Blue Beetle is another mediocre movie in a long line of mediocre movies featuring DC superhero characters. It seems that most DC movies fall into either the absolutely dreadful category or the mediocre but watchable category. Blue Beetle wasn’t terrible and was somewhat entertaining but definitely not good. After just watching The Flash a couple of days ago, it is clearly better than that trainwreck of a movie. On the good side, the action and fighting were good. I thought the movie was well cast, in particular Xolo Mariduena as the Blue Beetle and George Lopez as his uncle.
On the bad side, the desperate quest for laughs was often ridiculous and over the top, in particular the Grandmother character was absurd and not remotely funny as the movie intended her to be. The storytelling was weak. The biggest example of this was through dialogue, they kept hammering onto the audience the message that the Reyes family (standing in place of Mexican immigrants in general) love each other and are resilient to adversity. This is a fine message and I have no problem with it, but trust your audience that through the action and dialogue that they will be able to pick up this message. Instead, they treat their audience like idiots who are incapable of understanding a message unless they are repeatedly spoon fed this message. Or in other words, show don’t tell. Suspension of disbelief was stretched to ridiculous levels. As I said, this movie wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t good either.
The first season of this show was intriguing, entertaining to watch, and generally piqued my interest. It wasn’t great, but it was solid television. The second season can politely be described as a train wreck. That’s not to say there wasn’t anything redeeming about season 2. It had some good moments within the dreck, but overall, it was pretty terrible.
Spoilers ahead, so be warned. Among the myriad of issues was that this was a slow moving season. It seemed as if it took forever to get things moving. Episode after episode, Misty and her new boyfriend looked for Natalie. The entire plot with Shauna’s daughter and the police officer was dumb and slow moving. Taissa and her sleepwalking both past and present was tortuous to watch. This entire season could have been made in four episodes at most.
For the most part, the plot made absolutely no sense and was riddled with holes, especially the final two episodes, which were a bigger train wreck than the rest of the season. I’m not sure what was more ridiculous—that the Coach burns down the house trying to kill all of the kids inside, that Shauna nearly beats Lottie to death in front of the rest of the girls and nobody makes a move to stop her even though Lottie is apparently their leader, or most likely the dumbest plotline of all, that Misty’s boyfriend kills a cop, and for some inexplicable reason, his partner goes along with the plan that his partner was dirty and that he was the one who actually shot him.
The characterization is generally quite poor. Misty is the only really compelling character in the entire show. It’s hard to care about any of these characters. I was glad that the season was finally over and don’t intend on watching season 3.
Prior to reading this novel, I had watched the movie, Ready Player One, and I was surprised at just how different the novel was than its movie adaptation. After reading the book, I understand why the movie went in such a different direction. A true adaptation of this novel would never work as a movie, since it wasn’t anywhere near as action packed, and it wouldn’t have worked well on the screen watching someone play video games, which were the root of most of the challenges. Having said that, I think both the novel and the movie succeeded in what they were trying to do.
I thought this was a very creative novel, weaving in nostalgia with a dystopian/post-apocalyptic world. Being a child of the eighties, I thoroughly enjoyed some of the eighties references. In particular, I geeked out when Wade used Ultra Man in a fight in his quest to get the golden egg. I thought there was good commentary about people’s addiction to machines and how some people would prefer to live in a fictitious online world instead of the real world. Yet, I think the message here is that true happiness can’t be achieved by hooking yourself up to a machine, but through living in the real world.
There were some things I didn’t like about this novel. The most notable being the evil corporation that was trying to destroy the Oasis by winning the competition through nefarious means. First, the evil, giant corporation is so utterly cliché. Have a little more creativity and come up with something more original please. Second, this evil corporation was so ridiculously over the top that it wasn’t remotely believable even in this dystopian setting. Otherwise, I found the novel to be enjoyable, although I probably enjoyed the movie more.
We Have Always Been Here is a slow moving science fiction novel that has some mystery and intrigue but more often than not did not deliver. In the novel, a crew is sent to explore the planet Eos, where strange things were reported from two humans and an android that landed on the planet, by the ISF—an organization that could best be described as corporate overlords who control all things and people. Some of the crew experience waking nightmares where they feel as if they can’t control their bodies, and the androids start to become sentient and do things beyond their programming.
There are several things that don’t work for me. One is the characterization. None of the human characters were particularly compelling, including Park, the main character who was sent by the ISF to monitor the crew and report back to them. She has no personality and very little likeability. It’s hard to get into a novel when the main character is so dull. The other part that made it hard to get into the story was the constant switching back from the present to flashbacks of the other crew in Eos to Park’s backstory. It was hard to ever get into the flow of the story with all of the switching. Also, the writing felt plodding and tedious at times. On the good side, there was a lot of intrigue in trying to figure out the big mystery of the story, and the concept behind the planet they were inhabiting and the effects it had on both humans and androids was interesting. All in all, this was a solid but unspectacular novel.
In We Could Be Heroes, Jamie and Zoe both have superpowers and no recollection of their past life. Coincidence? Of course not. Jamie uses his memory reading and brain stunning power to rob banks that are FDIC insured, while Zoe prefers to use her superstrength, speed, and flying ability to stomp mudholes into bad guys. Both of these strategies have their merits—and problems. Naturally, behind these superpowers and lost memories is a vast conspiracy. As far as conspiracies go, this wasn’t so bad. I think the apt message here is beware of people who think they are trying to save the world because their idolatry and zeal for their cause will wind up steamrolling anyone who stands in their path.
I thought what made this story work is that the two main characters were very relatable, very much like ordinary people who just happened to be thrust into this situation. Both are very flawed. While Jamie is a little more refined, Zoe is more rough around the edges. But they worked well together. It was good to see them fail and overcome and fail and overcome. I felt the author was keeping it real with how two people like this would act given these extraordinary powers.
The story’s villains were just okay. There was a lot of predictability in terms of how things would turn out with the villains. I would much rather have had them take a darker turn than how the author handled it. I also felt that the ending had a bit of a deus ex machina feel to it. It didn’t kill the novel, but it could have been better. All in all, this was a fun read that I would recommend.
