#actual Taika Waititi quote

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

he said he was a supermodel! It’s true!

[gloriousburden]

i think they should make a movie where the writers actually like thor and loki

[ladyluscinia]

Draft clearing. I think I had more of a point on the topic of Jenkins and genre I wanted to make when I gathered these, but I'm not feeling it anymore. However, I need spread awareness of his absolutely baffling ideas about pirate media and how he sounds half-convinced it must be a formulaic action/adventure. I only picked up on this by reading way too many interviews back to back so I'm not surprised I've never seen anyone else mention it, but like. It's wild. And he's SO additionally weird about how showrunning a piece of media about pirates relates to whatever concept he has of pirate media in his head.

Here's the link to my interview compilation if you want to check my sources on these.

Jenkins Quotes on "Pirate Genre"

"I think actual pirate stuff is fine, but it's not necessarily my cup of tea. And I think Taika [Waititi] felt similarly.

[...]

Showrunner Jenkins sees Our Flag Means Death as having "joy. A lot of joy. I like Stede because Stede is, to me, the outsider artist of pirates. And I think in designing the show, I was conscious [of the fact that it's] a hard genre to do anything to. It's a very stubborn genre because it's been done so well and so often. So I kind of tried to look at, like New York, like Alphabet City in the '80s via a pirate genre via Mad Max and try to throw all these different things at it. So I think you'll get a different feel than you'd get on a normal pirate thing. I think we achieved that with our amazing crew." - (Gizmodo, 2/22/22)

"I guess I really… I get kind of bored. How much pirate can you do? They're going to rob stuff. They're going to steal ships. There's only so many pirate stories you can do." - (Collider, 3/24/22)

Despite creating a pirate show, he himself says he's not a huge fan of pirate movies. - (EW.com, 12/13/22)

"I don't want to see a bunch of pirate things that I've seen in other things, I'll just go watch another thing if I want to see that. That's not really my thing. I like the genre, but it's a very hard genre to budge. I want to see relationships in a pirate world." - (TV Guide, 10/5/23)

"The pirate genre is fun, but I wasn't dying to make a pirate show. Taika wasn't dying to make a pirate show. But the thing that was interesting to me was that Stede finds love, and he finds it with Blackbeard." - (Variety, 10/13/23)

"I think there is something in the show about how piracy is a brutal way of life. It's essentially Mad Max, this world. There's no law, there's just strong and weak." - (Polygon, 10/21/23)

"And it’s also a pirate show, so he’s got to die." - (Vanity Fair, 10/26/23)

"Another thing I love is what I call shaggy stories, stories about people navigating each other. When you plug them into different genres, you get this great engine that comes with it. I'm not particularly dying to write a pirate thing, but I want to write a bunch of characters trying to navigate each other in a pirate thing." - (Vulture, 10/28/23)

"But I'm like you. I'm not a big pirate person. In general, it's a big creaky genre that's hard to budge, but I think the show benefits from we can pull pirate stuff out when we need it. Ultimately, yeah, I want to see these different relationships and perspectives on different relationships. Then it's fun to plug it into an overwrought genre.

[...]

Pirates of the Caribbean, those movies are great. That's not necessarily what I hunger to see, but in that genre, it's great. You're not going to beat that, especially on something that's lower budget. We've seen a lot of this stuff, so it's fun to take it then and don't do any of that stuff." - (Metro Weekly, 11/1/23)

"I think it's more interesting to me that I've never seen a love story like this in this genre, and you dream for that. Really, pirates, what can you do that's different with pirates?

[...]

To me, to tell the story about these two men in this very hetero action genre, falling for each other..." - (Metro Weekly, 11/1/23)

---

...This is the same guy who just ended a season on the British Navy blowing up Nassau for symbolism reasons that I'm pretty sure have nothing to do with the love story. 🤨

[iamnotmisosoup]

In honor of the glorious OFMD season 2 teaser drop, I thought I would share some of my fan theories for the upcoming season here because I have nobody else to talk with about them :)

These are sort of ranked by what I think is most likely true, but I will clarify which ones I think are more unlikely then the others.

NUMBER 1: Spanish Jackie and the Swede are gonna hook up.

I from what the teaser looked like, I think this is the one that will 100% happen. In the teaser, the only clip we get with Spanish Jackie is with her and someone else in the background. I think it’s the Swede since it looks like the character is wearing some kind of headband, and the shorts that they are wearing kind of look like the ones that Swede wears for most of the season

NUMBER 2: Izzy is gonna get a partner

Now who this is going to be I have no absolute clue. It could be a new character introduced in the upcoming season, it could be a member of the Revenge, it could be anybody! But the Vainty Fair first look preview made it sound a lot like Izzy is actually going to get some romantic attention, and I can’t help but (kind of) root for him :)

NUMBER 3: Oh no!! The British!!! Oh no!! The Chinese pirates!!!

From what we have so far (the Vainty Fair preview and the teaser) it sounds like the Revenge crew is going to have a run-in with the British army again, and perhaps a battle with a new crew of Chinese pirates. What I am wondering though is if the British army might join forces with the new set of pirates, sort of like what Izzy did during the final episodes of season one, and go up against the Revenge and/or/maybe Blackbeard’s crew at the same time.

NUMBER 4: Big sea storm. Perhaps a sudden rainstorm and a canopy causes 2 people to stare into each others eyes lovingly and realize they were made for eachother….

If you know, you know. But for the sea storm bit the hair and makeup stylist for the show revealed that the most challenging part of season 2 was when “they were caught in the storm on the back of the boat” so….

NUMBER 5: Anne Bonny is going to be rlly important, not just a one episode side character

This is really just me hoping that Anne Bonny will have a bigger part, because she is just such a cool person within history! I hope she gets a chance to be the bisexual and polyamorous (I think I heard somewhere that during her lifetime she was in a polyamorous relationship, but I’m not sure where so don’t 100% quote me on that) pirate that she was!

NUMBER 6: The “major romantic moment between two characters” isn’t going to be Ed and Stede

Neil Gaiman already fooled me once, ain’t gonna let David Jenkins do the same.

NUMBER 7: The Revenge crew see a familiar face in the vanity fair first look image

(Note: for some reason tumblr isn’t letting me put the actual image here, so if you want to see it look at the Vanity Fair article and scroll down until you see the 5th image with most of the crew)

Now, from what the image looks like, I’m taking a wild guess and assuming that the crew snuck onto a ship (perhaps the new crew’s ship) and found a familiar face being held captive. Based upon Pete’s reaction (and my own personal delusional ass) I’m going to guess that they have found Lucius! But with Stede’s reaction, it doesn’t seem like Lucius is in the best shape that they have seen him…

NUMBER 8: The two new New Zealand cast members are apart of Blackbeard’s crew?

To be honest this is just me going out on a limb and guessing, because the two new cast members, Madeleine Sami and Anapela Polataivao, are both from New Zealand, and maybe Taika Waititi wanted to have New Zealand actors be apart of his crew so, maybe? To be honest this one is just a shot in the dark and me guessing idk

NUMBER 9: Lucius is alive, and his being held hostage by the Chinese pirates

Now this one is either my most likely theory, or my most delusional fandom brain theory. This one connects back to my #7 theory, that the Revenge crew might see Lucius again, BUT I think that after he got pushed off of the Revenge, he crossed paths with a Chinese Pirate ship who have heard of the “dreaded” gentleman pirate, or just want to keep him prisoner, and are keeping him captured on the boat.

~+ YIPPEE YOU MADE IT TO THE END :D +~

But seriously if you willingly read this far tysm, this is one of my first ever big tumblr posts and I just wanted to get some of my thoughts out and somewhere! Sooo yeah. If this does ok I might post more, but tbh I’m tired and want to go to bed, so goodbye for now :)

[howdytherepardner]

A few layers to start. An Instagram post (1), which was a screen recording of a tweet (2), which itself was quote tweeting another tweet (3) that contained a clip from Thor: Love & Thunder (4). (4) was some dialog between characters that was uneventful, (3) was complaining about the relatively emptiness of the scene, (2) alluded to rumors that the choices in the film in general were made by Taika Waititi out of spite for changes that the Avengers Infinity Saga films that undid the character and world development from his film Thor Ragnarock. I am somewhat neutral about those, but what got to me was the caption of (1) - the person behind the post said (from my recollection, before the post disappeared into the algorithmic sea): “I didn’t watch either Ragnarock or Love and Thunder, but I could just tell the drop-off of quality that happened between the two.”

This was a stunning, almost hypnotizing example, of the kind of consumption that does and does not occur in the online media ecosystem. a Headline Is Not an Article - this is something that people consciously believe to be true. I find evidence for this in how others will respond to simplistic opinions or perspectives of others, often noting the misunderstandings or misinterpretations that may have been avoided if one had ‘actually’ read or engaged with something fully. But it is a critique that I believe people are, naturally, unwilling to apply to themselves. [Given my experiences with or understandings of a topic, I can anticipate what points or sentiments will be expressed by this work - therefore, I do not need to read this work.] Every individual has great confidence in their sense own self, more than they could anyone else’s - so there is no need to question it.

~

I started wearing glasses about a 4 years and 3 months ago. My vision had likely been worse enough for it beforehand (perhaps my experience in the first year of college lectures would have been better), but it had come to a particular halt in the fully-online COVID semester of the fall. Long days staring at a screen, time spent inside but for only brief walks around the rural property where I was staying. I have no singular evening in memory, but I can evoke the dark nights in late autumn ahead of dinner, where the other side of dining room seemed uncanny. Obviously familiar, but not certainly.

It was the winter/spring term, still learning online but on campus, where I first had the visually corrective lenses. In my dorm room, glasses could stay off to keep my focus inside, but putting them on gave a clear vision of the campus and town on my outdoor walks - places I knew, but with a new sharpness. A warm blur, perhaps, replaced by a more concrete version of the world in a post-pandemic era. Though, what might have been most transformed for me was driving.

As vaccines slowly rolled out, so too did appointments at drug stores in the area - one’s best bet was to set a large search radius online, take whatever date and time you could get, and figure out how to make it work after the fact. This was further complicated by the two required jabs, with a distinct multi-week gap between them. But - I was fortunate enough to have a car and to have brought it on campus, and I extended that fortune by offering rides to friends to their appointments when needed. (Ironically, it was in disrepair for my second, but it was a nice walk-train ride-walk’n’back from Trenton.) 

All this to say, I was frequently on highways and local streets heading to CVS and Walgreens, Moderna and Pfizer alike, navigating all kinds of arteries and capillaries of central Jersey. With newly corrected vision, driving was WEIRD, and almost more nerve-wracking then before. My warm blur of near-sightedness was never so severe to make signs and surrounding vehicles invisible, but the lenses forced a new kind of forward focus. The brain couldn’t attend to peripheral vision in the same way, and I was turning my head and strewing my vision about more frequently than I had before. I could see things more clearly, and further off, but only one at a time. 

This could be a metaphor for things beyond the previously stated point. A project goes from finding a single broad picture to combining focused, detailed points into a more complete puzzle. There are pros and cons to either approach. The former seems easier to generate, simpler to grasp, but lacks some of the nuance from detailed engagement - the latter has that detail orientation, more thoroughly researched understandings, but requires a great deal of effort for discoveries that may be more difficult to connect than presumed. If you’re providing a general lesson, leaving the blurs in allows individuals to focus more where they feel inspired. If you’re assigned to review a work for publication, it may behoove the quality of the work if you become more deeply enmeshed in the material.

So, context matters. You can see someone’s laptop stickers better with glasses on, but you don’t know what brought them to place it on - nor can they say for sure what assumptions about them will be made by others for it. Always, a wind at your back; a breath down your neck.

~

Let’s bring it back to Instagram for a moment - a forum for photo sharing, at its inception, with a contemporary emphasis on the singular photo on one's profile. An unknown future were the days of reels (or videos at all, a product only added in the wake of Vine's success) and stories (ripped from Snapchat, naturally) for temporary display of images. Not even a carousel of multiple photos for a long time, and naught but some filters imitating lighting styles to alter appearances. In a time before now, third party apps for combining pictures, or formatting them for the profile grid had an environment in which to thrive.

One crafts an image in response to restrictions. One crafts a lens and its settings to take a photo in the first place - adjusting within a frame to find objects of focus and the level that contains them. Through clever tricks and modern technology, it's possible to contain multiple items on separate levels in clear view - but the specificity and detail that comes from a singular, concentrated focus outpaces even what eyes will choose to notice. Highlight and rhetoric - pick what matters most, and accentuate it while dismissing all that surrounds it.

[glorioustidalwavedefendor]

I place the blame firmly on Waititi shoulders and his half thought out ideas.

The SOMEONE in:

Becasue someone is a bad writter and had written himslef in to a corner …

is very much Taika Waititi, who very proudly gives talks about his WRITTING on Ragnarok:

Quote:

(...) I always get to 2:58 um to do passes on script so that was BUILD 3:01 IN TO MY CONTRACT on Thor so I could get 3:02 do a pass like a story pass and dialogue 3:05 pass and stuff and CHANGE A LOT OF 3:06 THINGS

Valkyrie is the such the example of the movie's conflicting ideas. It wants to bring up the bloody colonization and the slavery, but then subsequently ignore how so many others would have been complicit in that bad stuff. It's this paradoxical thing where Hela is Odin's daughter and had this dark past, but then somehow, it's only Hela who is evil.

That‘s where the good writters clash with the „someone“ …

I can't find the source anymore but I read somewhere that the colonization angle was not Waitities idea but was actually something Marvel wanted, that's why it is relegated to throwaway lines ...

Ragnarok does feel like a story that was written and rewritten a lot.

Yes, because "someone" is a bad writter

-> If you are allowed to change things on a script you become the head writter of the movie, because now it is on you, what stays, what goes and what is changed etc ... so you need to be a good writter to understand which part does what in a story. And you need to keep the world building etc. in mind. In this case your writting tool is not a pencil or a computer but other writters. You say, "I want this to happen" and then your writters execute that. But you have the last word on the scene and so you NEED to be a good writter. Same as a conducter plays the orchestra and therefor needs to be a musician first and a conductor second

and so instead of looking at the whole story and seeing how these story beats work together like cogs in a machine, he just goes: „wouldn‘t it be funny if … „

-> which is the equivalent of using a baseball bat on a clock mechanism

and then Yost, Kyle, Folsom and Pearson have to scramble to come up with ways to keep the cogs moving in a sensible fashion ... and that isn't always possible ...

ESPECIALLY if a lot of that happens on set during the shooting of the movie ...

I’ve spent years, in a haze, trying to forget my past. 

[funnyincorrectmcu]

Val: I have a confession to make. Thor: I think we all know where this is going. Lesbi-honest. Val: *raises an eyebrow*

[in-defense-of-loki]

Why does everyone keep shifting responsibility from Thor to Odin? Thor AND Odin have destroyed Loki’s identity together. Thor created the WAR that Loki had to fight. Who puts a WAR on the shoulders of his little brother and says"Here, FIGHT THIS WAR AND STAY SANE"At least Odin taught his children not to seek warDo people really not understand what the word 'war' means? How could it easily kill Loki and everyone Loki knows? How would it force Loki to kill a huge number of sentient beings?

I agree that Thor and Odin both played a part in the way Loki was essentially used and abused. But Thor is also a victim of Odin. Thor's problem is that he was raised with thoughts of honor and glory coming from war; after all, that's how his father got it, and his father before him. So Thor ends up idolizing war as a means for proving himself because of Odin's teachings. Odin just really is a shit father in the MCU, only realizing he has failed Thor almost too late (the coronation) in the first movie and then subsequently banishing him to Earth for it. As if that's supposed to actually and reasonably make him change? Whatever, I guess it worked.

Loki shouldering the burden of cleaning up after Thor was actually set up on him by both Frigga and Odin, when Frigga brings it up in a deleted scene from the first movie. So again we see how Thor being the golden child has really put him in a sour position of not understanding responsibility and consequence because his own parents believed that was Loki's job. And truthfully Thor is quite oblivious to certain things, like how his actions can hurt those around him or how Loki is expected to do things mentioned before. Thor has no idea, and he's only partly to blame.

Imo, Thor becomes antagonistic, mean, and spiteful to Loki on purpose starting in Ragnarok. Mostly due to Waititi and the writers not understanding what was set up in the previous movies, or respecting character development prior to what he, Taika, wanted to write and direct. Also Chris is to blame here, too, he was actually quoted saying Thor was getting too boring, too difficult to maintain. Plus, we fans would point out that it's clear he was envious of the popularity Loki gained, instead of Thor.

Also, for Avengers, Marvel already came out and said Loki was being manipulated, that his actions weren't his own. Problem is, that was when the movie was peaking, currently they're trying to take it back and act like that wasn't the case, despite the movie itself having specific scenes to showcase that Loki wasn't acting of his own accord. These "fans" wanna choose to disregard it and agree with Disney's new take. Hard to argue against willfull ignorance...

[rubensmuse]

tlt is about power and the things people will do to their fellow humans for it and the unbroken unending chain of human misery that results from that. the text is very explicit about absolute power, and even large amounts of power, not being corrupting in and of themselves; but rather being only mechanically achievable via the utter obliteration of everything which you and others hold dear. and it's about how mourning that loss is, after a certain point of no return, an empty gesture.

but nah Jod wears sweaters and quotes 5th grade poetry and has Taika Waititi for a faceclaim so he's boogleyboo poor little meow meow actually.

[lizluzz]

I listened to an old interview with Taika Waititi, and this part really got to me:

"... and that's exactly how we used to talk. Our parents weren't around... we'll say, my dad was like this deep sea exploration diver, and he was off on, like, this rig in the Indian ocean. And we all knew we were lying. We were lying in bed and making up these ridiculous tales about our parents. But there was something kind of cool, that we were trying to top each other with these imagined excuses for why our parents weren't around...

So, it's all tapping into this kind of thing, you know, where the imagination actually is stronger than reality, and it can actually eclipse reality in a lot of ways."

That's such a good perspective on both childhood and storytelling. I saw this post earlier and just had to find this quote again because I think it expresses a very similar sentiment. It's another level of suspension of disbelief.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

What gets me about the queerbaiting accusations with regards to Valkyrie in TLAT is that they never gave anyone a reason to think she would get together with any particular woman, and actually if Valkyrie can be "king," a "queen" doesn't have to mean a woman, but they did repeatedly say from Ragnarok's release through the rest of Phase Three that Valkyrie and Thor were written as a romance, which ended up being sidelined in TLAT. But fans who throw around the word "queerbaiting" do not care that the Black bisexual female lead of the previous film has as of now been denied her love story with the protagonist and was altogether diminished in TLAT for a white straight woman. They also follow the promotion of the film enough to know that Natalie and Taika, both straight, said the film would be gay, but their interest in the WLW character apparently stopped short of paying attention to the bi actress playing her to know that Tessa requested the script be changed because being queer was initially all Valkyrie had in it and Tessa found it dehumanizing.

I had to do some digging for sources for the quotes you're mentioning, and it looks like you might be misremembering what was said back during Phase 3. According to Thor: Ragnarok's writers, Thor and Valkyrie's relationship was written as romantic in the original draft of the script but that subplot was scrapped when the movie was still in development (i.e. probably before casting) because they decided they wanted to focus on Valkyrie as character independent of Thor and didn't want to commit to a romance between them right away. From Thor: Ragnarok writer, Eric Pearson:

“But we didn’t want to start from that place [a romance]. It was like, Let’s give Valkyrie her own story that connects with Thor … and if it makes sense for them to get together, then great. You’ve got two really good-looking people who can fight and who’d probably be [good together] if the story went there, but it just didn’t. It became more about the mutual respect, and also dealing with her PTSD."

[source]

So it seems like it's less that an in-progress romance was removed and more like the door was left open for a romance and they chose not to pick it up (yet?). But I definitely agree that Valkyrie herself was backburnered in favor of Thor and Jane's romance, and I really hated that she got left out of the final battle. She wasn't written as a sidekick in Ragnarok, but I feel like Love and Thunder used her as one. We really didn't need to spend all that time rehashing romantic Thor/Jane. They could have just been two people who were very important to each other but weren't in love anymore. That would have worked just as well, and it would have freed up more time for Valkyrie to have her own character arc.

It seems that you might also be slightly misremembering what Tessa Thompson said about Valkyrie's bisexuality. From her interview with Yahoo:

“We talked about it a lot, it was big topic of conversation, because I think rightfully there’s this real want in audiences to see characters be very clearly queer or LGBTQIA inside these spaces. And I think it’s hugely important to have representation. And also as humans I think that we are not defined by our sexuality, and by who we love. And so sometimes I think to hang a narrative completely on that is a way of actually diminishing the humanity of the character. Because you don’t allow them to be anything else.”

[source]

Unless this is not the interview you're referring to, she never mentions asking for the script to be changed or for anything to be removed. She's just talking about working with Taika Waititi during the writing process to make sure Valkyrie's bisexuality struck the right balance between being visible but not being her whole personality. Crucially, she does outright say that Valkyrie doesn't have a romance, which undercuts the accusations of queerbaiting pretty significantly, so it is clear that no one making those accusations read this interview.

However, I do want to give people the benefit of the doubt in that it's possible they weren't following the promotional material at all and just heard about the "super gay" thing through the grapevine (like I did, lmao). People have been talking about that on this website for weeks. If it makes you feel better (sarcasm), Tessa Thompson also got accused of queerbaiting by one of our anons this morning, so she hasn't been completely ignored.

[kuzcosources]

Out of Context Taika Waititi Quotes!

taken from various roles, interviews, and other media. as usual, pronouns/context can be changed as you see fit. some nsfw!

Those are a fine pair of legs. You know what, they’d make a great necklace.

Piss off, ghost!

And who knows, maybe one day, you could be living all alone, by yourself with no friends, drinking coffee out of a wine glass, naked.

Hey! I don’t like your face.

Where’s my hammer?

I can’t actually eat this popcorn, but I really like fondling it.

It’s got such a nice tactile feel on my fingers.

If this table starts moving across the room, I’ve got to be prepared to move with it.

I will take the ring! I will take the ring to Mordor!

Hey dude, I’m a Beatle.

They’ll probably have, sort of, big Viking kind of orgies and stuff like that, which I’m fully into.

Some insensitive white man left this banana lying around the field and this mouse got it lodged into his leg!

Is this sourdough? *slams bread on the plate aggressively*

After a good drilling, I’m ready to fill, so unzip me and grab my tool.

Oh my god, the hammer pulled you off?

[aidenwaites]

Lavender, ginger, ceylon!!!

Lavender: Favorite Genre to Write?

I'm,, honestly not sure!! I guess horror? Romance? Whatever blend of the two is going on with Will West at all times dhdhDNDJS

horror has one of the widest range of subgenres and places where it fits in with other things like comedy and romance and adventure, ect ect. I think *most* things I write have some element of horror in them

Ginger: most challenging part of your WIP?

The same problem I have with every WIP, which is just.. working on it. Idk if it's an adhd executive dysfunction thing or a tiredness thing or what, but getting myself to actually look at something and type words into it (before I get too frustrated by Not Doing That) is like hammering at a brick wall, no matter what it is I'm writing

Ceylon: best writing advice you ever received?

Uhh!! There was a post on here years ago that quoted someone saying to always stop writing in the middle of a scene rather than the end, so that when you pick back up you aren't starting something new. That one has helped me a good number of times!!

I think it was Taika Waititi that said something about how sometimes writing is staring at a blank page for 8 hours, which isn't exactly advice, but it makes me feel better shsjSSHSHSJ

[listening-to-thunder]

A brief not-a-review of why I love the queer pirate show

Skuld and I just watched all of HBO's Our Flag Means Death in three days, and I am smitten. I have been very weak for shows about pirates who aren't great at actual pirating, as well as shows where the subtext goes text, as well as for... well, I keep thinking about Gintama? Humor and silliness getting you laughing, and then when your guard is down: BAM, feelings. And found family. Fandom-wise, the experience of watching it was a lot like watching Yuri on Ice, going Wait, is this really happening?!". Giddiness and joy and an overwhelming sense of this being for us, for queer people wanting to see queer love on screen. But YOI always had the slightest plausible deniability for Reasons, whereas the moment I decided I needed to put OFMD at the top of my watch list was when Taika Waititi (who plays Blackbeard, half of the OTP) tweeted: 🏳️‍🌈🧨💥I'm very proud of this romantic comedy we made. Very proud. It's not "bromantic", it's ROMANTIC. If you hate this show, don't worry, I still love you. And I hope you begin to understand the many layers that love can encompass. Love is love baby. [taikawaititi, Mar 25] And this was on a quote retweet to a beautiful little vid about the progression of the main relationship. I only watched it after finishing the show, because: spoilers. But wow. That's all really there. In the text. On our screens. 2022, and we have a show that is a rom-com (about pirates!) and the leads who fall in love are both guys and this is no big deal. The show's creator David Jenkins answered a thankful fan: Thank you for embracing the show. Everyone deserves to see themselves falling in love onscreen. Wildly over-produced goofy pirate adventures are for all of us. Romantic comedies are for all of us.❤️🙏🏻 [david_jenkins__, Mar 25] And yeah. That's the show. For all of us who didn't know this show was exactly what we needed. (And given that there are over 100 new fanworks on AO3 since last night - right now there are 1365 total, but click the tag if you're reading this later and the number will definitely have gone up - there are a lot of us.) Finally, my non-spoilery capsule review (aka a tweet I wrote in reply to Skuld's tweet about the costumes, but that really sums up what this show is to me): I adore it. It's perfect. It's so utterly ridiculous you either bounce off completely, or turn your inner nitpicker off completely, and I unironically love watching things I can enjoy with my whole heart and like one brain cell.

[Crossposted from Dreamwidth, originally posted April 5th. I have since watched the whole show again.]

[measuringbliss]

So I watched The Suicide Squad last night and the first episode of Peacemaker this morning. Here are my Thoughts.

First of all HARLEY'S ROCKING THE FUCK OUT OF THIS OUTFIT!!!!

Now that I've said it. Onto the rest.

I absolutely loved TSS. I hadn't seen the first, but I did watch Birds of Prey twice in theaters. The James Gunn vibe is definitely there. Too much there, maybe? The old pop songs were vaguely justified in Guardians of the Galaxy since the protagonist is absolutely passionate about them, and it's in the narrative and it kind of became a GotG trademark, you know? They're introduced with Rubberband Man in Infinity War. It's their thing. So it does sound weird for TSS to have so much of them too. I feel like it was part of the contract; the execs wanted James Gunn, not only the man but the full treatment: colors, good comedy and songs. But I feel like now, it's really overdone. Umbrella Academy had that annoying "oh this fight scene is funny because there's a song in the background" thing in one of the first episodes, and then the absolutely ridiculous Run Boy Run scene made me quit the show because even though those moments irritated the hell out of me, they still were the highlight of my viewing experience until then because the rest was just. so. boring.

The lyrics are at least appropriate and not too much on the nose in TSS, so there's that. But it really wasn't necessary.

There were a lot of great ideas. Harley's flowers fight is wonderful, it looks like an ad for perfume you'd see on TV in the 2000s. The anachronistic order is nice. Comedy is mostly good. The opening act is absolutely hilarious and I really love Weasel. I'd already played both seasons of Telltale's Batman so I knew Amanda Waller is an asshole and wow, she was great. She was incredible. Loved her. All the actors are great, actually. John Cena was very surprising, but his scenes after the hard drive is found? Heartbreaking as fuck. Fuck that fight scene was so raw, I gasped. I gasped multiple times throughout the movie, I just wasn't ready.

Mickey Rourke's wig is awful, part of the fun obviously just as Weasel's dubious CGI.

"If I die 'cause I gambled on love... It will be a worthy death." FUCK, that quote is so GOOD. ALSO THE RATS. THEY'RE SO ADORABLE. I WANT TO PET THEM.

If anyone asks, yes of course I shipped Peacemaker and Flag, two guys trying to kill each other? Yes that's the good stuff. Also Taika Waititi was hot. Absolutely nobody is surprised.

I did think the music was overdone in the climax, with the flashback to both Ratcatchers and Harley helping killing Starro. It was... too much. But the moment itself was sweet as hell. Fuck, this movie is great. So many great stuff about it.

OKAY BUT JUST BEFORE WE MOVE ON TO PEACEMAKER EP 1

I feel like the "pop song everywhere in superhero movies" might eventually become even more commonplace and it would make sense, really, because comics are a pop thing too, you know what I'm saying? Pop songs are probably an appropriate soundtrack. Doesn't mean I *like* it, but it does make sense.

OKAY PEACEMAKER EP 1

FIRST. OMG A GAY COUPLE. FUCK YEAH. I love them. I love them so much. I hope they don't die, either of them.

okay now here is where I insert an entire paragraph about my thirst for John Economos. But I'm too lazy so you'll have to imagine it. but. yeah.

anyway DID YOU KNOW I LOVE HUGS? AND I LOVE IT WHEN CHARACTERS HUG EACH OTHER??? well it happens in both the movie and the first episode. loved it.

look. about Robert Patrick. I'm tired of seeing him play terrible guys I don't like. but also you have to admit he has the perfect face for that.

ALSO VIGILANTE IS SUCH A PUPPY. HE'S SUUUUCH A PUPPY. Freddie Stroma, I had you on my radar for HP6 and it's now confirmed: you're a certified snack.

what else, what else... I WAS SO ANNOYED I COULDN'T WATCH THE FOLLOWING EPISODES RIGHT NOW. I'M HOOKED, FOLKS. I'M SO HOOKED IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY.

okay I think I've said most of what I wanted to say. thanks for reading my ridiculous ramblings!

[templeofshame]

it’s  weird to me how in interviews (with different members of the creative team and different contexts) you get quotes like "People are like 'it's a comedy about pirates', it's actually a love story between two guys who happen to be on a boat" (Taika Waititi) and “We aren’t saying, “This is a gay pirate show.” This is a pirate show, and that’s it” (David Jenkins). And I get that some fans love these quotes and I respect where they’re coming from but also...

Actually it is a gay pirate show? And we don’t need to be ashamed of that? I understand the desire to market it to both people who aren’t into pirates and people who aren’t drawn to queer media. But at the end of the day, it is a fact that it is a show that is very consistently about queer pirates, and we love it for that. It’s popular not in spite of that, but because it does both of those things well (and, I think, because it does workplace comedy well and everyone loves workplace comedy).

It is a queer love story and it is a comedy about pirates, and obviously I don’t think that anyone making it doesn’t know that. (I think the Taika quote is implying that it’s not REALLY about pirates, the POINT is the love story, and I don’t disagree. It’s got a lot of thematic stuff going on about love and what it means to be a man and revenge and trauma etc. and yeah “being a pirate” isn’t part of the thematic core. And in context, David’s quote is about normalization and mainstreamness, about OFMD not being a niche thing that’s just for queer people, and honestly I don’t know much about the straight people who watch OFMD but I’m sure his points are valid.) I guess I just don’t generally vibe with this way of talking about media where it’s like, on the surface, it seems like this thing (because it is that thing) but I’m gonna talk about the thing that’s more important to me as if it can’t be, and isn’t, both of those at the same time. Stories are usually more than one thing at the same time.