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Okay my guilt for leaving this blog dormant has reached the point where I'm actually going to finish a post so let's do this. I've been wracking my brain to find the nice middle ground between things I can talk about at length and things that people might actually care to read about.

So instead of a post about anime no ones heard of or games no ones played I'm going to rant about particular scenes in moderately well known films, Iron Man 2 and Sunshine.

(If you've watched these films with me then you probably will have already heard these thoughts)

Iron Man 2

It's the final fight of the film, Iron Man and War Machine have taken out all the Hammer drones in an adequate fight sequence. Ivan descends from the sky in a tougher looking suit, ready to wreck their shit up as only the main villian can (or rather should). War Machine steps forward and launches his trump card superweapon the Ex-wife, basically a super bunker buster. It bounces off Ivan's armour and Iron Man asks derisively "Hammer Tech right?".

Seriously what the fuck?

The joke is supposed to be that Hammer and his company are incompetant and can't build decent weaponery. But the joke falls apart if you think about it at all.

Only minutes ago War Machine's armour had been under Ivan's control and Iron Man had been desperately trying not to get his face blasted off by WM's chainguns; which happens to be Hammer Tech.

And what if the Ex-wife had worked? Sure it would have blown Ivan away, as it would have IM and WM. Why would you fire a high grade explosive in close range? And how come none of the characters make any attempt to escape/avoid it?

While this all probably sounds trivial and nitpicky, my main point is that our supposed heroes show a worrying lack of perception or foresight, which given that they are wearing power armour, is kind of a big deal.

Sunsine

While the IM2 bit was me raging at plot holes, for Sunshine it's more about missed opportunities.

Let's look at the final couple scenes: Capa (the protagonist) blows the airlock, venting all the air in the spacecraft, presumably killing Pinbacker (the psycho killer). He releases the bomb, jumps through empty space from the ship to it and gets inside. There he finds Cassie (the only other survivng member of the team) and Pinbacker, who inefficiently tries to kill them. During this time the bomb is INSIDE THE SUN. Capa and Cassie escape Pinbacker, Capa sets off the bomb, and any of the budget remaining is spent on special effects.

While I do like this segment, it seems like they went overboard making Capa the hero (he does more in the last act than most of the characters in the entire movie), Pinbacker the villian (did we need him showing up one more time in the bomb, isn't being inside the Sun enough danger?) and Cassie the useless woman (her only contribution to run to the bomb thereby leading Pinbacker there). Here's how I would have preferred the sequence to go.

Capa blows the airlock, explictly killing Pinbacker. He releases the bomb and jumps from ship to bomb. He doesn't get inside, let's say because of safety restrictions eg no opening doors this close to Sun. He remains on the outside and watches as they went the Sun, thus referencing his recurring dream of being on the surface of the Sun which is mentioned earlier in the film. Meanwhile Cassie realising the situation activates the bomb, given that in an earlier scene Capa explains to her how it is done. The bomb goes off, this time without having as much time engulfed in nuclear fusion.

Bear in mind I do like these films, and as a result I hold them up to a higher standard. In my mind the better something is, the more jarring a bad bit is.