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Shout out to Lelouch for being a 17-year-old prince protagonist with three main love interests and a whole school of girls fawning over him… and he’s so busy scheming and being a chaotic little shit that he just does not have time for any of them, and when he does, he’s painfully awkward but also (mostly) a gentleman about it, on top of (mostly) keeping his love interests at a distance so he doesn’t drag them down with him—trying to, at least.

The cards are all there for any other protagonist to go wild with a cliché schoolgirl harem and it’s just not that kind of story, despite the art style, despite all the gratuitous costumes and compromising positions and outfits they’re put in. Nobody would blame him and yet the one time he gets drunk and tries, Kallen slaps him silly and reminds him who he is.

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I still hate movie remakes but I hate them even more because it’s not the fault of 99% of the people who make the movie. And I want to support actors, VFX artists, costume designers, musicians, set designers, foley, directors, gaffers—all of them. But I don’t want these soulless cash grabs to make enough money to justify their existence so film studios keep making more of them.

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Saw this post that was talking about the CaitVi sex scene in s2 as a milestone for lesbian rep in big name shows. Meanwhile in the comments there was a war between the usual suspects of queer discourse:

Side A: All rep is good rep beacuse if our standards are too high we'll get no rep

Side B: I'm not giving shit queer rep a pass just because it's queer, I'm holding it to the same standards as straight characters

I'm side B

Funny thing is, I don't like the scene either, and it has nothing to do with it being a 'milestone for wlw' rather that it was quite poorly timed and there just kinda to be there, in Jinx's former prison cell.

This is the same show that juxtaposed Viktor going tragically nuclear when testing the hexcore while Jayce and Mel were fucking so at least the writers are consistent with their strange timing of sex scenes.

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Love how LS tried to create an "evil and selfish to not-so-evil" kind of character arc but, to be completely frank, instead they accidentally created an arc of a character who had never once in their life experienced free will (because it didn't exist under the TVA) being punished for it, getting said free will for a very short amount of time filled with a bunch of problems to figure out (you know, like the universe dying), and then giving up the said free will without ever truly getting a grasp on what it means for them to have it just to let other people, including people who bullied, tortured and fought them have this free will.

.....how am I supposed to read it as a redemption arc? By all means, Loki is the only character in the mcu who had never had a choice because he was the one who created the entire concept of it, so like???? And the first thing he did after getting the free will was like... saving the multiverse????

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I figured out why I didn’t like Arcane Season 2!

Randomly, while at work.

I do not have the energy or time to intensely rewatch all 18 episodes right now so if you’re going to harass me about some minute detail in episode 7 that I’m forgetting… go off I guess?

My issue when I watched it was a lack of connectivity between the buildup of S1 and the payoff in S2 and how the whole thing felt rushed. I did not like Ambessa but couldn’t figure out why. She’s a fine character, but every time she was on screen she just felt unnecessary. I know she’s there for Mel’s arc and is a threat to Piltover.

But the initial conflict that divided Zaun and Piltover wasn’t from without, it was from within. Zaun had been suffering under Piltover’s boot and the runoff of Piltover’s pollution for generations. They were disenfranchised and both left to rot, but still under Piltover policing. Their issues were never about magic or its existence, it was always politics between them and only them.

Enter the hex cores and Ambessa from Noxus. Having the big resolution of the entire series, that felt like it was building up to explore the many different realms for the game’s other popular characters, to then funnel it back into a snake eating itself, with Viktor being the mage that Jayce saw all those years ago felt… limiting. Viktor’s “the solution to world peace is removing free will” impacted Vi and Jinx in that they’re all three Zaunites, but after all these years of bad blood, one team-up against a third-party military is the solution to fixing the relationship between Piltover and Zaun?

It took what I thought was going to be a political story working at how to give Zaun justice for all the shit done unto them and said “wait, put all politics aside we gotta fight these robots”. The show does not have a “everything’s perfect now” happy ending, but that’s a whole lot to be left to interpretation.

I’m still in disbelief that this was apparently the plan from the beginning, when they crammed just so much into this season. You open the entire series on a genocide that orphaned the two poster characters, because of systemic issues between two nations, and resolve the series with someone else’s villain while these two run support.

I don’t hate any of the characters, despite being a bit disappointed that they brought Vander back to just… die again, like they could not come up with anything better to give these two. Ambessa wants the hexcore and wants to take over Piltover. Great. Yeah, that’s a threat to Zaun, assuming she plans to make life exponentially worse for them, but it wasn’t the original threat to Zaun. Viktor wants to solve all suffering by mind-controlling everyone. Great. Once he’s gone, does everyone just toss their grievances aside?

Could season 2 not have been building up the extent of the damage that the hexcore was doing to both nations, giving them all time to understand that they’ve got to work together to clean up Piltover’s mess with Viktor as the villain? Then go and expand the world into the Ambessa problem in season 3, once these nations have built at least the foundations of an alliance. Nobody would have complained about having more show to watch.

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It's kind of wild sitting on the edge of the Arcane fandom scrolling past all these passionate posts in defense of specific decisions by the writers, while I'm over here with only one thought:

To me, it needed an extra two episodes to slow the pacing down.

So much happened so quickly, so many characters and concepts that showed up and then were rushed past. None in theory bad decisions, I was just left unable to get invested when the show was sprinting at breakneck speed to wrap everything up. Maybe because I watched them all at once where season 1 I was waiting with everyone else during the staggered release?

I'm not disappointed at all, instead I'm just here going "I waited 3 years for this? Oh, alright then. This is fine." I know this was the plan from the beginning, but it felt like it was cancelled and this was an effort to cram two seasons' worth of concepts into one.

The credits rolled on the last episode and I just felt nothing, beyond surprised at the body count. I think I was waiting for another "Guns for Hire" moment that didn't come.

Get mad if you want ig, the whole thing was underwhelming to me and I can't think of the last time a piece of media left me with absolutely no desire to dig further into why certain decisions were made in the writers' room.

Like, I like the characters, I don't hate the show now, I'm just not interested at all in rewatching season 2, where I will still go back randomly to watch chunks of season 1.

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So I just watched the clips of Viggo Mortensen on Colbert and something occurred to me that no one ever brings up when discussing the timelessness of the LOTR Trilogy: It’s not filled with A-list actors.

Like, if they remade LOTR today, you’d have Chris Pratt playing Aragorn or something. He keeps getting cast in roles he’s extremely unfit for, so, why not? And I know that those movies weren’t all unknown actors. Elijah Wood, Hugo Weaving, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellen—they’ve all had other films and works that they were known for and they were cast because they best fit the role, not to slap famous names all over the poster and marketing.

I know, “Wow, OP, LOTR is so not the only project to not cast big names for big names’ sake, like every movie ever before Shrek” yeah, I know but listen. Listen. It’s been now more than 20 years since those movies and I cannot separate Viggo Mortensen from Aragorn. He has other movies, but he’s never had a movie as big as LOTR since LOTR.

So many other actors will get their launch point from movie juggernauts (like Chris Pratt with Parks and Rec) and then keep showing up everywhere. I don’t care if Sean Bean was in Game of Thrones and Dominic Monaghan was in LOST and Sean Astin was in The Goonies and Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving have been in X-Men and The Matrix and so many others. None of them have been in Marvel movies. Or Star Wars movies. Or anything as big as that trilogy since it came out. Heck even Orlando Bloom in the Pirates movies stopped being in those movies in 2007 (we are not counting the cameo in the garbage sequel).

It would be like if Chris Evans showed up for Captain America and Avengers, died in Avengers, and never had another famous movie again. Sure he had roles before, but entire generations would see his face and only think “That’s Captain America". I mean, he still is known for that but that's because of 12 years of that role.

So. Yeah. Maybe I’m just sick of seeing the same faces, regardless of their talent, cast in every movie that keeps coming out no matter what genre it is or how fit they are for the role or maybe it’s just that I don’t like Chris Pratt or his characters.

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Can somebody explain Jon Snow to me?

Not that this fandom is dead or anything. I went down a rabbit hole of the last ten years or so of filmmaking where the general motive for story decisions seems to be “if the fan theories correctly anticipate the direction of the plot, change it at all costs to keep the suspense”. It was about Star Wars, but reminded me of Game of Thrones.

I didn’t watch seasons 7 and 8, only saw clips here and there and watched the whole thing for the first time earlier this year. I’m well aware of the fans’ loudest complaints but one just doesn’t make sense to me: Being pissed that Jon Snow didn’t end up on the iron throne.

From a storytelling perspective, I can understand the frustrations. He fits the archetype of the long lost heir, thus is story should end with him assuming his birthright as the ruler of the land. That checks out.

Problem is, Jon Snow as a person independent of this archetype never once gave any indication that he has aspirations of royalty. So everyone mocking his “she’s muh queen/I don’t want the throne” is, again, understandably frustrating for the meta reasonings, but… Jon isn’t exactly being out of character here, from what I saw when I watched the show over the course of two weeks or so.

This dude is humble to a fault and just keeps bad-lucking into critical plot beats that demand he flex his nobility and loyalty to his friends and his own beliefs, to a point where they get him killed. I don’t recall a single conversation Jon has where he longs for a station of power and endless riches and the respect of kingship, and the mortality rate of the leaders of Westeros don’t make it that appealing to someone like him anyway.

He never talks about how he would change Westeros or what about him he thinks would make a better leader than the inbreds. No other characters talk about how he’s really going places beyond the Night’s Watch and that he’d make a great king. Why?

Because for 90% of the story, Jon has no idea he’s the long lost heir. Since this IP is constantly compared to Lord of the Rings, let’s compare him to Aragon on only a “long lost heir” basis, and I’ll use Movie Aragorn, who’s much less gung-ho about his birthright, for familiarity’s sake.

When we meet him, which isn’t until almost an hour into the first movie, we have no idea who he is other than a competent Ranger who knows stuff the heroes need to survive, and that his name is Strider. Then without much fanfare, the revelations of who he actually is comes in waves. Arwen has an unremarkably dramatic conversation about how Aragorn hates being in Isildur’s shadow and how it gives him imposter syndrome—as in, there’s no dramatic pause for the audience’s sake for gasps of shock and awe. It’s just played straight. Then you get the big dramatic reveal for the rest of the cast during the Council of Elrond for a more concrete establishing of this long lost heir and what role we can expect to see from him.

Because we know from very early on in the story, and Aragorn and everybody he meets knows, too, his arc is constantly framed around how competent he is on a leadership level, and as a friend. He’s given spotlight after spotlight to show his prowess in battle and leading large numbers of troops in infantry and cavalry, is a solid tactician and strategist, and is the first boots on and last boots off the ground whenever he can be.

Skill wise, he’s shown to be an excellent swordsman and archer, or whatever weapon he can get his hands on in an emergency—but not OP. In the fight in the Mines of Moria with the troll, he gets knocked out by the troll.

He’s humble and friendly and always looking out for the little guy, always makes sure to act with the utmost respect to everyone he meets, even when they don’t deserve it, and is a leader who leads by example, on the battlefield in the mud on the front lines.

His entire arc is growing into these massive shoes he has to fill and accepting that he is the one true king. He goes from his scruffy Ranger outfit to the livery of Gondor for the final battle in all his shiny armor and velvet and gives his first real big speech to his troops—a true king to rally behind.

—

I did enjoy following Jon Snow as a character. He had a ton of depth and nuance and was constantly put in harrowing situations that kept testing his morals and beliefs and he has a lot of the same traits as Aragorn: Humble, respectful, charismatic, a bit of imposter syndrome, etc.

But since we spend more than six out of eight total seasons with the entire cast of characters, including Jon, completely unaware that he’s the long lost heir, there is zero development on that front. Personality wise, Jon is amazing, they pulled out all the stops, but his arc is just one long chain of act-and-react to the next obstacle in his way without much agency from him on what those actions are.

He doesn’t start his story on page one with a clear goal or aspiration in mind beyond to survive another day. A problem I found with a lot of GoT characters—they’re all just waiting around going on their side quests in the interim until the writers want to pull the trigger on huge plot set pieces, like the White Walkers.

By not having the understanding on page one that there is in fact a long lost heir (that wouldn’t just get murdered by these bloodthirsty savages), Jon is aimless, going wherever the plot demands because we don’t know where he wants to end up. Or at least, I don’t know.

He’s voluntold to campaign as the lord commander of the Knights Watch, he doesn’t actually want to do the job until he has no choice. He doesn’t want to be crowned King in the North after liberating Winterfell, it just happens to him and he has no choice.

And you’re telling me that somewhere in these unfilmed script pages is eight seasons’ worth of desire to be King Of The Whole World left on the cutting room floor?

So is everybody just mad that Jon didn’t fulfill his destiny as is written by the archetype taped to his forehead? Because wanting the iron throne was never anywhere as part of his aspirations. I’m mad he didn’t get it because it seemed they were doing so just to “subvert expectations” and not to provide a satisfying, unique end for his arc, not because I thought Jon got snubbed at the Westeros Oscars.

And if the answer is “it was in the books,” not good enough. HBO spent millions producing this show and for the first four seasons, it had incredible writing. They could have fit an explanation somewhere in there.

With the way they show ended, and I’ve only seen bits of 7 and 8, they could have still done so much with this character even with the late reveal of his true parentage. They could have had Jon reframe his entire worldview on whether or not he wants to risk his neck by going public with his claim to the throne, but he never did, all we have is what was written. There was still time to save this long lost heir arc.

So, yeah, somebody explain Jon Snow to me. I love him but he’d get eaten alive by Westeros politics and nothing can convince me any of these honorless backstabbers wouldn’t just poison him and call it an accident. There is no competent justice system of checks and balances in place. He’d just die in this cynical parade of grimdark misery.

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Frozen 2 is still a sequel that exists

Requested by @valentinerose529

If Disney released the BTS of all their terrible movies and bravely showed how such nonsensical plots came to be, with the best of intentions by the creators, people might have a softer take on disappointments like this. Frozen 2 isn’t a movie I was waiting for (certainly not for six years). I wasn’t a little kid obsessed with Elsa and I got really tired of all the music really quickly.

The only thing about this movie I was excited for was the new music, and based on the BTS, that’s the only thing they were banking on. So, with that in mind, this movie is just so confused with what it wants to be, I can’t even be mad at it for existing. It’s not the cultural juggernaut the original was, it came and went without much pain and hopefully there won’t be a third.

I probably have the same burning question so many other people who don’t like this movie have: You had five years to write this movie, and this is what you did with it?

There's certainly things I have problems with: Kristoff's stupid "Lost in the Woods," rinsing and repeating the "Elsa freaks out and vanishes and Anna must go save her (or nearly die trying)," plot, the botched twist reveal of the rewritten history, the underbaked development with the mom character to the point where Elsa was bawling at the sight of her during "Show Yourself" and I just did not care because the movie didn't do enough to make me care, and the self-depricating references to the hype of the original, making fun of fans' earnest enjoyment of an insanely popular movie, was in poor taste.

—

Unlike Pixar’s bad movies, where the plots beats and story elements are so interconnected that certain pieces can’t really be good in isolation, this movie actually does have really strong individual moments—the songs (“Into the Unknown” is still my favorite), Anna’s depressive spiral in the cave, the concept of the rewritten history, the new character designs, the concept of elemental winter spirits and Elsa being one of them—these are all great in isolation.

Put them together and they’re a hot mess. They wrote, performed, animated, and edited all the songs before settling on a story, and thus had to write their story around these really unrelated songs (quite similar to the first one, actually), and this is the result. It’s not a bad movie in that it’s unwatchable. It’s disappointing, confusing, and a little underwhelming. It’s not awful, because it’s not pretending that it’s amazing. It knows what it is, unlike the first one.

Thus, I don’t have strong opinions about it. I will still rewatch “Into the Unknown” on YouTube and everything with AURORA in it is great. The movie started out very strong, they just should have picked one of those plot threads to go with and make it a streamlined plot instead of mashing all these conflicting beats together.

The elemental spirits, the backstory with their mom that was sorely missing in the original, this uncreatively-named Enchanted Forest, the rewritten history—all of these deserved their own movies. Mashing them together like this leaves all of them underbaked and the story very scatterbrained. Heck, I’m shocked Disney hasn’t created a Frozen TV show to explore all those ideas and slapped it on Disney +. A little six-episode limited series, perhaps even with cheap 2D animation to plop your kids and die-hard Disney Adults down in front of for three hours.

The movie is better than the ride at Epcot, though, I’ll give it that.

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Young Royals Perfectly Understands Frustrating Teenagers

*Spoiler Alert for the whole series*

This Netflix-produced Swedish teen drama just wrapped up its third and final season. It follows the second-in-line to the Swedish throne, Wilhelm “Willie” navigating a fancy boarding school rife with toxic social hierarchies and a crippling addiction to dangerous traditions, while also discovering his sexuality. Suddenly, his older brother dies and he’s now the crown prince, when no one ever expected him to have this responsibility, including himself. His jerk of a cousin records him and his new secret boyfriend being intimate and so ensues three seasons of drama surrounding the chaos of this poor kid being outed to the whole world, and the damage of publicity on his relationships.

*I watched this with subtitles and cannot comment on the quality of any dub.

This show is incredibly frustrating, because its characters are frustrating—because they’re incredibly believably teenagers who stake their entire futures on a high school fling. Willie and his love interest, Simon, are in a constant struggle over Willie’s great expectations as the new crown prince and Simon, of a lower social class, having a great many demands over how he thinks he should be able to live his life.

The characters have a ton of depth and that goes well beyond the two leads. The villain of the show, August, the evil cousin, is a hot mess who can’t do anything right. One that absolutely expects to peak in high school and sail through adulthood on his family’s legacy. He’s also Willie’s spare if he abdicates the throne, a rather unique twist on the prince trope I haven’t seen very often. Willie doesn’t want to be king, but he hates the idea of August on the throne even more, and, if only to spite his cousin, strays way outside of his comfort zone and ignores his own wants and desires to make sure he becomes king.

Other side characters include the dudebro boys of their school, also all dickish aristocrats, the ladies’ side of the school, and Simon’s sister's relationship with these socialites and her awesome best friend, Felice.

—

*spoiler alert again*

These two characters, Willie and Simon, are terrible for each other. Simon is too young and immature to understand and appreciate the demands of being royalty in a modern setting. He gets upset at Willie for all manner of things—that Simon has to watch what he posts on social media, who he talks to, who he takes pictures with, what statements he makes, and his unrealistic expectations of any politician. Every time he gets upset, I understand that he’s 17, but I’m also scowling at my TV thinking, “What exactly did you expect, dating royalty?”

Willie, on the other hand, bends over backwards for this guy and desperately needs to actually attend his therapy sessions instead of angsting over his doomed-to-fail romance. They’re entertaining, but they are so, so stressful to watch, whether it’s their many arguments or whenever they start making out in a public place where they can be caught.

They break up, get back together, break up, get back together. In the 11th hour of season 3, Simon officially breaks it off and I actually cheered. I figured the finale would end with the sick queen’s funeral and Willie reluctantly accepting his birthright.

That did not happen. Instead, Willie and August have a rushed “all’s forgiven” conversation, he abdicates, and runs after Simon to be free of a responsibility he never wanted. On the one hand, yes, he never wanted to be king, that much was clear from the moment he found out he was the new crown prince, but on the other hand—Willie wasn’t the character who needed to change for this relationship to work.

Simon was.

Simon, who argued with him constantly over the conservative nature of the monarchy, for all the stances Willie wasn’t allowed to take because of his rank. Simon could have ended this season either breaking up with him for good, or committing to the responsibility of loving royalty, and the two could have looked to a future of slew of progressive changes once Willie had the authority to enact change as king.

August won’t enact shit. August who, upon telling his friends that he’s the new second-in-line, realizes acutely how miserable he’s about to be for the long rest of his life. I half expected this guy to not survive to the end of the season with how self-destructive he is.

It feels like they had a different direction planned for the finale and someone somewhere cut it down. That, or Netflix's "3 season" rule made no exceptions and they had to rush to the finish line.

—

Overall, they’re frustrating, but they’re also incredibly well-written teenagers. The constant pop/club music over actual score got annoying but it’s an exposure to artists I never listen to. The acting is fantastic across the board, as well, along with the editing and cinematography. The actual plot, up to the finale, was engaging and well thought out, with these two heirs duking it out in a cold war with the entire school caught in the middle.

Maybe I just don’t understand Swedish teenagers. I certainly can’t speak to if this at all reflects the reality of Swedish culture and living under a monarchy. It’s a shame that, in my opinion, it didn’t quite stick the landing with the messages it wanted to send, but the show’s a solid, if stressful watch, and a short one at that.

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The Reveal that Changed Percy Jackson

*Spoiler Alert*

I’m talking about the Nico vs Cupid scene in book 8, House of Hades. I picked this scene, even though there were a great many in the original series that defined Percy Jackson as a story far more meaningful than just “cool tweenage demigods with magic and superpowers who fight evil”.

When this book came out, Nico vs Cupid was almost all anyone talked about. Why? Because Nico came out. Nico, an explicitly gay character in a book published by Disney, in a rather high profile series. Nico, the little angsty brat displaced from the timeline, comes out of nowhere with a world-shattering reveal.

House of Hades is already the darkest book in the series and, I think, the most polished and successful with this tone and how it feels so complete. While Percy and Annabeth are in Tartarus, the constant clever and horrific callbacks to quests from prior books quite literally come back to haunt them. The others trying to carry on without them, the ridiculously high personal stakes, the drama, the storytelling, it spares no expense in this book.

The Nico vs Cupid scene was something else, though, and all these years later… I’m not so sure it was done for the better.

—

Independent of the Big Reveal, this scene does a lot of things we’d never seen before in this series, namely this: Cupid is scary, and no one expected him to be.

Percy Jackson, though it does have its serious moments, is the series where the god of wine wears leopard print shirts and the god of the seas has a fishing chair for a throne. These characters quip and joke even when they’re trying to be intimidating and Percy’s personality, snarky and sassy and very rarely shooting straight, undercuts a lot of the attempts at looking competent and threatening (and we love him for it).

They’ve fought gods and monsters and demigods and characters have died really tragic deaths, but for the most part, these serious moments all come when we expect them to.

This scene comes out of nowhere and for anyone who hasn’t read the book in a while, here’s the context: Percy and Annabeth are in Tartarus and Nico is kind of the de-facto leader in their absence, knowing the most about Tartarus of the remaining crew. He and Jason are sent on a side quest to go retrieve the Staff of Diocletian from Cupid and Nico is not at all happy about this venture, but we don’t know why beyond that he’s Nico and he’s never happy.

Right out of the gate, Cupid is not at all who we expect him to be and this fight scene, absent of Percy, is suddenly very serious. Cupid doesn’t quip, he doesn’t show himself, and he fights dirty. The god of love, not the god of war or anything we expect to be violent and dangerous.

He’s whispering in characters’ heads, throwing them around like ragdolls, and taunting Nico ceaselessly all in Jason’s POV. Cupid gets some seriously badass lines, too.

“I’ve been to Tartarus and back,” Nico snarled. “You don’t scare me.” I scare you very, very much. Face me. Be honest.

Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work—a quest that never ends. It demands everything from you—especially the truth. Only then does it yield rewards.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say Love always makes you happy.” [Cupid's] voice sounded smaller, much more human. “Sometimes it makes you incredibly sad. But at least you’ve faced it now. That’s the only way to conquer me.”

In all this, unfortunately in Jason POV, we’re primed only once by a previous god finally acknowledging that gays exist in this universe. This universe, based on Greek Mythology, famous for its not-straightness. Even then, audiences have spent 7 and a half books accepting that there won’t be any gays. No one is expecting this from Nico.

So when it comes, when Nico reveals he has a crush on Percy… the fandom lost our minds.

—

And I’m not so sure that’s a good thing, looking back. On the one hand, obligatory “we need representation,” but on the other, there was this one reviewer who knew what was up long before anyone else did.

She’d said something along the lines of raising damning concerns that Nico’s entire character arc was now defined by his homosexuality, that this scene frames all his anger, all his hate, all his rage and depression, about this one aspect of his character, and diminishes him because of it.

All these years later, I’m disappointed to say I agree with her.

This book series’ only major canonical gay (so far) is forced out of the closet with a proverbial gun to his head

Now, Nico likely never would have come out without that gun, but the way it happened, especially in front of Jason who he’s not friends with, showing Jason his memories because it’s not Nico’s POV and Jason has to see somehow because Nico sure won’t detail those scenes himself is... not good?

Jason handles it well, as well as he can given that this is Nico, and Cupid is an explicit villain so him forcing Nico out is in-character and not my problem. The narrative forcing Nico out is the problem—that this is a big reveal both to Jason and the audience is the problem.

The book isn’t new and with respect to when it was written and who wrote it, it’s not a terrible scene or terrible representation. But it’s not just forcing Nico out of the closet, either.

All of Nico’s character development is retroactively pinned on his sexuality

I get it. Nico’s… 14? 14 and from an era where being who he is was a death sentence, with zero education on the matter. Internalized homophobia is a thing (though Nico doesn’t actually seem to hate himself for being gay, he hates himself for crushing on Percy. Nor does he hate other gays or the concept).

Nico, though, is the one demigod who can summon any ghost he could dream up to teach him to hate himself a little less. He could have summoned the ghost of Freddie Mercury and what a dazzling mentorship that would have been.

The way the scene is framed makes it look like all of Nico’s rage comes from this one relationship, when it comes from so much more. He’s a son of Hades, a god no one trusts or likes and is synonymous with death, evil, and deceit. His sister, his last living relative, died on a quest as just a teenager. He has no friends at camp, powers that scare people, and is almost a century removed from everything and everyone he knew in his old life.

And he went and left camp *only* because of his crush on Percy? Not for any other reason?

When he does get his crush on Will, that only makes it worse. Nico did have friends, even if he didn’t believe it. He did have Percy and he’d earned the respect of his fellow campers after the Battle of Manhattan. He back-slid in HOH for this reveal, as if a romance is the only thing that could make him happy.

Cupid’s message is the narrative’s message: The only way to conquer love is to face it [in combat]

With a gun to his head, in front of a veritable stranger, instead of in, I don’t know, therapy with Apollo? There couldn’t have been any other way to fit this reveal in? He couldn’t have made his own group therapy session with other ghosts? Persephone or Demeter never sat this boy down for The Talk with a literal captive audience?

And that it’s a “reveal” at all, in incredibly dramatic fashion, a plot twist for shock value. The book couldn’t drop hints in Nico POV? Couldn’t casually state it anywhere at any time in the previous 3 books? Couldn’t treat it at all like this is normal and not a life-or-death situation?

I just feel bad for the kid. Nico can’t be the only demigod who has a guilty, unrequited crush. Cupid is forcing this out of him because that crush happens to be on another boy.

It’s in Jason’s POV

This world shattering, deeply personal reveal, and the character who’s having it isn’t even the narrator. Jason is a fine character and I know why it’s him out of everyone who could have gone with Nico, but this should have been solely Nico’s moment, not Jason’s commentary about Nico’s moment, being a non-consenting voyeur into Nico’s very personal memories about Percy.

Even if it’s not Jason’s POV to retain the surprise, it certainly starts to feel like Jason’s POV to retain the surprise. Jason can still be present, but even then—Cupid needed Nico to face Cupid, not Cupid and Jason.

—

It sucks because the scene as a whole, removed from the context, is incredible. The choreography, the pacing, the intensity of the battle, Cupid as a villain and Nico and Jason’s desperation to just stay alive.

Its impact on the series can’t be ignored. Blood of Olympus is no one’s favorite. It’s a terrible last book and not all that great as a book, period, but the ending?

Among other travesties, Nico confronts Percy, tells him he had a crush on him, and then *immediately* starts pining after Will. Percy doesn’t get the chance to talk to him, stunned at this reveal. They never have a heartfelt conversation about it, what this means for their friendship, how Percy never noticed or how this makes him feel, if he’s at all guilty for potentially leading Nico on and being a bad friend.

We get none of that. Nico just finds a pretty blond boy after, what, four years pining after Percy? One awful confrontation with Cupid and a few lines of dialogue traded with Jason and all his angst and moodiness is cured off-screen.

Can’t Nico go five minutes where he figures out who he is before he’s trading one crush for another? Can he not define himself independently of who he likes for just a couple chapters? He tells Jason after the Cupid fight that he’s over it, but… c’mon, he’s absolutely lying there, or he wouldn’t have been so hurt and upset and hesitant to reveal himself.

I love that he’s popular now, I love that he does have a healthy relationship (one that eclipsed the whole fandom for better or for worse), but the way he went about becoming popular still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Nico did walk so the rest of the series' extended universe could run. We did get Solangelo, we got Apollo being Apollo, we got a world based off Greek Mythology that stops straight-washing history. It's just a shame that he had to be forced out the way he did, and that his whole character is now defined by his relationship with Will.

[magnorious]

Cars 2 is Still Uniquely, Tragically Bad

Of course I had to watch the sequel. See this review of the amazing Cars for my inspiration to watch a movie 13* years old that is legendary for how bad it is.

And 13* years later, my opinion has not improved. Cars 2 is so bad, though, that it’s tragically bad. It doesn’t make me angry, it doesn’t leave me frustrated, it leaves me like an exhausted parent compelled to take their bratty child’s abused toys away until the kid learns to play nicely.

It’s so, so obvious what movie this wanted to be, and that was a perfect and logical direction to take this universe: Lightning won what I assume was the American racing championship, and, as you do, now he gets to compete on the world stage. Now, he’s competing against foreign models with unique traits and attributes that he’s not used to, racing not in a standard oval, but on the streets and all the twists and obstacles that come with it.

His villain is this new slick, Italian racer that everybody loves, who’s really good at what he does, and a jerk but not a dick (and there is a distinction, trust me) and Lightning’s secret weapon is his dirt-track roots.

I sat down to watch this movie only to watch Lightning’s races, because I remember really liking those sequences as a kid. Unlike Cars, this is not my feel-good, watch-anytime movie. I’ve seen Cars 2 maybe three times since it came out?

I think I watched all of 30 interrupted minutes of this mess, and maybe 10 minutes of that was racing.

Why?

The nonsense spy thriller plot that took over this movie like a cancer. I’m not mad at the characters for their dumb decisions, I’m not even mad at the writers, this movie got so mutilated by the producers and the Powers that Be that I’m embarrassed for the characters for having to exist in this story.

It’s not even that the spy stuff is bad, though it is contrived with the exact same plot that makes no sense in Incredibles 2: Villain wants to paint a non-existent problem in a bad light to remain in power, by creating a fake hero persona to build up the thing they hate, only to sabotage it to make their thing look better.

The spy elements, and seeing how they fit into a car-dominated world, was actually really fun. The opening sequence with Finn and all his gadgets, seeing the world expand to include boats and ships and oil rigs was very entertaining…. visually. 

It just should not have been in this movie. Finn and Not-Sally were clearly written for a different movie and somebody decided neither Other Spy Movie, nor Cars 2 deserved their own releases, so they mashed them together in the worst way possible.

That, and making Mater so dominant in this script that Lightning is relegated to, again, 10 minutes of his own movie being about him.

I liked some of the other elements. I liked the scraps of the other racers. I liked the existence of the lemons clashing with high-performance machines. I liked the visuals and Francesco, and of course I liked Lightning’s races, but the sum of these parts just don’t add up. 

Whenever those racing scenes got good, they were kneecapped when the movie cut away to Mater’s shenanigans like the movie was ashamed to show us something decent.

In including the Other Spy Movie in this script, there’s no room for other important details like: Giving the other racers any personality or backstory or rivalry and friendships, giving Lightning legitimate concerns about his ability to win on all these new tracks and what his journey is supposed to mean here, building up any actual threat from Francesco and, since he’s not written like a dick, just a jerk, some nuance to his character and *why* he dislikes Lightning so much (American arrogance, maybe? He was almost there already).

But most damningly, this movie has no soul. Yes, people complain about all the nonsensical earth-based details they included without a thought spared for how none of it makes sense, things that were so minor in the background of the first movie that they were just a passing curiosity which are now right in your face.

Those nonsensical details wouldn’t be so glaringly bad if this movie had anything else to balance it out, and it doesn’t. It tries—it has the plot about carbon emissions and the dangers of fossil fuels, but that’s the message of the *plot*, what’s the message of the *story*?

The plot in Cars said this: A rookie racer’s arrogance and self-centeredness gets him marooned in a podunk town for a reality check, and to gain the first real friends who don’t just see him as a shiny celebrity in his whole life.

The story in Cars said this: A kid who lives his life in the fast lane and thinks he can fill all the loneliness in his life with trophies and paparazzi attention gets marooned in a podunk town to discover who he really is, what he really wants, and who really matters to him, and the tragedy of the sport he loves and all who compete in it.

Plot and Story are two different things.

So, what does the story of Cars 2 have to say? Something-something the real friends are the dents we made along the way?

I understand that they didn’t want to re-cast Doc and as a mentor, it’s almost written into his archetype to die regardless of real-world circumstances, but having an entire movie of these two on equal ground and with equal respect, working together to solve a problem neither are experts in? That’s a movie I want to watch.

Assuming that Doc also never raced any European circuits. He’d spend the whole movie building Lightning up, meeting other grand old mentors and legendary racers of a bygone era coaching their protegés. Lightning would, in turn, make new friends, and new enemies, with those foreign cars and their unique perspectives, because the first movie was sorely lacking in giving any of the background racers personality.

The soul of the movie could have been about not losing yourself chasing ambition, knowing when to call it quits before it gets too dangerous, knowing that “winning” doesn’t always mean first place (harkening back to the original), and that “losing” amongst legends doesn’t make you a loser.

And, why not, keep the lemon plot, just rework it to cut out all the spy stuff. Lemons, cars that were engineered to constantly break down would have been an interesting contrast to dynamic speed machines that had real potential. Maybe make Lightning meet a bitter not-fan who, by the powers that be, will never be a racer (oh, wait, that’s Cars 3).

—

People make fun of how ridiculous the plot of this movie is, and it is ridiculous, but it had so much potential and what they did to it, this Frankenstein’s Monster that we got, is just tragic. They redeemed themselves a little with Cars 3, but you can’t erase the impact this sequel had on the franchise, Pixar, and American animated movies. It changed things, irrevocably, and not really for the better.

*year edited because I can't do simple arithmetic and blog at the same time

[magnorious]

Eowyn and the "Strong Female Character" debate

In the ongoing argument about Strong Female Characters (SFCs), the usual poster-women of “characters no one ever complains about” are the strong badass women from classic movies, like Elen Ripley, Sarah Connor, Princess Leia, and Trinity. Modern SFCs no one hates include Wonder Woman, every female character in Last Airbender, a handful of Marvel women like Gamora, Nebula, Agent Hill, Black Widow, and *some* of the heroines from teen dystopian fiction like Katniss Everdeen.

The attention paid to the women of Lord of the Rings goes, “Galadriel is a badass in her own right and the movies could have had more women, but the women we do have are great.”

And, yes, I agree, but I want to look at Eowyn in particular and answer this question: Would Eowyn, written exactly the same, in the exact same story, be criticized by today’s audiences? We’re looking at movie-Eowyn, not book Eowyn, for familiarity’s sake.

Eowyn looks a lot like the terrible so-called “strong female characters” modern audiences hate from modern movies. She’s strong, she’s skilled, she’s smart, she’s capable, and her whole story is about overcoming the stigma against women warriors and joining the battle in the end, and killing the great evil Witch King that “no man can kill” by virtue of having a uterus. She’s also one of… I think five named women in the cast, Arwen, Galadriel, Eowyn, Freida (little villager girl), and Rosie (the hobbit bartender).

She checks so many boxes, she’d have to fail in a movie written today, wouldn’t she?

I love Galadriel and Arwen and I love the argument around them—that SFCs don’t need to act like men to be considered strong. They don’t need to be physical warriors, they can champion their femininity and that in itself makes them strong. Their wisdom and compassion and wits, not just their muscles.

Eowyn, though, is a warrior through and through. She literally goes “I am no man,” as she stabs the Witch King, a line specifically and implicitly subverted by Wonder Woman in her debut solo film during the No-Man’s Land scene when it’s softballed to her with the line “It’s No-Man’s Land, that means no man can cross it.”

Surely, a 2024 Eowyn would be ripped apart…. Right?

—

Getting this out of the way first: Every character is written with depth and nuance, including the women, and, thus, no character feels like an agenda with a face taped to it. So already Eowyn has a leg up on so many other terrible releases lately. But let’s take it piece by piece here.

Eowyn is one of three prominent women in the cast

Yes, no arguing that. Why? “Because it’s fantasy and the author is sexist-” no. This is an author who lived through the World Wars, from a time period without women soldiers. Young men and boys being ripped away from home to never see their sisters, daughters, wives, aunts, mothers, best friends ever again is what he lived through and what this story is saturated with.

Could there have been scenes of prominent women nurses, or lady elves at the Council of Elrond or any member of the Fellowship? Yeah, sure, but it’s not at all a lack of women because Tolkien discounted women warriors. This cast is hefty enough, these movies are long enough, and they’re based on a book that’s almost 100 years old.

Eowyn is objectified by male characters and trapped in a love triangle

Yeah… the love triangle bit was weak. However! Eowyn was never bitter over Arwen and didn’t know she existed until Aragorn tells her basically, “yeah, I love her, but I’m guaranteed to never see her again,” so… can you blame Eowyn for holding out hope? It doesn’t at all define her character either, and she likes Aragorn not because he’s Protagonist Boy but because he’s a high-ranking, noble man who doesn’t bat an eye at her desire to join the war effort. She then gets Faramir, so, win-win.

Grima objectifies her, but Eomer, her brother, Aragorn, and Theoden, her uncle, all defend her. Eomer gets banished under punishment of death for standing up for his sister (among other things). She’s not the butt of jokes or slights or innuendos. No soldiers look at her with lust and desire. No one degrades her or belittles her or mocks her for being a woman. Nowhere do the writers get to satisfy their own sexism by writing in gratuitous insults and slurs against her.

Eowyn is repeatedly told to run from the fight and hide with the other women

Theoden has no living siblings and his only son dies off-screen. Eomer is (I think) older, but he’s busy being a general. Eowyn is Theoden’s best chance at an heir to the throne and he can’t let her get killed on the battlefield. Eowyn being told to hide is strategic, not sexist. Not only that, she may be competent enough with a sword, but she can’t have trained as well as the battle-tested soldiers to not be at risk in a nasty battle.

Also, at the rate men are getting killed on the battlefield, sending too many of your women off to war risks so much collateral damage.

Even putting strategy aside, Theoden loves his niece, loves her strong and pure and good soul, and doesn’t want to see it destroyed in the fog of war. All he wants is to see her smile again, so he can give her a world and a future worth smiling for. War is the “realm of men” not because they’re male, but because it’s a horrible, terrible, violent, depressing, scary place to find oneself in, and he’s trying desperately to protect her from it. Eomer tells her this explicitly in a deleted scene, that they’re only trying to spare her some horrific trauma.

When Eowyn does finally see real battle up close, she’s rightfully horrified and terrified and out of her depth during the battle for Minas Tirith. She’s not riding into war all smug and overconfident, and she’s not magically a better fighter or rider than the rest of the cavalry.

Eowyn constantly complains about being looked down on for not being a man

She’s not allowed to be a soldier, yes, but women of Rohan aren’t treated as lesser by the men. She’s not being teased or mocked, her station as the crown princess is uncontested, being relegated to the caves with the women isn’t seen as a time-out, but a necessity to make sure all the vulnerable non-combatants don’t get murdered and the entire kingdom of Rohan doesn’t get exterminated in one night.

She herself isn’t putting other women down for not wanting to fight, or putting men down to make herself look better. No one is telling her she can’t be a soldier because she’s weak and womanly. If she was Denethor’s kid, he’d be singing her praises right next to Boromir (within the context of movie Denethor, at least). She wants to fight, not because she hates her own femininity, but because “women of this country learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them”.

Eowyn single-handedly kills the Witch King because Woman

Actually, Merry stabs him in the leg to distract him first, giving Eowyn a few seconds to breathe and surprise him. The legend goes that “no man can kill the Witch King,” but it’s not meant to be the fault of men and instead the arrogance of the Ring Wraiths. These nigh-immortal spirits are so cocky and overconfident they don’t even register women on the list of potential threats, to their own doom. The legend also didn’t specify no Elves, Dwarves, or Hobbits, since “Man” is a race, not just a gender.

The Witch King is the Witch King because he was seduced by a shiny ring and a lust for power by Sauron. The “power of womanhood” isn’t the point, it’s the overinflated ego of the Witch King that is his downfall.

So Eowyn’s “I am No Man” is as much a “yay feminism” as it is a dig at his arrogance. It’s the fulfillment of this line by Galadriel: “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” Frodo is small in stature and worldly presence, and Eowyn is small in prowess and authority.

*headcanon that Sauron also hates the Nazgul and wrote in that little clause for the Witch King so he could get the last laugh on these snot-nosed, so-called “kings of men”.

—

So would Eowyn be panned by today’s audiences? No, I don’t think so. Another well-written woman who wants to learn swordplay and join the men’s war, and kills an unkillable witch king is Arya Stark. That “victory” went over like a box of rocks and no one hates Arya for it.

You can write women warriors in a no-women-allowed fantasy land. You can write them championing feminism without cramming an agenda down your audience’s throat, or insulting the audience for presumed bigotry. You can write women who kill the Witch King through a prophetic loophole. You can write them in a love-triangle and give them all the “women empowerment” speeches you want.

She is still feminine. She’s still nurturing, still has her wardrobe of pretty dresses, still sings at her cousin’s funeral and pines after men she absolutely deserves. She’s also a terrible cook and independent and not afraid to put creepy men in their places. She has flaws, she’s humble, she’s shown having fear. She’s not built up by stepping on her male counterparts, and her big moment isn’t detracted by Merry going “Wow! A woman! Who’da thunk it?”

[magnorious]

Pixar’s Cars is still way better than people give it credit for

Am I writing an essay on a kids movie that fell out of relevance after the last sequel seven years ago? Yes. Is it my favorite background animated movie to put on whenever I’m working? Yes.

It goes without saying that Pixar’s catalog is still topped by movies like Incredibles, Toy Story 2, Up, Inside Out, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, etc. Cars sat at the bottom of Pixar’s “best of” list until its sequel came out and people realized how bad Pixar movies could actually be.

But you know what? I love Cars. Is the story as deep and moving and profound as some of the others? No. But it was made with love and after what feels like the past 8 years of resounding “meh” coming from Hollywood and some of the most shameless cash grabs pretending they’re not, Cars remains my feel-good movie. It doesn’t have that classic Pixar “cry your eyes out” moment, no dead parents, no chosen ones, decently low stakes. It’s a good time, anytime.

Why I’m writing this now, though, is because of this: I knew already that the King and Chick were based off real racers, and Lightning’s “McQueen” is another homage, but I looked up if Doc was also based on a famous racer during my last rewatch and found this on Wikipedia:

Doc’s car model, the Hudson Hornet, was manufactured from 1951-1953 for its original run. In 1954, its manufacturer merged with another company and the Hornet was heavily remodeled to boost sales, only the popularity of the car never recovered. It stayed in production until ‘57. It was used in racing and that’s where Doc’s paint job in the finale draws inspiration.

But do you remember what his backstory is? 3 back-to-back Piston Cups from ‘51-’53, a crash in ‘54 that saw him rebuilt, and obsolescence upon his return.

People complain that they “didn’t need to be cars” in this movie. They’re not like the toys in Toy Story where the plot and message depends on them not being human. They’re not like the fish in Finding Nemo. They could have just been humans who drive race cars and it raises more questions than it answers.

You are wrong, Sir.

Doc’s backstory is why they had to be cars. They aren’t human because the story depends on them being machines – as Cars 3 explores more deeply. A human endurance runner can train to be the fastest, running against other humans with the same chances at success (ignoring steroids and socioeconomic opportunity). Humans aren’t running foot races against mutants or aliens where, no matter what we do, we will lose by nature of what we are.

Cars do. A car model is beholden to its manufacturing and all the complications that come with it. Cars are objects that, like toys, have obsolescence built into them. There is no “outdated” way to run a foot race.

So yes, Doc has a Tragic Backstory(tm) but it’s not just that he was some great master at the top of his game once that faded from glory like any human who got too old. He’s a car, and no matter how good he was, how many Piston Cups he won, the powers that be that made newer models with better mileage and efficiency and mechanics were always going to dethrone him.

The movie isn’t about him, though, it’s about another rookie. A rookie who lives life in the fast lane and thinks his time in the spotlight is never going to end when Doc can look at him and know exactly how wrong he is. Lightning is a race car too and, regardless of the existence of Cars 3, Lightning will also inevitably become obsolete no matter what he does to fight it.

I doubt the writers were going for this when they wrote it but that they’re machines is also a criticism of how we treat celebrities. Lightning is an entertaining story until the next shiny starlet emerges and, through no fault of his own, he’s kicked to the curb for the “new”. And that new will be cast aside for the next new and so on and so forth and the only winner is the greedy producer making money off their cash cow until they drain it dry.

Yes, the movie is about appreciating life and the things that you do have and “the friends we made along the way” but that they’re machines matters. Had they all been human, the movie would have lost half its message, and half the tragedy. If they were human driving cars, Doc wasn’t written with a disability so he could have, in theory, hopped back behind the wheel of a new car and still won against younger drivers. He’s not human, he’s a car, and he isn’t built to go as fast as newer models.

Age affects everyone, but a world made by machines that pits machines against other machines in an endurance test is inherently rigged when the machinery being tested can always improve.

It is unfortunate that both Doc and the King go out in wrecks (even though the poetry is nice) and the story doesn’t explore the existential obsolescence of being a machine designed to only do so well and be improved upon – even Lightning still has to wreck out of his big race in Cars 3 before he starts losing to the newer models.

But maybe having a Cars movie that does explore the existential obsolescence of a machine might have gone over kids’ heads. Or, maybe not? They pulled off some very mature themes in Incredibles with marriage problems and presumed infidelity that kids probably didn’t understand but still knew was not good for the characters.

Not to mention all the other wonderful details in this movie: The car-pun cities on all the license plates, the tire tracks in the sky and car-shaped natural phenomena, all the creative sponsoring brands on the racers.

How the “Life is a Highway” montage hits you over and over again with a straight road that cuts through the winding nature (the snaking river, the mountains sliced open to make room), industry that stops for nothing and scars everything in its path.

If you haven’t watched this movie in a while, do yourself a favor and find time to do so.

[magnorious]

Review: The Last Airbender Episodes 4&5

Why was Netlfix so hell-bent on adapting this show instead of making something new in the ATLA universe? Make a Kyoshi spin-off! Everyone would have been hyped to watch Kyoshi crush skulls between her thighs. Make some other avatar we’ve never heard of with complete freedom to do whatever you want with their story. The 100-year war can’t be the only conflict in the history of this world and the gap between Wan and… I believe Kuruk is the earliest-named Avatar in canon after him, is massive.

It would have been free from all the “the cartoon did this better” nitpicks and legit complaints.

If they wanted to Game of Thrones-ify it, they should have taken notes on how to deliver exposition. Opening the pilot spoiling the best reveals of season 1 would be like opening GoT with Jaime Lannister stabbing the Mad King with full context for why he did it, instead of waiting for that reveal when he’s confessing to Brienne.

“The Storm” was perfect, and you soiled it!

—

Season 1 of the original is the weakest in terms of consistency. This season has both “The Storm” and “The Great Divide”. It didn’t have the biggest budget and didn’t have the intense overarching story of 2 or 3 with the struggle over the Earth Kingdom and the climax with the Fire Nation.

So skipping and rushing a few episodes like “The Great Divide” or even “Bato of the Water Tribe” and just sifting out all the important beats wouldn’t have made too many complain. I didn’t have a huge problem with shoving 3 episodes worth of content into one menagerie because it still worked, even if it didn’t stick the landing.

But it just keeps going. If they hadn’t cut away to the Fire Nation scenes, maybe they could have reworked all this Omashu plot into one episode. I’m bored. I’d rather be annoyed, than be bored. Boredom is the cardinal sin of entertainment. They take forever in the Spirit World too with all these unnecessary flashbacks for Sokka and Katara.

Still don’t like Iroh. “It seems we are always getting on or off boats, perhaps that is our lot in life, Prince Zuko.” Wow. Sagely wisdom. I want that on a t-shirt. Totally.

*Side note: Couldn’t you keep any of the original episode titles? Name the premier “Boy in the Iceberg,” episode 2 “Warriors of Kyoshi”, episode 3 “Jet”, episode 4 “The King of Omashu”, episode 5 “The Winter Solstice”.

Aang’s conversation with Iroh in the crystal cave prison cells looks and feels like they stole it from “Crossroads of Destiny”, except that Aang is way more vitriolic than he should be. He gets indignant, but he never gets so judgemental.

When I said in my last review that these characters aren’t cartoonish enough — Bumi is supposed to be over 100 years old, as old as Aang. His actor looks 60. Costume is pretty, though and coding the kingdom of Omashu as Indian and the rest of the Earth Kingdom as Chinese implies they were their own kingdom for a very long time and got annexed so, kudos.

Bumi’s voice attempts to fill the cartoonish void but because everything else is so grounded, it’s just awkward. He got turned into a royal jerk, not just a crazy old man like he used to be. Also not letting the “Bumi” reveal happen, that even one of Aang’s ties to his old life is still kicking, is disappointing. This isn’t Bumi. Not to mention that Bumi, in season 1, would never let this happen to his city, or his prisoners of war. Manufactured drama is manufactured and we all noticed.

~Secret Tunnel! Secret Tunnel! Through the mountains! Secret Secret Secret Secret Tunnel! Yeah. ~

I am actually shocked they kept the hippies. Very well brought to life.

I didn’t mind episode 3 playing fast and loose with the episode order and content, but butchering the “Cave of Two Lovers” is a crying shame (and dragging it out of season 2, no less). The story of the two lovers (read by Katara, not the hippie whose name escapes me) was reflected in Katara and Aang’s journey through the caves. Romance has never been Avatar’s strong suit, but the episode was still entertaining. Now it reads like Katara and Sokka are the lovers, which is a *choice*, but no, they just bicker.

Iroh’s side plot with the Earth Kingdom soldiers, with this unnamed dude we don’t care about, certainly fills the more adult tone they insist on going for, it just doesn’t need to be here. Once again, the original got away with implication flawlessly, instead of preaching the horrors of war explicitly.

I can’t remember exactly, but Lu Ten was danced around as a topic until Iroh’s mini-sode in “Tales of Ba Sing Se”. We could see that he wasn’t all smiles, we knew the wacky uncle was a bit of a mask, but that episode showed you exactly who Iroh is when no one saw it coming. All this filler is just a whole lot of unnecessary scenes and dialogue hammering home a backstory done way better with far less.

And, that episode was in season 2. Once again, the writers can’t hold out on a mystery for anything.

*Side side note: For shame slipping a piano into the score! For shame! Get that Western percussion out of here. Maybe GoT is just on my mind thanks to that rumor, but the theme music for the Southern Water Tribe sounds a lot like the Winterfell theme in the beginning. Hell and gone from any asiatic influences.

“It wasn’t the crystals that guided Oma and Shu,” no, actually, it was. You just didn’t want to animate the wolfbats so you turned the gentle giant badger-moles into snarling beasts.

Oh, there’s Zuko’s sympathetic side in that flashback about Lu Ten. Nicely done, no notes. That’s the Iroh I want the entire season. I hear that Leaves from the Vine in the background.

—

Episode 5 opens with some ham-fisted exposition and wow, that was impressively bland. 

I… spoke too soon about omitting Bonzu Pipinpadaloxicopolis. My mistake. And I spoke too soon about enjoying Azula and Ozai. They’re both still great, they just don’t need to be here yet.

Because they have to make up scenes for these characters, they still say a whole lot of words without saying much at all – except that Ozai now randomly actually respects his son and chastises his daughter for mocking Zuko. That’s new. Ozai is all about “self-serving flattery and coy whispers.” Dude named himself the Phoenix King and invented a rank above Fire Lord for his own vanity. He would be a loser if he wasn’t so powerful.

Okay, the show got me. I actually laughed out loud when Zuko tried to bribe the Earth Kingdom tavern keeper and it didn’t work.

Nice to see they paid as much attention to the “Great Divide” as the Ember Island Players, but for shame about “The Waterbending Scroll.” That was a decent episode. They also skipped most of “The Fortune Teller” and carved out June and *man* is that some rushed CGI on Nyla.

Wan Shi Tong?! *checks notes* 20 episodes early?! His VA is great. Gravely goodness.

Iroh accidentally reads the script notes when he says “Zhao is already making his moves and we have yet to draw our tiles”. These two are aimless, leadless, and hitting plot points like potholes.

Regarding Aang dragging Sokka and Katara into the Spirit World with him, as far as I know only avatars and Iroh can enter the Spirit World. They don’t need to be part of these scenes. When I said the writers did their homework in the pilot, they must’ve read the SparkNotes for “The Winter Solstice”, and instead filled it with stolen flashbacks from season 3.

I take it back. I take back wanting to skip “Bato of the Water Tribe”. Hakoda never got the chance to do Sokka’s ceremony, that’s why it was Bato’s job, that’s why Sokka was left behind and so much older than the rest of the kids in the village, because he wasn’t a man yet. Are all these supposed to steal from “The Swamp”? They aren’t from season 1.

Koh looks great. That’s the best part of this whole over-long sequence. Koh. Even seeing Gyatso again doesn’t feel earned when this scene doesn’t need to exist. It’s not like Katara and Sokka are learning new information, nor are they the bridge between the worlds. Aang doesn’t quite feel like the “last airbender” if he can chat with Gyatso’s ghost whenever he wants, he’s supposed to be utterly alone, 100 years divorced from everything he’s ever known.

Gyatso’s speech is nice, if I extract it from its context.

—

This show is missing artistry. Some beautiful establishing shots and cinematography, scenes I can freeze-frame and stare at and turn into wallpaper – not to mention that once again, it’s too damn dark to see anything in night scenes.

Once again, the VFX is very obvious and distracting. I know the artists aren’t to blame, but, gee, had the whole thing been a cartoon, there wouldn’t be a need for realistic CGI.

Slamming all these episodes together like this makes them messy. The plot isn’t a meandering adventure filled with side-quests anymore. It’s not written like a show where you tune in once a week for a good time. It’s written like a bingeable Netflix property, and released all at once like one. They could have at least staggered the release to two episodes at a time.

I don't think I'm actually going to finish it. At least not now. I don't want to give Netflix the view thinking I watched beacuse I was invested. I wish it were as bad as the original movie, if only so I could make fun of it.

[magnorious]

Review: The Last Airbender Episodes 2 & 3

I still need to watch this show in a pitch-black room to see anything on screen during night scenes. Did you not learn from Game of Thrones?

Jet’s here! He shouldn’t be, but he is! Teo’s here! He shouldn’t be, but he is! And they’re both fantastic. Azula, Ozai, Mai, and Ty Lee are here! Wait a second….

—

Something I didn’t touch too much on the last episode that I’m going to now: This crippling addiction Hollywood has to ~reimagining~ beloved cartoons in live action consistently has the same flaw: It’s so *boring*. 

On the one hand, yes, I love the live action costumes. I love all the detail that can now be added since it doesn’t take tediously intricate details drawn frame by frame. However, cartoons, especially anime-inspired cartoons, take full advantage of the medium and frequently don’t draw *realistic* humans, they emphasize the features that matter like caricature.

ALTA not only uses caricature but the slapstick, rubbery physics of a cartoon world to hand-wave away the consequences of elemental fisticuffs. The expressions the characters make, their peak character designs, the exactness of every frame, even the less-detailed background shots of little gummy people with undefined details, these define the show.

So while the casting has been great so far, Gyatso, Iroh, Bumi, Zuko, Sokka, Gran Gran, through no fault of their own or the fault of the medium, lack the cartoonishness of the original characters. The cartoonishness that makes this show so beloved so the live action scenes feel… lesser. 

Also, because it’s anime-inspired, the fight scenes storyboarded and drawn in anime are incredibly dynamic. The way the camera sits and follows the action is beholden to no real-world physics because it’s all drawn and anime is particularly good at making spectacular, intense fight scenes. This show’s fight scenes, while well-choreographed, aren’t filmed like a live-action anime, and that also makes it feel lesser.

—

I can’t be the only one disappointed that every episode doesn’t begin with Katara’s narration, can I? They went through the trouble of CGI-ing the whole thing, so why not?

I was holding out hope that they’d still find the avatar statue room, because it was so well-animated and hauntingly beautiful with the buildup and all the eyes glowing. They kept tiny versions of the statues, it just lacked the oomph.

Or the foamy-mouth guy and all the kids enamored with Aang on Kyoshi Island, and Aang reveling in the praise and attention. That dude has become his own meme. He’s hilarious.

Still not satisfied with Iroh’s voice (not the actor’s fault), or Zuko’s, for that matter. He doesn’t quite hit the “I’m an angsty 16 year old stuck with an uncle whom I do not respect or take seriously in any way and refuse to admit that I care about” vibe. Zhao also doesn’t sound intimidating (though he tries and his physical acting is great). When casting all these roles, I wish they would have paid as much attention to the voices of the live-action actors, as much as their faces. There’s zero grit in anyone’s voices, even Gran Gran’s. Zhao sounds his best when his voice lowers as he narrates his letter to Ozai.

Humor-wise, this show sits in a weird spot where it’s trying to be funny only with one-liners (like Marvel) and zero situational humor. Sokka is the best attempt the show makes at being funny and sometimes it lands, I just wish there was more of it. It’s like this show is afraid to lose its “gritty” badge if any scene dares to be legitimately funny.

I do like the nod to the cartoon’s title sequence with Aang air-scootering into that statue. That’s the situational humor I’m talking about.

—

Kyoshi island (and their costumes) was good, lacking humor and giant koi notwithstanding. Kyoshi herself making an appearance giving Aang some sagely wisdom 50-odd episodes early is a treat, even if he’s suddenly excellent at handling the Spirit World with zero effort. They didn’t turn the Kyoshi warriors into insufferable girlbosses, remaining incredibly competent warriors that happen to be women.

In attempt to make it more adult, they’re starting to fudge some backstories and motivations, like Aang now having too much power to the point where the other kids were afraid of him, and the Sokka/Suki romance being far less subtle, and a lot more physical. It’s less sweet and more “wow, these teenagers are horny”. Katara did not witness Kya getting burned alive, her mother would never have let that happen. She’d left the tent to find her dad, and by the time she came back, Kya was already gone. It was tragic already, why make it worse?

**Side note, Momo is a lemure, not a monkey, please don’t give him generic monkey noises. They already gave you plenty of sound design for Momo, just use it.

Aang fumbling around in the Spirit World at the worst possible moment is so true to form, it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious. Him ending that trip by manifesting into Kyoshi totally kneecaps the moment during the Winter Solstice where he becomes Roku, even if it looked cool.

The Ozai reveal, though. Why? Just why? Did Daniel Dae Kim have X amount of minutes contractually obligated? Ozai wasn’t revealed for two entire seasons, not his face. They waited and waited and waited, leaving him silhouetted by flames and shadows, only drawing him from behind or from the neck down. This was a *reveal* because we didn’t know what to expect. Would he be as ugly as his soul? Handsome? Pretty? Scarred himself, like his son?

Oh. Azula’s here, too.

The writers of this show and Percy Jackson went to the same school of “Mystery be damned, let’s shoot our load right f’ing now!”

Also, Mr. Kim should have been Zhao, not Ozai. He would have made a fantastic Zhao.

—

The more Ozai is on screen, even if his scenes are good, misses the whole point of why he was barely a character. I’m trying not to use “the cartoon did X better” too much, but the cartoon did it better and here’s why:

Ozai is basically a non-character. Who *he* is doesn’t matter, he’s a bad guy doing bad things because he’s an evil narcissist. His actions and his orders are felt across the globe, though. So the Gaang doesn’t meet him (some ever) until the finale, but they still feel the impact of his actions the entire series.

Who’s Ozai? The guy who burned and banished his son and sent him on a wild goose chase.The guy who’s admiral murdered the moon spirit. Who continues to lay siege to the Earth Kingdom and whose daughter orchestrates its downfall. We don’t need to see who he is for him to be one scary dude. He doesn’t need all these extra scenes to prove how terrifying he is.

The original perfected “less is more” and Ozai (and Azula, and Mai and Ty Lee) just don’t need to be here. Not yet.

With that said, Azula’s great, what little we see of her. Ozai is great. They really seem to be having fun with their roles.

Episode three leaves me curious if all the kids watched the original and wanted so badly to make this show funny, and all the adults told them to tone it down. They’re trying so hard. Props to everyone doing their best with an IP as beloved as this one, and the massive shoes they all have to fill.

More missing humor: Bonzu Pipinpadaloxicopolis! But at least they kept the cabbage merchant.

Episode three decided to combine the Northern Air Temple with Omashu and Jet for reasons. These were two entirely separate plots and locations, but Teo and the Mechanist are incredibly entertaining even if they’re early. They filmed only eight episodes and I feel like a broken record when I say: If you hadn’t given us the wrong filler, you could have properly adapted the missing content. You can skip the Great Divide, though. I hope you skip the Great Divide.

The filler is entertaining. I like the easter egg of the Yu Yan archers training in the background with Azula, implying that she’s as good as they are. I don’t think Azula would bother mastering archery when she’s a firebending prodigy, but the scene is nice. The original Omashu and Northern Air Temple would have been nicer.

Can’t say I miss the original Jet episode and the second I saw this scruffy boy with emo hair in his eyes on that wagon, I thought, “This is Jet, right? It’s gotta be Jet. He’d make a perfect Jet.”

And I was right!

Wrong time, wrong place, but this is the first character who, upon seeing them completely out of their episode, even if he looks nothing like his cartoon version, he fits that character’s vibe perfectly. Excellent casting.

“Omashu” is so far divorced from the original, it might as well be its own thing and it’s buckwild, but it combines elements from three independent episodes and it works incredibly well, even if the plots still feel disjointed from each other, each stays their welcome as long as they need to.

The freedom fighters are amazing. Their costumes are amazing. As each one showed up on screen I was grinning from ear-to-ear. My only detractor is the slight-fanservicey nature of it all once Jet starts naming his team. No notes on Jet dropping his disguise and the slow-mo of the reveal of his hook-swords. One more re-write and it would have been flawless. Can’t wait to see this guy ambiguously pass away beneath Lake Laogai. He’ll be great.

—

I’m liking Iroh less and less every time I see him. He’s just not Iroh. He doesn’t act like him, doesn’t talk like him, doesn’t wax poetic like him, which is a shame because, behind Zuko, I’m pretty sure Iroh is the fan-favorite character. He was an entire generation’s mentor and this just isn’t him.

Zuko’s dickishness was also tempered by him being an awkward turtleduck. Here he’s just aggressive with zero moments for second-hand embarrassment. He doesn’t get bullied by Sokka in the premier, doesn’t bicker with Iroh, he just yells and screams. He’s not endearing in the slightest.

The VFX as well – I know the underpaid and overworked artists did their best but it’s very distracting when they’re so obviously standing in front of a greenscreen.

This show still does not need to exist, make no mistake, and I can see why the original writers left. There’s scenes I’ve legit fast-forwarded through because they just won’t end and I am bored – the massacre of the Air Nomads? Skipped.

With that said, it’s not the worst adaptation in the world, and everyone still showed up to do their best with the script they were given. Does every line land? Heck no. Are the fight scenes cool? Ehhhh, kind of? Is it funny? No, not really, not compared to the original. Is it for kids? I think no less than 20 people have been burned alive at this point so, no, not really. Not like the original was for all ages.

Once again we have a “but was it better than the first attempt?” bar two feet into the topsoil. Yes, so far, it is. At least it’s not like that other horrible adaptation that forgot it was an action-adventure story.

But Jet was awesome. If he carries this review solely on how awesome he was, so be it.

[magnorious]

Review: The Last Airbender Episode 1 - “Aang”

“Long ago, the four nations lived in harm-”

Lol nope. What is it with writers these days fumbling exposition? You had a template, and you botched it.

I nitpicked the heck out of Disney’s Percy Jackson because if you say you’re going to adapt a book, it’s not a very far leap in logic to hope the script might follow said book. But aside from the likes of Twilight, following the source material as it was written never happens.

Netflix had an even easier job. Netflix already had the show they were adapting in a visual medium. Netflix could have gone two ways with this: Shot-for-shot remake just with live action actors, or with an “inspired by” vibe that takes familiar characters, story beats, and themes but tries to make something new with their shameless cash grab.

So, they wanted to take a beloved children’s cartoon and make it gritty and realistic… okay. Sure. No one asked for that and it shouldn’t be embarrassing for any adult to sit down and *gasp* watch a cartoon. For kids.

The original remains amazing, top-tier storytelling, so instead of these reviews stating the obvious “original did X better, why didn’t they do it that way?” we’ll look at the show as if the original didn’t exist… unless it just goes the route of Disney and Amazon and slaps a famous IP on the title screen without making any attempt to stay true to the original just to get butts in seats.

—

We open 100 years ago in Caldera (renamed generic Capital City) with a pretty decent fight scene and special effects. The choreography is solid, the tone is way darker – and so is the lighting, I had to shut the blinds and turn my laptop brightness all the way up – and it establishes pretty quickly that this is Not Your Kids Cartoon Anymore, even if the fight is bloodless.

*Side note: That no one has a Japanese accent in the Fire Nation is… surprising? I know it’s not actual Japan, I know the original didn’t have any accents, but that they’re going for the whole “gritty realism” vibe and didn’t white-wash the cast, not giving them any accent feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Just the adults, even. Iroh had an accent in the cartoon.

The costumes are also amazing. The original is still a feat of animation but being able to see all the ornate detail in the costumes, particularly in the Fire Nation, is fantastic. The Water Tribe costumes don’t feel quite so lived-in. The colors are still vibrant, there’s no stains, no wear. They don’t reflect the weariness of a remote village still suffering the effects of a hundred-year-long war. Zuko’s scar doesn’t feel quite as gnarly as it could be, more like a very bad bruise and not the remnants of a 3rd degree burn (but at least it’s not on the wrong side). He still has his entire eyebrow and full visibility.

Sozin is amazing, too. Right off the bat he’s shown as clever, cunning, and violent. The original was limited by Nickelodeon’s censorship, so even though it was a kids’ show and they did amazing still scaring kids without showing the violence (like a graphic depiction of Zuko getting his scar), these are firebenders, and fire burns.

… Though if you’re twelve and watching this expecting a fun adventure, watching a man get burned alive in the first 5 minutes wakes you up right quick. I heard a rumor that they wanted to fill the Game of Thrones vacuum and, yeah, they went for it.

Is there a reason they didn’t lift the original opening narration straight from the old script? It was fine! It’s iconic! This feels like a student cracked open a thesaurus for their essay just to sound smarter. Gran Gran gets to deliver it and that is an... interesting choice.

They did salvage some of the original music, and hearing Aang’s theme and the foreboding horns of the Fire Nation theme redone was ear candy, along with the Sun Warrior chant in the end credits. During Aang’s escape from Zuko’s ship, however, the score sounded uncannily like the battle music from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

*Side side note: One nitpick. One little nitpick, I think I’m allowed. Aang cannot fly without his staff. It’s a convenient and logical cap on his abilities and there was no reason to not keep it in.

On the one hand, opening the series with the Air Nomad genocide establishes immediately that the Fire Nation is led by an evil warmonger. On the other hand, slowly weaving in that exposition over the first few episodes, culminating with “The Storm” took what we thought was a lighthearted adventure and made it so much more. That reveal in “The Storm” still makes it one of the best episodes of the show.

Gyatso is perfect. The casting is perfect. “Gritty realism” or not, they did their homework on Gyatso. The only voice actor that left a hole not-quite filled is Iroh’s. He doesn’t quite sound like the wizened old sage, just… a guy. Through no fault of his actor’s, he’s solid, he’s just not quite Iroh.

—

While the worldbuilding is fine and all the extra additions in the beginning are entertaining… the original cartoon was limited to a cable-bound, 30-minute time slot, with commercials. They did their best to pack as much as they could within that time limit for every episode and you weren’t left wanting. It was also animated and every single frame cost money to draw. Creativity thrives in a box and not having endless Netflix money forced them to do the best with what they had.

With all this room and time to kill on Netflix it loses that tightly-woven polish. Scenes linger and add in dialogue that could have been concise and short. This show marinates, where the original was multitasking in every shot – developing the characters, the world, the story, the lore, the relationships.

In the time it took an entire animated episode, this show front-loaded all the exposition and mysteries to be slowly teased and solved through the first half of the season. We’re not left wondering how Aang survived the Air Nomad massacre. We’re not wondering why he wasn’t there, we’re not wondering who he is and slowly learning him with each episode. Curious now if the “The Storm” episode will even exist.

When Aang takes Sokka and Katara to the Southern Air Temple, neither know exactly what happened beyond that it was bad, and Aang has no clue his people have been destroyed, that it’s been 100 years. This time, the trio and the audience already have that information so the oomph of seeing the aftermath, of seeing Gyatso, doesn’t hit as hard as it should.

The themes, the personalities, the motivations of the characters so far still feel like them, even with all the extra fluff. Aang remains a reluctant chosen one, a twelve-year old with too much responsibility on his shoulders – even if he explicitly ran away after eavesdropping on Gyato’s conversation about sending him away and didn’t just happen to be gone while his home was destroyed.

Everyone except Iroh, which is a shame. He reads less as a “concerned surrogate father figure trying to raise an angsty, bratty, entitled teenager” and more “old man who’s too old for his nephew’s BS so he patronizes instead of showing any genuine support.”

About the only major element that didn’t get the love it deserves is the humor. Aang’s abrupt “will you go penguin sledding with me?” right after he wakes up is just one of many missing lines. Game of Thrones had plenty of funny characters, a show can be gritty *and* funny and he’s still twelve, he’s allowed to be a little cringey and ridiculous.

For a shameless cash grab remake that lost the original writers and took forever to finally air, this is a lot better than I expected it to be. The script isn’t perfect and there’s some lines that aren’t well-executed, but no actor phoned in their performance and visually it looks amazing. The writers did their homework and, so far, even if they refuse to make it a kids’ show, they’re still making Avatar: The Last Airbender.