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@georgettekaplan
Sure was nice of Sony to make God of War: Laufey look like every other fantasy video game, so if you accidentally buy Avowed or Immortals of Aveum instead, you can have just as much 'fun' as you would listening to your quirky sidekick Jack Quaid.
"Go to hell" is basic. "I hope your favorite character gets a great look and only wears it for twenty seconds" is smart. It's possible. It's terrifying.
I'm of two minds on Death Becomes Her
I mean, it's basically a live-action cartoon, it's that campy arch-morality of Tales From The Crypt, and its moral is about living forever. And moreover, about the arbitrary drawbacks of this one particular method of living forever.
So it's like when cape comics go on and on about legislating superheroes or mutant rights. Yeah, it's a good excuse for a bunch of fun stuff, but it's not too relevant to the real world. I don't know about you, but I'm probably not gonna need to have a firm stance on immortality in the immediate future.
So it's not too important to me that all the thematic stuff lines up because... who cares? It's all just some dumb reason for everyone to goof around.
But...
It's alllllmost your working EC Comics morality play. Ernest is rewarded for learning his lesson and conquering his demons. Maddie and Helen are punished for not overcoming their issues. Sweet and simple.
Except--well, one, Maddie and Helen patch things up and resolve their feud, which obviously they should've done at the beginning. And I suppose it's another way for them to be petty and shallow... the biggest passion in their lives is screwing each other over and they can't even really commit to that! But still, they just about learn their lesson. Shouldn't they get partial credit for that?
And then there's this:
Yeah, it's a great laugh line, I don't know if anything is worth taking it out... but it means that Maddie (and possibly Helen) are getting into this without knowing the drawbacks and Ernest does. So is he really more moral than them or is he just better informed?
True, Maddie could've asked about drawbacks instead of rushing into eternal life... and the movie's takeaway is that immortality, even without the risk of zombification, isn't worth it, so she should've turned it down even without that catch.
But it bugs me, you know? It's one thing for Maddie and Helen to be so vain and shortsighted that they dismiss the warning that's going to screw them over. It's another for them to pretty much not get the warning because it's delivered when it's too late for them to say no.
It's just the principle of the thing, you know?
So I do kinda find it ironic that after all the insistence on the Snyderites' part that Superman should be broody and edgy and dark, they're getting a Supergirl that's broody and edgy and dark--and insisting that she should be cheery and optimistic.
But that's what's so frustrating about dealing with these guys! They're single-issue voters who don't care any about the comics, they just want Zach Snyder coming back. And they'll contradict themselves endlessly, tying themselves up in knots, just to characterize everything Snyder does as good and everything Gunn does as bad. To the point where it's hard to tell what they even like or are a fan of.
Like, I've seen Snyderites count Aquaman as part of 'the Snyderverse' to prove the public really liked Snyder's stuff because it made a billion dollars, then in the same breath say that Aquaman wasn't truly Snyder's vision and Snyder's vision would've been much better!
And the same goes for Wonder Woman! They count people liking Patty Jenkins' smiling, cheerful Wondy when it suits them, but if someone criticizes Wonder Woman, BAM--"well, you know, Snyder wanted Wonder Woman fighting in the Crimean War and carrying around severed heads!"
It's so maddeningly disingenuous and it really makes talking about DC Comics a pill because these guys are going to butt in and do their missionary work no matter what. And play the victim when they rightfully get a bad reputation over this.
It's like... if you'd stop jumping on every conversation and making it about restoring the Snyderverse, you could just have your little corner of the fandom, same as Michael Keaton has. Even Joel Schumacher has his fans! People are cool with it. They disagree, but it's cool if you like it, cool if you don't like it.
If Schumacher fans kept blasting into people having a conversation about The Batman and saying "oh, Robert Pattinson, he's no George Clooney! They can't possibly think Sebastian Stan can replace Tommy Lee Jones!" obviously that would give those movies an even worse reputation. You're just like fuck those guys, give it a rest, we all want to leave you alone to enjoy your stuff but you're not leaving us alone to enjoy what we like.
I'm sorry, it's just really unbearable that it's nigh-impossible to discuss, like, Lanterns because you always have to do a double-take to see if someone's make a valid criticism (which obviously is possible! those trailers do not look good!) or if they're just someone who is cultishly devoted to shitting on anything that Zach Snyder hasn't personally blessed.
When you know a movie would be so Good if it wasn't Bad
One of the big problems of The Mandalorian is them giving him literal unbreakable armor that makes him functionally indestructible. He can't even take battle damage the way that Robocop and Terminator can, which makes it all feel a bit pointless.
Most heroes are on their last legs by the time the climax rolls around, but Mando just looks the same as he always does. Subconsciously, you're going "well, what really happened? He hasn't taken one bit of damage or changed visually at all, so did he really go on any sort of journey?"
Here's James Bond at the end of a Bond movie. Doesn't he look like he's pushed himself to the absolute limit to accomplish his mission?
What an epic adventure Max and Furiosa went on! They barely survived!
Aaand here's the Mandalorian. He looks exactly the same as he always does. The story literally hasn't left a mark on him.
I have one of those "pay a lot to watch as many movies as you want" things at the moment, so I decided to watch The Mandalorian V. Grogu: Dawn of Gulp Shitto.
It's hilarious how first-drafty the writing is.
First scene. Mando kills an Imperial warlord he was supposed to capture for intelligence.
Mando: Damn, I was supposed to capture him, but I killed him instead.
Guy From Rebels picks him up.
Guy From Rebels: Damn, you were supposed to capture him, but you killed him!
Guy From Rebels takes him to Planet Rebel Base, where the movie expects you to be very impressed that they have a real set and real extras and one (1) Rodian.
Sigourney Weaver: Damn, you were supposed to capture him, but you killed him. Now I need you to (the thing that Mando needs to do). Go to the Hutts and they'll tell you more!
Mando goes to the Hutts.
Hutts: Mando, we need you to (the thing that Mando needs to do) and the planet you need to do this on is Planet Blade Runner. Get going!
What is this writing, bro? It's like they just took the script for an hour-long episode and padded it out enough to be a feature film. Same with the action sequences. There's a bit at the end where Mando has killed all the bad guys and the conflict is resolved, but more bad guys show up and then some X-wings show up and they have a dogfight with the bad guys! It's just pointless drudgery to drag the story out to feature length!
The Death of Robin Hood is pissing me off, man. "This isn't the story you know! This isn't the legend you've been told!"
I've literally been getting dark and gritty Robin Hood retellings my entire life. Fuck you, you're not special.
The closest thing to a lore-accurate Robin Hood in my lifetime was an episode of Star Trek, man. Don't start with me.
Media Literacy
A vague thought of how, in everyone's rush to prove that they "get it" and aren't some chud that's rooting for the Empire... we're not acting much better than AI. Reducing movies and other stories to a moral the director/author wants to send and if we can ace a test on it, that means we watched the movie right. And that's just not art to me. Not storytelling.
It's experiencing this creative vision of someone else and then having a reaction to it, even if your reaction differs from what the writer intended. If you watched Obsession and thought Bear was basically a good guy, I don't think someone else's response should be "no, you're interpreting the movie wrong."
Which isn't to go full Death of the Author, God no (I say, being an author myself). Just that the response should be "okay, why do you feel that way? What about how he acted here? Did you consider this?"
You know, a discussion, with multiple valid viewpoints, not just "You're wrong" or "you're right." Because the audience response is as important as the artwork. You wouldn't say art should only be allowed to be black and white, so why should the response to art only be allowed to be "You understood the author's message" or "no, you get a failing grade, you didn't have the proper emotional reaction."
So this is actually a surprisingly good men on a mission movie, which I'd about given up on Hollywood remembering how to make. It's just about corporate samurai instead of literal commandos.
Eiza Gonzalez is a lawyer who used Leverage fu on shady crimelord types to get them to pay back loans. Gyllenhaal and Gonzalez are mercenaries who bodyguard her from the crimelords' retaliation. Almost all of the runtime involves pressuring the bad guy in order to get him to give Gonzalez a face to face, plus the boys and their team planning an exit strategy for if and when things go haywire (planting small bombs on the corrupt police's car engines, setting up a zipline so they can cross a ravine if they need to, general A-team shit).
And I don't know, it's just very well done. Very much Ritchie in Man From UNCLE mode, just swapping out any weird cannibals and also adding in Gonzalez (who compensates for spouting reams of exposition by looking impossibly gorgeous while doing it).
If there's a drawback, it's that the pace is too fast for anyone to get much development. Cavill and Gyllenhaal's characters are the same queerbaiting good buddies as any Ritchie leads, characterized mainly by starpower--Cavill is sassy and British, Gyllenhaal is sassy and American--while their men are even less defined, which is a hindrance when they start getting killed off and you're still not quite sure which beardy guy is which (perhaps THE issue of 21st century action cinema; we need a new Ernest Borgnine. No one ever didn't know who Ernest Borgnine was).
ETA: Ritchie knows ball to cast the lesbian lovers from I Care A Lot as frenemies in this.
Got my short story finished right on the word limit.
So this is actually a surprisingly good men on a mission movie, which I'd about given up on Hollywood remembering how to make. It's just about corporate samurai instead of literal commandos.
Eiza Gonzalez is a lawyer who used Leverage fu on shady crimelord types to get them to pay back loans. Gyllenhaal and Gonzalez are mercenaries who bodyguard her from the crimelords' retaliation. Almost all of the runtime involves pressuring the bad guy in order to get him to give Gonzalez a face to face, plus the boys and their team planning an exit strategy for if and when things go haywire (planting small bombs on the corrupt police's car engines, setting up a zipline so they can cross a ravine if they need to, general A-team shit).
And I don't know, it's just very well done. Very much Ritchie in Man From UNCLE mode, just swapping out any weird cannibals and also adding in Gonzalez (who compensates for spouting reams of exposition by looking impossibly gorgeous while doing it).
If there's a drawback, it's that the pace is too fast for anyone to get much development. Cavill and Gyllenhaal's characters are the same queerbaiting good buddies as any Ritchie leads, characterized mainly by starpower--Cavill is sassy and British, Gyllenhaal is sassy and American--while their men are even less defined, which is a hindrance when they start getting killed off and you're still not quite sure which beardy guy is which (perhaps THE issue of 21st century action cinema; we need a new Ernest Borgnine. No one ever didn't know who Ernest Borgnine was).
Well, you know, it's okay.
I think everyone who's paying attention has already made the observation that they keep doing this exact same "Punisher gets revenge on EVERYONE responsible for his family's death/retires and has a mental heath crisis/comes out of retirement and swears to be the Punisher forever." And it's kinda lame, obviously. Like James Bond going rogue every movie.
So... it's good as a stuntshow that's just going to have Frank do Frank things for half an hour or so, but they've gotta have it so Frank isn't just a killing machine (debatable), so here's twenty-odd minutes of him being really sad and psychologically unwell. OKAY. But without any context or set-up to bring him to that point, it just feels like a self-indulgent thing to show off how much Jon Bernthal can emote.
Especially since in Daredevil, he seemed as well-adjusted as he ever is and anyway, it's been like ten years since his family died, so what, is he having this one particular inner conflict every six months or something? Like, in this point in his character arc, he should not be at the same place that he was immediately following his loss.
In video game terms, the cutscene was bit crap, but the actual gameplay of the Punisher killing an entire 'teen takeover' was sweet.
Speaking of, just when you thought the Punisher couldn't get any odder, politically, Marvel has it turn out that removing the fascist mayor from power and imprisoning his stormtrooper cops results in the entire city descending into lawless chaos. Like, cop cars on fire anarchy.
And of course, all street crime is committed by mostly-white gangs with one token minority in the background, and is directed at productive black members of society.
I mean, this is all a bit schizo, right? Next time, on The Punisher: "Trans rights matter! That's why I need an AR-15 with depleted uranium rounds and an underbarrel grenade launcher--to defend trans rights! Against Muslims!"
Maybe they should just go the Batman route and have him fight Italians forever.
Saw Mortal Kombat: The Second One, a movie of midness. Better than the first one in some ways, but worse in others... the first at least attempted to be a real movie, with things like dialogue and character development. Crap dialogue and character development, but at least it had ambition.
MK2 perhaps wisely just focuses on as many fight scenes as possible; the only subplot is some other characters in the sprawling heroic ensemble trying to turn off the villain's cheat codes so he can be Fatality'd.
(Speaking of mid, it's also not as good as The One With Christopher Lambert but better than The One With Dexter's Dad.)
The whole thing is a bit self-defeating. The appeal of Mortal Kombat is that, you know, it's mortal--you lose, you die. But here, not only do the heroes have the option to spare their enemies (which comes in handy when they're fighting morally conflicted antiheroes) but also it's trivially easy to bring characters back to life. Not even in good-dumb ways like turning them into Frankensteins or zombies or cyborgs, but pretty much just "poof, you're back."
This kinda takes the fun out of it for me. Even a silly movie should have at least a single note of gravitas, and it just strikes me as chickenshit by the filmmakers to not risk getting a thinkpiece headed their way by for-real killing off a fan favorite or a minority or anyone at all, really. If death doesn't actually mean anything, why kill off anyone at all? Just have them get knocked out like you're making a PG-13 Street Fighter movie.
(PG-13 Street Fighter also looks to not be as weirdly sexless as MK2, where the most romantic tension is between Kitana and her butch bodyguard/childhood friend. Which makes you wonder how the whole 'child bodyguard thing' works, agewise. Did the Emperor find someone who was an adult but didn't age or a twelve-year-old who was really good at killing people, what happened here, they look like they could've been in the same graduating class?)
It's also kinda a letdown on the villain front. The main bad guy is the Emperor, and they actually found someone who looks the part (well, you know, behind the mask) and can decently deliver a line.
But then they have it so he doesn't have any proper minions, just three separate traitors waiting to turn good guy. Even Baraka gets to be a Worf sorta guy instead of a mook, and remember, this is BARAKA we're talking about!
Shang Tsung and Quan Chi show up, but are basically just There despite being characters who could be the Big Bad of an entire movie. (And I mean, who else does the franchise have who can menace Earthrealm? Kronika? Puh-lease.) They botch Shao Kahn's face reveal and he gets defeated multiple times, needing a cheat code amulet to keep from Officially losing until the very end. Say what you will about Disney Star Wars, but at least they don't make Vader job to Cole fuckin' Young.
(Sorry to Lewis Tan for getting stuck with such a dud character, by the way. Can we, you know, resurrect him as an actual canon character like one of the robots or maybe port him over to Street Fighter? Or let's just stop giving Jared Leto parts for a while and see how Lewis Tan does. Lewis Tan Tron could be fun, couldn't it?)
P.S. At this point, I'm pretty sure the Mortal Kombat tournament operates on Calvinball rules. Anything is legal so long as you very confidently and dramatically announce that it's what you're going to do.
This show Pluribus... it really feels like Vince Gilligan wrote a script early on in his career and never sold it, but still really liked it, so now that he's got a blank check from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, he said "you know, I can just turn this movie script into TV show. I'll just make each scene into one episode with exactly one plot beat progressing the story and then a lot of setpieces reiterating how the hive mind works just because I have a blank check."
Really. I think there's a really well-paced movie that takes one scene from every episode and puts them all together and finishes up in a little under two hours. It just leaves out stuff like "Carol tests a tranquilizer on herself to see if it works" (why wouldn't it work, you took it out of a hospital?)
I liked the reboot of Nosferatu fine, they just... really skimped on scenes of him creeping around with his coffin in hand. And now we have the technology to really show how a vampire would do that. Consider:
Now here's what we can do with modern computer-generated imagery.
Potentially groundbreaking idea here: what if they made a superhero show........ for kids?