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thetypedwriter · 4 years ago

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Lore Book Review

Lore Book Review by Alexandra Bracken

Lore by Alexandra Bracken was one of 2021’s most anticipated YA novels and it's easy to see why. The plot summary itself is enough to pull you in with the intriguing concoction of calling it the combination of The Hunger Games and the Percy Jackson series.

What’s not to love when you fuse the illicit danger of Katniss Everdeen with the mythological enchantment of Rick Riordan’s masterpiece?

Turns out, quite a lot unfortunately.

Before I get into why this book didn’t live up to the insurmountable hype it built up, I’ll attempt to give a basic summary. The key word being attempt as a good portion of this novel’s plot was a mind boggling and convoluted mess.

The book takes place in modern day New York which Bracken likes to remind you every other paragraph with small snippets about how the city that never sleeps smells like sewage and is yet still the best place on earth apparently.

Don’t get me wrong, I love New York as much as the next person, but the pandering to the Big Apple got annoying after awhile.

Within the cantankerous city lives a girl named Lore which we are introduced to by means of her kicking ass in an underground Chinese restaurant’s fighting ring.

Pretty strong start.

Lore’s world (and the reader’s frankly) is tipped upside down when Lore’s long lost childhood friend, Castor, reappears to warn her that he is looking for her. Terrified, Lore is then at first unwillingly thrust back into the world in which she was born-a world dominated by violence, bloodlines, and the Greek gods who are very much alive and out for vengeful retribution.

In a very exposition-dump heavy conversation, we learn that Lore is the last of Perseous’ line with the rest of her family having been horrifically murdered, that a week long event called the Agon occurs every seven years in which the original nine Greek gods or their reincarnated selves become mortal for seven days, and that a series of killing often happen because if you kill a Greek god you then become that Greek god as well as inhabit their powers, abilities, and immortality.

Well, until the next Agon that is.

The currently reincarnated God by the name of Wrath is attempting to end the Agon by killing all the other Gods, but in order to do it he needs to wield a special weapon called the Aegis.

Unfortunately, only the Perseides can wield this shield (for some reason) and thus, Wrath is out to get his hold on Lore as the last of her line so that he can bring this eons old competition to an end with himself as the sole victor and only remaining God.

Confused?

I’d be surprised if you weren’t.

Now, I love Greek mythology. I’ve read the classics and would say I’m fairly up to date on the stories, the legends, the gods, and the stories they represent. I’m not an expert, but I would say I’m knowledgeable on who the major figures are and what they stood for.

I genuinely think this book would have been miserable for anyone that didn’t know anything about Greek mythology.

Bracken does a terrible job of explaining what the hell is happening at any given point, and she often throws out allusions and references to Greek mythology without bothering to explain a single shred of information about it.

In addition, after this laughably and poorly explained world and plot at the beginning, it is almost never explained again. It’s brought up, as are names and titles and weapons and relationships, but it’s never explained in a way that’s feasibly understandable.

At the beginning of the novel Bracken lists who all the important characters are, their bloodlines, and their titles.

I soon figured out why, as every other sentence a name like Wrath or Reveler or Tidebringer or whoever was brought up, and it was impossible to keep track of so I didn’t even bother.

Even Lore brings up that the names are ridiculous, which I appreciate, but the meta moment of clarity doesn't make it any better.

Also, what Lore and her friends get up to over 90% of the novel is a muddled mass of bewilderment.

Why do Lore and Castor and the others need to find Artemis? I don’t know, but sure, whatever, sounds good. Why was Lore the last of her line again? Oh yeah, right, okay, I guess. Wait, Castor died? Oh, he didn’t? Why not? Oh, we’re not going to explain it. Sure, sure.

Throughout this entire novel, what the characters are doing and what is happening is almost impossible to follow with the way it's presented and the way Bracken developed her world. I think this was a really cool idea that had very poor execution.

Points for the originality and the inclusion of Greek mythology, but all of the positives were taken away when that originality was flushed down the drain with a lack of explanation and logic.

Lore very much reminded me of a shoot-em up, bang-em up action movie. Almost every other chapter was some sort of super intense, super climactic fight scene, chase, theft, break-in, etc.

Now. I do think action scenes are hard to write and I think Bracken actually did an incredible job of writing action in a way that was entertaining and thrilling.

However, when the action takes place every ten pages it gets really old, really quick. Towards the end, I downright started skimming the fight scenes, because they lacked so little depth and stakes and we had read so much action at the end point that it had lost all vigor and vitality.

Continuing with the action movie metaphor, most action movies focus solely on the bright explosions and the crazy fight scenes as their selling point of the whole movie, often to the detriment of the characters, plot, and development.

Now, some people like this. I am not these people.

I find action movies boring as most of my enjoyment from consuming media comes from the characters and the developments they undergo.

My biggest criticism with Lore, other than the astonishing storytelling, is by far the characters. I just...didn’t care. About any of them.

Bracken tried to make Lore come across as a strong, opinionated, fierce, angry female character and while sometimes she succeeded, more often than not I found Lore temperamental, aggravating, impulsive, selfish, and shallow.

Bracken very much invoked the tell-not-show strategy that makes any book hard to get through. While there were some decent moments of showing instead of just stating, more often than not, Bracken would tell us that Lore was strong by having other people say it or others calling her weak.

I appreciated Bracken’s feminist agenda and how strongly Lore felt about gender inequality, even if it was a bit heavy-handed at times. Still, I did appreciate this inclusion of civil rights on this front, even if some of the circumstances to incite it were ridiculous or over the top.

In addition, I hated that there was all this backstory that we were just told but not shown. Like in my last review of Wilder Girls, Lore suffers from an intrinsic failure of getting me onboard with these characters and their relationships by telling me how I should feel about them instead of exposing them through action.

I was told:

Lore and Castor haven't seen each other for seven years, but my gosh, Castor is just the best and is so beautiful. Ensue obligatory YA romance.

Lore has a best friend! Yeah. Her name is Iro. Here she is! Um. Okay. Why was this necessary?

Miles is just the coolest best friend ever. Like, look how cool and chill he is. How funny is it that he has no idea what’s happening? Really not funny at all. He was a useless character used to build empty stakes.

The list goes on and on, but Bracken will throw out some sort of fact or relationship and just expect the reader to go “Okay!” Which. I didn’t. On any of those occurrences.

Often Bracken would do this in the use of flashbacks at the most inopportune times (during a fight scene, after someone was injured, right before a huge revelation, etc). These flashbacks were the worst. I do not care for adolescent Lore and child Lore was somehow even worse.

The romance in this book, much like an action movie, is off to the side and really only there to fulfill the trope of having a romance.

Lore and Castor are boring. I don’t know what else to say. Castor is too perfect to be likable and Lore is the opposite. Nothing about their romance was unique or well-crafted.

The kiss between Van and Miles I also saw coming a hundred miles away. I also thought it was pointless as Van and Miles had known each for six days and had had maybe two conversations. So. No. I didn’t care at all about the romances.

It actually made me laugh and scoff simultaneously at the end when Lore is looking at Van, Castor, Iro and Miles and smiles because she realizes that these people are her family.

Ummm. Sorry?

Castor disappeared for seven years and you’ve been reunited for seven days. You’ve hated Van your whole life until this week. You also haven’t seen Iro in seven years and she tried to kill you at least twice in this book. Miles is...fine, but again useless. I don’t even know why Bracken included him except to make Lore worry about him which she only did about half of the time.

Phew.

I know this review has come across largely negative, so this might be surprising, but I didn’t hate it. It lacks substance and depth, but it was entertaining.

Just like an action movie.

If you want some hyped fights and a plot that really doesn't matter and characters that won’t stick with you, but a fast-paced narrative that keeps you on your toes nonetheless, then you would probably enjoy this.

It’s like the equivalent of watching a James Bond movie or one of the millions of the Fast and Furious. Bracken tries to develop the characters, but at the end of the day, most of the story is made up of cool fights, magic, and weapons. If that’s your speed then you would probably really love Lore.

Recommendation: Action, action, action. If you want some high intensity, get-your-blood-pumping enterprise then this is your novel. The writing is fluid, the adrenaline-inducing scenes are non-stop, and everything else falls to the backdrop of external fights and villainous monologues. If action is not your preferred genre, then your best left to get your Greek mythology needs from Percy Jackson or the Song of Achilles instead.

Score: 6/10

#lore #alexandra bracken #6/10 #ya fiction #YA Books #YA literature #book blog #book review #top books #teen books #Teen Romance #teen fiction #Book Recommendations #YA Book Review #ya book rec #popular fiction #popular books #greek mythology

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Scooby Doo (2002) Review: The Most Punchable Fred Jones of All Time

It’s one last hurrah for Halloween as I take a look at the often derided 2002 Scooby Doo Movie! See what happens when you combine future superstar director James Gunn with .. the guy who thought directing the Smurf’s movie and Big’s Mama’s House were good ideas. Oh and with a splash of the guy who wrote the loveable family film Cheaper by the Dozen and the utterly loathed Percy Jackson film. It’s as messy as you’d expect with that.. but is it BAD? good, so bad it’s good, just sorta okay? Come with me as I try to find out under the cut with a full review.

I’ve always loved Scooby Doo. I grew up with the guy, watching reruns of the non-scrappy classic series from Where Are You to the Scooby Doo Movies, the three Superstar 10 movies (Boo Brothers, Ghoul School and Reluctant Werewolf), or the at the time brand new What’s New Scooby Doo. And later in life i’d absolutely adore Mystery Incorporated.. minus the whole Shaggy, Scooby Velma love triangle, but i’ll likely cover that at some point or sooner, you can comission reviews from me for 5 bucks each, 5 dollars off group orders if you really want to make me suffer through that that bad. But getting off self promotion point is I loved and still love the franchise. While I”ve yet to see “Scooby Doo and Guess Who”, though given there’s Weird Al, Kristan Schaal and Urkel episodes you can be sure i’m going to eventually, and Scoob was VERY ehhh even if Dick Dastardly was awesome. But despite my history with the great dane much like with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, despite my rich history with the franchise I haven’t dove in yet and with a friend who could use a nice halloween suprise and loves scooby doo, I figured now was the time to take a look at it. And since i’d been wanting to take a look at it again anyway, and decided going big wasn’t a bad way to start, i’m taking a look at the 2002 Scooby Doo movie. I saw this flim first run in a drive in, and saw the sequel the same way and loved it as a kid, and fondly remember checking out the Sountrack Preview page back before youtube existed to make checking out soundtracks easier. It was a simplier time. And even rewatching it later with my nieces, I found myself liking it. And the thing was almost every time this film comes up it’s with a turned up nose. The CGI, the confused audience, the deciding to cast Freddy Prinze Junior.. all terrible decisions that overshadow the film, when it’s not that bad. It’s not GREAT, but it’s not TERRIBLE either. So what is it then? Well i’ll tells ya. Let’s start with

PRODUCTION: Wait James Gunn Wrote This?

At the turn of the millneium Scooby Doo was back on top. After waning popularity during the Scrappy era, the advent of the warner affilated Cartoon Network meant a whole new generation of kids (raises hand) got to experince Scooby Doo for the first time. This new audeince lead to Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, the first of the franchises 80 or so DTV movies that will continue on long after the earth dies, and brought back the franchise after it’s long slumber. Scooby Doo went from dead to as popular as he was in his hey day again. Naturally Warner wanted to cash in and thus this movie was born. Originally the film was supposed to be a more adult project, a send up of the franchise with more sex jokes and what not than made the final cut according to writer James Gunn. Yes, the same James Gunn who wrote and directed the Guardians of the Galaxy movie and whose currently saving the suicide squad. It was one of Gunn’s earlier films but just from when he’s talked about it, you can tell he genuinely cared about the project. Along for the ride with our future Guardian was his co-writer, Craig Titely, who i’m convinced only came in to do punch ups as the guy has only written three other movies. One of them was being one of MANY writers on Cheaper by the Dozen and thus likely not doing much of note with that, and the other.. is being the only writer on Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief’s movie adaptation.. aka the movie the fanbase and general audiences rejected in droves yet SOMEHOW got a sequel. Which is somehow still worse than his other film, one that asks “was the moon landing a hoax?” Spoilers, it wasn’t. Point is this isn’t a resume that screams co creator and more screams “Guy brought in to kid freindly this up”. More on that in a minute. The director is another less than reassuring face: Raja Gosnell, whose credits BEFORE this film were Home Alone 3, Never Been Kissed and Big Momma’s house.. so already he dosen’t have the best track record but somehow got worse because AFTER this film and it’s sequel he directed both live action Smurfs Movies and the universally hated Show Dogs, aka the film that thought dog rape was funny. The fact this film isn’t out and out terrible is a miracle.

Even more so because naturally, as Studios tend to do they interfered: The film was supposed to be more adult, cracking jokes about common things fans of the series growing up thought like Velma is Gay or Shaggy’s a stoner, and having both be fully true. But wanting to appeal to kids, Warner gradually lightned it, hence Craig, and Raja clearly having no shame gladly took it instead of you know.. standing his ground. So Velma has a love intrest thrown in and her kiss with Daphne is gone, while Shaggy’s toke smoking was lowered to subtext.. because either of those things is bad apparently? I dunno the 2000′s were fucked.

Point is THAT’S why these films are so tonally confused and why I don’t hold it agains the film now I know: It wasn’t James Gunn or even, as dumb as he is, Raja Gosnell’s fault that the film had some tones clashing when the studio was demanding it, instead of you know, thinking this through at all and realizing more kids cared about Scooby Doo than they would’ve josie and the pussy cats instead of bringing it up DURING production, when most of the adult stuff was in there. It’s also why the sequel has no real adult stuff, though it’s STILL damn good, but i’ll get to that some other day.

The film was also shot at an actual theme park in australia. Neat.

So yeah the film’s humor kind of ping pongs between knowing adult winks and kids stuff. We get Scooby dressing like a grandma in the same film shaggy enhales his demon possed love intrests breath like weed. The jokes themselves on average are pretty good: Some of my faviorites include the grandma scene, everything rowan atkinson does, Velma getting drunk off her ass, and the instructional video bit which is easily my favorite bit of the episode and one of my faviorite scooby doo jokes period:

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This is even FUNNIER to me on rewatch, as we now know this is an instructional video for demons.. and that Scrappy clearly had enough problems with his demon horde to have to pay for this thing. It tis glorious. However there also are also a few that HAVE NOT aged well, are very creepy at best and disgusting sexual assault at worst with Daphne getting her ass grabbed by the Luna Ghost at the start being treated as a joke and Fred oggling Daphne’s body when he’s in it being treated as a ha ha and not...

So yeah the humor’s USUALLY good, but the slipups are noticable and do bring things down a bit when they come by. So the humor is decent if mixed and the production’s a nightmare, how’s the plot? The Plot: Scoob, We’re Getting the Band Back Together!

I won’t be as through as usual because this is a 90 minute movie, I’m running behind as is and it’s 20 years old,

We start with your standard mystery inc case with the Luna Goose, aka Old Man Incel who resented Pamela Anderson for not boning him. But Fred hogging the glory during the resulting News Cast leads the gang to start fighting over lingering tensions: Velma is tired of Fred hogging all the credit when she does most of the legwork solving things, Daphne is tired of being kidnapped and being mistreated by Velma and Freddy who laugh at the idea of her doing more, and Fred..

We’ll get to him later. Shaggy is the only one wanting to stick together, but no one’s having it and the group breaks apart and Matthew LIllard REALLY sells Shaggy’s heartbreak over his friends all abandoning him well.

Two years later though, with Shaggy and Scooby naturally getting stoned and eating large quantities of food on the beach, have made peace with retirement, and have apparently had to duck tons of people coming to them to solve mysteries since they aren’t about that. The latest in that line is a man representing Emile Mondovarius, the owner of Spooky Island, a vast island resort and theme park. Naturally since it has spooky in the name the boys want nothing but Mondovarius does what honestly every previous guy coming to them should’ve done: offers them an all you can eat buffet. Since they’ve done more traumatizing for Dog Treats, they agree and it soon turns out the entire gang was invited, though none of them but Shaggy and Scooby are happy to see each other. I will say one of my complaints about the film is it never tackles the emotions behind the breakup: while the teams slowly repairs there are never any outright apologizes or scenes of them recociling or scenes of Shaggy chewing them out for abandoning him due to their spat. It just skips over the emotional bits to either wave a joke for the kiddies around or scream

Really the jokes aren’t bad, the film just has trouble with actual emotion or depth that could’ve been there and tries for it once in a while, but dosen’t really do anything with it. The gang splitting up’s a good concept, and at this point on Scooby Doo on Zombie Island had really used it, and that was one where they were clearly still close friends and were still in touch they just quit mystery solving for a while till Zombie Island happened. Mystery Incorpreated would finally give this story justice later: Instead of over a petty ego squabble, the gang broke up over underlying tensions: The revelations about Fred’s dad caused him to go try and find himself, Velma alienated herself by hiding things from them, and Shaggy was shipped off to Military School and Scooby doggy prison camp... thankfully the last two didn’t last and Scooby rescued Shaggy with a tank but the tension DIDN’T go away: While the gang mostly reunited, Velma took time to forgive them and also tried bringing in the friend/girlfriend she’d made in the meantime only for her friends to isolate her and throw her out while Daphne took her time to return due to being hurt by fred. It’s complex and good stuff versus here where it’s just “WE’RE APART BECAUSE WE HATES EACH OTHER. And now we’re NOT”. It’s just a waste of a good concept and i’ m glad the franchise got around to doing it right.

But my gripes aside our heroes head to the resort and meet Mondevarious, who admits outright to having tricked then and with confronted with the gang being broken up, makes it clear he knews. “That’s the thing about broken things.. you can put them back together.”

And so he did. He needs the Gang’s help as he’s worried about the island and something going wrong there: The teens are leaving polite, well behaved. and clearly not themselves as one reacts to an old friend by neck lifting him and tossing him aside. Something’s deeply wrong here and the gang’s intrest is piqued enough to stay though everyone but Shaggy is determined to solve it themselves out of ego. Mondvarius is played by Rowan Atkinson and while I watched the bean movie as a kid this is where I fell in love with the guy, with later watches of Blackadder confirming that in my college years. Rowan just brings a fun dorky energy to the character and a nice earnestness too but when he later takes a turn for the bad, he does that well too. Atkinson is HIGHLY underated in my opinon and easily the MVP of this film’s supporting cast. So the investigation begins, and we get our supsects: The first we met on the plane, Mary Jane, a kind blonde played by Isla Fisher who got the job becasue Gosnel, in a rare good decision, saw how talented she was and while still picking Sara Michele Gellar for Daphne, made sure she had a part. She’s a nice sweet girl who Shaggy falls for and Scooby’s annoyed by it.. though unlike earlier the film beats mystery inc easily here as it’s a more understandable conflict and dosen’t act like Dog Issues is a thing people says. Again i’ll get to that clusterfuck of an arc some day. The other two are N’Goo Tuna, a shady worker at the park who spouts off the legends of the island. In a nice twist, he’s NOT the vilian, as is obvious but is his right hand man. He also has his own right hand and muscle in Zarkos a cool looking Luchador and N’Goo’s muscle. Also N’Goo may be one of the worst names in Scooby Doo History, and that includes Dabba Doo. But the legend claims the island was once owned by demons who want revenge since the resort took the island from him.

The other is probably my faviorite non Rowan Atkinson character, Voodoo Maestro, played by Miguel Nunez. He’s basically just a guy who lives on the fringes of the island and also hates the resort and tries using voodoo curses. He’s honestly a delight from his attempt to sacrifice a chicken (An already dead one at that), to his general hammy and annoyed at dealing with these teenagers demeanor. NAturally he has nothing to do with this but he’s still a fun addition and I wish he was in more scnenes than the two he gets. But with what they’ve gathered the gang all end up at a spooky castle attraction, with Scooby and Shaggy of course being bribed by daphne while Velma and Fred show up indpeendntly and end up finding the weird training video from earlier but all get caught when the traps are activiated> There’s also a farting contest which.. eh not funny to me but i’ve seen so much worse i’m not even remotely upset. But then the traps trigger though during the chaos Fred and Velma are forced to work together and finally start doing so, and Daphne finds a clue: A mysterious pyramid known as the damon righus and finally gets some, if not nearly enough, credit. So the gang is back together.. even if it’s a tenative peace, the high from solving this and relay to their boss the suspects, including him, though Fred assures Mondovarius it’s just because he’s spooky and rowan’s character’s delight over that is fucking glorious. So the gang enjoys some down time at the local bar, with Fred and Daphne doing their own look ins, Scooby and Shaggy eating and encountring mary again and Velma getting hit on by a dude while looking over the ritus, revealing it’s some sort of soul sucking aparatus, and going into their history... which is really just an excuse to bring Scrappy in who in this universe, is a horny egotistical little shit whose abandoned as a result. ANd before anyone boos he’s not a puppy here, he’s got.. dog dwarfisim.. which while .. how does that even work... means he’s a grown ass man and deserved this. We also get drunk velma and Linda Caredenlli is a delight

The night gets interupted by terrible cgi monsters, the aformentioned emon who soul suck most of the college kids present and also get fred and velma who both find out these are very much real. We also get the best song on the soundtrack, man with a hex. It slaps. But it makes good chase music as with Mondvarious, Fred and Velma captured, the rest of the gang and mary escape. The next morning we get a surreal as hell scene as everyone’s partying, Fred’s talking in slang and Velma with clevage, thank you, is chatting up.. Sugar Ray? For those younger of you they were a band at the time. They were a big thing. Not half bad but faded away. They looked as 2000′s as hell though. WHy Smash Mouth gets all the memes and not them is beyond me. Look at lead singer Mark McGrath!It’s like the early 2000′s gained sentience and took a human form. But the gang is quickly forced to run from sugar ray, though they get Daphne in a deleted scene. Why it was deleted I dunno. Point is Shaggy, Scooby and Mary are all alone.. oh and Mary’s possessed. Shaggy and Scooby argue over it because Shaggy just thinks Scooby is jealous and while he is .. why would he lie about this? He’s as cowardly as you are. But Scooby falls through the floor, and Shaggy is now going solo but luckily finds his friends souls, and eveyrone elses in a massive cool looking vat and frees them all. Velma, when the demon leaves her and confronts her, finds out sunlight kills the demons and saves Daphne from hers... only to find Fred in her body. Daphne is naturally horrified and we do get a great bodyswapping scene.

Our heroes reconvince on the beach where htey find the Maestro who explains what’s going on to a point, with the gang’s clues filling in the blanks: The ritus, which they stole back earlier, is used for a ritual that will allow the Demons to rule over the earth for “a thousand years of darkness” but it requires a pure soul to work. Cue our big bad talking Scooby into being their willing sacrifice since Scooby dooes not understand what a sacrifice is. Shaggy naturally rallies the group to go save him after their understandably worried since they usually dealt with weirdos in costumes and not the apocalypse.. well okay Velma and Fred aren’t, Daphne dealt with this kind of thing once a week back in Sunnydale. So they set up a plan to destroy all the demons at once by unleashing the soul bath, setting them all loose and then using a spooky disco ball from one of the attractions rigged up over the ritual area to shine the light in. It’s classic scooby doo.

Things naturally go wrong as while Shaggy goes to rescue scooby and makes up with him, he’s caught, so are fred and velma and they have to scramble, while Daphne looses a fight with the luchador up top while trying to let the light in to finish the trap. Meanwhile Shaggy saves Scooby’s soul just as Mondovarious sucks it out by shoving the guy.. revealing him to be a robot! DUN DUN DUN. And inside is Scrappy.. which you all probably knew already but try to act suprise who wanted to conquer the world as revenge for the gang abandoning him and because again, in this universe he’s kind of an asshole. He absorbs the souls gathered so far and merges with the damon ritus, because we’re operating on video game rules now apparently, so final boss time. But we get a great climax as Scrappy chases scooby, Daphne goes buffy on Zarkos ass , and as a result he shatters the glass and lets the light in releasing the disco ball the kill the demons.. man I love that I get to type things like that. Scooby removes the ritus and defeats his nephew and the day is saved. Velma hooks up with random guy, Daphne and Fred get together, I die inside a little and Shaggy and Mary Jane bond. At the press Fred does his good deed for the movie by letting Velma explain things and get the spotlight and the group have firmly reunited. THE END. Overall it’s a solid plot, that works well, comes together in the end and was well put together, it’s more the filling that causes it to tilt back and forth a bit, but overlal outside of the issue I mentioned it’s a good scooby doo plot. While some have pointed out it is similar to zombie island, a case reuniting the gang, the person who brought them there wanting to sacrifice them, or just scooby here, monsters being real, it works because everything else is so different. But since there’s more to break down and it’s easier to give it it’s own section let’s look at...

THE CHARACTERS: NOT HALF BAD, FRED CAN GO FUCK HIMSELF.

So we’re down to character.. and since there’s a blonde, preeening, selfish, arrogant, sleazy, sexist, obnoxious, loud mouthed, useless elephant in the room, let’s start with Fred. And to quote it’s always sunny....

Yeah so that fury of a thousand crashing waves (Cracks Knuckles): Fred is the worst part of this movie, the worst version of the character across the entire franchise that i’ve seen with the sincre doubt that there is ANY version worse than this. Everything I said above is true and THEN some. He is one of the most unlikable characters i’ve seen in a film that wasn’t INTENDED to be. There’s just NOTHING to like about him. Nothing. He treats his “Friends” like garbage, all four of them: He basically ignores shaggy and scooby at best and treats them as if they were nothing. For Velma he’s your classic power abusing douche who pushes her to the side and often steals the credit for things she did. He’s still a good mystery solver, but he acts like he does all the work to the press and takes all the credit when Velma works as hard as he does if not harder. And worst of all is Daphne, who he basically either treats like some moron who gets kidnapped due to incompetence and not because creepy old dudes want to feel her up, which given the intro is VERY likely the reason she’s the resident victim of the group, and not like a person, or like a pair of boobs and legs he wants to bang or feel up creepily while he’s in her body. For fuck’s sake his reaction to finding out he’s in her body is a creepy and smug “I can see myself naaaakeddd” If that dosen’t make you want to smack him get off my blog. And they get together in the end!

Who who wanted that. I genuinely want the presumibly original ending where Daphne and Velma hook up and Fred falls off a pier and is never seen again. The acting does not help. While the other four gang members are expertly cast Fred was given to Freddy Prinze Junior, who made a career out of playing arrogant dicks who are somehow the main character so I can’t fault the casting but I can fault that he can’t delver any line without that smug air of trying to be cool douche and it’s at it’s worst with Fred since Fred’s already written as the biggest creepiest douche in the world and Freddy somehow makes it WORSE. He also has zero chemstiry with Daphne, which would be weird given he and Sarah Michelle Gellar had dated for 2 years at this point and as of this writing have been together for 20 overall and have two wonderful kids together... but given how badly written Fred is here, I can’t blame either of them. And i’m sure FPJ is a swell guy, loves his kids loves his wife seems like a really plesant guy, nothing against him as a person, but at least at this point in his career he wasn’t very good. And I am actually planning on trying to seek out one of his later works in his career to see if he’s gotten better in recent years, and willing to give him the benifit of a doubt that he probably has. I just don’t like him here, and while the script does most of the work he only makes it worse.And works before this (Pup Named Scooby Doo) and after this (Mystery Incorperated) would prove you can give fred a personality that’s not dick tip, so fuck this character, fuck the writing.. and I hope Freddy is having a happy halloween with his loving wife and children, seriously I meant it I have nothing against him as a person. A terrible actor can still be a WONDERFUL guy.

Now that’s thankfully put to bed, let’s pivot over to Shaggy, whose easily the best of the cast. Matthew Lillard looks the part pefectly, has the right combination of heart and goofus and has some great comedic timing. Granted Scream had already proven the guy’s got genuine talent, but still he’s great here and is currently playing Shaggy in most films and productions, except Scoob which.. was far from it’s only mistake but easily the biggest. There’s not much else to say: the guy IS Shaggy and is the only person whose taken up the roll to equal Kasey Casem in it. As for how he’s written.. he’s basically the same and apart from one line of him wanting to leave everyone to their deaths, which feels like it was added later, he’s written really well and is easily the most likeable of the group.

Scooby is alright. Not the best version but funny and charming enough when he needs to be and while I hated the CGI at one point.. it’s honestly not that bad. It’s not GREAT, but time has actually been very good to it both in how it’s held up and in the fact we’ve gotten SO MUCH WORSE with so much better techlogies. I mean.. Cats exists.. Marmaduke Exists.. the Bill Murray Garfield exists. This was offputting at the time but now it’s just okay. But character wise he’s good and again not much diffrent.

Velma is the second best casting of the movie. Played by Linda Cardenelli, who i’ve harbored a crush on for a good few decades now and admire mostly for her talent and charm, Linda kills the roll and easily slips into it as easily as Matt did, and while not picking it up full time like he did, still did it a few times afterword and played hot dog water in mystery incorperated, so she did finally get to play a Lesbian Velma it just took a while. And while Velma being gay is kind of sterotyping, it would’ve been nice to have been kept in instead of edited out for bullshit reasons. But overal her character is decent: While she ALSO bullies and belittles daphne like fred, unlike fred it comes less from just being a douche and more from insecurity. As her scene at the bar makes clear she feels undervalued like the other, like the nerd who the cool kids LET hang out with them instead of part of the team. While it dosen’t make her treatment of Daphne OKAY, it makes Velma understandable. We also get Velma Clevage which.. okay not sure if the world needed that but whatever. Point is it’s throughly likeable portryal that I wish got some character growth. Finally out of the main 5 there’s Daphne, whose alright. Not as good as the other two, as it feels they lean a bit too heavily on her having taken self defense and wanting ot be tougher, but Sarah Michelle Gellar gives her a ton of charm and likeablity that her husband’s character sadly lacks. There’s just a fun, adorable energy to daph that ends up coupling with her buffy style badassery at the end and Sarah plays both beautifully. The script didn’t give her a ton to work with, though that’s the same for all four of htem, but Sarah really made the character work and made her somewhat memorable despite not being as good as Linda or Matthew. Basically not the best, but still a comfortable third ahead of scooby doo and jackass jones.

As for the rest of the cast, Rowan Attkinson i’ve covered and is utterly fantastic as is the Voodoo Maestro, and both should get hteir own hbo max spinoff together. The minons.. stupid name and luchadoor are decent enough, nothign special but they have presence and do the job of goon well. And Mary Jane is alright.. the joke is WAY too on the nose to be funny and she’s mostly just there to be sweet, but she’s harmless. Not good but not bad. So finally we have our big bad, Scrappy. And i’m.. mixed about this. On one hand, Scott Innes, who it turns out is also from Missouri good on you dude!, does a terrific job and I couldn’t tell it wasn’t don messick as Scrappy and he plays him as evil great. On the other.. it’s just kinda goofy. Out of all the tips of hte hat to scooby stuff this feels the most over the top. Scrappy was hated, including by james gunn.. so he’s the bad guy. It’s just a bit on the nose, and the twist is pretty easily teligraphed since Scrappy suspciously is mentioned in one scene so him showing up at all is pretty easy to see coming. It’s not terible but it’s not great. His demon minons also just suck.. the designs are wonky and their cgi, unlike scooby and scrappy’s, is just REALLY bad and dated, and even as a kid I never liked them.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Scooby Doo is a decent but messy movie. The clashing tones, dated humor and godawful version of fred drag it down at times, and it’s very clear this had a lot of hands in the pot. But.. I still enjoy it. It’s not the best scooby ever, tha’ts mystery incorpeated, but it has great atmosphere, some good ideas, an utterly spectacular with one exception cast, and some really funny jokes. I genuinely feel the film is overhated when it’s a unique, weird and wonderful slice of Scooby. For better or worse there’s no other Scooby doo property quite like it, and that’s what makes it so fun. And it has enough good performances and jokes to smooth out the edges. It’s not the best, it’s a mess.. but sometimes a mess is fun and I like this flim for being a fun mess I can enjoy with my nieces and talk about to all of you. And sometimes that’s all you need. Thank you for reading this. If you like this you can comission your own review: 5 bucks for a tv episode, 15 for a movie, 10 for an hour long special, and 5 dollars off when you order more than one episode of a show at a time. Just send me a direct message or ask on here and we’ll get started. Until then you can check out my backlog of reviews, check this space every monday for ducktales reviews, and VOTE DAMMIT VOTE. Until we meet again it’s been a pleasure. Play us out Atomic Fireballs, it’s been a wonderful halloween.

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#scooby doo #james gunn #shaggy rogers #fred jones #velma dinkely #daphne blake #rowan atkinson #sarah michelle gellar #freddy prinze jr #linda cardellini #matthew lillard

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frxstguardian · 4 years ago

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honestly if i was bryke i would just be like why the fuck am i making a live action show with no prior experience on stuff like this. and also netflix adaptations do tend to look wonky and with them having no idea how to run a live action show like that it woulda looked even worse. i honestly think the show might have a better shot with someone else running it tbh.

I definitely think Bryke were out of their depth and couldn’t navigate studio politics. Live action is very different from animation, and Netflix is a very different beast than Nickelodeon. I’m not sure it’ll turn out better now though. I’m very influenced by the Percy Jackson movies which suffered due to the original creator being shut out.

Transitioning from animation to live action is a big jump, but it’s possible. Dave Filoni spent his entire career in animation before becoming executive producer on The Mandalorian which turned out great. However he’s co-executive producer with Jon Favreau who had tons of experience with Marvel live action, so that probably helped a lot.

#fox talks #answers #anonymous #netflix atla

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thehollowprince · 5 years ago

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Full heartedly agree on the not selling to Disney thing. Especially since Artemis Fowl just came out, and it was, baaaaad. Worse maybe given that it’s believed a lot of changes were made last minute to a movie that at least tried to follow the plot (even if the actors weren’t right)

I'm old enough to remember a time when Disney wasn't so horrible. Granted, that time was before the internet where information is freely available, so I've since learned that they've always been pretty bad, but they've gotten worse in the last two decades because they're a bunch of greedy assholes.

I can't attest to the awfulness of Artemis Fowl, as I've never read the books nor watched the show, but I did recall recently that they have a Percy Jackson series in the works and my first thought was, "Why?! Why would let them do that, Rick?!" Because lest we all forget that the movies were god awful (ba dum tsh) because Fox just wanted to do what they wanted and completely ignored Riordan. Well, in case most people have forgotten, but Disney bought Fox, so we're more than likely looking at another disaster, just with better effects.

Look no further than what Disney had been doing for the last decade.

They bought Lucasfilm and decided to make their own Star Wars trilogy, and while I'm grateful that I got characters like Finn and Poe and Rose, all they did was try to recreate the original trilogy (very badly, I might add) so as to play on people's nostalgia to increase ticket sales. They're repeating that very same process by just pumping out all of these live-action remakes of their animated classics, despite those movies still being good by themselves.

Disney is a prime example of why corporations are bad. Profit over people is their motto. I can only imagine the horror that'll I'll endure when they introduce the X-Men to the MCU.

#ask and ye shall recieve #anti disney #disney is the death of good movies

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perlukafarinn · 5 years ago

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Movies (I saw) of the 2010s, ranked

Because I had lots of better things to do but no inclination to do them.

As I went through all the new releases I watched this decade, a few things came to mind:

I missed so much! Most recently, I still haven’t seen Parasite, The Lighthouse or The Irishman. I’ve also seen only one of Disney’s live action remakes, two out of four Star Wars films of the decade, and I’ve missed quite a few of Marvel and DC’s outings. My tendency to mostly watch older films came to bite me in the ass here. But c’est la vie, there’s only so many hours in the day!

A huge part of my viewing history took place during film festivals, so festival movies are way over-represented here. I’m not mad about it.

There’s not too many outright bad movies on my list, because I tend to avoid movies that look bad or like I might not like them (shocker, I know). Even the ones in my bottom ten aren’t as dreadful as I was expecting.

There’s no way I can rank all these films numerically! What about movies that I can tell are good but just aren’t for me? What about movies that are bad but enjoyable? How can you compare tired Oscar-bait with soulless blockbusters? It’s impossible!

Hence these categories. I’m doing a top 10 worst and best, and the categories go roughly from worse to better movies, but otherwise this isn’t based on quality so much as what clever category names I could come up with (or couldn’t, as the case may be). I’m also listing the movies within each category alphabetically because that’s even less ranking I need to do.

Buckle up, this is over 6000 words...

Oh, and if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing I still encourage you to reply with your own favorite movies of the decade!

The Worst Exactly what it says on the tin. These movies aren’t just unenjoyable or disposable, they are actively unpleasant to watch.

American Hustle (2013) Wait, this got how many Oscar nominations again??

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) This movie is so bloated and yet they couldn’t find any time to actually develop most of the main characters? I had such a bad time watching this one, I ended up skipping out on the last part of the trilogy.

Hurricane Bianca (2016) This looked like it might be enjoyably bad but it wasn’t. I still love Bianca Del Rio, don’t get me wrong, but her humor is not the kind you build a whole movie around, yet alone two. And yet…

Hurricane Bianca: From Russia With Hate (2018) Yeah, I watched them both. I’m a simple woman: I see Katya in a trailer, I watch. I really shouldn’t have bothered, this one is even worse.

Iron Man 2 (2010) Superhero fatigue got me bad in the past few years but even before then I hated this movie. Literally nothing enjoyable here, I was aggressively bored while watching. The Lack (2014) This is a movie about women, written and directed by a man, called “The Lack”. You might think I’m being uncharitable to say this movie is entirely about penis envy but the writer/director himself confirmed this at the Q&A I was at. This is why Q&As are always a bad idea, people!

Left Behind (2014) This one tips into “enjoyably bad” at times but in the end, it’s still two hours of your life wasted on a movie meant to make its Evangelical viewers feel vindicated in their horrible beliefs. Morgenrøde (2014) I have a fairly high tolerance for slow movies but this movie is sloooowwww and literally nothing happens in it. This is the movie that taught me not to trust it when festival brochures use the word “contemplative”.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010) Just dreadful. This is the worst kind of film in my books: the kind made to follow a trend, not to tell a story.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) It’s been eight years since the fourth PotC movie came out?? God, it’s been a long decade.

The Utterly Disposable I didn’t exactly have a bad time watching these but they left no impression on me.

Alex Strangelove (2018) Netflix has released so many unremarkable-looking teen movies this decade. This is one of the few I bothered to watch and it’s cute enough, I guess.

Fyrir framan annað fólk (2016) I am Icelandic but I don’t watch a whole lot of Icelandic movies and I feel kind of guilty about that. Not guilty enough to give a boring movie a pass, though.

Ghostbusters (2016) This super did not need to exist and not even my love for Kate McKinnon makes it any less disposable.

The Great Gatsby (2013) At least it’s pretty.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) I remember this getting a few laughs out of me but that’s about it.

The Imitation Game (2014) I think I just… don’t like Beneditch Cumberbatch? Sorry. This movie is the perfect expression of the bland, middle-of-the-road biopic, with the added mishandling of the subject’s sexuality.

Isn’t It Romantic (2019) I love a good satire but this ain’t it, chief. This movie isn’t doing anything that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hasn’t done 100x better.

John Carter (2012) If you’re gonna throw this much money into something, you could at least hire a charismatic lead actor. Then again, it seemed to work for Avatar. Magic Mike (2012) I did like that this sexy stripper movie kept showing how unhappy the main character is doing what he does as if that wouldn’t totally ruin the fantasy.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) Watched this on an airplane, which is fitting. This feels like a quintessential airplane movie; it’s mildly entertaining but ultimately disposable enough that it has completely slipped your mind by the time you reach baggage claim.

Paul (2011) Occasionally funny, I think? Barely remember it tbh.

Planetary (2015) There’s some interesting points buried in here but the movie’s too busy trying to look important to actually get them across effectively. Also feels surprisingly padded for just 80 minutes. Valentine’s Day (2010) Taylor Swift was actually kind of funny in this, which was a pleasant surprise. Zero impact otherwise.

“I Have No Memory of This Place” Movies I literally could not remember watching until I had read the entire synopsis, but for one reason or another was not comfortable calling “disposable”.

Bobby Sands: 66 Days (2015), The Departure (2017), Hell Is Empty: All the Devils Are Here (2016), Innsæi (2016), Last of the Elephant Men (2015), Late Summer (2016), Speed Sisters (2015), Una (2016), The War Show (2016) Lumping all of these together because they’re all festival movies I have hardly any memory of and that I may have in fact fallen asleep over.

Incendies (2010) Chalk this up to me seeing it almost a decade ago. When I finally remembered it, I could vaguely recall finding it affective. Probably due for a rewatch.

Prisoners (2013), Rush (2013), Warrior (2011) Around 2012-2014 I was working my way through IMdB’s top 250 list and I saw so many forgettable movies about men committing various violent acts. Literally can’t remember a single thing about these movies.

I’m So Sick of Superheroes Dear God Make It Stop I’d probably like some of these more if not for superhero fatigue but that is the trade-off for total global dominance. A couple of superhero movies did escape this category and you’ll see them later on my list.

Thor (2011), Iron Man Three (2013), Thor: The Dark World (2013), Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Ant-Man (2015), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) Lumping all of Marvel’s movies in this category together because I don’t really have a lot to say about Marvel anymore. Special mention to Winter Soldier for being the movie that soured on me the most and to Age of Ultron for in hindsight being the beginning of my superhero fatigue.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Boy, this trilogy ended on a sour note. Man of Steel (2013) Confused story structure aside, this movie is utterly grey and joyless. It’s also army propaganda!

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) The only reason I watched this was because it was on IMdB’s top 250 list. Peter Dinklage was good in it, if I recall correctly.

Don’t Like This Nope.

12 Years a Slave (2013) Very uncomfortable to sit through, which I get was the point, but I’m not sure it was the right choice. It honestly feels like misery porn.

Black Swan (2010) I’ve long made peace with the fact that Darren Aronofsky will just never click with me.

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) This movie is exhausting to watch because of the near constant country music playing. Loudly.

Kate Plays Christine (2016) This is a movie about a really interesting topic but instead of the real tragedy that actually happened it chooses to focus on an actress’s fictional struggle to connect with her role. I think the movie wanted us to think the struggle was real (heh) but for that they would’ve needed a better actress. La La Land (2016) I love classic musicals and I really wanted to like this movie but in the end I just couldn’t. As a movie it’s okay but it’s not a good musical and the whole white savior of jazz thing was……….. an odd choice.

Last Days in the Desert (2015) I’m a sucker for good, thoughtful religious films. The idea of Jesus and the devil being played by the same actor was intriguing to me and I liked that the devil wasn’t evil so much as just tired. But ultimately, this movie felt a little too cold for me.

Magic Mike: XXL (2015) I have no idea why every critic on the planet seems to love this movie. Strippers aggressively thrusting their crotch in your face is not sexy, it’s uncomfortable!

A Silent Voice (2016) Melodramatic and not in the fun, over-the-top way.

Vonarstræti (2014) It’s good but it’s just not for me.

Wir Monster (2015) I saw this at a Q&A screening and decided I didn’t wanna stick around after the credits rolled. On my way out, I tripped and almost fell onto the actors as they were walking past me. That experience had a way bigger impact on me than the movie itself. Make of that what you will.

Guilty Pleasures/So Bad They’re Good An enjoyably bad movie is a better watch than a middlingly competent one.

#REALITYHIGH (2017) Incredibly clichéd and tries way too hard to be “hip” or “lit” or whatever it is the kids were saying back in 2017. Don’t care, I’ve seen it four times.

Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) The first Bridget Jones is a highlight of the genre. The second one is just bad but the third tips over into enjoyably bad. I also loved having Renée Zellweger back on my screen!

A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish (2019) Recently watched this with my sister while baking and wrapping Christmas presents. It’s a terrible movie but we had fun (mostly by making fun of it).

Descendants (2015), Descendants 2 (2017), Descendants 3 (2019) I’m not apologizing for this even though I feel like I kind of should.

The Kissing Booth (2018) This movie is like a 13-year-old’s first fanfic come to life so of course I’m gonna love it. Even if the love interest is incredibly unappealing.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (2011), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 (2012) Who would’ve thought at the start of the decade that Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson would turn into indie darlings starring in one critically acclaimed film after the next? I love that for them.

Oscar Bait but I’m Not Biting Not sure the Oscars weren’t a mistake tbh.

The Artist (2011) I kind of enjoyed this but ultimately it’s watered-down Hollywood history made appealing to modern audiences and its aim is far higher than its reach.

Birdman (2014) It was a fun watch but it left no impression.

Darkest Hour (2017) Technically a good movie but such obvious Oscar bait I just couldn’t fully enjoy it.

The Help (2011) Let’s leave the white savior narrative behind in the 2010s, shall we?

The King’s Speech (2010) I love Colin Firth. I barely remember this movie.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) Don’t love that the racist cop is the most fully fleshed-out character in this movie while the black characters are all unnamed extras.

Whiplash (2014) It’s just drumming, J.K. Simmons, it’s not that serious.

I Feel Like I Should Like This More This category is mostly three camps, as you’ll see.

120 battements par minute (2017), 69 Minutes of 86 Days (2017), Fire at Sea (2016), I, Daniel Blake (2016) All important movies with a worthy message that I just couldn’t connect with on a personal level.

Adieu au langage (2014), Before We Vanish (2017), Bridesmaids (2011), Jagten (2012), A Separation (2011), Timbuktu (2014), Transit (2018), Winter’s Bone (2010) Critically acclaimed, maybe it’s just me?

Her (2013) The rest is all movies I expected to like more than I did. I’m not sure what didn’t click with this one. It’s been a while since I saw it.

Get Out (2017) I wasn’t gonna watch it because I don’t really watch horror so when I finally caved, I knew pretty much everything about it. Watching a movie the first time knowing everything that happens in it and after seeing it dissected for months on end by every critic on the planet does take a lot of the enjoyment away, as it turns out.

Gone Girl (2014) Really thought I’d love it. It’s good just didn’t click with me.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) It’s pretty. Liam Neeson is always fun.

Pacific Rim (2013) Mako is great and I enjoy the chemistry between her and Raleigh but ultimately this one just kind of slipped out of my mind as soon as I’d seen it.

Toni Erdmann (2016) It’s too damn long!

The Tree of Life (2011) I just watched this the other day so it’s very possible my opinion will change. I was expecting to love it but I… didn’t. It felt like this movie was trying too hard to be profound and important, at the cost of actually saying something, well, profound and important.

No Strong Feelings One Way or the Other I actually have nothing to say about any of these movies and most of them are good but they had to go somewhere.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), Boyhood (2014), Brave (2012), Creed (2015), Django Unchained (2012), Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), Flavours of Youth (2018), Frozen (2013), The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), Interstellar (2014), Intouchable (2011), The Jungle Book (2016), Monsters University (2013), Rogue One (2016), Schaste moe (2010), Shutter Island (2010), Three Identical Strangers (2018), To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), Undir trénu (2017), Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Middling Festival Fare I have nothing to say about these either but I couldn’t lump them in with the others. I mostly liked them more than the movies in the previous category and they took bigger risks. Some of them might even be great, just very much not my cup of tea.

3 Tage in Quiberon (2018), Acid Forest (2018), Amateurs in Space (2016), Barakah Meets Barakah (2015), Der Andständige (2014), Disappearance (2017), Dreams by the Sea (2017), En fremmed flytter ind (2017), Føniks (2018), The Girl Down Loch Aenzi (2016), God Exists, Her Name is Petrunija (2019), Gods of Molenbeek (2019), Jag är Ingrid (2015), Já, Olga Hepnarová (2016), Looking for Oum Kulthum (2017), Mister Universo (2016), Neruda (2016), The Raven and the Seagull (2018), Rester vertical (2016), Slow West (2015), Sugar Coated (2015), Summer Survivors (2018), Tickled (2016), Worldly Girl (2016)

Maybe Not the Best But a Lot of Fun Better than those guilty pleasures but generally pretty flawed. Austenland (2013) A very cute little romcom. Extra points for Jennifer Coolidge, the most underrated character actress of this century.

Baby Driver (2017) I feel like revisiting this one might not be as enjoyable for reasons that have nothing to do with the film’s quality but I had fun watching it in the theater.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) I was a fan of this franchise from the start so even though this movie is kind of dour and dark, it was still a blast to watch. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) Do I love every choice this movie made? No. But I saw this at a midnight screening, in full cosplay with my friends, in a theater packed with fans. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I, Tonya (2017) For a movie that contains so much abuse and such a bummer ending, it’s surprisingly entertaining!

The LEGO Batman Movie (2017) Lego Batman is my favorite Batman.

Nothing Like a Dame (2018) I just really love Maggie Smith.

On - drakon (2015) This movie feels like it was pitched as “Twilight but with dragons!”. It’s fun, though, and it’s got an interesting aesthetic and a proactive heroine who gets herself out of trouble with ingenuity and bravery.

Sing Street (2016) I love the soundtrack to this movie and the characters are incredibly endearing. The story is very simple in not a great way but it doesn’t need to be deep to be enjoyable.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) I like that they skip the origin story for once and keep the scope of it fairly limited. A very nice little slice-of-life teen movie combined with a superhero flick. Tom Holland is a good Spider-Man. Would’ve been better without Iron Man tbh. Star Trek Beyond (2016) I feel like they got the characters right here, which was a problem for the first Star Trek of the rebooted trilogy. It’s a fairly inconsequential movie but it’s a blast.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan so I don’t have a lot of opinions here. It’s fun! Not a lot more I want from Star Wars. Ultimately didn’t intrigue me enough to wanna see the rest of the trilogy.

Ten no Chasuke (2015) This movie is a little weird, a little goofy and a lot of fun. I like the guy who just constantly lives through different movie plots because the angel writing his life can’t think of anything original, that tickled me.

Good Movies I Don’t Have a Clever Title Here They’re good movies, Brent.

Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground (2018) An enjoyable, well-made documentary but considering its subject matter disappointingly conventional.

Black Panther (2018) This movie could have been much better had it not been under the constraints of the MCU. Still one of the best offerings of the genre this decade.

Boy Meets Girl (2014) We need more movies like this. Not just for representation (although that is important) but also because cinema needs a greater variety of stories than are currently being told.

Brooklyn (2015) The scope of this movie is very small but the characterization is nuanced and every aspect of the film goes towards furthering that.

Bugs (2016) The focus of this movie is split between its very interesting subject matter (the use of bugs as food around the world) and the chefs we’re following around who kind of seem like dicks and honestly drag the movie down a lot.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Steve Rogers is one of my favorite MCU characters, purely on the strength of this movie. In a world where no one seems to know how to adapt Superman to film, it’s nice they got this one right.

Cloud Atlas (2012) This movie has such lofty ambitions and I admire it for that, even if the execution is off at times. But the use of yellowface is..... bad. It’s very bad and the directors should have known better.

Cold War (2018) I love the music in this, which is good because it is near constant.

Damsel (2018) I love a deconstructed western and I love Robert Pattinson. It’s a shame that the female character at the center of the story wasn’t better developed, considering how much screen time she got.

Damsels in Distress (2011) This movie is quirky and cutesie, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (and usually isn’t mine) but I love it. Some solid acting goes a long way.

Der kommer en dag (2016) This movie is two hours of children suffering yet it comes across as so optimistic? I think it’s the space race stuff. Who doesn’t love the space race?

Frantz (2016) I am always down for stories that reckon with the effects of WWI.

Future Baby (2016) There’s a scene in this movie where a surrogate mother gives birth and it is both very graphic and heart-wrenching. If the rest of the movie were more like that one scene, it’d be on my shortlist for the best of the decade.

Fyre (2019) How was Fyre Festival a real thing that happened?

Girls Don’t Fly (2016) Girls don’t fly because the man training them to be pilots is a dick and treats them horribly. It’s a bummer but important to uncover.

Hidden Figures (2016) Kevin Costner’s character needed to be written out - black stories that don’t involve “good” white people are both possible and necessary. But I adore all three main actresses and they do some amazing work.

Hjartasteinn (2016) The subject matter is cliché but it’s handled beautifully.

The Lego Movie (2014) Everything is awesome! Everything is cool when you’re part of a team!

Journey to the Shore (2015) I honestly wasn’t sure how to feel for most of the run time of this movie but by the end it got me.

On Body and Soul (2017) This movie feels like a dream and I mean that in a good way.

The Salvation (2014) Have I mentioned that I love deconstructed westerns? Mads Mikkelsen is always on point, even with garbage material, but he’s got some good stuff to work with here.

Searching for Ingmar Bergman (2018) This movie made me more interested in its director, Margarethe von Trotta, than Bergman himself. Everyone should check out The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum!

The Shape of Water (2017) This movie is very much like a fairy-tale, which means it’s not particularly nuanced or complicated, but it is beautiful.

Still the Water (2014) This movie starts with a cow being graphically slaughtered and yet the only word I can think of to describe it is “gentle”. But maybe skip the first five minutes if you’re sensitive to blood or animal death.

Studio 54 (2018) How were the 70s even real?

Sumarbörn (2017) It’s a rare feat to get such good acting out of child actors.

Thor: Ragnarök (2017) The best MCU movie. It’s a lot of fun without once losing its heart, which is a rare thing for Marvel (just google the words “bathos” and “mcu”, other people have covered this already).

Warm Bodies (2013) The cutest rom-com of the decade features a zombie as its main lead. I’m not mad about it.

Wild Tales (2014) The dissonance between the realist shooting style and the cartoonish violence often results in some excellent dark humor. The rest of the time, it just feels kind of off.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) Jordan Belfast is both a lot of fun and utterly despicable and the movie is not afraid to go as balls to the walls as it needs to.

The Young Karl Marx (2017) So like... Marx and Engel were into each other? At least a little, right?

Great Movies Also No Clever Title

Andið eðlilega (2018) Okay so I don’t watch a lot of Icelandic cinema but from what I have seen, I am incredibly encouraged by the direction it is heading. Call this exhibit A.

Ága (2018) This movie is very slow and not a lot happens but that’s kind of why it works so well. It hooked me in and had me genuinely interested in every uneventful scene.

Brecht’s Threepenny Film (2018) I walked away feeling like I’d understood maybe one third of this film but it left me with a feeling of exhilaration that’s hard to define and that few films manage.

Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010) Adèle Blanc-Sec is like Tintin and Indiana Jones combined except way better. In a just world, she would be a much more popular character and the reported film trilogy would have actually happened.

En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron (2014) This movie is delightfully weird and messed up. Nothing more to say here.

The Favourite (2018) I was honestly expecting to be let down by this movie after all the overwhelming praise but as it turns out, it deserved all of the accolades and possibly more.

Gravity (2013) This movie was kind of marketed as “realistic sci-fi” and while I can’t say it felt particularly real, the emotional arc sure as hell did.

Inception (2010) The complexity of this film was vastly over-hyped but it’s still the best work I’ve seen by Nolan (though to be fair, I still haven’t seen Dunkirk). Kreuzweg (2014) The film is composed of just fourteen still shots, representing the Stations of the Cross. That could have come across as really gimmicky but it works because the shots are well staged and the material is just that good. Loveless (2017) This is the bleakest, most depressing movie I think I’ve ever seen. The Martian (2015) The best thing about this movie is the way it shows the world coming together just to save this one guy. International cooperation is the future!

Paradies: Liebe (2012) This is a movie about sex tourism and it is as unpleasant to watch as that sounds. But it’s also incredible.

Paradies: Hoffnung (2013) The third in Seidl’s paradise trilogy (I missed the middle part, don’t remember why). Just as messed up as Liebe but mildly more palatable.

Une nouvelle amie (2014) I saw this movie with my dad, which was kind of awkward, but that doesn’t take away from its beauty. We really do need more stories like this.

Tale of Tales (2015) I am always here for a fairytale adaptation, particularly ones that stick close to the dark, gruesome, humorous tone of most traditional fairytales.

Welcome to Norway (2016) This movie is just really, really funny.

White God (2014) If you’re sensitive to animal abuse then this is not the film for you. The dogs in this movie actually won the Palm Dog Award and it was well deserved. They’re very good dogs! Tom of Finland (2017) How refreshing to see a movie about a historical gay person that isn’t all death and tragedy! It does have some of that, unavoidably, but it’s also a lot of fun and ultimately is a celebration of a very important sub-cultural figure.

Vinterbrødre (2017) I wasn’t expecting a movie set in a mining community to look this beautiful.

Wonder Woman (2017) The best superhero movie of the decade, despite the slightly messy third act. It’s such an earnest, hopeful movie and unlike most films of the genre, it’s not afraid to take itself seriously or to come across as cheesy. Superheroes are cheesy! That’s one of the best things about them!

Amazing Animation I don’t like animation being singled out from live action as if it’s somehow less, but I wanted to highlight how many excellent animated films were made this decade.

The Breadwinner (2017) I’ve seen this film’s production company, Cartoon Saloon, been called the Irish version of Disney but Disney has never made anything half this daring. Coco (2017) The ending made me sob like a little kid. This movie doesn’t get enough credit for being one of only two Pixar films this decade to live up to their early work.

How to Train Your Dragon (2010) The flight scenes in this movie gave me actual vertigo and I loved it.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) The rare sequel that’s actually better than the original! For all the franchises that exist out there just to continue milking that cash cow, it’s nice to see something get continued because the filmmakers had more stories to tell.

Loving Vincent (2017) This movie has been criticized for a weak plot, to which I say: it’s an animated movie made up of oil paintings! Do you really care about the plot? Sometimes the spectacle is all you need, especially when it’s something that touches you as deeply as Vincent van Gogh’s art does.

Moana (2016) Moana’s scenes with her grandmother and Te Fiti are up there with some of the most emotionally evocative stuff to come out of Disney studios. It’s a pity the rest of the movie couldn’t quite live up to that.

Rise of the Guardians (2012) Mostly, this movie just looks incredible. I am also an eternal sucker for Chris Pine, even if his voice sounds weird coming out of a teenager’s mouth.

Song of the Sea (2014) This is the most beautiful animated film I’ve ever seen outside of Studio Ghibli’s best, both the look and the feel of it.

Tangled (2010) I know I sound like an old fogy but this movie would’ve been much better if it had been traditionally animated. Still pretty good!

Toy Story 3 (2010) It’s been nine years since the third Toy Story came out?? Christ, this decade.

Your Name (2016) I really should be watching more anime.

Zootopia (2016) Disney’s best work since Treasure Planet, which is an underrated masterpiece. It’s almost worth the resurgence in furries (jk furries, you’re okay).

This Is Why You Guys Should Be Watching Documentaries Because documentaries are a seriously underrated art form.

Ama-San (2016) This is the kind of cinema vérité filmmaking I live for.

Behind the Curve (2018) The existence of flat earthers remains baffling (well, maybe not that baffling when you look at the rest of our society) but this documentary is excellent.

Dawson City: Frozen Time (2016) This is a documentary about a cache of lost silent films that were found in the 70s and most of the movie is silent, with information being conveyed through text and images. It’s these kinds of choices that elevate a good documentary beyond just educational programming.

Exodus: Where I Come From Is Disappearing (2016) Absolutely heart-wrenching. It’s difficult to watch but the issues it discusses shouldn’t be looked away from.

Foodies (2014) There’s a foodie in this movie who rates his food on looks before he even tastes it and a chef whose signature dish is a dessert called “sex on the beach” which includes a very realistic-looking used condom. I wanted those two to meet but they never did and that is my one criticism of this film.

Free Solo (2018) I developed a fear of heights after watching this movie.

The Great Green Wall (2019) I had never heard of the great green wall before seeing this movie. It’s so surreal to get a window into a society where no one is arguing about climate change because they are already undeniably feeling the effects of it. And by strange, I mean incredibly sad and upsetting.

How to Let Go of the World: and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change (2016) Speaking of climate change. This movie takes on climate grief and shows why you can’t stop at that, why you need to push past it and keep fighting. I’d argue The Great Green Wall actually does that same thing and better but it’s still a very necessary message.

Into the Inferno (2016) Werner Herzog is just. The best. Especially his documentaries.

Kismet (2014) This movie examines how art affects people by way of one of the least respected art forms out there (soap operas). I just really love that premise and the execution is even better.

Merchants of Doubt (2014) Honestly fuck every single person making money by hastening our descent towards climate catastrophe. Good movie, though.

My Scientology Movie (2015) This was the first Louis Theroux movie I saw and it’s a great one to start with. For all they’ve been treated like a joke, Scientologists are actually pretty scary.

The Other Side of Everything (2017) The personal is the political in this film. What an incredible look at the ways our past shapes our present and future.

Pervert Park (2014) This movie fucked me up.

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) The conceit of this film is looking at the US prison system indirectly by keeping the camera outside the actual prisons and off actual prisoners. It works incredibly well, just astounding documentary film making.

Push (2019) Just when you thought you couldn’t hate the rental market any more!

Safari (2016) Fuck trophy hunters.

The Silence of Others (2018) I didn’t even know about the Spanish 1977 Amnesty Law until I saw this movie. Maybe that’s just my own ignorance but I feel it shows how necessary documentaries like these are.

Tower (2016) I cried like a baby watching this movie. Using rotoscope animation to tell the story of the 1966 shootings a the University of Texas was I think an excellent choice and made for a unique documentary.

Visages villages (2017) Agnès Varda is possibly my favorite director and it hurts to leave this one off the “best” list (call it an unofficial #11). Still not sure I shouldn’t have swapped out one of the actual top ten for it.

Welcome to Sodom (2018) The world is so fucked up.

It Stayed With Me Movies that left me reeling and that I couldn’t get out of my head for days after watching (call all of them an unofficial joint #12).

The Act of Killing (2012) Speaking of fucked up! It is absolutely surreal seeing these mass murderers try to justify their actions to the interviewers. “I was just doing my job” is no excuse and trying to use it as one is actually reprehensible.

Arrival (2016) I didn’t actually see it until this year and I felt it couldn’t possibly live up to the hype but it did! It’s reminiscent of Interstellar in that in this ‘hard’ science fiction story the ultimate solution is based on an emotional revelation but Arrival pulled it off much better. The Congress (2013) This is basically two movies in one; one is fairly grounded sci-fi and the other is just a straight up acid trip in film form. In any case, Robin Wright is absolutely flawless.

Carol (2015) Cate Blanchett please date me. Grüße aus Fukushima (2016) I’m always gonna be a sucker for a movie about women connecting and helping each other through trauma.

High Life (2018) I saw this one knowing nothing about it and ngl it shocked me a bit. The way it incrementally got more and more fucked up made me feel a bit like a frog being slowly boiled alive. November (2017) The atmosphere this movie creates is unreal. Maybe not the strongest characterization but it balances a feeling of magic and wonder with just utter bleakness and it left me reeling. Paterson (2016) I can’t even fully explain why I loved this movie so much or why it stuck me. Mostly, it’s just so damn cozy. The Square (2017) I mean, that scene with the ape man was fucked up right? Tangerine (2015) I don’t think filming on your iPhone is the future of cinema or anything but it does show how accessible filmmaking is slowly becoming. Also, that scene of Alexandra performing Toyland is one of the best musical moments in cinema this decade and that is not up for debate. Team Hurricane (2017) I’ve never seen a movie with an aesthetic like this before (it’s very vaporwave) but this film is about and was mostly shot by a group of actual teenage girls. It’s a little melodramatic in places but at the same time that feels very sincere and the girls all clearly have a lot of talent and a lot to say. Varda par Agnes (2019) This movie probably wouldn’t have stuck with me so much if Agnès Varda hadn’t died earlier this year. She is a truly unparalleled figure in film history.

The Best According to me, anyway. But I’m right.

Cameraperson (2016) This is a different kind of documentary filmmaking. What it most reminds me of is Beaches of Agnès (no, I’m never done talking about Agnès Varda) but even that is not a perfect comparison. It’s deeply personal while also covering an insane variety of topics. Embrace of the Serpent (2015) This movie feels like a dream and I mean that in the best way possible. At turns beautiful, brutal, and absolutely baffling. The Florida Project (2017) I’ve seen this movie criticized for glorifying poverty and I can’t discount that opinion. For my part, I thought this movie did an incredible job balancing the world as seen through the eyes of a carefree child enjoying her summer and the dangerous, precarious reality of living in poverty. Inside Out (2015) When Pixar gets it right, they get it really right. The Love Witch (2016) I just really, really love witches. The best looking live action movie of the decade. The fact that writer/director/editor/producer Anna Biller hasn’t made another film since is an actual crime. Melancholia (2011) No movie has ever hit me this hard in such a visceral way; I was miserable for days after seeing it. Lars von Trier is an asshole but he knows how to film depression. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Believe the hype, it is actually perfect. And I don’t even like action movies! Moonlight (2016) It’s rare to see a movie this deeply, devastatingly human. The final two shots of the film, paired together, are literally the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a theater. Kona fer í stríð (2018) The best Icelandic movie that’s been made yet. Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir is a national treasure. Shoplifters (2018) I mean, who’s expecting a movie called ‘Shoplifters’ to be so devastating? It’s such a painful film but it is also heartwarming and intimate. Un couteau dans le coeur (2018) This movie is strange and funny and violent and gorgeous. I’ve never had such a good experience at a film festival as I did the two times I went to see this movie.

#well it's done #this was mostly written for an audience of one aka me #but hey this took a while so do check it out if you want

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 6 years ago

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A Look Back on the Twilight Saga

I have never felt older than I have this year, in which the film adaptation of the first book in the Twilight Saga turns ten. Ten years ago, that movie came out, three years after the book. And what a book and movie they were! They inspired so much rabid devotion and equally rabid pushback, with people gushing over the beautiful romance in equal amounts as people saying how the books were offensively awful and filled with misogyny and romanticization of abusive relationships. Golly, I sure am glad discussion of fiction has improved since then and we don’t have dumb arguments like that anymore!

All joking aside, it is pretty interesting to look back on the series. With the passage of time, and the release of so much young adult fiction in cinemas between then and now, I have to say that looking back… Twilight is a pretty good film and, for the most part, a pretty good series.

Now, such a bold statement could never have been made in that period during the heyday of the series, where the popularity of the series was slowly souring and people began openly rejecting the series as trash. But I feel that rejection was just part of an obnoxious cycle I’ve seen a lot in recent years, where anything remotely popular with audiences (such as Frozen) becomes hated at the peak of its popularity, seemingly because of the sole fact that it is popular and not really due to anything having to do with the actual overall quality.

See, here’s the thing: despite the series having a reputation for being poorly written tripe, it really is a lot better than anyone gives it credit for. Now, I’m not going to say the writing is on par with other young adult fantasy series of the time, like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, because that is just patently untrue. What the Twilight Saga was, and what it always seemed to aim for, was the level of quality of a tacky airport romance novel you pick up while waiting for your flight to kill time. It’s nothing but wish-fulfillment fantasy in which an unhappy young woman becomes the reason for living for several unfathomably hot supernatural men, a sentiment that quite frankly resonates with the modern atmosphere towards supernatural romance and the prominence of self-proclaimed “Monsterfuckers.” Bella’s situation is pretty much a dream come true, is it not? Among tacky supernatural romance novels, Twilight and its sequels are easily the queens of the genre.

Here’s the thing that really sets the Twilight Saga apart, though: there is actually a serious amount of thought and care put into nearly all aspects of the romance’s universe save for the actual romance. Every single member of the Cullen family has a fascinating backstory: Carlisle was a vampire hunter turned vampire who proceeded to venture across the world in the ensuing hundreds of years building up a family and practicing a different way of living; Alice was committed to an asylum and has a past shrouded in mystery; Jasper was a soldier in the Confederate army who was turned into a vampire and tasked with raising a vampire army; Rosalie’s backstory is Kill Bill, BUT WITH VAMPIRES!; and Emmet, while easily the least impressive of them all, still died apparently fighting a bear, and considering how he is one can only imagine what on earth he was doing. Esme is the only Cullen without a deeply fascinating backstory, but even what little we do get is a bit tragic: she lost her child and so committed suicide, or attempted it anyway. There’s absolutely no need for all of these rich, complex backstories for characters in a throwaway romance novel, and yet here they are. And that’s not all.

The rest of the world and overall vampire society is presented in a very interesting way. The Volturi in particular are a fascinating idea, a secret cabal of vampires who rule over all other vampires with an iron fist, but one that is, while a bit tyrannical and unforgiving, seemingly necessary to preserve the existence of vampire society. Hell, their rules don’t really seem TOO harsh, and they only really spring to action when there are vampires fragrantly and blatantly exposing themselves to human society. They wish to keep the vampire world hidden in the shadows, where they can feed in peace away from prying eyes. Their position is understandable in a lot of ways. They also have a very interesting history to them, having apparently wrestled power over vampirekind away from a sect of Romanian vampires. Now, I did say they are a fascinating IDEA; in execution, they always tended to be a bit… useless. Their appearances in New Moon and Breaking Dawn are ultimately wastes of time, as they are never really opposed in any sort of meaningful way and get away in the end with the status quo wholly unchanged. No impact is ever made on vampirekind when they’re involved, which almost makes me wish that they were kept in the shadows and used far more sparingly. Their influence over events in Eclipse, where they only send out their powerful agents, showcases that Stephanie Meyers could use them very effectively when she wanted to.

The werewolves are a bit less effective. While they do have an intriguing backstory, there is something a bit… problematic about shoehorning a bunch of fictional elements onto the real Quileute tribe. On the other hand though, a positive and heroic portrayal of Native Americans in fiction is never a bad thing, and Jacob Black is easily one of the more sympathetic characters until halfway through Breaking Dawn. It’s a very tricky, mixed bag. I kind of wish that the issue with the handling of Native American folklore was the biggest controversy with the series, but there’s actually one far worse and even stupider.

The Twilight Saga has come under fire for being a negative influence on young women, for romanticizing abusive relationships and stalking, and for being some sort of massive insult to feminism. Now, these arguments aren’t wholly without merit, but the issue is that they are being filtered through human understanding and imposed on fictional creatures in a fictional universe. If a real-life human acted as clingy, impulsive, over-protective, and obsessed as Edward is towards Bella, yes, it would be absolutely terrifying. Here’s where I let you in on a little secret, though: Edward Cullen is, in fact, not a human. He is part of a race of ageless semi-undead beings who live off of blood and glitter in the sunlight. He immediately sees his soulmate in Bella and goes out of his way to ensure they end up together, acting on the instincts granted to members of his kind. Trying to fit all of his actions into a human narrative is as fruitless as if an ant tried to explain humanity to his colleagues filtered through his ant experiences. The fact is, Edward operates on a far different moral code than humans. This is not uncommon for vampires in any fiction; Marceline of Adventure Time fame is a vampire who is certainly not above doing some rather sketchy stuff, for example. While Edward’s actions can come off as bizarre and creepy to humans, for a vampire, Edward is actually downright romantic and even benevolent. One also needs to take into account that Edward is a kissless virgin who has spent a hundred years doing nothing but reading romance novels and listening to classical music, which would go a long way to explain his awkward and sometimes offputting ways of trying to replicate human courtship rituals with Bella.

The criticisms leveled at Bella are rather unfair as well; while she often finds herself a damsel in distress, it rarely is something she doesn’t want. When Bella is in danger, it’s because she wanted to be there and put herself there. Yes, she does get into trouble, but that’s mostly due to her being a stupid horny teenage girl with zero impulse control. Recall New Moon, where she constantly did dangerous stunts so she could have hallucinations of Edward chastise her. Bella is, quite frankly, an adrenaline junkie, and I feel she’d rather resent being called a damsel. Even the times when she is in danger, it is no real fault of her own, but rather the fact she is a normal human out of her depth in a supernatural world. Bella is not Blade, she is not Van Helsing, she is not Alucard; she is Bella Swan, normal teenage girl, and she tends to be as effective as your average teenage girl in situations where superpowered monsters are hunting her. Imagine if we applied these sorts of criticisms to other characters in fiction… “John Conner in Terminator 2 is such a worthless damsel in distress character, why does he not just fight off the T-1000?” or how about “Why do the kids in The Goonies not take the Fratellis head-on? Why do they constantly flee from them when they cross paths? And Chunk, getting captured by them, what a pathetic damsel moment.” People not being successful in areas where they are out of their element is not some horribly evil thing. I also resent the idea the series is some horrible, anti-feminist work, particularly because the entire series revolves around Bella’s choice, and when she is not given agency she goes out of her way to take that agency. For all the flaws of Breaking Dawn, and there are many, I will give it this: presenting Bella as being in the right for wanting her choices respected is a good thing. With that in mind, I think the entire series is a lot more feminist than many are willing to admit.

And look, I’m not saying this book is a flawless masterpiece or anything like that. I have mentioned this is definitely a book more impressive for the world it creates than for the actual romance it centers around. But I do feel that, generally speaking, the books never descended to the point many who criticized the books say they did. I say “for the most part” because I cannot even muster up enough good will to say a single good thing about Breaking Dawn. But generally, the writing quality is decent. Even some of the twists on vampire lore are interesting and refreshing.

For instance… the sparkling. This is one of the most infamous additions to the lore of vampires in Meyers stories. When in the sunlight, rather than bursting into flames as vampires tend to do in fiction, their skin sparkles and glitters as if it was encrusted with diamonds. It does sound silly, and it really is, especially when they show it off in the movies… and yet, it is actually far more accurate than just about every depiction of vampires in nearly 100 years. You see, the idea vampires are killed by sunlight is actually a relatively new addition to vampire lore, being created for the famous silent masterpiece Nosferatu because they couldn’t come up with any other way to kill the vampire. In the original novel of Dracula, for instance, the titular count strut about during the day with no ill effect. So, by accident or perhaps by some better understanding of the creatures than most writers, Meyers was more accurate than nearly all contemporary portrayals of the characters. Also interesting – but not nearly so to the point I feel the need to dedicate a whole new paragraph to it – the idea of vampires having a sort of “love at first sight” thing that allows them to discern their soulmate was copied by Hotel Transylvania, so I feel like that addition to vampire lore has its merit as well.

The film adaptations tend to not truly fix the flaws with the storytelling, but instead to paint over them with some truly inspired silliness. The utter apathy Robert Pattinson exudes for his role as Edward Cullen is palpable in how he acts, and it tends to make Edward’s creepier actions actually less threatening than the were in the books – and I’d argue there he wasn’t particularly threathening, despite his angsting. Taylor Lautner’s oft-shirtless portrayal of Jacob Black seems a lot more genuinely, but equally cheesy; his and Pattinson’s onscreen chemistry really gives them the feel of two romantic rivals, which makes it easy to see exactly why there was such a devoted following rooting for one or the other back in the day. Then we get to Bella.

As usual, Bella is a horribly misunderstood character here. It’s easy to blame the books for how one-note Bella appears in the movies – as a romance protagonist, Bella has enough personality for you to care while still being enough of a blank slate that you can put yourself in her position so that you can fantasize about the outcomes – but I almost feel like her portrayal was a deliberate choice. Kristen Stewart is actually a very good actor when in the right role, and I feel like even in the past I’ve been too hard on her portrayal of Bella. I think I might go so far as to say her version of Bella is better than the book, because Stewart actually does inject some vapid, awkward teenage girlishness to the role. That’s something wonderful, especially about the films – the teenagers, more than a lot of other series, tend to feel like real people. They say the dumbest stuff imaginable, but really, is that not what being a teenager is? Everyone was a stupid, vapid idiot as a teenager, it’s just how teens are. So all t hat combined with everything else that has been said, does any part of Bella’s characterization truly feel THAT abnormal for an otherwise normal, brooding teen thrust headfirst into the world of the supernatural? I personally don’t think so; Bella is actually one of the most real characters of the series, an anchor to humanity in a sea of supernatural strangeness, a character that is absolutely perfect in her dull, flawed, overly-romantic personality. She may not be the strongest, or most interesting, or even the most pleasant character in all of fiction… but she has an air of realness to her few other characters can hope to achieve. Perhaps this is why a lot of people rejected and mocked her; it’s so much easier to dismiss and belittle something than accept that it is something real, warts and all. No one wanted to accept the less pleasant parts of Bella, and so she was rejected by all except the fans of the book; meanwhile, seemingly disinterested goth girls would be fought over by two equally strange men for her affection, all while she talks in a sort of half-awake near-monotone.

I was in that situation myself. It’s all real teenage bullshit.

I feel like this more than anything explains why the Twilight Saga ended up being violently rejected by so many people: too many people saw through the supernatural elements and into the real life teenage angst and did not like what they saw, as it reflected their own experiences. It’s so bizarre to say, but Stephanie Meyers may have been too real for her own good, and her portrayal of angst-ridden teen love triangles may have been just too close to home for a lot of people. I’m sure a lot of older people had negative experiences in high school as I did, so anything that reminds them of those stupid, painful years is not going to seem pleasant. With other stories that feature realistic elements with supernatural settings, such as Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and so on, they never really faced this kind of scrutiny and rejection as while they also are grounded with realistic portrayals of their teenagers, they also take place in overtly supernatural settings; there is no place where an experience could be like that of Hogwarts or Camp Half-Blood. But there’s probably of plenty of places like the dismal, dreary town of Forks, Washington, a perpetually cloudy town out in the sticks where nothing ever seems to happen. Reading about teen angst in such an agonizingly depressing setting will not go over well with anyone who has had negative experiences in regards to the elements portrayed, supernatural dressing or no.

Looking back at the Twilight Saga, after years of imitators of varying quality and numerous attempts by mediocre young adult franchises to capture this saga’s lightning in a bottle, the stories sans Breaking Dawn seem to have aged quite well, and hold up a lot better. Removed from the rabid fandom, overwhelming hype, ad constant mockery, the series stands as a solid and kind of cheesy young adult romance series, one with superb worldbuilding that I have yet to see any young adult series after it match and an absolutely fantastic ensemble cast that is just rife with fanfiction potential. I find that even the lead trio, be it in the films and in the movie, have a lot more layer and depth to them than initially thought, with Bella in particular a character I feel deserves some serious reevaluation. And while I’d never call the series a masterpiece to rival Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, or Lord of the Rings, I do think that the series is good enough to unironically be enjoyed. While there is of course plenty to snark at here – it’s a story featuring a rather honest depiction of teenagers, after all, and teenagers are idiots – I think there is a lot more to like than the insane hatedom of the book ever gave it credit for.

And even if you can’t bring yourself to admit the series is genuinely good (albeit cheesy), there’s no denying that it had a pretty good impact on popular culture. Aside from being the basis for Vampire Sucks, which has the honor of being the only genuinely good Seltzer and Friedberg film, it put supernatural romance stories back into the mainstream again. The biggest example of a supernatural romance film that I can see got a lot of mainstream recognition was 1990’s Ghost, which is held up as a romantic classic; while there were plenty of supernatural romance films between then and Twilight, none of them seem to be recalled fondly or even at all, and none of them can even come close to saying they had the sort of cultural impact Ghost did. Twilight, though… it had a huge impact. Without Twilight, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Warm Bodies, we probably wouldn’t have gotten Horns, and honestly? We probably wouldn’t have gotten The Shape of Water, or more realistically, the movie would not nearly be as accepted. Twilight for better or worse conditioned us to see the humanity in supernatural entities and find attraction in them (not exactly a new idea as far as vampires go, I know, but it definitely put it in the minds of young adults). I can easily see the genesis of the modern crowd of people lusting after the Asset, Pennywise, Godzilla, and Venom being the Twilight Saga; it was a gateway drug that put in the minds of youths “Hey, monsters can be really sexy. Like, REALLY sexy.”

The Twilight Saga is truly a fascinating work, for better and for worse. There is a lot in it that I really admire, and there’s plenty in it that I resent, but even at its worst I can never say that the series was boring. For all the flack I give Breaking Dawn, it is still far more readable than any of the garbage Cormac McCarthy has ever shat out, and nothing in the series was as overtly misogynistic as some of the dialogue in Ready Player One. As cheesy as the film series got, the first was a surprisingly effective indie supernatural romance and the third was a gloriously Gothic cheesy delight, with the second being the awkward but still enjoyable middle film and Breaking Dawn: Part 1 being the only genuinely awful film in the series; nothing positive could be said for the slew of imitators that crawled in this film’s wake, such as Beastly, Red Riding Hood, and even some of the would-be successors to this franchise such as the cinematic adaptations of Percy Jackson, Divergent, and The Hunger Games among others, which despite them being based off of books of far greater critical acclaim had absolutely no respect for their source material the way the Twilight Saga films did. As silly as some of the acting in the movies was – and it got very silly, considering the lead three all seemed to actively despise their roles – none of their acting was as painfully bad to sit through as Jennifer Lawrence’s attempts at acting in the first Hunger Games film, or the entire cast of the Percy Jackson movies. I would never say that Twilight is the absolute pinnacle of young adult literature, but I think a lot of us had our judgment clouded back in the day, and with the benefit of hindsight I think it’s safe to say the franchise was a lot of fun; I’d even go as far to say that it is an underrated work of genius in many aspects.

Removed from the climate that created it and put into a world it helped shape, I think the tale of Bella Swan and her romance of the angsty immortal Edward Cullen resonates quite a bit better. So thank you to Stephanie Meyers and everyone involved with the film series, because without your work, the world we live in would probably be a much less interesting place, with far fewer people horny for monsters. I really don’t think I would want to live in that world.

#CineMike #essay #my writing #Twilight #The Twilight Saga #Eclipse #New Moon #Breaking Dawn #Edward Cullen #Bella Swan #Jacob Black #Robert Pattinson #Kristen Stewart #Taylor Lautner

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foreverandalwayscrysis · 6 years ago

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Tag Games - Random

1. Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi

2. Disney or Dreamworks: Disney

3. Coffee or tea: Coffee

4. Books or movies: Both - but honestly books

5. Windows or Mac: Windows

6. DC or marvel: Marvel because I never got into DC

7. Xbox or PlayStation: PlayStation!!

8. Dragon age or mass effect: Uhh.. neither?

9. Night owl or early riser: Night owl.

10. Cards or chess: Cards

11. Chocolate or vanilla: Chocolate

12. Vans or converse: Converse.

13. Lavellan , Trevelyan, Cadash or Adaar: Lol I have no clue about any of these I'm so sorry

14. Fluff or angst: ALL THE FLUFF but like with angst because I need both

15. Beach or forest: The beach!

16. Dogs or cats: Cats. I saw a cat birth live (under our COUCH) and loved those kittens with every fiber of my soul.

17. clear skies or rain: RAIN, ALWAYS.

18. cooking or eating out: Cooking! It can be fun and creative

19. spicy food or mild food: Spicy (shout out to my Indian spices)

20. halloween/samhain or solstice/yule/christmas: Halloween.

21. Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: Too cold because you can always warm up

22. If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Super seed tbh

23. animation or live action: Animation

24. paragon or renegade: Also neither because idk these words

25. baths or showers: Showers

26. team cap or team iron man: Team Iron Man

27. fantasy or sci-fi: Sci-fi

28. Do you have three or four favorite quotes? if so what are they: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" - Ghandi

29. netflix or youtube: Netflix

30. harry potter or percy jackson: Harry Potter

31. when you feel accomplished: When people ask about background things I’ve been working on/completed, shows they’ve paid attention and actually care

32. star wars or star trek: Star Trek

33. paperback or hardback: Paperback

34. horror or rom-com: I am SUCH a sucker for rom-coms

35. tv shows or movies: TV shows

36. spotify or pandora: Spotify

37. zootopia or inside out: BOTH WERE SO GOOD?!! Inside Out

38. favorite book: Along for The Ride by Sarah Dessen and The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson are tied.

39. favorite flower: I feel like this changes every year? I love carnations/lilies

40. what field of study are you in (or aspire to be in): I’m aiming for med school with a focus in pediatrics!

41. song lyric you really love? “We don’t know where we’re going, but we know where we belong” - Sweet Creature, Harry Styles

Honorable Mentions!!!

“Just because you’re clean don’t mean you don’t miss it” - Clean, Taylor Swift

“You will find me, in places that you’ve never been, for reasons you don’t understand, walking in the wind.” - Walking in The Wind, One Direction

42. what’s your MBTI type? I took it yesterday and got INFP! Translates to the Mediator type, as well as Diplomat and apparently I’m more on the turbulent side instead of assertive? Which honestly makes a lot of sense lmao

43. fave movie: FINDING NEMO.

44. favorite tv show(s): The 100, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Grey’s Anatomy, Parks and Rec, The Office, Gilmore Girls, Gossip Girl, Miraculous Ladybug, Kim Possible, PowerPuff Girls, Humsafar, Zindagi Gulzar Hai, Beintehaa (these last 3 are Indian/Pakistani and so over-dramatic, it’s great)

45. top three authors: Sarah Dessen, Ally Carter, Aprilynne Pike

46. favorite season? Autumn bc sweater weather & holiday drinks & fall colors

47. favorite high school musical? Okay don't @ me but I still haven’t seen HSM3.... but I’m making it my 2nd fave. HSM>HSM3>HSM2

48. silver or gold? Silver

49. favorite food? My mom’s chow mein!

50. dream vacation? Omg, so many places. Mauritius, Indonesia, Peru, Galapagos Islands. Honestly a multi-city trip through Europe would be incredible, Copenhagen, Brussels, Budapest, Helsinki, Split, Porto, Salzburg!

51. last dream you remember? I was getting set up by my friends with this cute guy whom I’d never met and it was hilarious because I didn’t realize what was happening.

52. city or country: City, I’ve been spoiled living here and as much as I love visiting the countryside once in a while, I couldn’t stay permanently, lol.

53. Slow burn or love at first sight: Slow burn all the way (Bellarke has ruined me for everyone)

54. Night on the town with friends or night in with friends? Night in, for sure.

Okay so @talistheintrovert tagged me in this like eons ago and it’s just been sitting in my drafts gathering dust until now (since I’ve decided to get my life together or something) - thanks for always tagging me in things, cutie <3

#answered #honestly im just so lazy sometimes and other times i wanna write a book #about me #ask games #talis #mine

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maychorian · 7 years ago

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Weekly Voltron Fic Recs #52

Happy Thanksgiving! Here are thirty fics. I’m so close to being caught up that I can almost taste it.

This is also marks the 600th post on @maychorianrecs. Hidey ho!

And I still have like twenty-seven old fic rec lists I haven’t copied there yet.

Rules: You can find past weekly rec lists here, and non-list recs in my general fic rec tag. Also follow @maychorianrecs for individually tagged posts, the easier to search and reblog. This is stuff I like, and I have a huge bias toward Lance, hurt/comfort, and general fluff, in that order. Gen unless otherwise noted. Please comment on the fics if you read and enjoy them!

Fogged Breath by BluePlanetTrash Words: 2,118 Author’s Summary: Ever since he was little Lance suffered from asthma. He didn’t think that it would be much of a problem in space. Fate had other plans for him, however. My Comments: Great little hurt!Lance fic with an exceptionally protective team. Hits the spot.

oh, the end of infinity by MissSugarPlum Words: 9,896 Author’s Summary: Matt can’t sleep. It’s not like this is a new occurrence. Sleep has been evading him for years now, and he can’t even remember what a proper restful night feels like. He sometimes thinks of when he was still at the Garrison, how he used to think he knew what stress was, how he used to bemoan the pressure from instructors, the rigorous training, the way he could only ever seem to get no more than six hours of sleep a night, and he yearns for the simplicity of back then. Past-Matt didn’t know how good he had it. -x- [Matt adjusts to being in the Castle of Lions.] My Comments: I really enjoyed this exploration of Matt getting used the castle and the team, especially the development of his relationship Lance. It starts out adversarial but gets much less so. Great scenes with Pidge, too. Possibly romantic Klance in the background, but can also be read as gen.

Congratulations by TheWonderTwins Words: 2,433 Author’s Summary: A mission doesn’t quite go to plan and Pidge is taken prisoner. Not everyone takes it as well as Pidge does. My Comments: Ahhh, Pidge. What a badass. This was exciting and fun to read.

Local Color by TheWonderTwins Words: 2,361 Author’s Summary: “Could this be more cliche?” Pidge muttered quietly. Keith smirked briefly. “We could get into a barfight.”“ Please resist the urge to punch people.” Pidge requested. My Comments: I frankly impressed that these two avoided getting into a barfight. Fun little scene with the two of them dealing with some aggression from locals quite well, actually.

What She Sees by HapaxLegomenon Words: 2,263 Author’s Summary: Matt’s safe, now, and Pidge is delighted to have her brother back. But Matt’s different, and she notices. Set during the end of “The Machinations of Perception.” My Comments: Little missing scene from a previously recced fic. Since that fic was entirely in Matt’s POV, it was nice to get a scene from Pidge’s perspective, here. These poor kids. Things are hard, but I’m glad they have each other now.

Easy Target by SunshineAndRainbows Words: 1,832 Author’s Summary: Every move was deliberate, every action filled with intent. He had meant to land his ship, he meant to stand from his cockpit, and so, he meant to walk slowly, deliberately to meet his hopeful allies. He had certainly meant to say something clever and suitably dignified in greeting.He hadn’t meant to collapse the moment his feet hit solid ground. My Comments: How to make me feel sympathetic to Lotor: Whump him good.

Go Go Paladins of Voltron by hufflepirate Words: 2,662 Author’s Summary: Shiro gave up everything, including his spot at the Garrison, to look after his dying mother. Now his mother is gone and he’s alone — until he meets four teenagers with attitude, a set of mysterious keys, and maybe, just maybe a purpose. Written for platonicvldweek 3, for the prompt Alternate Reality/Free, so it’s not QUITE a Power Rangers Fusion AU, but it is the meet cute from Power Rangers (2017), but with Voltron. We’re calling it an alternate reality, not an alternate universe, because they’re gonna end up in space doing their space thing, just… a little differently. (Marked complete because I like the ending ok as it is and don’t have time to write this as a multichapter fic right now.) My Comments: I haven’t seen the new Power Rangers movie, but you don’t need to enjoy this fun, fluffy little getting-together fic.

Bad to Worse by bookwormgir1LH Words: 1,794 Author’s Summary: Lance, Keith, Hunk and Pidge go on a hiking trip. Things start to wrong from the offset, but it soon gets even worse… My Comments: Fun modern AU about an absolutely disastrous attempt at having a good time. Poor kids, but everything turns out okay. Lance’s POV is fun to read, too, even as things go very wrong.

All Hallow’s Eve by this_book_has_been_loved Words: 2,921 Author’s Summary: In which the Paladins discover that Keith’s birthday is only a week before Halloween My Comments: Aw, poor Keith. Everyone’s heart is in the right place, but things are hard, sometimes.

What Could Have Been by Crowoxy Words: 5,222 Author’s Summary: Lotor is only a few decaphoebs (years) younger than Allura and it was just easier for him to leave Daibaazal for Altea. A what-if scenario where if Lotor grew up on Altea, what changed and what stayed the same?Day 7 of the Platonic VLD Week - Free/ Alternate Universe My Comments: I felt bad for Lotor being so obviously neglected by his parents, but it was really nice to see him growing with Allura and Coran and Alfor as his family instead. Cool AU. I would read more of this concept, and I’m not even a huge fan of Lotor. I could see, with the right upbringing, his charisma and intelligence being used for good ends instead of his own ambition.

Snowtron by Eastofthemoon Words: 2,648 Author’s Summary: It had all started with five words. Five words that changed the entire course of the day. Five words Allura never imagined she would hear any paladins say while piloting their lions. “GIANT ROBOT LION SNOWBALL FIGHT!” My Comments: Holy fish balls, this is ADORABLE. I love Allura getting dragged into Earthling shenanigans, and the ending scene with Lotor and crew was icing on the cake. The snowy, snowy cake.

A Gremlin In Glasses Swoops In To Save The Day by Kabber, this_book_has_been_loved Words: 2,752 Author’s Summary: First installment in a Percy Jackson AU for Voltron. In which Lance and Hunk discover that they may not be entirely human My Comments: Really fun action scene for an AU that is just FULL of possibilities. I especially adore Pidge swooping in to save Hunk and Lance. Exciting and intriguing read.

The Opposite of Sorrow by nightwalker for HumanTrampoline Words: 6,165 Author’s Summary: Shiro takes a hit from a druid spell that causes its victims to just quietly give up and die. Fortunately he’s got six good reasons to keep fighting. My Comments: The spell Shiro gets hit with is basically weaponized depression, and it’s pretty terrifying. But the solution is hugs and cuddling and bonding time, and I am all kinds of down for that kind of cure. Extremely sweet and heartwarming fic, and Keith’s POV is wonderful.

let the fog burn let my wick fray by imperiality Words: 4,501 Author’s Summary: Little bonfires are little things Keith and Pidge do. He can’t look away from the flames, Pidge can’t seem to get what he’s after. But then she wants to spice it up on a Halloween night. This purple fog is oppressive. My Comments: Interesting and different way to study Keith and emotionally hurt him at the same time. It’s a good thing his team came after him.

Grateful for the Years to Come by Ms_Marchy Words: 4,001 Author’s Summary: Five years after saying goodbye to her son, Maria McClain gets the greatest gift of being reunited with her son. Everyone knows Lance worries over how much he missed in his family’s lives. No one ever thinks about what Maria was missing about her son’s life. She didn’t even know herself until one day two giant mechanical lions land near her house. The Space War is finally over. Everyone can go home. My Comments: This was heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure. It’s sad to see just how much years of war scarred Lance, but it’s also wonderful to see him at home and loved with his family again, and his mother’s perspective is lovely and warm. Ambiguous Klance.

And My Nightmares Will Have Nightmares Every Night by ardett Words: 9,096 Author’s Summary: Restart program? A series of alternate paths in the Dream, Seam series. My Comments: Really cool and unique way of showing a bunch of ways this story could have gone really, really wrong. Or, well, wrong from a certain perspective. I adore this, though it hurts me, like a lot. Warning for major character death, though it doesn’t really stick.

With These Hands by A_Zap Words: 1,486 Author’s Summary: Despite all the trouble they’d been through, Hunk figured everything had turned out all right. After all, he and Lance had managed to return to the castle! Then Hunk sees the bruises and knows that things are not as good as he thought. My Comments: Great missing scene that we were totally robbed of in canon. I love these sweet summer boys and their relationship so much. Surprisingly more hurt!Hunk than hurt!Lance, actually, but I love both flavors.

She’s Looking A Little Green by spitfire00 Words: 3,936 Author’s Summary: Katie Holt was born to pilot the Green Lion, and her father knows it- Even if he doesn’t realize it. My Comments: Great, great Sam POV, and a wonderful Holt reunion in here too. Really cool look at the paladins and their fateful uniqueness.

Bruising Waters by TheStoryVerse Words: 17,743 Author’s Summary: Never tell a Soul. Never Let Yourself Be Seen. His mother’s words had been pounded into Lance’s head from birth; a warning to prepare him and keep his family safe. He’s managed to hide from the Garrison and even in space. But, much to Lance’s chagrin, the universe has other plans. When Lance contracts an alien virus while out on a diplomatic mission that starts attacking his Mer form, Lance figures it’s just a “space cold”. He brushes off the others’ worry and tries to continue as normal. But the pain is getting worse with each passing day, and he hasn’t had a moment’s peace alone to change forms and see what could be causing it. When everything finally hits the fan, the team quickly finds that Lance is in much worse condition than they had assumed. Lance is not only dying, but he’s changing right in front of their eyes.So much Hurt and Whump in the first chapter. So much good Bonding and Comfort in the next two. Let’s do this y'all! (Sorry, Lance) My Comments: This is some PRIMO hurt!Lance, lemme tell ya. A unique form of whump, and holy crow is is brutal. It gets kinda gross too, just to warn you. But the bonding and comfort and in the second two chapters more than makes up for it. Maybe a touch over the top at times, but darned if I didn’t enjoy every moment. Totally satisfying and highly recommended to hurt!Lance afficionados. You know who you are.

Wide Awake by taylor_tut Words: 1,373 Author’s Summary: From an anon request on my tumblr: Lance catches a bug that keeps him awake. When he’s not allowed to train during the day with everyone else, he tries to do it alone at night. It goes about as well as you’d think. My Comments: Aw, poor Lance. Great little sickfic with an unusual premise.

With Hands Tied Backwards by GibbousLunation Words: 6,684 Author’s Summary: Lance had this problem, just sometimes, where his brain got all floaty and his hands started feeling like maybe he’d forgotten to put them on properly in the morning. Like they were backwards and inverted and everything else was upside down too. Lance’s eyes slide out of focus staring at twinkling stars thousands of miles away, he lines his knuckles up in neat little rows, and he thinks too much about too many things. Team Voltron is falling apart in little ways, and building itself up taller ten times over. It started as a joke, “You know what would suck?“ It was easier to pretend they weren’t just kids fighting a war they’d never asked for, probably. "Angry edgy Not-Slav giving you CPR with his beak.” My Comments: Poignant and emotional exploration of Lance dealing with trauma-induced dissociation, and the kind of messed up games kids in war play to distract themselves from the threat of death while still acknowledging that it’s there. Klance that starts out ambiguous and then gets much less ambiguous, but could possibly still be read as gen. The point is survival, not romance.

Immunity by RiRiMania1335 Words: 2,165 Author’s Summary: Keith hardly ever gets sick. But if he does, it hits him like a truck. My Comments: Aw, poor Keith. He gets sick so rarely that he truly and sincerely believes that he’s dying, haha. Fortunately the others are there are to reassure him and take care of him.

Bonds by this_book_has_been_loved Words: 1,470 Author’s Summary: At first, it was subtle enough that none of them realized it. The bond with their Lions—that was obvious. Lance had felt it pretty much as soon as he laid eyes on the Blue Lion, and the rest of them had all had similar experiences. It was the bond with each other that was harder to pick up on. My Comments: I really like how this fic explores the concept of a psychic bond into the current canon, with all of the changes and disruptions and how that affects everyone.

Platonic VLD Week 3 - Oneshot Collection by hufflepirate Words: 10,865 Author’s Summary: WARNING: HEREIN BE S4 SPOILERS Day 1: Sleep/Nightmare - Pidge never wanted to share a room with Matt, but now that they have nightmares sharing’s not so bad. Day 2: Inside/Outside - Set mid-4.1 - Kolivan comforts Keith after the decoy ship blows up. Day 3: Tricks/Treats - Matt plays a trick on Team Voltron (a t-Rick) Day 4: Supernatural/Horror - Keith has an uncanny encounter with some Altean soldiers Day 5: Change/Growth - Hunk helps Allura learn more about piloting her lion [S3] Day 6: Distance/Proximity - Tag to 3.4 - After Allura returns, Coran hovers a little too close (Day 7: Alternate reality/Free is separate and the next fic in my platonicvldweek series.) My Comments: I love everything this author does, and this collection of little fics is like a kaleidoscope of Good Stuff. My favorites are probably day 2 and day 4, but they are all good and worth reading.

Old Soldier and Spy by Crowoxy Words: 1,874 Author’s Summary: Kolivan is the old spy who watches all of these young children grow into this war that’s been happening for ten thousand years. Day 5 of the Platonic VLD Week: Growth My Comments: I love this view of Kolivan as a wise, compassionate mentor for young soldiers, and his perspective on both Keith and Lotor is lovely and kind.

The Fear Of Falling Apart by this_book_has_been_loved Words: 3,211 Author’s Summary: Lance has feelings of inadequacy My Comments: This is so cute, and exactly how I want the relationship between Pidge, Matt, and Lance to develop in canon. I want them all to be wonderful siblings and appreciate each other and have fun playing video games. Pidge has two big brothers and it’s wonderful.

King of Wishful Thinking by BossToaster (ChaoticReactions) Words: 7,126 Author’s Summary: From Tumblr: Send me an AU and I’ll give you 5 Headcanons 1) The Galra attack Earth after the Pals leave in the Blue Lion 2) Pidge conspires to get Shiro a dog, and he ends up opening up a version of the Old Dogs Senior Sanctuary. Oops. 3) Scooby Doo AU (yes really) 4) Shiro’s relationship with his wings (Wing AU) My Comments: Each of these concepts fully deserves a full-fledged, 50k novel-length opus, but these small glimpses into the different worlds provided are immensely worth reading on their own, intriguing and heartwarming and horrifying by turns. My favorite is probably the Old Dogs Sanctuary AU, but they are all good.

Where Light and Dark Meet by squirenonny for Pechat Words: 34,168 Author’s Summary: The Fallen One arises: A captive star yearning for the heavens from which it was stolen… So begins the Prophecy of the Fallen Star, which speaks of the one who will save the kingdom from Haggar’s curse. Lance, Keith, and their friends are summoned to get in touch with Allura, the deposed princess of Altea, who is widely believed to be the Fallen Star from the prophecy. But things aren’t going to be quite so simple. Lance was cursed to become a cat at night; Keith spends his days as a crow. They both have a role to play in the coming battle, and they’re going to have to learn to trust each other–but how can they when they only ever meet in the fleeting moments at twilight when they both are human? My Comments: Klance and implied future Kallurance. I ADORE squirenonny’s fics, especially her fantasy AUs. Such amazing worldbuilding, great descriptions and and plotting and characterization. This one has some really nice hurt!Lance and protective Hunk and Pidge, too, which I always appreciate. I’m very pleased that this is apparently going to be a series, so I’ll get to read more in this world eventually. Just a great, great read, highly addictive, couldn’t stop once I started. I love it when that happens.

Blast Zone by bubblebucky Words: 4,729 Author’s Summary: In the middle of a mission, a bomb going off leaves Lance unable to hear. Still, while he’s deaf, the rest of his team are the ones that won’t listen. My Comments: This hits all of my buttons SO HARD. It gave me that good ache in my chest, you know the one. The other characters may be sliiiightly OOC in order to really hammer the hurt in on Lance, but it didn’t ping my “back away immediately” sense the way woobification usually does. Instead it felt understandable for a high-stress situation and I accepted it. The almost too-severe pain heightened the emotions for me and made the ending all the more satisfying. I REALLY love this. I’ve already read it several times, especially the ending, and it’s definitely in my Favorite Fics folder.

Home and a Half by sarehptar Words: 84,407 (7/?) Author’s Summary: They make a mistake that follows them home. (Or: Keith becomes an unwitting caretaker to three Galra children, who teach him a great deal about how to take care of himself.) My Comments: I am reading fewer WIPs these days because there are so many completed fics I still haven’t gotten to but want to, but this was recced to me so it moved to the top of my priority list, and I’m so glad I gave it a shot. This is far from a fluffy baby acquistion fic, with a lot of moral questions and deep consideration of mature themes, which makes the fic more bittersweet and heartwrenching than cute, though there are plenty of cute moments, too. It’s incredibly well-written and interesting, and the latest chapters have really brought some fun worldbuilding and adventure elements. I was afraid it was abandoned, but the author assures me it is not, and I’m really looking forward to continuing to follow this story to completion.

Previously Recced Fics That Updated:

Shadows of Stars (84674 words) Why it sucks to be a snake in space(52445 words) As Color Fades Away (211491 words) Shifting Sands (38605 words) - now complete

#voltron legendary defender #weekly voltron fic recs #fic rec #vldgen

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couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name · 7 years ago

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What do you think of the PJO films?

Okay, but seriously- if you went in with absolutely zero knowledge of the books, the first one would be pretty okay. Decent enough to keep you entertained but ultimately a very forgettable fantasy adventure that came in the wake of Harry Potter Is Ending Soon So Let’s Try To Be Cool. The second one though??? Very Bad.

I once compiled a list of everything Wrong™ with the movies…Haven’t gone over it in a while but I’m pretty sure it was close to like fourteen pages?

What happened with the first one was they essentially went ‘Greek gods. Stolen lightning. Character names. Cool.’ and then created their own mess? Percy’s like, a junior in high school, and Annabeth and Grover and Luke were all played by 30 year olds. None of the characters matched their descriptions- from small things like eye color, to big things like Luke’s scar and, like, personality traits. They cast Pierce Brosnan as Chiron solely because someone was dicking around instead of writing the script and like, just drew Pierce Brosnan as a centaur. Mr. D was missing in action, as were all the other campers with names, as were??? The cabins??? Everyone was living in single tents except for like Percy and Luke, who had a bunch of stolen electronics, it was weird. Instead of going to the Oracle and receiving a quest, the trio just kind of sneak out with literally no plan? Luke told them they had to find “Persephone’s Pearl’s” that were hidden across America because that was the only way they’d be able to leave the Underworld (Instead of, you know, Percy’s Literal Father Giving Them To Him So He Can Save His Son okay). They kept in the Medusa scene, but there was no spell cast on them, they just wandered in like dumbasses. The fought a hydra in Athens, Georgia??? It was very bizarrely handled??? Percy and Annabeth had too much sexual tension, with Annabeth knowing him for literally less than an hour, and only having one conversation with him, during which she said ‘I definitely have strong feelings for you’ like what??? They made this whole subplot where the gods didn’t use to abandon their children, no, it’s all Poseidon’s fault because he loved Percy So Much that he forgot to be the god of the sea so Zeus banned the gods from seeing their kids??? There was no big three oath. Hades??? Dressed??? Like a poorly aging rock star???? Persephone was not only in the underworld for some reason (It!! Was!! Summer!! She’s!! Above!! Ground!!), but she complained that Hades was crazy mean and abusive to her??? Literally no one who worked on this movie ever read a single mythology book I swear. Grover sacrificed himself and like, implied banged Persephone, and Luke stole the lightning bolt for no reasons mentioned. They had a fight on the empire state building, during which both Percy and Luke actually FIRED the master bolt (which…shouldn’t be possible), and then Percy literally…stabbed Luke through the neck with a trident and tossed him into a river. I’m still???? I’m still.

There were a few funny moments that redeemed it- while he didn’t play a very good Book Grover, Brandon T. Jackson was funny enough and kept things moving. The Lotus Casino scene was probably the best part of the movie, because since they aged the characters up, they didn’t feel the need to make it PG, so they literally just got high it was great. The marketing was a mess, though, I remember- a bunch of dramatic Harry Potter-pandering trailers, long slow shots up the Empire state building, interviewers trying to sexualize the end scene between Poseidon and Percy while Kevin McKidd was visibly dying inside as he desperately pointed out he was playing the child’s father…A Mess. A forgettable mess.

But then…the second one. Oh God.

So they like. Somewhat listened to fan complaints about the first movie? And they attempted to fix what they could…but sloppily, in ways that kind of made them worse. Annabeth’s randomly blonde now, don’t question it. Clarisse has always been here and she and Percy have always been rivals, don’t question it. Luke is somehow still alive and somehow got a scar on his face, don’t question it. Mr. D is here, don’t question it. Stuff like that. It could’ve been handled a lot better, but when you saw that going in it was like, ‘oh! They’re listening! Maybe this one will be better!’ but HA. The plot was once again, baseline- the have to find the golden fleece. They somehow invented, like, Ancient Greek transportation devices??? Like, beam me up scotty, but as a portable disc. Wild. Tyson was handled so…so bad, from his casting to the fact they didn’t want to spend cgi on a cyclopes so they made ‘spray-able Mist in a can’ to give him two eyes. The movie was doing that thing where they kept throwing in future references that had nothing to do with the plot but solely for the audience, but it wasn’t well thought out- like, it came out during the gap between Mark of Athena and House of Hades, so they had Luke throw out a line like “I crawled through Tartarus!!” thinking it was a fun line for the fans, but it just made people Very Upset. Nathan Fillion appeared, made a Firefly joke, and then gave a very unconvincing plea about him wanting Luke to be saved. The Princess Andromeda was a tiny ass yacht instead of a gigantic luxury cruise ship that can hold an army, and they had camp demigods on board that like…weren’t supposed to be there. Percy’s entire character went out the window, he spent the entire film moping about ‘maybe I’m not a Real Hero’, and Annabeth spent the entire movie waiting for him to act first. Grover didn’t get kidnapped until half way thru, and he only spent a few hours with the Cyclopes. They cut out basically everything else and invented an abandoned amusement park for the cyclopes to live on. They….this gets me so mad still, they literally RE-WROTE Greek Mythology just so Percy can have an ‘I’m-like-my-daddy’ moment. They also rewrote the Great Prophecy, which like, okay, with the cast I could understand changing the ages- but then they changed ‘the hero’s soul’ to ‘the evil’s soul‘ and the person sitting behind me in the theater actually yelled out in protest. The Golden Fleece Was Not Golden. And there was this whole scene with Kronos and Percy and Luke near the end….A Mess.

The only good parts I can remember are Stanley Tucci’s like, five minutes of screen time as Dionysus, and for some inexplicable reason, Luke yelling ‘Get off my roof!’…literally nothing else comes to mind. It’s like, where they tried to make up for the first movie, they let everything else drop? So while the first movie was a Bad Adaptation but a relatively average children’s fantasy film, this one was just. Not even good as a standalone movie. There was no good storytelling flow at all, and things were very poorly explained or ignored.

You probably didn’t want this long ass thing filled with arguable spoilers, but, sorry. I Am Very Salty About These Films. They had so much potential and just. ugh.

#percy jackson #rick riordan #the lightning thief #the sea of monsters #pjo #asks #molly mumbles

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theeyeswerewatchinggod-blog · 6 years ago

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Podcast Transcript May 16, 2019

[Podcast Introduction Music]

Suhrin: Hello everyone! You have your two favorite literary critics here. Today we’re going to discuss one of Oprah’s favorite romance novel of all time! I’m your host Suhrin and this is my co-host..

Dominic: Dominic!

Suhrin: Yeah, so. Have you ever read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God? Or perhaps ever seen the movie?

Dominic: Well, it so happens to be one of my favorite novels of all time. The story is so compelling in the way that it evocatively portrayes all these loaded but profound themes of slavery, racism, and feminism, among others. But, the movie seems to be lacking in many of these themes, you know what they say. If you love the book, don’t watch the movie. Unless you like being angry… Can’t forget the whole Percy Jackson debachuel.

Suhrin: It is really interesting that you mention that, because I wanted to talk about comparing and contrasting the film and the novel in terms of those themes! In fact, I wanted to sort of break down those themes and discuss the intent and the effect of these themes and the way these two mediums—the novel and the film—differ.

Dominic: Well, let’s get into it then. For starters, I think it’s worth exploring how the institution of slavery is portrayed in the novel. When Janie gets married to Joe Starks he claims a black town as his own and decides that he will become the mayor. He makes grand accomplishments in the town by erecting buildings, lamp posts, a store, and just about all the essentials for your very own town start-up. He seems like a great leader who gets things done, but there were, however, talk of people being underpaid in the town for their manual labor and some being left hungry. It really highlights how Joe Starks does not value the townspeople in terms of human decency—as we see through their low wages—but definitely not as much as he values his own voice.

Suhrin: Yeah, I agree with that. I would say it sort of mimics the way slave owners would use their slaves for advancement of their plantation with cruel treatment. It creates a parallel with the institution of slavery, really. I also wanted to go back on what you said about trying to claim the town as his own. It’s reminiscent of how the Puritans came to the United States and claimed the land as their own, there’s a colonial ideal that Joe Starks seems to embody, despite being a black man. Similarly, Joe Starks claims to “help the townspeople”, but treats them in an unfair way which parallels the way Puritans treated Native Americans. They used them for their land, resources, labor, and basically exploited them while simultaneously preparing them for slaughter. Of course, Joe Starks doesn’t kill anyone outright, except maybe Janie, metaphorically. He oppresses her, he enslaves her in their marriage, and he confines her to female gender roles and imprisons her in the store, where she spends the majority of her days removed from her community. So I think this all speaks to the idea of slavery, colonization, and the oppressive forces these bring.

Dominic: Yeah, I really like that comparison... There’s something deeply intrinsic in the black experience of oppression that seems to harken back to the relatively recent evil of slavery, even with her relationship with Teacake, there’s a specific part in the novel that helps build on this theme of slavery. Remember the scene where Teacake whips Janie? He describes that he needs to relieve “that awful fear inside him” and that “being able to whip her reassured him in possession,” (Hurston 147). I think this is just so wrong and definitely alludes to slavery.

Suhrin: I agree. It definitely parallels with the aspect of how slave owners would whip their slaves as punishment but also to represent their ownership over them. I think later on in the scene other people watch Teacake “punish” his woman and they praise him. It relates to how slaveholders would publicly abuse their slaves to represent their possession and wealth. The whipping is a tool of oppression, it breaks their will and resilience, crushes the spirit, and incites fear. It encourages the manufacturing of a glassy-eyed autonomous robot workforce, devoid of humanity, it being whipped right out of them.

Dominic: I guess this leaves us with this burning question: just what was Hurston’s intent here? What implications does this evocation of the institution of slavery have? I think it’s definitely speaking to how this terrible thing—institutionalized slavery—how even then the black community felt the beginnings of what would be a long lasting effect on African American life. The impact of slavery and the ripples it made in the world, in our everyday lives when we go out into society and interact with black people, it’s all stemming from this awful thing that was happening for hundreds of years. And I think the way their actions in the novel mimic the cruel actions of slavery, and the fact that it’s black people doing it to black people, it represents how they internalized those emotions and experiences, and through intergenerational trauma it shapes their lives even after, it marks their character with the effects of the ripples-turned-waves of slavery.

Their ancestors faced this cruel treatment and maybe subconsciously they emulated this treatment with their children since these experiences have stained their blood, their skin, their very souls. It also explores this larger idea of slavery not being just about white and black relations, but the lasting effects of post-slavery that still lingers within black communities.

Suhrin: Hurston is maybe trying to show a little sympathy to these African American characters that act in this manner due to the intergenerational trauma, but it does not mean that it is still justified. I think the way that the novel ends with both husbands dying shows sort of how their actions should still be met with an equal punishment. Slave owners will get what’s coming to them.

Dominic: That’s a bit cutthroat, but maybe! I think one thing for certain is that the novel explores this theme of slavery in a deep manner where it gets the reader to think about this cyclical system and its impact. As for the film, I don’t think this theme was adequately portrayed or explored. Sure we see Joe Starks create the town like in the novel, but the very real problems of underpaid labor and starving people are cut from the film. The film works hard to not portray him in a negative light in this way, and in doing so it makes his character less dynamic and minimizes the complexity of Janie’s struggle with identity as she buckles under the weight of his oppression. Also, they conveniently leave out the part where Teacake whips Janie. What appears to be minor details in the novel that are consciously left out by the filmmakers really makes a huge difference. I think the message gets lost somewhere in the translation from novel to film. We don’t see how institutionalized slavery affects the African American community, or more specifically Janie, and in leaving this out, the filmmakers fail to adequately portray Janie’s struggle with coming to terms with her identity as someone who’s black, someone whose grandmother was a slave, and someone who’s a woman.

Suhrin: I think so too. And I feel like we can’t talk about this theme of slavery without exploring the other racial undertones in the novel. For me, I think that the portrayal of racism is greatly focused in the novel specifically with Mrs. Turner. She is described as this woman with European features and praises Janie greatly for her own superior European aspects as well, romanticizing her light skin. It’s interesting how she describes Janie and herself as superior to the other members of the community due to the fact that they are “less black”. It really represents the idea of racism and specifically colorism. It’s interesting how Mrs. Turner conceives race though, it’s very hierarchical and rigid, offering little mobility upwards. You’re born into your lot, your caste, and you have a duty to act a certain way, going so far as to justify her belittlement and blatant colorism on this same power structure. The blacker you are, the worse you deserve to be treated. The whiter you are, the greater the need to treat those below you more terribly to make it known it’s not okay to be dark, to make them resent themselves for being black in hopes of somehow bringing an end to the race overall. In destroying their self-worth, Mrs. Turner hopes to discourage the propagation of the black community. She even offers Janie to be with her brother because he is not as dark as Teacake. It’s this idea that they need to dilute the dark melanin in black people to preserve this sense of superiority inherent to white skin.

Dominic: You know, I like what you’re saying here, these are some very astute observations. If we’re thinking about what Hurston’s thinking about as she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, the intention seems to be to represent this issue revolving around racism as something larger than blatant nastiness, but something more sinister and insidious that works itself into the minds of black and mixed people too, not just white people. It’s a disease that takes form in the shape of the internalized racism that’s ingrained in these communities and propagated like a virus spreading. Because Mrs. Turner is still a black women, she may be passing for a white women, or conceptualize herself in the realm of white identity, but she’s still also black. And it’s so sad to see the lengths she goes to to spread hate and misery.

Suhrin: That’s a sharp contrast to the movie, I think, we never hear or see any mention of Mrs. Turner’s character in the film. Perhaps it’s because they thought the inclusion of her character was a minor detail, but I really don’t think so. Her absence from the narrative leaves out important commentary on internalized racism and the toxicity of colorism.

Dominic: Mrs. Turner is especially crucial to Janie’s journey to self-discovery and identity. I read an analytical article by this scholar, Lihua Zhao, and she writes this wonderful piece on how Janie suppresses race and racial issues until Mrs. Turner forces her to confront them. Throughout the novel, we see Janie traversing the American South, and she rides trains and marvels at the beauty of the world. She goes on all these outings to restaurants and social spaces where Jim Crow laws are likely in place, since the South is most definitely still segregated in Janie’s world, but she never acknowledges it.

There’s different compartments for black and white folks on trains, there’s different restrooms, sometimes they’re barred from entire establishments based on their skin color, and not once do we see Janie speak to this. Zhao explains how this shows Janie’s alienation from black society and her denial of her black identity. I think this is a super interesting idea, considering the novel opens with Janie growing up among white children, not knowing she’s black until she’s shown a picture of herself.

Suhrin: That’s so interesting, it reminds me of this duality that seems to be essential to Janie’s character. I’m glad they didn’t cut that out of the movie, where Janie says she learns to portray herself and act a certain way externally, but her mind and her feelings are kept inside as she erects a wall between her internal and external worlds. And then this weird juxtaposition creeps in with her second husband, Joe Starks. He begins treating her like something other, and the townspeople follow suit. This idolization of the black woman was a much larger, more central issue in the novel than in the film.

Dominic: In the novel we also get a nice inversion of the meaning of the color black. She starts wearing black when Joe dies, but when Joe is alive and idolizing her, her black racial identity is essentially erased by this problematic idea of racial uplifting. Her black skin does not connote blackness for her, but the illusion of something more, conflating her status to that of a white woman. And on the exterior, Janie would put on a façade to appease Joe and the black community he represents that wants to put black women on a pedestal. But in Janie’s interior, she longs to partake in the conversations happening on the store’s porch, she wants to attend community events and gatherings not as a trophy wife, but as a regular person having fun and reveling in the sense of community. So, when Joe dies, Janie can finally destroy the wall he placed between her and Eatonville and her interior and exterior. In donning the black to grieve, she’s also reconnecting with her black community. For Janie, it’s not about living a posh leisurely life of a white woman, but living how she wants as a real black women. She finds freedom in Joe’s death, she finds an escape from the burden of having to be the model black woman, the ideal for all other black women to work toward, an ideal that alienated her from the very same race this ideal is striving to uplift.

Suhrin: I completely agree with that interpretation, Janie goes through quite a journey to understand herself and her racial identity. And it’s such a beautiful moment for Janie when she and Tea Cake banish Mrs. Turner from the muck farm, and sadly we don’t get that in the film. In the novel when the cast out Mrs. Turner, it’s as if Janie finds peace with her black identity, her black life, and she knows she has no room in it for the hate Mrs. Turner represents. And in portraying these issues of race and colorism, it allows the reader to be more introspective and think on how we should work to improve these issues in our society today. Because racism, colorism, and internalized-racism are still very real problems people of color face.

Dominic: Very true. The gender dynamics are pretty interesting too, when you compare the novel and the film. In terms of feminism, I think the novel doesn’t really do it much justice. In a way Janie is very submissive to the commands of her husbands. When Joe tells her to put on that head-rag to cover her hair, she sort of reluctantly does so, but she does it. In doing so, he masks her beauty, her stunts her identity, and that visual of putting her hair up and keeping it and her head wrapped up, it feels like he’s metaphorically shackling her mind. But even when she has that moment where she lets down her hair after Joe passes away, it just did not scream feminism to me. I liked that she found freedom in being single and she didn’t really feel the need to grieve Joe, not for long anyway, because he made her feel terrible about her body and herself. But it just felt like I expected more feminist commentary from a book written by a black woman living in the South, where gender norms are stricter than most places. In our contemporary world we’re getting things like female Ghostbusters, explorations of power dynamics and gender roles in TV and literature like The Handmaid’s Tale, and we have female superheroes like Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Scarlett Johansson, who can play just about any race and ethnicity, ha! But seriously, these women are role models and they’re portraying strong individuals and acting as great representation for women and young girls everywhere, and I just expected a little more of that from Their Eyes.

Suhrin: I totally get what you are trying to say. In the movie, she’s definitely more resistant to hiding her hair than she is in the book. When she realizes how Joe is trying to control her and segregate her from the community, she actually makes an attempt to run away and defy him. Then Joe starts screaming that no one will want, just as someone’s plaything, insinuating prostitution even, and Janie quietly, resigned, walks back into their house, and this was really powerful. I think including this scene makes it compelling to the idea that Janie is a strong female character with a strong will, and even then she is trapped in this situation, and we see this visually with her struggle in the film. Also, the moment she lets down her hair seems a whole lot more dramatized. The symbol of how the head rag is a metaphor for the constraint that men put on women seems to be far more prevalent. Maybe it’s because of the medium itself, film being more visual, that the effect feels more pronounced, but it was definitely a more focalized symbol in the movie than the novel.

Dominic: Could this relate to the idea that the movie is geared towards a female audience? I think the film is made so it is palatable for women by highlighting these feminist ideals, ironically in a sexist way. By leaving out these important themes from the novel of slavery and racism in the movie and focusing solely on the romance plotline, while simultaneously altering Janie’s character to portray this more contemporary ideal feminist woman, it feels as if the filmmakers aren’t taking women as seriously as they should. It’s like they’re dumbing down this beautiful piece of literature for an audience—women—whom they think is only interested in watching romance movies where they don’t have to think too much, just feel, as a woman does. There’s no room for explorations of identity, race, and slavery, let other filmmakers and the literature handle that, in the capitalistic world of film they need to produce something that sells, not something that provides scathing social commentary or sheds light on important and prevalent social issues.

Suhrin: Yup, you put it in words. The movie is definitely far more romanticized than the novel. Especially the way that it includes all those steamy sex scenes, and the primary focus is Janie’s search for love. They’re selling sex and romance, and although Janie’s character feels like more of a feminist in the film, I definitely think it’s for all the wrong reasons. What a confusingly hot take though, feminism is sexist in film! You have to take a minute to wrap your head around that, but I think it makes sense when you’re looking at it retrospectively and in terms of intent and purpose. Yes, we love feminist Janie who stands up for herself, yes we wish novel Janie were more like film Janie, but we also wish the film wasn’t butchered to leave out all these important themes and social issues the novel explores in depth.

Suhrin: All in all, slavery and racism is skillfully explored in the novel. The institution of slavery, and later racism, that persis in history have a negative effect on the African American community. It is shown when they partake in or emulate slavery and racism with their own people. It sort of represents the cyclical system that’s so ingrained in our society, but certainly not justified. By doing so, it makes the novel deeper than a love story. The novel doesn’t contain big ideas of feminism strongly, but perhaps it could have been the time period which does not allow for women of color writers to write about such controversial things, or maybe even radical at the time.

Dominic: In contrast, the film does not explore the ideas of slavery and racism, which makes it lacking in depth for me. Sure, romances can be powerful and uplifting and profound, but it’s a heavily gendered genre in film and literature, so I think the film definitely propagates this idea of romance being cheap and low-brow by leaving out all these themes. Nonetheless, the film also tends to have feminism a bit more ingrained in the story. Janie’s resistance to these men trying to control her life and her struggle is clearly portrayed in a feminist light. This highlights the power dynamics in society between men and women, especially back then, with women finding themselves stuck in situations where they’re helpless because they chose to marry the wrong man. But the way that feminism and romance are incorporated makes me believe that it was geared towards a female audience for purely capitalistic motivations.

Suhrin: I recently read an article written by Richard Wright and it discusses how the novel is “cloaked in facile sensuality,” and portrays the minds of “Negro-folk mind in their pure simplicity,”. It’s really interesting he feels this way because I would have to disagree. Yes, I think the novel and the film do not touch on every single theme out there, but they both portray greater ideas that go beyond just mere narrative. There’s so much commentary on society! There’s so much representation for women of color, for women writers, for victims of domestic violence, and for victims of racism, colorism, and internalized-racism. Neither the novel or the film are perfect, but in a meta way, these two mediums for Janie’s story act in conversation to spark more conversation, like the one we’re having now. Both mediums act together to get people thinking, talking, and hopefully to enact change. And for that, I love Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Dominic: Beautifully put Suhrin, I agree wholeheartedly.

Well, it appears that’s all we have time for today. Thanks for joining us as you listen on your way to work, as you drive your kids to school, or maybe just as you cruise down the highway, listening to us ramble. You all be safe out there and enjoy your morning. This has been your co-host, Dominic Rochel, and..

Suhrin: Suhrin Whang! Y’all take care now!

[Podcast Outro Music]

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