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Y2kk Update: - Stargate SG-1: Zero Hour and Stargate Atlantis: Thirty Eight Minutes Reviews (Spoilers) -

Stargate SG-1 hasn't been the brightest star in the galactic empire this year so far... I personally didn't feel much for New Order, despite it's promise of a new feeling for the new season. And Lockdown was even worse, suffering from too-serious-schizophrenia and a claustrophobic kind of episodic environment... like a ship in a bottle, without the 'ship...

Zero Hour doesn't really change much in the claustrophobic environment department. And it didn't really deliver the new kind of feeling that was promised for the new kind of season... But Zero Hour truly responds as the true Zero Hero of the hour. Because for the first time in the new season, I truly did enjoy a Stargate SG-1 episode.

And Jack O'Neill is obviously to blame... In season six, I could enjoy episodes that Jack wasn't in, simply because Jonas was quirky enough to fill the void. And in season seven, while Jack still wasn't around, at least the ideas behind the plotlines were more interesting than usual... But Zero Hour truly showed that there is simply no substitute for a lack of Jack O'Neill, whether he's a colonel anymore or not. Nearly every single line he had was finally the kind of serious-jokey kind that Richard Dean Anderson has perfected on the show, and it really showed with the sheer quality of Zero Hour. Couple that with a fortress of migraines for the newest General on the block, and you have a light episode that just feels Diet Pepsi taste challenge right...

The weakest part of the episode in my eyes was the plant. I never really cared for it, and I was disappointed when O'Neill didn't send it through with Camulus as a present for Ba'al... But nearly every other scene with General O'Neill (which literally was just about every other scene) truly shined above the rest. I loved his constant bickering with the now officially named "Walter" (although you can never replace the Jack and Daniel banter). And I always love Jack's obsession with food in the middle of a crisis, talking about buffets rather than anything else on the General budget menu... I liked his solution to the trade negotiations far more than I did back in the last Kelownan episode, if only because Mr. Happy Mark Gilmore was right there to act as a confidant of a counterpoint... And finally, Jack had some contact again with Ba'al! It was great that his time in Ba'al's fortress wasn't forgotten. And Jack's line, "it's what I do", was simply so brilliant (him probably being a closet Wormhole Xtreme fan and all, I'm sure...)... I personally thought his letter to General Hammond was a bit cliche and predictable, but the "nevermind" signed at the bottom was a nice touch at the end. And as always, Jack had wonderful, playful chemistry with Sam Carter. The look on her face when he wouldn't let her see her team's written reports was simply priceless...

The rest of the cast ironically pulled a Jack O'Neill by not being in the episode... Now it bugged me how Jack never demanded proof of SG-1's capture from Ba'al (even though Ba'al easily could fake a voice or image), so I thought it was pretty dumb of him not to think that SG-1 was just missing in action, rather than being in Goa'uld's hands... But Carter, for the brief moments she was on screen, was simply beaming as the new commander. Her insecurity was definitely in character for her, and a nice contrast to Jack's usual ways. And the "animal" comment from Teal'c's written report I'm sure was more than justified... Daniel and Teal'c didn't get to do anything at all, but their moments will come soon in later episodes... Camulus was featured a lot on the other hand. And since I still don't know how to spell his name properly, I'll still call him "Rhade" or "Blade" for now... Now, Rhade wasn't extra slimy or anything this episode, to a degree that was annoying at least. And I felt it was kind of pointless to send him to Ba'al so early in the SG-1 storyline. But I did like the little connections to Stargate Atlantis with the ZPM and everything. I loved how sinister Rhade was as well, booby trapping the power source and all... I liked all the fine touches in this episode, even the mention of the Tok'ra poison (so... now Earth has Naquadria hyperdrive, Naquada chain reaction bombs, anti-life energy weapons on our bloody hell machine guns, and tons of Tok'ra poison all manufactured and lying around?... wow... we can really kick ass and take names, now can't we?...). And I even liked Jack's little planned revelation at the end. I actually want to know what will happen to Rhade now, the poor planted sap who tried to be king...

The real reason why Stargate SG-1 was a Zero Hero this week, was not just because it somehow managed to produce a bottled episode that was more entertaining than even their massively overbudget season premiere... but it was also the first week of the season so far, where SG-1 has managed to outshine its late hour (or zero hour late) counterpart... although in a sense, that has more to do with Stargate Atlantis than it does with its parent trap of an earlier show...

Stargate Atlantis aired the episode, Thirty Eight Minutes, this week. And while it wasn't a bad episode, it surely suffered from the one thing I despise most in fantasy and fanboy sci-fi shows: the error of taking themselves too seriously... I mean, for Christ's sakes, this isn't the original Star Trek series, despite the lovely reference to "Cling-ons". So when I see a little parasite bug attached to some actor's neck, I'm going to laugh like a lunatic, alright?...

... and because I'm going to laugh, it made Thirty Eight Minutes a lot more laughable than it would've been if only at moments, the episode didn't take itself so seriously... Because against my better wishes, nearly every single cast member acted like the episode was the most dire moment in their lives to be... While I found some of his rants of "certain doom" to be amusing, MacKay was simply not endearing to me for the first time in the history of the show. I already forget most of what he said, simply because it was mostly generic for a geek on a show with an impending crisis. Although at least, we found out that he hasn't really mellowed out since becoming the hero last week... Rainbow Sun Francks or however you spell his name did a superb job in his role this episode, acting all concerned for Major Sheppard. But the problem is, he may have had tons of anti-Mayweather lines, but he had no backstory. He had no character development, besides showing he had a backbone at least... All he did was keep repeating "are you alright?" and then got to play the hatchback hero at the end. He really didn't have any memorable lines or actions, which kind of sucks (out of the airlock Archer) for him, considering how much air time he got... And Dr. Beckett? At least, he was once again the saving grace of the episode. Sure, he acted all serious himself. But he had probably the only clever lines in the episode, from the "Cling-on" comment, to merely the look in his eyes when he said you aren't supposed to try cutting leeches off... (and oh yes, just for reference, it makes a lot of sense now why Atlantis was submerged, if the Wraith truly can't take saltwater like this episode suggests... too bad it all reminds me a bit too much of god-awful Signs...).

Now, Dr. Weir was quite a weird enigma for me... Can Torri Higginson act at all? I say that with disdain this episode, not with the lovely prose I had for her last episode. Why? Because she changed her hair back, that's why!... So let me get this straight. In the midst of the Pegasus Galaxy, our Dr. Elizabeth Weir not only changes her hair every episode, but seems compelled to wear bad zipper shirts to work as well? Eh? WTF?... Either way, I didn't like any scene she was in. I hated her moment with the Aragon-clone where once again, the actress couldn't seem to relate or bash or whatever the Athosians properly at all. And while she did a good job of embarrassing the embarrassed ass of a scientist later on, she simply couldn't pull off her lines without sounding like a fool herself. Even her question to the Czech doctor of a weird name, of what she could do to help, sounded completely forced and fruitless and futile and lacking in emotion. Torri still sounded horny this episode, but dammit, after changing her hair, she just didn't look hot anymore... Teyla had a lot of lines like Lt. Ford. But she didn't really do anything, except get the medical kit way too late, all things considered. I did see some chemistry with Lt. Ford though. But besides her generic concern for the ship and crew, Teyla really didn't offer anything to the show. Hell, she didn't even look good in a uniform for some strange reason... And Major John Sheppard? Well, the episode probably failed in my eyes because he just wasn't really there. He never really got to pull of a joke, and all the flashback scenes of the Wraith planet just didn't have the oomph and power that I thought they would have on me. Plus, he had a stupid looking bug on his neck, which definitely didn't help make the episode seem serious in my eyes... I liked the idea of fooling the bug into thinking he was dead though. And I actually felt some chemistry between Sheppard and Weir for once, even though she technically wasn't there. But this was the first episode that Sheppard really didn't help the episode at all. I guess every character gets at least a week off from the show, you know...

Technical wise, I did love this episode. The simplistic special effect of the event horizon just sitting in the shuttle was amazing. And the idea of being lodged in the Stargate was a great 24 way of making an episode feel tense for 38 minutes... I loved all the little timbits of info we got about Stargate knowledge in this episode, from MacKay's "relativistic" reminder, to confirmation that the Stargate only transfers discrete bodies of matter through the wormhole (although that contrasts some things in SG-1, like staff weapons getting cut in half by the Stargate, but I digress)...

But even with all the fine technical details in this episode, I still didn't find it decent whatsoever. Why? Because it took itself too damn seriously, when it had a goddam tick attached to an actor's neck for Christ's sakes!... I needed some sort of comic relief in an episode like this. Even O'Neill turning into a viral alien had "undomesticated equines" to back the episode up... Thirty Eight Minutes was definitely not a bad 43 minutes of Stargate Atlantis allotted air time. It's just that, it was definitely the weakest of the episodes so far. And for the first time this season so far, Atlantis conceded the throne of the week to Big Brother, Stargate SG-1... a Zero Hero at the Zero Hour indeed...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate SG-1: Lockdown and Stargate Atlantis: Hide and Seek Reviews (Spoilers) -

A double dose of Stargate... Oh, how I've only dreamed of this moment until this very day!...

... the only problem is, the two episodes just didn't turn out nearly as great as I thought they would be... well, one of them, at least...

Stargate Atlantis was good, but unfortunately suffered from being a complete copycat of the SG-1 episode that came right before... And the Stargate SG-1 episode, Lockdown, suffered from being an episode that we've probably seen in sci-fi (and even Stargate SG-1) a million times before... I understand that with a tighter budget and a lot of money blown on the season premiere, that there's just got to be a certain amount of "bottle" shows happening on the SGC set from time to time... But I really expected them to have good writing at least...

Lockdown had the standard fare kind of "possession" kind of plotline. The big revelation was made out to be that Anubis wasn't dead. But honestly, how can an ascended being die? It's not like I ever assumed he was dead in the first place... The good part about Lockdown, was that it got to address some ascension ideas that never were really talked about before. Even frozen on a wasteland, Anubis still isn't dead. I'm sure he'd rather exile himself for another thousand years rather than bring on the wrath of the Ancients... I would've preferred if Anubis actually said something in this episode though, besides just taking people hostage and shooting the place up. It would've been nice just to hear his smug, over-evil sneer one more time before being sent off to the wrong gate address. Instead, we ended up with just a floating blob entity that was really damn stupid in the end (why not take over the body of O'Neill before the lockdown was issued? Why not take over the president to order the end of the lockdown, unless he actually did? And why bother taking over the Russian when he gladly would've like O'Neill to be dead?)...

But normally, a bad Stargate B-rated episode can always be saved by the strong characters on the show. I'm just sorry that except for maybe Jack O'Neill, there really wasn't any good script in Lockdown... Daniel got a nice running gag of who the hell shot him. Then he got shot from Carter again, which was always interesting (except for how damn long it took him to realize it was Anubis who pulled the trigger...). Teal'c got to talk about his apartment. But besides that? Did he do anything but look strange with hair?... Carter got the absolutely hilarious moment of actually rising to attention when General O'Neill came in. But that was perhaps her one lone, decent scene in the entire episode. I never cared whether she could deactivate the self destruct or not. And I didn't even care whether she got shot or not... Now O'Neill? He had the best lines in the episode. Just his general "Jackisms" as the new general of the base, acting as if the Cold War was still on and refusing to bring back Jonas for a four man SG-1 team (goddammit), were enough to save the first half of the episode for me... But the second half was just damn bland. The only thing that saved the episode was the appearance of the same actor who played young Lieutenant Hammond back in 1969. I have no damn idea why the Stargate writers keep recasting old characters on the two series these days. But at least Jack O'Neill finally got to boss George Hammond around, more or less, one way or another...

Stargate SG-1's Lockdown suffered from perhaps taking its own "possession" kind of story too seriously. Being on a military base, it's understandable why the episode would be so by the book sci-fi... But you see? That's what's fresh about Stargate Atlantis. While it is a sci-fi show, it takes itself to be much more of a fantasy driven sort of dribble than Stargate ever was... Now I personally enjoy straight out sci-fi over fantasy, but if Hide and Seek is any indication of the strong and clever writing to come? Then I really think Atlantis has somehow found that fine tipped balance between sci-fi and fantasy that I've always yearned for in the Star Trek series...

Hide and Seek obviously suffered from having almost exactly the same plotline as Lockdown did before it. And hell, I think to save money, both shows even used the exact same "blob view" effect thingy... But where the two episodes differed was definitely in the writing. While Stargate chose to portray the entity as just Anubis being his evil self, I enjoyed the twist in Hide and Seek, where the Athosians were convinced it was the Ancient ancestors looking down at them with angry old man fists... I personally thought all the little touches in this episode, from Weir telling the kids to play safely in the hallways, to even the look of the 10000 year old dead plants, really made this episode feel like something fresh and invigorating. Which is sure as hell a compliment from me, considering this episode wasn't just a predictable rehash of a thousand sci-fi episodes before it, but also a complete rehash of the SG-1 episode that aired just an hour beforehand...

Stargate Atlantis is really shining right now, thanks to its amazing characterizations so far... The only character that's suffering for the moment is Mayweather 2 (aka Lt. Ford), and even he at least got one decent scene with Jinto about "stuff happens" (but it's "shit happens", you dumbass! Get it right next time, and teach those Athosians how to cuss...)... But hell, even the recurring characters all had marvelous moments in the episode. Doctor Beckett is turning into a character just as fresh as Doctor Phlox was on Enterprise. I loved his sheer giddiness at the fact that there wasn't any FDA approval in the Pegasus Galaxy. And I personally thought his "Captain Invulnerable" title was pretty damn clever... As for the other cast members of Atlantis, John Sheppard didn't have the greatest moments in this episode. But even though he sort of pales as a character compared to O'Neill's early shadow, you gotta love him for being so damn giddy at knocking MacKay off the top of a balcony... I did feel however that he lacked any real chemistry with Teyla this episode. I loved the hockey references though (FUCK HIM for saying we Canadians are touchy about our fucking hockey...). And although the "Hail Mary" reference at the end of the episode was too damn predictable, I personally did enjoy the football scene earlier about Toronto's former Doug Flutie (dammit - why must they taunt me with their goddam better-than-plasma screens? And how the hell did they interface a DVD player with an Ancient viewscreen in two damn days?...)... Speaking of two damn days, why the hell did Dr. Weir get a new hairstyle just a couple of days into a new apocalypse for the Pegasus galaxy? Well, despite my complaints, I gotta admit that I now understand why the Stargate writers chose Torri Higginson over Jessica Steen... With permed hair and the most adorable white T-shirt I've ever seen, Elizabeth Weir was HOT this episode. And oh yeah, I guess she had some good lines too... Though I hated how forced her lines were when lying to Teyla about her people, I do admit that I absolutely loved the smug "smarter than MacKay" look on her face when she tricked MacKay into subconsciously slipping the Ancient shield device off...

Hide and Seek was truly a story about MacKay though. It was his version of Emancipation, without all that "I am woman, here me roar" crap that plagued Carter in her early proving-myself days... And you see? That's the true beauty of this episode. It made MacKay into a desirable hero in our eyes, without ever feeling pretentious or overdramatic in any sort of usual crap like that... Sure, the plotline in this episode was predictable. And hell, I even may have rolled my eyes at MacKay diving headfirst into the darkness monster at the end... But what made Hide and Seek truly enjoyable, was that even with the obvious "make me into a hero" cliche stuff, MacKay had some of the best lines that I've ever heard in sci-fi for a very long time... The whole episode had brilliant moments where he was trying to prove his worth, yet all were in the geeky way that I've always loved about his character... At the start of the episode, to feel equal to Beckett, he chose to undergo experimental gene therapy. And calling medicine the equivalent of voodoo was one his best comments ever, considering I quite agree with his sentiments... And throughout the episode, MacKay had simply brilliant lines hiding his wannabe bravado underneath even more wannabe bravado... The shield failing scene still has me snickering to this day (guess like Beckett, he can't consciously control Ancient technology either...). And I can't get enough of lines like, "I passed out from manly hunger", and "size doesn't matter!... That's a myth" sort of stuff... I mean, sure everything in this episode was predictable. Even the personal shield thing has been done to death on other sci-fi shows (although food and fainting were never nearly as interesting as they were in Atlantis)... But just the way that MacKay sings, "invulnerable". Or just the way he snuggly hugs his flashlight, even when he was supposed to be starving to death... all of this makes me proud that MacKay was chosen as a last minute replacement for whoever didn't make the Atlantis cast and crew in the end. It makes me proud that he's Canadian, even if he didn't stand up for our goddam hockey... Because without him and Sheppard, for now at least... there wouldn't be any show...

... we'd be stuck with just Mayweather 2... and a really, really, ridiculously hot Dr. Weir who can't act, but that's a story for another day...

Y2kk Update: - Namco's Tales of Symphonia Nintendo Gamecube Review (Spoilers) -

The goddam thing was, I was promised by the video game gurus at Best Buy that I would get the limited edition lithograph with this game. I mean, I bought the game pretty damn early, didn't I? First come, first serve basis, you know... But the goddam problem was, they didn't have any lithographs in yet! The Tales of Symphonia artbooks hadn't arrived at the store yet, compared to my earlier than earnest punctuality at least. And considering I didn't want to waste my perfectly wasted gas money (or my brother's, actually... wait, why didn't I?...), I still opted to buy Tales of Symphonia then and there, even without the free gift for being an early adopter. So the guy at the Best Buy promised me that if I just showed my damn receipt at the door this week, that I'd automatically get the Tales of Symphonia lithograph that I should've had in my hands a week ago...

Fuck limited editions! I was promised a free artbook, goddammit! And I was an early adopter! I picked the game up early! Isn't that the fucking meaning of first cum, first serve?... And all because I didn't go to Best Buy the one or two days when they actually did have the artbook in stock, they gave my fucking book away to some smoe joe porn addict who bought the game something like three days after I fucking did?!... What the fuck are their problems? I mean, do I even want the lithograph really?... Hell no! But it's the principle that counts! And I was there first! He said, she said, and I was there fucking first!...

... well, ten dollars off of a great game... and getting a person hopefully fired... but that's a story for another day...

Because the thing is, even with this whole Canadian Best Buy fiasco, I'm not actually nearly as mad as I make myself out to be... Because truth be told, I'm happy that I bought the game when I did. And truth be told, I think almost every single gamer out there who managed to pick up Tales of Symphonia in the past week is pretty damn relieved as well...

Because if reports are to be trusted, this game is sold out all over North America already... damn, Namco sure didn't have much faith in us Gamecube supporters, you know?...

And I'm not just satisfied because I was one of the few to even get the game in my area... I'm actually willing to forgive and forget the goddam Best Buy debacle, simply thanks to the fact that Tales of Symphonia is one hell of a game...

The naysayers on the net simply chock and choke it up to the RPG starved Gamecube fanatics. And while I can't really argue with that, I can offer another point of view...

Namco's Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube is being praised like the next day after tomorrow (without ever being as bad as the movie), simply because this RPG really is that damn good...

The thing that stands out most about this game is obviously the graphics. The Dragon Warrior series has dipped into the cel-shading department before, but I really do think that Tales of Symphonia finally was the first RPG to ever deliver the graphical technique real justice...

I mean, sure I can complain that the characters in this game don't look enough like their anime original artwork. Lloyd looks like a boy in this game, when in the opening credits, he looks like a man. And Collette is actually pretty sweet and charming in her anime undies, but in the actual game, she looks so young that it's almost a sin to keep an eye on her... Raine's hair doesn't match the sass of her imprint. Neither does Zelos' for that matter. Regal just doesn't have nearly the detail in-game that I was hoping for from a cel-shaded game. And Sheena? Well, she looks almost nothing like her artwork counterpart (except for the bump-mapping... for obvious game designer reasons, of course...)... I mean, wasn't the original point of the cel-shading technique to bring anime cartoons to life on screen? And at first, I was sorely disappointed in the fact that the characters in this game just weren't up to my original expectations... but at least they still looked a thousand times better than a polygonal counterpart would've...

Because even if the game still falls short of its real world perfections (as any game would), there's still simply no denying that this game is an absolute work of art, right up there with the best of Zelda: Wind Waker... Genis in-game looks remarkably like his anime counterpart, and hell, I even think Raine looks better as a professional game stub than she does as a horny mistress in the instruction manual... And the backgrounds in this game, while mostly polygonal, are simply stunning!.. The trees in this game are of amazing detail. The grass has never seemed sweeter in an RPG before... And while the enemy designs are kind of lacking in originality, they more than make up for it in pure vibrant colours and really cool explosion effects... And all of this majestic beauty is done in real time, with no hint whatsoever of any slowdown, no many how many Genis spells are going on in the background (well, except for one battle with four or five baddies on screen at once. But that was the lone exception...)... Sure, the Wind Waker blurring effect started hurting my eyes, 40 hours into the game mind you. And sure Tales of Symphonia may not be the absolute apex of cel-shaded character designs... But the overall package to me, in my honest opinion after 47 solid hours of gameplay, just worked and flowed together oh so masterfully, that it even put the game's anime CG sequences to shame at times...

If there's one area lacking in Tales of Symphonia, it's the sound and music. Because except for maybe Sybak and Hima, I don't think there was any memorable music in the game whatsoever... Everything was generic RPG tunes, and that alone is one of the reasons why I simply can't pit this game as one of the best of our entire generation of gaming... The sound effects are adequate, sure. But did Namco really have to release this game with unfinished voice acting?... Lloyd was voiced pretty damn well for a hero (better than Cam Clarke ever did in screaming "MELFICE@!!!!" in Grandia II...), and Sheena may have been Jennifer Hale's best work since Knights of the Old Republic (if not the original Metal Gear Solid). But the rest of the characters just felt flat with their voices, with Regal sounding like a Cam Clarke reject, and Kratos sounding like Cam Clarke rejecting himself... I mean, sure Presea stayed in character of sounding like a robot. And sure Zelos definitely had his moments... But for the most part, I really thought Tales of Symphonia lacked in the voice acting department. I can be relieved that the hero was done well at least (and even the heroines, Collette and Sheena, weren't bad at all)... But I'm still disappointed that not only was the supporting cast quite lackluster (even with everyone's favourite Leo in the mix...), but Namco didn't even find the time to pay for voices in the skits and half the movie sequences or what not... I loved the characterization during the skits, but without even a button to skip forward, why the hell didn't they just do the voices in those iddy biddy scenes? Does it really take that long to translate? Or is Namco still suffering from Tales of Eternia-lazy-itis?...

... sorry, I meant Angelus Tuberculosis... or whatever the hell they named it in this game...

But even if the production values are not nearly what I hoped they would be for a top tier RPG, all can be forgiven for the battle scenes in this game... I mean, heh... When I bought this game, I honestly told my brother, "yay for 15-minute battles!... just by waiting to type a command after each five-minute magic break..." Because truth be told, the last decent Japanese RPGs I played were Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II... yes, we Gamecube owners are really that damn starved for a good role playing game...

But as soon as I popped this game into my Gamecube, I simply fell in love with the battle system... I had completely forgotten that it used a real time fighting system. And truth be told, I was blown away by the sheer addictiveness of it all... Everything that makes a fighting game amazing, was all in this one game. I could guard, I could dash, I could jump, I could lunge, and most importantly, I could finally counter in an RPG... all in real time, mind you... I never once got bored of pressing X and backwards to dodge a blow. I never once got bored of getting a record 62-hit combo, even after 47 goddam hours of playing (wish I got those 200-hit combos like some people managed to do, though)... I loved the use of magic in this game, how except for charging the whole spell up, everything was just quick and easy in every single battle scene. And I loved the strategic use of items, as the delay between usages allowed me to think about combat and just surviving inbetween... And hell's bells, this game was even multiplayer! The best aspect of Gladius was back, and even though my brother hates RPGs, even he had to admit that the battles in this game were pretty damn cool... Maybe I would've preferred a game more like Street Fighter in the end (that's what Shenmue is for), but I for one have always loved button mashers. And the true beauty of the Tales of Symphonia battle engine, is that you can be whatever you want to be! I was a button masher with Lloyd. I was a strategic fighter with Sheena (although I cussed like hell after figuring out you could just set her on auto-pilot against that goddam ninja-revenge guy... damn bastard killed me twice at level 59...). I was a complete magic user with Raine and Genis. And in the early parts of the game at least, I loved being the best of both worlds with Kratos... Tales of Symphonia had simply the best battle engine for an Eastern or Western RPG, bar none. I don't remember if it's all been done like this before, but I swear to you that I've never played an RPG before that never, ever got boring after 47 entire hours of non-stop playing...

... that's right - forty seven entire hours of playing. And Tales of Symphonia never got boring... The only other game this generation to ever last me that long was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. 50 hours into that game, and I still wanted more... but unlike the former, Tales of Symphonia never really hurt my eyes (except for the occasional blurring effect). Tales of Symphonia never slowed down in pace after the first half of the game. And Tales of Symphonia, while not having quite as great of a storyline, never once failed to truly captivate me as well...

... big time spoilers... although for anyone who's ever played a Japanese RPG, they may not really seem like spoilers, if you know what I mean...

The moment I picked this game up, even without popping it into the Gamecube for the first time, I knew that if there was a religion in this game, that the leaders would be the bad guys... I knew that if there was a close relationship between a good guy and a bad guy, that the bad guy would obviously end up as his Star Wars father... And I knew that tons of guys would betray me. I knew that the people who betrayed me would eventually turn good again. And I knew that my attempts to save the world in Tales of Symphonia would only put it into more jeopardy, with the hero sprouting wings and the heroines never getting any real action in the end... despite all the bump mapping, of course...

... and yes, sadly... I actually knew all that before putting in the game... even the fucking Angel thing... that's how predictable Japanese RPGs have become these days...

Even though I knew all of these things were coming, I still thought the plotline in Tales of Symphonia was intricately woven, to the point where I actually count it as the best Japanese RPG storyline for this generation of games (although I guess that doesn't say very much...)... Sure, I rolled my eyes at Kratos' betraying my group after all of his mysterious "I'm not evil! I'm not Leo!" sort of ways. And sure, I rolled my eyes again when it was later revealed that he was Lloyd's father (oh yeah... didn't see that one coming...)... Sure, I didn't give a damn about Yuan, Botta, and the renegades (they really didn't serve much of a purpose in the game). And all the other aspects of the plotline, like sprouting an evil Giant Kharlan Tree, the two worlds of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla being split apart by a stupid Master Sword, or the idiotic idea of turning the entire world into exspheres, certainly didn't really win many favourable points from my point of view...

... and the plotline really did fall into a mess of Rez disunity and disgruntled disharmony after the first part of the game was done... Whodunnit? Wasupwidat?... it almost felt like a bad game of Clue at times... or even worse, a reality show... but we shall never speak of such evil things again...

Because I'll forgive all the above for just one revelation that I never did see... I mean, I knew the Mithos in my group was the Mithos of the Ancient War. And hell, I even expected him to be evil... and yet, never once did I guess that his name was Lord Mithos Yggdrasill. And never once did I imagine that all the clues leading up to the big revelation, of who exactly the group of four used to be back in the good ol' days, actually pointed to the people right in front of my own goddam eyes... Just like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic only needed one genuine shock to win me over, Tales of Symphonia earned my respect with this one shocking plot twist alone. Because for some odd reason, I actually had to stop and and whelp out a Keanu Reeves "whoah", when I learned of this news... It was not what I was expecting. And for an entire game that I had just assumed was completely predictable, unpredictability was the least thing I was expecting...

But the overall plotline was still weak in this game... I mean, the theme of discrimination definitely got on my nerves. I understand that half-elves were treated poorly, but did we really have to get a million speeches of human ranch justifications on one end, and horrible "faith in the heart" renditions on the other? I got enough of those on Enterprise and Grandia II, thank you very much... human ranches included, somehow...

But the absolute strongest point of Tales of Symphonia (and KOTOR as well), was that for the first time in a very long time, I actually liked the characters in an RPG for once... Hell, I enjoyed each and every single character in this game, as they all had backstories that actually mattered to the user... They all had stories to tell, and skits that I was actually willing to sit through, even without the aid of goddam voice acting...

Lloyd ironically had the weakest characterization of all of them... So what if Kratos was his father? So what if Kratos was forced to kill his mummy of a mommy? I never really cared for Lloyd's backstory, nor his constant speechifying when it came to the exspheres and human ranches and such... However, I did think that a lot of the little things that happened along the way to him were decent. I personally thought his inability to save Marble was a nice touch. And even though being exiled is like a requirement in a Japanese RPG, what happened to Iselia also took its toll on me. Hell, I even thought that Lloyd's comments with Chocolat and the tragic Dorr were even fitting of a good story... But Lloyd the serious was never what made his character great in the end. It was his sheer and utter comedy that always made him endearing, or his sheer stupidity at least, to put it aptly... Lloyd never got boring in this game, simply because even when he started acting like a saint, Genis still made fun of his friend for being a complete dunce. And Sheena always had a thing for Lloyd, and for some odd reason, I never got bored of their conversations (which were always a nice mix of respect and stupid comedy at the same time...)... And with Collette? Sure, most of those scenes were gag-worthy, talking about never leaving each other, going on a journey and whatever else kind of crap... But I will never forget the hot coffee scene. And it was actually touching, both literally and figuratively, for Collette to trust Lloyd enough to write things into only his hand... The Lloyd plotlines eventually got cheesy as hell, but still, even I actually smiled at the running gag of the birthday gift to Collette. Tales of Symphonia definitely did its part in making Lloyd memorable, thankfully in ways other than games like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II could only do through sheer annoyances...

Collette may have been the second character to show up on screen (I think...), but I was thankful that she was almost like the second heroine in the end... Her scenes with Lloyd were always the best, with the coffee, the finger touching, and the birthday gift above all else. However, Collette really got annoying in the final acts of the game, always questioning what it means to be a Chosen and crap like that. The only thing that truly saved her was how adorable all her clumsiness was in the end. I mean, just watch her day as a maid for a good example... Sheena however took the role of head heroine in the end to my surprise. She had far more lines and far more of a backstory in the end. Plus, more of a rack, but that's besides the point... Her past with Volt actually was interesting for a while, and just when it was getting boring, an evil ninja bent on revenge steps in her way. And who the hell can't love an evil red ninja?... I've never really liked summoners in past Japanese RPGs, but Sheena just had a gentle yet formidable touch to her that really made her special. She was by far my favourite character, having some great scenes with Lloyd, and having some great animosity towards Zelos as well... I was afraid after her turning from the enemy into a member of my group, that she would turn into yet another dumb witted, useless character. But she never did lose her wit. And hell's bells, how can you ever hate a character, who still sounds scarred for life every time Collette trips over a switch or something?...

Genis was a mostly useless character, besides his magical abilities, his comedy with Lloyd, and his obviously girlish appearance... I've always had a soft spot for his sister, Raine, though. I mean, damn I always fall for abusive blondes, don't I?... The second half of the game kind of sucked for Raine, when she got all weepy about her mother and crap like that. But honestly, who the hell doesn't laugh whenever she bitch slaps Genis down and heals the wound so that the child abuse police never come a'knockin'? And whenever she makes fun of Lloyd for his sheer incompetence, it just reminds me of just how damn witty and funny this game really is (and how much I wish I was a 12-year old boy with her as my Florida teacher... but that's besides the point...)... And then she bitch slaps some poor sap at a summoning ritual, and the game just keeps on getting better!... Sheena will forever stay my favourite character, probably because her backstory never got boring, and obviously because she has a rack... But Raine will always be the funniest. And hell, as a history buff back in high school, I even agree with her whenever the group reaches a relic! Until the whole mother complex came into effect... I just wish Genis had bitchslapped her just to knock some sense back into her, weeping over relics and acting like she was Lloyd or something with the speechifying, but that's besides the point...

The other characters in the game were not nearly as important as these five, but even surprising me, all of them were interesting in the end... Zelos betrayed the group, and we all saw it coming. And then we find out he didn't really betray the group (or in my version of the game, he didn't at least), and I realized that I was actually thankful that he was back. I never cared for the story with his sister, but his interactions with Sheena and his constant womanizing absolutely made me want to set him as my default character when skulking around cities (if only Lloyd didn't run faster thanks to his level 2 exsphere)... Presea was the most boring of the characters, being a robot girl bent on revenge and crap like that. But she was helped by Regal, who I was surprised was the owner of a company. I never realized why he kept looking at Presea strangely until it was finally revealed. And even if Regal's boring attitude got, well, pretty damn boring in the end, I will always forgive him for a) shocking me with his backstory, and b) being cool enough to fight in handcuffs, Jackie Chan style... Presea will always be boring to me, but through her, at least we learned more about the Angelus project. I thought the revelation about hers and Lloyd's special exspheres was pretty lame in the end, but still, a three foot girl who can kick ass and take names with an ax always gets props from me...

... and from Reggie... Reggielution 4 Life!... but that's besides the point... ahem...

The overall plotline in Tales of Symphonia is weak at best, Mithos withstanding. The whole idea of good vs evil, appearance vs reality, Half Elves locked in basements by the Half Life Pope, and never trust an Angel who sounds like a child rapist, has strangely enough been done in video games to death already, let alone anime porn... But the little touches in this game, from Regal becoming a grand chef, to Sheena wearing the flimsy dress Zelos sent for her... from Collette stumbling to stop a mana reactor, to Genis being the top of the Palmacosta Academy... from all the skits about Lloyd being a dumbass, to especially the peeping toms at the lesbian hot springs... from Lloyd cutting off Kratos' hand (well, not really...), to even just the littlest of moments, with Collette giving a snow hare to Lloyd for good luck (in my version of the game at least), Tales of Symphonia had absolutely the best sidestory characterizations I have seen in a game this entire generation of consoles...

And hell, even Namco knew that when designing the game... At first, I thought it was idiotic of them to ignore multiple endings, just to set up tons of different cutscenes for the exact same moments in the storyline, depending on which characters you've talked to the most... But I don't know why, but... getting that god-awful, bloody hell snow hare, just seemed to melt my heart as well... The game knew which characters I had become close to: Sheena, Raine, and Collette... those are the characters I went to the beach with. Those are the characters who would always talk to me at night...

And how the hell did the game know that? I'm not really sure... I suppose that's a tale for another day...

... end spoilers... those were spoilers, right?... not for a Japanese RPG, I guess...

Tales of Symphonia may not have had the most shocking of plotlines, but the game itself shocked me to hell... I mean, for once, the characters in a Japanese RPG didn't just grate my ears, but they were actually interesting and "human" for once. And for a story about discrimination, that was one distinction that the writers just had to make, Humans or Elves or whatever they may be, no matter how hard it is to make a video game character into somebody that feels real...

This game had the best combat system I've ever tried in an RPG, even putting Grandia II, KOTOR, and Shenmue II to shame... It had probably the best graphics in an RPG as well, with cel-shading that puts most Japanese games to shame, and a framerate that Knights of the Old Republic can only dream of...

Though sure, the game has problems... Until you get the Rheiards, traveling about the two worlds is a complete bitch. Not to mention the overworld looks like ass, graphical sprite wise... Even with all the sidestories in the game, I'm not sure if there were enough sidequests to keep me interested. And like all Japanese RPGs, the game suffers from a lack of replay value after you beat the game... The challenge in the game is a bit too damn sporadic at times (tell me how I could get my ass handed to me by Yuan and Botta and Reggie, yet not even have to use a single damn item on so many bosses after them?...). And the dungeons? While unlike IGN, I can't complain about the save spots (considering I saved thousands of times during the game... WTF was IGN thinking when they wrote their "no save spots" review?...), I can complain about the damn horrible puzzles in Tales of Symphonia... Because my God, some of the dungeons were just plain awful in this game! The darkness dungeon had some of the stupidest follower-guys on the face of the planet. Getting lost in endless forests and random transporters that had absolutely no pattern whatsoever really get annoying after a while. The gravity-less sliding was perhaps the worst damn experience I've ever had in a game since the last crappy game I played. And so many of the moving-block puzzles made me want to just scream at my TV, "just fucking jump, for Christ's sake!"...

... and most importantly, Tales of Symphonia (except for its battle system) doesn't really innovate the industry. There's really nothing in this game that hasn't been done in an RPG before, in this generation of gaming or the last. And that's why I really can't give it the exceptionally high mark that I so desperately want to give it in my heart...

But that's not to say that Tales of Symphonia doesn't excel at everything that an RPG should excel at... I mean, I fucking spent 47 hours of my life playing this game, non-stop. I never once got bored of the battles, and only rolled my eyes 471 times at the dialogue on screen (which is a record low for anything but a Nintendo-made Japanese RPG...)... I ended the game with my characters at level 72. And when it was all said and done, after an ending that actually was satisfying for once? I actually went back to my old game, started up on all those remaining sidequests, and finished the game again at level 79 with an extra five hours of gametime... And still, I want to start a new game, simply in the hope of seeing everything there is to see in this game, and meeting all the characters I've fallen in love with, for the first time all over again...

... hell, this game is so good, that I almost don't even care that I got fucking ripped off from Best Buy...

... well, except for the nightmares... don't ask - I almost don't care, at least...

The naysayers can make fun of us Gamecube players all they want, claiming that the Tales of Symphonia sell-outs are all but a fluke. But if all those goddam naysayers would just pick up this game for just one damn day... then they would all see that this isn't just yet another generic, Japanese RPG...

This is Tales of Symphonia. The best Japanese RPG of this entire generation of gaming so far...

A symphony of gaming... and absolutely the best game I've played all year, bar none...

Y2kk Update: - Stargate Atlantis: Rising (Parts 1 & 2) Review (Spoilers) -

The two-part series premiere of Stargate Atlantis wasn't a perfect episode, but it was still a far better experience than the two-part season premiere of Stargate SG-1 was this year... I personally loved the first half of Rising. And I can personally vouch that as an episode of its own, it was a far better showing than Stargate SG-1 ever had in its series premiere... While obviously Atlantis was missing some things (notably full frontal nudity of Daniel Jackson's wife... wish they got Lexa Doig in for that, but that's besides the point). And while I personally thought the latter half of the episode waned in terms of anything but character development for Major John Sheppard, I must admit that Rising, New Order, and The Lost City from SG-1 last season, truly make up the best six straight hours of Stargate television ever produced...

... and with two hours of Stargate coming each and every week from now on?... excuse me while I froth...

Stargate Atlantis' premiere had a bit of a disadvantage in the character development aspect compared to the Stargate SG-1 premiere... Eight years ago, Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill were already interesting to viewers, thanks to the series being based on a movie. And everyone else seems to forget just how badly out of character Carter was portrayed, or how one-dimensional Teal'c felt at first... So for what it's worth, in a fair comparison, I gotta admit that I liked the Stargate Atlantis characters must quicker than I ever embraced the SG-1 cast. Although what was up with the choice of having no Chevron Guy? Wasupwidat?...

Major John Sheppard was perhaps the only character developed in this episode... He had a bit too much of a O'Neill thing going on with his sarcasm, and even seemed to have too much lip towards a general (while Jack barely had any during his first run at the SGC). And considering Sheppard and his mannerisms somehow remind me so damn much of Lindsay from Angel, I just couldn't take him seriously with a P90 (and where were their frickin' zats?)... With that said, I gotta admit that Sheppard really shined where it counted the most: in his interactions with the Ancient technology... The ever classic "did I do that?" worked perfectly with his absolutely clueless bewilderment at being the only person known to humanity to be able to do what Jack did as an Ancient. I also thought he handled himself extremely well in the dogfight to close the episode, not even knowing that he launched a weapon... And the early scenes with Lt. Ford in the "puddle jumper"?...

I gotta admit, I'm scared that Lt. Ford is going to just become the next Enterprise Mayweather or some crap like that. Sure, Ford got a couple of great scenes, laughing and falling into the Stargate, going on a naming binge when it came to new technology, and hoping for a turkey sandwich from the "gateship" (although that was obviously more of Sheppard's doing). But then again, Mayweather had some pretty damn good scenes in the Enterprise series premiere too, so... be afraid, Ford... especially with a name like "Rainbow", be very afraid...

Sheppard had some real chemistry with every character, to be honest. He was great in every scene with Ford (and Ford certainly did nothing without the Major in the camera's view). And Dr. Carson Beckett, while pretty one dimensional (although you gotta love a doctor who's afraid of breaking million year old things), at least got to look envious of Sheppard in a hell of a lot of cool ways (the Teyla balcony scene for one)... Teyla herself was the weakest link of the episode. I personally found all her scenes boring, as her acting and voice just somehow reminded me too damn much of J-Lo for my own good... But somehow, I just gotta admit that she did have a bit of romantic chemistry with Sheppard. I don't know how or why, but I guess the mere look in her eyes helped make me forgive all those whiny, grating moments with the Teal'c-type speeches her actress just can't handle...

The two characters in the episode that needed no introduction were Doctor McKay and Torri Higginson as Dr. Weir... First up, I gotta admit that I was disappointed in McKay this episode. Sure, he had some ever classic lines ("using power, using power!", and "I knew that... I'm just surprised you did" when it came to the 6-factorial math stuff...), but on the most part, he just didn't feel like the same Dr. McKay we've always known and loved to loathe... I really feel the Atlantis writers should've connected him more to his SG-1 roots, even though I knew the writers were afraid that no-one remembers the episodes he was in... I just don't know though. McKay was sarcastic, but not nearly as endearingly annoying as he was in Redemption. And for the most part, all he did was stand beside Dr. Weir, as if he had a crush on her. Which makes sense of course, considering Weir was originally casted as a Samantha Carter clone. Rodney has always had a weakness for dumb blondes, even if they weren't blondes anymore...

While I was disappointed in McKay (except for perhaps his perfectly wasted explanation of a "Zed-PM"), I gotta admit that I was impressed with Dr. Weir... She didn't strike me as anything special, but at least Torri did a hell of a lot better in an Atlantis uniform than she did in a suit on SG-1... While I'm still disappointed that Jessica Steen was booted off of the show, I must admit that Torri plays a scientist/action star much better than Steen ever would have (thought definitely not a dipolomat... but that's not what this show needs)... I personally thought Torri had a lot of chemistry with McKay and Sheppard as well. Rodney actually seemed to shut up whenever she gave him "the look" (but I thought the foobar Chevron Guy act was cool, though!). And Sheppard actually seemed to respect her, admitting at the end of the episode that perhaps her advice was right in the end... But really, there's only one real reason why I really enjoyed Weir this episode... Her body and face aren't really attractive to me, but I just don't know... it's just that, whenever she talked to Jack O'Neill or John Sheppard, there was just something in the way she furled her brow, pouted her lips, and grinned her smile... almost as if she constantly had some sort of "come hither" look to her... If I didn't know better, I'd say she was auditioning for a part in a MacGyver porn movie or some crap like that... But a tasty, 'professional' porn movie about alien politics, of course...

While the central characters of Atlantis were developed decently, there's just one problem... I think they were all overshadowed by the great guest characters on the show... Jack O'Neill had absolutely his best lines since The Lost City (not that that was long ago...). I loved his reaction to the squid weapon. I loved his "succint"ness when it came to the flight back home. And even his little lines, like congratulating Sheppard on a flight well done, then ragging on him for liking it in Antarctica, all flowed with the kind of natural wit and passion that has been sorely missing from Jack O'Neill's repertoire since even Redemption, perhaps... Daniel Jackson also got to really shine. Cutting to the part where he speaks "really fast" is always a mind boggler. I loved his banter with Jack when it came to wanting to join the Atlantis team. And while it never explained how he figured it out, you gotta admire a man for figuring out our first ever eight chevron address (although I still don't really agree with the idea of using our only ZPM on anything but the Ancient weapons on earth)... And Robert Patrick's Colonel Sumner? His scruffy exterior was a perfect contrast to Dr. Beckett's over-enthusiasm on the Ancient hologram platform. Nobody can ever beat out the T-1000 when it comes to ever classic one-liners like, "I don't like the fact they got their asses kicked". And you gotta appreciate the poor X-Files exiled bastard, for putting on such a strong Mr. Face when meeting a vampire alien for the first time on the show (guess he gets much more ET contact in the military than he did in the FBI...)... It was a shame that his character was killed off though, just like I still don't like how early Kawalski was whacked back in the series premiere of SG-1. But still, I think Robert Patrick did his part... By not liking Sheppard, he made the Major more important in our eyes somehow (or at least, more memorable). And besides, with his liquid metal reforming ways, it's only a matter of time until Robert Patrick finally gets to say, "I'll be back"...

I've said a lot of positive things about the new series so far, because each and every character does seem promising for now (well, maybe not Teyla... or Ford... but you just gotta love the Scotty-like scottsman)... And I absolutely loved the first half of the episode, thanks to the raw feeling of discovery in Atlantis (lights coming on by themselves, the holographic recording, and nice little touches like the newfound iris). And some of the best scenes in the episode came from the helicopter ride above Antarctica, and the rising of Atlantis for target practice at the surface. And hell, even the musical score was good in this episode. Perhaps a bit too similar to SG-1, but different enough to truly stand out... But the second half of the episode just really felt weak to me in comparison. I was bored for every single scene on the alien planet with Teyla's people, as it had nothing we haven't witnessed in God knows how many episodes on SG-1 (and it's not like there was a cultural or mythological significance to the people either). And the Wraith? I see them as being decent villains, I suppose... Eating people alive makes them dangerous, and it was refreshing that they didn't talk their opponents to death (at first) like some Goa'uld do. But overall, they just didn't seem very threatening... These are the aliens that took out the Ancients? Considering our stinger missiles could even take out their Naboo fighters, I have a hard time accepting that... I know that the Ancients were caught unprepared, outnumbered and off-guard. And I remember that the Ancient hologram woman mentioned a "sleeping enemy" (which by the way, was a really cool design, ship-with-trees-on-top wise at least)... But I'm still not convinced the Wraith are the ones who did it all. They seem more like scavengers, and not the real deal. But we'll see what happens next, considering I at least like the fact that the Wraith woman had a pretty cool shriek...

.. and what the hell was with Narim in Weir's apartment?... oh wait, I get it... he got amnesia after getting shot out of a Tollan ship, landed on earth, and went for the first damn Carter clone he could find on our planet... guess he's going to have some rather nerdy fist fights with MacKay later on in the years...

Overall, Stargate Atlantis pretty much delivered what it promised... It had a fresh kind of feel to it, sort of like a cool ocean breeze that quite frankly, was rather... umm... refreshing, I guess... compared to the tried and true formula of Stargate SG-1, at least... even if it did use basically the same formula...

But I'm sure that the new car smell feeling won't last long, for better and for worse... Already I'm seeing weaknesses in some of the characters. I know the fact that the Atlantis team is international will be forgotten sooner than later. I don't know whether I like the fact that the team is stranded in the Pegasus Galaxy (~3 million light years from the Milky Way, just for record's sake...), without help from the Asgard, until SG-1 moves away from the SGC at least. And I don't know if I liked that final scene in the episode, with Dr. Weir going into a porn drunk phase and opening the bottle of champagne far too early in the show to be a good capper...

But Stargate Atlantis does indeed have promise. My hopes are indeed rising for it, as the winds softly billow in the tides... I doubt the show will ever replace Stargate SG-1 in my heart and mind. But that doesn't mean there isn't any room leftover for another show to clog yet another artery I know and love...

... couch potatoeness, here I come... my hopes are still rising with a new hope... in a galaxy far, far away...

I've been waiting for this episode for months... years actually, if you include all those days I dreamed of the return of the Replicators...

Just three days ago, I was frothing at the mouth like a cup of cappuccino... I just couldn't wait for this episode to air...

... and with all my insanely high expectations?... it's no wonder then, that I was a bit letdown from the season 8 two part premiere...

The thing was, contrary to what almost everyone on the net seems to think, this episode just didn't have the script and storytelling to make it one of the classics... Normally, Stargate season premieres are amongst the best of television, or at least the best of the series. The Serpent's Lair, Small Victories, Redemption, and Homecoming all rank as some of my favourite episodes of all time...

But New Order, despite looking so damn good on paper, just wasn't up to the season premiere standards. It just felt so damn straight forward and (ironically enough) so damn episodic formulaic, that I never really could get into the episode or any sort of crap like that... I mean, sure I always wanted the return of the Replicators, and I think the entire internet dreamed of what kind of funk Fifth would be in if he ever was able to escape the time dilation device... I always wanted to see another fleet of Asgard ships, or figure out why they never helped us with Anubis. And I always wanted Baal to take over, no matter how much I normally enjoyed Anubis' over-the-top ramblings from time to time... But did the writers really have to write a episode that just felt so damn by-the-book? Honestly, New Order simply felt like it was simply waltzing from plot point A to B to C, with no really any clever dialogue inbetween...

As a plot filler, I think New Order set up the new season in a superb way. With a war about to wage between the Asgard, Replicators, and Goa'uld, with earth stuck in the middle with a conveniently busted weapon, I really do think season 8 can match the very best of the best...

But as a single two-hour episode by itself?... I don't know... New Order just doesn't give me that new kind of hope I was looking for... not after how much I loved The Lost City last year, at least...

The first hour of the episode of the premiere definitely felt lacking thanks to the obvious (and intentional) lack of Jack O'Neill. The other characters did try to fill up the void though... Sam and Teal'c had a pretty amusing conversation on the modified Goa'uld cargo ship, but besides the look on Carter's face when Pete was mentioned, there really isn't much to mention. And all their other scenes together, in the briefing room and on Thor's new ship, really didn't strike a chord with me either. Hell, I didn't even care when their ship was being blown apart by a black hole. The special effects were decent, but I just didn't feel the suspense, especially considering the actors didn't even try to emphasize the drama of it all actually (they definitely had a been-there-done-there kind of vibe in New Order). I did laugh at Teal'c's line though, "indeed... for some", when quipping about Carter understanding everything. But one decent line in an entire hour of supposed clever script writing wasn't exactly what I was expecting a few months ago...

Teal'c never really improved throughout the second hour, although I did get a real kick out of his newfound love for the shotgun (sniff sniff... brings back fond memories of Angel's late Wesley...)... Carter though did get to shine with Fifth back on stage. Because dammit, the only truly great character in the entire episode was none other than everyone's favourite, pissed off Replicator. I mean, the torture scenes weren't even elaborate - all he did was stick his hand in her head and show little flashes of nothing on screen. But the looks on Sam's and Fifth's faces truly made the scenes what they are... I really did feel for Carter when she broke down in tears. And I really did relate to Fifth at times, because he really was going through the steps of a child, learning what it's like to be evil... Anger management, then a moment of regret, and then of course my favourite - romantic obsession!... I had already seen a glimmer of it back in season six, so I wasn't surprised when he admitted that he loved her in the end. I did laugh though... and having the love thingy confirmed made all the farming scenes with Pete more bearable... Amanda Tapping really did have great chemistry with Fifth, no matter whether he was pretending to be Pete or she was playing a newly spawned, Evil Repli-Carter... The dynamic between these two were what really saved this episode in my eyes. And I can only hope that with Fifth still out there, and with something about "twins" as well, that season eight will truly bring exciting closure to the Replicator storyline...

... now that we know he has a thing for Carter?... oh boy, Fifth is so going to die...

As for Daniel Jackson... He tried to carry the first hour of the episode by himself, essentially. He made all the jokes he could, and I did laugh at his "every pun done to death" comment when it came to Yu (although his over-the-top "Game Over" was too dramatic for my tastes, even with the followup)... And his banter later on with Jack definitely helped save the episode as well (although I'll get to that later)... But still, most of his performance was directly linked to the new Dr. Elizabeth Weir... and I'm sorry. Unless Torri Higginson can carry a machine gun with pride in Stargate Atlantis, I will be extremely pissed that they replaced the Carter clone, Jessica Steen. I mean, Weir was just plain awful this episode! She was given some great lines, like bluffing about taking Baal's territory. But every single line she uttered either sounded overacted, underacted, or simply out of atmospheric sync with the rest of the characters on the show. Like her UN joke? Completely didn't seem to fit the mood of the scene. Maybe it was her comfort level or something, but she just couldn't match the other actors, and I really don't know why... The only real compliment that I can give her is that despite her inability to act diplomatically intelligent, she had amazing chemistry with Michael Shanks, at least in terms of eye contact. I almost got a romantic vibe between Daniel and Weir at times... weird, ain't it? I never got that with Jessica Steen before...

But I know the real reason why I didn't really love this episode. It's because it went on far too long without Jack O'Neill at the helm... As soon as he appeared on screen, the episode truly did pick up and I finally started enjoying it for what it was worth... I cracked up at the homage to Homer Simpson with the Asgard lights. I loved the mirrored reactions in Daniel's and Jack's face when they realized the name of the ship they were on (the Colonel was probably just jealous that the Daniel Jackson survived more than five minutes, you know...). I was with him on the double take questions about Teal'c's new hair. And c'mon already! Who didn't snicker at the sight of poor Thor cowering from the humanoid Replicator on the ship... And somehow, without Jack there, tapping the weapon as if that would somehow help him figure out what it does, I'm sure that even the precious moments with Thor would've been a complete bore... Or actually, they were boring - I didn't even find Thor entertaining without Jack around to piss him off... And before this episode? Hell, I never found Thor boring, no matter how much Star Trek technobabble he spewed...

As for O'Neill taking over the SGC... I suppose it's the best thing the writers can do, considering Don Davis had left (although I really wish they would just bring Jonas back already...). And O'Neill did get to do cool things already, with a much well deserved promotion of Major Carter... And yeah, I found the jokes about being The Man and having a desk to be rather funny. And you see? That's also the problem... The episode was at its best when at all four members of SG-1 were together. I'm going to miss the team dynamic... It was what made Stargate one of the best sci-fi shows of all time for its first six or seven seasons. And who knows? Maybe it'll still be around enough to make the record reach eight...

There were good parts to New Order. Indeed... Like I mentioned, Carter and Fifth brought out the best in each other. Jack O'Neill truly showed us 'who's our daddy'. Daniel pulled off a good joke or two. And Teal'c got to hold his hair and hug his shotgun... And like I mentioned, the plot points in the episode were all great on paper. I loved how Ba'al was taking over, as he really has proved to be a great secondary villain over the years... I personally thought it was time for the Asgard to finally take the fight to the Replicators (although you gotta feel bad for the poor bastards... After thousands of years, Thor's race still hasn't matched the Ancients in anything but hyperdrive and transporter technology? Asgard have been getting their little asses kicked for years now, yet it takes a single Ancient only a few minutes to solve the entire Replicator problem? Now there's a good reason for an inferiority complex...)... And the Goa'uld Camulus? Since I don't know how to spell his name, I'll just call him "Rhade" instead (for no apparent reason whatsoever, of course...). I liked his addition to the Stargate universe, especially now that Major Coburn has gone MIA. But honestly? WTF is wrong with the Stargate people? Don't they know he's going to become the first officer of the Prometheus, betray the captain, and then get stuck in a black hole for 300 years?...

New Order really did seem like a great episode at first. With so many great plot points, a lot of questions answered, and a lot of special effects in the end, I really did think the two hour season premiere would rank up there with the very best... But alas, just like with my cup of cappuccino, New Order had just too much of a tall order to fill... The lack of Jackness, poor support from Dr. Weir, a once again mostly useless Teal'c, and an episode that felt far too driven by plotline rather than passion, all contributed to the fatal fact that yes, I was disappointed in New Order...

I waited months for a great episode... guess I'll have to wait a few months more...

... or at least, until next week... A new hope? Here's hoping for the Stargate Atlantis premiere...

I was in high school once. It's true. Oh, it's true... and as everyone should know by now, I had a real fetish for all things Star Trek. Hell, I still have a real fetish for all things Star Trek... But the thing was, at times I had more of an ideal for Star Trek than I had a reality. In this particular pointless anecdote, I had a real thing for the Borg... I envisioned them as unstoppable killing machines. Nostalgia for Best of Both Worlds clouded my judgment, and I couldn't help but picture the Borg as the perfect undying enemy with no real weakness...

Then came along Star Trek: First Contact, the only Next Generation film that the Trekkies out there actually enjoyed... The thing is, I never enjoyed it. Besides the odd moment or two with Zephram Cochrane and the first warp flight, I absolutely couldn't stand that movie back in high school. And why? Because I was so damn stuck up with the fact that a) the Borg were severely weakened (WTF is up with their ship actually taking damage?), and b) because they had been humanized with the Borg Queen... I didn't care whether the rest of the film was decent or not. All I did care about, was that the Borg weren't the Borg that I always remembered them to be... Even after rewatching Best of Both Worlds (and realizing that it was no longer the best of both worlds...), I still never cared much for Star Trek: First Contact. My sister even bought the VHS tape for me for Christmas one year, and instead of thanking her, I pretty much just shrugged (and I still regret my callousness to this day... even though I should stop living in the goddam past and just let the memory go... but I digress)...

... the thing is, I finally caught Star Trek: First Contact for the first time since high school on TV, and you know what? The movie was actually good... Nay, the movie was better than good. It was a much better film than any of the other Next Generation films were, no doot aboot it. And hell, I even enjoyed it! It was the fourth time I watched the movie, maybe even the fifth, yet it was the first time I enjoyed it... And you know what? And you know why?... It's because thanks to Voyager absolutely ruining the race for me, I no longer have the dream I once held for the Borg... I never really hated First Contact as a movie. I just hated it because it wasn't the movie that I wanted it to be... I wanted space battles galore, and the boarding of the Borg ship. I wanted a rehash for Best of Both Worlds, with all the same feelings I felt the first time I watched it... I wanted something that simply was not possible, and because of my bias first impressions, I couldn't enjoy this film until years later, when my hate had subsided and I had nothing better to do than write pointless Y2kk anecdotes on my noname website...

Short story short, I should've watched the movie for what it is, and not what I wanted it to be...

... considering all the piss poor reviews of it on the net (my own friend's included...), you tell me...

King Arthur is a story everyone has heard, and everyone already has an impression of. I think nobody on the face of the planet has exactly the same dreams and the same ideals of the King Arthur myth as anybody else. And you see? There lies the problem with how this damn movie was reviewed... Just like the hokey pocus around the crap that "the book is always better than the movie", nostalgia clouds peoples' better judgments, and movies get bad reps before they even get released in theatres... I mean, for God's sakes, King Arthur had less than a frickin' four out of ten on IMDB before the first few hours that the movie actually came out! Either a ton of people got to see the movie in preview screenings, or people judged the movie without ever really giving a damn about what they were judging...

Now, it's not like my opinion carries much weight on the net, especially considering the only person who ever frequents this website of mine is pretty much me... But let my opinion be clear: King Arthur was not the greatest movie of all time, or even the best movie of the month so far. But I'll be damned if I ever say it was a bad movie. I'll be damned if I ever get tortured into somehow admitting that a) I'm a British spy, or b) that this movie wasn't the best damn epic film I've seen since Gladiator...

I mean honestly, what the hell were reviewers thinking when they said this movie was crap? Was there something wrong with the music? Not really, unless you can't stand the fact that Hans Zimmer modeled the soundtrack after Gladiator, it seems... Was there something wrong with the sound editing? The picture quality? Not really, considering every fire arrow sounded poignant, and every scene appeared vibrant on screen (except for extreme moments of Gladiator-intentional graininess, at least...)... Was there something wrong with the pacing? Maybe, but not so much I'd think. The first half of the movie was a bit too slow, with sparse battles, poor comedy, and a bit too much King Arthur speecifying. Meanwhile, the second half of the movie was unquestionably the better half, with much better battles, character direction and dialogue. But was the pacing bad overall? Not really, considering besides the obvious homages to Tears of the Sun, I was never actually bored during the movie. And that's something that only Spiderman 2 has accomplished in full this year so far...

So what was wrong with the film? Was it the script? I suppose perhaps. It was the weakest link in the chain. Lancelot's line, "there's a lot of lonely men out there", was definitely not up there with the ever classic "are you not entertained?" (...)... And actually, none of the characters really had anything else to say besides pure cliche... The comic relief during the first half of the film didn't even get a grim grin out of me. Too much of it was man-hands grimace if you ask me. And probably the only line I did laugh out loud at, was Guinevere's awful, "I won't let them rape you" line. Now THAT was awful... But terrible T3 one liners aside, what was really wrong with the script? Not much, in my honest opinion at least. Lancelot put some real emphasis into all his emotions, despite the cliche lines he was given whenever around Arthur. King Arthur himself didn't get any memorable lines himself, but I don't remember a single line he said that was embarrassingly bad enough to hurt my head (unlike Spiderman 2, for example...). Clive Owen ruled his part, of being the dark and broody and glossy Roman at least... And Guinevere? Well, I didn't care if she said anything or not. Though she was damn ugly in Pirates of the Caribbean, Keira Knightley was damn hot in this movie (except when she lost her breasts in her Xena Warrior Princess act, but that's besides the point). She can come into my room wearing that robe of hers anytime...

So really, if the pacing was decent, if the effects were alright, and if the script was palatable, than what really is the problem with King Arthur?...

... they'll talk about history... as if it was actually set in Excalibur stone...

... spoilers for those who care, although the trailer itself shows most of them off...

The biggest problem with this film was the goddam advertising. Because hell, even I felt cheated by it... This is supposed to be the "true" story of King Arthur? What true story? There's only a bit of evidence out there that there even was a King Arthur, who managed to temporarily halt the Saxon invasions by unifying Britain (until the Anglo-Saxons came into power, obviously...). And truth be told, I know Englanders truly hate this film, if only because they hate the theories it chose to follow...

It's like the story of Atlantis, you know? Whenever a fantastic new tale of the lost continent with absolutely no evidence comes up, I cheer and shout and illogically call it proof that the story was true. And whenever some actual scientist comes around and shows a little primitive island, burrowed in volcanic ash, and claims that he's found Atlantis, I simply scoff at his evidence and roll my eyes whenever somebody mentions the theory again to me in school... And goddammit, I was the same way about Star Trek: First Contact. And it's the same damn way about King Arthur all across the net... The reviewers seem to hate the fact that the writers for the film chose the theory that King Arthur was "Arthurius Cassus" or some sort of crap from Rome. They hate the fact that the Sarmatian knight theory was taken into account, that the knights of the Round Table weren't even Britons and crap like that... They hated the fact that Guinevere was cast as Xena Warrior Princess. They hated the fact that the Roman's were still around Hadrian's Wall. Hell, I even read one awful review out there that chastised the movie for somehow not being specific enough about goddam Hadrian's Wall. I mean, he hated the movie because of a goddam wall? How damn nitpicky can you possible be?

Because WTF is their problem? I may hate the fact that the movie was advertised as a "true" story, but I more so hate the fact that so many online reviewers for this film actually think they know the true story... So what if King Arthur was a Roman? It made for what I considered a great secondary plotline. Because I'm a Catholic, see. And I actually found it refreshing to have a movie that made Catholicism at least look decent for once (well, besides Passions...), with one true Christian in the midst of a world of corrupted religious individuals. Even if it wasn't very deep in the end, I actually did feel sorry for King Arthur at times. He was looking for something to fight for, to live for. And of course, he found it - predictability has never been a problem for me in the movies... He was an honourable man. Perhaps too honourable for today's movie going society. And while I find that a refreshing breath of clean air, for the modern movie industry at least, unfortunately cynical assholes on the net looking for dark and mature anti-hero protagonists have to look elsewhere...

And tons of reviewers complained about the lack of love triangle between King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere. And I say to them, why bother with the damn love triangle?... It's actually written in Excalibur stone that the love triangle never existed. It was made up by a storyteller in the 12th century or some crap like that. And hell, even Lancelot was never in the original tale. Why the hell even have Lancelot in the movie then, right?... The truth of the matter is, in some ways, Lancelot was wasted in this film. But the missing love triangle was never really the problem... Ioan Gruffudd didn't have much to work with, considering all Lancelot did was question his loyalty to Arthur, pine for Sarmatian home, and pine for sexual freedom. Although I guess I did snicker from all his 'childish' jokes though, because I truly think Ioan outshone all others in this movie. Even with so few lines and so few moments to spotlight, Lancelot really felt like the most fleshed out and real character in the entire film... A lot of people complained about the use of the Sarmatian/Salvation army theory, but dammit, it made the rivalry between Arthur and Lancelot seem real at times. In many ways, Lancelot felt like the damn star in the movie, because he was always able to bitch slap poor Arthur down in arguments. And truth be told, I was kind of happy that they left the love triangle out of the film... I could still feel the passion in just the few quick glances that Lancelot gave. But the lack of love triangle truly paid off with Lancelot's death... I mean, I guess I should've seen it coming, since when one knight dies, I guess anyone but Arthur is fair game. But Lancelot's death?... He died for the woman he loved, without ever getting a chance to love her... He didn't dwell on pitiful jealousy or spiteful rage or any love triangle crap like that. But rather, he finally proved his noble worth. As a man, I appreciate that he died a real man. He gave his life for a cause that was never his to begin with, and I personally felt that made the Sarmatian knight theory in the film into something worth fighting for. Or worth arguing about, at least...

And Guinevere? Okay, so she's Xena Warrior Princess. She's a road Woad warrior who doesn't even get to fight naked, so sue me... And I too hate the changes they made to her character, girl power and all... But hey, she looked damn hot in that iceland dress of hers. And her archery in the ice scene helped make the battle into something really unique... That single ice battle alone was better than everything but the one-on-one fight in Troy, even if the idea of cracking the ice was predictable. I guess as a Canadian, I really do find hot, half naked woman in the middle of ice to be quite a scorching turn-on... so sue me...

And while I didn't particularly find her swordplay enjoyable (although Lancelot's double blades were badass...), I loved the use of archery in the final battle scene as well. The closing of the Hadrian gates, the Last Samurai fire hay trick, and hell, even the catapults helped make the battle the best epic-movie fight scene I've seen on screen since Gladiator (or Last Samurai, if that film counts), haters be damned... So many complain that this movie was just another hack and slash kind of film, without any of the soul of Braveheart. But dammit, real characters like Arthur, Lancelot, Knight number 9, and yes, even Guinevere the psycho bitch archer, helped make the battle into something that I actually remembered (rather than the flat CG sequences in Troy, for example)... I really appreciated the fact that King Arthur battles were almost entirely filled with real characters, and not Age of Empire AIs. I appreciated the fact that the fire arrows looked painful, the swords made cool sounds, and Keira Knightley got some pretty nice close-ups in that one-on-one fight she picked...

It still irks me that they changed Princess Guinevere into something so bizarre, but really, in the end, does it really matter?...

If the story were actually "true", there would be no Guinevere. She never existed... If the story were "true", there would be no Lancelot. There would be no round table. There would be no over-the-top evil Cedric... Hell, there wouldn't even be Knights, since the term "knight" wasn't coined until feudal society formed in the Middle Ages...

I may hate the movie for its awful tagline of being a "true" story. But when I walked into the movie, I simply parted that bias aside. And instead of watching a film that I wanted to watch at first, with a Merlin that actually did something, and an Excalibur that wasn't just a sword in a grave, I actually paid attention to the film that I was watching... and ended up really enjoying it in the end, surprising even me...

Many of the characters were obviously not their best... Merlin was a dog... The knights were ponies (...)... Cedric was such a one-dimensional villain that it actually hurt (although I like the nice touch of the barbarians having muffled "American" accents...). And hell, King Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere were all pretty straight-forward as well (although that fact personally bodes well with me, considering the archetypal nature of the root mythical, mythril material...).

And obviously the script was sour at times. Obviously the pacing of the first half of the film definitely could've been helped. And obviously, some actual comic relief like there was in Pirates of the Caribbean could've brought this film to something better than a pathetic $4 million opening day box office take-in...

But the movie had good battle sequences, dammit. The movie had well acted characters, even if they were a bit stale... The movie had good actors - and actresses, as who wouldn't want to see Keira Knightley these days?... The music was epic. The effects were adequate. And I love the Roman costumes (I've been looking for a good excuse to relive Gladiator again, in some form or another)... Technically, there is nothing actually wrong with this movie, except perhaps an overdose of the epic genre after LOTR... and many honest movie watchers on the net forums are figuring out the same damn thing as I did. They watched the film with an open mind, and actually come out surprised...

Surprised that it was good. Surprised that it was entertaining. And surprised that the reviewers and detractors of the film could be so damn wrong...

I think Locutus of Borg said it best: "Review a movie for what it is, and not what you wanted it to be"...

... yup... especially considering every damn reviewer these days just reads like yet another drone from the goddam hive...

The original Spiderman movie was the first movie I ever reviewed on this noname website of mine... if you can call whatever the hell I wrote a review, that is...

... and it was obvious from the fact that I talked less about the movie than I did about a father pulling a Steven Seagal on his son, that the original Spiderman movie definitely wasn't on my list of all time favourite popcorn flicks of the year... And I think it was even more than obvious that I was bored to tears, since I was too busy analyzing how damn openly Freudian it was (Peter Parker gets his father figure killed, murders the only other father figure, eliminates the friend/brother figure, protects the mother figure at all costs, wants to bone the childhood girl/sister figure, etc...) to even remember what the hell was going on in the film... Simply put, Spiderman was not nearly as memorable as I hoped it would be... not after the huge marketing blitz, I mean... and, well...

Truth be told, I kind of hated the first Spiderman movie. It was awkwardly paced, none of the actors or actresses seemed to have any chemistry with each other whatsoever, the dialogue felt more like a cartoon than a movie based on a comic book... and goddammit, I'm still pissed off that I jumped in my seat like a fraidy little school girl from that goddam Norman Osborn scene... If anything was memorable, pissing in my pants certainly was...

But goddammit, even though my brain was wracking at me to avoid the sequel to the film like the goddam plague, Sony sucked me back in again with yet another brilliant marketing scheme... Because I swear, Spiderman 2 had perhaps the absolute best movie trailer I've ever seen in my life. I've literally watched the downloadable 50MB version of it on my computer at least a dozen times by now, and it just never gets boring... which I knew would be a problem in the end... Because if a trailer to a movie is this damn good, then the movie in comparison can only end up as a bitter disappointment, right? Considering that all the good spots in the movie were already shown, that's normally how the movie game is played...

I saw Spiderman 2 in theatres today. First day. First review. I just couldn't resist...

... and because... well?... this film has been revered by critics all across the board as the series' The Empire Strikes Back. Hell, this film even has a 96% rating at Rotten Tomatoes right now, a feat I've never even seen before... and if only I actually liked The Empire Strikes Back (worst Star Wars film EVAR. Suck that down, bitches...)... although I really hate to admit this, but...

Was it a great movie? Maybe. Was it a perfect one like the Rotten Tomatoes rating suggests? Not quite exactly... but Spiderman 2 was definitely a war of worlds ahead of its predecessor. Hell, just straight off the bat from the opening credits, I just knew that Sam Raimi wasn't going to make the same damn mistakes with Spiderman 2 as he did with the first film. While the original had absolutely the worst opening credits I've ever seen, Spiderman 2 had perhaps the best that I can ever remember. Having water colour comic book paintings of the "last time, on Spiderman" sequences was simply a waterbrush stroke of genius. As the noname nostalgic, even I have to admit that...

At times Spiderman 2 felt a little long, with an ending that dragged on just a bit too much, and a middle act that never seemed like it would ever end. But to be honest? Completely unlike the first film, I don't think there was really a single time in the entire film that I was ever bored... Hell, that's a compliment that I can't even give the X-men movies, mind you...

The comedy was all there, even if it wasn't memorable. I mean, there's not many jokes I remember anymore, aside from a running gag about missing cocktail foods, and a rather brilliant cameo by Bruce Campbell, the Evil Dead Usher from hell... My brother though got a real kick out of the "my back, my back" punchline, even though he never really connected one and one together and realized it was a rib about Tobey Maguire's Seabiscuit negotiating tactics. And I don't think the rest of the crowd realized it either, but they sure as hell seemed to get a kick out of it too...

The music was all there, even if it wasn't memorable. None of the tunes from the soundtrack even stand out in my mind anymore. It's not like I'm humming anything in the elevators with Spidy on the side... But there was not a single time during the film that I ever felt the music was misplaced or awkward. And in many ways, that's the biggest compliment that I can ever give to a musical score: that it blends so perfectly with what's happening on screen, you don't even notice that the music is playing at all...

And the special effects? For the most part, I guess they weren't very memorable (bear with me on this one...). Spiderman looked horrible in CG whenever he stood still in the movie (and especially in those opening scenes... WTF were they thinking with that lighting?). And it's not like we movie goers haven't seen cars and taxis flying through coffee shops lately. As magical as special effects can be, we really have become desensitized to them... or most of them, at least...

Because absolutely the greatest CG special effect I've probably ever seen in a movie to date, has just got to be Doctor Octopus' mechanical tendrils. They moved so lifelike they that they almost seemed alive at times. And I really have to give credit to the scope of the film - they really gave Doc Ock some real damn style, with the mechanical arms lighting cigarettes and even playing cool with his Matrix-esque shades... It's been noted in almost every single review out there, how the Sam Raimi patented hospital scene was something fresh out of Evil Dead. And I admit, even I had to smirk at the sight of the chain saw... But while I also admit that the scene was far too "New York monster of the week" cheesy for me, never once did the mechanical arms look out of place. Hell, in the entire movie, not once did the mechanical tentacles ever look fake or cheesy. They looked as real as they come, and believe me when I say that's probably the biggest compliment I have ever given to a computer graphic effect...

And the battles the film? Looking back, except for the train sequence that everyone seems to be raving about as if they were on ecstasy, none of the battles were particularly memorable... and by default logic, I guess that would be a problem... And yet that's also the greatest compliment that I can give Spiderman 2, Dr. Strangely enough... That the battles may not have been memorable, that the comedy may not have been the greatest, and that hell, even the musical score wasn't really all there... and yet they were - they were all there, like pieces of a grand puzzle - and they never felt awkward or out of place, not even once (well, besides some cheesy comedy, at least)... Everything seamlessly blended in together as a whole in this movie, and dammit, made the comic book characterization of Peter Parker come to life on screen... While all the reviews I'm sure will be ranting about battle scenes here and special effects there, the only really thing that I care about, is that this film somehow suspended my disbeliefs to the point that it actually made a comic book character feel real in my eyes...

... for once, a comic book movie relied more on its character development than it did on character power...

... for once, a Spiderman movie embodied everything that the Spiderman mythos has ever truly been about...

... big time spoilers... although probably by now, everyone's seen the movie, so...

Peter Parker was absolutely the brightest star of the film, and completely unlike his performance in the first film, Tobey Maguire completely owned his role... Parker in this film suffered from the moral dilemma that plagues all superheroes at a point: what's the point in saving lives, if you can't even save your own in the end?... And overall, while the middle of the film sort of dragged on thanks to Spiderman not being Spiderman for too long of a time, I completely admit that Parker's dilemma really felt real at times... Some have complained that it's kind of weird that Parker would completely lose his powers, just from a subconscious desire to have a real excuse to quit his superhero life. I on the other hand personally thought losing his powers was a nice touch, sort of like performance anxiety, if you know what I'm talking about... However, relosing his eyesight and somehow completely losing his physique kind of mystified me to the point of actually laughing out loud (oops...)... But even still, both moments managed to provide some actual nostalgia from the first film. And both moments definitely provided some rather decent metaphors of what Peter Parker was feeling inside... And honestly, who didn't feel even a ripple of a chill down their spines when Parker dropped the glasses and clenched his fists to drop the gloves? The superhero was back, and I actually cared...

I will give all the credit in the world to the film for somehow suspending my disbeliefs and somehow making Spiderman falling, from a twenty story high building without a scratch, into something than actually helped the story rather than just annoy me with being scientifically impossible... And the real reason why the movie worked so well, Spiderman powers and all, is because the character basis of Peter Parker was just so much stronger in this film than the original... When the building was on fire, you can actually spider sense the guilt on his face. And when you hear that someone died in that very building, you can actually feel his heart snap in two... And honestly, I've never felt sad in a comic book movie before, but just the look on Parker's face when he was finally admitting the truth to Aunt May was nothing short of heartbreaking... even breathtaking, mind you... I still don't think Aunt May really fits into the movies well (her speeches were a bit too long and overdramatic, if you ask me), but her reaction to Parker's guilt was perfect... I mean, I really felt sorry for poor Parker. Guilt is the most powerful emotion in my life by far, and this movie was just so damn full of it that it actually made me want to cry...

... I didn't cry though... except when I looked around and realized there wasn't going to be another Steven Seagal moment, at least...

And completely unlike the first film, Tobey even had chemistry with Kirsten Dunst... Now, Kirsten once again didn't have much of a role except to get her hair all wet and look real horny for the photo ops... But dammit, she even played Mary Jane Watson as pretty sweet this time around, all the way to the point of her "go get 'em, tiger" finally sounding natural for the character... Although alas, at times, she was just a bit too one dimensional. All she did was pine for Peter Parker, without actually doing anything but repeatedly goad him into telling the truth. And she had absolutely no chemistry with Jameson's astronaut son (partially on purpose), although the upside down kiss was a rather nice bit of continuity... But Mary Jane really redeemed herself at the end of the film. The look on her face when she found out the truth about Parker was both surprising and painfully heartwrenching, and you can easily see in just the way her face shifts from sadness to smiles and vice versa, that she finally understands just why Parker has been acting the way he has... and it broke her heart to finally know the truth... Although some of the lines uttered were too damn long for the suspense of the scene, I really enjoyed the comic relief when Parker was trying to save Mary Jane's life from the fusion experiment. The two characters finally looked like they cared for each other rather than just for the money bags and script... And the scene where Parker had a heart to heart talk with his dame-next-door love on the spiderweb, was probably the most homely and heartfelt moment of the entire film, as even I felt horrible for the two characters and their forbidden love... And if the film had actually ended that way, sure the audiences would've booed at the end, but it sure would've made the film feel so much more whole than how it actually ended. I was shocked that Mary Jane learned the truth about Parker so early into the trilogy of films, but I was actually satisfied by the fact that Kirsten Dunst finally gave credit to her role... But then the film had to drag on and on, with a wedding runaway bride that made Watson look like a complete bitch, and an ending that may have been happy for audiences, but just somehow felt empty for me, knowing that the relationship between the two was being rushed thanks to the nature of the movie industry... I understand why the writers got the two characters together so soon - just in case the third movie is the last, I mean. But I really think they should've risked it all and left this kind of ending for at least the end of the third film. This movie was about guilt and finding yourself, and even though Mary Jane did find her true self at the end, it still felt tacked on to an otherwise wonderfully broody movie... What's the point of teen angst if you're going to be happy in the end? Make the audiences crave more with a hiss, goddammit...

Now, I never once imagined that Mary Jane would find out the truth in this film. But just from the trailers, I knew Harry Osborn would... And it's a good thing too, otherwise James Franco's character would have been completely wasted in this film... Because that's what he was: wasted. Wasted on scotch, actually... Are we actually going to believe that just drinking a bunch of scotch and reading a bunch of newspaper clippings can actually make a man go insane? Geez, now I remember why I hated the first Spiderman film in the first place... James Franco only got to play a one dimensional role, as evident from the fact that his only really momentous scene was bitch slapping Parker twice in the cotton mouth. His friendship with Parker in this film was completely lacking, though I suppose that's the point, considering he blames Parker for his father's death almost as much as he does Spiderman... And even at Harry Osborn's big shining moment, when he figures out the truth about Spiderman's identity, he still doesn't really get a single minute on screen to shine. Instead of giving him one redeeming moment where it shows him letting Parker go, we get a really cheesy cutscene of him somehow talking to his dead father in the Green Goblin mirror. While it obviously sets up a sequel brilliantly, the scene definitely made the film drag on to places that reminded me just why I didn't want to see this film in the first place... I'm really hoping that the fourth movie deals with Harry as the Goblin, and not the third. Because if this is the kind of brain grating dialogue that we're going to be forced to deal with yet again, then please give us one last good Spiderman movie inbetween, with hopefully a really good Spiderman villain to remember...

And that was probably what was the most memorable thing about the entire Spiderman 2 movie... Tobey Maguire was great for his guilt, Kirsten Dunst was actually adorable for once (her hair was nice, and thank God she didn't wear that hideous Chinese dress...), and even James Franco at least played his role to the best that the script allowed... But honestly, the show was stolen by Alfred Molina as Doctor Otto Octavius. I already mentioned that his tentacles were goddam alive enough to be counted as members of the cast, but I never once mentioned how damn great Molina's performance was, to make the tentacles seem so damn believable to the audience...

At times Doc Ock did get on my nerves though... Why did he need Stargate Trinium, when he was using bubble sonic emissions for fusion (sorry - I'm a tech geek, so I nitpick...)? How on earth did he manage to make mechanical tentacles that are magically immune to magnetization? How the heck did he manage to stay conscious from consecutive punches from Spiderman, a man who could even lift an entire building wall at the end? And honestly, why the hell would he create unnecessarily evil looking robotic arms with absolutely unnecessarily evil, self preserving AI? The logic of would-be villains is just downright baffling at times... And the scene where his mind begins to become possessed by the arms? Some critics called it creepy - I just call it downright cheesy (although at least it was still worlds ahead of whatever crap we had to put up with Norman Osborn)...

But goddammit, I'd be lying if Doc Ock wasn't the best damn villain I've seen on screen in years (although Stryker in X2 was pretty damn good himself)... Octavius wasn't the most menacing of villains, as all he really did was climb buildings like King Kong, stomp on the ground like Godzilla, and throw money bags of cars around as if we were watching The Matrix Reloaded or some crap like that... But he definitely had a personality. He definitely had intelligence. And he definitely had charm... The bank scene wasn't the greatest fight to me, except for maybe Aunt May's offence (although it bugged me that she was the hostage who was captured - wouldn't she have a "deliver us from evil" heart attack or something?). And the coffee shop scene was obviously spoiled for me by the trailers... But the train scene was absolutely remarkable, simply because Doc Ock did everything within his power to take out Spiderman, even to the point of sacrificing everyone on the subway. He showed no mercy, yet deep down inside, you could still sense that he was a good man, even with the loss of his wife and dreams... and it showed in his final scenes. Some might find it a cop out that Spiderman never was able to beat his nemesis, but I personally thought it was a great twist for Dr. Octopus to finally pull himself together and redeem himself for the monster he had become... I never liked how Norman didn't really give a damn when he found out about Spiderman's identity, but I sure as hell felt relieved when Peter Parker and his "unmasking binge" (did he really have to show off his bits and parts to the whole subway?) actually had a point in the end...

... end big time apple spoilers... get it? I made a pun!... oh, nevermind... a Peter Parker pathetic pun, I know...

Now, I won't be like all the other reviewers out there, gushing over this film as if it were the industry's saving private grace... I mean, sure I was never once bored during Spiderman 2, but that's not to say that I was always entertained. The movie did have a lot of weaknesses, afterall... Jameson still felt like too much of a cartoon character, although he finally was pretty funny for once. His son didn't really serve any point in the plotline, and I really felt he was wasted, considering what big plans are in store for him... I already mentioned that Harry Osborn was wasted from being Wasted. And judging from Doc Ock and his tendrils, I guess the bad-guy speecifying thing hasn't really gotten out of the writers' systems yet... Aunt May was still annoying in many scenes, especially in the one where she beat us over the head with an ugly stick about just what it means to be a hero... The middle act of the movie was a bit too long, as I've already said a dozen times by now. Some of the Parker dilemma things were just a bit too exaggerated. The ending dragged on, and didn't exactly finish the way I was hoping the film would end... And goddammit, evil Dr. Connors mentioned goddam Eigenvalues! I fucking hate Eigenvalues! They fucking failed me in first year Linear Algebra. Dammit, I'll never give four fucking stars to any damn film that reminds me of how damn much I goddam suck...

... but for everything that Spiderman 2 does wrong, I really hate to admit it, but it does a ton of things absolutely right. Because ladies and gentleman, although I still personally prefer X-men out of childhood nostalgia, Spiderman 2 truly is the definitive comic book movie for our generation. It truly brought to life everything that I think the Spiderman series is truly known for, and all that the Spiderman series truly stands for, all thanks to a brave man's attempt to bring the character of Peter Parker alive, and not just the character of Spiderman... This was the first comic book movie ever that I truly identified with the main character on screen. Whenever Tobey felt guilty, I felt guilty. Whenever he felt in love, I actually pined away for a horny Kirsten Dunst myself. And whenever he finally admitted the truth, to himself and whomever else at least, I really did feel sorry for him... I really did feel sorry... I actually did care, as if this was really Peter Parker, the comic book character that we all somehow care about... the one we all identify with somehow...

Peter Parker, the geek. With no choice but to be a hero... with no choice, just a conscience...

And even though I will forever still cling onto the blind hope that this film isn't perfect, or even that great, I will still admit that Sam Raimi and the minds behind Spiderman 2 truly did bring to life the very core, the very being, the very essence of the Spiderman meaning, in a way I never really thought was possible...

Nothing in this film was particularly memorable in itself... The comedy. The musical score. The special effects. The battle sequences. The script. The plot. Hell, even the characters...

... I will always hate the original Spiderman film, for making a boatload of cash for goddam Sony, keeping them aloft and afloat ahoy, during those early PS2 money-losing, money-grabbing days... I will always hate the fact that a movie that was just so damn cheesy and so damn boring in the end, could end up making so much money and get so much attention on name brand recognition and marketing alone...

... and while I never will like the fact that Spiderman 2 will do exactly the same, I am still man enough (and geek enough) to finally admit that...

[c. visitors too bored to return...]
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