You could tell those were going to be a gongshow just from the production process. LotR had years of prepwork to make sure everything was sorted out and ready for filming, so they had a relatively smooth time filming. The Hobbit films were rushed and you could tell. PJ apparently was finalising scripts and storyboards the night before each shoot.
LOTR was bad to me, I absolutely loved those books as a kid, I even enjoyed the animated ones from forever ago, but the movies were far too long for what they showed.
When The Hobbit came out as a trilogy movie series I was a bit confused but gave it a try.
I think it's probably because I saw them a long time before the new ones, it was something I remember from childhood. The live action ones came out when I was a young adult and they skipped the better parts and embellished others in my opinion. I know the "Tom" debate is overdone, but beyond providing the ancient weapons needed to defeat the Witchking, he provides a glimpse into the lore without making it a detour that just seems out of place.
I know it's ancient history, but I still can't get over the spectacular train wreck of Star Wars Episode One. So much hype, so much hope, and then you get a two hour arcade game promo with Jar Jar Binks. It was like George Lucas had picked every single terrible trope of 90s movies and packaged it neatly into a movie.
Man, Phantom Menace being the worst Star Wars movie when it came out is like George W. Bush being the dumbest US president: those were simpler times, somehow.
I'll say the prequels aged better than I'd remembered them, though. And they get a lot better with the existing fanedits, especially HAL9000's take on Episode I, which trims a lot of the dumb humour, dials down the Jar Jar antics significantly and tightens the plot a nice bit, to make it more of a classic Star Wars adventure.
Yeah, at least the prequels had an actual story to them and were cohesive with each other. The sequels are just a jumbled mess with each director doing their own thing. I’d take the prequels over the sequels any day.
Yes! That's what actually got me into Star Wars fanedits and fanedits in general, he made the whole prequel trilogy into a unified experience. Saw one based on his editing notes and liked it, but through the years I've come to enjoy other takes from the movies, as well.
The funny thing is, having been born several years after it was released and having probably played the lego games before seeing the films, I liked it! Hell I loved it!
But if i put myself in the shoes of, well, you for instance, then I can see that it's as dissapointing as the disney sequel trilogy. And then I can see how lame some aspects are on further rewatches
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
It has really low rewatchability too. The in-universe gap between phantom menace and attack of the clones is reallly long, making it less relevant to the rest of the trilogy. And it has huge swathes of boring stuff in the middle. Politics stuff, very hard to follow.
Jar Jar doesn't bother me as a character.
I say this everytime phantom menace is mentioned, but the original plans would have had appropriately aged characters and been really fun.
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
I find this a fascinating thing to think about.
I'm the same age as the original Star Wars film and grew up on the Original Trilogy. Those three were some of the best stuff ever to my kiddie brain. The older I get, the more I feel like the OT was pretty much just as childish as the prequels when it comes down to it, just without access to 1990s cartoony CGI. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, I still enjoy the OT, but it's clear to me now as an old fart that the prequels felt more kiddie than the OT when I watched them in the theaters because I was watching the prequels for the first time with a grownup's brain.
I still enjoy the OT, they poke those childhood brain cells that have been hooked on them all this time. I can enjoy the prequels a bit, but it's mostly in the form of memes and cracked-out fan remixes. The sequel movies, though, always struck me as a goddamned mess and I still haven't figured out who they were meant to be for.
I was born the same year episode 6 came out, so I was 16 when Phantom Menace came out, and grew up loving the original trilogy. And my teenager brain enjoyed the Phantom Menace too. Yeah, Jar Jar was annoying and the CGI was jarring sometimes, especially growing up watching the practical effects they used in the originals, but I still loved it. I just really think they should have aged Anakin up in TPM though, he should have been a teenager instead of a kid because it just made the scenes with him and Padme really weird.
I’ve seen it twice. I bought tickets to two showings on opening day because after sixteen years of waiting there was finally going to be a new Star Wars movie. I had one for the very first showing in the morning and the other for that night. There hasn’t been a more exciting moment in a movie theater than when I saw the Lucasfilm logo and “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and then that blast of trumpets. And then the movie happened. After the closing credits rolled, I spent the next few hours debating on whether or not to use the second ticket. I bit the bullet and went, surrounded in the line outside by all of these hopeful, happy people. I didn’t have the heart to warn them.
Moving away from physical buttons and physical media. I don’t mind touchscreens and I do enjoy downloading, but there’s nothing more satisfying than a good click of a button and actually holding something in your hand that you purchased.
If that cast and production crew had made an original show about a dark funky future and bounty hunters and whatever, clearly inspired by Bebop but not trying to be it, they could have knocked it out of the park so hard.
They would, of course, have had to get some decent writers instead of just feeding the original anime scripts to crack-smoking monkeys and then smearing their poops onto script paper.
On a related note, I was really underwhelmed and disappointed by last year's new Shinichiro Watanabe anime series, Lazarus.
As a huge fan of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (and to a lesser extent Space Dandy) I was really looking forward to another serious anime helmed by Watanabe. What we got was, for various reasons, not the least of which being the untimely death of Bebop writer Keiko Nobumoto, really boring and subpar at best.
I struggled to finish it, and I probably wouldn't have bothered it it wasn't by a creator that I like and respect.
it was genuinely baffling how superficial and shallow the writing was, how underwhelming the direction was and how uninteresting the character designs were (I genuinely can't remember a single one). The animation and music were great but overall it basically felt like a painfully average Netflix flick rather than a Watanabe.
Perhaps controversial but I don't think animated shows should ever be translated to live action, at least where fantasy, sci-fi, and exaggerated action are pivotal to the story or art style.
I have zero hope that there will ever be any good live-action remakes of anime. I remember how everyone was excited that the Ghost in the Shell live-action was just mediocre.
Overall I liked Korra. It has two big moments though that rubbed me the wrong way.
::: spoiler spoiler
The part where they broke the Avatar cycle was a awful direction to take the show. Also making platinum the most plentiful resource was a brain dead villian arc.
:::
I was extremely excited in the beginning because the setting felt very well-constructed. Bending having contributed to rapid technological progress made a lot of sense to me, and I really like that there wasn't excessive exposition regarding the state of the world.
So much of what they did from that point just felt so corny.
::: spoiler spoiler
When Amon took her bending only for the Avatar ancestors to pull up and return it like five minutes later
Raava and Vaatu being just one-dimensionally "good" and "evil"
The fucking kaiju fight
Introducing the dictator lady, Kuvira—can't remember how to spell her name—like three episodes before the next arc, telegraphing that she was the next villain focus so hard
Kuvira then doing the trite "you saved me, but why" and just completely folding on her entire mission
:::
It was just so disappointing for me. I don't know if they got creatively restricted, or if something happened with the original writers or what. I don't regret watching it, but I just wish they had taken or had been able to take more risks.
Yeah I agree, overall the story was bad. I really enjoyed the characters and slice of life aspects of the show. I felt some of those points you bring up were big weaknesses to the overall experience. It felt like the team was targeting a younger group than before. (Or I just got older haha)
I can corroborate your last point because I watched both of these series relatively recently, and I also have little to no nostalgia associated with the subject.
I actually used to despise when ATLA came on. At that age, I could never commit to following plot-heavy shows, because I didn't really watch TV a ton (I thought I watched a lot, but I'm learning now as I talk to peers that it was not lol), and the show felt like it was on forever, eating up time on Nick. I finished it up around this time last year and ATLA is now among my favorite shows ever. I continued with TLOK shortly after, and yeah, those were my feelings.
So from my experience, I'm not gonna say it's the whole "growing out of it" thing. TLOK just is a less interesting story, the way I see it.
I hated the above Avatar movie but I loved TLoK. She is such an awesome character and has tonnes of growth and development, along with the fantastic lgbt end of the series. It was definitely a little difficult in the first few episodes but a big part of that was the transition from a rural setting to a city setting decades later, so it went from the backwater technology level to the cutting edge near a century later.
Oh god... Star Trek just got... I dont even know how to describe what had been done to it.
Basically star Trek died after ST: Enterprise
Anything after that was vapid shitty pew pew cgi flare fest sci-fi, and the Picard series ruined TNG for me for years. I used to watch ST at least a few times per week, DS9, TNG, mostly. After ST :Picard i stopped. I couldn't anymore, it was ruined for so fucking long
But there was a small ray of light, though
Watch "The Orville", it's made by Seth McFarlane after he rejected what the execs wanted for star Trek. It's basically TNG updated for the 2020s and the first two seasons are amazing and have a BOBW episode, even, and hell, even a "family" type episode after. Seriously, it looks and feels like modern TNG, has great episodes like TNG used to have. The third season kinda went the pew pew direction as well, very few very long episodes where the good writing got replaced with loads of CGI, but it's still doable.
There isn't a fourth season, yet, anyway, but Seth recently said he is finishing writing the fourth season, let's see what happens
Those first two seasons though, are star Trek magic, the Orville magic
First, The Orville is excellent and for anyone who watches Trek I always recommend The Orville. It's a little crude when it starts, but it's levels out and is really great.
Second, since you didn't mention it, Strange New Worlds is the modern Star Trek in universe show you're looking for.
SNW can be ok, but it leans pretty heavy on the action, and the moral quandary episodes are hit or miss to a high degree. I can't think of a single high concept scifi premise episode of SNW that made me say "Wow." and stuck with me. The war PTSD episode with the transporter buffer triage was very good, but more emotional and less scifi high concept. And I've already seen MASH.
Season 2, episode 2, Ad Astra per Aspera is my go to answer for best episodes that I think about. It's clearly inspired by TNGs The Measure of a Man while that episode will always be the best, the SNW episode still scratches that itch.
I've watched them all, and none of them really felt elevated for me. Ad Astra per Aspera was fine, but I didn't come away with any new interesting thoughts about anything from it.
Many trekkies said that Trek couldn't be a Saturday morning cartoon and that after TAS would never survive, there are people who said that after TNG came out star trek was dead because the captain was bald, and some people who said DS9 killed it as a space station was not exploring, then some people complained that VOY killed it because the ship had infinite torpedos and a lot of people said ENT was the franchise's death knell because touch screens, and OMG what did JJ Abrams do? After DSC came out some people said Star Trek was over because people dont cry in space, After PIC came out some people said it ruined everything that came before because space captains can't change, some people said that LDS was turning ST into Rick and Morty fan wank, a horde of people said that PRO was trying to be be Clone Wars and that it gave the franchise a terminal diagnosis, it was the consensus of many fans that SNW was shitting on the memory of Kirk and crew, a loud group of trek consumers suggested that there couldnt be female Jem'Hadar and therefore SFA caused the franchise to flatline...
Yet there is more trek in development, that will be loved by some and derided by many
*edit: Section 31 definitely murdered the franchise because Rachel Garrett something something, irish vulcan space robots?
I'm honestly so confused by (presumably) adults who consider Sonic as their favorite media franchise... Just... What?
Have you, like, tried reading books or watching movies since you've become an adult, or...?
I don't want to sound judgmental, but I kind of feel bad for people like this. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it, I guess... But you're missing out on like actual good shit lol
People who grew up with the games have a certain fondness for the series that even better written franchises cannot replicate.
What's wrong with people deciding the franchise that made them happy in their childhood should continue making them happy in their adulthood? None of this suggests they haven't tried or enjoyed better written stories.
You are very judgemental and keeps repeating the same argument I've already addressed as to why someone can have their favourite franchise be something that is not the best thing they've ever read. I think you need to expand your perspective a lot more about the world. Being so narrow-minded is even more dangerous for modern society.
Maybe it's the person who's a grown adult and still considers Sonic the Hedgehog to be their favorite media franchise is he one who needs to expand their perspective.
I want you to be honest, do you actually know what the plots of these games are like?
You could, you know, be less judgemental, especially for something simple like a favourite media franchise.
You're still refusing to acknowledge my point about why someone would consider it their favourite, and it has nothing to do with not expanding their perspective. It's you that refuses to expand your perspective beyond your own capacity to understand stuff.
Do I need to care what the plot is like? My favourite media franchise has a pretty terrible plot, as well. It's not the reason I love it. You seem unable to grasp such a simple concept.
you can enjoy all types of media at the same time. Someone who enjoys Sonic or a franchise of similar caliber doesn't ONLY enjoy Sonic and nothing else.
One cannot fit a 9 books series into 1 movie. What a just terrible idea to begin with.
Also, if you haven't read the books and want an amazing Stephen King adventure, this is your series to read!
I'm a lifelong Stephen King fan and have read just about everything else he ever released, but I could never motivate myself to get started on the Dark Tower stuff. There's just SO MUCH and I kind of dread committing to it.
(And yet somehow I reread a bunch of his stuff including the extended The Stand every couple years. I claim no rationality about it.)
As a fellow constant reader, do it. The Dark Tower series ties everything together, all his works revolve around this one in a way. It can seem daunting, but trust me, those pages can't turn fast enough as you're reading them.
I caution the series to newbie King readers for the very same reason. The series is long, and they won't understand all the references and tie-ins. You will though, and you'll enjoy it (or I hope so, I've never met a fan who doesn't like them [except for the ending, but what King book doesn't have a contentious ending?]).
I'll second this, especially if you've read and enjoyed most of his other work (his horror novels especially have a lot of interconnecting themes that pop up and converge in fun ways).
I think book 4 is the peak, quality-wise. 5 was alright.
It's been so long since I've read them, but I remember the very end of the series being great (and really, the only possible way it could have ended). However, I remember the last two books, up to that part, being kind of dumb lol
Oh god, I had blocked that dumpster fire from my memory.
I still can't get over that their shirts from the first scene were just white button-ups that they rubbed coffee grounds on. It was so obvious I spotted it in middle school
Episodes 7 through 9 of Star Wars. Yeah 7 was a retelling of the same story almost but we also live in a world where we're repeating history so... It provided some New Hope for the series but 8 was total subversion of everything though I doubt it was all that well planned out to begin with. There were some questionable decisions and characters in that movie. And 9, I didn't even bother to watch it after I found out Palpatine is back. Just...yeah.
I at least appreciate what 8 was trying to do, even though it really needed more time in the oven and probably would have worked better as a side movie, but 9 was an abject disaster. It convinced me that JJ Abrams literally can't concieve of a Star Wars story that isn't just the original trilogy with a different coat of paint. He deliberately undid everything in 8 so that he could cram ESB and ROTJ into the same movie. Hell, he got Adam Driver onboard with 7 by telling him that Kylo Ren wouldn't be a rehash of the Vader plot, then rehashed the Vader plot with Kylo anyway. At least 8 showed some form of creativity.
My roommate has only experienced 9 by way of Lego Star Wars and said the characters side-eye the camera every time the plot doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure that's the best way to see the movie.
7-TFA was too afraid to establish a new status quo in the Star Wars universe. It was just the Empire up against the rebels again. It didn't feel like any of the struggle and victories from the previous movies mattered. The New Republic technically existed but we never really saw it enough to get invested. We just saw the confusing Resistance. Han Solo was still a smuggling bum wearing a vest. It was vapid nostalgia bait.
8-TLJ was made by someone who seemed to actively hate Star Wars. Somehow a Star Wars movie starting with a Yo Mama joke managed to just get worse and worse.
9-TROS isn't even worth discussing. I don't think anyone wanted to make or see it, but it had to be pushed out by obligation.
I really liked episode 8 and was let down by episode 9. I feel like the sequel trilogy was poorly planned. Abrams and Johnson were trying to take it two different directions. Some fans preferred Abrams' vision and others preferred Johnson's, going back and forth between the two resulted in an ending that was sort of meh for everyone
I know I will get hate for this... Breaking Bad. Everyone I know was hyping it up as the best series ever and how much of a complete bad ass Walter turns into - "it starts slow, but give it a chance and it gets so good". It really set my expectation for what the show would be to something... else entirely I guess? I watched the entire series thinking I was still in the "give it a chance" phase and any episode now it will get proper good and I'll stop hating Walter. Then the end happened and I was left so confused.
For the record I loved Better Call Saul. And I think it's possible that in an alternate timeline where someone just told me "you should watch it, it's decent", I'd might have really liked it. But it was built up so much, and Walter was built up to be such a "cool bad-ass", which he basically never is, that it just ruined it for me.
The biggest fault was walt being built up to be a good guy. He's the main character, but he's definitely not a "good guy". That's kinda the whole point of the show. Most people who walk away thinking walt was a badass have a relatively immature take on the story.
Something I never hear people talk about with BB is how it hit differently when it was first being broadcast, than when it hit streaming.
The original show spooled out slowly, an episode a week, and then nearly a year before the next season, then they broke the final season in half, and dragged that way out. So between episodes and seasons, you remember the excitement, and you apply that to Walter, and sort of forget all the atrocities he's committing. He's just a cool anti-hero.
But when you binge it on streaming, your shock at his behavior doesn't dissipate, it accumulates, and by the end, he's just a bad guy who got a lot of people killed, and deserves his fate.
I watched it during its initial run, then binged it, and I can't think of any other show that had such a different dynamic between the two.
I was also disappointed in the series not because it wasn't good, but because people overhyped it. I've learnt my lesson to never listen to people's hype for series I am interested in watching.
I'm with you on it. And you can't even have an honest discussion about Breaking Bad with anyone because if you say you didn't like it you're just dismissed out of hand.
The plots went to crap. The retconning destroyed decades of canon. I've nothing against the actors involved but the writers should be taken out and beaten.
I keep trying to give it a chance and don't understand what the fuck happened, but I feel so bad for Jodi Whitaker and Ncuti Gatwa. The writing is so awful it's like they don't even get to play the same part.
I generally like older, slower paced movies. The Bridge over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Guns of Navarone are all great movies, despite them being very dated in some regards. With that in mind, I decided to give the movie a try, it being a very famous classic and all. Despite that, my expectations weren't unrealistically high, but the movie still fell very short.
So, it consists of four chapters/acts, basically. The first one (with the monkeys) was very "meh" and could have been shorter, but I didn't mind it too much because, again, old movie. The second act on the moon was better, but honestly was "OK" in my books. The third act, now that was really good in my opinion. I though; "looks like the story is really taking off now!" And then came act 4...
I thought that, while the beginning wasn't great, it was still perfectly salvagable if the ending was decent. Here is where it fell really short, in my opinion. It is, in essence, just a light show with music. Now sure, I bet that for the time that was all very advanced, so I want to give them credit. But it didn't need to last for 15 fucking minutes! Even for that time, that is extremely long. I found myself starting to skip ahead to see if anything else was going to happen. And it did, I guess. Wasn't exactly blown away though.
Now what I think they were trying to achieve was what we now typically describe as eldritch horror, to see something we simply cannot fathom. And I think they did that very well with the tools that they had. But it was just way too long, and that thoroughly put the nail in the coffin for me.
I've always felt the structure and pacing of 2001 to be musical, literally a symphony in four movements. The classical music soundtrack really sells that concept.
The light show at the the end has to be taken in context. It was 1968, the peak of the hippie movement, and one of the most explosively creative moments in popular art in history, partially fueled by hallucinogenics like weed, but also LSD, which was making it's way across the country. It was already widely available in California, where it was being distributed by associates of the Grateful Dead in San Francisco.
In LA, Kubrick would have been quite familiar with the trend, everyone was, it was being talked about in the media constantly. Would it be that surprising if Kubrick tried what everyone was talking about, and was as blown away as everyone always is, and had to reference it in his movie?
Light shows of various kinds were becoming a standard addition to concerts, using colors, lasers, projections, blobs of colored fluids, etc. Kubrick knew that people would be coming into this movie to trip, and he wanted to give them a big light show to entertain them. If they dropped their tab at the beginning of the movie, they'd probably be reaching a nice peak right around when the light show started, or at least tripping enough to enjoy it.
I've always figured that was the reason. If it was any other era, I would doubt it, but this was made in California in 1968, when EVERYTHING was about drugs or the Vietnam War, and this wasn't about the war.
That would make some sense, yeah. Still, if you are sober and watching something that is considered a classic, it falls short. Either way, it is some nice historical context, so thank you for sharing!
I love the 2001 book (and its sequels) but the movie is outright boring, technically amazing for its time, but its so slow and borders on masturbatory in its execution
It's weird they spent so much time on act 1 since it was a single chapter in the book. Act 4 was multiple chapters of the book (and just as terrible as the movie).
Act 3 is iconic and just plain good, but act 4 just ruins the entire story for me
I read the novelization by Arthur C. Clark and it made way more sense than the movie. I never understood why HAL went crazy, but the book explains that it was given orders to be honest with the crew, but not reveal the purpose of the mission. HAL naturally concluded that he couldn't lie to a dead crew.
Lost never delivered on its initial promise of cool science fiction mystery. It became increasingly clear as the seasons went on that the writers had no fucking clue where they were going with any of this stuff and just gave up and everyone-was-dead-all-along was the only way out even though they promised early on that wasn't the case. Fuck that show and Abrams in particular.
I think this aimlessness is more common than people realize.
For instance, dare I say it: Half-Life. The games were made with questions never meant to be answered, and even the supposed "concluding episodes" have kind of landed with a thud. Even the release of Portal with Episode 2, tying Aperture Science into the world, didn't end up making much sense or having direct effect on anything.
Avengers End Game - after years of build up and creating the entire MCU, it felt like a cop out for them to fix everything with a time travel plot that they set specific rules for. It was just lazy writing.
boys 3-5 seems to have suffered, as kripke got lazier in running the show. vastly different from the first 2, usually he does very well on 5 season shows, like with supernatural, but boyz? spn 6-15 had nothing to do with kripke, thats why the show was so bad.
i thought 3 and 4 were great, but 5 was really rushed by the second half. they didn't use the Gen V cast barely at all in the finale and the last episode is just a mad dash to tie up as many plot threads possible. a really lackluster finish to what was otherwise an amazing series!
The TV adaptation of Preacher. The comics were more like a western but with a dark sense of humour that popped up when the moment called for it.
The tv show was ‘wow, this is so wacky and wild!’
I get the impression Seth Rogan liked the comics but didn’t actually understand them at all.
The start of the game is rather confusing and aimless. What's going on? Where am I going? Why am I going? What am I supposed to do?
In the mid game, the tempo picks up, as you see more and more pieces fitting together. You explore in a targeted fashion. Every new discovery is exhilarating.
In the late game the discoveries become fewer and further in between. The last bits of the puzzle seems to not quite want to fit together... Until it suddenly clicks... You understand what you must do, you know what is at stake, but not the consequences.
I couldn't really tell you what I discovered to be honest, I tried twice to get into the game at the recommendation of a close friend but each time I just found myself getting really frustrated by the gimmick. I'd spend a bunch of time trying to get to one planet, get into a ruin, discover some clues, only to have to trek all the way back because the sun exploded. I understand the appeal for some folks, but it just wasn't for me. I'm not a big explore-on-your-own-puzzle gamer anyway, which probably doesn't help the game for me...
Really pretty game! It just had me falling asleep at the wheel, or had me turning it off because I was trying to read a Nomai clue and KABOOM.
Fair enough, I must concede that it's probably not for everyone...
It's worth mentioning that most of the places that are hard to reach do have hidden shortcuts, that makes them much easier to get to, once you learn the shortcut.
Also you can enable a setting that pauses the game while you are reading Nomai text, or talking to people.
There's an interesting video on YouTube by TeeHallums who investigated why some people bounce off of Outer Wilds, in the video he also interviews Alex Beachum (the creative director for Outer Wilds), and discovers an interesting pattern in all the people he has experienced bouncing off the game: https://youtu.be/msABa06aiT0
Were there ever shortcuts that didn't require taking off from the home planet and landing on a second one?
I feel like in my time, I discovered a series of shortcuts. They still didn't make things fun to repeat to finally figure out what exactly you were supposed to gain from an area.
No, there's never any shortcuts that doesn't require you to fly to the other planets...
There is autopilot, so you don't have to fly completely manually. But you will still have to take off and land yourself. And wait while autopilot flies to the destination.
For me, this bit became complete muscle memory, and a bit of time to reflect and contemplate what I had learned. Almost a bit meditative.
But yeah... If it only ever felt annoying and cumbersome to you, then I can certainly see why the game wouldn't be enjoyable.
The autopilot does not work. On multiple occasions it caused me to crash directly into a drifting object, or veered well out of its way to dive into the sun.
Yeah, it's lacking an avoidance system, as Slate will also tell you, so just make sure there's nothing between you and your destination when you activate it.
Honestly, I also felt like it was boring starting out since you're just exploring aimlessly. Then after a while of just flying all over and looking at shit it starts clicking, the pieces start falling into place and the enjoyment of the game grows. Revisiting old places doesn't feel like a chore anymore because you're using new knowledge and instead of aimlessly wandering you're on a mission to explore a nook that looked off limits.
So yeah, if you started it and didn't get far it sucks, if you finished it then it's amazing.
I like the song Around the World and decided to listen to the rest of the album. It was awful! It was electronic dance music, but was so boring and repetitive it almost felt bored with itself.
I then listened to their album Discovery. WOW! What a difference. So much energy and movement. It's a complete and total 180 to Homework.
As a fan, I also forced myself to find things to like about it.
It would have made more sense if the supposed movie (The Lamb) ever actually existed. As it stands, it will forever look a lot like some kind of psychotic breakdown.
He even did SNL like that. :(
And YES, I do still like him. I can't help it. Even after the Facebook video. He was a god to little me and a big part of my childhood.
Everything Everywhere All At Once. People hyped it, I watched it and thought it started out OK and then just became a stupid mess. And I really like off beat movies.
The first MCU Doctor Strange movie. To be fair, I collected the comics when I was a kid, so I had high expectations. I was bound to be disappointed. I saw it on Election Day in 2016, so an all-around shitty day.
Star Citizen. I'm less disappointed in the tech demo than how Chris Roberts has handled the business end of it.
I grew up on Wing Commander, Privateer, Starlancer, and Freelancer. I still have all those games on physical media with original boxes. And the Wing Commander CIC is the one website I still visit daily since 1997-ish. So when Roberts pitched a new space game back around 2012 I was thrilled. Well, we all know how that turned out. I've given up waiting for any release of Star Citizen and Squadron 42.
I know everyone hates games publishers but this was a perfect example of a publisher untangling a mess. Microsoft bought Roberts' company and immediately dialed back the unworkable ambition, put Roberts in a consulting role where he didn't have a final say over anything, and actually got the game finished and released.
Star Citizen is what happens when the same guy who made such an intractable mess of development discovers an infinite money glitch as long as he never stops developing and never releases a full game.
The Korean Netflix adaptation of one of my favourite Japanese books called 終末のフール (shūmatsu no fūrū, roughly 'translate to fools in the end of times'). The book was about a collection of stories told from the perspectives of different residents of an apartment building in a world that's come to accept the fact that a planetoid is going to destroy the Earth in a few years. Some struggle to decide whether to have a child or not. Some question whether there's even a point going to school. Everyone has hard decisions to make but they're all oddly cool with the fact that their time on Earth is limited. They felt enlightened to me because I think most of us spend our days ignoring the finiteness of our lives.
On the other hand, the K-drama was a generic apocalypse survival show. Everyone just screaming and yelling. At least, that's how it started off as and I lost interest immediately. Even the English title was stupid—Goodbye Earth. Ugh.
Since I'm already thinking of Spongebob, I'll say that the Sponge Out of Water movie was the first large-scale disappointment that I experienced from a delivery perspective.
All of the advertisement showed almost entirely the scenes where they were, per the title, out of water. Once out of water, per the title, Spongebob and the crew were 3D, superimposed into the real world, and they had superpowers. It should've been great.
In the actual movie, they did not become "out of water," per the title, until approximately the last 20 minutes of the movie, if my memory serves me correctly.
I was also a bit disappointed with Avatar: The Legend of Korra. It's not a bad show—it's just that The Last Airbender set the bar so high, and TLOK did not measure up.
pretty much the only thing it shared with the story is the name and that robots exist
Same with the Foundation show. Could probably have been a nice science fiction show with any other name and with different character names, but for some reason (probably marketing?) they just had to ruin it for Asimov fans.
Nitpicking a bit, though, I Robot (the book) isn't a story, it's an anthology of short stories in which Asimov plays with the three laws, mostly to torture Powell and Donovan in entertaining ways (I'd kill for a good Powell and Donovan miniseries!) or to show how smart and unemotional Susan Calvin was, so it's hard to see how it could be adapted except as an anthology series.
Same with Foundation, really, though at least that one has an overall storyline. Possibly even more difficult to adapt, though, because other than Sheldon's hologram once an episode and possibly Eto Demerzel / R. Daneel Olivaw if you're being excessively liberal with the adaptation there's no characters to get attached to... (anthology series with no persistent characters have worked occasionally, though, so maybe just do that).
I watched 2 episodes of the foundation and was so frustrated on how completely different it was that I just can't watch more. I also get mad when I think of it. Ugh...
Same. It's doubly disappointing because there's clearly material for an interesting science fiction show in there (what they did with the Cleon clones would have been quite interesting in another series), but it's all ruined by the completely wrong Foundation references.
They managed to ruin what could have been a great adaptation of a great classic and what could have been an interesting original series at the same time, the bastards.
Disappointed doesnt even fully encapsulate my feelings throughout knowing this games existance
Heres a list of a 100 words that describe what I felt at various stages; Since its been announced all the way to the last hour I sunk into playing this game
7 years of developement time for one of the worst releases in gaming history
Not even an RPG as orignally promised, just another futuristic shooter.
Just missed damn near every mark, I'd time machine back just to tell myself to let that game go
From start to finish, and its not that I didn't have fun with it after they made it stable. Its that fact that as someone who is heavily into the genre of cyberpunk and love rpg gameplay with wide range of customization and choosing your own adventure in a content rich world, it was underwelming for all the hype.
At first, it was severly lacking, not getting what was a major selling point for what could of been a revolutionary AAA cyberpunk game was a big slap in the face for peeps like me who waited so long to play the game.
Sure its fun now, it was fun even with the hilariously game breaking glitches; however, thats not what was promised and that disappointing part of the experence cant be push asided
I'm kind of annoyed that it's still used as a benchmark performance basis despite the game coming out in a buggy and subpar visual state lol.
Batman Arkham Knight being peak visual fidelity a decade later is really not so funny anymore when no one seems to use actual high fidelity games to compare instead of the latest EA or Ubisoft slop.
It's a B-movie starring Barry Bostwick as Franklin D. Roosevelt, fighting against Nazi werewolves with a heavily weaponized wheelchair.
The trailer was hilarious. And then I actually watched it with a few friends for one of our monthly film nights.
You know when someone tries way too hard to be edgy and vulgar and it goes from funny to downright uncomfortable? This was like the film equivalent of that. Some scenes genuinely drag on way too long because Bostwick needs to crack another half-a-dozen sex jokes. He genuinely comes across as lecherous, creepy and giving me Chevy Chase vibes (not in a good way.)
We made it about 30 minutes through the film until we had to switch it off because it was just so bad. And I genuinely had to apologize to everyone for even nominating this movie.
I read His Dark Materials way back, when I was perhaps 13, and that was probably the right time in my life to read it because I'd never been as emotionally invested in a character before as I was in Lyra.
I genuinely feel like reading that trilogy made me a better person, weird to say.
I haven't read the books in a long time, but they have a place on my bookshelf in recognition of what they meant to adolescent me.
I guess books fall in the "whatever" category :P
I was majorly disappointed by The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. I actually enjoyed reading about 85% of it, but the ending completely ruined it for me.
Obi Wan Series, Star Wars 8, the movies series "road to...", Starlight express (i kinda expected a bit more. Its still amazing but it was just so build up to be this fantastical spectacl), lunar eclipses, blue moons, and the arms museum in portsmouth UK
65 was such a missed opportunity. It's about a guy who crash lands on Earth right before the asteroid that kills the dinosaurs. Spoiler alert: he escapes just in time to avoid the asteroid. It's just a generic survival movie with generic monsters. Waste of a premise. It should have shown the beautiful side of the dinosaur world and made us sad when they died
I really dislike how you have to spend 5-10 minutes preparing for every run, managing items and cats. The classes don't really feel special and the items are incredibly boring. The namesake of the game doesn't give you nearly enough feedback. Breeding just comes across as frustrating.
Random events hurt you way more than they help. Maps are confusing to look at much of the time and tactical view doesn't help much. Runs take too long and you are forced to put way, way too much on the line to make progress.
Loved the first one. Only negative I had seen about DD2 was the performance wasn't great. It's fucking dookie. Tons of great ideas that aren't executed well or for more than a single, short-as-fuck quest and then never used again.
The best part of the game is the Sphynx; and even those puzzles are a bit stupid toward the end. Like needing to remember where the very first medallion thing you picked up was. By the time you'd realistically find the Sphynx without any external guidance, you'd have found a ton of those fuckers and you sure as shit wouldn't think to mark down where after the fact.
Combat gets repetitive quick as enemies spawn constantly, and this includes big shit like griffons that can literally fly in while you're approaching the end of a long journey and snatch you up and carry you across the damn world to their nest.
Every little thing you do has some long-winded animation you can't cancel tied to it, and NPCs walking along roads constantly stop you to initiate meaningless dialogue; it doesn't just not respect your time, it pisses on it.
And to top it all off the story is stupid, short, and ends abruptly before you even know what the hell is really going on. This is including what little extra you can get after a NG+ cycle which makes it even more annoying that you are required to do the whole fucking game twice to still get a shitty ending that doesn't answer a single question you might have about the events of the plot.
So much of the streamed content that we had zero hesitation unsubscribing from all of them, a few years ago. So far, we don't feel like we're missing out on much as the little quality productions that somehow escape the global neutering that is going on over there, well if we can't get them on disc or elsewhere... too bad but there are still countless amazing productions available on discs it's not like we're short content-wise ;)
Payday 3. I had 2k hours in Payday 2, done every heist on death sentence one down and when the beta for Payday 3 came out my friends and I tried it and wow it was bad. We tried it again after it came out and had a few patches and it's still bad.
Yeah, Payday 2 used to be my friend group’s go-to “we don’t know what we want to play, so we’ll just default to this” game. Easily have like 2k hours, just from chilling with friends after work. And somehow, Payday 3 just completely failed to grab our attention.
Cowboy Bebop. Not even the Netflix adaptation (which I haven't seen), but the original. I got told by so many people that it was the best anime series ever, but I just couldn't connect with it.
I'd maybe say it's because I prefer more optimistic stories, but then I started reading Warhammer 40k books last year, so maybe I just have trash tastes.
I started with the Eisenhorn omnibus, followed by Ravenor. Currently I'm nearing the end of Gaunt's Ghosts (I think). I'm not sure where I'm going after that.
The One Piece Live Action proves that it can work somehow. Before that, plenty of live action version produced in Japan has decent reputation, like the Rurouni Kenshin and Death Note series. On the western side, Alita Battle Angel and Speed Racer was also received well.
I did like it very much actually, but I think the second half was dragged out hinting at information that was already obvious. I did watch other Kubrick moves but I was a little kid and I don't remember much
The last Divergent book. I want to like the Divergent series more. The authour was inspired by a lot of things I like. But I think she wrote the first two books without a thought-out plan for the third. They leave the city and you expect there to be some big purpose for divergents in the outside world and then we just get a lot of nothing. We get an explanation for the factions that make them make even less sense than before.
invincible season 2-4, the animations are pretty subpart compared to the first one. part of the blame is hiring expensive celebrities to do VA, and letting ROP suck the budget out of the other shows.
Most of the major series. Lost, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad… what contrived situation can writers either a) use as shock factor, or b) make the situation worse in some incredibly unlikely way. Throw in a dose of shitty relationships, too. While not actually putting a ton of effort into plot, wit, thinking characters instead of reactionary ones, or original ideas. They’re soap operas with varying degrees of violence that get worse writing as the show carries on.
Forza Horizon 6. Saw a whole bunch of videos of people going ga ga for it. Was excited. It finally releases proper on steam, and it doesn't work with a wheel. The cars feel AWFUL, more like hovercrafts than cars. The super corporate, cheesy bullshit "story". Very glad I bought on steam so I can get my seventy fucking dollars back. What a shitshow. A very, very pretty shitshow.
I first heard about it in the late nineties or early noughties, and I wanted to see it ever since, because liked its aesthetics and science-fiction in general, but for whatever reason, I didn't end up seeing it until last year. But wow, what a terrible film.
If I had to describe it in terms of individual issues:
The big problem that needs to be solved is this hackneyed blob of pure evil that appears for no reason other than, it just something that happens every 6000 years, and the way to solve it is to follow an instruction manual.
The way almost all the male characters interact with Leeloo is pretty icky, even when considering the time it was made.
I didn't feel the motivations of the characters were always that convincing.
The acting is generally pretty poor.
Most of the attempts at humour, which were mostly the usual 90s saucy jokes, fell flat.
I'm a bit wary of critiquing things like this, though, because when I like something, I'm also a lot more forgiving of its flaws, so when I don't like something, it feels like a rationalisation to convey it like this. But it's the best I got without resorting to onomatopoeia.
On the positive side, I did quite like the look of the film and the fact that the protagonist and the antagonist never actually meet or have much awareness of each other tickled me. Also, for some reason I just couldn't hate Ruby.
Ruby Rhod stole that show, but you're right that the concept art is the best creative aspect of the production.
The script is more style than substance, but in fairness you'd need a lot of substance to balance that equation. All of that is basically thanks to Moebius.
The icky stuff makes sense in retrospect, Luc Besson has allegations.
I watched until the second season. I watched the first ep of 3rd season and decided I can't anymore.
I was a bit too harsh in my comment. It's not that shitty. It has incredible animation, for instance.
But other than that, I found nothing likable about the series. It has a thin plot which makes excuses for characters to fight each other. There is no really good message or anything. It's just endless fighting. I understand it's supposed to be action oriented. But it basically has nothing that makes it worth watching except the action. I watched it only cuz it's super popular.
The sabotage is done by design, even good ones get ruined so that the novel one gets attention and gets sold else people watch stuff on repeat which makes less money and less reasons for industry to produce and sell content.
Spirited Away was too cringy and it had no consistent worldbuilding and therefore no consistent stakes, it just felt like a list of things happening for no reason, kind of like a dream.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for your opinion.
Personally, I don't think you're wrong, but that's also not really the point of the movie. It's not trying to make a spiritual world with hard rules per se. It's more about growth and uses the spirits to set the stage for conflicts for the main character to overcome (with the consistent stake of losing herself/her identity)
Like many studio ghibli films, it's about facing pivotal times in our lives and overcoming fears so we can better face the challenges of everyday life.
My neighbor Totoro has the kids moving to a new place and dealing with a sick parent, spirited away is about moving to a new city, whispers of the heart is about first love and how to decide what to do with your life, Kikis delivery service is about heading out into the world. In many of these movies, the fantastical is used to present these challenges in a more approachable way, but the "stakes" are almost always internal and personal.
I don't get his criticism for inconsistent world building. Like you said, it lacks hard rules because it is based on Japanese folklore that is mostly mysterious in its inner workings, but it doesn't mean it is inconsistent.
Like many any media tied to a specific culture, it assumes a familiarity with the culture - in this case shinto beliefs and japanese folklore. If you're unfamiliar with those things then a lot of the rules and situations seem to be random and come out of nowhere.
A similar scenario would be like watching Scream or Scary Movie without having seen the movies they make references to. You might still enjoy the movie, but without the context of the films they satrize/parodize you won't fully appreciate what the movie is doing.
It makes it an understandable criticisim, accesibility of a movie is a valid complaint. However, I don't think it's one that necessarily reflects on the quality of the movie, but rather is a warning about who will appreciate it.
I think familiarity affects how much it meets your expectations, not necessarily how consistent the world building is. Saying it is inconsistent either means the guy doesn't understand what inconsistent means or they think only things that meet their expectations can be considered consistent.
Not having clear rules doesn't mean it is inconsistent. If the same thing happens and the result is different, that would make it inconsistent. I don't remember anything like that happening in the movie.
I think the Eurovision Song Contest has lost the innocent magic it once possessed.
...of its own choice.
Yeah it sucks since around 1994
Yep ,go back to 80s
The Hobbit movies
One of my favourite books as a kid, I don't think I'll ever watch the movies again by choice
You could tell those were going to be a gongshow just from the production process. LotR had years of prepwork to make sure everything was sorted out and ready for filming, so they had a relatively smooth time filming. The Hobbit films were rushed and you could tell. PJ apparently was finalising scripts and storyboards the night before each shoot.
LOTR was bad to me, I absolutely loved those books as a kid, I even enjoyed the animated ones from forever ago, but the movies were far too long for what they showed.
When The Hobbit came out as a trilogy movie series I was a bit confused but gave it a try.
I don't think I've ever encountered a LotR fan whose favourite film adaptation was Bakshi's. That's really interesting.
I think it's probably because I saw them a long time before the new ones, it was something I remember from childhood. The live action ones came out when I was a young adult and they skipped the better parts and embellished others in my opinion. I know the "Tom" debate is overdone, but beyond providing the ancient weapons needed to defeat the Witchking, he provides a glimpse into the lore without making it a detour that just seems out of place.
I know it's ancient history, but I still can't get over the spectacular train wreck of Star Wars Episode One. So much hype, so much hope, and then you get a two hour arcade game promo with Jar Jar Binks. It was like George Lucas had picked every single terrible trope of 90s movies and packaged it neatly into a movie.
Man, Phantom Menace being the worst Star Wars movie when it came out is like George W. Bush being the dumbest US president: those were simpler times, somehow.
I'll say the prequels aged better than I'd remembered them, though. And they get a lot better with the existing fanedits, especially HAL9000's take on Episode I, which trims a lot of the dumb humour, dials down the Jar Jar antics significantly and tightens the plot a nice bit, to make it more of a classic Star Wars adventure.
Yeah, at least the prequels had an actual story to them and were cohesive with each other. The sequels are just a jumbled mess with each director doing their own thing. I’d take the prequels over the sequels any day.
I haven't witnessed the edit you mention, but it sounds like it fits in 20 minutes. 🤣
I think Topher Grace was behind an edit that only used about ten minutes of episode one.
Yes! That's what actually got me into Star Wars fanedits and fanedits in general, he made the whole prequel trilogy into a unified experience. Saw one based on his editing notes and liked it, but through the years I've come to enjoy other takes from the movies, as well.
The funny thing is, having been born several years after it was released and having probably played the lego games before seeing the films, I liked it! Hell I loved it!
But if i put myself in the shoes of, well, you for instance, then I can see that it's as dissapointing as the disney sequel trilogy. And then I can see how lame some aspects are on further rewatches
Phantom Menace was great for lore expansion of Star Wars, but it was weird to see it get more infantile than the previous trilogy, seeing as original fans were actually getting older.
It has really low rewatchability too. The in-universe gap between phantom menace and attack of the clones is reallly long, making it less relevant to the rest of the trilogy. And it has huge swathes of boring stuff in the middle. Politics stuff, very hard to follow.
Jar Jar doesn't bother me as a character.
I say this everytime phantom menace is mentioned, but the original plans would have had appropriately aged characters and been really fun.
Here: https://youtu.be/OgRTlW5gNCI
I find this a fascinating thing to think about.
I'm the same age as the original Star Wars film and grew up on the Original Trilogy. Those three were some of the best stuff ever to my kiddie brain. The older I get, the more I feel like the OT was pretty much just as childish as the prequels when it comes down to it, just without access to 1990s cartoony CGI. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, I still enjoy the OT, but it's clear to me now as an old fart that the prequels felt more kiddie than the OT when I watched them in the theaters because I was watching the prequels for the first time with a grownup's brain.
I still enjoy the OT, they poke those childhood brain cells that have been hooked on them all this time. I can enjoy the prequels a bit, but it's mostly in the form of memes and cracked-out fan remixes. The sequel movies, though, always struck me as a goddamned mess and I still haven't figured out who they were meant to be for.
I was born the same year episode 6 came out, so I was 16 when Phantom Menace came out, and grew up loving the original trilogy. And my teenager brain enjoyed the Phantom Menace too. Yeah, Jar Jar was annoying and the CGI was jarring sometimes, especially growing up watching the practical effects they used in the originals, but I still loved it. I just really think they should have aged Anakin up in TPM though, he should have been a teenager instead of a kid because it just made the scenes with him and Padme really weird.
It’s because it was for Star Wars fans to take their kids too.
I’ve seen it twice. I bought tickets to two showings on opening day because after sixteen years of waiting there was finally going to be a new Star Wars movie. I had one for the very first showing in the morning and the other for that night. There hasn’t been a more exciting moment in a movie theater than when I saw the Lucasfilm logo and “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” and then that blast of trumpets. And then the movie happened. After the closing credits rolled, I spent the next few hours debating on whether or not to use the second ticket. I bit the bullet and went, surrounded in the line outside by all of these hopeful, happy people. I didn’t have the heart to warn them.
Nobody would have believed you, anyway. Expectations were so high, you would have just come across as a hateful troll.
I actually walked out somewhere in the middle of it
Star Wars : The Parliamentary Debates ?
Moving away from physical buttons and physical media. I don’t mind touchscreens and I do enjoy downloading, but there’s nothing more satisfying than a good click of a button and actually holding something in your hand that you purchased.
Gotta use the cheapest processor to get the job done.
Great Expectations. It just wasn't all I'd hoped for.
I thought 2 Great 2 Expect was fun, at least.
Yes!
And is Great Expectation: Tokyo Drift part of the same franchise? It wasn't clear...
The Netflix version of Cowboy Bebop.
The cast was great but the script was just horrible and really ruined the show.
If that cast and production crew had made an original show about a dark funky future and bounty hunters and whatever, clearly inspired by Bebop but not trying to be it, they could have knocked it out of the park so hard.
They would, of course, have had to get some decent writers instead of just feeding the original anime scripts to crack-smoking monkeys and then smearing their poops onto script paper.
On a related note, I was really underwhelmed and disappointed by last year's new Shinichiro Watanabe anime series, Lazarus.
As a huge fan of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo (and to a lesser extent Space Dandy) I was really looking forward to another serious anime helmed by Watanabe. What we got was, for various reasons, not the least of which being the untimely death of Bebop writer Keiko Nobumoto, really boring and subpar at best.
I struggled to finish it, and I probably wouldn't have bothered it it wasn't by a creator that I like and respect.
it was genuinely baffling how superficial and shallow the writing was, how underwhelming the direction was and how uninteresting the character designs were (I genuinely can't remember a single one). The animation and music were great but overall it basically felt like a painfully average Netflix flick rather than a Watanabe.
Yes, I agree. To me it is almost like they ignored the original storytelling and the story and instead wanted to make something more "hollywood".
It is the deep background and how the stories are told along with the awsome music, that makes Bebop so good. Not flashy one-liners
I watched a few episodes of Lazarus and just couldn't get over how convoluted and bizarre in a bad way the premise was.
Perhaps controversial but I don't think animated shows should ever be translated to live action, at least where fantasy, sci-fi, and exaggerated action are pivotal to the story or art style.
Especially when they try to make it available and shoe-horn it to a wide general audience that probably haven't seen the original show.
One Piece turned out okay.
I can't think of a better example of disconnect between source material and output. Just... What happened? It's like it was written by a focus group.
I have zero hope that there will ever be any good live-action remakes of anime. I remember how everyone was excited that the Ghost in the Shell live-action was just mediocre.
The Last Airbender 2010 by Manoj Nelliyattu "M. Night" Shyamalan.
He ruined it. Nearly everything but the costumes were wrong. He should try again out of his own pocket to make amends.
How did you feel about The Legend of Korra?
Overall I liked Korra. It has two big moments though that rubbed me the wrong way.
::: spoiler spoiler The part where they broke the Avatar cycle was a awful direction to take the show. Also making platinum the most plentiful resource was a brain dead villian arc. :::
I was extremely excited in the beginning because the setting felt very well-constructed. Bending having contributed to rapid technological progress made a lot of sense to me, and I really like that there wasn't excessive exposition regarding the state of the world.
So much of what they did from that point just felt so corny. ::: spoiler spoiler
It was just so disappointing for me. I don't know if they got creatively restricted, or if something happened with the original writers or what. I don't regret watching it, but I just wish they had taken or had been able to take more risks.
Yeah I agree, overall the story was bad. I really enjoyed the characters and slice of life aspects of the show. I felt some of those points you bring up were big weaknesses to the overall experience. It felt like the team was targeting a younger group than before. (Or I just got older haha)
I can corroborate your last point because I watched both of these series relatively recently, and I also have little to no nostalgia associated with the subject.
I actually used to despise when ATLA came on. At that age, I could never commit to following plot-heavy shows, because I didn't really watch TV a ton (I thought I watched a lot, but I'm learning now as I talk to peers that it was not lol), and the show felt like it was on forever, eating up time on Nick. I finished it up around this time last year and ATLA is now among my favorite shows ever. I continued with TLOK shortly after, and yeah, those were my feelings.
So from my experience, I'm not gonna say it's the whole "growing out of it" thing. TLOK just is a less interesting story, the way I see it.
I hated the above Avatar movie but I loved TLoK. She is such an awesome character and has tonnes of growth and development, along with the fantastic lgbt end of the series. It was definitely a little difficult in the first few episodes but a big part of that was the transition from a rural setting to a city setting decades later, so it went from the backwater technology level to the cutting edge near a century later.
It looks to me more like a high school project than a professional clmovie.
my two favorite media franchises are Star Trek and Sonic. how long have you got?
Oh god... Star Trek just got... I dont even know how to describe what had been done to it.
Basically star Trek died after ST: Enterprise
Anything after that was vapid shitty pew pew cgi flare fest sci-fi, and the Picard series ruined TNG for me for years. I used to watch ST at least a few times per week, DS9, TNG, mostly. After ST :Picard i stopped. I couldn't anymore, it was ruined for so fucking long
But there was a small ray of light, though
Watch "The Orville", it's made by Seth McFarlane after he rejected what the execs wanted for star Trek. It's basically TNG updated for the 2020s and the first two seasons are amazing and have a BOBW episode, even, and hell, even a "family" type episode after. Seriously, it looks and feels like modern TNG, has great episodes like TNG used to have. The third season kinda went the pew pew direction as well, very few very long episodes where the good writing got replaced with loads of CGI, but it's still doable.
There isn't a fourth season, yet, anyway, but Seth recently said he is finishing writing the fourth season, let's see what happens
Those first two seasons though, are star Trek magic, the Orville magic
First, The Orville is excellent and for anyone who watches Trek I always recommend The Orville. It's a little crude when it starts, but it's levels out and is really great.
Second, since you didn't mention it, Strange New Worlds is the modern Star Trek in universe show you're looking for.
SNW can be ok, but it leans pretty heavy on the action, and the moral quandary episodes are hit or miss to a high degree. I can't think of a single high concept scifi premise episode of SNW that made me say "Wow." and stuck with me. The war PTSD episode with the transporter buffer triage was very good, but more emotional and less scifi high concept. And I've already seen MASH.
Season 2, episode 2, Ad Astra per Aspera is my go to answer for best episodes that I think about. It's clearly inspired by TNGs The Measure of a Man while that episode will always be the best, the SNW episode still scratches that itch.
I've watched them all, and none of them really felt elevated for me. Ad Astra per Aspera was fine, but I didn't come away with any new interesting thoughts about anything from it.
Many trekkies said that Trek couldn't be a Saturday morning cartoon and that after TAS would never survive, there are people who said that after TNG came out star trek was dead because the captain was bald, and some people who said DS9 killed it as a space station was not exploring, then some people complained that VOY killed it because the ship had infinite torpedos and a lot of people said ENT was the franchise's death knell because touch screens, and OMG what did JJ Abrams do? After DSC came out some people said Star Trek was over because people dont cry in space, After PIC came out some people said it ruined everything that came before because space captains can't change, some people said that LDS was turning ST into Rick and Morty fan wank, a horde of people said that PRO was trying to be be Clone Wars and that it gave the franchise a terminal diagnosis, it was the consensus of many fans that SNW was shitting on the memory of Kirk and crew, a loud group of trek consumers suggested that there couldnt be female Jem'Hadar and therefore SFA caused the franchise to flatline...
Yet there is more trek in development, that will be loved by some and derided by many
*edit: Section 31 definitely murdered the franchise because Rachel Garrett something something, irish vulcan space robots?
I'm honestly so confused by (presumably) adults who consider Sonic as their favorite media franchise... Just... What?
Have you, like, tried reading books or watching movies since you've become an adult, or...?
I don't want to sound judgmental, but I kind of feel bad for people like this. If you enjoy it, you enjoy it, I guess... But you're missing out on like actual good shit lol
Edit: hurr durr gotta go fast!
Heaven forbid an adult should enjoy video games. It's also possible to have a favorite franchise and read books, including outside of that franchise.
Prole, why do you always have so many hot takes?
People who grew up with the games have a certain fondness for the series that even better written franchises cannot replicate.
What's wrong with people deciding the franchise that made them happy in their childhood should continue making them happy in their adulthood? None of this suggests they haven't tried or enjoyed better written stories.
It kind of does though. They said it's their "favorite media franchise," not just that they were a fan.
It's for literal babies
And I have a problem with it, because it's not a rare thing and it demonstrates a lack of curiosity that I find to be dangerous for a modern society.
If the video game for babies that you played when you were 10 is still your favorite media franchise, then you need to expose yourself to more media.
You are very judgemental and keeps repeating the same argument I've already addressed as to why someone can have their favourite franchise be something that is not the best thing they've ever read. I think you need to expand your perspective a lot more about the world. Being so narrow-minded is even more dangerous for modern society.
Oh no I'm judgmental whatever will I do.
Maybe it's the person who's a grown adult and still considers Sonic the Hedgehog to be their favorite media franchise is he one who needs to expand their perspective.
I want you to be honest, do you actually know what the plots of these games are like?
You could, you know, be less judgemental, especially for something simple like a favourite media franchise.
You're still refusing to acknowledge my point about why someone would consider it their favourite, and it has nothing to do with not expanding their perspective. It's you that refuses to expand your perspective beyond your own capacity to understand stuff.
Do I need to care what the plot is like? My favourite media franchise has a pretty terrible plot, as well. It's not the reason I love it. You seem unable to grasp such a simple concept.
you can enjoy all types of media at the same time. Someone who enjoys Sonic or a franchise of similar caliber doesn't ONLY enjoy Sonic and nothing else.
They said it was their favorite media franchise, not that they enjoyed it.
Have you ever seen the "plot" of a Sonic game? If you're an adult, and that's your favorite media franchise, then you should be embarrassed
The Dark Tower movie.
One cannot fit a 9 books series into 1 movie. What a just terrible idea to begin with. Also, if you haven't read the books and want an amazing Stephen King adventure, this is your series to read!
I'm a lifelong Stephen King fan and have read just about everything else he ever released, but I could never motivate myself to get started on the Dark Tower stuff. There's just SO MUCH and I kind of dread committing to it.
(And yet somehow I reread a bunch of his stuff including the extended The Stand every couple years. I claim no rationality about it.)
As a fellow constant reader, do it. The Dark Tower series ties everything together, all his works revolve around this one in a way. It can seem daunting, but trust me, those pages can't turn fast enough as you're reading them.
I caution the series to newbie King readers for the very same reason. The series is long, and they won't understand all the references and tie-ins. You will though, and you'll enjoy it (or I hope so, I've never met a fan who doesn't like them [except for the ending, but what King book doesn't have a contentious ending?]).
Perhaps I may have to put it back on my stack and give it another honest try.
Thanks for the motivation!
I'll second this, especially if you've read and enjoyed most of his other work (his horror novels especially have a lot of interconnecting themes that pop up and converge in fun ways).
You won't regret it.
Honestly I just love it - it is my favorite series I've ever read from any author. It's certainly a journey but a fun one!!!
Ready for more disappointment? They're making a new adaptation.
It's a TV series by Flanagan, I have hope!
Me too, but not too much.
Fuck
I think book 4 is the peak, quality-wise. 5 was alright.
It's been so long since I've read them, but I remember the very end of the series being great (and really, the only possible way it could have ended). However, I remember the last two books, up to that part, being kind of dumb lol
I think I speak for us all when I say the Eragon film attempt.
BRIZINGA!
Oh god, I had blocked that dumpster fire from my memory.
I still can't get over that their shirts from the first scene were just white button-ups that they rubbed coffee grounds on. It was so obvious I spotted it in middle school
Episodes 7 through 9 of Star Wars. Yeah 7 was a retelling of the same story almost but we also live in a world where we're repeating history so... It provided some New Hope for the series but 8 was total subversion of everything though I doubt it was all that well planned out to begin with. There were some questionable decisions and characters in that movie. And 9, I didn't even bother to watch it after I found out Palpatine is back. Just...yeah.
I at least appreciate what 8 was trying to do, even though it really needed more time in the oven and probably would have worked better as a side movie, but 9 was an abject disaster. It convinced me that JJ Abrams literally can't concieve of a Star Wars story that isn't just the original trilogy with a different coat of paint. He deliberately undid everything in 8 so that he could cram ESB and ROTJ into the same movie. Hell, he got Adam Driver onboard with 7 by telling him that Kylo Ren wouldn't be a rehash of the Vader plot, then rehashed the Vader plot with Kylo anyway. At least 8 showed some form of creativity.
My roommate has only experienced 9 by way of Lego Star Wars and said the characters side-eye the camera every time the plot doesn't make sense. I'm pretty sure that's the best way to see the movie.
7-TFA was too afraid to establish a new status quo in the Star Wars universe. It was just the Empire up against the rebels again. It didn't feel like any of the struggle and victories from the previous movies mattered. The New Republic technically existed but we never really saw it enough to get invested. We just saw the confusing Resistance. Han Solo was still a smuggling bum wearing a vest. It was vapid nostalgia bait.
8-TLJ was made by someone who seemed to actively hate Star Wars. Somehow a Star Wars movie starting with a Yo Mama joke managed to just get worse and worse.
9-TROS isn't even worth discussing. I don't think anyone wanted to make or see it, but it had to be pushed out by obligation.
At least The Matrix Resurrections successfully lampshaded the concept of its characters being stuck in a forced cycle.
I really liked episode 8 and was let down by episode 9. I feel like the sequel trilogy was poorly planned. Abrams and Johnson were trying to take it two different directions. Some fans preferred Abrams' vision and others preferred Johnson's, going back and forth between the two resulted in an ending that was sort of meh for everyone
Most of the MCU wasn't great but Iron Man 3 thoroughly disappointed me.
The suits that seem to be made of Lego while the older ones took a beating from Thor, Cap, and Bucky.
The Mandarin. That was unforgivable.
Extremis is armor, not fire-breathing people.
I know I will get hate for this... Breaking Bad. Everyone I know was hyping it up as the best series ever and how much of a complete bad ass Walter turns into - "it starts slow, but give it a chance and it gets so good". It really set my expectation for what the show would be to something... else entirely I guess? I watched the entire series thinking I was still in the "give it a chance" phase and any episode now it will get proper good and I'll stop hating Walter. Then the end happened and I was left so confused.
For the record I loved Better Call Saul. And I think it's possible that in an alternate timeline where someone just told me "you should watch it, it's decent", I'd might have really liked it. But it was built up so much, and Walter was built up to be such a "cool bad-ass", which he basically never is, that it just ruined it for me.
The biggest fault was walt being built up to be a good guy. He's the main character, but he's definitely not a "good guy". That's kinda the whole point of the show. Most people who walk away thinking walt was a badass have a relatively immature take on the story.
Something I never hear people talk about with BB is how it hit differently when it was first being broadcast, than when it hit streaming.
The original show spooled out slowly, an episode a week, and then nearly a year before the next season, then they broke the final season in half, and dragged that way out. So between episodes and seasons, you remember the excitement, and you apply that to Walter, and sort of forget all the atrocities he's committing. He's just a cool anti-hero.
But when you binge it on streaming, your shock at his behavior doesn't dissipate, it accumulates, and by the end, he's just a bad guy who got a lot of people killed, and deserves his fate.
I watched it during its initial run, then binged it, and I can't think of any other show that had such a different dynamic between the two.
I didn't finish the show but I got the idea pretty early on; he's like Captain Ahab, right? Not a good man, at least not anymore - a tragic character.
That's a pretty good analogy.
Yeah, it's very obvious from the start that he's a mediocre person. Saying he becomes a badass is false advertising
I was also disappointed in the series not because it wasn't good, but because people overhyped it. I've learnt my lesson to never listen to people's hype for series I am interested in watching.
I'm with you on it. And you can't even have an honest discussion about Breaking Bad with anyone because if you say you didn't like it you're just dismissed out of hand.
Dr Who after Peter Capaldi left.
The plots went to crap. The retconning destroyed decades of canon. I've nothing against the actors involved but the writers should be taken out and beaten.
I keep trying to give it a chance and don't understand what the fuck happened, but I feel so bad for Jodi Whitaker and Ncuti Gatwa. The writing is so awful it's like they don't even get to play the same part.
I agree it's a mixed bag, but there's still some Stephen Moffat episodes in there that are fantastic, though.
2001; A Space Odyssey
I generally like older, slower paced movies. The Bridge over the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Guns of Navarone are all great movies, despite them being very dated in some regards. With that in mind, I decided to give the movie a try, it being a very famous classic and all. Despite that, my expectations weren't unrealistically high, but the movie still fell very short.
So, it consists of four chapters/acts, basically. The first one (with the monkeys) was very "meh" and could have been shorter, but I didn't mind it too much because, again, old movie. The second act on the moon was better, but honestly was "OK" in my books. The third act, now that was really good in my opinion. I though; "looks like the story is really taking off now!" And then came act 4...
I thought that, while the beginning wasn't great, it was still perfectly salvagable if the ending was decent. Here is where it fell really short, in my opinion. It is, in essence, just a light show with music. Now sure, I bet that for the time that was all very advanced, so I want to give them credit. But it didn't need to last for 15 fucking minutes! Even for that time, that is extremely long. I found myself starting to skip ahead to see if anything else was going to happen. And it did, I guess. Wasn't exactly blown away though.
Now what I think they were trying to achieve was what we now typically describe as eldritch horror, to see something we simply cannot fathom. And I think they did that very well with the tools that they had. But it was just way too long, and that thoroughly put the nail in the coffin for me.
I've always felt the structure and pacing of 2001 to be musical, literally a symphony in four movements. The classical music soundtrack really sells that concept.
The light show at the the end has to be taken in context. It was 1968, the peak of the hippie movement, and one of the most explosively creative moments in popular art in history, partially fueled by hallucinogenics like weed, but also LSD, which was making it's way across the country. It was already widely available in California, where it was being distributed by associates of the Grateful Dead in San Francisco.
In LA, Kubrick would have been quite familiar with the trend, everyone was, it was being talked about in the media constantly. Would it be that surprising if Kubrick tried what everyone was talking about, and was as blown away as everyone always is, and had to reference it in his movie?
Light shows of various kinds were becoming a standard addition to concerts, using colors, lasers, projections, blobs of colored fluids, etc. Kubrick knew that people would be coming into this movie to trip, and he wanted to give them a big light show to entertain them. If they dropped their tab at the beginning of the movie, they'd probably be reaching a nice peak right around when the light show started, or at least tripping enough to enjoy it.
I've always figured that was the reason. If it was any other era, I would doubt it, but this was made in California in 1968, when EVERYTHING was about drugs or the Vietnam War, and this wasn't about the war.
That would make some sense, yeah. Still, if you are sober and watching something that is considered a classic, it falls short. Either way, it is some nice historical context, so thank you for sharing!
I might be in the minority, but I enjoy every minute of that movie. Yea, it's masturbatory pleasure, but uuh.... Yea I'll take it.
I completely agree. You also never hear anyone talk about the fourth act. It's basically a weird post-credits scene.
I love the 2001 book (and its sequels) but the movie is outright boring, technically amazing for its time, but its so slow and borders on masturbatory in its execution
OK, I thought I was missing something, but cause I've tried to watch it so many times and its just blah
It's weird they spent so much time on act 1 since it was a single chapter in the book. Act 4 was multiple chapters of the book (and just as terrible as the movie).
Act 3 is iconic and just plain good, but act 4 just ruins the entire story for me
I read the novelization by Arthur C. Clark and it made way more sense than the movie. I never understood why HAL went crazy, but the book explains that it was given orders to be honest with the crew, but not reveal the purpose of the mission. HAL naturally concluded that he couldn't lie to a dead crew.
I recommend Confused Matthew's review
Lost never delivered on its initial promise of cool science fiction mystery. It became increasingly clear as the seasons went on that the writers had no fucking clue where they were going with any of this stuff and just gave up and everyone-was-dead-all-along was the only way out even though they promised early on that wasn't the case. Fuck that show and Abrams in particular.
I felt utterly betrayed that they never explained the smoke monster!!!
I think this aimlessness is more common than people realize.
For instance, dare I say it: Half-Life. The games were made with questions never meant to be answered, and even the supposed "concluding episodes" have kind of landed with a thud. Even the release of Portal with Episode 2, tying Aperture Science into the world, didn't end up making much sense or having direct effect on anything.
I honestly don't remember much of the plot of any of those games. Great games, though!
Avengers End Game - after years of build up and creating the entire MCU, it felt like a cop out for them to fix everything with a time travel plot that they set specific rules for. It was just lazy writing.
it's quite fresh in my mind, but the last season, and especially the last episode, of The Boys was nothing compared to what it could've been.
boys 3-5 seems to have suffered, as kripke got lazier in running the show. vastly different from the first 2, usually he does very well on 5 season shows, like with supernatural, but boyz? spn 6-15 had nothing to do with kripke, thats why the show was so bad.
i thought 3 and 4 were great, but 5 was really rushed by the second half. they didn't use the Gen V cast barely at all in the finale and the last episode is just a mad dash to tie up as many plot threads possible. a really lackluster finish to what was otherwise an amazing series!
It was still entertaining, but they really turned the propaganda up to 11 and the rest of the show suffered for it
The TV adaptation of Preacher. The comics were more like a western but with a dark sense of humour that popped up when the moment called for it. The tv show was ‘wow, this is so wacky and wild!’ I get the impression Seth Rogan liked the comics but didn’t actually understand them at all.
The Outer Wilds. Just really boring and frustrating for me.
Outer Wilds is my favorite game yet...
What have you discovered?
The start of the game is rather confusing and aimless. What's going on? Where am I going? Why am I going? What am I supposed to do?
In the mid game, the tempo picks up, as you see more and more pieces fitting together. You explore in a targeted fashion. Every new discovery is exhilarating.
In the late game the discoveries become fewer and further in between. The last bits of the puzzle seems to not quite want to fit together... Until it suddenly clicks... You understand what you must do, you know what is at stake, but not the consequences.
I couldn't really tell you what I discovered to be honest, I tried twice to get into the game at the recommendation of a close friend but each time I just found myself getting really frustrated by the gimmick. I'd spend a bunch of time trying to get to one planet, get into a ruin, discover some clues, only to have to trek all the way back because the sun exploded. I understand the appeal for some folks, but it just wasn't for me. I'm not a big explore-on-your-own-puzzle gamer anyway, which probably doesn't help the game for me...
Really pretty game! It just had me falling asleep at the wheel, or had me turning it off because I was trying to read a Nomai clue and KABOOM.
Fair enough, I must concede that it's probably not for everyone...
It's worth mentioning that most of the places that are hard to reach do have hidden shortcuts, that makes them much easier to get to, once you learn the shortcut.
Also you can enable a setting that pauses the game while you are reading Nomai text, or talking to people.
There's an interesting video on YouTube by TeeHallums who investigated why some people bounce off of Outer Wilds, in the video he also interviews Alex Beachum (the creative director for Outer Wilds), and discovers an interesting pattern in all the people he has experienced bouncing off the game: https://youtu.be/msABa06aiT0
Were there ever shortcuts that didn't require taking off from the home planet and landing on a second one?
I feel like in my time, I discovered a series of shortcuts. They still didn't make things fun to repeat to finally figure out what exactly you were supposed to gain from an area.
No, there's never any shortcuts that doesn't require you to fly to the other planets...
There is autopilot, so you don't have to fly completely manually. But you will still have to take off and land yourself. And wait while autopilot flies to the destination.
For me, this bit became complete muscle memory, and a bit of time to reflect and contemplate what I had learned. Almost a bit meditative.
But yeah... If it only ever felt annoying and cumbersome to you, then I can certainly see why the game wouldn't be enjoyable.
The autopilot does not work. On multiple occasions it caused me to crash directly into a drifting object, or veered well out of its way to dive into the sun.
Yeah, it's lacking an avoidance system, as Slate will also tell you, so just make sure there's nothing between you and your destination when you activate it.
Honestly, I also felt like it was boring starting out since you're just exploring aimlessly. Then after a while of just flying all over and looking at shit it starts clicking, the pieces start falling into place and the enjoyment of the game grows. Revisiting old places doesn't feel like a chore anymore because you're using new knowledge and instead of aimlessly wandering you're on a mission to explore a nook that looked off limits.
So yeah, if you started it and didn't get far it sucks, if you finished it then it's amazing.
Not everyone is the exploration type. Just saying, I love outer wilds.
Just recently, Daft Punk's album Homework.
I like the song Around the World and decided to listen to the rest of the album. It was awful! It was electronic dance music, but was so boring and repetitive it almost felt bored with itself.
I then listened to their album Discovery. WOW! What a difference. So much energy and movement. It's a complete and total 180 to Homework.
Homework is ok, but Discovery is their masterpiece.
The Alive 2007 live album is also very good.
I was an obsessive fan as a kid and had to (try to) defend this shit:
WHERE'S THE DAMN LAMB, GARTH!?
For some of us outside his fandom, that was the most interesting thing he ever did.
As a fan, I also forced myself to find things to like about it.
It would have made more sense if the supposed movie (The Lamb) ever actually existed. As it stands, it will forever look a lot like some kind of psychotic breakdown.
He even did SNL like that. :(
And YES, I do still like him. I can't help it. Even after the Facebook video. He was a god to little me and a big part of my childhood.
Everything Everywhere All At Once. People hyped it, I watched it and thought it started out OK and then just became a stupid mess. And I really like off beat movies.
The first MCU Doctor Strange movie. To be fair, I collected the comics when I was a kid, so I had high expectations. I was bound to be disappointed. I saw it on Election Day in 2016, so an all-around shitty day.
Star Citizen. I'm less disappointed in the tech demo than how Chris Roberts has handled the business end of it.
I grew up on Wing Commander, Privateer, Starlancer, and Freelancer. I still have all those games on physical media with original boxes. And the Wing Commander CIC is the one website I still visit daily since 1997-ish. So when Roberts pitched a new space game back around 2012 I was thrilled. Well, we all know how that turned out. I've given up waiting for any release of Star Citizen and Squadron 42.
I know everyone hates games publishers but this was a perfect example of a publisher untangling a mess. Microsoft bought Roberts' company and immediately dialed back the unworkable ambition, put Roberts in a consulting role where he didn't have a final say over anything, and actually got the game finished and released.
Star Citizen is what happens when the same guy who made such an intractable mess of development discovers an infinite money glitch as long as he never stops developing and never releases a full game.
The Korean Netflix adaptation of one of my favourite Japanese books called 終末のフール (shūmatsu no fūrū, roughly 'translate to fools in the end of times'). The book was about a collection of stories told from the perspectives of different residents of an apartment building in a world that's come to accept the fact that a planetoid is going to destroy the Earth in a few years. Some struggle to decide whether to have a child or not. Some question whether there's even a point going to school. Everyone has hard decisions to make but they're all oddly cool with the fact that their time on Earth is limited. They felt enlightened to me because I think most of us spend our days ignoring the finiteness of our lives.
On the other hand, the K-drama was a generic apocalypse survival show. Everyone just screaming and yelling. At least, that's how it started off as and I lost interest immediately. Even the English title was stupid—Goodbye Earth. Ugh.
Since I'm already thinking of Spongebob, I'll say that the Sponge Out of Water movie was the first large-scale disappointment that I experienced from a delivery perspective.
All of the advertisement showed almost entirely the scenes where they were, per the title, out of water. Once out of water, per the title, Spongebob and the crew were 3D, superimposed into the real world, and they had superpowers. It should've been great.
In the actual movie, they did not become "out of water," per the title, until approximately the last 20 minutes of the movie, if my memory serves me correctly.
I was also a bit disappointed with Avatar: The Legend of Korra. It's not a bad show—it's just that The Last Airbender set the bar so high, and TLOK did not measure up.
I, Robot.
I'm a huge Asimov fan, and pretty much the only thing it shared with the story is the name and that robots exist.
Same with the Foundation show. Could probably have been a nice science fiction show with any other name and with different character names, but for some reason (probably marketing?) they just had to ruin it for Asimov fans.
Nitpicking a bit, though, I Robot (the book) isn't a story, it's an anthology of short stories in which Asimov plays with the three laws, mostly to torture Powell and Donovan in entertaining ways (I'd kill for a good Powell and Donovan miniseries!) or to show how smart and unemotional Susan Calvin was, so it's hard to see how it could be adapted except as an anthology series.
Same with Foundation, really, though at least that one has an overall storyline. Possibly even more difficult to adapt, though, because other than Sheldon's hologram once an episode and possibly Eto Demerzel / R. Daneel Olivaw if you're being excessively liberal with the adaptation there's no characters to get attached to... (anthology series with no persistent characters have worked occasionally, though, so maybe just do that).
I watched 2 episodes of the foundation and was so frustrated on how completely different it was that I just can't watch more. I also get mad when I think of it. Ugh...
Same. It's doubly disappointing because there's clearly material for an interesting science fiction show in there (what they did with the Cleon clones would have been quite interesting in another series), but it's all ruined by the completely wrong Foundation references.
They managed to ruin what could have been a great adaptation of a great classic and what could have been an interesting original series at the same time, the bastards.
Ah, it's been a hot minute since I read through all of his works, I the story/anthology backwards.
I haven't watched Foundation yet, but I've said for years that a live adaptation would be almost impossible to pull off.
But an anthology series for I, Robot would have been amazing.
Cyberpunk 2077. Hands down.
Disappointed doesnt even fully encapsulate my feelings throughout knowing this games existance
Heres a list of a 100 words that describe what I felt at various stages; Since its been announced all the way to the last hour I sunk into playing this game
7 years of developement time for one of the worst releases in gaming history
Not even an RPG as orignally promised, just another futuristic shooter.
Just missed damn near every mark, I'd time machine back just to tell myself to let that game go
Have you played it? Like after the stability fixes it’s probably one of the best modern rpgs.
From start to finish, and its not that I didn't have fun with it after they made it stable. Its that fact that as someone who is heavily into the genre of cyberpunk and love rpg gameplay with wide range of customization and choosing your own adventure in a content rich world, it was underwelming for all the hype.
At first, it was severly lacking, not getting what was a major selling point for what could of been a revolutionary AAA cyberpunk game was a big slap in the face for peeps like me who waited so long to play the game.
Sure its fun now, it was fun even with the hilariously game breaking glitches; however, thats not what was promised and that disappointing part of the experence cant be push asided
thanks for the dictionary piece! i watched a lot of videos but it didnt get me.
I'm kind of annoyed that it's still used as a benchmark performance basis despite the game coming out in a buggy and subpar visual state lol.
Batman Arkham Knight being peak visual fidelity a decade later is really not so funny anymore when no one seems to use actual high fidelity games to compare instead of the latest EA or Ubisoft slop.
FDR American Badass.
It's a B-movie starring Barry Bostwick as Franklin D. Roosevelt, fighting against Nazi werewolves with a heavily weaponized wheelchair.
The trailer was hilarious. And then I actually watched it with a few friends for one of our monthly film nights.
You know when someone tries way too hard to be edgy and vulgar and it goes from funny to downright uncomfortable? This was like the film equivalent of that. Some scenes genuinely drag on way too long because Bostwick needs to crack another half-a-dozen sex jokes. He genuinely comes across as lecherous, creepy and giving me Chevy Chase vibes (not in a good way.)
We made it about 30 minutes through the film until we had to switch it off because it was just so bad. And I genuinely had to apologize to everyone for even nominating this movie.
You quit too early! It totally redeemed itself by the end!
Just kidding, I've never even heard of it, but your review of it made me want to check it out right away. It's sounds like my kind of movie.
I knew a Piccolo once.
Europa: The Last Battle
Thought it was a different perspective on WWII with unseen information.
Nope, just nazi propaganda. I couldn't verify a single thing they said. (Or I could verify that they were false)
I could only watch 2 episodes before I called it quits.
The liam neeson wolf depression movie. " The grey" Boring circuitous meaningless misery porn
The best thing we got from that film was Harmon's Neeson impression.
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Concept was great but I really didn't like how the story developed past book 1. I know the series has its fans, but it's a big nope for me.
I'm certainly one of those fans.
I read His Dark Materials way back, when I was perhaps 13, and that was probably the right time in my life to read it because I'd never been as emotionally invested in a character before as I was in Lyra.
I genuinely feel like reading that trilogy made me a better person, weird to say.
I haven't read the books in a long time, but they have a place on my bookshelf in recognition of what they meant to adolescent me.
I guess books fall in the "whatever" category :P I was majorly disappointed by The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. I actually enjoyed reading about 85% of it, but the ending completely ruined it for me.
Coming out of a world war vs going into one.
I still remember the opening of that book as being absolutely marvelous, but I can't remember the ending lol.
Still Life with Woodpecker may be something you'd enjoy, different, but they're linked in my brain.
I read the book Flashforward.
Then I watched the TV adaptation
Obi Wan Series, Star Wars 8, the movies series "road to...", Starlight express (i kinda expected a bit more. Its still amazing but it was just so build up to be this fantastical spectacl), lunar eclipses, blue moons, and the arms museum in portsmouth UK
Starlight Express was great when I went ... maybe it changed over time, though.
Not as good as Wicked, but on par with, say, Avenue Q.
I watched it in 2021 when did you?
Umm ... 2012 I think
Ah yeah then it makes sense. They change cast and directory every now and then
Yeah. i imagine the main performers have knackered knees after a couple of years!
65 was such a missed opportunity. It's about a guy who crash lands on Earth right before the asteroid that kills the dinosaurs. Spoiler alert: he escapes just in time to avoid the asteroid. It's just a generic survival movie with generic monsters. Waste of a premise. It should have shown the beautiful side of the dinosaur world and made us sad when they died
Mewgenics. Just.. good lord
What was wrong with Mewgenics?
I really dislike how you have to spend 5-10 minutes preparing for every run, managing items and cats. The classes don't really feel special and the items are incredibly boring. The namesake of the game doesn't give you nearly enough feedback. Breeding just comes across as frustrating.
Random events hurt you way more than they help. Maps are confusing to look at much of the time and tactical view doesn't help much. Runs take too long and you are forced to put way, way too much on the line to make progress.
Dragon's Dogma 2.
Loved the first one. Only negative I had seen about DD2 was the performance wasn't great. It's fucking dookie. Tons of great ideas that aren't executed well or for more than a single, short-as-fuck quest and then never used again.
The best part of the game is the Sphynx; and even those puzzles are a bit stupid toward the end. Like needing to remember where the very first medallion thing you picked up was. By the time you'd realistically find the Sphynx without any external guidance, you'd have found a ton of those fuckers and you sure as shit wouldn't think to mark down where after the fact.
Combat gets repetitive quick as enemies spawn constantly, and this includes big shit like griffons that can literally fly in while you're approaching the end of a long journey and snatch you up and carry you across the damn world to their nest.
Every little thing you do has some long-winded animation you can't cancel tied to it, and NPCs walking along roads constantly stop you to initiate meaningless dialogue; it doesn't just not respect your time, it pisses on it.
And to top it all off the story is stupid, short, and ends abruptly before you even know what the hell is really going on. This is including what little extra you can get after a NG+ cycle which makes it even more annoying that you are required to do the whole fucking game twice to still get a shitty ending that doesn't answer a single question you might have about the events of the plot.
I fucking hate this game.
Dragon Age 2 just that one at some point it was unbearable. 1 and 3 (inquisition) are awesome.
cant think of anything other atm (but probably incoming)
Enter the Void, kept hearing "so deep" and "a journey" and "perfect stoner movie"
It was self-important navelgazing - the movie - one of the only movies I stopped watching cause it just pissed me off
And I've watched Nazis at the Center of the Earth, and Postal
So much of the streamed content that we had zero hesitation unsubscribing from all of them, a few years ago. So far, we don't feel like we're missing out on much as the little quality productions that somehow escape the global neutering that is going on over there, well if we can't get them on disc or elsewhere... too bad but there are still countless amazing productions available on discs it's not like we're short content-wise ;)
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I found that movie simultaneously really good and really bad. Somewhere under there is a deep story about colonialism, but it's really poorly executed
Payday 3. I had 2k hours in Payday 2, done every heist on death sentence one down and when the beta for Payday 3 came out my friends and I tried it and wow it was bad. We tried it again after it came out and had a few patches and it's still bad.
Yeah, Payday 2 used to be my friend group’s go-to “we don’t know what we want to play, so we’ll just default to this” game. Easily have like 2k hours, just from chilling with friends after work. And somehow, Payday 3 just completely failed to grab our attention.
Cowboy Bebop. Not even the Netflix adaptation (which I haven't seen), but the original. I got told by so many people that it was the best anime series ever, but I just couldn't connect with it.
I'd maybe say it's because I prefer more optimistic stories, but then I started reading Warhammer 40k books last year, so maybe I just have trash tastes.
I started with the Eisenhorn omnibus, followed by Ravenor. Currently I'm nearing the end of Gaunt's Ghosts (I think). I'm not sure where I'm going after that.
That's the good stuff. You can round it out with the Cain books.
I agree.
I don't hate it, it wasn't bad. It just didn't wow me to live up to the hype
The One Piece Live Action proves that it can work somehow. Before that, plenty of live action version produced in Japan has decent reputation, like the Rurouni Kenshin and Death Note series. On the western side, Alita Battle Angel and Speed Racer was also received well.
I dunno, live-action Fullmetal Alchemist was pretty ass.
Of course, there are plenty of terrible adaptations, but not all are.
The only good thing about Dragonball Evolution was that it was so bad that it brought Akira Toriyama out of retirement.
I still can't understand why the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender exists.
The DnD movie. It's just Marvel slop with a couple weak jokes/references.
Hard disagree from my end
I don't disagree that it was using James Gunn's formula for Guardians of the Galaxy, but I don't see that as a downside.
Every TTRPG devolves into silly, campy jokes. From the trailers, the movie was setting itself up to be just that and lived up to it.
And this is coming from someone who's moved on from D&D for other games years ago and wants to see WotC fall
The percy jackson movie. I couldn't finish it.
Eyes Wide Shut, Billy Bat, and in general every thriller story that ditches the text in favor of the subtext
Eyes Wide Shut was such a good movie though. Do you like other Kubrick films?
I did like it very much actually, but I think the second half was dragged out hinting at information that was already obvious. I did watch other Kubrick moves but I was a little kid and I don't remember much
I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards.
The last Divergent book. I want to like the Divergent series more. The authour was inspired by a lot of things I like. But I think she wrote the first two books without a thought-out plan for the third. They leave the city and you expect there to be some big purpose for divergents in the outside world and then we just get a lot of nothing. We get an explanation for the factions that make them make even less sense than before.
Her newer books are better.
The movie version of The House with a Clock in its Walls.
Oh, most of them.
I'll name one for those three categories:
Seconding the APC album. It had a few OK tracks, but the album as a whole was light-years behind 13th Step or Mer de Noms.
In a similar vein, I find the newest Tool album a bit disappointing too.
Every Resident Evil movie.
You know whats funny? I was way too old before I realized that the movies had anything to do with the games.
invincible season 2-4, the animations are pretty subpart compared to the first one. part of the blame is hiring expensive celebrities to do VA, and letting ROP suck the budget out of the other shows.
Most of the major series. Lost, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad… what contrived situation can writers either a) use as shock factor, or b) make the situation worse in some incredibly unlikely way. Throw in a dose of shitty relationships, too. While not actually putting a ton of effort into plot, wit, thinking characters instead of reactionary ones, or original ideas. They’re soap operas with varying degrees of violence that get worse writing as the show carries on.
Destruction's Least Successful Human Cannonball
The mortal kombat 2 movie that came out recently, it was an empty CGI fest, with little focus on combat or the gore from the original games
Assassin's Creed has been going downhill since Revelations. The movie wasn't good either.
I'm still mad about Interstellar
The movie birdman!
I read about it as an piece of art and what I saw was simply boring.
I might not have understood it or have been in the wrong state of mind, idk.
Forza Horizon 6. Saw a whole bunch of videos of people going ga ga for it. Was excited. It finally releases proper on steam, and it doesn't work with a wheel. The cars feel AWFUL, more like hovercrafts than cars. The super corporate, cheesy bullshit "story". Very glad I bought on steam so I can get my seventy fucking dollars back. What a shitshow. A very, very pretty shitshow.
I was considering it. Not anymore. Thanks!
Season 3 of Forever Knight. An embarrassing, cartoonish end to a good show with a great premise.
The Fifth Element.
I first heard about it in the late nineties or early noughties, and I wanted to see it ever since, because liked its aesthetics and science-fiction in general, but for whatever reason, I didn't end up seeing it until last year. But wow, what a terrible film.
What made it terrible for you?
If I had to describe it in terms of individual issues:
I'm a bit wary of critiquing things like this, though, because when I like something, I'm also a lot more forgiving of its flaws, so when I don't like something, it feels like a rationalisation to convey it like this. But it's the best I got without resorting to onomatopoeia.
On the positive side, I did quite like the look of the film and the fact that the protagonist and the antagonist never actually meet or have much awareness of each other tickled me. Also, for some reason I just couldn't hate Ruby.
Ruby Rhod stole that show, but you're right that the concept art is the best creative aspect of the production.
The script is more style than substance, but in fairness you'd need a lot of substance to balance that equation. All of that is basically thanks to Moebius.
The icky stuff makes sense in retrospect, Luc Besson has allegations.
Those are all very valid critiques. Particularly male behaviours around Leeloo, lol.
YouTube channel 'Pop Culture Detective' produced a brilliant piece abpyt the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope.
Definitely worth a watch if anyone hasn't seen it: https://youtu.be/0thpEyEwi80
Fair enough.
Rezero S2. It is straight up ass.
Oppenheimer. Nolan movies are my favorites, but that was boring as fuck.
Jujutsu Kaisen.
Shittiest piece of shit to ever shit on my shitty tv.
It's been recommended to me by multiple people as absolutely incredible, and halfway into the first season it's just kind of okay.
I wouldn't say I hate it, but I'm wondering if it gets better or if I'm just not getting why people like it.
I watched until the second season. I watched the first ep of 3rd season and decided I can't anymore.
I was a bit too harsh in my comment. It's not that shitty. It has incredible animation, for instance.
But other than that, I found nothing likable about the series. It has a thin plot which makes excuses for characters to fight each other. There is no really good message or anything. It's just endless fighting. I understand it's supposed to be action oriented. But it basically has nothing that makes it worth watching except the action. I watched it only cuz it's super popular.
The sabotage is done by design, even good ones get ruined so that the novel one gets attention and gets sold else people watch stuff on repeat which makes less money and less reasons for industry to produce and sell content.
Spirited Away was too cringy and it had no consistent worldbuilding and therefore no consistent stakes, it just felt like a list of things happening for no reason, kind of like a dream.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for your opinion.
Personally, I don't think you're wrong, but that's also not really the point of the movie. It's not trying to make a spiritual world with hard rules per se. It's more about growth and uses the spirits to set the stage for conflicts for the main character to overcome (with the consistent stake of losing herself/her identity)
Like many studio ghibli films, it's about facing pivotal times in our lives and overcoming fears so we can better face the challenges of everyday life.
My neighbor Totoro has the kids moving to a new place and dealing with a sick parent, spirited away is about moving to a new city, whispers of the heart is about first love and how to decide what to do with your life, Kikis delivery service is about heading out into the world. In many of these movies, the fantastical is used to present these challenges in a more approachable way, but the "stakes" are almost always internal and personal.
I don't get his criticism for inconsistent world building. Like you said, it lacks hard rules because it is based on Japanese folklore that is mostly mysterious in its inner workings, but it doesn't mean it is inconsistent.
Like many any media tied to a specific culture, it assumes a familiarity with the culture - in this case shinto beliefs and japanese folklore. If you're unfamiliar with those things then a lot of the rules and situations seem to be random and come out of nowhere.
A similar scenario would be like watching Scream or Scary Movie without having seen the movies they make references to. You might still enjoy the movie, but without the context of the films they satrize/parodize you won't fully appreciate what the movie is doing.
It makes it an understandable criticisim, accesibility of a movie is a valid complaint. However, I don't think it's one that necessarily reflects on the quality of the movie, but rather is a warning about who will appreciate it.
I think familiarity affects how much it meets your expectations, not necessarily how consistent the world building is. Saying it is inconsistent either means the guy doesn't understand what inconsistent means or they think only things that meet their expectations can be considered consistent.
How old were you when you watched it or how long ago did you watch it?
I watched it at around 17/18 I think?
Oh. Maybe watch other studio Ghibli stuff. They have some more grounded stories like
What is inconsistent about its world building?
There are just no rules, anything can happen for no reason
Not having clear rules doesn't mean it is inconsistent. If the same thing happens and the result is different, that would make it inconsistent. I don't remember anything like that happening in the movie.