12/6/2008 - Every Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe Fatality

When they said that the next Mortal Kombat game would be T-Rated, I knew that it would not be a good sign for the series. They had to make it T-Rated because of the inclusion of the DC superheroes. In a bid to outdo Marvel vs. Capcom, all Midway did was to water down their flagship fighting series and to include licensed characters that seem oddly out of place. I suppose as long as the fighting engine is solid, neutered fatalities shouldn't be an issue, but it still seems wrong:



Batman's finishing move being a swarm of bats is just lame. Shang Tsung having to morph into the opponent in order to suck his/her soul? I thought he sucked people's souls so that he could morph into them. They actually had to censor Deathstroke and The Joker's fatalities in the final version of the game as well! I guess a point blank gunshot to the head is more intense than the Jax's machine gun fatality which wasn't censored. Ugh.

8/6/2008 - Batman : The Dark Knight Movie Review

Today marks another milestone in this blog: it's the 365th post! That means you can read one post a day for the entire year... yay! I'm going to use this occasion to take a respite from daily blogging and post entries as good videos become available. I'll still try to post as often as I can, but I'm not going to strain myself into writing about a video that's only mediocre.

Okay, I've featured many videos that feature foul-mouthed reviewers who critique everything from video games to movies. Most of the time, they use profanity to bash certain products they don't like. This is what you would expect. However, there are things out there that are so well-received, that swearing also emphasizes how good these products are. Here's a good example of this:

6/11/2008 - Iron Man and Batman (3 Videos)

Before we get to the video, my review of the Iron Man movie: it rocks! And yes, the main reason why it rocks is because of the man who plays Tony Stark/Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. There are maybe a handful of comic character roles that become intertwined with the actor playing those roles: Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Christopher Reeve as Superman, and now Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. With these three characters, we know what gruff is, we know what nobility is, and with Tony Stark, we know what it means to be a playboy and yet a hero at the same time.

This is not to say that the other actors in Iron Man weren't excellent... they were. It was hard for me to imagine that the hero in Tron would make such a good villain, for example. And I can't wait to see Terrence Howard in the War Machine costume. The story and dialogue was top-notch, as well. I've heard elsewhere that Iron Man was the perfect superhero movie, and they may be right about that. The only valid criticism perhaps was that the end fight sequence was too short. But to me, that's like one grain of salt on the best cheesecake you ever had.

Now, many might say that Iron Man is a complete rip-off on Batman... and that's what these series of videos play off of. However, the core of the characters are complete opposites: Batman is a vigilante who masquerades as a playboy while Iron Man is a playboy who masquerades as a superhero. See? Who says there aren't original ideas in comic books?

5/15/2007 - Hi, I'm a Marvel...and I'm a DC.

The Marvel vs. DC feud has been going on pretty much since Fantastic Four #1 when Stan Lee was commissioned to do a book that would rival the Justice League. Stan took it upon himself to break out of the mold and create a superhero team that would be radically different in that it was more like a traditional family with family problems.

Stan would go on to create a mythological pantheon of heroes that stood out against the more bland DC heroes at that time. These heroes would be believable in the "real" world and always had some kind of edge to them that made their powers somewhat a curse as well as a gift. That was the genius of Stan's creations and I consider him to be a personal hero of mine.

It took the movie and special effects industries close to 40 years to catch up to Stan's vision, and now we are finally seeing the results with such hits as the X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies. Of course the DC superheroes have their own movie franchises, too, and thus the feud between the two comic book companies has extended itself into the movies. Of course, being a Marvel fan (my favorite hero is the Incredible Hulk, btw), I got a big kick out of this next video.



Whereas Marvel is releasing two or more movies a year, DC is struggling to produce one a year. While Batman Begins was a decent way to reboot the series (anything would have been an improvement over Batman and Robin), Superman Returns struggled to gain mass appeal as Bryan Singer's X-Men movies. Don't get me wrong... I'd like to see both studios doing well, as I really enjoy the comic book superhero genre. It's just that I see a similar parallel in what happened in the comic book feud between Marvel and DC as to what's happening in the movie feud. DC may be more iconic, but Marvel appeals to a greater audience.