X Men Origins: Wolverine

Out of all the comic book movies, There are only two that I would consider watching more than once: The X men trilogy and The Dark Knight. X men unlike most other comics really nailed character back round and story and definitely had the coolest roster of heros and villains. Overall the movies were a good mixture of action, story, and personality. So naturally I was a little exited about X men Origins, especially since Gambit, Deadpool, and Blob were making their film debut. The story is a little too simple with no major plot twists, (That’s what I hate about prequels) the S.G.I fight scenes are a little over the top even for an X men Movie. The first three movies did do some pretty crazy battles but they did keep it on a somewhat realistic level, In Origin Wolverine practically cuts a helicopter in half with his claws. But the most disappointing aspect of the movie is how clique it is. Despite it’s story and S.G.I the acting is pretty good, (Except for Styrker, that guy isn’t as nearly as good as the guy who played him in X men 2) if they just took the story in a different direction and took the fights down a notch this would have been a great movie. Overall the story is a little on the boring side, the fights are unsatisfying, Gambit and Deadpool get hardly any screen time, the message that “It’s wrong to murder a murderer” is crazy, and most disappointingly you never really get to see Wolverine get angry. It feels more like an extremely long preface to a movie rather than an actual movie. But it’s still fun the watch, if you have some petty cash lying around than grab your girlfriend and go see it.

The Amulet of Samarkand

So many western fantasy novels follow the simple 1300’s King Arthur style story. A young knight must overcome great odds to defeat the evil sorcerer..Yeah, Yeah, Yeah we’ve heard it a thousand times over!

But The Amulet of Samarkand is different from most modern fantasy novels.

It is the present day and instead of Goblins, Wizards, Dwarves, Elves, Dragons, and Hobbits there are Djinni, a race of demons invisible to the average person who are commonly used as servants and slaves to a faction of Magicians. Nathaniel, a six old boy is adopted by one of these magicians after being disowned by his real parents. At age twelve Nathaniel; unbeknownst to his step father, summons a five thousand year old Djinni called Bartimaeus and commands him to steal The Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, a well respected magician who had previously humiliated him at a social gathering.

The story flips from Nathaniel’s point of view to Bartimaeus’s. While you’ll definitely enjoy both sides of the coin you’ll most likely be more interested in Bartimaeus’s side of the story.

The Plot is a clever, and witty tale full of suspense, murder, comedy, and epic story telling that anyone who’s ever enjoyed fantasy can get into. Bartimaeus is a great character in almost every aspect, he’s a very sarcastic but good natured Djinni. Allot of the character’s backstory and information is explained in little foot notes scattered throughout the book, it explains things in an easy down to earth matter while making a clever jokes here and there. I dare you not to crack a smile while reading this book.

While Bartimaeus is a comedic trickster who anybody can like, Nathaniel’s more of the straight man, which is fine because really the Series is named after Bartimaeus so it makes perfect sense that he would be the real hero.

Overall The Amulet of Samarkand is a great read and I am looking forward to reading the sequel ounce I’ve finished reading “The Dooms Day Book”. But don’t take it from me, just look at that little devil on the cover. Now stop wasting time on the internet and start reading! You lazy Sod...

Heroes that throw freeze dried candy????

One thing I can’t stand about some books is when the main character is so obnoxious it makes you wonder why you’re even reading this book in the first place.

Such is the case with Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I hadn’t read a good fantasy book in awhile and also because of the fact that the main character in the book was dyslexic (A mental disease that I conveniently suffer from as well) I decided to give it a read.

I read a few books in the series. The series centers around a young boy named Percy Jackson who at the age of twelve learns that he is in fact a demi-god and then starts attending a school for other demi-gods and has two best pals that accompany him on his adventures.

Sound Familiar?

That’s because it’s almost exactly the same plot as the Harry Potter series. It’s like Riordan just took the Harry Potter series, added Greek myths to the mixture and slapped different names on all the characters.

The three main characters are: Annabeth daughter of Athena, Percy son of Poseidon, and Grover a fawn..I mean a Satyr. Annabeth is an exact clone of Hermione, and has the same know-it-all personality that makes you want to slap her.

Then there’s Percy the narrator and main character, the author makes the mistake of trying to have Percy be funny but it just comes off as plain stupid. Percy is just a bad image of Dyslexic kids everywhere.

And then we come to Grover who is basically just a lame Mr. Tumnis. Mr. Tumnis is awesome and anyone who’s ever read the book or even just saw the movie would agree with me.

But Grover is definitely head and shoulders over the rest of the group, in fact the series should have been about him, it would have made reading the books a whole lot better.

Anyways the trio finds out that someone has absconded with Zeus’s Master Lighting Bolt; which apparently can destroy the world, and of course they immediately blame Hades for the theft and decide to pay a visit to the underworld (Which is conveniently located underneath L.A.) to accuse him of the theft. Even if he did steal it, what are three adolescents going to do? Tell him to give it back?

So the three set of from New York to Los Angeles and along the way Monsters disguised as humans try to kill them. What really strikes me is how dumb these kids are. Every few pages a monster in disguise tempts them to come close and then try eat them. But no matter how many times this happens they just keep walking into monster traps. For instance, the kids are broke, hungry, and tired when here comes an old lady wearing a veil who lures them into her store and gives them free burgers, but oh no! She’s not an old lady at all! She’s Medusa!

After a long boring battle sequence Percy manages to chop off her head. All’s good until another nice trustworthy human shows up later and again the kids have to fight him off too. This literally takes place all throughout the series; you’d think they’d be smart enough to stay away from shifty people but no they just keep walking into traps.

Being the son of Poseidon God of The Sea you’d think Percy would have some awesome powers to utilize against these villains right? But all Percy can do is breath underwater and splash people. Yeah that’s a great help when you’re tackling the god of the underworld. When Monsters do show up, Percy always has some weird way of defeating them. For instance there’s this one instance in the third book where these Metal Lions show up and start reeking havoc. So Percy using that big pink lump of cheese he calls a brain starts throwing freeze dried candy into the lions mouth and guess what? The Lion died. Then Skeleton Warriors show up and they throw guacamole at them and they die. Do you remember when in Lord of the Rings Gandalf threw chocolate sauce on the Balrog? Of course not because that would ruined the entire book.

The entire series is all just one Monster encounter after another and honestly it gets very dull. It’d be fine if Percy actually used some cool magic to smother his foes but no, instead he uses freeze dried candy. All in all, this book is practically an exact copy of the Harry Potter series with Greek myths tacked on and all the good characters taken out.

The first book is passable but after awhile it gets plain boring. You wish Percy would stop telling bad jokes and start actually using his God given powers. If I could re-write this series I’d have a cool kid who would preform awesome moves and use his powers to disintegrate the insides of Monster’s heads causing them to go crazy and he’d have an elf-girlfriend who’d fly around with him on his pet dragon while he fought other demi gods in jaw dropping S.G.I special effect fights, so cool that the whole book would catch on fire while you’re reading it.