Note 2: Despite that, there were some really good flicks last year.

Note 3: Despite that, some unbelievably poopy movies came out too.

The Way Back
Implausible: A movie conveys just how awful Gulags actually were.
Plausible: Colin Farrell is nuts.

Limitless
Implausible: A drug that makes you think you are awesome and it isn’t cocaine.
Plausible: Bradley Cooper as an uninteresting douche.

Paul
Implausible: An alien from another galaxy whose biology enables him to enjoy pot.
Plausible: Sigourney Weaver kicking the shit out of Simon Pegg.

Sucker Punch
Implausible: The average moviegoing demographic appreciates how mind-blowingly awesome this movie is.
Plausible: Robert Rodriguez creates the first feminist rock anthem of the 21st century.

The King’s Speech
Implausible: A British monarch as good looking as Colin Firth.
Plausible: Geoffrey Rush is made of awesome.

Scream 4
Implausible: This franchise is still relevant.
Plausible: Nobody noticed that this movie came out.

Thor
Implausible: Kenneth Branagh can direct action sequences.
Plausible: Chris Hemsworth didn’t spend enough time with his shirt off.

X-Men First Class
Implausible: Michael Fassbender was actually in such a stupid movie.
Plausible: This movie was as awkward as watching Ewan McGregor impersonate Obi-Wan times 10.

Transformers – Dark of the Moon
Implausible: A Transformers movie was made that I didn’t want to see.
Plausible: Michael Bay might have ruined my childhood even more than George Lucas.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Implausible: A movie with bigger fan service has been made.
Plausible: This was an unnecessary sequel to what should have been just one film for book seven.

Cowboys and Aliens
Implausible: Cowboys would have actually beat Aliens.
Plausible: This movie is so awesome you just don’t care about the implausibility of it all.

Real Steel
Implausible: This movie could have had any sort of plot at all.
Plausible: Everyone saw the trailer and so didn’t need to see the movie.

Footloose
Implausible: That there was any reason to remake the original.
Plausible: That the studio was looking for a quick cash in on nostalgia.

Twilight – Breaking Dawn Part 1
Implausible: That somebody decided this movie should have ended with a dude noming on his dead wife after she gave birth.
Plausible: There are a lot of dumb chicks out there with disposable income.

Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol
Implausible: That moviegoers have forgiven Tom Cruise for being bonkers.
Plausible: That awesome stunts and special effects can make moviegoers forgive Tom Cruise for being bonkers.

Taking a perfectly good Swedish movie that has done fantastically well in the international market and remaking it in the English language shows that movie executives believe that Americans are too dumb to want to watch a movie with subtitles. Well, okay, some Americans are too dumb to watch a movie with subtitles. In this case, those people wouldn’t matter because the Millennium Trilogy appeals to people interested in dark, complex, intelligent plots that get uncomfortably up close to serious social problems. People like that already watched all three of the Swedish-language flicks, and they don’t want to watch a sad remake made by people who believe that viewers aren’t smart enough to connect with a film that isn’t in their native language.

This is a constant problem with translation. The power of the original can become seriously compromised as works are taken out of their author’s original framework and remade into something for a different culture. In this case, the titles were softened and made sexy because in America, you have to use a woman’s body to sell pretty much anything. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is completely removed from the original, powerful message of the Swedish title: Men Who Hate Women. Lisbeth is not a girl in this book; she is twenty-four. If “Men Who Hate Women” was too controversial for the English language market, they could have at least not infantilized the main character by referring to her as a child. It’s easy to see where they got it from. The literal title of the second book was kept: Flickan som lekte med elden, or “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” However, in this case the title refers to the child Lisbeth and the plot delves into her early life and how it continues to affect her as an adult. The title works, but unfortunately it gave American publishers the idea of a “girl” and they ran with it. The last book, Luftslottet som sprängdes or “The Air Castle that Blew Up” was retitled The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

Lisbeth Salander was written to represent everything that thousands of years of sexism has done to women: she has been abused, ignored, shot, raped, deprived of her rights, buried alive, blamed for crimes she did not commit, and then vilified for becoming exactly what her abusers sculpted her into. Yet despite that she overcomes it all to be vindicated with the help of men and women who work together to move on from the crimes of the past. Changing the title to focus on the skin of a mysterious woman rather than the central theme of the plot was the first mistake. I’m sure this was deliberate; Americans are much less comfortable with addressing gender inequality than Scandinavians.

It’s impossible that an English language version made so soon after the originals could have escaped being called a rip-off. Americans who are smart enough to find out about these books and appreciate their message were also smart enough to see the original Swedish films, which weren’t afraid to be potent, ambiguous, and challenging. American filmgoers that smart won’t be impressed with movie producers who think they need some kind of cultural mediation performed by Hollywood.

Just in case you’re still wondering if you should go check this one out, I’d just like to remind you that all three original films are on Netflix. And you won’t have to deal with teenagers on their mobiles if you stay away from the theater.

Graham Chapman as Arthur Dent
Eric Idle as Ford Prefect
Terry Jones as Mr. L. Prosser
Terry Jones as the Barman of the Horse and Groom
John Cleese as Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
Terry Jones as Marvin the Paranoid Android
Michael Palin as Zaphod Beeblebrox
Carol Cleveland as Trillian
Eric Idle as Phouchg
Michael Palin as Loonquawl
Terry Jones as Deep Thought
John Cleese as Slartibartfast
Terry Gilliam as Franky Mouse
Michael Palin as Benjy Mouse
And Carol Cleveland as the voice of The Book

And yet it’s never to be . . . BELGIUM.

The Knights Templar began as a religious order dedicated to guarding pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem after it had been captured in the crusades. Over the course of a few hundred years they became the world’s first multinational corporation and bank. They invented the ATM card, allowing customers to deposit funds in one bank, receive transfer papers, and withdraw cash from another Templar bank. It made traveling for rich people a lot safer, and it made the Knights Templar insanely powerful.

The Pope and King Philip of France became insanely jealous, and so concocted a ridiculous fairy tale of Satan worship, sodomy, and whatever nastiness was needed to execute every last templar and (ahem) steal righteously appropriate the order’s assets. Those who gave critical support to the coup against the Templar order conveniently were also promised a slice of the pie and on Friday the 13th, 1307, Philip rounded up as many Templars as he could for swift torture, execution, and purse-emptying. (And you thought IRS audits were bad.)

That’s right, kids. The source of all of our Friday the 13th superstition is merely the result of a medieval hostile takeover.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I have never believed in superstitious rubbish about numerology or luck or fate or anything else that claims correlation is causation.

Until now.

I went to go see Thor on Friday night (yes, Friday the 13th) and it was absolute crap. I was so angry and disappointed that only now can I list what was bad and good about this flick.

Bad:

• The CG looked more awful than anything George Lucas did in the Star Wars prequels, which may actually count as an achievement as considerable effort would be required to make something worse.
• There was nothing in the film that passed as an action sequence. When a film is based on an action comic, this is generally considered a bad move.
• Natalie Portman managed to play an empty-headed female love interest that was even more useless to the plot than Padmé Amidala
• While we’re on the subject of Natalie Portman, it is an astoundingly improbable phenomenon that she managed to have even less chemistry with Chris Hemsworth than she did with Hayden Christensen
• Kenneth Branagh strayed from the realm of directing himself in an ego-massaging lead role in a film with scenes that are never more complicated than three people sitting in a room spouting poetry at one another.

Good:

• The 3.45 seconds that Chris Hemsworth did not have a shirt on

If this doesn’t make me believe in Friday the Thirteenth, nothing will.

I was tiny when that movie came out. Way too little to go to the movie theater. My parents, a young couple with their first baby, learned that the hard way when they decided to take me with them because paying a babysitter would suck up the budget to go see a movie.

I was fine until the scene when Elliot goes out to the shed with the pizza box. Then the ball rolls out of the shed. Then BWAAAAA-AAAAA-AAAAA and E.T. is screaming and his tongue is waggling and I’m going apeshit.

That night my parents learned what it was like to be those people who brought a toddler to the movies and ruin it for the rest of us. They never did it again.

Of course soon enough the movie was on TV. And Betamax. Curse you, Jimmy’s Video Rental, for carrying that most foul of films. It was re-released in 1985, just in time to re-traumatize me and solidify the shuffling asthmatic beastie as THE monster that came for me in the night. I was exposed to this evilness repeatedly as a kid thanks to callous and uncaring friends and relatives who helped make it . The glowing heart. The unnerving wide-eyed stare. The shameless product placement for Reese’s Pieces. The pasty, pale body lying in the woods. My brief glimmer of hope as it looks like the bastard might die and it will all be over with and I can return to dealing with the more normal scary monsters under my bed. My horror as he groans and comes back to life like a alien zombie Muppet ready to eat my brains.

When you watch this, pretend it isn’t satire and you will all understand for the first time what the recurring nightmares of my childhood were like.

The fangs. The red eyes. The slithering. This is the E.T. of my childhood.

Since Spielberg has been sucking the residual cash out of all of his franchises one by one like a good little Hollywood vampire, I knew it was just a matter of time before he returned to this monstrosity. It will be re-re-re-released with George Lucas-style midlife crisis-motivated digital enhancements. Oh, and 3-D. It’s coming to get me in 3-D in 2012. The apocalypse is also arriving in 2012. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. I just hope it comes before this nightmare hits theaters and somebody makes me go with them to see it.