I hate Highlander: Endgame. I don’t hate it because it’s a bad movie – it is, but not the worst film in the franchise. No, I hate this movie because it stinks of lies.
Continue reading “A Kind of Magic: Highlander: Endgame, part one”
Crowning Moments of Awesome: Wonder Woman
How did I become a Wonder Woman fan? It boils down to the fact that she’s my wife Sarah’s favorite comic book character. Sarah’s not a huge comic nut like I am, but in my attempts to get her more interested in my hobby, I chased down back issues of Wonder Woman. And what I learned is that she is awesome, through and through.
One hard part about listing the most awesome Wonder Woman moments is that I first have to figure out what interpretation of Wonder Woman I’m going with. Unlike Superman and Batman, she’s not automatically a huge seller, despite her iconic status. DC Comics has constantly tried to reinvent her, struggling with the fact that she is the prototypical feminist character in an industry that is dominated by adolescent males who, unfortunately, are not always the most progressive folks when it comes to seeing women as something other than sex objects. She’s been a warrior woman, a pacifist, a female version of Superman, a true goddess, and a waitress as a taco joint – often simultaneously.
For this list, I’m going with what I think makes Diana of Themyscira stand out as unique among superheroes: her focus on the positive aspects of femininity. William Moulton Marston created her as a response to the fact that his society saw femininity as weakness, and that not even women wanted to be womanly. Even in comics today, the feminine aspects of superheroines, except for sexuality, are often downplayed. Yes, they can kick ass alongside the men, but when they are shown to be at their best, their masculine traits are emphasized over their feminine ones. Wonder Woman, by comparison, is at her best when the traits usually downplayed in superhero comics are emphasized. She is tender, compassionate, and peaceful. When she does fly into battle and start kicking ass, she does so with grace and never uses more force than is necessary to win the day. Unlike other superheroes, she doesn’t have a code against killing, but will only do so to protect others. Essentially, Wonder Woman is a mother or a sister, with the entire world as her family. That means that she is very tender and merciful to those she loves, but is a terrifying opponent to those who would harm those she loves – which, in her case, is everybody. So this list is focusing not only on Wonder Woman the ass-kicker, but on the moments where she combines that badassery with the compassion and sense of truth that makes her a paragon even among other paragons.
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The Most Game-Tastic Moments in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
After so many years where mention of a Dungeons & Dragons movie meant some of the cringiest moments in film history, it is an absolute joy to have a good D&D movie with 2023’s Honor Among Thieves. That film managed to provide a solid, fun story spurred on by a likeable cast, and it caught a good among of accurate game lore in it as well.
Most remarkably, I found that Honor Among Thieves managed to feel like an authentic D&D session captured on the big screen. Just about everything that happened in the movie could occur in a D&D session, including stuff that isn’t in the rules but which every gamer has experienced. Here are the moments in Honor Among Thieves that really sold this film to me as a game come to life.
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Three Editions Later: Baldur’s Gate and the Development of D&D
With its incredibly deep game play and commitment for Forgotten Realms lore (even when I wish they would ignore said lore), Baldur’s Gate 3 is a triumph for the Dungeons & Dragons franchise. More than any other computer game I’ve ever played, it feels like I’m playing a tabletop game with the production values of a Hollywood blockbuster.
But the game’s predecessors are no slouches, either. In fact, for the past 25 years, Baldur’s Gate 1 and Baldur’s Gate 2 have been unicorns that other RPGs chased. While other D&D games have strengths of their own, none quite replicated the deep and massive story of those old games while also maintaining a distinctly D&D feel.
Yet those older games, despite making Baldur’s Gate 3 possible, feel very different from the newest iteration of the franchise. Some of that is merely a matter of scope and funding; Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 came out in older days with less technological power and far less money behind them. But a lot of it has to do with the fact that Dungeons & Dragons has changed dramatically over the years. The original used the 2nd edition rules, while Baldur’s Gate 3 uses 5th edition as its base. The rules have changed, but so have the types of stories fans want to see.
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The Absolute Worst Movies that I Happen to Like
Previously, I did a rant about the best movies that nobody likes. My argument with those movies is that they are honestly good…not “so bad they’re good,” but in fact well-crafted pieces of cinema. For comparison and contrast purposes, here’s the flip side: a list of movies that I know are just plain bad, but which I enjoy anyway. These are the kind of movies that I watch because they’re so cheesy. In my mind, they define the phrase “so bad it’s good.”
I will argue to Hell and back that the movies on the previous list are well made. You might not find them to your taste, but they do what they set out to do and are entertaining for what they are. These films, on the other hand, falter somewhere along the way. They cannot be considered well-made. But, even in their glorious badness, they still entertain.
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Superhero Evolutions: The Incredible Hulk, part four
In case the first three parts of this breakdown didn’t make it clear enough, the Hulk has changed a lot…arguably more than any other comic book hero. He’s been a tough one to fit into the Marvel Universe. Conceived as a cross between the Frankenstein monster, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a cautionary tale about nuclear warfare, he has never quite fit in with other superheroes, save for his run with the team known as the Defenders – a group whose whole hook is that its members don’t really fit together on a traditional superhero team. Whenever the Hulk did get some stability, some external factor shook that up, be it Bill Mantlo getting exhausted with the character and passing it over to John Byrne or editorial getting in the way of a long-term story planned by Peter David. As the character headed into the 2000s, he was in for more of the same, with a lot of changes in a short period of time. Fortunately, at the end of it, the Hulk got a brief renaissance that produced a modern classic for the character.
Continue reading “Superhero Evolutions: The Incredible Hulk, part four”
My Favorite Movies that Nobody Likes
Movies, like any other entertainment, are totally subjective. What is great to one person could be hideous to another. But this is the Internet, where billions of people worldwide shriek at the top of their lungs that people who do not share their opinion are bad human beings. And who am I to buck that trend?
What follows is a look at four movies that I swear to God are cinematic wonders, but which everybody seems to hate for some reason. Note that this isn’t the same as movies that I know are bad but which I enjoy anyway; that’s another rant for another time. I am legitimately claiming that the movies below are good. Naturally, you can feel free to insert all the typical Internet acronyms – IMO, YMMV, and so on, as appropriate. This being my corner of the Internet, though, I’m just going to pretend that I’m right and everyone who disagrees with me is a horrible person. Delusions are fun.
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Crowning Moments of Fatherhood
Superhero comics are filled with daddy issues. Be it parents who have died as part of a character’s origin story, abusive stepfathers, or children who are somehow their own father, a lot of superhero comics place focus on the importance of father figures. Here’s my list of the most awesome and heartwarming father-child moments in superhero comics.
All of these moments, of course, get the asterisk next to them that good parenting in comic-land is vastly different than good parenting in the real world. For example, Batman serves as a father figure to Robin, but in real life he’d be considered a monster for putting a child in harm’s way every night. So, placing on our reality-altering filters that allow spandex-clad vigilantes to be considered responsible figures, let’s dive into the list.
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Baldur’s Gate and the Happy Ending Override
Baldur’s Gate 3 is taking the video game world by storm. It takes the unenviable task of following up on a beloved franchise that has lain dormant for years and not only proves itself worthy but may be the best entry in the series. But while there is no curbing my excitement to return to old stomping grounds, there are some sharp pangs of regret as I see the fate of certain individuals who deserved better.
Any follow-up to the epic conclusion of Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal was going to have to make some decisions in how things ended canonically, since the game offers many different possible fates for Gorion’s ward and their companions. Unfortunately, that canon proves to be quite unkind to some returning faces. Some of that could have been avoided through different storytelling approaches, but much of it unfortunately comes down to how the Dungeons & Dragons has been mismanaged since the 2001 finale of Throne of Bhaal.
Naturally, spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3 (and its much older predecessors) follow.
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Superhero Evolutions: The Incredible Hulk, part three
When we last left Bruce Banner, he had been cured of being the Hulk. Yeah…that never actually holds. Banner has actually been cured of the Hulk many times over, but it didn’t get mentioned here because it’s always at most a one- or two-issue fix. This time around is no exception.
With John Byrne come and gone, Al Milgrom would be the next guy in line to start something he couldn’t finish. He left before the story arc he began with Banner’s apparent cure was even finished. That was a symptom of a bigger problem for the Hulk in the 80s: nobody wanted to write the character. Driven into a funk by attempts to cash in on the TV show in a medium that lacked the acting and soundtrack that made the TV show huge, the character had become stagnant. That’s what forced Bill Mantlo to introduce a Banner-controlled Hulk and then a completely mindless Hulk – he had started to run out of ideas for the classic savage Hulk. But since his departure, and since Byrne’s plans to recreate the Hulk his way had been stopped short, the character was basically seen as a dead end. It got bad enough that the book was eventually handed over to some marketing guy named Peter David. And what did Peter David do with the book? Started a twelve-year long stint that turned the Hulk into one of Marvel’s hottest franchises, of course.
Continue reading “Superhero Evolutions: The Incredible Hulk, part three”
Babbling Brooks 