User blog:Trollpastalol1234/CriticalBloxia reviews: Bloxy Cola series by SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX

Hello, and welcome to a new series I'd like to call "CriticalBloxia!" (epic guitar riff plays in the background)

Have you seen the Marvel short that coincides with the first Thor movie? Agent Coulson, on his way somewhere, has to fill up at a gas station. While he's browsing the minimart at the gas station, several robbers come in and hold up the store. Coulson, for no readily explained reason, takes it upon himself to kick the robber's butts, and then drives away in his refueled car. Awesome senseless action.

Imagine that scenario in Roblox, only over something much more petty and quite possibly even more senseless. Oh, and with a sequel set in a dimly lit bar. That basically sums up the "Out of Bloxy Cola" and "Out for Bloxy Cola" by the infamous leader of FEAR, SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX.

Now, I'm a fan of action movies. I love myself some good righteous crusading. But there's something that, at least for me, an action movie must have: a good plot. For example: some of the later James Bond movies, such as Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and all the other Pierce Brosnan ones, were heavily action-oriented as well as espionage and comedy-oriented. But they had plots to a greater or lesser extent. Goldeneye is about 007's mission to Russia to find out more about the Janus Syndicate and the powerful Goldeneye satellite, and along the way he discovers his fellow agent, whom he thought dead, was still alive and the head of Janus. The film excellently balances action with drama and dark comedy, and is one of my favorite movies of all time (apart from the Star Wars series).

Today, however, I'm reviewing the Bloxy Cola series. Which is an entirely different kind of action movie. Strap down, lads. This is gonna be a bumpy ride.



So here we are. The first video in the Bloxy Cola series was a smash hit, winning SONICXX a Bloxy Award for the year 2013. Currently it has over 100K views on YouTube. Evidently, it's still popular. However, commenters have noted certain problems about the movie. To see whether those complaints are valid, I will examine certain aspects of the film, then give my conclusion.

Plot
The film begins with SONICXX finding that he's out of Bloxy Cola. He decides to go to a nearby convenience store to pick up some more. As he enters, he discovers the place is being held up by several hockey-mask wearing goons, and the clerk is being held at gunpoint. SONICXX is suddenly threatened by one of the goons, and proceeds to wipe the floor with them, with the assistance of his pet hedgehog (... okay, that makes some sense seeing as this is SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX we're talking about). He then buys a case of Bloxy Cola and walks away into his car, which he presumably drives back to his house, although he could be in Tijuana now as we speak. The plot is kind of your standard action plot boiled down into the basics: hero has problem, hero arrives at place, hero scrubs the floor with all enemies at place, hero gets the girl/cursed artifact/large sum of money. Not too original, but sufficient. Plot: 6/10

Characters
I can't really get away with rating the main character, SONICXX, due to him being a real person and all, but I can rate his persona within the film. His persona is that of your standard action hero: toned as can be, with a hair-trigger temper and mastery of several martial arts. That's all well and good, but I'd love it if he had more of a personality within the movie itself. Not everyone on Roblox knows what SONICXX is like in person, me included, and thus we cannot infer his personality within the movie. In the movie, he's just an action hero with one dimension, and that dimension is set to kill.

The goons are also ill-defined, but that's just the nature of henchmen in films. Henchmen are just cannon fodder and opportunities to show the audience what the hero can do. This is partially why the sequel is so infuriating for me, but we'll get to that later.

The store owner serves as the audience's stand-in. At the end of the movie, the store owner is experiencing firsthand how powerful SONICXX's character is. It's quite clever, really.

And finally, we have the hedgehog. Seriously. It's a hedgehog bred to kill. You can just throw it at people and they're dead in seconds.

Awesome but trippy. Kinda like Dune, heh heh heh...

Characters: 6.5/10

Visuals
The second best Roblox animation I've ever seen! I say second best because the sequel came out and its animation BLEW MY MIND. The only problem is that there isn't a lot of flow during the fight scenes, and the lighting is kind of dull especially in SONICXX's house. It's like the lighting filter on Deep Space 9, only twice as soft. And there is far too much camera shake. This ain't Jason Bourne here! Other than that, no complaints are forthcoming.

Visuals: 9.8/10

Overall
This film is first and foremost a test of the capabilities of Roblox filmmaking. It may have defined itself as a classic due to the highly stylized action scenes, but other aspects such as the plot and characters bring the final score down.

Out of Bloxy Cola: 22.3/30, or 74.3%

Honestly, this movie isn't bad. It's not brilliant either, but it isn't horrendous, and it at least is entertaining. I can see the effort that went into it, as well as the time it took. SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX has proven himself a highly capable filmmaker, and has shown a stunning improvement since the days of his films like "Fall of Alianor" (don't worry, I'll review that monster later).

But, not to be satisfied, SONICXX made the sequel to Out of Bloxy Cola for the 2014 Bloxy Awards. Let's move on to...



Out for Bloxy Cola is the second major film in SONICXX's repertoire. And... oh boy. This is a tough one. Well, let's buckle down to it.

Plot
This film's plot is kind of a slight variation on the first's. SONICXX is at a bar, drinking Bloxy Cola. There are a lot of random clientele sitting around drinking (and in one man's case eating a slice of pepperoni pizza). Suddenly, who should come into the scene but a gang of thugs in a highly ominous black skull-covered van! Their leader is given prominence in this scene. They break in and start ransacking the bar. The innocent pizza-eater is attacked for no apparent reason, and then one henchman makes the mistake of assailing SONICXX, or more accurately swiping his Bloxy Cola and taking a swig of it. The drink must be poisoned, because the henchman begins choking. But honor apparently doesn't exist in SONICXX's world, for our hero punches the choking goon and knocks him out cold.

Whaddaguy, everybody. Give a hand for SONICTHEHEDGEHOGXX.

SONICXX swiftly takes out the rest of the henchmen, then faces down the leader. As the leader stares at SONICXX, we get a bizarre flashback of SONICXX being held at gunpoint in the first movie. We are led to presume that the pistol-toting goon is the gang leader. Okay, that was an unexpected twist, but the goon didn't have enough of a character as it is to return for the sequel of all things, much less a major villain! There are so many more possibilities for the villain! There could be a sort of "Anti-SONIC" that has a vendetta against SONICXX, or something. But I'm getting off track. The two get into a fight, and somehow slide all the way across the room and out the window, where they land on the street below and resume their fight. The gang leader holds a random woman hostage, and then as SONICXX tries to intercept him he jumps into the black van with the woman and drives away. SONICXX, determined to let no man walk out alive, steals a guy's motorcycle and compensates him handsomely with a bundle of Robux. There is a car chase, and the van crashes, letting the woman escape. SONICXX and the gang leader have one final confrontation, and SONICXX winds up shooting him in the head with a pistol.

This next scene is what really gets me.

As SONICXX walks away from the corpse, we zoom in on its face. Then, and I'm not kidding you here, THE EYES OPEN. Okay, let me look something up.

...

Right. A 9mm bullet moves about 1,400 feet/second when fired from an average handgun. Since this kill was presumably a headshot, this man's eyes SHOULD NOT BE OPENING. Have you ever seen a watermelon shot at close range with a handgun? It's messy. Nobody could survive that at close range.

Plus, the "dead guy opens his eyes" cliché is one of the oldest in the book. I've seen it in a lot of other movies, particularly monster and slasher films.

This plot is an improvement over the first Bloxy Cola movie, but still nothing to write home about. There are bits which could have been improved, and bits which are unchanged. To sum it up, the plot is still the barebones action movie basics, but SONICXX is gradually writing flesh onto those bones.

Plot: 7/10

Characters
Not really much to say here. It's mostly the same batch as the other movie, except for the bartender and the fat man eating pizza. They did make one of the previous henchmen into a major villain, but... honestly, there was no buildup and the reveal came off as kind of a rush-job.

Characters: 5/10

Visuals
This is the very best Roblox animation I've ever seen. It's an improvement over the first one, with smooth movements and fluid fight scenes that actually somewhat make sense. The only problem is that CONFOUNDED SHAKY CAM! Again, this ain't Jason Bourne, this is Roblox. The softening filter is somehow worse in this movie than the first one. God, it's like there's a fog over everything! What, is Venezia so badly polluted that even the air conditioning has just given up and died?

I've also noticed, on the plus side, that facial movements have been greatly expanded, unlike the first one where there are only one or two different faces in the whole movie. If there's ever a third installment, it'd be awesome to see some dialogue with lip-synch. That would be pretty sweet.

Visuals: 10/10

Overall
Even though the characters are basically the same as the last film, and the plot is kind of clichéd and contrived, the film still has a place in my favorite Roblox movies, along with Roblox: In Darkness by JohanSKruger and The LMaDer by Dayren. It's got problems, however.

Out for Bloxy Cola: 22/30, or 73.3%

FINAL SCORE FOR BLOXY COLA SERIES: 44.3/60, or 73.83%

NEXT TIME...
It's a bird! It's a plane! ...No, it's another BloxCon entry. Thanks for playin'.