BrainWyrms

My initial impression of The Dark Knight last night was that I was not disappointed. In fact, I was really happy with it. Which is rather amazing considering just how excited and just how high my expectations were going into The Dark Knight.

Batman Begins is, off hand, my favorite film of the last few years. I haven’t recommended and pushed and watched and re-watched anything else like this since it came out. I’ve really enjoyed a few other movies,  strangely enough including The Prestige, but none to the extent of Batman Begins. So when I say my expectations were really high, I mean they were ridiculously high.

The last time I was half as excited for a new movie was for Jumper. I ended up hearing a review of it on the Totally Rad Show and realized that I was going to be horribly disappointed. So I watched it on video just a few weeks ago and it was so-so okay. Before that was The Bourne Supremacy, where I left the theater almost shaking in rage at the travesty done to The Bourne Identity as a movie and the Bourne series of books. And then there was Riddick. But let’s not go there.

Basically, my point is this; I had, despite my own best intentions to damp down my enthusiasm, reached a disturbing and unfamiliar level of excitation such that I had difficulty stemming my vibrations in order to sleep the morning before. I was literally like a child the night before Christmas. And I was NOT disappointed.

Unlike Iron Man, which apparently was a really awesome movie that I simply did not connect with emotionally on any level, I loved The Dark Knight. (I just have a hard time admitting it.)

<— There may be mild spoilers after the break —>

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PenChaft: Although I wish there was more Firefly, I’m glad that it didn’t go so
long as to get as tired as Buffy did.

Then again, if there had been more, there wouldn’t have been Serenity,
which was one of the shittiest pieces of full-length feature shit I’ve
ever had the misfortune to be subjected to.

Nomad Scry: You don’t watch many movies do you? Did you happen to see Riddick? Or The Horse Whisperer? Or … oh what was that fucking horrid movie… Steve Martin in… Novacaine, I think. That was WRETCHED. Serenity was not the best thing ever, but it certainly wasn’t bad. I mean, it didn’t have Jar Jar in it. Or Short Round. It was better than Iron Man. But then again, I just can’t connect to that character, so I am biased. Heh.

PenChaft: Riddick was fine, because I was with a friend and we were laughing at
Eomer’s hair.

I don’t watch films like The Horse Whisperer.

Serenity was just… it was Joss Whedon SHITTING on his fans. It was
one of the most disrespectful films - to the characters as well as to
the fans - that I have ~ever~ seen. ~Also~, the Reaver thing was SO
GODDAMN DUMB.

Iron Man was excellent! Its biggest flaw was a lack of action/srs bad
guys, not TOTALLY RETARDED STUFF HAPPENING FOR A FEW HOURS.

I’ve only seen episode 3 and half of… A New Hope? I think? The Death
Star blew up, I saw that bit.

Nomad Scry: I, uh, respectfully disagree. Riddick was the shitting on fans. Pitch Black was a brilliant film that has held up over numerous visitations. Someday I will rewatch Riddick as a FANTASY movie and it may be okay that way. But, as a sequel to Pitch Black, it is a travesty.

Another shit on the fan movie was The Bourne Supremecy (or whichever the second one was.) The entire premise of the trilogy is Jason/David and Marie surviving each other and surviving together. Killing Marie in the first act of the movie was, according to the director’s commentary, supposed to shake Jason out of the happy complacent place. !!?!?!!!??!! That’s why Ludlum had her kidnapped! ARGH.

Sorry, that one … I walked out of the theater angrily appologizing to Jade for “forcing her to see that pile of shit.” I was livid. Literaly.

Serenities biggest flaw was being predictable. It was telegraphed all over the place. It needed to be. It had to wrap up the entire universe in two hours. Pretty rough road when you just spent (how many episodes in the series?) hours opening the story world up and up… and then two hours to tie all the stories and characters together.

And the Reaver thing… was simply predictable. As long as Whedon didn’t want to introduce straight up magic, that is.

I don’t agree, obviously, about Iron Man. it was pretty. And shiny. Like metal shiny, not like Firefly shiny. But ultimately boring, because I simply don’t give a shit that a molly-coddled uber-rich jackass got pissy and used his inheritence to build himself a fighting suit. What a fucking wanker.

Which is utterly hipocritical of me, I know and don’t care, because I LOVED Batman Begins.

PenChaft: I didn’t view Chronicles as a direct sequel to Pitch Black. It was
more of a… spin off? I guess? in my head.

Haven’t seen any of the Bourne movies.

The Reaver thing’s not predictable, it’s ~DUMB~. When we walked out of
the cinema (I saw Serenity as a special preview screening surrounded
by fellow SF fans) we started dicussing how utterly dumb the Reaver
planet, the Reaver band, the Reaver backstory etc. was. NOT GOOD LOGIC
OR SCIENCE AT ALL ARGH.

But he didn’t HAVE to wrap it all up (and kill it all off at the same
time). He could have just had a glorified episode and WE WOULD HAVE
BEEN OKAY WITH THAT. And it’s not just the plot that annoys me and
makes me think he just didn’t care. There’s no touching on any Jayne
subplot/characterisation, several of their accents were ~horribly~ off
in the first third of the film. OH YEAH, AND THERE WAS ALSO (arguably)
RETCON.

Iron Man was fun! I saw it twice (first time was a free screening). It
was just ~fun~. And they’re going to deal with the alcoholism and
stuff in the next movies, and I can respect their reasons for leaving
them out of the first one, and it was just so ~fun~.

Batman Begins is, however, ~~~THE~~~ superhero origins movie. <3 <3 <3
You might like these videos:
http://greyreviews.livejournal.com/16936.html (also check out the
other I’m a Marvel/I’m a DC, they’re all funny)

I don’t like Superman, though. Now THAT’S a boring character.

Nomad Scry: http://www.epinions.com/review/Superman_Returns_44832383/content_301537005188

That’s what I have to say on Superman.

PenChaft: I’ve never liked the character, and then when I saw that travesty of a
film? UGH. Lex Luther was the only (mild) saving grace.

That kid was such an awful, awful, AWFUL plot device.

Nomad Scry: Did you watch any of that Kevin Sorbo scifi show? Andromeda or something? I don’t think there is much else that could have been done with the Reavers that wouldn’t have simply turned them into the Maggog. Which would have been pendantic and boring because it was just done. (And from the little I saw of it, done well.)

PenChaft: I haven’t, no.

Nomad Scry: One of the neat things about Serenity is that you can very clearly imagine it as the story told over a session of the Firefly RPG. So yeah, some of it is pretty geeky lame… which is what makes it better. Walsh dies, for fucks sake. Why, man, why! Heh.

So I dropped my comics subscription the other day.

And then I found out that the second season of the New Universal comic by Warren Ellis just started up again.

Waaaaaah!  I want my comics.  [pouts]

Today I started doing my comic catch-up reading. I kicked off my pile with Serenity Better Days 1 of 3. I can’t quite comment on the story yet, except that it is shaping up to have the potential for a good tale. What I can say is that the artist, the one with the pencil, is seriously good. I can see Mal and Jayne and well… everyone looks just like they should. I’ve got 2 of 3 lined up to read in the morning, and I’m looking forward to how this is going.

I finally got around to doing my WordPress upgrade AND I got the Akismet plugin going. I was getting really, no really really really really (ad nausem), annoyed with the 60+ drug-bases SPAM comments and trackbacks I’ve been getting on a daily basis.

Why does ‘basis’ look so wrong? Strange looking word, like it’s all mangled up after starting life ‘basic’… maybe merged with ’statis’?

And now, to wrap things up before I head into work, I am watching the new episode of Smallville. Which is nifty keen, but better still is that track that played during the dance scene with Jimmy and Chloe.  I don’t know who or what that was, but I quite enjoyed it and would like to at least hear it again.

I’m looking into the cost of buying a replacement screen for my Creative Zen V.  CASizemore had suggested a link to me a few weeks ago, but I’ve (shockingly) forgotten where that went to.  Right now I am checking out an eBayer with 3 for ~$30.  Maybe next week, especially if I can find a decent walk-through on cracking this case open.  My biggest concern is shattering the case itself.  That’s not something that I know how to go about fixing at all, whereas I am pretty certain I can plug and chug a new screen in.

I am basically a comics-whore.  I have pretty much no taste.  My favorite comic book character is Strong Guy (from X-Factor) and I love him because his name is Strong Guy, he is the strong guy, and he has a kewpie doll head.  And that bit of back story is necessary… because I really did not like the 5 part Excalibur and Exiles cross-over.

I have been reading Exiles for the last 15-20 issues, but I’m not up on the Excalibur title at all.  So when I say that the beginning is rough and seems to jump in with a few missing chapters, I’m only referring to the Exiles side of things.  But seriously… I don’t think I would “miss” Rogue showing up as a member of the Exiles.  And yet there she is, supposedly one of the gang.

The three-part bad guy is … horrible?  I haven’t read the wikipedia entries on Jasper, the Fury or Merlyn.  And based on the lackluster way they were presented here, I have no interest in learning more.  Jasper seems like a pathetic rip off of DC’s Riddler.  The Fury is DC’s Doomsday.  And Merlyn strode right out of the original Star Trek series.  Stupid all around.

The art would be pretty fantastic if I had done it.  For a professional, it’s really quite bland.  Blah.  Meh.  Oh, and a bit confusing in the action sequences.  I realize it is probably quite difficult to do a fight where one of the characters keeps doing things like growing heads out of his back but whoever has been doing the stuff with Morph in Exiles handles it just fine.  On the other hand, I like the cover art very much.  All five issues look like they go together.  I would not be suprised to see them available as posters to hang on the wall.  Well, if you are into Psyloche, Captain Britain, Dazzler, or Longshot.  But then again, who isn’t?

I kinda feel bad for being down on the series though.  All in all, it seems to have mostly been just a grand salute from Claremont to Dave Cockrum.  Just a shame that the finished product was such a mess.