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JAG18

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  1. JAG18

    And We're Back Baby!

    By JAG18,

    Thanks to the great generosity of Bfahome this blog has returned from the ashes (for a little while anyway).
     
    Expect entries about the same inane things I used to blog about (mostly music and uh...stuff) shortly!
     
    Until then, bye!
  2. JAG18
    In my "Best Everything of 2016" list entry, I lamented the fact that I only watched 10 new movies last year and that I was going to try harder to watch more movies this year.
    Well, so far this year I've watch 13 new movies and I regret nothing...well, actually I do kind of regret seeing "Beauty and The Beast" and "Aftermath", but whatever.
     
    So what were these movies and what did I think of them?
     
    "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" is one of my favorites of the year so far and I love it. Oddly enough, I just watched the first "Guardians" this past January and I watch the second on a late Thursday night showing.
     
    "Life" is a pretty good sci-fi horror movie and while I noticed the similarities at the time after re-watching all the Alien movies this past month I really noticed how similar "Alien" and "Life" are.
     
    "The Lego Batman Movie" is a lot of fun.
     
    "Kong: Skull Island" and "Power Rangers" are fine summer blockbusters.
     
    "The Great Wall", "Alien: Covenant", and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" are all OK films.
     
    "Silence" is better made and "smarter" than all the above films, but I don't prefer it to any of the above.
     
    While, I thought it was good the first time around I really think I need to re-watch "Split" to form a solid opinion on it.
     
    It's not a great movie, but I enjoyed "Megan Leavey" a lot. Definitely more than I thought I would.
     
     
    And after all that I still need to watch "Logan" and "Wonder Woman", and there are still some movies coming up that I'm really looking forward to ("Dunkirk", "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets", "The Last Jedi"). We'll see what happens.
  3. JAG18

    Samurai

    By JAG18,

    Samurai/don't die
    You're the only one/you're the only one
     
     
    After sixteen years of waiting it all ends tonight.
     
    THE ANTICIPATION!
  4. JAG18

    My Favorite Movies

    By JAG18,

    Very recently, Voltex posted in his blog about making a list of every one of your favorite movies from every year you've been alive and I decided to do the same thing. Echoing some of the things he said, I too need something to blog about and I also need to watch more movies especially from the year I was born. I will also add that I need an excuse not to start writing a short story that's a sequel to that "Twilight Zone" episode "To Serve Man".
     
    Now on to the movies!
     
    96: "That Thing You Do"
    97: "The Lost World: Jurassic Park"
    98: "Mulan"
    99: "The Sixth Sense"
    00: "Gladiator" (sorry "Unbreakable" and "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust")
    01: "The Fellowship of the Ring"
    02: "Signs" (sorry "Spider-Man")
    03: "The Return of the King" (sorry "Master and Commander", but I guess that's the story of your life)
    04: "Hotel Rwanda" (sorry "Spider-Man 2")
    05: "Batman Begins"
    06: "Facing the Giants" (I'm not sorry "Spider-Man 3")
    07: "Ratatouille"
    08: "The Dark Knight"
    09: "Star Trek"
    10: "Robin Hood"
    11: "Super 8"
    12: "October Baby"
    13: "Captain Phillips"
    14: "Edge of Tommorow" (sorry five or six other movies that I also really like and everyone else would agree is better than this one)
    15: "Mad Max: Fury Road"
    16: "10 Cloverfield Lane" (sorry "The Neon Demon" for not getting around to watching you yet)
    17: I've only seen 8 films this year so far and "Dunkirk", "The Last Jedi", "Guardians Vol.2", and "Valerian" are still on the way, but at this point I'd probably pick "Life" or "Kong: Skull Island" as my favorite movie of the year with "The Lego Batman Movie" as a strong runner up.
  5. JAG18
    This has nothing to do with the movie I've been meaning to watch again for the millionth time. No, this is about the return of The Bionicle Caption Contest to G&T!
     
    Like most things I do, the decision to bring back this classic BZP game was completely spontaneous. I have fond memories of reading through the original topic as a guest and I've always felt that G&T was missing something without it; so since I'm trying to be more active around I thought it was time to bring it back the game this time with some of Gen 2's funniest images. Arguably, this would have been a much better idea to this a year or two ago when G&T was much more active...but oh well.
     
    Come in and play today!
  6. JAG18
    OK, I know I'm getting this up a little later than I wanted to, but regardless here are the rest of my year-end lists for the year of 2016 for your reading pleasure and because I really like making top lists. So, let's start with...
     
     
    Best Movie of 2016: "10 Cloverfield Lane"

     
    You know, I don’t know I make these best movies lists when I do. And the reason I say this is because I watched some of my favorite movies of 2015 (“Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Krampus”) for the first time in 2016 and more than likely I’ll discover my favorite movies of 2016 this year.
    OK setting all that aside, I did really like this movie. Put simply, it’s almost like a two hour episode of one of my favorite TV shows “The Twilight Zone” heck it’s even got a classic Twilight Zone ending. Yeah, I really liked this one.
     
    Honorable Mentions: “I’m Not Ashamed”, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”
     
     
    Best Album of 2016: “Royal Blues” – Dragonette

     
    You know what, I could start this by complaining for the millionth time that not one, or two or three, but five albums that I was really looking forward to coming out in 2016 and I thought would be the top half of a decent top 10 list, all got delay until this year, but I'm not going to.
    So, I’ve known who electropop act Dragonette is since early 2015, but this is when I really became a fan after hearing their amazing song “Lonely Heart” a couple of months before they dropped this album. Anyway, this is a really cool album, that I did like a lot (especially songs like "Body 2 Body", "Darth Vader", and "Your Love Can't Touch Me Now") even if at the end of the day there was no competition this year.
     
    Honorable Mentions: “Britt Nicole” – Britt Nicole, “You Can’t Kill Us” – Icon For Hire
     
    Top 10 Songs of 2016:
     
    First things first, the criteria were that the song need to be released between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2016 or needed to become popular in that same time period (without having appeared on a previous year-end before). Anyway, this was by far the list I spent the most time on and poured the most effort into. Since last January I’ve kept a list in a word document of every song I might want to put on this list resulting in almost 125 nominees. Now, I could list all 50 songs that I ranked and even add my short list to create a Top 75, but I’ll just stick to a top ten. And the winner is…
     

     
    I really like this song (obviously), although it was really, really hard deciding this one over “Chewing Gum” and I’m not entirely sure what puts this song slightly above that one, but whatever this is a great song.
     
    2. “Chewing Gum” – Nina Nesbitt
    3. “Real Love” – Florrie
    4. “Hotter than [karzahni]” – Dua Lipa
    5. “Rockabye” – Clean Bandit; Anne-Marie, Sean Paul
    6. “My Heartache” – Olivia Lane
    7. “The Magic” – Lola Blanc
    8. “Blow Your Mind” (Mwah)” – Dua Lipa
    9. “Play House” – Colette Carr
    10. “That’s So Us” – Allie X
     
    Best Music Video of 2016: “False Alarm” – The Weeknd
    Ok, first off I know that this director has made two music videos and even a full length movie around this concept and I don’t really care, because this music video is really cool and made me not only like "False Alarm" more than I probably would have, but also convinced me that there's a better song to play during an action scene than the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" (well, almost better).
    Of course, now is a good time to mention that I realized something last year and that is the fact that I really don’t watch music video anymore. Not sure why.
     
     
    And that completes all my "best of" lists for 2016, it was a fine year I guess aside from a lot of album delays, but hey that at least means that I have a lot to look forward to this year, right? Actually in point of fact, this week I discovered The Katherines' debut album, "To Bring You My Heart" that would have given Dragonette a run for their money if had come out this year, so hey that's a good start.
  7. JAG18

    Top 10 EPs of 2016

    By JAG18,

    The Rules:
    EP needs to have been released between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2016
    EP must have at least 3, but no more than 9 songs to be considered for this list.
     
    Honorable Mention: "From the Grave" - Juliet Simms
     
     
    10. “Ultraviolet EP” – Dagny

     
    Favorite Tracks: "Fight Sleep", “Too Young”
     
    9. “Libelle” – Annabel Jones

     
    Favorite Tracks: “IOU”, “Money, Love, Success”
     
    8. “EMOTION SIDE B” – Carly Rae Jepsen

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Higher”, “Cry”
     
    7. “Ammunition” – Krewella

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Marching On”, “Ammunition”
     
    6. “Criminals + Dreamers” – Willa

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Criminal”, “Hey”, “Stare”
     
    5. “The Magic” – Lola Blanc

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Don’t Say You Do”, “The Magic”
     
    4. “Bubblebath” – That Poppy

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Lowlife”, “Money”
     
    3. “Bella Goldwin” - Bella Goldwin
    A "little" too big for BZP
     
    JAG's Thoughts: 2016's most promising new artist
    Favorite Tracks: “Higher than Life”, “Save Me From Myself”
     
    2. “Vroom Vroom EP” – Charli XCX

     
    Favorite Tracks: “Vroom Vroom”, “Paradise”
     
    1. “Olivia Lane EP” – Olivia Lane

     
    JAG's Thoughts: The artist and EP who's come closest to filling country music's Taylor Swift hole.
    Favorite Tracks: “Quarter Life Crisis”, “She Fits”, “My Heartache”
  8. JAG18

    Spotify Year in Music 2016

    By JAG18,

    With another year almost come and gone Spotify has sent all its users their year in music, which means it’s time to talk about how I listened to music in 2016. This time around, Spotify was a lot less revealing having replaced a dedicated site with a simple email with regrettably less detailed statistics, but whatever it’s still interesting (to me) so let’s go with it.
     
    In numbers:
    This year I listened to 35,330 minutes of music (580 hours, 24 days), which is way up from last year’s 22,000 minutes. And also 1,309 different artists (double last’s year number of 648). However one place I lagged behind is in the number of unique tracks I listened to: 1,720 as opposed to 1,943 last year.
     
    Top Tracks:
    “Pray to God” – Calvin Harris feat. Haim: you know, while writing this I just realized that this was also my second most played song of 2015.
    “Red Eye” – Kid Cudi feat. Haim: this is the year I went from being a passive fan of Haim to them being my third or fourth favorite bands ever, which is my guess as to why they’re featured on both of my top two tracks.
    “Oh No!” – Marina and the Diamonds: probably still favorite Marina and the Diamonds song so I’m not surprised.
     
    Top Artists:
    Marina and the Diamonds
    Chvrches
    The Veronicas
    Charli XCX
    Halsey
     
    As I mentioned already, I was so happy when I saw that I’m in the top one percent of Marina fans and CHVRCHES is still one of my favorite bands ever. The Veronicas I discovered this year just in time to see their great new tracks drop “In My Blood” and “On Your Side”. Charli XCX is an old favorite of mine who released a pretty great EP earlier this year and Halsey is a more recent favorite. I’m more than a little surprised not to see Dua Lipa here or even Kyla La Grange, but whatever.
     
    Top Genres: Pop, Post-Teen Pop, Dance Pop, Indietronica, Metropopolis
    The only change from last year is that I’ve apparently stated listening to less synthpop and replaced it with Post-Teen Pop.
     
    Favorite Day to Listen (more like the day I have the most time to listen): Monday
     
    Your Top Songs 2016 Wrapped:
    Finally, Spotify also takes your one-hundred and one most streamed songs and puts them in a single playlist for you, and these are the first ten tracks on that playlist.
     
    “Hummingbird” – Kyla La Grange
    “Hotter Than [Karzahni]” – Dua Lipa
    “Higher Than Life” – Bella Goldwin
    “Chewing Gum” – Nina Nesbitt
    “Lush Life” – Zara Larsson
    “Love Is the Name” – Sofia Carson
    “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” – Dua Lipa
    “Real Love” – Florrie
    “Pray to God” – Calvin Harris feat. Haim
     
    Unsurprisingly, many of my favorite songs of this year as well as an obvious old favorite; the other eighty-one songs are about the same.
     
    And that’s all I have to share from this year in music; as I said not as detailed as last year, but then I guess it’s kind of a moot point seeing as I do have a Last.fm account (although unfortunately one I didn't get 'til this past July) so I have some pretty elaborate statistics of my listening habits over there. Either way, I hope you some enjoyment out of this and look out in the coming weeks for all of my music related year-end lists.
  10. JAG18

    Movies I've Seen Recently

    By JAG18,

    In the last couple of months I've seen a few new movies both in theaters and on DVD; a couple of which are several decades old, so their only new to me, but whatever here are my thoughts on all of them along with some pointless number ratings.
     
    "Krampus" 8/10
    This is a movie I wanted to watch as soon as I saw Red Letter Media's review of it last December, and I finally did see it last month and I was not disappointed. It was a silly over-the-top horror comedy and it worked perfectly as that with a good cast, great dark humor, and stellar creature and monster effects. Of course, that last one shouldn’t surprise anyone because the same people who did all the wonderful effects for “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy also worked on “Krampus”, I’m talking, of course, about Richard Taylor and his crew at the Weta Workshop and I can’t stress how much they hit it out of the park on this movie.
    If there's one thing I regret doing is seeing this film when I did, because this movie got me in the mood for Christmas, oddly enough, and I'm one of those people who hates any mention of Christmas until mid-November-ish so that was a bit of a mistake on my part. I wouldn't be too surprised if this ends up like “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a movie I screen every Christmas; I now it would be really strange, but I don't care.
     
    "I'm Not Ashamed" 6/10
    From the studio who brought audiences “God’s Not Dead” and “God’s Not Dead 2" comes a film about one of the first victims of the tragic Columbine Shooting, a girl named Rachel Joy Scott whose inspiring life and writings have led to several books and talks made by her family in the decade-and-a-half since. I did enjoy this movie a lot more than I thought I would; it’s a fun, inspiring, teen Christian drama, and if you’re in either of this film’s target demographics, people of faith and teens (although preferably both) then I do recommend it. Of course, having done some research into Columbine before hand, just because, I knew going in that everything involving the Columbine shooters in this movie was going to be awful and wrong and it was. But, this isn’t a Columbine movie (or at least it shouldn’t be) it’s a story about Rachel Scott and I’d definitely say that this movie’s subject matter and lead Masey McLain (who needs to be in more things right now) allows it to rise above its genre to being pretty good.
    One last thing, I do hope that after this comes out on DVD that someone will make an edit of this movie without any mention of Columbine expect for the very last scene, but just like the “Mockingjay” one film edit that’s probably just a wild dream of mine.
     
    "The Thing (1982)" 10/10
    I’ve known about this movie for the longest time and I actually saw a good half of it on Sci-Fi a year-ish ago, but last week was the first time I sat down and watched the entire thing and I was absolutely amazed. I loved everything about from the overall tone and feeling of the movie, to the music, the through the roof practical effects (literally in one scene), the great performances all around (especially from Kurt Russell) everything was just incredible. Yeah, this might be one of my favorite horror movies of all time if not one of my all time favorite movies; if there’s one thing I don’t like it’s that I don’t understand why a group of scientists has flamethrowers at their base, but who cares because the movie's ten times better with flamethrowers.
     
    "The Thing (2011)" 4/10
    After watching the original, I was excited to see the prequel, which I never knew starred Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who btw was great in this year’s “10 Cloverfield Lane”) and it was alright, but obviously it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as good as John Carpenter’s film. I thought Winstead was good, although she wasn’t Kurt Russell and I liked some other minor things, but overall this movie was very middle of the road and forgettable for me. I could go on about all the ways this movie failed where the original, but I’d rather not; overall another forgettable late 2000’s prequel/remake/soft reboot.
     
    "Hacksaw Ridge" 6/10
    Mel Gibson’s first movie as a director in almost a decade is about Desmond Doss a World War 2 soldier who refused to carry a gun because of his religiously beliefs, but still won the Medal of Honor for his actions as a combat medic. Overall, I liked this movie, in the first half it’s mostly just alright, but then it almost shifts into another movie when the fighting begins. I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but I think the action in this movie comes the closer to toping the opening in “Saving Private Ryan” than any other film since. Putting some big questions aside like whether this is an anti or pro war movie I would recommend this as a good war movie with the caveat that if you have any problems with extreme violence than this might not be the film for you.
     
    "Breakfast at Tiffany's" 5/10
    I liked Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady”, and so when I heard that “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was what most people recognized her for, I was on board for seeing it even if I’ve never liked romantic comedies and can’t name one I’ve seen from beginning to end. So, what did I think of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”? Well, it was fine, yeah Hepburn’s good in it and so is George Peppard and I didn’t find anything I really hated in it except maybe the generally boring plot even if did have some nice moments and hints of more interesting plot points, but still the plot was fine, just like most of the movie. Again it’s not bad and having looked into the film a bit I can see why other people would like it, but at the end of the day it’s not my cup of tea. I'll admit the whole time I was watching it I felt like I’d rather be watching “The Thing” because I want to see grotesque things set on fire with flame throwers in my movies. Either way, I’ll still probably give “Roman Holiday” a chance though.
  12. JAG18
    This may seem like an odd time to review my Spotify Year in Music since we’re two-thirds of the way through this year and I’m going to be doing this again in December, but whatever I’m going to do it anyway. Now, this Year in Music has particular meaning to me for two reasons, one because I joined Spotify the last couple of days of 2014 so this is my first Year in Music and almost reflects how the medium changed my listening habits the more I used it. And two, the simple fact is I almost exclusively use streaming while listening to music so this almost doubles as a look at my year in music period. Ok, with that out of the way let’s do this.
     
     
    Top Artists
    Marina and the Diamonds – 418 Streams
    Ok, so this is a no brainer, I discovered Marina and the Diamonds last April/May and since then she’s become one of my favorite artists ever. In fact, for good part of the year it seemed like all I was doing was playing her entire three album discography back-to-back non-stop.
     
    CHVRCHES – 402 Streams
    …Which is probably why she has a pretty decent lead over the runner-up who coincidently (or maybe not?) is another one of favorite bands, Chvrches; again a no brainer “The Bones of What You Believe” was one of the first albums I went looking when I first joined Spotify and it’s been a staple of my music listening ever seen. Not to mention they also released their sophomore album “Every Open Eye” in the fall of last year, which only helped them get this second spot and which I’ll talk about again later.
     
    Halsey – 334 Streams
    So, in the three spot we have alt-pop darling Halsey and hey I’m not complaining I loved her debut album that dropped in the summer and, in fact, of my 100 most streamed songs of last year a staggering nine were from either “Badlands” or “Room 93”. I do think it’s kind of cool how almost a year ago I had just discovered her music right before she dropped her debut album and now a year later she already has a number one hit on Billboard (with The Chainsmokers).
     
    Bea Miller – 250 Streams
    First, look at the drop in streams it took to make this list, but whatever, Bea Miller was one of the first artists I discovered via Spotify who I really liked so of course she’d end up here. Although I have noticed that I don’t seem listen to her as much I used to, now I am trying to fix this, but at the end of the day while her EP and debut album made for some great listening last year I’m skeptically if I’ll be very interested in any of her follow ups.
     
    Zella Day – 223 Streams
    I don’t have much to say here, like all the other four she had a major album release last year that I was a big fan of and, as we’ll see soon, “Hypnotic” was a song I couldn’t get enough.
     
    Top 5 Albums
    “The Bones of What You Believe” – Chvrches 200 Streams
    No surprise, not much else I can say about this album.
     
    “The Family Jewels” – Marina and the Diamonds 198 Streams
    Ok, I know if you asked me this at the time I probably would have pegged this as my favorite Marina album in a heartbeat, but now I might actually go for “Froot” instead, but either way this got almost as many streams than both of her other albums put together.
     
    “Kicker” – Zella Day 167 Streams
    Yeah, great album, no further comments.
     
    “Queen of the Clouds” – Tove Lo 158 Streams
    Despite liking “Habits (Stay High)” when it hit radio in late 2014 I didn’t immediately look into Tove Lo’s debut album “Queen of the Clouds” until about April and obviously I liked it a lot.
     
    “Badlands” – Halsey 152 Streams
    For reasons I can’t explain because I don’t fully know myself I decided to listen to the standard version of this album before moving on to the deluxe edition that I exclusively listen to now with the result being that “Badlands” is down here in fifth place. C’est La Vie.
     
    Top 5 Songs
    “Paperweight” – Bella Thorne 53 Streams
    Uh, I can explain…
     
    “Oh No” – Marina and the Diamonds 44 Streams
    For the longest time I jumped on this as my favorite Marina song (probably because it’s off “The Family Jewels” that I talked about earlier) and hey since I just listened to it today maybe it still is, but either way good song.
     
    “Pray to God” – Calvin Harris; Haim 42 Streams
    For the record, I’m here more for Haim than Calvin, but either way this is the song that put Haim on my radar and I couldn’t be happier for it.
     
    “Hypnotic” – Zella Day 41 Streams
    I wrote earlier this was one of my favorites of 2015 and I don’t have much else to say about it, but I do want to point out how close in streams all these songs are with this song only needing two more streams to get the three spot.
     
    “If Only” – Dove Cameron 36 Streams
    I think she’s got a great voice, and that’s all I’m going to say about this being as high as it is.
     
    Top Genres: Pop, Synth Pop, Metropopolis, Indietronica, Dance Pop
    If you’ve seen my posts in What Are You Listening to Right Now? Or just read the previous paragraphs this shouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Although I do find at least a little weird that Country didn’t show up here at all I mean I know I don’t listen to the genre anymore except for some choice acts, but still like I said it’s weird.
     
    Ear-Worm: “Paperweight” – Bella Thorne (streamed 8 times in one day)
    Ok, now time to explain, and well I’m just going to say that I really like this song yes I know it’s flawed (to say the least), but I don’t really care because it connects with me and that’s the only thing that should matter when it comes to music. That being said this on top of my non-existent list of songs that I wish would be covered just because I think that there’s a great song hidden somewhere in here waiting to be made.
     
    Listening Habits:
    Number of minutes listened to in 2015: 22,000 (or 358 hours or 15 days)
    Number of artists streamed: 648
    Number of tracks streamed: 1,943
     
    Since this is just raw stats I’ll post them here and move on.
     
    Outlier: “Music People” –IAMX
    According to Spotify I “ventured into the unknown,” by listening to song, which I guess is a good thing?
     
    Sounds of the Seasons: Most Streamed Artists by Season
     
    Winter: Avril Lavigne (74 streams), Chvrches (73), Cassadee Pope (54)
    So, this reflects my beginnings on Spotify, and is a pretty good example of what I used to listen to back then, not that I don’t still stream Lavigne and Pope, but it’s getting rarer these days to be honest.
     
    Spring: Marina and the Diamonds (165), Tove Lo (142), Chvrches (104)
    Note, the massive spike in the number of streams, which marks when I really got on board this streaming thing and more importantly is a great example of what I’ve always believed that Spotify is great at turning either occasional or non-listeners into much bigger consumers of music. Anyway, as I mentioned before it was around this time I discovered Marina and Tove Lo.
     
    Summer: Marina and the Diamonds (178), Halsey (152), Zella Day (143)
    I wasn’t kidding when I said that I was listening to Marina non-stop after I first discovered her; and also here is reflected the June and August drops of “Badlands” and “Kicker” from Halsey and Day respectively.
     
    Fall: Halsey (182), Chvrches (130), Melanie Martinez (119)
    I really liked Halsey’s album, and the drop of their stellar sophomore effort “Every Open Eye” in September precipitated the return of Chvrches in these rankings (although I do find it interesting that nothing off that album made any waves here either in the form of a top album or top song). Also, in August I made, what might still be, the best discovery off of Spotify’s much buzzed about “Discover Weekly” playlist namely Melanie Martinez. And it was the appearance of her song “Pity Party” on aforementioned playlist that made me an instant fan the second I heard it.
     
     
    And that was my Year in Music and I can’t wait to see how much my listening changed in December when my next Year in Music comes out.
  13. JAG18

    Exo-Force Spin-Off Idea

    By JAG18,

    For whatever reason, watching "Star Trek: Beyond" as sent me into a Sci-Fi craze (note: I do mean "Sci-Fi" not "science fiction" because the only thing I've been reading/watching recently that has anything to do with actual science is "War of the Worlds") and this, somehow, has made me think of an old LEGO theme I've always liked: Exo-Force.
     
    Now, I really like Exo-Force to the point that it might be my second of third favorite LEGO theme overall after "Hero Factory" and, of course, "BIONICLE", but rather than talk about the actual theme I want to talk about something I've dreamed of doing if I was in a position to do it namely an Exo-Force movie. If you like Exo-Force or mecha in general I'm sure you can imagine how awesome a live-action (or pure CG because, let's be honest, it would probably work just as well if not better) Exo-Force would be and I for one have spent lots of time thinking up spectacular and exciting action pieces that a movie about human and robots battling it out could have.
     
    Although, thinking about it now the movie I'd really like to see would probably be "Starship Troopers" meets "Terminator" with some more Sci-Fi military action thrown in, but that wouldn't really be Exo-Force, which gave me the idea for a movie that distills the theme of Exo-Force to it's essence: humans making an Alamo last stand against overwhelming robotic forces.
     
     
    And now, some incoherent thoughts from the brainstorming I had last night:
    1) It's really, really hard to come up with a logical explanation as to why the robots don't just go around Sentai Mountain and I'm not talking about going around the mountain to strike the village, but why not just surround the humans and attack them from all sides?
    2) Thus, the "plot" of the movie would be a single battalion of division of a human military defending a mountain, or other easily defended nature position, against the robots as a kind of delaying tactic. The humans are preparing a massive counterattack that could turn the war in their favor, but they can't go through with their plan if the robots are allowed to take this mountain.
    3) Even though, it would be hinted that their is a large conflict going on, for the sake of focus the movie would center exclusively on this one front of that conflict; one human battalion defend one mountain against overwhelming numbers.
    4) The robots would be an utter ruthless and merciless enemy looking gritty and terrifying like the Terminators who want one thing and one thing only; to destroy all humans (or "Blast some meatbags" to quote a certain fictional killer robot). They have grunts they rush forward in suicide charge to set off land mines so their superior soldiers can advance, they field jetpack wielding paratroopers in the vein of the Fire Vulture and massive attack helicopters.
    5) I love the idea that the humans fight the robot paratroopers by just knocking them out of the sky with a massive jet; no really they just fly it right through a swarm of them and just watch them shatter on their wings.
    6) The humans are, of course, a small band of space marines who have a very modern military feel...you know if the military had advance Sci-Fi technology.
    7) The humans have craved out helicopter pads into the mountain and I have a great idea for a scene where the robots scale the mountain on grappling hooks and force their way onto one of these pads forcing engineers and pilots to fight robots in brutal hand-to-hand combat.
     
     
    Alright, that's enough rambling, my point is I came up with a lot of action shots and world-building gimmicks for this idea. Will anything actually came of this? Probably not. Other than maybe another story treatment/script draft that will end up stored somewhere deep in my computer or maybe a short story I would post in OTC, I don't know. Either way, it was a cool daydream.
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