This trailer for the movie 'Priest' is awesome...

...and I strongly suspect that someone I know secretly wrote the script. Seriously, this is so relevant to my interests. I would say more but there is nothing to say. Just watch the trailer at io9.

Your New Crush

One of my friends recently told me about a group of history teachers in Hawaii who have a Youtube channel where they do covers of pop songs that change the words to history lessons.

This is the first song I saw, which is really good:



Now, setting a song about the French Revolution to the tune of "Bad Romance" is pretty good, but this is the video that sealed it for me:



Go on, tell me you don't have a crush on her now.

Added bonus: have some more awesome "Bad Romance" covers!

This one should be title Bäd Ro\m/ance:



And for my wife, for posting about crushes on other ladies (I wasn't being serious, honest). She's seen it before, but it's worth watching again:



(also, I apologize for Blogger cutting off the right side of all Youtube videos. Click through to Youtube to see them full-sized).

The Legend of Korra

What you see above is a picture of Korra, a young woman from the Southern Water Tribe who becomes the Avatar after Aang. She will star in a new show on Nickelodeon, made by the team behind the original animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Only a few details have been released, on this site that has currently been brought down by the server load of countless squee'ing Avatar fans.

We do know these things:

• Korra will be taught by Tenzin, who is Aang's son.


• It will take place in a steampunk metropolis.


• Part of the plot will deal with an anti-bending movement.


• It takes place 70 years after the original show.

Some of you might be saying, "Aang's son?!" or "Steampunk in Avatar?!" (as if that's news), and I understand your nervousness. Those were my first reactions, too, but I've gotten over my initial shock and I'm currently in a state of extreme excitement bordering on squee. I remember what it was like watching the original show and wondering, worrying, if the creators would do something to mess it up along the way, but they always steered us right. Personally, I'd just like to know that the same animation studios will be doing the artwork, and I'll be set.

EDIT: A great interview with Mike and Brian here: 'Legend of Korra': The 'Avatar' Creators on the New Spinoff. This show sounds SO GOOD YOU GUYS!

Watch some awesome trailers for The Old Republic

I can guarantee that The Old Republic won't be as awesome as these cinematics. Plus it's an MMO, so in reality the Sith would be named Darth Bauls. So let's just watch the videos several times each and bask in awesome Star Wars action.

Watch this brutal Mortal Kombat reboot video

(WARNING: NSFW, contains violence and disturbing imagery)



I find the trend toward making comic book and video game stories more realistic to be fascinating, and one of the best examples I've seen is the Mortal Kombat: Rebirth trailer. According to Wikipedia, the video was used to pitch the concept of a Mortal Kombat reboot to see if the director could get a studio interested. Here's hoping somebody bites, because this project is way too awesome not to happen.

Movie Review - Watson

My lady and I saw Sir Guy of Ritchie's newest movie, "Watson," and we found it wonderfully entertaining. It has little to do with the source material by the esteemed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, but that is not the point. The movie does not try to emulate Sir Arthur's style, but instead uses the source material as a rough skeleton for telling its own tale full of delightful costumes and sets.

The lead character is played by the talented Jude Law. His character has three motivations: to marry his lovely fiance (a commendable notion to be sure), to look dashing in Victorian-era clothing, and to get away from his sidekick, Sherlock Holmes, played by Robert Downey, Jr.

Downey, Jr.'s Holmes is a frumpy man with amusing facial expressions and permanently tousled hair. Holmes's neurotic genius serves as a good counterpoint to Watson's steely cool. I fear that Sir Guy's love of macho fighting may have caused him to devote too much of the movie to the Holmes character, though this fortunately does not take the focus away from his lead.

Rachel McAdams plays Holmes's love interest, Irene Adler, whose only purpose in this movie is to pout and be American. She pouts a lot and is very American. I suspect she gets her spy gear from Wal-Mart. In any case, I am glad they chose to have this character be a romantic interest for the sidekick, as this allows Watson to have the much more interesting Mary Morstan, played by the (fortunately British) Kelly Reilly.

The villain is Lord Blackwood, played by Mark Strong. Unlike in many mysteries, there is never any doubt as to his identity. His villainy is over-the-top, and in some ways encapsulates what this movie is about: it is theatrical, unreserved, and shamelessly entertaining. There is a moment at the start of the movie between him and Watson that made me gasp aloud.

I would not think it is necessary to see this movie in theaters to enjoy it, but if you do, be sure to keep an eye on the sets. Sometimes it is nice to simply look around and see Sir Guy's version of turn-of-the-century London.

In conclusion, "Watson" is an entertaining, if not particularly deep, bit of cinema, and I recommend it to anyone who likes gaslights, top hats, and explosions.

New Bitey Movie: Last of the Dashkin

Most of you already know that I love Bitey of Brackenwood. Well, in the latest installment, Adam Phillips takes his already formidable talent for storytelling and animation and turns it up another notch. It's amazing. Go see it.

the Last of the Dashkin

A Good Weekend for Movies

Last weekend my lady and I saw two awesome movies. First was The Fall, which we got from Netflix ages ago and finally got around to seeing. My lady had seen it before, and ever since seeing the movie poster on her wall I have wondered what this movie was about. Well, I finally got to see it, and it was fantastic.



The plot deals with a little girl with a broken arm poking around the hospital where she is recovering after falling from a tree. She finds a man who is paralyzed from the waist down after falling from a bridge. The man starts telling her stories to amuse himself, but the stories start to serve another purpose as he tries to get her to bring him something. I don't want to give away too much of the plot, and besides, the plot doesn't matter.

The real strength of this movie is in the gorgeous visuals. The sets, the costumes, the cinematography all combine to make it absolutely beautiful. The highlight of this movie is the story the man tells the little girl. What we see is entirely what's in her imagination, so things change as the man's description changes, and she even misinterprets some things. For instance, the man describes an Indian brave who loses his squaw, but the girl imagines a guy with a beard and mustache wearing a turban.

In some ways, this is a darker version of "The Princess Bride." The man is telling a sick little girl a story filled with wonder and imagination. Even more than "The Princess Bride," "The Fall" explores how the listener and the storyteller create the story together.





We then saw Red Cliff in theaters, because we knew that, as a foreign film, it probably wouldn't be in theaters very long.


This movie exists to prove one thing: Chinese history is badass.

"Red Cliff" was a four-hour, two-part epic in China, which was cut down to a single two-and-a-half hour movie for American audiences. You still get more epic badassery in the first ten minutes of this movie than you get in the entirety of just about any other movie, so I didn't mind as much that they shortened it.

The plot deals with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which a powerful and ambitious prime minister tries to conquer two smaller kingdoms whom he pretends are trying to revolt against the Emperor. The two kingdoms are forced to band together: one has an experienced leader and a bunch of badass generals but with a severely diminished army, and the other has a young, somewhat naive leader with a single really badass general who leads a large but inexperienced army.

There's all sorts of intrigue and character development, but that tends to focus on only a portion of the characters. Most of the characters all but disappear during the plot-related parts and then show up again for the fight scenes. This is okay by me, since the characters the plot focuses on are fascinating and their interaction is one of the high points of this movie.

The other high point of this movie is, of course, the fight scenes. I'll try not to give away too many of my favorite moments, but I'll say this: there is a scene that follows this sequence of events:

• a guy gets shot by an arrow


• he pulls out the arrow


• he runs over to the archer


• he leaps into the air


• he jabs the arrow through the back of the archer's throat

If you still don't want to see this movie, perhaps you should read that sentence again.

Surprisingly, the action in this movie is relatively realistic, compared to wuxia films where people go flying through the air and run across treetops. Nevertheless, you shouldn't expect anything less than over-the-top fight scenes, because Red Cliff delivers those in spades.

Dance of the Dead

Has anyone heard of this movie? Good? Bad? It looks like it could be hilarious or awful, depending on how it's handled:



High school losers vs. zombies. At least the premise is good!

First Squad Russian Trailer

This is amazing! I couldn't wait to post it. It's in Russian, which sounds awesome, and features guns, swords, crusaders, zombies, Soviets, Nazis, and all sorts of combinations of those elements.

The animation looks to be about the same quality as your average modern anime series, rather than a full-length movie, but the plot is so relevant to my interests that I don't care.

Zuko Shot First

Ever since the Last Airbender live-action movie was announced, I've been dreading seeing any news about it. To me, the Avatar television show was so well done that I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to make a live-action version. I even feared that, if the movie was truly terrible, the trauma it caused me would somehow bleed over into the series and make me like it less.

Then I realized something: no matter what sorts of special editions, prequels, TV spinoffs, or live-action versions they make out of things we love, they cannot take away our love for the original, or the feeling we got when we first saw it.

Of course, the ultimate example is Star Wars. First it was the Special Editions with the whole "Han Shot First" controversy. Then came the prequels with "Little Annie" and Jar Jar. Now there's Clone Wars, with its obnoxious mediocrity. But regardless of what Lucas does today, there is no way they can ever take away this:


Similarly, M. Night Shyamalan isn't going to break into my apartment, grab my Avatar DVDs, and replace them with the DVD for The Last Airbender. I will always have Avatar to watch and enjoy.

And every time I hear John Williams' famous chord, I will always become a little kid again, wide-eyed with excitement at seeing laser swords, spaceship fights, and a giant, hairy man-dog named Chewy Chewbacca. (I didn't realize that "Chewy" is a nickname for years.)

Basically what I am trying to say is:

A Little Disconcerting

So there I was, wasting my morning on Apple Trailers to see what movies are coming out. I saw the trailer for Ponyo and decided to check it out. I'd been looking forward to this movie for a while, being a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki since seeing Princess Mononoke back in college, but I still hadn't seen the trailer. I realized that Apple would have the dubbed version, but I was okay with that. I had originally seen Princess Mononoke dubbed, and I was mostly wondering about Ponyo's storyline and animation.

Here's the Youtube version of the trailer:

As it went along, I thought I recognized a familiar voice. Sure enough, Liam Neeson was listed at the top of the screen as one of the voice actors. Awesome, I thought. Qui-Gon is going to be in this! But then I saw, further toward the front of the list, the name "Frankie Jonas." Hm, I thought, Jonas. I'd been seeing that name a lot lately. Surely this couldn't be one of the famous Jonas Brothers?

Well.... here's Frankie Jonas on IMDB.

Yeah, it figures.

Since I'd never heard a Jonas Brothers song in my life, I decided maybe it wasn't that bad. I'd check them out on Youtube. This is the video I ended up watching:

The video's actually not that bad. I kind of like the idea of doing a tribute to spy movies, buddy cop shows, and kung fu movies. True, all the actors have "Disney Channel hair," but what do you want from kids these days?

But the song... the song!

I can still hear it... I can still hear it in my head...

Is Ponyo still going to rock? Probably. And there's always the subtitled version. For all I know, Young Master Jonas may actually be a good voice actor. But couldn't they have picked someone else?

(While on the topic of anime, I should add that I still haven't seen the teaser trailer for The Last Airbender. I'm sure my curiosity will overwhelm my revulsion someday and I will watch that trailer in a moment of weakness. I am just as sure that feelings of regret and self-loathing will immediately follow.)

First Squad Update

I'm sure you all remember my first post about First Squad.

Well, apparently it was shown at the Cannes Marche du Film, and to celebrate they gave us a new trailer. Check it out RIGHT NOW:



EDIT: It sounds like the story is based very loosely on some Soviet propaganda YA novels. Now that's pretty awesome.

SECOND EDIT: After spending quite a bit of time trying to hunt down the novels mentioned in the interview, this is the best I could do. It's called "Young Guard," not "Pioneer Heroes" like in the interview, but the content sounds very similar. Still, the interview says that the stories were popular in the 80's, and "Young Guard" was published in 1947, so I can't really say if I'm on the right track.

These Are The Voyages (warning: contains spoilers)

Don’t wanna sing now or play guitar
I wanna get drunk in a seedy bar
Get in a fight and kill a red shirt
And bring this f***er to red alert
--Warp 11, "Red Alert"

On Saturday, my lady and I went with two of our friends to the California Theater to see Star Trek. It surprises nobody to learn that we are all Trekkies, and we all had high expectations going into the movie. To me, this movie was do-or-die for the Trek franchise. Gene Roddenberry is gone, rest his soul, and the shows have steadily declined in quality since DS9. Enterprise was a sad, divisive last gasp of a beloved franchise that alienated its longtime fans while failing to attract new ones. Now studios seemed to be giving Trek one last opportunity to prove itself. No excuses: it would have a huge budget, J J Abrams, a large cast of good-looking, at least moderately famous people, and enough marketing to make a Ferengi blush. I felt that the franchise had woken up to find the head of its favorite targ next to it in bed. If this movie didn't work, that would be it.

Fortunately, Star Trek is making money hand over fist, and I don't think we need to worry about that dropping off any time soon. I know that my lady and I are already planning our second viewing (something we were actually doing before even seeing it the first time!), and I am sure that many of our fellow geeks will be boldly going where they have gone once before to see it again.

I could go on and on about the way this movie brought the fun and the "wow" factor back to Star Trek. There were several moments where I realized that I had been smiling without knowing it. Rather than boring you to death with endless babbling, I will share a few of the things that really made this movie, and some of the things that were not so good.

First, the good:

• Karl Urban nailed the character of Bones McCoy, from the first moment we hear him declare off-screen that, damn it, he's a doctor. I would have a very hard time picking a favorite TOS character, but if someone held a disruptor to my head, I would probably pick McCoy, so I was glad to see him done so well. Urban nailed McCoy's quirky charm and comfortable drawl, and yes, my dear, the eyebrow!!
  


• Along those lines, the parts where Spock sits down at the controls to the future spaceship and says "Fascinating" and where Scotty says "I'm giving her all she's got!" were absolutely perfect.


• Simon Pegg played Scotty. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of "Spaced" knows why this was an absolutely inspired choice of casting. He seemed to be having a blast every single second he was on the screen, which is perfect, because one of the best things about Montgomery Scott was his joy.


• Scotty's little sidekick alien was absolutely hilarious. If, before I saw the film, you would have told me that the movie would give Scotty a little sidekick alien, I would have told you that it's a horrible idea and I would have listed ten reasons why Scotty should never, ever have a little sidekick alien. But the second I saw that little critter's lip wobble when he thought Scotty had deserted him, I knew that these two deserved each other.


• Leonard Nimoy was absolutely perfect. It's a testament to Zachary Quinto's acting that his portrayal of Spock wasn't completely overshadowed by Nimoy's. It was as it Nimoy was saying, "You can be Spock now, but don't forget that you have some serious shoes to fill." Nimoy's Spock was wise, kind, and full of a startling reservoir of emotion. In a word, he was legendary, which is exactly what this movie needed him to be.


• A lot of the comedy in the film worked very well, which is good, because the amount of humor is one thing that separates the original series from the later shows. The "Weektor Weektor" scene was my favorite.

And now, the bad:

• The villain. Nemo was utterly bland, and what's worse, I think it was intentional. I'm almost tempted to believe that the producers were afraid their villain would out-shine their heroes and thus defeat the purpose of a reboot, but if that could ever be the case, they really should have had more faith in their cast. Facial tattoos do not make you interesting or scary. You need a two-bladed lightsaber if you want to pull that off.


• The Kobayashi Maru scene was, in retrospect, something of a let-down. As this blog points out, the Kobayashi Maru test is supposed to be about Kirk's inability to accept a no-win scenario and his willingness to do whatever it takes to overcome his obstacles. Instead, it comes across as Kirk being somewhat insufferable. That said, the movie does tell us that this is his third time taking the test. If it would have shown more of Kirk failing, fighting off frustration and defeatism and finally triumphing, the scene would have given us a lot more than Kirk sitting in a chair, eating an apple, and preening.


• A lot of the stuff with Sulu fell flat for me. First, he forgets the external inertial dampeners when he is about to go to warp. When I was restoring my iPod just now, it warned me that I was currently syncing my iPod, and made sure I still wanted to restore. So a spaceship in the future doesn't automatically warn you that the 'parking brake' is on? Then we get the fight scene on the drill. I thought it looked really cool when he pulled out his sword (fanboy moment), then was immediately let down by the fight that followed. It was some of the worse fight choreography I had ever seen. Almost Blade-esque. (If you ever want to see how not to film a sword fight, watch the original "Blade.")

That's about all that I want to complain about. As a nerd, it is my duty to nit-pick (and there are probably more nits I could pick), but it's Star Trek, and I loved the movie, so why focus on the negative?

So here's hoping that this new cast and crew boldly go many, many more times.

As a final note, how come Star Trek gets to rock its 21st century incarnation so hard, when my most beloved franchise, Star Wars, gets Little Annie and Jar-Jar? Well, despite my love for Star Wars, I am a Trekkie as well, and it is a good week to be a Trekkie. Now, if they would only make a movie featuring Klingons and filmed entirely in Klingon....

SPATULA

CONFIRMED!

...and what he does is not very nice

They've deviated slightly from the source material in the... in... in Wolverine, to... to make it work for... for the purposes of the film.
-Ryan Reynolds, on his character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine

(Warning: this post is mostly me bs'ing. Also, lots of spoilers.)

It all started with me geeking out over how cool Wolverine is after having seen the first trailer.

Then my enthusiasm for the project was somewhat lessened by the second trailer.

Now that I have seen this movie, it's a bit hard to wrap my brain around it. My lady* and I had been looking forward to this film and speculating about its content (and projected levels of awesome) for so long that I sometimes catch myself wondering what Wolverine will be like, having momentarily forgotten that I already know. In fact, watching the movie was very much like watching the trailers: some incredibly badass moments separated by scenes I was already trying to forget before they were over.

To start things off, I should mention that Hugh Jackman really is the only person who could have played Wolverine and pulled it off. He spends much of the movie growling, roaring, and attacking people with claws that come out of his hands, and he makes it as believable as any actor could. Sure, it's a superhero movie, so realism really doesn't play a terribly big part in the whole thing, but it's nice to watch a movie in which the main actor is putting himself into the role.

We all know that a movie version of a character is going to be different from the comic version, because a lot of the over-the-top drama and action in comics has to be dialed down to keep from looking ridiculous in movies. This leaves a gap in the character, and a truly good comic book movie actor will fill that gap with humanity. Hugh Jackman does this for Logan, wearing the character like a battered leather jacket that years of comfortable wear have molded to his body. Rather than trying to ask himself "What would it be like to be (insert the entire Wolverine Wikipedia article here)," Jackman seems to be asking himself, "What would it be like to be a loner with animal instincts, an unbreakable skeleton, and claws that go 'snikt'?"

And who doesn't want to see Hugh Jackman in character as Wolverine, striding slowly away from a towering explosion?

Credit also goes to Liev Schreiber, who plays Victor Creed (Sabertooth) and does such a good job of it that I did a double-take when I saw a picture of the Sabertooth from the original X-Men film. This new Sabertooth is brutal without being savage, unhinged without being a raving lunatic. I really liked the fight scenes between Jackman and Schrieber. They were well-choreographed and sold by both actors. There's one scene where Creed throws Logan into a stack of lumber that made me wince.

The montage at the beginning with Logan and Creed going through wars together was awesome.

Given that the relationship between Logan and Creed is what holds this movie together, I would say we have a good, solid foundation to this movie. Unfortunately, nearly everything this movie tries to build on that foundation fails.

Each of the Weapon X characters is completely bland and relies entirely on special effects to create an audience reaction. Agent Zero was a lot cooler when his name was Cleric John Preston and he had an entire movie dedicated to him**. The Blob was fat and stupid. The machine-controlling dude made faces that made elevators go. Wraith filled the role of The Cool Black Guy Who Thinks The White Guy Is Cool (see: the weapons guy from Batman, the Air Force guy from Iron Man). Stryker was completely generic, which is a shame because they actually brought up his backstory involving his mutant son, only to do exactly nothing with it. Also, I guess Ryan Reynolds was in it. I think he played some obnoxious dude with swords, but I can't really remember him that well since he's only really in it for one scene. He comes back at the end as a laser-eyed, sword-armed shirtless dude, which I thought was pretty cool. I'm not entirely sure which Marvel character that was based on, but I'm sure I'll think of it eventually.

The love story was so completely generic that my lady couldn't help but laugh. Whoever thoughts that Wolverine should be named after some whiny tearjerker myth, rather than the fact that he's a hairy badass who flips out and wrecks people, needs to be severely reprimanded. Though I did like Hugh Jackman in the scene where his wife makes him kiss her goodbye. He really sells the happy balance between a man who is hopelessly in love and wants to be romantic while still being a man's man. It's too bad the woman he was cast beside was utterly bland and brought nothing to the role.

I was also not too happy about the part where the wife touches an angry redneck and calms him down. The film gives us an unnecessary sound effect when she touches him, making it bleedingly obvious that she is using a mutant power on him. It would have been just as effective, and a whole lot more satisfying, to leave the sound out and make us wonder, so that later in the film when we learn she has powers we say "Oh, so that's what happened with the trucker earlier..."

I wasn't a big fan of the claws in this movie. Wolverine's claws looked aluminum and too wide, while Sabertooth's grow out of his fingers for some reason.

There were other mutants in this movie, as well, such as Cyclops and Emma Frost. Emma Frost looked like a bimbo who could cover herself in bulletproof styrofoam, and contributed nothing to the plot. Cyclops continued to prove why he's the least interesting character in X-Men. Oh, and apparently his laserbeams can cut through entire buildings now. He's sure come a long way since the days of the 90s X-Men cartoon, when his lasers would sometimes push people back and make their clothing smolder a little.

I was actually quite pleasantly surprised by Taylor Kitsch's pleasantly laconic portrayal of the not-so-ragin' Cajun, Gambit. When I said nearly everything this movie tries to build on the foundation of Logan and Creed fails, the one other part that did not fail was Gambit. His pimp staff was a bit too magical, both when he was climbing walls with its two halves and when he was chopping falling buildings in half with it. Also, he was apparently telekinetic. Well, never mind all that. In his ten minutes of screen time, he was roguish and likable, and that's what Gambit is all about.

To wrap up, I'd like to say that Ryan Reynolds once apparently expressed interest in playing Deadpool in a Marvel movie. Whatever happened to that? I hope they let him give it a shot someday. He'd make a really good Deadpool.

*and how awesome is it to have a lady who is genuinely excited to see Wolverine with you (and whom you can kiss when he says his famous line)?
**credit goes to my lady for showing me Equilibrium

Figures Fully Poseable

When my brothers and I were growing up, GI JOEs were the toy for us. Sure, we had Star Wars toys and Batman toys, but GI JOEs were the first toy line we really got into, and easily the one we had the most figures from. The best part of Christmas was receiving new GI JOE figures and vehicles, and I always weighed how expensive something was by dividing the cost by 5 to see how many GI JOE figures you could buy for that amount (fun fact: I still do).

I have seen the trailer to the new GI JOE live-action movie, The Rise of Cobra, and boy, does it look bad. I'm sure it will have lots of cool special effects, but the whole thing just looks way too slick. The whole point of GI JOE was that it was a child's fantasy: each character was a caricature, designed primarily to look cool. They were trying to sell toys, after all, and thus character design was paramount. More importantly, every character had to look different, so that kids would want them all. If the characters all had the same costumes (like they seem to in the movie), why bother buying more than one?

Which brings me to GI JOE: Resolute. Not to be confused with the upcoming live-action film, Resolute is a series of five-minute cartoons available on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim website. Written by Warren Ellis and directed by a guy who directed both Justice League: Unlimited and Avatar: the Last Freaking Airbender, this show is exactly what GI JOE should be.

I recognize so many characters, though I'm ashamed to admit that it's usually just "Hey, I know that guy! The dude with the corduroy mask! Jeez, what was his name again?" The fight scenes are larger-than-life, the villains are over-the-top, and once again Cobra Commander is trying to take over the world. Even better, the silly laser weapons and childlike non-violence have been replaced by more realistic weaponry and some proper killing. Two named characters (one JOE, one COBRA) die before the first episode even begins.

I can't talk about GI JOE without mentioning the most popular character, Snake Eyes. Apart from Cobra Commander, Snake Eyes is usually the only character people remember from the show, and he is featured prominently in Resolute. He has his own storyline, and there's a part of Episode Eight (where he fights his nemesis, Storm Shadow) that is so badass, if you don't say "woa" out loud I will be very disappointed in you. (Tycho Brahe agrees.)

So come on. The show is short, free, and easily accessible. It not only lives up to the source material, it improves it and elevates it in ways the preachy, poorly animated original could never hope to. I guarantee you this is better than the live-action movie is going to be. This isn't the show we watched on TV. This is the show we thought we were watching on TV, and the show we tried to reenact with our figures.

And now, because you knew it was coming: Cobraaaaaa!

Just kidding. Yo, Joe!

PS: One thing the live-action movie has going for it: the Baroness looks quite hot. Nerdy supervillains... yow.

How to tell Deadpool apart from Bullshit

It seems that some people do not know how to tell the Marvel Comics character Deadpool apart from bullshit. Here is a handy visual reference for those people:

Deadpool:


Bullshit:

Relevant to My Interests

Warning: videos contain Nazi mechs fighting T-34s and dangerous levels of awesome.





Apparently this show, First Squad, is about a Nazi plot to raise Crusaders from the dead to fight for the Third Reich, and the supernaturally-gifted Soviet teenagers who have to stop them. I kid you not. THIS IS RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.

Go to the site and download the high-quality trailer from the Downloads page. You'll be re-watching it many times anyway, so you might as well see it in good quality.

Thinking Way Too Hard About: Guns vs Swords

For the sake of clarity, this post will not deal with swords that are also guns, other than to say that they are awesome.

In the real world, there are swords and there are guns, and there's really no point in comparing the two. While there are apparently still some people out there who kill other people with swords, these people are usually insane enough for it not to count. Plus, modern-day sword-using killers tend to kill people who are unarmed and not particularly interested in fighting back. If someone with a sword tries to fight someone with a gun, the results are unlikely to surprise anybody.

When you take the realm of fiction, however, the situation is often reversed. This is partially because fictional worlds operate not so much on stodgy systems of "logic" than on systems of "awesome," and partially because the protagonists of these stories need a challenge that usually isn't offered by gunning down sword-wielding enemies from across the room.

Giving your protagonist a sword when his enemies all have guns is a good way of establishing his badassitude. Whether he has to rely on his sneakiness, his forethought, or simply his bullet-dodging acrobatics, he's going to be the underdog, which makes his victory that much more impressive. As an added bonus, the anachronism of using such an elegant weapon hearkens back to a more civilized age, so our hero gets the associated ideals of honor, duty, etc.

So far, so good. If you're writing a book, comic book, or movie about a guy who uses swords to fight guys with guns, it's not going to take a whole lot of explanation for me to say, "Okay, you've got me sold, now let's see some violence, plz kthx." This is an advantage to the "my story, let me show you it" method of storytelling: total control over the plot lets you sacrifice logic for the sake of awesome thanks to the underlying assumption that, if this was anyone else with a sword, they'd be shot to pieces in five seconds, and it's only because our hero is so skilled, trained, lucky, and badass that he gets to carve up his enemies instead.

Of course, there is another method of storytelling that we nerds experience, and that is the "my story, plz tell it to me" method found in video games and roleplaying games. In this method, the system is laid out for you, but it's up to the viewer to generate the actual events. This means that, rather than being able to say "99% of the time gun beats sword, now let me show you the 1%," you have to set up a scenario in which sword always beats gun, or at least stands a good chance against it. And this is where things get weird.

Perhaps the most famous example of this is Final Fantasy VII, in which a guy with a sword (Cloud) does a crapload more damage than a guy with a gun (Vincent). Then you've got systems (see: D&D) where a great big sword is going to be doing more damage than a gun. One wonders, therefore, why anyone would bother using, or even inventing, a firearm, when a sharpened piece of metal is more effective.

There is a reason behind this decision, however, and it deals with the main underlying difference in combat in video games and RPGs versus real life (or media based on real life, such as novels and movies). In real life, it takes a single good hit to take someone out of a fight. This hit could come from a sword, a gun, a rock, or a Scud missile: the result is the same. Death. In video games and RPGs (and RPG video games, and RPGs based on video games), a single good hit is going to hurt your opponent, but they will keep fighting. They lose hit points, but they are not dead, and now it's their turn to hit you.

So while real life combat operates on a more or less binary system of damage (dead/not dead), video games and RPGs have to come up with a sliding scale of damage ('tis but a scratch through MASSIVE DAMAGE). Realism goes out the window, and now we have to decide whether a bullet to the chest should do more or less damage than a sword to the chest. Looking around for something to base this decision on, we come across the previously-mentioned principle of "awesome," and naturally decide that a sword should do more damage.

Because, fundamentally, it's cooler to stab someone than to shoot them.