What Movies Have You Seen Lately?

I dislike movies that go into excessive plot twists, and as I started watching I worried that this would happen (MINOR SPOILER THIS PARAGRAPH) . The main character goes in for memory implantation by a private firm, and it’s not clear if this was successfully aborted, or if the plot twist is going to be that 'it was all a dream'. Such plot twist is indeed threatened to evolve, at several spots. As it turns out, to my relief, not so, and the idea it might go that way was used well instead. I really reject any such ‘it was just a dream’ plot twists as unacceptable ‘deus ex machina’ bullshit that allows the writers to conveniently get out of the fixes they have written themselves into. It’s not as if it’s a new idea, and it really sucks now to use it.

Mars is mentioned, but is taken out of the movie. Earth is a dystopian landscape where war has left only Britain and Australia liveable. What? Idiotically, the center of the Earth is a more hospitable place to go than any other areas on the surface, so a tube is built to shuttle passengers between the two areas, right through the core somehow. This allows for zero gravity at the very middle, which gets into the action too. This part is done pretty well actually, not sure how they did it. But even if you accepted technology could do this, it’s crazy to think the two zones would be liveable but the other areas worse than the molten center of the Earth!

The female villain struck me as familiar but new. I actually wound up searching to see if she was considered a new type of ‘stock character’, see link below. I guess you could say ‘Battle-axe’ ,with Xena the warrior woman as example, fits. But the character now seems to be new and I’m thinking needs her own category. She is a martial-arts trained machine able to contend with and potentially defeat similarly trained men. I’ve seen exactly her only in these new movies and such, she did not exist before unless you want to count Xena and Wonder Woman; Battle-axe to describe her is not quite satisfactory for me. Often, like those two, she is portrayed as having large breasts, and I guess this new [to me] character did originate as ‘Battle-axe’ ... partly, I object because I just think the name doesnt fit. Am I right in thinking that the younger men are the ones who like this character - the breasts do it for them LOL? I dunno, the women in this movie are not all that well endowed. I’m also fairly sure that this stock character, whatever she should be called, is not really there for the female audience, whatever the film makers might think.

This whole 'stock character' business got interesting to me with the realization that the 'magical negro' as stock character was quite real.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_characters

Speaking of the two women, the movie does something that irritates the hell out of me: they look very much alike. See the image. This confuses things, and sure enough when the second woman comes on the viewer is bound to think it is the same character. This may be intentional but adds nothing. Boo.

Back during the American Civil War, it’s said the South thought their soldiers were going to be able to whip the Yankees at a 1:10 ratio; disabused of this notion by defeat, nonetheless some true believers in this concept are alive and well today, writing for action/adventure movies it seems. Our hero absolutely several times defeats such numbers, killing people and robotic cops at easily that ratio. On the other hand, the bad guys absolutely can empty magazines by the dozens and never hit a thing, our hero dodging an absolute hail of bullets. I don’t quite get why it has to be so unrealistic. Sure, the narrow escapes by amazing trapeze artist feats, I get why that’s included, but ....

Another thing I noticed was that Australia had become an Asian slum. The signs for the businesses were all Asian, and the poor people were all Asian, definitely an ethnic underclass. No Asian had a role as anything other. I wonder what that was all about.

I’m surprised myself that I had so much to write about.