Lazy Weekend

I watched Avatar on Saturday night. It was a fun movie. I can see why people enjoyed it so much. It had a lot of the elements that made Star Wars and Lord of the Rings great. It was a fairly traditional story of Good vs Evil and overcoming odds, the hero's journey and fighting for what you believe in. It was actually quite refreshing not to have to be thinking about the plot too much (in that it wasn't difficult to follow). It wasn't trying to be clever, it was just trying to tell a story. It reminded me of some of the old Disney classics too. The visual effects were astounding.

Sunday night I watched two movies. The first was Terminator Salvation, It was definitely a movie. If it wasn't a Terminator movie it might have been pretty good. It was technically well executed, but the script was absolutely awful. The worst part was they kept doing little homages to the earlier Terminator movies like "see, we watched them and did our homework". But then turned around and left major plot holes like they didn't understand them at all. This shit isn't salvaging anything.

Spoilers Follow: Skynet should not have known who Kyle Reese was, let alone what he looked like. Unless you're telling me that Skynet checked John Connors Facebook page and saw that he listed Kyle Reese as his father. If Skynet knew who Kyle Reese actually was, why didn't Skynet terminate him the instant they found him (thus negating John Connor's existence as they were complaining would happen the whole movie). If it was so Marcus would still see him and get John to enter the facility, why didn't Skynet just falsify the information (or, you know, contact John directly itself). Skynet said Marcus was under its influence the whole time anyway. But regardless, only two people knew that Kyle Reese was Johns father (his mother and him - maybe three if you count him probably telling his wife). If Skynet didn't know who he was, why was he #1 on the kill list. That drives the whole plot and it makes no sense. The only reason I could think of that would explain some of it is the N-jump theory of time travel, but that might be giving them too much credit. There were other issues, but that was the most egregious issue I had with the plot. Spoilers End.

xXx was the other movie I watched. It's an older one, but one I hadn't seen. It was exactly what I expected. Light on plot, heavy on action and drowning in cheese. Coming straight after Terminator Salvation only made it seem better :) It was enjoyable, but I went in with low expectations.

On the gaming front I finished up Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Fun game, but it would have been nice to have referenced the story from the first one (even in passing). I was curious about what happened after the end of the first game. I also missed the openness of the first one. This one felt much more linear and constrained (almost on rails except for a couple of missions), a lot like Modern Warfare 2.

I then started up Mass Effect 2 (I'd been originally planning on Dragon Age, but it wasn't meant to be). I need to finish a run on Insanity difficulty to get the remaining two achievements. It's tough work at times, but I'm getting there. Playing as a Sentinel with a bonus ability of Armour Piercing Ammo. The Tech Armour is literally a life-saver.

I keep trying to get something constructive done whenever I have time off, but I guess I'm working myself too hard the rest of the time. By the time I get any time off all I want to do is goof off and do something that allows me to switch off my brain. It is looking like this next week is going to be pretty rough too, I'm actually wishing I hadn't taken Monday off (but I didn't have any idea of the schedule before then). Oh well. I'm sure it'll work itself out :)