Villians: The "necessary evil" for the Hero archetype?

In all honestly I’ve wanted to come back to these movie archetypes discussions for a bit of a while, just to balance out the discussions with the hero genres. It seemed only fair to do a focus towards the antagonists as well, since they are an equal and necessary part of storytelling, especially in movies.

Think about it, just how far and how good a film would be without the right type of villain or foe to show the endurance of the characters, the characterization of the antagonist, in comparison to the protagonist, and the storyline itself? In my opinion, probably not that far or that great.

Now I know I mentioned this before, but just to set the record straight once again this is not me glamorizing evil or its ideology, etc. This is just a discussion on the role of the antagonist in storytelling, and more specifically why we have them.

Prequels to Sequels... Yay or Nay?

In case any of you were wondering, here was the situation that brought me to this particular topic. I was out with two friends of mine not long ago and as usual our conversation eventually shifted towards media, and movies. We were all anticipating (and that the same time loathing) this year’s lineup for spring/summer seasons. At some point tin the conversation, one of us pointed out that lately, certain genres of movies have been over saturated within the last several years or so. In this case superhero type films, such as the X-Men based movies. With the X-men, there have been at least 4 affiliated films, in the past 10 years, with a 5th one “X-men: First Class” out this spring, and apparently 4 more confirmed titles out within the next 7 years or so. Yikes…

Sucker Punch, visual eye-candy with no substance, or something more?

Well, I guess with a movie this questionable yet visual, it was inevitable that someone to a review on it. And I guess that someone will be me…lol.

Some have said Sucker Punch is simply over-stimulated eye candy (in more ways than one) in a 120min extended fanboy commercial. Other say it’s a new rendition of GG live version of a anime, or a videogame. While even a few have compared its female empowerment ala fem fatale-ness approach is reminiscent to films like La Femme Nikita or Thelma and Louise. For myself, well…it’s hard to sum up a film like this, but I can try to put my two cents into what I felt about it.