#but overall the plot felt pretty. standard devil movie.

[angeltannis]

i'll probably make a proper post about it in the morning but I skipped ahead on my Watchathon list to check out The VVitch and um. i actually didn't really like it lmao

[instantpansies]

okay finished! final thoughts

first of all, it's not a bad looking movie. it's not my personal preference for animation, but it's a pretty standard 3d style and it's not bad by any means. and the backgrounds, especially architecture and a couple particular landscapes, are really beautiful. the lighting on some of the backgrounds is quite nice. character designs are a bit caricaturish and very cartoony, hyper-shape-language-y, and a bit too smooth and oblong for my taste, but there were some really solid designs. the scarecrow is passable, the tin woodman is decent, the lion i'm not a fan of but he's fine enough as a lion. favorite design was probably the wooden soldier general, his wheat hat and warm color scheme were really fun. the bear rug was creative, keeping the belly as quilt/fabric was a good idea. i'm personally not a fan of the puppet thing, but it's an acceptable design "objectively" speaking. (this is all based on character design not personality or characterization)

if appearance is pretty good, though, sound is another matter. i don't want to be too harsh, since this is obviously a fairly cheap dub for a movie that wasn't expected to do well anyways. the music feels off, poorly timed, and awkwardly transitioned to/between. sound effects are fine but a little sparse. voice acting varies wildly. i didn't like urfin's va much, the filler words and extra noises were really clunky and forced and he didn't come across as a villain at all. the puppet did come across as a devil-on-the-shoulder-type trickster villain thanks to the va, i thought they were annoying but they did fulfill that archetypical role. the scarecrow's va was just sorta flat (which was too bad, his lines were generally a bit better-written than some of the others') but not bad - i just don't think the voice fits the character bc i associate ray bolger or the oz no mahoutsukai anime voice w him, not the higher-pitched, younger-sounding voice he was given here. the tin woodman's voice acting was unremarkable in that i can't remember any particular things that stood out, i think he was pretty good overall. lion mostly same, but i felt his voice was a bit off as well? still fine tho. dorothy did a good job! i actually liked her quite a bit, she wasn't super fleshed out but she has some nice moments of kindness, determination, and braveness, which are all pretty important dorothy characteristics. she's enjoyable to watch and i like her design (again, nothing to write home about, but the hair is cute and overall she's quite differentiated from the world around her so the simplicity actually works in her favor)

shoutout to the va of the crow messenger!!!!! they did so well omg best actor in this movie. they put their whole pussy into it and even with the okayish cheaply-translated script it was so fun to watch and listen to their character. the true hero of this movie fr and my favorite.

TOTO. toto. what is going on with toto. he's???? making pop culture references????? they were in a cave and he said "#lovingthiscave" like pronouncing the hashtag??? he calls dorothy "girlfriend" at one point???? it feels so weird and ridiculous. oh yeah he can talk and his voice is okay for a dog who is on tiktok. it's kinda jarring but honestly i think i'd rather it be that way

queer section bc we all knew it was coming. yeah tincrow is definitely present here, they hang out constantly during the plot, they compliment each other, scarecrow sacrifices everything to save nick (im calling him that bc it's shorter than 'tin woodman' but he is not called nick in this movie), they escape together and have a nice b-plot important support mission. presented similarly to many other animated oz adaptations, they're both quite smart and kind but each is slightly 'more' of their respective trait. and they would die for each other a thousand times. we know how it is.

also. the thing with the tigers i am 100% serious it's so weird. they almost fulfill a role like those 'two idiots' characters (the two sailors in pirates of the caribbean who are always onscreen together, for example, or the pair of hapless skeletons from the adventures of clutch powers) - but not quite. they're just kinda there. they're on their own team. are they being paid by the lion to guard the entrance to the forest and welcome dorothy??? i don't know. they hang out, scare off an ogre, then one asks the other "what do you want to do now" and he says "go home" and the first one follows the second one out into the dark night and their voices are so like. sultry and it's so surreal i think they fucked i am so serious right now. i'm past the time i read homoeroticism into normal situations honestly and this was so blatant and weird and i think it was their delivery??? but like the timing and the way it was done was just so something. the next scene where we see them they're lounging in a field just casually in the morning and one asks the other "now what" and he says "let's get lunch" and it's all so charged and something is going on. i can't believe im saying this i don't care if the saber tooth modern tigers in a cheap oz spinoff are gay this was just deeply - not uncomfortable, but extremely substantial and just surreal to me.

also there's a more stereotypically coded ogre who is a chef and speaks with the "gay accent" with lisp and all, it's not really anything to speak of he just is fulfilling that sort of trope of the bad guy chef who is just in it for the divine flavors darling. you know the type. i don't reallly care idk

end of the queer section. there was no ozma :(

okay, in terms of plot. it's pretty decent. nothing so groundbreaking. the friends of dorothy are presented in a pretty traditional fashion, in keeping with the standards set by various oz adaptations. they didn't really do anything unique with those characters. i can't speak on the adaptation of urfin from book to screen, as i unfortunately haven't read urfin jus and his wooden soldiers yet - i have it saved, just haven't gotten around to it :( so i don't have an opinion on that. however, i can say that he wasn't presented as a villain i can love to hate. more of an annoying guy who staged a one-man coup and then lost all his resources and everyone forgot about him. he doesn't feel dangerous or threatening - i think perhaps because we didnt see a truly dangerous application of the powder of life until long after he's taken over the emerald city. other than the wooden soldiers, of course, but they are so easily defeated by dorothy and toto in their first two minutes in oz that they don't feel like a threat. this is mainly a pacing issue, if they'd let the threat of the soldiers grow for a while before they were shown to be stoppable it would've felt more high-stakes when fighting them off.

the focus on the lion was kind of nice! he's often put aside for the scarecrow or sometimes nick, so seeing him as dorothy's guide here was quite enjoyable and made him seem very important as a character - this can be difficult to pull off, as he's (imo) often more forgettable in adaptations, so i appreciate this aspect of the movie.

also!!! a big bonus!!! as i mentioned earlier, this movie had the chance to do a Big Reveal that Someone Loves Urfin After All, so it's time for a redemption arc. but they didn't do it!! he rejects the idea that he secretly wants to be loved, and instead seeks to crush his enemies. and he rejects malayna's (sorry if spelling wrong) token of love outright in acknowledgment of his growth (/negative) as a character! he doesn't care about people accepting or loving him anymore - he just wants the power and fear factor. this is the one thing i think urfin's portrayal did quite well. also yayyy no romance saves the day plot! i'm down for it sometimes, but it doesn't need to be the only way for a story to end so this was nice. seeing actual defeat of a villain, not just "gasp someone loved me after all, i now regret all my actions and become a perfect person immediately". wahoo

i would've liked to see: a better performance from urfin's voice actor. actually showing that dorothy has returned home and is not just indefinitely hurtling over the deadly desert (the movie ends with her disappearing lmao). better designs for the horrendous silver slippers. perhaps a more creative take on specifically the tincrow dynamic. a more interesting lion design. more screen time for that crow and the wooden general they were so cool!! but these are fairly mild criticisms.

overall, i'd give this movie like... 6.5 or 7 stars. nothing groundbreaking, nothing really astoundingly compelling, but i did enjoy watching it. if you're an oz fan looking for a nice adaptation with some really good moments and nothing horrible in it, i'd definitely recommend. for the average viewer, this will probably just be a standard boring cheap kids' movie, but still a fun time. i will probably not be watching again for a while, but i hear there's a sequel and i absolutely want to watch it (it looks worse) and it's a good movie to just have on the back burner. a pretty good experience :)

ok i'm watching fantastic journey to oz (2017). english dub bc i don't speak russian

expectations: low i think this'll be an interesting movie, but not for the reasons it wants to be... i've never actually read urfin jus and his wooden soldiers (of which this is an adaptation), i'm sorry to everyone who loves that book i'm sure this is not a good introduction lol off the bat (from the trailer) not loving the designs, except dorothy who is ngl kinda slaying, if in a boring way. the silver slippers are atrocious. what is up with toto. the scarecrow's voice is so wrong. tin woodman looks fine if basic. i'm liking the book-accurate munchkins tho, and the emerald city design is pretty decent! we'll see how everything is, more to follow

[hotdadslade]

Pennyworth Impressions

So I have seen more or less nothing about Pennyworth, and it’s little wonder why. It was released episodically on a channel/streaming platform no one I’d spoken to had ever heard of, with zero fanfare, and what marketing there was seemed to exclusively focus around ‘it’s about Batman’s Butler’.

So, first things first: Pennyworth is an alt history story with a young Alfred Pennyworth as the main character. That ‘alt history’ bit is important, but is in absolutely NONE of the promotional material I saw. Specifically, the story takes place in probably-the-60s, only it’s a vaguely dystopian world: people are executed publicly, there’s bodies in gibbets hanging around London, etcetc. I’ve seen a lot of people saying they’re not interested because... well, what’s so interesting about this kind of prequel? You already know what’s going to happen.

The actual plot is only barely about how Alfred meets the Waynes. The real plot is about political squabbling between two groups, the Raven Society and the No Name League, who are both secret societies which later become political parties, and they’re pushing England towards a full on civil war. Alfred gets involved on both sides, things get fucky, you know the deal.

That said, I’ve got four big points about the show for anyone interested so far.

One: This show is VERY gory. Not as bad as Swamp thing (which was some top-class body horror), but we’ve got torture, mutilation, heads blown off, etc... All shown with some pretty extreme detail. It is downright gratuitous at times and as someone who’s not a huge fan of gore I had to look away quite a bit. There’s also at least one rape, lots of animal dismemberment, cannibalism... You name it. If you have any sort of content you’re worried about, it’s probably in there.

Two: This show does nothing with the DC license, and seems to actively be made worse by it. The only named characters from the comics are Alfred, Martha, and Thomas. You’ll spend more time wondering how things connect to the characters they’re named after then making any actual connections, such as the reveal that Thomas Wayne has a sister and that he works for the CIA. Nothing really connects back and this would honestly have been a better story if it was just billed as a standard alt history political drama, because then I wouldn’t have spent all my time wondering wtf is going on.

Three: This show is, in theory, a political drama. That’s what it’s trying to be. However it has almost nothing to say about politics and the way it portrays politics is a bit... tone deaf. The fact that one side is described repeatedly (even by their own people) as fascists who are willing to engage in everything up to and including assassination and suicide bombing while the other side are socialists who... might be willing to kill a mass murderer - but are depicted as being on the same level is kind of surreal. All the sides are terrible yet the impression I got while watching is that we’re supposed to be cheering for the old guard (the Queen and Prime Minister) who are also terrible.

For a show almost entirely about two secret societies with opposing political views, the show doesn’t say anything about them, and keeping them all straight is... difficult. Alfred himself is almost staunchly apolitical, refusing to take sides, but considering one side is running around with women’s heads in jars while the other side is guilty of... trying to stop the other side... it kind of falls into the ‘not making a choice is a choice in itself’ category.

Four: The show has no idea what it’s doing.

There’s no nice way to say this, so I’ll be direct. There is a plot. There’s a story here. But that story is wandering and meandering in the most bizarre way. The first episode is astounding. Great character moments, fantastic world building, and it works almost as a standalone movie in its own right.

But every episode after that the plot gets more and more muddled. The characters wander around doing their own thing and only really come together at the end. A character who we should absolutely hate because he’s a complete fucking monster gets a multi-episode recovery arc to make him sympathetic, only for him to toss it away at the last minute.

The best example I can think of this comes midway through the series, and I’m going to go right on ahead and spoil it so I’ll drop it under the cut.

Midway through the season, Thomas needs to go out and do something to keep the show’s main plot going on. However, his drug addict sister, Patricia, has shown up at his hotel room, and he needs to make sure someone keeps an eye on her while he’s gone. He gets Martha to do this. Martha, for some reason I do not understand in the slightest, both says yes and then immediately agrees to go to a party with Patricia.

They then attend a bizarre party at the satanist Aleister Crowley’s house. It is vaguely implied that Martha might have been drugged, but left unclear. The party devolves into an orgy, and Martha repeatedly attempts to leave only to find herself back in the main room. The last time she does this she returns to find the room silent, with everyone staring at her, and she carefully walks across the room to be faced with the devil, featuring a goat head and six creepy eyes.

The scene cuts and we go back to Alfred’s stuff which seems absolutely inconsequential in the face of this bizarre reveal in what should be the B plot.We don’t pick this plot thread up again until the end of the episode, when Martha wakes up completely naked in a field.

The next episode establishes that Patricia has not come back, and that Martha has been missing for three whole days. Martha and Thomas investigate, find Patricia happy and healthy with Crowley, and Crowley is VERY intent on making it clear that no, he’s legitimate, he actually works for the devil. Thomas calls his bluff, insisting on negotiating, and is shown a piece of satanic ritual pornography featuring his sister, which mind controls him into attempting to murder Crowley’s assistant. He’s traumatized and more or less flees the building. At this point, Martha strongly implies that something terrible happened, and it is strongly implied she was raped by the devil and may or may not be pregnant or changed by this in some way.

This plot arc is then completely forgotten and effectively never brought up again.

It is so completely out there that my head was actually spinning by the end of the episode, because Pennyworth just established that the devil is real and may have raped Martha and then does absolutely nothing with it. It almost completely forgets about it, and I can’t even remember Patricia coming up again after that point. It was so bizarrely out of place that going back to it’s usual thriller political drama stuff felt completely wrong. If this was supposed to be a season two tie-in, they did a terrible job of it, because all I could think watching the last few episodes were ‘why do I care about this when the devil’s running around London’.

Overall, Pennyworth was a show with no clear direction and no idea of what it wanted to be. It didn’t use it’s license, it overly relied on shock value, and while there was some fantastic acting, it didn’t save the fact that the plot was all over the damned place. While it had some fun moments, I’d say most of those moments were at the very start and the very end. If you’re interested, I’d say the first three episodes (available for free on amazon) are pretty enjoyable as a standalone set, but I wouldn’t bother with the rest. If it gets a S2 (which so far seems unlikely), I’m not even sure I’ll go back to it.