Transformers Combiner Wars Bruticus, Part 6: Onslaught: Time to activate the Scramble City Protocol

We're finally at the end of Bruticus, for that is left is the combiner boss himself, Onslaught. I've wasted enough of your time, let's just do it.

Transformers Combiner Wars Bruticus, Part 2; Blast Off: We need a Doctor here!

It took them 30 years, but they finally did it. They finally fixed the problem of "Why is there a space shuttle on the army guy team?"

Part two of Bruticus, and now we come to his right arm, Blast Off. Who is a repaint, and repaint of Slingshot (or rather, Quickslinger) who is a remold of Fireflight (Firefly). The mold reuse is real here people. At least he still looses to Vortex who's been Alpha Bravo, Blades, Vortex, and the twins in Victorion.

False advertisement, that landing gear is not purple on mine!

Avengers vs X-Men: So tempting to do a Birds of Prey joke

Not the original plan, but being honest, I couldn't find ways to word it, so I picked another arc, this one, with thankfully better sucsess. So, what could bring the two biggest teams in the Marvel Universe to go against each other? Well seeing as this will probably not be the last hero v hero comic covered, let's find out. I should note, I'm only covering the direct plot of the arc, not before it, and not after it.

The Phoenix force, a power unlike anything you'll find in the MCU (for legal reasons). Its an entity of pure destruction, and its returning to earth, to merge with a girl called Hope Summers, the mutant messiah. The Avengers try to put her into protective custody, but the X-men, refuse. Using a portion of the Phoenix Force, hope flees from the battle, causing the two teams to try and find her. Hope wants to use the Phoenix to reignite the Mutant kind, and trusts Wolverine to, if need be, kill her should she not control it. Before the Phoenix can fully bond with Hope, Iron Man and Giant Man fire a device to try and stop it, but only splinters it, making it bond with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Neymor, Colossus, and Magik (hope I'm spelling some of those right). After defeating the Avengers, the Phoenix five, as they are now going by, are reshaping the planet to their desire, providing free energy, food and water to everyone, all really good things, but because their powers are going unchecked, they need to be stopped. After the first part of their plan, to rescue Hope, barely succeeds, many battles take place, eventually leading to them defeating Neymor, but having his portion of the power return to the other four, making them more powerful.

The rest of the main story is basically that, leading to Cyclops becoming the Dark Phoenix, with all the pieces, killing Professor Xavier, but eventually losing to Hope and the Scarlet Witch. While I can say that this is more then what I was able to do for the Dark Phoenix saga, everything else aside from the visuals and the situation is pretty meh overall. It was more style of the situation, over substance. Might it be because of my lack of time dedicated to it, to get the review, maybe, I hope not though.

The Dark Knight Returns

One final jab at Dawn of Justice, as this the last DC thing I'm doing for a while. It should come as no surprise that a part of the inspiration for Dawn of Justice is The Dark Knight Returns, and while I'm not reviewing the comic, I do want to review the animated movies. And yes, I said movies. There are two parts to this. So let's just go in order

Deadpool Killogy: Some want to see the world burn, others bathe in the world's blood

So with the Deadpool movie coming out this month, I thought it would be a good idea to look at a Deadpool arc, to get an idea of the character. Or in this case, what happens when the character breaks. Care to see your beloved and loathed characters, both in the Marvel comics and out of it? Well, this is the arc for you, the Deadpool killogy. Though to be warned, as the books themselves say, THIS IS NOT FOR YOUNG KIDS.

Ignition & Battle of Karda Nui: Race against time. Race for Life

The Kanohi Ignika, the Mask of Life. Most who touch it are eternally cursed in some way, those who are destined to wear it... well... aren't much better off. We have 15 small comics from DC (yeah, how many people here knew that DC did the BIONICLE comics?), so let's not waste time, because the characters don't have a lot of time. Ignition, and the Battle of Karda Nui.

To Boldly Flee: Because everyone hates plot holes

The year is 2012, Doug Walker has decided to stop writing Nostalgia Critic episodes, but not without leaving on a high note. The team still has a anniversary to release, and what better way to finish the character then with a 3 and a half hour long sci-fi movie. Time to, for the last time, re enter this world, To Boldly Flee.

So how does one go from... whatever you call Kickassia, to medieval in the form of Suburban Knights and then To Boldly Flee? Well...

Suburban Knights: When a sequel isn't really a sequel

What's the first rule of a sequel... more often then not its keeping the same theme as the first film. One year after the release of Kickassia, the Channel Awesome team bring out a new film that... somehow connects to Kickassia (in other ways besides mentions). The hunt is on for a power of old, time to delve into fantasy with Suburban Knights.

Disclaimer: I know its not the cover, I couldn't find a good image of the cover

Kickassia. "Is it possible to parody parody and make it good?"

Forward: Reviews will always be coming out on a Wednesday unless stated otherwise

We're back to doing reviews, let the trumpets be herd, and what better way to start reviews again then with a fan film. For those who don't know, a fan film is a movie made by film enthusiasts to tell some sort of story. They tend to have a budget of $0 and low production value and this is no exception. To celebrate the second anniversary of their site's launch (thatguywiththeglasses.com), the reviewers that contribute to the site (along with several others) decided to create Kickassia, and the final result... Well...

In regards to the story, I'm going to be directly quoting the IMDb page dedicated to Kickassia's plot because I can't write anything that would do it justice, while I will elaborate on points (aka, spoilers), this is just the summary of the plot:

"The Nostalgia Critic, internet guru of bad movies, discovers the existence of the Republic of Molossia in the Nevada desert. He rallies his fellow reviewers and media enthusiasts and invades, taking control of the micronation. Declaring himself President-for-Life, he assigns government posts to his friends and renames the realm Kickassia, the most nonsensical country in the world. The Nostalgia Chick, gloriously parodying Sarah Palin, is named Vice-President and spends her days cheerfully attempting to kill off the Critic to take his post. The Minister of Trade wants to bargain with other nations for goods and services...by trading old video games. The chief science officer performs research on a stomp rocket, and the newly designed Kickassian flag is held aloft by a very unhappy human flagpole (because they can't figure out how to use the real one). But it soon becomes apparent that the Critic has turned into a complete despot whose idea of a productive day involves sitting on the couch watching old television shows. When they discover that he's wired the entirety of Kickassia with 20 tons of dynamite, his friends realize that they have to try to find a way to remove him from power before things go horribly wrong."

Did I mention that this plot is dumb, but dumb in a good way. If you read the title of this review, you would see that I asked "Is it possible to parody parody and make it good?", the answer being: yes... kinda. The way the movie is written is that what its parodying is their own content, which is evident by the names of the characters being their internet persona's. The Nostalgia Critic and Nostalgia Chick, Angry Joe, Linkara, Mars Girl, JewWario (to which, while late, I am dedicating this to as he passed away earlier in the year), Cinema Snob, all of whom are the characters and persona's they use online for their content, and as a result, it actually makes the writing and the jokes very clever and hilarious in a dark humor way. Each of the jokes are stabs at their own content along with the content they review (a example being the Nostalgia Critic taking up the persona of M Byson) which something that you can see the moment you look at the poster that was made for the film.

The comedy also extends to the cameos that are laced throughout the story and for the most part, they are well done. Board James (Angry Video Game Nerd (who does have a movie coming out, I should get around to doing that when I can...)) teaching the rebels how to play Risk was hilarious, Little Miss Gamer and the "homage (???)" to Captain N was hilarious, "Goggles" (I'm using quotes because I'm not sure who Goggles is or if its her full name) and the answering machine was, while predictable, still funny. I'd have to say that the worst cameos was (while the joke was still funny) the cameos used in the "revival" of Santa Christ (someone who I'm not going to explain, look that one up yourself) purely because the cameos themselves weren't funny but the joke after.

Cinematography wise, you can tell this was shot on a small budget (assuming there was one to begin with). The camera work isn't the greatest, the camera itself didn't produce that clean of a image, lighting wasn't great, the animations were poor, but I think these work to the films advantage (well, the animation at least). People don't expect blockbuster quality filming in fan films. When we get that, great. If not, then nothing was lost. Most directors of these types of projects try to get as many aspects of the cinematography as close to actual Hollywood films as possible. Whereas here, they make use of what they have and seeing as most of them were probably just starting out at the time, it still looks reasonably well. I think the animation is probably the worse aspect to this but the animation adds to the comedy. You know the effects are cheep, hell some of them were ripped from 8-bit/ 16-bit games (I can't tell what era or what game, if any at all, but still).

There is a sense of self awareness to this film, a subtle destruction of the forth wall if you would. Probably the best example of this is the fact that Doug Walker, the writer, editor and director of the film, also wrote a Nostalgia Critic (his character) review of the film and trashed it in the standard Nostalgia Critic fashion. Kickassia as a whole feels like its a type of film that the people who are performing in it would trash under any other circumstances, which adds to the humor of the whole project. If your going into this thinking that it will be good when comparing it to Hollywood films, then your going to hate this film, but its good because of how bad it is because its awfulness makes it better (if that makes any sense). Next week, in memory of Robin Williams, Aladdin.