by Matty Boy Anderson 04.09.08

It's time again for me to fling wide the windows of the Pod Studio, and allow you, the gracious net-surfing public, to peer inside and learn the secrets therein. Please try to ignore the smell. I'll be your guide today, and I'll be happy to answer any polite questions you might have. Yes, I said "polite". If you're going to keep asking about the smell, just pretend our neighbors are burning old tires, and we'll move on. Alright? Super.

Now on to business. I see a lot of you have that "tl;dr" look on your faces, so I'll be concise. If you haven't been by the Pod in a while, you may not know that I made a feature-length (118 minute) animated movie, and it's actually on a DVD you can have. Click the image below and get one.

(If you're a frequent visitor who's suffered through 2+ years of sparse updates and is already sick of hearing about Armageddon, thank you for your patience.) I made a movie. I would never claim it as perfect, but I think it's funny as hell. Numerous people I have never met think it's funny as hell. It took me a little more than two years to make it, but it was totally worth it-- BECAUSE IT IS FUNNY AS HELL. I can not only guarantee that statement, I can back it up by pointing out that OTHER movies, which are either IN THEATERS OR ON DVD, coincidentally came up with the same gags I did. EXCEPT MINE ARE ABOUT A BILLION TIMES FUNNIER.

I can't elaborate too much more than I'm about to, because I don't want to spoil parts of MY movie. But I don't have to explain them-- that's the beauty of FINALLY bringing the movie to DVD; it put a final time-stamp on the production. But first note:

John's Arm: Armageddon was "completed" (functional as a movie) on February 18, 2008, one day after the birthday of Michael Bay, who directed another movie called Armageddon, which came out ten years ago.

John's Arm: Armageddon was, technically, conceived as a video game, in 2003. If you've frequented MTP since those days, I apologize, because you're probably sicker of the movie than anybody. The movie even utilizes numerous backgrounds from the unfinished side-scroller, and nearly every villain that the player fights as John's Arm went on to appear in the movie, even if they hadn't yet been seen elsewhere. The movie even carries over the game's concept of the town being overwhelmed by a supervillain convention, which itself was adapted from an Avunculus comic I never finished-- from 2000. The rest, mostly, was cannibalized from other unfinished scripts and animations, like John's Arm V: Five Fingers of Fury, and Bonk!, which also go back as far as 2003. "Ultimate Remote", the unused lead villain from Five Fingers, even gets a consolation cameo in the convention scene with TOAD Commander. He walks slowly, so you won't miss it.

Oh, how the sorta-mighty have fallen: "Nameless" battles John's Arm with his Ray of Ambiguous Purpose in the unfinished game (above left), and later appears to have taken residence in front of the same coffee shop in the movie's opening credits (above right).

So if you're keeping score, John's Arm: Armageddon is a sort of video game adaptation, except the video game was never released because I'm lousy with code, Rando got a real job, and my old computer couldn't run the demo worth a lick. The reason for this would not be the fact that my computer was old, but because I was at that point too stupid not to keep it cozied up against a subwoofer I had that could distort a CRT picture from across the room.

Now, you may very well ask if you were actually paying attention, why try to establish John's Arm: Armageddon as an adaptation of a video game, particularly when the video game in question never even made it to beta phase? Two reasons.

1. It makes the "illegal videotape" bit with Willis "meta", if empty buzzwords are your thing.
   
2. It means I can make another guarantee: John's Arm: Armageddon is better than any movie Uwe Boll has made, or ever will make. Guaranteed.

Oh, I know. You're saying Boll-bashing is "played out". My friend, you're defending Uwe Boll. Watch any of his movies and tell me they don't make you crazy with hate, whether it was based on a videogame you liked or not. Don't get so caught up in all your memes and lulz that you lose sight of your common sense. And sure, say what you will about me occasionally defending Michael Bay post-Transformers, but it's crystal clear to anyone that Bay has improved upon the things he's been criticized for. Boll's movies never improve. Look, when you start literally beating up your critics and telling people to file petitions to stop you, it's obvious you're WAAAAAYYYY beyond considering improving your abilities at anything.

Since I lack medical insurance but possess higher-primate neural capacities, I declined to step into the ring with professional boxer and bright light enthusiast Uwe Boll. Not that I was invited, but there's a line about Uwe within John's Arm: Armageddon that may inspire him to fly out here and beat me until either I take it back, or my skull has a cupholder. Maybe he'll even punch through time, like a rage-red tornado, back to when I animated the scene that contains the line in question... IN LATE 2005.

But no! I will not fight the boxing man, for I am not a boxer. I beat Uwe Boll at his CHOSEN PROFESSION: I made a movie that's head-and-shoulders better than ANY of his. And all Ol' Face-Punchy Boll had to do was point a camera at whatever has-beens wander in from soft-core cable. I HAD TO DRAW EVERYTHING! Do you UNDERSTAND THAT, UWE? Let's say, for example, I wanted to imply that a movie's protagonist, a female scientist, is smart. If I used your technique, which is to put glasses on Tara Reid, I would get as far as sketching her for the first time, slap myself on the forehead, and say aloud "There's no one in the goddamn WORLD who's gonna buy Tara Reid as SMART, glasses or not!" Then I would look around, and if it was clear that any part of the production involved Uwe Boll, I would eat many, many bullets. It's not impossible; Uwe recently made Postal, which he describes as a "comedy". Compare that comedy to mine and get back to me. Watch mine first; you can't enjoy it if you've already swallowed Drano or jumped off a building.

Now, earlier in this update, before I got off on the whole Bollbaiting tangent (god, his name just cries out for jest), I suggested that other comedies, out currently, are making the same jokes I made in John's Arm: Armageddon, just nowhere near as well. While I do believe this, and implore you to discover them on your own (especially because "references" and John's Arm: Armageddon have a special relationship, as you'll see when you watch it), I'll give you this example. Let's talk about another movie for a moment. Well, according to its title, it is actually a movie. This is helpful; otherwise I would have taken it for mustard gas and called the cops.

It takes a special kind of incompetence to make people think, by your deeds alone, that you are actually a malfunctioning computer program masquerading as two idiot screenwriters. Across the internet, users howl in e-vain for a rational explanation; surely Epic Movie, Date Movie and Meet The Spartans are NOT the creations of human beings, or beings at all? Maybe the letters of the names Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, when carefully rearranged, form the algorithm that unlocks the secret to making movies that are an affront to any kind of a loving god? Right? Right?

One of the basic goals I had in creating John's Arm: Armageddon was simply to make the funniest movie I could. Along the way, I threw in a touch of personal perspective, and more than a few things that are LEGITIMATELY satirical. I can even delineate HOW these things are satirical, what I'm satirizing, and for what satirical purpose. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer can't even SPELL "satire". I'd bet you a million dollars their idea of satire begins and ends with Mad magazine movie spoofs. And that million dollars would only be a fraction of how much the last movie these two cocksuckers made took in at the box office.

I don't need to have seen any of their movies to be able to guarantee that my movie is funnier. I don't have to smell every object that comes out of my ass to know if it's shit or not. (That's proof right there that I'm better than Kal Penn in Epic Movie.) There are better sites than mine that can tell you all about the Agony these movies inflict, not to mention Maddox summed it up goddamn perfectly with Vague Genre Movie. I'm positive my movie is better; it's up to you to prove me right. When you see John's Arm: Armageddon, you'll notice that I, like the shithearted makers of Epic Movie, included a gag about Angelina Jolie adopting babies. The crucial difference? Mine's actually funny enough to make you forget how shopworn the joke now is. Theirs has a picture of Angelina Jolie. You know, in case you needed to put the face with the name.

Above left: spineless, softball Brangelina gag from Epic Movie. Above right: My cock-blastingly superior Angelina Jolie gag, in set-up stage, from JA:A. Fun fact: most people can't tell my cartoon version of Jolie (above far right) from the photograph.

Maybe, when you see the Angelina Jolie gag from John's Arm: Armageddon, you won't "get it". This is perfectly alright. Show it to your friends. Show it to your weird friend who watches tons of movies. He or she will knowingly chuckle, then explain how the gag is respecting your intelligence by referencing a scene from a film that influenced people's emotions in a certain way. Then you both will watch the gag together at some point in the future, and you will enjoy it on a WHOLE NEW LEVEL. And oh... that weird feeling you're getting, like an anxious tickle? That's the sensation of watching a movie that treats you like you're smart. Don't worry; it's normal these days to forget how that feels.

The schoolbook definition of humor is the reversal of expectations. I fully expect Epic Movie and its ilk to be mule shit, and they are, as expected. Therefore, they are the opposite of humor. John's Arm: Armageddon is almost two hours of me doing my best to defy your expectations. I fucking DARE you to watch it and not laugh. I DOUBLE DOG DARE you to say Epic Movie is funnier. My movie KILLS THAT SHIT-- and I'm ONE GUY!!! Epic Movie was the work of TWO??!? Shenanigans. Oh man, I was looking for an excuse to say "shenanigans"!

I think I've probably made my point by now, but this won't be the end of it. The more that people spend to see terrible, unfunny, uninspired "movies" like Epic Movie, the more I'll holler about how much better John's Arm: Armageddon is. Buy it, I'm right. You'll see. Or you can wait until your friends tell you. I'm only frank with you like this because of how much I love you.

tl; dr

-MBA