The Villain is Certain

In any story, there is one character who is unwavering, uncompromising, undeterred. This character has no doubts about his course and knows, with utmost conviction, that he is right. This character never needs to naval-gaze, has no use for introspection, and will never second-guess. This person is the villain.

The hero has doubts. The hero questions. The hero wonders if she's making the right choice. The hero wrestles with his conscience. Often, the hero must change and consider other viewpoints and perspectives. The hero must concede the possibility that she is wrong, that she might even be fighting on the wrong side.

In many hero stories, it's not just a clash of good and evil, but also of doubt and certainty. That's why the best heroes, the ones whose stories I find the most interesting, are the ones who wrestle with doubt. They believe that they are doing the right thing, but their biggest fear, something many villains gleefully exploit, is the possibility that they might be on the wrong side. The villains never have this struggle.

This Open Letter to Paramount

Dear Paramount,

Let's dispense with pleasantries and get right down to business. You won. It wasn't even a fair fight. In your corner you have Muhammad Ali in an M1 Abrams tank. In my corner I have a sock puppet with a missing eye. We both knew how this was going to end.

Today is the day you released the Star Trek Into Darkness Blu Ray. A while back I was dismayed to learn that you weren't putting all the special features on one release. Instead, you got the bright idea to give different stores different versions, so that each retailer can boast its own set of exclusives. Now, either I buy two or even three copies of the same movie to have all the features, or I choose which features I can live without. It's like Sophie's Choice, except this isn't the Holocaust, it's only a Blue Ray home release, and I'm being incredibly petty.

Geeks and Bible Geeks

Any self respecting geek knows a lot of trivia. It's one of the hallmarks of our people. At a moment's notice, we'll regale you with the fact that Zac Efron got his start playing a young Simon Tam on Firefly, whether you want to know it or not.

How is this any different than someone who can quote any obscure verse from Habakkuk? Or someone who knows how many times the number 40 appears in Scripture (86) and the only one of Christ's miracles to appear in all four Gospels. (feeding the five-thousand)

Geeky Divisions in the Christian Church

You'd think that geeks are a monolithic entity (insert 2001 joke here), but we're not. Just because we're geeks doesn't mean we all think the same, believe the same, or even all get along. The same holds true for Christians. True, we all believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but after that we start to faction, and we've been doing so since day 41.

Perhaps the biggest split in the Christian church is between Protestants and Catholics. For geeks, it's Star Trek versus Star Wars. Each side has its share of atrocities (Jar Jar Binks and Star Trek: Voyager) but each side has done good in the world as well. (Empire Strikes Back and Wrath of Khan) The divisions between fan-bases can be stiff, with each side declaring that their science fiction geeky passion is the one true geek pathway.

Seriously. Go online and find a Star Trek versus Star Wars argument in any online forum, and it's like they're arguing about religion.

Sequels I Pretend Don't Exist

I like sequels. When done right (Spiderman 2) they can expand upon the universe, explore the characters in greater depth than the original allowed, and resolve dangling plot threads from the previous film. When not done well, and sadly this is often the case, they not only are a terrible movie, they retroactively ruin the previous film. (On the plus side, they do allow a lot of actors to pay back what I assume are massive gambling debts.)

Thus, to preserve my sanity and continued enjoyment of the first installment(s), there are sequels I just pretend don't exist. As far as I'm concerned, these movies were never green-lighted, scripted, cast, financed, catered, filmed, produced, and released. They didn't happen, and a pox on anyone who tries to shatter my precious illusion. (And yes, I am aware of the irony that writing about movies I pretend don't exist violates my own rule. I'm sure we can move past it.)

Big Reveals and Damage to our Jaws

not you

The best part about a long-running series is the Big Reveal, a turn that is so shocking, so game changing, people will slap you across the face if you spoil it for them. Just a scant few centuries ago, dropping an un-alerted spoiler was grounds for a duel. Little known fact: the famous Hamilton-Burr duel began when Alexander Hamilton gave away the ending of Catherine Cuthbertson's novel The Romance of the Pyrenees before Aaron Burr got a chance to finish it. (Spoiler alert, I may have made that last bit up.)

Sometimes, though, the Big Reveal does not cause our jaws to succumb to gravity. In fact, gravity itself is so annoyed by the plot development that it ceases to function around our jaw area, causing it, in fact, to rise. If you ever found yourself involuntarily grinding your teeth after finding out, I don't know, that as a boy Darth Vader built C-3PO, that's gravity expressing its disdain. (Seriously, don't annoy gravity. I don't think it likes us.)

8 Great 80's Movies

As a child of the 80's, I had many people in my life trying to expand my horizons, particularly regarding the merits of media from the 1950's. Sometimes it was the music (referred to as "real music") or the television shows (thank you Nick at Night) but, most of the time my elders wanted me to watch the great movies of the 1950's. To me, all these things were in the stone age. We're talking 3 decades and 6 presidents ago. That's forever for a child. It didn't help matters that when I watched Back to the Future, I was amazed at the primitive world of the 1950's and wondered how anyone could live in that decade. Why on earth would I want to watch a movie made in the 50's?

I was ignorant, and thankfully I was relieved of said ignorance about that decade and have now grown to appreciate those influences: the television, music, and of course the movies. Well, now many of my fellow children of the 80's have children of their own, children who hold a similarly ignorant view of the time period three decades prior, with the strange music, odd television shows, and of course, movies that they readily dismiss. They, too, need to have their ignorance eliminated so they can fully appreciate the contribution that this decade's movies made to our culture.

Today I will profile 8 essential movies of the 80's. It is imperative that this current generation see these movies. If I happen to converse with your child one day, and they don't get a single reference from Airplane, Ghostbusters, or Back to the Future, then I'm blaming you. Because that's just bad parenting.