#this is also why I'm not opposed to CGI ghosts

[coupleofdays]

I have been thinking about a particular aspect of Alien: Romulus, and how it's similar to Tron: Legacy. Spoilers for both movies ahead.

One of the characters in Alien: Romulus is Rook, a broken android who looks and talks exactly like the character Ash from the original Alien movie. This was done by using a combination of physical and digital effects, and sound filtering of the voice actor, in order to create a character that looks and sounds like Ian Holm, who played Ash, but is now dead.

There are of course many arguments to be made about the ethical and artistic implication of this kind of "reviving" of a dead actor, or similar "de-aging" that has been done in other movies. One common argument is that such attempts usually aren't entirely life-like, that the characters fall into the "uncanny valley".

But in this case, I think that if Rook looks "uncanny valley", that's actually kind of appropriate. The character is, after all, a creepy android, ripped in half and only repaired enough to lay on a table and talk to the other characters. If he looks "off", not entirely human, that makes sense in the context of the film.

As I was thinking about this, I realized that the same can be said for the character Clu in Tron: Legacy, who is a CGI-de-aged version of Jeff Bridges. In this case, I also don't think that it's a problem if the character looks "uncanny valley", since he is supposed to be a computer program, a digital copy of the young Kevin Flynn, living in an entirely digital world. If he looks like he's made out of CGI, that's entirely appropriate.

(Of course, this argument might not work for the flashback scenes where the human character Kevin Flynn is a similarly de-aged Bridges, but I have my own weird headcanon about that.)

On the whole, I guess I think that there are some specific contexts where it might be fitting to actually embrace the uncanny valley phenomenon: When it's a character who's intended to be artificial, or maybe just somehow unnatural or supernatural. I would love to see a horror movie some day that has a monster that is intentionally made to look creepy through the uncanny valley effect (yes, I am aware of all those "The Polar Express was actually a horror movie" jokes).

[amostimprobabledream]

Thoughts on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice *SPOILERS*

The Good:

The reveal that Astrid could see ghosts this whole time and that Jeremy was actually a ghost was genuinely really good - I didn't see it coming but in hindsight it was so obvious. The whole bit about him trying to trick Astrid into giving her life for his was so fun.

Michael Keaton was a treat to watch as usual - all the actors seemed to be having the times of their lives, especially him, Willem Dafoe and Monica Bellucci. I was actually laughing out loud at some of the scenes he was in and I appreciate that they used him sparingly. I also thought the gag of Willem Dafoe's character being a former actor who liked pretending to be a cop and his secretary kept fetching him coffees and feeding him his lines was genuinely funny.

I was on the fence about Astrid because from what I got from the promotional material she seemed pretty bratty and whiny, but I think her frustrations with Lydia and her life in general were generally fairly understandable and I think she and Winona Ryder had great chemistry. Also I want Astrid's wardrobe, that sweater-dress with the bike shorts and boots? An absolute serve.

It's cool that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton both insisted on building sets instead of relying on CGI to do everything, I think that one of the charming things about the first movie was the handmade feel of the sets and they managed to capture a lot of it in this one. I mean, they do use SOME CGI, especially where Beetlejuice is involved, but I think it's good they didn't just rely on greenscreens.

Banger soundtrack, as usual, thanks to Danny Elfman.

Killing off Charles and Delia was surprising but I thought it was handled in a good way. I thought the actor who played Charles had died or something and when I googled why he wasn't in the sequel I think they did the best they could with the character. Catherine O'Hara sort of held together the Lydia/Astrid subplot for me, especially when she says to Lydia, "What happened to the angsty goth girl who gave me so much trouble? I think you need to find her!" The Bad: - This movie really made me appreciate the Maitlands more. The whole thing with the first movie is that Adam and Barbara ground it and give it a sense of normalcy - they have random, sudden, unfair deaths and as the audience we're thrown into the confusing world and rules of the afterlife as much as they are. In this movie I feel like everyone is too busy trying to be different flavours of wacky to feel real, which is fine for people like Beetlejuice or Delores but the human characters didn't feel like that had substance like the Maitlands.

Am I the only one who felt like this film felt kind of like a character assassination of Lydia?? I love Winona Ryder to death (pun unintended), but I feel like all she did in this movie is make that pop-eyed shocked face and say exposition. I'm sorry but am I meant to believe that Lydia Deetz, the only person in the first movie who could communicate with Adam and Barbara, called Otho, Lydia and her dad out on their shit multiple times and had the balls to make a deal with Beetlejuice to save the former, would seriously let some creepy man pressgang her into marriage? Not to mention I can't remember a single line of dialogue from Lydia, she's kind of been demoted to just being a depressed goth mom and that's kind of it. Also I felt like the way she was using her power for a TV show felt OOC when she was the only one who opposed the haunted house idea in the original. (Also Winona Ryder's hair looked terrible in the movie, it made sense for teenaged Lydia to have those gel spikes but on a Lydia who's hit fifty they look ridiculous. Like what, did her fashion sense never evolve past age fifteen?)

There were WAY too many subplots. I genuinely really liked the subplot with Astrid and Jeremy, and I think Beetlejuice and his ex-wife had a lot of potential, but the end of the movie was like Tim Burton forgot to keep track of every subplot he had going on and wrapped them up really unsatisfyingly.

Monica Bellucci's character was WAY underused. Like. I absolutely loved her design and stuff but she was walking around the whole movie attacking random people we don't give a shit about, and then in the climax she just stands there and lets herself get eaten. (That staple-face look would make a fire Halloween costume though.) I feel like the subplot with Lydia's creepy boyfriend/producer should have been cut so she had more time to shine.

The dialogue. Some of it was fine but other times phrases showed up that are so obviously going to become dated in a couple of years, it sounded like adults trying way too hard to be edgy and relatable to Gen Z viewers, like when Astrid goes "the afterlife is so random!" or that one woman describing something as "non-triggering". I don't remember the dialogue in the first movie feeling so buzzword-heavy.

Beetlejuice felt less like a threat this time. In the first movie he's more of a clear-cut antagonist but this time he's very clearly on Lydia's side and even dispatches all the other bad guys, so I think some of his more sinister energy was lost here.

The ending was really dumb ngl. It feels like it's setting up for a third one but Tim Burton was like "lol not gonna happen" so I have no idea why he chose to ending it like that.

[centrally-unplanned]

Watched a bunch of stuff last night, including the Alita OVA from 1993! I thought it was a lot of fun, the thoughts:

--- It did the "obvious" thing of adapting the romance arc with Yugo of Volume 2 as the core, while blending in the events of Volume 1 as sort of backstory and setup as opposed to their own story. This arc is Alita at her most humanized in the early parts of the manga, and its the plot that centers Zalem as the untouchable overlord city most effectively. Any short adaptation is gonna choose this - part of why James Cameron (lol) did the same thing!

--- Speaking of, the manga does not actually have any particular focus on Alita's eyes, but the anime definitely has more than one shot where it establishes them as thematically special. Given that the James Cameron film is famous for going full CGI on Alita's eyes, and he knows about the property from Guillermo del Toro passing him the OVA as opposed to the manga, I think I can see the chain of events that lead to that (ill-fated?) decision.

Her eyes are pretty amazing in the OVA, so I get it! As my previous reblogs showed lol.

--- I think I can break apart the manga into three "concepts": the setting as cyberpunk dystopia, Alita as a character dealing with identity issues as an amnesiatic combat robot, and shounen fighting & levelling arcs. The OVA heavily focuses on the first part, ditching almost all the shounen stuff - its fight scenes are quick and focus on violence & bodily destruction over strength or "fighting techniques", etc. This is great for me, obviously! But it also, almost accidentally, ditches most of her identity issues? Because its less than an hour long, and needs to do a ton of worldbuilding - including even adding in a new character from Zalem to help with that - and is doing Yugo's entire arc, you really don't have time left for Alita's struggles. Yugo actually gets more "inner depth" than she does! She commits to being a bounty hunter, then after that she is pretty much just In Love while Yugo goes through his detailing of his past and collapse.

I'm not saying it doesn't work, it does as a story. Just interesting for something that is known as very "protagonist associated" to have an OVA where she is barely the protagonist.

--- While no Urotsukidoji or anything, this is another one of those OVAs where its reputation, particularly in the west, is as a hyper-violent, gory OVA? And like so many it really isn't. People get decapitated, don't get me wrong, buts its never lingers on those moments. Instead they serve as tone setters for the crapsack world or just are part of the action sequences.

I think in general the OVA era rarely made horror/gore films the way some other mediums/industries did? There are exceptions of course but in the end anime is trying to do too many other things; beautiful animation, focus on character designs, often being adaptations and so doing the plot of those more complex stories, erotic content for audiences that aren't *that* fetishistic on average, and more. All of these priorities compete for space in comparison to having endless jumpscares and blood splatters. So far my track record for watching the famous "gorefest" or "~crazy~" anime is that every one of them is tamer than the rep suggests, and I believe this medium/genre mismatch is why.

--- The biggest question I have around Alita in general is why there was never any more anime? Its weird, right? Its a famous property from a beloved genre, it had a hollywood film for some crazy reason, things like Ghost in the Shell got multi-season anime after all. Why no feature film remake in the 2000's? Why no 13-cour in the 2010's? I don't have an answer to that yet.

Why the initial OVA was so minimal is at least partly answered by Kishiro here:

MNS: Many fans have wondered, why were only 2 anime OAV episodes produced in 1993? YK: It was based on the plan proposed by the animation production company. It might have been better to turn down the plan and wait for a better adaptation proposal to come up, but back then, I couldn't afford to review the plan coolly. At that time, I was still serializing the work and was so busy that I wasn't ambitious to make it into animation.

Essentially he took the "deal on hand", not offering much, because he didn't have the time, money, or business savvy to work the industry for a better proposal. 100% understandable. I don't think the OVA did too well? I can't find a lot of sales figures, but the comments I see are in the "respectable" range, and it didn't get quick or expansive rereleases over time.

More broadly, and again speculative, I think maybe Alita overall isn't that successful? Like sure Kishiro is still out here releasing more sequel manga to this day somehow, but when I look at the "media mix" its just really sparse. No big video game adaptations - it has a PlayStation game in the 90's - it has like a drama CD and a novelization? No big merch waves or tie-ins. I am betting the big anime production committees just don't think its a hot enough property to sell that great. Wouldn't be a bad idea or anything, but not one you have to do like idk Chainsaw Man.

In the western fandom spaces its quite well known because of the idiosyncrasies of licensing history, the weird James Cameron factor, and I think a general fascination with anime cyberpunk; the west eats up any of the older cyberpunk properties for its aesthetic in a way that can blind people to the reality of that just being a subgenre in Japan at the time. Alita might just be niche enough that it not getting any wider anime adaptations is no grand mystery.

(But I hope to dig into this question more)

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

There's this rumors about the midnight suns movie (idk it it's confirmed) and they say moon knight is going to be in it? How do you think it would Work?

How do you think is he gonna interact with the rumoured members?? (According to am article and post in Twitter that I read) Since their different from the comics: dr.strange, wong, Elsa Bloodstone, Blade, Dane Whitman, Wanda,Agatha harkness,ghost rider, man-thing

Now I'll tell you what I think, but there's always the chance that it does happen and I'm completely wrong. So to the future people out there that find this, I'm more than happy to be wrong.

I think the Midnight suns as a movie is going to be a clusterfuck and perform terribly. The issue is that we are taking characters that have gotten shows and haven't been introduced yet to the MCU. And a movie is expecting you to come in with this knowledge. So there is the chance for a lot of people go come in and go "Why do I care about any of this?"

There's also the problem that they are anticipating this and making it more friendly to new audiences by watering down the characters. So you get Moon Knight standing in the background not saying much or you get cheap shots at his DID with no explanation and he comes across as quirky insane violent guy.

This happens in big team up comics too. Which is partly why I dislike them greatly. When you put together a large group from all over, you are either expected to know their background already and be thrilled to see them together, or they become just another figure standing vaguely in the background giving reaction shots to things that more popular characters say or do.

If they are going to do Midnight Suns, they need to give it a series with multiple episodes to cover all the characters properly. But even then... You'll notice that their other series on Netflix that did this didn't perform well at all. It had decent writing, excellent acting, and gave voice to the other characters, but the audience really didn't connect and it just kind of went bottom of the barrel in ratings.

This gives Marvel the idea that people just aren't interested in these lesser B rated characters (characters that aren't Captain America and Iron Man and Spider-man) and then they devote less time and money to them.

I mean, Marvel is already giving less time and money to their shows and even their movies. The CGI has dropped quality significantly. And with them putting everything into CGI and less practical effects, it just means that everything looks terrible. (Werewolf by Night my beloved you were beautiful and people need to devote more time and money into practical).

My fear with Moon Knight going into ANY big time movie that is not strictly about Moon Knight is what has happened to him in all the comics in the past that did this. He becomes a shape in the background and cheap pot shots about his mental health become gag worthy. He becomes that crazy guy that no one trusts because he is unpredictable and violent.

I WANT to see a show that brings in characters that are more on his level. I want to see a show with Jack Russel, Elsa Bloodstone, and Moon Knight. These are the OG of the Marvel Monster phase in comics. They started out together. They deserve to meet up.

Heck, Blade needs his own stuff first. I'd love to see Ghost Rider get a GOOD reboot and start to pal around with Frank Castel because those two love JUSTICE. (Though they are on different levels and there is the lack of development that would happen in that capacity).

I think the best thing Marvel has done so far in shows is having Frank show up in DD. Their diametrically opposed forces go SO well together and always have.

So on the line of who would go best with meeting up and working with Moon Knight? I'm back to Jack Russel and Elsa Bloodstone.

The MCU potential there is BEAUTIFUL. We have two comic book legends that have been given knew life through the MCU and are different than their comic book origins.

We have Jack Russel who understands what it is to be monstrous but also know that to be a monster is not to be evil. That often times the evil comes with being human.

Then we have Elsa who learned that of all the humans and life she has known, only the monster was the one who deserved pity and care.

Then we have Moon Knight... Well... You know what I think about Moon Knight because I could go on and on into another essay here.

SO ANYWAYS. I think Jumping into Midnight Suns is the wrong step. I think they need to work smaller and perhaps give back the Marvel Monster series. Get back to the start.

Give Werewolf by Night a series that explores the monsters and lesser liked characters. Get Man Thing back in here. Get Brother Voodoo and his zombies (though that has the potential in today's age to become Problematic if not handled with care, but amazing if done RIGHT)... Heck! Get Blade involved through this. Introduce the Vampires. (Reese in the MCU????? Yes Please).

SO yeah... I could be wrong. I'd love to be wrong and see how they do it and see it done well.... But I have concerns and honestly, I think Marvel has concerns too. They obviously WANT to do it. But two years in tells me that they still haven't figured out HOW to do it. And Oscar taking on more and more outside projects tells me that he also doesn't think they are doing it well either. (He said he'd only come back if he liked the script. That man has the right to be picky, bless him).