Terminator 3 Rise of The Machines Review

Posted on June 17, 2015 by dreager1

This is of the edited TV-14 version of the film and all thoughts below should be read as such. A review of the uncut version would likely be more negative as edited versions help to address my complaints for a product…typically.

It’s time to take a look at the third Terminator film! The second one was very enjoyable and really captured the feel of what a Terminator film should be like. The villain was impressive and the time travel aspects were handled well even if I had some questions on it. The third film wasn’t quite as big as the second film and certainly not as legendary, but it actually holds up to the second film. They’re very close and while I may give the second film the slight edge….it’s very close. Both of them outdo each other in various ways and I’ll compare them again towards the end of the review.

Sarah Conner is gone and John must now fend for himself. The problem is that John wasn’t prepared to attack the world on his own. He has managed to scrape by somehow, but now Skynet has sent another Terminator after him. The original Terminator is around to help John against the TX, but can the older model really prove to be effective at this point? Judgment day is at hand and the humans will have to get ready for what is about to happen. Only John can save the world, but can he even save himself?

As with the last film, John makes for a very poor protagonist. It’s hard to root for him when you consider the fact that one of his very first scenes is him getting locked up in a cage and swallowing some intriguing pills. He doesn’t get much better than that as his personality is simply unlikable. It’s like he was only half listening to Sarah’s warnings and he barely even seems to remember the Terminator from the second film. Granted, it’s another version of the character, but I expected more of a reaction although he clearly does remember the cyborg since he references the second film several times. I don’t know, he just didn’t feel consistent in that area and he never became likable.

Kate is the main heroine and she probably gets the saddest role in the film. The TX naturally takes down her fiance so that she essentially has no choice but to hook up with the main guy. She moves on from the Fiance in about 5 minutes so I don’t think that the relationship was that serious anyway, but it still makes her look bad. She really had no reason to like John since they hadn’t seen each other in years and the Hollywood effect (As I like to call it anyway) should have just let her off the hook here. As just friends, it would have worked out a little better.

Enough about the humans though. John and Kate are really the only two important ones. Kate’s father does have a role involving Skynet though and the fan favorite Dr.Peter also makes a quick guest star appearance for another fun scene. Beyond that, the Terminators really take on most of the important scenes so let’s talk about them. The classic T-800 is still a very likable character. He remembers what happened in the second film thanks to a sort of unified mind or something like that.

The fight is certainly tough for the Terminator since he’s really outgunned at this point. The TX is supposed to be superior in every way so only plot hax can protect the T-800. He’s still the best character in the film, but I have to admit that the fight scenes were really stretching logic at times although I’ll go into that more in a second. If you liked The Terminator in the first two films, you’ll likely enjoy him here. He gets more than one great burn and most of his scenes have him doing something cool like “Talk to the hand!” or “You’re Terminated” There was definitely a lot of memorable material here.

The TX is the first female cyborg to be shown and she makes for a merciless villain. Technically, she is easily the strongest Terminator that we have seen at this point and her weapons are very impressive. A single hit from her energy gun can destroy most Terminators and her instant regeneration is about as good as the T-1000’s. She can take over other pieces of technology and just acts more like a modern robot villain in general. She was certainly an imposing figure and made for a good enemy to the T-800. Even if she was a little overpowered to be honest.

Unfortunately, this film has more plot hax than the first two by a long shot. As mentioned, the TX is supposed to be superior to the T-800 in every way and she proves that in several scenes. Yet, the T-800 is able to physically overpower her during the big showdown and he actually lands a number of hits. It’s like watching a Mario player in Super Smash fight someone who doesn’t know how to DI. The Terminator simply keeps hitting and flipping her and she doesn’t really try to fight back. Eventually, she just seems to realize that she’s in a fight and disposes of him rather quickly. Perhaps she was toying with him since the Terminators do have a little personality at times, but the film didn’t play it off that way. She also had many opportunities to destroy John, but didn’t. One example is when she was on the car that he was in. Simply firing her energy blast would easily destroy him along with the vehicle. Such a minor explosion would barely harm her after all, but instead she tried throwing some punches and got knocked off of the car. Rookie mistake TX….

While the plot hax was around, the fight scenes were still the best in the franchise. The film producers/directors must have realized that CGI is the way of the future as the battles are like watching the Man of Steel if it was made a few years ago. The characters are really landing heavy blows on each other and they even have some decent speed feats. The action scenes are certainly ahead of their time and while you won’t enjoy them if you don’t care for CGI, CGI fans like myself (Only for live action) will definitely get a kick out of the bout. The TX should have won without much of a fight, but it’s more entertaining this way I suppose. Their battle was certainly the highlight of the film.

I found this film to be less violent than the second one and it feels like the series is getting a little tamer with each installment, which is always good. Of course, keep in mind that I am reviewing the edited version. The film can also still be intense at times like when the TX impales someone and drives while in that position. That scene was definitely pretty gruesome and the body count does get rather large at times. The implied violence can also get to you so naturally, you should know that you are about to watch a pretty intense film when you start this one. The soundtrack is also great and I have to say that it might even be better than the second’s. It’s very fast paced and the classic theme also shows up to increase the intensity. Most of the tracks really fit the scenes and while you won’t remember them for long, they are enjoyable while present.

In the end, how does this film stack up against the second one? Well, T2 has the edge with the main protagonist as Sarah is much better than John. T2 has less plot hax in the fight scenes and it was also a lot more epic as the stakes felt more real and theatrical. T3 was really epic as well, but in a way, you could tell that it was the sequel that was meant to be more comic bookey. Not a real word, but that’s a good way to describe it. While T2 was more of a thriller, T3 felt like a comic book film with super villains fighting the main lead. Even just looking at how the Terminators teleport onto the scene. T2 had the much cooler entrance as the Cyborgs just appear while T3 has a black bubble that appears first, which looked decently interesting, but it wasn’t quite as epic. T3 easily had the best action scenes of the trilogy and I dare say that it had better one liners for Arnold although most of his lines tend to be really cool. As such, it’s a close battle and both films are neck and neck, but I’ve got to give T3 the slight edge here. It’s hard to say whether T3 will always have the lead or not as one may age better than the other, but it’ll be interesting to see.

I’ve also got to give T3 props for the ending as it was fairly incredible and the kind of ending that you don’t see very often anymore. At least, not without a “Part II” or a direct sequel. While Salvation would end up rolling along, this was still an ending to a complete film and one that was fairly surprising. I was expecting more plot hax to be honest like the bomb plan actually working, but I loved every bit of the ending. It was all part of the plan and the heroes were just being led along. I’d love to see another ending like that sometimes, but it’s hard to handle correctly. We’ll just have to see if anymore films have it in them.

Overall, Terminator 3 was better than I ever could have anticipated. The fights were a lot of fun and the humor was handled well. It felt like a complete film and a very interesting one that used time travel to its fullest. Skynet never gives up and the quick pacing of the film keeps the audience guessing. The pacing isn’t quite as good as T2 as it slows down sometimes, but it’s typically fast enough. If John had been a better main character, the film would have been that much better. I definitely recommend this film to Terminator fans and you may be pleasantly surprised upon watching it. I wonder if the upcoming Terminator film will manage to have a stronger Terminator than the TX. Somehow, I doubt it, but that would be interesting to see.

Overall 7/10

Slayers Revolution Review

Posted on June 13, 2015 by dreager1

I’m closing in on the end of the Slayers franchise. It’s been a fun ride and this is certainly one of the definitive fantasy franchises out there. Revolution is certainly a lot newer than the other TV shows and you can tell as the animation is much brighter and more colorful compared to the old ones. Gone is the classic 90’s style and you can say hello to the 2000’s. The budget is consistently good for the animation and it is a lot of fun to see the classic cast return.

Slayers Revolution is only 13 episodes so that means that the plot can move at a much quicker pace than it usually would. A mysterious rabbit with hands for ears appears one day and starts destroying magical tanks. The cops believe that Lina Inverse is behind this so they hire special investigator Wizer Frayon so arrest her. To prove her innocence ~~and get vengeance on the rabbit~~ Lina and friends decide to find him. That being said, forces beyond what they may comprehend are also at play in the shadows. A kingdom which fell to a plague is involved and an evil kingdom is seeking the use the Zanaffar armor to make themselves a legitimate threat to the rest of the world. Finally, what does Zellos have to do with all of this?

While the series is only 13 episodes, it still makes time for some filler episodes. One of them involved a boulder contest as the heroes had to make the best golem possible to defeat the others and roll a ball up a legendary mountain. Pokota (The rabbit) decided to get involved as well for a fairly enjoyable one shot episode. Slayers has always been a series that had a lot of filler around to keep things from getting too serious with the main storyline. As far as the fillers go, they weren’t bad here and I at least did enjoy that one. The series is at its best when the show gets back to the plot though.

The beginning of the show is a little slow, but it starts to get more exciting as it shows up. Especially once the assassin, Zuuma, shows up. He’s fairly powerful for an opponent and then the heroes set sail for the evil kingdom to settle things once and for all. The final 5-6 episodes are essentially one long climax that takes a few pauses before continuing each time. The climax can certainly hold its own against any of the older titles. (It can’t win though, but it can hold its own) You’ll want to be ready for the giant monster at the end!

The series does a good job of mixing comedy with action as per usual. I’d say that Slayers has been modernized in a good way in that it is still similar to how it used to be in a nostalgic way. You could even make the case that Revolution feels more like a Shonen than the previous titles at times since the action was really nonstop for almost half of the series at the end. While Next still had some of the best fight scenes in the franchise, the sheer power of the animation keeps it close here.

As I mentioned earlier, the animation never lets up and it’s worlds beyond what we saw in the previous shows. One look at the theme song will show you that this series means business and that’s especially good news for all of the energy attacks, which have never looked so vibrant. As this is J.C. Staff, I’m not surprised since they are certainly one of the best animation companies on the block. I look forward to seeing how great the next show looks.

As for the humor, Slayers is typically funny and this series does a good job with that for the most part. The only downer in that area is the fact that the chest jokes are still present and more prevalent than ever as the villains always use this to taunt Lina before she blows them up. Still, while it is annoying, it’s probably the tamest form of fanservice that you can even have in a show and isn’t really enough to hurt the score. It also vanishes once we are around halfway through the series, which was certainly nice to see.

As always, Lina Inverse makes for a pretty great main character. She’s easily the strongest member from the main heroes and her Lord of Nightmare’s techniques really make her a threat for any opponent. She never uses the Giga Slave as the risks are probably too great, but she has many other spells at her disposal to tip the scales. While I would have liked for her to have beaten up Zellos to show how skilled she is, Lina always has a plan up her sleeve. It’s hard to find a more likable main character than Lina and I’m confident that she will always be a likable protagonist at this point. When I think of epic anime heroines, Lina is certainly near the top.

Gourry is true to form as you would expect. He’s still a fun character to root for and you’ll feel bad for him since he no longer has the Sword of Light. For most of the series, that does prevent him from being useful and he tends to be in the way during a fight scene. He tries hard, but it’s tough to manage when you have a sword that breaks over and over again. He gets a great fight scene at the end of the show to make up for this tough and he certainly outranks most of the supporting cast members.

Zelgadis used to be the intense rival character of the show, but he’s typically played for laughs in the current seasons. He has a lot of serious moments as well, but he’s so weak that you really can’t take him seriously. While teaming up with Amelia, he was barely able to beat a puppet. His skills have definitely stopped improving and they may have regressed over the years. At this point, he’s easily the weakest member of the main group, but I suppose that he means well.

Amelia is certainly a more likable character than Zelgadis and her search for peace and justice is one of the reasons why the character is so endearing. It’s also good to see a fighter using magic as a close combat type of attack instead of just shooting energy blasts all the time. She’s still not quite as strong as Lina, which we saw in the filler episode where the two fought, but Amelia has become a dependable fighter in her own right. Unlike Lina and her other pals, Amelia never allows herself to be corrupted and tries to help everyone that she can.

Zellos makes an appearance in this season and his role was actually a little larger than I would have guessed. He mostly sticks to the shadows, but actually gets to fight at one point when he challenges Lina and her friends. That was great since we haven’t seen him fight in a very long time. He easily overpowered them and showed why the main characters would always be outranked. Even if their spells can destroy him, they can never hit because of the large gap in speed. Zellos was a fun villain to have in this series and he’s certainly gone up since Next. The new voice an intriguing switch and I’ll have to get used to just about all of the new voices, but it’s not like I’ll have to get used to them for very long at this rate. I expect to see him in the next season as well.

Sylphiel appears briefly for the final fight, which will be cool for long time fans. As in the first show, she starts off with a very impressive scene as she blocks a blast from the legendary Zanaffar. After that, she quickly forgets how to be a fighter though and goes back to fainting and being in distress. It’s odd as the exact same thing happened in the first season. Maybe that’s just her gimmick. She obviously has a lot of combat potential, but it’ll likely never be explored. She’s a good character, but a longer action scene would have helped a lot.

Pokota is one of the new main characters for this season and it’s safe to say that he’s not holding back in terms of personality. It doesn’t really work for me even though the show was trying to go for the tough guy routine. I can’t take him seriously in his present form and his quest to destroy the magic tanks felt pretty futile since they can be manufactured so easily. He has a tragic past and a few twists as well, but he didn’t really add anything to the show. He’s great at running and somehow knows how to use the Dragon Slave, but he was never very helpful when actual villains arrived. It’s a classic example of a character who’s great against heroes, but bad against villains. Sort of like the police in your average super hero film. They can sometimes have the edge against Batman, but fail to stop random muggers. Pokota certainly didn’t do wonders for the cast, but he should be a little better in the next season since he’ll have mellowed out a little.

Duclis is one of the big villains and his plot ties into Pokota’s. Duclis wants to make the world pay for abandoning his people in their time of need and gets a giant monster ready to destroy everyone. Towards the end, he loses confidence in his goal and basically just decides to leave everything up to fate. He had a solid design and his light saber was cool, but he’s certainly not one of the more interesting villains around. I also wouldn’t say that he was a great threat power wise although he was a decent fighter. The show hyped up a fight between him and Lina, but it got interrupted before it could start, which was regrettable.

Gioconda was probably the worst villain here though as she was fairly generic. She just wanted to become richer and richer with every passing year. A noble goal, but when you’re already a multi billionaire…what use is more money? She already had her own kingdom, army, and castles. I just wonder why she would need more money or power, but goals don’t always have to make sense I suppose. She’s a decent fighter when she has a weapon, but I’m confident that Gourry would have had the edge if he had the Sword of Light. As it stands, he was holding back anyway. Gioconda’s android was much more memorable and she also seemed to be a better fighter as she could heal.

Zuuma is an assassin who really wants to destroy Lina Inverse. He is a human who knows quite a few good spells and his shadow magic can nullify all other spells. That’s definitely a very handy technique to have against someone like Lina since he would have the edge over her in a sword fight. He did a good job of handling the whole team and I have a feeling that he’s going to do quite well in the next season as well. He was certainly the best villain here and a great addition to the overall cast.

Zanaffar is the big monster who appears at the end of the show and works quite well as the final boss. He can actually talk, which was certainly a good thing and his abilities were impressive. He is impervious to most spells and he has a giant laser blast which can deal massive amounts of damage. I don’t think that he could be Shabranigdo, but he could give the other giant monsters a decent fight. His lack of speed is probably the main thing that holds him back, but that’s where his immunity to magic comes in. He’s a solid all around boss when you really think about it.

As I mentioned earlier, the best part of the series is the last 5-6 episodes, but the best episode of the batch would probably be the 3 on 3 fight in the Gladiator Ring. That was a lot of fun and we got to see how some of the fighters handle themselves individually. Because Lina is always surrounded by her friends, we rarely get to see her fight on her own. It’s why I was sad that she didn’t end up fighting Duclis. If that’s one thing that Slayers Revolution needed more of, it was one on one fights. Next actually had several of them and I suppose that it is one of the perks of being about double the size of this show. The pros easily outweigh the cons for long running series and I’d gladly take another 10 fillers if it meant that we would get 3 more episodes with some great fight scenes. A longer Gourry vs Zuuma fight would have been great as well since you could tell that it would be a really fun rivalry.

As for the soundtrack, Slayers Revolution certainly doesn’t disappoint there. The theme song is easily the best one in the franchise and the theme is quite catchy. It plays during the climax of the arc and certainly fits in quite well. The ending theme is also solid and the music that appears during the show is good as well. While not amazing, there were two themes during the episodes that I certainly liked. One was the danger approaching theme (Not the title, but that’s the best way to describe it) which occurred whenever things were looking bad for the heroes and the normal battle theme was also decently good. The theme song is what really helps the series as the soundtrack can be a little bland otherwise, but certainly still good and it fits for the series. It fits so well that a lot of the tunes have been present for the whole franchise.

Slayers also ends this season with a lot of cliffhangers to ideally be wrapped up in the next installment. The Android who helped Lina and friends seems to be part of a bigger scheme and the Rezo jars are still around the world. If they are all destroyed, Rezo will die as well. We also can’t forget the fact that the heroes need to find Rezo and fast if they are to awaken Pokota’s people. These plots and more, you can bet that the next show is going to have a lot of action and even Zuuma shall return if you saw the after credits scene. He has the jar and he has the power. The heroes barely stopped him last time and unless Gourry is able to keep on using the Sword of Light, the heroes could be outclassed.

Overall, Slayers Revolution was quite good and the 13 episode set up worked well for the series. One thing that hurt Slayers Try a little was the large amounts of filler that the series had, which kept you from getting too invested in the story. Part of the appeal of Slayers is the random adventures that they have, but I prefer to have all of the filler before the main plot or after it so that it isn’t interrupted too much. That rarely happens though and it still works out all right, but the short length of the series forced it to go at a rapid pace. Whether you have seen the other Slayer titles or not, this is a fun fantasy/action anime to check out. I would highly recommend still watching the other Slayers shows if you liked this one though as you will see their origin stories and learn a lot more about the universe as a whole. There are a lot of wink-wink moments to season 1 for the fans and it’s always fun to know the references. I’ll be checking out the next show soon and we’ll see if it can manage to top this one.

Overall 7/10

Jurassic World Review

Posted on June 12, 2015 by dreager1

I recently saw all three Jurassic Park films so I was all set for this one. To an extent, the premise of the Jurassic Park franchise guarantees that the films will always get low scores thanks to the fact that it revolves around dinosaurs and will have a lot of animal violence. This film is no exception and it’s safe to say that it does lose to Jurassic Park III, but beats the first two films. If you’re a fan of the older films, you should definitely enjoy this one.

Claire has helped to put Jurassic Park back onto the map as the new amusement park, Jurassic World. While her boss doesn’t care to much about the financial part of the operations, that’s where she comes in. She had her team create a new dinosaur that was even bigger than the T Rex to increase the wow factor of the park, but ends up underestimating the creature. It escapes so she is forced to call in the resident dinosaur expert, Owen Grady!

That’s essentially the plot in a nutshell and while I will be talking about the film a lot, I’ll try to avoid spoilers. I managed to see this film yesterday which was fun since a day 0 viewing is always intense. The audience wasn’t quite as ready to roll as they were in Age of Ultron or the first Avengers, but it’s mostly due to the timeslot. They were still ready for action though and I had my comfortable recliner so I was ready for anything as well.

I was cracking up for the first 30-45 minutes. Roughly of course since this isn’t the kind of film where you will be glancing at your watch. It was probably partially intentional by the film, but I mostly didn’t laugh at its jokes, but at the scenes due to being unintentionally funny. One example of a joke where I was laughing (on the inside, I rarely laugh on the outside) was when the parents tease Zach after his heartwarming moment with his friend. It was all in good fun so the parents went a little higher on my coolness chart. They were essentially non factors here though as their screen time was minimal. The kids were fairly awful, but they did help the humor for the film.

Another example is when the two kids finally meet up with Claire. She tries to be nice and excited about seeing them only to get one of the more awkward receptions. Zach basically doesn’t want to talk to her at all and Gray’s mood swings of being somber and then super excited don’t wait for anyone. Claire can’t stay so she lets her assistant babysit them. You just gotta feel bad for Claire and I sympathized with her for the whole film. She doesn’t have a lot of free time so it makes sense that she hasn’t seen her nephews in 7 years. It’s regrettable, but these things happen and the kids shouldn’t hold it against her. She’s trying to be a good Aunt, but they never even gave her a chance. Gray may have, but he was disheartened when she couldn’t stay.

Let’s quickly talk about the two kids. Zach’s thing is that he believes that he’s really cool. He completely ignores his parents at times and ends up flirting with every single girl that he meets. (Even though he’s taken) Zach’s constantly giving Gray a hard time. “Sometimes we have to grow up!” Those may not have been his exact words, but he gets a lot of the most generic dialogue in the film and he’s also a shining bad example in many situations like when he decides to head to the forbidden zone. He felt like the kind of character that you would see in a commercial warning you not to hang out with people like that. He has his hero moments towards the end with Gray of course and he sees the light, but that would help him in the sequel, not here. He was just terrible.

No worries, Gray was awful as well. He’s way too excited and constantly blasts through rides to the dismay of the babysitter. At one point, he starts to whine about where all the dinosaurs are…even though we see that dozens of them are in front of him only about a minute later. There’s no way that he wouldn’t have been able to see them. It reminds me of a critique for the flowers film where someone saw a dead body before they ever could have seen it. Sort of the opposite of this event. Gray really had no consideration for anyone but himself during his visit to the park and while you can sympathize with him since Zach doesn’t want to hang out with him, Gray should have still done a better job of enjoying the park. He’s also pretty emotionless when pointing out a giant dinosaur that is around.

Time for a few quick nitpicks. After two characters jump into a lake, we see them walking a few minutes later and they are hardly wet. Their hair is matter and one of the T shirts is soggy, but the characters look way too dry considering the fact that they were completely underwater for a little while. Anyone who has ever jumped into a pool and then walked out will know that you don’t dry out that quickly. There’s also the ball ride where two characters explore the park. Even once an emergency announcement cuts off the presentation and tells everyone to leave…the ball is unaffected. The passenger still has complete control of it and that’s certainly not very safe. If passengers could control these things to go wherever they wanted, people would constantly be crashing into dinosaurs.

I did also chuckle at the fact that one guy’s whole job was making sure that all of the balls were safe during the crisis. He tells everyone that they’re all safe until he actually looks at the screen and realizes that one is gone. Whoops….that didn’t look too good for the guy. I liked his Dinosaur collection and admired the fact that he always talked a good game, but he was out of his league and he also tried flirting towards the end. Luckily, it wound up being the ultimate friend zone moment and I thought that it was handled rather well. We need more friend zone moments to be honest as they would make just about every film better.

The actual park is definitely somewhere that you would want to go and it looks kind of like Epcot. They have big water rides and a petting zoo section as well. You could say that it’s a fusion of your local zoo with one of the big amusement parks. It’s hard to believe that people would get bored of such a place even though the wow factor was apparently leaving. How I see it, Zoos have remained relevant for decades, a Dinosaur park would at least last 20 years without any big decline in viewership. That being said, Claire may have been overreacting as the numbers still seemed to be quite good when she was mentioning the statistics.

Let’s take this time to quickly talk about Owen and Claire. I haven’t really mentioned Owen up til now, but he did have some solid scenes. I did enjoy his interactions with the Raptors and I like how it was handled. He was their partner, not their boss although he thought of himself as an Alpha. Owen’s essentially your average action hero who has his good moments and his iffy ones. His flirting and dicey remarks keep him from being a good character, but he’s still decent for the most part. It’s easy to root for him at any rate and he certainly knows what he’s doing. He’s another guy who never bows to authority and talks when he feels like it. Imagine if everyone in real life were so bold right? I think the world would be topsy turvy before long.

Claire is a good main heroine for the film and she was actually one of my favorite characters. She didn’t want to have kids which is a noble goal and she has spent her career moving up in the ranks until she became one of the higher ups at the biggest amusement park in the world. That’s no small feat to say the least. Towards the end of the film, she has a bit of a generic ending where you can probably guess that she decides to back away from one part of her logic, but she was still a good character through and through. I thought that she did a decent job watching the kids. Sure, she left that to the assistant, but she gave them VIP passes and they got to have a blast. It’s not like she could take a day off when the big bosses were in town and awaiting her sales pitch after all. I also can’t really imagine her getting on some of the rides and having a blast like the kids. Actually, one of the rides was only built for 2 anyway.

The assistant was actually fairly likable and I originally thought that she was going to be one of the main characters. The actress looked like the main one from Twilight so I thought that I may have just been out of the loop there, but considering her minimal role, I’m going to assume that it was someone else. She definitely didn’t care to be there, but she’s probably seen and been on all of the rides many times over at this point. Still, her facade was good enough to fool the kids I’d say, but they were intent on giving her a tough time right from the start. Her character path goes down a dicey road and I felt bad for the whole time. It just wasn’t her day.

The higher up in charge of the park was decently charismatic. The film was going for a Tony Stark kind of feel for the guy and it worked to an extent. He started to look a little iffy towards the end though, but at least he cared about the dinosaurs a little. As always, there is a human antagonist to liven things up and he is similar to the guy from the first film. He talks tough to everyone and he has his own plans in mind. He gave the film another jolt of humor and I liked him as one of the big bads. This guy certainly wasn’t playing around.

Time to talk about the mystery dino. If you’re seen the trailers, then you know that there is a new Dinosaur hybrid attacking everyone. While she is a little smaller than I had expected, she still packs a punch and makes for a great threat. There are few dinos who can hope to match up to this fighter and she is also very smart. The fact that this dinosaur has been created in a lab gave the writers a little freedom to add some new techniques so this dinosaur doesn’t just need to rely on physical strength. It has two defensive skills, which greatly increase how deadly it can be in a fight. This dinosaur was definitely one of the highlights.

The classics like the T Rex and the Raptor are also present of course and I still love both dinosaurs. Once you see this film, you’ll be reminded why the T Rex is so awesome and how merciless the Raptors can be. It would have been fun to have seen the Spinosaurus enter the fray, but maybe next time. The Raptors get a fairly large role and are integral to the plot. They are still my favorite Dinosaurs out there and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. They just look so happy and cuddly next to all of the others.

As you might expect, there is a big climactic fight towards the end of the film and it’s quite impressive. It was a fight that I actually called out as I walked into the theater and I was thrilled to see it play out. The fighters gave it their all and we see some nice teamwork as well. The fight isn’t that short either and gives the dinosaurs enough time to really show what they are made of. It’s easily the best fight scene that we’ve gotten in the Jurassic Park franchise and it’s hard to picture this one being topped.

There are some plot elements left around to get you ready for the inevitable sequel. Let’s just say that the next film could have dog sized super dinosaurs running around and it’ll make for a pretty epic clash. Alternately, it could have a plot similar to the original King Kong. Either way, the sequel should be fun and I wonder if the main characters would return or if it would be time for a new cast. I would like these characters to return, but I’m open to change so that we wouldn’t have to see the kids return.

Now, this review sounds decently positive so you may expect something like a 7? A 7 is what the film would have gotten if not for the main negative, but it is something that it almost literally impossible for the Jurassic Park franchise to get away from. That is…animal violence. It’s a dinosaur eat dinosaur world out there so it’s expected and I’m not surprised at the fact that dinosaurs are getting hurt all over the place. It simply makes sense even if it is regrettable. So, while I enjoyed the film as a whole, I’ve still got to cripple the final rating due to how many times an animal is injured and how prevalent this is in the film.

One scene is really just there so that the mini army can get some hype as a gun man casually shoots one of the Pterodactyls. That was just unnecessary and a lot of the other animal scenes aren’t much better. We see dinosaurs blown up, eaten, and effectively drowned. If you’re a dinosaur in this film, then you’re in a whole lot of trouble. A lot of the hurt also comes to my good ole Raptors, which is unfortunate, but probably a price of being one of the main characters. I could go on and on, but you get the drift and it occurs too often to be overlooked so you should prepare for a fairly low score on this one.

Still, it was more fun than the first three Jurassic Park films and certainly seemed to have more fun with itself as well. I’m glad that the Park finally got to open and the film was certainly able to make it look much more authentic than it could have with older effects. This is one of those times where the fact that it’s modern and has some good effects, really helps it. To an extent, I feel like new technology will always help films to have an edge over older ones. The older ones typically hold their own through the better writing, but when you have a good modern film against a good old one, the modern one certainly has that extra edge. Jurassic Park III still wins overall, but the tone and pacing of this film can’t be beat. World feels like a classic Summer Blockbuster.

Hmmm, have I touched on everything? I managed to stay pretty vague on all spoiler related areas and that also slightly limits what I can discuss in the review. The first half was really funny and made this the funniest film in the series and the ending also had the best action scene from all 4 so it was a nice balance. Any scene with the Raptors is typically a good scene as well. As for the soundtrack, you’ll certainly recognize the classic theme from the first film as well as the trailer theme, which plays during one of the scenes. The soundtrack may be a tad generic at points, but the main theme is still iconic and you probably won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. As long as you have one memorable scene, that’s more than most films have got.

While the animal violence is really the only big negative, there are some mild ones as well since this still wouldn’t be a perfect film if the violence was gone. (Although it would be a good-very good one) The kids naturally weren’t good characters, but the rest of the cast helped to nullify them. The writing isn’t great although this is mainly due to Owen and Zach’s characters as the rest are typically fine. There is one scene that will puzzle you a little bit as two security guards seem to have no idea that the Park is in trouble even though the alarms had already gone through a good half hour ago. It struck me as a little odd and random. That’s about it so the film was mostly solid. At around 2 hours, it was a good run time, which gave the film enough time to develop the characters and showcase the dinosaurs.

While Jurassic World is mainly a popcorn film with a lot of epic action and enjoyable moments, it can actually get pretty somber and sad at other moments. One of those moments is the Dinosaur graveyard, which is definitely tragic and one of the more emotional moments of the film. One moment that is supposed to be emotional is when we learn of a divorce, but it has no point in the film and its thrown out so randomly that you probably won’t feel any emotion other than a casual wince. Of course, if you like to have fun with films, then that may be a good thing as I was having fun grinning and wincing for some of the dialogue, but in a good way. On the whole, Jurassic World is still a fairly upbeat film that stays happy for most of its run time as it only gets sad once in a while.

The Pterodactyl attack scene will just get thrown in with the rest of the animal violence issue, but I wonder how some critics will take it. I read a critique of Jurassic Park III that Pterodactyls shouldn’t be strong enough to lift a grown man. Let’s just say that they lift quite a few people during the attack in this one. Is the science/films right or are the real life keyboard warriors correct on this one? I don’t know myself, but it seems perfectly feasible that Pterodactyle could lift humans up since animals are typically so tough. I’m no dinosaur expert though and am happy just being a casual moviegoer.

Overall, I’m definitely glad that I saw this one. If you liked the first three Jurassic Park films, then you should definitely like this one a lot. At the most, you may not like the fact that it’s much more of an action film than the first Jurassic Park, which was a survival film, but it’s still about dinosaurs and it’s still a good film so I believe that you would end up enjoying it. The animal violence is regrettable and it’s something that likely won’t leave the series until they bring in the mecha dinosaurs and I’m ready for that to enter the picture soon. Well, next stop should be good ole Terminator and it’ll be fun to see how that holds up.

Overall 3/10

Marvel Masterworks The Avengers Volume 4 Review

Posted on June 10, 2015 by dreager1

The Avengers are known as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and considering that the Justice League don’t exist in Marvel, I must agree. The Avengers have always been a team of powerhouses who could tackle any threat. That being said, this volume occurs when the team is actually not looking too powerful so they must use their quips and wit to outsmart the foes who stand in their way. It is an interesting concept, but the volume isn’t quite up to taking on the average Avenger collection thanks to its high standards. Still makes for a fun read of course.

There were around 10 issues in this collection, which is a reasonable amount. The first few issues deal with the Sons of Serpent organization. While they may appear to be extremely weak on the surface, they are powerful when in great numbers. They manage to capture Captain America so the rest of the Avengers are pressured into supporting the political views of the enemies. It’s always intriguing to see politics addressed in comics, but they made sure to not get too involved with those issues. I’m sure that the Avengers won’t underestimate the group again after this!

The next two issues featured The Living Laser! This guy was typically an Iron Man villain, but this time he decided to take on the Avengers because of his feelings for the Wasp. Little did he know that Heart, not feelings, wins battles. He was outmatched from the start even though he nearly finished off the Avengers for good. After that was a two part adventure featuring the Ultroids. They weren’t exactly Ultron, but these androids were still decently powerful and they could copy the abilities of the foes that they defeated through their technology. They managed to cream the Avengers for a while, but they overestimated themselves, which doomed the villains.

Finally, a three part epic involving the famous Hercules arrived. He was tricked by the Enchantress into attacking the Avengers and then he helped them out against Namor. That was a decently fun trilogy although it is always sad to see the heroes mind controlled so easily. Their strength of will should suffice to keep them safe from danger and harm. Ah well, at least Hercules realized what was up with some help and then stuck around to help the team when they were in a jam. I still consider him to be a watered down Thor who is not quite as impressive physically or mentally, but Hercules is still stronger than the rest of the cast at the moment so that’s always a plus.

We start to see why Hank Pym isn’t one of the greatest heroes in this collection. While he has some good moments like talking back to Hawkeye and taking charge, he’s definitely not very nice to the Wasp. When she’s in danger he gets riled up of course, but he basically tells her to leave when she was trying to help him with an experiment. He certainly doesn’t have a whole lot of tact and I can see why they drifted apart. The Wasp is a decent character here, but she’s still not close to how she was in later years as she can still be a bit of a flirt.

The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are good heroes here and they are finally confident in the fact that they are Avengers. They had some iffy moments down the line, but they now know their place on the team. With two of the stronger team members back with the Avengers, they helped to give the heroes some much needed muscle. Hawkeye does a lot of trash talking for the team and he’s always got an arrow at the ready. It’s scary to think that he’s actually one of the tougher members on board, but that’s simply what the Avengers had been reduced too in this era. He’s always a fun character to have around.

Captain America is the best Avenger so I was sad to see him go. I know that he eventually comes back, but it must have been tough for fans of the team to see the final member of the big three leave. With only the B list heroes on board, The Avengers really needed him to stick around. As far as the villains go, The Living Laser was one of the only ones that I recognized. He looked pretty bad here as he was just attacking people to get the Wasp to like him. He had some good dialogue, but such a petty reason for being a villain definitely ensures that I wouldn’t care for him as a villain. That’s just very shallow.

Namor was a neat guest star and he looked fairly impressive as he held his own against Hercules. Hercules is certainly stronger of course, but Namor found the Cosmic Cube and that helped him out a lot. I didn’t expect to see such a powerful cosmic item come into play either so the final issue really raised the stakes on the adventure. Namor’s still antagonistic here, but you can’t blame him for being fed up with the humans since they constantly attack his home. So long as Atlantis is under the sea, humans will never leave it alone so it is an endless fight.

The Black Widow has a subplot where she tries to join the Avengers once more, but Giant Man doesn’t trust her and she doesn’t give the heroes much reason too. She ultimately takes on a mission from S.H.I.E.L.D. which puts a damper on her plans and I guess that her plot will likely continue more in future issues. I don’t remember her really appearing in volume 5, but she may have been around briefly. This old version of her was certainly very different from her modern incarnation.

If I had one critique for the collection, it would just be that the stakes are typically very low. It’s hard to get very excited about some of the issues and some more well known characters would have been nice to have. The plot in X-Men was more interesting for me and the characters may have actually been slightly better although the writing here beats that of the X-Men’s. It’s still a fun comic that you will be able to coast through, but you won’t be as invested as you typically would be in one of these classic Marvel issues.

As always, the art is quite good for the Avengers collection. The classic designs for the characters are always fun to look at and the fight scenes are engaging. Quicksilver’s speed here looks more impressive than it did in other instants and we are finally starting to get to the point where his speed is at in the modern days. He’ll never be quite as fast as someone like the Flash, but this is still a nice start. The writing is also quite good as the heroes trade good one liners with the villains. We really don’t see dialogue like this anymore, which is too bad. It’s one of the reasons why comics were so awesome in the first place after all. The burns were certainly real.

Overall, This was a good collection of the Avengers, but it just wasn’t as exciting as it could have been with Captain America missing some issues and Iron Man/Thor not being around. I always miss the big three when they’re not together as they are The Avengers for me. I recently reviewed volume 5 so I’m already okay on that front. I’ve still got another Marvel Masterworks coming up, but after that one, it could be gone for a while. The series has been a fun way to read up on the old series though so I won’t be forgetting about it anytime soon. If you’re a fan of the classic Marvel stories, this is definitely the comic for you. It’s still a solid action title that makes for a good read.

Overall 7/10

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Review

Posted on June 10, 2015 by dreager1

This is of the edited TV-14 version of the film and all thoughts below should be read as such. A review of the uncut version would likely be more negative as edited versions help to address my complaints for a product…typically.

It’s time to look at the sequel to the first Terminator. This was the big film and you could say that this is what really put the franchise on the map. As well received as the first film was, the second would show us what the series could do with a real budget. We could get some more action now and a new villain who may even be stronger than the Terminator! I enjoyed this one more than the first and it got rid of one of my main negatives with the first film.

Sarah may have survived her last ordeal, but she is now being kept in an asylum as the police don’t really believe the fact that she destroyed a Terminator. They just think that it was a random guy with a cool pair of shades who managed to take everyone down. When The Terminator does appear again, Sarah prepared for the end, only to fnid out that he is on her side now along with her son, John Connor. Sarah doesn’t have much time to celebrate this as she decides to destroy Skynet before it is ever created. Can she get past the new Super Terminator from the future?

First off, the film did a good job of being very action packed like the first one. The Terminator shows up and quickly starts to mess his opponents up and then we meet the new and improved Terminator. With two enemies gunning after her, Sarah wouldn’t have stood a chance. Luckily, the first Terminator is on the side of the heroes for now. Like the last film, something is basically always happening and the film keeps up with a quick pace. With the budget improved, the liquid Terminator can really show off his strengths.

Time to talk about one of the plot devices, which I thought was a little iffy. In the first film, Kyle mentions that Skynet sent a Cyborg into the past so the humans countered with him. In this film, we find out that Skynet actually sent two Cyborgs and we used the time loop to our advantage to reprogram the first one and send it after the second. Hmmmm……I don’t think that this adds up too well. I guess you could say that we were able to reverse engineer the Terminator from the arm and chip that survived the first film, but how did the main characters get it? Also, adding in the fact that two Cyborgs were sent just seems like a mild retcon. Reprograming the original Terminator is another iffy part.

Regardless, plot holes rarely hurt films and they are just fun to look at. You can also make the case that they aren’t plot holes and that I just need to refill my Popcorn and continue with the review. Just keep that in mind since in Genysis…..it seems like more time twists are going to occur.

The Terminator is an iconic character and I’ve always known him as a good guy so it’s nice to see him be a protagonist here. He’s still a Cyborg and doesn’t really feel emotions, but he starts to get the hang of them by the end. He seems like a nice guy even when he’s shooting everyone as he is still trying to help John. Deciding not to destroy humans anymore was also a pivotal part of his character development. This film was also where he got his famous sayings and iconic weapons like the Mini Gun. (I love that weapon in just about every shooter. It’s just so good!) He was definitely the best character in the film.

Now, I know that many people consider Ripley Scott to essentially be the ultimate female protagonist of her time. She was tough and knew how to fight. Alien did come out before the Terminator films so it’s a valid reputation although I was never very impressed by her. That being said, I’d say that Sarah is much more impressive than Ripley and especially in the first part of the film as she breaks out from the Asylum and helps the Terminator fight against the new one. (I’ll just call him the T-1000 from here on out) She did start to lose some of her edge in the second half as she panics when trying to destroy Skynet and the dreams overtake her, but by and large, she was a very impressive hero. Not backing down from the T-1000 shows just why I consider her to be in the top 3 female movie protagonists. (Humans only and only counting her depiction from this film. Let’s ignore what happened in the first film)

There are a few dogs around like last time and they manage to stay uninjured. I wanted to quickly reassure all of you that the film didn’t make the big mistake of including animal violence. That would have been quite sad. Unfortunately, John is a very unlikable character and easily one of the worst in the film. Just about every scene where he has a “tough” moment is sad. He is in the rebelling phase and he actually steals money from people to use at the arcade. He’s certainly no hero and I can see why the Resistance is getting blasted by the Terminators. The film tries to push the argument that the humans will win and the Terminators are scared, but I can’t picture the humans winning. They simply don’t have what it takes at this point.

As for the T-1000, he’s a good villain. He starts to show some mild emotion at the very end like when he shakes his finger at Sarah, but for the most part he is not very emotional. His liquid metal abilities make him quite the threat and it’s safe to say that The Terminator doesn’t stand much of a chance against him in a fist fight. The original Terminator does seem to physically be stronger than the T-1000 though and he was winning in pure fisticuffs until the T-1000 started to use his Liquid Abilities. With them, he is very hard to destroy and his regeneration is also impressive. He made for a very good villain and it’s going to be tough for the future films to top him.

The soundtrack is excellent and I would expect nothing less from the Terminator series. As much as I enjoyed the music in the first film, this one managed to top it. A lot of the themes are very epic and make you feel the intensity of the scene. The iconic main theme is also very pronounced here and I can see why it is still remembered today. A good soundtrack really makes all the difference in a film and Terminator 2 certainly did a good job with it.

One of the things that holds the film back a little is still the fact that it can be pretty violent at times. Thanks to me seeing the edited version, it wasn’t too bad. Usually, the screen would cut away when a character got stabbed so while you can tell how the character was destroyed, it’s not brought to the screen’s view too often although you can usually see the corpse in the background as a quiet shock moment. Naturally, the film could have certainly trimmed the violence down without affecting the story and the film could have easily been PG-13 level if they really tried although I’m not sure if the rating was around back then.

There was one scene that nearly made me take away a star though. To show that the Asylum is not a safe place, we get a scene where the guy in charge of guarding the prisoners is actually a psycho himself. The scene literally has no point to it and it just serves to show us that there are always shady characters around. It was still a pretty distasteful scene though and nearly brought the film down. Had it gone any further than what was shown, I certainly would have had to cripple the score a little more. Luckily, it never went that far.

I did actually feel bad for the two guys who tried to help John when they thought that the Terminator was about to attack him. They came to help only to get some broken bones out of the ordeal when John thought that it would be funny to inflict a little pain. Once again, John proved that he was definitely not a very heroic protagonist and someone that you couldn’t root for. I can only hope that he is better in Terminator 3.

The best scene in the film is probably when the Terminator meets up with the T-1000 in the Asylum as the heroes finally manage to find Sarah. That’s where the film really got interesting and the death race got going. That’s the kind of moment that I hope to see in Batman vs Superman or in the Infinity War. Two big characters finally meeting up and the other characters as witnesses. That scene will definitely be remembered as a classic.

Overall, Terminator 2 was a worthy successor to the first film. It’s really going to be tough to top this installment as we had a great villain and good heroes in Sarah and the Terminator. John was a really bad character, but at least he wasn’t too integral to the plot so it was easy to ignore him. The sci-fi elements are always fun to watch and the opening scene with the future really showed off just what the series could do with a big budget. I definitely want to see more of the future soon since that plot looks super interesting. In Florida, they had a ride where a great part of the movie inside took place in the future. Something like that would make for a great film. There may be a few plot points that I found iffy, but you can safely jot it down to the time travel aspect. I definitely recommend this if you saw the first Terminator film and if you’re looking for an intense time travel film, this is what you’re looking for.

Overall 7/10

Batman vs Robin Review

Posted on June 10, 2015 by dreager1

DC has been spiraling downwards with their animated films for quite some time now. I still look at the Flashpoint Paradox as the beginning of the end as that’s when DC seemed to have decided that it was time to switch directions. As this film is the sequel to Son of Batman, I can’t say that I was too hopeful for it and it was basically what I had expected. More on what’s happened to DC in a little bit, but let’s go into the plot.

Batman and Robin take down a crook, but a new villain appears and destroys the guy first. This puts some tension between the dynamic duo and Robin decides that he can do well on his own. While Robin is being tempted by the darkness, Batman must work to try and make Gotham City a better place and find out what is up with the whole Court of Owls organization. Can he really find them and do they exist?

So, let’s talk about DC comics as a whole with their animated films. Originally, they were pretty incredible. We had the DCAU titles and solid stand alones like Superman Doomsday and the Batman/Superman series. The Justice League films were also fantastic. I’d say that Batman Year One is where DC slowly began to consider how things would play out if they went for a bit of a darker stretch. JL Doom was good, but not as good as the previous Justice League films and then we got The Dark Knight Returns films. The original comic wasn’t great so how could the film be? Then Superman Unbound came and that was probably the last really solid film before we entered the Flashpoint film and the New 52. JL War was actually decently good, but it should have been great. The film was already trying to push on with the excessive violence motive, which continued to plague all of the films, which came afterwards.

It’s no surprise that Batman vs Robin is also really violent and dark. Unnecessarily so, but it’s DC’s new MO. It’s too bad because they used to be leaps and bounds ahead of Marvel when it came to animation. Right now, Marvel has probably taken the lead when you compare the current films and shows for the two companies when it comes to animation. DC still has their other products like the Lego series and the new Batman Unlimited titles, which should be good. Unfortunately, all of their mainstream products are staying along the road of darkness and violence.

In Batman’s case though, it’s not entirely new. Even his comics have typically always been a little darker and grittier than the others. I’m a big fan of the character, but I can’t even think of the last time that I read a full comic from one of his mainstream titles because they all tend to be pretty intense. Especially New 52 and onwards. You also can’t blame DC from an economic stand point. Look at what Marvel did with Daredevil? DC probably saw the good reviews and decided that it was time to make things get more intense as well. I’m sure that you’ve heard about the Gods and Monsters movie that is accompanied with a show. Let’s face it…DC doesn’t seem to be changing their mind about where they’re going anytime soon, which is why it may be a good thing that they’re taking a break from adapting the classic arcs. I’d rather that they wait on the next Batman/Superman film until they start to make more tame epics like they used too.

Part of the reason why the Marvel Cinematic Universe succeeded is because it was so light. All of the main films were fairly cheerful with the exception of The Incredible Hulk, which still never got dark. Even Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron, which seemed to be a little grim based on the first trailers still turned out to be the comedy action blend that Marvel has really been shredding the competition with. If you’re going to copy a competitor, copy what really made them a force to be reckoned with. If DC was able to emulate that style for their films, they would definitely be on the map by now.

So, aside from the constant stream of excessive violence in Batman vs Robin, the opening is pretty off putting as Robin deals with a psychotic criminal. Again, this guy is just added to remind us that Gotham City is a very bad place and that the team must go up against crazy people like this all the time. I still wonder, why would you live in Gotham? It’s apparently better to be homeless in Metropolis than rich in Gotham. At least you will have a Man of Steel to watch over you in the other place.

Another big negative was one that Terminator always managed to sidestep. There is animal violence in this film as Bruce Wayne shoots an owl…with a gun! Remember how Superman snapped Zod in Man of Steel to show that he wasn’t always perfect as Superman? DC must have loved that because they’re doing the same thing with Batman. Before he got the no killing and no guns policy, he actually used guns and looked for the people who murdered his parents for some time. He shoots an owl because he thinks that an Owl organization took them and it’s just really bad. For starters, this isn’t Batman and the whole point is that he trained himself to avenge them with justice. He didn’t go around as a kid looking for trouble and shooting animals.

I suspect that the Bruce Wayne subplot from the past was around for Oscar bait and to show fans how deep and moving this film was. It’ll likely work as flashbacks like this one typically seem to work quite well, but it definitely didn’t do any wonders for me. Bruce Wayne also looks bad in the present as he lets one of the Owls charm him for a while and there’s a reason why we don’t see his playboy side anymore, it simply doesn’t help his job aside from finding out intel. It’s just unnecessary.

The ending is also a big anticlimactic way to end it all. Ready for spoilers? Skip this paragraph if you don’t want to find out. Batman actually loses to Talon in the end after talking so much about how he was going to win. That was embarrassing and the film was really heavy handed with the Damian hype at that point. Robin was also losing, but Talon helped him with the kill and naturally, DC decided to make it a decently gruesome one. Off screen, but you definitely know what happened. What I can’t get over is the fact that Batman lost. He also lost to Damian earlier and said “Finish me” basically. Seriously, they made Batman look so weak during those moments.

Now, Batman didn’t look bad in all of his screen time. On the contrary, typically he was shown to be an excellent fighter as he overpowered many of the Owls while they were teaming up. Batman still is the world’s greatest hand to hand fighter, he just has a tendency to lose a lot and also forget that he wears his gadgets for a reason. What’s the point of a utility belt if you’re only going to use it on zombies right? Still, let’s take a break from the negatives to look at the big positive of the film.

You can find solace in the fact that the fight scenes here are animated very well. Batman’s fight against Talon looks similar to Captain America vs Winter Soldier and debatably better as the director added a lot more feints. Both opponents will keep pretending to throw a punch to make the other block and they do this until one of them finally panics and throws a punishing move that the other counters. It reminds me of a good SSB4 battle as it’s all very tactical. Batman definitely shows his mastery of hand to hand combat and Nightwing also looks quite good. The feats here are quite good as Batman definitely pushes himself to the peak of human perfection. We haven’t seen many Batman fights that were quite as good as these and DC essentially pushed the hand to hand fight scenes as far as they could go.

Nightwing was the best character in the film as he did a very good job of fighting the Owls and his twin staff fight style helped to differentiate him from the others. The film shows that he is naturally not quite as skilled as Batman and doesn’t fare as well, but I was satisfied with his performance over all. He definitely should have wrecked Robin when they fought, but it was basically his win as he had already stopped to gloat a little bit. He should have beaten Talon, but considering his numerous injuries at the time, I suppose that it was basically all right.

Talon’s an interesting villain and his design quite good. His fighting style and build are similar to that of Deathstroke’s, but he’s not the kind of guy to just run away. His origin story was there to show us that he already knew how to make the tough calls and now he is a pro at what he does. I have to question how he got good enough to be one of the best martial artists in the planet, but everyone has to start somewhere right? He was a fun villain to have and he gave us most of the best fight scenes in the film.

As for Robin, he’s still not one of my favorite characters. His fight between Batman was really his fault and there was not much of a reason for it. I suppose that Robin wanted to test his skills, but he still just let Talon get away. Batman’s defenses were sound and made sense so I was not on Robin’s side when the kid decided to get past them. Robin’s a good fighter and he shows signs of becoming a good character soon, but he’s still a little too arrogant and he got tempted by the darkness a little too easily. At least he made the right calls when necessary.

It’s pretty much a given that the animation is solid even when no fights are occurring. Everything is streamlined rather well and you can tell that this is a modern film right when you start. DC’s definitely been doing well in this department and I hope that they can keep up this level of quality. The voices are another story. Most of them are all right, but this is easily my least favorite Batman voice. He just sounds so…weak. Batman won’t be scaring any crooks with this voice and he just sounds nothing like Batman. I’m hoping that he gets a new voice for future Batman films.

One of the more powerful moments in the film was when Batman fought with the Owls (Talons I suppose, but I prefer to call them Owls) in the museum. That was when we found out that they were already effectively dead so it was all right to go all out. Batman held his own for quite a while, but the enemies could keep regenerating and they were able to fight at high speeds.They were a good challenge for the Dark Knight and I liked them as villains. They’re mindless, but powerful enemies. It’s safe to say that these guys would overwhelm Captain America pretty quickly.

I’ve just about wrapped up everything that there is to say about the film. It’s rather short as it’s barely over an hour, but that’s still enough time to fit in a lot of fights. The movie also adapts the famous moment where the Owls infiltrate the Batcave. This is an extremely loose adaption of the arc, but it still covered some of the main points, which is cool. If you ever wanted to see the real arc animated…time to take out your old comics once again!

Overall, Batman vs Robin is still in the new DC style of seeing how violent and dark their titles can be without crossing the line, which hurts the film a lot. The actual fight between Batman and Robin is fun even if you probably know who will come out on top. The Justice League are essentially referenced thanks to Alfred and Star Labs, but I wish that they hadn’t been since that means that Superman exists in this universe. I try to forget that since Superman should have been around to help at various points when the Talons invaded the cave. Ah well, guest stars can’t appear every time. The action segments were solid and Nightwing continues to remind me why he is the best Robin. If you don’t mind a decent amount of violence and intense themes, you can check this film out, but I’d recommend just watching Batman Sub Zero instead for a deep and emotional Batman film. Batman’s been getting a lot of films lately, maybe it’s time to go back to someone like Green Lantern or Superman. After all, the Man of Steel deserves his time in the spotlight.

Overall 4/10

Marvel Masterworks The X-Men Volume 4 Review

Posted on June 7, 2015 by dreager1

I had a lot of fun with the previous X-Men collection so it’s cool that I had the next volume at the ready! We get a pretty nifty guest star here and the mysterious Factor Three organization also decides to show themselves. A lot happens here for sure and while there may technically have been issues with higher stakes and better guest stars here, I feel like the last collection had better subplots on the human side of things. Either way, this is another solid collection.

Before the team can strike back at Factor Three, The Juggernaut rises to fight once more. As always, he proves to be a difficult opponent to take down. It’s fun to see how the power levels were back in the day as the heroes exclaim that Juggernaut can destroy a tank and it was extremely impressive at the time. Nowadays, such a feat wouldn’t merit reactions that were quite so fierce. This two part adventure was fun, even if the X-Men were extremely outmatched at the time. They didn’t have any real power hitters on board to counter the Juggernaut.

After that, The Factor Three plot took center stage and covered at least 4 issues. Spider Man appears, which was a nice treat. After all of the hype, I can’t say that I was very impressed with the leader of the group. The whole thing was very….interesting. It was fun to see the old villains again, but after all of the hype, I wouldn’t have minded some new faces. The Blob and Unus are all right, but I don’t consider them to be heavyweight champs or anything like that. Still, this plot was certainly one that lasted and seeing the arc end was fun. This was probably one of the first true arcs to ever appear in the X-Men comics.

After that, it was back to the one shot adventures. Frankenstein’s monster appeared in one of the issues. Another one had a guy called Grotesque who decided to beat the heroes up. He didn’t have a whole lot of motivations, but he was powerful and he did the unthinkable. He managed to destroy Professor Xavier, which was a pretty impressive feat. I’ll miss the leader of the X-Men, but it’s safe to say that he won’t be dead for very long. In the comics, iconic characters just can’t stay dead for too long or else the fans will riot.

The art is pretty solid as per usual. The X-Men also manage to get real costumes for the first time. They had costumes before the issue, but they all wore the same thing. Now each character has his own look and that would just be the start as just about every super hero team uses the same concept. After all, why should everyone look the same. The Angel’s costume takes the most getting used too, but the others all look good. The Angel’s isn’t bad either, it’s just not what I would have expected.

The writing is also great, but we don’t get any moments that stand out quite as much as those in the last graphic novel. It’s hard not to chuckle when we saw Cyclops go up against the Locus and get sucker punched. That was definitely an intense bout. In this collection, the best lines are probably the ones where Cyclops and the Beast are insulting the villains or when Spider-Man is around. It’s safe to say that you will not get tired of the banter anytime soon as it’s a blast and a half from start to finish.

Professor Xavier looks very shady in this collection as he starts to keep the X-Men out of the loop. His reasoning wasn’t great and I still don’t really see what his angle was. It just brought dissension into the ranks and hurt the trust factor between teammates. Cyclops was bold enough to decide that he would bypass Xavier’s orders if necessary, but luckily things didn’t come to that. It was a little foreshadowing for when Cyclops would resent the Professor’s leadership in the Uncanny X-Men days. Of course, that just makes the Professor’s death even more tragic as he didn’t leave on very good terms.

The rest of the X-Men are essentially unchanged from the last collection. At least the Angel is pretty much over Jean as he finds a new friend to hang out with. I remember her from another X-Men comic so she definitely stays around for quite a while. He certainly comes in handy to the team with his flying even if he isn’t very powerful. The Beast is an interesting member as the others treat him like the strongest member of the team at times. I would disagree with that since I think that Iceman or Cyclops could beat him with ease. His verbal gimmick is always enjoyable though as you know that he’s doing it all on purpose. Unfortunately, Jean chooses the Professor over the team, which I didn’t think was a good move. The heroes could have died against the villain because Jean and Prof X decided not to help and that really shows why his plan was so bad. At that point, it didn’t matter what his reason was for deserting the team, he nearly ended the X-Men. If they had died there, that certainly wouldn’t have been good.

Beyond the main comics, there’s also a backup story about how Cyclops first joined the team. It plays out at the end of each of the final issues and Cyclops gets to go up against a guy who is now The Living Diamond. It’s certainly an interesting story and Cyclops shows why he is one of the true heroes. His origin story is also interesting because I’m not too familiar with it. The one sad part about having a backup story is that the normal issues end up being shorter, but I suppose that it is a worthy sacrifice.

Back to Spider-Man, it was also cool to see that the comic essentially admitted that he could beat the whole team. The X-Men started the fight this time so Spider-Man was just playing serious, but things changed once he got serious. He can easily handle them all thanks to his Spider Sense and he did a good job of keeping them all tangled up. That’s one thing that a lot of villains seem to take advantage of. In terms of raw power, the X-Men are essentially powerless. As I mentioned earlier, the Beast is physically the strongest member of the group and he’s barely any stronger than a normal human. So….the team really needs a power hitter. As it is, they’re lucky that they haven’t fought a really strong villain yet or that a lot of other factors were at play when the Juggernaut was around.

Overall, This was a fun collection. Besides Spider-Man, we didn’t have many notable appearances by any big players. It was a very dry collection. Juggernaut was a fun villain to have, but that’s essentially it. I wouldn’t consider The Blob or Unus to be too popular. The Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear for a very brief cameo, but they don’t really get to do anything so it barely counts. You really need to just enjoy the X-Men members a lot to enjoy this collection and luckily the writing is very good here so they are enjoyable protagonists. With Factor Three out of the way, it’s time for Magneto to step back into the equation. It’s been a while since he appeared so it’s certainly about time. With Prof X out of the equation, can the heroes really handle him? I suppose that we’ll find out once I am able to check out the next volume. Until then, you can expect a review for an Avengers collection soon.

Overall 8/10

The Terminator Review

Posted on June 7, 2015 by dreager1

This is of the edited TV-14 version of the film and all thoughts below should be read as such. A review of the uncut version would likely be more negative as edited versions help to address my complaints for a product…typically.

All right, it’s time to take a look at one of the cinematic legends! The Terminator is a film that many people grew up with and it has quite the reputation. I’ve now seen most if not all of the great film classics like Jaws, Alien, and Twister. Most of the iconic legends were fun to watch, but still crumpled when it came down to the overall rating. Whether it was through animal violence, excessive violence, or just an unimpressive climax, they couldn’t match up to today’s films like Avengers, Man of Steel, and Tron. I’m happy to say that The Terminator was more fun than most if not all of the other classics. Twister gives it a decent fight. The Terminator still makes enough mistakes to keep me from giving it a truly solid rating, but I can see why this title is a classic.

Sarah was living her life as usual when things suddenly changed. A mysterious cyborg from the future was sent to destroy her so that the human resistance in the future would never come to be. The humans sent back one of their own to her time and his name is Kyle ~~Rayner~~ Reese. He has to destroy the cyborg and keep Sarah safe, but that will be tough since The Terminator is just about invincible. Destroying him will take a lot of guts and determination. Sarah is also not helping matters since she doesn’t trust Kyle and goes to the Police. Can the cops help out or will they add to the body count!?

Let’s start off with the positives of the film. I have always loved time travel as the main focus. There are so many things that you can do with it so long as you head to the future or the future comes to the present. As long as you completely disregard the past, then I’m all set. We’ve seen great time travel adventures in shows like DBZ and Justice League in the past. Just about every big franchise has dealt with this plot and Terminator was probably the first to really popularize this. The concept of a machine coming to destroy you from the future is a good one. It’s hard to say who had handled it the best, but I’m tempted to say that Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 did.

The film also had a really fun soundtrack. This was during the time when it was okay to add quick techno themes to films in theaters. The battle themes are a lot of fun and the beats are catchy. Nowadays, it’s a little harder to picture a big film doing that, but some gems are still hidden among the others like with the Tron film. Having a nice soundtrack definitely helps to rise this film even higher among the classic titles.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see some more glimpses of the future after the initial scenes in the film. The blasters were fun to watch and the humans were managing to hold their own. Personally, I don’t think that they stand a chance against the powerful forces of Skynet, but it was still fun to watch. The future was definitely a grim place and it reminds us why robots shouldn’t be given too much power too quickly.

Finally, the film is just very interesting. There’s a constant sense of danger as Sarah runs away from the Terminator and the backdrops hold up fairly well. Something is always happening and the action rarely lets up to give you a breather. Unfortunately, that’s when things tend to get a little dicey, but the film’s tempo was another one of its strong points. Once you stop moving, it’s game over.

For time travel, there are many different theories on how it would work and I tend to like them all except for the one which claims that you can never alter the future. DC tried that in the Booster Gold comics and I definitely disagreed with that. As long as you can go to the past, you can certainly alter it. Whether you experience the changes in real time or not (Like in DBZ, where it just affects another timeline) you will still have changed things. This series is essentially using a closed loop system. The instant that The Terminator and Kyle went in the time portal, everything began to happen infinitely. Everyone would keep on doing the same things over and over again. The future would always go on and the past would always happen time and time again. It’s fun to wrap your head around that and it sort of starts the Chicken and Egg story.

Time for the negatives. Well, let’s start off with Kyle and his relationship with Sarah. Only in the movies will a character be running from deadly machines and the notion of time travel take time to quickly have a baby before doing some more running. Kyle and Sarah getting together did not make any sense and the whole thing happened way too quickly. They only knew each other for like a day and they were still willing to go all the way like that. Kyle claims that he loved her ever since he saw a picture of her and that also proves that he’s very shallow and just liked her for her looks. Possibly her reputation, but falling in love with someone because of a picture is pretty bad. Kyle ended up being my least favorite character in the film.

It was cool that he had a similar voice to Silver (Sonic) and Trunks (DBZ) but that was really his best quality. He was quick to threaten Sarah and he was constantly panicking when he showed up. It was pretty funny to see him take the conversation with the cops so seriously when they were clearly making fun of him. I guess that there is less time for sarcasm in the future eh? Kyle means well as he tries to save the future, but he should have stayed in the friend zone.

As for Sarah, she’s a decent lead. Of course, she also panics a lot and does allow herself to be with Kyle. So, I wouldn’t say that she’s a great character, but she’s not too bad and she does keep the dog in the end. That was a good move on her part and it does lead into one of the big positives of the film. I also enjoyed the police officers as they did a pretty good job of securing the perimeter. Did you think that the Terminator would scare these guys? Not a chance! The chief had it all figured out and he had about 30 men at his disposal for the fight. The officers were outgunned, but they had a lot of the best moments in the film. You can’t forget how one of them took pokes at Kyle’s story and showed why it could make a good novel..or film.

One of the big positives that I noticed in the film was a distinct aversion to animal violence. Just about all films nowadays could learn a thing or two from this one. At one point, The Terminator comes face to face with a dog and decides not to shoot him. That one moment had more depth than the entirety of the Jurassic Park trilogy and the writing was stellar. I feel like the film could have won an Oscar for that moment alone. There were several other dogs who appeared in the film and all of them lived. Even the two police dogs who went up against the Terminator came away from the battle unscathed. I was quite worried during those moments and I was mentally jotting notes on it. It’s safe to say that a scene of animal violence would have certainly pushed the overall score into the red.

Naturally, this film was originally in the mature rating so the film is excessively violent at different points. The scene where the Terminator shows his true eye is particularly gruesome and he impales quite a few people for the lolz. As far as the violence goes, it could have certainly been worse or better. It’s still a little more than there should be so I added it to this section. Again, due to the rating, it’s to be expected and it’s why most of the legendary films never get to have a great rating. Compare these to something like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and that film will almost always have the edge as it had an incredible fight scene with many epic things happening. The film dragged on a little though and still had its issues as well.

It also needs to be mentioned that there is an abundance of plot hax in this film. Again…it’s to be expected since the film is about humans trying to fight a super powered cyborg. They never stood a chance of defeating such a villain. So, I could name a few scenes in particular, but you get the jist of it. Terminator missing gunshots at point blank range many, many times. The army not coming to help the town (Welll….a bit of a nitpick there) and others. Mainly, it’s just the Terminator not destroying Sarah parts since he really had a chance to do so in just about every scene. His intelligence also seemed to greatly vary as he would make plans in one scene and just seem to walk around aimlessly in others.

As for the actual Terminator, he made for a good villain. Robots/Cyborgs are great when they’re played straight. The fact that he has no emotions is what makes him a very intriguing villain and he did a good job of hunting the heroes. He doesn’t have his iconic shotgun yet, but I mostly know him from the latter films. Seeing him as the antagonist was definitely interesting and I actually forgot that he used to be the bad guy. I’m just too used to him being the hero at this point.

As you can see, the film had many good and bad points. I’d say that they roughly cancel out into a decent film. Decent sounds more positive than negative and you can make that case. On a technical level though, the negatives were numerous enough to slow the film down. The film was still fun to watch though and I’d say that it’s similar to Alien. An engaging plot even though the score was certainly doomed at times. Terminator is a big step up from Alien and I still to consider it to be one of the best classics.

Overall, Terminator was a very interesting sci-fi film and handled the time travel aspect well. I’m not sure if I’m crazy about the loop, but I suppose that it was inevitable as soon as we found out why Sarah was being targeted. How will the sequels work? Well, in the future, Skynet will likely just put their next plan to work and that’s how things will get started. I’m definitely hyped for the sequel and the Terminator is definitely a fun franchise. I became a fan of it through the games so it’s nice to see what they were based off of. As far as the concepts go, the only classic film to really be about on par with this one is Men in Black, which was pretty incredible. I definitely recommend checking this film out if you’re a big Sci-Fi fan and know what you’re getting yourself into. The film can be a little intense, but you are likely aware of that. Take away the scene with Kyle and Sarah and I’m confident that the score would have been higher and more like what you would have expected for a review of this title. It’s neat that the film did so well with critics across the board and it was definitely something new and innovative for the time that still works well today. That’s why I’m hoping that the new film coming out soon ends up being really good. I’ll be checking out the sequel soon so definitely keep your eyes open for that!

Overall 5/10

Future Card Buddyfight Review

Posted on June 5, 2015 by dreager1

Buddyfight really started out strong. It came out of the gate swinging and I liked the new battle style a lot. It didn’t revolutionize the card fighting genre like Cardfight, but it was a fun approach to the new style of play. The characters were likable, which made for some good intro duels. The middle of the series is where Buddyfight began to lose some of its steam as the show started to get a little repetitive. Luckily, the final tournament showed up and helped to break the cycle. We had a lot of fun duels towards the end, which was intense. Buddyfight ended as it started, a very fun show with lots of excitement.

Gao Mikado is the main character and one day he decides to start Buddy Fighting competitively when he draws a good Buddy. His Buddy is Drum and he comes from Dragon World. Let’s take a step back quickly and look at the universe. Drawing a Buddy opens a portal between dimensions and the monster inside of the card actually appears. Luckily, all monsters (for now) are friendly so this is safe for all people. Even villains enjoy having their buddies so that they can improve their abilities and really break the law. Gao and Drum bicker a lot, but they ultimately become close friends who help each other when the going gets tough.

The series starts off cautiously and Gao duels many opponents who become his friends and rivals. Then a tournament is announced and Gao decides to enter to show the world how great he is. The tournament will be tough to win as many new faces show up, but they don’t scare Gao. Gao thinks of himself as the Mighty Sunfighter so he never backs down from a fight or from a challenge.

Part 2 of the series is where the stakes start to get higher. A villain group known as Disaster has shown up and they want to rid the world of adults. By opening a portal to the dark part of the monster world, they can end everything! A betrayal also rocks Gao’s world and the heroes will never be the same again. Gao will have to brace himself as he tackles this overwhelming challenge!

Let’s start off with how to play the game. The gameplay is unique in the sense that it is all about offense. Each turn involves you attacking the other player and you don’t have to take time to defend. Each turn, you can summon monsters until their combined level is three. Then, you attack the other player and try to get his life down from 10 to 0. There are naturally spells and traps to augment the gameplay as well. It results in a very fast moving duel, which makes it difficult to stretch into multi parters. Even the final fight of the series is barely more than one part and if you cut out the subplots, it probably could be one episode.

The clan that you choose will determine what your fighting style is like. Gao uses a Dragon deck so he focuses on attacking until his opponents finally go down. Katana World is about misdirection and fooling your opponent and Magic World is totally for defense and gimmicks. Naturally, Dragon World is easily my favorite since offense is definitely my style, but they all have their merits and weaknesses.

Gao is the main character of the series and also one of the main highlights. He’s one of the better main characters as he is determined and always wins the right way. He doesn’t use any stall tactics or overpowered cards to win as he chooses to talk with his skills. He’s one of the only main characters to ever go from the premiere to the finale without losing once. I doubt that many characters could hope to pull that off and the series isn’t exactly short. There are over 50 episodes to be found in Buddyfight. “The strongest deck in history” is his catchphrase and it shows how tough he is. Gao’s modest at times, but he knows just how good he is.

His partner is Drum and they definitely had a lot of banter during the older episodes. Towards the end of the series, they definitely became close, but still had some banter at times. Drum’s not bad, but he’s surprisingly weak considering that he’s the classic partner of the series. Not a problem though, he has some super forms to help him out in that area. He’s not the best monster, but certainly not the worst one and at least Drum has character.

Zanya is the calm and collected member of the group. He uses ninja cards to defeat his enemies and he has a trap card, which can be used to stop just about any opponent when used correctly. While he is very tough and the characters always acknowledge that, he’s not quite as good as Gao or Tesuku. He’s better than guys like Tetsuya and Shido, but he still needs a game changer if he wants to be among the best. I’m confident that his skills will be at that level at some point and we just have to give the guy some time. The only thing stopping him from being a really cool character is his gimmick, which gets old quickly. Zanya is deathly afraid of girls and he can’t talk or duel when in front of them. You can see how this becomes a problem and it is brought up constantly. I still like Zanya a lot, but this does take away from his coolness factor. Zanya is a big believer in honor and justice so you can see why I like the guy. He has some pretty emotional duels during the series. His buddy has a really cool design, but is almost always silent so he doesn’t get to have much of a personality. Ah well, at least Zanya’s a cool fighter. The next ally of Gao’s is decidedly less quiet and fierce.

Tetsuya’s whole gimmick is that he loves dancing. His friends fear that it takes up too much of his time and that he’s not totally devoting his energy to Buddyfighting. They’re not wrong, but Tetsuya is still a good duelist. While he is decidedly weaker than Gao or Zanya, Tetsuya always gives it his all and comes through when the team needs him. His jingle is surprisingly catchy and you may find yourself dancing to the tune when he begins the duel. The fact that he mixes in Banana’s with his hair is brilliant and one of the reasons why you shouldn’t underestimate the guy. While he is rarely solemn, Tetsuya knows when it’s time to be serious. His buddy probably has more personality than all of the other monsters. The demon has his own TV show and actually does some undercover work to help the heroes find the location of the villain’s base. He is also a whole species in and of himself, which saves a lot of time for when he has to check out multiple locations at the same time.

Tasuku is the boy genius of the series and it feels like the show heavily considered making him the main character. The show’s endings are always about him and even the opening gave him a decently big role. The show may have also just been trying to make him a fan favorite from the start. It wasn’t hard since Tasuku is a great character from start to finish. He goes through a similar character arc that Kai went through in Cardfight. The series seems to really love using the redemption plot device as a character will get a taste of darkness and the terrifying power that comes with it, but ultimately returns to the light for good. This happened to Rouga, Kiri, and Tasuku in the show and I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens to more characters. (To a lesser extent, you could say the same for the final villain of the show)

Tasuku is a nice guy and he always has fun when he is in a Buddyfight. He helps Gao enjoy the game and encourages younger players as well. He gets frustrated when the police force is corrupted and goes too far in his attempts to make everything all right on his own. Luckily, that’s where his Buddy comes in. Jack is a dragon and like Drum, he gets a lot of development. Jack is a buddy who really cares about what is going on in the human world and he plays a pivotal role in getting Tasuku back to the side of the heroes and he refused to become a villain. Having a good friend is always important and the bond between Tasuku and Jack is a strong one. These two will certainly continue to be some of the highlights of the show and Tasuku is easily my favorite character aside from Gao.

Kiri was once one of Gao’s best friends until he changed. He was very timid and also weak when it came to Buddyfighting. As a result, Kiri got bullied all the time and decided that he needed more power. The villains were glad to give him that and now Kiri was able to use his powers in the real world like Rouga, Gao, and Tasuku. He instantly became one of the strongest fighters in the series and he was pretty hardcore as the Grim Reaper. To quickly specify, the monsters are already real for all of the players. The only difference with Disaster Force/Future Force is that you can also make spell and equip cards real. This is still really good as Kiri has his Winter Wonderland (Not the exact name) card that can make a blizzard appear out of the blue.

Kiri was a decent friend at first, but certainly not my kind of character and he was a lot like Syrus. I was glad to see his character go through a mini arc and he ultimately became a hero again. The only difference is that he now has a lot of power. I’m confident that he will be able to help Gao out a lot in future arcs. His power up certainly helped him as a character even if I don’t care for his buddy. He just doesn’t do anything for me at the moment and needs some more personality.

Shido is one of the worst villains in the series. Apparently, he is still one of the better duelists in the school, but I can’t take him seriously. He is typically used for comic relief and isn’t much of a threat to someone like Gao. He is constantly being humiliated and appears far too often if you ask me. His partner is Sofia and she is portrayed as the serious member of the group. The problem is that she’s not much better than Shido and I have not been impressed with her either. She gets nonstop hype, but the hype never seems to transform into something more than that. I feel like the writers really don’t know what to do with her at the moment and it shows. I’m sure that she will start fighting more at some point, but for now…she is simply biding her time.

Rouga was the first real villain to show up and he stays as a supporting character throughout the series. He goes from being a true villain to a misunderstood rival who is just looking out for his friend. The turnabout certainly is cheesy and he looks really bad when he lets the main villain get under his skin. When taken seriously, Rouga is a good opponent for Gao. The problem is that he doesn’t know whether he is a villain or a rival most of the time. It’s safe to say that he’ll just be a rival in the sequel series and that will mean that Gao has yet another on. Depending on how many guys you count (Tasuku, Noboru, Kazane, Zanya, Genma, Tasuku……) it’s a long list. I suppose that a lot of people will be gunning for you once you’re at the top. Rouga’s buddy is pretty cool as he is one of the only monsters to have a decent amount of personality and Cerberus never backs down from a fight.

He’s decently tough and doesn’t feel like an average monster, which is a good thing. I don’t think that Rouga has been handled particularly well in this series. I still like him as a rival for Gao, but he has certainly dropped in the ranks from his first appearance and it will take a while for me to be able to take him seriously. At this point, he just seems to be a little out of his league.

Genma is another rival of Gao…in a sense. He has less of a role than the others, but he’s a decently strong Buddyfighter. I’ve never been a huge fan of his though and he comes off as very arrogant at times. He also takes it very personally when his friend uses a counter card against his iconic monster. That would be like me getting upset if someone counter picked to Olimar to defeat my Captain Falcon in Smash Bros. It’s a strategically sound move so I can’t really agree with him here. Genma’s tough, but his whole strategy does revolve around his dragon so once it is defeated, he is essentially doomed. I do love his recycled footage yells though and he really gets fired up when dueling. He can certainly be better, but a lack of screen time probably didn’t help his case either.

Jin is a sneaky member who is always hard to pin down. Is he helping the heroes or on the side of the villains? The answers to these questions are eventually answered and he does play a decent role in the series, but he is a bit of a lightweight. I’ve never considered him to be very tough and he gets himself into some pretty tight pickles during the series. He needs a new deck as stealth doesn’t work out so well in this game. He’s not really my kind of supporting character, but he’s not bad.

Noboru is Goa’s original rival. At the very least, I would consider him to be Gao’s main rival as they actually got some trash talking in and Noboru really wants to defeat Gao. I don’t see that happening anytime soon as the gap between them continues to grow, but it’s still good that Noboru is trying to get on top of the situation. Surpassing Gao is just tricky for any opponent. Noboru’s buddy is a little on the dull side though as it is an old man who doesn’t have any cool special abilities. It’s impressive that Noboru can still win with his current deck as it is just a really watered down version of Gao’s. Nonetheless, I do really like Noboru’s character and he should go far in the series. He even gave Tasuku a good fight!

Terumi works for Disaster and she probably has the toughest time out of all the members since she starts to see the light and is quickly thrown out of the picture. The heroes never did give her a happy ending and it doesn’t seem like that is going to change in the sequel series. She was never a very likable character for me as she was infatuated with the leader of the villains even though she should know that he didn’t actually care for her. She was used from the start and never did anything about it.

Elf was another member of Disaster and he was not very good. Elf rarely ever fought and it was hard to gauge out good a fighter he was. It barely even mattered though since he was more interested in talking a good game than actually backing it up. His design was meant to be his whole gimmick and that will never be enough to actually be a very compelling villain. He also didn’t get any real character development unlike the other characters and I wonder if he will return soon.

Gremlin is one of the members of Disaster and he’s a decent fighter. While not quite as impressive as some of the other fighters, his legendary deck building skills are why he is feared by so many. He built the decks for all of the other fighters after all and that takes dedication. By the end, he has essentially seen the light and remembers how the game should be played. I can’t say that I really bought his sob story though as it seems like he just jumped off the deep end for the lolz.

Kazane was Gao’s final rival of the series and she just popped out from nowhere during one of the episodes. She helped Gao to remember what it was like to really enjoy the game and Kazane’s a fun character. She’s easy to root for and while her deck isn’t particularly impressive, her skills are certainly real. Her role has stayed small so far, but I’m sure that the writers have big plans for her at some point although she’s quickly fading away from being a main supporting character in the sequel series. Big plans or not, she’s a fun new rival for Gao to have. He certainly has a lot of them now!

Kemura is one of the weaker supporting characters, but I’m not too surprised since he debuted alongside a group of fighters who were essentially filler. His gimmick is that he’s constantly trying to eat his buddy and it is reused way too often. It wasn’t even funny the first time so you can imagine how tedious it gets by the 5th or 20th time. The only reason why the group was ultimately a good idea was because we got to meet one good character. Kirisame is a swordsman and his skills are about on par with Zanya’s. He’s a strong fighter all right and he even shows that he could give Gao a good challenge.

Kyoya is the big villain of the second arc and he is certainly powerful. He took out Tasuku when they fought and he actually stood up to Gao. Granted, Kyoya didn’t stand a chance against the world’s greatest Buddyfighter, but he still tried hard and gave it his all. His goals didn’t make all that much sense though and it is hard to relate to the guy. His voice also wasn’t that good, which may have helped to prevent me frombeing a fan of his. His super form looked cool though and he is a powerful villain. He just wasn’t very good or interesting.

Azi Dahaka got a ton of hype throughout the series and fans of his were likely disappointed that he was used as an after thought in the series. After being shown to be the big mastermind behind Disaster, he didn’t do anything until he was summoned and then Gao still managed to take him out in a single hit. He did have a very ominous speech where he mentioned how Gao and the others have sealed their fate by defeating him, but that hasn’t gone anywhere at the moment. Still, the hype is real and it’s safe to say that defeating him a second time will not be so easy.

Baku and Kuguru are essentially Gao’s best friends. Baku makes the decks for Gao while Kuguru gives him the necessary intel for the fights. It’s too bad that they never got into the game as they could have been good Buddyfighters. They aren’t bad characters and are all right I suppose, but they definitely don’t add much to the series. Baku had his subplot with the Gremlin, but that’s about it. They aren’t bad though and every hero has to have a few friends. They help Gao when he’s down.

Buddyfight’s animation is quite good. I remember thinking that it looked solid from the start and the sequel series managed to improve the series even more. This title can hold its own against just about any other show. It’s still not going to be in your top 3 of all time or anything like that, but the animation is still great. Certainly well above average to say the least. The fights certainly look good and likewise with the overall animation. It’s just like Cardfight Vanguard in that every part of the animation stays consistently bright and solid throughout. The character designs and backgrounds never falter.

The soundtrack doesn’t get overshadowed as it is also quite good. The villain theme is certainly my favorite piece of music in the series. It is definitely dramatic and does a good job of building up hype for a fight. The openings are pretty lackluster though and a little worse than average. Again, the sequel series managed to improve in that area. Still, the overall soundtrack is good. I won’t call it great like the animation, but you’ll enjoy the themes and the villain music really makes up for the rest of the tracks.

Buddyfight is a great series through and through. I remember being properly hyped for the fact that Cardfight was getting a spinoff. The Cardfight cast even appears for an episode as a little cameo before getting written out. I hope to see a crossover between these two series at some point. They are certainly some of the best anime titles to have come out in the last few years and have helped to bring card game shows into the light once again. With those two going on alongside Yugioh Arc V, it’s a good time to be a trading card fan. Now, we just need Buddyfight to get its first film.

Buddyfight is a very light toned show for the most part. For a while, there isn’t much danger so the characters just have fun dueling. As expected, things began to get serious during the second half of the series and Buddyfight was able to bring us some thrilling and emotional battles by the end. Some of the fights between Tasuku and Gao at the end were amazing along with Tasuku’s battle against the enemy. The scene where the Reverse Dragonic Punisher first appears is one that you won’t forget in a hurry and it was certainly one of the best animated scenes of the series. The show really had some good variety when it came time for the duels.

As I mentioned in the intro, the pacing can be a little iffy sometimes. Buddyfight is the kind of show that doesn’t mind having several rematches and seeing the same characters fight too often can take away from the excitement. It’s similar to how I never like to see someone duel twice in a row in Cardfight because we will have just seen the deck. That happens quite a bit here, but luckily the duels are so fast paced that it is typically okay. I think that the show slowed down considerably towards the middle of the series, but the strong beginning and ending kept it in the great category. Buddyfight 100 is starting to make the same mistake though except that it has a weak beginning so far. I’m confident that it will be able to get past this issue.

In the end though, where does Buddyfight rank among the other card shows? Welllll…it would have to be in last by default. It loses to Cardfight and all of the various Yugioh Series that I’ve seen. I’m confident that it would beat the original Yugioh though and if we count it, Capsule Monsters as well. Considering the fact that Buddyfight is still a great show, you can see how steep the competition is in this genre.

Overall, Buddyfight was a really fun watch from start to finish. Finally, we had another original franchise that was introduced to the market and ended up being a big success. It’s hard to state just how excited I was so see a new series on the air. I was confident from the start that it would be really good and I got to watch it weekly from day one thanks to the official Youtube site. Nowadays, it’s hard to create a new franchise out of the blue that still ends up being so good. Buddyfight was over 50 episodes, which gave it a lot of time to flesh out the characters and give us some good stories to go along with the fights. The animation was very good and the soundtrack was good enough to make sure that it was an epic anime in all categories. Even if Buddyfight temporarily faltered at some points, It’s a show that excelled so much that this is barely noticeable. The sequel will have a very tough time taking it down. I highly recommend this series to all fans and you won’t be disappointed upon checking it out!

Overall 8/10

Red Dawn (2012) Review

Posted on June 4, 2015 by dreager1

Looks like it’s time for round 2 for Red Dawn. The original got a reboot and now we can see if America could put up a better fight with the modern technology that we have at our disposal. Spoiler alert….America doesn’t fare all that well. While it’s a decent film for the most part, I can’t say that Red Dawn is really my style and the premise is completely unbelievable, although I’ll get into that in a second.

The main characters are enjoying the city life and having fun when the film starts off. Matt ends up losing his team the game, but he gave it his all and that’s what counts. His brother Jed is finally back from being abroad at war and it’s a good thing that he is. See, Korea and Russia have launched an attack against the US of A and we lost big time. The kids must now form a band called the Wolverines and strike back at the oppressors with their experience in warfare and combat. Can they really liberate the greatest country in the world?

Well, let’s go back to the premise since that’s the part that I can’t buy into. See, America is the greatest country in the world and no one can stop us. We have friendly ties with several countries like France and Great Britain, but even if they wouldn’t help us through such an attack, we’d be okay. Would they help us if we got invaded by Korea? I like to think so since it was an unprovoked attack and they would want to get in on the action and spoils of war before the enemies came after them.

Back to the America is for winners part. Apparently, all it takes is a well placed super EMP to take us out of the picture. Without our tech, America simply isn’t very tough and we were defeated in roughly a day. That’s….embarrassing to be honest. America loves its tech, but we also have the best defenses for it and they can’t be permanantely shut off so easily. Moreover, the enemies have closed circuit technology so that they can communicate…and we don’t? Booooooo. America is prepared for all eventualities and we wouldn’t have lost.

At most, they could maybe take a state or two, not 42. We would quickly win them back, turn our tech back, and then nuke the place. America cannot be defeated and we quickly proved this in World War II. Once America got involved, it was essentially Game Over for the enemies. So, this film really feels like propaganda from the enemy. I had this thought during the original one as well and it makes you wonder how this film got into theaters. Freedom of speech and films of course, but we don’t want the American people to get the wrong idea or for the enemies to take this as a challenge to attack. While not as politically controversial as that comedy film about Korea recently, this one’s still not quite as patriotic as you would hope.

There are still patriotic themes of course as the kids take out quite a few enemy soldiers and continue to blow up their bases. It shows that we will never give up and Americans will always have their freedom, but that should have been applied to the whole country, which is why we shouldn’t have lost. America fights hard and they fight to win. That’s how it’s always been and the only way to take us out is with Global Destruction. A mutual nuclear attack would do the trick and then it would be game over.

Naturally, this film is pretty dark given the serious themes that are at play the whole time. Characters drop off one after the other and the heroes are put in many tricky circumstances with people that they can’t always trust. It’s a film that will keep you interested from start to finish, but not one that is really fun to watch. It is fairly realistic as people go through these situations in other countries and in our past, but that’s part of the reason why it turns out to be a film that you won’t find very enjoyable.

There is a twist at the end to keep things real and all films need a twist of some sort nowadays. It’s expected and it adds more drama for the sequel. The event in question definitely comes suddenly and the film did a good job of not being obvious about it although the foreshadowing did start to get a little iffy as the heroes were having too much of a good time. You have to have nerves of steel at that point since everyone is dying so you learn to be able to get decently happy very quickly since you don’t know how long the peace will last. Still, they should have kept moving.

Jed’s a really good main character and the film does a good job of making him likable. The main gripe with him is just how much beer the guy drinks. It certainly won’t help him when he’s out in a firefight. Luckily, the guy has a lot of experience in the field and he really ends up helping the team a lot. Without him, it’s safe to say that the heroes may have been a little out of their league. Matt is not nearly as good. I really didn’t like his character from start to finish. His first appearance has him crumbling during the end of a football game and it seems like he barely cares. He just heads out to have fun with his girlfriend and really acting like one of those throwaway characters from any film or show. He’s the kind of guy that you just don’t like and the film tries to correct that later on, but it’s too little too late. He abandons the team and disobeys orders when he feels like it without any real remorse.

Most of the other characters are here to remind us that this is serious business and not for the faint of heart. The guy who lacked will power steals the food and betrays the heroes to the enemy. The surest way to tell who isn’t a real American is to find the guy who betrays you to the other country. That’s just sad and I’m pretty sure that the guy didn’t live through the experience. The other characters are typically all right or a little on the not cool side. Matt’s girlfriend certainly did not help him become likable and I thought that she was a bit much the whole time. Jed’s friend was much better as she was more reserved and dedicated to the cause.

The writing seemed to be decent as there was only one piece of unnecessary language that I noticed, but I saw this on TV so they helped the film out a little by covering this area. I don’t know how much or how little they cut, but that’s always nice of them. The film was over in a flash and felt way under 2 hours. That’s probably a good thing as short and sweet has actually been working out quite well lately. If you’re as good as Man of Steel or Avengers, then go for as long as possible. Otherwise, go for a shorter route.

Overall, This Red Dawn is better than the first version. The main character is easily the best person in the film and he puts the other guys to shame. It’s too bad that Matt couldn’t be quite as good. The film is pretty careful in terms of violence and while a lot of things happen to the heroes, it’s never as intense as in the original. That being said, the premise is still as unbelievable as ever. America simply doesn’t lose like that and this is the kind of film that shouldn’t be given a theater release without some kind of propaganda video before it to pump us up. At the very least, we should have had an epilogue about how we ultimately won the war and crushed everyone. It was neat to see the Marines and they actually looked impressive in this version, but they sure tried to be as unlikable as possible at times. If you like war films where the underdogs have to fight against large odds check this out. If you want a lighter film where America owns the world, check out The Avengers! Now that film shows us the determination and skill of The American people!

Overall 4/10

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Red Dawn (2012) Review

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