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One Night in Miami

Living in 2021, and looking back on the politics and global changes the world has experienced over the course of the last several years, it’s easy to take for granted how little progress has actually been made. More causes have risen for the fight for societal equity, and more avenues to be heard exist, but the same struggles persist, the same fights are being fought, and many of the same barriers are in place. These setbacks are really highlighted when you look at a film that takes place in the 1960s that is as relevant for that time as it is for the time we live in today. Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night in Miami, is the story of four men at the peak of their global impact, coming together in a single room and, honestly, “just” talk. While that may sound reductive, it’s the dialogue and perspectives of these four in particular that really make the movie sing.

On February 25, 1964, after winning the world championship, 22 year old boxer Cassius Clay joins up with football star Jim Brown, singer Sam Cooke, and activist Malcolm X in a hotel room to celebrate. Over the course of a night, they each learn something about themselves and each other. To say much more than that would be both a disservice to the film and also a challenge because not much more than this happens. It’s in the tradition of Stand By Me, where the specifics of the plot aren’t necessarily as vital as the character moments and how these actors play off each other. Each of them is at a turning point in their careers; Cassius Clay is on the eve of his conversion to Islam, Jim Brown is contemplating leaving his football career behind to become an actor, Sam Cooke is struggling with appealing to a racially diverse audience, and Malcolm X is finding himself in an organization that no longer speaks to him in the way he believes it should. Each person has a personal journey here, but they also have unique perspectives on the journeys of their compatriots, and it’s in these exchanges that the movie reveals layers of thought and depth that we don’t usually see in movies of this caliber.

The film is based on a stage play and, for better or worse, that really shows. It means that the content really needs to be driven by the dialogue and the performances. It also means that the world outside the hotel room is rarely seen. When the camera steps back and shows the rest of the world, the results are mixed; while it’s a joy to see Clay’s fights or Cooke perform, it’s less necessary to have the cast convene on a roof, or go to a liquor store. These rare moments feel unnecessary and it wouldn’t have been an issue to leave the men in the single location.

At the core of this piece is the unexpected face-off in ideologies between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke. Cooke, living in gilded luxury, is working to both ingratiate himself with a white audience while also building a career as a businessman in music. X, who publicly denounces the white majority, believes Cooke isn’t doing enough to help his fellow black man; he talks about Cooke using his voice as a leader and how Cooke doesn’t live up to his own potential. The tension between these two is palpable, and they certainly get the most material to work with. Helping in this regard is Leslie Odom, Jr as Cooke who performs renditions of some of Cooke’s top hits, one of which is particularly resonant and closes out the film. In the other corner is Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm, equal parts militant and vulnerable. Watching these two verbally sparring is a treat.

Ironically, though, despite all the in-fighting between Cooke and X, it’s Cassius Clay and Jim Brown, the muscle of the group, who get the short end of the stick in the way of things to do. Cassius is mostly a talking point for the main two in the room, while Jim Brown doesn’t seem to be involved in the debate at all. It’s hard not to wonder if there were elements from the stage that were excised for the film; these two actors certainly have a physical presence, and Eli Goree does a spot-on young Muhammad Ali, so it was mildly disappointing to not get more from them in particular.

If this is Regina King’s first at-bat as director, I look forward to seeing what’s coming up next for her. This definitely warrants a watch, and a rewatch, if for nothing else than the thought-provoking conversations between X and Cooke. Add in some great character moments and scenes (one in particular featuring Beau Bridges was especially memorable) and you’ve got an instant classic that is as salient today as it ever was.

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Beavis Dodge: An Exercise in Frustration

You will believe a man can mope...

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS: DoJ, or Beavis Dodge) dropped a couple of weeks ago, and god, what an advertisement for Prozac this turned out to be. So much digital ink has already been spilled on its account, so I won’t go into too much detail about where it fails, but I will point out some thoughts I had about movies in general while I was watching it. I know it seems in vogue to give this movie a hard time in light of its critical (but not entirely commercial) failure, but the fact that this was the first pairing of the two characters and this is what we got is disappointing, to say the least.

“But Eliot,” you say, “this movie was awesome and you’re an idiot. This is what it would be like today. Superman doesn’t work in these times, and of course Batman would kill people.” To which I present the following argument: 

Meet your new Superman, the character who always does the right thing, even if it’s tough, even if it doesn’t fit with our current sensibilities, who strives to be better than us. That’s what makes him a hero. Marvel gets so much right about Captain America and his moral compass - he want to do the right thing, no matter what. All the superheroics are just secondary to him being a kid from Brooklyn who wants to stand up to bullies and help the little guy.

At his core, Superman is a kid from Kansas who knows right from wrong. He’s not an alien or an outsider. He’s lived here his whole life. His parents set his morals in place. And that’s one of the failings of this movie - the heroes’ parents, the characters who help define who they are, are so misaligned that it hurts the heroes. 

In the comics, while heroes are wondering how Superman would handle a situation, he’s wondering what his parents would do.

In Beavis Dodge, we get several instances of people saying there are consequences to being a hero, including one weird Jonathan Kent ghost telling Superman that being a hero once wound up getting a bunch of horses killed. But you know what...

Superman wouldn’t have let those horses die.

Martha (MARTHA!!!!!111!!) Kent also has a little speech to the effect of “Be their hero and guardian. Or don’t. You don’t owe them anything.” What the hell kind of lesson is that? It’s just doubling down on Jonathan Kent’s “Maybe you should have let those kids die” from Man of Steel.

Everyone in this movie is just so angry and cynical that it’s hard to root for any of them. I’ll give you an example, and this is right out of the gate, in a scene that most people know better than they know the story of their own creation.

Young Bruce Wayne, on his way out of a movie with his parents, billionaires Thomas and Martha Wayne, is accosted by a mugger. While making an attempt to protect his family, Thomas Wayne takes a swing at the mugger.

Thomas Wayne throws the first punch during a mugging....

Let that sink in. Don’t you think that kind of sets the tone for the whole thing? That the person who’s death gets the ball rolling for one of our heroes escalated the entire situation? And it teaches Bruce something too, when you think about it. Don’t be a victim. Strike first and strike hard. I guess that fits Batman to some degree, but Batman’s thing was always “No one else dies in my city.” Well, this Batman makes sure everyone in his path dies. 

Heroes should set the example for the rest of us. They’re fictional, so they’re allowed to be perfect. I don’t want a hero to be like me - if he was, he’d be at home catching up on Better Call Saul. Heroes should be out there making the hard choices for the greater good, valuing life and saving people. 

Superman often gets criticized for being overpowered and being unrelatable. People cite his ever increasing power levels as a problem. But Superman’s biggest power, the one that informs all his other powers, is his power to help. He is imbued with gifts that can help anyone out of any situation. He’s strong, he’s powerful, but he’s also caring and compassionate. Here’s a panel from Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, a shining example of what the Man of Steel should be:

He showed up to be with a suicidal girl. He didn’t punch anything. He didn’t laser beam anything. He didn’t rip the bones out of anything. He just...showed up.

These heroes show up, but leave corpses in their wake.

I may add a few more posts about problems I had with the movie, particularly in light of what it says about these characters, but this is the main one. It’s so mean-spirited and cynical about the idea of heroes that it makes a stronger case for there being no heroes at all. I go to these movies for escapism; if these versions of these characters actually existed, I’d just want to escape.

Any thoughts on this? What do you guys think?

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10 Cloverfield Lane - What Went Wrong?

Oy, this movie. I have several thoughts about it and rather than be hyperbolic and say it was “the worst thing ever”, I’ll just say I felt there were a few misfires. There’s several different movies in here fighting to be the main movie, and they just don’t go together. I think Goodman gives a great performance - it’s over the top, but it also lends the movie a tension that it all but squanders in the last several minutes. I’ll try to list out my thoughts on it, but I think the marketing for this movie may have hurt my viewing of it. Also, spoilers abound in this thing, so read at your own risk - you’ll definitely get more out of this if you’ve seen the movie, as I won’t be summarizing it and assume you already have seen it.

1) The movie wants to have Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) grow as a character, with the “decide your fate,” literal fork in the road moment at the end. I’d be ok with this, if she hadn’t spent the whole movie being a fighter anyway. I feel like that decision point would have worked better if she was submissive all the way through until she decided to fight. However, she was setting things on fire, making crutch spears, and trying to escape right out of the gate, so really, being proactive and fighting was never her problem (which the movie wants to convince me it was, and she just overcame it). The movie pays lip service to her being a runner, not a fighter, via a monologue, but nothing about what we see lines up with what she says.

2) There’s the mystery of whether Goodman is crazy or if there are aliens outside and the movie wants to have its cake and eat it too by saying “Yes” to both questions. Then it adds in these crazy sideplots of “did he kill someone else?” and “is he a crazy pedophile?” which create additional layers of plot that are not really essential to the movie. If it’s just supposed to illustrate that Goodman is crazy, hadn’t we already figured that out by this point? Did the movie need this as a motivation to get Michelle to escape? She was planning on doing that from the start. I’m ok with a movie leaving you asking questions, but sometimes asking questions for their own sake can leave you unsatisfied (I’m looking at you, Prometheus).

3) Showing the woman dying outside undercuts the movie for me, because it kills the mystery of “Is there something outside?” Yes, now we know there’s some kind of virus/pox/toxin that is killing people; until that point, I was thinking he killed his own pigs as a visual aid for captives. So by the halfway point of the movie, I knew that he was both crazy and right. And sure, we still don’t know what it is outside, but that’s not really important at this point, is it? It could’ve been aliens, or the Russians, or Draculas, but the conclusion would still be the same: yes, he’s crazy, but also yes, there’s something outside.

Wouldn’t it have been a cooler reveal if Goodman was responsible for that woman’s death via some kind of toxin? You know, the guy with the only keys to the place, being able to go out and hurt someone else just to convince Michelle to stay? You could still have the crazy alien reveal (I’ll get to it), but it also adds another level of “wow, this guy’s going to huge lengths to keep people trapped in here.” This is different from the “did he kill a girl” plot, since killing the woman outside would be directly related to keeping Michelle trapped (which is in service to both the plot and his character), rather than the mystery of Megan, which didn’t really service anything.

4) The ending - I get that people like it; it adds a different kind of tension to the movie, but this was a psychological thriller that suddenly became Independence Day. That segment was well shot and well paced, but it just didn’t fit with the rest of the movie. It was “Room” for the first hour, then ID4 mixed with a little bit of Signs. I didn’t feel it was bad - on its own, it was pretty good - but it just didn’t mesh. I like peanut butter, and I like spaghetti, and both are good on their own, but I wouldn’t put them together. Someone online mentioned a cut to white/black after she opens the door would’ve been a better ending; that’s the one I was hoping for. I won’t say it would’ve been a better ending (we got what we got), but I think it would’ve fit better with the ambiguity surrounding the rest of the movie. Besides, we already knew there was something outside - a lady straight up Harvey-Dented at the front door.

5) Minor little things: if you want to convince someone you’re helping them, why shackle them to a wall, especially if you have the only set of keys out of the joint?; you mean to tell me that this woman who was melting drove to a bunker she knew about to plead for her life to be let in, but still felt it necessary to lock the car door?; Executive: ���Wouldn’t it be a cool reveal if she knocked over the mailbox and it showed the address was 10 Cloverfield? I bet that’ll be an ‘Oh shit’ moment for the audience.” Intern: “But doesn’t the audience just assume this anyway? I mean, we’re calling the movie that, right?” Executive: “Pack up your things.”; our characters are all alone, but how do we convey that? I know, let’s play “I Think We’re Alone Now” front and center during a montage - that’s both brilliant and subtle.

Sorry for the length of this post, but I’d be open to anyone’s thoughts on my quibbles. I don’t think it was a terrible movie, I’m just not real positive that all the creative decisions work well together. It felt like a bunch of “Wouldn’t it be cool if” discussions took place and they said yes to all of them.

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In the Wake of Deadpool, Let’s Rank Stuff

So Deadpool happened...never would’ve seen that one coming. It’s amazing how good a movie can be when you give a crap about the source material and care to make the movie. I feel like Ryan Reynolds maybe had something to prove with this one, especially since his last turn as Deadpool was so worthless (shout out given in the movie). I have my quibbles with the movie, but overall, it was the best version of Deadpool we’re likely to get.

Following the movie, Thomas asked where I’d rank the movie in the pantheon of superhero movies; he claimed it was easily top 5 of all movies. It’s a tough call, so I set out to make a challenge to him and Sam - rank every superhero movies you’ve ever seen. I culled together a list of superhero movies from Wikipedia and sent it out. Just a quick note: this is my personal list, not the end all, be all of greatest movies of all time, so if you disagree, I’m ok with that. After the jump, I’ll share my list, with some caveats....

I like a lot of these movies for different reasons, so I'm using a bunch of different criteria for how I'm ranking. There’s some controversial placements, to be sure, but I tried to consider a few different things, in the order I present them, and thought it’d be helpful to know where my brain was at as I was putting this together:

-Fun while watching it. Critical acclaim doesn’t mean a whole lot if I’m not enjoying myself with the movie.  

-Quality of the overall film; I put fun higher on the list than film quality, and this criteria really only helped when it came to the bad movies lower on the list. 

-And the major criteria (which mostly guided my decisions) if it was a Saturday afternoon and this particular movie was on TNT, would I jump in halfway and keep watching it? 

So here’s the list: I’d be open to people’s thoughts. I’ll air this one out myself: I like Batman and Robin more than Dark Knight Rises; I think DKR is a chore of self-pity and errors in logic that don’t belong in a series known mostly for being grounded and realistic. B&R, perhaps in spite of itself, is at least goofy fun and good for a laugh.

The Dark Knight

Batman (1989)

The Avengers

Iron Man

Spider-Man 2

Captain America: The First Avenger

Superman

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

Chronicle

Unbreakable

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Batman Begins

Guardians of the Galaxy

X2: X-Men United

Superman II

Spider-Man

X-Men

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Deadpool

Man of Steel

Dredd

The Incredible Hulk

The Mask

Blade

Thor

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Hellboy

Blade II

The Punisher (1989)

The Punisher

Judge Dredd

Batman & Robin

Thor: The Dark World

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

Ant-Man

Batman Forever

Spawn

Kick-Ass

The Dark Knight Rises

Watchmen

Mystery Men

Batman (1966)

Daredevil

Iron Man 2

Batman Returns

Blade: Trinity

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men: First Class

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Punisher: War Zone

The Wolverine

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Constantine

Superman Returns

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

X-Men: The Last Stand

The Fantastic Four (unreleased)

Green Lantern

The Shadow

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie

Fantastic Four

Spider-Man 3

The Amazing Spider-Man

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Blankman

Ghost Rider

The Meteor Man

Dr. Strange

Swamp Thing

Howard the Duck

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Hulk

The Crow

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Crow: City of Angels

Superman III

The Toxic Avenger

Fantastic Four (2015)

Hancock

Catwoman

Steel

Kick-Ass 2

Supergirl

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D

Son of the Mask

Zorro, The Gay Blade

Superhero Movie

And, for a bonus list (and to corner comments like “You forgot So-and-So!!”:

Movies That Can Either Go Fuck Themselves or I Didn’t Care Enough to Go See:

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

American Hero

Super Buddies

Vs

Power Rangers Samurai: Clash of the Red Rangers – The Movie

Lightspeed

Jonah Hex

Underdog

Jumper

The Spirit

Push

Defendor

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Special

Zoom

The Toxic Avenger Part II

The Return of Swamp Thing

The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie

Elektra

Sky High

The Legend of Zorro

Man-Thing

The Crow: Wicked Prayer

The Specials

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

Star Kid

The Mask of Zorro

Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Barb Wire

Tank Girl

Darkman II: The Return of Durant

Darkman

Captain America (1990)

The Guyver

The Rocketeer

The Phantom

The Crow: Salvation

The Green Hornet

Super

V for Vendetta

I make no apologies for enjoying bad movies and offer only justification that the terrible movies are often more fun to watch than the “good” ones.

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Let’s Talk Review Scores

Metacritic. Rotten Tomatoes. IGN. As I cruise the regularly visited sites, there is, almost inevitably at the bottom of any review, a number. What’s this number? How’s it helpful? Let’s talk about this.

Let’s start with the basics - I get why we use numbers in reviews. It’s an easy system that lets me quickly see, on a pre-specified scale, how “good” something is. I can get behind the idea of a numerical score; it’s fast, I don’t have to read all those words and letters (because my brain), and (in theory) it’s objective. 7 is better than 5, right? If I’ve gotta choose between a 7 and a 5, it’s 7 every time. Makes sense.

Here’s where things go batshit. Let’s start with media powerhouse IGN. In a recent review for an Arkham Knight comic (oh, don’t worry Arkham Knight video game - your day is coming), the reviewer noted the art is “cartoonish” but the writer generally gets by and sometimes tells a good story. He gave the comic a 7.2 out of 10. For an X-Men comic, the same author writes “Fortunately, there's plenty of to like with the new series and creative team, even if this issue isn't quite the rousing start the book needed.“ He gives this a 7.1 out of 10. Of all the comics reviewed this week, only 4 dip below 6/10 and of those, only 2 dip below 5.

This might be a specific-to-IGN issues, but why have a 0 to 10 scale if you’re just going to hang out around 7 or 8. It’s not uncommon to read a review that basically says “This sucked real bad. The writing was terrible, the production was awful, etc - 7.3 out of 10.” A guideline for how these numbers are generated would be helpful. The qualitative review doesn’t always match the quantitative part; if I ignore the number, it sounds a lot worse than what amounts to a 75%.

Another point, which again might be specific to IGN but I’m sure other folks do this too - they use decimals, meaning they’re basically reviewing shit on a 100-point scale. Is this necessary? Do the nuances of the written review necessitate a spectrum of 100 points to choose from? More than that, do these numbers add anything meaningful? How is a 7.5 significantly different in terms of quality from a 7.6? Again, my brain says “7.6 is better than 7.5,” but is it really? In the above example, the X-Men review basically said it was ho-hum, but it was only 1/10th of a point less than the other comic. I’d argue this scale is way too big to be useful in any real way.

Does anybody remember X-Play? It was a show on G4 that reviewed video games in brief segments and discussed gaming stuff. Their scale was PERFECT. 5 points. 1 meant garbage, 2 meant pretty bad. 3 was a big meh (playable, but not great), 4 was good with some minor problems, 5 was great (maybe some problems, but overall a good experience). When they said a game was a 4 or a 5, you knew it was worth checking out. If it was a 3, you could sense it was iffy. Below that, you knew you were in for a rough time. It was intuitive and simple. I’d also like to point out Kotaku’s Yes/No system for “Should you play this?” as a good example of how to do this. Even Angry Joe, who uses a 10-point scale, generally agrees that 5 means “it’s ok” - it’s in the freaking middle of the scale; could be better, could be worse.

Obviously, the elephant in the room is aggregate review sites, like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. I get it - people just want to be able to look at a quick thing instead of sifting through review after review, and get a sense of whether something’s good or not. But what the hell do these numbers represent? I’m going to show my hand here and say that, in my for real life, I conduct some research, which may have instigated some of these arguments. As part of that background knowledge, I know that it often causes problems when you compare and combine things that are on different scales. They need to be converted so that the numbers are on an even playing field. A 5/5 is not the same as 5/100, even though they’re both 5s. So when RT says that a movie is 78% fresh, I’m not entirely sure what that means. Does that mean 78% of reviewers like it? Is the movie 78% good? How did you get that from a “7.4″,  “Go see it”, “3 stars”, and a thumbs up? It’s needlessly complicated and (allow me to be a cynic here), I’m going to wager that the reason text and number don’t always match is because there’s some kind of kickback for boosting the RT score. Why else would a “this is garbage” review still get somewhere between 7.3 and 8.6? The only thing that number seems to be influencing is the aggregate score.

Consumers aren’t helping. You don’t need to look any further than the comments posted at the bottom of a review to see the savage hounds drooling over the numbers. “YOU GAVE THIS A 7.8 AND COD A 7.6?!?!?! COD IS THE BEST!! KILL YOURSELF!!!ONEONEONE!!!” or “The reviewer obviously sucks. They didn’t like this and gave it a 6.8. This deserves at least a 7.3″ Here’s one actually from the X-Men review: “Disagree with the review of extraordinary X-men issue 3, I think the series is moving along nicely, lots of action so far, full of a nice colourful art style and its building to the return of an old X-men classic villain. Really do wonder if some of these reviewers even read these comics they review.” First, it’s an opinion - just because the reviewer didn’t agree with you doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Second, it still got a 7.1, which, out of 10, is still pretty good. Obviously, every fanbase has its vocal minority, but is the number that important to the typical consumer? Probably not. People just like seeing the things they love get high numbers because it validates their enjoyment of that thing. It didn’t influence the sale, since those rabid folks were going to consume that product anyway, but wars are started over this kind of thing. Digital wars. 

(I also want to take a quick second to say that people online often confuse the number for some kind of scientific measure of how good something is, like it’s a pure science, so when someone doesn’t like something and give it a bad review, they complain that they should’ve gotten someone who likes it to review it. Newsflash, all reviews are subjective. The number isn’t changing the product.)

I’m trying this thing where I don’t criticize something unless I have a suggestion for how to make it better, so here goes. Reviewers: keep it simple. Either have a rubric for how your number was generated so that I see there’s a consistent scale for everything you review (even if it’s just yes/no) or simplify your scoring system; otherwise, it just looks like a random, inflated number thrown in there for the sake of padding. Readers: find a person you like. Find someone who generally likes the games you like and someone you trust to tell you whether something’s worth your time. And actually read what they have to say; don’t just skim to the bottom and see how many points it earned.

Fucking numbers, amirite?

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Guys Be Gabbin’

We’ve tried team reviews before (I think Thomas and I co-reviewed Wreck-It-Ralph), so I thought we’d revisit that format. In this brief edition, we chat up Star Wars:

Thomas:

Plausible arguments or nerd hot take? I lean toward the latter. http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/what-if-the-new-star-wars-sucks-too-1737539377

Sam:

I think it falls somewhere in between, but yeah, mostly hot takeish.

I think it's certainly fair to take a step back and ask if we're sure this movie is gonna live up to the insane hype surrounding it. When Phantom Menace came out, it was pretty bonkers, basically just because it was a Star Wars movie, and there hadn't been one in a while. We know how that turned out.

Then again, I think it's mostly hot air. The trailers look amazing. There is no hint of any of the problems that drug the prequels down. It isn't overly CG’ed all to hell. It looks like a real, lived-in universe, the acting is good, and I didn't notice any racial stereotype aliens. Plus, it's in the hands of a director with a good recent track record who seems to seek to pay homage to the original trilogy, not spit shine it 100 times over and cover it in neon paint that nobody asked for.

Plus, I think the author was overly critical of RotJ. Just my opinion, though.

Eliot:

Let's also point out that prequels, but the very nature of them being prequels, are shit. Prequels have to do one of two things to work - either they have to show us characters we already know before we originally met them acting exactly the way we knew them so we can get excited about seeing them again (Wolverine in X-Men Origins, Obi Wan in Eps 1-3), or they have to be drastically different so you can show them "grow" into the character you remember (Indy in Temple of Doom, Xavier in First Class). Neither of those is exciting because you already know where they end up. The "untold story" bullshit is bullshit because the story's been told. Who gives a shit about Vader becoming Vader - I knew he was good, became bad, is now a murderer. Seeing it didn't improve it.

With the new movies, even if they're not as good as the hype, they're telling a brand new story, so having some excitement about where this is going is novel. I have no idea what's gonna happen, who will live or die, who certain characters are or their motivations, and that's awesome. It's unexplored territory, and the fact that it also looks amazing doesn't hurt. It's being made by someone who already made a great Star Wars movie, but they called it Star Trek. He grew up as a fan and cares about the story and the characters, not just the merchandise, and everything I've seen and heard so far (which, amazingly, is pretty minimal) seems positive. I'll concede Vader is a little neutered in RotJ - he's kinda whiny and mopes about needing to obey his master, but I never saw that as a problem. I saw it as character conflict. If there's a fault, it's that it's never telegraphed; a scene where he holds back or hesitates on murdering someone would have lent itself more to the overall cause. The Ewoks were the main problem. That's all. And who the fuck thinks the Jabba scene is overly long? 

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Making ‘The Room’ Work

Loved by millions around the world, the Tommy Wiseau led ‘The Room’ hit audiences by storm and, as with most things on the internet (cat videos, especially), it caught like wildfire. For those not in the know (in which case, ‘Welcome to owning a computer’), The Room is a semi-drama that has no business being anything serious. It’s directed by, produced by, and stars Tommy Wiseau, a phenomenon of bad acting that makes Van Damme look like Laurence Olivier. It’s a movie that feels like a personal story, but written by someone with no talent and barely a grasp of the English language.

Mad Genius

Those who know me know that I’m contrarian by nature (not cuz I hate cha), so when things are universally loved, I’m going to side against it - fuck Avatar. So when people say The Room is the worst film ever made, my instinct is to defend it. Is it awful? Of goddamned course it is; it’s enjoyable on the surface purely because it’s so bad. But I have to believe that Wiseau had a nugget of an idea that, between his lack of talent, problems with English, and potential brain injury, just got lost in translation. So let’s chat about how The Room could have been a decent (if forgettable) movie.

Let’s start by looking at the general plot of the movie. Johnny (played by Wiseau) is a guy who can’t seem to catch a break. He’s having a hard time at work, constantly turned down for promotion after promotion. We’re told he’s good at his job and the bank that he works for (I think) has put his ideas into action and have generally been successful. That said, he’s unfulfilled and feels victimized. Pretty relatable so far, huh?

His saving grace is his personal life; he’s engaged to Lisa, who on the surface cares about him, enjoys his friends, especially his best friend Mark, and cares for a weird man-child named Denny (we’re constantly told Johnny’s like a father to him; if there’s a cardinal sin this movie commits [as if there’s only one], it’s that it constantly tells us how people are related to each other - “You’re his best friend.” “He’s like a father to you.”). He cares for those around him and is supportive of them. See, still a cliche, but coherent film.

It’s when we get into the other cast of characters where things go wrong. Lisa, unbeknownst to Johnny, has fallen out of love with him. She feels Johnny is going nowhere and she wants more adventure in her life. She’s attracted to Johnny’s best friend Mark and secretly sleeping with him. Now we’ve got some intrigue. Add in a weird throwaway line about Lisa’s mother having breast cancer (in a “twist” that’s never again addressed or resolved) and now you’ve got someone with a life more complicated than just living with a good man. She’s juggling a lot of different emotions and at no time do we see Johnny checking in on her. He’s committed and kind, but not invested in her as a person.

Mark, an idiot, appears conflicted about his affair. When he goes to Lisa’s place, he seems generally confused about her advances (because he’s straight up dumb). He tries to talk with Johnny about his views on women a couple of times in the movie, but Johnny’s unwilling or unable to hear what Mark is trying to say; on some level, Johnny trusts Lisa and Mark so much that he can’t even comprehend that anything would be going on. So now we’ve got a love triangle going on, but in this movie, all three points are idiots.

Then we’ve got Denny....

Goddamn with this guy. At some point in the movie, Denny gets attacked by a drug dealer because he bought some drugs. Again, this is a plot point that comes out of nowhere and then is never resolved. How can we work that into a better movie? Well, at one point, Denny expressed to Johnny that he thinks he might be falling in love with Lisa. How about if he started using drugs either to deal with his unrequited love or as a way to grab Lisa’s attention? That would at least time him into the plot. In fact, in a double twist, not only would this not work to get Lisa’s attention, it could actually make Johnny pay less attention to Lisa because he’s busy caring for his surrogate son. Boom, further wedge driven between Johnny and Lisa.

There’s a lot of bullshit about football and people doing stupid things that could easily be cut from the film. It all culminates in Lisa and Mark being really blatant about their affair and Johnny finding out. As presented, the movie just kinda has them flirting in front of Johnny, but what it Mark drank the Kool-Aid that Johnny doesn’t care about Lisa. He’s spending all his time at work and caring for Denny that Mark’s noticing Lisa’s neglect. Now he feels less guilty about what’s going on because Johnny’s not there for her. This could easily lead to the split.

At the end of things, (spoilers) Johnny kills himself. And why wouldn’t he? His work life is in shambles and everything he thought about his life is a lie. He’s stuck and overwhelmed. He was going to marry someone he thought cared about him, but the two people he cared about most deceived him. There’s some (cliched) angst, but you could see how he’d be torn up about things.

Look, I’m not saying this could have been a good movie, just that it could have been not as bad as it wound up being. And I’m sure, with people doing remakes and reboots, someone’s gonna take up the task of making this a “decent” movie. It won’t win awards, but it’s at least as good as most garbage on Lifetime, which honestly, is better than Wiseau deserves.

[plotroast]

S’Been a While

We’re slowly gonna get back to populating this jammy with some content. During a recent rewatching of Amazing Spider-Man 2, I felt irate enough to want to share that with the internet, and though the internet is full of more ire than even I can muster, making fart jokes about a man in a red spider costume on the internet seemed like a good idea.

In other words, stay tuned.

[plotroast]

Ugh, so let's do this - Everything Wrong with X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Ok, so hear me out, because I know there's gonna be a lot of sighs of "But this movie has been bashed to death" and "What else needs to be said about how horrible it is?" And granted, those are valid concerns, but just like WW2, just like 9-11, just like Crystal Pepsi, we must never forget the atrocities of our past, else we're doomed to watch Hollywood remake them over and over. So let's talk about X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Is that a cross on his shirt?

So why this movie now? Well, Summer '13 is seeing the release of "The Wolverine," a movie that no one seems to be clear on whether it's a prequel, a sequel, or a brand new thing all on its own, and with that come all the pictures of Hugh Jackman standing around with claws acting tough and all the hype about "this one's real serious and dark and my mom says it's gonna be the bestest one." It remains to be seen whether that movie will be worth me paying the $175 a ticket it costs these days to go to a movie, but the only reason people are even moderately excited about it is because of something I like to call "Sith Syndrome." Sith Syndrome occurs when people look favorably on a movie because the one before it was just awful. When Episode 3 released, everyone praised it as a return to form. But really? They were just comparing it to "I hate sand"-of-the-Clones and The Phantom Jesus. It wasn't a good movie at all, but compared to those two? Hand it all of the awards you can find.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (there's too much punctuation in that title) is the story of Jean Valjean replacing his bone claws with metal claws and going on a murder rampage for no reason. Really, that's it. It was a chance for Fox to push a character who pretty much already had 3 movies all about him with absolutely nothing new for him to say or do. You could chalk that up to it being a prequel, which should be called "tension-suckers," but you could also chalk it up to the awful script, acting, directing, effects, story, and catering (I'm going to assume that was bad too). So rather than just describe it, I thought I'd go ahead and create a list of all the things that irked me about this movie. Feel free to disagree, but just know that you're wrong and society will constantly reward you for being wrong, so kudos.

The movie starts with a flashback to Wolverine's childhood in Canada where he's a sick kid in bed hanging out with his dad and another kid who's got Bugles for fingernails.

His dad, who bears a passing resemblance to Hugh Jackman, gets murdered by the groundskeeper, who bears a passing resemblance to Liev Schreiber. In a huge twist (45 seconds into the movie), it's revealed that the Liev Schreiber-looking guy is actually Wolverine's dad. If that was the case, why go out of your way to cast someone who looked like Hugh Jackman to play the fake dad? It's really not much of a twist when it happens right at the start of the movie, so there was absolutely no pay off, and does nothing to enhance the plot. Also, that's not how misdirection works.

More on this whole "who's the daddy" thing. So in the credits, Wolverine's fake dad's name is John Howlett and his real dad's name is Thomas Logan. This is probably the first time a movie screwed up big time by sticking to the comics. James Howlett is Wolverine's real name, but in the comics, he changed it to Logan so he could hide, using his groundskeeper's name (who was implied to be his dad, but never outright stated). So now if the groundskeeper is Sabretooth's dad, and Sabretooth's name is Victor Creed, then where does "Logan" come from? Made sense in the comics, but here, it's just complicated and/or stupid.

Everyone is super strong - if you're a mutant, you just get issued super strength right out of the gate. Don't believe me? Sabretooth is throwing dudes around like they're Pillow Pets during the intro.

Meow

Why are two Canadian dudes on the run from...the police?... fighting in every major American war? Why would they? Especially if YOU'RE ON THE RUN.

The movie implies that adamantium, the metal that eventually gets put on Wolverine's bones, came from space. That's stupid and also adds nothing to the plot.

There comes a point where Sabretooth and Wolverine are released from prison on the condition that they join this covert ops military team.

This team consists of Merriadoc Brandybuck who can control electricity (I think), an Asian with gun powers (I think), Will I Am with a cowboy hat, Ryan Reynolds, and that dude from Lost who looks like a rapist (he's super strong).

Yep, that’s the guy

They all do something "useful" for this mission they're sent on except Wolverine. All he wants to do is leave the team because it feels wrong. He didn't do anything for the team except complain. Didn't sneak into anything, didn't kill anybody, nothing. But the entire plot of the movie is set off because the team still wants him back because he's the best there is at what he does? Does this team really need a wet blanket that badly? Looked like they got their mission completed without him doing a thing.

I mentioned Ryan Reynolds. He plays a character known in the comics as Deadpool, a ninja assassin with a penchant for talking smack and making jokes. But in this movie, people spend more time talking about how chatty he is than he actually spends talking.

After Wolverine leaves the team, his girlfriend tells him a story about "a wolverine" who fell in love with the moon and howled at it every night, or some stupid crap like that. Wolverines don't howl at the moon. You must be thinking of wolves, Native-American-Girlfriend. Your legend that leads to his codename is based on a lie.

Wait, nevermind, guess they do.

To get him to join back up with the team, the villains stage a hyper elaborate plan to pretend to kill his girlfriend wherein they drug her and dump a bag of blood on her (for real, that really happens in a movie that was made) and make him think she was murdered. Two things: 1. Wolverine has hyper senses; he should be able to sense if someone is really alive or not. Even if he doesn't, even I could see her pulse beating on film. Protip: don't put highly glossy blood on the neck of someone who's supposed to be dead and then film them under really bright light. It shows. And 2. Fucking guy didn't take his girlfriend to the hospital? Have a funeral? He just left her in the woods after screaming "NO!!!"? Geez dude, you gotta follow up on these things.

Wolverine initially has claws made out of bones. These bones should not make his trademark "snikt" noise, as that is the noise that metal makes when it's being unsheathed. If anything, it should make a gross-ass fleshy noise.

Here's a logic puzzle: Wolverine says "I'm the best at what I do, and what I do best isn't very nice." If I'm the best at what I do, and what I do best isn't very nice, are those necessarily the same thing? I can do juggling and be the best juggler in the world, but maybe I'm better at cross-stitching. Way to screw up his most famous line.

Stryker, the leader of the covert team, refers to Wolverine as "old friend." They are, in fact, not.

So Stryker offers Wolverine the chance to get his revenge by giving him the opportunity to put metal on his bones. That's the dumbest plan ever, and the fact that he agrees to it is even worse. "Hey, that guy at Best Buy ripped you off? Well, if you want revenge, I can teach you how to breath dynamite. Whaddya say?"

Also, the entire course of the plan is to give Wolverine metal bones to see if the procedure works and then they plan to kill him afterward and do the same procedure on someone else. You want to see if you can make someone unkillable and then try to kill him? Whu?

Also, all the torture Wolverine complained about in the first bunch of X-Men movies amounted to this one time he voluntarily took part in a procedure, stood out of some water, killed one dude, and ran away. Not exactly waterboarding, but you know, whatever moves the plot along.

When escaping, he used his new metal claws to cut the door open. He cut 3 lines diagonally one way, 3 the other, to make a big X. If you look at the symbol, there are triangles that are formed in the middle which are apparently gravity-defying.

Must be one o’ them mutant doors

The worst fucking CG claw effects I've ever seen. What happened to the practical claws? These looked like someone took the movie and let their 7 year old draw the claws onto every frame.

Also, he’s a mutant sparkler

Wolverine runs into Ma and Pa Kent, an elderly farm couple with a conveniently dead son who owned stuff they could give to Wolverine. Things like his trademark clothes, jacket, and motorcycle. Thanks for stopping in, Kents - glad we never got to know your names and all you got for your trouble was death.

Again, the plan is to hunt Wolverine after you'd just given him adamantium bones? And your first attempt to do so is with a gun? Whu?

Stryker has a creepy meeting with someone else about the Logan situation. Stryker basically says "Chill, I got this" and whips out adamantium bullets. You've got the rarest material on the planet and you just decide to make ammunition out of it?

Also, why would you think an adamantium bullet would penetrate adamantium bone? How does that even make sense?

Also (ugh!), the idea is that Wolverine's brain would grow back, but not his memories, so he wouldn't know who to try to kill when he recovered. Why wouldn't his memories grow back? What precedent was set that alerted you to this clause? Is the bullet only hitting memory centers of the brain? He's still able to speak, eat, tie his shoes, (presumably) wipe himself...why would those specific memories disappear?

Wolverine goes to see Will I Am, who now operates a gym, because he needs help finding Stryker (when, really, Stryker's looking for him, so just sit still and you'll find him). Will tells him that "Dukes" (that rapist looking dude from their covert team) knows a guy who escaped Stryker so he knows where he is. For those of you familiar with the comics, Fred Dukes is the government name for the Blob, a mutant who's only power is that he's super fat and resistant to things because he's super fat. But here, he's that strong guy from earlier in the movie, but he eats as a coping mechanism. What was wrong with him just being fat? His fucking name is the Blob! It's the only thing anyone remembers him for, but now he has a binge eating disorder?

Also, they box. For real.

Also, Dukes mishears "Blob" when Wolverine calls him "Bub." It's the other trademark Wolverine quote, and he only says it one time in the movie, to set up a joke that isn't funny. No one has ever confused those two words in the history of their respective existences. This is a stretch.

Dukes tells Wolverine that the guy who escaped is named Gambit and he gambles in New Orleans. So he and Will I Am take a motorcycle ride from (presumably) Canada to Louisiana to meet him. Gambit provides nothing to the movie other than a place for Wolverine to look and he happens to own a plane so he can take him there. That's really it.

Gambit's powers are nothing like the powers he has in the comic, but at this point, that's like calling Double Dribble on a slow child - some shit you just have to let go.

Will I Am. That's all.

So Ryan Reynolds became the ultimate weapon, but they sealed his mouth shut. That's like the only thing the character is known for. Right, right, the double dribble thing I just mentioned. Letting it go...

Professor Xavier shows up with some of the worst CG de-aging effects I've ever seen. He looked like the freaking E*Trade baby.

Sabretooth calls Wolverine "Jimmy" during the whole movie. There's no better way to neuter a badass character than by giving him a kiddy nickname. Ain't that right, Anny?

Sure is…

This movie is the cinematic equivalent of polio. It's got more holes in it than the Columbians at the end of Scarface and is packed full of more worthless characters than Kim Kardashian. I'm not sure where they went wrong, but it almost looks like they didn't even bother going right. Check it out if you want to be irritated with Fox studios or if you're overwhelmed with too much happiness in your life - this movie will take care of it.

-E

[plotroast]

Loki picks the NFL Playoffs

My dog picks the NFL playoffs in the most professional, accurate and scientific way I could come up with. We did the AFC match ups first. The second video has the NFC and the super bowl pick. Thanks to Jessie, special friend of plot roast, for her Michael Bay inspired directing: 

[plotroast]

12 Reviews of Christmas: Scrooged -- A Sam Schreiber Review

So what’s not to like here?

We have the timeless story of A Christmas Carol, with the role of Ebeneezer Scrooge filled by Bill F. Murray.

We also have a drunken Bobcat Goldthwait stumbling around drunk with a shotgun like he’s spending a weekend on the lake with Ted Nugent. He doesn’t so much speak as he just makes general Bobcat Goldthwait noises.

Sample line from this scene: “ARRRGHH HSJABD CDSBCDJHS JDFNVFDKV POLICE ACADEMY!

Lew Hayward, Bill Murray’s old boss, is the Jacob Marley-type figure.

When they offer you that Garfield movie, you’re gonna say, “no,” understand? UNDERSTAND!?!?

He’s played by the Crypt Keeper, before he went on the Atkins diet.

The Ghost of Christmas Past is a psychotic, cigar-smoking cabbie who whips around the city like he graduated from the Lindsay Lohan School of Driving. He, of course, takes Scrooge to the past to relive emotional memories, while he, himself, relives memories of the time before emphysema. Also, he’s a handsome devil.

I’ll be sexing you now.

The Ghost of Christmas Present appears to be some sort of crackhead who uses not magic, but blunt force trauma. Seriously, she just hits him in the head with shit to move from scene to scene. These “visions” are probably just the feverish dreams of a concussion-riddled brain. I bet there was a deleted scene where Bill Murray wakes up in some back alley in a pool of his own vomit, pockets looted for drug money, and next to a sleeping Corey Feldman. Corey Feldman wasn’t actually in the movie though, he just happened to live in the alley where they were shooting.

Last one to take a dump on the sidewalk is a rotten egg! Also, a drug addict.

Also, we get to see Bill Murray rock a sweet 80’s mullet and mack on Indiana Jones’s woman. My only problem with this whole business is her pet name for him. Lumpy? Fucking Lumpy!?!? Is Peter Venkman gonna have to choke a bitch!?

A whip? Well has that pussy ever crossed the streams? Didn’t think so.

The Ghost of Christmas Future is portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins.

What’s your name again? You know what, I’m just gonna call you Clarice. Is that cool?

…Nah, I’m messing with you. They actually just hung an old robe over a TV.

Instead of the usual skull-and-death imagery, that’s actually a live feed of James Gandolfini’s shower.

As for the rest of the story, it’s A Christmas Carol, so you know the deal. Life lessons are learned. Hearts are warmed. Blah blah blah God bless us, everyone. I also really appreciate how much of the original novel is preserved in this modernization, like arguing over the merits of Rockettes-type dancers showing nipple.

For the record, PlotRoast is pro-nipple.

All in all, this movie is probably the most fun you’ll have with Dickens since ever.

[plotroast]

Thomas Reviews - Gilmore Girls

If you like Gilmore Girls I recommend clicking on one of my tamer reviews (Loki has a great review on Pocahontas 2!) because this show is a special kind of awful and I'm going to spend the rest of this article eviscerating it. Gilmore Girls ranges from atrocious to terrible and on its best moments makes Friends look like Mad Men. And Friends is terrible - it's a show set in a city with 8 million people that features the 6 most boring, cracker-jack white people in Manhattan. So to paraphrase one of the most interesting white people in New York (my dad): Strap your tits to your chests and tape your dicks to your legs, it's time to review Gilmore Girls.

Gilmore Girls is a show about a whorish mom who had a kid at 16 whom she's now best friends with because she's socially awkward and can't connect with people her age. Her parents are rich but don't help her out because her mom is an insufferable bitch. It's set in Narnia, where's it always winter but never Christmas and stars Alex Bidet, the slut elf from Bad Santa, Peter Petrelli, the dad from Richie Rich and Hoggish Greedly.

My friend Jessie was kind enough to bring over a few episodes to emotionally traumatize me because apparently I needed to finish what 2 Girls 1 Cup started. I'm not going to review each episode independently. I don't want to end this review having to check myself into the hospital for homicidal ideation. Instead, I'm going to highlight some overarching themes from the episodes I've watched and tie in a few specific anecdotes from certain episodes. 

Gilmore Girls gives the middle finger to silence.

I dated a girl once and her fatal flaw, besides her stalker ex-boyfriend who once came to my apartment claiming to be a pizza delivery guy so he could get into the building shortly after I did a fantasy football draft, was she would not stop talking. She would fill silence with inane drivel to the point where I once made out with her doing Indiana Jones just so I could hear Dr. Jones say “Nice try, Lao Che!”

Because of the constant talking in Gilmore Girls, scenes never build up and dialogue becomes white noise. Non-verbals are an effective way to grow a character. A sad smile when a potential love interest walks away or the contempt of speechless anger yield character depth dialogue could never achieve. Characters on the Gilmore Girls are shallow offering little more than pop culture references. They don't do anything but talk and as such come off as one-dimensional.  Frequent talking would be intolerable enough but everyone is talking so quickly it gives you no time to process scenes or enjoy the subtleties of the plot, characters or scenery. Gilmore Girl's would be infinitely better if this happened:

Seriously, I'm not saying that to be cute, this should would be infinitely better with a bit more silence. What's frustrating about this show is that there are a moments where the themes do shine and the minor characters are affable and charming. Melissa McCarthy's Sookie steals every scene she's in, which admittedly isn't hard because a wet fart could steal a scene with Lorelai Gilmore, speaking of which....

Lorelai Gilmore makes Lori Grimes look like Vivian Banks

I almost turned this entire article into a rant about why I hate Lorelai. She's a terrible mother and a character with no real motive or ambition. She owns an inn, but you never get the sense it's her passion, just something to fill time. When she's not complaining about her parents she's bitching about her love life. And when she's not bitching about that she goes back and forth with Luke arguing like a petulant child. The entire show is built around a woman who has no insight and the emotional range of a six year old. You can pull that off when your show is the Big Bang Theory and your main character is a nerd. Not so much when your main character is a mom. We expect a lot from our TV moms. We expect them to wear many hats and be able to have an extraordinary amount of resilience underneath a warm, loving persona.

Some idiot on the internets decided to make what I can only describe as the Mount Rushmore of TV mom's. They got 3 out of 4 right (no Kate from Lost? For shame), but they whiffed badly on Lorelai. The only way this analogy could work if is Mount Rushmore consisted of Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington and the President from Mars Attacks.

Seriously, Lorelai is not in the same league as these TV moms. She's trite, abrasive, uninteresting and self-absorbed. The only time she's even remotely interesting is when she's talking with her tramp daughter Rory (oh we're getting to her, fret not). She's socially awkward and has no clue how to interact with anyone who isn't her own seed. In one episode we watched, she had sex with some guy and then when he politely asked her to sleep in the guest room because he has insomnia she obliged! Really!? One of the reasons we love Clair Huxtable is if Bill ever suggested anything remotely close to this she would have uppercutted him and then ripped out Malcolm Jamal Warner's heart for good measure. Lorelai just isn't a strong mom, often complaining and whining about every remedial thing that happens to her life to the point I questioned whether I gave a fuck about Lorelai:

Her parenting skills make Child Protective Services squirm. Not once in the four episodes does she teach Rory a life lesson. Or counsel her. Or punish her. Or even feed her. Just following this advice would have increased her parenting skills ten fold:

Overall, I found her to be the most pestilent, cancerous part of the whole show. Which is quite an accomplishment considering...

Rory Gilmore sucks and immediately falls in love with every guy she talks to.

Look I get it. I was a 14 year old girl once. At that age you want to play kissy face with every generic teenage boy you can find. But my goodness, Rory is incorrigible. Even while dating her boyfriend Dean, played by the some asshole who can't act but got a show on the CW called Supernatural, she flirts with Chad Michael Murray. A terrible idea because it breaks one of my golden rules, never date a guy with three first names (except you Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I can never quit you).

She's not a teenager at all. She's fairly responsible, doesn't get into a ton of a trouble and has a good head on her shoulders. Which is similar to no teenager ever. Seriously, where's the crying on the floor, the mood swings, the screaming to the boyfriend she's had for all of 2 weeks but knows deep down is her soulmate. Being a teenager is about feeling every emotion simultaneously and having no idea how to handle it. It is also about having the hubris to think you know as much as adults do even though you're as dumb as a box of rocks. None of the teenagers on this show really experience these peaks and valleys. In fact, there all good kids that rarely get into trouble. This is a formula for boredom even making Jessie chime in at one point and say “Doesn't this feel like the longest hour of your life?”

Watching an episode of this show does feel so long because...

The plots are all over the place.

Here are the main plots in one episode we watched:

Rory finding out Paris is sleeping with Michael C. York (of Megiddo 2 fame)

Rory working at the Yale paper

Lorelai and Jason having (awkward) first kiss/sex and then wanting her to sleep in the guest room.

Michel (pronounched Michelle) rolling Hoggish Greedly's baby under a bed

Most dramas have an A and B plot formula that often allow multiple characters to be involved in the episode while pushing certain character's along. Breaking Bad is great at this – Walter White is often the A plot, but the B plot often rotates between a cast of strong character's and explores how they change because of Walter's shenanigans. Gilmore Girl's typically has several plots, most which don't interact with each other and just end abruptly without any closure. For example, one episode's subplot featured Luke hiring a kid who likely suffered from a learning disability. About 30 minutes into the episode he fires the kid and then IS NEVER SEEN AGAIN. Not the kid, but Luke. He just disappears and is not heard from until the next episode. The subplot did nothing to show us anything new about Luke (we knew he was a douche already) and honestly felt like filler. In the above sub-plots, the one featuring Michel is by far the weakest. Seriously – your idea of good television is trying to convince me a guy “rolled” a baby under the bed while playing with it?

  Look, I could go into more details about the bitch grandma, the inconsistent plots from episode to episode or stereotypical Asians but I think I've made my point. This show is egregiously terrible on multiple levels. The plots are dumb, the characters are shallow and the themes inconsistent if they exist in the first place.

Now I know one of the main counter arguments will be “Thomas, you're not supposed to enjoy this show because you have a dong LOL !1@” That's a bullshit excuse. Many shows aimed at woman are imminently watchable. Pretty Little Liars is flawed but extremely entertaining; Living Single was a great show with a strong female cast and Sister Sister executed the single parent/teenage kid dynamic as well as any of its contemporaries. The point is Gilmore Girl's sucks in a gender neutral way. Dull character's, boring plot, and an overabundance of dialogue dovetail into what might be one of the worst shows to last more than 5 seasons that didn't feature the word “Kardashian” in the title. I think the best way to sum up this review is a short conversation Jessie and I had while watching Michel mumble through his lines in a French accent:

Me: What did he say?

Jessie: “I think he said sycophant.”

Me: Everyone on this show is a sick infant. They cry and whine and won't shut the fuck up.

Jessie: <laugh with head nod> 

When a woman who owns almost all the seasons is laughing and agreeing with that statement, you know you've failed as a television show. Congrats Gilmore Girls, you're the worst the thing I have reviewed (so far).

[plotroast]

A Bedtime Story: Santa's Slay

Written by Drew Caudill

Twas the night before Friday,

And all through the house,

Not a creature was stirring,

Not even a mouse. 

I'd just got off work,

And was to hit the hay,

The wife pulled up a film,

A film called Santa's Slay.

The film had Goldberg,

A wrestler in fact,

One, if we are being honest;

Really can't act.

It's starts with a feast

The dad from Elf is there, holding a cup

Fran Drescher, Chris Katten are there too,

I can't make this shit up. 

Then comes a boom,

Santa's here, but everyone ran

Breaking down the chimney wall

Like the motherfuckin Kool-Aid Man 

He starts killing EVERYONE,

stabbing James Caan's hands,

Field goal kicking a dog,

and blowtorching the Fran. 

GIFSoup

Fast forward some time 

I'm getting too sauced;

This film stars a boy named Nicholas

and the cute pregnant girl from LOST. 

They find out in a book

that Santa is Satan's Son 

who lost a curling bet with an angel

and now have to run. 

Meanwhile, in a stripclub called Golddiggers

Santa is killing strippers in rows,

Setting fire to the place and saying,

"Ho, Ho, Ho" (Giggity.) 

But he's not all bad, I guess. 

He must have some soul;

He stops for a moment,

To Windex the pole. 

The heroes are frantic,

As people lay dying

They seek help from Nick's granddad,

Who is the angel sans flying. 

The throwdown occurs;

The whole world is whirling,

A Santa/Angel rematch,

One with Olympic Curling. 

Who wins, you may ask?

I cannot say,

You might have to go

And watch Santa's Slay.

But listen close Virginia,

For Santa is real.

Instead of presents, he murders 

and Curling is his Achille's Heel. 

THE END. 

[plotroast]

In Defense Of: Super Mario Bros. 2

I am in the minority (ha!) but I think Super Mario Brothers 2 is a good game. SM2 is a fun, likable entry in the Mario Brothers series that added quite a bit to the Mario mythos.

Unfortunately, everyone thinks it's terrible.

Imagine you're the middle child. Your older sister goes to Harvard, your younger brother goes to Stanford and you end up at Georgetown University. Your respectable choice to a quality institution is ostracized because you're not quite as good as your siblings (also, no one in your family knows what the hell a Hoya is).

Welcome to the quagmire that is Super Mario 2.

Released in 1988, SM2 will never be mistaken for NES classics like Contra ,The Legend of Zelda or the criminally underrated Blaster Master but it more than holds its own as a worthwhile entry into the NES library. I felt that way as a kid and after booting it up recently still feel that way now. So let's address some of the reasons why SM2 “sucks” (some reasons provided by Georgetown alum, psuedo-friend and fantasy baseball antagonist Jack Davis) and see if we can't make sense of this unique game.

Super Mario 2 is a weird game.

Super Mario 2 is very different than other entries in the Mario franchise. For one, it starts off with an admittedly half-ass story.

Spoiler alert: This entire game takes place in a dream. SM2 is pretty much Inception only with fewer plot holes. Also, has anyone ever awaken and immediately gone to a nearby cave? Do you think Mario got breakfast first? Took a pre-coffee poop? Why doesn't the story fill us in on his morning routine?

Anyways, Throughout the game you have control of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach or Toad . Each possess certain strengths and weaknesses that make certain levels easier or more difficult depending upon whom you choose. Mario is the most well rounded offering no weaknesses but also no strengths. Princess Peach can hover in the air but takes forever to pick up objects. Toad....well, we'll get to Toad in a minute. And as for Luigi, he can jump higher than all of the other characters. It sounds like fun until this happens to you:

One of the key differences in this game is instead of jumping on enemies to kill them you pick up objects including other enemies and hurl them to cause damage. This is one of the many quirks of that separates SM2 from the rest of the franchise; however many people see this is as a negative. It makes SM2 too different from the rest of the Mario games.

Let's look at this argument from the lens of one of the most beloved games of all time: Super Mario Bros. 3. I'm not here to knock SM3, a deservedly great game. But seriously, have you ever thought for a moment just how stupid that game is? Mario eats a leaf, becomes a raccoon and then flies. I'm not sure they have raccoons in Japan. If they did they would know that a flying raccoon is one of the scariest things imaginable and if I ever saw one in real life I'd probably drop an unscheduled booty bomb in my trousers. But not only is this a significant part of the game, but it's on the box:

Look, I'm not saying that Super Mario 2 makes any sense, but neither does any other Mario game. Mario 2 gets blasted because characters use turnips as a weapon but no one bats an eye when Mario is riding a dinosaur that doo doo's out green mushrooms after eating apples. Nothing in the Mario universe makes sense, not the borderline princess who constantly needs to be saved and rescued, not Bowser who sired 7 children with no Ms. Bowser and not these godforsaken sons of bitches:

Seriously, we're going to nail SMB2 to the cross because you pull a magic potion out of the ground which takes you to a secret reverse dark world where you pick up a mushroom but say nary a peep about bipedaling turtles hurling an infinite number of hammers in your general direction? The whole Super Mario universe is completely crazy. You can shoot fireballs underwater, float in the air with bunny ears, and go go-carting with Bowser and Donkey Kong but I'll be damned if you're allowed to carry a key while being chased by a floating head. The hypocrisy boggles the mind.

“The levels are stupid.”

Super Mario 2 has a rather wide range of levels. It was the first the Super Mario game to incorporate desert and ice stages; two levels that would get repeated use in future games. More importantly, SM2 had a variety of baddies to compliment the levels. Whether it was Carpet Eagleface (pretty sure that's a character in Pocahontas), Pokey the cactus or the whales in level 4, SM2 did a good job of providing some unique levels and characters. Sprinkled throughout the game were a fair number of secrets, warp pipes and shortcuts. Overall, the level design, which was unique for its time, still holds up.

“Super Mario 2 isn't a Mario game.”

This one is actually true. Super Mario 2 is actually a port of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic. Nintendo made a sequel to the first Super Mario Brothers but decided it would be “too hard” for American audiences and re-purposed Doki Doki Panic as the American sequel. For a more detailed look into the creation of SMB2, check out the Gaming Historian.

Quite frankly I can't blame them. As a kid, certain games frustrated me to no end. I'm pretty sure my hell is playing Quick Man's stage from Mega Man 2 for all eternity. And while we're here, I'd like to add that I hope whoever designed the levels to Ninja Gaiden dies of dysentery Oregon Trail style. Playing Ninja Gaiden was the first time I managed to use every curse word in the same sentence. Had Super Mario 2 been that hard, I'm not quite sure I would have seen the Mario franchise in the same way. Mario is challenging, but never overly difficult. You don't need a Konami code to beat it but still need to apply yourself to get through tricky puzzles and jumps. Mario games have a way of finding that balance and I actually think SM2 does as well. 

Toad Sucks.

I can't really defend this one. Toad is like the presidential candidate you're indifferent toward and have no reason to hate but despite his best efforts he can't seem to stop pissing you off. Instead of Binders Full of Women Toad has....Binders Full of Semen? I don't know where I'm going with this, Toad blows. Let's move on.

There's no Bowser.

The boss in Super Mario 2 is CBS play by play announcer Verne Lundquist

Bowser is most associated as Mario's villain but Mario has in fact had a few villains throughout his gaming career. Wario, Wart, King, Tatanga, Fawful, Smithy and Count Bleck all have opposed the mustachioed one to some extent or another. Wart is certainly a weird character (you have to throw vegetables in his mouth to defeat him), but he is appropriately difficult for a final boss and takes nothing away from Super Mario Brothers 2 either. To be honest, I'm not quite sure why he's the main villain, but NES games weren't really known for their storytelling. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

"It's not as good the other Super Mario Brothers games."

This argument is a bit unfair for a couple of reasons. You could argue the first and third Super Mario Brothers games are the two best games on the Nintendo period. Only a handful of games match-up. However, SMB2 does have one advantage over the other 2 games in the series...

It has much better music.

Don't get me wrong, the first obviously has the classic Mario theme and the third one is solid across the board. But this game has the most memorable music by far. Yes, some of the beats are simple, but they're memorable in their simplicity. The cave music is a great example of this. I often find myself humming one of these tunes far more frequently than any of the other Mario tune.

As for gameplay, again the other two Mario games are an unfair comparison. A much better comparison is the game that sodomized my favorite childhood heroes:

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

If we're talking about irrevocably terrible games in otherwise strong franchises let's start here. Like SM2, TMNT has 4 varied characters and is much different from its beat 'em up arcade counterparts. TMNT also includes a bunch of random characters not found in the other games. Sure you had the foot clan but there was also walking napalm man, alien tentacle thing and the eyeball attached to a foot that shot missiles. I don't even want to get into how much I hate this game. It's not even half as fun as SM2. If you ever want to see someone completely lose it, ask them if they played the original ninja turtles on NES and then ask them their thoughts on the underwater dam level.

"I'd rather watch gay porn than play this game."

Thanks for that insight Jack, we're all worse people for reading it.

Look, Super Mario Brothers 2 is a not a classic and is on few peoples list of Top NES games but it's not a terrible game either. SM2 is definitely in Tiny Toons Adventure/Bucky O'Hare echelon of solid, fun, enjoyable side scrollers with multiple characters. Unfortunately it gets knocked for being what it is not instead of appreciated for what it is. It does not have the classic feel of its predecessor nor the grand vision of its successor. But on its own merit Super Mario 2 is a solid game that deserves a second look. For the uninitiated I highly recommend giving it a play through on nintendo8.com. For the more hardcore gamer amongst you, SM2 definitely worth getting on the Wii Virtual Console. Don't worry about what it's not. Enjoy Super Mario Brothers 2 for what it is.

[plotroast]

Guess the Game...No, Really, Guess It

No, but like, for real, what game is this from? A Red Dead Redemption expansion? Colonial Modern Warfare? Assassin's Creed: Generic Irish Guy?

Nope, it's Bioshock Infinite, and this is the cover art they chose. Never mind the ambience of the game, the historical setting, the inevitable philosophical themes of the series thus far and this game in particular, the presence of a female co-lead in the game...nope: guns and 'splosions.

What is this shit? Why'd they go with this? This is the most generic thing you could possibly think of. It's like someone said "We need a cool guy for our cover. Someone google 'cool guy.' Also, he needs a gun, because we have guns in the game. Also, we need a flag in the background because Ammurica." Jesus Jumped-Up Christ, remember the cover art for the original Bioshock?

That dude is totally gonna wreck your shit, and he's got a murderous girl sidekick with a gun of some kind. Also, he's either underwater or in the shittiest greenhouse ever made. You got a sense of the atmosphere of the game, just by looking at the cover art. This was the kind of character you'd worry about seeing and a pretty original design in its own right. That dude up top? Grizzled shooty guy #4528.

I'm still gonna buy the shit out of this game, though, even if it is just a reskin of Uncharted Combat Evolved: Assassin's Hitman 2. Just sayin'

-E

PS: FUCKING LENS FLARES TOO?! DAMMIT!

PPS: Did Caudill write this post? Feels like Caudill wrote this post.

[plotroast]

Drew's Top Five: TV Shows that died too soon.

There are things in this life that are unfair. Like the fact that the cast of Honey Boo Boo just were given a raise from 5000 dollars an episode to 15000 dollars an episode. 

I'm going to let that one sink in for a second. The cast of Honey Boo Boo makes more money than you. 

Sigh. 

Well another thing that sucks about the world is that shows are rated. Those ratings directly affect if your show that you're watching is going to be on next season. So if you like that one Ancient Aliens show on History Channel, but no one else does, you're screwed. So without further ado, here are my top five shows that's candle was blown out too soon:

5) TONIGHT SHOW WITH CONAN O'BRIEN

Now I know this is a late night talk show, but I'm including it. How much did it rule to hear that Conan O'Brien was taking over for the Chin on the Tonight Show. In my belief, Conan is a hell of a lot funnier than Jay Leno and a whole lot less annoying. Conan's late night talk show, titled "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" after succeeding it from David Letterman was a great late night talk show, filled with great comedy sketches that caused the ratings to skyrocket and put Conan in the nomination for the Tonight Show. Which some feel is the holy grail of late night talk shows. 

Conan hosted it for a year before getting the shaft by....

THE CHIN.  Screw this guy. After a year in primetime, Jay Leno learned that he sucked and wanted his old job back, so the executives moved Conan's Tonight show to the witching hour of 12:05 and put the "Chinerific Chin Hour" (real title) before it in Conan's original time slot. Which killed the Tonight Show's ratings, caused the executives to panic and put Jay Leno back in the seat of the Tonight Show. 

4) FAMILY GUY

You might be asking yourself why I put this one on there. If you are reading this. Is there anyone out there? Hello?

Well, the reason is that it was cancelled to begin with in 1999. When I first started watching it with my dad. Yep, I was watching Family Guy before it was cool. Just call me this guy: 

Wait NO! Don't call me that!

When Family Guy was cancelled, it was again due to ratings. It was only after DVD sales that Fox picked it up and realized what a fucking gold mind they had on their hands. The DVD sales part, that's important. More on that later.

3) FREAKS AND GEEKS

This show was a perfect teen show for the outliers. The ones that were considered the wallflowers and the ones that were different. Judd Apatow knows how to create characters that are likable and put them in situations that seem real and relatable. This show dealt with everything from gym class to drug use in a whitty and unique way. Look at the synopsis below and check it out. You won't be disappointed. 

From Wikipedia: 

"The show centers on a teenage girl, Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini), and her younger brother, Sam (John Francis Daley), who both attend William McKinley High School during the 1980–1981 school year in the town of Chippewa, Michigan, a fictional suburb of Detroit named after Chippewa Valley High School, which series creator Paul Feig attended.[8]

The show's starting point is Lindsay's transition from her life as an academically proficient student, star "mathlete", and proper young girl to an Army-jacket-wearing teenager who hangs out with troubled slackers. Her relationships with her new friends, and the friction they cause with her parents and with her own self-image, form one central strand of the show; the other follows Sam and his group of geeky friends as they navigate a different part of the social universe and try to fit in.""

Just watch this scene. This show does a great job capturing the sport of Dodgeball from the different characters' point of view. Also, it doesn't hurt that Biff Tannon is the Gym Teacher. 

2) PUSHING DAISIES 

Ugh. This one really drove me nuts. This show was amazing. It was very different, which I think that's the reason why it failed. It wasn't American Top Chef Singing Idol Season 4. 

This show centers around the character Ned, The PieMaker. Ned was born with a unique gift. Ned can bring things back to life after they die, but only for one minute, or something else close in proximity will die. Ned was in love with a girl named Chuck, who got murdered. So Ned brings her back to life and breaks the rule of leaving her alive for longer than one minute, causing someone else to die. Now he can't touch her again because there is another rule. Touch once, Life. Touch again, Dead Forever. 

Here's the trailer: 

It was a great show that my wife and I still watch again and again on DVD. Because it's THAT GOOD. 

When it was cancelled, it was given the "hurry up and wrap up all of your shit" option, causing the last two episodes of it's short two season life to be muddled and rushed. 

Unfortunately, the Pie Maker can't bring this gem back to life. 

1) FIREFLY

HOLY SHIT. IT'S A SPACE WESTERN. 

Joss Whedon of The Avengers has made a lot of great TV shows. He started with Buffy and has made some great shows that have been cancelled. Firefly is one of them. It didn't even make it a full season before Fox, the undisputed killers of shows, knocked it off. This show is so popular, it reruns on THE SCIENCE CHANNEL. Yeah. The SCIENCE CHANNEL, and intersperse the episodes with facts about space travel and things in the show that could be real.

I may be obsessed. 

The show centers on a crew of ship named Serenity. After the end of Earth, people left the planet and spread throughout the galaxy. There are some planets that are run by the Alliance. These planets are well off, while the outer rim planets have gone back to a Western style, living off the land lifestyle. The storyline starts when a doctor and his sister board the Serenity in order to lay low from the Alliance, and the adventure starts there. Great Characters, Storyline, it was one of those shows that could have gone places. 

I was going to put the Firefly opening credits here, but when I looked it up on Youtube, I found the original missing. Upon further investigation, Fox has pulled the original content from Youtube for copyright infringement. Imagine that, Fox being dicks. Huh. 

So here is another version, made by someone. Ugh. 

So there you have it. The Top Five shows that died too soon. 

Wait. What? You said I missed one. Which one? I named all of the ones that have been cancelled. Ever. 

Sigh. Okay. I'll admit it. 

I haven't seen Arrested Development.

I know. I know. I've meant to watch it. I just haven't. And I have Netflix. I'm a sorry excuse for a reviewer. I'll get on that.

On to the DVD piece I mentioned earlier. It's the holidays coming up, and these DVDs are on sale right now. Firefly is 8 bucks on Amazon. I would give all of them a whirl. Try one of them out, you might become obsessed. 

If you excuse me now, I'm going to go watch Arrested Development. 

[plotroast]

Flashback: Captain N - The Game Master

You’ve got to hand it to the marketing geniuses at Nintendo. Back when they were running the world, they had their hands on everything from cereal to movies (like the Wizard, a feature-length commercial – we’ll get to that). Their influence was also felt in that most sacred of periods - the Saturday morning cartoon. If you grew up in the 80s, you’ve seen Captain Lou Albano sporting the Mario costume and Link spouting “Excuuuuuuuuuu….uuuuuse me, Princess.” Those guys had their own series (technically, Link just had a series of cartoons piggybacking off of Mario) because they were A-listers, but Nintendo, not content to let their B-listers avoid promotion, slapped them all together, threw in a spunky teen, and created Captain N: The Game Master. I have fond memories of this show, but will it still hold up once I removed the rose-tints?

Might as well just called it "Nintendo"

For those of you who have never seen the show, let me give you a quick rundown of the premise (conveniently re-explained at the beginning of every episode). Kevin Keen (fucking radical name, that)is a typical teenager, addicted to video games and hanging out with his dog, Duke. What he doesn’t realize is that, gasp!, his video games are real and exist in a place called Video Land (creative). The princess of this realm, Lana, is currently being attacked, so she opens “The Ultimate Warp Zone” and pulls Kevin through his TV during a quick bout against King Hippo. Now armed with a zapper and a controller belt buckle, he battles video game villainy in Video Land.

Let me just tell you, after writing that, I realize how ridiculous it sounds, even for a children’s show. What I’m going to do for this particular Flashback is give you a running commentary of the pilot episode, titled “Kevin in Videoland.” For those of you who have never watched it, consider this a taste, and for those of you who have, I hope you enjoy this look back.

The episode begins with a map of Video Land. Video Land apparently consists of 6 areas - Castlevania, Metroid, Mount Icarus, Kongoland, Megaland, and the Palace of Power. Once the map fades away, we get a HOLY CRAP WAS THAT MEGA MAN?

KILL IT!

What was that thing?! It was a little green man that whizzed by on a scooter and screamed “MEGA HI!” at the screen. No….that couldn’t have been Mega Man - just someone who was mega high. Ok, moving on and we get to WHAT THE BALLS? KID ICARUS? Sleeping on a cloud?!

He's like the ginger ghost of Michael Jackson

And then he shoots a lightning arrow over to Castlevania where we see George Hamilton in Han Solo’s Hoth outfit chasing a bat. Wait…Simon Belmont? Wasn’t Simon Belmont damn near a caveman? Loin cloth and whip?

Yup

Nope

Alrighty….Let’s just get through this 30 second intro of zaniness - we see Donkey Kong wearing an apron and cooking, Mother Brain sounds like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors, Kevin gets sucked into his TV, end opening. Mega High, indeed.

Who are these guys, and why are they hanging out at Target?

Now, Kevin is like the typical teenager as seen through the eyes of the late 80s -clean cut kid, athletic, voice like Zach Morris, all around good guy. What I never understood was where the letter jacket came from. In my day, either you were a jock, or you were a nerd who sat around and knew the ins and outs of the Metroid map - it was near impossible to do both, and if you were that second kind of kid, the only athletics you took part in involved the Power Pad. Maybe it’s just me, but I like to think that Kevin’s dad was in Vietnam and he just wears his old man’s high school jacket. In fact, that would explain why he’s a shut in, living his life through Nintendo, but whatever - he’s the Game Master.

Captain N - 1.0

Now that the episode has kicked into gear, we find that the Palace of Power has been under siege for 7 years, thanks to Mother Brain and her army of Wizard of Oz rejects - they seriously do the “Oh We Oh” thing from Oz. King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard are MB’s goons. Hippo declares that they’re simply too strong for the Palace to withstand, which is funny, because they’ve been withstanding MB’s attack for 7 YEARS! MB gets upset by his comment and attacks Hippo and Eggplant Wizard, who apparently craps vegetables when he’s nervous, which makes a delightful popping noise.

Back at the castle, Princess Lana (strangely, an original character living in Video Land) is worried that she’s doomed. Icarus (who ends random words with -icus;“Just doing my duty, your highnicus”), Mega Man (who sounds like he’s had a tracheotomy), and Simon Belmont (awesome in his arrogance) stand around and just kinda scratch their heads for a bit. At the height of her despair, a Power Glove talks to her (really) and tells her the legend of a hero who can save the day. Kevin and Duke get pulled into Video Land, and now the story can begin.

Kevin instantly recognizes all of the characters that are now standing around him, which is amazing because they look NOTHING like their game counterparts. He asks what’s going on, so Lana catches him up about the Warp Zone. Let me remind everyone reading this that this is now the 3rd time we’ve heard about the warp bringing Captain N to Video Land. I realize this was a Saturday morning cartoon and kids were probably loaded up with sugar at this point, but it probably wasn’t necessary to keep repeating the origin 4 minutes into the first episode.

Get used to seeing this

The newly minted Game Master turns down the position, saying that it’s basically too weird for him to handle. Back on Metroid, MB sends King Hippo to “punch out their defenses” (clever) and sends Eggplant Wizard with him. I don’t know if I picked up on this right, but I think Eggplant Wizard has a crush on MB - he calls her his sweet potato pie. Just the logistics of a purple blob nailing a brain in a jar makes me nauseous to no end.

Icarus, Mega Man, and Simon decide that, in this most dire of situations, their top priority needs to be to cheer the princess up, rather than protect the castle. Simon, being the suave pimp that he is, decides he’s going to take the lead on that particular task. Little does he realize that King Hippo and Eggplant Wizard are already in the castle, following him to locate the princess.

At this point, I realize two additional things about King Hippo - 1. he doesn’t have his signature band-aid on his stomach, and 2. he has the BIGGEST NIPPLES EVER! Seriously, you’d need a pasty the size of an LP to cover one of those things.

"Is there gravy in that thing?"

They (Hippo and Wizard, not Hippo’s nipples) capture Simon and throw him down a warp just before grabbing the princess. Captain N walks up to the door and suspects something weird is going on so, faster than you can say NRA, he takes his Zapper and shoots the door down. King Hippo throws Lana at him while Eggplant Wizard throws vegetables at him. Kevin now discovers that he has Matrix-like powers when he uses his Power Pad belt buckle. Kevin and Eggplant Wizard then have a showdown, with Eggplant Wizard winning by way of…turning Kevin into a banana…sigh. Lana is taken, and Kevin smells like a Runt.

They really don't taste like bananas

Captain N rounds up the troops, who are busy barricading doors with furniture. Icarus has a weird accent that I didn’t notice before. It’s like a Boston newsie, with a speech impediment, just hitting puberty. Kevin and Simon argue over the best route to Metroid. Simon insists he knows where it is, but Kevin states that he’s played this game a whole lot and knows where the warp to Metroid is. I don’t even know what that means. You mean he played a game called “Lana is Kidnapped” and there’s a warp in that game that leads to a completely different game? How does that work?

They take Simon’s route (after he pulls the ol’ Harvey Dent coin trick on Kevin) and wind up in Donkey Kong’s shower. So, just to recap, there’s a warp in Video Land that leads to Donkey Kong’s shower, folks. After a brief fracas with the giant ape, including Simon being squashed flat against a tree, they find another warp leading out of Kongoland, located inside a volcano. Dun Dun DUUUUUUUUNNNN.

We'll be RIGHT back

Meanwhile, on Metroid, MB sends Lana to a locked tower guarded by THE MOST RETARDED LOOKING GUARD EVER CONCEIVED IN LIFE! Seriously, look at that guy and tell me his parents weren’t siblings. I realize the villains in this show aren’t all that spectacular looking, but geez, check that guy out. Wow…

Good lord, with this guy

Kevin and the Chan Clan make it up to the top of the volcano where Kevin insists there’s a warp, using the same logic he used before. “I’ve played Donkey Kong enough times to know what I’m doing. Trust me.” I don’t remember a volcano or a warp in Donkey Kong, so my faith in Kevin at this point is wearing thin. I think for the next week or so, I’m going to make random suggestions and back them up with nonsense.

“Let’s punch that homeless man. He’ll pay us money if we do.” -”I don’t think that makes sense.” “I’ve played this game plenty of times to know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

WHAM!

The volcano shoots boulders up and Kevin hits pause long enough for everyone to hop onto one. His pause button is fairly inconsistent - earlier, it paused everything but him, now it only pauses the boulders. This must be one of the earliest examples of context-sensitive buttons. I guess by “warp” Kevin meant“bus stop” because they wind up riding those boulders all the way to Metroid, a trick he picked up while playing Donkey Kong apparently. Simon insists he knows the way to the princess and goes down a pipe on his own, while Mega Man tosses Kevin into the locked tower. Kevin lands on the Reguarded Tard (I think I spelled that wrong), killing him. Kev and Lana reconcile, both apologizing for really no reason. MB shows up and challenges Lana, Kevin, and Duke to make it through “the corridors of Metroid.” What follows is a musical montage of chase sequences not worthy enough to warrant dialogue other than “WHOA!!!”

The three heroes bust into MB’s chamber only to find that Kevin’s zapper and power pad are out of juice, at which point, in clichéd fashion, Simon, Mega, and Kid bust through every wall imaginable to back up Captain N. At this point we find out that Simon’s whip is magic, and not in the Vampire Killer sort of way, but in the it-has-a-mind-of-its-own kind of way. It pulls an Anaconda on Hippo and Wizard, while Wizard craps radishes. Technically, at the end of the day, Kid Icarus is the hero, shooting the “Make Mother Brain Spin and Shoot Electricity”switch that she leaves lying around by her jar. In typical fashion, he receives no recognition. Tough breakicus.

Get used to obscurity, kid

Back at the palace, Lana urges Kevin to stay and help out, but Kevin says he has to get back to his world, the world of acne, girls who aren’t into video games, and homework. However, when he walks up to the warp, he hears his harpy of a mother tell him to stop playing that foolish game and take out the trash. The prospect of having to do a menial chore makes Kevin reconsider his leaving. The only thing worse than fighting a giant brain in a bottle is taking out the trash.

I also want to mention that, while the end credits are running, we get to see the origin story again. We’re now up to 4 times.

This show was great as a kid. Seeing all of the characters that I recognized from games that I was currently playing, coupled with the cool little gimmicky things, like having a controller over your junk, and sound effects from classic games, was a total blast as a kid. In hindsight, it’s super cheesy, with corny dialogue and even cornier situations, but it was what it was supposed to be - a kid’s show that pushed Nintendo further into the public consciousness. Seriously, short of grinding up an NES cartridge and injecting Fester’s Quest directly into my veins, there was no way Nintendo was getting further into my brain than this show. The entire series is currently out on DVD. If you’re as nostalgic as I am, you should at least rent it. It’s worth a peek. And honestly, it’s a masterpiece next to the Mario movie. Til next time, folks, PAUSE!

-E