Anybody up for some shenanigans?

Jonah Hex has one. So does Doctor Strange.

Hellboy has two. And his name is Hellboy. Blade? The Daywalker has a trilogy, for crying out loud (even if I don't count the last one, honestly). And the Fantastic Four? However many they have...well, it's too many. And speaking of too many, I still wake up with visions of Dr. Manhattan's um, giant stethoscope, swinging through the sky. Yikes.

My point, if there is one, is I get it. It seems like all kinds of superheroes - including those of the once obscure variety - have had their movie made. Heck, maybe even their own franchise.

I mean, Hollywood once gave the green light to Green Lantern. 

While Hollywood is likely searching for yet another Batman to light up a marquee, poor Robin has yet to get his big chance. He's painfully aware that it's probably never coming, either. Painfully, self-aware, in fact.

In this summer's Teen Titans GO! To the Movies, based on the ubiquitous Cartoon Network show of the same name, the Dark Knight's sidekick hilariously laments this cruel reality with his sidekicks, the Teen Titans. Though the animated flick starts out as a rainbow explosion of sight gags and fart jokes, it quickly becomes incredibly subversive and beyond self-referential. If you've seen the show, you know what to expect. And if you haven't? This might be a good place to start.

After getting embarrassed at a big premiere, Robin decides that he and the rest of the Titans need to immediately leave Jump City and head to Hollywood. There, they meet leading-director Jade Wilson (that name sounds familiar, hmm), and she bluntly tells them the only way they'd ever get their own movie, is if they were the last superheroes on the planet. So what does Robin do? Um, quite brilliantly, he undoes every origin story. 

I mean, there is no Batman...if Bruce's parents never get killed. 

I'm beginning to see why you guys enjoy this so much.

Hey, Dr. Jones. No time for love!

I've gone on record likely too many times saying this, but I hate, absolutely loathe, the passionate goodbye kiss when the fate of the world is in play. The end of days is in your hands and you take a moment to clean someone's teeth with your tongue? Ridiculous on so many levels. The clock's ticking, dickhole. If you saved the entire f--king world, pretty sure the line to go down on you starts two streets over.

However...

...when that same hero (or heroine) chooses against saving the world and instead saves someone that means something to them? I'm beyond cool with that. How can you let someone you care about die directly in front of you? You can't. Imagine if you kept the detonator, walked away, saved the planet, only to find out your loved one survived getting shot in the face?

That would be, like, so embarrassing. 

The only thing embarrassing about Mission: Impossible Fallout is how little I remember about the story. Kicking off shortly after the events of the stellar Rogue Nation [review] (whatever they were), Ethan Hunt finds himself forced between saving his friend and, you guessed it, saving the world. Unfortunately for the rest of, Hunt chooses his (and let's be honest, our) main dude, Marsellus Wallace. Er, Luther. The badass computer dude of the IMF team.

Hey, that's cool - the CIA will totally be cool with Hunt's loyalty, till they aren't, and assign a mustachioed rock-monster named Walker to aid Hunt in undoing what he done did, which is f--k the Hell up. See letting Luther live allowed some nuclear components to enter the hands of some unsavory types. Hunt and his crew gotta get that shit back, and Walker's gonna make sure they don't f--k up again. No pressure, really. Just imagine your boss standing over your desk every second of the day. And even worse? He's staring deep into your soul at all times, cocking his arms. Or arming his cock...whichever one makes you more nervous.

Hey...I misjudged you.

You respectable types probably never do this, but being that I often get in way over my head, I, uh...well...I sometimes go back and re-read the plot synopsis of a movie I'm about to make a post on. Feels good finally saying it out loud.

I know, I know - it's pretty f--king embarrassing how terrible my memory can be, but despite stumbling around like a moron half the day, there's a lot going on upstairs, you know? I mean, how can you remember what a movie was about, when your head is full of baseball stats and the lyrics to 90 percent of every pop song ever recorded.

But even after watching it two nights in a row...re-reading the events of the film? I still couldn't tell you what the f--k it was about. And I read it twice. 

The good news? Even though I really can't tell you what the mission was exactly, I can, with exquisite detail, tell you that I f--king loved Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. I had so much fun, in fact, I was actually upset. Like, why the Hell did I wait three years to see this? 

Had I not looked it up, I would have told you this one was about the usual double-agent stuff...a list of operatives has gone missing, everyone's in danger, and Tom Cruise is gonna slow-motion jump through a window.

Turns out, most (if not all) of that is untrue, and this fifth installment instead finds the IMF being folded into the uncaring arms of the CIA. Ethan Hunt (possibly the long-dead CGI version of a 33 year old Tom Cruise) is desperately trying to prove his teams' worth to a government agency that ain't exactly feeling it. Yeah, Hunt and his crew always get the job done, but often at a spectacular cost. Just ask any one trying to take a selfie in front of the Kremlin.

Apparently, there's some mysterious/imaginary group of terrorist known as The Syndicate, and shocking no one, these a-holes are major fans of creating utter f--king chaos. Turns out they are going to assassinate some chancellor dude, and Hunt secretly enlists Benji (Simon Pegg) to thwart the hit. They do, sort of, and the game is officially on. Already beautiful people will continue their seemingly genetic lucky hand and pull off some of the most insane and daring things all in the name of world peace. Meaning?

Bullets will be dodged. Gadgets will be deployed. And, of course...faces will be torn off.

Humans? Monsters? What's the difference?

This November, my wife and I (assuming she hasn't eaten my head like a lady praying mantis) will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Mr. Piven, your thoughts?

While the weekend getaway is always nice, at this point, staying at a hotel again is a bit played out. Not that I wouldn't enjoy myself, mind you, but I'm thinking my wife would like something a little more rewarding for putting up my brand of nonsense for a decade. Something a little more...beachy, perhaps. But being that we live in lame-ass Pennsylvania six weeks shy of Christmas, I don't think sun and fun are something we could pull of in a short amount of time. Unless, of course...we went on a cruise.

But who wants to spend valuable time stuck on a boat with a bunch of a-holes?

Perhaps surprisingly, after seeing Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, I'd be all for the open ocean, even if we too, were headed to the Bermuda Triangle. Sure, a cruise is essentially a hotel on water, but if it's this much fun, who cares?

Yes (possibly ex) friends, the third installment of a franchise that absolutely no one asked to go this long turned out to be a pretty good time. My wife had fun, the kids had fun, and even though I thoroughly loathed the second one [review], Hell, I had fun. 

A long, long time ago, Drac and his crew were attempting to travel by train when that goofy bastard Van Helsing showed up and tried to kill the whole lot of them. Ever since, Van Helsing has been obsessed with hunting Drac, the same way Elmer Fudd always twies to kill that wascally wabbit. But no matter how far he shoves that gun down the hole, Van Helsing always shoots himself in the face.

Fast forward a bajillion years, and we catch up with a lonely Drac scouring his phone in an attempt to meet a lady. Poor dude has been a widow for over a century, and even if he's got his sexy daughter and her family to keep him busy (um, and the hotel), he can't help but long for the warm embrace of a lady vampire. Aww.

This is stupid.

Take five minutes and look up the Kyle Maynard story. Go ahead, I'll wait. Hell, you probably won't even need all five of them to believe.

Born with a condition that prevented him from developing limbs, this dude decided at an early age to be an absolute powerhouse. And though I saw his story years ago, it's never left me. Kyle has no arms and no legs. And he wanted to be a MMA fighter. And he did.

While many disabled people simply want to be treated like the rest of us, let's not really kid ourselves, okay? They are not like the rest of us. 

They're better.

While Kyle Maynard fought his entire actual life, in Skyscraper, fellow amputee the fictional Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson, continuing his streak of great fun in not-so-great movies), will fight for one incredibly long day. And a helluva day it turns out to be.

After losing his leg in a horrific blast years prior, we meet up with Sawyer as a loving husband and humble father of two, simply trying to make ends meet. He's left the S.W.A.T. team far behind, and is currently running a small security company. Inexplicably, he gets hired by a mysterious zillionaire to determine if there are any security concerns in the world's tallest building, a 225-story behemoth known as The Pearl. Turns out, there's a few. 

Dozen.

Not an hour after his presentation, the seemingly gentle-giant Sawyer straight up murders a dude. Sure, it was in self-defense, but good God this is a man that clearly, is not to be f--ked with. But what do some low-level gangster types do? Something worse than f--king with Sawyer. They f--k with his family. And shocking no one, he ain't exactly having that. And even with one leg, The Rock, yet again, is kicking twice as much ass.