Dear JJ Abrams

I'm sorry I'm a little late on the bandwagon, and I've already posted a Dear JJ Abrams letter to literally every other social media website there is, but this one's new, and this one's very heartfelt.

Here there be spoilers, in case you haven't seen the 15 year old film.

Dear JJ Abrams,

You know what Star Wars is really about? Making an incredible amount of money while giving your fans an incredible amount of badassery. You know what would complete both of those criteria AND be incredibly fun to produce? A QUI-GON AND OBI-WAN MINISERIES.

Now hear me out. Qui-Gon Jinn (played originally by professional badass Liam Neeson) was seen throughout the first half of The Phantom Menace, which is historically dated to be about the year 32 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin, the dating system used by the Star Wars fanbase), and Qui-Gon gets chopped in half halfway through, thus ending his life. But did you know that Qui-Gon was SIXTY GODDAMN YEARS OLD? That's right. Qui-Gon Jinn, according to Wookieepedia, was born in 92 BBY. We see a few weeks of his sixty years of ass-kicking. You, Mr. Abrams, can change that.

The first bit of untapped miniseries material would be his childhood, of course. Like many characters from the franchise, Jinn's entire history has been largely pieced together through various fan-fiction accounts in the Extended Universe (EU). Born on an unidentified world, Jinn's ability to use the Force was noticed at a very young age, and he was sent straight to the Jedi Academy on Coruscant, where he personally trained under Master Yoda. When he was eight, he would sneak back into the classrooms to continue training after classes, which is where he met the soon-to-be Librarian Tahl. Tahl and Qui-Gon retained their friendship throughout most of their lives. Bam. Supporting characters *and* cameo appearances already. This series could cover the two's training as children (from age 8 to 10, possibly further covering his later training under Count Dooku). Since Qui-Gon was a child, Disney could make this miniseries showcase the child-friendly side of Star Wars and stop producing PG-rated feature films.

Later on, Jinn discovers a force-user named Xanathos and brings him before the Jedi Council. The council has their doubts, but decide to let Xanathos prove his ability and sends him with Jinn and a couple other Jedi to his own homeworld. There, he is expected to end his father's tyrannical rule over the planet. Unsurprisingly, he instead joins his father, who Jinn then kills. Xanathos uses his father's ring to brand himself and swears revenge. Bam. Nemesis for future endeavors.

If neither of those tidbits interest you, Mr. Abrams, then I have one more idea that's sure to sell: Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan's BUDDY COP SERIES.

What are the Jedi but religious superpolice to the galaxy anyways? The Jedi have always been known as peacekeepers and helping hands to those in need. Well, in 44 BBY, Yoda encourages Jinn to try this whole Padawan thing again. He reluctantly agrees, and Yoda drags him to an exposition event similar to the one Dooku discovered him at. There, a thirteen year old boy named Obi-Wan Kenobi brutally beats another boy in a mock-lightsaber battle. Yoda mentions that the boy showed promise, but Qui-Gon refuses to train the boy due to his arrogance. Later, he is given orders and shipped out to the planet Bandomeer, and who just so happens to be on the ship? That thirteen-year old Kenobi kid, who's been sent on some BS mission to review agricultural guidelines. Kenobi ultimately abandons his own job and helps Jinn with his more interesting job of fighting off some MOTHER-LOVING SPACE PIRATES. After this, the two go back to the council, Obi-Wan gets approved as his apprentice, and they go off to FIGHT MORE MOTHER-LOVING SPACE PIRATES. Oh, also the Off-world Mining Corporation, which is owned by no other than Xanatos, the arch nemesis. The series writes itself.

So, as my closing argument for the miniseries, I just want to say that you've got potential banter between maverick Jedi Qui-Gon and oddball badass Obi-Wan, you've got potential love interests (at one point Obi-Wan almost gets married), you've got one of the most evil bad guys of all time, you've got an entire Galaxy of which less than 300 planets have been explored, and you've got Disney ready to produce. Please, give us a Qui-Gon miniseries.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: What Shouldn't Have Been

First and foremost, I would like to apologize for the whole reviews thing not panning out as planned. Family stuff came up, then employment stuff, then a whole mess of other stuff. So I've decided to move EdHatesMovies more towards my overall thoughts on the film industry, and this particular idea came to mind.

At some point during the latter part of middle school or earlier part of high school, I was given a little book by a friend. The book was simply labeled "DON'T PANIC!" in big letters, and was titled on the inside as "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". I was told that it was a great book, and the cover piqued my interest, so naturally I started reading it.

It actually looked like this, but I want the copy I just described.

Not since "Narnia" had I enjoyed a book that much. It was witty, it was seemingly random, it was smart, it was ridiculous, and it was fun. The author, Douglas Adams, had won my loyalty. Inside the pages of this little novel of his, he forced me into the shoes of Arthur Dent, a regular joe who wakes up one morning to discover that his house is being destroyed to make room for a highway, then has his planet destroyed to make room for a larger highway, narrowly being rescued by his quirky neighbor who turns out to be an alien. Hilarity ensues.

The book was so great that it came as no surprise to me that a movie had been released a year or two ago, though being in middle school I had better things to think about (namely Star Wars III and my discovery of music as actually being a thing), so it actually took me some time before I sat down and watched the entire movie. When I did, I was slightly disappointed for a couple of reasons.

First off, the portrayal of something so very science-fictiony is quick to disappoint. From the very get-go, I met the Vogons, a slug-like construction crew race which I had imagined as industrial and gritty and painted in safety-bar colors...

This, but in a spacesuit.

...And instead found something that resembled the freak love-child of Tim Burton's Penguin and Sloth from "The Goonies".

Vogon Poetry: "Hehe, Chocolate? Chocolate!"

Furthermore, it appears that the motives behind the Vogon constructor fleet's complete destruction of Earth has been changed from "Ironically timed interplanetary highway construction" to "Purely for shits and giggles".

Next, we were introduced to Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, a (mostly) humanoid native of Betelgeuse Five who is on the run after having stolen the most advanced starship in the universe, the Heart of Gold. The book mentioned that he was "clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed", and that he had two heads and three arms, the extra arm having been added in to assist in his ski-boxing career. Zaphod is brilliant, ruthlessly self-obsessed, and somewhat of a romantic, and was overall one of the easiest characters in the entire book for me to associate with. 

Pictured: The guy who's got my vote.

That was the book though. In the movie, we got douchebag Thor.

Pictured: Clever extrovert. Or hippie cub scout. One of the two.

The movie version of our badass space-pirate president (who, by the way, is the inventor of and the only person alive who can drink more than three Pan-Galactic Gargle-Blasters) is incredibly vain, incredibly irresponsible, and incredibly... Well, besides that, he's not much like the book version of himself at all. Also, as we can clearly see, he appears to be missing a head (It's totally been moved to his chest). 

Zaphod's starship, the Heart of Gold, is driven by a revolutionary new technology called an infinite improbability drive, which is a modified version of a party device that a lab-tech's apprentice accidentally discovered one day while cleaning up from one of said parties. It basically functions by causing the ship and the area around it to undergo all of the least likely scenarios possible at the moment, one of which is destined to eventually be arrival at your destination (but not before temporarily turning our main character into a penguin and transforming two guided nuclear missiles into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias). Did I mention that it's powered by tea?

The movie largely forgot about such things , opting instead to focus on our man Arthur and his girly Trillian (who he somehow met in a bar while she was supposed to be off in space doing space stuff) and the inevitable love-triangle involving douchebag Thor up there. 

Oh, and one of the best characters in the book was Marvin the Chronically Depressed Android. Marvin was the smartest robot ever built, with a brain the size of a planet that made him 50,000 times more intelligent than a human (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a mattress, if you prefer to see it that way), yet depressingly enough never got a chance to show off his brains as he was constantly following a couple of idiots around in search for the legendary planet of Margathea. 

Marvin's story is so depressing I deemed it necessary to show you baby sea otters.

Enter the Marvin of the movie, a depressed and comically disproportionate walking Macbook who, despite being one of the smartest beings in the galaxy hits his head on two or three different things during the movie for comic effect. Simply put, bastardization of a brilliant idea in the name of slapstick.

Seen here doing the robot for unknown rea... Oh, I get it. Kinda.

Eventually, the movie moves out of love-triangle territory and more into quirky science fiction territory, much like the book of the same name, as the crew of the Heart of Gold somehow figure out the coordinates of Margathea from visiting President Beeblebrox's election opponent, and go on their way (despite the fact that the point of the Infinite Improbabilty Drive is that you don't actually need coordinates since you'll wind up there sooner or later). Along the way, they re-encounter the Vogons, who immediately decide to arrest Zaphod for escaping their poetry reading earlier. A chase scene ensues, ending with the Vogons accidentally arresting Trillian, and Dent's insistence that they visit the Vogon Capitol to free her. Thus, the next bit of the movie is spent waiting in line to rescue her (a part that I don't remember from the book). 

After making the team file a good amount of paperwork, the Vogons allow the team to free Trillian, then decide that they want her back or something and start chasing the Heart of Gold. Something resembling a space battle ensues, building up to the launch of two guided nuclear missiles at the Heart of Gold. Zaphod activates the Improbability Drive, and turns the missiles into a sperm whale and a flowerpot, and successfully lands the ship on Margathea. From here, the movie doesn't digress from the book as much, so I won't go into as much detail over this part. 

Basically, we find out stuff that Zaphod had spoiled earlier in the film (not the book), such as THE ANSWER TO LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING (spoiler alert. It's totally forty-two.), and discover that the Earth was a supercomputer meant to calculate the Question To Life And The Universe And Everything, destroyed by the Volons (for no apparent reason according to the movie). Zaphod immediately suggests several questions, of which the best appears to be "How many roads must a man walk down?". This is settled on, and the crew decides to go have lunch at the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, leaving an obvious (though canonical) desire for a sequel to be produced to this all-out mess of movie. 

A feat nobody has ever managed without the employment of Megan Fox's "talent".

More like "Talents", huh? (High fives self)

That is, in a nutshell, everything that is wrong with the film adaption of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". For those of you too lazy to have read the book, but willing to have made it through this post, I will present to you a follow-up post shortly entitled "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: What Should Have Been", with my vision for a more canonically correct, smarter, overall funnier (or at least less reliant on awkward romances and bad slapstick) production that would have actually garnered a trilogy. 

If you don't want to read that, BBC also produced their own version a few years ago, and I hear that it was quite entertaining. You may check that out.

Iron Man 3 (86.6%)

The final installment of the Iron Man trilogy (besides, of course, The Avengers and a rumored sequel, and probably plenty of other appearances in other Marvel movies), Iron Man 3 lived up to its legacy.

In the weeks following The Avengers, a sleep-deprived Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) tells the story of how Iron Man met his match. Beginning the story at a New Years Eve party in 1999, Tony meets a disabled businessman named Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who asks Tony to join him in a corporate endeavor he calls Advanced Idea Mechanics. Stark not only refuses, but humiliates Killian by telling him to wait on the rooftop and then leaving him there for the rest of the evening.

Fast forward to the days following The Avengers. Tony Stark is having panic attacks remembering the alien invasion. Plagued by hypnophobia, he spends countless hours building various versions of his Iron Man suit. However, when a string of bombings are traced back to a terrorist known as The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), including one that severely injures a close friend of Stark's, he issues a personal threat to The Mandarin, going so far as to give his home address. The Mandarin responds by bombing Stark's home, and he only narrowly escapes with an Iron Man suit, leaving the world believing that he is dead.

Long story short, Stark does a bunch of detective work linking the explosions to Killian, discovers that The Mandarin is a fraud, and has a massive fight on a loading dock in which every suit prototype is destroyed, and it's pretty awesome. But I won't spoil anything else for y'all.


Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film-30%
It's an Iron Man film, and follows the basic Marvel movie setup, except we see a new director for Iron Man. John Favreau steps out on this one, letting Shane Black step in, which may explain the non-linear storytelling. Still, overall, it's an exceptional Iron Man film, and a pretty decent summer blockbuster.

Concept and Storyline-17%
Once again, the storytelling is non-linear. It can be a bit hard-to-follow if you're not a Marvel fanboy like myself, and when I first saw the movie in the theater with my brother, I had been about 56 hours straight without sleep, so I will admit that I dozed off at one point, but the concept is really rather ingenious. The Iron Man weapons are destroyed, The Mandarin gives way to an earlier, more personal villain, and Stark's love life is almost ruined, which is always interesting to see. (Forty percent of a love life, anyways.) Overall, it was a satisfying installment.

Performance of Actors-18%
Robert Downey, Jr. is Iron Man. I know it, you know it, Stan Lee knows it. That's hardly acting. Now, Guy Pearce's Killian (especially earlier on) seemed a bit overdone. Other than that, you can't really complain. Once again, it's a Marvel movie.

Public Opinion-7.6%
Once again, from iMDB.

Personal Interest-10%
Iron Man is my favorite superhero, has been my favorite superhero, will always be my favorite superhero. I'm glad to see the trio completed and look forward to seeing Iron Man in future Avengers installments.

Originality-4%
You can't expect a modernization of a superhero staple like Iron Man to be too original. Nevertheless, the superhero movie has been around for a long time now, and it still fits the bill. The new looks at The Mandarin, Tony's inner demons besides alcoholism and being an asshole, and the inner workings of several fictional companies do bring plenty to the table.

Total Rating: 86.6% (B)

The Great Gatsby (86.5%)

The Great Gatsby is a massive blockbuster starring Leo DiCaprio (oh how I love Leo DiCaprio) to bring a timeless novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 drama of the same name, to life as never before on the silver screen. Leonardo DiCaprio's done it before, rather exceptionally too, in "Romeo & Juliet", but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?

The plot is simple. A World War One veteran from the Midwest named Nick Carraway (Tobey Macguire) moves to West Egg, New York to support his writing through a stock broker job, meets his extravagant neighbor Jay Gatsby (who he later describes as the most hopeful man he had ever met), attempts to reunite with an attractive relative of his, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), who's own husband, Tom (Joel Edgerton), is having an affair himself. Shenanigans ensues. Oh, and it's all set in suburban New York in the early 1920s.


Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film-32%
Even for a big-budget blockbuster of a classic novel, director Baz Luhman went a little over-the-top with this one. It felt almost perfectly as if I was back in America of the 1920s, if it wasn't for the rap music playing at the parties. Seriously, guys? What's up with that? And honestly some of the fade effects were pretty cheesy too. 

Concept and Storyline-17%
Besides varying some in the device used to tell the story, the film largely remained the classic novel but on the movie screen. It may have been a bit dull at some moments and a bit noisy at others, but for the most part I was kept very entertained by a very fluid and in-depth story played out in what I really must admit was a very good representation of the 1920s.

Performance of Actors-20%
Leonardo DiCaprio is far too often one of those actors that just seems like themselves in another movie. This time, he really wasn't. After his first appearance, I didn't even see Leo DiCaprio on screen. I saw Jay Gatsby, eccentric millionaire. The same can be said for Macguire's performance (though I did start thinking Spider-Man after my roommate pointed it out). Other than that, our actors all behaved themselves and performed their roles excellently. Also, I'd like to point out how well the costumes were assembled. Perfect 20.

Public Opinion-7.5%
Once again, iMDB has spoken on this one.

Personal Interest-8%
Though I wasn't tracking this film for months before release, I knew from the moment I saw the preview that I was gonna watch this movie this summer. Though I don't think I've read The Great Gatsby since my freshman year of high school, it's still one of those books that kind of just stuck with me, and I knew that Leo DiCaprio would make it into one hell of a party on screen, even if it did involve him running over a (for the time period) scantily clad woman with an expensive car.

Originality-2%
I'm sorry to say it, but making a screen version of The Great Gatsby is, unfortunately, not that uncommon. According to Wikipedia, it has been done about seven times, with operas, TV versions, and even webcomics to boot. Still, not a bad take.

Total Score: 86.5% (B). Nice run, everyone!

World War Z (91%)

World War Z is a big-budget attempt to make a movie out of a novel, but a novel that is told in an interesting format, through interviews with various fictional characters set up all over the world over the course of a couple decades sometime in the early-to-mid 21st century, concerning an all-out war between humans and flesh-eating, mindless victims of a destructive virus referred to as African Rabies. In our movie production, we see a UN worker named Gerry Lane experiencing the Great Panic first-hand as he travels the world in search of a way to stave off the oncoming zombie pandemic, and save his beloved family.

I saw this film about a week ago, so my memory may be a bit hazy, but I have to say that World War Z was a success, especially after months (even years for some of us) of expecting it to totally suck. As a die-hard fan of zombie films (even if they are a bit overdone as of late. I'm looking at you, Warm Bodies.), I was expecting something a little bit more Max Brooks-esque. What I found instead was a beautifully woven interpretation of Brooks' beautifully written "World War Z", played on-screen by an equal parts terrifyingly badass and adorably family-oriented Brad Pitt. As far as turning the novel, which spans several decades and a plethora of characters, into a single coherent film goes, I thought that director Marc Foster's approach of taking the events of the book and weaving them all through one character worked pretty well. There were some pretty lame scares, but there were some breathtakingly genius moments that we haven't really seen in zombie films, such as (spoiler alerts) a magnificent airplane crash with the undead flying through the air, soldiers using near-silent bicycles to sneak past a horde of zed in a rainstorm, or even large masses of zombies pushing and shoving each other to the point that they just become a wave of terror.

That being said, visually, the film left a bit to be desired. Though the CG undead have come a long way since 2007's "I Am Legend", it still felt fake, even rubber at moments. Nevertheless, I've heard rumors of Foster attempting a trilogy, and I would absolutely love to see more of the World War Z book played out on the big screen (Yonkers, anybody? That would be sensational.)

Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Quality of Film: 32%
Though including the aforementioned breathtaking scenes and a pretty good amount of on-screen life, the shakiness of the camera got to be a bit much in some cases (or was that just the adrenaline?). I would have liked to see better, for example, when the fuselage of the airplane was ripped apart and undead went soaring through midair. During the scenes in the medical research facility, I enjoyed the use of the security system, but felt like it was distracting at times from what was actually happening before me. Also, once again, I would like to see the undead evolve further visually.

Concept and Storyline: 19%
"World War Z" was a complex book, and we all knew the adaption would be hard. However, Foster pulled off the movie fairly well, introducing the Great Panic, and the early attempts at stopping the virus spread. I would have liked to have seen more origins, though the investigation of Patient Zero was a neat take. Other than that, the first part of the book was covered pretty well.

Performance of Actors: 19%
It's difficult to get children to act well, especially in a horror/action/disaster movie like this. Constance and Rachel (portrayed by Sterling Jerins and Abigal Hargrove, respectively) worked for the roles. We saw a variety of emotions (excitement, relief, fear, anxiety, terror, joy, sheer love for their father, even whimsy in the beginning of the film), we saw two adorable little girls, and we saw a functional family (completed by Pitt and Mireille Enos, and Fabrizio Guido, who plays a young boy named Tomas that acts as part of the family). None of our military men left anything to be desired, and all of our doctors seemed professional. Not perfect, but professional.

Public Opinion: 7%
This one's simple enough to explain. I currently just lift my public opinion off iMDB, and I am not ashamed because I feel like that's the best method (I could look at box office statistics, but I haven't worked out a system yet).

Personal Interest: 10%
Having been introduced to World War Z by my older brother near it's initial release when I was in middle school (or early high school. Somewhere in there), I had long been anticipating a movie based off Max Brooks' work. When I first heard about the project back in 2010, it furthered my interest, and I very closely mulled over every scrap of information I could get on this movie, until the day that I saw it on opening weekend (I couldn't make opening night, but hey I'm only human.)

Originality: 4%
It's not entirely original, which would be preferable usually, but World War Z is an original take on an underrated book. And it's not a remake of Hellraiser (I heard one's in the works. Keep your eyes open. It'll be terrible, for sure.)

With our breakdown in mind, our total score for World War Z is 91%, which I believe is a B+. A valiant attempt, but we'd love to see them do better next time (I'm telling you. Battle of Yonkers.)

Best Of 2013: The Movies I Expect To Kick The Most Ass

Hopefully, on this list, we're looking at what is going to be about twenty-five truly kickass movies from 2013, Anno Domini. At first, the movie reviews are pure speculation, based on media buzz, the actors connected with the movies, the directors, and the basic storyline. After I've seen the movie, however, or at least after it comes out, I make sure to much more fairly rate the movies based on:
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%

Movies that I've seen and verified the review are in bold print.
Movies that I have yet to see and have partly based my review on previous series installments are in italic print.

HONORABLE MENTION:
-Warm Bodies (60%)
-After Earth (62%)
-Now You See Me (66%)
-Aquaman (69%)
-Jack Ryan (70%)

THE BEST:

20. The Lone Ranger (70%)
19. The Kings Of Summer (71%)
18. Oblivion (72%)
17. A Band Called Death (73%)
16. American Idiot (74%)
15. This Is The End (76%)
14. Oz The Great And Powerful (80%)
13. Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (83%)
12. The Wolverine (84%)
11. Romeo & Juliet (85%)
10. Kick-Ass 2 (86%) 
9. The Great Gatsby (86.5%)
8. Iron Man 3 (86.6%) 
7. Despicable Me 2 (87%)
6. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (88%)


TOP FIVE:
5. Star Trek: Into Darkness (89%)
4. Man of Steel (90%)
3. Ender’s Game (91%)
2. World War Z (91%)
AAANNNDDD....
1. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (96%)

Comment your personal opinions. I'd be glad to discuss.