Episode 33: [Movie Title Here] 3: Sucks (or: Why Pirates 3 Was Trash)

Ok, I'm only going to warn you once and once only:HERE BE SPOILERS
Ok, that's done.

I loved the first two Pirates movies. I really, really did. I saw them both in theaters and loved them. The first one was fun and new and had pirates. The second one was more of the same, plus Davey Jones. It was win/win all around.

After the ending of the second film, it was clear that parts 2 and 3 were basically separated conjoined twins, although most people knew that going in. However, the wonderful setup of the second film almost promised a grand third and (God, I hope) final act.

These things included, at the very least, the rescue of Jack, the return of Barbossa, the story of Davey Jones, Will and his father, Will and Elizabeth's love, Jack and Elizabeth's love?, the heart of Davey Jones, the East India Trading Company, Cuttler and Jack's Past, Mr. Swan's loyalties, etc. There were many more, but they all seemed small and insignificant after watching Barbossa walk down those stairs.

So I waited a year, and what happens?

Garbage.

Like, I said, spoilers ahoy, from the beginning I knew I was in trouble when Barbossa was considered a Pirate Lord, on of the great captains. How can he and Jack be members of this council if Barbossa became captain by having a mutiny against Jack? I can understand one of them at a time, but they were never both captains of the same boat at the same time.

The scene where Jack is "dead" goes on for far too long (both during the scene and the effects of it throughout). The surrealist feel wasn't even well carried out. And the eventual rescue was poorly paced. The characters show up and instantly find him. "He's closer than you think" is a terrible device to use to move the story faster.

And why would Davey Jones put Jack there WITH THE BOAT if someone could just get out of (off?) his Locker?!

After Jack and Cuttler have their meeting, I expected them to go over the "mark" Jack had left on him, mentioned in the second film. By the end of the movie, when Cuttler is dead, there is no mention of this at all. Nothing.

There is an intense battle set up near the end of the film, where all the pirate lords have ships to fight the Company's armada. There's billions of ships, but only the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman fight. All the other ships sit there and wait. Then, after one armada ship is taken down, the rest of the Company's ships just turns around and leaves. One ship down, and an entire armada flees? And what did those pirate lords do, exactly? Argue for 20 minutes then do nothing until the battle is over, then cheer? Weak.

Davey Jones, an interesting character, portrayed as both cruel and sympathetic, is revealed to be the lover of Tia Dalma, or the water god Calypso. There is a scene where Davey Jones turns human. You think maybe, just maybe, after everything is said and done, at least they would have a standoff of some kind after all the backstabbing and double-crosses they've but each other through, but no. He just dies. Two movies worth of set-up for a character, no execution. Pathetic.

And don't get me started on Calypso. Not a character AT ALL in part two, minor role that builds in part three, she turns into a giant, turns into a bunch of rock crabs, makes a storm, really does nothing, and then is gone. Wow, great writing!

Will and his father seemed tacked on. Barbossa seemed tacked on. The pirate lords seemed tacked on. There were 90 deaths that were not needed (Gov. Swan, Norrington, Davey Jones, etc.) or that could have been handled better. It was all garbage. And killing both Gov. Swan and beaching the Krakken off-screen, when both were memorable aspects of the first two movies... this is unforgivable.

And let's not forget trying to keep up with the movie series' millions of character driven subplots. Every person has some other things going on in every scene, making it impossible to even focus on this final one. To illustrate how bad this is, I have drawn a diagram that maps out all the characters' subplots. (diagram in no way spellchecked)

So, it was disappointing. Two great movies, one big lump of poop. Tarnishing the series, "At World's End" just reminds me that trying to do too much with a plot can ruin a great movie.

I give this 2/10, and hope to never see it again.

Episode 32: Skyler Returns (or: Who are you...?)

Well well well, long time no see, eh? I know, I know... this will probably be "too little, too late" for most of you dear fans. Although, I don't really think I've got what qualifies as "dear fans," so...

Where have I been for over a month? Well, many places. None of which were that entertaining.

The end of the semester was an incredible mess. Having been largely apathetic about school and everything else, finals were a disaster that was unavoidable. If any lessons were learned by me this past semester, they were much appreciated. Here are some thing I have learned to avoid or change in my scholastic life:

Sleep - Yeah, I know... I've never been good at sleeping or keeping regular hours. But I rarely was in bed before 3AM most nights. This, of course, meant that waking up was an impossibility.

Eating - I costarted a little group called 10.5 which got together every evening and consumed foodstuffs at 10:30PM every night and, typically, sat down and chatted until 1AM. It is easy to see that this caused problems for my sleeping, but it also gave me quite terrible heartburn that lead to my eventual disphagia which, if you you look it up, is not really that cool a thing to suffer from.

Class Attendance - Go to every class. There is no excuse outside of being too sick or too dead. Otherwise, you're just too stupid.

Study for tests - This is going to sound like old news, but I can't stress enough how stupid you'll feel when you get a test back and, instead of a right answer, you had drawn a stupid little cartoon in hopes of getting a single point because it was funny. The only thing the professor will think is funny is how stupid you are and the face you make when you see your grade.

Friends - Friends are cool; girlfriends are cool. But consarn it there needs to be a limit. I like hanging out as much as the next person, but if you've got some assignment due the next day or a paper to write... Do that first. Guitar Hero 2 or Casino Royale will still be there the next day. The ability to turn in that paper won't.

Video Games - As mentioned before, Guitar Hero 2 or Final Fantasy of Halo or whatever your poison is... These are all great ways to relieve stress or waste time, or have fun. But do it in moderation. 15 minutes of homework should never compensate for 4 hours of Freebird on Expert mode. They always say that video games kill brain cells, and I think now I believe them.

Aside from this and the fear of my GPA and ability to attend school next semester, this summer has been nothing but simple and complicated. My old job wanted me back, so every other day I've driven a half an hour to fill out random paper work all over again (for the fourth time, they make you do it each rehire process you go through) and start actual work on Sunday evening.

I've been to my grandmother's house which was, as per usual, very boring. But I got to meet some old women down at the senior center and... Well, no, that was very boring, too.

My older brother is graduating from med school this weekend which is terrifying and exciting and sad and all that. It's been a long crawl for him, and as proud as I am it'll be hard not really seeing him for four years.

Otherwise, I'm going to get back in the habit of updating this thing on a regular basis. So, I hope to see you on here again fairly soon.

(Also, I'll probably review movies or something this summer, starting with Pirates 3 which is out this weekend and will more than likely be the best movie I've ever seen.)

Have a great summer!
-Skyler

Episode 32: What the...? (or: ART!) (alternate)

Over the past few years I have been doing online artwork in the forms of comics, images, and so forth. I'm not a very good artist in real life (pencil & paper), and my computer art is in no way any better. But I do like to think that this is mostly because my only source of computer art tools happens to be ol' MSPaint.

My computer art career started years ago, on a webcomic I called "Jesus Time!" and, as you can guess, the main characters was Jesus. But not just one Jesus, but three. Three Jesuses. They were Jesus, Satan-pretending-to-be-Jesus, and a pirate named Captain Pirate Black Jesus (an inside joke for those that followed the comic.).

Jesus is wearing pirate garb because he tried to cheat and lie his way into Heaven. Just like the bible!

It was seriously not that great. Here is the first one I ever did, where, as is made obvious simply by reading it, we see that Jesus had issues getting into Heaven:
The next thing I did was a little Xanga (another blog site) called Age 19(www.xanga.com/age19), which was basically a site I did drawings on while pretending to be a small child (hence the ugly pictures), but still signed it "Age 19." This joke was used, first, by Futurama. They feature me in either stupid situations or doing something stupid.

The very first image I did was... well, I think I'll let it speak for itself:

I never meant to do any more than this one. But... Well, let's just say one wasn't enough to satiate my artistic needs. Eventually I did more and started to have a "style." Here are some of my personal favorites:
OceanA is for Applemander
M is for Meus
Rent
Disturbing Dream

Eventually I started to notice that I had created a girlfriend character for my comic-self and, well... one panel comics just weren't enough for my jokes anymore. I then created my first four panel comic:

You might not be able to see it, but down in the bottom right corner I have the name "Captain Apathy." This is because I purchased the rights to a site (http://www.captainapathy.com/) and, well... Started a story.

This webcomic was basically the life-and-times of Skyler and his gf, Karen as Skyler (an ex-super hero) tried to get a job. It eventually became much, much more. Now I'm into my third year and, well... I have an ending planned, but its very, very far off.

These days, my art has become slightly better (ha!) in comics I've posted on Facebook and other places. My current "strip" I'm doing, called "True Life Stories (as told through fiction)" is pretty cool, I'd guess. Here's a couple:

Where am I with art, now? Well, Captain Apathy is down, right now, because of some stupid legality issue; True Life Stories update every now and again, and the rest of my art is just sitting around, waiting to be used.
Thanks for letting me share with you, and if you like any of this junk, let me know.