Tag Archives: cinemasochism

05.02.14
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8 Explanations For The Lack Of Women In Star Wars

The cast announcement for Star Wars VII confirms that in a galaxy far far away, humans don’t have an equal male/female ratio, but a male-football-team-per-single-female referee/trophy combination rotio. Which is especially embarrassing since “a long time ago” is now 2014, and counting, and for fuck’s sake.

"Does this image STILL have a better gender ratio and message than the modern movies?"

“Does this image STILL have a better gender ratio and message than the modern movies?”

The expanded universe has dozens of female characters. Hell, even the regular fan-fiction has more female characters, if only because you need at least a 1:1 ratio for most heterosexual sex fantasies, or the propagation of a species, or to even pretend that you aren’t sexist in the modern world. You have serious problems when you have a worse gender disparity than DarthFap’s twelve-part Chewie/Leia epic “Walking all over the carpet (and he likes it)”.

Which is why I’m trying to come up with other explanations for the mismatch.

  • Every actress approached went “Star Wars? That’s the one where the most powerful woman in the galaxy was made to prance in a bikini for an actual slug, right?”
  • Attempts to create an equally yonic weapon to balance out the phallic lightsaber caused every female Jedi to accidentally commit plasma-seppuku.
  • Why yes, the whole point of the Force is to be a magic ability which utterly negates any advantage based on physical strength or speed, but, uh, the secret fourth Jedi test is opening a jar in a room full of mice or something.
  • All other women removed from the plot by the powerful “Wearing More Prosthetics Than Clothes Creepy Alien Burlesque Dancers In Every Star Wars” union. All of whom were immediately publicly executed on screen for no clear reason.
  • Seriously, they wanted the “princess” and “stripper” tropes but only had one female character, and instead of realizing the problem they just did both. All they needed do was strip Solo near-naked for freezing and it would have had something for everyone. And Jabba could have used the carbonite wall as a coat-hanger.
  • Sure, I’d love to appear in an iconic movie, only to be cut before anyone could see me like those lady X-wing pilots (not) in the first movie.
  • They meant a really long time ago, like before sexual reproduction, and every person you see on screen reproduces asexually. Note that this is still less stupid than the real reasons, and still introduces less plot holes than the prequels.
  • “Maybe the midichlorians” but the person who even mentions those things is immediately beaten into silence, so we’ll never know.

 

Continue the astroconflict with Patch Notes for C3P0.1

02.18.14
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RoboCop: No Spoilers And You Should See It

I was very worried about the new RoboCop, and I’m very happy to have been very wrong.

Luckily he seems the forgiving type.

Luckily he seems the forgiving type.

Growing up I watched the original so often it’s been installed as one of my prime directives. Trailers for RoboCop 2014 didn’t leave me hopeful, but I’m delighted to report that it’s the Inverse Trailer Effect: shitty movies can look awesome because they’ve been built to sucker people in with best bits which can be reduced to a minute of five-second smashes, and awesome movies can look shitty because all the best bits won’t fit in five-second smashes. Robocop 2014 is the latter.

Hurrah!

Hurrah!

Now a NO SPOILER checklist of essential RoboReasons fans should see the new movie.

  • Brutal evisceration of modern media bias: YES
  • Gorgeous callback to original RoboCop design: DOUBLE-YES
  • Villains who are unquestionably assholes: YES
  • Upgrade of original message to suit the times: YES
  • Sequences the original would have included if they could only have dreamed of having the special effects to pull them off: YES

And most importantly

  • Famous Quotes From The Original, Multiple:
  • – Cool line used seamlessly: CHECK
  • – Cool line crowbarred in a bit but you don’t mind because it’s the best one: CHECK
  • – Cool line used in brilliant inversion of original meaning: CHECK! SCREENWRITING BONUS!

The movie understands (just as the original did) that simply standing there and shooting bad guys while invulnerable isn’t a compelling plot. Despite being the plot of most action movies. There are a couple of glorious show-off sequences, like the original drug factory shooting gallery, but the plot progression doesn’t depend on fights getting bigger until you end up with tough-guys-throwing-each-other-through-a-steelmill. It’s a classic RoboCop final showdown, but with a new solution to fit the new Robo. I’m still annoyed that Officer Lewis was testicled for no reason other than “they already have a woman”. On the upside, Clara Murphy is an actual character instead of the feared self-propelled tear-lubricated wet blanket.

It’s not a retread of the original, it’s a new movie, and rather a good one. It’s how a RoboRemake should work: a genuine rebuild, using cool parts from the originals (even salvaging a couple of concepts from RoboCop 2), fleshed out with their own new material, and released into the civilian population to kick ass.

More movie fun with Pacific Rim: The Story of the Irish Jaeger and 5 Sequels Made By People Who Must Not Have Seen The Original.

07.16.13
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Pacific Rim: The Story of the Irish Jaeger

The movie doesn’t tell the story of the monster portal which opened in the Atlantic, because Ireland dealt with it single-handedly. It turns out that “being invaded from other lands” is pretty much our entire history, cultural legacy, and best way to get us to kick your arse if you try it now we have a tech sector. On the grounds that it was how we defeat all our existing demons, we built our jaeger out of a distillery.

WHISKEYOUTPUTsmall

40% fuel ensured the pilots didn’t feel any pain, fatigue, or need to ask pointed questions about the feasibility of a 100 meter tall bipedal robot. But the real breakthrough was when it turned out that the best way to check advanced psychological compatibility for direct neural linkage was “fighting with sticks.”

Advanced electro-neuro-compatibility screening, using the first tool ever grasped by ape

Electroneurofusion screening, using the first tool ever grasped by ape

We immediately drafted the Kilkenny hurling team.

Photo: Jim O’Sullivan

“I’ll tear his head off, you get the ball!” (Photo: Jim O’Sullivan)

Fifteen championship trained violencies of pure speed. Hurling is one of the fastest games in the world, because if you were up against over a dozen stick-wielding Irishmen, firing what’s not so much a small ball as a large bullet, with no protective padding, you’d move quickly too. Fifteen fellas to divide the load – that’s more help than Jesus had, and even He couldn’t have helped any kaiju fool enough to start a fight with a hurley team in a distillery.

They annihilated everything that dared step out of the water. If they’d been on the coast at the dawn of time, all life would still be aquatic. They learned to use large boats to beat down the monsters, because the largest boats in Irish waters are usually Spanish fishing trawlers, though sometimes they had to keep the fight going for hours until they found one.

Once Whiskey Output ran out of grain during an extended battle. The hurlers disconnected the bridge, stepped out onto the roof with flare pistols, fired them in the air to let the monster know where they were, then leapt across and beat the unholy shite out of it with their hurls. This jaeger only carried distress flares to let the monsters know when they were in trouble. It didn’t have a self-destruct; its final option was to let the kaiju bite and let a million gallons of poteen make that melting-kaiju-acid-spit look like a moisturizing cleanser.

Of course, no kaiju ever got that far. When Whiskey Output sealed the breach (by standing right on top of it and playing Whack-a-Kaiju with anything that stuck its misshapen head through, a strategy which seemed to evade the rest of the world, until they gave up) they marched back to Kilkenny, parked it, and took the lid off the fuel tank. Which was why they were too busy to turn up at the Shatterdome. And wouldn’t have been allowed to drive there anyway.

For more giant robot shenanigans, behold