Will the next Batman movie be a reboot or a sequel?

The recent reboot of Spider-Man into "The Amazing Spider-Man" came a little too soon on the heels of the previous film.

Yes, the new film is a good film. Just as good as the previous films. But it annoyed fans that they came out with the new film so quickly... or at least it feels that way. There was a 5 year gap between the two films.

And now that the Batman Trilogy is done (assuming it is done)... what next? Does Robin become the new Batman and they continue the franchise storyline with a new actor? (In the comics Robin eventually becomes the new Batman too.)

Warner Brothers execs seem to be keeping their cards very close to their collective vests on this topic.

After all, what can they do next? Batman Begins set a new grittier standard for superhero filmmaking, making it clear that films could be realistic, gritty, and that a superhero's early beginnings should be more about the learning process and an evolution into the superhero.

Or do we go back to the old style of Batman films... which was childish, outlandish and ridiculous?

Fans of Batman evidently enjoyed both, but the new Batman films were definitely more successful and got far more praise for their realism.

Awhile back the studio execs revealed they were planning to reboot the franchise after Nolan concluded his trilogy, but the end of “The Dark Knight Rises” clearly leaves the door open for another sequel - a 4th film. So maybe they are now rethinking this and wondering if there is potential there for a new Robin film - or a Batman film wherein Robin becomes the new Batman.

Which frankly seems like the only logical conclusion at this point, because trying to reboot this particular series will be tricky. If they try to go back to the old way of doing it, wherein the hero and villains are more childish and ridiculous... well then it might be the first Batman film to flop horribly.

And then there is the matter of the Justice League.

DC would love to make a whole series of films for Superman, Batman, Green Lantern (that film sucked BTW), Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, the Flash and so forth and have them all come together as the Justice League.

But to do that and do it properly they need to find actors which the audience loves, make films which are successful, and bring them all together in a well-knit series that is interconnected.

And that is tricky to pull off. The frequent changes of actors in the Hulk films prove that.

Star Trek Maps

Below - Maps of the galaxy in the Star Trek universe + interior maps of the Enterprise and Voyager ships.











Fantasy Maps of Barsoom, the Simpson's Springfield and Combined Mash Up

Barsoom, the Alternate Mars from the John Carter series of pulp fiction books


The Simpson's Springfield Map

Combined Fantasy World Mash Up

Fantasy World Maps: Harry Potter

Map of Hogwarts, from the fictional world of Harry Potter


Another version of Hogwarts, from the fictional world of Harry Potter


The Marauders Map, the Interior of Hogwarts Castle


A Map from a Harry Potter Computer Game, the Interior of Hogwarts Castle


The Exterior of Hogwarts Grounds, with Sites of Interest

Create Worlds with D20s

Brings a whole new way of thinking about "Star Trek D20"...

Rojan: "You say you create whole worlds with these?"

Kirk: "Limited only by your imagination."


The Hobbit, How to tell the 13 Dwarves Apart


So how does one tell apart 13 dwarves in a movie and learn all their names?

Well for starters it helps to know their back story. Each dwarf has a story, and if you know their story then you can learn the names and faces of each dwarf. Easy! With time you will figure them all out.

Lets start with the easy ones.

Thorin

Thorin Oakenshield—technically Thorin II*—is the one dwarf you won’t forget. He’s the leader of the company that disrupts Bilbo’s pastoral idyll in the Shire en route to reclaiming his people’s home under the Lonely Mountain. As you find out early in The Hobbit film, this gold-rich kingdom (also known as Erebor) was lost to the fearsome fire-drake Smaug. In his Unfinished Tales, Tolkien describes Thorin as an “heir without hope,” hardened by both despair and rage. “The years lengthened,” Tolkien writes, and “the embers in the heart of Thorin grew hot again, as he brooded on the wrongs of his House and of the vengeance upon the Dragon that was bequeathed to him.”

Played by a frowning Richard Armitage, Thorin in The Hobbit draws immediate comparison to Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn in the earlier LoTR movies— yet another scion of a glorious bloodline reduced to skulking in shadows. Thorin earned the sobriquet “Oakenshield” at the Battle of Anulbizar—an epic dwarf vs. orc bloodbath at the gates of the greatest lost dwarf kingdom, Moria—where, amid the clash of blade and axe, he was forced to defend himself with a splintered oak trunk. The dwarves won that fight, but lost half their numbers, including their king Thror, Thorin’s grandfather. His father, Thrain II, wanders off, half-crazy, and, as we learn in Tolkien’s appendices, is captured and tortured by the über-evil Sauron. Thorin leads his dwarves to settle in the Blue Mountains northwest of the Shire, but never shakes the tug of his eastern birthright and his hatred for the dragon who stole it. He intones in the first chapter of Tolkien’s The Hobbit: “Far over the misty mountains grim/ To dungeons deep and caverns dim/ We must away ere break of day/ To win our harps and gold from him.”

*Thorin I is six generations Thorin II’s elder; he was King under the Lonely Mountain before choosing to abandon it to colonize another set of mountains (descendants would return). This is where it gets even more complicated: their whole bloodline is descended from the kings of the greatest dwarf kingdom, Khazad-Dum, also known as Moria, which we see in The Fellowship of the Ring and which was lost to that ancient demon of the deep, the Balrog. The dwarves, for Tolkien, offer a cautionary moral tale: their insatiable greed and lust for the treasures of the earth serve only to bring evil upon them.



Dwalin

Dwalin is the first dwarf to arrive at Bilbo’s home. Tolkien says he has “a blue beard tucked into a golden belt.” As you can see, Peter Jackson’s adaptation has done away with the multi-colored beard scheme, perhaps mindful that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for children. Instead Dwalin’s most noticeable signifier is his bald, oblong head. Not a prominent figure in Tolkien’s books, Dwalin in the film is your stock-in-trade dwarf warrior, taciturn and Scottish-brogued (the more playful ones in the company conveniently have Irish or Northern Irish accents). In Tolkien’s books, we learn that Dwalin and his brother Balin fought alongside Thorin’s house at Azanulbizar; their father, Fundin, died there. So, yes, he’ll be killing lots of orcs.



Balin

Dwalin’s older brother, Balin, is the kindly old dwarf of the company. In the book, he has extraordinary vision and often keeps watch; in the film, he appears a bit doddering. Balin befriends the out-of-place hobbit Bilbo sooner than the other dwarves. After the events of The Hobbit, Tolkien says Balin disappears with a troupe of dwarves to retake Moria. We only discover his fate in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gimli the dwarf finds Balin’s tomb and the skeletons of his kin.



Gloin

Speaking of Gimli, meet his father, Gloin. Another veteran of the bloody Wars of the Dwarves and Orcs, Gloin looks every bit the grimacing, ginger-haired axeman his son (played by John Rhys-Davies in LoTR) is. Gloin did not allow Gimli to join Thorin’s quest—it’s assumed—because of Gimli’s young age.



Oin

Brother of Gloin, Óin is a somewhat befuddled dwarf with an oversized ear trumpet. After the events of The Hobbit, he joins Balin’s expedition to Moria and, according to Ori’s account, is killed by the “Watcher in the Water,” a lake monster which resurfaces in The Fellowship of the Ring.



Kili

Kili and his brother Fili are Thorin Oakenshield’s nephews and the youngest members of the company. Like their uncle, they have somewhat normal—perhaps even fetching—noses; in Tolkien’s questionable aesthetic universe, good looks have a lot to do with the pedigree of your lineage. Almost elf-like, Kili is also very adept with a bow.



Fili

In Fili’s case, the film has stayed true to the book: Tolkien says that he and his brother Kili both have yellow beards; in the film, at least Fili does. Youthful and courageous, the nephews of Thorin Oakenshield often act as scouts for the company.



Dori

Dori, alongside his younger brothers Nori and Ori, joined Thorin in exile in the Blue Mountains. Eager flautists, they accompany their distant relation on his quest to reclaim Erebor. Don’t let his grey beard fool you—Dori is one of the strongest of the 13 dwarves.



Nori

For viewers of the film, the most identifiable feature about Nori will be his absurd facial hair, sculpted with braids into a strange Christmas-ornament arrangement. Brother to Ori and Dori, distant relations of Thorin, he plays a minimal role in Tolkien’s narrative. The film’s producers, though, seem keen to deepen the character. An advance statement from Peter Jackson’s studio about Nori says: “Nobody ever quite knows what the quick-witted and wily Nori is up to, except that it’s guaranteed to be dodgy and quite possibly illegal.” Is that the hairpiece of a criminal?



Ori

Younger brother to Nori and Dori, Ori is the bookish geek of the 13, polite with a penchant for scribbling away in his journals. His writing habit comes into most dramatic effect not in The Hobbit, but in a famous scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. Ori is among the group that goes with Balin to retake Moria; it is the final words of his chronicle that Gandalf chillingly reads out: “We cannot get out. A shadow moves in the dark. We cannot get out. They are coming.”




Bifur

To give the somewhat innocuous Bifur some personality in the movies, the filmmakers decided to shut him up. How? Well, have a look at his head. There’s a rusty orc axe-blade permanently wedged into his skull. He’s alive and goes about doing dwarvish things like glaring dourly and spilling food on his beard, but the wound means he doesn’t talk much, muttering only on occasion in unintelligible Dwarvish. Bifur is cousin to Bombur and Bofur, a trio from a lesser lineage of dwarves unrelated to Thorin and his clan.




Bofur

Brother to the portly Bombur and cousin to the quasi-mute Bifur, Bofur completes the antic trio with a mustache that curls in symmetry with his outlandish hat. Expect him to be chirpy, goofy and perhaps a bit cloying.




Bombur

The first words Tolkien uses in reference to Bombur are “immensely fat and heavy” and that’s all you have to remember of the brother of Bofur and cousin of Bifur. His beard is braided in a circle that rests against his vast stomach; he will be the butt of numerous gags and fat jokes over the course of the films. In one moment in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Bombur’s companions have to haul his girthy frame up using a series of ropes. He makes up for such burdens by being one of the more affable dwarves of the company.

The Hunt for Gollum

Can't wait for The Hobbit to come out on DVD?

Watch the fan-made short film "The Hunt for Gollum" in the meantime. Its free on YouTube and actually very well made.


The Unstoppable Force Vs Immovable Object Paradox

By Charles Moffat.

I have solved the unstoppable force / immovable object paradox.

The Irresistible Force Paradox, also called the Unstoppable Force Paradox, is a classic paradox formulated as "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"

The origin of the paradox is from China, wherein the metaphor originates in the Chinese story of a perfect spear that can pierce all shields and a perfect shield that stops all spears. The story is found in the 3rd century BC philosophical book Han Feizi. In the story, a man was trying to sell a spear and a shield. When he was asked how good his spear was, he said that his spear could pierce any shield. Then, when asked how good his shield was, he said that it could defend from all spear attacks. Then someone asked him what would happen if he were to take his spear to strike his shield; the seller could not answer. This led to the Chinese idiom of "zìxīang máodùn" (自相矛盾), which means "self-contradictory", wherein the Chinese word 矛盾; pinyin: máodùn; means "Spear-Shield".

A variation on this paradox can also be found in the Greek story of the Teumessian fox, who can never be caught, and the hound Laelaps, who never misses what it hunts. Realizing the paradox, Zeus turned both creatures into static stars which "chase" each other across the night sky.

Lastly there is another form of this paradox, believed to have been created by an atheist, which challenges the omnipotence of god. It asks "Can God create a stone so heavy it cannot be lifted, not even by God Himself?"). If god is truly all powerful, he should be able to create a stone that even god can't lift. But if god is all powerful, then why can't he lift the stone?

Anyway back to my original topic, this matter can be determined through physics and logic.

For an object to be called immovable it would have to have "infinite mass".

For a force to be unstoppable it would likewise need to have "infinite torque".

If you shoot an arrow from a bow with 30 lbs of torque, it will continue on its path until slowed by air and obstacles equal to the amount of force applied. If the arrow has 45 lbs of torque instead of 30 it will go 50% further, or in the case of an archery target, the arrow will embed itself 50% deeper (minus any difference caused by air along the way). However if the arrow has infinite torque then when it loses say 45 lbs of torque, its no big deal, because there is still an infinite amount of torque left.

Thus when an unstoppable force with infinite torque meets a so-called immovable object with infinite mass, there can only be one solution: The immovable object is then moved. The flaw for the object is that it lacks any force holding it in place. The only thing that can move the immovable object is something with infinite torque, because there will always be more infinite torque to keep pushing the object regardless of its infinite mass. The so-called immovable object is not truly immovable, because it has no energy holding it in place.

Of course, in the end there is no such things as irresistible forces and immovable objects. Neither can possibly exist.

Or can they?

TIME is an unstoppable force. It can speed up or slow down relative to gravity in that area of space, but it does not stop.

A BLACK HOLE therefore is our universe's equivalent of an immovable object. The gravity surrounding it is so strong that it can slow down time relative to the rest of the universe and its mass is so great it is considered to be infinite.

However Black Holes still move through the galaxy, moving through both time and space. So they are indeed moving.

Thus, the Unstoppable Force (Time) wins.
Publishing a fantasy book? Make sure you get a professional fantasy book editor.

Study Archery in Toronto

So you want to study archery, but you are having difficulty finding an archery instructor who is local. However there is a solution. If you are willing to travel you can take a crash course in archery in Toronto, Canada. 10 lessons over a two week period will take you from archery novice to an experienced and capable archer.

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