What I Learned's blog

The Avengers fixed the problems of the Marvel prequels

At one point during The Avengers, I suddenly realize that here I am, in a big screen theater, full of people, watching a live action Thor and Iron Man fight. And it's good.

Decades of comic book movies have brought us to this point: Where we can have high budget movies with A-list actors and directors bring our comics to the screen for the mass audience.

Sure, there have been some bumps along this road. But Marvel's The Avengers paved over a lot of them.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts had more charisma in five minutes of screen time than in the previous two movies put together. (But why was she dressed like that?)

Chris Evans stopped being a boy in man's clothes who didn't emote (like how he was throughout the whole Captain America movie) and started being the take-charge man of principle that we all know he is.

The Hulk looked less like a cartoon, and more like a big, green Mark Ruffalo (This is a good thing). Ruffalo did a good job playing the conflicted Bruce Banner, and you could see in every scene that he's trying to hold it together. I think Edward Norton could have done it well, too, but these things happen.

Black Widow was given something to do. Instead of just slinking around and kicking people, she was the brains of the operation in a way that Stark and Banner couldn't be.

 

Joss Whedon's fingerprints were all over this thing. The bickering. The long stretches of dialogue. The humor.

There were times when a few characters are talking, then it switches to another scene where a few characters are talking, and then another. Compare that to the X-Men movies, where there's a few minutes of dialogue and then someone is attacked. It was a welcome change, with all the testosterone flowing around, for people to have intelligent, character-revealing dialogue.

I'm very happy for Whedon. He helmed a very large, very expensive, and very high profile project and he did it well. However, I do NOT want him to direct any sequels. Whedon has a tendency to get too familiar with his characters, rendering villains harmless and heroes little more than people who just hang out together.

 

The plot was paper-thin, when compared to what Loki attempted in the Thor movie. But, this movie was all about bringing the heroes together, and there might not have been room for an overly elaborate villain plot. That's debatable. The heroes spent almost as much time fighting each other. That may have been the plot, actually.

Loki was a bit too brutish with some of his combat. I don't see him as the type to bring down helicopters with an energy weapon while riding on the back of a truck. He is the master of illusion. However, maybe his fight was just a ruse. As you see later, when he gets caught.

There was a hint of romantic subplot that may happen at some point, but there was no burden of forced romance when there are a bunch of big storylines running around.

 

So, I'm very psyched for a sequel, although I have no idea how they're going to top the villain they introduced (I saw it coming, for the record!) for the eventual part 3.

 

Why it doesn't matter if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are mutants

When Eastman and Laird created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they gave them a ridiculous origin: They were turtles that were touched by some kind of mutagen that turned them somewhat humanoid. Then a giant rat named them and raised them. It was a goofy beginning (and a Daredevil parody) that became a serious comic and then a goofy cartoon.

The mutagen in question is just some random thing: a story starter. It could have been magic. It could have been aliens. It could have been anything, because the heroes were nothing before this.

It's not like you're making Bruce Wayne be bitten by a radioactive bat. Or make Peter Parker's parents spies (grumble grumble grumble).

That said, how are they going to be named after Renaissance artists? This movie will have the problems that “Wolverine” did: They're going to have to come up with all new reasons for everything.

 

I'm not the biggest TMNT fan, but Michael Bay's announcement bodes poorly for the movie. If this is different, what else will be?

I am the biggest Transfan, but I finally said “enough” and refused to see Transformers 3. I'm sure this didn't hurt the movie's bottom line one bit. But if 100,000 fanboys don't watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and don't take their 2 kids to see it, that's $3 million in revenue. Still, maybe not enough to make a dent in a $100+ million payday, but refuse to buy the merchandise and maybe you'll send a message.

Of course, that also hurts two creators who were fortunate enough to make a living doing what they love on a property that took off as a pop culture touchstone.

I'm happy for Eastman and Laird, but sad for storytelling in general.

 

This article pretty much sums it up:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/michael-bay-signs-50m-deal-to-fuck-up-thundercats,2702/

 

 

 

How Beauty and the Beast Should Have Ended

We brought our daughter to see "Beauty and the Beast," re-released in the theater. (We saw it in 2D, however!) I got to thinking of a better fate for Gaston, the movie's villain.

He's probably one of the more personal villains in Disney movies. And his goals and the ways he goes about it are more cruel than the power-hungry villains like Aladdin's Jafar. But I was always surprised he died at the end.

What should have happened is that he falls....and lands on Lefou, the toady. Lefou is then seen as a hero in the people's eyes, and Gaston becomes his toady.

Jafar, Ursula, or Scar...they will never rest, so of course they die at the end of movies. But Gaston is the type of character that utter humiliation is worse than death.

 

 

Men In Black 3, and how to make a good parody

 

For a parody to be successful, it has to be both good and first.

The official trailer for Men In Black III (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyaFEBI_L24) went online two weeks ago. My animator sent me a link and asked what we could spoof about it. I had a script done in two days. Within two weeks of the trailer being online, my video is online (shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-x0KkLjS0)

If you search “Men In Black 3 parody” in YouTube, my video is the first to come up. And it's the only one that's really relevant.

What I'm hoping by all this is that by being first to the party, I'll get a head start on views. The script is good, and I especially love the ending. And the video is first, or at least among the first if I missed the others.

So, take a look at it, and let me know if it's successful. Thanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC-x0KkLjS0

 

Submit your music for our movies

I make a video a week. And while most of the movies have the audio taken care of already, there are some that need background music.

Basically, I feel bad using www.Incompetech.com all the time.

This video will detail my basic needs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkLn7pzqAAM

Some of my videos have received thousands of views. Wouldn't it be nice to expand your audience that much? I need free music and you need free promotion, so let's work together.

I need professional-sounding recordings in these formats: .aif, .aifc, .aiff .asf, .au, .mp2, .mp3, .mpa, .snd, .wav, and .wma.

The recordings can't be live. And they have to be something that sounds like it would be the background to a scene in a movie. It has to convey an emotion without being distracting.

In submitting work, you agree to have your work used in a video that will only appear on the Internet. You understand that you will not be compensated for the work.

I can't promise I'll use it, or even contact you, so please don't send any follow-up messages. If I don't respond, I'm too busy with real life stuff. I'll definitely respond if I'm going to use your work.

Keep in mind, most of the time I'm only going to use a shortened version of the work, so viewers wouldn't be getting the whole thing for free.

So leave a comment here, or on my video if you want to share your songs. Leave a link to your work. Also, list your website if you have one. Provide whatever contact information you want to be public. Because other people will be viewing this link or watching my video. So, even if I don't use your work, someone else might.

“It's OK to steal from the Internet,” they say

I wrote a short story for a client, and it turned out really good. Then, after all was said and done, my client mentioned he stole the idea from the Internet.

If all you need to do is right-click on something, why be original? Creativity isn't rewarded, it's just copied. People who want to copy something because they like it, but don't realize there's a value there.

There's an assumption that if it's online, it should be free. If this was the case, no one would be making any money off their creations and you'd see much less of it online.

Anything can be ripped off. That's why it's even more important to be 100 percent original. Don't fall into the easy trap of generating content mashed up from other people's ideas. You won't stand out. You'll be exactly like everyone else who is doing it.

We don't revere people like Steve Jobs because he copied other people. He got the respect he did because he created something new.

When anything can be copied off the internet the only thing I have is originality. People want original content, not the same old thing. That's why, for instance, Charlie Sheen jokes got old very quickly.

My writing might not be much, but at least it's my own.

 

Here's my YouTube channel. You'll find some bizarre but funny and very nsfw material:

 

YouTube channel

Write about poop? I have a degree, damn it!

An animator I've been working with asked me to come up with some R-rated jokes to animate. He wants to sync into the popularity that comes from Family Guy and especially Seth McFarlane's private channel.

I already created a character who plays movie-based video games and makes fun of them. So, all right. He wants adult humor. Fine. What terrible movie should become a video game?

“2 Girls, 1 Cup.”

Yes, the 4-year-old Internet meme that won't die...it just keeps on going...If you haven't watched it already, don't. Seriously. It's disgusting. This isn't reverse psychology.

So, I came up with a few jokes and wrote it. It took me an hour, probably. I figured the idea was worth an hour. I have a college degree. I've been a professional writer for about 10 years. I didn't want to spend any more time on this than I had to.

Then came the actual production. It takes a lot longer to animate, and the back-and-forth e-mails as we narrowed stuff down took quite a long time. We had to agree on character and background designs, an intro to the series, and I did the voice acting.

End result: NINE hours to create this video. And that's just my half.

So, watch the video. Let me know if it was time well spent.

 

2 Girls, 1 Cup the video game

"The Immortals" script

I had the good fortune to interview Vlas and Charley Parlapanides, screenwriters for “The Immortals,” last week in advance of their movie.

They said something that struck me, and I want to share it here. They said that in Hollywood, scriptwriting still has a meritocracy.

“If you have a good script, “ it can get made, Charley Parlapanides said.

“If you do have a big idea, they don't care who you are,” Vlas Parlapanides said.

This is wonderful news to budding screenwriters. It means that if you have a good idea, you can make it work, providing you can get it into the right hands.

More or less.

They also said that you have to work your ass off and that you usually write 5 movies before your sixth one is sold. And then, there's no guarantee it will be made into a movie.

Also, they said you are only as good as your last one. So, if it doesn't make money, no one cares.

What I Learned: It's not as much who you know. Not when it comes to this. Sure, maybe more people will look at your movie if you are famous, or have some kind of connection. But you don't have to be anyone to start.

But you have to make yourself someone to keep going.

 

 

Alice in Wonderland was disappointing

I was trying to read while my wife watched the 2010 version of “Alice in Wonderland.” I kept getting distracted away from the page by the amazing visuals. Then, I'd hear a sentence of dialog and think “God, this is stupid,” and go back to my book.

The visual effects were stunning, and I found myself checking every nook and cranny on the screen to find little details. It's a shame the same amount of care wasn't given to the script. A-list actors, top notch computer animators, and a legendary story and this is the end product?

What a waste of talent.

 

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Pouty

Superheroes are supposed to be sexy...right...?

On the cover of today's Entertainment Weekly, there was one Avenger who I didn't recognize: Mark Ruffalo as Dr. Bruce Banner.

Banner is supposed to be a 90-pound weakling, someone that bullies kick sand at before he discovers Atlas. The physicality is part of his character – the Hulk acts out the things Banner can't or won't. He wasn't lucky enough for a super soldier serum like Captain America's Steve Rogers. He goes crazy instead.

But the cover of the magazine has Ruffalo sporting this come hither pose, as cheesy as a Ben Stiller Zoolander. I had to laugh a little. I guess he needed to compete with the other hunks in the movie. (When I went to see Thor, the ticket taker said to me “Chris Hemsworth...definitely worth the price of admission.”)