Prometheus: An Aesthetically Attractive Pile of Aweful

Holy SHIT! Did not see this one coming. If you told me a few months ago that Prometheus was going to be the most infuriating and disappointing pile of shit-on-screen that I have paid to see since Journey 2, I would never have believed you. Funny how life works out sometimes isn't it? Im gonna say this right now, this is going to get long and its going to be full of spoilers because to explain WHY this movie is awful I have to pic apart pretty much every other scene. So for those who don't want to sit through it all or dont want any spoilers, heres the quick version. Every action taken by any of the characters in this movie is either stupid, inconsistent or completely inexplicable. When the characters themselves are not destroying the scenes, the story and the situations around them boldly take up the mantle and make sure that the level of awful is maintained. Now, lets dive right into this and see what sense we can make of this debacle.

The Good: Pretty Pictures!

This will be short. One thing that can be (rightly) toted about this movie is the amazing visuals and attention to detail applied to the sets. As far as creating the possibility for immersion, this movie really delivers. I cant really think of too many other movies that have created a unique universe that can rival Prometheus on the visuals front. Yup, thats about it. Wait...let me think...yup thats it. Anything else that could have potentially been good was ruined by the writing. 

Oh and a quick note. The ability to create a visually impressive universe  in a film does NOT make it a good film. You want to argue that point? Well I accept your argument and I guess that means we should retroactively award all of the Transformers movies best picture due to their execution of visual mastery. 

The Bad: Everything else!

So apart from the visuals, everything else in this movie ranges from irritating to just flat out stupid. Where this is most obvious is in how the characters are written. So lets jump right into that!

Characters and Science: 

The first glaring problem with the characters in this film is that they are, predominantly, scientists, and not a single one of them acts anywhere CLOSE to how a scientist would act. Now before you start thinking im being nit-picky, you have to understand how characters and characterization work in a film.   While thats a topic for a film class, there is one message that we need to remember; you need consistency and common sense for characters to work and if you DONT have those two things, your characters will fail and your movie will as well. So I'll say this again, the characters in this film are, predominantly, scientists, and not a single one of them acts anywhere CLOSE to how a scientist would act. Because of this the characters just don't fucking work because anyone who has taken a science class before can pick apart almost every action taken by every character because they all violate basic common sense. Lets make a list of common sense rules that, I think, we can all agree on shall we?

1) DONT TAKE YOUR HELMET OFF ON AN ALIEN PLANET WHEN YOU HAVE ONLY BEEN THERE FOR AN HOUR! I can't believe they let this slide in the writing process. No one would do that. I dont care if there is breathable air. There is breathable air on THIS planet and yet there are still airborne contagints that can kill us HERE. How face-meltingly stupid do you have to be to risk contamination on an alien planet where, if there are microbes there, which there are, have the potential to kill us with no possible way to cure us cause guess the fuck what? Our immune systems never ran into anything like what would be on this new planet because we have never been there before. I don't care if it's actually the case that we were made by people who spent time on this planet, that doesn't mean our immune systems have magically become prepared to fight anything there! 

2) In a operation room, maybe behave like doctors? Again, we have scientists doing something that no scientists would do, operating on a foreign life form with no quarantine and almost no attempt at shielding themselves from anything that may be harmful. Also, electrifying a 2000 year old head to bring it back to life because you saw some cell growth on it? What the hell does that accomplish? Did they really think that it would come back to life? Are we, the audience, supposed to buy that that shit can happen just by shocking the brain? Why did it explode? Is this alien from the Ren and Stimpy universe?

3) When exploring alien ruins, ruins that you have fully mapped, how bout consult that map and those monitoring it instead of just wandering away. Probably one of the most contrived plot elements of this movie is the geologist and the biologist getting lost and left behind in the ruins, setting up for a couple of pointless horror scenes. How they got lost is beyond me. Seriously, they had people watching the mapped out ruins with everyones' position locked down. Not only that, they were in a crescent moon shaped area of the place, only two ways to go, left or right, how the fuck do you get lost in that? Seriously, it hurts my head thinking about this part. Speaking of our geoligist and biologist friends... 

4) Don't put your idiot face in the face of an alien snake. This one was really really really really painful. So we have a biologist, apparently, who, while previously being scared of the 2000 year old corpse of a new species (which, really, what biologist would be afraid of something like that? Wouldn't they instead be going absolutely crazy with joy and excitement being present at the greatest biological discovery in history?) decides to try and grab an alien snake thing with his hand. No equipment, nothing to contain the creature, just his hand. Wanna guess what happens? Surprise surprise he gets the shit killed out of him by getting face fucked by Mr. Snake. No biologist, no one in general, would do anything so stupid.

5) When running away from a falling object that is moving along a straight path, dont travel along the same path to avoid that object. Try moving left or right. Or dont. If you can't figure that one out you probably should get squished because you are an embarrassment to science and the human race in general.

6) Don't jump to conclusions, especially when you have no real grounds to make them. Lets break down the mission debrief scene. Our two main characters, after being introduced by someone in terrible old man makeup, present what the mission goal is; search this planet because they found it using cave paintings found in ancient civilizations across earth. The woman calls these aliens "the engineers." The other scientists ask why they call them that. She says something to the affect of "they created us." Biology boy asks, "whats your evidence?" She says, "Its just what I believe." This moment, roughly 10-15 mins in the film, crushes any immersion that had built up for me to this point and made it really really difficult to get back into the movie. No scientist would present something as fact when they have no evidence to do so. Now I don't care if thats what she wants to believe, I don't care that it turns out to be true, on a trillion dollar mission, surrounded by great scientific minds, you dont say something that stupid and present it as a fact. 

Ok, there is seriously more I could talk about, (don't build amazing surgery machines that are sex exclusive, don't wake up an alien with no containment planned, don't just run into an alien ruin, use your amazing space ship and its technology to tell that a storm is coming sooner than a few minutes before it hits) but number six is a good segway. one final note, some of these may seem nit-picky, things I should ignore and suspend my disbelief. Heres the thing though, good writing can get you to suspend your disbelief, but if you have massive lapses in common sense like those listed above, they will always take the audience out of that state and, if you continue to present lapses in common sense, they will never get back to it, and as result your movie will fail. So now lets get into the stupid ass story.

Creation and Aliens:
Like i said, the two main scientists are operating under the assumption that the aliens depicted in the cave paintings are the creators of humanity. Not, as is constantly claimed by the history channel, merely a force that uplifted us from primitives to a technologically advanced civilization, but the literal creators of the species. The reason for this choice is that there is a clear bullshit religious message that is the foundation of this movie. Now, going with the uplifting society rather than a creation story would make a much more convincing and cohesive story. But thats not the way they went so its time to  pull this nonsense apart.

1) The creation event: So the movie opens with what I assume is the creation event that is credited to the aliens. A totally ripped white dude drinks some black goo which disintegrates him and he gets all up in the earths water supply. Presumably, this is what makes "us" possible in the logic of the movie. Ok. Lets look at that. Its not like humans just flopped up out of the water a couple days later, all of evolution  still took place. Regardless, after all of that, humans still ended up a 100% match with the aliens DNA. This means one of two things. Either the story doesn't make sense at all because thats not how evolution works (hundreds of millions of years separating the initial creation event from the advent of humanity would make the likelihood that our DNA would match with the aliens about as likely as me hooking up with Christina Hendricks IE its not fucking happening) or it implies these alien dudes were hanging around throughout all of the biological history of the earth ensuring the development of the human species from the very first microbes onwards, which is equally stupid.

2) Religion and the creation event: There is a clear message about faith in this movie. The message is,you should have faith that there is a higher power than yourself, and you need to maintain it. This comes in the form of the hit-you-over-the-head messages from the main lady scientist in what she says, her attachement to her cross and her bullshit behavior (note the scene where she gets all mopey that she can't give birth, otherwise known as the worst bit of characterization in the film). However, there is more of this nonsense worked into the film in very subtle ways that you may not have noticed. Thankfully I'm here to point out this bullshit. As far as characters go you have three teams essentially.

Team 1: Christian archeologists
Team 2: Non-believing science heathens
Team 3: Team lets exploit our gods

Team 1 consists of our two main characters, who are depicted as being as perfect as possible, are  clearly supposed to be the characters we like. They are smart, pretty, kind, understanding blah blah blah. What's more, the lady of this group, the one who maintains her stupid faith, is the one who survives to continue her search for answers. The guy, who loses faith half way through (he gets sad cause the aliens were not alive so he gets all drunk) is punished because of this loss of faith.

Team 2, our geologist and biologist friends, who didn't have faith to begin with, are depicted as cowards, fools and assholes. They are bland, one dimensional characters and they die in the worst (and most contrived) ways.

Team 3 is the old man who wants to live forever, his daughter, Charlize Theron, and Mr. Robot. Old man and Mr. Robot, who are secretive, manipulative, uncaring for human life, and they, when they finally achieve their goal to meet their creator in an attempt to gain some form of power over death from him, they get the fuck smashed out of them. Charlize Theron's character is the person who is supposed to be in charge but she is depicted as a cold, unfeeling bitch who also happens to be a useless space slut. She fucks the pilot just cause he suggests that she is a robot and to make matters worse she is engaged in a power grab from her father.  She dies too. Mr. Robot does live but I believe thats more of necessity to further the plot as opposed to any intelligent message behind his survival.

The message is clear, have faith, don't stop searching for the answers within your faith, and you will be  a better person than those who dont have those characteristics. But the creation in question is so dumb that we cant buy into enough for this characterization to make sense to us. Heres the thing dear readers, the elements present are not intrinsically bad, they are just fucked up due to lapses in common sense and no intelligence behind the concepts. A lot of these concepts could be saved with some simple rewrites (maybe ill do that next blog) but as they stand, all these elements serve to derail the plot and the movie as a whole

Fuck it, I am done. There is still so many things to talk about in regards to how stupid this movie is but I covered the big bits, story, plot, characters. The guys over at redlettermedia.com, who I generally respect, were iffy about writing this movie off because of the aesthetic value it has and because they were not sure if the movie was too smart for them or they were too smart for the movie. The answer is clear, we, the people, are too smart for this fucking movie. This script, when you pay it about a minutes thought, comes off like it was written by a seven year old. Its sad because there are elements in this universe that would be great to explore. Too bad. Maybe  if they get the sequel going they wont have the dude who wrote Lost work on the script, cause if Lost and Prometheus has taught me anything is that that guy can't write a coherent plot so he tries to hide behind a bunch of idiotic mystery and uses religion as a crutch because he can't write creative new concepts. Too bad its really easy to tell when its condensed down to two hours.

Eye on E3 - "The Last of Us" (PS3)

So after an exhausting scrutinizing of the latest and greatest titles that will be showcased at E3, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and leak one of the more impressive games to you 3 days after the Expo has ended. Your welcome.



This possible little gem is called The Last of Us, and it's set in the US so perhaps that is a little pun there? Oh developer Naughtydog (of the Uncharted series), how clever and inappropriately named you are. But drunkenly selected developer names and game titles aside, this adventure/shooter/survivor looks pretty damn impressive and in-depth. The attention to detail and physics appears to be pretty top notch. The graphics are pretty, and dealing with enemies looks engaging and challenging.

Fresh off the disappointing single player campaign in Mass Effect 3, I am currently on the rebound, and if Last of Us has a decent story then I will probably be driven right into its loving arms. Now yes, it has no release date save for an ambiguous "2013," but I usually stay on the rebound for a long time, as few games can live up to my high standards to swoop up and sweep me off my feet and treat me right. The last time I was in a serious relationship was with ME3 and I got my heart broke. I loved ME soooo dearly...that I will probably be vulnerable for some time. It took some serious bro talks with Chet, during which we did not make direct eye contact and mostly conversed in a series of grunts and high fives, for me to realize just how deep ME3 had cut me.

No matter. It's time to look at and focus on the future. The Last of Us, as I mentioned, is set in the US -specifically beginning in a Boston quarantine zone. You play Joel, a black market dealer and protector of 14 year old orphan Ellie (not yet explained). Upon escaping the quarantine, your enemies are the survivors (people who are not infected) and the infected. The virus that has apparently infected human beings in this story is apparently not a virus at all, but a fungus - based on the horrifying parasitic variety that produced the infamous "zombie ants" captured in the popular BBC documentary, Planet Earth. I'm glad that the writers decided to go with this theory, because it adds a lot of legitimacy to the "how did these brain eaters come to be" question (I'm sorry but no, I don't buy that everyone in the world is just addicted to bath salts. Seriously, just shut the fuck up about bath salts already). Too often this part of the story is ignored, (zomg o noes I woke up one day and them zombie mahfuckers erewhere!)

All in all I'm pretty impressed with what I've seen so far and it'll be exciting to watch it as it develops toward its release date on some day, at something o' clock, 2013.

Well that's it for now. Keep checking in as Chet and I bring you our favorite picks from E3 (or don't check in because, let's face it, were both lazy pieces of shit).

Cheers!

Diablo III: First impressions

Jesus its been awhile! Fucking Mass Effect 3 got me so depressed I couldn't even gather the energy to tear it apart with my highly trained dagger esque critiquing, let alone take on any other topics. However, after some soul searching, punch dancing and drinking dark manly beers I am back and ready to start talking about important things again. The topic today? The long awaited Diablo installment and what i've noticed thus far.

Shit That sucks but I wont talk about:

If you have been paying attention to what the internet is saying about this game, the launch problems and the DRM bullshit keep cropping up as big problems. They are indeed problems but having a single player heavy game that requires connection to a server and having massive server issues (so bad that customers have completely nuked its metascore on many a review site) are no duh problems. It doesn't take a lazer guided razor brain like my own to pick on that. So I am going to talk about two problems that are really hurting what is overall a potentially awesome experience

Problem #1: Difficulty and Hand Holding:

So I have gotten almost all the way through Act 1 twice with a Monk and a Witch Doctor and something odd, at least according to my seasoned Diablo veteran mind, has happened; I have not died once. Not once! Not ever fucking close in fact. My monk got half his health knocked down once and my Witch Doctor has gone through with basically no damage. I have never had to use a health potion! Christ, remember the first mini boss in Diablo 2? You know, this bitch?

God Damn Blood Raven...

How many health potions did you have to down to get by her the first time? How ingrained was the lesson to always open a town portal outside a boss area so you could get back to your body when you inevitably got owned? I'll tell you the answers to both those, a fuck ton and so ingrained that it became as subconscious as blinking. So what the hell is happening in Diablo 3? Well first, you are over powered from the beginning. Every character has AOE attacks and all the characters thus far regen their mana so fast you can basically spam your most powerful spells. Gone is just the basic "hit with weapon" attack, you just constantly use spells so you just walk through enemies with no worries. This is compounded by constant health drops from enemies and the ultimate bit of handholding, extremely limited control of how your character develops. You can't really fuck up your character like you could back in the day, their stats are auto assigned each level and so far what skills your choose to run at a given time dont really change how effective your character is and even if it did you can change them whenever. Now im not against the latter bit perse, in fact I certainly prefer it to making a whole new character when I want to try something new, but not letting us control the stats? In an RPG? 

The reasons for these changes and this utter lack of challenge could only be the flawed logic that the game needs to be easy to be accessible to the widest market, saving the true challenge (I fucking hope at least) for nightmare/inferno mode. This is wrong because first, human brains like challenge and get bored with ease. Without challenge things get monotonous. Second, geting your shit owned makes completing tasks way more rewarding and way more fun. Most people dont just stop because they get beat once by a boss, the keep playing, and when they beat the boss they feel accomplished and want to keep going to the more difficult challenges ahead. Shit, I got one shot by Duriel in D2 for about 2 hours the first time I was trying to get past him, and when I eventually did I ripped my shirt off, flexed my 13 year old muscles and felt like an invincible beast god who could punch Odin himself in the face and live to tell the tale. I'll amend this if the difficulty gets harder post Act 1, maybe Act 1 is just a long tutorial, but if it keeps this pace, and if the difficulty doesn't go WAY the fuck up in nightmare mode, I will be upset. 

Problem #2: Aesthetics:

First things first, this is a totally subjective opinion. Never ever stay away from an experience simply because someone else doesn't like the way it is presented. Note the following;

This game, on the aesthetics front, is appalling. The graphics are terrible, the animations are glitchy, the heath/armor/weapon drops look like they are from about 1995 and the dialogue is so god awful its laughable. Regardless, its one of the most intensely enjoyable experiences I have ever come across in a video game, and if I judged it purely on aesthetics, as I am sure many have, I would have never played it and been a lesser person for it. However, I have a strong dislike for the Aesthetics in Diablo 3, and its not because of just one thing. So here comes a LIST!

1) Color Scheme: 

The colors in this game are just off for someone who is a veteran of Diablo. Everything is bright, sharp and generally the pallet, instead of being dark red/black/dead grey, is more blue, bright red and purple. As a result it makes it hard to feel oppressed and unnerved by your environment and its even more difficult to take your enemies seriously.

2) Silly enemies and Cartoony Graphics:

Look at these things

First of all, I couldn't find a good in game shot of these guys so this picture makes them look way cooler than they look in game. In game they look like Oogie Boogy from Nightmare Before Christmas is running up to give you a big hug. Then there are the Imps, hands above heads, mouths open, flopping around like a cartoon monster. Silly, silly silly in a game that silly shouldn't ever cross your mind. Part of the reason is that this game looks way closer to a cell shaded cartoon than it does to what many people, myself obviously included, think a Diablo game should look like. To sum up, when your taking part in the final battle between heaven and hell, it shouldn't look like a silly children's cartoon, and unfortunately it kind of does. Blame WoW and the drive for mass appeal.

3) Voices:

There were voices in D2 of course, but they were very sparse. Now everyone fucking talks and a lot of that dialogue really takes you out of the game. I suppose its supposed to make the game feel more real, people in town chatting etc, but it actually makes it feel way more fake and forced. The world benefited by leaving itself more of a blank slate to be filled by the players imagination, and sadly thats lost so far. 

4) Characters explode with all the colors! 

Everything your character does is bright, shiny and flamboyant. Not necessary at all and it would help the game to have that kind of stuff toned down.

5) Outlined targets:
When you hover over an enemy, they get a giant red ring around, making them even MORE cartoony and even MORE difficult to take seriously.

Overall the aesthetics are not appalling and I do enjoy a lot of the details, there just feels like a lot of missteps. Let me take off the targeting highlight at least. Im 24 years old, I know how to click on the shit I want to kill.

Good News!
This game isn't bad, im actually having a lot of fun with it and it shows promise. I like a lot of the new touches like how loot is divided in multiplayer and the skills show promise for complex gameplay. The things I have complained about could be changed later in the game or are not enough to make me regret my purchase. I am excited enough about the story to want to see what happens next and I can barely advance because I want to see how the other classes handel. So fuck it, play the game! The servers will be fixed and you will have fun. Do you want to join me in an adventure? My battletag is DeathBurger#1631!

Mass Effect 3 part 1! THE REVIEW! (no spoilers)

So after 30 hours of in game play and who knows how many spent in multiplayer I have now come to the end of Mass Effect 3, the end to a series which is consider by some to be one of the most important contributions to Sci-fi in this generation (and I tend to agree with that sentiment). Heres the deal Lazer-readers, I have a lot to say about this game so this entry could get very long. As a result, im breaking this analysis up into three entries. The first one (this one) is the general gloss over review with no spoilers. The second is the what went wrong analysis with TONS of spoilers in it so if you have not played it you probably wouldn't want to read it. The third is me flexing my many brain wrinkles to show how easy it is to fix these problems. So here we go with part 1!

The Review 

Lets get one thing clear out of the gate. I wouldn't have spent 30 hours in this game if it was terrible. There are many good moments within an amazing universe that made it worth while to play. However, there are many internal flaws (and external influences) that keep what should have been a defining moment in rpg gaming from being anything more than an adequate cover based sci-fi shooter. That said, lets get to it. 

Lets get whats good about this game out of the way (which interestingly enough actually lends to the flaws). The universe is deep, the characters interesting and awesome and the gameplay functional. The problem is that all of these factors have always been good within the Mass Effect series so the game cannot simply rely on these factors for success (in the eyes of the customers. Bioware is undoubtably rolling in the many dollars it has gained from this game already). It has to go above and beyond with the writing and story and that is where we hit our first bumps.

The writing in this game, while steller at parts, ultimately lags far behind the first two installments. Its not as though the Bioware team took stupid pills and then decided to go on writing the script, its more of a feeling that this game was rushed. There are glaring continuity errors, strange and obviously problematic decisions about pacing and tone and just an overall increase of "what the fuck?" moments from 0 in the previous two to about 5 in ME3. Heres the thing though; every idea in this game is solid. Its clear what they were going for and all it needed was a good editor, which the lack of one lends to the thought that it was rushed. There are plenty of theories of why this may be the case, the tainted hands of producers concerned about profits, too many resources devoted to the Star Wars MMO etc (more on this in the next section). Regardless, the biggest flaw is the way the story is presented and the writing within it, and as Mass Effect has always been a series defined by its stories and writing this is a big big problem. 

There are more signs of rushed production, more graphics and gameplay glitches, interesting flubs in dialogue pacing and in conversation camera movement (its always great for an intense/stirring moments when the camera cuts away from the person talking to get stuck focusing on a wall for 30 seconds). Finally, because this is the third installment in the series, the production team had two options. 

1) Develop the characters more, requiring a greater amount of time focusing on writing and greater risk

2) Rely on call backs to lines/behaviors from the previous games to cash in on the fan service train

ME3 went with option 2. Bad choice. The way returning characters are presented often has the vibe of a long running sitcom (heeeeeeeeeres Jack! Boy is she a fire cracker!) Its just lazy and a sad departure from the amount of time and effort that Bioware famously devotes to character development.

There are a few obvious missed opportunities to involve the player in gameplay that is more engaging and exciting than mere cover based combat. The only reason why they did not capitalize on a few obvious diversions from the norm could only be time and money on their minds, which of course ultimately hurts the game. Finally, they bring back a lot of things from the first game (characters that we stopped caring about/had closure for already, weapon mods and inventory which the ME2 system handled much better I thought), got rid of things they shouldn't have (no vehicle sections at all, much less focus on moral choice and consequences for your actions) and kept things they should have gotten rid of (the thermal clips! FUCK that shit. The first games ammo system made it feel unique and awesome and nothing breaks immersion like running around in battle looking for glowing ammo)

Oh yeah, and the ending. Big ol' thumbs down.

Ultimately, a game like this must be reviewed on two scales

First, in relation to games in general this game would rate pretty high. Again, a game in the Mass Effect universe cant help but be good because of the universe that it takes place in. As long as they dont fuck that up and make all the characters retarded its going to be a solid game, especially in comparison with a lot of the drivel that gets put out into the market. So, in that regard ME3 would probably rate an 7-8 depending on whether or not the game play/graphics issues I have been having are widespread. 

Second, this game must be rated in comparison with its predecessors. That rating will obviously not be as good. For me, ME1 would rate a 9 and ME2 was a home run at a 10. ME3, for the issues I mentioned and will extol in GREAT detail in the next installment would barely rate a 6, im holding it too that because im curious to see how Bioware fixes the issues with DLC. 

So, if you have never played a Mass Effect game, play the first two. If you have played them, play this with the knowledge that its worth the effort but it wont be what you want or what it should be and that Bioware will be draining even more money from you with the DLC that actually provides a proper end to the game you already paid for. 

Journey 2: The best ipecac Straight from Hollywood

So dear readers, it has been a while since I have delved into the fecal matter that is the bottom of the barrel hollywood ejaculate that comes out at around this time every year. You know, after the big christmas and oscar season movies are gone and before the summer blockbusters hit they use the months in-between to dump cheaply made garbage to make their budgets back on the opening weekend and a bit of profit over seas. As a result we get Journey 2, staring The Rock and Michael Caine, a movie so bad that it is actually below both of them.

The Review: 

This movie is so utterly terrible that I honestly, in retrospect, would have rather watched The Scorpion King again. OR perhaps a peoples elbow to the nuts would have been preferable. This film is a prime example of what has happened to modern movies. Hollywood, like the music industry, has spent the last decade-ish attempting to find exactly how little work they can put in to a project while still making a profit. Their breakthrough is that you dont actually have to make movies in which things like plot, story, characters/character development matter. All you need to do is get the appropriate names as far as actors and brand recognition go and put them into a trailer compelling enough to get people out of their homes for one weekend, thus allowing the studios to make their money back. As a result, and as Journey 2 is the lastest test subject in this horrid experiment, what you get with this movie is a collection of colorful images and action sequences intercut with "hilarious" dialogue that are cobbled together in a way that convinces you that you are watching a movie. Its just a series of things that happen that begins and eventually ends with little that connect the two points together. Heres a couple of images to show exactly what I mean.

This is a bare bones representation of how the plot of a movie is structured. This is basically how most movies are built, exposition leading to an initial point of conflict with rising action building to the climax and then dropping off towards the end. Journey 2 is not quite structured the same way. Heres a diagram of how its plot progresses. 

Yup. Its all over the fucking place. There is no exposition in this movie. Within the first five minutes you have some shit eating kid breaking the law and the Rock being kind of mad but still, wanting to connect with the aforementioned shit eating kid, he helps him crack a secret code and flys him to some island to buy his favor. All of this SHOULD have happened, in a reasonably structured film, in about the first half hour, giving us time to get to know the characters, their motivations, establish some actual mystery behind the mysterious island, you know, compelling movie things. Instead, in minutes they are on the adventure to the island where they meet the required ethnic stereotype and the love interest who take them into a permanent hurricane which of course lands them on the mysterious island in question. What follows is the most illogical string of action scenes with dialogue that just screams punch up writing, IE the question was asked multiple times "ok we are done with the scene with X giant animal, how are we going to make the five minutes of dialogue we have to put in to make it feel like there is some sort of plot funny and interesting?"The answer? The following three things would happen. 

1) The Rock calls Michael Caine a grandma and Michael Caine is snarky and british back at him. 

2) The boy is awkward around his love interest/mad at the Rock for trying to be a good father

3) Our ethnic stereotype says something completely retarded that no grown man would ever say ever

This movie is one of the many tumors that is slowing killing American culture. However, I am going to end on a bit of a bombshell. I had SO much fucking fun watching this movie and laughing at it that its difficult for me to not recommend it. The level of idiocy, while painful to someone who knows what makes a good movie, was so over the top that it made me howl and tear up from laughing so hard. For instance, in the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1aNIOIAiUk at about 2:20) you see the Rock doing a bit of peck dancing and the kid flicking a berry off him. You would think this scene maybe lasts another five seconds, given thats how long the joke actually needs. No. It goes on for something between two and a half to five minutes! Holy FUCK I was dying. Its just so ridiculous. So heres how I will approach this recommendation. First, know that by giving this movie money you are literally killing the culture of the human race. Secondly, you need to see it with at least one of your best buds. And finally, you need to see it in a completely empty theater so that you can get involved in yelling and laughing in disbelief at the train wreck of awful you are witnessing. If you can ensure the latter and live with the former, I cant help but suggest watching this, if for no reason other than coming to comprehend just how far mainstream American cinema has fallen.