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PORTAL with RTX (2022)

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20 YEARS OF HALO 2 • November 9th 2004

Earth will never be the same.

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Well, we kind of have no choice but to live. So I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.

PALM SPRINGS (2020) dir. Max Barbakow

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We kind of have no choice but to live. So I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.

PALM SPRINGS (2020) dir. Max Barbakow

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Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther | Captain America: Civil War (2016)

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My Old Ass (2024) dir. Megan Park

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Spider-Man 2 (2004) dir. Sam Raimi

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Die Hard (1988) dir. John McTiernan Die Hard 2 (1990) dir. Renny Harlin Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) dir. John McTiernan Live Free or Die Hard (2007) dir. Len Wiseman A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) dir. John Moore

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Harrison Ford when you ask him questions about Star Wars.

Captain America: Brave New World (2025) dir. Julius Onah

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Daredevil S01E12 “The Ones We Leave Behind”

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HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS (2022) dir. Mike Cheslik

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I, Robot (2004) dir. Alex Proyas

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GOSH it’s been a week, am I right? We had an election, the results of which were… uh, yeah, we elected a megalomaniacal senior citizen who tries flushing classified documents down his toilet. I’m going to let off some steam.

I’m here to tell you that Twilight of the Gods, despite getting a better reception than a lot of Zack Snyder projects, is hot garbage.

Sigrid is a half-giant, and on her wedding day, Thor comes and kills her family. Blah, blah, revenge quest, gather a group of outcast badasses to fight the Big Bad threat–

Wait, wasn’t the gist of it–the gathering a group of warriors to fight a bigger, institutional tyrannical threat–the same Plot as Rebel Moon? This even has a campfire sequence before the big battle where the heroes talk about the motivations and backstories. Goshdarnit, Zack. I know you’re not the only person working on this, but really?

That aside, the problem with Twilight of the Gods isn’t that the Plot is bad; yeah, it’s thin, but that’s not necessarily bad. You can have a great story with a thin Plot. Look at John Wick. No, the biggest problem I had is that so many of the characters’ actions and development make absolutely no sense. Characters will choose a path that doesn’t add up other than to move the Plot forward. Big things will happen, and revelations will drop, and the people involved do not care.

-There’s an episode where Loki tells Leif that he’s the Scapegoat God–his entire role in the pantheon is to be the douchebag everyone hates and takes the blame when things go wrong, or when people make bad decisions. And he hates it. Loki’s stuck with a role he despises. You would think this would have some reaction from Leif, and affect the interactions between the two in some meaningful way down the line. Nope!

-The dragon Fafnir used to be Andvari’s friend, another dwarf. When they defeat him, Fafnir turns back into a dwarf, and Andvari insists that they spare him. Leif kills Fafnir anyway, because he’s angsting about his lover Sigrid becoming more vicious. Andvari, nor any of the other characters, have any reaction to him killing someone who he wasn’t supposed to on a whim, much less the friend of a friend.

-Speaking of that: Andvari’s backstory with Fafnir and Loki isn’t explained by Andvari, one of the main members of the group, I remind you, but by Egil, summarizing to Leif and Sigrid the next morning being like, “Yeah, so last night he was telling us all about it!” Why didn’t you just show us Andvari telling his own story?!

-Also, Loki kills Andvari when Andvari tries to kill him. Everyone is shocked, and Leif is clearly sad when we see him burying Andvari. And then no one really cares that their ally killed one of their friends

-Hervor at one point wonders aloud if killing Thor will screw up the afterlife or the weather cycle. Hey, geez, maybe that would have been a good thing to ask before you agreed to go kill Thor? Especially as her life goal is apparently to meet up with her already-deceased sons in Valhalla. Hervor’s got no apparent motivation to be on this quest, either, other than friendship with Sigrid–I mean, hey, go kill gods with your friends amirite?

-Thyra, who was raised by the Vanir, is apparently perfectly happy to side with new friends against them when they’re framed for poisoning them. Why? I don’t know, she has a crush on Sigrid, I guess.

-Oh gosh, the Campfire Episode. Shrooms are passed away For Reasons, Thyra has a threesome with Sigrid and Leif which is apparently Oh-So-Magical for her (she swears eternal devotion to them afterwards, basically), and then Odin reveals himself there and the episode ends–and no one gives a damn about Odin appearing to Sigrid and talking to her, given they’re about to go to war with him.

The creators of this series did not care about a coherent story or cast of characters. It’s made up of moments that someone in a writing room said, “Wouldn’t this be awesome?!” (for the reveals, action scenes, and dialogue) or, “Wouldn’t this be hot?!” (for the at-least-once-an-episode sex scenes). That this has gotten a somewhat good reception is astounding to me. Castlevania, for all its flaws, had spectacular fight scenes and animation. This has even less redeeming qualities. I mean, the writers really said, “Hey, what if Jormungandr were actually a hot chick that has sex with Thor?!” and people… went along with that? And think this is good writing?

I suppose that at the very least, it’s clear that they did a lot of research on Norse mythology for this series, and people appreciate that. Then again, it makes the deviations stand out all the more. Why on Earth is Freya’s brother, king of the Vanir, Tiwaz? The 2018 God of War also made a lot of changes to the mythology, while still clearly having done tons of research as well, so those changes were done in service to the story and characters. Changes here are only there because… I don’t know why. To make it more gruesome?

And I spent the entire series saying, “Hey, I don’t know how any of this works!” We see they take quite a journey to get to Jotunheim, though apparently anywhere else in the Nine Realms is pretty easy to find, if not necessarily to get to. The crew gets god-killing weapons, and kills Vanir and Aesir mooks by the bucketload (how did they all get that good at fighting that they can wipe out gods with ease??), and yet when it comes to Thor himself, sometimes they’re god-killing weapons go through him, like he’s a boss fight and they have to wear down his first health bar before they can kill him. And Thor kills Sigrid’s family by making them explode with lightning (pretty sure that’s not how lightning works), but when fighting the protagonists he doesn’t do anything nearly as effective, swinging his hammer around wildly. He should be able to kill them at any time, and doesn’t, because Plot.

This is terrible writing. This is terrible character development. The animation’s cool, I guess, and that’s kind of it. There’s so much better fiction about mythology out there, so check that out instead of this.

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The Princess Bride (1987)

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Halloweentown (1998)

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@lgbtqcreators creator bingo | movie poster + comfort (insp, insp, insp)

Jurassic Park (1993) dir. Steven Spielberg