Tag Archives: prometheus

The Trilogy: The Prequel: Part Negative One of Three

Before there was ever a trilogy, there was always the Prequel. I’ve been prequelizing for some time now, you just haven’t realized it. And you still might not realize it, even after I’ve just said it to you, just laid it all right out there for your eyes to consume, for your soul to devour. But it’s all going to make sense. Even though nothing makes sense right now. By the time you’re done reading this blog post, you’re going to be like, “Ahhh … so that’s where he was going with all of this.”

Yep. Back to the start. Or back to before the start. Before there ever was a start. This is the new start. What I mean is, a whole new way of looking at things. Because the best way to come up with something new to write about is to not come up with something new to write about at all. Instead, you pick something that you’ve already done, and then you just kind say to yourself, “What now?” and then you go run some laps and you play some Zelda and you go to McDonald’s and you buy yourself a snack. You call it a snack anyway, but it’s actually a full combo meal. Whatever, it’s only four, too late for lunch, and you’re still definitely going to have dinner later on, so yeah, it’s a snack.

And then you’re done with your McDonald’s and you’re done fucking around on the Internet and you look at your watch and you’re like, “Shit! It’s eleven o’clock and I haven’t gotten any of my writing done!” and so you just go through all of your old stuff, again, like the Trilogy: Parts one, two, three, four, and five, (wait, I should have probably saved that for the end, for continuity’s sake … oh well, I’ll just do it twice, it doesn’t matter) and you say to yourself, what about a prequel?

The prequel. Think about other prequels. Think about Prometheus. Think about the technology, the same sorts of gimmicks, the stasis, the corporate space faring, the robots, think about how nothing really new happened, how you still had the same strong young female hero lead archetype, the same “ehhh-uuuEEE” sound effects, the same headless robots. And then you watch the whole movie and you’re like, “Huh?” but then you stick around for the end and it’s like, “Oh yeah. There’s the Alien alien. It’s Alien! It’s a prequel! Right? Right. Maybe?”

Think about this new Wizard of Oz movie, all about James Franco playing a young The Wizard of Oz. Actually, don’t think about that. It looks pretty lame. Maybe it will be a good movie, I don’t know. I’m just imagining a lot CGI and a lot of good witches and bad witches and flying monkeys and … didn’t the Wizard of Oz come out like a hundred years ago? There’s nothing more recent we can reinvent? We’re going to have to wheel all of these senior citizens out of their retirement homes, take them to the picture show because, “I saw the Wizard of Oz live in theaters when I was three!” and instead of being happy that they had a nice night out at the movies, they’ll leave and complain about the lack of creativity and how that doesn’t make sense and where’s Dorothy?

No, let’s think about a different James Franco prequel, an actually successful prequel, the new Planet of the Apes movie. I’ve got to tell you, I wanted nothing to do with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The trailers looked terrible. But, whatever, that was a pretty sick movie. Good enough that, I guess Franco was like, “I’m the king of all prequels! Next up, the Wizard of Oz!”

But seriously Franco, two prequel movies in a row? And that’s not considering that you’re probably going to be doing another Apes prequel. You’ve got to branch out a little. Well, you were in Spider-Man 2, so that was a sequel. Yeah, I guess everybody’s got to have their thing.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah. The prequel. This prequel. It’s a prequel to the Trilogy. And here it is. Here’s how it all ties together. Ready? I actually wrote this before I wrote the Trilogy last August. Before parts one, two, three, four, five, and six. What’s that? Six didn’t get released yet? It will. It’s all part of the plan. This plan. Before I even started there was a master plan. Is this the whole master plan? For now. Maybe there’s more. If I sequalize this prequel, it’ll all make sense, fill in any holes, answer any questions.

Sound like a bunch of bullshit? Yeah, well, it’s a prequel, so … you know.

Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises: Part 2: Of the Review

I wrote last summer about how obsessed I was with the new Batman movie. It’s been a while now, but the obsession hasn’t diminished. In fact, I think that I’m even more obsessed with it now than I was when I saw it the first time. Or the second time. Ever since movie theaters stopped showing it, and because I haven’t yet bought it on DVD, I have no way to satisfy the gaping hole in the core of my very being that cries out on a daily basis for more Batman. Seriously, that movie was f’n ridiculous.

You remember the beginning? That airplane scene? I can’t think of any movie that’s had a more gripping or a more dramatic opening. Remember when they dragged those hostages onto the plane and the CIA agent pulls off the one hostage’s mask, and it’s Bane, and he’s wearing his breathing mask, and the CIA guy says to Bane, “Will it hurt if I take off this mask?” and Bane goes, “Yes … for you!” Seriously, remember that scene? Right before he somehow gets out of his handcuffs, and then the other plane comes out of nowhere and somehow Bane escapes? I think I actually passed out from excitement during those first five minutes. I must have, because when I saw it the second time, I was like, wait a second, I don’t remember exactly what happened. I have a sense memory of euphoria, followed by a warm and fuzzy sensation, so yeah, I must have fainted. I can’t wait to see it again because, maybe I lost consciousness during the second viewing also, and so it’ll only be after repeated viewing that I’ll be desensitized enough to actually make it through the entire movie awake. I’ve never been more hopped up on visual stimuli than I was when I saw Batman.

Seriously, sometimes when I’m sitting around with my friends, I’ll just go, totally unprompted, into the whole, “Yes … for you!” bit. And maybe nobody will get it. Maybe only some of the people will get it. Even if you get it, it’s a pretty random thing to just say, totally out of context from whatever else we might be doing or talking about. But it’s so awesome. Bane was such a badass bad guy.

And if you haven’t seen the movie, one, I have a little piece of advice: go see the movie. It’s so amazing. I’ve tried watching other movies since I’ve seen Batman, but they’ve all been terrible. That’s not to say that they’re terrible movies, although they might be. All I’m saying is, Batman is such a good movie, hold on, such a good film, that it’s going to ruin movies for you for the rest of your life. And films. It’s like that whole every square is a parallelogram but not every parallelogram is a square thing, but with movies and films, and Batman, and Batman is the film. Get it? What I’m getting at here is after you watch Batman, you realize that nothing else is ever going to come close to making you feel the way you did when you saw Batman for the first, second, third, five-hundredth time.

So you might be saying to yourself, why would I want to go see Batman? If it’s going to ruin the movies for me altogether, why bother? Because. It’s so fucking awesome. Even though you’ll never be able to watch another movie again, it’ll totally be worth it, to see Batman, to see The Dark Knight Returns. And besides, you won’t ever have to go see another movie again. Because eventually it’ll be released on DVD, or Blue-Ray, or whatever format happens to be the current standard, and any time you hear colleagues or family members talking about how much they loved a recent picture that came out, you can just go home and pop Batman in, and I’m serious here, I guarantee that you’ll be having a better time watching Batman over and over and over and over again than all of your friends and family watching all of those other movies combined, at the same time. It doesn’t make a lot of sense until you see it. I hope you already saw it.

And that opening scene? The whole “For you!” part that I was talking about before? It only gets better. I remember when I wrote my original Batman review, I was still a little bitter with my wife, because she made me wait to see Prometheus with her, but then she quickly lost interest in seeing Prometheus all together, and so we never wound up seeing it. I thought this was a bad thing. I thought I was being held back. And that’s one of the reasons I went to see Batman by myself, behind my wife’s back, while she was at school.

And when I finally did see Prometheus, I was left totally underwhelmed. Angry, even. It was more of a confusion that gradually built up to anger as I contemplated what Ridley Scott had just snuck up from behind and shoved my face in, but this is all really small minded of me. Now that I’m a couple of months removed from Batman, I can safely say that God himself purposely made Prometheus turn out to be a totally terrible movie, if only to show me that my wife wasn’t about to let me see a huge summer blockbuster by myself, and when I missed the Prometheus train entirely, I realized that I couldn’t let the same mistake happen with Batman. And so, if Prometheus hadn’t sucked so bad, maybe I would have waited for my wife to take a break from her books to see Batman with me, and in this scenario, maybe we would have never seen it, and I’m forced right now to contemplate a reality in which I’ve never seen Batman. And I can’t stand to even think about it. But then I think about all of the other alternate realities, universes in which I’ve never seen Batman, and it makes me crazy, to try and imagine a version of me that hasn’t seen Batman, that doesn’t recognize it as the greatest film in the multiverse, and that thought makes me insane with despair. And so if somebody ever invents a machine to travel to parallel universes, that’s going to be the only thing that I’ll want to do, to hop around from Earth to Earth, warning any potential Rob’s to see Batman immediately. But I’d also need a time machine, so I could first travel to the alternate world, and then go back in the past, back to this summer, when Batman came out, and I’ll grab myself by the collar and say, “Go see Batman, now!” But what if he’s like, “Batman? What? Who’s Batman?” And I’ll have realized that maybe I’ve accidentally travelled to a world where there is no Batman. And that’s too much. It’s too much to even think about. And so I’ll have to travel back to my original reality, kidnap Chris Nolan, and take him with me, to that and every other parallel universe where Batman doesn’t exist. And I’ll threaten him, scream at him “Make the Batman movie! Or I’ll never take you back to our Earth! Now!” And he’ll have to. And I know, it’s crazy, because there are probably an infinite number of worlds out there, and so I probably won’t have time to take Christopher Nolan to every single alternate reality. But I’ll try as hard as I can. Because that movie was so fucking sick, so unbelievably amazing. And so if all I’m doing is just increasing the number of realities where Batman exists, even if it’s just a handful of worlds, then it’s all worth it. I just … I just … I just, really, really, really, really love that movie.

Rob’s day off

I had off today. When I woke up, I made a plan. I’d spend the whole day writing. I’d march right downstairs and sit at the computer and type out a ton of work, volumes of material. But now all of the sudden it’s almost 10:00 pm. I don’t know what happened. What about my plan? I thought it was a pretty decent one, as far as plans go. So now here I am, obviously a little more hurried than I had prepared for, and I want to get something down.

So what did I do with a whole day off by myself? Yeah, I probably should’ve mentioned that it’s not a regular day off, it’s a Monday. I mean, it’s a legitimate day off, but working at a restaurant, I often find myself with days off completely to myself, because everybody else is working. Especially on days like today, where I decided to skip showering and grooming, I always wonder if my neighbors think to themselves stuff like, “What’s this guy’s deal? Does he have a job? Why is his wife always gone but he’s always out walking his dog in his pajamas?” I want to wear a custom t-shirt that say, “In case you’re judging me, I’ll have you know that I work irregular hours at a restaurant, sometimes during the day, sometimes at night.” But to put all of that on a t-shirt? The font would have to be really small for it all to fit. And so if the neighbor that I’m imagining is judging me in his or her head, it’s probably from behind a window, not really close enough to read that whole message screen printed on a shirt.

But yeah, I went out to walk the dog in the morning. So that’s not really explaining where the day went. I drank a ton of coffee. Usually, and knowing that I know this kills me, but if I don’t start writing as soon as I feel the caffeine kick in, the coffee is just going to get wasted. All of that chemical fuel will just get spent wasting time on the Internet, or pacing around in a circle in the living room, something totally unproductive.

So I blew enough time to where all of the sudden I had to make lunch. The morning evaporated. I don’t know what I did really. I read some stuff online. I think I might have played a game of Internet Settlers of Catan. But then it was lunchtime. After lunch, which didn’t take long at all, I got this crazy idea in my head that now would be the perfect time to finally watch Prometheus which, for various reasons, none of them worth mentioning, I never got to see. But this was like one in the afternoon. This idea to watch a whole movie came out of nowhere, like I hadn’t even thought about this movie in forever. And not one part of my brain stepped in to interject an opposing thought. Nothing in me said, “Hey Rob, you know that movie is like three hours, right?” or, “Hey Rob, don’t you think you should maybe do some writing and then watch the movie?” There was no resistance. I thought about the movie, turned on my XBOX, rented the movie, and sat down to watch it, all within sixty seconds. It’s like my day was hijacked by Ridley Scott tag-teaming with my basest instincts of immediate gratification. And seriously, if you’ve seen the movie, well, I’m sure we all at least would have appreciated our money back, seeing as how it’s impossible to refund three hours of a person’s life.

And I had wanted to see this movie so badly that I couldn’t really consciously appreciate actually watching it until like two hours after it had finished. Of course, the movie ate up what should have been the most productive chunk of my day, and the next thing I know, my wife was home from school. “How was your day?” “Good, I finally watched Prometheus.” “Oh wow, didn’t you want to see that like six months ago? How was it?”

And I couldn’t answer. That was my first clue that something was wrong. I even opened my mouth to say something generic, “good, fine,” whatever, but my mouth was frozen. So I started thinking, did I like the movie? And I couldn’t answer that either, because I really didn’t know what was going on. So I went online to search for some basic answers to what I thought must have been elements that I had simply overlooked in the plot. But it turns out that everyone else who saw that movie shared similar frustrations. And in checking out everyone else’s critiques, it dawned on me that I was reluctant to agree with them only because I had been looking forward to watching it for so long.

So after I realized that the movie was terrible, I just kind of felt really deflated, bumming around the house. I was going to go running or something, but I didn’t. I still haven’t showered. I promised my wife I would cook something, because in the morning, before she left, I was all like, “Are you kidding me? I’m going to be so productive today! I have the entire day to myself! I’m going to write, I’m going to cook, I’m going to do the laundry!”

Fuck. Seriously, as I’m typing this out, I’m just now remembering that one of the first things I did in the morning was to throw in a load of laundry. But that’s all I did. I didn’t change it to the dryer. I didn’t get to any of the other loads. And I’m pretty sure that first load was our sheets, so they’re going to smell awful, just cold and damp all day long, and there’s no time right now to rewash them and wait for them to then go through the dryer. Damn.

Oh well, but I did cook. I went to the grocery store to make tacos. I was going to make pork tacos, but in the meat section I saw this package of chicken hearts. And I just heard them calling out to me, “You pansy. You wouldn’t know what to do with us. Keep walking, amateur.” And I was like, oh yeah?

So I bought them. They were like fifty cents. I think I rose to the challenge. I seared them real quick and then braised them in some stock. And I chopped them up and made tacos and told my wife it was just dark meat. I eventually told her, after we were done, but by then she had already finished, “And besides,” I pointed out, “you loved them. You ate every bite and loved it.” And she couldn’t disagree. Still she told me not to do stuff like that anymore without asking, but I don’t understand the problem. She’s living with a culinary mystery box.

So yeah, that’s it, Rob’s day off. Also, my wife bought three giant bags of Halloween candy, but we didn’t have any trick-or-treaters. Not even one. So today I ate all of it. It was the best. Just opening up the bag brought back vivid memories of Halloween as a little kid. But I don’t remember the stomachache being this bad. Maybe I just ate way too much today, heart shaped candies, taco shaped hearts, it’s all too much. Way too much day off with way too little to show for it. Except for this, that is. At least I got to write this. And at least you got to read it.