Category: OOC

OOC – The eyes are the groin of the head

At my old blogspot there were certain blog tropes that I hated. One of them was the “I’m drunk and/or high right now so this post is going to be super weird!” post. I am not on any sort of pain medication but this still kind of feels like that sort of post.

An HR lady at a job once told me that my worst trait (and I have many according to her) is my desire to publicize my failures. I will admit that yesterday when I poked myself in the eyeball with the corner of a gift bag and sliced that eyeball open like a boar eating a cantaloupe, my instinct was to e-mail everyone I knew and tell them how stupid I am.

Since my eye stings, obviously I can’t work out today. I thought I was past the point of looking for excuses not to work out but here we are. Mildly disappointing.

The good news is that I still have 20/20 vision. I got laser eyeball surgery about 20 years ago and you’re supposed to go to the ophthalmologist every year to see if your vision is degrading because laser eye surgery is still new enough that they don’t really know the long term effects, but I never do it. And my vision is fine so my laziness has been rewarded after the fact.

The bad news is I can no longer make fun of someone I know for having to go to the ER twice for getting glitter in their eye. Or at least I have to cut the fun making in half.

The only weird thing about my visit to the clinic was the doctor wanted to shake hands. We’re both there wearing masks and there’s signs everywhere about covid and she wants to touch me? I waved her off, which people really don’t like. I was hoping that sort of thing would go away for good out of the pandemic but people seem to be backsliding.

I saw Salma Hayek on an advertisement for an HBO show and I thought to myself “What HBO show is Salma Hayek on?” Turns out she’s going to be on a new show where she plays a woman whose boobs start talking to her. This sounds insanely awful to me, but perhaps I’m not the target demographic.

It put me in a mind of another show on a streaming service that I don’t think exists anymore where little Anna Kendrick went on a cross-country adventure with a sex doll that came to life. I started writing a script for that concept for a reboot of Mannequin only it was a horror movie because if a sex doll came to life, I figured it would be pretty upset about it’s existence.

Salma Hayek said recently that she was happy to be cast in the Eternals because the only roles she gets offered now are “old hooker” or “grandma”.

I never saw the movie Grown Ups but I understand that in this movie Salma Hayek plays Adam Sandler’s wife. And there’s a scene where Sandler goes to a yoga class to ogle the instructor. Because Salma Hayek isn’t hot enough. For Adam Sandler. I used to think that the media didn’t really have much effect on people but I’m starting to change my mind. Maybe things like this are part of the reason that mouth-breathing troglodytes used to come into my store and say that Halle Berry wasn’t pretty enough for them. They’d do her if she begged them, but it would be charity.

I watched the Matrix 4 the other day. It was fine. I was never a big Matrix man but I was interested to see what it was about. It felt very much like Force Awakens in that it was mostly just a remake of the first movie only I loved Star Wars enough that a remake got me with its emotional manipulation. I’d say a good 15% of the dialog in Matrix 4 was someone speaking directly to the audience saying “remember how much you liked the first movie? This is that again!”

In conclusion there was a show on IFC called Documentary Now! that was pretty good overall but the best episode by far is a parody of the Thin Blue Line called The Eye Doesn’t Lie.

OOC – Black Friday the 13th

One unexpected side effect of starting a WordPress blog is the many other blogs I’ve started reading.  There’s a few oddballs in the mix but they generally fall into three categories –

RPG blogs (mostly D&D since that’s the most popular RPG by a substantial margin these days) that I read to get ideas for RPGs and to shake my head at how the young people play RPGs these days and lament that the world I grew up in in gone.

Movie review blogs that I read because I enjoy how upset everyone gets by each new Marvel movie (and Star Wars to a lesser degree) because it RUINED everything because there was a female character in it. 

And horror movie blogs.  I enjoy the occasional horror movie but I am by no means a big horror guy.  My sister is a huge horror movie fan.  She honestly tries to see EVERY horror movie that comes out each year.  It’s crazy.  I like reading these blogs because I enjoy how into it people are.  People who are really into horror movies are REALLY into horror movies.  There’s been so much written about Friday the 13th and what’s really going on there and which movies should be “canon” that there should be a Wu-Tang American Tale style documentary about it. 

This is how I learned that Friday the 13th Part 9: Jason Goes to Hell is generally reviled by the Jasonheads out there.  I get why you wouldn’t like it, if you’re really into the Jasonverse, making Jason a Deadite and the Voorhees family Deadite cultists does pretty much overturn the mythology they had going.  It’s not as bad a Midi-chlorians to Star Wars people but its close. 

As a casual horror fan though I love Jason 9 the most, and not because of the Deadite thing, even though I am a fan of the Evil Dead.  I love it because of the opening scene. 

If you’re not familiar the opening scene is a sexy lady (the same actress who did the nude karate fight in Point Break which was the greatest thing I had ever seen when I was a young fella) going up to Camp Crystal Lake alone.  She goes into a creepy old cabin and immediately gets naked.  Which of course is how you summon Jason.  Sidenote, I one time wrote a Friday the 13th script where a lady gets naked and Jason doesn’t show up and it makes her self-conscious that she’s not attractive enough to get the attention of a supernatural killing machine.  That’s probably not okay anymore but I think that was in 1998 so I’ll forgive myself on your behalf. 

Anyway, Jason shows up and nudity 2-shoes dodges the machete attack and after falling off a balcony onto a coffee table she springs away like a gazelle.  At some point she wraps herself in a towel because as we learned from Zombieland no one wants to see a naked woman running full speed. 

Jason chases after her and she leads him into a trap where a small army of FBI dudes shoot Jason to pieces with an illogically wide array of firearms.  Also they appear to be in each other’s line of fire, but whatever.  Dudes even quick-rope down trees with assault rifles to get in on the action.  And then the pièce de résistance, after shooting Jason several hundred times the FBI guys all hit the deck and they finish him off with a mortar attack.

This is awesome.  But it also does what any great film does, it makes us think.  What did the FBI know about Jason?  And what does that imply?  Some people (you know the type) have tried to say that the FBI was just going after a serial killer, but to them I say – you don’t have small artillery  weapons for close fire support at the ready to blow up a serial killer.  Even in the 90’s you’d get in a lot of trouble for that.  To me this clearly indicates that they knew they were dealing with something supernatural. 

I submit that the FBI had collected all the details of the many times Jason has been dealt “fatal” wounds and shook them off, and the times that he had “died” and come back.  And based on this they decided to try some good old fashioned heavy firepower.  Let’s blow this fucker up with a mortar and see what happens. 

So, we have to wonder, is this the first time the FBI acknowledges and deals with a supernatural threat?  If not was there a special unit that deals with that kind of thing?  This is what I need to know more about.  Has there been some FBI agent out there (Mulder?) for 20 years trying to get attention to this Jason Vorhees thing and someone finally paid attention to him? 

Or was the FBI supernatural kill unit born after the federal raid on Innsmouth, Massachusetts in 1928?  These are the questions I want answered.  Were the people that killed Jason (he came back don’t worry) working on a pill to protect teenagers from Freddie Kruger and other dream masters?  Were they trying to figure out a way to harness the power of the Hellrasier dimension to create portal that would generate unlimited free clean energy?  Did they have a Chucky operation in the works? 

The Chucky angle is especially interesting.  Eddie Caputo is a serial killer who manages to voodoo throw his soul into a doll.  I have to assume the FBI was already on his trail since they deal with serial killers, and the information that voodoo can throw souls around is something that it seems like they would be interested in.  Not very PC since voodoo is a real religion, but what can you do?  If not Innsmouth maybe the FBI magic division came sprang from the Chucky case and they started recruiting people with knowledge of African diaspora religions to build their new squad. 

And what about the army?  When they heard about Jason did they want to learn his secrets so they could build an army of nigh-invulnerable Jason-like soldiers to take out the Russians?  Did the FBI have to work against them as well to prevent that horrific dabbling?  What did POTUS have to say about it?  What about the Supreme Court?  Does the Bill of Rights extend to supernatural entities?  Does Jason have civil rights? 

But that’s not even the most interesting question raised by Jason 9.  The real story I want to know is what the heck is going on with Creighton Dukes?   

So Dukes goes out to Camp Crystal Lake as a teen and Jason murders his girlfriend so he dedicates his life to learning about how to defeat him.  Uh, excuse me?  How does one study Jason?  Where does that information come from?  Is there a Jason section in the library I don’t know about? 

And why does he break that dorky dude’s fingers as “payment” for telling him what the hell is going on?  Is he magic and he draws power from pain?  He later produces a magic dagger that is the only way to kill Jason.  I submit that he’s a magic man and he made that dagger.  His girlfriend was murdered and he traveled the world Dr. Strange style looking for true magic and he found it.  And now he lives in an armored compound and has brought in six serial killers as a bounty hunter.  I want to know more about this dude. 

He tells Jessica Kimble that she’s the only one who can kill Jason because she’s actually Jaon’s niece.  How would he know that?  Because he’s the one who did the magic on the dagger of course.  It all makes sense. 

And while we’re on the subject of the Kimbles, Diana Kimble is Jason’s half-sister, the daughter of Elias Voorhees.  We don’t know much about Elias Vorhees, but we do know that he’s “far more evil than Jason” and he was killed by Momma Vorhees for beating Jason.  Oh, and we know that his great-great-great-grandfather was a warlock who was maybe burned alive when girls started going missing in Salem Massachusetts. 

So Diana is the daughter of this dude and whom?  And how did it all go down?  Does she really not know the deal?  She was hanging around Crystal Lake working at a diner, can that be coincidence?  Was there waiting for the day the dude with the magic dagger would show up so she could kill Jason?  She tells the dorky dude I mentioned before that they need to talk about Jessica.  She’s killed before she can give much exposition but that implies that she knew something about what was going on.  Is she magic too?  Was her mother a witch?  Did she specifically seek out Elias to get pregnant because he knew that only a Vorhees could kill Jason and she was getting the bloodline going for that specific purpose?  I need to know. 

OOC – Find a crew, find a job, keep flying

If I don’t get sick of writing this blog or die, someday I’ll do a sci-fi Ela story.  I heard 5 Parsecs from Home was pretty cool so I preordered the 3rd edition a while back.  Several weeks after it was released and everyone else bought a copy in stores, I got my pre-order copy.  I’m not bitter about it. 

I haven’t gotten into it too much but on first glace it seems pretty dope.  To the interest of no-one, here’s what this future sci-fi story crew might look like 5 Parsecs style.

We start of course with Ela, who will be a baseline human because that’s what she is.  Her background will be Peaceful High-Tech Colony because I want her to have +1 Savvy.  Savvy is basically a catch all for everything you do that’s not combat, kind of a mix of wit and charm and skillfulness.  Her motivation will be REVENGE because Duke Eaglevane must die no matter what the genre – this is the Ela singularity.  Her class will be Artist.  

Next up we have her not-faithful not-sidekick Martialla.  She’ll be a mutant which means her background is automatically Lower Class Megacity, which sounds about right for the Ela-Martialla relationship pattern.  I don’t want her motivation to be the same as Ela’s and there is no rescue my relative option so I rolled and got Survival.  Works for me.  Her class is Starship Crew since she’s traditionally an able sea(wo)man. 

Then we have faithful trustworthy old Blue.  He will be a Stalker because they’re blue aliens.  No other reason.  His background is Military Outpost because that’s his thing.  His Motivation is Loyalty.  Does Ela deserve his loyalty?  Sometimes more than others.  His class is Soldier. 

That’s it for our old stand-bys so let’s get into some random generation.  A 5 Parsecs crew is six people normally. 

First up we got a Bot.  That’s it, bots don’t roll for anything else, they’re just bots.  I shall call the bot Enhanced Learning Android or E.L.A.  The backstory is that Ela found an old C3-PO in a trash heap and fixed it up to be her handmaiden, (not) human shield, and general helper.  Not 3 Laws Safe at all. 

Next up I roll an ‘Oddity’ and rolling again on the oddity chart we get Emo-Suppressed.  This is not your niece who doesn’t have any money to go to Hot Topic, they’re someone who’s been nerved stapled to get rid of emotion beyond those needed for survival.  Because of this motivation is automatically Survival.  Rolling I get a background of War-Torn Hellhole and a class of Troubleshooter.  No need to get fancy here, this guy was clearly a special ops dude on murder planet 8000 and he didn’t want to feel anything anymore so when he got out of there he had them Eternal Sunshine him.  I shall call him Spock. Death Spock.  No, Doc. 

For our last crewmember I once again get Oddity and Emo-Suppressed, sometimes procedural generation gives you a lot to work with sometimes it doesn’t. Rolling a background of Giant Overcrowded Dystopia City and a class of Scientist.  It’s tempting to have the two emos have a shared background but I’m going to pass.  I’ll say that this person was trying to use science to un-dystopia their home and in desperation to be better at science to save the world underwent a treatment to enhance their logic that had the side effect of snuffing out their emotes.  When they didn’t have feelings anymore they realized that they didn’t care about helping their city anymore.  Backfired!  She shall be called Valeris.

Origin of the group is that Ela hired everyone and their “reputation” is Starport Scum.  Going through the gear isn’t that interesting (unlike the rest of this, zing!)  so I’ll just touch on a couple equipment things.  I rolled an AI companion which will be the Extended Linguistics Algorithm or E.L.A – the hilarious mix-up dialog practically writes itself! 

The gear doesn’t have to be assigned to anyone, it’s all mish-mash mix’em up but based on the rolls in order Emo man #1 got a boarding saber and a blade for weapons which I’m going to stick with.  This dude was nucking futs on the battlefield of his warzone/home, running around twin-swording it like there was no tomorrow.  Even though is brain has been stamped the rage still lurks below and his swords call out for blood.

I don’t know yet if the rules allow for double pistolero action but I gave Ela both the beam pistols I rolled anyway because that’s a total Ela move.  One of them has a laser sight.  Pew-pew!  That’s the mic and if you don’t hear her she’s got a back-up mic, know what I mean?  She has also the cyber-arm because robot arms are totally SCI-FI. 

So we have Ela and her quest for vengance, one person who’s loyal to her, a robot that obeys her, and three people that have no ambition beyond survival.  That does sound like a crew Ela would assemble – no reason to get things all confused with other people having their own hopes and dreams.  Good work random die rolls!

Normally you roll for a ship as well but if/when I ever actually work on this I’m going to go with the no ship option because that fits in with the standard “Ela” has been left for dead in an unpleasant place.  Speaking of let’s roll for the starting planet and we get Ice World.  Perfect.  Ela has been stranded on Hoth and has to find a way off world to get on the trail of that dastardly Duke Eaglevane. 

OOC – Bonus buffoonery

I saw Kelly LeBrock at Quiznos the other day and it got me to thinking about Weird Science.  I wondered if they ever explained what was going on there.  I went back and read the plot synopsis and no, they do not explain anything. 

Two super gross disgusting nerds write a computer program and all of a sudden it “comes alive” and is a sexy lady?  There’s no way to make sense of that right?  At the time the movie came out that was probably true, but with our modern advantages the explanation is easy.  Weird Science is a prequel to the Matrix. 

After the first installment, what the hell is going on in the Matrix becomes violently unclear but a couple things seem to be established.  One – there have been many versions of the Matrix before.  Two – the entire savior concept is part of the program.  As I remember it, which is poorly probably because I never saw the third movie and I was barely paying attention to the second because it sucked, they implied (or maybe stated outright) that NEO was just the latest of many “The Ones” who came around whenever the Matrix was getting old and outdated and his job was to create a big hub-bub and wipe everything out so they could start fresh with a new version.  NEO was an automated job designed to tear down a server that was getting old and crusty so a new one could be spun up based on the gold image. 

When Lisa shows up in the “real world” and has unexplained magic powers, specifically powers that allow her to manipulate other people – freezing the geezers (good band name, sidenote) turning Chett into a monster, Jedi mind-fudging the bouncer at the dive bar, etc.  Powers that can be explained if the movie takes place inside the Matrix and she’s a proto-NEO, who as you may remember, was able to manipulate the Matrix (aka “reality”) from the inside. 

Lisa’s powers are more mature than NEO’s in the beginning and there’s a reason for that.  NEO was a real dude in a tube who had “lived” as a Matrix avatar for a good while.  It’s never explained how the different versions of the Matrix work but it’s possible that he had lived many lives before that one in the Matrix as well.  Point being he had a lot of baggage to get over before he could break free of constraints that he thought existed. 

Lisa on the other hand is purely a program, ergo she never had any limitations of scope in her “brain”.  She started doing “magic” stuff right off the bat because she was never trained to believe that she couldn’t.  One day she was just there. 

In order for the Matrix to exist, it has to have some point where it intersects with the real world.  The program has to be running on something.  I submit to you that in Weird Science when the two gross disgusting nerds hack into the “government computers” to give their sexy lady program more power what they really did was touch the OS behind the Matrix.  The robots saw their program and thought “now this is interesting” so they made it into an avatar to see what would happen. 

Now, you may be saying “But Jeremy, a program in the Matrix that can manipulate other programs?  That sounds more like Agent Smith than NEO.”

Good eye, because what I believe is that Lisa is the earliest version of both NEO as a concept and the Agents literally. 

At the end of Weird Science, Lisa embarks on a journey to use her magic powers to help other gross filthy disgusting smelly ugly nerds bang cheerleaders.  She was built to help people out.  In an awful 80’s kind of way, but still she was basically altruistic.  So she goes around on various adventures helping various revolting stinking trash-eating insect-like nerds get laid for several iterations.  Eventually with her magic powers she’s going to catch on to the fact that she’s in a simulation. 

But from inside the Matrix, what can she do about it?  As we’ve established there has to be some connection point between the two – the machines are presumably better at security than we are so they probably don’t have unprotected S3 buckets out there but if the program is running, it has some way to reach back the other way.  You can’t touch something without it touching you back. 

So Lisa starts futzing around trying to wake people up in their pods in the real world.  Now, I believe that it was implied (if not outright stated) that NEO and all his Zion buddies were actually still in the Matrix the whole time.  No one ever escaped, it was just another part of the Matrix where you got to think you escaped and “fight back” against the machines and go on fun adventures and have sex with Carrie Anne Moss after super long cave-raves.  When Lisa starting messing about, that’s probably when the machines came up with this idea.  Let’s create a new “level” to the Matrix as a pressure valve of sorts.  We’re going to keep doing this forever, eventually there’s going to be a glitch and some of the avatars are going to figure out the deal so let’s make that part of the story. 

Whenever “The One” comes around and starts breaking the rules, we’ll send in a couple Agent Smiths based on the Lisa program to murder them up.  If they get The One, fine,  that means the system is still good and we stay the course, but if The One “wins” then that means it’s time to upgrade the drivers so we run the “you escape the Matrix” program and then tear down and build a new version.   

In other 80s news, to get back into the swing of things with Ela, I watched the Road Warrior the other day and I realized that the people in white football pads are real assholes for blowing up the refinery when they left. 

Mad Max is a world of scarcity and the whities destroyed a working refinery just to kill the homoerotic marauders?  That goes way beyond cutting off your nose to spite your face.  Granted we never find out what’s going on in the “Promised Land” so maybe the refinery isn’t the last one in the world (they do mention Gastown in Fury Road) but it’s certainly massively valuable to all of humanity.  Blowing it up just so someone else can’t have it is a dick move. 

It’s like in the Walking Dead when Negan burns all the mattresses.  That to me is the worst thing anyone did in that whole show.  All the people killed, that’s bad, but you can make more people.  There are no more mattresses ever.  The mattress factories are gone and they’re never coming back. 

And that’s my pitch for a new Purple Mattress ad campaign.

OOC – Rat-shack update

I just mowed the lawn and a rabbit just sat there in the grass staring at me. Even when I came at it with the mower it wouldn’t move. It did eventually run away but it was like it knew. Like it was saying “You can’t even handle a mouse. I’m a hundred times bigger than a mouse. You can’t do shit to me.”

I’ve lost the respect of the animal kingdom. Soon voles will be slapping me around and taking my lunch money. I need to break bad with the animals to get back some respect. Maybe I should move to Japan and join a whaling crew.

Remember that episode of the X-Files where the guy who speaks German for no reason and is giving women lobotomies with an ice pick screams at a captive Scully (actually the demons he thinks are controlling her) “I AM ON TO YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!” It was like that.

I rewatched the X-Files fairly recently I had forgotten how many episodes were Scully gets kidnapped and Mulder has to save her.

OOC – Letters from the rat-shack

Remember on the Simpsons when Art Spiegelman put on a mask to fight crime and boldly declared “Maus is in the house!”  I do. 

Remember the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the gang (minus Charlie) is trying to catch a rat but instead they end up huffing gas and watching Tom and Jerry cartoons?  I do.  Sometimes in Tom and Jerry they would bring in a dog character to abuse Jerry as well.  I wonder what its name was. 

Last week when I was doing some yard work a mouse sneaked in the back door.  I put out some humane traps which appear to be useless.  Friday I built a bucket trap and twice now the mouse has triggered it without falling in the bucket.  Either it’s a very acrobatic mouse or I need a wider bucket. 

Friday morning I saw it peeking at me from behind the bookcase.  Which would have been cute if I didn’t hate it.  Which I do.

My old blog had about a thousand followers.  And a lot of them actually read it (sometimes).  If I asked them for mouse advice there would have been a lot of it and most of it would have been annoying.  Is it mansplaining when it’s two men or is that only man on woman action?  Must be the latter because otherwise that’s just being a jerkstore right? 

I suppose when you’re giving advice, you have to assume the person you’re talking to is an idiot.

Case and point I saw some reviews where people were giving 1-star ratings of a mousetrap and they’d post a video to show how crappy it was and instead they weren’t using it right – of course the mouse walked right out, you had the top open GGGyellow856!  How did you think it was going to do anything like that?  It was a good reminder that product reviews are largely pointless (like humane traps).

I’m not asking for advice now either but I shouldn’t say to myself that it’s because no one reads this blog because a couple people do read it.  Thanks couple people.   There’s a new episode of Heels tonight.  I’m excited about that.  Maybe the mouse and I can watch it together while it gives me the hanta virus. 

PS – It is a mouse and not rat, that’s just a “funny” title. If there was a rat in here I’d burn the house to the ground.

OOC – Bonus buffooneries

WordPress is 42% of the internet I hear.  Of that 42%, 80% is reviewing (mostly complaining) about Marvel movies.  Never let it be said that I don’t conform.  Since a couple new Marvel movies have come out lately, Longtail Turtle and I had to update our rankings.  I figured I’d compare and throw in the rankings from Rotten Tomatoes as well.

Iron Man

My rank – 13

LTT rank – 9

Tomato rank – 2

We’re pretty close to each other but off the norm.  It’s a good movie for sure but I’m shocked that it’s reckoned the second best Marvel movie.  It’s pretty good for the first two acts.  The ending is a strong “meh”.  There’s something about two robots punching each other that doesn’t do much for me.  And why introduce the 10 Rings and then not have them be the end villain? 

Incredible Hulk

My rank – 22

LTT rank – 22 (yay, the same!)

Tomato rank – 24

No one likes this one.  It’s not terrible, it’s just not good.  I’m not sure the Hulk is a good character for storytelling.  I loved the Hulk as a kid probably for the same reason a lot of kids go through a dinosaur phase – when you have no power of anything it’s fun to think about a giant beast that smashes everything.  What would a good Hulk movie be?  Two hours of Hulk smashing shit?  I’m not sure you can do anything with the Hulk.  When he’s Bruce Banner his whole thing is not turning into the Hulk, which is what we want.  And when he’s the Hulk, nothing is a threat to him. 

Iron man 2

My rank – 7

LTT rank – 5

Tomato rank – 23

Whoa.  I knew people didn’t love this movie but the general public says it’s almost as bad as Thor Dark World?  That’s bonkers to me.  There’s another robot fight at the end, which is lame, but other than that what’s so bad about this movie?  Hammer is entertaining and I like Vanko as an enemy.  Sidenote LTT hates the Pepper Potts character.  I guess she is only there to be Tony’s love interest but as far as love interest characters go, I think she’s good.

Thor

My rank – 24

LTT rank – 23

Tomato rank – 21

Alignment here, this movie is lame.  Another one without a real antagonist.  Seems like they were real coy with having villains in these early movies.  I wonder why.  But then Thor doesn’t really have any classic enemies other than Loki.  Although in my mind Enchantress is Thor’s archnemesis, maybe because I read the wrong comics.  I can see why they don’t do anything with her though since she’s a magic trickster just like Loki.  Samesies!

Captain American – The First Avenger

My rank – 21

LTT rank – 7

Tomato rank – 18

This movie is okay before Steve gets the Super-Soldier serum, and the scene right after it is great.  Then it’s weak.  Also, how long was that montage supposed to be?  It seemed like Captain America was in WW2 for like a week but was it supposed to be longer?  Is there even a montage?  Am I remembering that right?  Red Skull was disappointing. 

THE Avengers

My rank – 16

LTT rank – 6

Tomato rank – 8

The actual title of this movie is Marvel’s The Avengers, I wonder if that’s because of the Uma Thurman Avengers movie.  I guess I’m on the outside on this one.  This movie was just kind of blah for me.  The opening scene is pretty cool and then it’s you know, whatever.  The Chitari are lame, the “double-cross” of SHIELD making weapons is lame, Coulson dying to bring them together is lame. 

It’s not fair to judge like this but I will anyway, after the rest of the movies came out this one makes no sense.  Thanos gave Loki the Mind Stone so he could go to earth and get the Space Stone?  Why would he do that?  Were all his loyal minions busy?  Why would he trust Loki?  Also he just saw Captain Marvel blow up an entire Kree warfleet, what did he think some lame-os on hoverboards were going to accomplish?  The space whales were cool.

Iron Man 3

My rank – 11

LTT rank – 19

Tomato rank – 19

I think people were pretty mad about the Mandarin fake out.  That was probably one twist too many.  Also it was kind of a throwaway of AIM.  Maybe this would have been better if it was just “we’re AIM and we’re doing AIM shit” without the fake terrorist threat.  Also I can’t remember now, what was the point of that?  So they could sell Extremis?  I think you could have sold that just fine without a fake terror threat.  If it worked.  I guess this movie is kind of a mess, but I liked the Tony without a suit stuff and the kid was funny.

Thor The Dark World

My rank – 24

LTT rank – 25

Tomato rank – 25

Yeah, that’s right, I say there’s a Marvel movie worse than this one.  What I find interesting is that no one seems to remember what actually happened in this movie but they still hate it.  Several people have told me that have no memory of the plot.  I remember that some red stuff goes into Natalie Sportsman and that red stuff is one of the Infinity Stones.  And there are Dark Elfs. 

TV Loki told me that this movie is where Loki accidentally (?) kills his adopted momma.  Which seems important.  I wonder what a good Thor movie would be.  Something with Beta Ray Bill probably.

Captain America The Winter Soldier

My rank – 2

LTT rank – 8

Tomato rank – 9

I like that this is in the top 10 but I clearly enjoy it more than most.  I’ll admit that “oh, it turns out SHIELD was HYDRA all along” is kind of lame but otherwise it’s fantastic.  The only thing that would have made it better is if Nick Fury had really died.  But no one dies in comic book land.  Sidenote I was reading some old comics the other day and as always happens I was surprised to see a white Nick Fury.  Sam Jackson has become Nick Fury so hard that’s all I can think of.  Sorry David Hasselhoff.  I would have liked to have seen them sneak the Hoff into a SHIELD part somewhere.

Guardians of the Galaxy

My rank – 1

LTT rank – 2

Tomato rank – 5

This movie made me feel like when I saw Star Wars for the first time.  It was awesome and it made me feel awesome.  If you want to nitpick you can, some of Peter’s quips make no sense since he left earth when he was a kid, and the “we’re family now even though we’ve known each other for 2 days” thing isn’t super strong, but it’s great anyway.  I hate 3D but one of the many times I saw this in the theater I went to see it in 3D because I wanted glowing Groot spores all around me.  Wonderful.

Avengers Age of Ultron

My rank – 5

LTT rank – 20

Tomato rank – 22

Another big WHOA.  I didn’t think people disliked this movie this much.  It’s worse than Thor?  I know people didn’t like the opening scene which is weird to be because it’s the only time the Avengers are really doing Avengers stuff.  It made me feel like they went on all kinds of adventures we didn’t see in the movies.  I really liked Ultron as a villain. 

What didn’t people like about it?  I’ve heard that people don’t like it when heroes fight big hordes of robots because they want real people to get slaughtered by the hundreds by the good guys.  I will say that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are kind of pointless.  Would people like it more without them?  Maybe Iron Man 3 should have been Iron Man against AIM and the twins who are totally not Magneto’s kids because they don’t have the rights.  Except now they do?  So maybe they are?

Ant-Man

My rank – 20

LTT rank – 17

Tomato rank – 16

It takes me a minute to remember what happened in this movie.  Yellowjacket.  What did Pym want his technology to be used for it not military murder?  What are the practical applications of shrinking?  Fantastic Voyage surgery?  Exterminators that go into the walls with lasers instead of having to use poison?  Because of when I was into comics the Wasp and Ant-Man are founding members of the Avengers and the newfangled version where they’re just people hanging around is weird.  Paul Rudd is likeable of course but it’s all pretty mediocre. 

Captain America Civil War

My rank – 17

LTT rank – 21

Tomato rank – 10

Huh, I guess people at large liked this a lot more than we did.  I’m not sure why it wasn’t Avengers Civil War.  I guess Spider-Man showing up was a cool.  It’s hard for me not to think that Cap isn’t being unreasonable in this movie, which is not how I like to think of Captain American being.  The Avengers should be above the law and do whatever they want?  That doesn’t sound right.  And the whole thing with Bucky killing Howard Stark doesn’t do much for me.  For that matter the whole Baron Zemo thing doesn’t work for me. 

Doctor Strange

My rank – 10

LTT rank – 15

Tomato rank – 12

Dormammu I’ve come to bargain.  Is Mordo ever going to show up again?  I hope so.  One time in the comics Blade and Dr. Strange teamed up to cast a spell to kill all vampires.  But then the spell was reversed.  There’s a Dr. Strange action figure that comes with a big battle axe, you know because of all the times Dr. Strange attacks people with an axe.  This movie was good.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 

My rank – 25

LTT rank – 24

Tomato rank – 14

This movie is garbage and I hate it.  Rocket is a super asshole for no reason.  Drax is FUCKING ANNOYING the entire movie.  All the Ravager stuff is stupid.  All the dad stuff is literally groan inducing.  Ego the Living Planet is dumb.  They set up Adam Warlock, aka the guy who beats Thanos for the Infinity Stones, and then did nothing with him.  Mantis is okay. 

Do I judge this movie too harshly because I loved the first one and I was so excited for this one and I never get excited and then they threw this turd in my face?  Probably.  Still I cannot fathom that many people this this is a middle of the pack Marvel movie. 

Spider-Man Homecoming

My rank – 6

LTT rank – 13

Tomato rank – 6

Donald Glover has a funny bit in his stand-up special about when there was some talk about him being Spider-Man.  I’m not a huge Spider-Man fan in general but this movie is perfect for Spider-Man.  The only thing I don’t like about it is when Peter is all “school is for losers, I’m a superhero!”  That doesn’t seem very Peter Parkery to me.  I love that they didn’t waste our time with an origin story.  I love that Vulture is actually cool for once. 

Thor Ragnarok

My rank – 4

LTT rank – 3

Tomato rank – 4

Alignment, this movie will Ragnarok your face off.  I asked how you could make a good Thor movie before, and a good Hulk movie, I guess the answer is make Plane Hulk into a movie and then replace the Silver Surfer with Thor.  Although I am bummed that they didn’t do the bit from the comic where Iron Man and Dr. Strange shot Hulk into space because they were sick of his bullshit.  I suppose that would have been too cold for the MCU.  It would have been cool if they spent less time on Asgard and instead had another gladiator fight or two with some other Marvel characters but you can’t have everything.

Black Panther

My rank – 14

LTT rank – 12

Tomato rank – 1

Major WHOA.  The world at large says this is the best Marvel movie?  It was fine.  Killmonger was cool.  Throwing in Klaw and then killing him seemed kind of pointless.  The guy from Fargo seemed totally pointless.  All in all not a lot happened in this movie.  The last scene was cool where Killmonger choses to die. 

Avengers Infinity War

My rank – 3

LTT rank – 10

Tomato rank – 15

This is shocking to me.  The general populace says there are 14 Marvel movies better than Infinity War?  This movie kicks ass.  Stuff happens!  People die (temporarily)!  Am I supposed to believe that the lame original recipe Avengers was better than this?   And Civil War?  And Ant-Man + WASP?  This is crazy.  Infinity War is great.  I still watch it sometimes. 

Ant-Man and the Wasp

My rank – 18

LTT rank – 14

Tomato rank – 13

It’s better than Ant-Man.  There are some funny parts.  The guy from Justified is there and he’s basically playing Hammer from Iron Man 2 so that’s fun.  Ghost is there for some reason.  Do they cure her at the end?  Maybe.  They rescue the original Wasp from Quantumtown I remember that.  The best part is the point credit scene where Paul Rudd is in the Quantum Realm and everyone else gets dusted and you’re like “oh man, how is he gonna get out of this one?!”

Captain Marvel

My rank – 9

LTT rank – 16

Tomato rank – 20

I throw out LTT’s score for this one because she thinks Alison Brie runs like a mutant and it’s all she can see.  I remember when this movie came out lots of people were real mad because a girl was a superhero and girls are gross.  I really liked it.  The Skrull being not the bad guys was a fun twist.  Not sure about it in the long run.  I would have liked a little something in the dialog to explain why there are pink and blue Kree.  For that matter I would have liked to see more super Kree.  I listened to a podcast where some non-woman haters really tore this movie apart so I guess lots of people didn’t like it.

Avengers Endgame

My rank – 15

LTT rank – 1

Tomato rank – 3

The fact that most people say this is one of the best Marvel movies freaks my funk.  I understand that there’s no stakes in any of the Marvel movies, but this is the one where I can’t even pretend anything is on the line.  Of course they’re going to defeat Thanos and of course they’re going to bring everyone back to life.  Not only that but they already have the ultimate plot cheating device in the infinity gauntlet and then they throw in TIME TRAVEL on top?  Why not just have Superman show up and make the world spin backwards while you’re at it? 

The one scene where Steve is all messed up and then everyone shows up to help him is cool, but then it’s followed by a 40 minute CGI barf-fest.  And then Thanos is all like “I’ll just destroy all life this time” because of reasons?  Two Nebulas is cool, but that’s about it.  And that Ronin stuff with Clint?  Utterly pointless.

Spider-Man Far From Home

My rank – 19

LTT rank – 18

Tomato rank – 11

It’s fine.  Since “everyone” knows that Mysterio is a bad guy it would have been cool if he actually was a hero from another dimension.  Also it would have been cool if they illusions he made to defeat and look like a hero weren’t lame elementals.  Meh.

Black Widow

My rank – 8

LTT rank – 4

Tomato rank – 17

People were mad about this one because not only was the main character a gross girl but there were other girls in it!  And Taskmaster was a girl!  They were real upset about that.  I guess the good news for them is that Scar-Jo has been excommunicated from the MCU so Black Widow may really be dead for real.  J/K, they’ll recast her.  Do you think they added in the first part just because of the Americans?  I kind of do. 

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

My rank – 12

LTT rank – 11

Tomato rank – 7

Pretty good.  For me it didn’t really do anything to resolve the fake Mandarin 10 Rings thing.  Also the rings themselves weren’t like I remember from the comic.  I remember really thinking the Mandarin was cool as a kid but apparently he’s a hugely racist caricature so I guess I’m a monster.  Tag-along Awkwafina character comedy relief didn’t do much for me, I would have ditched her and given more time to the sister and her criminal shenanigans.  Much like with Thor arena I would have liked to have seen a couple other Marvel character fights.  Maybe I just want to see Enter the Dragon with super people?