#and all that can help is some poorly lit Netflix originals

[thbstvrdthmtlbndndntn]

My dad really wanted to watch the Lindsay Lohan Christmas movie tonight but we live across the continent from each other and unsuccessfully share a Netflix account so I got all these messages on two different platforms (and two FaceTime calls) while I was away from my phone making bread for twenty minutes lmao

[richkomlkk]

Laptop Battery

Many laptop users have experienced the frustrating scenario of their battery dying right in the middle of an important project or during a marathon Netflix session. But have you ever wondered why laptop batteries tend to deteriorate over time? It turns out that most laptop batteries use lithium-ion technology, which degrades over time due to chemical reactions and natural wear and tear. This gradual decline in battery capacity is inevitable and can lead to reduced runtime and overall lifespan.

The good news is that there are ways to prolong your laptop battery life. One simple yet effective tip is to regularly calibrate your battery by fully charging it and then allowing it to discharge completely before recharging again. This practice helps recalibrate the internal sensors, ensuring accurate readings of remaining charge levels. Additionally, reducing unnecessary power consumption can significantly extend battery life; adjusting screen brightness, closing unused applications, disabling Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when not needed - all these small moves can make a big difference.

When it comes to replacing a worn-out laptop battery, some people opt for cheaper third-party options instead of purchasing original ones from the manufacturer. While this might seem like an attractive cost-cutting measure at first glance, it's essential to consider potential risks involved. Third-party batteries often lack the proper quality controls and safety features found in OEM (original equipment manufacturer) products. Investing in an official replacement battery may cost more initially, but it ensures compatibility and reduces the risk of overheating or other dangerous problems caused by poor quality replacements.

When it comes to laptop batteries, we often think about their capacity and how long they last after a single charge. But have you ever wondered why some laptop batteries drain faster than others? Screen brightness is a factor that affects battery life. Reducing your laptop screen brightness can significantly increase battery life because the screen accounts for a significant portion of power consumption. So, next time you're working on your laptop in a well-lit environment, consider turning down the brightness to save power.

Another lesser-known aspect that affects laptop battery performance is the operating system. Different operating systems handle power management differently, which can lead to different levels of battery drain. For example, macOS has been praised for its efficient power management feature, which optimizes background processes and reduces unnecessary power consumption. On the other hand, laptops running Windows may consume higher power due to poorly optimized software or some background services running unchecked. Considering these factors when choosing your next device can help improve your overall user experience while also extending battery life.

When it comes to laptop batteries, we often think of them as the revolutionary technology that powers our mobile devices. However, understanding the inner workings of a laptop battery can both improve battery life and our overall computing experience.

Contrary to popular belief, keeping your laptop plugged in is not necessarily beneficial for battery health. In fact, continuously charging your device at deteriorate its performance over time. Instead, experts suggest maintaining a charge level between 20% and 80%, allowing the battery's ions to move freely and reducing unnecessary strain on its capacity.

Additionally, occasionally running the battery by completely discharging it and then fully recharging it can help prevent power outages commonly known as battery memory. By allowing the ions in a lithium-ion battery to periodically recalibrate their charge level, you can ensure a more accurate representation of remaining power and optimize performance over the life of the battery . So the next time you consider leaving your laptop plugged in overnight or accidentally unplugging it after it's fully charged, remember these simple tips to extend the life of your battery while improving overall performance. battery body.

[pillowbelphs]

Bad Day

Genre: fluff

word count: 830

@ghoulgirlradio​ asked: I have another idea but if you have too many requests that’s totally cool don’t sweat it!! It’s for belphie again bc I’m a SIMP. Anyway mc has a really bad day and belphie makes like a pillow fort in the attic and watches movies with them 👉🏼👈🏼💞 also tysm for the last one I’ve been craving belphie fluff

author’s note: I will never pass up an opportunity to write some belphie fluff, i love him so bad, and this idea was so cute :3 i hope you enjoy!!

xoxo moon

It was a bad day.

There was no other way to describe it; you had woken up late, not being able to eat before rushing to school where you arrived late. Lucifer had chewed you out about waking up late once you had left your first class, putting you in an even worse mood than you had originally been in. You received a poor grade on a test you were sure you did well on, and continued to receive grades you weren’t happy about. Not to mention that you had had a pounding migraine all day, and your migraines were light-sensitive, so you needed to be in complete darkness to get rid of them.

Belphegor wasn’t upfront about his worry for you like Asmo had been—Asmo commenting on you furrowing your brows to try and dim your headache and how you would form wrinkles because of it—but he had noticed how poorly the day was treating you. He didn’t want to make a big scene about caring for you, but that didn’t stop him from having plans in mind on what to do with you once you arrived home.

You had a set schedule to spend with the demon brothers; they always wanted portions of your time, and usually, you didn’t mind, but today was a rougher day than most, and you found yourself wanting to crawl into bed the moment you got home to try and get rid of the pain in your head, and the sadness in your heart.

Once you entered the doors of the house of lamentation, though, Belphie had taken you by the hand and led you off to the attic, much to the other brothers’ dismay. He didn’t care, though; if after he was done, you wanted to go hang out with them, you would do so on your own accord, but they didn’t have a say in him snatching you away now. 

When you entered the attic, he had told you to sit and wait as he disappeared back down the stairs. Once he had come up again, though, he arrived with an array of things; pillows, blankets a glass of water, and two aspirin.

you nodded, taking the aspirin and following his instructions. You laid down with your eyes closed, unsure of what you were waiting for and what Belphie was doing. You heard him leave the attic a few more times, and felt the air around you shift once or twice, which left you curious as to what he was planning. After ten minutes, you felt a soft kiss being pressed to your forehead, before Belphie whispered “you can open them now.”

He helped you sit up, smiling at you as you gasped lightly; as you laid with your eyes closed, he built a pillow fort around you, hanging the sheets and blankets from the beams on the ceiling in the attic while stretching them out and securing them with the bottoms of chairs and various textbooks. All the lights had been turned off, and the only one that lit your vision was the light illuminating from your laptop, which Belphie must have taken from your room.

“Belphie” you said, a small smile forming on your face as he sat beside you. The sight left you speechless, only able to utter his name as you looked at him. It wasn’t often that Belphegor did these sweet gestures, but when he did, it was always when you needed it. He leaned over to his desk, where he had a bunch of your favorite snacks sitting.

“I know you didn’t eat today,” he said, handing you one of the things he had prepared, “Mammon is on kitchen duty tonight, so I asked him to make something he knew you liked. He told me he’d make it early tonight. We were all worried for you today.”

“Really?”

Belphie nodded as he pulled you into his chest, giving you a tighter squeeze than he usually did.

“I know you’re having a bad day,” he said, rubbing your arms as one of his hands went to navigate the suggestions that Netflix had for movies, “I know that you try really, really hard, and that today was just off. I could tell by your face that you were over with today the moment you came in to school.”

He looked at you, leaning up and pressing another kiss to your forehead. “So, I want you to turn your brain off for today. Since it’s Friday, we can wait to do our homework tomorrow. You have nothing else to worry about today, except for making fun of these horribly directed horror movies with me.”

You snaked your arms around his waist, basking in the natural heat he gave off. You nodded, whispering a “thank you” as he pulled you closer into him, pressing the start button on the movie. 

It wasn’t often that Belphie showed you he cared, but when he did, it made your bad days bearable.

[pokefan531]

Miraculous Ladybug Production Analysis

Today, I will be reviewing Miraculous Ladybug on the production quality. This goes on video quality and knowing its original format. We will be going over the base resolution, framerate, audio, and others. I've done some test by analyzing different sources of the show, and to see the techneical side.

Miraculous Ladybug credit goes to Zagtoon. Images are used for demonstration.

Video Resolution

On TV stations and on digital distribution, it is common to air or stream it on 1080p. In fact, most anime are digitally drawn on lower resolution than 1080p. For Miraculous Ladybug, this is the case.

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p, across all episodes and specials as of current. By taking some frames from Netflix stream, it is clearly upscaled from 720p. I did some check by looking at individual screenshots of the show and look at it on Photoshop. Looking at the characters hairs and some edges, you can tell that the source is upscaled.

It is common for a 3D animated TV show to render at lower resolution than 1080p, aside from the texts and the credits. The credits are clearly 1080p while the background is just upscaled to 720p. The text are clearly sharp and doesn't have anti-aliasing. The Ladybug icon on the left is also 1080p. On the opening, only the text are rendered at 1080p, but it's not as sharp as the credits. Still, it doesn't have jagged edges on the texts. Again, it is mixed with 720p background. Also, the logo scene seems to fit well with debicubic filter. I've tested upscaling filters with Avisynth on the frames to see what was the best. It seems like the studio actually use Bicubic scaling with Blur=1, and Ringing=3 setting. It is the default filter setting on Avisynth's Bicubic filter. I've check some masking between original frame and debicubic and use bicubic again, there was no difference aside from blurring out small compression artifacts caused by streaming.

So clearly, the show is upscaled from 720p with Bicubic filtering, with texts being full HD, especially seeing the credits.

(Although, the scene where Plagg gets sucked in on Stormy Weather, the vertical resolution looks like it's half. We know the show is not interlaced, but what happened?)

(Look at the edges of the objects when watching 1080p quality. It is certainly upscaled. Images from Robostus episode and The Bubbler)

Tonemapping

Like most 3D television shows, all scenes are tonemapped to sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. No HDR or wide color gamut is natively supported. Since it is tonemapped to SDR displays, at certain points, Ladybug's outfits seems to have slight red value cut. It is seen when the red shades are over 255 red value, that it can't go brighter and either shows red banding, or red highlight details may be lost. However, the problem is minor, since other color values are present to shade over it.

Overall, the show looks colorful and looks nice for any displays.

(The suit seems to lost some the bump mapping due to compressed tonemapping? Images from Stormy Weather.)

Framerate

By looking at available sources, it seems like the show is rendered at 24fps. By watching Princess Fragrance and The Mime from official Miraculous Ladybug Youtube channel, I can hear the speed difference from most sources that plays at 25fps. It supposed to sound like the 24fps version. Background music tracks and the theme song are available. They seem to match the episodes' audio speed by reconizing the tempo. A lot of sources are seen as 25fps, with the audio sped up without altering the pitch. Technecally speaking, it would be 23.976fps instead of 24fps, but still is.

Framerate Conversion list

As said above, a lit of sources found are playing the episodes at 25fps with sped up audio, but no audio pitch has changed. It's common for PAL conversion to speed up 24fps content to match their 50hz displays (aside from portable displays and computer monitors show natively 60hz). However, in recent years, they use better technology to speed up the audio without altering the pitch, so that it stays true to the pitch of the original format. That way, no one can tell the difference.

Since PAL regions use the format above, I'll list the countries and channels that airs in 60hz or NTSC regions.

South Korea:

The show is aired in the original format. It's 24fps on all channels that airs the show.

Japan:

The show airs in the original format.

Brazil:

The show airs in the original format.

Canada:

Quebec airs the french version, but airs it at 24fps. Family Channel airs it the same way too.

United States:

On Nickelodeon, they would air it at 25fps. Even though most content in the country would air at 24fps, 30fps, or 60fps, Nickelodeon decides to air their shows at 25fps to make more room for commericals to earn more revenue. That also means they cut the credit sequences for the same reason too, with the credits displayed on last 30-seconds of each episode. The audio pitch is unaltered, however. Even their streaming services airs the show at 25fps. Few of their early episodes has wrong conversion on their website, by converting from 25fps to 24fps, albert, with interlaceing, for some weird reason. They look terrible when Nickelodeon had them on their website back in 2015. It is unknown if KidsClick airs it in the original format since I never watch the show from their platform.

Latin America:

This is the most weird conversion of them all. While the show airs at 24fps, Disney Channel LA did the inverse of PAL conversion. THAT MEANS the audio pitch is LOWER than most sources! When I saw their commericals or clips of the recordings taken from their channel, I can hear the audio pitch being altered, but not the typical PAL way. It is very uncommon for NTSC standards to do this sort of thing. I even went to Costa Rica to hear how the show plays over there. I hear the audio pitch being lower as of last year. This is very rare for any channels over there to do this. I don't know what source Disney Channel LA got for the episodes, but it seems like they got 25fps ones and decides to think it is converted already for PAL regions. Very weird. However, streaming services outside the channel never had this issue. It is unknown if PAL countries like Argentina did this too. Their Disney Channel is basically the same, except it's their timeline and broadcasts in PAL format, 50hz.

It is possible that each country can air the show in their own local channel. However, you would have to be in the spanish community to know if they're playing the show correctly.

Netflix:

As far as I know, they have the episodes at 25fps everywhere. iTunes:

Not sure if they still have it, but I remember them having 25fps playback.

Youtube:

Only Princess Fragrance and The Mime are available. It is in the original format, and so as the clips on their Youtube channel.

Overall, it is commonly seen as 25fps in most platforms. I'm not sure if they preserve 25fps on Shouts Factory's DVDs R1.

Blu-Rays

There hasn't been a Blu-Ray release for the series. It's not uncommon for the series to be released on Blu-Ray. Star Wars The Clones Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Samuari Jack, and Batman Animated series has got blu-ray releases at 1080p. DVDs are never HD, and are usually compresses poorly due to using MPEG2 codec from 1990s. You can only find the HD versions on digital platforms. I only know iTunes would do digital release of their episodes. You may have to rip the episodes yourself from other digital platforms. I know not many TV series here have blu-ray releases, but majority of the medias are movies and anime. In Japan, they have very high sale rates on Blu-Ray releases. Not only you get to watch the episodes without internet, but you have very high quality studio like video at the highest resolution with barely video compression artifacts.

Audio

It is common to have stereo audio on TV shows. However, Netflix seems to have 5.1 Surround Sound audio for the show. Usually, the voices are at the front speakers, while you hear the rest of the sound everywhere, with panning from one or multiple speakers to the next. Nickelodeon has aired the show in surrounded sound format before on their HD channels.

Censorship

Miraculous Ladybug is a family friendly TV series, and nothing weird or inappropiate is in it. It was intentionally made for worldwide audience. However, very few television networks made their censorships to any shows. Miraculous Ladybug never got cuts or alterations for anything, but rather small decisions.

On Disney Channel UK, they did a simple motion blur on some scenes to avoid or reduce fast motion lights to reduce risks of seizures. Most notably, the transformation scenes, catching the Akumas, flying butterflies restoring damaged properties, and fast fight scenes that takes big part of the screen. On Frame-by-Frame, the image either have the next frame blended on the current frame, previous frame blended on the current, or both.

Reducing seizures by motion blur may help, but the show doesn't have any strobe or seizure induring scenes. Most broadcasts would leave the show alone. Even Japan leaves the video untouched, despite having paka-paka laws in place on TV broadcasts for airing Electric Soldier Porygon in December 1997. All TV shows have the "Watch in bright lit room" notice on the beginning of the episode in Japan.

Saudi Arabia has skipped Copycat for some reason.

(The bottom one is from Disney Channel UK. All episodes are censored this way to reduce fast bright objects.)

Conclusion

Miraculous Ladybug is rendered at 720p 24fps, with sRGB/rec.709 colorspace. The framerate, whether you're watching 24fps or 25fps, you wouldn't hear the audio pitch being different on the latter, so it's fine. The audio is maxed to 5.1 Surround Sound. Censorship goes from very small to none.

The overall TV show's quality seems pretty good for a TV series. Netflix has all the episodes for two seasons. Even if watching upscaled content, it still looks pretty fine. The audio and sound editing seems pretty great. The animation is smooth overall. The second season is the best season so far. It can be possible that later on, the series may start doing native 1080p rendering. It could be due to the fact that ray tracing on the studio's budget would take too long to render 1080p. Hopefully, native 1080p may soon be used for the future.

[themediareviewer]

Pan (2015)

Directed by Joe Wright. Family/fantasy movie.

Okay, so this is the type of movie that I feel I will come to disagree with my own opinion in a few years. I’ll explain why. I think I speak for all of us when I say that nowadays it’s quite hard to watch a movie without having ANY preconceived ideas of it. Either we’ve watched the trailer (one of those here-is-the-whole-plot-of-the-movie-except-for-maybe-the-last-two-minutes kind of trailers), or perhaps one of our friends has watched it and talked about it heatedly, or  maybe we’ve gotten 5,839,286 GIFs of the movie on our feed and already know most of the whole plot. 

My point is that, by the point when we sit down to watch a movie, many times, we have already formed an opinion about it. Sometimes, the movie has been so hyped up by our friends that when we watch it, our expectations are not met and we end up not like the movie, period. Or, on the contrary, the media has been so harsh with the movie, that when it’s anything more than a catastrophe, you actually end up enjoying it. 

When I walked into Pan, I did NOT have a good image of the movie. I had read somewhere (and this is a bit of information that I have NOT managed to confirm since then), that although the story of Peter Pan has become public domain, people who use the story still pay the copyrights to the owner. Why, you ask? Because the actual “owner” of the story, writer J.M. Barrie transferred the copyright to the Great Ormond Street Hospital , which is a children’s hospital in London. In fact, in the strongly-worded article I had read at the time, the article’s writer had specified how important that source of income was for the hospital, and how it helped a lot of children (a good writer always appeals to the heart of its readers, right?). Now, it was said (and this is the part I have failed to confirm, please let me know if you find an article about it) that this iteration of Peter Pan chose NOT to pay the copyrights. I mean, no one is actually obliged to do it… but it does seem like the right thing to do, particularly when you think of today’s movie stars’ salaries (which can go up to millions of dollars), donating part of the revenue of your million-dollar movie to a hospital of children, doesn’t seem like such a hard thing to do.

In other words, this movie was already not looking good to me as a person (I am the type of person who can’t fully separate the artist from the art, and although I won’t go on about it here, I will say that I preferred not to buy this movie, and only watched it when it came to Netflix). In addition to that whole internal debate about watching the movie or not, I also found a lot of reviews about this movie when I was trying to confirm the information in the paragraph above. And they were all extremely negative, with scores going from 0 stars out of 5, to 23%, to “YOU SHOULD JUST NOT WATCH THIS” kind of reviews. 

So, when I sat down to watch this movie and I first met the main character, I was astounded to realize that I quite liked him. Played by Levi Miller, he was easily one of the best parts of the movie. But even more surprisingly, I was FLOORED when I noticed I was actually enjoying myself! I almost felt ashamed by that point. “How can you like a movie that might be STEALING money from sick CHILDREN????” my heart would scream. But then my eyes and my ears and my love for art started to speak louder and I realized that some aspects of this movie were truly worth talking about.

I’ll start by the easy one: the soundtrack by John Powell. If the first thought in your head after reading those words is, “Who the hell is John Powell?”, don’t worry, that’s normal. I do have a very soft spot for soundtracks and one of my favourite of all times is from How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by (you guessed it!) John Powell. The way he layers different instruments together is breathtaking and clearly resembles the rush of feelings you might get when you’re flying — a theme that is very relevant to both movies might I add. I listened to this soundtrack after having watched the movie, and even individually, these songs are wonderfully crafted. The first few chords of the “Opening Overture” pulled at my heartstrings, and “Kidnapped/Galleon Dog Fight” had me excited for everything this movie promised. Even the song, “Smells like Teen Spirit” (or how I call it, “Hello, Hello, How Low”) is so wonderfully dark, I had chills at the power of hundreds of voices singing it together; and then Hugh Jackman’s evil voice joins in and the all is deliciously creepy. Unfortunately, it was intercut with unnecessary jokes and the movie’s tone doesn’t live up to the song. Nevertheless, if anything positive should be coming out of the movie, the soundtrack is definitely the one.

Now, if you’ll allow me a second positive element to take out of this movie, I’d say that the circus elements were visually stunning. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that all of the art directing was brilliant, because the indigenous section of the movie was very weak on that front. (In almost all fronts really, but I’ll get to that later.) However, the circus-themed aspects of the movie were pretty enticing -- and had this style been consistent throughout the movie, it could have been one of my favourite art directing in a while. However, it wasn’t. We only had a few glimpses of it, such as when we first see the pirates of Neverland: in an otherwise dark room, one yellow spotlight lit up, a pirate dropped from the ceiling, with an elastic clearly wrapped around his waist, snatched something up, and slipped back up out of view. The snappy timing of the situation, the comically elaborate costumes and the whole theatricality of the sequence made it all very surreal and visually intriguing. Again, I wish this circus theme had stayed throughout the movie, because the rest of it simply did not live up to it.

This leads me to the next point which is where I will shift into negative gear. Now, from the beginning of this review, you probably thought I was going to say this movie was genius, but fear not; those reviews online had good reason to criticize this movie. And my reason for joining them is because the aspects that this movie gets wrong, it gets really wrong. 

The first aspect that bothered me was the inconsistency in tone. The beginning of this movie is quite delightful in my opinion -- a sort of “Home Alone” vibe, as my friend called it. Adults are quite simply caricatures of adults, and the children are the real heroes of the story. That in itself was a tiny movie that begins with (**tiny spoiler**) Peter at the orphanage and ends with him and Nibs finding something they were not looking for (**end of spoiler**). Then, the second movie begins: an action movie where Peter is forced into a dark, adult world where death, slavery and capitalism are ever present; this, by far is the strongest part of the movie in my opinion. The conversation between Peter and Blackbeard in the Captain’s Cabin is one of the most chilling sequences I have ever seen. Their age difference is so obvious displayed, thanks to the difference in the complexity of their dialogue and interests. I was very positively impressed by the scene’s depth, and particularly by Hugh Jackman’s acting. 

From then on, the movie goes downhill. It becomes your usual very-bad-adaptation of a story, with corny costumes, weird character development and quite frankly, racism left to right. I’m not one to hammer on socially inadequate problems, because I’m afraid of joining in today’s abuse of the term “politically correct”.  However, this movie really did some very poor decisions on that front. I mean, the most violent character is the only prominent dark-skinned character; the only traitor is the Indian-looking character; the only character that can barely speak English is Asian; and the only strong indigenous character is played by a white actress. I mean. It’s hard to defend casting decisions like that.

Apart from that, although the special effects were pretty good, the integration between them and the characters was a bit… jarring. By that, I mean that sometimes we would see an extreme long shot (shot from very far) of a CGI battle taking place, then suddenly cut to a close-up of the character’s reaction to the battle... and not for one second did I believe that those two shots were taking place at the same at the same time and space. My movie-geek mind could just see the actors standing in front of a green screen and some director yelling at them “PRETEND TO REACT TO THIS!! REMEMBER THIS IS ALL VEEEERY SCARY!!” The soundtrack and quality of the actors themselves almost fixed this feeling, but I couldn’t quite shake it off. This CG oddness got considerably more relevant whenever flying characters were involved; it was very difficult for me to believe that they were part of the same world as the non-flying characters, which took me away from the story in numerous occasions.

Finally, one of my biggest problems was the character of Hook. I won’t say much about him in respect for those who want to watch the movie spoiler free, but let’s just say that as an origin story, it felt quite thrown together and poorly developed. His motivations were nebulous to say to least and it’s difficult to see how he and the Captain Hook we know turn out to be the same person. And if they truly do, then I would love to see that happening, because what I saw so far did not sell me on that story point. 

Not only that, but it felt like a wasted opportunity to make something incredible. Imagine if (** Spoilers ahead till the end of this paragraph**) after Peter gets taken to Neverland, Peter’s best friend, Nibs actually grows up and becomes bitter. And suppose, that when Peter does come back for him, Nibs has become a self-reliant old man, whose life was so sad and lonely, that his only drive to live was to hate that “blasted Peter Pan” who left him rotting in that orphanage. Now suppose that at some point in the movie, you find out that Nibs’ last name is actually Hook. I mean, wouldn’t you have lost your mind a tiny little bit? Wouldn’t it have been superb if Peter turned out to be the originator of his own nemesis? Wouldn’t it be tragic if, child-minded Peter doesn’t see the bitterness in Nibs-turned-Hook, and continues to play hero-versus-villain with his best friend for the rest of his days? Meanwhile, Nibs-Hook is actually trying to get to Peter, but can’t quite bring himself to kill him because they were best friends once? (**End of Spoiler**) Now that would have been true to the creepy, deep tone that the movie had established in the beginning, and could have actually done justice to the great character of Captain Hook.

In fact, as ridiculous as this might sound, I believe that the lack of time was part of this movie’s problem. “Wait, you’re saying you wanted more of this??” I hear you rage. Well, sort of, yes. I think this movie had a lot of rich material they could have explored, particularly in the dark aspects, like the slavery and war. The contrast between innocent children and truly infamous world is a hard sell, but a very possible one, if Stranger Things (2016) has taught me anything. 

The indigenous people also felt thrown into the story for me, and even seemed unnecessary the way they were presented. Their fighting style didn’t seem particularly unique (or effective), their costumes were not particularly rich, and their intentions seemed to come from a glorified past we didn’t get to see. I feel like they had to be there because they were in the original story, but their necessity in this movie was questionable. 

Now, if the movie had had more time, say, (**Spoilers ahead**) if the first movie had focused simply on Blackbeard’s exploitation of pixum and Peter’s escape from the compound, then the second one could have been about Peter discovering Neverland and its inhabitants (the tribe, the fairies, the mermaids), and the third movie could be the climax where Peter rises up against Blackbeard and the Pirates (**end of spoilers**). 

Again, I know this would all never happen, because producers don’t like investing in something they’re not sure will sell. They would hardly invest in three Peter Pan origin movies, particularly if the first one did as badly as Pan did. But as usual, I am speaking from a story standpoint. And although I understand that people claim that the world has simply “moved on” from the notion of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, I think that if we had had the time to explore a new, original Neverland, we could have been sold into loving Peter again. This movie could have reawaken the joys of being a child into many viewers’ hearts. But instead, it settled for being a rushed movie, with clashing themes, and brilliant aspects just begging to be explored. Now, it’s true that, as I said in the beginning, my expectations for this movie might have been so low, I ended up finding too many redeeming points about it, and maybe one day I’ll come to disagree with myself about all this. But for now, I honestly feel that this is one of the only bad movies I wish they had done more of.