Fanboy wailing, oh that's what that sound is

Shortpacked: The Worst Jobs in Hollywood

Come on, if you've seen Watchmen, you know that comic is so very true.

I guess I'll start there since it is just the most recent. Wow. Speechless, breathless, wonderful wow. Casting was superb, and it visually looks like Snyder has developed a way to keep the comic tone and iconic images without shooting a staged story panel. Though I found out my stomach appreciates the violence a little less realistic. Or in other words, I'm happy with breaking bones as long as they don't break through skin with blood. During the prison riot, I was actually glad to see some of the crooks decide to stay in the cells. I agree with a lot of the dumb criminals stereotypes, but come on they do have a healthy sense of self-preservation. And they kept all the favorite lines: "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me!" "I'm used to going out at 3am and doing something stupid." And I am so going to buy the soundtrack. Whoever put that together was brilliant.

Now the rest of the post probably contains spoilers, though I'll try not to give too much away.

And yes, they changed the ending. I know for some fanboys (using the derogatory meaning of the term) that is the ultimate sin, but I think the movie ending made even more sense than the book. One: we don't have time in the movie to set up all the secondary characters and investigations that something big and bad is going to happen and cover our five main characters dealing with the death of the Comedian.

Two: The movie ending gives an extra wrinkle of foolproof-ness to Adrian's plan. Dr. Manhattan being the unpredictable wildcard has to be neutralized. If killing him didn't work, turning the entire world against him sounds like a reasonable alternative to me. Even if he hadn't decided to go play god in another part of the universe, he wouldn't have been able to stop Adrian publicly ever again.

Three: The theme didn't change. Nothing ever changes, human nature is what makes the world a rotten place, and all Adrian has probably accomplished is a delay is all still present. Though I wish they had kept in Dr. Manhattan telling him that and then leaving the atom bomb cloud in his globe as he departs. But I'm not so crazy to demand that my favorite panel must be in a film in order to call it good.

Coraline is drop-dead gorgeous and if you can stand to see it in 3D, it's used to give depth to the world and not so much thrusting things in your face. And the story is wonderful. I love Neil Gaiman's stuff for the simple fact that he layers in stuff that most people without a Liberal Arts degree wouldn't understand but if you do get it, it just adds another layer of texture to the world. And if it does go past your head, you really don't have to know it to get the story. Also, I think that movie is one of the few times I have felt justified in wanting to call Social Services on behalf of a fictional child.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li: what the hell happened to this movie in development? I'm putting all the blame on the writers, directors, and possible whoever was in charge of editing it. Yeah, there will be spoilers in this part.

Problem one: YOU KILLED BISON! You put in a cute little ad and a nod to go find Ryu next, but you killed off Bison. You put Charlie Nash in the movie (and yes, someone else had to remind me of the significance of that character) and you let him live and killed off Bison! I haven't decided if I should give out brownie points for making it the most hard-core Neal McDonough on-screen death or not.

Problem two: I can accept using a video game as the place to get characters and build the story up from there. But with the genre of the game and the movie, your audience is expecting fights. And then when you set up fights between two characters from the video game, we expect to see some major ass-whumping. The Vega/Chun-Li fight is an epic fail in this regard. And the only reason I can't see it getting more time is because of problem number three.

Problem three: The B-plot with Charlie Nash and the Bangkok cop; why the hell was that even in the movie? Seriously, we get cheated on Vega fight because you need to make a joke about gold handcuffs? All those scenes should have hit the cutting room floor leaving the storage container scene and maybe some of the so unhelpful guns at the end. And Nash should have died. I mean DUDE, you just let a seventeen-year-old girl see her father get killed brutally and didn't even try to turn her aside when you saw what was going to happen!

I totally want Rose to snap and go evil just because of that alone. Either that or Bison invested in cloning research. And Nash should have died.

Problem four: I'm not hating Neal for the Irish accent, he said repeatedly in interviews "they" wanted Bison to have an Irish accent, so he came up with a backstory reason for it. Epic fail on directing there. I figured based on the interview reasons that it was mostly leftover from his parents and then reinforced when he went back to Ireland. Parents died when Bison was infant; any accent should have been Bangkok-ish since he never left until in his late teens or early twenties! Yes, you do pick up local twang (some people more easily than others) but being back in Bangkok should have been bringing that out in his voice.

Yeah, they made the first Street Fighter movie look Oscar worthy. Ponder that one.

And of course I had to go fix it. You know how Clue gives you three endings. Well this is the ending I think they left out.

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The BookWorm