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Episode Se7en

Feeling like the only human left on the planet who hasn’t yet seen The Force Awakens, I finally got off my duff and made it to the theater on Sunday to see it. And to my surprise, watched it without any spoilers.

To summarize, I thought it was a great film. Going in, I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it due to some of the negative comments made towards it. You know, like how the movie is catering to a wider audience other than the typical white male. Some have told me it was very obvious and made it too distracting to enjoy, but thankfully that wasn’t the case for me. I thought it was quite entertaining.

And so after watching all seven movies within a small time frame, I now sort of have Star Wars fever; which is something I never had before (call a doctor). Not that I want to start collecting toys or action figures or anything like that, but I now know enough of the universe such as characters, planet names, and other trivial information to participate in trivia for the franchise and to show off my l33t knowledge of the lore, allowing me to renew my geek cred for another year. Thank goodness too, because I felt it was on the verge of expiring.

A nerd confessional

I’ve been priming myself up to see the latest Star Wars movie by watching episodes one through six on DVD. Surprisingly I’ve been able to avoid any spoilers, seeing that basically every human on the earth has already seen it based its record blowing box office sells.

To be honest, I haven’t seen any of the movies with the exception of Episodes IV and I until recently. I originally saw episode IV for the first time back in 1997 when they re-released the original trilogy in theaters, supposing getting folks ready for the prequels that were scheduled to debut for the years to follow. Then I saw episode I in 1999 when it first debuted, and that was it!

It wasn’t that I hated them -- I actually liked the films; but I don’t know. I guess they were neat and all, but nothing beyond that. Then flash forward to a few years back when I got the DVDs and watched the originals, but basically forgot all that had happened story-wise since then (oops). Then a few days ago I decided it was finally time to watch them all. So for this round I started with the prequels first by watching episodes 1 – 3 and then the originals with 4 – 6.

So here’s my ranking of the movies. I know this is going to be very controversial to some, but I don’t care. If you have a complaint, take it to Lucas himself...or Disney. Ranking is from best to worst.
- Episode 1
- Episode 6
- Episode 3
- Episode 4
- Episode 5
- Episode 2

Now before you drop that monocle into your martini glass, please note that I never saw the full og set in its entirety until not too long ago, so I never experienced it the way you did. But if it makes you feel any better, I thought episode 2 was the worst. Nothing really happened and the CG hadn’t aged very well. There was only one part in that story that was worth of interest, but everything else seemed to be just a bridge for Episode 3.

I’d like to discuss what I liked and hated in details, but for people who haven’t seen the movies, I’ll save you from any spoilers (plus it’s late and I’m tired (and lazy)). But you can take my ranking with a grain of salt as I never cared for any of the games except for Rebel Assault II and the Sega’s 1993 Star Wars Arcade. The only other Star Wars game that’s ever caught my attention was Star Wars 1313, but they axed that one while it was in development, so it shows that the Force is weak with me.

Even though I’ve been hearing mixed opinions about the latest film, I’ll keep my expectations in check and hopefully enjoy it the same way I did for the other films.

Early Edition

Yesterday was the biggest celebration for nerds as it was Wednesday, October 21, 2015, the date when Marty McFly traveled to the future and got a taste of things to come thirty years from his present time in Back to the Future Part II. Well, 10/21 has come and gone, but the real deal came today a day later when USA Today put out their special edition on newsstands that mimicked the one seen in the movie from the year 2015.

I knew this issue would sell out fast so I made the extra effort to get up way earlier than I normally would, got my morning workout out of the way, and then booked it to a nearby gas station where I know sells USA Today; all while still wearing my workout clothes and sweating profusely, no less. When I got there, and to my surprise, there was only one copy left on the stand. I was hoping to get three: one for me, one for my brother, and one as an extra copy, but that plan wasn’t meant to be. I quickly snatched up the last copy, paid for it, and got the heck out of there before any other BTTF nerds seeing that they just missed it try to hassle me for taking their copy. But thank goodness I made it back home without and confrontations.

It’s so cool that they went out of their way to publish this goofy special edition for us fans of the movie. Gotta love that futuristic looking USA Today logo.

Summary from the abyss

I took a staycation over the past few days because my birthday was this week. And with it, a lot of unhealthy, high calorie, high fat, high sugar meals were consumed this whole week and I’m now starting to feel the effects of all this bad food. But unhealthy meals aside, this was a great week because for my birthday I received a PS4! Yea, I’m now officially with modern consoles like the rest of you. I received the PS4 that’s bundled with Arkham Knight. That’s cool and all, except I haven’t played any of the previous games. I was hoping this would be the kind of game where it wasn’t necessary to play the previous games, but the online gaming community proved that to be not true.

There are not many games that I care for currently (but there are many games coming soon), but I did happen to snag a copy of Alien Isolation that I got for a nice $40. I wanted to play this game so bad back when it originally came out, but I wanted to play it on a “next gen” console. So now that I own a “next gen” console I can now finally get to play it. Well, except for one minor thing: I’ve never seen any of the Alien movies with the exception of Prometheus.

I don’t believe you need to watch the movies to enjoy Isolation, but I want to have a solid understanding of the all of the little references from the movies I feel they have sprinkled throughout the game so I can have a better appreciation for them when I come across them in-game. Also, watching the Alien movies was something I wanted to do for the past few years but never had the motivation to do so. So over the past few days I watched all of the major Alien films in order of their release dates -- all by renting them on my new PS4 too!

Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Prometheus. My favorite was the original, Alien, followed by its sequel, Aliens. I didn’t care for the majority of Alien 3, but I thought Resurrection was a fun sci-fi flick. I hear a lot of people hated Prometheus, but I liked it; and especially after watching the original (things in that film make so much better sense now). So yeah, it was a great week with great accomplishments.

A guide for summer

A co-worker of mine let me browse a copy of this week’s Entertainment Weekly that includes a roundup of all the upcoming summer blockbusters. There are so many movies coming out that look so good. Here’s the list of movies I’m looking forward to.

- Avengers: Age of Ultron – the movie I’m looking forward to seeing the most. Hopefully it lives up to the expectations like the first film did.
- Tomorrowland – sometimes this looks good while other times it doesn’t. I’ll be cautious and see what others have to say about it before I plunk down the cash to see it in theaters.
- Jurassic World – when I originally heard they were making a new Jurassic Park movie, I thought it was just a dumb cash grab at a series that many (including me) loved so much. That it would be on the same level as the second movie. But after seeing the trailer for Jurassic World, I my opinion has changed and now I have to see it when it comes out.
- Dope – haven’t seen a trailer for this yet, but based on the article, it looks like a fun movie.
- Fantastic Four – I’ll admit I didn’t watch the films for this franchise from around 10 years ago (the second one looked gross with all of the Dodge car advertisements), but I’m willing to give this one a gander.
- Straight Outta Compton – not sure if I’ll see it in theaters, but it’s a movie I wanna see.
- San Andreas – like Tomorrowland, I’ll wait to see what others have to say.

And that’s it. I know I left out some glaring omissions like Ant-Man and Terminator Genisys, but they have yet to convince me that they are worth checking out. Other things in this issue of EW includes Mortal Kombat X being included in their “The Must List” -- it was item 6 in the list -- and I’ve now been convinced that I need to check out Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley that is currently airing season 2 on HBO.

Nerd weekend

I originally wrote it off, but I was convinced by a number of people to go see Guardians of the Galaxy.  My knowledge of Marvel’s deep history of IPs is kinda shallow, so I’m unfamiliar with GotG.  The only reference I had to the series is of Rocket Raccoon as he is a playable character in Marvel vs Capcom 3.  As for the movie, I have to say that was a darn good flick.  The story keeps moving and never slows down, there’s a lot of comedy, big explosions, and great music featuring a lot of classic rock; all making for an all-around fun experience.  It’s highly recommended.

But before we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy, we went to a place I’ve always heard of but have never been to, Frank & Son.  This is truly nerdvana for both the comic book and sports crowds.  Booths are squeezed into every nook of this huge warehouse building.  Booths will include things from comic books, to toys, video games, sports collectables, art posters and art sculptures, and many other things.  Heck, there was a booth that sold nothing but Disney pins (and holy cow there was a lot).  We were there for a while, but I was disappointed I didn’t get as much as I thought I was going to.  The only item I walked out with was a book from Udon that covers the history of Sonic the Hedgehog.  I always wanted this book, and actually wanted to get it when it originally came out, but couldn’t because I was on a really tight budget at the time.  But with my wallet a little bit looser and the price of the book dropping nearly 50%, I had no reason not to get it.

My only regret was forgetting to go back to a booth that had a sweet wanted poster of Zoro from One Piece.  Oh wells, maybe next time.  All of that was on Saturday.  What did I do on Sunday?  Killed a whole afternoon playing PC games.  Let the good times roll!