#and using cgi takes basically all of that away??

[saltytearsofjoy]

This is the second time I’ve read a manga and found out it has an anime that uses cgi

[pianapplez]

I'm so tired of shows that absolutely ignore the source material and feel like they straight up don't understand what's important about it, just make a different show why even bother at this point.

[catastrophicdisasters]

apologies, i'm still angry abt TUA S4

so, if we take out all of the blatant issues with the season (character assassination, 'resolutions' that create more plotholes than they solve, rushed scenes that make no sense, side plots that go nowhere, raymond vanishing for no reason, etc etc), what are we left with? let's see:

fatphobia (multiple jokes made about 'chubby Diego', when David just looks hydrated and healthy)

SA played for jokes (it's clear that Klaus having sex while possessed is supposed to be funny, but he's being held hostage and forced to do this for money, when we already know he didn't even want his powers back??)

cheating

problematic / borderline problematic age gaps (either way you spin it, either Five is physically 20-26 while Lila is likely mid 40s, or Five is mentally 70s while Lila is mid 40s; Aidan was 19 while filming, and Ritu was 34)

waiting for the actor to come of age before introducing a romance (we already know what some fans can be like over Five/Aidan, this will not have helped; I would be horrified if I found out the show runners had planned a romance arc with a coworked 15 years older than me and then waited for me to turn legal age to execute it)

sexism (i was reluctant to call it that but i also don't know what else to call it - Lila basically had her agency stripped away to become the love interest two men fought over; Steve wanted Five to have a romance and didn't care who with - use Lila simply because she was there)

complete disregard of character trauma (Klaus being buried alive despite it having been mentioned in every prior season that he was locked in a mausoleum by Reginald, including literally being left to die)

possible overstepping of an actor's boundaries (i've not been able to verify this, but i've seen it said that robert sheehan has requested not to do sex scenes?) (still havent been able to prove this; wasn't an issue with other roles so... hesitant to leave it)

actors requests being ignored (David asked multiple times if the Lila cheating sideplot was required, but clearly it went ahead anyway)

bad cgi

that awful vomit montage

Reginald (im not quite calling it abuse forgiveness but uh. it's not far off tbh)

i don't even know what to call this, but basically told the Hargreeves the abuse they suffered was their fault because they shouldn't even exist??

what did i miss? (im sure there's something)

from the replies:

the song in the ep3 dance scene uses a slur for romani people (and is also about a man and an underage girl)

SA dismissal (it's literally never addressed that Allison SA'd Luther last season. like, at all. everything's just a-okay now!)

more sexism (Allison's arc was also reduced to serving men; there's a single line to explain that Ray left, with no mention of why (i could go OFF about this but this post isn't supposed to be about mishandling of characters); even after everything, all her bonding with Claire comes through Klaus's storyline. also, Sloane is just gone and nobody gives a shit - Luther has one line and that's it??)

so many issues with consent (all of the girls shown in the place Klaus works look drugged / Klaus doesn't want to be there and doing any of that, it's all against his wishes / they all get their powers back against their wishes - although they do tell Ben that wasn't his choice to make / Klaus gets his powers back against his will when Allison is pressured to do it to save his life)

[bruhstation]

You seem like a Train Professional so where would one begin in order to get into the funny little talking train show?

these are all my own opinions so take it like a grain of salt -- the common go-to would be the thomas and friends tv show. start off from season 1 then work all your way up to the top (not actually really. you can skip some later seasons like s17 if you want to). the model seasons are considered to be some of the greatest because 1) they set the foundation of the cast (besides the railway series books) 2) they contain some of the most iconic scenes from the show like gordon's ronan kirk crash, the flying kipper accident, james and the shoelaces, etc and 3) they're the originals so you know what their personalities and relationships to their peers were like and how their characterization was supposed to be like before the cgi era flip flopped them up

also check out the railway series books in the meantime! the funny talking train show was based on the book series created by reverend awdry for his sick son! the first book feature edward, henry, and gordon. thomas appears in the second book. fast forward decades later and britt alcroft created a tv show called thomas the tank engine. there are many eras of the show, from models, to model/cgi hybrid, to computer animations where the show gets passed around like a volleyball from studio to studio

here's a google spreadsheet that contains all the thomas and friends episodes in various languages. feel free to watch the show for yourself and decide which seasons you like the most

some more of my thoughts under the cut

I recommend you steer clear of the big world big adventures seasons and specials because it's probably the most controversial seasons in the fandom. replacing two of the core cast members, "pandering" to certain audiences, putting in lackluster representation for the sake of selling toys, SAID representation turns out to be racist depictions, all of it reflected the current state of mattel when handling thomas and friends. they also didn't contribute anything to the overall show, like by the time the bwba seasons were out, people dgaf and just focused on the older seasons. you can ignore bwba and you won't miss anything important about ttte. not that I'm stopping you! you have your own free will.

the thing about ttte that made many adults get into it (if not for train autism) is how ttte was a show grounded in reality. idk if that makes sense but basically despite being a show about mean talking trains for little kids, reverend awdry and britt alcroft handled the characters with care. they gave the engines so much charm by making them bicker with each other like the cranky old engines they are BUT they're not reduced to singular personality traits too. thomas is cheeky and kind of a meanie but he wants to prove himself useful. edward is old and acts as a mentor to thomas but he also wants to show that he still got it despite his old age. gordon went from being a pompous grand young express engine to a humble old engine being a mentor to the newer ones and so on! they also put a lot of historical references related to the engines' basis too and tie their backstories in (henry's a stolen faulty design hence his cynical, miserable personality at the early seasons of the show). there's even irl engines mentioned in both the books and show (flying scotsman and city of truro) and it's just neat!!! because awdry cares about history so much!!!! that he even made an "encyclopedia" about sodor, its railways, and its history

the books and the earlier seasons of ttte didn't shy away from themes of death and usefulness and all that (the story of godred, henry being a faulty engine and getting cask of amontillado'd for being uncooperative, all of gordon's siblings scrapped sans flying scotsman) because the thing about them being engines are important to them. it's their reison d'etre. they get scrapped if they cannot be of use anymore, because that's how things have always been. they get into accidents often because their ego got to them. dieselization is starting on the island of sodor and the diesels are asserting their dominance over the oldschool steam engines. the engines just exist there. they just happen to have faces and talk. idk. I think it's interesting how they view life a bit differently than humans. thank you for listening to my ramble

[jakey-beefed-it]

I watched Alien: Romulus tonight, after having wanted to see it since it came out. Spoiler-free review: It's a B that could've been an A. Probably the best Alien movie since Aliens, definitely the best since Alien 3. It's at its best when it's doing it's own thing, and at its weakest when too directly trying to be "just like Alien/Aliens!". If I have one chief complaint, it's that it would benefit from a stronger 'less is more' approach than it takes. Spoilers below the cut.

So one problem I have is the timing. The alien's lifecycle, as established in other films, takes time. It's fast as hell compared to normal things, but on the order of hours and days rather than months and years, rather than minutes. They could've tossed in a single comment to the effect of "the scientists extracted the black goo compound and refined it, testing it on the facehuggers and whoops their lifecycle got sped WAY the fuck up" but they didn't so that's the realm of headcanon rather than text.

EDIT: rewatched it today and there is some commentary over how the xenomorph has a measure of control over its metabolism; the reason it's able to mature so rapidly and yet also shut down for long-term vacuum survival. It's not quite as apparent as I'd like but it definitely qualifies as offering at least some textual explanation so my above complaint is less 'this makes no internal sense' and more 'this strains my suspension of disbelief even more than the things' ability to grow to prodigious size without seemingly feeding on anything already did.'

Speaking of the black goo, yeah, it ties back into Prometheus (which I saw, and personally didn't much like) and Covenant (which I didn't see owing to not having much liked Prometheus). On the whole I don't know that this was the right move for the franchise, but the film mostly makes it work. The final monster being essentially a xenomorph/engineer hybrid was not a premise I was excited about and the stills I'd seen made it look kinda stupid, but in the actual execution, it is suitably unsettling/uncanny and imo it actually works.

There were a couple of nostalgia lines that made me roll my eyes pretty hard- when Andy rescues Rain toward the end by zero-g divebombing an oncoming xenomorph, shooting it and saying "get away from her" i was like "yeah great, good callback, good moment". When he then adds "...you bitch" I rolled my eyes. Didn't fit the moment or the character, was strictly there to reference a better moment in a better movie.

Which isn't to fault David Jonsson, who plays Andy extremely well. Due to synthetic fuckery he has basically 2, 2 and a half personalities throughout the film, and he does them all very very well. Stand-out performance IMO, would love to see him in more stuff.

Cailee Spaeny does a good job as Rain, there were a couple moments early on where I wasn't 100% convinced of her authenticity, but as the film wore on, I saw that it was an acting choice to make Rain a bit socially stunted, coming across as awkward.

None of the actors were bad at all, and while I have some ethical concerns with digitally resurrecting a cgi Ian Holm circa 1979, the effects were cromulent and whoever they got to do most of his voice work was quite good, and Rook made for a decent antagonist.

On the topic of 'less is more' I mentioned above, I really wish they'd used fewer aliens in a couple of the big set pieces. You don't need a dozen scrambling facehuggers to be terrifying, you honestly don't need more than one, but the pair of them from the scene with Ripley and Newt proves that 'one per endangered character' is a fine guideline. Likewise when they get to the hive section of the station, they could've kept it every bit as terrifying (and indeed probably more so) with fewer, stealthier aliens than they used.

EDIT: the things a lot of horror fans care most about that I didn't mention on my first pass. The SFX are great, very effective. I'm not sure to what degree they relied on practical effects but there's a much more tangible feel to a lot of things that are very hard to get with cgi. There are a couple of cgi moments that are less effective imo- the zero-g acid blood wasn't 100% convincing though it was by no means bad -but for the most part, it was all very convincing and suitably visceral for a franchise so thoroughly rooted in body horror. The deaths were gruesome in a franchise-appropriate way, for the most part, and people who watch horror movies with that as their priority should be reasonably satisfied. The lighting was dark in a good way- not so dark you couldn't see what the fuck was happening, but dark enough that the shadows were ominous and potentially hiding threats. Set design was flawless, no notes.

From a scientific standpoint, i didn't like how solid the rings were. Planetary rings are absolutely a feasible astronomical hazard one would want to avoid crashing into, but that's less to do with their status as what looked like a frozen sea of bumper-to-bumper icebergs, and more to do with their being composed of eighty fucktillion objects moving at orbital velocities which will absolutely shred any object moving perpindicularly (more or less) through them. This is admittedly a pretty nerdy quibble that most viewers won't give a shit about and I'm willing to mostly overlook it for the sake of the film but it did make me pull a scrunchy Kermit face.

My most minor complaint was the (in my opinion) overuse of the Weyland-Yutani name and logo. A single use of the logo would've been sufficient. Since the film's mission statement was basically a return to the whole cassette-futurism of the first two films, calling it simply 'the Company' would've gone a long way toward that.

Probably my most significant complaint pertains to misogyny. Like, okay, this is an Alien film, it's going to be chock-full of reproductive body horror, big creepy bio-mechanical genital-lookin stuff, etc. But of the four characters who die, both men die of 'being attacked by a full-grown alien'. One dies by being impaled by a phallic tail, so that's something, I guess. The other dies by getting whomped upside the head and falling into the stream of some acid pouring from a distinctly vaginal alien coccoon. He'd just rammed a phallic tazer thing into it though, so maybe it's some weird sort of payback if you want to psychoanalyze it. Both women, however, die due to alien pregnancy- one from a normal chestburster, the other killed by the weird uncanny human-alien-engineer monster her fetus turned into after she tried to save her own life by injecting the black goo. Not by its birth, despite the size of the coccoon thing she passes and the accompanying blood loss, but when it comes back and chomps on her a bit with its more eel-like pharyngial jaw. Which is also rather phallic now that i write it out like that. Meh.

EDIT: there's also a bit of unfortunate implications wrt race. Two points, outlined below.

The most obvious is that the artificial person owned by the company is a black man, but given that previous synths in the franchise have all been white actors (Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen, Winona Ryder, Michael Fassbender) it probably gets a bit of a pass. Only a bit of one, in that Andy is outright stated to be a more menial model than, say, Ash or Bishop given the designed role of 'mining colony asset' rather than 'science officer' or 'colonial marines assset' which has some unfortunate implications. I might have more to say on the matter if I myself was black, but I'll leave that to other reviewers.

The other thing is that the survivors are the white woman and her synthetic brother (played by a black man, as mentioned above). Which could be worse, for sure, but it doesn't sit entirely right with me that the brown guys (I couldn't speak to their specific ethnicity though I'd take a stab at 'mixed' with some white ancestry in there too) and the brown woman (definitely a latina) get killed off. As a mixed white/latino guy, I just wanna see a brown person survive the whole horror movie sometimes. I'm often disappointed. At least the director is a latino guy? It's something.

On the whole though, it's a pretty effective, decent Alien film that could've been a very effective, great Alien film if it had a bit more restraint. Your mileage may vary, of course, but in my opinion, the weaker elements don't wholly overwhelm the stronger ones, only dragging it down a peg or so.

[aangarchy]

Netflix atla live action review ep 7-8

Home stretch baby. I figured since i love the source material i should just be able to enjoy it, or at least be entertained by it somewhat. But even that was just not possible. I pirated it after the first three episodes just bc i didn't want to give netflix the satisfaction of a view.

It's not so much the acting, the costumes or even the bad/mediocre cgi, it's the writing. It's an absolute shitshow, a mess of the highest caliber. For someone who claims to love the source material, it really seems like Albert Kim didn't understand why a lot of the things in the original worked the way they did. Things that are important for character growth got removed, and lore that we normally don't see til later on in the show (or even in a completely different story within this universe!!) got crammed in. For no good reason too bc it doesn't really add anything, just gives us another obstacle or useless exposition that's supposed to explain another useless thing they added.

Both of the last episodes take place in the north pole. This makes sense somewhat because in the original all three of the last episodes took place there. The reason they did this in the original is to have room for all of the stories that still need to take place (pakku, zuko, spirit world, koh, waterbending training, sokka and yue etc.) However in this version, even though minutes wise we have more time, we have less story. Like way less. Also episode 7 proportionally is much shorter than 8 and it really gives issues with pacing.

Let's start with what annoyed me most. Where is the waterbending training? Where is it? The season's title is Water and Aang bent ZERO water this entire season unless he was in the avatar state. Katara "trains" yes, but it's mostly practicing moves she found on the scroll (which gran gran just gave to her? Why didn't this woman give it to her sooner???). She gets NO guidance from anyone, and the way she gets better at bending each time is because a BOY told her encouraging things. A BOY. In the OG we get Pakku saying "raw talent alone is not enough", which makes sense because bending in this universe is an extension of martial arts, and you have to train to become good at martial arts. This LA show however treated bending like a magic power, basically giving some mumbo jumbo about balance and a clear head and think of the people you love to become a better bender. And while yes, your mental headspace also is important (as highlighted in the original where zuko couldn't bend anymore bc he had no aggression left) it wasn't the only factor, it wasn't even the main factor.

When we arrive at the North Pole, Pakku and the chief of the North both expect Aang to help with battle strategy in order to stop the attack bc they're already aware it's coming. Aang tells them he doesn't really know how (wtf were they even expecting it mean that is a whole 12yr old) and they turn away going "guess we can't count on the avatar" like? Dude?? If they have such good intel that they already know the fire nation is preparing an attack, and that the Avatar is alive, how tf did you not hear that the Avatar is also 12 years old and far from a master of the four elements? Idk this weirded me out.

They removed the deserter episode, which means Aang doesn't renounce firebending, which means we get no storyline of Aang dealing with his conflicted feelings surrounding firebending because fire gives life, not just destruction. Katara also doesn't find out she can heal naturally. We just get told that healing is just a thing all waterbenders can do if they train for it. Katara's necklace has no significance at all in the story currently. Yugoda doesn't recognize that Katara is Kanna's granddaughter. Katara's gran gran being from the north originally doesn't play part in the story at all. Katara doesn't even once utter the words "this necklace used to be my mother's". Idk why that bothers me so much but it does. They also removed her rage at not being allowed to fight. Sure this show's Katara also goes to fight Pakku, but literally everytime she speaks she just sounds reasonable. She fights him not because she's So Enraged at not being allowed to become the master she's meant to be, but because the script demands it. She says it so matter of factly too. She's like a mellowed out shell of who Katara is supposed to be. I feel like this overall for her character in this show btw. I don't blame Kiawentiio bc i saw clips of her performance in other works (anne with an e notably) and she's good. This genuinely just seems like poor writing and directing. They removed all of Katara's passion. She's not warm, she's not feisty, she's not angry, she's not nurturing, she's also not flawed at all. I hate to say it but in this version she's giving Mary Sue, especially bc she just learns waterbending on her own, and then gets called a master out of nowhere. That's not how that's supposed to work. You're supposed to earn the term master.

Let's talk about Yue. Amber Midthunder is a great actress, but damn, that wig. Their budget was over 100 million dollars and yet they couldn't give my girl a lace front? Her wig was so structured and stiff, and if it were any other context like cosplay or a drag show this would have been perfect. Now it just looked really unnatural and instead of the hair being platinum it was gray. Yue's character got given more to do here. They changed the story to have her break her own engagement, but it's implied that the reason she did this is bc she met Sokka in the spirit world and... fell in love? Idk it was a bit weird. Both Suki and Yue were inexplicably entranced with Sokka. In the OG it's implied that Yue likes Sokka bc he's so different from the boys in the north, kind of like a city girl falling in love with a country boy. But here it feels different, he doesn't stand out at all compared to the other boys, and Hahn isn't a dickhead like the OG. I will say i like that Yue is a stronger character here. She takes charge of her own destiny and she is the one to realize that she can save the moon spirit, and wasn't told by someone else that she could do it. I am confused by them making her a waterbender, but i'm not mad at that change per se. I liked her sacrifice scene, her own acting was great. Sokka however... i genuinely burst out laughing, like so loud. The zoom in on his face, the expression, it was too much and too little at once. Overall, Yue's story was okay. Was it better than the original? Debatable. But it wasn't bad and that's a win.

We get Avatar Kuruk way earlier than we originally got him. I'm still kind of confused about the whole "you can talk to past Avatars but only in their shrine with their statue" thing, because if that's the case how in the hell is Aang ever gonna ask advice from Roku (or Kyoshi, since the writers clearly have a bias towards her and want to make her the main Avatar guide ig) without having to travel all the way to the shrine? Can they only talk in the one specific shrine or can we take a miniature set of Avatar action figures with us just in case we ever need advice? Also this lore abt the shrines and statues is flawed at best bc later on Kuruk shows up for Aang during the fight, while they're not present at the shrine. Either way, Kuruk was far from the go with the flow Avatar he was characterized as in the original. I know that we got some insight into Kuruk's story in the Kyoshi novels, and turns out it's a lot darker than expected, but Kuruk never let that change his character. He always remained chill, or at least kept up the facade, and i don't think OG Kuruk would be the type of man that is angry about how his life turned out. In this version, Kuruk is this scared, mean, bitter man who is really unsatisfied with his destiny, which he lashed out at Aang for. He seemed really angry at Aang to for no good reason. We're also not supposed to know this part about Kuruk's life yet. It's too much information and de waste time learning about his life story, the only reason we learn it in the first place is to explain the Special Spirit Killing Knife. Also the actor for Kuruk.... yikes bro. Idk which hallmark movie they pulled him from but he and his stupid polar bear hat looked like ass the whole time.

So there's this weird part about Kuruk having a Special Knife that is able to kill spirits. Idk if this is a thing from the Kyoshi novels that also made it into this show bc truth be told i haven't made it far into those novels yet at all, but it was strange to me. Somehow Zhao has this knife. We don't know how he ended up getting it (did the fire sage give it to him? I didn't see it but i might have missed it) and we pretend that this is the Only Thing that can kill spirits even when the spirits are mortal. Doesn't that negate the fact that the spirits are mortal, if they can only be killed by a Special Knife? Also there's this weird convoluted part about how the spirits actually live in the spirit world and only cross to the physical world once every ice moon to know what it feels like to be "mortal" and choose a different "mortal" form each time and this time they happened to be fish. But still, they can Only Be Killed By The Special Knife. Huh? What's the purpose of this added extra lore? I saw someone say the underlying point is that it shouldn't be this easy to kill spirits but.... that's the whole idea behind the Ocean and Moon spirits having permanent mortal forms? Them being mortal and choosing a form as insignificant as a fish, constantly circling each other to represent the precarious balance between Ocean and Moon, a balance that can be thrown off very easily. The whole point was that they're fragile so why add all this extra exposition for no reason? Why make the spirits harder to kill if in the end you're still just gonna have a guy stabbing a wet bag and not some rough spirit killing battle?

Zhao also just gets told by the fire sage that killing the moon is a thing he can do. I don't like what this changes about Zhao's character. Zhao is supposed to be this cunning man. He's scary, determined, strategically inclined, but alas overconfident and willing to go too far which ends up being his downfall. His ambition is what led him to do his own research by visiting a spirit library to find any weakness he could potentially exploit, and that's precisely what he found. In the original, Zhao always fought for his own career. His own accomplishments got him the tools to try and beat Zuko in the Avatar race. But in this version, Zhao just keeps getting handed things. He's a slippery snake that plays friends with Zuko and then tries to steal the glory from under his nose. He gets handed the archers, he gets handed the information on the moon spirit, he gets handed a war balloon (which completely ruins the surprise of the fire nation suddenly having air power at the invasion), and he gets helped by Azula of all people. It makes him look a bit chumpy in this story, and it really worsens his villain qualities.

On a completely other note, this LA seems to have a thing for making adults yell at a 12yr old Avatar for leaving the world behind, and it doesn't make any sense, because in this story Aang left on Appa for a joyride to clear his head. Aang didn't purposely leave. He had every intention of returning after an hour. Yet every adult in this show, even the past Avatars that know damn well Aang didn't flee from his responsibilities, yells at him bc he accidentally got encased in ice. And somehow this Aang gets made to feel worse about it than OG Aang even though he deserves it way less bc this Aang didn't actually run away! I don't like what this changes about Aang's character. In the OG, Aang has one fatal character flaw and that's avoiding responsibility. He runs away, and has problems with taking accountability for what his actions cost the world. He goofs around, plays games and likes to have fun to avoid having to face his destiny, all while carrying the guilt and blame for the century war. It's a huge part of Aang's character journey. The guilt he feels isn't misplaced bc Aang knows he ran off, and he knows that the world is in its current state because of his decision. In the end he takes responsibility by showing up to the fight with Ozai alone. In this LA, even though by all means Aang shouldn't feel responsible, he ends up taking responsibility right away. He goes to Kyoshi Island, not to goof around and ride giant koi, but because he knows he can talk to Kyoshi there. Kyoshi yells at him for leaving (again, why? She knows he didn't run away) and gives him a vision about the watertribe getting destroyed. Instead of panicking about it (like OG Aang did after finding out abt the comet) he just accepts that he needs to go and help. And while this Aang does get to have fun moments (i especially loved how in the first episode he sees playing watertribe children and immediately joins them, that was quintessential Aang), he just seems very down and serious a lot of the time. He's scared of people getting hurt and is very worried abt the safety of his friends to the point where he agrees with Pakku and tells Katara she shouldn't fight. It's not Aang at all bc OG Aang was rooting for Katara when she fought Pakku. To sum it up: i think the casting for Aang was perfect. A cute southeast asian skater kid that loves to have fun and genuinely just looked the part? Brilliant! I am genuinely not upset at Gordon's performance at all (although sometimes i wish he'd enunciate a bit better). But the writing messed up the character so much that i couldn't even feel the joy for having the perfect looking Aang. I will say Koifish Godzilla (Koizilla if you will) looked dope. What did confuse me abt the Koizilla scenes is that sometimes there was no music (which is a choice i often like bc it gives the scene extra gravitas) and then sometimes there was a majestic score playing in the back, like they couldn't choose how they were gonna execute it and just picked both. I know that's nitpicky but it bothered me nonetheless.

Speaking of Koizilla. Wtf was that thing they added about Aang "succumbing" to the ocean spirit and being "lost"? They didn't even explain it at all, but both Yue and Iroh talked about how Aang would be lost forever now. We don't get a why, we don't get a how. And "lost" is such a vague word for it too. Like would his spirit be lost and only his body remain? Would he be completely swallowed up by the ocean? Would he remain Koizilla, forever rampaging at the ice wall? They added this for extra tension i guess, but it doesn't really work when only minutes later Aang is able to return no problem bc Katara talked him out of it, so we don't even get to find out what "he'll be lost forever" means. Also: the scene with Katara talking Aang out of it was cute, but the execution was weird. Originally Katara gives this speech when Aang goes Avatar state at the southern airtemple. I like that they still kept Katara's speech to Aang bc it highlights their bond which is especially important for later on in the show, but I don't like how now Katara had to give this really heartfelt emotional speech to Aang in front of everyone else at the northern watertribe. It's supposed to be quite an intimate moment between her, Sokka and Aang as a new family, they're supposed to promise they won't let anyone harm him, which eventually calms him down. Here though Katara's just yelling these words at him in front of everyone and all the intimacy is gone. It also doesn't work as well bc we barely got any time of the gaang bonding. They spend episode 3-6 apart most of the time, so really they shouldn't feel this bond towards each other just yet. Because this LA removed a lot of the side adventures, we don't get the feeling that these kids have known each other for months.

Another thing they removed is Appa and Momo as characters. In the original they each get their own moments, we even got one whole episode with Appa as the main character (which won an award btw). Here though, Appa is solely used as a transportation animal and Momo... honestly i don't even remember what he does but i think it's mostly a small comedic bit? Also he hands the acorn to one of the characters. This is a bad change bc in these episodes Momo gets hurt so bad he nearly dies, and it has no emotional impact at all bc he's just an accessory in this story. I felt no emotional attachment to Momo and he just has no personality. I wonder how this choice is gonna play out when we get the kidnapped Appa story bc so far it's not looking good.

Anyway, for positives. I warmed up on Dallas's performance a lot, i wasn't that mad at Ian Ousley's performance and there were moments where he genuinely made me laugh. The cgi for the creatures was decent, but for the backgrounds it looked horrible. I liked that they showed how devastating the Seige of the North ended up being, with the unnamed kid and Hahn both dying. I liked the effect showing those two had on our main characters. I liked when Aang, Sokka and Katara all worked together taking out that one firenation ship. I liked the way they showed Sokka and Yue bonding. I really warmed up to the costumes as well, i still wish they dirtied it up a little to make them look less new.

There's probably some more positives but they're really minor compared to the negatives and also my brain is just done atp. I'm never gonna rewatch it for more analysis either bc i don't think i'll survive it lol. I might make another post abt my opinion on the show as a whole? Like an overall summary? Bc this shit is VERY long and i do apologize. If you made it this far, uhm. Thanks for caring abt my opinion so much that you sat down for like 10 minutes to read my angry yapping? I appreciate it.

Anyway bye

[crehador]

BROTHER CRAB'S SUMMER 2024 TOP THREE

i can't believe this is happening i really can't believe it but i think i'm gonna have to go with

THIRD PLACE: NIGE JOUZU NO WAKAGIMI

for much of the season, nigewaka seemed like it was easily going to be my anime of the season. it had a banging first episode and never at any point got less enjoyable to me

the animation was consistently beautiful (yeah sure with the occasional jarring bit of cgi but in all honesty it never bothered me much) and the characters are all delightful to me

i think the mix of humor and the horrors of war depicted here, understandably, might not appeal to everyone. but it really worked for me. the fact that these characters are so lively and alive, as opposed to doomed and hopeless, in these times of strife makes the stakes feel all the higher to me

so despite it taking third place on my list, this is still solidly one of the best shows of the season (of the year, even)

a few things just happened to blow me away a tad bit more

SECOND PLACE: DEAD DEAD DEMONS DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION

honestly this is so close for me that demons and nigewaka may as well be a tie, but maybe demons gets a slight edge just for being something so fresh to me

god i loved this. it's been a hot minute since i've seen something that felt so real and human. aliens are invading, the world is ending, but girls will be girls

i guess, like nigewaka, demons also mixes some good ol' humor with The Horrors, and it really works here too. the theme of "hey there's this giant alien mothership hanging over the city but life goes on" is executed so well in the early episodes of this series, and the plottier plot comes together in such a satisfying way in the later episodes

and seriously just huge props to ano and lilas ikuta for their performances in the leading roles here, they smashed it. if i didn't know, never in my life would i have guessed they weren't voice actors with years and years of experience each

ANIME OF THE SEASON: TSUE TO TSURUGI NO WISTORIA

first things first, i would not say this is objectively the best show of the season

but holy shit this is the most fun i've had all year

i'm probably more surprised than anyone that wistoria is ending up as my anime of the season, because even after a whole season, the story is just so... it's basically nothing (stay with me)

there are so many things you could call the plot of wistoria. typical, tropey, contrived, textbook, tired, etc etc etc. anyone who finds the plot boring isn't wrong. it's a fantasy magic school series like any other fantasy magic school series, with so many tropes that you'll recognize if you've watched basically any amount of fantasy at all

but for some reason i didn't dislike it. maybe wistoria doesn't do anything new, but it hits on all these familiar plot beats in such fun and entertaining ways

at some point i realized what word i really wanted to use to describe it:

quintessential

sure, it wouldn't be unfair to call it contrived or derivative or what have you. but to me, this is a quintessential fantasy action/adventure series. yes it hits on all the story beats we're familiar with, from countless series before it, but it hits each beat perfectly

the characters are ridiculous, all easily recognizable archetypes, but they're so unrepentant in who they are that i find myself enjoying them too

and then there's the animation

guys this show is fucking gorgeous. like if it weren't this pretty, i doubt i would be raving this much about it. if it had been just decently animation, i'm pretty sure i would've just enjoyed it a normal amount

but the animation is so so so good that this quickly became the number one show i was hoping for a season two of (and we are getting one!)

like the production quality just did not waver. i found myself baffled that this is the series, the story, that got this level of masterful work put into it. but then i started thinking maybe that's unfair, because really, the story is not bad. fairly simple and straightforward sure, but again: quintessential fantasy

not to end on an absurdly cheesy note, but just like how it's wistoria wand and sword, i think it's the stellar animation and entertaining story/cast that makes this series work so well. without the animation being this good, the story wouldn't have been enough to stand out. but without a truly entertaining story, the animation, however pretty, would have felt pretty empty too

very eagerly awaiting season two

[thegeminisage]

star trek: the motion picture rewrite

star trek the motion picture was bad so i'm fixing it. here's how

problem #1: everybody got interesting setups and nobody got any payoffs.

problem #2: ilia and decker were just not that interesting (sorry ilia and decker) and they either needed to be more interesting or have less screen time or both.

problem #3: it took more than half the film for the enterprise to even leave earth. this seems like poor pacing, which the overall film also suffers from.

problem #4: those damn 20-minute cgi scenery sequences. enough is enough.

sorry in advance but this post won't make much sense if you haven't seen the first star trek movie, "star trek: the motion picture." i don't have the time or patience to re-explain the entire plot! the novelization also ties into this but i do explain some of that.

MAIN PLOT

it wasn't a GREAT plot but i'm keeping it mostly the same, except a few changes:

the enterprise leaves much earlier in the film. all the interpersonal drama can happen ON THE WAY to v'ger and it would make very little difference to the main script and series of events, but the reminds that they're only x hours away from interception would help keep things tense and moving along. also, it would get spock in here earlier. we went a LONG time without seeing him.

the engines can still fail at the outset and get fixed by spock, but it's kind of weird that he shows up out of nowhere. i would change this to kirk leaving him messages - and spock finally answering at the exact right moment (more on this in spock's section)

less of those long cgi sequences, obviously. the enterprise deserves all the fanfare in the world but we do have other stuff to do. maybe we can learn a little about v'ger through the ilia-probe in bits and pieces before we get there rather than learning all at once at the end - the book sort of did that and it was better. but i think we just need to cut them to allow time for a LITTLE more interpersonal drama - the balance of interpersonal stuff to plot stuff was WAY off, even after you consider how the tos episodes are somtimes

i don't think decker should fuck the probe.

the book and movie seem to disagree on whether the ilia-probe really "is" ilia or a very convincing copy. i think we would do better to leave it open, as scifi so often is, because both answers feel slightly wrong to me

kirk just taking the ship at the end and going "ok thattaway" was heartwarming but lacks any semblance of logic. rather than beaming down to debrief, though - in case they don't let him go back up - i'd like to see him doing a power move where the required personnel for his debrief come to HIM. and THEN when the dust clears he can go "thattaway"

CHARACTER ARC: KIRK

there's a lot more on this in the book than the movie, but kirk begins this story three years post his five year journey. in the movie he's framed as "washed up" but the book sometimes implies he's "damaged." starfleet offered him the promotion to admiral to keep him out of space because his was the first ship to come back relatively intact after a five-year and they're using him as a poster boy for their pro-space propaganda. (kirk wholly disagrees with "intact"; he lost a total of 94 crew members over those five years and objects strongly to his new legendary fame.) it's worth noting that bones begged him NOT to take the promotion and he and some other officers actually RESIGNED over it.

also, for the first year back on earth, starfleet totally just SENT HIM A WOMAN? to like keep him distracted and "happy." he got honeypotted into not going back out into space. how many planets have tried to trap people by making them happy? how many times has kirk refused to stay in such a place because it leaves him nothing to strive for? and then, irony of horrific ironies, he was trapped on earth. he doesn't realize this woman was basically sent to pacify him until the very beginning of the film/book. anyway, this woman's name is lori, she's gonna matter just a little bit later. after she left, kirk got pushed into a desk job he was utterly fucking miserable in. he notes that it was the only time he ever ignored bones's advice and he suffered greatly for it.

when the "intruder" (v'ger, obvs) is revealed to be approaching earth (via brain implants? stupid, let's just switch to everyone seeing it on TV), kirk, for totally normal reasons, jumps at the chance to take the enterprise away from decker ostensibly because he's got more experience but also because (the book gets into this) he feels like he's been jerked around on a string for the last three years by the admirals (specifically he names nogura to give us a face but they were all in on it) and also that he's totally dead inside. he has to guilt trip bordering on BLACKMAIL nogura into letting him back aboard (ie bringing up the fact that he placated kirk with a woman and sweet promises instead of like...actually caring about his PTSD). we're keeping that part because it's sexy and fun.

the question the movie seems to be asking is, "is jim kirk too old and feeble to captain the enterprise again?" i would like to posit instead we go with "is jim kirk too DAMAGED to captain the enterprise again?" they really put him through the wringer in season 3 in particular and that total nervous breakdown from the romulan espionage episode was supposed to have been REAL before they changed it, so i'm sticking it in that three year timeskip instead. in the book, jim fucks up several times - can't figure out his seatbelt, gets lost, and notably fails to be able to save his former honeypot lori and his new vulcan first officer (off-brand spock) during a transport malfunction - they get rearranged horrifically and then die right in front of him. rather than frame this as jim being old and out of practice i'd like to frame it around the totally untreated PTSD of space and his five-year finally catching up to him.

the book ALSO gets into how jim feels more at home in space, how being away from it gives him physical symptoms almost like withdrawal, and how he felt he has been brought back from the dead and out of a miserable, meaningless life when stepping aboard for the first time. IMPORTANT FOR LATER.

at the same time though i think we might greatly benefit from mixed feelings - perhaps JIM HIMSELF has wondered if he was too damaged to get back out there - if, after everything, part of him wasn't a little hesitant to go back out into the unknown and risk putting himself through the kind of hell he got put through in some of those later tos episodes. maybe he wanted the captaincy to prove it to himself, yes, but also it was something he was determined to do (even though part of him was a little worried about doing it) because he thought he was the only one that COULD. there's a hidden element in this film of facing one's fears to benefit emotionally, so it would be important to squeeze something like this in, even if it's only in hints or light implications.

the ultimate answer to jim's question of course is that he ISN'T too damaged to be back out in space, especially not if spock and bones and the others are out there with him. but to get into that we have to move to...

CHARACTER ARC: DECKER AND ILIA

i'm putting these 2 together because (sorry) i don't care very much. side characters in trek are always supposed to just highlight the main characters anyway, right? again, i'm so sorry. anyway so. in the movie and especially the book, ilia is pretty constantly sexualized - deltan females and their pheromones or whatever - and she has very little personality. decker is mostly just mad (justifiably) that kirk stole his job after 18 months of prep and sad that ilia got zapped, but we feel neither of these things very strongly. the movie doesn't even MENTION decker's father killing himself in space* which is a huge waste of potential when you consider the name of the game re: kirk's arc, at least in the book, is PTSD.

*matt decker, will decker's father, is the captain from doomsday machine (consider this a spoiler warning): when a giant machine showed up and engaged in battle with his ship, the constellation, he evacuated his crew to a nearby planet and stayed behind, planning to go down with the ship. unfortunately the machine was a planet-eater, and ate the planet his crew was on, so his crew all died while he listened to them beg him for help, and he later tried to suicide bomb the machine with the enterprise and then later one of its shuttles, which tragically ended in his mostly-pointless death. kirk did at least use the idea to suicide bomb the machine with the damaged constellation and have himself beamed out just in time though, and he had the record made that matt decker died in the line of duty, omitting some of his shadier actions so as not to stain his memory or whatever.

ANYWAY, i think the only way to make decker and ilia interesting is to foil them with kirk and spock. decker is who kirk was before his five-year: smart, capable, ready to take on anything and chomping at the bit to get out there and bite off as much as he can chew and then some. also, he's emotionally distant from women because of his status as captain/his need to not be tied down so he can explore space.

ILIA on the other hand is more like spock - she has limited telepathic abilities, she is othered and sometimes sexualized by the people around her because of her VULCAN BIOLOGY sorry because of her race, and she has a passion for learning and pursuits of intellect. and also a semi-formal telepathic link with decker - they had met before, and were preparing to bond (the way a vulcan might), and then decker more or less got cold feet and left her at the altar because his own passion for being in space left him unable to commit. but she WENT AFTER HIM (important for later) and wound up as the enterprise navigator.

for decker, instead of showing kirk up once near the beginning, apologizing, and gradually learning to get along with him, i think i'd like him to be showing kirk up a lot - being subtly snide when kirk can't work his seatbelt, for example. this film has no real antagonist aside from an incomprehensible alien entity, but we could bring a little humanity to it by having decker justifiably resent not only being confronted with ilia again but also having his captaincy snatched away from him after EIGHTEEN. MONTHS. of prep. that's some serious bullshit.

but, while decker IS younger and more familiar with the enterprise's redesign, while he's had more recent space hours and suffers from none of kirk's PTSD, what he lacks is experience - this was the whole basis of kirk taking the fucking ship to begin with, and the movie as it is kind of totally invalidates that plot point. to that end, near the end of the film when they're in v'ger, i would make a bigger deal out of kirk knowing better than to perform the scan - because that's what got the klingons killed (when v'ger interpreted their scan as hostile). decker, shaken, realizes his own hasty decision would have resulted in all of them dying horrifically, and rather than kirk grudgingly respecting decker first, we get it the other way around - decker grudgingly respecting kirk, and kirk returning that respect after decker stops being an asshole. this does the job of helping the AUDIENCE respect kirk after spending so much time wondering if he was indeed too washed up and damaged to do the job, and it helps to begin to warm us up to decker too.

also, it would be fun to have decker overhear bones arguing with kirk or spock or even talking to chapel or something, to know that kirk was thought too washed up EVEN BY THE ADMIRALS (who decker does respect bc he doesn't know better yet), and then for decker to realize later kirk got jerked around - and maybe realize, once he begins to see kirk as a person instead of an obstacle, that something like that might be in his own future even if he succeeds in almost every possible way, as kirk had. we might even use this to get into decker's dad basically killing himself after losing his crew - it can go other ways than right for captains. it can also go so, so, so wrong. (this would require some exposition, though, since we can't expect everyone to have both seen the episode and remember the details.)

another moment that wasn't used to its full potential is when decker basically has to honeypot the ilia probe - this is extremely difficult on him emotionally, and kirk knows all about the perils of emotionally difficult honeypot missions (sorry that i'm linking to this twice). i think decker realizing kirk has done this same kind of thing like a zillion times and that's part of what led to his breakdown gives him respect not just for KIRK but for the position of captain itself - he would have no choice but to do this to protect 500 lives, if it were him. you don't get to tap out when you're captain. and this is good for kirk too, because in sympathizing with decker (and the horrific situation of having to honeypot the image of his dead lover) he can learn to sympathize with himself, and forgive himself for being at less than his best during his own worst moments - some of them during the five-year, some of them after, when he felt weak and without purpose. it also gives him the job of connecting the audience to decker - through him, through thinking of decker as a younger version of him, we can forgive decker for being an asshole earlier and sympathize with his pain. and he becomes someone we root for.

as for ilia - i think she should have gotten to yell at decker rather than passively act like he wasn't even there and hide her pain. her pain at being left behind and betrayed and having to find her own way could mirror spock's (more on this in a sec) but it could also mirror v'ger and its abandonment issues, even though she was abandoned by a boyfriend and not god. there's only so much you can do with truly misogynistic writing but she could've been likable!! her sitch and spock's are the same and she gets to complain while he refuses! even one iota of a personality would have helped so much.

ALSO, on that point, at least one conversation between her and spock would have done a lot to make her more interesting too, because then she would be adjacent to him. spock, too, left his home planet to chase after a space captain he was in um a relationship with, and that bit of kinship ("your answers are not here") could lead to a bonding moment - i think spock would respect what she's doing and that would lend her a lot of credit in the eyes of the audience. much like v'ger, much like spock, ilia has left her home to find out who she is, and part of that answer lies within emotion, within the people she loves: in this case, decker. i would also, if we HAVE to fridge her (DO WE?? more on this in the ending section), choose to have her take a blow meant for decker - her last act being one of love, because the film IS ultimately about love's importance, even in spite of all the pain it also causes (see: decker in his grief).

which leads us to...

CHARACTER ARC: BONES

we have to have a brief interlude here for bones. unfortunately, bones in this movie is little more than an extremely loveable afterthought. while fixing his ENTIRE deal is out of the scope of this tumblr post, what i WOULD do is give him more screentime by having both his AND spock's lives upended by the same event: kirk, the Main Character(tm), choosing to take the admiral stripes and "abandon" them.

i think theres enough evidence in tos to argue the case that bones places a lot of importance on jim and spock's lives - he claims to hate space, but he never resigns, and he finds meaning in taking care of them, even if (to my own interpretation), he can sometimes feel like a third wheel to their legendary "friendship" (so legendary that it's historically important both in-universe and in real life). when kirk agrees to "retire" and let starfleet make him their poster boy because he has PTSD and burnout, bones CANONICALLY objects to what starfleet is trying to do to him so strongly that he literally resigns. again, kirk notes in the book that "retiring" is the only time he ever ignored bones's advice and he came regret it deeply. so kirk needs bones back - in the book, he says outright he needs bones back because he, gaslit, cannot trust himself to be making solid calls emotionally, and he wants bones to call him out if he steps out of line.

for fun, i think bones should be a little more pissed about being "drafted" and like genuinely grumpy rather than fond and gruff - at least, until kirk apologizes. he tells bones all about being yanked around by the admirals and being honeypotted and how much he regretted not listening to his advice...and the gaslighting, not bones's medical expertise, is why kirk feels he needs bones now - why all of earth needs him, because this is a mission to save the entire planet. i think bones LOVES to be needed and especially by jim and/or spock, and he of course has a natural desire to caretake, so after the apology he could soften up to "gruff." he found meaning in what he was doing on earth, but he finds meaning in this too, and kirk telling him that of COURSE he can leave if he wants solidifies his decision to stay, even at the end of the film when the immediate threat has passed. put simply: he loves kirk and spock, and, like them, he wants the three of them to stay together, even though they previously broke his heart.

i think also that once spock comes aboard this gives bones a second job, which is to poke holes in spock's outward unemotional demeanor, which he genuinely is doing from a place of love (since it was bones who said the release of emotions is healthy). instead of standing around and being a lovable and nostalgic set piece, this would give him an actual purpose and an arc, even if his arc (healing spock via negging, healing jim via not gaslighting people) is holding up the other characters.

and speaking of spock...

CHARACTER ARC: SPOCK

post five-year, spock goes back to vulcan to undergo the kolinahr, a ritual meant to purge all remaining emotion from vulcans. he does this because he detests his human half and the many weaknesses and challenges it brings him etc etc but i also would like it if he does this because kirk retires - he has no logical, ready-made excuse to be around kirk and bones anymore, and just like kirk, he truly felt at home on the enterprise, where people valued him for his skill and what he could do rather than what he was (or wasn't). (this sentiment from spock is semi-canonical - it's in william shatner's tarsus iv novel, collision course.) kirk and bones are both an important part of his support system and it is crumbling without any way to save it - of COURSE he chooses not to feel emotion rather than face that pain. every human being ever has wished at some point or another they could numb themselves rather than hurt, and spock is half human, too. (that said, i would also not complain if kohlinahr was spock's way to escape the trauma of what the five-year did to HIM, making him feel emotions differently than what he believed was acceptable, changing him fundamentally as a person, and kirk only agreed to resign because space wasn't worth it without spock aka because he got dumped, but this is a minor detail.)

while on vulcan, kirk, equally adrift, sends him messages (this does admittedly make more sense if kirk only resigned because spock did) - but spock is potentially kind of mad at him (if kirk resigned first) and also trying not to feel anything, so he ignores those and goes out into the desert to get rid of all his gross icky feelings. when the masters read his mind and see that jim accidentally contacted him telepathically (which...girl WHAT was that all about did they bond fr during amok time) and that "his answer is not here," he reads or listens to all the messages at once (maybe including the deleted one spock prime had from aos...ouch), gets emotional (or resists, but it's a near thing), and realizes that if he can't purge kirk from his mind he has to at least find out why. the last message can be about the intruder (v'ger) and their fucked up engines, spock can feel reluctant concern and race to the rescue.

spock is initially very very cold to his old shipmates because he is trying to hold onto his logic and not allow the emotion back in his mind, but absolutely nobody is having this. like in the movie, kirk and bones drag him away to the lounge to interrogate him (he should admit to feeling kirk telepathically here just as he did in the book - i don't know that i'd go into the whole bond business in this movie because that's just writing fanfiction and is also a lot of exposition but i would never deny fanfic writers their fodder).

later, after talking with ilia, who did a brave thing (in spock's eyes, anyway, because he is terrified of what HE'S doing) by chasing down her man to give him an earful, spock is troubled, which prompts bones to start going IS THAT AN EMOTION I SEE MR SPOCK? (and make him more troubled). i think spock grieves ilia's death in his own way because of how much like him she is, or was. all of this culminates in his choice to attempt to mind-meld with v'ger, in the end - if he isn't a human and isn't a vulcan, WHAT is he? if he can't live with the emotion and he can't purge it, what is he supposed to do? if he dies in the mindmeld so be it, but at least he will have been useful - iirc, i think it was roddenberry or leonard nimoy who said that was always a primary motivation of his.

of course, AFTER the mindmeld, he does indeed realize that logic is pointless without emotion, and that he's been adrift not BECAUSE of his emotions but because of his refusal to deal with them and his refusal to feel. so spock, too, will decide to stay at the end of the film.

side bar on the scene where spock cries for v'ger: it's kind of dumb because v'ger is so unknowable. i think spock crying could be a bigger deal - maybe with happiness, as he holds jim's hand, or maybe when he thinks they're all gonna die (kirk says when he sees spock crying "it's not for us" but like what if it was though). i'd prefer him to cry after he finishes laughing post mindmeld of course but either instance could work.

and finally...

THE ENDING

i don't mind the ending in its plot - that v'ger really was just looking for its creator, as a child looks for its parent - but i really want the question of whether or not the probe IS ILIA to remain open. if you make an exact copy of a person that truly believes it is the original, is it? if it's indistinguishable from who ilia used to be even to itself, is it ilia? i like leaving this open because i DON'T like fridging her, but i also think it stretches believability to have this machine magically extract a consciousness and put it in a robot when we had a whole episode of s1 revolve around this exact same plot twist (is chapel's now-android fiance really still her fiance just because he thinks he is?)

it should be spock's idea to have a human join with v'ger - it was the joining with humans that ultimately led to HIS feeling emotions he was unable to ignore, which ultimately led to his understanding and acceptance of emotion and its value in general. spock would see the ilia probe as still being ilia, but in distress, as he was when he came aboard the enterprise, as v'ger is now. and he knows what fixed him (holding jim's hand lol sorry i mean accepting his emotions) and what would fix her.

and then of course decker does join with her - volunteers, insists even. i think he takes the chance on optimism and hope - something kirk lost along the way due to various traumas - but also because this film is about the importance of love, and he can't bear to live without his, even in facsimile. it's partially a sacrifice too though - decker's life and body as he knows it in exchange for the earth's safety - because that's what kirk would have done, what he HAS done. he did learn from kirk after all.

and kirk learns from him too - decker, who by now will know about the awful years the brass put kirk through prior to the start of the film, would tell kirk to give 'em hell, like it's something that can actually be done, because at his heart he's an optimist, and that's something kirk sorely needs emotionally at this low point in his life. a very gen-z-saving0the-millennials moment. (apologies to both gen z and millennials.)

so after the dust has settled, kirk, who has just saved earth, can basically ask for anything he wants, and what he wants is not to get sent out to pasture again. so that leads into him refusing to leave the ship and letting the admirals and everyone else who wants to debrief him come to HIM instead of him going down - he finally has back what he needed, which was simply control and agency over his own life, and his loved ones - since spock and bones decided to stay aboard. i would have liked some challenging action moment prior to the ending with the ilia-probe and decker included, a moment to highlight that kirk has still got it (kind of like his badass moment in the deadly years where he saves the ship in .2 seconds once they cure his dementia). but insisting that they see v'ger directly and not deal with its probe is okay too.

FINALLY, after we've established that kirk is In Control again and not just like, stealing a starship, we can do his scene where he begins a new five-year mission, and when directing sulu, says, "out there - thattaway."

THEMES

HOPEFULLY this ties together the various themes and foils in everybody's arc - the main ones being the importance of dealing with emotions, even painful ones, the importance of love, and the question "who am i?" - the theme of seeking answers

kirk wants to know who he is - is he still a starship captain who braved the unknown and returned alive? he tried to numb himself (or rather starfleet tried to numb him) after his five-year mission with a woman and a desk job and it didn't help - he had to risk getting back out there to do himself any good at all.

spock asks if he is a vulcan or a human, and seeks to answer the question by purging emotion, but must answer it by accepting the emotion instead - and he learns this from v'ger, who is asking the same question and cannot answer it without emotion anymore than spock could. spock is and always will be both vulcan AND human and no amount of resistance on his part can change that.

bones feels adrift without loved ones to take care of - who is HE if kirk won't even listen to his advice not to "retire" - and of course he is someone who takes care of others. which is a little sad because it's not a deeper arc, but it sort of rhymes with his whole deal in tos and there ARE five other movies. there's also a little bit in there about being willing to try again after your heart's been broken, which is also something kirk and spock are struggling with, to have the trio's arc rhyming with each other.

decker asking who he is - is he a real captain or a psycho case like his dad and kirk, is he someone who could have been ilia's husband - and ilia wondering if she is someone who could have been his wife, and later the PROBE wondering if it's truly ilia or not. MORE questions that have to be answered by overcoming fear of emotional pain - decker takes the chance and joins with her to answer both his own question, and the probe's - and, of course, v'ger's.

THIS CONCLUDES. my movie rewrite. i am so glad to have gotten it off my chest, which is the main reason i wrote it, but i don't think it's terribly popular...so if you actually read this whole thing you're a rock star. okay BYE!!!

[leo-fie]

Is Furiosa another Fury Road? (Guide of autistic folk)

Yes and no!

Furiosa has a different structure. Rather than a relentless chase for most of the movie, it's an episodic narrative over about 15 years. So it's not getting your heart pumping constantly with barely any breathers in between. It has actual plot. And dialogue.

That's not to say that Fury Road is lacking in any way. Rather the fact that it's basically a silent film with barely any plot, but loads of story, is it's greatest strength.

Visually it’s very similar. I don’t know if the filmmakers reused the cars they build for Fury Road or if they rebuild them, but there are several vehicles we already know. I don’t doubt for a second that most of the stuff we see on screen is practical. It has a similar feel of realness than Fury Road. Almost, more on that later.

Because we know where Furiosa ends up and the filmmakers know we know, they expect us to have watched Fury Road (or the many dissections of it, like by Innuendo Studios) recently. Fury Road is the Tankobon, Furiosa is the Databook.

Yes, we get more information about basically every aspect of the wasteland. We see more of the Citadel, we see the Bulletfarm and Gastown. We learn more about the inner workings of Immortan Joe's system. Sadly we do not see how our beloved War Rig gets build. But it's predecessor.

Furiosa expects the audience to pay close attention. The setting and pay-off, the flow of the action, the faces of characters, everything shown will come back in some way. That is of course just basic film craft, but even the simple things are nice if they are done well. I only saw Furiosa once so far, but I’m fairly certain repeat viewings will only reveal more nice setings and pay-offs, instead of plot holes.

Now to the feel. Because I’m not used to seeing movies on the big screen, it’s possible that the following is just me. But I thought the visual style of Furiosa leaned more into the hyper-real, almost mythical or into magical realism. Of course Fury Road already had the colour grade cranked up to where the sand was orange and fire was blood red. But it still felt incredibly real and tactile. Which is what set it apart back then from the shiny CGI of superhero movies. There were still weird elements in Fury Road, Max’s indestructibility, the sudden sandstorm with a lightning tornado in it, etc. But Furiosa in its visuals leans in a little bit more.

Could be because the story is canonically told to us by the History Man. Could be that the sweeping vistas of various locations are more clearly computer generated due to the sheer scale. Could be the camera work. Could be that we spend a lot more time in the actual fortresses of the wasteland, rather than just the War Rig, which we know to be a real object. Could be me.

I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m saying it’s different. The shot in the trailer, of young Furiosa picking a peach, that feeling is what I’m talking about.

Also the music. Tom Holkenborg returns for the music, but there is very little of it. I didn’t really pay attention much, but the massive Fury Road score is missing almost completely. Or I didn’t notice. I’m not a music person.

Anyway: Go watch it in the cinema, if you’re able. It’s an incredibly well made action blockbuster that takes full advantage of decades of lore. It’s firing on all cylinders. It explains the world of Fury Road more, but doesn’t get dry or takes away the intrigue. All the actors showed up for it. Anya Taylor-Joy is great, we all know that. Chris Hemsworth gives Dementus so much personality and gravitas that I only now realize he would have ended as a Joker-clone with another actor. John Burke as Praetorian Jack has a couple minutes and a couple lines and he makes it count. We also have returning actors such as Nathan Jones as Rictus Erectus, Angus Sampson as Organic Mechanic, John Howard as the People Eater. Sadly Richard Carter (the Bullet Farmer) and Hugh Keays-Byrne (Immortan Joe) could not return.

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about endgame thor again... with all appropriate caveats, i think there's a possible universe in which a) he's skinny thor rather than fat thor, and b) it's good.

like, i think it would be genuinely quite arresting to see a character so defined by his strength, as represented by his physical size, literally diminished. it would be a reminder that thor is not a god, just a person from another planet - he has needs, he gets sick, he can die.

and to be clear, i know that using thinness to represent vulnerability and tragedy can play into fatphobia, and it's absolutely fair to criticise canon for simultaneously using fatness to represent serious ill health in thor and treating it as a joke. fat thor should have been a tragic and arresting figure too.

but the thing is, fat thor's actual size is not that big of a deal. his mental illness and addiction certainly are, but his body type is not, in and of itself, unhealthy. of course laughing at fat thor is fatphobia, but making a huge tragedy out of the fact that he's got a bit of a belly wouldn't be any better.

thinness, on the other hand, gets dangerous much faster than fatness. if thor had lost the amount of weight canon had him gain, he would be in imminent danger of death. and considering that thor had a body-builder physique to begin with and therefore basically only had muscle to lose, it's even more alarming. (i'm not necessarily suggesting that they should have gone for weight loss that extreme, just trying to demonstrate the contrast in the core concepts here.)

and with all that in mind... they would have to get more creative with thor's plot and character than just winding him up like a toy soldier again if he were actually too physically unwell to fight. the idea of thor "still being worthy" would hit harder if thor's worthiness didn't have to take the form of killing people with hammers yet again, and what he contributed to the cause came instead from his heart or his mind.

and this would also probably not involve undoing the destruction of mjolnir, but even if it did, it would probably *feel* less like simply undoing it and more like completing an arc, because it would mean saying several related but distinct things:

mjolnir does not give thor his power.

mjolnir does not define thor's worth.

thor's power doesn't define his worth either. he doesn't need a magic hammer or lightning powers to be able to help his friends or to have a reason to go on.

oh, and finally, for the gimmicky marketers and easter egg nerds: it could be a fun callback to skinny steve in ca:tfa. cmon kevin, i know you want to do an eight-years-later cgi comparison! it would still be a little silly, but at least it wouldn't be a fat suit. and if there was a story with heart behind it, i think they could get away with it again.

[lunavarley]

i had a weird dream and decided to make some memes to remember it

i'll summarize it below the pictures if you want to read more, but the only context necessary for this is that it was presented as an episode of an animated kidcom, like the kind of thing you'd see watching nickelodeon, cartoon network, or disney channel as a kid

tw for the below summary: mentions of animal deaths

basic plot summary of whatever this dream was:

-again, consider this an animated kidcom. the main guy had a crush he was always trying to win over, like in most of those shows. the boy was talking to the girl in a classroom and convinced her he was gonna get her a gift or something. and through a wacky series of coincidences, the girl stumbles on honeymoon or anniversary photos/drawings of the teacher? i think? and is like "wait, it's us, i can't believe you did this for me"

-this anniversary was stated to be in ghana. this isn't relevant at all to irl ghana, but being on another continent (the show in this dream took place around california) is relevant.

-anyway, main boy starts making a collage with those photos and continues lying to impress the girl because hey, if this is what it takes to get together, why not. but there is an issue. he also is like "yeah, we're gonna go to ghana together!" he's not doing a whole flight to ghana. BUT he's a rich kid. he has his butler use most of the family funds (they must be billionaires or something) to basically nuke los angeles and do some light "landscaping" to make the city they're gonna fly to look like ghana, somehow

-and he's lying to her more and more throughout the flight. even shit she could easily look up like "trump's dead." eventually, when they get to the beach city near where everything was nuked. the girl vanishes, leading the boy to think she was kidnapped and want to go after her. and the whole class is on vacation there now too for some reason (which is relevant! not relevant but a fun thing to mention: the animation style suddenly changed from hand-drawn to CGI) -the boy finally makes it to where the girl is, but after having to avoid most of the class. maybe they don't like him? maybe they knew he was the one who launched the nukes. but either way, he's in a precarious position. (it also could be that he wanted to get the collage back from the girl for the teacher to not ruin/lose it, and the class knew he stole it?)

-also unpleasant: he goes over the frozen corpses of hundreds if not thousands of animals to get there. they're from the nuke. like this is something he explicitly caused. -so he finds the girl, and first, she lists everything fucked up he's done in the episode, including lying and the kind of misogynistic stuff you'd see boys casually do in these shows a few decades ago. and she punches him. tells him not to ever do something like that again. -but here's the wild part. despite the fact that he actually ended countless lives, she's touched about everything he went through for her and hugs him. she says to never stop being interested in her and she says she'd love to hang out and see him again if he gets out of this as she walks away -and he's like, "what do you mean get out of this?" -and at that point the feds roll up -now in this dream, i remembered this episode having an ending that kinda devalued it on the rewatch for me. and i'm like "oh, yeah, he just goes to prison for life or something. sure. that was the ending that made me not want to rewatch this episode whenever it was on." but NOPE! there's an image of jail and then a smash cut to him sitting up on a roof or atop a batting cage or something. one of the feds basically says they let him out because he's just a kid. despite the fact that he nuked a city.

-and at the end of the episode, he's been trying to call his mom for hours as he's all alone up there. his dad finally picks up and assures him he's not mad. and it seems kind of like a relief, like despite how HORRIBLY he fucked EVERYTHING up (i literally thought while watching the episode that i could never sympathize with him again after he NUKED A CITY TO LIE TO AND IMPRESS A GIRL AND THEY SHOWED THE AFTERMATH), everything's going to be ok

-and as the call ends, he suddenly is like, "Mom!" in an oh shit way. the implication being while he got away with everything else, she is going to be beyond furious

-and that alone is fine for an ending, but then there's a post-credits scene. this is the part that made me think either the whole episode is non-canon and he made no actual progress in getting the girl, or just every post-credits scene in this show is non-canon. because it is FUCKED up

-it cuts to the roof, where he still is hours later. he's all but sobbing and saying "mom" or something. i think he might've been too scared to go home and face her. regardless, he's there. and the school bullies show up. the implication is that they're gonna beat him up, and i thought the episode would end there, but no, it's worse than that

-with the bullies is him from the future, who makes it clear he wants to teach past him a lesson. the shot cuts to the bullies watching, and you can hear screams and weak, futile attempts to fight back, but you don't see the brunt of it

-and finally, the last shot is almost like an overhead. you can't see the boy, but you can see a bloody trail leading away from future him. future him even pretty much says he beat past him so badly that past him will never walk again. (and up until that part, i thought he'd been beaten so badly that he died.)

i felt compelled to share this here. with my favorite/weirdest/scariest dreams, i usually see what i can salvage into my writing. but in this case, i don't know what i'd even want to salvage? so enjoy the memes instead

[hersterical]

The mcu’s gotten so big that hey should just break it up into lots of smaller sub-genres and hard-core lean into what makes each of these sub-genres different from each other. It would improve the quality of the shows, it’d be easier for people only interested in certain characters and storylines to stay invested, and decrease “superhero fatigue” (which I don’t think actually exists but is actually “huge movies with the same tones and messages and are often mediocre fatigue”).

Would it take more time and more effort to do Avengers style team-up movies? Sure. Does it mean that some people’s favs would be left out of the big team-ups? Sadly yes. But you can still have small team ups.

Basically do what they did with The Defenders and the other Netflix shows but instead of just doing it with the street-level heroes do it with all of them. The mystical, the cosmic, the Avengers, and the street-level/spies. Make it so they can all exist on their own and use the cross-overs and team-ups sparingly.

This would have the added benefit of less studio involvement just out of sheer necessity. Have a team of people in charge of keeping the lore and timeline straight just so characters can jump genres when need be but with all of these things being so separate then plot holes and timeline inconsistencies wouldn’t matter as much

they would also need to have lower budgets and we’d have to live with some lower quality cgi if we want the special effects teams to be treated humanely. Which I guess would leave us with them having to get more creative with practical effects as well. Oh darn (she said sarcastically).

To me, what made the mcu so successful while other cinematic universes failed was that they nailed down the individual stories and made those super solid before even thinking about the big team up movies. Now they’re making the same mistakes that other cinematic universes made and are putting the universe before the individual stories. They drifted away from this, which was fine up until Endgame when they basically had to do a soft reboot but instead of actually starting over they treated each new storyline and character as though we were already familiar with them. But they forgot that phase 1 took years. Now we went through phases 4 and 5 with twice as much material in each phase in the same time frame it took to do phase 1. They’re not patient anymore. They don’t care about the stories or the characters anymore. (I can still feel the care that the creatives have for the stories which is why I still love the mcu but the execs just won’t stop biggering and biggering. Give me more low stake stories!)

No, this doesn’t solve all of the mcu’s issues but I still think it could do a lot of good

(basically what I mean is structure the mcu more like comic books i guess)

[kitkatt0430]

Parker and Eliot for the Character Ask Game? if possible?

Parker

How I feel about this character

I adore her so much. She's this gorgeous blonde woman who in a lot of other shows would have wound up this femme fatale type who already knows how to wield her looks as a weapon, but Parker is just so socially awkward here. She might know how to dress to blend in but her neurodivergence (it's never said she's autistic, but she's totally autistic) makes socializing - especially the kind of slipping from one 'character' to the next that their cons require - super difficult for her.

She's not sexualized - even when she does occasionally pull off her clothes to change mid con, it's not framed to be sexy and should there be guys present (typically Hardison and/or Eliot) they politely look away.

Even though Parker gets called weird a lot, she's never treated badly for not knowing how to exist in social situations or other places that her skills haven't taught her how to navigate. Instead there's a lot of thoughtfulness put in by others to help her learn how to navigate those spaces. Sophie coaches Parker a lot in the original series and I love that Hardison helped Parker put together a flash card system in the new series. And the show basically couches these things as being equal to the thief stuff - breaking into vaults, traveling via vents, helping Leverage International teams - that Parker brings to the table. They're just skills that can be learned like everything else.

Basically, I love that she gets to be this very intelligent, expert thief whose opinions and skills are incredibly well respected and who gets to exist as visibly autistic without that last part being used to treat her like a child compared to the rest of the cast. She's the one judged most able to take over the team at the end of the first series when Nate retires and it's just so satisfying to get that much deserved acknowledgement.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Hardison and Eliot, though with Eliot it's a bit complicated 'cause I see his relationship with both of them as more of a queerplatonic partnership than romantic (I enjoy fanfics where it's romantic, but I do think QPP fits their canon relationship better and also I have aro headcanons for Eliot, so...)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Eliot, Sophie, Breanna, and Harry. Their her people and she loves them. (I really like how she just kinda politely strong arms Harry into not leaving the team at the end of S2 of Redemption. And he's just so pleased to stay after all.)

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don't really know that I have one. *shrug*

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

This is tough, when canon is already so satisfying. But I think I would have liked it if she'd gotten to stab someone just once or twice more than she did in the original series. The sequel series, however, has acquitted well to having her taser people with a very satisfying 'electrifying the skull' CGI addition that really just hits the spot.

I'd also like it if the polycule of Hardison/Parker/Eliot could go completely canon, but honestly they're already clearly life partners at this point and ones whom death shall not part (because of the robot bodies, if anyone can will those into existence it will be Parker)

Eliot

How I feel about this character

I love Eliot, in part very much because he has done things so awful that he cannot talk about them. He just... he can't. The person he is today is so very ashamed of those things and wants to be more than them, while knowing he will carry that weight for the rest of his life.

I think it's important to have characters like Eliot. He's likable, works to better himself, and has done such terrible things that if we saw him during that time of his life... we'd probably have hated the villain he was. (And given the hints and implications we've had about that time in his life, there's a very good chance that he killed children and that's what motivated him to turn his life around even before he became part of the Leverage crew.)

There's a lot of 'you'll always be who you were on your worst day' going around the world - and especially on the internet - so having a character who has this terrible past but is still capable of being a good person today... that's important to me. We should have more characters whose choices to become better people are celebrated and respected and supported the way Eliot is.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

I mean... I see him as being aromantic or aro-spec so I don't really have romantic ships for him. I enjoy Hardison/Parker/Eliot when other people write it, but for me that's a QPP for Eliot and an open relationship which is why he felt comfortable dating during S1 of Redemption (and of course why Parker's opinion of his girlfriend was important, that's his QPP right there, he wants his QPP to like her metamour)

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Nate, Sophie, Parker, Hardison, and Breanna

I think he and Harry get along fine and have a good repoire but I'm not sure they're at Eliot's ride-or-die level of devotion yet beyond being teammates

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think one of the reasons he joined the military was because it would put a pause on his relationship with Aimee. I think he cared about her a lot but he got engaged because, well, it was expected. But, as I read him as aromantic, the marriage itself was something that didn't really appeal to him even if he didn't recognize why at the time. He probably didn't think it all out or even realize that he was using the military to avoid getting married, but I do think it played a part.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

As mentioned with Parker, I'd love to see a real acknowledgement of the polycule. But it's also something I'm kinda wary of because I guess I'm afraid of it coming at the cost of the character traits that make me read him as aromantic allosexual.

[doctorguilty]

Prev post

Can I Say Something like there's a lot of people in the notes like shocked to hear they start filming before the script is done or like first learning about why the lighting and color grading looks Iike turds, like I'm sure they've been aware to at least some degree that big studio stuff like Disney and Marvel are exploiting non unionized depts etc but like, not how BAD it goes, like do you know sometimes they'll film actors saying their lines in front of a green screen solo like without the other actor(s) in the shot present b/c its cheaper in like all sorts of corner cutting ways, or just how much is cgi like whatever amount you think is cgi it's more, like these films are chunks of half baked script and shots stitched together at the end, but the point i was gonna get at is like.. when people are like PANICKING about "AI is taking over and will soon be making movies" I wanna be like, it's already Been as bad and unethical and exploitative as your imagined damage AI would do, and certainly I agree Disney is probably already hard at work figuring out how to computer generate 60% of a film and we'll see that someday, but I'm saying the leap from like, where we are now to that is not a canyon, the gap is much less wide as you think! And that's why like the attention being completely put in the like AI tools is like *Gundam missles flying over head* like does that make sense? It's already SO BAD, there'd definitely some particularly novel areas of filmmaking AI can make worse that nothing before it could, but again like, industry practices as large have longggg been taking the nosedive, you just don't know it unless you read up on this production stuff

Like that's not the specific subject of prev post but it makes me think of some stuff I wish I could like, host an informative talk on, because what's going to inevitably happen (calling it like I've been calling basically everything regarding AI art panic) is people getting really upset when they hear AI stuff being used in a film and like x amount of people in the studio are replaced etc etc, and then one of the big studios that's been exploiting its workers the whole time in all the same ways will be like "we don't use AI in our films :) we pay human artists" and everyone will be like "we stan!!!" The bar of industry ethics being conveniently lowered like that, your attention being taken further away from the core issues, it's all a part of the ride they're taking you for

[weirdowithaquill]

WIP game... uhh...

22 or 23 please?

Ok, so I've already answered about 22 (the link to that answer is here), but 23 is one I'm quite interested in digging into soon!

The basic concept is to take all the 'rejected' HiT and CGI era British engines and stick them all on a railway in the middle of nowhere - the Reject Railway. They are, in essence, rejected by fans and by my ERS. But when Molly accidentally winds up there (having made it into the ERS), she has to help these engines with their issues with one another and grow as characters.

It's also known as my excuse to mess about with post Season-7 characters.

Here's a little sneak peek:

“Howdy!” Molly jumped – a truck went flying. “Oh, shoot! Sorry, sorry – didn’t mean to frighten you.” Molly glanced around, and spotted a dark red tank engine. She had a massive headlamp bolted to her smokebox and the biggest grin Molly had ever seen. “Who’re you?” asked Molly quietly. “I’m Rosie! I’m an American Dock Tank, and I shunt the yards here with my friend Stafford! Who’re you?” “I’m Molly… I just arrived.” “Another reject? Shame. How long did they keep you in the studio?” “Studio?” asked Molly. “What studio?” Rosie looked confused. “Weren’t you used as a new character for the Thomas series?” “No… I was on Sodor till this morning…” “Oh heck! You’re a special one! I gotta tell Stafford about this, he’ll short-circuit! A real-live Sudrian!” Rosie dashed away before Molly could even process everything that had been said at her.

Molly made her way to the sheds. Rosie was happily chatting at Stafford, who was staring back at the American in shock. His eyes slid over to Molly, and widened. Molly gulped, and hid at the back of the shed. As her driver headed home for the night, Molly felt more alone than she had in years. Not even the tunnel had made her this lonely, because she’d always had Andrew. But Andrew wasn’t here. No one she knew was here.

***

Back on Sodor, a massive group of engines barred the Big Station, whistling and shouting. The Fat Controller stepped out, his sister by his side. “Sir!” exclaimed Andrew loudly, whooshing steam to quieten the other engines. “Henry said he saw Molly being towed away, what’s going on?” The Fat Controller looked very confused. “Towed away? Why would Molly be towed anywhere?” “Sir, you need to find Molly!” Emily said. “She’s one of us now – you can’t let her be taken!” “I will start looking for Molly at once,” the Fat Controller announced. “Now please – continue with your jobs. We may need money if Molly is in a tight spot, and that means that you all need to work hard.”

The Fat Controller hurried back into his office, Bridget close by his side. The two began pouring through papers, until Bridget held one up, a look of horror on her face.

“It’s that damned entertainment company!” she said. “They’ve had Molly transferred to The Reject Railway!”

Hope you enjoyed! And thank you for the ask!

[the-masked-reviewer]

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) Review

Potential spoilers ahead...

I had low expectations going into this movie, and holy shit was I right. The CGI also wasn't great. There's not really much to say about it, other than it was just bad and lifeless. The basic premise and concept is decent, but the execution made most of the movie's points fall flat.

The pacing just feels off and strange the entire time. It manages to be both too slow and too fast. It feels almost as though they tried to edit Amber Heard out of the movie as much as possible, leading to some strange ripple effects in the story (that pun was unintentional but I am not sorry). The movie shows Arthur as both essentially a single father and as a loving husband whose his wife (Heard's character) is weirdly absent within the family montages we are shown, yet still manages to be there and seemingly very involved. If that explanation seemed confusing, that's the whole problem. If they had just chosen a way to explain her character's absence, or had they actually explained the weird juxtaposition, it all would have flowed at least a little better.

As for the rest of the story, it feels like every important story beat or explanation is shown through narration over a flashback-like montage. Which isn't necessarily bad, and is definitely used in the superhero genre, but when you do that on at least THREE separate occasions, and with all major story beats, then it takes away from the actual story. The way this is done makes it feel more like you're being told a bad summary of what you wanted with weird asides and missing details instead of watching the story unfold throughout the movie like you actually want.