The quality of George Lucas’ film making skills have been the subject of much debate for the past decade. But no one can deny the fact that 35 years ago today he changed the world as we know it. Star Wars was a tour de force and geekdom will forever be in his debt. Thank you George Lucas and a very Happy Anniversary to you.
Month: May 2012
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You sunk my Battleship!
Believe it or not, this outfit was totally unintentional. I happened to be wearing this for errands and we saw the movie on a whim.I use to play Battleship with my brother for hours on end when we were kids. Moving our little red pegs around and gleefully shouting “you sunk my battleship!” It was a fun way to connect with our Dad when he was off on WestPacs. We kept it readily available at all times as demonstrated by this picture of my paternal grandma and maternal grandpa starting a game.
Can you guess what year it was by the lovely carpet?It was obvious from the get go that any movie based on this past time would not and could not bear any resemblance to the game. There is no plot, no characters, just some gray plastic ships and a peg board. I went to see this movie for one reason and one reason only. Because movies depicting the US Navy are few and far between and I wanted to see how they depicted the life I grew up with, however unrealistic the alien plot line may be.
No aliens were harmed in the raising of my brother and IBeware: I try not to spoil things too much but I’m sure I do so just be warned.
The basic plotline is as follows: Guy is lazy but smart and has no direction in his life so his older brother forces (yeah right) him to join him in the Navy. Flash forward 5 years and various Naval fleets from around the world are participating in RimPac off the coast of Hawaii. Guy doesn’t like one of the Japanese Captains and the feeling is mutual. Naturally they get stranded together by aliens and have to work together to save Earth with the help of a pop star, a Power Ranger, and a guy who looks kind of like Matt Damon. Oh yeah, and there’s a subplot about his girlfriend who just happens to be the Admiral’s daughter (isn’t she always?) who is in a completely different area but also helps save the world with the help of a real life hero and Dr. Doom’s Assistant.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpoabtbEJOI]
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I very rarely look at any reviews until after I’ve seen a movie and written my own review because I want to formulate my own opinion and I usually don’t agree with those other people anyways. Even though I still have not read any of the reviews for Battleship, I went into this movie expecting to hate it. Maybe it’s because I had such low expectations but I actually really enjoyed it. It’s no Avengers but I laughed throughout while it poked fun at itself.
I could identify with this movie in a few ways. My Dad was stationed at Pearl Harbor from 1972-1976 during the tail end of the Vietnam conflict (and long before I was born). He loved it there and it was one of the few aspects of his long military career that he would discuss freely with us kids. During this time he participated in a RimPac in which one of the subs in his squadron played a joke on the Australian ships and nearly caused an international incident with the Aussies. So yes, it’s been known to happen. One very minor detail that 99.9% of the people watching this movie won’t even notice but that made my heart skip a beat was seeing them use wax pencils and remembering watching my Dad use them. He always had one or two tucked neatly into his desk drawer and I would use them like crayons. I LOVED tugging the string. More years than I care to admit later and I’m still using USS Samuel Gompers nuclear work procedure notepads for scratch paper.
Duh.The only parts of the movie that are anything like the board game is the use of the NOAA buoys to track the alien ships and the torpedoes used by the aliens. The humans RADAR is knocked out by the aliens and, for some reason that isn’t explained, the aliens can’t seem to see them either so a screen that shows the movement of waves hitting the buoys acts as the pegboard. It was actually pretty cool. My biggest complaint is that it only lasted a few minutes before they moved on to the “they don’t like the sun” theory. The torpedoes used by the aliens look kind of like the pegs used in the game and stick in the hull for a few seconds before they explode. I got a kick out of that.
The least convincing of the Naval officers was the main protagonist Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch). His attitude and complete disregard for the rules would never be tolerated (and to the credit of the movie makers, almost wasn’t). I’m sorry, but there’s no way he’d make it through OCS and be an O-3 within 5 years and be so insubordinate. That being said, I kind of dig his weird robot surfer dude way of talking and he’s got great comedic timing.
Commander Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgård) is more believable as an officer but he still seems like an actor who’s pretending to play war games. His default expression is to stare wide-eyed, kind of like Amnesia Eric on True Blood. My favorite part? The part pictured above. It was the most emotion I ever saw from him. But I love Alex, he’s defintely worth nerdgasaming over and he fills out his dress whites very nicely.
The Admiral’s daughter, Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker) makes her entrance via a sexy slo-mo walk into the dive bar where Alex and Stone are hanging out celebrating Alex’s birthday. He immediately locks onto her position and attempts to sweet talk her but all she wants is a chicken burrito. His hilarious attempt to get her one wins her over and, I’m not gonna lie, it would probably impress me too. She’s a gorgeous girl but I have yet to see a fabulous acting job from Mrs. Roddick.
Lieutenant Colonel Mick Canales is played by Colonel Gregory D. Gadson, an Army Veteran and double amputee. He was my favorite of the main characters. He had a couple of cheesy lines that didn’t seem so cheesy coming from him. He also gets into a badass, no holds barred fist fight with one of the aliens that had me cheering. I hope I get to see much more of him in future films.
Aside from implying that the Japanese have been spying on us all this time using our tsunami tracking systems, I thought Captain Yugi Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) was pretty cool. He likes to poke fun at the punk white kid which is all fun and games until he sucker kicks him in the face during a soccer match. That was not so cool. He makes up for it though by being a valuable member of the alien annihilation team and showing off the mad gun skillz he learned at summer camp when he was a kid.
The thing that pissed me off most before even seeing the movie was the fact that Rihanna was in it. I mean seriously. A pop star with a history of very bad decision making as a passable Naval Petty Officer? Please. But I was shocked (shocked I tell you!) to find that I actually didn’t mind her. She did alright and I even forgot that she was Rihanna at times.
Liam Neeson is always great. The man shows up, talks like a badass for a few minutes and goes home. What a life! At the end of the film soon-to-be LCDR Alex asks Admiral Shane if he can marry his daughter and the Admiral says no. He then beckons Alex to join him for lunch while they negotiate the terms of his surrender. I laughed out loud. That is absolutely positively something that my Dad would say.
The rest of the non-redshirt Navy personal is rounded by Ordy and The Beast (Jesse Plemons and John Tui). I thought Ordy was hilarious. He was kind of like Checkov in the Star Trek redux. A boy wonder who looks like he’s way too young to be there but just happens to have the knowledge needed to get us back in business. Beast is the wall everyone leans on. He’s calm and collected 99.9% of the time but isn’t afraid to yell in the face of his newly minted CO when he makes an absurd decision that will get everyone killed.
Adam Godley is the NASA scientist who creates and builds the communications array that draws the aliens to Earth. Once they get here he doesn’t know what the fuck to do so he relies on the crackpot scientist (Hamish Linklater) assigned to the satellites on Hawaii to figure it out. Cal almost chickens out but then grows a pair just in time to help out Sam and Mick.
The best part of the whole movie for me was when all the shiny new Destroyers are *ahem* destroyed and the few remaining sailors start eyeballing the “Mighty Mo,” a battleship that served from WWII to Operation Desert Storm. But wait! They don’t have enough people to operate the ship! But wait! Thar be old salts among us! The Veteran “Old Salts” are fantastic. I could totally picture my Dad and my Grandpa (the one playing Battleship up above) reacting in the exact same way. Plus, they have some of the greatest facial hair I’ve ever seen.
Random things I didn’t like:
The spinning fire balls of death killing all of the Marines. My brother is a Marine. It made me sad. I also didn’t understand why the spinning balls decided that a freeway overpass was a threat other than maybe they are sadistic and just wanted to watch cars plummet to the street below.
The slo-mo montage of pretty people. It was a bit too Michael Bay-ish.
The weakest point was the aliens. With their armor on they were kind of a HALO rip-off.
Which one is Master Chief?With their armor off they were vaguely reminiscent of the Tharks from John Carter of Mars (rather ironic since the film stars the guy who played John Carter) and Vincent from Beauty and the Beast.
They have weird porcupine quill beards and lizard eyes that are apparently their only weakness. They were dumb.
Random things I DID like:
Cal Zapata (Hamish Linklater), the NASA scientist working at the satellite outpost in Hawaii. He was funny and quirky. I especially loved the scene when he’s skyping with another scientist and all the various agencies (NASA, Dept of Defense) turn up on the line.
LT Hopper hurriedly explaining to a young boy the difference between a Battleship and a Destroyer. It reminded me of when I’d go onboard my Dad’s ships and his coworkers would try to explain things to me. It went right over my head 99% of the time but it was so much fun.
The “I’m giving ‘em all she’s got” moment when the USS John Paul Jones fires every available weapon at an alien ship blinded by the sun. Great visual fx.
The joke about the North Koreans being responsible for the force field. Hahahaha. Yeah right. As if.
It was a totally cliché line but I like the way “Mahalo mutha fucka” sounds even though “mahalo” means “thank you” so the line made absolutely no sense in the context it was given.
The really weird back and forth, back and forth explosion caused by the alien torpedoes.
Mick the amputee: “we can buy the world another day!” Cal the scientist: “who talks like that?!?” This movie knew exactly what it was and wasn’t shy about making fun of itself.
Acquiring courage.
The Museum-to-Battleship transformation that the USS Missouri goes through has a definite Battlestar Galactica feel to it. I even made a note of it. Then, once the Mighty Mo is in full fight mode against the aliens and the force field finally comes down, the Admiral sends in a fighter jet. What is the pilot’s callsign you ask? Boomer! I have no idea if that was intentional or not but I just about flipped the frak out.
Oh, and remind me to bring my Gompers notepad to write notes on next time.
3 out of 5 Sci-fives!
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Marvel Cinematic Universe Podcast (World’s Best Podcast)
It could happen….About a week before The Avengers came out in theatres I participated in a World’s Best Podcast discussion about the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. We discussed Hulk (briefly), The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America. We also got into why the Marvel movies seem to be outdoing the DC movies (with the notable exception of the Christopher Nolan Batman films).
I was still sick when we did this so there are moments when my voice cracks and I sound like a 13 year old boy going through puberty. Since I typically dress like a 13 year old boy it was actually pretty fitting.
You might also notice that I got really excited and more talkative during the Thor part. What can I say? He’s my favorite comic book character 😉
Thanks to Isaac and the guys at World’s Best Podcast for another fabulous evening of nerd talk. It’s always a pleasure! Hope you enjoy our discussion:
As per usual, if the above player takes too long to buffer, just click here to listen: http://tinmanfrisbie.podbean.com/2012/05/17/season-4-episode-19-part-1/
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Avengers Assemble!
Thor is my favoritest Hero ever in case you didn’t know that by nowOMFG.
I don’t know how else to adequately describe how much I loved this movie.
I saw The Avengers twice in 2 days. The first time after an epic all-day Marvel Movie Marathon with my NBFF Geek Outlaw.
And the second time on Sunday morning with my Mom and SO. Afterwards we went to Smash Burger which I thought was really funny. I’m not gonna lie, I’m probably going to go back a third time and see it in 3D. I don’t normally watch 3D movies that were converted in post-production but I’ve heard the 3D is pretty good so I’m willing to give it a shot. It was also one of the funniest movies I’ve seen. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard since Bridesmaids.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead! So don’t read past this if you don’t want to be, umm, spoiled.
When Thor came out I predicted that Loki would be the main villain in The Avengers (that much was obvious from the teaser after the end credits) and that the plot would center on preventing Ragnarök, a major plot point in the Thor comics. And while it wasn’t exactly an apocalypse (unless you were on the island of Manhattan), the end of the world as we know it was a real possibility so I’m going to consider myself 12% right, with an argument being made for 15%.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOrNdBpGMv8]
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The basic plot line is as follows: After letting himself fall (not being pushed…but nice word twisting there Loki) Loki explores the tree of life for a bit before forming a partnership with The Other (frequent Whedon collaborator Alexis Denisof) and the Chitauri. Loki agrees to give The Other the Tesseract (aka Cosmic Cube) seen in Captain America in return for an army to conquer Earth. We humans aren’t too big on that and we fight back as usual, this time relying on The Avengers, a hodge podge team of superheroes led by Nick Fury and SHIELD, a super secret agency. Loki uses that brilliantly deceptive tongue of his to divide our heroes before they see the big picture and come together to save mankind and Manahattan (with the help of some real life Army Reservists by the by).
Now, I’m going to be nitpicky for just a second and point out a few things that differ from the comics. Nick Fury/SHIELD did not assemble The Avengers. We don’t get to see Avengers founding members Ant-Man (Henry Pym) and Wasp (Janet van Dyne). Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye are later additions to the team. The Chitauri are a race of history-meddling shapeshifters and we never really see their true form. This shapeshifting ability was apparently tossed for the movie.
And I am completely OK with all of those changes.
Avengers assemble!
Iron Man (Tony Stark):
Tony (Robert Downey Jr) got most of the best lines in the film. His nicknames for the other heroes were HI-larious. The ones that immediately come to mind are Legolas (Hawkeye) and Point Break (Thor) but there were so many others that I can’t think of off the top of my head. He had a great bromance going on with Bruce Banner and I was happy to see the two wunderkinds drive off together at the end of the film. I thought it was interesting that they chose to completely ignore Rhodey (War Machine) since he would probably only skip this fight if he were trapped in an underground bunker somewhere, but I can’t say that I’m surprised. There was already so much going on and you can only say “we sent them halfway around the world for their own safety” so many times. They did feature Pepper Potts quite prominently though. I’m not a big Gwyneth Paltrow fan but I do enjoy her as Pepper so that was fine. Anyone else notice that Tony wore a Black Sabbath t-shirt for a large chunk of the film? A nice little reference to their song “Iron Man” that I found amusing.
Hulk (Bruce Banner):
Mark Ruffalo is officially my favorite Bruce Banner. He was positively adorkable. His shy, soft-spoken good naturedness (is that even a word?) was so appealing that I never want to see anyone else play him ever again. It was a very good call to model Hulk after Ruffalo using the same technology used for Avatar as opposed to having him be pure CGI. I read that Hulk was a combination of Ruffalo and a male stripper from Long Island which is awesome. At the end of The Incredible Hulk it seemed like Bruce was working on controlling his alter ego. It appears that he succeeded. Much like his evolution in the comics, we see Hulk being uncontrollable when he’s caught off guard and in control when it’s his choice to change. I’m not surprised that we didn’t see Betty Ross but I was expecting some kind of reference to General Ross, especially after watching the Agent Coulson one-shot “The Consultant.” Hulk had so many great moments in this film but my favorite is probably when he picked up Loki and started smashing him back and forth before calling him a “puny god.” Harry Dean Stanton had a funny little cameo as a security guard that witnesses Hulk’s plummet to Earth and solemnly informs Bruce that he has “a condition.”
Thor (Thor):
How they planned on getting Thor (Chris Hemsworth) to Earth after the destruction of the Bifröst was something I was very interested to see. Loki comments that it must have taken a lot of dark magic on Odin’s part to make it happen. I’m looking forward to seeing the repercussions of that in Thor 2. Now that the cosmic cube resides in Asgard, Thor should be able to return to Earth and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) at will until the Bifröst can be remade. Jane was one of those “we sent her far, far away” quickies and that’s too bad. I would have liked to have seen her go up against flying monkey Erik and her (sure to be hilarious) reaction to Loki in all his Asgardian finery. This ordeal was so much more personal for Thor. Within a very short time he lost his kingship, was betrayed by his brother, changed his whole mentality, fell in love, lost his brother, and had to save Midgard. The fact that he has an “only I can be mad at and deal with my brother” attitude in the beginning is certainly understandable. And his comment about Loki being adopted made me LOL. It was fun to see Thor duke it out with Hulk. It’s made clear in the movie that he’s one of the few individuals who CAN be a match for Hulk. Go figure that it would take a god. The best part; however, was the conclusion of that fight. Having been interrupted by a fighter jet distraction the first time around, Hulk took the opportunity of punching Thor across Grand Central after they worked together to bring down a Chitauri mega monster. Brilliant.
Captain America (Steve Rogers):
Poor Cap. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is such a smart and instinctive guy but the fact that he’s a fish out of water and placed next to two of the world’s foremost geniuses, makes him seem a bit dense (his excitement at understanding the flying monkey reference was endearingly adorable). But his leadership skills and strategic ability are never questioned by his fellow heroes once the fighting begins. This is a guy whose entire world has been flipped upside down and yet he doesn’t even flinch. People need saving and by God, he’s going to save them. This includes a cute blonde waitress (Ashley Johnson). Anyone else find it interesting that her nametag said “Beth” which is a nickname for Elizabeth? You know what else is a nickname for Elizabeth? Betsy. As in Betsy Ross aka Golden Girl, Cap’s onetime partner and girlfriend. I can’t help but wonder if that is a coincidence. Considering it’s Joss Whedon, I’m thinking it had to be intentional.
Black Widow (Natsha Romanoff) / Hawkeye (Clint Barton):
I seriously want to see more of the Hawkeye/Black Widow relationship. I think they should give the two of them their own Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. There is plenty of history (and sexual tension) between the two of them to make it interesting and entertaining. I don’t know what it is about Jeremy Renner, but there is something very appealing about him. He’s not your stereotypically handsome action star but I kinda wanna jump his bones anyways. I think I’ll add him to the runners up list. I’ve always been told that Scarlett Johansson is a bit of a bee-yatch but I’ve seen her perform on Broadway (in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge) and she is a fantastic actress. I also think she’s one of the sexiest actresses working today (Geek Outlaw thinks so too). She certainly holds her own with the boys in this movie. Considering Black Widow and Hawkeye are ordinary humans (albeit with extraordinary skill sets), you have to suspend belief a bit when watching them survive falls and body slams that would normally kill a person instantly but barely leave a scratch on them. And yet, I didn’t care about the improbability of it all. The awesomeness outweighed the practicality for me.
SHIELD:
Samuel L. Jackson is having way too much fun playing Nick Fury, creator and director of SHIELD (sorry, I don’t like putting periods between the letters, I think it looks weird) and I’m having way too much fun watching him. It’s nice to see him have more to do than scold Tony or show up in the end credits. Nick Fury started SHIELD after WWII (he mentions his friend Howard Stark as a fellow founding member during Iron Man 2) so if you’re not a reader of the comics you might be wondering why he looks 45 years old. They don’t explain it in any of the movies but his aging has been slowed by the Infinity Formula. Just so you know.
I started getting nervous when they got personal with Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) at the beginning of the movie. That never bodes well for someone as cryptic as him. My psychic movie skills kicked in and I figured out what was going to happen to him pretty quickly. I’m in mourning. Even though his character was manufactured purely for the screen and doesn’t appear in the comics, I’m going to miss not seeing him weave in and out of the various individual films. If you haven’t seen it, watch “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer.” It’s Agent Coulson showing off more than his wit for once. RIP Phil.
Had Joss Whedon’s Wonder Woman flick taken off, Cobie Smulders would most likely have been cast as Diana. But that project was shelved and instead she won the role of Agent Maria Hill (beating out Firefly alum Morena Baccarin). Boy, is she a looker. Wow. She also stars on How I Met Your Mother with Alexis Denisof’s wife and Whedon regular, Alyson Hannigan. Cobie wasn’t given a trainer for the movie so she hired one herself to teach her how to act like an agent. I like a girl who does her homework.
The 12-person SHIELD Council should be more in shadow, we shouldn’t be able to see their faces. No one knows who they are, not Nick Fury, not even each other. If we can see their faces, we can use facial recognition software to find out who they are. But that’s me being nitpicky.
The guy on the bridge playing Galaga? Classic.
The Helicarrier is a character in its own right and plays a huge part in the film. It exists because a mobile headquarters is much more difficult for an evil organization *coughHYDRAcough* to find and destroy and protects any potential host nations from being a target. They took it one step further in the movie and gave it cloaking technology which was totally badass and a nice little treat for this Trekkie.
Loki:
I’m very quickly becoming a huge fan of Tom Hiddleston. I had never seen him before Thor but he’s perfection as Loki. And this is coming from someone whose way into anything related to Norse mythology. In the comics Loki is the first villain The Avengers go up against so I was happy to see that they kept that. It would have been much easier to pick a different villain and avoid the whole magic vs. science conundrum. The various directors, producers, writers, Marvel Execs, etc. did an excellent job of making the magic scientific and the science magical so it didn’t feel forced and it made sense to the laymen. They get an A+ for teamwork.
Anyone who leaves the movie theatre before a Marvel movie’s end credits are over is an idiot. There’s always some little nugget of awesomesauce just waiting to delight our senses. In this case we got two of them. The first one shows The Other talking to a mysterious master about the fact that humans are not to be trifled with. They don’t say who this master is but I’m thinking its Thanos. If anyone has another theory I’d like to hear it but I’d bet money that I’m right. The second one has our heroes sitting around eating shawarma just after the battle while the employees clean up debris in the background. No one speaks (although Bruce does start chuckling) and it’s hilarious.
I’m a massive Whedonite so I’m probably totally biased but I have to give Joss Whedon mad props for this movie. It’ll probably go down as one of my top 5 favorite movies ever and a lot of that is due to him. He rewrote the script and had a vision that wove together four different franchises into one seamless and elegant package. The combination of action, drama and humor is classic Joss. I think that one of the other directors would have made an excellent film as well but Joss made it magical and I hope they are smart enough to keep him as the director of all future Avenger films.
I hope so, Joss. I hope so.“These people shouldn’t be in the same room let alone on the same team—and that is the definition of family” – Joss Whedon
5 out of 5 Sci-Fives!