Film Reaction Retro: PANDORUM (2009)

 I've been staring at this poster for 15 minutes and

I still don't know what the hell it's showing me.

Blergh.  I hate leaving this blog to rot for any length of time now.  Unfortunately, I'm thumping my head against a brick wall trying to put together anything clever toy-related, and the last two movies I saw in the cinema, while okay for the most part, just...look, you want my reaction to Godzilla?  'Ehhhh'.  That's my reaction.  And X-Men Days of the Future Past that are also Past Futures to the Future Past Future had some lovely moments though it still feels like a bungled step after First Class.  Both those points have been made better elsewhere, and I got beaten to the punch on most of 'em since both films opened in the States before Europe (which seems to be the less likely option these days).  And I'm still trying to think up something good to rant about in the gaming world after that Resi post, so...hmmm...

...I guess I don't have to limit myself to new movies, do I?  Okay, so let's talk about a random sci-fi horror film that made basically no money.

Comic Musing: SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN, BLACK WIDOW & Others

Really wish DC would have some sort of cover bar

so that these all look like a matching set.

It's certainly been long enough since my last rambling comic review post, and I haven't exactly been letting my reading slip since then, so there's more than a few books I'd like to talk about.  For the sake of keeping things brief, I'll stick with four for now.  Firstly, my muddled thoughts regarding DC's divisive Superman/Wonder Woman series, which has just released its fifth issue this month, and then some looks at three of the new start-up series from the All-New Minty Fresh Marvel NOW! initiative, namely Black Widow, X-Force and Ms. Marvel.

WARNING:  The following post discusses - and contain spoilers for - issues 1-5 of Superman/Wonder Woman, issues 1-3 of Black Widow and issue 1 of both X-Force and Ms. Marvel.  Turn back now if you're sensitive, y'big wuss.

Toy Review: Play Arts Kai Faora-Ul

 Not a photo of mine.

You can probably guess by the lack of awfulness.

To start, hey look, my first post of 2014!  Hope everyone had a safe New Year's.

Anyway - as time passes, I find myself growing more and more irritated with Man of Steel, as seems to be the prevailing feeling amongst interweb dorks like myself.  This is the big problem with the tone and aesthetic that Christopher Nolan has bequeathed to Warner Bros.' nascent DC cinematic universe: when every character and place is presented as cold, severe and super-duper-serious it prompts the audience's thoughts to linger on the ideas and questions raised by the story rather than just relax and let oneself be moved by the flow of the film.  That's fine if you've got a tight grip on the tale and know exactly what points you want to get across, but if you don't - if the questions you're raising clash with the overall 'point' of the film, or if you're simply not elaborating them well enough - then all you're doing is giving viewers more time to chew over the film's problems.  And hoo boy did MoS have hefty problems delivering its themes.

Despite that, I still bought the damn blu-ray just so I could gawk at Faora-Ul in glorious HD.  That plus the hilarious sight of Michael Shannon's misshapen beanpole body being pushed through military-grade workouts in the special features was worth the asking price.  Thus my Faora crush remains strong, albeit ill-served by the movie's merchandising.  Sadly there's still no sign of a Hot Toys 12" $200+ wallet-killer fig of the lady (I remain hopeful - HT's Roadblock figure still hasn't been released and G.I. Joe 2 came out last March) and Mattel did their usual hopeless job on the main toyline, resulting in this disappointment with its cartoon face, borked joints and oddly squat physique.  Luckily, though, DC's licensing deal with Square Enix covers both comics and movie properties, and so the MoS subline of the Play Arts Kai range has stepped up to fill the void and maybe give Faora the toy she deserves.

G.I. JOE 3: Fantasy Casting

With the summer movie season having shot most of its load already, my attention is now heading onwards to the future, and the perilous promises of sequels.  While there's a lot to say about how 'sequel culture' has had a negative effect on blockbusters over the last decade-plus, and I happen to agree with a few of those issues in principle, I'm also the first person to start theorizing about where the characters of any given film will go next, often before I've even left the theater.  (maybe in a future post I'll try to explain my logic for having Matt Smith turn up as the Doctor in the next Fast & Furious movie to take Vin Gasoline and his mates down after one too many violations of the laws of space and time)  And G.I. Joe Retaliation was no exception.

That said, the amount of deck-clearing action going on in Retaliation (both from the much-publicized extermination of 90% of the Joe roster, give or take, plus the revenge-deaths taking their toll on Cobra command) has made me a lot more curious about the players for the next film rather than the actual plot.  Not that I don't think the story will matter - the joint realities of Cobra as a known evil entity in the public mind and the world's nations having been tricked into depleting their nuclear weapon stockpiles can and should open up lots of new and intriguing places for the series to go - but I often find that a Joe story (be it movie, comic or cartoon) is determined by the characters involved.  They're like Lego bricks: interchangable and capable of being constructed into any shape...but, if you wanna make a car, you still need 4 Lego wheels.  Wanna make a house?  Gonna need a door-brick.  Ditto, if your G.I. Joe story has Shipwreck and Cutter in it, there'd better be some sort of naval battle at some point, preferably involving the old W.H.A.L.E. hovercraft, because otherwise you're asking 2 sailors to be land-lubbers for the duration and...why?

That was a load of waffling, yes.  Click through for my dream casting session pick things.  THIS I COMMAND~!

Just A Random Bunch of Faora GIFs

I think I mentioned in my Man of Steel review post that I was impressed with Antje Traue's performance as uberstrong henchlady Commander Faora-Ul (she ditched the 'Hu' in the film*), bu-u-ut that's really understating things.  Faora represents two conflicting fixations for me: the nerdy, over-analyzing part of my brain recognises the presence of a truly strong female character, who is allowed to be prominent and dangerous in a film largely dominated by male characters, and whose gender is never once brought up as an issue, which is fantastic; the more simplistic, primal side of me sees an exotic, beautiful actress with an all-kinds-of-sexy pan-European accent, somehow made even more intimidatingly unattainable thanks to power armour and a frickin' cape.  IS THIS LOVE????

So, here's a bunch of GIFs of the lady I found by tooling around on Tumblr and Google.  This is really more for my convenience than yours, yes.


* - Nerdy subnote: For some reason, it's long established in Superman comics that female children of Krypton take the full name of their father as their surname rather than just the hyphened suffix that serves as a family name - so while Kal-El is the son of Jor-El and you know they're related because they both have '-El' in the name, Kal's cousin Supergirl is named Lara Zor-El, with Zor-El being her dad's full name.  I really don't know why this is the case, other than maybe some anachronistic misogyny that never got retconned...and if that's actually the case, it makes sense for Faora to shorten her surname down to just '-Ul', as it sticks with the crazy man-hating persona of Faora in the comics.  Just a thought.

Film Reaction/Now Playing Double Date: MAN OF STEEL

2 seconds later, the bungee cord tightened and Clark

went crashing back down.

While I usually try to get these reaction pieces up nice and quickly (well, quickly by my own hopeless standards, at any rate), Man of Steel - Warner Bros' latest attempt to prove they can do a successful superhero movie not about Batman - has been something of a stumbling block, thanks to a few factors.  I couldn't see it until a few days after its UK theater debut, I was still fumbling through an attempted review of Fast & Furious 6 (probably gonna ditch that one - short version, it was silly and great fun, see it if you haven't) and there was no shortage of reviews from more official sources all over the net, many hitting in advance of release, to the point where I figured anyone who knows me could already guess what my opinion would be.

Nevertheless, I do want to get some thoughts on it down here, because it's one of the more 'important' films this summer.  And in the name of variety, I'm also gonna throw in my 2 cents on the MoS tie-in game for iOS/Android devices after the film stuff.  Who says I'm not good to you?  (SPOILERS FOLLOW)