My thoughts on unappeasable fans.

Two topics in the gaming and film circles that've caught my interest recently, Mass Effect 3 and Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Both are intellectual properties who fans recently have shouted about for not being how they want and why I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I should stress, I haven't played any Mass Effect games, nor am I a fan of any Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles media, so this point of view is strictly based on my opinion.

Mass Effect 3

Mass Effect 3 was given a lot of criticism recently due to having a controversial ending, I.E, an apparently open ended game where your choices altered the course of the story, ended up having only one conclusion, one that didn't correspond to choices the player made. This does sound like a problem, but I might add these points:

It's a story, you can never be in control of a story unless you're the writer. No matter how it appears, you're only going on a predetermined path set by the writer, the writer clearly wanted all possible stories to converge on one simple truth, whatever it is.

B) You can't write several parallel different stories and expect them to all flow together as one, a bit of one story where you make one choice, and a bit of another story where you make a different choice does not make sense because the character may have no in-story justification for this because the player will often change their mind on a whim.

I haven't played many games with interactive stories, so it could be that I don't know what I'm talking about, but there you go.

Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Onto Michael Bay's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The controversial change from the source material is that the backstory is to be changed so that rather than being mutated Turtles shaped to become humanoids, they're simply aliens who happen to resemble anthropomorphic Turtles. This has caused a great deal of backlash from the fans.

The original story, so Wikipedia told me a while ago, was that in the original comic books, the Turtles were ordinary turtles, mutated by a strange radioactive substance leaking from a crashed vehicle, being a parody of Daredevil. The Turtles were then trained in the art of Ninjitsu by a similarly mutated humanoid Rat, and they became assassins for hire.

So the original story was a vague Daredevil Parody comic in which the main characters were assassins, in none of the following adaptations were either of those elements present, which certainly ought to have changed the dynamic of the story.

The cartoon was changed by marketing to become kid friendly and altered the personalities of the main characters, in which the main characters were a lighthearted bunch who never killed. And being made in the 80's or young kids, presumably dropped the Daredevil references.

Then there were the films, in which the personalities were exaggerated more and involved a story where the Turtles travel through time to feudal Japan, in a storyline that may or may not have been fabricated by the filmmakers.

Then came the cartoon reboot of the franchise, in which there was the major change of a previously human villain turning out to be an alien.

This, fans, is what happens when a franchise outlasts the original creators, things get changed, things move on. Spider-Man's origin story was a radioactive spider-bite, then a genetically altered spider-bite, then a magical spider-bite sent by a higher being, then it turns out he was a mutant with radiation immunity. In Doctor Who, does The Doctor flee because he's an outlaw, because he's bored, or because he's hiding a weapon? Writers have said each.

Changing them from mutants to aliens seems to me personally like changing the missing item in a detective story, it doesn't matter if they're looking for a diamond, or a wristwatch or a small puppy, its appearance it not defined by its purpose. Just like I very much doubt that it will matter if the turtles are aliens, if they were brought up the same, had the same experiences and had the same abilities, they've not changed a lot.

If the writer DOES make the change big however, and making them Aliens rather than Mutants changes the story drastically, it'll be because this is a reboot, and the purpose of a reboot is to change a story we're comfortable with according to modern ideas, not to show us an existing story, because the existing story has already been told and a new writer wants to do something new.

Sometimes however, major changes are not good, such as the Spider-Man comic in which he relinquishes responsibility for his actions and makes a deal with Mephisto, which is bad because the writer wanted erase everything the last 10 years of writers had done and ignored 10 years of character progression.

But as I said, a good change is a change that, after using up all the good stories for one version of a character, changing the character slightly and writing all the stories for that version of the character. Which is what changing the origin story is to me. A bad change, as mentioned, would be using all the good ideas, changing it to write new stories, then changing it back and reversing the progression. Or alternately, using all the good ideas, changing it in a way that doesn't work and using all the bad stories.

Overall

What I'm saying is basically, that writers should be trusted to progress the story in the way that they envision it, Mass Effect's writers should be trusted to have their one ending, because that must have been what they intended. And Michael Bay should be trusted that his weird idea is a step forward. And if you don't like the way it's progressing, then don't bother carrying on and go and write a fanfiction.

Batman: Arkham Asylum + Arkham City

I played these two games recently upon getting my Xbox, mostly because the general hype would have me believe that Arkham Asylum and City were the best liscenced games in the history of liscenced games. While that's probably far from a lie, it doesn't mean they're perfect, but I'll elaborate quickly.

First of all though, the hype is definitely accurate about the well praised combat system, which is the best I can personally remember handling, the general idea of the combat in the Arkham games is "Engage an entire prison block's worth of poor muscular criminals in a fistfight.", and it works very well, you punch somebody a few times, they get hurt and fall down, but not out, then another knucklehead approaches you and you repeat the process until they all stop moving. I understand I just said 'repeat' in a sentence about the combat, but really there's more to it than that, there are a ton of combos within memory so it never feels like you're endlessly smashing them with webs like in Spidey: Shatty Dims, and plus there's the fact that you can target enemies and the combos will take you right to them, and if you can't be arsed hitting them with your limbs there's the option to use gadgets (Batarangs and Grappling Hook in 'Asylum', Batarang, Grappling Hook, QuickBomb, Quick Electrode shot and a bloody ice Grenade.) which can knock out a load of knuckleheads before they get near you.

Also good in the games in the stealth sections, the best way to describe them would be by asking you to remember the scene in Batman Begins where Batman gradually picks off the gun wielding thugs from the darkness by scaring them a whole bunch. In Arkham Asylum and City, this is done through hiding on the top of curiously plentiful wall mounted Gargoyle statues and slowly taking them out silently without the other knowing you're there, because if they do they'll use their bullets to make Batman kick his addiction to breathing..

..Or I assume that was the intention, because in Arkham City, all I ever seemed to do in the stealth sections was to challenge them to a fistfight while they shot me from afar and my armour upgrades and smoke bombs protected me from being shot, yes the sheer amount of upgrades and gadgets, while quite fun in the combat sections, kind of break the stealth over its knee due to the fact that there was little need to be stealthy when I could take a large amount of bullets and disable at least three gun wielding thugs at a time anyway using various methods of stunning, I generally take this option because the stealth, while fun, is time consuming and not necessary unless the enemies can shoot you from very far away.

Back to the good though, what I like about both games is that the ArkhamVerse's interpretation of the various Batman characters are spot on, though in the first game it was more in the style of Batman: The Animated Series characters, which made since because the plot of both games was written by the showrunners of Batman: TAS. Though having just said I liked of aspect of the writing, I was somewhat less than fond of the actual story of both (Stop reading now if you don't want spoilers.), first and foremost being that the games are written by two guys who write for a TV show very well, which doesn't necessarily mean that they can write for a wholly other medium such as video games just as well.

For example, the main focus of the gameplay is exploration, stealth and combat, and while that might be fun for fighting several knuckleheads at once, it's hard to make conflict with the singular villains fall into this category, like the fact that Batman far far outclasses The Joker, Two-Face, Poison Ivy, the Penguin and other powerless villains in terms of fighting ability, and the superpowered characters like Killer Croc, Bane, Clayface, Solomon Grundy, Ra's Al Ghul and Titan Joker who could put up a fight don't feel that powerful. The only boss fights in the games who actually feeels as threatening as fighting their comic counterparts are Mister Freeze who feels as clever and as powerful as he is in the comics, and Scarecrow and the Mad Hatter, who pit you against your own delusions rather than fight you directly. Wheras Bane, who figures out Batman's identity and cripples him though a combination of intelligence and power, does not come across as such in his fights where you trick him into running into a wall a few times.

Also, I have a love/hate relationship with the environments too, in Asylum, I hated navigating the overworld because it felt like a less distinctive version of Hyrule Field and I hated navigating the buildings because every room looks the exact same and made me lose about two weeks of playtime trying to find a room that I had access to but I forgot the route to, and made me feel like like Batman and more like Link if Link was stuck in the Water Temple the entire game. This is why I like the overworld in Arkham City because not only do you feel like Batman traversing the rooftops and drop kicking criminals that're beating up innocents, but the way you travel is both quick and very Batman, specific buildings are often hard to find but they're usually on the map anyway and my problem with the level design is far lesser.

The game has a ton of side things to do for all the psychopath level OCD sufferers like collecting Riddler Trophies and solving riddles, as well as (In City.) side missions where you fight other villains or help people alternately, some of the side missions are very fussy about when and where you're allowed to continue them (Gameplay tip: When the game tells you "Look for more leads.", what it actually means is "Play the main story and we might think about unlocking the rest of this mission.".), but that's nothing that'll put me off the game.

From all my criticism it might be easy to assume I don't like these games, but that's not the case, I like the combat, the stealth, City's travel system and overworld, and the characters, which is more than enough to subsist me. The games are definitely not perfect, but I wouldn't claim to challenge the notion that they're deserving of praise.

Fright Night 2011

Fright Night was not the film I expected it to be. I'd heard good things about it from Roger Ebert and TV Tropes, but I didn't think it would be as good as it was, allow me to fill you in.

The story is deceptively simple to say it's such a good film, a teenager named Charley (Played by the guy who played Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation apparently.), after a series of incidents, suspects his next door neighbour Jerry (Colin Farrel) of being a Vampire, which is an easy assumption to make seeing as he never steps into the sunlight and can't enter a residence he hasn't been invited into. Speaking of which, the Vampire entrance rule always did interest me and made me wonder why I hadn't heard it in more stories, I first heard of it in Let Me In where it was used interestingly, and again here, where it is a recurring plot point that a vampires can't enter people's houses, and the rule is played exactly like a rule, something that can be bent. Such as a scene early on where he enters an abandoned house and explains he can enter it because there's nobody to invite him in, and of course one very funny way of breaking the rule halfway through.

One of the film's main strengths in my opinion is the casting, Colin Farrel plays an extremely scary vampire even before you see him do anything, obviously you know he's a vampire from the start but he seems scary even when doing something entirely innocent such as asking his neighbour for a beer or doing some carpentry. He holds himself in a very scary manner, suggesting himself to be very powerful and intelligent without actually doing anything that would suggest so.

A second great casting choice is David Tennant as Peter Vincent, stage magician, vampire expert and TV personality, I held onto his every word because when he spoken, you knew that he knew what he was talking about. Obviously this is because of his experience in playing The Doctor, so I would naturally pay attention to any character he plays, he even exhibits several Doctor-like characteristic, such as the same accent, knowledge of things unexplainable to humans, acting the centre of attention to disguise his dark and troubled past, and even saying "Well...." the exact same way. At the same time though, he is clearly playing this role to move away from being typecast as The Doctor, as his character swears a lot, is very cowardly, hiding away at the first sign of a Vampires and fleeing when the opportunity arises.

The story is very interesting, it goes to a lot of places I did not expect it to take, which I won't spoil, and though none of the scares really scared me, I still found it very thrilling.

The film is not the greatest film of all time, despite not being able to think of any criticisms. But I would entirely recommend watching it, I myself could watch it lots of times, which I can't say about many films.

My thoughts on upcoming Comic Book Films.

After watching Captain America and staying after the credits for a thrilling 20 seconds of teaser footage for the upcoming Avengers film, an incredibly brief trailer for the Dark Knight Rises, a photograph of the Man of Steel Superman reboot, and just now a teaser for the Amazing Spider-Man film, I thought it'd be time to muse on them and get my hopes up.

Avengers:
It think it's safe to say I'm looking forward to this film the most. It has all the characters from Iron Man up to Captain America, and I have to agree that every single actor playing a superhero in the Avengers films were just born for those parts, every single of their films I've gotten hyped for, and now that they're all banding together to save the world from Loki/Red Skull/HYDRA/The Skrulls (delete as appropriate), I'm definitely excited.

There are two additional reasons for this, one, I did actually read the Avengers comics, owning roughly the first three volumes of Essential Avengers (Incidentally, my favorite stories are the intro story with Loki and when the Hulk is part of the team, and the one where they defeat the Super Adaptoid.), and the fact that the personalities of each member clashes perfectly. Much like they initially did in the comics. Tony Stark and Clint Barton (Hawkeye.) will be the wisecracking pair making jabs at each other constantly. Thor and Steve Rogers (Captain America) will be the more serious ones, focused on the task at hand, and searching for the serious route, but Thor may play bad cop if he feels there is no other option. Natasha Romanov (Black Widow) I imagine will also play this role, or will be the one to put her trust more in SHIELD than in her fellow teamates. Bruce Banner I imagine will create an interesting dichotomy with Tony Stark in that they're both scientists who became who they are through their own doing, but Tony would be the more in control one.

I think the fact that I can write a large paragraph about characters I already know about should give a good idea that I'm looking forward to the heroes bickering more than watching them save the world. Because that was my favorite part of the Fantastic Four film, and Chris Evans was very good at that with a different character, so it will be interesting to see him play such a diametrically opposed role.

Dark Knight Rises:
As a lover of the first two of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, I'm very much looking forward to this one, as I'm very interested to see what storylines they'll explore. Popular rumour among my classroom at College seems to say that Bane (Who will serve as a villain.) will break the Bat's back at some point as he did in the comics. I also hear Ra's Al Ghul will be a villain, having being resurrected or rejuvenated by the Lazarus Pit.

I must admit though, the Lazarus Pit scenario is the one part I will be skeptical of, I was rather hoping that Ra's Al Ghul wasn't literally immortal in this film series, because it would definitely subtract from the realism by having an immortal dude. I liked in the first film, where Ra's Al Ghul implied that he was immortal through the passage of a legacy rather than being one person who lives forever. Because one thing he teaches Bruce Wayne, and I quote "A man can be locked up, but if you become an idea, you can't be stopped, you can become something else entirely, a legend." I took this to mean that the title of Ra's Al Ghul had been passed down from the first guy it appears to be, to Henri Ducard after he died, implying that the ideas and will of Ra's Al Ghul could not be killed, even if each individual person did, which I found far more interesting than "He's just immortal."

I'm also interested to find about what the central dichotomy of the film will be. In Batman Begins, the theme was Ra's Al Ghul and Scarecrow's use of fear as a weapon used to defeat the fearful, and Batman's use of fear on criminals people who take advantage of fear. In The Dark Knight, the central Dichotomy was Batman representing Order and respect for giving everybody a chance to redeem themselves, and The Joker and Two-Face representing Chaos, showing that for all the good Batman can do, he can be stopped by The Joker's sheer unpredictability and a lack of pattern on his crimes. Batman never kills because he believes he doesn't have that right, and The Joker an Two-Face believe they definitely do have the right if fate decides for them.

My guess is that the theme will be that if Batman's moral code and fearlessness can't be conquered. Then somebody like Bane can simply outfight him, despite Batman's quick thinking and intelligence. A kind of 'Intelligence VS Brute Strength' kind of thing. My second guess would be that Bane is a foil of sorts for Batman, as in the comics, Bane is easily as smart as Batman, an can definitely outfight him despite his ninja skills, except whereas Batman grew up rich and chose to make himself what he was after the death of his parents, Bane grew up in prison and had no choice in becoming what he was. But all this is just my speculation, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

Man of Steel:
The photo of the new actor playing Superman wearing the costume has definitely turned my head some. But not in a good way, more of a 'Train Crash waiting to happen' kind of way. The first thing that rubbed me up the wrong was the fact that the teaser photo is so bloody desaturated of colour. Leading me to assume that this film will be a darker remake in vein of Batman Begins and the Dark Knight, whch wouldn't surprise me because Christopher Nolan is producing this film. And while that easily works with Batman because he was always a dark character, I can't see it working well with Superman.

The first problem being is that Superman has no personal problems besides hiding his secret identity, he chose to be who he is because he believes it's the right thing to do and doesn't go much deeper than that (Apart from Smallville where he had no choice in the matter.). I could kind of see it working if they did it like Captain America, where bad things are happening all around him, but he retains a positive attitude because people can be like that, and that he was born to be a superhero before he gained his powers. But if Man of Steel goes for the darker route as the photo implies, I can't see it working without making Superman look like a naive idiot.

Amazing Spider-Man:
Again, this trailer looks like it's taking a dark and gritty approach to the Spider-Man series, and contains a photo on the internet of the new actor playing him wearing the costume, except with the saturation on his bright red and blue costume turned way down. Unlike Superman however, I can see this working with Spider-Man, because when the comics were first written, they were quite ahead of their time in terms of how dark and serious they were. For one thing, Spidey became who he is because he believe it's his responsibility, and a character driven by responsibility can be very serious business. Which does make me look forward to this film, as long as they don't go the whining degree as Sam Raimi's film, and also, I'm hoping that Peter Parker is actually funny, because I could not stand half thes cenes when Tobey Maguire didn't have his mask on because Peter Parker is dreadfully dull, even when he's in a good mood. Whereas the Peter Parker of virtually any other media is characteristic by being just as witty as Peter Parker as he is as Spider-Man.

In fact, there are several comics I've read that are so painfully despairing that only Spider-Man/Peter Parker's hilarious one liners are keeping me from just stopping reading lest I get more depressed, which I think is kind of the point, because he's despairing inside too, and he's just distracting himself with the jokes just as much as us, and I didn't get that from Sam Raimi's Peter Parker, he was despairing on the outside just as much as inside. So I'm hoping this film will use that aspect of the character.

Conclusion:
Well, congratulations to you if you read all my ramblings, I can't say I blame you for not reading this far. I might post me thoughts on yet to be released films at some point in the future if the mood strikes me. Until then, seeya readers.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

So I just got back from watching The Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Being a fan of the original, in the week since I watched the original no less, I was curious to see the prequel having not seen Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which I'm told this is loosely based off.

I'm going to write my 'Tl;dr' first, and hope people don't just take that and then leave. I liked Rise of the Planet of the Apes the Official Film of the Film. It's a very good sci-fi/drama/animal film with very well written characters.

Most of the time anyway, the characters that matter, though well written, are largely very bare bones, everything is said about them that needed to be said, no more, no less. Which works well for the more prominent characters but makes the lesser shown characters seen shallow. For example, the main two characters, Caeser the Chimpanzee, motion captured by Andy Serkis in another role where he's in a quadrupedal position, and Will Something-Or-Other, played by James Franco. Caeser's character arc revolves around his relationship with Will vs his relationship with other Apes, and it's a very well written character too, I was wearing blinkers on my mind's eye throughout the film, because I knew he would perform a certain action very early on, but didn't want to believe he would do such a thing, because he's so nice and cuddly right?

Will is the more bare bones of the two, his motivations are simple, the film begins with him developing a cure for Alzheimer's to help his ailing father (played by the bloke who plays the father in 3rd Rock from the Sun), and when testing it on Chimpanzees, finds that the effects cause increased intelligence that carry on along the genetic line of one test subject, who's baby Will adopts. Throughout the film, he continually attempts to help perfect the serum as well as taking care of the Chimpanzee, who he names Caeser. He's easy to understand and a very likable main character, you might argue a little bit too likable, every single thing he does is on the behalf of his father or Caeser, but I suppose being too nice isn't much of a problem.

Back to Caeser. The entire plot of the film is basically this, Caeser was born with increased intelligence due to his mother being a test animal for Will's Alzheimer's cure, and the first half of the film is basically "Here is the life of Will and Caeser", since it takes place over the course of eight years, and it's nice, it shows that despite being an animal, he is very intelligent and manages to fit in with human society. However, his animalistic instincts kick in eventually and he is taken in by the authorities and treated like an animal, which he is not familiar with. He is forced to use his increased intelligence to cause an uprising amongst the apes he is kept with in order to free them all from captivity and live in the wild where he believes they belong. It's all very compelling stuff, helped by Andy Serkis doing an incredible job acting the balance between intelligence and sapience and animalistic instincts and tendencies, I especially like the fact that he does not learn to speak until late in the film, really helping the acting tell the story using only nonverbals from its main character.

Moving onto the special effects, special effects in my opinion,are finally reaching a point where you wouldn't know they were being used unless you were told. A good example of this occurs recently in the Social Network, where a pair of twins are neither greenscreened not played by actual twins, and you can't tell because of how seamless it is. This is also used to good effect in Captain America with Skinny Steve and Strong Steve, and finally in this episode, where you could really believe that all the Apes are just perplexingly well trained Animal Actors.

One final point I noted about the movie was both in its favour and against it. In the original Planet of the Apes, the morality of the Humans and the Apes were more black and white, the central message of the film (Let me state this is my interpretation.) was that humans were evil, thoughtless beings who would nearly destroy their planet by accident, and that the Apes were better heralds of the Planet, but just as evil due to their treatment of Charlton Heston's character. In this film, none of the events are explicitly the fault of either party, the Apes, while intelligent were acting through instinct and meant no harm to any of the Humans, and the Humans themselves, while treating the Apes much like they treated the humans in the first film, were at least trying to cure Alzheimer's and did indeed grant sapience to the Apes, if unintentionally. The film is more realistic in the portrayal of the morality of the two factions, being less black and white and more grey and grey.

And while this definitely improves the film and makes the actions of the characters much easier to swallow, it also (Again, my personal opinion.) undermines the message of the original film, because whereas the original film strongly implied that the humans were definitely responsible for the near destruction of their planet and that the Apes were somewhat justified in their treatment of them. The events of the film, looking back, make that film seem like one big misunderstanding.

Overall though, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes the Official Film of the film the Prequel the Phantom Menace was a very compelling drama, disappointing if the trailer tricked you into thinking that it was an action film perhaps, and you are definitely required to have watched either the original or Tim Burton's remake to catch all the references (Though I imagine even those who haven't would get the hillarious "You damn dirty Ape" reference.), but overall, it was a good film. Not a good film for getting into the series however, I would suggest watching the originals before watching this. Especially since the biggest failing of the film is that the very premise of the film assumes that you don't care about the original's twist ending being spoiled.

Captain America: The First Avenger.

So I just got back from watching Captain America, and my opinion? An excellent film, better than Thor, and I liked Thor quite a lot too. I'd almost say it was as good as if not better than the Iron Man films, which next to the Nolan Batman films and Watchmen, are the epitome of a good superhero film.

The story is this, Steve Rogers, a dangerously skinny guy looking to join the army to aid the war effort against the Nazis is repeatedly denied on the grounds of making a stick figure look like it's put on weight. But due to his honesty and courage, is selected by a German Scientist to be America's first Super Soldier. The rest of the film is Steve, as Captain America, helping to defeat HYDRA, a superscience Nazi division, defected from the Nazis, whose leader Johann Schmitt AKA, The Red Skull, dreams of conquering Earth through use of their highly advanced technology.

There are several things I can say in the film's favour, the first and foremost being that Steve Rogers is a rather well written character to say he has absolutely no character arc in the film, a stark contrast to Thor, where the character arc is the main focus. Instead, in Captain America, he starts off as a likable good guy, ends as a likable good guy, and in the middle he does not compromise in this in the slightest.

You really get the impression that Steve was meant to be Captain America from the very beginning, my favorite examples being at two certain points. The first time, Steve is asked if he wants to join the army to kill Nazis, to which he replies "I don't want to kill anybody, I just don't like bullies, wherever they come from.", the second point is when Steve's drill sergeant throws a false grenade near him, and he dives on it to try and save everybody else from the blast at the cost of his own life, believing it to be a real one, while everybody else ducks behind cover. Both of these moments occur before he even becomes Captain America. Overall, Steve made me think "This is how Hal Jordan should've been written in the Green Lantern rather than being forced to be a goodie.".

Also in the film's favour is that the fight scenes are the truest to the comics I've ever seen, throughout the film, Captain America is jumping, thwacking his enemies with his shield and frisbeeing it into them, amongst other uses. And unlikable the last action film I saw, the action scenes were far more coherent, Captain America as well as his squad were always very visible, and what they were doing was always obvious, even in the wordless montage scenes.

The thing that kept me thinking long after the film had ended the most however, was how it related to the other Avengers film, because the way they all connect seem very clever, and this isn't even the things they state outright, many connections I noted were only vaguely implied, it was a lot of fun just noticing how the stories all interconnected, it made me want to watch those films over again. So not only do I want to watch Captain America again, but the rest of the films, because a narrative can be seen throughout all of the films, at least for me anyway.

Lastly, I really loved the Red Skull as a villain, while not as sympathetic as Loki, he's one of the most comic book-y villains I've ever seen in a comic book adaptation. Once he reveals his red face, he spares no expenses and just wears a long black cloak with a skull logo on it. I almost wanted him to tie Steve's love interest to a train track because that would seem very in character for him. My only problem is that while I was watching him, I was thinking of the contrast between how real the Iron Man villains are in comparison, who are in the same universe and act far less cartoonishly evil.

In summation, a fine example of a comic book film, ever since Iron Man, Marvel films have only been getting better, which gives me very high hopes for The Avengers, you might say it is silly of me in today's cynical days to have high hopes for a film, but I'd rather look forward to something and have it be good than not look forward to it and be surprised.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

I really haven't been getting enough use out of this blog recently, I must post my thought more, it makes me feel more productive even if nobody's reading what I have to say. I assume.

Transformers then. Transformers is a film series based off a cartoon franchise based off a line of toys, always the origin of a hollywood epic I'm sure. To put a long story short, I rather liked this film, though I suspect my fondness is distorted by the fact that like most sequels, I had to compare it to the other two Transformers films, which I wanted to like but was less enthusiastic about watching. And just as being not as good a sequel as the original can drag a good work down (Portal 2 for instance, and arguably Paul, even if that's not technically a sequel.), being a good sequel to a meh series can make you put it on a much higher podium, whether it deserved it or not, but I liked this film despite those feelings.

I think the main reason is that it fixed two ever present problems the previous two films had. Whereas the first two had too much of Sam, who's role in the plot of the Cybertronians was always very boring, and not nearly enough of the Transformers who's names the average viewer could remember (Which for me was Optimus Prime, Bumbleblee and Megatron.). DOTM fixed those pretty quickly, I actually found myself caring more about what Sam got up to, because whereas in the first two Sam wanted little to do with what mess the Autobots dragged him into, he's now seeking out a plot rather than just having it land on his lap. And Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are featured far more in their own film, and do in fact do much more. I'm still annoyed that they first appeared an hour into the first film and Prime was barely in the second for obvious reasons, so instantly I was more interested.

Another thing I liked about this film was that I felt that stuff was mattering. In the first two films (I keep using those words.) I didn't get the impression that the presence of the large alien robotic organisms was having much of an impact on the world as a whole, we only see it affect the main human characters and the army, with the rest of the world not noticing the multi story tall robots running around. But in this film, they apparently noticed that the Autobots were bloody hard things to hide and are revealed to the world, making it seem like they were there much more there. I especially like roughly the beginning of the third act-ish when the main villain basically turns an entire city into a War-Zone and is about to enslave all of mankind, unlike the first film where a city is a battleground and nobody seems to remember. So the fact that things were happening was far more interesting, especially given the villain's cartoonishly unrealistic plot.

Though even without having to nitpick, there's still a lot of things I don't like about the film. And most of these problems are more a problem with the series as a whole, but I digress. The most unavoidable part is in the scenes where the Autobots are fighting the Decepticons alongside the humans. Just to be clear, the average Transformers is one to two stories to tall, meaning the human soldiers can just about touch their feet, and the problem with having them fight together is that you can never see all of it at once, because they try to focus on both fights at once, we can barely see anything because the film tries to keep them both in, so when we see the humans, we can barely see the Transformer they're fighting, and when we see the Transformers, the humans are just a coloured blob. So the action is always very cluttered. Though granted even in the exclusivity Transformer centric fights, you can still barely tell what's going on. One thing that the filmmakers don't seem to grasp is that if you're going to go the effort of painstakingly model, animare and render every Transformer so realistically, the audience would like to see them. They're barely on the screen before the shot changes to a different angle, meaning that lots of their hard work is wasted. And I know how detailed it looks because the transforming sections, I'm told are very accurate and make perfect scientific sense.

Tl;DR: The fighting scenes are too cluttered to enjoy or understand.

Another thing that bugs me is that the fighting scenes themselves go on for far too long, because after the battle begins in the city, it just keeps on going for ages, which viewers of Revenge of the Fallen who hated the battle in the dessert will find annoyingly familiar.

I would complain about the acting in the film, but the average acting quality in the film can best be summarised by two moments within the film where Shia LeBouf's character screams bloody murder for an extended period of time, which was the hardest I've ever laughed in a film, more than any carefully crafted joke. Because no matter how clever, witty or well thought out a joke is, there's something about an amusing sound that throws out your common sense and stimulate a part of your brain reserved for laughing at comedicly timed farts.

One main thing did rub me up the wrong way, which probably shouldn't do, was the Science of the film. I shouldn't complain that a Transformers film is Scientifically inaccurate, but aside from a few issues with mass a few times, the films generally followed real world Science alongside their own rules. But there is one scene where a few Autobots go to the moon and I was noticing the fact that the Transformers weren't leaving metre deep footprints, the fact they were moving the same speed as on Earth, and the fact that noises were happening. The last one I can generally allow but the first two were far too obvious.

One last thing that I really hated about the film was a single scene within it that took place inside Chernobyl. For those not in the know, Chernobyl is a small town nearby a power plant that, due to complications, had a meltdown and released a ton of Nuclear Fallout on the town making it uninhabitable, killing many people and affecting the lives of thousands of others. This happened in 1986. Transformers: Dark of the Moon seems to informs us that this was the fault of the alien baddies. The deaths of real life people were caused by aliens trying to get their tech working or something like that, rather than the result of human error. I'm certain I got more than a few of my facts wrong in real life and in the film, but even so I'm glad I don't know anybody affected by this or it would have irritated me far more than it already did.

To put a long story short, the story is more interesting than the action, both of which are more interesting than the previous films. I'd recommend it to somebody as stupid as I am, because I can easily be distracted by what is clearly a popcorn film. There's definitely been better films this year but this can hold me attention for its two hours.