Here's the LAST WORD from the creator of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. RIP Cameron and Co. Long may you live on in Digital Heaven.

TV and Thee

Wanted to give a quick update on the fates of several shows as of today:

Dollhouse RENEWED!
Chuck RENEWED!
Scrubs RENEWED! (I'm as shocked as you are.)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles CANCELED!
(That one really hurts, what with that game changing season finale.)

Lots of shows still on the bubble and we probably won't know more until the new schedules are announced in the next few weeks. Keep the torches lit.

Unhappy answers: X-Men Origins - Wolverine

If you love Hugh Jackman and his portrayal of Wolverine, I would recommend seeing this spin off. If not, stay away, as his performance is the only consistently good thing as the movie checks off box after box on its long list of what it thinks people want answered. Stryker at one point warns Logan not to follow this path as he won't like what he finds at the end. I say the exact same thing to you now.

Yes, questions are answered, but you will not like these answers. They range from bizarre to stupidly simplistic to ham fisted revisions but none will give you that tingle of satisfaction when the pieces fall into place. More often than that, you'll find yourself saying 'Really? THAT'S what you're going with?'

Heading into spoiler territory here. I'm a fanboy, I admit. But it wasn't my inner Comic Book Guy voice that had the issues. Wolvie and Victor are bros? OK. It was the fact the movie seemed to have been plotted by bullet points. Each scene ended with a black check mark on some piece of backstory then they dutifully moved onto the next. No narrative flow or momentum. I'd say its like a video game, but I'm playing the game and its better than the movie.

The movie starts badly. Of course the movie would begin with an adaption of Origin. Thing is, this miniseries is generally regarded and tepid and even dull by most fans, at least the ones I have heard from. And the big dramatic moment, the first use of the claws, was so awful I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. I was holding my head down to stifle the giggles. Not an auspicious beginning. From there, things get better. The title sequence was very well done. Showing the claw brothers fighting for AMERICA! in various wars through history was cool, but the trouble is I would rather see a movie based on any of these battles than what we actually got. Wolverine & Sabertooth killing Nazis? Yes please! Their military career over, the brothers get to meet the team 'o freaks. Enjoy this, because it's the highlight of the movie. It's all down hill from here. The characters are interesting, funny in Wade's case, and we get to see them strut their stuff in a big attack sequence. Once Logan leaves the group though, the movie starts to sputter. 

Skipping to the end, it all comes down to a fight between Wolverine, Victor and Deadpool on the top of a nuclear cooling tower. I'd throw a spoiler alert in front of that if it wasn't in ALL OF THE PREVIEWS! But midway threw the fight I realized I didn't really care about it. Why? No stakes. All three of them are immortal healers. Any wound, short of decapitation, would be healed including a fall from the top of a nuclear cooling tower. Why have the fight up high when it doesn't matter if they fall? This was cemented when at the end as the structure is collapsing, Logan and Victor have a calm discussion before Victor jumps to the ground.

And then the gun. Seems like late in the process, the creatives realized they had to scramble Logan's memories. Their solution? A gun with Adamantium bullets, a Deus Ex Magnum if you will. Stryker explain that shooting him in the head with it will scramble his memories. First off, how does he know? Its a first generation solution for a first generation problem, how the hell could he predict what it would do? And how would he know what memories would be affected? Blam! No more 6th birthday party. Blam! Now you can no longer ride a bike. Blam! What is your favorite color? YOU DON'T KNOW! MWA HA HA! No nanobots to erase memories. No use of Stryker's psychic son. No mind wave bomb. Nope, big gun, shiny bullets. Lazy writing, folks.

If I had to give one piece of advice to filmmakers doing these movies from here on out, it would be this: USE SOMEONE ELSE. When you are writing a movie like this and you want to take a popular character and vastly change his history, powers and personality, then use a different character. Yes, I am a Deadpool fan and was annoyed about the lame alterations they made to him at the end. What's worse is that there are so many characters in the X-universe that would have worked for this. What about Omega Red? Hell, use Fantomex. Nobody'd blink if you tore that dude to pieces and you get points for obscurity. Now if they want to do a spinoff, they have to do the saran wrapped face, ginsu armed x-bot version with bizarre shushing action.

I didn't hate the movie, I was just massively disappointed. In the large buffet of X-stories, why do they keep going for the bad shrimp and avoiding the sirloin. Hugh emerges from all this pretty much unscathed. His Logan is great all the way through, especially when he keeps it simple. His 'crap' and 'damn' moments are highlights. Speeches? Not so Wolverine. The acting is pretty top notch all around, esp. Ryan Reynolds and surprisingly Will.I.am. It is the laundry list feeling of the rest of the movie that hurts the most. Next time, how about letting the filmmakers make the film rather than the beancounters.

A little ode to spring, very appropriate for the day. And also very NSFW! Earmuffs for the kiddies please. Enjoy!

Character Studies: The Whipping Boy

In this series on character, I haven't mentioned the most important part of the equation: you, the audience. Without the people watching, all the writing, acting, producing is all for naught. And when the magic happens, you get people to fall in love with a fictional construct and watch that creation's adventures from week to week, year to year. But this is not without some dangers.

Good drama is all about conflict. We watch people in their worst moments, on their worst days. Sometimes they rise to the occasions, sometimes they fall. And we curse the fates their lives should be so terrible, and bless them that we get to watch the struggle. But in all this, we must believe that it is the universe causing these situations to occur. When the veil parts, when we get a peek behind the curtain, this can be the beginning of the end of the character love affair. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

I loved ER from its first episode. This was a medical show, dime a dozen even today, but it really focused on the individuals. And through its history, it has created many memorable characters. I can only talk about the ones from the start of the show for reasons that will become apparent. It would be easy to talk about Dr. Doug Ross here. It's the birthplace of the phenomenon know as Clooney. Much could be written here about character, how this handsome young actor had tried and tried to catch a break, but just couldn't catch one. But here in this show, with these writers, these directors, these costars, the settings were right for him to create a fantastic, memorable man that audience have loved for over a decade. But that's not my focus. My guy was Dr. Mark Greene.

While Clooney got the spotlight, Anthony Edwards (the BMOC when the show launched) was creating just as memorable and fascinating a creation. His Doc was smart, savvy, passionate and wore his heart on his sleeve. He was the one I was always waiting to show back up on screen. But as the years went by, things changed. While Dr. Ross got his hero moment, his self sabotage times, his loves and his fights, Dr. Greene seemed to be on God's S*** List. He was unlucky in love, savagely beaten and eventually had that long staple of lazy "what do we do now?" writing: cancer. After a time I had to stop watching the show. Not because it had gotten bad, but because I couldn't stand to see what the writers were doing to this character I adored.

I'm not naive, I know how the system works. I've watched Buffy die twice. But in all the shows I watch, with characters I care about, it felt to me like the universe was acting on them, that the story was in control. The more the writers heaped abuse on Dr. Greene, the more aware I became of the almost sadistic joy they seemed to be taking in knocking him down again and again. Joss referred to Alyson Hannigan as The Queen Of Pain because he knew whenever he did something to Willow, she was golden, that she could convey anguish and hurt and make the audience feel it. But it was always in the service of the story, not just a series of punishments just to fill airtime. None of this is factual, to my knowledge. I'm speaking here of how I felt about the situation. But as time passed, I couldn't stand to watch the beatings they put this noble soul through week after week. I had to walk away.

It's a fine line. You have to put characters in conflict. It's the heart of drama and comedy. But in shows like ER, which became more of a machine to feed characters into as it ran on (and on and on), all things serve the franchise and it becomes more grist for the mill rather than putting beloved characters under the knife to carve them into better, more realistic people. And with a character I cared about, it just hurt too much to watch him beaten for their amusement.