I love Adventure Time.
Cartoon Network has been riddled with a series of flopshows over the
past few years, but has shown resurgence with Adventure Time and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. There’s a lot of love for Adventure Time out
there, as evidenced by this wonderful piece of art placing the cartoon back in
retro comic book land.
I'd say explaining Jake's ridiculous eyes as goggles makes sense, but nothing in the show really does.
It's fantastic.
If you haven’t checked out Adventure Time I highly recommend
feasting your eyeballs and audio holes upon it.
I saw The Dark Knight Rises on opening weekend. I thought it was great. I saw it again yesterday. I ruined it.
I am not a huge Batman fan. I remember when
The Dark Knight came out and everyone was all...
Did you guys know Ledger died?! Death makes it so much better!
I had seen
Batman Begins and thought it was a respectable cinematic adventure; mostly
because of Liam Neeson’s awesomeness.
Prior to that my only real exposure to the goddamn Batman had beenJustice League, where I always found it funny that the super-powerless billionaire
was saving the League of Pricks with Powers all the time. Except black Green Lantern. He got Hawk girl. That was cool. I was also overall impressed with Yes, Heath
Ledger Died the movie; minus the whole China-diplomatic-crap thing. So I did actually get a little excited for
The Dark Knight Rises; but only like, “Hey, I’m not out of Cinnamon Toast
Crunch yet” excited.
I walked out of the first showing of Nolan’s last Batman fairly
stoked. Bane’s voice was ear-cake. The Bat is the coolest thing this side of
Iron Man. Anne Hathaway looks great in leather. And the ending was
full of sunshine and rainbows. It
wasn’t quite the diamond-encrusted Aston Martin driven by Kate Beckinsale from
Heaven we were promised; but it was pretty darn good.
Walking out of the second showing my first thought was, “That
movie was more full of holes than Gotham’s infrastructure.”
The Plot Holes
It's like it's supposed to be mean something.
How did Bruce Wayne get back into Gotham after his stay in a sink hole? Bane blew half the city up with exploding concrete (which I’m not even sure is chemically possible) minus one bridge that was carefully protected against people by the entire national guard. And one dick police officer. It was specifically said that if anyone so much as sneezed on that bridge the terrorists would recreate Hiroshima. The only other way into Gotham would be walking over the river ice, but we saw that didn’t work out too well for anyone. On top of that, Bruce isn’t exactly a member of the Ice Capades...
Through some skates in there and you've got a kick-ass new winter sport.
The counter-argument to all of
this is: He’s Batman, he knows Gotham
and all its secrets. What, like the
underground tunnel network that’s completely blocked off with three thousand
hobo-policeman trapped in it? Yeah, no. The bigger mystery is actually how Wayne got
back to America in the first place without money, identification, or good hygiene.
How has no one figured out Bruce Wayne is Batman by now? At least at the end of the movie everyone would’ve figured out that; hey, the eccentric billionaire Batman died
at the same time. Coincidence? Not allowed to believe in those; Gordon told
us so. Heck, how did everyone in Gotham not
figure it out during the eight years the Batman disappeared and Bruce Wayne
simultaneously hermited away into house archery and creepy facial hair? Or when Bruce is taken out of the country by
Bane’s men and Batman doesn’t reappear until Wayne publically shows up at a
trial obviously meant to be judged by the Joker but had to be Scarecrow because
the actor was still alive? Or when Bane’s
men show up in Batmobile’s they stole from Wayne Enterprises. Or when the engineers see Bruce Wayne fixed
the Bat’s autopilot? Seriously. No one makes the connection?
Hey, that looks familiar...does it come in black?
Oh wait, people did. For stupid reasons. Like staring deeply into Christian Bale’s
soulless eyes.
How did the ending even work? I understand that Batman ejected from the Bat
and then Michael Phelped to shore somewhere; but when and how did he fix the
Bat-signal, leave a bag in his will for a cop, meet up with
Catwoman, rock over to Italy, find a café that Alfred mentioned briefly and
sit there every day until he showed up to let him know he was totally boning
Selina? Sure, we can assume they both dropped off the map entirely
with the clean-slate program; but one stray photograph and sober memory and
the FBI are going to have some questions for a very recognizable dead
billionaire and master thief who happen to not exist in their database anymore.
Batman and Bane are Idiots
There are supposed to be some seriously smart people in The
Dark Knight Rises. We know the general
populace of Gotham are borderline retarded, but at least the hero and villain
know what’s up, right? Wrong. Very,
idiotically, wrong.
Bruce Wayne/Batman
You know how most of the issues in this movie could have
been avoided? Turning on the freaking
fusion reactor.
It works. We’re very clearly told
it works. It would provide clean, efficient energy for
all Gotham and beyond; which would help out Gotham’s struggling lower class and
give Bruce and Wayne Enterprises more money than god for them to use on more
cool monorail trains. Yet Bruce Wayne
won’t turn the Poke’ball of Destiny on because ONE crazy Russian figured out
how to turn it into a nuclear weapon. You
know what also has that same problem?
Nuclear power plants. I worked at
one. Know how they stop Libyans and
Delorean enthusiasts from stealing uranium and turning it into nukes/time
travel fuel? An ass-ton of security. Had Bruce decided to flip the switch, cackling like a mad genius, the
government would have gone: That’s
awesome! By the way, you need to
surround that thing with about thirteen hundred miles of concrete, a few thousand armed guards,
barbed wire fences, and airport style security checkpoints. Lucius Fox also gets a stupid badge for this
one for not figuring out this either, despite being Tony Stark as played by
Morgan Freeman.
(We're also ignoring the whole, “guns would solve all Batman’s problems”,
as adequately displayed by Catwoman.)
Bane
Bane is supposed to be as intelligent, if not more-so, than
Batman. And at first Bane shows his smarts. He has that elaborate
plane-airlift-crash thing, turns Gotham into swiss-cheese, figures out Bruce
and Batman are one dude (as mentioned above though, not difficult) and he takes the schizophrenic chain smoker out of Gotham and throws him down a well halfway
around the world.
Then he takes a stupid pill.
Take the blue pill and the story ends. The red pill adds two hours to the movie.
Bruce’s total downer cell-mate informs him Bane runs
the pit-prison. But there are no guards. Only a very climbable wall with one Ninja
Warrior leap of faith at the end. Yeah,
sure, that’ll stop the goddamn Batman.
Later, Bane acts all surprised that Batman’s back: “I broke you.” No you didn’t Bane. Bruce could still move his legs. You didn’t paralyze him. He can recover from that and magically
teleport back to punch you in the face.
Why did Bane even give him the chance anyway? Why didn't he just detonate the poorly defended
fusion bomb as soon as he got it?
Bane's goal is to destroy Gotham.
Sure, the whole “anarchy fear thing” is cool, but the bomb is going to
go off anyway and have the same effect in five months that it would in five
seconds. Why not just get out of there,
set it off, and go enjoy mojitos through a twisty straw in the Caribbean? Nope, have to give Batman and the cops a
chance to rebel and screw up your plan.
The Matinee After Syndrome
Any movie you go see a second time while it’s still in
theaters is not going to be as good as the first time you feast your virgin eyes on it.
Those who assert a movie was “better the
second time” are trying to justify spending enough money to buy the DVD
without doing so. The problem is not
enough time has passed for the unexpected moments to be even remotely unanticipated
again.
I’ve seen The Avengers four times. Are the scenes where the Hulk punches Thor
and tosses Loki around still hilarious?
Yes. Is the Mark VII bracelet suit-up
thing still engineer-gasm fantasticness?
Yes. But I didn’t laugh or openly
gape the second, third, or fourth time I saw it. The problem with those types of scenes is they only ever have a significant impact on you the first time you see them. If you let enough time pass between seeing
the movie you may be able to scrape up some semblance of that glorious first time again,
but it will never be the same. This is what
plagues The Dark Knight. Badly.
I would never stop paying to see this.
So many points of the movie rely on “sudden reveal” or
perfect cinematic timing that when you’re expecting it the second time through
just lose their weight entirely. Just a
few examples are: When Catwoman betrays
Bruce, when the Batwing flies out of that alley, when Talia stabs Bruce, etc. The biggest one though, is the ending
itself. Knowing that Bruce lives ruins
the entire end sequence. As soon as Batman hooks up the nuke, the statue, the Robin, the fixed autopilot, the Alfred crying just doesn't hold any weight. In fact,
it makes it worse. Bruce lets everyone close to
him think he’s dead and only lets Alfred know he’s alive in a highly chance dependent
event. He also goes off to live the good life while leaving Gotham’s incompetent police department to deal with an under-trained new Batman.
The Dark Knight Rises is a good movie; just try to
avoid seeing it again before you boot up BitTorrent at the DVD release.
Anyway, this track is from a band that will probably appear a lot, because all their music is awesome. I give you "Dragon Rider" by Two Steps From Hell.
If that wasn't enough for you, there is a fan-made extended version.
I am a regular of 9GAG, as well as other random meme-focused areas of the interblag. I find memes hilarious, which by default means I'm going to impose this view on you! Don't you feel special?
When you fail to parallel park, you have my permission to cry.
I love soundtracks. I'm not much of a music person, but there's something about movie, video game, or trailer scores that gets me. So welcome to Soundtrack Sundays! Where, to the best of my consistency, there will be a track or so here for your enjoyment noon every Sunday!
Going to start things off with one of my new favorites - "An End Once and For All - Extended Cut" from the Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut DLC.
For a few short days every year San Diego, California becomes the apex of the geek world. Comic Con is an opportunity for those who enjoy all forms of nerd-dom to come together and indulge in fanservice, press releases, and of course, merch. While I have not yet had the opportunity to join in this festival of awesome, this oddly heartwarming video is a perfect end to the news I've been getting.
Game developer's common sense must be tingling. A Deadpool video game was just announced at Comic-Con 2012 and it looks like it's going to fill all my fourth-wall breaking, gun-noise making, dual-sword swinging dreams. Behold the glory of the announcement teaser:
While this isn't the movie announcement I was personally hoping for, it's Deadpool; it's a video game; and it's probably going to make my wallet lighter. No release date, but expect it sometime in 2013. In the meantime check out a few more details here: deadpoolgame.com
With the use of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a fifth moon orbiting, what I still say is a freaking planet, sadly demoted non-planet Pluto. Designated "P5" the object was discovered during a closer look at the system for the New Horizons spacecraft, currently en route to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
The really important thing to pull from this, though, is that the object could be a Mass Relay. In the Mass Effect video game series the gigantic space tuning forks (pictured above) are the primary mode of instantaneous intergalactic travel. These "cold" space objects (no emissions make them incredibly hard to detect because space is also really freakin' COLD) orbit around planets or solar systems just waiting to be found by any squishy organic life form capable of a quality 4th of July. According to the Mass Effect history books, another moon of Pluto, Charon, was actually discovered to be a dormant Mass Relay in 2149. So hey, the more moons we find, the better our chances of messing with advanced alien technology, right?
For those of you unfamiliar with Dick Figures, it's awesome. The YouTube series is now in its 3rd season and every episode is a cavalcade of bad pop-culture/internet humor, great animation, and kick-ass soundtrack.
Now the most hilarious internet series I've seen since Red vs Blue (which you should also look into if you have more spare time than you know what to do with) is looking to make a half-hour long feature. Having just found out about it, I'm glad I did because there are ONLY 4 DAYS left in their Kickstarter fundraiser. The project is only $6,000 short of the $250,000 goal at the moment and you should definitely follow the link below and support them in their quest for epicness!
And for those of you who haven't seen Dick Figures and are asking yourselves: "Why would I want to fund something that sounds like it's very title would get me in trouble at work/school/with my parents?" This is why:
*UPDATE: In less than 4 hours after posting this the goal has been reached! Now let's see if it'll make it to $500,000 in 4 days for the full hour special!
*UPDATE: Dick Figures is not only the most popular animation on YouTube, but also set a Kickstarter record for animation for the movie: Dick Figures Breaks Kickstarter Record
