I’m watching the second episode of Stargate Universe as I write this.  I’m not exactly excited by it.  Again, I’m going to hide this behind a “read more” link… if you’re not reading this on the front page of my blog, and you don’t want spoilers, stop reading now.

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I started playing Champions Online over the weekend (curse you, Shamus!) and of course I had to go with a dual-sword-wielding hero.  He does technically have super-strength, but he rarely uses it as a weapon.  Some of you know me as “Heron”; some of you know me as “Heron Blademaster”, and that’s this hero’s name (sorry, no swords in the pictures):

From the front; you can see CO's broken cape physics.

I got these from CO’s website.

From the back

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Sorry, I’m not sure how to get those two to be side-by-side without pasting them together in Paint.  Anyway, I like the design; it’s I-like-killing-things-with-swords without screaming I’m-a-westerner-who-thinks-he’s-a-ninja.

I played through nineteen levels without having to grind (that’s a good thing) and without being required to join a group just to progress (which happened at level 13 with Lord of the Rings: Online, and is also the reason I stopped playing LotRO).  I found that I shared Shamus’ experience in Snake Gulch, though, which means I got frustrated and started a new character.  (I’ll go back to Heron Blademaster in a while.)

Champions Online is a good break from the completely-serious sort of atmosphere of WoW or LotRO; it’s also a good MMO for super-hero fans who like playing alone (like me) because they can’t be bothered to sit there trying to get a group of people together for an hour so they can go spend fifteen minutes killing some guy hiding in a sewer.

The other day I mentioned Linkin Park’s Leave Out All the Rest being the closing credits song in the Twilight movie.

The DVD also contained a recording of a live performance of that song.  Turns out, Linkin Park sucks at singing.  The lead singer can’t stay on key.  He ended the song on the wrong note.  There isn’t much he could do to make me more disappointed in the band.

I’m brewing another Linkin Park-related post in the back of my head that I’ll write in the next day or two.

While I watched the premiere of Stargate: Universe, SyFy played commercials for a show called Sanctuary, which stars Stargate SG-1′s Amanda Tapping.  The trouble is, in Stargate SG-1, she’s a blonde American, whereas in Sanctuary, she’s a brown-haired Brit.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but the first episode of Sanctuary was disorienting.  After a few more episodes I stopped noticing (much like I only briefly remembered Zachary Quinto as Heroes’ Sylar in the new Star Trek movie).  She does very well in the role.

Unfortunately, this post isn’t so much about that as it is about the show itself.  It’s basically X-men without the superheroes.  It still has supervillains, though.

The trouble is, Sanctuary expects us to believe that nobody knows about these “abnormals”, despite the destruction they cause and the tendency they have for destruction.  In one episode, a mutant that can fly – he has bat-like wings connecting his arms and torso – is killed, and his body is just left on the ground.  Surely the police would find such murders, and they’d hand the bodies to doctors?  There’s simply no way there could be people like that without the rest of the world finding out.

That’s why I stopped watching the series halfway through the first season (streamed on Netflix).  I was jarred out of my suspension of disbelief far too many times.  So, I can’t recommend the series.

Yes, I mean that Twilight.  The movie based on the books by Stephenie Meyer.  It’s been sitting in our Netflix queue for months now, always getting pushed back in favor of other more interesting things (like my ongoing re-watch of Star Trek: Deep Space 9).  Somehow it made it to the top, though, and arrived in our mailbox.  So, like it or not, we had to watch it.

I read the books – yes, all of them. What can I say?  They brought out my inner teenage girl.  But if you took out the overdramatic angst and the lame lines, you’d have a decent, unique vampire book series.

The movie, on the other hand, took everything the book did wrong and did it worse.  Contrived plot?  They contrived it further (and left out some crucial character development).  Lame lines?  They wrote even more lame lines.  Overdramatic angst?  Edward was practically bipolar in the movie, and they played up Bella’s angst so much that it was the only character development they gave her.  As one-dimensional as she is in the books, she’s even more so in the movie.

The things the book did well, the movie took and did poorly as well.  Edward is supposed to be an attractive young man (so to speak) with an inherently seductive voice who is good with people.  They chose an unattractive kid with a boring voice and no acting skills.  He’s like… an ugly Hayden Christiansen.

The vampire powers in the book are interesting.  The special effects in the movie are cheesy and poorly done.  The lighting is always wrong.  The pale vampires in the book are supposed to be beautiful – in the movie the pale is ugly.  The sparkly skin in the book was supposed to be amazing – in the movie it looks like a disease.

In the book, Bella knows very little about sports.  In the movie, she acts like she knows nothing about sports, but when the Cullens ask her to umpire their baseball game, she appears to know the hand signals used by umpires to signal an “out”.

In the book, when Edward and Bella first meet in school, Edward can barely contain his desire to attack her.  In the movie, it looks like he’s about to throw up instead – quite the opposite reaction.

Oh, and the music was lame and sometimes misplaced for the entire movie.  It made me wonder why Linkin Park would agree to let them use Leave Out All the Rest as the ending credits song.

Blah.  I could go on.  Basically, the book was marginally passable as vampire fiction.  The movie was awful in virtually every way, and disappointing even though I expected disappointment.  Don’t watch it, if you liked the books, and if you didn’t, well, you should know better than to waste your time with this kind of movie