The Arkhamverse

    This entry is likely going to prove something of a rarity on this blog, as it deals with a topic that I am generally woefully ill-equipped to discuss: video games.  That's not to say I dislike video games; far from it.  It's just that, well, how do I put this?

    I suck at them.

    I wasn't really allowed video games as a child - I had a few for my Commodore 64 (not that I'm dating myself, or anything like that), but the only ones I ever displayed any real aptitude for were the Carmen Sandiego games.  And while I did have an early-edition Game Boy in junior high, I didn't actually own my first video game system until well into college, when I picked up an SNES system on clearance.  It still works, by the way - I keep it active for those afternoons when I want to kill 45 minutes with Turtles in Time.   Long story short, I never quite developed the abilities most of my classmates did.  So while we do have an Xbox (and have, more recently, acquired a PS4 which is primarily used for Netflix), a safe assessment of my gaming abilities is: If it doesn't have the word "Lego" somewhere in its title, odds are I'm going to be pretty awful.

   Most of the time.  I mention all this because the subject of this blog is the Arkhamverse - the series of Batman video games put out by Rocksteady Studios (and WB Games) that have proven to be some of the most popular games of the past decade.  You should know, then, that this is coming from the perspective of a Batman fan, and not that of a gamer.  If you want an assessment of the merits of the series from a gaming perspective from someone who actually knows their stuff, you may need to try IGN, Wired, etc.

The cover image to the first game, Arkham Asylum.

    That said, as a Batman fan, over the years I gave most of the various Bat-themed video game offerings a try.  Many of them were forgettable, and most rather devoid of any kind of significantly fun components.  I've come to understand that while part of this feeling is due to my own regrettable lack of skills, a lot of it is due to these games being pretty lousy overall - even to real gamers.    There simply wasn't much in the way of quality in Batman video games.

    Following the success of the Dark Knight, though, a new game was announced by the relatively obscure Rocksteady studios.  I say 'relatively obscure' based on what people who know about the gaming industry told me; I'd never heard of them - as far as I was concerned, 'Rocksteady' was either an '80s R&B song or, more honestly, a mutant rhinoceros.  Entitled "Batman: Arkham Asylum", the game was released with a fair amount of hype in the summer of 2009.  I was given the game as a birthday present.

   And no one saw me for about a week.

"Who's doing what now?"

  I was completely in love.  The premise was fairly straightforward - you play as Batman, trapped for one night on the creepy island which houses the facility which serves as home for the Dark Knight's many foes.  The style was incredible - crumbling Victorian architecture, flickering lights, labyrinthine corridors, overgrown grounds populated by every kind of maniac and thug imaginable, and possessing an oppressive, haunted atmosphere.  The player is required to master all of Batman's skills, not only combat and escape but detective work and tracking, in an environment practically dripping with details.  One of my favorite elements was solving the Riddler challenges - dozens upon dozens of hidden references, puzzles and trophies, which required the player to investigate every nook and cranny of the island.

   The game was written by Paul Dini, one of the major forces behind 'Batman: The Animated Series', and had a solid cast headlined by Kevin Conroy.   As a story, it delved into just how disturbed the characters of Gotham are, but did so in a way that the game could stand alongside that of the comics; its plot was such that it felt like another adventure, albeit a superlative one.

   Best of all, it was remarkably straightforward to use; the game walked you through each new ability, gadget, enemy, etc. easily enough.  Granted, people with more dexterity than I can achieve better scores in the various challenges in the game, but it was user-friendly enough that I could play it without getting overly frustrated.  It never stopped being fun.

  I must have played through the game three or four times over the next few months, and eagerly awaited a sequel.  So, when "Batman: Arkham City" debuted in 2011, once again, I became a temporary video game junkie.   

Batman, with Arkham City spread out behind him.

   This time, you were in a walled-off section of Gotham, an open-air prison where everyone from the Asylum and then some were tossed to rot - or to start a minor civil war, whichever came first.  Reminiscent of the famous Batman storyline 'No Man's Land', the player takes the Dark Knight into this militarized city-with-a-city, which was several times larger as Asylum.  It was just as detail-rich, though, and fully populated with characters, most of whom were quite eager to kill you.  You had more gadgets to play with, though, and there were even sections of the game where you could play as Catwoman or Robin, if you got all of the additional DLC. 

   The story began to take on a life of its own, though - diverging from the comics in several major ways, establishing itself as its own 'universe', which has come to be known as the Arkhamverse.   It's quite a dark universe - grim, decaying, and corrupt - and the assorted collection of villains are more twisted than ever.   The plot went in bold directions, killing off major characters, with every bit of the impact you'd expect...more so, actually, given how casually most comic book entities can laugh off death.

    The weekend following the game's release, I started and playing, and didn't stop until I'd beaten the game, which, as it happened, was dawn of the next day.  It was just that good, that engaging, that fun, that I simply couldn't stop.  It certainly didn't hurt that I was actually *capable* of handling the controls.   To date, it remains my favorite video game - I couldn't tell you how many times I've gone back through it, but it must be at least half a dozen over the past four years.  It's such an incredible game, and does such wonderful service to the character; both games make me proud to be a Batman fan. 

     While another game was assumed, it was some time before we got any news (unlike following the first game, which clued fans in that more was forthcoming fairly quickly).  There was a good deal of surprise when "Batman: Arkham Origins" was announced in the Spring of 2013, then, as it was being produced not by Rocksteady, but by WB Montreal, and would serve as a prequel to the existing games.   WB did their best to allay people's concerns, but ultimately the game did not hold up as well as the first two in the series.

   For one thing, though the game doubled Arkham City's size, there was about half as much to do, and whole chunks of the city were devoid of content.  It had a plot which strained credulity: boiled down, it involved a rookie Batman meeting a large number of his major foes over the course of one Christmas Eve.  What's worse, the plot turned derivative, as we learned that the Joker was once again the main villain, a misdirect which was frustrating as we'd been led to believe there'd be a greater focus on other foes, not to mention the fact that Joker had already dominated the first two games of the series.  It was an unremarkable story, and devoid of all of the atmosphere that made the first two games so rich.  Most damning of all, the game was positively glitch-ridden, with critical errors all over the place.  After playing on and off for three days, my file became inexplicably corrupted, which destroyed my saved game and necessitated starting from scratch.  WB Montreal did eventually issue some patches, but that still left a number of problems, many of which were never solved, especially after the developers basically threw their hands up.

The poster for Origins.  It's about as exciting as the game.

   It was a huge come-down following City, but fortunately, not long after Origins' rather dismal reception, Kevin Conroy accidentally let slip there was a new game coming.  Sure enough, in the Spring of 2014, Rocksteady announced "Batman: Arkham Knight", a follow-up to City which was to be available only on next-gen consoles, and complete what they viewed as their trilogy.  We later learned that Origins was merely filler - WB didn't want to go four years without a game, so they let WB Montreal develop the prequel story. 

   Which brings me to today.  Arkham Knight is scheduled to be released at midnight tonight, following several delays (the game was originally due out last October.)   This game was the final motivation for our decision to get a PS4...it was inevitable we'd need a new system eventually, more for streaming than anything else, but this game was the deciding factor.  I've been looking forward to this for four years now, so I'm sure you can guess what my plans are for the upcoming weekend.  The game is reportedly five times the size of Arkham City, filled with countless enemies and allies and with more detail than the first two games combine - or so they say.  With a plot that's sure to be even more dark and twisted than its predecessors, the game will no doubt keep me occupied for quite a while.

   There will probably be a post at some point in the near future with my thoughts on the new game, but I wanted to leave myself a bit of a bookmark.  This may be the last time I get to anticipate a game like this; I certainly can't imagine any other kind of game for which I'd have this level of enthusiasm.  As I mentioned earlier, I don't generally have much involvement with the video game medium outside of bi-annual Lego games, so these offerings, much like Batman movies, are something of an event for me.

   Hopefully Knight is every bit as exciting and fun as I want it to be.  I confess to a certain amount of apprehension, as this new game will apparently involve extensive use of the Batmobile, and when it comes to video games, I'm a positively atrocious driver.  It's entirely possible I may find myself apoplectic after crashing into too many walls, we'll have to see.   I remain optimistic, however.  If nothing else, it's one more (and final?) turn to Be the Batman.

Remember This?: Batman Forever

     It was pointed out to me this morning that my favorite movie was released twenty years ago today.  I confess I felt a twinge of embarrassment for not recognizing the date; after all, the poster hung on my wall for over a decade - but any chagrin was quickly eclipsed by the depressing realization that we were talking in terms of multiple decades.  So sue me - I'm trying not to think about time, I have a birthday coming up.

     What is the movie, you may ask?  Well, if the title of the post hadn't clued you in, the film that holds the distinction of being nearest and dearest to my heart is Batman Forever, the third film in the '89-'97 Batfilm series, and the highest-grossing (or second-highest, depending on how you qualify) film of 1995.

This was the first image of the movie I saw, and it's still my favorite.

     To clarify, by no stretch of imagination do I claim that this is the best movie ever made; heck, it's not even the best Batman movie ever made.  But it is my favorite - I liken it, and a few other films of varying natures, to comfort food.  It may not be fine dining, but it's one of those movies that I just love, warts and all.  It's my cinematic mac'n'cheese.

    I could give you a number of reasons why it's special to me: it came out at an important point in my adolescence when I was very much on the crest of the 'teenage immortality' tsunami, and as such, I have a number of very good memories attached to it; it featured the Riddler, my favorite fictional character; I was wildly in love with the marketing, and could not begin to tell you how many trips to the late lamented WB Store I made over a period of months, soaking up every bit of information or merchandising I could in those halcyon pre-internet days, etc. etc. etc.  All of those are factors, but when you get right down to it, basically I just really loved the movie when I saw it, and I've never grown to like it any less. 

    It's no masterpiece, I freely acknowledge that.  There's quite a bit of loopy dialogue, much of the acting is hammy, the film is edited together strangely (which has a lot to do with a studio mandate, more on that in a minute), and it's got some extremely dubious plot elements: a hidden luge track running halfway across the city, the Batmobile racing straight up a vertical wall, giant glowing green clouds of 'neural energies' floating across the city that apparently no one notices, and so forth.  Danny Elfman's phenomenal, moody, majestic orchestrations - which were used in Forever's trailers - were jettisoned in favor of Elliot Goldenthal's brash, brassy themes.  The incredible aesthetic of Gotham City in the first two movies was replaced by architectural mish-mash and Day-Glo paint.   And let's get this out of the way:  Yes, they put nipples on the Batsuit.   I can't say that the film doesn't take its characters seriously, but it is played much more like a cartoon than the two previous entries in the series, and is devoid of any of their darkness or atmosphere.  Of course, the first two films were directed by Tim "Gothic Creepy" Burton; Burton only produced Forever while Joel "It's a Toy Movie" Schumacher directed.

  

Jim Carrey channeled a LOT of Frank Gorshin.

   When the movie was filmed, it was actually much darker than what was released.  At the start of the film, Two-Face made a bloody escape from Arkham Asylum, and there was a whole subplot, only hinted at in the finished film, about Bruce's interactions with the bats beneath Wayne Manor and their effect on his psychological state, in addition to explanations about the night of the murder of Bruce's parents, Thomas Wayne's diary, and so forth.  (Some of the cut scenes are available on the 10th anniversary DVD, others are still missing, though.)   When Warner Bros., who was already displeased with Burton's methods after the dark and somewhat gruesome Batman Returns,  saw the cut of the film, however, they objected and wanted the film toned down and lightened even further, and the finished movie is the result.  That's why, if you pay careful attention, much of the editing in the first half of the movie makes no sense, with characters' movements being erratic, and action in scenes shifting from morning to night in the course of a few moments.  Had the film been released as written or even as originally shot, I think it might have ended up being more solid.

  As it is, though, I think it's a better film than people give it credit for being.  Yes, it's a far cry from the Dark Knight Trilogy which followed a decade later, and it lacks the mood, character, and sheer style of Burton's 1989 film.  But it's  certainly more faithful to the characters, and less of a mess than the over-indulgent, weird Batman Returns, and it's nowhere near the debacle that its sequel Batman & Robin would be, which decided to try and recreate the 1960s show but without the personality or irony.  It's a product of its time.  It's not really on a level of any of the modern wave of superhero films, but on its own merits, it's actually quite enjoyable. 

   If nothing else, it's fun.  I've never been in the camp that's seen Batman as just an angry, angsty grouch.  There's a place for that, to be sure, just as there's a place for the campy comic Batman, but I prefer a balance, and I thought Forever brought it very well.  I loved how Batman and the Riddler were played, and I thought the use of the requisite riddles was pretty neat, even if they did make Batman look rather dense.  The re-write on Robin's character was an interesting take, which worked well for the film, though Two-Face comes across as a loon...a watered down version of the Joker, really.  I also contend that Nicole Kidman has never looked as good as she did in this film.  There are some good lines...mostly Riddler's...and the soundtracks has some great songs on it.  The movie is energetic and playful, and even has some neat little nods to the comics.  For example, the illuminated laundry sign which hangs outside of Edward Nygma's apartment is from Riddler's very first comic appearance in 1948, and factors in to the first crime he ever committed.  And I still love the giant green question mark which appeared when Riddler hijacks the Bat-Signal.  It might be my favorite image from the film.

Val Kilmer as Batman, Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian, and the Batnipple as itself.

    The movie's become something of a footnote in the intervening years; it lacks the legacy of the 1989 film, but also (fortunately) lacks the notoriety of Batman & Robin.  Schumacher's career took a hit, though, following his two Batfilms, as outside of the film adaptation of the musical Phantom of the Opera, he's not had much in the way of high-profile jobs.  The cast has had varied success; while Nicole Kidman and Tommy Lee Jones have remained Hollywood A-listers ever since, and Chris O'Donnell has managed to carve out a TV career, Val Kilmer and Jim Carrey's careers have largely evaporated since the late '90s.  Drew Barrymore doesn't do much on-screen anymore, and veteran character actors Michael Gough and Pat Hingle have passed away.   While Keaton's take on Batman is still remembered fondly, which was certainly helped by the release of Birdman last year, this third entry hasn't really endured in the cultural memory quite as much.

   And that's fine by me.  I'm perfectly content to hang on to this one on my own.  It's a pick-me-up kind of film.  Everybody's got at least one movie that's off the beaten track that they love.  I might even go so far as to call it a guilty pleasure.   To tell the truth, I actually haven't watched it in a few years; I might need to rectify that in the near future and toss it in the DVD player one of these days.

   Anyway, Happy Birthday, O Favorite Film.   Thanks for making my teenage self very happy, and for cheering me up ever since.

This hung opposite my bed for ages.

REVIEW: Jurassic World

   OK, all together now:  "Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur..."

   Twenty-two years after the original kerfuffle on Isla Nublar, the park is at long last open.  Jurassic World - the park in question, and its eponymous film - has finally been released, showing the world not only what could have been if John Hammond's vision had been realized, but also that people. never. learn.  One of the taglines, "Bigger.  Louder.  More Teeth." should make that abundantly clear.

Welcome to Jurassic Park...er, World. 

    This is a movie which I need to review in two different ways, as you'll see.  First, the traditional approach:

     Jurassic World is the fourth movie in the Jurassic Park franchise, though it largely ignores the first two sequels in favor of being a follow-up to the original film in plot and tone.   The premise is straightforward: despite the setbacks of the original venture, the park, now known as Jurassic World, has been opened to the public and has proven remarkably successful.  Families flock to Isla Nublar to see the dinosaurs, stay in fancy hotels, go on dino-themed rides, etc.  A desire to boost revenue even further leads to the creation of a brand-new species, the Indominus Rex, a monstrous hybrid made of different types of terrifying dinosaurs, with components from a smattering of other creatures, all of which were apparently psychotic.   Indominus promptly escapes and starts destroying everything in sight - human, dinosaur, or inanimate object.  And as is usually the case, chaos ensues.

   The plot is predictable; viewers know from the outset how the movie will play, and which characters will end up as fodder for the island's attractions.  Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard head the cast, he a rugged ex-Navy dino trainer, she a career-minded director of operations for the facility.  The roles, however, are strictly disaster-movie tropes; Pratt's Owen Grady is a bland no-nonsense bad-ass incapable of error, and Howard's Claire Dearing is a humorless 'suit' yearning for affection in between bouts of running and screaming.  (Seriously, what is it with babyshaming the red-headed heroines this summer???)  Both characters exist to be the requisite Leading Couple, and while they handle the expository dialogue and action sequences ably, their romantic relationship is forced and devoid of chemistry.

Look at the dinos, not each other.  You'll have better chemistry that way.

    While in a typical summer blockbuster monster movie, this lack of depth would be standard, here it's actually disappointing.  The first Jurassic movie gave us memorable characters that were fleshed out and nuanced.  The new cast hardly lives up to that; in fact, I had a hard time figuring out many of the character's names, and I was listening for them.  Rounding out the stock roles are Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson as Claire's nephews, also known as Obligatory Endangered Children; we also have Vincent D'Onofrio as Meanie Who Wants to Exploit the Dinos, Irffan Khan as Well-Meaning CEO, Jake Johnson as Techie Providing the Moral That No One Wants To Heed, and B.D. Wong returning from the original film as Dr. Wu, AKA Arrogant Jackass Geneticist.  There are cameos by Jimmy Fallon (impossible to overlook) and Jimmy Buffett (blink and miss), and a nice tribute to Richard Attenborough's John Hammond (who we learned has passed away prior to the events of the film.)  No reference is made to Grant, Ellie, Malcolm or the other characters, though Malcolm's book makes a quick cameo, as does 'Mr. DNA'.

     The movie's messaging is about as unsubtle as you can get, but that actually works in its favor, in a meta sort of way.  While we still have the warnings about messing about with nature and consequences therein, there's an added level of commentary about consumerism, marketing, and excess, which is sometimes tongue-in-cheek given the blockbuster nature of the film.  In terms of the moral dynamic, in the first movie, bad ideas were happening on a road paved with good intentions, here, bad ideas are happening with a cavalier disregard for common sense.  It's made rather painfully obvious that anyone who thinks Indominus Rex was a good idea should have been committed to an entirely different sort of facility.  The plot thread about weaponizing the dinosaurs for military purposes is so ill-advised it's hardly worth discussing.  Again, the audience will know exactly how most of this is going to play out - but it is worth noting that a logical door for a sequel has been clearly left wide open.

This image really should be on a Most Wanted poster.

   All that said, though - no one's really coming to see this movie for character development, plot intricacies, or discussions on ethics in bio-engineering.  (Though, again, all that *was* in the first film.)  People are coming to see the dinosaurs.  And they do not disappoint.  Every last one of them is rendered beautifully, coming to life right out imagination.  Indeed, there's a clever bit of retconning thrown in where it's explained that some of the dinosaurs are not scientifically accurate because they were engineered to look the way they're expected.  The dinos are the true stars of the movie; Indominus Rex really deserves the top billing.  She's a modern-day Frankenstein's Monster, stitched together out of disparate dangerous parts by an ethically-challenged doctor, and she breaks loose into a world that she neither knows nor understands.  As such, she relies on pure killer instinct, though as we find, that instinct quickly becomes violent and sadistic;  none of the other dinosaurs have killed for sport.

   The rest of the prehistoric cast is filled out by old and new species alike - we finally get to see brontosaurs (or apatosaurs, whichever you prefer) alongside familiar forms like the triceratops.  The velociraptors are back and incredible as ever, now being trained as a pack and learning, with questionable success, to relate to humans.  The park's current star attraction, the mosasaur, adds an impressive aquatic element, and the pteranodons and dimorphodons get to wreak some significant havoc.  And of course, the Tyrannosaur returns as well, and from its existing scarring - and a little online reading - it appears that this is the very same rex who once saved the survivors of the original film.  While I'm not entirely sure how she survived all this years, I suppose it's true that life, uh, finds a way.

We've come a long way since Jaws was the scariest thing on screen.

     The movie is full of little callbacks to the first film.  The ruins of the long-abandoned visitor's center make an appearance, though we see how poorly it has fared in the intervening years.   One of the original Jeeps makes a return, and there's a very clever little nod to Ian Malcolm's demonstration of chaos theory.    And while there's new orchestration, both of the main themes of the original movie are present, alternating between mournful and majestic.

     Indeed, that majesty is the single best part of the movie.  As characters arrive on the island, we're teased by that familiar music, gradually swelling until it bursts out triumphantly as we finally see the park and its inhabitants in all their glory.   Herbivores frolick together, carnivores are fed under careful but appreciative observation, children interact with dino hatchlings and even ride pygmy versions of triceratops, and thousands of people delight in these magnificent creatures - everything the way it could or should have been.   I got the very same goosebumps during this sequence that I do every time I see the scene in the original film where Grant & Ellie meet their first dinosaur.  And just as with the first movie, I watched all this and found myself wishing it could be real.  I would cheerfully hop into one of those gyrosphere things and go for a stroll alongside some sociable stegosaurs any day of the week.  For me, this is true movie magic.

    The movie is ultimately quite enjoyable, though thanks are due entirely to the dinosaurs.  They're exciting and fascinating, and the film is well paced and takes full advantage of them.  The climax of the movie utilizes the key dinosaurs in a sequence that is silly to the point of ridiculous, but in such an exhilarating and fun way that it's impossible not to feel like a kid again.  There's a sort of willful abandon to the set-up that harkens directly back to the climax of the original movie with that same silliness that you cannot help but love.  Let's be honest - it's the reason everyone's seeing this movie in the first place.

I know who I'd put my money on.  No school like old school.

   I mentioned earlier that I needed to review this movie in two ways.  What you've just read are my thoughts as someone who views cinema through a critical or analytical lens.  But really, if I'm going to honestly express my thoughts on the movie, I need to let my inner monologue for the film handle it:

    Ooooh dinos where are the dinos I wanna see the dinos omigod that's the music it's the park it's the gates it's the DINOS lookit the dinos there are the dinos and they're riding the dinos and petting the dinos and it's the rex! and lookit they're all hanging out and that huge thing just swallowed a shark and the raptors are friggin' awesome and somehow cute and yes, yes, yes, people, blah blah blah Wu is a schumck and Bryce Dallas Howard is very attractive yadda yadda yadda holy cow Indominus is terrifying and  and OH WOW it's the original set and lookatit and uh-oh pterodactyls and was that Jimmy Buffett and its a raptor gang and now it's a dino smackdown and oh crap and IT'S THE REX and I cannot believe this is the most awesome silliness and OH CLEVER GIRL and I cannot believe they just did that and I'm just waiting for the banner to flutter down again and see ya later, sucker and dinos and dinos and ...oh, it's over.  Can we see it again?

Raptor Squad.  I smell a spin-off.

  And really, I can't call this a popcorn movie because I would have completely forgotten the popcorn about three seconds in.  This is the most fun I've had at the movies for a while.  And so, while I'd like it to have been the original, it obviously never could be, though it's probably the next best thing.  It has the same love and reverence for the dinosaurs - but with a lot more of them, in all their glory.

   After careful consideration, I have decided I will endorse the park.

FINAL RATING:  8 PAWS (OUT OF 10)

   
     

   

Jurassic Park: Here There Be Dinos

    When I was small, I, like so many others, was obsessed with dinosaurs.  I'm still fascinated by them...whenever I enter any museum, it doesn't matter what else they may have on display, I'm still a sucker for the fossil rooms.   I just really like dinosaurs.  I don't know exactly what it is, but clearly it's a pretty common captivation.  They're simply, for lack of a more academic term, cool.

     As a child, dinosaurs were pretty readily available in popular culture.  The Land Before Time movies, Dino-Riders, Dino-Saucers...heck, my favorite sub-group of Transformers was (and is) the Dinobots.  There was even that rather odd Dinosaurs TV show in the early '90s that managed a couple of seasons.  Of course, there did seem to be some kind of consensus that dinosaurs were 'kids' stuff'.  But that changed rather dramatically; I first became aware of it during the summer before I was to enter high school, when I received my summer reading list and saw this:

A better reading list choice than The Faerie Queene any day of the week.

  The rest, as they say, is (pre-)history.  Suddenly, dinosaurs weren't just for kids anymore.  I was blown away...not only the story, but the concepts.  Dinosaurs walking the earth again, alive and well and living in Costa Rica.  I quickly learned that a lot of the science in the book was impossible, but that never stopped me from imagining the possibilities.  I also learned at least one new word, "velociraptor".  I liken it to someone just shy of two hundred years ago first learning the word "Frankenstein".

  I've re-read the book a few times in the intervening years; it really doesn't hold up very well from a literary perspective.  It's filled with fairly generic characters delivering lengthy dissertations on cloning, mathematics, biology and ethics; it's preachy and predictable, and has little or no reverence for its subject matter...ultimately, dinosaurs are merely the vehicle by which Crichton's opinions on genetic engineering were delivered.   The funny thing is, as clunky as the book can be, I still love it.  I find it a captivating read, and I still enjoy the characters and the story, despite some technical failings.

  In the summer of 1993, the film adaptation came out and changed the way audiences viewed movies.  Cutting-edge CGI and animatronic/puppeteering brought these creatures to life in a way we'd never seen, and dinosaurs have been pretty well set in popular culture ever since.  Spielberg certainly took some liberties with the movie - there are any number of plot changes, and the fates of most of the characters ended up quite differently in the re-telling.  A solid cast made the two-dimensional characters of the book likable and memorable, far more so than pretty much any monster/disaster movie ever had.   More importantly, though, he changed the tone of the story, and while it was still a cautionary tale about man's arrogance in the face of nature, it was filled with the majesty of the dinosaurs.  No longer were they simply blundering or killing machines, but strange magnificent creatures that were beautiful and terrible all at once.

I don't know how many times I've seen it, but this scene STILL gives me goosebumps.

     It remains one of my favorite films, and holds up very well.  I find that thanks to its movie-specific attributes - score, dialogue, editing, etc. -  that it enhances the book rather than contrasts with it.  Even with the differences, I find between the two there's a nice balance.  Secondary characters are fleshed out, the island is more fully explored, and there are more types of dinosaurs thanks to the book, but the film brings it all to life more vividly and impressively.  The movie is one of the rare instances where I feel that the adaptation is better than the source.

    The first book and movie alone would have cemented the concept's place in popular culture, but of course there were sequels.  There will always be sequels.  If not sequels, then prequels, or remakes, or whatever new term we may find.  With most intellectual properties, this is usually cause for exasperation, but in the case of Jurassic Park, I find that I never seem to mind, because DINOS.  Yes, I'm pretty easily marketed-to on that score.  (I got burned on two Transformers sequels but I still went to the fourth one for no other reason than the Dinobots were on the big screen for all of twenty minutes.)

     Crichton wrote a sequel to his bestseller, "The Lost World", which quite frankly I hated.  It felt like a cash-in maneuver, not least of all because of his inexplicable un-killing of Ian Malcolm (yes, Malcolm does die at the end of the first novel).  Crichton was evidently pressured into writing it, and it certainly doesn't feel like a labor of love.  The film adaptation of the sequel is decent, though; there are some rather substantial changes and a very different set of characters, but that's to the film's benefit.  It's moody and dark, and revolves around a plot to remove the dinosaurs from the island on which they live for the purposes of building a commercial zoo in San Diego.  While it's not as grand as the first film, it's fairly solid...or at least 80% of it is.  It rather goes off the rails in the last reel as it turns into a very silly pastiche of Godzilla.  A different type of ending could have helped it quite a bit, but on the whole it's pretty entertaining.

The cast of the Lost World.  It's harder to feel sympathy for people who go into these things voluntarily.

   There was a third film a few years later.   It was basically just an excuse to have a sequel, and while it's not a bad movie on its own technical merits, it's full of cardboard cutout characters and ultimately forgettable...were it not for the Jurassic Park brand, it's likely no one would ever remember it.  On the plus side, though, both sequels did provide audiences (OK, what I really mean here is "me") with more dinosaurs.  The stegosaurus, my personal favorite, appears in the Lost World, and the third film gives us the some neat pterodactyl action (which was actually featured in the first book.)  There are others, but really my only major takeaway here is getting to see more well-rendered dinos on the big screen.

    Now, here we are over a decade later since Jurassic Park III, and a new film, Jurassic World, is due to open in a few days.  JW is being pitched as more of a sequel to the first film, but based on the premise that the park, which never saw the light of day after the events of the movie, is now successfully up, running, and hugely popular.  There's something really incredible about the thought ...like a shade of Norma Desmond in the film studio 'coming home' again...that despite all the crazy, maybe it could actually work?  Of course the humans must fiddle around as they are wont to do, leading to running, screaming, crunching, and squishing, which really must raise the question "Why do people never learn?"   You know what?  Who cares?   I'm gratified by the excitement the movie appears to be generating, but really, I'm just happy because DINOS.

    The worst thing about the whole Jurassic Park concept for me is that it is, in fact, fiction.  For over twenty years I've found myself wishing that it could be real...that these incredible animals could be living and breathing again in the 21st century.   There's not much else in the movies that I can really say that about, that I very deeply want the science-fiction to be science-fact.  Maybe lightsabers.  I don't want aliens to invade or supervillains to tear up cities...that kind of thing can hit close to home if you take it out of context.  But the thought that somewhere out there, these things could exist....that's a great little dream.

   And that's really what it's all about for me.  Because while I like the original characters and the score and all that, it's about the dinosaurs, and letting Hollywood work its magic for a while and imagining they're out there.  Good, bad, or otherwise, I'll keep coming back for these guys.  How could you not?  I mean, come on....DINOS!

Chris Pratt, and one of his squad...yes, squad!...of trained velociraptors.  Sold!

   Of course, now that I think about it, what about DINOS....with lightsabers????

Thanos: Working Hard or Hardly Working?

   One of my complaints about the MCU has been a rather glaring lack of development in its villains.  As a group, they seem to be fairly interchangeable - snarling threat figures, with a gimmick and glib dialogue but little in the way of character growth, depth, or even real personality when you get right down to it.  The MCU movies have been dominated by the heroes, and that's coming at the expense of the villains, which is a shame when you consider the wasted potential.  Magneto, in the X-Men films (which are Marvel, but not MCU as they're produced by Fox) is proof alone that the potential exists for a well-written nemesis, but somehow that's not translating in the MCU.

   Tom Hiddleston's Loki is something of an exception, in that he simply exudes personality, far more than any of the other MCU Big Bads.  But even Loki's actions are trite and vague, and there's that same, nebulous "I want to rule the world just 'cause..." attitude that the others share.  You could probably try and extrapolate some motivation, but for the most part, all of the MCU villains have been one-trick ponies or sneering goofballs with a schtick...Iron-Monger, Abomination, Whiplash, Red Skull, Aldrich Killian, Ultron.  Baron Strucker was a non-entity.  Don't even get me started on Mandarin.  And I think an argument could be made that Malekith & Kurse from Thor 2 are actually secretly doubling as Ronan & Korath from Guardians.

I've done Shakespeare, you know.

   However, the biggest of the Big Bads has been lurking in the background of three films, and as we move forward, I expect we'll see a lot more of him.  Thanos is the mover and shaker behind the over-arching plot of the whole MCU, namely, the acquisition of the Infinity Stones, which will presumably lead to a huge throwdown with every character thus far introduced in the forthcoming Infinity War films.  So far, we haven't gotten much in the way of screen time for Thanos, so it may be that he'll get his due as a character, but I'm not holding out hope based on what we've seen so far.  Sure, there'll be some obligatory dialogue to say that he wants to rule the world so he can destroy everyone for Death, his would-be mistress, but I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up showing the same monotonous lack of depth and character we've seen so far.

   But...

   My wife and I were chatting about this recently, and we hit upon a way Marvel could retcon much of the disappointing villainy so far, if they chose, by using Thanos as a subtle manipulator, rather than just the Monster at the End of This Shared Universe.  Basically, this way revolves around three moments from Age of Ultron:

1.  It is revealed that Loki's staff from the first Avengers movie contains the Mind Stone, as many viewers had suspected.

2.  Ultron is building the 'perfect body' to host his own consciousness, and plans to use the Mind Gem for it.

3.  In the mid-credits scene, Thanos snatches the Infinity Gauntlet and declares something to the effect of "Fine, I'll do it myself."

     Now, that third one is a little strange in and of itself...sharp-eyed viewers will have noticed the Infinity Gauntlet tucked away in Asgard in the first Thor movie, and wherever Thanos was at the end of AoU, it was not Asgard.  Also, it strikes me as a little odd that he keeps the Gauntlet stuck...where, exactly, a closet?   It makes me wonder if there are other items in there....an Infinity Fedora, perhaps?  Infinity Pants?  Perhaps undergarments...is Thanos more of an Infinity Boxers or Infinity Briefs type?  Or...(shudder)...an Infinity Thong?  Is this line for both sexes?  Is there an Infinity Bra, by chance?

Enjoy that image.

    There are six Infinity Stones, and the whereabouts of two of them are as yet unknown, the Time Stone and the Soul Stone.  At least one will have to figure into the Doctor Strange movie, methinks.  As to the other four, a quick recap:

1.  The Space Stone (aka the Tesseract or the Cosmic Cube):  Last seen in the first Avengers movie, taken to Asgard and presumably still there.

2.  The Reality Stone (aka the Aether):  Given to the Collector by Sif and Volstagg at the end of the second Thor movie; presumably still in the Collector's possession.

3.  The Power Stone:  In the possession of the Nova Corps and the end of the Guardians film.

4.  The Mind Stone:  Currently powering the Vision at the end of Age of Ultron...which may not bode so well for Marvel's favorite synthetic man once the time comes for the gathering of the stones.

   We know Thanos needs all six stones in order to achieve full Godhood, or whatever you want to call it.  So here's a theory:  What if everything that has happened pertaining to the stones has been by design...not just what we've seen, but what may be happening behind the scenes.  We know that Loki and Ronan were at least at times working for Thanos...indeed, Ronan was supposed to be acquiring the Power Stone *for* Thanos, before he decided to go solo.  So we can safely assume that Ronan messed up Thanos' plans.  But as for the rest...

"If I had a hammer, I'd hammer on the Nova..."

   By equipping Loki's staff with the Mind Gem, Thanos is putting one of his six most coveted things into the hands of someone else, and then Loki gets his butt whupped.  But what if he was supposed to?  Consider the events after the first Avengers movie...the Space Stone gets taken to Asgard, and SHIELD ends up with the staff.   As subsequent events have shown us, though, Loki has secretly taken over Asgard, and Hydra infiltrated SHIELD and gained possession of the Mind Stone, which the Avengers eventually retrieved.

   So what if that was all part of the plan?  What if Loki was *supposed* to 'fail', as part of a master plan to have him with Asgard at his heel, and thus able to acquire the Space Stone?  Beyond that, what if the games Hydra was playing with the staff, whatever they were, were part of a plot to lead to Ultron's creation (perhaps even thanks to the Avengers), and had Ultron's plan worked, he would have been in possession of the Mind Stone, so if his whole existence were part of Thanos/Loki's scheme, that stone would be in the hands of one of Thanos' agents?  What if, somehow, the return of the Dark Elves was also orchestrated by Thanos/Loki, to trigger the return of the Reality Stone?  If all of that had worked out the way the various schemes had started, Thanos would have had four stones in the hands of willing pawns, in safe keeping and ready to be gathered. 

   In a way, that's the only means by which that Thanos' line at the end of AoU makes sense.  The "I'll do it myself" thing makes it seem as though he was watching Ultron and relying on him and expecting a different outcome, doesn't it?  (Unless it transpires he's reacting to something else entirely, which we've not seen yet?)

   I'll grant that this could be stretching, especially the bit about the Dark Elves...I'm not totally sold on that myself, so it may require some more thought.   But it's a theory which could explain the rather bland nature of the villains so far, in that they're only supposed to be henchmen working for a Master Planner (who, sadly, due to rights issues, cannot be Doc Ock.)  It would mean sacrificing lesser characters, namely Ronan, Malekith and Ultron, for the good of a more potent villain: Thanos.  Loki, for his part, could be scheming, Starscream-like, with his own agenda to usurp his puppet master down the road. 

Be thankful the plan was to put the Mind Gem on the forehead, and not some other place that he's fond of showing.

  It's just a theory, and given the mediocre writing on the villains so far, the only way it could work would be as a retcon...I wouldn't believe Marvel at this stage if they tried to claim they'd underwritten the villains on purpose.  But it could be a huge saving grace moving forwards, by offering an explanation of foresight and strategy.  Since another of my issues with the MCU has been a lack of consequence between different entries, it would go a long way towards giving us a sense that there actually is a master plan, after all, and it's not just about adhering to the cheap and easy formula of a Macguffin Device, sought by a standard growling meanie,  thrashed into oblivion by 'noble' heroes who overcome themselves to unite in the final reel.

   We'll see...most of Marvel's best villains belong to Spider-Man, the X-Men or the Fantastic Four, and as such, haven't figured into the MCU.  So for the most part we're talking about second-tier names to begin with.  I think it'd be pretty neat if Marvel could contrive a way of elevating these characters from photogenic, action-figure-worthy punching bags into great villains.  They'd still have to worry about things like motivation and depth, but at least there'd be a start.  For Thanos' sake, I hope so.  Time will tell.