For all the bionic details about what led to the Creation of Project X, please visit the Intro Post. It’s totally worth six million bionic dollars.
LIKE
Vacation!
A while ago Mrs B and I went on a Vacation down to Georgia to visit the family. Ahhh, good times. I do wish we could have a vacation like that every year. It would be a big stress reliever for sure.
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Villains
Villains are like poop; necessary but only those with severe issues actually like them. If you see someone smearing poop around, I’d hope you would knock them down, tie them up and call the cops. I feel that way about people who praise those who are villains. When movies come out with the main character being a villain, it makes me want to shoot someone. But since I’m not a villain, I don’t.
Of course, now that I’ve said that, you should go watch Villain Pub. It’s pretty funny 😉
And that is it for this week. Stay tuned for our next episode, . Where Whether to Weather the Weather will be the main topic of discussion. Exciting stuff!
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
But what if a villain evolves into someone good? Or if he’s an anti-hero? There has to be room for redemption,
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Bad doesn’t “evolve” into Good. There might be a redemption story, but it always involves the badguy making a choice and becoming a good guy.
As for anti-heroes. I think that philosophy is a pernicious creeping evil. One of the people I follow wrote something on this very subject. I’ll have to get back to you with the link, as I can’t figure out how to search her site at the moment.
And I began writing without reading the rest of your comment. Sorry.
Redemption. I completely agree that redemption must be there and that villains are not cast in stone. But redemption is more than just a bad guy doing a good thing. It also involves them repudiating the bad things they have done. And in the stories we get today, that almost never happens 😦
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Hm. I see you’ve thought about this some. But even Darth Vader can recognize his son and reject the dark side!
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And Darth Vader is exactly who I was thinking about actually. If he had lived, his redemption would have included an about-face for his past and a return to Anakin Skywalker. He wouldn’t have been redeemed if he’d saved Luke only to become Emperor 2.0.
And yes, I have given it thought. Being a Christian, this type of subject has real world application 🙂
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Never watch Ozarks Booky. 🙂
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There’s a reason I don’t watch many movies or tv shows….
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How you enjoyed the fourth season so far Fraggle?
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Luvvin it!
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Just so you know, Dix has you piloting a helicopter over the Secret Island in Washington DC. He’s supposed to be rescued by you and Alex.
Things aren’t going according to plan though 😉
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He should write a screenplay. We could do a WP4 action movie!
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It would be a stirring, very emotional saga. I want the guy who plays Jack Reacher to play me!
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I want Helen Mirren for me!
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Absolutely!
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Tom Cruise or the new guy Alan Rirchson?
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Oh, Cruise was an abomination as Reacher. His ego was way to big for him to do those movies (even though I enjoyed them).
The new guy. He’s a monster!
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Will be watching this series soon!
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It is really good. I binged the whole thing the weekend it came out 😀
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Good to hear! Wasn’t so keen on Xavi (or however you spell it) at first, but part II has been set up very nicely…
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Just half way through last episode, had to get to bed so will finish it tomorrow. It’s Javi, pronounced Have-y, and yep he’s a POS.
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You’re in for a treat!
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Was it like Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation?
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How did you guess? It was exactly like that!
I thought about asking the Chevster if he was psychic and based the whole movie on a vision he had of our vacation. But I didn’t want to take the mystery out of the situation, so I didn’t ask.
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Villains are there to be hated, of course (one might think of it as some sort of public service 😀 ), and when we find the perfect one – the one we LOVE to hate – we know the story is a good one…
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A well crafted villain is a true piece of art, with a fatal flaw running through it, even if unseen 🙂
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I do love a good bad villain!
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A finely crafted villain can really help the hero shine. But when he outshines the good guys, that’s when I start having problems with them.
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One does have a need of a good villian to make a good hero story tho, i feel its kinda a cant live with them, cant live without them scenario… I mean I do like the Terminator, but he was reprogrammed, I used to love Predator and Alien before Holywood screwed up the franchises… Predator I did not feel was particularly bad, he was more a guy coming to show humans that they werent as on top of the food chain as they thought they were…
Happy you got to take some vaycay at least, always good to do some recharging.
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Yeah, Predator was a whole different kettle of fish. I do wish the franchise had stayed awesome. I haven’t even dared watch that “The Predator” from 2018 as I heard nothing good about it.
I do hear there is another one coming out this year called “Prey”? According to Wikipedia it is going to be Hulu Direct release. That doesn’t inspire much hope 😦
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If the predator 2018 was the one that the novelizations i read about i think you dodged a bullet there.
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Love vacations, there’s nothing better. Unfortunately I do like a good villain too. Don’t you just find them more entertaining? Think they’re more accurate in the diluted morality of modern times rather than your perfect, upstanding citizen e.g. Superman. After all, that tiny, slight, sinful thought we repress to our deep subconscious is something we can all relate to, right?
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The reason they are more entertaining, as you say, is because most writers are a bunch of *insert your choice of pejorative* who are perverts and purveyors of filth and as such wouldn’t know a Good Guy if he biffed them upside the head. How can they write well about something they not only ignore but actively denigrate? They can’t. So we end up with insipid vanilla nobody’s.
“they’re more accurate in the diluted morality of modern times”
This is something I’ve discussed with Dix before, and most movie watchers seem to favor his (and your view) that movies are supposed to reflect us and usually the bad part of us. My take is that movies should show us what is possible and give us something to strive upward for.
I don’t want to relate to the baser part of humanity when watching a movie. and I think the obsession with that idea (I had a coworker who loved the latest Venom film because of woke bullshit reasons about Carnage) is what is driving movies down the path movie reviewers all lament (ie, originally, interesting stories, etc, etc).
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Very very interesting. I don’t think there are any intriguing modern-day heroes that really come to mind when I think about it that aren’t an anti- or some sort of superhero. Maybe that’s just my viewing choices, but I wonder if that’s representing a shift in society to our more animalistic urges, or a shift in more liberated writers.
I think the argument here about movies reflecting us is really: what is the purpose of a film to a viewer? Personally, I think it’s the opportunity to live vicariously in another life or world we’ll never be able to experience – and so often have we had the urge to disregard social confines for our own selfish wants. Perhaps it proves your argument of writers exploiting our worst qualities for the success of their own stories.
I do accept your view movies should present a better future, but I think there’s also value in films that show the opposite to shock us into change too. But, at the end of the day, cinema can only do such much.
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Hanks likes to play everyday heroes 😉 he had a bunch of movies recently where he’s the typical good guy, understated but generally morally upstanding. I think we need those movies, too 🙂 But well done ambiguous antiheroes are more interesting 😉
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Of course, Hanks! You’re right: we do need those sort of films too and who better than him. I really enjoyed A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood which I watched a while back – Hanks playing the arcanely perfect children’s TV host, but even then I felt we were only just rippling upon the surface of an incredible and complex man. But Bridge of Spies, Sully, Captain Phillips… they fit the bill.
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I still need to watch A Beautiful Day and the new war movie, Greyhound. But he is a balmy presence in our troubled times 😉
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Like a distant but mild mannered and comforting family relative…
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Like Darth Otsy!
Everybody’s favorite Uncle….
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You can call me Uncie Darth Otsy for short if you want Booky, as my favourite nephew…
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Thanks Uncie Darth Otsy!
I always knew I was your favoritest….
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Just don’t tell the others… 😉
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No worries, I won’t tell a soul!
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Well there’s an unholy alliance if ever I saw one!
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Hahahaa!
shhhhhhh, don’t tell anyone.
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Uncle Tom! 😀
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I agree that society HAS shifted.
And what is the purpose of movies? To me, the basic premise, above all else, is to entertain. But what we choose to entertain ourselves with is where the morality of movies come into play for me.
Movies are just a representation of a greater cultural shift though. It’s what the greatest number of people in the world can relate to, which is one of the reasons I have thought about this subject. More people watch movies than read books, so I need to know what I think of movies in general and in specific before I talk to them about them.
I’d love to be able to do this for books, sigh…
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Agree with everything you say there. I’d read more books to talk about that to you, but, then again…
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Even with books, I suspect we’d have vastly different opinions 😀
For me, movies are easier to talk about because I don’t really care about them.
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Haha!
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A lot of focus on Villains in the comments so let me subvert your expectations (really dislike that phrase!) and say I LOVE Vacations. And I really miss being able to go on one. Argh! As I was typing this, Over-The-Shoulder’s comment just dropped. Beat me to it 😂
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Yeah, that vacation a couple of years ago was the first “real” vacation I’d had in years. I wish, really wish, I could afford something like that every other year. While I’m wishing, why not every year? Yeahhhhhh……
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Vacation!!!!
How about villains on vacation, though – good or bad? 😀
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Villains on vacation are Good. Because their guard is down so the hero can easily take them down 😉
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…and as they’re vacationing they don’t do their usual villainous jobs 😀
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Hahaha definitely confirms why Villain-centric stories are almost always doomed to fail! Heroes come first! 😛
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Villains ARE doomed. unless they’re redeemed….
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