#Tommy watching the gods transform into their true forms: WHAT THE FUCK-

[baka-monarch]

Gods are worshipped and have shrines you prey at to them (but for Dream and Tommy they don't have shrines, cause like, they're life and death)

Gods are giants, usually over 100 feet tall, and can choose what they look like (although if they don't choose they'll be like just a presence, like an aura, but filling up a large area- most have a physical form that looks person-like but not exactly human)

For size difference it's mainly gods being giants

When they piece it together they end up working together to try and get Tom and Dream to admit that they're gods, they're not exactly scared tho considering both of them seem stupid enough to not be able to do anything actually harmful to them

Prime boys react via trying to hide that they're gods (poorly) and end up forcing themselves to seem more human but just seem even less human cause they don't actually really know anything about humans

They do in fact still have god powers as humans (they've caught Tom just. Floating. Before and Tommy didn't realize it was weird until someone pointed it out)

They switch via horrifying transformation of flesh and bones cracking and popping to reform- it doesn't hurt them obviously but it looks gross

Of course they have their true forms and their physical god forms- but they also sometimes turn into animals cause it's fun

Before all the human stuff they hung out almost all the time, cause like Dream is fascinated with life and finds it really beautiful, and Tommy thinks some of the deaths Dream deals with look really cool and he likes to fuck with mortals sometimes by pushing people to stay alive a little longer than they should be before Dream takes them just to watch how horrified people are at it. It's very funny

After the human stuff tho they stayed separated unless they had a job together so that they could prove they could be a convincing human for longer than the other

Just randomly vibing and thinking about an au where Tommy's the god of life and Dream is the god of death and they're just besties/brothers

[plztumb1rhelpmegetoveranxiety]

Fey , simply vibing , enjoying time with his kiddos :

C! Tommy who has realized he literally could never have this universe because it's not just him who is extremely different :

Sbsvssvsbahshajsbv PFFFFT

[robbyrise]

RANGERS REBORN.

So good it makes me wanna type away like i used to. 

Just got back from my first viewing of the Power Rangers and i’m glad to announce I am very satisfied with what was put on the big screen. Like most movies i didn’t have any crazy expectations for the film, just minor details here and there like the story going its own route to make it different and unique from the original show but still keeping true to its essence.

My only worry for this reincarnation of a great past time from my childhood would be the fact that the old shows (and even first 2 movies) were just so corny, so bad yet so good. Trust me, there are times when i come across clips and what have you, from the old shows that make me cringe when i realized how lame and corny it was. How could they possibly make this movie NOT corny? 

Why and how was i so drawn to this kind of entertainment? The power rangers taught me a sense of unity and it was probably what opened my eyes to being a part of and trusting your team (besides the Knicks). My favorite color back then was blue, so naturally Billy was my favorite ranger despite being the total opposite of his personality. 

If you’re a true fan, if you were there from the beginning till maybe the 3rd-4th generation of Rangers, and you don’t have high expectations of the new movie, you will probably find yourself feeling so much nostalgia from your childhood and it will open your eyes to how much the first group really made you appreciate the essence of wanting to become a power ranger. 

This is as far as I’ll go in regards to not spoiling anything. So if you haven’t seen it yet and plan on seeing it and don’t want me to ruin anything, stop reading here and come back later after you see it. If you don’t care and just want to keep reading because you’re bored, by all means go for it, just don’t say i didn’t warn you.

*SPOILERS*

The fact that they changed the story a little bit was already an indicator that i did the right thing in not wanting to expect anything from the movie that would impress me or even predict. Don't ask me how i remember this, but if i recall, the very first episode of the power rangers season 1 has something to do with a dumpster. Dumpster day or something. I don’t know, i just remember reading it, yes i could (somewhat) read at 5-6 years old. I remember Alpha and Zordon were already established in their ‘Command Center” and sensed Rita Repulsa’s escape from captivity. Want to know how she escaped? Go watch the original ORIGINAL intro of the series and you’ll see astronauts pushing over the lid of a genie stove top releasing the alien witch. The movie has her as a FORMER RANGER, the GREEN RANGER to be exact. Some will think it’s lame, i thought it was cool and acceptable. 

Recruiting. 

How the movie’s story pits the potential rangers together is a testament to the original series and how Zordon ordered Alpha to recruit “individuals with attitude.” The new teenagers portraying our beloved Jason, Zack, Billy, Trini, and Kimberly were all somewhat trouble makers/rebels. All of them rebels in their own right. All of them having something deep inside that could only brought out about themselves through each other, something we could really appreciate with the original rangers. 

Morphers? 

Remember it’s morphin time? And BOOM, out comes the morphers that EVERYBODY HAD AS A KID, well, almost everybody, and the rangers TRIBEAMED their transformation into rangers and the awesome theme came on and you know shit’s about to go down. I appreciate the fact that they really displayed these ‘rebels’ having a dark side to their personality and using the good inside them to be their source and spark to their armor.  Five strangers becoming friends and willing to do whatever they had to do for the greater good of their town. 

The Zeo crystals. 

I didn’t realize the importance of the crystals on the show until the Zeo rangers came about (potentially setting up a new franchise). It was referenced on the show numerous times as well. But what granted our rangers their powers were their crystals, or on the show the gold coins with their Zord animals on them.

OH, don’t worry, i’ll get to the Zords. The movie gives us a better perspective of how these teenagers with attitude came about and ‘trained’ as Rangers to defeat Rita. The show pretty much put them in suits and rangers like billy and Kim magically learned martial arts whereas Jason, Trini and Zack were already established martial artists. The new rangers were forced into training by Zordon and even Alpha. 

Backstories. 

The writers and producers did just enough to cover each character’s lives leading up to their discovery of the power coins crystal things. All well enough for them to be unique and appreciated in their own right. Billy the nerd with some loner/awkward issues who’s father disappeared (passed away perhaps?), Zack being a wild rebel with a sick mother, Jason the star jock athlete with a desire for trouble and a disappointed father, Trini (pronounced Trin-E in the move, not Treen-e like the original show) who jumped schools every year because of you guessed it, being a rebel and then Kimberly, who had personal issues ‘not being a good friend’ i guess? She was a cheerleader also vs. the Kimberly from the 90′s that was a gymnast. 

ZORDS.

Again, i’ll reiterate, there were times when I realized the old show was corny as fuck. And yes, the old Zords, while being badass in their own right, were still corny... as fuck. They were literally just remote control toys that were zoomed in on by the camera to make it seem like they were huge robots on TV. HOWEVER. If you were to fuse a real life Gundam wing with a Beast Wars transformer, you’d probably get a Zord from the new movie. The massive robot reference to crushing Bumblebee was very poetic. I’m glad i had a good crowd because they laughed and applauded that. But these new Zords? I’d say they were pretty fuckin awesome. I just personally feel like they made those corny robots toys that were on screen, cool and transformer like. Just again, in their own unique power ranger way. 

TRUE ESSENCE.

I mentioned ‘essence’ earlier in this write up and that essence is something that could only be felt if you were part of the beginning. When the original rangers, despite being so cheesy and corny, made you want to be a ranger SO BAD. The concept of the power rangers teaches us the power of unity and what the team could accomplish if they worked together. They struggled to reach the full potential of their powers, almost 2 weeks even (11 days to be exact b/c thats when Alpha calculated Rita could strike). But they did to the expense of Billy who later on was revived by Zordon as Zordon realized it wasn’t his team to lead. Remember when Zordon was about to die in the 1st Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie? the adorably HOT Kimberly at the time said, “You’re like a father to us all.” Zordon guiding the Rangers towards the right direction to reach their potential, and giving Billy the 2nd chance to live showed qualities of just that in being a father like figure to the rangers, something he’s very accustomed to in the show and previous movies. In the old show, there were PLENTY OF TIMES when the rangers “were at their doom” at the hands of Rita and Lord Zed, but they somehow ALWAYS found a way to win. 

I’ll give you a perfect example of true essence. When the rangers and their Zords were pushed to the edge and they had to ‘hold the line’? Their struggle vs Goldar. Man... seeing the commercials I KNEW that the Mega Zord was going to be formed and it was going to kick serious ass, but the moments leading up to that they were all ready to die TOGETHER? I’m not gunna lie, i had the same feeling form up in my feels when Woody and Buzz held onto their friends at the end of Toy Story 3 before the claw saved them (shouts to swag surfer). As the cinema Gods as my witness, NO MOVIE has made me feel that way since Toy Story 3, LEGIT, until the new power rangers because I KNEW WHAT THE OUTCOME WAS and yet there i was, sitting on my seat reminding myself, “wow... i haven’t felt this urgent sorrow for ANY GROUP OF CHARACTERS since toy story 3.” And then they fall into the pit and you hear the Zords forming and i get this huge relief and burden lifted off my shoulders and i applaud with the crowd thanking God the tears forming in my eyes didn’t stream out b/c that would've been really embarrassing. But yeah, i’m applauding, the crowd is applauding and Billy has that comic relief line of Mama Zord-Mega Zord and as they try to advance the entire Zord falls over. Well fcuking done. No really, they didn’t just magically download the program to operate a “65 million year old alien robot” in a few seconds to their brains, they actually taught themselves how to operate their respective body part that was formed by their Zord. Again, unity, team work, Power Rangers... WOOOOO!!!!!!

I’m still kind of in shock at how much i actually enjoyed this movie. And i think that’s due to the fact that the crowd i watched the movie with was probably one of the better crowds i had watched a movie with since i got to Washington. Really. The movie culture here isn’t as passionate as what we have in New York but anyway back to the movie.

Alpha 5 said his signature line 2x,the black guy is actually the blue ranger and the asian is the BLACK ranger, both the pink and yellow rangers are cute & hot AF, Rita made her monster grow and said her token line as well. There weren’t any communicators, there wasn’t a bulk or skull even though i think the bully in the movie was supposed to be one of them i’m not too sure. Mid credit scene = Thomas Oliver = Power Rangers 2. Speaking of Tommy, the actor and actress who played they original Tommy and original Kimberly cameos probably had the biggest applause of the movie. Boom. Might be a little too early to bring in Lord Zedd in the 2nd movie, MAYBE hint or reference him like Rita did in regards to the Zeo crystals.

Future?

The Power Rangers have a generation of fans that first started watching and admiring them at such young age that are now PROFESSIONALS, MARRIED AND WITH KIDS. Granted, the series has gone onto bumblefuck abyss because i obviously lost track of where the TV series has gone, that old generation could show their kids what they used to watch, and be like, “That movie that’s out? That’s a remake of the ORIGINAL rangers, the founding fore fathers of what you young maggots are watching now” kind of deal. 

I AM PRAYING that this generates enough revenue and popularity that they make a nice, LONG MOVIE SERIES because THERES SO MUCH potential. Maybe something Disney could look into working a deal with Saban b/c there’s just too much to let slip away. You got franchises like Fast and the Furious that’s gone off track from how great it was before the 4th/5th movies, but could somewhat catch up to and pass GI Joe (unless they actually cross over with, wait for it...), and maybe be half as good as the Transformer series (yes, GI Joe and Transformers could crossover, because they have in the comics). I look at transformers and think thats a good goal to strive for, because movie series like James Bond, LOTR, the Matrix, and Star Wars are just at an elite level. Then I see franchises like the Underworld, Resident Evil movies (sorry, i’m just not a fan of them) and Sharknado (IDK how and why people find those movies entertaining), and it gives me hope that the Power Rangers movie reboot could just be the thing we need in the movie industry to keep it interesting unless Japan and Hollywood could work something out to bring Gundam Wing to life. 

*CUE BLOG SOUNDTRACK ENDING CREDIT AND MOVIE RATING THEME = VAN HALEN - DREAMS*

ANYWAY. 9/10 Power Rangers. I’m going to see it again. WITHOUT A DOUBT.

Off topic final thought:

Where are my movie junkies at? This is off topic but i know you’d appreciate this. I had a dream... you ready? I had a dream, that Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas all worked together to make an American interpretation of Spirited Away with a movie score composed by Hanz Zimmer. Call me crazy, but i woke up and had mixed emotions about it.

[nightmareonfilmstreet]

Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part III - Episodes 5 & 6)

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Review: BLACK MIRROR Season 4 (Part III - Episodes 5 & 6)

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

“Metalhead” is pretty good. A bit daring and experimental, but that sort of thing is always to be applauded, especially when it’s pulled off so well.

“Black Museum” is the single best episode of Black Mirror I have ever seen. (Please direct all vitriol to the comments section, below.)

From here on out: Spoilers.

And, if you haven’t already – read Part I and Part II of my review.

EPISODE 5: METALHEAD

Someone’s been reading their Cormac McCarthy.

“Metalhead” is an exercise in minimalism, in a lot of ways. It’s the shortest episode in Season 4 (though you’d never know it, with the torturously ratcheting tension dragging seconds into hours). The story is fairly straightforward: Civilization has been wiped out. A group of survivors are trying to get something from a warehouse to help someone at their base camp who is dying. They accidentally activate a “Dog” (a robotic murder machine on four legs), which systematically kills them off until it’s just Bella (strong work by Maxine Peake), our protagonist, and the Dog, locked in a desperate chase across post-apocalyptic Scotland.

This is the only episode of Black Mirror to be shot entirely in black and white. And not just black and white: a stark, high-contrast black and white with a touch of warmth in the grade. More Pi than Nebraska. This isn’t a gimmick, either. It’s more subtle manipulation of all of us on the edge of our seats as Bella struggles to get the key into a lock, or dig a tracker out of her body, the Dog coming on relentlessly somewhere behind her, just out of sight. It turns the episode into a horror film.

Oftentimes, especially in Science Fiction, flash and pizzazz are covering fire for a cardboard story. (See Blade Runner: 2049, every Transformer film ever made, etc.) There’s real danger in stripping something back as far as “Metalhead” was stripped…but there’s also a kind of freedom, for both the creator and the viewer.

We never find out just how civilization fell. There are a few clues: Bella’s fondness of peppermint candies tie this episode to Season 4, Episode 3: “Crocodile.” It isn’t too much of a leap from that world to the world of “Metalhead:” if even our memories have no sanctity, why shouldn’t the police have total access? To our front gates, to our front doors, to our cars? If we have nothing to hide, then why would we need privacy? Why kick a door down, or smash a window, when we could just give the Lawmen the keys?

(Do these arguments sound familiar? They should: we’re already a few steps down this road in the U.S.) But humans are fallible. We are imperfect, and make imperfect decisions. We can be bribed and swayed by emotion. Enter Robocop. (Think I’m joking? Dubai already has them.) But that’s all speculation.

Brooker never tells us, and that’s part of what makes the episode so effective. We’re thrown into this post-apocalyptic world, and all hell breaks loose. There’s no chance for Bella to sit across the fire from Clarke (Jake Davies), reminiscing about the day it all went wrong, or how different things used to be back before X happened…because everybody’s dead before we even have our bearings. Maybe that’s a clue in itself. Maybe that’s how the world ended: all at a stroke, without warning. Not with a bang, but with a few hours of screaming.

“Metalhead” is like a poem, and a poem is not a puzzle to be solved. What makes Cormac McCarthy’s The Road so incredible isn’t the long exposition about exactly how things came to be this way. It’s the human story, fully alive and fully realized, that we’re thrust into. Same here. What matters isn’t the nifty, smart, cynical explanation for all this. What matters is that Bella loves someone named Graham, who she is trying desperately to see again. That the people whose house Bella breaks into killed themselves while watching television, staring into the omnipresent Black Mirror. That’s important.

The fact that everyone we met in “Metalhead” died trying to get a new teddy bear to comfort a dying child, even in a world where every step outside could be your last; what that says about humanity, even in the face of annihilation: There’s nothing more important than that.

  EPISODE 6: BLACK MUSEUM

In a season of some of the finest science fiction I’ve ever seen on television, “Black Museum” is the best of the lot. It may be the best of the series. (I’m sure someone will take me to task for saying so, but these are just my opinions, so pipe down.)

“Black Museum” is an anthology story inside an anthology series. While her car recharges (I’m sure Elon Musk is working on it), a young girl named Nish (Letitia Wright) heads over to the nearby “Rolo Haynes’ Black Museum.” Haynes (Douglas Hodge: perfection) leads her through a macabre museum of tragedy and horror, telling stories about some of the exhibits as he goes. But when they get to the main attraction, it becomes apparent that some things are not as they seem.

There’s something here for everyone. For the hardcore Black Mirror fans, the first walk through the titular “Black Museum” is a giddy dream come true. Look! There’s the Parent Unit from “Arkangel!” Ooh! And there’s Robert Daly’s DNA gizmo from “USS Callister,” with Tommy’s sucker still on it! The bathtub where Anan was murdered in “Crocodile!” And…a mask of Charlie Brooker? (Yep.) There’s so much here. There are nods throughout the entire episode, more than I have space to point to. Just trust me. Bring your baskets. It’s an Easter Egg Hunt.

For those swept up in the political rage orgy that has been the last year or so, Brooker’s slipped in a few jabs. If some of the scummy things that Rolo says seem to ring a bell, it’s because his is not the first garbage mouth to form the words. “Fake news!”, “Hatchet job!”

When he first meets Nish, who is (as far as he knows at that point) a foreign woman of color, he jokes that she should be used to the heavy security she has to go through to get into the museum. “Our immigration guys are pretty tight these days,” he says. Black Mirror has dealt with this sort of thing before, but this season has taken a bit of a stronger stand. The giant wall in “Metalhead,” for example, which fails to keep out the threat, but bars the way of an innocent struggling to survive.

For the Black Mirror addicts, there’s the story of Dr. Dawson. Based on a short story by Penn Jillette called “The Pain Addict,” it is one of the darkest, most brutal things I’ve seen in ages. It’s a return of sorts to the edgy full-black of the pilot episode, and it’s brilliant.

In large part, its brilliance lies in its self-referentiality. There’s a thread under all the blood and pain and pleasure, only just noticeable if you know what you’re looking for. Brooker is talking to us. Dawson slowly becomes addicted to pain. To horror and fear. At first, his addiction is vicarious: he sees others suffer and literally feels their pain…without consequence. When he goes too far, something in him changes, and he becomes dependent on that next-level voyeurism.

He watches people suffer, and he can’t stop. Sound familiar? I’m writing about exactly that, right now. When his addiction becomes too severe, Dawson too obviously sick and weird to be around people anymore, Rolo sends him home. “Binge a miniseries,” he says. Come on. We’re all watching the pain. We cue up Black Mirror and watch politicians forced to fuck pigs, mothers murder babies, murder whole families, watch women dig shrapnel out of their faces and rob shotgun suicides, and Netflix asks us: “Are you still watching?”

Of course we are. We’re addicts.

There’s more. My god, there’s so much more, here. Not the least of which: did you notice that the “Black Museum” is at a crossroads? That Rolo Haynes, in his snappy suit and snakeoil smile, offers people miracles? Offers to make their wildest dreams come true…for a price? Did you notice that Clayton’s “soul” (his wife’s word, not mine) is trapped in eternal torment, fully-rendered copies of one infinite moment of boundless, limitless pain distributed across the world? Suffering without end, at the hands of…other people?

Rolo may be the devil.

But Hell is other people.

  Black Mirror Season 4 is now streaming on Netflix. Let us know what you thought of the series in the comments section, below – or over on our Facebook Group. And, be sure to read  Part I and Part II of my review of Black Mirror Season 4, if you haven’t already.