Strange Space

With the news that Youngblood, possibly one of the most forgettable super hero teams ever assembled, (I won't demean myself by inserting a hyperlink. You can search for it yourself if you wish, but be warned.)  is receiving it's own movie adaptation, I must pose the question: "When will it all end?"

How many comic book adaptations have already been created? How many have butchered the original material?

Today, I was thinking about the question why so many comic books are altered so dramatically for their feature film presentation, and thought that I had developed a formula proving that the fewer existing issues there are of a comic, the more true to the source material it will be. I would have cited, "V for Vendetta," which despite numerous changes and additions was still fairly true of the original. It would have been chosen due to the fact that it was taken from a relatively small collection of comics, but then I thought about the recent movie, "Wanted," which was also taken from a short series, but in no way resembled the original after about the first fifteen minutes of the movie. If you had gone into, "Wanted" after reading the comic, you would have said to yourself, "What the fuck, was that the movie?" The comic book was basically a knock-off of DC comics with parallels to many of their existing villains, who have secretly taken over the world and were in the midst of an internal war. The movie was about seeing 1/8" of Angelina Jolie's buttcrack. "V for Vendetta," on the other hand, allowed you to view the movie and say to yourself, "Oh, I remember that," and then a few scenes later, ask, "Where's the part about the dolls in the ovens?"

"Sin City," is the closest adaptation to date for a comic-turned-movie. You can take the graphic novel and follow along page-for-page as it progresses. "300" is a close second. "The Spirt," however, Frank Miller's third attempt at a "movie," breaks with this tradition and instead decides to follow nonsensical moodily-lit scenes of femme-fatales and Sammuel L. Jackson as a villain who's traditionally not supposed to show his face. "The Spirit" is one of those movies trying to cash in on a super hero's name while shitting on the original material. At that point, you have to ask, "Why make a movie about this character, when you can just create your own?" Ever try to make your own super hero? It's easy. They have video games where you can do just that. Why bastardize someone else's work, when there isn't a kid alive who knows who the fuck the Spirit is.

Do you think any kid is going to camped out for two days in line to see "Youngblood: The Movie," like they did with "Spider-Man?"

And what about Spider-Man? Three movies that moved progressively further away from the source material, even after separating themselves. Sure, there's over five hundred Spider-Man comics in existence, with issues from multiple series released each month dating back to 1963, so you have to update the character to a certain extent and condense it down into 2+ hours, but when you're countermanding material that was established in a movie release less than six years ago, with "Spider-Man 3" changing the story of how Uncle Ben died to include some B.S. about it being the Sandman, you're taking things too far.

Cannon is being erased with the concept of, "reset," the point at which whoever's in charge decides to throw away whatever they had and start fresh. Batman's been reset twice now in the movies, and the Hulk was the most recent.

For some reason, the connection speed on my 360 is terrible tonight, which means I can’t play the new maps I just downloaded for Call of Duty: World at War. It’s basically the ideal time to play: everyone is on equal footing as they learn how to exploit the new terrain and there’s double exp. points to be earned. I just traded in all my previous exp. and weapon upgrades in order to earn Prestige Level 1. According to a Achievement pop-up, if I level up to 65 nine more times, I can unlock game points. That’s not happening in this life, or the next. I was pretty choked giving in my favourite weapons and going back to basics just so I could have my ass kicked for another 35 levels until the good stuff makes itself available.

I also downloaded the Hasbro Games Night after seeing that it was, “free.” I was hoping for Xbox to finally throw me a bone and give me the equivalent of a browser game for free, but instead I was treated to four “trial games,” such as Yatzee, Battleship, Scrabble, and Connect Four. The complexities of keeping your ship placement a secret from your local Player 2, etc. in Battleship is solved by a screen popping up to tell you to look away. There’s also about fifty pop-up screens explaining the extremely basic controls, such as pushing the left button will move your cursor to the left. Each game only gives you a few minutes of play. They games themselves cost 800 points apiece, which is the equivalent of $10.00. Meaning: It costs $40 to buy all four of the available games, plus there’s three more games yet to be made available, but will likely cost the same, meaning it costs $70 to buy all the games being displayed at the moment. You could nearly buy all the real board games for that amount.

Sadly: I have Scrabble in a box across the room, but instead I’m playing it on my 360.

I purchased Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for my DS, and it’s kicking my ass on Normal. It’s a turn-based strategy RPG. The problem with the game is that death is death in the game, meaning the characters you lose in battle are gone. These characters also have a place in the story: so if you have a certain character, you might engage an enemy of the battlefield and convince them to join you instead of fighting. Don’t have that character? Then you can’t get the new character. It also forces you to kill some of your characters at certain points. So you obsess over keeping every one of your characters as safe as possible for the whole match, forcing you to reset when you misstep.

I was forced to sit through a trailer for Pixar’s new computer animated movie, “UP,” while waiting for “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” to begin. Before they showed footage from the new movie, they went through a montage of every Pixar film ever made, which only served to remind me how Disney has basically given up on making “Disney” movies, which is to say “animated,” as opposed to “computer animated.”

Disney films were formulaic, but Pixar films stretch the limits. I’ve never understood how they’re perceived as “heart warming.” “Cars” was about a car wanting to win a race, but he’s basically abducted by hillbillies who force him into slave labour and somehow they all end up friends and he learns a lesson about judgemental small-town hicks dragging everyone down to their level. The movie is basically “Deliverance,” without male-rape, and with talking car stereotypes.

“Up,” from what I gathered, is about an old coot traveling South via balloon house to retire, and he’s got some Boy Scout with him. Expect the issue of an old man abducting a young boy being passed over. …Now that I think about it: a lot of Pixar films are about abduction or missing children. “Finding Nemo” comes to mind.

Far too many people in the theatre were laughing uproariously, which explains how movies like this get made.

I live in a lax society, which is specifically that of British Columbia. Liberalism is taken quite literally, meaning that if a person wants to do something, it’s deemed generally okay for aforementioned person to do so. This attitude is extended to drug use and marijuana. The problem is seen as so big that it’s no longer viewed as a problem, but a way of life. Marijuana is our number one export, after all, although you would not find it listed in any geography textbook. As so many people are so involved with marijuana, there are constant attempts by grassroots groups of individuals trying to legalize it. The idea is that so many people are guilty of a crime that it should not be called a crime. This is a view that thankfully only applies to prohibition, or else it would lead to very dangerous territory, and the breakdown of society itself.

Yet, the drug trade in B.C. has lead to a gang wars between local groups that have left many dead. In this permissive climate, the general opinion that greets the news of these deaths is, “Good, they had it coming.” People are waiting for the problem to sort itself out: meaning one group should wipe out the other. People are even pining for the days when the Hells Angels had a stranglehold on the province.

This is a province that doesn’t believe in the death penalty. Robert Pickton, convicted of second degree murder of six women and suspected in the deaths of fifty others will spend the rest of his life in prison, but two high school kids selling drugs to classmates are dead here in my hometown. People secretly want capital punishment, but they want it doled out on the street level so they can feel blameless. It’s not vigilante justice either, it’s criminals doing injustice upon each other. They’re leaving the bad guys to take care of the bad guys. Innocent people are getting hurt in the meantime, but the media’s spinning things to make it seem as if everyone’s involved. The wife of a drug dealer has become just as bad as the drug dealer himself.

I just finished playing the X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Uncaged Edition video game, which is probably one of the most faithful movie based video games. People were probably angry about how much the movie deviated from the comic books, but I doubt they’d be able to argue that the game, which uses actual dialogue and scenes from the movie, is a painful detraction. In fact, it’s better. The game makes the final climactic scene with Wolverine fighting Deadpool on top of a nuclear cooling tower cool. The game is soaked with blood, which the movie lacked. While in the movie you have to watch Deadpool pull his squeaky-clean swords out of freshly killed corpse, in the game, Wolverine delights in impaling people on tree branches.

Despite this, the game has some points that, if you over-think them, make no logistical sense. Such as: Wolverine’s claws are adamantium, and can cut through everything, but after he leans on a downed enemy combatant’s chest, and repeatedly stabs him in the face, the dude can still get up. The dude just got stabbed in the brain eighteen times and he can still get up.

I pity the goons in the game. These are guys who proclaim, “Give up, there’s no chance of escape,” as they stand against the edge of a bottomless pit you can hurl them down with the smallest shove. Wolverine has the clear advantage: he has an indestructible skeleton and he can heal from any wound, plus he has claws that can cut through steel. That = Win.

For instance, he can survive falling like a bullet from fifty miles up with enough force to create a crater, but for some reason, if he fall two storeys into some bushes, it’s game over. There’s an actual scene where Wolverine climbs to the top of a giant tower, then blows it up. He’s hurtled about half-a-mile, and gets up afterwards. BUT: if you slip off of the tower while climbing it, you’re dead.

Also: his costume grows back. No explanation: but it grows back.