I’ve had this idea for a long time and while I think that American remakes are terrible, I think that this would be fun. For those that don’t know, Attack on Titan is a show where what remains of humanity are locked inside of a group of walls to save them from the Titans, massive naked humanoids that seek to eat them.
Here’s hoping you get swallowed and don’t have to deal with being crunched.
I watched the first season and most of the second but then found out that the main characters become fascists and gave up on it after that. There was a live action movie, which I saw with my friends and it sucked. The thing about these movies is that technology is stuck somewhere in the realm of I want to say revolutionary era America. Guns are single shot and not that useful. Also, titans have to be killed by having the back of their necks sliced open. They do this by using swords and something called ODM gear to swing them around the city while they fight.
That part is sick as hell. So, now that we have all that backstory, what’s the big idea I’ve had? Simple. They should make a remake of this, hype all the big names in it, all the best talent in Hollywood. Show them in the gear.
Then murder all of them immediately.
Jenna Ortega, eaten. Tom Holland, knocked out of the sky and eaten. Brad Pitt, stomped on.
Just a full ten minutes of popular Hollywood actors getting merced to show that no one in the franchise is safe. After that, start the actual movie with a group of unknown actors. Maybe make Inde Navarrette the Mikasa Ackerman substitute. I don’t know.
You have to subvert expectations because the original show does that so well. Especially for…
Click here to reveal spoiler!In the fifth episode of the show, Eren Yeager the protagonist gets eaten by a Titan, the first time he tries to fight.
Anyway, that’s what I would do. But we don’t need anymore live action anime remakes especially because Jordan Peele had the beautiful and talented Keke Palmer perform an Akira slide in Nope and that kind of won for best anime adaption of all time.
We like making movies about assassins because it combines what we all have to do(a job) with the fantasy that we have when we see a zombie movie(to take care of your problems through killing). We use that to tell stories about the human condition. John Wick trying to escape his life of murder only for it to cling and drag him back. The same thing with the Professional. Kill Bill. Okay, so maybe there’s only one real assassination plot. Someone wants to live but their hands are stained with blood and they can’t get away from the things they did.
Well, what if that didn’t happen. What if the two assassins didn’t care and were just kind of happy living their lives as killers? What if they were just lazy slackers when they weren’t killing? And that’s what Baby Assassins is in a nutshell.
Chisato and Mahiro, a pair of assassins, are told by their handler that they need to get part time jobs to make sure that the taxman doesn’t come looking for them. Unfortunately, beyond killing they’re not good at much else. We see Chisato working at a waffle place, she can’t quite get the whipped cream on the waffle as well as she’s supposed to. She puts in it in front of the customer and he states that he doesn’t like whipped cream and gives it to his date. Seeing her hard work cast aside, she screams at him “What the fuck is your problem?!” and slaps him with her tray. The owner comes over and using her bare hands, Chisato breaks her neck. Always with a bright smile on her face after she’s committed the violence.
This becomes the tone for the entire film. There is a subplot where Mahiro doesn’t think that she can fit in with anyone in society so she doesn’t see the point of trying. Chisato manages to succeed at a maid cafe until the subplot pops in. The subplot being a yakuza trying to modernize his operation by welcoming women into the fold. A male and female yakuza member are trying to find out who killed one of their members and guess what it’s the girls. The girls barely acknowledge what’s going on with the yakuza until the end of the movie.
The movie knows what it’s about. It knows that the true heart of the film is the two assassins and sticks with them throughout all of it. Their relationship is actually generally sweet and reminded me a lot of Buddy Daddies minus the child(I would not trust Chisato and Mahiro with a kid). It has good action, it’s interesting and a breath of fresh air where most action stars are giant hulking dudes who are good at everything, you have these two gremlins who are barely functional.
If you’re looking for a chill time, watch it on Tubi or Youtube. I highly recommend it.
Plus the director does a rad thing where he made another film that’s in the same universe called A Janitor and the two women appear as antagonists. But unlike the movie, Ballerina, which did that so that John Wick could show up and tell the protagonist what a good job she’s doing, they just appear to be road blocks for the main character.
The character profile series is going to be me going over characters. The things I like about them, hate about them, find interesting or confusing. To start this series off I’m going to start with one of my favorites, Admiral William “Bill” Adama from Battlestar Galactica.
Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica
There’s always been the conversation of whose your favorite starship captain and it always boils down to two choices: Picard or Kirk. Well, you could be a cool kid and go with the radder third option: Adama.
Adama doesn’t have anything backing him, no Federation, no shields, no backup fleet. It’s just him, his pilots an their Vipers and the Galactica herself. The Galactica being nothing more than an upgraded aircraft carrier. Despite all of this, he’s entrusted with the safety of the remnants of humanity. All 50,000 of them, a number that steadily decreases.
He’s a man of principle and brute stubbornness at times. But he still allows his mind to be changed when he’s presented with new information. He’s also willing to listen to those around him when he takes particular lines of action that might not be the most intelligent.
When the fleet splits over the president wanting to remain at Kobold and search for the tomb of Athena, it takes his communications officer to tell him that he’s making a terrible choice. Hell, he wants to stay and fight the Cylons until Roslin has a sit down with him to tell him that that’ll get everyone killed. They end the conversation, he goes away and has a think then comes back to admit that she was right and he was wrong. It’s after the former that the two of them get on the same page and become an unstoppable tag team.
The man also believes in fairness, justice and the law. He has one of the greatest lines in history about the role of the military: ““There’s a reason we separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
I’ve seen all kinds of captains of starships. Some of them are happy go lucky, others are reckless and wild. Adama looks like a stick in the mud in comparison. But the sternness in his nature I think is the perfect fit for this show. Those other captains can dance because they have the room to do so. Adama lives on the edge of the knife. If he messes up, that’s the ball game. He could end the entirety of the human race. He’s not the teacher you want every day but when the shit hits the fan, you’re glad he’s running your classroom.
He also passes the Han Solo test. It’s a test that they brought up in the Red Letter Media review of the prequel trilogy. That a good character is one you can describe without bringing up what their job is. Thus, Han Solo is a great character because you don’t need to know he’s a smuggler/pilot to know what kind of person he is, charming, funny, rash, loyal and secretly kind.
Adama is stern, thoughtful, quiet, honorable and stubborn. He makes his presence known without too much effort.
I think alot of this kinds from the fantastic actor that is Edward James Olmos. Also known for killing it in Stand and Deliver. I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else in the role. Thanks to his masterful work, we also got one of the best romances of sci-fi history which I’ll cover in the Laura Roslin profile.
Adama is a great character amongst greats. He embodies everything that makes Battlestar Galactica stand the test of time. You’ll be seeing more of these show as I keep doing this series.
What a useless and pointless cash grab. I don’t normally say that about prequels and sequels but this one feels particularly egregious. Weapons was such a good movie but it doesn’t need to be a sequel machine like all the others. It’s like a magic trick and a prequel would explain how the magic is done, thus ruining the trick.
If you haven’t seen Weapons yet, you should go do that. It’s an amazing film and very scary. I know I’m a bit of a scaredy cat for horror movies as opposed to reading horror so maybe I can’t judge it that well. I’m going to get into a few spoilers in this post so you can skip it if you like.
SPOILERS START AFTER THIS
The story of Weapons is that 27 children have gone missing. Based on ring camera footage, all the children got out of their beds at about 2am and they ran off into the distance. What follows is several figures living through the aftermath or actively trying to find out what happened to the kids. We see the story from several perspectives.
One such perspective, is Alex the only boy that didn’t run into the woods from his elementary school classroom. We find out that weeks before the incident, Alex’s mother invited their Aunt Gladys to come to stay with them.
There she is
Turns out that Aunt Gladys is a witch and is hundreds of years old possibly, I don’t know. The movie leaves you to make your own lore for her. She can control people by performing her witchcraft and appear in people’s dreams, maybe, once again the movie tells you that context is for other movies.
She uses this power to make Alex’s parents act as enforcers and hostages. There’s a horrifying scene where she makes them stab themselves in the face with forks when Alex disobeys. She was behind the missing children who she’s hiding in Alex’s basement and forcing him to feed them cold soup along with his parents. She’s going to suck the youth from them or something, once again, the movie is not forthcoming with answers. Alex eventually uses the same witchcraft to have the kids chase her down and tear her limb from limb in a scene that can only be described as hilarious.
The movie leaves you with nonstop questions about Aunt Gladys, where did she come from? How did she learn her powers? Are there other witches out there? Is she part of a coven?
These are the questions I had after this movie and I don’t need any of them answered. Whatever answer I’m going to come up with is going to be better than anything that the movie studio could figure out.
I’m not against prequels, don’t get me wrong. I just think that this is going to become the worst kind of prequel, which is shitty reverence as opposed to fanfiction, which is the good kind of prequel. Allow me to explain the difference.
Solo: A Star Wars story is shitty reverence. They make such a big fucking deal about every goddamn part about Han Solo’s life. My name’s Han, I’m alone, alright we’ll call you Han Solo. Stupid. There’s a part where Woody Harrelson disassembles this large rifle and it turns out to be the blaster that Han used in the first two movies. He even kisses it before he gives it to Han. Why? Why would he kiss it? We see the Kessel Run, which is kind of fun.
What I’m getting at, especially with Woody Harrelson kissing the blaster is that it’s like he knows how important it is. It’s like if all the characters were like “I can’t believe we’re hanging out with the Han Solo! Can you believe how historical this all is!”
It also just makes Han Solo lamer. I didn’t need to know he was a floppy haired idiot running around not knowing what to do half the time. It’s like finding out Marlon Brando’s Godfather got his position because his predecessor was killed through a series of pratfalls that started by him slipping on a banana. And there was a yakety sax style chase at some point.
All it is, is a handjob. It doesn’t matter. There’s no reason for it to exist except for fan service. I didn’t ask where han solo’s blaster and vest came from. Now let’s look at the fanfiction.
This might be cheating because it’s technically a sequel-prequel. But the whole thing focuses on Rocket Raccoon and explains his past. Mostly while he’s unconscious after getting fucked up by Adam Warlock. What works about it is that we see how much his friends give a shit about him and are willing to go to any lengths to save him.
During his comatose state, Rocket remembers his life as a creation of the High Evolutionary a man looking to create the perfect world. Rocket is thrown into a jail cell that becomes his whole world along with his friends, Teefs, Floor and Lylla. They help the High Evolutionary create his perfect world but he hates Rocket because Rocket is so much smarter than he is. This leads him to attempt to kill them. Rocket attempts to escape but all of his friends are killed. Partially because he refuses to run and instead attacks the High Evolutionary. He brutalizes the High Evolutionary and flies to the stars eventually meeting up with Groot and the others.
We’re not shown his meetup with Groot but this backstory recontextualizes everything that’s happened to him before. In the first movie, where he yells at Drax for summoning Ronan to attempt to kill him and just gets his ass kicked, Rocket shouts at him “Everyone’s got dead people, that’s not an excuse to get everyone killed” and now we know he knows that from personal experience. When he wants to flee to protect Groot instead of going to fight Ronan and most likely die, he’s not being a coward, he just knows that he has to survive and protect what remains of his family.
We know now why he hates himself so much, because he thinks that he got his friends killed. It also makes him losing Groot twice and the rest of the guardians that much more heartbreaking because he lost his family three times. There’s also a payoff from the first movie where they were ready to run away and let Ronan kill the universe because fighting him would lead to their deaths. Now in this movie, there is no discussion, they’re going to go save people whether they be a bunch of kids or animals.
I liked Rocket before this movie. I loved him after this. And that’s how you do it. You don’t need to create a giant neon sign about their motivations. You can just show their past and let you make the connections.
Weapons was an enormous hit. I don’t think you need to add anything to it. It doesn’t need Aunt Gladys doing her first magic. I can know she did it and be satisfied. There’s no way it would be shitty reverence.
I made a joke over the weekend that when I come to power, I’m going to force people to go through every western and digitally replace every poker or blackjack scene with Magic the Gathering. It was supposed to be a funny joke about the juxtaposition of a nerdy game vs the toughness and manliness of the wild west. But then I thought that there must be other replacements for poker.
Board games were a definitive out. It’s hard enough to keep track of all of the pieces while you’re living in a house. Imagine trying to find the top hat for your Monopoly game while you’re on the dusty trail fighting outlaws and trying to maintain law.
Thus we must consider portability. It has to fit in the saddlebag and be able to be kept together easily enough. So, Dungeons and Dragons is straight out. All those clanking miniatures, books, maps, the thousands of dice and such. No way that a cowboy can herd cattle with that. This also ties into knowing how to play. Everyone knows how to play poker but what if you have someone that plays pathfinder instead of DND? What then?
Finally, we have to think about what could cause the most tension when playing it. How many people have died over particularly vexing hands of poker. We know that Bill Hickok was killed holding a hand of black aces and eights. So, that means that you need to have some tension. That leads me to figuring out what the ultimate replacer to poker would be for the cowboys and cowgirls.
Thats right, it’s Jenga. Portable? Yes, sir. Instead of carrying 52 cards, you’re carrying 54 little pieces of wood. It can easily be made again, what carpenter can’t make 54 tiny little rectangles? Plus, if you’re truly desperate, you can use them as fire starters. Tension?
“Son, you topple that tower, you’ll be eating a bullet.”
Boom. Both me proving my point with an onomatopoeia and what’s going to happen to the kid when he topples that tower. Then we got Jenga, where the rules are so simple. Remove block put on top. Done. Plus, you can’t cheat as well at Jenga as when you’re playing poker.
There, I think I’ve proven that card games should be replaced by Jenga in westerns. No one asked for this but there it is.
The Predator movies have always been goofy as fuck. I mean, who could forget this?
That’s dumb in the best way. Now, I’ve seen a lot of people online pointing out how much they hate the new predator movie for the fact that it has comedy and features *gasp* a woman as an actual character! You know what I have to say to that? Those people hate fun. Remember that? Fun? That thing we desperately need more of in this world?
I’m a casual predator fan to be fair. I haven’t read the vast amount of comics where they fight just about everyone in the universe. Especially the multiple times he went up against Archie and didn’t win.
Our plot concerns with the runt rookie predator, Dek, seeing his father kill his brother and swearing revenge. To do so, he has to prove himself and thus arrives on a planet known for its lethality, Genna. There he meets Thia, played by the wonderful Elle Fanning, a bright and cheerful android who has lost her legs. Dek straps her to his back and she spends her time bouncing bright and sunny dialogue off of the misanthropic and brunt Dek. Their interactions are all amazing, you can feel the chemistry despite the CGI. Dek is trying to kill this beast the Kalisk, which is known for its immortality.
I was riveted the entire time. The movie balances the darker parts of Dek watching his brother die with the more comedic moments throughout the rest of the movie. The action sequences are imaginative and fun. The planet feels alive and like it actually works, which is something that most alien worlds don’t. I still remember in the first J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek movie where Kirk lands on an ice planet and gets immediately attacked by two horrible monsters. But then old Spock and him are able to walk across the planet without incident.
Mike and Kevin from Rifftrax summed it up:
Mike: Man, I’m sure glad we didn’t run into any wolf things or horrible bug monsters.
Kevin: Based on how quickly I ran into both of them initially I thought this planet was crawling with them.
Mike: I know right, apparently not.
It also feels like it could be a legitimate threat to the predators.
To sum it up, go check out this movie. It’s super fun and really well made. Everyone is giving it their all and it’s just a good time. I’ll be telling you about Running Man next week.
We mentioned Tim Meadows on the podcast this week and I want to just say that he and Judy Greer are the two best supporting character actors working today. Every time I see that they’re in the cast, I get pumped. They’re liked whipped cream to an ice cream sundae. They’re just going to improve it.
I mean, who can forget Judy on Arrested Development flashing Michael and screeching at him to “say goodbye to these, Michael!”. She also killed it in Halloween(2018). I’ve put the scene below but she has to pretend to be scared to attract Michael Myers into her killzone. The immediate switch from being helpless to shooting him in the face is tremendous.
Then we have Tim Meadows who killed it in Dewey Cox by being the main supplier and tempter of Dewey for his drug journey. Even today, my friends will just say to each other “And you never paid for drugs… not once.” Despite being for the most part all straight edge. Two of my friends drink but we always make sure to get written permission from their parents before they do so.
You know I say that as a joke but I’m sure there are parents that are puritanical that that is something people have to do.
He was also incredible on the Office, Pop Star and Brooklyn 99. He just enhances everything. The scene I was talking about before is below:
Once on reddit, someone asked who has the most staying power. I answered at the time Judy Greer but I would say that Tim Meadows exists in that world as well. They’re just going to get better with age. Someone needs to pick up the crown of the Golden Girls and I think Judy has the ability to do so. Tim Meadows proved himself in SNL and he continues to do so.
Franklin Cota, an author and podcaster 