Riddick - Take my $5 and leave me alone!

It's a big, normal world out there and we nerds need to stick together, support each other.

Despite dire reviews, I determined to support a fellow nerd and paid to watch Riddick.

  

For those of you who don't know, Vin Diesel has played D&D for years and wrote the forward to "30 Years of Adventure:  A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons".

Enough history - To the review!

Riddick is betrayed by the Necromongers (remember Chronicles of Riddick?  Yeah, the death cult) and left for dead on a desert planet.  After setting his broken ankles, Riddick sets off across the planet with his pet hyena-dog and finds an abandoned station.  He triggers a beacon which reports he's a dangerous criminal and summons two ships.  One is filled with rag-tag mercenaries; the other with a militarish group of bounty hunters.

The movie quickly descends into a testosterone fest as the mercenaries and bounty hunters jockey for position.  Riddick picks them off and peeps on topless Dahl (Starbuck from BSG) while she bathes.

Real classy, Riddick!

As epic rain begins armless dinosaur creatures with venomous stingers in their tails emerge from their dormant state and attack the station.  Queue the Pitch Black 2 sequences.  Survivors race across monster saturated terrain to retrieve fuel cells so they can escape the planet.

In the end, Dahl, who throughout the movie has been a ball-busting lesbian, asks Riddick to have relations with her.  Wait.  What?

Apparently, the writer(s) of Riddick think the cure for lesbianism is to throw a testosterone fueled man-thug at the lesbian.  Surely she'll see the error of her ways if confronted with enough juvenile come-ons and boorish leering.

The end basically turns Dahl into a mere object of contention between rutting males, to be awarded to the winner.  Man fights, wins, has woman.  What do you mean, she might have her own thoughts and feelings?  

I am disappointed in Vin, in the movie and most especially in Katee Sackhoff for playing such a shallow, stereotyped space bimbo.  

What would Starbuck do?

Back off or I'll kick your @$$!

A for Effort - Iron Man 3 tips his helmet to women

The summer blockbuster season is upon us and we open with the return of our beloved Tony Stark, the Iron Man.

Overall, Iron Man 3 lived up to my expectations of a comic book movie, especially one produced by Disney.  The plot is fairly simple:  Disillusioned genius scientist puts his skills on the free market and turns to evil.  Our hero, aided by his sometimes sidekick, Col. Rhodes, his steady girlfriend, Pepper Potts and a plucky kid with a knack for causing panic attacks, must face his own PTSD demons while battling the growing threat posed by the Mandarin, played quite ably by Sir Kingsley.

The story picks up after the events of the Avengers and Tony is having problems sleeping due to the the trauma of learning both aliens and Norse gods exists.  Strangely, the US is still more concerned about religiously motivated terrorism than they are about OMG ALIENS and GODS!  Anyway...

Mr. Bad Guy Pants has recruited wounded vets and using an experiment process created by Tony's one-night-stand Maya, turns them into super soldiers.  Queue the final showdown - Tony, Rhodes and Potts vs. an army of super soldiers and Killian.

This movie takes a few faltering steps away from the comic cliches in its treatment of three female characters.  While none are the main movers and shakers, they have their own moments to shine.  Sadly, these are almost immediately overshadowed by the boys.  When Maya takes a stand, demonstrating her moral courage, she's shot.  When Brandt fights Tony, she's blown up.  When Pepper saves Tony and herself from Killian, she turns right back into the uncertain girl, full of quivering pleas for comfort "Am I going to be alright?", thus putting a lie to her single moment of badassery.

I'm encouraged that scriptwriters and movie producers are trying to give their females roles outside of the classic damsel in distress or femme fetal.  I'm looking forward to more efforts and a day when women feel just as included at a Marvel movie as men do.