Review Schedule Change

Due to TOMMY performances at my school, my review schedule will be off, as it has been. By next week, it should be back to normal.

Frivolous Friday- Canon Rape

Not to be confused with Cannon Rape

We all know what a canon rape is, and we can usually smell it a mile away. From Winnie the Pooh’s “friendly heffalump” to Joe Schumacher’s terrible Batman movies tearing Bane’s back story to little bloody giblets; in a world of reboots, remakes, and sequels, “canon rape” has been a term that should be permanently integrated into our culture and vocabulary.

Kill it! Kill it with fire!! It looks like it hurts to be it!!

But what are some of the worst abominations of canon rape? What are the cream of the crop of terrible reboots and awful remakes? Well, I don’t know, but I have a list of some you may or may not think about when I say “canon rape”. If they were just the worst abominations of all time, Michael Bay would inhabit more than half my list. So here are the Top 5 Canon Rapes (no Michael Bay involved, thanks…)

5.) Yu-Gi-Oh!

I can’t make too many jokes here not already made famous by LittleKuriboh of Team Four Star fame.

Wa Wa We Wa!!

Yu-Gi-Oh! Is a children’s Trading Card Game (TCG) that originated in Japan. But it was also a series of comics from the popular manga serial, Shonen Jump. It was also an anime localized by 4Kids. So which one’s the canon rape? Eh… do you have to ask?

 Don't you just want to smack that little twat about the face until his hair turns inside out and impales his brain to death? Anyone?

The anime takes leaps and bounds away from the original source material. Not only will Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG fanatics tell you all about the inconsistent and downright wrong rules from this pretty terrible show, it also putzes around with the original manga material.

In the Manga, Yugi is a shrimpy kid who turns into someone named Yami, a dark pharaoh from long ago. This pharaoh is a fan of something called shadow games to expose fakers, bullies, schemers and, well, anyone he doesn’t like, really, as the frauds that they are… and Yami does not like to play nice.

In one issue I remember off the top of my head, Yami is playing a shadow game with a bully on a large griddle. It’s like Russian Roulette, Hot Potato and Air Hockey all rolled into one. A large ice block contains a vial of explosives. When the ice melts, the explosives will touch the grill and detonate in a spectacular way, and whoever has the vial on their side when that happens… “loses the shadow game” (i.e. THEY DIE!) So they smack the ice back and forth like an air hockey game invented by Hitler.

I Don't fully understand what happened, but I think it was violent and glorious... and probably gross.

Let’s compare this to the anime, when Yugi doesn’t learn Yami’s name until late (whereas it is revealed in the first issue of the comic), Yami always plays fair because of Yugi’s strong moral standards, and all “shadow games” are played with… Duel Monster Cards…

Need. I. Go. On? This one is at the bottom of the list as it is a little knitpicky, but it still deserves a spot.

4.) Final Fantasy X-2

Final Fantasy X wasn’t received well by critics, but fans loved it. It is still the only pure Final Fantasy to date (outside of Crystal Chronicles… but we don’t speak of that) to receive a direct sequel. So what did they do to make the sequel fun and fresh?

Remove everything about the original game that made it fun and fresh.

First, they took out all those dorky male characters and gave us skin-bearing versions of Yuna and Rikku, along with a broody sidekick, Paine.

A Loli Chick, a Hot Goth Chick, and a nice ass in booty shorts... we're about one fetish short of charging by the minute...

Next, they took the one good thing about FFX, the battle system, and stripped it, giving us what some call a “throwback to the job system” but I call it “accessorizing for the perfect fashion crisis.” Accessories instead of armor, dress spheres instead of classes, concerts, slumber parties… these ladies don’t even walk from place to place. They are placed at the most convenient save point from their air ship.

"My autotune engineer says I have the voice of a million angels!!"

All this game needs is a water fight in bikinis to be the pinnacle of saccharin girliness… Oh wait.

Everything appealing about the first game, whatever that was, is gone. The original beautiful music, apocalyptic and desperate plot, endearing and diverse characters… it’s all gone. Replaced by teenyboppers and crappy pop loops.

3. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

This one is special, because it manages to rape multiple canons at once.

As with most comic books and long running serials like X-Men, this one’s “canon” gets a little murky. What exactly is canon? Am I using the movies, the comics, the 1990’s cartoon, the 2000’s cartoon, the 2010’s cartoon? There is a lot to go on.

Need I say more?

In actuality, with this one, it’s a self-contained canon rape at the same time it’s kind of an overarching canon rape. I haven’t read enough of the comics and don’t remember enough of the animated series to give more information on the latter, but I have been informed that it is bad.

So I’ll stick with Fox’s movie series canon for now. First off, the claws. Yes, I know Wolverine has bone claws in the comic, but in the movies Wolverine clearly has mechanical claws. Not to mention that the claws in this new movie are so long, they look like they would extend well past his elbow, making it impossible to bend his arm.

Clearly Mechanical

Clearly too long to exist...

Not to mention that Gambit, among other mutants, who all go with Professor X in the end… well, most are never seen in the original three movies. Ever.

Let’s not even talk about Sabertooth. Why is he so civilized? What turned him into the blathering beast a la X-Men? Why is he so clean cut? What happened to make him so ruthless, and yet… why is he so calm when he has to help Logan at the end of the movie… So many questions. Not enough time to bitch about the colossal canon rape this movie is.

2. Star Trek (J.J. Abrams Reboot)

Star Trek was once a series that, while it didn’t have much in the way of budget, made up for it by being a thinking man’s show and was smart and different for its time.

So it’s ironic, really, that when it got rebooted in 2009, it was flashy and shiny and all-around prettyful, the script was subpar and kind of stupid. Courtesy of the assholes that brought you Transformers, everyone.

These men are responsible for the death of your childhoods. Hate their derpy faces with all your might!!!

Really, where do I even begin? I don’t even want to go into the small details to expose exactly how much of a Trekky fangirl I be. (40 KLINGON WARBIRDS? BY A DRILL? 40 KLINGON WARBIRDS???) Being able to beam to a ship that is probably millions of miles away by now when the technology hasn’t even been invented, the destruction of Vulcan, the death of Spock’s mother, Urhura and her ridiculous “character development” and her relationship with Spock…??

I want to meet the guy who said; "Star Trek... WITH ABERCROMBIE MODELS!"

Oy. It’s really a hard one to cover, mostly because a lot (and do I mean a lot) is all in the details and it would take me about a year and a chalkboard to cover everything wrong with this movie… So instead, let me rant about my number 1 choice, the worst of the worst..

1. Merlin BBC

Really, this is a blanket statement for all “Smallville Treatments” that I see… basically taking a well-known story and casting the kids of Dawson’s Creek to make everything more palatable for a modern audience. Merlin BBC is the worst offender I’ve seen… mostly because I don’t thing it knows it’s doing it.

This is a terrible offender, mostly because the entire backstory of the Arthurian legend has changed. Merlin, Morgana, Arthur, Guinevere… all the same age. Oh, and Guinevere is black. Because black people were totally in pre-Saxon England, right? (Not Racist) Uther Pendragon is still alive and a tyrant, Arthur is Uther’s arrogant, stuck-up, and stupid son, Morgana is his loving and misunderstood ward, Guinevere is her maidservant, and Merlin is… get this… a natural born wizard who can’t use magic because magic has been outlawed… I smell hijinks!!

Look upon my charming, goofy smile!! See how normal and palatable I am! SO much cooler than an old man with a long white beard who can summon dragons with a fart, amiright?

Don’t even get me started on what they did with Mordred.

It’s really a shame, because rebooting a beloved old story for today’s audience isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. Merlin had a good premise going for it, but ended up getting stuck so far up its own butt, it performs its own colonoscopies now, degenerating into sophomoric, generic, and episodic crap that Smallville became after the first episode.

So that’s my list. Hope you enjoyed it. This was fun!! I should do it again sometime…

Comment and tell me what you want to see next on this blog. Who knows… maybe you’ll see it someday. 

Issues and Us- Topical Movies

A long time ago, before the time of the internet and the “nerd takeover”, the only people allowed to make shocking political statements were what people called “serious filmmakers”. Basically, only people the old-school Academy would even bother with. “The Godfather” is allowed to be biting socio-commentary on organized crime, “Citizen Kane” is allowed to change the face of film making forever, and “Dances with Wolves” was allowed to make observations about the relationship between us and the Native Americans circa… forever. Yes, serious films made serious statements. Serious films had serious themes. But has that time passed.

Today, I watched “District 9” for the very first time (more on that next Wednesday). Last January, I watched “Daybreakers”.  I’ve seen “Fight Club” and “Watchmen” and “Spiderman”. All these movies were trying to say something, be it about their medium or the world that surrounded them. But they were panned by “traditional” critics. Why? Well, because of what they were. Yes, “District 9” and “Daybreakers” et cetera are all good movies, but they are so much more. “They” just didn’t see it.

With the nerd revolution of the early 21^st century, things have begun to change. Serious themes and statements are no longer the domain of Academy films. Comic book movies are front-and-center in the box office, some of them even saying…stuff…about…stuff.

Ok, so not all movies made today say something about something. If that were true and Michael Bay is still making movies, then the implications would be terrifying. But apparently, there are a handful of directors out there who want to say something, but are dressing them up as badass action sci-fi comic movies. Or having Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman make the beast with two backs.

 This will NEVER get the nerds in the seats... EVER.

Yes, now the flashy Hollywood drivel isn’t all drivel these days. Take ‘District 9’ for example. Here we have a ridiculously action-packed, incredibly violent, viscerally gory movie that’s dressed up as a summer blockbuster. Nasty alien weapons are getting dragged out, military people are being flash-liquefied, and there are robots. Robots. Clearly this movie can’t say something, can it?

Nope... too easy.

Well, of course it does! I wouldn’t be mentioning it if it didn’t. It’s obviously a biting socio-commentary about racial tensions today. It’s relevant. That’s the point I’m trying to make here…  Obviously, though, this movie has been praised up and down, and everyone knew the message. So let’s look at something different.

“Black Swan.” This movie can’t say anything, right? It’s a good movie, but in the end it’s just a movie about a ballerina who loses her marbles in a glorious way, right? Wrong. “Black Swan” is about the human condition, nature vs. nurture, the destruction of self and the creation of art… I could go on. It’s about love and living and whether to accept something at face value. It’s about more than Mila Kunis going down on Natalie Portman… but that’s the part that gets our butts in the seats

 (On an unrelated note, this is the DVD cover for Black Swan... and it's AWESOME... though not as awesome as the movie poster)

Finally, I get to my point—why we care. It’s about the almighty dollar, my friend. A badass movie about aliens and vampires and superheroes and yes, ballerinas (as long as they’re lesbian ballerinas… can you tell I really liked that part of the movie??) will get our butts in those seats and make us pay for the overpriced stale popcorn. Directors like Darren Aronofsky and Neil Blomkamp want to make these grand statements. They want us to stand up and take notice of what is surrounding us every day, but they have decided to make it all more palatable. Trust me—this is a good thing.

“Black Swan” and “District 9” were both big hits and both got nominated for Best Picture in their respective year. Neither of them won of course. “District 9” was too gory for the Academy and “Black Swan” and it’s horror iconography was probably just a little too much for our beloved Oscar, despite the fact they both deserved the prize than the 2009 and 2010 winners.

Colin Firth is bored by your Academy shenanigans...

I’ll leave you with this—I hear all the time that not every movie has to be about something. While it’s true, I find it depressing. Movies get better when they are engaging and making statements and are relevant. We already care, and when a movie channels that, there is a fantastic and unforgettable impact on us as viewers. Look at the classics, and tell me what you think. 

All pictures belong to their respective owners and not to me. This is intended for information and fun, not for profit. I do not claim ANY pictures or licences used here. No copyright infringement is intended.

Review/Blog Format

Quintessentially Nerdy Format:

Posts:

Monday- Game Changer
Description- A classic, modern or otherwise, that somehow changed its medium, for better or for worse.

Tuesday- Nerdgasm
Description- Just a talk about anything I want

Wednesday- Way Late to the Party
Description- A review about a piece that I have had recent exposure to long after its first run

Thursday- Issues and Us
Description- A serious column about the general "nerd" culture, it's evolution, and the current
events surrounding it.

Friday- Frivolous Fun
Description- What goes here? Pretty girls? Pretty boys? Release info? New movie reviews? Plug a friend?
How did our raid go last night? Answer- yes. To all.

Weekends- Off




Grading System:
A- Award worthy; almost flawless
B- Exceptional, most likely shelf-worthy
C- Average, identical to everything else of its kind
D- Below average, probably skip
F- Abomination, masochism, avoid at all costs