#I hate the system too and know it's bullshit and spectacle but it truly shows a lack of empathy to only think about one issue and yourself

[genuflecting]

I hope those who voted third party or didn't vote watch the next four years and realize the two candidates were not, in fact, "the same," but I won't be there to hold their hands through it

[namelessblacksheep]

WHY WE NEED A REVOLUTION

Growing up I recall a soft drink advert where they used to make the claim ‘the revolution will not be televised’. Given all the crap we see on TV these days I kind of hope that it is.

Don’t get me wrong, a revolution does not have to be a long series of riots or violence. It could be something completely different, but something that leads to a shift. Who knows maybe something akin to a revolution is actually taking place.

The reason I feel we need something akin to a revolution is that bubbling away under the surface of life is deep unhappiness. In the past decade or two so many things have been surfaced that have shocked us.

Across the globe, politics has quite frankly gone bat shit crazy. Unrest and discomfort in daily life are becoming the norm.

We had a global financial crisis that didn’t correct any of the wrongs that underpinned it.

On a weekly basis, we are learning that the people we celebrate and reward so highly, flout their positions and commit heinous harms. Justice is never likely to be served.

Huge corporations and powerful individuals continue to increase the divide between the haves and have nots.

It’s as if all of the rich and powerful have totally forgotten the concept of ‘with great power comes responsibility’. Failure is richly rewarded for some, irrespective of the cost it brings.

The masses though are placated with toys and avenues to keep them from rising up. I have never witnessed such a monumentally awesome age of great television. Fuck the real world problems out there, I’ve got several hundred hours of Netflix marathons to get through.

Then you feel a bit guilty that you are failing in your civic duty, so you decide to send an ironic GIF to Donald Trump – you know doing your bit.

You could cancel your Amazon Prime account and vote with your feet, but then you’d have to wait a few days for your deliveries.

You’d use a search engine to find a different provider, but you like Google. Google knows you so well that when you start typing shit it predicts what you want and you don’t need to hit another key.

It doesn’t scare you at all, not even the fact that you clearly have an Asian babes obsession or some of the suggestions are a bit worrying.

Sure, someone else could get right on that issue. Politicians for instance. They should be sorting this shit out, except they are far too busy trying to pretend to rule the world and avoid answering difficult questions.

Be honest. We are quite simply fucked right now. A revolution might be exactly what we need.

You may be in need of a little more convincing. You know as you are sat there skipping words and sentences for a quick fix that tells you whether this is worth your time or not.

5 minutes of your time, taking you from your busy life. The one where you're a battery plugged into a system that is fucking you every day. At least it all fits conveniently into your phone, I guess.

So, here it goes.

People have become weak

Everybody seems to be offended, like, all of the time. You can’t say shit anymore without someone either correcting you or reminding you of the new rules of engagement that nobody agreed to.

If you are one of these people, don’t be offended when I say that you are total Thundercunt. Seriously, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

If you came here hoping to find something to annoy you, then you aren’t paying attention. Unplug your earphones and look at the world around you. It’s fucked. You could focus your efforts on doing something productive even if that’s being a better person, or a little less sensitive.

There’s plenty to be pissed about. People don’t want to focus on the big stuff that matters. They’d rather freak the fuck out about inconsequential nonsense that bruises their fragile egos.

We need a revolution so that we can all ‘man the fuck up’ (sorry feminazis) and start fixing shit like we’re Bob the Builder (or Betty if it makes you feel better).

We need to change the news narrative. Anyone else bored to tears with the daily Brexit coverage? Seriously, this storyline is more drawn out than the whole Ross and Rachael will-they-won’t-they saga.

For all the super-intelligent University educated geniuses that just graduated and have no fucking idea who Ross or Rachael are, go check out a TV show called ‘Friends’. It’s probably on the History channel these days anyway.

Brexit is like an un-flushable turd. A repetitive narrative that papers and broadcasters trot out every day. Seriously, this shite is more convoluted and contrived than the X Factor. It’s the epitome of the lowest form of entertainment and we need to change the record.

Whether you are for a Sunnyside-up Brexit or a Brexit with a side of Unicorn steak, I couldn’t give a damn. A revolution might at the very least give us all something new to get excited about and something we could all rally behind.

We need unity not division

Issues like politics, sport, and even mild banter have become so immersed in the underlying anger we're silently drowning in that no one seems able to have fun anymore.

I cannot remember a time when so many comedians couldn’t make a decent joke about the moronic state of the world and instead make sniping remarks to canned laughter.

Every decent sporting event seems to get overrun with people’s inability to enjoy the spectacle for what it is. Social media and chat forums are littered with petulant hatred and jingoistic tribal bullshit. The Brexit ‘have your say’ plays out like an anthem of bitterness with new vitriolic names invented every day.

We are descending into a bunch of spoiled children who express their pent up feelings through sending passive aggressive memes, angry hashtags and all manner of confusing emojis to make some innocuous point.

We are slowly becoming a mathematician with a broken calculator to solve all our problems. It can’t always be about division (see what I did there).

This diversity bullshit just isn’t working, let’s try something new like a bit of unity. You know: adding shit up to something bigger. I’m fairly sure Einstein would approve, and he was a smart guy.

Some folks need something better to do

If you spend most of your life sitting on your butt. You have all your stuff delivered to your door and your thoughts delivered to your phone or through your TV or laptop – you need a revolution.

We can call it a hobby or a social bonding activity. It’ll be a bit weird because all your new ‘friends’ might not look exactly like you, but you might learn a thing or two about the real world you live in.

Echo chambers are nice and safe because everyone in them thinks the same stuff. However, the real world is full of people ready to blow your mind in more than 140 characters or a 5-minute blog post. It could be exciting.

If you need convincing, watch the Matrix. Neo was simply sad old Thomas Anderson miserable as fuck, then he met Morpheus and learned to fly and loads of other cool shit.

If you already know what you think and it makes you comfortable to surround yourself with other people just like you, perhaps you should just join a cult and be done with it.

The system is broken

Seriously, guys, we have seriously screwed the pooch with the world at the moment.

The system’s broken and we are all just standing around waiting for inevitability to prevail.

The Avengers won't be coming to save us. Anyone who saw last year’s movie knows they are a bit down on their luck at the moment.

Thanos’ minions seem to be running the world and we all need to step up and become superheroes in our own right.

If you want to whip out the Lycra or Spandex – go for it. But do something, even if it’s just being better or not throwing hate out to the world because someone is different from you.

I don’t care if the revolution happens or even if it is streamed on Netflix or some other site. Change needs to happen and often that is as simple as everyone trying to be less of a douchebag than they might have normally been.

The only thing I can offer as a ‘reward’ or promise is that we might actually get some decent music back on the scene.

Revolutions tend to come out best in song. There has been no truly great era of music for decades now, and if ever there was a more compelling reason for a revolution this would be it.

Music is the anthem of the soul. It’s time for it to wake up and belt out something beautiful.

[atleastputinsomeeffortinuroc]

Rant/Review: Ready Player One --aka-- Just Watch Wrinkle in Time Instead...

I don’t usually hate movies. 

I know that seems backwards considering that this blog is me complaining and ranting incoherently about movies I don’t like, but very few movies leave me seething. Even all of the Detective Conan movies, which are mostly terrible pieces of garbage, I don’t necessarily hate. Red Crimson Letters is a terrible waste of time and energy, but I wasn’t insulted or felt talked down to. It was just a really bad movie I wanted to talk about.

In my life, there have only been three movies who have truly enraged me. “Batman v Superman,” “Joy,” and “War for the Planet of the Apes.” 

Objectively, there are aspects that are genuinely good in all of them and are definitely better than I probably give them credit for...but I doubt it, but they just flare up an anger in me for one reason or another. They’re permanently on my “fuck that movie” list. And now…now there’s another entrant to that prestigious list.

Ready Player One.

My GOD. THIS was the book everyone’s been talking about? THIS is supposed to be the fucking bible of pop culture?! THIS MOVIE?! THE ONE THAT UNIRONICALLY HAS THE PHRASE SPOKEN BY HUMAN VOCAL CHORDS “FANBOYS ALWAYS KNOW A HATER?!!” ARE YOU GUYS--…ok. Ok, I need to calm down. 

There are several, several, SEVERAL parts about this movie that don’t work, and I could go into a lot of the problems, but instead I’m going to try to talk about three aspects of the film. And for the sake of me not swearing up and down, we’re not going to talk about that godawful dialogue. Just know that it sucks.)

1) The ham-fisted arc

2) The protagonist and his trophy waifu

3) References over content

There are spoilers ahead, and I’m going to write this with the assumption that you’ve already seen the movie. If you haven’t, you’ve been warned. Anywho, let’s get started. Put on some “a-ha,” break your nostalgia goggles and join me as we go down this road where I collectively shit over Spielberg’s attempt to adapt a supposed “beloved classic.” (CAN YOU TELL I’M MAD?!)

1)     The arc

Here’s the thing with arcs in narratives, and more specifically films. 

They need to feel earned. 

Your central character has gone through a life-altering change or point of view since the beginning of the film due to the adventures and trials had throughout the film. Good examples include “Mad Max: Fury Road” where Max finally lets others into his life and sees the value in not going through life alone as described by the part where he donates his own blood and tells Furiosa his name. Another good example is actually from the Oscar nominee Spielberg had LITERALLY LAST YEAR, “The Post.” In it, Kay Graham finally put her foot down and shows authority by stepping out of her comfort zone to release the Pentagon Papers—damn what the powers that be say. This is important to any narrative because it shows the flaws of your characters through their insecurities and hesitations to make them human rather than movie characters. Even if you have paragon characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, or Batman, they still have to overcome some kind of personal issue that is keeping them from achieving what they’ve wanted.

Now, if you look over to the main character, you can see that his arc was…what is it that was his arc? 

He’s…he’s the same at the beginning as he was at the end. 

“OH BUT HE HAS A PENTHOUSE AT THE END,” yeah that’s not a change. One could argue that the (even though the catalyst for change has no fucking relation to it) arc is about unplugging and enjoying the real world. The bits at the end with Easter Egg man where he starts going on and on and on about how he missed reality or something, and the VERY BRIEF bits at the beginning where you see people all over the VR systems, one of which is the mother neglecting a fire in the house and one where an Asian man almost commits suicide after losing all of his stuff in the game (it’s played for comedy, so THAT’S also pretty fun, because it’s not like Japanese suicide rates are a serious issue or anything OH WAIT.) So it’s about being close to reality and unplugging. Ok. Coolio.

But here’s the thing, similar to “War for the Planet of the Apes”…YOU HAVEN’T EARNED IT. There are brief moments where it kind of alludes to it (see the middle challenge with ‘oh yes, I should have kissed the girl during the Shining’ and the small bit at the middle where the main two are sitting there and the main dude has ONE HALF-ASSED LINE about how “it’s nice here. It’s slower,”) but that’s IT. It doesn’t actually give you a reason to think that staying in the Oasis and avoiding reality is a BAD thing. Sure you have abusive father obsessed with getting high scores but he’s just one dimensional asshole dad who dies and you don’t give a shit about it one second later after his parental figures are killed. 

There are no real CONSEQUENCES to spending too much time in the Oasis, it’s just because he’s good at the game. And if there are, they sure as hell aren’t focused on in favor of mindless spectacle (which looks REALLY BAD by the way. I know it’s supposed to look fake because video game, but do the main characters have to use the ugliest models in existence?!) As such, the ending and central arc of learning is lost.

So what’s the arc? Well…there is none. Nothing is really learned, nothing is really gained that MATTERS aside from the keys to Willy Wonka’s goddamn chocolate factory. 

Z or Perzival or Wade or generic-white-gamer-boy learns all of fucking NOTHING by the end. (As such, it makes the ending where he says “EVERYONE HAS TO BE OFF ON TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS” come off as BULLshit.)

But no, this is clearly the Spielberg classic. It’s not like Indiana Jones learned anything in the Last Crusade as a character only he totally fucking DID, HE LEARNED TO RESPECT AND LOVE HIS FATHER WHO HE PREVIOUSLY DESPISED AND THE IMPORTANCE OF—sorry. Sorry I’m getting a bit mad again.

Anywho, due to a lack of a real arc, it makes you think that the entire fucking plot was pointless. It was just inevitable that the good guy win because…well he’s the main character. He doesn’t say anything about anything but is instead dumb fluff, which would be fine…but here’s the thing. It also affects the main characters. And it affects them HARD.

2)     Tweedledee and Tweedledumbass

The two main characters have no personality or character due to this lack of an arc.

The main man, Wade, his personality is…what exactly? He’s just generic hero-boy who is obsessed with the 80s. “He’s like a regular Star-Lord!” I hear you say, only he totally fucking isn’t. Starlord has baggage, has character has points and instances that stretch BEYOND just quoting 80’s movie and saying the actual phrase that a screenwriter actually wrote down and didn’t immediately delete that went “FANBOYS ALWAYS KNOW A HATER” NO I AM NOT OVER IT.

...Point is, the references don’t make Star-Lord who he is, it’s the character of Peter Quill himself. Cocky, brash, and in many ways, a child running from his past. 

As for Wade, he’s got nothing. I’ve looked over this sometimes, depending on the writing or the situation, so maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much, but the actor who plays him isn’t doing a good job. I know I don’t talk about acting a lot, but the man…the man is just whining through his lines. He comes off as insufferable with his needless 80’s knowledge that I was genuinely rooting for the one-dimensional villain to kill that fucking brat.

Then we have Artemis or Samantha or Sam or its-the-pixie-cut-rebel-chick.  

There are several scenes that are etched into my brain now (including a FUCKING NUT-SHOT AND A PASSWORD FOR A HUMAN ADULT THAT IS “B055MAN69.” IN A SPIELBERG MOVIE. THE MAN WHO MADE INDIANA JONES AND SCHINDLER’S LIST.), but one of the big ones is the final image of the film in which the main character in his 80’s man-boy cave spins around with his beautiful woman sitting in his lap as they suck face as the line “reality is pretty awesome anyway” or something like that. Aside from the main character not earning that statement as previously stated…fucking let’s look at it for what it is.

The man just won a real-life walking-talking waifu. A trophy wife that he wins at the end of the game.

She’s what probably made me see through the movie the most honestly. She makes this big fucking deal about “oh, but I’m not who you think I am on the outside, I’m not pretty” and then when you go outside to the real world, of course she’s the fucking gorgeous Hollywood white girl—she just has a goddamn birthmark on her eye to be her “blemish.”

“Oh but she’s insecure about it,” I hear you say--I’m sorry, but you mean to tell me NOBODY told her she’s fine and beautiful with the eye-mark BEFORE Wade? You mean to tell me she’s insecure, but not insecure enough to feel the need to buy fucking MAKE-UP!? I’m not saying that she needs it, I’m saying that the character’s central flaw is the WEAKEST FUCKIN FLAW I HAVE EVER SEEN. YOU WANNA CHANGE THE GAME, QUASIMODO THAT SHIT. 

THEN, and this part was just fucking HILARIOUS to me, she mentions about how the ioi company fucking KILLED HER FATHER in a workshop and she has to stop him for revenge…and then it’s totally dropped. Like it’s never mentioned by the end. At all. She chucks a grenade into Mechagodzilla to kill the bossman but fuck me if it ain’t satisfying and adds physically NOTHING to her character.

Her character exists for one purpose. She is the love interest who sets the main character off on his journey. Nothing more. And I say that, because SHE’S THE CATALYST FOR HIM FINDING THE FIRST KEY. She tells him something that reminds him of something that solves the puzzle. And what’s more, I am willing to bet that THAT’S the reason they kept her Hollywood pretty. Because you need to have an attractive romantic love interest to keep the audience pleased. 

Now apparently, she does more in the movie than she does in the book. And that’s great. That’s super. She’s the one breaking in to destroy the d20 of doom. Hell yeah I guess. But I also don’t care. You wanna know why? BECAUSE I AM NOT READING THE BOOK. Superficial changes that improve certain aspects doesn’t make the movie better than it is. It’s like polishing a fucking turd. Yeah, it’s nicer than what you had, but you are still making me hold this piece of dogshit.

They don’t have characters. They don’t have chemistry BECAUSE they don’t have characters. It’s a fucking wash.

3) Drowning in References

But now we talk about the big one. The big fucking thing that everyone and their mother is obsessing about this movie over. And the thing that has gotten me from not liking this movie to fucking DESPISING it.

The references.

To quote from people who will be seeing the movie in the theater *ahem*...

“OHMYGOD IS THAT TRACER?! OH AND IT’S HARLEY AND THE JOKER! OH! OH! OH! IRON GIANT! HALO! BORDERLANDS! BACK TO THE FUTURE! BATMAN—FUCKING IT’S THE BATMAN! THEY MENTIONED THRILLER! THAT’S PRINCE! STREET FIGHTER! MECHA-GODZILLA FIGHTING GUNDAM! MINECRAFT! NINJA TURTLES! FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH! STAR TREK! FIREFLY! THE SHINING! IT’S FUCKING CHUCKY!!!”

…Ok? So what?

Not to be a snob, but seriously—so what? Why does it matter?

Listen, I like crossovers too. I remember the Avengers and what a big goddamn deal it was, and how it made everyone’s jaw drop to the ground, and how in some ways, it still does. But whereas with those it felt organic, Ready Player One with its ninety thousand references felt…empty.

I’m going to bring out two comparisons to the table that do the same thing that Ready Player One did, “Who Framed Rodger Rabbit?” and “Wreck-It Ralph.” Both had pop-culture icons throughout them. One had all of the classic cartoons all spliced together—where you saw Daffy Duck and Donald Duck in the same shot having a dual piano-off. One of them had all of these video game characters that you loved and embraced since you were a kid, running around and hanging out ala “Toy Story.” These big names are all in the background, just like Ready Player One, but they’re clearly different in terms of execution. Why is that?

Well it’s because the movies weren’t reliant on them. Sure, Rodger Rabbit had fun moments with these big names, but if you took them out and animated totally new characters with similar personalities, what would you lose? Nothing. The plot is the same, the dynamics are the same, and it can still be seen as a salute to the classic animations from back in the day to also an allegory for the Jim Crowe era just as the book intentionally was. Same goes for Wreck-it Ralph, the character goes through a fundamental change that has him accepting who he is and how “there’s nobody else I’d rather be, than me” ALL THE WHILE paying respects to classic arcade video games.

The same can’t be said for Ready Player One. The instant you take away the pop-culture references, the movie loses its protective suit of armor to reveal it’s about…nothing. 

It is. 

Nothing. 

The generic quest, the generic corporate baddie, the generic love interest, the main character has nothing to say, and the conflict is revealed to be flat—nothing about it sticks out or makes an impression.

And if you fail to make an impression without a fucking suit pop-culture references then, well, if I may use a pop-culture quote myself...“If you’re nothing without the suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”

Plain and simple.

But then…there’s the one thing I can’t really debate. 

“It’s just fun though, right?”

Yeah sure. I’ll admit around that third act, even though it was long overdrawn, I had fun watching the violence and references I understood while they blasted “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in the background.

But y’know what? It was just about as enjoyable as seeing someone adapt a piece of shitty fanfiction, because both have one thing in common for everything that they do: It’s just there for fan service. If you make the statement “well the Oasis is cool,” then you’ve clearly missed the point because you don’t like the movie, you like it’s gimmick. And it’s gimmick exists—it’s called VR Chat.

Meanwhile, screenwriters of different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders and religions from everywhere across the world are actually putting EFFORT into their screenwriting and directing. And while their action scenes for their blockbuster idea may not be perfect, they at least tried and did something new with it.

I went to see “Wrinkle in Time” today after I’d seen Ready Player One yesterday, needing to see literally anything good. And yeah, it’s not perfect. It’s got some stilted dialogue and some questionable acting on nearly all fronts at points and the conflict can be about as cliched as you can imagine, but the visuals, the costume design—you could tell everyone cared and put a goddamn effort into everything put forth. It’s much more gorgeous than the downright UGLY CG that was in the Oasis world in Ready Player One, and I guarantee you nobody had the phrase “B055MAN69” anywhere. It didn’t pander to kids or guys who wanted to feel validated for knowing a couple references. It wanted to tell the story of fighting back evil and hatred by embracing love. It’s cheesy and sappy…but fuck me, if it didn’t try to say something while having fun.

But fuck that movie right? We have Iron Giant fighting Mechagodzilla. 

If you have that, then why bother putting in effort?

That’s what kills me. It’s lazy and people praise it because it just stuck pop-culture words in a fucking blender. Don’t call it innovative. Don’t call it original. Don’t call it anything than what it is.

80’s. Prepubescent. Fucking. Fanfiction.

You can love it and enjoy it if you want, I mean I don’t like not liking movies. It sucks. And in some aspects, I can see why you can if you turn your brain off but…I’m not gonna lie, to see this get away with murder insults me.

Listen, I love Spielberg. There is nobody I respect more in the business. His work in AI, and the reason why he did so to keep a dying friend’s vision alive will always keep him as one of my personal heroes but…sometimes you gotta call people out when they make shit. And I am.

I don’t care what anyone says, don’t see Ready Player One. Watch something worthwhile. Go to Netflix and watch “Stranger Things” if you’ve got that need for an 80′s kick, or hell--”Blade Runner 2049″ is a visual goddamn MARVEL. Go see “The Post” or “Jaws” if you want some good Spielberg. Just PLEASE! Go see something that isn’t just a bunch of references that almost feel as though it’s a remake of “ctrl+alt+del.” 

(Random aside, people have told me to read the original book...but if that fucking thing is ANYTHING like this movie, I’d rather BURN IT than let it get one inch into my house. So no, I’m not going to read the book even if there are claims that it’s “better.” (Even though I believe that it’s impossible to say a book is better than it’s adaptation or vice versa because it’s two different mediums and as such it’s hardly fair, but that’s a whole other thing.) Point is, I’ve never been more turned off to a book in my godddamned life and I ain’t gonna bother.)