cabbageboy

I won't get on them too hard on this ECW thing, mainly because I don't think they had any ideas of making ECW permanent. It was just a "Here's a nice one shot PPV for the die hard ECW fans, enjoy." I'm fairly sure they will bring ECW back but right now they are puzzled as to how and when. The ECW PPV so thoroughly punked out Vengeance it's not even funny. Hell, even with the 1 goofy angle of the WWE guys invading it made me want to see the show if nothing else to see those guys get beat down. The only Vengeance match announced at that point was the HIAC and I don't think most people care about yet another HHH/Batista main event. The wildly pumped up ECW show just made these dull Raws seem all the worse. I know I've had trouble making it through the past two weeks of WWE shows. By the way, am I one of the 15?

Oh God, I am so glad someone mentioned Bad Dudes. You want the definitive 80s action "beat the shit out of ninjas and evil bosses" game? That's it. I remember as a kid being part of lines of people at the arcade where someone would play till they died, then the next person would continue the game and it would continue till SOMEONE finally beat it (thus 10 people could lay a claim in part to beating the game). I had forgotten all about this game until one day at Funcoland the guy there brought it out saying it was a game I'd enjoy for the NES. He put it on and I was like "Oh my God I remember this game! I love it!" There was another game I used to play but I can't recall the name of it. It had a barbarian dude who fought enemies and flying bats and you could use the sword to chop down in the rock to underground caverns. Anyone remember this one?

You know if they'd done a Batman in the late 30s Veidt would have been a killer Joker from that pic. Of course he is German and had an accent, not sure how they would have gotten around that. Shame Batman wasn't around in the silent era, huh? The Man Who Laughs is a movie I heard about on the Universal Horror documentary as an example of Universal doing a horror type drama in the silent era. It's about a guy who was horribly disfigured by carny crooks as a kid (the weird smile was his freak gimmick) who falls in love with a blind girl. I've never seen it though, but I should sometime.

No one really addressed my pondering on Eddie/Rey. Why job Eddie out to him all these times? I'm all for pushing Rey, but after a point there is really only so far he can go. He's not really believable carrying a heavyweight title or anything, so his push has some inherent limits. Eddie could shoot right back up the card if they'd just book him to WIN a few matches. This whole draft has fucked up a lot on SMDN, it really has. I was looking forward to an Eddie/Cena type feud going down at SS or so, but now what? We'll get Batista fucking around in boring matches with Bradshaw and the Undertaker the rest of the summer.

It doesn't hurt that Neeson is a lot more interesting than the boring Ra's with the monotone voice from the cartoon. I've never read any comics with Ra's in them. He's in some ways the most curious Batman villain in that he and Batman have a cordial type relationship, Ra's seemingly tries to hook him up with his hot daughter, etc.

Speaking of Eddie, what is the entire point of him doing all these jobs to Rey? I mean the point of doing the heel turn is so you have renewed focus and start WINNING again. I can't think of a match Eddie has even won since he turned heel. And isn't this thing sort of ass backwards anyway? They have an angle where a heel flat out cannot beat a face. He just can't do it. This makes no sense, it works better when you have a face who can't beat a sneaky heel under any circumstances (think Dreamer/Raven). Eddie struggling so much with Rey almost gives him a sympathetic Coyote vs. Roadrunner appeal.

Thing is, stuff like the original Ocean's 11 wasn't really a classic anyway. It's a fair/decent movie and there was room for improvement. And with the Bakshi LOTR, hell that wasn't really too good to begin with and only goes to Helms Deep. Huge room for improvement there (though the animated LOTR does clarify a few things that were confusing to me in the movies). Adrien Brody as our hero (here recast as a sensitive playwright rather than a tough sailor) already has me cringing.

How exactly is either Christian or Jericho on any sort of roll? I don't mean gimmick wise or in terms of heat, but in actual winning matches terms. Christian hasn't won a match in forever, Jericho has been jobbing his ass off in the IC division....so now both get a shot at the WWE title?

There is no way in hell this bogus Smackdown title comes to legit fruition. My God they already have the World Title and the WWE title, can't somehow simply get traded to Smackdown? I think they'll have this bogus match and someone like JBL wins it, then Batista debuts on SMDN, we have a pointless unification (that Batista MUST win I might add).

The Big Show is the most boring main event possibility on Smackdown right now though. It seems like ever since he lost to the sumo wrestler at WM he's just been dicking around.

I think Carlito will get some lame DQ type win, or it'll be a DQ in some way to have Shelton save face, then he can head over to Smackdown. This show has had a horrid build given the loaded nature of the card itself. On paper it looks quite good but the build for the matches has either been nonexistent (Angle/Shawn II) or repetitive (HHH/Batista III), or just plain bad (Edge/Kane). It's ironic considering the ECW PPV had no angles in the matches really, which had its drawbacks of course but yet also had some positives. At least there weren't any awful storylines.

Spider-Man in 2002 was essentially the same hugely anticipated film that Batman was in 1989. By 2015 or so let's see if Spidey can still bring in gigantic box office when he's dicking around with The Shocker or whoever.

Playing Matt's music the way they did got a Pavlovian response from me, I'll admit. But when it was a hoax I got kinda pissed. As far as weddings go, it's not even LITA's best wedding. The Kane/Lita wedding was funny as shit. Besides here I don't recall anyone even saying "I do." I don't think getting married really fits Edge and Lita as this storyline goes. It makes them too...respectable? Lita should just ditch Kane (or Matt if you look at it realistically) and then shack up with Edge. I mean how is Lita as much of a slut if she marries Edge?

On those shirts it spells it out BWO in all caps, haha. I think the world is a better place at this point without any references to the nWo, so let's let the BWO stay dead.

Anyone think at times Dr. Crane looked like a loony Eddie Vedder? Particularly in his "It's the BATMAN!" rant in the chemical basement. The Joker is infinite amounts cooler than The Scarecrow. He's funny, he's scary, and certainly dangerous as hell. Scarecrow isn't good for much beyond being a lackey heel, spraying a couple people with his gas before he's figured out and beat down. He could hardly carry an entire movie (though he's fine for a 30 min. cartoon).

I think the Animated Series is easily the best Batman stuff I've seen...it had the visual style that I didn't think Begins really had. Spider-Man made more money because it's a newer series, plain and simple. The first one had the origin of Spidey AND a marketable villain in the Green Goblin, while the 2nd movie had another well known heel in Doc Ock. If you adjust the first couple Batman movies I'd think you would get similar numbers to Spidey now. Also, the Spidey trailers give you a good idea of what exactly will be taking place. In the first you get some action clips of Spidey vs. Goblin fights, a bit of other things...stuff that compels you to want to see it. The Batman Begins trailer takes forever to even show you that yes this is a Batman movie, and it doesn't really show you much in the way of compelling conflict or a villain (mostly just Liam Neeson blathering and some training montage). I personally think the Batman series is a bit far gone at this point, not necessarily quality wise but in terms of box office. Unless they wanna start doing total jobbers like Mad Hatter or Killer Croc there really aren't a huge amount of villains left. And if they reuse The Joker and Two Face for future movies there will be some that complain that "they have already done films with these guys."

As I said, HHH will need a bit of a rest from the main event for now. Hell, HHH/Cena is a fairly notable match that hasn't happened as of yet. I'd wait for a while and maybe do Cena/Angle...thing is Angle is going to job to Michaels and will thus be in no easy position to demand a title shot. Raw is all out of whack now with a face champ and heels going after him, haha.

I thought about this last night. And honestly I couldn't think of a finisher I've seen Carlito do more than maybe once or twice. I'd agree with the statement that his real finisher is to grab the ropes in some fashion.

This series should be over. Horry the other night reminded me of Derek Fisher against (irony) the Spurs last year. It wasn't quite as dramatic but it's one of those crushing losses that I don't think most teams can recover from. The Spurs have 2 games now at home and need 1 win. They'd have to be total bitches not to win this series.

Given that they've introduced Ra's into it I'd go with Talia. Hell my dad was asking me "Ok they have Ra's Al Ghul, now where's his hot daughter?" Thing is, it might include bringing Ra's back too...if so I demand he call Batman "detective." But would all this take heat off the Joker? As far as the Scarecrow being weak...well shit, he's a jobber. As I said, he's a C grade villain with a one note schtick of using hallucinatory gas. Once Batman figures that out, there's really nothing he can do.

I'm shocked they spent 100 million to market Batman Begins, considering the TV ads and trailers really didn't even make the movie seem all that compelling. As I've been saying in the Batman thread, this movie is a hard sell to a mass audience (as in gigantic box office total). It doesn't have a notable villain that fans are familiar with. In fact it struck me as a solid graphic novel on Batman's origin aimed at geeky fanboys, rather than a definitive "This is what happened, no more arguments" origin like you see in Spider-Man. Stuff like Bruce Wayne travelling to Tibet to train with Ra's Al Ghul isn't what I'd have in mind when thinking of Batman's origin...it's stuff seemingly from a graphic novel that 10 people would buy. I think to some extent people are Batmanned out. The last couple of Schumacher films, the Catwoman fiasco last year...no one was just DYING for another Batman movie. In fact I think Batman and Robin being so horrid is making this film look better than it really is. Good film, but I found it more of an interpretation of Batman's origin rather than something definitive.

Kahran, I agree. From the first murmur of the draft a few months ago the initial idea was Cena comes to Raw, Batista goes to Smackdown. Basically they were going to just switch the champs. This isn't to say Christian and Jericho shouldn't go to SMDN, it'd be cool if they did. But no way is Cena going to lose to either of them. For a while I thought it might be interesting to have Batista as the very last selection to keep things in suspense as to whether SMDN would ever get a champion. If that happens this week instead, no one will care that HHH would job again to Batista, since he'd be leaving the show anyway. I do have this awful feeling we're in for Batista/Orton at SS though, which would be really horrible. And of course HHH/Cena, and HHH will probably win there but then job it back soon after (it'd give HHH another token title run, and Cena can get it back anyway).

One problem with Raw is that they are trying to get over some really unappealing guys as faces. Viscera has been a sexual predator, he's huge and fat, he basically stalked Lillian...and the guy's a face? He practically buttfucks his opponents. Kane...forces a woman to have sex with him, forces her to marry him, is a complete psycho, and of course we're supposed to see his side and cheer him. Great. That's why I jokingly said I missed Masters tonight. Hell he might suck but at least he's booked somewhat sanely. I dunno if it was one of the worst Raws of all time, but it was pretty ugh. I'm telling you, these shows are seeming worse after the ECW PPV. It's made me not want to tolerate shitty wrestling.

It isn't poor business by any means....it's just not on par with some other stuff, that's all. I'm not saying they needed to focus a huge amount on the villains, but a trailer showing a bit of who they are would have been good.

I have the sneaking suspicion that SMDN isn't so much becoming 1998 WCW as it is ECW with a few other guys.