They Deserved Justice

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Despite my better judgement I was actually looking forward to Batman V Superman, and so you can imagine how silly I felt when it turned out to be a shit-spackled slab of cinematic dross. You can probably also imagine how silly I felt when, after having seen it, I again found myself getting excited for its Justice League sequel. Had I already forgotten about Jessie Eisenberg's performance as Lex Luthor which was more annoying than a wart on the gooch? Surely I could remember the 'Martha, Martha, Martha!' scene which made less sense than Donald Trump's pubic knots? Well, despite all of this, I had a small lump in my heart that Superman would no doubt claim as 'hope'. On retrospect it was probably just mounded cholesterol because, in the words of the great George W Bush, “Fool me once, shame on.. shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again!” Without trying to mince my words, I am unhappy to report that Justice League is load of total wank.

A DC Film That's Wonderful

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In 1913 the Suffragette Emily Davison threw herself in front of the King's horse and lost her life in the name of equal rights. From then on, all was right with the world and the two genders have been treated as absolute equals ever since. Well.. you know.. other than the slight difference in pay that women face. And the glass ceiling. Oh, and the shockingly high levels of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sexual objectification that they suffer. By all means they do have the vote now, but if somebody dares to do an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters then that's where we men-folk draw the fucking line, it seems! As such, Wonder Woman is a revelation. It's the first big-studio Superhero movie to have a female lead in over twelve years. Of course there was Catwoman and Elektra before this, however like that time I was asked to do the dishes and so smashed them up the fucking walls to ensure I'd never be asked again, those two films were beyond shite. It's also the first ever superhero film to be directed by what Moonraker's Bond would refer to with surprise as 'a woman'. Oh, and it's also the largest budget film to be entrusted to the gender that we men have constantly referred to as, 'darling', 'sweetheart', 'love', and under very special circumstances, “sugar tits”.

Are You Team Fan Or Team Critic?

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In many ways I think that we humans are essentially just an over-evolved gang of mentally deficient pack animals. Sports fans hate the fans of a rival team, mods hate rockers, Bible-bashers hate common sense, and bigots hate anybody with a skin shade darker than that of a shaven wookie. Just look at Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and you'll see this in almost every aspect of it. The marketing asked us if we were 'Team Batman' or 'Team Superman' to which I couldn't help but align myself with 'Team Not A Teenaged Fucking Girl'. Even before this though, and simply at the announcement of the movie, the internet insisted that you had to be on the side of either DC or Marvel. In the way that this became a thing, you'd think it'd be impossible to enjoy a film without giving a solitary shit about the publishing rights of the characters' original incarnation. It's like living in an alternate world in which literary adaptations bring in the biggest audience and being asked to pick between Team Penguin Books or Team Faber and fucking Faber.

We Are A Plague And He Is The Cure

Superman represents many things to many people. To some he means hope and to others he symbolises pure kindness. To me however he simply exists to show off how pathetic we humans are as a species. For a start, he's an alien who we literally cannot harm and so if he turns against us we're fucked. Not only that but since first appearing, Earth has been invaded by several monstrous villains all of which would have destroyed us if it wasn’t for him. It seems we're not alone in the universe and everything else out there is a lot more advanced and powerful than us. The Kryptonians have already mastered long distance space travel whereas we as a species spend our days eating cheesy crisps and wanking our way through old episodes of Buffy. Or at least that's what I do. Either way we're certainly very, very crap in comparison. To our alien cousins, we are the slimy lizard-fish that's only just crawled out of an oozing lake of filth. The furthest we've gotten with space travel is a shit game of golf on the Moon and even that's only possible if we make it out of our atmosphere without becoming a NASA-funded firework display.

Another reason that Superman represents our crapness is the failure of his last film to be embraced as a franchise by the public. In 2006, Superman Returns was released into cinemas and, contrary to what everybody else now says, I genuinely love it. I know there are a lot of confused people out there who think it's rubbish but I'm more than prepared to fight them to the death over it. I won't go into ‘why’ because that could/will be a blog entry all on its own but suffice to say I patiently waited a long time for a sequel to that. You can therefore imagine how happy I was to hear that after about half a decade it was announced that the next film in the series would instead be a reboot from the director of Sucker Punch. Man of Steel retells the origins of Superman, detailing the destruction of his home planet and how he ended up on Earth. Russell Crowe plays his biological father and to be fair, despite my initial hesitance, I can't imagine not enjoying any film that begins with the Ex-Gladiator casually riding about on a dragon. It also starts with Michael Shannon as the villain General Zod who spends a lot of his time screaming his angry bug-eyed face off. Anyway, to cut a long story short, the planet Krypton explodes, Zod escapes and the newly born Superman gets blasted off to earth like an alien Moses in a basket of metallic-looking sci-fi shit.

His face is so boring it actually angers me.

The first third of Superman's time on Earth is presented in a non-linear fashion as he wanders the land trying to discovery who he is. His real dad might be the Irish sounding Robin Hood but here on Earth, his adopted father is Kevin Costner, the tacky, mulleted Prince of Thieves. Now, I should say that I did actually enjoy the film quite a lot but the scenes in Smallville were a little on the schmaltzy side. Now known as Clark Kent, there's a section where as a child he is overcome by his alien powers and so hides in a cupboard in his school. His mother is called to talk him out and so asks what is wrong with him. The sappy music kicks in and he answers, “The world’s too big, Momma”, to which she responds, “Then make it small”. I'm sorry but really who talks like that? If my kid said that I'd just scream, “get your arse out of that cupboard right now” and then I'd have the pretentious little fuck sectioned. Also, I'm never usually a fan of Kevin Costner because he bores the absolute tits off me with his dull, charisma-free soul, however here I was very close to enjoying him. The problem again was sadly with the slightly ‘up itself’ writing. Costner couldn't just answer a question normally but had to deliver a long meaningful monologue every time he spoke. You could ask him the fucking time and he'd answer you with a stern face, looking towards the horizon. 

By the time we get to the second third, Zod has made his way to Earth and is threatening to destroy us conveniently at the exact same time that Superman discovers that he's Superman. I suppose I quite liked the design of the new costume but if I'm being completely honest, I kind of missed the red underwear. I know wearing your skiddies on the outside is a bit stupid but the character has been around for like eighty-years and so I was kind of use to it. Also, I don't expect Earth’s saviour to be pant-pissingly funny but would it kill him to crack a smile at least once? Clark discovers he's got super powers and yet spends the majority of the film looking as though he's just found out he'll need a testicle amputated. Believe me, if I'd just discovered I had x-ray vision then I'd be perving so much that I'd never frown again. I don't care what anybody says- if any one of us developed any kind of superpower, we'd be using it for at least minor evil within the hour.

By the time we get to the final third, the film descends into all-out action. I hate to sound like I'm getting old but perhaps for me the fighting was a little too fast. I knew people were getting the shit kicked out of them but all I could see was a blue blur and then devastation. Sadly too, the fighting just didn't feel painful which makes it all slightly redundant. In The Dark Knight, there were two psychopaths, one dressed as a clown, the other a wrestling bat and when they hit each other you felt the impact. Here though, faces get dragged across the smashed up concrete road and the only pain you feel is that of the council who will be one day tasked with mending it. This conveniently leads me to my next criticism which is in regards to the complete and utter annihilation of Metropolis. During the climactic battle between Superman and Zod, that city gets well and truly fucked. Our saviour throws his enemy through skyscrapers with such little regard for human life that it becomes clear that he really doesn't give a shite about us. During the city’s destruction, director Zack Snyder throws up imagery that is clearly reminiscent of the events of 9/11 but this is like that day on crack. Tens of buildings topple and it is very clear that millions of innocent people will have died. I can only assume that by the time of the sequel, Metropolis will have turned to communism because there's sure as fuck not enough money to rebuild it. Once again, this complete disregard for human life highlights my initial theory about how Superman represents our species’ complete and utter insignificance in the universe.

I guess to summarise and conclude, I thought the film was pretty good but had an odd mix of clever and dumb about it. I still wish I'd seen a sequel to Superman Returns but there was enough here to enjoy that I'm interested to see what happens next. I'm going to presume the city will be rebuilt by Lex Luthor  and Superman will have a newfound aversion to killing. It'll also be intriguing to see how the Clark and Lois Lane relationship pans out considering it'll seemingly have a slightly different dynamic to perhaps how it did in previous films. Also, the couple don't exactly start things off on the best of terms as Superman says the weirdest post-kiss line ever. She says to him, “They say it's all down-hill after the first kiss”, to which he rudely responds, “That's only if you're kissing a human”. So either he's telling Louis that she's going to enjoy the relationship a lot more than him or he's casually endorsing experiments into bestiality. I suppose this clumsiness with women must be a result of him being from either Krypton or even worse- Kansas.

Anyway, so that's the end of the blog.

Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

I certainly hope you had more fun reading it than I did writing it. As a little added bonus though I just thought I'd mention a slightly irrelevant observation that I made about the film. Is it just me or is Man Of Steel a prequel to the The Matrix franchise? Firstly and most obviously it's clear that both Superman and Neo are a version of The One. They can both fly about, are here to save us and I'm sure must both be based loosely on an arse-kicking Jesus Christ. Secondly, both this film and The Matrix feature babies being artificially raised in little bubble pods by sinister looking insect-like machines. Not only that but Zion's defender, Commander Lock appears here as pretty much the exact same character but this time named General Swanwick. More noticeable perhaps though is that Commander Lock is not alone. Morpheus is also joining him although currently running a News Paper and known as Perry White. As far as I know, we never learnt of Morpheus's real world name and this current employment puts him in a perfect position to become slowly aware of the existence and importance of The One. Like I say though, it's all just a theory and, I agree, possibly slightly tenuous. But whatever, if you don't agree then the blog officially ended one paragraph ago. See you next week and in the meantime try not to die... I need the hits. Goodbye.

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Holding Out For A Hero

Aron Ralston is not, by my definition, a ‘hero’. I'm sure there are people out there who consider him one, however really- what did he do? He got stuck behind a boulder and then chopped his own arm off to escape... I mean, how exactly does that make you a hero? Of course it shows what we as a species can achieve and could be both massively motivational and inspirational but have you seen Superman Returns? I swear I saw that kryptonian motherfucker throw an island into space with just his bare hands. How can you compare what Ralston did to that? Sure, he probably gets a few extra bonus points for being ‘real’ but so what. I once saw a video on the internet of some knobhead shoving a glass jar up his arse which then cracked and shattered. He then proceeded to pluck the broken shards out of his bleeding shit hole before heading off to hospital with a limp and presumably one of the funniest excuses of all time. To me, that tit with the scarred poo-hoop and Ralston are in the same ball park. They both did something stupid for fun and then had to deal with the gorey consequences. The only difference is that Ralston's Story also makes a bloody good film.

Following his Slumdog Oscar win you would have thought that Danny Boyle would seize the chance to make a film for more than his usual £78 budget. It's therefore interesting to see that what he actually made was 127 Hours. The story couldn't be superficially smaller if it tried. Although it might deal with large issues such as spirituality and survival it is still one actor alone for 90% of the screen time with a big bolder pinning him in place. It's basically Cast Away if you replaced Tom Hanks with James Franco and Wilson with a giant cunting rock.

The film starts with a series of quick cuts pretty much setting up who Ralston is. He's one of those tits that needs to go to the extremes of the world and probably considers himself an ‘adrenaline junkie’. My average days consists of drinking too much caffeine with my adrenalin pumping only when the Rich tea biscuits run out and I have to switch to Chocolate Hobnobs. Ralston however prefers to ride around in the middle of nowhere, go rock climbing, camping and pretending to be Ethan Hunt. I have no problem with people doing all of those adventure sports but surely I'm not alone in thinking that they're complete idiots? On one of his expeditions Ranulph Fiennes got frostbite in his fingers and so chopped them off in his shed with a Black & Decker power-saw. That is literally the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard. Usually when people do shit like that it's whilst under the influence and becomes an argument for why drugs should be illegal. The obvious message is if you ever take mushrooms get yourself a few quid in sponsors. At least if you try to fly out the window you'll die as an inspiration to others. Apparently charity is the excuse that makes idiocy acceptable.

Anywho, so Ralston heads out for his latest adventure which is to take place in Blue John Canyon. Apparently this is an area in America famed for being one of the hiding places of the legendary “Hole In The Wall Gang”. I'm not sure what they're famed for actually doing but judging by their name I'm going to assume it was cottaging. What this opening 20 minutes does is allow us to judge Ralston and get to know him a little bit. He is a tit but like Richard in The Beach he's a likeable tit. Of course it does help that he's played by James Franco who was the second best thing about Spiderman after Toby Maguire's screwed up running/angry jizz-face.

Considering this is what the entire film centres around, when he falls, the incident is almost anticlimactic. Even he doesn't seem to notice what's happened allowing the horror of his imprisonment to slowly sink in. It's kind of like watching Titanic and only showing minor concerns about those pesky leaks until the boat has gone under, DiCaprio has died and worst of all Celine Dion starts singing. The other similarity it shares with that film is that everyone knows how it's going to end. 127 Hours is therefore not about what will happen but will we believe it when it does. For the next 70 minutes we're simply subjected to the trapped Ralston as we witness his emotional journey which ends with him deciding to hack off his own arm. I guess it's sort of like a cross between JackAss and Saw but real. Faced with a choice of removing my arm or watching Titanic again I think that like Ralston, I'd have to accept that my wanking days are over.

The title and promotional material for 127 Hours would have you believe that this is a race against time for survival. However it's not really like that as whilst trapped, Ralston looses track with minutes and hours blending into one. I guess it must be a little bit like playing Age of Empires on the computer in that respect. Back in about 1997 I actually experienced something a little similar to Ralston myself. I was about eight years old and needed a dump. There was however one problem... The shit I was trying to pass was significantly bigger than my child sized arse hole and it really fucking hurt. At first you panic and don't know what to do but eventually you rationalise and deal with the situation. As Ralston begins to use a knife to chip away at the rock, I started to cry and called for my Mum who talked me through it like a fecal-midwife. The irony is that some of the expressions Franco pulls in the amputation scenes are near identical to those that I pulled as my giant turd began to breach.

Before he does hack of his arm, Ralston attempts various ways of removing the boulder. One of the purposes of the film is to apparently show us what we would all do in his situation. I think I know what I'd do though and removing a limb would not be how it ends for me. At one point he throws a rope out of the chasm, ties it around the boulder and tries to hoist it off. As soon as that failed I think I'd just give up, turn the pulley into a noose and asphyxi-wank myself to death. Given a choice I'm naturally a righty but seems as that hand is the one that's trapped well I guess we all have to make sacrifices.

In order to get into his mindset we are treated to various flashbacks, hallucinations and dreams. He also at one point drinks his own piss which is I'm sure something we've all been curious about but never had a proper excuse to do. Rather than having a straight up narration Ralston starts expressing his thoughts by talking to a camera. Effectively he makes a number of video blogs like he's auditioning for some shitty Big Brother reality show. To be fair he doesn't do anything that those cuntestants wouldn't do either. I think the moment people start shoving wine bottles up their fat, clammy vaginas they'll do anything as long as it's being recorded.

By the time he decides that his arm has got to go, Boyle and Franco have done their job. Although I don't think I could do what Ralston did I believe that the depiction of him on screen could. The scene isn't quite as disturbing as the pre-release hype would have you think but it's still pretty full on. The worst part about the scene is the point where he has to cut through a nerve. The last time I hit a nerve like that was when I accidentally called my mate a beaver forgetting he was sensitive about his teeth. The jokes on him though as I think his teeth are fine, I meant he was being a cunt. Eventually Ralston frees himself, takes a photo of his arm and walks off to freedom. I'm not sure why he took a photo but I'm hoping it was for the most fucking up facebook profile picture ever. Nor do I know what happened to his arm after he left. He's famous now so I'm assuming someone will have found it and stuck it on eBay. If he signed it, he could auction it off for charity to a lonely woman or some obese gays whose fingers can't quite reach their own arse hole.

Danny Boyle is one of my favourite directors and this easily shows off his abilities. The editing matches Ralston's mentality, fast and jumpy when he's exploring, slow and disorientating when he's trapped. It's got a cool soundtrack, a knobhead main character and an optimistic ending. It's basically your typical Boyle movie which is fine by me. Like “Perfect Day” in Trainspotting, this also includes an ironic use of the song “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. My idea of a perfect day is finding a big bag of marijuana, opening a packet of quavers and then wanking myself to sleep. Chopping myself up does not feature in that for me.

For anyone who hasn't seen the film I can't recommend it strongly enough. Since escaping his situation the real Aron Ralston has gone on to make millions of dollars with books and public appearances. If there is a message to this movie then it's one of two things. Either that humans are a remarkable species who can adapt to survive any situation given the right amount of motivation. Or that self-harming to the extreme will make you rich and famous. I'm not recommending you start cutting on your arms to become well-known but if you died you'd probably get your name in the newspaper. If that sounds tempting then go for it- prove Darwin right, motherfucker!

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