Take a Stand. Take Down Santa.

Photo by Cyril Doussin. Click for source.

So, it’s that time of year again. That time when the sun can’t bear to look upon us, the time the very darkness in the atmosphere forces us to hide within our homes, the time when all the first world devotes to worshiping that demonic thief in the night: Santa Claus. Idols to that jolly red roof lurker have pervaded all aspects of our culture. There’s no escape. Trust me, I’ve been trying for years.  Santa Claus, the Christmas mascot.  Normal, sensible people will lose their mind in a false sense of happiness at the mere sight of him.  People look upon him as some sign of peace, joy, and happiness. Oh, those fools.

I’m tempted to say you all disgust me, for your blighted Santa infatuations, but I won’t. Not because you don’t all disgust me, I’m just not going to say it. And, because I realize that you’re all mostly just unenlightened as to the evils of that crimson mass of blubber. All you know is the tales of the rosey cheeks and cherry nose and the magical times at the north pole and the reindeer and sleigh and the presents, presents, PRESENTS! Well, Santa is not that man. And I’m tired of being the only one around that knows it. So, please read these following facts, and hopefully, after I’m done, you’ll be convinced enough to join me in my annual holiday celebration of kicking Santa’s fat butt as soon as he enters our homes.

St. Nick, another name for Santa Claus, is patron saint of:

Merchants-Christmas is not about the presents so that you can make your friends and family happy, no. Christmas is about the presents so that you can fill the coffers of those who bankroll Satan Claws on his yearly quest.

Thieves-fitting, as Santa sneaks into your house like one. And you ever notice how everything you’ve ever loved is missing after Santa visits your home? That’s because Santa is also the patron saint of…

Pawnbrokers-That’s where everything that goes missing after Christmas ends up. Also, half the presents you give out go there too, because people are jerks. Santa-worshiping jerks.

Furthermore, St. Nick has spent his immortal life waging a war with Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, Women’s Empowerment, and Virginity. As for why this battle’s gone on, well, he is the patron saint of prostitutes.

Everyone knows that Santa gives presents to the good kids. What about the bad kids though? Coal? Well, yes, but he’s also got a long, long history of giving bad children golden colored birch branches to be beaten with. So Santa’s an advocate of child abuse, too.

Santa doesn’t work alone, either. He has a couple of companions, such as Black Peter. Black Peter used to be a murderer, who attempted to serve St. Nick human flesh. So Santa turned him into some immortal… thing who alternatively scares and entertains children by performing a minstrel show in blackface. So Santa’s a racist, too.

There’s also the Krampus, a demon who rides shotgun with Santa, punishing the bad kids as Santa rewards the good. By punishment, I mean those children are whipped, kidnapped, drowned in ink, dragged to hell, that sort of thing.

NORAD tracks Santa whenever he’s flying around. They pretend it’s some kind of cutesy Christmas funtime thing, but clearly, they don’t trust him any more than I do. And if the US Government doesn’t trust somebody, why should you?  Granted, they’re apparently tracking all their own citizens out of paranoia, but still!  My point kind of stands!

Santa is officially a Canadian citizen. That means he’s entering our country illegally every year. He’s also got homes in America, and each of the Nordic countries. Forbes has him as the single richest person in the year. Does he ever pay a cent in taxes? There you have it. Santa is the reason for our deficit.

And this is only a few of the evils that man has committed. I can go on all day, listing his crimes, the various demons under his command, and the rest of the reasons for my lifelong vendetta against him.  But I’d still like to hold onto my sanity. Hopefully, this is enough for you.  You’ve seen the terrors this man is capable of.  This villain, this thief in the night who breaks into all of our houses to steal our cookies and kiss our mothers!  It is time to fight back.  Time to finish the era of Santa Claus.  I have had enough of him.  And so have you! So join me, and let’s end our common nemesis!

Man of Steel, Film of Crap

 

So, let’s try and start this review off on a positive foot.  Let’s list the things I like about the movie.

1.  It sure is pretty.  The visual design is very striking. The special effects are held to a high standard, and there’s a lot of them in the film.

2.  The casting was excellent.  A lot of good, big-name actors that really fit their roles.

3.  Henry Cavill looks really, really good with his shirt off.

There.  That’s it.  That’s all the good things I have to say about the film.  Other than those, it is absolute dreck.  It is a case study in style over substance, expecting the viewer to get distracted by all the shiny, shiny visuals and completely ignore the absolute incompetence in actually delivering a film.  I didn’t like it, is what I’m trying to say.  Is that coming through at all?  There was barely any characterization, the plot was completely forgettable, and the action… well.  Let me preface this by saying I loved 300, from the same director as this movie.  I count Tony Jaa’s The Protector as one of my favorite movies, and everything in that film is delivered by fist.  I have a special place in my heart for “action porn”, those movies where the plot is just an excuse to make people’s bones break.  So, in light of that, when I say I got bored with the nonstop action in Man of Steel, you know it means something.  The introduction is bloated, while the main plot barely goes anywhere.  And the film is just joyless.  That’s the best way I have to describe it.

The problems come from the filmmakers trying too hard on half the things, and not trying at all on the rest.  Take the aforementioned fight scenes that make up most of the movie.  Sure, it was exciting at first, to see a bunch of kryptonians pounding on each other.  Yet they went on waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooooooooooooooooooooooooo loooooooooooooooooooooong without any progress whatsoever!   Superman couldn’t hurt the villains, they couldn’t hurt him, and neither really had much to gain from the early fights, yet they kept ineffectually slapping at each other anyway.  It was obvious they were trying to make the viewer have the feels of ‘OMG THIS IS AWESOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!!!”, what with everything that could conceivably explode doing so five times at once and the stuff that wouldn’t explode only doing so once, yet the action took forever to get anywhere, and it just got dull.  And worst yet, between the shakycam and the constantly changing camera angles, techniques that are supposed to inject energy into fight scenes, it was almost impossible to keep track of what was going on.

On the barely caring side, we can use the characterization for an example.  I was reminded of nothing more than crappy teenage fanfiction in this film.  Oh, there’s certainly nods towards developing characters, such as Superman ‘learning’ humility from his Earth dad teaching him that letting people die was more important than people knowing that somebody has superpowers, but the attempts never actually went everywhere.  Beyond that, nothing.  Superman had barely any motivation, and little character.  It wasn’t the actor’s fault, Cavill just wasn’t given much material to work with.  There was nothing to him.  He was far more of a plot device than he was an actual person.  The worst is Lois Lane.  Again, it’s not Amy Adams fault, the entire character seems to have been written like a bad Mary Sue.  She’s able to intimidate career military officers, can outgun trained soldiers, figures out who Superman is effortlessly, and the protagonist instantly falls in love with her with absolutely no development, yet she contributes nothing to the plot!  You could write her out completely, and the movie would be exactly the same.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the early drafts didn’t have Lois Lane in them at all.

And the entire film is like that.  It tries too hard with the issue of Clark Kent being accepted on Earth, and balances that out by not trying at all to have a plot beyond ‘dudes show up, superman punches them’.  It tries too hard to make the kryptonian culture seem alien, then doesn’t try at all to make its secondary characters matter.  And so it goes.  It was constantly trying to make me feel the feels that I didn’t really feel, and I was left aghast at all the obvious shortcomings.  So that’s my review.  This film is crap.