I am Number Four DVD Review

That was horrible.

Well, maybe not horrible, but I wouldn't have rented it had I known I'd be watching an extra-long version of Smallville.

Here we have high school alien from another planet whose powers are developing as he's getting older. He has to keep his secret and, being raised on Earth, he feels more human than alien. He just wants a normal life with a normal girlfriend. He doesn't want his powers or to be hunted down by every evil alien with an ugly face and destructive energy weapons.

Except for the fact that the guy was blond, he really could have been Clark Kent. The majority of the film took place in "Paradise, Ohio", which certainly could have doubled for Smallville, Kansas. Lots and lots of high school angst, being bullied by the Captain of the football team, wanting to take him apart with his super powers, wanting to play "smootchy-face with his cute, blond girlfriend (everyone is so blond..at least his best friend Sam has dark hair), and so on.

I know a lot of fans of the now-ended Smallville TV show wanted a Smallville movie made. Wish granted. Just watch I am Number Four. In fact, since the film ended just begging for a sequel (or sequels), you could have Smallville-like film experiences for years to come.

OK, Clark didn't have a "Krypto" dog on Smallville, but John, our friendly, hunky, handsome (funny how people who have evolved on another planet can look so human) alien has a beagle who, when the chips are down, morphs into a big alien critter who takes on the bad guys' alien critter. Also, another last minute save is the appearance of a motorcycle riding British "Number Six", blond counterpart to surfer-alien John.

I could go on, but why bother. I wasted a perfectly good bowl of popcorn on this movie. It can't get it back to the rental store fast enough. I will not be watching "I am Number Four-Two".

Batman: Under the Red Hood DVD Review

First of all, this is loaded with spoilers, so if you haven't seen this video yet and you want to preserve the mystery, don't read any further. You've been warned.

OK, it was fabulous, and I don't give out compliments lightly. The suspense in this tale had even me twisting in my seat. I was actually nervous about how it all would come out. Go figure.

Several major pieces of Batman comic book history are adapted for this story.

First, Jason Todd, the second Robin, being killed by the Joker. That happens right at the beginning and is the set up for everything else. Jason is beaten to a pulp with a crowbar, left for dead, and then, before Batman could get there, the place blows sky high. No fake death. Batman gets to the site of the explosion less than a minute later and picks Jason's broken body out of the rubble. He's dead. No faking it.

Second, we have the "Red Hood" origin of the Joker. There are a number of different twists on Joker's origin, but one of them...one that I hate, is that the Joker was a petty crook trying to reform. He was married (the back story wasn't in the film, but I thought I should fill you in) and his wife was pregnant. His "honest" work wasn't going so well and some of his old pals convinced him to help pull off a heist. The catch is that he had to dress in some stupid looking red mask and cape, pretending to be a crime lord or something.

Naturally Batman shows up. It's in a chemical plant. The "Red Hood" tries to tell Batman that he didn't want to do wrong. It goes bad. "Hoodie" slips and falls into a vat of chemicals. The Joker is born.

Oh, the entire movie starts with Ra's al Ghul. Yeah. Thousands of miles away from Bosnia, which is where Jason buys it, Ra's knows somehow that Joker is beating Robin to death and, get this, that Batman will be too late to stop it. The film never explains how Ra's knows that but it does explain that Ra's hired the Joker...but not to kill Jason.

OK, that's out of the way.

Five years after Jason's death, a crime lord named Black Mask has taken over all of Gotham's mobs. Unfortunately, he's just Captain America's Red Skull with a black paint job and a bad temper. Nothing really special. I was disappointed.

The interesting part is when a guy in an adaptation of the Red Hood outfit (without cape, thankfully) takes over the mobs with the promise to protect the gangs from the Black Mask and Batman. He cuts himself into Gotham's drug profits but with one odd demand, "Sell drugs to kids and you're dead." He means it.

It was immediately apparent that the new Red Hood was Jason (although it takes Batman a little longer to figure out). Even with Nightwing's help, the Red Hood is always one step ahead of Batman. He knows all of Batman's moves. He can counter all of Batman's toys. The clues are all there. Jason wants Bruce to figure it out. At one point (and Bruce has to analyze the voice recording of their encounter to hear it), the Red Hood...Jason, even calls Batman, "Bruce".

The mystery isn't really why Jason would kill. Bruce knew right from the day he recruited Jason that he was both gifted and dangerous. Part of turning Jason into Robin was to control him, to keep him from going "dark". It almost worked until he died. Yeah, he really was dead. I'm getting to that.

Red Hood uses guns and explosives. He doesn't have a problem with killing. He does what he thinks Batman is afraid to do and he thinks that while it's impossible to get rid of crime, it can be controlled. In some ways, Jason walks a finer line than Bruce, few morals and no inhibition about killing, but he's not in it for the profit or even the thrill. He has a plan.

The mystery is how Jason really came back from the dead and ultimately what he wants with his new life. The first was hard to figure out because I never thought Ra's would go that far. The second was a bit of misdirection.

Batman wasn't the only one who felt guilty for Jason's death. Ra's hired Joker to be distract Batman while Ra's was working elsewhere. He never thought Joker would kidnap and kill Robin while Batman was chasing him in Bosnia. Ra's took Jason's dead body from the morgue after Bruce left the country and transported him to a Lazarus pit (Ra's replaces the body with a very convincing replica..and Bruce is too guilty to look at the body a second time). Oh crap. It worked. That green slime really can bring someone back from the dead. It can also drive them crazy, as it always threatens to do with Ra's.

It would be easy to say that Jason stayed crazy, but he didn't. He escaped Ra's al Ghul's compound and managed to make his way back into Gotham. Funded by drug profits, Jason decided to become a better Batman than Batman. Now that the mystery of how a dead guy comes back to life has been solved, what about the next mystery: what does Jason really want?

To kill the Joker? He almost does. To kill Batman for failing to save him? It looks that way. But looks can be deceiving. I won't tell you the details. Watch the DVD and find out for yourself. I absolutely promise it will be worth it.

Stuff I liked:

I liked the various flashback scenes when Bruce recalls Jason first becoming Robin and even when they first met in "crime alley", when he caught a 10 or 12 year old Jason trying to steal the hubcaps off of the Batmobile. Batman is Batman. Hard as nails, but inside, he really loved that kid. It humanizes Bruce and yet lets him keep the darkness and pain of being Batman.

I liked Alfred, probably because he's always Alfred. He's part of what anchors Batman and keeps him Bruce. He's the guy who gets to tell Batman stuff no one else would dare. He knows all there is about Bruce and he can be trusted. He's the closest thing Bruce has to a father (it never happens in the film, but if Jason really wanted to get to Bruce, all he'd have to do is mess with Alfred..fortunately Jason doesn't take it that far).

Stuff I didn't like:

I could get past Bruce Greenwood doing the voice work as Bruce/Batman. I certainly think that Kevin Conroy is *the* voice of Batman, but Greenwood (and I like Greenwood as an actor...a lot) wasn't half bad. I really hated John Di Maggio as the Joker, though. He sounded just like any other thug, especially in the beginning of the film when he was killing Robin. He communicated nothing of the dangerous insanity that Mark Hamill brings to the role. He was just mean and sarcastic.

That is until Di Maggio laughed. It's creepy, which it should be. Di Maggio redeems himself somewhat as the film progresses, especially when Black Mask springs him from Arkham and hires him to kill the Red Hood. The sequence of Joker going from broken prisoner to multiple-murderer in just a matter of seconds was brilliant.

I still think Hamill was better.

There was a scene where three out of four assassins trying to take Red Hood/Jason out were using variations on one and two-bladed light sabres. Oh c'mon, we've all seen Star Wars. Can't you be more creative? The action, suspense, and danger held up, but it took the edge off the scene just having light sabres there.

Batman: Under the Red Hood. I was impressed. Very impressed. Very few flaws, at least that I noticed on a first viewing. Lots of little homage pieces to other films and the comic books. Very little Jim Gordon, which there wasn't time for in the story (too bad). Frankly, I loved it. If you're a Batman fan, or maybe even if you're not, you'll love it too.

Smallville is Dead!

I realize this is difficult for many Smallville fans to accept, but the series is over. It's over. Repeat after me: "The Smallville series has ended." Please try to accept it.

OK, OK, the Smallville Complete Series DVD Set won't be released for several months yet, but no new episodes are being made. While you will still be able to thrill to each and every telecast of the show online, on the DVDs you own, or after the complete series DVD set is released, those are old shows. Tom Welling, Erica Durance, Michael Rosenbaum, Allison Mack, and all of the other Smallville actors have moved on.

So should you.

Oh I'm not saying you can't continue to be a fan of an old TV show. I'm very fond of the original Star Trek series with Shatner and Nimoy, but I don't obsess about it on twitter or Facebook, either. I know, STTOS is decades old while Smallville died just last spring, but the principle is the same. What's dead is dead.

I've heard exactly one loose rumor on twitter about a possible "Metropolis" series, perhaps starring some of the other superheroes who originally appeared on Smallville, but I can find absolutely nothing credible on the web to say that it's even a possibility. As far as anyone can tell, there will be no Smallville spin-off. If there were, they'd have to be filming by now and news like that would be impossible to keep secret.

Face it. It's over. Clark Kent is dead. Long live Superman: Man of Steel. Starting in 2013, Henry Cavill will be the Last Son of Krypton (no, the photo isn't really Cavill in "the suit", just a photoshopped simulation).

Now please go watch a different TV show and let Welling and Co. get a well-deserved rest.

Peace, out.

The End of Smallville: A Review

I know. I'm terrible. I didn't watch the series finale of Smallville until last night. I almost didn't watch it at all, even though I had the time and opportunity. Let me explain.

My wife isn't a Smallville fan in any way shape or form. She's not a Superman fan. She's not into science fiction and fantasy (well, she does like Star Trek and the Indiana Jones films). We don't watch a lot of TV.

Here's another confession. I didn't start watching Smallville in 2001 when it first came on the air. I can't remember when Smallville first registered on my radar. I think I saw a friend's collection of DVDs of the early seasons a few years ago and started watching them just to see what they were like.

I was hooked. I blew through his DVD collection and then started renting the rest of the DVDs (up to the 6th or 7th season I think) from the local video store. Even then, I couldn't really make the time to try and watch the actual TV broadcasts. In fact, I stopped watching Smallville again until the summer before season 10 came out.

I had to go back to the video store and rent the rest of the videos, supplementing them with whatever I could find on the CW Smallville site. Eventually, I made my way to almost the "present" last fall. I was watching new season 10 episodes on the CW site and watching season 9 episodes on disc. I never got to see the last two episodes of season 9 because that set of discs was always rented out. Oh well, I might get to them some day.

I managed to watch most of the season 10 episodes via the CW but my schedule didn't allow me to watch the last two episodes, "Prophecy" and "Finale". Last night, opportunity arrived.

I figured I'd just sacrifice "Prophecy" and pursue "Finale" since that's where the whole answer to "How does Clark become Superman?" lived.

How did I like it?

The episode was sort of a rollercoast ride of "I like this" highs and "this sucks" lows. The experience reminded me of the patchwork Lex clone that Lionel (OK, he probably had some evil doctors do the work) put together (funny how he managed to find a "working" brain with all of Lex's memories, but he couldn't manage a heart). It was a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of the other thing.

I can't blame the Smallville writers too much for this. Michael Rosenbaum took forever to sign up to play Lex for the final episode, so I'm sure the writers had to scramble to move things around and figure out where and how to use him. It's pretty likely that they had a similar task to perform relative to Allison Mack, since she was originally scheduled to play Chloe in only five episodes in season 10, not including the finale.

I thought it was pretty lame that the show opened with Lois "suddenly" having doubts about her marrying Clark and then on the heels of her concerns, Clark resurrecting his own doubts (remember, I haven't seen "Prophecy", so maybe that's all explained in that show). I thought they'd gotten past all these worries. The "conflict" felt like so much filler material, written just to take up time until the actual wedding was supposed to happen (and Clark and Lois never got married on the show...so much for "Clois" fans).

A big pet peeve for me was how a planet-sized body could enter our solar system completely unnoticed. Depending on how fast Apokolips was traveling, the gravitational effects should have been observable on the various objects in our system for months. It couldn't possibly "sneak up" on the Earth. In fact, Apokolips didn't seem to cause any demonstratable tidal effects on Earth until it was inside the Moon's orbit! Amazing (though as someone on twitter pointed out, how can I bitch about all this if I'm willing to believe an alien from another galaxy with a perfectly human looking body can fly?)!

One of my other frustrations with the finale is that it seemed like Clark was going to talk everyone to death. Long conversations with Lois, his Mom, Lex, Darkseid (inhabiting Lionel's literally heartless body), Jonathan's ghost, and finally Jor-El. Oy. Just shut up, put on the f*cking suit, and stop Apokolips, you moron!

OK, Ok. What did I like?

I really liked the framing sequence with Chloe and her little boy, reading the "Smallville" comic book and with "Mom" explaining how Clark became Superman (if DC in her world really published this story, Clark's identity must have been completely sanitized from the magazine). Mack even successfully pulled off looking like a woman in her early 30s rather than her actual age of 28 (29 this coming July). OK, not much of a stretch here. She probably just cut back on the makeup.

I did like how the suspense managed to build until after about 80 minutes (including opening credits and commercials) I was about ready to beat up Clark around the head and shoulders with a kryptonite baseball bat while screaming "Just become Superman, already!" (the flip side is that if the writing had been tighter, the entire finale could have been compressed into a single, regular-length episode).

It could have been better. I felt like a lot of loose ends had to be quickly tied up in the last hour and a half (even with commercials, the running time of the finale was less than 90 minutes, at least as broadcast on the CW site) and how it was done was really uneven. In many ways, I'm just glad it's over. Smallville is a story about Clark's journey to become Superman but sooner or later he actually has to be the Man of Steel. Either that, or Smallville goes on forever and Clark becomes the only 75 year old "almost-but-not-quite-superhero" in history.

I did think that Smallville did nearly nail my biggest expectation for the finale in the last few minutes. An emergency is announced at the Daily Planet. Clark manages to get to an isolated area (in this case, the roof). He takes off his glasses and tie, the camera moves in on his chest, he opens his shirt, the Superman shield is flashed. Fade to black.

Good-bye Smallville. Hello Superman.

The end.

From Smallville to Superman: Man of Steel

The cast for Superman: Man of Steel (2012) is forming and boy are the Smallville fans pissed. Well, at least some of them are pissed.

After all, Tom Welling wasn't cast in the role as Clark Kent/Superman and Erica Durance wasn't picked to play Lois Lane. What's worse, the actors selected aren't the names that were being tossed about the Superman/Comic Book/Fantasy blogosphere. The producers chose to select actors we never saw coming over the horizon. Let's see what we have.

(Click the photos below to see larger versions. I had to shrink them down so they didn't overwhelm the text)

Tom Welling vs. Henry Cavill. I'm not going to attempt to compare these individuals as actors. Welling has played Clark for ten years and that's (as far as I know) the only role he's been playing. Sad to say, I've not seen a single thing that Cavill has acted in, so I have no idea about him at all.

But how to these two guys compare as far as "the look"? Do you see either one in the big red cape and long blue tights? That's where it at least has to start. You have to "look" the part. We've all gotten used to Welling defining his own "Clark look" but we'll have to wait and see about Cavill. Unlike Welling, he'll have to pull off a convincing Clark and Superman. That's not easy.

Let's take Christian Bale as an example. Of all the actors that have played Bruce Wayne/Batman over the years, Bale was the only one (in my opinion) who was convincing as both. All of the other actors did a good, or at least decent Batman and a lousy Wayne or vice versa. It's hard to be both. That's Cavill's challenge. Welling will be "Superman" for maybe a few minutes screen time in the tail end of the last episode of Smallville, just to fulfill his destiny...not to really play the role.

Moving onward, how about Lois Lane? We have Durance vs. Adams. A lot really depends on how Adams will be playing Lane. I didn't like Margot Kidder's Lois because she was both an airhead and frankly, not very tough. Durance's Lane can be an airhead but at least she's got a lot of fight in her (and she looks great in a tight tank top). I think Adams has the moxie to pull off Lane, but I hope she plays her as both tough and smart. In the comic books, Lois is smart (but for most of her history, not smart enough to figure out that the guy she works with every day is really Superman).

The roles of Jonathan and Martha Kent probably generate a lot less angst than those of Clark and Lois, but since those roles have been cast in the film, we might as well examine them.

Annette O'Toole vs. Diane Lane. O'Toole is beautiful and she's able to communicate "Mom" on the screen. How about Lane, who's not that much younger than "sonny boy" Clark? Of course, she could play Martha when Clark is a boy and not appear in the film when he's a (Super)man, or she can be artificially aged, either by makeup or CGI. The main thing is that she has to convince the audience that she really is Mom. She practically has to be our Mom. I always thought of O'Toole's Martha as Mom.

John Schneider vs. Kevin Costner. I've never liked anything I've seen Costner in. I don't know. Maybe I just don't respond to his style of acting. He kind of bores me. When I first started watching Smallville, I didn't connect Schneider with his role in the Dukes of Hazzard (1979-1985), thank God. Let's just say I'm not a fan of that show.

At first, I thought Schneider was a little too young and active to be Jonathan. I got used to thinking of Glenn Ford (from Superman the Movie 1978) as "Dad", but Schneider's portrayal of Jonathan as the loving but hot-tempered, hard-headed Kansas farmer quickly appealed to me. I just hope Costner can make me feel like he's the same "man of the earth" kind of guy as Schneider's Jonathan.

Oh...that's it. No more cast members (so far). I guess we still need a few other primary roles filled, such as Perry and Jimmy. Then, of course, there's the villain(s) whoever that/they will be.

I know that Smallville fans will have a difficult time making the transition. Thanks to DVD technology, they can continue to experience Welling and Durance as Clark and Lois for years to come and even ignore the new Cavill/Adams film that will be released next year.

But for this up and coming generation, especially for those people who are really young now, Smallville will be an "old" TV show and Superman: Man of Steel will be Superman. That's not evil, that's the passage of time.

One more thing. This is for Tom Welling fans. I found this photo at a fan website and thought I'd share. Oh my! Tom Welling with long hair, a beard, and carrying a few extra pounds around the middle. See? He can look like any other guy. Looking like a hero takes a lot of work. Welling's only human after all.

Just thought I'd add a bit of perspective.

Peace.

We Are the Heroes!

All of the news and social networking outlets are flooded with information about the magnitude 8.9 earthquake in Japan. A significant part of my twitter community is involved in comic book, TV, and movie superheroes. It's almost too easy to imagine Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman racing to Japan to put out oil refinery fires, stabilize "at risk" nuclear reactors, and evacuate the thousands of injured victims.

Would the Martian Manhunter and the Flash show up and help cities like San Francisco prepare for the arrival of the quake-created tsunami (and thankfully, Hawaii survived its passing)? Which heroes would be patroling the Pacific, keeping ships and the populations of the many islands in harms way safe?

But we live in the real world. There are no superheroes...

...except us.

I'm not suggesting that we can put on a costume, exercise heretofore unknown super abilities, and "save the day", but we can do something more than sit around and watch it all happen on CNN.

For instance, New York City will help direct local donations to quake and tsunami victims and there is very likely a local or national group you can donate to, as well. Google has already pitched in by launching a person finder for Japanese quake victims, so if you work in technology, you may be able to leverage your skills and your business to assist.

Text "Red Cross" to 90999. $10 will be automatically charged to your phone bill as a donation to the disaster relief. Please Text "Red Cross" to 90999.

This is a link to a Reuters.com page containing links to a number of ways you can help the Japan quake victims.

And, if you are a religious or a spiritual person, you can pray.

Whoever you are, where ever you live, you don't have to turn into someone else and use fantastic, metahuman powers to make a difference. You can help by being just who you are. The only power you need to have is the power of compassion and the will to act on your humanity.

Be a hero. Help.

The Japan Earthquake Seen by Millions of Digital Cameras (Updating Live)

Save Me!