Battleship> The Avengers

I’ve gotten a lot of backlash from my friends and coworkers about the statement I am going to make but nonetheless I am going to proclaim once again that Battleship is a better film than The Avengers. I’ve seen both films a couple of times and I think that if you’re looking for an action adventure movie Battleship wins the day. Of course all of this is my opinion, which I will admit is hardly a humble one, hahaha, but in all honesty I really enjoyed Battleship more than The Avengers.

Battleship deals with people as opposed to superheroes. The Avengers script seemed like it focused more on making certain that each character’s unique abilities were showcased rather than providing us with a lot of linear, action driven storyline as we see in Battleship. Of course I will admit that I am probably somewhat biased because I didn’t grow up with comic books. Add to that the fact that I’ve always been a fan of the WWII naval movies which feature battles at sea and plot lines focusing on the personal demons and shortcomings which plague the ship’s captain. But in the end, the captain usually figures out a way to win the day, if not the battle and these are the central themes in Battleship.

In my opinion, The Avengers was just Iron Man and some other people. The Hulk was interesting and I actually liked Thor even though I wasn’t familiar with him from his earlier movie until I watched it after the fact. Black Widow and Hawkeye were pretty much superfluous but then again, I’ll certainly never complain about being given the opportunity to see Scarlett Johansson on the big screen. But when you think about it, it seems that Tony Stark was featured more prominently than the other characters. I guess that’s because he had two prequel movies compared to the other characters each having only one. Oh yeah, none of the major characters die in battle, not even Loki.

In Battleship we have all of the elements which we know and love from traditional war movies, but then we thrown in some modern technology and amazing action and destruction scenes. What better combination could you ask for?  We have the hero who is thrust into leadership when he least expects, yet somehow finds a way to save the day, the old sea dogs who still have a couple of tricks up their sleeves and there’s even a love story that focuses on the girl he left in port. Because of these elements I enjoyed it more than I did The Avengers.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked The Avengers a great deal, I just liked Battleship a little bit more. I mean after all, I did see The Avengers twice in the 3D IMAX, but I also saw Battleship twice as well. I really wish that Battleship had been given the IMAX nod because the action and explosions were more seat rumbling than those in The Avengers. The long and the short of it is, that no matter what the critics say about Battleship it is well worth your time and money. I know that this will be one of the Blurays I purchase on its release date which I hope is sometime soon.

Book Review - The Wrecker

A few days ago I submitted a post which outlined my thoughts on Clive Cussler’s The Chase, the first in his series of books featuring turn of the century, the Twentieth Century, private detective Isaac Bell. I decided to follow up with a post about the next novel in the series, The Wrecker. The Wrecker has a great deal of similarity to The Chase in that each are centered around the railroad industry and the equipment that makes it roll. While the two books have a great deal of similarity, I’m not ready to simply throw in the towel and shout, “Second verse, same as the first!”

The Wrecker focuses more on the development of the title character who is given his moniker because of his penchant for sabotaging the railroads. A great deal of the story is devoted to unraveling his reasons for these acts, but of course a lot of the drama is inherent in the detailed chronicling of how he carries out his destructive deeds, just as we saw in The Chase. Cussler takes a lot of pride in explaining how the criminal mastermind makes his escape from each caper and rightfully so because each criminal endeavor is clever and cunning.

Fortunately for those of us who intend to read the entire series, the character of Isaac Bell is also bolstered in that we find out more about his past, both as a youth and his boxing days at Yale. We learn a few other subtle things about Bell and his relationships with friends and family. I hope that in subsequent Bell novels Cussler continues to throw us more of these insightful, and welcomed, peeks into Bell’s past so that we can better understand the character into which he has evolved. I hope that the remaining books in the franchise continue this as well.

To wrap things up, if you liked The Chase, or railroads in general, you should enjoy The Wrecker as well. I should mention that both of these titles are suitable for all ages in that there’s no explicit sexuality and the violence is pretty much on par with that of prime time television. So feel free to give these as a gift to any teen who likes reading series fiction. They might even learn something about history along the way.