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space-blue · 3 years ago

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Dune, the mostly spoiler free review.

Spoilers will be under breaks.

Having slept on it (and since I got to bed at 4am I needed that), and having eaten enough sugar to kickstart my brain again, I can now confirm, wholeheartedly, that Dune is a masterpiece.

Hardly a hot take on the internet right now, I know. I'll say this, to start on a low note : Dune's greatest flaw is that the side characters (anyone outside of Jessica and Paul) can be left wanting development. Some non-book readers might struggle to get attached.

The film simply doesn't have time to deliver narrative, mood and emotional characters the way Fellowship of the Rings did, as I often see the film compared to LOTR. Unlike LOTR, Dune has not shot part 2, and it doesn't have enough action beats/plot beats to give you engaging character interactions for 1/3 of the story.

As a result some characters seem to be "seen in passing". Which... Bothered me a little at 3am, but has since faded. My memories turn to Jessica and how incredible Fergusson was. Absolutely show stealing. And Skarsgard!! Yeesh, the Baron Harkonnen does not need more screen time to be intimidating...

All the cast delivers. The visuals, design, costume, photography... It's clear to me everyone involved in this was at the top of their craft and giving it their all for a career turning point of a production. I even struggle to believe book 2 could land such a punch again, I mean, I've rarely been punched in the face this hard by a movie...

I mean, I'm not the type to be into spaceships or anything. I even struggle with models in the Star Wars universe and I published 58 fan fics for that fandom so... And yet in this film, hah... When the Atreides ships are introduced (you see these big transports in the trailer) I was like "No. He didn't... OMG the madlad, he did." — the music, the visuals, the scale... And then there's the thopters, and I was having moments of prescience myself, seeing actual ship/spaceship nerds rise up, foam frothing at the mouth. Modeling thopters and making videos about them for years to come.

The audio was loud, bold. The music alien. The sound mixing done so well I had a snappy thought 2min in, along the lines of "I hope Nolan sits to this film and learns something about sound mixing from this" (don't @ me, I'm still spicy about my viewing of Tenet).

In short, Dune is spectacular. It oozes with mythos and charm, feels lived in, intimidating yet beguiling. The plot is as sound as the book's the visuals are a cinema/SFF fan's wet dream, the acting and production value are stupid crazy, and the only drawback IMO — for non book readers — will be the "in passing" characters (like Raban, Piter, Gurney, Hawat... Who simply don't have the space and time to shine yet) and the ending, which is 100% "INSERT CD 2"

It feels jarring and leaves you begging for more. But book readers probably won't feel the same pang, since we can now close our eyes and image how bonkers part two can be in such visuals.

I've over-heard old french people saying it was super boring and slow and... lol I can't disagree more, but then again the trailer does market an action movie, and the film is not any more action packed than BR2049 was. When the action comes calling it's big, fast... When it isn't, the movie is moody, deliberate, and meticulous.

It won't be for everyone, but if you've so much as "enjoyed" the books, you'll be having the experience of a lifetime.

Before I delve into some mild spoilers I'd like to make a disclaimer: Denis has begged people to see Dune in cinema, and I was thinking "of course, what film maker wouldn't want people in cinema?" but also suspected he might want the numbers in order to get part 2 started.

I owe him an apology for these impure thoughts. You MUST watch Dune in cinema, not for Denis or part 2 (though, come on...), but for YOURSELF. There is not a single home cinema set up that can do justice to this film. It's the definition of why you go to the cinema for. It's epic in scale, it makes you jump at startling moments, it punches and screams at you, and makes you squint at others, and you walk out of there with a sense of having witnessed something like... To me, like Interstellar. Remember seeing that docking sequence scene in the theater and walking out being like "holy shit" ? Well Dune is very much like that. It was made for the big screen, and anything short of IMAX or Dolby ATMOS would be a disservice to both the film and yourself.

I will be seeing it in France the instant it comes out in September. It begs rewatching.

Now for some spoilery thoughts (mild spoilers, and a warning for further spoilers below).

The film takes surprisingly little time to delve on certain topics. Like the spice. Sure you're told it's important, and the economics that drive the story make it feel important, but not nearly as much as I suspected it would be. There is no clunky exposition on the topic (lol no fucking time for that!) no scene where someone shoves spice in your face and goes “oh but blah blah spice must flow”. It’s said in passing and newcomers better hold on to their seat and pay attention.

Sadly though a fair bit of the dialogue was expositional imo, and too little of it over all felt like that heart warming moment between Paul and Leto. It's not a big drawback, but since I enjoy more character driven stories, I regretted the lack of general emotional investment.

On the point of emotions though, I was taken aback by Jamis! The scene of him in the trailers "I'll show you"... creates a sort of very subtle and implied dynamic that was probably one of the biggest heart punch for me, and started driving home how dire Paul's visions can be. I suspect some viewers won't interpret it the way I did though.

THE VOICE WAS SO WELL MADE YOU GUYS!! The thopter escape scene was always a "meh, sure, they get away" moment for me in the books. Good teamwork between Paul and Jessica... But *hearing it* was a completely different business. I was at the edge of my seat, I LOVED IT.

There's also a lot of actual signing in the film! And the Sardaukar don't speak english but a super guthural language. Kind of like making a conlang merging German and the Black Speech of Mordor and giving it to a Danish to speak. Felt very cool.

The shields were just as badass as you think they'll be. The slow impact weapons are just... *chef kiss*

Finally some heavy spoilers on book story details (jihad, Muad'dib, some characters) :

There is no mentions of Jihad, but not because it's avoided. The visions of a fight Paul has are rare, and he mentions them once. At that time he says war or massacre but not Jihad. I didn't notice until I was asked.

He also doesn't chose the name Muad'Dib. If I recall that's right after killing Jamis, but doesn't happen here, even if we see the literal muad'dib in the desert. It's also fine. Those scenes were at the very end, and I felt like slamming newcomers with such a significant moment with alien language at the very end might be a mistake. I'm curious to see how it's handled in part 2 though.

I was looking forward to Piter... His role is uber minor. As much as Hawat's. Like, the Bull that killed Leto's father gets more screen time, funnily enough. There's a heavy imagery around it that's going to fuel many video essays.

#Dune #biennale di venezia #venezia 78 #Denis Villeneuve #paul atreides #lady jessica #duke leto #baron harkonnen #muad'dib #film review #spoilers hidden #mild story spoilers #Dune review

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twobitmulder · 4 years ago

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In Defense of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

This may be a controversial statement. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a pretty good movie--and at that--isn’t all that incongruous with the rest of the franchise. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out when I was 12--but because I’d been raised on the first three movies (and the Marvel and Darkhorse Comics and the Young Indy Show) I was a pretty big Indy fan already. I don’t actually remember what I thought of the movie when I saw it in theaters, but I remember the opinion that formed afterwards.

Very quickly the rest of the world had decided this was a bad movie--an unworthy followup that ruined the “ride into the sunset” ending of Last Crusade (in addition to invalidating a such a meaningful title). As a teenager I was perfectly willing to agree because when you’re a teenager there’s some kind of genetic impulse to agree with anyone who says something is lame. The best thing I ever said about it in those years was that it felt like someone’s very good fanfic--well plotted, fun action, a little derivative of the previous movies, and fulfilling the wish that Marion would come back and she and Indy would end up together but ultimately not really feeling like a “true” Indy movie (whatever the hell that means). In the years since, I’ve come around on it, and after my latest rewatch of the whole saga I’ve come to the conclusion that I actually really like it and I think it fits nicely thematically and aesthetically with the other three. Now if you truly don’t like it, that’s fine. Movie opinions aren’t moral imperatives but if you’re interested in a positive spin on it, read on.

One of the major arguments was that it didn’t “feel” like Indiana Jones. The 50′s aesthetic, the Soviet villains and most of all the aliens (sorry, inter-dimensional beings)...and yeah, it’s a little incongruous at first blush. Obviously it had to be set in the 50′s because Harrison Ford was old and already playing almost a decade younger than his actual age. The color pallet is a little weird too, more vibrant than the other movies and the CGI is distractingly 2008 but...I don’t think any of that is actually out of line with the first three movies. Indiana Jones was always set in a cartoon/comic book universe. For Pete’s sake in Raiders there’s a giant, perfectly round boulder that chases him. That is literally ripped out of a Scrooge McDuck comic. In Temple of Doom there’s a big musical number and in Crusade Young Indy escapes via magic trick. Indiana Jones was always an amalgam of things from old adventure stories. On that note, I’d like to take a moment to defend Mutt’s vine swinging. Now, it’s a weirdly staged scene and if it doesn’t work for you I totally get it, but Tarzan is just about the last classic adventure story Indy never took from. It may not have worked for everyone, but it’s exactly the kind of gamble they took with the boulder.

Now...the aliens. Fate of Atlantis did Aliens long before Crystal Skull but that’s neither here nor there. I think what eventually won me over to the aliens was that they were classic Roswell Greys in a flying saucer. To make my point, let me refer to another property--comic and movie--that are throwbacks in the same way Indy is. In the Rocketeer (both the comic and movie) he fights a bad guy modeled on horror actor Rondo Hatton and in the comic his girlfriend is basically just Bettie Page with a slightly different name. And we accept this because it’s a fun nod to the period and stories that inspired it and if the Rocketeer made it to the 50′s it would make all the sense in the world for him to encounter Roswell Greys in flying saucers. Same for Indy as far as I’m concerned. As for the existence of aliens at all...Like I said, it’s a comic book world that has an active Abrahamic God, active Hindu gods and if we take the Young Indy as canon vampires (and if we take the comics as canon Greek gods, Dragons, Mesoamerican gods, Celtic gods and even some borderline Lovecraftian “old gods” out in the arctic). Saying aliens don’t make sense in this universe is like saying magic shouldn’t exist in the DCU because it’s more heavily weighted toward aliens and sci-fi.

Now, I think that a lot of what makes this all feel wrong is the special effects, which definitely make it all feel less grounded than the previous films. I don’t deny that and I do wish they had kept the effects a little more practical--but my real point is that the things that feel silly, cartoony, or corny are all really still in line with the stuff from the old movies--it’s just that those were constrained by technology and for better or worse these weren’t. So Marion drives off a cliff--Indy rafted out of a plane. So Mutt swings on vines--Indy got chased by a Scrooge McDuck Bolder. So some CGI prairie dogs have a cartoonish reaction the rocket sled going by--a f**king monkey did a Nazi salute, silly animal antics are baked into this franchise’s DNA. Basically, it was always silly and over the top--the practical effects just convinced us it wasn’t.

Now, in the interest of fairness, there’s a fair amount I don’t care for and can’t really defend or spin another way. The Ancient Aliens hypothesis is a stock plot in stories like this but it is--ask any archaeologist or folklorist--absolutely steeped in and birthed from racist ideas that non-white cultures couldn’t achieve the things they did. I’m not saying the filmmakers were actively racist--I think they took a stock plot that needs to die and didn’t consider the implications, but it puts a damper on the movie. And the portrayal of indigenous people in this movie absolutely leaves something to be desired (understatement). It’s a problem with the colonialism that’s baked into the genre and I don’t think it’s unavoidable but I do think it’s far too easy to slip into writing a movie like this and it’s a problem all of the Indy Movies have.

Also, yes, the fridge scene is dumb. It stretches suspension of disbelief just a rope bridge too far. Spielberg and Lucas are really creative and talented men who also come up with a lot of silly ideas and sometimes one gets past the goalie. It happens. And, again, the CGI is jarring, no two ways about it.

But this is also the movie where Indy and Marion get back together and get married. This is a movie where we get to see a good balance Indy the Professor and Indy the Adventurer. He’s past “fortune and glory” but he still still gets giddy looking at all the history stored in Akator. This is a movie where we see and Indy who has actively grown since the past movies, he’s not a glory seeker and he repaired his relationship with his father but there’s still something missing and in the end he gets it. Also, Shia Labouf is not a bad actor and was, in fact, fairly good in this. Look at how he tears up in the sanitarium when he realizes what’s happened to Oxley. Look at how even after a fight with his parents in the Soviet convoy he’s able to jump into action mode because survival trumps personal issues in that moment. Look at how he cares for Oxley and Marion in all the group shots. It’s not a perfect movie...it’s not the best of these movies, but I think it’s better than we’ve been giving it credit for.

#Indiana Jones #Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

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jerusalemstraycat · 5 years ago

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Post-Finale Thoughts (very long post)

Here is a comprehensive and possibly unnecessary summary of my feelings and opinions about the SU:F finale. I’ve been procrastinating (lol what else is new) so it’s a week later than I would have liked, but at least my thoughts have had a chance to fester a bit. Anyway.

I was a bit iffy about the way it went at first, but it grew on me. There are several glaring issues, as there always are, but overall it was a great note to end on. What an amazing sendoff for one of the most iconic shows of the decade.

Part of the reason the finale felt so weird to me on my first watch-through is probably the fact that I started with Everything’s Fine, having watched Homeworld Bound when it was released early.

Homeworld Bound was a great episode overall and set things up very nicely for the rest of the finale, and not having that bookend made the last three episodes feel odd and disjointed. The power of watching a show in the way it was meant to be watched, I guess.

I am SO relieved to see that Spinel’s new living arrangements are working out, you have no idea. That was my main concern with the end of the movie.

It was neat seeing the Diamonds find new applications for their powers, but Yellow’s ability to fix shattered gems with tweezers and healing static didn’t sit right with me. It makes Jasper’s shattering seemingly irrelevant and lowers the stakes way too much. How can it be that reversing corruption is harder than literally bringing back the dead? (Pink Zombie powers notwithstanding - it’s probably different with organic creatures.)

THAT SCENE WITH WHITE THO. Good lord. When Fragments first aired a common complaint was that it felt jarring, like it didn’t really belong in the series. However, the possession scene somehow fit right in while still being just as terrifying. I don’t really have much to say about it in the way of interpretation that hasn’t been said already, but I do want to point out how cool it was that Zach could sound like two entirely different people in that scene. He HAS the range.

Everything’s Fine was also good, though I feel it could have been re-timed.

The first half of the episode was excruciating to watch. Not quite as bad as Together Forever, but it went on for far too long and simply belabored its point.

Maybe it’s all the half-corrupted Steven fanart I’ve become very attached to, or my low tolerance for secondhand embarrassment, but I really feel the episode would have benefited from devoting more time to the breakdown/transformation scene at the end and making it more gradual.

But hey, I’m not going to complain about what we got, because that ending was phenomenal. The slow descent into madness, the whole impostor syndrome thing that is all too real for me, the expressions??? The exploding into monster form at the end??? I loved it.

I Am My Monster is easily my least favorite episode of the finale, and probably of the second half of SU:F in general.

The only good parts were the scenes with Connie, and of course the ending (which was probably my favorite part of the finale). The rest felt so sparse and empty, which was even more of a letdown considering the potential it had. That time could have been used in so many interesting ways, but it wasn’t.

I would have loved something from Steven’s perspective, some mindscape stuff, internal monologue (or even dialogue), clarification of what the heck was going on, closure concerning Steven’s nature as a half-Diamond, something! But no, we had to settle for a lackluster kaiju fight and clumsily executed group hug.

Don’t get me wrong, everything happened that needed to happen, and strangely enough nothing felt rushed, but...I’m not satisfied with the way it went down.

As much as I grumble about this episode, I did love how Connie was the one to give him the “healing kiss” (such a sweet scene ;_; ) BUT that didn’t change the fact that the “power of love” thing they were going for was a familial love, not romantic. Infinite thanks for not going the romantic route.

The Future was what really saved the finale for me after the disappointment of IAMM.

I don’t actually mind the timeskip, though I do wonder how in the heck Steven managed to recover from everything. I’m just glad my boy’s okay, and I don’t think I could have emotionally handled seeing what happened in the intervening months.

And I love how understated everything was - he’s not dramatically turning his back on his home, he’s moving out like a normal person, keeping in touch with his loved ones. He’s in a relationship with Connie, he’s got a therapist, and Jasper’s at Little Homeschool. No need to make a big deal out of any of it.

I really feel what Rebecca said about this episode - it’s an ending where Steven, always forced into the limelight, gets to live his life with some privacy.

Parting thoughts:

I’m perfectly fine with the chest in Lion’s mane remaining a mystery, as a metaphor for the secrets of OG SU being revealed. I’m NOT fine with Rose’s portrait remaining in there forever, because it seemed to me at the end of Rose Buds that it was just continuing to repress Steven’s feelings toward Rose and putting off dealing with them.

Speaking of which, we spent all this time watching Steven trying to reconnect with his humanity but NOT reconciling it with his Diamond side. I wish we could have had some scenes where he internalizes that having the powers of a Diamond does not make him a bad person.

I do appreciate that Rose/Pink was barely brought up at all, since the main conflict was no longer related to her. That had been dealt with in the first half of the series, and bringing her in in the finale would not have been appropriate.

Zach Callison Broke Into My House And Smashed A Barrel Over My Head Killing Me Instantly. Seriously, I’ve been watching SU since season 2, and it’s been such a ride hearing him grow as an actor over the course of the series, and you can tell he really put everything into SU:F.

Of course everyone’s obsessing over Zach’s performance but I would also like to commend the whole cast, who did a superb job of bringing the characters to life (particularly Deedee Magno Hall, Shelby Rabara, and Michaela Dietz. Pearl, Peridot, and Amethyst really made the series for me).

I don’t really cry over shows (though Storm in the Room came close) but rewatching the end of CYM after finishing the finale simply ended me. Remember when it seemed like a nice happy wrapping-everything-up kind of ending? Lol.

If you read the whole thing, I applaud your tenacity. Send me your own thoughts, agree, disagree, whatever. Actually please disagree, I would love to hear other takes.

#steven universe #steven universe future #suf finale #long post

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0poole · 6 years ago

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Mulan and Pocahontas

So after rewatching Princess and the Frog (and I guess Ralph Breaks the Internet, technically), I realized I want to go back and watch every one of the Disney Princess’ movies just so I can actually see what’s up with them. Obviously I’ve seen bits and bobs about them, and I basically get the gist of who they are, but even if I did see their movies, I’ve probably forgotten the actual events of it because I honestly think child me didn’t really care to remember much. So, I started with Mulan and Pocahontas, really just because they’re the ones on Netflix...

Mulan did kind of start this spiral, since I wanted to watch this movie anyway. I could definitely sing along to a bit of Make a Man out of You, but I didn’t remember how the movie resolved exactly. I knew she shot a rocket at a mountain to kill some of the Huns with an avalanche, but I thought that was the very end of them. I didn’t know about the final bit, so that was fun. I also didn’t really know what was up with Mushu either, apart from him being a part of the comic relief animals.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do with those types of characters in Disney movies, especially in these ones, but Mulan more specifically. They tend to just ruin tense moments for me. There was that one scene in Pocahontas where they remarked at the killing of one of the Natives, but that was about it. In Mulan, though, they really should’ve just been kept out of that scene where the troops look upon the thousands of dead soldiers near that attacked village. You already got a feel of dread and sadness from the village, and then panning over that bloodbath with all of the characters showing visible grim on their face, and one of them bringing up the helmet of the dead general, and then... cut to proto-Will Smith in dragon form with gigantic puppydog eyes. It just breaks the feeling.

It’s also weird, though, because those three other soldiers who basically are comic relief also don’t feel as bad when reacting to such a scene. Maybe it’s just because they’re designs aren’t quite as exaggerated as the animals? I don’t know. It’s almost how upbeat they usually are that makes their somberness so much more impactful, especially when the scene cuts their joyful shanty short.

Speaking of songs, Mulan’s Princess ballad actually struck a chord with me. I say “actually” because it was pretty much a generic “I want to be what other people don’t want to be” sort of deal, even with the “women are supposed to be seen not heard” tones of the film that are a little blown up nowadays. I mean, if you’re ever going to use that tone, it should be in ancient(?) China, but still. The song really got me.

I mean, that’s basically all that needs to be said. It was a great movie, obviously. There’s 0 chance in hell that I’d watch the sequels, though. I don’t think anyone would shame me for that.

Pocahontas was probably the weirder one for me, even apart from the obvious historical inaccuracies, including but not limited to ol’ Poca not being of legal age when meeting the dreamboat Smith. I mean, when it comes to the fictitious version, frankly, this might’ve been the most believable love-at-first-sight I’ve ever seen. They established that she (I’m not going to type her name out every time) wanted someone with a distinct personality and a wild side, so naturally she’d be into a strange man with strange trinkets from a faraway land. Not to mention, he was seriously charming. I was honestly charmed. I’m not even into that type, and I wanted them together. It was probably helped by the fact that they didn’t resolve it with the perfect happy ending too. If you don’t resolve it yourself, then the audience will be more likely to want it resolved, anyway. If you do it for them, it feels slightly cheaper.

With Poca herself, I got that same sort of vibe I got when watching Lilo and Stitch. I’ve always seen her in merchandise and whatnot, so she never felt entirely like a character, and more like an image. Her few bits in Ralph Breaks the Internet just sort of cemented my preconceived notion that she’s the more reverent and quiet princess, but seeing her in action broke that, which is a little bittersweet. Obviously the wild-type is super charming, always has and always will be, but that seems to be the case with basically every princess. Obviously again, she’s one of the earliest princesses, so you couldn’t really blame them for maintaining a trend, but having a more quiet princess would be nice. Maybe that’s what they’re going for nowadays. It’s hard to tell, since she’s in basically nothing, especially with Elsa taking the Disney Princess reins.

It was also weird sometimes with the discrepancy between the flawless, probably rotoscoped faces of Poca and her friend, mixed with the highly cartoonic (cartoony? apparently cartoonic isn’t even a real word?) animals. It really gave off that same feel when a live actor is (trying) to interact with a CGI character, but decades before CGI was even a thing. It’s kind of interesting in that regard, but still really jarring. Thank God animation isn’t doing that anymore. The normally animated humans, like Ratcliffe, looked great though. They seriously spared no expense in the animation, as is the case with early Disney works. I just thought this movie was going to be more reminiscent of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, where it was good, but not quite as polished. It was definitely polished.

The climax of the movie genuinely got me going, though. Both clans interchanging the same beliefs but from different sides through this gigantic, angry song was actually fucking amazing. You do sort of side with the Natives though, since they’re the ones acting in self defense, pretty much. By the end of it all, you of course realize that Ratcliffe was the source of the altercation, and frankly I wish one of his men shot him just as he was about to shoot Poca’s father. That would’ve been amazing. But, alas, John had to take the bullet. If only it were that easy in real life... There are just one too many Ratcliffes in the world.

Again, the sequels might as well not exist, because I ain’t touchen em.

I’m going to hope that I’ll get the chance to watch Snow White and Sleeping Beauty next, because I really want that classic Disney dose. I’ll take Brave as a substitute, even though that movie was seriously a disappointment in concept at least. I wanted a badass warrior princess, dammit! I mean, the only time I’ve actually watched Brave was on a party bus during a school field trip, so maybe I’m missing something.

#poole #disney #princess #escepades #pocahontas #mulan #animation #opinions #thoughts #rant #rambling

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once-upon-a-ouat · 6 years ago

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OUAT Rewatch 1x05 “That Still Small Voice”

So many things happened in this episode. Archie and Henry’s dynamic was awesome. I loved the part where Henry said that Archie was a part of Operation Cobra. He is the second person Henry trusts the most after Emma. So it was really heartbreaking to hear Archie tell him that he is practically crazy. I know he was following Regina’s orders but I still think that there was a part of him – at least in the beginning of that speech – that also thought it would be better for Henry to stop believing because his determination to prove that the Curse was real was putting him in danger. What I loved most about this episode though was Henry being the Savior this time. Archie was supposed to help Henry but it was Henry who helped him.

I really liked the fact that Archie stood up for himself although I’m not that thrilled about the way he did it. He practically threatened Regina which was in response to her threat and he really didn’t have any other choice if he wanted her to leave him alone but I think it kind of contradicted the whole conscience thing. Maybe the writers could’ve executed that a bit differently. I also feel like it hurt Regina and Archie’s dynamic a bit because later on in the show he’s one of her biggest supporters and believes in her even when Henry doesn’t. He always approaches her with understanding and we saw that in the previous episodes and earlier in this one too (when Archie and Henry were talking in the elevator) so the hypothetic situation that he used to get her to back off was a bit out of character and seemed a little cruel. Granted, Regina was a lot more cruel towards him and Henry’s fantasies but Archie is not Regina. The whole point of the flashbacks was that he learned his lesson but his chat with Regina seemed like a step back from that.

I loved Archie’s parents’ dynamic. They were both on the same wave and clearly had the same philosophy about life. They completed each other. They were one of those couples that you know are meant to be. Unfortunately, they weren’t good people but that couldn’t stop me from enjoying their dynamic.

Geppetto’s parents being turned into dolls was symbolic in two ways. 1) It was Jiminy’s parents that were supposed to be turned into dolls and they were puppeteers. And 2) Geppetto’s parents were people who were turned into dolls and his son was a doll that was turned into a real person.

We saw a bit more of the Blue Fairy in this episode. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t like her. But in this episode I found her only mildly annoying. Nothing I can’t live with.

With that said, I really didn’t get the whole thing with the crickets. Sure, they are free but so are all the other animals. So Jiminy being turned into a cricket was just in honor to the Disney movie and not actually that important of a plot point. Also the whole thing with the crickets coming back to Storybrooke didn’t really make sense to me.

I loved how Emma triggered change by deciding to be a part of the community. It was as if she pushed a button by tucking that deputy badge into her belt. I also loved the shadow of doubt that fell over her when she realized that the mine collapsed right after she took the deputy badge. It was the first time that she actually gave the Curse a second thought. For a moment there she wondered if there might be something true in Henry’s words. She was so shocked she didn’t even roll her eyes at Regina’s comment to do her job.

I have mixed feelings about Regina in this episode. Evil Queen mode was on again. Once again I think she handled Henry a bit too roughly both physically and verbally at the beginning of the episode. Threatening Archie to ruin his life if he doesn’t get rid of Henry’s fantasies was kinda evil. Like, take a chill pill, Regina. But I still think it was a great way to show how used she is to pushing people around. It felt the way that the Evil Queen should feel and not just super cringy as some of her scenes in the previous episodes did. For me that scene did the trick. I would have felt sympathy for her because Henry thought that she was trying to hide something if she wasn’t actually trying to hide something.

We also saw another side to Regina in this episode though. We finally saw how much she really loves Henry. This time she put his well-being in the first place and stopped arguing with Emma for his sake. She nearly started crying which meant a lot because Regina’s vibe has always been ‘conceal, don’t feel’. Lana’s acting really did it for me in this episode. The subtle changes in her facial expressions conveyed so much emotions and the transitions between them and I think this episode really added a lot of layers to Regina’s personality. We were assured that she loves Henry but she keeps hurting him because she convinces herself that mother knows best. Now, where could this be coming from? Cora, I’m looking at you.

We finally saw Regina do some mayoring. I think she handled the situation rather well in the thirty seconds of screen time she was given to do it but I can’t understand why she didn’t have that mine paved years ago. It would have saved her a lot of trouble and I know she didn’t expect any of the events that took place to happen but still. The glass coffin was in there and she just decided to leave it open for anyone curious enough to go inside?

Which brings me to my next point. Why the fuck was that coffin there except to give her a headache? In 1x02 it was implied that she had control over the Curse when she promised Rumple to give him a good life in this new land and she delivered on that promise. So why the hell bring the coffin over to this new land? But when you stop to think about it, it actually makes sense. The Curse is obviously modeled after Regina because it too creates unnecessary problems that could easily be avoided and has all the subtlety of a crowbar hitting you over the head (I mean, Dr Hopper? Seriously? Subtlety at its finest).

Rumple’s role in this episode didn’t make any sense to me. Why was Archie stealing for him? His parents might have made him do it but I somehow don’t find that plausible although it is probably the explanation since he got gold in return for the stolen items. I also don’t understand what Rumple got from that deal. He was never shown to have found any use for the dolls so why did he need them? He doesn’t do anything he doesn’t think is necessary. I think he was only in this episode as a plot device because the writers couldn’t figure out another way to make the events they needed to happen happen, which was really disappointing. Rumple is an evil genius and his plan was carefully crafted, but in this episode they made him go out of his way only to further the backstory (it’s not even the main plot). It would’ve made a lot more sense if they had sent Jiminy to Regina considering the storyline in the present but Regina probably wasn’t even born at the time which left them with only one choice. Unfortunately, this one didn’t work out that great either.

Mary Margaret and David were super cute in this episode. She almost hanged on her own name. I think it was super cute that he chose her name as his word. You could tell they both felt a connection. By the way David’s “It’s like I woke up in some strange land” was just hilarious. I really hated the fact that Mary Margaret decided to resign from her position as volunteer at the hospital but I also think that maybe she needed that. Making her a volunteer was the Curse’s way to keep her near her True Love and cause her pain and she chose to step away from that.

Knowing about Regina and Graham’s relationship really made a difference in this episode because Graham didn’t stand up only to the mayor but also to his lover (if you can call her that) in order to hire Emma. We also saw once again that he cares about Regina. He placed a hand on her back in an attempt to soothe her when the plan with the explosives failed (Honestly, how has no one learned that they’re sleeping together yet? They’re not being very discreet). By the way, that was some very shitty editing in that scene.

I loved Ruby’s quiet presence throughout the episode. She barely had any lines but she was there and I loved that because you can never have too much Ruby. In fact, we didn’t see nearly enough of her.

I loved that everyone was celebrating at the end of the day. Everyone except for Regina who was busy covering up her trail. It was a good way to show that she was the one to distance herself from the community because she was trying to keep the Curse intact and a secret.

Favorite scene: Regina stepping back and letting Emma go in the shaft. That was such a great scene. Regina consciously agreed to let Emma be the savior, the one who Henry would praise for saving him and Archie. Also, you could see the fear in her eyes when Emma said “He’s my son too”. From the very beginning she thought that Emma wanted to take Henry away from her and the knowledge that Emma started viewing Henry as her son scared the hell out of her and yet, she still agreed to let Emma go save Henry because his safety came first. Also, Swan Queen set sail. I remember watching this for the first time and thinking “Are they gonna kiss?”. Joke aside, it was a great scene both for Regina’s character and Regina and Emma’s dynamic.

Least favorite scene: Regina not letting Emma near Henry after they saved him. That was so horrible. Emma wanted to hug him and make sure he was okay just as Regina did but she didn’t let her. It was so jarring to Emma that she stopped functioning for a few moments. I think a little bit of my soul dies every time I see that scene.

Favorite line: “You’ll do your worst? Because I will always do my best.” - Archie to Regina

Least favorite line: “This can’t be all there is.” - Henry to Archie

That was his reason for believing that the Curse was actually real and for me it just lacked the conviction and passion that he displayed in the previous episodes. That doesn’t sound like something that should come from the boy who so adamantly insisted that the book was real. It really put me off to hear that.

Sorry for the long post but this episode is special for me. It concluded my first day of watching “Once Upon a Time” and it’s like a milestone for me. I wanted to do it justice. I loved the character development in this episode but I think that they put more focus on that and that’s why the story was lacking a bit. There were quite a few things that didn’t make sense but on the other hand the pace of this episode was really fast. There was a lot of suspense, to the point where they needed those slower scenes with Mary Margaret and David to ease the tension. The acting was amazing in this episode. Especially Lana Parrilla, Raphael Sbarge and Jennifer Morrison. And the soundtrack was just too good. For me some of the things didn’t land though. The flashbacks didn’t really do the trick and the way that the details came together in the previous episodes wasn��t present here. It was still a good episode but I was definitely a bit disappointed.

#ouat rewatch #ouat #once upon a time #season 1 #1x05 #that still small voice #operation end

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baconpal · 7 years ago

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Whats your opinion on the Monogatri series?

fuck man, i was gonna draw tonight, you cant just give me an ask that i could write for hours about

idk how long thisll get but just in case, usual read more time but tl;dr very very good series, absolutely recommend to any seasoned weebs out there

I fucking love the monogatari series for so many reasons. i’ll just shit out bullet points of cool shit

1. gigantic but segmented: it’s one of the longest animes i’ve watched, but if someone wanted to just watch some i’d just tellem “hey just watch bakemono and stop there for now” and they’d still watch some great content and be mostly satisfied as everything wraps up well and doesn’t have any kinda sequel bait or cliff hanger. You can watch as much as you want when you want, even down to the various arcs, even out of order if need be, so it’s incredibly convenient, which means a lot to me (i say as i marathon HxH and Ippo)

2. Fuck the Order: there’s about 3 main orders that people like to preech, novel order (the order the arcs were released according to the light novels), anime release order, and chronological order since the story isn’t told chronologically in either case, and that can get confusing on top of none of the arcs being numbered outside of bakemono and bakemono 2 (which almost nobody recommends you actually watch consecutively) BUT the part I love is ANY order works and is interesting in its own way, the order that events are presented to you can change the impact of various scenes and events, like the ending to koimono is a lot more terrifying if you have no clue that kaiki is a healthy happy boy a year later, and owari becomes a bit more confounding if you know ougi is also doing fine (even if a bit boyish), and when you watch kizumono can drastically change how you feel about araragi and shinobu’s relationship, like when they were super duper tense in nise i always felt kinda whatever, but now that i’ve seen kizu its kinda like “fuck man how arent either of you dead already”

Basically its cool as shit since everything is written without regard for order

3.Character Development (and lack there of): All the characters in the series develop pretty well, and sometimes experience multiple large character shifts that improve them from the absolute pieces of garbage they are in bake (lookin at you Hanekawa, though you were pretty alright in kizu) Senjougahara is also worth note as she’s the primary girl and is thus around a lot despite having very few arcs centered on herself

but one of the most powerful parts of all the characters is they all also never change their true worst traits, and those who don’t really are my favorite characters, and those would be Senjougahara, Hachikuji, and the main man himself, Araragi. Senjou never really is able to drop the autistic girl sitting on the fourth wall deep down within her, Hachikuji continues to constantly fill roles and play parts that don’t belong to her, up through the very end of the series where she becomes a fucking GOD for NO good reason but FUCK it i love you hachikuji, and lastly Araragi, one of the best protaganists ever, who matures quite a lot over the course of his life and all, but from the begining of kizu to the end of owari, he is just completely incapable of letting someone pathetic go without help, even if it means completely sacrificing himself and I love my stupid boy so much

4. Who’s the protag anyway?: So araragi is the protag, duh, but not all the time, and the differences in how the show works when it changes is always very interesting, as it reveals a lot about both araragi and the characters who take his role; namely, Hanekawa, Nadeko, and my fucking BOY Kaiki. Hanekawa interacts with the story much closer to a novel (to the point of analyzing chapters and such), Nadeko sees everyone around her as bubbly colorful nobodies, and Kaiki sees everyone as normal fucking people which is only strange and jarring because when Araragi is the protagonist, anyone who is unimportant to him literally does not exist or physically manifest on screen. Some would call it a lazy choice, and maybe it is, this is shaft, it wasnt the first time they did it and it wasn’t the last either (side note; i like mekakucity actors fight me pussy) but even moments full of “background characters” like Araragis freshmen highschool dilemma, everyone in class other than the 2 cute girls he knows are just depicted as names and random photographic images of shit and its very telling of his character despite never being directly said in the novels or script.

5. FUck man this shit looks good: Art is important shit dude, and monogatari consistently looks good, even if the backgrounds can be incredibly simple at times, they are STYLISH and effective and thats all they need to be, and despite being a show mainly about people talking, the characters will move and be in as many weird cool perspective shots as they need to in order to fill out a scene. Whenever the show ISNT just people talkin, the animation does not slack off. The few fights of the main series are absolutely to my taste, I love Araragi V rainy devil, and thats pretty much the only straight up fight in the show, but the Kizu movies are 3 hours of pure kino holy shit, even araragi buying some porn to beat he meat is animated excessively well and with cartoon abandon.

I know that stylish substance is still just a shaft thing, but it’s always on point in monogatari, also NO CG CHARACTERS outside of a few random shots in Kizu, which is a definitely worth pointing out considering mekakucity’s original television run exists.

6. FUck man this shit sounds good: The voice acting is impeccable, I love everyones voice so much, but the music is also of very high quality, and guess what it does that thing that i always fucking mention cus it’s awesome and should be used whenever possible anywhere: Motifing. Every character has a theme in some way due to every major character having atleast 1 opening centered on them (there’s an OP for every fucking arc and its insane they’re all fully animated too its bonkers) and theres usually a couple remixes of each persons theme used at some point, especially as like, bittersweet slow classical songs at the climax of an arc being a remix of the OP for that arc.

Kizu is also noteworthy for motifing the EDs into the other songs, remaking songs from the anime for specific classic interactions (looking at you, sharp and friend or foe) as well as just being super interesting in its use of vocal accompaniment, like the shoowap-doowap kind of stuff they throw in is very fun.

7.FUck man this shit IS good: I said early that the show is mostly just people talking, but fuck man i love listening to these people talk to each other. Everything they talk about is super entertaining and full of multiple meanings and just so much to take in that any amount of rewatching will always have me finding more to love, but since its a weeb show with references and puns and stuff, I would recommend making sure you’re atleast a decently powerful weeb who can at least UNDERSTAND some Japanese and knows a bit about anime before getting into it, also make sure you can read decently fast. It’s not Tatami Galaxy levels but stuff can move quick. (bit far into a post like this to make a recommendation but hey)

oh no i wrote for an hour about this shit bless the poor souls of any mobile users who still follow me

#long ass post #Anonymous

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kylosrehn · 7 years ago

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for the tv series thing, I know it isn't one but star wars?

send me a tv film series and I’ll tell you:

my all-time ultimate fave character:

Since the sequels came, I’m highkey loving Rey. But before that it was Vader. Still is, I guess. They’re kinda tied. Yeah I like the villains okay fight me.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do:

Hmm…Kylo I guess. I never disliked him, but I was pretty meh about him. I just didn’t care all that much. But I like how they fleshed him out in TLJ and built-up his backstory, and I’ve warmed to him since. He’s very much a tragic character and I always like that. Between the two of us, he reminds me a little bit of Ward—or FW Fitz, take your pick. It’s the whole lack of affection/evil mentors make monsters out of good boys/men thing all over again.

a character I used to like but now don’t:

I actually left this question til last to see if I could think of something, but nah, I’ve got nothing. I don’t think I went from liking to disliking any one character completely, just kind of…liking them less. Padme is one of those. She used to be my girl through my childhood and now I’m more meh about her. I guess that’s the closest example I can think of right now.

a character I’m indifferent about:

There’s a good few. Rose, Finn, Holdo out of the sequels. They’re the first ones that come to mind. Boba Fett, Phasma, Hux (aside from the fact that he makes for good comic relief). I don’t know, probably a few more.

a character who deserved better:

Maybe Padme, because the whole ‘breed and die’ trope, but it was obviously necessary because she never shows up in the originals and they had to explain that somehow. And Obi-Wan. Though it’s less of a ‘deserved better’ and more of a ‘fuck he’s been through a lot of shit in his life.’ The Rogue One crew I suppose, though again that was a plot thing.

a ship I’ve never been able to get into:

Finn/Rey. I’m just not very interested in friends to lovers ships (looking at you FS.) And maybe Han/Leia. I know they’re basically at “iconic” level by now, but they never really wowed me. Tbh most SW ships are like, “eh, okay” for me. I tolerate/moderately like them, but there are very few that make me go into hardcore shipper mode. Mini-me loved Anidala growing up, they were literally one of my biggest childhood OTPs, but over time the allure has started to fade and I’ve picked up on more and more flaws, and honestly, I think I’ve just outgrown them. Now I’m focusing on Reylo because it’s just such a cool dynamic that’s never been explored in the films before (I mean, a telepathic/empathic bond that lets them tap into each other’s skills and memories? That’s so awesome, I’m so here for this) and all that build up and development in TLJ really got me. I was kind curious (but mostly in the worried kind of way) to see how they’d approach it after TFA but now I’m 100% on board. I loved what they did with them. Aaaand that’s not the question. (Totally unrelated: I lowkey shipped Vader with Aphra from the Comics. It’s such a rarepair, but the dynamic was quirky and I’m always here for that. She was kinda like a S1-Skye cracking jokes at this evil, murderous Sith Lord. Plus, the line “you’re what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.” ‘Nuff said.)

a ship I’ve never been able to get over:

Reylo. Please don’t screw it up in IX, please please please.

a cute, low-key ship:

Jyn/Cassian. Also, I really like platonic Finn/Rey. And Luke and Leia’s relationship. And I wouldn’t be opposed if somehow Finn/Poe happened. And Poe/BB-8. Okay so not all of those are ship-ships, but y’know.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it:

Tbh I lowkey wanted Poe to be with Paige, Rose’s sister, but lol she got killed off pretty quickly. Unpopular…well, I’m kinda looking forward to seeing how Han/Q’ira plays out in Solo (I’m 99% sure she plays him somehow. But hey, that seems to be my type.) I don’t know.

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened:

Eh, I don’t hate any ships, really, or think something was “wrong.” Not a huge fan of Rose/Finn just because I don’t see any chemistry between them and it sorta feels one-sided, but I mean, you can develop feelings over time, so that might change in IX. I don’t mind them, they’re just kinda…there. Not a fan of Kylux but that’s just a fan thing, so whatever.

my favourite storyline/moment:

Right now it’s the Reylo Force Bond scenes. Yeah, all of them, lol. And the throne room fight scene because you expect them to start attacking each other, but instead they work together and subvert all expectations and I loved it. That scene at the end of Rogue One where Vader just demolishes the rebels. It was so dark and chilling and just all around ahh. Also, the Obi-Wan/Qui Gon/Maul fight from TPM is one of my all-time favourites. And the music! Ahh, awesome. Oh, also, the arena fight on Geonosis. I’m not sure I have a favourite storyline—though I’m admittedly a sucker for the whole ‘here, go on a totally-not-romantic trip to protect to senator on this beautiful, lush, fragrant world and try not to fall in love lol bye’ storyline because it’s just so wonderfully tropey. It’s like something pulled straight out of fic (and not necessarily in a bad way.) I’m kinda tempted to write a fic based on that, ngl. One day.

a storyline that never should have been written:

Predictably, lol, I’m gonna say the Jar-Jar Binks/Gungan stuff from TPM. The whole underwater kingdom concept was cool, but it just felt like it took up way too much screentime. I wouldn’t have minded if it was just more of a background thing, or if it was of lesser importance. They’re just a huge part of this film and then they’re virtually never brought up again (in the films) in any significant way, so all of that just feels so moot and unnecessary, like it was just a run time filler. The political plot, although somewhat frustrating, does prove relevant to the story later on so I’m cool with it. I don’t think I hated any storyline really. TFA was a disappointment for me in that it felt a little too familiar and I really wished they would’ve taken more risks and tried to pave their own path as opposed to recycling elements (I mean, ANOTHER Death Star? Sorry, Starkiller Base. Really? And the Empire’s defeated but like, merely a few years later they’re back and crushing the rebellion again? Sorry no, that’s…It’s the First Order now. Got it. Totally different. My bad.) from the originals just to please the hardcore fans, but luckily TLJ assuaged most of that frustration. I can only hope the mood for IX is closer to TLJ than TFA because that would be regression and honestly just a huge insult to the saga.

my first thoughts on the show films:

I think I just loved them straight away, lol. I must’ve been…five at most when I first watched them—well, the originals and I and II, they were the only ones that were out at the time—on the good old VHS with my dad because he was/is a huge fan and he got me into it. Obviously the more nuanced stuff flew over my head as a small kid and certain things only really clicked when I rewatched them years later, but the love was there.

my thoughts now:

I still love it, though my love tends to come in sporadic bursts now as opposed to being linear all the time. Like, I can just push it to the back of my mind for a year/two/three but then something like Rogue One comes out and reminds me just how much I love that world. I ride the high for a few months, read fic, etc. and then the hype tapers off and plateaus for a while. Nothing for another few months/a year, new movie, and wham, I’m sucked back in.

I try to stay in my own little corner though and not get too involved in fandom because the drama is just nasty and can really suck the enjoyment out of, well, everything really. For a long time I guess I just wasn’t aware of how nasty the SW fandom was—aside from the group that hates on the prequels for the sake of hating the prequels because it’s what the cool kids do or whatever—probably because I didn’t actively go looking for this type of stuff. But then TFA came out and it kind of erupted like a volcano that’s been…somewhat dormant since III in 2005. Still, I stayed away from it for the most part, only hearing stories of hate in passing, and never really engaged until after TLJ, when it became a little “safer” for the Reylos to emerge. Before that it was two years of hell and name-calling and threats and verbal abuse and general fandom wank, to my knowledge. And that’s fucked up. No one should have to endure that, not in any fandom. Stuff like that just pisses me off so much. But I’m sure you already know that.

#replies #ilosttrackofthings #thanks for asking!#i got rambly lol what else is new #star wars #about me #long post

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thisislizheather · 4 years ago

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June Jaunts 2020

Above Photo: New York Public Library, June 2020

Can someone just hit me in the face hard enough so that I wake up in 2021? As a favour to me? (Also I love that we’re all assuming that a new year means a completely fresh new slate and that none of the actions taken this year will affect the rest of our lives? It’s ridiculous, but it’s a type of logic that I can absolutely get on board with.) In any case, life is hell right now. Here’s what went on in hell this month.

I found a new streaming site for movies that is incredible.

My brother Gary made another gravy video (this time a Swiss Chalet one) and of course it’s perfect.

My Dad turned 97!

I started doing Ipsy bag reviews again. The best find from the bag this month: a REALHER lipstick. Just amazing quality and I need to look further into their other products.

I watched Get Me Roger Stone and the man seems like a needy psychopath.

I rewatched The Disaster Artist: still great.

I tried hard seltzer (not White Claw, it was a brand called HOOT) and it was very okay, I just don’t see the big deal? I think we all have low standards for things being good.

God, I miss Jon Stewart. I find myself just watching old segments from his show which are sadly still incredibly relevant.

I visited this coffee shop in Astoria called Coffee + Cake that’s so lovely. They make freshly baked goods each day and homemade ice cream and I’ll definitely return. This is their tomato & parmesan focaccia bread.

I started taking antihistamine eye drops for seasonal allergies and they’ve cured me completely. It’s insane. I love them.

I tried birthday cake Kit Kats because why wouldn’t I and of course they’re good. But they’re basically just… white Kit Kats… and that’s already a thing that exists… and look I’m not trying to hate on them, so I’ll keep my mouth shut about it from here on out.

If I became famous, the first thing I’d endorse would be Vicks (obviously), but the second thing? This dairy-free, almond milk yogurt DAH! Yes, the name is terrible. But the yogurt is heavenly. The madagascar vanilla will change you.

Finally made this ricotta jam jar with crostini and it was everything I wanted it to be and more.

I’ve been keeping a collection of photos taken of the city throughout the pandemic that are just gorgeous photos, here are a few.

Above Photo: April 2020, photo by Jerome Strauss

Above Photo: March 12th, 2020, the first night of Broadway going dark - photo by Gretchen Robinette for Gothamist

Above Photo: June 2020, photo by Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Above Photo: April 2020, photo by Jerome Strauss

I watched the Holy Chicken! documentary from the Super Size Me guy and it was okay. I did know a lot of those chicken facts already since we haven’t been eating meat these last few months, so it wasn’t anything revolutionary. And then after I watched it, I was reading about it and then came across all the gross behavior by the creator of the film and uggghhhh I wish I hadn’t watched and supported it now.

I tried this New Orleans cold brew and whoa. Good stuff. I don’t exactly know the difference between cold brew and coffee and it’s such a boring thing to look up, so… here we are.

Will forever love the food at The Thirsty Koala in Astoria. Thank you Katie, Greg & Irene for gifting us so much of their food this month! Truly so sweet of you.

Favourite tweets of the month.

New favourite Health-Ade kombucha flavour: passion fruit - tangerine. Absolutely unreal.

I bought a ton of underwear from Aerie since I don’t feel comfortable going into any stores or on the subway yet, and they’re actually pretty great quality (I’m sorry I didn’t get on this sooner, Marla.) The sizing is a little off in that one medium doesn’t fit like another medium, but once you figure it out, you’re good.

This girl. She’s still breaking my heart with these renditions.

How do I set my Google Alerts so that these types of stories are the only news stories I read?

I learned how to make vodka martinis at home, so what I’m trying to say is that I’m better than you now.

Truly don’t know how I feel about this news, but I think I have to support it, right? I wish we could just leave good things alone. Why must we always want more.

I watched The Joy Luck Club and here’s my takeaway: don’t have daughters. And also maybe don’t have mothers? It seems like everyone is a disappointment to every character in this movie. I was expecting to love it, so when that didn’t happen I was a little disappointed.

I watched Dan In Real Life (mainly because of Steve Carell who was way too good for this movie) and it suuuuucked. Hated Dane Cook. Hated the plot. Hated the whole white, rich, we-dance-as-a-family type aesthetic of the whole movie.

I watched the first season of You and a few episodes of the second season and uuuuuuuggggghhhhhh what a garbage show. I don’t need to see anyone romanticize some pathetic Gossip Girl loser who I feel no empathy for. It’s actually just so badly written and how on earth did someone green-light this trash. Here’s a good piece written about it.

Also watched a bunch of reruns of 3rd Rock From The Sun and what an underrated, great show. Wish I remembered it more.

I’ve been on a real Harrison Ford bender lately and I can’t see it stopping anytime soon. I watched Sabrina (which was okay, the best part was seeing him play a nerdish, unlovable character). I also watched Working Girl (which is really not a great movie, but it was only watchable for Ford). Also saw Air Force One and what a movie. How on earth have I never seen it before?? Such a fox. If you haven’t seen it before, I shall entice you with this one line.

Rainier cherries are in season now and while I don’t particularly love a cherry, these are delightful.

I’ve been sucking down these Saratoga Springs sparkling waters for days and there’s no turning back, they’re refreshing in a way I didn’t think existed. Just pure magic.

The only summer salad that’s worth a damn is this panzanella salad, but make sure you add fresh mozzarella to it.

I never thought I liked biscotti until a friend recently made it, so maybe I’m just into chocolate biscotti?

What a great idea (below):

If you’d like to hear the birds in NYC right now, get on over here.

I started watching Insecure but couldn’t really get into it, maybe I’ll give it more of a chance, maybe not. I feel like if you’re not hooked into a show within three episodes, it’s not gonna happen.

I rewatched Clueless and it’s really just a perfect movie. I could quote every line in this movie at one point in my life and I think I might still be able to. Still looking to emulate this perfect outfit one day.

Cannot stop making this broccoli pasta with Banza and the Beyond Meat sausage.

Absolutely haunted by this moving front page of the Times.

I finished watching Fuller House and I’ll never know why I wanted to, it’s such a corny/actually-bad show and yet I still watched. Thankfully it’s over forever.

Incase you’re looking for an alternative site to Amazon for buying books: Bookshop.org

I haven’t read a book in what feels like forever, so I finally finished Glennon Doyle’s Untamed and wrote about it.

Excited to one day see the new LaGuardia.

I went over what I did from my spring list that I made in March.

I naively made a list of what I’d like to do this summer.

It’s been a harder month than normal and I found myself watching The Land Before Time and uncontrollably weeping onto my yoga mat (I like to watch movies in the background when I’m working out). A kind of cry that comes around every decade or so where you can’t really breathe and you’re blinded my tears and everything is too much to handle. I know it’s a sad movie, but I think it was the movie and the combination of this month that made me react that way. In any case, I hope kids today still want to watch that movie. It’s a hard one, but it’s really still so good.

My grandmother Ma passed away this month and since travel is not allowed, it was especially difficult for this to happen now. I felt helpless being separated from most of my family so I wrote a bit about how it made me feel. I could talk about the greatness of this woman endlessly, how it’s insane that you could live in this day and age and not read or write and still enrich the lives of everyone you know, there’s no way to sum her up as a person. I’ll just miss her. Her voice, her endless encouragement, all of it.

Some things I’d like to do this month: I’d like to not sink into an unending pit of depression (that’d be great), I’d like to keep going on our nightly walks with Nathan, I’m likely going to buy these bike shorts as soon as they’re back in stock and you can’t stop me (I already have an outfit in mind, trust me it’s gonna look good), I was looking forward to movie theatres reopening (the Regal near our house specifically) but the date’s been pushed again to the end of July (which will likely get pushed again), and I’d really like to start and finish another book this month.

If you’ve got any interest in reading last month’s roundup, you can see what went down in May over here.

#June 2020 #June Jaunts #monthly list June 2020 #this is liz heather #Liz Heather

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13thhr · 5 years ago

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Episode #241: Reading from The Thirteenth Hour on Exercise in Seclusion and the Start of Like a Hood Ornament 1

https://archive.org/download/podcast241_202003/Podcast%20241.mp3

On this week’s show, I thought I’d touch on the topic of exercise, specifically what you can do if you happen to be isolated (either due to a global pandemic or imprisoned for other reasons, like Logan in one part of The Thirteenth Hour, which we’ll be reading from shortly.

As it turns out, there’s actually quite a lot you can do even if you can’t go to a gym. Although being quarantined does not necessarily mean you can’t go outside (the virtues of short duration outdoor physical activity is something we discuss briefly though a scientific paper – see the abstract below), you can do a remarkable amount inside, even if you have little to no equipment. I’ve done a version of the workout that inspired the little passage in The Thirteenth Hour for decades. That workout was really nothing special – just having been the body weight exercises we did in martial arts classes and other calisthenics I recall from an old Canadian Air Force fitness manual I had as a kid that we probably got at a garage sale. If you’re interested, Arnold Schwarzenegger put together a similar routine that is available for people to access here.

Here’s the passage from The Thirteenth Hour:

They’ll break you if you let them. I wasn’t the strongest person out there, and though I always had hope, now I had purpose again. I started from the beginning, with my body, the only way I’d learned how. Every morning, after I woke up, I would wash my face and clothes, if they needed washing. Then I did calisthenics – pushups, sit–ups, stretching – like I had done when I was in training. My muscles felt deconditioned from lack of use and malnutrition, so much of my strength had left me, and everything was more difficult now.

It’s hard to take it slow when your never–resting mind can envision all the things it’d like your body to be able to do once more. But in the end, sometimes it’s best to just get busy trying and spend less time thinking.

When I could comfortably walk around my cell and jog in place, I slowly motioned through the different hand–to–hand combat techniques that I had learned during my training. Who knows, I thought, if I make a break for it, I’ll need those techniques the most. After a few weeks, my stamina began to reassert itself, allowing me to wage ongoing battles against that cloaked magician, Klax. Whenever I felt myself growing tired, I saw his form in my mind and practiced harder.

More than once the guards rushed into my cell, thinking that I had collapsed or died because I was lying face down on the cold stone floor. I was actually just resting, but my guards had grown somewhat fond of me, they said, and didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. I was never sure if they were telling the truth or not; I’ll bet Klax would have had their necks if they had been so careless as to let me kill myself without his being able to see.

My agility came back last. The cell was not large enough for much, but the ceiling was high and my boots were padded, so I figured it was worth a go. Pretty much anything is, though, after you’ve been cooped up in the same room for weeks.

I tried standing on my hands again, at first with my feet resting against the wall to accustom my arms to the change in weight they’d be frequently bearing in the near future. Then handstands without the wall. Then handsprings, and finally, aerial techniques. As for the latter, the first few times, the guards must have heard the sound of my feet slamming into the stone floor because they came running. They saw what I was doing, took it as a suicide attempt, doubled their checks on my cell, and, of course, made me stop at once, lest, by golly, I crack my head open on the hard stone floor. I was too far into my regimen to really care what they thought, and it just meant I had to practice when they were asleep or weren’t looking. And try to land softer.

There were a few times when I did go overboard and missed beaning my noggin on the stones out of sheer luck. It goes with the territory … sooner or later, everybody ends up bailing in midair. One minute you’re in the air, next thing you know, your jump seems off or things just feel weird, and if you have time to think anything at all, that’s about when you think some bad words, along with “this could hurt.”

But I knew that once I regained confidence in my body and what it could do, I would stop bailing. I knew my body would get used to being in strange positions in the air again, and I knew the best way to not get hurt was to go all out on each technique. I just wasn’t quite there yet, resulting in a few midair problems and hard landings on an unforgiving stone floor. I hurt an ankle after a bad landing – an easy thing to do if you’re practicing on a hard, uneven surface like the floor of my cell – but thankfully escaped anything worse. Luckily, I had a good set of boots – one of the few things Darian’s Army did right – that were light and flexible with thick, padded soles meant to withstand miles upon miles of marching and other abuse. Later, Aurora found me a mattress, which she intended for me to sleep on (which I did, of course), but what she didn’t know was that it was the mat I used to soften my landings.

https://www.tiktok.com/@13thhr/video/6805532752927001861

https://imgur.com/gallery/yYmEOnO?s=sms

So I finally took the plunge and created a little profile on Tik Tok. To be honest, I don’t get 95% of the stuff on there, but it has some videos of people making stuff and doing flips, so that’s enough for me. I mainly just use it to post some videos of the resin minifigures I’ve made. This is the backflip animation whose frames are above.

Today also marks the first Rocketeer segment as a part of the podcast. Now, obviously, there have been many episode mentions about the Rocketeer before, though here are a few:

–Ep 18 on comics (Dave Stevens)

–Ep 53 on rewatching the Rocketeer as an adult

–Ep 235 on making the resin miniature Rocketeer

But this week’s show marks the first time starting an actual segment (kind of like how I used to do a starving artist segment before) that I’m calling:

https://imgur.com/gallery/yYmEOnO?s=sms

That’s “Like a Hood Ornament” if your interface doesn’t support graphics (that’s you, iTunes show notes). You may recognize the moniker as a line from the 1991 film. Today’s we’ll start out with the fictional bio most likely written by Dave Stevens for his protagonist, Cliff, who inspired Logan in many ways.

More coming next week! Stay safe!

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There are now Thirteenth Hour toys! If you’d like to pick up one of these glow in the dark figures for yourself, feel free to email me or go to the Etsy store I set up (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio) and get them there.

If you haven’t checked out “Arcade Days,” the song and video Jeff Finley, Brent Simon, and I finished one year ago, click on the link below to do so!

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You can find more pictures and preview clips of “Arcade Days” on IG as well as this podcast’s FB page.

Empty Hands, the synth EP soundtrack to the novella, Empty Hands, is now out for streaming on Bandcamp.

Stay tuned. Follow along on Spotify! There is also a growing extended Thirteenth Hour playlist on Spotify with a growing number of retro 80s songs.

Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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Signup for the mailing list for a free special edition podcast, a demo copy of The Thirteenth Hour, and access to retro 80s soundtrack!

Like what you see or hear? Consider supporting the show over at my virtual tip jar over at Ko-fi.

Have this podcast conveniently delivered to you each week on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, Player FM, Tunein, and Googleplay Music.

Follow The Thirteenth Hour’s Instagram pages: @the13thhr for your random postings on ninjas, martial arts, archery, flips, breakdancing, fantasy art and and @the13thhr.ost for more 80s music, movies, and songs from The Thirteenth Hour books and soundtrack.

Listen to Long Ago Not So Far Away, the Thirteenth Hour soundtrack online at: https://joshuablum.bandcamp.com/ or Spotify. Join the mailing list for a digital free copy. You can also get it on CD or tape.

Website: https://13thhr.wordpress.com

Book trailer: http://bit.ly/1VhJhXY

Interested in reading and reviewing The Thirteenth Hour for a free book? Just email me at [email protected] for more details!

Stuck at home? Think you can't exercise? Maye not! This wk on the show, we touch on #exercise you can do in #quarantine, like Logan in #TheThirteenthHour. Plus, the start of a regular #Rocketeer segment on the show! @ihavespokenpod Episode #241: Reading from The Thirteenth Hour on Exercise in Seclusion and the Start of Like a Hood Ornament 1…

#actionfigures #CliffSecord #davestevens #designertoys #exercise #figurine #martialarts #miniatures #quarantine #resin #rocketeer #sculpture

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themeatlife · 5 years ago

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - A Review

AND Reranking the Star Wars Movies

The Finale (Maybe)

2019 saw the end of several major pop culture series: The Avengers, Game of Thrones, and the Skywalker Saga of Star Wars (or at least it was proclaimed, we shall see a decade from now if it is resurrected). Having a major finale was en vogue.

So here is the spoiler-free review. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was enjoyable. It was imperfect, with a handful of glaring flaws, but nothing that would prevent die-hards or casual fans from enjoying the experience. You get the scale of things and at moments visually it is almost overwhelming. The action set pieces are fantastic. All-in-all, worth seeing in theaters.

Now for the spoiler-rific review below the line. If you haven’t seen it and don’t want to be spoiled (why are you reading this) then scroll until “The Star Wars Countdown” headline is at the very top of you window/phone screen.

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I’m probably going to skip a few things but this is the main storyline.

Palpatine has never really left. He’s been in the background in the Unknown Regions raising the Final Order, a super-ginormous fleet to rule over the galaxy once and for all.

We catch up with our new trilogy trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe and what is left of the Resistance, led by General Leia. Leia has also taken the lead in mentoring Rey in the ways of the Force. News of Palpatine gets to them and the trio find themselves planet hopping on a quest first to find a dagger which is the key to finding Palpatine and then a programmer to get C3PO to translate script on said dagger. Along the way they are being hunted by the First Order and Kylo Ren. This sequence is very Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, but better executed.

Once the dagger is decoded, it leads them to the remains of the second Death Star where they must retreive a device with the coordinates to where Palpatine is. There is first a showdown between Rey and Sith Rey a la Luke in the forest in Degoba. Then is the showdown between Rey and Kylo where Rey ends up stabbing Kylo with his own lightsaber (Kylo was distracted by a dying Leia, Force-calling out to her son with her last breathe) and then Force-healing him and leaving him on the planet using his Tie Fighter with the device. Kylo then sees a vision of his father Han Solo telling him Kylo Ren is dead and his son Ben lives. Ben then leaves to chase after Rey to attempt to help confront Palpatine.

So Rey arrives on Exegol where Palpatine and the Final Order are gathered and preparing to deploy, leaving a signal for her Resistance friends and Ben to find. While Rey confronts Palpatine, the short handed Resistance tries to take down a communication tower in an effort to prevent the fleet from deploying. Epic battle ensues. Lando Calrissian comes with reinforcements for the Resistance while Rey almost gives in to Palpatine in an effort to save her friends. Ben comes in and they both fight Palpatine. Ben goes down and Rey uses the lightsabers she and Ben were using (coincidentally Luke and Leia’s lightsabers) against Palpatine’s Force Lightning, eventually killing him and herself in the process. Ben revives Rey and then kisses her (WHAT?!?) and then dies. The Resistance takes down the Final Order. The Resistance returns to their base, the new trio hug it out. Then the film ends with Rey returning to Tatooine where the saga began, burying Luke and Leia’s lightsabers and with their Force ghosts looking on takes on the Skywalker last name.

So my issues...

So, Palpatine is back? Last we saw his body fell down a shaft in the short-lived rebuild Death Star, thrown over by Vader in an effort to save Luke. I’m not sure how that even works that he’s back. I know they touch on it in the movie but seemed like we were done with the Emperor three (or is it six?) movies ago. But as a villain, Palpatine is effective.

The quest for the dagger and map device thing was a bit much. That actually could have been a movie itself. Like could have essentially replaced The Last Jedi with that quest. As much as I liked the The Last Jedi, I think a lot of the internet fanatics didn’t. And that hurt the Star Wars powers that be. And much of The Rise of Skywalker felt like it was actually attempting to write a lot of The Last Jedi out of the Star Wars timeline.

And yeah the Ben-Rey kiss was sudden. They seemed to have a very non-romantic connection so that was kind of out of place. Maybe it was more a goodbye kiss from Ben than anything, but it felt out of place.

And then the new trilogy as a whole. Although there was a new trio of main characters, the storyline was really dependent on the trio from the original trilogy. If the Force Awakens was the Han Solo movie and the Last Jedi was the Luke Skywalker movie, the Rise of Skywalker would have been the Leia Organa movie. And in many ways it was, but then it wasn’t. There is only so much you can do with extra footage. Rest In Peace Carrie Fisher, this movie needed more of you in it.

But with all that, it was still an enjoyable experience. It was imperfect, but that’s okay. No Star Wars movie is perfect (except for Empire). If you want comparison, better than Game of Thrones, no where near as satisfying as Avengers: Endgame.

The Star Wars Countdown

I ranked these almost two years ago. It didn’t change that much but I did switch a few and added the newer ones after I rewatched all the movies in the lead up to the Rise of Skywalker release. I FINALLY got my wife to watch them all with me. Disney+ and Netflix came in handy. So here are the updated Star Wars standings. I’ll do my college football wrap up later this week.

11 – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

Surprise surprise, I know. But yes, Episode I is by far the weakest and most disposable of the series (as evidenced by the omission of it in the Machete Order). Most of the major plot points are brought up again in Episode II, so not really that important to watch. And the action in it, while okay for the most part, do not make up for the most annoying and boring parts of the film – Jar Jar Binks, child Anakin Skywalker, and the Pod Race. If you must watch it, the main scene you need to watch is the battle on Naboo where Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn and the Ewan McGregor version of Obi-Wan Kenobi take on double-lightsaber wielding Darth Maul played by martial artist Ray Park.

10 – Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

While Attack of the Clones is a step up from Episode I, this episode is plagued by two things: awkward pacing and the unnatural evolution of the love story of Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker. The way the movie was paced it felt like it was going by too slowly at times. Obi-Wan’s story arc kept me interested as he investigates bounty hunter Jango Fett and discovers the clone army. But man, that Padme-Anakin story is rough. Anakin comes off with a stalker-like creep factor obsession for Padme, and somehow Padme is infatuated with that? Yeah I’m not convinced, that dynamic always felt super awkward and forced. Not that Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen couldn’t have chemistry. It’s just that in this movie, they didn’t…at least not convincingly. Cool stuff on the back end of this movie is the battle on Geonosis featuring a gladiator-style survival scene for Obi-Wan, Padme, and Anakin as well as the Jedi coming to their rescue. Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu and Frank Oz’s Yoda show off some lightsaber skills as well.

9 - Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

This ended up being not as bad as critics made it out to be. It was fun and action heavy. I slightly different take on the Han Solo character by Alden Ehrenreich. It was fresh and it was Han as a young man less jaded than his original trilogy self. It was cool to see Woody Harrelson (Beckett), Thandie Newton (Val), Emilia Clarke (Qi’ra), and Donald Glover (young Lando Calrissian) in the Star Wars universe. There were a few things wonky with the movie though. I don’t know if I liked the live story between Solo and Qi’ra. The whole Lando and a droid thing was weird. And resurrecting previously deceased Sith Darth Mal felt a little empty (I know he’s appeared in other Star Wars projects but the cliffhanger at the end of this was Darth Mal’s first film appearance since Phantom Menace).

8 – Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Out of the prequel trilogy, I like this one the best. And while it was a longer movie (2 hours 20 minutes), it didn’t feel weighed down by some of the pacing issues of Clones. The ever-present forced romance between Padme and Anakin is still there though, and it becomes the primary reason Anakin turns to the Dark Side. While the premise seems feasible, the unnatural feel of the relationship hinders this reasoning. Over the course of the prequel series, they did a good job of planting seeds to make it seem like the Jedi are plotting to take over the Republic. So as a secondary reason for Anakin turning to the Dark Side, this reasoning works. Some people had a problem with the whole calling kids “younglings” but I didn’t really see that as a problem. The Old Republic could have talked like that, so it wasn’t an issue for me. So minus the whole Padme-Anakin thing and an unintended hilarious “NOOOOOOOOO” moment when Anakin turns into Darth Vader, it was a solid movie. It was sad to see several points where Anakin could have turned back but didn’t.

7 – Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Before going into this film, I have to say that doing away with having the episode number in the title was a welcomed change away from the George Lucas era awkward titling. When I first saw this movie, I was awestruck. Filled with nostalgia. Almost like seeing a Star Wars movie as a kid again. But the second time around seeing it, I quickly realized that even though there were new characters that this was more or less a very borrowed plotline. It was basically the original Star Wars, only updated. Rey (Daisy Ridley) was like Luke (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford, of course) like a less-Force oriented Obi-Wan. The First Order is basically the Empire resurrected, the Resistance is the Rebel Alliance. Starkiller Base is the Death Star. And Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) killing Han like Vader defeating Obi-Wan. But I was still thoroughly entertained, and the intro of Rey, Poe (Oscar Isaac), Finn (John Boyega), and BB-8 was a welcomed addition to the Star Wars universe and The Force Awakens put down a solid foundation for the franchise to build upon for its new trilogy.

6 - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

See above for the review. I will say for all it’s problems it was enjoyable for the most part and entertaining as hell.

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5 – Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

While The Force Awakens feels borrowed, The Last Jedi felt more like its own things. Some critical of The Last Jedi felt it similar to The Empire Strikes Back. While it did have some similarities, I think the major differences (particularly the Force Chat and dynamic between Kylo Ren and Rey, and some of the backstory behind Luke and Kylo Ren’s relationship) make it so much of its own story. It is the peak as far as quality of the newest trilogy. One of the coolest scenes in the entire Star Wars franchise was Kylo and Rey taking on Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) and his Praetorian Guard. And while clearly the main focus of the film is the Kylo-Rey-Luke dynamic, the side plot of Finn and Rose (Star Wars newcomer Kelly Marie Tran) to Canto Bight in search of a hacker to disable a tracking device while Leia (RIP Carrie Fisher) and Poe try to lead the Resistance away in escape of the First Order were welcome storylines. Don’t listen to the haters online, this one is the best of the new trilogy.

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4 – Star Wars (1977)

Wow, trailers back then are nothing like they are now. Yes, I refrained from calling this film “A New Hope,” simply because that was not the original name of the movie. I respect this movie. It’s the origin story of Luke Skywalker. It featured ruthless villain Darth Vader (before we knew he was Luke and Leia’s father), a love interest (Leia before we and Luke find out they are brother-sister), and the cool rebel too cool to be in the rebellion (at first) in Han Solo. But as most movies of the time, the special effects feel dated (much more so in this film than the other two in the trilogy). And while it is the origin story, it was merely the tip of the iceberg. A strong foundation to build the rest of the franchise, but not the most compelling plotlines of the series (that is to come later).

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3 – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

I had this film actually up at 2 when I ranked this a year and a half ago. It isn’t an essential movie to the overall Skywalker storyline of the main Star Wars installments. But you get the sense of urgency and the sacrifice it took to steal the Death Star plans. Rogue One is one part chase movie, another part heist movie. Two types of movies I always enjoy. The characters fill out in a short period of time and feel so rich. It is the only Star Wars movie where all the main protagonist characters you are focused on the entire movie dies, making it not feel like a Star Wars film. But the death scene with Donnie Yen’s Chirrut Imwe and Jiang Wen’s Baze Malbus as well as Felicity Jones’s Jyn Erso and Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor are equally heartbreaking and powerful. The feels! While the film doesn’t add to the overlying plot of the entire series, it does add a bit of understanding of just how big the stakes were in getting those Death Star plans and how invested the Rebellion was outside of the core characters of the series in trying to topple the Empire. And then, well, Darth Vader totally owning the Rebels while trying to board Leia’s ship is badass and leads right into the original Star Wars. Loved this movie.

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2 – Return of the Jedi (1983)

A great conclusion to the original trilogy. We see the movie open with Jedi Luke displaying his control of the Force as the team rescues Han from Jabba the Hut. The Rebellion wants to strike one last blow to the Empire by taking out the rebuilt Death Star. The fight culminates on the forest moon of Endor. Luke reveals to Leia what she probably felt but didn’t recognize, that they are brother and sister. One of the strongest scenes was that final confrontation between Luke and Vader that ends with Vader saving Luke’s life from electrocution from the Emperor. Some people had a problem with the cute, fluffy Ewoks but I was okay with it. This is the movie where the extras added by George Lucas in the 1998 theatrical rerelease (and updated again in 2004) hurt the movie experience though. The extended musical scene at Jabba’s place was unneeded. We don’t need extra celebration scenes on other planets when its mission accomplished. And we didn’t need Hayden Christensen’s ghost in place of original Anakin actor Sebastian Shaw standing there with ghost Yoda and old ghost Obi-Wan Alec Guinness. But other than that, this was my second favorite Star Wars movie growing up.

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1 – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Out of all the series, this is the masterpiece. If you ever want to make a successful sequel that continues the original story and add to the overall depth of a film series, here was the blueprint. From the opening battle on Hoth, to the core team getting split up, to Luke’s journey finding Yoda and training, to Han and Leia being chased down by the Empire, all the way to the climax of the film on Cloud City, we find our heroes being tested and pushed as well as finding themselves. The Han-Leia love story holds up and feels realistic. Luke’s internal struggle to train and fight off the darkness in him while confronting his fear of Vader feels realistic as well. And of course, the mic drop of all mic drops in sci-fi and maybe movie history – “I am your father.” I was eight or nine years old when I remember first watching and actually understanding some of what was going on. I remember yelling “WHAT?!?” as I watched. The most iconic moment of the series. It made this more than just a space opera. More than just a sequel to a sci-fi hit. Those words made Star Wars into an expandable series that they have since built upon twenty-fold. It turned Star Wars from a battle of good vs evil into an internal family struggle – the Skywalker family saga that impacted not just that family, but the entire galaxy. Luke’s fear was no longer about confronting some ominous unknown bad guy. It was Luke confronting his father, one he never knew. And the 1980 special effects hold up pretty well in this one.

The Force will be with you. Always.

#starwars the rise of skywalker #starwars

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margarittet · 8 years ago

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“See you in five years, Dean.” says Lucifer 2014 AD aka why I think “The End” holds the key to THE END.

I have had this one weird thought for a while, ever since I read this meta and loved it. I've rewatched the aptly named episode ("The End") lately, and man, so many thoughts about it! The thing is, I am aware there is no chance in hell they somehow planned a story for 13 or 14 seasons in season 5, but I do believe that they had ideas where the story would eventually go if they had time and money. Somehow, supernaturally (heehee) they got the time and the money, and believe it or not, they will be able to close the individual character's stories, like a good book series would!

Now, I tried to figure out when they started writing Dean and Cas into the subtext with the idea that this is where they would go with these characters if they had a chance. Right now my money is on the ending of season 4, when Chuck sees Cas sending Dean away, and dying for him for the first time (there is a reason why Chuck immediately restored Castiel after that). Of course chemistry was there before that episode, and maybe we could argue that the whole love story started when Dean started talking to Cas about free will for the first time, or maybe even when Chuck originally sent Cas to fetch Dean from Hell (he was the one writing their story in the beginning, after all).

But when did the writers on the show deliberately started writing an arc for Destiel, not just hints and jokes based on Cockles chemistry, but an actual arc, even if it was without any belief they would use it one day?

My opinion is that season 5 already started with a deliberate Destiel arc, and "The End" is a part of it. I think textually it was supposed to be all it was (showing what will happen if Dean kept saying “no” to Michael), but subtextually it was supposed to also hint what could have been if the show went on long enough. Now, I think this kind of storytelling works both ways - you plan for the future without knowing whether you will ever use it, but also later you come back to what you created before, and weave it into your later chapters to create a balanced story that ties the past and the future.

In books it's easier, because you plan the whole thing ahead, how many books, a story for each book, the overreaching arcs, etc. With a TV show you never know how it will fit with the number of seasons, because usually you have no idea how many seasons you will get, and how to divide the overall narrative - that's why so many longer shows look like they are made up as they go along. So many shows died a painful death because of it - "Angel" looks like it was cut short in the middle of the storytelling; Buffy sidetracked after season 5, and painfully survived only two more; ”X-Files" was great until seson 7 finale, and then got terrible (admittedly there were problems with the arcs before that - but they gave us the basis for the slow burn of DeanCas in Mulder and Scully, so I still love them. Plus my god Vince Gilligan.) Most of my fav shows had this problem.

I know SPN has a lot of issues, but characterization (in my opinion) is spot on (with occasional Bucklemming episodes here and there, but I can overlook it). See, I watched seasons 1-5 in one sitting, and season 6-11 in another, so I had a more literary experience with them, rather than an “one episode per week” experience, but it allowed me to see how, even the weaker seasons, never went off track or looked like they made them up on the spot. I was expecting this problem with each new season: to be disappointed, for the characters to start acting like carricatures of themselves, for the writers to start recycling the same story with same results, to start putting Jar-Jars into the narrative for comic relief and nothing more. Imagine my shock when this didn’t happen. When the story just kept on going for 11 seasons, sometimes better, sometimes weaker, but even then, solid and moving forward. I was impressed.

And then season 12 came, and felt different, felt off, not bad, just with a very different feeling. I thought the reason was the new showrunner, the new writers, but as the season progressed I realised it’s all deliberate. It’s all part of the narrative. That they have some bigger idea that we didn’t expect, but instead of throwing it at us, they weave it, slowly but surely. And it’s once again about the characters.

That’s why I believe they always had some general concept what their characters' stories are, that they prepared individual stories even though they didn't know how to get to the end (but they always knew what the end was), and whether they would have a chance to tell it all. Fortunately, shockingly, they do have a chance (which is amazing, because I hate open endings and narratives cut short). That is why I believe they are not doing stupid fuckups just to stir the shit up (like killing off Cas or exchanging him with some AUCas that would be a completely new character), but they deliberately are leading the story of Dean, Sam and Cas (and Crowley, and Mary) where they want it, even though it doesn't always look like it.

Now, I am aware it can be purely coincidental, or just dumb luck, but I rewatched the Samifer scene from "The End" the other day, and he has a conversation with Dean in the garden:

DEAN

You better kill me now. Or I swear, I will find a way to kill you. And I won't stop.

LUCIFER

I know you won't. I know you won't say yes to Michael, either. And I know you won't kill Sam. Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up—here. I win. So, I win.

DEAN

You're wrong.

LUCIFER

See you in five years, Dean.

I know it means 2009 to 2014 (five years). But from today's point of view it looks like 2014 to 2019 (five years). End of season 14. The End. No matter what you do, we will always end up here.

I believe the end is exactly what we see in “The End”, but with a twist!

Because the apocalypse didn’t happen. Because Sam didn’t okay Lucifer’s use of his body, and Dean didn’t become Michael’s meatsuit. And yet, we’re steadily moving towards the similar end that we saw there, only more positive.

I think it’s not coincidental that when I think about Dean and Cas being together in the end, in my head it’s endverse!Cas who is always the one fitting best in the spot of Dean’s endgame. Of course Dabb is now repairing the narrative, so it’s not gonna be the broken human!Cas and broken, performing leader!Dean, with a long list of coping mechanisms and a death wish. No, but it still will be human Cas, who stays with Dean till the end, who has his own spiritual interests (minus drugs, booze and women, because these are coping mechanism that happy Destiel will not need), living together with Dean (because you won’t tell me Cas and Dean don’t live together in the endverse, in this huge, luxurious cabin with a king size bed, movie posters and buddhist paraphernalia, one wardrobe that they apparently share, and drinking water supplies for the whole camp - no one in their right mind would give Cas the stoner keys for the drinking water supplies!) (Also, somebody had to take care of Cas when he couldn’t walk for two months). They have some people around them, maybe they still go out and hunt sometimes, but generally they have a well-rounded life, with Sam (sans Lucifer) somewhere close, doing his thing.

You take away the apocalypse, croatoan virus and Satan, add the Nephilim and the Wayward Daughters, and you have the hunting husbans we hope to see one day, with their nice cabin in the woods (or, ekhm, a little white house in Washington, by the lake, where you can fish and with a portal to another dimention in the backyard).

This is what I think is happening now with Castiel being killed - and as painful as it is, it will lead us to The End. The good kind. With Nephilim instead of Lucifer. With the balance. And I do believe that this time Dean finds a way to kill the devil. For good. And there will be rainbows.

Also, since everything that Mark Sheppard posted lately on Twitter turned out to be true, I have a feeling that Misha/Cas getting his make-up done in his Jim Morrison t-shirt and jeans is a hint as well.

Yes, still excited to see where the story will take me.

#spn meta #supernatural #destiel #domestic destiel #endverse!destiel #endgame

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gywair · 6 years ago

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I finally watched Endgame. I’d put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral. This series has been part of my life for a decade. Going to see the cumulation of over twenty films felt too heavy to see. Putting it off only made the tension build though. Finally, bite the Infinity Stone and ordered tickets.

First, I watched it in “4DX”. This is similar to the theme park rides that started popping up that are a mixed medium experience. So the seats move, air blasts at you, there are water effects, lights flash, and even smells get pumped into the room. In theory, this seems really interesting but usually, I go to movies I don’t care about to try out new gimmicks. My first 3D film was My Bloody Valentine. It was silly and fun. It also helped me adjust to what a 3D movie would be.

My first 4DX-like experience was the Empire State Building ride as narrated by Kevin Bacon. A sentence that makes me feel like I suffered a stroke while writing but is a real thing that exists that I have experienced. It’s been a few years since that and I think it lasted less than 20 minutes (probably less). Sitting for an entire movie seemed like a whole different worm can.

For me, I didn’t really like it. The water, lights, and smells were cool. The smoke was nice too. The seat, however, is made for someone slightly smaller. So when Iron Man gets kicked in his kidneys, oh spoilers BTW, the seat hits you too like a demented message chair. I think normally it would softly strike you in the back on your rib cage. For me, it went straight to my soft organs. This made the fights are to concentrate on (a problem for a movie about fighting). Likewise, little jets of compressed air go off just above your head. For me, they were pointed directly into my ears. So each time they fired off, I couldn’t hear and had the painful sensation of a ghost giving me a wet willy (I’m also blessed with ear problems so your experience may vary).

Anyway, big thoughts:

The Good:

The job of wrapping up 20+ movies was a big task. This film does that. It has a large cast of characters and several errant storylines to wrap up in a short timeframe. Cause even with 3-hours, this felt like there was still more to say. Which isn’t bad cause that means there can still be more films but for a chapter closer it was ambitious.

I was satisfied by the investment I’ve made into the franchise. This was a fitting close to this chapter. Each film contributed in ways that made the complete journey feel fluid and necessary.

It makes several subversions of expectations. Not just for characters but for narrative design. It kept me guessing the entire time. Even with seeing a handful of tiny spoilers, I was never sure what was going to happen.

Avengers served up heaping mounds of gratuitous fan service in the best ways possible. Sometimes this can be very bad like in animes when the whole episode is about boys spying on girls in a hot tub. Here, it’s Captain America fighting a copy of himself or Professor Hulk half-assing some smashing. One of the best parts of the film is about time travel. Here they show off fan-favorite Loki popping up at different points in history.

One important aspect to me for a story of any kind is how much foreknowledge a viewer needs before starting the work. If you watch Pirates of the Carribean 3 or Return of the Jedi, you will be pretty confused. However, you can pick up just about any Marvel movie anywhere in the series and have a fair idea of what is going on. This continues in this installment. Some context is lost or hidden but anything you need to know is shown/told/explained to you. This, for me, is what makes a story stand on its own legs.

See?! This scene just makes sense all on its own.

The Bad:

With so many cooks in the kitchen, there are still weird dangling problems in the continuity. Things still feel left open to interpretation. Even the filmmakers didn’t agree on how elements in the film worked which is something that should have been determined before the first Avengers movie was written. It feels haphazard with how certain things were written off or ignored. This plays well into feeling like a comic book where different creators retrofit things to fit their narrative but it still felt jarring.

For example, in Captain Marvel, the cat has a stone. Well… so does Thanos… but also now Loki… There is a lot going on and even a whole (if well delivered) exposition still didn’t completely cover all their bases. It feels like they slapped it together at random at times. I get that they can play with the timeline literally but I feel like there were still a lot of open questions that should have been answered that weren’t.

I could rewatch all the movies (read as: will eventually) to get the full context. This makes the act of enjoying these films more academic though than just for pleasure viewing. It’s not that I don’t want to do this but for casual viewers, there was a lot of backstories to keep up with to get each nod.

The Ugly:

After years of hearing that fans want more women characters, the film tried to give them the limelight for an action sequence. The rest of the film is mostly about a boys’ club rushing around doing action hero stuff. Yes, Nebula and Black Widow make important contributions to the plot but they feel sidelined or overshadowed by the boys. The problem here is that the women are treated more like set dressing than people important to the plot to move ahead. If Spiderman had finished running the Infinity Glove to the van it would have served the same device. Instead, they made a big show of having the girls team up for a few seconds.

Supposedly this movie was gonna have a “Big Gay Film Moment” TM that would make people happen. Instead, it just suggested that gay people do actually exist. IDK man, like that, is a pretty cold take. If Warmachine and Bucky had started making out after the big fight I would have been cheering my head off. I’m not upset by any means. This is more of a missed opportunity for the filmmakers to do something and instead, they took the safest path.

Hope you weren’t invested in Starlord and Gamora cause that entire trio of films is pretty much null now so far as character development for Gammy. She had an awesome arc. Then they killed her off. Then she comes back but now she doesn’t know Quill. Okay, well this means that other dead people come back… right? Oh, no? Vision and Black Widow are still gone? Weird… I heard this is cause they were killed pre-Snap BUT so was Gamora and they got her back. I think they were just running out of time. I hope Scarlet Witch gets to go back to her robo-boyfriend.

Was that all just a wild middle finger to Gunn? That’d be drama.

The funeral… why isn’t anyone crying? Everyone seems so calm. Is this like when you have already been to like six superhero funerals that week and five are already back on their feet?

I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry.

Characters:

Alright, so this film had way too many characters to really cover perfectly as a group. I have some stray thoughts on several, however.

Hulk is my new boyfriend and I will fight you for him. Banner has made peace with himself and created a half-way point between Hulk and himself. Now he is permanently strong and smart. This is wonderful for character development as he finally finds the peace and belonging that he has wanted since Edward Norton tore up downtown as the rage-y green giant. His new hipster persona felt satisfying and fresh for the film universe. Something of a reversal of the Ragnarok Hulk.

Captain America finally bangs and accepts his position as “America’s Ass”. I’m so proud of my boy. He’s all grown up.

It took Iron Man a decade but Tony Stark finally discovered how to care about something other than himself. His character arc is the film universe’s arc to this point. He was the foundation for everything that came after. This film serves as much an Iron Man movie as it is an Avengers’.

Black Widow kind of gets the shaft here. She began as a coldhearted assassin and ends up as the corporate mom leading the heroes’ home base. There is so much to still unpack for her. Her character has so much potential just under the surface but no one seems to be interested digging into it. I mean Scarlett Johansson “kills” in the role but this movie doesn’t really give her anything to do except talk to Hawkeye…

Hawkeye tried to be the Marvel Aquaman comeback kid and he just comes off as edgy but not in a good way. More like a midlife crisis day buys a motorcycle than the Crow. Like, he tries to make it sound like his entire career of being an assassin was more good than being an assassin now. He does get a brutal back story but I feel like he falls short of reaching his character potential here. He does get some cool scenes and then just gets shoved to the back of the movie.

Thor is bae. He has a brutal journey to this movie but he gets a lot of character work here. His beer belly hermit hijinks provide a much needed comedic break. I also cried like a baby over him.

Rocket has finally gotten some growth as a person. In this movie, he gets to interact with the core team more. This was a lot of fun because of his sass with characters like Iron Man. Also, he finally dons his iconic blue flight suit and red scarf–not important but it was a fun Easter egg.

It only took two Guardians and an Avengers but they finally let Karen Gillan really make Nebula rule. Gillan is a fabulous actor so it was always painful that Nebula just ran around screaming. In Endgame, she finally gets to have some real personal moments that don’t feel weird. Paper football was the best scene honestly for the emotion and narrative. I mean, her whole career as a sour rage junky comes to a boiling point and then she FINALLY gets to open up the tiniest bit with Tony. I really hope there is something… anything in the future where she gets to be this new fun Nebula. It’s like your weird aunt went on vacation and actually had some personal growth and brings you back some neat shells and a guy named Desmond for herself.

Ant-Man got some funny moments in but nothing to really write home about. He was our Joe McEverydude here and it worked fine. I’m baffled at the taco scene but it was worth it for Hipster Hulk to share with him. Like, I know Scott Lang as a character isn’t super bright. That’s his whole thing. But, I just can’t understand what would drive him to go outside the fancy building to eat tacos on a bench facing the jet landing pad.

Warmachine got some interesting developments here. I’m sad now that he didn’t get to build a romance with Nebula (that is just barely suggested here). He felt like a full member of the team rather than just a sidekick from movies past.

The Falcon & Bucky were there. I really wish there had been some kind of closure or growth moment for them. In Winter Soldier, they were at each other’s neck. Now they seem cool. A friendly word or a high five could have sold me on their growth but they kind of get forgotten instead. I was never gonna see my Falcon-Bucky slash make it to the silver screen but would it have killed the Russos to have one heated kiss between these two obviously boyfriend material lads.

**EDIT** —–> THERE IS A SPIN OF THESE DORKS. OMG.

Alright. I’m psyched for this.

Captain Marvel comes in at the end of this list just like she did in the movie. That’s right, she shows up as a Deus ex Machina and looks cool but really got burned here. She deserved better. She just drops in for a minute to help and then jets. Still cool but she gets no development here. Her movie rules though so I’m gonna forgive it. Mostly. That said, it was wild to see basically an Amy Dangerous on screen and that was special for me.

Closing Thoughts:

It was a really fun movie. I may never watch it again. Just like the other Avengers, it’s a good time but it feels more like a spectacle than a great film. That’s not bad but when I watch a film, I wanna see characters grown in new unexpected ways. I want to see hard choices and emotions. Those moments were there but as little islands between big budget action scenes. I really enjoyed it but for the same amount of time, I might just watch Ragnorok again or Detective Pikachu. Finishing this movie felt like the end of a long (20 movie) hike. It was a great adventure. The fun of it was the friends we made along the way. I don’t regret a minute of it.

But it feels good to be at the end.

For now.

Endgame Thoughts I finally watched Endgame. I'd put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral.

#film #movies

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malarkiness · 7 years ago

Text

I saw the Star War. TLJ spoilers under the cut.

I was spoiled for just about EVERYTHING in TLJ but despite that, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it once I actually saw all the weird shit in context. Some fans with similar tastes to mine seemed to hate it, but others thought it was mediocre with some redeeming traits, and then some actually liked it, so I didn’t know how I’d react.

And after seeing it, I'm... still not really sure how I feel about it?

I didn’t find the conflict between Poe and Holdo that interesting. I can appreciate that it provided a little character development for Poe, but it felt kind of contrived.

There’s a lot of jarring humor in the first half hour or so of the movie. Like there are all these scenes where tension starts to build and pull you in, but then it’s shot down because someone just has to make some stupid, useless comment. And it just makes the writing seem really insecure, like they’re afraid the audience won’t take this seriously, so instead of just committing anyway, they have to throw in some elbow-jabby line to make it seem like they’re in on the joke, too. I found myself refusing to take scenes seriously because I knew the emotional build-up wasn’t going to pay off.

Leia gets shot into outer space and lives because... the Force? Honestly, fuck it, who cares, Leia can do whatever she wants.

I did like how Rey and Kylo’s skype calls were shown, how you could tell that they could see each other even though they were in different locations and weren’t even in the same shot. Kylo noticing the rain on his glove was a nice touch, too. Also, between shirtless Kylo and those.... things Luke milked on the island, there were entirely too many nipples in this movie.

Rey started sympathizing with Kylo WAY too easily, IMO. She saw this guy nearly kill her friend and also rip a hole in his own father’s chest, what, a week ago? If that? Why would she believe anything he tells her? I understand her not fully trusting Luke either, that’s fine, but her decision to try to get Kylo to switch sides was too abrupt. I’m not really against Rey trying to turn Kylo as a plot point, but it could’ve been written much better, and in a way that doesn’t make Rey look so naive.

Popular opinion, apparently: I didn’t care for the casino planet. Finn and Rose have to go there to find this one kind of annoying character who can get them access to the First Order, and along the way they see how the First Order is funded and all that, so it does play into the overall story, but it just felt like those two were lightyears away from the actual plot. Every time the movie cut back to that subplot I just dreaded it, and I hate that. Finn’s my favorite character, so his storyline should’ve been one of the highlights of the movie for me, but it was just so boring. Like the setting itself wasn’t very creative, the codebreaker they pick up is pretty forgettable, Finn and and Rose’s interactions are kind of flat (which is a shame because John and Kelly work great together in interviews and whatnot; it just seems like they weren’t really given any good dialogue to work with). The whole thing just felt like a waste of time. They definitely could’ve found something more interesting for Finn and Rose to do. I did like Finn telling whatshisfuck that he should give Rose her medallion back, though, and that whatshisfuck.... actually did it. That was kind of nice. I think what the writers were trying to do was solidify Finn’s commitment to the resistance, but... we sort of already did that? In TFA, he wants to run from the First Order and is on his way to do just that after leaving Rey at the cantina, but he changes his mind after the first Starkiller attack. And from then on, he’s on their side. Granted, his primary focus is saving Rey, but he’s still fighting alongside the resistance. And anyway, if you really wanted to do this sort of storyline (again), you could’ve found a more interesting way to do it.

I liked seeing Yoda again, especially his OT incarnation. I rewatch RotS at least once every Christmas, and that’s more consistently than I watch any of the other films, so I tend to forget that Yoda wasn’t always the calm, steady, powerful CGI figure that he is in the prequels. He actually started out (release order-wise) as this jankity puppet character who’s very wise but also kind of batty, and it was just really fun to see that version of him again.

I’m pretty sure my heart dropped into my stomach when Phasma showed up. For some reason, I completely forgot that she’d be aboard that ship too, so I wasn’t prepared for her at all. I think I actually gasped in the theater lmao. I loved seeing her and Finn face off, and that she calls him a flaw in the machine (or something like that) and then “scum,” and I LOVE that he corrects her insult to “rebel scum” right before she dies... even if it does seem like a cap to a kind of redundant character arc, but what the hell, it’s still a good line. I would’ve liked some more build-up to this fight, though. I suppose Finn defeating her had more to do with what she represented to him than their personal relationship, but I dunno, it would’ve been cool for these two to get more than just one fight (and a very brief one at that). Also, Finn needs to fight with a lightsaber again before this trilogy ends.

Rey and Kylo kill Snoke in his very silly-looking throne room and then fight off all his equally silly-looking cherry jolly rancher henchman. Silliness aside, though, that was a great scene. Kylo using the Force to ignite the lightsaber and slice Snoke in half was gruesome and honestly really fucking cool, and I say that as someone who’s easily grossed out by that sort of thing. I also liked how the tone shifts when the fight’s over and Rey expects Kylo to call off the First Order and spare the rebels, and he refuses.

The fight scenes in general were fantastic in this movie. I especially loved how often Rey used a reverse grip with her lightsaber.

Luke and Leia’s reuinion was very sweet. I did cry a little over that.

Luke and Kylo’s face-off was great, too. I like that Luke apologizes, but still holds Kylo accountable for his actions. And I liked the line, “Kill me in anger, and I will always be with you,” and I can’t wait to see how that concept plays into IX. And I LOVE that Kylo doesn’t kill him (not for lack of trying, ofc...), but that instead, Luke sacrifices himself to give the resistance time to escape. I was just a little upset that Luke wasn’t really there, though, and that he didn’t really give Leia Han’s dice.

I liked the battle on Crait, too. The red soil getting kicked up from under the salt made for a lot of nice visuals. All the red dust in the scene where Kylo fired everything at Luke made it seem so much more brutal. I also liked the scene where Rose stopped Finn from sacrificing himself (by crashing into him lmao, that could’ve ended very badly very easily). Rose kissing Finn was kind of random, but I liked her line about “saving what we love.”

Finn and Rey’s hug at the end was the single greatest moment of the entire film (and possibly all of 2017 cinema tbh). It was perfect. I love that Finn is the first one out of that cavern to her, and that there’s no hesitation or talking or anything between them. They are just immediately in each other’s arms and are so happy and relieved and it’s so beautiful and pure and I am devastated that this ship is sunk. I mean... I dunno, I guess it could still happen, but right now, I’m thinking FinnRose’ll be endgame. Rey and Kylo will probably have some drama or whatever, but Kylo’s almost definitely a dead man in IX, so I kind of doubt we’ll get R*ylo as a final ship. Just no love triangle bullshit, please. I barely survived LoK’s, and I kinda doubt a FinnReyRose triangle would end with ReyRose.

I gotta say, though, I was pretty disappointed in the lack of an actual relationship between Luke and Rey. I mean, they have a relationship technically, but there’s no bond. They eventually have this duel on the island, and Rey tells him she thinks she can turn Kylo on their side and leaves, and....... that’s the last time they ever see each other. It just felt so hollow. Instead, the movie focuses all the real drama on Luke and Kylo’s relationship, which honestly is fine. I was surprised that I actually didn’t mind all that much that Kylo got so much focus in TLJ because the movie at least built him up as a good villain for Rey, setting him up to be a very Vader-like counter to her Luke. I just wish I could’ve gotten that and some more development between Luke and Rey. I liked seeing Luke’s fear of training Rey after sensing the darkness in her, and I wanted to see some more focus and drama around that. In all fairness, though, Luke could come back as a Force ghost in IX and remedy some of this, so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on it.

I’m fine with Rey not being a Skywalker (and she isn’t, assuming Kylo’s word is good for anything. It’s perfectly possible that he was lying, but even if he was, I still don’t think she’s a Skywalker. Luke showed 0 recognition of her, Leia and Han didn’t know her... Unless Shmi miraculously conceived another Force baby and didn’t tell anyone, I think this theory’s dead.). Truthfully, I mostly wanted her to be a Skywalker just because it would’ve established a foundation for her and Luke’s relationship, but I guess it wouldn’t really be necessary. I just wanted something substantial between these two, and... I didn’t get much of anything. And okay, I’ll just throw this out there: What I really, really wanted was for it to be revealed that Rey had been one of Luke’s padawans along with Ben when she was very young (and she later lost her memories of this via plot contrivance), and she was the only one Luke managed to save when Kylo went on his rampage. And instead of.... any number of better choices, Luke decided to hide her on Jakku and then go into hiding himself. And honestly, if there’s a fic with that premise, I want to read it. Hell, I’ll forget all about this movie’s canon and sub that in, I don’t care.

All that said....... We ever gonna learn anything about Finn’s lost family or what?

lol this write-up is all over the place, but that’s kind of how I feel about this movie: It’s all over the place. There are some good twists and nice moments, but god, you’ve gotta slog through all the forced humor and casino subplots and Holdo-Poe spats and everything else to get to to the good stuff. I’ve ping-ponged back and forth over whether or not I liked this movie as a whole, lol. A lot of fans seem to either love it or hate it, and I think I might be somewhere right in the middle.

If nothing else, though, it made me appreciate TFA that much more.

#star wars #tlj spoilers #the last jedi #sometimes i watch things #this is so damn long ldjfksf

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