#staying in this closed bubble between yourselves and considering others differently from you is useless

[lokihiddleston]

You can love the Loki series AND love the movies, and that's not weird. Just because we like the series doesn't mean we “didn't get the movies”.

You can love the series, and love all the Loki in the movies just as much. Just because we love the series doesn't mean we no longer love the Loki in the movies. Just because we love a ship doesn't mean, we don't care about Loki as character. You can love a ship and Loki just as much.

It's not because I love season one of Loki that I love season two, for example. On the contrary, I hate this one, because they dared to do the sacrifice thing again and be punished when he'd suffered enough. Loki is a character I love, even if I didn't like how he was treated in Ragnarok movie either. But that doesn't mean I've stopped creating/sharing about him into or banishing Loki from the film. I put things aside, because I love this character in spite of everything.

I like seeing him, sharing about him, discussing things about his own growth, the changes. Whatever the content. You can dislike things about a piece of content but still create and share on it. I like seeing Loki with someone, but I love him even more on his own.

You have to put water in your wine when you really love a character. It seems to some that since this isn't the "version of Loki" they wanted and imagined, it's “not their Loki”, sorry but it's wrong to think like that. There is no official Loki, or good version about him, especially with variants.

The point of all this is to love this character, nothing more. It doesn't matter where you prefer him. I've been part of the fandom for so many years: I've loved, love and will always love Loki, despite his background and everything else.

[maczazind]

Film Diary 2017: 'Blair Witch' Extended Thoughts

The following is an extended take on my feelings of Blair Witch (2016). It is an expansion of my monthly film journal for January 2017, the full post of which you can see here. This is simply my opinion and trying to have fun discussing entertainment on Tumblr. Feel free to agree or disagree; I welcome all takes and perspectives with an open mind.

Spoilers follow for 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and 2016’s Blair Witch. What follows is also strictly MY OWN OPINION.

As a child of the 90s, I very much recall the hype of The Blair Witch Project from the perspective of a youngling. While I didn’t necessarily realize the internet tie-in standpoint of the film itself nor how nearly unprecedented the found footage aspect was, I definitely remember how massive of a phenomenon it was. People discussing it, video store conversations by adults at the checkout counter debating the ending. And even seeing it myself…to an extent; it was the movie of choice at a sleepover at the time but I fell asleep out of a mix of boredom and fear after the creepy tone that was set by friends. Since the release, I’ve revisited it removed from the bubble that was the late 90s and admittedly The Blair Witch Project is far from my favorite horror film. My first time rewatching left me feeling jaded and disgusted at what people considered a classic, but multiple times since I’ve come to respect the simplicity, character focus, the mythology slowly expanding through dialogue and the ambiguous moments that fueled the aforementioned conversations all these years later.

While Book of Shadows is a mindfuck in quite a bad way, the Blair Witch hysteria died out never to capitalize on its fame again as the world moved on. For years, rumors popped up in the depths of the internet that maybe Blair Witch could come back in some form and those ideas seemed to be just that: ideas. That is, until Comic Con 2016. In one swift surprise, what was a horror feature previously teased & titled The Woods was revealed to be a continuation of the franchise all these years later simply titled Blair Witch. But while there was a solid reception out of the con, I was disheartened to see not only a negative reception from critics just two months later upon release but a soft opening weekend box office as well, despite a reportedly small production budget as well. At the time of writing this, Blair Witch has a Rotten Tomatoes critics score of 36%, an audience score of 31%, an IMDB average score of 5.1, a MetaCritic critics score of 47 and an audience score of 4.8. So…what the hell happened?!

Missing it the first time around, Blair Witch has hit Blu-Ray & DVD and I finally picked it up to check it out for myself to see exactly what I would think.

Let me start first by prefacing that in the last decade, I was unabashedly a fan of the Paranormal Activity franchise. Even through the upsettingly bad installments (*waves to PA4 and The Ghost Dimension*), I was enthralled by the mythology growing with every movie to a presumed climax that frustratingly never came (I have an idea on how it should end, but that’s a whole other topic for another day). But much like the “torture porn” fad of horror that came as a result of the success of the Saw franchise, the “found footage” aspect that was popularized again with the emergence of PA has clearly worn people out. While there were some very notable films to have utilized that method, there were PLENTY of bad ones that were shot in the style, made on a very low budget, made its money back but at the same time kind of burned audiences (*waves again to the URL ending of The Devil Inside). And to a certain degree I think Blair Witch may have been the very last straw for many in that respect.

Another footnote to consider in this entire ordeal is that Blair Witch had only TWO MONTHS from title reveal to theatrical premiere. That, in my own opinion, did not allow it to build up the positive hype it needed to stay afloat. I saw many tweets online and even knew a few friends who because of the naming and unfamiliarity thought the film was simply a cheap remake and not a continuation. If the film had a bit longer to establish itself in the casual public eye, I think there wouldn’t necessarily have been as big of a blowback as there was. Then again, that’s more than likely just the optimist in me.

But what did I think of the film itself? I walked away liking it…with some reservations.

Some of the initial complaints I’ve seen since the release are that Blair Witch is more remake than it is sequel and I can’t argue with the certain point of view of that. Yes, the path we find our characters on is incredibly similar. The source of found footage serves a greater purpose, they venture into the woods, get lost, start fighting a bit and it all ends at the infamous house. But at the same time I found it to be an expansion with different motivations that served intriguing. The adventure of the first isn’t eclipsed nor forgotten but the additional material thrown into the mix here helps expand the concept for some of the vague moments in the original. In addition, when you believe a scene starts to feel a bit familiar I thought that there was always something fresh to take away to subvert your expectations. The campsite, the tents, the house, the popular symbol of the witch; they all have something presented that at least adds something.

Taking a step back from that, though, the characters prove to be a mixed bag. It doesn’t help that as the plot goes along it burns the bridges of at least two members of the group. There are small details you can grasp onto for each character to flesh them out a bit but not really enough for their personalities to overly shine as the intense circumstances grow and take center stage. A blooming relationship pops up in spots between who you would consider the two leads of the group and it helps to care about that development as we lead into the finale. But with the threat of an unseen supernatural force lurking around, it’s also hard not to try and distance yourselves from these characters in order to prepare for what may be the inevitable.

Similarly the beginning approach feels a bit different with our resident film student Lisa actually going all out to prepare in very reasonable conditions. The arsenal of technology this time includes earpiece cameras and a drone that upon presentation interested me in how exactly they would be used. Likewise to the same problem with the characters however, there was always this feeling in the back of my head that any of this tech can simply malfunction and prove ultimately useless. Some of that does happen but at the same time it kind of feels like a lifeline for the characters being cut off to give it impact to the events unfolding.

With a sequel of this magnitude, it’s hard not to think that somewhere along the way questions from the first film be addressed. Namely the biggest one people have is exactly what happened to Heather in the closing moments. Here the answer is never quite given but can be assumed as much given how our new cast of characters close out their journey. And it’s just the first in a handful of additional material supplied. Before this, through dialogue we learn more about the legend of Elly Kedward - a piece of the mythology presented in tie-ins after the original - that leads to a eureka moment in the climax finale, as does an even more supernatural solution as to how Heather and company exactly got lost in the woods as well as the footage that serves as the catalyst for the entire film.

I do have to commend director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett. To resurrect a franchise so embedded in a certain era of pop culture is no easy feat but I feel they provided what could have been a solid landing pad to have expand upon even more had the film been a bigger hit. Wingard presents plenty of memorable imagery that I can still call back to with such clarity as it took a dormant world and added some fresh air into it. Barrett as well took what we knew about the mythos so far and pushed it even further to get me thinking without ever quite rocking the boat of the entire established story as some horror sequels can unfortunately achieve.

Blair Witch is carried out with such respect and love for what came before it, but audiences and critics simply didn’t bite. Perhaps it was the similarities and the shortcomings along with the lack of an open mind that caused the backlash. Or maybe I’m just glancing at this as more supplementary rather than the intense elevation that others truly wanted. It never tops my list of favorite horror movies nor is it my favorite Wingard/Barrett film (that would be The Guest) but it’s far from a number of frustrating features the genre has pumped out in the past.