I saw "Men in Black" on Saturday morning for the first time in a long time. No, not J, K, and L, but my *other* favorite trio, Howard, Fine and Howard. Useless fact: in this Oscar-nominated short, Curly first created his now-famous "woo-woo-woo" to hide the fact that he'd forgotten one of his lines.
Anyway--

POK JJ: "Charizard's Burning Ambition"
Here we see a foot-weary Team Twerp slogging its way through a wasteland, with Team Rocket watching over their shoulder from a nearby mesa (and, oddly enough, able to catch every disparaging comment made about them even from a distance). They meet up with a green-haired female trainer--who looks oddly like a character from "Sailor Moon", for some reason--who instantly throws Brock into a libidinous fit.
She's a Charizard trainer who rides a female Charizard and offers to take Ash and co. to a special valley where the great beasts train. She coaxes Ash into riding his Charizard--which, if he could do all this time, why bother hoofing it from gym to gym? Charizard is not accustomed to playing horsey--watch him struggle to lift a 98-lb. 12-year-old into the air. He's wheezing like a chain smoker running the Boston Marathon.
Team Rocket follows, hoping to make out like bandits. Here we see a very human side of the Rocketeers--despite being bitter foes, they respect Charizard's fighting prowess and determination, which shows how one dimensional they aren't.
Charizard proceeds to have his butt handed to him by several bigger, surlier Charizards, and takes it badly, especially hearing the trainer slur his manhood by calling him weak because of his macho displays. Note how the maxim "like master, like pet" comes into play as Ash does a little macho posing himself, and Misty gets a little nervous about her normally laid-back paramour suddenly acting like he's ready to eat bullets and sh** ice cream.
Charizard becomes depressed--and borderline suicidal. He falls into a lake and stays there, threatening to dip the tip of his tail into the water and kill himself. Here we see Team Rocket play philanthropist by throwing pebbles at Charizard's head to keep him awake and alert so he doesn't do himself in. I admire their attitude but I question their methods.
The Rocketeers actually are helpful here in using their new bank account-draining robot that James ordered online (a little tip of the cap here to us Netgeeks) to batter down the door to the Charizard training grounds...though their villainous pride and their showmanship urges don't allow them to just come right out and say, "We want to be the heroes for once!"
This would be the the fourth Pokemon Ash has let free or given away--after Butterfree, Primeape, and Pigeot. It provides a nice lead-in to getting Cyndaquil, his new fire-breathing Pokemon, though it was also his last flying Pokemon, so that could leave our boy at a disadvantage.
The ending struck me as a bit abrupt. I wasn't sure what to expect--Charizard giving up his dream of training with the creme de la creme of Charizards and going with Ash? Misty berating the boy for his seeming callousness in ditching Charizard? Team Rocket rewarded for their generosity by crashing down not in some dangerous or painful place, but in a flower-filled meadow or through the roof of a Chippendale's?

ZETA: "His Maker's Name"
Zeta learns the name of one of his creators and goes in search of the guy, which takes him to an aeronautics lab. here he gets mixed up with the cast of "Godspell" and gets whisked back to their commune, which looks straight out of an episode of "Dragnet". Bennett misunderstands Zeta's intention, thinking he wants to kill the scientist, and sets a trap...though a bit of scientific know-how and a good heart grants him escape and another piece to the puzzle of his past.
Ro is drinking soda in a cyber cafe. I would think drinks are discouraged near the machines; at least they are in a college computer lab.
It seems there are hippies even in the age of flying cars and holophones.
Watch the bit where Z and Ro disguise themselves as a pregnant woman. "Should you be working?" Why? Do you detect a malfunction?" Absurdly hilarious.
Watch Z slice the head off a security robot with his wrist saws. Get this boy on "Battlebots"!

X-MEN: "Turn of the Rogue"
This is actually on of the better episodes, because it shows us a glimpse of the real Rogue from the comics: she wants to love and be touched (watch her make goo-goo eyes at Scott from the gym window and on the bus), but because of her talents and her strict upbringing she can't. So she sublimates her lusts by acting aloof and snotty. Plus when she has her shirt and jacket off and her hair out of her eyes you can see what a little knockout she is.
When the class is scheduled to go on a field trip, Principal Darkholm arranges for Jean to be nixed and Rogue to be put in her place. Meanwhile, Logan tells Xavier to come clean with the kids about Darkholm's true nature.
Here we also see a confrontation between Magneto and Xavier for the first time. It seems Maggie's tired of playing with paper clips; he uses his talents on Chuck's chair, locking the wheels. (It seems to be an older steel model rather than the newer, lightweight, aluminum ones.) However, throwing him against the window was a bit *too* much. The men's views on mutants may be polar opposites, but Magneto respects Charles deeply and would never bodily injure him.
Rogue and Cyclops end up in an underground cave together, but before you can say "makeout", Rogue deamnds to know the truth about the X-Men. She heard about her face being used on an enemy dummy in a training session, and her feelings are hurt. Scott insists it isn't like that; they want to recruit her, but if she insists on remaing the x variable she will have to be treated as such.
Here Mystique shows herself, and Rogue pulls a brain drain to learn the real truth. Mystique--and this seemed a bit over the top; what is she, a cannibal or something?--turns into a wolf and backs them onto a middle of a precarious ice bridge. Rogue thinks quickly and uses Scott's eye beams to signal the Blackbird...and in this she becomes an official part of Team X.
How old is Mystique? I'd place her at about fifty. We know she lived in Germany for several years, where she had an affair with a count, got pregnant, gave birth to Nightcrawler, and left him for dead. At some point she was a stepmother of sorts to Rogue and was training her for combat. And somewhere in there she had enough time to claw her way into a key post in the New York state school system. She's had some life!

BAT BEY: "Curse of the Cobra"
A fair plot, although not as many twists and surprises as "Out of the Past" or the two-part JLA story. Of course this one wasn't penned by Dini, most of whose scripts beautifully carry these elements. When Bruce mused about the DNA and the thermal bombs, I immediately figured these Kobra clowns were going "Jurassic Park".
When the Kobras show their hooded faces in Gotham and Terry proves inadequate (don't worry, kid, it happens to all superheroes sooner or later), Bruce sends him to see an old friend of his--a fishmonger. Well, actually, she trained with Bruce back in his martial arts days and runs a secret dojo when she's not hawking carp and talking with a stereotypical Japanese accent.
Terry meets Xander, a mysterious youth who travels with a retinue of bodyguards. Terry figures he must be royalty and decides to give him an education he can't get in the dojo. He takes Xander to a pizza place, where he tries pizza for the first time, and gets his butt kicked at "Sentries of the Lost Cosmos" by Max (who gets a little silly with her victory dance/chant). Some Jokerz show up at that point, and Xander demonstrates his fighting skills for Max. Xander's bodyguards show up and ecort him home.
Now here's where it takes an odd turn--Xander is Kobra elite, and he's supervising a project to mutate several "volunteers" into human reptiles. Then he sets his sights on Max. The query is, does he want to make her his mistress, or will we get to see if she looks good in snakeskin?
As I said, not a lot of big surprises. I already have an idea that part two will involve a plot to mutate the population of earth into reptiles, and the previews show a volcano, which tells me it'll be a cloud-seeding operation. It's a plot I've written and know well.
Still, I'm a big fan of mutation storylines, so I'll be watching, if only to see what the beast has in mind for the beauty.

Let your opinion be known! Reply to this post!

- Register as a New User for the WBC Bulletin Board!
- Already Registered? Reply to this post!
- View the original post and all replies!