Author: Andrew Hilzendeger

Andrew Hilzendeger
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Superman Not So Super

Supposedly leading the charge in the new (and improved) DC universe, (or, at least, that’s what Warner Bros. wanted you to believe), the new Superman movie is officially in theaters. Sadly, this Superman movie is anything but that. Instead, it’s got as much of a chance at making progress as a gay pride parade on a blood-splattered battlefield – and it desperately needs to deliver on the hope that makes a Superman movie great. For Hollywood currently suffering from artistic heart failure, that’s a tall order, maybe even unfair. Spoiler alert: There’s no hope here.

A great story is character-driven – genuine heart, no flashy plot – but James Gunn’s Superman, starring David Corenswet, (sidestepping body odor jokes), flips that script. This film is overloaded with plot clutter, packed tighter than the actor’s costumed underwear, and has as much honesty and depth as cast comments on the red carpet. It’s got the hallmarks of a former Marvel director’s cheap gimmicks: hit-or-miss humor, bright colors, weird aliens, and pets doing silly things. But does it have soul? As much as a rock does, yes. I mean, hey, that soulless strategy made Marvel billions. Why not ruin Superman, too?

Let’s get into it. Wrap your inner child in a warm, Superman-emblem blanket, put a good Superman movie on starring Christopher Reeves, close the door, and come outside to see the Kent farm in ruins. Face the destruction dispassionately. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Krypto the Annoying

The dog’s supposed to be Superman’s loyal companion, but he’s just a constant, distracting presence – playful whether the stakes are life or leisure, contributing nothing but irritation, clogging an already backed-up plot.

Superman, the Punching Bag

The Man of Steel spends more time taking hits than dishing them out and even throws a tantrum in front of Lex. While he’s supposed to draw strength from the sun, he seems to be as emotionally driven and unstable as characters written to deliver a killing blow regardless of the collateral damage. Superman stands for truth, just, and the American way, something Bruce Timm’s Superman embodied with timeless fashion. Yet this screen treatment of such a well-established character feels insecure, conscious of the shadow cast by all previous iterations, though, to give credit where credit is due, this Superman is not nearly as emotionally driven than Zack Snyder’s Superman played by Henry Cavill. But where Cavill’s Superman showed confidence in 2012, Gunn’s Superman has no identity.

The Lore, or What’s Left of It

Gunn’s creativity here feels less a superpower and more a liability. He depicts the Kryptonian parents as power-hungry rulers. Kal-El’s birth parents want him to subjugate Earth and have many wives. Where Gunn saw this as a good angle for the story, it’ll forever remain unclear. There’s never a question of whether Kal-El will do as his parents wished. That’s not who he is, inside or outside this movie. Superman exists outside the studio system in the hearts and minds of fans, so this plot twist is a non-starter in so far as Superman’s character is concerned. Now, sure, it does make his relationship with the inhabitants of Earth a bit wobbly, but even that has no meaningful impact on the film’s plot. Meanwhile, the Kents? They’re technologically clueless farm folk. They squabble and undercut each other when they should emulate the moral upbringing that made Clark Kent-Superman who he is today, but they’re hardly the moral anchors the “alien refugee” was raised by in better installments.

The Lex vs Superman Showdown

Lex Luthor fights through a keyboard-commanded surrogate clone in a high-rise command-center, which feels more like a high-end call center than the lair of an arch-villain. After a decade without Superman films, this is the “thrilling” third act we get? A fight between a weakened Superman and a clone of himself controlled by a button-mashing Lex Luthor? To add insult to injury, a wasted Supergirl shows up before credits roll just to pick up Krypto. Maybe the scene would have fit better in a stronger script, whether it’s comic book accurate or not.

If that weren’t enough, the supporting heroes – the “Justice Gang” of Green Lantern, Mr. Fantastic, and Hawk Girl – offer mixed bag performances. Hawk Girl, powerful but immature; Green Lanter, played by fan-favorite Nathan Fillion, under-utilized by a weak script; and Mr. Terrific, scene stealer, showcasing the competence and confidence Superman sorely lacks throughout this whole picture.

A Script Undeserving of “Superman”

The movie’s own theme collapses under a heaping of CGI led. Superman faces the choice between heroism or villainy, but the story barely gives him time to wear the shoes of Clark Kent – his essential, grounded alter ego – before burying him in scenes that feel more like Guardians of the Galaxy than anything from Superman’s universe. Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane, which should have served as the emotional anchor of the story, instead feels like a fragmented sentence, incomplete and barely explored. Though, brief moments of hope do spark. However, they are far too fleeting.

James Gunn, Studio Darling or Creative Liability?

Why Warner Bros. picked James Gunn to direct this iconic character is anyone’s guess. This movie treats Superman with the same careless management Disney showed the Star Wars sequel trilogy – a beloved legacy mishandled, leaving fans frustrated and disappointed. Instead of unlocking the secret of Superman, Gunn seems to have jammed the wrong key in the lock, smashed it beyond repair, and called studio executives to break in with an axe, completely counter to his previous claim that he had “unlocked the secret” to the character in this movie.

Andrew Hilzendeger
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Trump Orders U.S. Air Strike Against Iran

Just when we took Trump at his word, that Iran would face consequences if in two weeks they didn’t cease attacks against Israel after two weeks, he makes a shocking announcement – a bombing strike carried out by U.S. Armed Forces on his orders, against Iran’s nuclear sites.

This is results-based, Trump-branded foreign policy at its finest. He’s not messing around. With Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Senator Marco Rubio, who also holds the title of Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Trump announced at the White House that this strike was successful. Prior to this, Trump had given no indication that such a move was even in the works because it was a secret. That sneaky bastard.

According to the administration, this was a covert, precision air strike with a narrow purpose of decapitating Iran’s nuclear capacity. It was not an official act of war. The night-time strike was Trump’s way of weakening Iran’s combative posture. Trump’s decisive action, kept top secret until its resounding success, was probably to pull the world back an inch from everyone’s favorite dreaded sequel to humanity’s ongoing trilogy of world conflicts. While that’s speculative, it’s also not outside reason as far as theories go, for in the middle of the world’s pressure cooker, nuclear-capable Iran shares dead-center with Israel. With Taiwan and Ukraine as the other two hair-trigger hot zones because of their neighboring antagonists China and Russia, Iran got addressed first to cool off the region and bring Israel lasting relief.

This strike, just months into his second, non-consecutive term, further cements Trump as a historically uniquely dynamic president, taking immediate action for the best results. Given the timing and results of this attack, it stands to reason that, to avoid a world conflict, Trump will act, if and when the remaining hot zone regions push the world to the brink of times like that prior to the signed surrender of Japan on the USS Missouri.

Trump’s actions set him apart from previous administrations. Unlike George W. Bush, whose family was deeply tied to politics, and Barack Hussein Obama, who hardly set foot ever in the private sector, Trump became president after achieving long-term celebrity status in the business and entertainment industries. His no-nonsense approach to deal-making on television and empire building entertained and inspired millions. If he doesn’t have a gold toothbrush, he owns the company that makes the toothbrush. Trump is a high-energy, non-stop entrepreneur who cares about assets and growing wealth.

But unlike his compatriots in the world of opulent wealth and headline drama, Trump doesn’t let public opinion determine his response. He’s got the commanding presence to flip public opinion through results. Having crossed the divide from celebrity billionaire to politician and won in the 2016 presidential election, before wading through legal law-fare bombardments leading up to the 2024 election, Trump has shown his thick skin regarding public opinion by winning the confidence of the American people in November, becoming the 47th president of the United States, promising peace and no war during this term.

Of course, avoiding all wars during his second term remains a tall order no smart politician would promise. But Trump’s cleaning the blood of his sword after a slice across Iran’s nuclear sites. If there’s anyone with the authority to steer America clear of overseas conflict and the commitment to see it through, it’s the man who nearly got assassinated, waded through seemingly endless legal battles, and ran a powerful campaign, resonating with voters, to win the election.

Since he took office and following the aftermath of this attack, Trump has brought transparency, results, and foreign action to the federal government when nothing of the kind had been seen in decades, if not centuries. Trump is strategic, unpredictable, and provocative, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Let’s just hope it stays that way for three and a half more years.

Andrew Hilzendeger
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The Eternal Moon Journal: First Step

Tonight, I’m feeling pretty good. I just wrote the character profile for a protagonist that has existed in my thoughts for years. He’s a lot like me, taken by grandiose ideas but enjoys working with his hands and appreciates beauty.

Having written over eight hundred words for this character, I find myself on the top of a slope where one inch forward sends me sprinting, then tumbling, down a hill of creativity where the forward momentum is overwhelming, at which point I have no choice but to write – write like a mad man.

Dark Times

It wasn’t always like this, having this growing urge to write the story, unable to stop until it’s finished. For years – many years – I slogged through the creative process, fighting “resistance,” pushing myself to write, despite my mood. It was easier to fight that creativity-sucking mosquito when I was around writer friends. They held me accountable. But just as often as they pushed me to write, they were also visibly frustrated by my apprehension to write characters, to write scenes, to tell a damn story.

They said I had good ideas, and they wanted desperately to read a story by me.

But I was afraid to pull the trigger.

Telling a story meant putting my money where my mouth was because I had often criticized movies and books for not being well written or for being emotionally shallow. Whether my criticisms were sound or well-founded, it didn’t matter, because, ultimately, behind all that was a heavily implied claim that I was a good storyteller.

Character Development

I would later become a great storyteller, able to write short stories on the spot and read them to the nearest open ear in the room, which was often my wife and her family. But to get there, I had to recognize the fact that I had a lot to learn about self-confidence and belief in who I was. The arrogance had to die, and humility had to take its place. Pride had to die for the art to come forth.

The journey was painful at times. Some late nights, alone, in the light of my lamp, with Pad Thai and a coffee to keep me company as I wrote in silence.

Light At the End of the Tunnel

But as it turns out, I don’t function well in silence. I don’t work well alone. When my wife came along, the creativity burst out unexpectedly. Finally, someone who wanted to hear my ideas and was genuinely excited to hear more. She is my ear. My muse.

Her constant encouragement helped shape the creativity that pours out of me today. Now, not only do the ideas pour out but the characters, plot, and world-building do as well.

Get Ready for Awesome

So, I can say with confidence, that beginning next year, as in early January, after New Year’s Day, I will begin chronicling my progress. The goal is to write and finish my novel, The Eternal Moon. Publication will be a battle for another year. For 2025, the battle is to forge the pages of The Eternal Moon in blood with meat and tears.

In 2025, be prepared to plunge into the story of the far future, a Christian science fiction story of epic magnitude similar to Dune and Star Wars. It’s time for good and evil to clash for the last time.

Andrew Hilzendeger
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Santa in September, Part II

Alright, so, Santa relaxing in September was where we left off. He’s resting before gearing up for the holidays, and he’s living off his stash of silver and gold, which is precisely what would attract the naughty who would want to steal his treasure.

There are a few things this begs to question. Does Old Saint Nick have a way to defend himself? How wrong could things go? Whom can Santa call on for help? And we’ll answer them in that order.

Santa carries around an umbrella, a tool he can offer others and defend himself with. Of course, it’s a magic umbrella, capable of surprising anyone who uses it or gets hit with it.

No matter how careful Santa tries to be, someone’s bound to notice his uncommon form of payment and want more where it came from. Something he cannot avoid is paying someone on the naughty list for passage somewhere.

Entranced by the precious metals in their hand, the naughty one, with street smarts to boot, takes mental note of Santa’s defining feature, his eyes. They are the eyes of a saint, warm and welcoming, and leaving a lasting impression on anyone who comes in contact, though they don’t know it.

One Saturday, having chosen a different AirB and B in the back country, as he has for the first three Saturdays, Santa settles in for a quiet day inside, Christmas songs on his heart, a Safeway box of sweet and sour chicken stabbed with chopsticks on the table, and a stack of wood in the fireplace ready to catch flame.

The latched door is pried open with a crowbar and kicked in. The naughty figure stands tall in the doorway, cold air blowing in from outside. Santa remains sitting, unfazed. He’s known this man since his first letter, which asked that his dad come home from the war for Christmas.

As Santa purses his lips at the encounter, the imposing figure, wearing leather gloves, grips his crowbar and points it at Santa’s leather stash of silver and gold. Santa slowly shakes his head, unfazed by the razor’s edge upon which the moment hangs.

The figure steps inside and closes the door with a slow creak. Santa sighs. The figure walks over to Santa, his steps measured for instilling terror in his victim. As he looms over the old man sitting in his chair, Santa shakes his head.

That leather grip on the crowbar tightens with silent rage, but the thief sidesteps Santa in his seat and goes for the bag of silver and gold, opening the sack to see the coins glittering from the ceiling light. A shadowy grin appears on the thief’s face as he chokes the bag closed and stands up, only to turn around and see Santa standing before him, making eye contact at his level. He too has a imposing presence, his red suit somehow giving him a transcendent presence.

Where everything changes is in Santa’s eyes. They tell the thief’s entire life’s story in one look. How he’s become this thief, who helped him along, and how Santa feels about it, compassionate but furious. Most powerful though is how he feels in Santa’s eyes: small.

The sack hits the floor with a sharp, metal thud, and the thief raises the crowbar to a striking pose. Santa’s eyes remain locked on his, unchanged.

With time standing still, the thief lowers the crowbar, having lost the upper hand, having felt exposed and disarmed. No one had looked at him before, stared at the monster within, only to show compassion and outrage.

The figure walks passed Santa and heads for the door before he felt a sharp pain against his temple and blacked out, Santa towering over him with his umbrella.

With the man on the floor, out like a light, Santa sits back down to enjoy his now-cold sweet and sour chicken, the fire in full blaze. He’s just not in the mood for Christmas songs anymore. But the rest of the year – and the naughty list – press on him with urgency and empathy.

It’s almost October, and he’s still got plenty of silver and gold to last him the ferry ride home. Iceland will be his last stop.

Andrew Hilzendeger
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The Wild Robot Review

Since Hollywood has regressed into wokeism, directors and writers have made cringe a predominant narrative characteristic, a reason for movie-goers to stay home and watch movies from a time not poisoned by woke culture. The “message” has infected entertainment so deeply that fun, it seems, has flat-lined into a coma, except The Wild Robot is a sign of brain activity. Is this animated film enough of a wake-up call for us to smell the coffee, or, more accurately, the popcorn?

On its face, The Wild Robot tickles instant curiosity with an oxymoron for its title. Other, more expensive book adaptations have failed to hook so simply – calling out Disney’s John Carter, which was uninspired and gutted from the original book’s superior title, A Princess of Mars, attached to which was a truly grand story that got stripped of all its best parts to appease creatively bankrupt Disney. DreamWorks Animation wisely avoided repeating Disney’s bone-headed mistake.

Proud of its origin as a children’s book series by Peter Brown, directed and written by Chris Sanders, The Wild Robot rewards admission by supercharging its first ten minutes with a setup for the story that feels brisk without being disorienting and doesn’t try too hard for laughs by honoring the slapstick, cartoonish humor of beloved, timeless Looney Tunes.

The Setup

This story begins on the beach with the washed-up remains of a shipment after a lightning storm – cue Cast Away vibes here. Inside the torn shipment container is an intact, folded-up robot, which curious otters investigate and inadvertently activate. Powered on, the strange being introduces itself in multiple languages as ROZZUM of Universal Dynamics before mimicking the wildlife to escape a massive, oncoming ocean wave.

Having climbed a rock face in a crab-like fashion, the robot faces the tree line of a forest, at which point it taking its first steps into the wild. The robot tries making contact with the animals, offering assistance to every creature along its path, snapping photographs of the shocked creatures as proof of the completed task.

Quickly registering the language barrier as problematic, ROZZUM folds up like a standard-issue Trade Federation droid and enters “processing mode” for several days, absorbing data from the wildlife interactions, foliage gradually covering her up. The squeaks and squabbles of the animals become conversations, revealing the nickname the scared animals have given her, The Monster.

Emerging from the overgrowth, ROZZUM loudly broadcasts to all animals, using a dazzling, Las Vegas-style light show, that she’s there to help. One brave little ambassador bunny asks if ROZZUM wants to kill everyone. ROZZUM unwittingly replies, “Negative…” and, without skipping a beat, a moose knocks her to the ground with his antlers, only for her to recover unharmed. At this, the wildlife scatter in clouds of dust!

Servicing this island has gone beyond what ROZZUM was programmed for. At her wit’s end, or the lack thereof, she activates the homing beckon atop the island’s highest peak underneath storm clouds, expecting her creators to come pick her up. Of course, lightning strikes, and she’s back on the ground, up against the tree, and shortly thereafter, at the mercy of glowing, blue-eyed raccoons in the black of night. They overwhelm her for parts, including the homing beckon, which blinks green right when a raccoon snatches it.

Having recovered the homing beckon through a series of comical tussles, ROZZUM then gets chased through the trees by a ferocious bear until she loses her footing and falls to a ridge near the water where a nest meets her on impact. Sticking out from a pile of branches under pouring rain is a single adult goose wing, and sifting the wreckage reveals one unbroken egg with a living creature inside. ROZZUM doesn’t know what to do with it. A hungry fox comes along and snatches it, but she rescues the egg from the fox’s mouth.

The Emotional Hook

The egg cracks open. ROZZUM repairs it. A foot breaks through, and out from the shell comes a cute gosling who imprints on the robot, thinking its mother is the towering robot with complex subroutines and an inner core.

An Unlikely Pair

Overwhelmed by a closeup of his mother’s circular, robotic face, the gosling screams, but it’s attached at the hip. ROZZUM must raise the helpless little one, as Pink-Tail, a mother possum, followed by her 7-then-6 surviving baby possums, points out… The baby will die without a mother.

ROZZUM has found her task – a daunting one at that.

The Stakes

Making up the difference where the robot’s programming comes up short, Fink (the fox) and Pink Tail help direct on generally how to raise the gosling. The first step is food, followed by learning to swim, and finally, flight. Mother and child get nicknames: “Roz,” and “Brightbill.” Unfortunately for Roz as a first time mom, nurturing her child is not as simple as 1-2-3-done. Roz builds a home for Brightbill to eat and sleep safely as he grows.

Once Brightbill becomes an adult, his unlikely family “launches” him into a nearby lake for swimming lesson, which backfires in a way neither Roz nor Brightbill are ready for. Being a runt, Brightbill faces the pitfalls of integrating with others of his kind. He’s different, behaves as if he’s got modes and a processor, and, generally, has no clue how to be a goose in the wild. The others mock him mercilessly.

Despite the wedge between him and Roz, Brightbill faces a dire imperative. The senior goose leading the Great Migration warns Roz that if Brightbill doesn’t build endurance for the long journey, he will not survive the winter. The laws of nature apply to Brightbill regardless of his disadvantage to other geese, and the Great Migration demands more than wings. Where his wings faulter, his heart must pay the balance.

This is a matter of life and death, not a typical theme for an animated movie. But it’s a welcome one all-the-same in this harrowing struggle. Brightbill’s friends push him to stay in the air even when he gets tired. During the winter, while far away from the island, Brightbill, having trained to reach his full potential, finds that his past struggles prepared him to lead all geese out of a shooting gallery, a testosterone-inducing scene in which he has them form up behind him through a harrowing ground-to-air conflict reminiscent of daring World War 2 planes dodging ground fire.

Takeaways

As subtle as it may be to some, The Wild Robot is a highly sophisticated piece of entertainment, a blend of the story types institutionalized and underdog, promoting the qualities for greatness: Grit, hope, and courage against insurmountable odds. Roz discovers her wild side by breaking away from her programming to give the little one a chance at life in the wild. Brightbill takes on challenges none of his kind were trained to handle, and in doing so, becomes their leader.

Surprisingly, for a movie out of Hollywood, The Wild Robot contains powerful, counter-cultural themes of discipline and bravery, relegating agendas like global warming (glimpses of water-submerged landmarks) and inclusiveness (prey and predator living under one roof on the island during a killer winter storm) to mere aesthetic and humor-masked surface plot. These agendas tastefully take a backseat to the characters we care about, giving The Wild Robot an emotional edge over lesser films.

Such a heartfelt story elevates this Chris Sanders-directed film to on-par status with the likes of Pixar’s Wall-E, while firmly setting it outside the exclusive club consisting predominantly of Pixar’s earlier works, like Toy Story and Monsters Inc, and another film by DreamWorks Animation, The Prince of Egypt.

The Wild Robot earns its screen time at the theater where the smell of popcorn and stories adorn the walls of those sacred halls where imagination goes to fly. No time of death here. Storytelling is still fighting like Brightbill to survive the killer winter of wokism.