movies – Ryagas.me

ryan

| March 5, 2017

Photo credit: comingsoon.net

Here are a few of my thoughts on the movie, Logan. It’s super difficult to avoid spoilers since this is a movie seeing the end of two iconic characters from the Marvel universe (or, one of the multiverses, to be more specific.)

Logan, The Wolverine, goes on a journey, both physical, and emotional, to help out a girl, who has similar abilities to his own. At the same time, however, he’s suffering from a side-effect of his own. His body is poisoned and slowly deteriorating due to the adamantium in it, which is a material known to be lethal to him.

He’s battling not only those after the girl but his inner demons. He’s on a quest, however reluctantly, for redemption. He’s not alone, however. Charles Xavier, Professor X himself, is also along for the ride. His body is also, coincidentally, slowly deteriorating, with dangerous effects. His mind, his super weapon, is breaking down, and that’s a huge risk to all who are near him but in a much larger area. Logan’s got a tough set of tasks on his plate: protect his mentor, the child, and the larger world around him.

That’s the setting for this action-packed adventure. This Wolverine is not the spandex-clad one from some of the comics (and one of my favorite cartoons as a teen.) Jackman’s Logan is a much darker, grittier almost anti-hero. Logan’s far from perfect, and, as an artificially-created mutant, so aware of what can be wrong about weaponizing super-humans.

He’s also, in a way presented with a way to not make up for his misdeeds, but to help another with the potential to become like him to understand that it’s the choices made that matter most, and not how one’s “created,” or what purpose their creators might have intended.

I thoroughly enjoyed the action. It’s a movie with a long trail of sometimes grisly fatalities. Logan’s not the most graceful fighter, but he’s hard to take down. The only one who Logan needs to fear is himself. He’s got an antagonist here that’s human, but “enhanced” in a manner more like what’s sure to come in the near future.

Logan is certainly an action adventure, but it’s also a story of redemption. It’s easily a contender for the best comic-based movie, ever. It’s also an excellent story. I have not seen all of the Hugh Jackman Logan/Wolverine films yet, but it made sense. I feel like I’m OK at this point.

If you like action movies, see this movie.

If you like westerns, see this movie (if you like Shane, especially.)

If you like Hugh Jackman and/or Patrick Stewart, see this movie.

If you like stories of dark heroes seeking redemption, see this movie.

If you have little ones, get a sitter and see this movie.

You should probably see this movie.

Article

The Name’s S.

ryan

| February 9, 2017

A telegram, lodged between the pages of the book, S.

It’s another blank page. It’s time to conquer it! Let’s go!!!

My motivation for today that is.

Anyway, I had a good long meeting with my bed last night after a very long day yesterday. It was a day that included the long-overdue adult physical checkup (I’m good, but need a bit more exercise) and the sometimes-dreaded work performance review.

On a much brighter note, I got more reading on S. done. The core story is a decently good one. So far, it’s featured a man with amnesia (that’s S. himself) and a ship crewed by whistling ghouls. Seriously, only one shipmate could sort-of-speak English. S. has endured being Shanghaied so far, and his adventure’s only just begun. To be clear, he knows his name, as do people he introduces himself to, but it’s obscured from the reader so that whenever he presents himself, it looks like this:

“What’s your name?”
“S—.”

It’s the only book I’ve ever picked up that is written this way.

At any rate, it’s getting a bit easier to keep the loose items that come tucked into the book from falling out, now that I’m a bit closer to the middle of the binding. Like a good video game, I’m looking forward to discovering their meaning on my next “play-through” of this book.

Also, my sweetheart shared this fun video, made by one of my favorite YouTube creators, Freddie Wong:

She truly knows how to get me hyped for a movie.

Article

We Went Back!

ryan

| October 23, 2015

roads-dont-need-any — Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. -Doc Brown

The first Back to The Future movie ended with that line, as Doc, Marty, and Jennifer launch, in a flying DeLorean, to the future. Part 2 picks up right after this, and the future definitely looked different. Somewhat outlandishly different.

Clothing that would have been at the edge of fashion in ’85 was the norm in the imagined 2015 world. Advertisements were much more pervasive and even holographic. Athletic shoes had self-tightening laces. Hoverboards, for gosh sakes, were the latest fun way to get around, replacing skateboards. There’s even more, but those are some of the most memorable examples.

So, what’s a tech-savvy person to make of this? Well, there’s some things there that are nearly self-fulfilling projections of the technology of the time. Self-tightening shoes, for example, were really a giant leap and Nike will be releasing matching shoes, inspired by those in the film.

Hoverboards, however, as envisioned in the movie, are ever-elusive, although tech is in the works on, and some practical hovering-based things exist, but they’re mostly more practical things, like cargo moving gadgets, to replace wheels.

Great Scott! The future is now. Meet our Hendo 2.0 #hoverboard #bttf

Posted by Hendo Hover on Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Not quite as versatile as the ones in the movie, but evolving.

The heavy commercialization and in-your-face advertisement isn’t quite as obnoxious as shown in the film version of 2015, but it does continue its slow crawl towards it, from increasing product placement almost being expected, not just in film, but, TV (which still exists) and even video games.

In a way, I’m a bit glad it’s not such an exact match of the predictions, which usually fall short, especially in more whimsical sci-fi such as this. Things are, in some ways, arguably better (and, not just because the Cubs didn’t even make it to the World Series.) For example, the very wide-spread use of, and even existence of, the Internet. There was not even an inkling that such a communication network would be so big. It’s good that was not imagined since any guess would have been very far off.

Those are just my quick thoughts on this since it was really a summer movie that didn’t get me to thinking too hard on serious issues of the development of society. I was more focused on getting ready for the fall school year since my family hadn’t been in our new place in the suburbs very long while the movie was still new.

[On October 21, 2015,] movie fans celebrated “Back to the Future Day” since it was the day that the characters went to in their time machine. The vision they cast about what 2015 would be like in 1989 is quite different. What do you think about that?

Let me know what your thoughts were, or if you’ve already grown weary of the saturation, that’s fine too. 🙂

Prompted by Daily Write – 10.22.2015

Article