The Bourne Legacy

The Bourne series is another one of those 21st century film franchises that I don't think actually has any true fans.  Its not to say that the Bourne movies do not represent a collection of decent action movies, because they do, its just saying that nobody is exactly emotionally invested in the fate of "The Bourne Legacy".  Its just like the "Mission: Impossible" films, they're all more or less solid entertainment, but will they ever become pillars of pop culture?  Nope.  Are their rabid Bourne fans out there crying "BETRAYAL!" at the replacement of Matt Damon for the star?  I really hope not.  As for me, I don't even remember most of the stuff that happens in the first three Bourne movies, I think I saw them out of order, and I can't for the life me remember if I saw "The Bourne Supremacy" or not.  I do remember though that Matt Damon kicks Clive Owen's ass in one movie, which is bullshit, Clive Owen could totally take Matt Damon.  Anyway, as it turns out I didn't have to worry about being lost in "Bourne 4", since this movie has almost nothing to do with the first three.

So "Bourne 4" from the start is a low-impact action movie that I was mostly bullied into seeing.  I say "bullied" because EVERY movie I have seen in the last six months has had a damn trailer for "The Bourne Legacy".  ALL OF THEM.  I think they even snuck a "Bourne Legacy" trailer into "Brave".  I was thinking:  "Come on, Hollywood!  I really don't think this movie is really worth my time."  Then I saw five more movies, and then I finally I gave up.  "Alright, fine, Hollywood, I'll go see your friggin' Jeremy Renner action movie.  But you owe me now.  You better find a way to make Guillermo del Toro's 'At the Mountains of Madness' movie*, or else you're sleeping on the couch tonight, film industry."  So then I went to see the movie, and it was a perfectly serviceable action movie.  Now I want my "Mountains at Madness", goddammit.

If you're really deeply into the Jason Bourne adventures, you'll probably be unhappy with "Bourne 4".  But since I don't believe that population actually exists, its otherwise a finely-tuned action film that is slightly above mediocre.  There is really only the most tangential connection to the Bourne movies, and I think the movie is stretched overly long because of wasting the first hour showing off its Jason Bourne credentials - when Matt Damon does not appear once in this entire movie.  So while the Bourne logo might help with advertising, it hurts the final production.  They should have called this "Jeremy Renner: Supersoldier" and it would have been slightly better... but still this was never going to be a classic.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Trailer

So "Final Fantasy XIV".  Um... Not exactly Final Fantasy's strongest moment, was it?  Yeah...  If there were any people left believing that the Final Fantasy series was just as strong as ever, FFXIV broke their spirits pretty quickly, and I don't think FFXIII-2 has done much to win back the crowd.  Anyway, I mostly ignored FFXIV as soon as it was announced, since its an MMO, and I don't play MMOs.  That's not my thing, and it never will be.  Even when the game was released and turned out to be the biggest turd in history, I didn't play it, I didn't really comment on it, and I let the entire miserable event pass right by.  However, Square Enix wisely decided that they weren't going to simply roll over and lose millions of dollars, so they fired the old team and set to work saving FFXIV.  Here's the new trailer:

So I don't know about anybody else, but that looks ROCKING.  Now, obviously I'm not convinced enough to actually go out and buy a copy of FFXIV, there is absolutely no room in my life for an MMO, I still got to play "Chrono Cross", "Xenogears", "The Last Story", "Terranigma", "Mystic Quest", and "Pokemon Black Version", along with finishing "The Last Remnant" and then somewhere in that huge ass-storm I need to have a life.  But still, this is one of the coolest looking trailers Square Enix has released in years.  This is what a PS3 AAA Final Fantasy game should look like, and sadly... its wasted on a damn MMO.  What a shame.

Chrono Cross Part 1

"Chrono Cross" is probably going to be the single most troublesome game I've had to review.  Last week I was ready to just savage this thing with a hammer, saw off its limbs, and kick it into the tallest Martian volcano I could find.  Because there a crap load wrong with "Chrono Cross":  its battle system is a pitiful mess of bad ideas, there are too many friggin' characters and most of them suck - both in terms of raw fighting ability and the fact almost none of them are developed, and as a sequel to "Chrono Trigger", this is a huge insult.  "Chrono Trigger" was probably the best-made JRPG ever made.  I mean, its so good that I can't even make up a coherent sentence describing it.  Its battle system, its storyline, its characters, all were just perfection, nothing felt unnecessary, nothing felt tacked-on, it was all engineering balance, design perfection.  And as for this game, its a mess.

BUT - that's a big "but", its in all caps - "Chrono Cross" is not quite the hideous failure I thought it would be.  Actually I think I have enough energy to go all the way and finish this thing.  Because as bad as the ideas are around "Chrono Cross"'s battle system, its still something of a very interesting game.  I mean, the game doesn't work, but its something of an admirable failure.  I can respect a game like "Final Fantasy VIII" on some level because even though the Junctioning system was confusing as all Hell, it was at least an experimental attempt at innovation*, if still a huge mistake.  More importantly, "Chrono Cross" is a beautiful game, perhaps the single prettiest game on the old PlayStation.  You can tell with every location and every character that a lot of work was put in.  And yeah, the storyline is inferior, but it is still an epic RPG adventure that keeps you engaged as to whats going to happen next.  Ultimately it really helps when you stop comparing this game to "Chrono Trigger" and just try to enjoy the wonderful scenery and excellent soundtrack.

What we have here is a game form the Golden Age of Square.  Back in the PlayStation era, Square was making all kinds of innovative experimental RPGs, like this, FFVIII, "Xenogears", "Parasite Eve", and "Vagrant Story".  Since then the now Square Enix has been riding on endless cheap mediocre Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest spin-offs**, then they whored out Kingdom Hearts like you'd never believed, and lately has gotten even lazier in that now most of its games are actually made by Eidos.  "Final Fantasy XIII-2" is my Exhibit A for why we should appreciate games like "Chrono Cross", because while that's a failure for being lazy, completely recycled, and then left it all on a cliffhanger so they could sell more crap like DLC, this is a failure because director Misato Kato and his team simply had too many creative ideas.  There was too much love put into this game, too many things to deal with, and the final product is something of a mess.  So its a failure, but a remarkable failure, I feel.

Piranha 3DD

Just how low is the lowest common denominator?  "Piranha 3DD" (pronounced "three-double-D") is the one movie that dares to find to answer.

"Piranha 3D" probably remains the best monster movie of this current decade, being exactly what a monster movie should be:  fun, gory, silly, and full of bare boobs.   This is the movie that brought up the underwater nude lesbian sex scene, remember.  And its also the movie that brings us the sight of hundreds of idiot spring break kids getting eaten by fish with great gruesome effects.  It had a great cast, funny scenes, and just a perfect sense of unserious fun that Michael Bay wishes he could achieve.  A true return to proper 80s horror movies, unlike the CG gore crap that has devoured the entire horror world.  It even managed to use the 3D gimmick properly, making "Piranha 3D" the only horror remake to be better than the original.  So obviously there would be a sequel, and "Piranha 3DD" is that movie.  Weirdly, however, this got the most bizarrely limited release, coming out in only one hundred theaters around the country, and just one in my entire state.  So this review would have come out earlier, but sadly I couldn't see this in theaters.

Anyway, the big question:  is "Piranha 3DD" any good?  Well, right off the bat, its not as good as the first one.  This is probably going to be a short review because its really a short movie and not exactly world-changing stuff.  From the start, the cast isn't nearly as good.  Adam Scott's character is dead, Jerry O'Connell's character is dead, the only survivors to come back are Christopher Lloyd and Ving Rhames, and they only have cameos, really.  Instead its just a bunch of nameless faceless horror movie twenty-somethings who are guaranteed to get killed.  So right the cream of the acting crop is wiped out.  Gary Busey opens the movie... but gets eaten immediately (though at least he dies after biting one of the piranha's head off).  The big surprise here is David Hasselhoff, playing David Hasselhoff, and teaching the giant fish to never hassle the Hoff.  The gore effects aren't nearly as good, the entire film is terribly color corrected* to blue and orange - so that means we can't have too much blood, since blood is red.  There's too much CG gore, they don't really do anything with the piranhas that we didn't see last movie, and everything is just a lot less fun.

So realizing they made a more mediocre movie, the filmmakers inserted tits everywhere.  Finally we have a movie that lives up to its "Double-D" promise.  Its at least watchable then.

Batman: Night King

We haven't had a Fanwank Corner in a while, have we?  I need to correct that.  Here's a Batman sketch:

So after writing so much on Batman that I could probably publish all of those posts as a short novella, eventually my mind starting swirling around this concept Batman.  Unfortunately I have this bad habit of mine that somehow when I think about something long enough that I start to formulate stories in my head.  Its an entirely uncontrollable process.  So somewhere between reading "The Dark Knight Returns" and watching Moviebob's review of this movie, I had an epiphany.  "Warner Bros should totally make a 'Batman 4' starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, man.*  It would be totally lame if they just rebooted Batman again in like 2015 in some crappy Superhero movie starring Channing Tatum or something, they should move in this new direction here."  Then somehow that idea moved into it being a "Batman Beyond" movie (which we've already done here), then somehow that idea just kept on warping until finally I had no idea what I was dealing with, but it kept on moving.  Fermenting, evolving, changing, until somehow it became this, something totally new, something cool.

A few months ago Moviebob was typically complaining about Master Nolan's influence on superhero movies he always does, he mentioned how the Nolan storyline of Batman films seemed so medieval - this part of his long running issue with Batman because he's "right-wing".  Medieval because it seemed like Gotham City was this ancestral noble territory that Bruce Wayne had inherited from his parents and that he had to step up to save it by virtual divine right.  The Nolan films treat Gotham City has the Wayne family responsibility, a burden of the ruling nobility, of which Bruce Wayne is the heir to.  It isn't merely revenge on the system of social corruption that killed his parents, its a Princely duty.  Bruce Wayne is the Prince of Gotham City, and he's fighting a war to win it back from the forces of crime and insanity.

So how about this:  make Gotham City a fallen kingdom.  And Bruce Wayne the prince of the lost dynasty.  And set it in THE FUTURE.