Gabe Mayuga's Favorite Moments of 2015

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone! So sorry that I haven't written any of my blog articles since this September. But I guess I was... busy with everything that is most important for me and my Mayuga family like completing and preparing my difficult fall semester George Mason University projects. Aside from all of my stressful moments with my own personal family problems and tragic deaths of loved ones (Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lee, James Horner, Uncle Joseph Bauzon), I recall some of my favorite moments that I will always cherish besides the nostalgic memories I've had years before the year 2015! The year that went through a lot of major changes with some results that don't meet expectations albeit with reasonable purposes.
My favorite part about this was watching some highly-anticipated movies with surprisingly good word of mouth or disappointing box office figures (like Josh Trank's "Fantastic" Four and Brad Bird's underrated Tomorrowland) that leads to unexpected effects to the current movie industry. My favorite films from summer or fall-winter are Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. But my most favorite moment of all time this year was visiting the Children's Museum in Indianapolis to enter the Transformers exhibit, storing all of the Transformers toys from the past and some activities fun for little kids and long-time Transformers fans like me despite the franchise now no longer getting a lot of attention like they used to have since the pre-AOE TF movies (as the 4th one from last year got a paltry $245 million in domestic areas (unlike the 1st three's $300-400 million grosses in the U.S.) despite its massive success in China, totaling up to over $1.1 billion) back from 2007-2012. It was on display until late July during the time when the latest TV show Transformers: Robots in Disguise premiered on Cartoon Network this Spring and can be seen every Saturday morning at 6:30 A.M., while paling in comparison with a much superior Transformers: Prime show. But it was a fun time reliving my obsession with the Autobot/Decepticon warfare after I was drawn to it via watching the very first live-action film 8 years ago. I am hopeful that the new writers hired (by Akiva Goldsman, of course) for this "cinematic universe" will make Transformers relevant again without bringing up things that I fear would cause critics and even the fans to nitpick in a nonstop way like they have with the upsetting TF sequels since Revenge of the Fallen. Autobots, roll out!
I also visited the Star Wars Costume Exhibition in Times Square of New York during one of my artsbus trips last month. Looking at these costumes from the past 6 films was an experience I've ever had, and will surely make me feel totally excited to see The Force Awakens when it comes out on the opening day, which I will watch 3 days later. My dad and I were amazed at how the costumes and props were once used by characters, with names that only I strongly remember, before Lucasfilm was sold to Disney. While the prequel trilogy have actually underwhelmed a lot of fans, their love for the originals that has the Rebellion, Imperial ships, and Darth Vader will never fade away and will be "strong with the Force." Am curious to how the latest J.J. Abrams-directed film is going to change the franchise?
After being so upset with how The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had turned out, in financial terms (only $709 million, as opposed to the $750-$800+ million grosses the previous 4 got), resulting in the cancellation of the threequel and Andrew Garfield's exit after for just TWO Spidey films, I knew that had Sam Rami's Spider-Man 3 not ended up as the WORST movie of all time (for me, if no one agrees), there wouldn't have been a need for Sony to start a reboot from scratch FIVE YEARS LATER with a new origin that proves how inferior it was to the much-better handled one in the 2002 film (minus the retcon that clearly HURT the traditional Spider-Man origin). Around this February, I was shocked to learn that Sony (after the infamous hack) has agreed to allow Marvel incorporate the Spider-Man characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (starting with next summer's Captain America: Civil War) while retaining distribution and creative control over the web-slinging hero! With that confirmation, I was curious about who's going to PROPERLY play Peter Parker/Spider-Man to joke around with any of the fellow Avengers and wash away the bad taste of the post-SM 1&2 trilogy (2007-2014). And sure enough 4 months later, Sony/Marvel has picked TOM HOLLAND (The Impossible, In the Heart of the Sea)! Since then, I had complete faith that young Tom Holland will DO GREAT as our most iconic arachnid superhero (now "2nd place" to the Avengers (specifically, the "invincible" Iron Man) without bringing up something that made Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield act almost "out of character". And I have been trying so hard to write comments to SHUT UP those (especially on Facebook) who don't seem to treat Spider-Man 3 the same way they did with Batman & Robin and Indiana Jones 4, by saying that it was "better than Amazing Spider-Man 1-2", as though it is still canon in the Sam Raimi trilogy even though I don't want it to be (some "happy ending") having watched what the time-traveling does to the X-Men movie continuity affected by the disappointing X-Men 3 in Bryan Singer's Days of Future Past. But I am proud that Spider-Man is "back home" with the Avengers. Can't say the same for the Fantastic Four, unfortunately. I pray that the 2017 Spider-Man reboot (without the origin story this time) will prove me right!

Another one of my favorite 2015 moments was going on two Artsbus trips with my mom (along with dad this November) to the Washington, D.C. area. I registered these two Artsbus classes for my fall semester, despite not being graded with As or Bs. It was however a fun experience for me during my time at George Mason while dealing with designing magazines, making motion design videos, and discussing art subjects in aesthetics class. Some of my favorite artworks I've seen are the ones made by Anselm Kiefer or even paintings by painters such as Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh (found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) as well as the war paintings by Italian artist Alberto Burri in the cylindrical Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (motivated by the On Kawara's Silence video in Prof. McCoy's classroom). Although I was more interested in seeing how these contemporary or antique artworks were greatly designed than learning many of the important facts that I'll sometimes have trouble understanding. It was fun going to the museums with just my mom or with mom and dad together.

But my biggest moment in 2015 of all, was getting to see my younger sister Christine Mayuga come back from Notre Dame University (since last August) during each and every holiday weekend. Just like the very touching moment for Riley and her mom and dad in the Inside Out movie, I will not forget how much of a family we truly are despite getting into a lot of fights and suffering from horrible coughing. And watching that Pixar movie with a very original concept since Up reminded me just how much I miss my childhood days when we're not always dealing with a lot of "important" work and that not every movie relies on too much sequels/remakes and "more money" businesses or even TV shows in which cartoons now sadly ended up as nothing more but YouTube parody/poop jokes videos (Teen Titans Go, The Bare Bears, Breadwinners) or "kid-friendly" toy-selling commercials (Avengers Assemble, TMNT 2012 past Season 2-3). No wonder Joy has been trying hard to make Riley be more happy by reliving her favorite moments from Minnesota in a more modern world that always stick with iPhone technology and social networking discussions. Wonder if 2016 will be any better? I hope so. I mean what could happen?