One Piece 817 Review: Raizou & Red Poneglyphs

One Piece, Chapter 817: Raizou of the Mist

To note: Tokyo Ghoul chapter will be delayed for a couple of days simply due to the sheer amount of big things that happened in this week's chapter.

I have said it once, and I will say it as many times as I want to -- the Wanokuni Country arc doesn't really interest me at all. Kin'emon and Momonosuke has been around all the way since Punk Hazard, and while they were set up to play a role in Dressrosa, neither they nor Kanjurou's anticlimactic reveal ended up really being anything beyond 'hey these eccentric characters who we promise will be important someday. Honest!'

It's just a standard revelation of a new, oh-so-quirky character, Raizou, but unlike Bleach and Toriko, this week's One Piece knows to put in a couple other revelations into it as well. We get the token scene showing that, yes, Jack's not dead and only idiots would believe it. The Kouzuki (previously written as Kougetsu but changed, apparently) family's heir is apparently Momonosuke Kouzuki, heir to the Daimyo Oden Kouzuki. And the whole Kin'emon/Momonosuke father-son thing has been nothing but a farce to protect Momonosuke. It's not a big revelation, really, since Kin'emon and Momonosuke had been such ciphers before. But hey, another big-shot who's allied himself with Luffy! Sorta.

Inuarashi and Nekomamushi call a truce and whatnot, then takes the Straw Hats to see the ninja Raizou. Who, in true One Piece fashion, looks absolutely fucking weird, like Gedatsu and Foxy had a baby or something. He's been chained up on the top of the whale tree, so he's not a dick that just hides while the Minks are being massacred. Raizou is basically, well, what you'd expect a ninja to be in the One Piece world, with a couple of token references to Naruto -- the concept of ninjas aren't exclusive to Naruto, of course, but showing Kage Bunshin no Jutsu and mentioning the various elemental releases was a nice little reference. He's quirky and crazy. That's about everything that's to know about him. 

More interesting than Raizou, though, is the existence of the red poneglyph in Zou... which naturally doesn't get read in this chapter because everyone else (even Law!) is obsessed with ninja ninja ninja. 

The Walking Dead S02E06 Review: Glenn's Biggest Weakness

The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 6: Secrets

Ah, this was a much better episode. Still a lot of talking, and the barn o' zombies isn't addressed quite as much as I would like it to, but the focus on developing Glenn, Lori, Dale, Shane, Maggie and Andrea as characters are definitely welcome. The titular 'secrets' mostly revolve around Glenn keeping the two secrets that Lori is pregnant, and that the barn is filled with zombies, and eventually, well, breaks down in front of Dale. This led to Dale confronting both Lori and Hershel, and, well, Dale's the nicest person in the group to do that, really. Lori takes it well. Hershel takes it mostly well, but this does put a fair amount of friction between Glenn and his sex buddy Maggie.

Hershel apparently isn't trying to build anything sinister like a zombie community or an army to take the world or experiments or anything... he's just sequestering the members of his family and friends that got zombified because he views them as simply sick and be cured, comparing the zombie plague to schizophrenia. Um, okay, then, if you say so, buddy. The scene where one of his daughters snaps a bunch of chickens' legs and drops them into the barn is creepy as all hell.

Glenn and Maggie's interactions are pretty well-done, from Maggie giving Glenn the cold shoulder thanks to what she believes to be the right thing, to Maggie telling Glenn to not be such a doormat, to Glenn rescuing Maggie from the sudden jumpscare by Pharmacy Zombie, to Maggie just getting ultra-pissed at Lori... Glenn's own interactions with Lori are great, too, being a trustworthy friend who stands by Lori no matter her choices, and that nice platonic friendship hug is refreshing considering all the bullshit love triangle Lori's been stuck in for an entire season.

So why didn't Pharmacy Zombie attack Glenn and Maggie a couple episodes ago when they were having hot and presumably noisy sex? Or did Glenn really only last a minute and not give the zombie enough time to attack? Or did it just, um, watch?

Andrea, despite being a mouthy moody bitch for the majority of this season, and accidentally shooting Daryl after whining and being a gun nut last episode, finally manages to show some badassery. She gets some nice training scenes with Shane (who's one helluva jackass instructor), sulks off a bit, and then partners up with Shane to investigate a very creepy abandoned house, and then shows that she too can be an insane gun nut under pressure, shooting zombies left and right. And then in the car she goes all dick-grab and has sex with Shane. A far more enjoyable portrayal of the character than moody and inconsistent, that's for sure.

Dale also confronts Shane. Whether Dale is just cocky at the passiveness and receptiveness of Hershel and Lori respectively, I thought this bit was one of the greatest moments for both of them. Dale proves that Shane pointing a gun at Rick isn't forgotten, but at the same time Shane also points out that if he really is someone who would kill his best friend... what chance does someone like Dale have? Dale also suspects, I think, that Shane and Andrea did the nasty, and he's... protective?

And finally Lori tells Rick that she's pregnant, and while that scene ran on for a bit longer than it probably should, what with the dilemma between abortion pills and prenatal vitamins and whatnot, and Lori's long speech about bringing a child into a shitty-ass zombie apocalypse world, and Rick's idealism speech, it's still a pretty decent speech. Lori also breaks down about her secret affair with Shane, which Rick... already figures out (and Dale too, apparently).

A great moment for everyone who got character development, and actual justification for the characters just standing around and doing nothing. It's still a relatively weaker episode, though. Now freaking deal with the zombies in the barn!

Movie Review: Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four (2015)

It took me this long to watch the movie, not having caught it in theaters when it came out. It's famous for absolutely crappy reviews and zero approval from literally everyone from professional reviewers and casual moviegoers, and is the movie to point to when you want to show that simply adapting characters from a well-known comic book does not guarantee success. Everyone derides it, and granted the show does have one hell of a troubled production (but then, so did Ant-Man, and that movie was awesome), something I am not bothered to write up but I'm sure a google search will give you the answers you're looking for. 

But let's just review a movie as a movie. Is Fantastic Four the 2015 movie that horrible to deserve all those memes and 0/10 reviews?

Well, after watching it... it's not that bad. I mean, Fantastic Four 2015 is certainly a bad movie, and a bad superhero movie, it's a rather poor adaptation of the Fantastic Four comics, I definitely prefer the older 2005 version and any sane person should. But it's still watchable. It's just... well, extremely problematic. It's a very dull and boring movie, which is a big problem when your main characters are supposed to be bright and colourful. It has been a problem that plagued a lot of superhero movies, but while it thematically suits heroes like Batman or Jessica Jones, it certainly does not fit Fantastic Four. There really aren't much about this movie that is pretty, beyond that one scene of Dr. Doom's portal sucking up the trees and scenery... the Thing looks ugly as hell, making an already intentionally-gonky design look utterly horrendous. Dr. Doom is an utter embarrassment to his classic design, taking 'realistic update' way too far and none of the three humanoid Fantastic Four members look decent, being forced to spend the entire movie in either dull black suits or with their faces hidden in these astronaut suits. 

Plot wise it's your average superhero origin movie that really should've not lasted an hour and a half. The movie takes too long to get started, and we never really get a proper payoff. We spend too long just detailing how Reed and Ben met each other, then how they met the Storms, et cetera, et cetera. It's nice to see how the gang came out together -- ensemble movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Trek did the same thing -- but generally you spend the first fifteen to twenty minutes getting the dudes together and then showing the audience why you should care about them, instead of going into boring minutiae. A good chunk of the movie is spent on the alien planet, and another good chunk is just the Hunt For Reed while Ben and the Storm siblings are being used by the military. The Fantastic Four don't get their powers until like halfway through the movie, has to spend a quarter of the second half controlling it and/or in chains. Then Doom comes back in the last ten minutes for no proper reason, and we get the most generic superhero showdown with a big glowy portal in the sky that's been overused ever since Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Avengers did it in the same year. Doom's plans are bland repetitions of his 'the government can't be trusted' stuff he spouted before, and he's as dull a villain than Malekith from the second Thor movie... but that Thor movie had the utterly awesome Loki to compensate for a dull Malekith.

Worse-looking than even Jar Jar Binks

Doesn't help that Dr. Doom looks almost as bad as Red Tornado from Supergirl, but honestly this version of Doom just looks so cheap and when people in cosplay can make a better Doom costume than this... this fucking disgusting thing, well, who honestly thought that it would be something that the audience would look at and go "yep, that's cool"? Seriously? You spend a big movie's CGI budget for this? Some people say that Doom walking through that corridor while everyone dies around him is one of the better scenes in this movie... no, not really. Any sense of horror is kinda muted when Doom looks absolutely ridiculous. 

It tries to be Darker and Edgier when Fantastic Four is really the last franchise you should throw that trope on. Also it tries too hard to avoid being a superhero movie, doing away with Doom's far more attractive and flamboyant costume, does away with all the blue spandex (and Thing's pants), and doesn't give anyone codenames. Hell, generally movies at the very least throw the heroes/villains' comic-book codenames as an in-joke. Mr. Fantastic is obviously a horrible name and I can understand the movie not wanting to use it... but honestly, you can't throw Dr. Doom, the Thing and the Human Torch earlier on? It would be so easy for Ben to angst about being turned into "a thing". But no, it's not until the last ten seconds of the movie for Thing and Human Torch to be thrown out like in-jokes, whereas the Fantastic Four name isn't even said on-screen. Hell, apparently Victor Von Doom was changed into the utterly stupid-sounding "Victor Domashev" during principal shooting before it was changed back.

The dialogue in this movie is also extremely basic and I honestly can't think of a single clever exchange. Add that frankly insulting tirade from Doom against Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and I just cringe at this movie.

The four main characters never really interact as a group proper, with Ben only ever interacting with Reed, and Reed himself felt like a pretty bland character to hold the four together. He's smart, and, uh... I'm hard-pressed to say anything much about him. Johnny, Sue, Reed and Victor worked together to build the portal, of course, but other than that, again, there's not much to talk about their relationships beyond the short-lived hints of Doom's attraction to Sue. Ben gets angry at Reed for leaving him behind in the military facility, but they make up like they're best buddies for no reason at all. Ben is bullied as a child, with his brother apparently being the source of the Thing's signature "it's clobberin' time" catchphrase... but this is never brought up even once in the movie. Reed's exile also ended up being honestly a pointless plot point and I'm not quite sure where it's supposed to go.

I'm honestly not sure what was the point for the film to exclude Ben from the portal-working project... IIRC Comics Ben was a scientist himself, so why make him be excluded from the group? If it's to give Victor, Johnny and Sue more focus, then it sure as hell didn't work. Ditto for Sue not going along with the group to the planet, which just seemed like poor writing all around.

Making the team drunk when they do the journey also makes them rather... moronic. They apparently lose their drunkenness when they arrive on the Negative Zone (I'm not calling it... whatever anal name the movie called it. Mostly because I forgot) but instead of just taking samples and inspecting what's nearby of course they jump down a cliff and dip their hands into glowing green pools. Paragons of science, these people are.

Also how the hell is Sue affected and turned into the Invisible Woman when she didn't go with the boys to the other planet? Also, other than a short scene about being the responsible sibling, and her ongoing gimmick of using music to concentrate, Sue never really developed a personality either. She's bland, with neither the sibling connection with Johnny nor the apparent attraction to Reed, or even Doom's crush on Sue, get explored at all. Yes, there's a couple of stilted obligatory scenes to show that, hey, Johnny and Sue are siblings! Sue kinda likes Reed! But they are so devoid of any emotion and end up not mattering whatsoever. There's a nice point being brought up about Sue being adopted, and Johnny having a bit of jealousy towards Sue for being the good child, but again, not explored. Johnny's daddy issues were set up quite well, with him being really talented but wasting that on racing cars and shit simply to rebel against daddy, gets a nice continuation when he agrees to be a government weapon, his father died before he could make any meaningful changes... and ends up not getting that resolved either as his character ends up being reduced to nothing buy 'guy that shouts Captain Obvious things' when the climax rolls around.

Honestly, I'm not sure about the wonky pacing of the movie. The first half was half-decent, as poorly paced as it was. Did we really need the kiddy scene, or the high school science fair thing? Could've just reduced it all to ten seconds of dialogue from Reed. And all the buildup about character interactions that you'd expect -- Reed and Sue's not-flirting, Victor's jealousy at Reed, Reed and Ben's friendship, Johnny's estranged relationship to his father, Johnny and Reed being quick buddies... none of them really pay off. They go to the other dimension, which in itself took way too long and felt moronic considering it's a drunken spree... and then Doom gets left behind, they get captured by the government, Reed escapes...

I should probably say something about Dr. Franklin Storm and government man whose name I can't remember... but honestly they make such a little impression on me that I can't think of a word to say about them. They both die, and I just shrug. Considering Franklin's two children don't even react much regarding his death beyond the crying "DAD I'M SORRY" scene right after his death... Franklin is immediately forgotten about by both the cast and the audience.  

An overload of angsty character posturing is bad for a work of fiction (RE: Arrow), but the alternative, which is to have lifeless caricatures of characters who barely react to anything emotional around them ends up causing me to really not give a fuck about any of these characters. Darker and Edgier only works if you care about the characters... and I don't really care about any of them beyond the first act. As dark as stuff like the Nolan Batman trilogy or Man of Steel can be, they take time to make Batman and Superman... well, human, and retain character arcs for most if not all of the other supporting characters throughout their movies. Fantastic Four does no such thing.

And a random timeskip to one year later, and both Ben and Johnny seem happy to be used as weapons by the military. We could've explored how Ben felt about being used to crush tanks and soldiers for the government, or we could've explored just what Reed did while in self-imposed exile, but no. We just skip straight to setting up the finale, with the dull embarrassment that is this movie's Dr. Doom, and it ends up falling apart. None of the character threads set up in the first act are followed up upon as the characters just stand around and sulk, before Doom attacks, and then they attack Doom and sulk. There's no sense of fun or camaraderie between the titular Fantastic Four, when in the comics they're like this big happy family, and that is something the 2005 movie got right. 

Not that the third act was any good, mind. Superheroes saving the earth is a nice turn-off-your-brain-and-munch-popcorn plot, but Doom doesn't even make a lick of sense. He wants to destroy humanity... because? Again, it's something that the 2005 movie did better, as is the titular Four banding together to beat Doom, and the 2005 movie isn't even strictly a good movie! The CGI in this movie is especially bad mostly because so much of it just looks unfinished... but considering the monstrosities they turned out that is Dr. Doom, I'm not sure if the movie would look more impressive or better if they actually wasted even more money finishing the CGI.

Also why in the fuck did Doom forget he had "make your head explode by waving my hands" powers? Maybe it doesn't work on the stretchy Reed, but he did such impractical shit like throwing rocks at the Thing and just randomly force-punching Human Torch and Invisible Woman. 

And it's hard to fault the movie's poor production history for its many faults, but it's clear that these actors are capable of doing stuff... yet are just prevented from doing so by shitty directing or shitty scripting or both, but between whatever is going on, and the blatantly obvious reshoots... I mean, Sue's hair changes shades of blonde from scene to scene, Reed magically grows facial hair and causes it to disappear from scene to scene... at least when you do a reshoot make it proper! Jeez.

Also, this movie could've done without the obvious racial profiling of having the white Sue Storm be the studious, obedient child while the black Johnny is the rebel doing illegal car races and crashing cars. No, I don't care that Johnny Storm is black now... but this just seems two steps forward, one step back as far as progressivity goes. And Sue Storm being left behind as mission control? It felt kinda sexist for me too, especially literally every single version of the Fantastic Four origin always had the five of them go on the trip to the Negative Zone. 

Honestly, this movie is just... exhausting. It's only an hour and a half long, but I just feel devoid of energy watching it. There's no sense of fun or wonder to be had from it, in no small part due to poor dialogue and simply the movie being... unattractive. Doom and the Thing just look grotesque, the whole movie is dark and almost entirely happens in the dark science facility or the doomsday world of planet zero or whatever the stupider name they replaced 'Negative Zone' for. Hell, even Batman had scenes set in daylight! Fantastic Four really could've been a decent origin movie... yet it just ends up being a soulless wreck doles out way too fast to make sure movie rights stayed with Fox and didn't return to Marvel like Daredevil and Punisher did. But I have to echo what everyone is thinking... I mean, Fox has a sweet thing going on with X-Men, but this trainwreck of a movie (plus the sub-par performance of Spider-Man) makes everyone think if Fantastic Four would be better off just returning to Marvel, since Marvel Studios, well, people trust them to make good movies, and even the worst among their movies are at least fun to watch. Hell, even the old bad Fantastic Four movies had a sense of fun to them even if they're bad movies.

This? This isn't honestly bad bad to deserve all those bad reviews, it's just boring, disappointing and exhausting to watch, the antithesis of what a superhero movie should be. It tried its best at adapting the source material... it just did a shitty job out of it. 

Legends of Tomorrow S01E05 Review: Prison Break

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 1, Episode 5: Fail-safe

The biggest weakness of Legends of Tomorrow is how it blatantly regards sensible logical story progression for sheer entertainment value. We've discussed how moronic it was to send Ray in without the Atom suit, and send Stein in without Jax as backup. This episode isn't quite as bad, but Team Legends did set off a Firestorm-empowered atomic bomb in a Russian Gulag that would be the site of events in the future -- most crucial to the CW-verse being the Diggle/Deadshot/Lyla team-up in Season 2, set in the exact same gulag. Setting a fucking nuclear bomb in the middle of the Cold War in what is definitely not a remote TerroristCon location would change the course of history rather significantly, you'd think, but apparently not. Neither was a metahuman attack on the Pentagon last episode, or the nuclear bomb at TerroristCon in a previous episode... but distract a young Martin Stein for a moment? Time-caused annulled marriage. You can only play the 'time fixes itself' card so far, really. 

Some people have also pointed out how idiotic it is for the team to 'kill' Savage temporarily. The thing is, Savage is a sorcerer. He can just teleport or magic blast or say some random mumbo jumbo about how Carter must be around for the magic to work or whatever, and it wouldn't feel stupid. We would accept it. Rip Hunter setting off a room to explode around Vandal Savage while he walks away might look cool for five seconds, when you realize he could've just shot Vandal Savage in the head, drag him and strap him down to a table while he's regenerating, and have Kendra stab him. Or have Captain Cold freeze him and do the same. Or slice off his limbs and do the same. It just felt impractical, really, and the writers definitely could've done a better job at actually portraying a proper excuse that the Legends Team didn't actually murder Savage when they could and save it for the season finale.

So yeah, the overreaching plot for the series already frays apart, as much as I like it. The characterization part was really fun, though. There never was any doubt that Martin Stein wouldn't break, but we get some really nice moments for him struggling with it, even if that random Not-Cisco hallucination was gratuitously unnecessary. Jefferson gets the brunt of characterization this time, thinking up a way to contact Stein based on the same thing that Ronnie did in Firestorm's earlier appearances in the Flash, we get Jefferson doing his football running thing to reach Stein, and we get that predictable-but-still-nice moment of Jefferson talking Stein down while he's merged within Valentina Vostok as a blue-coloured Firestorm -- which in itself is a trifecta reference to the aesthetic look of Firestorm, Valentina Vostok's comic book counterpart Negative Woman, and Pohzak the Russian counterpart to Firestorm. Valentina blows up at the end of the episode, though really it's not too far of a stretch to think that she would come back.

Heat Wave and Atom got some bonding moments. I feel that Ray's getting a bit too much of Brandon Routh's old Superman role slapped onto the character, and he's definitely got the whole 'has Superman's idealism but none of his competence' vibe going on with him. It's definitely a characterization, but so far all he's got for it is earning him Heat Wave's respect to drag him out of jail when the breakout happened. Ray really needs to step up and actually be a competent Atom. Mick shows some backbone and while it's fun to see him warm up (pun fully intended) to Ray while they are hanging out in the prison and he's just eye-rolling at Ray's naivety, he ends up saving Ray at the end despite Snart's protests. It's nice to see Mick grow into his own character, even if it's one small scene at a time.

Rip's big point in this episode seemed to be that other characters -- Captain Cold in particular -- realizes that Rip's been treating them like pawns. Jax and Kendra certainly don't appreciate being benched even if Rip's logic does make sense, and Sara is definitely being used as an assassin for simple pragmatism of taking out Martin Stein, despite the team being, y'know, a team. But eventually of course heart wins out and neither Sara nor Rip go on with the plans. I really like how it's Captain Cold's unique brand of honour-among-thieves that actually shook Sara's old League training, and really Captain Cold is easily the best character in the show. He's dropped a couple of fun Prison Break references, too. I've never watched the show, but Cold and Heat Wave certainly got a bunch of fun scenes together.

Hawkgirl didn't do anything important, I think. Neither did Savage, really, other than repeat some of the 'I will kill your son and wife!' lines to Rip, be menacing to a couple of powerless men and then get himself blown up.

Chronos randomly shows up in the end only to fail spectacularly at killing or even troubling Team Legends, though he at least strands Team Legends in the obligatory post-apocalyptic 2046 future setting, where they are met with a black successor to the Green Arrow. Connor Hawke? That's certainly going to be interesting next episode.

It's weaker than the 70's arc, definitely and the Cold War arc has mostly been a bit of a less well-written and unevenly-plotted story. Again, like last episode, the things that worked (Stein, Jax, Snart, Ray and Mick to some extent) really worked, and putting the characters in interesting situations is fun... but really when the main story really could've been touched up a whole lot more it brings down the main experience.

The Walking Dead S02E05 Review: Barn Conspiracies & Redneck Survivors

The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 5: Chupacabra

A mostly decent episode, but one that still felt like it went on for a bit too long. The Daryl parts were excellent, of course, and both the opening and ending segments of this episode were great, explosive ones. It definitely brought up some of the momentum that we lost in the past two episodes. But still, the pacing really is a problem that's bogging this show down. 

Let's talk about the good part first. The opening flashback shows us that Atlanta ended up being napalmed by the pragmatic government folk. Or whoever is in that jet, it doesn't matter. The ending shows that Glenn's innocent desire to have some post-apocalyptic loving with Maggie ends up with the unsettling and frankly unexpected revelation that the Greene family is keeping a small herd (that's the proper term as far as this show is concerned) of zombies cooped up in the barn. Man, and all Glenn wanted was to get laid! Yes, we did get hints of something sinister, with Hershel being an increasing control freak, and getting increasingly pissed off that things are happening in his farm with him knowing about them only after they happened. Throughout this episode he's been wanting more segregation between the two groups. It isn't that far-fetched to think that he's really up to something crazy, whatever he's trying to do. We'll see next episode. 

Meanwhile Lori is hiding the pregnancy from Rick. Oh this is going to be dragged on for a long while, isn't it.

The search for Sophia, meanwhile... yields a doll. Yay. It's something, at least, compared to four episodes' worth of jack shit, and Shane isn't having any more of this shit. It's cruel, yes, but it's also pragmatic (and not boring), with actual arguments talking about risking everyone's lives for one little girl (citing Carl getting shot, plus Daryl himself getting hurt this episode), and the normal survivability of children out there are generally under 72 hours and that's without a zombie apocalypse. Whereas Rick is driven partly by a sense of guilt, and his argument sums up to "we gotta do this it's the right thing". The morally right thing, perhaps, but definitely the utterly stupid thing to do. The Rick/Shane argument was a bit too much of the same thing being revisited for my tastes, really, because they already did a variation of this argument last episode.

Meanwhile, Daryl gets dropped off a horse into a creek, falls on one of his arrows, and, alone, has to contend against two walkers who found him and hallucination Merle. Hallucination Merle is a gigantic twat, continuing to basically piss on Daryl, telling him to go kill Rick for leaving Merle behind, telling him that he's always going to be an outsider no matter what and generally acts like the shitstain he is. Daryl manages to survive, and looks completely awesome while doing it (he's got a necklace of zombie ears for extra manliness and insanity) but whether his character arc will go anywhere, and whether his little crisis of loyalty will be explored any time soon will remain to be seen. It's a nice buildup for his character, though, since he's grown softer and more likable over the recent episodes. The gun-happy "I can do this, I'm an adult" Andrea very nearly kills Daryl with a rifle shot, though, because, y'know, sometimes you do have to put your foot down. It's a miracle Daryl didn't die. 

We get a couple of fun scenes with Glenn and Dale. Dale has been an understated source of much-needed levity throughout these episodes, and I definitely appreciate this old man hanging around. As it were, however, with the clue to Sophia's whereabouts, and the revelation of the zombie army milling about in the barn, I think we're in for some serious plot advancement next episode and it couldn't have come any sooner.

Also, I know, I know, I'm behind on reviewing some of the Sunday mangas and superhero shows, but real life's kind of being a bitch right now and these Walking Dead episode reviews are easier to churn out mostly because I watched some of them like a week ago, half-wrote a review and all I have to do is complete it instead of writing from scratch. So yeah. 

The Walking Dead S02E04 Review: Well Zombies

The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 4: Cherokee Rose

A far slower episode, so I don't think I'll be too verbose about this episode. It's very much a cooldown episode, and I am honestly unconvinced that each good episode must be followed by a cooldown one. You can have an escalation. What we got is good characterization, but it's just so low-paced. Shane's big moment from the previous episode ends up only translating to him ad-libbing Otis's eulogy, and later in teaching Andrea about how to flip off The Switch when killing someone, but also confesses that he still has guilt about it.

The search for Sophia goes on... with absolutely no result. Daryl runs around as this solo tracker, but we don't get any payoff. Not even a requisite walker fight. Even Carol seems to have somewhat given up on the prospect of getting Sophia back alive, and I'm just confused where we're going with this. Some clue to indicate either way Sophia's status would be nice. And having us actually care for Sophia since she's barely a step up from a non-entity in the first season would be decent too. Daryl's short speech about Cherokee roses to Carol was nice, and he's definitely softening up.

Rick's... kinda just there. We get a moment of talking between Rick and Hershel, and while Rick respects Hershel a great deal he is also not afraid to beg Hershel to reconsider letting them hang out in a more... permanent form, something that Hershel was initially straightfowardly adamant about. There are 'aspects' he can't discuss, so maybe he's hiding something? I highly doubt this nice old vet will end up being an antagonist, but we'll see. Maybe the well zombie will end up being a plot point?

Also Lori is pregnant. Also Glenn and Maggie have sex. Also Rick gives Carl his sheriff hat. The first is a bit of a nice, if not unpredictable, revelation -- beyond the question of 'who's the daddy', really. With Glenn it's nice to have him be brought up to B-lister status after basically being nonexistent for this season, and with Carl it's... well, just a heartwarming moment.

The thing that didn't work for this episode was the stupid well zombie, though, and how long they spend on trying to pull it out. With Daryl's solo search being uneventful, and Rick and Hershel just looking into the Georgia sunset together, it just makes the episode mostly dull. And the fact that after all their trouble the well zombie just splits in half and contaminates the water anyway... honestly, it's just dumb, especially since a couple of scenes earlier Maggie or someone told them that there are five wells. Drinking water from a well where a zombie has been mucking around for long enough that it has become bloated (good job on that makeup effects, though -- Bloatface McWell is easily the best zombie makeup jobs in this series so far) isn't going to be healthy.

Overall not a very exciting episode, honestly, mostly because nothing really happened that was of consequence.

The Flash S02E14 Review: Knock Knock

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 13: Escape From Earth-2

I think I like "Escape From Earth-2" less than its predecessor simply because of how cookie-cutter it ended up being. There really was no surprise to the big twist in the end that Zoom would drag Jay Garrick back, especially with him standing so conspicuously apart from the rest of the group right next to the portal. Granted the hand-through-the-chest was brutal as fuck, but I thought that could've been a lot less obviously telegraphed. Likewise was the rather boring 'you can do it' speech that Barrytwo (as Cisco nicknamed him) gave to Barry, which ends up being exactly what I expected to happen. Likewise everything regarding Killer Frost ending u betraying the good guys to Zoom before the whole Ronnie speech gets to her and she stays behind to tank Zoom on. Other weak things include the entire plot thread in Earth-1. The scenes with Iris's random Jonas J. Jameson copy felt shoehorned in and makes no sense whatsoever to the overall plot. Geomancer still looks like a douche, though he got taken out like the idiot that he is, it's still quite annoying that it ended up being somewhat of an anticlimax. So yeah, unlike the previous episode with its bombshell after bombshell and me just not knowing what will happen, this episode is extremely... it's not bland. It's just extremely serviceable. Like eating plain bread. It doesn't taste like shit, but you'd rather be eating bread with butter or jam or nutella.

What is good for this episode, though, is how utterly fucking horrifying Zoom is. I mean, yes, for all his awesome speed he gets fooled with a hologram wall, he gets frozen in place by Killer Frost, and he got totally blindsided by Harrison, and he doesn't get to kill anyone, but the sheer horrifying aura and voice, the savage beatdown of Barry, and just that opening scene where he drops random leaflets and carves 'BRING ME WELLS' in fire on the side of a building...

(You have to wonder... did Zoom xerox those posters? I have a mental image of Zoom standing next to a photocopy machine just scowling and lurking)

So yeah. Even when Zoom is on the back foot, he still is imposing, and while he still isn't as 'OMG OMG OMG' as Reverse-Flash was in the first season, he's starting to really embody that dreaded feeling hat he's supposed to exude after being in the backburner for the past few episodes. And, well, that scene of Zoom roaring as he breaks out of Killer Frost's ice is just insanely cool.

Jesse is fun in her short scenes of prominence, though I really believed she won't die until she at least becomes Jesse Quick, so, um... totally feared for Harrison exchanging his life for Jesse, but alas that didn't happen. Cisco and Iristwo were decent if unmemorable compared to last episode. I did love how Iristwo and Barrytwo just say 'yeah we'll hide out in Atlantis' like they're talking about the next town over or something. 

The big point for me, though, is for Jay Garrick to use Velocity-9 (we skipped 8 and went straight to comic-book serum name), which naturally gives him near-full super speed, and he just Flash-saves every single person in a crumbly building, and poses gallantly. Fuck yea Jay Garrick! This show isn't really fair to him and doesn't give him as much appearances as he deserves (Jay's one of my favourite DC characters) but this episode is one that he truly embraced the fact that he is the Flash. I mean, it would be extra-awesome for him to run that extra mile and whack Geomancer in the face, but Caitlin randomly shooting the fucker with a lightning-choker gun is hilarious so that's okay.

Geomancer showing up randomly in STAR Labs with zero regard of the fact that only main villains are supposed to enter the Hero Base is hilarious and actually quite scary, even if I didn't believe for a moment that Iris or Caitlin would die to a tool like Geomancer.

The man in the iron mask is spelling out Jay with his tap-tapping, and honestly I thought it took really long for Barry and Jesse to argue about what specific code that Mr. Ironmask was tapping in. He spells out 'J-A-Y', but we don't get any reveals on that front. Not even a crazy pre-credits stinger scene. Oh, showrunners, you giant cockteases, you. But Zoom is definitely connected to Jay, so, uh, y'know. Hunter Zolomon. Which probably is a bit of a letdown considering how obvious it is (for comic book fans, at least) but hey, it's something.

I think one of the biggest weakness ends up giving way too much of focus on Killer Frost and Barrytwo. Barrytwo is just really boring and jittery and borderline irritating on screen, while Killer Frost... nothing wrong with her, really. She's your average supporting character with a personality, but again she's so blah-ly-written that her big supposedly emotional moments end up being just expected. I get that they're going with a nonchalant attitude on her instead of a more traditional hammy ice witch, but the result ends up not being quite as annoying.

The general pacing of the episode also felt rather disjointed and odd, with moments like the escape from Zoom's lair to STAR labs being absolutely glossed over and we're randomly just in 'happy post-fight talky' mode, and then we cut to Earth-1 where Jay and Joe fix the portal (in a ridiculously overlong scene) and when we cut back to Earth-2 somehow Flash, Zoom and Wells are already in a fight of their own. I thought showing some action scenes of Zoom arriving and clashing as opposed to retaining the entire 'let's fill up the action quota' run-around-the-portal scene would work so much better. Other scenes that ran too long include the whole Barry-and-Jesse-trying-to-figure-out-the-code scene, Iris's scenes with the random editor dude, and the scenes to establish that Jay repaired the portal off-screen only for it to get broken again after Geomancer's attack. We don't even see a courtesy scene of Killer Scene beaten and possibly dead (tm) on the ground. 

Overall, it's still decent and watchable... it just doesn't have the same amount of surprises and tension as the previous episode did.

Oh well, next episode is titled 'King Shark', so that's going to be fun.

Supergirl Season 1: Episodes 11-15

Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 11: Strange Visitors From Another Planet

Well, this isn't half-bad. The Adam/Cat subplot was entirely forgettable and I honestly don't have anything to say about it. It isn't even really bad, so I really don't have much to rant about it... it's just mind-numbingly boring. It takes so long, every single 'twist' in the interactions between Adam (played by Melissa Benoist's real-life husband), Cat and Kara are all predictable, the way this subplot was injected into the series (Kara randomly decides to finish one of Cat's letters) is actually a really shitty thing to do, and honestly I don't give a flying shit about Adam not when the main plot this episode is so much more interesting. TL;DR, Winn is in self-friendzone mode, Adam is going on a date with Kara. This reviewer continues to not give a shit.

The main plot of the episode features some exploration on J'onn J'onzz's backstory, in that a White Martian attacks a thinly-veiled fictional counterpart of Donald Trump, except with space aliens instead of human aliens. It's honestly a bit eyeball-rolling, and I honestly don't care that much for the Senator's story... she's put down mercilessly with thinly-disguised jabs thanks to Cat, and ends up changing her stance after being rescued by Supergirl and J'onn. 

Alas, the White Martian's plan kinda falls apart a bit, and I'm not quite sure where in all that chaos did the White Martian manage to hide the real senator under the sewers and switch back up -- Supergirl seemed to be pretty fast in chasing after the White Martian. I honestly thought that there was a pair of White Martians working together throughout the entire episode, and was honestly kind of confused when they took out just the one.

The White Martian... doesn't quite work when she's disguised as a human, but when she's rampaging... oh, that is some pretty cool CGI. See, Supergirl? You can too make good-looking enemies. Why shame yourself with Bad Cosplay Tornado? The White Martian is just evil, chaotic race supremacists who conquered and slaughtered the Green Martians with thinly-veiled Nazi parallels. The Green/White Martian rivalry existed in the source material, of course, but the backstory didn't involve concentration camps and the White Martians weren't the ones responsible for wiping out the Green Martians (in the comics the martians' extinction was caused by the H'ronmeer Curse). It's a backstory that still works for this incarnation of J'onn J'onzz, though, and not one that I'm going to bitch about too much.

I thought the sudden shift to "I must kill the White Martian" to "I'm tired of living, I want to get this over with" was odd and jarring, and the episode would be better served just choosing a single extreme -- either make J'onn angry and ready to kill despite being a good guy, or just make him a death seeker. Either way it gives ample material for Kara and Alex to redeem J'onn. I'm more or less satisfied with what we got, though, it being the best material for J'onn J'onzz so far.

Because I haven't had a chance to mention it, the title of this episode, "Strange Visitor From Another Planet", is an old nickname for Superman before things like the catchier and more heroic "Man of Steel" stuck. 

Overall, rubbish sideplot aside, this is a pretty decent episode, with a stinger showing that, hey, an impostor Supergirl is flying around town! Whatever could it be? Oh, the next episode is titled "Bizarro". Well.

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Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 12: Bizarro

Bizarro is... a remarkably faithful adaptation of the comic-book character, albeit this time she's a clone of Supergirl instead of Superman. Other than speaking in opposites ("Me no am Bizarro") which would be hella confusing to pull off in live action, Bizarro is a remarkably faithful distillation of the various Bizarro origin stories. An imperfect clone created by an evil scientist (Lord here instead of Luthor) to combat Superman/Supergirl, and is evil simply because it misunderstands the world. She acts like a child, but is ultimately only harmful because she doesn't understand things and is tragic because she'a a pawn in the evil mastermind's machinations. She gets Bizarro #1's pasty-white cracked skin halfway through the episode, has fire breath and ice vision (the latter not really easy to tell because the show's dumb and made Kara's heat vision blue), is empowered by Green Kryptonite and is weakened by the harmless-to-Kryptonians Blue Kryptonite. Bizarro Supergirl even kidnaps Jimmy Olsen -- a common go-to plot for any Bizarro is to kidnap love interest Lois Lane! It's an impeccable adaptation of the comic-book Bizarro... and it's just a shame, y'know, this episode kinda sucked. 

Not the Bizarro parts, because Bizarro is a decent, fun villain, and I did enjoy the little moral dilemma that Supergirl has regarding taking down Bizarro. Alex is just ready to launch Kryptonite and scream bloody murder, but Supergirl is convinced this clone has a soul and all that. I mean, I've seen this happen multiple times across multiple incarnations of the Bizarro incarnation in comics and cartoons, but it's done well here, and actually highlights some nice staunch realism from Alex, who has been kind of a flat character lately. But really, that's mostly it. 

And it's a shame, really, because Bizarro's been built up across a couple of episodes as Maxwell Lord's big plan, and the idea of an evil tragic clone is always exciting... but it fell apart, I think, due to two main factors. One, Maxwell Lord just doesn't work for me and he just feels like this knockoff Lex Luthor who just doesn't quite have the charisma or dangerous aura that Luthor has. And the second... this episode is just filled with nonsensical lovey-dovey interactions that either don't make sense or ones that I don't care about. 

For one... Adam. I just don't give a rat's ass about him. Watching him was painful, and I think even moreso than the stupid Kara/James/Winn love triangle which at least has the excuse of happening early on in the show's life. Adam is just your stereotypical nice guy, and it's odd, really, considering what he sprouts really isn't that much different from what "Mr. Friendzone" Winn said a couple episodes back. And we've got some really boring and cliche'd breakup scenes, some stupid scenes from Cat favouring Kara because she's dating her son... and the show treats this breakup like, oh, Barry Allen and Patty Spivot from the Flash, a relationship that lasted more than half of a season. When Adam literally showed up last episode, and spent most of last episode interacting with Cat anyway.

Winn actually became a bit more likable in this episode after being a bit of an ass, being mature regarding the whole friendzone thing, giving James Olsen friendly advice in dealing with his feelings, and generally being a supportive friend. I mean, I could write an argument how two men discussing who should "get" a girl would be objectification and something that a pro-feminist show should, y'know, fucking avoid, but hey, it's not that it isn't realistic that two men would talk like that. 

James Olsen, on the other hand, once more just fell apart. I'm not sure if we skipped an episode's worth of character work or whatever, but last we saw them James and Lucy Lane were still quite together and nice and all. And suddenly James is all "huh I do love her" when Winn talked to him, and he confesses his love about Kara in front of Bizarro... it's just odd. And weird. And badly written in general. 

All these moronic love subplots, and I really hoped at least the main superhero stuff was genuinely good. Well, we get some good Bizarro scenes, but it all falls apart up top. Maxwell Lord is just insufferable, and he's not at all threatening, sounding like a villain from Super Friends. I think he's just became an even worse villain than Astra. He just doesn't work, his insistence that the DEO can't touch him, his being hammy without really having anything to back it up. A simple "if you arrest me, footage will be released in 4 hours" or actual plausible deniability and, y'know, not taunting the government agent that he made Bizarro would be actually intelligent. Lord gets arrested and put in jail, and I do hope he stays. He's a boring, bad villain.

TL;DR? Bizarro's good. Everything else is just shit. 

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Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 13: For the Girl Who Has Everything

For The Man Who Has Everything is heralded as one of the classic Superman stories. In it, alien warlord Mongul used a parasitic plant called the Black Death to trap Superman in a dream-world where he wakes up in a world where Krypton did not get destroyed, trapping him in that sleep state, and the only way to wake up from the Black Mercy is to reject the dream world made up of his greatest desires. Meanwhile, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman do battle against Mongul while simultaneously trying to find out if there is a way to bring Superman back. Eventually, of course, Superman does manage to break through the illusion, and the Black Mercy ends up trapping Mongul in a karma-guided punishment.

This episode only follows that classic storyline in broad strokes. The Black Mercy is replicated faithfully in an honestly awesome CGI design, and Kelex the Kryptonian robot butler appears in a short, minor role early in the episode which made me smile. I like Kelex, and he actually looks really good! But the execution isn't honestly as good as I was expecting. Kara Zor-El, who left Krypton where she was a teenager, would have far, far more reason to desire to return to a place where she belongs, but that doesn't really amount to much beyond "oh yeah I remembered this one bit that I did once as a kid". I think showing Kara actually interacting with her family instead of showing the confusion when her mind starts to forget Earth and time-skipping straight to her accepting the dream world would be a far more effective way to deal with the Black Mercy dream world. I wished we actually dealt with Kara exploring her emotions and all that character jazz instead of stringing in the stupid Maxwell Lord VR helmet bullshit. I mean, yeah, it does give a strong Alex/Kara moment and I can't fault the show for doing that even if the dialogue isn't as good as it could be... but honestly, I just felt that it would be a far stronger episode if Kara made the choice to leave happiness behind to fight the villains on her own. 

One of the biggest and strongest moments in the comic is that, well, we want Superman to be happy so badly in that dreamworld, whereas here the episode straight-up treats the dreamworld as what it is. An illusion. Other than that short dinner that Alex interrupts, all the other scenes with the dreamworld is either Kara being disoriented and confused, or Alex screaming at Kara to wake up. Obviously other scenes happened off-screen, but still I thought it would definitely be more effective to show how much happier Kara Zor-El would be in the dream world, and how she would be so pained to see it all go.

Still, that's just me being kinda nitpicky. Maxwell Lord is still annoying, though not quite to the level that he was in the previous episodes. He's been gang-pressed into the DEO's unwilling tech expert, though fighting Astra's band of aliens that fucked up Lord's company before is a bit of a compelling reason for his cooperation.

Alex gets a couple of great emotional scenes with Kara, obviously, as well as J'onn refusing to lose her and basically choosing Alex over the chance to get both girls back. Alex has been rather boring and to see her basically lose it when Kara might never return from her Black Mercy coma is well-done. The bit where Astra tells Alex how to save Kara is definitely odd, though, and honestly, couldn't she have done that after the big Myriad mission is accomplished? It just felt weird, and the interactions between Alex and Astra leave me confused. Yes, the two want to save Kara and I'll buy that, but why didn't Astra go for the kill in the climatic fight?

James and Winn... are around. Winn manages to help out with his uber main-character hacking skills that outshines a group of secretive secret agents to figure out Team Astra's plan, and gets an utterly sappy friendship speech. James gets to stop J'onn from pulling Alex out of the dreamworld too early.

One thing that didn't work for me -- though I recognize that it might be appealing to others -- is the bit with J'onn impersonating Kara in front of Cat Grant. It was amusing to see the first scene, but the second scene was hardly necessary and utterly irritating, and Alex acting as if Kara losing her job at CatCo would be a disaster of mighty proportions to Kara's life is just utterly stupid and hard to stomach. Something less overwrought and dramatic would've definitely worked better, something like "c'mon J'onn, it's Kara's outlet at living a normal life" instead of going all IT WILL DESTROY HER and shit. Because, come on, there are like a gajillion other ways for Kara to get a job that doesn't involve CatCo. Oh well. Stiff!J'onn is at least somewhat amusing even if it went on for too long, and Cat's slight stupidity can be chalked up with Adam being driven away by Kara's breakup.

Surprisingly, though, the bits with the Black Mercy aren't the ones that were the most interesting this episode, but rather Astra, Non and their alien buddies finally doing something instead of skulking in the background without any good reason not to invade and wipe out the DEO. And the big twist that Astra dies with Alex's kryptonite sword was awesome. I certainly was not expecting that, but yeah. Astra has been a badly-executed character, with none of the promise of drama and conflict regarding her dual status as a main villain and as someone Kara loves really amounting to anything really engaging. She ends up sabotaging her plans more than she should, doesn't really feel like a credible threat and I'm glad she got out of the show... while the show still giving her a modicum of respect as she goes out still conflicted about whether to choose the cause or to choose Kara.

There is a second twist that as Astra lies dying -- and pretty awesomely not divulging what Myriad is, since as much as she loves Kara she also believes in her cause -- J'onn took the blame for Alex dealing the wound that killed Astra. I imagine this would be The Secret(tm) that will take a long while and be dramatic when it comes out, but we shall see. It's a nice gesture on J'onn and a great moment for Alex when she didn't hesitate to kill Astra despite knowing what she meant to Kara.

Meanwhile Non is shaping up to be a villain that's definitely far more menacing than Astra, and far more effective than Lord. He's definitely got as much personality as a cardboard box, being your bog-standard generic evil alien mastermind, but that's effective as a proper, credible villain than whatever the hell they did with Maxwell Lord, and the mediocrity that is Astra.

Another Easter Egg that I didn't have a chance to sneak in on the review is her dream-world dismissing her twelve years on Earth as part of an 'Argo fever' is a nice touch. The incarnation of Supergirl in Superman: The Animated Series was from Krypton's neighbouring planet Argo instead of Krypton, and she did slumber for quite some time in a stasis pod. In the comics, this tidbit was retconned as Kara's family hailing from Argo City.

Overall, it's a pretty decent episode. I actually enjoyed myself in this, and while there are some moments where I rolled my eyes like the second Cat/J'onn scene, the VR goggles and the rather iffy choices that Astra makes, it's easily one of Supergirl's stronger entries, and one that I would say is actually sorta good. The show needs to improve on this quality, though, and we might see a turnaround in the second half of this show. We'll see.

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Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 14: Truth, Justice and the American Way

Back to this show, I guess. Supergirl's having a crossover with the Flash in episode 18 and that's around 80% of the reason that I'm going to catch up with it. The other 20% is J'onn J'onzz, definitely. This episode tries to be more philosophical about things, which mostly is imprisoning resident jackass and horribly-written Lex-Luthor-expy Maxwell Lord without a fair trial. Despite the fact that, y'know, the only real thing stopping Lord from getting said trial would be him knowing about Supergirl's secret identity -- something that J'onn certainly could've have a hand with making him forget certain things. The dude created an evil Supergirl clone that totally fucked up the city! 

Also, Supergirl is all prissy and being passive-aggressive like a little girl towards J'onn... for killing her aunt. In combat. I mean, I get that she loves his aunt and that she's relatively new to this superhero thing, but honestly the prissy little passive-aggressive comments she makes towards J'onn and the uncomfortable reactions from Alex... it was really poorly done, I thought. 

I thought that the moment with Non was quite well done, that Non respects Astra and Kara's relationship enough to invite her for her funeral. And the Kryptonians observing funeral rites for, well, a couple of weeks basically takes them out of the equation for the forseeable future. 

The concept of this episode's filler villain was relatively decent. I'm not aware of the villain Master Jailer (though a quick google shows me that yes, he is a villain from the comics... though a human instead of an alien as it is here), but he's shown as this big bounty hunter that hunts down the convicts from Fort Rozz and then systematically executes them with his Space Guillotine. 

Apparently the DEO has records on every criminal imprisoned in Fort Rozz, enough to know where to track the asshole corpse-eating alien (who got beheaded) and the nice old professor who was only imprisoned for trying to steal stuff to buy medication (who Supergirl saved)... but despite being an organization dedicated to hunting down these potentially dangerous alien convicts, they don't even... try to look and apprehend Luzano and those other five aliens before this? Man, the DEO's alien tracking system is shit. 

Meanwhile, the filler Cat Co subplot involves a new secretary. She's Siobahn Smythe, played by an actress that's quite pretty, and, well, she's basically a bitch. Nothing that she does in her interactions with Kara in this episode really felt like it needed to be in this episode -- and while she's definitely being built up for a larger role in the future (*cough*SilverBanshee*cough*) she's mostly just an annoyance here.

Also, we get this stupid subplot where Lucy and James get into a big argument about their relationship. I honestly don't care enough to listen to what they say. I think there was an argument about how James cares more about superheroics and is Lucy jealous of Supergirl? And then there's a subplot where James angsts about telling Kara's secret identity to Lucy. Or whatever. I honestly don't give a shit, and giving a shit would mean I would probably have to rant and type another three paragraphs about the bad writing regarding relationships and the underutilization of Lucy Lane as a character, so let's leave that alone, shall we. 

That moment between Cat and James about journalism ethics with that backstory on Cat Grant's journalist origins was pretty decent, though, I must say. 

Overall, though, while ultimately throwaway, this episode does have an interesting concept with Master Jailer as a villain. The character himself was extremely dull, with a very inconsistent power level that takes out Supergirl with one shot in the mid-episode mark but Supergirl tanks every single blast and punch in the climax. But what he represents -- a Punisher-type antihero that embodies an extreme Knight Templar brand of 'good' does make Supergirl think about her own ethics, and that makes him somewhat interesting. Granted, considering that the examples used in this episode are extremely conveniently black-and-white with Luzano being obviously not evil and Master Jailer being a cackling 'OFF WITH THEIR HEAD' psychopath being obviously very evil kind of makes it moot. Plus, you're letting Max Lord back to do whatever he does... which is different from rescuing a wrongfully death-sentenced criminal. So yeah, props for trying to tackle a big topic, but maybe make your allegories less strawmanny. 

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Supergirl, Season 1, Episode 15: Solitude

This was surprisingly decent. There's a part of me that's incensed that they turned Indigo into, well, basically just a generic mwa-ha-ha I am evil doomsday villain, and they definitely just scoured female Superman villains, went, hey, there's a female Brainiac! And then proceeded to write her as Brainiac without really learning much about Indigo. See, I read the Outsiders, and Indigo was... a relatively more complex character than that. She was sent from the future and despite being this socially awkward robot girl, Indigo ended up being a member of the Outsiders team and being a happy supporting character and whatnot, until suddenly it is revealed that 'Indigo' is a subroutine program and she's actually Brainiac 8, a future 'offspring' of the present day Brainiac, and she ends up being caught in a bit of a personal conflict. Is the Indigo subroutine, which was a mask to endear herself to the superheroes, even real? Which one was the true personality, et cetera, et cetera.

This version of Indigo? She's just an angry internet-travelling villain (who looks way too much like Mystique for my tastes) who wants to mwa-ha-ha shoot nukes and mwa-ha-ha genocide. She does make for a far more compelling and consistent villain than the likes of Master Jailer or Hellgrammite, though, and she just has such a fun time being a hammy bastard that she's fun to watch.

Indigo herself really isn't a problem. She's a great concept as a villain, someone who can just zip in and zip out of the internet (with a cool-looking effect at that), and a connection to the whole Kryptonian subplot. Indigo reveals herself to be the one responsible for hacking Kara's spaceship and helping her escape the Phantom Zone, as well as already being an acquaintance and acquaintances with Astra and Non. Apparently she's afraid of Astra for whatever reason? She's a fun villain, even if I don't fully comprehend the technological blah-blah as to why she needs to fuck up the electrical systems of National City to hack into the phone of the general going to the nuke base.

Supergirl saving a nuclear bomb is a delightfully classic Superman moment, though. 

The Fortress of Solitude is another classic Superman moment. It's got a crapton of nice Easter Eggs (which I'll cover below), including the Legion of Superheroes flight ring which is identical to the Easter Egg we glimpsed in that one episode of the Flash that allowed him to peer into other universes. It's a bit of a nice moment there. 

Sadly, other than Indigo and the Fortress of Solitude the rest of the episode kind of falls short. The whole passive-aggressiveness from the previous episode with Kara being a total child when dealing with J'onn, and Alex's big dramatic revelation that she's the one responsible for killing Astra ends up being... absolutely underwhelming and induces nothing but eyerolls. Again, yes, Astra was Supergirl's aunt and she was nice to Kara, but she's also hellbent on... wiping out humans or whatever the fuck her grand plan was I forgot. And really, if it's her adopted sister that kills her aunt it earns hugs and tears, but if it's J'onn, who's acting to save Astra, it earns nothing but Kara's scorn? Jeez. 

I also disliked how the DEO took out Indigo, with Winn using an old virus he cooked up before to somehow eliminate a hyper-advanced technological alien being with a computer virus. Anyone with a slight working knowledge of how computers work will know that a virus that worked on, say, a Windows operating system won't necessarily do anything on a Mac or whatever the hell, let alone an alien robot. It's dumb how the virus just shoots Indigo to hell. It's also boring. And really, they could've gone for a far obvious way and say that Winn reverse-engineered the virus by studying Indigo's technology from a previous encounter or some shit, or they could've used fucking Kelex, who is an alien computer, but no. Winn had to be that guy. Winn had to be that hacker who somehow is able to hack into alien computers, which is frankly one of the most moronic and stupid sci-fi cliches. 

Also, what didn't work was Lucy getting irrationally jealous of Supergirl, and Kara's attempts to smooth things over end up, y'know, making things worse. It's stupid, and poorly executed. How moronic is it for James to think that 'I must tell Lucy that Supergirl is Kara' is the only way out of his predicament? How moronic is it for Lucy to be jealous of Kara from one conversation? And Kara's talk about how James is dedicated as a boyfriend ends up falling flat when, no, we've never really seen any evidence of that. It's honestly badly written. 

There is also this utterly uninspiring Cat Co Subplot with Siobahn regarding, oh, some bullshit celebrity-leaks thing, and Siobahn is an opportunistic bitch who somehow manages to hit it up with Winn? That didn't work, really. It's not bad like the Lucy thing, but it just fell flat. Winn and Siobahn bonding over their shitty fathers is fun, though.

Overall, though, other than the nice moments with Indigo (who I'm honestly kind of surprised I'm not ranting more about), the nuke and the Fortress of Solitude, the bad things in this episode really outweighed the good, so yeah. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Fortress of Solitude, of course, has been a staple in literally every single incarnation of Superman. Back in the Golden/Silver Age comics, Superman left the key to the Fortress literally in plain sight as this gigantic key hanging out on an icy mountain, but the one used here has the key on the doorstep... but made of a condensed dwarf star material that only Superman can lift, which is taken from All-Star Superman and most modern depictions of the Fortress.
• The Fortress has crystal-style architecture that was popularized by the Christopher Reeve movies, but the giant Lara/Jor-El statues holding a globe is more inspired by the comics.
• The Legion Flight Ring on the pedestral belongs to the Legion of Superheroes, a team of superheroes in the 30th Century. This very shot of the ring has appeared in an episode of the Flash. Both Superman (as Superboy) and Supergirl has made travels to the future to work with them in the comics, so this might be a foreshadowing to a future adventure that Kara's going to take.
• Lovable Kelex, a.k.a. Superman's Kryptonian butler, returns. You might recognize him from his short-lived appearance recently in the Man of Steel movie, and I think he appeared a bit in the Black Mercy dream. 
• James mentioned that Supergirl is faster than Superman, and the post-Crisis Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl was stated to be physically stronger and faster than Superman multiple times.
• Indigo/Brainiac-8 is a Coluan, which was the species that Brainiac in his various incarnations originated from. Indigo's closeness to the operating facilities of Krypton is taken from the DCAU cartoon where that incarnation of Brainiac was the planet-wide computer in Krypton and hitched a ride on Superman's ship. 
• Indigo is played by Laura Vandervoort, who played Supergirl in Smallville. 

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The Walking Dead S02E03 Review: Judge Jury and Executioner

The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 3: Save the Last One

The main focus of this episode is undoubtedly Shane. Sure, he spends most of it other than the last fifteen minutes embroiled in an action scene with Otis set in darkness where they save each other as they try their best to survive the zombie horde. Yet Shane returns, all alone but with all of Carl's equipment... and we get a flashback showing that Shane -- who previously has been saved by Otis from the zombies -- shoots Otis in the leg, beats him up and grabs the medical equipment from him and leaves him to be devoured by the zombies in the most horrific of manners. You could argue that Shane is doing it to ensure that his son-figure, Carl, would survive, or he could just be looking out for his own survival, or if you're feeling like a dick you might think he did it to score points with Lori. Or it's simple pragmatism as they're both not fast runners and they're almost out of bullets, so either they both die (and so does Carl), or one of them make it out and save Carl. Either way, though, Shane basically killed Otis, and while it seemed like an open-and-shut case at the moment, like Merle in the first season it might not be that simple. It's a great scene, though, and we're not sure whether we should be cheering for Shane... yet booing him after seeing how much Carl's possible death would affect Rick and Lori, people we actually care about, and things suddenly get more gray. 

Rick and Lori get a lot of great scenes as they consider the ever-worsening odds regarding Carl -- kid didn't help by going into a horrifying seizure. Rick going out is certainly not an option considering his blood loss, and the two actually have a pretty good discussion about keeping Carl alive in this horrendous world where sooner or later Carl's going to die by some horrific way or other. Shame the introspective moment got ruined by the utterly cheese "he talked about the deer, Lori" speech which just plain didn't work for me. But keeping the hope alive and yadda yadda yadda works out fine, though. 

With the focus of the episode solely around the drama surrounding Carl and Shane, and a good chunk of the episode taken up by action scenes, it's amazing how much extra character moments we got in this episode. Some of the characters shifted to the side get a lot of character moments, with B-listers Glenn and Maggie having a great scene where Glenn tries his hand at praying. We get Daryl bonding with Andrea, talking about opting out in this crazy crazy world as they see the zombified body of someone who hung himself with the most ridiculous suicide note ever. We get Daryl talking about his past, how he himself got lost in the woods for days while his father didn't give two shits, and is adamant that Sophia is alive -- without Carol around, it seemed to be something Daryl really believes in, so the resident jackass has a soft spot for little kids. 

Overall a pretty damn great episode, and most of it centralizes on the big reveal at the end about what Shane did to survive. It's still a great episode (cheesy deer speech aside), though, with nearly everyone getting a great moment of characterization or two. 

Movie Review: Deadpool

Deadpool

I didn't hate X-Men Origins: Wolverine as much as the rest of the world does. It wasn't a terribly good movie, but it was a good one. Of course, one of the biggest mistakes is undoubtedly turning Deadpool, one of Marvel Comics' most popular characters -- and one that I knew about even before I really got into Marvel Comics -- into, well, basically the anathema of what Deadpool should be.

See, Deadpool is supposed to be funny. He's supposed to be utterly psychotic, has a slight streak of good to the people he likes, cracks jokes, punches holes in the fourth wall, utterly psychotic, insane and utterly psychotic. And funny.

Not with his mouth sewed-up and turned into a mindless, quiet, unfunny final boss encounter.

See, even in Origins Ryan Reynolds was actually a decent Deadpool (sans fourth-wall-breaking), and I fanboyed a little when I realized who that wise-ass soldier was supposed to be. Alas, that Deadpool lasted for a grand total of one scene.

It has been a pet project of Ryan Reynolds to get a Deadpool movie going on, and now that he actually did, hoo boy, you can bet your ass that this movie shits on Origins: Wolverine's incarnation of Deadpool. And that Green Lantern movie. And Ryan Reynolds himself. Because why not? It's the kind of comedy that works with Deadpool, and it definitely does.

I won't go into too much detail about nice little Easter Eggs and whatnot because I'm not a big enough of a Marvel geek to get everything, and I'm sure there are a lot of sites out there that would be far more exhaustive, but this movie really, really loves to reference everything, and not just use one as a running joke. Even shitting on Origins Deadpool or Green Lantern were relegated to a couple of jokes each. 

I did want to say that Bob's cameo was hilarious. Why, yes, I know who Bob is.

The movie's plot is honestly your standard superhero movie. Deadpool gets an origin story that completely ignores everything in Origins: Wolverine and swaps out getting regeneration from Wolverine as something that was unlocked from his latent genes, and then because his face got totally fucked up he goes around on a one-man rampage to hunt down the villain that does this to him, in order to fix his face and return him to his handsome Ryan Reynolds face so he can get back with his girlfriend. Throughout the movie, we get Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead coming in to try and rein Deadpool in, a bunch of classic Deadpool characters (Weasel, Blind Al) helping Deadpool out, kidnapping the love interest, and a big big mutant power fight at the end.

Of course, the first half of the movie Tarantino's up the love/tragedy origin story with Deadpool hunting down Ajax in the present day, a stylistic choice that actually helps the movie a fair bit, I must say. It makes the movie far less straightforward, and, naturally, Deadpool has some fun with fast-forwarding and fourth-wall-breaking.

So yeah, plot-wise, there aren't anything special with it. I mean, action scenes are cool and all, but everything truly hinges on whether Deadpool's comedy style would work, and more importantly, if it will be faithful to the original character, the lack of which was what caused the fans to universally deride Origins Deadpool. And, well, it definitely worked! I enjoyed myself. In between a crapton of dropping the 'F' word, some general comedy themes like brick jokes or Deadpool fanboying over silly things like Voltron or Negasonic Teenage Warhead's name,  the insistence of using the name 'Francis' instead of Ajax* a fair amount of black comedy humour -- having a character that can recover from all injuries is great for that -- and, of course, a couple of fourth-wall breaking jokes. We got Deadpool lampshading why there are only ever two X-Men in the show like the studio can't hire more, which professor McAvoy or Stewart are they bringing him to... yeah. We get some hilarious scenes where this psychotic superhero is just hanging out and talking about love problems to a cab driver or arguing with his flatmate about IKEA. This movie is funny. It is crass, it has a couple of pop culture references which I honestly didn't get sometimes and it has a lot of sex and death jokes. But, y'know, that's how Deadpool goes with the flow. 

*Which gets my vote for the weirdest and most stupid supervillain codename ever.

And, really, Ryan Reynolds's Deadpool is really what made this all work. Reynolds is truly charismatic as Deadpool, getting the voice and the mannerisms right, he does not ever shut up in the entirety of this movie, which honestly isn't easy when most of the time the character is in a full body costume that doesn't even show Reynold's face. Y'know, CGI mask-eyes helped out a little but still. It is hilarious, it is definitely unique, and, well, it's not for children. Yes, this movie is definitely ever-so-slightly overrated, but that's okay. I still loved it.

Really, the weakest part of the movie is Ajax, a.k.a. Francis. Deadpool's insistence on hunting down 'Francis' is probably why he wiped out the entire organization without finding a clue of Ajax's wherabouts. Ajax and his crony Angel Dust (the third character to be called 'Angel' in the X-Men movies) are suitably creepy and horrifying in their cold-blooded oxygen torture of Wade in the origin scenes, and there's no doubt that Ajax is a competent fighter with those twin pickaxes and his inability to feel pain... but his big plan, selling super mutant slaves and all, ends up just as an excuse to fuck Wade up and is forgotten in favour of the two of them wanting to murder the other.

Weasel and Blind Al were... okay. They had scenes, they were memorable enough, but they exist mostly to bounce dialogue off of. They were fun. Vanessa is a generic love interest, though she does manage to shishkebab Ajax that one time. There was a memorable character, Cunningham, in the lab.

I actually liked the scene at the beginning where Wade was just being a bounty hunter for... well, threatening stalkers with PIZZA. I found that scene hilarious for whatever reason. The lady being stalked was apparently one of the X-Men, Pixie... and I bet the movie is filled with more traditional Easter Eggs beyond just Bob and Pixie.

The two X-Men that featured, however, were hilarious. I've always thought that Colossus was always under-used, barely getting more than a couple of lines or a couple of punchy-punch scenes in the three movies he's starred in... and this movie broke him out of the mould. He's still a heroic character, urging for Deadpool to be good guy delivered with great Russian accent. Colossus is easily the funniest of the non-Deadpool characters, mostly because he doesn't even try to be funny. Negasonic Teenage Warhead was apparently inserted into the movie simply because of her insane name (she even borrows the powers from someone else) and, well, I enjoyed her. She didn't get to do much beyond be sullen, hang around big brother Colossus and just get roped along with Colossus and Deadpool's antics, but she does prove a lot of awesome action scenes with her explody powers.

Speaking of action scenes... this movie really has well-crafted action scenes. Ajax versus Deadpool on top of the aircraft carrier, most absolutely that highway scene, Colossus fighting Angel Dust, Negasonic's mutant explosions, Deadpool's thirteen-bullets scene... it's brilliant.

Overall, yeah. It's definitely slightly overrated, and not all the jokes are funny. It's definitely not a movie for everyone and casual moviegoers might not get it. But it's a great movie. It's funny, it's got great action scenes, it's got a great lead, a great supporting cast... it is definitely really fun to watch. Just, um, maybe don't bring your kids along.