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.

Eddy’s Movie Club Part 4

So I’m back, and though it’s only been about thirty seconds for me I imagine it’s been about a day for you if you’re reading this regularly, which I don’t expect that you are, after all, I update this blog every day and not many people are tolerant enough to want to be inside my head for that amount of time, although if I did less I’m sure that not only would the readership of this blog dwindle largely, but I would probably not be able to keep them regular, remember when I was doing those doctor who blogs? Well I don’t think I got past episode 6, not very good eh? Well at least I’m on track now, so where were we? Ah yes.

X-men First Class. Go watch it.

Seriously go watch it, it’s absolutely incredible.

Now I’d heard good things about this movie and certainly due to the fact that it was a marvel movie I was interested enough to consider watching but not only have I been a little disappointed with Marvel ever since spider-man 3, which in my opinion is only exceeded in its disappointment by Superman Returns, a pile of steaming movie turd if I ever saw one, for Christ’s sake, Inception was better than those movies and Inception was the greatest of the movie turds, in fact Christopher Nolan squeezed out a turd so big for inception that it shat all over The Dark Knight cake he had made the night before, mister Nolan you should be ashamed, very ashamed.

Wait a minute, I didn’t finish the not only. Yes I was going to say that the trailer wasn’t particularly exciting, it was the typical transformers treatment of lots of stuff going on with little substance, which in my opinion, probably sums up all the transformers movies, however, what I got was different, so different in fact that I think I might actually have to forgive Marvel for making Spider-Man 3 (although I’m sure even I could have done a better job on that film), and I’m not going to say that X-men is first class because that pun had been used too many bloody times and it was old after its first usage.

But from Nicholas Hoult actually pulling off The Beast pretty well to the Hugh Jackman ‘Go Fuck Yourself’ cameo this movie was full of surprises, which I’m sure I will touch on when I return, for now I’m going to cut the umbilical cord of this particular blog and let it take its first breath before I return a few seconds later to type up the second utterance about the new X-men movie.

And yes I almost put Eddy’s move club as the header, that would have been a very different kind of club, one which I am neither trained nor choreographed to teach.

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.