#other villains have what he has only in their wettest dreams

[zeroducks-2]

I have this rant ready in my head I'm just waiting for the right ask lmao

I think this week is the week I address the pettiness allegations against Eo.

[davidmann95]

Early Kingdom Hearts III impressions

I got the thing. The playing of the thing has been sporadic, though hopefully that should change tomorrow. Having made it partway through the Toy Story world, here’s what I think so far, in mostly non-spoilery terms (I touch on a couple minor and/or expected things that happen over the course of the first world) but under a cut regardless. Except for one critical thing I need to make sure everybody sees: the opening to the Toy Story world is very possibly already the best moment in gaming in 2019, and even if you don’t give the weakest, wettest fart about this series, you owe it to yourself to look up those first 2 minutes or so on Youtube.

* so fucking pretty

* Only one truly sour note so far (other than Phil not speaking at the Coliseum, which is monstrous), but damn, what a place to have one: the 0.2 ending made perfect sense to use for the opening here, but for god’s sake, why on Earth not just use the whole thing? So damn janky cut to the bone like that; at minimum it should have kept “I’m back!” This is somewhat in keeping with the game as a whole being almost aggressive in letting you know you’re screwed if you didn’t play literally every other game (other than hopefully X, since I passed on that) - this isn’t really Kingdom Hearts III, it’s Kingdom Hearts III Part 3/3 after Dream Drop Distance and A Fragmentary Passage - but frankly, I feel like at this point that’s fair, even if IV better do a better job at starting on a relatively clean slate. It’s just this one point where I feel like it failed in execution, but the philosophy remains understandable.

* It’s fun! I wish I could cycle through the triangle commands, but the fighting’s frenzied and exciting while remaining familiar, and I’m using magic and shotlocks a lot more than I did in past games. I thought moving away from the command deck was a mistake, and I still hope they return in the future, but this absolutely feels like the perfected form of the classic model.

* This is a LOT funnier than past games. A few moments of stiffness that are par for the course aside, the dialogue feels so much more fluid and natural than in the past, while still managing to bring it for the emotional material.

* There are about 3 or 4 times more mechanics involved here than a normie like me could ever hope to grasp, but it feels like a pick-and-choose of what might most interest you and your playstyle rather than an overwhelming necessary collectathon, especially given I know the secret ending this time is just going to be behind a single scavenger hunt, so I approve.

* The Gummi Ship is...fun now. Not an outright blast or anything, I can’t imagine i’ll go into the depths of it, but I honest-to-god dig blasting around the overworld in the thing and the actual fights are perfectly solid. I remember playing Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time years ago and thinking “just do this!”, and it honestly isn’t a million miles away from what they went for. Big gold star for most improved mechanic.

* I was concerned the new (ish, I know she’s filled the part in a minor capacity in the past) Kairi voice actor would be distracting, but as of her one time sticking her head in so far, I think she’s really good. Sadly they kept Richard Epcar as Ansem, and while to be clear he’s definitely still good, I’m holding out hope that if the Xehanorts fuse together for the final battle as implied by the last trailer, that guy’ll be voiced by Billy Zane. I think I’ll be down for the new Master Xehanort later, since going by the trailer the new guy with him is doing entirely his own thing rather than a weak Nimoy impression.

* Sora, you took down four previously post-game bonus boss-tier enemies at the same time, why are you talking like you’ve been reduced to a 90-pound weakling

* Malificent is still convinced she’s the main villain and that’s delightful, as is her and Pete’s failed first go at grabbing the box.

* Love love love the Uncharted-style integrated environmental storytelling and incidental dialogue, which I’ve thought for awhile the series would benefit from; learning why Seifer wasn’t in Twilight Town this time and why the skateboards vanished damn near made me double over, and I cannot overstate how important it was to me to learn that pizza and burgers exist in the universe of Kingdom Hearts.

* I like the camera and I’m definitely using it more than I did in Spider-Man, even if it’s nowhere near as versatile., since you can actually take pictures and there’s more environmental stuff actually worth taking pictures of. And in the past I’ve been a little ehhhh on the song titled Sora as his definitive tune compared to everyone else’s, but I like it a lot more as the ringtone.

* I’d always assumed that it would take, like, the Kingdom Hearts equivalent of a nuke to break a Keyblade, and that it would set off titanic repercussions or at least seriously damage the heart of whoever wielded it. That it’s apparently more of a ‘damn, gotta get a new one at the shop’ situation certainly makes it clearer how Riku was able to just hand Kairi one like it wasn’t even a thing. Apparently it isn’t!

* And finally: I assume it’s a character thing, but if I had a whatever name like Lea and then was bequeathed something as dope as Axel, I too would stick with the latter even after getting my heart back.

[anautisticdragon-blog]

Marvel vs. DC

I've wanted to write this one for a while, but I'm going to sum it up before I begin: DC does diversity and social issues better than Marvel could manage in its wettest, wildest dreams.

That's going to annoy fans. So let's even include my personal bias, just as a disclaimer: I'm really not fond of Marvel's lack of continuity, nor am I a fan of Bendis.

With Morrison's New X-Men, Grant looked at the problems which plagued the X-Men and how every time the books would just go back to telling the same stories. He wanted to unshackle these books from that curse, and he set up the means to do precisely that.

He weaved everything together so masterfully, Corporation X, the second mutant boom, the much needed nod to how mutants aren't all just these beautiful poster models, et cetera. Honestly, how can you stand for the downtrodden if you come across as the one per cent?

Being an X-Man must've had an amazing dental, physical, and mental health plan. No one dared to even be anything less than a perfect icon of the status quo, it was basically what Magneto always wanted. It was really quite difficult to distinguish between what separated him from Xavier.

Grant fixed that. Mutants could be less than beautiful and that was okay, mutants didn't always need to have MacGuffin powers and that was okay too. Then, at the very end, he edited the Marvel Universe to remove mutant prejudice.

That's wild.

It's the end goal of everything they'd just been striving for since the '80s, and the reason they had been locked in this neverending cycle. Now the X-Men could tell new stories. Stories about how it was okay to be interesting, diverse, and not just a living god. It was incredible, I had more hope for the X-Men at that point than I ever had.

Marvel retconned it with the very next issue. Prejudice returns, everyone is beautiful again, and every gift Grant gave them was generally pissed over. Marvel hates continuity. They're so wantonly, gaggingly desperate to tell exactly the same stories over and over and over again.

One of the worst casualties of it all was Beast. Before Morrison, Beast was nothing more than a one-dimensional, Silver Age character. Grant gave him a third-dimension, a dichotomy. Certainly, it was a bit of an old trope (Grant loves those), and yet he used it to give Hank McCoy depth he'd never had in all his years as an X-Man.

Bendis took that away. No more feline Beast for us, no more dichotomy, no more third-dimension. Hank is just a Silver Age airhead again.

Marvel is basically Groundhog Day. This is their problem and I promise you this will all tie together and go somewhere. This Groundhog Day syndrome is at the root of all of Marvel's problems, and why DC are trouncing them right now on every story-telling front.

So, they did it with Iron Man, too.

Tony Stark was always weirdly technophobic for what could only be described as a self-made transhumanist. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can see him operating on himself to give himself upgrades. Not in the comics.

Warren Ellis was the first to set out to fix this -- Extremis. Extremis was pretty okay. I'd say it was definitely a step in the right direction, but Tony still had this technophobic edge to his personality that caused dissonance in anyone who had any minor level of familiarity with technology.

Tony seemed oddly unfamiliar with the tech he'd supposedly been building. Had it turned out that -- in fact -- Tony was just a pretty face, and the real tinkerer and putterer was hiding in his shadow? That would've been interesting!

They didn't go that way, though. So they had to cure Tony of his technophobia. From Extremis we moved onto Matt Fraction's run where Tony really learned to trust technology; In fact, it proved to be more reliable and faithful to him than people did. His distrust moved away from technology to authority, government, and powerful figures like the Mandarin. This provided a strong focus, it provided the reader with reasons.

It reminds me of Mark Waid and Eobard Thawne. Eobard, the Reverse Flash, was just a two-bit Silver Age airhead of a villain. Just evil because evil, no more to it than that. Waid fleshed him out by having him become an obsessive stalker, a crazed fan whose vision of Barry Allen was so idealised that the real Barry couldn't live up to it.

This gave Eobard Thawne a reason to be Barry's villain. Similarly, Tony's newfound distrust of very powerful people and authority gave him a reason to distrust a self-styled, preening, entitled figure like The Mandarin. A character who fancifully imagined himself as an emperor.

It also allowed Tony to explore technology and realise that he wanted to spend more time simply working on it and helping to create heroes to combat men like The Mandarin than showboating hismelf. It set up the scene for both Rhodey and Pepper to replace him as Iron Corps.

Continuity! Evolution! A bold new di--RETCON! Now Tony's a technophobe again who was starkly (heh) terrified of his old technology and went back to sticks, rocks, and showboating because that's what Tony does at Marvel.

And this brings me to why I dislike Marvel. You might've heard that their editors actually blamed their push for diversity for their waning sales. It couldn't have anything to do with this Groundhog Day syndrome of theirs. No, no no no. Of course not. It has to be diversity, right?

Well, no. And, weirdly, yes? You see, their attitude toward diversity is inauthentic. It isn't genuine. I think everyone's catching on. That black kid who's going to be Iron Man? That's Cat Beast, you see? Soon to be replaced by technophobic Tony, completing the cycle.

The new Lady Thor? Cat Beast. Falcon as Captain America? Cat Beast. It'll all revert. It's because they don't actually have any passion behind it. Why did Falcon become Captain America? Oh, he and Steve Rogers had an argument and now he's wearing Captain America's uniform because reasons.

Then he got Cat Beast'd, now he's Falcon again. Steve Rogers is Captain America again. Groundhog Day, everyone! It's Groundhog Day!

Lady Thor? Lady Thor is there because... Um, er, other realities? Reasons? No one really knows, but everyone knows that it's a gimmick. It's not really intended to stick. She'll get Cat Beast'd, and ultimately replaced by Man Thor again.

I mentioned the Iron Corps, right?

This is because of how DC handled things with the Green Lantern Corps. The best example I've seen yet of HOW YOU DO THIS RIGHT.

Hal Jordan? He's being a space cowboy. John Stewart? He's leading the Green Lantern Corps. Your old favourite lantern? Heavily featured in the Green Lantern Corps. New, young, diversified lanterns? Meet Cruz and Baz!

DC does do it wrong, occasionally. I feel like what they did with Barry and Wally was just a massive clusterfuck. That Barry is still present as the League's only speedster is depressing, it's very much contrary to the Lantern Corps and it feels a little Marvel-y, to be honest. It's all about the editorial staff pushing their tastes.

So DC isn't perfect. No. Are they doing almost everything better, regardless? Heck yes! Do you care about social issues? Check out Green Arrow, Batgirl & the Bird of Prey. Do you want diverse characters? Cyborg, Blue Beetle, New Super-Man and many others have you covered. Do you long for nuanced stories that cover a character's life outside of being a hero? Superman has you covered. Do you want old-fashioned superhero comics? Action Comics, Justice League, and Detective Comics have your back.

DC is inclusive. And... AND AND AND... DC never, ever Groundhog Days. If DC does something? Then it sticks. This is why I respect them so god damned much. Even if it's begrudgingly, sometimes. You know? They deserve it, they really do.

The New 52 was a failure, they knew that. So, what's to be done about that? Reboot it and just forget it ever happened? No! Do something really clever and make all continuity matter, forever! That's what DC had done up until the New 52, so it's not that unexpected, but it is refreshing.

They could've been cowardly and just set the clock back to a pre-52 state. They did actually have some pieces in place for that (Waverider, Pandora, et al). Instead, they did something much, much more compelling. They made it all matter. So any new characters they'd introduced and fleshed out? They got to stay, along with the old stable!

And that's why DC will always be better than Marvel. I mean, you know, along with the fact that I don't think that DC has featured nearly as much snuff porn and women getting kicked in the vagina as Marvel has given us (thanks, Bendis). So that's also a feather in DC's cap.

Plus, when a woman is empowered in DC comics, it doesn't just feel like a silly, colourful, 'this is my l'il Universe which is separate from everything else' gimmick (looking at you, Squirrel Girl, sorry). They really are there, in the prime reality, and working to make a difference.

Batgirl & the Birds of Prey is better than just about anything that Marvel has done in its long history. So we're back to being inclusive, can I talk about that some more? Young readers? You've got young, experimental comics with the Young Animal and Wildstorm imprints. Gay audience? You're covered, too! Especially notable, here? Apollo & Midnighter.

When DC does it, it feels authentic, real, and genuine. They put a lot of heart into the story, to set things up. It's a long, drawn out process of handing over the mantle or switching focus. Sure, they screw up occasionally but for the most part they get that right.

It's not BOOP DIVERSITY GIMMICK, which is very much Marvel's schtick. It's why no one is satisfied with Marvel, not even an old, haggard "SJW" like me. I see Marvel's insensitive, tacky gimmicks for what they really are.

If Marvel cared to understand how to do this even remotely right? Apollo & Midnighter, Batgirl & the Birds of Prey, Shade the Changing Girl, New Super-Man, and... Doctor Endless.

Oh. My. God. Doctor Endless. Here's why I'm inspired to write this. It's not just a tacky BOOP DIVERSITY GIMMICK thing, it's not a magical one issue replacement of an existing character. They put in the effort to create new characters that people would care about, it shows DC cares.

Marvel, by comparison, feels like a soulless corporate machine. They're doing diversity not because it's ethical, or inclusive, or it makes people feel good, but rather because they think they're widening the net to sell more of their hugely overpriced comics.

If you replace five existing characters with LGBTQ versions BECAUSE REASONS (without any actual reasons) in a one issue span? It's meaningless. It’s insulting. It doesn't carry any weight or gravitas. It's hard for people to get behind that as their new hero because it all just happened so suddenly that it feels like a trick, they're feeling like Marvel will tug the rug out from under them the moment those characters lose popularity. They'll be gone as suddenly as they appeared.

Inauthenticity, a lack of genuineness, and just an air of being con men. Along with an inability to ever change, evolve, or grow. This is what I think of Marvel as being, now. Like I said, they had some really obvious chances with X-Men and Iron Man to grow. They could've launched off of Matt Fraction's stories to set up an Iron Man Corps, it would've been glorious. They could've had a number of Iron heroes, each with their own fleshed out story which is separate from Stark's own. No tackiness or gimmicks needed.

And you know Marvel is going to just Cat Beast every diverse character. Give it a couple of years and no one will ever remember any of these people they invented over a one issue span, no one will remember that Falcon was Captain America because it happened and it was gone again so quickly that it was forgettable.

It's Groundhog Day, everyone! A really gimmicky, shady Groundhog Day!

There are actually a lot of characters like that throughout Marvel's history, who've either been forgotten or have lost most of their development due to Marvel's love of the reset button. DC only flirted with the reset button once and it almost doomed them. They learned from that.

So now that Doctor Endless is here, they're now here to stay. They're always going to be in the DC Universe. Everything is. Grant fucking Morrison is in the DC Universe as The Writer or somesuch. Yankee goddamn Poodle and Captain Carrot are still present. I LOVE IT.

With Rebirth, DC has made a stand. They're not going to use the reset button to fix the time they -- thanks to some poor judgement -- flirted with the reset button. They're leaving that thing well, well alone.

So while Squirrel Girl enjoys a short stint of popularity as one of Marvel's gimmicks (and this kills me because I adore Ryan North and love his writing), off in her own Universe? Black Canary exists in the Green Arrow, Birds of Prey, and Justice League of America books being generally just the most kick-ass woman ever.

I used to be such a Marvel fan, it's funny. It's just that I began to notice their over-reliance on that bloody reset button back in the '80s. It got boring by the '90s and I was fed up of it. Morrison's X-Men and Fraction's Iron Man gave me some, infinitesimal glimmer of hope, but...

I watched DC continue to grow, grow, and grow. I mean, I'd always had some love for DC thanks to the DCAU and the Justice League, but I was iffy about the comics because they took away one of my favourite characters as a gimmicky stunt (and that felt like a very Marvel thing to do). With Rebirth? I couldn't stand it any more.

I can forgive DC for its one, flawed, gimmicky stunt. The horrible, egregious error that was the New 52. I forgive you, DC. It's okay. It really is okay. You've done everything to make up for it.

However, Marvel is doing reboot after gimmicky reboot all the time. GROUNDHOG DAY, EVERYONE! All of those new first issues, and nothing ever, ever changes. It's just a new issue one to tell exactly the same stories, just with a shiny, new gimmick! And when diversity and social issues are their shiny, new gimmick? I feel especially dirty.

DC is as authentic as Marvel is just a soulless, corporate beast who's only in it for the money. Yeah, sure, DC is a company, too. Owned by Warner Bros and definitely also in it for that money, but it feels different. You can tell by reading the comics, it really feels genuine.

If DC has a book featuring women? It'll often be written (and sometimes drawn) by women. If DC has a comic book featuring minorities? It'll often be written (and sometimes drawn) by those same minorities. This is really obvious with New Super-Man, Batgirl & the Birds of Prey, and so, so, so many others. It really shows.

And there are just too many honest-to-god genuine things going on at DC -- for those who pay attention -- for me to think it's all just a bunch of clever ploys to draw in the money. There's too much effort. If you're just doing it for the money, you do it like Marvel, and you'll succeed all the more. Marvel is simply better at making money than DC comics has ever been.

Sorry, DC.

But DC comics puts out some damn good comics. And they're trying. It's not gimmicks, they are trying and I can tell. I love them for trying.

You need only look at Doctor Endless to fully understand why DC are trying, whereas Marvel is just taking the piss (and your money).

It genuinely reminds me of the Nostalgiasaurus Parx thing I was talking about, recently. Where it turns out that the tyrannosaur had feathers and scales, it wasn't merely scaly as has been incorrectly reported so frequently of late. When people heard it really might've been a Nostalgiasaurus Parx, though, instead of a Tyrannosaurus Rex? Well, it was like their football team had won, or something. Fireworks, celebrations, people crying in the streets, riots. Crazy shit.

I guess that some of us want to preserve the status quo no matter what, right? Some just want to uphold that, keep it steady, no matter how much jury-rigging they have to do, no matter how much Don Quixote-esque self-delusionary nonsense they have to engage in just to keep the world as this overly simple construct that they already knew everything about.

Others? Well... I imagine that this is a scale, where it kind of slides and it has extremes. But on the other end of this sliding scale? I imagine that people will become more open-minded, they'll actually want a constant evolution of change borne out of an ever growing understanding. They can accept that the world is changing around them. There are likely traits and quirks that get swapped between and around to dictate where on this scale a person sits, but that's how ultimately it seems to be.

It also, quite interestingly, ties back into the toxic ideals of perfection that some people have and how problematic they are. And the importance of valuing being humble and understanding diversity instead of just upholding the status quo as some kind of holy default state that must never, ever be questioned.

Marvel kind of does the status quo thing. Yeah, they have gimmicks, and tomorrow it'll be a new gimmick, but they're doing the same kinds of stories they always have. Miles Morales comes along and could serve as the Spidey on the Streets role that people enjoy, allowing Peter to slip into the background as an older person and enjoy a family life, perhaps even take on a team leadership role. Growth, yo! But, no... Peter's still a small-time bank robbery solvin' sort of guy. Which makes Miles Morales utterly redundant, since that's what they brought him in to do.

So Morales was a gimmick. Peter being a teacher, then Peter being a CEO? Gimmicks. Nothing will stick. Ultimately, Peter's always going to be dealing with gang bangers and hoods. He's always going to be stuck at that frozen point in history, never to evolve, grow, or change. And that's Marvel.

Which is... why I prefer DC, and that's that, I guess?

[trendingnewsb]

5 Horror Movies That Made Up Rules Midway Through The Film

Any good movie needs to establish the rules of its universe. The viewer absolutely must know what happens if zombie blood gets in your mouth, or if you give a gremlin a boner. Unfortunately, not every movie can keep its own rules straight. Some make stuff up right in the middle and hope you won’t notice. Spoilers ahead, of course.

5

In Get Out, The Villains Must Vet And Seduce Their Victims Carefully … Or Just Kidnap Random People?

One of the major reveals in Get Out is that even white people who voted for Obama can be racist. Another big one is that Chris’s girlfriend, Rose, only dated him so that her family could hypnotically trap his mind and auction his body off to wealthy brain-rapists. It’s an amazing movie, is what we’re saying here.

Anyway, we’re first tipped off to the evil plot when Chris discovers a troublingly large stack of photographs of Rose and all her (black) exes, including her parents’ weird servants. You might not immediately think, “These are people she’s mentally enslaved,” but it’s worth bringing up.

Universal PicturesAlso, what’s with the box of physical photographs? Are you a hundred years old?

Rose has been dating Chris for five months. And judging from the intimate photos, she’s convinced over a dozen other people to fall for her. This means she has been in the family business of debauching African Americans since she was, at best, a teenager. Forget about how creepy that is; it’s sort of incredible. They’ve been asking this girl to constantly convince strangers to fall in love with her and then betray them since before she could buy beer. She’s the Meryl Streep of brain transplant crime.

Using Rose as a honeypot sounds extremely inefficient, but what else could the family do? The movie clearly establishes that they’ve got to get those people to their house somehow, and it’s not like they can simply abduct anyone on the street.

Except … wait, that’s exactly what they can do.

Universal PicturesTo this guy. This poor son of a bitch right here.

The man in the picture above is Andre. Andre is nabbed while wandering around an upscale suburban neighborhood, presumably looking for an Olive Garden. Rose’s brother, Jeremy, lacks his sister’s bubbly charm, so he apparently knocks out random black pedestrians and stuffs them in his car.

And it’s not like Jeremy’s method is any less successful than Rose’s. Andre was clearly hypnotized, brain-transplanted, and sold with no real problems. Jeremy achieved in a single night what took Rose five full months.

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6 Classic Movies That Get Ruined By Grade-School Science

On top of all of that, Jeremy’s method is significantly safer. While she was dating Chris for half a year, she met all the people in his life — like his friend, Rod, who might wonder why his friend didn’t come back from her house. A bisexual girl who dates only black people is already going to generate some gossip, but if every single one of those people mysteriously goes missing, it’s safe to say that story would get picked up sooner or later. And a string of abductions linked to the city’s most famous interracial sex addict is a much easier crime to solve than a few seemingly unrelated disappearances.

4

In Freddy Vs. Jason, Jason Randomly Becomes Afraid Of Water

Freddy Vs. Jason was supposed to be the horror villain smackdown to end all horror villain smackdowns. But before the two really go at it, Freddy enters Jason’s dreams to see what he fears most. After decades of murder, Jason has been beaten and mangled, sometimes to death, so obviously the thing he fears most is water. Wait, water!?

Specifically, harmless cascading water. It’s … it’s weird.

Later in the movie, Freddy uses this knowledge to his advantage. Right when Jason is about to machete the shit out of Freddy, a pipe bursts, spraying wetness between the supernatural forces of death. There’s nothing special about this water. It’s just water. And it stops Jason right in his tracks. Now, this rule makes sense on paper … if you’ve never seen a Friday The 13th movie. As a boy, Jason first died by drowning, so a phobia of water would not be out of the question. Now here’s a picture of a very relaxed Jason chest-deep in his greatest fear:

New Line CinemaOr maybe he’s scared? It’s hard to tell, of course.

Here he is in Jason Takes Manhattan, wherein he hitches a ride to the big city on a boat’s anchor with no problem whatsoever. This is almost certainly the wettest way to get to Manhattan.

New Line CinemaLook at the poor thing: Scared to death.

Even in a Friday The 13th video game, Jason has no problem getting in the water to do some good old-fashioned lake slaying.

Gun Media“Oh thank god! Rescue me!”

Is it possible Freddy reawakened some dormant fear in Jason? Maybe, but the more likely explanation is that there needed to be some kind of tension in a fight between two immortal fear monsters, and they didn’t hire the world’s most creative writer to develop the story every seven-year-old horror fan thought of first.

3

In It Follows, Shooting The Follower Doesn’t Work (Until It Does)

It Follows is about a monster that follows you if you fuck someone who was already being followed by the monster. Then, if the monster catches you, it fucks you to death. It’s uh … it’s better than it sounds. The whole thing is a not-so-subtle metaphor for STDs, so you would imagine the solution to the problem would be some kind of poetic, maybe metaphorical thing, like convincing teens to practice abstinence, or maybe burning off your genitals. But no. Instead they shoot it.

They straight up shoot the thing dead.

RADiUS-TWC

Now, shooting isn’t a bad idea if you’re looking to kill something, but they establish early in the movie that bullets don’t work on the Follower. Instead of getting on a plane to Australia to wait it out (because the entity can only very slowly walk wherever it goes), the main group of kids decide to hang out at a nearby beach and let it catch up. Naturally, the monster shows up, and the main character, Jay, shoots it in the neck.

This doesn’t keep it down for long. It gets right back up and continues following Jay. This should communicate that it’s a mystical being that can’t be stopped with mortal techniques, but it doesn’t. In fact, the movie soon gets straight up Scooby-Doo. During the big final showdown, the heroes attempt to electrocute the creature in a pool. But when that plan goes belly-up, they decide to finish it off once and for all … by shooting it. Again.

Maybe it’s not a metaphor for STDS, but for how nothing matters and everything’s stupid.

When the pool fills with blood, the kids decide the entity is defeated once and for all. Now sure, there’s a scene at the end which shows it may (or may not) still be following the characters, but the monster inexplicably showing up at the end of the horror film is a tried and true cliche. It means practically nothing. It’s as pointlessly ridiculous as having the monster leap out of the pool on a surfboard and go, “I’ll be back in It Follows 2: Beach Bods!”

2

In 2004’s Dawn Of The Dead, People Turn Into Zombies Just, Like, Whenever The Hell

A lot of zombie movies play their “zombie rules” pretty fast and loose, but the 2004 Dawn Of The Dead remake reeeally stretched the boundaries of zombification science. Basically, when people get bitten, they turn into zombies whenever it’s most convenient for the plot.

In the opening scene, Ana’s husband gets bitten in the neck by a zombified neighbor child and collapses on the bed. In the time it takes for Ana to call 9-1-1 and get a busy signal, he dies and pops back up as an undead maniac:

Universal Pictures“HEY! We’re out of toilet paper! I TOLD YOU YESTERDAY WE’RE OUT OF TOILET PAPER! YOU ALWAYS DO THIIIIIS!!!”

Later, when the gang is in the mall, they bring in a truck full of eight people, two of whom have been bitten. One is a lady in a wheelbarrow, best described as 300 pounds of moaning rotten meat long overdue to die from any number of things. The other is TV’s Max Headroom, who has a little bite on his arm.

Universal Pictures“Wait, in what zombie story do you bring me into an enclosed space!? This is fucking crazy!”

Universal Pictures“Wait, someone remembers Max Headroom? This is fucking crazy.”

Max Headroom dies very shortly, but another character, the pregnant Luda, has a similar wound on her arm, and she lasts days, maybe weeks? The movie doesn’t give a clear timeline, but within one montage set to a lounge cover of “Down With The Sickness,” it’s made clear the party is in there long enough to get suicidally stir-crazy.

The point is, Luda lives hundreds, maybe thousands of times longer than other people with the same wound. Maybe her pregnancy had an effect? Meanwhile, the lady in the wheelbarrow seemed to rot into a corpse puddle long before she hopped up as a zombie. Maybe her weight problem had an effect? Is diabetes the cure for zombism?

The characters spell it right out for the audience that bites transit the disease, and yet not a single infection seems to follow the same rules. For instance, the gun shop owner gets bitten on the arm, describes it as “not bad,” and turns undead in minutes. Can the zombie virus tell when it’s time to speed up the plot?

Universal PicturesZombie for “Wrap it up.”

So turning into a zombie can take several minutes, a few hours, or literally weeks, based on whatever reveal is coolest. Maybe the silliest dramatic transformation happens in the climax, when the Ty Burrell “rich dick” character gets jumped by a zombie and moments later comes back as a hissing monster. Which means that within seconds, a zombie kills him, decides to stop eating him, and leaves the area completely. This goes against everything we’ve learned about zombie behavior and most of what we’ve learned about bite timelines, but it allows him to get shot in the face for a callback to earlier in the movie, when Ana said she was going to shoot him in the face.

Universal Pictures“Ha! I knew that line about shooting me in the face would pay off!”

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In Saw, Jigsaw Lets People Live If They Appreciate Life. Except No, He Doesn’t.

Saw‘s central villain, John Kramer, conducts sinister tests on human beings, only allowing them to live if they learn what life really means. The movies clearly want us to think of Jigsaw as a complicated character. Yes, he’s a murderous criminal, but also sort of a free life coach? Which may be how they justify letting him win at the end of every movie. (Sorry for spoiling Saw, Saw II, Saw IV, Saw 3D, and Jigsaw.)

There’s always some reveal to explain how all the people in Jigsaw’s traps deserve it, and unlike his insane proteges, Kramer himself has a single guiding philosophy he’s trying to carry out. Supposedly, he forces people to appreciate what they have, and if they demonstrate that they’ve learned this, he lets them go. But is that really what he does? Is all of this as stupid as it sounds?

Yes. In one movie, he forces a man to tunnel through a maze of razor wire to prove that he wants to live. The man in question does indeed want to live, and is so determined to do so that he slices his stomach open while fighting his way through. So he proves it, right? No, Jigsaw lets him die. It wasn’t any kind of test; it was a weird murder with torture and puppets that would have killed him less if he wasn’t so motivated to live. Enjoying life isn’t the same as being immune to barbed wire, Jigsaw!

The movie is full of traps built around how much damage a body can take, not how determined the body is to seize the day. For instance, the man covered in flammable jelly and made to tread on broken glass without flinching. Jigsaw watches that poor guy through a peephole and doesn’t once intervene, even as the guy clearly demonstrates his willingness to endure pain to save his own life. He passed, you dick! Call off the murder!

At one point, Kramer leaves a victim in a chair designed to drill into the man’s head if the detectives following him don’t call off the case. What kind of zest for life is that supposed to test? Drills don’t magically stop working when they hit a brain thinking about how it hates dying.

In the history of Jigsaw’s arts and crafts murder spree, only a small handful of people are actually tested on how much they appreciate life. The rest of them are killed in pointlessly unpleasant ways. It’s like Jigsaw created the world’s most infantile, half-baked philosophy solely to justify thousands of hours of death trap construction and bicycling puppet maintenance. How did they make eight movies about that, and only seven about an evil Leprechaun?

Jordan Breeding also writes for Paste Magazine, the Twitter, himself, and with a dirty, dirty spray can in various back alleys. Mike Bedard does a lot more than point out flaws in movies. He also makes his own. Here’s a short he made about Indiana Jones saying it’s okay to punch Nazis. If you like what you see, then follow him on Twitter. Dan Hopper is an editor for Cracked, previously for CollegeHumor and BestWeekEver.tv. He fires off consistent A-minus tweets at @DanHopp.

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