This Whole Batman v. Superman Thing

So the new trailer dropped last weekend.

... and as much as I've whined and complained about this movie being GRIMDARK, I started feeling a bit better. They showed Robin's costume, for cryin' out loud! There was some (tiny little itty-bitty) scrap of respect being shown for the history! And it looked like they were going to acknowledge the weaknesses in Man of Steel and use them as a springboard for character growth!

I was cautiously optimistic.

But then you hear that bit from Ma Kent and it sorta all goes down the crapper. This editorial over at Topless Robot contains a good deal of profanity, but it explains the serious issues with her statement extremely well. Maybe in the context of the film it makes more sense; who knows. I just know that really want to get excited about DC's cinematic future, but every time I start to I see some other nasty, mean-spirited, let's-appeal-exclusively-to-middle-school-boys nonsense.

... not even gonna get started on the Suicide Squad today.

Fictional Realities

The other day I was reading an (old) article about Roger Ebert's reviews for movies he really hated. Down in the comments, folks began talking about one of the movies in particular and one person made a very interesting comment:

I think an ending that says "the entire movie you just watched never actually happened" is just about one step above "it was all a dream." I don't like walking out of a theater thinking that there's a chance that nothing I just saw mattered and I was tricked.

I am certainly not arguing that this person is wrong, I can completely see where that opinion comes from, but I immediately thought: "why?" Why can we accept so much from our fiction (superheroes, talking alien robots, The Rock) but a simple reminder that our fiction is fiction yanks us out of it?

Back in 2011, when DC launched "The New 52," I remember taking it badly. The universe I had grown to know and love was GONE 4EVR. Never mind the fact that "my" universe had already replaced another that came before it back in 1986. Now, four years later, we might even be moving to yet another new universe with all this Convergence stuff.

... and again: all this headache over stuff that really isn't real in a physical sense. Yet it is real, isn't it?

Batman v Superman: Dawn of DARKNESS

So the new trailer for Batman v. Superman v. Good Feelings dropped this week, and The Internet has been doing what The Internet likes to do. Some love it; some hate it; most everybody has an opinion. My opinion is probably fairly obvious from that link. I don't want to just whine, though; at least not today. Probably later.

... I opted to do a little something to improve that trailer.

Get Ready to Break The BANK Is More Like It

Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man.

It's like, my initial feeling is that this is rad as heck... but then I realize that it's just another Skylanders/Infinity/amiibo thing. Which means it will combine two of the most expensive toy properties mankind has ever created into one monstrous hybrid of cash-guzzling insanity.

Awesome Animation

Not much to write today (hard to focus when your stomach is engaged in glorious combat with last night's leftovers), but I did find this fascinating series of animation tutorials that I thought I'd share:

I had originally only intended to watch one or two and save the rest for later, but they really sucked me in. Helpful information for any kind of artist or cartoonist, I think; I'll have to add these tips to my toolbox.

The Park Is Open

First of all, let's all revisit this and revel in how rad it is:

The first Jurassic Park flick is one of my all-time favorites, and I even enjoy the cheeze of the sequels on occasion.  That slowed-down version of the theme in the above trailer gives me chills. I am looking forward to this more than I'm looking forward to Avengers 2. I understand this probably makes me a bad nerd, but it's true.

One thing that immediately struck me about the trailer (as it apparently did many others) was the scene with Chris Pratt's character riding out with the raptors. When I first saw it, I assumed they were all running from their common enemy... that the raptors would be attacking him otherwise. "What could be so terrifying that even raptors are running from it?" I asked. Eventually as more information came out, I learned that this was not the most likely explanation.

"Mr. Spock. You have the ability to overcome great fear..."

So I was pretty excited to see this come up today:

From the official website:

"U.S.S Enterprise crew members meet Hal Jordan and the entire Green Lantern Corps Green in an adventure that spans space, time and all the colors of the spectrum. Set inStar Trek's 23rd Century, the balance of the universe will be tested when the Green Lantern Corps' Power Rings come into the possession of certain Star Trek characters while a dark and powerful evil looms around every corner. Only the combined power of the Green Lantern Corp and the Federation stand any chance of stopping those who worship evil's might."

My Mii Plaza Is Getting (More) Crowded

So Nintendo just e-mailed me with this:

... and I am just a terrible, terrible nerd/Nintendo Fanboy because I both desperately want and absolutely detest this. I seldom StreetPass (unless I'm at a theme park or something) and when I do, I feel like it takes forever to play through all the games I already have. As a psycho completist, I want to play them all and not miss a single StreetPass tag; but as a boring old man I don't actually enjoy them all anymore. I stopped playing Find Mii after a few run-throughs; Mii Force is too big a pain; and Flower Town I muscle through but seldom actually like. Now I'm supposed to add two more?

Now, I totally realize how irrational this all is. I don't need to play anything, and there certainly isn't anymore holding a gun to my head to make me buy or play something new. I'm being silly. I just wonder if anyone else gets this weird split perspective, or if it's just me.

... gonna buy the two new games either way. Stupid zombies and fishing.

Providing a Valuable Service For A Valuable Service

I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA that one of my favorite webcomics, XKCD, had added a new cloud storage service! I am also completely unaware of any calendar-related reasons this might not be entirely factual. Either way, it seems that some random errors have damaged some of the information backed up in the XKCloud, resulting in the need for the denizens of the Internet to reconstruct it.

Naturally, I was only to happy to assist... I recreated the image that had (almost certainly) originally accompanied the text:

... you should head on over to the site and pitch in. Be prepared to lose a good chunk of your day, though.

Great Comics That SHOULD Have Happened

I've always been a fan of comics (and superheroes in particular), but I haven't actually purchased a monthly "floppy" in forever. Part of that is because I'm old and destitute, and part of that is because any DC comics that aren't Batman '66 are too in love with being grim & colorless slogs. Today, though, I stumbled across a blog featuring some books I actually might consider spending my LEGO minifigure allowance on:

Comics fan Ross Pearsall has been working on a blog called Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues! and it is extremely rad. Today's issue features one of my all-time favorite real-life metahumans, Mr. T:

This got me thinking about other fun comics-that-never-were-but-shoulda-been, which of course led me to...

Comics Alliance Presents: Great Comics That Never Happened

Which are pretty much all amazing. One of my favorites, though, is the League of Extraordinary Gentleman: America 1988 cover:

Which was technically an April Fool's Day joke, but which reminded me of this... so many good FAKE comics. I know there are some amazing REAL comics on the shelves right now (*cough* BATMAN '66 *cough*) but so few with such a sense of humor and fun. Heck, the last two LOEG books weren't half as interesting as these pretend ones made by fans, but they were sure ten times as gritty!

... like I said, I'm old.

Super Mario 64 HD Needs to Be A Thing

Revisiting past titles in the Super Mario series is ALWAYS an idea I can get behind.

A computer science student named Erik Roystan Ross has recreated the first level of Super Mario 64 in high def and made it available to play online. I haven't tried it myself yet (I think I have to install something?) but I've watched the YouTube video, and it looks crisp.

It's funny how, more than anything, it's the sounds and music that bring me back. I'm a huge fan of the SNES, always will be, but I remember standing in a Target store and watching that first Mario 64 demo and being blown away by it. The music is so... peppy, and the sounds so cartoony. I think I may have to pull my N64 out of the closet this week (or at least my DS copy of the game).

According to PC World, the level isn't a perfect copy, but to me it still looks like a great revisit. Makes me wish Nintendo would return to the title and do a polished version for the WiiU with all new textures and the like. I'm sure I'd still be terrible at it; I should probably just stick to Super Mario 3D Land.

Our New Lex Luthor

I'll start this off right, with one of my (most likely) unpopular opinions: I thought Michael Rosenbaum was awesome as Lex Luthor on Smallville. Clany Brown was even better on Superman: The Animated Series. So those are my baselines for Lex Luthor on screens both small and large. Hackamn was great, but in a totally different way; Spacey was riffing on that. I think our new Lex Luthor will be more like the former two than the latter.

For those of you who haven't seen it, "our new Lex Luthor" was revealed by Entertainment Weekly last week: Mr. Jesse Eisenberg. There's not too much to see in that picture, other than he's at least bald... and annoyed... and black & white. I'm sure he'll be suitably grim & gritty.

I'm trying to get excited about these upcoming Justice League movies, since I've been a DC guy since I first saw that Super Powers Hall of Justice sitting under the Christmas tree... but they are NOT makin' it easy for me. Man of Steel almost completely missed the core of what makes Superman as a character, and little I've seen or heard recently makes me think Warner Bros. will learn any of the right lessons from Marvel.

... but when the first trailer drops, I'm sure I'll squeal with glee and change my tune. For a bit. In the meantime, I helped Entertainment Weekly out a bit with their Lex picture. Something was missing.

... or, if you prefer the aforementioned Super Powers (and who doesn't?):

Standard-Issue First Post

I think most people like to think their opinions are interesting, or at least that there are some people out there who share them; I'm no different. This blog will be my attempt to find out if either of those things is true of me. In addition, I've always enjoyed writing and telling stories, so this will be an outlet for that as well.

My plan is to translate my thoughts on various pop culture topics into text, and see if any interesting conversations arise. I'll be pushing myself to update every day or two... but I'm sure everyone who starts one o' these things says that. We'll see how it goes.

Hope you stick around for the ride.