Early Thoughts on Man of Steel

There's a lot of nerdy things that I dig.  I've already talked quite a bit about being a big Star Trek fan, but I have always also had an appreciation for comic book superheroes.  The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers are just two of the latest examples of superhero movies that I've recently loved, but there is one character who, for me, stands a head above all the rest.

That man is Superman.

I've been a major Superman fan ever since I was a kid.  I rarely ever read the comic books, and that never really mattered to me one way or the other.  One of the reasons why I don't read the source material for many of these superheroes is because comic book publishers are constantly retconning themselves from one storyline to another.  Every so often they'll do a story to really rip up and rebuild one or more titles at a time (Marvel's Civil War story arc from a couple years ago is a good example of redoing lots of things all at once), but more often then not publishers will do a reset in order to tell a new series of stories with their characters.

I have fond memories of watching the Christopher Reeve Superman movies when I was a kid.  I recall having my own cape to run through my backyard and pretend I was flying at supersonic speeds just like Superman.  The original film from 1978 still stands as one of my top five favorite films of all time, and Superman 2 still has, to this day, the greatest all-out brawl that's ever been put to film in my opinion.

I say all this because I saw the teaser trailer for Man of Steel Friday night with The Dark Knight Rises.  If you haven't yet seen it, check it out for yourself:

I'm not one to review something like a trailer because there have been plenty of kick-ass trailers for movies that turned out to be crap, and vice versa.  However, I had to comment on this teaser.  It's not about showing Superman in action, nor is it about showing too many special effects.  It's about reintroducing us to what is arguably the most iconic character in American lore.  It's about creating an emotional impact for the audience.  It's about doing something new with a character who most anyone knows the basics about.

The first time I saw this teaser in the theater, I was caught completely off guard.  It's not what I had expected for a first teaser, and I loved that about it.  When it was over, I looked over at my two buddies I was with in the theater - one of whom said straight up he was not a Superman fan at all - and we all had this look of awe in our eyes.

Zach Snyder is directing Man of Steel, and his film record to date is spotty at best.  His first film was Dawn of the Dead, which was a decent enough zombie survival horror flick.  Then he made 300, which was exciting to be sure, but the story had no depth to it.  He followed that up with Watchmen, a film that I have seen but can't say I either liked or disliked it.  His most recent film was Sucker Punch which I have not seen, but everything I've read online about it paints it to be one of the single worst films of the last decade.

Based on the few images contained in this teaser and Snyder's record to date, Man of Steel will be visually impressive if nothing else.  I only hope the character has the same kind of heroism and awe that Superman has been associated with for 75 years.  Superman: The Movie and Superman II both captured those factors, and I want a new Superman film that I love as much as those two films.  Superman Returns tried to capture that same magic, but it ultimately didn't work.  Man of Steel looks like it could be much more serious in tone than other previous Superman films, which could be a good thing for the character and the franchise.  Rebooting the franchise into something entirely new doesn't spit on the great films that came before it, and it also gives a new generation the chance to fall in love with an icon all over again.

I really want Man of Steel to be something special.  The film doesn't arrive in theaters till June 2013, so I have a good while to wait and build anticipation for it.  If this teaser's mood and tone accurately represents the final film, I think I'm going to be very happy with it.  Of course, the flip side is how much of a disaster the movie could also be if it doesn't work.  At this point, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I made a conscious effort to stay spoiler-free in reading any review of this film prior to seeing it last night, and I was largely successful in doing so.  However, the reviews I had read weren't quite as predominantly positive as I had expected.  I read everything from "major disappointment" to "good, but not as awesome as The Dark Knight" to "the greatest conclusion to the trilogy possible."

As you can probably tell, I wasn't sure of what to expect from The Dark Knight Rises.  That was probably to my benefit so I could watch the movie for what it was versus having it not live up to my expectations.

Not only did the film live up to my expectations, it was better than anything I could have predicted.

Eight years have passed since the events of The Dark Knight, which in and of itself was an interesting direction taken by co-writer/director Christopher Nolan.  That long of a time period between stories allowed for lots of physical and mental scars to heal, as well as new ones to form.  Gotham City is no longer the crime-filled hostile zone that it was early in Batman's career, and Harvey Dent's legacy has led to over 1000 men arrested and put in prison for their crimes.  Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) hasn't put on the cowl and cape at all during that time, and he lives mostly in recluse away from the public eye.

This is all the calm before the storm, however.  There's a new force who wants to make a statement to those in power, and his name is Bane (Tom Hardy).  What he wants isn't quite clear at first, but his entrance in the film's first action sequence shows he has the will, the motivation, and the manpower to pull off some serious stuff.

Then there's the mysterious Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who has motives of her own.  She breaks into Wayne Manor and meets Bruce Wayne early in the film, only to make a swift getaway.  She's in cahoots with a rival corporation of Wayne Enterprises for their own financial gain.  She's also radically different from any other version of Catwoman in the past; she's much more of a traditional femme fatale than anything else.

Speaking of Wayne Enterprises, tell me if this sounds like a reflection of modern times: due to a number of poor financial investments the company has made, the company is facing either filing chapter 11, or be bought out by another investor.  Enter Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), who Bruce Wayne trusts Wayne Enterprises' future to.

All of these details come about within the first 40 minutes or so of the film, which are individually small parts of the film's much larger plot.  I haven't even touched on Bane's ultimate plan to take over Gotham City or how he plans on doing it.  You'll also notice I haven't mentioned what Batman does in the film, since he doesn't actually show up until a massive bike chase through downtown Gotham City.

There's also John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who's quickly become one of my favorite young actors), a young police officer who builds a strong relationship with Commissioner Gordon throughout the film.  Blake becomes critical to the plot by the climactic war that breaks out, but I can't go into too many details about him without spoiling a whole lot of details along the way.

I have to comment on the one major issue I have with the film, though: Batman is hardly in the movie.  He only shows up in costume for the major action sequences in the film, which nearly undercuts the film's title.  His two major battles with Bane are supreme throwdowns, and as awesome as those moments are, they are too far apart from one another.  Batman couldn't show up till halfway through Batman Begins by design, since we had to care about Bruce Wayne as a man first.  In The Dark Knight, Batman was front and center from the beginning all the way to the end of the film.  Here, we had to wait for Wayne to want to suit up again, but Wayne isn't so much the star of this film as he was before.  It's more John Blake and Bane's movie than anyone else's.

Make no mistake though - as compelling as Bane is as the villain of the film, he isn't half as fun to watch as Heath Ledger's Joker was in The Dark Knight.  There are a handful of lines where Bane's muffled voice is hard to decipher, but it's a whole lot better than early trailers made him sound.  Since Bane's mouth is covered with his mask, Tom Hardy can only emote with his eyes for the most part; there were a few moments where his hand gestures played a role in his acting, but he spends the majority of his time staring at whoever he talks to.

Director Christopher Nolan brings all these threads together by the end of the film with stakes higher than anything else done in most action movies.  It's all out war between Batman and the police force versus Bane and his minions, and it's complete mayhem.  What's particularly marvelous is how little CGI is apparently used for most of the action sequences, aside from Batman's flying contraption dodging missiles (if there is more CGI used during some of these action sequences, it's exceptionally good since it isn't easily discerned from the rest of what's going on screen).

This is the rare third part of a trilogy that satisfies expectations while still offering something new to enjoy.  I didn't see the film in IMAX, but I definitely intend on seeing it in the IMAX format.  It's not quite as awesome as The Dark Knight, but it's still a stellar film.

By Any Other Name

A good friend of mine recently caught the writing bug, and is writing her first novel.  She's already through her first chapter of the book from what she's told me, and all I know of the plot is that it involves a witch of some kind in a modern day setting, with some elements of 50 Shades of Grey mixed in for good measure.

(There's that book again.  I CAN'T ESCAPE IT!)

I already contributed my idea for the book's title: Which Witch Is Which?  She loved it, and if she ended up using it as the actual title, all I asked for in return was a special "thank you" in the inside cover.

I would've been a happy man if the book eventually got published just with using my idea for the title.  However, today she asked me for another favor in relation to her book.  She wanted to give her main character - a woman - a very complicated name that most people couldn't pronounce. 

My last name typically frightens most people when they see it in print for the first time.  What usually happens is a person sees it, stares at it for a few seconds, and then just asks me how to say it.  Every now and then I come across a brave soul who is willing to take a stab at it, and every once in a great while, somebody gets it right the first time around with no help from me.

The funny thing is, the only thing that's really scary about my last name is the first three letters.  It starts with "Tch," which is enough to have most people give up.  Once I tell them how to say it, they realize it's a whole lot easier to say than they originally had thought. 

So naturally, my friend contacted me to ask if I would allow my last name to be the inspiration for her character's name.

I gladly offered it up for my friend to use for her main character.  I've never had a fictitious character named after me before, and I think it's a pretty awesome honor.  I can't wait to see how it's used in the book, and I'm gonna milk this 15 minutes of pseudo fame for every ounce I can get from it.

On a semi-related note, my girlfriend and I have a running joke about my last name.  Her maiden name is O'Connor, so if we got married and she took my last name, she would most definitely be trading down.  Instead, we're going to be super progressive about this should we get married one day, and I'm going to take her last name.  I don't know if this would impact my name being used in the book at all, but at least I wouldn't have to phonetically spell my last name out to anyone who ever hears it in speech.

Review: Ted

Lots of movies are guilty of a very common sin, that being they include all the best parts and clips in the trailers.  This is especially true of comedies, and one good example of this for me was Talledega Nights.  I can't remember a single moment of that film that wasn't included in the previews, which ruined the film for me.

Ted is the complete opposite of that concept.  The best stuff in the movie can't be shown in the previews because all the best moments are adult in nature.  It's a wonder anything remotely funny can be aired on television ads and avoid looking like nonsense.  Somehow the marketing team put together enough clips on television that are suitable in order to gain attention, but that couldn't possibly be an easy task.

Mark Wahlberg is John, a 35-year-old man who, when he was a boy in 1985, got a teddy bear for Christmas.  He wished that same night that Teddy could speak and act on his own, and when he woke up the next morning, he found out his wish came true.  At first Ted is lovable and cute, and he quickly becomes a celebrity by appearing on news broadcasts and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Fast forward to present day.  John is now working at an auto rental company, and he's been dating his girlfriend Laurie (Mila Kunis) for nearly 4 years.  Ted is still John's best friend, but his 15 minutes of fame have long since passed, and he's now a celebrity that most people have forgotten about (that right there is a possibly storyline that could have been used as the backbone for the movie, since that is an idea that would be ripe for comedy too).  Ted lives with John and Laurie and generally interfering in their relationship by taking bong hits while watching 80s cult classics like Flash Gordon and Masters of the Universe.

Laurie grows more and more annoyed with Ted's antics and forces John into the position of kicking Ted out of their apartment.  Now on his own Ted - who, I feel obligated to remind you, is a teddy bear - is forced to get a job as a grocery store cashier to provide for himself.

This whole story could have still been funny had Ted been a human being, but the sight of a teddy bear taking bong hits, drinking beer, and making sexual advances on women puts a new spin on the idea.  It's sort of a one-joke movie with substituting a teddy bear in place of any human being in the role, but it works.

Ted is the brainchild of Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and American Dad.  MacFarlane wrote, directed, and voiced Ted in the film, and he makes a couple references to his previous works in the movie.  He also tossed in a few cameos that I dare not spoil for anyone who hasn't yet seen the movie; they are all priceless.

Network television only allows MacFarlane to go so far with his style of comedy, even while using animation.   Ted is truly MacFarlane Unchained, so any parent going into this movie thinking a comedy about a grown man and his childhood teddy bear better think twice about taking their kids to see this (in fact, I had spotted a woman carrying her daughter who was around 4 years old in the theater, which horrified me).  I don't know if MacFarlane can continue making movies while also running his animated series, but if he does he will certainly have a bright future ahead of him.  This is probably the funniest movie of the summer and possibly the funniest movie we'll get this year.

100th Customer

I took notice a while back that my post count had been creeping closer and closer to 100 blog posts, and I decided I'd use my 100th post to look back on some of the more important events in my life over the last two and a half years.  There's a lot to look at, that's for sure.

I lived by myself for the first time ever in my life when I had lived in Virginia.  I gotta say, it was quite an experience.  I always had either friends or family to come home to after work, but living on my own was eerily quiet at times.  It forced me to grow up quite a bit, mainly to teach me how to keep a fairly clean house, keep a budget, and how to cook.  I actually like cooking now, and I really dislike throwing a frozen pizza in the oven, barring laziness.

There are two other very important events in my life during my time in Virginia that I can't avoid talking about, those being my period of unemployment and my parents splitting for good.  The really tough part was that both events happened within a week of each other, which piled the stress on big time.  I can at least put a positive spin on my unemployment because it made me appreciate my friends and family in all sorts of new ways.  That was the time when I had to call in every favor I had in the book, and pray that one of those favors would pay off.  Fortunately it did, and that leads me to my next highlight.

My new job is just awesome.  I've wanted to work for the federal government going all the way back to my days in college, and I don't have to worry about being squeezed like I was at my old job.  It also led to me moving back to my old stomping grounds in Baltimore, so I could be around my closest friends, my family, and my niece a whole lot more.  My niece in particular is this glowing beam of sunshine who just makes everyone around her smile.  I went to visit my sister a couple weeks ago, and my niece is walking around the house, looking for new ways to get into trouble.  She even likes to play a version of hide and seek by tucking herself inside a storage cabinet at the base of my sister's dining room table.  She's a real blessing.

There's one more important event that I dare not omit talking about.  My girlfriend is someone really, really special.  I'm holding off talking about her and our history until we get to the six month mark, but that's mostly out of superstition.  We have a very long history going back 11 years (!!!!), and it's one of those stories that make my friends and family laugh when I tell them how we had first met.  Don't worry though; that post will be coming down the pipeline in due time.

I don't want to say anything terribly cliche like how I'm older and wiser than I was even two and a half years ago, but I know I'm not the same person.  I used to be a welcome mat and allow others walk all over top of me, and while I'm still fairly passive I'm not lacking in backbone as I used to be.  Getting well into your thirties will do that I suppose, but that's a benefit.  Overall, I have matured as an adult, and I don't feel like I sacrificed much of any fun like I did during most of my twenties.

So here's to the next 100 posts.  May they be filled with as much random thinking, nonsense, humor, and hopefully some deep thought as my previous 100 posts were.

Nearly a Statistic

I had brunch with my mom on Sunday since we hadn't seen each other since right before my girlfriend and I had left for the Caymans over Memorial Day weekend.  It gave us a chance to catch up on everything we've been up to in the last few weeks, and I got to tell her in more detail about everything Kim and I had done while we were away.  I also gave her the small gift I picked up for her while I was in the Caymans, and tallying up good son points are always a good thing.

(Incidentally, we had briefly talked about everything that I had talked about in my last post, but I stopped her  short of filling me in on her side of the story.  The less I knew, the better.)

While we were having brunch my mom dropped a bombshell on me: in February, my aunt went in for her normal mammogram checkup, and doctors found something abnormal in her breast.  They ran more tests, and they confirmed a malignant tumor in my aunt.  In short, she had breast cancer.

Before I go any further, here's the good news: my aunt has already met with a specialist and had surgery to remove the tumor.  The doctors caught the cancer early enough when it was only starting to show, and the surgery was fairly standard.  She's expected to make a full recovery and will be following up with her doctor for future checkups to make sure nothing comes back.

When my mom told me the bare facts before getting into all the details, my mind immediately jumped in a number of different directions.  How are her kids - my cousins - handling it?  How many people did she tell? How serious is it?  When is she meeting with a specialist?  Can surgery eliminate all the cancer?

My mom quickly filled me in on everything.  My aunt chose to only tell a few people in the family because she, understandably, didn't want to keep telling the same story and answering the same questions over and over.  Instead, she went ahead with meeting with the specialist, and once her surgery was scheduled, she told the rest of her and my mom's siblings.

Like I said, the surgery was successful and my aunt is on the road to recovery.  The truth remains that she is now a breast cancer survivor, which is the good side of the statistic.  It could have gone another direction, and I could be writing a post about how my aunt is fighting for her life right now.

Every Mother's Day, my mom and I have gotten together to go to a baseball game together.  We've had this tradition for years, and the great thing is that the weather is generally perfect for a game.  What's really awesome about Mother's Day baseball is that the players use pink bats and wear pink gloves to show support for breast cancer research.  It's a great cause, one that I am now personally invested in.  My mom and I did out regular day at Camden Yards in May, but next year we'll have a whole new reason to go and show our support.

A Rock and a Hard Place

I've purposely avoided writing about my parents' divorce on here for several reasons, namely that most people who read this blog don't know either of my parents personally, so they won't have any kind of context to their relationship.  Aside from a couple comments made in passing here and there, I doubt any reader would have even known my parents were divorcing anyway.  Still, it's a major change in my family and our collective lifestyles, so it bears worth discussing.

I won't bother talking about the entire history of my parents and their issues since that goes back nearly three years ago.  The major stuff anyone would need to know is that they separated in April last year, and it hasn't been a very pleasant split.  I was living in Virginia at the time, so I was somewhat blessed to be living apart from them both and didn't have to deal with either of them very often.

Most of my information at first came from one or both of my sisters.  They were both very upset at both my parents for different reasons, and chose to limit talking to either of them as a result.  I don't blame them for making their choices, but I always found it very difficult to follow their suit.  However, it was equally tough for me to speak to either of my parents, knowing my sisters didn't want to speak to either of them.  Essentially I was caught in the middle of the entire mess, and I didn't know who to take at face value for the most part on either side.

The storm kept brewing once I allowed myself to be messenger between my parents a couple times.  My dad called me asking for favors to pass messages off to my mom, and even though I was extremely uncomfortable with being the messenger boy, I told her what my dad had asked me to say.  Both times I had agreed to call my mom on my dad's behalf resulted in incredibly awkward conversations, and I had to put my foot down with my dad to tell him I wouldn't be willing to play messenger anymore.  He didn't like it much since he only saw it as making a phone call, but he didn't understand how I was putting myself at risk in getting involved in their divorce proceedings.

Fast forward to this morning.  My dad sent me a text a little after 4:00 this morning (?!?!!??!) asking me to call him because of an urgent matter.  I had made plans to have dinner with him this evening for Father's Day, but he had abruptly cancelled those plans yesterday, after supposedly being upset by a conversation he had with two people regarding my mom (I don't know any details beyond that, and frankly I don't think I want to know).  Now, he had a new favor for me in light of yesterday's confrontation: he had a check for my mom, but he didn't want to see her, so he had asked me to deliver it.  I immediately thought back to playing messenger for him in the past with my mom, and how uncomfortable I felt from delivering those messages.  Still, I agreed to deliver the check.

Then I discussed the whole thing with my girlfriend.  She's been through a divorce in the past, so she had plenty of insight into the situation.  Her advice was right in line with my gut feeling on the subject, that I shouldn't have to be the one to deliver the check, regardless of what my dad says.  I'd be putting myself at risk if I delivered the check and something went wrong with it, not to mention there was no guarantee what I was delivering was in fact a check to begin with.

The follow-up conversation with my dad loomed over my head for the next couple hours.  I eventually called him and told him straight up that I wasn't going to deliver the check.  Suffice to say, he didn't like hearing that.  He tried explaining that it was a simple task and it shouldn't matter, but I told him how it would put me in a potentially risky situation.  It led to a pretty big argument, ending only because he eventually hung up on me.

Here's my dilemma: I don't want to be dragged in between my parents anymore than I already have, knowing that each of them would pit me against the other in the process.  Ironically, in order to avoid being the bad guy, I have to be the bad guy with them by backing off.  On top of all that, I still want to try having a relationship with each of them going forward; they're still my parents after all.  Yet, I can't really talk to either of them without the conversation at some point turning into a bitch session about the other.

I know the easy answer is their divorce is between them and they're being the real bad guys by pinning me against each other.  My sisters were smart to back off completely from the get go, but I still tried keeping active relationships with them both.  Bottom line is drawing a line in the sand with the two of them is easier said than done.  I don't like the idea of taking a hard line with either of them since that could make having a relationship that much more difficult later on.  I can only hope that if that's what I have to ultimately do, they'll both realize why in the end, and once these hard times are in the past, we can all collectively move forward.

Of course, I'm probably being more than a little naive.