2012 and Ninja Assassin: Stupid Fun

Howdy, folks. I've been away for a long time because of school. Essays for Shakespeare and Early English literature, online math tests and quizzes, stories for creative writing, all that fun stuff. I decided to hold back on blogging so I could focus on school work, but now that there's only two weeks left of the semester, it's time to unwind and reflect on two movies I recently saw: 2012 and Ninja Assassin.

2012 was an entertaining cinema event, yet suffered from poor storytelling while trying to amaze the audience with fantastic special effects.
It was fun watching Los Angeles be torn apart from biblically destrutive earthquakes, and it was exciting to be there with the characters in the plane as they swerved and dived around the falling buildings and general carnage. It reminded me of those fun VR simulators they have at the mall, where you shell out a few bucks to sit inside a dark, cramped space and be jerked around while watching a B movie. Fun, but nothing that makes you want to come back for more. I was pleasantly surprised, though, with the amount of well-rounded characters in 2012, because they actually made you care about them and want to know how they survive the whole world reshaping itself in less time it took God to create it.
But the whole premise of 2012 is silly. If you do some honest research on geology, neutrinos, and the Mayans, you can find out that this movie is just your typical Hollywood fluff whose purpose is to sell tickets and popcorn. If you actually believe that the world will end in 2012 from massive earthquakes, then go stick your head in a bucket of irritated pirhanna. It'll be fun. Trust me.
(Besides, everyone knows 2012 is when the Mayan Space Zombies return to enslave us all!)
So anyway, despite the likable characters and computer-generated thrills, this movie is not memorable enough to make me see it again and again. I even predict that this movie will fade from most people's minds by 2013 while we are building palaces for our Mayan space masters.

Ninja Assassin, on the other hand, was a movie that I thouroughly enjoyed despite its flaws of weak story and over the top special effects.
There really isn't much to say about the plot for Ninja Assassin. There's a good ninja who is out to kill a lot of bad ninjas because they killed his girlfriend. Meanwhile, European spies and commandos are chasing the good ninja because...he's a ninja. It's as if each of the filmakers grabbed something from a bag of generic kung-fu plot devices, then they stuck them all together to make this movie. It's nothing groundbreaking, probably won't win any Oscars, but who cares! We're here to see all that sexy ninja action! There's enough blood spilled in this movie to drown ten whales, and watching all the visceral dismemberments and decapitations is like watching a live action Anime or video game. This movie would be great in 3D because there are a lot of scenes where they slow down so we can appreciate the sharpness of a throwing star or claw-on-a-chain snapping at the audience before removing the appendage of an offending ninja. It was gory, gruesome, and a lot of fun. It probably won't be as well loved or remembered as 300 or Sin City, but I left the theater satisfied nonetheless.

So that's all for me now. Still got a couple of weeks of school to go and then finals, so stay tuned. I may have more fun stuff to share down the road.