RE: the Hungry Hungry Hippos movie

Seriously, if Robin WIlliams hasn't been yet cast, it is a matter of time.

  This is an open letter to the employee or employees of Emmet/ Furla/Hasbro who thought it was a sound idea to make a Hungry Hungry Hippos movie.  

Perhaps you are surprised. You might be wondering why people are shocked. Didn't we all love Hungry Hungry Hippos? Didnt we all play it as kids? Doesn't that mean we'd all watch a Hungry Hungry Hippos animated film by default?

Did you not see the result of this line of thinking with Battleship? In case you didn't, here is a less apt metaphor: you know most people in the western world are familiar with? Toasters. Whoever hasn't owned has has at least seen one on TV. Do you think that's a built in audience? Do you think if you announce a movie about toasters it  will bring all toaster enthusiasts?

Can we keep the Christ Parallels to a minimum, please?

And yes, there was an animated film about a toaster and it did generate some revenue. But it wasn't because people thought toasters are cool.The fallacious thinking that just because people are aware of the name of something they will see it, and that the movie will drive sales of the toys was,in fact, questioned earlier when  it was revealed Transformers: Dancing in the Dark was revealed to have not sold as many toys as they expected. And the TF brand has a pretty strong market penetration, too. Perhaps this was because Transformers falied to produce enought "Sprint action Sam Witwickeys" and "Penis Joke soundchip Ken Jeong". You can't sell kids the the character without SELLING kids the character.That's how Transformers cartoons worked. It sold ALL the characters, not just 2.

So Hippos: it will probably land between decent and mediocre which, lets face it, is pretty good when you consider the source material is THIS HIPPOS ARE HUNGRY, THEY EAT A LOT.  So what's our problem? It's not like you can "ruin" Hippos with anything other than not making them Hippos or Hungry. It could be a depressing gritty noir tale of absolution and It'd still be accurate if the lead character is called "John Hippo" and had at last one scene in front of an all you can eat buffet.

The problem is that the idea of a Hungry Hungry Hippos  movie has been a joke in the same way you might say putting 1000 monkeys in front of a 1000 typewriters can create a masterpiece. We're watching you send off for the shipment of typewriters and monkey ownership permits, fully expecting the 21rst century King Lear, apparently unaware as everyone who knew this wasn't a litteral expression . Can this end anything but badly?

But worstly...you are killing the parody industry. Dude, how are we supposed to mock Hollywood's tendency for adapting plotless toys and games if youkeep doing the very ideas we are mocking? Hippos was probably the last good ridiculous movie-idea joke. Are you gonna make Tetris and Chutes and Ladder And Pacman,  too? What are gonna have to do? "Pencil" the movie?  You are setting the bar of mockability unreasonably high. And that's before your movie gets trampled by a less ridiculous toy adaptation.

Continue

The Problem with Michael Bay

The state of your shit is: REAL For illegal paramilitary foreign action, press 1, to say a catchphrase, press 2, to hear all options...

There have been many  words shed about the recent, disheartening Ninja Turtles script leak. I was sitting at the fence of this one topic, thought not out of choice. I had written previously a long article about the silliness of changing the Mutants to Aliens, but I never got it on time.

It raped my childhood DURING MY CHILDHOOD!

It wasn't the change per se. At it's core, we have to understand that TMNT has been readapted a crazy amount of times for a franchise that isn't that old. It's got more adaptations and origins and reboots that most franchises have in their entire history. In it's short existence, there have been less years than there aren't TMNT products present in some form of media than not.

And it's somehow almost never wrong. The Original comics and the 80s Cartoon are, at a glance, ridiculously different, and while many argue that the toon is a disservice to the books, both have their fans. The 2k3 series is quite different from both of those, and it stoll found it's adepts. The more grounded Live action movies are quite a leap from the magic warrior fest of the CG movie, and it's not the difference makes either of those bad.

Happy 300th post!

In essence, the Turtles are a malleable franchise. Which is why I thought perhaps this alien thing was much ado about nothing. Besides, Bay isn't even directing this thing! I kinda liked Battle: L.A.

But here's the thing: Look at the filmography of Francis Ford Coppola. Now look at  John Mc Tiernan's. Now Look at Michale Bay's. Do not compare the quality of the films(please, don't. For your own sake). Compare the variety of them.

Michael Bay  at some point got enough money and clout to do whatever kinds of films he wanted.  Surely, it must not have been an entirely mercenary desition to enter the movie world? There must be somethings that Michael Bay likes that he's rather make a film about? Why yes there are. Of his eleven directed movies, none of them do not contain:

America(playing the best-country-in-the-world angle)

Beautiful Cars(that are also paying Michael Bay by being onscreen)

Beautiful Women(that I'm sure some of them at least sleep with him.)

Over the Top action( by over-the-top I mean falling from a building and walking it off.)

Military Equipment and hardware

Juvenile Humor

 There is no problem with any of those things.NONE OF THOSE THINGS ARE BAD. Hell, most of them work pretty well in Bad Boys(although I think it's the only movie that stopped the whole action to show rats having sex. Seriously, what are you, 14?)


 The problem is that at a very early portion of his career, he realized that he didn't have to try to experiment. He could do the things he liked, and WE seemed to like it, judging by how much we where going to see it. The Island is a pseudo remake of an old movie where people are harvested for body parts, and he is unable to put any message about it except Boomaction! Pearl Harbor is a historical American tragedy and he can't deliver it without selling it off as WOOO AMERICA WINS! Michael Bay is not going to direct a medieval movie, because he can't get any U.S. army action in there. Michael Bay isn't  adapting any children's franchise if he can't have something humping something else.

So when you give him Transformers, or Ninja Turtles, he isn't thinking of the best way to make that story into a movie. That's priority number 56.  He's thinking how much Pro-America, how many Beautiful Cars and Beautiful Women, and Over-The Top Action and Military Equipment amd Juvenile Humor he can put in there. Because that's what he likes, and he assumes you want that too.

So it's not about the change about aliens being ridiculous anymore. This leak script proves that  Michael Benjamin Bay probably convinced the writer( who is an underling of the producer, and must follow his-er guidelines) to put all the things he likes in there. Cautious optimism isn't working out anymore. The  movie's obviously in the wrong hands, hands that shall not switch because hands payed money for it.

So if your like I was , and have not given up on all possibility that the future movie would be at least possibly not as bad as it could be, take heed: Michael Bay is no fan, Michael Bay is no artist, Michael Bay is no innovator, and Michael Bay only cares about Michael Bay. He's to hollow to put some heart into it, too selfish to just do his own fantasy franchise, and the only thing between him and the movie he wants is aparently us. Huh.

Stop him?

Continue

THIS BLOOD'S FOR YOU!

"Lesse...Puch, pouch, pouch, pouch, gun, gun, gun, gun guuuun...sword, sword sword, sword dagger, boom! New character!"

We should count ourselves lucky. Used to be  superhero adaptations to the big screens ran into 3 key stumbling blocks, and most never rose up from there: "How could we put this on the big screen?" "How do we change this so its not stupid anymore?" and tertiarylly "how much money does it take?"

Now that Hollywood found the answers they've gotten to adapting superheroes left and right. But Kick Ass  aside, most of them have been the big popular ones from the big 2.

But perhaps thats all changing soon.

Rob Liefeld, celebrated creator of Deadpool and Cable is aparently about to have one of his million 90s superhero teams optioned for the big screen. The group is Bloodstrike, a commando of vampire blood fueled super commandos. Not to be confused with Youngblood, another Liefield team already optioned for film by complete monster Brett Ratner. Or Bloodwulf, Liefelds Lobo knockoff. Or Bloodbank, a character I just made up, but could totally be a Liefeld character.

Anyway, here is them.

Actually, I think crazy hairs up there is Bloodwulf. Maybe.

I for one cannot wait to finally see Sheeva, Wolverine and Deadpool onscreen. But I think Iron Monger and Hawkeye are lame so no praise there. I cannot wait to see Liefelds intricate original and stylistic designs come to life. Hopefully they will prove just as enduring as they where then.

Continue

Leaked in Early Secrets- Marvel's Dark, Tall, TALL new villain

We are so fuckin' spoiled these days...

Who didn't enjoy Marvel's Avengers movie? I'll tell you: that stupid crazy guy my brother gat paid to haul around. He's always asking if Ron Jeremy is in the Avengers. Dude, get help!

But that aside, everyone liked it, it made industrials amount of money before we even touch merchandising, and all is well in Marvel Land. Except for the books, those aren't selling.

Pachinko Wolverine is still not happy, though.

But you did not come to hear what you know, but Leaked in Early Secrets (my doctor said I should shorten it to L.I.E.S. so I don't get carpal tunnel syndrom. I don't remember if she said it while I did her and her sexy nurse at the same time, or after.) And so, get ready to hear the real, nonest for real future truth about the Marvel Universe.

If Fox doesn't start filming Daredevil anything by October 10, the rights to Daredevil return to Marvel, where  unless marvel stops making money and they sell it, it shall stay until the mountains wither and the rivers stop. And so, Marvel is already eyeing  the juicy, fruitful Daredevil fanchise for a future movie, right?

Oh, no! Marvel already has all the movies it needs set up to come out in the next few years. And let's face it, If Marvel wanted a street level hero, they've plenty of choice.

No the real sweet part of the deal is bringing back from the diaspora Daredevil's supporting cast. Guys like Kingpin, Bullseye The Hand, Elektra, and other's such have great applications within the movies and stories Marvel is already doing. So where am I going, exactly?

Jennifer Garner is cool, but crude, and Ben Affle-eck, is a party dude!

Well, I tilted my antenna just north of south(I'm bein litterall, I have antenna on my head), and I hear from my sources that whatever preliminary story work on Avengers 2 is being reworked to this new possibility. Thanos is being relegated to the Guardians of the Galaxy, and instead, the main badguy for Avengers is set to be the BIGGEST THREAT OF ALL! A REAL TALL ORDER OF A NASTY! THE ONE WHO LOOKS DOWN ON ALL THE HEROES! STILT-MAN!

Coming this Fall...

Wilbur Day, is a scientists assistant, who steals the invention and uses it to steal even more as the Stiltman, having incredible heights, enhanced durability, and affecting the probablity field of carnivals to make them less boring.

At the end of Captain America 2 they already have a teaser planned out, where Bucky, Cap and The Falcon are enjoying themselves at a circus, when they sort of look up and the ominous shadow of the Stiltman looms over them. There's gonna be a scene in Ironman where Tony Stark is making out with Pepper Potts in the 5th Floor of a hotel, and  STILT-MAN'S HEAD CAN BE SEEN PASSING BY THE WINDOW, UNCONCERNED!

Course, at the end of Avengers 2 Stilt-man calls into a Helicarrier's Intake and explodes, and we see his  funeral, we get a glimpse of his wife, and the following exchange ensues:


Maria Hill: Excuse me, lady? 

Glenda Day: "Lady?"

Maria Hill: We have questions about your husband, Stilt-man.

Glenda Wise: My husband's name was Wilbur day.

Maria Hill: He killed Black Panther and died a monster, lady. He was a monster.

Glenda Day: And I was his wife.  Ms Stilt-Man. Lady Stilt-man!


Wowser! Are yo excited, cuz I'm excited! It's unbelievable.  I mean, hardly believable at all. So great! And so, remember: I cannot tell a lie, but I can tell  many L.I.E.S.! Batzarro AWAY!

Continue

Batman: Arkham Shitty

Oh. Acclaim. Why am I not surprised?

I heard you, guys. I wasn't on the internet, but I heard. You where talking about Batman Arkham City, the first game that apparently succeeds at the whole "Now you're Batman, in a wide open city, beating up  goons" thing.

I mean, let's face it, most Batman games have been deeply ingrained in preexisting genres like "Beat-Em-Up" or Racing"". That doesn't make them BAD games (being bad games made them bad games), but in terms of immersing you into the cowl and tights live of the Goddamn Batman, it felt a little...lacking. That is, until someone finally tried to give us the full Batman experience in  1998s movie tie-in "Batman and Robin" for the Playstation.

Hey, I said "tried". TRIED.

The interactive spawn of the filmic marketing machine that  put the lucrative Batman franchise out of theaters for 7 years, Batman and Robin  is a full on sim, with Bat Computer antics in the Batcave,  Batmobile driving down Gotham Park,  and the actual score from the actual movie. That last part is sort of amazing in the context that Spider-Man games always had this...stock music that felt like a slap to the face to the tunes Danny Elfman strung together. And hey, I do like Eliot Goldenthal's score for Batman and Robin. So sue me!

Be nice to the new neighbors, dear. They just went through a reboot...

However, the game is so poorly constructed, that any joy, even ironic, that could be derived is quickly smashed under the weight of some pretty garbage gameplay.

The game opens to a CG Full Motion pre-rendered Video of Gotham, where Mr Freeze is coming from underground in his Freezemobile as his minions  also drive recklessly in the streets. I guess this isn't crazy, considering his plan is to  burst into a museum to steal a diamond, Ice skate for a bit,  then use a rocket (with a bomb in it) to blast  off into the sky, then glide down on butterfly wings. He should have gone to Africa, where there's lots of diamonds and no Batman. Oh, well... there is one now, but not back then.

He did give me a sign. Now... to wait until he hits me more time.

Then Batman is in the Batcave, which immediately leads to you controlling him. You can press a shoulder button to switch between  running and "the batman strut", and another to switch between "detective" and "insecurely punching" modes. Detective mode has the option to jump in it, for some reason. And it also has the gadgets you would want to throw at a villain's faces.

Eventually, the player wanders into the vehicle platform, where  Batman(or Robin, if you so felt inclined, by wandering into the Robin ensigned closet.) and drives of in one of the vehicles into the big city.  The city itself is sparsely populated, and most of the citizens are, as expected, eccentric  criminals. Weird clowns and dominatrix gymnasts(but not THE Weird Clown or THE Dominatrix Lady Gymnast) are loose and stalking Gotham's two other inhabitants, while the police don't even bother. Luckily Batman's car is armed with a mosquito machine gun, and he  can blast away from the safety of his cockpit. Until he runs out, that is.

However, Mr Freeze isn't just after mere jewels, and has declared a holy war on  the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder.  Every  half a mile two cars from the movie, a motorcycle, or a kamikaze ice cream truck will try to Benazhir Bhutto your ass. Unless you get off. Then they leave you alone. This would add entertainment and excitement to what otherwise would be a quick drive to the grocery store(of crime) if it weren't that the controls for driving are awful.

Ice Cream! Death to the Batman And Ice Cream!

Seriously, the get 'into the Batmobile and drive there' part is one of the worst  virtual driving things ever. I mean, I would rather play Multi Racing Championship than drive in this. Getting your car to drive straight is an unachievable goal, and you forget about Robin's motorcycle. Forget it. You'd think since they put the effort of putting it in the game and making it a significant part of it, they'd have put the effort into making it not fucking suck.

Eventually, after finding "clues" and  picking coins out of payphones  to put them in newspaper dispenser machines to get health(yes, BILLIONAIRE playboy Bruce Wayne isn't gonna fucking pay for his own newspaper) you get into the Museum, which doesn't fully exploit the over the top scene of the movie. Mr Freeze isn't even there. It is here that, if you haven't yet been killed by Ice-cream trucks yet...you will see this.

Aww... he got a shorter one just for Barbara!

That's the game over screen for the game. One of them, at any rate. You will see it every time more than 3 of Mr Freeze's men catch you.  Every time you  press an attack button, you should hear George Clooney ask the U.N. for permission to attack the person in front of him within the next decade as long as Venezuela puts half the money.  But whenever 3 of the Freeze Faithful gang up on you, they begin what is known in fighting game culture as an "an infinite" and to your local Gamestop as "why we still sell controllers". There isn't enough health(which comes in the form of floating double helix strains. Yes, Batman is going into town picking up people's genetic material and putting it in his mouth. Why do you ask?) and the controls aren't reactive enough.  And again, since  a significant amount of options that would be useful in combat, such as jumping and drawing gadgets are on detective mode, you will have to rely on the combat actions or learn to quickly change into detective mode to get out of trouble. And the movement is tank-like, yet imprecise.

What Killt de Dynasoars? Dere Ar Diffrent Teeorees about Dee Ecksackt CAUSE but mohst scientists agrree it didn't involve DEEICE AYGE!!

Eventually, The Caped Crusader or his Loyal Liege secure the diamond before the Iceman gets to cometh. Which leads you back to the batcave, where you have some pretty useless clues about where  Freeze will strike next. The next mission is a sordidly designed jewelry store, where you are supposed to  wait until the bad guys arrive so the mission can be done. Not waiting like , at a stake out, or perched and watching the people. Waiting as in, wander around an empty jewelry.  Go ahead and trip the alarm. Then it's waiting...with an alarm blaring.

This game is stubbornly obsessed with time. With making you wait. With making you get there in time. With  clues having to be at a particular moment. I kind of get why one would do that...but in a game this poorly constructed, it just adds another layer of confusion and frustration. This is Batman and Robin, not fuckin' Shenmue!

Hurry up and die! Gotta pick up the kids at soccer practice.

But the waiting isn't the hardest part, as Mr Freeze finally shows up to grab the gem and kill the heroes. Yes. Kill them. Yes. Yes. As I stood there, in front of a shuffling model with a pixelated Arnold Schwarzenegger face on it, whiffing away,  watching him do gymnastics, I was wondering what the hell was going on.  It is then that I realized that the fighting system is truly broken. He won the first one, of course. And the next few ones, too.  Then it hit me like a thunder strike: third person fighting rules had abandoned me. Everything I knew was a lie. The only truth is that  he needed to be a good sport about me kicking him and not hit back, because my hits are no good here, but his hits  affect me. Life isn't fair, Batman.

But, yeah, our heroes steal another diamond, yet Freeze...flies away.

I actually lost the next mission. Yes, you can lose and move on, like in True Crime. I don't see why the fuck you would want to lose, but in my case, I had no choice, as wandering the latest labyrinthine jewelry store aimlessly lead to a glitch in which Freeze's  henchmen who was supposed to steal the thingie froze(ha ha) there, and made the stage unwinnable. I could have tried again. But I could also have made this paragraph  a loosely put together  chain of profanities. I didn't want to do either.

And he's single. Ladies.

However the next mission is  exactly the same, but without the glitch, and I get my chance at revenge on fucking Frosty. I don't get what difference it makes who gets a diamond or not. And why are the jewelry stores so apart?

The a small release came. I wandered behind the Robin ensigned closet and noticed yet another closet, which enabled me to play as Batgirl. I thought she would be playable in a later moment, but I guess she was here the whole time. Though her vehicle, the Batcycle, is the humblest looking of the 3, it handles the best and has the least problem surviving  the sudden goon strikes that haunt the player. That's right: in a stunning reversal, Alicia Silverstone's Barbara Pennyworth  is the least bad part of Batman and Robin: the game. Sure, she looks like Pagan and sounds like Maya, but anything that makes this experience less bad is good.

No jokes about women drivers here. Unless you consider this a joke and this thing here a woman and the steering in this game driving.

After getting myself lost AND caught saving after the game was winnable, I found the botanical garden scene. You know, I'm not a bigshot game designer, but if you're sending the player looking for something called "Botanical gardens" in a city full of flat doors...maybe don't make it look like a garage door. I've been to a Botanical Garden, and it didn't look like  that at all.

Still, big scene. You don't get to bid over the toply for a woman that came out of a monkey suit, but you do get to fight scores of henchmen. And there's icicle mines. Also, there's some thing making the floor blue that kills you. Oh, and the bad guys like to attack with grenades now. And sometimes, they come out of unexpected places. I actually came in with full health every time, and they just knocked it right out of me. I discovered blocking and rolling. Still dying. It's like a very deep game of chess where all your pieces are pawns and kings and the other player has a shotgun. Then FROSTY shows up again. I thought he was in jail? Isn't Vivica A Fox gonna show up? She's in this movie, too!

So, if you can somehow brave the crazy fucking odds...you get your shot at Mr Freeze again. And this time, he means it! He's got a device that shoots ice randomly, he's building big ice pillars atop a giant hand, and he's not afraid of kicking you into the ground and freezing you before you get up. Your first instinct might be to run up to his face and beat the shit out of him. Mine too. It failed. He can easily destroy you in 2 seconds if he gets  3 hits in. Then I tried using the batgadgets to wear him down first.  It did not work particularly well. You might try patiently trying to gather gadgets from afar to wear him down. But if you wait too much, the machine explodes and you fall down for no good reason. Touching the device hurts you. Falling is easy and sometimes you can even fall through floors. His health goes down slooow, and there's two bars that each respond to different types of attacks. There are no indicators as to what you have to do. There is no strategy here: if you won, it is a series of coincidences that strung themselves together to enable your victory. It is the perfect boss fight. For the boss I mean.

Mah emoshons mede me wick!

Or is it? Will I be able to beat this? Am I going to quit and go back to playing enjoyable games? Find out next time in Batman: Arkham Shitty 2!

Continued in part Two!

Continue

Scolding Review Dragonball Evolution

All-ah-wanna-say-issat, they don't really care about us! Aaaaaaah!

Well, well, well. We meet at last. I remember being so busy defending would be turd Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, I barely had time to defend Dragonball. I certainly didn't want to watch it. My Dragonball experience is roughly two weeks of Z, which taught me that the franchise takes it sweet time to make stuff happen. The movie has much less time to develop an arch, yet somehow manages to waste what time it has.

The film opens to narration, but you can skip it. It's repeated wholesale later. But if you must watch it, it says that once there was an alien bad guy named Piccolo, and he and his minion Ozaru pretty much had the earth by the balls. But then some mages did a suicide spell and cast him to the center of the earth. But he just escaped. I would have liked to see the escape.

Antennae? That would look make this green skinned, pointy eared  alien named after a flute...silly...

You know, I really like James Marsters, but he's wasted on this. He doesn't get any real good moments, and doesn't even meet the heroes until the climax. It's not really a problem that he looks like he walked off  an episode of the later Star Trek series, but he's just  a dull character with  a really weak motivation, and no amount of "scary voice mod" will help with that.

Then we get to watch Goku, played by Justin Chatwin, the annoying boy from The War of the Worlds, sweat, before he gets into some elaborate choreographed fight with his grandfather. I've seen worst stunt work, but the old man has been given some terrible lines to work with.

Now, let me hunt down the elephant in the room and make some fine piano keys with it: I don't care if Justin Chatwin is white. I don't. At all. See, thing is, Goku is an alien. He COULD be Asian. Or he could  be a black guy. What in-story reason would he have to  to require being Asian of the South East variety? All this "they should have cast an Asian in the role" stuff is fairly silly to me, as if people somehow expected a Dragonball movie  made in Hollywood by Fox to be an accurate portrayal of the franchise or any good at all  let alone take some kind of high road in terms of casting. Hope in vain, true believers.

That said, Justin Chatwin is not right for the role of lead in an adventure movie ANYTHING. He needed to be upbeat, he needed to be energetic. He can't put passion and emotion onscreen here. And it's painful to see him try.

Back to the movie, grandpa wins an arousing game of "The floor is made of lava" by shooting a wave of transparent energy at  Goku. He and his grandpa proceed to bond, with Goku complaining that  stuff at school is hard, and he feels outcast and he just can't get a girl. So, hey, he's just like you, kids! He can do wirefu and shoot Mamamama energy, but he's still bullied at school! Don't you hate that?

Also, when he made this face to tell Goku to believe in himself, I quit the movie.

So then we see Goku go to high school, turning the first part of a martial arts adventure into a lame and unnecessarily cliche of bullies and classes and bullshit. But I guess the writers must have known this was trite too, so they turn the crank up on those cliches up to eleven. Goku doesn't just have bullies steal his lunch money and embarrass him. They PARK ON HIS MOTORCYCLE, DESTROYING IT(which seems like it should harm the car that does it). He doesn't just have a crush on a girl. He has visions of the girl fellating  a strawberry in a field of daisies.

Maybe they should have called it Dragonball: Subtle.

Now, usually in this stories, the hero doesn't have powers, gets bullied, then has powers. So my question is: How many fucking times would you let people bully you if you could shoot waves of energy? Let's say you have no secret other identity to speak of. Your just some misunderstood soul who happens  to have super powers and mega martial arts. What would keep you from making a big display of them?

But trouble is afoot as the evil Piccolo is using his Final Fantasy brand airship to scour the land for the 7 Dragonballs, the megamaguffins of the franchise that can grant anyone's wish once collected. He attacks some kind of asian village somewhere with his assistant, a woman who always wears magenta.

Goku decides to bail on his grandfather and his huge birthday feast in order to spend party time with Chichi, the love interest from school. So he goes to a party where everyone is, even the bullies. What is it with you Americans and going to your enemies' parties? Stay home! Go to another party!  Don't party where the people you hate are partying!

So the bullies try to murder him on sight. But Goku uses bullet time to make them  beat each other up. Having made the alpha males into beta males, he proceeds to court the female. Mating is a long process in which the thick layers of fat earned in the winter are...sorry.

Also, a bully knows how to do  a flying kick.  Super Bullying at it's best.

Essentially, this becomes, "The day Spider-Man remembered he didn't have to take shit from nobody because he wasn't a superhero and just had to beat everyone up and get the girl". He could have done this  at any point in his life. You don't even have to fight. If a guy shot an energy wave at me, and I fell down, boy, I would STAY down. They're trying so hard to sell him as a downtrodden guy, when he should at least have everyone afraid of him.

But then Piccolo just had to  try and find  Grampa's Dragonball, unaware that he had given it to Goku. You'd think a powerful whatever-he-is like Piccolo would know  who has what mythological trinket, as he doesn't seem to be tracking the Dragonballs based on rumor and speculation. So, not having found the ball he mortally wounds gramps and drops the house on him like Applebloom dropped Twist. This activates Goku's Goku-sense, and he gets there to find some cryptic talk from his grandfather, who points him out to the next useful character and then dies.

She was sweet to you, you heartless bitch!

So, free of his school duties somehow(and if I could shoot waves of energy, only parental devotion could make me stay in school, too.), Goku remains at the ruins of his former house, until Bulma Briefs, one of the most terribly named characters in anything ever, shows up  and starts an action scene. It seems she is searching for a Dragonball that was stolen from her company. However, she is mistaken about Goku and the two join forces to get to Master Roshi.

It is a good moment to point out that I don't know what this world is. It's somehow futuristic in design somewhat, but not "flying car" futuristic.  I mean, there IS a flying car, but it's an exception. Mostly it's those small, ugly European cars. I would set this future somewhere beyond Robocop, but before Starship Troopers.

Well, I know it's earth. That's about it.

So Roshi lives in an island with a San Francisco house in the middle of what looks like Neo Hong Kong. Sebulba and Goku walk in, which triggers a martial arts scene between Roshi and Goku. As far as fights go, I've seen worst, but there are two things that bother me. One is that once Goku starts punching at super speed his grunts sound silly, like Videogame spamming. And two, that Goku shoots a wave that misses Roshi and hits Bulma square in the chest...and she has no questions about that. In fact, no character is amazed or shocked at the amazing feats being performed. Like, really? You got knocked into the floor by wind coming out of a guy's hand, and  not even a "what the hell?" It's like this with Chichi too. Is this shit the norm or what? Isn't half of Dragonball people surprised at things?

So, a third party member is acquired, and this one fills the role of mentor left by whatever the old man's name was. Roshi is weird. He's over the top, but I don't get what he's even supposed to be in the first place. A crazy guy? Some kind of wacky uncle? However, I couldn't help but cast George Lopez instead of Chow Yun Fat for some reason. My mind is weird, sometimes.

Then they get to where the Temple where going, but there's a tournament there and Chichi's participating. They really want to keep her in this movie, but don't want to make her anywhere near part of the main plot. They also meet some monks, including that guy who played the black Ghostbuster. I guess he's going for serious roles now.

So our heroes travel through my favorite Dragonball environment:  huge expanse of endless desert. It's here where our heroes meet a fourth  party member:  desert thief Yamcha. And you know what? I don't even remember which one was Yamcha, but I like this dude's upbeat personality and almost cartoon like voice and delivery. This guy should have been Goku. He's probably just as known as Chatwin anyway.

Eventually they find a cave that leads into lavaland, where yet another Dragonball exists. But Piccolo sends his minions after them. They defeat them all easy .Lady in Magenta actually has  a scene in which her punches don't affect Goku.

The stakes are high!

So, she decides to attack the heart and disguises herself as Chichi using her blood because that's something she can do. She steals all the Dragonballs from under our heroes, and then actual Chichi shows up and starts kicking her. But the moves are evenly matched. Goku then has that moment in movies where there's two people that are identical but the hero doesn't know which is the real one and which one is the  impostor. I'm gonna make a gif collection of those some day.  Goku beats one down with no actual evidence but her own word and waits with his back turned until the one he saved reveals her true nature by killing him.

Also, the dress isn't part of the transformation, which leads me to the natural conclusion  Magenta scoured the malls and outlets for the same dress Chichi had and was gonna wear that night.

Goku meets his grampa in the afterlife, but then Roshi revives him. With Piccolo now having all the Dragonballs, it's on to the final act.

Pics uses his 'Balls to cause one of my favorite things to happen: Evil Geography. It's that thing where huge spires of evil rock raise from the ground, symbolizing the villains power to reshape the very earth itself. I've seen it better, but it's good here.

So Yamcha uses his now flying car to crash  into Mt Piccolo, and our heroes run upward. Vulva Girl has a shootout with Magenta, and Roshi tries to trap Piccolo in  a spell. Then the twist comes.

Speaking of Twist coming, she doesn't need you for that anymore because she's found someone else, you ungrateful hick!

Goku turns out to be Ozaru. Despite having been trapped since the days of the early Church, apparently( and really, setting Piccolo's past conquest of earth "2000 years ago?" Jesus must have fled earth when he saw him, right?)  Piccolo recast his monkey assistant as a young alien baby Manchurian Candidate that came to earth just in time for the exact event that required him to. But what little I know of DB being contradicted aside, what matters is that now the film has an excuse to put on film a  7 story high ape, one of the elements of the franchise you'd think would be too "out there" for Hollywood thinking.

Except it is too out there, because the ape is roughly the size of an NBA player. Now, putting aside the fact it's a really bad CG werewolf that happens to be an ape, think about this: The whole plot hinges on that Ozaru's return is a VERY BAD THING. It is referred to as Apocalypse.  It is key to Piccolo's return to power and that involves rivers of lava running free across the earth and the annihilation of entire countries. Now...HOW THE FUCK DOES A 7 FOOT TALL APE HELP WITH THAT? No, don't look to the movie for answers. He just chases people, poorly. Actual monkeys are scarier than that.

Also,  it looks pretty bad.

Either way, they make a Kate Beckingsale-less version of the ending  from Van Helsing, only it's Chow Yun Fat getting killed that makes Goku rediscover his  humanity.  And as such, the final fight between a powered up Goku and Piccolo ensues. It's not a bad fight. They shoot magics at each other  and fly and punch. They do the Dragonball thing, but in live action. Not excellently, but they do it. Eventually, Justin Chatwin Kamehamehas Piccolo into dust and uses the power of the Dragonballs to revive Roshi. Yamcha and Bulto get together, Chichi and Goku get together  and we even get  a hintsie that  the Piccolo I knew is gonna show up in the sequel. I can't wait to see a green James Marsters kick children on the big screen. Is it 2012 already? It is? Then I guess this movie must have been a failure and no sequel is ever coming, then!

This film is marred by bad scripting, cliché after cliché, and some pretty bad acting, especially from the lead who should be CARRYING the movie. Some of the set pieces are good and I liked the fights, but for a work inspired by Akira Toriyama's seminal stories it lacks what the source material had in spades: energy.

Continue

6 Videogame movies that didn't live to be bad

Not how animation is directed.

Folks, the track record of videogame adaptations is a subject we're all painfully aware off. But making a movie isn't easy. It takes money, which you get on loan from movie execs who want to make their money, too, and  if they give you the cash, they want to make sure you do it "right". Right is...something they aren't often good as.

Like in the Movies! Remember that? No? Only me, huh? How about Freedom Force?

Due to this nature of the film industry, many planned films never get made, even if rights to  franchise are acquired, or if actors are attached to contracts or if a film is already half made. A movie has to clear technical hurdles, budget issues, scheduling issues, and simple petty behavior from above before they can get to the silver screens as it is more practical to cancel a movie than to try and fix it as it goes. Video Game movies are not exempt from this, which you might disagree with when you see drek like Bloodrayne 3 sneak itself on unsuspecting ...are there still videostores? Regardless, here are some  videogame movies that never existed, so we can't know how much they sucked.

Fear Effect

A magazine!  Wow, this was a long time ago.

This game  series  was known for titillating "Mature" content, cardio based health system and because it had an early version of the Mass Effect options, if only to open your towel.

Wow! Shake those polygons!

However, shadow-over-the-land Uwe Boll got the rights to Fear Effect  with the promise of getting the rights to Hitman if he bought the first. However, he dropped the film when the promise of rights to Hitman never  materialized.  Which is for the best, because if a franchise isn't good enough to unload on The Boll, I don't want to see what mangled remain of a film he would have made.



Duke Nukem

Tits-reference-tits

Back in 2001, before Duke Nukem made jokes instead of being one,  someone actually got the rights to do a movie based on the square jawed enemy of Captain Planet ersatz action hero setting it in a PG 13 range.

However, unlike the game, we know better than to expect the product to be released over a decade later. during the 10 years that ensued, they probably lost the rights .  Your best for a Duke Nukem film is just to watch They Live, Evil Dead, and Fifth Element while huffing paint. Don't worry, you'll come up with Duke Nukem eventually.


Perfect Dark

Out of the way! Trying to read the title, here!

It is true: the game adaptation of N64 and Xbox spy series  was underway many gears ago, when the rights where acquired. However, not much was heard since from the cinematical adventures of Joanna Dark. Isn't  it weird how videogames have that many more female leads than movies?


Soul Calibur

Heh. I guess my photoshop skills WHERE bad.

The cancelled Soul Calibur film that was supposed to be  released a couple of years ago never resurfaced. Rumors of a plot involving twins fighting against an evil prince and also of the movie starring  Isabella "Ivy" Valentine alias "Growing Up Ivy".

Personally, as much as I would relish some Samurai vs Knight action, I wonder  how much of a stretch it is to find a guy who can do it proper. If they can't do Tekken right, I don't think they should touch Soul Calibur.

Metal Gear

Well, did you snake or not?

The stealth game/cutscene  delivery system is known for it's cinematic flair, so it's not surprising they eventually tried to work it into a movie. But Snake's voice David Hayter, who worked on the script confirmed the movie got stuck on the way.  Which... well, he wrote this too, so maybe it's better if he don't.

Call of Duty: 3 Bar combat

Call of Duty
Defying all  logic, Activision filed a trademark which sparked rumors of a Call of Duty movie. Which...really? Are you so desperate to have name recognition that you need to name your  war movies after games.  Thankfully, this dreadful idea has been MIA for quite some time.

Continue