Oh yeah, I’m going there.

It is time to stir the pot. I’ve been doing reviews about specific movies, and the occasional TV show, and I’m usually pretty polite. What’s the saying again? If you ain’t got nothin’ nice to say then don’t say nothin’? As Eminem put it, fuck that shit.

This is going to be my first of many blog entries in my new Haterade Series. Look for the Haterade tag in future posts.

YA is short for young adult. Not teen, not tween, but young adult. Which at this point is pretty much a blanket term for teens and tweens… and people with poor taste in movies. Can you believe someone actually thought “young adult” – a whooping 11 characters – was so long that it needed to be turned it into an acronym? That’s lazier than condensing “do you know what I mean?” into “na’mean?”

But seriously, these YA movie suck. Balls. Big balls. Here we go.

Dystopian Futures that Make No Sense

Not no sense in the fact that they are fantastical, like Avengers or Harry Potter. No sense in how could such communities ever come to exist at all? Harry Potter, despite its magic actually seems plausible. We’re magical, we need a place to stay since humans are assholes, so let’s make a VIP magical land and oh, let’s put a boarding school there to teach kids about magic. Even Twilight for all of its Kristen Stewart shortcomings had a decent premise, just a horrible story… act acting… and staring.

Divergent Plot

But take a look at Divergent. Teens are categorized into factions based on personality traits, except for that one little caveat, oh yeah… they are ultimately allowed to choose which faction they join. So now it’s optionally compulsory? Who designed this system, the Obamacare team?

Despite the fact that you can be suited for one faction, but choose another, if you actually exhibit traits of multiple factions, they kill you. Oh, and if you don’t exhibit any traits of the five factions, you become a hobo and starve to death in the streets. They really got this perfect totalitarian utopia thing locked down tight, don’t they?

I mean seriously, I’m a libertarian and communism makes more sense than this system. I can see Stalin sitting down, mustache n’ all, and pitching communism. “Comrades, dees is our plan. Everyone gets equal pay. Agreed?” But I would love to sit in on the sales pitch for Divergatopia.

“So guys, check this shit out, we’re gonna like…. split everyone into like… five groups, one for every finger. Oh, and like, all the losers go farm and hand out blankets n’ stuff. And then like all the nerds go read sciency stuff. And like, maybe someone should make laws or something? Oh, and the rest of us will just run around and do parkour and jump off buildings. EXTREMMMMEEEEE!!!!”

Or as Leo Sun put it,

“In Divergent, dystopia is simply replaced by a bloodier version of high school drama.”

It’s basically the less racist version of public school where different cliques of kids are easily identifiable. Or was that just my high school?

Maze Runner Plot

I think the Honest Trailer sums it up about right. So a meteor crashes into Earth and turns people into zombies and the world becomes a desert, and in order to save humanity from the desert zombie apocalypse, evil adults maroon a bunch of teenage boys in what I can only imagine is a 300 foot tall booby-trapped maze the size of Australia, with a bunch of man-eating monster robot spiders that then kill the teenage boys. They built alllll this, instead of, ya know… trying to like find a cure for zombism, or maybe investing in drip irrigation?

Oh, and then they drop one girl in a group of like 20 horny guys to get gang raped. Sounds legit.

Hunger Games Plot

Okay, they can literally make fire, and weather, and trees, and killer animals out of thin air. And they can’t make food? And then Katniss goes to war with a recurve bow? Not even a fucking compound bow? And what’s up with the people in the Capitol dressing up like Johnny Depp knock offs?

Stupid Vernacular

You know what I’m talking about.

So in Divergent, the factions are called what now? Dauntless, Amity, Erudite, Candor… Abne-what now? Abnegation? 4 ½ words you never used or even heard of before this movie.

Where’d the author find these words? The deleted scenes of Mary Poppins? Supercandorfragilisticexpiabnegation! Come on, erudite sounds like a gem you’ll hear about on the jewelry channel at 3 a.m.

Oh and Maze Runner. I’ll just rattle ‘em off:

• griever,
• glader,
• med-jacks,
• shank,
• klunk,
• schuck,
• slim it,
• slinthead,
• good that,
• jacked,
• and like 10 more.

You’d think I bashed my head against the key board and made this up, but no joke. Look this up. It’s called glader slang.

Stupid Weapons and Gear

I can get reinventing systems of government or society. But if you’re going to have guns and body armor, why go through the trouble of reinventing the wheel?

You gotta love the Hunger Games sperm suits, complete with rib cage chest armor ribbed for her pleasure. This is almost as bad as putting nipples on the Batsuit.

Remember that movie Host by the Twilight author, where aliens took over earth by inhabiting human’s bodies, and the aliens also randomly decided to hire Xzibit to paint all the cars silver?

And what’s up with Katniss going to war with a bow and arrow? She can carry about 30 arrows total, and that’s it. It’s not like anyone else is using them so once she’s out, she’s out for good. Bows and arrows are all fun n’ games… til’ someone Chris Kyle’s your ass from 1,900 yards away.

And then of course these YA movies always have to reinvent weapons, because we don’t have enough existing weapons to choose from apparently. Check out these guns from Divergent? It literally looks like someone superglued a super soaker to a pogo stick and spray painted it silver. What, the future doesn’t have Glocks and AR15s? Are those LEDs?

God, I can’t wait for the next season of Game of Thrones.

Alright, I’m done for now, but I’ll be back with another episode of Haterade here shortly. Thanks for reading and letting me vent.