At first, I thought for sure that Professor James B. Hicks was gonna be a touch teacher to handle with, but after having a nice talk with Jessica Machado, Wayne Adams and my mom, things are becoming less stressful and next thing I know, his attitude with me and the other Package Design students has slightly improved and is actually being quite easy with us! I know I got a B- on my first project which is the Heartland Soup cans, but in the next following projects, my grades and the reactions I get from the teacher and the classmates have greatly improved and almost everyone, including Ben, Angela, Ryan and KC, in what was a very difficult subject have started supporting me and gave me some confidence that I need to complete my projects. Angie even helped me with the purchase display project and convinced me that I actually don't need to include the boxes containing 9 soup cans that I was struggling to work on. I was happy that I got an A- by the end of the semester instead of a B like I thought I might get! Even better, I got an A+ in Seth Hudson's History of Game Design class where I worked VERY HARD on the final paper about the Pac-Man topic! An A for Lynne Constantine's Critical Art Theory class and Josiah Lebowitz's Basic Game Design, and I also got an A- for Thomas Stanley's sound design class where I create my videos (including the hilarious Charlie Chaplin short) and incorporated my own sounds and my own music that I make in the work station! Although, I was disappointed that I got a C+ in the online exam for the sound class and on the final Basic Game Design project that Cooper, Ali, Bryce and I have worked since the midterm. But that doesn't stop me from getting the A grades like I always have!
From November to December, I got to see Doctor Strange, Trolls, Rogue One, and of course Sing! Never thought I would actually enjoy them all even after being so underwhelmed by critically/financially disappointing summer movies that aren't Captain America: Civil War, Finding Dory, or The Secret Life of Pets! But that's not all!
Trailers to all the upcoming 2017 movies have been popping up! Including Transformers 5, Fast & Furious 8 (or "The Fate of the Furious"), Pirates of the Caribbean 5 (the one with Javier Bardem), Pixar's Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, the final Wolverine movie Logan, and the long-awaited Marvel Cinematic Universe Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland himself! But what I'm most excited to see next year are the live-action Beauty and the Beast remake, Transformers: The Last Knight, and Spider-Man: Homecoming! However for Transformers 5, I can only hope that building a writers' room starting with the aforementioned will mark a significant improvement from the 2-year-old thought-to-be-pointless-cash-grab that proves that the Bayformers are the "worst thing that's ever happened" since the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies. Because watching the teaser trailer has given me the suspense and a lot of questions of what I can really expect besides learning about the happy returns of familiar faces from TF 1-3 including Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson, Barricade and Megatron (Galvatron from #4?), further development of Transformers mythos as promised by the new writers hired by Akiva Goldsman, lack of uninspiring Age of Extinction stars minus Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci, while hoping that TF5 will deliver the same TF movie experience that I have been missing so much since my 2nd year at Oakton High School without repeating the same tiring and upsetting mistakes that has absolutely hurt the sequels since Revenge of the Fallen! And as for Spider-Man: Homecoming, the moment Tom Holland's Spidey was all "'Sup, guys? Wait a minute. You guys aren't the REAL Avengers!", it was that exact point that I know for sure is exactly the Spider-Man we so rightfully deserve after being so impressed with Ben Affleck's Batman. Even if it's not ANOTHER origin story nor does it have a familiar villain like Green Goblin, Doc Ock or Lizard, what I really want is for the new Spider-Man movie to cleanse the bad tastes that we fans had to suffer through Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 and the now-uncompleted Amazing Spider-Man franchise! No matter what people say about Tobey Maguire being the "best Spider-Man ever", what's to stop them from wanting to see the Spider-Man who should be making hilarious quips JUST LIKE IN THE COMICS that I know most kids like? Whether it will earn the same amount of money as the first three from when I was in elementary and high schools, I hope that it will once again make Spider-Man a blockbuster hit that Sony has been desperate to achieve!
Speaking of Spider-Man 3, though I can't believe that I have to say this. But maybe Spider-Man 3 is not the "#1 worst movie" I have ever seen. It still is in my view, but not at #1. I basically called it that because it was overwhelmed by a huge number of things that I know tarnished (or did it?) the greatness of the first two films like X-Men 3 once did to the 1st two Bryan Singer X-Men films as soon as we got an Andrew Garfield reboot (and its now-wasted sequel) instead of a Spider-Man 4 (with or without Vulture or "Vulturess") that would have redeemed the original cast's reputation. In fact, after Sony marked The Amazing Spider-Man 2 a "disappointing failure" for earning just $709 million worldwide and being given a 52% rating by Rotten Tomatoes, I blamed Spider-Man 3 for causing the death of what could have been the most memorable blockbuster movie franchise up there with Harry Potter and Shrek. But yet, every comment I would find, whether on YouTube or other movie database sites I would usually browse on Safari, all I would find is that Spider-Man 3 is "terrible but does not deserve a lot of hate". It's like despite a lot of things that people dislike in that threequel, they just acted like it's a continuation worth remembering unlike Independence Day 2 or the Matrix sequels when it comes to the word "trilogy" (think Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, and The Dark Knight)! It's no wonder there are petitions for a Spider-Man 3.1 Cut which restores some much needed extra footage such as Sandman and his tragic relationship with his daughter, Eddie Brock trying to approach Gwen Stacy, and Venom's alternative way of convincing Sandman to team up with him (that doesn't involve "Interested? Yeah, sure") to kill Spider-Man. Even though the studio is to be blamed for forcing Sam Raimi to include Venom and Gwen which interferes with his original vision. I wasn't sure how can it be so when nothing in Spider-Man 3, besides the more familiar aspects that was still retained from the first two, has given an indication that what was once likable can remain so. Do they not have a huge problem with how Mary Jane disses Peter for not understanding her Broadway career downfall (her career dream is to be a theater actress (NOT as a singer), right?) and for stupidly going along with Harry's plan to break up with him despite that she will always "support" Peter at the very end of Spider-Man 2 ("Go get 'em, tiger")? Especially when Peter/Spider-Man does the upside down kiss with Gwen IN FRONT OF MARY JANE, as though he is nothing but a self-absorbed idiot before he made contact with the alien Symbiote? How does that make Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man "likable" as he was in 1 and 2? And there's no way that I would call the Peter/Harry fights "awesome" when they're like super cheesy and the fact that their second fight inside the Osborn Mansion is filled with awfully-written dialogue that tried to be funny when they're NOT! I treated the moment when Peter and Aunt May found out from Captain Stacy that it was Flint Marko who actually killed Uncle Ben (revealed that he actually shot him by accident when the carjacker carrying the stolen cash startled him) in the more enjoyable first one, as a cheap motivation to gain our attention to experience our first look at the Black-Suited Spider-Man on the big screen when all we got is nothing but TOO MUCH EMO PETER PARKER that pretty much made a mockery of Marvel's most beloved comic book superhero. And why would people enjoy Spider-Man 3 and not erase it from their minds (like most other certain awful/bad movies) when they have the worst depiction of Eddie Brock/Venom since Deadpool's transition to Weapon XI in the should-be-non-canon-even-before-DOFP X-Men Origins: Wolverine? But even if Spider-Man 3 is "improved" by extra scenes (in a novelization by Peter David or in the 3.1 version) that makes the multiple characters and storylines far from superfluous like most reviews say, does the Sandman retcon still ruin what was already well-handled and similar to how it was in the comics in the first Spider-Man movie unlike in the forgettable Amazing Spider-Man? Maybe the only way that Spider-Man 3 would be more watchable than the so-called Amazing Spidey films, is that I would skip out almost every cheesy as f**k Emo Peter Parker scenes (including "Now dig on this"), parts with the news reporter and the crowd ("Awesome! Wicked cool!") during when Spider-Man was about to be overwhelmed by Sandman and Venom, the Harry & Mary Jane "Do the Twist" dance, the butler's too-little-too-late revelation to the facially-scarred Harry Osborn, the Tobey Maguire crybaby faces, mute Sandman's "and the gun was in hand" line and have myself say that his partner with the stolen cash "shot him", thus removing the retcon that made everyone loses their mind on and everything that led Peter to becoming Spider-Man in the first film wouldn't be because of a little "accident", and to make the Peter/Mary Jane slow dance ending far from depressing (in my opinion), I would view the happy final swing video on YouTube (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSeUJy_X5o). I mean, why would I "give Spider-Man 3 a chance" when from now on, the only Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies that are canon in my head are 1 and 2? Just like I see the first two Alien movies as canon only, and then disregard Alien 3 (no matter how better is the "Assembly Cut," if it still killed off poor Hicks and Newt at the start due to an Alien egg that WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ON THE SULACO IN THE FIRST PLACE!) and/or Alien Resurrection. After all, X-Men: Days of Future Past was able to give the original X-Men trilogy cast an actual happy ending by erasing everything that led to the X3 disaster and thus brought back Cyclops and Jean Grey from the dead. How can the way that Spider-Man 3, that was tainted by an awful amount of stuff that made the characters we so love more than the Amazing Spider-Man characters completely idiotic, ended be truly "happy"? Spider-Man 2 ended on a HAPPY note, like the journey of Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker to accepting his true destiny as Spider-Man is already completed since he finally have Mary Jane (b*tchy or no) as his girl, if we ignore the part with Harry discovering the Green Goblin lair when he clearly said no to his dead father's hallucination yelling "Avenge me"! Yet people keep saying "trilogy" like Spider-Man 3 is an entirely important chapter like Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King always were despite knowing that every third installments are "always the worst"!
So to conclude this blog post, I had a hard day's work over the past 3 months. Mom and I had a nice talk with Linda Barajas about considering taking a job internship next summer, yet I was unsure of what I can expect as I move ahead to spring semester at George Mason next year.
I should be ready for Christmas Day this weekend! I hope I have plenty of time to see all the holiday specials like Shrek the Halls and the Chuck Jones' How the Grinch Stole Christmas cartoon, or the Christmas-themed movies like The Polar Express and Gremlins on the night of Christmas Eve before I would go to bed so Santa may come to our house to deliver our presents, even if we're not little kids anymore. So as Santa Claus would say, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"
