Of Nerds, Women, Prizes And Lazy Storytelling Tropes (Or: The Unexpected Vices Of Ignorant Screenwriting)

SPOILERS FOR GOOSEBUMPS AND PIXELS FOLLOW

Towards the end of the motion picture Goosebumps, my least favorite character in the entire motion picture, Champ (Ryan Lee), gets around five minutes of screentime entirely devoted to him taking down The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp via fatally biting the beast with the help of his silver fillings. Why is a character depicted in the film as a walking/talking embodiment of the conventional nerd suddenly showing such bravado in combat? It's simple really; The Werewolf Of Fever Swamp is attacking Taylor (Halston Sage), a popular girl at the school who gets two lines of dialogue and no distinct personality to speak of before she makes out with Champ.

What Can We Learn From This Summers Blockbusters?

Another summer has almost come and gone. Technically, the summer box office doesn't conclude until Labor Day graces our world, but unless We Are Your Friends becomes an Avatar-level box office phenomenon, I can pretty much guarantee you right now that Straight Outta Compton was the last moneymaker of this summer. In terms of summer blockbusters, there were highs and lows in terms of quality, with the more blatantly subpar projects like Terminator: Genisys and Pixels failing to lure in audiences, thank Heavens.

Pixels Is Almost As Bad As Gamergate

Let's just cut to the chase here; as you can tell from that headline, Pixels is bad. But it reaches a level of incompetence that even past Adam Sandler catastrophes like Jack & Jill could only dream of.  This is a film where the acting of its leading man (the incomparable Adam Sandler) is somehow one of its lesser problems. From the get-go of the feature, which depicts a younger version of the character played by Kevin James stealing money from a little girl, the movies puzzling lack of awareness of its own characters blatant flaws is apparent.

New Pixels Trailer Contains Adam Sandler And Smurf Murder

I mentioned a while back that I thought Pixels would be one of the box office bombs of this summer, but now I'm not so sure. What's reversed my thought process? This new trailer. It's not something I like, but I could see it being a huge hit with general audiences. Check it out below, let me know if I'm on the wrong track here.

Pan Will Fly Off To Neverland In October

Looking over the 2015 release schedule, I was surprised to see Warner Bros. had nothing planned for October 2015. Considering they release more movies in any given year than any other studio, it was surprising they didn't have anything up their sleeves for October. That's changed today, as their reinvention of Peter Pan will arrive now on October 9, 2015.

Adam Sandler Fights Pac-Man In Trailer For Pixels

In 2016, a number of video game movies (such as Assassin's Creed and Uncharted) will attempt to reverse the poor track record such films have had both critically and financially. Until then, this summer's Pixels will similarly try to bring some success to video game cinema, as well as Adam Sandler's troubled film career (which has seen some low points in recent years, to say the least). Catch the trailer for Pixels below.