#also I HATE THE HANS FROZEN JOKES WE GET IT HES A VILLAIN WE HAVE DONE THE SAME JOKE LIKE THREE TIMES ALREADY

[greenvillainredemption]

This is how I envision a Bruno and Pacha interaction:

[dalekofchaos]

My critique of the Sequel Trilogy Lightsaber duels

My biggest problems with the Sequel Trilogy are the blatant rip off and unoriginality, no clear plan at all, lore breaking bullshit, lack of worldbuilding and poor executions of great character concepts. In this post, one of my My biggest gripes with the Sequels is the terrible Lightsaber fights.

The only good duel in my opinion is Finn vs Kylo Ren. This feels raw and powerful. A hardened soldier who has just became familiar to Lightsaber combat vs a trained dark side warrior. Despite Ren's years on training, though, Finn puts up a good fight and is able to hold his own before having his back sliced up. But.....that's what kills the fight for me. Finn's injuries. If this were in the first 6 movies or anywhere in the EU, Finn would be in a wheelchair or in a bacta tank for life. And guess what? A movie later and Finn’s injuries are never brought up again or treated with any severity.

Like Finn’s injuries, Finn’s rivalry with Kylo Ren is dropped for no reason whatsoever and never mentioned again. Finn and Kylo Ren are narrative foils, yet after TFA it’s dropped??? From the start they have been prominent foils to each other: dark from light and light from dark, both in the First Order but in drastically different positions. And Kylo too obviously has strong feelings about his defection. I also believe that Finn is the awakening in the force that Kylo and Snoke felt. Perhaps that is why Kylo focused on Finn and is so angry about him. Finn is also the first person to use the legacy lightsaber and is the first to actually fight Kylo. TLJ could've focused on Finn and Kylo being  narrative foils having a force connection and Kylo wondering why Finn would switch to the Resistance while Finn wonders why Kylo joined The First Order and  Rey standing in the middle of it all wondering with the new realization that her family has a mixed past of good and evil and her questioning where exactly does she belong? The way at the height of tfa when Kylo Ren rejected Han Solo’s offer for redemption and killed him he looked over and noticed Finn. Like they both locked eyes and in that moment was a surge of emotions between them— shock (and some fear) on Finn’s end, and anger on Kylo’s as he shouts at Finn that he’s a traitor— and those circumstances set Finn and Kylo up to be the dynamic for the sequel trilogy. They were foils, and the trilogy had the potential to truly expand on that and see their development in a final standoff/rematch at the very end. But it was wasted, because why have good movies.

Rey vs Kylo Ren. This duel was bullshit from start to finish. Okay, I don't care how force sensitive she is. I don't care that she downloaded Kylo's abilities in the interrogation. ANd I don't give a fuck WHO she turned out to be related to. If you are thrown into a tree, you are gonna be out for at least an hour. I will hand it to them that it feels like a genuine fight, but it just feels cheap when Rey won. It also doesn't make it any better that Kylo's injuries doesn't force him to wear the helmet at all times, his facial wounds are non-consequential. Rey has no prior training. Never held a lightsaber. Rey fighting off thieves with her quarterstaff is not the same thing, it is understandable that Kylo was struggling because of his injuries, but Rey didn’t struggle against Kylo. Even Luke struggled with Vader and Anakin struggled with Dooku. What should have happened is as it looks like Kylo is about to win, Chewie from the Falcon fires his bowcaster to keep Ren at bay and both Rey and Finn make it to the Falcon. This way we can keep Kylo Ren strong and show Rey struggling to overcome Kylo. It will also show This is how powerful he is when injured, so imagine him at his peak. Instead we get a pointless fight instead of Rey and Finn just escaping Starkiller base while Ren collapses due to injuries and Rey beating Kylo served no purpose(the end goal to destroy Starkiller Base was already accomplished) and helped derail their villain of the trilogy.

The Throne Room Duel. Everyone knew that Rey and Kylo would kill the Praetorian Guards. This is a fight with absolutely zero stakes. It's one thing if Rey and Kylo dueled Snoke himself, that might be a good fight. But come on, did anyone REALLY think they would lose? There is no tension in the scene and it is pointless. Kylo Ren and Rey are fighting a faceless a group of guards that we know absolutely nothing about and have literally no purpose in the entire story except for this one fight. We know neither of the characters are going to die because these are just faceless red shirts and there is still like 30 to 40 minutes left of the movie. Terrible editing takes away any enjoyment one might have with the fight choreography, if you've got to literally photoshop out the bad guys weapons in post production to not look stupid you might need to recoreograph the shot. There are multiple times where Rey, Kylo and the guards are just doing motions and actions because they look cool but serve no purpose but to look cool. Kylo stabbing the ground? Pointless. Rey twirling her rave stick around while someone falls behind her, pointless. Not even once do we see them displaying their powers is what cheapens the fight. Kylo Ren is powerful enough to freeze a blaster and a person in place and Rey herself unlocked Kylo’s powers, so the two of them could have easily ended the fight sooner than it was dragged out. Kylo is powerful in the force but he SERIOUSLY could not stop a Praetorian Guard choke holding him and Rey struggled with a guard? Rey and Kylo were stronger in TFA and are just made weaker in the duel with the Praetorian Guards. Kylo could have frozen half of the guards and Rey could have mind tricked the other half into killing the frozen guards and Kylo and Rey could have finished them. They are masters of light and darkness, but they are made weaker. The throne room scene is a symbolization of everything wrong with the movie. It’s all flash, but no substance and the more you think about it, the worse it gets.

All this duel makes me believe is that Rey and Ben should’ve both switched sides in TLJ. Rey gives in to the dark side and Ben returns home. Rey is the most Sith like character if you obey the rules of George Lucas for Light and Dark sides of the force. Ben Solo is more Jedi like throughout the movie until the end. Let me explain. Rey throughout the sequel trilogy has given in to her passion and anger. In the end of TFA Rey gave in to anger and hate to defeat Kylo. and in TLJ she is shown to use anger and hate throughout the movie. She is shown to as Yoda put it “take the quick and easy path to the dark side” gives in to anger and hate in almost every scene before she boards the Supremacy and gave in to the temptations of the dark side water cave. Her dark side actions in TROS speak for itself. Ben is calm and clear minded like a Jedi, he even wants to cut all ties to attachments like a Jedi. Everything we were told of the Jedi and how disciplined they are, Ben displays that in TLJ until after the Throne room fight. Hell, EVEN THE THRONE ROOM FIGHT SUGGESTS THIS. Think about the fact that Ben really does not move or even engage. He just stands there and dodges and swings once when the guard rushes him. Contrast that to Rey, who is clearly being more aggressive with her lightsaber and attacking rather than just being passive. How again is Rey the Jedi and Kylo is the dark side force user in this movie? They’re fighting in the exact opposite way they should be. Rey fights for the kill while Kylo gets a glancing blow in the armor in the opening fight. Their style of fighting in the Throne Room with the Praetorian Guards really suggests that they should’ve switched sides. What they should have done is have Ben realize that Snoke was evil and shows regret for his actions and turn to the light. While Rey feeling betrayed by Luke and the revelation of her family turns to the dark. This would not only be unexpected but would even rival Vader’s “I am your father” twist. And it would logically follow what we’ve seen of these two characters leading up to this point. Rather than just out of the blue Kylo turns angry and irrational and Rey is calm when Ben was calm and rational throughout the movie and Rey was full of anger and hate throughout this movie. You have them follow an arc that makes sense for their individual personalities. Ben is always calm, but he felt betrayed by those on the light, but he comes to realize that betrayal was an incorrect perception and he desperately wants to make amends to Luke and Leia and therefore he should rejoin what he knows in his heart is good. While Rey is full of passion and anger and as that builds up and she realizes that even the great Jedi Luke Skywalker is a disappointment and her family abandoned her, she knows the only person who can live up to her own expectations is herself and that self-centered attitude leads her to the dark side. That would make sense and we would have something to fight for, save Rey from herself or stop her.

Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren. Originally, I thought they were gonna have Luke first send the Walkers’ turboblasts right back at them and use the force to bring down the transports, TIEs and the shuttle and then toy with his nephew like Vader did to him and leave Kylo Ren in defeat and his ruined fleet. In a way he did(minus the ruined fleet), but it took away any tension away by having Luke just be a force projection. He wasn't there. His moment with Leia and 3-PO doesn't feel genuine anymore. And the "duel" if you can call it that is just bad. Luke doesn't have his Green Lightsaber and their blades do not clash. A Jedi is all about defense. But a Jedi will also fight in self-defense to defend others. The argument that Luke did the "most Jedi thing ever" is bullshit. A Jedi will stand up for what's right and face the threat. Instead Luke pulled a practical joke and died pointlessly. I mean if he instead pulled the X-Wing out afterwords and told R2 "Come on R2, we've got work to do." I would forgive that and then we could've gotten a genuine master and apprentice relationship between Luke and Rey and a proper reunion between Luke and Leia. But no, he has to die of force exhaustion. If Palpatine, who uses the force like crack didn't die of force exhaustion, then why did Luke?

The duels in TROS are all equally terrible. Not once did I felt any excitement between Rey and Kylo's duels as I did with Finn and Kylo from TFA. Every Lightsaber duel is forgettable. The fight in Ren's Quarters is just bad. The fight on the Death Star Ruins is just terrible. It's like they both got high on deathsticks and could barley remember that they are both trained with a Lightsaber. Fighting in ruins surrounded by water SHOULD BE EXCITING! But they did everything in their power to make this duel boring, mediocre and lackluster. They act as if they are swinging bats, not Lightsabers. Lightsabers aren’t baseball bats, stop treating them like they are!  

The worst part is that THIS was the final Lightsaber duel of the Star Wars saga. A huge step down if compared to Obi Wan vs Anakin in Mustafar and Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker in the Emperor’s Throne Room, which unlike the previous prequel, had awesome shooting and use of the soundtrack, also being very lengthy.

Then we get the Luke and Leia flashback. The ONLY well choreographed fight scene is a fucking flashback.

Then Ben Solo and the Knights Of Ren. Again, we know the Knights are gonna die. If JJ Abrams bothered to characterize the Knights, then yes they might've had a chance, but like the Praetorian Guards, they exist for background and die pointlessly.

Of Course we don't get to see Palpatine duel wielding his twin Sith Lightsabers and fighting Rey and Ben, cause JJ mr I hate the Prequels can't give the fans any decent Lightsaber fights. Instead of Palpatine facing Rey and Ben in an epic climatic final battle, we get Palpatine killed by his own lightning.

The fights in TFA is adequate at best. TLJ is meaningless. TROS is absolutely terrible and forgettable.

John, Daisy and Adam deserved better choreography than they were given. There's no excuse for the lackluster duels we see in the ST, whether from Rey, Finn or Kylo.

One of the biggest complaints for the Prequels is Lightsaber fights is "they are too choreographed" and anyone who believes this is an idiot. What? You wanted Jedi in their prime to slap sticks like old people? You wanted them to fight like drunken hobos? One of the best things in the prequels was finally getting to see the Jedi finally go all out in some awesome lightsaber duels. The Jedi should be masters at Lightsaber combat. Fight choreography is a good thing. Look at the duels in the prequels. You can like or hate them but the duel between Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon and Maul was great. As was Obi-Wan vs Jango, Yoda vs Dooku and every duel in ROTS. Even The Clone Wars had great fight choreography. There was more planning and choreography in The Clone Wars S7E10 than in the whole sequel trilogy.

Seriously, why wasn't Nick Gillard contacted? He is the main reason why the Lightsaber duels in the prequels were so good. I don't care if too many Lightsabers were a big complaint amongst the Prequel haters, the duels were good. So instead of great fight scenes, you traded great fight choreography for mediocre baseball bat fights?

The choreography is not the issue alone. There is no emotion. In TFA. Starkiller Base was already set to blow, so the fight was pointless. In TLJ there is no emotion at stake for the Throne Room fight and the Resistance already got away prior to Luke's pointless death. Rey vs Kylo doesn’t even matter because the characters HAVE THE SAME GOAL. Both want to get to Exegol via a wayfinder before the duel and both get to Exegol with a wayfinder (or memory of it) at the end of the duel. While Kylo gets redeemed, the duel wasn’t necessary for this part as Leia just needed to talk to him and then give him the force induced memory. The only thing this proves is that Rey is not a Jedi because she gives into anger and blind rage to start the duel.

The duels in the prequels and originals had themes, emotion and meaning. Not just that but they looked damn impressive and was the spectacle that helped made Star Wars, Star Wars.

There isn't any good musical scores for any of the Lightsaber fights either or at the very least, nothing memorable. Nothing as iconic as Duel Of Fates, Battle Of Heroes and the Throne Room fight in ROTJ. I don't remember any themes in the Sequels and that's a problem.

And it doesn’t help that these duels have no meaningful deaths either. A bunch of faceless guards and Luke (through indirect means) are the only deaths via a duel. But this is what happens when you hide the mentor archetype on an island and have the hero and villain go at it for three films.

The Lightsaber duel is no longer an emotional spectacle and a grand duel to the death. It's a bunch of idiots high on deathsticks fighting pointlessly and fighting for absolutely nothing. Rey fights like a Sith but she's a Jedi. Ben fights like a Jedi but is leading the First Order? They don't matter anymore and the duels in the sequels are the most forgettable thing about them.

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

disney’s ‘the hunchback of notre dame’, early 2000s kid nostalgia, and other midnight musings

“What the fuck, Stina? I thought this was a blog for book reviews!” you say.

“Books, amongst other things. Hence the -ish suffix,” I say. “And all my mediocre ‘reviews’ are hit-or-miss in terms of engagement, so I’m pretty much free to post whatever the fuck I want.”

I toss my head. My hair whacks me in the face.

The first time I watched Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame was been circa 2006, in the ‘movie room’ of my preschool, huddled around a CRT TV with the rest of my five-year-old classmates. Not much about the film particularly stood out to me at the age.

Fast-forward fifteen years later; I’m cooped up in quarantine, hundreds of thousands of miles away from that first viewing. I’m living my best life, rejoicing in my introverted tendencies and having a laugh at the expense of all the suffering extroverts. I haven’t moved from my bed all day, except for the bare necessities, and I’m bingeing YouTube videos. All is well.

I discovered Lindsay Ellis’s channel quite recently- embarrassingly enough, through her videos on Omegaverse and the whole Addison Cain fiasco. I stumbled down the rabbit-hole of her channel, and here I am, a few dozen videos later, and I find her one on this film.

Which, of course, led me to want to re-watch the film, with the eyes and mind (supposedly) of an adult. And it went far beyond and above my expectations.

The film is dark, much darker than the average Disney film of today- not just thematically, but the graphics too. Except for the first parts with the Festival of Fools and the last scene, the rest seems to have a dark filter put over it all. Obviously, given its themes (I’m pulling these out of my arse; I’m a STEM major and I have zero to no knowledge about film) of freedom and equality, acceptance of those different from us, corruption and lust- all that good shit, in other words- you can’t exactly have sunshine and rainbows. But it’s such a stark contrast from what I’ve been accustomed to from Disney; Frozen has Hans about to decapitate Elsa, but the background remains bright and light; Simba sobbing next to Mufasa’s body in The Lion King is heart-wrenching, but a few scenes later, we have an anthropomorphic meerkat-boar duo singing about eating bugs and farting and all that classy stuff, so it’s not as traumatizing.

The themes are a lot more on-the-nose than a lot of other kids’ movies (forgive me if I err, I am aged and forgetful)- cue la Esmeralda saying, “What do they have against people who are different, anyway?”- you get what’s essentially the same ‘accept others regardless of their differences’, ‘prejudice is bad’ morals from, say, Zootopia, but having given the main characters fursuits makes it less obvious than in this movie.

(Or maybe I’m just a dumbass. I have no elaborate notes for this; I’m high on sugar and deprived of sleep so I might be spewing bullshit.)

Admittedly, the resolution is a bit… unrealistic. The citizens of Paris = sheep, essentially; they go from throwing fruit in Quasimodo’s face because the guards started it, to helping defeat them. Maybe there’s something about mob mentality in there, but I find it hard to believe that people who showed up to watch Esmeralda burn to death were suddenly totally cool with not getting what they didn’t pay for. But then again, this is a Disney movie, and you can’t make kids too cynical too early on. Let them have their innocence and ‘people will be with the heroes in times of peril because humanity is inherently good!’ before they realize that humanity kinda fuckin’ sucks.

The characters are some of the most human from those I’ve seen in Disney (other honorable mentions: the main characters of The Emperor’s New Groove, Moana, Tangled, Anna from Frozen). Quasimodo’s the main character (lol DUH, will I ever say anything not obvious?), and he’s so lovable, but not without flaws- he’s biased against gypsies in the beginning because Frollo’s the literal scum of the earth. To borrow from the K-pop fans’ dictionary: UwU he’s so pure!

Esmeralda sparks a bit of controversy because she’s another POC leading lady from a Disney film of the 90’s (a list including Jasmine, and, sigh- Pocahontas) who’s markedly more sexualized than the white Disney princesses. It’s not something I particularly noticed nor cared about until I saw it being brought up- I mean, the woman shows a bit of cleavage and then dances for a couple of seconds- but. I’m just putting that out there.

She’s an empowering heroine without having to belt in in your face (not me making a dig at Naomi Scott’s Jasmine from the Aladdin live action film), and I also love how her role in taking down the Big Bad doesn’t have to do with her ‘power of seduction’ (the scene in the animated Aladdin film where Jasmine kissed Jafar truly traumatized me as a kid).

Phoebus is… well, he exists. Kind of a Regulus Black archetype, but not exactly. The guy on the bad side who turns good and all is forgiven. Well, at least it’s not the ‘her love made him a better man’ trope. And he is a good guy. Even if he did spend a considerable amount of his adult years on the side of the bad guys.

Systemic oppression? Nah, it’s one or two corrupt baddies. But again, it’s a Disney film, we need everything to work out for the good guys in the end.

Let’s get the gargoyles out of the way. To reference Lindsay Ellis’s video (she’s a lot smarter than I am and breaks this down better than I ever could): yes, the comedy’s oft ill-timed and inappropriate… for an adult audience. And the primary demographic of Disney films, especially princess ones (obviously Esmeralda isn’t a princess, nor does she marry into royalty, nor is she included in the group of princesses in the dumpster fire that is Ralph Breaks the Internet, but I had a book imaginatively titled ‘Disney Princess Stories’ as a kid that included Esmeralda’s story alongside Belle’s and Ariel’s, so I’m calling her a princess), are kids. And kids love fart jokes.

Additionally, I have a theory-that-is-not-really-a-theory-but-a-pretty-obvious-thing-that-happens that the gargoyles are figments of Quasimodo’s imagination, and the, at times crass and ridiculous things they say are just the voices in Quasimodo’s head (THIS IS OBVIOUS, STINA, YOU HAVEN’T STUMBLED ACROSS A STARTLING NEW REVELATION); maybe what he imagines normal townspeople to act like.

And then we have Judge Judy Chrissy Teigen Frollo. This dude is the embodiment of pure evil. He’s bigoted and rapey and abusive and one of Disney’s most successful villains- even better than Mother Gothel, who previously held the crown. It’s rare that a villain genuinely terrifies me, especially a cartoon one. Frollo, unlike your typical fairytale antagonist who wants power/fame/fortune/to overthrow Olympus, is far more sinister; driven from deep-rooted hatred instead of plain greed. He’s so much closer to people in positions of power and authority even in the modern world, and that element of reality makes him so much better as an antagonist instead of a literal sheep who hates carnivores (seriously, Disney, enough with the twist villains- they’re not working out).

Also, Hellfire slaps. In fact, the entire soundtrack does.

Speaking about Hellfire, I love the contrast between that and Heaven’s Light; how Esmeralda is viewed by Frollo (an object to possess, “Destroy Esmeralda, and let her taste the fires of hell; or else, let her be mine and mine alone”) as opposed to Quasimodo (someone with free will, “I dare to dream that she might even care for me”).

Another argument brought up, and admittedly one I had as a child was, ‘but if the whole point of the movie is acceptance and love as opposed to lust, why didn’t Quasimodo get the girl?’ Which, years later, I realize is an extremely misogynistic way to look at it. As Princess Jasmine said four years before The Hunchback was released, she is not a prize to be won. Quasimodo is Frollo’s antithesis; he lets Esmeralda choose, and she chose Phoebus. And Quasimodo accepted that, because he is good and kind and sweet and loving. Severus Snape, take note.

On a sidenote, I’m always kind of caught out of left field when the plot in films moves really fast- I’m really not a movie-watching type; I prefer to read, and books usually indicate how much time passes from one main plot point to another, and there are little slice-of-life, filler parts that tie in to character development and moving the plot forward, but at a snail’s pace. So, whenever I’m watching a movie and it’s one important event after another, I usually haven’t had enough of a refractory period to process it.

Let’s pretend that I segued smoothly into the next part of this (already tedious and long drawn out) review.

The Hunchback is the darkest film I’ve ever seen come out from Disney. Re-watching it as an adult made me pause every so often and wonder why the hell I wasn’t traumatized by it as a kid. I mean, the whole movie kicks off with Frollo about to throw an infant down a well. And then there’s that horrifying shot of the stone renditions of the Israelite kings on the church walls. Frollo falls to his death into fire. I mean, good riddance, but still. I guess it’s because the kids’ shows of today are awfully censored and polished so kids don’t have nightmares forevermore.

Update: tried to watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame 2. Exited just as fast as I clicked on it. Disney sequels really ain’t shit (yes, I’m looking at you, Frozen 2).

[i-want-anne-hathaway]

*JUMPS THROUGH YOUR WINDOW* GUESS WHAT! IT’S FROZEN DAY!

I purposefully made sure that I got to Frozen today because I think that it’s only fitting. Frozen will be the only thing I listen to today as well as Black Friday but shhhhhh

Okay, so I’m not going to be explaining why today is Frozen day in this post because like... secrecy. But at the same time ask, I’ll explain with the excitedness of a literal puppy.

I have a bad feeling that I’m going to have become so adjusted to the Broadway version of Frozen that I won’t remember what it actually sounds like.

“We will look to you” MR. HAWKINS?!

A Little Bit of You is really fun to listen to, and it makes me wanna bounce up and down aggressively.

WHY THE FUCK AM I CRYING probably because it’s 5:19 BUT STILL IT’S DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN

In the movie, there’s like no ensemble parts, and it’s probably going to weird as fuck hearing that after listening to the Broadway version exclusively.

Ryan McCartan making jokes about Broadway closing is the funniest thing ever. “I was not the first Hans on Broadway, but I was the last.”

Queen Annointed sounds like something my chorus teacher would try to get us to learn with the boys choir, but the girls would end up in the Baritone/Tenor section while the boys were in the Soprano/Alto section.

All of Elsa’s songs are sad as fuck, and I don’t appreciate it.

Dangerous to Dream really makes me want to have like... talent and the ability to sing but alas I cannot.

Love Is an Open Door is a villain song, and you cannot convince me otherwise.

I don’t know what’s happening in that instrumental portion of Love Is an Open Door, so whenever i sing this song I just stand awkwardly like... “what the fuck am I supposed to do here”

Reindeer are better than people. The plural of reindeer is still reindeer, right? Because that’s how it works with the word deer.

What Do You Know About Love is so good and gets the Certification of Bophood™️

Kristoff: *makes valid points about why Anne shouldn’t get married*

Anna: But true love

Okay, on one hand I think that the screaming “puddle” is funny, but at the same time they’re disrupting a performance that is for children, and it ruins the experience for them so you can get a 15 second video.

I have so many stories about the song Let It Go, but my favorite is one time my drama teacher told me to play something really annoying that would piss people off and make the really intense moment not as intense. She specifically said play a song. Now I had no wifi or data in school, so I could only play things I had on iTunes, which is actually all my mothers. And I wasn’t playing gospel music in front of some +100 kids during rehearsal. So I played the only other option... the Demi Lovato Let It Go my mother bought back when I was in first grade. My classmates were literally dying on the floor because it’s the moment where they reveal that they were betrayed by one of their closest friends, and then I’m just tied up in a chair blasting Let It Go.

THE COLD NEVER BOTHERED ME... ANYWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Hygge is a good song, but it’s also that one song that lasts way longer than it should, which makes me not like it nearly as much.

But at the same time I love chanting “HYGGE” over and over.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FOREVER (REPRISE) WAS AND PROBABLY STILL IS MY FAVORITE SONG. IT’S JUST SO PRETTY! EVERYTHING ABOUT IT IS SO GOOD

Fixer Upper is a bop, but at the same time I don’t like the trolls. I think that this whole thing could’ve been easily avoided if they didn’t teach Elsa to be afraid of herself.

KRISTOFF LULLABY MAKES ME SOFT! HE’S IN LOVE WITH HER, IT’S SO SWEET!

Monster does this thing called breaking my fucking heart. I love that Monster doesn’t feel exclusive to Elsa. It’s not a song that only she can relate to, which is important when writing music. The line “I’ve started a storm” is literal in the show, but can be taken figuratively and applied to a lot of people in real life.

True Love was the one song that my playlist really wanted me to listen to. It was shoved down my throat. And I appreciate that because I wouldn’t have listened to it otherwise.

Listening to this in a freezing cold house is a TIME

“I charge Queen Elsa with treason” bitch, sit down

Elsa is depressed, and I just want to give her a hug.

And the lyrics in Colder By the Minute are so good. Anna and Kristoff call out to each other, Hans calls to Elsa, and that leaves Elsa calling out monster. Or Hans.

AND THEY’RE PLAYING THE TUNE OF DANGEROUS TO DREAM IN THE LAST FEW SECONDS.

Caissie and Patti are Anna and Elsa, sorry Idina and Kristen. Hate to break it to ya.

“And another in my aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabdomen.”

There’s also the deleted song “When Everything Falls Apart” on here, and I actually like it more than I thought I would.

“You hesitated.” “No, I didn’t” “yes you did”

Final Judgement: I really love Frozen, and I also love the musical. And thinks musically wise it does a great job of adding new songs and improving ones already in the movie. There are no doubt going to be problems, but I don’t know enough about the show to properly critique it

[helsaguy]

Unpopular opinion: One major problem with Frozen's plot is that it tries to simultaneously explore two very distinct themes that can stand as their own in a movie, i.e. don't marry the man you just met and be yourself. The story could have been better by focusing on Elsa's emotional struggles with her power and how she eventually learned to accept help from the people around her. The decision to make Anna's flaws a main point ended up sending mixed messages. Frozen is a movie, not a TV series.

Agreed.

To me Frozen was always a story about two sisters. How they grew apart because of fear and isolation and a lot of manipulation by their parents, and how they should have been brought together again through love, support, and the process of relearn to accept and love oneself with the good and the bad (which all of us have) We are not alone and we shouldn't go through life alone. Frozen should/could have been about not just blood family but found family as well (which is a very important matter) and... They blew it.

The whole idea of trying to make Frozen a story about not marring someone you just met is pretty dumb. And while I agree that it could be a theme on its own for a whole other movie, a movie like that would also be pretty dumb as I don’t think a movie as such would be needed or exciting to watch... Who needs a movie about that specific theme, really? I think no one in the real world would/should be stupid enough to marry someone like that no matter how well they get along. The only way I see two people marring each other while not knowing anything about each other and having just met is if that marriage was arranged by parents or whatever authority figure the people respond to? People nowadays also marry because of money or things like medical insurance, afford a place to live, etc. And while I understand why these things happen, I can't help to think it's quite sad in more than one way...

Elsa’s struggle should have been the main aspect to explore in the first movie but they pushed it aside for the longest time throughout Frozen. All the characters cared about is the weather. Well, Anna and Hans were the only ones who showed some concern for her but Hans’ ultimate goal was to stop the winter (even if that meant killing Elsa) as he was left with the responsibility of taking care of a whole kingdom threaten by said winter; and Anna’s priorities were all over the place. She wanted her sister back but showed no sign of caring about her sister’s side of the story. She basically judges Elsa for being distant and assumes Elsa doesn’t like her or doesn’t want her near. Then she wants Elsa to stop the winter while continuing to not care to listen to her sister’s problems causing Elsa to accidentally freeze her heart. At last Anna was more concerned about getting a kiss from a stranger to save her than what was happening with and to Elsa.

I'm writing this in a "matter of fact" way and not as a mean to complain about the characters though. These characters are flawed, they are complex, and they have reasons and motives to be this way, I think.

On a side note; it has always bothered me how the people of Arendelle weren’t the least concerned about their just crowned queen (of course I believe the Duke's attitude helped in that too)... Not a single one of them, nor the guards, nor Kai and Gerda were worried about Elsa. All the people of Arendelle saw was their kingdom being frozen and no one saw nor cared about Elsa's obvious face of terror and panic while everything was happening. No one ever put themselves to think that Elsa was being a victim of what was happening just as they were and that makes me sick to be quite honest. I also want to say that if Frozen would have made better use (or use at all) of the characters they already had to work with, Kai and Gerda could have been Elsa and Anna's guardians after their parents died. They could have acted like the parental caring figures the girls were missing. Or at least be confidants to the sisters. People they could talk to. Because apparently Anna was so alone that she talked to pictures on the wall. Neither of Kai and Gerda could have acted as friends to Anna while Elsa was in lock up? And the same for Elsa. Could neither of them try to be there for Elsa? Support her in any way they could if they cared? These two are so wasted... They could have been treated as real characters even in the sequel. But no. They had to come up with a nonsensical plot that introduced more characters that would be once again ignored or sidelined and tokenism.

The composition of these movies is so wrong...

The Duke and the trolls are also characters that are there but they do nothing either. The trolls contribution is to be cryptic or misleading af and Fixer Upper is an awful song and sequence; while the Duke could have been taken as a serious character but he is there for laughs and his antagonistic nature and criminal actions are brushed off easily... If this movie "needed" a physical villain, the Duke and his goons are the characters they should have used. Not throw Hans' character under a fucking bus for shock value and try to be "subversive" with the Prince Charming trope. They already had the act of true love being Anna's sacrifice as a good, valid, and appropriate contribution to what Frozen is or should be about. That alone was actually relevant to the message of the story.

I could be writing about this and so much more all day to be honest. Time passes and all there is left about Frozen are missed opportunities, wasted potential and crap. A lot of crap. In front and behind the scenes. There barely is a shadow of what it used to be. I can only vaguely remember how much I idolized this movie... What a joke. What a scam. What a waste of time and energy it all amounted to.

P.S. I’m also tired of Disney nowadays making jokes about what it “used to be”. In my eyes they are insulting the foundation of the company they so much brag about today and that doesn’t float with me. One more thing to add to the pile of things that make me hate the products and brand I cared and loved so much about since I was a child. Thank you Disney for ruining in my eyes all you used to stand for.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

The 25 Worst Movie Villains

If your movie is going to have a villain in it, you better be damn sure your villain is fucking fantastic. Of course, not every movie without a great villain is bad, but if you’re going to give us a major antagonizing force, is it too much to ask they be impressive? Hell, even bad movies know to make sure their villains a re memorable; Terl of Battlefield Earth, Profion of Dungeons & Dragons, the eponymous Giant Claw, they all have presence and memorability, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. So when a movie that is otherwise good or a movie that is already bad fucks up their villain, it stings, because when even arguably worse movies can make a halfway enjoyable antagonist compared to yours, well... it makes you think.

These villains are failures on every level. These are villains who could have improved the films they are in a great deal if they were better, but alas, they just... weren’t. Still, for the most part, the fact these villains suck is not really indicative of the film’s overall quality; true, most of these villains are from crappy films, but there are a few from good or even great movies on here.

Well, let’s not put this off any longer; time to be disappointed by the 25 stupidest foes ever to antagonize on the silver screen:

25. Drek

Ratchet & Clank

Drek was one of the most sinister and intimidating villains of the Ratchet & Clank trilogy on PS2, with superb voice acting from Kevin Michael Richardson, a truly heinous plot, and just generally being an effective bad guy. In the movie, he’s basically a bumbling, smarmy comic relief villain who is upstaged by his own henchmen. He’s also played by the normally awesome Paul Giamatti, who has succesfully played sleazy businessman bad guys to great effect in films like Big Fat Liar, but here he just falls flat… he just doesn’t suit the character like KMR. Maybe if Drek was better this film wouldn’t be the worst video game movie ever made… but here we are.

24. Malekith the Accursed

Thor: The Dark World

The sequel to Thor is already fucking awful, and somehow they managed to fuck it up even more by casting Christopher Eccleston as the bad guy, cutting out any scenes that gave him depth or clear motivations for more Wacky Loki Antics™, and then make him into the blandest, most generic doomsday villain you’ll ever see. At the very least the makeup is awesome, but it leaves one bitter knowing a great actor was wasted in this crappy role.

23. Hans

Frozen

Disney’s surprise villains seem to work the same way Star Trek sequels work; every other one sucks. And while for those movies it’s the even numbers that are good, the even numbers are shitty here. Hans scores a lot lower than he would simply based on the fact there is some brilliantly subtle foreshadowing for him, but it still doesn’t save him from being really lame compared to the previous surprise villain King Candy or the next one, Yokai. Hans hardly does anything evil until the last twenty minutes, at which point it’s just an incredibly jarring shift in character. The hate for Frozen is way overblown, but Hans isn’t something I can really defend too much.

22. Bane

Batman & Robin

I will defend this movie to the death. I will defend the villains; Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy are two of the best, campiest, and funniest comic book villains you’ll ever see. But this film’s version of Bane? He kinda blows. Nowhere is the brilliant strategist or the man who broke the Bat; he’s just Ivy’s dumb muscle. It’s okay though, she has enough personality for the both of them.

21. Goldmember

Austin Powers in Goldmember

I get that Mike Meyers likes to juggle a lot of characters, I do. And usually he does a good job at it; Austin, Dr. Evil, and Fat Bastard are all really funny in the first two films. I guess in this case three’s company and four’s a crowd though, because Goldmember just is not funny at all. He’s just a living dick joke with an obnoxious accent. It doesn’t help that he appeared in the worst film of the trilogy.

20. Anubis

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie

I get I probably shouldn’t be expecting complexity and depth from the villain of a movie based on a children’s trading card game anime… but no, fuck that. Pegasus and Marik both had a bit of depth to them and were great, and even some of the other villains from the weaker seasons had some level of depth. Anubis takes one of the coolest Egyptian gods, strips him of anything interesting to make him a god of evil, and then makes him look like a buff pro wrestler, relegating his true jackal-headed form to a brief dream sequence. What makes him all the worst is that his goal is really… confusing. Did he even have an endgame? Whatever, the movie’s non-canon, and considering how shitty Anubis was it’s easy to see why.

19. Paris Franz

The Killing Joke

How do you make an already awful prologue worse than it already is? Why, by giving it a totally ridiculous villain of course! Paris Franz has a weird obsession with Batgirl and can’t seem to go two seconds without making some innuendo towards her. Even worse, Batgirl finds his interest in her… cute. He was gonna rape her after gassing her, but, you know, I guess some girls are into that, no kinkshaming here. Doesn’t make Paris any more entertaining or interesting though, and it certainly doesn’t help that the only thing that could possibly make him better is the incredibly stupid sex scene that tops the worst part of the movie off.

18. Blackheart

Ghost Rider

Ghost Rider is a great, trashy superhero masterpiece, but that’s in spite of the villains, and not because of them as is usually the case. Blackheart and his crew of bland elemental video game boss demons are some of the most dull demonic entities ever put to screen. It’s really not helped that Blackheart is played by the creepy, plastic bag obsessed kid from American Beauty. Not even absorbing the thousand evil souls and becoming Legion makes him any cooler, as his every line still completely oozes corniness.

17. Norman Bates

Psycho 1998

You’d think it would be hard to fuck up one of cinema’s most intriguing villains, but you’re also probably not someone who ever thought to yourself, “Hmmm, Vince Vaughn would be a great choice to play Norman Bates!” Honestly, this casting only leads further credence to the idea that Van Sant only remade Psycho so that he could make a version so bad no one would ever try to remake it again.  Putting a masturbating Vince Vaughn in your film will certainly deter people, that much is true.

16. Katayanagi twins

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

How does one stand out in a film full of over-the-top, crazy personalities? By being incredibly BORING. And boy, are these two boring. No interesting backstory, not a single line of dialogue (since the actors didn’t speak much English), and easily the least interesting fight scene in the entire film, the twins are an utter letdown. The fact they have absolutely no characterization stings even worse after Scott has already faced down four other evil exes who, while not given massive backstories, had tons of personality and some insight given as to who they are and why they’re fighting. The twins are just there because Scott needs to fight ex #5 and ex #6. They’re living plot devices.

15. Aldrich Killian

Iron Man 3

Ben Kingsley spent the entirety of Iron Man 3 playing the Mandarin, Iron Man’s most famous foe, and averting fears of the villain straying too close to his Yellow Peril origins and being offensive. His Mandarin was cool, intimidating, seized your attention… and he was all a hoax, perpetrated by the ‘real’ Mandarin, who… is some pussy A.I.M. scientist played by the very white and very poorly cast Guy Pearce. Look, I love Memento, I adore The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but Pearce is no Ben Kingsley. Thank god the creators knew how stupid him being the Mandarin was and released a short film revealing that he too was a fraud; maybe we’ll get the real Mandarin someday soon. Anything to wash the taste of Killian out of my mouth.

14. Rowan North

Ghostbusters 2016

One of the most baffling aspects of Ghostbusters 2016’s incredible heaps of critical praise is the fact that the villain is so vapid and forgettable that I actually have to look up his name every now and then to make sure it’s actually right; he’s that forgettable, and in a huge blockbuster franchise reboot, you need to be damn sure your villain is impressive. Rowan is not. The only remotely memorable part of him is the fact he turns into a giant version of the logo ghost and gets shot in the dick to be defeated, cementing the movie’s sexist undertones. The worst part is Rowan actually does have a bit of characterization that, if expanded, would have made him an interesting foil to the team or at the very least a more fleshed-out, perhaps even somewhat sympathetic, antagonist. But as we all know, the writers for this movie were gibbering nincompoops who couldn’t write worth a damn, so we have… uh… what was his name again… whatever, point is, he sucks.

13. Zeebad

Doogal

Jon Stewart’s villain is hardly the worst thing in Doogal – that honor goes to Jimmy Fallon – but it’s not exactly like he’s helping anything by being there. His villain is cliché, directionless, and not particularly funny, which is baffling since Stewart is a pretty funny guy. I get no one in this film was particularly interesting and the whole movie is just a really bad gag dub, but come on.

12. Aloysius O’Hare

The Lorax

He’s short, he’s ugly, his hair is stupid… No, I’m not talking about the title character you asshole, I’m talking about the one-dimensional Captain Planet villain who snuck into this story about protecting the environment and helped turn it into a generic “Defeat the bad guy and solve all the problems” story. At least he has a few good memes going for him, and his VA is having fun, but that doesn’t change the fact he is an absolute waste of an antagonist, and one wholly unecessary when the much more fascinating Onceler family is there.

11. Eddie Brock

Spider-Man 3

You know what? Venom was cool. Venom kicked fucking ass in this movie. It’s just a shame that for most of his screentime he had to open up his mask and reveal the pussy little bitch face of Topher Grace beneath. Yep, Eddie Brock is what really dragged this otherwise awesome character down into sucking, all due to the baffling choice to cast Topher Grace and the equally baffling choice to have Venom not only speak with his voice but to constantly have Grace’s face showing.

10. Justin Hammer

Iron Man 2

A villain is supposed to annoy the hero, not the audience. Justin Hammer didn’t get the message, because he is absolutely unfunny, obnoxious, grating, and just a piss-poor villain that sucks up screentime that the much more interesting villain Whiplash deserved. If this movie had two compelling villains, it would have probably sucked so much less, but instead we get Rourke’s totally neutered villain (because Marvel back then was constantly meddling with the movies) and an annoying prissy bitch who just fails on every level as a villain.

9. Minnie Castevet

Rosemary’s Baby

I will never get why this character is hailed as some great, incredible villain for the ages. She’s annoying as fuck. She’s just the obnoxious, forceful, overbearing neighbor cranked up to eleven and oh yeah she’s also an evil witch who got the titular character knocked up by Satan. She’s not funny, interesting, or entertaining, she’s just a painful-to-watch character in a movie that is already a hugely frustrating downer.

8. Plants

The Happening

Just because I love this stupid movie doesn’t mean I think the true villain is all that great. Yes, the big twist of Shymalan’s incredible unintentional comedic masterpiece… is the plants are the killers. You see, they’re mad at humanity for fucking up the Earth, so they blow some tree toxin that makes people commit suicide and okay did no one realize how stupid this sounds when they were writing it?

7. Dominic Greene

Quantum of Solace

You know how Bond usually fights hammy, world-threatening madmen who have things like death lasers, golden guns, and volcano lairs? Dominic Greene… is the exact opposite of that. He’s deathly boring and uninteresting, and considering how much of a grimdark shitshow this film is, him being a hammy madman would have been so very welcome. But nope. He’s just boring and flat as a plank of wood.

6. Bellwether

Zootopia

Zootopia is, without a doubt, one of the finest films Disney has ever made. The story is great, the characters are very well-written, the designs and atmosphere are top-notch… and then, for the fourth fucking time in a row, Disney pulls the hidden villain bullshit out and BOOM! This cute little sheep secretary from earlier was really the bad guy pulling all the strings. This doesn’t work very well because, as this is in the climactic final confrontation, there’s not much time to establish why she did what she did beyond a bit of dialogue. We don’t get to explore why she’s doing this or really see her be evil, and this is an enormous flaw with these sorts of villains in modern Disney films. At least before the reveal King Candy is clearly being an insane, sneaky dick, and Yokai’s identity is a more traditional switch that isn’t so much of a bother because he, as a villain, is onscreen being villainous frequently before his true identity is revealed; Bellwether, for all we knew until the reveal, was just a nice, overworked cute secretary girl.

5. Doom

F4ntastic

We’re never going to top the Doom from the cheapo 90s movie, huh? Even with that low bar set though, Doom has been fucked up every time they adapt him to screen, and of course the 2015 movie version of America’s original superhero family fucked him up worst of all, much like they fucked everything else up. Looking like a cross between a crash test dummy and a gimp suit, this Doom does little but bring to mind the infamous Dudepeel… and don’t worry, we’ll get to him soon enough.

4. Julia

The Tall Man

Spoiler! She’s the bad guy and she kidnaps impoverished kids to give them to rich folks who will provide them a better life, alongside an entire organization of underground extremists who do the same. You can almost see where this group and Julia are coming from; yeah, let’s take these abused kids away and give them a better life! That’s good, A+, gold star for you! The problem comes from the fact they also just take kids from poor people, and we in fact get to see one such poor mother who dearly loved her kid have her child taken away and given to someone else. We see her break down crying as she’s told by Julia her kid is dead. It ruins whatever point this movie was trying to make and comes out to being, “Well, fuck poor people, am I right?” The movie’s really trying to frame Julia as a sympathetic, “I do what I must for the good of others” villain but it kinda falls apart when your supposed anti-villain has about as much disregard for the poor as your average conservative politician.

3. Lex Luthor

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I guess it’s dumb to expect anyone as good as Kevin Spacey ever again. Jesse Eisenberg is not a bad actor, and Lex Luthor as a goofier character is not unheard of (look at the Christopher Reeves movies), but… it just does not work here. Nothing about this Lex really screams Lex Luthor. He’s practically an “in name only” interpretation of the character. We can only hope his Lex will get better, but when his final line onscreen has Lex screaming out “DING DING DING” to Batman, there’s not much hope to be had. You can’t expect me to take a character who pisses in a jar and gives it to someone seriously. I’m sorry, it just doesn’t happen. The hate for this movie is some of the most overblown I’ve ever seen, but I will never speak a word of defense for this manic, cringeworthy buffoon of a character.

2. Dudepeel

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

You knew this one was coming. There’s really no worse fuckup in comic book movie history than the utter mishandling of Deadpool in Wolverine’s first solo outing. Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson earlier in the film is pitch-perfect and a faithful adaptation of the character… and then they kill him offscreen, sew his mouth shut, and down the crapper this character goes. This character is all the worst because it’s just so baffling as to why anyone would approve of something that just spits in the face of a beloved character... But hey, making absolutely idiotic and boneheaded decisions is par for the course for producer Tom Rothman, who fucked up this film and so many others.

1. Roy Burns

Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning

There’s really no other way to say this: Roy Burns is the worst villain ever. The last minute reveal – literally last minute, his role is not so much as hinted at save for one shot near the start – completely and utterly renders the entire film prior nonsensical. None of the victims he killed had anything to do with the reason why he was killing, his dressing up as Jason is so nonsensical… he feels like a character who was meant for a different movie but just got tossed into this because, who fuckin’ cares? You can read my review of the film for all the reasons why this is twist is absolutely stupid. One thing is definitely for sure: Roy Burns is no Jason Voorhees, and never will be.