So You Think You Can Annoy the Fans?

Every MLP fan's worst nightmare...

If you've read my review of The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug, you probably know that I don't take kindly to anyone—be they movie director, novelist, or anyone else—messing with my favorite books and movies. Neither do I appreciate the corruption of a franchise I appreciate, such as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. 

So, with that in mind, here is a top five list of adaptations, sequels, or thinly veiled marketing ploys spinoffs that I did not appreciate. 

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#5: The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug

I have already taken the liberty of reviewing this atrocious creative movie, so let me just sum up my opinion as this: I didn't like it. The movie in and of itself had some nice moments, and while I didn't appreciate the overtly dark tone, it was overall a pretty fun outing. 

However. 

In the context of being a book adaptation, it was horrid. Almost nothing went according to the original work, characters and backstories were added willy-nilly, and almost half an hour (by my estimate) was spent on a superfluous scene that could have been avoided if the director had just taken the time to expound on the things he should have.

So I didn't like it.
(Please note that the first Hobbit movie, while liberal, was good enough to earn a reasonable rating from me. The second one wasn't. As of the writing of this post the third one hasn't yet been released, but at this point my hopes aren't that high.)

#4: My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks
This one hasn't been released yet, but it's on the list purely because there's a 99.5% chance that it will be just as terrible as its predecessor.

Which leads me to...

#3: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls
I've already linked to the Wikipedia article in the picture at the top of this post, so I'll be brief here:

I don't like Equestria Girls because it's cliché. I don't like Equestria Girls because it's childish. It's generic. It's boring. And it ruined a part of the My Little Pony franchise for me.

Now, don't misread me. I like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic because it's the opposite of all the adjectives used to describe EqG above. But Equestria Girls? It was terrible, and frankly I think Hasbro sold themselves short. A My Little Pony movie could have been so much more.

#2: Superhero Squad
Oh the horror...

Okay, so this show is (hopefully) supposed to be a parody. Which I didn't know when I tried to watch it. So I probably ended up taking it way too seriously... but still.

This show is just... stupid.

Seriously, that's all I can think of to describe it. The characters are all one-dimensional to the point of being out-of-character, the villains are that plus being clichéd and brain-dead. And there are no alter egos.

So no Tony Stark. No Bruce Banner. No Carol Danvers, Peter Parker, or Steve Rogers. I didn't know how much I loved alter egos until they stopped being there.

 And there is absolutely no character development what. So. Ever.

Conclusion: If you intend to venture out into the juvenile depths of this show, be prepared to take it with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

#1: Disney's Pocahontas
Admittedly, I had a surprisingly Disney-free childhood. To this day I haven't watched a number of their princess movies, though I do tend to like the ones I have had. So that may contribute a bit of bias to this opinion.

But still...

Disney's adaptation of Pocahontas affronted me, mostly because they, apparently, thought they could play fast and loose with the historical facts. Here's a tip: if you don't think X will make a good movie, then just don't make a movie out of it! But don't, for the love of caramel corn, rearrange facts and redesign characters willy-nilly to accommodate your ideal of the movie!
My other major problem with this movie was its characterization. Both of the main characters were two-dimensional at best, and so was the villain and the one of the two supporting characters. The other supporting character did happen to have some halfway-decent characterization, and he ended up being the only reason I finished the movie.

Conclusion: It's a sad, sad, time when you're watching a historical fiction movie... and end up only finishing it for the sake of the one completely fabricated character.

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And there you have it! Five complain-y mini reviews, all for the price of one!

Tune in next time to hear me complain about even more stuff!

Or maybe review Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I'm not sure yet. 

And that's all for now, folks!

So Wikipedia Taught Me Something New Today

Well, I was researching the human eye earlier today, since I have to do a research paper on it for Challenge A. Since I have a rather odd, but also rather enjoyable, interest in eye colors, I eventually ended up with that article open.

So I'm reading. And I'm thinking, Well, not really anything I don't know, or really have an interest in, but hey, these pictures are cool...

And then I see this.

Apparently heterochromia is an an ocular condition in which the eyes display two different iris colors. In some cases the iris will be one color, with a certain section being a different color*. Occasionally a person is born with eyes of different colors.

This is cool/important/really interesting to me personally because the novel I'm trying to write involves a species whose defining trait is eyes of two different colors, such as having one blue eye and one brown eye. When I came up with this I had no idea that such a condition actually existed, but there you go.

After all, truth is stranger than fiction.

On Superheroes [Review for Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes]

*Warning: Unmarked spoilers may follow. Viewer discretion is advised.*

Dear Failed Villains Anonymous,

First of all, I'd like you to know that just because you didn't manage to conquer a insignificant little planet full of the most backward beings in the galaxy, that doesn't mean you're a total failure. You just need to find a larger world full of more advanced beings, because, you know, they're always easier to conquer. Just ask Beta Ray Bill. Or the skrulls. You also might want to go back to the University of E.V.I.L. and retake that Harmful Radiations course, because everyone (or almost everyone) knows that 999,999,999,999 times out of 1 billion, gamma radiation will just kill you. 

Sincerely, 
A Concerned Fan

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Well, since I've already posted some of the things that most annoy me, I'll mostly focus on the counteracting aspects that make me like/dislike this show. So hopefully I won't bash anything too hard, but we'll see. 

Also, I haven't finished the last season yet, so edits may appear later on. 

Now. 

I once said that I like superhero movies in general, and this show in particular, for the action and the character development. That's mostly true. 

The characters, for one thing, are pretty-well fleshed out. You have Iron Man/Tony Stark, the rich, more-than-a-little-bit snarky team leader/financier. You have Captain America/Steve Rogers, the morally upright good cop (most of the time, but we'll go into that later). You have Black Panther/T'Challa--he's the king of Wukanda, but he tends to spend most of his time hanging out with the Avengers. I don't know, maybe he has a deputy or something. Anyway.
There's the Wasp/Janet Van Dyne, the feisty girl endowed with insect-related superpowers, and her employer/love interest/partner Ant-Man, aka Giant-Man, aka Henry "Hank" Pym. And Bruce Banner/Hulk. I don't think he needs much explanation.

And the team gets even larger as the show goes on, but there are spoilers involved, so I'll just try to mention them as I go.

Good/Favorite Bits:

• Hank Pym and Bruce Banner. Seriously. They're probably my two most favorite characters out of the whole gang (with Janet/Wasp as a close second). Why? Well...
  To start, Hank is a pacifist, which means it's a miracle he even joined the Avengers in the first place. Even as one of the team, he's prone to try and find a nonviolent solution, usually leading to the "Can't we talk this out?" question (most villains don't want to talk it out). He's also a scientist, and has a slight tendency to go starry-eyed when confronted by new or different technology/ideas (sadly, few villains can appreciate that as well as I can).
  EDIT: Having watched Yellowjacket, let me just clear something up: I like Ant-Man. I tolerate Yellowjacket.
  As for Dr. Banner, well, I like him about as well as I did in the 2012 Avengers movie. Sadly, he gets a lot less screentime in this version; early on, he and Hulk make a deal, in which Hulk will join the Avengers if he gets to stay the Hulk permanently (he does let Bruce out one day per month). 
• Gambit pileup, aka several villains invoking overlapping plans. You end up with several villains all enacting their plans at once, and the heroes generally are only aware of one or two, maybe three. This gets especially prominent in the opening movements of the skrull invasion (and it will drive you crazy, take it from me). This also shows up when you have Loki and/or the Enchantress doing anything. (Seriously, I bet Loki invokes multiple plans and manipulates people just to go buy milk from the store.)
• The action is good, providing, of course, that the episode isn't 90% smashing the bad guy and only 10% doing everything else (a couple episodes have lost me this way). But it is, to a reasonable extent, fun to watch the combat. Notable favorites to watch are Wasp, Iron Man, Black Panther, and Mockingbird. 
• Finally, the fact that the characters are deep enough to get to me to care about them. Most notable is the fact that when a certain Avenger is replaced by a shape-shifting alien, I go crazy because it's tearing the team apart, I know everything they don't, etc. 

Bad/Least Favorite Bits:

• Stupid villains--and when I say "stupid" I mean "lacking in basic logic functions and/or a decent primary-school education". Probably the most egregious example, to my mind, is the Leader. Enveloping the entire planet in a dome of gamma radiation? Seriously? Trying to turn everyone on the planet into mutant gamma monsters? Really? Naming your newly minted utopia Gamma World? Seriously? I know the episode needed a title drop, but that's just ridiculous. Not to mention obvious. Really. 
• Villains who lack reasonable motivation, other than that they're just EEEEEVIL. (Zemo, I'm looking at you.) Villains who lack backstory explaining alliances/actions. (Amora the Enchantress, I'm looking at you.) Also, villains who lack an explanation for their superpowers or abilities. (MODOK, I'm looking straight. At. You.) Granted, I'm probably know at least some of this stuff if I read the comics, but I don't and haven't, so I kinda expect the show to at least give a few hints. 
• As stated above, episodes that are 90% smashing the villain. Breakout - Part 2 lost me this way, because frankly I tend to bet bored after about ten minutes of heroes smashing Gravitron--Gravitron smashing heroes--heroes smashing Gravitron, wash, rinse, repeat. 
• The Gamma World arc in general just really, really, really annoys me. The first episode was okay; in fact, I was mostly into it (and a couple of characters introduced there come back later, so it's a good thing I was paying attention). But Gamma World - Part 2 was just... no. First of all, the "Leader"'s master plan, as stated above. That alone majorly turned me off. Then the episode devolved into an entirely smash-the-villain-centric plot, and I just... zoned. Honestly, about the only things I remember from that episode are a) Hawkeye and Bruce Banner/Hulk having some nice moments, b) Black Panther and Wasp going feral (literally), and c) Absorbing Man having a nice quasi-gladiatorial fight with Thor.
  EDIT: And now that my siblings have caught me up on what I missed, that episode sound even more idiotic. Apparently our intrepid heroes defeat the Leader by... overloading his brain and expanding his cranium. Somehow. Even though the Leader's entire schtick is having a super-enlarged brain that should be able to take whatever the less enlightened can throw at him. Dear EMH scriptwriters: What the heck?

And now, since I've rambled enough, I'll go on.

Conclusion:

Yes, I'm biased. Yes, I watch this show for fun, not strictly to review it, and yes, I like it. But for the sake of the review I'll try to come to a reasonably objective conclusion. 

My verdict? If you don't like superheroes, you probably won't like it. It's a superhero show; there's not really anything I can do about that. If you like character development and such things, you may like it; if you like action, there's a good chance you'll like this, because there is a lot of action. 

That said, it is for the most part a kids' show (I hear it aired on Disney before being cancelled to make room for another Marvel-related show). So you won't see much blood, or cursing, or innuendos (beyond one female character telling another to "stop playing jealousy games" with a guy who clearly has a crush on her). Personally, I think that's a bonus, but everyone's different. 

So, all that having been said, I think I'll give Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes a solid four stars out of five:

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Aaaand, with that, the first in my series Reviews of Stuff I Like comes to a close! Next will be... a surprise. Ha. Stay tuned.