Links

It occurs to me that some of you may be missing out on some of the great stuff on the internet. Most people get pissy when I do not attribute the mention of a cool site to them for having "discovered" it. So, I would first like to say that I found very few of these sites on my own. Mostly, I was directed to them by Jason while he was wasting time in between revisions of his thesis. And while Strongbad "discovery" has been contested by no less than three of my friends, I assure all out there that it was Kyle who first pointed me in the right direction. Nonetheless:
http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html
Lenny brought Happy Tree Friends to my attention. It is incredibly vile.
http://www.happytreefriends.com/watch_episodes/index.html
This next one is for all of those fans of the old Super Friends cartoon out there. It takes a bit of time to get around in it, but the pay back is great
http://www.seanbaby.com/super.htm
All I can say is, "enjoy." Unless you are actually prone to seizures.
http://www.seizurerobots.com/
Admitedly, this was better when it had the message board which I got kicked off of. Still: Nut case or comic genius. You decide.
http://dinohuge.tripod.com/
I would have listed Stick Figure Awesome, but it unfortunately, no longer exists. Maybe it was a bit too high brow.
Last, but not least, the page that has been my home page for a couple years anyway.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/

Shock to the T-izzy

Prelude: Apopalopolis
The city is sick. In places it dies. The docks are showing early signs of scurvy coupled with a horrible cough, the cause of which no one has yet to identify. The expressways are congested leaving an uncomfortable nasal twang. The sinuses are sore. There is pain in the joints, a feeling of disassociation. Last night, the city went out under delirium and got lost somewhere out there. It only barely made it home. Lethargy, shortness of breath, hypersensitivity to light. China town has a leprous glow, and Germantown has a fever. The pulse is erratic and comes with cold chills. Pustules are forming and pus is running. There's a virus, there's an infection, there's a parasite eating at the core.
Broken Bobby leans over the streets below him. Five story drop. The wrought iron railing is held in place by the worm eaten wood of the highest balcony of the long abandoned Pacifica Hotel: the Presidential suite. He stares down the streets, down the alleys, and across the rooftops. He watches dreams, aspirations, hopes, memories. He looks at street lights, traffic lights, the lit up green signs of the freeway. He wonders 'How far away am I?' The night is black, but looks purple. The sky is orange. It is not an hallucination. Bad thoughts rise off the street like steam, like fear from an abused child, like the apathy of a TV viewer watching yet another mass murder on the screen, factual or fictional, like sweat from a fever. What is the pathology?
Five story drop. Broken Bobby studies it. Watches it. How everything looks so small. He wonders whether if he lets go, could he do a half flip in the air, just like in the movies, and land on his back on top of the wonderful soft garbage below? He looks into the open bin. Someone has abandoned an exercise bike in it. The equipment is covered with newspaper, shredded. It looks like confetti, blowing in the breeze. It reminds Bobby of a Japanese war flag. Bobby has never seen a Japanese war flag. Maybe someone is sleeping below that flag tonight.
Bobby imagines landing next to the old crusty bum sleeping below the flag, imagines simply falling like a feather, maybe landing on the exercise bike, peddling like a mad man with a rictus grin on his face. What would the bum do then? Would he scream? Would he wonder what had happened? Would he change religions? Bobby shifts his weight on the rotten wood from foot to foot attempting to get some sort of momentum behind him. How far? Twenty feet maybe. Five stories down, twenty feet over. Could he make it? He feels like he could. Like the way you can jump over anything in your dreams.
His body ceases to sway. Behind him, his arms grow tired. Soon they will not be able to draw Bobby back towards the railing. 'Like so many things' thinks Bobby as he ponders the point of no return. He is not there yet. He looks down again. This time he lets his senses wander trying to think of down as forward. How long would it take him to run the distance? Inside his ears, the equilibrium only surrenders itself momentarily and soon forward is down again. Soon, it is falling to be considered rather than running. Soon, Bobby realizes that he is reaching the point of no return.
-Help- cries Bobby and -Help- again. -I'm infected by this fucking city. Its goddamn contagious.-
That it is Bobby, but Slam hears you.
Slam. Ugly. Slam. Fiending. Slam, like a nightshade poison in a diamond decanter, is sitting lotus in the middle of the Pacifica's Presidential suite, his dirty black locks hanging far below the lapel of his second hand trench coat. Slam has a bounty on his head. Daily he laughs to think that life is hunting him down and is offering a reward. Dead or Alive, the sign reads, preferably dead. Slam pays the reward himself over and over again, and daily it changes. Today it cost him two hundred dollars. He got the money by selling cloned cellular phones, and then it was off to call in the debt at his favorite dealer's house. The man was not really Slam's favorite dealer, but that was the story. In truth, he was the only one home, only one who wouldn’t ask questions, the only one wouldn’t wonder whether the bounty was becoming a problem.
Slam can hear Broken Bobby, but it is a while before he can see his friend. Bobby is camouflaged. Chest forward on the wrong side of the railing. The stars beyond him are bobbing up and down as if the entire building were floating. Bobby is the statue at the front of the ship's bow. They are headed North, but Slam cannot remember why, or what cargo they carry. The sound of -Helps- rings out like a chanty.
The building is turbulent. The boards are rotten. They hold together with rusty nails and in many places it is necessary to climb to the next landing. The rats of the sea are an infernal plague. They eat the crumbs left behind. The stock. All the things that made the hotel great once are gone now. Stolen by this rat or that. Nobody notices until months later.
Slam is at Bobby's side. Broken Bobby's arms are stiff. His muscles quivering, losing strength by the second. Below, Slam's thoughts are confirmed. The street is debris floating in the water, and up against the hull of their mighty craft is an open garbage bin bobbing with a bike in it. The bin is a lifeboat of course, set adrift amongst whatever ruin floats in the water and passes for asphalt. He can see it rise and fall with the swell of the ocean. Inside the life boat is a bike, the handle bars are obviously for steering the craft. Slam marvels at the ingenuity of the thing. He has never seen a life boat constructed in such a way.
-Friend Bobby, you are not planning to jump with all of that crap in the water-
-What water?- To Bobby the street is swirling too, but it is only an image of a swirl that has been superimposed, a picture of water projected onto a movie screen. Below that, the street is very much solid.
Slam nearly falls over backwards as if he has yet to get his sea legs, but brings himself back up.
-Why the water below you of course. Anyway, besides all of that floating debris, I do believe that we are at least five stories up. I am, of course, unsure as to your level of expertise concerning diving into water, but I myself am nowhere near capable of landing such a stunt gracefully, what with the drugs and all. Didn't you take something too, friend Bobby-
Bobby did, he remembers. The mushrooms he ate seemed almost incidental to the sights he was seeing only moments ago, now he is not so sure. Perhaps, this is not reality, and if not reality, then perhaps his arms really aren't tired. He tries them out, his mind working under the assumption that the exhaustion is only an hallucination. One arm gives way, then the other follows.
Slam reaches out and grabs a hold of Bobby's wrist. Slam is much bigger than Bobby who still has some leverage with his feet against the decaying wood below the railing, but still there is much strain. From below it appears as though Bobby is trying to save somebody, far out in the middle of a mid-air stream, as if he were a hero, or a god presenting fire to somebody or other. Above, adrenaline begins to pump, Slam grits his teeth and pulls. Broken Bobby spins around almost slipping out of his friends grasp but he maintains and is brought back to the railing.
There is a crispness in the air, like frozen cellophane, and an electric charge below the orange sky that makes Bobby wonder what color the lightening would take were it to come at that very moment. Far away angry cars honk at each other, and from even farther comes the smell of the ocean, but no one can see the water in that strange urban darkness, except that it is the place where the city lights stop, a grand and indiscriminate darkness that forces the city back only through threats of drowning. Slam pauses as if he can hear the sound of the dinghies.
-Shrooms are not wings Bobby boy.-

And they wouldn't let ME into Harvard...

I don't even know what to say here: http://www.hbo.com/alig/harvard.html.
Okay, I happenned upon this story last night as I was waiting for adult swim. Here it is, Ali G, of HBO fame, gave the commencement speach at Harvard University. Ali G.

Not Jimmy Carter. Not Gorbachev. Not Hillary or Bill Clinton. This is Harvard. They want to Harvard for four years. They paid the tuition of $24,000 each semester. And now they are graduating. How about some parting words for the best and brightest (and richest) of our country. Hell, in 1838 in Cambridge, they let R.W.E. have a go at it. He didn't do too bad. How bad could Ali G be?
Can you imagine for a moment what that must have been like for the guy in the audience who'd never heard of Ali G--how Fellini-esque that moment must have been? I mean, you're graduating from Harvard. You expect Maya Angelou to take the stage, or General Schwartzkopf, or Bill Gates. Somebody of that caliber. Instead, clad in a yellow jogging suit, gold chains, and a beanie, Ali G takes the stage and begins to talk about bitches and hoes. Maybe you've seen Malibu's Most Wanted. Maybe you haven't. In any case, you get the idea that this guy snuck in and that at any moment, one of these secret service guys will emerge to escort this protester from the grounds. But then...no one steps up. What's more, those around you are showing their approval of this wannabe gangsta. Your feminist friend laughs when he says that feminists in Brittain are called, "lezzes." You contemplate the dream like quality of this event. You may even look down to see if you have on any pants. Later, when you say, "who was that guy?" someone tells you that it was Ali G, that he has a show on HBO, that he's a comedian living the rewards of these fifteen minutes of fame. You wonder if this is some strange Harvard tradition. Did MC Hammer ever give a Harvard commencement address? Vanilla Ice? Dolph Lundgrin? You realize with some horror that the parting words your administrators felt would yield you wisdom and guidance as you take your place as part of the American power structure were, "black, white, brown or pakistani we all come from de same place - de punani." Flash in da pan. True dat.
It isn't that they essentially hired a stand up comedian to give the commencement address instead of someone, oh I don't know, inspirational that bothers me. And oh by the way, believe you me, I'm sure they would have had no problem getting anybody they wanted to give the commencement at Harvard. It isn't like they chose Ali G because there were no other takers. Kings, queens, presidents, Kennedys, poet laureates and nobel prize winners will drop whatever they are doing to give the speach. And it's not like they need another line on their C.V.. They do it because here is a chance to talk to the new power brokers of American politics, American economics, American publishing. Essentially the big whigs of America minus the techno people--they're over at M.I.T..
Okay, work with me. Imagine for a moment that you are giving the commencement speach. Your audience consists of: a future president of the united states, four future senators, Allen Greenspan's replacement, a future CEO of an advertising company responsible for 34% of the commercials that America will see in the next twenty years, the next head of B of A, a secretary of the Interior, an astronaught thrown in for good measure, a future CEO of GE, a future editor of the Wall Street Journal, a Chief of Staff, three state governors, sixteen heads of universitys (including Harvard), a supreme court judge, and numerous other power brokers. They are still young. Their potential is still unrealized. What do you say to them to send them off into the world?
You could make your speach about restoring honor to the oval office (it's had some pretty big hits in the last decade or so). You could make your speach about leading the world ethically into this new era of global politics. You could discuss the dangers of greed and arrogance (just as R.W.E. did those so many years ago). Of course, you could discuss hope. You could discuss the U.S.'s responsability on the global stage. You could urge that a panacea be given to waylay the fears of the world concerning the future.
In truth, you would not be talking to the wrong people, as happens far too often. You would be talking to the very people who could make a difference. The future leaders. The future market setters and policy makers. You would have them as your audience whether you wanted to talk social reform or geo-political-economic policy. In fact, you might feel that you had a duty to give your speach the necessary gravity due to a situation of this importance.
Well, Harvard went with Ali G instead. This is what bothers me. In actively avoiding an inspirational speaker, it's almost as if they believed that any attempt to inspire these leaders of tommorrow would be a waste of time and effort. Believe me people, the commencement speach at Harvard is a temperature gauge, and if Harvard believes that our leaders won't listen to words of gravity, won't suffer arguments concerning the future of our nation--if Harvard believes that the best thing we can do for the power elite who will guide our country is to keep them entertained by a clown, then we are in for some dire times indeed.
Peace, me out.

paper boy redux

I realize that the question on everyone's mind is: what are the differences between crosswalks in California and those in Northampton? Good question. I'll try to address your concerns.First of all, in California when the light turns green in the direction you wish to walk, you are legally allowed to cross the intersection. If you have pressed the special button, a lit up sign will tell you as such. In Northampton, this is not the case. Even when the traffic in the direction you wish to travel gets its green, you may NOT walk. The sign will not change. You will be forced to sit and watch an intersection which you could hypothetically cross in safety without crossing it. In Northampton, walkers get their own light, so to speak. So that traffic goes one way, then the next, and then the walkers are allowed to go, no matter the direction of their stroll. In fact, when they are given the go-ahead, they may even cross the street diagonally. These are the rules. You cannot walk in the crosswalk until you are given permission by the signal.Now, outside the crosswalk is a whole different story. Outside of the crosswalk, you may cross the street any time anywhere. You may hold traffic up as they wait for you to cross the street. What's more, as there is no sign to tell you when to start and when to stop, whole streams of people can cross the street, one after another, effectively blocking off downtown, as long as they are not in a crosswalk. You may think, 'well, I'm sure these jay walkers wait for the coast to be clear before they step out in front of speeding motorists.' No. No, they do not. In fact, if you are walking in Northampton and you pause at the side walk, say to check out what kind of restaurants are across the way, chances are that traffic will come to a screeching stop--just in case you were thinking about maybe crossing the street.This is a natural reaction because as far as I can tell, no one in Northampton so much as looks at whether or not there's a car coming when they jump out, and jump out is the right term. Sometimes they go between cars and you'll think, 'hey, that guys just getting into his car.' Sometimes they'll even give you a little fake out by looking in one of the cars, and then BOOM, there they are right in front of you.In California, people tend to use the crosswalks, and only jaywalk as a last resort, and even then they are careful not to step directly in front of traffic. In Northampton, people actively avoid the crosswalks because crosswalks have rules about when they can go and when they have to stand there. Who the hell needs that?!?What makes this situation worse is that Northampton, along with its disdain for crosswalks, isn't too keen on lanes either. There are points in downtown where the street is wide enough for three lanes, but as far as actual painted markers dividing up the street go, there is none to speak of. Basically, you keep to the right, unless someone is pulling out, or you decide that you want to be left, and then you swerve over and perhaps back, not like you've changed lanes or anything, just kind of a drift. If the guy in front of you has decided that the street only has one lane, he'll sit sort of in the middle of the street, just swerving and watching for suicidal pedestrians. Maybe he'll pull a U turn. No need to wait for that pesky light for that. No siree.The best way to think of driving in Northampton is this: imagine that you wake up one day and there are no people. How would you drive? Would you stay inside the lanes? Would you watch for cars when you pulled out of a parking space? Would you drive on the right side of the road? Okay, how about walking? Would you look both ways before crossing the street? Would you move fast across the street so that the cars waiting for you wouldn't have to wait too long? Would you even use the sidewalks?Okay, that's Northampton. Everybody drives and walks as if there wasn't another person in town who might run them over or crash into them, or whatever, if they aren't careful.Do you know what's pretty much illegal in this state? Turning right on a red light. I'll say that again. Nearly every intersection has a sign that says, "no right turn on red." That's a driving privilege that people in Massachusetts evidently abused and lost. How bad do you have to drive that they won't let you turn right on a red light? All you have to do is look over your shoulder, make sure your not cutting anybody off, and go. That was declared beyond these people' skills.But I suppose the real difference between crosswalks in California and the ones here in Northampton is that they beep here. When the signal turns to "Walk," it is accompanied by the sound of a chirping bird. I think that this is so that blind people won't collide with the pedestrians while they are out driving.

They even took your sword

I'll be frank, I don't have much to write about. Right now, the exterminator is downstairs. He's a nice man, and for some reason, I'm going to call him Floyd. The reason for that is that he looks like a Floyd. I'd forgotten what he looked like, but this morning, when I opened the door, there he was, looking like Floyd.
Anyways, the reason we have an exterminator is because we have a big ant problem. Not an ant problem that is big, but a problem involving big ants. You know the saying, "the people look like ants from up here." Well, that really wouldn't mean much with these ants. Each one is about the size of a dime. The day we moved in, I opened a cabinet and found them crawling all over each other like three deep. It was one of those scenes where you shield others from it because it's just too disturbing. I then grabbed a can of Raid and sprayed the bastards with the venom of someone who has just discovered that, not only are there giant ants, but they've invaded his happy home. The people who were helping me move were warning me that they felt I was using too much spray even before I'd made it half way through my killing spree. So, long story short, Floyd's downstairs. I'd better make this quick.
My favorite line in the movie Blade II is attributed to Whistler, Blade's aged mentor. He says, "they even took your sword." It's such a great line.
Allow me to set the scene. Blade and Whistler have just been captured by a big group of Czecoslovacian vampires and Blade has come to on some kind of big glass floor thingee that looks straight out of Aliens, but that's okay. These vampires are high tech. So, there's Blade and his first instinct is to reach for his weapons, but of course, the vampires were smart--they took his weapons away. They stuck him next to a big vat of blood so that he could use his vampiric powers to rejuvinate any wound, but hey...they took his weapons.
Then, after Blade is looking for his weapons, Whistler says, "they took your weapons," and then, "they even took your sword."
Okay, yes they took the sword. It's a weapon. So, yeah, when you say they took the weapons, that implies that they took your sword. But it isn't what Whistler says that so baffles me but how he says it. He says the line like the vampires were not taking the silver sword with the retractable spike handle away because it was dangerous or because Blade had at that point killed his way through nearly two movies using this thing, but because taking away the sword was the same as taking away Blade's dignity. His voice would have had the same tone if he said, "they covered you in vaseline and dressed you like Shirley Temple."
If I may, I'd like to respond to Whistler as Blade. "Yes, they took the sword. It's a weapon. I used it in the last movie to kill a whole series of big bad asses. I'll probably use it to kill all the badasses in this movie. But more than that Whistler. Of course they took the sword. You see, it's made of silver. It's worth a fortune. I could get mugged and they would take the sword. I'm surprised no one's broken into the house. Now, shut up about the sword, help me to that big vat of blood so that I can get back into kick ass mode and get my sword back."

Intellectual blah blah in Amercian Thought

Some of you know, others do not, that my thesis was on Nazism, but more than that, my thesis was on a moral dilemma. To put it simply, my thesis was on a historical event--the Holocaust--and how that event represented the ethos of polarized morality. Let's try that again. The Holocaust provided such an obvious description of evil that it made it hard, thereafter, to stick to some namby-pamby description of morality where there is good and bad in all things. Denying the Holocaust is one thing, but if you accept that the Holocaust happenned, then you have an outright example of evil. This is, in fact, why neo-nazis deny the holocaust. Even they cannot argue that it was virtuous.
That would be step one of my thesis. Step two was that this polarized morality, good v. evil, was representative of the nazis attempt to philosophy of polarization. In other words, the Holocaust, an obvious evil, was perpetrated by people who believed in absolute good and absolute evil. After WWII, the rest of the world shyed away from such absolutes. They wanted nothing to do with fascism and its attempts to polarize and so the philosophy practiced by the world after WWII was this de-polarized morality--good and bad in all things--as a rejection of the philosophy of the Nazi party and fascists world wide. See Orwell, Politics and The English Language.
The casualties in this de-polarization are many. In fact, I argued that one of the things that was de-polarized was the Holocaust itself. Films made light of the German's involvement in genocide, arguments have been made about what really were the "evil" events during WWII (Hiroshima, the bombing of Dresden, and the allies support of Stalin's own pogroms are often cited as examples), and even the perpetrators of the great evil were given clemincy in America (Werner Von Braun headed are space program, for instance, though he was in charge of the slave labor at the Mittelwerke rocket factory and a member of the SS).
Thus, due to an abandonment of polarizing morality, because of its fascist implications, the post-war--post modern--world is unable to seperate good from evil, right from wrong. That was my thesis.
So now, though I don't feel I've done justice to this idea, I feel the need to add. After all, I am in a doctorate program. That was my master's thesis. It seems only obvious that I add to my ideas and allow them to grow into, well, a career of intellectual endeavor. But that leaves a question: what is the next step with this thing?
I think I hit on the idea recently due to my wife's disturbance at the end of Mystic River. A week later, we watched Chicago together and I saw the same thing happen. Let me move back a step and try to explain. Stories are fairly simple. You have a hero, a protagonist, a whatever, and he/she is trying to do something. Then you have something standing in the way of the protagonist, an antagonist. Now, if the protagonist is successful then you have, according to dated terms, a comedy. If the protagoist fails, then you have a tragedy. But I have recently discovered a third option that has crept into the American story line. In this third option, the protagonist fails, but the story is told in such a way as to procure the sympathy's for the antagonist, who has succeeded. In other words, the good guy loses, but we're supposed to feel okay about that because the bad guy won. This can only be achieved if the audience cannot tell right from wrong, good from evil. In other words, this story only works if the audience cannot figure out who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. This story, therefore, only works if morality is de-polarized.
Take for example Mystic River, which I'm about to ruin. The hero of this story, the good guy, is Tim Robins character who was molested as a child and is still haunted by the event. The movie ends with Sean Penn killing Tim Robins over a case of mistaken identity--he thinks Robins is screwed up from the molestation and that he has become psychotic. The town, therefore, cannot get over what has been done to Robins' any more than Robins' character can. Tragedy. But the audience is supposed to feel good about the whole thing because Sean Penn has learned something about himself. Ahhh...a happy ending. He's learned that he should resume his life of crime with aspirations of forming and leading a mob. The ending is not tragic because Penn has overcome all odds to find himself. Of course, he's found out that he's a murdering asshole, not to mention that this self-acualization happens at the sacrifice of some poor guy who's lived an entire life as a victim only to be screwed over one last time by someone who's supposed to be his friend. The movie only works if you forget all that good/bad, right/wrong type of thinking. You have to assume that it's a sad thing that Robins' character is dead, but that his murder was a sort of cosmic accident, and that Penn is better off for having murdered his friend because now he can form a syndicate and take over Boston.
I don't know. These are just preliminary thoughts. A possible starting place really. Let me ruminate.

XXX

I don't want what I'm about to say to be interpreted as jealousy, but when I woke up this morning I found that my wife had been up for some time watching the movie 'XXX.'
In an era that has brought us such fine titles as 'Snatch' and 'Blow,' 'XXX' is also misleadingly named. What I can figure is that the main character Xavier is a an eXtreme sports hero, the kind you might see in the X games, and there you have it, folks: three X's.
My wife freely admits that she feels that Vin Diesel is a sexy bitch, and so it is no wonder that she might be watching this movie, and as I am no opponent of the action move genre, I too sat and watched the last ten minutes of the movie. This review is based solely on those last ten minutes.
First of all, I want to say something about Vin himself. I remember him in what must be Science Fiction's biggest sleeper since Star Wars, Pitch Black. If you haven't seen this movie, you must. I'm still kicking myself for not seeing its sequel. Nonetheless, Vin was good in that movie. And here's why. He was an absolute badass. His range of movement was scant sure, but how much do you have to move when you're a bad ass. Either you're swaggering or you're killing. And just as with Clint Eastwood in such great films as For A Fistful of Dollars, and of course, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Vin only needs two emotional states: 1--total ambivalance given the amoral state of the world and the fragility of life, and 2--total objectivity given the amoral state of the world that will judge your actions and given that the thin line which seperates victor from victim is based not on morality but on composure. And there you have it, ambivalance and objectivity. The first is for all those scenes where people plead for you to take out the bad guy, and the second is for when you're taking out the bad guy. It works well, but as you can see it isn't much of a range. All Vin has to do is act like he's above it all and that nothing, not even his being a total badass, is going to change the unfeeling uncaring world. Vin did this well.
In XXX, however, Vin was not allowed to remain emotionless. They actually wanted him to act. They did not give him a pair of black swimmer's goggles as they did in Pitch Black. You could...you could...see his eyes. Okay, that's a mistake. Clearly the people who made this movie had no idea who Vin Diesel was, they thought he was an actor, but I digress.
Anyways, the plot of XXX is an action plot and is, therefore, fairly simple. As I said, I only saw the last ten minutes and yet I was still capable of figuring out what was going on. There's this guy, and he's pissed off or something, and so he's going to launch a bunch of rockets armed with biological badness at some cities in France--because if you're pissed, and you're a world wide supervillain, chances are you're pissed at France, because France is always coming out against supervillainy. This is fiction remember.
The only person who can stop this pissed off supervillain is, of course, Vin Diesel, aka XXX, and of course, his french girlfriend.
Before I go on, I want everyone to realize how badly the action film has fallen. Remember Die Hard. Okay, in Die Hard, there's a building populated by bad guys. It's surrounded by cops, who are good guys. The bad guys are going to kill everyone unless the good guys get in. The good guys can't get in, but...here's the rub, the bad guys can't get out. This is where the plot gets intelligent--the only place where the plot gets intelligent, and the only place where the plot should get intelligent: the bad guys' escape plan. They try to execute a fifty part escape plan with contingencys while Bruce Willis tries to stop their escape plan with diminishing resources, until the plan hinges on only one act, and when Bruce prevents this act, the movie is over. Good.
The new action movie has none of this. John Wu screwed all that up. Now the villain is doing something dastardly. The hero shows up. The villain escapes on a bike, then a helicopter, then an earth mover, back to the bike, over to a hang glider, and into a giant fan. Yeah! No thought. No intelligent part at all. What's worse is that what has taken place of the intelligent part is now some plot feature which seems complicated enough to thwart anyone's attempt to scry its inner workings, but unfortunately, it only seemed that way to the morons who made the movie, so that the average person does not see the intelligent part's replacement as complicated but as ridiculously stupid.
Example time. Vin is on this ship, called The Ahab, and it's headed down the river for Paris armed with a bunch of germs. Vin has got to stop the rockets from firing. Will he A. Pull out the wires to the guidance system, B. pull out the guidance system itself, C. disarm the rocket, or D. reprogram the rocket system to drop the rockets directly on his agent's house. If you answered E.-- crash the boat in the river thereby submerging the explosion and releasing the biological warfare agent into the river and poluting Europe's water supply with a deadly new strain of the bubonic plague--then you are correct. I'm not making this up folks, he blows the rockets up, and releases all those filthy little germs, into the river. What's worse is that no one even thinks about it in the movie. They're all, "good job X." What's worse is that no one on the set at the shooting of this movie commented about the stupidity of this ending.
What can I say more about this. Am I to believe that Hollywood does not understand the basic notion that polluting water is bad? No, I don't think that's it. We are watching movies after an age when people tried to make classics. Movies like Aliens, Die Hard, Pale Rider, The Terminator. Not big budget. Not high brow. Just good clean action, sometimes clever, but always gritty, and rarely ludicrous. But as I said, we are watching movies after that time. The makers of XXX, sadly, just didn't care.