Toon Closet Review: The Pirates of Dark Warter

Hey everyone and welcome back to Toon Closet this time we're going on an adventure on an alien world of Mer that's being devour by Dark Water. And only a long lost prince can stop it by finding the lost Thirteen Treasures of Rule. Yeah that was the opening credit narration of The Pirates of Dark Water which aired on February 25, 1991. Before the series premiered on ABC it was originally aired on Fox as a five part mini-series called Dark Water. However, chances were made by Hanna-Barbera and the series was rebroadcast on ABC later in 1991. The bulk of the series revolves around an evil substance known as Dark Water that's bend on consuming the planet. And it's up to a small group of adventurers with the help of the Thirteen Treasures of Rule to stop the Dark Water. In the first few episodes we're introduce to the series main characters. Ren an orphan who learns that he's a prince of once great kingdom of Octopon. Tula an ecomancer with the ability to control the elements and biological life, both sentient and non-sentient, as well as a natural affinity towards nature and animals. Ioz a rogue and pirate who joins up with Ren and Tula initially for the promise of treasure. And Niddler a monkey-bird who once belonged to Bloth (the series' antagonist), until he escaped by aiding Ren's own escape from the pirate lord. Although that each of the characters have their own agendas, their main goal is to find the Thirteen Treasures of Rule which processes mysterious powers of stopping the Dark Water. Aside from the Dark Water that the heroes must face there's also Bloth the evil Pirate Lord who pursues Ren and crew just to keep the Treasures for himself and was the one responsible for the destruction of Octopon.

The series lasted for two seasons with only 21 episodes and was abruptly canceled due to expensive production costs and failing to meet the airdates (according to Wikipedia). Resulting that the series was never completed and that Ren and crew found eight of the thirteen treasures.

My Final Verdict: Pirates of Dark Water is visually stunning, well scripted, and by far an entertaining cartoon series that came out from the 90s. This is a series for all ages to watch and enjoy it's just unfortunate that the series ended without any resolution. Pirates of Dark Water can be found on DVD through the Warner Bros. online store website.

The Film Vindicator Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

Now as I said last week this is a two part review. This part is the review of X3 while part two is my further thoughts on X3 which explains my problem with this film and how could they did it differently.

X-Men: The Last Stand or X3: The Last Stand was the third installment in the X-Men franchise that came out in 2006. While the first two X-Men films were directed by Bryan Singer which I believe he did a good job decided to drop out directing X3 to go directing Superman Returns. So Brett Ratner took over to direct X3 and the final result a complete and utter mess of a film. Now Brett Ratner is most known for directing the Rush Hour film series which is more of a poor man's Lethal Weapon in my opinion.

So the film starts off with flashbacks one with Professor X and Magneto meeting the younger Jean Grey. And another one with Warren Worthington III (Angel) already beginning to mutate which soon after his father finds out and this is basically where the search for the mutant cure begins. After the opening credits we see the X-Men in "combat" with an unseen enemy which turns out to be a Sentinel (giant robots design to hunt down mutants). Wolverine (played by Hugh Jackman) manages to chop its head off ending the "fight" which turns that the whole battle was the Danger Room (the X-Men's training room) As much it was nice to see the Danger Room and a Sentinel in the same film deep down it's a tad bit disappointing and abrupt. The X-Men soon learned that the government has developed the cure for genetic mutation which turns out that the cure is a mutant (named Leech who can dampen or negate the powers of other mutants). Of course this information gets to Magento (played Sir Ian Mckellen) and he doesn't like this at all as most mutants are now taking the cure including Rogue. So he decided to rally up any mutants who don't want the cure which he meets with "The Omegas". Not The Morlocks which that would be your first thought if you're familiar with the X-Men comic series but no they're called the Omegas. Why would they change the name of an established group of outcast is beyond me but I'm saving my argument on that for part two. While that's going on Cyclops (played by James Marsden) (still depress about Jean's death at the end of X2) begins to hear thoughts from Jean and heads back to Alkali Lake where she died. Eventually Cyclops finds Jean (played by Famke Janssen) alive but somehow different resulting Cyclops to die off-screen. Professor X (played by Patrick Stewart) has a psychic sense from Alkali Lake and sends Wolverine and Storm (played by Halle Berry) there to investigate. They find Jean but no Cyclops and brought her back to the school.

It's explained that when she was a child Jean developed a split-personality which called itself the Phoenix. To be fair that's actually pretty good, in the comics the whole phoenix situation occurred in outer space. X2 didn't end in outer space otherwise that would be a little silly. So to change the outer space origin to a split-personality origin actually does works. But unfortunately this explanation is not fully explored further mainly because of the conflicting sub-plots in the film but more on that in part two. So Jean/Phoenix goes ape-crap for a moment and escapes the mansion and somehow has not faced with any resistance whatsoever. Magneto becomes aware of this via Callisto's (played by Dania Ramirez) ability to sense the presence and powers of other mutants an ability she DOESN'T HAVE IN THE COMICS. At this point Brett Ratner is not even trying to match the mutant powers with the characters so expect a lot stupidity of Ratner pointed out in part two. So the X-Men and the Brotherhood converge at Jean's childhood home the Professor and Magneto try to talk her down but doesn't work out well. So Jean/Phoenix starts psychically attacking Professor X while the X-Men and the Brotherhood fight erupts outside. Eventually Jean/Phoenix kills Professor X and Magneto takes her away. With X2 already established the "Phoenix Force" power which is obviously fire/flame of energy but here it's a full on Evil Willow effect ripoff. Why? Moving on the film pads out with the students mourning for Charles Xavier's death while Magneto lends his mutant army to Alcatraz Island where the cure is being distributed. Final scenes of the film take place at Alcatraz with the X-Men defending the humans from Magneto's army. I must say as much as this battle seem awesome to look at but it feel's almost average. Most of Magneto's army appears to have copy-and-paste abilities which make this battle feel unimpressive and lazy. So obviously the X-Men win the battle, defeated Magneto by injected him with the cure, and with Wolverine killed Jean/Phoenix. The film ends with the government beginning to accept mutants with Beast/Hank McCoy (played by Kelsey Grammer) as a mutant ambassador at the U.N. and Storm manages the school as the new Headmistress. The final scene of the film shows Magneto at park playing chess alone with his hand hovering over a chess piece hinting that the mutant cure didn't work after all.

My Further Thoughts: Hello everyone and welcome to part 2 of the X3 review. So basically this part of the review is my thoughts on X3. As I pointed out last week there's a plethora of flaws in X3 that makes you think did Brett Ratner did any research before making this film. Well apparently it doesn't feel it with X3 for one there's at least three sub-plots in the film that are conflicting one other. You have the Cure sub-plot, the Human-Mutant War sub-plot, and the Dark Phoenix sub-plot. At least two of these sub-plots would work together in this film maybe but again there's just too many sub-plots going on. There's two ways they could have done with the plot. One the cure plot could have been use as human propaganda. Meaning that the government has discover the mutant cure but Magneto believes that it's a lie there is no cure it's all human propaganda. So Magneto convinces most mutants by secretly destroying camps where mutants are taking the cure. Making it look like the humans are using this false hope as a way to gather mutants in one place and then capture or kill them. This would lead to the Human-Mutant war due to Magneto's deadly persuasion over most of the mutants. Two have the plot be that the cure is a product of human propaganda to serve as a smokescreen for a secret project developed by the government. Somewhere through the film Magneto discovers this Project Wideawake is a plot to capture or eliminate mutants. So this leads Magneto to warn everyone that there is a cure is a lie but no one doesn't want to believe and you have the Human-Mutant War again. As for the Dark Phoenix plot they could save that for a possible fourth X-Men film, it really didn't need to be in X3. Mainly because it has its own plot that actually last through the film and not to mention introducing new characters to give the film series a breath of fresh air. And again having the Phoenix a split-personality origin really works in its own film instead of clashing with two other sub-plots.

Most of the issues in this film are the completely misuse and inaccurate interpretation of some of the mutant characters. For instance, "The Omega" (The Morlocks) unbelievably misinterpreted Ratner really has no clue what they do, what their names are, or why put them in this film. To start Callisto (played by Dania Ramirez) it's like they try to make her look more intimidating by giving her two different powers from other mutants in the comics. Superhuman speed (Quicksilver) and the ability to sense and track other mutants (Caliban) two abilities which she doesn't have in the comics. Kid Omega (played by Ken Leung) instead of having omega level psionic powers here he has "quill" powers. I'm sorry but if you have Omega in your name it's mandatory that you may become a badass this film doesn't do that which is deeply sad. And lastly Psylocke (played by Meiling Melançon) who her power in this film is the ability to.....go in Predator camouflage mode. So it's bad enough that Ratner brings in characters whose names and powers don't match up at all. Now the only "Omega" character who's truly accurate from the comics was Arclight (played by Omahyra Mota). Yeah don't try to get the popular characters right but have that one character that no one cares just right. Other characters make appearance in this film but they don't do much of anything other than being cannon fodders. Like the Juggernaut (played by Vinnie Jones) whom in the comics he's Charles Xaiver's step-brother yet they don't establish that in the film so basically he's just a bad fan request. At least in X2 they gave a hint hint wink wink in a scene with Nightcrawler and Mystique (that they're mother and son).

My Final Verdict: This film is one of those films that even if you enjoyed it, subconsciously you're gonna be a little unsatisfied. X3 displays how much Brett Ratner is too incompetent for a film franchise like X-Men and again not sure if he did any research before making this film. Sub-plots clash each other without any smooth exposition among the characters nor the main plot. Basically X3 is a mess of action scenes, no purpose misinterpret characters, and misused plots.

Next week I'm reviewing a good Schumacher film in fact it's the only good Schumacher film that I know. That's right next week I'm reviewing The Lost Boys, stay tuned.

The Film Vindicator Review: DOA: Dead or Alive

That's right I'm reviewing Dead or Alive a crappy film based on a popular video game so buckle up. The film premiered in 2006 and stars Jaime Pressly, Devon Aoki, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter, and the Best of the Best himself Eric Roberts. Now unlike Legend of Chun-Li and King of Fighters movie this film is pretty accurate from the games sure it might not look like it but it is.

So the plot is simple a group of fighters are gathered to an island to participate in a tournament Dead or Alive where the winner receives the $10 million prize. However, there are a few subplots that follow before and during Dead or Alive. Such as Kasumi (played by Devon Aoki) leaves her ninja clan entering the tournament in order to find her missing brother Hayate (played by Collin Chou) who was killed or disappeared from the previous tournament. Another subplot that Christie (played by Holly Valance) and her accomplice Max (played by Maximillian Marsh) enters the Dead or Alive tournament to find a vault which holds $100 million dollars. As the film progresses we see matches between fighters from the game to serve as padding since some of the familiar characters such as Brad Wong and Gen Fu don't have that much screen time. A match breaks out between Kasumi and Leon (played by Silvio Simac) (the man who "supposedly" defeated Hayate from the previous tournament) and trust me this is one of many good fight scenes. Kasumi defeats Leon believing that he couldn't have defeated her brother and also believing that Victor Donovan (played by Eric Roberts) (the man in charge of the tournament) maybe lying. While tournament is going on Kasumi gets attacked by Ayane (played by Natassia Malthe) due to that she's honor bound to kill her for leaving the ninja clan. Donovan's intentions are revealed later when Weatherby (played by Steve Howey) tells Helena (played by Sarah Carter) that Donovan had her father killed and took over DOATEC. OK if this guy knew that Donovan had Helena's father killed why did he wait until the following year to tell her that? He couldn't just report him to the cops I don't know. Earlier in the film before the start of the tournament each of the fighters is injected with nanobots that collect data of the fighter's skills. So with the final four fighters Kasumi, Tina (played by Jaime Pressly), Christie, and Hayabusa (played by Kane Kosugi) they are set up in a trap which further reveals that Donovan will harvest these nanobots from the best DOA fighters, creating a technology where the host will be able to predict and adapt to any fighting style and therefore defeat any combatant. Also it turns out that Donovan held Hayate captive after winning last year's tournament in order to experiment this technology on Hayate. With the help of Helena and Weatherby Donovan's plan to sell this tech to terrorists has been stop and the four fighters escape. But not before Donovan makes his escape he actives the island's self-destruct sequence, kind of a James Bond cliche but whatever. The final scene in the film is a fight between the female lead characters and Donovan and a fight between Hayabusa and Bayman (Derek Boyer) which I'm not gonna lie these are really good fight scenes, better then Legend of Chun-Li in comparison. So the DOA fighters manage to defeat Donovan and escape the island before it explodes the end.

Further thoughts on DOA: Dead or Alive: First let me point the flaws, it's obvious that they couldn't use all of the characters from the games so they pretty much hand-picked the popular characters I guess. Not to mention that they created two characters (Weatherby and Max) just for this film they don't exist in any DOA series. As much as they were "useful" it's still unnecessary and awkward to have in the film especially when they made a few scenes a bit off. I can complain about the white-washing of Ayane but I would just be giving pointless ranting so let me put it like this. If you can't get an Asian actor/actress to play an Asian character just get another character or just create a new character. Don't get a White actor/actress to play an Asian character it's neither creative nor a brilliant idea it just tells me that the filmmaker is lazy and some what kind of a racist. And now to the good parts the fight scenes are really good throughout the film. Except for that one fight scene between Tina and Zach (Brian J. White) well not the whole fight scene just that one moment when Zach throws Tina in the air and about to do a spinning back kick. And with the help of crappy Wire-Fu for a split-second Tina just STOPS IN MID-AIR before Zach kicks her down. Plus it's nice to see Eric Roberts still a bad ass since Best of the Best.

My Final Verdict: I take back what I said that it's a crappy film based on a popular video game. Sure it has flaws but it's just so enjoyable in its own right. With Mortal Kombat being the only video game film that's flaw yet still an awesome film, DOA comes second place in the standard of what video game films should be. It's not as great but it's far superior to any other crappy video game films that came out over the years. I understand that most fans of the DOA games may not like this film but I recommend any DOA fan to watch this film. Stay tuned next week as I do a two part review of X3: The Last Stand.

The Film Vindicator Review: Solarbabies

Sorry for the small delay the faulty wiring situation at my house requires some money to fix, so it may take awhile until then. So until that's solve my weekly reviews are re-schedule for Mondays so on to Solarbabies.

The 1980s was a mecca of all sorts of genre and sub-genre films; post-apocalyptic is one of those sub-genres that have been use in films quite regionally in the 80s. This led up to popular films such as Cyborg, Escape from New York, and Yor the Hunter from the Future. But in 1986 Solarbabies is one of those films that I consider it to be the Mad Max for teenagers and I mean that in a good way. The film stars an ensemble cast of actors Jason Patric (The Lost Boys), Jami Gertz (The Lost Boys), Lukas Haas, James LeGros, Claude Brooks, and Peter DeLuise.

The opening starts off with a narrator stating a prophecy that as entity known as Bodahi will descend from the stars to restore Earth. So it's the post-apocalyptic future where most of the Earth's water has disappeared resulting the remaining water supply to be controlled by a military organization the Eco Protectorate. The Eco Protectorate are the obvious antagonist of this film among that they run orphanages which are designed to indoctrinate new recruits into their service. In one of these orphanages we meet our heroes the Solarbabies Jason (played by Jason Patric), Terra (played by Jami Gertz), Daniel (played by Lukas Haas), Metron (played by James LeGros), Rabbit (played by Claude Brooks), and Tug (played by Peter DeLuise). They and the other orphans participate in a pass time sport called Skateball (a hybrid of lacrosse and roller-hockey). One of the Solarbabies Daniel who is deaf came across an orb with special powers (Bodahi). Upon touching the orb Daniel is cure from his deafness. Later on Daniel reveals Bodahi to the group which in turn developed a special bond and decided to keep Bodahi a secret from the Eco Protectorate. That is until Bodahi is discovered by an orphan named Darstar (played by Adrian Pasdar from Heroes) who steals Bodahi and escapes the orphanage. This transaction leads Daniel to escape alone to get Bodahi back which this leads the other Solarbabies to escape to find Daniel and Bodahi. The film carries on with the Solarbabies traveling through the dessert to a small town (Tire Town). There they meet up with Daniel, Darstar, and Bodahi after which the E-Police showed up and captured Darstar and Bodahi as the Solarbabies escapes. In the dessert they've been rescued from two bounty hunters by the Eco Warriors an organization that uses to fight against the Eco Protectorate now went into hiding. The Eco Warriors are led by a man named Greentree who is also Terra's father. Earlier in the film Jason gets a vision from Bodahi of the Protectorate's water storage facility which is the final scene of the film and where the Protectorate is bent to destroy Bodahi. So the Solarbabies head out to the water storage facility and has successfully infiltrated the facility and now the battle between the Solarbabies and the E-Police begins.

I'm gonna take a step back and talk about this battle scene. I'm not saying its bad just that something about it really tickled me. They could have brought along the Eco Warriors with them and could have easily won the battle but instead they went to the facility by themselves with no problem of fighting the Protectorate. Seriously nobody from the group gets hurt, or get shot, hell there's not even an abrupt death scene from one of the main characters. This is sort of reminds me of certain movies such as Red Dawn, Battlefield Earth, and Beastmaster. Movies that always feature a small group of heroes going up against a larger army of bad guys and the heroes actually win the battle with little to no effort. So yeah a large army of good guys will immediately get owned but a small group of good guys have a much better chance of winning. Again it just tickles me and honestly I don't think it's because that the good guys suck it's a bit more on the lines of the bad guys being ether really overconfident or incredibly lucky. Seriously in this film how much do the bad guys suck when they lose to these kids? So the film ends with the Solarbabies defeated the E-Police and destroyed the water storage facility releasing all of the water supply.

My final verdict: I love this film so much it may not be as awesome as Mad Max or Cyborg but its pretty close. And to add that after the apocalyptic future rolls by it's safe to say that break dancing will still be around. You'll see what I'm talking about. OK I will be reviewing next week it's just I can't recall what film due to that my reviewing schedules are on my computer. And that I don't wish to damage it with all of the faulty wiring but don't worry as soon as I know what I'm reviewing you'll be the the first to know. So until then stay tuned.