Wednesday, January 31, 2024

The fall of Rocksteady's Arkham Batman.

 I always loved Batman growing up watching his movies and the DC Animated Universe. I hear how great the Arkham Asylum was and got a PS3 bundle with the game. I was eager to play the next entry of the Arkham series. I even seen the Suicide Squad animated movie that supposedly tied-in to game universe.

Arkham Knight was the grand finale of the series with Batman supposedly dying and his sidekicks taking up the reins to protect Gotham. I remember a few years back, we got two trailers of two new games. One was about Bruce supposedly dead and his Bat Family taking over. It looked like a sequel to Arkham Knight, feels like a sequel, smells like a sequel, taste like a sequel, and yet, it's not a sequel. It's weird it's premise looks alot like how Arkham Knight left off and yet it's not the sequel to it.  It was made WB Games Montreal who did the prequel game and a few minor stuff to the Arkham series.

I learn the game actually made by Rocksteady Studios was the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. This seems cool. You get to play these four famous villains like Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, King Shark, and Deadshot. I mean they sure have they're own abelites like Harley using a bat, Boomerang using his weapons, King Shark using his muscle.

It then hit me a week or two later, why is Deadshot black, isn't he suppose to be white. The thing is we seen Deadshot in Arkham City and Origins. He was basically the lead in the animated movie, Assault on Arkham. We did get an answer from the studio and they said the Deadshot we knew for a while was a copycat and the real Deadshot, is the guy in the new game. Are you kidding me? The one we been fighting is fake. This "copycat" retroactively made Amanda Waller look like an idiot for filing him as "Floyd Lawton", who has a daughter named "Zoe Lawton."

Another thing hit me is that King Shark is supposed to be dead. He got his head blown off in the animated movie. Not only that, but the Arkham version of King Shark is more humanoid than his other counterparts. Usually he's a two-legged 7-foot shark in most versions but the Arkham version is big muscle human with metal choppers. Think Jaws from James Bond but it completely covers his entire upper and lower jaws. Yet the game features him like your usually version of King Shark.


However, you could debate the animated movie may not be considered canon and the main canon are the games alone. I also heard from somewhere in a tie-in comic that Captain Boomerang is suppose to be dead too.


Gotham Knights did came out and I heard there were mixed reviews. Some people were like "Oh well," because it was a stand-alone thing and not the continuation of the Arkham series that people were looking for, but oh boy, as more and more things got revealed, the hype for the game died.

Gameplay footage was revealed and everyone was going gun-ho. You think each member of the Squad be using other weapons. Captain Boomerang's name itself makes you think he be using other things than guns. More news about battle passes, loot boxes, and microtransactions. Gosh, I didn't expect we go from a single-player action adventure game to a shooter. What the heck.

Time passed, I didn't hear anything for a long while but I heard that beta testers didn't have much nice things to say. I mean ouch. This is killing my excitement more and more. 

Then social media erupted and say they disrespected Batman and gave him a terrible spinoff and the internet wasn't joking or anything because Batman, the very same Batman we loved from the Arkham games got brainwashed and than shot by Harley, and he died in a lame anti-climatic manner. Gosh, I'm having flashbacks of Luke in Last Jedi or John Conner in Dark Fate.

It's not just him who died all lame like. The subtitle of the game is literally, "Kill the Justice League." They died from guns and Boomerang wanted to pee on the Flash's corpse. WTF man. The entire League dies. This isn't some other universe where bad stuff happens while the "main" universe is fine and dandy like the Injustice games. I mean, this is in very bad taste, and this is the continuation of the Arkham Games? I'm in complete disgust.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

You Will Cry 2022!!! Part 1

 


1. You will cry...When you see Batman...Played by Robert Pattinson AKA the Sparkling Vampire from Twilight.


Wait! Robert Pattinson is perfect casting now that I think about it. I seen a few clips of Twilight and man, the time he told Bella's dad he's going to take his daughter to the baseball field in the most bored and unenthusiastic tone possible is the funniest thing ever. He's a huge step up from Ben Affleck because he didn't have a silly voice like the great Christian Bale who had the most laughable Batman voice ever. I was looking forward to Batman v Superman and I was disappointed because I didn't laugh at Affleck's performance as the Caped Crusader.




2. That Ben Affleck's solo Batman film that he was going to write, direct, and star has ended up being reworked to this movie that's not even the same universe as the DCEU. Thanks alot Edward Cullen. It's all your fault.


3. That the post-credit scene of Joe Manganiello's role as Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke is now pointless since his scene was meant for the Affleck solo film. Thanks alot Edward Cullen.

Also Manu Bennett's Deathstroke was put off-limits due some embargo that you can't have two separate live-action Deathstrokes running around or something. All this, just over a small two minute post-cred scene that ended up going nowhere. Again, it's your fault Edward Cullen.



4.  The Riddler's outfit, nuff said.

5. That Batman doesn't kill. Wait he totally kills. I mean Michael Keaton shoves bombs in people's pants and walks away with a smile. Christian Bale will say "I won't kill you, but I won't save you". Ben Affleck will give prisoners a mark, signing them up for execution and he intended to kill Superman till he found out he and Supes' mom have the same 1st name.





Note#1- Robert Patterson casting led to alot backlash since everyone remembers him as the sparkling vampire from Twilight. Suddenly we were reliving the later 00s/early 10s back when that series was the joke of the internet.

Alot people pointed out this isn't the 1st time people judge harshly on actors announced as Batman characters and their opinions will go through a 180 once the film is out. Also Robert been in a dozen films besides Twilight.


Note#2+3- Ben Affleck did had big plans for a solo Batman film but due to numerous rewrites and reshoots of Justice League, and other creative differences with studio, he was getting stressed out and decided to stepped down. The plans for the solo Batman film didn't stop and director Matt Reeves took over and it led to this.

Note#4- Yeah, there were jokes about the Riddler's outfit and how it looks like a gimp suit.

Note#5- There been talks how despite he's suppose to be Mr. Do-Not-Kill, he kills several times or abuse loopholes to let his villains die.


Here's the trailer if you want to see



1. I'm going to make you watch Morbius. It's the greatest movie of all time. The best scene was when he confronted a group of guys and told them, "It's Morbin' time" and he Morb all over them.

Have you seen a movie so highly rated.


Man, Morbius made way more money then everything else.

2. You will cry...When you see...A blood sucking vampire. A blood sucking vampire? That's the stupidest thing I ever heard. Nobody is going to see a blood sucking vampire.


I mean we all know that Morbius is a vampire that drains plasma from his suction cups in his hands. He never sucks blood from his fangs. Thanks alot Jared Leto, you ruined Morbius.

3. That trailers lied to you about Spider-Man being in the film or this is connected to the MCU.

4. That Michael Keaton's Vulture cameo doesn't make any sense whatsoever.



Note#1- There was a huge joke about the upcoming movie. Everyone was making memes like praising the film like it's the best thing ever and it the highest rated film and has the highest grossing film. There was memes of his fake catchphrases made "It's Morbin Time!"

Sony caught on to the memes and re-released it theaters and it hardly got any money. The thing is that everyone whose memeing this, really had no interested in actually watching the movie. 

Some watch movies just for the memes but the thing is that the memes of Morbius weren't actually within the movie itself. The only thing that became a meme from the actual movie was Matt Smith silly dance scene and even then, it's not really worth it.

Note#2- Morbius is a very unknown Spider-Man character. Besides this film, his biggest role outside of comics is from the 90s Spider-Man cartoon. A cartoon that is known for it's censorship. Spidey can't punch, the Sinister Six had to be renamed the Insidious Six, the Punisher had to use non-lethal weapons, Carnage the serial killer had powers to drain lifeforce instead of killing.

Morbius was also censored. Because we can't have blood or having his fangs bite people in the neck, they completely rewrote him as a vampire that absorbs plasma from his hands. I'm sure 99.9999999% of kids know what vampires are famous for.

It be funny if there is someone out there who is only familiar with the 90s cartoon Morbius and only him and complained that the movie is an unfaithfully to the character.



Note#3- The early trailers lied to us. They made us think this is connected to Tom Holland's Spider-Man. For a while we were been given flip-flopping answers is Venom set in the same universe as the MCU or it is not. The official answer was that Sony has a universe to use Spider-Man characters (Venom, Morbius, the upcoming Madam Web, and Kraven), but it has no connection to the MCU.

At the time, Morbius was originally intended to be released before Holland's 3rd Spider-Man movie or the 2nd Venom movie. If you noticed on the above picture, it said "Murderer", because at the time, the 2nd MCU Spidey film ended with a cliffhanger with Mysterio telling the whole world of Spider-Man's secret identity and telling them that he was murdered by Parker. 

Then Covid happened and Morbius got delayed and it ended up being released after Venom 2 and Spider-Man: No Way Home with that cliffhanger long been resolved.



Note#4- The post credits scene of Morbius and Vulture meeting makes no sense at all and the most hated scenes in the movie. Vulture from the Homecoming movie was transported to a different universe and randomly guesses that Spider-Man is somehow involved without proper research. 

Even in a one minute scene, his personality clashes from the guy we knew from Homecoming and he was thankful that Spidey saved his life and not bother to tell his cellmates Spider-Man's identity. Viewers just shrugged and say he's a variant from a different universe and not the same guy from Homecoming.

Also, the ending of No Way Home had all the characters transported back to their original universe while Morbius states it pulls you away from your universe and throws you to another one.






1. The aftermath of the Illuminati scene
 OMG!!! It's Mr. Fantastic, meaning this is a tease of a future Fantastic Four film. Also Peggy and Maria got superpowers instead.

OMG!!! It's Professor Xavier and he's in his iconic hoverchair and they're playing the iconic X-Men theme.


And they're dead. WTF?!!





2. That you are required to watch Inhumans before seeing this movie. 

Oh gosh, do I really have to torture myself by watching 8 hours of the worse thing that came out of the MCU? I thought it was loosely set in the MCU. Man, this sucks.





3. That America Chavez claims she's the only one in the multiverse despite the character she's based from the comic book version exist in the same mulitverse. Also quit calling the MCU as Earth 616 because that's the comic universe's designation, not yours.


4. That Wanda is now evil





5. That the set up of Doctor Strange's former friend turned enemy doesn't show up and all we got is his good counterpart from another universe.







Note#1- The Illuminati introduce us to a different group of superheroes from a different universe with all these characters. Some were teases to the future of the X-Men and Fantastic Four appearing in the MCU since for a long while, Fox had the rights to the characters till Disney bought Fox. 

Sadly, their appearance is very short-lived and they got murdered right away.


Note#2- No, you are not required to torture yourself by watching Inhumans. I did joked to others that it's a requirement to watch now that Marvel actually brought back a character from the hated and forgotten show. I never watch it besides the trailer and that's it. I remember it didn't look great and then I heard nothing but bad things when it was released. As time went on, Marvel just sweep this under the rug and pretend it never existed, well until this movie came out.

I was surprised they brought back Black Bolt from the show and even got the same actor. If you haven't seen the show, that's fine. He's just there to be part of a group of heroes that's there for a few minutes, only to get slaughtered. Also, it's an alternate counterpart, it's not exactly the same guy from the show. If you seen the show, well you should be happy he gotten a 2nd chance to be in better material. Sadly, it was short-lived and it's all Reed Richards' fault.
Dumbest Man Alive




Note#3- It confused me that America Chavez claims that she's only one in the multiverse and anyone who reads the recent comics or looked up her character can clearly sees she has other versions of her. 

I was told that the MCU is designated at Earth 199999 and it's part of a large multiverse that includes any of the comics, shows, games, and movies with the Marvel logo. However in Phase 4, they kept talking about the sacred timeline. They act like the Multiverse spawned when Sylvie stabbed Kang but I always saw it was always there. I'm starting to realize that the MCU may not see itself as same mulitverse as the other properties of Marvel. Apparently, the designation of the MCU was made way way back when it was only the 1st Iron-Man movie and only that and it wasn't used again since then.

Yeah, this is confusing. 



Note#4- Anyone who got attached to the Scarlet Witch from anything from Age of Ultron to Wandavision were upset that the main villain is her. She radically became a bloody thirsty murderer. The end of Wandavision ended with her reading a evil tome called the Darkhold. Alot fans say she got corrupted by the dark book.

Also she dies as soon she got back to her senses. So if you were looking forward to more adventures of her as a good guy, well your chances got squashed, like her.



Note#5- The previous movie had Mordo from Strange's ally but at the end, he was disturbed by the actions of his friend and he ended up resorting to murder and villainy. You think this was set up for the next movie but they ignore that and gave us a good counterpart of the guy.


1.You will cry that you only saw Blaster, Darkwing Duck, Baloo, Flounder, Tigra, Pumba, Lumiere, Ant-Man, Skeletor, He-Man, and Scrooge McDuck for a few seconds. 

Man, they were the reason to see this


2.That Gadgit and Zipper got married and had 42 children. 

Like eww!!




3.That Peter Pan is evil

1st Wanda and now Peter Pan. Quit ruining our heroes Disney



4.That Sonic's ugly design has come back from the dead.

Oh gosh, put this monstrosity on fire.



Note#1- It's alot like Ready Player One or Space Jam 2. It's filled with cameos. They weren't the main characters


Note#2- If you think Gadgit will end up with anyone, it be either Chip or Dale, not Zipper. I mean they ain't the same species. Not only that, but to have all those kids.

Well the movie more treats them as actors rather than fictional characters in a fictional setting.


Note#3- Yeah, Peter Pan is evil. Not the actual character but the movie treats him as an "actor". He's a washed up child actor who didn't get much success after being popular as a kid and started becoming a crime boss that runs a bootleg business.

Again, Peter Pan the character isn't evil, it's his "actor".


Note#4- Once apon a time, a trailer was shown for the upcoming Sonic movie and everyone hated it. They hated his normal human teeth, his muscular legs, and "overly realistic" design. The animators went back and redid his design and actually resembles his game counterpart and all the hate for the upcoming movie disappeared.

A few years later, the ugly design came back in the Chip and Dale movie and that ended up as a good thing. He's designed to be ugly and disturbing on purpose. Even the chipmunks were put off by his human teeth. 

The viewers now loved Ugly Sonic. It helps they treat him as a separate character from regular Sonic than actually being Sonic himself. Kinda like how Godzilla fans felt when the American Godzilla from the Matthew Broderick film came back and renamed as Zilla and treated as a separate character and standing side by side with the Big G.

Here's the trailer



1. You wil cry...tears of joy when it took 6 longs films to finally see feather dinosaurs

About frigging time


2. When Blue says thank you and goodbye to Owen




Note#1- Over the years, I joked about the dinosaurs and their lack of feathers. The 1st few entries was made before pathologists discovered that a good number of dinosaurs had feathers. However feather dinosaurs was never into the mainstream and your average person thinks dinosaurs look all scaly rather than feathery.

The later Jurassic Park/World series did tried to explain the lack of feathers by explaining they were cloned from fossils with incomplete DNA and filled the rest with frog DNA. It was even admitted within the films themselves that were designed to looked like attractions rather than accuracy.


Note#2- Admit it, that scene got to you.

Here's the trailer



 1.That they totally ripped off of that one episode of Deep Space 9.

From that one episode where Odo killed 8000 descendants just to save this girl.

2. That this is a movie that Andy saw in 1995 with this amazing CGI.

3. There is a lesbians couple in 1995 that Andy saw.

I don't know what's more unbelievable, that there was a movie Andy saw in 1995 back when same-sex couples weren't common on the big screen, or this high grade CGI in the 90s.




Note#1- The plot is a space crew crashed on a planet. Buzz felt it was his fault this entire crew was stranded on this planet and wanted to fix this. He repeatedly went out to fix this by doing test flights with hyperdrive. Every time he went off, a few minutes went by for him but for anyone else, several years has passed. It got to the point he was seeing their grandchildren.

At the film's end, he said he could go back and prevent them from crashing in the 1st place but it will prevent all these generations of people that grew up on planet and he chose not to do.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had an episode where they found a planet full of their descendants. They told the crew when they go back to space, they will be pulled 200 years in the past and crashed and stranded on the planet but Kira will die from the event.

As much they want to go back to their lives, the crew says it's morally wrong to prevent the lives of their descendants. Future Odo went behind their back and did adjustments on their ship, thus preventing this future.

It's more or less the same plot, except for Star Trek, they have to go back to the status quo reguardless while Buzz didn't have a status quo to go back to and did the morally right choice.



Note#2- The beginning of the movie flat out said that Andy from Toy Story was inspired to wanting a toy of Buzz Lightyear for his birthday after seeing this movie. The movie we are now watching is a movie-within-a-movie and it happened in 1995.

CGI was brand new in the 90s and very dated looking by todays standards. I guess you argue this is meant to "live-action" from Andy's point of view and not a CGI movie.



Note#3-While it's more common to see same-sex relationships on TV and film, it was alot more rare back in the 90s. I know I just mention Deep Space Nine not too long ago but I remembered it was a big deal when every time they went to the mirror universe.

Her mirror counterpart hit on everything that moves, including herself from another universe. She also had a same-sex kiss scene in another episode.

It was a big deal at the time because it was rarely seen, just when Kirk kissed Uluru in the 60s.
I never watched Sailor Moon but I have heard of the infamous censorship in the US version of making these two "cousins". They try to explain their closeness because they are "family". When one talks about her 1st kiss, it was "a guy named Brad" who we didn't see or it was in a very shadowy area.

There is no way that in 1995, that Andy saw lesbians kissing at the theater.


Here's the trailer















Friday, September 29, 2023

You Will Cry....With those Darned Dirty Apes

 

I'm going to make you watch the original Planet of the Apes. You will cry that you already know the twist ending before you actually saw the movie.

Note- The famous twist at the end of the movie is well known to most people. Just like who Darth Vader is, what happen to Dumbledore, or the ending of disk 1 of Final Fantasy 7. It doesn't help there's a dozen sequels made. The movie's twist been parodied all over the place like this scene from The Simpsons. Even certain DVD have the twist on it's cover

Here's the trailer if you want to see




*Spoilers ahead, you been warned*

I'm going to make you watch Beneath the Planet of the Apes. You cry...When you see magical mutants in you somewhat grounded franchise.

When Taylor blows up the Earth. You maniac! You blew up it!

Note#1- This series is mostly grounded despite there's time travel and evolved apes. Suddenly we these out of the blue mutants. They were descendants of survivors of a nuclear war from thousand years ago. They been exposed to radiation and mutated them and their children. They also gain telepathic powers. After this movie, they never went back to telepaths again.

Note#2- The movie infamously decide to just randomly blow up the planet. Charlton Heston was asked back into the movie but he didn't want to. He agreed to only have a limited role and have his character killed off. Also to prevent sequels being made, they have Taylor press a button to a powerful bomb that blew up the planet. That's right, they ended the movie in the most depressing manner. Have a nice day. The End.

Yeah, this is consider one of the worse movies of the franchise 

However Earth's destruction didn't prevent sequels. The next movie stated that several apes found Taylor's spaceship and went to space and witness the planet's destruction as they were pulled into the 20th century.






Planet of the Apes (2001 remake)- You will cry...When you are trying to figure out the ending.

Notes- After Marky Mark defeated the villain and made peace with humans and apes. He got in a space pod and leave the planet. He than arrived on Earth but he couldn't land properly, so he had to make a crash landing in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The statue of Lincoln had an ape's face rather than a human. Just then, hundreds of cars arrived and the people got out to take pictures of Marky Mark. They were all apes. This ending did not make sense.


I guess this was an alternate universe where human never did became the dominate species. It's possible that this is Earth in the future where apes evolved and took over and rewrote history to their liking.(Like changing Lincoln's face.) The only other idea I have is the entire movie took place on prehistoric Earth and apes did became the dominate life on the planet. Either way, the ending was never explained to this day.

Here's the trailer





You Will Cry...That uhh... James Franco is err...a poor man's version of Ricardo Montalban. Uh yeah.



Note- Some people dare me to find something to make fun of the newer Planet of the Ape series at the time they were being released theaters. I couldn't think of anything till recently.

The joke sort of originated that when the 4th Transformers flim, Age of Extinction was announced. People say that Mark Wahlberg is at least a step up of Shia Labeouf. (As long he's not spending the entire film complaining about his daughter's boyfriends who somehow have a card saying he's legally allowed to sleep with minors)

It was then, that we all remember that he was in the 2001 remake with him as an astronaut who crashes in a mysterious planet that's full of apes and he struggles to survive in this harsh world. He was more or less playing a similar character to Charlton Heston's. Shia was then called, a poor man's poor man's Charlton Heston.

Well in the classic series, Ricardo Montalban was Caesar's caretaker before Caesar became a leader who led an ape rebellion to their freedom. In some sort of way, James Franco sort of somewhat had Ricardo Montalban's role. However they are very completely different characters who just happen to be caretakers of Caesar in different universes.







*spoiler warning, you been warned*
You will cry....That this war...Is only in the 1st few minutes. Wait that's it? Well I'm leaving the theater then.


Note- There was a skirmish between humans and apes only at the very beginning of the film. Most the remaining movie turned into a revenge quest for Caesar since he "tries" to go on his own to kill one bad human. Later on, the movie was more closer to "The Great Escape" or the Biblical Exodus than a full on war. The bad human was more gearing up to a different group of humans than apes at the end. There was more human vs. ape war in the previous movie than this one. It's not a bad movie but the title is a little misleading.

Here's the trailer

Thursday, August 31, 2023

Problems of Streaming Franchises

Streaming is great but sometimes, if your trying to get into a franchise with multiple entries, it can be frustrating, especially if different distributors owns certain parts of the franchise.


Back in the day, we had Netflix disk rentals and it was very helpful and help me watch most of the franchise. Nowdays, disk rentals has fallen in popularity due to the rise of streaming. It's still around but not used as much as it used to. It's even hard binge watch a series this way because Netflix will suddenly stop in the midway in the series or having missing parts in it's section.

I remember back in the day, it was hard to watch the entire Godzilla series. I grew up with them over the years and caught marathons on TNT and Sci-fi(now SYFY). After I looked it up on the net, I discover a dozen more films I haven't seen, as well as an entire expanded universe to explain all those 5 second cameos that was seen in Destroy All Monsters. One problem was trying to was watch The Return of Godzilla, AKA Godzilla 1984(or 85 going by the US release), and Godzilla vs. Biollante. At the time, they were only available for VHS and I had had to dig out my old VHS to watch these after buying them off of amazon.


Godzilla's box office rival, Gamera was also tricky to watch. Sometimes, I had to use my barely used VUDU account to watch some of his movies. Some were only available with Mystery Science Theater mocking the movie. Do you want to watch it with them or not? If not, your stuck with them because there was no other way. Of course, if you want to watch it in the original Japanese, it's far far more harder to do so. 

The final movie of the Showa Timeline called Gamera: Super Monster, I had to watch on Hulu. I don't know what worse, that I had to use a 3 to 5 different services to watch the entire Gamera series, or I saw that horrible excuse of a movie that ended the Showa Timeline. I have notice in stores in recent years there is DVD boxsets of the entire Showa era and honestly, it's better to do that than to use multiple separate services.


Now you can easily see almost the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe on Disney+. I repeat, almost because certain Spider-Man movies is unavailable due to Sony having Spidey's film rights. Heck, trying to watch Sony's Spider-Man's Universe is hard to watch. I had to use a Redbox to finally see the 2nd Venom movie since I was unable to find a streaming service unless it wanted to buy the movie or rent it at a very big price at Amazon.


I notice Doctor Who is complicated to watch. I know the BBC in the UK is promoting it's iPlayer that will hold the entire franchise library but only in the UK. Here in the US and other regions, not so much. To watch Classic Doctor Who, you have to have use the lesser known service Britbox. To watch Modern version with Doctors 9-13, you have to have Max. To watch the upcoming 60th anniversary and anything after, it's on Disney+. What the heck. 


There also the spinoffs of Doctor Who. The one-off K9 episode from the 80s is on Britbox. Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures is on Max. Back then, you could watch Sarah Jane on Amazon while Torchwood was on Netflix. Times have changed. I can't find a place to watch Class unless you plan to buy the series on Amazon or VUDU. Shout Factory has the streaming rights the newer K-9 show. However, that is considered non-canon, so you may not have to worry too much on watching this show.


I been trying to get into the Fate franchise but the problem is alot different people holds streaming rights to different series. Fate was based on a visual novel that had three separate paths that had the main dude ending up with a different girl and fighting a different villain. Also it had a prequel and semi-sequel. I been told watch Unlimited Blades Works 1st, then Heaven's Feels, after that, either the 06 anime or Fate/Zero. Easier said then done. 

Unlimited Blades Works and Fate/Zero is on multiple places like Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix. That's fine and good but I'm told Fate/Zero is a prequel and not the 1st entry of the franchise. It be like watching the Star Wars Prequels 1st, or Metal Gear Solid 3 or Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. It may be sort of easy to watch the prequel 1st that way but it be seeing all these references and foreshadowing that may fly over your head. Also Fate/Zero spoils certain stuff that happens in Heaven's Feels.

About Heaven's Feels, I had to use VUDU to watch that movie trilogy and update my credit card since it shows how often I use that service.

The 2006 show, it's on HiDive. Everyone has opinions on the 2006 anime since it's not done by ufotable studio and that show is mostly based on the Fate route but mixes parts of UBW and Heaven's Feels into it instead of giving a true adaption. And that's the main part of Fate. I haven't bother to look into the rest of the multiverse but I'm sure it's going to get messy to figure out which series is on what streaming service but good gosh, all these different services, just to watch the main part of Fate.


I took a quick peak at Gundam and even it is on different services. I have notice back when Hathaway got his own movie Netflix, they put most of the UC Gundams on Netflix frontpage that made it easy for people to catch up on. That is at least a good thing, however ZZ Gundam never got dubbed and not released on Netflix.


Video Games may not count as streaming but there is one gaming franchise that's on multiple game systems. While it's true that as time goes by that you have to get the newer game systems to play the new entry but it's usually going from Wii to Switch or PS4 to PS5 but I'm talking about different games across different systems that belong to different parties. I'm talking about Kingdom Hearts. KH1 and 2 are on the PS2. Chain of Memories is on GBA. Coded is on a Japan-only cellphones. 258/2 Days and remake of Coded that we got years and years later, known as Re:Coded were on the DS. Birth by Sleep is on the PSP. Drop Dream Distance is on a 3DS. Good gosh! Bouncing back between Nintendo and Sony.

Thankfully they released a compilation a year before KH3 on the PS4 to finally played most of the games on the PS4. It also has the bonus content when the games were re-released in Japan a year later with extra bosses and cutscenes that ended up important to the plot and the later games will have flashbacks to these scene and confused people who didn't play these bonus content.



Monday, July 31, 2023

How Demolition Man is a possible post-covid future

During the infamous time of Covid-19, I watched a movie from the 1993 movie called Demolition Man and what's funny is can be seen as a possible future from 2020-21's perceptive. 

The movie in the near future of 1996, an officer, John Spartan(Sylvester Stallone) is after a mass murder, Simon Phoenix(Wesley Snipes). Spartan got Phoenix captured after blowing up a mall and accidently killed some hostages. Spartan's superiors weren't happy about this and wanted to punish the man. There is a plot twist about the hostages but I need to stay on point. Anyways, both Spartan and Phoenix were sent to be punished by being put into cyro-freeze and release decades in the future.

Phoenix got released way too early in the year 2032 and he's out there causing chaos. The police needed to fight fire with fire and release Spartan but he is a fish out of water and having a hard time adjusting to the new world. It's very funny movie.

One of the things that it can be seen as a possible post-covid world is no one uses a high five. Instead, they hold their palms up a few feet from each other without touching and do a moving circle motion with it. This can be seen as avoiding contact to not spread germs.

One scene had Spartan invited by his partner, Lenina Huxley(Sandra Bullock) to her house to have "sex". It's really just them having VR headsets and experiencing "sex". Spartan was disturbed by this and brings up about actual physical sex and kissing. Huxley is grossed out about "fluid transfers" as she calls it and talks about STDs and unwanted pregnancy. Also getting pregnant is illegal unless you have a license and it has to be clean. This sounds similar to what I saw from the movie Future Cops where in order to prevent AIDS, sex is outlawed and everyone is a test-tube baby. Both came out the same year, so either movie didn't ripped off one or the other. Avoiding sex or kissing could be another way to see this is how everyone avoided Covid.

One scene has Spartan wanting to go to the bathroom but sees no toilet paper and asked his coworkers about and they said to themselves, "He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!" It showed three seashells sitting on a counter near the toilet. I guess with all the toilet paper shelfs all empty in the stores, they got replaced by seashells. They don't explain how exactly used in the movie. Alot viewers were puzzled about this scene and came up with theories how to use them. 

In the movie, everyone has a tracking chip, except for Phoenix since he was frozen long before the chip. During 2021, Alot of anti-maskers and anti-vaccine people has spread conspiracy theories that the vaccines are tracking bugs. So that can be another sign that this could be a post-covid world.

Alot things are banned like alcohol, swearing, chocolate, spicy food, meat. Well it was very hard to find meat in stores at that time. Maybe it was banned early on and that's way the meat shelfs in stores were empty? Or not.

There is alot other stuff that sort of became true. Like Schwarzenegger going into politics or remote cars. VR headsets gotten popular again long after the failure of the Virtual Boy.

Clearly, this future didn't happen but at the time I saw this back when it was the number 1 thing everyone was talking about, I could see this future was a possibility at the time.


Friday, June 30, 2023

Transformers myths and misinformation.

I recently came across some new info about our boy Sideways.  The mysterious bikerbot who is either a spawn of Unicron/Unicron's avatar/a dude with a split personality/a citizen of Planet X/or a member of the Cybertronian Empire was not a dimensional traveler who hops to different dimensions(at first). Over the years, we been told the various versions of Sidewayses may or may not be the same dude, crossing to other universes.



Yes, the guy who died in the opening scene in the 2nd live action movie. Weird that this 10 second character retroactively became same character from other Transformers stories.

I mention this character(or characters) several times in my blog and I had to go back and edit them to prevent more misinformation.

There was a Decepticon bike in the Robots in Disguise 2001 toyline called Sideways with a toy bio. Later on, Armada's toyline had a Sideways and it's nearly the same. He was then featured in both Armada and Cybertron. Two shows set in the same timeline(Sort of, that too is a can of worms) In 2004, there was a two-episode OVA crossover series in Japan called RobotMasters


Optimus Prime, Primal, and Victory Saber teamed up

Transformers from various eras are thrown in one area and fought over a rare power source. Anyways, Sideways was in this crossover and he had the same colors as his Armada counterpart and shared a very similar toy bio as his RID2001 and Armada counterparts. People then mentioned that every version of Sideways from the RID2001 toy, Armada/Cybertron character, and Robot Masters are the same exact man as he hopped into the Japanese G1 universe. It kinda made sense due to his master, Unicron is a god-like being who crosses universes.

In 2010, a book called Allspark Almanic said that the Transformers: Animated universe has it's version of Sideways and hints it's the previous dimensional traveler and it hints he will go to another universe and go to Shanghai. Basically saying that hi&bye Decepticon we saw in the 2nd movie is the same guy. The author of the book said it was suppose to be a joke and an Easter egg, not to be treated as canon evidence.

In 2015, there was an official Q&A section on Facebook called Ask Vector Prime. When Vector Prime wasn't around, Sideways took over and claimed every version of his clashing stories is true, or not. He acted like a total troll and nobody took his words seriously. Also, he mentions your mom alot. Vector Prime did came back to his Q&A section while Sideways retreated.

Well the thing is, the stuff about Robot Masters about Sideways being a dimensional traveler was never true to begin with. Western audiences thought RobotMasters was multiverse crossover but that was never the case, it was a time-traveling crossover. So RobotMasters Japanese G1 exclusive. Another thing is someone online made claims about RobotMasters version of Sideways and claim that this is the same exact guy from Armada as well as the toy from RID2001. Everyone took him seriously and it was added on the Transformers wiki and everyone believed it and it stayed that way for a while.

Later works like Allspark Almanac and Ask Vector Prime were inspired to write about Sideways, the dimensional traveler who likes to troll people. So it ended up as canon but it technically wasn't up until to this point.

Sideways was a confusing headache, saying that every version is the same guy, even you ignore the live-action version. We could avoided all this if we knew about this false info. Well sort of. Sideways will still have clashing origins to begin with. The horribly rushed dub of Armada said he was Unicron's avatar which didn't make sense and contradicts with him commutating with Unicron as a separate person. Cybertron gave him a different origin saying he's from Planet X. A whole twelve years after Armada ended in America, the Japanese version finally got completely fansubbed and Sideways said he was a creation of Unicron.



There were other times misinformation got spread around. I still remember being told that in Japan, that Optimus in Armada and Optimus in Energon were two separate characters. This kinda makes sense because Armada ended with Optimus floating in space, feeling unworried of carrying the Matrix due to give in to his dark impulses. You think Energon will start with the Autobots move on in the ten years of peace and when force of evil attacks, Optimus will make this big come back or something but nope, he's suddenly back with the Autobots like nothing happens and doesn't comment on his floating in space moment. Another thing is they have different voice actors in Japan. However that was not the case and it was an early sign that Energon is going to become one of the worse Transformers series of all time.

Somehow these were two separate people in Japan.

However that was never the case, they really were meant to be the same guy. The thing is not everyone had the space in their hard drives to download 52 fansubbed episodes or their relatives didn't want them to download a ton of stuff on their PC. This was long before the age of streaming BTW. All they heard was from they saw on forums and other places of those who seen the Japanese version.

However, this information did spread and people started asking questions like is Nemesis Prime from Armada the corrupted version of Armada Optimus?

It sounds simliar to some fan theories about the recent film, Rise of the Beasts. People theorized that the movie is going to be the like Days of Future Past and that the Maximals are from the future of  the events of The Last Knight and Unicron woke up and destroyed the Earth. The planet eater got control of Optimus and turn him into Scourge, the villain of the movie. The Maximals go back in time to warn the Autobots of the 1990s to prevent this bad future. However that didn't happen and to this day, Paramount still kinda sees the Post-Bay films maybe prequels possibly.


I remember one rumor of something else in Armada but 1st, I must go back to the very 1st episode of Transformers: Robots in Disguise when it premiered in September 8, 2001. The episode had a Dr. Onishi at a press conference in New York City when
Megatron bust through a skyscraper to abduct the scientist but the Autobots arrived to clashed their foes with NYC as their battleground with fallen skyscraper debrief all over the place. Of course, we all know what happen three days later in real life.

The English version of the show got heavily re-edited. Any shots of buildings getting destroyed were edited out. Several episodes aired out-of-order, confusing viewers. There were three episodes that never aired in America. The 1st episode was reran with heavy editing.


Ok, back to Armada, I had to explain the situation of how 9/11 affected RID2001. In January 30, 2003, an episode premiered with a mysterious light almost crashing into a space shuttle. It was revealed that was Jetfire scanning his new form. Two days later in real life, the Columbia Shuttle Disaster happen. Suddenly people were spreading rumors that we were going to this episode is going to banned or edited. Actually it didn't happen surprisingly.




I think there was one rumor that Orson Wells died during production of the animated movie and that Leonard Nimoy finished his lines. This been disproven by the people who worked on the film.

There were myths of that the Japan-only series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo, that the cast came from the 24th century Cybertron, just like the characters of Beast Wars. Not true. The problem is these shows didn't get properly translated and everyone assumes they came from 24th century Cybertron. They actually came from tens of thousands of years after Beast Machines. However this misinformation did influenced a mid-00s comics based on Beast Wars and threw in characters from the Japan-only shows.
Inspired by lack of info from an untranslated anime.


Then there is the High Moon games, War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron. Alot people think this is a direct prequel to the G1 cartoon. It's not, it's more like inspired by G1 and all it's pre-earth stories featured in the comics. It's actually a prequel to the show, Transformers: Prime. However it was originally designed to be G1-like but Hasbro at the time wanted everything outside of the Michael Bay movies to be part of this one big timeline and it was called the Aligned Continuity. Trying to ram an unconnected video game with a T.V. show doesn't make sense but that's the official explanation we got. The 2nd game did sort of added little Easter Eggs that sort of connect it to Prime.

They got rid of their big muscles, Tron lines, and their noses since the events of the game.