silver-screen-simulacrum

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[cranity]

the most realest not human guys you could imagine

[silver-screen-simulacrum]

Sometimes I just randomly think about Angel from X-Men: Apocalypse. Is he Warren or not? He's never referred to as such, and the timeline doesn't line up with Warren Worthington from X-Men: Last Stand. The punk rock vibe and the claws at the tips of his wings are obvious additions to make him edgier and more interesting, but I don't dislike it. I just wish they did more with him, at least this version of him, instead of killing him off. With the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and the slow casting of more X-Men for the MCU, I can't help but wonder what direction they'll go with for Angel, as he's never been prominent in the Fox films.

Also, having Angel be a part of an underground mutant fighting ring where they have to kill each other to survive is so random and wild and dark, that I wish it was expanded on a little more in the film. Perhaps this version of Angel was Warren. Maybe he was kidnapped and put in this situation, but due to being stuck in survival mode for so long, this is what he turned into.

[brianna-joy-art]

💫🐕🦸‍♀️🚀

[ggarbagee]

what ails you white boy

[echosrobotarm]

Maul watched sunsets on Coruscant. Maul addresses women as “Lady” because he’s respectful (to women, and tbh that’s all I care about). Maul names his training droids. Maul spared a fallen Jedi who’d been tortured to the point of madness because he was impressed with how she fought against a syrox. Maul thought the castle in Theed was somewhere he could see himself ruling from. Maul was impressed by Qui-Gon’s fighting abilities. Maul misremembers his brother’s death. Maul returns Jesse to Ahsoka and Rex as a show of good faith, telling him to go back to his brothers. Maul created a memory where his own brother begged him not to go with Sidious because he wants to believe someone would miss him, wants to believe someone would try to stop him from leaving in the first place. Maul has nightmares about Kenobi. Maul swears not to allow what happened to himself at Sidious’ hands happen to anyone else, even though he doesn’t know how to meaningfully break that cycle. Maul drinks cassius tea because it’s what he is given by Pre Viszla, who tells him it brings good health, and enjoys it enough to keep drinking it long after Viszla’s death, offering it to Devon, a child of O66, as a show of peace. Maul sees himself and Savage in Scorn and Icarus, and is reminded of Savage’s death when Scorn dies. Maul made a friend at Orsis and she died at his hand with a smile on her face. Maul believed Sidious’ abuse made him stronger. Maul is desperate for an apprentice. Maul died in the arms of a man he loathed to the point that it fueled his survival in a trash heap for a decade. Maul spent a life experiencing nothing but violence, and he was last touched with kindness. Maul never got to see a galaxy without Darth Sidious.

[smilesbag]

if you zoom in on ned then spider-man brand new day is literally like what if you felt your heart reaching out for another person so fondly and fiercely that you build an app that connects millions of people just so you can know where he's been and you want to find out who he is behind his many masks just so you can say thank you (and be safe and i love you) and you have a secret handshake in the well of your memory and a lego figurine on your desk and there's another aspect of those memories that your mind can't really hold onto but you keep trying to build a life around those empty spaces and then one day you're eating a sandwich and a man tells you his name and oh.... how could you ever have forgotten your best friend?

[errorbasket]

Molting Spider

[dual-sabers-art]

I'm not sure if this is a hot take, but I’ve always wondered whether Savage was actually Maul’s brother, or if their relationship was simply a false memory created through Nightsister magic.

I say this because of how drastically Savage's personality changed the moment he was altered by the Nightsisters and mercilessly killed Feral, his actual brother, for being “weak”, yet had compassion for Maul even in his deranged state.

It’s also never made sense to me that neither of them ever mention anything from the past such as Maul being taken away when they were children nor them just reflecting on their childhoods in general (I know that Maul actually reflects on this in episode 8 of Shadow Lord but Sam hinted at the idea that Maul is an unreliable narrator and is only viewing a version of the past he WANTS to see because he wants to believe he had someone who actually cared for him as a person rather than a tool to be used or it simply could be a remnant of a false memory that was made by the Nightsister Magic)

Another point is that Maul only calls Savage “brother” after he’s had his mind “fixed” by Talzin, it just makes me think that they both had their memories altered in order for them to work more efficiently together to ultimately serve Talzin’s goals which is why Maul was even resurrected in the first place.

At the very least, I’d assume Maul and Savage are half siblings, sharing the same father but a different mother, which would explain why Talzin doesn’t care for Feral being used as a kill test for Savage (Though she’s not winning mother of the year anyway for leaving Maul to rot on a trash planet for 12 years. I’m positive that someone with powers as strong as hers knew her son was alive but simply refused to go get him)

Another theory I have is that the Nightsister Magic altered Savage's mind to see Maul as Feral and Feral as just a stranger.

As much as I love Maul's arc in TCW, so much about Savage, Feral and the Nightbrothers remains unexplained. Maul's bond with Savage always felt deliberately constructed rather than something natural. If that were true, it would make his character even more tragic. His own mother fabricating memories of a brother to manipulate him, when in reality he had no one.🥲

Hopefully this all made some sense, I'm super tired right now and felt the need to type this out :,D

[zenniaphoenix]

Losing my mind about how Jor-El wanted his son to take a harem of wives and repopulate the Kryptonian species, which was the exact same motivation that the movie gave Kara’s villain. Like, Jor-El didn’t specify that they should or shouldn’t be child brides, but he did say that Clark should take anything that he needed or wanted by force if necessary. They sent him to a place where he would have access to all of the power he needed to force a planet to its knees. Clark’s parents wanted their son to be like Krem. What a thing to wish for a baby.

[biblioflyer]

On Subjective Humor and Space Barbarians

or: Am I out of touch? Or is it the children James Gunn who is wrong?

The biggest problem I have with Supergirl is that I don't understand what kind of superhero movie I am supposed to view it as. Were the expectations set by Superman fair and the humor just didn't work on me? Is it actually something that really is intended to be more introspective and moody like the Snyderverse films?

It does bug me a bit when I can't figure out what the right lens is to view a film through because I genuinely want to be generous. I don't want to be the person who just completely doesn't understand the intentions and themes of a film that isn't trying to be opaque and subjective - and I don't think Supergirl was trying to be on the same level as Ridley Scott's Prometheus when it comes to finding signal amidst the noise, Supergirl is fairly loud about its themes....it just seems to do nothing whatsoever to actually validate those themes. Which may be a problem that I overlooked in the much glossier, and jokey Superman.

Spoilers ahead

Was this meant to read as an action comedy or am I just a snob?

I did not find Supergirl to be a silly or frivolous film. Subjectively, it felt like there were far, far fewer jokes overall compared to Superman and I only remember one or two that really landed with me. Maybe there was more there there and its just not my brand of humor, but it was infinitely less slapstick than Superman, aside from Kara's drunken brawl. I sort of get the impression that Lobo was meant to provide more comic relief, but if so he didn't exactly have me in stitches. If this was an intentional choice instead of me just not getting it, then that is itself an interesting contrast with Superman that does in some ways add more contrast to Kara and Clark and their outlooks.

So I do understand the framing here that Kara is a mess and while aspects of her messiness may be funny, this is ultimately a person who is dealing with a lot of very serious baggage. Same with her newly orphaned sidekick on a revenge quest. In a lot of ways, a lot of goofy antics would undermine the gravitas of this being a space fantasy redemption and vengeance story: that is, after all, among the common complaints of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or Taika Waititi's Thor films. Yet all of this somberness is undermined by the most aggravating trope this film deploys:

Space Barbarians

This is incredibly, incredibly subjective but I'm so over this trope. Brutish body modification enthusiasts who are barely more eloquent than the Reavers of Firefly and sometimes, maybe, sort of follow some kind of internally consistent code of honor but only when it suits them. Krem and his gang are offhandedly referred to as having a "male only society" and, fine, whatever, they're hardly the first group like this in sci-fi, fantasy, comics, or mythology - hell the Romans celebrated the mass kidnapping of women from neighboring areas after their (semi-mythological) founding by runaway slaves, exiles, and other people of predominantly "lower" social status led to a major gender imbalance.

There's at least a way to tell this story where the Romans are scrappy underdogs who turn to wretched villainy to ensure the long term survival of their society. Krem's Ravagers...wait that was Guardians of the Galaxy....Krem's Reavers...nope that was Firefly...Krem's Venari Ral...nope that's Starfleet Academy...hang on I'll get this right....Krem's Beltalodas nope, that's the Expanse.....okay its...wait for it....The Brigands!

The Brigands.

A completely legally distinct group from Marvel's Ravagers or any of the aforementioned groups.

Disney in The Mandalorian and Skeleton Crew at least played cutesy with it and had its Space Pirates be evocative of cheesy pirates. The Expanse tries to make its pirates sophisticated and allegorical by having the Outer Planets Alliance be an exploited underclass cobbling together their forces with salvage and use savage tactics because they themselves are the victims of generations of dehumanization by Earth and Mars.

The Brigands fly spaceships but pee in buckets.

I know that this film seems to be trying to lean into the idea that this is a film capturing a much darker and more gritty side of DC...in a bio humor sense, even demonstrating that Kryptonians do in fact pee, but there's establishing our heroine has gone kind of feral and antisocial and then there's a space pirate on a space ship peeing into a bucket. A film that can't decide if its Guardians of the Galaxy or John Wick feels like an alarmingly unserious platform to vaguely gesture towards Boko Haram.

The Brigands are designed to be offputting and entirely unsympathetic so that its completely fine when a few of them die as collateral damage when they fail to kill Kara and co. and Lobo gleefully kills them by the truckload. In this I'm reminded of a discussion on the lives of henchmen in media that I thought went something along the lines of "Whose deaths matter?" but I cannot now relocate the essay, book or YouTube video I lifted this concept from (I believe it name checked John Scalzi's "Red Shirts.)

Krem is likewise created in such a way as to duplicate the Problem of Evil in superhero media. IE the infamous thought experiment used to dunk on deontological morality by demonstrating that every time Batman has an opportunity to kill the Joker and refuses to, he is passively refusing to prevent the Joker from killing more people - which he almost certainly will do. Therefore in a consequentialist paradigm, the responsibility for the Joker's future murders are shared, at least in part, by Batman as his enabler.

Intriguingly, Kara's arguments against Ruthye killing Krem are very similar to that of Batman: vengeance won't offer peace, murder will change who you are for the worse. Kara demonstrating that she does believe in a version of Clark's morality but then acting as a kind of sin eater for Ruthye could have been an interesting twist ending if not for Kara executing Krem seeming to be entirely inconsequential. If you grasp enough straws, you could perhaps argue that this is the moment where Kara decides she does in fact need connection and more specifically Clark's idealism specifically because she just killed a man and is seemingly totally fine with it.

But I think that is straw grasping.

I think two things are true with no real relationship between the two: Kara executed Krem and didn't express any real shame or regret in doing it AND THEN decided it was time to stop self medicating and get on with things, with the adventure she just undertook probably having had more to do with getting her off the fence than any issues with having killed someone.

I'm not saying that in empirical reality, she should feel bad - I leave that to you and your conscience, but in the reality of this film we are led to believe that Kara at least thinks she should say that killing Krem would be bad for Ruthye. The implication being that she either knows this from prior experience or believes this to be true for other reasons, and then kills Krem anyway - not even bothering to rationalize it: whether through there being no viable way to contain Krem and/or little hope for his rehabilitation.

Unlike the Joker, Krem definitely won't be killing for fun in the future and that should be enough for this audience member. Yet again the lack of any real introspection on this choice to reconcile it with Kara's preaching at Ruthye feels like a giant oversight if its not a deliberate choice to throw a twist in at the end as a sort of "surprise! Kara was wrong, killing for the right reasons is fine, she should have killed Krem much earlier and if she had that Space African family would still be alive. Lobo was the hero we actually needed and wanted."

Maybe I'm going to fully into the Dweeb Side as the world seems to shed any pretense of continuing to revere Enlightenment values, but it felt weird and bad even though this was fully constructed in such a way, plot wise, that Kara has no other choice from a consequentialist lens but to kill a disarmed man at her mercy in order to prevent him from future mass murder.

But then that's probably because I never sat and really thought about the implications of Superman all that closely because it was so successful at covering up anything that might make me uncomfortable with a well timed, well executed joke: something I'll be reconsidering in a post coming to a wall near you in the near future.

[alisa-aydin]

got commissioned to draw the cuties 🥹

[spidey-webs]

There seem to be a lot of people who don’t understand why Lobo was in the movie, so I’m just gonna say it: Lobo is who Kara is at risk of becoming.

Kara is at a crossroads, and one road leads towards Clark and one leads to Lobo. Or rather, one path leads to embracing the responsibility of the life and powers her parents gave her, and the other is continuing to drink her life away, not caring about anything or anyone but her and hers.

Lobo is immensely powerful, and the last of his planet. Just like Kara. And when we meet him, he’s passed out drunk in a bar, oblivious and uncaring of violence and exploitation around him. Just like Kara was trying to be when she first met Ruthye.

Lobo is Kara’s future if she gives up on trying to be good. Drunkenly stumbling through the galaxy not helping anyone or anything and only caring about herself. Maybe not mindlessly cruel, but not kind or good or caring of the pain of the people around her.

It’s why they both get Ruthye’s spiel, it’s why Lobo’s whole introduction mirrors what Kara was just doing demanding to know about the Brigands, it’s why they’re both “the ditz from the bar”, it’s why they both have the gag with the space suit collar.

It’s why Lobo crops up each time Ruthye and Kara are faced with choices, sometimes acting as a devil on their shoulders, sometimes just a big lurking ominous warning of their bleak future if they make the wrong choices. It’s why Lobo says “let Ruthye have her revenge”, uncaring of how the violence might haunt Ruthye for the rest of her life. He’s a big constant reminder why Kara cannot let this thirteen year old girl be consumed by violence, and of who her parents didn’t want her to be.

Lobo is Kara’s foil and shadow.

I don’t think the movie always executed this well, it could have been done better, but I don’t think it was subtle either. The parallels between Kara and Lobo are right there in every scene and always highlight the choices Kara makes to be kind, and I do wish people would take the time to actually think about them before writing Lobo’s presence off.

[pedro-reed]

En Sabah Nur | X-Men '97 2x03 "Rise of Apocalypse: Part 1"

[niftybiscuit]

uhhmmm baby maul? :3

[ivoselle]

(feminist) thoughts on kara and ruthye's back-and-forth on the 'ruination' of spirits, souls, and hearts. ruthye and kara are resting in a room, and unbeknownst to them, the couple downstairs is ready to trade them to traffickers (two girls for one). kara shares her past, telling ruthye that clark, he's not 'like them'--- he's not ruined, not broken or tainted like she is, like how ruthye is. and ruthye's reaction to that is visible; she comes from a place of safety, only recently torn away from her by traffickers that exploit girls and women. she is new to this notion of taintedness, of brokenness. it's hard not to frame that as a metaphor for virginity, in some way: clark is hopeful, he is safe, he is a man. kara and ruthye have both been torn away from something, and with that, something has been torn from them, as young girls.

i love how this theme recurs throughout the film, with ruthye begging kara to let her kill krem: "i'm ruined anyways". and in that moment, kara realises what she's, unknowingly, dropped onto ruthye; the thought that ruthye, in having something (her family, in this case) torn from her without her consent, is forever adulterated, tarnished. the way that when women are sexually assaulted, they are adulterated by society. so kara is quick to fight that, realizing the weight of her words. i think the power in this sort of feminist narrative is kara's understanding that she is unintentionally treating ruthye as she treated herself, and finally seeing the flaws in those self-destructive modes of thought. similar to how all women must unlearn misogyny in order to love ourselves.

in the end, the two of them are not ruined. their bodies have seen pain and violence, and they themselves have enacted pain and violence, but that doesn't mean that either of them are sullied or irredeemable, or have some kind of permanent darkness within them. neither are women who have been assaulted or trafficked. supergirl 2026 discerns these concepts in a gentle but wonderfully nuanced way, and i absolutely adored it.

[droiid]

Darth Maul pencil drawings, by his character creator Iain McCaig

[wondlas]

padmes queen voice being artificially lowered in post to sound like the origin for Vader's low pitch and accent is crazy it makes me crazy that he was in that suit learning how to be a person again in a medical torture device & was like i guess i will mimic my dead wife's intonation she used in her stint as child queen to legitimise myself as the emperor's freaky cyborg wizard sonwife

[wondlas]

i keep thinking about it because im reading the prequel novelisations and im still on phantom menace reading the inner thoughts of this fucking 9 year old with a sweet crush on an older girl the way many average 9 year olds do and its making me SAD because anakin's listening to her and sabe doing the Queen Voice and whether its a conscious choice or not that poor kid has like 15 years before it's back to slavery and no more im a person & my name is anakin you have to be his monster you have to wield authority you have fucked up not only your entire life but an entire religious order too and you have to learn fast how to be an entirely new creature to anything you have been before. its fucking unbearable if i think about it too long. padme hasnt even been gone that long and the small amount of free will vader has left goes to imitating the way Queen Amidala spoke because that's the first thing vader can think of when creating a new persona that sounds imposing and powerful. and then i look back at the page and its just 9 year old anakin innocently watching padme & the handmaidens doing the Queen Voice. should we all kill ourselves