With No Power Comes No Responsibility (Kick-Ass Review)

Kick-Ass' premise is deceptively simple: why is it that no one in the real world dresses up like a superhero and fights crime?  This is the question that Dave, your average high-school boy, asks at the movie's onset.  It's a fair question: haven't you ever thought of buying/making your own costume and then going out and taking on criminals?  I know I have.  This is precisely what Dave does, though it doesn't exactly turn out as he thought.  Before long, Dave - or "Kick-Ass" - gets swept up in a much bigger plot involving crime lords and a lot of blood.

I was hooked on this movie from the moment I saw the first trailer, and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed.  There's really nothing special about Dave, as he himself clearly points out, aside from the superpower of being "invisible to girls".  He's just your average high-school guy who, I'll be honest, reminded me a little too much of myself at that tender young age.  When he finally dons his wetsuit - excuse me, costume - he admits that really all it took was some optimism and naivete.  His actions over the course of this movie speak volumes: he has no "defining moment" of superhero origin, where his parents are murdered by criminals and he sets out to avenge them, no girlfriend raped and murdered by thugs in some dark alley, nothing.  And with no powers to encourage him, there really is no reason for him to become Kick-Ass.  Yet he does.  He goes out and risks his life for people he's never met just because it's the right thing to do and he's willing to take a stand.  He was a fantastic character, and well-played, too.  The only other thing I'd ever seen Aaron Johnson in was Shanghai Knights, where he played Charlie Chaplin as a boy, but that hardly counts, as he was 13 and it was a minor role (and not a terribly good movie, though it kills me to say that).  I hope to see him in more.

As the above poster may suggest, there are other "superheros" involved in the world of Kick-Ass, and it is with them that things get really interesting.  The first time you see Hit Girl and Big Daddy, the latter - Hit Girl's father - is all smiles and encouragement as he pulls a pistol from his belt and shoots his 11-year-old daughter in the chest, blowing a hole in her pink down coat and sending a few feathers into the air for amusing effect.  Don't worry - she's wearing a bulletproof vest, and her considerate father was merely showing her what it felt like to get shot in order to prepare her for the real thing. 

Nic Cage's performance as Big Daddy was far more endearing than I expected it to be.  He always calls Mindy - aka Hit Girl - "Child" with an odd southern accent, and he wears this big dopey grin to match his innocent eyes and his "I clearly used to be a cop" mustache.  But when he wears his Batman-like costume, he speaks to everyone but Mindy like Adam West's campy version of Batman from the 1960's.  Hearing Nic Cage impersonate Adam West alone made the movie worth watching.  Ironically, if you, you know, remove the weaponry and death from the equation, Big Daddy's interactions with his daughter are the perfect example of a great dad.  You can tell that they love and trust each other deeply.  Big Daddy does everything he can to teach and protect Hit Girl, while the latter struggles to learn what it means to do things on her own, outside of the training room.  They listen to each other, and they do the best that they can to bring out the most in each other.  It was touching, really, until the next scene finds Hit Girl running men through with a double-bladed glaive.

Hit Girl, meanwhile, was expertly played, given that the actress turned 13 this year.  From her character comes the majority of the critisism for the movie, though I think that some people can't live without getting in a fuss over something.  She's an adorable 11-year-old girl who enjoys wearing pink... and slicing people to ribbons with sharp, pointy objects.  The first time you see her in her superhero costume, she calls the merry band of druggies in the room "cunts", from which spawned a whole host of controversy that I just don't feel makes much sense.  The actress has stated in interviews that she would NEVER say those kinds of things outside of the set, to the point where she won't even say the name of the movie in public but just refers to it as "the film" or "Kick-Butt".  So if she's not psychologically disturbed by playing such a character, whom are the critics trying to protect by attacking her character?  Their kids?  If these people are taking their kids to go see Kick-Ass, then a few colorful remarks by a young actress are bound to be the least of their problems.  That leaves, then, the adult audience, who hears the same language - and more! - from almost every other character in the movie, but are these groups concerned about adult men saying such terrible things?  Who knows.  I doubt very much that they do.  I'm surprised that no one's accused these critics of being sexist.  That'd be funny: throw critics at those critics and see what happens.  I bet they'd start reenacting scenes from Kick-Ass.

Ever since we saw Star Trek last year (and found it to be fantastic), I've been conscious of an observation by my then-fiancee:sStrong female characters, and the curious lack thereof.  In Star Trek, Uhura and Spock's mom were pretty much the only women present for more than five seconds, and while both of them brought a lot to the film, in the end it was all about Kirk and Spock.  This is all too common in action/superhero flicks, with notable exceptions like Kill Bill and perhaps even The Fantastic Four.  Women are usually just there for romance, but seeing as how Hit Girl is only 11, that element gets taken clean out, leaving only a strong-willed girl with more depth than you may initially think.  This is a good thing, since the romance of the movie was not particularly exciting or, I thought, well drawn-out.  I'm not saying Kick-Ass' love interest wasn't a good character, or their interactions poor, but after a certain scene, she becomes pretty useless, while Hit Girl takes the spotlight more and more.

Mark Strong, meanwhile, has found a niche in playing rough, dark badguys with a certain flair of humor.  You may have seen him before as Septimus in Stardust, or the evil Lord Blackwood in the recent Sherlock Holmes.  And Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin from Superbad) plays his usual, dorky-type character, though of course he does it well.  That role was all but made for him.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  This is a movie made for anyone who loved Kill Bill.  It's the kind where you find yourself laughing because you've just realized that you're watching an 11-year-old girl in a school uniform and purple wig slicing off the leg of a huge hoodlum.  More than most superhero movies I've seen in quite a while, you feel as though the people behind the masks really are people, with their own personal struggles to face outside of the plot's central badguy.  But if you don't want to see what a man looks like when placed in a massive microwave (a combination of Nickelodeon's "Inside-Out Boy" and an overturned bowl of pasta sauce, as it turns out), then you may want to skip this one.  The blood and gore is as over-the-top as it was in Kill Bill, so take that how you will.  I, meanwhile, will be heading down to the local comics store to check out the original source for this movie.

Hungry? Why Wait? (Catching Fire Review)

I waited as long as I could.  Really.  After reading The Hunger Games, I immediately went out and bought the sequel, Catching Fire, before I realized that this may not be the best idea.  The Hunger Games was really, really good (in case you didn't read my review).  It was the first in a trilogy about a young woman, Katniss, who lives in a world where twelve oppressed districts are ruled by the Capitol.  Each year, the districts must hold a "reaping", where one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, an annual "celebration" held by the Capitol to remind the districts of who's in charge.  See, several years ago, the districts rose up against the Capitol in rebellion, but they lost.  Now the Capitol holds all the wealth, all the power, while the twelve districts all but starve in the most miserable conditions one can imagine.  Anyway, twenty-four teens are chosen for the Hunger Games.  They are thrown into a large arena.  The last one surviving is declared the victor.

Sound depressing?  I suppose it is.  The Hunger Games was an emotional ride filled with small gems of happiness amongst an onslaught of pain and misery.  Twenty-four teenagers are thrown against their will (except for the "Careers", but that's another story) into this arena.  Twenty-three must die while their parents and friends are forced to watch the highlights, as if this was some football game being covered on SportsCenter.  That any glimpses of humanity could be found within such a dark world is remarkable, yet the story that Suzanne Collins has unraveled here is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

So, why did I not want to read Catching Fire yet?  Well, the third and final book of the trilogy's not out and won't be until August, that's why.  I thought perhaps I could hold out until at least July before reading Catching Fire, but I cracked.  Call it weakness.  Now that I've finished it, things are just as I feared.  I have to try to keep myself together and not go crazy from anticipation.  If The Hunger Games was really, really good, then somehow, Catching Fire was even better.

For some reason, when I started reading this series I thought that this was Suzanne Collins' first book series to write, but I was quite wrong.  She's been writing since 1991, and has even written for some Nickelodeon shows like the excellent Clarissa Explains It All.  Eventually, she tried her hand at novels with the five-part The Underground Chronicles series before tackling The Hunger Games.  As a budding writer, this came as something of a relief, for if this had been her first book series, I may have cried.  It just wouldn't have been fair for someone to be so good so early on in their career.

I'm going to be as spoiler-free as possible, but I won't hide the fact that your narrator, Katniss, survives the first book and is once again your eyes and ears.

Over the course of this book, I finally figured out why this series does such an absurdly good job of taking hold of your heartstrings and slinging them around like some mad spinster.  The books are in first-person.  This puts you right in the action and, if the author's good enough (which Suzanne Collins is), will trick your brain into seeing the events of the books more as memories than a fictional story.  What keeps your brain even more actively involved in the story is that Katniss narrates in the present (as in, "she hunts for food", not "she hunted for food").  It may sound strange, but it works disturbingly well.

Catching Fire picks up right where The Hunger Games left off.  Let's just say that "unrest" is the name of the game here, as the events of the first book have set things in motion that might not be able to be stopped, and Katniss is right in the middle of it all.  What amazes me about this series is that Katniss is a very intelligent girl, yet often times her sound reasoning leads her to assume things that are incorrect, so that when something counter to her expectations happens, not only can you instantly see why her assumptions were incorrect, but the surprises manage to be genuine without being cheap.  Plot twists abound, yet never did I once think "what the hell?"  A few twists actually garnered an audible "oh no!" or a "craaaaap" from me, and I rarely, if ever, speak with my books.  Oh, and darn it all, but this one had a moment that made me cry, too.  I'd say that reading from a girl's point of view has turned me into one, but that'd be sexist and rude, so I won't.

To be honest, I don't have much else to say about Catching Fire without spoiling things.  Katniss and the characters around her are deep and fascinating and constantly full of surprises.  This book will keep you glued to the edge of your seat for the entire ride.  You will not be able to put it down, and you will not, as I must, be able to wait until the final book hits the shelves this fall.  Please do not miss these books.

YELL AT IT! (How to Train Your Dragon Review)

I bet I know what you're thinking. "Hey, I really liked that movie. Hiccup was perfectly voiced by Jay Baruchel in a wonderfully dry, humorous manner, and Toothless the dragon acted like a weird but lovable combination of my neighbor's cat and Stitch from that Disney movie. But his eyes!  Toothless' eyes were SO emotive!  The dynamic between Hiccup and Toothless was so powerful that neither of them had to speak a word in order to communicate.  I went home and downloaded the soundtrack as soon as I could because it was so amazing, and boy were there some funny moments!"

I completely agree with you, but I'm actually here to review the book, not the movie. Go see the movie though. Please. Not including Pixar films, it's the best non-live-action thing I've seen since... well... Shrek 2 at least, and probably earlier than that.

That being said, the book is something entirely different than the movie, which can only be described as a "loose" interpretation, looser than (I'm assuming) the Dante's Inferno videogame version of the old poem written by some Italian man suffering a mid-life crisis. I'm not saying for a moment that How to Train Your Dragon - the book! - is bad. In fact, it's quite good, but don't expect anything even remotely resembling the movie, which to me was a CGI version of what Eregon should have been and in every way wasn't.

Sorry, had to get my weekly dig at the Inheritance Cycle there. Whew, glad that's over.

So what's the HTTYD book like, exactly? Well, for starters, I suspect that it was written with, say, 10-11 year-old boys in mind. The narration is simple and straightforward, and it is lightly funny, though rarely at a level higher than that grasped by a prepubescent male. Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is the young son of Stoick the Vast, who is the leader of the Hairy Hooligan tribe of Viking warriors. Hiccup is not like the other Vikings, who are aggressive and loud and generally enjoy killing things and/or throwing them a great distance. No, Hiccup is small, and thoughtful, and is the only Viking around who has read enough books to have learned Dragonese.  Dragons in this world are dog-sized pets captured and trained to serve primarily as food-gatherers, not mounts.  Vikings are instructed that the louder you yell at your dragon, the better it obeys.  When Hiccup and the other boys go out to the caves to capture their dragons, he winds up with Toothless, a tiny, "terrier-sized" dragon of the most common variety. Now Hiccup has just a few months to train the whiny, singularly uncooperative Toothless for the initiation ceremony, or he'll be expelled from the Viking tribe forever.

This was, first and foremost, an enjoyable book.  Many of the adult Vikings (most prominently the boys' trainer, Gobber) have more dialog set in ALL CAPS than not, since they are always yelling.  Given the target audience, there aren't as many poop jokes as you may think, but there are some (and let's face it: boys don't really grow up when it comes to this subject.  I giggled my pants off during these scenes).  On at least every other page there is an adolescent-style sketch of a character, or a scene or item or something, as though Hiccup himself drew on the pages to give you a better idea of what his friends really looked like.  The scenes go quickly, and it is an incredibly fast read.  I must have finished it in about three hours, tops.  As it turns out, this book is part of a seven-part series that chronicle the life of Hiccup, a great hero in the fictional history of these Vikings.  I had no idea.

It has all your typical young fiction elements: teachers who don't understand, bullies, unorthodox friends who stick out even more than the protagonist, oblivious parents, happy endings.  It's predictable, but not cliche.  You can tell the writer had fun with it because you'll have fun reading it.  I recently learned that the writer is British, which doesn't at all surprise me.  They have a certain wit about them when they write.  Try reading something by Neil Gaiman, like Stardust, which, much like this current story, involves an absolutely fantastic movie and a pretty good but incredibly different book.

I'd have enjoyed HTTYD more were I only 10 or 11, or even up to perhaps 14.  That's pretty much the age group for whom I'd recommend it.  It's lighthearted, and the ending is indeed satisfying, but where the movie touched me deeply (one IMDb reviewer says that it won the "Heartland Truly Moving Picture Award" in Indianapolis, and I believe it), the book just sort of skims the surface.  I would still recommend reading it because of its British humor and fun story, but if you're looking for a moving, human experience, stick with the movie.  I don't know if I'll ever read any of the other books in the seven-part series (the other books have titles like How to be a Pirate, or How to Speak Dragonese, in case you were wondering), but I'll let you know if I do.


Speaking of how to speak Dragonese, that was definitely my favorite part of the book.  At one point it offers a few key phrases, so that you, too, will be able to tell your dragon "No poo-ing inside the house, please" (Nee-ah crappa inna di hoosus, pishyou) or "my mother does not like to be bitten on the bottom" (Mi mama no likeit yum-yum on di bum), or my personal favorite, "let's try that again" (Doit a wummortime). This was only topped, perhaps, by Hiccup's mother's name - Valhallarama - and the fact that her bra is eventually used as a weapon.

Oh. My. Gods. (Clash of the Titans, 2010 Review)

In case it hasn't yet become painfully obvious on this blog, I really like stories dealing with Greek mythology. Ever since we studied them in 5th grade, and I had to dress up as Hermes (so I made little wings for my sandals, tied a bedsheet around me, and brought my awesome White Power Ranger Staff weapon to school as my "caduceus"), I've just been hooked. As I've said before, I would have practically majored in mythology if I could have.

Let's begin with the briefest mythological lesson I can manage.

Hesiod was the first to actually record a form of creation myth involving our Olympian friends. According to him, there was Chaos, from whom came Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros, who caused couplings to happen. Eventually, Gaia popped out Ouranos (or Uranus) and had many children with him: the twelve Titans, and also the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires (or the "Hundred-Handers"). Kronos (or Chronus) was the youngest Titan. Long story short, the Titans rose up against their oppressive father Ouranos and took control. Kronos mated with his sister Rhea, and together they produced half of the Olympian gods: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. Kronos knew that his children may rise against him as he did his own father, so he ate them all, but Rhea hid Zeus away until he was old enough to fight back. A huge war ensued, but with the help of the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires, the Olympians beat the Titans. Kronos was cut up into little tiny pieces and thrown into Tartarus (since he can't technically die). Zeus then split power between he and his two brothers: he claimed the sky, Poseidon claimed the sea and earth, and Hades claimed the underworld. The creation of man mythos changes depending on the source: sometimes Zeus made them, sometimes "the gods", and sometimes Prometheus, the son of a Titan who allied with the Olympians (and who famously gave humans fire, for which he was punished in Prometheus Bound by having a bird fly by and eat his liver everyday).

Now, take all of that information... and throw it away. Watch Clash of the Titans (1981) with the sound off. Write a screenplay, and voila! You have a new Clash of the Titans epic to end all epics.

As Professor Goodtime says, "Barf sandwich".

For the sake of time, I'm not going to go into how either movie deviates from the general myth of Perseus and Argos. There just isn't enough time, and I'm fairly convinced that the makers of the new Clash used the 1981 movie as their sole source of historical accuracy, so there's really little point.

From the outset of Clash of the Titans (2010), you know that either the writers have never actually heard of Greek mythology or they just somehow felt that they were skilled enough to justify completely changing 3,000-year-old tales. I'm guessing the latter. They begin the movie by explaining that the Titans ruled the world, but then that Zeus, Poseidon and Hades showed up and decided to battle them (which sounds less like succession mythology and more like Pokemon). The Olympian trio started to lose, but then Hades did a bit of black magic and sacrificed part of his own self to create a Titan of his own: the Kraken. This new weapon was then used to defeat the Titans. After victory, Zeus claimed the sky as his domain. Poseidon claimed the sea (Hollywood never realizes that Poseidon isn't called "The Earthshaker" because he goes clubbing on Friday nights), and Hades was tricked into becoming Lord of the Underworld, where he sits by himself for thousands of years, quietly plotting revenge against his brothers.

Now, I've never before said the full phrase from which we get "WTF", but it almost escaped my lips when I saw this opening segment.

From here you are introduced to Perseus, the hero of the story. With his parents supposedly dead, he gets taken in by a kind fisherman and his wife. Through the fisherman you're introduced to one of the main focuses of the plot: that Man is dissatisfied with the gods and doesn't feel that he needs them anymore. "One day," the fisherman says, "somebody's got to make a stand. One day, somebody's got to say... 'enough'."

I almost stood and said "enough" to the movie right there. To my everlasting shame, I kept watching.

Perseus grows into a man, and one day he and his family witness a group of soldiers ripping down a massive statue of Zeus. For some reason, this causes Hades to appear and wipe out all of the soldiers before sending some kind of Dragonball Z energy blast towards Perseus' fishing ship. His family dies, but he lives, naturally sustaining a severe hatred of the gods (by the way, the movie never properly explains, in my opinion, why humans hate the gods so much. They just do). Other soldiers appear and take him to Argos, where Queen Cassiopeia is busy claiming that the gods are useless ("The gods need us! They need our prayers! What do we need the gods for?" she says). Eventually she announces that her daughter, Andromeda, is better-looking than the gods themselves (though, strangely, she's not better-looking than the Andromeda from 1981), and again, Hades appears - why does HE care about a queen's vanity? - and says that if Andromeda isn't sacrificed to the Kraken in ten days, the big ugly monster will destroy Argos (and so will the Kraken, hey! a-boom-tsh!). Because it's important to the plot, Perseus wanders into the throne room just in time to witness this, and when Hades sees our hero, he tells the demigod of his true parentage: Zeus is Perseus' father. The king sends Perseus out to kill the Kraken, and we're on our way to more lessons in Greek heresy.

Argos becomes vaguely divided between those who wish to sacrifice Andromeda and those who wish to believe in Perseus, but you never get a clear sense that the city even knows who Perseus is, so I actually spent a large portion of the movie wondering "does this entire city want to die before sacrificing their princess?" The character of Andromeda was so underworked in this movie that I couldn't give a flying fart (to paraphrase a coworker) whether she lived or died. Perseus ventures out to save her, sure, but for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. There's no love interest there, no hopes that he himself will one day marry her and become king like in the old version. Perseus as a character pretty much represents Clash's version of Man in general: confused, muddled, angry and bitter for no clear reason, doing things that make no sense, utterly compassionless.

After Argos, Perseus faces more or less the same challenges that he faced in 1981, but with a few bizarre twists, most notably Io and the Djinn. Io was a name I recognized from myth but couldn't quite remember off the top of my head. In the movie she's a sort of guardian angel character cursed with immortality for little explainable reason who follows Perseus around (for NO explainable reason) and generally acts as a catalyst when the other characters can't figure out what to do themselves. She is, in other words, the lazy writer's dream. When Perseus and crew (he travels with a merry band of Argos marines whose sole purpose is to show you how the movie's monsters can kill people) would otherwise be clueless as to their next move, Io provides divine knowledge out of nowhere and keeps them moving. It's supremely lazy writing, for the hero never has to figure out anything on his own. Really, Io is the writer's guardian angel more than she is Perseus'.

As it turns out, Io in mythology was a woman with whom Zeus tried to, eh, forcibly mate, but she was a priestess of Hera, who subsequently turned her into a white cow. Where the filmmakers made the jump from "raped white cow" to "guardian angel love interest" I don't quite know. I half expected Perseus to call his Pegasus "Icarus" after that.

And the Djinn? They're the weirdos on the left in the picture up top. I'm pretty sure a Djinn is actually a spirit in Middle-Eastern mythology (where we get the word "genie"), but for some reason they show up here as mystic shamans who slowly replace parts of themselves with tree bark or something. They'd almost have been worth watching if they'd all been played by Robin Williams.

Why the hell either of these new characters are here is beyond me. They were two of the bigger "WTF" moments of the movie, but hey, the Djinn's glowing blue eyes looked cool, and Io provided the requisite warrior woman / eye candy, and isn't that what matters most?

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the Kraken is part of Norse mythology, not Greek. It was a big ugly sea squid who wrecked ships (one of the few things that second Pirates of the Carribean movie got right), not a city-killing, Pokemon-battling turtle with a severe tentacle problem like it is in this movie.

I don't normally comment on this kind of thing, but it's much more than the plot that bothers me about this movie: it's the sentiment. Men are angry and bitter and have no love of the gods. They constantly mock the gods, and Perseus in particular has this obsession of "being a man", even though he's a demigod and thus only half-man (perhaps he was compensating?). The gods send him gifts, like an Ancient Greek lightsaber and a cool flying horse, yet he refuses to use any of them because he wants to complete his quest "as a man". It's annoying, it's cheesy, and it completely falls apart by the end of the movie when Perseus, while still claiming to be doing the quest "as a man", finally relents and uses these godly gifts. It's like the writers wrote the whole movie with this "I can do this without the gods' help" theme, only to find that the Kraken really can't be defeated in a showy manner without these cool-looking and extra-handy gifts of the gods. The writers said, "Oh, crap" and, rather than retool the script, kept it in and just allowed Perseus to temporarily go back on everything he stands for in order to win. If that doesn't say something about today's culture, I don't know what does.

I'm fairly convinced that Hollywood doesn't know Greek myth from Christian verse. The only gods who have the slightest bit of relevance in this movie are Zeus (aka God) and Hades (aka Satan), even though Hermes and Athena were two prominent figures in the actual Perseus/Argos myth. Hollywood doesn't understand that Greek myths had nothing to do with "good vs. evil", but I suppose that Hollywood's not completely through with showing its pictures in black and white yet. Zeus acts like the Christian God does in the Flood story of Genesis (which itself, curiously, is a take on flood myths from other cultures that don't include Greek). Zeus decides that humans need to be punished for their unwillingness to worship him unless Perseus can save the day.

Why Hades is always portrayed as "evil" is easy to see: he's the God of the Dead. He rules the underworld. Satan rules Hell. Therefore, Hades = Satan, right? Perhaps when viewed through a Judeo-Christian lens, but that's completely not the character he was to the Greeks. ALL humans went to the underworld when they died - even the good ones - so Hades was, in effect, the God of Hell and Heaven. He punished the bad, but he also rewarded the good. Think of him more as a judge than a demon. In many ways, he was the kindest and most fair of all the gods, particularly between the "big three" of Zeus, Poseidon, and himself. The Greeks attributed thunder storms to Zeus and earthquakes and tsunamis to Poseidon; therefore, they had the tempestuous personalities to match. But Hades? He was usually pretty chill.

In this movie he's bent on expanding his kingdom to include the Earth, but I don't think that's how Death would really act. Other filmmakers did the same thing to the Percy Jackson movie, though in the Lightning Thief book Hades was tired, and passive, and didn't want to have to deal with the constant flow of soul-traffic headed his way. War was a strain on Hades; disasters were a nightmare. This is the same view that Markus Zusak took in his excellent novel The Book Thief, wherein Death (the narrator) is a tired old thing who only manages to stay sane in his depressing job by observing colors. Brilliant book. You should read it. So should Hollywood.

But they won't.

They're too comfortable with the simplicity of the good vs. evil, God vs. Satan, Harry Potter vs. Voldemort (did I mention that the guy who plays Voldemort, Ralph Fiennes, plays Hades here? He does so brilliantly, I must admit; his voice feels old and whispery, like he himself is on the verge of death. The poor guy's becoming type-cast as modern-day Satans). Hollywood doesn't understand Greek mythology and its chaotic nature, the way gods turn on each other and each other's children, the way that there was never intended to be a strictly "evil" or "good" god, or the way that heroes were heroes because they did supernatural feats with the gods' help. That doesn't make sense to Hollywood, I guess. Their wars can only have two sides, black vs. white, and you aren't allowed to cheer for both. Maybe someday they'll begin to see colors, like Death in The Book Thief.

When I came out of this movie, I tried to think of something optimistic to say for my review. The best that I came up with was "it's the best movie I've ever seen in which Sam Worthington plays a reluctant hero who spends 3/4ths of the final battle sequence astride a winged beast", as a playful jab at Avatar, a movie of which I am not especially fond, to say the least. But as soon as I thought that, I realized a terrible, terrible truth. It wasn't right. I didn't really think that. It forced me to say something which I NEVER thought I'd say. Avatar was better. Oh, gods, now I have to go wash my hands and burn my keyboard. Ugh.

Oh, and this movie employs the "shaky cam" effect in all of its action scenes. This can be done well (see: the Bourne movies), but usually, as is the case with this movie, it's a sad, sorry gimmick that serves two functions: covering up the actors' inability to do coordinated fight scenes, and making the viewer too dizzy and sick to care. Watching it in 3D - and apparently it wasn't filmed for that medium - only makes it worse. If you MUST see this movie, see it in 2D, or better yet, wait until it's out on video and RiffTrax has had a chance to thoroughly mock it.

A Quick Note on Percy Jackson & The Olympians

Just in case you're wondering where the reviews are for the other Percy Jackson books (and you know you are), here's the deal. I finished the third one (The Titan's Curse) and am almost done with the fourth (The Battle of the Labyrinth). I will probably wait until the fifth and last (The Last Olympian) hits paperback, since all my others are paperback and I'm OCD enough to want a complete, unified set. As far as reviews go, I'm not going to do proper reviews of the rest of the books but will probably do a series review upon completion.

This is mostly due to redundancy: I pretty much have the same things to say for these books as I did Book 2. They're funny, they're terribly clever, they're inventive, and they impress me to no end in terms of bringing the old myths into modern settings. The characters (namely Percy and Annabeth, but certainly the others as well) mature tremendously and have become compelling personalities in their own rights. The Titan's Curse is probably my least favorite so far, but that's like saying Finding Nemo is my least favorite Pixar movie. They're all very, very good - even the "least impressive" one.

Don't miss out on this series. You'd be doing yourself a terrible disservice.

The Fantasy Title Generator Game!

As he writes on his own blog, GoldenPigsy and I have been friends for an uncomfortably long time - more than half our lives. Ours is indeed a love-hate relationship; we enjoy giving each other a hard time for no real good reason except perhaps to see the other's reaction (for instance, I once told him that Ozzy Osbourne sucks, just to see what he'd say, even though I'm a big fan of the Prince of Darkness myself). Knowing that the other guy doesn't really hate you opens up endless possibilities for taunting and good-natured (usually) mayhem, like throwing Lemonheads at each others' cars through the sunroof while driving. You know, really stupid crap like that.

To a large extent, it was GoldenPigsy's blog that revived this one. I enjoyed reading his reviews so much that I thought "hey, I want to do that, too!" So I did. And here we are.

Anyway, GoldenPigsy and I decided to do a bit of cross-over between our blogs. He suggested a little game, and I agreed.

The Rules:
- You have 15 points.
- Words from tier one are one point; from tier two, two points; from tier three, three points. Proper names are tier four, and take up four points.
- Only five points can be used per title.
- “the,” “of,” "a," and “and” are all free words.
- You must use all fifteen points.
- You must write a short synopsis for the books you come up with.

Tier 4:
Any sort of proper name (i.e. Odin, Thor, Hogar, Conan, or anything you make up)

Tier 3:
God(s)
Queen
King
Lord
Dragon
Sword
Ring
Talisman
Quest

Tier 2:
Legend
Tale
Assassin
Wolf
Shadow
Fire
Ice
Mage
Thief
Lightning
Thunder
Blade
Fox
Curse
Valkyrie
Medusa
Knight
Wizard

Tier 1:
Gold (or golden)
Black
Moon
Lance
Blood
Divinity
Radiance (or Radiant)
Pool
Goblin
Invincible
Devil
Consort
Crown
Iron
Steel
Tower
Light
Song
Truth (or True)
Sacred
Virile
Wind
Stone
Dark
Power
Fact
Scimitar
Sun
Stars
Couch
Virago
White
Ruby
Jewel

My entries:
Song of the Wolf Mage (-5):

Myrrean, a local farmboy, longs to someday join the kingdom's Wolf Guard, an elite unit in the army whose job is to protect the king. But when real wolves begin to attack the nation's towns in organized, efficient packs, Myrrean's world is turned upside-down. He begins to have disturbing visions in his dreams, until he realizes the awful truth: he is the one controlling the wolves in their attacks. Now, Myrrean must battle against his own nightmares, lest he destroy the very king he so dearly wishes to protect!

The Thunder Knight (-4):

Frederick is not your typical applicant for knighthood in the Hyperian realm. For one, he is an orphan peasant, and only nobles (and merchants with enough coin) are permitted to command. For another, he weighs nearly twenty stone. When he becomes the laughing stock of the Hyperian army, Frederick's true father reveals himself: Zeus, Lord of the Sky. As Frederick's demi-god powers begin to manifest, the realm comes under attack by strange, watery creatures immune to sword and spear, and Frederick's newfound storm powers may be the kingdom's only hope...

Medusa's Pool (-3):

When a brand new recreational complex opens up down the street, Amaya is positively stoked. But strange, unexplainable disappearances by many of the town's children begin to point to the same source: Emm's Rec Centre. Now, Amaya must solve the mystery of the disappearing children before it's too late, but the truth may just be too horrifying to be real...

Wind in the Devil's Tower (-3):

This offbeat comedic adventure stars Lucy, stepdaughter to the Lord of Hell himself. Hundreds of miles below the Earth's surface, Satan reigns supreme. But trouble is never too far away, as Lucy and her misfit family of demons, demi-gods and dictators have discovered. An army of would-be heroes is knocking on Hell's doors, but will Lucy and her family be able to whip their horde of tortured souls together in time to stop the onslaught of light?

I believe that adds up to fifteen points. If not, well, I majored in Psychology, not Math. Feel free to pass the game along to your friends, or play it yourself! If you do, be sure to add a word of your own to the list above. I added "quest" (tier 3). GoldenPigsy added Virago (tier 1), the little minx.