Alien: Romulus review

    ALIEN: ROMULUS is good. This is something that should be said in the start of the review because it is a miracle on par with Moses parting the Red Sea or the resurrection of Lazarus. It may sound as if I’m engaged in hyperbole but I’m a fan of the Aliens franchise since I bought one of those incredibly mismarketed children’s toys when I was ten. In simple terms, my summary of Aliens can be viewed as, “Alien is good, Aliens is good, Aliens vs. Predator the video game is good, the Dark Horse, comics were good, Alien: Isolation is good, and everything else is crap.” There’s degrees of crap among the Alien franchise and some things are much worse than others but there is a lot of crap in the franchise and some of it is historically bad like Aliens: Colonial Marines.

    The issues are many but boil down to the fact that much of the movie is about the mystery of the xenomorphs and them becoming a known quantity after the first movie. Prometheus failed because they tried to set up a grand mythology around what amounted to, “a bunch of space wasp-spider-ants tear into us.” I’ve long held to the belief that the best way to view the original Alien was a space trucker was transporting some moldly alien caviar and the eggs hatched, killing everyone. Space is hostile in Alien and no one can hear you scream but the horror is multi-layered with the real terror being that in the year XXXX, we’re still a capitalist dystopia.

    Alien: Romulus mostly gets it right. It’s the story of a bunch of twenty-somethings barely out of their teens that are trying to escape a colony world where they’re treated as little more than slave labor by Weyland-Yutani. They decide on the risky plan of heading up to a seemingly abandoned space station in order to do some looting and get themselves to a planet where they aren’t expected to die in the mines. It is not a spoiler to state that the abandoned space station is full of face-huggers, xenomorphs, and signs that Weyland-Yutani have been conducting unethical experiments like their spiritual descendants in Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation.

    Indeed, if I have a small complaint, it’s that Alien: Romulus feels very much like a video game and the Alien: Isolation influences are obvious. There’s more monsters, more action, and more puzzles that our heroes have to solve in order to escape. The cast is also younger, prettier, and, honestly, feel a bit like extras from The Force Awakens with Rain (Cailee Spaeny) having a Rey-like quality about her. I say this is a small complaint because it is a very good video game. I also enjoyed this a helluva lot more than The Force Awakens and I didn’t hate that as much as most fans. If you’re going to steal, steal from the best in your franchise and Alien: Isolation is up there.

    I’m not getting too much into the plot of the movie because there’s not that much of one to describe. It was a very bad idea to come to this space station and getting off becomes a very challenging task. There’s an attempt to weave together all of the mythology from the franchise, including elements from Alien: Resurrection and Prometheus. This I’m iffier about as I am happy consigning them to the dustbin of non-canon but Romulus does better with both film’s concepts than either film. I’m not going to spoil but there’s an element here from Resurrection that was incredibly stupid there but is genuinely horrifying in this one.

    An interesting take on the subject of androids in the setting is the character of Andy (David Jonsson). He is a barely functioning unit that has fallen into the hands of the cast. He is also treated like crap by everyone other than Rain. He is an interesting allegory for racism and disability as the man gets an “upgrade” midway through the film that calls into question how we treat people by their apparent value. Speaking as someone neuroatypical, I resonated with Andy even as I kind of felt like he should have left them all to become alien chow. Even Rain doesn’t look great in how she treats her “brother” more like a pet than a person at times.

    The acting is good, the characters are more than paper-thin, and I enjoyed the action even if I would have slowed it down a bit. I wasn’t a fan of using Ian Holm’s face for a CGI performance by an “Ash”-model android. I feel like they could have easily cast Lance Henrikson instead and it would have made a lot more sense with none of the necromancy element. Rain may not be a Ripley but she’s a solid lead.

    In conclusion, Alien: Romulus is a solid space horror film that reminds me of a lot of the better elements of the franchise while ignoring most of the worst. I give it a solid 8 out of 10. That may not sound like a super-ringing endorsement but it’s fantastic by comparison to much of the regurgitated garbage that just makes use of the HR Giger puppets.

Available here

X-men 97' review

 
    X-MEN 97' is an interesting test study in just how much you can appeal to an older audience as opposed to a newer one. Pretty much everyone who watched X-men 92' is going to be in their late thirties and early forties as I just turned 44 while being sixteen when this series was originally out. However, it occurs to me that I played Batman: Arkham Asylum with the same appeal directly being made to my childhood with Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill right up until this age. 

    Just because something is nostalgia bait doesn't mean it doesn't work as bait and the fact that it is the X-men at their best, even more than the movies, is something that I am hardly going to complain about. DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE thrived on the X-men movies that weren't that different in the audience they were trying to appeal to.

    The premise for X-men 97' is that is a sequel taking place after the original animated series ended. Charles Xavier was seemingly assassinated by Henry Peter Gyrich (but moved to the Shi'ar Empire). As a result, there has been some small progress toward mutant-human coexistence. Jean Grey is also pregnant with Scott Summer's baby and they are thinking of leaving the X-men. However, there's something wicked afoot as the Friends of Humanity (a Far Right militia that feels a lot more relevant today than in 96') has found itself in possession of a large amount of Sentinel tech as well as other advanced weapons. The X-men manage to triumph over Master Mold in an early victory but are stunned to return to their home and find that Magneto has been left in charge of the X-men by Professor Xavier's will.

    I could spend a lot of time reciting the various plotlines of the first season, but I don't want to get into spoilers. Suffice to say, they're a mixture of a lot of X-men classics, which was the best decision the original series made in its run. There's a massive number of great stories adapted here from Inferno to Genosha's massacre to Operation: Zero Tolerance. There are some more questionable story beats like Rogue and Magneto's romance from the Age of Apocalypse but, overall, it does the correct thing in mining the comics' continuity for stuff worthy of adapting. Really, Disney should have done the same thing with the Star Wars Legends books.

    The returning cast has noticeably aged and Lenore Zann as Rogue is particularly noticeable since she's now 65. Alison Court has also been replaced as Jubilee for various reasons. Still, I really enjoyed the acting and there's a lot of great scenes carried by the stellar voice work. Everyone is also in character with the rare exception that Magneto occasionally comes off like a massive creeper to Rogue. Seriously, that romance is just all kinds of no even if he can touch her when no one else can.

    The plot is significantly more adult and if the original cartoon was a PG show, which was already pretty adult for its time, this is definitely PG-13. There are themes of genocide, references to the Holocaust, deaths of major characters, and a few political notations that have only gotten a small number of complaints about online. Mostly because Morph is now gender fluid, happily switching between sexes, and queer. Still, this is the X-men and if there was ever a franchise that proudly flew its progressive politics, it was this one.

    Overall, I really liked it, even if I wasn't a big fan of the ending. My favorite episode was the adaptation of Inferno that gives a lot more sympathy to Madelyne Pryor than the original comic. Also, her outfit rocks even if it's toned down from its original sexiness. My wife was equally pleased by the return of Gambit after decades of absence.

9/10

New Years Resolutions 2025

Some mistakes were made for 2024 in terms of trying new editors, expanding some projects while not paying attention to others, and also attempting to do some licensed fiction deals that didn't pan out. However, 2025 is a brand new year and I have a lot of plans to make it up to my fans. Among these will be the audiobooks for MOON CITY VICE, BRIGHT EYES, SPACE ACADEMY VAGRANTS, and TALES OF CAPES AND COWLS.

I also will be returning to my classic series with the fourth and final Cthulhu Armageddon novel, CTHULHU'S CANYON, and the revival of the Supervillainy Saga with THE RISE OF SUPERVILLAINY. I also hope to maybe do a couple of United States of Monsters novels that will harvest ideas that fell through for my licensed fiction including a brand new Peter Stone novel.

Do I regret all of my choices for 2024? No, not in the slightest. I got a lot of valuable information out of my experiments with new genres and I think the LORDS OF DRAGON KEEP trilogy told me a lot about how the LitRPG genre worked. I also noted that moving to Kindle Unlimited wasn't a bad idea for my older series.

Perhaps the best decision of 2024 was combining my urban fantasy books into the United States of Monsters books and my science fiction books into Futurepunk. Basically, I feel like they're now much more readily available and fans can now appreciate how intertwined a lot of my writing was from the very beginning.

Reviewing this year has been hectic and I fell behind several times due to the fact I wrote 2 1/2 novels that wiill never see the light of day for licensed properties that rejected them. I wish I'd devoted more time to it because I absolutely love BEFORE WE GO BLOG, GRIMDARK MAGAZINE, and EPIC INDIE as places that have done their best to promote other authors.

I also never would have gotten through this year without the help of such amazing friends as Eric Malikyte, David Niall Wilson, David Hambling, David Dodd, Hunter Blain, Matthew Davenport, Steven Ott, Susanna Sharp-Schwacke, Frank Martin, Gary Noon, Jenn Caswell, Susan Boss, Noah Chinn, Crysta Claire, Bobby Dee, Sarah Mussett Arnette, Antonio Marchena-Rodlen, Melissa Watt Hayden, Jeff Jones, Gary Noon, Allan Batchelder, and so many others. My dear wife Kat gets elevated above them all. You are all fantastic.

I hope I can pay you all back for your aid.

My New Years resolution is to keep doing what I love and to make the stories I'd want to read.

Chilling Reflections by Drew Hayes review

    CHILLING REFLECTIONS is the third (technically fourth counting Villains Vignettes volume #1) installment of the Villains Code series. For those unfamiliar with the series, it is a world that superheroes and villains have created an uneasy truce on, The villains have effectively restricted themselves to white collar crime and avoiding prosecution for their crimes in exchange for keeping a low profile as well as keeping the rest of the costumed evil doers in line. It's a reasonably lighthearted series with most of the villains not being that bad except for exceptional brutality to those people that break the rules or threaten their few loved ones. I'm a big fan as I write my own "supervillain with a heart of gold" series and am always on the look for more.

    Honestly, I think this really should have just been considered the fourth book as there's a lot of references to the events of the Villains Vignettes book and it feels like a sequel to that story. In this story, Earth finds itself invaded by a horde of extra-dimensional insects that threaten to wipe out all of humanity. They're also accompanied by an incredibly powerful armored villain who turns out to be the alternate version of a very familiar character.

    Multiverse stories are somewhat tired these days and for good reason. It's wonderful when you have a strong concept like Injustice, The Justice Lords, or even The Crime Syndicate of America. However, most multiverse stories are cheap one-offs that never really develop the worlds or concepts they create.

    The best are alternate stories like Spider-Girl by Tom Defalco and the Gwen-Verse before they decided to permanently move her to Earth-616. Here, the concept is restricted to one visitor from another reality and a high fantasy world that is sufficiently different from the main setting to be interesting in its own right. Still, I sympathized with Fornax when he said that he hated dealing with multiverses.

    Much of this book is devoted to character development for Tori, her roommates, and the New Science Sentries. They've all been devoting themselves to their careers as villains and heroes, to the point that a conflict between the two groups is inevitable. This is a problem because Tori and her roommates are friends with the New Science Sentries but there's no way of letting them know the truth.

    Other characters have their own plots like Cliche realizing her cutesy power of gaining abilities through folk sayings could actually be trained up to altering reality. Fornax's son is preparing to get himself empowered and his parents are less than thrilled at the possible ramifications. We also have Lodestar trying to win over some of the villains through the power of common decency.

    This feels very much like a transitional book and while a lot of plotlines are advanced, very few of them are resolved. One element I enjoyed was that we do get confirmation that the Science Sentries' boss, Professor Quantum, is more supervillain than hero, though. That's been foreshadowed since the first book but it's nice to have it confirmed here.

    Whether you'd like the Villains Code series is really where you're more interested in likable protagonists doing low-stakes sort of superherorism while even the villains aren't particularly awful unless they're smashing other bad guys. To judge whether you'd like this book can probably be determined if you find the idea of the equivalent of General Zod and a female Beetle being blackmailed into being Girl Scout supervisors for a weekend by the resident female equivalent of Superman.

    In conclusion, this was a fun and entertaining book but I feel like it didn't advance the plot of the Villains Code series much. That isn't necessarily a bad thing since I was entertained throughout the read and will gladly read more books in the future. Still, someone wanting something more substantial might be disappointed given the release rates. This is mostly just heroes and villains hanging out between punching giant insects. Which is all you need sometimes.

Available here

The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim review

    The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is an adaptation of one of JRR Tolkien’s mythological history of Middle Earth. Specifically, it is an adaptation of the story of Helm Hammerhand, King of Rohan, as well as his tragic fall from grace. There’s some unfortunate issues with this, not the least being that the movie doesn’t actually follow the story of Helm Hammerhand but his daughter, Hera, who is only mentioned in the story as Helm’s daughter. I don’t mind stories inspired by their source material versus direct adaptations but the liberties taken with the story are something that will come up constantly in this review so be forewarned.

    The premise of the original legend is that Helm Hammerhand is the King of Rohan but someone who is deeply prejudiced against the Dunlendings. Lord Freca is a Rohirrim lord with much Dunlending blood in his veins who also holds great wealth as well as ties across the border. Helm wished to marry his daughter to a Prince of Gondor while Lord Freca wanted to wed her to his son, Wulf. A council full of petty insults degenerated into Helm striking Freca and due to the force of his blow, killing him outright. This led to a brutal civil war (or just war since Freca employed many foreign mercenaries) and Helm’s nephew, Frealaf, ends up becoming king. No further mention is made of Helm’s daughter.

    The depiction in the Appendices is not a flattering one for either side. Helm and Freca behave in a foolish self-aggrandizing manner that escalates tensions between them repeatedly. Helm treats Freca’s suit dismissively and Freca brings far more men at arms to the council (which he calls) than is appropriate. It’s a tragic accident that results in a civil war that neither side is willing to back down from and leads to thousands of pointless deaths. A tragedy like Hamlet or MacBeth with no clear good guy or bad guy. Like most national myths, the Rohan ignore just how much they’re at fault for things going south.

    The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is clearly the same story but it’s a shift in perspective and, well, the morality of the story. The Rohan are clearly the good guys here and the House of Freca are not just scummy but about as detestable as House Frey crossed with the Lannisters. While Freca is just loathesome from the beginning, Wulf goes from now being Princess Hera’s childhood friend to being a man who breaks every single rule of combat as well as parlay as exist in Middle Earth. He’s also someone who wants to marry Hera by force, which is something the original tale did not imply.

    The character of Hera is fine. She’s clearly based on Eowyn, though redheaded now, and is heroic as well as kind. She’s also not interested in marriage and some viewers may take it as well as other clues that she’s a queer interpretation. Whether she is or not, she plays a far vaster role in this version of the story than in the original legend. Wulf is obsessed with marrying her, she is the only voice of sanity, and is involved with several action sequences that depend on us wanting the Rohan to triumph. Which most Tolkien fans do but that was never the point.

    The animation is okay for this movie and there’s great scenes from beginning to end. It’s a distinctly Japanese take on European fantasy, though, and that might not be to the taste of every viewer. The animation is a bit choppy in places but this can be forgiven for a beautiful set of visuals. Sadly, there’s precious little in the way of monsters with only a couple of orcs to hint at the larger conflict against Sauron.

    In conclusion, this is a fun movie but it’s not really an adaptation of Helm Hammerhand’s fall from grace. It’s more the story of a spunky princess who flees from an arranged marriage to an evil man and her family gets horribly hurt by them. That’s a fine story and one I’ve enjoyed many variants on. If you keep that in mind, I think you’ll enjoy this movie a lot more.

Available here

How I'd reboot the Punisher

    The Punisher has an image problem. Not the least because real life assholes have adopted his symbol to spread their hate. The thing is that these people have no right to the Punisher because plenty of other people have loved Frank Castle's adventures and hold them as the kind of people he'd go against. I grew up on Punisher War Journal and while I turned into a maladjusted lunatic, that doesn't mean other people didn't.

    It goes beyond the Punisher's fandom, though, and the writers themselves. The Punisher is an easy target if you're going to try to argue against comics being too dark or make a social point. But the writers include people who have Frank Castle join Hydra, point guns at Molly from Runaways, and lecture his cop fans. They act like Frank executes all drug dealers and falls into vicious cop stereotypes. He's dehumanized to blood and vengeance with no supporting cast. 

    In my Supervillainy Saga books, I literally have the protagonist as a guy whose origin is "The Punisher killed his brother and inspired him to believe supervillains are victims." The EXPY is a white supremacist and also statutory scumbag. Thing is my protagonist is also a murderous antihero who just so happens to be allied with the "better" heroes. Merciless represents how the Punisher should be (even if Gary would hate that comparison).

    If I was hired by Marvel, my absolute first pitch would be "The Punisher versus the Klan" followed by "Punisher versus Police Brutality." Absolutely, I would make a speech like, Frank is holding a crooked cop hostage and lecturing him as the guy thinks he's about to die.

"I don't go after criminals. I go after monsters. Killers. People the law won't punish because they're too rich, too connected, and too powerful. Because cops like you don't do your job or don't care. You think I'm like you because I kill without a judge or jury. Because I'm a monster too. Maybe. But I'm the monster who preys on monsters.

*BANG*

[misses the cop and leaves him wetting himself] 

    I don't think the Punisher's problem is his concept. He's an antihero but we have Venom and Deadpool. The problem is that the character is always shown to be punching down and the writers themselves want to make Frank Castle a monster half the time. Which is fine as you can easily write Frank as Dexter. A serial killer who hunts other serial killers.

    The Netflix show for me is the first Frank Castle project that attempts to say, "What if Frank isn't actually a psychopathic monster but that is how the public sees him? What if he's actually a guy who has made the questionable choice of going to war against the Kingpin types, evil megacorps, and the in-universe Hydra?"

    I'd do it as a series of mini-series rather than ongoings too.

• The Punisher vs. Hydra: The Punisher against white supremacy and the Far Right. Guns versus lasers. Frank gets to say to Baron Strucker, "We are not the same. You follow a one-testacle ranting madman."
• The Punisher vs. Weapon X (Or Orchis): The Punisher does the Joel thing and ends up protecting a little girl ala Wolverine against mutant hunters. We find out Frank is not afraid of mutants. Maybe a "ordinary man versus a Sentinel" issue. 
•  The Punisher vs. Roxxon: The Steven Siegal movie version of Frank Castle. The locals are being driven off their land by a greedy megacorporation and its up to Frank to stand up for their rights. Typical Western plot where he befriends the locals but has to leave in the end.
  
• The Punisher vs. The Police: More or less the Professional and that one scene from Batman: Year One where the Punisher has to protect some people under siege from an elite SWAT unit. This unit being actually on the payroll of the Kingpin to kill the people involved for, I dunno, real estate or whatever. Would Disney allow it? Maybe not. However, it would be a good rebuttal. 

    Basically, I feel the Punisher has gotten too far away from, "What if an action movie star from the late Seventies and early Eighties got stuck in the Marvel Universe?" They don't have Frank have any traits other than being a killer other killers. They remove the supporting cast and any emotions other than anger and hate.

    The Punisher should be angry. He's a dark character. He's not going to be an aspirational figure like Spider-Man. However, he shouldn't be nothing but anger and hate. There's a lot you can do with an ordinary man in the Marvel Universe who is up against the people who are untouchable. You know, what just about every action movie postulates.

    The trick is that if Frank Castle has to choose between protecting an innocent and going after some more killers then he'll (reluctantly) do the former. Because that will be the difference between him and a villain protagonist. Guns may not be the best toy for children but neither are knives and that's Wolverine's chief power.

    If Marvel has a problem with Frank Castle, maybe they should write him better is all I'm saying.

Joker: Folie à Deux review

    Is the Joker: Folie à Deux bad?

    Yes.

    Yes, it is.

    Is it a worthy follow up to the themes of Joker?

    No, not really.

    This is going to be a rather personal review but I've suffered mental issues for much of my life. I'm not going to get into the specifics of them but I had quite a few of them growing up. I had epilepsy for my youth, high functioning autism for adulthood, plus several diagnoses for other issues that range from...oh wait, I said I wasn't going to get into specifics. I was on a lot of medications and very much someone treated "weird" by society. That's because I am weird and proud of it. It's all y'all neurotypical folk who are the strange ones!

    The Joker film by Todd Phillips tries to take Arthur Fleck, mass murderer, and make him a sympathetic character. Perhaps it was deliberate or perhaps it was accidentally correct but he did a pretty good job in the original movie. Arthur Fleck is mentally ill, low grade schizophrenia and depression as an amateur diagnosis, but that's not why he becomes a shooter. 

    One of the things I hate in America is whenever someone does go do some horrifying atrocity, they attempt to blame it on mental health in America. This is just cover, of course, and they do less about mental health in America than they do about gun control but it's also complete horseshit anyway. Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than they are ever likely to be perpetrators (John Hinckley Junior aside) and the majority of spree killers are driven by ideology or a desire to commit suicide by cop. Hate is not a sign of insanity.

    The first movie has Arthur driven to become a killer by a combination of parental abuse, financial distress, class warfare, and a desire to become famous. Society rewards Arthur Fleck with fame and attention only when he becomes a murderer. It is better to be feared than loved but Machiavelli said it was best to be both and the Joker persona allowed Fleck to become a national celebrity through his crimes. It's not a premise that tracks 1:1 with reality but as a Scorsese homage to Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy as much as Batman, it worked.

    Joker: Folie à Deux doesn't work in the slightest. It also more or less abandons the idea that society transformed Arthur Fleck into the Joker by rewarding his worst behavior than, "Oh, yeah, he really was crazy all along and that's why he did what he did." It also doesn't remotely make use of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn (or "Lee" here) in either her acting, singing, or general weirdness. She's a character that could have been portrayed by anyone and the work suffers for her absence. Arthur never goes on to be the Joker and spends virtually the entirety of the movie in court or dream sequences where neither of the primary actors are allowed to sing well. Lady Gaga made an entire soundtrack for the movie and they didn't use it. What a waste.

    Essentially, the movie reverts all of Arthur's character development from the previous movie and infantalizes him by trying to make it so he isn't responsible for his worst deeds. No, Arthur is a multiple murderer and fully responsible for that. Society may have broken him but he's the guy who thought being a famous murderer was better than being a disgraced nobody. You don't get to walk that back. Indeed, the movie offends me by basically inverting the movie's message about society's treatment of the mentally ill as it requires Arthur being abused worse to get him to acknowledge the Joker was a bad idea. Yeah, abuse doesn't make people better regardless of what people think about prisons.

    In short, this movie sucks and just isn't fun nor informative. It also doesn't work as a sequel or an expansion on the characters of the first one. My own biases make its statements on what the mentally ill "need" incline me to hate it but the fact is that it would be bad even if it wasn't spouting nonsense. People wanted a movie about the Joker who commits crimes for the attention. They wanted a Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers. What they got was Chicago with crappier music.

4/10