Offbeat Worlds

So I went and saw the Avengers on opening weekend and holy s#@%!! It was amazing! One of the best movies to come out this year! It completely earned all the money it made opening weekend, shattering box office records by bringing in a haul over over $200 million in just the first three days.

I wish I had been able to long into my website right after seeing it so I could have written up a review right then, but I have been having some website issues and couldn’t log in. And since most people have seen it already, allow me to simply highlight some of the best parts.

1) Each character got about the same amount of screen time, and I loved every single one of them. Joss Whedon created yet another kick-ass female character in Black Widow, and he gave her the most human moment in the entire film. With an entire cast of male heroes, her character stood out from the crowd and I loved her character. She’s my new favorite superhero. =D

2) The story, while simple, never got dull or boring. There were only two main battles but they were intense and full of twists and adrenaline that left me sitting on my seat wondering what was going to happen.

3) There was a casualty in the movie that I did not see coming, and it made me very sad, but at the same time I am glad they did it, because with the amount of destruction and damage in this film it would have been entirely unrealistic if everyone had made it out alive. And surprisingly it wasn’t Joss Whedon’s idea to kill the character! *cough* Wash *cough*

Those are really the main highlights of the movie, at least that I can think of right now. But I think one of the best things about this movie is what happened during opening weekend. Joss Whedon, who is always so humble even in the midst of huge success, came out on his website Whedonesque and thanked all of his fans for making the Avengers such a huge success. What an awesome guy, right? *tear*

Thank you, Joss Whedon, for being amazing, and for creating what will probably be the biggest hit film of 2012!

So last weekend, when X-Men: First Class came out, I went to the midnight showing Friday night with a couple of friends to see the movie.

I have to say, after the severe disappointment of X-Men: Last Stand and the Wolverine movie, I wasn’t sure whether I should get my hopes up for this one. The trailers looked good, no doubt about that. But then, so did the trailers for Wolverine. Trailers can be misleading.

However, I am happy to say that X-Men: First Class was not only not disappointing, it was actually really good. The characters, some of whom we’ve seen before and some we have not, had depth. There weren’t so many characters involved that the story got bogged down in trying to keep track of them all, but there were enough to show the world of the X-Men and how they get started.

Our two main characters were Charles Xavier, played by James McAvoy, and Erik Lehnsherr, played by Michael Fassbender. James McAvoy brought a very interesting twist to the class Professor X character we’re used to seeing Patrick Stewart portraying. Xavier was a recent graduate of college, a young man with a huge interest in genetics and a bit of a party-boy side to him. Despite being a huge flirt in the bar, James McAvoy is the character who grows up in order to aid others in their growth. He essentially is the Guide for the other characters.


Erik, on the other hand, is a character with a haunting past who is still tormented by it as an adult as he tries to hunt down the man responsible for all his pain. Michael Fassbender played the man who would become Magneto with so much intensity that he really stole the show from everyone else. His struggle between his vengeance and doing the right thing is heart-breaking, especially as he learns that this very struggle is what’s keeping him from harnessing the full potential of his powers.

Xavier’s best friend, and secret admirer, is a young woman named Raven, who most of us know as the elusive Mystique. To Xavier, Raven is like a sister. But Raven wants to be more than his sister, even asking if he would date her in her true form. Raven is the mutant struggling the most out of all of them. She can hide who she is, but she doesn’t like that she has to. As the movie progresses, her desire to simply be herself becomes much stronger, so much so that she eventually sides with the one person who doesn’t want her to hide.

The main villain is Sebastian Shaw, played by Kevin Bacon. Unless you are already familiar with the comics, the movie manages to surprise you by revealing that Shaw is an extremely powerful mutant who can absorb and transform energy. That makes him rather hard to kill, and ups the stakes as you sit there wondering how in the hell our heroes are going to defeat this guy. He also carries a hand in Erik’s tormented past, which makes the whole fight personal for both of them.


There are several other characters that we are introduced to as well, including Hank McCoy AKA Beast, a young scientist with a mutation that also must be hidden, Emma Frost, a woman who can turn into solid diamond, Banshee, Darwin, Havok, Azazel, and Angel Salvadore. The movie does a fantastic job of showing their struggle to control their powers as well as themselves. They help each other, they work together, they protect each other. The movie really is about the mutant accepting not only each other, but accepting themselves as who they are. They become not only a team, but a family. The first X-Men.

This is definitely the best X-Men movie to come out in a while. There is depth and emotion in this movie that is very much absent in earlier films. But it’s not just the depth of the story that makes it good. There is humor and a lot of really fun references to things that happen to the characters later on. For instance, shortly after Charles officially becomes an Professor at his school for mutant, he says jokingly to his friend Moira MacTaggert “I suppose I am a professor now, aren’t I? Next thing you know I’ll be going bald.” The subtle references such as this only add to this movie and make it just that much better.

I definitely enjoyed this film and if you are a fan of X-Men then you definitely will too. If you’ve already seen it, please let me know what you thought in the comments.

This morning I finally finished reading the first book of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, the Gunslinger.

Now, before I get into the book, I need to clarify something. I often have a problem getting through books. It’s not that I don’t like to read, it’s not that I can’t get invested in the books, and it’s not that I have any kind of reading disability. I just have trouble remembering to pick it back up again. I could be loving a book and it will sit on my nightstand for days or even weeks at a time before I pick it up to continue again.

I suppose part of the problem is that I would just rather watch a movie or a few episode of a TV show before I go to bed.

Anyway, that said, it took me a good long while to even get invested in this book. It’s not that I didn’t like it, it was really good actually. It’s just the fact that there was so little that was clear about the characters and the setting that I felt like I didn’t know what anything looked like.

Like I said, it took me awhile to get through the book simply because I kept forgetting to pick it up, but I don’t really recall the gunslinger ever really being described. I imagined him as a tall, dark, and handsome man but so world-weary that one could barely tell he was actually good looking, and shrouded under a wide-brimmed hat and leather jacket.

I definitely know that I had no idea when or where this story was taking place until near the end of the book. I wasn’t sure it this world that Stephen King created was a mirror of earth, an alternate reality that was desolate and void of much life. Now that I’ve read the entire book I feel like I understand the setting better now.

The character of the gunslinger was extremely intriguing. He is a complex and dark character who at first seems simple. But the book slowly revealed how the gunslinger thinks and what happened in his past to shape who he is now.

I think I really started getting invested in the book when the small boy named Jake showed up. Jake was the first person that the gunslinger had come across that he didn’t view as a tool to be used and discarded. The gunslinger grew attached to the small boy. It gave him a sympathetic side that had previously been obscured in his hunt for the man in black.

The gunslinger’s obsession with chasing and killing the man in black definitely an interesting one. The gunslinger knew the man in black had magical gifts and was suspicious of everything, because he knew the man in black would set up traps for him. This paranoia was not unwarranted. Most of the time he was right.

Anyway, I really like the book and I am going to continue the series, but first I am going to reread the Harry Potter series in preparation for the release of the final movie in a couple months. This will be interesting, I haven’t read any of the books in a couple years. For shame, I know.

So on Thursday night, I went with a couple friends to the midnight premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I have been to only a handful of midnight showings, and each one has been a unique experience. This time it seemed that about 70% of the audience were Renaissance Fair goers, and their costumes were wonderful.

My friends and I also went in costume, sort of. I had a Pirates of the Caribbean shirt I had bought at Hot Topic, as well as skull and crossbones fabric tied around my head and waist. Two of my other friends wore shirts with a skull and crossbones on each (one of which I actually drew on the shirt with a silver sharpie).

We arrived very early to get good seats, and it was clear the audience was very excited for the newest installment of Jack Sparrow’s adventures. It was fun to people-watch, that’s for sure.

Finally midnight struck, and after a few entertaining previews for upcoming movies, the adventure began.

I have to say, after the suckiness of the previous two films, this one seemed to be back on course. Jack Sparrow was as wonderful as ever. He felt much more natural than in Dead Man’s Chest and At World’s End, and I think the main reason why was because the writers figured out that they didn’t need to have Jack do this extremely long-winded and confusing speeches or any of his regular catchphrases in order for him to still walk and talk like Jack. That was one of the things that irked me the most in the second and third Pirates movies. The writers were trying to hard to be true to Jack that the dialogue ended up sounding fake. Not the case in On Stranger Tides.

There were also no seriously over-the-top stunts, such as the fight on a wheel from Dead Man’s Chest. There were, obviously, a few that may have stretched believability a little bit, but not so much that it ruined the movie. The supernatural events that took place were on a smaller scale this time around too, limited mainly to the Fountain of Youth itself, the mermaids, and Blackbeard.

The acting was great, especially on Johnny Depp’s part. His reprisal of Jack Sparrow was as hilarious as ever, but with a side that we haven’t really seen from him before. I never really noticed in the previous movies, but Jack Sparrow never kills anyone, and he was very adamant about it this time around. He gave a shit. He argued when Blackbeard threatened to kill people, and was not happy when he carried out his threats. Heck, he even tried to stop an all-out battle between the Barbossa’s men and Blackbeard’s.

Penelope Cruz’s character was interesting if a little confusing. Her allegiance to Blackbeard conflicted wildly to her belief in second chances and not killing needlessly. But she made a good match for Jack Sparrow as someone who’s moves he could never predict. There was a funny moment in the movie when Jack Sparrow tries to tell Gibbs that he may have had “stirrings” for her, but Gibbs knows what he really means.

If I have any criticisms of the movie, it is that there were too many parties chasing after the Fountain of Youth for all their various reasons. The most pointless opponent was probably the Spanish. They really didn’t even need to be there, and at the end their presence was basically just to crush everyone’s hopes, even though someone else could have easily done the same thing.


Now, my favorite aspect of the movie was probably the mermaids. I have been a huge mermaid geek all of my life, I have read and watched a lot of mermaid related stories. These were some of the most unusual and dangerous mermaids I’ve ever seen, and they were done really well. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say they have a secret weapon that I was really not expecting at all.

And ladies, there is a new hot guy in this one, and my friends and I agreed he is way better than Orlando Bloom. And he even goes shirtless for a little while. We may have drooled a little bit at that part.


All in all, I liked this installment in the franchise a lot. It was definitely better than the second and third movies, back on par with the fantastic adventure of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. I definitely recommend you go see it.