Do I WANT To See X-Men Days of Future Past

I've been asking myself this question since the first trailer came out, possibly a year ago.

I mean, I loved X-Men: First Class. A LOT. And I really really liked The Wolverine (except for the silly climax). And, as weird as it sounds and as unpopular as this opinion might be... I liked Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. It's a really pretty movie.

So, that should erase all ill-will I have from X3 and Wolverine: X-Men Orgins, right? This is fixing the old franchise and tying it into the new, right? The cast is amazing, right?

I just... can't, though. Not after seeing the trailers. And the corporate tie-ins. Something feels... askew. Too removed from reality. Too removed from the mood of either version of the X-Men franchise.

Maybe it's because the whole "save us from this apocalyptic future" thing is exhausted (in my opinion). Maybe it's because it feels like a money grab. Maybe it's because I sort of have this inkling that when First Class did well, Singer suddenly felt a little jealous for only being involved on an executive producer level and wanted back in on the glory and pushed Matthew Vaughn out of the director's chair. Which was stupid, if you ask me. Just like it was stupid when Singer was ousted on X3 because of hissyfits over him doing Superman Returns.

X3 was a weird parody of the universe Singer had developed in the first two films. And I fear that Days of Future Past will be Singer trying to not only re-claim things too late in the game, but also try to partially parody Vaughn's new universe. Because Vaughn and writer Jane Goldman brought a very specific (and very British) tone to the film. A tone that appears to be present in the trailer for their other 2014 comic book movie- Kingsmen: The Secret Service. A movie which I AM very excited about, thankyouverymuch. A tone very different from Bryan Singer's tone, no matter how much involvement Singer had in First Class.

But don't judge a book by it's cover and don't judge a movie by it's trailers & posters. Right?

And... Dinklage! Lawrence! McAvoy! Jackman! Sir Patz & Serena!

Gah, that's a terrible poster.

I'm conflicted. Someone convince me one way or another.

Yay, David Tennant's Hair Is FINALLY Back To Normal

Listen, David Tennant has, historically, really great hair. To the point where in the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left", Rose Tyler even describes the tenth Doctor has having "really great hair". Fact. 

So, when six months go by of Mr. Tennant having sub-par hair and there being a lot of pictures of him with such hair, it's sad to see.

But, from the looks of things in the pictures from the Broadchurch 2 cast reading, his hair is finally back in Olympic form. Or, I'm just so hopeful that his hair would be better for the show that I'm seeing fresh layers happening. Either could be true. But I chose to believe that it has been improved.

It may not look like much, but it's a much better cut than what he appeared to be sporting while shooting the American version of the show, Gracepoint. The Gracepoint hair is just so... flat. 

The Gracepoint hair was a bit of a let-down (to me. This is all about me and my opinions of a stranger's hair) when pictures starting being released, as I was hoping for him to have made a bigger improvement from the dark era that involved extensions for Richard II.

 Instead, it appears that they just took the extensions off him and sent him across the world without so much as a maintenance trim. Which was disappointing because his Broadchurch hair was so... nice.

Gah, this post is pathetic. I apologize.

Male Lead Character, You'll Be A Woman Soon...

I've been outlining a story for a screenplay for a couple weeks now, and it was really flying. I was reaching the homestretch for outlining and almost ready to start really working on the script. I was really excited because the story wasn't running away with the plot, it was working in the way I had hoped it would, and I was restraining any overly crazy whims that came along. It was a small story and staying small. It was bittersweet but had some funny moments. It was going to require a giant budget for music rights if it ever saw the light of day.

And then I paused on it for a few days, because life got busy and I was just a little bit stuck on a big revelation for one of the characters. Then, yesterday, I was in my car and thinking about it and suddenly realized what the problem was.

I need to turn my male lead character into a woman. It makes the dynamic with the existing female lead character so much more impactful and meaningful.

But, dammit, I had a specific actor in mind and everything for that role!

Also... hello, internet! You have no idea how many unfinished draft posts I have started since I last successfully posted to this website! I'm still here! just not good at finishing things.

And now I need to think about everything that will change now that I'm writing a story about two women.

Back To Who: What To Think About Martha Jones

I have a lot of feelings about Martha Jones.

When she first showed up, I was hopeful and open-minded about her. I loved Rose, but I was excited about having a change of pace. Martha was supposed to be a little bit older than Rose, a little wiser and a bright young medical student. I had hoped this would mean she'd be a bit nerdy with the Doctor and a little less reverent towards him.

And from looking at the first three episodes, I think they might've originally intended that for her.

But that damn crush. They gave her that stupid crush on him and made him very harsh towards her in response. I sometimes wonder if Russell made the Doctor extra harsh towards Martha in a way to get the audience on her side. But if that's what he was aiming for, I think he missed a bit as the unrequited love she had for the Doctor made the brilliant Dr. Jones seem like she was a little bit stupid. Why would anyone be so loyal to someone that treated her so terribly?

I loved when Martha would have some attitude. Like her snitty little knock in Human Nature when Matron Redfern tells her she should knock when entering a room. Or when she made the Doctor stop and explain himself on New Earth. The best being when she basically told him to fuck off (not using those words) when her apartment blew up and she was calling her parents. She should've been like that all the way through. She should've been giving him major grief about acting like she was still a guest on the TARDIS rather than looking like she was being given the holiest of communions when he finally gave her a key.

And it kills me that they barely played with the fact that the Doctor was traveling with someone with a lot of medical and science knowledge. Other than in The Lazarus Experiment, you never see her and the Doctor talking about anything scientific together. Martha tells people she's studying to be a Doctor but barely ever shows people (her little lesson to Redfern barely counts). Why weren't there more episodes where she and the Doctor could play off of each other's scientific knowledge to figure out what was going on? Or even by having the Doctor show-off with showing her medical techniques from the future? Would that have been too much to ask for?

Instead, the poor girl was given the worst trips around the universe ever. She gets kidnapped at (fake) gunpoint, almost killed by a giant scorpion-man creature, stuck in freakin' 1913 as a maid for several weeks, briefly jettisoned towards a sun in an escape pod, and then stuck in flippin' 1969 for several weeks. How cruel is it to have two trapped-in-the-past-for-weeks adventures happen to the black companion? And have them both be "not-terribly-enlightened" time periods? Ugh. I hope there are unseen adventures where the doctor takes her to spas and amusement parks for weeks on end and gives her presents to show thanks.

Then she walks the damn earth for the Doctor for a year. I remember watching The Last of the Time Lords for the first time quite vividly. I was in a Panera. I had met up with a friend that had been out of the country for the past year and only had a couple weeks before she was heading back to Asia for another year. We huddled together and watched the episode on my laptop the day after it aired. And I have to admit, I first thought there was going to be an "it was all a dream" reveal A LOT sooner than the "it was all reversed" ending. It just didn't ring true that Martha would do that. Or could do that. Her family had become slaves to a madman, her "hero" was turned into a feeble old man, and she was given this ridiculous mission... wha? But I've gone on about the episode before, so I'll stop here and just say... what a horrible way to spend a year.

How the hell did she recover from that year? From having memories of a terrible time that almost no one else remembered? How did her whole family cope? It always bugged me that it wasn't really dealt with more than a single line in one of her Torchwood episodes.

Oh, and then there are her Torchwood episodes. Martha's actually pretty badass on Torchwood. I think Freema even seems a little more confident as an actor in the Torchwood episodes. But shit goes down in those as well and she nearly dies in each episode.

By the time The Doctor's Daughter ends, I can't blame Martha for being all, "Dude, I'm DONE. See ya!" but then she get's screwed again by not only having an untested teleportation device strapped to her, but she's given the horrific responsibility of killing everyone on Earth to save them from threat. Thankfully, she doesn't need to use it, but... OH MY GOD!

How has this girl not had a mental breakdown?! How is she not Theon in the beginning of season four of Game of Thrones at that point?!

Also... her and Mickey? Really? Really?

Anyway, I feel that Martha really got a shitty situation compared to the other companions. Yeah, she's one of the few that got to live her post-Doctor life the way she wanted to, but her time on the TARDIS was really terrible. I think her time with Shakespeare might've been the only adventure where her life wasn't directly threatened. I guess maybe that's how it has to be to be one of the few that walks away?

On the upside- she had the best clothes out of all the Tenth Doctor's companions. So, there is that.

What Is This Feeling?

So, today I arrived at work an hour before anyone else. It was glorious. I love being alone in the office. I put on my headphones and then just started to zone out into website edits (work website edits, sadly, not fun websites that I've been neglecting). And by the time 9 AM rolled around, I realized that I hadn't yet had to speak to anyone all day. It was beautiful.

I normally do like speaking to my co-workers... it's just that the really talk-y ones were absent. And the really annoying ones ended up being absent as well. So, it gave me a chance to just relax and work and not be disturbed for a few more hours. I continued to feel calm and collected. I still had little moments of work rage, but nothing as severe as I've had in recent day and weeks.

But I also started to realize that I was ridiculously achey. My jaw has been acting up for ages due to all the weather changes and I've been so tense recently that my neck was reacting to release of tension and aching more because of it. Like, my neck hurts so much that my throat muscles, on the inside, hurt. It's been a while since I felt that.

And now, with half an hour left in my work day, I think I'm just tired.

Or dying.

But I still feel calm and sort of at peace about it all. I don't really get it.

Spores, Molds, and Fungus: Harold Ramis Has Died

I seriously don't remember ever watching a movie before Ghostbusters. And I certainly don't remember voluntarily rewatching any movies before Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II.

Groundhog Day is basically a religious experience for me. It's one of my "I'm having a sad day" movies. It's a movie that I will watch on repeat all day even on days that are not Groundhog Day. I've even driven up to Woodstock, IL in the winter just to take a look at the shooting location in the snow (it's beautiful, by the way).

The emotional journey in that film is something that my mind will wander to frequently in everyday life. Especially the concept that Phil had, by the end of the film, repeated the day for decades worth of time. I always wondered how the hell he would return to life after having lived more life in that one day than before that one day. Would he have forgotten his address back home? Would he not know how to present the weather any more? Are there names of people that he lost during that time, just because he didn't interact with them during the decades he spent trapped in Punxsutawney? And how crushing would his love for Rita be by then, after decades of just trying to win her over and over and over again?

I, quite literally, just found out about Harold Ramis dying. And I got teary. Not just "Oh, that's sad." or "Oh, that's tragic." but honest-to-goodness teary. I don't normally get that way over celebrity deaths. And it's not like he was a spring chicken, right? Nor was he in the middle of a career renaissance. But... he was Harold Ramis. He gave us comedy that wasn't just funny but was also intelligent. He gave us stories that went in directions no one expected and let the characters experience things.

He was able to direct Bill Murray at the height of his Bill Murray-ness. And directed some of the best episodes of the Office.

Not to mention... Egon Spengler. He was Egon Spengler. Possibly the best geek ever put on screen (other than the Doctor).

Mr. Ramis, you will be dearly missed.

It's Not Snow, Not Any More

In my "ignore winter until it gets the hint" move (which is strikingly similar to how I end relationships), I've decided to stop believing that the white stuff that is all over the place is snow.

It's marshmallow.

Marshmallow left over from a second Stay Puft Marshmallow Man attack. And this time it was a bigger Marshmallow Man. We're talking at least 1000 feet tall, rather than 100 feet. That's why there's so much! And why it's all over the country!

You see, a Gozer worshipping cult has been growing in strength across the Midwest and Eastern seaboard. And when this cult, mostly made up of millennials, managed to bring Gozer back this time, they just automatically assumed that his physical form was of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, as that is the form they all know he took in 1984. No one other than the Ghostbusters saw the first form that Gozer took! Therefore, Gozer was a 1000+ foot Marshmallow Man this time.

How did they manage to bring Gozer back? Well, by manipulating Louis Tully into sharing his experiences as the Keymaster. You see, Louis's life has been pretty boring in the past 20 years or so. His stint as a ghostbuster was rather short, as shortly after he donned the uniform, Janine was also trying to convince him to style his hair in a familiar tall and top-heavy style that a certain other ghostbuster styled his hair in. Upon realizing that Janine was unintentionally using his willingness to fill the Egon-shaped hole in her heart, Louis left the ghostbusters and tried to just provide legal and financial advise to the team when needed.

But, eventually, he still wasn't over Janine and when the Ghostbusters shut down in 1991, he felt the need to leave New York entirely. It was then that the cult started watching him. And, eventually, he had reached the point in his life where he was so open and looking for something to fulfill him that the cult swooped in and made him feel like a part of something important again. They told him how amazing he was for being picked to be the Keymaster. How important he was to all of history. How very very special he was. They even started just referring to him as "Vinz", the name of the demon that had taken him over.

Louis lapped it all up, desperate for love. Desperate to be cool. And told them everything.

The cult was lead by the great-grandson of Ivo Shandor, a skilled architect that had studied the designs Ivo had used to make the building used in 1984 and had a few ideas on how to improve upon the original. He built several buildings this time to help create the gateway for Gozer to return, knowing that it would have to be at least 30 years after the first attempt. And in those 30 years, the world kindly suffered so many major problems- wars, economical depression, climate change, and so on- that the cult had no problems recruiting new members that believed that Gozer needed to be summoned to end the world.

And, in early 2014, they summoned him. Big time. As the Stay-Puft Marhsmallow Man. This time it took all the regional versions of the Ghostbusters (instituted by Egon when he re-instated the organization in the late 90s) and every proton pack in existence. It took days, but they defeated him, leaving half the country under a thick coat of marshmallow. Marshmallow that also caused atmospheric disturbances that resulted in extreme cold.

So, there you have it. It's marshmallow. And it's going to suck to clean up when it thaws.