"2001: A Space Odyssey" Review (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Hey, guys. It's me, OptimusPhillip, here with a review of Stanley Kubrick's classic movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey

I honestly dislike the movie. I think that it got too many things wrong and not enough right to offset those bad things. To show what I mean, here's a list of what I think they did and didn't get right.

Right:

1. The HAL9000 plot (at least in concept). The concept of the ship's onboard A.I. computer, HAL9000 (or Hal), malfunctioning was an interesting idea and I wish that it seemed like the crux of the movie.
2. The cast. The cast did a really good job at doing what they had to do, especially Hal's voice actor, who delivered all of the lines in a computer-esque monotone that still comes across as menacing.

Wrong:

1. The pacing. The movie's pacing is done so poorly, with too many long, boring scenes that either shouldn't have been there or should've moved faster, I was almost surprised when we got that shot of the moon bus flying by really fast. The movie feels like a 22 minute episode of a TV show, or maybe a 45 minute episode, but either way, they shouldn't have tried to force so little into a 2:28 runtime. 
2. The execution of the HAL9000 plot. When it comes down to it, the HAL9000 plot was executed quite poorly. There were some good scenes, but, again, the pacing just throws the rest of the scenes off, and I can't tell if this is supposed to be the main plot or the subplot. And while his monotone voice does sound kind of menacing, the only menacing thing that he does is say "I'm sorry Dave, but I can't let you do that." He doesn't even come across as threatening when he kills the hibernating crew.
3. The monolith plot. This could've made for an interesting story dynamic, with humanity's evolution being an artificial phenomenon caused by this mysterious black rectangular monolith, but it goes absolutely nowhere and the closest we get to a payoff is what looks like an LSD trip and shots of Dave looking at an older version of himself and becoming that again and again until he's a giant fetus looking at Earth. What are we supposed to take from that? And is this the main plot or just the subplot? While the Hal plot feels like both, the monolith plot feels like neither.
4. The musical score. The musical score just doesn't work. The Blue Danube plays in a ton of scenes where you feel like something else should be there, and there are spots where there is just dead silence only broken by the annoying sound of Frank's and Dave's respective breathing apparatuses, and sometimes that's not even there. There really should've been a real music score here, and not just the placeholder music Kubrick decided to use instead of the actual score that The Blue Danube was holding a place for. And is it just me or would the mood be better set if there were some appropriate music to go with the scenes? Like when we get those shots of the crew's vitals shutting down we should get some type of dramatically sad music, like when Prime dies in "The Transformers: The Movie".

People say that the accompanying book explains everything whose absence affects the movie, but I'm not going to let this movie off because of that: If it isn't in the movie, then it isn't in the movie. Just because a book based on a movie or a book made into a movie contains important information about the movie's events that is absent from the movie does not mean that that information is a valid part of the movie's canon: they are separate works and must be treated as such.

This is just a movie that had potential, but just disappointed on so many levels, so I give it a 2/10, the lowest score I've given a movie ever. It feels like something they should've put on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, except the movies I've seen on MST3K are better than this.

Armada Cyclonus with Mini-Con Crumplezone

The story of how I got my Cyclonus is rather interesting, I was at a local comic shop but none of the comics jumped out at me, the only ones of a story I liked were Dr. Who, and none of them had the 10th Doctor. Then I saw a rack of used toys, and most were TRANSFORMERS! I went with Cyclonus because he and Titanium G.I. Joe Megatron were the only complete ones and Megatron... I know what he does when you transform him, he falls to pieces. There were toys like Armada Hoist and Energon Rodimus, but they looked incomplete, so I went for Cyclonus. I was not disappointed in the least. His color scheme is very interesting, it's white, light blue, dark blue, purple, and gold. These colors are unprecedented and that's why I like him. The name is derived from a G1 character but that's the only G1 element to him. The color layout is nothing like G1, and he's a helicopter unlike the G1 jet mode. But I think the name comes from the fact that he's a helicopter, that generate a mini-cyclone to provide lift, and they needed a name that had "cyclone" in it and Cyclonus was the final choice. The only hindrance is the rotor spinning gimmick makes a really annoying clicking noise. His Mini-Con can interact in two different ways in the chopper mode. The first one is that if you plug the Mini-Con onto the underwing cannons to fire the RPG or the chaingun barrel, why a chaingun would fire the barrel as a missile I don't know, but it's a missile gimmick, we should appreciate how much we got them in Armada, because finding a missile launcher on a Prime toy is like finding a needle in a haystack spray-painted silver. The other Mini-Con gimmick is you fold up the cockpit on Cyclonus. Then you rotate Crumplezone's turret and fold the treads around and clip the treads over the tabs on the sides of Cyclonus's front end. This gives Cyclonus an underslung cannon which recoils in tune with the rotor gimmick and a more realistic front end, with Crumplezone as the cockpit he looks like an Apache. There's another gimmick where you take Refute from Hoist or any Destruction or Adventure Mini-Con and plug it into the bottom of the cockpit and the rotor triggers the gimmick on that Mini-Con, I can't do that because I don't have any of those Mini-Cons. the transformation is simple but intuitive, I especially like how the waist slides down and into position when you fold down the chest. After that it's just a matter of unfold the arms and fold out the head. One essential but undocumented step is to rotate the rotor into a show accurate diagonal angle. When in robot mode he bears a very cliche helicopter Transformer look, cockpit chest, rotor on the back, side mounted parts becoming arms, and under-kibble stuff forming the legs. But the toy still looks good all the same. I don't mind the orange face, I do think, however, that the eyes being green looks weird. Especially since the orange sometimes bleeds through the eyes making them an ugly brownish. Crumplezone has the simplest transformation I've seen out of a tank-former so far. Fold the copter cockpit out into the legs, turn the waist, and that is it. Back to the main figure, his arms have the same missile gimmick from the vehicle mode. There is also a Powerlinx plug on each leg, which will trigger a flip-out cannon. The concept of cannons protruding from the knees was revisited with the Energon Wing Saber toy to compensate for the total brickiness making normal armament impossible. Back to Cyclonus you can still attach Crumplezone to the chest but that means he has a giant cockpit sticking right out of his chest. So I prefer to leave Crumplezone off the chest. The only downside to the toy is that there are no dead Mini-Con ports, so in robot mode Crumplezone has to stay off if you want to have both missiles in place and no knee weapons. So is this toy worth it? I got mine for $9.00, that means this is worth it, at least one eBay listing goes for twenty-something, but that was just one, and it's mint on sealed card. The rest were somewhere between 5 and 15, a great price range. So if you can find one on eBay in that range ( the odds of which are about 50:1 (if you think those are bad odds, go back to 8th grade math))  go for it.
      OptimusPhillip rolling out

The Avengers review

This movie is a great film, very little emotion, but it wasn't meant to have much of it, it's meant to be just an action-packed thriller superhero film.
I'll cover the story and as I go along I'll say my opinions on the various plot-points, Dr. Erik Selvig is examining the Tesseract, I'm surprised they called it that, in Captain America: The First Avenger, they called it the Cosmic Cube, all the other films that included it included it as an Easter Egg and never referred to it by name, and then Loki is zapped into the lab, where he brainwashes Selvig as well as Agent Clint Barton (Hawkeye.) Loki attempts to open a portal with the Tesseract to bring in his army, however it collapses on itself. Desperate for reinforcements, Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement Logistics Division, for those who don't know) orders the execution of the Avenger Initiative, a program that was first mentioned in Iron Man, implied in The Incredible Hulk, and expanded upon in Iron Man 2. Which entails assembling Earth's mightiest heroes to "fight the battles we never could." Agent Phil Coulson visits Tony Stark (Iron Man) and tells him that he's needed by S.H.I.E.L.D., meanwhile, Agent Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) goes to find Dr. Bruce Banner (The Hulk) as the radiation from the Tesseract are gamma rays. (we all know how much Banner knows about gamma rays. ;)) and Fury goes down what I'm guessing is a gymnasium of some kind and talks to Steven Rogers (Captain America), an abridged version of this scene was shown in the post-credit scene of Captain America: The First Avenger. They all meet up on board a S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft carrier, which reveals itself to be the S.H.I.E.L.D. Heli-Carrier. Agent Coulson is revealed to be a Capt. America fan, and frequent mention is make about his collection of Captain America trading cards. Fury puts Loki into a holding chamber meant for the Hulk. Under the supervision of Dr. Banner and Stark, Loki's spear weapon (not Gungnir from Thor) is examined and they also track the Tesseract using mass-spectrometers. Thor, who had attacked the Quin-Jet to try to convince Loki to change his ways, leading to an epic fight scene between Rogers, Iron Man, and Thor, is also there. Barton and some friends arrive at the Heli-Carrier and trigger Banner to hulk out. The Hulk nearly destroys the Heli-Carrier, and this is where we see exactly how far ILM has come from making a Hulk, their first attempt in 2003, was great, but a bit cheezy, it looked like a guy painted green walking around a miniature set of the city, then Rythm & Hues did their Hulk and it was a lot better, however he was almost too realistic, now, they got that perfect blend of Ang Lee and Louis Letterier, creating what I hope is the Hulk we see in all future Marvel films starring Hulk. One issue I do have, though, is that the Hulk rampage makes him out to be a mindless beast. Which is okay for the comics or cartoons or the Ang Lee Hulk film, but in The Incredible Hulk, it is shown that the Hulk only attacks what's attacking him, he never attacks an innocent person. Yet he battles the other Avengers when it was Loki's men who were triggering the Hulk-out and are attacking them. Anyway, the Hulk and Loki's minions do a considerable amount of damage to the engine, and Capt. America and Iron Man are charged with getting it back up. Stark goes in to push the turbine back in motion and tells Rogers to pull the lever to slow them down long enough for him to fly out, however Capt. A is attacked but manages to save ol' Shellhead. Meanwhile, Loki escapes and kills Agent Coulson (or a Life Model Decoy, as implied in promos for the new Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show. Fury uses this to motivate them into a cohesive team. The team learns that Loki has prepared a proper support device on top of Stark Tower, opening a portal through which his army of aliens come. Tony returns to his place, talks to Loki in a casual manner, secretly putting on wristlets which come into play when Loki throws him off the Tower, and he deploys his MK VII armor. The newly assembled Avengers, rejoined by Banner and Barton, who has been cured strategically by Romanoff (she KOed him), hold of the Chitauri, Loki's army. Then Selvig is cured and he tells them that the Tesseract is giving off a protective shield that can only be penetrated by Loki's spear. However, Fury's superiors resort to nuking Manhattan to destroy the invaders, however, Iron Man is able to destroy the oncoming waves by sending the missile through the portal before they destroy it. Then the Avengers emerge victorious and go out for shawarma. Then comes the mid-credit scene, where we learn that the next big bad guy will be the infamous Thanos...
A more light hearted post credit scene is shown after that where we see them eating shawarma together, while Capt. A covers his face to mask Evans's newly grown beard.

Overall it's a great movie. I can't wait for the sequel which features Ultron and potentially Vision. This movie was great and I was totally psyched to finally see all these heroes together on screen, since until recently, it was simply impossible as rights were dispersed across studios. From Fox, to Sony, to Universal. Overall I give this movie a 9.5/10, subtracting half a point just because of their poor portrayal of this iteration of the Hulk