My Top 10/11 Favorite Films of 2012

2012 was a good year for films I think, even though there are about three new IP's on this list and the rest being remakes, sequels or adaptations.

10. Taken 2

Good sequel escalation, roughly equal in quality to Taken 1, but with a very 'The Hangover' type recursion in the plot. Lots of very thrilling action sequences from start to finish, as well as good character development for whatever Liam Neeson's daughter was called.

The only thing I don't like though is that there is a theme that questions the similarities between Liam Neeson and the main villain, since they're both amoral monsters willing to sink to incredible depths to protect their families. And then you remember the villain's original motivation was selling sex slaves and you stop empathising with them, making the film's theme kind of a nonissue. Nonetheless, a thrilling action flick, just like its predecessor.

9. Skyfall

As I hadn't seen a bond film before, the action wasn't remotely as over the top as I expected thankfully, the story was interesting and relevant too. I like the characters of Mr Silva, M and Q, even if they do seem a bit familiar somehow. Of note has to be the incredibly captivating semi-animated opening credits that I really really liked for some reason.

8. Looper

Good world building and concepts, the story keeps you guessing at the start when it's interesting but becomes predictable toward the end until the last second. The ending is a bit of a letdown and felt meaningless to me, but it built up well.

It's an interesting and highly unique story concept that takes lots of unexpected twists and turns for the first half, the latter half deflates and ends with a whimper but that shouldn't mar your enjoyment of the film unless you're thinking about it too hard like I was.

7. Dredd

Excellent, tightly packed film, there were so many ways they could have ruin the main two characters of Dredd and Anderson, by making them too dark and unlikable, or over sexualising Anderson, but they chose not to. If anything, my main problem is that it's too short. I feel like I could've watched another half when it was over, I wanted to see more of the Megacities, more villains for Dredd to oppose. I look forward to the hopeful sequel, which will go into production if the DVD sells well according to rumours.

6. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

A very good adventure story, Martin Freeman as Bilbo is more likeable than the entire Fellowship in Lord of the Rings combined due to the fact that he's pretty much the go-to  guy for "Everyman getting caught up in somebody else's adventure", the other members of The Company are also very likable, even if the fact that there's 12 of them causes you to forget the names of most of them. Standout scenes are anything with Bilbo being Billbo, but most especially when he meets Gollum and obtains the ring. 

The main, glaring flaw though is that it's padded as all hell, It takes about 10-20 minutes for Martin Freeman to appear onscreen as Bilbo Baggins, and keeps cutting away from the action to have characters explain somebody's backstory at the drop of a hat which breaks the flow over its knee several times in my opinion, the problems that it has make it not quite as good as Lord of the Rings, which is such a shame because I actually liked all the characters more than anybody in Lord of the Rings, even Gandalf is much more interesting and amusing in here than he was in LOTR, and loved the simplicity of the core story more than Lord of the Rings' story miasma if plots.

5. Amazing Spider-Man

Andrew Garfield was amazing as Spider-Man and Peter Parker, buildup to becoming a hero handled better than in Sam Raimi's films when he seems to gain motivation rather quickly. Fight scenes ok, though the fight between Spidey and the Lizard in the school is the best.

Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey also far better than Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane., even if she does bear a strong resemblance to Lana Lang from Smallville, except more likeable and not a Mary-Sue. Problems include Spider-Man not quite as funny as trailers implied, as well as entire plotlines outright being removed from the film.

Personal bias puts this film further than it would've been, as some of the film's flaws may be difficult for many viewers to look past, and indeed on a second viewing I found the pace to be far slower than I remember.

4. The Woman in Black

Really good ghost story, some overuse of jump scares and creepy children's toys, but, Daniel Radcliffe played a really good character I felt, because the fact he's so young makes you empathise with his hardships much more.

3. Ted

The funniest film of the year from start to finish, while it clearly takes a lot of its traits from Family Guy like the cutaway gags and the referencial humour and nonsequitors, the characters are more rounded and interesting to watch, rather than just vehicles for the jokes like the rest of Seth Macfarlane's works.

A standout scene I must mention is the cocaine fueled scene in the middle of the film that would be a crime for me to spoil.

2. Chronicle

Best POV camera film I've seen, I liked the disturbing character growth of Andrew who is portrayed like a school shooter waiting to happen, but with telekinetic powers instead of guns, I also like the creative use of the telekinesis in that the characters use their powers on the In-Universe Camera, that allows for clearer visuals and greater clarity in the more hectic scenes. The escalation is also quite good, the film builds up to a climax where I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next.

1. Avengers Assemble.

Best Marvel film ever made, including all the Marvel Studios films leading up to it. Everything I looked forward to happening happened, and then some. I especially liked how lots of the things that happen in the film seem like a reward to the viewers who've been following the story for ages, for example I like how the plot was largely based off the first issue of the Avengers comic that was about 10 pages long, and like with Chronicle, it felt like the threats escalated throughout the course of the film resulting in the climax having more weight to it.

Summation

So those were my favorite films of 2012. Films that didn't quite meet my ridiculously high standards include Prometheus, the Hunger Games and the two claymation films Paranorman, and Pirates on an Adventure with Scientists. Perhaps next year's Animated products will fare better. I look forward to Man of Steel, Iron Man 3, Wreck-It Ralph and Django Unchained, the latter two of which would probably have made it on this list if it weren't for the fact that the European releases were months too late.

Doctor Who - Everything Dies (A strictly opinion based essay)

Everything has it's time, everything dies.

After watching the first part of Christopher Eccleston's series of Doctor Who, I have to say. My mind's changed on which series is my favourite.

I think Eccleston's one series is the best story, it has a clear theme that flew over my head. There is a repeated meme that "Everything has it's time, and everything dies." as The Doctor states in the second episode. And it's true, most episodes are about something dying, or something approaching death.

1. The End of the World: The Earth is destroyed and the last pure blooded Human dies. The Doctor states he is the last Time Lord.

2. Dalek: The last Dalek dies.

3. Boom Town: The last of the Slitheen Family dies.

4. Empty Child: The theme of this episode is that there is occasionally a rare subversion, everything dies, but sometimes you get an extra chance. But, as The Doctor says "Just this once.".

5. Father's Day: Rose's father dies, despite the events of the story.

6. Parting of the Ways: The Earth is wiped out. The 9th Doctor dies. But gets an extra chance.

The central theme, as I've made clear, is that everything, without exception, eventually dies. And that you should make the most of it, whether you get lucky or not.

THAT is a problem David Tennant and Matt Smith have, because after evading death for so long as the 9th Doctor, he starts thinking that he and his friends are invulnerable, that they don't have to take responsibility, and that they don't have to let things die. Both David Tennant and Matt Smith have saved the Universe from non-existence twice, and there appears to be no negative consequences for this. In fact, they actually get rewarded. For example, Steven Moffat admitted that in Torchwood, the Cardiff Rift was now never created since Matt Smith saved the Universe that first time. The 11th Doctor even admits that he knows that he's leading people to their deaths, but keeps doing it anyway.

After clearly accepting that everything dies and getting a second chance at his own life, as David Tennant, he goes on more dangerous adventures, kills the Devil himself, because again, screw responsibility, and gets a lot of people killed in the process and ruins the lives of many many people without the villains help. And after Rose herself learns that everything has to end, she gets to have her Dad back by fetching him from a parallel Universe. And after he loses all his companions for reasons that are totally his fault, he moans for a year's worth of episodes, puts himself in more dangerous situations, tries to sacrifice himself several times and then at the last second decides he's not ready because the 10th Doctor's clearly bipolar. And as Matt Smith, the central theme is "Time can be rewritten.", meaning that using his time machine, he can in fact take no responsibility for causing people's deaths, which is an even bigger step backwards in terms of character. Another theme is the consequence of stories and legends, but there's no responsibility involved because he saves the Universe from being erased by wishing really hard. He almost learns his lesson when he is ready to accept his death at the climax of series 6, but changes his mind again for no discernable reason.

I wouldn't have a problem with this if each Doctor was their own story, that they didn't follow on form one another, because each Doctor has a consistent characterisation, but the fact that it's meant to be the same guy gives me the distinct impression that he's just plain refusing to grow up even after being taught the hard way.

I have a lot of friends in real life who refuse to accept responsibility and grow up, and I don't want my fictional characters acting the same way because that's just stupid to watch. Things like Doctor Who are meant to be escapism.

And just so I'm clear, I love Doctor Who, it's one of my favourite, if not my favourite live action TV series, and I like the characters of the 10th and 11th Doctors, they're, on the surface, more fun to watch than the 9th Doctor. I think some of the standalone stories of the 10th and 11th Doctor are better than the 9th Doctor's standalone stories, it's just that when you stand them next to one another, it becomes clear that the reason they're more fun is that they're thinking in the short term, not thinking of responsibility, not knowing things have to end. This is something the writers need to learn too.

I'm no expert writer, I'm not saying I'm more intelligent than Steven Moffat and Russel T David, I think the fact that they built such spectacle proves they're more creative the I could hope to be. But if I were in Steven Moffat's position, I would end the Silence storyline, specifically end it with the 11th Doctor's death, which is the originator of the Silence's name, his Silence, his death.

Everything dies, after all, and it's about time Doctor Who did.

Arrow (Also I complain about Smallville)

Has somebody placed some kind of curse on some of DC's superheroes names that causes them to not be spoken aloud? I've watched a few live action DC adaptations recently, such as the Dark Knight Trilogy, Smallville, Green Lantern and now Arrow and they all seem very shy about reminding you what the superheroes names are with a few exceptions like Batman and the Green Lantern probably out of fear of sounding ridiculous.

Nevermind. Arrow is a TV series made by the same company that brought us Smallville, and it's crap. It's adapted from DC's Green Arrow stories, it's about a rich businessman named Oliver Queen, who becomes a costumed vigilante who wields a bow and arrow after being forced to learn archery when stranded on a desert island.

I had a love/hate relationship with Smallville, because for every excellent thing about Smallville (1) that made me love it, there was an equally bad thing that made it a chore to watch (2). Arrow has far less of the former. 

(1) Excellent parts in question being the characters of Lex Luthor, Lionel Luthor, Lois Lane and Oliver Queen. The wonderfully tragic storyline of the episode 'Commencement', the excellent dynamics between the Justice Society in series 9. And some of the interpretations of the DC mythos, like the short lived appearance of Booster Gold. Amongst other examples.

(2) Awful parts in question being the decision to make the least likeable character the most powerful character on the planet, outstripping Superman himself and then never using the powers for anything ever again making her look an even worse person for being so lazy after claiming she would do good. Also everything about the finale.

So, it's a reboot of sorts of Smallville's Universe centred around the character of Oliver Queen, AKA, the Green Arrow. Except it strips away the superpowers and general comic book-y aspects, like the titles character's bloody name, and sticks to the purely none-powered characters and depowers the ones that DID have powers. And if you're thinking that sounds influenced by Christopher Nolan's interpretation of Batman you'd be right, from the 'trying-to-be-similar sounding' narration (One of the lines is "In order to protect my city I must because someone else, I must become....SOMETHING ELSE.") to the fact that Oliver Queen builds a secret base that looks suspiciously like the Batcave (Fun fact, in the original Green Arrow comics, he had 'The Arrowcave', which is what I hope the writers of Arrow were referring to.) it makes this series look like it has no originality to speak of, but that's not actually strictly true.

Credit where credit is due I suppose, one thing they get right about adapting it Nolan style is that they understand that if they're making it real then they have to strip away the characters who were unreal, and add new characters they serve new purposes to the plot that the original material lacked. So, gone are whatever supporting characters the Green Arrow had, and bring on the new characters, like Oliver Queen's bodyguard, who is the only likeable character, Oliver Queen's suspiciously alive mother (Who was dead in the comics from the first issue.) and a new sister, though the sister doesn't count because they seem to be implying that she's the adapted counterpart of Green Arrow's sidekick 'Speedy' in the comics by calling her that as a sarcastic nickname.

Speaking of sarcastic nicknames, that's a problem I had with Smallville too. It's ok writers, if you want to make some new material for existing sets of characters, that's perfectly fine, but don't treat the source material as a sarcastic suggestion by referencing it in the form of funny nicknames because it gives the impression that you're laughing at the very thought of such silly comic book nonsense, whilst adapting said silly comic book nonsense and acting as if your version is more dignified.

Back to Arrow though. Besides all that backstory nonsense, I still don't like it all that much. Like I said earlier, I like some ideas for new material, one example being Oliver Queen's different motivation and characterisation, and the duel story mechanic they use, in which each episode will alternate between two stories, one story in the present day when he's back home and becoming a vigilante, and a story in the past back when he was on a dessert island. We slowly learn the circumstances behind his disappearance, his return and his transformation from rich nobhead to rich nobhead with a bow.

It's all for naught though, because I think the writing is shockingly generic, they say their generic badass phrases, their generic sarcastic comebacks, they have their generic plots within interesting ideas, and none of it engages me because I feel like I've seen it all before. Oliver Queen himself is a generic anti-hero, he says gruff things in his gruff voice and then kills people, which doesn't make him likable it makes me agree with one of the antagonists, who's a police officer that believes Arrow is a serial killer, which he clearly is because he goes after specific individuals rather than fights crime, and murders a lot of people he knows to be innocent but lets lots of his victims live for some reason.

I'd recommend this series to people who don't mind the generic, which covers a relatively wide audience. I suppose it's not awful, it just could've been so much better, and I think my problem is that I was never expecting it to be better at any point.