#honestly a better movie from a purely objective standpoint

[passiveagressiveintrovert]

you know what? unpopular opinion but i liked the 2023 live action the little mermaid way more than the original.

[blueskittlesart]

PLEASE elaborate on the mario movie i want to know how bad it sucks

i took notes while i was watching it because i'm insane so here's what i wrote down:

objectively bad. especially if you are not a mario fan. sorry. specifically that special illumination flavor of bad. despicable me bad. you know what i mean

clearly more emphasis was put on aesthetic/worldbuilding than story. the spectacle is incredible but the story is barebones at the best of times. several plot points seem VERY rushed and very few character relationships are given the time or attention they really need to have the character-driven story that this movie clearly WANTS to be

ESPECIALLY mario and peach’s relationship is not given nearly enough time. they get a meet-cute scene in which peach instantly takes mario in for seemingly no reason and then one training montage (both within the span of about 30 mins of runtime) and after that they’re sharing intimate secrets with each other and we’re supposed to see mario as a potential romantic partner for peach. the relationship is not NEARLY established enough for any of this and the audience is left to assume that a ton of development must have happened off screen, which makes the relationship seem REALLY rushed and flat.

the only genuinely well-written relationship imo was mario and donkey kong and they fucking hate each other

that being said the world design is REALLY good and it’s clear the designers were fans and put a lot of effort into it!! it just kind of makes it more obvious that the story is bad when it’s painted over such a fantastic backdrop

the way the references to the games were built into the environment was, again, very well done. every reference i got was well-placed and funny. i just wish the story that held all the references together was good lol

peach’s body proportions were throwing me off for the entire movie. her head is SO huge in comparison to her tiny skinny body that it’s super distracting

sometimes chris pratt makes an effort to sound like a new york italian and sometimes he just Is Chris Pratt and i genuinely don’t know which one is worse

peach’s voice honestly threw me off more than crisp rat it just does not fit her at all

animation is over rendered in that new age disney-pixar style that i really hate. i think that a movie based on retro pixel-art video games could have benefited a lot from a more stylized art style instead of so much realism

the soundtrack is incredible tho

bowser is the best character in the whole movie (we knew this)

final fight was very good. that’s all i have to say about it it was good

i honestly think this was doomed to happen with a movie like this because mario as a game doesnt have a ton of story to hold it together so any story you try to make out of it is inevitably going to rely on game references over plot ESPECIALLY if you have diehard fans writing for you. i think they could have benefitted from a few writers who DIDN'T know or care about mario to look objectively at the script as a narrative because if you take away the game-reference spectacle the story is just. not great unfortunately. I don't think it was AWFUL per se but from purely a writing standpoint it could have been WAY better than what we got imo.

[aion-rsa]

How Mortal Kombat Became the Best Selling Fighting Game Franchise Ever

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WB Games recently confirmed that Mortal Kombat 11 has sold over 12 million copies worldwide so far. That means that the Mortal Kombat franchise has sold more than 73 million games to date, which, as some analysts have already pointed out, also means that it now appears to be the best-selling fighting game franchise ever.

For reference: Mortal Kombat – 73 million units Smash Bros. – 65.1 million units (March 31, 2021) Tekken – 51 million units (April 2021) Street Fighter – 46 million units (March 31, 2021) https://t.co/f0mhQLMzeM

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) July 26, 2021

While WB has confirmed the lifetime sales of the Mortal Kombat franchise to date, it should be noted that some of the other current sales figures for the other major fighting game franchises are either estimates or are based on reports that haven’t been updated quite as recently. Having said that, it certainly appears that Mortal Kombat is now the best-selling fighting game franchise ever, which is even more impressive when you consider that it was nowhere close to dethroning Super Smash Bros. for that honor prior to the release of Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11.

So how did we get to this point? Well, the success of the Mortal Kombat franchise isn’t a sudden thing nor is it one of those sales records that somehow make us question the direction of the video game industry or the tastes of gamers. No, Mortal Kombat‘s success can instead be attributed to a series of factors that highlight just what an incredible job its various developers have done over the years and the unique place this series has in the industry, video game culture, and certainly in the hearts of fighting game fans everywhere.

The Enduring Novelty of Mortal Kombat’s Violence

Look, you probably don’t need a complete rundown of how the original Mortal Kombat‘s violence helped set it apart. At a time when violent video games were still a novelty, Mortal Kombat offered one of the most celebratory violent gaming experiences the world had ever seen up until that point. It triggered Congressional hearings, protests, lawsuits, and, most importantly for our current purposes, an incredibly successful fighting game franchise.

What doesn’t get talked about quite as much, though, is how Mortal Kombat‘s violence has remained something of a novelty even as the idea of violent video games becomes much more common. See, there was a specific era of video games in which developers were trying to use violence/extreme content to court controversy for their games (Rockstar’s excellent Manhunt is one of the better examples of that era). It was kind of like the torture porn era for major horror movies. We experienced it, the fad burned out, and many of us left a little more numb to the idea of extreme violence as a draw. More and more game studios dialed back on the idea of implementing such incredible levels of violence, not necessarily on moral grounds, but because it slowly became less of a hook/novelty.

Mortal Kombat is different. The franchise could go toe-to-toe with most of the most violent video games released over the last 30 years or so from a pure content perspective, but Mortal Kombat‘s violence has always been…fun. It’s less of a torture porn scenario where violence is meant to disturb and test you and more like an ’80s slasher where the violence is so cartoonish and over-the-top that it’s often hard to take it seriously. It’s all about having fun, which is still a novelty compared to toned-down violence, violence as biting (sometimes hard to process) social commentary, or violence that is trying too hard to be controversial.

Mortal Kombat Is One of the Most “Accessible” Fighting Game Franchises

Talking about “accessibility” in fighting games is always tough. It’s a topic that draws gatekeepers who look down on the very concept of accessibility in gaming as well as those who think they’re defending a game by arguing it’s not really that accessible from a mechanical standpoint.

When we talk about Mortal Kombat‘s accessibility, though, it’s only as a positive. In fact, it’s not just about the game’s mechanics. Yes, the original Mortal Kombat games were perhaps “simpler” than something like Street Fighter, but as the series grew, it certainly adopted more complicated gameplay systems that elevated it in the eyes of some genre purists. I’d argue that modern Mortal Kombat games boast better pick-up and play credentials than some of its genre competitors, but you’re obviously not going to convince anyone who believes that is an inherently bad thing that it’s actually a very impressive quality.

No, the real magic of Mortal Kombat‘s accessibility is how the franchise’s various developers and designers over the years have maintained this aura of approachability that the series boasts to this day even as it has become a much deeper fighting game series. As we noted above, Mortal Kombat feels more fun than intimidating in a way that even some of the best fighting game franchises can’t equal. As we’ll look at below, a lot of the ways the Mortal Kombat teams over the years have achieved and maintained that image can be attributed to the elements of their games that they’ve intelligently chosen to emphasize over their closest competitors.

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Mortal Kombat is More Satisfying to a Much Wider Audience

You could maybe label this idea under “accessibility,” but it’s actually a slightly different point that proves to be very important when you’re trying to comprehend the incredible staying power of the Mortal Kombat franchise after all these years. “Accessibility” is what can help get gamers in the door and form their first impressions. What matters from there is how those players feel once they start spending time with the game, and that’s where Mortal Kombat really pulls ahead of some other notable fighting game franchises.

See, whether you play on the easiest difficulty setting and enable one-button fatalities or choose to master every combo and character, Mortal Kombat is really all about performing over-the-top moves with over-the-top characters in over-the-top environments while enjoying a, you guessed it, over-the-top story. That’s the core of the Mortal Kombat experience, and it’s the big reason why you’d ever bother to play one of these games.

You can enjoy the “core” Mortal Kombat experience no matter how good you are at the game. More experienced players can enjoy an evolved form of that experience that grows as they do, but the fundamental appeal of this franchise doesn’t demand a certain level of commitment. Ironically enough, that’s often what inspires a wider audience to spend more time with it in the first place.

Mortal Kombat’s Story, Characters, and World Give it a Personality That Many Other Fighting Games Don’t Have

Again, there’s no point in arguing that Mortal Kombat features better characters, stories, and world-building than Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, Tekken, or any of the other greatest fighting game franchises. That’s obviously a subjective argument.

What’s a little easier to objectively argue is the idea that the Mortal Kombat team has chosen to emphasize those elements more than other fighting games traditionally have. Mortal Kombat initially distinguished itself from Street Fighter 2 by offering a more cinematic (and obviously violent) gaming experience, and while you can still debate about which of those games were better, that kind of experience simply reached an audience that included many who would have otherwise never paid attention to a fighting game.

Over the years, Mortal Kombat developers from various studios have stuck with what brought the franchise to the dance, so far as emphasizing those personality-based elements go. It hasn’t always been perfect, but the fairly recent decision to turn Mortal Kombat‘s campaigns into this kind of cinematic universe has only helped ensure that more people continue to follow this franchise if only to watch what happens next. The Mortal Kombat franchise slowly forced other fighters to follow in its footsteps, and it honestly still does those “cinematic” elements better, or as good, as anyone else.

Mortal Kombat Constantly Reinvents Itself

Look, the Mortal Kombat franchise is far from perfect. In fact, I think you’ll find that other fighting game franchises may just be better on an installment by installment basis. There have certainly been Mortal Kombat games that have been cleanly outsold by their competitors over the years.

Yet, that strangely makes Mortal Kombat‘s success all the more impressive. When Mortal Kombat 4 made people question whether or not the novelty of the series had passed, the Mortal Kombat team decided to drastically change their design philosophy with the release of the surprising (and successful) Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. That approach was still commercially viable by the time that Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was released, but in response to criticisms that things were starting to get a bit stale, NetherRealm Studios boldly decided to blow everything up again with 2011’s brilliant Mortal Kombat reboot.

There are few other franchises in all of gaming that have been this consistently committed to keeping things fresh even at times when “more of the same” would have been enough for many. You can point to a lot of factors that have contributed to Mortal Kombat‘s incredible success over the years, but let’s not forget that at the heart of it all are some really good games.

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[lliaq]

okay, now that I’ve slept on it I’m actually gonna try to put down my thoughts on the season, so obvious TUA season 2 spoilers below and it’s probably going to get really long

Just to preface this, I haven’t read any of the comics, so I can’t speak to how the show compares to them.

Guess I’m gonna start with the positives, and I think what I enjoyed most about the season where just little moments between the siblings. Obvious standouts being Ben getting to talk to Vanya and Diego. I think those were the only two scenes that acutally made me tear up a bit. It was just really nice seeing him get that opportunity, and something that I’ve wanted to see since S1. It would have been even nicer if he got a moment with all his siblings, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. Another one was at the very end with Vanya and Diego just sitting on the stairs together. Just a nice little moment, even if it was short.

Luther apologizing to Vanya was a pleasant surprise and showed that he actually used his time alone to reflect and have a bit of character growth, so that was another plus.

I overall liked Allison and Ray’s relationship, and I was okay with the way it ended. It was kind of bittersweet, but it made sense and felt in character.

On that note, I also liked that Allison learned to achieve things without her powers, because never having to do that was kind of a big note of her character in S1. Not necessarily sure it had to be done by taking her voice away, I think if anything it would have been even better if she did it by choice, but I’ll get back to that.

I enjoyed the whole old Five vs “young” Five thing. Not much more to add to that, really.

And lastly, I enjoyed Reginal a lot more than I thought I would. It was interesting to see a bit of a different side of him when he was with Grace, felt like it gave his character a bit more depth, and I mean the actor is just fantastic. Like, I fucking despise Reginald, but it’s a joy to watch his performance. The way he went in on Diego at the dinner was fucking brutal, man. That was heartbreaking to watch, and the fact that none of the others stood up for him sucked, but honestly I think it just shows that despite them bonding a little, they still have a ways to go in terms of being a functional family. S1 didn’t span all that much time, and they were separated for most of their time in the 60s, so it makes sense that they’re still learning in that department. Them getting into the car with Vanya showed that they’re getting there though. Also, to get back to Reginald, I think they’ve made it pretty clear now that he’s an alien, so there’s that too. No more confusion about that.

Now on to the so-so stuff. Things that were neither all good nor all bad.

Vanya & Sissy - oh boy man. I mean first of all: give me that lesbian farm life, hell yes. I was rooting for them from the start, and I just really loved all their interactions. Also, idk if that was intentional on Ellen’s part or not, but her chemistry with Sissy was leagues above whatever the fuck was going on with Leonard. That being said- I’m personally not a fan of cheating storylines, just in general. I get why, in this case, but yeah. And unlike with Ray, I really wish they would have taken Sissy and Harlan with them to 2019. Because, for one: can we at least have one happy gay couple on this show? And second: They both deserved to have a life where they’re not constantly judged for who they are. From a character standpoint I get that going to the future would be really scary and shit, but just imagine man. Vanya and Sissy could have been together without having to hide, and Harlan could have vastly benefited from the better understanding of autism we have now. Not that either of those aspects are perfect in 2019, but they’re a long way from the 60s.

Diego and Lila’s relationship I honestly didn’t care much about. It felt like they just completely dismissed Patch and the impact her death had, by not even so much as giving her a mention. And I also just didn’t really feel it man. I mean they spent some time together in the asylum, but it seemed like they weren’t even friends really - and then by the end of the season they love each other, like girl, it’s been less than a week. Relax.

Lila on her own, I did kind of like, but I feel like she could have used a bit more development, and a little less ‘I had sex with this guy once like five days ago and now I love him more than anything’

Ben. Ben Ben Ben. I was kind of up and down on his arc. I actually liked that he was just so done with Klaus’ shit, even if calling Dave a fling might have crossed the line a bit for me. Some of the posession stuff was weird (though I’m glad they at least had the ground rules talk), but at the same time getting to see him experience the most basic sensations like air on his face and dirt under his feet was nice. He did also save the world through the power of communication and love, so you know- good job, Ben. And then they killed him (again). Ngl, I was pissed at that- but I figured they would probably find a way to bring him back somehow, so I held off judgement on that until the end, and I was right. Still not entirely happy, and whether or not that’s going to change will likely depend on what happens with S3.

Klaus’ cult story line was kind of eh. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like it either. His attempts to save Dave were more interesting, even if they ultimately didn’t work. Other than that, he didn’t really go through any growth this season. It did piss me off that Allison enabled his drinking after he relapsed. Fuck that.

I’m glad we got to see a little bit of how Allison losing her voice affected her, but I think they could have done more there. Idk, it just felt a bit lackluster for something so huge. Like I mentioned earlier, her living a life of never actually having to work for anything was something that shaped her character and personality in S1, and I‘m glad she’s had that realization. That being said, I think it would have been even more impactful if she worked for what she wanted w/o using her powers by choice, showing that she was was willing to put in the effort to grow and change, rather than being forced into it by circumstance. But you know, sometimes life works like that, and people don’t change unless they’re forced into a situation where they have no other option.

And, somewhat related, I think the last point for this section is Allison and Vanyas relationship. While I’m glad that they’re closer now, I wish they would have at least adressed Vanya slitting her throat. I understand that Allison doesn’t blame her, we already saw that at the end of S1, but c’mon. At least have a short conversation about it, because that was a big thing. It feels like they just used that to fuel the ‘Allison needs to learn how to do things without her powers’ storyline, and then it just got dropped, never to be mentioned again. The show tends to do that a lot, and it completely diminishes the impact of these big moments.

Okay, now to the purely negatives, here we go.

Luther moping over Allison. For the love of god. Listen, Luther did grow on me this season, compared to S1 - but I was so fed up with his moping around. Can we just not do the incest thing anymore, please. I already went through that shit with Shadowhunters (except there it at least wasn’t actually incest), I don’t wanna do it again.

Harlan. I honestly did not care for him at all. That being said, I usually don’t care about child characters, so that’s not a big surprise and not necessarily the show’s fault. But also, the fuck even was that storyline. I’m sorry, but it just made no sense. Which actually leads me right to the next point

Inconsistently written powers. Diego doing the thingy with the bullets like since when tf can he do that? I understand that the show already changed his powers from the comics, but up until that point it was strictly about knives. We never see him curve or manipulate (or whatever it is he actually does) any other objects, so this just felt so random and out of nowhere, and like they just wanted to give him a ‘badass powers moment’. If they wanted to indicate that his powers were more than what we’ve seen in S1, literally all they had to do was have him use them on something that’s not a knife at any point in the season. A 2 second shot, done. And then you don’t get to the finale and are suddenly like “the fuck”. But, boy, Vanya was even worse. Sounds. That’s what we learn her powers are in S1. Sounds, she manipulates sounds and sound waves. So how in the everliving fuck does she a) bring someone back to life, b) tranfser part of her powers to that person and create a magical connection, and c) take that part of her powers back? None of that makes any sense whatsover. The stuff in S1 where she’s sucking the life out of her siblings was already a stretch, but they’ve just made it worse this season. And this is just a minor gripe with the VFX, but her floating out of the barn looked so bad. I know it’s hard to make floating/flying people look good and natural, but other shows and movies have done it, so it’s not like it’s impossible.

And lastly: The villains. They were terrible, period.

I don’t like the Handler that much, she’s just so...plain and boring and really the only thing she has going for her are the outfits. Nice outfits don’t make a good story though. But the Swedes were even worse. Just every scene they were in felt like it dragged and I just wanted to skip past it. And then they have the fucking funeral scene with swedish Adele like are you kidding me? Am I supposed to feel bad for these pieces of white toast with zero personality or development? ??? Honestly, they could have cut them out completely and replaced them with more development for Lila and I would have been perfectly happy with that. Or replaced them with literally anything else. I don’t think I would have felt like I was missing anything important. Also, AJ? What was up with that? Again, haven’t read the comics so idk if he’s a big deal or not in them, but I really thought he would play a bigger role. That felt like such a waste of a character and like what even was the point?

I really feel like AoS (esp. S1-4) raised my bar for well written and developed villains. Admittedly, a 22 episode season allows for a lot more time to actually do that than a 10 episode season, but still. If you have less time to develop characters, then you need tighter writing and TUA completely dropped the ball on that one.

Okay. I think that’s it. I mean, I probably forgot a bunch of stuff, but these were the things most prominently on my mind after letting everything sink in for a bit. Overall I’m pretty meh about the season as a whole. I’ll probably watch S3 (if they renew it, that is), but I’m not super hyped about it or anything. The only thing keeping me interested are sibling interactions and the Ben reveal (even though his emo hair is an atrocity. I’m sorry Ben, I love you, but no.)