#so instead i rewatched all of absolution and watched a movie and hammered out like 800 words of his story

[invinciblerodent]

Hm.

This looks like a thought I should scoop up and run far, far away with, don't you think?

[jonathanraychapman]

Thinking about the Hobbit Trilogy (Films)

I’m sort of in a weird place on the Hobbit films from 2013.  They’re decent and yet they’re despised by some purists.  But I can rewatch them and I’ve been enjoying them more than The Lord of the Rings to be honest.  Also, these came out in 2012 and 2013?  Wow.. time moves very quickly.

So listen.. I watched the Hobbit cartoon a billion times as a kid (I still do every year).  My grandmother recorded it off TV with The Last Unicorn for me before she passed and I basically wore that VHS tape out.  And yes I’ve read the book.  Heck.. my mom was a 6th grade teacher and taught ‘Riddles in the Dark’ to her class.  That’s how much we’re all into it.  And my mom actually dislikes most fantasy and she still loves The Hobbit.  It’s kind of our film (the 1977 cartoon) to watch together (along with The Maltese Falcon and a few others).

So yes.. I know my Hobbit lore.  And I know that when I watch these films, they’re padded to heck (and back) and involve references to stuff that maybe only existed in the appendix - which they turned into fully-fleshed-out theatrical sequences.  But I can’t hate them for it.  It’s like that meme where there are two cakes and the creator of one is worried about one being liked over the other and the hungry person is just like ‘wow!.. two cakes!’.  That’s the way I was with the three films.  I’m just happy that one was created.. much more three of them.  That’s amazing.  And - while not perfect - they’re not absolutely screwed up.  We’re not talking 2003 Daredevil or that Elektra movie here.  No.. these aren’t Spider-Man 3.  They’re more like Spider-Man 2.

I know it’s kind of a thing for Internet reviewers of movies to pick on The Hobbit movies.  But it’s kind of a disservice to the potential viewers.  They’re pretty fun to see.  Got cool visuals? Check.  Got action sequences?  Check.  Romance?  Check.  Humor?  Check.  Ghosts, Wizards, Dragons, Shapeshifters, Giants, Hammer-slinging Dwarves on Battle-Hogs?  Check.

Sure.. it’s not like the book.  It’s not true to the author.  But they’re not bad and I don’t think Tolkien is turning in his grave.  This is just a decent fantasy series of movies.  I don’t see how you can be mad at Tauriel the Elf showing up in what is pretty much an only-male ensemble.  And yes.. it’s a romance and it drags out.  And to be fair to today’s audience, there might should have been more women (besides Galadriel) that aren’t involved in romance.  But, again.  This is an old tale told in a different time and - let’s be fair to the writers - this is a romance like Tolken’s most-famous between Beren and Luthien.  It’s a nice call-back and a peace offering to the modern viewers (that of course the nerds slapped away in response).

Could I do without the rock giants or the bunny-sleds?  Sure.  Those are pretty silly.  Was the Goblin king a little too goofy?  Yep.  But movies are allowed to do their own thing sometimes.  It’s their interpretation and sometimes it’s about catering to their audience instead of to the most-hardcore fans.  The council attacking Sauron and his flunkies?  Yep.. that was kind of dumb.  But it was also kind of awesome.

Tolkien started writing The Hobbit as a bedtime sort of story for his children.  And then it grew and he turned it into a book.  And then he wrote some more books with a much more-grandiose backstory.  And then he modified The Hobbit a little here and there in revisions to kind of / sort of have it tie in to that backstory.  

But honestly, The Hobbit (book) remained sort of its own thing versus the Lord of the Rings (book) for decades.  And that’s why I think the Hobbit films can sort of be their own thing too.  If anything, they pull in too much of the Lord the Rings (movie trilogy) and it bloats the films a little.  But what I’m saying is that this is great for fantasy fans.

So.. yeah..  have fun and let other people enjoy things too.

[gravecinema]

Why Fright Night is the Best Vampire Movie Ever Made - 05/21/2020

You may have noticed that vampires just may be my favorite subgenre of horror to watch. So, I don’t say this lightly when I say that I believe that Fright Night is quite possibly the greatest and best vampire movie ever made. A strong claim, I know, so I must also say that Fright Night is the best one that I have ever seen while also fully admitting that I have not seen every vampire movie ever made in existence. I can however confidently say that I have seen all the great classics of the genre, and in my opinion Fright Night stands above the rest of them in terms of story, effects, soundtrack, and characters.

Made in 1985 and expertly written and directed by Tom Holland, the story of Fright Night contains what I believe to be the perfect structure of any classic vampire story: A vampire (with an unassuming name of Jerry Dandridge) moves in next door, our young hero Charlie Brewster (played by William Ragsdale) discovers the vampire’s secret, the young hero makes themselves a target and seeks the help of an expert, and then lastly the hero and expert face off against the evil vampire for one big final climatic confrontation. Add all of those together for your story, and you have Fright Night.  

This is a story that works so well, they repeated it almost exactly in the next three Fright Night movies, and two of those were remakes. Since this particular story structure works so well, those movies actually turned out to be pretty damn entertaining to watch all on their own. I recommend them. Seriously, there is not a weak movie in this entire series, which is pretty rare for a horror franchise, and even rarer for remakes. That’s just how much this entire story structure is a joy to watch for vampire fans.

Fright Night also boasts some of the best practical effects work of the 80’s that continue to stand up today. There’s just something about the use of good practical effects versus the use of CGI that make a movie that much more immersive for the viewer, and the use of the effects in Fright Night really help to make the movie that much more believable and fun to watch. My favorite example of this has to be when they kill the main vampire’s minion and familiar Billy, who must be some type of ghoul or golem considering the way that he dies shows that he is clearly not a human. The melting of his body and decomposing of his bones is beautiful to watch knowing that the effects were all done practically.

Fright Night also is one of the first films to give its vampires monstrous faces instead of just plain old fangs, so the viewer never forgets that these charming and sexy creatures are truly monsters at heart that should be feared. The vampire mouth effect used on Amy was a last-minute decision and prosthetic that they made turned out great for the promotion of the film, since that is the image that is prominently displayed on the great poster for the film. The 80’s gave us some great horror movie posters, and Fright Night is truly one of the best ones among them. One look at it, and you can tell exactly what this movie is all about.

The soundtrack for Fright Night also has some great 80’s sound throughout it. The dance scene at the nightclub showcases some of the best music in the whole movie. It’s also a universal law that almost every vampire movie needs a dance scene at a nightclub. This one does a fantastic job of setting the tone of the scene by having Jerry using his vampire mojo to seduce the young and virginal Amy while some of the best 80’s synth and pop sounds are playing. Jerry even plays some pretty pimping music later when he’s getting ready to seduce and bite Amy. You got to love a villain who plays his own soundtrack.  

Speaking of Jerry, he is played to absolute perfection by Chris Sarandon who is most well-known for his roles in The Princess Bride and Child’s Play. He’s perfectly charming, well-dressed, sexy, and completely in love with being evil. This is not a tortured vampire who hates the curse of what he has become. He relishes in his predatory instincts to hunt and kill. When he sees something he wants, he goes after it and won't let anyone get in his way. He knows he’s the apex predator, and as such, he has no fear of the boy Charlie who discovers his secret, or the actor vampire hunter Peter Vincent that Charlie turns to for help.

Peter Vincent is also the best and most memorable character in the movie, played by Roddy Mcdowall. At the start of the movie, he’s just a classic horror movie host and actor who used to star in a bunch of B films as a vampire killer, similar to the famous Van Helsing from Dracula. A clear reference to when the role of Van Helsing was played by Peter Cushing in the Hammer films. He now hosts the horror program Fright Night, where the film gets its title from. Charlie just so happens to be a big fan of the program, so when he discovers that a real-life vampire has moved in next door to him, he seeks out the help of the horror host for slaying the beast.

Peter Vincent shows great character development while first being in denial that a real vampire actually exists, to then being scared out of his mind, and then facing his fear and letting himself become the character for real that he played for so long. In many ways, it is the character of Peter Vincent who undergoes the classic hero’s journey tale that many classic stories use instead of the main character of Charlie Brewster. There are many moments where Peter Vincent summons the strength to face his fears and to continue on in his mission to slay the evil Jerry Dandridge, slowly becoming more and more like the character that he has only just played for so long. Make no mistake about it, the faceoff between Peter Vincent and Jerry Dandridge is the one element that completely makes the film a superior work of the genre.

I also have to mention Charlie’s best friend Evil Ed played by Stephen Geoffreys. He’s the first person that Charlie turns to for advice on dealing with the vampire next door and is played delightfully somewhat over the top. He’s a very loud personality and is a great supporting character who suffers tragic circumstances later in the film. Jerry eventually turns him into a vampire, and when Evil Ed is finally slain by Peter Vincent, he suffers one of the longest and most drawn out deaths in the movie. That doesn’t stop the character though from providing us with a little stinger at the end of the movie using one of his iconic lines from earlier to end the movie with.

The biggest thing I find that Fright Night has whenever I rewatch it is that it has practically everything that you could ask for a vampire movie to give you... Fantastic practical effects: Check. A great cast of characters: Check. Sexy love scenes: Check. A soundtrack that sets the perfect mood: Check. A strong, sexy, and powerful main vampire bad guy: Check, check, and check. It has all of that to go along with a great and satisfying story that can be appreciated by anyone at any age. I rewatch it more than a few times a year and will continue to do so. I can’t say that it’s my top favorite vampire movie to watch, since that’s a personal choice that can change depending on my mood for that particular day. I can confidently say however that it is in my mind and in my view the best vampire movie ever made... for now. I am of course always looking forward the next vampire movie that��s yet to be released just right around the corner.

[aion-rsa]

How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood

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In 2000 Mission: Impossible 2 topped the box office, Gladiator triumphed at the Oscars, and the first X-Men movie ushered in a new era of superhero movies. Meanwhile in Canada, while no one was watching, a new hero was emerging. Her name was Ginger, she was a 16-year-old girl, and ok, she might have turned into a monster and killed a few people but, wow, was she a ferocious figurehead for females everywhere. 

“That’s what she’s about. She’s about fuck you, fuck the patriarchy, fuck the standard, fuck society, fuck the norm. And to me, that’s a hero,” says Katharine Isabelle, speaking with Den of Geek via Zoom from her home in Vancouver, 20 years after the film’s debut. Isabelle was just 17 when she stepped into Ginger’s very cool boots and she had no idea it would become a massive cult hit.

“When it first came out, no one fucking watched it. It did well with some critics at a few festivals, but no one cared. No one went to see it,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until it hit the VHS circuit in small town Canada that people were like, ‘Oh, Ginger!.’ Emily [Perkins, who plays Ginger’s sister Brigitte] and I thought we’d be the only people that liked it because we were weird and dark. We had no idea that through the generations it would continue to have an effect on people.”

Watching 20 years on and Ginger Snaps absolutely holds up. More than that, in fact, it looks positively progressive and even transgressive in a year where we were onto our third Scream, our second Urban Legend, and our first Final Destination. Glossy teen slashers were the thing, which didn’t often make for great parts. 

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“In the ’90s, as a 17-year-old girl it was ‘be hot, get murdered’,” says Isabelle. “There weren’t a lot of really interesting characters coming out of that, especially in my small Vancouver, Canada acting world. So to see this and be like, ‘Holy shit, this really speaks to me, I am this dark, insecure, troubled, deep, dark humored girl who feels outcast and misunderstood by everybody,’ I was just like, ‘Yes. 100%.’”

Written by Karen Walton who would go on to write for Queer as Folk and Orphan Black, and directed by John Fawcett (one of Orphan Black’s co-creators), Ginger Snaps was a fresh take on the werewolf subgenre and a brand new slant on teen horror. This was about girls for a start – sisters Ginger and Brigitte who are weird outsiders fascinated with death. Though there’s sex in the movie it’s really a love story between the two females while the only male character who we have any sympathy for is a drug dealer who has no sexual interest in either. There are dog maulings along the way, and as we head towards the climax with Ginger becoming more and more monstrous, there’s plenty of gore.

But the most scandalous splash of blood is Ginger’s own first period.

Period piece

“You never see that. The visual of bloody panties is so shocking,” says Isabelle. 

“It’s what, 2020 and we’re just seeing feminine hygiene products using red dye instead of this fucking blue shit? We’re always so mortified by this human experience that half of the people on the planet go through. And you know what? At the same time you should be, because being female is a fairly horrific fucking experience in itself. So guess what? Why don’t you fucking look at it once in a while? For it to be labeled as shocking is just so boring to me.”

It would be bold even in 2020. That color matching company Pantone only last month released a new shade of red inspired by periods as part of a campaign to end menstruation stigma shows it very much still exists. So to be this open in discussing it in 2000 in a horror movie – traditionally assumed to be the playground of young men – was a brave move.

“I remember a friend of mine, his older brother had taken his friends to see it and he was like, [Isabelle does impression of bro-tastic young man] ‘Oh yeah, we were all screaming and throwing shit at the fucking screen and then we walked out. All this fucking women shit.’ I was like, ‘Cool. Thanks, buddy. Awesome.’ Fuck you! They thought they were going to see hot girl tits and werewolf stuff and they weren’t prepared for an actual look into what the female experience is like. And they couldn’t handle it. Pussies.”

Suddenly it’s like I’m talking to wolf-Ginger, fierce, articulate, full of fire, the Ginger that punches the mean girl in the face for hurting her sister, the Ginger that isn’t going to stand for any of your shit any longer, the Ginger that could tear the flesh from your bones if she wanted to. 

The metaphor of werewolf transformation and puberty is a no brainer to Isabelle.

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“You’re going along your life perfectly fine, something happens to you, boom. In one day, you have all these strange urges, you have all these weird thoughts. Your body is completely abandoning you and morphing into something else that you are not comfortable with,” she says. “It’s a complete betrayal of everything you know and how you feel. And it creates this monster in you that you have to reckon with and deal with. It’s a brilliant allegory.”

Ginger Snaps is body horror. It’s a movie about a woman’s own body destroying her from the inside out. Before she knows what’s really going on Ginger is bleeding, weak, crippled with cramps. Weird hair starts sprouting – a shaving scene really hammers home the horror of teenagers taking razors to their legs.

But with this pain comes power. Ginger is suddenly confident, beautiful, strong, the boys at the school all desire her and she knows it. She will take who she wants and do what she wants – there’s some serious wish fulfillment going on at the same time as the trauma of her transformation.

Being Ginger

It’s not really surprising that Isabelle is so like this iconic character. She says she had an immediate affinity to Ginger – both sides of Ginger, the troubled outsider as well as the she-wolf.

“At that time, I wasn’t a good enough actor to have acted it. I just had to be myself,” she laughs, “They showed a pieced-together trailer halfway through to the cast and crew and I had a complete panic attack. It was my first panic attack, and I was like, ‘I’m fucking this up.’ This is the best character in the best movie and I clearly have no idea what I’m doing. I’m obviously the worst, this is terrible. I’m ruining this, I should just die. So all of the insecurity and the manicness…”

This just in: it’s shit being a teenage girl. Even more so when you’re 17, on location without your mother for the first time and working 18 hour days. 

“I nearly fucking died!” she says. “Towards the end, it’s like a seven hour prosthetic piece when I’m full blown werewolf. I was living off of Oreos, McCain Deep Delicious Chocolate Cake, cigarettes, and Coca Cola. It was not good. And honestly, I wasn’t a good actor. So everything in that was just me being manic and sleep deprived and upset and insecure.”

Whatever was driving it Isabelle is excellent, flitting from difficult outsider with an undercurrent of fury to a whirlwind of teenage angst, sex, hunger, and violence that feels absolutely authentic.

Becoming the wolf

The effects are practical rather than CGI, which helps Ginger Snaps not to look dated on a rewatch. Ginger transforms gradually from woman to full blown wolf over days – she’s not a traditional werewolf who only becomes a wolf during the night of a full moon, instead once she turns fully she’s not coming back. Her different looks in the movie are cool and iconic – unsurprisingly Ginger Snaps cosplay is a ‘thing’ – which pleases Isabelle. The prosthetics procedure was somewhat less pleasing, however.

“I didn’t understand what the process was,” she says. “You see it in your head like you do when you read a book or whatever, or how the movie is going to be. You don’t think of the six hours on top of your 18 hour shooting day that you’re going to be inhaling alcohol-based paint until you’re high out of your fucking mind.”

The transformation came with other obstacles too.

“The process of losing my senses was a first for me. By the time I’m in the very late stage werewolf with the hair, the contacts and the claws, I can’t see anything, I can’t hear anything, I can’t smell anything, I can’t talk. I have fangs. I had to ADR most of the movie when I have fangs in. Because I had a lisp, so I’d be like, ‘Ask Tham. He’th the exthpert.’” She says, mimicking a line from the movie. 

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“It’s just terrible. I couldn’t touch anything and there is blood all over me, and it’s drying and I was trapped in my own body nightmare. You don’t really realize that when you go into it. So now when I read scripts, ever since then, I’m very like, ‘What does that exactly mean for the physical torture I will be experiencing through the duration of this?’ Let’s take a step back and just really look at this more closely,” she laughs. 

Pain and gain

Isabelle is funny – like Ginger, she has a dark sense of humor and though we genuinely get the sense that the shoot was traumatic (“We were all fucking ill and we were shooting nights for about three weeks in a row, so you do not see daylight. You lose your mind. It wasn’t quite Apocalypse Now, but it felt like that to me when I was 17.”), she’s got great stories. Like the time she gave herself a concussion… 

“There’s a scene where I slam my head on a desk and I was like, ‘Ginger probably really slammed her head on the desk.’ So I really did it a bunch of times and then woke up the next day with a fucking full on concussion headache. They had a doctor come in because I was fucked. He gave me Tylenol T3s and I took them on an empty stomach. I’m vomiting on set and they’re holding the roll, and I’ve got a bucket I’m puking into. And then immediately I had to do the slow motion walk down the hall scene. I was so fucked they had to put tape on the floor. I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I’m so mad every time I see that. I’m like ‘Fuck, you only get so many slow motion walking down the hallway looking cool and hot in your whole career, and you really fucked this one.’” 

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Of course, it doesn’t play that way on screen. It’s a key moment in the movie and even 20 years on, Ginger’s look still stands out. Costume designer Lea Carlson put together her outfits from thrift stores to create a kind of indie/goth cool with spot on accessories for an aesthetic that matched Ginger’s newly awakened give-no-fucks vibe.

“When that infection hits and she’s got that fucking attitude, it’s like, don’t we all wish we could just walk around with that attitude like a hero?” says Isabelle.

She says she can watch the movie now and enjoy it, though she couldn’t for a while.

”I haven’t seen it in 15 years because I tend to not revisit my most awkward moments on film as a teenager,” she laughs. But she now speaks fondly of this “wonderful sisterly love story.” 

Ginger and B

She and co-star Perkins had known each other “forever” before filming began, having even been born in the same hospital and gone to the same elementary school so they auditioned for Ginger Snaps together. Perkins as the younger Brigitte (even though Isabelle is actually four years younger than Perkins) is sympathetic, awkward, vulnerable, and eventually heroic and there’s an obvious chemistry between the two. Isabelle recalls how between one of the auditions and the first time director John Fawcett came out to meet them Emily had shaved her head.

”I was like, ‘What are you doing? You’ve fucked this for us!’, I didn’t even recognize her in the room. And then thank God, we got the part. And that’s why she’s wearing this wig, this very offensive wig throughout the film…”

Why did she shave her head during casting for this movie? We can’t not ask…

“I don’t know. I don’t know. She was having a moment. She’s a very smart, progressive woman, and she was feeling her oats,” Isabelle laughs.

Despite the traumas of the prosthetics and the shoot, Isabelle has clear affection for the movie and a character who rings incredibly true even 20 years later, largely because of her authentic performance  “It connects still to this day with people who weren’t even born when it came out. And that’s always shocking to me,” she says.

So what would today’s Katharine Isabelle tell her 17 year old self, 20 years ago?

“Oh, God. Fucking suck it up, you whiny bitch.” she says, all wolf-Ginger before swapping back to pre-transformation Ginger. “No, I would be like, ‘Yo, this is good, and you’re going to be okay. You’re gonna be good, and you’re not going to hate yourself as much as you think you do. And eventually, in 17 years, you’ll be able to watch this without having a total meltdown about how obviously terrible and insecure you are.”

She pauses.

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“Isn’t that what everyone says to themselves 20 years ago? ‘You’ll be okay, don’t be so insecure, believe in yourself, you got this?’ I think that’s what everyone would say to their younger self. Also, ask for more money.”

The post How Ginger Snaps Explored the Subversive Horror of Womanhood appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[slashers-hell]

Michael Myers’ Psychosexuality

Ok, so, I don’t know if this is already a thing, but I was rewatching the latest Halloween movie, and I noticed a few scenes in particular that stood out to me and can potentially give us clues about Michael’s sexuality or at least a reason why he kills in the first place. It has already been established that Michael Myers is basically pure evil able to walk; however, I think that reasoning is way too black and white. Rewatching the movie popped another idea in my head, one that has been often overlooked. 

I also want to clarify that I do not support the concept of him being brothers with Laurie Strode, and I only take the first and the latest movie into consideration in my analysis.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead including gory details.

In Halloween (2018), Michael kills 17 people in total. His first four kills after being locked up for 40 years occur when he’s being transported by a bus that happens to crash. It is very likely that Michael Myers himself is the reason for the crash, as we can later catch a glimpse of the bus driver’s corpse. The same applies to the bus guard who warns Michael’s next victim to run away instead of waiting for the police. 

So these first two kills take place off-screen, giving the viewers a hint that Michael is basically free and ready to go on a killing spree in Haddonfield. His next target is the little boy that has left the car to look for his daddy. Michael gets quickly rid of him on-screen in order to steal their car and have an easier time reaching Haddonfield. It is implied that Michael kills the father off-screen. Thus, the intention behind all these kills is clear. Michael doesn’t kill them out of his dark desire to do so but to further his goal.

Moving forward, Michael pays the two nosy investigative journalists a visit in order to get his mask back and probably because they annoyed him. Though there is a key moment that sparked my interest the most. When Michael arrives at the gas station where they have been taking a break, he brutally murders two people off-screen. The car mechanic to wear his suit and the employee guy. 

He proceeds to slowly approach Dana, the female journalist, who has been sitting on the toilet. Firstly, this alone is a huge violation of privacy since he doesn’t quietly wait for her to be done (why would he anyway?) but steadily walks inside and waits in front of the restroom door that she’s sitting behind. Dana repeatedly tells Michael---obviously unaware of who he really is---that she’s already in there. Instead of listening to her, though, Michael shows her the teeth of his previous victim(s) by letting them dramatically fall on the floor.

Oh.

Oh.

This is one of the ways Michael gets off. Sexually. He enjoys scaring beautiful woman, preferably teenagers. That’s why he is doing this and doesn’t just kill her. In fact, he didn’t have a particular reason to go and kill her first because she wasn’t even in his way per se. She was busy in the restroom, so why didn’t he kill Aaron first? He preferred shocking Dana with his same old creepy build-up tactics. He completely loves this. Michael lives for this. This is further highlighted at the end of the killing scene when Dana desperately crawls and attempts to escape from the stalls, and Michael starts dragging her by her feet. Aaron being alarmed after witnessing the two dead bodies follows them to the restroom, rushing to her aid. And what does Michael do? He kills him in one of the most disgusting and violent ways one could imagine, bashing him into the stall Dana is hiding in. And then... does he murder her as brutally as he murders Aaron? 

Nope.

Michael begins to choke her, and she makes orgasmic expressions. 

And that’s it.

He chokes her to death. Nothing more. No blood, no gore. None of that.

On another note, it is only implied in the movie but confirmed in the script that Dana and Aaron are lovers. So Michael kills a couple once again! Just like he killed his sister after seeing her with her boyfriend and killed the two friends of Laurie who were both in relationships!

On to the next part that intrigued me a lot and simultaneously gives huge hints about what Michael had to be thinking during these moments. 

Michael arrives in the suburban neighbourhood, surrounded by children who are trick-or-treating. He walks inside a home that he found on the way, holding a hammer in his hand; and he beats a middle-aged woman to death off-screen. He does this because he wants her kitchen knife. Plain and simple. No other motives. Then, he hears a baby crying and approaches but ends up sparing the baby’s life. Why does he do this? No, not because he has some sort of moral compass but because he has no reason to kill the baby.

First off, the baby is way too young and helpless to ever present itself as a real threat to Michael. Secondly, Michael obviously doesn’t care about babies. What he cares about is stalking young, attractive woman and getting off on that, and then eventually killing them. Thus, he ignores the baby and keeps on walking through the neighbourhood. This is when he suddenly comes across a beautiful woman that is dressed up in a sexy nurse costume.

Michael stands completely still and keeps staring at her to the point of her noticing him and staring back, evidently creeped out.

However, they are interrupted by her boyfriend. The couple ignores Michael’s presence and gets into their car. Michael turns around and faces a house in which another middle-aged woman is busy talking on the phone, reassuring her friend that she is safe. Seconds later, Michael has already broken in and stabs her in her throat. Now, the question is, why the fuck would Michael do this? He legitimately had no reason to kill her. So, is Michael just a psychopath who kills people on a whim? 

No. He doesn’t kill anyone on a whim.

His reaction was so strong because the couple reminded him of Judith, his older sister, whom he had killed at the age of six when he witnessed her having sex with her boyfriend. This triggered an equally violent reaction in Michael, and he was angered by the sight of a beautiful woman with another man. I will later come back to this thought. 

Next up, the following scene is an obvious nod to the first Halloween movie. Michael stalks Allyson’s teenage friend Vicky, who is supposed to babysit on Halloween night. 

So he watches her all the way to the point where her boyfriend arrives and shares a heavy makeout session with her.

But Julian---the kid she was supposed to babysit---is scared and asks her to look in his closet, claiming that he saw the bogeyman. When she does this, Michael gets the drop on her and stabs her to death. Dave rushes to help her, but he ends up being killed off-screen. The kid Julian seemingly escapes. Once again, this is what Michael enjoys. He had absolutely no reason to kill them other than the fact that he gets fucking off on this. This shit turns him on because he doesn’t know how to express his sexuality in other ways. He has voyeuristic and violent sexual fantasies that he fulfils by killing attractive girls, especially with their boyfriends.

Then, there is another important, telling scene. Michael stalks Allyson and Oscar. After he confesses his feelings to her, Allyson leaves angered by his attempts to make a move on her. Oscar is drunk and notices Michael standing next to a tree. He starts making a conversation with him and asks him: 

“Have you ever really liked a girl, and you just couldn’t have her?”

Why would they put this in unless this line was supposed to compare his situation to the situation of Michael’s obsession with Laurie? Michael really likes Laurie, but he can’t have her, so he wants her even more. He really liked these girls, but he can’t have them, so he kills them to express his sexual desire.

Later that night, he gets hit by a car in which Allyson is sitting, and Michael ends up killing his own psychiatrist and yet spares Allyson’s life. For now. 

He even watches Allyson get away to the forest. This would be Michael’s chance to kill her, easily so. Especially when she’s alone in a dark forest. But he chooses not to. He does this on purpose. Like I said, he fucking loves this. 

This game of cat and mouse, letting his victim escape and stalking them later. It’s fun to him. It potentially even turns him on and lets him fulfil his sexual lust.

Michael kills more policemen brutally including crushing his psychiatrist’s head with his boot like a watermelon and then arrives at his final destination. 

His favourite victim, his obsession: Laurie Strode. 

Once again, he is interrupted. This time, it is by Allyson’s dad, and he quickly murders him, putting no thought to it. He doesn’t stalk him like he stalked the babysitter or he stalked Allyson and even let her get away twice. Because he doesn’t get off on killing people he isn’t attracted to. They are merely a burden to him and need to get out of his fucking way as soon as possible to let him stalk his preferred victims and give him room to get off on that. 

Now that he found the Strode family, he couldn’t be more excited. This time, he is attacking right away. He starts choking Laurie like he did in the first movie and to many other female victims of his.

And the cat and mouse game continues. 

This is the fundamental theme of the movies, Michael stalking beautiful woman and getting off on that. He is evil so he has no guilt about murdering them, but he doesn’t murder them because he is evil---he murders them because it turns him on and serves as a sexual relief for him. Him being evil is merely a side effect. Michael doesn’t know how to express his sexuality in any other way. In his mind, he cannot have these girls. The only way of getting closer to them is to stalk and eventually murder them. So it is quite likely that Michael is a huge misogynist and hates women. But above that, Michael views them as objects of his violent desires. And that’s what leads him to kill them.

Keep in mind, this is only my personal interpretation so you can take it with a grain of salt. I have way more to analyse, especially because I left out many key moments from the first movie that partially had even stronger sexual themes. Anyhow, I hope whoever is reading this enjoyed it and has other questions/ideas/suggestions about Michael Myers!

[dailyarturia]

Instead of just rating servants, what about a rating of the different Fate storylines?

oh now THIS I can do

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. often called the most boring route which, I guess yeah because it’s the first route of the first game so it ends up being exposition central. it has its moments and it’s not bad per se but it hasn’t aged that well and the rest of the series has caught up with it since it’s not the entry point for new fans anymore so like half the route’s content and plot twists end up being stuff that is already known from other installments. I still think it’d be nice if ufotable made an ova or something just to complete the set, and also because heaven’s feel actually mirrors fate route on a lot of points so I feel the hf movies aren’t going to be at their best if you haven’t gone over fate route beforehand. if you skip over the outdated exposition you can easily fit all of it in ~10 episodes cause it’s pretty short. 6.5/10 if looked at on its own, but its importance as the base on which later routes build can’t be underestimated 

my personal favourite route even tho its heroine is the worst part of it. with fate route getting the exposition out of the way ubw can go at a faster pace and is more action oriented. the shirou-archer and related archer-lancer conflict is one of my favourites in all of fate and “here I come, king of heroes- do you have enough weapons in stock?” is ICONIC. rin got massively gimped as heroine cause nasu didn’t seem to dare actually letting her be flawed and shirou ended up too focused on his own conflict to form like a real bond with her but that’s a horse I beat to death long ago. the examination of what makes a hero is in general one of my fav themes in fate and ubw obviously delivers there but what I especially love in ubw is the theme of “don’t ‘welcome to the real world’ me asshole, the real world shouldn’t be like this”. 9/10 would be a 10 if rin had like, any character development

this one is... so stressful to read, which is GOOD cause that’s the point but that also means my reread is going at a pace of 3 scenes per 4 months. heaven’s feel throws every convention that fate and ubw set up out the goddamn window by immediately killing off like half the cast including powerhouses like gilgamesh and turning an ideological conflict into a really viscerally personal one. the final conflict isn’t a hero versus a world ending calamity, it’s a bunch of traumatised kids with bad blood between them and the rest of the world caught in the crossfire. “the embodiment of all the world’s evils was a victim” is a really powerful statement to make and where fate and ubw only really asked “what makes a hero” hf hammers in the corresponding question of “what makes a villain”. 8.5/10 it’s an incredibly strong thematic ending to the game as a whole but it’s just, not my favourite

jesus christ look what you did, you got me started. here’s a readmore to save your dashboard and rip mobile users cause I got some opinions on fate alright

this one fucking sucks if you look at it on its own it only works if you know fsn follows it otherwise its just DEATH DESPAIR PAIN SUFFERING yeah yeah we get it urobuchi. apparently he was going through a real bad depressive episode when he was asked to write zero and it was really cathartic to him to be able to write it as dark as he wants knowing that he can’t possibly ruin the happy ending of fsn so, I’ll give him that I guess. I thought it was the greatest shit when I first watched it cause uro’s really good at leveraging shock value but the flaws become more obvious with every rewatch. not really my favourite it’s mostly just asshole central and people who stan zero are usually insufferable but it’s got some good shit among the usual uro stuff. 7/10 PROVIDED you look at it in the context of fsn otherwise it’s like, a 5

BIG favourite and origin of my wife for life bazett fraga mcremitz. I read this one at the exact right time in my life to be absolutely destroyed by it. the whole game is based on the premise of ‘a second chance’ so it goes out if its way to go into the characters who got kinda shafted in fsn while also being the canon ‘everyone lives’ au. fsn has always underlined how valuable an ordinary life is that’s why we call it family dinner simulator 2004 but fha really hammers that one in. less outright action than fsn but a really strong and tense atmosphere. 9/10 would be a 10 if it weren’t for the fucking caren scene

basically revisits the themes from zero and stay night from a different angle but the cast is too large to really go into it so its clunky and a lot of characters end up sidelined. still it’s home to a lot of my favs and some of the coolest action in the whole series. I have a lot of apocrypha opinions but most of them boil down to who i want to hold hands with each other and how much I love sieg(fried) so I’ll spare you those. 7/10 thanks to shaky execution but if you take a shovel and make it that deep yourself it easily jumps up to 8 or even 9. don’t watch the anime I’m begging you.

the storyline actually suffers a lot from how linear and rigid the game structure is so its main selling point is hakuno and their bond with each of the 3 playable servants but by god does it deliver there. hakuno is one of my favourite protagonists of all time and it’s all in how they’re not going to take this shit lying down. it’s a game about forging bonds in a system designed to drive people apart and holding stubborn hope for the future. 9.5/10 the half point is as much acknowledgement of the game’s flaws as I am willing to give because we have decided to stan forever

lol what was that about linear structure? its like, super horny on main so it’s a hard sell but it basically turns everything I liked about extra up to 14. fate/extra CCC is a game about reaching out to others, how people are stronger together, how the future can be changed for the better as long as you are alive to see it, forming your own identity in the wake of trauma and learning who you are in relation to others as well as to your own past, healthy love and unhealthy love and recognising the difference between the two, and big fat anime titties. 10/10 i am not fucking kidding you if you can handle the horny CCC will be the best ride of your goddamn life.

look. i don’t want to get started on extella so just take the ratings. 8/10 concept 4/10 execution.

it’s incomprehensible garbage but it’s MY incomprehensible garbage 9/10 and 3/10 simultaneously

now we got some real mixed feelings on this bad boy here so I’ll try to keep it short. basically all the chapters up to and including london were mediocre at best with septem as the absolute peak of garbage. they actually said in interviews that they didn’t make a shift towards heavier story content until between london and america so that makes sense but it painfully shows. america camelot babylon salomon then exponentially increased in quality and were the fucking bomb. epic of remnant was a massively mixed bag thanks to all the guest writers with minimal supervision to buy nasu time to write lostbelt. lostbelt is fun again. the main story nowadays is really good quality because nasu is just doing what he does best and writing incomprehensible lore with a story around it but because of the game’s nature as mobile game that wants to make everyone appealing somehow it misses a lot of the visceral emotion that fsn had. events are often too silly even if they do end on a serious note and there’s not enough actual serious story content to balance it out so everyone kinda suffers from character erosion and I’m not sure if there’s an easy way to fix that, cause sure you can say ‘make nasu supervise it more’ but nasu’s always writing like 5 different things at once and he can’t really Do That. I think ultimately fgo has been good for fate as a whole in the story department and I also think a different direction/feel from earlier stuff isn’t bad in itself but the scale at which fgo works does seem like it’s beyond what nasu and co really expected to ever have to handle and so while the amount of successes has increased, the amount of failures has also become more glaring. 5/10 on the first few chapters, 8/10 on the later half of arc one and onwards, ???/10 overall, oh fate how I wish I could quit you (i don’t wish that i’m having a good time)

no

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 11 [Finale]: “I Want To Connect, So Sarazanmai”

Do you ever just watch an anime episode that’s So Much in so many different ways that it makes you immediately want to lay down and sleep for a hundred years, but in like a good and hopeful way?

Yeah.

It’s very fitting that the final episode title is technically self-referential nonsense that in practice makes complete emotional sense and leaves everything feeling neatly tied together. It just Works [tm].

Thoughts under the cut.

Even though they were in like 5% of this episode I just wanna immediately point out that Reo and Mabu are ALIVE and IN LOVE and my SKIN IS CLEARED. It didn’t exactly happen in the way I expected, but I was hoping that they’d get revived, and here we are. The finale gave absolutely no shits about actually explaining any of the lingering mysteries about them, but I can’t fault them for it when they gave them such an unambiguously happy ending together. And in practice it perfectly fit the dreamy, surreal, intensely emotionally-driven vibe of the whole finale. Seeing their connected rings morph into them flying through the air while holding hands and the sheer power of their gay love literally paving the way for the main trio to finally connect was one of those moments where you just gotta sit back and accept that Ikuhara’s throwing at you, lmao.

Realistically I thought they might get left off on a pretty bittersweet note like a lot of Ikuhara characters, but nah, they’re just straight up back to being alive and happy and they pretty much got to attend their daughter’s magical furry wedding, lmao. They didn’t even get their memories erased like I thought might happen, so the whole confession scene from ep10 is still perfectly intact and now that the whole otter thing’s dealt with, we can probably safely assume that the two of them made up and are back to being The Ultimate Couple. It also looks like the two of them and even Sara and Keppi are still hanging out in the human world, which is kinda unexpected. I thought that even in the best case scenario they’d all just head back to the kappa kingdom, but I guess since that doesn’t really exist anymore they’re just gonna stay in the human world. Reo and Mabu seem to be working as rickshaw drivers now, which makes it even more clear that they’re probably back to being more or less regular people and being part of regular human society, and they’ve probably given up their jobs as cops, which is nice.

None of this answers the still lingering question of ‘how the fuck does the manga even fit into the timeline aaaaaaa’, but I don’t care as much about finding out the answer to that after this finale, so it’s not a big deal. I guess we’re meant to think that it happened before the anime, though. My best guess is that Sara was intentionally sent into the human world as a baby to protect her from the kappa/otter war, or something, and then Reo and Mabu raised her, she magically turned into her teenage/adult self [in an instantaneous fairy tale-y kind of way], then she went back to the kappa kingdom for a bit, and I guess she arranged things with Keppi and had them get recruited into the kappa kingdom? I still think they’re humans that got roped into this like the main trio, so I think that makes sense to me.

Even more so than with the main trio, I think that those two getting a 100% happily ever after with no caveats or drawbacks really spells out how fundamentally optimistic and hopeful this series is, and how they were one way or another victims of a harsh system that didn’t deserve the shit they went through, and so they got given a happy ending. It’d be understandable if people feel upset that they got such a happy ending after having done undeniably awful things, but I don’t mind.

And on the topic of the main trio, hoo boy they sure were the main focus of this episode, lol. And by ‘them’ I mean ‘Toi’ because let’s be honest he was basically the actual main character of the show by the end, and the finale was like 99% focused on his character development specifically. Which isn’t a bad thing. Kazuki’s whole deal had already been more or less resolved by the end of ep6, so it makes sense that the second half in general focused more on Toi.

On the flip side, Enta kinda got the short end of the stick in terms of screen-time and development, and things end in a sorta wishy-washy way in regards to his feelings for Kazuki. It makes enough sense that his whole ending was about choosing not to drown himself in fruitless delusions, even if it feels kinda lame and disappointing compared to the more climactic and intense resolutions that Kazuki and Toi got.

Though tbh a big part of why I don’t feel too negatively about how Enta’s crush on Kazuki kinda fizzled into irrelevancy is because Reo and Mabu got their happy ending that preserved all of their character development, with the obvious implication that they’re back to being in a happy and stable romantic relationship. The fact that there’s at least one happy gay couple at the end of all this makes me much more willing to forgive Enta’s story being handled a bit differently. I mean, that’s part of the whole reason why diversity in storytelling is so important. When you include multiple different gay characters/relationships in your stories, you have the freedom to do different things with them, instead of having all the narrative burdens and expectations being placed on just one character/relationship. It’s annoying when the ONLY gay character in a show ends up having to repress and move on from their feelings, but it’s fine when there are other gay characters who get to have their own happy relationships.

Anyway, I really liked how Toi’s story wrapped up here. A lot of what actually happened in the finale was full on bizarre dream logic nonsense, but the emotional undercurrent of Toi being faced with the prospect of effectively committing suicide in order to free himself from the pain of human connection once and for all, and him coming to the realization on his own terms that he doesn’t want to let go of those connections, got through perfectly clearly. They actually went a lot further with his story than I expected. Literally further, in that we had a whole timeskip epilogue detailing how after the main story ended he went to juvie for a few years and then reunited with Kazuki and Enta when he returned. I’m going to assume that he turned himself in, since there shouldn’t have been any concrete evidence tying him to any of his crimes, except for maybe him shooting Reo [though even then, Reo’s corpse immediately transformed into one of those rings so I don’t think that counts as lasting forensic evidence, lmao]. It was definitely the most brushed-over part of the finale, but it didn’t need to be focused on that much, since the more important part was him reuniting with the other two afterward.

And in terms of timeskips and whatnot, I really loved the whole potential future flashforward sequence showing a what-if scenario of the three of them becoming professional soccer players and being slowly torn apart by interpersonal drama, while the different episode title cards are re-used in this new context to show how their emotional issues and hang-ups might lead to that sort of negative outcome. It did a really nice job of illustrating how they’re willing to face the possibility of future pain in order to hold onto their connections with each other. Which is what the entire show had been building up to, really. It was all about them becoming able to face the harsh realities of being known in order to lead fulfilling lives with meaningful personal relationships.

I do kinda wish their older selves looked a bit more distinct from their base designs, though. Aside from the difference in outfits you can barely tell that they’ve grown up, lol.

I was initially planning on rewatching episode 1 after this, but honestly after what actually happened I don’t really think I’d actually get anything new out of episode 1 now. The very first scene of the show is still a bit of a mystery, even though it’s obviously based around a lot of visual imagery and cinematography from the finale, and the whole deal with the ‘A’ signs is still up for interpretation. But I don’t really think it’s super important one way or another.

I’m actually very happy that the ending didn’t involve any sort of time travel, and that that’s not what the first scene of the show was hinting at. Especially with how this finale really hammered in the importance of living with the consequences of your actions and accepting the future for what it is, it would have felt very cheap if anything got reset in the end.

I guess it’s also worth noting that, at least with the main trio, there weren’t any romantic developments, which I think was fine. With how the story had been building up to this point I think it was fairly obvious that their ending was gonna be more about friendship alone. Which might disappoint some people [and the whole topic of Enta’s unrequited crush on Kazuki is it’s own whole thing], but at the very least, Reo and Mabu got their happy romantic ending together, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out, lol.

Part of me wants to be disappointed that we didn’t really learn anything new about Sara, and that she didn’t exactly, uh, DO anything even in this final episode, but honestly I feel like that’s kinda ‘the joke’. Like, she and Keppi come across as a super tongue in cheek joke about the fairy tale concept of princes and princesses. Sorta like how the Utena movie made the ‘prince’ into a complete joke, Sara and Keppi are just there to be funny plot devices, and their big ending is that they have a big fat furry wedding and that’s that. And honestly that’s fine by me. I feel like Ikuhara’s whole artistic career has involved him becoming more and more flippant and dismissive about the concepts of princes and princesses and how much importance is placed on them in fiction, and that’s valid. It reminds me a bit of how all of the actual major characters are all queer dudes and their relationships with each other are the actually important part of the narrative, whereas straight characters like Sara and Keppi and all the different faceless kappa zombie dudes are mostly just joke characters. There’s something both deeply amusing and deeply vindicating about how this show turns the tables like that, with how it frames different types of love and relationships.

The main trio’s story ended up being not super tied into what the show has to say about sexuality in general [and overall the show is less specifically ‘about’ that than Yuri Kuma Arashi was, from what I understand], but there was definitely a whole lot of social commentary about homophobia going on with Reo and Mabu, and thankfully that part of the narrative came to a satisfying and genuinely subversive ending, with them overcoming the death imposed upon them and regaining their happy lives together. 

Now I’m hoping that Ikuhara will ‘complete the set’, so to say, and have his next anime be about trans/non-binary characters, especially after how Kazuki’s whole cross-dressing thing ended up being kinda unimportant and not about gender identity to begin with. Which is still kinda disappointing to me, but oh well.

Overall, this ending was almost aggressively happy and optimistic compared to what I was bracing myself for, so thankfully it’s left me feeling warm and fuzzy and content. All in all, it was a surprisingly straightforward story in terms of it’s central messages, in spite of it’s over the top and abstract framing, and I think it really benefited from that inherent simplicity, especially in this finale, which was so singularly focused on it’s central trio [and mostly just Toi’s perspective alone]. I was a bit worried the finale might turn into one of those things where a deeply personal conflict gets blown up and tied into literally world-ending stakes, but thankfully they didn’t go unnecessarily far with it. Even the kappa/otter war resolution barely involved the main trio themselves.

At least in hindsight, I think the anime was very tightly woven and was paced surprisingly well for it’s short episode count, and it’s hard to imagine how they could have spent much more time on the main trio, but now that we have a better idea of the timeline of the series, I really think that episode 6 should have been followed up by an episode that basically adapted the ReoMabu manga, plus parts of the twitter account, and the short chapter from the first light novel volume about how they met. That way it would have ended up with a nice round 12-episode length, and I don’t think it would have ‘spoiled the surprise’ of the later reveals and developments with Reo and Mabu. I just think it would have been really good to actually cover that in the anime itself, especially since even in the finale, the whole fact that they literally raised Sara as a baby never got addressed, so it feels like anime-only viewers are missing out on a big chunk of their story. But it’s not a huge deal.

I guess at the end of the day my feelings about the finale boil down to ‘Reo and Mabu are alive and happy and that’s literally all that matters to me’, lol.

I was really worried about how I’d be left feeling after this, but I’m happy that I’ve been following this series ever since it was first announced. This is the only time I’ve watched an Ikuhara show as it’s come out, and oh boy has it been an emotional roller-coaster. The fact that it ended in a satisfying way makes it all feel worth it, though.

I probably won’t get to it immediately since I think my brain needs time to recover from this one, but sometime soon I want to finally get around to watching Penguindrum and then Yuri Kuma Arashi. I don’t think I’ll liveblog them like I’ve been doing with Sarazanmai, though, if only since I’ve already been spoiled on bits and pieces of what happens in them, but we’ll see how it goes.

[elcorhamletlive]

MCU Rewatch: Age of Ultron

Those first few moments at the beggining of the battle are kind of dull, but I do love the shot of all the original six together.

I like the “language” line. I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but to me it works because of how obviously shocked Tony is by it and how Steve himself recognizes he’s kind of playing into his own stereotype when he goes “...I know”. I think it’s fun banter.

I also love that he throws his motorcycle at a car just before he says “it just slipped” lol.

There’s a very weird “people outside the U.S. resent the Avengers” subtext going on in this movie that is just too shallow for the theme it’s serving. It’s something that I see in fandom sometimes too, and it always rings kind of hollow because it’s like people trying to be “woke” without actually understanding what imperialism is and how it works (that’s also where a lot of Bad Takes about CW come from, but I digress). I feel like the movie just kind of puts it in the middle of the larger “are we monsters?” theme, but it really doesn’t work if it’s not properly explored.

I love that Steve lands on his feet after Pietro throws him up in the air LOL. Acrobat Steve is very present in Avengers movies in general, which I appreciate.

I looove the move of Thor slamming the shield with his hammer. It’s so clever and so cool.

“Please be a secret door, please be a secret door... yay!” So cuuute.

The emphasis Tony’s vision places on Steve is downright amazing. Tony straight to him, checks his pulse and no one else’s. Hears his voice talking. I live.

Wanda definitely sees the vision she gave Tony, but I don’t think she necessarily crafted it. This is an important detail for no one but myself and my endless wip-creating mind that still wants to write a fic of these two.

It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but Steve is helping Clint on the quinjet when they’re going home. 

Thor’s report on the Hulk is amazing.

“How is he doing?”/”Unfortunately, he’s still Barton” LOL.

Everyone’s outfit in the party scene is so on point, and then there’s Natasha with that weird skirt.

Also, that kind of goes without saying, but I love everything about the party scene. So many small and fun interactions, and the seeds to Steve’s home arc are laid out. It’s nice.

I love everything about Steve’s characterization in this movie, in fact. Him talking to Bruce is so sweet, and he’s also helping Nat as well by doing it. I love.

Everyone attempting to lift Mjolnir is the best part of this movie. Rhodey and Tony trying together. Steve managing to move it. Thor by the end with his “you’re not worthy” line. It’s perfect.

I love that Hill just has a gun on her at all times.

Oh my god Bruce falling with his face in Natasha’s cleavage is so cringe-worthy.

Aside from that I love the fight with the Iron Legion scene. Steve using the table as a shield, Tony using the fondue fork to attack a robot. Very good.

I’m sorry I’m not trying to get into Discourse but in the scene right after the fight? Tony is completely in the wrong and I literally can’t fathom someone watching that scene and thinking he’s a poor misunderstood baby in need of protection.

I do GET the complaint about how Whedon wrote Tony here, though, because the whole laughing and pretending it was funny was just a very, very dick moment that did feel a little forced. I feel like maybe if we had gotten one extra scene exploring how the vision played with his ptsd and anxiety (or even him just dwelling a little on the vision itself) it would’ve worked better, because then we’d see Tony’s emotions at play a little clearer.

Hnnnnng and there’s it is. “Together”. The moment I turned into absolute certified garbage. Tony’s FACE.

I do like that the Maximoffs interactions with Ultron kind of set up how they’re in over their heads with this whole thing. It’s also shown when they try and epically fail to intimidate Klaue.

Ultron’s whole “I’m not like Tony” thing while also saying things Tony would say is another weird element that never really pays off. It’s just... there.

I will forever love the “pretending you can live without a war” line, and how it ties with Steve’s vision. How the camera flashes sound like shots and wine stains look like blood. How Peggy asks him to “imagine” going home and then the room goes empty because he CAN’T. I really love it.

I feel like Clint’s family is kind of a weird plot point and it plays into some tropes that I don’t really like (like, we don’t know anything about these characters, but we’re supposed to care because they’re the stereotypical Nuclear Family and this makes them important), but Tony’s “these are.. smaller agents” line almost makes it worth it. lol

Clint staring out at Steve and Tony thoughtfully while saying “maybe they’re my mess” is the most relatable moment of the entire MCU.

I feel like BruceNat could have worked a little better if Ruffalo had made Bruce seem actually attracted to her, as opposed to incredibly uncomfortable every time she comes on to him. And she comes on so strongly, it eventually gets awkward because of how one-sided it feels.

And hoo boy there’s the “I’m sterile” talk. I really don’t think Whedon meant to equate infertile women with monsters here, but the way the dialogue is written, it’s kind of the impression that gives off. It’s uncomfortable.

LOG-RIPPING SCENE, YES!! I have a lot of Feelings about how Tony deliberately pokes at Steve because he thinks Steve seems to be doing okay (because Steve is hard to read for him), and how he doesn’t seem to notice that the whole “go home” thing hits Steve really hard. And he is being honest and trying to communicate, he just... can’t see it, and Steve doesn’t know about the vision, so it can’t really get anywhere. 

I will say that this movie is definitely missing a scene where Tony TELLS the others (or even just Steve) about his vision. Like, it feels that the resolution can’t be complete without it, because Tony’s fear can’t be fully addressed if it’s never out in the open. I enjoy Tony’s scene with Fury (and I love him calling the tractor “dear”) but I feel like this moment was necessary.

Tony gives a cute smile at Steve’s silly “craziest thing science ever made was me” line :D

Okay, the Thor subplot is completely unnecessary. I know it sets up the Infinity Stones, but it could have been waaay shorter. And the second fight before they create Vision is so dumb. There’s no reason for Tony to just jump into creating Vision AGAIN without even TALKING to everyone else. I’m on board with pretty much everything Stony-related in this movie, but this is unnecessary, dumb conflict that didn’t need to be there.

All the pseudo-philosophy that comes out of Ulton’s mouth is just so weird and artificial. It doesn’t fit with the quippiness he’s supposed to have inherited from Tony, and the result is that when he needs to seem scary he just sounds kind of stupid.

I do love Clint’s speech to Wanda, though. And Natasha talking about the view. These are nice moments.

Awww the “captain’s orders” guy from TWS is at the helicarrier! I had never noticed that.

The fact that Tony echoes the “together” warms my heart, and I do feel it provides some resolution for his argument with Steve - as in, he gets his point, they should work as a team. But I still wish there had been an actual turning point where we could see Tony understanding that, instead of just jumping from point A to point B.

Pietro’s death is so hollow because we just don’t spend enough time with him to truly care, but I like Wanda’s scream destroying all the bots around her. And also her ripping off Ultron’s heart.

I do like the last talk between Ultron and Vision, too. Paul Bettany just sells it to me.

Steve and Tony and their dumb bantering because of Mjolnir is too cute.

ALSO: When Tony says “I’m gonna miss him. And you’re gonna miss me”, like... It feels like he kind of throws it out as a joke, and then immediately adds the “manful tears” comment. And then Steve says “I will miss you, Tony”, and you can see for a second the little look he gives, like, “yeah?” like he can’t really believe it at first. And then when he asks if Steve is okay... I feel like this is a rare moment where they actually manage to understand each other a litte more, through these small glimpses, but it’s all still very tentative, very hesitant but still very sincere. I love this scene to bits, especially the last line.

“It’s a very nice wall” is the WEAKEST snark ever omg Steve. Nat absolutely drags him by calling him and Tony out in response lol

I actually do like this movie. It has many flaws, it’s not as tight as the first Avengers by any means, but ultimately I enjoy it and I think the hate it gets is a little unfair, even if I get where it comes from.

[thiskindofshootingstar]

Spoiler Culture isn't New or Bad, You Guys Just Like to Hate on Pop Culture

Okay, I have a major issue with people talking shit about "sPOiLeR cuLtUre" ruining media (and almost always using the MCU and the Russo brothers as examples)

Because there is a difference between having a twist or major character death in a piece of media that you've been excited to experience for the first time being spoiled so that you can't experience the emotional journey as intended but you'll still see it anyway just will go in differently and everything will be tinged with that knowledge of what is coming and it changes the experience of the media without ruining the story

and a piece of media being built solely on shocking their audience so that if the plot points or ending gets out it completely negates people's desire to watch it and literally ruins the entire piece for the audience because it was cheap and there was no building or lasting emotional journey and impact, it was all done for the shocking ending that nobody saw coming and thus won't watch again because it's pointless *cough* gameofthrones *cough*

I have read stories about people reading Harry Potter, and waiting in line at a book store to get the sixth book the day it came out, and then some absolute asshole that flipped to the end just shouts out that Dumbledore dies spoiling it for everyone that was so excited to read the book! Does that make JK Rowling a bad writer because people had the sixth book spoiled? Does that lessen the writing of the book and make it "cheap" because there was a twist at the end that you didn't see coming until it happened and then it all made sense?

The answer is a big, fat, resounding, NO

I don't care if we all know that Harry defeats Voldemort, but reading/seeing Harry sacrifice himself in order to do so, in order to protect his friends, is so powerful and heart wrenching, that experience would've been less so and dare I say ruined if people spoiled that beforehand with declarations or gifs before someone had read or seen it. If I had known Charlie died in Lost, that Zuko jumped in front of a lightning bolt to save Katara, that Jake was going to propose to Amy during the Halloween Heist before seeing it, when I was eagerly following the series, I would've been so upset and it would've changed how I experienced the series' and those scenes. Because everyone wishes they could go back to re-read or re-watch their favorite series for the first time again because it's a completely different experience going through something for the first time, not knowing what happens and feeling the joy or fear or tension or heartbreak as something happens, versus going back through knowing what happens and reading or watching everything with that knowledge. Rewatches and rereads are fun, don't get me wrong, ESPECIALLY when it's a well crafted story wherein going back through you pick up on little hints and foreshadowing that you completely missed or dismissed the first go through but now you know and it gives it that much more meaning. But if you start out knowing, and looking for all those signs ahead of time, you've missed out on experiencing it for the first time. And what spoilers do, is they take away that first time from you before you even get to watch it or read it.

And honestly this is why I hate people harping on the MCU for trying to avoid spoilers

Because if I had been told that 100% Tony Stark dies sacrificing himself to save everyone and Steve Rogers wields Mjolnir and then goes back in time to live his life and passes the shield onto Sam... I would've been disappointed. Not because it ruined the movie-- on the contrary I would've been relieved and happy to know that, because I like that and wanted some of those things to happen--but because I didn't get to experience those big moments in real time: the pure excitement at seeing Cap wield the hammer for the first time, the tension of the big battle worrying for my favorites and dreading to see which one(s) succeeded in sacrificing themselves for the world, the pure and sudden grief at seeing Tony dying and his loved ones saying goodbye. And I went into Endgame, just like everybody else, expecting Tony and Steve to die. I was honestly more shocked that Steve lived than I was that Tony died. But if someone had told me flat out with 100% certainty or if I had seen gifs of these scenes before I saw the movie I would've been upset because that surge of emotion at experiencing something as it happens would've been taken from me because the first experience wouldn't have been seeing mjolnir fly back to... Captain America! On a giant screen in a packed theater where everyone screamed and clapped and lost their minds! (Even though I read the comics where Steve wielded mjolnir) Instead it would've been a shitty quality 3 inch 3 second looping animation seen alone with no narrative build or tension. The pure enjoyment of that scene would've been spoiled. And not in the way of making it pointless, because you can bet your soul I will watch that scene 100s of times and reblog every gif I see of it. But because I didn't get to see it the way I wanted to, the way it was intended.

And here's the thing. 99% of the population does NOT want the plot points of their favorite shows and movies and books spoiled for them. Creators actually reaching out to encourage people to be respectful of others who aren't able to buy tickets the day they go on sale or go to the pre screening or wait in line for hours is a GOOD thing. Would you prefer that the Russos sent out a fucking postcard with Steve holding mjolnir and Tony wearing the Gauntlet a year before the movie came out? No, you wouldn't. Just like you would've hated if JK Rowling put Dumbledore's death on the cover of book six, or the Avatar season 3 preview showed Zuko's coronation with Aang by his side. It's not Marvel's fault it's the big pop culture series this decade (well technically it is because they make fun movies but you know what I mean), but it is, and I guess that means it's the one that gets pointed to when someone wants to criticise pop culture (never mind that DC is the same way but the only difference is no one actually cares enough to worry about spoilers for their movies). Because ultimately that's what it all boils down to, all the claims about *insert popular fantasy/scifi series with a happy ending here* is ruining art and culture are just elitist critiques that either think life is pointless and thus media should be too or that art should be conceptual and everything should be a theme or a metaphor or a reflection, both lines of thinking get off at being the "only ones that get it" i.e. no one likes what they like because it actually elicits no emotional reaction.

The only reason people speak out against "spoiler culture" now is because of the internet. Because let's face it, when half blood prince came out you were unlucky to be at a place where a jerk decided to spoil the ending just for kicks. But in this day and age, you can't go to work or drive your car or check the weather without seeing things about the latest movie or episode. So creators have to make an effort to keep things under wraps so that people are able to enjoy and experience things like they're intended to be experienced by the audience for the first time. And as a writer I can tell you that if I wrote something that was then spoiled for my fans I would be sooo upset. Because people put effort into stories and even though everyone will have different opinions on them, the one constant is the structure, the chronological, time-based nature of stories that everyone is supposed to experience the same way, in the same order.

So you can keep your cold takes that "spoiler culture" is ruining media and storytelling. Because it's not. (Forbes literally said Endgame was a better movie than last year's Oscar winner.) The only thing ruining media is creators not caring about their audiences or their content.

[junker-town]

I rewatched Game 5 of the 2004 ALCS and it was magical

It took nearly six hours and 14 innings, but the Red Sox made it happen. 

My heart sank when my baseball-loving kid asked when we were going to watch a game again. Then I remembered after the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series I bought the full set of games on DVD, including the entire American League Championship Series. Having never actually watched any of the discs, I vaguely remembered stashing them in a box that had somehow made its way from Philly to Boston by way of several Cambridge apartments.

Eureka! I still had them.

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

We started with Game 4 of the ALCS against the Yankees because even in a quarantine I wouldn’t bother with the first three games. My kid soon became familiar with Papi, Manny, and the whole gang of Idiots. He promptly proved his Masshole bonafides, yelling, “Come on Millah!” when Kevin Millar came up to bat in the ninth against Mariano Rivera. For the record, neither my wife nor I have a Boston accent and he doesn’t either. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a proud moment.

My wife, incidentally, couldn’t care less about baseball, but she has fond memories of staying up late with her friends, living and dying with every pitch. When Dave Roberts stole second, she screamed like it was happening in real time.

Game 4 was iconic, of course. The whole sequence belongs in a time capsule. Starting with Millar’s walk to Dave Roberts’ steal through Bill Mueller knocking the great Mariano Rivera off the mound with the game-tying single like he was Charlie Brown in a Peanuts strip. And then, much, much later, Big Papi’s home run. Game 6 was even more famous with the whole bloody sock thing, while Game 7 was just pure cathartic release.

But Game 5 — holy shit, Game 5. I had forgotten how magically insane it was. Over 14 innings and almost six hours, it was like watching a slow-motion nightmare unfold only to emerge in a blissy dream state where unicorns are real and it ain’t over ‘til Big Papi takes a swing.

To set the scene, Game 4 ended after midnight, meaning Game 5 took place literally the same day. Your starters were Mike Mussina and Pedro Martinez, making perhaps his last start in a Boston uniform.

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

The Sox took an early 2-0 lead but couldn’t bust out a big inning against Mussina, who settled down and pitched a gem. Martinez was also dealing, but that pitch count was rising higher as we got to the sixth with the Sox leading, 2-1, which is when I started taking notes.

Martinez is getting up near 100 pitches. I forgot that after 100 pitches he turned into Ramiro Mendoza. Thankfully, Joe Buck is here to remind us. Tim McCarver thinks pitch counts are overrated and now I’m yelling at McCarver to shut the fuck up. (For future reference, STFUTM will serve as shorthand.)

Earlier, he told an incredibly random story about Trinidad Hubbard that made absolutely no sense. Hard to believe, but there really was a point when McCarver was an insightful announcer. Happens to all of them, eventually.

Martinez gets Bernie Williams to pop up, but Jorge Posada reaches on a quirky infield single and Ruben Sierra follows with another hit. I’ve seen this movie before. It ends badly. Tony Clark strikes out and now it’s up to Miguel Cairo. Martinez just hit Cairo to load the bases. 2004 me is yelling at Terry “Tito” Francona: “GET HIM OUTTA THERE, FRANCONA.”

Photo by Linda Cataffo/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Tito leaves Martinez in to pitch to Jeter and Buck notes that Jeter hasn’t put his stamp on this series yet. Oh God. The inside-out swing. The slicing line drive landing in right. Three runs are going to score. I’ll go to my grave saying Prime Nomar was better, but it would really help if Captain Intangibles stopped doing stuff like this.

Looked like Cairo may have been out at the plate, but it’s real close. You know what this game doesn’t have? Replay review. There were at least eight plays by my count that would have been subject to replay review and this game would still be playing if that was the case. We got along fine without reviewing every close play and I would like to return to that nebulous state of affairs when the world stops burning.

You know what else this game doesn’t have? Fans on cell phones. Everyone is hanging on every pitch and it’s beautiful. I know this because the broadcast keeps cutting away to the stands and I’ve seen the same woman clasping her hands in prayer between pitches a dozen times. Pretty sure I’ve seen her at the Fresh Pond Trader Joes.

LOL, Martinez plunked Alex Rodriguez just because he could. McCarver doesn’t like it. STFUTM. Now Gary Sheffield walks to load the bases. Um, Tito? I think you can go get him now. Francona leaves Martinez in and he gets Hideki Matsui to fly out. Good job, Tito.

The Yankees had a chance to break it open in the eighth, but Mike Timlin gets A-Rod to pop up with a runner on third and one out. This was A-Rod’s chance to be a True Yankee and he blew it. Shame, really.

On we go to the bottom of the eighth and it’s time for the WebMD update. Today’s injury is a broken heart. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.

Photo by Keith Torrie/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

Here comes Papi and he takes Tom Gordon over the Monster and off the Volvo sign. I miss the Volvo sign. Now Millar, who draws another walk. Dude could take a walk like nobody else. Roberts comes in to pinch run and Gordon throws over a half dozen times. He’s clearly rattled. It’s happening again.

We’ve officially reached the moment where Francona becomes a super genius. Everyone keeps expecting Roberts to steal second, but Tito calls for the hit-and-run and Trot Nixon executes it perfectly sending a line drive single to right center. God bless that dirtbag right fielder.

First and third, nobody out and Joe Torre calls on Rivera. Officially this will go down as a blown save when Jason Varitek lofts a sacrifice fly to center to tie the game, 4-4, but this is on Gordon. No Yankee ever scared me more than Mariano. Salute to him.

When McCarver gets what he considers a profound thought in his head, he slows his cadence for dramatic effect. Then he repeats himself like he’s delivering a dugout sermon from Whitey Herzog.

“After 169 games and eight innings, the Red Sox season comes down to one inning,” McCarver tells us before the ninth. “One inning.” Oh Tim, we’re just getting started.

Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Keith Foulke is on to pitch the ninth. He worked 2 ⅔ the night before and will pitch tonight and then again in Game 6. Foulke threw 14 shutout innings during the postseason and was never the same. He gave up his career for this postseason run and was never properly appreciated because he made some crack about fans the following season that caused everyone to turn on him. Here’s to you, Keith Foulke. I have no idea how you ever got anyone out, but you were nails.

In the ninth, Tony Clark hit a ball to right that somehow crawled up the short fence and landed in the stands. Had it stayed in play, Ruben Sierra would have scored and the game would have been over. Sixteen years later, the universe hates Boston and its run of championships, but in 2004, this was all strange and new. Kind of miss those days.

Bronson Arroyo, fresh off getting hammered in Game 3, strikes out A-Rod and Sheffield en route to a clean 10th inning. The strike zone, by the way, has been a tad inconsistent. It’s hard to tell because there’s no K-Zone or pitch tracking and again, that’s totally fine! Maybe we were better off not knowing everything all the time.

Even though I know how this is going to turn out, I keep expecting Papi to hit a home run every time he comes up to hit. Instead, he strikes out.

On we go to the 12th and it’s Tim Wakefield time. The knuckleballer’s normal catcher/binky is Doug Mirabelli, but Tito rides with Varitek, who has absolutely no idea how to catch a knuckleball. Super genius.

Cairo singles to left and Manny kicks it like only Manny can, allowing Cairo to get to second. My kid smacks his forehead and says, “Oh, Manny.” He doesn’t even know the half of it. Fortunately, Jeter flies out and so does A-Rod. Crisis averted.

The Sox have stopped hitting. This seems bad.

Photo by Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images

Ah, the 13th. Nothing bad can happen here. Sheffield is swinging for the Mass Pike. He’s legitimately terrifying. Somehow, Wakefield strikes out Sheffield with a nasty knuckler that Varitek misplays into a passed ball. I remember thinking at the time, “This is how it’s going to happen. This is how they’re going to kill us.”

Two outs now and Matsui’s at first. Whoops, another passed ball. Now he’s at second. Intentional walk to Posada. Everyone at Fenway is nervous as hell. My wife comes into the room and starts watching. Now she’s nervous.

ANOTHER passed ball puts runners on second and third. Missed opportunity by McCarver to say something profoundly stupid like, “Johnny Pesky held the ball. Varitek can’t catch the ball.” Actually, that would have been pretty good.

Seriously though, one more miscue from Varitek and he’s Mike Torrez combined with Bill Buckner. Somehow, somehow, Wakefield strikes out Sierra and Varitek miraculously holds on. Fenway erupts. My wife cheers. “Mom, you know what’s going to happen,” my kid says but none of us care. This was the greatest game I ever saw and even now it doesn’t seem real.

Photo by Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

OK, now the 14th. Esteban Loiaza is on to pitch for the Yankees and he’s somehow become Whitey Ford. His cutter is filthy. Johnny Damon, who has done absolutely nothing this series, draws a walk.

Two outs and here’s Manny. I always loved Manny in these spots because a) he’s a great hitter and b) he’s completely impervious to pressure. God, this is a great at-bat. He’s fouling off quality pitches and laying off sliders just outside the zone. Manny gets his walk and trots to first like it’s a game in June against the Orioles. Here comes Papi.

It took 10 pitches for Ortiz to end Game 5 with a bloop single to center off the handle of the bat. He fought off nasty cutters and sent one about 420 feet screaming into right that went foul. My wife is tense. My kid is yelling, “Come on, Papi!” Finally, the big man does his thing and Johnny Damon comes home from second with the winning run.

Buck had a great call. “Damon can keep right on running to New York.” McCarver immediately blows it by saying, “He didn’t do it again, did he?” Dramatic pause. “He did.” Thanks, Tim. Oh, and STFU.

Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

By the way, there’s no off day because there was a rainout prior to Game 4. I have no idea how either one of these teams turned around and played again the next night, but I’d give anything for another marathon Red Sox-Yankee game right about now. Thank Papi, I still have the DVDs.

[originaljediinjeans]

MCU Rewatch: “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015)

This post isn’t as long as the one I wrote for Avengers but it’s still pretty long.

In all fairness, after The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it was fair to expect Age of Ultron to be just as good, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise that it wasn’t.

But some kind of end-credit scene would have been nice.

The Bartons’ farmhouse has a very nice kitchen

The real villain of the film is the Mind Stone. The opening shot of the film is the Sceptre. The Mind Stone created Ultron and gave him his incentive to destroy the world and attack the Avengers--whether due to some scientific reaction or intentionally. Re: my theory that the Infinity Stones should be regarded as actual “characters”, AoU demonstrates it

The main characters are: the Maximoff twins, Tony Stark, and Clint Barton. 

The Avengers

By the time the film opens, the Avengers have been taking down Hydra and they’ve been unstoppable.

The team has a working relationship with JARVIS--we see at least Steve talking to him

Their teamwork is incredible. Steve is sharing his shield with Nat. I’m sure she’s not the only one but we got her doing it onscreen and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Also Clint tossing the Shield to Steve; the team throwing the robots to each other to beat up, it’s great to watch

The scene in Klaue’s hideout: the big 3 confront Ultron while Clint and Nat are waiting in the shadows

“Code Green” only happens occasionally, not every time

Does that mean Banner plays the “man in the chair” on other occasions from the QuinJet?

On their various missions, they have fought other “enhanced” people

The Avengers have their own satellite. It’s not just Veronica on there, they’ve got surveillance and stuff. It probably helps with their communications.

Wolfgang von Strucker let the other Hydra bases be found bc they didn’t concern him or his experiments. But he didn’t think the Avengers would come for them. An arrogant miscalculation.

But he’s also a coward

Hydra has always more or less wanted an army of super-humans. They weren’t satisfied with just the Winter Soldier--and how could they be?

Ulysses Klaue was in contact with Strucker and they had talked very recently

Golly these people are just disturbing

The Maximoff twins are indeed punks

Tony Stark:

By the end of the film, Steve takes Thor and Tony’s word for it that alien threats are still out there. But Steve doesn’t understand how seriously Tony takes that threat and how personally it affects him

Part of it is because no one was really listening in the scene after Ultron awakens when Tony talked about those fears. As soon as he said “Do you all remember when I went through a wormhole?” they thought he was expressing self-pity. They told him to minimize those fears at least momentarily because Ultron was the bigger issue at the moment.

Also Tony never told the rest of the team about the dream Wanda gave him. 

Probably because he didn’t think they would listen. Chances are, he was right on that count.

Steve and Tony aren’t super-close friends like the way Steve and Bucky used to be. But they were friends. They had a cordial working relationship. So those of you saying Tony in Civil War saying “So was I” was an arrogant assumption are incorrect--but those of you saying Steve at least owed Tony some personal loyalty are also correct.

Tony’s dream: Why didn’t you do more? Tony isn’t just afraid of aliens returning. He’s afraid of his own inadequacy. He’s afraid of failure.

Tony knows the team doesn’t understand what he’s been through. Tony also knows that the team doesn’t understand what the possibility of a permanent solution means: because some of them don’t have real “homes” to go to. And Tony kind of wants to end the personal hell he’s been living in for the last seven years. If he can. I think by the end of this movie Tony realizes that maybe finding something to replace the Avengers isn’t the best idea

There also is kind of something suspicious about him creating an AI that immediately attacked him and his friends. Maybe the Mind Stone tapped into Tony’s self-loathing and his...distrust of the others. IDK how that would already have been written into Ultron but remember we are dealing with cosmic forces here

It’s nice that even without an AI that Tony still has working internet in his suits

Ulysses Klaue knew Tony Stark well enough to recognize one of his catchphrases. What aren’t you telling us, Tony? (Chances are I don’t wanna know, actually)

Trying to harness forces that you don’t understand to solve your personal problems and everybody else’s problems is just a terrible way to deal with life

Watching Tony attempt that is not fun.

The Banner-to-Hulk and back transformation is painful and uncomfortable

Strucker had a chitauri slug monster in that vault. Tony’s PTSD was triggered as soon as he entered the room. Wanda just pushed him over the edge.

Thor had been looking for the sceptre since SHIELD fell. You have to assume that SHIELD had it in some kind of security--or they thought they did. All Strucker had to do was to contact the right Hydra sleepers and he had it for his personal use.

The Mind Stone created Ultron. Also Strucker created the robot bodies. Tony Stark did not create Ultron. Got it?

I like the party scene because it shows how some of the 06 have a life outside of Avenging.

Are those old vets at the party people that Steve knows/has met, or did Tony invite them?

Ultron wearing the mysterious cloak is super dope and my brother agrees

One of the weaker points of this film is that a lot of exposition happens in scenes in between the big action sequences. Like, exposition that explains tiny technical details

Fury and Hill absolutely pwned that Robot

Seeing Peggy in Steve’s dream kills me. Every time.

Natasha: 

Wanda convinced Steve to not trust Tony Stark

At the very least, Steve (A) was very aware that Tony dealing with something he didn’t understand behind everyone’s back had gotten them in the Ultron mess in the first place (B) he felt the need to tell Tony that doing so again was a bad idea, and (C) walking into the lab and seeing Tony already messing with it did not improve things

This whole thing really could have been avoided if someone else had taken Barton to the QuinJet and Thor had personally retrieved the scepter instead of letting Tony do it

Civil War really actually almost started over the cradle

But then Thor showed up and he didn’t say anything to explain stuff, he just did his thing with the hammer and the lighting

Also the tragedy at the end could have been avoided if someone had locked up the QuinJet, or even just hopped it over to the Helicarrier when it showed up--not like anybody had time but still

Thor saves a lady from falling--and she looks up and sees him--is that adoration in her face?

Laura tells Clint that he needs to look after the team and make sure they can work together, subtext: the world kind of depends on it

Helen Cho: *sass*

Clint has probably always wanted to bring the other Avengers to the farm. 

The Barton Farm probably has really great internet security. Probably the best SHIELD had to offer before it fell.

Did anybody get any real sleep while they were at Bartons?

Because it seems to me like the only time the Avengers got any sleep was during their trans-continental flights--but even then whatever jets they were flying in probably weren’t that comfy to sleep in

Ultron takes turns with each of the Avengers to pick a fight with them. He gets real pleasure out of intimidating each of them.

Sokovians hates America. They’ve been under communist rule for most of the last century so what do you expect? They hate American capitalism. They hate Tony Stark because that’s what he stands for. They hate the Avengers because that’s what they represent--or what people in an impoverished country in eastern Europe think they represent

(My headcanon is that American businesses tried to build there and they’ve made it harder for the local economy)

At some point back in the 90s, there was a war in Sokovia and one of the sides happened to be using contraband Stark Industries weapons. That’s what happened. I think Wanda figures that out sooner or later that it wasn’t directly Tony’s fault. If she doesn’t know already.

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff volunteered for Strucker’s experiments so that they could fight for their country. They joined the Avengers for the same reason. After Pietro’s death, Wanda joins the Avengers partly because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but she also wants to continue to fight the good fight and make the world a better place

Ultron knew about the Winter Soldier and after he had destroyed the planet I’ll bet you he would have gone to look for Bucky’s remains and then chewed on the metal arm like a drumstuck

the deleted/extended version of the Water of Sight scene was kind of better. They should have at least kept in the shot of Thor drinking the Asgardian liquor to stiffen his courage

Did his buds bring him that?

The scene with Laura and Clint in the bedroom is so tender. Screw what anybody else says, I love that Clint has a family. I’ve admitted this before, but I initially wrote Clintasha into my fanfic, but it just didn’t feel right. Laura and the little Bartons are what I needed 

(Because my Jedi OC who goes to the MCU is Clint’s adopted cousin)

Also, Auntie Nat. Clint and his family have adopted Natasha. I’m just in love with Clint taking in other orphan superheroes. ^_^

Nick Fury is basically the Avengers’ Dad and he knows it

Steve knows that the world he lives in now is different from the one he saved back in the 40s, and he knows that he’s a different person now. But that being said, his arc in this film is still heartbreaking to watch

Tony and Steve are both offended on a personal level that Vision can lift the hammer

When Wanda watches Vision coming out of the cradle, it isn’t “love at first sight”, it’s “okay the monster that Ultron created is out of the bag and it’s alive now, what’s it going to do?”

From my brother: Ultron should have known that Wanda Maximoff was going to “read” what was happening inside of the cradle

Also my brother: Ultron should have just flown off in the QuinJet

Ultron is just all kinds of unbalanced and he is scary

Overall, Age of Ultron isn’t as good quality as some previous MCU films but it still has a lot of epic action, it’s awesome and fun to watch

Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again, the only reason I haven’t accepted other people’s theories about how BruceNat was fake or tried to retcon it myself is because I have made bad relationship decisions, I’ve tried to rush into relationships with people I wasn’t compatible with or didn’t know well yet, it’s part of being human

It’s still the worst part of the movie

I didn’t take it personally, I just...ugh

It’s poorly written and it makes no sense for their characters even if they do have a certain kind of working relationship. Even if you don’t ship Natasha with anyone else it’s terrible

The Hulk responds to touch from another person and it relaxes him

The Hulk does have some kind of relationship with Black Widow: he responds to her and he tries to protect her

Bruce Banner is also pretty comfortable with Natasha

Natasha’s lines in this movie really aren’t that great

We did, however, get the Red Room Flashbacks and a lot of kick-butt Black Widow action

The fact that Natasha talks about the trial of being artifically sterilized while the actress playing her was pregnant is kind of disgusting. Really disgusting, actually. But on the other hand (I think partly because of ScarJo’s pregnancy) Natasha is kind of emotional in that scene. Her voice is choking. She empathizes with Bruce and she tries to tell him as much. 

If there is anything redeeming about BruceNat, it is the thematic value

Natasha values her superhero work and she values the team

Everyone was kind of hoping that taking out Strucker in Sokovia would be the last thing the Avengers needed to do. So Natasha was banking on the fact that after they had stopped Ultron they wouldn’t be needed anymore. She was seriously contemplating running away with Bruce. If there was any possibility for her to step away from it all and have a normal life, she wanted it. She wanted some of that happiness in her life.

“I had this dream that I was more than the assassin that they made me into.” Why does no one talk about this line? That is her best line.

But poor Bruce just goes through the mill in this movie. 

When he comes out of the witch-dream in Africa, is he seeing Banner’s worst fear or the Hulk’s worst fear? Both?

Bruce Banner may feel some guilt with how Ultron turned out.

And the Hulk had a good look at all the terrible destruction he caused.

Did anyone else notice the soldiers with the guns surrounding the Hulk before the Hulkbuster finally took him out?

Hulk just can’t deal anymore, okay? 

And neither can Bruce. So no, now is not the time to elope.

I love the Maximoff twins, okay? Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen did a great job portraying them. And I’m biased because her name is Elizabeth and I’ve been cosplaying Scarlet Witch since months before AoU came out.

In spite of its flaws, I still like how Age of Ultron still has thematic depth. Themes include: Belonging, finding home and family, misunderstanding, being a “monster” versus being “human”. All themes that tie back to the greater MCU.

But yeah, it might as well be just a giant trailer for Civil War and Infinity War.

Age of Ultron and Thor: The Dark World aren’t the best MCU movies but Stan Lee has great cameos in both of them

The way I see it, after SHIELD fell (the world was less safe w/o SHIELD). Steve Rogers learned about Hydra having all these secret bases still in operation and Hydra people who had survived/escaped/not been found yet. That was important enough to him to reluctantly leave the search for Bucky (and hope that Sam Wilson would have some luck finding a person who didn’t want to be found). He called on the other Avengers to help him. Tony Stark decided that it would be a good idea to help out...well, more than a good idea, he knew he needed to help. He may have already had a new suit ready. Pepper had to have been at least semi-supportive at the outset. I don’t know what she heard about Ultron or Sokovia but it must not have been good.