Con Air April 10, 2023

 Con Air is one of the greatest action movies ever made, even if the plot makes little sense. It is a nice to see an action movie starring Nicolas Cage, where except for his accent, he is not the over-the-top part. John Cusack was entertaining as the voice of reason along with Cage, and it was pretty funny seeing him argue with the Colm Meaney's character. John Malkovich was perfectly cast as the main villain, and it was obvious he ad-libbed a lot of his dialogue. There was, however, a lot of parts of the story that made no sense. In real life there is no way you can transport thirty of the country's most deadly criminals. It was stupid the way the prison guards ignored Cusack when he told him not to touch anything in Malkovich's cell. The story about why Cage was incarcerated makes no sense, when in the end all he had to do was call the police. But it was still a fun movie. 

Like every movie I have on DVD/Blue-ray, it has inspired me in some way. What I will use as my influence from it, is try making the story with a bit more logic behind it. Have the heroes as interesting as the villains. Not that they were not likable, just kind of flat. My homage to John Wayne's Westerns as to have at least three battles in my stories, one where Jack Stamper and his sidekicks just use their laser swords and pistol, one where they just use their swords and assault rifles, and the rest where they use all. This last part is just a personal preference, but the characters that are supposed to be friends, will use their Christian names. I know surnames often sound cooler, but I feel like using their first name shows their friendship. At the time I first saw that movie, I was picked on in school for having a rare name. People often couldn't pronounce it right or spell it right. Some people thought it was a more common name, like Nathan, and sometimes even Eric, I don't see how we get that from Ethan. The worst of it was, people often tried to make me adapt a cockamamie nickname that means I'm rich, but I still preferred my given name, which means strength in Hebrew. A lot of times, even my best friends didn't stick up for me about that, joining the people making fun of me for it. My former counsellor says that was because they were afraid that they would get picked on, too. Now that I said that I started referring to the people who tormented me by their surnames, because many of them had cool sounding ones. My parents didn't mind me talking about people like that unless it was somebody that had authority over me. Apparently, they thought I talked to them like that in person and I didn't, and from my point of view, they were not letting me express myself. All the same, I turned out to be a great kind person, and my friends did start to show more respect for how I felt as they aged, and that was part of the process, and it was why most of the characters who are friends in my books use their Christian names. Most of all, it gave me material for stories, and you know what to do if you want to hear more of that.