#alien ripoff movies

[nattikay]

sure is interesting how the internet just loves to accuse Avatar of being a carbon-copy-ripoff of Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Fern Gully, etc. but never seems to accuse Dances with Wolves, Pochanonas, or Fern Gully as being ripoffs of each other. Surely if Avatar is exactly the same as all these movies at the same time then all those movies must be exactly the same as each other too right! But no, for some reason it’s fine when those movies share similar tropes and themes, but when Avatar does it, using those tropes is suddenly some lazy and derivative sin against storytelling, apparently.

Yes, Avatar does share a lot of themes and tropes with all these movies, no one’s denying that. But guys. Dances with Wolves did not invent the “going native” trope. Fern Gully did not invent “saving the environment from greedy villains”. Pocahontas did not invent “foreigner falls in love with a native”. It’s ok for more than one movie to share these ideas for pete’s sake y’all holy flip

Heck, you could argue that in some ways Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas are more similar to each other than either is to Avatar since they are both historical fiction set in North America centered around the native Americans vs the Europeans, whereas Avatar is a sci-fi/fantasy set on an alien moon six light years away where the humans have hyperadvanced technology and big robots and the whole moon is covered in a massive neural network that the locals can tap into at will using the biological usb cable that grows out of their heads. “it’S jUsT pOchAHonTaS iN sPaCE” SO WHAT? Telling a familiar story in a unique setting is not some cardinal sin against storytelling and I’m tried of pretending that it is. Maybe “a Pocahontas-type story but in the future in space with aliens and a whole bunch of unique immersive fantasy worldbuilding” is kinda a cool concept actually, there’s nothing inherently wrong with or “lazy” about it.

Sorry to suddenly go off about this, it just seems that whenever I see someone (outside the fandom) mention Avatar on the internet they seem to have this weird compulsion to make some dismissive disclaimer about how the movie is silly and derivative before they move onto the meat of their analysis (whatever that may happen to be), as if they need to justify their mention of it lest someone judges them for having poor taste and tbh I’m tired of it.

Avatar is fine. You don’t have to preface every mention of it with a disclaimer about how it (supposedly) sucks. You don’t have to throw in a snarky “oh God forbid, this movie” when you bring it up as an example of xyz. Especially when the most popular “criticism” that get tossed at it is as shallow and silly as “it shares some tropes and themes with some other movies”.

if Avatar is genuinely just not your cup of tea, that’s totally valid! Like any movie, it’s not gonna appeal to everyone and that’s ok.

But if your perception of it is “it’s bad because everyone knows you’re supposed to make fun of the dumb blue people movie, Big Reviewer YouTuber called it Dances with Smurfs and said it was lazy”, maybe think for yourself for five minutes

[frankendykes-monster]

Countdown to Halloween 2024 ranked

54. The Willies (1990)

53. Hell High (1987)

52. Face of The Screaming Werewolf (1964)

51. Terrifier (2016)

50. The Last Halloween (1991)

49. Cathy's Curse (1977)

48. The Last Shark (1981)

47. Godzilla × Kong: The New Empire (2024)

46. Creepozoids (1987)

45. The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

44. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)

43. Man Beast (1956)

42. Tourist Trap (1979)

41. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

40. Fiend (1980)

39. Vampyros Lesbos (1971)

38. Devil Girl From Mars (1954)

37. Halloween Hall o' Fame (1977)

36. Nightmare (1981)

35. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

34. Peeping Tom (1960)

33. Violent Shit (1989)

32. Invaders From Mars (1986)

31. Eggshells (1969)

30. Night of The Ghouls (1959)

29. Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

28. The Strange World of Planet X (1958)

27. The Colossus of New York (1958)

26. The Scooby-Doo Project (1999)

25. Night of The Living Doo (2001)

24. Scooby-Doo! and The Reluctant Werewolf (1988)

23. The Great Bear Scare (1983)

22. The Wasp Woman (1995)

21. The Cyclops (1957)

20. Frankenstein and The Monster from Hell (1974)

19. The Tingler (1959)

18. The Boogey Man (1980)

17. The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

16. Quatermass and The Pit (1967)

15. The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

14. Mad Love (1935)

13. The Alien Factor (1978)

12. The Walking Dead (1935)

11. Dr. Caligari (1989)

10. The Deadly Spawn (1983)

9. Invaders From Mars (1953)

8. Alucarda (1977)

7. Uzumaki (2024)

6. Sole Survivor (1984)

5. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

4. Shock Waves (1977)

3. Frankenhooker (1990)

2. Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1978)

1. Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

What a productive year. October lasts all of 30 seconds which is why I have to start watching these in July if I want to make any decent headway (31 films is not enough). I desperately tried to make this a year of "have not seens" after last year's top spots being flooded with films I already loved; we mostly did it, mostly. Another top heavy year with relatively few abysmal entries, let's get started.

The Willies is the grand shitshow for this year. It feels like it's an evolutionary precursor to something like Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of The Dark?, but it mostly plays to gross out rather than scares. I don't normally care for anthology horror films to begin so to start off a film with brief segments like a woman eating a deep fried rat or a little white dog being microwave exploded and then doing extended stories on monsters hiding in the school bathroom does not do it for me. The most minimal points possible for some decent lighting and special effects but they are not enough by any means to make this worth watching. Stay away.

Onto the 1980's horror: Hell High is what happens when a film crew asks "what if we put a woman into a situation and didn't stop". I want to call it misogynistic torture porn, but I don't want to devalue that phrase for when I use it for a film later on here, but suffice to say a woman is tortured. Emotionally. For very little reason. Universal was right to block The Last Shark from US theatrical distribution. Not because it's a very blatant Jaws ripoff and they wanted to protect their copyright, but because it's abysmal and nobody should have to pay money to see this. I think the stock footage of sharks juxtaposed with the unmoving props between shots is funny, and some of the soundtrack elevates the experience, like the high shrill drones when the shark attacks a helicopter. Creepozoids is an odd one because 1987 was a bit late for a Mad Max/Escape from New York/Alien knockoff but also too early for some Full Moon tier/softcore porn adjacent 1990's production, so it loses out on both fronts. Fiend I'm struggling to even recall, I feel like Don Dohler had one movie in him (see: his plethora of alien invasion films) and him trying to branch out did him no favors. Nightmare is one I want to enjoy because it's beautifully shot but I feel like I've seen one too many slasher adjacent films at this point that include plot points like the killer having a troubled relationship with his mother or him moonlighting as a regular guy (still better than Pieces mind you). Same with Violent Shit. I feel like my tastes are pretty attuned to films that are just gore effects showcases but this one doesn't have any zany concepts to justify or compliment it, so it just falls flat.

The Boogey Man belongs to that tirade of Halloween knockoffs that flooded theaters up till about 1984 or so, but it puts in some extra effort like having a ghost be the main antagonist and a symbolic interest in mirrors, which is much more than could be asked of films like Terror Train which came out the same year. Dr. Caligari is the obligatory "this is what Tim Burton thinks he's doing" film of this year; its sets and its performances are perfectly otherworldly to a humorous degree. It's something of a quasi-sequel to the 1920 film but its relationship with logic is attuned to such a frequency that it's not a hindrance. Very hard to objectively quantify, you're either in the target audience or you aren't, so of all films here take its tier placement the least seriously. The Deadly Spawn is such a gloriously gross film. The house it's shot in isn't supposed to be disgusting on purpose, it's just one of those century's old buildings where I feel like I'd revulse if I had to touch any surface, and that's before fleshy alien monsters break in and start shredding people to bits. Sole Survivor is one of those magical "missing link" horror films, we've finally found what comes between Carnival of Souls and Final Destination. The actual scares in this film are incredibly minimal as it prioritizes atmosphere that balances between comfort and unease, something incredibly rare for films of virtually any genre. Don't go in expecting ghosts and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Taking a brief-ish detour to the 1960's, Face of The Screaming Werewolf is one of those films I'm more angry at than anything because it's one of those films that's just the combined stray footage of multiple previous films. Rare for these to be produced in the western market (most of the examples I think of are from (south)east Asia) but it's infuriating nonetheless to see something only to discover it's a worse version of multiple better things you could be seeing. Peeping Tom is our "most overrated" entry winner, I don't know why so many people applaud this one, I feel like barely anything of substance happens to such a degree that any ounce of suspense you could draw from this just disappears, and what a shame with the concept at play here that feels as if it would take another decade for everyone else to catch up. Eggshells is the directorial debut of Tobe Hooper and while cohesive narrative is virtually nonexistent here, the amount of experimental editing keeps this going throughout the entire runtime, you can definitely see where The Texas Chainsaw Massacre came from down the line. I feel like I'm somewhat disappointed with Quatermass and The Pit (not sure what "The Pit" refers to now that I think of it) mostly becasue the first two Quatermass films are among the best 1950's science fiction films. All three are theatrical remakes of television mini-series and that's most felt here with how so much of the film takes place in the single location of an unearthed Martian ship in the heart of London. I do love that we have a science fiction film positing that humans are partly the genetic ancestors of aliens prior to people taking that seriously with books like Chariot of The Gods. The Brain That Wouldn't Die is magical, sometimes those oft hated 1950's/1960's science fiction films have something to give back to the rest of us. Here it's a man so obsessed with his own work that he sees his wife's death as an opportunity to try and kill other women so that he can use their bodies as grounds to bring her back. Which sounds like something else I watched...

...said film being Frankenhooker, which has largely the same plot but now functions as a dark comedy. God. I hate so much that the capitalist enclosure on the production and distribution of film prevented us from getting so much more from Frank Henenlotter. The man is one of the best to ever direct horror, and anyone who thinks this film or any of his other work are "bad movies" just flat out do not know what they're talking about. I think compared to Basket Case and Brain Damage however, Frankenhooker is the one that "keeps giving". You think you've seen everything the film has to offer and then something like a hotel room full of women combusts as they succumb to the effects of exploding crack or Elizabeth (the titular character) has her head punched back and starts spewing smoke and electricity everywhere. Film is a magical medium of art.

Terrifier is what I held onto "misogynistic torture porn" for. No narrative, no character work, just opportunities to show Art the Clown dismember and murder women in revolting ways. It's one of those films that vindicates everyone that doesn't like this genre and makes me wonder what I'm doing sitting side by side with people that like this shit. I think Art cutting off a woman's breasts and scalp and attaching them to his nude body to disguise himself as another prior female victim of his is when my mouth went agape and audibly asked what the fuck am I watching, cannot stress enough how much it takes to get that reaction out of me. There's an upfront showcase that Terrifier knows that it's trash and revels in it, I mean there's an early scene where we see Art has spelled out his name in his own shit, and I'm not sure how to interpret that other than I feel like I might be landing in a Duchamp's Urinal trap. For reasons that allude even me I am still eyeing the prospect of watching both sequels.

I think my overall reaction to Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is one of "whatever". A passably bad film is a definite improvement from the abomination that was Godzilla vs. Kong but it's admittedly easy to rise up when you start from the bottom. Adam Wingard more or less sucked all the joy I could muster out of the Monsterverse, I truly do not care anymore. If anything can be gleaned from this film it's that this is a film made to reconfirm people's existing biases of "I hate the boring human scenes, I'm only watching this for the monsters." Kong is the best actor in this film because the special effects team have to have him actually emote in response to a given situation, which is more than could be asked of anyone actually on the set, apparently. It's a miracle that this came out in the shadow of Godzilla Minus One than on its own terms.

The glut of 1950's science fiction films are a perennial staple of the Halloween countdown but they don't have a huge showing this year. Man Beast is one I'm going to confuse with all the other yeti movies of the decade though having a main antagonist that's actually a human hybrid gets it some points for originality. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll infuriates me because women who become monsters in film never get to be "hideous" and "scary" like their male counterparts, I'm throwing tomatoes at this one. Devil Girl From Mars is mostly memorable for having a giant clunky robot a la Gort, but the actual titular antagonist doesn't "serve cunt" enough to warrant interest, she should have taken notes from The Astounding She-Monster. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an honorable mention because it's a feature-length pastiche of the z-grade films of this era. I don't think it's particularly funny and I kind of wish they lampooned a "good" film of this type rather than make something that fits in line with the middling genre efforts. Night of The Ghouls is the last horror film directed by Ed Wood and I feel like I enjoy it slightly more than Plan 9 From Outer Space. It's far more competent in producing that lulling insomniac reaction than Wood's prior efforts but I still don't "get" the attention his work consistently gets. The Strange World of Planet X gets a special pass from me just because the finale has a bunch of giant bugs attacking stuff. Moving on.

The Colossus of New York is an oddball modern Frankenstein of sorts with a guy being transformed into a giant robot and struggling to maintain some attachment to his former life. It doesn't always work but once again giant clunky robots are giant clunky robots. I'm something of a Bert I. Gordon apologist so something like The Cyclops is going to hit harder for me than it does for most people. I just like people wandering around Bronson Cave and poor matte shots of giant animals moving in and out of frame, okay? The Tingler was the oddest revisit I've had in a while. I don't think I fully "get" William Castle's approach to film but what stuck out to me is how this one takes place in largely two locations and how Vincent Price's character is kind of the antagonist, experimenting on animals, himself, and other people (resulting in a murder) to get at the Tingler. Much like in House on Haunted Hill I'm not wholly sure how some of the spooky things in this film actually work and I don't think I'm meant to, adding to the bizarre nature of the entire series of affairs here.

Invaders From Mars...oh yes. One of the absolute best 1950's science fiction films is also the most lyrical and dreamlike. It reads at times like a Soviet parody of an American child's story would be like; a boy sees every institution designed to protect him as a child and as an American turn against him on account of some nefarious foreign invader, so his only course of action is to get the US military involved. It plays out so well because it's a POV piece from a young boy, which eases over any leaps in logic both in terms of form and content of this film. Which is more than can be said of the remake, part of the diminishing returns of Tobe Hooper's then contract with Cannon. The film largely follows the same plot structure but decenters the frame through which we see it unfold giving it a "the military is legit" vibe. It also is just a bit more mean-spirited in ways that are designed to taunt the audience versus the original film's more hardened edge to it. I think a great summation of the difference between the two is that the 1953 film had Martian bodyguards that are clearly guys in fuzzy green pajama suits, but they're more threatening than the ones in the 1986 film which are giant quadruped Stan Winston monsters. I digress. Had this come out 20 years later it would be classified as part of the wave of "why are they remaking everything?"

Speaking of remakes, briefly want to mention the 1995 Wasp Woman. It's The Wasp Woman for the 1990's, now with explosions and softcore sex scenes. I can't wholly defend the original 1959 film despite my affinity for it, so let's just say this one is of comparable quality.

The 1930's are a delightful treasure trove for horror but sadly we only have two up for offer. Mad Love makes me curious as to how other adaptations of The Hands of Orlac handle the material; I was convinced a guy got his head surgically reattached and with artificial hands to boot. Always good to see Colin Clive and Peter Lorre. The Walking Dead feels like a dry run for what Boris Karloff would do later that decade in the much better The Man They Could Not Hang, just with him as the victim here and not the mastermind. Truly some of his best work as an actor as he has to float through the world not being allowed to live or die, that shit sticks with you.

We watched a scant few Halloween specials proper, I always feel like I want to watch every Halloween special possible but sometimes the enthusiasm leaves me. The Last Halloween is trash, but that's on me for thinking something made for very small children would appeal to me as an adult. It crams far too much into its brief 22 minute runtime, so the only thing that manages to escape into the zone of interest is that the CGI aliens are actually very well done for a 1991 television production, had this been all about them (voiced by Hanna Barbara stalwarts such as Frank Welker and Don Messick, along with Paul Williams), this would have been far more tolerable. Halloween Hall o' Fame is the first of apparently several Disney television specials that repackaged their theatrical shorts inside a live-action framing device. It's quaint but this format would live and die by the quality of the shorts included; I'm not intimately familiar with Disney's back catalogue solely because they've barely released anything on home media but I absolutely adore the one where Pluto goes to Hell and is put in a kangaroo court with cats on the jury. I feel like the novelty of The Scooby-Doo Project and Night of The Living Doo have carried them along further than their actual quality have, stray artifacts from when Warner Bros was briefly testing to see if Scooby could be an adult property now, doomed to the same fate as Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The latter of these two specials made me come to terms with the fact that David Cross was "a big deal" at some point. The Great Bear Scare is the winner here. How could you not like an animated special where bears have to stand up and be brave against an oncoming horde of Halloween monsters? What makes this an oddity (sort of an obligation for me and Halloween specials) is that this is animated 100% without in-betweens, so every character in every scene cross-dissolves in real time between their keyframes. Depending on who you are it could be ridiculously distracting or make you step back and appreciate how hard animation is.

Clearing out our remaining animated showings, I felt like I would really get back into Scooby-Doo and The Reluctant Werewolf. In the mid-late 2000's when Cartoon Network was desperately trying to excise showing anything from their backlogs, this is one of those films that was on repeat constantly as midday viewings especially over summer. It's just so far removed from what Scooby-Doo "proper" is that it's an enigma, I go to bat to defend each of the "red shirt Shaggy" movies but this is brain melting at times, there is no mystery to solve, monsters are real, Fred/Daphne/Velma are completely absent, half the film is dedicated to a drag race, it goes on and on and on that I feel numb after a bit. Uzumaki...it's good. I feel like the fact that this was in production hell for five years following the first trailer release made me stop caring so all the shenanigans regarding the reaction to the animation dropping off (the production team got screwed over, how the fuck do studios not have the money for FOUR EPISODES, David Zlasv strikes again) brushed off of me. Regardless of that I think the actual pacing would have restricted this given how much sequential material from the manga now has to occur concurrently. It gets by solely because it's Uzumaki and as such it channels such a foreboding sense of dread and despair that is unreal. This more than anything is the true epitome of cosmic horror because there is no "source" or "identity" behind the threat that is warping reality around you, there is nothing to oppose and be defiant against, which was true of the manga and it remains true here. Bravo.

The 1970's prove to be another sporadic decade for horror. Cathy's Curse proves that no matter how good technical effects are, do not watch any Carrie knockoffs. Blah. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks...you took a movie where a Frankenstein monster fights a caveman and made it boring, congratulations. In the interim between 2021's viewing of Curse of Frankenstein and now, I've made the effort to watch the entirety of the Hammer Frankenstein series. They make for a brilliant reinterpretation of the source material with Frankenstein effectively being antagonist: he kills consistently for his experiments, which often time warp and alter people's identities along with their bodies. The "holy triumvirate" of the series as referred to by me would be The Revenge of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Created Woman, and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, all for showcasing new stuff that can be done with the character and any prior influences such as the Universal films being absent. Then comes The Horror of Frankenstein, a soft remake of Curse of Frankenstein, with Terence Fischer and Peter Cushing both absent. It's a dry and tedious affair that just rehashes what Curse already did, just now with a black comedic angle and no real consequences for Frankenstein himself. It's easily the worst of the series and why I'm glad Hammer backtracked for Frankenstein and The Monster From Hell. This is probably the first instance in film history where a sequel has consciously ignored a preceding remake, and while it's not wholly original either, it's comfort food for fans of this series, and now employs a darker more claustrophobic setting in an ~insane asylum~. Not the best ending for the series, but Hammer, along with Toho and Ray Harryhausen's efforts with Columbia, sort of represented the "old" styles of horror that were pretty quickly being replaced as the decade went on. This film specifically came out the same year as the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was a transitional period where what horror once was was cast away. Still not sure why the monster in this film looks like a Neanderthal man but that's just me.

Tourist Trap desperately tries to be one part Psycho and one part Texas Chainsaw, and it admittedly starts off with a nice hook of animatronic puppets being the main focus of the film, but it falls through the cracks and just becomes another random 1970's horror film. Vampyros Lesbos makes me realize that my infatuation with Zombi 3 last year did not mean I'm suddenly infatuated with Lucio Fulci's overall filmography, exceptions are not the rule. Come to think I don't think I've seen a single lesbian vampire film that I'm smitten with, how do you make this boring and not sexy at all, fuck you. Scream, Blacula, Scream is the obligatory Blacula cash-in sequel, nothing worthwhile to see here and none of the charm and significance of the first film is carried forward here, sigh. "DEDICATED TO THE MILLIONS THAT LOVE BRUCE LEE," The Dragon Lives Again is one of the plethora of films featuring Lee impersonators following his death, showing Lee in Hell as he has to find a way back to Earth while also fighting off The Godfather, Dracula, The Man with No Name, Emanuele, Zatoichi, and James Bond while allying himself with Popeye and Dr. Who. No I am not making any of this up, yes, this film was made with very little money so it sounds far more interesting than it actually ends up being, but it's a cute film, I can't be mad at a film made for me, nor can a movie showing Popeye eat spinach to fight mummies or Bruce Lee knocking out Dracula with his "third leg" be something you don't go out of your way to watch.

The Alien Factor is Don Dohler's first and best film. I love the fact that a dozen people made a small scale alien invasion/slasher film in their backyards with actually solid special effects for something that was probably made on the weekends. You can't hate this film, it's made from pure love for what was already decades old genre material. Had some of the script and acting been tightened up this could have become one of the more widely recognized independent films of the decade. Oh...Alucarda. I hate when they make a lesbian devil worshiper film between girls coming to terms with theirs sexual orientation and then they aren't the heroes of the story. We've come a long way since then.

Given that the Eggers film is still a few months out, I'd say Nosferatu the Vampyre is my preferred interpretation of the story (not my favorite Dracula adaptation overall mind you). Let me say that I think remaking Nosferatu is ridiculous solely because you're just doing Dracula, again, just with some stylistic details brought on from a specific prior Dracula. But this film goes all out. It's one of those times where I'm reminded of why slowly paced films with shots that last minutes at a time are so great. It relies very little on narrative (the extent/nature of Dracula's power of the geographic barriers between Wismar and Transylvania go unexplained) but you get so thoroughly sucked into the setting and the characters that you can't complain. This has undeniably the best portrayal of Mina in any Dracula film, she's effectively the protagonist by the second half and each of her encounters with Dracula are on her terms, he's effectively powerless against her even if she ensures they both die in the end. Also, rats. So many rats. Everywhere. The plague is in town.

Shock Waves is just great 1970's horror. Shoot on location, hold the camera in hand the entire time, do it cheap, have a dreamy distant narrator, and make it grisly. I do find the concept of Nazis engineering platoons of super soldiers and we only seeing just the one in this film is probably the scariest thing about it, it invites you to think about what else is happening out of sight. My favorite first watch of the year.

1978's Invasion of The Body Snatchers is also a phenomenal remake. This one is difficult for me to talk about because it just pushes all my buttons, I felt like I wanted to cry throughout the duration of this viewing, it is an incredibly mean film. Someone you know just one day turns on you, and then everyone else follows suit. You think you know your surroundings and your city but everything is flipped upside down and you can't even describe why. From the very start when you see the premature pods land on Earth it's made immediately clear that no one is making it out of here, it was too late as soon as it started.

But there can only be one #1, and this year it's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. Another instance of "nothing is going to beat this" as soon as I rewatched it. I feel like I'm alone in considering this one of the absolute best in the series, I feel like between the espionage and exploration and blood and laser fights that this is just one of the films that reminds you of why we make and why we watch movies, you get to have some semblance of every possible human emotion watching this. There's not much more you can ask for.

[lizardsfromspace]

I didn't submit it to the worst finales thing bc it's too obscure but I have THOUGHTS on the finale to SLIDERS

If you haven't seen it Sliders was a 90s sci-fi adventure show where people travel from universe to universe, hoping the next leap jump is the jump home. The parallel dimensions early on had high-concept premises like "what if the Soviets won the Cold War?" "What if the world prized intellectualism the way ours does sports?" "What if women dominated politics and a man ran to break the glass ceiling?" And also "what if the world was entirely cowboys?" Big, deep philosophical questions

Early Sliders was done pretty well, and had some nice touches - for instance, many bit parts were played by the same actors each time, so we got to see the same minor characters across multiple worlds as well.

Then after two seasons it became a bunch of ripoffs of movie plots, had frequent cast changes, latched onto an arc about an alien invasion, and was cancelled and jumped to Sci-Fi Channel. Jerry O'Connell, star of the show, made them hire his brother, and then both of them left for the final season, which starts with...

The main character merging with his double as he slides into a new world, killing the protagonist, and recasting him, bc somehow, Jerry O'Connell and Jerry O'Connell's brother merged with an alternate Jerry O'Connell results in a different guy.

So there's only one original cast member left, Cleavant Derricks. This show only ran five seasons and only had one guy stay for all of them! So in the final season, naturally, his loyalty is rewarded by giving his character a deadly virus and having him go through the portal to another world, where he may or may not die, and we'll never know bc that's how the show ends

What a series

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

I’m a few episodes into season 1 of “Farscape”. My thoughts so far:

* Overall, I’m really enjoying this. Not gonna lie, I like the show for the same reason why I liked the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies. Before anyone says anything, I’m not calling the GOTG movies a ripoff. But it’s obvious where James Gunn got his influences from.

* I like how this is basically a space isekai.

* This may be subject to change, but this show feels like…hornier Star Trek. We had an episode where Aeryn Sun had to take some clothes off because she was “overheating”. There was an episode where we got full-on alien ass. The most recent episode I’ve watched literally has an evil seductress alien (as well as Aeryn wandering around the ship in a black crop top for some reason). Not complaining, I’m just used to sci-fi shows being a bit on the prude side.

(EDIT: Okay, this is definitely hornier Star Trek. Aeryn unintentionally made a dick joke. D’Argo is clapping cheeks and Crichton is sleeping next to Zotoh, who just stripped down. She even put her hand on his dick lol)

* Favorite character so far has to be Ka D'Argo. He’s like if Drax was treated more seriously.

* I see that Claudia Black always had it going on. I knew her as Chloe Frazer from “Uncharted” and Vala Mal Doran from “Stargate”. So, I guess she got typecast as “badass woman who everyone has a crush on”.

* I’m surprised that Crichton stopped trying to go home after episode 2. He went from wanting to go back home immediately to “well, I guess I’m here now”.

* Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan is so obviously who Liara T’Soni was modeled after. So not only did James Gunn watch this show, so did the team at BioWare.

* The puppets are pretty interesting to watch. Not gonna lie though, at times, I feel like I’m watching “Dark Crystal”.

* I find it lowkey funny that this is an Australian show, but is still American-centric. But I guess it kinda works since there’s an alien race that speaks with an Australian accent, so we needed an American protagonist to distinguish who is who.

[thefloatingstone]

Hi C-puff. Since you know your manga/anime, do you have any suggestions for a person feeling nostalgic for Chobits but not looking to re-read it?

hmmmm~ 🤔

I think it depends what it is you liked about Chobits itself. A Magical Girlfriend anime (not to be confused with magical Girl anime) that I quite like but which is a little all over the place with its anime adaptations is "Oh My Goddess" or "Aah My Goddess" depending on how it's translated. it's a lot lighter than Chobits in tone, but it does have a weird mix of magical girlfriend romance... and a SEVERE interest in motorcycles. The laborious detail the manga has on its machinery is ridiculous. Fujishima Kousuke just completely indulging himself. It's great. Also it has one of the most interesting concepts for how its whole "Goddess" system works. I recommend the movie from the 2000s (which wasn't attached to any specific anime at the time) which if only in aesthetic is one of my favourite "easy to watch" anime movies. It also had a proper anime tv series made for it around 2005 I think?

For something a little grittier that really explores relationships and especially heartache a little more in depth, I'd recommend "Video Girl Ai" which is a 6 episode OVA which is based on the manga Denei Shoujo. It's far more mature (in themes, not in adult content) regarding loneliness and relationships as experienced by normal Japanese teenagers in a way that focuses on the emotional side of things. So if you need something a little less wish fulfillment and a little more personal I'd recommend it.

If you don't mind an ecchi, there is Mahoromatic: The Automatic Maiden which I still have to watch myself past the first 3 episodes, but I find the plot synopsis extremely juicy;

Mahoro Andou is a powerful combat android designed by Vesper, a secret organization protecting the world against alien invaders. Unfortunately, her remaining operational time is running short. If she continues to fight, she will shut down in about one month. However, if she chooses to avoid combat, she can live freely for over a year.

Suguru Misato is a high school boy who lives alone in a large house left behind by his late parents. Like any other boy his age, he has trouble taking care of the house on his own, so he decides to enlist the help of a maid. His problem is solved in the most unexpected way: when a couple of thugs hijack the bus he is riding, a young, beautiful girl wearing a maid outfit saves the day. It turns out that this girl is Mahoro, who has chosen to live her remaining days as Suguru's new maid.

Mahoro makes the best of her remaining time and develops bonds with Suguru and his friends during their peaceful yet lively everyday interactions. However, Mahoro is hiding her true intentions behind becoming Suguru's maid, that being that she is the one responsible for his father's death.

Again, just be aware it IS an Ecchi and as such has a lot of adult humour, however if you're familiar with the Chobits anime it's about on par with that (although the Chobits manga is not as sexually focused as the anime is). Mahoromatic is also a show created by Gainax around the same time as Chobits but before the studio had made FLCL. (it also has some INSANE sakuga in it). Just be aware you're in for a lot of anime tiddy.

Then there's DearS but I wouldn't recommend DearS because it's literally a Chobits ripoff. They have the exact same plot except DearS is even more of an ecchi than Chobits with none of the interesting meta-human commentary and more "look at my hot alien waifu who has the intelligence of a child" thing.

I see a lot of people on MAL also recommend an anime called "Plastic Memories" but I am not familiar with it myself. It's got a pretty decent score tho, and the premise seems interesting as another Android/human love story which also has the plot point of the robot girl's lifespan being on a short timer.

I hope one of those might be what you're looking for!

[tyrantisterror]

If you were ever given the keys to directing or writing a Spider-Man story (or write a Spider-Man fanfic), how would you handle each of Spider-Man’s villains? I’d love to see a more heroic take on The Lizard!

I'm afraid I don't really have a clever take for Spider-Man - I'd probably end up just doing a fairly predictable rehash of the 60's comics, with a dash of some of the newer characters thrown in, like a less good version of Spectacular Spiderman (the cartoon, not the various comic runs of the same name).

Like, I wouldn't change anything about Green Goblin, he's perfect as is. I wouldn't change Sandman or Electro or Rhino from their OG 616 takes, I like them as goons with varying degrees of humanity between them. I'd probably have the most fun with Mysterio by way of doing a lot of Occult and B-Movie homages for Spider-Man to scooby doo his way through. Dr. Octopus would take a lot from Alfred Molina's portrayal because it's my favorite of all of them.

It'd be very unpopular, but I would not portray Kraven as an "honorably hunter," but a vainglorious braggart in the vein of those survivalist reality TV show stars that were so popular a decade ago - with the dated-ness of that being part of his motivation to do something bold to get back into the spotlight.

Lizard would just be a bestial animal in lizard mode rather than an Inherently Evil Reptile Man, and not even a particularly aggressive or vicious animal at that - more a hazard because he's large and scared than predatory.

I would buck the current tradition and portray the symbiote as not necessarily evil/corruptive, with its breakup with Peter being a result of poor communication and Peter being freaked out at how closely he's bonding with an alien parasite than a result of the symbiote turning him malicious. That's how it was originally portrayed, and I like the idea that the symbiote is (initially) a neutral figure and only becomes a threat because of a bad breakup, with Eddie, its second host, being the one who brings genuine hostility into it.

I would make Carnage very silly and hammy while still being destructive - like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac but with goo monster powers.

Kingpin and the Enforcers can continue to be elaborately themed Mafia supervillains, there's nothing that needs to change there.

I wouldn't do Black Cat because she's literally just a Catwoman ripoff and I'd rather focus on rehabilitating Mary Jane when it comes to Peter's love interests.

Spot would be done ala the Spider-Verse films because it's a great take on him and let's be honest, no one's going to un-see that version of him when he's brought up.

MCU Vulture being a scavenger of superhero tech was a cool take that gives his names more meaning than "is a bald guy with robot wings," so I'd go ahead an adapt that too.

And there's dozens more but I think at this point you've got the jist, none of it's very interesting. I'm not exactly a fanfic writer, most of my creativity is funneled to my own stories these days, and has been for a while now.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

Disney and Dreamworks have been locked in combat since day one, and honestly, can you blame them? The Katzenberg/Eisner feud is pretty legendary, with both men taking potshots at each other in films, and the drama behind stuff like A Bug’s Life and Antz has been done to death. The thing is, in the early years of Dreamworks, it was pretty clear that no matter how hard they tried, Disney was the one who was taking the Ws when it came to the cinemas. Stuff like Sinbad and The Road to El Dorado were flopping pretty hard, and while The Prince of Egypt was a success, the failure of the former two ended Dreamoworks’s hopes of ever competing with Disney in the 2D animated market. What’s a studio to do in a situation like that? Well, someBODY ONCE TOLD ME...

Shrek didn’t just solidify Dreamworks as a contender, that movie changed the course of animation in the 2000s all on its own. With its snarky humor, pop culture references, awesome pop soundtrack as opposed to musical numbers, and celebrity cast, Shrek codified many trends for animation going forward—for better and for worse. But whatever impact the film had pales in comparison to one simple, unignorable fact: This movie came out on top over Disney. It won the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Picture, and considering how long Disney was in that game that must have really fucking stung. While Disney spent the early 2000s floundering and releasing flops that would only become cult classics later, Dreamworks was riding that green wave Shrek produced all the way to the bank. What’s a studio to do in a situation like that? Well, someBODY ONCE…

Oh no.

Chicken Little was Disney’s blatant attempt at making their own Shrek (with blackjack! And hookers!), but to say that things didn’t pan out well for Disney there is a vast understatement. Michael Eisner made sure to meddle as much as possible, turning a more straightforward adaptation of the fairy tale into a snarky, self-deprecating comedy about baseball and aliens, which certainly is a choice. This choice had some dire consequences; while not a bomb by any means, the film ruined the already-struggling career of The Emperor’s New Groove director Mark Dindal, producer Randy Fullmer left Disney with Dindal and went into making guitars, and ultimately Eisner himself became a victim of the film as well, with it being the final blow to his tenure at Disney after a decade of failed investments. Eisner ended up passing the torch to Bob Iger, who turned out to be a better leader than Eisner who never did or said anything quite as stupid!

Audience reaction to the movie has always been pretty mixed, to say the least. Reviewers on YouTube such as Schafrillas, Doug Walker, and Mr. Enter have used the film as their punching bag at various points, with the latter in particular helping shape the image of Buck Cluck as Disney’s most vile father figure. Audiences these days aren’t particularly receptive to it either, with most people considering it Disney’s absolute worst film, though there are nostalgic viewers with a soft spot for it. I first watched the film myself a few years back, and I was thoroughly disgusted and unimpressed by what I saw; for the longest time, I had it higher than Doogal on my list of the worst films ever. Fucking Doogal! Can a film really be that bad?!

Well, I decided to give it a second chance and find out if maybe my perception was just colored by all the negative reviews. Is Chicken Little really that bad, or is this just a so-so Shrek ripoff that people overreacted to?

THE GOOD

Most of the characters in this movie are actually decent, even if they’re a little cringe. Chicken Little himself is a likable dork, which only makes all the suffering and setbacks he goes through that much harder to watch; I think they made him too likable, y’know? His friend group is pretty solid as well, with Abby being an okay love interest, Runt being a nice guy (or maybe I should say Nice Guy considering what he does with a bimbofied Foxy Loxy at the end), and Fish Out of Water being a cute “lol so random XD” character. They aren’t the best thing ever, but they’re all pretty decent. I can see why Zach Braff likes voicing the title character so much, and it is cool he got to be in the best Kingdom Hearts game, so that’s something!

Though of, course none of them hold a candle to the absolute Chad that is Morkubine Porcupine, a character so fucking cool that he refuses to give this movie the dignity of more than three single words out of his mouth. If he had more dialogue, the whole movie might collapse under the sheer power of his voice. He’s like Black Bolt, except a porcupine, and in a marginally better piece of Disney media.

There’s a great sequence at the end of the movie that has a Pee-wee’s Big Adventure-esque film within the film about Chicken Little’s exploits… except he’s a ridiculously buff rooster voiced by Adam West in a film that looks like an insane version of Star Fox from the brief clips we see of it. Runt is in there as a hardcore, ugly warthog and Abby is an overly-sexualized space bimbo, but I’m not even particularly bothered by the fact they gave the girl chicken breasts because Adam West’s chicken breasts are so much more massive. 

The entire scene, as brief as it is, is delightful thanks to West being West, and it honestly makes you wish that the whole movie was just a ridiculous space battle adventure… And everyone’s wish was granted when they released a pretty good video game based on this silly concept!

Of course, as is typical of any Disney movie, the best part is without a doubt the villain: Buck Cluck, Chicken Little’s own father.

 In his youth, he was a strapping sports star, and because of this he feels a deep sense of shame at his son’s wild antics and is completely unable to relate to him. He constantly puts him down in front of others to try and salvage his own reputation, throwing him under the bus at every opportunity and refusing to support him. And even after Chicken Little pushes himself to the limit and becomes a baseball star all so he can earn even the slightest smidgen of his father’s respect, Buck is quick to cast him aside once more all so that he can try and keep the dignity among the townsfolk he mooched off of his son’s victory. Buck Cluck is the proto-Mother Gothel, a distant and absent parent for the ages, and one of the most despicable foes the studio has ever produced. Hell, I might even go as far as to say he’s one of the greatest villains of all ti-

Wait, hold on. I’m being informed that Buck… isn’t intentionally a villain? He’s supposed to be… sympathetic…?

THE BAD

I’VE COME TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT! BUCK “THE CUCK” CLUCK’S A BITCH-ASS MOTHERFUCKER!

Ok, ok, let’s be serious for a second. I’m gonna get a bit controversial here, but Buck Cluck isn’t nearly as evil as people make him out to be.

Let me explain: While the film’s narrative completely and utterly fails to make his redemption feel earned at all, it’s not like he was ever really intentionally or even physically abusive like Frollo, Gothel, or Lady Tremaine were. Buck Cluck has a very real problem a parent can have, in that he has a hard time relating to his son while being a single parent that is likely still dealing with the loss of his wife. The issue is the movie doesn’t bother trying to flesh him or his feelings out and tries its damndest to make him look like a good guy all while he emotionally neglects his child.

All this being said, his vocal performance from The Princess Diaries director Garry Marshall is actually pretty great, he gets a few good jokes here and there, and it’s actually really endearingly goofy when he overcompensates with loving his son in the third act. While I’m never going to stop treating the character like he’s Chicken Hitler, I want it to be clear that my jabs at him are very much in the same vein as someone like Huey Emmerich. The difference, of course, is that Huey is an intentional case of making a character you love to hate, while Buck is accidental. And that’s why this segment is here, in “The Bad” part of the review: The movie failed this man so bad that he is put alongside characters like Shou Tucker, Ragyo Kiryuin, and Fire Lord Ozai in animated parent rankings. How do you fuck up that badly? Mainly by deleting the scenes where he actually gets development or characterization beyond being a lousy parent, that’s how!

These writing issues don’t just affect Buck, though; literally the entire movie is as messy as that Kentucky fried bastard’s characterization. The main issue is with the story itself. Now, when you have a movie called Chicken Little, you kind of expect an adaptation of the fable of the same name. And since this is Disney, you wouldn’t be stupid to assume that’s what they’d do, considering adapting fables, myths, and fairy tales is basically their bread and butter. But that is decidedly not what they did here; instead, they decided to make Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius by way of Shrek, because movies like that were popular at the time, and what we’re left with is a film populated by mean-spirited jerkasses who do nothing but dump on our likable main character as he takes part in a story to win the love of his dad via baseball that suddenly, out of completely nowhere, turns into an alien invasion movie about halfway through. Absolutely none of these elements work well together, and the film comes off felling like it was stitched together from unrelated scripts and turned into an unholy Frankenstein of bad ideas.

Not helping helping the disjointed story are the desperate attempts to seem cool. I like Morkubine Porcupine, he’s one of the better gags in the film, but he is so plainly a desperate attempt at creating an ensemble darkhorse that it hurts (the fact it actually worked in spite of this is nothing short of miraculous). The humor is very much aping Shrek, with lots of snarky humor and mean-spirited characters which ends up not working because it’s too cruel, and even ignoring that the pop culture references (a staple of Dreamworks at the time) just all come out of nowhere. Why is the fish reenacting King Kong? Why are these animals watching Raiders of the Lost Ark, and why is Indy still a human? Why did Disney think referencing the lemming suicide myth was a good idea when they literally perpetuated that myth by driving lemmings off a cliff for a movie?

Then there’s the animation. It is so blatantly obvious that this is Disney’s first time making a fully computer animated movie without Pixar’s help. A lot of characters look really unpolished, and even worse is that a lot of the characters are extremely overanimated. If you wanna see what I mean, watch Abby at the end of the dodgeball scene when she’s talking to Chicken Little. She just never fucking stops moving! Once you notice it, it becomes really distracting.

But by far the worst thing this movie does is the constant needle drops. This movie would make The Super Mario Bros. Movie blush with its overuse of licensed music, and it sure feels like Suicide Squad took notes from this because they cram so many tracks in here it’s not even funny. Sometimes they even just have thew characters sing them because… who fucking knows. Barenaked Ladies gets a pretty fat W with their song “One Little Slip” playing over our introduction to Chicken Little, but after that we either get the most obvious songs possible for any given seen (“It’s the End of the World as We Know It” plays over the alien invasion at the end, because of course it does) to “what the actual fuck is this doing here in the movie” (“Wannabe” by the Spice Girls is sung by Runt and Abby during a karaoke session, proving that canceling the Spice World review was not enough to save me from this band).

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Alright guys, here comes my hottest take ever: Chicken Little… isn’t that bad.

Now, don’t get me wrong! This movie is still not really good at all. It’s disjointed, mean-spirited, confused, and stuffed to the brim with the tropes and trappings of every bad animated movie of the 2000s. But all of that is also what helps make this so genuinely fascinating! When Dreamworks did stuff like this, it was whatever, that studio is a rising contender in the animation game… but this is Disney! This is THE animation studio, the biggest around, and they’re making every single mistake possible because they want to try and beat Dreamworks at their own game, and they are failing at it! It’s honestly so funny that they tried to make their own version of Shrek without any sort of understanding of what made Shrek work.

But even beyond that, even though this movie is bad, it’s not really worse than Shark Tale is, and that is a premier so bad it’s good film. Really, this movie is the opposite of that film in many ways. Where that film had a world that was too overly nice and propped up the shittiest main character animated at the time, this movie has an insanely cruel world where the sweet, charming, heavily traumatized child is incessantly beaten down and belittled to the point you half expect him to try and dive headfirst into a deep fryer; where that film had a single generic plot that was at least remarkably consistent, this film has two separate plots that don’t go together at all and just end up making both halves of the film feel stupid and pointless; and where in that film Oscar is desperately seeking love from his peers due to his sheer selfishness, Chicken Little just wants the love and respect of his father. Pile on that the mountain of similarities, from the overuse of lame pop culture references for the sake of pop culture references gags to the bland love interests, and you have the Awesomely Bad Animation Double Feature of your dreams.

So yeah, I think the rating it has is about what it deserves. This is easily one of Disney’s weakest entries for sure, but it’s not without its moments and it has some amusing jokes, charming characters, and Adam West as a buff space chicken. If you go in with lowered expectations, you might be amused, but honestly I get why this film is so absolutely despised. It really isn’t great at all, and is firmly in the “so bad it’s good” category. You can’t really expect much more from a movie that presents a character whose biggest crime was just being an asshole getting their personality overwritten with a girly-girl one that the comic relief fat guy insists is perfect as a hilarious joke and then leads into a dance party ending where the whole cast sings Elton John.

...Or you could expect more if it weren’t for that son of a bitch Buck Cluck. Fuck that guy.

[sloshed-cinema]

Godzilla vs King Ghidorah [ゴジラvsキングギドラ] (1991)

Is it truly a ripoff if the scenes that are blatantly torn from other movies are some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen? Buried deep within this gently absurd entry into the otherwise serious Heisei journey is a clip reel of all of Hollywood’s greatest hits circa the late 1980s and early 90s. Terminator? You got it, as villainous turned suddenly heroic android M11 escapes a burning car and sprints at superhuman speed to catch our heroes, equal parts T-11 and Ash from Alien (though his physique is more in that latter category, to be sure). Mustache-twiddling corpo-villains control the levers of power from the shadows. And our himbo hero says “Go on… make my day” as he shoots a thing on the UFO. This is pop culture fed through a pipeline of cable TV shows and imprinted upon impressionable minds. This is the stuff of Turbo Kid or maybe Psycho Goreman, earnest pulp homage made from a loving place, though this is more contemporaneous. All the same, I couldn’t classify this in good faith as an Asylum type film by any stretch. It simply cares too much. To that end, I also have to shout out the commitment to making a bunch of artificially inserted cute marketable creatures for the express purpose of making them the primary antagonist.

But the roots of Godzilla, no matter how goofy the outcome, have always been in existential horror and trauma. In its more serious veins, this film attempts to reconcile with the burgeoning economic successes of a Japan venturing into the 21st century. A figure who survived the initial incarnation of this avatar of destruction has gone on to become a corporate mogul and the harbinger of his own sort of terror as he owns nuclear weapons of his own. Godzilla was his savior in the Pacific Theatre, and becomes his executioner in the final moments, the two seeming to share a moment. Crucially, shockingly, King Ghidorah is briefly glimpsed destroying Hiroshima, the Atomic Bomb Dome visible in the foreground as these conquerors from the future seek to put Japan in her place. This is about resilience and defiance, uncertainty about how to move forward as a potential economic superpower.

Akira Ikufube’s score absolutely rips. Aside from the plodding, inevitable Godzilla theme, the opening sequences especially are rife with a dense and frenetic score. It has such interesting instrumentation compared to the usual reliable hits, opening on bass-register piano, timpani, and contrabassoon before being reinforced by a denser palette of woodwinds and pitched percussion than typical. Godzilla is evolving, and so are his harmonic sensibilities.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'UFO' or 'dinosaur'.

A time jump occurs.

Close-up of the Dorats.

Time paradox shit.

BIG DRINK

Blatant, amazing, bizarre Hollywood reference.

DO YOU BLEED, GODZILLA?

Flawless early 90s computer graphics.

[mrswhymrhow]

the one time i tried to watch the movie alien i accidently found a bad ripoff movie with the same name and it took 20 minutes of no sigourney weaver showing up for me to wonder "is this the right movie"

[mylifeincinema]

My Week(s) in Reviews: August 25, 2024

Yikes... it's been damn-near a month, and I've only got three new ones. That's summer, though. With my concert schedule, most of my free time goes toward keeping up with reading, and anything else has been going to reruns (of Seinfeld, mostly). ::shrugs::

Anyway, here they are...

Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez, 2024)

I mostly liked this one. Cailee Spaeny and David Jonsson both turn in phenomenal performances. Alvarez handles the tension and terror beautifully. And the production design is a perfect blend of the Alien & Blade Runner films of the past. Unfortunately, whatever that abomination of a final act was damn-near ruined the entire experience, for me. Still a solid piece of sci-fi/horror, overall, though. - 7/10

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Gil Kenan, 2024)

I actually really liked this one. There's a charm here that kinda seemed missing from the last one. Still nowhere near the brilliance of the original, but it's really not a bad way to spend a couple hours in a familiar, likable world filled with familiar, mostly likable characters. - 6/10

Incoming (Dave & John Chernin, 2024)

Pretty damn bad. But it's kinda the type of bad that I didn't entirely hate wasting my time on. It shamelessly plunders its elements from just about every teen movie of significance over the past 40 years. There's heavy doses of Superbad, Booksmart, License to Drive, 10 Things I Hate About You and more, and poorly veiled hints of countless others. The characters are types and nothing more, making everything that happens seem inconsequential at best. It's at once a warning and a wet dream, and too few of the lessons learned feel quite like they stick. However, there are two elements that I really liked. And that's the outcome of the stolen Tesla storyline, and Bobby Canavale. The former actually feels super '80s, rather than feeling like a ripoff of the '80s, and the moral of it—that kindness begets kindness—is something refreshing to see in a film about today's youth. And the latter is just having the silly, absurd time of his life. I love Cannavale, and the dedication that he brings to this trainwreck of a character is simultaneously delightful and wholly cringe-worthy. I especially liked that they checked his nonsense in the end. - 3.5/10

Also got a couple revisits in. Bone Tomahawk held up well, but lacks the overall "holy shit" factor when you know what's coming, so I had significantly less fun with it this time around. Then I watched Rosemary's Baby because I finally got around to reading Ira Levin's book. It really is an all-around perfect adaptation. What an unholy masterpiece.

Enjoy!

[pharah-airways]

Tag people you want to get to know better game thing!

Ty @toads-treasures for the tag i will honor it with my life.

Tagging @surumarssi @creatureactivist @sodalover @pitl0ver si quieren

Last Song: Magnetic by Waterparks (i'm going to see them in a week!)

Currently Watching: Four different things lol 1) Neon Genesis Evangelion (rewatch) bc i'm gonna watch End of Evangelion w a friend over spring break. 2) Black Lagoon - kinda mid but pretty fun. I like how Revy has Gun Autism and belligerent sexual tension with every other woman in the show 3) Dungeon Meshi. very nice to chill eat dinner while watching the Monster Food Show. 4) Scavengers Reign - soooo good. What if you were marooned on the most beautiful scifi horror planet ever. Alien ecosystem that hates you is one of the most creatively designed things ive ever seen

Three Ships: hmmmm i feel like i think less abt ships now than i did a few years ago. That said,

Asa x Denji (Chainsaw Man manga) - ohhhhh my god its so good. this is mostly bc Asa is one of my favorite characters ever but their cringeboy x failgirl dynamic is peak. theres also the impending doom which totally wont happen if i look over here.

Anthy x Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) - the blueprint. i can't talk about them here this post would reach novella length. go watch Utena legitimately the best show ive ever seen.

Shinji x Kaworu (NGE) - whenever i get sad i post this to my instagram story

Favorite Color: her...

Currently consuming: Priory of the Orange Tree (book, good), The Magnus Protocol (podcast, good), Kill Six Billion Demons (webcomic, goated)

First Ship: The first thing i shipped in any way relating to internet fandom was Pharah x Mercy (overwatch). The first fictional relationship that i really liked and thought about tho is probably Percy and Annabeth. PJO numero uno campeao do mundo

Place of Birth: Northeast USA

Current Location: 39.644727°N, 76.745757°W

Last Movie: DUNE PART 2 ITS SO GOOD RAHHHH

Currently working on: I have several writing projects that are neat but are not getting finished, but primarily three things: 1) scifi project ive been working on since i was 15. I think ive managed to stay true to the original vision (star wars ripoff) while also making it somewhat good. 2) Newish high fantasy project born out of worldbuilding a four-gender system. I like how the magic system intertwines with gender i like the theme of cycles and how to break them, but ive still got a long way to go. 3) Long scifi short story about a clash of oppressive societies via toxic yuri. almost done!

Writing: I'm assuming this means completed. Several small things i don't care too much about, and one pretty good short story about a spaceship AI having a Transgender Moment (1 dead many injured)

Art: discord whiteboard akiangel. they're in love btw.

[detectivenyx]

zepotha doesn't even sound like the name of any slasher let alone an 80s slasher. if it is a horror movie it sounds like a ripoff of alien 3. would be a space horror. an 80s slasher would either be a superstitious horror concept (friday the 13th, halloween) or a collection of words that don't necessarily go together all the time but create a sense of dread (the texas chainsaw massacre, a nightmare on elm street). if you're trying to make an 80s slasher you gotta call it something like The Campbell Road Bloodbath

[pluckyredhead]

I definitely do not want this to be a bait question, so please feel free to ignore it! I was curious about your take on Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow. Generally in the broad DC fandom, the opinion on Tom King's work is not great imo. But most ppl seem to love Supergirl. Based on the summary itself I feel like I wouldn't like it because it seems like hurt without comfort, but I haven't actually read it, so /shrugs. Anyway wanted to hear your thoughts on it bc I do appreciate your comics posts!

I LOATHED IT. You're 100% right, it's all hurt no comfort. It's yet another example of Tom King getting an insanely talented artist (the brilliant Bilquis Evely) who makes his unimaginative, repetitive writing look profound. I could rant for ages but I'll try to boil it down to key points:

It is literally a ripoff of True Grit. Like he just wholesale stole the plot.

IT'S NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT SUPERGIRL. The main character is an alien teenage girl named Ruthye whose father is murdered, so she hires Supergirl to help her track down her father's killer. It's Ruthye's story, told entirely via Ruthye's narrative, and Ruthye is the character who grows and changes. Supergirl could be replaced by Lobo, or Krypto, or a big stick.

As usual, Tom King doesn't even make the faintest attempt to stay in character. His Supergirl is a surly, miserable drunk who has to be begged to help people.

He also very clearly read exactly one Supergirl comic - her origin story from 1959 - and nothing else. It's the only previous Supergirl canon referenced. There's a whole issue where he retells it in painstaking detail, except he takes a silly Silver Age story and puts it through the Unnecessarily Bleak filter. He explains his miserable take on Kara by wallowing in the trauma of Argo City's destruction. At one point, 15-year-old Kara finds a dead baby. I want to be clear that this backstory is at least FOUR RETCONS OUT OF DATE, but he decided to go back to it because he apparently refused to read more than 8 pages about Supergirl as research, and then he put a dead baby in it.

Supergirl was created to appeal to little girls. This is not my opinion, this is absolute fact: she was designed to get little girls to read more Superman comics. To this day, she remains one of the very very very few characters who is well known enough that little girls can relate to and identify with her, thanks to the CW show (which had its faults but got her character very right) and DC Super Hero Girls. Woman of Tomorrow treats Supergirl, her history, and her intended audience with complete contempt, and making a movie of it that little girls can't see because this shit is going to be rated PG-13 if not R is peak "I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me?" behavior from a grown-ass man. SUPERGIRL DOESN'T HAVE TO APPEAL TO EDGELORDS. SHE WASN'T MADE FOR THEM.

Anyway yes I hate it very very much, and it doesn't surprise me that people who have never liked or read Supergirl think it's great, because it isn't Supergirl.

For a better take on Supergirl who yes, has experience trauma but is still in character, I recommend the current World's Finest series by Mark Waid and Dan Mora. For an AU with an angsty Kara who is still true to the core of herself, Supergirl: Being Super by Mariko Tamaki and Joelle Jones. The upcoming Legion of Super-Heroes movie also looks excellent in this regard.

[mortallyclearwonderland]

Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans vs Luca

Critics, Reviewers, Comment section, News outlets, etc.

TOP 10 things Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans copied from Luca.

Child: Mom can we watch Luca? Mom: We have Luca at home! Luca at home

Luca, but American.

DreamWorks’ Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans is just like Pixar’s Luca but with a girl.

What if Luca was a girl and it happens in Florida?

DreamWorks: Can I copy your homework? Pixar/Disney: Yes but change it a little. DreamWorks: Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken/Meet the Gillmans

It will just like Antz vs A Bug's life, Shark Tale vs Finding Nemo, or Megamind vs Despicable Me.

(Art by F16 - Lift Those EyebrowsPublished: Nov 7, 2010By jbwarner86. It’s not her opinion! It’s just a comic.)

I'm going to be honest. I love DreamWorks movies, so I might be bias. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This is mine! I'm tired of everybody calling their movies ripoffs! Hollywood only cares about Disney and Pixar. They're the studios that get all the awards, except once in the blue moon. The media has many times shown bias towards Disney. Not to mention people who don't think of animation as art or think anything animated is made by Disney.

A movie can have a completely different animation, characters, tone, plot, humor, message, story arcs, execution, etc. But as soon as it shows even the smallest similarity with another movie that came out around the same time or worse comes out after it then it's labeled as a ripoff and if not it's constantly compared to its older film siblings.

Even Rise of the Guardians gets compared to Avengers because it came out around the same time, in 2012, and has characters that form a team to stop a bad guy. Seriously!?! 

(That’s actually a fun parody!)

What's next? In this movie, people breathe, walk and talk it's just like the other movie where people breathe, walk and talk. Totally the same!

I get it. People want to describe a movie in the shortest amount of time possible without getting anything away and using a vastly popular movie that most people watched or is so prevalent that most know it in great detail even without watching the movie itself. But those descriptions are mostly misleading and are stretching a lot to find anything similar, as I previously mentioned.

There are hundreds if not thousands of things that go into the making of a movie and even changing one thing can make someone love, hate, or feel indifferent about it.

You might love Avengers but hate Justice League, love Cinderella but feel meh about Sleeping Beauty, and vice versa. They are what a lot of people would call ''the same movie'', ''similar movie'' or ''basically the same''.

Unfortunately, I don't think it's ever going to change. Not everybody has the time or wants to listen to hours of essays about why a film is great or bad, and it’s especially hard to praise something without getting into spoilers.

And I need to remind you that you have your own will, opinions, and tastes. It sounds pretentious but a lot of people seem to forget that. Even if the person describing a movie to you is someone with whose opinions you many times agreed or knows you personally and knows what you like and dislike or even you may think ''I hate - insert what you hate in movies here - ! No way I'm going to like this movie.'' and then you watch it and love it.  

Everybody and their mother makes fun of Shark Tale on the internet but I think it's funny (Polish dub). Almost no one talks about Monsters vs Aliens in a flattering light but I love it. Everybody seems to love the Guardians of the Galaxy movies but I found them unfunny.

Maybe I just didn't find those videos yet.

So, when you hear someone compare one movie to another take it with a huge spoonful of salt.

Can't wait when the Wizard of Once movie comes out and everybody will compare it to Harry Potter because it has magic and the main boy character has black hair.

What movie do you think gets this unfair treatment?

[lostcryptids]

They should've made a sequel to The Thing set in New York City. The Thing absorbs a truly staggering amount of biomass thanks to all the sewer rats and turns into a giant rat monster.

The thing as a character is such a good monster, I wonder why we didn't get a ton of ripoff movies like we did of alien, i would have watched them all. the bootleg thing takes new york

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/3/2023: COBWEB

I'm extremely ambivalent about this movie, which can sometimes be more interesting than having a simple pass/fail reaction to what you've seen. It's a type of thing I don't often like: A modern fairy tale about an alienated little boy whose imaginary friend drives him to madness. I'm not pressing myself to come up with all the examples I've forgotten because I found them um er forgettable, but I bet you know what I mean, the kind of movie that is overly dependent on aesthetics and a kind of generalized "spooky doll" vibe that doesn't always work if you're not thrilled by the alleged novelty of combining grownup horror with an infantile affectation of innocence. There are certainly films that have done this really well, and I'd say that COBWEB mostly feels like sort of a primitive ripoff of THE BABADOOK and Bob Balaban's incredible PARENTS. I could also recommend THE PIT if you want to see the most insane possible iteration of this type of thing. But, although I find this movie a little basic and a little blunt, it still outdoes itself on occasion. The parts of it that feel like pretentious cliches about the scariness inherent in a lonely childhood may have lulled me into a false sense of security, because when the shit really hits the fan in the back half, I was genuinely surprised! It's a lot more brutal and grim than what I thought I saw coming.

Meanwhile, I've been watching the Apple TV show The Changeling, which is uneven but often terrific, and it occurs to me that the last Apple show I thought was interesting was also about a changeling, sort of: I hesitate to call it "good", but I found The Servant absolutely fascinating and watched every episode with rapt attention. I wonder what the changeling archetype is about. Like, the werewolf idea is always about managing "the beast in man", and the vampire is a cypher for many forms of foreignness and queerness and contamination (among other things). Ghosts always recall the ill effects of an unsettled past...you can find some kind of allegorical value in most any folkloric horror. But what is the changeling about? Or conversely, movies about evil parents? It seems too simple to just say that these stories are about, um, not getting along with your relations, being disappointed by or ashamed of a parent or child who you think should present in a specific way that pleases you personally. And maybe it's also too pat to say they're about mental illness--about how it feels when someone you're supposed to be intimate with becomes unrecognizable to you. And maybe it's too limiting to say that these tales always reflect post-partum depression experiences. I'm not really in a position to speculate on what the many peoples across time and space were thinking when they developed their respective changeling-like myths, but it's interesting to wonder what factors might link them all.