Author Archives: Thom Yee

Godzilla (2014)

24 Saturday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures and Toho

Images courtesy of Warner Brothers Pictures and Toho

If you have even a passing interest in Godzilla (and I assume you must considering what you’ve done to arrive here in the middle of this sentence), over the last few weeks you’ve probably been seeing and hearing a little bit more about the character and series than you normally do. This year marks sixty years since the release of the very first Godzilla, the debut of the iconic Japanese monster and the first steps of an icon that would go on to star in more than thirty movie that broke free of their homeland and gave birth to an entire genre of… grown men dressing up in rubber monster suits and trampling all over obviously fake cities as allegories for nuclear terror and mankind’s contempt for nature (is contempt the right word?).

And what better way could there be to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the venerable series and symbol of Japan than with an all-new 2014 movie produced in America, with a British director, filmed in Canada, and set for release more than two months later in its homeland than most of the rest of the world (that’s right, Godzilla opens on July 25th in Japan)?

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On the Death of a Community and #FiveSeasonsAndNoMovie

15 Thursday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community cancelled

All images courtesy of Sony Pictures Television and New York Media LLC.

Look, I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t have any precognitive abilities, and even though my sense of pattern recognition is roughly the equal of most Asians, I can’t directly tell you what the future holds. All I know is that last Friday, May 9th, NBC did the unthinkable and cancelled Community after its fifth season. #darkesttimeline said star Joel McHale, accompanied by similarly morose, but appreciative lamentations by many members of the cast, and series creator Dan Harmon’s words, “Twitter isn’t big enough to hold my condolences and more importantly my gratitude to the best fans, cast and crew in TV history. Excelsior.” (Bear in mind that these statements were all from Twitter and not necessarily meant for full-scale grammatical analysis).

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2

10 Saturday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures and Marvel Comics

“I hate Spider-Man.”

That might be a popular sentiment in a place like the (no-doubt continually shrinking) Daily Bugle offices and from its often-tyrannical editor-in-chief, but I actually heard that from the owner of Edmonton’s biggest and most popular comicbook store. “If [he] wasn’t so whiny all the time, I’d probably enjoy him,” he finishes telling me.

Anyway.

It’s always been my contention, given what we know and can reasonably assume about society, that Spider-Man has the best overall powerset for the real world. Flight’s always been a popular choice, speaking to our fundamental need for freedom, but it’s also a power you’d have to be really careful with. Just like Pa Kent contends in last year’s Man of Steel, if people found out there are people with powers, that there are people who can fly, it would change everything. And I wouldn’t really want to do that. Continue reading →

The Amazing Spider-Man

03 Saturday May 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

Images courtesy of Columbia Pictures

I don’t think it’s possible to talk about The Amazing Spider-Man without first talking about the Raimi-Maguire-Dunst-Franco movies that preceded it by a mere five years. In fact, I know it’s not.

I’ll never forget how it felt as I watched the Green Goblin, sputtering away on his now-damaged goblin glider, barely escaping his first encounter with the man who would become his mortal enemy, and proclaiming, “We’ll meet again, Spider-Man!”  I’ll never forget that definitive, pinpoint moment where I knew that we’re still going to have to settle for the same old superhero movies. Because nobody would say something like that in real life.  Not even supervillains (and don’t even try to tell me that supervillains don’t exist in real life).

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GR Dailies: Community – Basic Sandwich (Part 2)

18 Friday Apr 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5×13  “Basic Sandwich” (Part 2)

So… that was… something.

It’s hard to describe what I’m feeling right now as disappointment, even though that’s pretty much accurate. It’s not quite true through, and putting it that way would almost feel like a betrayal, so I don’t think I’m going to. But I’m certainly not satisfied.

If there’s one central theme that Community tends to gather around and circle through its five seasons, it’s the idea of accepting people for all of their quirks. That may not translate to welcoming people with open arms (see: Chang or Todd or Jack Black’s Buddy), but there’s a slow, yet tacit admission throughout the series that every one of our Greendale Seven (and various newcomers and hangers-on) have significant issues and hang-ups (if not outright social disorders). Continue reading →

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

12 Saturday Apr 2014

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by Thom Yee

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Images courtesy of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Marvel Comics.

As hopelessly optimistic and cartoonishly heartwarming as Captain America: The First Avenger may have been in telling the story of the greatest hero of our greatest generation, it was tough to swallow that whole pill without noting the bitterness it ended with. If you had any investment in the character at all, it was hard to watch him running through the streets, frantically taking in the sights of a world seventy years his senior, and not feel your heart sink just a little bit as he realizes what’s happened and how far from home he will always be. If you’ll remember, The First Avenger essentially ended with Cap’s musings on missed love, ending the whole film on a bit of a sour note before shunting us off to his first modern mission, a post-credits sequence leading into what was, at the time, our first, best look at the upcoming Avengers movie. It’s that man out of time aspect, that sacrificing it all and wondering at the price, that’s at the heart of the character, and if you don’t get that, if you don’t understand that Steve Rogers is someone who embodies the best of many traditional American values without being a slave to the system, then you’ll never really get the character.

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GR Dailies: Community – Basic Story (Part 1)

11 Friday Apr 2014

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by Thom Yee

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

Community images courtesy of NBCUniversal Television Distribution

5×12:  “Basic Story” (Part 1)

When the exploits of the Save Greendale Committee bring widespread contentment to the entire campus, Abed goes in search of a problem… conflict… a story… anything for this week’s episode to revolve around, breaking down the entire structure of what it means to be on Community.

Given some of the groundbreaking episodes we’ve seen in the series, that sounds like an exciting and landmark episode. It wasn’t. At least not yet.

“Basic Story” is an episode of Community that’s both literally and figuratively in need of direction. Continue reading →

Captain America: The First Avenger

05 Saturday Apr 2014

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by Thom Yee

Captain America: The First Avenger images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Captain America: The First Avenger images courtesy of Paramount Pictures

At the heart of the success of the Marvel Studios movies is a sincere desire to respect and honour the characters. While that may seem like an obviously necessary element of any adaptation, one need only look to the poorly translated and unnecessarily altered characters in movies like Fox’s Fantastic Four franchise to see what happens when producers deviate too far from the source material. The reason why so many of our biggest comicbook characters have transcended major societal shifts and uprisings through more than (in Marvel’s case) seventy-five years of existence is that, at their core, they represent a wholehearted commitment and (in the case of the heroes) a dedication to the fundamental good that we all hope is really at the heart of all mankind, even if that good is often hidden or deliberately suppressed.

I’m reminded of this fact as I recently re-watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, mostlybecause I was too lazy to turn over and change the channel, but also a little bit because that Human Torch-Silver Surfer chase is, admittedly, pretty sweet.  Continue reading →