty mission really hurts my enjoyment of the film. Godzilla taking a backseat feels wrong. I don’t really care about these soldiers, they aren’t actual characters that we’re invested in like we are in a movie like Black Hawk Down. They’re all faceless nameless soldiers with the exception of Johnson. But the camera keeps cutting to them and keeping them in the foreground, while Godzilla’s battle, the thing we really want to see, keeps getting the background treatment. It’s incredibly disappointing and feels like someone’s missed the point of this movie.

It feels clear now that Edwards took a lot of influence from Cloverfield. Yet Cloverfield was a found footage movie, and the camera being strapped to one of the survivors necessitated the frequent cut aways from the monster. After all, they’re all trying to run away from the horrible creature. Godzilla is not a found footage movie, and the camera can be anywhere at any time. Yet Edwards insists on cutting away just when we’re getting into the monster action. What feels right and appropriate in one movie does not in another. And the camera cutting away time after time left me feeling exasperated, because I was simply stuck watching faceless soldiers in a plotline that we’d already seen in plenty of other movies. The ticking-bomb-about-to-explode-in-a-city is something that’s been retread over and over again: Batman Begins, Spider-Man 2, The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, etc. I certainly don’t ever need to see it again in a movie in this lifetime.

Now after the final battle… the nuke goes off and everyone’s safe. We’re left with retrieving people from the rubble of collapsed skyscrapers. And the news comes on and they proclaim… “Godzilla, Savior of the City?” Wait, what? We just had a battle that destroyed more of San Francisco than Zod accomplished in Metropolis, and yet Godzilla’s the savior of the city? How does that work? I mean, yes, if you were privy to the entire military situation and figured out that he stopped the MUTOs and that allowed the nuke to get away safely and the nuke detonated far away from the city… yes, I suppose that you might be able to see it that way. But I don’t really think the news reporters in San Francisco would be in on that information? As far as they’re concerned, Godzilla was just equally as responsible for the devastation in the city as those MUTOs. And considering how many people died in the fallout, I hardly think they’d be wondering about him being a savior. The whole thing just feels like a lame attempt to copy the ending of The Avengers. And while I thought that tv montage in The Avengers was pretty cheesy and hokey, at least it felt appropriate and earned there. Here, it feels ridiculous. And yes, I know that Godzilla has been portrayed as a protector of the earth in earlier Toho movies. However, I would respond by saying that A) I never cared much for those movies, and B) it really does steer away from the aspect of Godzilla that I prefer, which is as a force of nature. A force of nature is not a savior of any sort, he merely does what he wishes and leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. So to see him referred to as a savior left a bad taste in my mouth, which isn’t what you want for a closing scene.

At the end of the day, I would have to say that Pacific Rim is the better movie of the two. Now, I’m not saying that Pacific Rim is an amazing movie, and it certainly had problems that weigh it down: Too much screen time devoted to the wacky scientists and Ron Perlman, and poor acting from the two main leads. Those problems do hold the movie back… and yet when I walked out of the movie theater, I was rather pleased with the overall experience and wanted to return to that movie universe. And that is not really something I can say for Gareth Edward’s Godzilla. The stunning waste on display is a real shame and I don’t have high hopes for a sequel with him back at the helm.

5/10

Man of Steel is a good Superman movie after what we got from Singer, but it's pretty damn weak when you compare it to Donner's Superman 78. The action is legitimately great, but you expect as much from the guy who did 300. That's no big surprise.

The heart isn't really there. When Pa Kent dies in Donner's movie, your heart breaks for Clark and his mom. This loving man was the bedrock of Kal-El's life and instilled him with goodness and compassion and everything admirable about Superman. Even in the final minutes of his life, he was instilling in Clark the principle of doing good for others because he can. Another form of the "with great power comes great responsibility" speech. And we get to the funeral scene and Clark laments that even his great powers, far beyond those of mortal men, can't save his loved ones sometimes. It's a powerful lesson and you form this immediate emotional bond. Superman is completely relateable in the movie, because we've all gone through loss like this. Superman the Movie is the only superhero movie I can think of where I've actually cried, and it's usually right around this part of the runtime.

With these three relatively short scenes, Donner expertly explains the why of Superman. Kents find baby Kal-El, Clark comes home and Pa Kent dies, Funeral scene. No fat to trim here. Everything works together to form a coherent picture of Clark's mindset and how he came to be that which is best in men.

In contrast to Donner's straight and linear approach, MoS adopts the jumbled flashback sequences of Nolan's Batman Begins. But while Nolan is a master of the disjointed nonlinear narrative, Snyder clearly is not comfortable with this storytelling technique, and it shows. The flashbacks in MoS have an odd, disconnected feel to them, and they don't marry together in any comfortable manner I can perceive. Batman Begins's scattered flashbacks were mysterious in a way that intrigued you and made you want to uncover more and more, gradually piecing together the full picture of Bruce Wayne's past and how he became the Dark Knight. They layered on top of one another and felt like they were building up to a coherent message. Manohla Dargis wrote this in her review, and I agree with it: "[...]Mr. Nolan invites us to watch Bruce Wayne quietly piecing together his Batman identity, to become a secret sharer to a legend, just as we did once upon a time when we read our first comic."

With MoS, the flashbacks were delivered to us in a way that lacked the effectiveness of BB and just kinda left me feeling cold. It felt like we were just moving from one scene to the next in a confused and detached manner. They really didn't explain Superman in the same satisfying way that BB's jumbled narrative did, or the way Donner's straightforward narrative did. This new Pa Kent advises Clark that maybe he shouldn't save those kids on the bus, because his secret takes precedence over everything. Later, it even takes precedence over Pa Kent's life. This is an odd message that doesn't make a lot of sense to the audience, trying to root for Superman. Where is the Pa Kent that guided Superman to doing what he does? The shining beacon for goodness? It's hard to see it here, since we're given the exact opposite of what the traditional Pa Kent said. I found myself watching the screen with a confused and perplexed expression on my face. There was no emotional bond or resonance, since they hadn't given me anything to latch onto.

Now... there's nothing wrong with adding a bit of realism or verisimilitude to a character. That's after all what Donner did so well in the first Superman movie all those years ago. He actually plastered the word "verisimilitude" on set because he wanted it to be the leading ethos for the production. So I'm fine with the idea of adding realism in that regard. But I do believe that it requires a very capable and subtle touch. Because at the end of the day, Superman to me is a shining inspiration for the entire DC universe. Someone once wrote that at his best, he is the best. So he can have internal conflict, and struggle. That's something that Superman, even with his incredible powers, cannot avoid. The best stories with Superman are inevitably about his internal struggles and conflicts, not external. Kingdom Come is a good example.

But... does that mean we should saddle Superman with faults and weaknesses? That's the tricky part. If Superman has too much in the way of faults and weaknesses... he no longer becomes that source of inspiration. It's hard to be inspired by an ideal that's weak and faulty. Superman is supposed to be super, and that's not just with his powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. He's supposed to be super inside, as well. When you're rooting for Superman, you know that he's got your back, and that he'll never give up, and that he represents the best in each of us. Or at least that's what I think of when I think of Superman.

So it's very easy to go awry. And then we end up with a Superman who's ruined. A Superman who's no longer that super in terms of conduct and morality. And that's not a Superman for me.

Finally got my very own copy of Batman vs Predator. I'd read it many years ago but never got around to buying it back then. Nowadays, the TPB's been out of print for forever so the used price is usually pretty high. I managed to find it on Amazon for about 20 bucks and felt that was alright for a rare book. I mean, it'll probably only go higher in the future, right? Seemed like an alright investment, though my reason for buying it was simply because it's a great comic.

Of the 3 Batman vs Predator stories DC's put out over the years, I can say with some certainty that the first one is still the best, by a considerable margin. The second book suffers from an incredibly bad artist at the helm, and some plot twists that are straight out of Predator 2... resulting in a story that's often clumsy and feels derivative. The third book is quite an improvement, possessing good quality artwork, but since it's the third outing with Batman and these fiendish foes, there's a sense of familiarity and Batman feels a lot more confident in taking them on, which makes the Predators feel completely nerfed. It doesn't help that we have to deal with the pesky sidekick Tim Drake, who butts in and wants to know what's going on every five minutes.

The first book is everything that you could hope for in a titanic crossover matchup between Batman and the Predator. They're both hunters of men, so naturally the Predator judges Batman to be the worthiest prize for his trophy collection. But on the side, he doesn't mind spending some free time cutting and gutting some of Gotham's most dangerous mob bosses and henchmen.

Since this is their first encounter, Batman isn't really sure what's going on at first and we get to see his detective skills at work. But even though he gradually pieces it together, it's not nearly enough, as this Predator is fully as capable as he's ever been depicted and nearly kills Bats in their first direct confrontation. That's what's so satisfying and refreshing about this story, the fact that unlike the majority of his street level foes, Batman is at a severe disadvantage and gets knocked out by a foe vastly more skilled and vicious then any he's faced in his past.

But of course, you know Batman will rebound and prep time his way to even the playing field for round two. And he does it just as you'd imagine Batman would, with equal parts technology, martial skill, and strategic thinking. It's very reminiscent of Arnold's prep time in the first Predator movie. And that's the thing... with the Predator in this urban jungle, you'd think it'd be very similar to Predator 2. But while that's true on a superficial level, the actual essence of the story is much closer to Predator 1, with two larger than life characters eventually finding themselves in a duel to the death.

Besides the excellent story, BvP also boasts fantastic artwork from a young hungry Andy Kubert. In the prime of his youth and brimming with talent, Kubert delivers a very high quality Jim Lee-style depiction of Batman, while simultaneously drawing a striking and powerful image of the Predator. He perfectly captures the sheer strength and musculature of the Predator from the movies, in highly dynamic poses which effectively convey the savage nature of this alien from beyond the stars. Since the book came out after Predator 2, we also get the full arsenal of the Predator, such as his target seeking smart disc and net-gun.

Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Predator or Batman... it's the best of the series and one of the greatest crossover efforts in all of comics.

Just watched Thor The Dark World. Yeah, kinda late to the party. Heard a lot of conflicting statements about this movie. Lots of people liked it, while a lot of people seemed to hate it. I didn't know what to expect, but I did enjoy the first Thor for what it was, which was a fun, popcorn, summer action flick. These Marvel movies all tend to pretty much have the same light and breezy tone/mood.

Okay, first thing I really noticed in this movie... the delineation between sci-fi and fantasy. This is of course open to debate but I always felt like the first Thor was fantasy with a thin layer of sci-fi, while this movie seems to go in the opposite direction and looks much more like sci-fi with a thin layer of fantasy. They lean quite a bit more into the sci-fi realm this time: you've got laser rifles and deflector shields and predator-esque cloaking devices and anti-aircraft batteries and heat seeking missiles and singularity grenades that all feel right out of a sci-fi first person shooter. The holding cells underneath Asgard almost feel like the brig of the Enterprise D, equipped with thinly-veiled yellow force fields.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, in and of itself. I can't say I'm a fan of the Thor comics so I'm no purist, someone beholden to the traditional comic book interpretations. But the problem with the new sci-fi emphasis is that as the movie continues, it makes some things look ridiculous and illogical. Asgardian soldiers clad in D&D armor and weapons made sense when this was all a fantasy setting of sorts, but it's a lot harder to swallow when you see them all getting gunned down by Elves wielding sci-fi looking laser rifles spewing hot red death, while throwing their black hole generating grenades. The Asgardian armor doesn't seem to do anything to protect them (Stormtrooper syndrome), so you're left wondering why they're equipped so poorly. Hell, you're left wondering how these Asgardians ever defeated the Elves in the first place, all those countless centuries ago. Surely the Elves with these powerful ranged weapons could've gunned down all the sword-wielding armor-wearing Asgardian soldiers.

The world of Asgard is more fully fleshed out this time around, with lush gardens and parks in addition to the pure metallic alloy spires of the last movie. Maybe it's just because I knew the director worked on Game of Thrones, but the way Asgard is shot and decorated this time around does make it look more Game of Thrones-y. There's more of a warmth and natural rustic beauty here then the modern art museum-like construction that Branagh presented us with. You see carved wood and ceramic pillars and it all conveys an earthy interior that feels more welcoming and human.

I like that they're still maintaining the subplot between Thor, Sif, and Jane. Jamie Alexander was one of the great surprises of the first Thor and the tension in this pseudo-love triangle makes for a compelling thread to follow through the greater tapestry. I kinda figured that Sif was the writers' fallback if Natalie Portman, the accomplished dramatic actress she is, decided not to come back for Thor 2. But since she has, they still acknowledge that there is this uncomfortable situation and that it's not going away anytime soon for our hero Thor.

Tom Hiddleston is his usual impeccable self, as expected. What I appreciate is how they've written Loki just as human as they did in the first Thor, instead of portraying him as the monster of a massacre in NYC. When you see him mourn in his own way after learning of the death of his adopted mother, you're nodding because it feels real and rings true. Even a villain like Loki is bound by certain obligations and ties and that's when you glimpse that he isn't completely irredeemable. The closest comparison I can make is the relationship between Prof. X and Magneto. Should we still hold a hope that he and Thor can mend their relationship? Thinking rationally with our heads, probably not. But Hiddleston's performance, with generous support from Hemsworth, gradually nudges us in that direction, despite ourselves.

The Dark World is an appropriate subtitle, because it is certainly a darker movie this time. Which isn't to say that they dropped the humor and one-liners from the first, because they haven't. They went and did something I didn't expect... Thor's mother dies. I thought Rene Russo was kinda wasted in the first movie, with Anthony Hopkins given the lion's share of the work. But this time around, she does get to show off her talents before dying and I appreciated it because Russo is a legitimately great actress and perfectly conveys a gentle maternal presence combined with a warrior queen side that we never suspected but probably should have.

Now, while I do think the story is effective when taken as a journey to avenge the death of a mother... I can't say I comprehended the main plotline involving the evil red blob thingy hiding in the center of a giant stone block. I haven't read the Thor comics, but I suspect that this red evil globule was created specifically for the movie. Why they thought it'd make for a compelling story, I have no idea. It's in Jane, and it's gonna kill her, but the main evil Elf wants it, so he takes it into him, thereby saving Jane. But it's probably not gonna kill the Elf dude, it'll make him stronger somehow... it's all just a confusing mash of empty nonsense. I didn't comprehend just how Jane was able to manipulate the gravity wells surrounding the metal spike things on her handy dandy tablet computer. And frankly, the movie is designed in such a way that you're simply too distracted by the crazy shenanigans surrounding Thor's fight into and out of the different realms to be able to think about much of anything. It's quirky and entertaining in how fast the scenarios change and morph around, but I would've preferred if I'd known exactly what was happening.

Chris Eccleston's Meleketh(?) isn't the worst villain ever, but he's further down the list then you might expect. He's not as aggressively atrocious as Eric Bana's Nero, for example. But... I didn't really find myself captivated by his presence. There was nothing to latch onto, which I suppose you can blame on the scriptwriters who gave him absolutely nothing memorable to say. I just knew that he wanted that red goo a whole lot. How that was supposed to help his race of Elves... god only knows. Why did he decide to crash his giant ship into the center of a university, Speed 2: Cruise Control-style...? I couldn't tell you. But going beyond the dearth of meaty dialogue from the writers... Eccleston himself just doesn't exude any personality or villainy in particular. He just seems hamstrung by being stuck in elf makeup and clumsy armor. Oftentimes, an actor will imbue a role with something beyond the page, making it come alive from sheer performance and force of will. Eccleston does nothing of the sort in this movie, and I found myself more entertained by the CGI of the red shards shooting from his body (which wasn't much) then I did by his delivery.

Thinking about the movie as a whole, I have to judge it as being passable entertainment on a lazy afternoon. But compared to the first Thor, it sits a notch lower. The humor and one-liners from Skarsgaard's Selvig and Darcy continue to work, though that one scene of Thor riding a Subway felt incredibly British and took me out of the moment. But when you think about it, Thor 1 had actual character development and growth for Hemsworth's Thor. He's an arrogant prince who learns to humble himself and do right by others, instead of yielding to his own passions. Not the most innovative character arc ever conceived, but it worked well and got us to root for the guy.

Here... I can't really detect anything like that. The movie merely had me asking myself questions like "Why isn't this cloud of red goo doing anything to Thor when he walks through it?" "Why are these spikes strong enough to teleport Meleketh's limbs away when Mjolnir couldn't do anything?" "Is this red goo meant to do anything when it reaches the other realms?" "How many buildings will Mjolnir crash through to return to Thor's grasp?" and "Why is this guy playing Darcy's intern so bland and dull? Is he returning in Thor 3?" Really inane stuff, right, but what else could I think about... there didn't seem to be any real growth to Thor. I mean at the end, he does decide not to be King. But what that had to do with the previous battles with Meleketh, I couldn't say.

These last few weeks

I've been confused

sometimes I wonder if

I'm better off alone.

You fall in love

then break your heart.

you fall in love again

it's never ending.

I used to have this friend

who took his fiance

to see Billy Idol

a couple weeks before

their wedding day.

the chick got backstage

and left my friend outside.

next day she called from a hotel

asking for a ride.

I guess I'm giving up on love

I guess I'm giving up on love

I guess I'm giving up on love

'cause it really kind of sucks

Uninspired

and growing tired

why am I always

so attracted to drama?

So here I am

grown up at 23

will someone tell me

what it takes to be happy?

I play in my band

and write a lot of songs

about relationships

and how mine went wrong.

maybe I'll meet that special

girl along the way

then she'll break my heart

and leave me crying.

I guess I'm giving up on love

I guess I'm giving up on love

I guess I'm giving up on love

'cause it really kind of sucks

I guess I'm giving up on love

I guess I'm giving up on love

'cause it's not worth it

I guess I'm giving up on love

'cause it really kind of...

The most recent book I finished was Margaret Atwood's "MaddAddam," the final entry in her Oryx and Crake trilogy. And god, it's a disappointment.

Oryx and Crake was a fantastic dystopian cautionary tale. Just amazing in its detail and world building and I marveled at her ability to construct this horrifying yet oddly plausible glimpse into the near future. At the same time, the novel also functions as this very realistic and relateable bildungsroman of a young boy. You wouldn't expect this elderly woman on the book jacket to write about the childhood of a boy in such an authentic manner, or at least I didn't. But she does, and it feels truthful in a way that the best coming of age stories do..

Of course, Oryx and Crake isn't a perfect story. I would say that the character of Oryx is a cypher and not really a character at all. She's just the object of desire for the two main characters, in my eyes. There didn't seem to be much to her, and it felt like she was in the story mainly to allow Atwood to divert the book into her own personal soapbox to preach about the horrors of child sex slavery in southeast Asia. Which we all already know is horrible. So that whole section of the book feels out of place and doesn't contribute anything to the rest of her story which focuses on the dangers of genetic engineering and corporations run amok.

So overall... really enjoyed Oryx and Crake. The sequel The Year of the Flood was not quite as good, but I also loved it, simply because it gave us more of that incredible world that we were introduced to. There were a few nagging coincidences that seemed a little unlikely, but I forgave them because the new characters were intriguing and seeing the same world from a new fresh perspective was fun. It was a bildungsroman from the opposite sex's point of view and that was refreshing.

But MaddAddam goes way too far and completely flies off into crazy town. Huge tracts of the novel read like really cheap romance novels, with strong female characters established in the previous books now reduced to pining away for men in flowery internal narration that is positively vomit inducing. Where did this soap opera nonsense come from? I dunno, maybe Margaret Atwood fell in love while writing this book and it inevitably crept in. But I don't like it.

The coincidences that you started noticing in Year of the Flood now just completely take over the book and become ridiculous and overwhelming in their absurdity. Apparently... the only people who can manage to survive the apocalypse were all conveniently from Jimmy's homeroom. And ended up dating him at one time in his life. Wait, what? What? Jesus H Christ... it's just goofy nonsense.

And let's talk about Jimmy. The great, sympathetic character from the first book who we were missing from the second novel. Well, now we're gonna get to go back to this guy. Oh wait... except he's in a damn coma for half of the book. I mean, the whole reason we got drawn into this trilogy in the first place was because we loved this complicated, somewhat damaged boy from Oryx and Crake. He was a relateable slacker and we cheered on his perseverance in the face of doomsday. So just dragging it out and keeping him out of the first half of the book just felt needlessly cruel and frustrating.

But things don't really get any better when he wakes from his coma. Because Atwood seems to have forgotten how to write Jimmy. He's not sympathetic or likeable now... he's just kinda crude and distant. I dunno, I really liked Jimmy in the first book but here, he's pretty much wasted as a character. There's no bond between the character and the reader, which might have been Atwood's intentions I suppose. Perhaps she felt she'd drained him of all narrative potential at the end of the first novel. And then, Atwood literally wastes the character by killing him off at the end. But it's not even done well... it's practically done off camera, which is absurd. What an unceremonious end for this once compelling protagonist.

And finally, I've gotta address the most disturbing and tasteless aspect of the novel... which are the pregnancies of the female characters in the book. There is no reason why Atwood had to shroud these in secrecy for most of the book, while somehow justifying it by explaining that these women wouldn't know whether they had been gangraped by a tribe of strange blue men. That just does not make any sense to me. It's insulting and icky and made me wonder about the state of Atwood's mind. If a bunch of well-meaning blue men suddenly grabbed you and started running a train on you... I think you'd remember that. I don't believe this is something that would be in doubt or forgotten about.

I can't help feeling that MaddAddam was simply an opportunity for Atwood to cash in on the success and popularity of the first two books. She had to whip up something to cap off the trilogy and managed to conjure up something monstrous and yet flimsy in narrative. I'd say just steer clear and keep rereading the first two novels.

They're really building up the hype...