The Latest Movies (Non-Anime) You Are Watching Right Now

[danth]

I recently watched Karate Kid, National Lampoons Vacation, and MacGruber. All were better than expected. Karate Kid was fantastic, better than I remembered. Vacation was enjoyable and full of 80s quaintness. MacGruber was actually watchable, if totally stupid.

The highlight was seeing young Jenna Maroney from 30 Rock as the cousin in Vacation.

I'm looking forward to watching Karate Kid 2 for the first time!

[greg]

I do not know about you guys but, I think the 90's were the most kick ass years in recent history.

Babylon 5, FTW!

I'm looking forward to watching Karate Kid 2 for the first time!

Oh wow. Brace yourself for some borderline looney caricatures of how Japan was perceived in the '80s. Of course, when I saw this as a kid in the theaters, it was something that made me fall in love with Japan. Looking back on it now, it is a bit over the top. "You insult my honor! I kill you now!" I've had conversations with people who actually believe that Japanese people behave like this. I've picked up on it and I've asked, "You've seen Karate Kid Part 2, right?" Having one's knowledge of the workings of Japanese culture as introduced soley by this movie is about as absurd as having one's sole source of knowledge of nuclear energy being from watching The Simpsons (which is frighteningly very true for so many Americans).

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So last Saturday, I had a real "geekdad" experience. If you've ever read Wired's GeekDad blog, you'll know what I mean. I watched Back To The Future with my 5-year-old daughter! That was exhilerating, especially because she could sit through the whole movie and it held her attention. So far I've watched Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back on laserdisc with her. Maybe this Saturday I will watch my favorite of the Back To The Future trilogy, Part 2, with her. Another movie I am eager to share with her is 2000 Leagues Under The Sea. That movie totally captivated me as a child, too. she's watched Tron with me as well as most of The Black Hole too.

One of the cool things about being a parent is introducing your kid to the neat stuff you enjoyed during your old childhood. Other movies will have to wait, such as Alien. She knows about facehuggers and such because I even have a plush facehugger toy. She understands the concept of chestbursters too, but I will wait until she is older before I scare her with those movies (only the first two though, of course). There are just some things you need to shield from your child's eyes because you love them, such as gruesome horror movies, pornography, and the Star Wars prequels.

[danth]

I'm looking forward to watching Karate Kid 2 for the first time!

Oh wow. Brace yourself for some borderline looney caricatures of how Japan was perceived in the '80s. Of course, when I saw this as a kid in the theaters, it was something that made me fall in love with Japan. Looking back on it now, it is a bit over the top. "You insult my honor! I kill you now!" I've had conversations with people who actually believe that Japanese people behave like this. I've picked up on it and I've asked, "You've seen Karate Kid Part 2, right?" Having one's knowledge of the workings of Japanese culture as introduced soley by this movie is about as absurd as having one's sole source of knowledge of nuclear energy being from watching The Simpsons (which is frighteningly very true for so many Americans).

Oh, it was absolutely horrible. For all those reasons and more. Apparently Okinawans speak to each other in English by default. Even old people on their deathbeds. And anyone doing or speaking of things of great importance does so with the doors to their home wide open so that Daniel-san, and the audience, can eavesdrop.

I mean the premise of Daniel going to Japan with Miyagi to see his dying father was stupid anyway.

[greg]

Ha! Yes, the '80s were home to some of the most fantastic movies ever, and some of the stupidest movies ever. I didn't think that the premise of Daniel going along to Japan with Mr. Miyagi was too off, although wasn't it like a spur-of-the-moment decision? Did Daniel even have a passport? It was once they got there is when everything seemed so incredibly stupid. Still, the cinematography and visuals were beautiful, and they presented Japan in a captivating way. At the time, we had no idea how stupid the movie was, but we sure thought, "Wow, Japan really is so beautiful and exotic!" If anything, take that from the movie.

Since you've gotten this far, you may as well go ahead and watch the entirely forgettable Karate Kid Part 3 while you're at it. Just as with other '80s movie trilogies, the third movie is basically a rehash of the first. (Star Wars---another Death Star! Indiana Jones---Nazis are after God's garage sale items again! Back To The Future---the entire plot all over again, only this time it's in the Old West!) Yes, in the third movie, Daniel is back in a tournament! Oh yay.

[greg]

This movie was finally released yesterday in Japan (February 28th). If any of you in the USA feel like complaining about the price of movie tickets, try paying $18 to go see a movie at the theater in Japan! I actually bought the pre-sale ticket at the nearby convenience store, so it only cost me $13.

So anyhow, I LOVED THIS MOVIE! It exceeded my expectations. Watching Gandalf fight Sauron with the light vs darkness was SO COOL. Stuff like this is awesome, but the book just glosses over it. "Oh yeah, sorry I was gone. I was just risking my life attacking the Necromancer's Tower. It's not important. It only becomes pertinent later when Tolkein thinks up the LOTR stuff and retcons this Necromancer to be Sauron, which at that time he probably hadn't thought up yet." And later, there's this big, huge, epic Battle of the Five Armies. Bilbo gets knocked unconscious as soon as it begins. Then the book skips to the aftermath, with half of Bilbo's friends dead, and then he has one last conversation with Thorin.

This does NOT make for good cinema. Yes, Jackson is padding the story. Guess who was the first to pad out the story? Yes, J.R.R. Tolkein himself. "Hey, what's this sudden romance between Strider and Arwen? I don't remember that in the book," some said. It was in the appendices. Tolkein went back and filled in so much side-story because it was obvious that he wanted to add to his already great-story he'd made. The problem is that he was just making things up as he went along.

Look, Tolkein was a good writer overall, but he did not plan his stuff out well. He mostly thought it up as he went along. That's why chapter after chapter in Fellowship, even though there's this big huge story unveiled about the Ring, Frodo is still hanging out in the Shire. That does not make for good cinema. When I read The Hobbit, I was thinking, "What's this Moria? I want to know more." Time after time, Tolkein revisited his stuff and embellished it, giving it far deeper history. I want to see Thorin fighting it out in Moria with the white orc. I want to see why he is nicknamed "Oakenshield." I want to see Gandalf attacking the Necromancer's tower. I want to see this epic Battle of the Five Armies, because it was glossed over in the book! The book is like, "Oh wow, it was so epic and huge. You should've been there. Well, bye!"

The Hobbit was a fairly short book, but there is so much to explore. OK, Legolas wasn't in the book, but it makes sense to have him appear in the movie. It's fanservice, but that's great. I don't see extending the book into three movies as just a cynical cash grab. Sure, that is going on, and New Zealand wants more tourism money. But Jackson truly loves the story, and he knows how to make it marketable for the big screen.

The inclusion of a new character, Tauriel, turned out to be rather cool. Because face it: everyone loves female elves who kick ass: Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War, Lucia from Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons arcade game... the list goes on and on. Well done. Having Legolas in this movie not only makes sense, but is a great idea.

As for the often discussed cliffhanger ending, I like it. I approve. Of course we are all nerds and we've all read the book already and know what happens. However, Joe Public out there who may not even remember this movie exactly by the time the third movie comes out, may think, "Wait, they killed the dragon. Why are they continuing the story, again?" I guess this is a bad comparison, but by the third Matrix movie came out, nobody cared anymore. I know after the second movie, I sure lost interest. Granted, Desolation of Smaug is by far a better movie than Matrix 2 (at least as far as I am concerned), but to the masses, you can't just have the dragon killed at the end of this movie if you're going to make a third movie because at least in the book, there aren't that many pages left to go until it's over. But again, there is a great battle that deserves to be told, because Tolkein himself didn't actually tell it much himself (unless it was just covered in appendices and supplemental tales).

One last thing, about the supposed "romance" between Kili and Tauriel, I don't think it was a big deal as some people have made it out to be. It's not like Kili is the first guy to get smitten by an elf. Secondly, I get the impression that she's just taken a fancy to a handsome dwarf captive, and she cares for him. I get the feeling that she'll likely die in the battle of five armies in the third movie, and we already know that Kili and Fili with both die because we've read the books. So I think this is just going to make his death heavier, to expand the character (and guess what.... Tolkein didn't really explore and expand much of the dwarves' characters himself).

[Heero]

There's significant padding that I'm not feeling, but that's not my big issue with the Hobbit "trilogy". My BIG issue with it is actually something you think is a strength, which is tying it too closely to LotR. "The Hobbit" obviously IS the precursor to "Lord of the Rings", HOWEVER, it is COMPLETELY different in TONE. When Bilbo finds the ring, it is simply "a magic ring". You don't have this oppressive, emo, EVIL overtone just putting the dang thing on. And more importantly, you NEED to not have that in order for the stupid story to WORK.

Simply put, when he was recruited, Bilbo is NOT a "burglar". He's a normal(ish) guy who is willing to go on an adventure and who grows up as he sees the world. But he has ZERO training and no real capability or skill at the tasks he is called to do. The main reason he is ABLE to do the things he does late in the book (killing the spiders, freeing the dwarfs, sneaking into (and out of) Smaug's lair) is BECAUSE he has a ring that lets him turn invisible. (plus, lets not forget that he holds on to the dang thing for DECADES after "The Hobbit". If it is so BLATANTLY evil, why the heck does he do that?!?) There are just too many plot elements (that were changed) in "Desolation of Smaug" that make no LOGICIAL sense for me to really enjoy it. (I also don't like what they did with the "black arrow", as it makes it less epic and "legendary")

In my opinion, "The Hobbit" should be an adventure where a young hobbit grows up into a confident person and along the way he finds (and uses) an artifact that turns out to be much more than it appears and highly relevant to the world. What it should NOT be (IMO) is a dark, oppressive prequel to Lord of the Rings, heavy with anxiety and dread over the coming apocalypse.

[greg]

Well, the movie makes it clear that Bilbo is not a "burglar." As with the book, Gandalf enlists him because Hobbits are small and light on their feet, whereas Dwarves are plodding and blunt. Hopefully, a Hobbit would be able to slip past a sleeping dragon and find the Arkenstone. Yes, the ring was just a magic ring in the book. The Necromancer's Tower was just something cool to put on a map, and was little more than an excuse to remove Gandalf from the story in order for Bilbo and the gang to get in over their heads a bit (and make the plot more exciting as a result). Even in this movie though, the ring is not revealed to anyone that it is "evil." It is not revealed to Bilbo at all, and I don't expect it to be revealed to be as such in this next movie, either. In the first LOTR movie, Gandalf says something to the effect that there are many magic rings in this world, and they are not to be taken lightly. In the third Hobbit movie, we can expect to see Gandalf find out that Bilbo found a magic ring. He still won't suspect that it is the One Ring of Sauron, though. If he does, then it'll make it incompatible with the LOTR movies. We can expect such sloppiness from an X-Men movie, but I am confident Peter Jackson won't overlook such a major thing. There's no plot hole there.

It seemed to me that Gandalf was only aware at first that he was fighting against the Witch King of Angmar; not Sauron. He and Radagast first investigate the Witch King's tomb, and then he infiltrates Dol Guldur in Mirkwood. We know through Tolkien's writings that it was during the White Council's siege on Dol Guldur that they confirm that the Necromancer is indeed Sauron. This is not just an invention of the movie; this is Tolkien's own retconned vision.

JRR Tolkien was all about retconning. He took a neat youth novel and turned it into a huge epic. He wrote a lot of appendices and supplemental material from which these movies are pulling. You can't fault these movies for pulling The Hobbit into the LOTR continuity, since Tolkien was the first to do so. Read up on the LOTR Wiki about Dol Guldur and you'll see that it's in line with what is portrayed in the movies. Mention of the movies comes below in that article.

I see what you're saying though. It is possible that The Hobbit could be portrayed in movie theaters as it was in the book: a straightforward adventure tale. However since we've already been first introduced to Middle Earth through the LOTR movies, it makes sense to build these prequels on top of the success of the LOTR trilogy. While reading The Hobbit years ago, I thought about the Necromancer's Tower and figured that Bilbo and the Dwarves would have to deal with that. It was completely bypassed, to my disappointment. It wasn't revealed until later what that is about. Tolkien made stuff up as he went along. He didn't try re-releasing his books; he just wrote supplemental materials to bring it all together. If you're to tell the story in a straightforward style for movies, it makes sense to bring it all together. Thus, the simple children's book just got a lot fatter.

I love this stuff. I can only hope that more Middle Earth stuff may eventually make it into movie form, such as the Children of Hurin novel.

[_D_]

It' not so much that Tolkien was making it up as he went along", rather, his plans changed over the years. The first glimmerings of these stories came about as early as 1917 and he changed things, added things, took things out, etc. It's a wonder we have anything coherent. The Hobbit was written as a bedtime story for his children and completed in 1937. By that time he was working on things like The Children of Hurin and other tales that would eventually become The Lord of the Rings. Originally I don't think hobbits were supposed to be in TLOTR but because of the demands of his publisher for more Hobbit stories, they become prominent once again. They do not figure into works like The Silmarillion or anything in The Unfinished Tales. Heck, from some of the books Christopher Tolkien wrote of his father, many of these stories were supposed to be in poetry! That of course would have been bit of a hard sell...

[yusaku]

It has been the strangest thing to me lately. I have had a yearning to re-experience the 90's genre of film. I have been yearning for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
"Sliders"
"Hercules"
"Xena Warrior Princess"
"Friday the 13th the Series"
"Farscape"
"Star Trek" Deep Space Nine and the Next Generation
"Quantum Leap"

I do not know what I think makes the shows in this era so inviting. It is just I find these shows somewhat refreshing, and I just do not know why. Now the tv shows I have been watching lately is "The Colony", "The Walking Dead", and "Breaking Bad". I do not seem interested in much else. I was into "orange is the new black", but I paused because the show was getting so very raunchy. I have to watch shows like that in small bites if at all. Just my two cents.

[greg]

I know what you mean! For me, it's Babylon 5. Farscape too, to an extent. My favorite shows from the '90s (aside from MST3K) were Babylon 5 and The X-Files. I own everything X-Files on DVD (even that disappointing movie that came out a few years back that didn't really need to be made), but I really want to invest in getting Babylon 5 on DVD. I think after Bruce Boxleitner left the show it really wasn't worth watching much, and those spin off series were just rabbit trails that didn't really amount to anything. But man, I miss that show!