#idk why like i love rebirth but remake just feels like home

[xiiiwayfinders]

Send help I want to replay ff7 remake again

[flying-elliska]

Ok I caught up with wtfock s3 because well, it felt weird to leave unfinished (except a few clips i just didn’t want to watch, like the attack one). here’s what worked and didn’t for me (i’m pretty critical so don’t read if that sort of thing upsets you or you’re not in the mood) because i still think having this story remade so often is an unprecendented storytelling experiment worth thinking about even when it doesn’t entirely work (and i think argumented criticism is good, but if you post hate about the actors/fans etc you really suck tbh) : 

- to start with positives : like many said, the acting was pretty damn good. overall wtfock has a really solid cast. the willems have succeeded in creating an onscreen queer intimacy that feels very believable, no holds barred and no awkwardness, and they have to be commended for that. there’s a lot of chemistry and tension at first between them, which then turns into something very soft and sweet and puppy-love-like. it was nice seeing Robbe evolve and the sweet bean energy that emanates from how the actor plays him is very very powerful. i also loved the warmth of the flatshare, and as a Dutchie I just adored the Sinterklaas bits, it was so funny and i loved the found family vibes. warmth is just something they do really well, esp with the last clips, perfume shopping, playing board games, the party at the end. They use the Christmassy vibes really well. the cinematography has its moments too, contrasts between warm and cold, the episode at the beach is gorgeous, the sequence in the tunnel, the light on their faces when they are in that classroom surrounded by drawings. wtfock as a whole is also good at creating some very lovable secondary characters, be it Milan, Yasmina, Noor, or especially king Senne. So, I do understand that there are things to love about this remake, which is probably why my disappointment feels so strong. I really wanted to care about these characters in their journey. 

- on to the controversial : i don’t necessarily fault them for wanting to show a more prononced aspect of homophobia. i think the debate about this often lacks nuance. on one hand, this is the sixth remake, and homophobia is something that is still often prevalent, and having one remake show that out of six is not in itself a problem. on the other, yes, happy fluffy stories are important, but sometimes people who have gone through stuff like this also need to see their experiences represented. the power of skam is that it shows difficult experiences BUT ALSO a happy ending. that can be very healing, i think, compared to other stories which focus only on the drama. the trouble is, i don’t think they dealt with it very well, or put any effort into processing the consequences of these harrowing things. and if you don’t, it feels cheap.

- on to my main gripe : the writing. previsible, i know. but to me, essential. and this is not about them ‘changing things’ - i like when remakes change stuff, when they do it well. the thing is, i have been burned too many times before. and when i sense that the writing is being wack, it makes it automatically much harder for me to invest emotionally in the characters. and simply put there were signs early on that made me distrust the writers. for starters, the first two episodes gave me a feeling that they didn’t have their priorities in order. the POV-immersion and depth is one of the most powerful aspects of skam, and it was lost. too many early clips felt out of Robbe’s perspective, and when it was him it was about Noor ; a few clips to show his discomfort were on point, but there were too many of them, and there were repetitive, losing time on what isn’t really an essential part of Robbe’s journey. and while they were spending time on clips that felt like misery flavored filler, they decided several times to condense original clips focused on Isak and Even, together ; like their first meeting and then their first hangout, or later in the series OHN and the minute by minute talk. and i think their story suffered from that. i think because they don’t have a real discussion early on, the buildup of their relationship feels mostly based on physical attraction. and while it certainly is a thing that happens, it just isn’t my fave love story thing. i missed the sweet pining from afar and tension that makes later drama believable. it felt like they brought the drama comparatively too fast without enough character work to make it worthwhile. Also there is just too much time spent on Zoenne drama, and their breakup seems like it foreshadows the dreaded s4 love triangle, which, yikes. the focus is all over the place, the rythm felt incoherent. 

- what’s more, they decided to introduce pretty grave elements of plot, like Robbe using slurs against Sander, the homophobic attack, the suicidal urges on both their sides, Sander kissing Britt while he was still saying I love you to Robbe in the morning, without either proper build up or resolution. It made it all feel cheap, jarring, and unearned, especially when they didn’t put trigger warnings or made jokes about it on insta or waited forever to give news about the characters being ok. it felt like drama for the sake of drama, and definitely not written with a vulnerable audience of queer teens in mind. and at the same time, when it came to the ‘big scenes’ of their relationship, like the first kiss or the universes talk or sander’s episode, it felt more or less lifted from OG without a lot of effort made to adapt it to them. i actually quit live watching/blogging after the first kiss scene, because of how similar it was, and how uninspired it felt, and lukewarm. it felt like a lack of imagination. when it came to OHN, the scene in itself was lovely, but the weird time gap, random timing and people seemingly doing nothing after a suicidal Sander disappeared, sort of broke it for me.  In the OG the combo of buildup, longing, realisation, fear, release works so well in a sequence, and splitting it over time really diluted it, to me. Similarly the quickly thrown out ‘life is now’ at the ending felt sort of out of nowhere, while in OG it was such a lovely bookend, him apologizing to Eva and reflecting on his growth. The symbolism, which ties everything so beautifully together in themes of rebirth, salvation, baptism, union, faith, deciding your own narrative in OG, here feels inconsistent. There is an attempt I see, something about wasteland vs. warmth/family, but it’s often absent of main clips. It’s nowhere near as coherent as it could be. 

- all of this builds up to the main problem for me, of the season. which is, i didn’t really get into Robbe and Sander’s relationship. Or their individual arcs for that matter. When it comes to Robbe, I guess he just isn’t my type of character. I feel like he is missing the fire of an Isak. A lot of the time he just felt too passive, like he let other characters make his decisions. I was waiting for him to stand up for himself more than he did. And there are too many scenes of another character doing his coming out for him. And then Sander ; I have to say I don’t understand all the love his character gets. Maybe because that’s because he sort of gives me Dutch fuckboi vibes...but there were several times he just came accross as a flat out asshole. I found him intriguing in his intro clip, chaotic and charming, but that never really went where i expected it to. i didn’t get his passion, what drew him to art. the symbolism around his character - basically Bowie, and drawing Robbe, and Chernobyl (which is a bit tasteless imho, turning a tragedy like that into a cutesy romantic thing), feels ...disjointed, and shallow to me. Like I never really got into it. And maybe some people did and noticed deeper links but to me, I got stuck at the surface. I saw a lot of interesting theories with what was going on with him but in the end they just copied OG. And I’m sad to say, but he ended up feeling like a manic pixie dream boy cliché to me, and i just didn’t understand what drew them to each other so strongly. Yes, Robbe is caring and Sander is in need of care, but that feels like a very reductive reproduction of OG. Beyond that...i don’t know. Certain complexities of the OG i loved  just...were sanded away, like Isak being ignorant about MI and learning compassion. This just...didn’t feel like it had the same depth, and often felt like soapy teenage drama, leaning too hard and too lazily on the actors’ chemistry. i like my romances wordy and solidly enmeshed in character development, and this was not it. It never felt like they had a real conversation about things, esp after the drama. 

- i think this is the first remake that made me actually angry for reasons not related to problematic cast shit, and so i’m trying to analyze that emotion. for me it comes down to too much drama, too heavy handed. Too much of the boy squad being shitty to Robbe, too much Noor, too much filler clips without any deeper meaning, too much things distracting from getting to know the main characters and going into their issues in depth. They changed stuff, but didn’t have the guts to actually follow through. They broke the mold but only in ways that ended up feeling shallow and unconsequential. Like I would have loved seeing Robbe go to therapy ! see his mom ! Zoe and Robbe go to the police together ! Sander have a complicated home situation ! or doing a Bowie related art installation to express his feelings of alienation ! seeing more of the underground graffiti scene ! or just...something, idk. And them also removing the faith-related themes also felt disappointing. and the ohn clip taking place in the place where sander draws feels very....basic to me, even if it was pretty. very ‘oh he’s an artist, here is his safe place’....hm, okay. I didn’t like that they made Britt into such a villain, I didn’t like how the boy squad showed no care for Robbe whatsoever for weeks until the plot said it was time for them to be redeemed in a way that felt too jarring, and I didn’t like that they made Moyo so horrible but redeemed him so easily. I actually thought they would show that it’s okay to separate yourself from friends who are that bigoted, because it just shows they are not willing to care for people. And him suddenly saying those sweet and mature things felt too out of characters and a ahah ‘gotcha’ rather than depth . I didn’t like that Robbe, too, was made so virulent by his internalized homophobia but got over it so quickly. I think what disappointed me most, in the end, was that I kept picking up potential and the show kept doing absolutely nothing with it, or confirming my fears, and it made me feel stupid and out of tune with whatever they were doing. And it’s, to me, symptomatic in modern storytelling of a trend to privilege shocks and twists over inner coherence and build up. And it makes for...Very underwhelming stuff, in the end. 

- all in all, i think this remake illustrates why s3 of OG is not as easy to remake as it sounds. it’s very intricate machinery, with a pitch perfect rhythm (and an extremely passionate nitpicky fanbase lmao). and if you don’t get all the parts of why it’s so great, you’re going to lose a lot of it. (and all the remakes ended losing up stuff in translation ; more or less compensated by inventivity and charm of their own.) so many mainstream press articles praise the real time/social media format and the ‘real talk about teen issues’ which, yeah, is part of the success, but doesn’t explain the devotion on its own. there’s the way the story uses real time to build up a storytelling rythm that feels organic and makes sense as if it was part of the lives of the viewer. There’s foreshadowing and aftershocks. Wtfock often feels like they wrote the clip numbers on darts and randomly threw them at a week planner. If an episode of a regular series ends on a cliffhanger, we can be thrilled and frustrated and put it aside for next week. but if you end an episode with a character shown to be suicidal, or you don’t show them being okay after a beating, for hours or days, that’s the emotion you leave your viewers with, because skam is a continuous experience. and remakes who pile on drama moments without respite (looking at you too skamfr s4) don’t get how tiring and disengaging this can be, in this format. skam worked so well because of how benevolent it was, on the whole. and also, cheeky, with that ‘don’t take it too seriously’ deflating humor. grumpy isak in ‘hate me now’ mode getting bumped into. this lightness and comedy often feels missing here. also my god the social media is absolutely terrible. plus...there is too much filler. honestly, them having more time, on the whole...ended up being a bad thing. Plus Wtfock feels like it has so much more unadressed plot points, like...why did Sander change his mind exactly and kiss Britt again ? How did Robbe’s mom react ? Who did the attack ? What is happening w Senne now ? etc. And it feels like they just missed the fact that OG, however subtly, did adress those things. 

- now, don’t get me wrong, i’m happy it’s popular in Belgium. On the whole it’s still a beautiful story of love and acceptance. and that people found something in it that spoke to them. but as a remake, it’s probably one of the most disappointing yet, to me. and i sort of...don’t get the hype. and i don’t want to be too ‘oh cute boys kissing’ cynical about it. but i think this illustrates why in the end, this is also very subjective. there are probably things i missed because i didn’t feel the need to examine it in depth or do the extra emotional work that comes with being a devoted fan of something. and some of their choices made me angry, and i’m not forgiving when it comes to these things. i still wish them success for s4 and whatever else, but i don’t think i will watch live, at least unless it gets really rave reviews about their treatment of Yasmina’s season. i mean they got s2 right, who knows? 

[llama-milk-for-the-egg-nog]

Thoughts on Mulan (2020)

Ok so I had heard some stuff beforehand about this movie, but I didn’t wanna let that tint my experience too much, though it kind of did in the form of noticing western influence on certain things. Here’s a list of thoughts more or less in chronological order.  First I wrote these in a notebook, and now I’m putting them here.

The beginning sequence reminds me so much of Kung Fu Huslte

though honestly it might just be that stephen chow’s movies are pretty much the extent of chinese-made media that I watch

Rosalind Chao is here, I’m a Keiko O’Brien stan so she reminded me of DS9

Fa Zhou saying something about “emissary” also reminded me of DS9

The music where the rourans first attack is cool I guess

idk if the brass made the music of the imperial city sound kinda western or what, but it certainly did sound militaristic (which I guess it’s supposed to)

Why does mulan have a little sister instead of a little brother? to add more female characters to the story? she doesn’t really do much though

After mulan’s whole childhood sequence, it cuts to a shot of the witch in the desert, which if you didn’t already know the story, might make it seem like mulan grew up to be the witch

although this makes some sense too bc the movie likes to compare them

the witch twists into a hawk (?), neat!

I saw people earlier comment about both men and women in china (and other parts of the world) keeping their hair long, so when mulan’s hair fell out of place in the matchmaker scene it made me notice that both the men and women also wear their hair up, which in turn causes the part of the movie later when mulan emerges after the avalanche to make way less sense since how would they know she’s a woman?

ok this is the thing I’m upset about, its a small thing but still, Why don’t we get to see the sword form?? If you remember in the animated version, her father does this straight sword form. (It’s a real form, not just made up for the animated movie). So I was like “ok maybe mulan will do it later” and then it NEVER HAPPENED. (possibly she did it during the “make a man out of you” training sequence, but the odd camera angels and quick cutaways make it impossible to tell)

I also had heard earlier that the script was not subtle at all,,,y’all were right

oh look, a phoenix

mulan: “the phoenix”

yes, we know

Commander Donnie Yen Tung’s entrance is iconic

BAHAHFHDSK mulan’s reaction to seeing naked men skjfdk

uh oh,,only 40 minutes in and the forced romance is already upon us

although, in retrospect, the way they resolved it at the end didn’t make me cringe that much

I’m a slut for butterfly kicks

the scene where mulan bathes in the lake has a much more predatory undertone now, especially now that Ling, Chien Po, and Yao are missing

the trio made the scene funny in the animated movie

can the not-Li-Shang-love-interest Honghui please leave Jun/Mulan alone?? ffs

speaking of no Li Shang, I liked the Donnie Yen mentor character half better than the Honghui half

Honghui kind of comes off as a simp ngl

what’s with the witch’s makeup/outfit? are they based on something?

speaking of outfits, awhile ago, I saw a really cool doll alteration video for mulan 2020

Commander Tung’s monologue/ mulan’s and the army’s training sequence about Chi where the words “Tranquil as a forest, but on fire within” are spoken is actually my favorite part of the whole movie. As much as I would have liked a musical remake, I think they translated the visual elements and the words together well in a way that was different enough from the animated version, but still satisfying to watch (at least for me).

They also integrate the music of Reflection here really well imho.  In the animated version, there’s a point where mulan modulates to a higher key, but the live action version doesn’t do that, which further pushes it away from sounding like disney’s classic musical theatre style.  They also changed a few of the notes, and I think the overall changes to Reflection in this part of the movie really improve this montage.

Compared to the Spiderman where they changed the notes from harmonic minor to (normal) minor (idk if that’s the real term I’m not actually a music major) in the MCU opening sequence, the note changes in Reflection don’t actually upset me.

my brain: oh look!! flowers!! cool! whooshhhh (honestly I couldn’t even tell if she was doing flowers right in the first part of the movie until here)

Mulan/Jun is gonna marry Commander Tung’s daughter? Yeah girl!! Get it!

oh look at me I’m a rouran and I gotta turn around on my moving horse to shoot arrows let me just swoOP

1:01:56 WHY ARE YOUR FINGERS IN FRONT OF THE HILT oh ok they fixed in the next shot but its still annoying

Unsubtle phoenix imagery not subtle

I guess I was warned about it :/

oh look its my fav interval a major 7th, I wonder if that’s supposed to be like “the last step before rebirth/the octave” bc of how Jun “dies” after the witch throws a weapon that gets stuck in her chest binding

at least she’s not using ace bandages or smth but idk much about binding

WHY ARE YOU THROWING OFF ALL YOUR ARMOR WHEN YOU’RE GOING INTO BATTLE? ACCEPTING AND PRESENTING YOURSELF AS WHO YOU REALLY ARE DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO TAKE OFF YOUR ARMOR

ok I know it was so she would be visually distinguishable from the other imperial soldiers, but still

the soldiers doing the turtle thing with their shields reminds me of the “we irritating 😂😂😂” meme

brass to signify that mulan is going to have a heroic moment (causing the avelanche) seems western to me. Idk much about traditional chinese instruments but it seems like they could use more of those.

Guys,,,I’m so fucking stupid I- .... it took me an hour and ten minutes to register the Lucky Cricket stand-in character,,,excuse me,,,,

the scene where mulan saves hongui and puts her hand over his heart gives me r*ylo vibes and I hate it

the witch, 1:14:40: “🎵yes I~ am a girl like you~🎵”

damn the music even reminds of the barbie movie a bit

The emperor’s voice reminds me of the mentor character from Kung Pow Enter the Fist which in itself was a western guy making fun of old cheesy martial arts movies (and how movies sometimes have a white male protagonist when they’re deadass set in asia and everyone else is asian)

the mentor characters voice was dubbed into english (and you can tell) but to me the emperor’s voice also kinda sounds like that

I’m disappointed that we didn’t get some kind of scene like the part in the animated verison where Mulan leads Ling, Chien Po, and Yao to cross dress to help save the emperor.

to me, that scene in the animated ver. is a reminder that it isn’t shameful for men to act/dress feminine

in general the animated version, to me, sends the message that it is ok to have both feminine and masculine traits, and that they don’t undermine each other or your identity, so they should all be embraced as a part of one’s personality (which tbh really helped me as a young kid)

the 2020 ver,, just doesn’t really send that message, instead its more broad like “be true to yourself”

I’m a slut for butterfly kicks

the witch taking an arrow for mulan really didn’t do it for me tbh, it made her seem a little wishy washy

like, I get that she wanted acceptance/validation, and that a part of her was glad that mulan found that for herself, but what about the rest of her motivation? Isn’t a desire for power or something what separates her from mulan?

Unsubtle phoenix imagery and dialogue is unsubtle

The music playing during the Mulan v. Khan duel reminds me of Duel of the Fates

actually the setting of the duel and other things really remind of of the Maul v. Ahsoka duel from Clone Wars s7

damn I really wanna watch the Maul v. Ahsoka duel cause the fight choreo is just,, so much more interesting

aww! Cricket is alive!

Around 1:34:39 , the music does not feel like it should be building up to Reflection here.  At this point, I think the melody had been reprised too many times and was getting to be overused (I still like it in the training sequence though).

I was happy to see Ming Na Wen!

Mulan is going home and ugh! Honghui! Don’t you know she’s betrothed to Commander Tung’s daughter? smh. homewrecker simp.

the matchmaker reminds me of Baron Harkonnen (Dune)

cheezy credits song is cheezy, even cheezier because they reprised reflection again