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. 

Prometheus

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So I just Bought Prometheus on Blu ray DVD combo pack (I'm thrifty as a mother fucker!) and I wanted to write a little bit about it, so I pulled up my stream of consciousness review of the one and only time I saw it in theaters and thought I would compare it with my review of it on DVD.

First off I can already tell you that just by looking at what the box advertises this is going to be a difficult movie viewing experience. Not only do they advertise 'deleted and extended scenes' and an 'all new ending' but an 'alternate beginning' as well. why not just put a big fucking sticker on the box that says "THIS IS NOT THAT PIECE OF SHIT YOU SAW IN THEATERS. OH NO! THIS SHIT MAKES SENSE, WE PROMISE"* then you see that little star and flip the box over and see it says *promise not a guarantee of any increased, logic, reason, or sense in extras's it's entirely likely this movie is still a teen slasher flick pretending to be a sci-fi movie.

So before I get onto my DVD extended version with new middle, beginning and end, I present to you uncut my stream of consciousness review/critque of Prometheus.

Prometheus: The prequel to the Alien movies. Ridley Scott's not quite full on face raping HR Geiger wet dream. Warning this is a stream of consciousness break down of the film. I'm not being  analytical, although that might change as I get further into this. Major spoilers as I am not even gonna try and avoid beating around the plot points.

So it's way before life on earth. And the scenery is bitchin, An alien Powder's great^30 grandfather drinks a cup of devil snot and falls to pieces in the river (and you were worried about animals making poopies in your tap water). A fuck load of a long time later, humanity in the form of Scientist Adam and Scientist Eve are in Scotland digging up all the things. When Eve finds a picture on a cave wall that apparently is ancient Scottish for "Go here for sexy time Alien life contact" And they are like "hmmm obviously nothing ominous about that at all, sure what the fuck we'll get five guys burgers on the way".

Two years later Prometheus NOT A FIREFLY is about to reach its destination. And the bastard child of Dave and HAL 9000 is playing house (Seriously his name is David, I'm not making a huge leap here), watching the sleeping passengers dreams, making himself look like Peter O'Toole and just generally doing everything in his power to be subtly creepy short of actually touching the cryofrozen crew and making Hannibal noises. Captain Stiffy Mssblanderson wakes up suddenly because the audience was starting to worry this was gonna be some weird art house film like Moon They are about the reach planet LV 223 (savvy Alien(s) fans will note that the planet Ripley and then colonists found the Xenomorphs on was LV 426.) David wakes up the rest of the crew and Miss blanderson gets dressed and has a big ol bowl of cardboard yum yums. The crew consists of an extra from green street hooligans, an MIT nerd that stole an outfit from a random Japanese hoodlum, the basketball player and problem gambler from Down Periscope and PILOT RENEGADE CAPTAIN BLACKY MCAWESOMESAUCE. (he's part pirate cause he plays a tiny accordion). Also in attendance is Scientist Adam who has taken up drinking as an interstellar hobby. Everyone assigns themselves their mandatory social connections and establishing lines of dialog, the Green Street Hooligan is quite confused as he went to sleep wanting to go to Saturn for the Universe Cup and woke up here with a short pamphlet letting him know he was a rocks expert. Miss blanderson tells the assembled crew that it's time to watch an old man on TV talk about stuff like geritol and faith and being rich and how much life sucks when you pee seven times a night and can't pay anyone to pee for you. Then Miss blanderson tells Adam and Eve to explain why the just flew two years for no reason. Also during this scene it's blatantly laid out that David is a Robealot for anyone who didn't get that when he was being awake and subtly creepy like three minutes prior. Any who Adam and Eve are all "Check it out, all across Earth's history in numerous cultures there are these star formations in art that are exactly the same. and we're totally confuzzled because this star cluster ACTUALLY EXISTS but its like twenty Star gate trips away so how the fuck did Mulan and Hercules know about that shit?

(this scene is actually kind of cool it's well paced and it gives the sense that your about to get into something much more interesting and deeper than what actually happens)

 So the crew gets down to doing their thing. the pilot duo from Down Periscope pick up their friendship like no time at all has passed. Adam and Eve are invited into Miss blanderson's quarters/doctors office/escape pod. Adam starts drinking, cause he's gotta build something along the lines of a character for us to care about. Miss blanderson reminds the couple that they can go fuck themselves with their wants and dreams because Weyland paid a Trabrilion dollars for this expedition so the company is gonna get what it came for. The conversation goes a little like this:

Miss Blanderson: thank you for coming into my oddly opulent entirely secure room which has a med station and is actually a standalone rescue ship.

Eve: why did you just tell us all that?

Miss Blanderson: no reason, would you like a drink? David make them drinks.

Adam: I like drinks.

Eve: honey when did this obsession with alcohol start?

Adam: about the time you found out that you're as fertile as Dudeatudes career.

Eve: who?

Adam: exactly, David skip the olives in mine please, i never was one for foreplay.

Miss Blanderson: I have a wall that's a television, see? you thought that was actually a real forest but its not because we're on a space ship.

Eve: no...we were aware, did you ever think this expedition might have cost significantly less than a Trabrillion dollars if your quarters weren't this ostentatious?

Adam: Eve if you don't want your's Ill just take care of it for you.

(Miss Blanderson takes her shot while Adam finishes Eve's drink)

Miss Blanderson: To pointless plot information squeezed into awkward conversations!

Adam: I'm not wearing pants!

David: I would have been fucking GREAT in Laurence of Arabia BTW.

Anywho PILOT RENEGADE CAPTAIN BLACKY MCAWESOMESAUCE (PRCBMAS) has the pilots stop bickering over their bet and land the ship near plot point location Alpha 1, which is a big giant dirt boob.  They park just far enough away to be annoying and have to use that much more fuel in their land vehicles (This will become an issue later, the distance not the fuel). So the bridge crew and Miss Blanderson stay behind as everyone else gets into space suits and their vehicles and head over the hollow dirt boob to investigate.

Inside the dirt boob the scientists hang out and wait for their mapping probes to check the place out and they find that while the planet isn't breathable atmosphere, inside the boob it is. So SIX PHD clad SCIENTISTS decided to TAKE OFF THEIR SPACE HELMETS and breathe the air in an unknown alien inhospitable place....cause....you know, nothing weird or wrong or strange about that at allllllll. They wander around the boob and David turns on a recording that leads them to a door, where a corpse is beheaded against a wall. GSH rock master scientist flips out cause they just found a dead alien body on an alien planet and he apparently wasn't prepared for that having just flown two years to an alien planet in search of alien life (to be fair he wasn't exactly told ahead of the flight why they were going) so he and the other meat sack soon be sacrificed to the plot head off to get a cappuccino while the others open the door and find the severed head, a giant human like stone head statue and a bunch of sorta neo Egyptian vases with devil snot all in them. thankfully the scientists decided to put their helmets back on because well...you know. And start checking this room out. The scientists start dealing with the severed head and David goes into super don't pay attention to me sneaky ninja mode and bags one of the vases of devil snot. They all do this quickly because they get word a silica storm is on the way and that's bad. So man vs storm race ensues.

Upon the completion of a mostly pointless action sequence they get the head and devil snot vase onto the ship and start messing with the head in quarantine. Which explodes and that depresses Adam a lot because he wanted a planet full of magical ninja death metal ponies to hang out with and go on adventures. So he drinks more. David puts devil snot in Adams drink SUPER subtle like Adam discovers that he likes the lime in the coconut so he drinks it all up and goes to hit on Eve.

They Bonercise

twice ( guessing)

PRCBMAS is playing his pirate accordion on the bridge and hits on Miss Blanderson because watching the two scientists video feeds who got left behind in the boob is fucking BORING. Blanderson and PRCBMAS head off to "make sweet sweet off screen cuddle joy time" and the two scientists left behind go back to the giant statue head room and pay no mind to all the sloppy drooling vases, they chill out and talk shit for a while and then notice a white sorta snake thing with no eyes come up out of the river of demon snot. and before you can say "why are people with PHD's so God damned dumb?" the snake thing has multiplied and killed both scientists.

 The next morning everyone refuses to talk about all the sex that happened on the ship and instead we see that Miss Blanderson apparently knows something that David knows as well, WHAT SECRET COULD THEY BOTH SHARE ABOUT THE UNKNOWN INFLUENCE ON THE SHIP? (spoiler: Wheyland is alive and on the ship being old and insane.) (Spoiler the second: this is a prequel to the movie Alien....pssst don't tell nobodies) David goes to check on Adam who is definitely under the influence of new and interesting biological happenings. They decide to go rescue the stranded scientists who they haven't heard from in hours. (nothing out of the ordinary there). Back in the Boob Adam is getting way sicker and Eve is feeling a little under the weather. they find the scientists dead and fear that they have all been contaminated because THEY TOOK THEIR FUCKING HELMETS OFF AGAIN!!!! five PHD's and not one working brain amongst them, fucking shameful. Everyone books it back to the ship where Miss Blanderson has suited up and has a flame thrower ready to smores Adam for being a fucking gross petri dish. Eve is not happy about this. Adam is kinda liking the idea of going out in a blaze of eternally burning flame glory. The scene goes a little like this:

Miss Blanderson: Hey Adam Truth or Dare?

Adam: Dare

 Miss Blanderson: I dare you to let me set you on fire.

 Adam: ok

 (Miss Blanderson burns Adam alive. Even is less than thrilled.)

 Eve: Bitch just toasted my man!

 Mis Blanderson: I DONT EVEN KNOW WHY I'M IN THIS MOVIE!!!!

 (Everyone goes inside for grilled cheese sandwiches)

David quarantines and inspects Eve only to find out that she is indeed with fetus. Eve is once again less than thrilled and demands an abortion as she had the sex less than ten hours previous but the fetus is three months along. David suggests Cryo back to earth because well it's a theme in these movies. Forced impregnation is scary shit kids, don't mess with it. When your partner says NO it means NO, unless your playing freaky BDSM games which is a whole different mess.

Any who Eve sneaks off to get the surgery machine in Miss Blanderson's  escape pod/quarters to do a Cesarian section on her and its a genuinely creepy awesome scene that ends with her getting stapled back together while her squid fetus thing is in forceps above her torso flailing around and being gross and super creepy and just fucking insane. She gets out safely and David is all "bitch, I just lost the game." everyone in the theater and on the planet groans with frustration and Eve is all "I just cut a space squidlet out of my own body and you fucking say something about some stupid internet fad? Go back to the X-men movies." Sense everything has gone to shit city Wheyland is woken up from cryosleep to absolutely no one's surprise...wait? what?....Eve was fucking surprised he was on board?...for serious....well you are correct she did just have an emergency C-section style abortion so she's probably pretty tired and wiped out mentally so maybe she chose to ignore all the "clues" the movie kept dropping like big super obvious bread crumbs, but considering the other intellectual leaps of faith she took this one genuinely surprises me that they had her be surprised.

They take Wheyland to see the last living Engineer on the planet…cause this place is exactly where you want to take a frail old man who want's to meet "god". So they take the old man into the same place where demon snot mutated into penisnakes and skull fucked two guys to death, (Hollywood is liberal but the penis is scary…whaddagonnado?) Except they go past the sign that says "you must be this old or this robotic to ride this ride" and wake up the last cast member on the supernap extravaganza, which is when he promptly realizes that holy shit our way to convoluted etchasketch chemical weapon species has come back to wipe us all out because…tacos, KILL ALL THE PEOPLES!!! and kills the old man (super useful character there, cannot wait to see how we were supposed to derive anything from his time on screen at all, but hey lets wait to see all the deleted scenes he was in.) And rips Davids head off which is cool and not at all bad cause he is a robot and survives as sort of a severed head kinda creepy edgar allan poe wrote Lawrence of Arabia kinda way.

Any who the Now awoken and very pissed off engineer is rampaging after Eve and not that its hugely important but this is about the time all hell kinda breaks loose, and I start to really loose track of why any of this shit is happening….WAIT I REMEMBER! so the engineer starts the ship which is supposedly going to go back to earth and etchasketch shake the planet cause the current drawing sucks and obviously we don't want that so EVE tells the captain over the com channel that they have to stop the Engineer ship that is going to take off and nuke Earth. Eve makes a run for it and the ground is opening up and its a wild action scene and PRCBMAS and the pilots decide "fuck it we were never making it to the sequel" so they use the prometheus NOT A FIREFLY to ram the alien ship which does catastrophic damage and Miss Blanderson is not on the ship no mores cause she jettisoned her super expensive escape pod 1/5 of the fucking ship and yet still ends up along with Eve trying to outrun the crashing alien spaceship the long way rather than running a shorter distance to the side and she gets squished…good bye Miss Blanderson.

So Now the escape pod is the only part of the prometheus NOT A FIREFLY that is left and there is alien spaceship wreckage everywhere and Eve is all "fuck it I'll fly the escape pod out of here." which is exactly where she and the Engineer have their final showdown. With fighting and kicking and shoving and…wait no she unleashes her abortion alien on the Engineer and they fight it out instead. Which is awesome because we're about to see what EVERYONE wanted this whole movie to be about in the first place. The engineer looses to squidbortion and it impregnates him face hugger style and Eve goes back to the launch control room to get David's head and they then commandeer an alien ship of their own and go look for another alien planet to land on and fuck around with. Then we cut back to the dead Engineer and see that the thing in its stomach pops out and the first baby alien is born. SO Aliens are devil snot, prematurely dug out of a human woman, which impregnated an Engineer, and then properly birthed creepy explodo style….QUESTIONS WERE ANSWERED!!!!!!!!!!!

Ultimately there are many interesting things about Prometheus that would make for a fascinating story what with the idea that we were a faulty science experiment, that biology is a play thing to other beings as machinery is a play thing to us, the dependent and very dysfunctional balance between science and faith, the all consuming power of corporations, and the danger of educated ignorance, but what the film develops in its first 20 minutes is never again referenced or expanded upon. From the second that Elizabeth responds the the question "What evidence do you have that the engineers engineered us?" with the simple statement "It's what I choose to believe." we see that the film maker has chosen to accept what the audience has seen in the pre credits sequence as a form of faith for the main character. She has seen nothing more than cave paintings and has incredibly accurately surmised that these taller drawings are aliens that created man, the audience knows that this is true in the context of this story because we saw it happen but Elizabeth is pulling fictions out of her asshole and with her single statement of belief we are exiting a story about science and discovery and entering a story based on faith and obsession. Do not be fooled by the spaceship or the psudoscience jargon, this movie is as much or more a way of looking at man kinds relationship with "god" than it is about exploration and finding 'answers". Faith needs no answers all it requires is continued subscription to an unchanging idea. And if the Engineers represent 'god' in this story, then ultimately we must assume that the dead engineer in 'Alien' is also God and it remarkably changes the entirety of the Alien saga for one simple reason. The xenomorphs in all four films, represent the 'Devil". The heart of 'god' torn out and corrupted by the sins of man and science. The sins of turning your back on faith and choosing to require concrete answers and explanations, the sins of expectation and demand. The film is very clear on the fact that God cannot withstand the introspective and curious nature of man kind, it ultimately destroys him and frees the devil to wreak havoc on the universe.

But that doesn't explain away the incredibly large number of weaknesses in the script. From the point that we see Elizabeth's dream sequence logic is no longer a point of interest in the film. We are given assumptions, superstitions and incredibly un reasonable behaviors to explain away the reasoning behind the plot points in the film.

with 17 people on board all of whom are highly skilled and intelligent as we assume the would have to be in order to warrant being hand picked for an interstellar mission of discovery, you have several scientists two of whom spent their LIVES trying to figure this puzzle out, who upon getting to the planet and checking out the first artificial formation they could find and seeing some dead bodies both of these incredibly well educated and intelligent individuals decide that means the ENTIRE planet is dead. And because the story of the film needs the entire planet to be dead their assumptions are in fact correct, but there is not a single shred of evidence that any of what happened at the location they arrive at has effected anything other than the location they are currently inspecting. But the story needs the engineers to be dead so the entire planet is dead. The movie then sloppily damages this incredibly ignorant assumption beyond repair by allowing the characters to find an engineer in stasis, why was this engineer in stasis? Because the humans had to eventually meet their 'god' and discover it to be a raging mass murdering psycho that will chase them around. There is no logic given for the engineer to be in stasis, Not a single person wonders what else might be happening on this particular moon. Every single character makes MASSIVELY unreasonable jumps in logic and base almost all activities and behaviors on the fact that the first structure they found on the the moon is some how the ONLY location they need to inspect, or investigate. It would be like aliens landing on Earth for the first time and checking out Chernobyl for two days and then deciding that the entire planet MUST be dead because this one location is fucked. These people did not die at the hands of an incredibly volatile alien world, they died because they were all stupid.

The best and clearest way I can sum up how much this movie doesn't care about logic, character consistency, or making any kind of sense beyond it's chosen metaphor's is with the Rock obsessed mowhawk scientist. He has these mapping droids that he unleashes and they map everything out and create a map, back at the spaceship. This is beyond retarded for two reasons. Why does this guy not have like a tablet or a wrist projector to see the map his droids create? You want to be able to see the map your robots are making. Having it projected back at the ship wheres it is literally useless, is beyond stupid. Then if that were't enough, the map/rock scientist is one of the people who gets lost trying to get back to the vehicle, which is fantastic because he leaves before everyone else and still somehow gets turned around, which would never have happened if he had a way to see the stupid fucking map his robots made…but then he wouldn't have died to penisnake and thats the whole point of his character.

Interpretation

One of the things I find most entertaining about film is interpreting what I am seeing in ways that were never intended. Forcing a perspective change on a film can turn even the most popcorn laden summer blockbuster into a deeper and often more entertaining experience.Today we're going to look at three films. Blue Crush, The Fast and The Furious, and Ghostbusters.

In The Fast and The Furious we assume that late in the film when Brian reveals his undercover status to Torretto that this is a betrayal and a complete surprise. But if you interpret The conversation between Torretto and Brian when Brian rescues Torretto from the cops that Torretto knows everything about Brian and when he says his name this is sarcasm and disbelief, Brian hasn't fooled Torretto but Torretto chooses to keep this a secret from everyone in the group except for Jessie which also gives Jessie an more interesting angle because Jessie trusts Torretto enough to open up to an undercover cop. It also makes the final reveal conversation between Torretto and Brian a reversal because Brian's not revealing to Torretto at this point, he is revealing to himself as to which side he has chosen. Torretto then hammers the point that choosing a side in this instance has serious consequences for all involved and that it while Brian was confused as to his loyalties Torretto never was, This makes the final race/escape a bit more interesting because Brian isn't choosing Torretto over his law enforcement career, he is apologizing for loosing sight of his job, his goals and for inciting the destruction of Torretto's gang, Torretto gets a free pass and Brain stays behind to face the punishment for loosing sight of who and what he is.

Blue Crush is the story of an up and coming surfer that opens the movie dreaming of a surfing accident she suffered a year previous, we're then treated to a somewhat watchable story of personal and professional redemption, hot girls, happy endings, up beat music and a wish fulfillment sotry that plays out like a Disney Princess story for single moms working through their pregnancies.

But change the interpretation of the film and we assume that her "dream" of the accideent is actually the real accident. Everything after the "dream" is Ann's time in purgatory. Every character represents some aspect of her personality, hopes, dreams, or fears. She is being judged by the almighty as she makes her way through her own personal spiritual trials and in the end she surfs with determination and overcomes her fears. She ultimately "looses" the competition (dies) but becomes "famous" (goes to Heaven).

Ghostbusters might be the most interesting of these examples. Watch the film under the assumption tha the Ghostbusters are the true villians. The entire story hinges on their obsession with paranormal activity. And until they create their trapping and containment systems the amount of paranormal activity seems to be a relatively normal low to non existent. This is why they are kicked off campus for never being able to produce results. There are no ghost sightings in the news, they are focused in an area that is a virtual non issue. But once they take up residence in the firehouse and build their machines (which why they couldn't build these machines using university money is beyond me) The ammount of ghost activity sky rockets. And thus they face the same problem as every other super hero origin story, the nemesis to the hero is created almost entirely out of actions take by the "heroes" yes there were ghosts before the Ghostbusters had their system up and running but the film goes to great lengths to point out that for the most part no one really cared and these guys are hacks. But the further they get into their ghost trapping adventures the more and more crazy stuff keeps happening. Enter Dana Barret and her apartment building, (which was there for a very long time before the Ghostbusters and did absolutely NOTHING). You can make the case that Zuel, the key master, and the gate keeper and the rescue team for the wrongfully imprisoned ghosts being held by the Ghostbusters. Egon at one point in the film miss interprets the data he has collected and blames the ghosts and the evil apartment building on a massive buildup of energy in the NY area. When he should have looked right at his containment system. Which when shut down does basically create the paranormal version of the atomic bomb. Even the key master can see that he and the rest of the rescue team are too late and that the Ghostbusters must be stopped before they use their unlimited funds and technological intelligence to cause more harm to both the physical and metaphysical realms. All the damage and destruction seen in the film comes from wayward ghosts and the proton pack beam's wild flaming arc's of destruction. These are men stupid enough to run around with nuclear weapons strapped to their backs, it's a wonder they didn't just melt the damn city down building them in the first place. Even the Stay Puft Marshmellow man which is a punishment laid upon the Ghostbusters by Zuel comes from Ray's mind, and is just another reminder that Educated ignorance is one of the most violent ways we can destroy ourselves.

So take another look at your favorite films or get a six pack and watch your least favorite films. Take the opportunity to change the accepted interpretations of what your seeing. You'll be surprised how much it can change what your watching.

Project X and the pull out method

Having seen project X twice now I feel like I can comment on it with a clear head. I walked into this movie with little to no expectation or understanding of what I was about to see and came away so incredibly shell shocked that pieces of it stuck in my brain almost like I was there.  My jaw was solidly on the floor for most of the second half and I only came out of my shocked state of overdose as the film was wrapping up. I wanted to come at the film from a more logical angle as the rest of the night after my first viewing my brain was making connections and attaching bits of the film to other films in the house party genre.

Just out of curiosity I wiki'd the movie and am not entirely unsurprised by it's critical reception. Critics tend to dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel elevated and this movie has no desire to elevate anyone. If you have ever gotten drunk or attended a party with more than twenty people over the age of 15 and under the age of 40 then you have a general idea of why critics would hate this film. Hard to love something like "The Blind Side" and even attempt to make a case for something like Project X, which in my opinion is one of the things I like about the film. Unlike most found footage films that try to "place" the camera within the narrative so the characters can ignore it or the audience can basically forget about it, Project X is completely obsessed with it's camera's and by extension fame, from the first frame to the last frame. The whole driving goal of all three of the main characters is to drown themselves in either prestige or infamy and they genuinely do not care which. And in today's celebrity/fame obsessed society I found it incredibly refreshing to see teenage characters that behaved less like adults with smaller bodies and more like actual teenagers. We're talking about the generation that invented sack tapping, they have worse things to worry about then being "likeable". These kids were born with the internet and knowing that your Facebook page can get you on the news, and your life is always public, fame is more than a job for today's youth, it's a wide spread epidemic fed by every aspect of their life.

After my second viewing of the film I am of two minds. The first viewing made me feel like the film had chosen a direction and a conclusion that was going to cement the whole narrative far above other movies in this genre. The found footage aspect makes it easy to suspend disbelief as the party gets further and further out of control, and for the most part the film does a decent job not only creating an epic party experience but laying out the consequences of what should happen if Thomas and his friends get "out of control" or "irresponsible". The first half of the film doesn't do nearly as good a job identifying the main characters as disrespected nerds as Weird Science does and the consequences/stakes are not nearly as high as they are in Risky Business but this film has the kind of party that house party movies have wanted to have sense the genre was invented. That was the whole driving point of this film. And the fact that for their actual plot line they borrow heavily from both Risky Business and Weird Science and probably many other house party movies can be easily overlooked. In fact the film basically removes any chance of redemption for any of the characters once party goes get into the house. It should ruin the tension of the narrative structure but considering the events of the party and the infectious unbelievable feel of the film it's easy to forget that this is not a cause and effect story, this is a "How much legendary shit can we fit into a ninety minute excuse to destroy the Warner Brothers Ranch street lot." So the whole point of the film isn't wondering how the hell the characters are going to avoid the consequences of this completely awesome disaster of a night but to count young boobs, remember your youth and thank God (if you're like me) that you never did anything remotely this stupid (no matter how hard you actually tried to).

The film does ultimately fail to cash in on its found footage structure. It's third act is pure Hollywood magic as the kids parents casually accept the fact that their home/entire neighborhood has burned to the ground, the best friends meet with minor (considering the events that take place) consequences and the fact that they will all be in debt/civil court for the rest of their lives as minor trivialities compared to the legendary fame they have gained at their high school and with the media. Their efforts were a complete success, not a single serious downside to the entire night is shown accept for the person who filmed the whole mess who is under suspicion of killing his parents (don't make your own movies kids only freaks and psycho's take Hollywood's job away from them).

For me as a viewer considering the epic level of chaos that is presented to the audience the lack of consequences and the reaction of the parents/neighborhood/school weakened the entire film. There was a point when Thomas and friends are on the roof of the garage looking over what they have brought upon their neighborhood and a media helicopter shines a light down on Thomas and he double deuces the news chopper and the message is clear "we understand the generation before us sold our private lives to the highest bidder and we have no secrets from the world, you wanted to see everything all the time? this is the consequences, the yin to the yang of no more privacy is never being able to shut out the constant stream of data. No privacy doesn't just mean you get to spy on your neighbors it means you can't NOT spy on your neighbors, a luxury we are just now starting to understand.

Project X could have been an extremely well done cautionary tale about how social media saturation and technology are causing our lives overlap in ways we still do not understand fully. What it ends up being is a possibly the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to showing what kids dream of doing every Saturday night. This is not the first film that has failed to capitalize on its first two acts with a strong third act, Daybreakers tacked on a weak sequilzed ending to an otherwise solid film and it weakened the entire film. Project X needed to have a third act that was just as crazy over the top as its first two. The parents needed to be world destoryingly pissed off, we needed to see the neighborhood in the light of day with the family looking over the distruction and the kid looking at his dad and saying "hey once the fire department lets us get back to the house, you will see there is not 1 single towel by the hot tub!" Yes he and his friends reached infamy but the third act shows that mainstream Hollywood is no longer capable of anything other than a "happy" ending or the "twist" ending. and Project X some how fulfills both. Everything magically turns out relatively okay and considering the rest of the film a "happy" ending is a "twist" ending. If they had followed through then Thomas and his friends would have accepted the bad with the "good" like Cameron does when he kicks his dads convertible out the window.

Actions have consequences and this movie has no real consequences for the characters. They get everything they wanted and plan to do it again. Ultimately the message of Project X is disturbingly clear, if you are famous or get famous doing it, Nothing is unforgivable.

Chronicle

I assume for many people the found footage genre began in 1999 with the release of the Blair Witch Project. For weeks all anyone wanted to talk about was "do you think it's real?" "I wonder if they really died?" "holy crap it looks so real" "it was so real it scared me to death!" The hype, style, and the fact that the camera existed within the narrative made it harder to maintain a barrier between yourself and what you were seeing, ultimately people we're able to suspend their disbelief a little further and easier than they had been in Hollywood as of late. Of course it was fake, you paid 8 dollars to see it at your local mall, everyone knew the police were never going to let real footage like that filter out and while it looked rushed and amateur there were things about it that just felt to prepared and practiced and developed, there were points at which you were like "if these people are real they have the worst case of the Hollywood horroretards I've ever seen." But it worked and found footage films pretty much exploded onto the scene.

Interestingly enough for me the terror and awesomeness of found footage started in 1986 with Aliens. The marines we're each equipped with their own camera and vial information screen that the lieutenant could follow back in the too awesome for words armored car. There are scenes when the marines first engage the aliens, when they take you away from the action that's happening and put you in the armored car to watch Riply, Burke, and Goreman react to the fact that the marines are being blended like a banana cherry smoothie. This was awesome, you could see what was happening on the screens, knew that these people were terrified because they were getting a front row premier of what was most likely gonna happen to them and they kept you focused on the action cause the marines cameras had audio too. So you didn't need to be right there cause you were listening to them scream and die and yell at each other and fire weapons you saw how horrible this was on the faces of the people in the car. Ultimately I think this is why found footage can really work as a fictional genre it takes at least some of the barrier between the audience and the subject matter and shreds it completely, and when it really works it takes more of that barrier than you're generally comfortable with away.

Interestingly enough I went to Wikipedia (don't wiki kids it's a gateway information source) and looked up found footage and the genre has a longer history than I was aware of. Guess I'll be doing some more research :)

Stating up front that I liked Chronicle. I think it would have been better to be a full on fiction piece without the format of found footage because while the story is interesting I was left with far too many questions about the non super power elements of the story. Your story has to be MORE interesting than the questions: "Who put this documentary together, How did it get out? What were the effects of these events on the innocent bystanders and other civilians?" Blair Witch was simple "They took the tapes and played them in the theaters" and from the looks of it that's the out that most of these movies use. "Here watch these totally not fake or directed tapes we "found" Chronicle doesn't have that luxury. In the fictional universe of Chronicle someone went through hundreds of hours of footage from security camera's, the boys tapes, girl's blog footage, the traffic camera's, the cell phones and cameras of the people on the space needle, this footage was dispersed all over the city and understanding that the ultimate assembly of the narrative is part of the narrative itself we begin to wonder who put this thing together for us to see. Now normally this is just a minor question but when the boys go back to the sink hole there are park rangers there block things off and the seed that something larger is going on here is planted and instantly your questions about the origin of the assembled film becomes more interesting than the story your watching.

Add the above to the problem every found footage film faces at some point: It requires a little more suspension of disbelief than other presentation formats. You have to accept the fact that they "establish the camera" within the universe of the characters and that everyone will only flip out about the constant filming for a very minor, even trivial amount of time because if the filming character relents and stops filming then BAM! movie over, which is bad. So you have to find a way to make your characters not care about being filmed within their own reality and that's hard, because we in real life don't like being filmed 24/7 and we wouldn't stop hounding people to turn the damn camera off. So there's a disconnect there that makes your brain unable to accept the "reality" of the footage almost from the get go once the characters just decide to go on and accept being constantly filmed in really extraordinary circumstances.
Found Footage can be an awesome presentation tool, but if your story goes like this:

CHARACTER: "I'ma start filming 24/7 for no good god damned reason"

And the next thing you know the craziest shit humanly possible goes down for questionable at best reasons? YOU HAVE A NARRATIVE STRUCTURE PROBLEM. Yes it's a bummer but you can fix it with just a little creativity.

Chronicle has this problem. And their attempt at making it seem normal is to follow our camera wielding character around his normal everyday depressingly less than average world. And when the movie begins to get crazy or in ANY WAY interesting it's because two other characters find a fucking plot hole. It's a hole in the ground and it moves the plot along. I am not making this shit up. This is also where you begin to wonder who assembled all this found footage because the kids lost their first camera in the crater that Kal-El's baby carriage was in. And sense we're seeing it assembled that means someone went in and at the very least got the camera, and I'm assuming retrieved Superman's spaceship and took it to Area 51. Am I supposed to be asking these questions? Considering the movie not only doesn't address them at all, but pretty much chooses to ignore the plot hole once things go wakadoodle I am assuming they were hoping against hope that we would just go "crazy living tentacle covered space diamond that turns out to be a brain warping vending machine? Nah I don't want to know more about that, 30 minutes of practical jokes and telekinetic pranks AWAY!"

The interesting thing is that the camaraderie works for me. I like the trio as they develop and it's genuinely disappointing to see the downfall of everything. But I cannot help but admit that every time I expected the movie to finally deal with the fact that these kids we're about as secretive and subtle as a jack hammer and yet received no calls from any shadowy government or black suited agency type really confused me. Again taking me away from the strengths of found footage and pushing me squarely into "Damn I wish this was just a 'Normal' movie" territory. Hell even a conversation that looked like this:

"Why don't you think the men in black have knocked on our door yet?"

"Are you stupid? That Will Smith crap doesn't exist in the really real world."

would have at least addressed the very real feeling that there is a whole half of this narrative that we're missing because they couldn't figure out how to wedge it into the found footage format. Again creativity here is not a sin. About the furthest into really left brain creativity they get is the scene at the top of the space needle with the bystanders phones and the girlfriend filming for her blog, because well they needed an excuse for her to be filming her half of EVERYTHING.

Ultimately I left the theater with more questions than I wanted to have, but found myself genuinely enjoying what I had seen. there were some interesting attempts to craft solutions to the technical problems prevalent in "found footage" genre films but ultimately I think that they paid far to much attention to the camera as an object in the environment, I do look forward to seeing a "found footage" film that finds a way to seamlessly insert the camera into the narrative with out making it a burden or an often unnecessary catalyst/ topic of conversation.