#that first iron man movie was so fucking solid

[who-knew-a-sheep-can-write]

Werewolf Bigby Wolf x Reader Headcanons

🌙 Bigby's been a werewolf for a good handful of centuries already, turned right before they all had to seek refuge in the Mundy World hundreds of years ago during the Saelum Trials. It may seem like he has a perfect handle on things, but in reality, he doesn't.

🌙 He used to lose control all of the time, especially in the first year. There were so many rumors and stories that came from him doing so that they've lasted centuries to the modern day. People nowadays brush it off as fake or bring up how back then, glasses weren't a thing so they were all crazy which is a breath of relief on Bigby's part.

🌙 He rarely loses control these days. The last time he could remember off of the top of his head would be the whole Crooked Man incident getting gunned down in the alley. In some sick and twisted way deep down inside, he loves the feeling of hunger and relief that washes over him when he lets go but he will never say it out loud.

🌙 His will isn't the only thing to keep him sane. Centuries of experiments and spells and charms and trinkets the thirteenth floor conjured up also helps, but they all have their breaking point. At least he doesn't turn on full moons anymore and go on a rampage through New York like in the movies.

🌙 There are times, however, when even the thirteenth floor's magic isn't enough and Bigby's iron will breaks. It's rare, but when it happens, it's messy.

🌙 When you two started dating, he could feel the beast inside of him writhing with life, almost like it wanted to come out just to be with you. It was a shock at first, he had never felt like that, especially when he had his little thing for Snow. He likes that feeling though.

🌙 Be careful with certain scents. Bigby's nose is like no other and very strong scents can give him horrible headaches. He won't say anything unless you ask him what's wrong. He loves the smell of you naturally already, there's no need for all of these sprays and scented lotions.

🌙 Speaking of scents, he can also dictate your emotions. It was a skill he taught himself over time. He mostly uses it to try and catch people lying, but's found it useful to detect if you're in distress or even if you're feeling very flirty.

🌙 It's the same with his hearing; Another skill he's honed over the years to weed out the truth from the bullshit lies he's fed. He often listens for your heartbeat during the day if you're around the Woodlands.

🌙 You knew what he looked like, but you hadn't seen it in so long. Bigby would sheepishly look away as you oogled at him in his form. He liked the way you looked at him with those eyes, and he could practically smell your satisfaction, but he wouldn't say something.

🌙 He has a bit of a temper, so flares tend to happen. It's often just the glowing eyes, but there have been times where the claws came out. He doesn't mean for you to see him like that, often worried that you may suddenly see him as the brute many others see him as.

🌙 Speaking of that special little side of him, he loves it when you card your fingers in his thicker hair- especially when you scratch lightly at his scalp or even at the fuzzy sideburns he grows.

🌙 He also likes it when you idly play with his fingers should you hold his hands when he's like that. You're admiring his sharp, black claws without a care for how dangerous they are. It puts his striking nerves at ease.

🌙 Compliment him. It catches him off guard and gets the wolfman blushing and stuttering when you compliment his furry little self. His yellow eyes, his solid body that radiates heat, his strong arms that can hold you like you weigh nothing.

🌙 When he's full wolfman, he often shies away from your gaze at first, worried that you may come to your senses and be disgusted by him- But you aren't. He's instead shocked when you approach him with that smile he fell in love with.

🌙 He's tall as fuck when he's turned, often having to hunch over in your apartment and duck to get through doorways. He often fills up the doorway with his hulking body, his body is broad and muscular, it can be a bit awkward maneuvering around inside.

🌙 He often loves it when you fall asleep while he's all fuzzy, preferring you to sleep on top of him with his beastly arms wrapped around you. There's no need for a blanket as his furry body is enough to keep you warm.

🌙 He likes to tease you when he's like that. Nipping lightly with his fangs, his claws lingering or splaying his large paw across your body, dwarfing you with his size. Anything you say to scold him jokingly earns you a deep wolfish chuckle.

🌙 If you're a fable that also has a different form, it comforts him when you turn and lounge around with him in the comforts of either of your apartments- mostly yours as it's bigger than his by a long shot.

🌙 He's a protective person, it's really in his nature. You're his, and Bigby gets a sour taste in his mouth when certain Fables get around you. He doesn't mean to be jealous and over-protective, he's just acting on his wolfish instincts.

🌙 But if something happens? Hell will break loose. He prays that it would never come to it where it's another Crooked Man situation where he had to turn to protect Snow and almost lost complete control. He saw the pure fear painted all over her face, he doesn't think he could handle that same look from you.

🌙 He lays awake some nights where his nightmares wake him from his sound sleep. It's all the same shit, constant worries pulling at the back of his mind. It scares him to the bone knowing that there's the possibility that he could fully lose control and even hurt you, even with that possibility being so low.

[justeliiijah]

1:25 Siffrin!

submitted by @sammusbird my beloved <3

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

HOOO boy okay a lot of characters with anxiety, PTSD, and depression in media are shown as uwu soft or evil with NO in between and siffrin has a LOT OF NUANCE TO HIM. there was a lot of care and love put into how they react to the hopelessness of their situation and by god do i adore it.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

dude is so fuCKING shape. also SUCH fun nonbinary rep??? give more queers knives. i know a lot of us have them but more. more should have them. me. give ME a knife.

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

how do i draw him in color he looks Wrong

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

ace attorney bc i think it wld be funny. they wld get framed for a murder that they did commit somehow i can Feel it

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

dont kill me bc this is kind of hilarious but the song is called Time Travel by Never Shout Never it's linked lol. u can extrapolate abt who's talkin to who in the song but i imagine it's loop and siffrin

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

[thousand yard stare] hot and transmasc next question

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

fuck that lad up yall ur doing great

8. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

as king of angst every time i see siffrin unburdened with trauma i lose ten years off my life span (i don't have any real pet peeves and am not super active in the fandom!)

9. Could you be roommates with this character?

i can't even be roommates with my roommates, man

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

unfortunately i am a bit of an asshole and i also have ptsd i think we wld kill each other with our eyes immediately

11. Would you date this character?

we are the same type of fucked up so that is a solid dear god no

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

ftm (i am projecting ok). they are canon nb i believe but i don't know if. like. there's a canon depiction of them w top scars or some shit but it wld fuck!!!

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

feel free to assume what i mean from this bc i'm not adding context

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

i am not a fashion bitch but i think someone shld give him a choker

15. What's your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn't matter if it's canon or not.)

surprisingly canon for once! isafrin <3

16. What's your least favorite ship for this character?

mira or odile w siff. those mfs are his besties stop trying to make them kiss. also mira is aroace

17. What's a ship for this character you don't hate but it's not your favorite that you're fine with?

loopfrin. ironically my bf @codacheetah is extremely abnormal abt this one lol

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

mira and siffrin's relationship makes me fuckign emotional literally dont look at me???? but siffrin and odile too bc like. they share that lack of ability to Know where they come from (if only partially on odile's part). and bonn-- okay i think. i think all of their relationships are insanely complex and important ok

19. How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

not applicable tbh. i do think that he shld kick the king in the wiener tho

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

mira my beloevd <333

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

i havent posted fic since like. 2017

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

i love the introspection abt the recovery i've seen!!! like, ppl showing how they think siffrin copes after the fact.

as for dislike,,, hm. i don't love the Other People Loop aus despite how intriguing they are because,,, well. there's a Reason to me that it was siffrin, a reason that their desperation to stay was so powerful. they are singularly capable of that level of need, i think.

23. Favorite picture of this character?

man its gotta be

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

ur gonna laugh but. like s4 jon sims. i think they wld get along but jon is far more of a loser

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

honestly i think i thought they were a very malleable char? like, that he wld change w the player's decisions. and i wasn't wrong entirely, because that's. how story driven gaming works, but siffrin has a much stronger personality and identity than i thought. i also thought they were in space for some reason i did NOT listen to coda's rants

26. FREEBIE QUESTION!!

hes a cutie :3

[kustas]

i'm going to be honest i am not versed in politics at all. i don't have the knowledge to back up why with solid arguments, but this article is pissing me off. this is gonna be my attempt to articulate it not via geopolitics but via my (also limited) knowledge on animation. discussion is welcome.

for context, here's a link to it, TLDR a hacker discovered animation files for US animated shows coming from NK internet.

outsourcing has been a thing in animation for a long time - the article says it right there: "unreasonably low-cost labor" is why. it's not a secret, studios can outright boast about the money they're saving by doing this in professional circles like festivals, and anyone who has contacts in countries notably in south asia knows about it if not knows people who have worked on outsourcing themselves. animation takes a lot of work and that's why the ending credits to animated films are so long. have you also noticed how international they are? that's outsourcing baby. if outsourcing is good or bad is another debate but here it's the way they talk about it in NK that pisses me off.

regime this and regime that, this article several times mentions animation, comic books and always ties it to propaganda. i know little about korean culture but if they've been "proeminent since the country's founding" i would assume it's not because big evil government wants the little cartoons to brainwash, but because they already liked cartoons there.

animation outsourcing to NK in france predates the digital era. there is a rather famous comic here called "pyongyang" by canadian artist guy delisle who details his everyday life as an animation supervisor in the capital. it mentions by name at least two productions, one of which i've actually seen. it's strange for me to see this article acting like it's an offense until they dropped the big one - apparently, the US forbids contracts with NK, woopsie!

so we have the US, a country with immense international soft power and the world's biggest movie industry, notable for their own comics and cartoons, who's taking a stance against outsourcing not because of the nature of the practice but because it's done in NK, a country who's only interests in animation would be for propaganda reasons apparently, nevermind outsourcing working due to exchange rates and how poor compared to the outsourcers the workers from these countries are

ironically the first example they state is a superhero show, a genre born in USA and famously apolitical. what the fuck man

[miriamundertale]

ok fuck it we ride

i really dont like infinity war and i havent but literally only for one single goddamn thing

they got rid of thors eyepatch

so. to me, the eyepatch is both a representation of the problem with the entire approach of infinity war and endgames writing, but also just in general some great symbolism and character design. lets start on that first.

ragnarok is explicitly a growth story for thor. now, every story for thor in an mcu movie is a growth story for him, but it's the least subtle one including the one where he learns not to be a dick. ragnarok is thor growing to equal and surpass his dad. its a very simple story about him facing not just his dads past as a warmonger and the mistakes and victims that came from it, but to understand how to surpass that and take up the responsibility odin had towards his people. thor's eye is a direct telling of that through his character design. the loss of his eye IS the catalyst that makes his fathers words truly hit for him, to make him recognize himself and his responsibility as a leader. as he comes into his own as the leader of asgard after the fight with hela, he gets his eyepatch, and the proof of his arc is right there, literally staring you in the face. he lost the same eye his dad did. he has grown into the same place.

in infinity war rocket just has a spare eyeball so we dont really need that. also this whole responsible for people thing is silly so we gotta actually basically kill a lot of asguardians off and also make thor fat and depressed later!!! haha!!!!!

any characterization FROM other movies is irrelevant. the point is never to use a characters developments, its to just use the old standard in order to make quippy remarks. i know it's not suprising to say "mcu bad" especially with everything from infinity war onward, but despite its flaws there are some excellent movies in there that did do a great job with what they were given. ragnarok is one of them, all of the guardians films are, iron man 3 is honestly so solid i forgot i really dont like iron man. the avengers movies are never in that same category. they are the worst parts of the franchise on permanent display to prewoobify any characters for easier consumption and undo any real work done by any of the other directors.

[luimnigh]

2013 for the movie ask game :)

send me a year and i'll tell you my favourite movie of that year

This is the year I've dreading someone asking. My top two favourite movies are from this year.

But before we begin, I've had a lot of movies I don't like to start these lists, and this year also has a movie I have a grudge against despite never seeing, so I'm gonna air that for a moment:

Fuck Grown Ups 2. You know what you did. You know what you did.

On to better things that Adam Sandler's vacation videos.

Not a lot of kid's movies this year, as I was seventeen and desired to be oh so very grown up. It was the year I started dipping my toes into anime instead.

I've always held a fondness for Warm Bodies. It's a cute little romzomcom, a very small genre. I also personally like White House Down, and consider it the better of the year's two "White House is attacked by terrorists" movies. Iron Man 3 was okay, but I was ultimately disappointed in the lack of Rhodey. Also my sister broke her ankle on the way into the theatre.

I've only ever seen Man of Steel on a Christmas Eve when all my relatives were paying flying visits, so it's a good movie if you can't hear half the dialogue. Can't vouch for it beyond that. I also saw Gravity that same night, thankfully I do think I caught most of the dialogue there.

The World's End is perhaps the weakest of the Cornetto Trilogy, but it's still a damn good film. Similarly, The Wolverine is obviously not the best Wolverine movie, but solid enough. Better than the first.

Machete Kills is a dumb fun action movie, only slightly marred by it's Elon Musk cameo. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a nice solid film too.

Philomena is fantastic movie, delving into the life of a survivor the Magdelene Laundries, one of Ireland's greatest shames. I definitely would recommend it.

But on to my two favourites. And I cannot choose, I really fucking can't. So I'll call it both: Pacific Rim is fucking amazing. Everyone calls it dumb, but it really isn't. Del Toro put as much work into it as he's put into his Oscar-nominated work, you only have to scratch the surface to view the depth.

And I just love Frozen. Even after all these years, I don't know why I fell in love with this story, but I did. And unlike Pacific Rim, I loved the sequel too.

[adamshallperish]

hiii ♡ 1 + 2 rant about your faves!!!

1. what is your current favorite film?

i tend to fluctuate between them, and i honestly feel like my absolute favorite film is still out there waiting to be discovered, but for right now i'll say o brother where art thou. it's such an incredible experience in that it's hyperaware of what the odyssey is (a myth), and merges that with american mythos in a way that becomes even more incredible when you learn only one person on set had actually read the odyssey (it was tim blake nelson, who basically steals the whole show as far as i'm concerned). it has such a solid cast and beautiful cinematography (i believe it was the first film to do digital color grading), and i'd be lying if hearing the first notes of man of constant sorrow didn't get me immediately pumped up. i want everyone in my life to see this movie.

2. what was your favorite film as a child?

had the DEEPEST hyperfixation on newsies (1992) in a way that forever altered my brain chemistry - and i must reiterate - i stand by my eleven-year-old assessment that it was the greatest piece of cinema ever released on home video. it has everything. scenes shot in what is obviously a shitty backlot. the wildest new york accents you have ever heard. the fact that it was made with Actual Teenage Boys and so this pg disney film occasionally has characters audibly swearing in the background. a soundtrack of absolute fucking bangers. a disney movie with an anti-capitalist message that bombed so hard upon release and remains somehow deeply ironic today. robert duvall putting his entire pussy into a role and the result is absolutely bewildering. homoerotic subtext up the wazoo. christian bale sings, dances, and is on a horse??? it transed my gender before i even realized i was transgender. i was in the trenches of the newsies fandom for years. if it gets bad enough i may get dragged back again.

[justtothesea]

hi! I just found your peterick reclist and i love it so much! do you have any movie au fics?

aw yay! I'm glad you like it, here's a few favs I go back and read often from the list:

As You Wish by lazenby (~19k words)

Princess Bride AU featuring a lot of bandom guys listening as Patrick tells them a story. 💜 I sorta love it a lot.

“I know,” Patrick says, clutching at Pete just as tightly. “I'm sorry. I wanted to tell you, you have to believe that. But I couldn't. Nobody could know Roberts had let me live. And I thought once I got enough money, I'd retire and find you.” He pauses, then quietly says, “I didn't think you'd get engaged. I didn't think you'd fall out of love with me.”

Pete pushes back, angry. “Might I remind you that you were dead?!” Pete says, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “And it's not like I love her or anything!”

*

And Then the Aliens Killed Bill Murray by misspamela (~5k words)

Obviously a Groundhogs Day AU. Did you know I'm actually obsessed with that movie? And this fic...

Patrick stared at him. "You come over and wake me up to convince me that you're stuck in a space-time loop and all you really want to do is what we were going to do anyway?" "Pretty much, yeah," Pete said, closing his eyes. "I'm tired, Patrick. Really tired. I just..I'm taking a break this time around. Sing me the words?" He heard Patrick taking a deep breath and sighing, then the familiar sounds of harrumphing and grumbling that meant Patrick was getting ready to sing. Pete smiled. This was exactly what he needed.

*

Turned to Steel by awkwardgturtle (~6k words)

Iron Man AU (of the first movie) that I have no biases about considering it was written by a friend. Her writing just is that good. I'm not kidding.

Patrick was decidedly not moping when Pete came home late. He was simply staring intently at his shoelaces. They were bright yellow and in sharp contrast to his red shoes.

“I don’t know what Joe told you,” Pete said when he found Patrick sitting on the kitchen counter, “but I wasn’t with anyone.” Patrick jumped down. “I don’t care, Mr. Wentz,” he muttered. “It’s not my business.”

*

Truman Show 'Verse by awkwardgturtle (~36k words)

Like it says, it's a Truman Show AU. Pete's whole life is a show, with all the angst that you could imagine.

Her hand flies to her chest in an overdramatic manner. “You didn’t hear? The eruption! Volcanic ash has been grounding planes for weeks!” “My friend Gabe just got home from Japan a week ago.” The blood drains from her face a split second before she laughs nervously. “Oh, those skies are clear, of course.” “Then we’ll go there,” Pete decides. Patrick adores sushi, plus there are plenty of beaches around to relax on and a beautiful city to explore. It sounds perfect. “No.”

*

No More Than Three Feet Apart by coricomile (locked to ao3, ~10k words)

Labyrinth AU with Gabe as the Goblin King and Pete, the babe I'm reminded of...

“Give Pete back,” he choked out, eyes still screwed shut. “I beat your fucking labyrinth, I won. Just stop.” Cold fingers pressed against his cheeks. “Stop!” Patrick lashed out, swinging blindly. Something solid hit the ground, and the air tensed. Patrick opened his eyes. Gabe was sprawled on the stone, lifted up by his elbows. “You’re nothing to me.” “Patrick-“ “No! You’re meaningless.” Patrick took a deep breath and shook his head. “You have no power over me.”

That's all I've got for now! There's more on the list if you search for movie!au using find in page, and more tags to search for too. If anyone has any other similar recs please send them my way!!! I'm way behind on my peterick fic knowledge 😭

[kenisle]

rewatched civil war (twice) and damn team iron man was really doomed from the start

tony: driven by rising guilt. goes against previous values and patterns of behavior so he has very little sway with the govt he’s trying to work with. thinks he can convince steve to compromise his beliefs (have you met steve??) just to get what tony wants while unwilling to do the same. also he’s chosen ross as his ally? and doesn’t even think bruce would take his side on the accords/bucky situation? girl if you’re gonna go this hard at least be sure of yourself.

rhodey: already in the government’s pocket. more power with them but less credibility w everyone else.

vision: 2 years old. v little experience with emotions, which are shown to be brought out most strongly by wanda.

peter: 15 years old. how much did tony even tell him? or did he just wave a shiny new suit in front of him?once he sees past the starstruck-ness i highly doubt he’d side w tony. like steve tells him there’s a lot happening that he doesn’t understand and peter’s all “funny mr stark said you’d say that” like yeah girl but uh that doesn’t make it not true lol.

natasha: demonstrably close with steve and others on his team (clint, sam, wanda). defects p much first chance she gets.

tchalla: also defects as soon as he realizes what was really going on. even before then, he clearly only wanted to get bucky, didn’t care abt tony’s mission. realistically prob wouldn’t have submitted to the accords as bp anyway if it wasn’t in wakanda’s best interest. as he should.

meanwhile team cap was SOLID

steve: once bucky’s in danger, it’s over. man’s locked in and will not be stopped by anything short of a bullet to the head. you don’t trust someone without a dark side, tony? this is steve’s “dark” side: his devotion to bucky.

sam: loyal to cap. they may not always agree 100%, but they’ve got each other’s backs. where steve goes, sam goes.

bucky: spends most of the movie running and defending himself bc he’s the main target, but once tony knocks steve down? bucky’s there to stop him and they’re the dream team once more. gets his arm blown off and keeps fighting. to the end of the line.

clint: helping his friends, plain and simple. he believes in the fight, even if he doesn’t seem to take it as seriously as the others (joking around, pulling punches w nat). he gets the job done.

wanda: loyalty most shaky bc of her connection to vision, but she’s also the only one who can overpower him, and she has bonds w clint and steve as well as beef w tony, so she commits when it matters.

scott: happy to be there, backing cap. kinda like sam in catws. “dude captain america needs my help.” total wild card bringing a new power set to the table, which really came in clutch several times in the airport fight. familiar with the flaws of the us justice system and breaking the law to do what’s right. also he made watching the movie way more enjoyable bc he’s comic relief but not in the “smartass sarcastic” way that i’ve gotten tired of. he’s just a goofy dad fighting the good fight with his weird ass contraptions and gizmos. he risked tearing himself in half with a highly experimental maneuver for a distraction. i cannot stress this enough he went full titan mode instead of, say, supersizing a colony of ants, because these guys he just met needed a diversion to avoid being arrested by these other guys he just met (which is what ends up happening to him because he passes the fuck out immediately after)

and while team iron man was backstabbing each other left and right? everyone on team cap was prepared to stay behind and get arrested — insisted on it — so cap and bucky could escape in the quinjet. tony stark you can never again underestimate the power of friendship because it just blew up in your face and demolished your ass.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Is It Really That Bad?

I think I speak for everyone when I say that Jack Black is awesome. Ever since the one-two punch of 2008’s Kung Fu Panda and Tropic Thunder, Black has steadily seen himself rise to becoming a wacky and near universally beloved cultural icon, with zany YouTube videos and roles such as the gay psychic viking musician Helmut Fullbear in Psychonauts 2 and fucking Bowser of all people in The Super Mario Bros. Movie fully cementing his status as one of the most fun actors working today. But this sort of adoration wasn’t always the case.

Sure, everyone loved School of Rock and Tenacious D had a solid stoner buddy comedy film and some amusing songs, but Black’s career prior to the 2010s was pretty spotty and filled with bad and disposable comedies; there’s a reason he’ s playing the character stuck in a rut of making nothing but flatulent fat joke comedy movies in Tropic Thunder, after all. He still had some speedbumps to overcome before he’d reach Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Goosebumps even after his well-received 2008 films, and after starring in a film in 2009 that ended Harold Ramis’ career (and that I’m sure you’ll all vote for me to rewatch eventually), he made a pit stop in 2010 to dent his own career… but it wasn’t just him who suffered thanks to Gulliver’s Travels.

You see, this movie has an interesting bit of trivia to it that s likely the only reason it’s even vaguely remembered at all. Emily Blunt was contractually obligated to star in this film as a result of starring in The Devil Wears Prada, which on its own isn’t all too interesting… But because of this, she had to skip out on being Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While Iron Man 2 wouldn’t have been better with her in it, the MCU as a whole might have benefited from having an actress as good as her as the first superheroine in the franchise. Maybe we could have even gotten a Black Widow movie sooner, and with less awful villains and terrible CGI!

This is all the film gets remembered for today, if it’s remembered at all: A footnote for the MCU, and one that hurt the careers of its lead actors for a couple of years until they were able to bounce back with more critically-acclaimed films. At best, those into more niche and obscure media might know that this films has a lot of material reworked from a scrapped adaptation of the Prometheus and Bob shorts from Nickelodeon’s KaBlam! It can’t even be remembered as some ridiculously huge bomb, because even with it making less than half its budget back domestically, internationally it managed to double it!

So hey, maybe those international audiences were on to something. Sure, it was critically reviled but it was also successful overseas, so maybe other countries knew something we didn’t here in America. Is Gulliver’s Travels really that bad, or is this a hidden Jack Black gem that America was too hard on?

THE GOOD

I think what really surprised me the most is the set design and costumes. Maybe I’ve just been absolutely poisoned by the non-stop onslaught of CGI as of late, but it was really nice to see some actual sets, actual costumes, and actual effort on display in a movie, even if it wasn’t the most amazing thing out there.

The film also has some very fun sequences, all of them obviously revolving around Jack Black. There’s the scene where he has to put out a fire and, uh, uses his natural hose to extinguish the flame (which is apparently lifted directly from the original book), which manages to be one of the only funny pee jokes in human history thanks to James Corden becoming doused in urine; there’s a scene where JB has to defeat an armada of ships and manages to do it with an accidental counter attack that eerily manages to foreshadow the climax of Kung Fu Panda 2; and there’s a scene where JB is banished to an island where he is kidnapped by a giant girl and turned into a doll in her dollhouse. Fun sequences like this make full use of the world the film has created.

Also, yes, it’s a bit dumb and cringey how one of the major conflicts in the film is solved by Jack Black randomly breaking out into a musical number, but if you’re gonna pay for Jack Black you gotta get him to sing. This one time, I’ll let the corny dance party ending slide—but it’s on thin fucking ice.

THE BAD

I mean, with both James Corden and T.J. Miller in the film, it’s no surprise there’s plenty of suckiness to the proceedings.

I think the main issue is that the film is too short and doesn’t really do enough with its premise. Now, I’m no expert on the book this is loosely adapting seeing as I’ve never read it, but I feel like they could have done more than just liberally adapt elements for a silly family film, and I also think eighty minutes isn’t nearly enough time to really delve into things. And even having never read it, this is taking one of the greatest pieces of classic literature written by one of history’s sharpest satirists (Johnathan Swift, he of A Modest Proposal fame) and turned it into a wacky vehicle for Jack Black. It’s kind of hard not to feel a bit bitter we didn’t get a straighter modernized adaptation instead of a wacky family film.

Aside from that, though, the worst I can say is that some of the humor is pretty dorky or cringey, and that not a lot of performances really stand out. The former is to be expected from a silly family film like this, but the latter is pretty damn shocking considering the massive amounts of talent in this film. Black is having fun, but his hamming doesn’t always land, nor does his oversaturation of pop culture references; Emily Blunt and Jason Segel are okay, but they feel a bit overplayed and underplayed, respectively; Billy Connolly is barely even trying as the king, but it’s not like he’s given good material; and the rest of the cast are perfectly serviceable but not exactly standout. Everything is just okay (even Corden and Miller, but I hate them so let’s just say they suck).

I think my biggest issue is that even if nothing is done offensively badly here, the film’s story is packed far too tightly with the most expected family film cliches you can imagine. You’ve got a really basic “liar revealed” plot at the core, you have the character getting bad romantic advice from his friend that leads to a third act breakup with his love interest, you have the most shallow romantic arc in the world beside that with one of the most unrealistic reactions you could ever imagine from a woman who has been repeatedly lied to by the guy crushing on her… It’s just really tired and sloppy. You have seen all the plot points here in a dozen better films.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Maybe it’s just because I was expecting a lot worse, but I honestly found this film to be kind of charming.

Like, sure, it’s not really anything special. It’s just a goofy Jack Black family film, and as far as those go it’s definitely nothing compared to Nacho Libre. But it doesn’t really overstay its welcome, it has a few chuckles, Black gets to sing, and James Corden gets doused in piss, so I can’t say I didn’t find some enjoyment in it. It’s a silly little disposable bit of fluff that’s fun to watch once and maybe put on in the background if you need some noise, and there’s a place for films like that in this world.

But, you know, I kind of get why audiences didn’t vibe with this. Nothing in this movie is as offensively bad as a lot of other family fantasy films of the time, but there’s nothing that really stands out here either. You’ve got some cool scenes, cool ideas, and Jack Black hamming it up, but none of it really ever gels into something great. This is a completely average, somewhat enjoyable, and kind of forgettable film, and I completely understand why it has faded from the public consciousness besides being a bit of MCU trivia. It’s not offensive or bad enough to really bring out intense emotion, but it isn’t good enough to gush about, and Jack Black has been in so many better roles lately that utilize the traits this film is banking on far better that it’s hard to recommend this unless you’re really curious or bored.

That 4.9 is pretty harsh though, honestly. I gave it a 6, mostly because I just found the whole thing endearingly dorky, but realistically I’d say maybe in the mid to high 5 range is where this movie belongs. It’s got plenty of cringey moments and it’s not really mind-blowing, with it relying far too much on cliché plot elements you see in a lot of bargain bin family films, but I think there’s just enough effort on display here to make this a passable viewing experience. As far as corny Jack Black movies go, you could be doing a lot worse than watching this one.

A lot worse.

[popculturebuffet]

Watchemen Retrospective Finale: Zack Snyder's Watchmen (Comission for WeirdKev27)

Hello all you happy capes.. and welcome to my final review of 2022 and my grand finale to my look at Watchmen. I've looked at all 12 issues with a brief April Fools detour to look at the unmade Sam Hamm version, but there's still one last piece of Watchmen media I want to look at as the Clock strikes 12. Yes folks we're talking about the divisive, loyal as it could possibly be, greatly soundtracked, 2009 film Watchmen.

Filming the Unfimable

As the fact I had a full script to review should show, attempts had been made to adapt the Watchmen for decades. The Hamm script was pitched with Terry Gilliam of all people who considered the project unfilmable as a movie, and better as a mini series.

The biggest attempt was made with David Hayter, voice actor and writer, aka Metal Gear's Solid Snake, Zangetsu in Blodostained, and Captain America in Spider-Man TAS. He also was a writer on the first two x-men films, the scorpian king, and an executive producer on of all the things i've reviewed, A Christmas Horror Story> I knew NONE of this when looking him up and i'm incredibly impressed. This is one hell of a career the man's gotten. His draft really impressed executives, but attempts at paramount, rogue pictures and others stalled until eventually Warner Bros scooped up the rights.

Hayter's script had a few diffrences from the final product as Alex Tse, who'd go on to make wu tang an american story, would do some touch ups. His was set in modern day, at one point Nite Owl straight up killed Adrian, and at one point Adrian's plan ivnolved a MASSIVE SOLAR DEATH RAY

Yeah I mean I get why Christ Almighty it's the goddman watchmen gets mentioned more, it's objectively funny.. but the fact Adrian used a solar death beam at one point still should come up more. Don't get me wrong, the idea of using the power of the sun is awesome: Jonathan Hickman's run had Iron Man build a dyson sphere to potentially smash planets. But there's a difference between taking a real world floated concept and making it high concept sci fi.. and having your morally complex if ultimately evil despite his claims villain have a fucking death ray powered by the sun. The other ideas.. are also not my forte. The 80s setting and the 50s start to mystery men are integral to things, as the films eventually director agreed, and having Dan kill adrian just feels a step too far. What the film goes with is still cathartic and we'll get to it, but Adrian should live not to reap the benefits of his actions.. but to live with both the guilt of what he's done and any consequences should the truth come out.

As for who would direct this, with the recent success of 300… Warner Bros tapped Zack Snyder to direct. We'll get into Zack Snyder himself in a second, but to his credit, he was a huge fan of the graphic novel and most tweaks to Hayter's script were out of reverence to it, though he did keep that ending which again we'll get to.

The resulting film was.. divisive. Some critics loved it, some hated it and fans were split on everything from the performacnes to.. that ending. It's part of why I wanted to dive into it. See when the Younger Me saw it over a decade ago.. he dug it. He liked it a lot and thought it was a great adaptation. So I wanted to see if it held up: if it was still good a decade, a through yearlong re-read of the source material, and Zack Snyders lesser adaptations after it later. So let's answer that question shall we as I watch the Watchmen one final time.. at least for this year.

Watchmenmaker So yeah.. before we can even get into the film we have to unpack it's director. And I'm not one to take the side door, I'll come right up front and knock: Zack Snyder is a kind generous man who uses his massive fanbase to help charities, seems to really love his fans and his work, and who generally seems to be an upright guy. He's hard to hate on his own. That said while as a person I have nothing but respect for the guy, his other superhero works i've seen Man of Steel and Batman V Superman are not great films, especially the latter. If you like them great, your allowed to disagree with me but their just not the best superhero films and I for the life of me can't understand why some people are so ride or die on them.

Man of Steel is.. fine. It's a flawed film with a palette that can best be described as "Hope you like grey!", and easily the worst Jonathan Kent in the characters history, a selfish dumbass who has the sheer gall to berate his son for saving lives and who stupidly throws himself into a tornado for reasons that make entirely no sense and who clearly fucked his son up to the point he's traveling the world and the seven seas instead of living a normal life because SOMEBODY felt he never could. It's not a film I really fondly remember, but it's one I felt okay about coming out of the theater. It's alright. It's not the best take on superman, but I can see why some may like it.

Batman V Superman on the other hand.. is giant mess. I liked it a bit out of the theater, but the more i've thought abotu it the less it's become. Part of it isn't entirely his fault: it's clear DC wanted to FastTrack the justice league and shoved as many heroes in as they could. Wonder Woman, while a great part of the film, feels just kinda there, and while Ben Affleck gives it his best, his version of batman just doesn't work. It's clear Zack Snyder has the same reverence for the Dark Knight Returns as Watchmen.. but fails to get that that's not necessarily how to approach batman, nor that even THAT batman does not kill and will not.

His lex luthor is also just baffling, with it being hard for me to figure out just what he was going for. The idea of a younger luthor whose a tech bro was brilliant.. but the resulting writing has a luthor who sounds and acts like he did a literal, not figurative, mountain of cocaine before every scene, whose plans are needlessly convoluted , and who thanks to said cocaine thinks a jar of piss is a good statement. Seriously I did not realize he pissed in a jar the first time around, probably because Lex Luthor pissing in a jar and leaving that jar wired with explosives is not the kind of thing that usually makes it past first draft. There's a reason we never got Superman fighting a giant spider-man while Braniac wrestled a polar bear after all. Trying to jam Death of Superman in there without having properly built up to it doesn't remotely hep and the film that results is just an overly long, overly dour mess that is more concerned about tlaking about superman being a god for 40 minutes than actually telling a good story. It's overly long, overly self indulgent and ultimately just.. just bad. It's bad.

And look I don't begrudge Snyder himself for wanting his cut of Justice League. He only left the film due to the worst tragedy that could befall a parent, and had it cut to shit behind his back. What I begrude is the cultlike beahvior that's formed out of it. While there are likely fans of Zack Snyder's dc work who are nice, kind, and don't mind if someone has a difference of opinion and if your reading this, I value your existence, there has been a foaming, loud, asshollish horde of fans that has not shut the fuck up since getting said cut. Wanting more of something you love is fine. Right now as an Owl House Fan we're hoping desperately Disney gives us more of the series in some form and actually listens. Sometimes you have to scream to be heard.

The problem is instead of accepting the snyder cut as the cool what could've bene it is and being happy with what they got.. they gnash their teeth at ANYTHING they percive outside it. They've taken the screws to Shazam for not being as edgelord as the films they like, and lately have been just outright insufferable. They have gotten RABID since James Gunn was made one of the heads of DC and made the decision to get rid of Henry Cavill… a decision I udnerstand as the snyder verison of superman has a LOT of baggage and while Cavill did his best, I can understand James wanting to start fresh and using a new actor as a way to do that. It's an understandable decision from a guy who was given the hard task of coming in and steering a ship that has no direction in a company that's on fire thanks to David Zaslav's escalating selfish, terrible and downright baffling decisions. He did not come in guns a-blazin to gut everything: Gal Godot and The Rock are still on board, with his black adam announcment merely being that their going to hold off on using him again at first, rather than "your fired get out" as many are intepreting. And while I get it's weird to fire cavill after the stinger to black adam, it was included more because Dwayne Johnson wants to fight superman than being a coherent plan for a sequel, and I say that with all the love I can to the rock whose an awesome dude. I just don't care about seeing Black Adam fight superman. That's not who he has a connection to.

It's just been so draining. I get liking a film but I doubt Snyder wants .. any of this. He's fine. He's moved on from his superhero work. You are NEVER going to get what you wanted back> Let someone genuinely talented who will likely pull out some weird, wonderful cuts do what he wants and give him some room to do it. Zack Snyder is not a bad filmmaker but like superman. .he's not a fucking god. He doesn't want a fucking cult in his name. He just wants you to enjoy his films and support them. Just.. do that. Love his dceu work if you like but accept it's over, move on and for god's sake stop harassing people for it. I shouldn't' have to say this but it's gotten bad, and I felt it couldn't' be ignored. When Snyder fans are, no joke, going up to a tweet Gunn made trying to get support for charities and saying "DON'T CARE WANT CAVILL", I have to say.. SOMETHING, when I have the chance to speak to said fanbase. To those of you not doing this shit.. thank you. Thank you for being good people like Zack likely actually wants. Your awesome.

Now you may be asking yourself "Well how did I get here?"… or more likely "Okay nice speech and all Jake but what does this have to do with the film your actually reviewing" or

If your a tad deranged. My reason is that while I can see bit sof the DCEU in here, particularly Zack Snyder preferring to deconstruct superheroes than actually play it straight, Watchmen.. zigs a lot of places he'd later Zag. It's shockingly colorful while still being grounded, still having the gaudy outfits, but keeping them because he knows their important. The only change he made to them was to make them more like something you'd see in a superhero film of the past, to help evoke these costumes come from the past: Nite Owl and Ozymandis in particular have outfits that come out of a Burton Batman and Schumacher Batman film respectively. Laurie's is more shiny latex, and the Comedian thankfully keeps his domino mask during his full career and either wears your standard Sterling Archer spy turtleneck on missions or his costume rather than bringing out the gimp. I do think it clashes a LITTLE with the 60's and 70's these costumes are supposed to come from but I get that putting them in say, a 60's batman style outfit would be a bridge too far given the tone of the work, and that the original outfits, while neat, were also intentionally goofy in a way that just dosen't work on flim. It's why you only saw The Scarlet Witch, Vision and Quicksilvers full silver age costumes as halloween costume easter eggs in wandavision or Steve Roger's classic cap outfit as his uso outfit. These are iconic looks.. but they just don't work on screen. You can still hav ecolor and flair as the MCU has shown us, but you have to rework it to fit the present.

This way Snyder gets to both have pops of color.. while also having the costumes still get the slightly dated look in a way people who haven't read the comic will get. It's honestly a stroke of brillance and while his works aren't my forte and he slapped a palette of grey over them, his later works do have neat costumes.

His watchmen shows a respect for these characters and world his DCEU work dosen't quite have. He replicates panels, only didn't replicate the costumes beyond rorshachs for the reasons mentioned, and really tries to get as much of the story in as he can. Which brings us to

The Times they Are A Changing

The film is for the most part a fairly straight adaptation of the Graphic Novel. There's a big change to the ending I keep ominously hinting at and we're almost there just hold on, but there are changes either stylistically or just for compressions sake. It's why I tilt my head at reviews that said he was overly reverent to the graphic novel. I agree he could've used a touch more of his own take.. but Snyder still put his own spin on it and his own style. There's some bits of his trademark slowmo and some quick pans and he does brilliantly find ways to incorporate scenes into motion. The opening scene of the comic is a great example of this, as he somehow manage to pan up in the exact same way David Gibbons does while accounting for having to show EVERY frame going from the street to the Comedian's penthouse.

There are some goofy touches, for some reason he thought adding whipcrack sound effects to some fight scenes was neat, likely to parody it being used in 80's and 90's superhero films, which Watchmen takes some style cues from, but it jus tdosen't mesh when said scenes are played dead serious. This is a deconstruction, not a parody and there's a fine line between the two.

Out of his personal style touches my faviorite is easily his use of music. While there are only a handful of sequences, Snyder picked his soundtrack masterfully. It's nothing but the hits but often used in ways that help play off the scene beautifully or create just the right dissonance.

The first and best example of this is the Times They are a Changin scene. Even people who don't like the film admit this scene slaps and for good reason. It's easily one of the best openings in any superhero film ever if not THE best. In just a few minutes of montage, nicely set to one of the iconic songs of the 60's (not a huge Dylan fan myself but I can't deny this song rocks), it takes you through both ages of superheroes easily, gives you all the exposition the film couldn't thanks to Under the Hood being something they couldn't fit in easily (Maybe a tv movie or something but it would've come off obvious to me), and just looks gorgeous: it breaks down the triumphant rise and tragic fall of the minutemen, the hope of the new era of supermen and it's sad fall beautifully. The imagery just does not leave your brain and it's easily a beautiful little mini movie in it's own right. While the film is still good after this, it's easily the best part of it, kind of like how Up's intro is easily it's best part too for similar reasons but the rest is still fantastic.

That said, the next sequence with this.. is no slouch. The Vietnam flashback with ride of the valyrkyes, as Dr. Manhattan looms over the Vietcong and explodes anyone in his path, is masterful, taking an already great one panel image from the comic and IMPROVING on it. Seeing him in motion really sets in the dread of this giant, looming all powerful godlike figure coming towards you and you can do nothing to stop him and really helps set in the scope of manhattan. I also noticed when writing this section that Manhattan has a nice motif of classical music, to establish a timeless feel, using Phillip Glass' music to really set things in motion.

Dan's sequence is no slouch though, as it amazingly uses the funk classic "i'm your boogie man", and is part of why I love that song so much. It both nicely contrasts with the protest going on.. and nicely matches to Comedian horribly responding to it by violently beating up the protestors. Granted said protestors are pro police, which is especially odd given some are POC.. but I write this off as Snyder, like many of us white dumbasses, not fully grasping the history of police violence on people of color at the time. It's not great in hindsight but I can't say many knew much better and he still shows off that someone with undue power and no checks and balances, i.e. the Comedian, going into a crowd and wailing on them is as horrible as it should be seen.

Then we get a long break, just one sequence with Manhattan i'll talk a bit more about later, before we get the next one.. which stuck out in my mind for the wrong reasons and I was ready to give Zack Snyder all the shit for.. till I learned out why he did it. If you've seen the film you know and if not.. the film takes Dan and Laurie's sex scene.. and make sit into… an over the top, in tense and gratuitous as fuck sex scene.

It's just so ludicrious, so unecessary, so out of nowhere it's parody.. and that… was ex-zactly the point. Yeah turns out Zack Snyder did not ask for this scene, the crew did not ask for this scene and i'm pretty sure Dan Steven and Malin Akerman did not ask for this scene. No one wanted to do this except the executives, who demanded

So Zack pulled a Sean Micheals and decided to give it to them in the goofiest, dumbest, most over the top way possible. It's likely why EVERY movement dan makes seems to make laurie orgasm. Akerman was likely in on the joke, and I salute her for it. Like if your forced to do a gross fanservice sex scene, you might as well make it hilarious and honestly the sequence is: you've got Hallujeah blaring over it, Malin going 80 times over the top, dan stevens just .. rolling with it and the gloriously stupid finish when Laurie climaxes as she hits the flamethrower button. The Silk Spectre has a FLAMING orgasm that is seen by ongoers in the night sky. I.. I can't even add to that. I didn't know Zack Snyder could make a funny but here we are. Good on him.

The last music sequence is a classic and a pretty obvious drop… like while all the songs are pretty well known in a song called the watchmen that pulls heavily from the 70's and 60's to evoke a sense of nostalgia a lot of the characters clearly have… All Along The Watchtower was a perfect pick. It's how I first heard the song and it is fucking dynamite and setting it to Dan and Rorschach's descent into the artic.. fucking perfect.

We get two more songs in the credits. The first is an awesome cover of Desolation Row by My Chemical Romance. I loved them since hearing Danger Day and love Gerard Way's awesome comics work after MCR, so I do like the song.. but it's also a touch too modern to really fit with the film. It was clearly made because the studio wanted a soundtrack tie in.. but it's also very hard to hate because it's so awesome and the first issue's title directly references this song.

The other is We'll Take Manhattan, which I feel was likely Snyder's first choice and is a nice cheeky nod to the horrors that just happened.

Okay so now we've cued the music , let's talk about another change.. one i've been omniously hinting at all film and one where I can't help quoting a certain critic I admire's theme song

They Made Watchmen Without the Slimy Squid

Yeah out of all the changes, one bit of casting, and other various things… this is the single most divisive part of the film. See most of the plot and even the ending is the same: Nite Owl and Rorshach find out Adrian was behind it, confront him at his arctic fortress, and while him kicking their asses is mostly omitted, it's for a good reason we'll get to, and while they plan to not let him do it but..

And thus his plan goes off and while Dr. Manhattan also confronts him, ultimately our heroes are forced to back down for the sake of the world. The big diffrence is WHAT the plan was. See when the Hayter script was made .. it was intended for 2003, complete with a screen test. This was two years after 9/11 so showing what was likely minutes of bloody bodies lying in the streets of new york after an attack.. was something they really coudln't do. They coudln't drop NYC either as it's grimy 80's exterior is as much a character as our heroes. So he came up with something else that made it all the way here.

So instead of Dr. Manhattan having harnessed his power to change the world, he's just getting to it as the film is in progress and is working with Adrian, who goes from a psychic alien attack.. the much simpler plan of using his energy to simulate Dr. Manhattan attacking the world, still giving humanity a common enemy.

Now while I like the squid sequence.. I get why a change had to happen. Even in 2009 9/11 was still fresh in minds. It was likely hard enough getting just dr. manhattan exploding people through. And besides just being sensitive to a reall life tragedy by making things more fantastical… the Squid thing is convoluted as fuck. Like Adrian does lay it out… but it requires a psychic's brain, kidnapping scientists and artists, and genetically cloning it into a squid. It's a BRILLIANT scheme, as it was made to be as believable as possible, and I love it dearly.. but when your trying to streamline an already beefy narrative to fit three hours, it's a LOT to unpack and something not everyone might get and understandably so. I even missed the whole psychic part till adrian brought it up. It has that many moving pieces.

You also have to remember this was pre-guardians of the galaxy. Studios were very gunshy about weird shit and they'd already let the naked blue man hanging dong pass inspection. Zack and Hayter likely didn't want to push it too far. So changing it from the slimy squid while sad.. was necessary.

That said the replacement.. just dosen't work for me. I get using Dr. Manhattan.. but how he pulled it off just raises a LOT of questions and leaves a hell of a lot more holes that could be traced back to him than in the original verison. For one thing the project wasn't some secret project on a remote island and then the arctic but a HIGHLY public clean energy project. I'm not sure they knew manhattan was powering it, but a bunch of scinetests going mising from that suddenly.. isn't going to go away forever. I mean sure Adrian can probbaly bury it with his money, but iwth the journal, there's every chance someone might look into it. Now i'm sure Nixon and later Regan after him would likely gladly shoot anyone who questioned this for world peace.. but i'm also sure someone could leak it eventually.

In the comic.. part of why Adrian won besides assuring world peace.. is he covered his tracks emacuatley: Everyone went missing long before he killed them, he could always fake bodies if needed given his genetic engineering and the squid was so convincingly alien, no one would really THINK to investigate something else. I do get Dr. Manhattan is so throughly. .not human it's supposed to be the same principal, but i'm also not convinced someone wouldn't buy the continence of it.

Not only that is trips away the ambigiutiy of Adrian getting caught as if he does.. Jon could just show up, go ooga booga and confirm the plan. It wipes away any chance of him blowing this away. Unless Jon intentionally lets Vedit hang out to dry, which dosen't seem likely, he gets away completely. It just.. dosen't work for me. I get what they were trying to do but it just dosen't add up.

There's one other adjustment to the ending, but this one I like: LIke the comic everyone but Rorshach agrees to keep quiet but for one thing it's even clearer Dan and Laurie aren't on board with this. We also get a nice adjustment to Rorshach's death as Dan follows.. and sees it happen… crying for his death. Even if Rorshach wasn't a great perosn.. he was still his friend and didn't deserve to die like this. While I like dhis lonely death in the comics.. this still works.

The part I like the most though.. is Dan storming in afterword's and beating the shit out of Adrian. Adrian dosen't fight back and it's left ambiguous: Does he feel guilty or is he just patronizing him like a father whose child is having a tantrum. It's what Dan says though that I really love

"You haven't idealized mankind, but you've deformed it, mutilated it.. that's your legacy.. that's the real practical joke".

Just Dan, tears down his face, knowing he can't get the justice that's required.. but not being content to just.. let Adrian smugly step away. He's given humanity utopia but before marred it with it's cost and will forever carry that burden as he damn well should. It's not QUITE as satisfying as "nothing ever ends".. but it still works with Vedit left just as stunned wondering if he really won. Which nicely brings us to

Under the Hood:

While snyder brought the core of the story well enough to screen, his character work was a bit more.. mixed. Some actors soared, others fell, and some were just let down by the script

We'll start with the character both most prominently used in marketing and whose often see as the franchises mascot, Rorshach. Jackie Earle Haley's performance.. is stunning, it's absolutely perfect to screen, having a nice gruff batman-esque tone that still sounds coarser more tired, and perfectly growly. It fits his uncomoromising mindset, blunt nature and perfectly captures that Rorshach needs help more than he needs to be murdering people. Haley PERFECTLY captures the character, and while he spends most of the film under a mask, he emotes greatly. He also BEAUTIFULLY excutes one of the best scenes of a comic, Rorshach's death. His response is growly.. but when taking off the mask.. he looks utterly destroyed at first, nicely replicating the crying and the fact that despite being so resolute.. even rorshach is sad not only is he passing.. but that a horrible man has gotten away with everything and his scream of "Do it!" is just.. perfect.

Writing wise however.. it's a mixed bag. Hayley does a lot of the heavy lifting.. but a lot of Rorshach's character and backstory was cut. We see flecks of it in his psychological examination but the darkness of mere being itself.. is largely cut out of the film. Malcom Long gets nothing of an arc, a huge shame given he was the only POC character of note in the piece (something Snyder could've rectified and didn't), while the context for Rorshach's fall is mostly gone. The change to what he does to the villain works, having been switched from the saw like handcuffs for understandable reasons ot him savagely meat cleaving the guy, but the slow slide from a man with a tragic past being a vigilante to a man who badly needs a therapist but is so far gone he can't accept the help he needs. .is gone and it takes weight for the character. A lot of what makes Rorshach so neat is gone.

Also gone.. are his right wing leanings. While his opening monologue his kept his homophobia, sexism and general other unpleasantness. This is a double edge sword.. on one hand it makes him more likeable.. but on the other hand it robs the ending of some of it's punch as even if Rorschach sucks.. the fact he's throughly RIGHT hit hit harder coming from someone so often wrong and his right wing fanaticism makes it less obvious if his words will carry weight givfen his various prejudices. The character only still works so well.. because Haley does such a phenomenal job in the roll that the various sanded off edges don't come off as bad as they should. He's just so good and so perfectly cast it helps. It's still not the strongest version of Rorschach, but damn if it isn't memorable.

Less well translated is Dr. Manhattan, who I feel gets the shaft despite his sticking out. I mean at least he probablyg ot some nice resduals form his condoms

Yeah while I feel bad people often overly focus on the character hanging dong, as the whole poitn of that is that he is so far beyond human concerns he dosen't evne care he's hanging dong anymore, I can't knock dc for having a perfect tie in with that.

Look dick jokes aside Dr. Manhattan's representation is really spotty. Some moments are translated perfectly: the aforementioned ride of the valyrkye scene, his spotlight with Watchmaker which shockingly shows off his sense of time despite being portrayed in a fraction of it, and his ending return as a giant blue man.

But a good chunk of his scenes are muted. Part of this is on Billy Crudup. He tries his best.. but ultimately just HOW good he is at portraying a detached godlike being.. varies on the scene. Sometimes he sounds perfectly alien and emotionless.. and other times he sounds like he's just.. bored. The latter just dosen't really work.. I mean sure he's lived through all of this but part of the characters mistique is he's often very hard to read. He also stumbles on the time he is, still coming off emotionless during his ephinany about Laurie or , most damingly when shouting for everyone to leave. Crudup just coudln't figure out the righ totne to match the scnee sand the character dosen't come off well.

Writing wise he's mostly fine.. but the Mars bit is completely botched. Like out of all the stuff the film adapts it's easily the issue that is done the absolute worst. See in the comics it looks like this

Nice crystaline but still pink and otherworldly. Easy enough toa dapt for some reason…. Zack Snyder went with..t his

yeah not only does mars look crappier as while ti's more realistic it's also all brown and muted, taking away a lot of the planets haunting majesty from the comic, but the palace for some reason is entirely made of glass, and cgi.. and as a result it looks REALLY bad. LIke I get using CG, I do, and Manhattan himself is an amazing effect. They got him to screen beauituflly, hanging dong and all. But this is just.. I can't tell if it was just the tightly stretched budget or terrible design choices but it just looks ugly and the scene is so cut down in the theatrical cut it just drains the whole phislocpiacal argument between Manhattan and Laurie. It's just..awful and when you cut a characters best scene down to ribbons he's bound to not come off great. Manhattan looks great but just.. feels souless

So speaking of laurie, stop me if you've heard this one: They cut out most of her backstory. Yeah that's a problem with the film as a whole: I get having to streamline things but not finding some way to intergrate the backstories as well damaged most of the cast. With Laurie it's especially bad as the pressure form her mother, the strained relationship and her painful history are all either underplayed or in the latter case gone entirely. Most of what character she did have is gone.

There is a TINY bit of good as she no longer breaks out into hysterics over most thing, an unfortunate trait I noticed that I don't think Moore or Gibbons thought through for you know, one of only two major female characters in the piece, and the other.. is defined ENTIRELY by nearly being raped then having sex with her rapist so not too good on either account.

That said they replace it with

Malin Ackerman tries her best, but even she admitted that she regretted taking the role, citing it was out of her comfort zone and being the only none shakesphere experinced one in the group and the work's importance, got a bad case of imposter syndrome. I just feel bad for her and her feeling out of her depth shows in her performace. it feels stilted like she dosen't know what to do.. and it's one of the times I blame the acting on Snyder himself. Sometimes acting can be bad direction but not helping an actor whose clearly struggling and not having the good sense to give her way more to work with and an actual character.. that's on him. He had no probelm adjusting the script when needed, so laurie coming out this underbaked is inexcusable. The fact she comes off more as a sex object thanks to her outfit and sex scene without having any AGENCY in said sexuality does not help.

WE then have Dan.. and he may be the only one tha'ts a full on improvement. Patcik Wilson is perfect in the part, not only looking exactly like dan but playing him well: he comes off just a touch more confident.. but not so much he isn't still the insecure, withdrawn nerd the story needs him to be. HE's still a painfully shy man, but he not only has a closer friendship with adrian that helps give him more to do in the plot, and more reason why he's more doubtful he's behind it at first, it also makes Adrian's actions hit harder. IN the comic it wasnt' clear if Adrian was all that close to any of his collegeues. Here the betryal feels personal. He also has great chemistry with ackerman. Wilson is the mvp of the film. And like I said he dosen't just sorta.. collapse and go along with the plan at the end, but is actively spiteful about having to and leaves Adrian devistated. This is easily the better version of dan, and it's likely because unlike the others we didn't get a ton of his backstory, so we only gain more of him instead of loosing a lot.

We then have our mastermind Ozymandis and he's done.. fine. Goode dosen't look the most like him, but did put a lot of effort into the roll. Granted he also infamously told people against his casting "Suck my dick because I don't give a fuck"

But he still did his best and I support his casting: he dosen't look like the superman of the books but more gaunt.. yet he does in the past, giving the feeling the weight of his actions and what has happened has worn on him. While he puts on the cold vener of detachment he dosen't have the smug ego. It makes the character diffrent.. but not in ab ad way, coming off as someone who is doing the grim work necesary to save the world instead of a smug egotist who thinks he's the only one who can. Neither is a good person, but both versions ar eintresting. Admitely Goode slips in an out of an accent but it came from the good idea of having Adrian be german and hide his accent in public to blend in more, as well as distance himself from his nazi parents. I wish this was more texual than just something he thought of but poitns for effort

Finally for the main cast we have our boogie man himself, The COmedian. Along with Stevens and Haley, Dean Morgan not only perfectly matches the role in apperance.. but just ooze sinto it. And since we get his full backstory bit, he's one of the few not as badly marred. The only issue I have is changing his attempted rape to have him be older: him being young and still trying to do something his awful signified that he'd ALWAYS been this cynical, selfish asshat and age only made him worse. The roll was a departure for Morgan who was best known for Grey's Anatomy at the time, but nicely blended into the roll and I wouldn't be shocked if, while not having seen him in wlaking dead, this roll landed him negan as I have read the comic version and the two characters are just similar enough for it to be perfect casting. Ther'es not a lot to say about the comedian I havne't in the comics reviews, Morgan is just perfec tin the roll and desreves more love as an actor.

Finally we have the only two minute men of consequences. Stephen McHattie does a great job as hollis mason though sadly his best scene was cut out of the film, as his death was done BETTER in the extended cut, which I almost reviewed but decided for KEv's wallet and times skae not to. It shows Hollis going down swining, imagining the top knot's as his foes. IT's a great death and I wish it'd been kept in.

Carl Gugino does great as Sally and while she dosen't get many scenes, she is great and I like adding a line about Sally having not regretted her one night stand with Eddie because of wha tit gave her, making her reconcilation with her daughter feel way more plausable.

So with that we just have a few odds and end to

The Cutting Room Floor

As you can probably guess the film exercised a lot. in addition to the various backstories, under the hood and tons of other stuff, pretty much every subplot is excised; The Newspaper Man, the kid with him, Malcom Long, the Lesbians, everyone is gone. The newspaperman and malcom long are unfortunate and it's asd to see them go.. the lesbians not so much as their subplot came off untiotnally homophobic. They also removed mustache cop and you can just imagine my reactoin

Most cuts are understandable. And with that

The Clock Strikes one

So overall Watchmen is a decent film: It has visual flair, some decent aditions, and cast that mostly tries their best even when some aren't given a lot. Is it a GREAT superhero film? Honestly.. no. The cut portions mute the story a bit and Gilliam was likely right that a mini series was a better fit, not to mention there's some tarnish of the time with the executive mandated sex scene and general poor writing for laurie as well as that freaking mars cgi. It's far from a perfect film.. but I still maintain it's pretty good and I still enjoyed it. It's not the best adaptation of the work.. but it's the best it could be within the time, budget and paramenters given and it's a clear labor of love. It's clear Snyder loved watchmen and while he amde some changes, he did his best to get the spirit of it down on film. THe result is a real treat if your a fan of the graphic novel or just a superhero fan in general and if your a fan of snyders, you'll likely enjoy this even more than his justice league works. Doubly if your not a fan. So check it out, it's on HBO max and.. thanks for reading all this way. This has been a decent retrospective and one of th ebiggest and most ambitious project si've done.. But it's time to put away the doomsday clock, let it chime to one in storage.. and stop watching the watchmen. It's been a long road but now.. I rest. See you in the new year.

[tartrazeen]

I have finally seen Across the Spiderverse!

tl;dr - amazing movie, folks here need to be more normal about Miguel

The longer version:

1. I'm so happy you people put that "Gwen is trans" theory in my head.

I got to watch the whole beginning of the movie like, "Omg, her dad is so supportive of her!"

And then I got to watch that part where Miles tells her, "We're the same. Uh - I mean, in the important ways, we're same," and be like "(⁠☞ﾟ⁠∀ﾟ⁠)⁠☞ Solid recovery, man."

And then I got to watch the part where Gwen comes back home, and when her dad asks her where she's been, appreciate the metaphor that'd be in, "I was off murdering all my best friends." Like - oof. I would not have caught the added meaning in a trans girl telling that to her father without this theory. A bit of "I guess he's not that supportive" followed by "Oh thank God, he's going to try harder through the power of movie magic and love and acceptance."

And that really hammered home the "Spider-man is a metaphor for coming out" with Miles, because he can't exactly pull a Misha Collins and come out as straight. As bi, though? As part of a big, interconnected web of LGBTQ2I+? Yeeeesssss.

Separately from that, I hope he and Gwen get together, really building off the "I'm gonna do my own thing" arc he's going through, paired with the "It doesn't end well" bit about Gwen falling for a Spider-man.

2. Loved how quickly they set up Spot.

I get him, I get the story, but they kept the pacing perfectly focused on the Spiderverse stuff. Spot's in the background but also developed well in the background. It's a perfect case of 'not too little' but especially - more importantly! - not too much.

3. Hobie is a fucking bro.

He showed up to help everyone - like one of the first things out of his mouth was, "Hey Miles, you can do better with your powers, here's some help." Loved him. And the fucking COMMON SENSE this guy had? I loved his little "haha anarchy" jokes, but this guy was on the Spiderverse's side completely - right up until he realized, "Nope, this shit has crossed a line" and immediately fought back against them. He didn't just help Miles and then quit. He helped Miles, quit, probably left assuming that Miguel wasn't gonna go completely batshit, and despite that assumption, still had the presence of mind to pass on his not-a-watch to Gwen.

And I think someone else wrote that he ran away? I disagree with characterization. He didn't panic and leave, and he didn't even abandon anybody. He disagreed, withdrew his support, and then left the others to come around at their own speed. I mean, Miguel hurried that speed up a lot, but that just speaks to how fast Hobie moved from "I agree with the Spiderverse" to "You guys are fucking facists." And the second he was tagged to help - after realizing how correct he was about the 'facist' thing - he was immediately back to actively fighting alongside Gwen. There was no passiveness on his side whatsoever. What a bro. And he even gave Gwen a place to stay when she needed it, which was such an extra point of community. 💖

4. Uhhhhhh can everyone please be more normal about Miguel...?

Because I watched that movie. I know like 5% of who this guy is. They gave us the Cliff notes of Sad Backstory and a glimpse - a glimpse! - into how he probably felt, but it was all from behind an iron mask. We haven't gotten into any of the real him yet, just the anger and outrage and fury.

So... people taking running with an obviously incomplete character? That's normal, fine, sure.

People taking that and running with it to slot him in as an uwu Top for Peter B.? Did you only go in looking for a ship, and did you have to be so weird about making it be the guy whose only defining traits are "Big" when his other and MORE IMPORTANT defining trait is "PoC whose race has been historically and actively fetishized for being violent sex objects"? 'Cause it's like everyone just scrubbed that 5% of what we know away to put him into this predefined "Big Dom Top" role with zero self-reflection, and handwaved how that once again perpetuates every racist stereotype this relates to. All to woobify the white guy some more.

I'm all for shipping, but you people literally don't know him. His story's pretty clearly being saved for the next movie, comic book sales show so many of you don't read those and definitely didn't before this (likely just stopping at what Wikipedia says), and went off of ~v i b e s~

And just happened to not notice how creepy and fetishizing it is that those were the vibes you were left with.

5. I teared up when Miles' story started. Yes, right after the opening title.

I wasn't expecting it, but as soon as the music started and that atmosphere was set, I just got hit with such a wave of, "This is unapologetically black." I heard the Puerto Rican vibes coming in later and both of them perfectly throughout the movie, but the centering of his blackness through the music alone. It was a 'great opening for a sequel' before that point. At that point? It was 'a brand-new story.' 💖💖💖💖 Representation bbyyyyy

[signalwatch]

Musical Watch: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

the movie that posits: women love being abducted and held against their will

Watched:  02/07/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First (and possibly last)

Director:  Stanley Donen

Holy cats, y'all.

I...  I don't even know where to start.  There's so, so many angles to this thing, so I'll try and capture my thoughts as best I can.  

I want to be very clear - Until this film, I (perhaps wrongly) believed I'm *pretty good* at contextualizing the cultural differences between our social norms and mores and those of yesteryear.  I may even be able to do period-piece stuff made in prior decades, trying to grok what the people of 1954 found charming about frontier life.  

In general, I can see a film and say "yes, I understand that there were ways that we viewed gender/ race/ manners/ religion/ etc..  that no longer reflect how we'd likely feel now" and I can go on with my life.

But.  Y'all.  I am adrift.  

My take-away is that the current interest in this film by classic film buffs is rubber-necking, ironic appreciation, or just outright hate-watching.  Or not!  Classic film buffs are an unruly bunch.  In its release year, this movie was very successful, financially and critically.  So I don't know anything about mankind anymore.

I've now seen the movie, and will only watch it again if it's my opportunity to bring the madness to the people.  

Some thoughts:

This is a movie which endorses kidnapping at best and possibly abduction and rape, depending on your reading of both the film's text and the much referred/ basis of the film to Abduction/ Rape of the Sabine Women - a well known bit of Roman mythology/ history that this movie turns into a jaunty tune to set up all the events of the second half of the film

It's clearly also somewhere between a movie about the powers of Stockholm Syndrome and the successful establishment of a cult

This movie is the future incels want.  It's a movie about men minus women who feel they *deserve* women and take radical action

Every single character in this movie is an absolute moron

This movie needed to end in a body count - there's no other believable finish

The movie is a musical with zero memorable songs except for the one where you're like "Are they.... singing about mass rape?" Johnny Mercer, I believe was responsible, and that seems insane

The main character (Howard Keel) is maybe the greatest asshole to ever grace the screen.  It's breathtaking.  Just a real shitbag from his first line to his last. When he's not insisting himself upon women, he's treating his new wife as domestic help.  And he's the one who thinks "hey, let's just go raid a town and collect its women for our own personal gratification."  He's an absolute psychopath.

The movie has this same lead state "all women are basically the same" and therefore fungible.  The movie never puts the lie to this idea.  So, good news, ladyfolk.  One of you is swappable for the other, really.  It's just a matter of hair color preference. 

There's a dance number that's really pretty rock solid in the middle

Someone tell me what the brothers are farming up there on the sides of mountains.  Somebody.  Anybody.  Rocks?  branches?  

Julie Newmar is in this movie, she's a head taller than all the other women and she clearly complicates every shot she's in.  But she's Julie @#$%ing Newmar, so you keep her in the @#$%ing movie

I cannot imagine the smells in the house of the brothers.  Like - simply can't wrap my head around it

Russ Tamblyn's career is fucking wild, man

Up until watching this movie, I thought it was about the mail-order-bride shenanigans of the 19th century, where, 160 years before 90 Day Fiancee, lonely-hearts on the frontier would correspond to women in the East, and those women would (sometimes) come out and marry them.*  This isn't the plot at all.

Instead, Howard Keel is a mountain man/ rock farmer in 19th Century Oregon (which was semi-settled as an all-White colony at one point, and this movie does not challenge that idea).  He comes down to town once a year to buy goods for his farm, and this time he also wants a wife.  And, after 5 minutes of looking, he finds one in Jane Powell.  Without mentioning he's bringing her to live by herself with his six brothers and basically be the maid.  Who he will pork, I guess.  It's very sophisticated.

Because she has an American can-do spirit, she actually goes along with this instead of getting right back in the wagon and going back.  

Inspired that their brother is now getting laid, the other 6 brothers go to a barn-raising/ hoe-down, dance, and basically harass girls and fight with the locals like the worst hillbillies to ever fall out of a tree.  Convinced they'll not be allowed to court the girls, the brothers then sneak into town, throw the girls in bags and ride off with them (no, really), intentionally blocking themselves into their own farm for winter by causing a deadly avalanche when the parents, siblings and townsfolk try to save the girls.  Who are in bags.

By the way, I have no idea how anyone eats anymore within two months of the girls' arrival, but worrying about "how will people eat if we double the population of our compound?" is not an issue in this movie and because the journey for the girls is to eventually fall in love with their captors is more important, we never learn what the bathroom situation is.  I had a lot of logistical questions.  

After months of assuming their children had been held like a bunch of Kimmy Schmidts for months on end, when the pass clears and the town-folk make their way to the farm, the girls all lie about being pregnant so they can get married to their favorite toothless hillbilly. Because brainwashing or something.  The movie makes no effort to explain that the brothers somehow de-asshole-ify.  We just see them wandering around in colorful shirts.

And, curtain.

People loved this movie.  It has awards.  It did boffo box office.  

I feel like you have to have the mind of a small child who can't conceive of bad things happening to good people to not be mostly horrified by the entire film. 

If anyone can tell me how this isn't a Blumhouse creation, I'd appreciate it.

*it was a profitable scam then and now as women would ask for money and then just stop corresponding when the money quit showing up. 

https://ift.tt/yNJex90

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/fSDlPts

[rei-ismyname]

Blood Hunt is still happening

Okay, yes thank you Marvel, the vampires can go away anytime now. Blood Hunt is garbage. It's just so aggressively average - dull, plodding, predictable. Blade's daughter (I'm not looking up her name) is a pretty new (I think) cool character but she's not getting much focus. Spoilers below the cut.

Introducing what seems like an interesting character in such a boring event feels like an excellent way to kill any interest. She gets running scenes, some 'Dracula telling her she has to kill her dad' scenes, the obvious 'I won't kill my dad' scenes, and some self-doubt scenes. It's an interesting choice to have Blade be the master Vampire/Darkhold guy or wtf is going on there, and the introduction of the daughter (Okay fine her name is Brielle Brooks) as the heir to the family business makes me think 'oh okay maybe Blade really will be killed off and she'll take over' very briefly, because Marvel doesn't do that.

He's been a popular IP for decades now, one of the first Marvel superhero movies, and if I'm being honest a pretty cool character in small doses. I say small doses because Blade only clocks on for Vampires (except for that one time after Secret Wars when Leonardo Da Vinci was running SHIELD and DOOM was Iron Man) and nobody wants vampires all the damn time. He's not getting killed off, which means we're getting Brielle as a new supporting character for a supporting character. Cool, I guess.

OR, I'm wrong and they are going to kill Blade (briefly, as Marvel deaths go. He'd obviously be back) and Brielle will have room to take up space in books. In the unlikely event that's the plan then they need to be doing more with her. The Strange Academy kids have had just two issues and have established multiple threads and threats, each character wants something and they're not all compatible. Half of them have had a satisfying arc of learning from mistakes and being better people. That's in two issues. Comparatively, we've learnt whose daughter Brielle is but not what their relationship is like. She's met a couple of heroes who have protected her but she's spent the most time with Dracula who hasn't explained shit - he's just told her she sucks, that she's wrong, and that she needs to trust/work with him.

I honestly can't tell if the character is suffering from the unfocused nature of the event or if we're not meant to get invested because she's there for Blade's pathos/character development. If she's speed running the hero's journey and this is a poorly executed refusal of the call then The Threshold better be hype as fuck when she crosses it. It's great to see more black heroes, especially teens, I'm just wary of her being wasted.

The magic squad, headed up by Dr DOOM and Agatha Harkness, seem to have things well in hand. They're both pretty untrustworthy, though DOOM has saved the universe from magical threats at least 3 times in the last two years. He has siphoned their power each time, so I guarantee DOOM will be the big menace in some magic crossover event at some point. He better be, because solid setup has been done and it'd be foolish to waste it.

Maybe I'm being unfair. It's possible we're still in act 1 (oh my god fuck I hope not) and the players are being arranged for a thrilling climax. It hasn't captured my attention, which is a ding - I'm honestly just reading it because IT'S TAKEN OVER THE MARVEL UNIVERSE AND I ENJOY READING IT, USUALLY.

Fuck this. My advice is to wait for the Trade Paperback. The shitty pacing won't be so noticeable when you can get the whole story in one go. I'm rereading old X-Men runs while waiting for Uncanny X-Men to drop, and cringing hard whenever Greg Land appears.

Love you

[bones-sprouts]

@jrwiyuri you asked for this

OKAY SO.

1960s spiderman: really low budget show that has ended up being generally memed upon. it's charming for what it is, but you can't really say it's held up. obsessed with pete sounding like a radio announcer or smth though

1981 spiderman - basically just the 60s show again but with a slightly higher budget. i watched it a little but i cared about it less than:

spiderman and his amazing friends - this one was an extension of the 81 series, it paired up pete with ice man of the x men and original character firestar !! it's not a fan favorite it was definitely made to sell toys but it was my jam as a small child. it was very weird firestar got mind controlled by dracula in 1 episode but it was fun and there was a little dog who was the best ever

spiderman 1994: i think it and another series we'll mention soon are battling for the prize of The Spiderman Cartoon. this one is the most iconic for sure i never watched all that much of it (i was mainly exposed to 80s and 00s shows as a kid but not much 90s) but it was pretty solid👍

spiderman unlimited: this show was fucking CRAZY it was a followup to the 94 series but there were rights issues and it was trying to copy batman beyond so it was a bit of a mess. to sum it up spiderman venom carnage john jameson and a couple other characters are stuck on a parallel earth inhabited mainly by furries. humans are discriminated against and they fight a rebellion and also some earth 2 variants of classic spidey villians. it also ended on a cliffhanger. shit was crazy

mtv spiderman: was made to be a continuation of the first tobey maguire movie before the second one came out, follows pete (who is played by neil patrick harris???) mj and harry thru their college years!! the animation is really rough bc it was a cg cartoon in 2003 but honestly i really like the style they were trying to go for. also it could get really weirdly dark a lot of the time? it rules

spectacular spiderman: THE BEST SPIDEY SHOW OF ALL TIME. HANDS DOWN. MAYBE THE BEST SPIDEY PERIOD I WILL STAND BY THIS. it's so so great it has a bunch of really interesting spins on villians (i think about the twist with the goblins constantly it was so good) and their writing is just so great. THEIR PETER IS SO GREAT. THE BLACK SUIT STORY IS THE BEST ITS EVER BEEN. there's a lot of Teen Drama so it may not be for everyone but i swear to christ it's so great. everyone reading this look up the theme song and you'll understand. warning though it does end on a cliffhanger because of:

ultimate spiderman: okay this show was Controversial. when disney bought marvel they left spectacular on a cliffhanger so they could start it. spidey is put on a shield team with nova, iron fist, white tiger, and luke cage (who is almost exclusively referred to as power man). it relies super heavily on the comedy and meta jokes, which can get Tiring. it had a crossover episode with Jessie (the children's sitcom). they did i believe is the first spiderverse adaptation and the later seasons replace most of the cast with more spider people. they call miles kid arachnid.

marvels spider man: this show has been ripped to shreds so many times and honestly i can't really defend it. they turn every character into a supergenius and then turn every character into spiderman. i think my hot take is im sick of having like thirty spidermen like if you aren't doing spiderverse one is fine man. anyways the only thing i liked is they adapt superior spiderman (the comic where doc ock and spidey switch bodies) and it was really great honestly i really like their otto. he dies though so then i stopped watching

spidey and his amazing friends: its just pj masks with spiderman. next

spiderman freshman year: this show isn't out yet but i love it so much. there's speculation it may get cancelled and i swear i will die if that happens all of the concept art looks GORGEOUS im so excited about it

someone ask me to list and explain all the spiderman cartoons in chronological order

[softgrungeprophet]

musing on movies in general, long post, do not read if you don't want my rambling opinions on cinnamontography or whatever

anyway

my kingdom for a spider-man noir movie (by which i mean Spider-Man Noir, the 1920s spider-man, but i also mean, a noir movie about spidey in general, even modern) in the vein of the Batman and other modern and neo-noir films instead of this ugly, poorly lit stuff the MCU keeps putting out

sony!! sony do you hear me?! (disney do not interact) i want black shadows and strong lighting used to lead the viewer's eye, purposefully obfuscate things, and only reveal what the movie wants the viewer to see when it wants the viewer to see it. i want to see two eye lenses and nothing else, looming in the darkness...

(tasm2 tie-in game actually did this really well, ironically; visually that game is not bad, but the menace system makes it almost unplayable for me 😔which is unfortunate cause it's clear how much more polished it is than the first game (which i enjoyed despite its tendency to crash)) (though i was disappointed they removed the auto-web button that lets you web-dodge up to a vantage point)

sony?????????

i am looking forward to the next ITSV movie, i just know that will look good as hell

this post as turned into a long ramble about cinnamontography and movies i've seen recently so if you care you can read it but otherwise XD probably not worth it

but imo birds of prey and the batman are probably the best looking live action superhero movies i've seen since 2014 (probably not a controversial statement XD) both have stellar cinematography and choreo.

batman is heavy on the blacks and stark contrasts and using the shadows to hide things until they want you to see them (thus my fave minor moment: batman materializing seemingly out of the darkness, as if he was born from it) and it really nails its aesthetic imo. i've seen some criticisms of its darkness but i feel like these are criticisms that stem from this idea that well, it's dark, therefore it's badly lit, instead of understanding the differences between bad lighting and purposeful darkness. like the difference between, you know, GoT or something and this is that in The Batman, the shadows aren't just bad lighting, they're used to frame the images, to hide certain elements until those elements need to be seen, and to establish mood and tone as what is essentially a noir movie with horror and and superhero action elements. i appreciate that, and it reminds me of the way Into the Spider-Verse uses the Kingpin's literal body to manipulate the frame and affect the cinematography, in some ways.

Birds of Prey is less heavy on the noir elements but has a lot of really good color grading for setting the mood. like the lighting in the final scenes? it's so moody and effective, and I love a good movie with good color stylization, using purples and blues and reds like yes, please do that, I'm sick of Realistic Lighting™️ (Mad Max: Fury Road also did this really well). it looks fantastic throughout and is just a very well directed action movie imo

birds of prey also has possibly the best fight scene choreography i've ever seen in a modern superhero movie, along with like... tasm2?? which also has some stellar action choreo and really fascinating set pieces and setups (basically everything involving electro was fucking sick) but like, i think BoP surpasses pretty much every live action superhero movie i've ever seen, including my fave live action spidey movies (Spider-Man 2 and TASM and TASM 2, minus the green goblin but including the clock tower) in being not just fast and frenetic and high-impact, but also being clear, concise, easy to follow, and creative. the glitter cannon stuff is so well done and was very fun to watch in the theater. The fight scenes in Birds of Prey are fun, fast, clear, and absolutely fucking brutal.

i feel like i always compare it to Black Panther, which i saw first obvs (though not in theaters), and which is a solid movie that i enjoyed for the most part, and which is indeed probably the best MCU movie in general, but I found the fight scenes in Black Panther to be muddy and somewhat difficult to follow, almost slow, despite being... technically fast? I only bring it up specifically because it was praised as being not just the best MCU film (a low bar) but also in being a Great Movie with Great Fight Scenes but... tbh i wasn't big on the fight scenes in Black Panther... though i do think it's got the best costume, hair and makeup of the entire MCU at the moment, personally. and I haven't seen 2, though I hear it's good, but the costumes also look fantastic in that, and I hope the fight choreo has improved cause those movies would be really stellar with the right action choreo imo.

like I said I just brought it up cause like, when I watched Black Panther after hearing it had these amazing fight scenes, and i finally saw them, i felt kind of... confused? like, damn maybe I just have no taste in fight scenes? i was really underwhelmed by it, like, am I missing something that other people are seeing here?? (but like i said, i enjoyed the movie, and it has great costume design) But then I saw Birds of Prey a little while later and was like, blown away by the choreography and cinematography, so I think it's just a matter of the whole designated action setpiece stuff that's going on in the MCU overall, and the way that Disney/Marvel kind of controls that aspect of their movies. i also watched Black Panther on my laptop though, so I wonder if that affected the viewing... like would Birds of Prey be less impressive on my laptop than it was on the big screen (I mean. yes, but in terms of choreo specifically would it be worse on a smaller screen? i'm inclined to say no??? but i haven't rewatched it on DVD yet... maybe i should)

the recent predator movie, Prey, also had some really good choreo and cinematography imo, though I found it suffered somewhat from the use of CGI instead of practical effects for things like the bear hunting, but, I get it, it's cheaper to use CGI than to build a fucking... animatronic bear XD but aesthetically, I think it was an attractive movie and I liked the design for the Predator in that movie a lot... the skull faceplate and general integration of bones into the design was really cool looking, and the like... juxtaposition of natural colors and warm lighting from fire etc. compared to the neon green of the predator blood and its modern technology and cloaking was so interesting, visually. also a movie with absolutely brutal violence lol

actually when i watched Prey, I watched Predators (with the s) the same day, because I was looking at lists and saw it was well-praised, and in some cases put as #2 only behind the original Predator, but... like... it's no contest. Prey is a better movie. I'm sorry if you cannot suspend your disbelief that a teenage native girl outwitted the predator w/ nothing but her environment and handmade weapons but I think the movie sold that really well and showed that she was learning and adapting the entire time, and showed how close she came to dying not just from the predator but from the bear and other animals as well, numerous times. I think it was as convincing as any other "human beats predator" movie can be. and like the other movies, a lot of the humans trying to fight it did die. like... i don't think adrien brody's character in Predators is any more or less convincing as a character using his wits to beat an adversary that is more physically powerful and more technologically advanced than him.

Prey is a better movie imo

Predators was fine, and you know I love topher grace being a weird little guy, but it's simply not a contest lol. it was effective in making you hate most of the characters though, so it did that well XD except of course the most interesting character died, so, whatever. Predators gave me the vibe of a movie that was like, OKAY WE HAVE THE BUDGET FOR THESE BIG NAME ACTORS, we GOT morpheus from the matrix, we GOT machete himself—but we only got the budget for five minutes of screen time so they are going to die immediately unfortunately XD

i also thought the romance was dumb but what else is new lmao

and prey feels like a movie that's not trying to just be big explosions with a famous guy but like, telling a story with characters that know each other already and telling a story about not just overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles and enemies but also about proving oneself, and being true to oneself, and also about how french people suck

anyway boy this ended up being one long ramble about movies i've seen over the past couple years huh

just musing, thinking,

hey man you know what other movie ruled? pacific rim. that's a movie with character design, mood and setting. hell yeah.

i didn't hate the sequel as much as some people but i did think it was lacking a lot of the mood and character of the first (though the mechs looked nice) and while i found the actual plugsuits better designed i thought the helmets were less visually appealing without actual glass visors, and i think its plot would have been better if instead of icing mako they had instead made the plot about her and her brother's relationship instead of playing him off of some bland white dude (though the obvious bisexuality on display was funny)... having mako be the only person he can drift with would have been way more interesting to me tbh... the stuff with the little girl was solid though. but nothing can live up to that first movie, i mean, how COULD it. it's GDT doing mecha! (they should have named the mech in the first movie something else though yikes)

[mossfvcker]

i know we don’t want to hear it. and tony stark was a scumbag etc etc we all hate marvel. but he has some massive trans guy swag in the iron man solo movies