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That was a good movie!

I’m all tingled up with geeky goodness now. A great job, in what has to go down as one of the greatest retcons in history. Well done, Mr. Abrams!

Feel free to use the comments to tell me how I’m an idiot.

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It sucks.

Fuller commentary — AND SPOILERS! — after the jump. So don’t read on if you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to because I will totally ruin it just like that good-looking jerk ruined your prom by dancing with your date, then taking her home while you had to hang out with Billy from band camp.

Not that there’s anything wrong with band camp. Or Billy for that matter.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with “Avatar” and simply put, it’s that somewhere along the line, James Cameron forgot he was supposed to be telling an entertaining story.

As my buddy Dave said, when you have an animated movie (whether animated by hand or computer), you have to make the script even better than it would be with live action, because you have an additional hurdle of believability to overcome. With actual human actors and settings, you’ve got the benefit of the audience buying in at a fundamental level as to what they’re seeing. But with animation, you have to not only make what are fundamentally non-real images seem real, but to make what is happening to them seem real as well (at least within the confines of the world you’ve created).

Cameron forgot that step in “Avatar”. The dialog is as bad as has been reported elsewhere, particularly with The Colonel bad guy character, who chews up more scenery than a hungry Doberman. He’s so over the top and stereotypical, he completely ruined every scene he was in, from his intro beneath a hulking weight set to his absurd personal fire extinguishing later in the film.

I don’t know why they bothered animating all the big blue cat people with computers when they were going to use cardboard stand-ins for the human actors. Maybe it was a budget thing.

I’ll say this, the film looks beautiful. But even there, I didn’t see anything that I’d have been shocked to find in a top-end video game. Less so, in some cases.

The worst thing about this movie was that I never felt immersed. I never lost the sense that I was watching a movie, that I was seeing computer animated figures, nice as they looked. That’s because a stupid story is stupid no matter how many millions of dollars you throw at it to dress it up.

And this, my friends, was a stupid story.

SPOILER ALERT: Look, no matter how bad the defeat of the first outpost was, no company or nation or world is going to give up a substance fetching twenty million dollars a kilo on the open market. Not gonna happen. They’d be back in bigger, more ferocious, nastier vehicles. They’d firebomb the entire surface. They’d nuke it from orbit and scoop out the ore when the fires died down.

Speaking of which, why the hell did they need to load a shuttle full of explosives to bomb the tree? Lob a few missiles at it. If targeting systems are a problem due to Flux, drop some asteroids on it from orbit. Problem solved. No need to get your tilt-rotor flying assault choppers dirty.

I was barely holding on to some sense of “Just let it be stupid fun” until the end when the Colonel bad guy pulls a giant knife out of his mechanical fighting suit. W. T. F. Are you telling me they strap f***king KNIVES to these things? That’s just silly. I couldn’t help it, I laughed out loud. And that’s not the reaction they were going for, I feel sure.

Look, if you want to spend a couple of hours looking at gorgeous scenery to the tune of six bucks a head, go for it. But you’d be better served watching the Sunrise HD channel on cable. It would make more sense and you wouldn’t have to put up with a bad story and bad acting in the service of James Cameron’s wet dream over his latest technological toy.

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SCHWING!

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Mockery and snide derision with a side of snark after the jump. It’s probably going to be petty and immature, too, so scram if you don’t want to put on your kindergarten Underoos and join in the fun.

Here’s your list, along with commentary and visuals for reference.

• “Batman” featuring George Clooney:
  
  Easily the worst of the Joel Schumacher Batman costumes, and that’s saying something. Granted, the platter-sized man-nips are covered up on Clooney’s suit, but that’s overshadowed by the even more unfortunate and completely gratuitous use of the shiny stainless steel codpiece, particularly egregious on Robin’s supplemental leather play-toy accessory outfit. Plus, what’s that crap doing on his legs? And the divots taken out of the bat ears? It’s rare to get a costume so bad you root for the bad guys, but this one’s it if ever there was one. Unless, of course, your bad guy in question is …
• “Mister Freeze” featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger:
  
  It would be easier to talk about why this costume doesn’t suck, because from top to bottom it’s chrome-plated lameness. My first question would be “Why did Mister Freeze weld the grille from the Pixar film ‘Cars’ to his abdomen?”, closely followed by a query as to why he requires a reservoir tip. Take a close look, kids, at the Outfit That Killed A Franchise.
• “Ozymandias” featuring Matthew Goode:
  
  Whereas Dave Gibbons’ Ozymandias makes you think about how sad and pathetic, ultimately, this uber-intelligent man is, surrounding himself in the faded tatters of a long-gone king doomed to rot in the sands, the movie version of the costume instead makes you think “WHY IS THAT PENIS LOOKING AT ME AAAAAAGGHH!” Throw in the nipples sliding out from under that collar, the sculpted belly button, and the pouty little-girl mouth Goode is cursed with and this looks more like a still from “Buttycandyass”, the XXX rated rip-off feature.
• “The Phantom” featuring Billy Zane:
  
  Although not as spectacularly, blatantly, utterly offensively bad as some of the other entries, I felt I should include Billy Zane’s “Phantom” costume purely as a method of discouraging other would-be adventurers from sallying forth in their bathing suits and shower caps.
• “Silk Specter” featuring Malin Åkerman:
  
  Why is a stipper fighting crime? She doesn’t even have to change clothes between jobs, that’s why. The yellow shiny vinyl, the garter belt holding up the thigh boots, and the radical French-cut pseudo-thong don’t bother me as much as the fact that she’s wearing jogging shorts beneath all of it. That’s just weird.
• “Steel” featuring Shaquille O’Neal:
  
  This photo combines two of the things I love to hate the most in all the world — Shaquille O’Neal and bad super-hero costumes. This outfit looks like what would happen if someone took a seven foot tall black Genie reject, rolled him in industrial-strength bonding agent, and threw him into a junk pile. Which is not a bad way of describing Shaq’s acting talent, come to think of it.

That’s a lot of bad costuming, folks, picking just one isn’t easy. My heart tells me to go with Shaq, but let’s be serious — no one takes that movie seriously. Similarly, Schumacher has taken so much heat for the later “Batman” films that at this point they just sort of mock themselves, so going after them feels kind of cheap.

Instead, I’m going to surprise myself and go with “Ozymandias”. The whole thing just gives me the heebie-jeebies, especially whatever is going on in that crotch region. There just shouldn’t be an eyeball anywhere in that region, and if that’s old-fashioned of me, so be it.

I’d love to hear your take on these, or any others I might have left out, in the comments.

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The Good: The casting, the action, the acting, the spirit, the fun, and the special effects all come through with flying colors. The Holy Trinity — Kirk, Spock, and McCoy — in particular deliver performances that are truly inspired by (rather than a copy of) the original cast.

The Bad: The story is more full of holes than a Caddyshack golf course. Luckily it’s enough fun that you don’t really care.

The Ugly: Eric Bana’s bland, utterly forgettable role as bad guy Nero.

More to follow after the jump (spoilers abound!).

First, let’s be clear here — this movie is an action/adventure, not a science-fiction flick with aspirations of Deepness like the very first “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”. I mean, look at that subtitle, it practically screams “Take me seriously!” JJ Abrams has no such pretensions, just as his movie has no such sub-title. This is just pure “Star Trek” — a bunch of cowboys flying around the universe kicking ass. People nowadays make a lot of noise about the “Prime Directive” and how progressive and noble the unity the Federation showed was, but that’s horse puckey. “Star Trek” was first and foremost a Western, a morality play of Good Guys versus Bad Guys, with liberal amounts of womanizing and ass-kicking. It just happened to be set in outer space.

Which is exactly what we get in this latest movie installment.

I was reminded of nothing so much as “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, a movie that jumps right into heart-pounding action and rarely slows down. This is pure, unadulterated fun from start to finish, a big old-fashioned Saturday afternoon serial featuring big fights, big explosions, big characters, and big fun. Go into it with that understanding and you won’t be disappointed, whether you’re the guy in the Spock ears at your local convention or someone who thinks William Shatner is just that guy from the Priceline commercials.

Now, having said that, the story is utterly ridiculous on several levels. Time travel always irritates me, and I’m only giving Abrams a pass because he outright admits as much right in the movie, with Kirk calling it “cheating”. I get that the writers have done this so they have a clean slate with the very vocal Trek fans who are going to make up the bulk of their die-hard support, but when I’m in a movie I don’t want to be thinking about “meta” issues at all. I don’t want to ponder how “the franchise” is going to develop, I don’t want to worry about fanboi reaction, I don’t want to worry about clearing the slate from what went before. I just want to set my phasers to kill and be about my business.

Like I said, I understand WHY he had to do it, I just don’t think it was necessary. We didn’t have to have a time-traveling Daniel Craig clearing the decks for a “new” Bond, we just were thrown right into the action and we don’t worry about what went before. I wish Abrams had done the same here.

Second, you can’t time travel through a black hole. The tidal forces would rip you apart long before the overwhelming gravity crushed you into sub-microscopic dust. That’s just stupid. And if you WERE going to get sucked through a black hole into another time, why does it take twenty five years between one delivery and the next? And if it’s going to take twenty five years between one delivery and the next, why would it come out at the same point in space? And if you’re a guy waiting around to take revenge on a whole galaxy and find yourself armed with technology 125 years more advanced than the fledgling Federation around you, why do you park your ass in space doing absolutely nothing for a quarter of a century? Have they never heard of a remote probe parked in orbit waiting for your target while you go off and find some green-skinned chicks to pass the time with?

Third, if such a thing as “red matter” existed, and could be transported in a one-man ship, and it could literally annihilate any star or any planet with the push of a button, I’d say you’ve got some pretty damn serious problems. Remember how “Genesis” almost started a war for exactly that reason? And it couldn’t even affect suns!

Fourth, if Romulus’ sun was about to go nova, sucking it into a black hole wouldn’t have done jack squat to save Romulus. Last I checked, suns were kind of important to planets in terms of, you know, actually supporting life there. “Congratulations, sir, we saved your planet from supernova death by destroying your sun! Hey, good luck growing plants and supporting weather without one, gotta run, ta!”

But look, like I said, the movie is fun enough that you don’t really worry about all that while you’re watching it. It’s all just an excuse to get the crew together so they can fly around kicking ass without regard for the laws of physics, logic, law, or anything else but Kirk’s overwhelming libido. Which is just fine with me!

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Discussion after the jump.

I suspect that when it comes to movie franchises involving fantastic worlds of speculative fiction, sequels simply have more room to be. Part of the challenge in this kind of creative endeavor is that you have to introduce the viewer to the world — its rules, its customs, its conflicts, it players, its reality — in a way that’s completely unnecessary with the latest romantic comedy or World War II movie. As a result, an awful lot of the time in a franchise’s opening act is spent showing the main character’s origin, or explaining how the world got from where it is in the viewer’s reality to that of the film.

Which eats up the minutes, even when it’s done really well.

But in a sequel, you don’t have to bother with any of that. The audience has been educated and knows what to expect, so you can just tell the story without having to exhaust precious screen time on basic scene-setting. And at the end of the day, it’s the story that makes for a good film, not exploding robots or flying super aliens. More story equals a better movie, which is why in my opinion, all the films on this list are actually better than their predecessor.

• The Dark Knight: You can make a great case that “Dark Knight” is not, in fact, better than “Batman Begins”. But you’d still be wrong, this movie kicks ass. It features a lot more action in a tighter, more engaging story and, come on, it has Heath Ledger as Joker. Nuff Said.
• The Empire Strikes Back: Most Star Wars fans consider this the best film of the lot, and they’ve got a great point. I still find myself drawn to the original (and it’s just “Star Wars”, not “Episode IV”, because I am old and cranky and that’s how it was when I was a kid so get off my lawn!!), with its innocent charm and wholesome fun. At the end of the day, though, “Empire” is a more mature movie as a storytelling vehicle, as a moving emotional experience, and as dark entertainment. Betrayal, action, awesome lightsaber battles, gut-wrenching plot revelations, whiz-bang giant walking metal monster battles, and not a damn Ewok or Jar Jar Binks in sight. Had Leia been in a bikini in this one, we’d have the best movie of all time, but as it stands we’ll just have to settle for best of the franchise.
• Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: OK, I lied in the intro — I don’t think this movie is better than “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, which is one of my all-time favorite films. But a lot of people do. They’re wrong, but as a magnanimous guy, I included their misguided opinion onto my list.
• Spider-Man 2: I mean come on, no one’s face even gets melted by the hand of God in Temple of Doom, how lame is that?! OK, moving on … “Spider-Man 2″ is just a lot more fun than the first one, which was also really great by the way. But I felt like Peter really came into his own in this film, and I thought Doc Ock was a wonderful villain. At least, he was waaaaay cooler than the apparently-coked-up Willem Dafoe and that ridiculous Japanese robot-movie face mask. By all that’s good and right in the world, I hated that thing.
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Kirk’s hairpiece! Khan’s ridiculously tanned and muscled chest! Mind controlling ear-roaches! KHHHHAAAAAAAAANNNN! Oh my, I think I need a moment. Clean-up on Aisle Ten!
• Superman II: Were it not for the thrown-logo-as-Seran-wrap, this movie would take the cake easily. You have to remember, at the time we didn’t have any really good super-powered fights with convincing special effects, so this was really awesome for a young geek of the era. Watching four Kryptonians duking it out was such a thrill, I still get all psyched up thinking about it.
• The Two Towers: I loved the “Lord of the Rings” books, and TTT always hooked me in the strongest. I still groan with anguish when the narration switches from one set of characters to the next, I get so wrapped up in them. The film … not so much. I don’t know, I need to watch these again, but I think I’ve just read the trilogy so many times the movies didn’t affect me quite as much.
• X-Men II: I think you see the “We don’t need no stinking back-story” dynamic at its purest in this movie. Non-stop butt-kicking goodness up one side and down the other. A great super-hero film.

Looking at the list, I think you can make a solid case that any of them are better than the original installment of the franchise, which when you think about it, is pretty amazing. I mean, outside of the “Godfather” series, I think you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of examples of other movies where a sequel is better than the first one. I’m looking at you, “Weekend in Bernie’s 2″.

I still can’t believe either of those movies got made.

But, looking over them all, I’d probably put “Khan” and “Empire” as my top two sequels, even though there are others on the list that I liked more as films. But I think those two helped nail the high point of each franchise in such a way that it turned the whole series from just good to legendary.

And in honor of the release of the new Star Trek movie, which I have yet to see (a situation I hope to remedy soon), I am going to go with “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” as my all-time best geek sequel movie.

Which would you pick?

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I do plan on taking in the actual film tomorrow as soon as I can slip away, but in the meantime this scratches the itch nicely. Hope you enjoy it!

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“The story itself is a pretty straightforward mystery,” said Snyder, “but inside of that, there’s this huge plot that has international intrigue and a super-villain and everything you want from a superhero story.

And it made me want to put my head through the wall. The “Watchmen” graphic novel is a “straightforward mystery” with a “huge plot that has international intrigue and a super-villain and everything you want from a superhero story” in the same way that “All in the Family” was a “straightforward sitcom” with “a cast of zany characters full of good-old-fashioned American hijinks and crazy situations and everything you want from a silly sitcom”.

No no no no no no no. Like “All in the Family”, “Watchmen” used the traditional conventions of a genre and turned them on their head to tell the story of interesting, conflicted, flawed, deeply human characters. My dad never realized Archie Bunker was making fun of racists — he thought the part was straight-up and agreed with everything that came out of the character’s mouth. He didn’t understand the concept of irony any more than Zack Snyder does, judging from that quote. To walk away from reading “Watchmen” and to think that the plot and the super-villain were the most important bits is to completely miss the entire point. I cannot tell you how disheartening it was to read that. Gah.

I have a sinking sensation that this movie isn’t just going to be bad, it’s going to be epically bad. Categorically bad. Galacticaly bad. Bad in a way that slanders not just itself and its source material but the entire genre. My guess as to how this is going to turn out is best summed up in this “Bloom County” strip:

I sure hope I’m wrong, but everything I see gets me more and more disheartened. Zack Snyder completely does not understand this project. At all. I better bring a sponge with me to the showing because I have a feeling my eyes are gonna bleed. Blech.

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My favorite quote is “Ratner told Variety that “Most of the great graphic novels are gone, and ‘Youngblood’ is one of the few comicbooks left.”

In other words, all the good comics have been taken, so now we’re stuck doing this crappy one.

Judging by “Last Stand”, Ratner is the perfect director for a Liefeld property, with his innate grasp of all things flashy and shiny and disdain for anything approaching a coherent narrative or compelling character. Because the lesson to take from the mega-success of the Dark Knight film series is that stories and people don’t matter, just flashy gadgets, babes with big boobs, and lots of violence. Right.

I can’t decide if this news makes my day or ruins it, but I appreciate Collex pointing it out.

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