World's Finest

I go to Iceland for 16 days, and what do I find when I get back?

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Even though this is exactly what I hoped/predicted Warner Brothers would do, it's hugely exciting news. Despite several attempts to create this movie, Batman and Superman have never before been seen on the big screen together. With all the speculation about a potential Justice League movie, and the success of Man of Steel, it was only a matter of time before Warner fed us something. As I understand it, all we got was a logo, a release date of 2015 and the tentative title of Superman VS Batman (which, truth be told, isn't hugely inspiring - just look at Freddie VS Jason and Alien VS Predator).

I'd originally planned to do a post explaining why a World's Finest (that's the name of the original comic-run in which Superman and Batman joined forces) movie was Warner's best option, but they've already taken my unspoken advice, so that blog post would unnecessary. What I will do is briefly say why I think this is a great idea, but also what I think Warner should try to avoid.

Why is World's Finest awesome?

Firstly, it's not as convoluted as Justice League. Warner's original plan was to do the reverse of Marvel's line-up, and have one movie that would introduce all the characters and spark off a series of individual movies. That would have been terrible - establishing such strong and complex characters and getting them all together and testing them to their limits against a Big Bad requires more than 2 hours. Start off small, don't bite off more than you can chew.

It goes without saying that Batman and Superman are two of the three most well-known superheroes in the world (the third being Spider-man), so it's natural for Warner to use that property to establish their DC Cinematic Universe. Plus, the success of Man of Steel and the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy has everyone wanting more of both. Now is the perfect time for them to team-up on the silver screen.

So start small, and then move onto bigger things. Get the two most important heroes right, and then you can bring in the other stars in future movies. In my opinion, the DCCU should go a little something like this:

1. Man of Steel
2. World's Finest
3. Flash
4. Wonder Woman or Aquaman (possibly - this stage isn't 100% necessary, but would be nice)
5. Justice League

By the time you get to Justice League, you only have to introduce a couple of new superheroes, who are normally Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and sometimes Cyborg and/or Hawkgirl. Then, once the big film's out of the way, you can work on giving those other heroes their own movies.

What should Warner Brothers avoid?

Having the whole plot of the movie be Batman fighting Superman. That would be outright terrible. There's no way that a) they could find an interesting enough plot for it, and b) that it would be able to come anywhere near to matching the action in Man of Steel. After all, what's a human got on a Kryptonian? Even though Batman has a strong chance of winning (which he does many times in the comics), it wouldn't make a great movie.

That's not to say they shouldn't come into conflict at all. Just look at The Avengers: Joss Whedon effortlessly pitted Marvel's three biggest heroes - Iron Man, Captain America and Thor - against each other in what was portrayed as a really petty quarrel, and then Thor and Hulk fought each other later on. However, they worked out their differences for the finale and beat Loki and his army of aliens, and saved the day. That's really what World's Finest should do: have the two heroes at odds, but allow them to work their issues out before taking on the real enemy, whoever that may be.

To round off, here's a picture from the LEGO Justice League movie:

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In one of my next posts, I'll talk about who I think would make the best villains in the movie. I hope this hasn't been too much of a geek rant - I just wanted to get my opinion out there. I'm really excited for this movie, but also worried that they might not get it right. Superman and Batman deserve to be done, er, justice.  :)

I Am Number Four: book or film?

Having finally watched the movie adaptation of I Am Number Four, I thought it was about time I read the book, and so I did, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Safe to say I'll be reading the rest of the series.

As we're all aware, sometimes when a book gets a film adaptation, the story is torn to pieces. Just look at Phillip Pullman's beautiful His Dark Materials series. New Line released The Golden Compass in 2007, which is apparently one of their most expensive movies to date. Visually, it was a masterpiece (I mean, it's really worth watching the movie just for the incredible VFX, particularly the ice bears), but it softened a lot of the atheist themes of the book (though not enough to prevent harsh criticism about it being violently anti-Catholic) and rearranged many of the events in the book for absolutely no reason. This, and the fact that the whole thing was badly paced, caused the movie to flop; a brilliant book flopped, even after New Line emptied their wallets throwing money at the production.

Similarly, the first Percy Jackson movie was almost indistinguishable from the book. While I understand that the Percy Jackson books are oddly structured (that's not a criticism, as I'm a big fan of the series and enjoy its picaresque style) and would not easily leap to the screen, I think that Fox handled the material really badly, probably worse than New Line did with Northern Lights. They shuffled everything around to fit the Hollywood formula, skipping over loads of important plot elements, characters, and the series' underlying villain completely. However, it was still reasonably enjoyable.

So, I Am Number Four: The Book. First book in the Lorien Legacies series. Written by James Frey and Jobie Hughes under the pen name Pittacus Lore. Young adult sci-fi romp.

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And then, I Am Number Four: The Movie. First and now probably only movie in a planned but shelved series. Directed by D.J. Caruso and, though you wouldn't guess from watching it, produced by Michael Bay, all for Touchstone Pictures. Teen sci-fi action movie (sort of).

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What's it all about? Well, there's this guy, called John Smith. He's fourteen (but played by 23-year-old Alex Pettyfer), and he's one of only eighteen remaining aliens from the planet Lorien, which was invaded several years before the story starts by the villains, the Mogadorians, an evil race who use life force to sustain their technology. The nine Lorien children sent to Earth are protected by a special charm that means that they can only be killed in sequence. However, that doesn't help John; the first three are dead, and he is Number Four.

That's the basics of the premise. There are lots of details about Lorien's core and about Lorien's alien magic, and lots of backstory about life on Lorien and John's memories, and all these flashbacks of the war and explanations about why some Lorien-people have powers and some, like John's protector Henri, don't, but none of that's important. Or at least, Touchstone Pictures didn't think so. Everything I've just mentioned is left out of the movie, and that's not even a quarter of the total omissions.

So what's in the movie, then? Well, the bare bones of the story: John moves to a new town in Ohio, knowing that he's next. He makes a friend in Sam Goode, an alien conspiracy theorist, and a girlfriend in Sarah Hart (still a better love story than Twilight), and then there's this jerk called Mark James...it's all very simple, really, and aside from a few props here and there and the alien bad guys themselves, there's nothing very sci-fi about it at all. John could just as easily be a young undercover spy (perhaps in the vein of Alex Rider?), on the run from some enemy agents. The sci-fi almost feels unnecessary...until the end.

There's the school battle, and in the movie it's awesome. It's a little different to the book, but it's still cool. And Number Six is introduced.

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This is where the comparison gets interesting, because Six is actually a better character in the movie than in the book. I'm serious - though Six has just as many lines in both, Teresa Palmer shows us some emotion in the movie, whereas in the book Six doesn't really do much except fight. Her entrance is an unexpected twist, but a bit flat. It feels like a tag-on. In the movie, Six is introduced about an hour earlier through some little bits that are hinted at in the book but never explicitly described, and they work a treat. They make her a serious badass.

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The villains are much better as well, even if the film does make them seem slightly silly. While the gangster-styled Mogadorians of the book are imposing, the gill-nosed, supermarket-frequenting Mogadorians of the movie are both funny in their semi-assimilation of human technology and culture, and also hugely menacing; the way they dispose of their loose ends is beautifully sadistic, especially in tandem with their humorous side. My only comparison is the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs (which was undoubtedly a huge influence on this). Again, watch the movie for yourself to see what I'm talking about. I don't want to write spoilers, and I don't think I can do the scene justice anyway.

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However, the lack of any Lorien whatsoever does make me a bit sad. Though the book isn't amazingly written (not bad, just not anything overly special), the concepts described about Lorien and why some of its inhabitants have powers is kind of beautiful. I won't put it here; it's not a major spoiler or anything, but you should read it for yourself. It's more powerful that way. There are also lots of flashbacks to John's family on Lorien and the life he had there, and they flesh him and a few other characters out massively, as well as providing some depth to a later plot development (involving a gecko and John's grandfather). I know the movie had a limited budget, but it would've been nice if they'd have made a bit of an effort. The book has such heart and depth, whereas the movie focuses on the teen love-story aspect a little more than is necessary and makes the science just out-and-out sci-fi. No magic involved.

All in all, I'd say watch the movie and then read the book. I enjoyed the movie, but if you come from it having read the book and expecting the same warmth, you'll be disappointed.

P.S. the book has lots of swearing in it, which is just one of the things that makes it 'young adult' rather than 'teen'. The movie didn't, and was firmly 'young teen'. Complete change in maturity level. Know your audience. Just sayin'.

An Unexpected Encounter

During a stroll through the forests of Greenwood, a young Saruman has a rather unexpected (and unwanted) encounter with a mysterious being...

The footage is from a few months ago, and I edited it yesterday afternoon when I was already brain-fried from college work, which is partly why it's so bad. The angles are terrible, the quality of some of the shots is terrible, and there's a hideous amount of light flicker. The sound is more than a little bit bad too, since for once I didn't pay it much attention. Still, at least I've finally managed to get something out!

There are lots of internet/meme references in this, and the script was actually quite fun to write. Y'all probably know I'm a Slender-man-fan, and he'll be somewhere in most of my videos from now on. The twenty dollars thing is self-explanatory if you know your Slendy. If not...basically, there's a joke that the reason he haunts people is that he wants twenty dollars.

I'm trying to get a some more videos out, both original ideas (some based in Greek mythology) and some DC, Harry Potter, Marvel and more Hobbit/Lord of the Rings. I really want to imrpove my skills, so be prepared for lots of short videos rather than fewer long ones. And obviously also for the fact that I'm suddenly making videos again.

Christmas 2012

Yes! It's Christmas! PARTAY! It's come around a bit fast, though. Christmas 2011 only seems like a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, I haven't been able to do a Christmas video this year (unless something exciting happens in the next few hours, which I doubt), but I'm currently slaving away writing a Calamity story with a yuletide twist, which I'll upload to deviantArt when it's done, which should be either this evening or tomorrow. It's called The Red Coated Stranger, and I'm particularly excited for it. Here are the title cards:

That's all for now. Back to writing :)

Novus Ordo Britania

Last week, and I guess also the week before too, I decided to try and write a Slenderman story, to get it all out my system. I decided that doing Exilis right now probably isn't right for me after all, but I wanted to add to the mythos, so I wrote this. It's a bit odd, and won't make as much sense to those who haven't seen the series DarkHarvest00 than to those who have. Hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway!

Click here for the DeviantArt folder!

So...back to Calamity. I'm going to start with some stories on DeviantArt, and that kind of thing, but there is a film coming. I'll be starting to assemble a crew in November (I've got a few other things to get out of the way between now and then).

Until next time, Keep On Jammin'! (it's a bad pun, but I like it)

Tennis Match

It's game, set and match in today's video (sorry - it's a bad joke, but I just had to give it a try!)

Remember to read the video description, as it's kind of important.

So, I recently managed to acquire both of the minifigure tennis players (there's a store near me that does series 3, 4, 7 and 8 packs). At first I was quite disappointed, as I wanted to get gorilla suit guy, but then I realised that since I have both, I can do a tennis match.

I spend a lot of time at my grandparents, where I have a really basic animation setup and loads of 80s LEGO, so I took up some minifigures and ended up doing this. I didn't have much time for this (chores, dinner, homework etc) which is why it's quite short, although I did think it would amount to something a little bit longer.

When I have my new computer, which should be quite soon, I'm going to try and do a short animation quite regularly. At some point, that'll include a tennis rematch. They're great minifigures and I really want to get the digital ball movement right (it's a bit dodgy in this video - my computer's so laggy that I can't tell what the actual frame will look like while I'm editing) so watch out for more tennis!

Oh, and there's something else which will be regular too - Slender Man. Call it an Easter Egg. He's really prominent in this video because I want you to notice him, so that you'll keep looking for him in future videos...

Finally, here are some clues towards my next videos, both stop-motion and live-action:

• Pirates
• Grave
• Bat
• Watching
• Dream
• Tree

Good luck figuring out what all that means!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Treasure hunters?

Here's a little teaser for an upcoming animation. I haven't actually started filming yet, but I've got most of the sets built, and it shouldn't take too long.

The guy on the left, with the spiky brown hair, is Caden Hawke, and the guy on the right is his as-yet-unnamed sidekick. They're a two-man, treasure-hunting team. As for what they're searching for, you're just going to have to wait and see...