Han Shot First

A lot of nerds (and I mean a LOT) go apeshit over the whole who shot first Han or Greedo. From that same scene, they'll also point out that a parsec is a unit of measurement and not time, even though it's a movie about wizards and Muppets using magic in the future which is also the past.

Nobody, but nobody ever mentions that Han essentially has the exact same conversation as he does with Greedo later with Jabba the Hutt in his hangar. This scene was intended for the original release and was digitally altered and added with the theatrical re-release, so it's cannon. Basically, Han tries to sweet-talk his way out of debt/death, which didn't go over too well with Greedo. For some reason, Han is able to escape with his life by etching out the details of a shady deal that already went tits up for Jaba before. Why? Is Han a Jedi (which would make sense) or is Jabba the most dumbass gangster in his backwater section of space? In the next movie, when Han has access to easy money and political power, (plus a link to the Rebel Alliance which is probably in need of blackmarket weapons Jaba deals in), Han gets frozen in carbonite and hand-delivered by Bobba Fette. What changes in the undeclared amount of time between the two movies?
Jabba doesn't even seem to care too much about Greedo in the scene, even though he was killed in front of a large group of Cantina patrons. How does Han escape immediate justice from all the Storm Troopers mulling about? Even if no one talks, they must have heard the laser blast from down the street. They'd probably circle back anyway because they're not getting off that planet without finding those droids. They'd find Greedo's dead body and start asking questions, and they'd break heads if they didn't like the answers.
What about the space monster that Obi Wan cuts an arm off of? Doesn't he need medical assistance? Won't the Storm Trooper find it suspicious that someone's reporting they got their arm cut off by a Jedi weapon?
Plus, the droids are standing right outside the Cantina in the hot sun without Obi Wan to cloud the minds of the Storm Troopers for them. How did they escape?

Batman’s Parents

I was thinking about the iconic death scene of Thomas and Martha Wayne that forever altered the life of young Bruce Wayne and lead him to become Batman, and how it made no fucking sense whatsoever.

The story itself -like common folklore- has been changed many times for comic reboots, movies, television and video games, but the general facts remain the same. Thomas, Martha and Bruce Wayne leave a theatre (usually a movie theatre playing “The Mask of Zorro,”) and take a shortcut down Crime Alley, where Thomas and Martha are robbed and murdered. The criminal (usually a common street thug with the unlikely name of Joe Chill), grabs Martha’s necklace and breaks it, then shoots both of Bruce’s parents.

Now: Thomas Wayne is a well respected doctor and one of the richest men in America. At the time he’s a millionaire and by today’s standards he’d be a billionaire. He’s one of the most recognizable men in Gotham, if not America. Thomas and Martha are a power couple, with Martha coming from “old money.”  Still, it’s possible that your average thug wouldn’t recognize them, even if they’re in all the papers. He could be out of touch with the media, or it might be too dark in the alley. He’d only notice they were dressed too well for the neighbourhood and rob them.

The baffling thing is why Thomas or Martha would put up any kind of resistance that would warrant them being shot. Thomas is a millionaire. A millionaire. The money he keeps on his person wouldn’t be worth a millionth of his fortune. Martha’s pearls, which get her shot, could be replaced as easily as Marge Simpson’s in the one episode where it’s revealed she has a whole drawer full of them. With Thomas’s influence, he could have every cop in the tri-city area hunt down the criminal and get the pearls back for him. He even has connections with the mob family, the Falcones, as he once saved the Don’s life. Both sides of the law would be on him like flies on shit. They could have just given him the pearls, and gotten Alfred. Alfred himself is combat trained in the British army and much younger at the time. In all likelihood, Alfred himself could have gotten the criminal single-handedly. He might have even carried a gun in the glove box for safety. In any event, the situation could have played out much differently.

Still, Thomas and Martha throw a fit and get shot. Maybe they deserved it? No reasonable person with as much wealth as they had would put up a fight in that situation. They’re like the Trumps.

Also, why were they at a movie theatre dressed to the nines? They have a private theatre in their mansion. You don’t run into Bill Gates at the grindhouse. It wasn’t even the good movie theatre; it was the one next to Crime Alley. That’s it’s literal name, “Crime Alley.” It even has a sign saying, “CRIME ALLEY.” They ducked down CRIME ALLEY wearing enough jewels to feed Africa. The average person might be tempted to rob them in that situation.

Like I said, the story’s been changed a bunch of times to suggest it was a conspiracy to assassinate the pair and destroy Gotham, but still… What the fuck were they thinking? I’m surprised Batman didn’t start a campaign to stop stupidity.

In many versions of Batman, he NEVER finds the man responsible. In one version it’s Joe Chill, in another it’s the Joker, but in the longest running version up until a few years ago he never finds out who did it. It’s not like he’s the only one trying to solve the crime either as the “World’s Greatest Detective.” As one of America’s greatest unsolved crimes there’s likely hundreds of people involved in the investigation, including three Robins. Commissioner Gordon himself keeps a tab on the case and follows up on any leads. With all of Batman’s skills, training, money, and connections to people who can see molecules, read minds and travel through time, he never solves the case. He even has a super-fan from another dimension called Batmite, who can alter reality and knows everything about Batman. You’d think he’d help out. Any member of the Justice League, the Outsiders, the Justice League International, the Teen Titans, the Titans and even some of his villains like the Riddler would be more than willing to help him solve the case. The Martian Manhunter alone could probably crack the case in a few hours.

Seriously, he has a database in his Batcomputer he pours over every night. It has facial recognition technology and can finger a perp instantly. His parent’s murder is permanently etched in his mind, a mind which he’s honed into a weapon to fight crime. He has complete access to Gotham’s police files, as well as the FBI. At no point while looking over any of these files does he recognize the man who killed his parents. It’s completely implausible. I’m not even sure what stance the New 52 has on his parent’s murder, and they’ve even tried to resolve how Batman never deciphered the Joker’s real identity… kind of. Batman claims to the Joker he knows who he was before, but the Joker throws himself off of a cliff to avoid hearing it. Then they reveal that the Joker knew who Batman was for years and years, but didn’t care.

Why is there such a glaring oversight in the Batman cannon? There was always a sense that one day they’d do a sweeping story arch that would finally reveal the secret truth behind his parent’s death, like how in the Batman movie it was the Joker, or in Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins it was Ra’s Al Ghoul, but that never came to be. The best answer is that it was Joe Chill. In one Silver Age comic, Batman tracks down the crook who killed his parents and… kind of scares him. That’s as exciting as that got. He told the dude he was keeping an eye on him.

From the outset, it seems like Joe Chill is the dumbest criminal who ever lived. He created the world’s biggest control freak/superhero and made about $50 in the process. Way to be. Yet, things turn out pretty decent for him considering. In some versions he avoids jail. In others he works for the Joker as a henchman, and in other versions still he becomes a small-time crime boss. In Nolan’s version, Bruce intends to kill him, only to witness him being murdered for turning snitch. Still, in his earliest days, Batman was fond of dumping criminals in vats of acid, with varying results. Joe Chill managed to kill his parents and avoid that fate.

Super Spock

Composite Superman has green skin so you won’t mistake him for the wrong person at the right angle….

I was trying to decide if the reboot Spock was more like Superman, or Batman, and I decided he’s more like Composite Superman, which as you know is a cloned zombie Superman and Batman stitched together. Why? Let’s go over the checklist of what they have in common:

Superman:

• Alien
• Home world destroyed
• Super strength
• Wears blue
• Mild mannered
• Believes in truth
• Weakened by radiation

Batman:

• Saw mother die
• Will break your arm
• Logical
• Shows little emotion
• Control freak
• Knows an unbeatable fighting technique
• Bitchin’ ride

Console Wars

Since Nintendo and it’s rival Sega went from 8-bit to 16-bit, then to 32-bit, the console wars have become steadily less inspiring. The key-push to the war was always graphics. The system with the best graphics usually won out, or got left behind. Now, Playstation and Xbox are on-par with each other in terms of graphics, with Playstation leading the race. With the next-gens we’re reaching the limits of what our TVs can even reasonably display, but they’ve given up on “gimmicks” like 3D display. That being said, the debut games on the next-gen consoles won’t look much different than the last games on the old consoles. This has always been the way. What’s the advantage, then, or the reason to update?

The Wii U is already out and being lambasted for not having the most advanced hardware. It’s considered a Wii with a iPad. It, however, has tons of backwards compatibility, and easy access to it’s back-catalogue of games. You can literally play the Wii on the Wii U. The new PS4 and Xbox One (X1?) both spit on that concept. You apparently can’t load a 360 game onto a One, despite the technology being there and it being connected to your old Xbox account.

Beyond that, the new systems have little to offer that couldn’t be made available with an app, like on the later-day 360. The One boasts the Kinect 2.0, which isn’t something people necessarily want. The Kinect 1 was nothing more than an expensive gimmick for the 360, with few gaming options. Players were always promised integration with their favourite games, and that never happened. The “big” Kinect games like the Star Wars one were on-rail jokes.  People traded in the Kinect Adventure game it came with, and you could buy it for pennies used. That’s likely because no one wants to shout commands at their TV, or wail their arms around like crazy when they’re trying to unwind. Have you ever tried using voice commands? On any system from the Kinect to Siri, to Google Voice? It DOESN’T work. Having the integrated Kinect 2.0 only adds to the cost of an already expensive system, plus gamers are being told they’ll have to pay extra to “unlock” used or borrowed games.

The gaming industry hates the used gaming industry because it creates a secondary economy. The great thing about the secondary economy is that’s it’s a viable alternative to the first, which sucks. Every new game comes out costing around $70, and without the secondary market, it’d stay that way. Only the AAA titles are worth that expense, but the full content is always kept from players in the form of “downloadable content” which can cost double the shelf price. Essentially, you’re always paying for half-a-game. The secondary market cuts through that bullshit. Garbage titles will soon find themselves in the bargain bin. With Xbox or Playstation controlling the market, they’ll never likely dip under the $40 mark until well over a year has gone by. They’re fleecing the consumers every way they know how.

Their other forms of “integration” aren’t phenomenal. Being able to link your gaming console with your handheld device like Vita, or your smartphone, isn’t really useful. I’ve tried using the Xbox app on my tablet, and beyond being able to search for videos on youtube slightly easier, it’s useless. The One was really pushing it’s integration with TV viewing, neglecting the fact that no one watches TV anymore. Nobody. It’s all downloads, Netflix and youtube. People want to be freed from their TVs. There’s little point in even owning one anymore, except for having a bigger screen.

Then there’s the “exclusives.” These are the real reason to decide between consoles. Nintendo pumps out the same stuff it’s been giving us since the 80’s. PS4 has ??? and God of War. The One has Halo and ???. The Halo franchise doesn’t even belong to Bungie anymore. As for Infinity Ward and the Call of Duty franchise that’s the game-killer, Infinity Ward isn’t even Infinity Ward. The rest of the sports games belong to EA, which is the worst company in the world two years running, and will likely fuck up their launch titles on both systems while they’ve dismissed working with Nintendo outright.

Startling Trek

I’m still thinking about the new Star Trek movie days later. Specifically, all the weird things about it. Anyone could go on about little mistakes, and I WILL, because it’s fun.

SPOILERS!

1: You have to watch the first movie in the reboot series, PLUS the Wrath of Kahn from the original run to fully understand the movie. Meaning it’s not as good independently. A lot of sci-fi movies suffer from this. Just look at Star Wars, the Matrix, etc. None of those movie sequels except the originals really hold up under their own weight.

2: Why did Kahn need the alias of James Harrison? Nobody knows who the hell he is. He’s been frozen for centuries. It’s not like he’s going to run into someone who’s looking for him.

3: Why are they still using hose reels for fire suppression hundreds of years into the future? Why has there been no advancements on that front? In the movie, Kirk uses a fire hose to take out a shuttle, which is stupid. He had a gun with him, which he could have fired directly at the turbines keeping the shuttle aloft. Instead, he finds a very unlikely fire hose reel and ties the gun to it and tosses it in there, which works. You can see Kahn glaring at him out of the window thinking to himself, “This is a superior opponent.” If it was John McCain, he would have tied a computer to it and dropped it on him. Seriously, has no one else noticed every single action movie has the hero using a fire hose to escape or to blow something up? They’ve never once been used to put out a fire.

Also, Kahn had opened fire on an entire room full of people with heavy gunfire. The entire building should have been cut in half. Instead, maybe two people die.

4: Why were Kahn’s crewmates inside of the photon torpedoes? It’s explained in the movie, but it’s a terrible explanation that makes no sense. Hiding anyone inside of an active missile is a pretty terrible idea.

5: Why would waking up the rest of Kahn’s crew from cryo-stasis kill them? It’s established that they’re all like Kahn and Kahn has super-healing powers. If a blood sample from Kahn can cure death by radiation, it could probably cure a case of frostbite. Kahn’s like the reverse Tony Stark in this movie. He’s captured and forced to make weapons, but instead of sneakily devising a means for his own escape, he goes ahead an builds the torpedoes. He could have used that time to find a way to thaw out his friends and revolt, but that never occurs to him.

6: Everything about Kahn’s plan makes no sense. Obviously, he wants revenge on Starfleet, but the way he goes about it kind of defies his whole, “Evil Genius,” status. He has a ring he can turn into a bomb when it comes in contact with water. Why did he need the one guy’s help with blowing up the “archives?” He could have snuck that bomb in a million different ways. He could have blown up the meeting too in the exact same way. Everything he does seems as if it’s designed to get him closer to getting his crew back, as well as the Starfleet warship. There’s so many points along the way where he could have literally no idea what would happen next, or if he’d get his crew killed. At one point, they were going to launch his own crewmates at him and blow everyone up until he surrenders. That doesn’t sound like a winning plan.

7: Why does the guy Kahn recruits as a suicide bomber send a note off before killing himself? The idea was to repay Kahn, without endangering his family. No one would have likely traced the attack back to him without the note as all evidence would have been blown up. Probably the only reason he went through with it at all is because he felt Kahn would kill his family if he didn’t, or if he went to the authorities beforehand. Telling people that Kahn was the one who talked him into it and supplied the bomb negates all that.

8: Why would Starfleet ever accept Scotty’s resignation? He’s the genius behind the biggest technological advancement since the Warp Drive. The fact they’d stick him on a ship instead of a lab is baffling in and of itself.

The Dumbest Ways Movie Characters Have Been Brought Back to Life

Science Fiction and Fantasy movies are notorious for shirking the rules of life and death, even within the confines of their own mythology. In the Harry Potter universe, for example, it’s supposed to be impossible for a person to be brought back to life, but then there’s Voldemort and a legion of ghosts. That being said, audiences hate to see their favourite characters and actors cut out of their favourite franchises, and everyone loves a happy ending.

Warning: This contains spoilers. See every movie ever released before continuing.

X-Men: The Last Stand:

X-Men: The Last Stand has the distinction of bringing not one, but two characters back to life in the same movie, at the bookends.

The character: Jean Grey

The death: Killed in a flood

How she came back to life: The Phoenix Force

In all fairness, fans of the X-Men comics were waiting for this event to take place. The death/life/death rebirth cycle Jean Grey goes through is considered one of the crowning achievements of a series that goes back to the 60’s. That being said, in the comics Jean is chosen as the vessel for a cosmic force that brings her back to life. In the movie, she reaches a new plane of telekinetic power and it’s not even clear if she died in the previous movie. Nobody bothered to check. Scott’s the only one who bothers to go looking, and that’s months later after he gets a telepathic signal. You’d think with the multi-million dollar super-jet and all their super powers that could have at least dredged the lake to look for her body. Or they could have reported her missing and let local authorities find the body for them. It’s not like she would have been arrested post-mortem for being a mutant. Jean still supposedly had family, who’d probably want her remains.

When asked how she’s still alive, she replies, “I don’t know.” That’s all the explanation beyond, “She’s a mutant,” the audience ever gets.

Come to think of it, how is anyone sure she’s dead at the end of the Last Stand? She survived being crushed under a tidal wave and drowned and then came back like she Jason Voorhees, why would being stabbed be any more effective?

The character: Professor X

The death: Being ripped to atoms by the Phoenix Force

How he came back to life: Mind-swap

Nobody in any movie ever has died as utterly as Professor X did in The Last Stand. Every molecule of his being is pulled apart and you see him torn to dust. After the credits roll, you’re treated to a scene where he’s entered the body of a comatose boy, an event which is eluded to earlier in the movie. This creates a weird implication that Professor X’s consciousness has always been separate and independent of his body, which means his powers function without his physical form. That means he might never have been a mutant to begin with.

Star Trek:

Star Trek: The Search for Spock:

The character: Spock

The death: Radiation

How he came back: Terraforming

Like the X-Men, characters in Star Trek are constantly dying and coming back to life.

At the end of the Wrath of Kahn, Spock dies heroically and is given a burial in space. That’s cannon. In the sequel, his body is brought to an experimental planet and is somehow brought back to life using a terraforming device which in no way is designed to do that. Not only does he come back, he’s a rapidly-aging kid again and his emotions (which he isn’t supposed to have as a Vulcan) control the weather on the new planet, Genesis. Then he goes back to normal, and resumes his old job as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Star Trek: Generations

The character: Kirk

The death: Saving Whoopi Goldberg

How he came back: Rescued by Picard from what was essentially his own personal Heaven, minus the green alien women. (Thanks Picard!)

If Spock’s resurrection made little sense, everything about Kirk being suspended in time/space for decades so he could team up with Picard made less sense. Since the pocket-dimension he was trapped in was a crucial part of the bad-guy’s evil plot, the movie itself made no sense. Seriously, what was the plan? The bad guy was going to blow up a planet to start a chain reaction that would let him access the Heaven-dimension and bring back his dead family, only he got a karate chop to the face by Kirk as a consolation prize. Kirk dies a few hours, if not minutes of being resurrected and gets buried on a lonely planet where no one will even visit his grave. To recap: Picard is a total dick.

Star Trek: Into Darkness:

Seriously: Spoilers. Skip ahead.

The character: Kirk

The death: Radiation. The exact same way Spock died.

How he came back: A blood transfusion

Typically, blood transfusions only work if you have a beating heart and every cell in your body hasn’t burst from radiation. KHAAAAAAAN’s blood is magic, though, and they decide to use it to save Kirk and not the dozens of other dead or injured people from the same attack. Bear in mind, Kirk’s already dead. In the extra feature to 28 Days Later, the directors discuss how they toyed with the idea of a blood transfusion as a cure for zombism, but decided that audiences would never buy it. Abrams knows better. His heroic death was just a role-reversal of what had already happened in another movie, meaning Abrams screwed audiences into paying to see something twice.

The Matrix: Reloaded

The character: Trinity

The death: Computer generated bullets

How she came back: THE ONE!

If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life. Unless you’re fucking Neo. Neo takes his hand and shoves it inside her (SFW) to remove the bullets and to BREAKOUT! KICKSTART MY HEART! Instead of resorting to CPR, he literally pumps her heart with his hand like he’s about to sacrifice her to Khali-Mah. Even with super-powers, it shouldn’t have worked, because her heart stopped in real life. She dies again in the next movie and Neo just kind of accepts it, even though he has super-powers in real life too (he can see even though he’s blind, and he can shoot out EMPs with his hands). Why it doesn’t occur to him that he’s essentially a God I won’t understand.

Superman:

The character: Lois Lane

The death: AVALANCHE!

How she came back to life: Time travel

Superman is expressly forbidden to use time travel by his father, who blabbed about it in the first place. Well guess what, dad? FUCK YOU! Supes spins around the world so fast it starts going backwards. This causes time to go backwards as well, instead of sending all the people, trees, oceans and everything else hurtling into space. His dad somehow magically appears and tries to talk him out of it, even though he’s just a recording on a crystal and not a Jedi. If you watch closely, you’d notice Supes only needs to go back a few minutes, but he spins the Earth around what must be several months. Still, he miraculously returns in the nick-of-time to save Lois, who doesn’t really understand she’s just been saved from certain death by a guy with about 1/16th of an inch of fabric between his Johnson and her. Is she really the real Lois Lane anymore, or just a different version from an alternative timeline? Super’s dick can’t tell the difference.

Crank: High Voltage:

The characters: Everyone

The death: Everyone

How they came back: Open-heart surgery/secret twin/head in a jar

Crank: High Voltage is better if you accept it as a parody of action movies. It uses every trick in the book to bring back every character that died in the first movie. Chelios is supposed to be deader-than-dead after plummeting out a helicopter while simultaneously succumbing to poison. He is literally scraped off the ground and has an artificial heart put in after some Chinese back-room surgery and aromatherapy. His gay sidekick returns in the form of a twin brother seeking revenge, who also has FBT (Full Body Tourettes). The bad guy from the first movie is back, but now he’s a severed head in a fish tank, hooked up to some tubes and shit. High Voltage is notable because Chelios dies several times in the movie after his artificial heart stops beating, and then again during the credits.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

The character: Jason Vorhees

The death: Hung by the neck and drowned

How he came back: Girl with psychic powers

So there’s a girl with psychic powers and she’s having a tantrum, so she goes out on the dock at Crystal Lake and unleashes her psychic fury. Her telekinetic powers rock the dock and somehow brings Jason back to life. How? How the fuck should I know? Jason dies at the end of almost every Friday the 13th movies with a few exceptions, and since he’s a zombie to begin with it’s not hard to write in how he gets revived. In the past, lighting has done the trick like a Post-Modern Prometheus. The psychic-blast was a definite low-point in one of the most cheeseball franchises out there.

Peter Pan

The character: Tinkerbell

The death: Fucking with Captain Hook

How she came back to life: Clapping

This scene is replayed in a lot of different versions, where everyone has to say, “I believe in fairies!” and clap their hands, and I mean everyone. Even you, in the audience, are supposed to say, “I believe in fairies!” I’m pretty sure you have to do it when you read the book too. You wouldn’t want to be the one person who doesn’t. Imagine watching the movie with your kids and you didn’t say the magic words. They’d never trust you again. You’d be sitting at the dinner table and they’d be looking at you out of the corner of their eyes waiting for their moment to strike. You can’t just half-ass it either, like the National Anthem, or love-making. You have to feel it.

Snow White:

The character: Snow White

The death: Poison apple

How she came back: Date rape

Snow White wasn’t sleeping: she was fucking dead. Then the Prince rides in an gives her a kiss, and she magically comes back to life. How the fuck does that work? It wasn’t the same story as Sleeping Beauty, where only true love’s kiss would wake her. What would he have done if the dwarves and forest animals weren’t watching?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The characters: Megatron and Optimus Prime

The death: Michael Bay-PLOSION!

How they came back: Bullshit

Not one, but two characters are brought back to life in this movie at the bookends. Megatron is brought up from the ocean floor and revived like a zombie Bin Laden and then Optimus is brought back to life by Shia LeBouf’s terrible acting. This movie got a lot of flack, and rightfully so, for not giving a fuck about the audience’s limits for suspended belief. The worst part if how Optimus’s death almost mirrors the one in the animated movie from the 80’s which scarred a generation of kids. That movie was shocking in that it didn’t resolve Optimus’s death, and that you walked away knowing he was gone for good like Bambi’s mom (the TV series later revived Optimus). I realize they’re robots-in-disguise and that they’re essentially just machines that can be repaired, but the movie uses mythical artefacts and a “chosen one” to do the job a blowtorch and a wrench could have done.

Books I Haven’t Finished Reading

The book report is a staple of the education system, despite the fact that there’s little you can add in your report that hasn’t been said before, and your mistrusting teacher will fact-check to see if you copied and part of your report in part or in whole. If you’re like me, you didn’t even bother reading some of the books you were assigned, or gave up halfway. It’s a habit I carried through Elementary school to 400 level university courses. Even today, I’ll start reading, then decide the book isn’t worth my time and toss it in a pile.

With my tablet and Google Books, I can increase that habit a thousand-fold. I’ve been meaning to read quite a few copies of classic novels I downloaded, but I haven’t had much luck. The most recent casualty is a book titled, “Ghost Stories,” written by a man with the unlikely old-timey name of Felix Octavius Carr Darley.

It’s essentially a book of ghost stories that aren’t ghost stories. Hence: false advertisement. It’s a 200+ page short story collection trying to debunk belief in ghosts by telling 2+ page stories about haunted houses where the real culprit is really the family dog, or a drunken brother. It’s like Scooby-Doo without all the Scooby Snacks and rubber masks. Basically they’re scary stories that aren’t scary and there’s a narrative at the end of each story explaining how it was never a ghost, but an equally unlikely situation that was responsible for each haunting. CASE CLOSED! Really, the book is an asshole. I don’t know if books themselves can be assholes, or it’s the author, but this book is an asshole. It reminds me of those books I read as a kid like Encyclopaedia Brown that were full of two-page mysteries you were supposed to solve yourself before reading the solution, which made less sense than what you’d been thinking of. Also, since the stories are all made up, it’s not like it’s using any factual evidence to debunk myths, like Mythbusters does. The author could have taken the time to research real incidents, since he’s claiming that the belief in ghosts and stories about them are commonplace. That doesn’t happen. The whole time you’re reading this book you’re thinking, “You know what would have been better than there not being a ghost? If there’d been a ghost. That would be interesting.” If you took this book, edited out the last few paragraphs about how stupid everyone in the story was for thinking there was a ghost, and have them be violently ripped to shreds by hands from Hell, then you’d have a book.

Ironically, having died in 1888, the author is now a ghost.

Blood Dragon

I finished playing Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon in it’s entirety, including all Achievements and collectables. The game itself is pretty short without much re-playability. That being said: It’s awesome. It’s like the 80’s exploded. It’s filled with references like Ninja Turtles, Krull, Star Wars and Terminator. Everything is neon, which is the way things should be. It even feels like Skyrim at times when you’re fighting giant dragons. Instead of CGI cutscenes, the game uses rertro-80’s style 16-Bit cutscences full of one-liners and Rocky-esque montages. There’s cheese-ball jokes like:

“Tell my wife I died a hero.”

“Tell her yourself!”

The game is very self-aware of itself as a game. The training sessions and the load-screen hints are parodies while being helpful. Your character, Rex, will even reference other, terrible missions from other games while basically doing the same thing in his. Him saying, “I hope I don’t have to collect any fucking flags,” while collecting TV sets of VHS tapes is likely a reference to the Assassin’s Creed side-mission where you have to spend hours and days collecting flags to get a pointless Achievement. Rex’s top running speed, the availability of vehicles and fast travel, plus his Cyber-eye that pings targets and the ability to unlock all collectible locations on the world map makes his collectible quest painless and easy.

Rex is able to finish quests to upgrade and trade-out his weapons. This becomes moot once you get the Killstar, a reference to the mystical weapon in the terrible 80’s movie, Krull. It’s basically a spinning Ninja Star that shoots out lasers from your cyber-arm. It’s uses your health-bar as ammo, but once you max out your level you won’t notice your health taking a hit. It can kill anything and even score head-shots with sweeping laser blasts. I spent hours just running around shooting anything that moved. This was a complete departure from how I started off in the game sneaking around getting Stealth kills. Stealth is only important if you don’t have the guns to back up a frontal assault.

The game’s ending had once of the greatest moments I’ve ever seen in a game, when you walk into a room and the floor lights up with a rainbow bridge to lead you to your new cyber-dragon-thing, which is basically a dinosaur with a giant cannon on it’s back you ride around on and kill things on-rails. This leads you to the end-game moment, which skips the obligatory boss battle.

Some areas are difficult, though, like when you have to kill two dragons at once in an arena-style fight to progress the game. They even have extra baddies come in to shoot you while you’re fighting for your life. I had to stealth the first part of the fight to set up mine and C4 traps (the only part of the game I used either weapon, despite the ready availability of both throughout), then blast away with the gattling gun and hope I didn’t have to reload.

I haven’t even played Far Cry 3, and I have no idea how similar the two games are, or if they’d even play the same. I know both are vaguely RPG, open-world-style FPS, but then Far Cry 3 probably doesn’t have a button for flipping people off.

Star Trek: Into Blarkness

The main thing I took away from the new Star Trek movie was that there was a medical advancement that could effectively cure any disease, even death, and it existed for more than three hundred years before the events in the movie took place. It’s existence makes all other medical treatments obsolete and could effectively wipe out entire fields of medicine and their practitioners. Without giving away any spoilers, the medical advancement crops up three times in the movie and on one occasion it literally cures an incurable disease in seconds. In the rebooted Star Trek universe, this technology is easy to use and readily available around the time we live now, but it was mothballed and didn’t see the light of day for hundreds of years because… it’s never adequately explained why. Yet, even after it’s rediscovered, no one realises it’s full potential. They don’t even think to mass-produce it. Nobody says, “Stop what you’re doing with the phaser battles and lens flares, and come look at this shit. We just became trillionaires!”

Did I mention lens flares? Because J.J. Abrams decided to ignore all the criticism about the use of lens flares in the first movie (and there was a lot of it), and used it again. It’s an artistic choice that makes no sense. If he had decided he was going to film the whole movie using an Instagram filter, that would have probably been a better choice. The lens flares are digitally added, and cost time and money, meaning that the entire production could be held up for weeks because the director decides there’s not enough glaring lights in his movie. Plus, I watched the movie in 3D, and the lens flare looked flat, which took me out of the moment. Every time they’re on deck and the lights start blaring at you, you’re like, “Fuck, really? This shit?”

The other weird thing about the movie was the constant shift in rank. In the first twenty minutes there’s about five or six people getting promoted, demoted, then promoted again, and resigning altogether. If your job was like this, you’d walk the fuck out. I think three different people sit in the Captain’s chair, with another on deck. If you were on the ship, you wouldn’t know who to salute to. You might wake up and find you’re Captain. There’s one moment where a character has a Star Fleet vessel and you’re like, “Where the fuck did they get that? Didn’t they quit? Do they let you keep them as a parting gift?” Still, the characters rally against any protest the admirals might make about how they do business on the Enterprise, like their complaints are unwarranted. It’s like that new, terrible reality show on FOX, “Does Someone Have to Go?

I noticed the one thing the movie does well is to introduce minority characters, outside of the “original/rebooted” cast. If there’s a dude or dudette on screen that’s only got one line or two, they’re black, brown, or an android. (I swear I saw what must be the rebooted version of Data.) Beyond that, they’ve got fat bald chicks possibly filling in for Kristie Alley and 400% more brown people than the rest of the Star Trek universe combined. One of them turns out to be a terrorist, but still… Is that progress? The original TV series was hailed for groundbreaking way it showcased a multi-cultural cast. Kirk and Uhura had the first white/black kiss on film. The movies that followed? They seemed to forget that. Pretty much everyone who wasn’t Sulu or Uhura were white. Even the one movie had a white actor playing a Klingon in blackface (why wasn’t that ever considered racist at the time?).

The movie also has a romantic sub-plot/love-triangle that goes nowhere. Kirk sees the new love interest in her underwear, then that chick and Bones are alone together and flirting on an alien planetoid. That’s all that ever comes of that. Supposedly, they’re setting up the romantic sub-plot for the next movie, which kind of leaves the audience hanging. She’s not a crucial part of the movie, or even necessary, and could disappear entirely in the next film if the actress tries to hold out for more money. James Bond had more meaningful relationships with women he’d spent three minutes in a hot tub with.

The movie also eludes to something J.J. Abrams might try for his Star Wars reboot. There’s a scene where Spock, Uhura and Kirk are all together and risking their lives, and they decide then and there they’re going to have a long and drawn out conversation with Spock about his real feelings and their relationship, although he’s a Vulcan. Imagine if they tried that shit with Leila, Han, and Chewie.

Leia: “Before we blow up the Death Star III, I want to talk about our relationship.”

Han: “Right now? Like right now right now? We need to save Luke from Darth Vader II!”

Leia: “You never talk about your feelings!”

Chewie: “GRRRGGRGHH!”

Leia: “You keep up of this, fuzzball!”

Han: “I never want to talk about my feeling because I’m too busy being awesome.”

Leia: “You never thanked me for rescuing you from the frozen carbonite!”

Han: “Probably because you did jack shit while I was being frozen, then waited five years and fucked up my rescue. I had to be saved by fucking Lando from a giant sand vagina while you were wearing a metal bikini and getting groped by a giant green slug! How’s that for my feelings?”

Leia: “You nerfherder!”

Han: “And that’s another thing: do you even know what a nerf is? Have you ever even seen one?”

Leia: “I..”

Han: “Nerfherders make good money, you know.”

Leia

I was thinking about how Star Wars is about the complicated family dynamic between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, but really Princess Leia had it worse. All Vader did to Luke is cut off his hand and try kill him on three separate occasions. That thing with the Skywalkers getting burnt to a crisp really didn’t have anything to do with him, plus Obi Wan kind of had it coming after he cut off his arms and legs and left him in the lava to die. Beyond that, it’s all politics and lasers. As for Leia, he captured and tortured her and would supposedly have carried out her execution if given the chance. Oh, and he blew up her home planet and her adoptive family and everyone she ever knew or cared about. He didn’t give the order, but he was standing like two feet away when it happened. Then he dipped her boyfriend in carbonite and gave him to a bounty hunter, because he apparently is prejudiced against nerf herders. Then, after all that, he thought about offering her the same job he was going to give to Luke. Why didn’t he start off trying to recruit Leia? He had to have known she was his daughter and could use the Force. Why not just try and hire her on the spot instead of subjecting her to torture and mass-genocide? There’s no rule saying you can only have one Skywalker at a time.

Borders

Recently -meaning last night- we had an election in BC. In the build-up to the election I was reading up on the candidates and better informed myself. Then I learnt that the particular riding I had been following wasn’t even my own. That riding is two blocks from my house. I can walk out the door, walk a couple of blocks and be in a different riding. In fact, there’s three ridings in my town’s region.  I was getting a little confused, because I’d noticed that one side of the street had a different candidate for the same party than the other. Living about about ten to twenty minutes from the US/Canada border my whole life, I’ve always thought borders themselves to be a little ridiculous. The very idea that you physical place on the planet governs how you’re being governed is kind of bullshit. It’s like driving unwittingly through a gang-riddled neighbourhood and making a wrong turn by accident and winding up on someone else’s “turf.” Unless someone comes up and informs you that you’re in the wrong place, (which will definitely happen) you’d never know.

Flipper, Flipper, Faster Than Light

Have you ever been to the aquarium where they’ve rescued a dolphin or other animal and they give you a big long speech about how the dolphin couldn’t possibly survive in the wild? It really makes you think that they’re making a difference in that dolphin’s life. They’ll even show you the scars or deformity the dolphin received from being tangled up in a fishing net. Then, for the next fifteen minutes, they’ll make the dolphin jump fifteen feet up into the air and do backflips and shit and tell you all the super-powers that dolphin has. That fucking dolphin is a million time healthier than you are. If it came down to a fight between you and the dolphin, you’d lose the second the bell rang and be knocked clean out of the pool before being led away by security. How in the hell do they come to the conclusion that the captive dolphin wouldn’t know how to survive? They even stress how awesome the dolphin is and how it can tell the difference between a BB pellet and a piece of corn using only echolocation from 200 feet away. That’s a super power. How could it not catch a fish on it’s own? What kind of horseshit is this? Shamu’s killed like two of his trainers, but you’re saying he couldn’t catch himself a meal on the fly? I know you’re trying to make me feel better about a dolphin being imprisoned for the crime of getting caught, but I’m not the one who should be feeling guilty. 90% of Free Willy was people telling the kid Willy didn’t belong in the ocean anymore, but that kid didn’t fall for their shit because that kid gave zero fucks. Why should I? If you ask a marine biologist, they’d probably tell you that kid essentially signed the whale’s death certificate for letting him go, and that you’re a terrible person for liking that movie. That marine biologist is a liar who doesn’t know his own damn job. A whale is still a goddamn whale. Aside from a boat being piloted by drunken sailors, nothing in the ocean is going to fuck with a whale. That Willy would eat that fucking kid if it had the chance. He probably tried to while he was jumping out. It’s not like he’s some retard baby that would die if you left it in the woods. It’s one of nature’s killing machines.

Lucky There’s a Family Guy

Last week’s episode of Family Guy revealed that there was a second toy company near fictional Quahog, Rhode Island, which opened several questions. Firstly, why couldn’t Peter Griffin find a job there after Happy Go Lucky Toys closed down? He was briefly the C.E.O. of Happy Go Lucky Toys (although he accidentally killed his employer). The fact he was involved in Mr.Weed’s death opens another line of thought. Peter’s accidentally killed two recurring characters on the show: Mr.Weeds and Cleveland’s first wife, Loretta. By comparison, Stewie’s only killed the Vaudeville pair (in his defence the piano player was a child molester), and Diana Simmons. Everyone else he killed either came back in a later episode or was never a recurring character. In the one episode, Diana Simmons killed Brian’s ex-girlfriend’s husband and the Jewish guy’s wife (James Woods came back to life and his girlfriend wasn’t a recurring character). The difference between those two and Peter is that everyone knows Peter’s responsible.

Speaking of James Woods, James Woods once alerted authorities about four suspicious people on a flight, who later turned out to be four of the 9/11 hijackers on a dry-run. Seth McFarlane was later supposed to be on one of the 9/11 flights, but missed it. Meaning: James Woods nearly saved Seth McFarlane’s life, and both narrowly avoided being killed by terrorists, and they’re now occasional co-collaborators.

Book to Movie

Since Hollywood has been barren of ideas since before I was born, books have often been a source of inspiration for films. I’m not talking about the classics, either. I’m talking about literally any book. Sometimes, however, the producers don’t even bother to crack the cover. I’m starting to think that they simply look at the title and go, “Okay, I can make a movie out of that. All I need now is millions of dollars and cocaine.”

I’m noticing a trend like the one with super hero movies. There’s movies that try and stay true to the works with some obvious embellishments like Watchmen and V for Vendetta and Sin City, then there’s movies that go off the rails, like every Marvel movie sequel. It’s kind of sad, because if you look at comic books today they’re obviously trying to be the storyboards for movies, because there’s no money in selling comics.

The same can be said for books. Everyone’s trying to be the next Harry Potter or Twilight, which means there’s a lot of angst-ridden young-adult novel filled with fantasy crap and two-dimensional characters. On the other end there’s niche books like World War Z, which is being released as a movie soon. With all the speculation about it, the movie promises to have nothing to do with the book except the title, plus it’s got Brad Pitt. If you read the book, you’d find what’s basically a script. It’s all setting and dialogue. You could technically make version of the movie that would contain no zombies and cost about five grand to make, because it’s just people talking about zombies. It could be a radio play. That doesn’t sell tickets, though, and it would be a waste of 3D.

I was watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and noticed that it had nothing to do with the book I read. The book was another in a series of novels intended to take dry subjects and spice them up with ridiculous monster battles, because of ADD. Literally none of the scenes or dialogue coincided with anything in the novel. There was even an extended plot they added which gave Lincoln an arch-nemesis that wasn’t in the book and was basically the entire movie. It was weird too, because Lincoln waits 10+ years to take his revenge on the vampire, who escapes. Only, Lincoln shoots him in the eye during the fight and the vampire never bothers to take the bullet out. He walks around with the bullet in his eye socket and doesn’t put on an eye patch until later. This vampire is trying to keep his cover and he’s showing everyone he’s a walking impossibility. Plus the vampire starts stalking Lincoln after their fight and never does anything to harm him, or even threaten him. So the vampire knows exactly where Lincoln is and Lincoln knows where the vampire is, and they just sort of co-exist in the same world while wanting to murder each other. For years.

Plus it’s full of all these action shots that make no sense unless you see it in 3D. There’s tonns of stuff flying at you in slow-motion, which looks silly in 2D.

Free Comic Book Day

Today wasn’t just a terrible Star Wars related pun, it was also Free Comic Book Day. It’s the one day a year in which you can get… wait for it… free comic books at local participating comic book stores. It’s been going on for a few years now. It’s designed as a promotion to get people to visit their local comic book stores and support their business (you’re supposed to be guilted into buying things). Why then, are the same comic books available online?

Yes, you can also download the exact same comic books from reputable online services like comixology.com as you would in store, for free. Or you could be a dick and download them illegally, it doesn’t make a difference. That way, you can avoid going to the comic book store altogether, because let’s face it: comic book stores are sad. Sure, they’re full of things you like, but the 40+ year-old man running the place is a living stereotype. Every comic book guy is literally Comic Book Guy. How sad can it get? The comic book store downtown where I used to live went under years ago, but not before the owner’s son killed himself upstairs.

Comic book stores lose money like M.C. Hammer, only they have no money to begin with. Seeing how anyone can freely purchase online seems like a kick in the teeth to comic book stores. Especially this last month here. On comixology.com, you could buy 700+ free Marvel comics. On Dark Horse, you could get a pack of fifty.

The King and the Traveller

The King: “Welcome traveller to the Kingdom of Porn Parodies, Jizzalot. I am your King!”

Traveller: “Wouldn’t it have been funnier if you called it Cumalot?”

The King: “My God, you’re right. I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before. Why did we go with Jizzalot instead of Cumalot? Now it’s on all our T-shirts and stationary and it’s too late to change. I don’t want to be King anymore!” *Throws crown on the ground and leaves."*