Royce's Random Thoughts

 Short Version: Go see this movie. Right now. I'd put this up as one of the best, if not THE BEST Marvel movies, and that includes all of the MCU.

Randomly Spoilerly Comments.
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1. Miles is Spider-Man. Terribly young, terribly afraid, but willing to do the right thing, even if his friends and mentors feel he'd be safer staying to one side.

2. Liked the interaction between Miles and his dad. It definitely felt like his father loved him and wanted to connect to Miles, but was just stumbling as to how.

3. Miles' uncle was a cool contrast, the appealing, chill, and slightly crooked opposite of his brother, and their interactions also felt genuine, making his eventual fate even more painful. 

4. Peter B. Parker was both simultaneously funny and tragic. This is a Spider-Man who has been in the costume for over twenty years, and is visibly tired of the grind. As one reviewer put it, he's the genius kid who peaked in high school and has been living in the glory days ever since. But he's still a hero, and as the movie makes a point of, Spider-Man always gets up again no matter how many times he's knocked down.

5. Aunt May was incredibly cool. The easy characterization would have been to make her devastated over the loss of "her" Peter, but when she sees Peter B. she immediately realizes what's going on, and becomes the clever ally of him, Miles, and the other Spiders.

6. All of  the Spiders, even the cynical Peter B. and Noir Spider-Man, and silly Spider-Ham, are heroes. Their immediate reaction when faced with the situation is stopping Kingpin and keeping poor Miles out of trouble. They may all be different, but they're all the Spider-Man/Woman/Girl/Pig we love.

7. Oh, God.. The animation blew my mind. I'm willing to say it's more innovative than even a Pixar film, and that's saying something.

8. If the movie has one fault, it's that it's got too many villains. The main three, Kingpin, Dr. Octavious, and Prowler, are done well enough, but Green Goblin, Scorpion, and Tombstone are barely sketches.

9. Didn't realize until now the significance of Miles' final Spider suit. He takes the backup of his world's Spider-Man and spray paints it, literally "tagging" Spider-Man, making it, and Spider-Man's legacy, his own.

10. Stay through the credits. Aside from a tribute to Stan Lee that will make you sniffle a bit, the last two Spider-Men we see made me laugh my ass off.

Specifically Hopps/Wesker shipping fanart.

No I'm not linking to the art. Give me some credit for taste.

The old Star Blazers themre redone using clips from the remake series of Yamato

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Nelvana's 1979 22 minute epic Intergalactic Thanksgiving (Please Don't Eat the Planet). Proof once again that Canada really, really hates its neighbor down south (or they really hate their own Thanksgiving holiday).

No, you probably don't know who he is, but if you ever heard a familiar young boy's voice in a cartoon, he was the one you were listening to. Here's a classic example.

Summary: In the wake of Arkham Asylum's destruction after the Joker's attempted takeover, an aging section of Gotham City has been walled off for Arkham's former residents and the prisoners of Blackgate Prison. Now three gangs fight for control of the city under the direction of The Penguin, Two Face and a deathly ill Joker, who is suffering from the poisonous effects of the Titan overdose he experienced at the end of the last game.

Now, on a snowy night, Batman tries to discover what Arkham City's director, Dr. Hugo Strange is up to, while his sometimes love interest Cat Woman pursues an agenda of her own.

( Darker and Edgier doesn't quite cover it )

Summary: Intrepid boy reporter, Tintin, buys a model ship at a flea market and finds himself the target of nefarious gangsters on the search for a treasure lost for hundreds of years. On the way, he hooks up with the drunkard Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), ancestor to the disgraced Sir Francis Haddock, who's ancient secret holds the key to The Secret of the Unicorn

( Great Snakes, Snowy! We've been motion captured! )

Summer Wars:

"Please, tell me you didn't break the Internet."

Summary: Kenji, a certified eleventh grade math genius and junior administrator for OZ, a virtual Second Life type world where much of private and government administration is done these days, gets roped into going with his crush Sasuke to her family's big weekend birthday bash for her 90 year old grandmother. After meeting with her extended family at the ancient castle that's all that's left of their family wealth, he gets a mysterious math problem e-mailed to his cell phone. He manages to solve it, which unfortunately allows a virus-like AI called "Love Machine" to break through OZ's security and start taking control of millions of user accounts.

Review: This is what you get when a family drama meet Wargames and it works. The family in their castle is a microcosm for the greater virtual world of OZ and its community, both of them messy and complicated and difficult to organize, but when faced with a dire problem willing to put their shoulders together and come together to find a solution.

Mind you, there are a couple of points when you want to strangle a couple of Sasuke's family, especially the her uncle the cop, but every family has a guy like that.

Recommended.


Tokyo Godfathers

"The baby? A gift from God."

Summary: On Christmas Day in the slums of Tokyo, three homeless people, Gin, a bitter middle-aged man, Hana, an ex-drag queen and Miyuki, a sixteen year-old girl, find a baby abandoned in the garbage and go on a wandering quest through the streets to return her to her parents.

Review: Even for an anime, which tackle a wider variety of subjects than their more cautious Western counterparts, this is a pretty odd and very adult movie. Inspired by director John Ford's The Three Godfathers, Tokyo Godfathers takes a sharp look at Japan's homeless, and what makes them slip through the cracks of society to fall to the bottom, to be cold and hungry at best and randomly abused at worst, but mostly ignored.

That said, it's not a humorless movie. The drama is strong but so is the comedy as Gin, Hana and Muyuki bitch at each other even as they come together to search for the baby's parents. That and it is a Christmas movie, which gives the scriptwriters excuse to pile coincidence upon coincidence as the three conduct their search, justified by the time of year and their almost literal Mission From God. But the coincidences are (mostly) plausible, with only one outright miracle, besides the baby herself of course.

Recommended.

But make him a blond? Seriously?