Movie Review- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

This is it. The movie people have been waiting for since The Dark Knight came out in 2008. And now that it's been out for three weeks, I finally decided to go watch it and write a review.
There was a lot of hype about this movie, especially when it started filming a year ago. Everyone was waiting for it, and when it finally came out... not everyone really cared. There are a couple of reasons for that, but I'll get around to that in a different post. But it failed to meet my expectations of shattering the opening weekend record Marvel's The Avengers set a couple of months ago. Does that mean it isn't as good as The Avengers? Not even close. But before I get into why it was so good, I'll give you a brief synopsis of the movie.
It's been 8 years since the end of The Dark Knight, when Harvey Dent went insane and died after killing five police officers. Since the time of his death, an act of law has been set to his name that keeps the mob bosses and the other people Harvey Dent put in jail imprisoned without peroll, and a holiday has been made in Gotham City called Harvey Dent Day. The masked vigilante called Batman hasn't been seen since the night of Dent's death. Bruce Wayne has become reclusive, leaving the business of Wayne Industries to Lucius Fox and staying in his house, allowing no one but his butler Alfred to see him. A 'cat' burglar named Selena Kyle robs Bruce Wayne, stealing fingerprints from his home and selling them to a businessman under the control of a masked mercenary known as Bane. Bane, an excommunicated member of the League of Shadows, has taken control of the League and comes to Gotham to fulfill Raz' Al Ghul's plan.
That's the most of the plotline I can give away without spoiling the movie, pretty much. Any more would probably ruin it for you.
The Good:
This movie was a tad long, at almost three hours, but the movie never lagged. In fact, it felt like the movie wasn't quite long enough. The effects of the movie were very well done, and the threat to Gotham City was plausible. The way Christopher Nolan tied in the plot with the events of the first and second movies was incredibly well done. Batman must conquer the fear he's developed of being involved as Batman in order to defeat Bane, and that brings back some of the fear he felt from when he was training under the League of Shadows in Batman Begins. This isn't a trilogy of loosely connected sequels. The first two are connected pretty well, but The Dark Knight Rises brings them together in a way that only Christopher Nolan could pull off. When the whole trilogy is watched in succession, you can see that these movies are one of the most stripped-down versions of the Hero Cycle you can get. That doesn't mean it's bad. This third movie wraps it up by making things even worse for Batman than they were in The Dark Knight, then almost literally bringing him down to Hell and bringing him back up. There's a theme throughout this film of rising and ascent that really moves the viewer.
The Bad:
There was very little bad about this movie. Bane's voice sounded a little funny, but who cares about that? I think Selena Kyle/Catwoman could have been a little more involved, but her role in the movie was pretty good anyway. I didn't really like that they didn't talk about The Joker at all, but I heard that Nolan did that out of respect to Heath Ledger, and I can understand that. I think the last half hour or so of the movie could have been wrapped up in a better way, but it was still fantastic.
The Rating:
When watching this movie after seeing the first two movies in the days before, I have to give this movie a full five stars. Not even a question. If any of those small issues I mentioned above had been fixed, it would have been six stars. It was a fantastic movie that was part of an even better film trilogy.

The only question I have is how they're going to connect Batman to the Justice League movie they're supposed to be making.

HIGHLY, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Just remember that it's still a very dark movie. Not as dark as the previous one, but pretty darn close.

Book Review- Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (1999)

I have to start this review with two things. First, it took three tries for me to finally read this book all the way through. Second, it's worth the amount of effort it takes.
Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen isn't a bestseller. It never was. The general public isn't nerdy enough to read this kind of fantasy. This takes the worldbuilding Tolkien did and steps it up several levels. The Malazan Empire is set in one of several continents: something very rare in an epic fantasy. Not even Tolkien had that much land covered. It covers five or six different plotlines and a cast of characters large enough to justify a three-page Dramatis Personae, basically a giant list of all the characters and their basic roles in the story. There's a background of gods and beings set in a history going back three hundred thousand years, the politics between the Empire, the unconquered cities, and the various gods and other powerful beings is mind-blowing.
Another thing to mention. This is the first novel by author Steven Erikson, a Canadian with a degree in Anthropology and Archaeology. He has the credentials, he has the worldbuilding skill, and he has the potential. But the problem with that is that he's working on his masterpiece series without any prior publishing experience. He has a TON of potential at this point and more skill than many experienced fantasy writers, but there are a couple areas that suffer greatly in his first novel.
But first, I'll try my best to do a summary of the book. The Malazan Empire has been fighting to conquer the continent Genabackis since before the death of the Emporer ten years ago at the hands of the current Empress, Laseen. After taking a major city called Pale, a group of the late Emporer's elite called the Bridgeburners are sent to one of the last major cities holding out against the Empire: Darujhistan. Joining them is Captain Ganoes Paran, the assistant to Lorn, Adjunct to the Empress. Investigating the slaughter of more than five hundred people, he is sent to uncover and kill a girl possessed by the God of Assassins. When Paran joins the Bridgeburners, the God of Luck Oponn plays his hand against the Assassin God and his master Shadowthrone. The key player in the game is Crokus, a thief living in Darujhistan. Meanwhile, Adjunct Lorn travels to an area outside the city, hoping to uncover a being that ruled in the days before gods and use it for the Empire's purposes.
There's a lot more than that, but I don't want to bore you with synopsis. Now, I mentioned earlier that there were several flaws Erikson had as a debuting author, and one of the big ones is characterization. He focuses so much on the plot that the characters lose a lot of their humanity, instead obeying the whims of the plotline. The motives of Shadowthrone and Oponn are largely unknown by the end of the book, and Paran switches sides several times on a whim. The other big thing that subtracts from the novel is that there are so many plotlines that it can often be very hard to follow. Hence the three tries needed to finish the book cover to cover.
But despite all this, the potential Erikson shows in this book is enough to keep me going. Despite all the flaws it was still a pretty good read, and the word of other readers that future books are much better helps as well. But this is NOT a book for everyone. Most people can't handle the number of plotlines and characters in Gardens of the Moon. But the fantasy geeks like me that are looking for something more extensive than the typical Brooks, Jordan, or Goodkind will love The Malazan Book of the Fallen. 
My rating: 3.5 stars as a fantasy geek,
                1 star as a casual reader
Seriously. If you aren't a serious fantasy nerd than DON'T TRY READING THIS BOOK.

I, Mistborn- The Similarities Between Brandon Sanderson and Isaac Asimov

By the Ranting Critic

I've been doing a lot of comparisons on here lately, haven't I? I'll have a couple of book reviews out in the next couple of weeks, so don't get too sick of these.
I noticed many of these similarities about a year ago, when I found out about the connection between most of Sanderson's books through his Cosmere, which I'll explain later in this comparison.
The first big thing I noticed is the similarity in style. NOT necessarily genre, as Asimov held fantasy in contempt, but in their similar use of rules and laws in their novels. Take the Foundation series, for example. Hari Seldon's Psychohistory is a method of mathematically calculating future events based on the predictable actions of large groups of people. It can predict the future, but only to an extent. This form of science is used by the Foundation as an object of mystic religion, but in reality is governed by strict rules concerning the actions of mass groups rather than individuals, as many in the series think. Sanderson's Allomancy from the Mistborn trilogy is very similar in regard to it's structure and the people's reaction to its powers. The skaa, or ruling class, regards Allomancy as a mystic form of magic that allows people to magically fly through the air and become unnaturally strong, but like Asimov's Psychohistory is governed by a strict and concrete set of rules. Allomantic Steelpushing, which allows the Allomancers to fly through the air, requires an extensive knowledge of Trigonometry and trajectory. Feruchemy, which allows the user to store physical attributes such as strength in metals, requires the user to give up that attribute for as long as they store it.
These strict governing rules are also seen in Asimov's classic novel I, Robot. 
1. A robot may not harm a human being, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm
2. A robot must follow orders, except where this conflicts with the first law
3. A robot must protect its own existence, except where this conflicts with the First and Second Laws
These two series, Foundation and Robot, both have strict rules regarding the special abilities granted to them by the author. The same is likewise with all of Sanderson's novels. The term Sanderson uses in his essays concerning magic systems is "Hard Magic," meaning it has a very well-defined set of rules and consequences. The Sanderson magic system, when it was introduced in Elantris and The Mistborn Trilogy, was something very new to fantasy. Other authors like David Eddings had come close, but nothing close to what Sanderson did in those books.
Asimov likewise arguably did the same thing for science fiction. I, Robot and The Foundation Trilogy were both published around 1950, a time when Sci-fi had an almost fantasy feel, and when fantasy novels were very rare. Authors like H.G. Wells used science in The War of the Worlds or The Time Machine much like fantasy authors of the 70's, 80's, and 90's used magic. I think the reason for that is probably because science was just starting to advance rapidly but there wasn't enough that was already happening to really make science fiction out of. The reason it happened in fantasy is because J.R.R. Tolkien explained very little about the magic of Middle-Earth, and the subsequent authors just followed his example.
Asimov used these hard rules and governing laws to revolutionize the Science Fiction genre. It took a while, but it happened. I believe that Sanderson is going to revolutionize Fantasy in a similar way, if he hasn't already. His books are steadily growing in popularity among teenagers and adults alike.
The other big similarity between Sanderson and Asimov is the fact that their book series are interconnected. Asimov connected his Robot novels, his Foundation novels, his Galactic Empire novels, and his 1991 novel Nemesis by making all of them a part of a 20,000 year future history. Sanderson's method is true to the fantasy genre, but has a science fiction twist of its own. For those of you that didn't know, the Cosmere is the universe that The Mistborn Trilogy, Elantris, Warbreaker, and The Way of Kings are all a part of. There was a conflict at one point that split up the power of divine creation into sixteen shards that are all held by men that are revered as gods or destroyers on their world. In Mistborn its Ruin and Preservation. In The Way of Kings its The Almighty and Odium. This interconnection between novels is something that both authors use in their more popular books. 
These are the biggest changes I can think of. If I come up with any more I'll write a sequel essay for you guys covering this topic to a further degree.
And now I end my post and my rant. I'm terrible at conclusions, aren't I?

The Two Towers: Differences Between the Book and the Movie

Now, the differences between the book of The Fellowship of the Ring and the movie of it were more extensive then previously thought, but still pretty good for a film adaptation. The Two Towers is where things get nasty, consistency-wise.
One difference that isn't quite as important is that you didn't know about the whole orc attack and the death of Boromir at the end of the first book, but the first movie ended after Boromir's body is released on the River Anduin. Honestly, the first movie had a better ending than the first book did. Boromir's death was a WAY better place to let off then Frodo and Sam leaving just before that.
The film version of The Two Towers actually didn't have many inconsistencies for the first few minutes, at least not until they left for Helm's Deep. That's where the differences get nasty. Remember in the movie how everyone just packed up and left Edoras? In the book, Theoden left Eowyn in charge with a small company of Riders to protect those that stayed behind.  But that still isn't too bad. There's one huge difference in the sequence leading up to Helm's Deep that threw off the end of this movie and the first half of The Return of the King. And that was when Aragorn and his horse were dragged off the cliff by the Warg. That didn't happen in the book. They weren't even attacked on the way to Helm's Deep. If Peter Jackson had gone along with the book, he would have been able to end the second movie with Shelob's Lair like the book did. But at the same time, the sequence where Aragorn is dragged off the cliff and the dreams that follow create a lot of tension, both in fear for Aragorn's life and romantically. See, Tolkien's problem was that there wasn't any actual romance present in the Trilogy. Arwen just kind of popped in the third book and they got married. But this whole issue with Elrond wanting her to cross the sea and her being torn between Valinor and Aragorn creates a lot of tension that makes the movie a lot more exciting.
Remember the elves that come right before the Battle of Helm's Deep to help? In the book, the Rangers/Dunedain showed up. That's something I wished would have happened in the movie, because their coming to help shows the reader that Aragorn's kinsman care about each other, and they are in fact there to help people like they say.
Other than those three things, the differences are very small. The Fellowship scenes and the Sam/Frodo scenes are integrated instead of being separate like they were in the book, but that's an improvement. The differences in the Return of the King are honestly almost as great as the ones in this, especially when it comes to the ending. You'll see when I write the post for the differences between the book and film versions of The Return of the King.

The Fellowship of the Ring: Differences Between the Book and the Movie

By the Ranting Critic

I just finished reading Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring for the second time. I was in 8th grade the first time I read it, so the details were really hazy, especially because I did more skimming than reading. Now that I've read it again, I notice some subtle differences between the book and the blockbuster film adaptation (the changes in the film version of The Two Towers were a lot more extreme, but that's another post)
The first big difference that you see between the book and the movie is that there's a nice long twenty years that pass between Bilbo's birthday party and the time that Frodo leaves Hobbiton. You can tell a lot of time passed in the movie,  but that's a detail Peter Jackson forgot to get around to, because Bilbo seems to have aged twenty years while everyone else aged about a year or two. I also noticed that Merry and Pippin aren't quite the troublemakers in the book that they are in the movie. Pippin doesn't even become that important until Frodo leaves the Shire.
Second big difference: In the movie Frodo just leaves Hobbiton, but in the book he sells Bag-End to the Sackville-Bagginses and pretends to move to a town near Buckland. It's not quite as big a difference as the first one, but it would have been nice to know.
The third big difference is one that fans grumble about a lot: the omission of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs. The reason I've heard for this omission is that Peter Jackson wanted to increase the tension in the audience by making the Ringwraiths a more constant threat, and the incident with Bombadil's house would compromise that tension. I agree with that, but at the same time the fact that he  didn't include the Barrow-Downs means that they just got swords from...nowhere, really. They just kind of had them. If you remember in the book, they got the swords after Bombadil chased away the Barrow-Wights.
This next difference isn't too important. Remember in the movie how Arwen took Frodo to Rivendell? In the book it was an Elf-lord named Glorfindel.
The Council of Elrond was pretty spot-on in the movie, but the fifth big difference is huge. Like character altering huge. Remember how Aragorn had that whole internal struggle in the movie with whether or not he wanted to take the kingship? He was actually striving to become king in the book. I will admit that that makes his character more boring, but that's how it is.
Anduril (Isildur's sword) was re-forged and given to Aragorn when they left Rivendell in the first book, not in the third one like in the movie.
Arwen's presence in the movie is A LOT stronger than it is in the book. This is probably because most of the female figures in the Trilogy are almost nonexistent. Eowyn isn't as important in The Two Towers, and Sam just kind of marries Rosie when he gets back. She's completely absent from the first book.
After this the differences are a lot smaller. Sam is given a box of seeds from Lorien by Galadriel, they spend more time on the River Anduin (or the Great River), little things like that.
So there it is. The movie's not quite as spot-on as most people are led to believe. But it's still a darn good adaptation of a great book. You'll see a lot more differences that are huge in the second book, which I'll get around to comparing later.
Any thoughts about the movie or book? Share them if you do.

Movie Review- The Avengers (2012)

There has been a lot of buzz about this movie, and for good reason. The Avengers has been anticipated by Marvel fans for four years now since the end credits of Iron Man. 
The Avengers revolves around the Norse God Loki's plot to use the tesseract (that blue cube thingy) to bring an extraterrestrial army from the other end of space to conquer Earth and make all humans subject to Loki's rule, since he can't be king on Asgard. The first half of the movie focuses on the differences between each of the team members and their struggles to find common ground. Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Steve Rogers (Captain America) in particular butt heads a lot, mainly because of the fact that Stark is a narcissistic jerk and Rogers is a selfless hero who puts in everything he's got.
If I told you any more than that, I would spoil most of the movie.
The Good:
I thought that there would be little time for any character development due to the fact that there are six or seven main characters and to the nature of the massive plotline. But there were some serious team-building experiences here, and you could see each of the characters begin to overcome their differences to act as a cohesive unit. The action didn't get too caught up in itself like most movies of this nature; when there was a serious moment one of the characters would often crack a joke that would lighten up the rest of the team and the audience. There were a lot of inside jokes for Marvel geeks like me, and there were also jokes that everyone could understand and laugh at. The special effects were amazing, and the action scenes were definitely action scenes. Not only was the storyline good, but it also improved the rather rushed and poorly done storylines of the movies Thor and Captain America.
The Bad:
The plot was good, but at times it felt a little too much like the plot of Transformers 3, which I hated. The climactic battle scenes of the two movies were very similar, but the one in the Avengers benefited from the jokes that would lighten the mood throughout the sequence. Loki was an okay villain but he could get a bit tedious sometimes, especially with that bratty I am the Rightful King type of attitude that he always had. The director also had a minor case of redshirt syndrome, I think.
The Rating:
The Avengers gets 4.25 stars. The bad was bad, but not bad enough to subtract too much from the overall awesomeness of the movie. Definitely worth the four years it took to get it out there. Highly recommended, and well worth the wait.
After you finish watching the movie, stay after the credits. Not just the first line of credits, but the second one as well. Don't ask why. Just do it.

Book Review- Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole (2012)

Shadow Ops: Control Point is the debut novel of Myke Cole; a former soldier and government civilian that served something like three tours in Iraq. Ace, the publisher, decided to publish this book in mass market paperback (the small kind) only.
Control Point starts off at the beginning of a mission to take down a couple of kids that have manifested illegal magical talents and are destroying a public high school. The main character, Oscar Britton, is one of the men involved in this assault and is having second thoughts about using the full might of the military to take down two high school aged kids. The night after the mission he manifests an illegal magical talent himself and is forced to go on the run. But unfortunately, this guy is no Jason Bourne. He has no idea what he's doing and ends up killing several people before being caught by the military. He wakes up in a secret facility, where he is told that his crimes have been pardoned by the president under the condition that he will use his magic and become a mercenary under the orders of the government.
I can't tell you much more without giving it away, but I will tell you that he is taken to a magical world where little creatures the military calls goblins rule, and where the U.S. Army is fighting to take control. The problem is that goblins manifest magical skills twice as much as humans, and they are greater and more numerous than the Americans stationed there. The conflict of the novel focuses primarily on Britton's struggles and doubts about whether or not he should be a killing machine for the government.
The Good:
Oscar Britton is a very human character, and he is supported by several other well done characters. You can tell from the first page of the book that Myke Cole knows a thing or two from his long service in the military. The battle scenes are very well done, full of action but never to the point where you begin to get annoyed. He integrates magic into the combat scenes very well. The thing I really liked about the combat scenes is that people actually die. He doesn't just kill redshirts, he kills people you've come to know and even like. That's something you don't always see in a book like this. You can feel the friendship between Britton and his fellow teammates growing throughout the book, and the villains aren't blindly evil. They have reasons behind their motives, and sometimes those are very good reasons.
The Bad:
Oscar Britton was human, but sometimes he's TOO human. His flaws were easy to see, and sometimes they got annoying. I liked that he questioned the motives of his leaders instead of being a mindless soldier, but it got annoying sometimes that he questioned every order he got. He can't seem to get over the fact that his job  in the Shadow Coven involves killing people under orders, even though before that he was in the military before that. Killing under orders is pretty much the main idea of the military, isn't it?
The thing that really irritated me is that the relationship between him and Theresa, an attractive woman with healing talents to boot, never really developed. It was just kind of there. Cole could have done a better job on that, I think.
Honestly, the doubts and unwillingness of Britton to kill under orders didn't bug me a ton. I can understand why he tried to avoid killing people. It's just that he questioned it SO MUCH.
Overall, it was a very well-done thrill ride. A book like this would make a very good military urban fantasy action movie. The pace was fast but not so fast that you couldn't keep up.
The Rating:
This book gets three and a half stars. It was good, but I felt that the negative elements dragged it down a little bit. All things considered, it was pretty good for a debut novel.
Before you go and read it, I have to warn you that the military men really talk like they're in the military. If you're younger than sixteen or seventeen, the language might be a little heavy.