Super, Man

Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! And he's wearing proper red trunks like he's supposed to!

This illustration had a long and tortuous journey from my mind to the screen. I first sketched it out about four or five years ago, then stuck it in a folder and promptly forgot about it. With this year being the 75th Anniversary of Superman plus the new movie coming out, I dusted it off and finally finished it.

Originally this was going to be a generic superhero rather than Superman. He was wearing a red suit with a yellow cape and trunks. I hated that color combo though and went through dozens of others without success. Finally I decided I was working so hard to not make him look like Superman that it would be far easier to just give in and go for it. So now he's Superman.

The clouds were kind of a happy accident. Originally the background was just gonna be clear blue sky, but I thought that looked too plain and bare. So I decided to add some clouds. I figured it would take me all day to draw decent looking ones but I started doodling around with a fuzzy brush and miraculously got them right on the first go. It was a Fonzie moment-- I looked at them, realized I couldn't improve them, spread my hands thumbs up and said, "Ayyyyyyyy." OK, so I didn't really do that, but I thought about it.

I tried to draw and paint more loosely here than usual and let the brush strokes show. For some reason that's a big struggle for me-- I tend to draw everything tight and precise. It's looser than normal here but I still don't think it's loose enough. I need to keep at it.

Lastly I meant for it to appear as if the viewer is on the ground looking up as Superman flies overhead. Hopefully it reads that way and doesn't look like a side view.

Supes went through many looks until I finally settled on one I could live with. The one on the left was the original digital sketch I did. The middle one is the more detailed and fleshed out digital sketch. As you can see he was looking a bit chunky here. The image on the right is the color version, based on the middle sketch.

I was about 90% finished with this version when I decided I hated it. I don't know if it was the doughy proportions or what, but I just couldn't stand it. So i started over.

I did a few more digital sketches and finally settled on this one. He's quite a bit sllimmer here.

I tried some different lighting effects in this illustration, and I really wanted to make it look like the sun was filtering through his red cape. I had no idea how to go about that though, so I did something rare for me-- I took some reference photos. I actually went outside on a sunny day and shot some photos of a Superman action figure to see how his cape looked in the sun.

It came out OK, but it's still not perfect. I can live with it for now though.

Superman was drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet.

It Came From The Cineplex: The Purge

So far Summer Movie Season 2013 is a big bust as far as I'm concerned. Big budget blockbusters are premiering every weekend but none have succeeded in connecting with me yet. Sadly, The Purge continues that trend.

The Purge was written and directed by James DeMonaco, the writer of Skinwalkers, Assault On Precinct 13 (the remake) and Jack (the one where Robin Williams is ten years old but looks like Robin Williams). Now that's an eclectic resume. Not a good one by any means, but boy is it eclectic! 

The basic concept of the Purge-- a society in which all crime is legal for one night a year-- is an intriguing one. Sadly the idea is wasted on a bland and pedestrian home invasion story. Imagine if instead of the script we got we'd have followed a group of characters trying to find shelter in a city during the Purge. Then maybe we'd have had something.

How did the world get this way? We get little or no information as to the origins of the Purge and precious few of the rules, as if the director isn't interested in how this world works or how it got this way.

The only real rules we're told is that the use of weaponry above Class 4 is prohibited, and Level 10 government officials are off limits. I assume that means no using nukes against the President.

What the hell is this film? A satire? A black comedy? Horror film? It seemingly tries to be all of these, but doesn't go far enough in any category. It could have been a scathing commentary on our society-- the One Percent vs. The Poor or the Tea Party and all that, but instead it's just dull, listless film that doesn't mean a thing.

The Purge had a budget of just $3 million dollars, less than what some movies spend on their craft service. Maybe they should have spent a little more and sprung for a decent script. It definitely looks like a low budget film; there are few if any special effects and no prosthetic makeup to speak of. In fact the whole thing seems like a SyFy movie that was released to the theater by mistake.

Hollywood loves these low budget blockbusters (think the interminable Paranormal Activity series) because they make an incredible profit on them. Don't be surprised if Universal greenlights The Purge 2 soon.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
The year is 2022. One night a year America celebrates The Purge-- an event in which any and all crime is legal for a period of twelve hours. 

On the night of The Purge, the Sandin family is hunkering inside their spacious and secure home. Their idiot son deactivates their security system to let a homeless man in. Later a group of young psychopaths who were hunting the homeless man show up, demanding the Sandins turn him over. Chaos ensues, there's lots of blood and death and little sense.

Pros:
• Honestly, I got nothin.'

Cons:
• The entire concept of The Purge brings up so many questions. We're told that all emergency services are suspended during the event. So if your appendix bursts or you have a heart attack, I guess you're just sh*t out of luck. What if your house catches fire for non-Purge reasons? Or you're in an auto wreck? Too bad for you!

Think of the millions in property damage that would occur as a result of The Purge. Broken windows, vandalized cars and homes, arson-- it would take months to clean it up and sort it all out.

I can only imagine the hundreds of thousands of lawsuits that would arise from such a situation. Or would Purge-related lawsuits be prohibited? We'll never know, as the screenwriter couldn't care less about the specifics of his own concept.

• So all crime is legal during The Purge, but the movie ignores every illegal act except for murder, which of course is the least interesting thing it could do.

Think of all the things they could have touched on that would have been way more interesting. What about embezzlement? Hack into your bank, transfer millions into your account and boom! You're rich and no one can prosecute you. Or steal a new car from the auto dealership. You could rape, pillage and burn with no consequences whatsoever. You could illegally download all the music you wanted!  

• As The Purge begins we see the Sandlin family cowering inside their home, hoping to wait out the event in safety and seclusion. Why risk it? Why not just pack up and leave the country during The Purge? The Sandlins are obviously rich, surely they could afford four plane tickets to Paris.

Or is The Purge a world-wide event? I doubt it, as all the newscasts keep saying it's the brainchild of "our New Founding Fathers." Are American citizens allowed to leave the country in 2022?

• The Purge is a nation wide event, but once it begins we're stuck inside the Sandlin home. Keeping the film locked down inside one location becomes absolutely claustrophobic after a while.

• This is one of those movies that can only work if every character acts like a complete and utter idiot. If everyone had displayed even an ounce of common sense, there's no way the plot would have been able to proceed.

First there's daughter Zoey's boyfriend Henry. Zoey's father James has forbidden her from seeing her boyfriend because he's a couple of years older. Henry's solution to this dilemma is to shoot James during The Purge. Did he even once think this plan through? "There ya go, Baby! I fixed everything. Do you still love me now that I killed your father?"

Then there's the Sandlin's weirdo son Charlie. He watches the video monitors and sees a Homeless Man being chased down their street, and decides to deactivate the goddamned security system to let him in. Let me repeat that: During an event in which the public is encouraged to kill one another, he lifts the steel doors and windows protecting his home and family to let a complete stranger into their home.

I must say when James finds out what his son did he takes it better than I would have. I'd have lifted the security doors one more time-- to throw son Charlie outside on his ass.
 
Then there's daughter Zoey. After her father kills her psycho boyfriend Henry, she runs off and hides somewhere in the darkened home,putting herself at risk of accidentally being shot by her parents.

It's honestly hard to feel anything for these characters when they act so ridiculously stupid. I was on the verge of rooting for them to die.

• After the Sandlins let the Homeless Man inside their home, a group of young masked psychos shows up. It seems they were hunting the man and are quite put out that the Sandlins are sheltering their "prey." The Psychos give them an hour to release the Homeless Man or they'll breach the Sandlin home and kill everyone inside.

So the Sandlins took the Psycho's "prey." Big deal! Go find another homeless guy to kill. Surely there's more than one in this city? 

• James Sandlin's occupation is selling advanced home security systems designed to withstand The Purge. Unfortunately for his customers and for James himself, his security systems are laughably inept.

First of all, the Psychos cut the power to the Sandlin home. Not much of a security system if it can be disabled by cutting the electrical line leading to your house. The security system still works (on batteries!) but it seems like the regular power should be protected somehow as well.

Then when the Sandlins fail to release the Homeless Man, the Psychos get a truck and somehow tie a chain to the front door and pull it off the house, allowing them to enter. As part of the security system, the front door was covered by a thick, steel door. It had a couple of window slits in it, but was otherwise perfectly smooth. There was no doorknob, hinges or protrusions.So how'd the Psychos attach a chain to it?

• The director fails miserably at giving us a sense of the space of the house. I have no idea how many rooms there were or where they were in relation to one another. This may not seem like that big a deal, but compare it to films like When A Stranger Calls. The director of that movie was very careful to give you a complete sense of the layout of that home. You knew exactly where you were and what rooms were around you at all times.

• Late in the film the Sandlin's neighbors show up to kill them. The neighbor characters all seem like they're in a completely different movie. They all act in a very broad and satirical manner. It makes it hard to take the movie seriously when the characters aren't.

When you've got a premise as unlikely as this one, your actors need to play it absolutely straight in order to sell the reality of it. Letting them go over the top as they do turns the whole thing into a farce. 

• The neigbhors' motivation for wanting to kill the Sandlins was a little sketchy as well. They're jealous that James has enough money to build a new wing on their house. That's it. That's apparently reason enough to murder an entire family. Damn, what would they do they do if they let their grass get too high, draw and quarter them?

I get that the neighbors feel James got rich by preying on their Purge fears and selling them all high-priced security systems, but big deal. He didn't force them to buy, did he?
 
• Did anyone NOT foresee the homeless guy coming back to save the Sandlins?

But why would he? Earlier in the film they came very close to handing him over to the Psychos and Mrs. Sandlin even stuck a letter opener into his open wound to torture him!

• We're told several times that one of the benefits of The Purge is that it lets citizens release their frustrations. What frustrations? I get that the poor would have plenty, but other than the Homeless Guy we never see anyone from that side of the tracks. All we see are a bunch of rich and privileged white people who live in expensive homes and shouldn't have any reason to feel frustrated.

• The film tells us that in 2022 unemployment is at an impossibly low 1%. This is because the rich survive The Purge because they can afford to protect themselves behind reinforced doors, while the poor become prey. Apparently the screenwriter believes the solution to the unemployment problem is to "decrease the surplus population." Just like Scrooge said!

Trouble is our society needs the poor in order to function. Without low-paying service jobs, who's going to serve us our McBurgers? Pick up the trash? Stock our shelves? Sweep up school kids' vomit with red sawdust?

I think the screenwriter has a fuzzy idea (at best!) of economics.

An intriguing concept that's absolutely wasted. Muddled, confused and claustrophobic. I give it a D+.

Out Of Context Family Affair Moment

So a couple days ago I'm watching the first season of Family Affair and this happened:

Whaddya think? Too easy?

HAW, HAW! Making fun of the past and the way language changes over time is hilarious!

Under WHERE?

For good or ill, the new Superman er, Man Of Steel movie opened today. It definitely looks good, but there are several things in the trailer that are raising red flags in my mind. I'm trying my best no to let my hopes get too awfully high by a movie, lest they be dashed on the rocks again (I'm lookin' at you, Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness).

One thing I already absolutely, positively can't stand before I even see a frame of the film is the disturbing new Superman costume.

I hate everything about it. The dirty, dingy colors, the weird Art Deco flourishes, the arrows pointing toward his ample package (as if we could miss it!) and the scaly reptilian texture covering every inch of it. The whole thing is just downright ugly and very off-putting.

The worst part about though it is the lack of Superman's iconic red underpants. I don't know whose boneheaded idea it was to get rid of them, but they need a good firin,' and fast. Yes, I know that the "no underwear look" is how he currently appears in the comics, but that doesn't make it right. 

No matter how good the movie may turn out to be, I'm never going to be able to get over his lack of drawers. He looks positively naked without them. Something about the solid blue suit makes me very uncomfortable, like I should avert my eyes. "Hey Superman! Go put some damn pants on! There's kids over here!"

So to remedy this dire situation, I'm thinking of starting up a new Kickstarter project. I want to design some kind of computer app that will automatically superimpose a pair of red underwear over Superman's body, wherever he appears. Theaters, TV, DVD, cereal boxes, print, you name it. If you can see him, my new app will cover up his nether regions. 

Never again will you feel uncomfortable watching Superman parade around half nude in a disturbing scaly suit. With my new app you'll see him the way he was meant to be.

I figure the results of the app will look something like this. See? That's better already!

Now all I need is several hundred thousand bucks, someone who knows programming inside and out and a couple of theoretical scientists who can figure out how to project the image of a pair of red underwear over any piece of Superman merchandise that anyone anywhere happens to be looking at, worldwide, any time of the day or night. Sounds pretty simple to me.

Who's with me? Together we can change Superman back to the way he was meant to be! Fully clothed!

Family Circumspect

Take a look at this recent Family Circus comic. When I was a kid and I'd see these drawings I really did think that Bil Keane's son Billy actually filled in and drew his comic for a week. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Lie #1: Bil Keane allegedly based the strip on the antics of his family, but he never had a son named Billy. He did have a son named Jeff who was the inspiration for the Jeffy character in the comic. The Mommy character was based on Keane's real-life wife Thel. 

Lie #2: Even if there was a little Billy, the strip started in 1960 so he'd be close to 60 by now, and would hopefully be able to draw a little better than this.

Lie #3: Bil Keane died in 2011. His son Jeff is now writing and drawing the strip.

As I said, this entire scenario is nothing but a filthy pack of lies!

DVD Covers In Which One Or More Of The Characters Appears To Be Pregnant, But Isn't

I'm starting a new feature here on Bob Canada's BlogWorld-- It's called DVD Covers In Which One Or More Of The Characters Appears To Be Pregnant, But Isn't. I think it's really gonna take off!

Up first is the 2012 made-for-cable movie Strawberry Summer. I'm pretty sure that's not Shelly Long there on the right, so I have to assume it's Julie Mond, a name I don't recognize. If you give this cover a sideways glance it looks like she's at least eleven months pregnant, until you realize it's just an awkwardly placed guitar. 

What's that? Hold on... I'm being told that the normal human gestation period is only nine months. OK fine, she looks like she's at least nine months pregnant. You're sure it's only nine? There's never been some world record where they went for eleven? No? That would be something though, wouldn't it?

Hold on a second-- I'm on the Google right now and it seems that in 1945 there was a case in which a human woman gave birth after 375 days. That's over twelve months! So suck on that, Mr. Editor!

Next up is the 2004 horror movie Taxi, starring Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon. Sadly, I recognize both those names. What's that? Now I'm being told that this isn't a horror movie. With a cast like that you could've fooled me!

Here both characters appear to be at least nine months pregnant (especially Mr. Fallon), but it turns out it's just the unfortunate placement of the car behind them.

I seriously thought Fallon was pregnant in the film for the first thirty or forty times I saw this cover. Let me tell you, that idea severely distorted my idea of what the movie was about. One day I finally realized what I was actually seeing on the cover and it all made more sense. It still wasn't enough to get me to watch it though.

Next is... well, that's about it for now. I kind of thought there'd be more DVD Covers In Which One Or More Of The Characters Appears To Be Pregnant, But Isn't. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea for a new feature after all. Let's forget the whole thing. Sorry I wasted everyone's time. Please go back to diddling with your phones.

Extreme Christmas Creep

I went to Hobby Lobby yesterday to stock up on quiltin' supplies (soon to replace Speed Stacking and X-Treme Puzzling as America's favorite pass time) and while there I noticed they were selling Christmas decorations.*

Christmas decorations. In June.

They didn't yet have an entire corner of the store devoted to Christmas as they usually do; for now it was just one small display of decorations that look like giant lollys or candy canes. Doesn't matter how small the display was, it's still too damned soon. Putting Christmas crap out any earlier than the second week in December is too early if you ask me.

Mark my words: If this Christmas Creep isn't stopped and soon, stores are gonna keep putting their holiday crap out earlier and earlier until we finally loop back around to December and we'll be buying our Christmas 2014 stuff during Christmas 2013.

*Sorry for the lack of photographic proof, but unlike the other 99.9% of the population I don't constantly carry a combination phone, camera, communication and multimedia system with me at all times.

This Is Why Your MuuMuu Doesn't Fit: Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe

This week in Horrifying Food News: it's the release of the Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe.

The appalling sandwich consists of a glazed Krispy Kreme donut that's split in half, slathered with sloppy joe, drowned in a tomato-based sauce and topped with cheddar cheese.

Oddly enough, Krispy Kreme officials were adamant in pointing out that they had nothing whatsoever to do with the ghastly concoction. It's the brainchild of Chicken Charlie's, a purveyor of deep-fried, tallow-based novelty foods at the San Diego County fair. They seem to specialize in ruining other companies' products, as their menu includes Deep-Fried Twinkies, Deep-Fried Oreos, Bacon-Wrapped Pickles and Fried Kool-Aid.

The company's Facebook page has this to say about the pants-splitting new sandwich: "Your stomach will thank you!" If by "thank you" they mean "shut down and refuse to function again," then I would have to agree. Just looking at that thing makes me feel like I need to go for a brisk walk.

Frankly I'm at a loss to understand why Krispy Kreme isn't putting the kibosh on this thing. They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but what about when their product's being used in a way that makes me never want to eat anything ever again?

I can practically feel the North American continent growing heavier as we speak.

It Came From The Cineplex: After Earth

After Earth is the latest from king of the sci-fi summer blockbusters Will Smith and director M. Night Shyamalan.

Smith gets a "story by" credit in the film. Impressed? Well, don't be. His contribution consisted of seeing an episode of the TV series I Shouldn't Be Alive (in which a father and son crashed their car in a remote area and the son had to walk a hundred miles to find help), and commissioning a script based on the episode. So he basically got a writing credit for lying on the couch and watching TV.

Come to think of it, a film based on that original car crash premise might have turned out better than what we got.

Many are saying that the film is nothing more than a vanity project for Smith, designed to jump start his son's acting career. I have no doubt that's true. But so what? Non-actors do this all the time and no one cares. If a plumber brings his son into the business, no one looks at the kid and says, "You only got this job because of your old man." So why is it bad when actors do the same with their kids?

That said, I think it should only be done when the kid shows some true talent, which is most definitely not the case here. I feel like a heel for picking on a kid, but Jaden Smith doesn't have even a fraction of his father's talent or easy-going charm.

I had absolutely no idea this was an M. Night Shyamalan movie until I saw the opening credits. I'm positive this was a deliberate move by the Columbia Pictures marketing department. Shyamalan hasn't exactly been pumping out the blockbusters lately, so they apparently wanted to keep his involvment on the QT, lest his presence chase away potential ticket buyers. 

Actually Mr. Shyamalan probably deserves some kind of award. Not every director can take a magnetic and charismatic actor like Will Smith and turn him into a soulless, unemotional automaton like he is in this film. Congratulations, M. Night!

Some of the philosophy and pop psychology spouted by Will Smith's character sounds a lot like Scientology, which isn't really a surprise. At least no one in the film was named Xenu.

Lastly, Will Smith was hopeful this film would be the first leg of a trilogy. Based on its poor performance at the box office, that seems unlikely.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
After permanently befouling the Earth, humanity leaves and settles on a new planet called Nova Prime. One thousand years later, aliens called Skrels attack the new colony with specially bred monsters (called Ursas) that can smell fear. A ranger named Cypher Raige (Will Smith) discovers the only way to beat them is to not feel fear, rendering yourself invisible to the monsters. This technique is called "ghosting."

Cypher's son Kitai (Jaden Smith) desperately seeks his father's approval and wants to become a ranger like him. The two take a trip on a spaceship as a bonding experience, but the ship crashes on the most dangerous planet in the galaxy: Earth.

With Cypher seriously injured with two broken legs, Kitai must travel through several hundred miles of dangerous wilderness to the tail section of the ship and activate the rescue beacon, all while avoiding the deadly prowling Ursa or both men will die.
 
Pros:
• Kudos to the filmmakers for setting the story a thousand years from now (give or take). It always bugs me when a sci-fi movie features warp drive and other super advanced technology and then takes place in the far-off year of 2030.

That said, according to the official back story, humans were forced to leave the poisoned Earth in 2071. Sigh...

• Everyone in the film speaks with a faux Southern accent, which is an odd choice on the part of the filmmakers. On the other hand people living on another planet a thousand years from now probably would speak differently than we're used to.

Cons:
• Everyone in this movie acts in a very stiff, stilted and stylized manner, almost like they've all been sedated. Was this a conscious choice? Again, people a thousand years from now would likely act quite differently than we do. Is it possible they did this on purpose to create a futuristic feel? If so I applaud the effort, even if it did fail miserably.

• Will Smith's character is named "Cypher Raige." Yow. Who came up with that name, George Lucas?

Shyamalan needs to look up the word "cypher" in the dictionary. It means "a person or thing of no importance; nonentity." That's actually pretty apt considering Smith's emotional range in this film.

Cypher is supposed to be a battle-hardened military officer who's emotionally distant with his son. I get that. But it's taken to ridiculous, sometimes hilarious, extremes. His success at killing Ursas is due to his not being able to feel fear. Apparently he divested himself of all other emotions while he was at it.

• If you're going to populate your film with basically two characters then you'd better made damn sure they're interesting. These two aren't. 

Kitai's late sister, who we glimpse briefly in flashback, is ten times more interesting than either main character.

• During the space trip, Cypher feels something's not quite right with the ship. He takes off his wedding ring and holds it against the inner hull of the ship, where it somehow amplifies vibrations from outside. Cypher interprets these vibrations as an oncoming space storm. Nope!

Space is called that for a reason. There ain't nothing in it. Vibrations need air, or land or something to travel through.

• We're told that Earth is the most dangerous planet in the galaxy because everything there has evolved to specifically kill man. Um... humans left the planet a thousand years ago. Why would animals evolve to kill prey that no longer exists? 

Now if they want to say all the animals have evolved to the point in which they just happen to be deadly to man, that would be OK. But implying that they're revenge-evolving is just silly.

• I was a bit underwhelmed by Earth's so-called "danger." We're beaten about the head with the fact that Earth is such a treacherous place you'd likely die a minute after stepping foot on open ground. Yet a gawky fourteen year old walks a hundred miles or so and survives.

I was expecting Kitai's trek to be a lot more dangerous. Instead it was just kind of... dull. We get just a light sprinkling of mutated animals every now and then that don't seem all that hard to avoid or defeat.

Dullness is a problem with most "quest" movies like this. The character has to get from Point A to Point B, so you know there'll be a lot of dangerous but easily beatable obstacles thrown in his way to pad out the run time. Which is exactly what happens here.

I suppose if it had been more dangerous then it would have been too unrealistic to believe a kid like Kitai could survive the trip.

• One example of Earth's abundant dangers: The temperature drops to deadly levels every night, with the exception of a few conveniently located "hot spot."

Everywhere Kitai travels he's surrounded by abundant verdant green foliage. Wouldn't such freezing temperatures kill the plant life? Yes, they show the leaves folding up as the temperature drops, but… it all seemed a bit sketchy.

Oddly enough, all the newly evolved animal species seem vulnerable to the cold as well. Several times we see animals instinctively heading for hot spots as the temperature drops. So they've evolved to kill humans who aren't even on the planet anymore, but they haven't evolved a resistance to the extreme cold. Got it. 
 
• At one point Kitai is stung by a venomous leech (!) His father calmly and dispassionately (how else?) instructs him to inject himself with an antidote or die. I could swear he says the cure comes in three parts, but we only see Kitai administer two.

I will admit it's possible I'm wrong on this; I'd need to see the film again to make sure, and that ain't happenin.'

• It's the After Earth drinking game! Take a shot every time Cypher Raige says, "Take a knee!"

• One of the many features of the magic survival suit Kitai wears: It changes color when it senses danger. It's never explained if the suit is somehow sensing danger (like Peter Parker and his spider-sense) or if it's sensing the emotional state of the wearer. Unfortunately it seems to work at random, only when the screenwriters remember it. 

Even when it does work it acts strangely. At one point some mutated baboons attack Kitai and the suit turns black. Why black? Who knows? He's in the middle of a green jungle. The suit actually makes him more visible. Maybe it's just a warning to the wearer and not camouflage? Later on when he's freezing it turns white, which makes a bit more sense.

• Eventually Kitai comes to a cliff and discovers he can't make it to the tail section because he doesn't have enough of the magic lung juice that allows him to breathe Earth's tainted air. Back in the ship, Cypher's computer shows him that if Kitai flies to the tail section he'll make it. He sighs and tells him to come back. 

That seems a bit out of character for an old war horse who's survived dozens of campaigns. Yes, the flying thing is dangerous and Kitai could die trying it, but they're both going to die anyway if he aborts the mission. Why not have the kid give it a shot?

Kitai refuses his father's order and rages against him for not being around as he grew up. Hey kid, it's not like your dad went out to get a pack of smokes and never came back-- he was protecting your world and your selfish little ass from aliens! Credit where credit's due-- Jaden Smith actually does a decent job of acting in this scene. I said in this scene!

Anyway, Kitai defies his father and flings himself off the cliff and his magic suit instantly sprouts a pair of wings, like those of a flying squirrel. At no point did Cypher ever tell him flying was an option. So did Kitai know he could fly? Or was he just petulantly throwing himself off the cliff out of spite and lucked out because he was wearing a flying suit?

• While flying (or I guess gliding), Kitai attracts the attention of some giant eagle thing, which attacks him. He wakes up in its nest, which is full of baby eagle things. I'm pretty sure the mama brought him there as food for her younguns. Suddenly the nest is attacked by a pack of mutated tigers. Kitai fights them off but all the babies are killed. He escapes the nest in the confusion and continues on foot as the eagle thing follows him from the air. 

That night the temperature plunges as he remembers he was supposed to look for a hot spot. He passes into blissful oblivion as he begins to freeze to death. Then he wakes up the next morning to find that the eagle thing dragged him into a hole and sacrificed itself by laying on top of him to keep him warm. Huh?

I don't understand why it saved him when a few hours earlier it was trying to feed him to its kids. My movie-going pal KW Monster suggested the condor thing took a liking to Kitai because it thought he was another bird (what with the wings and the flying). I guess that's as good an explanation as any in a movie like this, but... it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

• The alien Skrels deliberately designed the Ursas so they're blind and can only sense their prey "by fear." Wouldn't eyes and a heightened sense of smell work just as well, if not better? If the filmmakers wanted the Ursas to have strange, alien senses, how about giving them eyes that see infra-red?

And how do Ursas navigate when they're not smelling fear? How do they avoid walking into walls or off cliffs?

• Kitai finally reaches the tail section and finds the emergency beacon. It won't work though (man, all the technology in this movie seems very glitchy and prone to malfunction) because of something in the air that's blocking the signal. Never mind that this thing can send out what appears to be a powerful visible Death Star-like beam, it can't poke through a few clouds. 

So Kitai climbs up the side of a volcano to reach higher ground. An active volcano mind you, one that features flowing rivers of lava. Seems like the intense heat ougtta affect him, maybe even kill him, but no. He doesn't even break a sweat. Must be his magic suit protecting him from the heat. Shouldn't it have turned red or something?

After Earth is by no means a good movie, but despite its many problems I couldn't bring myself to hate it. It's like some clumsy kid with no athletic talent who's trying to make the basketball team-- you just feel kind of sorry for it. With a competent director and a better child star it might have actually been good. I give it a B-.

Out Of Context Family Affair Moment

So the other day I'm watching Family Affair and I see this scene.

This entire teaser sequence is an absolute goldmine of bone-headed awesomeness.

First of all, take a close look at the incredibly realistic New York skyline in the background. I have a feeling those buildings didn't look real even on 1960s era televisions with their 250 scan lines. It also looks suspiciously identical to the skyline outside Uncle Bill's luxury Manhattan apartment.

And where's the horizon? No matter how high up you go you can still see the horizon line, especially with the camera pointing down as it is. The only explanation is that Uncle Bill's constructing a five thousand foot tall building and the curvature of the earth is hiding the horizon..

In the teaser the man in the blue shirt climbs all the way to the top of the building to deliver an important message to Uncle Bill. No convenient cell phones or even walkie-talkies back in 1967!

Uncle Bill can't hear the messenger over the din of the riveters in the background, so he throws his pen at them to get their attention and tell them to knock it off. His pen hits one of the men in the head and bounces off into the void, where I'm sure it couldn't possibly have shattered a windshield or embedded itself into someone's skull several thousand feet below.

Once it's quiet, Blue Shirt delivers his important message: It seems that Uncle Bill's niece Buffy has "torn her tutu." Blue Shirt seems genuinely concerned at by dire news and asks if that's "real bad." Uncle Bill chuckles at his underling's naivete. He tells him that a tutu is a short skirt girls wear in the ballet. Blue Shirt then gives him the uncomprehending look you see above. You can practically see the computer tape reels spinning fitfully inside his meaty head as he desperately searches his inadequate memory banks. 

Yes folks, Blue Shirt here has never before encountered the word "ballet." Never gone to one, sure. Couldn't name the title of one, who could? But to not even know what the word means? Apparently Uncle Bill found out he could get government grant money if he hired the "differently abled" on his construction crew.

The message delivered, Blue Shirt climbs the thousands of feet back to the ground and Uncle Bill and the riveters return to work. 

Apparently they didn't have OSHA back in the 1960s. Take a closer look at this amazing scene. The riveters in the background are both squatting on a sheet of plywood that stradles two girders with nothing between them and the ground but several thousand feet of empty space.

Not to be outdone, Uncle Bill laughs in the face of death as well. Look where he's standing. He's on some kind of makeshift platform made from several planks. With that table in front of him he's got about six inches of space in which to stand. If his mind wanders for a second and he takes even one step backward, Mr. French is gonna be raising the kids alone.

And how the hell are those blueprints lying flat instead of being blown to New Jersey by the strong high-altitude winds?

I told you it's the most awesome teaser in the history of television!

It Came From The Cineplex: Iron Man 3

Another incredibly accurate visual metaphor for the state of the franchise.

Iron Man 3 is the third installment in the series and the first to not be directed by John Favreau.

This time Shane Black (writer/director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) takes over the directorial duties, with mixed results.

Black does a decent job with the material right up to his baffling, ill-advised and disappointing take on the Mandarin. I enjoyed the film up to that point, but alas, after that it lost me for good.

I will never understand why filmmakers take a well-loved property and then proceed to change or remove everything about it that made it popular. I suppose it's all part of the "This is great, but I want to leave my mark on it" attitude that I encounter on a daily basis in the graphic design field.
 

The main plot of the film is based largely on the Extremis storyline that played out in the Iron Man comic book a few years ago. In the comic though, Tony Stark is injected with the Extremis compound and discovers that his armor is now part of his body. He's able to will it to the surface or something when needed. Kind of glad they didn't go that route in the film.

The end of the film seemingly wraps up Tony Stark's storyline for good and suggests this is the last installment of a trilogy. I wouldn't worry too much about it though. Once this entry grosses around a billion dollars the Disney bean counters will demand another film, regardless of how this one ended.

Speaking of dollars, the media is reporting that Iron Man 3 is currently the fifth highest grossing film of all time. So what? Movie tickets are higher than they've ever been. Of course it made a crap ton of money! And this film was in 3D to boot, which artificially pumped up the gross even more. And next year tickets will be even higher and there'll be a movie that surpasses this one. Such stats may be important to accountants, but they're meaningless in the real world.

Count the number of goddamned tickets you sell! THAT'S how you should be gauging a movie's popularity.

Something I thought was kind of funny-- in the film Tony Stark fills his time by building dozens of specialized Iron Man suits. You might even say he's "collecting" them. His girlfriend Pepper Potts isn't happy with this collection and orders him to get rid of them.

As an avid action figure collector, this scenario sounds very, very familiar.
 

SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY! INCLUDING ONE WHOPPER ABOUT THE MANDARIN!
 

The Plot:
After the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark is suffering from insomnia and panic attacks. He fills his free time by building a squadron of Iron Man suits with various abilities, which upsets his girlfriend Pepper Potts. Meanwhile a terrorist called the Mandarin begins attacking cities throughout the country, while the authorities are seemingly powerless to stop him. Tony challenges the Mandarin, who retaliates by destroying his home, nearly killing him and Pepper in the process.

Tony investigates and discovers the Mandarin is actually a befuddled British actor hired by Aldrich Killian, a rival scientist who has invented a regenerative treatment called Extremis. Killian kidnaps Pepper and injects her with the unstable Extremis formula, hoping to force Stark to perfect it.

Stark confronts the Mandarin with his army of Iron Man armors and eventually defeats him. He then destroys the armors to prove his devotion to Pepper and even has the shrapnel removed from his chest, eliminating the need for the arc reactor in his chest.

Pros:
• The film starts out with a flashback to 1999, when Tony Stark is attending a science conference in Bern, Switzerland. While there he's introduced to Professor Yinsen. He was Stark's fellow captive in the first film who helped him build his very first Iron Man armor. A nice little callback.

• In the film Tony Stark is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. I don't ever remember ever seeing a comic book character suffer from this condition before, so kudos I guess for showing the down side of being a super hero.

However, I'm wondering why he's suffering? He claims it's because of what happened in New York, obviously referring to the events of The Avengers movie. What happened during that film that was so traumatic? The fact that he encountered aliens? That he met a real life god? That he briefly went into space and kind of into a wormhole? All of the above?

And why weren't any of the other superheroes similarly traumatized?

Cons:
• During the 1999 Bern flashback, Tony Stark is introduced to a Chinese man named Dr. Wu. The camera lingers on him a bit longer than necessary, making one think there's a point to his introduction, but nothing ever comes of it.

In the American version, that is.

Chinese audiences are treated to a few extra minutes of Iron Man interacting with Dr. Wu in scenes shot specifically for that country. Why? Because there are over a billion Chinese movie-goers with ticket money in their pockets, that's why. Tailoring a special version of the film to them increases the chance they'll go see it. The same thing happened last year with Looper.

I'm not particularly a fan of this practice, but there's precious little I can do about it.

• Whoops! The filmmakers forgot to put Iron Man in their Iron Man movie! They'd have been better off calling this installment Tony Stark. I bet if you added up all the time he actually appears as Iron Man it would be about fifteen minutes. Twenty tops.

Just one of the thrilling scenes from Iron Man 3. Watch as Iron Man battles the Deadly Barcalounger!

The same thing happened in the The Dark Knight Rises movie-- Batman barely appeared in his own film. This is a trend I hope suffers a quick death. This is a superhero movie after all. That means I wanna see some superheroes! If I want to see normal people sitting around in their street clothes talking about their feelings I'll go watch something starring Meryl Streep.

• This is the third time Tony Stark has somehow humiliated a rival scientist who's gone on to become a super villain who attacks him. At least Killian wasn't yet another foe in an armored suit, as we've seen in the previous two films. 

Just once I'd like to see a villain who's a plain old evil bastard and doesn't have some deep-seated psychological reason for hating and attacking the hero.

 

• One of the Extremis agents who attacks Tony Stark is a war veteran named Ellen Brandt, who has a prominent scar on one side of her face. In a flashback sequence we see that she lost an arm due to a war injury. She's injected with the Extremis formula which magically regrows her missing limb in a matter of seconds. Curiously though her facial scar remains unchanged. So for the record: Extremis can regrow a goddamned arm but can't erase a scar. Got it.

Brandt's presence is also sort of an Easter Egg: In the comics, she was romantically involved with a scientist named Ted Sallis, who became the swamp creature known as Man-Thing. Yeah, I said Man-Thing. Get yer mind outta the gutter.

• I'm confused. In the previous films I was under the impression that in addition to keeping Tony Stark alive, the arc reactor in his chest also powered his armor. But here he's got an entire squadron of suits that can act autonomously. Obviously the suits no longer need him to power them (if they ever did). When did all this change? Between The Avengers and now? Or has it always been this way and I got the "what powers the suit" thing wrong?

• Just how rich is Tony Stark? In the film Tony suffers from insomnia and has been spending his nights tinkering together various new armors. The latest, and the one he wears most during the movie, is the Mark 42. 

He wore the Mark 7 armor when we last saw him in The Avengers, so he's made 35 new armors since then. Let's be conservative and say each of these suits, with all their sophisticated electronics and advanced materials, costs $50 million. That means his little hobby cost him at least $1,750,000,000. Pretty darn close to $2 billion dollars. Now THAT'S an expensive hobby!

Did he use his own money for these armors or charge it to Stark Enterprises?

• Tony Stark really is a mechanical genius. His Mark 42 armor not only contains mechanisms that allow it to move independently when empty (like a robot), but each individual piece also contains a propulsion system to allow it to fly through the air to his present location (often hundreds of miles away!) and assemble itself in the proper place on his body. Best of all the suit still fits him like a glove! Now that's some impressive engineering!

• Tony publicly challenges the Mandarin to a fight, giving out his home address in a TV news interview. The Mandarin accepts his challenge and bombs his home to smithereens, almost killing Tony and Pepper Potts. 

Many fans have called out the stupidity of revealing your address to your archenemy. Eh, that didn't bother me. It's not like Tony's home was hidden by some kind of stealth technology-- it was a pretty distinctive-looking structure located right out in the open on the ocean front. Not to mention he's a world famous public figure whose secret identity is well known. The Mandarin could have found the address with about thirty seconds of Googling.

Besides, I think the fans are missing the point-- the Mandarin wasn't sitting around waiting for someone to tell him the address before he attacked. He attacked because Stark challenged him. That was the stupid part.

• At one point in the film the Mandarin sets off a bomb in Air Force One. Several passengers are sucked out of the plane before it explodes. Iron Man flies out of the doomed plane to rescue them. Jarvis tells him there are thirteen people falling, but that he can only carry four.

Of course Iron Man, hero that he is, refuses to let the laws of physics boss him around! He begins plucking the falling victims out of the sky one by one. When he can carry no more, he instructs the ones he's holding to grab the hands of the other plummeting civilians. Eventually he's holding a daisy chain of all thirteen survivors and lowers them safely into the ocean.

It's a well done, nail-biting sequence full of action and suspense. Too bad it doesn't make a lick of sense though. The screenwriter seems to believe that Iron Man can carry an indefinite number of people as long as they're not directly touching him. He's told he can only carry four, so he grabs a couple and then lets them hold onto the rest. That doesn't make any difference! 

If he can only carry four people, then he can't suddenly support nine more just because they're not physically touching him. Even if the other nine are being held by the civilians, they're still indirectly attached to him and are weighing him down.

It's like they're saying Iron Man can't hold a semi truck over his head, but he can hold a person holding a semi truck over his head. It just don't add up! 

Not to be outdone, the Mandarin also poses on furniture. Thrilling!

 • And then we come to the character of the Mandarin, undoubtably the most divisive part of the film.

For many months before the film premiered the trailers introduced the Mandarin as a dangerous terrorist of vague ethnic origin with an odd, pseudo-Southern drawl. The trailers showed us that he was the one foe who could actually destroy Iron Man.

The first half of the film backed up these assumptions, depicting the Mandarin as a calculating and ruthless force to be reckoned with, who attacked with impunity and was seemingly untouchable. 

Then halfway through the movie the plot does a 180º turn (you can almost hear the tires squealing) as we find out the Mandarin is all part of a big lie. He's nothing but an illusion. A front performed by a British actor who's simply playing a part. He's a distraction to draw attention away from Aldrich Killian, who is in reality the real Mandarin.

I must admit that this plot twist was definitely a surprise. Unfortunately it wasn't a pleasant one.

Director Shane Black tried to justify his decision with a lot of politically correct bushwah. In the comic book the Mandarin is, not surprisingly, a Chinese warlord who wields super-powered rings. Black stated that such a character was an unfortunate and outdated Fu Manchu stereotype and just would not fly in today's more enlightened world, so something had to be done.

To that end he decided to change the Mandarin from a Chinese super villain to a terrorist with no super powers who likes to surround himself with Chinese motifs and trappings.

Oy gevalt.

So let me see if I have this straight: If the Mandarin is Chinese that's offensive, but a British man who looks vaguely Arabic posing as the Mandarin while a white man hides behind the scenes and is the actual villain is somehow OK. I must be missing a very subtle point of logic here.

The worst part about it is they took Iron Man's only real nemesis and absolutely wasted him. Wasted, I tell you. Iron Man doesn't have much of a rogue's gallery to start with, as most of his foes are just people wearing armored suits similar to his. The Mandarin, politically correct or not, was the most interesting of his villains. And now they've ruined him for good.

Don't believe me? Think of it this way: Imagine you're watching The Dark Knight movie. You're enjoying Heath Ledger's brilliant performance as the Joker, then halfway through the film you find out he's really an out of work actor, while a normal looking man, sans makeup, is pulling the strings from behind the scenes as the real Joker. What would you do? You'd start a riot in the theater, that's what. Just like I wanted to do during this film.

Surely there was some way to make the comic book version of the Mandarin work, even in our hyper-sensitive, easily offended politically correct excuse for a society. If this ersatz version was the best they could do then it would have been better if they'd dropped the character completely and concentrated on Killian as the villain. I'd have enjoyed the film much more had they done so.

• Pitting the real Mandarin against Iron Man could have been something truly epic. In the comic, the Mandarin wears ten magic rings on his fingers. Each of the rings has a different power; one shoots fire, one fires a disintegration beam, one controls minds, etc. Imagine a battle between that version of the Mandarin and Iron Man! Magic versus Technology in a fight to the death!

Instead we got a fight with a villain who can, um,,, raise his body temperature and melt stuff and regrow arms and sort of breathe fire or something. It was all kind of vague.

There's no reason we couldn't have had a Mandarin with magic rings. They've already established that there's magic in the Marvel Movie Universe with Thor and Loki, so it wouldn't have been too jarring a concept.

Somewhere in a parallel universe there's a much better version of Iron Man 3 featuring a proper magic-powered Mandarin.

• Does the whole "Villain who's really a front for someone worse who's wielding the real power from behind the scenes" plot sound familiar? It should. The exact same thing happened in this summer's Star Trek Into Darkness. In that film Khan appears to be the villain, but he's secretly being manipulated by the evil Admiral Marcus. Great minds Bad screenwriters think alike, I suppose.

•  In addition to botching the Mandarin, Iron Man 3 opens an industrial sized can of worms in regards to Tony's suit technology. In the film Tony rigs up a way to remotely control his armor. Now he can his send his suit into battle while he stays safely home on the couch. In fact he's remotely controlling his suit during the whole "mid-air rescue" scene mentioned earlier.

There's no logical reason for him to ever leave his house to do battle from this point on. It's gonna be tough to write any suspenseful scenes or place him into danger in any future films.

• I very much enjoyed the scene in which the squadron of various Iron Man armors flew to the rescue. I can only imagine how much more I'd have enjoyed it if I hadn't watched the scene in the trailer every week for six months prior to the premiere. Why would they do that? Think how much more awesome that sequence would have been if had been a total surprise.

• The various Iron Man armors are all very cool looking... I think. Unfortunately my eyes could only register the vaguest impressions of them as they zoomed around the screen at Mach 4, in the background, at night. I can't believe they went to the trouble of designing all those armors and then shunted them to the background (and yes, I know there are closeup photos of most of them online, but I shouldn't have to hunt for them after the film's over).

• Like all Marvel movies, this one has a post credits scene. Unfortunately, this one's pretty lame. At the end we see Tony Stark has been telling the whole story of the film to a dozing Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk. Note to the filmmakers-- it's probably not a good idea to show characters falling asleep in response to your story, even as a joke.

Slightly better than the second movie, but not as good as the near-perfect first one. I would give it a B, but the botched Mandarin plot twist just pissed me off so much I couldn't enjoy it after that. I hate to do it, but I've got to give it a C+.