#the issue with this is that I cannot view this Fine Film with my family on holiday but that is alright i will channel the anticipation

[takiki16]

A Fine Chain

UPDATE: Chapter 8/?

Fandom: Jupiter Ascending

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Beta: @gallifreyburning

Relationships: Jupiter Jones/Caine Wise

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Light Dom/sub, Power Imbalance, Royalty, Slavery, Collars, Leashes, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Don’t copy to another site, Dark

Summary: Caine Wise, disgraced ex-Skyjacker and convicted criminal, is suddenly inducted into the service of the enigmatic Queen Nea-Seraphi, mysterious new Recurrence and puzzle to the Entitled social circle. While figuring out the boundaries of his new station, worrying about his old commander, and nursing old wounds from his court martial, Caine finds himself slowly being drawn into the confidence of his royal employer. What could Her Majesty possibly want with a defective splice?

In which Caine gets a promotion, an assignment, and a snack - not necessarily in that order - and learns several interesting new things about her Majesty Queen Nea-Seraphi

[mineofilms]

Review of: “Knock at the Cabin”

Heavy Spoilers Ahead. Read with Care…

Knock at the Cabin (2023) Writers: Paul Tremblay (Novel), M. Night Shyamalan, Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman (Screenplay) Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan Stars: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge IMDB Rating: 6.2/10 Stars Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score: 64%

“Knock at the Cabin” (2023) which confused me with “The Cabin in the Woods” (2011) is the first M. Night Shyamalan movie I have seen with No twist. This movie is played straight the entire time and that made this very hard to swallow. I have never done well with movies, plots that revolve around a binary decision. It is either this or that, anything else is irrelevant. It was sort of weird, the movie watching experience I mean. I did take issue with the cast. I have never been a very big Dave Bautista fan as a leading man. He is good to play smaller roles but to be the center point in any role. It doesn’t work for me. Basically the man cannot really act well. Like I said, he can do well with very small and his character being limited but to give him too much dialog, it really is film-cringe. I don’t know, bad call in my opinion. The movie itself flowed fine. When I sat and watched it I was getting those: “It looks like a thriller, feels like one, tone feels right,” vibes. My big issues are with the plot, the resolution. The whole 3rd act. I mean this will totally get the social media, "how this movie should have really played out," treatment.

If this happened in a real reality, right now, and not a pseudo-reality. We'd all be doomed. If I had my chance at it. Out in the woods, yeah, the gun would have been in a much better position. If I got a chance to defend myself from these four horsemen at any point in the story I wouldn't even hear them out. If I got my hands on that gun. I would have systematically murdered them all without even getting huffy about it. My point of view is; I am already dying/dead from my own medical/mental health combinations. Those four people canceled their lives the second they forced themselves into the home from my perspective. As far as the whole of humanity goes; I do not know if I would sacrifice what is and has been defined as mine since I was first able to understand concepts of any make or model. If I am chosen. God/gods, choose the wrong person and wrong family. If a God, or gods demanded I make a sacrifice, boi.... aren't they gonna be disappointed lol. I have sacrificed enough for three lifetimes. No meal ticket here. No FKs given either and I am not sorry about that. If there was a lesson to be learned I fail to see what it is.

I always pull from the Matrix: ReLoaded, at the end of the film where Neo realizes he is NOT the One but merely just “a-One,” the sixth One. Neo is The Sixth One to appear in the sixth Matrix iteration in which the trilogy takes place. In each iteration, The One is guided by the Oracle and then the Keymaker to a holding room of sorts where The One gains an audience with the Architect. That for all Neo’s abilities he is as powerless as all the humans trapped inside the Matrix. All choices up to this point have been weighed, measured, calculated and manipulated to get Neo to reset the Matrix for the Machines. That the free will Neo is striving for is not real. A binary information system displayed on a 2D surface appears as 2 points. There is Left and there is Right. If you want to see the Puppet Master’s fingers on the strings one has to see this on a 3D surface. Right now, the way society sees this as just 2 points on a sheet of flat paper. I never look at decision making that simply. I always assume both choices have something else at play. Call it, a lifetime of being on the wrong side of this binary information system for most of your life…

Now my head is in this place that if one or a group attempts to force this binary logic-choice upon me. If I have no other recourse other than to choose red choice or blue choice, left choice or right choice and I do not feel like either are what I stand for, or will accept, then I WILL choose my own way. I will look at Morpheus, I take both pills, give Morpheus the finger and jump out the goddamn window. Whatever happens, happens. My only recourse is to never give them what they want or even need. That my last ditch of independence before it is taken from me is to not comply… I will not submit… One or the group cannot force a win in their favor against someone like that, but people continue to play by the rules of a binary information system, even in fiction, especially in fiction. We take these huge liberties with our characters we write for fiction but less and less now I see the level of practical and realistic growth in their decision making processes. I know we are talking about fiction here, but this fiction in this specific story is related to our current reality. Yet, it doesn’t obey any of those rules. I feel pretty strongly about the current logical approach we take with the Left/Right binary information system. I do not believe in it more than there being a lack of evidence to support the belief in Jesus Christ. I believe in the concept Jesus more than I do the binary information systems and I absolutely DO NOT believe in Jesus Christ as a religious savor, in any capacity. I hold that concept very high on my own personal knowledge system that binary is bullshit. I guess I am crazy or a Sociopath lol. In that respect I had a very hard time seeing the plausibility of these very human situations and choices in “Knock at the Cabin.”

Other than that, it wasn't bad. I actually liked the gay couple aspect and it not coming off overly WOKE. Oh, it’s in there, of course it is, but at least it wasn’t shoved down our throat and it was important to the story. This at all didn’t feel forced like it always tends to feel. Like, it’s a thing but not a thing. I don’t know if that was dark humor or not. If I look at this movie as totally dark humor from beginning to end. Then I think it’s sort of a middle finger to our current world culture view, then this movie is brilliant. If it is supposed to be taken seriously, the choices and decisions do not make much sense to me in that scenario. If the whole movie is like, “hey we got these four people/horsemen, or whatever, that are gonna try and convince a family to sacrifice a family member what possibly could go wrong?” You get a foreign kid with a physical deformity that no one wanted so they gave it to Americans, not even knowing they were a gay couple. You have a gay couple where one side the parents do not understand and see their son as a failure/disappointment and the other guy is a domestic violence victim because of his sexual preference of being a gay man in modern times. If those are your odds, then that is the joke. That is the humor. I honestly could not tell whether or not this movie was played straight or is really a satire on our world culture. If it is a satire then it is brilliant, if it is straight then this movie was poorly executed.

That in and of itself is funny to me. So yeah… It wasn’t terrible but nothing special. If you are bored, it is worth a watch but there is nothing must see here. It is just a solid thriller that tries to act like reality but really isn’t real nor does it even feel real. This is what you get when you try to get people to care about your characters so they try to put themselves into the decision making process. Me… I would have lost my mind and after a few hours. I would stop cooperating in any capacity. I’d have no problem at all watching each of them kill themselves. If anything, I’d lose my patience with how slow they are about it all. The problem I have with this is the great human experiment from my perspective is a huge mistake. Do not give me that power… I won’t make the choice that is expected of me by the masses…

One of the last things that was eating at me about this movie is every time the family said no to a sacrifice one of the four horsemen were killed and then the doomsday event happened. At no point were we told or shown what would happen if one or all of the four horsemen did not contribute to their own death. What if they said, hell no. I am not doing this. The movie suggests that these four people came together via the internet due to their strong visions. That, if they didn’t do this the visions would get stronger. Ok, fine… They get stronger… You’re telling me these four people felt so compelled to meet and attempt to force these people to choose? And on top of all that, they are a Gay couple. So they do make note that they are being targeted because they are Gay. It comes up, it is quickly discussed and disregarded. That is when this movie starts to break apart for me. Plus one of the four are the person that previously attacked one of the couple some years ago that set the decision making process for him to purchase a gun to begin with. It is because of all this that I feel he would have had the gun on him or at least in the cabin, somewhere where he could quickly get to it before they all broke into the cabin. I just think it would be highly unlikely the gun would be in the safe in the vehicle.

The other part of this is these four horsemen have collectively decided to corner, bully and force this part of this all onto this family. If I were one of them. If I were forced to either force someone else to contribute over, them, the group saying, this isn’t right. I do not care how bad these visions get. That I won’t do this. Regardless if this is real or not. If this is the message of the movie then humanity is absolutely doomed. The reality is all four of these people would have committed suicide before they planned to hunt down this family and force them to compile. And if they were able to plan something out what kind of shape would they be in mentally/emotionally? Spending months not sleeping, slowly thinking you are crazy. Again, the real reality of the situation. If all four showed up and tried this, they all should have been shot dead before they actually got into the cabin, but that isn’t how fiction goes. Sort of why this movie really needed that M. Night-Twist and it didn’t get it. That is why I think this might just be that dark humor here but who knows. M. Night movies have been so miss pretty much since “The Village” and that was 2004. Sure, he has a decent one come and go. “Split” from 2016 was decent enough but it is rare to find anything in his catalog after 2004 that comes as highly recommended. He is capable, but we haven’t seen much that gives us those “SIGNS” vibes…

 Review of: “Knock at the Cabin” by David-Angelo Mineo 2/26/2023 2,009 Words

[sixtynineinchnails]

I’ve been posting and reblogging a lot of anti-jk rowling content today and I think some people might see “fuck jkr” and get the wrong idea, so I want to make myself very clear.

I was a Harry Potter fan for over a decade. I am very familiar with the books and films. I am not hopping on here to hate on a series I loved for my entire childhood. I find it pretty icky when people call out problems in the source material without having read/watched any of it, and trust me: I am NOT doing that.

I am airing my criticisms from the standpoint of someone who was absolute obsessed with the series for years. I think at one point I had enough Harry Potter t-shirts to wear one for each day of the week (all gifts from friends and family). hell, I hand wrote fanfiction. on paper. believe me when I say I get it. I really do. it’s meant a ton to me over the years (as I know it has for many others) and I have wanted so badly to defend it.

but I cannot. not remotely. there are some big issues in the original text. and there are some very big issues with the author herself. I don’t hate the imaginary world of Harry Potter. I hate that the author is bigoted, transphobic, fatphobic, racist, and who knows what else, is a billionaire with a huge following who uses her platform to spread hateful nonsense (and support other people spreading hateful nonsense), and I especially hate that people are refusing to see the truth about the situation because they’re blinded by their love of the media itself.

it is possible to like a piece of media and still be critical towards it and it’s creator. I am not here to make you burn your merch. I am not here to force you to stop consuming the content altogether. I’m asking that you don’t put your money towards a franchise that’s supporting a bigot, and that you view Harry Potter through a more critical lens. consider moving on. if you can’t, just please don’t keep hyping it up online. be aware of how others might see it, how others have been hurt by both the author and the text itself, and try to understand where dislike of the series may come from.

still wanna watch the new movie coming out? okay. fine. pirate it. if you don’t mind waiting, your local library will probably get a copy eventually that you can watch. there are ways to consume media without supporting the creator. but please don’t watch it blindly.

TLDR: coming from a former Harry Potter enthusiast, please don’t feel that “fuck jkr”posts are an attack on fans because that’s not remotely what this is about. this is about bigotry, and boycotting injustice.

[lila-rae]

🙄🙄🙄 rolling my eyes at Tom liking ig stans posts about the photos yesterday. Dude is a walking and talking contradiction. I cannot wait to see him learn in real time when he moves to NYC. You are not 19 anymore and able to causally walk down the street like a average person, Tom. Both him and Z have been viewed by billions of people and paps get huge paydays for their photos. I was hopeful with them going to such public areas and playing it for the cameras that they'd be changing their ways but clearly that was only for a few hours. Buy a house in some private part of NYC and hire actual drivers and security and don't frequent highly popular areas. They were caught, by fans and paps, in NYC in December multiple times and were fine so what's the issue now? Zs probably a little better on this than him but it's silly how ruffled he gets over this. Sir, idk who you think you aren't but having a thing against paps seems hella silly when they'll only get worse. Learn to befriend them or avoid their typical sights or something. Idk if he feels as though there's plenty of high profile celebrities who don't get papped but few have the attention of youth as he and Z do and MANY are papped they just don't go viral. NYC is going to be a tough but necessary evil for him especially since Z will be working for a good portion of it so it'll be him on his own without her as a buffer. Grow up and make an actual plan, dude. This weird back and forth makes him look silly and immature.

I defended him with the London pics because they were super invasive and crossed a line. They weren’t in public and had a reasonable expectation of privacy at his parent’s home. That I get being upset over. But I’m sorry anything in New York shouldn’t be a shock. I know his publicist has explained to him this (she’s way too competent and respected not to) he knew the risks when he stepped foot out of a car to go to Mamo of all places. Like dude just get a grip and understand your situation instead of being passive aggressive with family pages. It’s not cute or becoming and he just looks like an entitled brat who wants his cake and to eat it too. Cause if he really didn’t think pictures were going to be taken leaving the front door of your hotel or the movie screening of his own film he’s delusional. And of he’s mad about photos with Z being shared why bring her out where he knows there are cameras. Or why not use the service entrance I know that hotel has. I’m kind of over his weird nonsensical expectations and his IG liking to “make a statement”. You want to be mad at someone be mad at the system that’s designed to raise celebrity to the point people want to see pictures of you out and know about your life. Don’t be shady to your own fan pages about highly public images. Makes you look like a dick.

Ok end 4 am rant courtesy of baby girl dancing on my bladder. I’m going back to sleep now.

[twstheadcanons]

Any hcs for pomefiore, like how its students interact socially. Or hcs on the etiquette lessons?

this is long

·         I stand by what I said about Savanaclaw – Night Raven College has a bunch of stupid high school boys in its student body.  Being in Pomefiore does not erase your dumb high school energy.  It is just redirected.  As the oldest dorm, Pomefiore has some antiquated decour, and its own pride in maintaining them, including its gratuitous amount of candles strewn about.  Are the candlelit flames real?  Yes.  Can students touch them and light them themselves? Absolutely not.  They’re enchanted to light up and extinguish on their own. Vil’s seen firsthand how hotheaded and confrontational Pomefiore students can be.  He finds enchanted candles reasonable.  

·         There’s a garden in the back of the dorm building.  As the dorm known for its prowess in poisons and potions, it’s important for Pomefiore students to be able to identify specific types of flora commonly used in formulas, alongside their potential benefits and dangers.

·         Gardening can be grueling, especially when dealing with tricky, difficult flora. Vil has extensive instructions under his belt when it comes to making sure all students do their part (there is no avoiding gardening duty).  As such, alongside gardening itself, he’s put a lot of time and effort researching and specialising methods to minimise/mitigate the amount of mess and physical involved – and that’s without cutting corners.  Every new year brings in new students with their own personal strengths, so he has to make sure no stone goes unturned.

·         That said, absolutely no one shares gardening gloves.  Crowley is crying at the expenses of just damn gardening gloves but Vil is Not going to budge.

·         Of course, the apple trees are ones Pomefiore plants as well.  It’s their signature after all.  Rook hawk eyes both the trees’ growth and makes sure no one’s snagging them beforehand.  Ever since Epel enrolled, he’s lowkey more instructive of the process whenever Vil’s not around.  He’s also got his own shortcuts and tricks for general gardening.  Having a more hands-on approach since birth, it comes naturally to him.

·         Like, no offence, but the Pomefiore apples are not as good as the ones the Felmiers grow.

·         Epel is constantly on the verge of going apeshit when something he KNOWS he’s good at and knows his shit about is getting nitpicked, so for Vil’s safety I am making the executive decision that Vil’s noticed Epel sometimes taking charge in helping other students and just lets Epel do his own thing when it comes to helping out with Pomefiore’s plants and apples.

·         Honestly, having the two different approaches work in Pomefiore’s favour.  Some students need/want more structure and guidance, making Vil a better option.  Others benefit from Epel’s self-assured, informal approach since it makes it seem less daunting for beginners.

·         Rook likes to indulge himself when it comes to apples.  By that I mean he likes to ‘help’ students ‘slice’ their apples by doing the classic arrow-through-the-apple thing.  A lot of students think it’s actually pretty awesome.  

·         Right up until Rook asks for a volunteer to have the apple on their head.

·         The science club actually has its fair share of Pomefiore students apart from Rook.  Some are simply following the example of a generally respected vice-leader, whilst other took it for their own interests.

·         The same goes for film appreciation.   While small and mostly Pomefiore students under Vil’s lead, it’s a close circle of students working together.

·         The ballroom, like gardening, requires its own care and maintenance.  Keeping floors, windows, and mirrors clean.  This actually goes for the entire dorm, but the ballroom hosts a lot of Pomefiore’s recreational and group events (makes for a good place for film appreciation rehearsals).

·         Another reason it’s important to keep the dorm itself clean overall: absolutely no one wants perfume and cologne just lingering in furniture.  That is not the life anyone wants.  Ever.

·         This is something Rook’s especially quick to get on others’ cases about (in his own Rook Hunt way that is).  He’s a hunter, so he doesn’t want to risk even the most wonderful of scents blowing his cover.

·         Speaking of Rook, if you’re familiar with French in Pomefiore, but don’t use it often.  You Do Now for the sake of your fellow dormmates that want to know what the hell Rook is saying.

·         Students in Pomefiore tend to grow up into more hands-on careers.  Of course, there’s the ones in professions like show business, fashion, and cosmetology, but other common careers they gravitate to are generally science or fine arts related.

·         If you know what’s good for you, and you’re interested in fashion, start learning about the ethical issues and dangers of fast fashion ASAP.  As someone surrounded by aesthetics and designs, Vil knows his shit and idealistic views that overlook the shady business practises of even big-name groups get under his skin fast.  In general, as passionate as he is in his line of work, Vil’s still disillusioned to the glitz and glamour of it, which is why he takes such an aggressive stance on his own management.

·         Since first years share four students in one dorm room, Epel’s roommates will never escape the apple smell.  It’s gone from charming, to a bit sickening, to being plain desentisised to the scent. While all three are kind of over having an apple or apple juice every time Epel’s family sends them, they’ll happily accept them from time to time.  The apple juice especially is popular since it makes for a refreshing change from water.

·         Makeup brand debates.  They’re a thing.  Vil mostly thinks they’re dumb on a surface level since people just gravitate to what works for them and is within their budget but if you ask he’s got dirt on which brands have the worst practises that don’t need Anyone’s money.

·         Considering his ‘villain’ typecasting the guy has no fear using his platform to be outspoken on those types of issues which is why a lot of Pomefiore students end up actually respecting him outside his acting and modeling career.

·         For the record, it’s not like Epel’s the only student from a rural background in Pomefiore. There are plenty of others, it’s just that they didn’t literally get into a fight with a dorm leader during the opening ceremony.

·         The way he acts with Epel early on, however, does leave a rather unflattering impression on said rural students.  Epel doesn’t really keep his background a secret, so it’s easy to hear Vil scold Epel’s informal, direct way of speaking as him disliking the actual accents a country person may have.  So like. Vil’s gotta work on clearing that up with them, lol.

·         This is a “Vil’s done a good number of things wrong” zone regardless of his background and actual intent and also a “Pomefiore isn’t only about beauty but considering the way its students act and speak in general Uhhhhh” so as focused as Vil is on image and Pomefiore on seeming ‘proper’ I am Forcing him to reevaluate his approach to educating less experienced students on westernised and Eurocentric etiquette expectations.   You’re going to have students with staunchly different mannerisms and ideas of etiquette that do not affect their work ethic whatsoever sweetie.  

·         In a similar vein, older Pomefiore students that happen to be beastfolk (I’d like to imagine the Mirror of Darkness doesn’t magically toss Savanaclaw into some unholy ‘this is the beastfolk ghetto’ hell.  Do not burst my bubble I won’t listen) usually end up being tightknit with first years.  Honestly how else are first-years going to survive Rook Hunt being their vice-leader.

Vil also takes his own measures to minimise how up in their business Rook gets with Pomefiore’s own beastfolk.  

Being a detail-oriented dorm, Pomefiore has the most amount of students experienced in hands-on work and crafts.  If the individual students get along, Savanaclaw and Pomefiore students can get a lot done when they put their minds to it.

“Absolutely Beautiful” blasting from the ballroom at 5am so the less morning-inclined can wake up properly for the next three weeks.

·         Look Vil and Rook have particularly polarising personalities you cannot expect the entire dorm to worship them nor their way of doing things.

·         Master Chef, although a small elective, also has its fair share of Pomefiore students.  Something about a practical skills class appeals to them, and it actually makes for relaxing classwork.  

·         First dorm that sorts out people’s allergies.  If you think it’s excessive Pomefiore has forms prepared for new students to fill out regarding any extenuating circumstances and conditions think again. No health accidents happening in this dorm.

·         Mentions of students struggling tend to result in other students helping each other out. Study groups are pretty encouraged within the dorm if it works out for the people involved.  The lounge aside, the ballroom’s surprisingly popular for study groups when it’s not in-use for anything else.

[gammacousin]

Okay. I’m ready to real talk Black Widow. I don’t want to but as an activist there’s an obligation I have to share and educate. I nerd to forget but I suppose it shows the power of this movie if it brings something real into the light.

*Spoiler Warning. Trigger warning for everything.*

There are some things I want to say that could potentially spoil aspect of the Black Widow film. I also would advise you to skip this post if you have a darker past, if you aren’t interested in getting serious, or wish to skim by, I’m sincerely not judging! I come on here to avoid the universe as well. You do you, I totally still love you if you don’t read this and want to move onto something nerdy or more fun. This isn’t the post for you.

It’s taken me a while to process and organize my thoughts. Skip if you don’t want to hear deep, raw stories.

3

2

Okay. Nerd review first.

The level of girl power and any and all glass ceilings… There is SO much left to do. So much that needs to still be addressed. But seeing 3 women run this show: Yelena, Natasha, and Melina was an absolute joy to observe. This isn’t the end of some hard waged war, it’s the beginning and I beg you; Disney/Marvel. Please give us more of this? It’s so important for young girls to see other girls kicking butt and winning. Quick summary of nerd feelings; Losing Nat still burns. Yelena is a boss.

Okay…Real talk.

I have to get a little deeper here now. My personal story absolutely played into how I felt about this film and I wish I saw some trigger warnings about the material covered. Do I know Black Window’s story? Yes. In and out. I can read it, I can write my FF on it. However. Little to no one knows my story and so absolutely no one is to blame for not warning me. I was not expecting to come out this shook.

I’m sharing this because it’s happening now, today. In the real world. I doubt the film makers had this mind over other social issues, but after feeling like it’s irrelevant, that my pain is somehow less than, I’m realizing through my activism it’s not.

I grew up in a cult where women are not relevant. You matter up to a point. You are useful, to a point. If you’re giving 24/7, you’re not giving enough. If you’re not smiling as you’re doing cult stuff, you’re complacent. In addition to why I’m about to share, my house growing up was not a safe space which is a story for another time. So it’s a stack��this janga-ish game that eventually just comes crashing down.

My trigger started moments after the film started the handing over of the kids. When Alexei chooses the job over the welfare of the girls. Alexei put his two “daughters” in danger to save ‘face’. To put the job ahead of two children…it hit home. In the group I’m from, fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings will absolutely choose the group over blood. You are nothing and you mean nothing if you ‘defect’. If you break a rule. If you complain. If you say ‘no’. If you put in a bad review for a leader, if you have anything bad at all to say about the organization as a whole. You can confide something deep in someone you trust and it absolutely will come back to hurt you.

The title song shook me completely. This collage of video and images of brainwashing, treating these girls like absolute objects is disgusting in itself. But when you’re raised in this other world, there’s a level of brainwashing that is absolutely unmatched. Videos, books, quizzes, 12 hour lectures, weekly meetings.

People are unified to the point where you lose your own identity. There’s a language- a literally language- words you start to misuse. Verbiage only people in the cult use. Kids of any age will watch any rated film. Frequently the themes are about obedience and or cooperation and the consequences if you do not cooperate/obey. Death is a such a common theme that either you become petrified of your own shadow, petrified of breathing wrong, or turn completely numb. In sharing these videos, the goal is to instill this fear that you will never be enough. That you will die- turn into a charred hot dog of a figure if you do not obey 8 white men - the leaders, in New York. That your friends, classmates, neighbors, family will die if they don’t believe what you do. That you’re held accountable if you can’t bring them to your side.

The song for the credits hit me. I cannot listen to it. I have no idea what it was about.

When I watched the film, I couldn’t focus at this point at gosh barely 15 minutes in. I had already checked out. I heard keywords. “Entertainers,” “I feel stupid and contagious…”

In my world, I did not matter. What mattered was, what was presented to the public. To your group. Meeting some checklist of this perfect family at any cost. You’re not an individual, you’re a number. Literally. Your records are documented by men in the back room- your actions, your track record. But ultimately? You’re part of a numeral equation reported to headquarters. And if you’re a woman, you do not have a say in how you look, dress, act or in what you say. You are as the title song says, …“Entertainers”. You smile. You do your job, and you are ‘happy’ about it. Your job is to dedicate x amount of hours cleaning the room you gather in, and in recruitment of other members…

There’s a ‘job’ in the cult called a “pioneer”. Okay. No, we might not have been trained assassins. But you are trained to manipulate emotionally. To prey on the weak. You get books, magazines, movies, speeches, lectures- you rarely get a free Saturday. Oh and the job isn’t paid. So make sure you’re working (part time because full time secular work isn’t acceptable) at a desk job (because college and getting an education is not allowed). Don’t make friends with the people who work with you, they’re out to get you. Back at the club; You answer questions like it’s some schoolastic quiz every week and quote what your reading. It’s a brainwashing tactic. If you say something enough times, you remember it. You start to believe it. You spend hours reading these things, training… Your job is to target people who have lost- and have lost a lot because they’re vulnerable. You learn to go to cemeteries, and literally stalk people who are grieving. Like Val. If you can catch someone when they’re weak, senses are dulled. They’re desperate. And you bait them with this false promise. This idea that all THEY have to do is change all that they are, join you, and they’ll see their dead loved ones again. That they are doomed if they don’t change. Most pioneers draft 2-4 people per lifetime. If you’re a great saleswoman, you can draft more into this horrific world. And I regret the hours I spent lying, torturing people. For some cult that doesn’t give two cents about me.

I 100% believed of I didn’t convince my classmates, neighbors, to join my side they would either turn me in or they would be killed by a divine being. From 2 years old I was supposedly handing out pamphlets. The doom is not a quick painless death, no. You have visuals. You have men getting up to talk in detail about what your ‘friends’ will look like as corpses. Visually descriptive to the point where I still feel a bit numb to it all. That you will have to bury their bodies after the whole divine destruction. That you will have to “clean up” the earth. You are numb- convinced- bullied to the point where you believe this is true.

If you’re hurt as MANY WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE, and you don’t have two people to testify and say they saw it- it never happened. Abuse is the norm. And if you speak up about it? You’re called a liar. Your friends cut you off. They think you’ll die along with everyone else if you put in a ‘bad review’ or leave. You’re bullied into submission and taught from a young age that you are not in control of your own decisions. You relinquish yourself under the pretense that the men you have such reverence toward are under some divine being’s control.

Your parents hurting you is acceptable. And don’t you dare speak against your father if he’s deeply involved. Don’t even think about approaching if he’s on a phone call. If you’re hit you take it- because you “deserved” it. And you smile. You shove that pain deep down. You hide the bruise, the cut lip, the depression, the bottles of pills you’re swallowing the whatever….You’re screwed if you faint, throw up, pass out, because you’ve missed a meeting. You better be dying for that to happen…

The idea that is portrayed in the movie (IMO) is that you can forgive family who hurts you. I see people forgiving Alexei and what’s her name. Look- that’s great. It’s a fun film. Alexei is funny. Here’s what I saw; it’s a toxic man- nay- father who can’t accept responsibility. He takes pride in what the girls have become- monsters. Not in who they are at their core. He has no idea who they are. And the mom has this photo album…I’m tearing up. She remembers this a certain way, a wishful thought. I’ve confronted my own mother about our past and had an album thrown at me, “We were happy. You were happy.” The fact is I was told the smile. You’re forcing this perception that everything was normal. That it’s okay to go back. (I’m not taking away Yelena’s view that everything was real to her, that’s fine for the sake of the story, and sweet. The moment between her and Alexei..fine. Milena turns and takes their side at the end, great.) The problem with how I saw this, is that’s not how the real world works. I don’t owe my parents forgiveness when I didn’t mean shit to them. When people leave the cult they’re cut off. Treated like they’re dead. I didn’t find these moments cute, I found them horrific. Hugging me, saying he’s proud of me is the toxic sh** my father would pull. Ignoring the holes in the wall, in my skull, the phony impression he gives to the rest of the group. Hugging me…after sweeping everything he did not only to me, but countless others under the rug because the cult…because 8 men in NY will protect him. Legally. Or otherwise.

I don’t need to forgive my parents. If you’ve been mistreated, you don’t owe anyone anything. They can “try” to do the right thing, that doesn’t somehow block out years of mistreatment. Years of trauma. Sheetrock only patches the surface of the broken walls. Wounds heal but some scars stay with you forever. Metaphorically or otherwise.

‘Entertainers’ was a trigger word because if you’re high enough in the ranking system you’re asked to “testify” or share a story. It’s in front of a couple thousand. It’s an “honor”. What it really is, is a three ring circus. You will only see women on the sidelines reading from the cards while only men stand at the main podium. They’re reading what they have told them to say. Stories are manipulated, cut, changed to fit a narrative that better suits the group of a couple thousand members.

Dreykov. I hate this. But I have to go there. I’m neck deep already, might as well. I think the worst part of all of it is that you can’t touch the person who made you this way. Those 6-7-8 leaders are untouchable. It doesn’t matter what you try. What legal entities, ex groups have tried. There’s a term for us and we are considered ‘mentally diseased.’ Members are told to avoid us. And in case you were curious, no, they can’t just break their nose on a table to be free- if only it were that simple. Gosh that got me. I would cut a limb, split my skull open, if it meant I could just cut a chord. It takes years of therapy and I still have nightmares. Urges to just, go. I’m OKAY. But most escapees are not. If you manage to escape with your life and don’t end it because the pressure, guilt, abuse that comes with leaving is too much. (This is sadly the fate of MANY LBGTQ+ members.)

The only hope is either the group eventually runs out of money or they’re taken down legally. Both of which are impossible since many older members will leave all they have to the group rather than to their family. It’s a complex billion dollar publishing company that plays monopoly with people’s investments, homes, and lives.

If you speak up, you’re the liar. So you cannot free your friends, who have turned on you, already cut you off, and discarded you the day you walked out and didn’t come back.

Watching Natasha, and Yelena free their sisters made me think of every woman who is stuck in this cult. For every woman, child, currently being sexually/physically abused and can’t say sh** because they literally believe god will kill them. If I say anything to them, they block me. If I expose what’s happening they will lie in court. That’s what is happening. And it’s not in the news, it’s not talked about. Because you can’t. You’re forced into silence. There’s a block. A literal legal force field that you cannot penetrate. They have their own lawyers. You can’t break into it. You’ll lose every, single, legal battle you try to fight.

Was this a decent movie? Yes. Was I expecting to share this days after release, no. I’ve been forced into silence for so long, told that people have it far worse and that I shouldn’t talk about it. But just today I saw a grown ass couple in an escapee group, talking about how one trigger word sent them into a depressive spiral. Wondering if some god damn lightening will come out of the sky and knock them dead. And we frickin struggle in silence. People will just shrug and go “oh it can’t be that bad,” while my gay best friend can’t catch an effing break. While someone else suffers at home because god wants it that way. Someone else will bury their kid today, maybe not even hold a funeral for them if they were ‘mentally diseased.’

For people like that couple I met today, like me, if you don’t just see a fun film but a darker past or maybe it’s brought up some memories for you, I’d honestly love to chat!!! Message me! I feel like for as painful as this is to hash out not too many people know about what goes on behind a group of smiling, well dressed woman who come knocking on your door. “It’s just a religion.”

I guess I didn’t realize…the criminal aspect of what happened to me. You’re so ingrained to keep quiet. To smile. To ignore, to suppress. I can smile, joke laugh, but visualizing…inadvertently seeing this mirror was so unbelievably uncomfortable. I would always rather help someone else because it takes me out of my head. Live in a bubble where I can call my trauma a ‘fantasy’. What’s real is when someone like me has a bad day? Lol! Look, my husband literally checks his phone to make sure a conversation never touches a couple hundred trigger words that will absolutely send me into the closet with a gallon of ice cream or a bottle of whiskey. I can’t imagine what someone else, what some other traumatized individual goes through. (Maybe that’s why the Bucky stuff makes me all angry She-Hulk too..)

Look, talking people ex members of this group, out of suicide is a daily endeavor to the point where it’s borderline on autopilot. But having this, I suppose, brilliant, piece of cinema turn the camera around left me raw and writhing and angry. Not for me, but for everyone else still stuck. With every year you spend in that cult, add ten more to therapy.

If you feel like me at all, you’re not alone. Not anymore. We were raised to feel alone in the world. That the universe is somehow out to get us and that’s simply not true. You don’t need the people who raised you if they were absolute shit bags. And you DO NOT have to forgive them for keeping you in that environment. Family isn’t family if they’ve hurt you. You owe them nothing. It is healthy to feel your feelings (and you and your feelings are valid. )

Anyways! I hope to be able to talk about more fun Marvel topics soon. But this felt important so thanks for listening. I’m really not hating guys, this is just…it’s heavy. And I beg you to do your research into cults and to help out where you can.

Love and light,

-M

[sepialunaris]

Besides the crazy stupid plot twist and dumb character actions I think the big problen why Jurassic World is a failure of a narrative is that it constantly confuses its own tone and what idea it wants to convey. And as a whole it just sounds like singing praises to capitalism and pinning problems on other aspects instead of the root of the problem.

So JW is said to have been open for 15 years, and its said people are bored with classic InGen retrosaurs hence initiating the creation of Indominus, and yet from the other perspective people are enjoying the retrosaurs just fine? It is not even hinted a bit that they did not not enjoy them besides that bit of exposition.

And our audience perspective character doesn't work. Gray and Zach seems to come from a middle-upper class family and yet they never visited the park for years despite having a family member as a high level staff? Knowing their son is obsessed with dinosaurs? And the only reason they were sent there was because it was an excuse to cover up their parent's divorce? In the case of Darius Bowman from CC it makes sense, but this is weird. It's kind of nitpicky, but okay my point is, what makes them ineffective is that they are new eyes to the park and Zach cannot represent "ahh ppl who already seen this many times get inspired to see the beauty of ugly 1993 retrosaurs" because he has never been there either. So its just weird to include their POV when it deosnt complement the Indominus narrative and if it does it feels forced and loose.

And its more bizarre when the movie seems to be more obsessed with showing "oh my god look at this capitalist paradise! John Hammond's gentrification deeam fulfilled!" and panning on random buildings and starbucks with the Jurassic Park theme. Besides "do you have dinosaurs in your dinosaur park" it just wooshes the anti-capitalist social commentary of JP, more crazy when its loads of product placement. I know that they did plan a panning shot with dinosaurs which would've been effective and narratively fitting rather than *pan to giant building* so idk why they even did that. And so idk if this movie wants to criticize capitalism and consumerism combined with the privatizing of the genetics could give way to ethical and environmental issues or do they want to say "god powers are allowed for capitalists if they are nice" (ahh and based on leaks for JWD, its the latter. They made John Hammond a messiah for protecting his unethical business from the 'bad capitalists' omg)

There's also the issue of 'authentic' dinosaurs (hence why I keep mentioning retrosaurs from the start 😂, i want to talk about this too). The scene with Wu and Masrani works, but ultimately the whole movie fails it. It is lifted from one of the few good scenes from the oroginal movel with Wu and Hammond, and concerns about how ALL dinosaurs from this park are genetic hybrids from the start. And well it would've worked well to explore the ethics and capitalism approach but honestly with the whole movie as comparison it just sounds like "guys this is the reason why they are not realistic and feathered please dont ask us about it again." The fact that they are hybridized retrosaurs get ignored and thrown under the rug besides that one scene, and we never again explore how unnatural all of them are as the movie time to time again keeps promoting a division between "legit" dinosaurs and Indominus, the character Lowery keeps pushing. And the latter... aslo shows how much they want to praise the first park and John Hammond despite it being a metaphor of capitalism failing from wanting to conquer nature, despite it being the exact same thing as modern JW. "They didnt need these hybrids they only had real dinosaurs" is already an errornous statement since all of them were frog hybrids, so if its wrong... what was the point of bringing it up? JP didn't just fail because Dennis Nedry sabotaged it, it was bound to fail for its attempt to control nature as Ian said. However JW attributes the singular creation of Indominus as the reason for its failure (and by attribute hoo boy how many plotholes did they engineer to pin it the blame. Suddenly it knows its being thermally monitored? Or does it just releases electromagnetic energy to make ppl around it dumb or jam cellphones, god im rambling), and if they continued making retrosaurs it would've been fine? So what was the message? "Its okay to mix dinosaur dna with frogs but don't add to much to the mixture"? "Its okay to play god with capitalism but dont go too far"? Instead of mentioning both concepts as unethical and the concept of Indominus as an already flawed concept pushed even more unethically, the increasing level of tolerance for playing god already shows a shift of morals from the JP and JW. So once again its 'capitalism is actually good, its just the evil ppl thats the problem'

It honestly just erases the brilliant potential of how that narrative could be engaged. Of course its obvious the park would want to promote their retrosaurs as legit and Indominus as a different flavor despite both being hybrids but the latter being pushed to the max, so both of them are bound to have intersecting problems. However not everyone would've been fooled by such promotion. And yet from our POV only Wu was aware of it; the view of them as retrosaurs is treated as an understatement to be ignored as we are only allowed to see things and agree with opinions from the POV of Lowery or the kids against Hoskins' cartoony "lets convince our president to use dinos to steal oil" idea.

It could've honestly touched on many aspects of de-extinction or concepts like the Chickenosaurus, as well as the complex moral dillema around many genetic issues, but the movie just wants to shy away from it and impose a black and white morality of "Indominus bad unnatural" and "retrosaurs good natural." Not unnesary military commentary that doesn't work (dinosaur's effect in the environment would be more devastating than them acting as military weapons so pro-US imperialists can be proud (one bullet will kill them, I swear yeah ik this is a 'scifi' franchise, but the logic hoops you need to jump from that. One raptor died from getting hit by a rocket launcher as they should. So what US wants to use these bags of flesh as weapons to steal oil? There is nothing they can do that dogs or dolphins can't do better). The only time its kinda shown is when Indominus is killing Apatosaurus for fun, but... real animals like humans, dolphins, chimps do that too. And the movie treats this as something unnatural or makes it evil. Scorpios rex despite being ugly actually accomplishes the ecological horror of having an invasive creature invade an ecosystem (despite the ecosystem itself alr being flawed and superficially created) and being able to reproduce through parthenogenesis). And I doubt they would touch on this in JWD despite the variance of animals they will show, as even Atrociraptor is not going to be called out by name in that film, that they can change its name in post production.

[skamamoroma]

The disappointment for me is simple when it comes to this introduction to Eliott’s part of s6...

Obviously I’d have preferred an Eliott POV season or chunk of time. We aren’t going to get that so it is a trade off to seeing his experiences through someone else’s eyes. I’d have preferred to see him through the eyes of someone we know better but, again, we can’t have that.

So it leaves it to a character we don’t know well to see his experiences through and that’s... it’s difficult to get into for me because these things are so personal. Mental illness (which I know they’ve said they will cover) and Eliott’s issues around lying etc are personal and it isn’t ideal to see that through someone else’s eyes with little depth.

But, for me, lying as a topic is something I don’t need to see with Eliott. I feel I understand him well as a character and I entirely understand his lone wolf ways, his healthy need for freedom and expression and time to pursue stuff alone and I understand his ingrained insecurities about rocking the boat rolling a relationship.

But this is the third season where the topic Eliott is given is lying. Season 3 is characterised by Eliott’s lies, his story in Season 4 is entirely focused on his lies and now in Season 6 we have his main story around lies.

Characters have ingrained issues. Some things are very difficult to get over or to sort out in your head. For Eliott as a parallel of Even and in his own right, was so understandable in s3 and we understood why he lied. Even for s4, this was their first test as a couple and Eliott’s lying wasn’t really necessary by show runners (it didn’t follow Even’s story) but the point was that it was supposed to be showing him and Lucas reaching an understanding about talking more and being better at communication, managing their expectations about honesty and openness. That would have been great if it was handled better but the conclusion was a good one.

Now in s6, we’re seeing the same topic again. We were told in s5 that Lucas is concerned that they need to be more open about stuff because he’s worried a little about Eliott leaving him. It’s disappointing because there doesn’t seem to be growth. We’re not a few months past s3, we’re way past that and if they are unable to communicate and Eliott is still lying - what are the writers intending with that narrative?

We ended s3 with them both learning huge lessons about honesty and openness and their own worth. Are we to believe that a year later after already going through issues about lying that those issues haven’t been improved at all? Is that healthy? We don’t see their experiences and certainly don’t get any focus on Eliott’s internal workings so we must theorise that he doesn’t trust Lucas to handle the truth of his life. That’s really sad to me. That’s not what Isak and Even opitomised and so we must set Eliott and Lucas aside even further and consider that they perhaps have so much good in their relationship but so many fundamentals about trust are just not functioning correctly. They’re humans and flawed and I want flawed but this is just repetitive and it feels entirely inorganic to me.

For this to be resolved, it needs to be recognised as a long term trait for Eliott and he needs to understand his mistakes himself. We need to be given his viewpoint and some focus because otherwise we are left as an outsider viewing these things without any understanding of how HE is experiencing life. Maybe if we saw more of what his day to day is like we’d understand his actions a little more. It’s one thing to need your space and hobbies and that’s an important thing and it’s another to lie continuously to your partner about a fundamental part of your life while telling other people you barely know.

Also, the problem with seeing Eliott through Lola’s eyes is that we don’t see any of Eliott’s life. I want to see him outside of Lucas! I want to know what he does at Uni, what work is like and if he has made new friends. I want to see Urbex and does he have any buddies he does it with. What is his family like? What other kind of art does he do? Is he still into film making? Does he go to therapy? How does his art impact his mental health? All of this is interesting and you could pick so many topics to cover for Eliott even if we only have him for a while. But we can’t. We must see him through Lola’s eyes and she’s a sixteen year old girl... so Eliott, a 20 year old man is framed through the eyes of a 16 year old girl. Which is fine if that all we can have but if you want to go for the big brother thing, the mentor in mental health and well being, someone she can look up to in terms of his expression and art... awesome, but don’t introduce topics though Eliott’s POV that fundamentally need his POV to work. Without it, we get a 20 year old dude opening up about lying in his relationship to a 16 year old stranger and it... it just doesn’t work for me. It feels odd and forced as a means to and end. Not to mention that you have Lucas entirely oblivious. And I’m not even considering what I imagine will be the worsening of this as we go on aka that spoiler.

So that’s my issue with it. I got 5 asks about today’s clip and I already made a post a few days ago but I don’t really want to continuously talk about it... I guess I have my issues with it, it’s a disappointing approach for me and when I wanted to see Eliott, I guess I genuinely would rather not have his POV if this is how we have to have it. I hope they do afford him his own moment of POV and that it makes sense and honours him as a character because Skam France writers aren’t kind to their characters and I cannot watch them treat his character like rubbish. I hope they don’t rely on the fandom’s love for him for us to just overlook uneven writing. He deserves more than that.

[beyond-far-horizons]

Given the majority of reviews and fan comments...I’m not sure if you did Greg...

Interesting article with the MK 2021 writer Greg Russo. Spoilers and my opinions to follow...

There are several major points here that stand out to me and corroborate why, while fun, MK 2021 didn’t work as well as it should have and I’m afraid a lot of that was because of the script as well as the editing/direction. This is no respect to those involved but it’s useful to know as a writer so we can avoid the same mistakes. This is just my view - if you liked the movie, that’s fine, but many had issues with it and I want to address those.

Here are my main thoughts - 

1) He says he knows and respects the lore - as a big MK fan he should do, problem is he doesn’t. The main point about MK is there is a Tournament every generation and 10 straight victories gives one realm a chance to invade another. But they cannot attack each other’s fighters before that. But that’s exactly what Shang Tsung does repeatedly! He even rubs it in Raiden’s face. So no stakes, yet we can’t have Shang Tsung use his full power straight away in that case cos the protags would get trounced and we can’t have Raiden step in cos he’s too OP so we get caught in this nonsensical plot where Shang sort of breaks the rules and Raiden can’t really stop him until the plot needs him to which undermines both of their characters too. I actually liked the prequel set-up but it needed to be more grounded. Let Shang Tsung bend the rules but not so blatantly break them or give us better reasons why Raiden can’t stop him at the time.

2) The studio needed an audience surrogate but Russo didn’t want to rehash the original movie so he works in Cole to do something ‘different and original’. The problem with that is a) when you adapt something you have to take into account the previous material otherwise you disrespect your major audience - the fans. If you didn’t want to go with 1995 audience surrogate Johnny Cage (and I can understand they didn’t want another white dude or a wisecracker along with Kano), Sonya or Jax would have been perfect and they would be given more depth and investment. b) Cole Young is not original, not his story, not his powers (which weren’t great tbh) and having to establish and centre him on top of loads of other interesting heroes and villains derails the plot and dilutes the character building.

3) Russo repeatedly states there was so much lore he couldn’t bog the average viewer down with it and that exposition is dull. This is a key misunderstanding in my opinion as a Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer. Exposition can be tricky to write but it’s only dull if you let it be (like when he has Sonya exposition the hell out of Cole like that conspiracy theory meme, wall board and all!) There are lots of creative ways to depict lore without it being OTT. Show not Tell etc etc. Critically we need a certain amount of establishing to care about these characters as an average viewer. Russo talks about the Hanzo/Bi-Han rivalry but said he couldn’t get into it too much but that means any mention to their clans falls flat and angers your other main audience - fans, because they don’t get the adaption they wanted. Stripping Cole & his family etc out of the story would give more time to focus on Hanzo and thread him and Bi-Han through the movie, tying in with other co-protags Sonya and Liu Kang. Even better have Shang Tsung’s centuries’ master plan (as was hinted in the movie) to corrupt the fighters of Earth and set them against each other before each Tournament. He isn’t technically breaking rules, he gets to use his sorcerer abilities and be the shady f*ck like we know he is and build him up as the ‘Final Boss’. This also explains Hanzo and Bi-Han’s powers and rivalry and what we are likely to expect from Shang Tsung with the modern kombatants Sonya, Liu Kang, Jax and esp Kano. 

Ways to maybe make it better.

The plot could have contained the essentials of the MK 2021 movie, hit the studio requirements and remained more faithful to the characters and lore if it had centred on the Scorpion/Sub-Zero rivalry from the past into the present and had Sonya and Liu Kang’s stories interwoven with it. Sonya and Jax could have given us an introduction to the world being a Special Forces secret unit tracking down Kano and running into Sub Zero. That leads them to Liu Kang and Kung Lao and all the protags have to deal with their insecurities/issues whilst encountering Hanzo and trying to bring him back from his curse to fight for Earthrealm. Movie can follow similar lines with Sonya not having a mark and needing to get one (i’d have her manifest it maybe?), Shang bating and attacking slyly whilst Raiden has left ‘to consult with the Elder Gods’, Kano betraying the team, Kung Lao having to sacrifice himself and Hanzo deciding to (Get Over Here!) save the rest at the last minute over battling Bi-Han, especially Liu Kang who in rage and grief runs towards Shang Tsung and is def going to get his soul sucked. I’m still not quite sure how I would end it, I think Hanzo would still kill Sub-Zero but he would do it for Earthrealm reminding Bi-Han he has become a pawn. But basically they set up the true Tournament to save Earth and retrieve Kung Lao’s soul with Hanzo still banished to the Netherrealm but promising to return and fight for Earth. Sonya, Jax and Liu go to find the others and we get the set-up for Cage. 

Maybe this is crap, who knows, I’ve had a day to think about it where as Russo’s had years. I totally understand it is a difficult job and there were behind the scenes pressure like the studio etc, but despite liking Lewis Tan I don’t think Cole Young was the answer and they now have a big problem on their hands with him in the sequels. 

[sweet-star-cookie]

Ideas for a Rewrite of Pixar’s Onward

So I finally watched Onward, unfortunately not in theatres because of [REDACTED] but what can you do? Gotta be honest, it didn’t wow me. :/ The world seemed flat and boring, and a lot of the tropes and story beats felt really played out and done before, even within other Pixar movies. That said, fantasy themed worlds and the potential creativity therein is a topic that is super close to my heart, and even when the trailer dropped for this movie I wasn’t super impressed with what it had to offer. From the setup of the plot itself, I’ll admit that I was skeptical of it from the outset, perhaps a bit more than usual.

I have my issues with the world building of this film from a visual design standpoint as well, but I’ll save that for another time. For now I want to discuss how I would approach rewriting this film to make it an overall stronger product in terms of story and character development. Obviously there will be spoilers for the actual plot of the movie in addition to my thoughts, so fair warning there.

Okay so when it comes to building a new world for your characters, regardless of its themes or genre, it is important to establish how much of that world pertains to the story you want to tell. As in, are you telling a story about the world itself via your characters, or are you telling a story about the characters with this world as a backdrop? It might seem like a small distinction, but a world’s rules (or lack thereof) can easily divert an audience’s focus within a story. I believe the current version of Onward is an example of the latter, but with a few complications of the former that muddles the direction of the plot a bit. The sense of scope for this film seems to go half-and-half instead, but we’ll get to that later. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about how the world of Onward followed more closely with what we would call a fantasy world; wizards, mythical creatures, knights, a magical staff, the works. But in a pretty rapid-fire scene, we are shown how modern technologies began to usurp the use of magic, thus leading to the modern day fantasy world that is the setting for the rest of the film. Despite how quickly this plays out as a sort of prologue for the movie, I do believe this is a fine set up for a movie like this...

If the movie was about the world.

But as we know, it’s about Ian and Barley’s quest to bring their father back, and almost exclusively focuses on their family. This too is a perfectly good setup, but the movie somehow ends up with both, and it leads to a lot more questions than answers as a result. The prologue setup generates a lot of questions about the world itself, such as the use and discovery of magic, that do have an effect later on in the story, but the implementation of magic itself does not have clearly defined rules about who can use it and why. Modern day law enforcement seems to govern this world, yet any use of magic does not seem to have any bearing on that. Magic clearly still exists in this world, but the audience does not know when or how it appears. Where does magic come from? What is the scarcity of it? Can you get arrested for using magic? Do people who use or own magical items get special treatment? Are magical items more valuable and therefore need to be regulated? How common are they? All creatures in this world appear to be inherently magical, or at least possess abilities from their magic-based ancestors, but seem to have “forgotten” those abilities over time. Both the pixies and the manticore have wings, but it seems that only the pixies need magic to use them. Why? Historical landmarks like the one Barley tries to protect in the film are viewed as passive history, no longer holding much significance. And even the manticore’s map is reduced to a placemat at a children’s restaurant, so the preservation of this history does not appear to be a priority for this society. Moreover, these questions also directly correlate to the main protagonists, namely, why can Ian wield magic and Barley cannot? If Wilden (the dad) could or used to wield magic, could Laurel (the mom) do it too? Are their different kinds of magic? Is there a hierarchy to how powerful one’s magic can be? Ian becomes better at using his father’s staff over time in the film, but how he is able to do so via the staff or Barley’s instruction is pretty unclear. Now, all of these are questions are actually ones that wouldn’t need to be answered necessarily, but only if the film reeled itself in a bit and its scope was a lot clearer. Many other fantasy or alternate world stories have a much smaller scope that doesn’t need to ask these questions of the audience when it doesn’t pertain to the story they’re telling. An excess of world building does not matter if it has no bearing on the current story being told. A good example is in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where the establishment of toons existing in the real world is the entire crux of the story, but how toons became a part of the real world is not explained, and doesn’t need to be for the direction of the plot and characters. You are introduced to the world with only the information you need, and you are taken through the story with that specific set of information. The progression of the plot does not rely on answering the question of why toons exist in this world, so it does not address it. Onward could have achieved this too, if the film didn’t explicitly ask these unanswered questions within its own plot. If the film focused solely on the Lightfoot family without the prologue, all of these questions about the world wouldn’t need to be answered. This is not a “magic was usurped by technology” story. This is a “how do I get my Dad back?” story. Which honestly begs the question:

Why does this have a fantasy setting?

With how much this film goes half-and-half on the relevance of the world to its characters, the more it seems like a coat of fantasy paint slapped on top of a story that could be told with real humans, or any other kind of creature for that matter. The fact that these characters are elves, pixies, trolls, etc. is inconsequential to the storytelling. Magic aside, if you replaced all of the fantasy races and locations with real-life equivalents, what would change about the story or its progression? In fact, if you removed the idea of magic entirely and replaced it with a series of non-magical challenges that Ian faces on his quest, you would have the same movie, just without the fantasy filter. All of the locations in the movie are not inherently fantastical, the school, the gas station, the tavern, even the vehicles and animals in the film, all have really obvious real-world equivalents, which diminishes the fantasy theme even further. Nothing separates them from these parallels. Even the main magic system is an equivalent to DnD and other tabletop roleplaying games in this world, and isn’t viewed as anything more despite becoming a prominent source of power for the protagonists. Again, having the world take a backseat to the characters is not inherently a bad thing, but if you’re going to take the time to establish how this world began and changed over time, then that has to be relevant to the story at hand in some way, otherwise you’re just establishing something that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. So how would I fix this? Well, at this point I feel like you’d have to pick one of the two halves that this story tries to weave together: either open up the world and the relevance of magic within it, or focus exclusively on the Lightfoot family and their relationships. If it were me, I’d pick the latter, because to me the best parts of the film were the parts that focused on the family, especially the relationship between Ian and Barley. The world of Onward really isn’t that interesting as it stands, so putting more focus on that without a complete overhaul probably isn’t a good idea.

To start, I would keep the part about Ian wanting to learn more about his Dad, as well as Barley’s memories and misgivings about not saying goodbye to him. This, like most Pixar movies, is the strongest part and serves as the emotional core of the film. Both of them have their individual reasons for wanting to see their father again, and those motivations can move and change over the course of the narrative. But, have Ian tie his own identity to finding his father, as if his father is the one person who can tell him who he needs to be. A missing piece of him that only his father can fill, and this desire becomes more and more desperate as the film progresses and they run closer to that 24 hour time frame. Those earlier scenes about others who knew and admired his father could help corroborate these feelings, where Ian wishes to carry on the legacy of his father. Perhaps Barley could have similar feelings, as if being called a “screw up” throughout his life made him question the legacy of his father and his relationship with him. A “I don’t know who I am + believe in yourself” message has been done to death, but the execution could still make the ending of this film that much stronger. When the climax happens and Ian is unable to see his father before the sunset, THAT is when you want him to have the Act 3 Pixar realization about the overall message of the film, and how he had a father figure through Barley the whole time. Maybe there’s a point where Barley is hanging onto Ian in the rubble and time is running out, and he tells Barley to go see their father while he still has the chance. Have the internal realization be that Ian doesn’t need to see his father to know who he is anymore, as the journey he went on throughout the movie already gave him that answer, thus allowing him to let go and let Barley get his closure instead. Some of these points do exist in the current version of the film, but I feel that this slight reframe could strengthen it enough so that it is a common theme throughout the movie.

The subplot with the mother and Officer Colt is a strange one, further complicated by the inclusion of Corey the manticore as a secondary character, but I think it could have rounded out the story even more with a bit of work. If there really needed to be a stepparent role for this movie, I feel like Corey could have filled that role while also providing the map for Ian and Barley’s quest (I know getting a Disney Gay is like pulling teeth at this point but hear me out). There is a fairly decent amount of time spent in the movie regarding Laurel’s role in protecting her sons, especially when she recruits Corey into finding them. And with the scene at the tavern, Corey already has a decent idea of what the boys are like, which could make for good chances to bond with Laurel. There’s a good line in the movie that I feel really goes under-utilized, where Corey describes the boys’s assertiveness at the tavern. Laurel assumes she’s talking about Barley, but she’s really talking about Ian, and this surprises her. This is a really good way of showing that another’s perception of one’s character is not the whole picture. With the climax reframed to better focus on Ian’s sense of identity, this could have been an excellent line as a lead up to that climax, and for thematic coherence overall. Ian struggles with his identity while relying on others to make it for him, and that extends to his own mother’s perception of him, which changes as the story progresses. Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of conflict between Laurel and her sons, even when discussing their late father. They’re sad, yes, but ultimately they’re dealing with it okay. They love each other, and despite their differences they have a good sense of solidarity. There doesn’t have to be conflict in that way in every story like this, but her quest to rescue them could have been a good way to bridge that, bringing in a one-two punch of parental resolution at the end. 

With this you could cut Officer Colt’s character entirely, in fact I don’t know why both him and Corey are in the film when they seem to fight for the same purpose in the story. His inclusion doesn’t seem to create a rift in any of their relationships outside of mild disdain when he’s first introduced. I genuinely did not know that Colt was officially in the Lightfoot family until the word “stepdad” was used over halfway through the movie. Otherwise I just assumed he was someone who was involved with the family via arresting Barley and had at least a mild romantic interest in his mother. And given the relevance of Wilden and the strength of their prior relationship, that doesn’t paint him in a very positive light at the start. But if you really wanted to keep him, there needed to be a scene that truly solidified that he cared for Ian and Barley. There is very little to suggest what kind of relationship the brothers have with him, other than Colt’s disapproval of Barley’s delinquency, but by the end of the film they’re suddenly on good terms, as if some resolution was made. He doesn’t seem to do much more other than pursue them like a cop would a criminal, and even when Laurel is worried for them, his search still seems to be nothing more than a part of his job, like it was at the start. 

Perhaps he could save them from something while they’re on the quest, like when Barley sacrifices his van to make the rocks fall. Maybe it goes wrong and the rocks falling still puts the brothers in danger, forcing Colt to abandon the other officers to save them. The brothers may be surprised at this, but it would have come from a genuine desire to protect them on Colt’s part. If you really wanted to establish even a bit of a connection with the brothers, he could’ve accompanied them on part of the quest, doing things that only he could do to help them, and perhaps having a chance to hash out their relationship with him along the way. I realize that Colt having difficulties connecting with the brothers is a common stepdad trope, but if he was to have any relevance at all, he needed a reason to be there. Ironically, Corey ends up having more interactions with the boys at the tavern than Colt does for the entire film. Overall I feel like there was a lot of missed potential with Onward, and while the emotional core was there like it always is in Pixar movies, I feel like it got skewed a bit along the way, thus diminishing the final emotional punch at the end. There are some genuinely great parts of this movie, especially Ian’s final character resolution with Barley, but the whole is not greater than the sum of those parts, and that saddens me greatly. I’m not sure how much of this was Disney mandated versus Pixar implemented, but I hope they can get their groove back eventually.

[kitcat992]

Endgame thoughts and emotions: A proper review

Yeah, I did the unthinkable today. I saw the movie for a second time. And in my defense, I did not want to. I laid in bed as my friend literally tried to pull me out of my blanket burrito and drag me to the movie theater. The issue is, he bought me a ticket and really wanted me to go with him for his first time showing. After much commotion, I dragged myself into a theater seat, pouted, and watched it for a second time.

I decided to try and find a silver lining in my misery: Now I can view the movie with a much clearer mindset, without the fog of fan excitement and the years worth of anticipation. Plus, it was a matinee showing, so I was sure the crowd would be a lot less rowdy and I would be able to really immerse myself in what was happening. And most of all, if I was going to bitch this much about the movie, I decided it was only fair I really give it a good watch.

So here I go: Thoughts and emotions the second time around.

Too long; didn’t read: It’s still shit.

Tony’s opening scene in the Benatar remains to be the best part of the film, along with his confrontation with the team, specifically Rogers. These moments are why the film started off so strong – we were receiving exactly what we waited for since Civil War. I repeat, we waited 3 years for Civil War to finally pay off. But it’s really pathetic that the only good parts of this film are the beginning, right before the 5 years later cue card.

Despite the amazing pay off from the fallout in Civil War and the incredible acting from RDJ during that confrontation scene, the pacing of the beginning STILL felt all sorts of weird. For starters, did Marvel just assume that every single movie-goer would watch Captain Marvel/Captain Marvel’s end credits scene?

Without that scene, without the whole “We found Fury’s beeper.” and “Where’s Fury?”, Captain Marvel’s entrance makes ZERO sense. And ya know what? Even after seeing the movie [Captain Marvel] it STILL makes zero sense. This is one of the many moments in the film that we’re left to assume. We’re left to assume that the team told Carol about Tony having flown to space to stop the doughnut ship, and we’re left to assume that she went and spent 3 weeks looking for him.

I was flooded with questions before the title card even rolled: When did they find Fury’s pager? And how did they find Fury’s pager? Were they just walking the streets and came across it, or did it have a GPS of sorts on it, or did it have an alert set to notify the compound in case of emergency? Did they tell Carol to go search for Tony or did Carol come across Tony on her own accord? How did they know Tony fought Thanos?? Tony even asks “Who told you that?” Well, who told him that? Did they receive the messages from his Iron Man helmet from when he was onboard the Benatar?

And let’s talk about Irondad&Spiderson moment that wrecked me – “I lost the kid.” Don’t get me wrong, this had me peeing my pants a little bit. But HOW did Steve know about “the kid”? His face says he knows, the way he reacted says he knows. Does he just know Spider-man is a kid, and he knew Spider-man went to space with Tony Stark, thus that’s the kid Tony refers to? Or did Steve also know about Peter before Civil War? Perhaps he was someone they both were planning to recruit, but Tony got to him first. How does he know about “the kid?”

That’s a lot of questions for the first, what, 10 minutes?

Immediately feeling the pacing so off balance in the movie this soon was incredibly troublesome. It only gets worse once they go off to kill Thanos. Because the moment Thor walks out of that hut, the movie takes a nose dive it never stood a chance to recover from.

5 years later.

Fuck that noise.

Okay, so the “5 years later” part didn’t bother me during my first watch. Because I so strongly (and naively) thought time-reversal was the end fate for this film. It was the only goddamn thing that made sense. But, to say the least, nothing following this cue card makes sense.

For starters, there’s just NO information given to the viewers about what happens from the fallout of The Decimation. So once again, we’re left to assume. Did the Avengers hold a press conference? Does the world now know about other universes and infinity stones and magic? Was Carol Danvers the one to explain that? Or Tony? Was the world angry with the Avengers for not stopping Thanos? Does the world even KNOW about Thanos? Does the world know what we the audience know or did the government sell them a lie? How about the Accords – did that dust away too, because we see Natasha handling business with the help of Nebula, Rocket, Rhodey and Carol.

But there’s not even a HINT of what civilians think or what they were told. We’re left to assume.

It turns out Steve’s little support-group-talk about “Some of us moving on” was actually a way for The Russo Brothers to completely erase his character development of the past handful of movies. Here we naively thought he was talking about moving on from the loss of Bucky and Sam and the other half of the universe…nope. All a ploy to remind the audience that despite the fact Steve Rogers said goodbye to Peggy Carter, buried her body, and began to live his own life in this new time and world, he still hadn’t moved on from the woman he loved for 21 months. Not only is this a giant slap in the face to Steve’s narrative, but he’s turned into a hypocrite by preaching “move on” without actually moving on himself. “Some of us move on…but not us.” is NOT a way to justify his actions at the end of this film.

I’ll say it now and here: I’m positively sick of Hollywood preaching that happy endings only come in the form of romantic relationships.

Natasha’s little spiel about family was sweet. I knew she was dead the moment she said it. My first viewing, I was okay with this. I actually felt a little touched, knowing that she got redemption from her red ledger by making the sacrifice for the family that she found. Upon my second viewing, I actually got pissed. Very pissed. Ya know why? Because Clint deserved to make that sacrifice. Nay, he needed to be the one to make it. But I’ll get there.

Paul Rudd’s acting for his reunion with Cassie was actually really touching. In fact, Scott Lang probably suffered the least amount of character-development-fuckery in this entire film. It probably helps that he was stuck in the quantum realm for 5 years instead of living with the others. I guest we’re just supposed to assume these characters changed over the course of 5 years, because they sure as hell aren’t acting like themselves.

*sigh* Tony…*bigger sigh* Morgan Stark. I know I’ve said it once before, if not multiple times already. I’m sorry for being a broken record. But Tony did not need to have a kid. She only served purpose to the narrative if time had been reversed. Perhaps Tony procreated with Pepper after Infinity War because he felt he needed to contribute to society and help get the universe back to how it was. Okay, I can flow with that. Even his insistence later on that they bring the dusted back but “keep everything from the past 5 years, at all cost” would play majestically into the ultimate sacrifice of losing his daughter for the other half of the universe to return. Watching these scenes [with his daughter] the first time around wasn’t as painful when I so naively thought time reversal would occur. My unbelievably intense opinion that Tony and Pepper did not need a kid keeps me from even remotely enjoying them now. Another thing Hollywood so wrongly assumes and pushes on audiences: If you’re a couple, you have to have a kid. Tony and Pepper were just fine without one and bringing a child into their story only prevented Tony from reversing time.

Also, the little girl who played Morgan was horribly directed. I know she was young, and I know kid actors aren’t great to begin with. But she mumbled all her lines and never looked anywhere but the ground. I will give credit to RDJ for playing the fantastic Irondad we all knew at heart he was, and I’ll treasure those moments with Peter in mind instead of Morgan.

But again, more questions arise from here. Steve, Natasha and Scott come to talk Tony into doing a time heist. The way Tony looks at them all…I can only assume he hasn’t spoken to them in years. But when? When did they all fall apart? Was it directly after he slammed his arc reactor/nano housing unit into Steve’s hand and passed out? Was it after the team told him, off camera, that Thanos was dead and the stones were gone? Have they kept in touch at all?

For the most part, Tony seems civil to them – “Table is set for 6, if you don’t talk shop you can stay for lunch.” and even pours them all drinks. But so much was left unsaid/off screen that I have no idea what’s gone on between these characters in the past 5 years. A cue card doesn’t tell me narrative. At this point in the film, I’ve already got a headache. I’m asking too many questions and getting so little answers.

I cannot even begin to express my utter disappointment in how they handled Professor Hulk. Even during my first viewing of this film, I had face palmed at this diner scene. Mark Ruffalo had a very well-thought out mini story in every Avengers film and even during Thor: Ragnarok. His struggle to control the Hulk, and Hulk’s distaste for Banner, all led up to Professor Hulk. How Banner described him is exactly how he was supposed to be – brains and brawns, the best of both worlds.

He was instead used for jokes. And lets be honest, he just looked weird. He acted weird, he looked weird, and every time he had a moment on screen I was just uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. I loved Ruffalo’s performance of Bruce Banner and all that just went away with this film. I don’t even like to think of Bruce Banner in this movie. Science Bros went away, his dynamic with the team went away, so much went away.

It felt like watching an alternate universe Avengers at this point, it really did.

Tony’s desire to get Peter back saved the universe: That is fact, that is canon. He was adamantly against time travel until he saw that photo and then BAM, he figures it out. I will take joy in this moment, despite wanting it to be something else. I really wanted this to be a grieving moment, I really wanted him to be at May’s place (who be are left to assume got dusted) or at a makeshift funeral/memorial or something. I’m happy to have gotten this scene, I really am. But I also feel empty from it. Perhaps that’s because so much is left unsaid that we’re left to assume the nature of Peter and Tony’s relationship since Homecoming.

So again, I get my hopes up for this time reversal that never pans out. Tony  has a conversation with Pepper about how he figured out the time travel nonsense, but he could put a pin in it immediately and forget all about it. Pepper, softly and a little heart broken, said he wouldn’t be able to rest if he did. In my honest opinion, that was Pepper telling Tony “I don’t want to lose what we have…but so many others lost so much more. We can try this again. We can have a second chance.” That, to me, was Pepper accepting the possibility of time being reversed to 2018 and losing Morgan and their cabin and all they had done in the past 5 years. In that moment, she accepted that. She gave him her blessing.

This made sense to me, this made sense to the narrative. Because this would leave Tony with a heart breaking choice of choosing the universe over his daughter. But he would, because that would be his ultimate sacrifice. One last sacrifice, to quote his movie poster. He’d be absolutely heart broken but he would know that his loss was nothing compared to all those who were dusted, all those who lost their lives by the dusted (falling air crafts, ect) and all those who took their lives due to the grief. He’d make that decision. And we’d go back to 2018 where time would be restored to how it was. If the writers really wanted to keep the Morgan nonsense, they could have even give him a happy ending by Pepper announcing she’s pregnant in 2018, showing that he’ll still have Morgan and his happy life.

Ultimately, this is not what pans out. Things only get worse from here.

Tony returns to the team, who failed at managing time travel with Scott due to lacking a time-travel-GPS. I’m not even touching that scene, it’s just sorta pointless and there were pee jokes and…yeah. Tony invents this time gps and agrees to help them, so long as nothing changes from the past 5 years. He gifts Steve a new shield, admitting that resentment is corrosive.

So…I’m left to assume he and the team really did split ways after his return from space. I mean, it’s a sweet moment….but I’m also left to assume what the shield is made out of. Is it Vibranium? Does that mean Thanos’ sword can cut through Vibranium, as it goes on to cut through his shield during the final battle?

A throw away line here was vital and never received. Steve’s shield was widely known for being made from the strongest metal in the world, and if you’re going to recreate it, you need to establish if it’s made of the same material. A simple “You better not toss that around like a Frisbee all the damn time, it’s not made of the worlds strongest metal, ya know.” or “It cost me an arm and leg to get some of that glorious Vibranium from Wakanda. Be careful with that thing.” And all you’d have to do to make time for this one throw away line would be cut one of the many unnecessary childish jokes in the movie, or reduce the “Nah, take a picture with him, ‘cmon!” scene from like, a solid minute to 30 seconds.

Its small things like this sprinkled throughout the entire film that goes to shine a light on how awful the script really was.

They decide to get the team back together, which includes Rhodey, Rocket and Nebula. And Thor.

Pour one out for Thor. He ain’t dead, but his character development sure as hell is.

My anger with Marvel, the MCU, Kevin Feige and The Russo Brothers stands to be for so many reasons, but this one might just take the cake. Once all of my anger dissipates from bad writing, the destruction of character development, the immature jokes – this will be the one thing that remains. I will never forgive any of the parties involved for turning Thor’s clear-as-day PTSD into a fat joke. Thor became a depressed, traumatized alcoholic.That is NOT something to make light of, and yet at every corner there was a joke for him.

His one serious moment – when Professor Hulk mentioned Thanos’ name and he was so clearly triggered into a state of emotional distress – was laughed off by Rocket telling him they had beer on the ship. So not only was his depression laughed at with the fat jokes, but his alcoholism was turned into jokes as well. As someone who grew up with an abusive alcoholic father, I cannot condone this type of humor, especially for young children. There are some things you just do not make fun of.

I wrongly trusted Marvel to be able to handle mental health issues with grace and dignity, as seen in Iron Man 3. They did more than drop the ball on this. They played skee ball with it.

Oh, and Hawkeye is now Ronin (was his name actually said, though? I guess we’re left to assume again) and he’s been murdering a shitton of people. Natasha finds him, says a sad line about “not being able to give hope sooner” and recruits him. So that’s cool, I guess. Problem is no one cared about his family to begin with and they still sorta don’t. But, yeah…everyone bring the murderer onboard. Cool. It’s sorta telling the audience (which includes kids) that its okay to murder as long as you actively kill bad guys, but yeah, whatever.

Now, things have been bad up to this point. Very bad. But it just gets so much uglier from here. The team discuss Time Travel and try to tell the audience how it REALLY works in their universe – by dismissing the notion of “you mess with the past, you mess with your future” theory all movies tend to have. This is essentially the butterfly effect and its really the only way to go about time travel.

But they couldn’t do that, because then we couldn’t have the time travel shenanigans that follow. And honestly, I’ve seen a LOT of things with time travel, and their explanation still doesn’t make sense. “You can’t change the past, only your present, which then becomes your past.” Whatever, Russo Brothers. You’re just trying to pass off a shitty time travel plot without actually caring about it.

Clint does a trial run of time travel, it works, and then they go about figuring out where the stones were so they can travel back to get them. None of this was entertaining. Rocket calling Scott a puppy fell flat, for starters. Thor having an obviously distressful triggered moment recalling his mother and Jane was painful to watch and equally painfully to hear the audience howl in laughter from it. It was nice to see a 15 second shot of Tony, Natasha and Bruce laying against each other, surrounded by books as they try to figure things out but these type of brief, fleeting moments were why I was so found-family-trope baited in the first place. 4 movies too late, MCU.

Also, Nebula tells them clear as day that Vomir is a place of death and Thanos went and came back without his sister, to which Scott jokes “Not it.” So SERIOUSLY, Nat and Clint knew something was up before they even went. Dick move to whoever sent them there.

Time travel shenanigans from here. They split into teams and go to their past locations where everyone fucks up everything in every timeline, but there are no consequences because the narrative established “you can’t change the past”

Listen, I do not even WANT to try and understand this. I don’t. It’s why I don’t mess with TheFlashTV anymore. Professor Hulk goes to get the time stone but The Ancient One won’t give it to him and they have this long drawn out discussion about how if the team doesn’t return the stones, her new timeline/reality is doomed. So Bruce’s astral form promises to bring them back and he tells her Strange gave it up willing and she gives it to him and…*sigh* Again, the Russo Brothers using cheap lines to try and explain their shitty use of time travel. This scene exists solely for Steve Rogers. It gives him his reason to travel to the past at the end and return all the stones to their rightful place (and, as it will later be discussed, say Fuck You to everyone in the year 2023.) That’s all this scene is here for.

Loki got away with the space stone/tessract, Thor gets to talk with his mother while Rocket grabs the reality stone, Nebula somehow connected with past Nebula’s harddrive and Thanos got to see her memories and Clint and Natasha did a little remake of the Thanos and Garmora sacrifice from Infinity War. To make matters even WORSE, because Loki got away with the space stone, Steve and Tony have to travel to 1970, to the SHIELD bunker seen in The Winter Soldier and where the space stone/tessract is being kept, as well as grab some additional Pym Particles on the way since they didn’t have enough for the additional jump.

This entire scene is garbage. Tony runs into a young Howard Stark. And I guess because Tony’s a dad now, he goes on to forgive his own dad for abusing him. As a child of abuse, fuck that noise. Howard is made out to be a man with good intentions and Tony even hugs him before he travels back.

It’s like the Russo Brothers wanted to write Tony having everything he ever wanted (a family, a kid, closure with his father) before they killed him off. This scene served nothing to the movie, nothing to Tony’s narrative and really sent a harsh message to victims of parental abuse. The mix messages with Howard along the way of the MCU films are so flawed I cannot even begin to describe them here.

Oh, and Steve runs into Peggy’s office where he stares at her from afar. This is the Russo Brothers once again shoving down the agenda that Steve Rogers needs to be with Peggy Carter if he’s to be happy. Despite having said his goodbye and having buried her body, he’s still hung up on the woman he knew for 21 months over 16someyears ago since coming out of the ice. So we get that.

Rhodey and Nebula grab the power stone. Rhodey spends like, 1 minute talking about the temple being boobytrapped only for them to walk into it fine. Not sure what that dialogue was there for. Nebula burns her hand off getting the power stone, they go to travel back but 2014 Thanos links with 2023 Nebula’s mind harddrive and accesses her memories and discovers the future and…yeah, I’m just not even in the mood to explain this. Nebula was kept around as a plot device. It’s a real shame to see her character reduced to that. Also, jumping way ahead here — someone seriously needs to explain to me how she still exists after killing her past self. I need that explanation like whoa.

Thor’s conversation with his mother about “being who he’s meant to be, not who he’s supposed to be” would have been more touching if the fat jokes weren’t tossed in every other line. He legit had a panic attack, even SAYS “I think I’m having a panic attack.” and how do the writers go about this serious mental health issue? By having Rocket slap him.

I was sitting near a middle-aged man who howled SO loudly with laughter at this, it reminded me of how people laughed at the 3 stooges. Way to go with that one, Marvel.

I think that about sums up the time travel shenanigans. While it was fun to watch the 2012 Battle of New York from a different perspective, everything just got so royally fucked up that my headache was turning into a migraine at this point in the film. But again, it doesn’t matter. Time travel in this movie is explained as “You can’t mess things up. You can’t change the past.”

But wait. The best is yet to come. Our first death of the movie. It’s bad enough that Natasha died instead of Clint, but to have her death be such a blatant rip off of the Thanos and Garmora scene in Infinity War is a real slap in the face.  All the way down to the usage of the same score music. Why? That only made the scene less emotional and moreso, took away from the impact of the Thanos and Garmora scene in Infinity War. The entire time, I felt like I was watching a fanfic with that scene. Among many others.

Clint deserved/needed to die instead. I get that they “battled it out” to be the one to jump, and he wanted to be the one to die – I get it. But that’s just…sorta not good enough. Because the writers wrote all that in when it didn’t need to happen. For starters, the entire fight over who jumped was drawn out and quiet frankly, hilarious. Sure, it showed a bit of their personalities and what friendship they had, but it ended up laughable. Maybe that’s because everything leading up to this felt like such a joke as well that I couldn’t take any of it seriously.

Regardless, while I’m not nearly as angry at Natasha’s death as I am Tony’s, I still strongly believe Clint should have been the one. Otherwise, the message I walked away with is: It’s okay to go on a murdering spree when you’re feeling hurt and bummed out, as long as you say sorry for it and try to take the spot of sacrificing your life. 

I would say that Marvel didn’t want to kill off a “family man” with Clint, as he had his family and kids, but Tony had that at this point as well. I feel they killed Natasha off because they didn’t know what else to do with her, as so clearly evident in her other films. She had no direction with these movies, no real character arc to go off of, and even with her solo movie in the works (an obvious prequel) she was sort of an empty slate waiting for her story to be told. Marvel never used her properly, never really took advantage of her, and at one point even gave her a relationship that did NOT need to be [Brutasha] because they were so clueless as to what to do with the only female Avenger. (Which means she HAS to have a love interest, right? RIGHT? God, Hollywood sucks with females)

They return to 2023 with all their stones and without Natasha. There’s a 1 minute grieving scene where Professor Hulk throws a bench in the lake and Steve blinks a tear and that’s…it. I mean, christ, don’t dedicate another second  longer to the poor woman, we couldn’t have that. Gotta make room for all those fat jokes. /s

They put the stones into Tony’s nano gauntlet and fight over who should put the gauntlet on – Professor Hulk wins. He says some shit that’s pulled straight out of his ass about gamma and how much gamma is surrounding the glove and that only he can handle it because Hulk is gamma. “It’s like I was made for this.”

Okay, whatever. Seriously, all this is so out of nowhere that I can’t muster the strength to care. A universe that always relied on collective narrative and plots weaved throughout movies is just pulling shit straight out of their asses at this point and I’m supposed to eat it. Please just snap your fingers and reverse time to 2018, Professor Hulk. That’s all I’m waiting for.

Tony once again says DO NOT lose the past 5 years and I guess the stones work off of what you’re thinking (ie: why they won’t let Thor do it, he’s too much of a mental mess) so Bruce…thinks about the dusted and snaps and…yeah. The dusted are back. A bit anticlimactic.

This also raises SO many questions about so many other things…what about those that got dusted in crashing airplanes? Are they just falling from the sky now?  People who were in boats that are no longer there, or in trains, or cars? What if they were dusted where a wall is now built? Are they morphed into the wall? Not to mention, bringing the dusted back in the year 2023, 5 years from when they were dusted…the legal problems that will occur. What if you had an apartment and someone is living there now? Where’s your stuff? What if your spouse married another person? Not to mention, what if your loved ones who survived The Decimation committed suicide in grief?

What about all that life insurance that was dished out?

None of this is explained. I doubt any of it ever will be. As the audience, I am once again left to assume.

So anyway, cue final battle scene. Thanks to time travel fuckery, 2014 Thanos is in 2023 and he bombs the shit out of the compound and it’s all CGI action from this point forward.

I mean, the fight was pretty cool. It was just…it was a lot of CGI, and to be honest, it was dark. Like, hard to see kind of dark. I get the tone and atmosphere they were going for, but one of the reasons I loved the Wakanda battle scene in Infinity War so much is because it was during the daylight. Even the battle of Titan was bright. Again, I get the tone they were going for, but I had a lot of trouble seeing what was going on, and it was a lot at once.

The OG 3 fight Thanos alone at first, which was cool. They all get their asses handed to them and Steve’s the one left to try and finish him off, solo, when Doctor Strange opens portals around the universe and brings all the dusted and army’s to the fight. I’d like to say I felt the same excitement watching this the second time around as I did the first, but I just…didn’t. Knowing the ending of this movie robbed a lot of initial joyful moments and if you ask me, a movie shouldn’t do that.

Also, yes, the fanservice moments exist. Steve lifts Mjolnir and says Avengers Assemble. I’m sorry, that’s not enough for me to forgive the mess of this movie.

A few pairs have their reunion scattered along the battlefield. I absolutely adored Peter and Tony’s, though I remained vastly uncomfortable that Peter was suddenly 5 years in the future and even addresses it as much. “And then Doctor Strange said you gotta hurry, it’s been 5 years!” Like…again, if this was reversed, that’s fine. But friggin hell. At this moment he doesn’t even remember turning to dust and how much pain he was in. Simply “Remember when I got all dusty? I must have passed out.” They hug though, so at the end of this shitshow at least the Irondad&Spiderson fanbase got their hug.

Rocket and Groot exchange a look and say nothing.

Fucking Steve and Bucky don’t even talk or see each other in battle. Probably because the Russo Brothers reallllyyy wanted to push that Steve/Peggy agenda and not remind anyone of Stucky. I look back on my complaints about the Irondad&Spiderson in this movie and take my grateful’s that we got the hug, because the poor Stucky fanbase got friggin robbed.

So again, big giant CGI battle fest. At one point they’re playing Hot Potato with the gauntlet trying to keep it away from Thanos and get it to Scotts van. I will admit, seeing Peter get like, 11 moms all at once was badass. Though it broke my heart to see him curled up in a tight ball holding the gauntlet like that…boy gunna have some real PTSD that Far From Home will likely brush off with more jokes disregarding and disrespecting the seriousness behind mental health and trauma.

I legit forgot about Captain Marvel until the moment she showed up.

I repeat: I legit forgot about Captain Marvel until the moment she showed up.

I know this moment had a LOT of characters to balance, but christ. If the writers can’t handle multiple characters with grace, they shouldn’t be handling multiple characters to begin with. Most were in this battle scene for the sake of showing their face. I mean, did Mantis even fight? So much was going on I couldn’t see past the center focus.

And I know a LOT of people complained that they didn’t want Captain Marvel to be the one that saves the day, but honestly, she would have been the better fit.

Tony making the final snap was done for shock factor. I stand by it. The narrative called for Steve Rogers to lay down his life in a blaze of glory, and because people predicted that – which is NOT a bad thing! It just means you’re telling your story well! – they took a hard left. Steve Rogers was a man out of his time, and his narrative told us time and time again he struggled with his life without a war. He needed the fight, that was his purpose. And his purpose should have ended with that final snap.

Instead, because movies want to be edgy and unpredictable, they ruined the narrative of Tony Stark and the final snap kills him. It’s horrific to watch. His last audible words are “I am Iron Man” and his last mumbled words are “Hey, babe” to Pepper. He gurgles blood out of his mouth, his brain is melting from the sheer power of the stones, Peter legit just sobs over him and he dies after Pepper feeds him some poetic, flowery shit about “You can rest now.”

This would be an immensely touching moment if it weren’t telling the audience that death is rest and the only way Tony could rest is if he died. First and foremost, I’m sorry, I do not consider death to be rest. Death is the end of existence. And Tony Stark had plenty of opportunities to rest without death. But the Russo Brothers decided 5 years of happiness was enough for him (when honestly, was it truly happiness? We all know he was harboring guilt from the Decimation and still mourning Peter) so they gave him those 5 years and then killed him off.

Between Thor, Natasha, and Tony, the MCU has taken society’s fight against the stigma on mental health back like, 25 years. Their answer to those who have mental trauma is to make fat jokes or kill them because that’s the only way they’ll be at peace. I guess this means Spidey is next, because there’s no way a 17 year old teenager is walking way from that without some serious PTSD.

Just by watching it I have PTSD.

I’m just not even touching this one in full extent. I’m sure other people will say it better than me and already have. All I will say is this: The past 11 years of film and subsequently the collective narrative told over the course of 22 films created a purpose for each of these two characters — Tony Stark struggled to move on from the fight, to truly let go of being Iron Man and retire. Steve Rogers struggled with his place in the world, moving on from Peggy Carter and finding purpose in fighting the battles that needed won.

Tony Stark deserved an ending of retirement, or even semi-retirement, perhaps taking on an advisory role at Shield. It would show the audience that sometimes you shouldn’t fight what feels natural within yourself, and Tony had a natural urge to be involved in this superhero life. He still could be, from afar, like a new Nick Fury.

And Steve Rogers, a man out of his time, deserved to win that battle in the blaze of glory, laying down his life for the other half of the universe. I really can’t believe I’m saying this, but I feel cheated for not seeing his death.

The Russo Brothers got this wrong. And shame one everyone who supported them along the way. These character’s had arcs established for many films prior to this and with a “5 Years Later” cue card all that just goes out the window.

Tony’s funeral exists solely for the purpose of doing a slow pan shot of a ton of faces standing around somberly. As an Irondad&Spiderson fan, it hurt to see Peter directly behind Pepper, Rhodey, Steve and Happy. May looked to be the same age/not aged up so I have to assume she got dusted as well. And since I’m being honest here: I know a lot of people fawn over Harley and Tony, but him being there made little to no sense to me. Plus, 95% of the audience didn’t even know who he was.

But again, this scene exists solely so we can show a bunch of big name faces at once, the big “group shot” that’s been spoken about so much during the hype of this movie. Even General Ross is there, the little fucker.

And to be even more of a bitter little sarcastic ass — the sailing away of his first arc reactor was sweet, truly, it was. But I look at that lake surrounding their cabin and think…it’s just gunna float around out there, making it’s laps around the cabin. I’d hate to be Pepper, waking up one morning and seeing it near the front porch. Unless they go and collect it once everyone leaves…I dunno, fuck, I just don’t even like thinking about this part of the film. It all played out like so much fanfiction I’ve read waiting for this movie. This just wasn’t supposed to be the movies ending, I really can’t say that enough.

Clint and Wanda have a moment that, I suppose, is there to tell us they’re grieving over Nat and Vision. It all felt like cheap throw away lines. Natasha deserved so much more than that, and hell, so did Vision. And hell, so did half of Asgard, and Loki, and all the people who died because of The Decimation.

But it’s okay. Steve’s going to return the stones back to their proper timelines, as promised to The Ancient One, and with that opportunity of time travel he’s going to give the middle finger to the remaining team members he has by staying back in time and “living some of that life Tony told him to get.” How, you ask? By using his other hand to give his other middle finger to the life Peggy Carter established long after him, with a husband and children and a career at SHIELD, so he can marry her.

😑

Imma be honest, when I first watched this movie, it was the cheeseburger line that really broke me. Up til that very moment, I held strong. I ignored all the shitty jokes, the shitty unraveling of character development, the shitty use of time travel, the shitty death of Tony Stark – I ignored it all. For some reason, the cringey-as-fuck “Your father liked cheeseburgers. I’ll get you all the cheeseburgers you want.” line just broke me. It read so much like badly written fanfiction that to sound like the obnoxious white girl I am, I couldn’t even anymore.

But once this scene hit, I was done. This was my “Nah, fuck this movie.” moment. This was my “I absolutely do not accept this” moment. This was when I walked out of the theaters, not waiting for an end credit scene that didn’t even exists anyway, or the credits of all the actors who’ve been in the MCU since 2008. I walked out the moment that dance ended, furious. And honestly, sticking around for that montage the second time around was rough. The anger hadn’t gone away yet.

So, to sum up? Avengers: Endgame played out like a fans poorly written, rushed, badly scripted fanfiction. But that fan had only watched Infinity War and read a couple of fanfictions afterward to get the gist on how to even write in the first place.

I’ve defended the MCU up until this moment. I know a lot of people jumped ship after Civil War; clearly the Russo Brothers were doing something wrong then. But they absolutely destroyed the universe with this movie to the likes that I’ve personally never seen before. What should have been a proper send off for characters (death or no death) ended up being a laughable joke of bad script writing, poor treatment to characters who had been around for a decade, and an idiotic usage of time travel.

Doctor Strange saw 14 million futures. In my head, Endgame was merely one of their lost battles. In my head, I have disowned this movie from the franchise. And while I will always be a Marvel fan, I’m likely done with the MCU moving forward in this odd universe of 2023. It’s just sad that I have to say goodbye with such a bitter taste in my mouth.

Thankfully, that’s what fannon and fandom is for.

[halloweennut]

A little cheesy but, how about Lou discovers that Draxum has never kissed anyone before, and Lou offers to “teach” him

(I’ve been trying to do a tiered release between here and patreon but I’m really excited about this one, and the Sunday fic might be late because I’m getting finicky about it) 

 (Pre-relationship)

The idea that no one had ever kissed Draxum outside of a familial or friendly kiss on the cheek or forehead was preposterous to Lou, and a downright insult to the yokai. Who wouldn’t want to kiss him? Theoretically speaking of course. Sure, he was aloof and a little stand-offish, perhaps a bit too uptight at times, but past all that…Draxum was sweet, gentle even, with a brilliant mind and hair that would be so easy to tangle fingers into-

Lou had to rectify the situation immediately. As a friend. Close friends. Nothing more.

“Would you like a kiss? I know that sounds like one of my normal teases and goads, but I’m highkey serious,” Lou asked, quickly adding in that he was being truthful as Draxum’s look of shocked disbelief. Lou swore he saw a faint tint on his cheeks before Draxum turned away indignantly.

“I do not have the experience to perform to your expectations, whatever they are,” Draxum replied, arms crossed.

“That’s fine, I’ll just have to teach you,” Lou said nonchalantly, stepping in front of him. Draxum raised an eyebrow. “I do have more experience after all.”

He hated how that last sentence sounded, but it was true. Between his films and numerous romantic exploits, he had kissed a lot of people, actor, actress, socialite and the likes alike. Draxum knew that, Lou just hoped he didn’t diminish the experience. He hoped that Draxum said yes, without much badgering on his part.

“Fine,” Draxum huffed. “Only because I know you won’t let the issue drop until I let you.”

Lou grinned, pumping a fist in the air. “Yes!”

“Do not make me change my mind, Lou,” Draxum sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And not a word of this to Big Mama or anyone else! At least Huginn and Muninn aren’t here.”

“Probably off at the Battle Nexus viewing lounge or something. Come on, the lesson starts now!” Lou said, grabbing his hand and dragging Draxum to a more secluded room in his house, settling on what appeared to be a small sitting parlor.  He stopped and turned to face Draxum. He didn’t look too amused.

“Okay, first lesson,” Lou started. “Eye contact is very important, I cannot stress this enough. This is one of the best ways to communicate interest to a partner and see if they’re just as interested. Verbal communication is always good if you can’t get a read.”

Draxum nodded, perhaps a bit halfheartedly, and brought his eyes up to meet Lou’s, bright and intense. Lou smiled in approval, keeping his eyes locked on his.

“Good! Second lesson, closeness and physical contact,” he continued, stepping closer. “There’s a few points of contact you can employ for a kiss, all optimal for pulling your partner close.”

Lou grabbed one of Draxum’s hands, placing in on his waist. “Waist is always a good place to start, and from there, other spots can be utilized.”

“You’re approaching this very analytically,” Draxum said. “I can appreciate that.”

“No problem,” Lou replied. “I know how your brain works by now.”

He grabbed Draxum’s other hand. “You can place both hands on the waist to start, then move one of them up to the upper back, the back of the head, or one of your partner’s hands. All will get them closer.”

“Back of the head? Wouldn’t that be more akin to a neck based attack?” Draxum asked, ever the warrior. Lou laughed.

“No. Back of the head allows for - oh, just let me demonstrate.” Lou raised a hand, placing it on the back of Draxum’s head, maintaining a gentle grip and tangling his fingers in the red locks. He let himself appreciate the sensation a moment before continuing. “There’s something intimate about the touch, and you get to move their head for better angles. Angle is good for this, and both parties can do this.”

“Ah, I see…,” Draxum replied. Lou felt a hand leave his waist, trailing up his back to the back of his head, perfectly copying his movement moments before. Lou tried not to shiver at the sensation. “Like this?”

“Mhmm,” Lou swallowed a lump in his throat. “Perfect…ahem, so, from here, in one motion - that’s key - you pull them close, angle them just slightly, and then, and this is also key, you pause for a second, before the kiss.”

“And the kiss?” Draxum asked. Lou felt him pull on him slightly. “Any guidelines?”

“Not that I can think of…,” Lou suddenly realized that he didn’t have as much control over the situation as he thought. Mostly because Draxum had already pulled him in close, and there was little space between then two. “Draxum-”

His voice came out quietly, half silenced by the closeness and the intensity of Draxum’s eyes. Time stopped for a moment. He only broke away to glance down at Draxum’s mouth and back up, then slowly Draxum closed the gap between them.

It was gentle, cautious, uncharacteristically unsure and done as though Lou was something small and delicate. Lou leaned into the kiss, angling to deepen it and encourage Draxum to do so as well, draping his arms over his shoulders. Draxum tightened his grip on Lou as though the space between them could possibly get any smaller. Lou felt his chest threaten to burst when Draxum finally threw caution to the wind, throwing himself fully to the kiss.

And then he pulled away. Lou felt breathless, holding onto Draxum’s shoulders and he felt his face heat up. Draxum moved his hand from his head to his chin, slightly tilting it up. Lou tried to hide that he had gotten flustered over just a kiss as the line of sight was reestablished. Draxum looked calm and cool! How?!

There was a second’s pause before he spoke. “Was that…Was that satisfactory?”

There it was, the lack of composure! Lou nodded, still trying to find his voice.

“Uh-huh. You learn fast,” he forced a laugh. “It was good, it was good.”

Lou pulled away after realizing they were still in that intimate closeness. Draxum stepped back as well, trying to regain his normal collectedness. Lou awkwardly pointed behind him to the door, gracelessly stepping around him.

“I, um, gotta go,” he said, turning to face him as he walked backwards to the door. “You know how it is, training and everything. Got to stay the Champion! I’ll - oof!”

In his rush, he nearly walked into the doorframe. Avoiding Draxum’s eyes, he quickly finished his goodbye and rushed out. Lou mentally kicked himself for looking like a fool and acting so foolishly and flustered over a simple kiss!

….It was just a kiss, right?

[rhetorical-ink]

Rhetorical Ink Reviews: Two Bland Movies to Prep for Two Crazy Ones -- The Addams Family and Last Christmas

**SPOILERS BELOW**

I haven’t reviewed movies lately...simply because I haven’t been to the movies much this fall. Half is out of business with work, and half is because I just haven’t been excited by the box office lately. 

However, with me going to see two new movies next week (Cats -- yesssss - and Rise of Skywalker), I figured I would recap two movies I DID see -- The Addams Family and Last Christmas. 

Why didn’t I review them before? Well....simply put, they were almost too bland to review. But, the more I thought about it, there are actually a lot of similarities between these two films you wouldn’t expect to see! So, with that in mind, here are -- 

MY TOP TEN THOUGHTS ON THE ADDAMS FAMILY AND LAST CHRISTMAS: 

10. Both films jam certain nostalgic elements INTO. YOUR. HEAD. For The Addams Family, this works better, as much of the tropic elements from the television show and previous movies helps to establish that these characters are indeed the ones audiences fell in love with previously. Last Christmas? Wham. A lot of Wham. And basically a George Michael’s soundtrack...jammed. into. your. head. 

9. The humor works -- except when it doesn’t. There’s a lot of cute laughs in the movie, especially with the leading ladies, which I’ll address below. But a lot misses in both films. I felt mixed throughout most of each movie, chuckling at parts and cringing at others when the humor doesn’t work. Particularly with Emma Thompson in Last Christmas -- and I’ll touch on that below, too, but why one of the WRITERS of this film, who is British, posed as a foreign immigrant with a heavy Russian/Turkish accent is baffling to me. Emma...honey...WHY?

8. On the first note, I have to say I love the two leading ladies in each movie. I have really come to appreciate Emilia Clarke, not just for her acting on Game of Thrones, but because of how much of just a good-natured, pure, and innocently amazing woman she seems to be in real life! And here, she is NOT just re-hashing any character she’s played before. She is genuine, snarky, and as down-to-earth as any protagonist in a 2019 modern-day set film. Her acting is relateable and she is easily the best part of the film.

Likewise, Chloe Grace Moretz is easily the best part as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family. Her sarcastic, dry, monotone voice is very on-point, but she adds an additional layer of teenage drama and flair that is nuanced and I feel easily relateable for teen girls in the same way Emilia Clarke’s is for 20-30-year-old women. Both women are cast well and the best parts of their films. Bravo, movies, for that!

7. But, whereas the two leading ladies are excellent in this film, the same cannot be said for the rest of the cast. The Addams Family alone are fine -- except Uncle Fester -- I really don’t like how infantile they make him this movie, just for “laughs.” However, I love the main family the cast work well to bring them to life. 

It’s the rest of the citizens of The Addams Family who seem out of place and really show how “dated” The Addams Family as a concept actually is compared to modern times -- again, more on that below.

With Last Christmas, Emilia is great, but the other characters? They either don’t read like actual people or they are just cartoonish or caricature-esque and it just...doesn’t work and makes the plot seem more contrived than it might have seemed with better developed characters and less wooden acting. 

6. With Last Christmas, Emilia’s character has had a major medical emergency, which works in the film (especially with Clarke’s acting) because the actress playing the protagonist has actually lived through a similar major medical issue. So, while the plot goes into complete BONKERS land (more. on. that. below.), it’s almost passable because Emilia sells it. 

The main conflict of The Addams Family is handled much like Illumination’s The Lorax, which I despised compared to the original because much of the story is contrived and doesn’t match with the tone of the original source material. It’s hard to “update” The Lorax of the 1970′s to modern day without seeming forced. The same is true of The Addams Family -- the family doesn’t match with modern times. Of course, this is explained off through the metaphor offfff....

5. Immigration is a B-Plot of both films, oddly enough. With The Addams Family, the movie starts out with Gomez and Morticia literally being thrown out of their homeland and being immigrants to the bright, sunny suburban neighborhood. The Addam’s differences cause judgement by their neighbors and by the end of the film, the main message is that it’s not right to judge by appearances and that it’s okay to be “different” and the need for tolerance and acceptance. Which is odd, in many ways, because The Addams Family was always about being happy with who you were, even if you were different and strange, because who cares what others think! Here...it’s important that the neighbors accept and let the Addams Family integrate with their community. ‘Kay...’

...But with Last Christmas, the immigration B-Plot is not essential to the overall message of the story. In fact, it’s not necessary. At. All. Why is Emilia’s family immigrants? It’s mentioned at the start and is mentioned throughout the movie, but aside from Emilia’s dad being a cab driver (is this an excuse for that?!) and Emma Thompson using it to add bizarrely not funny humor using her not convincing accent, this part does not make much sense. The topic of immigration is brought up once while the protagonist is on a train, but it adds nothing to the overall story and just seems placed in for no particular reason except to help explain...why...Emilia’s character is “odd?” ‘Kay...

4. The Addams Family is not mentioned as much in this post because it’s a fairly basic, straight-forward, and bland movie -- whereas Last Christmas has a LOT more bizarre choices within it, which I’ll touch base on in these next few points, but I will say that for The Addams Family, it’s biggest detriment is it’s trying to be like other young adult, Illumination-knock off, pre-teen movies. It sacrifices what made The Addams Family stand out as kooky and strange to appeal to a modern day young audience. And that sacrifice ultimately makes it bland and unremarkable. 

For Last Christmas, the closest thing it tries to tie to at the end is the Christmas film, Love Actually, with a concert shoved in the last few minutes and Emilia Clarke singing -- not that Emilia is a bad singer, necessarily, but she is no Marceline, that’s for sure. 

3. Now, for the “Bonkers” bit -- I will say, that the second half of this film is pretty repetitive and bland -- my friend watching with me actually FELL ASLEEP in the middle of the film and I had to wake her up when her snoring cause the three other people in the theater with us to crank their heads our way.

HOWEVER, the climax of this movie is one of the most baffling I’ve seen in a while. Emilia’s character develops a confused relationship with a man that constantly shows up at her place of work and throughout the movie, she tries to get to know him more and more, but he mysteriously shoves her away.

Finally, she convinces him to open up and he takes her to his apartment -- they make out both there and on a park bench (in public, keep in mind), and seem to be getting along much better. AND THEN, we learn the twist. 

The twist is that her would-be-lover is actually all in her head -- or rather -- in her HEART, because, as we come to find out -- her medical situation is that she had a heart transplant and received the heart of a man in a bus accident. The man ends up being the one she’s been seeing -- they were mentally connected through the heart she received from him. 

2. So....many questions. If he was in her head (or heart) all this time, does that mean she was just talking to herself? Was she making out with no one on a park bench...and no one called her out on it? Did she break into a dead man’s apartment and make out with no one? Clearly, so, as this movie implies. And it seems that “he’ll be with her” from now on that she has his heart. 

I will be honest, whereas I was just slightly bored throughout The Addams Family, my jaw dropped with Last Christmas and this extremely confusing revelation and its impact on the plot.  

1. So the verdict? In all honesty, I don’t think I would ever watch The Addams Family 2019 again, especially with such better versions out there on television or the 1990′s movies.

HOWEVER, much like A Winter’s Tale, I think I might actually watch Last Christmas in the future if it were on television or needed a holiday movie to play in the background. There is SO much Christmas atmosphere and Emilia Clarke’s performance elevates it to the point that while the plot is SO laden with problematic elements, there’s enough wacky nonsense and good acting to keep me invested for a future viewing. 

Okay you all, now to round out 2019 with Rise of Skywalker....and Cats. 

Pray for me, y’all. 

[imalloutofgin]

Gin and Talking Pictures | Joker.

*** SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS *** It’s 11:33PM. I just got home from watching ‘Joker’ with a friend. I don’t want to give too much away... I mean I don’t want to give anything away, thus the spoiler warning. But I absolutely have to talk about this film. 

This film is amazing. It’s got an old and troubled soul. It escalates steadily to a blistering crescendo and then drops down to fill in a few blanks. This film talks about the way we treat the people who need our help most. I identify with Joker because I have been (and still am, I suppose) pretty damn crazy. I have only held onto sanity by the skin of my teeth and with help from a solid support network of family and friends, without them, I could be homeless or dead. I was lucky. This story is about that system failure. When the structures that are supposed to support Joker are taken away, (therapist/medication) due to budget cuts, he cannot cope. Capitalism makes him the way that he is. It hits too close to home for me. I empathise with this character despite not wanting to.  The film talks about the way that people and corporations are fine with humiliating and using people for views. The way that the media industry can chew you up and spit you out. The way that some television preys on the weak and vulnerable to create “entertainment.” One of the best parts for me is the slow dolly out towards the end of the film, a slight tilt up and our screen is filled with many screens showing the commodification of a tragedy. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and then it turns a profit. To me, it felt reminiscent of the media frenzy surrounding atrocities such as school shootings. His face on every station. The Joker’s message shown to the world, just as he wanted it to be. 

Okay, off of the heavy stuff, let’s talk about colour. This film mostly uses a triadic colour palette, but emphasises certain moments with green and orange, which are colours associated with Joker in the film. This is really clever and I appreciated the real attention to detail. I loved the costumes, the make up, the carnival coloured moments, the total took of this film. It was detailed, well thought out and beautifully executed. My friend also noticed that he always had to walk up the steps on his way home, until we see him ready to go on TV and he leans into his madness, that’s when he dances/ runs down the stairs, descending into the madness below.

I will also say, I heard a rumour that in the USA, people are being warned against watching this film... and I’ll say this. Watch it. I’m not saying all out anarchy is good. I’m not saying that I agree with killing people. But this film has a social commentary about how we treat our most marginalised people in our society, and your government clearly thinks that message is dangerous. They want you to have an ‘us’ vs ‘them’ dichotomy because it distracts you from the real opposition of class struggle. Batman could do more for the issues of Gotham by giving away his wealth than he ever could as Batman. Watch this film. Really, watch this film and think about it. 

5/5 stars.

[smartbutuncertified]

Movie Review: NoBody’s Perfect (2008)

I watched the movie noBody’s Perfect, filmed in 2008, by Niko Von Glasow. The main stars are Fred Dove, Kim Morton, and Bianca Vogel. It’s about a man who has a major birth defect due to Thalidomide trying to find others who have a Thalomide birth defect to make a nude calendar. The film largely concerns body image issues, but also touches on the idea of disabled people being whole and how abled people often disregard disabled people’s privacy and dignity for their comfort and curiosity. The act of participating in the calendar seems to be a large step forward for many of them, to seeing their bodies more kindly. It also has a large section devoted to discussing how little responsibility was taken in Germany by the company who distributed the drug, and continued to do so even after they knew what it did to fetuses.

It talks a lot about acceptance of your body and your differences, a subject that is very topical in our airbrushed world. Having a major birth defect is about as far from classical beauty as can be, and yet they find beauty and joy in themselves. So as a member of the general population living in the same cultural climate of our bodies never being good enough, it connects on that level. “My (short) arms are a part of me, they’re a part of my life, and that’s all right. But I am not ‘short arms’.” Sofia declares.

It hits home in a closer way as well. I also had a birth defect. Like a terrible country song, I was born with a broken heart. It was entirely internal, but saving my life left me with a distinctive scar on my chest nearly a foot long, distinctive enough that people who work in cardiology sometimes ask what I had fixed. I don’t think about it too much, but sometimes people mention it when I wear a top that shows where it starts. Perhaps I should be prouder of it. I survived.

Then there’s the abled people feeling like disabled people have some sort of duty to disclose their disability, another personal sore spot. Fred Dove, while being interviewed on a radio show, had his disability disclosed to all the listeners by the interviewer as a bit of -  color commentary. I cannot politely express how livid that made me, but I wholly understand why Fred only spoke about it for a few seconds before changing the topic.

Sofia, an actress, recounted a disturbing event from her childhood where she was often forced to strip naked in front of a number of doctors, usually male, for inspection. “It was awful. I was surrounded by about 20 white coats” This reinforced my belief that it’s incredibly important to preserve the privacy and dignity of disabled people, children, and disabled children. There is no reason why a child not having an immediate medical emergency needs to be stripped naked in front of so many adults at once.

It’s stunning that Kim’s mother up and left her religion entirely when the minister refused to have Kim in church due to her visible disabled status. That shows remarkable integrity. It also illustrates a much larger dynamic present throughout the film, the importance of the individual over the system. Systems are useful, but if they no longer serve their intended purpose, for example, a holy place turning away an innocent child for looking odd, they need to be abandoned for the sake of those they should have helped, and didn’t. This aligns wholly with my view of how our relationships with institutions should work.

It’s notable and painful how differently the Vogel siblings were treated by their families, with the one not affected getting much more attention and praise from their grandparents. However, this doesn’t seem to have affected their relationship, they seem quite close. This defied the general narrative of the spoiled child becoming cruel to the maltreated one, and makes me wonder how much truth there is to that idea.

About forty percent of the way through, they reveal a horrifying fact. The company that made the drug knew what it did in 1961, and still kept selling it. Even worse, the pioneer of the drug knew that one of the ingredients was of a group often referred to as “monster makers”. The company compounded the error by having no female trials before releasing it to the public. The company has also never even apologized to the victims, let alone settled with them. One interviewee puts it best when he says “[…] let’s call them criminals, who committed their crimes in the greedy pursuit of profit.” I absolutely agree with that, the film is not the only thing making me want justice for the models.

I’m not sure how I feel about the constant presence of smoking in the film. Since it’s reality, it’s important to represent honestly, but I wonder what this says about addiction among the disabled. Either that, or smoking rates are much higher in Europe. That would have to be a whole other paper, honestly. I don’t agree with smoking, but vulnerable people pick their pleasures where they can get them.

I take exception to one interview where they talk about how when they talk about their issues in a public forum, the issues become detached from them. The interviewee seems to feel that in order to express oneself clearly, detaching yourself is the only way to do it. I would argue that this in fact muddies the issue, making it less about what is important: the people.

I was surprised by the interview with the gardener, which talked about another of the disabled models sexually assaulting women, and about him beating up kids his own age and older in school. It’s generally not considered that the physically disabled are also capable of assault, but they are whole people in every way, not just the positive ones.

I have very mixed feelings about the astrophysicist who reportedly grabbed women’s chests being presented sympathetically. I’m aware that this was a single report from another person, and that that isn’t the whole of who he is, but it still discomforts me that the film seems to brush over what it’s reported that he did. The film mentions that Thalidomide disabled about 7,000 children, surely there weren’t exactly twelve that were willing to pose nude?

It must be mentioned that nobody from the drug company was present in the film for any significant part, but that was not for want of trying on the director’s part. He did his best to loop them into the film for their side of things, and they refused to participate.

It addressed the whole topic of body issues incredibly, letting people speak for themselves about what made them uncomfortable and what didn’t. As one interviewee put it, “[My insecurity] is in my mind, it’s not in your perception, is it? It’s like, you look fine to me, but you’re probably unhappy about something that I don’t care about.”

The presence of ableism is felt throughout the film in many of the conversations and in how several of the models think and behave in regards to themselves. All of the models have varying levels of comfort with themselves and their disability. The director, Niko, is one of the least comfortable. It was interesting to hear that for Doris and Niko, they stayed away from other Thalidomide children for quite a while because they didn’t want to see themselves in them. They didn’t want to relate to others who were clearly different and know that they were just as different. It’s also mentioned that several of the models have had difficulty with romantic relationships because of their disability. But there are only two shown incidents. A child making fun of a wheelchair using model and a man and the end who is being interviewed on the street about the art installation saying that it’s “tasteless” for a disabled person’s naked body to be shown in public. Thankfully, both of these are framed with an immediate counterpoint by people who weren’t hired by the producers, showing that times are changing. These scenes were handled with care.

There was an interesting conversation where an interviewee that uses a powered wheelchair admits casually that he’s considered killing himself. It’s moved past quickly, but there’s something about the framing that makes it feel less like they did it to dismiss it, and more like they don’t want to dwell over it and overshadow the other complex facets that this person has. As someone who has struggled with suicidal impulses, I loved that.

The inclusion of the lesbian art teacher served as a pointed reminder of the intersectionality of disabled issues. Past the obvious, she also mentions founding a group working to protect disabled women and girls from sexual violence, something that’s not often thought of as an issue concerning the disabled specifically. But they are a uniquely vulnerable population to predation.

It passed the “who cares?” test with flying colors, framing the issue as one of pain and justice that crossed communities. I would say that it said that “who cares?” ought to be everyone who wants the world to be a safe place, for companies to be held accountable for their mistakes and “mistakes”, for people to be able to not fear what others think of them for things that are out of their control. Of course, the film may not hit like that for everyone who watches it, but it was good enough to win the German Film Award of 2009, so it’s clearly not just me.

The film opens on a scene of a man talking candidly to his daughter about being afraid to be naked in front of anyone because of his malformed arms. It was a good tone setter for the film, encapsulating the main issue, the joking, yet honest air, and how these people are not curiosities or strange creatures, but humans with lives and families. It was a beautiful way to ease into the film, and it flows well from there.

The theme of showing these people as complex and whole is possibly the strongest one in the film, arguably the film’s thesis. It was hard to hear that some of these people, as babies, were taken away from their mothers by the doctors with no explanation for days. One for two, one for six, and we don’t know about the others. I would understand wanting to monitor babies with a severe birth defect for further issues, but it isn’t that hard to keep the parents in the loop. They chose not to.

The film was art, but not art that is intended to make the viewer feel good. The art is put into making you understand, as much as you can, what happened to these people, and how they have continued on with what they have. You are allowed to have whatever feelings you like, but you must understand that they are whole human beings. They look incomplete to people who don’t know them, but they are anything but. You don’t need a certain amount of body mass to be human.

I must disclose that I personally watched the film largely in 20 minute increments, but that was largely because I kept stopping to note things down so that I could write this as well as possible, with plenty of accurate examples. If I was watching this for pleasure, I would absolutely have gone through it twice over without pause. I may very well do that at a later date.

Add to that that this film launched a successful campaign to increase German benefits for Thalidomide victims, and it’s done the thing all art sets out to do- made a notable mark on the world. I hope that all of the models benefited from this, as it’s hard to find out what happened to people whose last names you mostly don’t know. However, it was easy to find out that Niko is still thriving as a film director.

I thought that this film was stunning. I would view something by these people again in the future, because I love how things were addressed. I loved how they presented everything, how compassionate and thoughtful their framing of delicate issues was. But I would only recommend this to individuals above the age of fifteen who were okay with artistic nudity. There is explicit nudity, which may make some individuals uncomfortable, but it isn’t pornographic, just beautiful people being brave and naked. If you’re at all interested in disability issues, body issues, corporate accountability, or even all three, I would highly recommend this film.

[lesbian-ed]

How do you move on? I've been in love with this girl for years and I only recently realized we'd never truly be in a committed relationship and it broke my heart. I miss her and I think about her everyday. I joined Her and I've gone on a few dates, but nothing has stuck. I don't really want it to or expect it to, but it still sucks.. I'm completely emotionally unavailable. I feel like I could sleep around and feel nothing. I've never felt like that before. How can I move on?

First and foremost, Anon, I think we need to dispelthe notion that moving on and getting over a broken heart necessarilymean jumping on to the next woman in line. If, as you said yourself,you are emotionally unavailable, my experience is that trying to bewith someone else to break the spell won’t aid you in the least.

See, moving on isn’t about moving on to the nextgirl, but moving on with life, with ourselves. You shouldn’t be attempting toerase the mark this girl has left on you by inviting lots of other women into your bed because it won’t have any effect if youhaven’t done the proper ‘digesting'—it’s no use to strain your bodyto fit in with another while trying to mend your heart and change yourmind. There’s a whole process involved, one of letting go and‘enjoying’ one’s solitude.

I know 'enjoying’ might seem a bit inappropriate whencoupled with the word 'solitude’ in light of an unsuccessfulrelationship, but there are elements of enjoyment to be found inbeing alone once one has surpassed that initial moment of disbelief,hurt, possibly despair. There is nothing novel in recommendingsomeone time in dealing with issues of feeling, I’m sure, andthere’s a reason why people will tell you to wait and let timeflow, but what most fail to tell you is that you cannot sit idly bywhilst consumed by the thought of this one girl, the errors orproblems that led to this outcome, wishing things were different—onthe contrary, I think one must use this moment to assess things asrealistically as possible. If it didn’t work out, then it wasn’tmeant to be—otherwise, logically, it wouldn’t have broken, wouldit?

There is a difference between grieving what we thinkmight have been amazing and condemning ourselves to misery by believing that that was the one chance for happinesswe’d get in this life. The first is a feeling that comes and goes,for, even in the future, when we have left this wholly behind (and itwill happen if you let it, if you make it happen), we still do findourselves wondering 'well, what if?’ but we don’t lose sleepover it anymore; it’s casual, human curiosity. Whereas the second option can lead us to a statevery close to what you’re describing, in which we become somehow verydependent on the memory of what was and on the desire of what couldhave been (or should have been, in our minds), dependent onthe idea of the woman that does not want us back. And that is bad.

It’s common in the first weeks following a break-upor another kind of romantic disenchantment, but to suffer years ofthis, of being shackled to one person who is clearly not at allshackled back to us?

You ask, Anon, how to move on. One must allow time tosweep away the dust of our sadness—but, and many will not like mesaying this, one must also give oneself permission to move on; onemust, at some point, actively pursue the overcoming of our sentimentif time by itself won’t do the trick. And to do that does not mean topursue someone else—but, perhaps, to pursue ourselves.

Now, personally, I dislike psychology and I do notwish to present myself an expert on the matter (Sappho forbid!), butthese sorts of issues, of over-dependence on an ex-girlfriend, onwanting what didn’t come to pass or what has already ended (or neverbegun, depending on the case) always seem to me linked to issues ofconfidence and self-esteem, as if one found it hard or unfeasible toimagine oneself without that person in one’s life. But the truthgenerally is that the person in question is already out of ourlife and we have not yet accepted that reality. For fear, perhaps; ofnever being loved again, of never loving someone to thatdegree again, of never settling down and finding happiness in thearms of any other woman… Reasons abound.

But we tend to feed on a handful of illusions and allof these motives for fear are just that: illusions. Nobody losesvalue by not being corresponded in love; nobody ceases to beimportant because one person in the world suddenly thinksdifferently; nobody is doomed to sadness because we believe ourselvesunloved and/or unloving. I wager we put too much value upon others’perception of us, that we base too much of our happiness on otherpeople—wonderful people, sure, women who stand out in a crowd,otherwise we would not have loved them, but even so we should notforget ourselves to their benefit. We should have the courage to facelife as it is; to choose to move forwards, to leave behind that whichgives us nothing.

Someone might argue that to love a woman still,albeit she loves us not, might give us some strength here and there;that this ideal, romantic, self-sacrificing love is ‘inspiring’; thatit is the only force driving us onwards, that it compells us to make something outof ourselves so those cherished eyes will once again befall us… And I would be forced to respond that livingfor someone else, and especially to that degree, is no way of living.It shouldn’t be difficult to verify that these circumstances are farfrom healthy—and to cling to a love with so much potential for harmis masochistic to say the least. We build prisons out of our owndreams, sometimes, and pain from our joys. With all the romanticismwe tend to use in approaching relationships, it’s a fairly commontrap to fall into.

You might accuse me of being unromantic or unfeelingto speak of these things in this tone, but I assure you I know allabout seeing no way out, about being chained to someone I loved whowould not bat an eyelash towards me. We all have at least oneexperience with this kind of thing and we must find ways to breakfree from this conundrum.

I said earlier that moving on might have something todo with finding ourselves rather than someone else to replace thewoman we loved. That’s also got to do with self-esteem. Many will saythey are incapable and unwilling to love themselves because theybelieve the 'love yourself and others will love you’ line a fallacy;whether it is true or not is completely negligible, because you don’tneed to love yourself, just accept and, perhaps most of all,respect yourself.

Respect your faults and qualities, the time you needto get back up again. Get to know yourself a bit better, enact a bitof harmless selfishness (as in 'I want to see that film in theatresand so I shall, regardless of company’ rather than 'fuck mum and dad,I can spray paint my room and turn up the heavy metal to full volumeif I want to’, mind you), spend time with yourself.

That is, I think, the best and only way to trulyheal. Talk to yourself, listen to yourself. What do you like doing?What are your wants and needs? What are your dreams? What’s yourfavourite smell, food, colour, book, film? Maybe you enjoy walking orswimming or sculpting or meditating or writing. Immerse yourself inyourself. Amidst the chaos of contemporary life, despite thepressures of study or work or peers or family, take a few minutesoff to be with yourself. No, you will not find a void there—and ifyou do, who better to fill it with something nice than you?

You mentioned putting yourself out there, trying toget in touch with other women, but I think sometimes we need to getin touch with ourselves first. And not just when getting over abreak-up or something of the sort, but as much as possible.

It well may be that this is nothing but my own,hyper-individual view on the matter and that many people willdisagree, but, alas, I was the one to answer your question on thisblog today. These are methods by which I have risen again afteradversities of the heart. For we rise again always, Anon. We mustsometimes help ourselves to do it, occupy our hands and muscles andthoughts with something other than our perceived failures, dosomething with ourselves for ourselves rather than for others, wantto be better for ourselves rather than for a partner. In theend, there are few people we can rely on in life apart from thatperson we see in the mirror staring back at us every day.

To finish this (and spare you any more of myphilosophy of life), you will get through this, Anon. It might seemlike a dead end right now, it might seem like you will never leavethis spot of stagnation, but you will. You must want it, as well, ifjust a little bit; be courageous and shed this shell. Breathe. Letyourself be alone for a little while, let it sink in that it did notwork—and that you are not obliged to make anything with anyone elsework at the moment. Focus on you. Find what brings you pleasure anddo not insult your own intelligence and spirit by thinking only shegives you pleasure in life; it isn’t true, not for you, not foranyone. We are made for more than to serve as partners to others,adorable as they might prove to be. If you are currently unable toopen yourself up, then don’t. Don’t go looking for women you’re notyet ready nor willing to bring into your life. Take what you have atthe moment and make the best of it for the time being.

The pressure to find a new girlfriend might even dieout. And that’s a good thing, because we tend to find the mostfantastic and remarkable partners precisely when we aren’tlooking—when we’re ready to live a life with them ratherthan for them, if you know what I mean!

Be patient with yourself and listen to yourself. Bekind. Be to yourself what you’d like others to be. You’ll do just fine.

/Mod T