Summer Movies!

Transformers comes out today, and I thought I would celebrate by looking over my Netflix queue and impart some hard earned wisdom. So, here is a quick look at what I've seen recently and how I feel about it.

When I was a kid my favorite show was The Incredible Hulk, at least it was during it's run on TV. As a side note, I thought Lou Ferrigno was the greatest actor of the 20th century. So, when he graced the silver screen as Hercules in the early 80's I was pretty much the first, and only kid, lined up to go see it.

What could make this better? I know, lasers!

Ah, memories. Anyway, when I found it on Netflix I sat my poor wife down and told her to prepare for an afternoon of awesome.

Wow. I can't begin to describe this movie. You have to watch it to understand. But I'm pretty sure there were lots of drugs involved in the making of this film. There had to be. At one point when some king wanted Hercules slain, he called some goddess (I should know who it was, I just forgot), and she showed her machines of death - which were all about 6 inches tall.The wicked king says, "These will obviously grow to enormous size upon entering earth's atmosphere."

Obviously.

That pretty much is as about as dramatic as it gets, but man, what a trip. When we were done I turned to my wife and said, "Did that just happen?"

She shrugged and said we can never discuss what we just saw again. Do yourself a favor and see it for yourself. I feel stoned just thinking about it.

Next, I turned my attention to another of the gods, this one from my Norse brothers, The Mighty Thor. I can't say too much about this except that it might be the worst thing possible if it weren't for Richard Grieco rocking the screen as Loki.

Honestly, there may have been a plot, maybe, but  I don't know what it may have been. Thor is a big sissy, he has an older brother that's cool and tough, and when Odin and Thor's unnamed older bro get murdered by Loki, sissy Thor has to run around and... um... well, I'm not sure what he does, I think I fell asleep. 

I watched the second half a few weeks later, still unsure of the plot, Loki wants the hammer of invincibility, which he has no problem taking from Thor, Thor can't get it back so he makes his own hammer, um, with his bare hands... out of Lava... while in Hell!

Geez, this one has it all, bad acting, bad directing, crappy fx, but if just doesn't feel as drug influenced as Hercules did, it's more like the director wanted you to think he was high the whole time, but he really wasn't. It's fun enough I suppose, but not a must see. I'd skip it.

However, for the love of all that is good and beautiful in this world, never, ever, no matter how much you might want to, no matter how much your friend swears it can't be that bad, should you ever watch Valhalla Rising.

I've seen bad movies, sometimes they're charming and fun in their awfulness. This mess is the most god awful dreck I've ever seen. It's about a guy that... wait. It's about a kid that hangs out with a guy... hold on, that isn't it either. 

Okay, these guys are going to fight in the crusades, they pick up a one eyed pit fighter and then get lost, they run around all these beautiful landscapes and moan about how scary it is, then they die. There probably is about 5 minutes of dialog in the whole movie. The rest is slow mo shots of people staring. Seriously, just staring. I can't believe I considered stopping that crappy Thor movie but still managed to sit through this.

Yes, I just gave a spoiler, trust me, if you're pissed about that then I don't like you. I'm doing you all a favor by telling you about it all now. If you ever see this you'll be like, "Damn, nothing I've ever seen before could prepare for how awful this is. I'm going to make a bunch of tracts to hand out to people warning them of the dangers of this movie."

Never. Ever. See. This. Movie.

Whew. I feel awful just thinking about those last couple. Ugh. I'll stop here, let you percolate on it for a bit and get back to you for part 2 in a couple of days. A few I actually like are in there.

Cheerio

I couldn't find an embeddable YouTube trailer for Hercules - but here's one for Hercules II

The God of Thunder Strikes Again!

I'm off to see Thor, I'll keep my fingers crossed that I'm not disappointed. In honor of the god of Thunder, I present my completely digital doodle.

Please click. It took way too much work to only seen this size.

It's Thor'sday!

And Cinco de Mayo, be sure to get you 99 cent grande combo meal at Salsarita's

In modern times, the worship of Thor has, for the most part, dwindled somewhat. Aside from a few aryian cults that pepper the religious landscape he's relegated to comic book fans and mythology buffs. Not too surprising, they say you can tell a lot from a society by how war-like their gods are. So any society that openly services a beer drinking, womanizing, war-hammering diety is probably not the sort society you want to hang out in for long - a long weekend maybe, a week tops.

Especially if you have a holy day for said deity once a week! So good for us that we don't have to go out and konk each other on the head every Thursday.

Anyway, with the midnight showing of Thor only hours away, I thought I would honor him with something today. But, I woefully underestimated how lame I am with my new Wacom tablet, so it'll have to wait another day or two.

Did you know that the movie opening this weekend isn't Thor's first live action appearance? No, it isn't. Please enjoy the clip from a classic moment in television history... Hulk vs. Thor!

Woden!

Marvel Comics decided to call him Odin - the father of the gods.

Back in the day - maybe it's true now, but I don't really know anymore - Thor was about as rough and tough as super hero could be. He was Marvel's version of Superman. If the story Stan Lee told was true, he struggled with the idea of how to create a hero as powerful, or even more powerful, than the Hulk. So he decided that only a god would fill that role, and The Mighty Thor was born.

Also, they may have gotten married.

As the mythos expanded, his father, Odin, was on order of magnitude mightier than Thor himself, a cosmic entity that was far above the triumphs and failures of mortal men. For a time, probably for much the same reasons that DC has struggled so much with Superman, it was tough to find bad guys that Thor couldn't just pound to a pulp and be done with it. So he spent much of his time battling other gods, demons, cosmic entities and the like. Leaving earthly concerns to Spider-Man and Captain America. It seems like much of the 70's and early 80's Thor was just pissing off his dad. Dating Jane Foster, Dating Sif, being a doctor, a warrior, a cripple, a god. Blah blah blah.

So the storylines weren't always the most accessible. What was a young and impressionable youth to do?

Get lucky. In my opinion now, looking back, most of Thor was crap. Wasn't my thing then, and isn't my thing now. So why did I love him so?

Because the first issue I ever picked up (#337) started what I think was the greatest story ever told in comic book form. For the next year and a half, I got sucked into the soap opera (before those year long story arcs were cool) and he became my favorite hero. During that year and a half I spent all my time thinking of how lame all other comics were. In fact, once the storyline was complete I  hung on for a few more months, but really, my heart wasn't in it any more. I quit comics for 20 years.

But that story arc brought Odin to the forefront, and I became a huge fan of his too. Just thinking about it makes me want to rush out and purchase all the graphic novels in hopes of reliving the glory. But I'm afraid to read the story again, as is often the case, it might suffer if I read it as an adult.

So, in an ode to the greatest story I ever read, well, at least to an 11 year old boy in 1983. Here's to you Thor, and to your Father, Odin. They should name a day of the week after you, both of you.

A Week 25 Years in the Making!

Thor movie week!

This week is dedicated to Thor, the god of thunder. Well, to the Marvel Comics version of him anyway. I will post nothing this week that isn't at least tangentially related to Thor.

Today: How Thor got me through middle school English.

Thor, the Norse god, the mighty warrior who was worshiped by the Vikings spoke Jacobian English, how odd. When studying Norse mythology during my early teenage years in middle school I was tasked with writing a paper on the gods.

Take that, jewel thieves!

So, I picked out a few choice Marvel Comics and shared how Thor lived amongst the inhabitants of Midgard, as their champion. How he slew demons and frost giants and did battle with the world encircling serpent. How he joined forces with Spider-Man to stop some jewel thieves... Wait, was that a tale from old - or from Marvel Team-Up, issue 148?

I jest, but the truth of the matter is that I really did glean just enough actual Norse mythology from my collection of Thor back issues to fool my English teacher and get an excellent grade.

Better Than the Comics!

I divide my childhood into blocs of time based on what superhero I was most enamored with at the time. For example, my earliest memories of even being aware of superheroes was the old black and white George Reeves Superman shows I would watch every afternoon after school - Kindergarten I suppose - most likely around '76 or so.

I would try to tuck towels inside my t-shirts and jump around the furniture pretending I could fly. He could bend steel bars, see through walls. He did it all. My mom or dad would come home with the occasional Superman comic and I would read them over and over. Reliving each panel, trying to draw him in various poses and otherwise try to be him - I probably got more of a sense of my adult values from him than real person I ever knew.

Of course the movie came out around that time, after I was exposed to him for sure, but not too much longer. I'd suspect that the TV show was airing at that time in a mischievous plot by studio execs to get me excited about the movie before I knew it was coming out.

Not so long afterwards though I moved on to bigger and better things. I don't know when the Incredible Hulk television show hit the airwaves. But that was all it took for me to have a new favorite hero. I must have been six or seven and found that when my parents would bring home a comic book version of the show that I loved that the comics were even more awesome. From that point on I think I actually preferred the comic book version of all my heroes.

So went the second era of my life, reading the Hulk led me to other marvel characters, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and eventually... Thor!

Thor was my favorite comic book character for years, I felt so anti-establishment. I mean, he had long hair, had a big hammer that he beat people with. He spoke in Jacobian english and he drank alcohol. He was a bad man. I suppose he was Superman with an attitude.

One could probably learn a lot about my personal issues considering I chose the most powerful heroes ever imagined to idolize growing up. But still, Thor was my third era of childhood, and lasted probably from the age of 10 or 11 up until I quit comics all together when I was around 15.

So now that I'm an adult and special effects in movies have gotten several orders of magnitude better superheroes have really gotten their due in the past decade. The child in me rejoices. Imagine my unmitigated joy upon seeing the trailer of the upcoming epic based on Marvel's Thor.