Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to another edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better.

Normally, this is about rewriting a film to correct its major problems. This time around, I'll be focusing my efforts on a theoretical remake of a video game—actually, multiple games.

I've been working on this project for some time and with the benefit of Guest Five's donation on Patreon via the Pick Your Poison tier (donate today if you want to request a special feature of your own), I've finally been able to set aside the time to finish it.

What I'll be doing here is tossing out my ideas of how to make a better version of Generation 1 of Pokemon by retooling lots of things in Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Yellow.

Before we get started, I have to preface this with a bunch of notes, as this is an exhaustive process that needs some clarification.

1. Obviously, I'm not actually remaking the game. I have absolutely zero knowledge in making video games.

2. That also means I can't talk about the actual glitches in the game (not that I'd remove MissingNo). Just assume that something like the Focus Energy problem is just naturally fixed, because, well, why wouldn't I want to fix that?

3. We are fully treating this like a fantasy and giving myself the extreme benefit of hindsight. They never would have been able to know these things back when they made the original games.

4. I'll be spreading this out in 3 parts. The first will address some basic things for the overall games, part 2 will dive into the Pokedex and part 3 will be about the story and the trainers and such.

To begin, let's do a little more setup on what we're working with here...

Enter: Pokemon Green

The first thing I need to address with my reboot is that there would actually be 4 games, not 3.

Originally, Pokemon was split in two with Green and Red versions (Venusaur and Charizard as the mascots). Then, Blue came out with Blastoise and Pikachu, naturally, was the mascot for Yellow. There's even a chance they were going to make Pokemon Pink and Pokemon Brown, supposedly, with Clefairy and Eevee as the mascots.

It always confused me as a kid that there were games with the colors of all the starters except for Bulbasaur. Sure, it was my least favorite of the four by far, but it felt strange to just cast it aside like that.

So for my remake, there would actually be 3 versions of the normal game with Yellow being the oddball, essentially. All 3 versions would function the way they always do, with some Pokemon available only in one, so you'd have to trade between them. There wouldn't be some rule now where if you pick Blue, you can only get Squirtle or something like that. I'm not that cruel, even if I'm forcing people to spend more money. But, maybe as a compromise, the games could be individually cheaper or something. Generally speaking, if each game were normally $60, let's make them $50 so people are more inclined to buy a triple pack of all three for $125. Maybe that's not the right pricing. Ask the boys in marketing and sales.

If need be, let's keep it to just Red, Blue and Yellow, for simplicity's sake with rewriting history.

Pokemon Types

Dark, Steel and Fairy are a thing, just like they are in remakes like Let's Go.

There is also Typeless, in which a Pokemon has no type. Every move works against it (no immunities) and nothing is super effective.

I think I would also use the type effectiveness chart that I redid before, although that is a little outdated and could probably use some more tweaking.

Difficulty Settings

One of my top 5 video games of all time (the other 4 being Pokemon Gen 1/2 lumped together, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario 3 and Kirby Super Star, in no particular order) is GoldenEye. In that game, I loved how there were 4 difficulty options in Agent, Secret Agent and 00 Agent with 007 mode being kind of a sandbox scenario that you could tweak some stuff like enemy health.

It would be too crazy for Pokemon to have the ability for people to mess with the trainers and all, but it wouldn't be too much to ask for an Easy, Normal and Hard difficulty mode to pick from.

It's pretty self-explanatory. Easy Mode has trainers with lower levels, less wild encounters in caves and such, a higher catch-rate for capturing Pokemon and so forth. Hard bumps up the encounter rate, battle levels and everything else.

This gives little kids the chance to play the game without being too frustrated, but adults don't find it too much of a breeze.

Field Moves / HMs / TMs / Equipment

TMs are reusable. They should have been that way from the start and I'm glad the series eventually realized it was better to not make them a 1x use. Some TMs are found, some are given to you by trainers and some are purchased.

There are no HMs in this game. It's a concept that has been replaced by much better options and it was always frustrating that you had to take up slots on your moves just to get around the area. I also absolutely hated teaching my Charmander the move Cut in my first playthrough of Red before realizing I couldn't undo it.

Instead, HMs are replaced by Equipment/Tools and Field Moves/Skills, which work similar to how we've seen some things in other games. These are as follows:

Equipment / Tools

These are things you have in your backpack that function like the Bike and Poke Flute (which are two of these).

• Running Shoes = available pretty early on (after the first gym?) to use until you get the Bike
• Bike = Instead of the ludicrous idea that it costs a million bucks, you'll just not be able to purchase one at first. Cycling Road will block you from part of the game and you'll only be able to navigate that when you get a bike, which will only happen once you do something else (not sure what). In the meantime, the bike shop will be closed with the owner away. He'll return once you advance to a certain point. Then, the Bike makes it so you can travel faster. Duh. 
• Poke Flute
• Fishing Rod = just one; you complete tasks to learn how to upgrade your skill level and become a better fisher
  
• Escape Rope
• Coin Case
• Amulet Coin = you get it from some in-story thing with a Meowth
• Itemfinder
• Exp. Share
  
• Flashlight = replaces HM Flash
• Shears = replaces HM Cut
• Surfboard = replaces HM Surf (possibly)
• Hammer = replaces Rock Smash (possibly)
  

Field Moves / Skills

Field Moves, aka Skills, are when you beat certain trainers and they pass on knowledge so you have the ability to teach any Pokemon of yours to do specific things in the terrain. It's another variation of the HM concept similar to what we saw with ride Pokemon and such.

• Surf = if there's no Surfboard tool
• Rock Smash = if there's no Rock Hammer tool
• Dig
• Fly
• Dive
• Waterfall
• Whirlpool
  
• Teleport
• Strength
• Rock Climb
• Defog (not necessary?)
  
• Headbutt (not necessary?)
  
• Chatter (not necessary?) 
  

What does this mean for those actual moves the Pokemon can learn? Well, they're replaced with other variations that can do similar things.

For instance, Dig, Dive and Fly are parallels, right? Just have the same moves, but call them Burrow, Submerge and Hover or High-Ground. Cut and Strength have nothing keeping them interesting, so they're just gone entirely. Surf could just be a water move equivalent of Thunderbolt/Ice Beam/Flamethrower called Tidal Wave. Basically, if it serves a purpose, keep the move, but rename it to something else so it isn't confusing with Waterfall, for instance. That can just be White Water or Rapids or Torrent or whatever.

Held Items / Type-Changers / Evolutionary Stones & More

- Pokemon can hold items. Once that happened in Gen 2, we can't look back.

- Berries to heal and things like Spell Tag to boost power are all the way they should be from Gen 2 onward, too. Iron Ball lets Flying types get hit with Ground moves, while Air Balloon makes things levitate to avoid Ground moves. There's something to ground out electric moves, etc.

- There are also items that can change a Pokemon's type. I'll dive deeper into the specifics of which Pokemon can do what, but in general, here's a breakdown:

* Porygon has the ability to change into any type with items that "upload" that function to its computer system. Let's just call these things like Psychic Disk and Bug Disk.
* Metal Coat turns certain Pokemon into the Steel type.
* Dragon Scale (or another name for it) turns certain Pokemon into the Dragon type by tapping into their more dragonlike side or whatever your rationalization is.
* There's maybe one of these for Electric (static cling?), Ice, Poison and Fire, but I'm not sure. We'll hammer out those details another time, team.

- Most Pokemon evolve through level-up. None evolve by trade. I've always hated that mechanic. If I want an Alakazam, why am I giving YOU a Kadabra to get my Alakazam? Stupid. But any Pokemon that doesn't evolve by a natural level-up evolves with the help of some sort of item.

- For the most part, those are stones or some evolve with the help of stones or other items.

-Magneton, for instance, evolves from holding a Magnet and you need to have 2 Magnemites on your team. Slowpoke evolves into Slowbro if you have a Shellder on your team and both are holding some kind of something. Crap like that. I won't name them all.

- As far as the evolutionary stones themselves go, let's clean this up a bit in hindsight and have Fire Stone, Water Stone, Thunder Stone, Leaf Stone, Ice Stone, and Moon Stone. Maybe a Dawn Stone and Sun Stone, if need be.

Pokeball Notes

- You can access the PC anywhere. Wi-Fi. This is a modern reboot.

- I like the wider variation of Pokeballs that you can use in some other games, although I think they're a little messy now. I'd clean them up by only having these:

• Poke Ball = low catch rate
• Great Ball = medium catch rate
• Ultra Ball = high catch rate
• Master Ball = guaranteed catch rate
  

• Dusk Ball = for use in caves or at night
• Heavy Ball = works better on heavier Pokemon
• Net Ball = works better for bug, flying and water Pokemon
• Speed Ball = works better on quick Pokemon

- Something I'll get into later with the Pokedex, but my version of Voltorb isn't an Electric type, isn't named Voltorb, and changes its appearance based on the Pokeball you capture it in. More on that, later.

Other Miscellaneous Notes

- You can pick the girl or boy character.

- Storage is like newer games. You don't have a PC, and it's definitely not "Someone's PC" until you meet Bill. You have access to a backpack with all stuff on a Wi-Fi system, in a way, for storing items, Pokemon and more.

- Time is a thing. This is how the Safari Zone works (not based on steps or balls).

- There is a day and night cycle, as well as seasons. Both influence the encounters and the battles.

- Naturally, in turn, the locations of battles and things like Sunny Day are in this remake.

- Friendship is a thing. So are natures, but I think I'd want to clean that up a bit, as I'm honestly confused about how Timid and whatever work.

- Genders are a thing. We'll talk more about that with Nidoran and the concept of variants.

We're just getting started! This was just setting up some of the basic stuff. For part 2 of this endeavor, we'll be talking about the Pokemon themselves with a breakdown of the new Pokedex!

Welcome to another edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better.

With Spider-Man: Homecoming out on Blu-Ray, I had a chance to rewatch it for the first time since seeing it in theaters. Overall, I was a huge fan of the movie and there were only a couple of things that annoyed me, so on my rewatch, I was curious to see if those few errors were more or less annoying than before.

They were the same—shocking—but that prompted me to give a rewrite a crack to fix these problems in what is mostly a 90% perfect movie for what they were going for.

I love nearly everything about this film, from the inclusion of Damage Control, the references to Aaron Davis and multiple Shocker identities, having The Tinkerer and even down to the comedic tone.

So with that being the framework, keep in mind that my goal here is always to change as little as possible to make the movie as great as possible, so it isn't a complete rehaul of every idea, which is why you won't see a full-on fan fiction script below.

With that being said, what are the problems I do think are present with Spider-Man: Homecoming?

Core Problem #1: The Multitude of Michelle and Liz Problems

These are somewhat tied together with many facets to unpack...

MJ Instead of MG

First things first, no, Michelle is not Mary Jane. Don't try to be cutesy by calling her MJ. You can't just strip absolutely everything from a character, at the last second call them that character's nickname, and have that be okay. Didn't these people watch what happened with The Dark Knight Rises trying to pass off John Blake as Robin, which just pissed people off in all ways?

The representatives of Mary Jane Watson are pretty standard: she is a Caucasian girl roughly around Peter's age with red hair who is out of his league beautiful and eventually the love of his life. Sometimes, you can play around with the specifics like whether or not they grew up together, if she's sassier or sweeter, etc.

There was some backlash about the casting of Zendaya when it comes to her race. Admittedly, I wasn't a fan of it, as I didn't see the reason to necessarily change this (even though I'm all for doing that with certain characters, a la Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury is infinitely better than the other incarnation and I prefer my Iris and Wally West to be black as well, and Tilda Swinton was a great Ancient One, and Heimdall is an improvement, and so on and so forth). My issue was more so that she doesn't have any of Mary Jane's traits because even though Zendaya is attractive, they downplay that entirely and make her a creepy SJW loner type with no friends who looks like she barely mustered up the energy to roll out of bed in the morning and throw on yesterday's sweats, rather than some bombshell that she could have easily pulled off. She's a completely different character in every possible way, so just let her be a different character.

Also, if you're going to go with the Michelle name, why is she Michelle Jones? Why isn't she Michele Gonzales? Michele is a character from the comics and a love interest that could have been explored that we haven't seen in the films yet, like Carlie Cooper. Or, perhaps, if you don't want to have her be a love interest, you could have made that character more of a lesser entity and still referenced previous material by casting a Middle Eastern girl and making her Indira Daimonji, who would make perfect sense being that type of friend to Peter in that circle of friends. For that matter, if you wanted to, you could have made that character Debra Whitman, too, but I get the attempt at diversity, so I'll bypass Whitman as she's typically just another white blonde girl and that should be reserved for Gwen Stacy.

So for now, let's just move forward with this in mind: Michelle Jones is not MJ in this script. Instead, she is Michele Gonzales, and there's nothing at all referencing Mary Jane Watson whatsoever.

Liz Isn't Liz

Liz is absolutely nothing like she's typically presented, either, and that extends once more to a difference in both appearance as well as characteristics.

As far as the race change goes, I'm okay with that. Spider-Man's series was really generic in how his love interests for the longest time were solely white girls, so hey, the way I see it, leave Mary Jane and Gwen alone and you can alter the rest if you want. If you want to make Betty Brant Asian, I'm all for it, although I also think it's dumb that we have Betty Brant and Glory Grant, but that's another whole issue.

Liz, to me, is almost always a bitchy type. She and Sally Avril and others are best utilized as a pain in the ass "popular cheerleader stereotype" kind of character. If you wanted to go with someone with the traits of Liz in this film, you could have swapped her name out for Indira or Debra, who are much more academic.

The Vulture's Daughter

This absolutely had to have been a Sony note, since we know for the longest time, they wanted Spider-Man 4 with Sam Raimi to be about Vulture and his daughter, who would have been either Black Cat or something called Vulturess.

Clearly, they wanted to do this very, very badly. We've seen this type of mentality by studios before with how they're getting their Venom spinoff film, or how for years, the Terminator franchise kept toying with the idea of turning John Connor into a Terminator only to go ahead and do that for Terminator Genisys, which was awful.

I don't absolutely 100% hate the idea of Vulture having a daughter that has ties to Peter Parker, but I hate how it was shoehorned in there. It didn't need to happen, and it even less so needed to be Liz Allen of all people.

Her name in the movie is actually Liz Toomes, making her even less of Liz Allen, and just a random ass character they created. Meanwhile, there actually IS a daughter for Vulture elsewhere, named Valeria Toomes....so if she doesn't act like Liz and isn't named Liz, why isn't she Valeria????

With that in mind, let's correct the problem in one of three ways:

Solution #1 = Valeria Toomes

Instead of Liz Allen being Liz Toomes, you just have Valeria Toomes and Michele Gonzales be these two girls.

Valeria is whatever you want her to be. She's popular, she's bitchy, she's nice, she's smart, it doesn't matter. She's there just to be an object of Peter's affection and a motivational tool for he and Vulture anyway in the film.

Once Vulture is sent to jail, Valeria and her mom move, just like what happens in this film.

Peter, the whole time, has been focused on Valeria and has been ignoring Michele, but hey, there are sequels to come, so maybe those two kids will totally hit it off now that Valeria is out of the way and we clearly don't have Gwen or MJ to step in.

Solution #2 = Merge Them

Vulture is the stepfather to Michele Gonzalez. There is no Valeria/Liz. She doesn't move when he's arrested. You explain her erratic behavior by having her grow up with a guy that is a criminal.

The end...but with more of an explanation with solution #3....

Solution #3 = Switcharoo

Liz Allen, played by someone who is closer to Tom Holland's age, and named Liz Allen instead of Liz Toomes, is a completely different character in the film. She's the super hot popular queen of the land that is actually really bitchy, but Peter is transfixed by her and doesn't see this. All the meanwhile, he's been ignoring this girl Michele Gonzales who is a little eccentric, but much nicer to him, and who might have a crush on Peter.

Instead of getting to go to the dance with Liz, Peter "settles" for going with Ned and Michele as a "group stag" type deal as friends.

This is when we get the reveal that Vulture is Michele's stepfather, which explains why she's so goddamn weird, and suddenly, the girl in the background of the film is now so much more important, which is a better reveal.

At the end of the movie, Toomes gets sent to prison, but he has a decent relationship with Peter who not only saved his life, but also Michele's, and he also kind of commends him for befriending her even though she's an oddball. She doesn't move. She stays in New York, but now she has a better support system in Ned and Peter.

Liz, on the other hand, continues being her bitchy self and the difference isn't in her character, but in how Peter views her character. It's a lesson in how these types of people in high school sometimes turn out to never change and you don't need to deal with them the rest of your life, which is a lesson very rarely taught in movies even though it's truthful (although in my school experience, we didn't really have stereotypical jocks and cheerleaders like that, so....)

Oh. Also, Michele in any incarnation has a brother, Vin, who can either be seen having issues with Peter when he comes to pick her up for the dance or there can just be a passing reference to her saying that Vin doesn't like Peter. No biggie, just fan service and continuity.

Core Problem #2: Normal School / Characters

This idea of Peter being in a gifted school makes sense to a certain degree, but it also flies in the face of a lot of what is tantamount to the Peter Parker story.

One of the most fundamental concepts of the Spider-Man franchise is that Peter is a guy that has horrible luck and is never given the credit he deserves. He struggles in every aspect, but he still manages to find a way to be optimistic for the future and spread some laughs.

The kid loses his parents, then loses his uncle due to a decision he makes, fights crime and gets called a menace, is always struggling for money, is always criticized for being a bad friend when he's the total opposite, etc. "Brilliant but lazy" despite that being as far away from the truth as possible, for instance.

Why is he in a school filled with his peers when he should be an outsider who isn't given the chance to succeed?

Peter should be in a regular high school with a regular Flash Thompson who is totally not Tony Revolori, but more of the ilk of, I don't know, every other incarnation of the character ever, where he's a bit of a meathead jock who picks on him but eventually grows to respect him, rather than some intellectual rival?

Nitpick: Flash should throw the party, not Liz/Valeria/Michele. Flash doesn't want Peter there, and only agrees to let him come if he can produce Spider-Man to make an appearance. When he doesn't, Flash calls him a loser and voila.

These teachers in the normal school should have more references to the comic book characters as well. Just browse the bible and you'll see tons of teachers he's had in various media and insert their names instead of making up even more random ones.

For that matter, include more of those side characters that you don't have to do much with, but just round out the supporting crew. Jason Ionello popping up made me go "hmmm wow", so let's see Sally Avril and Seymour O'Reilly and Kenny Kong and Robbie Robertson and whatnot all hanging out. Nobody gives a shit who Brian "Tiny" McKeever really is, but why not allude to him by having a real quick cameo of someone as a hall monitor and then credit them as the character? It doesn't take much! Maybe instead of Betty Brant being the girl working on the news program, it's Danika Hart, too, since that's more up her alley.

Also, what's up with this weird amalgamation of Edward "Ned" Leeds and Ganke Lee? If you're going to do that, give us some supplemental material that turns into the skid by naming him Edward Ganke Lee, aka Ned.

For that matter, Harry Osborn should have at least been a contact on Peter's phone as an Easter egg. You didn't need to make him a full character in this film, but he needs to be someone in Peter's life.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved this movie and made it better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. No Daily Bugle? –Like, at all??? Not even in the background?
2. No Netflix References? – Marvel's film and television sides clearly have issues with each other, but it isn't hard at all to throw each other a bone. One line of dialogue will make fans go crazy if you have Peter nervously say something about "the devil guy in Hell's Kitchen" or how he's not some public persona like Luke Cage. They live in the same city. Reference something.
3. Karen – The voice of the suit, nicknamed Karen, should be a reference to something in the comics, perhaps Madame Web instead.
4. Avengers Tower – If this is being sold, it better be a conversion into the Baxter Building. If not, I'm going to be pissed.
5. Washington Monument – This whole set piece felt like a contrived way to have a "save people" action scene at that point in the movie. It's out of place and it seems weird that more people can't connect the dots to Peter being Spider-Man. The decathlon should be closer to New York, perhaps upstate, to make it more convenient and easier and realistic.
6. Timeline – Lots of confusion about when this film takes place. To avoid that, just say "present day" and "The Battle of New York" instead of giving out specific years.
7. Spidey Sense - Um...where are you?

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if I was magically given me the ability to do so. I might go back and edit this when the film comes out on Blu-Ray and I get a chance to watch it again (if I even want to rewatch it, that is) and either find out that my opinions have changed for the better or for the worse. Maybe I'll add things, maybe I'll tweak the current things, or maybe I'll see that I missed some details that justify the nitpicks and I'll remove them, but we'll have to see about that.

Welcome to another edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle was a massive disappointment for me and I couldn't help but feel after leaving the theater that there was a much better and more obvious trajectory that would have led the series in a much more solid direction that not only would have sit more comfortably with me, but could have also helped garner a higher rating from critics.

As such, I figured I would give it a crack to explain what I would do if I could go back in time knowing what I know now, and if I had the influence to change certain aspects of the story to craft what I feel would be a better film.

Keep in mind that my goal here is always to change as little as possible to make the movie as great as possible, so it isn't a complete rehaul of every idea, which is why you won't see a full-on fan fiction script below.

With that being said, how do you fix Kingsman: The Golden Circle?

Core Problem #1: Roxy

By no means should Roxy have died in this movie, under any circumstances. Not at the beginning, not in the middle, and not at the end, but CERTAINLY not at the beginning without doing a goddamn thing.

The first movie barely utilized her and this was their opportunity to fix that by having her actually be a valuable member of the team. In this modern culture where women empowerment is such a huge topic in films, they had an opportunity to give Eggsy a partner who doesn't have to be "his equal in every way" because she's not the protagonist, but she could be "as capable of an agent as Eggsy, bu tin different ways that compliment Eggsy and make them such a good pair."

My idea for Roxy in the film is that the events unfold where she is alive with Eggsy and Merlin after the attack on the agents. She continues to fight the good fight with them as a genuine member of their team who contributes just as much in certain ways. All the meanwhile, there's tension between Eggsy and Roxy because he's headstrong and cocky (in a good way, he gets results, but in a bad way, he's reckless) meanwhile she's the reliable cautious one (in a good way, she saves him from getting into too much of a mess, but in a bad way, she freezes up and that can be dangerous). Basically, this is a logical extension of their relationship from the first film to show how they still need some growing, but how they are growing as well.

There's also tension because they're partners, coworkers, friends, and there's clearly a chemistry beyond that. Yes, I'm shipping them. I know some people will criticize that idea by saying that she doesn't need to be his love interest, but why the hell does she need to not be? If you don't have an answer for that other than something political, it's not good storytelling and it isn't valid.

The story being told here is of Eggsy's increased ties to Kingsman and how it really is his life. By the end of the movie, he realizes his familial connections: Harry is like his father, Merlin is like his uncle, Roxy is his lover, and Tequila is like the older brother who picks on him or like his roughhouse hooligan buddies and best friends.

Roxy and Eggsy don't have to get married at the end, as that's rushing it. However, there could maybe be a kiss to just hint that that's where things are heading in the third film, which could at least in part deal with Eggsy having an uneasiness with his girlfriend being a spy and in danger while he doesn't want to give it up, etc etc etc.

Core Problem #2: Princess Tilde

There's absolutely no reason why she should be the love of his life who he gets married to in this movie.

The joke of the first film was a parody of the Bond girls where at the end of the movie, 007 ends up just having sex with some woman and it's good for a laugh. Tilde should have stayed entirely in that capacity.

The one and only appearance I would have had her make is some kind of a cameo for a quick laugh, like maybe she appears on his phone trying to call him for another shag or something and he just rejects the call (signifying a lack of commitment which could tie into his relationship with Roxy).

At most, if they felt they NEEDED to have her be a bigger character, she could be this ideal of a princess that Eggsy wants, but Tilde is actually a piece of shit that we slowly dislike more and more throughout the movie. By the end of it, Eggsy rejects her in favor of Roxy. The third film could have the quick cameo where she's brought up and we find out that she's become addicted to anal sex or something and by that point, we don't like her, so we're okay laughing at her expense.

Core Problem #3: Up the Ante on Familiar Jokes

When you are repeating something from before, the only way to have it have the same effect or better is to actually increase the value. With a joke, for instance, it tends to get less and less funny the more you hear it, so you have to make it funnier.

This film doesn't do that. When it repeats itself from before, it merely repeats itself. It's an echo, not a statement on the previous thing, outside of two instances that I can think of. One of which is when Eggsy and Harry are looking in the mirror at the end, but even that lacks the punch it should have because Princess Tilde is such a waste. The other is when Harry tries the "manners maketh the man" speech and isn't able to hit his target with the glass, which was executed much better.

Subverting the audience's expectations with previous jokes is the best way to get around it. Every joke that has a familiarity to it should be either a twist on the original one or it should be taking it to the next level, not just merely referencing it. If you're going to have an action set piece to a funny song, make it better than "Give It Up" was, not just something that reminds you of something better from the first movie.

Core Problem #4: The Replacement Arthur

At the end of the first film, Arthur has been killed because he was evil. Some time has passed, but I think this film would have benefited from Merlin being a temporary replacement for Arthur, while not actually being in that position.

Essentially, think of him as an interim boss. He's the most senior member of the team (outside of potentially some of the other random agents) and he's the most qualified to lead, but he is still Merlin. Being the tech guy is his bread and butter, not being the leader, so he's trying to do his best while dealing with two young recruits (Eggsy and Roxy) and seeking out a replacement Arthur.

You can even keep the struggle of him saying he wants to be in the field, and by the end of the film, he's realized his true passion is what he's been doing all along and he goes back to being the regular Merlin.

Meanwhile, Harry is rehabilitated and he becomes elected the new Arthur, which not only makes sense in the literal job capacity as Harry has shown that he has fantastic leadership capabilities, but it also solves the two Galahads problem which doesn't get resolved despite being specifically mentioned in the movie!!

Ideally, you can even hint at a romantic relationship between Ginger Ale and Merlin to illustrate how unified Kingsman and Statesman are at the end of the film, with them working side by side on missions rather than in the dark of each other.

Harry Harthur.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved this movie and made it better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. The Ending Tease of Part 3 – My ideal ending would have included some kind of a tease that maybe other countries could branch out and create their own organizations that could pop up in the third installment, where we could see Canadian mounties or Italian mobster types and so forth.
2. The Best Friends – Just use the best friends from the first movie. Why have three brand new ones? Dumb.
3. Less Elton John – One or two jokes. That's it. This was overkill.
4. Keep Charlie Alive – Charlie shouldn't have died! He should have continued to be a pest in Eggsy's side in the third film, now with two robotic arms or maybe a robotic leg to coincide with the arm.
5. Robotic Eye – Poppy's cybernetics should have given Harry Hart (the new Arthur, mind you) a new eye that acted as the same functionality as the eyeglasses they wear with the screens on them. How did they miss this opportunity?
6. Hacking – Their watches can hack into Charlie's arm, but not the briefcase with the access code?

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if I was magically given me the ability to do so. I might go back and edit this when the film comes out on Blu-Ray and I get a chance to watch it again (if I even want to rewatch it, that is) and either find out that my opinions have changed for the better or for the worse. Maybe I'll add things, maybe I'll tweak the current things, or maybe I'll see that I missed some details that justify the nitpicks and I'll remove them, but we'll have to see about that.

Welcome to the seventh edition of Fanboys Fix It, where instead of just complaining about what we don't like about something, we try to figure out how we can make it better. With the upcoming release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, I can't help but feel it's time to reflect a bit more on Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens. We're a year removed from the release of that film, so we've had more than enough time to fully digest it and for the shock value to wear off. Now, with clearer eyes (shout out to Maz Kanata) we'll be able to break the film down better and more accurately pinpoint the problems with it that could have been fixed with a few more tweaks to the script.
For those curious, you can check out my initial reviews of the film and many more posts at the bottom of this article. I happen to love the movie, ranking it probably as my third favorite of the series so far, but even after my first viewing, I could see some issues that I wish had never popped up. Over time, a few more things have gotten under my skin, and that's hurt its reputation a bit. I still think it's great, but now more than ever, I wish the film had been approached in a different way in its execution.

With that being said, how do you fix The Force Awakens?

Here is a list of what I feel are the errors of the film and how I would have fixed them in a rewrite.

Core Problem #1: Being Kept in the Dark

There is a recurring theme throughout a good majority of this article, where many different problems are going to circle back to one fundamental concept: there were far too many mysteries in the film which didn't need to exist.

A good movie gives you all the information you need to know in order to get the full scope of things, while leaving minor inconsequential details out of the mix so things don't get bogged down. For example, the Lord of the Rings series can sometimes seem a bit bloated because they feel the need to explain the process in which dwarfs prefer their potatoes to be cooked on Saturdays, which comes from an old legend that blah blah blah. We can all agree that if you're a fan of the material, you want to indulge in as much of it as possible, so that stuff might be interesting to you, but that's where the expansion into other media can satiate you.

This film, however, has the opposite problem, as it relies too heavily on extraneous media to explain major plot points rather than just adding icing to the cake. The reason this happens is because they tried to rush 30 years of history into quick moments, meaning important elements are glossed over either too quickly to resonate or they are completely ignored entirely. It's a byproduct of not having enough time for the film and leaving things on the cutting room floor more than it is having told a full story and wanting to elaborate on it elsewhere.

The prequels did a great job of not falling into this pitfall, for the most part. By the end of Revenge of the Sith, you know that the clones will transition to the Stormtroopers, Obi-Wan has dropped Luke off on Tatooine where he'll watch over him as he grows up with Owen and Beru, Bail Organa has Leia and will raise her, Yoda is on Dagobah where he'll stay until we see him in The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader is in his suit and the Galactic Empire is about to start tightening its stranglehold on everyone with oppression getting worse over the next 20 years. The Jedi are dead and a Rebel Alliance is going to have to spring up over time. The rest is inconsequential, as the first major victory is the Battle of Yavin, which we see in A New Hope, which then gives us the journey until Return of the Jedi.

Then, the next film we have—The Force Awakens—is a jarring jump forward which makes you feel like you forgot to watch at least one, if not three movies.

Why does it seem like it's taking longer to get rid of the Empire than it did for them to have their entirety of their rule? Oh, it's not the Empire, it's something called The First Order. What's The First Order, then? The first of what? Also, if the Empire isn't still in control, do we have a new Republic? What is the new setup of the Republic? Who is in charge? We went from Valorum to Palpatine to who? Is it Leia? No, she's the leader of The Resistance. Well, what is The Resistance? Why are they resisting something that is not oppressive if they're in charge? Shouldn't The First Order be The Resistance, then? Also, if she's not the leader, does that mean she's trained in The Force and this Resistance is some kind of militarized branch where she's a go-between liaison with Luke's Jedi Order and the armies of The Republic? Wait, she didn't train at all? Why? Where's the Jedi Order? They're killed by The First Order? Again, what the fuck is The First Order? The Empire in another name ran by a guy named Snoke? Who the fuck is Snoke?! The leader of The Knights of Ren? WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS "REN" THING??!

The response you'll often hear is "read the books" which is just lazy and ridiculous. Even then, the books still don't explain much of this, as many of those questions haven't been answered yet a full year later.

Franchises work in three ways: 1) each new installment is standalone and you can jump in at any moment, 2) there are subcategories and as long as you follow the same thread, you're good, but if you branch out then you enrich your experience, 3) you need to pay attention to every little detail in every bit of canon possible. The Star Wars film series operates on the second wavelength. You don't have to dive deeper into anything other than the movies in order to get everything you need, but if you do read the comics, watch the cartoons, and so on, you're adding more depth and layers which were optional.

Look at the Marvel Cinematic Universe for an example of how to properly balance things. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier saves the day by showing up relatively out of nowhere. If you just watch the films, the explanation they give is that Nick Fury, Maria Hill and the others on that ship had this stashed away in secret for an emergency, and while the other characters were off doing their own thing, Hill and Fury were retrieving that. Cool, that explains it. Now, if you watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television show, you get to see more of how that retrieval went down, which apparently also involved Phil Coulson. Awesome. You don't need to know Coulson's involvement to avoid being confused in the film, but watching the show gives you some added bonus fun.

Supplemental material should be used to explain only supplemental material. Star Wars Rebels explains how the Rebellion acquired the B-Wings. Cool. But when Hosnian Prime was destroyed, many of us thought it was Coruscant because the film didn't even take the time to say the name of the planet—or any of the planets except Jakku for that matter, oddly enough. We still don't know if Starkiller Base is Ilum, Hoth, something new, etc. The context we had with Hosnian Prime was that we had seen only one planet before that looked like a giant city and was the capital, and here is a capital planet that looks like a giant city, so why shouldn't we think it's Coruscant? 

So how do you fix this problem? You simply work harder on the script in the planning stages to explain these things in a more efficient manner. Dialogue can be great tools to cram a lot in just a few words. Tweaking a minor change to the line "It was the Republic. The First Order, they've done it." to something like "That was the Hosnian system. The First Order, they've destroyed the Republic." clarifies that and takes up a fraction of a second more time.

Adding a two-minute scene where Leia speaks to representatives of the Republic could give us a considerable amount of information very quickly. That's a small amount of time to add to the film and isn't going to hurt the box office, which broke damn near every record possible. Changing a film from 2 and a half hours to 3 hours can make a dent, but nobody's going to be flipping out if a film is 137 minutes instead of 135.

Some mysteries can still be left for future films to dive into, like what Luke has been up to since he went missing, because that's a mystery to our protagonists, but we shouldn't be unaware of what happened before he left, too. Leave the fans wanting more of what's to come, not being confused about what has already happened.

Core Problem #2: Family Matters

By the end of the film, why do we not know who both Finn and Rey's parents are or where they came from or anything other than the generic baseline character descriptions given out in press releases beforehand?

There are four brand new main characters introduced that we're following the journeys of—the other two being Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren. With Poe, we don't need this information. He was originally scripted to be killed off and he's basically just an amalgam of Lando Calrissian, a less important Han Solo, and Wedge Antilles. His backstory isn't something shrouded in mystery, so it makes sense to elaborate on it with the books. Kylo Ren's backstory is incredibly rushed, but we'll get into that later in another section below. However, Finn and Rey are the two true main characters and we still basically know nothing about them!

Since we don't know Finn's heritage, we're left with conflicting arguments about whether or not he's Force-sensitive. I'm really hoping he is, as it makes more sense than if he isn't. The marketing material always had him holding a lightsaber and if they were misleading just to dangle a carrot and then say "nope, he's just a normal guy", then that's very disappointing. If he has latent Force powers that he just hasn't tapped into yet (but now can, due to The Force Awakening and all) then that would explain 1) how he could use a lightsaber pretty damn well with no training, 2) why he was such a great Stormtrooper, 3) why he could resist the brainwashing techniques they use on the children they train. To be fair, knowing that his parents were John and Jane Doe and no other information doesn't clear that question up, but we don't even know what Finn's real name is! We can assume he was abducted as a child and his parents were killed, and they might have been just two random citizens on a random planet, but why is Finn so special, then?

Rey is an entirely different animal, and I addressed a lot of my gripes about her lineage here, so I recommend checking that out. I'll try to be as short as possible while elaborating on some more things inside this article, though.

Right now, the filmmakers have painted themselves into a corner. There's no way the answer to her backstory satisfies. If she's Luke's daughter, it's okay to save information about her mother for the next film, but why not tell us at the end? People will be disappointed, saying it's the obvious answer and there was no need to delay it. I myself want this to be the case, but I can understand the point of view that it was a needless tease.

If she's Han and Leia's daughter, why don't they remember her? Just because they wanted to leave a mystery for the second film to be revealed like in the first trilogy? That's stupid.

If Rey's parents are characters we don't know, then why is it a mystery anyway? Let's just say for argument's sake that her parents are Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor of Rogue One. We wouldn't have heard of them beforehand, but when they revealed that the first standalone movie would be not only the backstory of stealing the Death Star plans, but that it was also where Rey's parents met, then that would be super interesting to the audience.

When the reveal happens is also going to be a source of contention. Too early in the next film and you run the risk of people thinking it was a waste to wait and drawing comparisons to how The Force Awakens puts too much information at the start, too. If you wait until the end, then leave the film off with wanting more information that you won't get until Episode 9, you're pissing people off for waiting another couple of years and taking everyone's patience for granted.

Because of Max Landis, more people know the term "Mary Sue" than ever, and I agree with him on the issue that Rey is definitely a victim of that lazy writing scenario. For all intents and purposes, she has absolutely zero training in The Force not just at the beginning of the film, but at the end as well, so how does she know these advanced techniques? Because they wanted her to kick ass? That's a problem with the writing team beyond the fourth wall and not something built into the story from what we're aware of. There's too much ambiguity. People shouldn't be arguing about which stretches they make up to fill in the gaps of the plot holes you create. The fans are then doing your job for you. That's why we still have no definitive answer for how Finn could fight Kylo Ren and not be decapitated in a moment. Either we have to make the jump to the conclusion that he's Force-sensitive and untrained, which puts him on par with an injured Kylo Ren, or he's a regular person and the level at which Kylo was injured is much more than indicated.

Hell, we don't even know if Finn and Rey are going to be love interests in this series, which is really a shame. Both of them are in the exact same limbo in regards to the mystery of their backstories as they were in before the film premiered, and that's not good enough. To fix that problem, they should have given us all the necessary main information we needed to know where they were going, just not how they were going to get there.

Core Problem #3: Improve the Villains

The villains we have for this new series are Supreme Leader Snoke, Kylo Ren, General Hux, Captain Phasma and to a lesser extent, Unkar Plutt and Kanjiklub and such. Some of these characters have a ton of potential, but most of it is untapped, while others are quite lackluster.

Kylo Ren as a member of the Solo family who turns evil and joins the dark side is a story we've already basically seen before, so I both don't want him to be redeemed and simultaneously don't want to see the last in the Skywalker lineage end up a villain (unless, of course, Rey is Luke's daughter, which I'm really hoping is the case as mentioned above). Having him dress up similar to Darth Vader is okay, but that name "Kylo Ren" isn't threatening enough to me in comparison. For that matter, all of the names of the villains are pretty lame. "Kylo Ren" could work very well for something else in the universe, but as the primary villain, meh. Think about it. What is more villainous sounding, Kylo or Sidious? Ren or Maul?

Snoke is a dumb name, too, and Phasma sounds like something that is better suited for Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek than Star Wars. It's too stereotypically sci-fi for this series, oddly enough. Hux is okay, but kind of lame, and it doesn't fit that particular character. To me, Hux should be the name of the overweight alien in Maz's castle, not Domhnall Gleeson (who actually could have been named Kylo Ren and I would have bought that, more). Star Wars Rebels has better names overall, like Agent Kallus, which sounds more threatening than Captain Phasma, so maybe those writers should have spent 5 minutes of Google research to find cooler sounding things than what we got.

Ignoring the names for a moment, the characters themselves are lacking in other ways, too. Snoke right now is WAY too much like Emperor Palpatine. They're both old, bald, pale, deformed dark side users who have menacing voices and wear black robes while sitting in chairs and are introduced via hologram and not wanting to get their hands dirty. Seriously, what's the difference? Why not do something that's a change of pace like making the big bad a woman or go with a completely changed design that we wouldn't immediately think of as a poor man's attempt to redo Sidious?

Captain Phasma was advertised as this big deal and she ended up being less threatening than Grand Moff Tarkin as well as having less screen time than him. Why make her out to be a badass just to have her give up at the first sign of a threat and then be unceremoniously thrown into the garbage and presumed to have blown up on the planet which, of course, has no name yet because they don't like naming planets anymore I guess. I know I'm not in the minority when I say she was one of the biggest disappointments based on the advertisement material building her up to be something she wasn't. That scene with Nines—who, again, we only know the name of because of the novels, not the movies, which is why everybody knows him better as TR-8R—should have been Captain Phasma's part in the movie. They gave no explanation for her surviving and if she had been fleshed out more, it would have been okay for her to be killed off in that scene since no villains are killed at all in this movie.

Starkiller Base is just another Death Star. If you need something big for them to blow up (which I don't think you do, by the way) then why not do the Sun Crusher from the Expanded Universe? That's at least more interesting than "a bigger Death Star that can shoot multiple beams instead of one."

The Rathtars are pretty lame and that scene slows down the movie and eats up time that could have been used for something else, like a space fight scene or more time for explaining all those things we were kept in the dark about. Even worse, though, is that you had the guys from The Raid do something that wasn't an actual fight sequence—and this is coming from a guy who hasn't even seen that movie! I've heard nothing but amazing things about their choreography and how great the action was in that film and to see them do nothing but run from tentacles was such a wrong choice. They should have been cast as members of the Knights of Ren and shown killing off the new Jedi or something.

Let's finally circle back to Ben Solo and how everything with him was rushed. When we last left our heroes in Return of the Jedi, Leia wasn't even pregnant with him. The audience didn't even know that Han and Leia had a child, so we need to be caught up on: 1) they had a kid, 2) the kid is named Ben, 3) he trained with Luke, 4) something happened where he turned to the dark side, 5) he's now going by the name Kylo Ren, 6) he's defected to the villains and has a high ranking there. That's SO much information that we don't have much time to process without even getting the details of those things—just the bulk concepts in general. Right now, Kylo Ren exists more as a concept of a character than a truly fleshed out character himself, and he's not supposed to be as mysterious as Darth Vader originally was. In A New Hope, we didn't need to know much about him. He's just the evil guy who trained under Obi-Wan and killed Luke's father. Done. It was simple, effective, and it worked for the film. Lor San Tekka—a character we know nothing about and learn nothing about—basically just says at the beginning of the film "You're the son of Han and Leia and turned bad for some reason."

The villains in The Force Awakens aren't memorable yet because they haven't done anything, except for Ben killing Han, but it doesn't have as much gravitas as if we would have known more about the character before he made that choice. We never got a chance to see Ben in a way that makes us heartbroken to see him kill his father. To us, he's always just been a villain, so it's not surprising that he kills Han, which is why everybody saw it coming from a mile away. If you watch The Phantom Menace first, by the time you reach the scene where Anakin chops off Mace Windu's hand, you're surprised he took the evil action instead of turning against Palpatine and doing what's right. When you watch The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren has been nothing but evil from the start and he's just some punk ass whiny emo dickbag who murdered one of your favorite characters from the original films. Without killing Han, nobody cares about Kylo Ren, just as the only thing people care about with Snoke is his learning his identity. Without that mystery, Snoke is a poor man's Palpatine just as Hux is a poor man's Tarkin, Phasma is a poor man's Boba Fett (albeit with an equally bad track record), Unkar Plutt is about on par with the Tusken Raiders and the Rathtars are even less interesting than the Rancor.

Core Problem #4: Properly Illustrate the Passage of Time

Why does everything feel exactly the same as it did in Return of the Jedi if so much time has gone by? If the answer is just because they wanted people to feel like it was tied more to the original trilogy than the prequels, that's a misguided attempt to pander to audiences rather than to justify it within the story.

Obviously, after the horrible dictatorship that went down, there would be a healing process where the galaxy would need to take a long while to get back to normal, so they shouldn't be as prosperous and clean-looking as things were in the prequels, but this should have been bridging the gap at least. Why is there seemingly little to improvement in decadence in this time of peace? Everything is still a barren wasteland with old technology. It's been 30 years and they're still using X-Wings and TIE Fighters? They're antiquated!

If your answer is "The Resistance was forced to rely on leftovers and use old technology as they weren't given the proper funds from The Republic due to a political struggle where some people didn't support them" then I ask you where that information was relayed in the film. Again, if your answer is "it's in the books" then I'll point out that six other movies didn't run into that problem, so this one shouldn't have, either. I should be looking into the books for information on why Kylo Ren prefers a crossguard design to his lightsaber, how BB-8 and Poe Dameron first met, the backstory on how Han stole the Rathtars and simple things like that, not big questions.

We should have had different ships, or at least alterations to the ones we're used to, save for the Millennium Falcon. Admittedly, it was nice to see that they changed the circular dish to a rectangular one, which means they do pay attention to some details, but why are the X-Wings basically the same? Shouldn't they have upgraded to a different type of ship by now or at least augmented them with some new advancements other than that gun turret which may or may not have already been part of the other ones in the original trilogy but just never seen on film?

One argument I could make is BB-8 being a more modernized version of R2-D2. I'll give you that one. The spherical design allows for much better maneuverability, which shows that at least in the field of astromechs, someone's trying to take things to the next level. That's the type of philosophy that should have been applied all over the place.

Similarly, we ended Return of the Jedi with Luke being the only Jedi and this film starts off with him being the only Jedi. We couldn't even get half a film where there were some more? Why couldn't The Force Awakens be the tweaked where instead of it being a hunt for Luke, the movie's midway point isn't the destruction of the Hosnian system, but the eradication of the new Jedi? To preserve the mystery of what happened? That just brings us back to the argument asking why we needed to have all these mysteries to begin with!

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. Use the Force, Luke...I mean, Rey – When Rey and Kylo Ren are dueling, the tide turns when he says he'll train her to use The Force, and she simply says "The Force?" closes her eyes, relaxes, and can suddenly fight better. I've heard this suggestion before and I absolutely love it, that it would have been so much more powerful and made much more sense if she had overheard Luke's voice telling her to use The Force, similar to what had happened with him in the X-Wing with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Some would take issue that Luke isn't a ghost, so he shouldn't be able to communicate in the same way, but why not? He's the most powerful Jedi ever. You mean to tell me he couldn't send a message like that in a great time of stress to someone who may be his daughter, particularly when we've seen Yoda speak to Ezra Bridger in similar fashion while still alive? Luke would be able to reach out, and it would give her the guidance she needs to explain how she can fight better. I'll even one-up this, by saying it would be great to hear Snoke before this tell her to kill Kylo, so we could hear a battle of influences between the light and dark sides. You can even justify it by saying when Rey touched Luke's lightsaber, a connection was established through psychometry. On top of this, it would give the viewers a chance to think "Wait, is Luke dead?" which makes the finale reveal so much sweeter.
2. Easy on the References – The callbacks to the original trilogy were fun, but too numerous. The trash compactor joke and Finn picking up the little training ball served no purpose other than to get fans to chuckle.
3. Give Finn a Theme – Rey has a theme. Kylo Ren has a theme. Why no Finn theme?
4. R2-D2's Convenient Timing – Why does Artoo not wake up from sleep mode when BB-8 first comes to the base? The true answer is "because they wanted to keep the map reveal until later" which is no excuse if there's not an in-story rationale. Something should have given that a reason to be delayed. 
5. Where is Lando? – How was he not included in the movie or even mentioned?! That guy needs to be a senator or in control of a planet or something.
6. Who is Lor San Tekka? – Who is this dude? His death means nothing because we don't know him. 
7. Kill Chewbacca – I can't imagine Chewbacca carrying on as a character without Han Solo. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just think he'll be a shell of his former self and his death won't matter as much now. He should have died in a self-sacrifice to blow up Starkiller after Han bit the dust. You might ask what would have happened with him not being able to save Rey and Finn with the Millennium Falcon, right? Well, how about Poe saves them instead? There. Now Poe and Rey can actually have a scene together, which brings me to...
8. Give Rey and Poe a Scene Together – They seriously don't exchange a single word to each other. Isn't that weird to think about?

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if I was magically given me the ability to do so. Some of these problems just cannot be fixed anymore, while others can hopefully be elaborated on in Episode 8 and future films to help explain why we're left in the dark about so much information.

Welcome to the sixth edition of Fanboys Fix It, where we address the problems a certain movie has and try to figure out ways to make it better in hindsight.

To coincide with the release of the Extended Edition of Suicide Squad, I sat down to rewatch the film and see if the problems I had with it from before were fixed. They weren't. I don't think a single one of them was corrected, so since we've done a Fanboys Fix It for both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, it seemed like a good idea to point our pencils in this movie's direction and start erasing and rewriting the mistakes.

With that being said, how do you fix Suicide Squad?

Core Problem #1: The Villains

Enchantress and her brother, who I don't even think has a name, was a terrible choice to go with for the adversarial element. It's one of the universal things people dislike about the movie, along with the editing, which I would devote an entire section to but can be summed up mostly by saying "it sucks and the studio clearly messed around too much". The weird dancing twitches are made fun of, not creepy. The magic power base is such an alien concept to audiences fresh in this franchise that it can seem stupid to people who haven't invested in it yet, which is why Marvel played it smart by starting off simple and then building up to that. DC refused to play patiently and rushed, so by doing so, they're making people take leaps of faith.

In a film where lots of bad guys need to be killed, you can't have normal humans being shot up the whole time, so I get why they'd want to have some kind of faceless enemy that can be chopped to bits without getting an NC-17 rating, but they had no personality whatsoever and neither did Enchantress or her brother. And if you want to talk about tired tropes, why did they have the generic blue beam of light in the sky like so many other stories have had? This "swirling ring of trash in the sky" as they refer to it doesn't seem to be any different from any other similar concept: the Space Stone in The Avengers, the Technodrome in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows and so forth. All it does is floats debris in a circle above a building and then act like any energy pulse.

Instead, they should have gone with OMAC as the villain with Brother Eye. The story could be that in the absence and response of Superman's presence, different sectors of the government are looking to find an answer for how to deal with metahuman threats. One section, led by Buddy Blank (or possibly Maxwell Lord, or better yet, even have Lex Luthor be someone who is involved in the mix) wants to create the One Man Army Corps as a means to create super soldiers. Instead, they go the cyborg route with the Observational Metahuman Activity Construct. Brother Eye is a satellite that will spy on people while these cyborgs will help police those threats. Bruce Wayne can be looking into it because he sees it as a threat. Amanda Waller agrees that they need some kind of military response unit, but she opts to keep control in her own hands with Task Force X. When OMAC goes out of whack, Task Force X has to swoop in to save the day and cover the government's asses, meaning a lot of the same type of film can play out but you've just changed some important details around.

No longer do you need to get into magical backstories, since this is all just computers, which is easier to explain. Hell, you can even have a big payoff at the end where OMAC's cybernetics can be worked into the explosive nanites implanted in the Suicide Squad!

Core Problem #2: The Style

Some of the choices made for the style of this film are absolutely fantastic, but a ton of others are tiresome, lame, overbearing and just self-indulgent.

Why do I get the feeling there was a decree to try to make everybody fit into either hood/urban or grunge stereotypes instead of everybody having their own unique identity? I'm totally cool with that being used with Diablo, but I hate how they turned Killer Croc into a guy in a hoodie who says "bruh" and "shawty" and his only request is for BET. That just comes off uncomfortably stereotypical.

And what's with the tattoos? Why do The Joker and Harley Quinn have them? First off, I'm not a fan of them because they didn't have them in any other source material. Second, I'm not a fan of tattoos to begin with. Third, to hearken back to the previous point, it seems like they thought "tattoos = bad people" which is another stereotype. Finally, it pigeonholes their look for future movies. Now, if The Joker doesn't always have those same tattoos, how are they going to explain the lack of "damaged" on his forehead and whatnot? It's a choice they made where they thought it would look cool rather than if it would serve the functionality of the universe they're playing in.

Another thing with Harley Quinn's appearance is her costume. As much as I love seeing Margot Robbie in as little clothing as possible, her outfit is just ridiculous. Yes, she's supposed to be sexy, as that's one of the staples of her character, but did she need to be dressed in a way that didn't try to mask that at all? She should have been wearing something closer to her Arkham City look where it covers her up a bit more but also can still turn heads.

Core Problem #3: The Music / The Humor

Piggybacking off the style problem, the same thing can apply to some of the humor in the film. The pink unicorn fetish joke screams of people that thought they'd get the leg-up on Deadpool which works for that series, but not anything else. It's such an easy, middle school level joke, similar to when people think its funny if an old person makes out with a young person or if a gross fat guy rubs up against someone on a bus.

But the bigger problem with the humor is the music, which needed to be toned down considerably. It's obnoxious in how much the film praises itself for its soundtrack. Just as they probably thought they'd throw in some Deadpool-esque jokes with the pink unicorn, I get the distinct feeling this is a full-on attempt to replicate the musical punches of Guardians of the Galaxy.

The repetitiveness of how the music is used is what is the most bothersome part about it, too. It's literally the same joke every single time: a scene where someone bad is doing something violent and it's set to a happy song that wouldn't normally go in that environment. It's a painful attempt to be hip and to juxtapose two different forces that would take audiences by surprise when they hear it, but by the time the opening scene is finished, you've seen the joke maybe six times and it keeps happening, so it loses all its edge.

Core Problem #4: Underutilized Characters

"Hey everybody, here's Katana. She's in the movie, too. Say hello."

That's basically what we get from Katana, outside of a few sword slashes. You couldn't have done a better job introducing her and making her seem like a worthwhile character? If you had no means of accomplishing that in the script, why not just save her character for the Birds of Prey film that is rumored to happen where she could maybe be given the proper treatment she deserves?

Let's talk about Slipknot, too. He similarly just comes into the mix out of nowhere and after having seen the film twice now, I still don't know if he has more than one line of dialogue. He definitely exists just to have his head blown off to show that it isn't an empty threat, but could you at least have attempted to not make it obvious that he was a sacrificial lamb? Audiences are smart enough now to know that the person who will most likely die is the one that hasn't had any importance placed on them and that was extremely poorly done.

Also, I would have enjoyed seeing someone like General Wade Eiling in the mix of the military supervisors and a recasting of Scott Eastwood's GQ character, as I think he accomplished nothing and that ended up being a waste of Eastwood, who could have been saved for a different role in a future DC film.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. Recast Rick Flag – Originally, Tom Hardy was going to be Colonel Flag, but I don't think he would have been great for the part, either. Joel Kinnaman wasn't bad so much as he wasn't good. That's probably half a matter of his part being written poorly and half a lack of preparation since he signed onto the film much later than ideal. I like my Rick Flag to be basically Captain America without the likability and this version just came off like your average southern military jackoff. At no point did I really root for the guy or his contrived romance with June Moon, but I also never reached a point where I believed that he was someone who was that great to be in that position of power as a leader for the team. Maybe Adam Baldwin? Maybe Kevin McKidd? Someone who could evoke a young Ed Harris would be great, where you just hate the guy but you respect that he could get things done.
2. Take the "Will Smith" out of Deadshot – Will Smith is great, and I'm glad they cast him as Deadshot, but there are times where he's clearly playing Will Smith tropes rather than the Deadshot character. Those times, he should've been reigned in.
3. Mallet > Bat – Harley should have used her standard mallet instead of a baseball bat.
4. Capture the Flag - Two times in the film, some creatures start dragging Flag away and they have to save him. Did you need to do that beat twice?
5. Killer Croc Looks Fake - Killer Croc's makeup, the way his face moves when he speaks, and any CGI they might have implemented all look off. None of it seems natural. It all looks reminiscent of Michael Chiklis as The Thing in Fantastic Four.

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if I was magically given me the ability to do so. Some of these problems just cannot be fixed anymore, while others can hopefully be elaborated on in Suicide Squad and future films to help explain why we're left in the dark about so much information.

Welcome to the fifth edition of Fanboys Fix It, where we address the problems a certain movie has and try to figure out ways to make it better in hindsight.

With the release of the Extended Cut of Suicide Squad out now, I thought it would be fun to look back on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice now that some months have passed and both films can be viewed with clearer eyes. I'll be doing a Fanboys Fix It for Suicide Squad once I rewatch that movie, but first, we have to backtrack to the film that preceded it as we've already done an edition for Man of Steel.

For those who haven't seen my previous reviews of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, I'm actually a big fan of this film. Sure, there are flaws we'll be talking about here, but I feel like it gets significantly more flack than it deserves. It had a gargantuan task and on the list of 100 things it needed to accomplish, I think they knocked 80 of them out of the park once you view the Ultimate Edition, as that was an immense improvement on the theatrical cut.

With that being said, how do you fix Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?

Core Problem #1: Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor

This was just a terrible idea. There's nothing redeemable about his performance and that's not to blame things wholly on Eisenberg, because he can be a great actor when he's given the right material and the right direction. Unfortunately for him, he was wrongly cast in a part that was written wrong. Lex Luthor is supposed to be charismatic and not twitchy. He's supposed to be bald, yet for some reason every goddamn movie wants to make him wear a wig or have hair, which I'm convinced now is entirely due to actors not wanting to shave their heads or be put in a bald cap, which is ridiculous. Lex is also supposed to be a physically fit guy who everyone should be envious of because he seems to have it all—good looks, money, fame, intelligence, charm, etc. He shouldn't be a nervous schizophrenic wimp who looks like a trust fund douchebag better suited to run a TMZ-style blog than a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Basically, Lex should have been the exact mirror image of Bruce Wayne, but with a more likable persona on the outside and no hair. That way, they could reflect each other where Bruce appears to be a playboy jerk but has a heart of gold and Lex seems to be the more trustworthy but is evil inside.

Rewriting the character is the biggest problem, but in doing so, you also have to recast the part, as Jesse Eisenberg just doesn't fit that appearance. He would have been a great Jimmy Olsen, but he's no Luthor. I know a lot of people thought Bryan Cranston would be great, but he's too old for it. Lex should be roughly the same age as Clark and Bruce, so you'd have to go for someone between 35-45. Some names I think would have fit perfectly for the role are Bradley Cooper, Jude Law, or maybe Jon Hamm.

Core Problem #2: Editing and Pacing

For a little bit, there was a rumor going around that this could have been split up into two films entitled "Batman v Superman: Enter the Knight" and "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice". While I don't like those titles, I do think if they added just a little bit more to the story and reworked a few angles, they could have gotten two films out of this, and it would have been interesting to see them released 6 months apart. Even if that wasn't the case, I think the Ultimate Edition proves that the theatrical cut was hacked to pieces and it made everything feel off.

At times, it's slow, but it also seems like those slower moments need to go on longer to allow them more room to breathe. It's weird how they have both problems happening at the same time. I'm not too sure how to get around that issue, as I'm not a professional editor by any means, but I think it might be a byproduct of trying to cram too much setup into one movie just to catch up to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This suffers from the same problem as Iron Man 2 where albeit a fun movie, it's mostly entertaining because it brings in Black Widow and it starts building up the Cosmic Cube and all of the other elements that would pay dividends later. They essentially threw it all disjointedly into that movie to be able to skip forward and that's what happened with Dawn of Justice.

It's hard to ask people to sit through a 4-hour movie, but maybe that's what we should have gotten in order for them to tell the full story that needed to be told. Or, alternatively, maybe there should have been one movie to focus solely on establishing Batman and having him look into Superman while setting up Lex Luthor as the big bad, then they fight, and the end of the film has them being friends again, while the second film released a few months later would consist of the trinity, Wonder Woman's backstory, looking into the metahumans, fighting Doomsday (and possibly someone like Metallo) and doubling the box office by having two 2 and a half hour movies come out instead of one that really needed to be at least 3 and a half hours long. Then, you can even have some more fun with fleshing out other elements like having Batman talk to Commissioner Gordon, maybe throwing in the scene where The Joker kills Jason Todd to help set up Suicide Squad, and so forth.

Core Problem #3: Batman Shouldn't Kill

Under no circumstances should Batman kill. There's no excuses. I don't care if he's at a darker time in his life and he's disillusioned with the world. Batman should never do anything to kill someone no matter how bad they are.

Sure, he's inadvertently done things to lead to the death of different people, monsters and so forth in the comics, but it's always as a result of inaction or something you can get around. For example, it's okay that at one point in this movie, someone throws a grenade at him and he bounces it back. That's not Batman hooking a bomb to a clown and tossing him away to explode to death like in Batman Returns. I'll even argue that it's okay he shoots the flamethrower to stop KGBeast, as nothing definitively says he would die (or did die) as opposed to being burnt to a crisp. But why is Batman blowing up cars with people inside where it's impossible for them to have survived?

That's the line Batman refuses to ever cross, so you can't have him cross the line and then go back to acting like life is precious and should never be taken, which means now that he's killed people, there's no reason why he shouldn't just kill off The Joker for all he's done. With some slight tweaking to any of those potential deaths, the same story can be told without implying that Batman has murdered people. You lose nothing by having him not kill, you only gain respect because it's one less things the fans can complain about.

Core Problem #4: Motives for Fighting / Save Martha!

Here's a doozy, so strap yourselves in, as this section is going to be a long one.

It's made clear why Batman considers Superman a threat, so there's no problem there. Why Superman has a problem with Batman, though, is still problematic. The Ultimate Edition helps it a bit by showing Clark researching Batman's vigilantism and thinking that he's a menace, but it all feels contrived. There should be a scene somewhat early in the movie where he flat out states to Lois or someone else that after the events that transpired in Metropolis in Man of Steel, he feels personally responsible for policing the world and the more he looks into different threats, the more this Batman character seems to be a burden rather than a benefit. There's a perception that Batman is a killer and the discussion should be put out there that people are now comparing the two, saying Superman is the same as Batman, except he's more powerful and operates on a more global scale, which makes him even scarier. Clark, in an effort to prove to people that he isn't a corrupt vigilante, wants to take Batman down to show that he's there to stop people from getting hurt instead of imposing his own brand of justice. That should be explicitly stated and not just subtext hidden under multiple deleted scenes.

Clark is a great reporter and with his heightened senses, it's justified that he should learn who Batman is at that party scene, just as Bruce should figure out who Clark is. Also, as smart as Lex Luthor is, he shouldn't be able to pull the wool over Batman's eyes as much as he does. Bruce should somewhat know that he's being manipulated, but he's okay with it to an extent as he thinks it's all just leading him to the same goal he's trying to achieve, which is to stop Superman. He doesn't trust Lex by any means, but he trusts the enemy he knows more than the enemy he doesn't, and if push comes to shove, he thinks he and Lex can be a more united front against Superman because they're both human. Lex is an egomaniac and a bastard, but he's got some good points as far as wanting to protect the human race.

Lex holding Superman's mother hostage is a fine element. Clark holding it back against Bruce during their fight makes sense, too, because no matter what, he shouldn't be looking to kill him, only take him in to be arrested, but he also believes it's better for the optimistic arrest where Bruce turns himself in rather than to be dragged kicking and screaming. Right off the bat (no pun intended), he should also make it clear that Lex is playing puppet master, but Bruce should be too stubborn to want to listen. This is similar to what happens in the movie, but it's not emphasized enough. Clark should be saying things that are vague, which leads them open for misinterpretation. For example, instead of starting off the conversation with "Lex has my mom hostage and wants me to kill you", he should say something like "Lex is the real evil here, not me. I need your help. It's our job to keep people safe." which Bruce could then assume is a standard villain plot of "Join me and we can rule the galaxy together" in a way. Bruce is a dick. He doesn't like other people to be in charge and he doesn't trust Superman at all, so why would he want to listen to what he thinks is the sweet talk to convert him to the dark side?

And then there's the elephant in the room: the fact that the fight ends with the Martha name. It bugs a lot of people, and I can see why. I'll go on record in saying that I absolutely loved that they acknowledged that connection they had, since it's something I've wanted them to address for years, but the way they executed it was definitely flawed.
At the beginning of the movie, I immediately thought it was odd that Thomas Wayne only called out for Martha Wayne and that it might play into the events to transpire later. Just to downplay it a bit so it's more of a surprise for smarter audiences, Thomas should have called out for Bruce first, then Martha. That would justify flashing back to it a bit more as people wouldn't have paid as much attention to the Martha name being so blatantly obvious.

The line Clark says is also incredibly awkward. Why is he saying "save Martha" instead of "save my mother" or "Lex has my mom" or something like that? It's an unnatural way of speaking that nobody ever really does because they needed to have him say the name out loud for it to work. A slight reworking of that could be much less hokey where Batman isn't yelling back "Why did you say that name!?"

Let's take a look at the dialogue in the current version of the film:

"You're letting him kill Martha!" - Superman

"What does that mean? Why did you say that name?" - Batman

"Find...him.....save....Martha...." - Superman

"Why did you say that name?! Martha!? Why did you say that name!?" - Batman

"Stop! Please! Stop!" - Lois

"Why did you say that name!?" - Batman

"It's his mother's name! It's his mother's name." - Lois

First off, Batman should know it's his mother's name, because he's The World's Greatest Detective for fuck's sake. Second, this is exactly the type of screaming lunacy that we make fun of Christopher Nolan's trilogy for having done with some of those lines.

Try this on for size as an alternative rewrite:

"Bruce, stop! It's Luthor! You have to stop Luthor!" - Superman

"Shut up!" - Batman, who punches him in the throat, making it hard for Superman to breathe after all the gas he's inhaled.

"He'll...kill...her." - Superman, who starts to cough uncontrollably by now.

"What? What did you say?" - Batman stops attacking, as he cares about other people potentially being hurt.

"Stop! Please! Stop!" - Lois, running into the scene, yelling from a distance.

"M...moth...er..." - Superman struggles to get the words "my mother" out.

Batman mishears him as saying Martha and has flashbacks, paralyzing him in fear.

"Why did you say that name? Who is Martha? WHERE IS MARTHA?!" - Batman

"It's his mother's name! Martha's his mother's name." - Lois

Is it perfect? No. Is it better? I sure think so. It makes it a little more nuanced with Clark not just saying Martha for the hell of it. I'm sure someone else could take it to an even better level if they spent more than a couple minutes on it like I just did, but I think even on paper, this would have read weird and I'd have taken a lunch break to rewrite it a bit or played around with the dialogue when filming it.

Miscellaneous Extra Flaws & Nitpicking

Basically, those big problems above are the things that would have saved these movies and made them better as a whole, but there are smaller things that could have been changed as well. I'm obviously not going to nitpick every little detail, but a few things that stand out to me are as follows:

1. The Emails – I like the idea that Lex Luthor has been doing research on metahumans, but why the hell does he have logos created for The Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg? That made no sense whatsoever. Those files should have just been labeled with random numbers or codes.
2. The Flash's Beard – What's up with that facial hair on Ezra Miller? It looked awful.
3. Have Mercy on Mercy – This doesn't hurt the movie too much, but I was disappointed to see Mercy Graves killed off. She's such a great character and I would have enjoyed seeing her be Lex's assistant in the future.
4. Don't Kill Jimmy Olsen – I have never loved the whole sidekick young kid hanging out with Superman idea, but he's as much of an iconic supporting character as Alfred is to Batman. Jenny Jurwich in Man of Steel should have been Jimmy Olsen and he should have made another quick appearance here working for the Daily Planet, rather than being some CIA operative who gets a bullet in the brain. Who thinks of this shit and doesn't realize it will piss off fans of the source material?
5. How Many Stayed That Way? – When Bruce asks Alfred how many good people are still left, he should have also clarified things more by saying Harvey Dent turned into Two-Face, Dick Grayson is off in Bludhaven, Barbara Gordon is paralyzed and Jason Todd is dead. It's implied, but why not just say it? Those name drops would get fans giddy.

Well, there you have it—some insight into how I would have changed things in hindsight if I was magically given me the ability to do so. Coming up soon will be Fanboys Fix It editions for Suicide Squad as well as Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, so stay tuned for those!