Geeky Things My Dad Has Ruined: Part II

Written by Shae Rufe

Given the first blog, you think I would have learned a long time ago to not watch things with my dad. Sadly, that’s not true. But, alas, no matter how hard I try, my dad has simply managed to poke plot holes in my life. I think his existence is based upon ruining my inner nerd. Still, he’s a pretty funny guy, and while I love to hate him, and hate to love him, he brings up some amusing points, and I think he does it just for the sake of arguing.
 
Like, watching Star Trek reruns on TV. Now, Bones is my all-time favorite character. I do not care about which captain is more awesome, I do not care which generation everyone loves and grew up with. Bones is the best. He’s sassy, snarky, and so sarcastic it hurts. His eye rolls are epic, and quite frankly, if I were to have a person as a spirit animal, it would be Bones. Do you sense the ‘but’ coming? Can you feel it? Right. We weren’t even watching the show, in fact we were just talking about it when my dad thought it would be fun to point out that Bones, while a ‘good doctor’ never actually touches most of the patients he finds. It’s always a look and a ‘he’s dead Jim’. Of course, I argued that technology and doctoring are different in that era…and dad countered with ‘You can’t tell if someone’s dead just by looking at them!’ I’m pretty sure words were yelled, and then for the rest of the day he spoke like William Shatner while quoting Bones. Yeah, if that doesn’t sum up my dad, I honestly don’t know what does.
 
If you think that’s bad, going to the movies can be worse. Admittedly, I am a talker. I sit away from people and will whisper, quietly, my comments to friends throughout the movie. I’m even more so that way with my dad. X-Men Origins: Wolvervine is a movie that my dad personally lost his shit in. Does that even make sense? I suppose it does. When we see a young Logan with bone claws, my dad literally started ranting about how this is not accurate to the comic at all. And that he should know, he’s read them. He then went on to say that later in the series Magneto takes the metal out of Wolverine, and the bone claws are a side effect. Did I care? Not really. I thought it was a cool movie….until Deadpool happened and my dad nearly just walked out of the theater. Can you imagine the conniption he had at the blatant disrespect this movie had personally thrust upon him and his childhood? Or seeing the The Dark Knight Rises? Granted, he didn’t ruin anything over that movie. We both did agree on a lot of things over that. I’m the Batman expert in the house, so I probably ruined a lot for him during that movie. With no regrets!
 
Star Wars is a nerd staple that we all love or at least enjoyed and saw once, or maybe twice. My dad made me binge watch the original three movies and then promptly pointed out things. Such as, Luke and Leia being siblings….the first time I saw them kiss. Which, we can all have an ‘ew’ moment over that. It’s not Game of Thrones bad, but still. But, in Return of the Jedi, Leia admits to ‘always knowing’ that Luke was her brother…so that makes that kiss a lot weirder, especially when dad pointed it out. Or at the beginning when Obi-Wan dies. Dad paused the VCR to rant for a solid 5 minutes on how ‘striking him down’ didn’t making him stronger. In fact, the body disappearing completely was a stupid waste of plot.
 
Then the prequels happened and along came Jar Jar. And the Anakin/Padme love story. My dad loves Star Wars. We legitimately used to have full on lightsaber battles in the garage. He’d pull the cars out, close the door, turn the lights out, and we’d spend hours hitting each other. Anakin’s easy turn to the dark side was almost too funny to watch…until he slaughtered an entire temple of children. And then Padme dies…and Dad sat and laughed when Vader yelled ‘Noooo!’ and informed me that it was a little silly for a man who later cuts off his son’s hand and tortures his own daughter to be so ‘distraught’ over his supposed wife dying. Anakin did try to choke her with the force, didn’t he?

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