#this show has a decent balance of names that are thematically appropriate and names that are just like real life normal

[synodic-lupine]

IMO the funniest explanation for Donna's kid being named Rose is happenstance, total coincidence. It's a pretty name, not extremely uncommon but not overused, why not. Then the meta reason is the writers wanted to fuckin jumpscare the Doctor with her name lol.

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows Vol 2 #10-12 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here.

Even though issue #10 is a done-in-one and issues #11-12  two-parter, to all intents and purposes the three issues form a three parter, issue #10 acting as a kind of precursor to the latter issues.

  First things first the elephant in the room to address is Ryan Stegman as the writer and by extension the artists filling in for him.

  Whilst neither Stockman nor Level are the measure of Stegman, they both do respectable jobs, with Level’s art in particular being a better compliment to Stegman’s. This isn’t to say Stockman’s art is ill suited because like in issue #5 his style excels at expressive almost Rugrat looking child characters and issue #10 features one such character as the lead.

  Stegman for his part, whilst he may be working off of ideas leftover from Conway, does a surprisingly good job. There are some problems with issue #11-12 I will talk about later, but issue #10 is great and over all his dialogue, pacing and handling of the characters is solid, shockingly solid for someone who I do not believe has much (if any) writing experience. This applies to his writing contributions to issues #8-9 too.

  His work is not as layered or as nuanced as Conway’s but it’s still good, still cuts to the heart of this series (family) and still delivers on the emotion when needed.*

This arc as a whole provides a decent enough wrap up to the over all subplots across the series and the 12 issues as a whole did a good job in the pacing department.

I despise decompressed storytelling but RYV up to this point has handled it really well. The first 4 issues were the guiltiest in this department but their style of pacing was justified. Beyond that it’s been done-in-one stories or else two parters or in this case a pseudo three parter. This keeps things nice and breezy and makes you feel like things have actually advanced quite a bit since issue #1.

Of the three issues though it must be said issue #10 was the strongest and most interesting.

I said back when I covered issues #8-9 how I appreciated that each story across the series was mixing up which characters get the focus (last arc being Peter and more noticeably MJ) and that continues here. Whilst technically Normie is the lead character of issue #10 it’s Peter and Annie who’re the Parkers getting all the focus here, and it’s adorable.

  This is something we haven’t seen before outside of that back up from issue #1 and it’s nice to call back to that (along with the fact that Peter pumps Annie full of sugar when MJ’s away). The clever part of the story is how the focus upon Peter and Annie is complimented by the Lizard and Billy’s opposition to them. This recalls Mr. And Mrs. Spider-Man #1 from 2009 but also emphasises the key point of this story: Normie’s loneliness.

The whole issue is an exploration of Normie, his attempts to live up to his father and grandfather’s toxic legacy and how that quest and their absence in his life has left him alone and unprepared. He thinks he’s grown up to cope with the challenges facing him but he is still ultimately a sad little boy who misses his family.**

In particular in this issue and the next two Normie’s problems are highlighted when contrasted to Annie. Annie expresses gratitude for having a loving family like Normie lacks, calls out Normie on the depressing state of his young life and behaves (comparatively) more like a real child of around their age.

But it is also Peter’s treatment of him with small sympathy that highlight’s Normie’s childishness and pitiful emotional state. We see his anger is born less from a desire to honour his legacy, or even plain old revenge but more a childish anger about just not having his parents (specifically his Dad around). And Stegman and Stockman just sell it!

You see the shades of Norman and Harry’s vendetta cropping up in him but just from a different angle. This permeates through the arc actually and both directly and more subtly recalls DeMatteis and Buscema’s Harry Osborn arc from the early 1990s.

It’s not just fun or coincidental references either it taps into the idea of how family legacies can be toxic which is contrasted nicely with the family dynamic of the Parkers.

This comparison and contrast between the Osborns and Parkers deepens in issues #11-12.

The most obvious example to bust out is the one already drawn (but done better here imo) from the Venom arc. That of MJ and Liz Allan both being mothers who will go to extremes for the sake of their children, with their confrontation in this arc being pretty juicy.

But we also see it in Peter’s protectiveness over Annie too. In another potentially genius call back to Spec #190 by DeMatteis and Buscema (and possibly RYV vol 1 #2), a rage fuelled Peter beats the crap out of the Rhino due to him threatening his family. This is both a realistic reaction for a parent to have and also very true to Peter’s established character in both RYV and the 616 universe, and something not displayed much in RYV vol 2.

In a way this arc marries (if you pardon the pun) the kind of extremes Peter was shown to have regarding Annie from vol 1 with those MJ had been given in vol 2 as the story shows both becoming aggressive in pursuit of rescuing Annie.

In having Peter hunt down Annie, Annie confront and attempt to redeem Normie and MJ get to the bottom of her Venom situation with Liz, issue #11 does a great job of closing out the over arching story of volume 2 by having the Parkers all equally be the focus. Issue #12 kinda does the same thing by involving the X-Men and similarly the use of a Regent power draining mech helps tie-back into the original RYV.

Issue #12 in regards to balancing out the family has a few more mixed results, but it depends what you want out the conclusion.

The story again provides us with a nice change up in the dynamics as it’s more Annie and Normie’s story than it is Peter and/or MJ’s. So it’s something different, but for a wrap up arc maybe having the Parkers fight all together was more thematically appropriate.

It certainly isn’t poorly done though. Annie comes into her own, Normie is believably redeemed and the story has a great message about how words can sometimes win out over fists.

There is also a great twist (kind of) in having the background character Ms. January wind up as the main villain, allowing for Normie to be redeemed and allowing him to break the Osborn Curse of which the arc is named after. It also ties back into the theme of family as Ms. January’s actions stem from a kind of motherly instinct towards Normie.

The action is pretty decent as are the stakes.

Giant robot = Bad.

Giant robot vs a powerless Spider-Man and Mary Jane = Very bad

Giant robot vs a powerless Spidey and MJ whilst it also has the powers of four of the X-Men = How ARE they gonna get out of this one?

Speaking of the X-Men, the arc handles them in a way I appreciated. Not only does their presence recall RYV #1 but it also ups the stakes whilst not allowing them to take away any of the spotlight from the Parkers.

Specifically Annie who comes into her own as I said and this then leads into a pretty organic transition into the new 8 years later status quo.

So...all great right?

Well...not exactly.

Let’s put aside how the Goblin mech having the X-Men’s powers was somewhat underutilized. Let’s put aside even how as I said it maybe should’ve been better if all three of the Parkers were involved in bringing down the threat.

Let’s instead talk about the three big elephants in the room.

Elephant #1: Venom

When I finished RYV #9 even though MJ was still wearing the symbiote I presumed that she’d beaten it and was going to get rid of it. Seemed like the obvious and natural ending to that arc right?

Right...except that didn’t happen.

I was truly surprised when I saw MJ in the suit during this arc. It got me thinking her absence and trip to the hospital in the prior issue made more sense.

But narratively it served little purpose here. It gave MJ something to do in issue #11 I guess but equally MJ could’ve gone to confront Liz without the symbiote simply to learn why  Liz had done what she did.***

So why did MJ keep the costume? My suspicion it was purely to justify her still wearing it in Venom-Verse and thus milk MJ in the suit more given how the marketing department (or whoever) were the people who pushed that onto the series in the first place.

It wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for the fact that it’s disposed of so cheaply and easily in issue #12 and you have to No. Prize why she couldn’t have gotten rid of the suit earlier.

The Fantastic Four were mentioned in issue #10 and since they were the guys who got Peter and the symbiote separated in the first place you’d think this wouldn’t be a problem. The ONLY explanation I can dream up (and this isn’t present in the story mind you) is that the symbiote was altered somehow by Liz to be resistant to fire and sonics, hence why in issue #9 MJ punches a flamethrower or something with no problem.

Elephant #2: Ms. January.

Conceptually a background character turning out to be a villain in a twist is great. Problem is we never learn why.

At first it seems like Ms. January just cares for Normie that much but not only is this an offhand motivation in the first place but more poignantly Harry (not Normie) is brought up more than once by Ms. January in issues #11-12.

So it has something to do with him but we never learn what exactly.

She just switches on everyone, goes nuts and it’s because of Harry.

????????

I think this is an example of Stegman being an artist more than a writer tripping up, it may well have been Conway’s original plan for Ms. January to be the final boss but he hadn’t fleshed that part out and Stegman just plugged it in.

Elephant #3: This arc takes waaaaaay too much stuff from Spider-Girl.

I love Spider-Girl. She is my second favourite Spider character behind Peter himself. Her series was a triumph and an underrated all time classic.

And one of the key parts of that series was Normie Osborn being a sad lonely young man self-destructively trying to live up to his father and grandfather’s legacy as a Goblin, and avenge what he perceived as his father’s death due to Spider-Man. The subplot wraps up in Spider-Girl #27, my favourite issue of the series, in which Spider-Man’s daughter is captured and at the mercy of Normie, calls him out on his BS, expresses sympathy for him and with kindness talks him into changing his ways, finding redemption and becoming an ally to her.

Sound familiar?

Here is the thing, putting aside how Spider-Girl did it better, there is nothing wrong with repeating the same ideas to an extent.

But it is the fact that they repeat the redemption part and the manner in which it happens that is the problem. No Normie isn’t borderline suicidal in this story but he’s still on a path to destruction and still has Annie at his mercy and she still is the one who redeems him.

It would’ve been a better take had it actually been Peter who talked him down.

The comparisons to Spider-Girl are not helped by many fans feeling RYV and Annie supplanted Mayday in certain respects and more poignantly that from here on in the series would be borrowing waaaaaaay too many elements from Spider-Girl, starting with the epilogue to this issue where Annie becomes a teenager.

So...in a lot of ways this arc had the weakest writing of RYV up to this point, but I think it’s strengths in spite of it’s weaknesses combine to render it stronger than the X-Men arc and thus only the second weakest arc of the series thus far. In particular I have to commend them for making so much of it work as they did in spite of Conway leaving.

I doubt I’d be complaining this much had I read these at the time of their release though simply because back then these would’ve still been infinitely better Spider-Man than Slott’s clownshow.

Were I to give issue #10 it’s own grade it’d be an A-.

But the 3 issues collectively get a B-.

  Good, worth a read but very flawed nevertheless. 

  *Which is very damning when you consider Stegman, an artist, was a better Spider-Man writer in 3-5 issues than Slott was across 10 years.

  **Also the story explains why Normie seems more intelligent than he should be, it’s because of the Goblin formula which helps resolve what otherwise would’ve been something of a contrivence.

  ***Speaking of which how did Liz know Spinneret would’ve taken her bait about the symbiote? Not saying there is NO explanation but we don’t really get one ever.

  P.S. How the Hell can this random orb contain Peter’s powers? His powers stem from being altered on a genetic level!

[ladysmaragdina]

other Shadow of the Tomb Raider thoughts:

- whoever decided that a little old indigenous lady who lives in Totally Not El Dorado should sell advanced modern climbing equipment has some explaining to do. Like, I can’t even use GUNS here. GODDAMN.

- whoever decided that the obvious, subtle name for a restaurant IN MEXICO was ‘la casa mexicana’ HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO.

- The first outfit you get in this game is made of jaguar hide. I’m never, ever letting Lara take it off (except when I have to for Plot Reasons), because the game shows her making this outfit out of a jaguar she killed just a few hours beforehand. I’m pretty sure the pelt hasn’t been CLEANED, much less cured or anything. Lara must smell fucking rank, and this is hilarious to me.

- the story is pretty... I mean, it works. Mostly! Mostly?

- There was a moment when I hit the Main Hub where about six pages of the script fell out and got swept off with the trash, but... okay. I can live with that? It was deeply weird. One minute you’re trying to find a temple, and the next minute there are people! Not just people, but rebels! And cultists! And a succession crisis? I gotta wear blue to indicate that I’m on the side of the rebels? Who are rebelling... against... wait, but you said they’re all off in the jungle, but everyone is HERE, and the “rebels” are IN POWER, or... are they? They’re just coexisting totally peacefully in the streets but also in deathly danger of being kidnapped and murderdeathed at any time? And... Who the fuck are ANY of these people? Is anyone gonna explain what those weird not-zombies are? Anybody? Is anyone going to explain why THESE guys think human sacrifice is cool but THESE guys think human sacrifice is cool in some never-defined DIFFERENT way and you know what, that’s fine, I’ll just go crawl through this pit of human sacrifice victims for SOME REASON and.... ah, there’s the plot. I think. I’ve missed you. (Apart from that, the story is decently solid, by which I mean that it clips along as a fast enough pace that the route from A to B to C makes good urgent sense. But I still don’t know who the FUCK these people actually are)

- Lara can apparently pass as an indigenous person by putting on the appropriate dress, and everyone in Totally Not El Dorado has a) never heard of the outside world and b) effortlessly code-switches between Quechua and English. I’m not even going to try to unpack that one. 

- (I am aware that Totally Not El Dorado has an actual name that actually comes from real life, but a) spoilers and b) I don’t think the game cares)

- “It must have taken hundreds of sacrifices to fill that pit with blood,” says Lara re: a pit that was once filled with a heck of a lot of blood. This pit is about the size of a  large hot tub, which means it would take somewhere in the vicinity of 300-400 people; Lara is right, and I hate - hate - that I know this.

- “They didn’t enter,” says Lara in a tone of utter shock and confusion re: the spooky not-zombies, as she walks into the heart of the temple where the Macguffin That Was Forged In Paradise And Can Save Or Doom The World is kept. Lara, an archaeologist, has apparently never heard the word ‘sacred’ in her life. (To its great credit, the game seems to be trying to say that Lara is wrongheaded about this! But the game has also never been able to stick with a solid thematic character choice for Lara for more than... twenty minutes? It had a FANTASTIC choice in the prologue that it has done LITERALLY NOTHING WITH SINCE)

- there is a random parasitic worm in someone’s arm. It is at least a foot long and as thick as my thumb, has an entire extended cutscene devoted to it, is incredibly disgusting and probably triggering to someone, and is (so far) pointless and never mentioned again.

- someone on the level design team has a Thing for underwater sequences. I’m not a fan.

- I’d be much more of a fan if I could get the swan dive mechanic to work consistently, because when the story objective is ‘dive into the cenote’ it’s REAL gauche to cannonball instead... which feels pretty thematically appropriate, honestly.

- ...I feel like the big problem I’m having with this game is that it’s setting up these INCREDIBLY obvious theme touchstones and then not cashing in on them. Lara is destructive! Lara is impulsive and bullheaded! Lara is selfish! Lara doesn’t think about the implications of her actions! Lara is a terrible archaeologist and needs training on cultural sensitivity! Lara doesn’t connect history to actual people! These are all GREAT fucking things to set up, but... like... are we going anywhere with this? Ever? (Naaah, screw cultural sensitivity, we’re just gonna milk indigenous body modification for all the dehumanized horror tropes we can!) The game seems afraid to go anywhere with these really heavy themes and seems to be setting up a hard pivot to a trite “the future is more important than the past” moral, which is SORTA connected to the “Lara is a shitfuck archaeologist” thing they’ve got going on, but... it feels like a cop out. It feels like an excuse to keep them from needing to unpack all the vague racism the game has going for it. Shadow of the Tomb Raider wants to have its cake and eat it too, it wants to say ‘tomb raiding is bad’ and also ‘look at how much fucking fun tomb raiding is,’ and has no idea how to balance that.

- I could be wrong! PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG, GAME. I AM GLAD THAT YOU ARE TRYING. TRY HARDER. I REALLY WANT ‘SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER’ TO THEMATICALLY COMMIT TO BEING ‘SHADOW OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM’ AND MAYBE EVEN MAKE ME FEEL BAD THE WAY SPEC OPS: THE LINE DOES. PLEASE LET LARA LEARN A LESSON THAT ISN’T ABOUT HER FATHER.

- I think the BIG PROBLEM with the Tomb Raider Reboot Franchise is that after the original 2013 game, Lara’s “survivor” arc was finished, and they have no. fucking. clue. what to do with her character. 

- in other, lighter news: there are way fewer bears guarding the tombs this time. And by fewer, I mean none. I’m actually playing a Tomb Raider game instead of a Rise of Leo DiCaprio simulator like last time. There are way more tombs. There is way more emphasis on tombs and parkour. The tombs are no longer beefgated by ridiculously undying bears. All is well.

- I am GENUINELY enjoying the game, despite all the weird pivots on theme and whatever the FUCK the person who "implemented” Immersion Mode was smoking; I’m having a great time, as long as I can turn off my brain a little bit. The gameplay balance is a hell of a lot better than Rise of the Tomb Raider. Shadow of the Tomb Raider probably isn’t as good a game as Tomb Raider (2013), but I don’t think it ever could have been, because that game has a solid narrative arc and this one just kinda throws darts at things and doesn’t look to see if they stick.

- speaking of which, I’m still waiting for a ‘darts shooting out of the skulls in the walls’ trap like in Indiana Jones

- please give this to me

- I know we have ‘spikes springing out of the walls’ but that is not remotely the same

- please

- there are so many skulls embedded in the walls everywhere

- please have some of them try to kill me

- it would be so cool

[theinquisitivej]

‘Justice League’ - A Movie Review

Sigh… well, I’m glad we still have ‘Wonder Woman’.

‘Justice League’ is a dull, unappealing mess. And yet I can't muster up enough energy to get angry or upset over it like I did with 'Batman V. Superman'. It's certainly not as big a disaster, but it's a lot less interesting for that same reason.

          None of the action feels as impressive or as imaginatively put together as it should be. One exception to this is a sequence where Amazon Warriors work in tandem together in a way that’s both visually entertaining, and thematically in keeping with how they’ve been presented in the past. Speaking of which, Wonder Woman is undoubtedly still the star of the DCEU, with Gal Gadot clearly having found her feet between ‘BvS’ and this. As shaky as the rest of the cast can be, Gadot makes sure that there’s at least one person in the film who fits the mould of a superhero, much like how you could depend on Hugh Jackman delivering a solid performance as Wolverine in even the worst of X-Men movies. Diana’s presence is a very welcome reminder of ‘Wonder Woman’, as well as all the good the DCEU might still be able to do with the right approach. Though it is irksome that some of the lines explaining how the character went from ‘Wonder Woman’ to here mess with the journey and impact that story should have had on her. Here’s hoping Patty Jenkins stays the course and keeps doing her thing, because it’s the only thing that’s working for DC right now.

          The visuals have tidied up a bit since ‘BvS’, but it still all feels wrong. The colour palette is a murky mess that never uses contrast to make for sequences where we can tell what’s going on, or, if we can, there’s nothing striking about it to make it memorable. When paired with an abundance of weak CGI that never looks right on anything (let alone Cavill’s removed moustache), which is used to construct busy images filled with overdesigned nonsense, what results is a drab superhero film with no splendour to its visuals. It’s trying to be a grand time, but it doesn’t show any of the artistry required to put on a decent fireworks show.

          The opening is downbeat as all hell, but I’ll admit that seeing this world without Superman, without light, hope, or compassion, and then realising how much this echoes the reality of 2017 made this an emotional opening for me. But it also highlights exactly why this version of the DC universe hasn’t worked up to this point. I don’t buy that the world presented in ‘Man of Steel’, ‘BvS’, or ‘Suicide Squad’ would miss Superman or be affected by it this much. Superman should be a cornerstone of this world, an extreme example of ultimate brightness, against which all other characters are evaluated. But Cavill’s Superman has not been that. I don’t buy him as an embodiment of all that is good. His Superman, either intentionally or inadvertently, has been presented as largely indifferent to the people of his planet. Most human characters apart from his immediate friends and family treat Superman with fear and suspicion. So how can I believe that this world would care when he’s gone as much as they are shown to at the start of this movie?

          The cast all dress and look like the heroes they’re meant to be, but, except for Gadot, no one is developed enough to sell us on the idea that they really are their character. Affleck’s Batman displays a variety of characteristics that never link up together to convince us that he, or anyone on the writing or editing team even remembers what their take on the character was supposed to be. Jason Mamoa looks the part as Aquaman, but he doesn’t have any decent material to go with the look. He has very little time spent on his development, so we know scarcely anything about who he is. I often forgot that Aquaman, the king of the ocean who can command armies of fish, a character who should be larger than life, was even in this movie. Cyborg’s visual design looks less streamlined than I would have preferred, but I did like Ray Fisher as Cyborg. His solemn reflectiveness towards his fate didn’t make me feel like they had wasted the character, especially as it was balanced with a few humorous exchanges between him and the other heroes. I honestly would like to see him in a solo Cyborg movie. Ezra Miller was occasionally grating, but his light relief as the Flash was welcome, because otherwise no one would be bringing any levity to the show. There are good and bad things about each of the main cast, but my biggest frustration is that none of the new heroes get enough time to firmly cement their character. What we really need, just like everyone’s been saying since the beginning, is for each character to have their own film so we can set down who they are, and why we should care.

          Because, unfortunately, the central conflict makes it so difficult to care about this movie or its story. I won’t name the villain in case people want to go in as blind as possible, but he is atrocious. I know we complain about the likes of Malekith and Yellow Jacket in Marvel, but this is the absolute worst example of a lazy, boring villain that has ever been put into a superhero movie, or any movie really! His visual design is uninteresting and generic, his dialogue goes on and on about the sodding MacGuffins of the movie, and the facial animation is stiffly limited to an inexpressive range of face and mouth movements that drain any chance of taking this shoddy digital construction as anything resembling a character, human or otherwise. He has one more level of personality than Doomsday had in ‘BvS’, but that is nowhere near good enough when this character is the threat upon which the entire Justice League is being founded! With no well-defined heroes, and no charismatic antagonist to make the team overcoming him feel like a momentous occasion, the story for ‘Justice League’, what should be the foundational moment around which your entire fictional universe is developed, is a non-entity. This film tries to be momentous, but it instead feels pointless.

          I don’t like writing harsh words about ‘Justice League’. First and foremost, the messy production was a result of Zack Snyder making what was absolutely the right decision and walking away from something that wasn’t doing him any good during a tragic time for his family. Losing a child is an unbearable thought, and I can only hope that the Snyder family has every chance to heal with time. My opinion on the final product of this film is not an attack on Zack Snyder or his character, and I sincerely hope that we see more from him, when he’s ready. Secondly, I really do love these characters, and I want more people to grow fond of them in the same way people have taken Wonder Woman to heart after her film resonated with audiences. So it hurts to say that something I hoped would be good turned out to be a disappointing mess. But I do have hope, and things can always change. With enough time to think things over, and the right group of creative people with specific visions, I think the DC films have the chance to put together something wonderful.

3/10.

An inevitable messy pileup after the cataclysmic car crash that was ‘Batman V. Superman’. Better than its predecessor, but its positive elements make it less morbidly fascinating. But, as I feel is appropriate for a series containing some of the greatest superheroes ever written, I have hope for the future.