Go outside! Also, World's Finest.

I thought I'd step away from video games tonight and talk about something different. I don't know where you are located right now, but if you're near the Cincinnati area like I am, the weather has been fantastic lately! I'm talking mid-70s during the day, mid- to low-60s at night, and just enough cloud cover to keep the sun out of your eyes. For late July in the Ohio River valley, this is unseasonably cool, but I don't think anyone's complaining. So I urge you all to find something to do outside. If you follow me on Twitter, you've seen me tweet about it a few times this week. It's given me a great opportunity to get my lawn mowed without dying of heat stroke. And just a few minutes ago I was sitting out in my driveway, enjoying the last of the daylight as I read a book.

I used to do outdoor things more often, when all my friends still lived nearby. We used to do bonfires and outdoor parties on a pretty regular basis. You know how it goes, though. As you get older and your group all spreads apart with families of their own, it gets harder and harder to do that sort of thing. So it's been nice finding a reason to go outside this week and just enjoy it. I even spent a good part of the afternoon a few days ago walking around my town.

So go outside and do something while the weather's nice. Take a handheld system if you must. There are a ton of great games on 3DS right now, and the Vita's starting to get more and more all the time. But I'm guessing you want to hear more than just me talking about how nice the weather is. Okay. Let's talk a bit about the recently announced Batman/Superman movie.

I've been waiting for this to happen for a long time. It's been brought up before, more than once, I believe. Remember the Will Smith version of I Am Legend? Yep, a movie theater sign showed a World's-Finest-style Batman/Superman logo in that movie. So you know Warner Bros. has been wanting to try this for some time. And the thought that this could lead into a Justice League movie would be very exciting, except for one thing: I hated Man of Steel! You may have read my post on this a while ago. The movie was so heartless! I didn't care for any of those characters one single bit, and frankly was just waiting for the movie to be over. The only redeeming quality, in my opinion, was the action. The fight scenes were done well. Other than that, I was thoroughly unimpressed. So to hear that Zack Snyder is going to direct this new movie, along with David Goyer writing and Henry Cavill playing Superman, was disappointing to say the least.

Now, let me be clear. I loved 300, and Watchmen was decent, so I know Snyder can make good movies (didn't like Sucker Punch, though). As for Goyer, he did The Dark Knight. I don't need to say much more than that. It was one of the best Batman stories ever told. Unfortunately, he also did The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel, two movies that I really didn't care for much. The Dark Knight Rises was well written, it just didn't live up to its predecessor for me, nor did it feel much like Batman. Cavill I only know from Man of Steel, but I've been told he was good in other movies.

So I'm not ragging on these guys exactly, I just know from my experience that I don't always like the way they handle superheroes. They, and DC/Warner Bros. in general, seem to go for too much realism in their movies. With Batman that can work. With the other heroes, not so much. I much, much prefer Marvel's way of doing their movies. The Avengers was a comic book come to life on screen! That's what I want out of my superhero movies! I read comics because I like comics! I watch superhero movies because I like comics! The Dark Knight was great, and it's fine to do one like that now and again, especially with a hero like Batman who's very grounded in reality compared to most superheroes, but I hate to see DC fall into the trap of trying to make their movies some kind of high cinematic art. Comic's are a compelling medium already. Let your movies be comics on the screen, like Marvel does. Stop trying to turn them into a product that's very different from their source material just to please critics. In doing so, you run the risk of turning away your pre-existing fans.

That's it for tonight! Thanks for reading, be sure to tell your friends and follow me on Twitter @RevLink_GI! Now I'm going to go back outside and enjoy the night.

Odds and ends

I don't have any one topic I want to talk about today, so I'll just cover a few things briefly.

I saw Man of Steel a couple of nights ago. I pretty much hated it. I know it's been getting mixed reactions, some people love it, some hate it. I just can't understand how anyone liked it. The characters in this movie were all boring and unlikeable, with the possible exceptions of Jonathan Kent and Jor-El. I'm not going to go into specifics since I don't want to spoil anything for those of you that still want to give it a try, but I will say a few things. The acting was bad. Or maybe just the direction, as the people in the movie are all competent actors. But Superman was so wooden! He never seemed to care about anything. He made Christian Bale's Batman seem cheery! And the movie never seemed to give me any reason to care much about any of the characters, especially Superman, and even more especially Clark Kent. Some of the Kryptonian lore was very off from the comics, too. I just couldn't find much at all to like about this movie, and I couldn't really recommend it to anyone.

Next I'd like to talk to you a bit about Nintendo and their practice of region locking their systems. This means if you have, say, a US 3DS, you can't play any import games on it. Nintendo are the only hardware maker that still do this. The PS4 and Xbox One (and I believe the PS Vita) are completely region free. Any import games you buy for those systems will work just fine. You might not be able to understand the language, but the game will play. I don't know why Nintendo is holding to region locking so strongly. They've given some excuse about conforming to each countries rating systems for games, but that seems flimsy. It hasn't stopped Sony or Microsoft. So, if you care at all about importing games, please let Nintendo know! Send tweets to @Nintendo and @NintendoAmerica with the hashtags #NintendoRegionFree and #EndRegionLocking. If you have a Wii U, be sure to post on Miiverse about it as well. I believe there are a couple of online petitions floating around also, you could look for some of those.

Sorry for the short post. Hopefully next time I'll have more in-depth things to talk about! But, as always, thank you for reading. Be sure to follow me on Twitter @RevLink_GI!