#i was really excited for the thief remake too :(

[madegeeky]

Epic Free Game (til 4 Apr 2024, 10am ct)

Take to the sky and reunite a fragmented world in this surprisingly wholesome metroidvania! Help Iko adventure across beautiful hand-painted islands, receive letters from a quirky cast of characters, and face powerful monstrous adversaries.

[nemirutami]

I discovered you recently and was scrolling through your stuff when I fell in love with your Joker redesign. It’s just so Good! Not only is your art style perfect (for all your art, really) but the thought you put into it was just wonderful. My favorite part were the horns, they just fit so well! I’d love to see any other ideas you have, but really I just wanted to gush about how much I loved it. Thank you!

Aw, that makes me so incredibly happy!!!! As much as I rag on P5's story execution, I do adore all the potential there is to the characters and the potential in redesigns that better fit the character's personalities. I'll repost all the ones I've finished for funsies, but I think now is actually a good time to mention that I'm going to be compiling all my p5 redesigns into a little zine (a re-de-zine haha) with more detailed thought process behind what I was thinking when redesigning them (there wasnt enough blank space for all my notes, or my sketches)! I'll add some blurbs from the document I have in [these] brackets! I actually focused heavily on his mask, so I'm super relieved and excited that it's what you liked most about it!

JOKER

[[Aside from Akechi’s prince outfit (which I think was flawlessly executed), I knew that I couldn’t allow myself to butcher Joker’s design- especially since I intended to remake his mask, despite his mask being perfect as it is (and was also my base for the Black Mask design before I decided to remake everyone else). // My main concern was to make the outfit represent all of PT’s, not just Joker, but I also wanted to highlight Akechi’s part in playing as his foil. As such, where Akira has a heart shape connecting all phantom thieves together by a silver string of fate, Akechi has a distorted red glow that extends chains to weigh him down as well as wings to show his ability to choose his own path.]]

AKECHI [[I wanted to keep his face obscured, but add an option to show himself if he wished. So, a hood helped cover him up for me. It helped me make it feel as though it’s a “lost” part of Robin Hood that still clings on to his Black Mask design- a desire (though weak and decaying) to be a good person underneath it all for someone he once cared about. //

Akechi's chains (from his heart) symbolize his outlook on bonds, and how they tie you down, whereas Jokers symbolize the strength he has with his teammates. I felt like this was a little too sad to write on the concept page. Reading “Goro Akechi has no friends and it manifests in his Black Mask outfit” isn’t the most uplifting sentence you want to stumble across.]] ANN [[Ann was often forced to hold her tongue around Kamoshida in order to protect Shiho, and Shiho in turn tried to do the same to protect Ann. The whip I created for her is a play on the phrase “hold your tongue” showing a lion with it’s mouth open and its tongue hanging out- filled with thorns and ready to be used as a weapon to protect those that she values. One of her biggest weaknesses now becomes her force for change and success, and she ultimately uses her power as a thief to open the maw of the man that told her to be quiet- revealing all his ugly secrets with his own words.]]

FUTABA [[This one doesn't have any notes I can share yet, but she took ages to design, so that's why, lmfao!]]

MORGANA

[[ I wanted to make him blend in more with a classic SMT demon such as Jack Frost, but still distinct enough to stand out as “more than a demon”.

//

Since Morgana is the collective human hope, I think he can take any shape or form. I only retained his cat persona because I wanted to stay true to the original design concept of it being an animal. If I was allowed complete creative form over a “guiding light” however, I think I would base Morgana’s design on Anubis or psychopomps- guides of souls (souls of human hope). The interesting thing about psychopomps is that while Anubis is also an example of one, commonly, so are crows. Meaning, I would have to design Morgana to fit a canine in order to imply Akechi himself could have perhaps had a guide similar to Mona if he was not used to bring about ruin. However, Morgana’s cat aesthetic is tied into Joker’s own traits (sometimes down to mannerisms), so getting rid of the cat persona was not something I really wanted. That, and the fact the last protagonist was based on a loyal dog made it hard for me to choose canine. I would have liked to pull something out of zoroastrianism if possible, but I was not sure how far I could take it before his design became entirely unrecognisable. And the point of a redesign was not to entirely change them to become different characters, but just to play around with different themes to better fit the character and their backstory/feelings/traits.

]]

I really hope this content was fun to read!!!! The next design I have in my WIPS is Yusuke. Honestly, I find Ryuji and Yusuke are going to be super challenging, since I ADORE their designs and I genuinely do not want to just touch them up randomly without purpose and happen to downgrade them. Morgana and Ann were my easiest targets haha.

[mylifeincinema]

My Best of 2021: Non-2021 Films

My Best of 2021 is a series of annual lists in which I pick the best of the best from 2021, all leading up to my official picks for My Top 10 Films of 2021.

I saw a lot fewer new non-2021 films as I would have liked. Less than 15, I think. So it was tough making this list, but only because several on here don’t really belong on any ‘best of’ lists. Oh, well... here they are.

1. A Mighty Wind (Chistopher Guest, 2003)

A hilarious mockumentary about folk music that dismantles and pokes fun at the genre and the artists therein without ever becoming callous. And the original songs are fantastic.

2. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger, 1943)

Powell & Pressburger really could direct a movie, couldn’t they? Some of the narrative stuff doesn’t quite work for me, but the character work is phenomenal, and the performances behind them are so full of heart and dedication and loyalty that they fill in the parts that didn’t work and help create a whole that packs a punch.

3. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020)

A film about alcohol… both its positives and its negatives. How it brings out the best in us and how it brings out the worst in us. This is a fascinating film about four friends stuck in a painfully boring rut who bust out of it in gloriously drunken fashion; a study of walking a line and finding that said line is quickly beginning to blur. Mads is a powerhouse, here. And that ending is every bit as wonderful as you’ve heard.

4. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)

Matthau and Shaw are incredible, here. Just so pitch-perfect.

I love how bare-bones it all is. Just a simple heist/hostage film that doesn’t feel the need to overwrite its characters.

This is so, so much more effective than the remake, overall. And I actually really like the remake, too.

5. Best in Show (Christopher Guest, 2000)

It’s really funny. Guest and gang know what they’re doing, they know how to do it, and they milk it for every single available laugh.

6. Let Him Go (Thomas Bezucha, 2020)

This is NOT the film I thought it was going to be. Wow. This is such an effective slow burn of a film, with great performances from both Lane and Costner, a thematically rich, emotionally resonant screenplay and an explosive third act.

7. The War of the Worlds (Byron Haskin, 1953)

I loved the design of the Martians, and the VFX in general is just a ton of fun. There’s some really creative shit going on, here. Yeah, the ending is painfully anti-climactic. And sure, it’s Wells’ fault. But I’m still surprised no adaptation has managed to make it even a little more exciting/thrilling/interesting... and that’s a shame.

8. Greenland (Rick Roman Wuagh, 2020)

Significantly better than expected.

Butler puts a lot of his goofy machismo aside to accentuate his character’s desperation, here, and it pays off. They opt to tell this story with a greater focus on the human angle than the always crowd-pleasing ‘disaster porn’ angle, and that also pays off.

Also, most of this plays out very similar to Spielberg’s War of the Worlds without the aliens. That’s a compliment.

9. The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)

Not Scott’s best, but it does manage to captivate occasionally. Bowie is phenomenal in an all-too-small role. And Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon’s chemistry is equally natural and completely intoxicating.

10. Honest Thief (Mark Williams, 2020)

It’s at the lower end of the Liam Neeson action vehicles, but even that still makes for an entertaining ride. Neeson’s fantastic in this type of role, and it’s very hard not to cheer for him. The writing and directing here could have been better, but they do their job well enough for the type of film it is.

Enjoy!

-Timothy Patrick Boyer.

Next Up: Assorted (Animated Feature, Foreign Film, Editing, Screenplay, Etc.)

More of My Best of 2021...  

[meangirlsx]

your opinion on... musical theatre being adapted for film? which shows do you think are successful (favorites??) and which ones do you think really need to be told in their original format? which ones have not been adapted but you think would make a great film adaptation? (-phantomoftheorpheum)

OH YOU REALLY WANT AN ESSAY YOU GOT IT

I’m gonna put a divide here because I’m about to be my wordy bitch self to answer the first question alone

I have so many conflicting thoughts on this. I had the absolutely incredible opportunity to work in New York theatre before and as everything shut down (that was an experience but that’s an entirely separate story), so I’ve been able to talk to people who are more closely affected by the situation, too.

Overall, I think musical theatre should be adapted for film. Theatre is an art form with an incredibly unique and undeniable power when performed and experienced live. But it is not accessible the way it needs to be.

A show on Broadway is expensive in itself, and most consumers on Broadway are not living in New York, so they’re also expected to spend money on travel, lodging, food, and transportation around the city, in addition to presumably having to take time off work or otherwise away from their lives to make the trip. Seeing shows on Broadway are some of the most incredible things I’ve ever experienced, but I am very fortunate and these experiences come at a great cost to most people. So many people who want to visit Broadway are not able to.

There are of course tours and that’s great. But similarly, they’re not usually cheap, and they’re not always close to you. I’ve encountered countless people who drove and even spent the night in another city to see a touring show that wasn’t coming anywhere closer to them. You can always find local shows, too, and those can be so wonderful. But the fact stands that a majority of the theatre world is based in an exclusive area. The Tony Awards are a nationally broadcast and celebrated event, but so many people watching have never had the chance to see the shows the same way you’ve had the chance to hear songs before the Grammys.

So I think shows being adapted to film widens the audience in a very necessary way. But there are two ways to adapt to film. The first is the way we know many movie musicals, as a true adaptation, like Mamma Mia, Into the Woods, The Sound of Music, Annie, Hairspray, Rent, and Les Mis. I actually do really love these versions. (West Side Story is also iconic but they basically forced their actors into brown face so there’s your not so fun fact of the day.) I think it’s fun to see the show told truly inside the world that otherwise is at least partially left to the imagination in most cases. And being adapted in this way typically means that it will interest more of a regular movie audience, which is really great to help get the stories out into the world and get more recognition of these shows and the industry.

The other way to adapt to film is the way Hamilton and Legally Blonde did it, where they released a professionally recorded version of the original stage production. I think this needs to happen more often. The original team of a show deserves for their work to be seen as the original form of the show.

For example, I’m so excited that The Prom is getting a movie, and I think the star-studded cast will help it get a lot more attention and therefore help the story reach a lot of people who need it, and that’s wonderful. This story needs to be told and these characters need to offer representation to people who have never had the chance to see themselves onscreen like this before. But the original team deserved to be able to tell the story they’d been telling it. They were the ones who introduced the story to the world and they deserve to introduce it to the world on this bigger scale.

It would be wonderful to normalize that kind of adaptation, maybe even in addition to the total remake adaptation format. I don’t want to get rid of one in favor of the other. Both have their place and their purpose. I suppose it wouldn’t be very sensible to create two movie versions of every show, to capture it in both full adaptation and stage-to-screen format, but I would honestly be all for that.

Some shows have such important, beautiful, intentional staging that it couldn’t be translated any way other than a professional recording. (Some examples below.) So some shows might lend themselves best to only a professional recording and not a total adaptation, but while I would love for anything to have a total adaptation that worked well in that format, I would want the original production, too, because it’s what they deserve.

I think especially now as we adapt so much to virtual formats, we’ve stepped into a new era of theatre potential. Theatre can be performed live virtually, or it can be recorded and shared to be watched over and over again just like our favorite TV shows and movies. There is nothing like the intense, electric feel of a live performance, but that should not limit us from sharing the art in other ways. The argument that being able to see a show as a movie would make people less likely to go see it has frankly been proven wrong time and time again. People want to see the show live more and will if they are able. Otherwise, we helped someone see a show who couldn’t see it any other way, and isn’t that the point of theatre? Making a difference in people’s lives? Connecting people?

As for shows that would make great film adaptations...

Hadestown is one of the most popular shows, so I feel like people would love to see that. The original team deserves to have their version of the show immortalized and shared with the world. But I would also love to see what an adaptation could do with the set for the Underworld.

I would love to see Come From Away as a movie. I think the show is so so so so so well done in its format, I can’t even really imagine it as an adaptation other than as a professional recording of the show.

Similarly, If/Then is a story I think everyone could use but I can’t even imagine it outside of its stage format so I vote for a professional recording.

Spring Awakening could really be a helpful show for a lot of people to see, but hot take I want it to be Deaf West’s Spring Awakening. Michael Arden is an absolute genius and the whole world needs to see his version of the story told through the phenomenal team.

The Lightning Thief deserved to be nominated at this year’s Tonys and they deserve a professional recording to be shared with the world. And I mean if someone wanted to make a better version of the movie with this group, I’d be down.

Bandstand deserves to be shared with the world and actually was available virtually for a little bit and I want that to be true again. I can’t imagine that in any other form, either, because the staging of trauma is so powerful.

Waitress was a movie first but I want the stage version immortalized because we need it.

Not Broadway but I want Kerrigan-Lowdermilk’s The Mad Ones to hit Broadway and then get a film adaptation, too.

[ash-trash]

💗💥☀️🌙🌺 for all your ACTIVE RP charr.

Oh my! To keep this from going overboard, I’m going to keep this to Charr that are participating in active guild or open RP! Let’s get started...

Sela Lunarstep:

💗 Ramble a bit about this character!

Oh gosh, there’s so much to ramble about! Sela’s actually not my oldest EU character, she’s younger than Kurra by a smidge, but she’s definitely my favorite! She’s currently having a pretty rough go of it, but I really love thinking about her “private” life outside of Warband stuff - she gets into tussles, makes jewelry, all sorts of exciting things! :3c Sela’s name comes from, shocker, the Greek moon goddess Selene, while Lunarstep has changed a bit over the years. Originally, she was a shadowstep thief build, which is where the Lunarstep came from, but now it’s more of a... she’s always at the front of the pack, leading the charge, sort of deal. :p

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this?

Sela is garbage at dealing with anything related to her own vulnerabilities and weaknesses, aha. She’s built up this huge facade of bravado that fixates on her being the perfect soldier and the best Legionnaire and so she has a huuuuge amount of trouble asking for (or accepting) help, or admitting that she can’t do something. Vulnerability is a big no-no and so naturally, although she does well with the more maternal relationships within her Warband, she really struggles with anything that veers towards the romantic. As far as hating to feel something, she hates to be embarrassed or humiliated, again related to her own pride and confidence.

☀️ How well does your OC take care of themself? Do they tend to put others before their own wellbeing and if so how often? What is their favourite way to pamper themself?

I’d say that she does a pretty good job of taking care of herself, but she absolutely puts others before herself. She prides herself on taking care of her warband and spoiling them and that often translates to making sure they get the lion’s share of the goodies while she scrimps. That said, she does have enough of an ego to feel that she “deserves” the good stuff, so she generally takes care of her own needs pretty well. Except sleep.

🌙 What are some of your OC’s favourites? Favourite food, colour, season, stuff like that! Give some general simple facts that tend to get overlooked!

Hmmm, stuff that’s overlooked... well, her favourite colour would be purple, season would be fall (she likes the milder weather and really enjoys the autumn leaves), flavorwise she loves spicy things (honestly, just because she’s trying to show off and be tough) as well as deep rich flavours... More obscure stuff might be: Her favourite time of day is late night, favourite bunk is the bottom one, favourite horn is her upper right one, favourite instrument would be the flute (she tends to prefer her music in the higher ranges - piccolo’s up there too!), and favourite cheese would be a nice heady parmesan.

🌺 What additions would your OC make to their body if they could? Lets say, if they don’t have a tail would they want one? Wings? Horns? Do they wish they could shapeshift?

Sela’s pretty happy with her body as it is, but there’s definitely a few changes she’d make. As much as they’d get in the way, she kinda wants bigger horns, and definitely bigger teeth. She’d love to be even more flexible than she is, and she’d like some extra muscle and definition to her legs. Wings would be nice, but definitely not all the time. Shapeshifting, of course! That would come in so handy!

Graf Towercleave (Yes, he still counts >.> ):

💗 Ramble a bit about this character!

Ah, Graf, my old man... Graf is definitely one of those characters with the most fleshed-out backstories, especially in how it affects him nowadays, and all the traumas and memories that come with it. I don’t remember the inspiration for his first name, but the second part was because he was originally designed to be a WvW Firebrand in his off-time (which... never came to fruition, oops), so Towercleave. I’m really excited to see the next step in his journey, though it coincides with my own journey in such a way that I do find myself getting emotional about the good-byes... ;w;

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this?

I’d say that Graf doesn’t really do well with a lot of the “non-Charr” emotions/feelings: any sort of romance, faith, or selfishness. He’s learned to deal with them in others, to be sure, but they’re still fairly alien to him. I’d say that as far as things he experiences that he struggles with, it would be the trauma of his past - whether it’s something that he experienced in the Sieges, or in his time with the Vigil, he... doesn’t do well with being “scared”, or not in control.

☀️ How well does your OC take care of themself? Do they tend to put others before their own wellbeing and if so how often? What is their favourite way to pamper themself?

He does good at taking care of himself, though perhaps a bit more spartan than is strictly necessary, because that’s what he’s used to. He’s been a soldier his whole life, through and through, and he knows how important maintaining his equipment, including his body, is. He does a good job at keeping himself in shape and healthy, though perhaps to a detriment of not allowing himself many luxuries (except for warm baths, those are always welcome). Although he does consider others, he usually tends to leave them to their own devices, except when he decides they’re too young/naive/bullheaded to do it properly, such as a certain blue-haired warbandmate.

🌙 What are some of your OC’s favourites? Favourite food, colour, season, stuff like that! Give some general simple facts that tend to get overlooked!

Favourite food would be some good old traditional charr chow. Grilled meat, lots of special sauce, no fancy frou-frou to mess with it. Maybe some cheese. As far as colours, although most of his life tends to be filled with red, he’ll admit to liking a nice deep dark navy blue the best. The sea has been a rare treat for him, and he enjoys it when he can. Favourite season would have to be winter. Although he doesn’t care for the snow and cold and slush, he likes the way it makes the world slow down. He likes that everyone hates it together, I suppose. Some more obscure ones... his favourite flavour of pie is strawberry, his favourite place was a small grove in what is now the Dragonbrand - nowadays, it’s probably the Hero’s Canton, because it has the most nice memories without bad ones to taint it.

🌺 What additions would your OC make to their body if they could? Lets say, if they don’t have a tail would they want one? Wings? Horns? Do they wish they could shapeshift?

Honestly, he’d mostly just... fix his current one. Make it less old, less achy, less stiff. Shapeshifting and the rest of it sounds like a lot of faff. He wishes he had a third set of ears so he could hear humans better. Maybe another pair of arms to hold more things.

Naphtha Seizetar:

💗 Ramble a bit about this character!

But I ramble about her so muuuuch, FINE. For any newcomers, Naphtha was originally a villain in a Lunar plot that met a gruesome end, but I loved the concept so much that I had to remake her (a sort of AU, what-if-her-life-turned-out-different) as a good girl. I’ve actually got a sort of spooky story in the works with her (and at the rate I’m going it might be spooky season before it’s ever finished) that’s going to give her a bit of development with her magic because right now the poor girl is a dummy and would rather play with pressure cookers.

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this?

A lot of them, probably. Naph is a sweetie but she doesn’t do well with a lot of “serious” things. She likes being left alone to her own devices and is still getting the hang of the much-more teamwork oriented Seize group. So I guess emotionally, uh, things like teamwork and codependence and responsibility, whatever emotions those are. As far as hates feeling, she really doesn’t like feeling like she’s wrong (ironically). She doesn’t like feeling like she’s being irrational, or that she’s not justified in what she’s doing.

☀️ How well does your OC take care of themself? Do they tend to put others before their own wellbeing and if so how often? What is their favourite way to pamper themself?

She does not. Naph is the kind of gal that would go weeks without showering, live off of corn chips and stale marshmallows she found under the couch, and develop a 12 coffee a day habit so she only has to sleep once a month. Naph does not take very good care of herself at all, and she takes care of others even less. She’s not necessarily inconsiderate, she just... as above, doesn’t do well with the whole teamwork thing and kind of figures that she can take care of herself, so everyone else can too. As far as pampering herself, she rarely goes above what’s “necessary” as far as self-care, but on the rare occasion that she did decide to treat herself, she’d get a lot of fancy soaps and oils and just... go to town on her fur and spend like a whole day grooming and scrubbing and getting the years of grime out of there until she’s as soft and fluffy as can be.

🌙 What are some of your OC’s favourites? Favourite food, colour, season, stuff like that! Give some general simple facts that tend to get overlooked!

Favourite food would be mushroom anything. Probably her favorite ever is something she had in Lion’s Arch one time, some sort of pasta dish with mushrooms and squid ink - it was salty and savory and rich... Her favourite colour would be brown (well, she’d say black but as far as actual COLOURS), and her favourite season would be fall. She likes the spoopy season, and enjoys cronching the leaves. More uncommon things, her favourite shape is octagon, her favorite simple machine is the screw, and her favorite animal is the carrion devourer.

🌺 What additions would your OC make to their body if they could? Lets say, if they don’t have a tail would they want one? Wings? Horns? Do they wish they could shapeshift?

She would absolutely go all out and give herself big ol’ bat wings and like 3 more sets of horns and huuuuge fangs and way bigger claws and a pointy tail and SPIKES and probably a third eye on her forehead... heck yeah.

Elda Throatchop:

💗 Ramble a bit about this character!

Ahhh, Elda. I included her mostly because I wanted to talk about her and also she’s sort of gotten sucked into a few open-ish things lately so she totally counts >.> She’s another NPC-turned-character from Lunar’s Drizzlewood plot, this time a generic helper NPC that was supposed to get killed off but Lunar actually did well enough that she survived, and helped them through the final fight. Aesthetically, she’s actually based off of the Pokemon Obstagoon, which is where her last name comes from as well. Sort of. I’ve honestly had the idea for a Blood engineer in the back of my mind for years now and Elda is absolutely not that! She’s not at all what I would have made had I set out originally to make a Blood engineer, but I love her anyways and I’m really enjoying her.

💥 Are there any emotions your OC doesn’t know how to deal with, doesn’t understand or hates having to feel? Any reason behind this?

Elda hates feeling loneliness. She doesn’t mind being alone, and she can handle that just fine - she likes her private time to tinker or work on projects or test the latest whatever, and she probably does better on her own anyways, but she... needs to know that there’s people there for her if she wants/needs. She doesn’t like being isolated. As far as stuff that she doesn’t know how to deal with, probably regret? She’s so far operated on a kind of “live hard die young” sort of deal (and she almost did, dohohoho) and so when missed opportunities or regrets jump out at her, she’s not really sure what to do about it. It never spurs her to action so she’s kind of just left there staring at it like “so... what now?” and it kind of shuts down her whole mojo for a long time.

☀️ How well does your OC take care of themself? Do they tend to put others before their own wellbeing and if so how often? What is their favourite way to pamper themself?

Elda takes decent enough care of herself. Not exemplary (she’s not out here practicing yoga or getting enough fiber) but well enough! She eats regularly and gets enough sleep and bathes often, so she’s doing pretty good! Although she doesn’t regularly put anyone above herself, she would do it for certain people, like her friends or family. She values them and their role in her life enough that she’s willing to self-sacrifice to make them happy and keep them around. When she does want to treat herself, she tends to splurge a little on some shiny new tool or toy, often with the excuse that it’s for work and it’ll help her be more productive, but she knows that it’s just because it’s bigger and shinier and has an extra spanner or something.

🌙 What are some of your OC’s favourites? Favourite food, colour, season, stuff like that! Give some general simple facts that tend to get overlooked!

Her favourite food would probably be things that are kind of finicky and interactive, so poultry wings, or artichoke, or shellfish. She’s not really picky about flavours, though of course she likes things meaty. Her favourite colour is obviously red, though she’ll admit to a fondness for pink as well. She never understood why humans attach so much meaning to it - pink’s cool. Her favourite season is definitely summer - she likes the clear skies, the bright weather... More random stuff! Her favourite Bop-It command is Twist It, her favourite style of soda pop (if such a thing exists in Tyria, I dunno) is Dr. Pepper, her favourite sport is wrestling, and her favorite piece of clothing is her belt buckle, which is made from the melted down remains of her first gun.

🌺 What additions would your OC make to their body if they could? Lets say, if they don’t have a tail would they want one? Wings? Horns? Do they wish they could shapeshift?

Elda’s pretty happy with how she is, but given her choices, she’d like to be quite a bit taller and a bit bulkier. She wishes her teeth were a bit pointier, and she always wished she could grow a longer mane - she wants to have a big spiky mohawk too. As nice as wings or shapeshifting would be, it seems like having too many things would just get in the way.

[2bstudioblog]

Konami’s wheels are turning... slowly

Lot’s of interesting news heading to our heads this Monday from what I heard from Yong Yea’s video about Konami wanting to outsource their IP’s to 3rd parties.

Obviously, Akira Yamaoka has kinda given away a strong hint that he’s working on a project with Bloober which in this case would be the long awaited SH remake or the direction they had with PT before it got cancelled. Akira Yamaoka also decided that (too late) he wanted to amend the article from his interview and release it later down the line. It’s very unusual that these news happen, but we all know Yamaoka is most famous for his music in Silent Hill.

Which brings me to a funny story about my own involvement of a Silent Hill game. I mentioned this on a podcast that I was part of 2 Konami-owned IP’s that went into another direction and killing off their franchises which have been like dead bodies in a morgue for the last 7 years.

I got the request to write industrial-metal music for a Silent Hill (of course at this time I only knew the IP and their most famous version of the game has been Silent Hill 2.) game. First I was of course very excited to be part of the series, but I jumped to early until I found out it was a Pachinko-machine (A japanese style pinball-game mixed with a touch-screen and a one-armed bandit and a slot-machine in one.), and my heart sank a little. I think I produced 4-5 cues for the machine, but I’m glad that nobody will be able to hear my “mediocre” masterpieces because all you would hear are metal-balls falling into a tray. But the thing about this machine, it had taken cut-scenes from Silent Hill 2, upscaled or even re-mastered/remade the graphics which would have looked great if it was its own game. But it was the same thing they’ve done with all their other IPs when those transfer over to this kind of entertainment. All what was left of it, Jim Sterling turned the game into a Meme and all I can hear is the -”HIT THE LEVER!” and the effects overpowering the music behind it. But I’m glad it didn’t go further then that. Technically here, Silent Hill(s) died with the arrival of the pachinko-slot machine and the series have tried to re-establish itself ever since.

Another game I was a part of was a Castlevania (Dracula in Japan) themed Pachinko-slot machine, with the revolutionary phrase “Erotic Violence” in it’s PR material and video-commercial. I mean, they took the music production part of this machine very seriously because I wasn’t aware of the “EV” part. I just thought it would be a machine praising the history of Castlevania. I was assigned to re-write and re-orchestrate a few songs from Neo-classical Metal music into more Progressive Metal style, and I was super-proud of this one because they had the sheet-music already available for me. All I had to do was re-arrange some parts for a string-quartet (1 cello, 2 violins and 1 viola) and I believe it was engineered and recorded by famed engineer Kenji Nakai who was under and working with famed engineer Mr Bruce Swedien (Michael Jackson, Quincy Jones).

From that moment me and Mr. Nakai stroke a friendship because he has a passion for Progressive Metal and he asked me if I could send more songs his way. From this we both have been incredibly busy on both of our ends, but I hope we can be able to work on something in the future. I have a feeling that might be soon.

So a long story short, Konami spent a lot of money for recording, they approved everything and we were done. But when it turned out to be a pachinko-machine and not a world-wide videogame release, I just had to facepalm myself, asking the question why they keep doing so many poor decisions. Why leaving all those fans out in the cold and really start making Castlevania mean something. This void of “lots of fancy things, but no substance” started right here...

Konami are turning their wheels a little bit too late and too slow until now. After they got rid of Hideo Kojima (Who I believe was thinking of the international-market rather than the domestic one), Konami had only one thing on their minds: Making money quick and domestically. No more wasted time on translations, straight for the gambling crowd. No need to write interesting stories. No need to introduce kids to this adult material. They wanted to earn it back as fast as possible. But we all see their decisions put them on the map as a “black-company”, who mistreat their staff, shaming them out in the office for overstaying their lunch-breaks. Moving staff from one business to another, from a programmer to a Konami-fitness Center-staff, or as a toilet-cleaner at a Konami-owned pachinko-slot gambling hall. The management of the company has been horrendous for the full-time employee. I’m glad I was not part of these later projects and only wrote stuff for them for Pro Evolution Soccer series from 2009-2012. (My work on 2010-2012 was unfortunately un-credited work. :(

Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain In My Ass

When the playable teaser called Metal Gear Solid - Ground Zeroes, came out on the PS3 and later on the PS4, it was an introduction for the new graphics engine designed by Hideo Kojima’s team, simply called The FOX-Engine. Basically this “game” was more of a demo rather than a full-product. But it looked great and with a fantastic score by Akihiro Honda, Ludvig Forssell and Harry Gregson-Williams, it had everything going for it to become something really awesome. It became a standard approach from Hideo Kojima now to produce “Playable Teasers” to show a great concept while offering a 3-4 hour short campaign, showing off the engine’s graphical capabilities.

Still, the story was under progress and I knew early on that Hideo Kojima really didn’t want to do it after he always felt that Metal Gear Solid 4 was final. But here is the curse of the die-hard fans, and I’m sorry to say it. No matter how many Iron Man movies Marvel crams out, at the 3rd movie, I started to feel “This does not feel like Iron Man anymore”. But that’s what the fans wanted and is a standard in the movie industry. Always produce a trilogy. Indiana Jones has always been the 3 movies from 1981-1989. The 4th one doesn’t really need to be called Indiana Jones at all. It was there I felt, just like with Metal Gear Solid V, they were beating a DEAD RACE HORSE.

I can’t deny the talents on display for Metal Gear Solid - Ground Zeroes. It laid down some really cool foundations for the gameplay, but I still believe the better game-series for stealth was beaten by the likes of Splinter Cell and most recently Thief. Stealth in MGS has always felt a little bit childish and I only really enjoyed MGS 1, MGS 2, tried to play MGS 3 (still have it one my Vita!) and will try to finish it. MGS 3 has felt like the TRUE Zeroes experience, with the inception of the story and lore behind the cloning of Big Boss. MGS 4 finally brought it all to a great finale and I felt, there is NOTHING more to tell. MGS 1, 2 and 4 is the Trilogy, MGS 3 serves as the Prequel and I see nothing wrong with that.

Mission - Erase Kojima’s Legacy

The making of MGS V - The Phantom Pain is kinda true to it’s title. Can you feel the nostalgia? Or are we just imagining the sensation of a Metal Gear Solid game past it’s prime? The missing link? The missing limb? And with the worlds biggest cop-out  of everything that had to do with story was completely missing.

Each mission is playing out every time the same, with an intro to a TV-show, giving away massive spoilers to who would appear in the mission, you do your thing (not so much of story, just a “go-here, do that approach, sneak back out, head to pick-up) rinse and repeat. I wonder how much of this was Kojima’s fault? I don’t think he was up to it. I’m sure he fought for more story but the big heads didn’t want to listen to what makes a MGS game a MGS game. The new management had now already played the hand to disown the man who put Konami on the map for games since the mid 80s.

The game is no longer marketed like before. The tagline “A Hideo Kojima Game” no longer exists and will never be part of Konami’s mission of erasing the person who gave them their fame and the recognition that a game carrying the name Konami was a brand of quality for any gamer out there. Me myself, personally only played PES because of the stellar animations, but its recently since 2012, I stopped playing the series. FIFA had already cheapened itself, PES likewise. Updating the graphics, but the same old animations have been recycled back to the PES3 days. Maybe there’s been an update in the collision engine, but otherwise everything stayed the same, with the huge amount of data collected from previous years of motion-capture, why do it all over when its all about the brand recognition? Saving money on processes wherever possible. Simple Math. And here it is. MGS V is not a MGS game.

We already knew it was going to be a massive budget behind the game of MGS V. But what can Konami do to save money on MGS V? They already have the Fox Engine running from Ground Zeroes. The assets for “Snake” (I’ll let you know why I put quotation-marks around it) and standard models will extend somewhat. Oh, yes, let’s save money on a character that doesn’t speak (Quiet), over-sexualize the character to start a fan-base of people who just dig character design, animated a sexy “shower” routine for the character for boys to go nuts over. What about voice? Let’s not really try to sync the voices to the mouths. Let’s have the guy from “24″ record his performances onto tape-logs. Kiefer Sutherland would have been a good “Snake”, but I understand now that you are not “SNAKE”. The game explains pretty soon at the end that you are just a Medic and all the tapes you’ve been listening to is the original Big Boss. You never where the character of Snake. Even though this all could have been handled better, Konami wanted to save money wherever possible. We also knew David Hayter was not asked or put forward to return as “The Voice of Snake”. But in this case I start to wonder myself, David Hayter might have dodged the biggest bullet in the most expensive, commercial and very controversial game of all time once Konami decided to kill everything that built up their reputation.

Even during production Kojima managed to start working on PT. The game Konami “silenced” after it was released on the PS-store. Guillermo Del Toro and his friendship with Hideo Kojima’s dream-game was put on ice. All because Kojima was about to get frozen out of the company that was according to Konami “Wasting too much bloody money”. I might get blacklisted for saying this, but once the new management started to mess with the other IPs for just domestic/gambling market, that’s where everything went sideways. Konami wasn’t treating their heritage with respect.

It took them 7 years to realize their mistake! And now, for those who wants to be part of 3rd party developers who would get a crack at a new Castlevania, a new Metal Gear Solid (remake I hope), Konami has realized that the only way they will survive (Yeah, Metal Gear Solid Survive killed them HARD) is to let other’s take over. Maybe my dream of scoring a Metal Gear Solid game would be somewhat more possible now rather than working in the confined space of limitations posed by the higher ups at Konami. Let 3rd party developers breathe life into the IPs because I know there are smarter ways to tell a story and I would gladly like to see the return of David Hayter in the seat, without having to deal with the blank-face approach that he was faced with every time he had to audition for Snake in MGS 2, 3 and 4! David Hayter is a fantastic writer, actor and voice-actor. He has the chops and I think we are all ready for either a re-make or a better follow up to MGS 2 and the time between that one and MGS 4.

[jacksallys]

Hi maddie, ily! ❤🤠 1, 15, and 18 for the asks thing plz and thank you 😌 -gigi.

thank u sm for the ask gigi <3 appreciate u always

1. if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

!!! god thats a big question okay. uh? as far as reading goes honestly,,, probably harry potter? its a Big part of me tbh. probably makes up about 78% of my personality. smth to watch hm,, well !! my favourite tv series of all time is charmed (the original not the shitty remake lol) so !! probably that. and listen to,, hm,, either the we all have our comfort albums ok playlist or more specifically. maybe just sounds good feels good... top notch album tbh

15. five most influential books over your lifetime?

ohhh my god okay okay. so. im not really going off of like? Influential more just as like. books that r special to me? and sorta shaped me as a person

1. harry potter & the philosopher’s stone by j.k. rowling a piece of shit :)

its not like. my favourite harry potter book or anything but? it does have a very special place in my heart just cause... its the beginning? yes

2. the iron king by julie kagawa 

i feel like. no matter how ??? i Am mentally i can just. reread this book and everything will b okay for a sec? that sounds a little sad now im typing it out actually but u know. top notch book one of my all time favourites 

3. carry on by rainbow rowell

!!!!!! this BOOK. god if it wasnt. evident enough how much i already hyperfixate on this stupid book i do have a cheeky lil muke fic thats an? au of it. need to finish that but !!! god i literally only read it in like. april maybe but. ive reread it abt seven times since then its rlly just? amazing. in every way possible

4. one of us is lying by karen m. mcmanus

i have like. a huge huge issue w ?? finding books too predictable. and i think this is one of the Only books ive ever really read where? i didnt already have a faint idea of who the “killer” ig is by the time it was revealed. its just !! a really good book i love it a lot 

5. the lightning thief by rick riordan 

well :) some of us fixated on greek mythology as a kid and then Fixated on pjo as a teenager. enough said lads (im not gonna start rambling abt percy jackson because otherwise ill have to put a read more on this post okay)

18. what’s your patronus?

thank u for indulging me by asking a hp specific question i love u always gigi

okay SO according to pottermore or wizarding world whatever its bloody called rn its a calico cat !!!!!!! very exciting i can remember taking that quiz when it came out and thinking that i was gonna have a fat kick off and have to create a new account if i didnt get some form of cat <3

identity ask.........oh shit

[bearpillowmonster]

Top 15 Games!

I saw some people make this but with 20, I decided to do 15 but with the rule of using ONE PER SERIES to make it tougher and so I didn’t just fill it will KH games. This is in no particular order so I’ll just explain them all the way I have them.

Minecraft: I must have logged more hours into this game than any other, I would wake up just to play mods on the weekend, it’s just something to kind of pass the time or do just whatever with.

Tron 2.0: I’m a sucker for Tron and for them to have made an FPS genre about it with a great system to add buffs or powerups such as high jumping/silent walking. To have different weapons (A sniper called LOL I mean come on! How do you not adore that?!)

Daxter: May be a PSP title but worth the time, good world building, character, and spunk.

Super Mario Galaxy: Who are you if you don’t have Mario on your list, the question is which one? Mario Galaxy has an epic orchestral soundtrack that is one of the main reasons I got a Wii.

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando: Why this one? Why not-

Oh...but in all honesty, it builds upon the first game and just has a better story in my opinion, yeah the 3rd one has neat weapons but this one stays close to me.

Spider-Man: Oh boy, Insomniac strikes again. This game plays magically. I love the acrobatic parkour fluent style of Spidey’s movement, I can tell how other players differ from me in their play style and it just overall has a ton of stuff to do.

Kingdom Hearts II: While I will say I like the speed of KH3, KH2 has a slight edge because of the story, the weight of your actions (keyblades, character movement, etc.) and it has not only a Lion King world but a Tron world!

Epic Mickey: While you can play as Oswald in the sequel and I really like that, this feels slightly more grounded with it’s narrative and originality, I like the dark sense it gives while also introducing one of my favorite characters of all time to me. OSWALD! Also paint, has a really cool paint thing.

Pokemon Platinum: While I love seeing Pokemon go to 3D, this game still remains my favorite in the series. Pokemon Diamond got me back into Pokemon but this game improved on that in almost every aspect...otherwise the Reverse World and Darkrai/Shaymin capabilities. 

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D: I love playing handheld Zelda but there’s something that most of them just don’t get that the console ones do so when I got this game you can imagine it was the best of both worlds. Improving on the original OoT, while having it on the go just felt great, this was an adventure. 

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End: You would think a long lost brother that was never mentioned would seem kind of cliche but they deliver it with style, the graphics are great and the gameplay is at it’s best. You can shoot a nerf gun, what can I say?

Chibi-Robo: Plug into Adventure: I’ve reviewed this on my blog before so I’ll just sum it up. It gives a nice sense of duty without feeling too pressured, yeah days go past but you never have to do anything in any certain order for the most part, you just do stuff at your own pace, in your own way and it really goes to show how much a character that doesn’t talk can later become your tumblr icon because he’s so cute and relatable.

Halo Reach: I played a good bit of the Halo franchise, with friends that is, I never had my own Xbox but the new collection is coming out on Steam, I’m so excited. This one in particular had the most memories for me, yeah Halo 4 did some cool stuff, so did 3 but this just for some reason strikes me as the best in the franchise and I feel like I’d have a lot of people back me up on that.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution: I was going to give this to Control or Portal 2 because this game conflicted me but then I remembered...I may not have been the best fan of this game at first but I played it anyway and I had a gosh darn good time, I feel like this is more of a fun game than anything, even with Mankind Divided, I liked this one better, the way it’s set up with mini open worlds, cyberpunk ideas, potential for different augments, the feeling you get from the stealth, the feeling you get from going in guns blazing, it was just a good time.

Metal Gear Solid: I think the gameplay belongs to MGS5 but the story belongs here. I have to say, for a PS1 game, this is the cake. It has a remake on the Gamecube and it still doesn’t beat this, this is stylized, this is an experience. I didn’t play it until MG5 was already out and I still loved it with gameplay flaws and all, if it can age that well then it deserves it’s spot. 

The next potential in this list is either Death Stranding or FFVII Remake

[lovetheangelshadow]

N'Pressions: Netflix' Carmen Sandiego

I will admit my past experiences with the Carmen Sandiego franchise is a mix of both enjoyment and frustration. My first encounter with the series was that my grandpa had the original black and white game installed on his Mac II and half the time me and my brother were guessing and constantly losing because who knew you needed the accompanying Almanac to go with it. Also I was like six and my brother four and we didn’t even know what an Almanac was. We did sporadically watch the game show; both the geography and history ones, when our mother let us watch TV and well as the cartoon that came up on the Fox. To memory the only other game we ever owned was the USA specific one that we played to heck out of.

 I was not even aware that there was a reboot in the making until I had gotten an email from Netflix about some shows I might like. I glanced at the trailer on YouTube and admittedly was not exactly enthusiastic about the premise. From what it appeared to be, we were following Carmen specifically and that, while she was still a thief, she stole from other thieves. Sly Cooper. They were essentially premiering a Sly Cooper type show. Why didn’t Sly get his own show?! Okay so the Ratchet and Clank movie tanked, but you have a bit more wiggle room with a show guys! Heck technically there is 2D animation in the Sly series, it would not look out of place. Well despite my disappointment, I decided to give this a fair shake.

The theme song is meh. Honestly it just doesn’t stick with me like the previous three version. And yes, as corny as it was, I still like the Where in Time theme. I get what they’re trying to do though; invoking a jazzy tone like in the James Bond series, Pink Panther, or Catch me if you Can-it just feels very generic to me. Which is an honest shame because the animation for the opener is beautiful. The black and white cut out backgrounds with the trademark red coat gliding through and the title character eluding capture is just a treat. Again it works really well with the mood and tone of the show; a spy-action chase theme traversing the world. Like I said it does feel like they’re trying to invoke that classic thief/spy films. It’s just the theme doesn’t stick with me.

And as for the reboot itself, the show decides to elaborate and remake Carmen Sandiego’s origin. Now I don’t know if people were clamoring for this, but I never really came across any howling dissent like with She-Ra or Powerpuff Girls when this news came out. Most of the reactions I’ve seen were either excitement or hesitation. And let’s face it, any time there is a reboot there is reasonable grounds for reluctance. Now with Carmen there is a bit more of a leeway here. After all, at least to my memory, a set personality or origin for her. You knew she was a thief that wanted you to know it was her, someone who enjoyed the chase, and was very crafty and intelligent. Also mysterious.

So the new concept is that Carmen, or Black Sheep as her former name, was an orphan found by one of the V.I.L.E faculty members, Ms. Blunt and raised on V.I.LE Headquarters island where she had a series of various tutors who taught her geography, history, and world culture. She also learned a few other things by osmosis from other members of the organization and was also a bit of a prankster and precocious. Eventually she is allowed to train in the next school year where only 40 thieves graduate per year (clever pun). And it’s here where we meet some of the her schoolmates who will eventually her antagonists for the season. And if I may put in aside her, this show does this SO much better than She-Ra. The show actually does take the time to make them more or less fleshed out characters so you know the kinds of threats they will eventually be later on in the show. With She-Ra they’re more like set pieces then anything else (save for Catra, but whatever). Anyway the school is run by five faculty members each with their own personality and gimmick to their methods of crime. And watching these guys is very enjoyable. The best comparison I can think of is the Kingdom Hearts series where if you compare the organization of Disney Villains and Origination XIII in terms of interaction and entertainment. The former classmates are more like Organization XIII. Sure they have their own gimmicks and personas, but they don’t stand out as much and their interaction with Carmen is more professional and serious. The only exception may be Tigress-but she’s more of a rival. Also I am convinced two of those guys are gay and it actually feels natural because it’s not their most outstanding feature. With the Faculty, it is a lot more personal. Plus their egos often clash with one another and they’ve got no qualms taunting or flaunting others’ failures and their own successes. There is someone of a sixth member, who is the bookkeeper for V.I.L.E. Fun fact, she is voiced by the original Carmen and the reboot Carmen steals her soon to be trademark hat and coat from her. That is one of the cleverest pass the torches EVER.

Anyway, Carmen is flunked from the course and is forced to take it over. However she stows away on the place heading for heist where she learns the true face of V.I.L.E. She doesn’t have a problem with theft, it’s the fact that the organization is willing to kill to get what it wants. There are other atrocities but I won’t spoil them here. So finding this out, she escapes the island with stolen data with the help of a hacker named Player and vows to destroy V.I.L.E by stealing thigs before they do and or steal back from them.

For the rest of the series, it plays itself out a straightforward heist and chase show. At the same time either Carmen or Player will drop factoids about each place they visit either to each other or to Carmen’s two assistants: Zack and Ivy. They are also perused by Interpol agents Chase Devineaux and Julia Argent. Chase is a by the book officer who is persistent in pursuit and isn’t too interested in history and cultural facts. I would not call him stupid but rather he’s focused on the hunt and will do what he has to in order to keep up the chase. Also he has some of the best comedic lines in the show. Julia is more the bookworm and slow burning patient partner. ACME is also part of the chase as well as a shadow organization dedicated to tracking down and stopping VILE. When I first heard the two agents mention Chief I was super excited to see the return of the Chief and…shrugs. And nothing against Dawnn Lewis but she doesn’t strike me with authority the same way Lynne Thigpen did. Also I am kinda sad that they went the more generic men in black look. Sure the old red and yellow coats were cheesy, but they’ve stuck in my mind more than anything. Plus with VILE’s color schemes being mostly green, black, and grey it would have made for the perfect contrast.

The show goes more for of a cutout style along the vein of shows like 6teen and Chaotix season 1 (yeah remember that show?) with coloring resembling more of a painterly style. Basically similar to the style of the opening but a bit more simplified. For the most part I don’t mind it too much; but it tends to be not always as flexible when it comes to the action sequences. This is more noticeable with it comes to sequences that involve impacts, but they’re too brief to really notice unless you’re actively looking for them. Same thing goes for other things like follow through and squash and stretch. But for a first season especially with this kind of animation, I will give them credit that more the most part its consistent and nine times out of then it doesn’t feel stiff and awkward. If I have a minor nitpick it’s more the character designs themselves. I feel like a lot of these designs I’ve seen in other shows and none of them really stand out to me. Sure the old VILE agent designs from the show and games were kooky and sometimes questionable in design choices, but they still felt a bit more individual.

And now on to Carmen herself. Honestly, she’s fine. Sure they changed her to more of a grey hero but they didn’t toss off what made people like her. She’s fast on her feet, able to use what the situation gives her, and she is a skilled thief even when pitted against members of her own class. The only ones who really give her great trouble that she has yet to really outmatch are when she’s going against facility members head on. Which makes sense as they are more experienced than her. Hell, she almost gets hugged to death in one episode. Admittedly the humor in the show is 50/50. I laughed at a few jokes, but most were minor shrugs. At least there was not anything that made me cringe or face palm.

I honestly enjoyed myself and I felt the show was in the spirit of the original series. While focusing on Carmen and making her a Robin Hood-esque character was an odd choice they didn’t forget what the core of the series was. Globetrotting heists, geographical education, and just good old straight forward action. Also thank you so much for just focusing on being good educational entertainment. For actually being something that a broad spectrum can genuinely enjoy and not feel talked down to or pandered. I am very excited for the next season. So good job guys. I’m Noctina Noir and I’m one Nox of a Nobody.

[apathetic-revenant]

do you ever think about the weird as hell progression of the plots in Pokemon because sometimes I do and it messes me up

like

gen 1: you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rival was your childhood friend, but is now kind of a jerk. meanwhile a crime syndicate is doing some crimes so you get them to cut that shit out. also, some scientists experimented on a monster to make another monsters but that happened a while ago and really doesn’t have much to do with you. your rival becomes champion of the land first but then you beat him so you become champion. 

gen 2: you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rival is a mysterious and cold-hearted thief who just kinda hates everyone. the crime syndicate is back and doing more crime, so you gotta put a stop to that. your interactions with your rival convince him to change his ways and atone for his past mistakes. then you collect eight more gym badges, climb a mountain, and get in a fight with the protagonist of the first game.

gen 3: you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rival is your next-door neighbor that you just met. they seem nice. an extremist environmental group is trying to expand the land/sea to make things better for people/monsters and their end goal for accomplishing this is to awaken an ancient primordial force of land/water using a magical artifact. only the primordial monster is too powerful and threatens to destroy the world so you have to take the other magical artifact and subdue the rampaging primordial monster even though you’re like, twelve or something. your rival doesn’t do much. 

gen 4:  you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rival is your really hyperactive but friendly next-door neighbor that you’ve known for ages. an extremely nihilistic man literally hates emotion so much he wants to destroy the world and replace it with a more orderly and logical one, so he formed a space-themed criminal organization who plan to summon the god of space/the god of time to remake the world. depending on the game, you might have to go into another dimension where the laws of physics don’t work and face off against the god of antimatter so you can seal a rift in spacetime. your rival calms down a little bit.

gen 5: you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rivals are your studious, rational neighbor and your flighty, emotional neighbor. a monster-rights group who all wear actual armor are advocating for the release of all the monsters, and a green-haired guy who really likes math claims to be their king and is kind of stalking you. he wants to capture the dragon of truth/the dragon of ideals and become champion so he can order everyone to release their monsters. then it turns out he was actually the pawn of an evil dude with terrible fashion sense who manipulated him from childhood to be an appropriate figurehead for his plan to make everyone release their monsters so he would be the only one left with any monsters and he could take over the world. a giant castle rises from the ground. you beat up the evil guy so no one has to release their monsters. your rivals finally decide what they want to do in life. 

gen 6:  you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters, get eight gym badges, and challenge the champions of the land. your rivals are--deep breath--your neighbor of whatever gender you didn’t pick, your really excitable neighbor, your really dorky neighbor, and your really bland neighbor who has a thing about dancing. your monsters can now turn into bigger, more elaborate monsters for brief periods of time if you have the right macguffins and love them enough. a bunch of people in awful red suits are doing nefarious things. they’re led by a guy who got so fed up with people being awful he intends to wipe out everyone on the planet except the people who paid a bunch of money to join his criminal organization. he’s gonna use the god of entropy/the god of life to fuel a super powerful weapon that was last used in a massive war ages ago, but you beat him. a parade is thrown in your honor. your mom doesn’t come. rude. a weirdly tall dude appears and it turns out he was the king who ordered the weapon to be used ages ago and he’s been wandering the earth ever since but his monster finally came back to him so he’s at peace now. your rivals do nothing especially interesting.

gen 7:  you’re on an adventure to catch cool monsters and clear all the island challenges but you can’t challenge the champions of the land because there aren’t any yet. your rivals are your friendly neighbor, a super mysterious shy girl with a mysterious monster in her bag, and a super mysterious grumpy criminal boy. the mysterious mcguffin power from the last game is back but now there’s another mysterious mcguffin power and no one understands how this one works either. the local criminal organization are a bunch of huge dorks that no one is concerned about in the least. then it turns out the real bad guys are this organization that seemed nice but they’re actually trying to tear open a hole in reality so Lovecraftian monsters can come through because their leader thinks the monsters are pretty. also, the mysterious girl and boy and her kids and they ran away because she’s an incredibly controlling and horrible mom. the monster the girl has is the larval form of the god of the sun/moon, which you use to open a hole in reality so you can rescue the girl’s mom from Lovecraft jellyfish. some local champions have finally been scraped up so you challenge them to become champion. the girl takes her mom, who’s for some reason not in jail, back to Japan to recover. your neighbor is sad because he had a crush on her. the criminal boy doesn’t have to be a criminal anymore but he’s still grumpy. an INTERPOL detective and an amnesiac from another world contact you and enlist your help capturing more Lovecraft monsters that escaped from other dimensions. they’re totally cool with you keeping the monsters afterward. you fight and capture the local protector deities ‘cause why not. 

like...what the hell is gonna happen in gen 8?? I dunno but it’s gonna be wild. 

[copperbadge]

Heist movies! This reminded me that somehow, the serious, nuanced meditation on intolerance I'm plotting has morphed into an 8th century paper caper (like literally stealing paper from the Chinese) and I am wholly ignorant on where heist/caper tropes end and their clichés begin. Other than Leverage, can you or your readership recommend good motion pictures examples of the genre?

A PAPER CAPER. What a great idea! 

Hmm, heist films. Well, there are a couple of subgenres. And some examples of the genre are really good examples of the genre while not necessarily being very good movies. But let me see if I can break it down a bit.

(NOW UPDATED with Crowd Recommendations!)

Movies I Have Seen: To Catch A Thief - focused around crime and theft but the classic caper is actually carried out by someone else; I think it’s a great movie but it is quite long and not everyone agrees with me. How To Steal A Million - the heist sequence itself is a bit clunky, but the movie is charming and well-written for the most part. It’s somewhat of an outlier in terms of using heist/caper tropes but fun to watch. Ocean’s 11 (classic) - this is a Greek tragedy written as a heist. But it does have great music and it’s a fun Rat Pack film.Ocean’s 11 (modern) - a great example of heist genre tropes and inversions of same (pickpockets, hackers, a laser grid, a bait and switch, etc)Ocean’s 12 I felt betrayed its viewers somewhat; I don’t think it’s a very good heist film. I haven’t seen Ocean’s 13, but @sailorsol says it goes back to a more traditional heist feel. I am SUPER EXCITED about Ocean’s 8 because it looks like it’s a return to what made Ocean’s 11 so good. Entrapment is a heist film and I remember when I saw it in 1995 I loved it, but I don’t know how well it has aged. Inception is considered by some to be a heist film. I don’t care for it, but it does use several heist-related tropes (a ragtag group of experts, an elaborate plot, a lot of thinking on one’s feet) so I think it’s worth a watch if you’ve worn out your other movies. :D The Sting is based on supposedly real-life events. It is an EXCEPTIONAL film and a good introduction to many con-man and heist tropes. Its central conceit, the telegram fraud, is riffed on in an episode of White Collar. The Thomas Crown Affair (classic) - contains several heists, but I would consider it more of a psychological thriller. An enjoyable film in general. The Thomas Crown Affair (modern) - An adequate remake with a great heist at the end; on its own it’s a decent film, though it pales in comparison to the original. Now You See Me - Considered by some a heist film, I’m not entirely sure I’d agree; they do pull off several heists but it’s more focused on illusionism. I didn’t care as much for Now You See Me 2, but it does have a very The Sting-like denouement that is useful if you’re analyzing heists. Dog Day Afternoon has been riffed on endlessly as a bank robbery film; I’m not sure I’d classify it as heist/caper, but there’s no denying it has had a huge impact on anything to do with media and bank robbery. The Saint: suggested by Anon and also by @drivemetogeek, I had forgotten about this movie and I love it a lot, though again it’s more spy-thriller-with-heist-tropes than a heist. The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan: Anon suggested Great Muppet Caper, which reminded me that there’s a great send-up of high-tension heists in Muppets Take Manhattan. Both are absolute classics. @sailorsol pointed out “If you want to get pedantic, Star Trek IV: The Journey Home is a heist film too" and a) totally true and b) it’s my favorite Star Trek movie, so highly recommend. @jmathieson-fic recoomended Catch Me If You Can, which I had forgotten about and agree is a really fun and also quite touching film, based on real events. 

Movies I Haven’t Seen:Logan Lucky JUST came out and I haven’t seen it yet but it has Sebastian Stan in it so I will. :D Similarly I’ve head Baby Driver is great, but I haven’t seen it. @radiozilla says “Baby Driver is indeed fantastic, but I don’t really consider it a heist movie. It focuses on a group of heisters, but the heists themselves aren’t shown in detail. During them the focus is more on the driver parked outside, then the car chase.”And I’ve just had Going In Style recommended to me by @enduring-reality, who says “Its a 2017 film about grandpas getting screwed over and stealing from their bank! funny and entertaining. starring morgan freeman and michael caine. 10/10 would recommend!“The Usual Suspects is a movie I haven’t seen but is generally thought to belong to the heist/crime genre and to be a good example of it. The Italian Job (classic and modern) – the modern one considered an excellent heist film and a comedy. I know nothing about the classic. Likewise The Taking of Pelham 123 (classic and modern) I know very little about, but they’re both considered heist films. @jmathieson-fic recommends the original as “Classic and awesome.”Snatch - I honestly know nothing about it but it shows up on a lot of lists. @miss-kitty-fantastico recommends it. The Great Train Robbery - I’ve been meaning to see this one for ages but don’t know a ton about it. The Fast And Furious films - most of these are considered a form of heist film. I’ve seen several of them but they all kind of blur together. They are very good viewing, action-film wise. A Fish Called Wanda - supposedly quite funny; I don’t know much about it. @delphia2000 says “one of my very favorite films..worth borrowing from your library” and @prince-atom adds “A Fish Called Wanda is hilarious, for the most part. I would caution that it comes with a major content warning for animal death, however.”Heat and Inside Man both came to my attention from a 99% Invisible episode, and while I’ve never seen either one, Inside Man sounds amazing. Anon says “Sneakers is a classic, and I think Hackers counts as one too. And The Real McCoy.” @miss-kitty-fantastico says “Also consider Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Another Guy Ritchie film and although the Heist part is sort of told oddly, it is done really well.”@rsfcommonplace suggests “Sam Whiskey, a 1969 film which is both a Western and a heist film in reverse. (They have to put the gold back. Once they retrieve it from the depths of the Platte River.)”@jmathieson-fic suggested  “The Hot Rock (based on Donald E. Westlake's excellent novel)” and @geekerypeekery seconds it. @geekerypeekery also suggests “the often-overlooked Quick Change, a Bill Murray heist film from 1990. Hilarious and also quite meta on the heist tropes.” @onceuponacupoftea suggests “David Mamet’s Heist and also House of Games, which is a con film. The Spanish Prisoner is “neonoir suspense”, according to wikipedia, but also involves espionage and cons.” (I feel like I’ve seen The Spanish Prisoner and compared it semi-favorably to The Sting but I don’t recall if it’s the actual movie I’m thinking of.)@brownhairandeyesonline says “Out With A Bang is good fun (though I haven’t seen the original)”@annechen-melo recommends “The Ladykillers, and though I enjoyed the classic more than the remake, the modern film has its moments.”@laughingacademy says “This list needs some Jules Dassin: Rififi, a noirish “one last job” story in which a break-in and safecracking plays out for half an hour with no dialogue, and Topkapi, a comedic caper film and the origin of what’s now known as the Mission: Impossible Cable Drop.”

Are They?Often spy thrillers are classed as heist films because they usually involve an elaborate multi-stage plan to steal something. So you’ve got your Mission Impossible films, your Man From UNCLE, and I would consider Rogue One this very serious, very dramatic form of heist film. I don’t know if I’d consider Kiss Kiss Bang Bang a heist film exactly, but it plays on a lot of the tropes. I don’t like it, as a film, but it does have Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer in it and that’s not nothin’. In theory, you could consider Captain America 2: Winter Soldier to be a sort of heist film. It’s more of a spy thriller and I wouldn’t classify their attack on SHIELD as infiltration or a multi-stage elaborate plan, but there’s some elements there. Apparently Ant Man is also considered a heist film but I haven’t seen it. 

TV Shows and Etc:Leverage as you already know is a great primer for heist tropes because many episodes involve a heist that is structured after a movie trope.White Collar is even more explicit about lifting its heists from cinema, so it’s also excellent (at least in the first few seasons) for learning the standards. I can’t really recommend viewing after 3rd season, but YMMV. I have never seen the original Man From UNCLE tv show, but I hear it’s pretty compelling. @spadesandaces says “Idk if the man from uncle tv show counts as heist centric...don’t get me wrong, I love it, but it’s not like leverage or ocean’s” while @peoriarhetoriapeoria says “the show has many episodes that may not be exactly heists but hew close enough to the tropes they might as well.” Same for the classic The Saint series -- I haven’t seen it but I hear it’s good. @drivemetogeek seconds the recommendation for the Saint tv series. @glymr says “It’s not exactly a heist show (at least, not mostly), but if you want to see the Grifter to end all Grifters, watch the Rockford Files.  It’s a show about a P.I. played by James Garner, and he is a Master of social engineering." @drivemetogeek says “seconding Rockford.... the Leverage writers referenced it constantly.” though you guys, I have to admit I’ve watched a few episodes and I found them less than engaging. 99% Invisible did a FANTASTIC podcast about heist films. There is a GREAT book about early 20th century con men (it’s the first place I encountered the characters from The Sting) called The Professional Thief. I don’t know that a lot of people who write heist genre have read it, but the stories inside it have obviously trickled out into our crime media. It’s a really enjoyable read as a sociological study of individual-level crime in the early 20th century. Also gonna throw in a quick recommendation for the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison (particularly A Stainless Steel Rat Is Born) and the Raffles short stories by EW Hornung, who wrote a gentleman burglar in response to his famous in-law, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing Sherlock Holmes. :)

Wikipedia also has an extensive list of heist films and a decent definition of what they generally entail. 

One last note – don’t necessarily think that just because the heist genre is rife with tropes, you can’t use tropes and cliches. Most heist films of the modern day really lean into them; they’re fun to play with and there’s a reason they became tropes in the first place. Don’t be afraid to write a “standard” heist – as long as you enjoy writing it and the readers enjoy reading it, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the most original idea in the world. Think of it as a rube goldberg machine, where the formula is essentially the same but the components vary and provide the fascination. Heist films are fun in part because there’s a formula, and that formula is comforting when followed and fascinating when defied. 

Good luck! There’s tons of media out there and a lot of it is just fun. Enjoy yourself!

(Did you find this useful or educational? Prevent me from robbing a bank and drop some change in my Ko-Fi or at my Paypal!)

[entamewitchlulu]

Homura’s Flash Reviews: Spring Season Open 2018

Okay so the spring season started a long ass time ago, but it took me a bit to get caught up!  Here are the anime I started for this season and what I thought about them/if I plan to continue watching them this season! (not including anything I already watched the first cour for, so I won’t talk anymore about Clear Card here for example.  My list is once again based on what TFS is watching for the spring season of Anime FMK, plus one or two things that i just personally wanted to watch.

this ended up being really long and i hate cluttering dashes so it’s going under a cut

lostorage conflated WIXOSS

The fourth season of WIXOSS, conflated follows the quest of Kiyoi, a former LRIG desperate to atone for her sins by bringing a final end to the curse of the Selector battles. To achieve this, she approaches multiple former Selectors for their help, even as a darker force brings about the battles once again, with a far more determined focus.

Okay, this is absolutely already the BEST WIXOSS ever.  Kiyoi is an amazing protagonist, and I am such a fucking sucker for shows that bring back the old characters.  I screamed when I saw Ruko appear in the trailers.  The LRIG designs and the animation are up a notch even from incited, and I’m so so so excited to see where this rollercoaster ride takes us, especially since it feels like this could very well be the conclusion of the WIXOSS anime universe.

verdict: I absolutely intend to finish this one and enjoy it every step of the way!!

Comic Girls

Kaos, a young, brand new mangaka, has been struggling to come up with a storyboard that her editor will accept. To help her improve her skills, her editor suggests she move into a dedicated dorm for fellow young mangaka, so that she can learn from them and her experiences.

Okay this is 100% anime bullshit, but it’s pretty tame in comparison to others and honestly...it’s just a fun time, okay?  I’m not gonna act like I didn’t enjoy it.  It was hilarious, the art jokes are relatable as fuck, and yes, okay, i love the cutesy art style.  Meeting all the characters and watching them make different kinds of manga together is adorable and fun and it’s just a lighthearted, funny show.  It reminds me a HECK of a lot of Sunshine Sketch, one of my absolute favorite 4koma, and since that anime adaptation disappointed the heck out of me, this anime is a good substitute! 

verdict: I’m gonna keep up with this one as long as I keep laughing!

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Otaku

Narumi had to leave her last job after her ex found out she was an otaku, and now that she’s starting a new job, she’s determined to keep her secret forever--that is, until she finds out her childhood otaku friend works at the same company, and the two of the suddenly begin dating.

This one is fucking hilarious holy shit, and I can’t believe how many real world references to real brands they can make without having to bleep them out.  It’s a little slow in places, but absolutely I’m gonna keep up with this one just because god i need some relatable gag anime sometimes ya know

verdict: gonna keep watching!

Space Battleship Tiramisu

Subaru is Tiramisu’s ace pilot in the great space wars but he’s actually just a fucking nerd who wants to sit in his cockpit all the time

wow okay there’s a lot of gag anime on this list, this one has only 7 minute long episodes which is a blessing because in the end even that was too long.  the jokes were only funny in the first episode and by the third episode with the fucking sexualization and sexism i was just bored out of my fucking skull.

verdict: i’m already dropping it lol

Gegege no Kitaro (2018)

When people start turning into trees in the middle of Shibuya, Mana Inuyama assists a neighborhood friend in sending a letter to Gegege no Kitaro, a yokai who helps humans defend themselves from other yokai. Though she doesn’t believe in yokai herself, Kitaro soon appears and introduces her to the mysterious and dangerous world of yokai.

Okay so apparently this is a HUGE franchise of like, YuYu Hakusho proportions, and this seems to be some kind of reboot.  I had never heard of it in my life although Kitaro looks somewhat familiar, I might have seen him somewhere?  Anyway, this is absolutely still not something I would haved picked up on my own and....it’s....good?????  It’s really good???  The animation is incredible, the character designs are adorable, even the body horror elements are tame enough for me to handle, and I actually really love yokai stories so I’m really loving this take on Japanese myths and legends.  The character interactions and plot honestly aren’t super in depth, but I don’t think it needs to be!  It’s a sweet and cute little kid’s show and I even think the eyeball is cute lol.  

verdict: definitely giving this one this season’s shot!  Looks like it could be looong though so we’ll see how far I go haha

Lupin III: Part V

I guess it’s about the world’s greatest thief and stuff idk, this is a big franchise isn’t it?

I watched one episode and like it didn’t do anything super offensive, it just...bored me.  Animation was good, I guess the characters were likable even though I’d never watched a Lupin III property before, but the episode felt like kind of a chore to get through tbh.  Not to mention I’m kinda bored of the whole...rogueish flirt and all the girls are super sexual and shit.  Like I’m queer and I don’t really mind seeing boobs sometimes, but when it’s clearly made just for the rogueish flirt and thus the male audience to enjoy, i get bored. the femme fatale thing in old detective-like shows is just not my thing.  I probably would like it more if i had actually seen previous Lupin shows.

verdict: I have enough to watch already so I’m just dropping it now

Hinamatsuri

A successful yakuza’s life goes haywire when a strange metal cocoon containing a small girl appears in his apartment, and he finds that the girl, Hina, is actually a powerful psychic. Somehow, the girl ends up living with him and he ends up becoming a dad.

This show is so fucking cute oh my GOD.  It’s hilarious, the timing is great, the animation is so adorable and well done, Hina is a cutie and I want to adopt her, and I’m such a sucker for dudes who accidentally adopt children.  His relationship with Hina is so cute and there’s absolutely no weird anime shit going on between them, they’re just a dad and daughter in the most unlikely family unit ever and I love it.

verdict: this is the first one since WIXOSS on this list that I’ve been super hyped for so hell yes I’m finishing this one

Golden Kamuy

A former soldier from the Russo-Japanese war, “Immortal” Sugimoto is desperate to find some cash to fulfill a last wish for a friend he lost during the war. When he stumbles across a conspiracy hiding a large amount of gold in the tattoos of several dozen prisoners, he and an Ainu girl Asirpa work together to retrieve the stolen Ainu gold in the harsh Hokkaido wilderness.

I did not expect to enjoy this one as much as I did so far, and it’s really, really interesting.  For starters, the front and center of the Ainu culture is super interesting, something that, to my knowledge, little to no other anime have ever represented. The relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa is lovely and they’re always treated as being on even footing, and I love hearing Asirpa explain and share her culture with Sugimoto, like their food and hunting techniques.  The overarching story has yet to really hit full force, but that’s okay because these characters are charming as all get out and I’m loving the exchanges between them.  I am a little bit squeamish over some of the blood and guts that show up, but none of it is unrealistically gory, so I can handle it.

verdict: at this point definitely going to watch this one through to the end!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These

basically it’s star wars i really don’t know what the plot is besides that, there’s some L/Light dynamic between two of the commanders but other than that it’s star wars

I think this is also a remake of some kind, seems like there’s a lot of remakes on my list this season.  well, 3 episodes in and i’m not sure how i feel about this; i think the space battles are cool and i like tactics and shit, but idk, not really feeling much for the characters atm.

verdict: I think I’ll continue for the time being, but i’ll drop it soon if it doesn’t engage me more within a couple episodes

Megalo Box

I want to make a serious plot summary but it’s so much faster and funnier to just say that it’s 5Ds the Boxing AU, because that is exactly what it is

Anyway idk I don’t love it, i’m not a fan of the muted color palettes and the shonen must-get-stronger-to-punch-and-have-thrill-of-fight thing isn’t always my speed, and also there’s exactly (1) female character which does not endear me to it, but idk i guess there’s something engaging about it.  kinda slow and i just wanna see some more punchiness, there’s a lot of training and technical shiz going on atm.

verdict: I’ll give it a few more episodes but I’m not committed to this one

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #439

Top Ten Disney Princess Love Interests

Well, I’m back to Disney again. It feels like ever since Lockdown kicked off (dunno why I capitalised Lockdown but it seems fitting) I’ve either written about Xbox or Disney. Probably subconscious as those two things have dominated the front room of the house. Maybe I should make it even more accurate and do lists about the Switch, Lego, and trying to get my daughter to do her violin lessons.

Anyway: Disney. I don’t mind coming back to this well a few times, as there are quite a lot of things to dredge out and discuss, many facets of their universe to ponder. This week: Sex Bomb-ombs of Disney.

Yes, we’re ranking the animated hunks. These are the blokes (or not!) who serve as love interests to Disney Princesses. And I’m focussing on Princesses; so not every single Disney film. So, y’know, no Peter Pan or Bianca or Maid Marian or EVE or Bo Peep… let alone yer MJs, Pepper Potts, or Agent Carters. So basically anyone qualifies if I consider them to be an official love interest for an official Disney Princess, as per the characters who cropped up in Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Flynn Rider (Love Interest of Rapunzel, Tangled, 2010): as far as love interests go, you can’t go better than a “Han Solo type”. He’s a thief, yes, but with a heart of gold, who repents his criminal ways to save Rapunzel, even sacrificing himself for her. Plus he’s, like, really funny and charming.

Kristoff (Love Interest of Anna, Frozen, 2013): in a film that unpicks notions of classic Disney romance, Kristoff is a noble and true counterpoint to sociopathic murderer Hans. Smelly, earthy, but just a really nice guy. Gets a banger in Frozen II, too.

Aladdin (Love Interest of Jasmine, Aladdin, 1992): yeah, okay, film’s named after him, but from Jasmine’s point of view he’s an exciting, adventurous bloke, interested in her for who she is rather than her wealth. Okay, he lies to her a fair bit, but his heart’s in the right place.

The Beast (Love Interest of Belle, Beauty and the Beast, 1991): he might have been a grumpy, selfish bugger at one point, but once he has something – or someone – to live for, he’s a delight. He tries to be a better man, and even gives his girlfriend a library. In thirty years with spin-offs, sequels, and a remake, Disney could have given him a name, though.

Prince Naveen (Love Interest of Tiana, The Princess and the Frog, 2009): a swaggering lothario whose only interests are expensive parties and, well, shagging; obviously he has a Heart of Gold™ and falls for Tiana, but he’s one of the must fun Princes in the Disney canon. Great taste in music, too.

Li Shang (Love Interest of Mulan, Mulan, 1998): he’s tough but compassionate, a great leader, a great teacher, and willing to listen and acknowledge that he’s wrong. Looks good shirtless. And had the best song of any Love Interest until Into the Woods.

Prince Eric (Love Interest of Ariel, The Little Mermaid, 1989): perhaps a touch vapid and misty-eyed, but also adventurous, brave, and pretty much saves the day. Arguably a little flighty but he was gonna propose before Ursula popped up. Great hair, too.

Prince Phillip (Love Interest of Aurora, Sleeping Beauty, 1959): definitely a bit of a drop off now, but Phil (named after the Duke of Edinburgh, because when this film was made Our Phil was a Sexy Royal, Jesus Christ) is way better than other “Princes Charming”. Gets a good romantic song, has his own agency, and has a kick-ass fight with Maleficent.

John Smith (Love Interest of Pocahontas, Pocahontas, 1995): Pros: good hair, natty armour, genuine romantic chemistry with Pocahontas, listens to a woman, learns the error of his ways, heroically takes a bullet. Cons: is Mel Gibson.

Honeymaren (Love Interest of Elsa, Frozen II, 2019): so the only reason she’s at the bottom is because it’s not really clear in the film that she is a Love Interest. I think she is, and I think the film wants us to think she is, but it’s certainly not explicit. But Honey-M is smart, funny, has good chemistry with Elsa, and rides a reindeer. C’mon, Disney, give us the Frozen spin-off we want: Elsa’s Wedding.

It’s funny doing this because, in all honesty, by the time I got to John Smith I was kinda scraping the barrel (no offence to Honeymaren). You have what I would say are the classic three “Prince Charming” models – from Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, and it’s not till Beauty that he really gets any kind of characterisation at all. It wasn’t until the Disney Renaissance that you see any kind of distinct personality given to the “Prince” character, which is in part due to changing times and audiences (protagonists from Ariel onwards seem to have an increasing amount of agency and spark about them, even if The Little Mermaid is quite surprising in how closely it hews to “Prince as an end-goal/Prince utterly saves the day”), and partly because in the nineties the blokes started to become leading characters themselves. This is definitely in part due to Disney’s attempts to market its films more to “boys” (the story is that Tangled isn’t called “Rapunzel” because their marketing revealed that boys don’t want to see a film with a girl’s name in the title), but again I think there just being a bit more modern-day wit and verve to the writing helps. Flynn (or Eugene Fitzherbert, I should say) is very much a modern romantic lead, whereas Frozen attempts to deconstruct classic fairy tale romances. So we end up with a bunch of very recent characters jostling the top spot, and those practically nameless Charmings fall off the bottom, and I end up having to stick the relatively vapid John Smith in there just because, well, at least he’s a character, y’know?

Part of me wishes I wasn’t so beholden to my own silly rules, because otherwise we could have had anyone from Simba to Prince Edward from Enchanted. But I am nothing if not arbitrary.

[garloszeczek-blog]

What we liked most about Aladdin

Colourful figures in Aladdin is directed by guy Ritchie and it's the latest Disney live action remake. This time retelling the original 1992 animated classic of the same name. And it tells a story of a streetwise thief name, a Latin who comes across princess. I was very curious when I first saw Aladdin's trailer. Jasmine meets a genie and fights the evil Jafar. Seriously, though, before I get into the review of this movie has been met with so much online criticism because will Smith is blue.

And people just thought that was so goddamn hilarious. And I guess it does doesn't really look that good. Having seen the actual movie. I have some things to say about it, but yeah, it's not like Sonic the hedgehog where like, as soon as I saw the trailer, I wanted to actually burn all of my Sonic games in retaliation for the horrific thing that I was witnessing.

It wasn't like that. I still liked the original Aladdin. It's funny though, having actually seen the movie will Smith has the least of my concerns. If anything, he actually kept the movie more charismatic than it was whenever he wasn't on screen. The music was composed by Alan Menken. I can't really focus on the music and say the music is this great highlight because it's just the songs from the original.

Yes. There's some new material and yes, it's all good. But I'm just having a hard time getting excited about these Disney live action remakes, because it's essentially taking something we all love already and saying, Hey, let's look at it through this light. Sometimes that works. I really did like John fibrose the jungle book and the Cinderella film.

The cast, nothing special

Wasn't too bad either because those films, I can see how they could be real life. A boy in the jungle, there are animals. Yes. They talk and stuff. But at its core, I can picture that in real life. We've had so many adaptations of that story. Anyway, same with Cinderella. It's something I can picture in real life Aladdin.

That's a little hard. We have this over the top, genie, the princess with her friendly Siberian tiger. You know, like it's kind of hard to picture some of these things in real life. And so that's a struggle. This film has because the movie is trying too hard to evoke the feel of the animation for one thing, the animated film.

Is 90 minutes. It's tight. It's contained, it's compact. It works. This film is two hours and eight minutes. There's a lot of new stuff and you can feel it. You can feel the story. Start to get stretched. And you can feel these characters getting stretched to the point where they don't have anywhere else to go.

One of my biggest concerns with the film though lies in the performances, namely the Aladdin character. At times, he feels like he's trying too hard to be like the animated version, that nervous, cute, anxious quality that Aladdin had in the first film where he was trying to be something he wasn't, that works in animated form.

Aladdin 2, or Aladdin replaying

But when you translate that exaggerated elements of performing to live action. It comes off very cheesy. And I felt that most of the acting in this film was very bland. Will Smith is fine as the genie. Once you get over the fact that you're looking at will Smith as this giant genie, he's actually the most entertaining part.

The film. In fact, when he wasn't on screen, I found myself. Relentlessly bored. As far as the other characters go, I would say Naomi Scott, as Jasmine gave the best performance, she felt like she was really trying with this role. The film is defined in the family category. And I'm sure the actor who portrayed Aladdin was also trying. I have nothing against these actors.

You guys know me. I actually, I really am uncomfortable. Speaking negatively about actors, because I know how hard their job is. And it always makes me feel icky every time I do it. But I really do think that most of the performances in this movie were very weak. The worst though is Jafar. And I've seen this actor in another film called what happened to Monday with Numi Repas it's on Netflix.

And he was really good in that movie. So, yeah. This leads me to believe that there was something about the way this film was directed by guy Ritchie that just kept everything very stilted and wooden it at times does feel like a low rent stage play version of Aladdin. Even down to the way it looks. The costumes look so clean and perfect.

Colourful figures in Aladdin

They don't look dusty or dirty. There's no sand or dirt on them. There's, there's a few scenes where they're, they're literally rolling around in the sand. That's different, but when they're walking around the city, they just look like they were freshly laundered. It kind of reminded me of Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skull. Just Five Feet Apart didn't have such a great sound, but it could still move.

One of my biggest issues with that movie was just how clean and glossy everything looked. Whereas the original three, they just felt like they were shot in the backyard somewhere. They looked so, so gritty. This movie, everything looks clean. So relentlessly perfect looking that it really did feel like I was watching something shot constantly on a sound stage.

I never ever had that disconnect with reality. I always felt like I was watching something that was filmed, never got into the movie. There were some sequences that were entertaining. Most of them being really over the top Jeannie songs. It also feels like, like guy Ritchie may have been uncertain about how to approach them musical because some of the sequences were characters are singing.

Are just very bland. The camera just follows them around as they walk. And there isn't much movement. There isn't much flare to it. Every time Jafar was on screen, I honestly felt like laughing his look. He looked like he was in a power Rangers episode. I mean, he's got this big Cobra staff and there are just certain things that work in an animation and they just don't work in a live action.

Songs during Aladdin

Whenever you do a remake of something that was in a different form before four, you have to look at that and say, what. Works as a drawing and what doesn't, because just recreating what we liked in animation form clearly just doesn't always work. But in regards to will Smith, he had a major uphill battle with this character.

I'm sure he was probably horrified at the potential of, you know, inhabiting this character. There are a few Disney characters as renowned as the gene, and there are even less. As synonymous with their actors as Robin Williams is with the genie. Those two things are almost inseparable. I mean, Simba is probably a more famous character than the genie, but when you think of Simba, do you think of Matthew Broderick?

Probably not. But when you think of the genie, you think of Robin Williams, it's impossible not to. Does he trample all over that character? No. No, he's fine. It's just that you kind of have to get over the fact that it's. This giant CGI will Smith dancing around. It just, it doesn't always work when he plays himself, though.

I thought he was really charming and he did a good job in the movie. He's easily, honestly, the best part of the movie, which is funny because he was the most widely scrutinized aspect of it before. There are times where you can feel like the actors are trying to break free from whatever control they're under.

Who is the actor playing Aladdin

And they're trying to just be a little more lively, but for the most part, yeah. Some of the dialogue and some of the performances are cringe-worthy. The CGI is very noticeable and the sets look like sets. Is it as bad as the interim? I thought it was going to be, I guess not. I mean, the thing that everyone was worried about was probably my favorite part of the movie.

It's everything else around it, the stuff that people just assumed would be good. That I thought was bad. I'm going to give a Latin, a C minus guys. I just want to say thank you for continuing to watch my videos. It's awesome. I appreciate it. I, every once in a while, I just want to remind you guys that I really appreciate that you guys are here.

[kurtty-drabbles]

“I can’t drown my demons. They know how to swim.” (Any 'verse)

@augment-techs  @rachel-foley @djinmer4  @asakacc

N/A: In Brazil, we don´t celebrate Halloween, and I know little about the story of Halloween, therefore, the only thing I like about this international holiday is the spooky stories.That said, I receive a prompt and I want to fulfill it. Some weeks ago, I watched the remake of Rosemary´s Baby (only the part I) and it gives life to this idea.Yes, I´ll use aoa!Kitty Pryde and Kurt Darkholme. I don´t know much about this version of her, so I´m using more headcanon than anything.warning: rest easy this fic will be spooky but I´ll not cross any line here, no rape or anything like in Rosemary´s baby. This fic is more Dark humor(a poor attempt) than a gore festival.

Moving from a new job is a drastic change for some, now, change the job and country is an aggressive change that few have the stomach to endure it.

Thankfully, Kitty Pryde wasn´t tied up to her old place (nor physically or emotionally) and her boss was pretty adamant that she move out to Paris, France, saying how she is the only one for the job.

Normally, anyone would be thrilled to be in such famous, charming and stunning city, however, people tend to imagine a life in Paris in the most luxurious way possible and Kitty didn´t receive such treatment.

Her shabby and barely lit place is an indication that her job covers many fees and offers nothing in return. The only comfort in her precarious situation is a tiny dragon that loves to be on her shoulder, cuddle with Kitty and follow her around.

The only constant in her chaotic life is a tiny purple dragon name is Lockheed.

One of few perks of the job is how much of free time Kitty actually have, the woman with short curly hair, black leather jacket and a purple dragon on her shoulder explore a city that will never be her home.

Narrowing her eyes as trying to understand how the gothic aesthetic of Notre Dame came to be, what inspires the artist and thinking about Disney´s The hunchback of Notre Dame that didn´t notice a younger boy pick her purse and running from his life.“Hey, thief ” she goes after him, which proves to futile since a blonde girl already catches him and start to beat him up. The astonishing fact is that this tiny blonde Russian girl(she start to swear in Russian and Kitty understand what she was saying) didn´t even sweat over this.

She gets Kitty´s purse back and is smiling innocently as what just happened wasn´t big deal.

“Hi, my name is Illyana Rasputin,” says with a Russian accent and Kitty feels awkward to be able to chat with another human being.

“Hi, my name is Kitty Pryde and this is Lockheed”

“Hello, Lockheed”

Surprisingly, Yana the blonde Russian girl and Kitty forge a friendship which is something Kitty is not against, of course, Lockheed is Kitty´s BFF no one can take his title.

“Kitty,” Yana asked one day" do you like your apartment"

“Not really, but is what I can afford at moment”

Never once, Kitty asked more about Yana´s life, maybe, is out of respect since Yana is not asking too many questions about Kitty´s life either. It is nice.

How long will this friendship last? Kitty prefers to not dwell on this, Lockheed, however, will forever be Kitty´s BFF.

One day, Kitty´s shabby and poorly lit place gets on fire, in a mysterious way. Why mysterious? Lockheed swears for his life that he didn´t start the fire and Kitty completely believes him.

After all, the fire starts far away from where Lockheed was. And the fire starts by the widow quickly spreading to the building. Kitty, along with her tiny dragon, survives the fire along with her neighbors.

It was a luck, sadly, lady luck didn´t seem to like Kitty very much and the unsettling reality that Kitty is a homeless weight on her shoulders.

Kitty and Lockheed are in the hospital, brought by force, waiting for something and nothing at the same time. What can kitty do? Her employer is not a …kind man.

Suddenly, Yana appears in the hospital anxious way and her death glare meet any doctor who tried to stop her.

“Kitty, I came as soon I heard” she is worried sick for Kitty´s health and well being and that is touching “how are you and Lockheed doing?”

“We were marveling the idea of being French buns,” says the woman trying to light up the situation.

“You don´t have a place to stay?” wonder Yana but there´s akin of happiness in her eyes “because if that true, you can stay in my building, we have an empty apartment there that no one wants.”

Normally, she would say no.Her job requires focus and dedication but after lost her home, Kitty decides that she could accept the offer.

It would be fine until she saw how luxurious the place actually was and start having second thoughts. It makes even worse was the fact that Kitty has little to no possessions, a few boxes were enough. 4 little boxes along with an overly excited dragon.

The building is a mix of luxurious, stunning and macabre in one go, Yana seems very happy, Kitty is not sharing the sentiment, but, anything is better than be homeless.

“Welcome, Kitty Pryde, to the building Limbo,” says with a trademark smile and would say something else when her cell phone ring forcing begrudgingly to answer the phone.

After a few minutes, the girl frown and looks unhappy.

“Is everything alright?”

“No, I have to fix something, meaning I´ll have to leave now” clearly unhappy with this predicament “ But Kitty, promise something, don´t be afraid. Nothing will hurt you”

“Yana, I think is easier for me to hurt them then otherwise” the blonde girl crack a smile and shakes her head.

“Whatever you say, Kitty.” Kitty and Lockheed wanted to say something else to Yana, sadly, the girl disappears without leaving traits. No sound or word, she was just gone. And now, the girl is alone in a very fancy place.

“Ok, bye Snowflake,” say to no one “hope you come back safe and sound” complains and with the 4 boxes give a look at her new/temporary home.

“What to do now?” says feeling like a fish out of water. Lockheed probably would eat a fish right now.

“Need help?” a voice sly and with a definitely German accent asked behind Kitty forcing the woman to turn around to see who it is.

“Oh, Gaspard Ulliel?” exclaims Kitty in surprise and the Gaspard have a mock smile on his face as he shakes his head.

“My name is Kurt Darkholme,” says pleasantly albeit seem too sinister for a happy neighbor, but then again, when you look like the young Hannibal no need for Halloween costume.

“Mine is Kitty Pryde, Yana let me stay here” not that she need to justify for the creepy neighbor.

“Oh, then welcome, Yana did mention you are coming” tries to smile in a friendly way, the result was enough to make Kitty never want to see Hannibal ever again.

“She did? great, I guess”

“Do you want help?” gesture the boxes and the new apartment, incredibly luxurious and big, excessively big. She is not stupid enough to let the stranger enter, but having watched Hannibal taught her that it would be rude to turn down the offer.

And then again, Kitty is Kitty and Lockheed has her back, so the new guy is not really a threat, but is unsettling.

“Sure, Mister Darkholme, you can put the boxes on the"she trailed off looking at the apartment and the dining room” in the fanciest dinner room I´ve ever seen"

The man complies smiling in the same way Hannibal did, Kitty couldn´t let that pass.

“ By the way, the tiny dragon on my shoulder is real,” says as a matter of fact crossing her arms and looking deep at the new neighbor. Who, for his part, doesn´t seem to be scared at all.

“Of course it is real, what´s the point in having a fake dragon?” says his pose indicates he wants to say something else “ do you know the history of this building?”

“Not really, a fancy French building for rich people that definitely went bankrupt allowing someone like me to live here, even though, they would be very cross with this, but who gives a shit?”

“You are spunky,” says messing with his hair “I like this answer” and leave the apartment without causing any problem or eat Kitty, but leave this advice “Oh, Kitty, if strange things happen, don´t be afraid”

Kitty was opening one of the boxes when Kurt said that. Diligent in the task, once Kurt gave this advice, Kitty stops her work to talk with Kurt but the man was gone.

“That is…not normal, right Lockheed?” the dragon doesn´t seem to care for this and was more than happy to destroy the box and make a fine nest for himself.

Kitty´s job remains the same and her routine didn´t change much, walk around with Lockheed, doing her job and return home.

She didn´t have much trickery, the lots of her possession are usually in the dining room. She is a very organized person, and hardly ever change the organization.

That´s why after returning from a nice walk with Lockheed, it is odd that her dining room is a mess, no, actually the organization is different.

The painting of a farm is on the left wall, instead of the right, the curtains are closed, usually, they are always open, the chairs are crowed in the center of the room when normally is on the left side.

“What?” this isn´t the first or the last time something like that happen, Kitty would organize the dining room in a way to the next day be completely changed.

“The fuck?” says not liking this prank. But considering how little she will stay here, this ending up not being a real issue. Her neighbor, Kurt, once found out about this incident suggested it may be a ghost.

“This building was Eleanor Garden, she was murder here”

“And what? her ghost leaves heaven or hell to mess with my dining room? ok, whatever floats her boat”

Then, something happens, the walls start having a message for her, in Latin.

“Stupid ghost, trying to scare me with a dead language” and show her tongue to the wall.

The next day, the wall has a message written in English.

“Oh my god,” she says in pure horror"Lockheed, my dear friend, don´t look at this monstrosity, there´s so many grammar errors here “ Lockheed cover his eyes and Kitty show the Star of Davi to the message.

"Ghost, there´s too many grammar errors here, is offensive, try again”

On the next day, the ghost draws an unhappy face.

“Ghost, you are going to clean this”

One day, all her TV channels are only Fox content and this makes her go pale and unhinged for a moment.

“Now, as the news arrives President Trump is the new president of US and will now give a speech”

“Ghost, please, you can have my tv now”

The next day, the TV is gone and Kitty is a relief and lost her faith in humanity.

On the weekend, Kitty brought beer for herself, French beer, of course, it was offered the German one but the woman wanted to try the French.

She never had the chance as the ghost ending up snatching her beer and then write something on the wall, the English improving now, the beer sucks bring a German one, those are better.

“Ok, ghost, I´m tired of this, came out now” growls as Lockheed fly around. “Ghost, I´m going count until 3 and if you don´t appear…”

“What menace threat, Kitty” what she can register in this moment, a blue fur devil appear, with red eyes, tail(he was on the ceiling)  and leather outfit appear in her dining room smirking at her. A slashy version of a smile.

“Oh, you aren´t a ghost, anyway, this isn´t a hotel is my house, so if you want German beer you will get yourself”

“…that´s not the reaction I was expecting”

“What were you expecting? Would I scream and run in my panties? sorry, this is real life, not a movie” she pauses to think about what she just said as Lockheed is back again on her shoulder.

“…you do realize this is a building for demons, right?”

“…Yana forget to mention this”

Yana did come back from her job/mission with a big sword cover in blood to meet Kurt Darkholme and Kitty Pryde talking about the difference between German beer and French one.

Once that Yana come back many things were said, mostly about Demons and beers, the pranks stop and Kitty is somehow forced to bring only German beer and Yana likes to explain about magic and demons. Life is chaotic but truth be told, is not lonely anymore.

[idaisa]

THE MUMMY 2017 (WARNING SPOILERS)

So I am a HUGE fan of the 1999 Mummy, I loved the characters, the story, the charisma of the adventure (for the purposes of this review I’m not going to bring the sequels into it). SO when I heard they were making a new Mummy movie (with it not being a remake or sequel) more of a reboot for the “Dark Universe” build up, I was EXCITED, I was so stoked, I LOVE those old monster horror movies and as long as it didn’t shit on the 1999 version I would be all for it. Then they said Tom Cruise would star in it... and at first that disappointed me, THEN I heard Sofia Boutella would BE the Mummy so I forgot about Cruise (if you haven’t seen her in Kingsman FIX THAT). So needless to say I was open to the idea. For financial reasons I couldn’t see it opening week, and didn’t end up seeing it until a few weeks after the release. I read the ONSLAUGHT of reviewers and critics saying how bad the film was, so I’ll admit that pushed back my desire to see it. But I was looking forward to this movie so I ended up seeing it anyway.... SO here it goes.  The GOOD: Sofia Boutella was amazing, she was beautiful, she was horrific she was tortured as a character and I would’ve LOVED more of her and her life in the movie.  The build up of lore was decent, I had an idea of her motivation, her end goal, and I didn’t question why she was doing what she was doing.  The ACTION, was face paced, it kept things moving, there was no moment where I was said to myself “okay we get it, explosions are cool” although Cruise runs ALOT... like the man loves his cardio.  The graphics, Sofia’s “zombie” form, or corpse form I guess, was very cool, and I dug how her absorption of her victims through a death kiss, its a new way, and it made her the sexy kind of deadly. Which lets face it, she’s a woman in a hollywood movie, even as a monster, she’s gotta be SEXY. The henchmen, were pretty gruesome, and I liked that, I liked that they weren’t underdone, they were gross, rotted and moved like I imagined a reanimated body would.  I did like the room of oddities (vampire skulls, Gillman hands etc). And that was enough to link it to more movies.  Now the BAD: Cruise takes over the film, in fact the title “Tom Cruise feat. the Mummy” suits as even in her main goal, he is the center of Ahmanet‘s mission. And in the end he is turned into a living god, something I’m sure Cruise loved.  It needed more of her, the movie is called the Mummy and I knew more about Cruise’s character than I really needed to.  The fact is Cruise’s character isn’t the strong hero type. Think more womanizing, thief that is supposed to be charming, but comes off more selfish and self serving than charismatic. And then you’re supposed to like him and think he’s the good guy of it. The COMEDY is severely misplaced in the flow of the story. It breaks up tension in fight scenes, it breaks serious moments with quips from Cruise and his ghost buddy, when you should be taking the threat seriously.  The story is rushed, I get that this was meant to be a platform to make a monster movie universe, but there was SO much pushed into this film. That the same point could be made with a character other than Jekyll. It could’ve been a human hunting monsters, rather than a monster hunting monsters. And it would’ve made more sense. Make him a VanHelsing (that would honestly make more sense to me than the Good Doctor). it would’ve pulled things together without having this random fight seen in the middle of the movie. And once again the humor between Crowe and Cruise was so misplaced.  Comparing it to 1999: 1.  O'Connell is a better hero, I can’t even remember Cruise’s character’s name (Just googled it) his name is Nick, but see that’s how forgettable he is. I don’t care about him, he isn’t a charismatic hero. O’Connell came with them to Egypt because he made a promise, he needed to stick by that. Nick is there to steal stuff, awesome, can I really get behind that? 2. The ladies, Evelyn is wonderful, she is educated, she is beautiful and is a great contrast to O’Connell, and they work well off each other, him being the charismatic American who can get shit done, her being the delicate English flower that becomes an explorer for the sake of gaining knowledge. Jennifer works for Jekyll, we get very little back story as to why, only that they “share the same interests” but it turns out he’s more into the idea of dissecting  Ahmanet rather than gaining any knowledge (which seems to be Jennifer’s motivation). She comes off as more of a charismatic adventurer than Cruise, WHICH IS A PROBLEM, considering that in the end he saves her. Its not a real story of redemption for these two as it doesn’t feel like they have a bond (at least to me) it was more like, hey we shagged one night, guess we should hang.  3. THE MUMMY, Imhotep was a priest who (with his lover) killed a Pharaoh in the hopes of being with her. She kills herself so he tries to bring her back. It is this betrayal and dabble in the dark arts that gets him a one way ticket to scarabville in a tight box with no air holes to keep him company. It was a story of romance, gone wrong and you kinda wanted them to be together, even if you didn’t want them going about it in the way they do.  Ahmanet was promised a kingdom, and was denied that when her father had a son (because even in Egypt, as a boy he would get the throne before she would). So she makes a pact with the God of death, kills her father, her brother and in return she’d be queen of the world as long as she gets the God of death a body. Its certainly a more self centered ambition, but what’s wrong with that? my only issue is that they try (at times) to pass it off as romantic. She calls Cruise her “chosen one” and attempts to kiss him at times, however she doesn’t deny that there was a “one” before him. And to be honest in the 10 seconds of flashbacks I believed a romance between her and that guy over her and Cruise. Call it what it is. She wants him for his body, and after that she’ll get what she wants, to be Queen. Why can’t the woman just want to be on top? Now if we’re talking powers generally they are the same. They both control sand, manipulate the dead, although she seemed to control animals too, he was more traditional with the plagues. They both regenerate by sucking the parts or life from their victims as needed, however she reuses hers (lets not be wasteful in this new era) where as his disciples were more victims of the plagues. Story line wise I do love the desperation of a romance, but for the new world, and a new story, why rehash it? I like the new take, but pick an angle, and stick to it, don’t half make it about power and then have moments of love in here, its just weak story wise.  ANOTHER NOTE, they made such an issue about this movie not being connected to the 1999 one, HOWEVER Jennifer hits a henchman with the book of life, the Gold book from the 1999 movie, now if you don’t want to be associated with them, DON’T HAVE THAT IN THERE. If you do, you would’ve made alot more money and be better in general having Evelyn and O’Connell (or even their son but lets face it Fraser would’ve been awesome and the perfect Chosen one) be in there. They’ve been through this, they would be experts!   So In the end, the movie isn’t as bad as everyone is saying, that being said it is bad for a few reasons. The movie needs to be at least equal parts your hero and your Mummy, this movie felt way more Cruise-centric rather than an equal share, and I get that he’s a big star but then don’t shoot so high for the sake of the story. The good thing about the 1999 version is we found out about O’Connell slowly, but what you found out was weighed with Imhotep’s backstory and his journey into becoming whole again. Ahmanet took way less time to regenerate and spent more time in the custody of Crowe. In the end we cared about O’Connell, we wanted him to win and save Evelyn. Cruise was an ass of a character and Jennifer lied about her involvement as well so really I mean sure we want them to live, but if she had stayed dead, for me it wouldn’t have lessened the quality of the story, they were pushed together for the sake of their being some romance. I’d say see it if you can compartmentalize for the sake of a movie where you don’t have to think about much or invest in anything, but don’t see it if you’re thinking about the nostalgia of the 1999 version because it will only enrage you if you think it can live up to it.