#also most of that shit looked stupid and goofy and like bad cgi | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mychoombatheroomba · 10 months ago

Text

Things I Love About the Shitty Live Action Resident Evil Movies

So, it was my birthday recently and my roommates asked if I wanted to do anything fun. My response, of course, was to suggest getting drunk and watching the live action Resident Evil movies and like, damn, I love those stupid ass movies so much. So I wanted to make a really dumb (and lengthy) post about the goofy things I like, whether for legit or meme reasons.

Y'all, I know they're bad, that is, in fact, why I love them.

1 - The opening is genuinely kinda freaky, like, the elevator scene? Oof, well done suspense

2 - Michelle Rodriguez. That's it, that's the post.

3- The LASER ROOM - so iconic they used it in the games. The first movie came out in 2002, RE4 then used the laser room in 2005, like, y'all, they took that from the goddamn movie, that's how much of a vibe it was

(And honestly, just the Red Queen in general, what an absolute icon, love that her appearance changes in every movie she's in)

4 - Alice is the most fanfic Mary Sue character I've perhaps ever seen on-screen, and I love that for her. Look at her kicking this zombie dog in the face, it's hilarious

5 - Pretty game-accurate costuming? I can dig it

6 - They're gay, your honor

7 - Bad CGI on the Licker, I would expect nothing less

8 - Alice is at her most powerful when she finds a white bathrobe just lying around somewhere

9 - Raccoon City gets destroyed in the course of, like, a day if I'm understanding the timeline right. Like, first infection to nuking the city seems to be about 24 hours. Incredible.

10 - Leon fucking wishes he was Alice, miss ma'am out here driving motorcycles into buildings and then launching them at a monster just to shoot it and blow it up.

youtube

(Special mention for another "they're gay, your honor"

11 - You'd think the kid they have to rescue from Raccoon City is Sherry, wouldn't you? An Umbrella scientist's daughter who the gang have to save? NOPE it's Angela Ashford. Not to be confused with the game's Alexia Ashford. Is it an easter egg? A botched cameo? IDK bro, you think they know the lore?

12 - "GTA MOTHERFUCKER" - LJ, before running over a zombie

13 - THEY GAVE NEMESIS A REDEMPTION ARC??? Incredible (not before making him and Alice fist-fight each other)

14 - Keeping with RE tradition, the helicopter almost always crashes.

15 - They just decided, fuck it, let's give Alice superpowers. Also the stupid Umbrella eyes, literally whenever they come up.

16 - The third movie is just Mad Max and Fallout: New Vegas merged together. Also the way they say the whole earth withered and died but later movies very clearly show flora still alive

17 - Why is Jorah Mormont from Game of Thrones here? WHY IS JOHNNY CAGE FROM MORTAL KOMBAT 1995 HERE???

Also why does Wesker look a little like Eminem to me in the third movie?

18 - The amount of just, like, "hey, this monster/character was in the games, let's just put them in the movie anywhere!"

19 - Carlos gets one of the only satisfying death scenes for a named character from the games. And by that I mean he gets one of the only on-screen death scenes for a named character from the games. Slay, king.

20 - Why does the Tyrant look like that?

21 - The army of Alice clones were blonde originally, but all went out and dyed their hair together between movies and I think that's cute.

22 - The timeline is so fucked up, I don't think they even knew how long was supposed to pass between the movies

23 - The way they shoehorned Chris in so bad that, as a kid, I thought he had no importance and they just wanted to give Claire a character to help her with her amnesia (also, Claire having amnesia). The Redfields do get to shoot the shit out of Wesker at the end though, good for them.

24 - THEY'RE GAY, YOUR HONOR

25 - The Executioner from RE5 just like, is in Los Angeles for some reason?

26 - This shot of Wesker.

27 - Wesker takes Alice's powers away in the beginning of the 4th movie, then at the end of the 5th movie he reinfects her with the T-Virus so she can be a superhuman again and just like, bud, you're wildin'. Also it's mentioned in the 3rd movie that Alice's blood could be the cure, and that she could synthesize it once the Tyrant is dealt with? But she doesn't? She just takes the clones of her in the facility instead of using the equipment to make a cure? I know they cure it in the last movie but like, girlie, you could have tried earlier idk. Fascinating.

28 - The opening credits scene for the 5th movie is actually pretty cool

29 - The rest of the fifth movie . . . whatever those writers were smoking, I want some. I know there's literally an Umbrella base in Antarctica in the game but like, idk, having an underwater base where you have multiple city simulations running for BOW production is so funny to me. They've got clones of Carlos and the whole team from the first movie, a random child Alice adopts, Las Plagas lads on motorcycles, more Executioners, Barry (oh, hi Barry!) and damn I love every terrible minute of it.

30 - "The Leon you ordered from AliExpress"

31 - Li Bingbing as Ada, my beloved

32 - Whatever the hell this fight scene is (I am obsessed with it). The sapphic energy of Jill v Alice. Las Plagas giving you instant superpowers. Michelle Rodriguez beating the shit out of Leon Kennedy (mans draws his knife and immediately gets disarmed, Krauser would be so disappointed). Ada just snoozing in the snow the whole time. Cinema.

The music kinda slaps though.

youtube

The second half of this where Michelle gets clocked in the face with a fire extinguisher and just looks offended? Immaculate.

youtube

33 - Wesker saying that he, Alice, Jill, Leon and Ada are the last hope for humanity from the roof of the White House. What a team.

34 - AND THEN LEON, ADA AND JILL FUCKING DIE OFF SCREEN BETWEEN MOVIES ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? Peak writing right there.

35 - I have never seen the Final Chapter, but I do know that Claire is the only (known) surviving original RE character. Chris is MIA and everyone else is dead. The lesbians win again.

36 - Also there's a character named K-Mart. No notes.

37 - WESKER GETS KILLED BY A DOOR LMFAO

I cannot say I would recommend these movies without the consumption of alcohol involved. Once that's in the mix? They're a great time.

#Youtube #resident evil #resident evil live action movies #they're like an acid trip

11 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

Text

Mickey and the Roadster Racers: “Mickey’s Perfecto Day” and “Daisy’s Grande Goal” review or “I think i’m going out of my headcold”

Saludos Amigos! I”ve been sick, and as such have had no energy or state of mind to continue my look at every apperance of the CABs in the us, concluding with a look at every episode of legend of the three caballeros.

And today’s stop is one i’m only passingly familiar with: Mickey and the Roadster Racers. MATRR.. wait really that’s what it spells?

No Larry the Cable guy on this blog thank you. Anyways, Roadster Racers is surprisingly complicated for such a simple show. For starters it’s the successor to “Mickey Mouse’s Club House” another CGI Disney Junior show, Disney’s equivalent to Nick Jr because their clever like that. And to continue the theme of ripping off other properties, the show was Disney’s stab at following the big fake interactivity craze started by Dora the Explorer. And it’s annoying as that sounds with a lot of pasues and an annoying recurring hot dog song that’s obnoxiously catchy. It was mostly just slice of life shenanigans with the mickey mouse crew and when retoolling it they decided to drop the now dated fake interactivity, turn up the slice of life and add some of those nitro burning funny cars vroom vroom. IN a sense genral g rated soft boiled mickey shenanigans with a racing theme.

Not a terrible series but not terribly intresting hence why i’ve never covered it. It’s a bland inoffesnsive cartoon for toddlers. Enough effort is put in for me not to hate it, as even a toddler show can have effort, but not enoguh so that I really care. I’ve seen better, i’ve seen worse. The only intresting things are the racing gimmick and the fact that as said gimmick diminished they switched names to “Mickey’s mixed up adventures” in season 3. Hence the complicated part as it’s not counted as it’s own series but unlike other disney title changes they aren’t just slapping another label under the logo like the marvel shows. This is a full on retool. But it still has the same cast and prodcution crew and is counted as part of mickey mouse. Point is it’s weird and not relevant since our boys didn’t show up in that season. Oh and as a final note I learned while writing this/ there’s a THIRD Mickey Mouse Disney Junior Series, Mickey Mouse Funhouse, coming next year.

But with so little to cover I ended up throwing in a freebie. See normally I charge the same for 11 minute and 20+ minute shows. It’s fair as most 11 minute shows these days pack in as much character as the ones that use the full half hour. It’s just a diffrence in tactics is all. But here I felt obligated to do at LEAST two diffrent, but cabs related, 11 minutes here, so if I had nothing to talk about I could pad it out and If I had everyhting to talk about.. eh I still tried to do the right thing. I regret nothing. But yeah i’m sick, this series is eh, let’s gooooo.

Mickey’s Perfecto Day So Mickey and Friends are preparing to drive to spain.

No i’m not making a joke. Wish I was would be one of my best but no, Mickey and Friends are just.. casually going to drive to Spain. To explain why this hurts my head a map, on which i’ve drawn the route they’d have to take to get to spain from, let’s say Calisota, the fictional state where Mouseton, Duckburg, New Quackmore, and thus probably Hot Dog Hills, the show’s setting, reside.

This is a crue map, they oculd’ve gone down through mexico or central america.. but the point is THEY DROVE ACROSS THE OCEAN. And I genuinely do not know if their cars can do that but apparently they can. So either the writer didn’t know where Spain was or didn’t care and either way it’s bad. LIke at least give their cars a plane or boat mode. Go full DKR up in this bitch, give em diffrent racing vehicles. But it wouldn’t be as aggrivvating or bizzare if they MENTIONED how they were driving to spain, like maybe Donald’s car that’s also an old boat and goofy’s that’s a tub have aquamodes and can tow the rest. I get 5 year olds don’t care about this.. but still? I guess? Also MIckey is either the sorcerer supreme or jesus at this point. He can cross oceans by car, astral project, cross into other dimensions.. the only thing missing is raising the dead and he already did that in the 30′s.

So as for why the sorcerer supreme and his buddies are going all the way to Spain, Donald has a concert with the three caballeros and this time they all remember him as a memmber and Daisy’s a huge fan. Which is sweet. Then we hear donald duck talk and...

Yeah, Daniel Ross is not the best Donald. Now I will cut the guy some slack here: He’s a voice actor more known for doing bit parts who just got the role in 2016, since racers aired in 2017 and animation lead time and all that. He’s not going to be nearly as good as Tony or Clarence out of the gate. Even Tony wasn’t. He also had a valid reason for picking up the role as Tony likely had two series in production at that time, Rise of the Three Cablleros and Ducktales, and thus had to split his time between both. And having Chris Diamaptolus do mickey in the new shorts instead of his usual voice actor Bret Iwane despite Iwane not being in any serious danger of dying soon has worked out super. So having multiple actors isn’t the problem. Hell after the tragic loss of Russi taylor and with how bad the world is, having an understudy in mind for such an important role is a grim but understandable necicisty. While I belivie tony can go on for decades, he’s only human.

So my issue is not on Donald’s voice being diffrent or new.. it’s that it’s not very good and the second episode featuerd here shows Daniel Ross really hasn’t improved despite now having worked as the character for a while.I can forgive taking some time to grow in but being this sloppy after a full season is just unacceptable. He’s BETTER but he’s still just not very good and doing the bear minimum. I don’t doubt he’s a good va in other rolls, I don’t want to hate on the guy, but I can hate on aperfomance when it’s bad and it’s not good here. It’s just not. Not in either episode not in any way shape or form. It just feels like a lazy donald duck impression. Disney can do better and Ross can hopefully find better work in the future. But for now this just hangs like a wet fart on his resume.

Moving on, thankfully, we have our three stories split pretty evenly and all stock plots. “Horay”. Mickey and Minnie: Mickey tries to have a “perfecto” day, hence the title with Minnie, but instead gives her a rose a baby bull likes.. or maybe it’s SUPPOSED to be full grown but while Mickey and Minnie treat him like a grown bull and react to him like one.. the boy dosen’t look at all, even in the series style, like an adult bull. he looks like a calf. Mickey.. is initimdated by a small child whose horns aren’t sharp enough to hurt him.

It’s just REALLY distracting and takes me out of the plot which itself is as bland as plain toast and twice as dry. They flee him till the end where Minnie figures out the rose thing at the concert and they make an ew friend. NOt TERRIBLE but not great. Goofy and Cuckoo Loca: Okay first off who and what is a cuckoo loca? Well she’s a wind up bird that lives in Daisy’s Cuckoo Clock and makes sarcastic comments in a brooklyn accent because nikka futtterman voices her. Still makes more sense than driving to spain. She’s not a bad addition to the cast.. not even that weird as most kids based franchises have an adorable animal sidekick to market. Goofy wants to try some “flamingo dancing” while in spain, with Loca going along to make sure he dosen’t die somehow.. which would be unjustifable for anyone but goofy. Also.. Flamingo Dancing...

But yeah Goofy goes up against ... world famous flamingo dancer horace horsecollar?!

Now apparently this is a common thing for him in this series, apparently, but still it feels like if one of those weird variant ninja turtle figures from the 80′s was a plot point in an episode. Like if we actually had an episode based around birthday magician raph.

It feels just as odd and out of place for down to earth if showy horace to suddenly be the best flaminco dancer in spain, despite being very much white coded, as it does for the angriest ninja turtle to be pulling a rabbit out of kids hats. Now Rise of the TMNT raph I could totally see as a party magician but any other? He’d probably break his wand over some kids head.

Goofy ends up winning anyway because he’s stupid, though Flamingo dancing should be a real thing even if this joke is bad and it shoudl feel bad. What an ODD subplot Okay one more then i’m free of this prison.

The Three Cablleros Plus Daisy: Okay finally we get to what I came here for. The Three Caballeros! And..they look a tad off. Not terrible but clearly the animators weren’t as skilled with non duck beaks as both of them look ready to do this to donald.

While Panchito’s color varies. Sometime’s it’s a deep brownish crimson, sometimes it’s poop brown and there’s no classy way to put it. When he’s in this cheap cgi, he looks like a shit chicken. This gets to a larger issue though... the animation here is not great. It’s not TERRIBLE.. but it’s pretty freaking sub par for disney. And i’ve SEEN their other cgi shows around the same time due to having a young niece and nephew. Sherieff Callie, Doc McStuffins, MIles from Tommorowland, and after this T.O.T.S. and Rocketeer. I’m not saying these are masterpieces of the genre, but they have more effort in botht he animation and writing put in. Here it just feels like they do the bear minimum which feels really fucking wrong. These chracters deserve better and have thankfully gotten better. YOu can make a show for preschoolers that’s cutsey and harmless and still have it at least be creative god dammit. It’s why I don’t like covering this show. It just feels so.. lifeless. They try a bit here and there but outside of cuckoo, there’s nothing really new or intresting to really make kids love these characters and it bothers me. it bothers me a lot.

Moving on thank god, the plot is bare bones as is the boys characterization. So far at least their character has been pretty consitent across all mediums. i’ts something I haven’t really touched on but their seen as world traveler’, Panchito being a Gaucho and Jose being such a ladies man this will probably happen to him eventually.

youtube

I swear to god that was the only part of this movie I can remember. I’m better off that way. But yeah without Panchito’s pep or Jose’s smooth talking ways, there’s just nothing for disney junior to work with so their just.. friends to donald who are nice to daisy. Which is very nice to see, but isn’t very intresting or gives me a lot to talk about. Donald eats a food that’s too hot, continues to talk poorly, and Daisy has to fill in. He gets back in at time and they sing probably the most forgetable cabs song yet. It’s.. not much honestly. This was worth covering for completions sake but it dosen’t really add much. If nothing else it at least made me realize so far each mile of the ride has added something fresh to the characters: The original was the foundation, rosa gave them depth and made them feel like real people, and house of mouse made them feel like a big deal to other characters and made donald’s history as a cabllero part of his legacy as it should be. Each one so far has felt like it added.. this one just made me realize that and that is all. It builds on nothing adds nothing and there’s really nothing here other than MAYBE the brown/crimson design for panchito that carries over from the looks of it. The next two versions build on what rosa, the movie and to a lesser extent the house of mouse built. This one adds nothing. This plot is just.. inconqueintal. not bad for kids to know about them but even then it feels like a disapointing introduction. I fondly remember hte cabs episodes of house of mouse and even on rewatch they mostly held up despite some weak parts. This .. this will just be forgotten and I only hope legend and ducktales have done a better job keeping my boys alive in kids minds. God i’m depressed. Well at least this is over right.. right?

Daisy’s Grande Goal

Okay as I said I was doing two, and rather than do this episode’s paired episode I decided on Season 2′s “Supercharged: Daisy’s Grande Goal”.. and cut the supercharged out of the title for the most part because why would you put the sutitle in your actual title. And only in some episodes. But yeah this season had a new gimmick, SUPERCHARGING... which basically means our heroes roadsters can go into super sayian tron super sayian mode and go real fast. They look real nice though and it has it’s own neat theme tune so there’s that. Otherwise the only other change is the animation which improves greatly. Seriously look at that shot above. That’s quality lin line with the ohter disney juinor shows. It’s still not as CREATIVE, but it’s not as slipshod as it started and I have to give them credit on that.

So our heroes are in Brazil.. and as far as I can tell they drove there again.. but the diffrence is 1) you can actually DRIVE to brazil and 2) they have super fast super cars now, meaning even if the super charge mode has a timer, it can help with the commute. It’s also one of the boys actual home countries this time. I mean the episode isn’t built around the cabs.. but neither was the last one. Seriously I almost missed that: it’s three unrleated plots and really you could’ve just lenethed the bull and goofy plots a bit and left donald and daisy out. If your not going to use the cabs right hten don’t use them at all. Here though their used BETTER.. still not in the lead unforunately but at least them being on the brazilian soccer team makes sense as jose is from brazil and while panchito is it he’s his best friend, sometimes lover and always there when he needs him. So spending some time in brazil to play soccer/football isn’t a stretch. But that’s about it for their involvment: they say a few lines, are part of the brazilian team our heroes face, and we get Not-Donald saying “No Way Jose”.,,,

Sadly I can’t leave but the main plot is about Daisy’s Cousnt Almonda. She was in the previous episode which I did not watch but I do like both there being a valid reason why our heroes are here, and connection between episodes. While this season isn’t MUCH better.. it’s still better by some metric. The plot is very basic: Almonda always wins at soccer ever since she and Daisy were kids, and it’s your basic “hero gets overcompetitive to finally win plot and learns to just have fun and to use teamwork heart of the cards and all that” It goes how you’d expect with Daisy hogging the ball and causing disasters and then a ten car pileup before cucoo yells at her, she realizes she was bad and also realizes Almonda had to practice hard to beat her, and ends up beating her through teamwork and you get it. IT’s not much But yeah ten car pile up.. that’s where it is intresting and rediculous as their playing soccer with cars. Which given i’ve always been an advocate for card games on motor cycles, seriously it’s not more rediculous than Yugioh was before that: in the anime and manga before 5ds we had table hockey but the puck is ice with nitrocylcrine in it, a battle with an escaped convict involving vodka and only using one finger, a chinese puzzel box that devoured souls, a dueling monkey, a whole hogwarts style school for dueling, duel spirits, our heroes childhood creations coming to life to help him, our hero merging with his androgynous childhood friend to fight the light of all evils, and on top of all of that, kaiba building a giant murder theme park soley to kill yugi and, even with how rich is he is, not even going to prison for the two months he’d get for that. My point is Yugioh is fricking weird and I love it so and card games on mortocyles is awesome. Soccer with cars is alright. The teams are mickey, minnie, daisy and donald, for the US and Almonda, Jose, Panchito and.. Pancho Pete for the Brazilian team. Pete’s cousin. He apparenlty has a lot of em. Eh as long as we don’t get petkeem the african dream we’re fine.

Why why did I make this. Why. But yeah it’s fine, not the best action ever adn the supercharge segments as I said look nice but as I also said ther’es just not a lot here. Daisy’s cousin is intresting, but likely more in the other segment. Here she’s more of a plot device to make daisy into an asshole for the episode so the plot can happen. There’s just not a lot to talk about> Hence me doing two of these. I will say it’s a better episode than the other one: it felt like more actually happened, it was more cohesive, had way more enerjgy and it had billy beagle... the series resident overexcited and loveable announcer voiced by the far from loveable jay leno of stealing conan’s job he gave him and last man standing, for some reason, fame.

Overall these episodes are.. eh. The first one is kind of a mess, the second one is slightly better but these clearly werne’t meant for adults, let alone older kids and it shows. But I found some material here and made a horrifying combination of a terrible racist wwe gimmick and pete so.. I win/ I guess. I dunno, until next time, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

#mickey and the roadster racers #mickey's mixed up adventures #disney #disney junior #mickey mouse #donald duck #goofy goof #daisy duck #minnie mouse #cuco loca #Jose Carioca #panchito romero miguel junipero francisco quintero gonzalez #panchito pistoles #pete pete

12 notes · View notes

the-desolated-quill · 5 years ago

Text

Sonic Vs Harley: Send In The Hedgehogs - Quill’s Scribbles

Unless you’ve been meditating in the desert for the past couple of weeks, you’ll know that there’s a bloody epidemic going on in the world right now. The coronavirus outbreak has dramatically changed our very way of life for the foreseeable future, and us plebs have been having to get used to all these alien concepts such as social distancing, self isolation, vaccines being good and Gal Gadot murdering John Lennon with a tuneless rendition of ‘Imagine.’ These are scary and uncertain times we live in, and this goes double for the movie industry as productions are halted and/or delayed, and cinemas around the globe are shutting shop. This means that streaming services, initially dismissed by pompous filmmakers like Steven Spielberg as being lesser than cinema, has now become Hollywood’s saving grace. Oh the irony!

But I’m not here to talk about that. Today I’m here to talk about how a blue CGI hedgehog seems to be more profitable than Margot Robbie.

Jokes aside, this is actually a fascinating topic of discussion in my opinion. Both Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey (I categorically refuse to type the whole title because I’ve got better shit to be doing other than trying to remember how the fuck you spell ‘fantabulous’) were released within a week of each other just as the coronavirus outbreak was gathering steam, and yet the box office earnings of both films are poles apart. Sonic has now become the highest grossing video game movie of all time and is, at the time I’m typing this, the second highest grossing film of the year, beating even Disney Pixar’s new film Onward if you can believe it, whereas Birds Of Prey... well... it’s not exactly flopped as such. The film’s low budget protected it from that, but it’s hardly what you’d call a success, making just shy of the $200 million it would need to break even. How did this happen? Especially when you consider that public opinion of both films a year ago would have you believe that the opposite would have happened. Everyone was massively excited for Birds Of Prey, especially after the string of successes DC have had with Aquaman, Shazam and most recently Joker, whereas Sonic...

...yeah, lets not talk about that.

Now before we start, let me just make absolutely clear that this is just my opinion. Mu subjective opinion. Normally I’d expect my readers to be smart enough to know this, but I’m talking about a DC movie here and I know from personal experience how ‘passionate’ a certain tin foil hat wearing portion of that fanbase can be sometimes. You may recall back in 2016 I received rape and death threats when I had the gall to say that I didn’t enjoy watching Suicide Squad. You know? That beloved classic that nobody fucking remembers or talks about anymore? Also there was that time when Harley Quinn fans started spreading fake rumours that the Sonic movie was homophobic in the hopes of salvaging Birds Of Prey’s box office earnings. And yes, I know it’s not all DCEU fans that are like this, etc. etc., but considering that it only ever seems to be DC fans that pull shit like this, you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly in a very generous mood right now. Basically, if you’ve seen Birds Of Prey and liked it, that’s great. More power to you. I’m not even suggesting that Birds Of Prey is a bad movie. I’m just exploring the reasons why I think the film may have underperformed and why, possibly, Sonic The Hedgehog overtook them despite outside circumstances. This is not fact. This is just my opinion. It’s my opinion. An opinion. A subjective opinion. It’s my opinion. Okay? Okay.

Also I should point out that out of the two films, I’ve only seen Sonic, not Birds Of Prey. Believe it or not, this will be relevant later on. Again, this is not about the quality of either film. This is merely my subjective observations regarding their respective marketing and box office performance.

So why, according to the fans and the media, did Birds Of Prey underperform at the box office? There are three popular reasons for this. The first is obviously the coronavirus. Less people willing to leave the house and buy a ticket, therefore less box office earnings. Makes sense, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Lets not forget, Sonic The Hedgehog came out a week after Birds Of Prey and practically steamrolled over the competition despite coronavirus fears. So I’m not entirely convinced of this. The second reason is that Birds Of Prey only has niche appeal because it’s based on a lesser known comic book property. Again, makes sense, but so was Guardians Of The Galaxy and Deadpool, and they were both hugely successful. Obviously I’m not saying Birds Of Prey needed to be as big as those movies. Even if it just made the same amount of money as Shazam did, it would have been successful, but it didn’t. The third reason is good old fashioned sexism, and yes, I agree that may have been a contributing factor, but I think it’s naive to place all the blame on the anti-SJWs who feel threatened by a gang of women kicking butt. Look at the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters for example. That film received a tirade of misogynistic comments from butthurt fanboys, but it still made roughly the same amount of money at the box office as the original Ghostbusters did. The reason it flopped wasn’t because of the fanboys, but because of Sony spending a stupid amount of money on the thing in the hopes of jumpstarting a shared universe. If Ghostbusters 2016 had the same budget as Birds Of Prey, Sony would be laughing their way to the bank right now.

No I think there’s a little bit more going on here. Lets bring Sonic into the discussion and explore it, shall we?

The most blatantly obvious reason for Sonic’s success and Birds Of Prey’s relative failure is the age rating. Sonic is a PG, family friendly film with a cuddly animal as its main character. The film even stars Jim Carrey being his usual goofy self. Kids love this shit and parents will no doubt be prepared to risk a zombie apocalypse to let their kids see it. Birds Of Prey, on the other hand, is a hard R. Strong bloody violence, sexual references, everyone says ‘fuck’ a lot. No kids allowed. Of course that hasn’t stopped films like Deadpool or Joker being such giant hits, but they didn’t have to contend with a global pandemic. Plus, according to what I’ve heard from certain critics, apparently Birds Of Prey’s R rating doesn’t seem wholly justified. That if you were to cut back on the swearing and the gore, it would make no difference to the film. Now you see this is something I’ve been afraid would happen ever since Deadpool’s surprise success back in 2016. That studios and filmmakers would take the wrong lessons from it and make their films R rated just for the sake of making them R rated. We see this with movie studios all the time. One studio finds success and suddenly everyone tries to copy it without considering why it was successful in the first place. The reason Deadpool as well as other R rated films like Logan and Joker worked is because the films justified their R ratings. You couldn’t have told the same story without that R rating. An R rated Harley Quinn doesn’t seem necessary, especially when you consider that there have been Harley Quinn adaptations before that did just as well without being strictly for adults. Hell, the original Harley Quinn story from the Batman animated series was PG rated. So the inclusion of a R rating feels less like a genuine artistic choice and more like trend chasing. And now that Joker has become the most profitable comic book movie ever made, I fear this is only going to get worse in the future.

Another factor that needs to be considered is audiences’ trust and expectation. Sonic The Hedgehog’s journey to the big screen has in some ways become the classic redemption story. After the initial reveal of Sonic the Manhog, fans were understandably pissed off that a beloved video game icon was given such a grotesque re-imagining for the sake of ‘realism’ (snort). As a result of the backlash, the director Jeff Fowler announced they would revise the design and the film was postponed for three months in order to fix it. The result was a Sonic design much closer to the games and this generated a lot of goodwill from the fans. Subsequent trailers were much better received and there was a lot more positive buzz around the movie. Birds Of Prey on the other hand demonstrated the inverse of this. Everyone was hugely excited, but as we got closer and closer to the date of release, audience anticipation began to wane. The trailers received little fanfare. In fact a lot of people were largely unimpressed by it. Why?

Well first we should address the elephant in the room. The fact of the matter is Sonic has a bigger and much more passionate fanbase than Harley does. That’s not to say Harley isn’t a popular character. She is. But I think Warner Bros and DC seriously overestimated how much people wanted to see Harley Quinn get her own movie. She may have been the best thing about Suicide Squad, but considering what a total trainwreck Suicide Squad was, that’s hardly saying much, is it? I mean the villain Sandman was the best thing about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. That doesn’t mean I want a whole movie based on him. It just means out of all the things I hated about Spider-Man 3, Sandman was the thing I hated least.

And that’s another thing. The fact that Birds Of Prey didn’t try to distance themselves from Suicide Squad I don’t think did them any favours. While Suicide Squad was a commercial success at the time, people haven’t exactly been kind to the film in subsequent years. I mean feel free to read my review of Suicide Squad for an exhaustive list of reasons why the film was less than enjoyable to sit through. One dimensional characters, poor editing, ugly colour palette, casual sexism, David Ayer trying desperately to look cool and edgy, I could go on. So when the first trailers for Birds Of Prey came out and we saw the neon colour scheme and Hot Topic wardrobes make a comeback, I can’t have been the only one who was slightly put off.

Which leads me to the biggest issue of all and that’s the stonking unoriginality of the whole thing. For all their boasting about how feminist and progressive they are, what is it about Birds Of Prey that makes it stand out from other comic book films? Granted Sonic wasn’t wholly original either, but at least they had the novelty of a blue CGI hedgehog to piggyback off of. Birds Of Prey really doesn’t have anything if you think about it. Here’s the impression I got from the trailers. It has the same aesthetics as Suicide Squad, so already I’m getting PTS style flashbacks, and its story doesn’t seem all that intriguing or unique. Think about it. A violent anti-hero has to protect a delinquent child from some sadistic big baddie. How many times have we seen that done in these films? Terminator 2, Deadpool 2, Logan, even Ghost Rider has told this story before. The fact that the characters in question happen to be women doesn’t change a damn thing. They even have Harley Quinn breaking the fourth wall. Like... guys, come on! Surely we can do something more original than this! It feels like the only thing Birds Of Prey has going for it is that its main protagonists are all women. But after the likes of Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, that’s no longer a real selling point anymore. You need something else to entice people. Something that Birds Of Prey sorely lacks.

Now I’m sure any Birds Of Prey fans reading this must be getting pissed off at me, so I’d just like to remind everyone yet again that I’m not necessarily saying Birds Of Prey is a bad film. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen it. And that’s kind of my point. A week or so ago, my friend and I knew this was probably going to be our last opportunity to go to the cinema for quite some time, so we knew we had to make our choice of film count. We had a choice between Sonic The Hedgehog and Birds Of Prey, and we ended up going to see Sonic. We don’t regret it. We had a good time watching Sonic. It was a fun movie, well made and surprisingly moving at points. (interesting to note, Sonic also has the main protagonist protecting a child plot, but unlike the films I mentioned, Sonic’s story is told from the perspective of the kid. It’s a little thing, but it’s enough to make the whole thing feel fresh and unique because it’s something not even the games tend to acknowledge. Sonic is a kid and the film plays around with that, which adds to its overall charm). Maybe Birds Of Prey is a better movie than Sonic. I don’t know. But that’s not what this is about. When picking which film we would watch, it was the factors I mentioned before that we considered and I suspect what many other people took into consideration too. Basically we looked at these two films and thought to ourselves which one would we be prepared to go outside and risk our health for in order to see it in a cinema. In the end, Sonic won because, out of the two films, it looked more exciting and more unique than Birds Of Prey, and ultimately we trusted that this film could deliver what it promised. Is that fair? Probably not, but sadly that’s often how these things play out.

Birds Of Prey may have had a good critical reception, but it ultimately shot itself in the foot thanks to some of its creative and marketing decisions. And if studios take anything away from all this, it should be that relying solely on the gender of the main characters as a means to sell something just doesn’t cut it anymore.

#sonic the hedgehog #birds of prey #birds of prey (and the fantabulous emancipation of one harley quinn)#quill's scribbles

10 notes · View notes

wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 7 years ago

Text

Justice League review

Sometimes when you expect the worst, you get the best instead. At the very least, you can get something a hell of a lot better than expected, and I have to say, that is most definitely the case here. Justice League is a movie I went in expecting to be a bit disappointed in; it has the clashing styles of dark, intense Zach Snyder and goofy, snarky Joss Whedon, it’s the sequel to some very contentious films (films I enjoy but realize are not the top of the superhero film pecking order), and has tons of awful CGI that looks more at home in a Syfy original movie than a superhero film. Yet despite all this, or maybe even BECAUSE of all this, I greatly enjoyed Justice League.

The story is pretty simple: something is coming, and that something is Steppenwolf, a warrior from Apokolips who wishes to conquer and terraform Earth in the name of his lord and master Darkseid (who is sadly only namedropped once in the whole film). Batman decides it’s time to get a team together to stop this shit, so he tries to recruit Aquaman, Flash, and Cyborg to his team. Wonder Woman joins up with him and Flash happily comes along, but the other two turn out a bit trickier to persuade. Can the team come together in time to stop Steppenwolf, or is this born-to-be-wild Apokolips native gonna be taking Earth on a magic carpet ride to Hell?

So, let me just start off by saying that this movie is pretty messy. This is obviously due to the tragic death of Snyder’s daughter, which caused him to step away and have Joss “Cheatin’” Whedon come in and fuck the tone of the film up in reshoots. Alright, alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration; as much as I loathe Whedon, he did some good here, and I didn’t really mind the tone clashing that much. To me, it just added to the movies charm, and kind of felt like a good transitional point: BVS was a very dark, grim story, the dawn of justice, so to speak. There was still darkness, but the light was coming. And here in this film that light is coming in full force, the morning sun come to vanquish the horrible night. So yeah, I can dig it. I can’t dig that stupid fucking “landing in Wonder Woman’s boobs” joke, but Flash’s embarrassed face afterwards was too cute for me to be mad at. And I can’t lay all the blame on Whedon either. For instance, it was Snyder who cast Amber Heard as Mera, and in her single scene, she managed to give a performance that rivals Jennifer Lawrence in the X-Men prequel trilogy in terms of awfullness. She gives a wooden, generic performance that has me praying for a Flashpoint movie if only so I can see Gal Gadot cut her stupid fucking head off. Snyder is also responsible for the divisive villain Steppenwolf, but…

...You see, I actually kind of liked him. Steppenwolf is a weird choice, especially when there are so many more interesting Apokolips residents you could send to fight, such as Granny Goodness. Steppenwolf is a choice that baffles me when you have so many more famous characters you could be using here. DC does not have the problems Marvel had when starting the MCU; Marvel’s most iconic villains and heroes were off in the hands of Sony and Fox, and Marvel had to use their B-listers to turn them into icons. DC has no such problem. We could have had Starro be the villain, or Granny Goodness, or really just about any big cosmic threat from DC you could think of. Instead we get the relatively obscure Steppenwolf, and instead of going for his corny Robin Hood-esque outfit from the comics, they instead opt for the clunky black-and-grey armor routine we previously saw with Ares in Wonder Woman.

But I said I liked him, yeah? And despite spending an entire paragraph ranting about him, I actually do. You see, unlike Ares before him, Steppenwolf actually gets a lot of scenes throughout the film, and while his character is about as deep as a puddle on a hot summer’s day, boy howdy is he the most perfect trashy sci-fi villain you can imagine. Ciarán Hinds truly sells this generic villain as a menacing threat despite his very generic motives. The best comparisons I can give is that Wolfie here is a lot like Ronan the Accuser of Guardians of the Galaxy, Kaecillius from Doctor Strange, or Apocalypse from X-Men: Apocalypse. None of those villains I mentioned are particularly deep, but their actors give them weight and presence even though the script and the story don’t seem to. I’d say Steppenwolf can sit at their table; he’s simple, but he’s fun in a trashy B-movie way. All his snarling about his “mother” (as in the Mother Boxes, not Martha this time) really helps. It lends him an old school cheesy charm.

Now, what of our core cast of heroes? As usual, I have nothing but good things to say about Affleck and Gadot. They easily carry this film on their shoulders when it seems like things might start to slack a bit, and they are, as far as I’m concerned, the definitive versions of their respective characters. Wonder Woman and Batman have never been as good on the silver screen. And then we come to Cavill as Superman. I’ve always liked him, but in hindsight I feel like the stories he has been in have kind of failed his character. Superman is a bright, optimistic, shining paragon of truth, justice, and the American Way. And here, in Justice League, he gets to be that for the first time on film in decades. Superman, after getting brought back to life (it’s not really a spoiler, it’s the most obvious thing in the world) and having a badass scene where he beats the shit out of the League in confusion, gets to be his stronghearted, corny, heroic self, and Cavill cements himself as my favorite live-action performance of the Man of Steel.

And what of the newcomers? Of the lot, my favorite is Aquaman, who is a laid-back, funloving jackass with a dirty mouth and a generally carefree attitude. He’s easily the most enjoyable new character in the movie, and Jason Momoa plays him to perfection. I’m super excited to see how he does in his solo film; his portrayal here gives me faith Momoa can manage. The other two newcomers are a bit more of a mixed bag, but let me say, they aren’t AWFUL. Flash here is really the biggest love-or-hate ele,ment, as he makes a lot of jokes, about 50% of which are really cringey and miss their mark, with the other 50% being genuinely funny. Flash has a bit of an interesting character thing going on with his relation to his dad, but this isn’t fully utilized, and Flash is basically there to do all the fast running, and it IS cool when he does. On the plus side, we have an awesome scene where we see him running, and when he runs, time outside his run slows down… except this is when he’s fighting Superman, and you see Clark turn his head towards Flash as he runs and the ensuing reaction from Flash before… well, it’s the minus side: he crashes. Flash crashes a lot in this movie, and it’s annoying.

Cyborg is a similarly divisive character. He definitely grew on me as the film went on; at first my brain rejected him because I’m so used to Khary Payton’s portrayal of him on Teen Titans. He did grow on me and I like him alright, but I feel he really wasn’t given a lot to do in this movie and his character wasn’t explored to any great extent. This is really the flaw of doing these kind of big teamup movies without several films worth of buildup, though I will say that at the very least we get a good basis for the characters who are new, better than what we were given in Suicide Squad at any rate. It’s a serviceable introduction, but boy do I wish we got a little more. And if you think there’s some MCU bias here, this is the kind of problem I had with Age of Ultron too, as well as Iron Man 2, where they introduce so many new characters and do absolutely nothing with them while expecting us to care. Though, again, I will say Justice League does this a lot better than either of those movies as well.

A couple of things I didn’t really get into were the CGI quality and the humor overall; I actually burst out laughing at a few of the jokes, so it evened out with some of the cringier jokes, and while a lot of the CGI in this film was incredibly awful for a multi-million dollar film, I’ve seen worse, and the overall product is still enjoyable. Then there are some things it’s not even worth touching, like the complaints about the Amazons outfits. I can’t believe something so stupid and inconsequential actually became a point of discourse.

So, overall, this is a good movie. It’s not as good as Wonder Woman, but this is yet another step in the right direction for the DCEU. This was fun, entertaining, filled with likable characters… it’s like the polar opposite of Suicide Squad. That film was filled with poorly-developed douches with cheesiness enhancing it to the point the film is only enjoyable as so bad it’s good or trashy cult classic at best (keep in mind I DO have a soft spot for Suicide Squad, I’m just painfully aware of its numerous failures); meanwhile, this film has likable characters with decent enough development and cheesy campiness that honestly enhances the film to the point it feels like a sci-fi action film of old at some points. This is a pretty damn good movie, and one of the better hero teamup films. I hope the DCEU can learn from what worked best about this film and apply it to their upcoming projects, because if they do I think they’ll make more classics to rival the MCU. I definitely recommend checking this film out if you enjoy superhero movies, because this one is, despite or even because of its flaws, a lot of fun.

The post-credits scene has Luthor and Deathstroke meet up to start plotting to create a Legion of Doom. This is an interesting development, one I hope they actually follow up on unlike all that “Knightmare” bullshit from BVS. It might give Eisenberg room to actually grow and develop into his role as Luthor; his brief appearance here certainly seemed a lot more tolerable, though he had about one minute of screentime, so who knows. One more thing: there are rumors around that there’s actually a director’s cut that follows Snyder’s vision more closely, and honestly, I’d be interested to see it if only for comparison’s sake. I mean, we have two versions of Superman II, so why not Justice League?

Whatever the case, I’m happy the DCEU is doing some good shit now.

14 notes · View notes

nautiscarader · 7 years ago

Text

Kim Possible season 3 recap

And here is part 3 of my KP marathon notes. Obligatory thanks to @fereality-indy for encouraging me to watch this awesome show.

So, what will happen this this time? Will Kim Possible save another kitten from a tree? Will Ron discover something better than nachos? Will Doctor Drakken release the Krakken? Will Shego puncture her ego? Will Lord Monkeyfist buy Club Banana just because he is bonkers? Will Duff Killigan finally score?

So, let’s see what’s the first big problem KP has to deal with!

Kim being alone on a Friday evening. Okay.

Also, amusingly, everyone is doing something on a Friday evening, including the villians.

Motorhead turns out to be Drakken’s cousin. okay.

And people know the address of Draken’s lair bc of mailing list

See, it’s the little touches like those that make this show a very accurate portrayal of superheroes and villians.

KP gets jealous of Ron’s friend in wheelchair because they spend too much time together playing video games, so she has to find a way to “fit in”.

Okay, so they can approach it in a sensible and subtle, or so-cringe-worthy-and-painful-the-skip-button-presses-itself way.

So, which did they choose?

painful it is

Few stupid scenes later, Draken STEALs THE WHEELCHAIR FROM A DISABLED KID

shego: what’s next, stealing lolipop from a baby?

and there is a brilliant running joke about it

is it ableist to say that a joke about disabled person is “running”? Well, this is tumblr you gotta be carfeul

Anyway, turns out that Drakken and Jake the Dog make an actual competent combo, even though they end up in prison. And momma Lipski is still clueless about her son’s profession

Next ep: KIM CHANGED HER HAIR! and she looks cute

Ron is a pickle, but that’s normal

Draken and shego steal moodulators (get it?) from random scientist #464

Shego: if you are so smart why do you always steal instead of inventing things yourself

Draken: it’s called outsourcing, shego

God d amit, that is a smart show.

And of course moodultaors accidentally fall on KP and SHego, so they act random throughout the day. And boy it is weird when it’s set to loveskick

Shego: steals lolipop from a baby for Drakken because she luvs him

KP turns into a proper stalker mode for her Ronnie

And Monique is completely fine with it.

and then kim KISSED him!!!

OMG NOSEBLEED

And then poor Ron has no idea what to do with dating KP so suddenly, and the whole scene where he debates what to do is absolute gold with a punchline that defies expectations.

Draken and Shego go on a date and boy it is weird. SHE CATWALKS TO HIM

I can already see Disney censors thinking when it’s going to be too much for The Mouse

and kim’s dad threatens to send ron to a black hole when he takes her on a date

Also the random professor wants to sell his no-longer-existent moodulaTors on auction and he thinks about blaming it on the mail. You know, i’ve seen some approaches how to handle a world where superheroes/villians/geniuses live in our society (like in BNHA, for example), but KP so far makes it the best approach, because it makes them so relatable.

And boy the finale is satisfying because everything completely backfires

Shego and KP got stuck in an anGry mode, and chase their boys. Ron tries to hide in the same place as drakken

Drakken: Dibs!

Ron: Double dibs!

Drakken: all right, you won with your superior dib-calling (ACTUAL QUOTE)

And the day is saved thanks to the power of friendship and not that Kp and ron are definitely in love with each other

KP, Ron, Drakken and Shego somehow manage to get into Tv, where they visit parodies of famous shows

Honestly, meh. I remember a similar episode of Teen Titans, that one was funny as heck.

and then we find out who’s the real villian of the middleton high: THE SCARY LIBRARIAN!

And turns out Ron accidentally put a book Kim rented in his backpack, causing her to get into trouble doing library duties.

So he goes on a mission to revisit all of the bad guys they fought to see where he might have left it

Okay: calling it now, it’s still in his backpack

Shego: Where’s Possible?

Ron: She’s not my girlfriend!

Shego: Never said she was.

And Ron accidentally saves the world on that book hunt

Lord Monkey:Ron Stoppable!

Ron: You’re the only one, who remembers my name, I respect that

Okay, so Wade can make stuff invisible. Like, how?

And there we go: the book it was in his backpack all the time.

Oh, and Ron takes a book from Lord Monkeymonkey contaning a spirit of a monkey demon.

And he returns to the library, saving Kim from being bored to death by retunring the book.

GUESS WHICH ONE HE RETURNED.

Oh, it was another half-episode. Weird.

And the next one is about giant bugs. Interesting how Kim tells Ron not to be afraid of bugs, and next moment she’s all squirmish while Ron befriends a giant roach and calls him Roachie.

KP: Ron, did you start working on the project? it was supposed to be autobiographical

ron: No, I’m waiting for it to write itself.

WE MIGHT GET RUFUS’ BACKSTORY!

Oh, and Drakken tried to take over the world with shampoo. Honestly, it’s funny as heck

he tries smarty mart to sell it

he even makes loreal-style ad, but it doesn’t sell

so he tries product placement in a hip hop song, and the artists is like “Aw, hell no”

And then

and then

turns out that Shego and Drakken are having karaoke night every friday.

God dammit, i don’t know why but that is beyond funny

and turns out that Drakken can sing.

and shego points out that he could sing about the shampoo

so he goes to an american idol

And I think I realise what really makes it funny: Kp is barely in this episode, helping ron with homework. No evil-doing is actually done, we only get to see, for the most part what goes behind the scenes of an evil plan that is so insanely and unnecessary convoluted it is beyond belief.

OH, AND kp GETS TO RIVAL HIM ON STAGE, OF COURSE.

people hypnotised by the shampoo so far: one (1) random henchman

one (1) old TV producer in a sauna

one (1) Simon Cowell

And...holy shit, his song is actually good.

And instead of KP, who is busy fighting the mean lean green machine, Ron sings about Rufus. The song is titled “Naked Mole Rap”. And it is FREAKING PHENOMENAL.

Oh, add one (1) Shego to the list.

Okay, so far that is the most crazy episode. Like, seriously, the quality was through the roof.

SCRATCH THAT NEXT EP is EVEN WEIRDER

So, the Team Impossible, which we have learned about in the movie, is angry at KP for saving the world for free, whereas they actually charge people for it.

And they try to cut Kim from all of her world-traveling assets and knock her out of competition.

THAT IS FUCKING V ILE

And they hack Wade

AND TURNS OUT YOU DON’T FUCK WITH WADE

YOU DON’T CUT THEIR INTERNET CABLES OF A NERD

SINCE THIS IS ONE WAY TO MAKE AN OBESE SUPER GENIOUS WALK OUT OF THEIR ROOM

AND HE LOOKS SO FREAKING BAD-ASS WHEN HE STORMS INTO THEIR HEADQUATERS

aaand TI is defeated the same way they would have been defeated had they answered the call.

Pretty funny, and it does go into the details of how on Earth superheroes work in this world.

And we have another episode about the secret ninja high school Ron was sent to

And Yori travels to US for Ron

And Kim is super jelaus

Wade: Kim, you are jelly

Kim: So not

Monique: You are jelly

Kim: So not

Kim: *is jelly*

So she pretty much stalks Ron all the way to the school, and nearly fails the mission of trying to save the levitating magical jedi principal. Seriously, he’s OP as fuck.

And he’s escaping from a huge monkey. turns out it’s crazy dna lady who turned herself into monkey for Lord Britishmonkey.

Next episode is bascially one huge satire on the movie industry, down to the title (”and The mole rat will be CGI”). KIm and Ron accidentally crash a movie set, after Senior Senior Junior crashes it first since he accidentally applied for a role of a henchman in said movie.

It was supposed to be set in Britian, but the movie set was in New Zealand, since “it was cheaper”

And I was like

Is that a “Lord of The rings” joke? Someone tell me if I’m right.

Oh, and we have another long episode WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE IS ANOTHER MOVIE?

And it looks like it’s a three-part episode again, I wonder if the formula’s gonna work again.

The beginning feels like a short promo scene for people who might not know what KP is about, and I’m not gonna lie, this sums it up perfectly. Action, drama, explosions, more drama, goofy ron, naked mole rat kicking ass and more drama. By the way, what;s the title?

I guess the intro is an homage to the James Bond ones, with lots of colourful, surreal visuals floating in the background to the soothing, slow music. Love it, too bad it’s short, but again, it had to fit an episode’s running time.

wait so the Nakasumi president CAN speak English? Even the movie calls him wacky for whispering all the time as if he couldn’t.

Okay, now the movie just fucks with us.

mr and mrs possible almost switch their cloaks with important documents, but she switches them back just at the last moment

mr posible ALMOST deletes his work file worth three billion dollars but undos it at the last moment.

it’s like the plot TRIES to start itself

And I bet the key is under the doormat

So the dating drama IS going to be the theme of the movie, huh.

Wade: Drakken has been spotted in the Bermuda triangle

Bermuda triangle: *turns out to be a hotel*

And Ron just happened to have his suit under the scuba diving gear.

Shego proves to be once again, way more competent than Drakken.

and we have obligatory fight between two kickass ladies in dresses and high heels. This IS a James Bond movie.

So, the prom drama continues, and it is sadly kinda goes into the cringe territory, with some new dude falling in love with Kim and Kim falling for him, Ron feeling sad, they both being conflicted, yep, seen it.

But for once Drakken helps the cause and moves the plot forward, stealing some super project from dr Possible.

he deletes the file like he did in the opening, but GASP drakken has some mind reading machine

I do wonder if the coat switcheroo is going to be part of the plot.

Holy shit

Drakken’s plan is so crazy that it actually makes sense. Take over the buneo nachos and put kiddy meals in it with robot toys that take over the world. And neither kim nor Shego could have forseen it.

And more prom drama. Ugh.

I always like when Possible family work together to stop the evil-doers.

So Drakken’s plan was brilliant, minus the part when the entire army of robots shuts down when the signal goes off-line. Kinda a major fuck-up.

And they kindapped Kim’s boyfriend to lure her.

OH, SO HE WAS A SYNTH ROBOT

I genuinely didn’t see that coming.

Drakken learns Ron’s name, yeah! And it’s shot like Drakken’s yelling a curse to the skies, love it.

Also, HOLY SHIT, Kim kicks Shego into the tower so hard it looks like she was about to kill her. Like, that was genuinely chilling moment, especially with an ominous, lightning-filled close-up onto her later.

Spoiler: she didn’t die.

Okay, colour me confused: I didn’t think that Kim and Ron were going to kiss and start dating now, I thought this movie was going to be one huge prequel to a movie by the end of S4. Or more precisely, it feels weird NOW, knowing that there is a whole season ahead of me. Cos that felt like a pretty good end of a series, something akin to the Last Airbender one, so I’m slightly concerned how it’s going to be played into season 4, cos this can go haywire pretty easily.

Uh, not going to lie, I’ve got mixed feelings about the movie. On one hand, it gave us a proper evil plan from Drakken, one that attacks Kim psychologically, showing that for once, he DID his homework and actually studied Kim’s behaviour. On the other, the prom/dating drama is kinda painful to watch, but fortunately gets resolved in the end. Maybe it’s just me, but I had the same expression as Rufus when he and Ron said that guys don’t talk about feelings. It felt kinda clumsy and not subtle at all, and what’s worse, the show itself did way better job of portraying romance in previous episodes, most notably the moodulator one. But as I said, those last few scenes with Ron and Kim fighting together does make up for it.

also, Rufus once again is the unspoken hero. He did so freaking much, including, but not limited to: saving ron from the tentacle monster, freeing kim and ron, defeating the synth boyfriend, pushing Kim and Ron together... He really is a badass.

So, not a bad one, though I preferred the first movie. Also, on the whole Season 3 was significantly shorter than second. Wonder what’s gonna happen in the next season.

#kim possible

8 notes · View notes

johnnythirteenguns · 7 years ago

Text

just seen justice league (this isnt spoiler free at all)

also went to thor: ragnarok for the third time to wash the taste out.

so i went to go see it for miller, momoa, and mera in that order. i was super impressed with mera. i thought they were gonna go the like easy way and give her an Accent like the amazons, but they didnt. even though her cadence was different like idk man i know very little about dc but i picked up a one-shot earlier this year where mera neatly beats the fuck out of the justice league on her own and she’s a semi-jerk who kind of hates surface dwellers and you know what for the thirty seconds we had her onscreen i believed it and she was powerful and felt like a character with backstory and i COMPLETELY didnt hear what aquaman was saying i just heard her side of the conversation

man ben affleck really doesnt wanna be here huh anyway we should recast him at the earliest convenience

also why was batman 90% CGI like fine i get it no one can be a gymnast in a 50 lb rubber suit but like every single one of his moves that required any bending had to have been cgi

speaking of which the cgi isnt like bad in and of itself it’s just typical like it’s the cgi youre used to seeing. it doesnt blend seamlessly into anything and the characters dont blend seamlessly into it. the cornfield looks fake as can fucking be and i dont really know why? what else there was another fucking weird cgi moment. anyway, steppenwolf is ugly as sin and has no emotion and is all one color and is??? generally weird looking

speaking of which. he is not frightening at all. the New Gods isnt something casual dc fans are gonna be familiar with (i am barely familiar with it) and like? apparently, darkseid was supposed to have scenes in this but didnt? anyway go see thor ragnarok which features 1) a horned villain that is legitimately terrifying and powerful, that you fully believe can do the things she does, and who is beautifully designed and 2) features glow-y eyed masses of disposable soldiers that are cool but goofy and dont take themselves too seriously but were still frightening and made for thrilling fights because you believed they could actually pose a threat to the characters they were attacking

the beginning... uh i think like three scenes of the film looked pretty good, but they looked like cutscenes. very GOOD cutscenes, but honestly... if i wanted it to look like this id have played... a video game. like, i want it to look like a real place even if it’s heavily stylized. uh but the first showdown where batman is luring a parademon out looks beautiful if fake as shit. the scene with wondy in the bank (which features a group of girls from an all-girls school... at a bank?) and terrorists wearing cheap pinstripe suits (like, this is fine! it’s nonsensical and stupid but fine it’s a comic book movie) was kind of cool because for once i felt like... maybe diana was a creative person who goes in wit ha strategy? like picking the dude up with the lasso and holding him up was fun i was like oh!!! thats not something a typical movie would do! it was the first time she felt like Wonder Woman to me (ive seen the wondy movie itself, it was... eh). uh and idk what was up with the standing on the scales of justice or whatever idk the hilarity of gal gadot on that statue which sits on top of a bank like. it was funny.

hey question what the uh... fuck was the “what are you” “a believer” line about it made zero sense in context at all

dont quote me on the order of scenes i dont remember fuck all of this movie in order because literally, the pacing was so weird. so... it was very obvious there were parts missing from the movie. not like, cuts made where you could be like oh there was something there or maybe there'll be a deleted scene no like you Knew there was stuff that was necessary that was gone. the football scenes with victor from the trailers were gone!!! i think the movie was trying to set up a really strong friendship with wonder woman and cyborg but it never really went anywhere? and i suspect because it all got cut! and i dont understand why because ray did a really good job and he sold cyborg to me so well i loved his take!

also... i dont know if theyre saving it for the aquaman movie next year but did Arthur get a bunch of his stuff cut too? because i like jason momoa, and i like his arthur and so im sort of torn because, like, he didnt have much to do. like, he has the bit where he sits on wonder woman’s lasso of thruth and tells them all this stuff but you dont know enough about him for any of it to land? but i really wanted to know more (at some point i did give up on, this was a very passive viewing experience). my friend was saying that like literally why did they try to make arthur so Cool he’s already jason momoa he is by default cool now you can do whatever you want with him we’re all going to love him.

speaking of the lasso scene... was the entire last half of the movie re-writen and re-shot by whedon because like? the lasso scene is a whedon. the bit at the end where wondy goes “children. i work with children” is a whedon (THERE’S NO REASON FOR HER TO SAY THIS? I THINK THIS WHEN SHE HAS TWO TEAM MEMBERS LIKE LAYING ON THE GROUND AFTER NEARLY BEING BLON UP? IT WAS FUCKING WEIRD). i genuinely cant tell if all of barry’s dialogue was written by whedon or if that was ezra improvising but uh... man he’s... he needs to practice if that’s hm. if it’s just whedon i mean fine but he also doesnt have the shitty RDJ quality thats let’s him say those lines with believability.

speaking of which, going to see barry was my priority because apparently im gay for miller rn so like. uh. man he wasnt funny like there were a couple parts where he was cute and the line landed and it was fine but generally he just... wasnt funny? because the movie wasnt funny? like... idk man ezra really acting his heart out and ive said like cool i wanna follow his career and see if he does good stuff and gets even better at his stupid art but maybe he peaked with credence barebone i dont know. the first scene where we meet barry, with the flash pad and the pizza, that was good, that was funny. the bit at the prison was good. he has very soft eyes and thats nice. the panic attack is cute in the clip and the beginning like rhrgrh moment he has is good but then idk the pacing falls apart again

why is his character like this? i just dont think ezra’s... funny enough yet. (tbh i think he takes it too seriously even if he’s trying to be light-hearted man sometimes jokes is just jokes). there’s a bit where theyre digging up superman’s body and it’s JUST HIM AND CYBORG FOR UH? SOME REASON? maybe they explained why they sent the two babies but i didnt hear it and it’s literally just them two. and he tries to fistbump victor but vic is like “no” and tbh barry is annoying? like maybe u think he’s cute and an audience member but he’s uh... you can tell he’s annoying in the story and anyway then the flash says “right, racially charged” ABOUT A FISTBUMP? WHICH? LITERALLY MADE NO SENSE? WAS THIS LINE IMPROVISED? WAS IT WRITTEN? IM GONNA PUT MONEY ON IMPROVISED BECAUSE HE IS EXACTLY THAT KIND OF STUPID BITCH

if they were breaking into the lab why even bother going through the front door? barry drives the thing in (theyre trying to smuggle superman’s body into star labs) disguised a soldier (the literally most unconvincing thing, not to me as an audience member, because it was cute and funny to me,, but that a guy with THAT FACE is military like yeah sure, why did that guard believe him) but then they get to like the normal ass parking inside and the other three are standing there in full costume in full grey DC-brand daylight? are you telling me between 5/6ths of the justice league they couldnt sneak in a fucking pine box when wonder woman can lift a fucking tank on her own? like.

speaking of which uh.... superman is stupidly overpowered. like i said i read an issue of JL where mera hands every one of the justice league members their own gently roasted ass in hand on her fucking own. diana regularly kicks superman in the head. why was she not able to take him down? when theyre fighting steppenwolf for real it’s not until superman shows up that they even have a real fighting chance. they dont fight as team, they dont even fight as people casually unified in a common cause. theyre playing high-stakes legos and cyborg gets pulled away from them like three times?? and it gets fucking annoying? and then supes shows up and literally wipes the floor with him. it is so completely bizarre and stupid.

here’s a problem i still have with wonder woman: why is she so thin? the other amazons (except Hippolyta and maybe one other one) look built as FUCK? LIKE THESE WOMEN COULD EASILY TOSS ME ACROSS THE ROOM. wonder woman has serious fucking arms, where are they

also those amazon bikinis were bad. the whole styling of this movie is bad, but especially the amazons. everything is red and gold, for some reasons? the outfits dont looks heavy like armor, they look heavy like bullshit material. there is no reason for the fucking bikinis. the gold cloak hippolyta wears is??? heavy and looks like? like drapes like window dressing like thats the weight of it. additionally, there is no reason for their hair to be SO STYLED. it’s really like prom night hair it’s like shiny and muss free and always loose and in perfect clearly salon-styled curls. also, why are they so heavily made up? it’s really prominent. wondy herself has the same issue going on, she looks much more heavily made up (why is everyone’s blush so PINK, like it's distracting, is this a side effect of the recoloring process) and her hair isnt loose and doing its thing like in BVS or Wonder Woman it’s like... idk she looks really. Pretty when she’s on the field and it makes no sense.

the amazon fighting style is still ugly and makes no sense ive never seen such a wasteful fighting style it made sense exactly once during Wonder Woman

why is themyscira entirely the ugliest cgi i have ever fucking scene

why does the camera INSIST ON MOVING LIKE THAT. the action is super hard to track, the cgi is ugly as fuck (it really cannot be overstated)... i made it to about... i want to say when theyre on the way to the big fight and then the combined everything gave me a heaache that o had for the rest of the movie

i mentioned earlier that the pacing is weird the transitions are also weird. you get cuts to and from places that never fade into each other, it’s always a hard jump cut but it’s never the right cut to make? like, in thor ragnarok for example, there are a bunch of scene changes that happen via the bifrost, via people going through doors. there are wide shots that jump to wide shots in other places, so youre not suddenly on a close-up. there are a lot of people emerging from something into view, and there are a lof of people being alone in the center of the frame. it’s a very smooth and easy to watch movie. JL is the opposite of this in every way. I SUSPECT. AGAIN. THAT WHILE THIS WOULDNT HAVE BEEN FIXED ENTIRELY. THAT THOSE EXTRA TWENTY MINUTES THAT WERE CUT WERE PROBABLY REALLY IMPORTANT

the lois lane bit where she calms supes down just reminded me of the age of ultron and i quoted “sun’s going down” at my friends who were with me and they shit themselves laughing

ma kent calls lois lane “thirsty” in a Hilarious Teen Humor Gag thanks joss whedon you fucking hack

bruce wayne is fucking useless he could have got barry ANY JOB EVER and like... my god whatever.

also i still dont understand how how voice sounds like that when he’s batmanuh the after after credits scene is setting up, according to my friend, a sinister six movie. deathstroke isnt played by manu bennett so it’s fucking usless thanks for coming to my ted talk

6 notes · View notes

thetwoplayergays · 8 years ago

Text

Kind and Goofy

I thank (and blame) @pixletta for this. This is based on a short story they gave me and I just-

ENJOY

Au where your world is black and white until you kiss your soulmate

Jeremy had always thought of his life as simple. For years he only had to focus on three things: his music loving best friend, his obnoxious teenage bully and the love of his life - the main ingredients for a teenage boy. He had grown used to the black and white surroundings he had grown up in. However this all changed when he got the Squip.

The little computer in his head was adamant on him becoming more than his nerdy persona. He insulted him, manipulated him into getting what he wanted and soon Jeremy found himself rising above his ranks. He was talking to the popular kids, he was wearing more fashionable clothing and his once teenage bully was not practically his best friend. All he wanted now was her - his soulmate.

But apparently, that was too much to ask.

"What do you mean it might not be Christine?" Jeremy questioned his Squip out loud in his bedroom where no one else could hear. His dad had gone out to get groceries (thankfully with pants) so the house was his for the time being.

"I'm saying," the CPU stated, taking his physical form over to the end of the bed, "that soulmates are not the result of science, therefore I am unable to calculate who the particular human will be, given that there are roughly 7,500,000,000 people roaming the Earth at this given moment. It is very unlikely that your soulmate is Christine."

"But it has to be!" Jeremy interjected. "Soulmates have a bond, and I can feel that bond between us."

"You don't even know her Jeremy."

"I don't need to! When I close my eyes, I can picture us together, and we're happy. Whenever I see her, I just want to kiss her and tell her how much I love her. I want her to tell me how much she needs me... I want to know that I'm her favourite person." Jeremy was soon lost in his own daydream and failed to notice that the Squip had suddenly taken interest.

"Jeremy, what kind of things would you like to do with Christine?" He asked curiously.

"Like dates and stuff?" Jeremy thought for a moment. "Nothing special, maybe stay at home in her room playing video games..."

"Video games?"

"Yeah," Jeremy chuckled. "I bet she would be great at Apocalypse of the Damned..." The Squip tried not to slap Jeremy.

"Anything else?" He asked begrudgingly.

"A movie date would be nice! I bet she would be totally into those really bad action movies. I can see us now, sitting in an empty movie theatre sharing popcorn and laughing at the obvious CGI effects," Jeremy chuckled to himself.

The Squip decided it would be best not to mention his once weekly movie nights with Michael.

"And what about music?"

"I don't know, Christine probably likes a lot of music. Maybe..."

“Bob Marley?" The CPU suggested in the most bare tone of voice he could manage.

"Yeah... Bob Marley..." Jeremy sighed happily, staring off into the distance whilst his computer companion tried to recalculate his IQ.

"Christine's not your soulmate." He stated, snapping Jeremy out of his daydream. He turned to glare at the physical form of the computer. "Well how do you know?"

------

Christine wasn't his soulmate.

"I don't understand Micheal!" Jeremy cried, head in his hands and knees curled up to his chest. "I was so sure it was her..."

"Hey cheer up buddy, there are plenty of fish in the sea. I'm sure you'll find them one day." His best friend tried to help as he sucked on a pale grey lollipop, sitting in the beanbag opposite Jeremy. The tall boy had barged into the basement a couple of minutes ago ranting on about his date with Christine. He, of course, was happy to see Jeremy after such an uneventful day, but hated that he was in such a state. The date had obviously not gone well and Micheal tried to feel sympathy for the boy. Deep down, he knew Christine wasn't going to be Jeremy's soulmate. The two barely knew each other when they started dating and Jeremy had put her up on such a high pedestal that he was blinded from seeing the other person in his life: Michael. The boy who had been watching Jeremy for years now trying to find a way to accidentally kiss him and confirm his longing. But despite how hard he tried, Michael knew he wasn't what Jeremy wanted. He had accepted that long ago.

"-and then I kissed her and nothing happened! Nothing! We stared at each other for a few more seconds until she broke the silence by kissing my cheek, apologising and walking away... everything is still as dull as ever Michael..." he groaned, curing up into a tighter ball, pouting. Michael had to resist the urge to kiss him right then and there.

"Come on bro, I'm still here. Aren't I the light of your life?" He joked, causing the sad boy to burst out laughing. He turned and met Michael's kind and goofy eyes.

"Of course Michael, you're my favourite person."

------

"You want me to do WHAT?" Rich fell over laughing, whipping the tears from his eyes. Jake also began to snigger. Jeremy's face had blown up in shade, no thanks to the added effects of the alcohol in his system. The clear darker shade of grey plastered his cheeks. Michael, who was sitting beside him, was trying not to die.

"Dude that's mean," Jake tried to say but wasn't taken seriously as tears had also began to form from holding in his laughter.

The group were all sat in an empty bedroom somewhere in Rich's house. He had offered to host the annual Christmas party as Jake's family were still trying to find a decent place to stay. Jeremy was adamant on the whole group attending, despite Michael's complaints. He eventually managed to convince him on the condition that Jeremy would not leave his side all night. His word was kept, but it backfired when Rich and Jake invited the two to play truth or dare in the spare bedroom. Michael tried to voice his concerns but the excitement on Jeremy's face killed his complaints.

So here he was, trying to stay conscious because Rich had just dared Jeremy to kiss him.

"I- I can't! He's my best friend!" Jeremy rambled, eagerly looking for an excuse.

"Oh come on Jerry, what are you chicken?" Sniggered Chloe. Jeremy tried to protest but was only stammering up a storm. Michael turned his attention from his best friend to his grey hoodie and took in a deep breath. 'I'm going to regret this'.

Confidently, he sat up straight and turned to face Jeremy.

"What's the matter Jer? This hot piece not good enough for you?" 'I shouldn't have drunken that beer'

"Ooohh someones confident tonight." He heard Brooke wolf whistle. "Don't want to keep him waiting Jeremy."

Jeremy's attention was now fully on his best friend as he made a face as if to say 'what on earth do you think you're doing' Michael didn't respond though, he only held his head in his open palm and smirked. It was cute to see Jeremy all flustered. Of course, he didn't actually expect him to go through with it. He just thought it was cute.

Perhaps, deep down, he knew Jeremy would crumble.

"...fine," was all the warning he was given before Jeremy cupped his cheeks and smashed their mouths together. The action earned a soft squeak from Michael, muffled by their lips. No more than a million second later Jeremy pulled away and hid in his hands, refusing to look at his best friend.

'HOLY SHIT I CANT BELIEVE I JUST DID THAT MICHAELS GONNA KILL ME WHAT AM I EVEN MEANT TO SAY TO HIM I CAN NEVER SHOW MY FACE AGAIN-'

"Shit..."

The soft curse was enough to snap Jeremy out of this mind long enough to hear someone running out of the room. He instantly knew who it was and Jeremy shot up from the floor.

"MICHAEL NO PLEASE IM SO-...rry?" Jeremy slowly looked around the room. He could see the dark purple of the bed covers, the bright blonde of Brooke's hair, even the painfully obvious red streak in Rich's that was previously just a shade brighter.

He could see colour.

He had just kissed Michael.

Michael was his-

"Yo dude," Rich's voice broke through as his hand came up to his shoulder. "I don't quite know what's going on, but you might wanna go after Michael before we have another bathroom fiasco."

Jeremy didn't need to be told twice. He bolted out of the spare room and into the hallway. He winced at the sudden change of colour but forced his eyes towards the crowd of teenagers down the stairs.

There. Opening the front door was a boy with brown hair and headphones dressed in a brightly coloured hoodie. Despite not knowing the colour, Jeremy could recognise that shade anywhere.

Jeremy burst through the front door and ran out into the cold crisp winter night. He found Michael sitting down on the grass, watching the lights of the neighbourhood twinkle. Carefully, Jeremy joined him - a few meters away. When Michael turned to face him he closed his eyes shut up and winced, expecting a slap from the boy. Instead, he got a soft chuckle.

"Man, I don't even know what that colours called but it looks horrible on you dude," he laughed softly pointing to Jeremy's Christmas jumper. He looked down and saw a horrible shade of green and burst out laughing. The two boys fell onto the grass, laughing up a storm. Soon a calming silence fell between them.

"I'm sorry," Jeremy heard Michael whisper.

"What for?"

"I know you didn't want it to be me," came the reply. "You wanted this perfect girl, smart and kind and goofy and... not me." Jeremy watched as Michael sat up and continued to stare at the Christmas lights of the house opposite. "Your Squip was right to block me out, he probably knew..." he chuckled to himself. "You deserve better."

"You're kidding right?" Jeremy cried, flying up to meet Michael. "All this time, I wasn't just picturing this random girl! All those stupid dates I came up with, the compliments, the nicknames... I know now," he locked eyes with Michael and smiled sweetly, a slight blush creeping onto his face. "I was thinking of you."

Michael's face instantly blew up. Jeremy recognised the colour from his hoodie, he had already decided it was his favourite.

"You... can't be serious..." Michael said, muffled by the hand covering his face from embarrassment. Jeremy gave a soft chuckle.

"Well in normal circumstances I don't think I would have imagined my soulmate listening to Bob Marley."

"NO WAY!" Michael cried, bursting into laughter and tears and Jeremy couldn't help but join in. The two sat there laughing until Michael looked up and tackled Jeremy into a hug, pushing both boys onto the ground. When their laughing eventually quietened, the two boys locked eyes with each other. Michael smiled.

"You always were my favourite person."

#I DID IT #FINALLY #fun story I accidentally deleted the first draft of this and cried #boyf riends #bmc #be more chill #be more chill musical #writings

594 notes · View notes

scrawnydutchman · 7 years ago

Text

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Movie Review

*NOTE: The following review contains spoilers, highlighted in bold letters for reader’s convenience. If you haven’t seen the film yet, skip the bold letter sections of this review and come back to read them when you have seen it.

Well, the long anticipated episode 8 to the beloved Star Wars franchise is here. My group of friends and I went into The Last Jedi knowing that it had some pretty mixed opinions going around for it. Some people, like my brothers, were giving it some high praise for being absolutely spectacular and epic. Others were calling it stupid and non sensical. Now that I’ve seen the film, what’s my verdict? Well . . . . it’s no wonder people are as divided about the quality of this film as they are, because it’s a very mixed bag. It may be the most dramatic and thematically deep Star Wars film in years, possibly the whole franchise . . . but it’s also the most laugh out loud ridiculous. Yes, that includes The Phantom Menace. But while the prequels were mainly just boring and/or annoying, The Last Jedi is silly in a way that kept me consistently laughing hard in the theater. It’s an unintentional comedic goldmine.

PLOT:

Synopsis:

After the events of The Force Awakens, the rebellion is on their last set of legs in their fight against the First Order. There are so few rebels left in the fight and hope is dwindling. The only chance they have left is if Rey can receive Jedi training from the rediscovered Luke Skywalker in hopes that she can help the rebellion survive and eventually overthrow the First Order. Will the rebellion win the battle?

Now I know that’s a pretty bare bones synopsis but really, it’s the only way I can be as cautious about spoilers as possible. This movie has like 50 different twists and turns happen throughout it’s runtime. Every time you think one cliche’d or recycled plot point is going to happen, they go in a completely different direction. My guess is that after the fact that The Force Awakens was a pretty blatant repeat of old film beats leftover from A New Hope and to a lesser extent The Empire Strikes Back, the writers decided they wanted to flex their own creative chops a bit and experiment with the old formula. Honestly, I welcome it. I like that this movie was so unpredictable, since The Force Awakens and Rogue One were truthfully pretty easy to guess (Rogue One especially since it was a prequel). I also like the ways this movie challenges the old Star Wars formula we’ve come to love.

One way in which the film does this is it’s blurring the line between good and evil. Star Wars has always been pretty blunt and rigid about who are the true antagonists in it’s story, pretty childishly so even. It got to a point where the movie villains have been pretty cartoonishly evil (especially lord Palpatine and Snoke). But in The Last Jedi it’s not that simple. Despite the fact that we saw Ben Solo kill his own father, he makes decisions in this film that make us think he might turn to the light, such as kill Lord Snoke when he threatens the life of Rey. We also get a pretty poignant scene with the code breaker about how the grotesquely wealthy weapons dealers provide starships and guns for both the first order and the rebellion alike, making a point that the rebellion also does ethically questionable things for it’s cause. We as the audience even get trust dilemmas with beloved characters we’ve known for years, like Luke friggin Skywalker!! Did he fail Kylo Ren and make him succumb to the dark side?! Did he attempt to murder him?! Were his actions justified?! Stuff like this is great and It’s a welcome change of pace from an otherwise pretty black and white story about who’s the good and who’s the bad.

That said, not every choice in this movie is a good one. Sometimes the twists and turns of this plot are counter intuitive, for a number of reasons. For one, because this movie is big reveal after big reveal after big reveal, a lot of times characters actions, even if completely understandable in retrospect, could have been made a lot easier if they just EXPLAINED why it was they were doing what they were doing. Luke is reluctant to teach Rey the force, and goes for literal DAYS without explaining anything to her. The code breaker guy needs Rose’s cherished necklace in order to infiltrate the First Order’s tracker, but won’t just explain that and creates this whole thing about being selfish and heartless. But by far the biggest offender is vice admiral Holdo, who had a completely noble reason for charging the escape pods but couldn’t be bothered to explain what she was doing to Poe, leading him to mutiny against her. The plot forces these characters to behave irrationally in order for big reveals to happen, and had they been honest and communicative with each other they could have saved themselves ample amount of time. But being open about your thinking doesn’t fill a 2 and a half hour runtime I guess.

Another way in which the movie challenges old Star Wars sensibilities is that while The Force Awakens tried desperately hard to be as much like the old films as possible with it’s constant references and reappearances of old characters, this film has quite a bit of those old themes disappear by the end of the film and even has Kylo Ren talk about getting rid of the old ways to Rey. Luke Skywalker dies by the end of the film (albeit through a string of what I think are fakeouts). Snoke is killed off, and of course due to the unfortunate passing of Carrie Fisher, it’s unlikely Leia will be appearing in episode nine (unless they already finished shooting her scenes). I appreciate this films willingness to explore it’s own territory, as if to say “alright guys, we had our fun gushing over all the cameos and nostalgic feels, but now it’s time to tell our own story”.

But all of that said, there’s a great deal of silliness in this movie. Like, Star Wars 1-3 levels of silliness. The most prominent coming to my mind being when Leia is flung out into the cold depths of space after an explosion and survives by channeling the force and guiding her body to the safe remains of a rebellion ship. Now at first I thought this was the world’s ballsiest way of killing off a character whose actress tragically passed away the year prior. Instead, it’s the most laughably ridiculous part in the whole movie. If you’re one of those people who was upset at how quickly Rey was learning the force, how about seeing Leia, who has NEVER DEMONSTRATED SUCH COMPETENCE IN THE FORCE, suddenly being able to defy death in a way that no jedi or sith has ever done before?! There’s also basic plothole knitpicky shit, like if Finn and Rose were arrested for illegal parking then why was their spaceship still kept on the beach where it shouldn’t be? But to be fair they end up not being able to use it for escape anyway. Also the Chrome lady Stormtrooper from The Force Awakens shows up again, but does nothing and is taken out like a chump. She’s pretty much the Boba Fett of these new movies; she looks cool and sells toys, but does absolutely nothing. The irony is she has more dialogue than Boba ever did but is somehow less memorable.

Overall the plot of this film is a bit too ambitious for it’s own good, but I appreciate the ambition regardless.

VISUALS:

Much like previous Star Wars movies of recent years, this movie is pretty hit and miss. I’ll give it credit that it isn’t like The Force Awakens where it’s just too aesthetically similar to previous films to really have it’s own visual identity and it isn’t like Rogue One where the new stuff pretty jarringly clashes with the old. This movie has a pretty consistent feel and look to it and offers some creative new environments and creatures.

My favorite environment in the whole movie is the casino. While I was initially afraid going into it that this would just be another cantina just like the bar in The Force Awakens was, this movie has a setting that’s reminiscent enough of real life casinos to be instantly recognizable but also has enough distinguishing features to be it’s own version of it and also creates solid additions to the lore of the world. This is an explanation as to how the First order gets it’s weaponry, as well as how there’s one aspect in which the rebellion isn’t perfect. It’s also just an environment we haven’t seen in Star Wars before; a rich aristocratic type place that’s beautiful on the surface but hides a sinister underbelly.

This movie also has some decent CGI effects . . . . mostly. Okay, the Star Wars films have recently had a reputation for having somewhat scary looking CGI characters, particularly the recreations of Tarkin and young Leia in Rogue One. But the creatures and machinery in The Last Jedi are pretty creative designs and are pulled off effectively . .. again . . mostly.

But of course, this movie has as many goofy visuals as it does plotpoints. I already mentioned the hilarious image of Carrie Fisher’s limp body floating through space via conveniently appearing force powers, but there’s also Kylo Ren’s weirdly wide shirtless body which has been meme-ing for a while (EDIT: Apparently that’s actually what Adam Driver looks like Extra weird). The visual problems aren’t just with the CGI though. This movie has noticeably weird cuts and overall editing with it’s clips that does a weirdly specific amount of worldbuilding. There is of course the infamous shot of Mark Hamill milking the utters of a CGI animal that adds nothing to the plot and could have easily been cut out while still maintaining a two and a half hour movie. There’s also this one shot of a laundry iron coming down that would initially have you believe it’s just a starship in the SHAPE of a laundry iron, but it is in fact just a simple laundry iron ironing out the wrinkles of First Order officer’s uniform. YES, THIS SCENE ACTUALLY HAPPENS and it is so off-putting and weird it’s hilarious. I didn’t know how much I wanted to learn about the day to day maintenance a First Order officer has to go through until right now. Are there dish washing droids on their ship? Is there a vacuum droid? Is there a sewing machine constantly making new uniforms every few minutes? I have SO many questions.

The verdict on the visuals is pretty much the same as the verdict on the plot. Lot’s of ambitious choices; some effective, some weird but still entertaining.

Acting Performances:

The cast here is pretty damn good. Rey and Finn bring the awesomeness from The Force Awakens back (albeit with a few corny one liners worthy of The Phantom Menace). Kylo Ren is more likable this time around, playing up how he’s just an emotionally confused guy who doesn’t know what to think, kind of like a Star Wars version of Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Mark Hamill has both a gut wrenchingly hilarious and compellingly emotional performance (and is particularly badass in the finale). Carrie Fisher remains classy as ever even in her final on screen performance. There’s some pretty decent new additions as well. I like Rose a lot; she’s cute (if only a little stupid in the end). I like the Code breaker guy (even if he’s kind of a Deus ex Machina) because he’s a morally ambiguous character who only acts with money as his motivation. He’s kind of badass in his own way and I hope he comes back in Episode 9. Poe was great. Holdo was . . . . .eh, kind of just a generic by-the-books general butting heads with the reckless Poe. I know she ultimately has good intentions, but because she’s both introduced and dies in this movie she doesn’t leave much impact otherwise. Not much else to say here.

Sound/Music Production:

Typical great Star Wars quality. Effective sound effects, unique voices coming from every CGI creature, a soundtrack that’s not offensive but also not as poignantly epic as the original trilogy. Overall serviceable.

Conclusion:

Whether it’s edge-of-your-seat exciting or bombastically hilarious, The Last Jedi is very entertaining. I appreciate it’s very ambitious choices even if a lot of them are pretty stupid, and I do legitimately like the ideas of blurring the line between good and evil and moving on from the old ways of doing a Star Wars movie. The film keeps you guessing, has good drama, interesting ideas, all tied together with hit-and-miss execution. I’d say give it a watch!

Plot: 1/1 - Average (but with extra credit due to being hilarious)

Visuals: 1/1 - Average (but with extra credit due to being hilarious)

Acting Performance: .5/1 Average

Sound/Music Production: .5/1 Average

OVERALL: 3/4.

#star wars #the last jedi #starwars #episode 8 #film #review #movies #movie review #star wars viii #viii

0 notes

eridianshores-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Yes, I Just Sat Through Sharknado 4

Look, I know these movies are supposed to be ridiculous as shit, but I firmly believe that Sharknado: The 4th Awakens is the death knell for the once watchably-schlocky series.

None of these movies are worth scholarly, comprehensive criticism, but the phenomenon of “so-bad-it’s-good” versus “just plain bad” is worth examining. See, the first film was pretty much like any other high concept SyFy film; yeah it was dumb and unapologetic, but it still basically tried to be a film. Even though it became this massive “hit,” I think what a lot of people fail to realize is that it was made like any other P.O.S. SyFy movie. I mean there’s nothing wrong with liking Mega Python vs. Gatoroid or Mansquito but let’s be honest about what they are - high concept schlock made on a shoestring budget. And that’s all Sharknado was. Why did it catch on? It’s hard to say.

My thought is that it was simply seen by enough people. All it takes nowadays for something to go viral is a tweet or two from the right influential people, and boom, instant exposure. It’s very possible these days for a single tweet or like or share to be the difference between “just another random piece of internet fodder” and “next big thing (for 15 minutes - or less).”

Popularity points aside, there are plenty of B-movies better than Sharknado. It does have a few things going for it though. The acting, while uneven, isn’t completely awful and the most cringeworthy parts seem to be the result of an unnatural script rather than a failure of acting talent. Another plus is that it attempts to take itself somewhat seriously. It’s stupid, but also shameless. And let me be clear, when it comes to low budget film making, there is a difference between between being fun and shameless, and then being outright self-deprecating. As the series wears on, it pokes fun at itself with reckless abandon and gets a little too comfortable with the self-referential shit. What’s worse is that it never really breaks any new ground behind the “sharks falling from the sky” concept, nor does it use its newfound fame to do something like hire a better scriptwriter or spring for some help in the FX department.

Getting back to what specifically makes The 4th Awakens such a travesty captured on celluloid, let’s take a quick look at the plethora of “-nados” featured. Actually, it might’ve been sortta cool if they’d spent more than 2 seconds on them:

SHARKNADO

SANDSHARKNADO

BOULDERNADO

OILNADO

FIRENADO

LIGHTNING-NADO

LAVANADO

HAILNADO

COWNADO

NUEKNADO

I mean...I just...fuck.

Tommy Davidson plays some kind of corporate mogul science guy in the most annoying way possible, and all the while the film vacillates between portraying him as a sketchy businessman and a courageous do-gooder. It’s confusing. Plus he delivers one of the worst lines of the movie. His advisers are telling him about how the current technology won’t work on he new “-nados” and he blurts out, “We just need a solution!” Well no shit, Sherlock. Then someone says some goofy shit like, “we could try adding more isotopes to the base” and he’s all like, “yeah, you go with that” in a tone that reads somewhere between facetiousness and incredulity. The guy flits and screams in every scene he’s in like some kind of black Adam Sandler.

In the first flick, maybe even the first 2, the actors did a reasonable job of “interacting” with the green screen. Maybe it’s because the “action” scenes were less ridiculous (hard to believe anything in Sharknado could be described as “less ridiculous” than anything else...), or maybe it’s because they just got lazy...I don’t know.

Tara Reid - man, how far has she fallen? - delivers another atrocious line; while using her new cyborg powers to save a kid from a car, she claims to be “Iron Man’s wife” in order to comfort the kid and get him to run and find his mom. First of all, what does being “Iron Man’s wife” have to do with getting the kid to run away and find his mom? Secondly, where the hell did this line even come from? It’s just goofy. It’d be different if a joke - or even a bad joke - followed, but no, it’s just all, “I’m Iron Man’s wife, go find your mommy.” It’s WEIRD.

Oh and Gilbert Gottfried ups the annoyance factor for good measure...to quote the first film’s tagline, “’nuff said.”

I’ve seen plenty of films from the Asylum (the production company responsible for this type of stuff), but never have I see one with such an inability to properly convey perspective. We get a long shot of one of the various “-nados,” then our characters standing around with some wind blowing, and all of sudden they’re right next to the damn thing. It makes very little sense. I know we can basically chalk it up to the poor FX and CGI, but they could do a better job with the establishing shots. Also, it can take these ‘nados 15 minutes to move 200 feet or 5 minutes to cut through 4 states. I’m not even sure what the point is in switching locations every scene.

There is a lot of terrible dialog in the movie - among the worst I’ve ever heard in something proclaiming to be a feature film - but perhaps even more sickening is the film’s heavy-handed and absolutely pointless insertion of references to other films.

Example 1: Being a horror nut, I found this one particularly egregious. It actually starts off somewhat subtle and tasteful. The gang is in Texas (they just magically hop around the country, popping up hundreds of miles away in a matter of minutes) and find themselves in need of a chainsaw. (I’m not sure why the chainsaw became such a staple of the series; from the get-go it seemed to be directly ripping off Evil Dead’s blatant fascination with the device, and the deal was sealed when April (Reid) had her hand severed and then got some kinda mini-chainsaw robo-attachment.) So anyway, they end up at a chainsaw shop...in Texas...run by Dog the Bounty Hunter (remember that weird-ass Hulk Hogan-Paul Hogan wannabe?) and some crazy woman. She makes a comment about how their relative “Gunnar” uses a specific chainsaw to scare off neighborhood children. Cut to a quick shot of Gunnar to reveal a burly, surly guy with a face etched out of granite. Now if they’d ended the reference there, I might’ve even gone so far as to call it “clever.” But no.

Don’t get it? That’s ok. References are supposed to be oblique. I mean it doesn’t really count when they beat you over the head with it. And that’s exactly what Sharknado 4 proceeds to do. To explain the original reference, I’m sure most of you have heard of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the main villain, Leatherface. Although not as well-known as Robert Englund or even Kane Hodder, big horror buffs will know the actor Gunnar Hansen as the actor who played Leatherface in the original 1974 film. See? At this point it was a well structured reference. But...

The whole family ends up outside cutting up sharks with chainsaws while our main character goes and gets in a ditch-digger (it’s supposed to look like a giant chainsaw). Dog (the Bounty Hunter) shouts, “the saw is family!” in the most unconvincing manner possible, and then the crazy woman goes, “it wouldn’t be Texas...without a chainsaw massacre!” Ugh. Infuckingcredible.

Example 2: This is a crossover which leads into a reference. Our crew meets up with some guy from SyFy’s Lavalantula movie who gives them a car named “Christine.” Of course the giveaway (before the name drop) is painfully obvious as the quintessentially 50′s car rolls up playing quintessentially 50′s pop music, you know, those wistful teen tragedy songs. The guest character makes all these comments about “she knows where to go” and “she’ll know how to find him later,” So what does all this business of the “living car” lead up to? Nothing. Literally nothing. The world’s largest ball of twine is chasing them, but since it’s “coming too fast,” the guy stops the car, everyone gets one, and they all start running...because that’s how you outrun a massive ball of twine propelled by a tornado. POINTLESS.

Example 3: Here we have 3 references to the same movie. Team goes into a house in Kansas, gets picked up by a Sharknado, and travels all the way to Chicago without someone even so much as having a brush with a shark. Anyway, the house lands on the bitchy major, and we then see her legs, complete with striped socks and red shoes, just before her toes curl up. Was the major even wearing this shit? Also, the storm picks up some “yellow bricks” and then trops them, and Fin tells everyone to “follow the yellow brick road. And then his kid’s all like, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore...”

More Examples: There’s plenty more that are just stupid and out of place too. April rescues Fin and says, “Come with me if you want to live.” (Terminator 2) There’s a stupid, stupid “homage” to Baywatch where some chicks run in slow-mo before getting eaten. Fin tells someone, “Don’t get cocky, kid.” The kid pulls a mini-chainsaw out of a rock a la The Sword in the Stone. Oh god, and then there’s a scene where April is testing out her cyborg features; her dad tells her to “use the force,” whereupon she produces a lightsaber blade from her wrist, and then says, “may the force be with you.” What in the living hell.

I guess I could keep going on about the nonsensical choices of the characters (for example, they need a large body of water, so they pick the highly-dangerous Niagra Falls instead of like, one of the Great Lakes...or a fucking spot by the goddamn ocean), or the bad acting, or the exceedingly poor CGI, but I think it all boils down to the creative forces behind the film not giving a shit. Instead of cutting corners due to budget concerns or other practical limitations, it was like they started cutting corners because they “needed” to make a “bad” movie.

Bottom line: this ship has sailed. One of the things that even the worst movies have going for them is creative envelope pushing, but not here. The gore has worn a little thin, and there’s only but so many times that it’s fun to watch sharks land on people or pull off these well-coordinated bites while zipping through the air. The story is just an excuse to throw all these weird “shitnados” into the mix, and while they could’ve been interesting and posed some unique threats, for the most part they’re quickly glossed over. The “nuclear sharks” are able to generate a few chuckles I suppose, as is Al Roker’s deadpan delivery of stuff like, “technically we saw a sand-sharknado.” But overall it was just a sloppy, jumpy film that adds nothing to the series. Besides, the only reason sharks were initially able to survive was because they were contained in waterspouts; there’s never any reason for how they stay alert and aggressive amid a dust devil, hailstorm, or flaming oil. But whatever. I actually had a little fun watching the first two. The third one was mildly irritating, but this fourth installment is just aggravating and insulting.

.shark { font-size: 30px; font-weight: bold; text-shadow: 2px 2px 0 black; }

#sharknado #syfy #scifi #syfy movies #scifi movies #sharknado 4 #sharknado the 4th awakens

0 notes

popculturebuffet · 6 years ago

Text

Mega Man Fully Charged: Throwing Shade Parts 1 and 2

Mega Man fights for everlasting peace and makes annoying quips in this review of the first two episodes of Fully Charged. Is it as terrible as fans fear or suprisingly good?

I have always been a huge Mega Man fan. While I haven’t played every game, though lord knows I want to, the series has always held a special place in my heart no matter what version it is. So hearing the Classic Series, for the unininitiated the original games where Mega Man battles Dr. Wily and various Mans, was getting a cartoon excited me, especially since the people covering it were Man of Action who, while having a spotty at best track record recently, still have classics like generator rex and the first two Ben 10 Series under their belts. And then my expectations dimmed as more and more info came out, cumliating in Mega Man’s misguided brother …. Namagem…. the dumbest name in Mega Man history. And given there are 7 sub series, several manga’s and three comics series one of which is so fucking bizarre that at one point one of the writers tried to have their OC kill off the actual cast to take over the comic, that’s a tall order. But I’m not here to talk about that stupid decision, that’s for whenever the character shows up. I’m here to see if the series, despite it’s possible flaws, is any good. The basic plot of the series is Aki Light, changing his name form light, found out he had combat programs buried in him.. along with a tiny robot called Mega Mini who lives in his helmet and throws out unfunny jokes while I pray for death but death won’t come. And no he’s not an AI or anything that would make sense. He’s a tiny robot that crawls out of Mega’s helmet and operates a control console in there. And no i’m not currently running a fever or snorting a mountain of cocaine though sometimes I wish I was. It’d make this make sense. And if you think… “Well Gee Jake, dosen’t the episode your covering explain any of this” it.. really dosen’t. While Mini does make some sense, helping copy powers and managing the side effects of them, we’ll get to that, we don’t know HOW Aki got the powers or why mini isn’t just an AI. He’s just Mega Man because he’s Mega Man. Even the original games at least gave a quick bit of expositon in the manual for the first one and in the intros for 2, 4 and onwards. And given Aki narrates the opening we could’ve at least got a bit of exposition in it… but no. While I know it’s a minor gripe and it dosen’t severely hurt the series, the lack of exposition just feels lazy, like they COULD’VE easily had some in the dialogue but theyd idn’t. Anyway, getting to the episodes themselves, they detail Mega Man’s first outings as a super hero and his battle with Fire Man, while introducing the supporting cast. But before we get to them, let’s talk about the man himself. Aki.. is a mixed bag. Like most man of action teen heroes he’s cocky, brash, and likes to fight.. which goes against the character’s original motivations of doing this because it’s the right thing to do and not because he’s a cocky asshole who thinks his dad’s war background, we’ll get to that in a second, is a cool exciting action movie and not a violent bloody racist war. However.. it’s balanced by the fact he does genuinely care for the people around him, with saving civilians being his priority in combat and getting angry at one point because Fire Man nearly killed some innocents. And despite his fight happy nature DOES fight for everlasting peace still. Overall he’s a good kid who just has a reckless streak, and while I hope like Ben and Rex he gets fleshed out a bit, it’s not a bad base to start with. The one real huge issue I have at this point in the series is the mid battle dialogue and his use of dude when trying to calm fire man down at one point, as it’s cringe inducingly trying to be cool while instead making him come off as rejected 90’s rad sonic knockoff. As for the rest of the cast, we’ll start with the good doctor Thomas Light himself. Thomas is as bit of an absent minded professor, but genuinely seems to love his kids, and wants peace between robots. While that’s all kinda stock for Dr. Light in most adaptations, what’s intresting, besides his being voiced by Optimus Primal himself Gary Chalk, is that he’s a war vetran. The story has a decent backstory: there was a war, known as the Hard Wars, a decent pun that pit robots against humanity. Light here is a pacifist BECAUSE he’s seen the senselessness of the conflict. While the show is fairly on the nose about it’s message of tolerance and peace and not being racist and all that stuff we’ve heard a thousand times, it’s not a bad message and hopefully he series will get deeper with just how hard that peace is to maintain and just how terrible the war was with time. It’s too early to tell if it’ll be wasted or not but I’m hoping they will given just how dark Generator Rex got. Replacing Roll is Suna, who looks completely different than roll not even keeping her red and white color scheme for no reason. However unlike …. Namagem… who makes me die a little inside every time I have to type his name, there IS a reasonable reason for replacing her: With the rock and roll names out, using her old name would’ve made no sense.. and Suna is a human. Who Thomas bang shang a langed to create her or if he adopted her is still unknown, but it adds to the series themes and is an intresting twist. Personality wise she’s.. still Roll, teasing Aki a bit but genunley supporting him and being the only one who knows his secret Identity at this point. She also serves to keep Mega Man grounded, caliming him down when he absorbs fire man’s anger, more on that later, in the first ep and reminding him why he’s fighting. She’s a thoroughly likeable character and while I do wish they’d give some lip service to us roll fans, she’s a thoroughly likeable character in her own right. Speaking of changes… the Light kids best friend is Bert Wily… yes THAT Wily. Wether he’s just the kid of the actual Dr. Wily, or IS Dr.Wily and we’re seeing a Superboy and Lex Luthor thing here remains to be seen as the creators DO intend to use the good Doctor eventually. But for now he’s just Aki’s goofy best friend who likes machines and carry’s around a sentient toaster, as you do and referes to him and his friends as Team Light, which gives me a nifty term to use. He’s also a thoroughly likeable kid, a goof but he looks up to dr. light and towards the end of the first ep, along with Suna and Thomas stands between fire man and Mega Man trying to talk him down. With Mini covered before we get into the villains of the series and the episode respectively, there’s one last character for me to note: Principal 100100 the principal of the Lights’ middle school. A GIANT ROBOT who was clearly a war machine once and is just.. just fantastic. I love this guy and hope he continues to pop up. Now to bring on the bad guys. Starting with Sgt.Night the series big bad who’s a hero of the hard wars and is using robots to try and start it up again, starting with having Fire Man attack him. While this isn’t a bad setup, as oft used as the fantastic racist villain is, there’s.. problems. Night himself is fairly generic in his views DESPITE having reasons to be a racist asshole, having fought in a robot war and lost an arm, and his mode of trying to stoke the war while not bad, having robots attack to prove his point… his method of doing so is weird. He cooperates with robots.. instead of you know REPROGRAMMING THEM OR MANIPULATING THEM LIKE YOU’D THINK AND LIKE WILY DOES. On top of this nonsensical way of doing things that end sup proving the opposite of his point, he won’t shut up being hamfisted as shit with his views while Thomas gives logical reasons for his. He comes off as a two dimensional racist a-hole and it makes me wonder why they didn’t just have wily in his position in the first place or use someone like Sigma from the x games and have the robots trying to restart the war with Night as a neutral party Mega Man has to win over or that proves not every racist can be turned. As is for now he’s just a mustache twirling waste of potential. Finally, we have Fire Man the episodes villain who’s fairly one note, being angry at humans for wanting him to change jobs for stupid jokey reasons (they wanted him to become a fry cook) and working for Night because shut up. However he’s still a competent villain, and a good threat to Mega Man, just a bit one note. His dialogue could be replaced with “Grr I HATE HUMANS” and it’d barely be different. His design is pretty good. Speaking of designs the shows designs are.. really good for the most part. While there are some questionable ones we’ll get to when those characters show up, Mega Himself while having.. weird eyes, has a nice blend of his classic design and Mega Man X. It looks neat as does fire man’s bulkier design. Really only SGt. Night has a terrible design and that’s more because he looks transparently evil to the point I’m questioning why he hasn’t been thrown in jail for constantly showing up places to spout racist rehtroic.. and that’s not a joke that’s what he actually does, just showing up at Aki’s school because he’s butthurt the human and robot school strangley didn’t invite a racist to be a guest speaker. But enough bitching about Night the animation is decent, looking okay despite some weird proportions on Mega Man and having cool fight scenes that while not wining any awards, are fairly fluid and tense. It’s overall some decent CGI that adds some decent flow to things and dosen’t hurt the eyes. The spirtwork bits however just look off.. like they want to mimic the games but would rather go for the cheapest way of doing that, though it’s mostly for Mega Man himself as the robots look decent and sprites are used for the various schematics mega man has. The show’s music is excellent, remixing the robot master themes with the Theme Song in Paticular being awesome. Something I have no segue for but is intresting is how Mega Man’s powers work here: he uses a beam to copy them, having to stay close to the master to do so while Mini copies them, and unable to use his weapons during it. It’s an interesting way. They also modify his look to look like the master similar to the style changes from Battle Network or Mega Man 11, though I suspect the former was more what they were going for, if not as extreme. It’s a neat addition and even better: he gets a bit of the masters personalities, having to grapple with anger after copying fire man’s powers, and it adds a wrinkle that I hope is used well and not just for stupid comedy bits. Speaking of which the Humor is the weakest bit. Mega’s one liners are terrible, MOST of the jokes, with little exceptions are stupid and juvenile. While I don’t mind throwing in jokes for the target audience, I hate outright pandering with a fart joke and stupid puns instead of actually trying to be clever. When they do, like having fireman try to lift a sewer grate, it’s funny. Otherwise it’s.. pretty stupid and hopefully improves or is downplayed as the series goes on. To wrap things up the Plot is ..d ecent. It’s basic and mostly setup and the odd omission of an origin bothers me, but overall it’s enjoyable and while heavy handed, the climax having mega man stop fighting and stand along side the rest of the cast and preach human and robot unity is intresting. I wouldn’t want it every time, but it’s a nice way to hammer in the obvious if necessary in these trying times message of unity and not being a racist dipshit. Overall, I enjoyed this two parter. While the series has issues, it has more potential and hopefully CN’s terrible airing schedule for it dosen’t bury the series. While it has it’s share of stupid, with fart jokes and Sgt. Klansman, the series has eveyr bit of potential to be a solid adaptation. My complaint is more that the series could’ve devoted time to showing Aki actually unlocking his powers and setting up the mystery of that instead of saving it for a flashback presumibly down the road as well as the stale attempts at humor. Despite this the show has strong potential and despite the changes the creative staff do seem to love the source material on some level. At any rate i’ll be tracking the series growth episode by episode so join me won’t you? Until then, courage. Final Grade: B+

7 notes · View notes

the-desolated-quill · 7 years ago

Text

The Snowmen - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

The Snowmen has got to be the least Christmassy Christmas special ever, and believe it or not I mean that in a positive way. Doctor Who Christmas specials have always left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, not just because most of them have been poorly written and just plain idiotic, but also because every year the show seems determined to drown you in slush. To its credit, The Snowmen does manage to escape that somewhat, keeping the slush to a minimum. Okay the villain is ultimately defeated by ‘a family crying at Christmas’, but it never comes off as mawkish and there is actually a decent in-universe explanation for how that worked, so I’ll allow it just this once.

So who are the villains? A deadpan Richard E. Grant and some carnivorous snow voiced by Ian McKellen. Compared to other Christmas special villains, they’re fairly good. Out of the two, Mr. Simian’s character is the weak link because we don’t learn anything about his character or the nature of his relationship with the snow, but Grant’s performance is still pretty good and it holds your attention. Ian McKellen also does a decent job with the material he’s been given, and I do like the idea of alien snow, even if the bitey snowflakes and smiling snowmen were a bit gigglesome (and the less said about the bad CGI ice governess, the better I think). It’s a bit like the robot Santas and killer Christmas trees from the RTD era. It’s silly, but it’s enjoyably silly. And as an added treat for us classic series fans, it turns out this episode is actually an origin story for the Great Intelligence. Usually you can see Moffat’s plot twists coming several galaxies away, so I was kicking myself that I didn’t pick up on it the first time. Particularly considering how the hints and Easter Eggs are so obvious on rewatches. The Snowmen as in The Abominable Snowmen and the Yeti. A disembodied voice trying to gain a physical form. The map of the London Underground. The snow is being kept in a giant sphere inside Simian’s office. And of course the initials GI. So yeah, that was a nice callback.

All in all, this could have been a fairly decent Christmas special. Nothing to write home about, but still watchable. Unfortunately The Snowmen is ruined by one thing and that’s the characters. Good fucking God are they horrendous!

Let’s start with the Doctor. After losing Amy and Rory, he has decided that he doesn’t want to travel or help people anymore and is now living above England on a cloud as a lonely old miser.

Fuck off! Not in this universe nor in any other universe would this EVER happen!

You may recall a couple of years ago when I reviewed the RTD era that I really didn’t like the Doctor’s reaction when he lost Rose. it just felt too human and it didn’t really gel with his character. He’s lost companions before. He mourns, but he moves on. Why would Rose be any different? But credit where it’s due, at least the Doctor kept travelling through time and space rather than stay in once place and sulk because RTD knew that that at least is something the Doctor would definitely never do. Here... I mean you can’t even use the excuse that the Doctor was in love with Amy. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be emotionally affected by what happened. I’m just questioning why he would be this emotionally affected to the point where he would actually refuse to help people in need. It just feels totally out of character.

Plus it really does display just how arrogant Moffat is. Of course it would be his characters that caused the Doctor to sink into a deep depression and only his character can bring him out of it. And of course his characters are what inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes, which he will later adapt in his god awful Sherlock TV show. Christ Moffat, I hope you’ve got plenty of tissues to clean the mess up with after you’ve finished wanking yourself.

Matt Smith doesn’t help matters. His turn as a reclusive miser just isn’t in the least bit convincing, but at least it’s preferable to when he magically makes a full recovery and reverts back to his obnoxious goofy self. This is the Doctor now everyone. A man who has arguments with his own hand and sexually molests Punch and Judy dolls. (Sigh. Only 11 episodes to go Quill. Just hang on).

We also see the return of the Paternoster Gang. A group of one dimensional, unfunny cardboard cutouts that people really seem to like for some reason. Strax is by far the worst, with each bad joke and moment of incompetence driving another nail into the coffin of the Sontarans forever. (But wait, isn’t Strax supposed to be dead? Ah fuck it! Everybody knows death is only a minor inconvenience in the Moffat era. Who cares if it ruins the impact of future deaths or that it completely contradicts Sontaran lore. Just laugh at the Doctor calling him a potato, something the Doctor would also never do because I’m sure that’s racist to Sontarans). And Vastra and Jenny have the same problems as every other Moffat woman in that they have no character or agency of their own. They exist solely to help the Doctor. Also Jenny is in a dominatrix outfit for some reason, and they openly talk about being gay. Two things that would definitely have caused shock and outrage in the rigid and repressed Victorian era.

Actually that’s one thing that really pisses me off about New Who and this episode in particular. None of it is true to the period. Clara is completely contemporary in both her outlook and behaviour, and everything unsavoury about the period is dismissed with the Doctor’s sneer of ‘Victorian values.’ Yes this is the Victorian era, but it’s the Victorian era you’d find on the front of a Christmas card. It’s very easy to just sneer at a period of history and congratulate ourselves for how much better we are today, but why not actually explore the era properly? What’s that saying? The past is like another country? Let the audience see that. Why not have Clara behave like a woman during the Victorian era would and have the Doctor come in to challenge that? Have the episode be a clash of different attitudes and values.

Speaking of Clara, she is by far the worst thing about this episode. I honestly didn’t think it could get any worse than Oswin in Asylum Of The Daleks, but boy was I wrong. She is just insufferable. She’s really smug and smarmy and not in the least bit likeable or believable. She’s like River Song, but 10x worse. Also it doesn’t help that Jenna Coleman decides to give Clara this really bad ‘gor blimey guvner! Strike a light! Up the apples an’ pears’ Cockney accent. (Brief side note, why was she keeping the whole nanny thing secret?). I’m certainly not buying her supposed special connection with the Doctor. That’s another thing Moffat is guilty of. He’s so shit at writing female characters that he can’t effectively convey whey they might be so unique in their actions or behaviour, so he has to just flat out tell the audience instead. Well I’m sorry, but that shit just won’t fly. What reason does Clara have for chasing the Doctor’s cab? What reason does the Doctor have for being impressed with Clara despite the fact she’s done nothing remotely noteworthy? What reason does Clara have for snogging the Doctor’s face off despite the two sharing no romantic chemistry whatsoever? Answer: the script said so. Maybe if Moffat spent less time writing stupid scenes like the ‘respond with one word’ interrogation and more time actually developing her character, I might have actually given a shit when she died. (I mean for fuck’s sake, talk about disappearing up your own arse. How the fuck would Clara have known the word ‘Pond’ would have passed the one word test? How does ‘Pond’ convey she needs the Doctor’s help? What is even the fucking point of the one word test other than as a pathetic attempt for Moffat to try and look deep and intelligent as opposed to a pretentious halfwit? God, he’s such a shit writer).

Worse still, despite the fact Moffat had insisted that Series 7 won’t contain a series arc, it turns out Clara constantly dying is going to be a series arc now. So it looks like we’re going to be stuck with this ungodly annoying woman for quite a considerable time. Bugger!

While The Snowmen is considerably less slushy than some of the previous Christmas specials, I unfortunately have to stick this in the bad category along with the likes of Voyage Of The Damned and The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe due to its terrible characterisation and Moffat’s pretentious, egocentric bullshit.

#the snowmen #steven moffat #doctor who #eleventh doctor #matt smith #clara oswald #jenna coleman #the great intelligence #bbc #review #spoilers

14 notes · View notes