The state of the union distress

***Rant Alert***

I'm not going to review Battle: Los Angeles. Firstly, J-Man has already covered everything in his posts. Secondly, I don't want to waste time writing about the movie. It's horrible. That's it. However, I want to touch on something to do with Battle: Los Angeles. The critical reviews.

Rotten Tomatoes is one of the best known websites for compiling critical reviews. Overall, it garnered a 32% score. While this is means that most critics found this movie awful, I was disturbed. 32% means 1 in 3 critics LIKED this movie. To draw a comparison, Skyline, a far superiour movie received a 16% rating. Season of the Witch, a movie I liked this year and would own, received a 5% rating. Shocked beyond even expletives, I read some of the positive reviews.

"While there's no subtlety here, this remains surprisingly gripping throughout and boasts three-dimensional characters and well executed action scenes."

"Action packed with a solid performance from Aaron Eckhart and a large dollop of patriotism."

"A sci-fi "Black Hawk Down," Jonathan Liebsman's "Battle: Los Angeles" will satisfy any genre-movie buff jonesing for this generation's "Independence Day."

"[I]'s not about aliens: it's about us. This isn't science fiction: It's a bleak fantasy about karma being a bitch. It's about collective cultural guilt. Looking at from that angle, Battle: Los Angeles is fascinating."

"It's a gritty, tension-filled story of soldiers fighting their way through extraordinary circumstances. The characters feel like real people. Their struggles seem genuine. And Los Angeles is going up in flames."

Okay, that's the more outlandish ones to me (and to be honest, I couldn't go much further than 3 or 4 pages...the positive reviews were making me sick). Most of the reviews that were positive still mention how trite the story is, how generic the characters, how ridiculous the whole movie was...but they still endorse it. Herein lies the rub.

Why, why WHY are we endorsing this garbage if we're also noting how much it sucks? "Well, the characters are ass and the storyline could be written by an extremely mentally-challenged 4 year-old and the you can't see a blessed thing in any of the actions scenes and the alien design was horrific, but still see this movie." What! Why? Why are we endorsing this stuff when we know it's garbage? Why are we telling people to pay their money to see this atrocity when we know it's bad? Because here's the thing about people in the "civilized" world. They're mostly sheep. They go where people tell them to go, they do what people tell them to do and they see what people tell them to see. They're online, they're interested in seeing a movie, they don't know what's out, they read the Battle: Los Angeles reviews, they click on the wrong one and bang! Depending on how many are going, we could see 60 bucks down the drain.

Like right now, there's this big screaming from the fanboys because Darren Arofnofsky is off The Wolverine. They wanted him to make The Wolverine, but here's the thing: there's no guarantee he would have made a good Wolverine movie and there's no saying his replacement will make a good or bad Wolverine movie (unless it's Michael Bay, in which case you would know The Wolverine will suck), but they still beat their breasts and complain. You know what? Shut up. Shut your mouths. The guys saying Battle: Los Angeles is bad, but you should still see it, or worse the guys who are saying it's good and you should see it, shut your mouths, as well. Let's do the world a service and keep all the pie-holes on the internet shut for a change, instead of leaving it open as a toilet bowl for the turds.

You see, as a film fan, I feel it necessary to try and give honest opinions. I try and tell you why I like something, why I don't like something. Unfortunately, there's this cacophony of screaming from the cheap-seats, 15 year-old dateless wonders locked in their rooms and they're all posting on the JoBlo/Ain't It Cool/Latino Review/Arrow In the Head forums, just filling up the internet with all this garbage, all these critics who, I mean if you love Battle LA, you're either being paid or on drugs or something, especially if you're a film critic for crying out loud, whatever happened to liking good films? I mean demanding we get good films with solid storylines, great characters, action we can SEE, imaginative action choregraphy, worlds of the imagination, what happened to that? Why are we getting critics endorsing Battle LA? Why are the fanboys running things and being a-holes about it?

Because they're the ones posting on the blogs and the forums. They're the ones people are listening to. Their the audience that the studios are catering their films to. Never mind they don't really care about the films and either won't support them or will, but give you ridiculous reasons why they liked the films. Never mind that in the end, all these guys' opinions aren't worth a shovel of spit in a drainage pipe. They're the ones with the voices and they're the ones with the loud opinions.

Well, no more. This is The Fantom Zone and at least here, we won't get any of that stupidity. At least here, the fanboys and the idiot critics aren't welcome. The state of the union is sad indeed, but as long as this blog exists, there will be one sane voice on the internet. So to all the little girl fanboys who refused to support Scott Pilgrim and are crying that Aronofsky is off The Wolverine and to all the film critics who endorsed that steaming pile of donkey dung called Battle Los Angeles, just be warned that I'm here, in the dark, hating your guts and hoping for the day that someone will kick all your candy asses.

- Stephenstein