The Day the Earth Blew Up (PG)



If you're looking for a vignette of Looney Tunes skits with a loose story connecting them, I guess you can do worse. I could have done without the embarrassing attempts to appear hip with the kids like Daffy Duck twerking and the prolonged scene of Porky and Petunia Pig flamethrowering gum monsters to REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

It's also meant to be a riff on old science fiction horror movies as an evil alien uses tainted bubble gum to infect the world with mind-controlling parasites, and our three heroes have to find a way to stop him. But when they defeat the evil alien and thwart his plan to take over the world, the movie drops a big twist so it can keep going because fuck you, we have to fill eighty minutes somehow! But you know what, I would have excused this as good old fashioned Looney Tunes trolling if what the alien really wanted wasn't another cringey attempt to seem "with it."

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Transformers ONE (PG)



Before I start, the main characters all go by different names as miner bots before they're upgraded into Transformers. I know the protagonists for most of the movie are Orion Pax and D-16 and don't become Optimus Prime and Megatron until the very end, but just so people know what the hell I'm talking about I'm going with everybody's mainline names.

Optimus Prime might be the one going through the hero's journey but this isn't really his story, it's Megatron's. There's an odd feeling as you watch the first act, knowing what this chill dude trying to keep his dumbass friend in check is going to become. And if you think his reaction to finding out his entire life has been a lie could be more level-headed, well, that's what Optimus Prime is here for.

A major theme of the movie is everyone having the power to make a difference and it being up to the individual to decide what kind of difference they're going to make. When Optimus and Megatron are both given Transformer cogs and allowed to decide how to deal with Sentinel Prime one chooses justice while the other chooses vengeance. Heck, the miners have been literally stripped of their ability to change by those calling the shots. Of course the cynic in me would point out Optimus and Megatron were only able to change the world because they randomly bumped into the one bot who had the macguffin that set everything in motion, so making your mark on the world is still about being lucky.

One criticism a lot of people bring up is how grating Bumblebee is. I get why people find him annoying, but I could tolerate him. For me he fell into the same category as Tidus in Final Fantasy X in that I occasionally wanted to reach into the screen and slap him but I didn't hate him, and when it comes to annoying comic relief characters he doesn't come anywhere near that fucking robot in Treasure Planet. And at least we got a good joke out of Shockwave from it.

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Batman: Justice Buster, Vols. 1 - 4 (Written and Illustrated by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi)



Yeah, Shimizu and Shimoguchi totally lifted Damned's plan to kill humanity's faith in Ultraman from All-Star Superman. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This is a retelling of what I think is supposed to be Batman's early career. It's hard to tell how long he's been at this because he's had time to develop a high tech suit straight out of the Ultraman reboot, but he still has his standard Batsuit on standby, is working alone, and isn't even part of the Justice League yet. He's also had time to develop an AI, Robin, trained on countless crime reports with the intent of predicting and stopping crimes before they even happen. When Robin goes rogue and declares it must destroy the human concept of "justice" I thought oh, great, this is another story of an AI deciding the best way to save humanity is to wipe it out. I should have given the two Shis more credit, because while Robin does fuck with Batman for a bit it's all building up to - kind of like with Transformers ONE up above - an exploration of the difference between justice and vengeance.

Oh, and Batman also has a battle mech, because Japan likes those.

There's also this dude who fights crime while wearing a clown mask and calls himself "Joker," and refers to Batman as "partner" while Batman keeps telling him to shove off. I genuinely could not figure out who this guy was supposed to be because he looked like Jack got tired of waiting for Ultraman to give him something to do and wandered off into a different manga. Is this a variation of Batman's origin story where the Joker was a spurned fanboy, like Syndrome? It turns out, yes, the manga has its own take on the origin of "the" Joker, but this Joker is Jason Todd, imagined here as a detective investigating the murder of Dick Grayson's parents. What you're picturing probably isn't far off from what actually happens.

So how did this convince me Shimizu and Shimoguchi borrowed from All-Star Superman? Because as you read this manga you realize these guys know their Batman. The story makes many references to famous Batman stories like The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family, and the second volume ends with a cartoon where Bat-Mite explains how the DC multiverse works and Shimizu confesses he's a big fan of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. And for Morrison specifically, the ending of this manga gives the same "all interpretations of Batman are valid, just in different realities" thesis from Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne (which was translated into Japanese) and even has a cameo of Cavebat.

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Miles & Kilo (Switch)



I fired this up because I wanted some bing bing wahoo, only to find out it's a runner where you have to dodge hazards and reach the end of each level without taking a hit. Think Super Meat Boy but nowhere near as brutal as that game (except the final level, holy shit).

If you're into that kind of game, it's fine. In addition to being easier than Super Meat Boy, if you die in a level enough times the game offers you a powerup that... I imagine gives you invincibility, to be honest I never took it because I didn't need an invincibility cheat, I needed something to let me skip the section I've pulled off ten times in a row so I can get to the part I'm still trying to figure out.

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