Rise!

Since the Internet on my computer is down you may have to forgive me for a few errors in this post. I may love my new phone but I fear it was not designed with blogging in mind. Nevertheless, I shall rear it towards that purpose in the best ways I can think of, and, if technology shall serve me well, I will soldier on.

Now, I know by now you are probably sick of me not talking about the kind of things that I actually have the knowledge to make reasonable commentary on, but considering that I left the door open with yesterday’s post about me being somewhat hesitant about what I thought going into it, I want to say a few words about the dark knight rises.

I think I’ve forgiven Christopher Nolan for inception.

You may think that is a bold statement if you have yet to see the new batman flick or if you have been one of those people unfortunate enough to get the awesome experience out of it that I did. I would go on however, to deny that, it was a really bloody good movie, at least after the first twenty minutes to an hour had passed. Without giving too much away, wow, just when you think it’s a typical superhero movie everything hits warp speed and the film turns into the tangle wood of awesomeness that may have even beaten the avengers and the amazing spider-man for me; although in truth I cannot pick a favourite, and would furthermore insist that, despite falling within the same movie genre, those films are all too different beasts from each other to be compared.

Nolan’s Last Chance

Welcome back to the fold gentlemen and gentlewomen (who implies that females can’t be gentle as well, that’s crazy), and into the lair of idiocy and raised eyebrows that is this blog, which today is brought to you by the letter S and the number 4; not for any logical reason but because I just got an iPhone and it’s stuck in my head, sorry about that.

I’m going to go see the Dark Knight Rises today (hopefully) so no spoilers, but I’ve got that nice balance going where half of the people I’ve talked to about it have said it was amazing and half of them have said it was terrible. I usually get quite into those kind of movies though, I loved Wolverine Origins… but then again, I regret every minute I wasted watching Inception, that shit storm of a movie should be erased from time and Christopher Nolan should have to use any money he makes from the Dark Knight Rises as compensation for all of those people who had to watch that crap and are still reeling from the turd that they had to watch for three hours.

But then again, if this movie is as good as some say I might just have to forgive him. This is your final warning Christopher Nolan, I loved The Dark Knight, and I thought Batman Begins was pretty awesome too, so if you can make a perfect trilogy… perhaps… just perhaps I can forgive you.

Perhaps.

Hiding Out For A Hero

Before I start making notes on how to measure cardiac output let me bathe in the glory that is a twenty minute break on WordPress, a site that still won’t let its own name pass its spell check filter.

My room has now become my batcave, I’m spending way too many hours in here scribbling notes and reading over older ones, sleeping and getting changed; but at least it has a window, that’s something that I felt the batcave was always severely lacking, and on days as sunny as these, that’s actually quite the comforting factor.

Not that other superhero hideouts are better designed, Superman’s fortress of solitude is architecturally shaky at best, the baxter building is just asking for a terrorist attack and everywhere the X-men go it seems to be pretty damn conspicuous.

And if we’re talking about the savage land, I’d say Antarctica’s a pretty shit place to be living, even if you have converted it into some tropical paradise. Then again Magneto doesn’t really need to find a good place to live, he can create one with a few strokes of his… mind? Hand? Whatever he feels like using on that particular day.

Spider-man’s use of his house though is probably the most sane answer to the superhero hideout problem, and looking around me I’ve already taken pretty good care of that.

Superhero hideous: check.

Now all I have to do is get my powers.

I wonder how much adamantium goes for these days?

To Avenge Or Not To Avenge?

I really want to see the avengers.

The problem, besides the ridiculous prices of tickets is that I haven’t seen any of the movies leading up to it; and I say that as a Marvel fanboy.

I think I saw half of Iron Man and it wasn’t great, but to be honest after Spider-Man 3 I really lost my faith in superhero movies.

Having said that I love the new batman movies and there hasn’t been an X-men film I didn’t think was amazing, but with the avengers I always have to be convinced more than other superhero titles, because Captain America’s probably the least interesting hero in the Marvel universe, Thor’s a God so he’s basically a walking deus ex machina, Iron Man’s a character that’s impossible to relate to on a personal level, it’s questionable how hawkeye and black widow are on the same league as these giants and the incredible hulk… I prefer him when he can’t be tamed.

Sorry Miley Cyrus, but your song would be much more appropriate were you a tall, muscular, green giant who loved to smash. Also being related to Billy Rae Cyrus and that guy from Metro Station really doesn’t help your cause. Why does nothing good ever come from your family?!?

That being said I’m still quite excited about the prospect of watching it. I much prefer a black Nick Fury and I feel like the problems I have with the individual characters are kind of made up for when they’re together; the dynamic change might just be enough.

For instance, I loved the justice league but I hated superman. He has way too many powers, so many that he doesn’t need to be in a team, he is basically a team by himself.

But then again, DC has the ‘just add batman’ card which makes everything ten times more awesome.

Are Women Hard To Write?

It’s blog time again!

That’s all I’ve got so far.

…

You know I’ve always wondered if I’d be able to do a good job of pulling of writing a female main character, not being well versed with having a vagina I’m not sure whether I’m portraying female characters accurately in general, and I do worry about that on occasion, I mean the last thing you want to be doing is writing essentially a male character under a fictional female avatar.

Not having got much feedback on this however, I find it hard to work out whether I do a good job at this generally, which leads to the bigger question of, how easy is it to write the opposite gender as a lead?

I know that many authors do, I mean Philip Pullman and Stephen King certainly aren’t under the same gender umbrella as Lyra and Carrie but there’s a reason they’re already very well established authors and I’m a student living with his parents who writes in his free time.

I’ve heard that apparently the DC Universe, the rebooted one I should say, isn’t doing a great job at respecting its female characters, and from the panels I’ve seen, they’ve pretty much decided to turn some of their best loved female characters into soulless sex objects.

My inner child’s heart breaks seeing what’s happened to starfire.

And although I never really gave much of a shit about catwoman the fact that she shags batman in the first issue of her new series seems a bit… forward?

Perhaps that’s the wrong word, judging by Batman’s two hundred or so abs in the picture I’d say creepy was closer to that.

So some writers haven’t quite made that distinction it would seem, not to say the good people at DC aren’t good writers, but that some of their number have some strange ideas about how these female characters should act, ways that could only really make them credible characters were they on ‘Two And A Half Men’, and after watching the first episode of the new series of TAAHM I can confirm that Ashton Kutcher’s character, although refreshing, looks to be about to be set up as a man just as shallow as Charlie Sheen’s.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it I suppose.

Sidekicks

Is it just me or do sidekicks take a little away from superheroes?

I mean I saw the Judge Dredd movie many years ago and I really wanted to murder Rob Schneider, a feeling I don’t often get seeing as I don’t see a lot of the guy.

Especially in movies I find that when the comic relief character is an essentially useless distraction from the actual plot that it really waters down the intellectual property of the plot and is a little patronising, assuming that we don’t concentrate enough on the serious to enjoy the story.

Also in comics I find the idea of there being a super-everything a little overdone, but seeing as I never really understood the appeal the character and can’t see myself every changing that, I find that superboy, supergirl and krypto the super dog all a bit overwhelming, especially after watching the atrocity that was Superman Returns, never again.

And although I never really saw how Robin deserved as much face time as he did, I loved Nightwing, the actual evolution of a sidekick was interesting and the relationship batman and robin had in the first place was far from Rob Schneider-ish in nature.

There will always be a range however, for example Aqualad is much more pointless than The Falcon, who I personally prefer over Captain America, maybe it’s because I don’t understand nationalistic views etc. either way, Captain America I could never seriously appreciate, his only redeeming quality was that he had less powers than Superman, and that’s another refreshing thing Batman and Robin always had, they didn’t have any supernatural abilities, they used their own intelligence and skill which is really special considering how many powers are around now.

I mean really, who needs the Forges of the superhero world, are they not just a get-out clause for huge plotholes that would be needed otherwise for the invention of ridiculous devices as critical points in the plot?

At least they seem to diverge from the blatant racism of Batfink and Karate but that was a long time ago.

Now, unsurprisingly, one that works really well is Weasel from Deadpool’s band of associates, he was humorous, sarcastic and he looks at his life with disappointment, he’s quite grounded in reality considering Deadpool’s innate sense of humour, multiple times breaking of the fourth wall and his existence being an ongoing piss take of Deathstroke from Teen Titans.

Is it odd that the sidekick that seems to work the best is essentially a spoof?

Well no, and Dick Grayson still worked really well.

Inside Charlie Sheen’s Mind

So if anyone was wondering, why it was that Charlie Sheen decided that he’s got the brain of an extra-terrestrial that will make you explode, I’ve got an answer for you that will leave your children crying all over your exploded body.

Now, if I actually thought dubstep was a half decent form of music I might not have found this so funny, but regardless, for anyone who wants to see what it was like for Charlie going through that interview rather than the WTF moments the rest of the world is having while watching his mouth dribble out what appears to be ironically accidental comedy gold, then you’ve got it.

You would really think a man that has essentially parodied himself for eight years would be a little more careful really though wouldn’t you? I mean, we all knew he was a little on the odd side, but now he’s crossed the border from conspiracy theorist and domestic abuser to full blown arkham asylum type crazy.

Now if batman were around what would he do?