My Problem with The first two hobbit movies.

Presented in Patened Scriptomation!!

Gandalf: Bilbo you're totally going to do this favor for me?

Bilbo: I totally won't but just for funsies what's the favor?

Gandalf: You're going to be a burglar and steal some stuff for some dwarves.

Bilbo: Sounds like work.

Gandalf: More than you know.

Bilbo: Not interested

Gandalf: Yeah well i'm thirty thousand years old and kind of already told the dwarves you were DTF.

six million dwarves reinact a Broadway musical and eat Bilbo out of house and home...seriously? weirdest turn of phrase ever, but I digress.

Bilbo: Now that I'm destitute and will starve if I don't go with you, what does DTF mean? It sounds dirty.

Gandalf: Down To Fence.

Bilbo elbows Gandalf and raises his eyebrows with a knowing smile.

Bilbo: aaaaaaah! I see what you did there! Where is this stuff I'm supposed to steal any way?

Gandalf: Other side of the planet.

Bilbo: Should have led off with that so I could kick the Dwarves out before they ate all my food.

Gandalf: It'll be fine dude trust me.

Bilbo: In the short time I've known you, You've lied to me twice and let a bunch of classist, racist strangers eat all my food and drink all my beer and smoke all my pot.

Gandalf: The Censors require us to call it "long Bottom Leaf"

Bilbo: It's fucking weed old man!

Gandalf: Quite right you are.

Bilbo: So we take the longest walk in the history of the planet just so I can steal something for the dwarves. Why wouldn't I go with you?

Gandalf: I cannot think of a decent reason.

Bilbo: where exactly on the other side of the planet are we going?

Gandalf: The Lonely Mountain

Bilbo: You say that like I might know if it.

Gandalf: Used to be a Dwarven Kingdom, hence the journey to get back to it.

Bilbo: Do I want to ask what made you say "used to be"

Gandalf: Not really no.

Bilbo: Why did it "used to be"?

Gandalf: A great red dragon took the mountain over and all its treasure.

Bilbo: I hate you.

Gandalf: Why ever for

Bilbo: Serously get out of my house.

Gandalf: I am Gandalf the Grey and you have terrible manners for a Hobbit.

Bilbo: I am Bilbo the Hobit and you have terrible everything for a what ever the hell you are, please leave.

Gandalf: what if I told you that you only have to steal one thing from the dragon.

Bilbo: See your still telling your story and I stopped listening like four minutes ago.

Gandalf: You'll find a treasure of great power!

Bilbo: listening again.

Gandalf: It will allow you to turn invisible.

Bilbo: that will be exceptionally useful when trying to hide from a Dragon.

Gandalf: well he'll still be able to smell you and the mountain is so full of gold that every move you make will cause a cascading waterfall of sound.

Bilbo: did you go to some sort of school to tell stories badly?

Gandalf: I can cast the most powerful of spells why would how I tell a story matter?

Bilbo: Well for starters, you continue to make me wish I had never met you.

Gandalf: I'm just trying to help

Bilbo: You're not doing a very good job, So I have this invisible ring and I will have to steal something out from under an evil red dragon and even when invisible he'll still smell me and hear me.

Gandalf: For starters, yes.

Bilbo: Starters?

Gandalf: Yeah, remember the ring?

Bilbo: The one that makes me invisible?

Gandalf: That's the one.

Bilbo: what about it?

Gandalf: well it was forged by the dark lord Sauron and has a will of its own and will slowly try to eat your soul.

Bilbo: And I get to do all of this for free! mere mortals would pay for such an adventure.

Gandalf: Now your just being flippant.

Bilbo: I have a short temper please continue.

Gandalf: Ultimately the ring is the most important part of this entire journey.

Bilbo: How so?

Gandalf: Not sure yet. I'll figure it out in the next fifty or sixty years I promise.

Bilbo: in the meantime what exactly am I stealing for the dwarves?

Gandalf: The Arkenstone, it's a a super shiney big gem type rock thing that the dwarves need to convince other dwarves to join them in taking the mountain back from the evil red dragon.

Bilbo: wait...just...one...second

Gandalf: Waiting

Bilbo: we're going to walk half way across the world

Gandalf: The only other way to get there would be to fly.

Bilbo: we can fly? why aren't we flying!?

Gandalf: Because then I would owe the eagles a favor and they have the worst timing for calling in favors.

Bilbo: oh! well when you put it that way! So we walk half way across the world.

Gandalf: Actually there will be very little walking because we're going to be chased quite often by orks.

Bilbo:...of course we are. So we're going to run half way across the world, while being chased by goblin's, get to a mountain where I will be required to sneak in,

Gandalf: oh you won't have to sneak.

Bilbo: How will we be getting into the mountain without the dragon knowing?

Gandalf: Well see the dwarves build a secret entrance.

Bilbo: smart idea.

Gandalf: It can only be opened with one key.

Bilbo: kind of less useful

Gandalf: on one particular day of the year.

Bilbo: Because that makes sense

Gandalf: And only if the light of the moon hits the wall where the door is.

Bilbo: So on the ONE DAY the door could be opened, If it's cloudly this entire adventure was litterally for nothing.

Gandalf: I'm sure it won't be cloudy.

Bilbo: I really, really, REALLY hate you.

 ( NINETEEN HOURS OF FILM LATER)

The Dwarves and bilbo get to the secret entrance and it's daylight and a cloudless sky and sunlight everywhere. The sun goes down, the dwarves get pissed because no door shows up, clouds come out of no where. The dwarves PTFO. Bilbo is raging out.

Bilbo: IT'S FUCKING CLOUDY AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN HERE YOU ANCIENT BASTARD JERKFACE DICKBAG!!!!!

The dwarves come back and the clouds break and  they open the door.

Bilbo: So this gem I'm stealing what does it look like?

Old White Haired Dwarf: you'll know it when you see it lad.

Bilbo: no, no, NO! I have been finger fucking the devils cock ring in order to save your asses over and over again this entire trip, your leader doesn't trust me because you're all a bunch of racist bastards and I'm expected to be the lynch pin in this cluster fuck of chaos and destruction? You draw me a fucking picture of this thing RIGHT NOW! or so help me, you can take this damn ring and get your stupid gem yourself your highness!

The Irony is lost on them: Ender's Game

Thoughts on Ender's Game 

I really against all better judgement walked into the theater wanting to like this movie. The cast should have been dynomite, and the kid who tormented Hannah Montana's brother stepped up to the plate and did a fantastic job until he got half assedly PG'd out of the movie. But there ends the list of things that made this worth watching, his performance as Bonzo was the only time I wasn't thinking about walking out of the theater. Everything else is the most expensive performance of book jacket liner notes which were scraped together from the italicized plot points from the Wikipedia plot breakdown of Ender's Game which were then triple distilled through Save The Cat.

This movie is everything Hollywood is hoping will save itself from itself. So obviously they carefully avoided doing ANYTHING new or interesting. They were to afraid of making something smart because audiences "don't like smart movies" which is weird because they are making a movie about genius level kids learning to be interstellar generals and the geo-political effects of underestimating the power and determination of a person just because they haven't hit puberty yet. So naturally there are plenty of explosions, Harrison Ford gets to chew scenery, so if you're into that kinda thing then you got that to look forward to. Butterfield who was amazing in Hugo basically spends his time running around updated sets from 2001 while watching Randy Quaid kill himself over and over again at the end of Independence day. His one directorial note is to "almost cry" for 1 hour and 58 minutes only to finally let the rain fall down just so an Alien can wipe a tear of his cheek. I am not exaggerating this part.

The director read the book after he spent time in the military which is obvious because instead of doing any of the battle school scenes from the book he just sort of re shot selected scenes from the first half of The kids bop edition of Full Metal Jacket while Butterfield kept trying to write Letters to Mr. Vernon repeatedly explaining why he was in detention. These letters are important apparently because they keep bringing up his need to send letters to his sister because in the book I remember some dumb ass side story where his sister and brother were pen pals or some stupid thing. This movie is more about A young Bill Murray in space boot camp just trying to sass the brass and live the easy life, or something. Kids shoot each other and war is bad m'kay?

Also super important themes on the indoctrination and tactical use of games, because waving your arms around like a fucking land locked synchronized swimmer is what makes you the best and most leaderist leader that ever lead a group of people who speak in catch phrases and have no character development what so ever. Buttterfield spends so much time waving his arms around that MY shoulders hurt by the end of the movie.

I also like that the story is supposed to be about Ender being a super good leader,  which we experience by watching him get promoted for sending a text, given an army for having a crush on a girl, and made lord high commander of the Omega Doom space fleet because he built a raft. I know are whole montages they cut from this film because there are several times when it feels like your about to be loving laid into a pointless montage and then they just skip over it and you have no explanation that time has passed or that shit just got real but the movie has moved forward and you're just left to accept the fact that that montage which would have been pretty and possibly related some sort of minor character development for any one of the MANY characters kind of sort of almost in this movie, is no longer there and its time to watch more selected scenes from the cliff notes Ender's game.

Things I learned from this film:
Action speaks louder than words, Enders Game the book is a staggeringly deep emotional and mental experience, very little dialog and a LOT of thinking. Having 'brilliant" characters do nothing but think out loud in bold megaphone style dialog is just about the most efficent way of making something you intend to be serious into a live action Warner Brothers cartoon.

The best way I can sum this up is that Ender's Game the film feels both in emotional depth and visual style like a more mature, slightly older but still very fucking stupid sequel of Starship Troopers.

Blame Lundon: Star Trek Into Ha Ha Just Kidding.

TL:DR Suffers greatly from to much talent not enough direction. Everything except the story works perfectly. Lens flares were far less annoying except for one scene they overpowered character development. The film hits all the required moments a movie needs to be a movie but the reasons it hits those notes are completely lacking. See it for the visuals and actors doing their best, lower your expectations by a few steps at least as far as the story.

I give it 6 out of 10 warp core breaches.

THUS BEGINS THE FULL REVIEW:

Dear Bad Robot,

lens flares are cool, they look great, they are not cooler than the following things,

character development
coherent plot
emotional investment that rewards the audience.

if this is what you feel to be a worthy companion piece to Wrath of Khan then I will thank you to please focus the entirety of your energy on Star Wars because, god help you, you're going to need it. Empire Strikes Back is infinitely more nuanced than Wrath of Khan, and you have proven that lighting effects and bullshit random ass special effects mean more than character or story.

Sincerely
The Fat One, Blame Lundon

OOOOOOO kay, first raise your hand if you like the first Bad Robot Star Trek. Those of you who didn't raise your hands can leave. This isn't about bashing the cool kids who don't know what it means to REALLY like ST. I pretty much loved BRST 1 and think that they got the damn thing done right, which is rough because then they needed to do a sequel and there is A LOT of story and content they could draw from and I know they must have had a hard time trying to decide whether they go right into Khan or ignore him completely or do some other story or what.  This question was on the mind of every nerd at least once a week don't lie. So if you're Bad Robot what do you do? Skip Khan and tell your own story? it has the virtue of striking out on your own path and making Star Trek fresh and new for reasons other than the publishing date of the copy of After Effects that they used.

Or you could just do Khan, begrudgingly, because well 'everyone' (THE MONEY GUYS) want you do Khan cause nerds obsess over that shit and by obsess the money guys mean spend money for thirty years never letting the past go. So you suck it up and start cranking out a Khan story line, which is awesome cause it's got a main character death and theres a villain who's presence forever echo's through out the TOS history because he scarred Kirk to his emotional core. So you and your writing guys pretty much figure everyone will assume you're doing Khan so you spend months and half the movie money advertising that you're not doing Khan, Khans a classic legend we would never do that no, nope, uh uh, the villain is Donald Mcbumbleveryoneknowsitskhanstopthestupidfakeoutbullshit. So you announce Benedict Cumberbach is playing Donald MCkahn, and on three continents panties drop simultaneously which is impressive because, damn, you have done something right. You've added british sexiness to an already overly talented cast of overly talented people being overly talented. Now all you have to do is figure out what kind of story you're going to tell about not Khan. Well obviously there needs to be Klingons, Klingons were an integral part of the storyline after Khan and Spock died so we'll throw an action scene in there to introduce klingons cause….klingons. And make some references to other shit from TOS. Nerds love references to stuff they know. So you have klingons and a terrorist plot, and star fleet being attacked by a terrorist and Jim kirk getting busted just like it was back in the old days when Fatty Mc…..pause played the captain, the nerds are going to love it! buildings are shiny, there's price scanners all over the bridge, and everyones got witty banter about torpedos, cause torpedos are a big part of the plot now? and Blondy science officer immediately makes Spock jealous/curious/suspicious. But she's a good guy cause she gets pretty much naked and HOJOLY SHIT KIRKS GONNA BONERCISE WITH HER AND THE TORPEDOS ARE GENESIS!!!!!! AND THIS FUCKING MOVIE IS….what do you mean the torpedoes are actually secretly stasis tubes? Why would Khan put his people in super torpedoes? What? Where is the superman logic in that? Put the people in and take the torpedo parts out maybe yes, then The Enterprise brings the super torpedoes over to Kronos and fires them and Khan lands them by remote on his uninhabited island and his people take their hijacked klingon ship and whoop the shit out of the enterprise and i'm totally cool with Kirk dying because it would have BEEN THE BEST REAL TWIST EVER. But no, Notkhan surrenders after saving the cast in the shuttle instead of shooting them, taking the shuttle back to enterprise and taking that shit over and going to kill the general. Did i forget to mention there is an evil general? yeah, ok so evil general apparently unfrozed JUST khan because with 73 stasis pods to choose from he caught a tiger by its toe, and forced Khan to make weapons for him cause…weapons and tactics made by super notkhan. YUP. So Khan is in Hollywood brand Clear glass prison (so hot right now) and Kirk and Khan team up cause Khan is SURPISE the victim and is just trying to get his family away from the evil general (who interestingly is played by robocop, The immortal Peter Weller. I don't say immortal out of respect i say immortal because he looks like a fucking ghoul, seriously dude eat a sandwich or get reverse liposuction, you look like the understudy for the fucking Emperor…shit they are gong to cast peter welled as the emperor in Star Wars 7.) So Roboempevilgeneral takes the super ship designed by khan out to kill the enterprise cause see the evil general wants a war between klingon and the federation because….he likes space battles, space battles are cool now. But apparently this secret plot to start war between klingon and The federation is a for really real secret and that means the enterprise needs to die so the emperor general fires on the enterprise at warp which is fucking awesome and they fall out of warp cause its sort of like the Eastern Austrialan Current from Finding Nemo, but with no giant space turtles, I COULD HAVE MADE THIS MOVIE SO MUCH COOLER FOR STONERS!!!! So the enterprise is beat to shit they can't really move, or fire but Kirk and Khan go space luging through space debris while scotty talks to a steroid guard on emperorgenerals ship and they start killing the very tiny crew on the VERY LARGE ship, (HOW THE FUCK DID KHAN KNOW 300 YEARS AGO HOW TO MAKE A SHIP THAT MAKES ENTERPRISE LOOK LIKE A MINI COOPER BUT IS FUNCTIONAL WITH A CREW OF TEN? THE ENTERPRISE NEEDS A CREW OF 10 TO TURN THE GOD DAMN BLINKER SIGNAL ON!!!!????

So they take over the ship and Buckaroo Banzai gets knocked out and his daughter is all blond and helpless, and now that Khan has a ship he and Spock have a little verbal chess match and its awesome cause I FUCKING SAID SO. And the torpedo people get sent over and Khan who can design super ships and do all kinds of fucking awesome gun katas doesn't think to scan the torpedoes for life signs and is somehow shocked that they blow up cause well we're running out of time, then the enterprise almost crashes into earth for like three months and then some tiny rockets save everyone because  yay tiny rockets, then we find out that Kirk was the reason for the tiny rockets and we get a GREAT flippsy daisy scene from Wrath of Khan with Kirk dying instead of Spock and for a split second your mind screams WUUUUUUUUT DAAAAAA FUCKBUBBLES!!! but then you remember that this is hollywood and he'll probably be saved by a tribble or some god damned thing. And then khans ship which i swear to fucking god blew to pieces not three minutes earlier is now re-intact and crashes into San Francisco, which, random point of trivia, Khan never apparently listened to Scott Mckenzie, because I saw no flowers in his hair. So Khans miracle self assembling ship crashes into A HUGE portion of the city and destroys like seven sky scrapers and tons of the town and then two blocks later not only does no one care, but they don't even SEEM TO NOTICE because life goes on as per normal even though a HUGE FUCK OFF SPACESHIP has just taken out a substantial part of a coastal city…no biggie I guess. Spock and Khan leap from flying car to flying car like 'roided out billy goats and beat on each other cause action scenes are cool. Bones gets the idea to save Kirks life with…A FUCKING TRIBBLE FUCK YOU BAD ROBOT, FUCK YOU. So Uhura beams down to keep Spock from beating Khan to death Rocky style and they use his blood to bring back Kirk. Then thirty seconds later, with the slightest of fades, it's a year later and the coast city of San Francisco is fine as frogs fur and Captain Kirk is giving a tribute speech about dead extras and responsibility and now the Enterprise is going on it's five year mission.

1: everything and I do mean EVERYTHING in this movie wraps up TOO NEATLY, even character deaths are either erased or made insignificant. Everything that seems to be a negative consequence always turns around to be a positive thing through very little to no action from the main characters.

2: Kirk gets demoted, then promoted again not three minutes later because why would we not want Captain Kirk? the demotion did fuck all of NOTHING FOR ANY REASON.

3: Spock uses the death of Pike to make up with his girlfriend. As far as classic Star Trek death major characters have died for much much less so i can't slight them here but as the only persistent consequence in the whole film I felt completely and utterly cheated. For all of three seconds i felt invested in the death scene between Spock and kirk but that investment was betrayed almost immediately because they didn't have the balls to follow through on it.

4: Khan needed to be a main character, the general was a complete and total waste of time. Pick a plot, a villain and stick with them, classic movies are classic because they took the time that was required to let emotional investment from the audience PAY OFF. he's a terrorist, no! he's a freedom fighter!, No he's a Super genius psycho mad man bent on killing  guy he just met ten minutes ago and has actually been WORKING WITH most of that time, NO HE'S REALLY A SUICIDAL IDIOT WHO CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING BETTER TO DO WITH HIS SHIP!. This is not development this is jumping from lilly pad, to lilly pad hoping one of them has enough strength to float your bullshit.

5: The selective gravity of the Enterprise during the crashing to Earth scene REALLY annoyed me. To have a scene where the ship is fully flipped on its side and people are falling to their deaths and three main characters work together to not die, immediately followed by a scene where they run through another huge open area of the ship and a shit load of extras are standing at their posts somehow successfully having not fallen to their deaths when the ship went completely ass over tea kettle not thirty seconds previous is SLOPPY. If reminded me of this: http://www.hark.com/clips/xbrnwmfngm-tilted

6: Any time the main cast was conversing with each other i loved what i heard, these guys know their characters and hit home runs again and again, but the plot was god awful and a complete waste of a classic character, several great actors, seriously you needed Peter Weller AND benedict Cumberbatch to chew scenery in your shitty dollar store space based rip off bastard child of Cocoon and Under Siege? What the FUCK is wrong with you?

7: I would love to have some actual Trekking in the next Star Trek please.

Iron Man 3: Supply and Demand

No breakdown cause the movie is new. Go see it. In theaters, wif yer friends. (READ BELOW AFTER YOU SEE THE MOVIE. I AM TALKING FRANKLY ABOUT THE PLOT. DON'T BE AN IDIOT AND RUIN THE STORY IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY SEEN IT.)

TL;DR Not a bad story, fun to watch but ultimately fails to build on the marvel world or Tony Stark's character. I gave it three thumbs up.

Your movie was bad and you should feel bad (1)
The loneliest star (2)
arbitrary numerical assignment identifying an average performance (3)
* three thumbs up(4)
ALL THE STARS!!!!(5)

Things I think IM3 succeeded in doing:
Setting up Tony's mental state post Avengers, and this was largely done in the trailers, but still it was done well, the guy is a mess and he doesn't trust himself to be the awesome bad ass he used to think he was. Setting up the evil charismatic sinisterness of "the mandarin" again this began with the trailers but the first half of the film the whole presentation of the mandarin is cool and mysterious and charismatic. Pepper's time in the suits, 'bout damn time she got to play with Tony's toys. The (stealing from a friend) "Tony Stark P.I". feel of the story, I think that ultimately the pacing and flow worked really really well, even if the focus on characters in the plot was misguided. Misguided you say?

Things I feel failed, were wasted, or didn't execute in IM3

The Marvel Movie Universe is a universe of gods, monsters, and mutants. And in the middle of it all, we have Tony Stark. A super smart human being. The heart warming tale of a boy and his sentient computer system. Tony Stark's mutant power isn't his intellect, its his charisma, the fact that everyone (including himself) loves him unconditionally. Each of the Iron Man films centers around people who stop loving him. His business partner betrays him for money, The rival business man betrays him for money, and the Mandarin betrays him for...shit we've hit our first speed bump. In Iron Man 3 No one gives a shit about Tony, Tony is narrating as if this is his story but ultimately there is no inexplicable failure of his charisma. The mandarin's scheme centers around getting the vice president into office so they can for ever run the war on terror and use super soldiers to fight it. Yes the villains were slighted by Tony Stark thirteen years ago but the ONLY reason Tony Stark gets involved with the actual plot of the movie is because his friend gets hurt. And it is here that we have to ask ourselves what kind of story is this? It's NOT a super hero adventure film, it's Shane Black telling another P.I. story that happens to involve Iron Man. It's a decent story but ultimately we see no real progression of Tony's mental state or self actualization, he narrates that he changes but ultimately the ONLY thing that is shown is him building the Home Depot suit and a one liner about how special Pepper is. Tony's panic attacks only ever effect him when its useful for comedy or when we need him to bond with the kid. In fact we get a clearer understanding of Tony's instability through the consistent failure of MK42, first it can't fly, then it can't shoot then it can't fly again, then it spends half the movie inert (recharging) after which it can take a fucking beating over and over and over again. In lieu of actual character development the MK 42 barely works at the best of times and gets the shit kicked out of it repeatedly and in the end sacrifices itself to kill the villain (which ultimately fails). What we see happen to the MK42 we NEEDED to see happen to Tony, but every time you think he's about to get hurt or should have gotten hurt he wasn't actually in the suit. 

If it wasn't any clearer by the end action sequence IM3 is one long shell game of false build ups and reveals, that end action sequence in which 20 suits fight guys we only see as random henchmen. And literally Tony uses the suits as a sort of flying shell game. Even the villain gets his bait and switch reveal which almost ruined the movie for me but we were rescued by the actual mandarin being genuinely a creepy cool bad guy and the fake mandarin being played by a legendarily good actor.

All of this I was ok with, until the shot of the burning iron man mask. Movies can be silly and fun and shallow and random and just mindless action, I don't require every movie be deep or well thought out, or logical. The shot after the MK42 explodes and 'kills' Mandarin when tony see's the head piece and fire comes up from the eye and it's sinking in that they might have had the balls to REALLY kill pepper pots and that last line he said about her already having been perfect gets to him and he realizes that while he has no iron man suits left to fight with, she was his heart and he has no heart to fight with any more, he has nothing left, and the burning face is staring back at him and you get this tremendous sense of foreboding of everything Tony Stark touches turning to ash, his whole life nothing more than one long cleansing fire of hubris and fear. We are seeing the moment Tony officially begins down the path of super villain, he is now as hollow as his suits, his charisma used to bend the earth to his twisted will to NEVER be vulnerable again, to wipe the earth clean of anything that could ever even contemplate doing him harm, and anyone who would ever even dare to reach him emotionally, this man would scour the planet clean of danger and feels. BUT NO the Mandarin is still alive and Pepper pots is too and she uses her itchyburn heals and some IM suit pieces to finally kill the Mandarin once and for all and rob us of something that could have been a CLASSIC movie moment, the moment that Tony Stark became the villain for Avengers 2.

Instead we get pepper with itchyburn heal which gets narrated away, along with Tony's chest piece, the vice president, and any questions about what the hell happened to his PTSD/Panic attacks and why any of this shit helped him get over what happened to him in NY, why it mattered at all that the villains knew him in 1999 (Seriously the movie would have worked just as well without the 1999 connection, it MEANT NOTHING).

I hear a lot of people really didn't like IM2 and I kind of feel like while IM3 wasn't a bad movie I like it the least of the trilogy, it wasted some great set ups on the same old shit we saw in the first two movies ( real villains hiding behind other fake villains) and ultimately wasn't really the movie I was hoping for from the trailers, In a world of Gods and Monsters there is nothing wrong with telling a human story about a human guy who has human fears and deals with them humanly. I feel like having all the suits be able to kick ass without him in them meant that when he says "I am Iron Man" at the end of the movie all I wanted to do was sort of roll my eyes and respond "yeeeah ok Tony, what ever helps you sleep at night." Which kills me because Bruce Banners reaction to the story was EXACTLY the way I felt about the whole mess.

The Hunger Games

EDIT: I apparently assumed y'all have read/seen the book/movie and that was lazy on my part so here comes the spoiler Alert synopsis of The Hunger Games so you can decipher what I wrote bellow. SPOILER ALERTS! (fer seriousness)

 TL;DR? The movie isn't 'great' but it's not awful. it's far to long for the content it covers but everyone in the film does their level best to turn in a watchable performance. If I were to give it a star rating I would give it some stars. which is more than none and less than some more stars and way less than ALL THE STARS!.

Katniss is this girl who live in future 'merka. where there are twelve districts all slaving away in service to the 'capitol'. Katniss lives in district twelve which is coal country, everything there is gray/black. She takes care of her sister, her sisters pain in the ass meat sack of a pet cat, and her mom who's basically tuned out sense her husband died. Katniss is a super good bow hunter but the only place she can hunt is in the woods beyond the very rarely turned on electric fence boundaries of district twelve. Her best buddy Gale is also a super good trap hunter and together they feed their families and try to make ends meet. Sounds pretty lower middle class except this world has a terrible yearly ritual of torture called The Hunger Games. Where each district offers up a boy and a girl to fight to the death on television and its against the law to NOT watch. Katniss' little sister gets called up and Katniss volunteers instead, then Peta is the boy and they get wisked away to the capitol on a super fast spacetrain and Haymitch (A past district 12 winner) is all "you guys suck...like a lot.) and Katniss stares at things cause well shes kinda in, shock I guess. Anywho they go to the capitol which is sorta like hot topic but fifty years from now when all the cool kids are old and tired. Haymitch tells Katniss and Peta to make people like them if they want to win the other kids range from shitty to awesome and we see freaky peoples of all colors and styles, then Lenny Kravitz has gold eye shadow and dresses Katniss in flammable material and they become friends and he's too cool for words. Then the kids ride chariots cause chariots are cool now! and Stanly Tucci is awesome and his hair is sorta blue and kind of creepy. And there's training and Peta throws a big rock type metal ball thing to intimidate the other kids and Rue is doing her Spiderman thing (Rue is from district 11, the 'grains' district) and finally the kids get rated for their lethality and potential to sell action figures and everyone is shocked because Katniss pulled a William Tell and that got her an 11 out of 12 so her action figure will have bow shooting action and accessories! Then the kids get flown to the Hunger Games site and put in their own special launching tubes which put them near the cornocopia and there's all kinds of supplies and kids start killing each other and Katniss runs away with a sack of slightly useful supplies and sleeps in trees, gets hunted by the cool kids, which include Peta (sadness) and they Rue's in another tree cause she's spiderman and points out these geneticly mutated bees called tracker jackers and Katniss drops them on the cool kids and some of them die and Katniss goes a bit wonky in the head cause she got stung and that's super poisonous and Rue takes care of her during her nightmare coma time and their friends now and have a tea party that includes blowing up the popular kids camp full of supplies and food, but Rue dies cause this kid spears her in the chest but Katniss is all "bitches aint making this death cheap! NO SIR!" so she sings and plants flowers around Rue's body and District 11 see's this on the TV and is all "YEAH WE'RE GONNA BURN THIS MUTHER DOWN! *&&^% YOUR COUCH!" and then the cyborgs from THX 1138 kill all of them :( So Katniss finds Peta who's apparently a T-1000 cause he's super good at morphing into other things (He painted himself to look like a flat river rock...it's only slightly unbelieveable.) And they have a moment in cave with the hugging and some kissing and they get a gift from the audience to keep Peta alive but its some soup which is pretty much a way for Haymitch to say "play it up you slut." and they have a conversation about their lives cause well there are fans watching, and then theres an announcement that there are special treats for everyone and Katniss goes to get the stuff to keep peta alive and the other kid from district 11 saves Katniss' life by killing knife girl. The last few kids get killed off and then there's dog things that chase Peta, Katniss and Kato back to the Cornocopia and Peta and Katniss think that they could both with cause dismebodied annoucner voice said they could both with, Kato gets eaten by the dogs but slowly and Katniss offs him with an arrow out of mercy and the disembodied voice is all "sike one of you must kill the other." so Katniss is like "*&^% this game and tells Peta they should both eat killerdeth berries and then the disembodied voice is all "double sike you both win #1 sexy victory dance time! They get picked up, theres post interviews and they get sent home, the guy who was in charge of the game controls is killed by the president of the central district and Peta and Katniss return home as heroes but Gale is all sad cause he saw them make kissy face on the TV....THE (TO BE CONTINUED) END.

First things first. I read the books, all three of them. Didn't hate the first two at all. But Suzanne Collins is a sadist. Pure and simple, her narrative practically sleeps through the first half until people start killing each other and all of a sudden her prose comes alive and you can practically tell that her word count per day went through the roof. Her story is about the kids killing each other, everything else was fluff her publishers demanded so they could sell this as "YA Sci-Fi".

So if the killing of children is what works in her books then why would they make a movie about it? Because the fluff garbage about the future society and districts actually sort of works, she accidentally built an interesting world with some depth, and I say accidentally because where she could have delved into the psychological effects of using death and destruction to shape a society through fear and totalitarian control over decades she doesn't really care about that because she wants to tell a story about kids killing each other for cash and prizes. She fails on almost every level to develop her world of perversion and sickness beyond the basic metaphors she needs to let everyone know that anyone who would enjoy kids killing each other for any reason is a soulless sadist. which is what her stories about so there is a HUGE amount of Irony in the books that we never really touch on or inspect. Which is great because we elevate that irony to near epic levels for the movie.

We all just watched a movie about kids killing each other for the benefit of some twisted future society, we're supposed to feel joy for the heroes and shame and anger for the corrupted society and those who enjoy its fruits, but here's the twist, WE JUST WATCHED IT ALL HAPPEN. The film makers realized this conundrum and in order to separate the audience from ever putting two and two together that they are by association part of the sickness we took a rated R story and brought it down to PG through the magic of really, really, REALLY shitty camera work. half the time I couldn't tell if the camera guys were bored or they tagged Michael J. Fox in to run the camera. See you can't feel revulsion for people who would willingly watch the forced murder of innocent children (which is you the viewer. You should be revolted by your own willingness to see this) if you cant see any god damn thing except for this tree, and some grass and look rocks and a river and a hey a pretty girl running away from fire, root for her!!!

Make no mistake, there are dark, horrible questions in the murky parts of Hunger Games, but this movie is about a half assed love triangle, and beating the odds, we won't ask why a society of so many would allow them selves to be tortured by so few. Or what kind of society lives for watching children kill each other on national television. No we will only focus on the Girl on fire, and Rue, poor poor Rue, and the evil Capitol district with their strange perversions of fashion and morals.

I have already mentioned the camera work being awful and it comes back again and again, they should be ashamed. The pacing is pretty awful too, and the horrible failure to pay attention to detail destroys almost every bit of hard work the cast did to develop what little character they were given to work with. Elizabeth Banks killed it, same with Stanly Tucci, and Woody Harrelson. Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence did a workable job with what little they were given to build on but every few minutes something happened that made me cringe. Katniss waits far to long to save her sister by volunteering for tribute, its supposed to make you fear for the little girl but Katniss needed to be right in there like a reflex action and it just drags on for what feels like forever, it hurts her character because they focus on the sister and not on Katniss' reaction to the event so you don't know where her head is at because you can't see her face, by the time she steps up you start to wonder if she gives a shit about her family at all. Not to mention that you loose all the thinking that she did in the book, and they don't ever once try and connect you with her emotionally other than showing her from these half assed quarter shots where she stares at random shit, this does NOTHING to relay her internal voice or emotional turmoil, for that we either need to see her wrestle with things in her eyes, her mind or with OTHER PEOPLE. Also seeing them approach the food like they are starving would have been nice. I believed the book being called the Hunger Games, the movie should have been called "Skipped Lunch" Games.

The fire on Katniss and Peta was nice but pretty lazy on the CG side, felt very slap dash quit your bitching we save quality FX for oscar contenders!!!

The books are just as guilty of making Katniss passive and boring but I honesty feel like of all the things they could have fixed for the movie making her more proactive or getting her out of her own damned head was something that NEEDED to happen, She has NO character arc, she makes plenty of decisions but the world just kind of happens around her nothing in her changes in this first book at all and the same thing happens for the movie, on every level Peta is a more interesting character, Rue is a more interesting character, Katniss is basically the first Hipster hero, she's too cool to every let any of this shit change her for either better or worse. I didn't care about her at all until WELL into the third book and by then I hated the turn of events the author had chosen because the whole story is about sadistically hurting the readers as much as possible. And the movie is so antiseptic compared to the book that its basically a different story, there's almost none of the inherent soullessness of the capitol in the game, the wolves lack the human faces, the violence is shakey cam'd away, we get more of Haymitch's politicking but other than that the capitol feels very much like a reject city from the Star Wars Prequels and I cannot for the life of me muster any hatred or like for it at all.

Why did the kids let Peta behind them while hunting Katniss? He could have taken out the back two before the front two knew what was up, the third girl dead before Kato can turn and Peta and Kato die together. WHY THE FUCK DID THEY SLEEP NEAR HIM, stupid idiot should have slit all their throats nice and quiet, these moments ruin Peta for me, I don't understand why they showed them sleeping or wandering around as a group with Peta, in the books you assume they don't trust him and the author NEVER gives you reason to doubt that, but Peta had NUMEROUS chances to kill these idiots of almost or completely scott free.

LOVED the district 11 response to Rue, which was the ONLY part of her death I gave a crap about at all in this, all the parts from the book were in the movie but they were disconnected and given no chance to breathe so there was no pain, no emotion to it, but the district 11 response was AWESOME. Although a dangerous choice as a film maker because I wanted to stay there and follow that story more thani wanted to go back to Katniss. This was building on a series of events and people were making active decisions based on a situation and that is interesting, also they aren't the main character so there are lives at stake and I VERY QUICKLY care about these people with out even knowing a single one of them or hearing ANY of them speak. But no back to the main storyline.

The Cornucopia looks like the EMP building got an erection, and that's not what I would call good design. The dogs are wasted, the whole sadistic horror of the end is just PG'd away. Did I miss something or did the black guy from 11 never get killed? Did they just sort of  'screw it no one really cares' a character away? YAY they win cause apparently a TV show about kids fighting to the death is only acceptable if someone lives through the whole mess, its just barbaric if EVERYONE dies!

Stanly Tucci thank you for making this somewhat watch able, you are quite the performer sir. And shove in one more pathetic attempt at that pointless love triangle before the credits and we're out!

Credit where credit is due

I just got back from Norwescon 36. Great event and I know because I helped put it together. Had some great discussions on film and narrative structure, race representations in the media, and gender relations as represented by fiction aimed at both children and adults. And there was one thing that I heard several times this weekend and that I have been hearing for years now, from both content producers and content consumers alike: if there is change to be made in how content is made/presented and blame to be laid for why we still produce the most racist, sexist, backwards ignorant media around the world, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the content consumer. I have always and will always have a massively huge problem with that concept. So let’s take a look at why it's a truly horrible idea to blame the consumers instead of, and before the creators.

1...”If people didn't buy it, then the creators wouldn't have a market and they would be forced to make something else." To illustrate the reason why this idea is backwards and horribly broken, I present a metaphor: Let’s say in an urban area there is a drug dealer, and EVERYONE knows where the dealer lives, what the dealer does and who the dealer sells too. The cops have enough evidence to arrest and charge the dealer but they figure that by arresting and charging the dealers client base the dealer will be forced out of business and have to rely on his accounting degree. You wouldn't accept that as a functional form of crime prevention, so why are you accepting it as a functional way of changing content creation? It's because you’re lazy and, yes. It’s insulting, but it’s also true. You might not even realize just how lazy you are and it’s because you've lived your whole life agreeing to a bargain you never knew you had a chance to turn down.

2. "If the Consumers would just pay more attention to independent cinema and projects on the internet then they would find content that the mainstream media would never have the balls to air." This is sort of like saying that if everyone just started their own gardens and raising their own cattle, then McDonalds would have no choice but to make healthier food to stay in business. We each have our own little lives and only so many hours in a day. I love media, and the internet is my often very diverse and very scary holy ground, but even I sometimes just want to come home, turn on How I Met Your Mother and zone out for a few hours. We live in a world that is built on an infrastructure that is, by today's standards, ancient; and while, yes there are some things that each of us can do to live healthier and more conscientious lives, that often takes more energy and more time away from things like our families, our bills, our homes, our jobs, and all the other little contracts that we have entered into that make our world go round. Yes, we as consumers need to be more aware of alternatives, but the alternatives also need to be more aware of consumers. It feels like a victory just to get finished work on the internet, but if you don't have twenty minutes of sneaker ads every hour chances are your parents make up half your audience. Yes, there are content producers on the web that break this mold, but you are talking about a hand full of people who got lucky on Kick starter and are awfully lonely out there in the great big world of studio productions. For an example of this we all know that Veronica Mars got Kick started, but how many people have heard of The Gamers or Project London? Spend all the time you want seeking out new creative life and new cinematic civilizations, but it will be YEARS before anything you discover has the kind of distribution and word of mouth to equal to the staying power of even a crappy network show.

America is a consumer based society. We spend all our time and all our money on wanting and having things, from esoteric and ethereal things like love and college degrees, to simple comforts like porn and shoes. We are consumers born and bred, and to then turn around and blame us for doing what we have been taught to do since birth is dishonest and insulting to people who work hard, and try to live decent lives and just want to get lost in a story for a little while. And when you consider the same issue from the point of view of a creator, it is just as insulting to assume that the only way a creator can learn to create something new and different is by having people ignore them or dismiss the work that they already have done. This is not only heart breaking to a class of people who work hard, but doesn't say much for our national intelligence level. When people ask “Why is our content so sexist, racist, classist, and ignorant?" I tell them that we, as Americans, will pay attention and money to an entertainment provider as long as they say things that make us feel better about who we are, why we are here, where we have been, and where we are going.

Which leads me to the points I always consider when thinking about this topic, and recently, about media in general.

1: There are things that consumers CAN do to make slow changes to the library of content offered up for them to consume. THINK about what you are seeing. Not endlessly and deeply, but at least a little. Ask yourself if Full House would have been as popular if the family was black (Family Matters), or if Lost would have been such a huge hit if the characters actually looked like normal people do when they don't shower for months on end and wear rags and live on a deserted island. Would you still watch How I Met Your Mother if Ted was gay? Would Breaking Bad be as big a hit if the main character were a man of Middle Eastern descent? You can learn a lot about yourself, your culture and your content if you just THINK about what you're seeing and why.

2: Create. Not all the time, and it doesn't need to be the center of your life, but make something of your own. It can be short stories, or paintings, or bird houses, or knitting, or whatever strikes your interest. We grew up being told by the media that only an infinitely small fraction of our country and planet are lucky/talented enough to create. And that is WRONG. What would the world be like if only the best birds sang? I'm not saying live your passion every day loud and proud. What I am saying is that, if you ever get the inkling to try something outside your normal set of skills/life experiences, TRY IT. Be creative. There are four hundred million plus people in the United States, and most of them think Wipeout and Jersey Shore are the height of American culture; but I guarantee you that we are ALL the silent majority, wondering when something we love will come along and capture our hearts and minds. And nothing ever will, at least not on the level that popular media needs it to happen to be considered a "financial success." There is no single story, no single TV show or movie, no single book or hobby that will interest all the people all the time. We, as a consumer base, MUST REALIZE THIS, because it’s the job of the financiers to make as much money as possible as often as possible, and it’s the job of the creators to create and the consumers to consume, and for a really, really long time the money guys have been looking for the biggest bang for their buck, the largest body count for the lowest cost, and it’s time for them to unleash the creators to make as much content as humanly possible. There never has been, and never will be, the show/book/movie/song/play/idea that captures the whole nation; but what there are is an infinite number or stories that will move SOMEONE and, once moved, they want to be moved again. Creativity is not supposed to be an atomic blast. It's a series of carpet bombs that blanket our hearts and minds, and anyone can make something that touches someone else in a meaningful way. All they have to do is follow through on the impulse to create.

There is a quote: "90 percent of everything is Crap." That quote has made my skin crawl, both as a creator and as a consumer, for most of my adult life because it’s a selfish, egocentric way of seeing someone else's hard work. I prefer "90 percent of everything is NOT FOR ME." These things do not happen magically. The movies that are made for the love of making movies are just as hard to make as the ones made for a paycheck, and someone out there was motivated enough to make them. Yes, the 'mainstream" is close-minded, sexist, racist, classist, and often completely soulless, but we as consumers are not at fault for decisions made by the corporate masses. Yes, there are hundreds if not thousands of things out there to read, see, and listen to, but we as consumers are not at fault for not searching hard enough. We cannot stop consuming media, just like we can't hurt the oil companies by refusing to buy gas for twenty four hours. What we can do is add to the conversation, increase the noise level, counter program, distort the feed, question the system, and raise the level of discourse. Just because we are consumers does not mean we cannot create, and just because we create does not mean we must never consume. And most of all, just because we want to make a living from our work does not mean that we must first sell our souls. We are always, and will always be better than that.

The Dark Knight Rises Breakdown

TDKR has a lot going for it. The cast is phenomenal, it's beautifully shot with fantastic use of space, light and visual metaphor, and the very iconic soundtrack make for a wonderful viewing experience for our third and final Nolan Batman film. But, unlike The Dark Knight, TDKR's storyline falls drunkenly on its face several times from the opening scene to the closing scene. TDKR plays out like a half assed excuse to appease the trilogy gods and give a great cast some more screen time rather than a chance for the audience to see an iconic super hero go through the final stage of his rebirth to dramatic screen legend. So what could have gone wrong between TDK and TDKR?

The answer is incredibly sad and ultimately frustrating for both fans and the creators of the films; they chose not only to NOT recast the Joker but also to COMPLETELY remove him from the film universe. This is the first and most important and ultimately fatal mistake that lies at the heart of TDKR's storytelling failure.

You do not need to see a character on screen for them to influence a narrative and in TDK The Joker was EXTREMELY influential; so much so that, even as a sequel to Batman Begins, they chose a totally different title. While we are following the same characters from the first film, The Dark Knight was a separate narrative in every possible way. A villain that embraced chaos and the cold logic of insanity much the same way that Batman embraced theatricality and the law of might makes right. The Joker went out of his way to convince people that he had no plan and that all of his insanity was random and he was riding the wave like everyone else, but if you stepped back and looked at it EVERYTHING he did required incredible amounts of forethought and planning. But he kept people focused on the insanity of what he was doing and if your victims believe there is no logic to your behavior they stop looking for logical solutions. The Joker needed to be involved in TDKR for all those reasons, but NEVER on screen. There are many ways to accomplish this and the Batman universe has nearly an infinite number of possible solutions.

So let’s take a look at the plot of TDKR, I am disregarding the 8 minutes of footage they put before Mission Impossible 4, it's pointless, I never saw it and if it meant anything to the story they should have kept it with the feature film. We start eight years after the end of The Dark Knight.

A man waits next to a tiny plane on an airfield in Somewheresville, Nonamistan. A truck pulls up and delivers four men, Three with bags over their head and handcuffed and one without. We find out the free man is a scientist of sorts and the airplane man is very excited to have custody of him. The other three are said to work for 'the masked man'. And Airplane guy says “Bane!” and gets a little wet in his pants. He then takes all four men onboard. Here we come across our first bit of illogical behavior. You are trying to transport this very important scientist for very important reasons to someplace very important and there are three men who have already been caught and captured trying to kidnap your scientist. KILL THEM, problem solved. You're in Somewheresville, Nonamistan why the fuck are you taking these guys onto your tiny plane? The only reason this guy didn't leave them behind is because one of them is Bane and Bane needed to be on the plane. This is stupid, not smart, not intelligent, not crafty. It's fucking dumbshits on ice and so is everything that follows afterward. You try to threaten three guys for background information about a character we're about to see anyway? Why not try and find out why they wanted the scientist? What the hell does the mask matter at all? Was getting caught part of your plan? These questions are pointless and stupid used only to pinpoint how stupid this random dude is, because the plane is then attacked by a bigger plane. So the bigger plane drags the littler plane and the wings fall off like one hundred miles away from where the plane drops straight down into the earth like a lawn dart from hell and no one ever mentions this event ever again ever.

Batman has taken an eight year hiatus, Jim Gordon has been overseeing a city seemingly at peace and thus is about to get fired cause that's what you do when a man takes a metropolitan hellhole and cleans it up. You fire him. Also Bruce Wayne has a leg injury and has been holed up in one wing of his new house alone and sad for a really long time. Gordon feels that it is time to out the lie he himself created about how awesome Harvey Dent was because this will...do...something, for the city of Gotham...yeah. Anyway he has this big speech which could basically be summed up as “I told you a lie about a white guy so you would all behave and be awesome and it worked for eight years, btw all that shit about the white guy was a lie...um...sorry?” And understandably Gordon feels bad about his lie, it cost the city their Batman and presumably his marriage which we get sorta as a side conversation between two other characters. Gordon is done carrying this burden. But Wayne, well Wayne is apparently having fun being an eccentric broken rich dude and is not at all shocked when Catwoman steals pearls and his fingerprints from his house. He doesn't seem to care much right now about the fact that he gave EVERYTHING he worked for up to protect a pointless lie designed to save the face (HA!) of a dead man. He doesn't seem to care that he has let his body fall by the wayside. If they explain his injuries in the 8 minute thing then I hate this story even more. He doesn't even seem to care that honestly the city is NOT safe or peaceful it's only free of super villains which could have been an interesting idea to explore (I.E. The hero’s most powerful tool is completely removing themselves from the city thus avoiding the creation of a power vacuum that is filled by an equally powered enemy created much the same way or BY the hero himself.), but they completely ignore that idea and move onto Batman just decided to stick his head in the sand and wait for his prom.

Ultimately the opening the film makes two things abundantly clear. Gotham city has calmed down. Police corruption and organized crime, which were major plot elements of the first two films are not only no longer an issue in this film, they have ceased to be a concern of any kind to anyone of importance in story. Gordon and Batman/Wayne have carried the pointless burden of Harvey Dents legacy for far too long, for no reason easily discernible to the audience. We are left with two strong men, capable of great deeds as we have already seen, suddenly broken and tired for reasons left almost entirely unexplained.

Enter Catwoman - a criminally under used element in the story. She has a great introduction with stealing from Bruce Wayne repeatedly and building a rapport and then we have a great conversation with Selena Kyle and Bruce Wayne concerning the inequality of lifestyle and the 'storm' that's coming for the rich and powerful and she has this great speech and then....nothing. She literally does nothing for the rest of the film other than betray Batman to a scarier villain and then walk through the rest of movie all mopey for being a wasted character. Not one single element of the bond that develops in the first hour of the film between Wayne and Kyle is built upon. Not one single iota of her threat to him at the party is of her own doing, she in no way is part of the plan to bring chaos to the city, she merely sits back and watches it happen, and they never even give a reason for her to be aware of what Bane is planning to do.

Bane is easily the most interesting character in the film, not because of the background they give him or the character build they give him, but because he is one of two main characters that are doing SOMETHING REASONABLE. Banes motivation makes sense, his actions make sense. His secret base at first doesn't make any sense until it turns out that it's literally right under Wayne Enterprises applied sciences secret piggy bank of toys...wtf? Why is Fox's secret base literally on the first floor directly above a massive sewer room? Your secret 'off the books” hiding place is bad and you should feel bad! From the point that Bane connects directly the rest of film he ceases to make any sense what so ever. His plan is pretty and diabolical but doesn't make even one tiny amount of sense. See, Bane kidnapped the only scientist in the world that figured out a way to turn the ONLY perfectly stable fusion energy system on the planet into a very, very, VERY slow fusion time bomb. How slow does it have to be to say very three times? FIVE MONTHS. Yes the bomb will explode in five months if not stopped by any one of the 625,000 people in the city of Gotham. Bane is hoping that fear will keep them from banding together and stopping it. BTW I’m using the population of Boston ‘cause I felt like even though they used New York for distance shots of the city, because Boston’s population was a more reasonable number to cling to.

Before I get into the rest of the film I would very much like to know why the scientist who figured out how to turn the possibly not even real fusion energy system that Wayne Corp owned into a fusion bomb (every thermonuclear bomb/missile in existence today is a fusion weapon.) So this scientist has figured out how to turn something of which there is ONLY 1 of on the earth to something of which there are THOUSANDS of. Why couldn't this guy turn every fusion bomb into one of these Fusion energy systems? And getting beyond that, why did Bane need some extremely convoluted plan to get the Wayne Corp fusion system when he could just get literally ANY ONE of thousands of thermonuclear weapons from around the world? Why was the Wayne Corp system so special? Why only use one roving bomb in the city? Why not take control of ONE American naval vessel and take the missiles out of that and then have to fight Steven Seg – wait wrong movie.

The only other character of interest is Blake, who might as well have been Batman for this story because he did the most detecting and actual hero work. Everything that Blake did in this film Batman NEEDED to be doing. Breaking down Banes plan, being smarter than the cops, being the logical cool head of the movie that wanted to in the end at the very least save the kids. But while Blake is doing all of this we are watching Bruce Wayne heal his broken back and get not only out of a hole but from the other side of the planet with no funds, and no way to have Alfred sneak him back into the quarantined city. Which he does in just under five months. Lucky him. So instead of seeing Batman 'Rise' by putting in the hard work hours to re-earn the love and trust of Gotham city and PROVE that he wasn't the villain in the case of Harvey Dent we are left with Blake who they then sort of toss a bone to him by either making him Nightwing or the New Batman.

So why is the movie called “The Dark Knight Rises”? Because they connected back to the well that Bruce fell into as a child. The prison that he climbs out of is his emotional version of a resurrection, the time when he throws the weight of his decisions from the second film off his back and climbs out of the dark pit of his living death and crawls back to the light of the world, newly afraid and ready to kick ass in the name of Gotham. The only part of this that fails to work is the fact that we aren't given a chance to see Bruce Wayne weighed down by the decisions made in the film. Yes he gets his back broken but the splitting with Alfred, the loss of Gordon as an ally, the problems in the city, even the loss of his company pretty much do NOTHING to affect him past the moment in which they happen. So by the time we are told that this hole he is in is a form of resurrection it only works on a very minor level because we haven't really had time to see him under the emotional pressure of the burdens he bears, even though we know he bears them, ultimately the escape from the hole is inevitable and the character fails to show or express ANY emotional growth.

Gotham is much the same as Batman. After the first two highly random and dangerous events that are the first two films, I find myself not only wondering why anyone would choose to live in Gotham but why the city continues to function at all. Both of these questions could have been very interesting to see Nolan answer but he skips past both of these and lands on “how do you hold a major metropolitan area hostage for the better part of a year and get both the citizens, the public safety workers, the national guard, the military, the government, and the United Nations to do absolutely nothing. In fact, the threat of blowing up the city is such a great deterrent that they put one cop on one bridge to tell people to go home should they storm the bridge. What happened to seal teams? “We will not negotiate with terrorists!” The swat cops and other public servants with weapons in the city itself? Did they just give all that shit up like “oh shit there’s a bomb on a truck, Bane! Please take all my guns!”? Ultimately we are presented with a city and by extension a nation that is perfectly willing to sit back, do absolutely nothing to stop the villains, the bomb, or save the city in any way. I don't count sending in the group of random guys who then immediately get shot after an info dump because it was a waste of time but they needed a somewhat plausible reason to explain what was going on in the city as the audience was just with Batman for the last twenty minutes half way around the world. The city clams up, goes into hibernation and refuses repeatedly to save itself, until they have like fifteen minutes left, then the three thousand cops that have been living in collapsed tunnels for three months (released by the batwings missiles) emerge after months of captivity wearing pristinely clean and immaculate uniforms, well fed, and somehow in fighting shape. So the city and the plot really skip FIVE months like it meant nothing and then the cops, and ONLY the cops gather to fight the bad guys, to say nothing of the firemen, the military folks who were there on leave, the national guard members, or any other civil servants and first responders that happened to be in Gotham at the moment that the city became locked down (unless you’re Bruce Wayne). But no just the cops who somehow lost their guns in that five month period because even though fully armed SWAT guys walked into those tunnels they all came up funny hat wearing beat cops with night sticks where their service revolvers should be. Bane and Batman get in on this cops and crooks beat down as the city slumbers (except for the boys home kids who get put on the ONLY BUS IN THE ENTIRE GOTHAMN METRO AREA) Bane and Batman get busy with their Rocky IV fight and punch each other in the head and chest repeatedly (cause time bomb not important only boxing important!) Until Miranda Tate stabs Batman with a Kryptonite knife...I think it's Kryptonite cause that's the only reason I can think of for him to be all “I suck again” while it's in him but then back to being awesome once he pulls it out.

Here comes the part where I backtrack and point out that I'm skipping a lot of really beyond stupid plot shit, but I will sum up. Bane's more convoluted plan was to work as a mercenary for the guy who was trying to woo Miranda Tate in the beginning of the film. See he wants control of Wayne Enterprises and figures the best way to do that is to have a bunch of mercenaries break into the Gotham Stock Exchange (Think the NYSE) and break into the computer system and using Wayne's stolen fingerprints (courtesy of Catwoman) to trade away Wayne’s entire fortune, including the company, so that Daggatt could buy it all. In response to this disaster Wayne gives the company to Miranda Tate, much like he gave it to Fox in the first film, only Tate turns out the be the ultimate villain. Bane kills Daggatt because he has outlived his usefulness, which is questionable at best because really this whole idea is ludicrous at best. So then Miranda Tate has control of the fusion device and sort of pretends to be a victim when Bane takes control and forces them to access it to turn it into a bomb, then she sits around some more while Bane makes a bunch of speeches about not taking shit from rich folks no more ‘cause were going to burn this mother down. Then, when Batman and Bane are having it out and you think Bane is this badass who climbed out of the same prison Batman did, you find out that no, it was Miranda all along and fuck Bane you actually don't know shit about him other than he's got a mask ‘cause someone cut his pretty face. Then she sort of double deuces both Bane and Batman and lives up to the horrible stereotype that women cannot drive by crashing the truck with the bomb in it and dying after an action scene where her truck sloughs off like sixteen direct missile hits...wtf. Goodbye Miranda Tate.

For fun go back and watch the blond rip off of Harvey Dent police guy at the end of the movie. He goes from pistol to random ass assault rifle to random ass being dead, you don't see him switch weapons, you don't see him die, it’s just three cuts in less than thirty seconds and it's good bye dip shit blond cop guy. It made me laugh.

So Batman and Bane go back to beating each other about the head and shoulders except Catwoman shows up and shoots the hell out of Bane with the Batcycle guns, which is probably better than finding out that his face mask just had Juicy Juice in it.

In the end, after gratuitous action scenes, Batman sacrifices himself (or did he?) to fly the bomb thing out into the ocean which will cause no harm at all to Gotham's fishing or aquatic industries in any way. Alfred gets his Goodwill Hunting ending, Fox somehow avoids indictments for being the worst CEO in the history of companies that took on military hardware contracts (oh wait – that’s not so hard). Commissioner Gordon stayed Commissioner Gordon, Blake, whose middle name is (da da DAA!) Robin, gets a geocaching clue from the Wayne estate because they declared Bruce Wayne dead, and the relationship that didn't develop between Wayne and Kyle is cemented by seeing them together in Paris, which is good because at least we know they both like Bruce's mothers pearls.

And people continue to live in a city that has been poisoned, spied on, terrorized, and almost blown up all thanks to technology and lax security courtesy of Wayne Enterprises.