Twas the Night Before Takeoff

...and I'm still awake because I'm not sure why, but I am.

Tomorrow is the day.

Tomorrow, I'll get on a plane and fly half-way around the world. My life for two months is contained in a checked suitcase, a carry on, and a backpack. I have waited fifteen years for this day.

Right now, I'm a tangled mix of emotions and I'm not quite sure what is going on, but I guess we'll know tomorrow.

Stay tuned right here for all of my crazy adventure updates, pictures, and the like.

Two Weeks and a Tentative Schedule

That's right: two weeks from today, I'll be on my way to London! I'm so excited I can hardly sit still while thinking about it. Pretty much going back to my five-year-old self on Christmas morning.

With that, we received a tentative schedule for our program, and it is going to be amazing. Within the first two days of being there, we will have seen St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London, and the Museum of London. We also found out that we'll be going to Paris in the third week of the program, and up to Northern England, the Lake District, and Scotland at the end of May. Not to mention I planned a tentative day to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour and have decided on at least three musicals to go see on the West End. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm going to make it to Wimbledon, but that'll just be a reason to go back!

I simply cannot wait, and I can't believe I am so close! I've been putting off packing because as soon as I'm packed, I know I'll just want to be on that plane. Several people have asked me "how are you thinking/doing anything else?" and the truth is that I'm not really. I'm just trying to get everything all finished so I can take off!

I've dreamed about this day for the past fifteen years, and I can't believe that now, it's so close. Hopefully the next two weeks will fly by!

Why I Can't Get on the Superhero Train, or plane I guess, or...well, you get the picture.

So, in the past five days or so, I've watched two Marvel superhero movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Avengers. I've previously seen the first Captain America and part of Thor.

I'm not a fan.

Okay, I can enjoy parts of it (I'll get to that), but for the most part, I just...can't see the hype.

My biggest thing is that there is hardly any plot. I was halfway through The Avengers and all that had happened was some explosions (so many explosions... nothing is safe when these people are around, apparently) and some creepy good acting on Tom Hiddleston's part. Apparently, there were a lot of allusions to the movies before this one (Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, etc.), but why did it take an hour to get to anything happening for this film? Same thing with the second Captain America; the conflict just felt like a rehashing of the first film, with one little twist. I'm all about story, so this is a problem for me. I want more story, more plot, a stronger journey. I want something new that's going to surprise me. On that note, they really need to make better use of some of the incredible characters they have. I mean, can someone tell me what use the incredibly intriguing Hawkeye was in The Avengers? I wasn't sure either.

My second beef with these is all those explosions. I mean, most of them just seem so unnecessary. Surely there is a more intelligent way to beat these bad guys than blowing up most of New York City? It just seems a little extreme. Sure, all of these flashbangs and flames make for some fantastic cinematography (bravo special effects teams!) and whoever choreographs the fight scenes sure knows how to make it exciting (I mean, you just want to cheer when Captain America is out there, throwing his shield and landing a roundhouse kick in the same move, or Hawkeye hits a target without looking). Maybe this is just me, but through all of these things I just keep thinking, "Man, you just made a huge mess and look at all those poor regular people who are going to have to clean it."

All right. Let's transition away from that, because I'm sure I've made somebody out there upset (I'm sorry. Really, I am). The last thing that irks me really leads into the thing that I really love, and that's character. So many of these characters just seem to have no depth. There are things hinted at, but in the films I've seen, I really haven't seen any character development. That being said, the actors they have chosen for these parts are in-cred-i-ble. I could go on about all of them, but I'm just going to go with Chris Evans as Captain America as an example, because I've seen the most of him. He's completely believable. Every gesture, every line is perfectly placed. He relays so much emotion in his eyes. It's easy to see that this is a straight-up guy with a strong sense of morals who is just trying to do the right thing. It's wonderful. He perfectly balances fierce soldier and somewhat lost regular guy taken out of time. Plus, he's polite and rides a motorcycle that looks like Steve McQueen just got off of it while wearing a leather bomber jacket. It's classy, okay? And I love that old-fashioned classy. We'll stop it there.

I will say there is someone doing an incredible job with the ending credits, though. The graphics for that are breathtaking.

It seems that superhero movies are this generation's cowboy and war flicks, but as a huge fan of those old movies, I just don't think I can get behind the souped up version of them. I like simple. Though the shout-out to "War Games" ("Do you want to play a game?") in the second Captain America gave me a good laugh...though I'm sure at least eighty percent of the theatre I was in didn't understand it at all.

I can certainly appreciate these films for their fun, popcorn filled excitement, and maybe I just need to see more of them, but for now, I think I'll just stay a casual viewer. Plus, I've ranted on enough.

London updates are coming soon, as I've only got 22 days to takeoff! And then maybe something actually exciting will be written on this blog...