Movie Review Round-Up #3 - Robots, Demons, and Mutants (Oh My!)

The 2013 Summer movie season is winding down, and I'd have to say that overall this one has been more or less middle of the road in terms of the quality of films I've had a chance to watch. To me, there just hasn't been anything out thus far that has been so epic in its presentation as to make it the definable movie of the season. That's not to say the movies I've seen so far have all stunk; far from it, as there have been several really good movies (Man of Steel, Despicable Me 2, and Star Trek Into Darkness) but nothing that's been absolutely great. There's been no Avengers or Dark Knight, is what I'm really getting at. Those are the kind of movies that make the bothersome task of going to the movies worthwhile for me seeing as how I can't bring myself to spend money on something like Grownups 2 or We're the Millers. That's the reason why I have Netflix, so that when I can't sleep I can watch something formulaic and repetitive that will put me down for a few more hours.

Pacific Rim

In the not-so-distant future, gigantic monsters from an alternate dimension have begun rising up out of the Pacific ocean using a gateway between their world and ours. Traditional machines of war prove to be ineffective against these great beasts called Kaijus, which is why the governments of the world begin building huge robotic avatars known as Jaegers to be piloted by 2-man teams. The Jaegers were effective initially but the Kaiju threat has grown worse and worse, and the Jaeger fleet has has all but been demolished. Down to a handful of Jaegers and pilots, humanity is making its last stand.

There's nothing about this movie I didn't love, quite frankly. It's robots and monsters fighting, how could every 13 year old boy (or a 33 year old man who still acts like a 13 year old boy a lot of the time) not get a kick out of this? There's more to it than that, though, as the stunning imagery and special effects (produced by the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic) are a great compliment to a well-rounded story featuring characters that are somewhat stock in terms of their construction but still unique.

The cast is lead by Charlie Hunnam (known mostly for his work in Sons of Anarchy) who plays Jaeger pilot Raleigh Beckett, a man haunted by the death of his brother who was killed when the two were engaged in combat with a Kaiju. Idris Elba takes the role of Stacker Pentecost who's the commander of what remains of the Jaeger program. He's assisted by Mako Maori, played by Japanese actress Rinko Kikuchi. Ron Perlman is involved here as well, taking the part of Hannibal Chau a black market dealer in Kaiju parts who's something of a snake oil salesman. Charlie Day rounds out the core group as Dr. Newton Geiszler, a scientist working the the Jaeger program on ways to find the Kaiju's weaknesses.

I can't not mention a young actress by the name of Mana Ashida, who appears as Mako when she was a child. I won't spoil the scenario here in case you haven't seen Pacific Rim. She's not on screen for very long but her performance was brilliant, as far as I'm concerned.

One of the biggest compliments I can pay director Guillermo del Toro for how he constructed this film is to say that there was never a point in time while I was watching Pacific Rim where I thought we truly had the upper hand. There's never a moment where you genuinely feel like mankind or the Jaegers are going to run completely rough-shot over the Kaiju, and that's significant because in so many action movies there never winds up being any sense of peril for the heroes. There's never a situation where you, as a viewer, stop and think "Wow, how the heck are they going to get out of this?" Pacific Rim makes you do that about half a dozen times, and the tension it builds is a great additive to the experience.

4/5 Robot Jox References

Elysium

Almost 150 years into the future, Earth has become so polluted and overpopulated that the most wealthy among the human race abandoned the planet, choosing instead to live on an orbiting space station called Elysium where there is no crime, no war, and no disease. Every day is a struggle for survival for the people who have no choice but to remain on Earth, as the criminals are almost as bad as the robotic infantry put in place to enforce the law.

Elysium's plot follows the plight of Max Da Costa, (Matt Damon) an ex-con living in the ruination that is what remains of Los Angeles looking to redeem himself by earning a living working in a factory that manufactures androids. He becomes exposed to a lethal dose of radiation while on the job - given only days to live, he's presented with the opportunity to get to Elysium and save himself. Little does he realize, at least initially, that he actually has a chance to save everyone.

There is a lot of cool stuff going on in this movie from a technical standpoint. You've got ships capable of space flight, futuristic weapons, humanoid robots with fluid movements, and soldiers equipped with powered exoskeletons. What's more, it all looks great - especially Elysium itself. The problem is that there's not enough emotional substance of characterization behind it all. You wind up with a visually compelling piece of work that doesn't leave any impact on the audience.

The realm of science fiction can be a dark place and there are plenty of films that do a great job of making a case for a less than likeable character becoming a heroic figure, but Elysium spends too much time trying to make the audience care about a guy who, quite frankly, has few redeeming qualities. Much of Elysium's plot centers around Max's effort to save himself after he gets irradiated. Up until the moment he's injured we've not gotten any sort of context that makes him into a likeable or sympathetic person. He's been a thug since he was a child; not a Robin Hood sort of thug, either. He's not even an effective anti-hero because when he's presented with the opportunity to save the dying daughter of a woman he loves (and has loved since childhood) he's still primarily concerned with getting himself into a med-bay (you could make the argument that he's trying to get the agents of Elysium who are chasing him away from her home, but I doubt that's his true inspiration for fleeing). Not until it dawns on him that he more than likely isn't going to survive this journey does his cause shift to aiding the little girl, and by then it's too little too late to make a difference in the mind of a viewer.

I loved District 9 for the fact that it was an amazing piece of allegory that gave a rather stunning perspective on apartheid in South Africa. Blomkamp has tried again to make his audience care about a cultural phenomenon using allegorical means, this time shedding light on the concept of healthcare becoming something only the richest among us can obtain. It's a painful truth, but the fact of the matter is that Elysium comes across as being very heavy handed in its message, almost to the point of being preachy. I'm not disagreeing with the message, mind you, I'm merely of the opinion that politics and entertainment don't always make for the best bedfellows.

And is it me, or is it a little bit ironic that Blomkamp made a movie involving a ring-shaped world considering he was supposed to have directed a movie based on the HALO video games?

3/5 Guilty Sparks

Evil Dead

The lazy critic in me enjoys reviewing movies like Evil Dead, simply because of the fact that recapping their plot doesn't require much effort.

This is your classic "kids go into the woods and get terrorized by some demonic beast until all but maybe 1 or 2 of them are alive" type of movie. It's been done to the point of becoming formulaic, and in the case of Evil Dead it's a gimmick that feels even more redundant seeing as how this is a re-make. What's more, it's a re-make of what has to be one of the campiest horror films ever made, that being director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead which was released in 1981 (it's the movie that introduced Bruce Campbell to the world, though, so it's still awesome). The 2013 edition attempts to ramp up the experience by shedding the inadvertent silliness that was so abundant in the original, instead opting for good old blood and guts horror.

The plot of this incarnation of Evil Dead is based around a group of kids in their late teens or early 20s who've all come out to a remote cabin in the woods in order to have an intervention with one of their friends, a girl who's developed an addiction to heroin. It turns out that the cabin has been used for a variety of activities related to the occult and Satanic rituals, so of course when one of the characters finds a book that's wrapped in barbed wire and heavy plastic he immediately begins reading the thing. He winds up unleashing a demonic entity that inhabits the girl they were trying to help, thus setting off a rather nasty slew of events for all involved.

If you're a fan of practical special effects, those being the kind that rely on prostheses and make-up as opposed to computer generated imagery, you'll enjoy the effort put into this film. I have to say it's refreshing to see this sort of thing. Artists can do amazing things with CGI, it's true, but CGI is too clean looking in my opinion for a movie like this. It needs to be dirty, gory, and sick. You just can't get that out of CGI.

2/5 Bifrucated Tongues

The Wolverine

The Wolverine serves as a follow-up to X-Men: Origins - Wolverine and X-Men: The Last Stand, this time peeling back the history of Logan as it relates to the occasions during his long and tumultuous life where he found himself in Japan. According to this mythology, Logan was a POW being held near Nagasaki and was present when the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped. He was able to save a man named Yashida, one of his captors, from the blast. Fast forward to present day - Wolverine has done his best to drop off the grid as he's haunted by memories and dreams of his lost love, Jean Grey, choosing to live the life of a hermit in the Canadian wilderness. His seclusion is interrupted when he's found by a young woman named Yukio who has come to bring him back to Japan as Yashida is dying of cancer and wants to thank Logan for saving him all those years ago. It turns out that Yashida knows of Logan's pain and offers him the one thing he has never thought possible - a noble death.

Hugh Jackman has made the role of Wolverine his defining work, and he continues to be the linchpin of the entire X-Men film franchise. How many other actors can say they've been able to successfully carry an entire series? (Certain media outlets are claiming Fox has offered him $100 million to continue on with the character in 4 more movies - that sounds like a lot of money until you consider how much cash he and the other merry mutants have raked in for the company.) The work he's done with this character is quite marvelous (See what I did there? X-Men, comics, MARVEL, marvelous?) and I highly doubt the series would be where it is if not for his charismatic abilities to make Logan the sympathetic warrior that he is.

Therein lies one of my problems with this movie. It is incredibly overbearing in trying to convey Wolverine as being in this epic state of depression. That's an understandable move - he wound up having to kill the woman he loved, for crying out loud, he's got a reason to be sad. Add to that the fact that he spends a majority of the film having to deal with being in a compromising position thanks to his healing abilities being suppressed, and you've got a version of Wolverine that's just not Wolverine for lack of a better way of putting it.

What I'm getting at is I don't like emo Wolverine. I like feral, berserker Wolverine. Chaos is just more entertaining, I guess.

I will be forthright in saying that, in hindsight, this movie feels a lot like nothing more than a transitional piece meant to bridge a gap left between X-Men: The Last Stand and the coming X-Men: Days of Future Past. I didn't dislike it, I simply don't think this was that big of a moment in the grand scheme of things. That said, Fox could've simply had Jackman suit up for the post-credits Easter egg scene, put that out around Comic Con or some other similar event, and been done with it.

3/5 Bone Claws

Movie Review Round-Up - A Furiously Tangled Trek Into the Oblivion of Iron Man 3

It's summer time which means it's also movie time, and for that reason it's one of my favorite times of year. I could do without the heat and humidity seeing as how it tends to turn me from being a big, hairy beast into a big, hairy sweaty beast with questionable hygiene. It's 138 degrees outside this time of year and there are bugs whereas in any given theater it's 70 degrees and there are nachos readily available. Sure, there are annoying little kids and their unqualified and ineffective parents to deal with (sadly I've had experiences in theaters that have left me questioning how some adults have lived as long as they have and wanting to punch a child), but is it any wonder why I'd sooner stay inside and watch movies?

Star Trek Into Darkness

Picking up where JJ Abrams' reboot of the classic Star Trek mythology left off, Into Darkness sees Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and their cohorts plunged into battle with a foe that is both mysterious and familiar. Through perceived acts of terror, this villain reveals that Star Fleet has realized a threat exists in the form of the Klingons and that scientific exploration is no longer the sole purpose of their operations.

Pine and Quinto are the obvious headliners of this movie but for my money Benedict Cumberbatch is the true star. His portrayal of Khan is absolutely brilliant - he has an amazing voice, which is a lot like that of Jeremy Irons only somehow more visceral in its delivery. Like all great villains, he has charisma to rival that of his protagonist counterparts. Combine that with the fact that his character's back story involves a legitimate effort at revenge and you can see why there are points in this that I was genuinely pulling for Khan instead of the crew of the Enterprise.

Longtime Trek fans will quickly realize that the plot of Into Darkness is something of a re-hashing of 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This take on Khan is more relevant to today's audiences as the concept of a character seeking vengeance on an assumed political or government entity is certainly identifiable.

One of few issues I have with the movie is the finale of Into Darkness in that it tidies up a bit too well. There was an effort to send everyone home happy here, or so it seems. That and the fact that there are still parts of the Enterprise's interior that look altogether too much like a boiler room are all that bothered me. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new Trek is headed, even though it may be a while before we see another one since Abrams' focus is now on a different universe, one far, far away from this.

/5 Tribles

Iron Man 3

The world has changed for Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) since his encounter with other-worldly beings in The Avengers. He's a man so distraught with fear over being unable to protect the one person he cares for more than life itself (Pepper Potts/Gwyneth Paltrow), he's dedicated his every waking moment to advancing his Iron Man armory by building dozens of specialized configurations. Try as he might to use what he knows to satiate his fears, they're realized when Stark encounters an international terrorist known as the Mandarin.

I don't get Stark as a haunted man who's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, even though it's a topical subject that's gotten a lot of attention now that so many members of our Armed Forces are returning home from combat with symptoms of PTSD. Downey is still the only person I ever want to see play Tony Stark, I just think the well is running dry on Iron Man now that he's done his job in serving as a conduit for The Avengers to assemble. What's more, the relationships that exist between these characters doesn't feel as fluid as it has in the past.

I hate to say this - IM3 is my least favorite of the Iron Man franchise. There was a lot of fanfare about Shane Black (who's best known for having created the Lethal Weapon series) coming aboard to take the helm once Jon Favreau decided not to return as director after having lead the first two films, but I don't think Black's writing or directorial style have improved matters. If anything, he's managed to take the canon a few steps backwards. IM3 has too many moving parts that aren't that interesting. This is particularly disappointing because there's a decent chance this is the last dedicated Iron Man film starring Downey, Jr.

/5 Shellheads

Tangled


Tangled is Disney's interpretation of the Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel, and like many of the Disney translations this story has been modified to make it more consumable for younger audiences. By that I mean it has a happier ending where evil has been vanquished and good prevails, as opposed to almost everyone involved dying a horribly tragic death. But what else should we expect? This is Disney, after all.

Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is in her late teens here and, like most girls her age, she's beginning to feel the urge to strike out on her own. In Rapunzel's case, her need is more legitimate than most seeing as how she's been held captive under the pretense that the outside world is a terribly dangerous place by the woman she thinks is her mother, Gothel (Donna Murphy), in a tower where the only other being she has contact with is her pet chameleon Pascal. Her desire to flee is enabled when a bungling burglar (Flynn Rider/Zachary Levi) finds his way into the tower. He inadvertently sets off a series of events that not only gets Rapunzel out of the tower but reveals her true identity as well.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that Disney and Pixar are the same entity but in watching Tangled I can tell you that a number of differences can be spotted. The style of animation, most notably, but what stands out the most is the writing. I'm of the opinion that Pixar's films are some of the best written movies, animated or otherwise, you'll ever see. I'm not saying that material like Tangled isn't penned well but the fact that this is an adaptation versus a novel concept does hurt it somewhat as there's already a "tower" in place from the start which confines where these characters can go.

There's not an overwhelming sense of star power here, and I appreciate that. It seems like a lot of A-list Hollywood talent do an animated feature for the heck of it. Here, you have a main character voiced by Mandy Moore, a singer and actress who's more than capable of handling the musical elements while also breathing life into Rapunzel. Zachary Levi does a great job with Rider as he's not only the comedic center of the film but also a character with a number of dramatic scenes as well. Donna Murphy is yet another evil pseudo-mother in the annals of Disney mythology; she doesn't have that much to hang her hat on as the character isn't as involved as some of their other villainous matriarchs have been.

This may seem odd but my two favorite characters from Tangled are ones that have no actual lines: Pascal the chameleon and Maximus the horse. Seriously, they're fantastic - I'd probably watch an "Adventures of Pascal & Maximus" if it ever happened.

 /5 Frying Pans

Fast & Furious 6


I have to apologize to anyone who's a fan of this series because I don't particularly see the need to spend a whole lot of time reviewing this movie. When you are talking about a franchise that's on it's sixth iteration, it stands to reason that the movies have become paint-by-number in terms of their assembly and that's exactly the case here. There are criminals, there are cops, there are fast cars, and a whole heaping helping of absurdity to tie it together.

Vin Diesel and essentially all the other original members of the Fast & Furious cast have returned. Their characters have more or less sunk into lives of hiding in order to stave off heat from various international crime fighting organizations, but as it turns out it's those same groups that were hunting them that now need their help. There's a new bad guy in town, one with a similar penchant for being fast and furious about it, and there's apparently no better team to throw at this new threat than an aging group of street racers.

I'm one to talk when it comes to criticizing movies and TV shows where an ability to suspend what's plausible in this realm of existence is necessary, seeing as how that's more or less everything that I watch. Be that as it may, Fast & Furious 6 has a number of scenes where you have to take everything you've ever learned about physics and the durability of the human body and throw it out the window. More than that, you have to take it and light it on fire with kerosene - it's that crazy, and it's that distracting. For example, if Fast & Furious 6 is to be believed, there exists a runway somewhere in Europe that is approximately 300 miles long.

Don't worry, they're already working on Fast & Furious 7 which will add Jason Statham to the cast.

/5 Vin Diesels

Oblivion

In the not so distant future, humanity has fled planet Earth as a result of the rock we once called home having been ravaged by an alien race (who went so far as to blow up the moon, just for good measure) that sought to annihilate our species and strip-mine the globe of any useful resources. We were somehow able to overcome the odds and defeat the invaders but we did so at the cost of losing what once was our home world as Earth is too far gone to remain habitable. Now only a few humans remain on Earth, support crews in place to oversee a mining operation to provide fuel for the colonizing effort on one of Saturn's moons (where the survivors of our kind are holed up) and protect it from attacks by alien survivors, now known as Scavs (short for "scavengers").

Tom Cruise leads the cast of Oblivion as he plays Jack, a character who is a mechanic but also a soldier, tasked with maintaining a batch of automated mining platforms and a squadron of airborne drones that protect them from Scav attacks. Imagine Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible series but with more knowledge of engines than international espionage. He's flanked by Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), whose role in the operation is similar to that of technical advisor and overwatch, meaning she's Jack's eyes and ears when he's out in the wasteland.

Visually speaking, Oblivion shares much with director Joseph Kosinski's only other film, that being TRON: Legacy. That's not a complaint as I loved Legacy and I can't wait to see what Kosinski does with the announced sequel to that film.

I don't feel like I can justifiably get into discussing the remainder of the cast because, to put it quite simply, there's a whole lot of ways I could spoil the plot and I don't have enough cleverness within me to skirt the material without blatantly stating what happens. That said, I will tell you that while there are a number of twists to this story the sum of the entire thing is very derivative. There are elements of films like Moon, Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Independence Day, and a sprinkling of classic Twilight Zone episodes. It's not a bad mix of inspiration as sci-fi goes these days but the more the movie goes on the more imitative it seems to become.

/5 evil super computers

My Love/Hate Relationship with Pro Wrestling

This entry is in response to a wealth of comments and criticisms I've read recently online regarding fans of professional wrestling being frustrated with the state of the industry, as well as some surprising responses to these sentiments (which have come from talent and fans alike).

It's no secret to long-time followers of wrestling that the kinds of things we see on TV today don't hold a candle to what was out there back 10 or 15 years ago. The "attitude era", as it's referred to, spoiled us. There were 3 major competitors running steadily in the United States at that time in the form of Extreme Championship Wrestling, World Championship Wrestling, and World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment. It was a great period for the "sport" as the talent working then was as great of a combination of skill and charisma as has ever been seen in the world of wrestling.

Now, for all intents and purposes, World Wrestling Entertainment IS professional wrestling in the United States. Yes, TNA/Impact Wrestling is there, but they aren't considered a major competitor to WWE (they have their niche but their audience pales in comparison to that of WWE). Likewise, the independent wrestling scene is a jumbled mess of companies that seem to ebb & flow in terms of being able to deliver a hit only to have it fade into obscurity shortly thereafter. Ring of Honor, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and Chikara are at the top of the food chain in terms of indies. WWE has signed a lot of talent to come out of those companies, which is a testament to the kind of athletes that are out there working in high school gyms, bars, and VFW halls every weekend still trying to make a name of themselves. It would be awesome if one or more of those federations could grow to be a bigger entity but I just don't see it happening - not now and maybe not ever. Wrestling just isn't the draw that it once was.

As wrestling has changed over time, so too has the fan base and its ability to express themselves. The internet has been a great tool for wrestling as the product is as visible as it has ever been, but at the same time the internet has also been one of the worst things that could've ever happened to wrestling because there are no secrets anymore. Everybody knows by now wrestling is a show, a form of entertainment no different from a Broadway play. But because of the internet and the amount of information that's out there, every fan who's read one dirt sheet or wrestling "news" website is suddenly an industry insider with their finger on the pulse of the business.

The combination of knowledge acquired from often unreliable sources, unfettered freedom of speech, a cultural attitude where complaining without having an actual point is acceptable, and a slew of mountaintops from which these complaints can be slung into the ether of the World Wide Web (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) has brought us to where we are now. A couple nights a week, hundreds upon thousands of armchair match-makers tune into Monday Night Raw, Impact Wrestling, or SmackDown and let loose to all their online buddies about how Vince McMahon is an idiot, Dixie Carter has no business in wrestling, and that the wrestlers they hate are being forced upon the masses despite being talentless hacks while the wrestlers they like are being horribly misused by the companies for which they're working.

How do I know this? Because I do it myself, that's why, and I think we - as fans and consumers - have every right to making our opinions known.

First and foremost, what makes me an "expert" or capable of delivering valid analysis of pro wrestling? I'd show you the certificate I got off the web for being an internationally recognized master connoisseur of wrestling but it's printed on paper that will literally disintegrate if I were to attempt replicating it, so you're just going to have to take my word on this.

In all seriousness, I'm a lifelong fan and while I may have never been a wrestler I did spend a brief bit of my life working as a production assistant (for lack of a better phrase) with a couple independent federations. I would never toot my own horn about those experiences, but I think I've been around long enough to know the difference between good wrestling and bad wrestling as I've seen plenty of both.

When I buy a product that winds up being a disappointment, I tend to want to tell others of my experience so that they might not waste their money on the same piece of garbage I did. It's not griping for the sake of griping either, this is legitimate criticism we're talking about here. Now apply that line of thought to professional wrestling. I go to live events, I buy pay-per-views, I own wrestling-related merchandise. I'm not a WWE stockholder but I've definitely contributed to their earnings over the years in other ways.

That said, I don't see what I'm doing as being anything different than what most consumers engage in these days via the modern marketplace; think of it as leaving a 2-star product review on Amazon. The difference is that when I report a bauble I purchased as being less than ideal it can't get its feelings hurt because it isn't able to comprehend it's own ineptitude whereas when you tell a wrestler with an overly inflated ego that they aren't that great they tend to get defensive about it. And you know what? That's fine, too! They can buy their own hype all they want or, better yet, maybe they can take what's being said about them constructively. (I admit that's a difficult thing to do, especially when you've got random 12 year old kids on Twitter telling you to learn to work.)

The most consistent comeback I've seen to comments made by folks like me is that if we know so much about how the wrestling business should be run then why aren't we operating our own promotion, having live events, producing TV shows, web content, and the like? I'll answer this in two parts.

1) If I had access to WWE's roster, I would take advantage of the abilities those men & women possess. That's one of the biggest problems with the product nowadays; wrestling and being a charismatic personality isn't the focus, it's the angles and the storylines that matter. We're in an era where writers who have little to no knowledge of wrestling history put together the material that's seen on TV and where bodybuilders and swimsuit models get opportunities above guys and girls who've worked in obscurity for 5-10 years on the indies. How much sense does it make that a guy who's drawn crowds in the US, Mexico, Japan and Canada plays second fiddle to a dude who has an amazing physique and the wrestling acumen of a breath mint? None, that's how much. Let wrestlers actually wrestle - it worked before, it can still work today.

2) It's my experience that people either pursue wrestling as a business or a hobby; for me, it couldn't be a hobby. If I were to become a promoter it would be a full time job because that's what it would take for things to progress beyond mediocrity. Unfortunately, I don't exactly have a whole bunch of money lying around to invest in an entertainment-based venture. For that matter, even if I was a multimillionaire I wouldn't be wasting my disposable income by running a wrestling promotion because the failure rate is huge. (Alternatively, if someone bleeding cash were to come to me and say, "Hey, I'm going to give you a million bucks but you have to use it to make the best wrestling product anyone's ever seen!", I'd be all like "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.") As a business, indy wrestling simply isn't profitable. Taking risks is a part of any business, sure, but starting an independent pro wrestling promotion and expecting to make money is like planting a jar of grape jelly in your yard and expecting a wine vineyard to appear. It's just not going to happen.

The other question I see often is "If you dislike what's on TV so much then why don't you just stop watching?" You've probably seen a sports fan at a game dressed like this.

That pretty much sums up the way I feel as a wrestling fan right now. There are times where I'm ashamed to admit that I'm still hanging around but I also can't give up on "my team", to use another sports analogy. I've been watching pro wrestling for the majority of my life. I'm as big a fan of wrestling as you're likely to ever meet. I have passion enough to stick with it because I know how great it was and I know it can be great again. I don't want to miss what might be around the corner because I was a fair-weather fan who walked away when times got rough.