Deadpool's Completely Festive Movie Review Of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)

Muahaha… While you all thought I was just being lazy, I was actually holding off on releasing another review until Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Fesitvus/ZombieJesusDay/etc.! (… Okay, that’s a lie; I was actually just being lazy. Hey, YOU try working a mercenary job with no salary these days! Damn kids and your Steam sales…)

So on top of ALL those other movies we already saw this month, we have perhaps one of the most hyped right in front of our freaking little pupils, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Based off the second book in this irregularly popular series, the trilogy continues right where the end of the first film left off. I’m going to be completely honest with all y’allz; as a fan of the three books (HEREADSBOOKSZOMG), I did NOT care for the way the first story was depicted on screen. Not only did the movie take away every last sense of wonder and mystery that the first novel gave you , but their attempt to look like “the indie kid” with that damn shaky camera was just too much to stomach (Literally! I couldn’t keep that popcorn down for long folks!... Sorry again to the kid who was in front of me… He knows why… >_>).

Well I’m thrilled to report that this sequel fixed just about every annoying little complaint I had with the first film. For starters, NO MORE SHAKY SEIZURE-INDUCING CAMERA BITCHES! I think we can all agree it was just a bad idea the first time around and move on with our self-entitled little lives. Secondly, the mystery factor is more or less back again. Now obviously, when a book is written from the perspective of one character, you can’t usually expect the movie to follow the same pattern. While the second film doesn’t exactly do that either, it’s okay, because the things you see going on outside actually enhance the experience, rather than just rob you of any ounce of development like it did the first time around.

And plenty happens this time around. Just when you think you’re starting to get a grasp on things by about halfway through the movie, they slap you across the face at 180 degrees to show you that things are just getting started and that no one is ready for what’s coming. Gotta love that doom and gloom. Kids love the doom and gloom. Because it’s deep. Deep like them.

… So deep.

As usual, the actors and actresses were at their best, and we got some excellent newcomers thrown into the mix. Everyone plays their part like they were pretty much born for the role. This especially applies to parts like Effie, who should more or less be a Japanese anime character, and Finnick, who was so accurate to his book description, I’d almost argue that he existed in real life first and that Suzanne Collins simply wrote about him after!

I will also say that of the three mentioned books, this is actually my favorite of the three. After the first story, you had absolutely no idea what was going to really happen next, and that was totally rad. It added to that badass feeling of badass-ery when you finally did know what was coming and knew where to go from there. Even though I’m pissed that the third book (of EQUAL length to the other two) is being made into two separate movies, ala that annoying trend I’m now seeing among most Hollywood book-to-film projects, I’m still happily excited to see where the movies will go from here. But enough of that! It’s time for the part where I give the review score and say something witty to end this on.

9 Quarter Quell’s Out Of 10

If there’s one thing that seeing the success of these books/movies has taught me, it’s that in order to be a famous writer of today, you need to craft a story about a young female overcoming obstacles and fighting corruption. If you do this right, you will become a BILLIONARE. I kid you not. If you think I’m wrong, read up on another little series called Divergent, which is about to do the EXACT. SAME. THING. No offense to the Divergent series, but I think we can all see what’s going on there, as do I since I read the first book (HEREADANOTHERBOOKZOMGITSLIKEIDONTEVENKNOWYOUANYMORE). Merry ‘all those holidays I wrote down in the first paragraph’ everyone!

Deadpool's Timey Wimey Movie Review of Doctor Who: The Day Of The Doctor (2013)

Long time, no rant folks! Hope you didn’t miss me too much! ... Because honestly, the feelings probably weren’t reciprocated…

So, Doctor Who. That’s certainly gotten quite a rise in popularity, hasn’t it? If you’re not in on the craze, I’ll break it on down for ya. So this guy, right? He’s not this ordinary guy though. He’s this time traveler, known as a Time Lord (they look like us, but they don’t age like us!). He travels in a police call box (courtesy of the 60’s!) with different companions through time and space. What do they do with this amazing power? Usually find all kinds of problems (by accident!) and solve them, saving said time and space. Many aliens and Dalek’s abound! After a certain point, when one actor’s run on the show would be up, they’d create a scenario where the character would be dying, only to have him regenerate into a whole new Doctor, with the memories of his previous self. A simple formula that’s more or less worked for the last 50 years! That’s right folks. This show is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. What began as a small, low-budget science fiction television series has now become a high-engrossing low-budget science fiction television series, with a fan-base comparable to that of Star Wars. Yes, it’s THAT popular.

What’s kept it going for so long? Well, to be honest, it wasn’t always doing so great. The first few years were pretty solid, with an excellent pickup by this guy in a long scarf in the 70’s. (You may have heard of him; Tom Baker’s pretty iconic now.) Things got a bit rocky in the middle, with arguable reasons as to what brought the show’s popularity down (*cough cough* the Colin Baker years *cough cough cough* Poor bastard *cough cough* He got the crap end of the stick for doing what the writers and directors told him to do *cough cough holycrapthatsalotofcoughing cough cough*). Once 2005 hit, the show was rebooted with surprisingly awesome results. The Doctors also became younger, which therefore brought about a ridiculous number of fangirls into the show. Said fangirls are also the reason I avoided even getting into this show until about a year and a half ago. If there’s one train I have no desire to hitch a ride on, it’s the ol’ HYPE TRAIN! Lucky for THOSE annoying people, the show is freaking awesome and I’ve been trying to watch it all to make up for lost times. What, how was I supposed to know the hype was actually justified for once!?

Flash forward to now, and we’ve finally got a big fancy movie to justify this whole shebang. The current Doctor (Matt Smith) meets with his former self, the 10th Doctor (David “Best Hair Evar!” Tennant) to get involved with a topic the show kind of danced around ever since the reboot began: The Great Time War! Yes, not only do we finally learn what happened in this war that caused every other Time Lord to lose their lives in it. (Not a spoiler by the way for those who don’t know Who! They say that almost right after the reboot starts!) Without going into too many other details (because believe me, there are a LOT of details I could go into), things get crazy pretty fast. Steven Moffat has been building up to writing this story for quite some time after Russel T. Davies left the mount, and boy was there a lot of ground to cover.

Something I should get out of the way is that this movie is NOT for new fans. Seriously, if you start with this, you’re pretty much asking for a grenade to go off in your head; that’s how fast it will explode over what you’re seeing on-screen (especially if you saw it in 3D!). There are a lot of plot threads that were touched on, with many many many many many many MANY more that can still be expanded onto. I can respect Moffat not wanting to go back to the material that Davies had left before passing on the torch, but I was hoping for at least a few more references to it. People expecting some kind of 10th Doctor/Rose reunion are going to likely come out disappointed, and even worse than that, David Tennant’s hair is no longer floofy!!! I want my floofy David Tennant hair back dammit!!!

Overall, the movie itself is quite good, plot holes be damned. You get what you came for: Matt Smith and David Tennant taking hilarious jabs at each other, a complex plot with an even more complex result, and all of the action that one would normally expect for this type of show. If you want more than that, then again, you may be disappointed. That said, I’m not sure what else you would have actually expected from this by now. I mean bro, do you even lift, ah, I mean watch the show!?

As much fun as I had with this movie (and believe me, I had a BLAST with it!), there are of course some issues. So now that we’re past the “OMG DOCTOR WHO IS THE GREATEST; BOWTIEZ FOR LIFE!” stage of this review; I can get down to my more personal and sexy thoughts. My beefs mainly go in line with Steven Moffat’s writing. The guy has a brilliant knowledge base of the show and uses it quite often to make little nods to the classic episodes, which is aweomsesauce. The problem is when he writes these plotlines with huge stakes, only to result in little actual repercussions of any of it. It was annoying the more he did it in the show, and it’s completely out of hand here. Fans of Russel T. Davies’ writing on the first four seasons will also be quite disappointed to see almost everything they loved about those seasons get more or less ripped out from under them. Some won’t care; in fact many won’t, based on some of the attention spans I’ve seen in the human race lately.


Maybe I’m just talking into thin air… Cyberspacey air at that, but it wouldn’t be one of my reviews without me letting out my deepest most inner thoughts… about a sci-fi TV series… Shut up, I’m NORMAL!!! X_X

So there you pretty much have it. It was fun, exciting, and left a whole new dimension of possibilities for what we can expect in the future. I wish it was done differently, but I’m not going to act like that made this a bad movie by any means either. Kudos for some of the nods to the show’s own trivia, like everyone’s pal Tom “The Mother-F@#king Scarf” Baker’s cameo, and the brief and slightly unexpected shot of the upcoming new Doctor, Peter Capaldi. Even if it was just a few seconds; that was the best “giving the eyebrow” face I’ve seen in years!

8 Regenerations out of 10 (Or should I say 11 for now? Hehehe… Clever. That’s what I am…)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go rewatch every old episode, so I can complain about how the stuff I liked was better than the stuff that’s out now. Hipster Deadpool has spoken! Face!