The land of tomorrow (no spoilers)

On the surface, Disney's Tomorrowland seems like little more than a cash-grab, capitalizing on the theme from another part of the Disney parks as inspiration. The thought worked with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise but failed miserably with other films. Remember Haunted Mansion and The Country Bears? Yeah me neither.  I was interested enough to see which side of the fence Tomorrowland fell on that I was willing to sacrifice a few hours to it. It was more than that. Tomorrowland is an entertaining and hopeful movie with a strong message. The advertisements for the movie are cryptic enough that there weren't many expectations going into it, which is a refreshing change from most films these days where you've seen a good percentage of the movie before stepping into the theatre. 

Let me start by saying that Britt Robertson and Raffey Cassidy are the future. They are the two female leads and own a majority of the screen time. Both are expressive, endearing and capable actresses who I'm confident we will be seeing a lot more of in the coming years. Robertson plays Casey Newton, a teenage girl looking to make a difference in the world. Casey is being raised by her NASA engineer father who encourages her to ask questions and dream big. Cassidy is Athena, the android resident of Tomorrowland, who recruits Casey to save the future of our world when the residents of the futuristic utopia have failed. The two have a good chemistry and it is nice to see some more strong, young female characters. Assisting Casey on her journey is Frank Walker, played by George Clooney, a man who has been expelled from Tomorrowland and has lost the enthusiasm for science and inventing that he once had. It is up to Casey to bring the magic back for him and for all of Tomorrowland by reminding them that the future can be anything you want it to be, while it is villian Hugh Laurie's job to stop them.

There is a definite overarching message to the movie. Things are in a bad way in the world right now and all we're doing is accepting them as immutable realities. The movie's answer is to dream big and strive to make a difference, that whatever it is that you do, you should try your hardest to do it well and see what happens. Also science is cool. The whole film has a Wall-E-esque vibe to it and the message seemed hardly lost on the audience. But that's ok too. The film has a clear vision and its nice to see it follow through.

I would have liked to see more of Tomorrowland itself as it was a brilliantly animated and picturesque blending today's modern sleekness so popular in Apple products with the kitschy space-era 60s futurism that Disneyland's Tomorrowland is so famous for. Its definitely the carrot on the string for Casey but it would've been nice to linger there a little longer at some point. Maybe on the Blu-Ray? 

All in all its a fun, feel-good movie with tons of Disney nostalgia. Even if the message is a delivered a little less than subtly and the pacing is a bit off, it is beautifully animated and well-acted and that in itself is worth spending a rainy Saturday on.

Happy 20th Bioware! Thanks for the feels

Today marks the 20th anniversary of my all-time favorite game company. I'm not sure how I'm going to put everything I feel about them into words but I though I should at least give it a shot. Now I want to start by saying I'm not an OG, I didn't play Baldur's Gate on the PC back when or even KOTOR when it first came out. Mass Effect was my entree into the world of Bioware games and the weight of that game hit me like a ton of bricks. After spending several hours wandering around the Citidel I was hooked. There was so much more to see than any game I'd ever played. I'd never played a game where I could spend that much time, never accomplish anything and come away feeling totally satisfied. I was totally floored at how much work went into the game and the world and the characters. I was pretty used to linear shooters or licensed games where I felt like most of the world building was done by tie-in media or easter-egg seekers in internet forums. I felt like I was meeting real people and developing friendships. My Shepard was everything I wished I could be, hoped maybe one day I would be, everything I was too scared to be in real life. She was brave, honest, pragmatic, and open minded. When Kaidan thought he lost her, I thought I lost her too. One look at his face and I burst into tears. I'd never cried over a video game before. I don't really cry over movies much even but that moment got to me. I found out what it was like to be hit with feels. All the feels. I found out what it was to be a fangirl. I got into fanart and fanfic and I felt less lonely in liking something than I ever had before. Shepard helped me find parts of my personality I couldn't express before. I moved and the Normandy moved with me. When I was scared or lonely Shepard wasn't. She is my ultimate hero and will probably always be the most important fictional person in my life.

Following Shepard there have been others, Revan, the Warden, Hawke and the Inquisitor. Each woman, and yes they have all been women, has her own place in my heart and mind. And it seems like no matter how many play throughs there are, the first iteration is the most important. She is the one who is mine. But each seems like a version of Shepard and an extension of me.
The worlds these women inhabit feel like a place to visit like a coffee shop where you do most of your writing or a vacation spot you can't stop going back to because it recharges your batteries like nowhere else. They inspire creativity. People want to carry little pieces with them, they want to be reminded in their daily life of a memory from the time they were someone else. That's powerful stuff. It sounds sappy but Bioware games changed my life. They gave me the courage to write. They gave me the passion to talk about something I love without caring about being judged. They helped me make friends and learn to talk to people.

So thanks Bioware. Thank you to all the writers, artists, voice actors, and musicians who made me laugh, cry, and fall in love. Here's to the last twenty years and many more fangirl tears in the future.

Avengers: Age of Ultron or How AI is a Really Bad Idea and Will Probably Kill Us All *Spoilers*

So I finally got a chance to see Avengers: Age of Ultron today and I really enjoyed it. This is the second marvel film I've seen where I didn't have a concrete set of expectations as to what I was going to see. The first being Guardians of the Galaxy, where I had never read any of the comics, wasn't familiar with the characters and was really just expecting to have a good time. Age of Ultron is similar in that I hadn't had a chance to catch up on the Ultron arc so I just had the basis of the rest of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This film is darker than the other MCU films but still retains the Joss Whedon trademark one-liners that had the audience laughing out loud. There's a lot going on with film. It does a lot of heavy lifting tying the previous installments to the upcoming films and the Infinity Gauntlet and Civil War storylines, introducing new characters Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Vision, and  still managing to be entertaining. The fight scenes are meticulously crafted and had the audience in my showing gasping aloud. Overall fan service abounds. Heavy spoilers from here on, so be warned.

Okay, now the elephant in the room. I don't really have a problem with the representation of Natasha in this film. I will give you that the romance sub-plot between her and Bruce was unnecessary. We already know that she has above-average skills of persuasion, and if there was an Avenger who could calm the Hulk it would probably be Nat anyway. That said, I don't think it detracted from her character in any way. I feel like her conversation with Bruce about her forced sterilization is more a moment in which they both mourn the loss of the ability to choose the path of their own lives than it is her admission of feeling like less of a woman because she is unable to have children. The whole section of the film at the farm is about each team member dealing with the nightmares the Scarlet Witch gave them and the full weight of what it means to be an Avenger. Each of them mourns the loss of normalcy and a sense of control, and I think Natasha's struggle isn't so different.

This movie also cements the wedge between Tony and Cap that preps for the Civil War arc. Steve is out of his element throughout the movie continuing where we left him after Winter Soldier. He continually struggles to adapt who is he as a hero and as a man to the realities of today's world and the enemies it faces. Steve is the past and Tony is the future, but Steve is learning quickly while Tony becomes increasingly paranoid. Tony Stark seems to long have been the fan favorite in these movies but his creation of Ultron makes him more a villain than he's been since the beginning of Iron Man. Ultron is a great villain and a great foil for both Tony and Vision. Spader was brilliantly cast in the part and is as menacing as he is snarky. He embodies a lot of modern fears about technology and anxieties about artificial intelligence. I love that he takes one brief look at the internet and decides that mankind has to go. Ultron's mining of Vibranium to make the giant floating island seems a little silly but I'm assuming that the Vibranium and the weird weapons dealer guy (played by a non-CG'd Andy Serkis) will feature more heavily in the upcoming Black Panther film. Like I said, there's a lot going on.

I liked the new additions to the MCU cast. In early stills Quicksilver came off super cheesy, but in the finished product he is likable and remarkably powerful. I feel like he was gone too soon. I can't wait to see where Scarlet Witch goes from here. She comes into her own late in the movie and as a new team comes together, she looks to be the most powerful apart from Vision. Oh man, Vision. So cool. Paul Bettany looks amazing as the synthetic human AI and has some of the best lines in the movie. I'm so excited to see what happens to him in upcoming installments although I can't help but wonder how the Infinity Stone makes its way out of his forehead into the Infinity Gauntlet. Overall, the new Avengers team assembling at the end of the movie looks promising as hell. The Iron Patriot, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Captain America and Black Widow. It's a big step forward in terms of representation both of women and people of color in the MCU.

Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron is a great movie. It's entertaining, well-written and well paced. Is it perfect? No. But it lives up to the first film and creates a valuable bridge between the last phase of films and the next.