Repo Men: Part 2

We left our hero last time in mid-epiphany, complete with the dundun-DUNDUN-dundun-DUNDUN cello music from every superhero movie. Let's see what kind of antics his new-found junkie-girl rescuing morals get him into.

Back in the locker room at Evil Organ Inc., Schreiber, at his most typical, gives Law's Recall Notice to Whitaker, who politely declines. Schreiber then offers the ticket to the other repo men who, since they have no lines in the script, look away embarrassed.

Cut to the slums, where Law and his girlfriend (I'm almost certain her character hasn't been given a name yet,) are digging through other peoples' refuse for valuables to store in a stolen shopping cart. Singer Girl, apparently done with drugs forever since, as any reformed drug addict will tell you, the only way to recover from the self-destructive cycle of addiction is to be abducted and kept against one's will by a violent psychopath. She also unearths the old-fashioned typewriter we saw Jason Sta...uh, Jude Law pecking out his voice over's on at the beginning of the film.

At this point Law, being legally retarded, asks in open wonderment how Singer Girl keeps track of her many organ replacements. It would seem remembering the names of almost a dozen different body parts is an incomprehensible feat of intellectual prowess to Law. Singer Girl then mumbles at length which, combined with her thick accent made it impossible for me to understand whatever plot points she brought up. But knowing the Director I feel confident that they will be explained several times over the next couple of minutes.

Oh. Her lips are not robots. Awwwww. Cue obligatory soft-core bag lady porn.

In the next scene Law's voice over explains that what he's been writing is a cautionary tale to keep others from making the same mistakes that he has. I would have thought merely posting a bulletin about never working with any of these people would have been a lot more effective and less embarrassing. Law then watches several school girls playing jump rope through his binoculars, since child voyeurism had yet to be checked off of Sapochnik's list of "Evil Shit To Put In Movie."

Singer Girl then uses her robot ears to detect the approaching repo man Landlord (not sure if that's his name or Law's attempt at humor, but he's the even more retarded repo man from the beginning of the film,) in time for them to make a daring escape. It would seem her unintelligible monologue earlier was explaining that she was the 6 Million Dollar Man.

After setting up a not very cunning or believable pitfall trap (the new repo man, after using his scanner gun to find Law from a block away, but somehow failing to detect the Robo-Junkie hiding in the same room, then gives up a tactical advantage by holstering his stun gun to attack Law with a machete,) the floor collapses further revealing that the Love Interest's name is Beth. Law then drops his typewriter on Landlord's skull.

In a freshly stolen Volkswagon, Beth repairs her damaged knee with a home surgery/electricians tool bag she had been hiding somewhere. Which is weird, since Law hadn't noticed it even though he carried her unconscious body to the stolen SUV.

Arriving in the parking garage, we find the Company's Lung Mascot on a cigarette break. The Director, realizing this is far too subtle and clever for anyone but him to notice, has Law point out the irony.

Law, disguised as a lung, although I don't think the audience is supposed to know that, but it's impossible not to, sneaks into the building where he is immediately set upon by the two most irritating children in the history of film (HI LARRY!!!! HI LARRY!!! HI LARRRY!!!! HI LARRY!!!!) He then has an irritating and pointless "I'll go this way, no, I'll go this way," collision with Whitaker, then goes to Schreiber's office and punches him a lot.

Surprise! The lung was really Law in disguise!

Law then pulls out the stun gun he so seriously and symbolically walked away from earlier and trains it on Schreiber. 'Witty' banter ensues, then Law tosses Schreiber a tattooed lump of skin from Landlord, ending their jovial reunion.

Schreiber informs Law that it's impossible to take Law's heart out of the system since (Dun Dun DUUUUuuuunnnn,) he knows about Law's clumsy attempt to scratch off the bar codes and all organs now have to be sent back to the Corporate Office instead of tossed in a bin in the locker room. Management, amirite? Then Schreiber, being Schreiber, tries to up-sell Law, who tazers Schreiber and steals some paperwork and probably the jamming devices from earlier.

Back in the parking garage Law informs Beth that they're leaving for Kenya, South America, which I guess is a place in the future. Beth points out that trying to get on a plane would be a titanically stupid idea. Law reveals (surprise!) the jamming devices.

After another Volkswagon commercial, Schreiber orders Whitaker to personally take out Law. The Volkswagon Touareg, by the way, got fourth billing in this movie.

At the airport, which is exactly the same as airports not in the future, Law and Beth proceed to behave as suspiciously as humanly possible. Or robotically possible, in Beth's case. Somehow this fails to work and Law has to kill everyone with his usual combination of Jason Statham-y swagger and inventive gleeful sadism.

Whitaker appears at the airport and seems genuinely surprised to see Law there. Which means Whitaker must have been at the airport for some mysterious, unrelated reason that didn't involve his job or getting on a plane. My guess is anonymous gay sex in the bathroom with someone he met on Craigslist.

Escaping back to the slums, Beth informs Law that, since his stupid-ass plan accomplished nothing except almost getting them killed repeatedly, they were going to a 'Vulture' that she knew. "Not a scavenger?!" exclaims Law, providing no clarification. It is made clear that neither of them is happy about having to do this, but it is also clear that repeatedly stabbing her own knee with a filthy surgical tool didn't fix Beth's knee as nearly well as she claimed it had.

The Vulture is John Leguizamo!!! He is so good! Why does he keep signing on for terrible movies like this?! I would like to point out that according to the Internet Movie Database, Leguizamo's role in this film was uncredited, placing him alongside Dancing Girl #2, Hot Commercial Girl and Hot Girlfriend on the shockingly short list of people that knew what a career-killingly awful movie this was.

After some brief half-in-Spanish tough guy dialogue, Leguizamo uses a 'universal remote' to control Beth's voice box. The universal remote, for some reason, is an antique television remote from the 60's with four buttons on it. Leguizamo then describes an impossible amount of sciency things that can be done with it. He then reveals himself to be (spit-take,) Beth's drug dealer. He then starts dancing. There is no reason for this. There's no reason for any of this. There's just, there's no God anymore. Just this, forever.

Leguizamo and Law then get into an ideological debate straight out of 4th grade while Beth slowly bleeds to death. Leguizamo informs Beth that he won't help her for unclear reasons and that she should seek the help of yet another previously unmentioned character that had, I guess, tried to kill her at some point.

Flash cut to a different shit hole apartment/operating room, this one containing several Asian stereotypes, in a nice break from the Mexican machismo stereotypes of the last scene. Beth mumbles out a list of her implants again while a 9 year old girl performs very disgusting surgery on Beth.

Later, in an alley, Beth's super-robot-ears stop working long enough for Law to hear the ping of the price guns first. This leads quickly to Leguizamo's gutted carcass. Leguizamo's universal remote activates a recording of the last things Leguizamo said, which was that he was killed by repo men. Whitaker then comes out of the closet. Unfortunately not in a dramatic "I've always loved you Jude Law," way, but in an "I was just standing over here,' way. He then gives no real explanation on how he tracked them to Leguizamo's apartment, since that would have required Whitaker to be Professor X. Or, you know, have access to a tracking device, which haven't been invented.

Whitaker, seething with jealousy over Law's feeling's for Beth, promises Law that he can make things right with Schreiber if Law returns with Whitaker. Law refuses, being in wuuuuv, and Whitaker calls him a pussy. The word 'pussy' makes Whitaker visibly uncomfortable. Whitaker also reveals that it was him that sabotaged Law's defibrillator unit in a cunning plot from the Psychotic Girlfriend's Handbook to keep Law from leaving him for a different position.

Law loses the ensuing fistfight badly, although he does take Terminator levels of abuse from the fight. In fact, the entire punch up was lifted almost frame for frame from the Terminator 3 bathroom fight.

Through a wall,

Into a sink,

Onto a catwalk.

At this point Law and Whitaker start laughing for some reason, Whitaker offers Law his hand, Law stabs Whitaker in the leg, and Whitaker smashes Law's skull in.

Law's life, or at least those parts of his life that had already been filmed, flashes before his eyes, along with scenes from the M.5 Neural Net commercial and computery noises. I have no idea what this could entail for our hero.

Fading back into the squatter's nest and totally not a computer generated hallucination of the squatter's nest courtesy of the M.5 Neural Net, Law is, amazingly, still alive, although Whitaker is mysteriously dead. The other denizens begin screaming "Raid!" and leaving en masse, since two repo men are not enough to trigger the squatters' flight or fight instinct, but three causes a full-scale panic.

In another action scene derivative of every action movie ever, our hero's manage to escape by pure dumb luck, employing the same running away strategy as everyone else and accidentally not being shot. They are then yanked into a Rebel Hideout, where Law is not summarily executed by dint of this entire sequence taking place in his damaged imagination.

Just to make sure all moves are telegraphed, the possibly Rebel Leader even says "Welcome to your world, Repo Man," completely out of context with anything else in the scene. Get it? He's in a simulation! Bet you won't see that coming!

Law, awakening to a hanger full of butchered corpses, including the nine year old surgeon, since the audience had so much emotionally invested in her after her two lines and 45 seconds of screen time. Law responds to this by going out into a field while Beth asks him to come back inside with the many, many mutilated corpses. Law, stating the hopelessness of their situation, informs Beth that he is going to finish this.

In a subway station, Law explains his plan to go behind the Pink Door at the Corporate Office and steal Project Mayhem from Fight Club. Law's wife and son magically appear. Law's wife, in mid-bitch, is tazered in the back by Law's son, himself an aspiring gleeful sadism expert. Law gives his Cautionary Tale to his son, tells him he loves him, and flees, leaving his child alone on a subway at night. There is also a very subtle billboard behind the subway car advertising the M.5 Neural Net.

After our hero's somehow bypass the alarm on Schreiber's car, break into it, rearm the alarm and hide in the backseat, Schreiber gets in his car and is promptly tazered.

Law then begins his assault on the Corporate Office in what can best be described as a mixture of terrible jokes and Cannibal Corpse album cover. Four long, long minutes into this Repo Men remembers it hasn't stolen any ideas from better movies in almost four minutes, and lifts the claw-hammer sequence from Oldboy, replacing the claw-hammer with daggers, a hacksaw and (in a fit of creative bankruptcy,) a ball-peen hammer, the seasoned gang members were replaced with white collar office workers. Somehow this fails to be as viscerally satisfying or tastefully done as Oldboy. I would like to remind everyone that Oldboy was a movie almost exclusively about blood-soaked revenge and incest.

Whitaker and Schreiber magically reappear again, just as Law and Beth break into the Pink Room, where they realize they'll have to manually scan their robo-organs into the machine.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that anyone reading this has plans to eat at some point in the future, so I won't go into detail about the climax of the movie, but phrases like 'hardcore snuff film,' 'drug-addled knife rape,' and 'wound-fucking,' would be woefully inadequate.

Finally this madness ends with, unsurprisingly, an explosion set to idiosyncratic music.

Cut to Law, Beth and Whitaker vacationing on the island from the M.5 Neural Net commercial where, HOLY SHIT Law has been in the M.5 Neural Net since Whitaker brained him back at the squatter's nest.

So, having resolved nothing, learned no lessons, served no purpose, or made any meaningful impact:

THE END 

 

Repo Men: Not the Good One

The good ones being, of course, 1984's Repo Man and 2008's Repo: The Genetic Opera. Those are excellent and, more importantly, more important films than 2010's Repo Men, also known by it's working title of Sodomized Stab Wound: A Love Story.

Repo Man was important because it was the first time the sub-culture of American Punk Rock had been portrayed on film in a way that wasn't silly, misinformed, demonized or clueless. Plus it had Charlie Sheen's brother and Harry Dean Stanton as a paranoid meth addict.

Repo: The Genetic Opera was a musical that some-fucking-how is okay for heterosexual guys to like. It's important because it was a 'goth' movie that, unlike every single other 'goth' movie ever made, didn't make the 'goth' sub-culture seem like the absolute bottomest of bottom rungs in any social hierarchy. For the record: 'goth' is the absolute bottomest of bottom rungs in any social hierarchy, despite their women being unfairly hot.

I apologize for beginning with a detour, but it's important for me to remember that good movies do get made on occasion. And also if you wound up here wondering if Repo Men is a good movie, you now have two much better movies to watch instead. Also and also the next time one of my friends watches a piece of shit like Repo Men and then recommends it to a self-diagnosed movie snob like me, I can have them read this, and ask them if they're okay with me sorta hating them for a while.

Before I begin: there is one single change that could have been made to this film that would have raised it from 'cataclysmic failure' to 'abysmal failure.' Happily, this is a change that can be made yourself. If for whatever reason you hate yourself and have your heart set on watching Repo Men, tell yourself the following before beginning the film: Forest Whitaker is a self-loathing closeted gay with a man crush on Jude Law. The whole fucking fiasco makes marginally more sense with this in mind.

At :30-:31 we see the most wholesome character in the film.

Now, on with the tide of spoilers!

The film begins with a sound-byte montage of news reporters screaming about economic collapse and war and recession and everyone being poor. That the director chose this very obvious 'subtle' jab at the current ongoing everything crisis to open his film seems like a bold and daring statement. Obviously the director believes he knows something about economics, government, business, military conflict and the alleviation of global human misery. Realizing, perhaps through innate wizardry, that this titanically pompous introduction is in a movie that managed to gross negative 15,000,000 dollars leads me to the conclusion that the director, Miguel Sapochnik, will be a member of the United States Congress in the near future.

In the first scene we see topless Jude Law (llllllllllllladies...) waxing poetic about Schrodinger's Cat. Unfortunately, he also waxes retardedly wrong about it. Does Jude Law think Schrodinger's Cat was an actual, literal cat in an actual experiment involving cat murder? Schrodinger's Cat was an illustration of a physics idea.

Jude Law then states that he's been obsessed with this thought experiment for years and still doesn't understand it. Since he still manages to be this fucking wrong about it that can mean only one thing: Jude Law's character is hopelessly damaged. He then resolves this internal quandary by removing a semi-conscious man's robo-liver while listening to salsa music on his iPod. To be fair, he did ask the guy if he wanted an ambulance. Since he's too brain damaged to know better he asked the guy after tazering him. Jesus, this is going to be a long fucking movie.

Cut to Jude Law driving a Volkswagon and describing his vocation to the audience. Well, to those members of the audience too cognitively challenged to make the connection between the title "Repo Men" and the previous scene of Jude Law repossessing an artificial organ. Repo Men's entire target demographic, in other words.

5 minutes in we roll credits. Last chance to take the film back to the rental place to try to talk them into store credit. No? Well, here's more fictional news about how bad things are on Jude Law's alarm clock that is also a television. Yeah, it looks fucking rough.

Family bullshit. Jude Law's married to a woman that resents him, together they have a son that will probably redeem Jude Law's humanity in a not-very-believable way later. Off to work.

After tazering and (presumably,) butchering to death a couple of people we're treated to more of Law's delightful voice over. All the owners of the organs he repossesses die, apparently. This segues into a tour of the office with the corporate commercials playing in the background. Thanks, Mr. Director. I totally never would have have imagined that a cutthroat multi-gazillion dollar industry could be cunning enough to hide behind the facade of a reputable and compassionate business and yeah, I get it. It's just like banks with home loans. Because banks are evil. Got it. Thank you.

Note to Hollywood: If you're going to cast Liev Schreiber in your movie and you want to create any kind of mystery or suspense, then don't cast him as the bad guy. He only has one gear: underhanded.

Cue witty office banter between Law, another repo man more obviously damaged than Law and Screiber being fucking underhanded while bags of robot gore are scanned into a computer. The love interest is then introduced via Whitaker's playful and totally not phallic stun-gunning of Law. According to the montage, Whitaker's character has been expressing his unresolved romantic feelings towards Law via violence for decades, it would seem. It also raises the question of why Law has made absolutely no effort to suppress his British accent since, according to the narrative, he's been in America since early childhood.

Law and Whitaker then stop at Law's horrible, nagging bitch of a wife's work to agree with her that she is, indeed, a horrible, nagging bitch. Whitaker talks about Law's testicles.

A commercial for a virtual reality spa they totally didn't steal from Total Recall plays on a blimp. I'm absolutely certain that the M.5 Neural Net will bear no further relevance to the plot. The soundtrack then reminds the audience that it is still 80 times better than anything else in the movie while Whitaker talks Law out of transferring to the 'not-butchering' department where, presumably, Law would meet a new creepy, violent best friend leaving Whitaker to die alone in his recliner, suffering a heart attack while jacking off to old MMA fights.

At a bar, after joking about organ harvesting their grandparents, Law is obviously lovestruck by a not very attractive or good singer. Whitaker, cursing his cowardice at his inability to tell Law his true feelings leaves to punch things. The singer, having attempted to croon "Cry Me a River" while making moon eyes at Law, will probably have no further bearing on the plot.

Returning home to his cold, vacant wife, Law attempts to instigate some romance while "Cry Me a River" plays on the radio. It's unclear whether this is to illustrate that Law is thinking of the sickly-looking singer from the dive bar, or that Law's wife knows he was out all night boozing and making eyes at the sickly bar singer, or if, as previously established by all parties, she's just a horrible, nagging bitch. Either way, Law's wife excuses herself to restock her vagina with ice cubes and centipedes.

Full of liquor and sexual frustration, Law wanders into his son's room to have a forced, clumsy dialogue drawing forced, clumsy analogies between the barbarism of the Roman Empire and the barbarism of American capitalism.

This movie is very, very bad at having a liberal agenda.

Cut to a happy barbeque with Whitaker, Law, various terrifying repo men and Law's wife and child. Whitaker excuses himself to butcher someone in Law's driveway. When Law's wife sees this her reaction is (for once justifiably,) horribly bitchy. Law's son films this. Wife and son leave, much to Law's puzzlement, him not being an intellectual giant and all.

Later, while driving around at night looking for past-due kidneys, Whitaker describes the M.5 Neural Net in greater detail, in case the audience missed the subtly of the previous attempt at heavy-handed foreshadowing.

Finding a cargo ship full of overdue organs using what appears to be an advanced supermarket scanner, Whitaker makes a valid point, saying "Wait a minute! Do we not have GPS in the future?" Seriously, if they're selling these organs for $750,000 at 20% interest you'd think adding a tracking device would be a pretty logical move. I mean, I can touch like 3 things, right now, with tracking devices, and I don't even live in a world with robot spleens or VR vacation packages.

Admittedly, this would hamstring the premise for the entire movie, but this is a fucking unrelentingly terrible movie. Check it out: Organ hackers find a way to bypass the security on artificial organs, leading to widespread black market organ dealing, costing the well-connected companies that manufacture them billions. Law and Whitaker are two good cops trying to bring down the organ pirates while wrestling with the notion that they may really be on the wrong side. As Law and Whitaker realize they have far more in common with the people struggling to survive in a world gamed against them than they do with the faceless corporations at the end of their leash they set out to bring down the system. Cue Whitaker's noble sacrifice so that Law and the plucky and strong-willed female lead can go on to complete the mission, etc.

That took like 2 minutes to come up with and A) doesn't involve the constant butchering of civilians to maintain the viewer's interest, B) is just as relevant with current real world events (piracy, intellectual property, consumer rights, health insurance, the systemic corruption of capitalism and so on,) C) doesn't require both male leads to be impossibly psychotic, and D) isn't fucking stupid. Back to the film.

After Rambo-ing up, L and W enter the ship and take down whoever these people are utilizing tazer guns, pulse grenades, knives, pipes and gleeful sadism. Mostly gleeful sadism. Really can't stress that enough.

Returning to Schreiber's Evil Business Office, our heroes report their glorious capture of 32.5 organs and a couple of price gun jammers that use made up science. All dialogue pauses while Schreiber very obviously hides the jamming devices among his personal belongings. He then offers Law and Whitaker the opportunity to do this 'professionally,' which would seem to imply an upgrade from 'callous professional murderer' to 'callous professional whatever's between murderer and genocidal madman.' Before Law can ask for a desk job instead Whitaker, terrified of losing contact with his unrequited love, tells Schreiber to keep them on the regular surprise surgery roster. Law looks conflicted about this development but keeps his mouth shut.

Whitaker then almost really tells Law his true feelings, but loses his nerve at the last second and begins babbling about 'rules and responsibilities,' while slowly reverting to his comical 'Macho guy who is not gay' defense mechanism. The entire undercurrent of Whitaker's performance is screaming "I love you, Jude Law! Put your dick in me!"

Law, realizing he hadn't talked down to the audience in several minutes treats us to another voice-over, in which he tells the audience that what he's doing in this scene is, swear to god, the thing he just talked about doing at the end of the last scene. At this point even I have difficulty believing that the people this was aimed at exist anywhere outside of the director's bloated sense of superiority, as they would have to have an attention span of less than one second and an inability to hold memory for more than five.

Anyway, Law is about to kill his last, uh, client, I guess, who is named T-Bone. Law claims to have been listening to T-Bone's music since high school. Since T-Bone, played by RZA, seems to be about the same age as Law, this creates the kind of paradox that would be the perfect opportunity to talk about Schrodinger's cat. They do not talk about Schrodinger's Cat. RZA explains music production to Law. Law manages to remember enough of his training to ask RZA if he would like an ambulance before stun-gunning and butchering him for once. RZA does a lot of coke. I think it's coke. It's red though. Obviously a drug, and no doubt the reason for the delinquency on his payments.It's almost a touching scene if you happened to be raised in a POW camp and think intimacy is when the guard tells you he pissed in your food before you eat it.

After exploding himself with his defibrillator unit, Law explains, via voice-overed flashback, how and when he had been rendered unconscious during his life. The first time was in the standard army test that involves being hit in the face with a baseball bat. Turns out Law has a "very small brain." Which explains, well, everything about his character. This led to him being put in a tank with Forest Whitaker, since there's only like 20 or 30 people in the military and he was bound to be deployed with his childhood best friend/worst enemy/gay lover.

Cut to a strip club after the war. Law and Whitaker are attacking the patrons with their trademark gleeful sadism when one of the patrons renders Law unconscious again. This brings us to his current KO at the hands of his own medical equipment.

Fade into a scene of Law regaining consciousness at the hospital with Schreiber looking underhanded and Whitaker looking like a gay guy trying really hard not to look like a gay guy. Whitaker points out that, even though Law's horrible wife isn't there, Whitaker would love to change Law's diaper.

To Law and absolutely no one else's surprise Law has been given an external robot heart, which will soon be switched with an internal robot heart once Law signs his soul away. Law freaks out, Schreiber gives Law the underhanded party line, because, y'know, evil business. Law pulls the cords to the external heart out and walks quite a long way considering there is absolutely nothing keeping his blood flowing at this point.

Returning home from the hospital, Law finds that his horrible, nagging bitch of a wife has packed his bags, changed the locks, and slams the door on Law's face when he asks to see his son. This is done to re-establish the Director's philosophy of 'A wink may be as good as a nudge, so why not emphasize every single point with a jackhammer?'

Law, of course, goes to crash at Whitaker's place, Whitaker being the only human outside of Law's wife and child that Law has ever had any kind of interpersonal relationship with since birth that didn't exclusively involve killing people for money.  Whitaker, as one would expect, is both kinds of gay about Law sleeping under the same roof as him. Whitaker covers by talking about sports and hot Chinese women that are coming over to, uh, do sex with them. Yeah, they're gonna, shoot milk at us out of their bosoms, and uh, giggle when we take our pants off. Yes, dog, they are some fine looking 'harlots,' and it is going to be 'hot.' They're gonna, like, shave their legs and put on make up. And we'll be watching 'sports.' Because we're men. We're gonna have so much heterosexual sex with these 'hoochies,' that we'll run out of Astroglide. I mean condoms. Because I'm all about doing sex with women, dog. We should practice before they get here. Take your pants off, dog.

Cut to Law's Welcome Back party at the office. There is a stripper. She gives him the pink slip for his new heart. That is the entire scene.

Cut to Law breaking into a house for organ harvesting purposes. After rendering the debtor unconscious Law experiences a panic attack at the prospect of performing surgery.

Later, at the bar, as the repo men exchange war stories Law's voice over explains to the viewer that what we just saw was him developing a conscience.

Later, on the porch of his estranged family's house, Law is ignored by his wife, says hi to and hugs his child and has the door slammed in his face, again, by his horrible one-dimensional stereotype of a wife. He convinces his wife to open the door, but instead of talking, she hands him a Past Due notice. Before this scene even ends, Whitaker's voice from the next scene begins by explaining that Law never turned in the pink slip from the guy he didn't murder before. Whitaker then does all of Law's justification and rationalization for him as they share an intimate dinner and a bottle of red wine.

inter-cutting scenes of Law being terrible at a sales job, possibly due to either his complete lack of non-violent people skills or his tiny brain, Law explains to Whitaker that he's fallen behind on his payments and needs to make some money. Since the Past Due notice was given to him almost 20 seconds ago I assume this is to remind the audience that it happened and to explain what Past Due means. Or maybe the Director just doesn't think film-goers can read.

This is about the point in the film where everyone involved in its making officially stopped pretending to give a shit. First of all, they commit the cardinal sin of reminding the audience that much better films exist by showing a scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. I'm sure you know which scene. Second, Law states that if he doesn't come up with some money soon he'll be put on the 'to kill' list.

Okay, I understand that this is a science fiction movie set in a dystopian future. But no amount of 'it's fiction' can explain this set up. If the company sics a repo man on Law then it's at best even odds that Law kills his assassin. Since Law's supposed to be one of the best the odds are probably way worse than that. So the company will probably lose at least two repo men to reclaim one robot heart. Since the reclaimed organs are kept in the repo mens' locker room, they must not cost that much for the company to make. If you think about it, and I can't imagine anyone that saw this movie on purpose did, these repo men can't be cheap for the company. First of all, not many people are cut out for the lifestyle of human jackal. I mean, I don't think I personally know anyone that would, on command, kill a stranger, friend or family member because their boss told them too. On top of that they would have to be intelligent enough to perform surveillance, breaking and entering, detective work and field surgery. They would also have to be healthy enough to best the vast majority of people in all forms of combat.

What I'm saying is, the job requirements for being a repo man are so impossibly varied and specific that finding a good one would be next to impossible, and training one would take years and cost a small fortune. And we're expected to believe that this company will risk sacrificing as many as it takes to reclaim an artificial heart that they're just going to dump in a bin next to someone's dirty towel? When the logical solution would be to force the delinquent repo man into indentured servitude for the rest of his life?

On top of all of that, since the repo men seem to have a high level of security clearance (they barge into Schreiber's office whenever they want, for example,) that would automatically be an unacceptable security risk. A ruthless, heavily armed, well-trained, intelligent, remorseless and experienced professional hitman that you want dead is the absolute last person you would want having a high-level security pass and working knowledge of your operation. Who the fuck wrote this shit? Back to the movie.

Whitaker, tired of watching his possibly-lover fuck everything up by not killing anyone, takes Law to the slums to go on a surgery spree. Whitaker, after a brief tazer rampage, mama bears a couple of delinquents over to Law and pleads, teary-eyed, that Law please just get over this hump and kill these people. As fucked up as that last sentence is, it still does no justice to the level of fucked up in the movie. While wrestling with his inner demons Law is (understandably and deservedly,) beaten to shit by a group of transients. Law's voice over, which is becoming more and more of a blatant rip-off of Jason Statham's from "Snatch," reminds us that this is KO number four.

Immediately after waking up, Law walks twenty feet and finds none other than the singer from the bar, strung out on a pile of garbage, singing to herself. Whatever drug brought RZA down is at work here, I guess, since her teeth are stained red.

In a romantic scene filtered through the director's quirky view of reality, Law takes the singer to the nearest No Tell Hotel to kick, complete with seizures and vomiting. True love.

In a twist that should be familiar to anyone that's ever seen a movie or television show or read a book or heard a story before, it turns out that the singing Cu (or Q or Queue or whatever the drug is,) Junkie is 90% overdue robot. Law's voice over informs us that he interviewed a serial killer once. The why and when and who aren't explained, but he did use the experience to inform the audience that serial killing also works in reverse. Which I think means once you meet someone and don't kill them, then it will be easier to refrain from killing the next person you meet. The monologue seems to think this is some sort of abnormal state for a person to be in.

Returning from the store to the hotel, the junkie singer promptly does her level best to beat the holy shit out of Law for no apparent reason other than her script telling her to. Since Law is in wuuuuuv he's okay with this. I would like to point out that Law still has not had a single conversation with this character.

While using his security clearance to break into the Organ Warehouse to perform some shady looking tampering on a couple of robot organs Law's voice over starts talking about Schrodinger's cat again, and manages, somehow, to be even more wrong in an even insaner way than last time. Whitaker, of course, catches Law doing whatever it is he's supposed to be doing with the organs.

The Director uses this opportunity to allow Whitaker some of what he probably thinks is 'character development.' Whitaker explains that his uncle was a bank robber until he got caught after he went soft and was off of his game, Whitaker almost cries, Law symbolically lays down his tazer gun, they almost kiss, scene ends.

After breaking into his own house to tell his son goodbye, Law returns to the hotel to collect his violent, homeless drug addict soul mate only to find out that she thinks she can do fine on her own. Not really surprising since she, you know, had done fine until he came along. She changes her mind when she learns that he had cleared the recall notices on half of her dozen parts and none of his one and she instantly falls in love with his selflessness. He then lights his Volkswagon on fire so that he and the singer can look serious while being lit by the flames. That is the only reason they do this, since they immediately travel further into the functionally lawless and unregulated maze of the slums on foot.

After finding a suitable squat, Law's voice over reminds the audience that he has an artificial heart and she has an artificial 'everything else,' although if she was 99% Terminator she would be the Terminator that the other Terminator's would pick on and make fun of for being frail, slow and useless. Law's voice over then comes to the obvious co-dependent's conclusion that this means they must be two parts of one whole, verifying that she is, indeed, the shoehorned-in love interest, despite her having only half a dozen lines and five minutes of screen time at the mid-point of the film.

Next Time: The Second Half of This Awful, Awful Movie's Less Awful Synopsis

When Marios Attack! (part 2)

Last time on When Marios Attack, Alicia revealed that Alex was secretly her brother the whole time, and not her son as everyone suspected. Governor Flamberge announced his retirement from illegal pit fighting, and Crystal was caught using Kristal's razor, to the delight and "OH NO SHE DI-INT!!!" of all involved. This week...

Bikinis Turn on Boobs 


In 2003 Tecmo, makers of such classics as Tecmo Super Baseball, Tecmo World Cup '90 and Tecmo World Cup '93 finally happened upon the mystical secret to turning their generic, poorly made sports games into generic, poorly made sports games that people would buy as if they were gigantic titty simulators. The secret, it turns out, was to add a gigantic titty simulator. And so Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball became a thing, years after the idiotic Xtreme Sportz fad even qualified as an old joke.

And that was that, bar the predictably obligatory Christian-panic-media-grab that always erupts whenever games notice that girls are shaped differently than guys and have to pee sitting down so that their girl-penises don't fall out. At least until years later when Tecmo, during a rare break between releasing samey sports games and  jacking off to some of the unsexiest, terriblest porn ever conceived by man, noticed that the internet was a thing that allowed people to do things.

Warning: Contains no Volleyball. Only horror and boner repellant.

What had happened was this: someone that knew how to do things on computers noticed that those girls up there don't have a lot of clothes on. This led to a patch being made for the game that allowed those girls to be played with, get this, no clothes at all! It was such a shocking and unforeseen turn of events that it is a testament to Tecmo's fortitude that they aren't still, to this day, caught in a perpetual spit-take upon learning of this.

After mustering their legal department, amid many grumbled curses of "why the fuck didn't we think of that?" Tecmo filed a lawsuit against the administrators of Ninjahacker.net as well as starting a manhunt to round up all alleged offenders. Tecmo claimed that "On behalf of the game industry, the gamers and all future innovations in gaming, the protection of intellectual property is a serious issue that affects everyone in the game industry, and can no longer be ignored," and took it into their own sticky, sticky hands to do something about it. Since that quote from Tecmo's General Manager contained no emoticons to denote that he was being silly or sarcastic, I assume he thinks people were meant to take it seriously.

(As an aside, the domain ninjahacker.net is available and quite easily the best possible website name for organizing a silent army of mystery and nunchucks.)

There are several reasons that Tecmo is acting like an omnipotent internet troll here. And believe me, I know internet troll. Beyond the whole "modders gonna mod, hackers gonna hack" aspect, the whole thing is absolutely rancid with jealous hypocrisy. DoAXVB was very, very obviously attempting to pander to a certain demographic and also very, very obviously attempting to not appear to be pandering. What the ninjahacker patch did was give players what they wanted and made a very simple, valid point: "who gives a shit? Guys like boobs. We gave them boobs. Your behavior is only weird because you're hiding behind bullshit justifications and the pretense of morality." 

There's nothing inherently wrong with pandering. Pandering works. You see it every day on your TV and hear it on the radio. Every internet or magazine ad, every commercial and film trailer panders. The patch only highlighted the fact that if Tecmo hadn't been trying to play the 'moral' card and included a nude option as a hidden code or something they may have retained some dignity. Since we already know they're a bunch of amoral sexual degenerates the press release of "We are shocked that something like this made it into the finished game," would come as a shock to no one.

Another reason Tecmo takes the gold for Tecmo Super Troll '05 is that they can't possibly have any idea how the internet, people, video games or titties work. If the link for the nude mod was downloaded once, then the odds are it's still on the internet. As soon as one male with an Xbox, an internet connection and a copy of DoAXVB got his hands on that file it turned into the demon from Fallen. If boobs in a video game are an option then there is no force on this earth short of global blackout that will keep that from happening. That Tecmo didn't realize this sooner and chalk it up as a loss shows that even people that specialize in software for decades can still be really fucking stupid about software.

Bethesda Sues Language 

America has a rich and storied history of greedy idiots abusing the justice system until money pops out. A Google search of 'bullshit lawsuits' returns over four and a half million hits. To put that in perspective, a Google search of 'nobel prize recipients' returns only two million.

So it should come as no surprise that poorly executed RPG heavyweights Bethesda, makers of games like The Elder Scrolls: Still Haven't Fixed The Combat Engine and Fallout 3: We're Not Fooling Anybody, It's Just Re-Skinned Elder Scrolls, lost it's mind and started stomping on indie developers like they were fire ants. Fire ants that could release games that could be designed and released quickly and cheaply and weren't sub par experiments in poor Quality Assurance.

Seriously, how the fuck do you miss this?

 One person was surprised, however. And that person was "Notch" Persson. For anyone that doesn't know who that is, Markus "Notch" Persson may just be the next Shigeru Miyamoto. For anyone that still doesn't know who that is, Shigeru Miyamoto invented, like, every video game ever made.

Bethesda's legal department sent a cease and desist letter to Mojang Specifications, the indie game development studio founded by Persson for their upcoming adventure/strategy game "Scrolls." The letter claimed that 'Scrolls' is a Bethesda trade mark, because, y'know, the Elder Scrolls series, and threatened to sue if Mojang proceeds under the name "Scrolls."

Anyone that has ever watched daytime public access television will recognize this lawsuit from The People's Court. Only in an odd twist, instead of the plaintiff being a deadbeat alcoholic parolee trying to hustle his former employer or landlord, it's an award winning, ground breaking AAA video game studio trying to hustle the Minecraft guy by claiming that every word in their trade mark can never be used in another trade mark.

Following Bethesda's flawgic we would all be living in a world where we were treated to previews of the action blockbuster "l;ajkscv888976" during the smash sitcom OIe/oY$DN9023hd8*k's commercial break.

The thing is, Notch, even though he's Swedish, is the American Dream. He had an idea for a game, sat down and designed and coded and tested and marketed and released it, and he won the goddamn lottery. Judging from the figures you, reader, either have Minecraft open in another window or are a liar. Bethesda, on the other hand, are a huge company owned by an even more huger company that makes even more more huger games that take dozens of employees and probably thousands of man-hours, and recently those games have invariably been game of the year or even game of the decade.

I don't believe that Bethesda believes that people could possibly mistake the almost impossibly mild-mannered Notch's harmless little clicky games with Bethesda's gargantuan sword and sorcery epics. I also don't think that anyone at Bethesda could possibly expect anyone to take this lawsuit seriously, including Bethesda. So I'm quickly running out of sane reasons why they would do this. The only real explanation left is that Bethesda is just trying to slow down the development of "Scrolls" so that it's release has minimal impact on the release of Elder Scrolls 5: Your Character Still Handles Like A Mannequin Possessed By A Drunk Ghost.

Since that's the only possible explanation left, that means Bethesda, like a true 'Merican, instead of calling up Persson and saying "Hey, our games are slated to come out at the same time and both have "Scrolls" in the title. You want to work something out so we both benefit?" you know, like a fucking reasonable human being, they decided to take the classy route and surprise Persson and the eight other employees of Mojang with a lame duck lawsuit designed to do nothing beyond pushing Mojang's development cycle back and wasting everybody's goddamn time reporting about it in their dumbass blog.

Now that that's all settled, I'm off to go trademark the name "Mothmantis," so that I can sue the shit out of anyone that tries to trademark something with the letter "M" in it and never have to work again.

When Marios Attack! (part 1)

I really, really, really love video games. I want to make that clear. I beat Dragon Warrior on the NES before I could tie my shoelaces. I've read Splatterhouse fan-fiction on purpose. I played Evil Dead: Hail to the King until my eyes wouldn't work, and that game was legally classified as a hate crime against nerds. I neglected to pay my electric bill so I could buy X-Men: Legends II: The Rise of Apocalypse on release day. I was one of the guys spamming Namco-Bandai for years for not localizing more "Tales of" games as well as Square-Enix for not making another Chrono game and I don't even really like the Chrono games!

The point of me outing myself as a comical nerd stereotype is to make this point: video game fanatics and video game companies have a very unhealthy dynamic. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, it's just something that developed when a demographic composed mostly of socially backward and entitled man-children become dependent on distant, inhuman corporations that specialize in ninja simulators.

I say there's nothing wrong with this, and there isn't, until the faceless corporations decide to engage in role reversal therapy without telling the hapless man-children. That is the point where the dynamic becomes what I like to call Fucking Lunacy.  See, the giant software companies that make video games have things like lawyers and PR departments and checking accounts and working knowledge of copyright laws and ties that don't clip on and other things that Average Joe Gimme FFVII Remake just doesn't have access to. When these companies turn the tables on the customer it's like watching Cujo attack a Yorkie.

Playstation Sues Goofy White Kid


If anyone doesn't know about the Playstation 3/Geohot/failoverflow jailbreak fiasco, allow me to give a brief summary. Sony is one of the largest and most powerful electronics/software companies on the planet, and they did it even though they repeatedly treat their customer base as an unwelcome burden. Despite a history of being shitheads about property rights, when a customer tinkered with a product they sold to him, they had no qualms about attacking him with their lawyers.

The thing about hackers is that they enjoy hacking. It's like a drug to them. Bragging about having great security, for hackers, is like offering an alcoholic single malt scotch. Or whatever classy drinkers like. Probably not Steel Reserve and mouthwash. My point is, is that Sony is not nearly as good at computers as they think they are. Even if they were, it's a universal law that no matter how good you are at something, there will always, always, always be someone better at it. So when a hacker called GeoHot (hackers are required by Space Law to have terrible nicknames,) cracked the Playstation 3's security Sony flipped the fuck out and threw every weapon they had at him. And the important thing to remember about GeoHot is that he isn't some maniacal evil scientist hiding in an evil computer lair in Siberia. He's a white kid, probably from the suburbs, that makes terrible rap videos while sitting at his computer. GeoHot is this guy:

Fucking this guy!

  That guy is every goddamn kid in America. Now, I'm not pro-piracy or pro-jailbreaking (assuming you mean actual pirates and jails and not just bullshit buzzwords that have nothing to do with high seas adventures or daring escapes from incarceration,) but I goddamn definitely am pro-not-criminalizing-your-target-demographic and pro-property-rights.


The result of this abuse of the American Justice System is that at best, it stopped a few pirates from playing copied games (even though they'll just look elsewhere to enjoy their booty or make engineers walk the plank or fire their cannons at electronics stores, or whatever fake pirates do,) while Sony looks like a towering, black skyscraper made out of dick and pettiness that sues its own customers, and at worst, this case is the beginning of an assault on customers' privacy and ownership rights that, having been exploited once, will now be the go-to for every corporation looking to squeeze a few more pennies out of their customers spleens.

World of Warcraft Sues Autopilot 

I've already spent many hours explaining my distaste for MMO games, and, honestly, making jokes about WoW nerds is like going for the low-hanging fruit at this point. It's less hard than joking about Charlie Sheen's hilarious death-spiral or Nickleback's lack of musical ability.


So I don't really know what WoW is beyond some kind of elf-themed fantasy fulfillment for lonely nerds with disposable income and maybe Blizzard is a righteous bastion of righteousness for suing MDY Industries for releasing Glider. By the way, Glider, as near as I can tell, is an autopilot for Warcraft characters, allowing them to autolevel, which breaks some kind of taboo in the World of Warcraft.


Here's why suing the company that developed the program is a fucking retarded idea. 1. WoW costs money to play. That's the reason Blizzard executives all drive platinum coated SUVs made entirely out of panda. 2. Paying a company for time, and giving the time to a robot to use for you is a fucking stupid-ass waste of time, money and robot. 3. Auto-power-leveling can only be used for (I imagine,) a couple of things, either to skip the early BS levels for someone on their 4th playthrough, to beat up on low level players, or some third thing I'm unaware of because I don't play shit like World of Warcraft.


If someone just wants to level up to the point where they can breeze through the early game it really doesn't effect anyone but the player doing it. Yeah, Blizzard may lose a few payments when players burn out marginally quicker, but c'mon, WoW is a relic. The sooner people stop paying for it the sooner Blizzard will start on making a sequel.  

If players are using Glider as a bullying-enabler then there's only so much that can be done about that. For most people that kind of behavior would lose it's charm after about twice. If someone makes a second career out of it then banning them from the servers for using a bot would only hasten their transition into the inevitable headline "Cheetoh Encrusted Cubicle Worker Shoots Fucking Everybody!" Since every minute that person spends in an imaginary world as an imaginary barbarian beating up on weaker imaginary barbarians and imagining the imaginary tears he's causing at the other end of an internet connection is one minute closer to the moment someone notices that something is seriously fucking wrong with this person, calls the police and averts the rampage.  Do you want that on your conscience, Blizzard?


Finally, the thing about these kinds of programs is that they're like crackhouses. Close one down and another one pops up across the street. There are a fucking lot of people that like modding games, and even more that like playing modded games. If you want an exact figure, it's (C2)H3/.5S, where C=the number of crackheads in America, H=the number of crackhouses and S=the current supply of crack. I'm not sure where prostitution or trafficking or crooked cops figures into the equation. Gamestop, somehow, probably. I'm going to abandon this analogy now. 

Modders love modding. And if someone is willing to do it for money, then it's only a matter of time before someone else does it for free. If Blizzard does take down the paid plugin there will probably be a freeware version available before they even have time to pop the corks on their champagne bottles, proving once again how absolutely and totally futile it is to try to legislate things like thought, information and nerds' desire to do nerd shit like build plugins for games they love, despite the company that produces those games hating their customers.


(Next Time: Dr. Chalmers has a secret that will take your breath away! Is Kate really who she appears to be? These and more questions answered!)

A 'Merican Dream

"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."-F. Nietzsche

"People are fucking stupid."-anonymous

Ever since I was a young man I've dreamed of being a super-villain. The road has not been easy. I don't know how to build a Doomsday Cannon, I can't afford a secret lair, and I only have one henchman, and she moved to a different state to go to some bourgeoisie 'school.' So she could 'learn things,' and 'get a job.' Since my only super powers involve the ability to know exactly which toothpick someone is about to take out of a toothpick container and the power to make most people feel vaguely uncomfortable around me, I thought I would have to throw in the black, pentagram-encrusted towel.

So there I was, ready to throw the old spandex outerwear, cape and mask in the dumpster and apply for a job in telemarketing or the Motor Vehicle Department when the beginning of the cunningest of cunning schemes began to hatch in my mind. At exactly late 2007 or early 2008 a movement of utter destruction began in America. It combined all the classic elements of villainy: absolute unquestioning certainty that this lunacy was commanded by the gods, a level of self-centered monomaniacal contrariness that should be impossible for humans after the age of 13, and the unbreakable constitution that only the doomed cult member can possess. Combined with a hatred and fear of science and learning, a blatant and total rejection of  self-preservation, coherent communication, rational thought and basic humanity, it was truly a sight to behold.

Formless as a fog and pervasive as a pop song, it rose; casting off the fetters of knowledge, discourse, progress and civility that had bound it for so long. It was weaponized denialism. Striking with the mindless drive of the revolting mob and the clinical callousness of a corporate takeover, America didn't stand a chance. As the prophet said, evil had come to America wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. It called itself Tea Party.

Historically, the Tea Party was an event in American History that involved Paul Revere and White Jesus sinking the British fleets by firing Thomas Jefferson's illegitimate children out of a cannon made out of the Liberty Bell while George Washington built the White House out of the bones of brown people on the day that Moses and John the Baptist copied the Bill of Rights out of the King James Bible. Fuck you, if politicians get to invent history, then so do I. The current Tea Party aims to... actually I have no idea what the current Tea Party's agenda is. Lower taxes on the rich? Being an easy target for stand up comedians?

Probably not this.

Whatever their ultimate goal is, it didn't take a genius to see that a force this unrelentingly insane could never sustain itself. I, however, am a genius and saw hope: how my Empire of Skulls could be built upon its blackened corpse. After systematically hamstringing and/or dismantling and/or corpse-raping central and local governments through sheer audacity of will, the Tea Party, along with everyone else that doesn't control the things that make a functioning society function, would soon be too concerned with animal level survival to continue its ideological rampage. 

In the near future, having intentionally cut the strings for their own safety net: their access to cheap food, clean water, dependable energy, education, affordable healthcare and gainful employment, the American people would no longer have the capacity to work together or stand up for their rights, and the country will degenerate into what I imagine will be called The Remember-When-This-Happened-In-That-Road-Warrior-Movie Future by the toothless, syphilitic scavengers of the American Wasteland. The only commoners spared from this future, of course, will be those able-bodied and quick-witted enough to be conscripted into the Armed Forces of The Theocracy Of the Unclosing Eye of Jesus.

The good news, at least for me, is that this will save me a HUGE amount of time and money and effort. Just think, I won't have to develop a super-virus to control the population if people not only can't afford to go to the doctor, but also sincerely believe that an imaginary father figure that lives in the sky will cure their child's infected wound if they only continue praying and not making any real fucking effort to learn how to grow penicillin. I won't have to spend decades slowly building a campaign to brainwash the masses into believing I'm an incarnate god sent to liberate them if the masses first convince themselves that anyone that can read or do math or check facts or work an internet is a communist witch that feeds on miscarriages and should be sacrificed accordingly. That's a society begging for a Nefarious and Evil God King.

From there it's a simple matter of training the ignorant, diseased, malnourished masses into a suicidally vicious army while keeping a much smaller cadre of the intelligent and useful back to help run things or to attack any problems that attacking doesn't fix. Like power grids or communication networks. 

The absolute best thing about controlling an army of ignorant, hostile, xenophobic barbarians is that, as a super-villain, I would be morally obligated to not care if they die; therefore I only have to worry about results as I ransack the strongholds of the former elite, regardless of the cost in human life. I'm already practicing my anti-affirmations in the mirror every day: repeating things like "A man that cherishes ignorance is not a man," and "There is no more noble death than to die serving the greater good."

So, with that I'll leave you to stockpile water and ammo for the day everything burns. But just so you know, you will never have enough.