Godzilla: Final War, A Review

So, if you're like most people, you're probably aware of Godzilla, but have never heard of Godzilla: Final War. I'm a big Godzilla fan and I thought I'd do a little review. Let me share a tiny bit of Godzilla history to start off.
In 1998, Tristar came out with an "American" version of Godzilla, starring Matthew Broderick simply titled "Godzilla." As many of you know, this movie sucked.












"Oh no! My acting career!"

Toho, the studio who created Godzilla, was so horrified by how much that movie sucked, that they started making movies again to help reclaim Godzilla's right to be called the King of the Monsters. The result was 4 excellent modern monster movies, the best of which is the last one called Final War. Here is my review.


So, Final War begins with arguably, the best beginning to a movie ever: A gold dragon being blown up by a nuclear drill shaped submarine that shoots lasers. Also, mutants are now quite common and have formed into a earth defense force that flies around the world in fighter jets killing giant monsters. So, like I said, the best beginning to a movie ever.



















Submarines with Drills are obviously better that regular ones.

At this point, all the monsters are inexplicably scooped up by a huge flying saucer that's driven by a bunch of aliens who are all dressed entirely in black pleather. This is of course, really bad ass. They have a few negative issues though, one being that they are really egotistical (which is obnoxious) and another is that they want to kill and eat everyone (also obnoxious). They announce the latter issue to the earth, start to blow the crap out of everything and let all the monsters they scooped up loose.













Cower before their black pleather jackets!!

Luckily, the earth still has a few cards up its sleeve. One is all the random ass kicking mutants that are everywhere and another is, of course, Godzilla. Oh, and there is this one completely random sword toting American as well.









You can tell this American is a bad ass by the size of his mustache.

Well, the mutants and the American go to free Godzilla (who is apparently frozen in a huge block of ice). They do this pretty damn quickly considering they need to fly from Japan to the South Pole, but who cares, Godzilla is finally in the movie!












Fuck Yes!

What follows is even more bad ass than the intro. Godzilla begins kicking the crap out of almost every monster he's ever fought, ever. This is accomplished by zooming around the world in a series of short 10-15 min fights. Also important to note is that he doesn't just win, he dominates the hell out of these monsters. This includes using every possible move that could be made by a man dressed in a rubber monster suit (which is surprisingly a lot). The movie even pulls out the random monsters of Godzilla's past like"King Cesar" and "Giant Spider."










Godzilla: Takin' care of business

My favorite fight is the where Godzilla tail whips the American Godzilla (or "Zilla" as Toho refers to him) into the Sydney opera house, making it explode while Sum 41 plays in the background (yes, this actually happens). the proof.

At the same time as all the monster mashing is going on, the mutants are trying to fight the aliens. How do they do this you ask? Why, by a high speed motorcycle fight of course. The aliens are also ninjas and of course, they ride on Kawasaki ninja bikes. Some nice Ninja on Ninja action for you.









Like this but with more ninjas and lasers guns.

So, as this is happening, the leader of the aliens, who is named X (he chose it because he though it made him sound like a bad ass) is getting increasingly more pissed off. This is pretty understandable since he's pretty much getting his shit fucked up on two fronts. He finally manages to catch all the mutants and the American. He then releases his last monster, who he named "Monster X" and ends up having to fight the mutants while Godzilla fights the monster.

At first, it seems like the movie is actually going to pit Godzilla against a new monster, but no, That would be stupid. Instead, Monster X turns out to be none other than Godzilla's own worst enemy ever, King Ghidorah!
















Shit just got real.

Meanwhile, the American now has to fend off three ninja aliens and does pretty good until the last one, who is a girl. He tells her that he would never punch a girl and promptly karate chops her in the face, killing her instantly. God bless America.

Anyways, Godzilla's still fighting King Ghidorah who is doing pretty damn good against him. Nothing really happens for a while but then, all of a sudden, Godzilla gets a super power burst and starts punching the hell out of King Ghidorah. Just when you think they've both had enough, Godzilla completely kicks his ass! At this point, he doesn't just kill him, he decapitates him! Three fucking times!

After this, Godzilla's pretty proud of himself so he starts roaring and breaking things and the mutants finally killed X the alien with some super stylized ninja fighting. The rest of the movie is pretty much the same as that, only with everything blowing up all over the place and X yelling NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!











X the Alien and his bald friend getting all pouty

Anyways, that's pretty much all I have to say. Its a great movie that shows up now and then on the Sci Fi Network so if it comes on, you should definitely see it!

A Bunch of Reasons Why I Didn't Like the New Alice in Wonderland

If you've gone to see the new Alice in Wonderland movie you know two things: one, Tim Burton can still pull off a stylized movie with plenty of fashionable flare, and two, Tim Burton also can't tell a good script from a bad script.

Well, maybe that last one isn't quite fair. Perhaps, I should say that Disney can no longer tell a good script from a bad script. Actually, its not that surprising though when you consider that the script was penned by Linda Woolverton, the same screenplay writer who wrote the scripts for both The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. Maybe its her that can't tell a good script from a bad script? Who knows!?

Lets talk about what went wrong shall we?

One issue is with how the story is told in general. In both the book and the 1951 version, Alice is the least highlighted character. With the exception of the beginning, you really don't notice Alice much. Instead, the focus is more on the experiences she has and the characters that she meets. The reason for this is not to ignore Alice, but to make you feel as if you ARE Alice. You see things much like she sees things. In life, you don't notice your self but you notice other people and other places that seem strange to you. This is what makes the movie and book's characters so memorable. This idea is completely thrown out the window in the new movie. It attempts to not only highlight the strange world and characters, but highlights Alice's life and feelings as well. The end result is that both feel washed over. You never feel that you've fully experienced Wonderland and Alice's story just feels awkward and forgotten until the end.

Pictured above: Tim Burton ignoring the main character

Another annoying this is how they butchered the characters. Let me tear apart a minor character for a second to better tell you what I mean. Take the door mouse. In the book, there is a goofy interaction between the March Hair, the Mad Hatter and the Door Mouse. The Door Mouse was simply a sleepy character that only moved when provoked and was happy to simply nap, even when being tossed around by the March Hair and the Mad Hatter. In the new movie, they erase the whole sleepy mouse thing and basically copy and paste a generic fantasy mouse instead. New Door Mouse (as I feel like calling it) is just like reepicheep, despereaux, and every other sword swinging mouse that has ever come along in fantasy. They just hollowed out the original character and filled the empty shell with a newer and much more boring personality. This way of doing this is awful and can be seen repeated over and over in both the characters and nonsensical plot.

This character especially sucks

Of course, not all of them are simply generic fantasy stand by types. Others are just plain stupid. Take the caterpillar for instance. Its been turned into an awkward sage who never makes any sense, yet everyone keeps coming to him for his confusing gibberish he calls advice. Or the Mad Hatter, aka Johnny Depp as a drunk irish skitzophreniac. Yea, it makes just about as much sense in the film as it does here. What were they thinking?

The Caterpillar: ugly and confusing

Ok, here's my last point before I stop bitching about all this. I want to talk about the queens. In the new movie, they have two queens, the Queen of Hearts and the White queen. This is stupid. Let me tell you why. In the original books by Lewis Carroll, there were three queens total. The Queen of Hearts, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Red and White queens from Through the Looking Glass. Through the Looking Glass was, in part, imagined by Carroll as a chess game where there were two queens, a white queen from the white pieces and a red queen from the red pieces. In the new movie, they simply smash two of the three queens together for no good reason. The queen of hearts is a monarch and the white queen is a plastic game piece. They just don't belong together. Its just silly to think about. Imagine Queen Elizabeth waging war against a checker piece. It's plain to me that the main people behind this had little to no interest in understanding the original pieces of literature and just threw this crap story together.

Who will win!?

I guess thats all I really have to say. I know I'm being nit picky, but really this movie won't be remembered or cherished the way the books or original Disney movie are and the reasons, for me at least, are as obvious as the Queen of Hearts new awkward, confusingly over sized head.

But the visuals looked nice at least.

The Rip-Stick is dumb

Madness

There are many decisions to make when choosing transportation. For instance, you might want to use roller blades because of their small size, regardless of how silly hey make you look or maybe you want to use a car because of its speed even though it pollutes.

Well, what if I told you that there was a form of transportation that was both slow AND made you look stupid? Oh and as an added bonus, it had a terrible name!

Meet the rip stick!









Yes, this stupid thing exists.


It provides all the inconvenience and lameness that two wheels screwed to two wiggling boards can afford.
Honestly, I can hardly imagine the target audience that this invention had in mind. I mean, who exactly is out there saying to themselves "I wish there was an awkward skateboard thing that was slow, hard to use, and made you look like you were having a seizure when you tried to use it"

When I did a google search, I had a hard time finding pictures of people riding the Rip Stick. Probably because nobody wants too. Even the people in the adds looked unhappy.









Pictured above: A girl who's probably wishing her parents got her a real skateboard for Christmas

It even has a website (which refers to its owners as "ripstikers") It has a video trying to teach people how to ride the awful thing. One moment features a little chubby kid holding on to his friend who's trying not to teeter over on to his face. The site admits that its hard, but tries to make up for it by promising "instant fun" once you master the wiggle board.

Right.

Group Projects: Why I hate them

In the past semester I've been complaining way too much about group projects and why I don't like them. So, I'm just getting it out of my system right here and now.

I've put up a pic of a nuke to demonstrate what my brain looks like when I hear I've got another group project assigned.

Just for fun, here are some reasons why I hate group projects.

1. Its like the teacher is saying to you "I don't want to do my job teaching you, so you do it"

2. Its more stress than you need, trying to balance a bunch of people's schedules together.

3. The teacher is supposed to be the best one at teaching, as well as being an expert on what ever class they are teaching. Why then, do teachers want students (people who aren't equipped to teach) to teach themselves AND the class!

4. Its a waste of time. Rather than the teacher just giving you information, they force you to go out and get it, even though they already know it. Think of all the information and learning that could be passed along in the time it takes to "form a group."

5. Many times they also want you to make a "presentation" out of your research which is a waste of time for two reasons: one, these are often too long and the students often simply waste time. two, the students are not (or should be) as good of teacher as the instructor of the class. This means that the teacher is forfeiting their own good teaching, for clumsy student teaching.

theres probably more, but i'm too tired to write it.

blah, screw group projects.

Endless Ocean

I've been playing Endless Ocean all weekend and I'm pretty much in love with it. Yea, the story is kind of cheesy and the graphics could be a little better, but hey, for what it's worth, it's a great package with a ton of stuff to do for only $30.
The big thing for me is the treasure hunting and fish discovery, but I'm just stoked over the new locations. Exploring a murky portion of the amazon then flying over to the Red Sea, followed by Antarctica is just awesome. Not to mention that you get to deck out not only your diver but your own personal island! Add in a ton of side quests, a bunch of achievements and this game is just what I need to get me through my stressful mid terms.

The untouchable 64

So, unless you really care about Super Mario or Nintendo, you probably won't care about what I'm about to say, but it's my blog and I'll write whatever I want to! Hoohah for free speech!!

So, anyways I was playing Super Mario Galaxy when my roommate came in and said "I wish they would make a sequel to Mario 64." To which I said, "Thats what Mario Galaxy is." He then said no, I want a mario game just like Mario 64, with paintings and flat levels." I said, "this is the same thing, your just on planets not flat levels and instead of paintings you just beam up to little universes." He still disagreed.

I then realized it wasn't so much the game he was in love with, it was just the memory of Mario 64. I've seen this happen with tons of Nintendo 64 games. For some reason people have it in their heads that they are just the best and there is no beating them. They see the new Mario Kart and say "this is good, but it's no Mario Kart 64" or they see a new Zelda game and go "well this is good, but it's no Ocarina of Time."

In this day and age of gaming the Nintendo 64 seems to have gained some legendary status between pop culture gaming and hardcore gaming. This ends up with most of the games seemingly untouchable. People never want to hear anything bad about mario 64 or Golden Eye because they have such fond memories of them.

Truth be told, I never had a Nintendo 64 till I got one at a thrift store a few years ago and I finally got to fully play through those old games. I played Super Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Wind Waker before I played through Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. While these old games are great and have quite prominent points in gaming history, I didn't have the fondness for them. As for Ocarina, I understand, since its quite possibly one of the best complete story ever told in video game history. As for mario 64, I'm still a little baffled. See, a game like Super Mario Galaxy is pretty much the same, only with better controls, better visuals and more levels. There isn't as much hidden materials but it's made up by sheer variety in level design. When I go back to Mario 64, the controls feel clunky and the camera seems to get stuck on everything. I can't tell you how many times I flung my little mario off cliff after cliff simply because of the combination of camera and control.

So, yes I understand that they are apart of gaming history, but I just want to state that that doesn't mean they should be untouchable. We should never forget them and never stop playing them, but we should also remember to never make them out to be something they aren't.

Top 5 Best Zombie Movies

I love Zombie movies and I thought I'd put together a short list of the best!










5. Zombie
-Italian director, Lucio Fulci originally made this film as a spiritual successor to George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." Many say that "Night of the Living Dead" is better, but I disagree. This opinion, however, is based mostly off the fact that there is a scene where a zombie fights an actual Tiger Shark under water, which is actually, pretty amazing when you think about it.









4. 28 Days Later
-Being more of a revival of zombie movies rather than a continuation, this movie came out of no where to blow everyone away with it's haunting film style and creepy music. To be perfectly honest, the monsters in this movie aren't exactly "zombies" since they never die, but rather they are a sort of sub-category that has become popular ever since called "The Infected." This explains how the "zombies" don't shuffle around but sprint, yelling and screaming like animals.












3. Evil Dead 2
-"Evil Dead 2" is pretty much the same movie as "Evil Dead" only much better and much crazier. This movie is just packed with bizarre moments, from the possessed dear head on the wall to the main character's chainsaw hand. It's become famous for being the movie that not only made B movie king Bruce Campbell famous, but it's the movie that truly made director Sam Rami career possible.











2. Dawn of the Dead
-Ten years after he created "Night of the Living Dead," George A. Romero made this genius follow up. An interesting fact about this movie is that it was a collaboration between both Romero and Italian film maker, Dario Argento (famous for directing "Susperia" and other psychological horror films). Romero directed and wrote, while Argento lent the movie Goblin, a band that he hired to make most of his film's music. Another interesting thing about "Dawn of the Dead" is how often you see it referenced in pop culture. For instance, the end song of the show Robot Chicken is a chicken clucking one of "Dawn of the Dead's" songs and the band Gorillaz has used tons of clips from the movie in their work, even using a piece of the film's music to open up their album Demon Days.









1. Dead Alive
-If you think you know director Peter Jackson simply because you've seen "Lord of the Rings" you've seen nothing. Before he became known for creating incredibly long epics, he was known for making some of the most raunchy and over the top gory movies of all time. Saying that "Dead Alive" is kind of gory is like saying the ocean is kind of wet. This movie is drenched in blood and the action scenes are truly insane. People get attacked by zombie intestines even! But what really makes this movie great is how incredibly original it is. There is nothing else like it and I highly recommend seeing it, just for the crazy trip.

No one has abandoned the Wii

So, I've been hearing a lot of flack against the Wii lately for all sorts of random dumb things, but what has really surprised me is the stupid things actual game designers and companies have been saying. Recently I read a quote against the Wii from one of the co-founders of Dice, saying something along the lines of it being "a virus." His reasoning didn't make any sense but the gist of it was that didn't like the wii because he thought of it more as a toy and that gamers were becoming bored with it. Well, as far as gamers getting sick of crappy gimmicky mini-game filled games coming out for it, then yes gamers are bored of that. But as for gamers getting sick of the Wii, I think the sale numbers from New Super Mario Bros Wii will speak for itself. The way I see it, a lot of game industry people have been getting frustrated with their low sales on the Wii as compared to other consoles. This causes then begin making all sorts of dumb comments and making excuses. I even caught Sega bitching about the low sales of their crappy Wii games.

So, for all those who just can't seem to figure out why their game sales are low, let me explain.

You see, a company can make a sub-par game for the x-box 360 and the PS3 and it will get moderate sales. However, they will make a sub-par game for the Wii and get no sales. They brush this off by complaining that people have abandoned the Wii or are getting sick of the Wii, which is dumb. The real reason is that the Wii hardcore gamers are just picky as hell. I know this is true because I'm one of them.

This occurred to me the other day when I started to play Dante's Inferno on my roommates x-box360. I thought the game was ok, but not that good. He was baffled and couldn't figure out why. I then went on to explain all the things I didn't like about it, i.e. lame leveling up system, unoriginal game play, half assed level designs, etc. My roommate said he didn't mind any of those things and thought the game was great.
As a Wii owner, I tend to compare everything to Nintendo's line of games for the Wii and most games just aren't that good. This is the reason that a game can do good on the x-box or PS3, but not the Wii. Its not that Dante's Inferno is a horrible game, its just that compared to other games its not worth my time and money.

When it comes right down to it, its not that the hardcore have "abandoned" the Wii, its just that most of the industry doesn't make games as good as Nintendo. They can complain and bitch all they want, but it's the cold hard truth.

My advice to game companies is this: If you can't make a game as good or better than Nintendo, don't make it on the Wii. If your not up to the challenge of making a great game then make it on another system where people will shell out $60 for your half assed games.

7 Reasons why video games are better than movies

1. Sequels don't suck- Almost every movie sequel, with the exception of Terminator 2 and Aliens has sucked or at least hasn't been as good as the first. Video games hardly ever have this problem. Heck, legend of Zelda's franchise has been going strong since the late 80's and keep getting better. Even if you don't like the newer zeldas to the older you have to admit that at least video games have never had as bad a sequel as Transformers 2.

2. It's like books and movies put together- Let's face it, the melding of books and movies almost never works as well as it should. This is mostly because they are two completely different mediums. It's hard to represent something visually in a book and you can't make people read a lot of text in a movie no matter how well it's written. You can do both quite successfully in a video game, sometimes at the same time. Both good writing and a good visual narrative come together in video games, giving us the best of both worlds. You can have your cake and eat it too (unless the cake is a lie that is).

3. A much longer narrative - The length of movies have been pushed over the years but long movies, no matter how great the are, usually tend to become a drag when they hit the two and a half hour mark. Video games have exceeded this by leaps and bounds. Disregarding any replay most video games clock in at 10 hours. Heck, most RPGs are expected to take upwards of 20 hours. With the extra time, you have time for a more rich story and a better connection with the characters.

4. They fill the void of goriness - Lately, our movie have turned into big sissies. Even the goriest of movies these days pale in comparison to the slashers of the 80's. Fortunately, video games have come in to fill the void, pushing the boundaries of gore and violence. Earlier today, I used a drill to mulch up the face of a crazy, Tommy gun toting, drug addict. That's fantastic. Thank you video games.

5. Kids and adult media in one - With the exception of Disney/Pixar, most kids movies suck if your not a kid. This makes it hard for kids and adults to enjoy the same movie. This is far from the truth in video games. Heck, just mention mario kart and people of all ages will want to play. Not only that, but a lot of modern video games like mario galaxy and Little Big Planet can be appropriate for kids, but also have depth and complexity of game play that hardcore gamers want, perfectly connecting to two different audiences.

6. A better connection with the story - Many movies are good at sucking you in or "taking you away" to a different place, but even in the best situations you are still someone simply watching. You have no control over anything thats happened and in that way you will always be an outsider. With video games it's not just you sharing in the adventure, you are actually living it (sort of). Video games suck you in by not only taking you to another place but by making you the main character. The main characters choices are your choices and their triumphs are your triumphs. Like wise, their losses are yours also, and in this way video games surpass movies by giving you a deeper connection with the characters that just isn't possible in movies.

7. No Shia Lebeouf or Nicholas Cage - As far as I know, Shia and Nick have stayed the heck away from video games (save for recordings in their respectively awful movies made into game performances). Lets hope to God that it stays that way.