Editorial Stuff

Let's just point to the fact that I have done a shitty job at maintaining this blog this year. Let's face it. Bring on your criticisms. Bring on your hate. Rain down those hate on me!

......Like anyone's gonna.

I'm going to confess to whoever reading this. I love statistics. I love data. I like comparing them. This is what probably 12 years of school made me do. The only thing they successfully made me do. So, to justify how I fucked up at my sole and only job: keeping this blog alive, I'm going to compare and contrast with the previous years. Bear with me. I know, this is probably the worst post on this blog since the 2012 London Olympics withdrawal post. I mean, who has a hard time withdrawing from the Olympics? Not even the Greeks do. To my defense, it was not a withdrawal post, it's just a normal, self-absorbing post with too many Olympics reference in it. I have a picture of Kate Middleton to prove it on that post.

So let's do the comparing and contrasting thing.
So far, this year I have posted 21 posts, including this it makes 22 until the end of July. 22 posts means an average of 3.14 (a phi!) posts each month. I posted 25 posts in 2014 (avg: 3.6 posts per month), 24 posts in 2013 (avg: 3.4 per month) and 21 posts in 2012 (3 per month). So all that growth in two years have amounted to nothing! I'm a lazy bastard.
To my own defense, I have three drafts to date. With the one most prospectful is the one about my all-time favorite/guilty pleasure TV series Heroes, particularly the third season. I have a great title to go with the posts and I was writing it because Chapter III in Season 3 was way better than I remembered and also I was going to write the post based on Chapter III and IV, but then I couldn't get my hands on most of the episodes on Chapter IV so that post became abandoned.

Also, let's see how many movies that I managed to review up until July. From American Sniper until the most recent Terminator Genisys, I have reviewed 19 films until July 2015. In 2014, I also reviewed 19 films until July, starting with a very late Ender's Game review to the equally late Godzilla review. In 2013, I reviewed 17 films. In 2012, I reviewed 15 films. So movie-review wise, I'm actually doing good. Yeah niceee.

But how's my audience doing? 2015 has been pretty dull in terms of click. I, myself, is anti-clickbait, so you won't see my writing 'This Guys Did This To A Girl, The Girl's Reaction Is Priceless' bla bla bullshit. I stay true to my title and ideals. I'm not selling out. But that probably got to do with my viewers going down. But views aren't fair, because obviously the posts in the previous years have had more views. But this ain't a dissertation and no one's judging. Up until this post, the most viewed post in the blog is not even movie-related (the irony!). It's about me going to Taylor Swift's concert in Tokyo, it got 72 views to date. Not even 100. The second is my year-opener post, titled Benvenuto 2015! with 38 views. Pretty sad. In 2014, I have six posts passing 100 clicks up until July. First one is Divergent review with 334 views and second is Sherlock Series 3 review with 275. In 2013, I have three posts passing 100, with one indisputable champion, my review of Oblivion which surprisingly had 1044 views to date and still is the biggest one on this blog.

Bottomline, this is a bad year for this blog with me being a lazy-ass than ever before and also the crappy posts don't even get any audience. Well it's just the middle of the year, who knows it will get better. This is not a big deal anyway. My blog suffers clinical depression and has been getting the prospect of abandonment since time immemorial. I just don't have that many stuff to do, so I keep getting back to this blog.

On a groundbreaking note, this post marks the first time ever since the very first post in 2009, that it has no image whatsoever. This year also mark a first non-English post, which was written in my native language Indonesian. Another mark is that this year is the first one that I wrote about a concert instead of a movie, which is the aforementioned Taytay concert. Pretty daring and bold 2015 so far.

Next up is still Jurassic World--next week!

How To Nurture A Franchise

We've seen so many franchise now. Every summer tentpole is a franchise, except for Dwayne Johnson's surprise hit San Andreas. However, we've seen desperation that calls old franchises to be revitalized in the new era. Like, Jurassic Park or Terminator or Mad Max. Some are really dear to some audience's hearts and it's insulting to us to see something valuable ruined for the sake of money. So, I think I've seen quite a lot to show those Hollywood exec on how to continue/reboot/remake/restart a franchise.

1. Continuity
Continuity matters. Like a lot. This problem happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They have stand-alone films and then an event Avengers film. They have different directors in it, therefore different vision. I really like Joss Whedon but he's the biggest culprit in this matter. I mentioned this one before, Whedon likes Black Widow/Natascha Romanoff in short hair. So, despite her being incredibly sexy in her long hair in The Winter Soldier, the hairstyle changes again in Age of Ultron. Also the costumes, being rebooted each time without any explanation, save for Iron Man because he's rich and he can change it anytime.




2. Admit Mistakes
If you made really bad movies in the franchise, man up and own it. Don't be lazy and just say these movies don't exist. I haven't seen Jurassic World but I heard that the movie disowns The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, which means: fuck you Trevorrow. Terminator Genisys recently did so as well, they disowned Rise of the Machines and Salvation which confused me from the first five minutes of the film. If they stayed true to Judgment Day, it means that the subtitular Judgment Day has been averted but why is it still happening in the backstory of Genisys. The new Judgment Day should be in 2003 as per RotM's storyline. But then Genisys moved it again to 2017 for no fucking reason. While I'm not a fan of RotM (I liked it because it still has a badass Arnie, the killer T-X and Claire Danes in it), I thought Salvation was quite awesome for bringing us to 2018 during the actual war.

The only franchise that owned up to their mistakes is the Fast and Furious franchise. They chose an ingenious way to do so, where they jumbled up the order of the movies but still making sense of them all. Delaying the events of Tokyo Drift to make way for installments 4, 5, and 6 is smart. Not only it brought back the original cast but also maintaining Tokyo Drift's breakout character Han. The X-Men franchise did a quasi-admission to their mistakes. They know The Last Stand and Origins was an unfortunate addition so they did a hard reset with Days of Future Past to erase that movie. However, it is still a shame because it means erasing the whole original trilogy and Wolverine's solo storyline.

3. Know When to Stop
Well, no franchise has known when to stop. Even Harry Potter which has a definite ending, has to be milked out with Fantastic Beasts and J.K. Rowling's inability to fucking move on. Yes, Rowling, it's not cute anymore for you to spill 'new' information about the wizarding world. Maybe there are some franchises that know when to stop, but they needed to be slapped with the hard truth when their movies have become intolerable and bad. No one goes out with a bang. Examples: The Matrix franchise (if you think Revolutions is awesome then you need to submit yourself to a mental hospital), Saw (I never watched any of it but pretty sure it's not even downhill anymore when it gets to installment number seven). I believe Resident Evil franchise will stop after the upcoming movie, but that's after the box office numbers have became really low. So many movies that should have ended a long time ago. For example: Indiana Jones franchise with The Last Crusade, Pirates of the Caribbean franchise with At World's End, Middle Earth films with LotR: Return of the King, Transformers franchise with Dark of the Moon, Die Hard franchise with With A Vengeance (although Live Free or Die Hard is pretty awesome).

This is also relevant to those YA movies that has to split their ultimate chapter in to two parts. It worked for some movies but not all of them. Yes I'm looking at you two for now, Mockingjay and Breaking Dawn. Man, but both of ya still managed to make me pay for both chapters. Shit.

4. Stop Picking Up Old Franchises
Okay, how many franchises are built upon an original movie that happened 20 years ago? So many. Tron Legacy is the trendsetter I guess for I guess setting the record for mainstream sequel with 28 years gap. This one kind of similar with point number three above. Sometimes they pick up these old franchises because they think they still have some steam. Like Star Wars franchise. I love the movies but making them again after a perfect ending with Revenge of the Sith seems pointless. Even with J.J. Abrams as director. After the announcements I have been quite excited for The Force Awakens but do we really need Star Wars standalone films? Why does no one on the Internet object to this idea? Only me? Having some steam in the franchise doesn't mean it will be good. Gamble all you want but when it backfires, write down them checks.

5. When You Reboot, Do It Cleanly
Terminator Genisys is a reboot that was done dirtily. It wanted to be a new reset but it still wants to homage/drag the original films. The cleanest reboot is Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy but that's not fair because bad movies that couldn't go nowhere prompted that reboot. Genisys still has some work to continue but decided to reboot. I guess the cleanest reboot for this matter would be Mad Max with this year's spectacular extravaganza Fury Road. No time for nostalgia because it's all fire and blood! Witness that movie! The other good reboot is J.J. Abrams Star Trek alternate timeline, which should be in the same case with Genisys. Abrams' films still provoked nostalgia with the late Leonard Nimoy showing up in the two movies and Into Darkness was basically a remake of Wrath of Khan. But at least it does not rely on the amazingness that was in the original series.

I hope this is useful for you, Hollywood. Take notes from this guy who should be writing his final essay instead of doing bad photoshop jobs and doing this.

Next:
they just went and made a new dinosaur. is it a good idea?

Robots--Angry Robots

I finally watched Avengers: Age of Ultron two weeks ago and just tonight I watched Terminator Genisys (pffftt..Genisys). I was going to do separate posts for each film but man was I busy these past few weeks. You know, the pains of being me. Busy doing nothing. Busy sleeping. Busy having fun. Busy talking about other people. Anyways, I was probably the last person on Earth to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron. The main reason I watched Genisys is Khaleesi. I love Emilia Clarke. I loved the series too but even the first trailer was unconvincing.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
The movie starts out with a bang. With that one tracking shot that includes an amazing slow-motion sequence with all the heroes in one frame. After that, it just felt rushed. The creation of Ultron comes out of nowhere and just snap, he got made and mad. Then the film just goes to a static phase. It just treads until the Hawkeye twist then treads again until the battle scenes in Sokovia. Especially that slow-mo, no music scene. Best scene ever. For all the faults in this film, Joss Whedon proves that only he can make this kind of spectacle with amazing shots in it. I'm quite skeptic about The Russo Brothers taking over Avengers III, they did an okay job with directing but the best thing about The Winter Soldier is the game-changing story.

The one that bugged me the most with Avengers: Age of Ultron was not the overabundance of action scenes, of course. But the continuity. What happened to Tony Stark between the events after Iron Man 3 and this film? Didn't he quit being Iron Man already? Also there's suddenly a romantic thing going on with the now curly-short haired again Natascha and Bruce Banner. What happened to the over-the-roof chemistry between Black Widow and Cap? And what was Thor doing in that pool?? The actors are doing very good jobs, I'm loving Elizabeth Olsen than ever before. Her Scarlet Witch was among the highlights of the movie, especially that shot at the ending. Man, I love her so much. Avengers: Age of Ultron: rated 3/4

Terminator Genisys
The film actually isn't that bad. But then again Paramount signed their death certificate when they decided to spoil the fact that John Connor is the big baddie. If it's only in the trailers, I can take it but not on the fucking posters too. Also the fact that I keep telling myself that the Entertainment Weekly scoop about Sarah Connor calling T-800 'Pops' is a big lie only makes the reality so funny. They actually call him Pops, which translates to Japanese as Grandpa... Why. Let's start with the good parts first, the film is filled with cool imagery and pretty rad sci-fi time travel twists. The action scenes are decent too. The actors are good as well especially Jason Clarke as John Connor. I never get the hate towards Jai Courtney but he could lead this film.

The thing that bogged down this movie is the over-reliance to James Cameron's masterpieces. They messed with the original timeline so bad. But unlike Star Trek, which immediately introduced a different timeline which is still existing alongside the original, Genisys relied on the viewers' knowledge on the original timeline to move forward. It's harder for the fans to accept while the newcomers will just get lost in what's happening and who's who. There are so many plot holes about the time travel too. For example, Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor time travels to 2017 and they haven't had sex yet, so by 2029, John Connor would at least only be 12 years old. Would they bother to create a time machine just in order for them to have sex? Also the film relied too much on the Terminator-can't-smile joke and random music breaks for comedic effect. Too much homages and nostalgia that the film couldn't stand on its own. It's not working guys. I'm just glad that it's not as bad as I expected though. And watching this in Atmos helps make the film better too. I'm not seeing this film spawning any sequel though. Oh and check this line out it's when John told Arnold: "You are just an old relic from a deleted timeline" So mean... Terminator Genisys: rated 2/4.


Next: Inside Out is already released but all dubbed in Japanese and the title became Inside Head.
I guess see you when I watch Jurassic World.

Fire and Blood and Sand

Second summer movie! I've heard so many good things about Mad Max: Fury Road and finally I've got the chance to see it--in a large screen, in 3D, in Dolby Atmos. Life is just complete. I've never seen the original Mel Gibson films but I want to though. But this film just looks awesome. The film stars Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky but the real star here is Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa. Firstly, that's an awesome name--Furiosa and she's so badass. I was convinced I'm going to see the film in cinemas since they released the Comic-Con footage a year ago. That was so perfect I don't need to see anymore trailers. So fun yet so risky putting your money on a director whose film credits since 2000 only includes two Happy Feet films.

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where all that's left of the world is a great desert. A warrior named Furiosa is looking to go back to her homeland by stealing a war tank from a cult group leader Immortan Joe which infuriates him. She met Max and helped by him escaping Immortan and another two clans chasing them. The film then plays out as one long chase scene--one long awesome chase scene.

The film is insane. The story is so simple but the mechanics of the stunts is crazy. Almost all the stunts you see there are done on set in Namibia. The green screen are mostly done for interior shots and additional effects were for landscape. The pacing of the action is just incredible, there isn't one slow second at all. It is a very satisfying experience. Add that with a killer score by Junkie XL/Tom Holkenborg. The score is necessarily loud and awesome. See the track 'Brothers In Arms' which plays during the 'fool' scene in the film. However, Holkenborg still needs to diversify his score because sometimes his percussion reminds you of his work on 300: Rise of An Empire, which is the reason why George Miller hired him though. Director George Miller is amazing. I praised the action scene enough, but the film's props, character design, and color palette are just so equally beautiful. He has an amazing eye for detail. I'm gonna put myself out here and bravely say that George Miller might be the equivalent of David Fincher in action movie-making.

The cast is amazing. I remember reading an article about the casting of Nicholas Hoult, Zoe Kravitz and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, and that article dismisses Mad Max: Fury Road to be doomed from the start. Nicholas Hoult is crazy good and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has definitely taken some acting classes and acing them, cos her performance is 350% better than her debut in TF3: Dark of the Moon. As much as Tom Hardy is cool and fitting as the titular Max, I actually don't mind if this film is called 'Furious Furiosa' because Charlize Theron killed it in her role. Theron now specializes in playing strong badass women, I first noticed this in Hancock, where she played Will Smith's equal. Then most importantly in the highly disappointing Snow White & The Huntsman where she single-handedly saved the movie from being a total snooze-fest. Also in Prometheus until her stupid death scene. This movie justifies all those badass women character for putting her in the perfect scenario for her to be badass. This could be our summer's champion. Mad Max: Fury Road: rated 4/4.

Bonus!
I'm proud to say that I made this edit on amazing women characters in the last five years.

Up next: The last person on Earth to see Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to see Avengers: Age of Ultron this Saturday.