Curse Your Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal
Yesterday was the final day of this brief vacation, and I knew that unlike Monday I needed to actually get some adulting done. So I scurried around like mad in the morning and knocked a dozen things off of my list all before eating breakfast. The day was going to be awesome, and to make things even more interesting it turned out that yesterday was “Spindle” day, meaning that the Lost to Light mission was the daily heroic. Now the Black Spindle weapon in Destiny has been the bane of my existences for some time. I’ve spent probably a grand total of ten hours working towards getting one now, in the various weeks that it has been available. Always something goes wrong, and either the group I have managed to assemble doesn’t stand a chance due to low light levels… or we struggle and get super close to pushing across the line but never quite get it. On my best attempt we had two mobs left standing at the end of the mission. The worst part of it is that trying to get folks for this mission is like pulling teeth… because nobody likes it. It is that one mission that no one wants to do but everyone feels at least slightly obligated to help with. So I feel horrible anytime I even begin to ask.
One of the big problems with my clan is that so many of them are only online during what is my “daytime”. So with me being on vacation I was hoping that would mean that pulling together a crew for it would be easier. Initially I got pulled into a Challenge of Elders group and then as we were waiting in orbit for someone to take a bathroom break… there was a power spike. Instead of the power coming back on… it flickered a few times and then was off for good. Sure enough there was a major power outage. There is a local website where folks post rumors of stuff going on, and it turns out that most of my town was without power or at least most of the shopping district. This was just too much after the internet outage the other night killing my plans, having a power outage do the same was just frustrating beyond belief. I reported the outage and the power company was unable to give me any sort of an estimate as to when it might be back on. I mean I guess it could have been worse… and the outage could have happened at night. So I went downstairs and fixed myself a sandwich resigned to wait for the power to come back on.
Civil War
It was around then that I got an idea and called the local movie theater to ask if they had power. Sure enough they must have been on one side of whatever the divide was that flicked off the power to the rest of the town. I had been planning on going to see Captain America: Civil War at some point over the minication so in theory there was no better time than while the power was out. I normally shun watching movies in 3D but the showing this time was an hour earlier than the non-3D one so I went for it… and resigned myself to wear an awkward pair of glasses over my glasses for the entire film. Now some theaters have glasses that have actually taken into account that someone might not have perfect vision and wants to watch a movie, but ours has the cheapy disposable RayBan look-a-like glasses. In any case I sat down to watch the movie without realizing that it was roughly three hours long… and this would ultimately gobble up any time I had left in my day off. The positive is however that the movie was really good, but I guess the bar is pretty damned high at this point for the movies in the Marvel franchise. Awhile back I created a playlist in chronological order and it takes over 26 hours to chew your way through it. This is not taking into account either of the television shows or any other potential direct tie-ins. This makes this quite possibly the most massive movie series ever created… and honestly the general high level of quality across all of the movies gives me some huge hope for what Disney will do to the Star Wars franchise.
As far as the movie itself… how do I talk about it without spoilers. There are a lot of references to Empire Strikes back during one part of the movie, and I feel like this is apt. This is very much the Empire Strikes back moment of this series. It is the first time in the series where there are more unanswered and unsolved problems at the end of the film that were before it started. Previously each movie was this call to action that was more or less neatly wrapped up by the end credit roll. Now of course traditionally there are after credits sequences that open up a whole new can of worms and tee up the next film, and this does that nicely. What it does not do is give the viewer closure. Things are still pretty screwed up at the end of the movie, and it feels natural that we have another movie waiting in the wings to fill in the rest of the details. I was honestly afraid that having this movie essentially cut and half and spread between two different years would make it feel like the Harry Potter finale did where it felt like things just were abruptly cleaved in twain. Instead this feels like a complete movie, but one that we know there will be another complete moving coming behind on its heels to finish things up. The pacing is much slower as well, which fits the Empire Strikes Back comparison but it happens in a way that adds weight to the movie and not one that makes things feel stretched thin. In any case it is well worth your time going to see it, but I highly suggest you watch the rest of the series… because this one makes so many references to past movies that I feel like someone might be lost if they started here. As far as the rest of my plans yesterday… they more or less didn’t pan out and once again Lost to Light passes without me getting a Black Spindle.