#Maybe I should write something sad happening to Cutthroat where he in some way is looking for comfort

[hisredhysteria]

Blood in the Water.

[18+ MDNI]

Note: I guess this weekend is dedicated to Cutthroat...? This writing is what I was working on for myself as my (now late) birthday gift, so it's self indulgent. Since I post the wildest stuff anyways though, I thought maybe someone else wouldn't mind reading this. Even if it's 10 years from now....if you're reading this and my blog still exists in 10 years hi omg- I should add it's in my usual style so I kept the reader vague, it's not that kind of self-indulgent fic—

TW: There is no 'real smut' but it gets suggestive. blood, knives, implied murder or NSFW (depends how you choose to see it I guess... I chose to see it as murder and you may be able to tell by the way I wrote it, but rereading it....I could see how it might be taken in another way.) The reader is being threatened by a knife, so I will not call it knife play. However, I will warn that it sounds like that. So then I'd have to say noncon just in case.

Summary: You decide to take a bath ...and how dare you take one without Cutthroat.

Rainy days were when most nightmare inducing incidents at least threatened to occur. From soaking wet shoes to moist humid skin, frizzy and matted hair would seem so small by comparison. They were a day like any other however, even if it meant they were a little bit different.

An arm snaked around your waist while the two of you slept, it was all the comfort you could have hoped to ever ask for. Something that Cutthroat couldn't easily deny you of, it was just another luxury that came along with the innocent title marking you as his.

A precious angel.

Tugged in so close tonight that if he pressed into you a little further, your organs would simply pop from your mouth and sides, an unkind sickness bubbled from the whispering heat. It was delightfully suffocating, yet another thing you could rarely hope to bear. Sweat built, sticky through your clothes as the fire like warmth of his body pushed so far into your back. Breaking away from his iron like grasp was impossible, could you have even asked?

You laid with your head to the pillow, parting your lips for just another painful breath. Letting in a heavy inhale that must have caused him to stir, you shut your eyes tight with anticipation for the worst.

"Cutthroat..." Your throat unexpectedly sore, still happened to work.

"Hm..~?" A sleepy voice hummed back to you, his grasp only provoked to be at its strongest. Loosening to explore your body for just a second, you felt his bandaged hand sneak its way underneath the hem of your shirt. Lifting it, almost. With the expectation for his hand to slide across your stomach, or even just lay bare flat, it instead desperately grabbed at the waist of your shorts. It had been as if Cutthroat only knew what you were about to ask him. Sinking in your own ill feeling though, you had to bring yourself to do this.

"I'm not feeling too well... Can I go to the bathroom...?"

Silence never sat long around the Murderer, it wasn't something he preferred. His hands only tightened now, like he'd refuse to set you free.

"..But...the sun's not up yet.. If you go now, the bed will get cold...." Cutthroat's half-asleep voice whispered back in dismay, his own breath still hotter than his body against you.

"I'll be quick, I promise."

A barely audible gasp and you knew he just had to be smiling. How pretty the word promise was leaving your lovely, innocent lips. Begrudgingly still in his own right, Cutthroat allowed his hand to release and slip from your body. A growing ache only worsening as he did so.

"You really promise you won't be long...?" He asked, testing your honesty for himself.

"Of course."

A careful eye peeked open nonetheless at your words, Cutthroat wouldn't hold himself back from watching to make sure that you'd make it to the door okay. As you worked to stand up, the dizziness encountered from both heat and lack of eating that night hit you all at once and you stumbled to reach balance. Your body was sick with temperature, but it was kind enough to barely manage without plummeting straight to the floor.

Your hips bumped into the doorframe, and that was when you realized, this quick trip to the bathroom wasn't going to be as short as you swore with a promise. Head spinning to accompany your hazy vision, you placed a hand to it like there was some way your neck wasn't holding it in place quite right. Your hand wouldn't manage to hold it in place either though, and the only thing you could do was support yourself on the walls of the hall as you reached the bathroom at long last.

You slapped the dim light bulb on and wasted no time to click the door locked behind you. Hardly able to stop yourself from collapsing to the floor inside, you felt your eyes flutter like they did when you went in and out of a peaceful rest. A sigh left your lips before you'd allow your legs to rest on the cold ledge of the bathtub, so devious and white. Relief washing over you, a wandering glance couldn't be helped. Your eyes surveyed a shine, so beautiful the blinding glint to each handle bar of the tub happened to be. Swallowing hard at the knot in your stomach, your head grew with pressure as saliva slid down your throat.

"I know I said I'd be quick.." You murmured to yourself, predicting that any late appearance back to the bed next to Cutthroat would have been troublesome. "But, the worst he could do is follow me in here..."

Your thoughts weighed bricks as you fought with the idea of twisting the handles and pushing the tubs sprout down to fill a warm bath for yourself. If Cutthroat was asleep again, you could get away with it. But if he'd been awake, hearing the water run through the pipes was sure to elicit some sort of response. Be it good or bad.

Against your better judgement, a hand made contact with cool metal, so clean you could catch your reflection in it as if it'd been a mirror. Rotating it carefully at first, water drizzled from the faucet. Waiting a second, then just a few more, when Cutthroat didn't come to throw the door open, you figured yourself to be safe. A little farther this time, you turned the handle and a loud waterfall unlike any other began to spill into the empty tub. Watching it fill for a second after the sound enveloped the air, you stood to your shaky legs and slipped your clothes off. Moist with sweat soaking through from your skins rising temperature, the feeling was nearly abysmal.

Your shirt came off first, lifting it up then feeling hair fall flat back to your neck as the bottom came over your head. Next, your shorts. Slipping a finger into the hem that rested against your body, you tugged them down and off your legs, stepping out as you did so. Last were your remaining undergarments, so familiar to you that you might as well have forgotten you'd ever put them on to begin with.

Setting a foot into the waters surface, you sat opposite to the faucet, still hurrying to pour it's warm liquid into the bathtub. You'd been dangerously lightheaded, and with fear of the world swirling just a little faster, you let this bath be only a warm one.

Eventually it came time where the racing water filled so close to the brim from your distracted attention that you could ignore it no longer. Leaning in, your hand forced itself to turn each nozzle and beckon the water to a halt. A few more drizzles like rain starting to cry, small drops fell into the tub before it ceased to a complete stop. Finished with no interruptions, your hand drew back the long shower curtains to ensure an illusion of safety.

Relaxing now wasn't any word used to describe how your tense body felt leaning back against the slippery porcelain. Nonetheless, it was only slightly better than having to bear another tight hug from Cutthroat. Shifting lightly, you fluttered your eyes shut and drowned in the unpleasant feeling of your head pounding with ache. The pressure at your temples was unforgiving, almost as much as how uncomfortable you were being forced to endure your bodies own agony. A soft whimper emitting from your lips, your heart would begin to do a routine as creaks in the walls became too close for comfort.

"It's just your imagination.." You whispered, your own attempts to console yourself being very hard to prove successful. Tingles shot down your spine, a foreign feeling for the warm water that surrounded you. Something felt a little amiss, but to point your finger at it was a little too real. So real, that perhaps this imagination of yours was a dream. A nightmare your weary body went through when you began to doze off like a sleepy child.

In and out of your dazed like state, wind whistled through the cracks of the bathroom window hardly ajar behind it's curtains. An echo bounced through your ears, harsher and more deafening the longer you left it to linger. As if a ghost was trying to break down the walls and tell you something, your eyes ripped back open at a bang slapping against a hard surface. An observation dropped with horror unmatched as you forgot any aches and pains to glare through the translucent shower curtains. The bathroom door flat against the wall Cutthroat threw it against, you shivered.

"Oh...that was easier than I thought..." He noted, peeking inside the small room to catch your frame hidden behind see through curtains. How rude it was of you not to invite him, and how much ruder it was to have not invited him to a party this thrilling.

Eyeing your disregarded clothing sprawled across the bathroom rug, Cutthroat's interest only piqued. His lips pursed softly, bending down now to glance at you through the mere plastic sheet you felt a deceitful safety behind.

"Can I join~?" He hummed, forgetting any promises you made to make it back to the bed in a timely manner. Had he found you doing just about anything other than sitting in the water of a bath right now, surely he'd have been just a little more hurt.

A treacherous route to take—permitting him to submerge within the same water as you—your glance only shifted and your shoulders barely shrugged. It wasn't as though you weren't sure if he could join, it was that you weren't too sure if he should join. Nevertheless, what would happen if you tested him with the refusal of a simple no? Perhaps a long winded explanation could further deter him as he grew impatient with boredom.

"I don't mind..."

"Ah-! Good choice..! I knew my angel wouldn't...~"

It was all you had to say because in the end, a "no" would have never worked on Cutthroat to begin with.

Watching his taller frame further enter the bathroom and close the door, a sense of feeling trapped threw you off. Your mouth acted like it was ready to ask him why he felt the need to shut it, even when he often liked to leave it how it was when he opened it. You shut your mouth however, and figured he had a reason.

Half expecting him to pull the curtains back and indulge within this experience fully clothed, Cutthroat wasn't going to waste an opportunity to feel closer to his angel than he already was. Fumbling with the buttons on his white pajama top with you still avoiding eye contact, he gave a frustrated hum like they held a grudge against his fingers.

"Come on.... I can't do it..." He fussed, narrowing his eyes as he looked down at the buttons. Smug soon there after as he remembered who he was in the room with. "...But maybe my angels touch can do the trick?"

An obvious scheme to get closer to you, a trick that you left to fly straight over your dizzy head for the moment. You being the angel he spoke about, Cutthroat's hand pulled back the shower curtain as he politely peeked into the small enclosure you had for yourself.

"Come closer then.." You answered his request too kindly, watching his lovely features light up with an excitement enough to make your heart pound faster. Reeling the curtains to the side, he knelt down to the edge of the tub, allowing you an easier reach. Doing so, you'd expect your eyes to have met his at least once or twice with a tension building awkwardness. Oddly enough though, his entranced eyes were fixated on something above your head, like you had birds circling above you at all times.

Working down the buttons and stumbling across a few with a shaky and sick hand, eventually when you got halfway down, something loud and ear piercing slammed against the floor.

"Oh no, there goes my knife...." Your partner blinked, seemingly upset for the edge to become duller from a blunt impact against its blade. If he hadn't expected that, then what exactly was the knife doing up his pajama shirt in the first place..?

"Cutthroat.." You whispered, his eyes widening at the sweet tone you hit him with. "Put it on the sink."

The instructions weren't a surprise, at least not to yourself. Though, Cutthroat wouldn't let something so out of place for him happen.

"Can't I leave it on the bathtub side instead..?" He whined back, a compromise he'd hope was acceptable to you. Especially given that it was where he'd place it if you hadn't caught him with it.

Apprehensive, you agreed with a small, "fine" seeing as the look on his face wasn't something to easily argue with.

Grabbing the knife as you finished unbuttoning his top, he placed it on the very edge of the tub next to you. Shampoo bottles and every other kind of body cleansing container laid by it.

"There." You flashed him a weak smile, watching him straighten up and slip the top off each of his arms. Letting it fall to the floor on top of your own clothing, he wasted little time with his own pants and undergarments as well. Hard not to catch his eye or let him clue in on the fact that you were even threatening to look towards his bare body, Cutthroat's foot broke the equilibrium of the peaceful bath water.

An "ah..~", left his pleased lips as the surface made contact with pale skin. On the opposite side he chose to sit of you, legs close to your own. Almost like they fit into a puzzle, the stance was so intimate that his own cheeks would dust themselves in an arousing pink. Eyes filled to their maximum with your glowing beauty, a mischievous glint at the sight of you was something Cutthroat didn't dare to hide. A fool would have thought he'd sit so still with you in the tub across from him because that's exactly what he didn't do.

"Where are the bubbles..?" He asked, scanning around as his finger swirled itself amongst the clearness. Daring to dip in a whole hand and watch it drain from his grasp and back into the tub, Cutthroat shot you a suddenly bored glare.

"Isn't water its prettiest when it's clear?" You challenged, leaning your leg against his own when your body finally decided to loosen up.

Enlightened perhaps, his eyebrow cocked down at the water, then your leg touching his. He couldn't find himself to argue with your truthful observation as his own leg pressed further into yours in response.

"Huh, I suppose it is then..."

Again, your eyes shut and your back gently pushed itself into the end side of the tub. Feeling safer with every moment passed where Cutthroat didn't initiate anything, the sound of a bottle popping and releasing pent up air caused you to jump. In the split second after, your consent wasn't necessary as a hand began to rub at the skin of your leg. One eye opening to see what you were feeling, Cutthroat had been lathering soap into you with just his bare hand.

How strange.

His touch wasn't the most delicate, but it wasn't at all an unpleasant feeling. At least, your heart wouldn't tell you that was so.

"Wouldn't a wash cloth be more sanitary...?" You asked, blinking down at his hand. Eyes widening at the soaking bandages he seemed to refuse taking off even in the tub, you frowned. Sighing too, you leaned back up and put out an empty hand like you'd been waiting for him to place something in it.

"Hm, why the hand?" Stopping the lathering of soap across your sensitive skin, Cutthroat most nearly seemed confused by the gesture you had yet to explain.

"Your arm will chafe underneath your bandages if you don't take them off in the water. I thought I told you that..."

Still, his eyes looked at you. It would have been ignored had anyone else brought this up to him, but because it was someone as special to him as you were, he set his arm into your hand and waited for you to pull at the wet cloth hiding his skin. Again to add, he was impatient. Had it taken a stranger to work this long on him, Cutthroat would have already pulled away. However, he was nearly entranced by the way your fingers slipped between the crevices and worked to rip the bandages off of him entirely.

"Feel better?" You asked, discarding the soggy mess of entanglements to the tubs side temporarily. Glaring at his hand and lifting it up as if he'd never seen what it looked like underneath, his vision skewed from it's focus to center on something above your head again. If a small gasp was any indication that he'd been seeing something you couldn't, then perhaps each one should have alarmed you further.

"What is it..?" Unaware, of what swirled on top of you, you questioned him. His hand dropped and enchantment fell upon him at your presence. If... it hadn't done so already.

"Can I come closer?" He asked, a smile on his lips for he'd already started to lean in without your permission.

Flustered, your back pushed further into the white porcelain behind you. Not hard enough to disturb your body, but just hard enough so that you were no longer comfortable. Opening your mouth to speak, the sound of water shifting and spilling back into itself filled the air as Cutthroat moved into a position to accommodate his intentions. Pulling your legs in and allowing him more room to move as he pleased, you really were absolutely no help to your own pending fate.

His own legs now pressed into yours as if they weren't close enough to you previously, you were most nearly being straddled in place underneath his wet body. Streaming water dripping back into the tub from Cutthroat's stance, you got quite the front row seat of just everything he had to offer. If you hadn't been so fearful that he'd sink you by your shoulders and drown you into the tub, appreciating him would have been more possible.

"What are you doing?" You asked, so late that not even a tardy slip should have been able to excuse this.

"..Getting closer...I can't touch you when you're so far..."

It was an interesting thing for the Murderer to say, given that in a tub meant for one, you were already as many as two. His excuse to come closer wasn't too uninvited, despite all your uneasiness. Your heart would hate to inform you though, that his lips were tracing the skin of your neck.

Unsure of how to feel from the closeness at which he came, you couldn't miss the screeching sound of a knife being slid across the ledge of the tub he set it on. To help himself now was his pleasure, and with you beneath him there was little chance for your escape.

Sicker than before, a horrific feeling set at the deathly cold blade. Skimming across the skin of your collarbone, his hot breath whispered love with it.

"You'll finally belong to me now.."

Eyes growing wide at the unfair statement, you felt your legs begin to shake.

"I what ...?" You whispered back, tilting from the blades end. His motive remaining almost unclear.

For the sharp blade now beginning to tease your wet skin, pain would eventually destroy reality. Slowly sliding the tip of his dagger into your desperate body, soft moaning cries became music to his ears. In love to the point of madness, Cutthroat took careful time to not split any veins. You had to last as long as he could drag it out, and where the time between life and death could have been your chance, you simply missed it from a presumed lustful dance.

Now how selfish was it of him to watch your blood splutter like paint across the porcelain white? How much more fair was the way he watched his own fingers smear it like thin syrup into a print with the wall behind you? The surface of bath water unbalanced, crimson rocked within it, back and forth to its sides.

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - August 3rd, 2018

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them. 

Please Note: I’ve been struggling trying to avoid Season 7 spoilers, I’ve failed a few times - so I have to stay away from just glancing at what is new AO3. Sadly, this will prevent me from seeing stories that aren’t shared on Tumblr. I am also avoiding spec stories, that I haven’t already started. I sad. Stupid spoilers ruin all my fun.

My Arms, They Will Hold You by @olicityaddicted - Oliver is back home from prison, but something happens when he has a nightmare. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15404745

If I Tremble by @smoaking-greenarrow - A collection of prompts and ficlets, with all the smut! Olicity sexy times are the best times. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409122/chapters/35762643

I'll Try to Behave by who_seeks_shall_find - William is excited to meet Ray and Sara. When William, Ray and Felicity start talking about science, Oliver feels a bit left out. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403056

Visit to Gotham by @cruzrogue - Olicity Hiatus Fic-a-thon - Prompt: Unfinished - Felicity and William move to outskirts of Gotham City. Before Felicity and William move back to Star City after their adventure in Gotham where William finds his step-mom is helping Batman and he thinks she could possibly cheat on his dad with Bruce Wayne. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15421605

Hidden Talents: Work in Progress by @laureningall - Olicity Hiatus Fic-a-thon - Prompt: Unfinished - After a perfect evening with Felicity, Oliver is anxious to bring her breakfast in bed, starting with coffee. Fate has other plans. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038072/chapters/35818332

The Queen's Mage multi-chapter WIP by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl - Words have power, and mages, those with the aptitude to draw on that power, are few in number. Thus, their services are highly sought after by anyone who has exhausted all mundane means of solving whatever problem is plaguing them. Felicity is reminded of this fact the hard way when she is hired by Moira Queen, the Lady Starling, to find and return to her son Oliver, who fled his family home five years ago following the death of his father. With a threat hanging over her should she return without Robert Queen's heir, Felicity begins her search. When she finds Oliver, and ends up joining his vigilante crusade while she waits for him to decide whether to return home, the last thing she expects to do is fall in love with him. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14617068/chapters/33781269 | ONE | (Oliver the Footballer) multi-chapter WIP @someonesaidcake - Felicity Smoak had a plan; to save enough money to kick her monotonous job and start up the company of her dreams. She made good plans, solid plans, attainable plans. He was never part of her plan. His name was Oliver Queen, the reclusive Brazilian football star with a broken smile and a story to tell. He'd never planned on her either. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15005402/chapters/34779542 Deep Water multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A Season 7 Speculation fic. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15081917/chapters/34968092

The Ring by @spaztronautwriter - The 4th prompt for @olicityficchallenge is: A stuck elevator, a dead cell phone, and a ring. https://spaztronautwriter.tumblr.com/post/143048602908/olicity-fic-challenge-4-the-ring

Love and Little Cupcakes multi-chapter WIP by @christinabeggs - Felicity loved sweets so much that she paid no attention to her lovelife. Until Thea Queen came into her store wanting fabulous cupcakes for her sixteenth birthday. SO ADORABLE! http://archiveofourown.org/works/12400539/chapters/28216053 Falling For You multi-chapter complete by melicitysmoak - Both at significant crossroads in their lives, Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak cross paths one weekend at Niagara Falls. They fall for each other as strongly and swiftly as the mighty waters that drew them there that late spring morning. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152363/chapters/35138201 The Eternal Love multi-chapter WIP by Mellowyellowdiamonds - Forced into a loveless marriage to Al Sah Him by her ageing and clearly looney adopted father Ra's Al Ghul, Felicity Smoak tries her best to plot her way out of this "terrible" marriage in a bid to regain her freedom. Her husband however has other ideas and is determined to foil her plans every step of the way. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328269/chapters/35564142 Something Inside This Heart Has Died (You're In Ruins) multi-chapter complete by @entersomethingcleverhere - After a life-changing, soul-crushing event that happened five years ago, Dr. Felicity Smoak exiles herself to an Army hospital in Germany. She spends her days stitching soldiers back together, but who's going to heal her? Enter Command Sergeant Major Oliver Jonas, an American soldier who gets injured during an IED attack with a beautiful smile and more than a few secrets of his own. https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472908/chapters/12647312

Please Call Me (Only if You're Coming Home) by @entersomethingcleverhere - It's Felicity's first stateside Thanksgiving in five years, and she's spending it with her fiance's family. What's Thanksgiving without some drama sprinkled in? https://archiveofourown.org/works/5761705

Time for a Story multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

Soulmates multi-chapter WIP by @bri206 - What happens when Oliver and Felicity wake up in the past with no idea how they got there? They will have to relive their past lives and maybe find an ally or two to get back to their present. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15466416/chapters/35903511

Hidden Talents: What are Friends For? multi-chapter WIP by @laureningall - True friends will help you out - even if you don’t realize you need their help. In other words how Thea and Curtis conspire to reunite our favorite couple. Will they succeed? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15038072/chapters/35914386

One Night multi-chapter WIP by @suttons-brady - Felicity paces back and forth in her bathroom, fingers playing with each other in front of her stomach and her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. How the hell did she get here? She prides herself on being smart -- on being a genius, actually. Hell, she skipped eighth grade! So how in the hell had she ended up here, burning a hole in the floor of her bathroom, waiting for a flimsy plastic stick to tell her if her life is over? http://archiveofourown.org/works/11076792/chapters/24706029

Shatter multi-chapter WIP by @yespleasehawkeyee - Star City has fallen victim to a serial killer. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594097/chapters/33728688

The Paths We Take multi-chapter WIP by griever11 - Rival CEOs AU. Felicity Smoak, CEO and founder of her own company, is trying to prove herself in the cutthroat world of the technology industry among the other bigwigs in the game. Oliver Queen, recently back from the dead is trying to prove to the world that he's no longer the same man-child who went down on the Queen's Gambit and is finally worthy of his family's legacy. Both equally formidable names in the corporate world. And both with a long, complicated history with each other that no one but themselves are privy to. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15314133/chapters/35530296 10 Rules of Rebounding multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - Oliver and Felicity start a sex relationship as rebounds for each other. What’s supposed to be just fun, soon gets complicated when it turns out that their work lives collide, Robert Queen fears their sexual relationship could threaten his company and an ex comes back into the play. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15403404/chapters/35749620 Pieces of Always multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Life continues after Forever is Composed of Nows. Ongoing non-linear collection of family moments for the Queens. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8220479/chapters/18840356 Caged by @supersillyanddorky06 - Prison AU. She's the beautiful prison doctor. He's the most dangerous inmate. https://archiveofourown.org/works/4493247/chapters/35973042

The Reason multi-chapter WIP by flipflops - Oliver is an Alpha and Felicity is an Omega....circumstances lead Oliver to find this out and a very bad time or maybe very good time... https://archiveofourown.org/works/15012431

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Prompt: Could you write a fic about 6x22? When Oliver saves Felicity in the precinct, and he angrily and worriedly drags her back to the van, like a lecture or argument he gives her for doing such thing, him being worried sick and protective. http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/176461047934/could-you-write-a-fic-about-6x22-when-oliver

Unexpected Meeting or Fate? multi-chapter WIP by CaptainSammyAngel - Since she was a little girl, Felicity Smoak has been apart of the League of Assassins. While Oliver Queen for the past six months has been the CEO of Queen Consolidated and trying to keep it afloat. When the League decides to start the hunt of Malcolm Merlyn in the last place he was located, two people will meet but circumstances and pasts will make it difficult for them to be together. Will they find a way or will they be torn apart? https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007139/chapters/34783916 Whiskey and Romance multi-chapter WIP by @mindramblingsfics - Felicity Smoak gets the opportunity of a lifetime to compete for the hand of Prince Tommy Merlyn. She is taken from her normal mundane Vegas life and is soon swept up into a lifestyle full of nobles, drama, obligations and chaos. All the while trying to stay afloat, someone else begins to win her heart, Tommy’s best friend, Oliver Queen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14441952/chapters/33357156

The Omega Project! multi-chapter complete by @oliversmuse - Oliver Queen was enjoying being the strong Alpha on campus at Harvard when he met and fell in love with Felicity Smoak, a strong Omega who was going to school nearby at MIT. Their time together was amazing until one day she disappeared. There was no note and no trace that she had ever existed. Oliver is now the most powerful Alpha in Star City, and he will move heaven and earth to find out what happened to his Omega. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330348/chapters/35569281 Elizabeth Grace Smoak multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - What if Felicity and Oliver briefly had met before he got on the Gambit? Despite her best efforts, Felicity was unable to get in contact with the famous Oliver Queen after having a one night stand with him and getting pregnant with his child. After raising their child for five years after finding out that Oliver died on the Gambit, she finds out he is alive and knows that she needs to tell him about their daughter. But will he believe her? AMAZING STORY!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/13639371/chapters/31322715 Finding Felicity multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - After Lian Yu blew, Oliver searches for his friends and loved ones on the island. This is an AU versions of what happened when Oliver found everyone after the explosions. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15538641/chapters/36071301

Do You Believe in Soulmates? by who_seeks_shall_find - William asks a question that Felicity isn't prepared for. He asks: "Do you believe in soulmates?" https://archiveofourown.org/works/15297816

Can I Go? by who_seeks_shall_find - William wants to attend a party. First, he just needs to ask for Oliver and Felicity's permission. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15243012

Partying Can Suck by who_seeks_shall_find - William attends a party but everything doesn't go according to the plan and in the end, William is glad to see his dad and Felicity. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15242856

It's Only Three Days by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity is leaving for Gotham City because she has a business meeting there. Oliver wants to say a proper goodbye before the take off. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450720

It Was a Great Speech by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity comes back from her business trip and she wants to spend some quality time with her husband. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15450843

That's Insane by who_seeks_shall_find - There has been a break-in at Felicity's apartment and everything is smashed down and ruined. They wonder whether it's about Felicity and Curtis' start-up or Felicity being married to the Green Arrow. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15489318

My Favorite Grandson by who_seeks_shall_find - Donna comes to Star City for a visit and she is determined to get to know her grandchild better. Raisa may feel a bit jealous. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504066

Talk to Me by who_seeks_shall_find - Felicity has no idea how she and her mom have ended up talking about a conception of a child. Oliver is still in prison after all. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505512

You Promised by who_seeks_shall_find - Diaz is caught and Felicity wants to get rid of her bodyguard. Nevertheless, Oliver struggles to keep his promise. https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505992

Re-Airrow: Episode 2x01 by @lostolicityscenes  -This scene takes place after the clip above but before the clip I will attach at the end. It mainly functions as a way to fill in the emotional blanks between Oliver and Felicity leading up to the Russia episode. https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/176561447621/re-airrow-episode-2x01-an-i-was-planning-on

P.S. Hong Kong: Was it Real?!? multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue for Olicity trope-tastic award: Fake Marriage - This is off season 3 Flashbacks. When Tommy goes to Hong Kong he doesn’t go alone he takes his friend Felicity as the best information system being to help him locate Oliver Queen. Tommy may leave empty handed but Felicity gets to be a bride… https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025697/chapters/34832747 Caught in the Rapture multi-chapter WIP by @bindy417 - AU. Being the daughter of a ruthless and notorious crime lord, Felicity Smoak didn't think her life could get any worse. When her father unexpectedly sells her in marriage as a peace offering to his enemy, she quickly learns it'll take more than just her sharp intellect to survive. But what starts out as a sentence worse than death may actually be her only shot at freedom. AWESOME STORY!!  http://archiveofourown.org/works/7931917/chapters/18128824

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 //

[staircasttext]

Ep 14 Transcript: Brokenstar's Polycule

Episode 14

[intro music]

PAZ: Hi, everybody, welcome back to Stairway to StarClan, a Warriors cat reread pawdcast. I'm Paz.

JULIAN: I'm Julian.

LIZ: And I'm Craig.

PAZ: No, you're not.

LIZ: I'm Liz. Just a little joke, a little humor, you know, from me to the listener.

PAZ: Well, I'll probably put-- that'll probably be at the end, the context. Well, look forward to that, I guess.

JULIAN: The end of the episode where we explain the joke at the beginning.

PAZ: Well, no, just where I put the beginning pre-intro. Sorry. This is gonna be another late episode. I have been having computer issues. But hopefully nothing will happen to this recording. And if not, we have Craig. That's why Craig is here. Thank you, Craig.

JULIAN: Thank you Craig.

LIZ: Thank you Craig, but with a caveat.

PAZ: O-oh.

LIZ: Craig, if you-- look at me, Craig. If you fuck up, I'm gonna kick you. We'll ban you from this exclusive podcast server.

PAZ: I didn't realize Craig was like on a probationary period.

LIZ: Listen, podcasting is cutthroat, man.

PAZ: Yeah, that's true.

JULIAN: Craig's on thin fucking ice. Just like the cats of ThunderClan.

PAZ: Yeah.

LIZ: Eyy.

PAZ: Yeah. Uh huh. Wow, look at that segue. That's some professional podcasting.

LIZ: Seamless.

JULIAN: Thank you. Thank you.

LIZ: Craig, that's what you have to live up to.

PAZ: Yeah, so we're continuing Fire and Ice. Shit's getting real. We read chapters...

JULIAN: 22 through 25?

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: They were a doozy. A lot happened.

PAZ: They sure were. All right. Let's hop into these summaries. So chapter 22, patrols keep reporting that RiverClan and ShadowClan have been scented in ThunderClan territory. Meanwhile, Fireheart is busy hunting, trying to look after Cloudkit, Cinderpaw, and Brackenpaw. Graystripe is Brackenpaw's mentor again but is still slipping way to see Silverstream often. The camp no longer has greencough.

Fireheart goes to visit Cinderpaw who is staying with Yellowfang. She tells him the exercises for her injured leg hurt a lot, though she is still cheerful. Fireheart says he likes spending time with her and he misses their training sessions, which makes Cinderpaw sad. She says she probably can't be a warrior anymore. And Fireheart says no instead of anything supportive or even offering any alternatives. No editorializing here.

Then Fireheart asks about what happened when the monster hit her, fearing that Tigerclaw had something to do with it, but Cinderpaw can't remember. They talk about Cloudkit instead, and Fireheart expresses how worried he is about Cloudkit being bullied in the future for being born a kittypet. Cinderpaw reassures Fireheart, even though he hasn't done much of the same for her.

Fireheart asks Bluestar if he can go to the next gathering, and she agrees. He then goes to see Cloudkit, and Brindleface tells him he might have a fever, which worries Fireheart. He overhears the other apprentices mocking Cloudkit for this. Then he meets Sandpaw, who is also going to the gathering. They talk about how it's odd she hasn't been made a warrior yet. And she reassures them about Cloudkit's future. Later they all leave for the gathering.

At the gathering, Fireheart greets some cats from WindClan as they wait for RiverClan and ShadowClan to arrive. Bluestar doesn't wait for the normal introductions and announces immediately that RiverClan has been hunting in ThunderClan territory. There is more arguing, and Crookedstar, the RiverClan leader, says an unknown ThunderClan warrior has been scented in RiverClan. Both Fireheart and Graystripe realize he must mean Graystripe. Whoopsie.

Tigerclaw accuses RiverClan and ShadowClan of joining together against them and Crookedstar accuses ThunderClan of doing the same with WindClan. The leaders keep arguing until a cloud passes over the moon. Runningnose, the ShadowClan medicine cat, and Yellowfang say the StarClan is angry they fought at the gathering and that the darkness is a sign to stop.

Chapter 24, Tallstar ends the gathering because of the sign from StarClan, and all the clans leave. Fireheart hopes Graystripe will be willing to talk, but he only agrees to meet Silverstream at Fourtrees instead of in RiverClan territory. Graystripe is still upset with him. They return from the gathering, and Fireheart checks on Cloudkit. Bluestar tells everyone that RiverClan and ShadowClan have joined together and are now a threat. Fireheart is uneasy, thinking of RiverClan's difficulty and ShadowClan's reduced numbers.

The next day, Cloudkit is recovered from his fever. Fireheart watches Cloudkit happily as he play-hunts a ball of moss. Then he sees a scary leg.

Unknown Speaker

[laughter]

PAZ: Liz wrote these summaries. I'm reading them for the first time.

LIZ: Well, he does.

JULIAN: No, that's exactly what happens.

PAZ: Yeah, I really can't argue with that. Woo. Then he sees a scary leg and tells Cloudkit to stop. It's actually Tigerclaw, who gives the moss ball back and says to Fireheart that he should be careful with his quote unquote "playthings."

Chapter 25, Brindleface calls Cloudkit away and Tigerclaw leaves ominously. Then Whitestorm, Mousefur, Sandpaw, and Fireheart go patrol the ShadowClan border, but smell the other clan before reaching it. Fireheart recognizes the scent but can't remember which ShadowClan warrior it's from. The patrol also finds rabbit bones, which were apparently left by the ShadowClan as a sign of disrespect. Whitestorm is angry and says they have to tell Bluestar and punish ShadowClan.

When the patrol returns, Bluestar has already left for her own patrol. Whitestorm tells Tigerclaw about the rabbit bones, and they quickly decide to retaliate against ShadowClan. Sandpaw isn't allowed to go, and Tigerclaw tells Fireheart to stay behind, leaving him as the only warrior in the entire camp.

Yellowfang recognizes the scent on Fireheart as Brokenstar's, and he realizes that was who he was smelling earlier. She says Brokenstar and his friends must be the ones trespassing on the territory, and not ShadowClan, and that Fireheart has to stop Tigerclaw before he attacks ShadowClan. Fireheart can't leave the camp undefended in case Brokenstar attacks. So he sends Brackenpaw instead. He manages to tell the rest of clan all of this right before Brokenstar shows up. And that's the end of our reading.

JULIAN: It's a very dramatic place to leave off.

PAZ: Yeah, this was a very dramatic set of chapters.

JULIAN: Especially like the first-- like chapter 22 is just beat after beat. The stuff starts coming and it don't stop coming.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, it sure is a set of chapters in terms of poorly thought out writing decisions, but also then good writing. You get both.

JULIAN: Yeah, you really do. It's a little of, uh... you get a little ableism, you get a little cat racism, you get a little excellent plot beats.

PAZ: This is what Warrior Cats is about, baby.

LIZ: A tasting platter.

PAZ: Um, let's take... where should we start?

JULIAN: Let's just start from the beginning. Um, Graystripe continues to not be shit.

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: Makes me so mad.

JULIAN: I don't know what 10 year old me was thinking when I was like, Yeah, Graystripe is cool.

PAZ: Okay, I also feel like I remember Graystripe being cool, but I only knew him from like A New Prophecy onwards.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think he does some cool stuff maybe in later books, but uh....he's struggling.

LIZ: He's a shitty teen now.

PAZ: This is really clouding my perception of him.

JULIAN: Like Brackenpaw's sad little oh, I guess he just doesn't have time for me or whatever.

PAZ: I know.

JULIAN: It's just awful.

LIZ: It's so sad.

PAZ: Sort of to set up what we're talking about, it starts off with Graystripe's missing again, and Fireheart's basically asking Brackenpaw like, oh, where'd he go. And Brackenpaw's like, he went hunting without me. So sad.

JULIAN: Brackenpaw's like, he said I could go tomorrow and like, of course--

LIZ: God.

JULIAN: We all know that tomorrow's never going to come.

LIZ: It has such the tone of like, tiny child says, oh, my dad just went out to get milk.

PAZ: No.

JULIAN: Like, kid waiting for their parents to come pick them up, like, oh, I'm sure they'll be here soon.

PAZ: I don't know why. Why is Graystripe not being like reprimanded more? It's pretty obviously he's not trading his apprentice.

JULIAN: Right? Well, Fireheart has this moment where he's like, Oh, "Fireheart knew that Tigerclaw wouldn't accept Brackenpaw's answer so easily." It's like well, Tigerclaw, do your job. Be menacing. Graystripe should be menaced a bit.

PAZ: He should have been menaced like two weeks ago.

LIZ: He needs to have I guess like a disciplinary meeting with the manager that is Tigerclaw.

PAZ: Yeah, there was also like a apparently like a vague timeskip or something, because it mentioned like the last gathering didn't happen because it was cloudy, which was very funny. A very funny note. So that means like at least one moon cycle has passed by or something.

JULIAN: I'm like a little-- this makes a lot of sense actually for why the clans are in such like political disarray, if they can only meet once a month if it's not cloudy, and they live in England.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Really setting themselves up for failure.

LIZ: It's that seasonal whatever thing, right?

PAZ: I was gonna say like, like oh, what happens if there's a gathering and there's like an eclipse, but I'm fairly certain that's a plot point that happens later. So, you know.

LIZ: They're cats. They like it to be sunny when they go. They wanna, you know, soak in the vitamin D.

PAZ: It's not even the sun. It's the moon.

JULIAN: It happens at night.

LIZ: Oh, um, well, fuck if I know.

JULIAN: It's also like... not to criticize the world building here but like when there's a full moon out, it's much harder to see the stars.

PAZ: Yeah. It's not fucking MoonClan.

JULIAN: Like I get the whole cyclical nature or whatever.

PAZ: Do it on the new moon.

JULIAN: And if it's the new moon, you probably won't even notice if there's clouds.

PAZ: Yeah. I don't know who came up with that rule, but I think they planted the seeds for a lot of political problems.

LIZ: Imagine if they were just like, yeah, let's meet every two weeks.

PAZ: Cats don't have calendars.

LIZ: Let's meet every eight days, which is how many paws we have on two front legs, I think.

PAZ: What? What?

LIZ: Wait.

PAZ: How many paws? Hold on.

JULIAN: Liz, what kind of cats you been looking at?

LIZ: Paws? How many beans? How many toes? I didn't want to say toes.

PAZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: I was imagining like a fucking Sleipnir.

PAZ: Yeah, like fucking catbus from My Neighbor Totoro. Oh god. That's actually how all the cats look. It's just not mentioned.

JULIAN: That's where they keep all their magic. In their eight legs. Maybe it's just the leaders who have eight legs where they keep their lives.

PAZ: Wow.

LIZ: You become president, you just pop out four extra legs.

PAZ: Oh god.

JULIAN: I hate this actually.

PAZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: I know I suggested it, but it's very bad.

LIZ: I know the sound it makes. It's like [pops lips]

JULIAN: Ahh!

PAZ: Stop. Okay, we're gonna move on from that. I mean, speaking of legs, the next part in this chapter is Cinderpaw makes her speaking debut again.

JULIAN: Ugh.

LIZ: Ugh.

PAZ: Um, yeah, and there-- I-- this is time to really talk about like, the problems that come up with her character and honestly continue to be a theme throughout Warriors to this day, apparently, based on what I've seen on like Twitter and forums and stuff.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's--

LIZ: Like-- no, go ahead.

JULIAN: It's really great to like, see her as a speaking character again, and it really sucks that like, they have apparently have cat physical therapy. But it's like, well, nothing can be done.

PAZ: Yeah. I mean, like, it's nice that she's like, not like, deeply depressed and like, she's... like, it hasn't like, destroyed her character. Not destroyed her character, but like, I don't know how to word it.

JULIAN: She still has the same personality.

PAZ: Yeah, like, it hasn't like completely changed the personality and purpose of like her as a character in the book. Um, I mean that's really about all I can say for it.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's, uh... it sucks. I mean, I guess like, kind of brief spoilers, but she ends up becoming a medicine cat, which is sort of the thing that happens to any disabled cat is like, well, you're a medicine cat now. Which is just like, cool. Like, that's all you can do.

PAZ: Yeah. And them getting that position is like 95% of the time, like, against their choice in some way or form, because it's just like, no, you cannot be a warrior at all.

JULIAN: Yeah, and it's especially like... in literally the next chapter we meet Deadfoot.

PAZ: Yeah, that was a really egregious, like... the scene kind of like right after this is is Deadfoot showing up. And his physical disability is even pointed out because it says like, oh, he's limping. And there he is being a deputy. And it's like, it literally doesn't make sense, doing that to Cinderpaw's character.

LIZ: It's not even like, I don't know. What you said before about how so many, like, of the disabled characters are forced to become medicine cat. That's not even a case of like, oh, this one became a medicine cat and now like, can give perspective on you know, better care for other disabled characters. It's not like that. It's just like, you cannot have the job you want anymore. Ugh.

PAZ: Yeah. I mean, like, cat physical therapy exists, which is nice to see. But like, that really doesn't get utilized in any good way going forward or in this scene really.

JULIAN: Yeah, and there's no like, oh, you should like, you know, do your exercises so that like, you can regain some motion and like, you know, it'll be easier for you to be a w-- you know, that's not even like presented as an option.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: Yeah, um, I was reading around a bit and watched some videos on this topic that I figured I would shout out and like, quote from. So there's a really good video on YouTube by transredtail. Great name. Just called "Disability in Warrior Cats" if you want to check it out.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's really good.

PAZ: But yeah, it's a good video, and he's disabled himself. So he was speaking from that perspective about disability in the video. And kind of like the three main points in the video, were like, one, any disabled cat cannot become a warrior is like a running theme. And two, when writing a disabled character, the Erins frequently choose to have the surrounding characters make decisions for them, often unwanted decisions. And then three was like indications that life as a disabled person is less than life as an abled person is kind of like the reoccurring themes when it comes to how disabled characters are written in Warriors. And then also points out that like, disabled characters exist as plot points or as a way to create pity or guilt in the surrounding cast of characters, which is also definitely true.

JULIAN: Yeah, that's definitely happening here with like, Cinderpaw as sort of fuel for Fireheart's manpain.

LIZ: God. The scene where he goes to see her is like so... so frustrating because here's his, like, young apprentice who had like... who's really cheerful and enthusiastic and so clearly happy to see him cause she's bored out of her mind. And the scene just becomes about like, how sad he is that she doesn't have a future, and how it's his fault, and how suddenly he's worried that the same thing will happen to his nephew. And she-- this kid is the one who ends up comforting him about his nephew and all of his worries about Cloudkit that he doesn't really have for her anymore.

JULIAN: Yeah, it sucks that like he has immediately jumped from being worried about her to like, being worried about Cloudkit, as though he's just completely given up on her as like a person that he needs to care about her future.

PAZ: Yeah, it's so weird that he doesn't like, fight for her at all, or, like, encourage her at all. Like, it's just like, her fate is sealed without really any discussion.

LIZ: The thing he says about like, oh, well, maybe we can go hunting again and we'll find you the slowest prey possible. And she just like laughs, instead of like, being sad because that's, it's so patronizing. And it makes all these assumptions about-- it's not like being accommodating towards her because she didn't ask for any of that.

JULIAN: Yeah, like she wants to be a warrior. And like, I just, I can see a way that it could have been... like, transredtail talks about this and has like a lot of really good videos of like, how disabled kits actually move, that's really like, helpful for the well, what about the realism? crowd. Because like, spoiler alert, it turns out that cats that like lose the use of their back legs can actually scamper around pretty well.

PAZ: Yeah, like, even cats are like completely paralyzed in their back legs still move around pretty good.

JULIAN: But like, I can see, like an alternative where like, Fireheart is like, yeah, I'm going to help you with your physical therapy. And we're going to, like, figure out ways for you to hunt that are different. And maybe you'll have a slightly different role as a warrior, but you'll still be able to, like, hunt and do patrols. And it's just-- it sucks to see him completely give up on her. And it also, I wish-- I know that this would require like an acknowledgment of the fact that Fireheart is being ableist, but I wish she got to be angry about it.

PAZ: Yeah, it's like, the book doesn't.... the framing of this is just like nonexistent in the book. Like it doesn't-- there is no like self awareness of what it's doing. And like, it's kind of just presented as-is, like, yep, this is what's happening now. And Fireheart's reaction to it is not portrayed as bad or anything. It's just...

LIZ: Yeah, it's so like, thoughtless and lazy, I don't know. Someone mentioned before how in the next chapter, we see Deadfoot again. And also like, just to note, still the worst name possible to give to your--

PAZ: Absolutely.

JULIAN: Yeah. Oh, God, it sucks.

LIZ: God.

PAZ: That's, um, that is another thing in Warriors is like once cats get like injured or physically disabled in a way, they get renamed. It's very weird.

LIZ: I think they should be able to choose better ones for themselves. God. Um, but yeah. It's such a missed opportunity, too, because one, there's like the precedent of mentors taking their apprentices to gatherings. Why not just have Fireheart take Cinderpaw there and meet this extremely, like, respected, perfectly happy other warrior, who is very much in the-- who has like a very similar experience to her?

JULIAN: Yeah. Like they're on good terms with WindClan.

PAZ: Yeah, I just-- I don't know, like, it was just like non-thinking on the part of the authors, I think. But like the juxtaposition, cause Deadfoot being like, mentioned again in the story come so soon after that Cinderpaw stuff. And it's like you're not even like making sense within your own narrative.

LIZ: It's like wow, that's just-- it's extremely... it's bad. On the subject of disability, it's bad, and also on the subject of like, just plotting, it's real bad.

JULIAN: Yeah, yeah. And like, I don't know. I like, I think the name thing is awful. I don't think it's like... I don't hate the idea of like taking a new name when something like as life-changing as like a major disability happens to you, because that does like... like disability does change the way you identify for a lot of people. But like the fact that it's not anyone's choice is... that it's like the leader giving you this like... Oh, well, your foot is dead now. And that's who you are, like euaaaagh. Bad.

Yeah, I don't know. I also like, obviously, I have thought a lot about disability recently, because like, I just got out of-- the reason we didn't record for like, a month and change was because I had surgery on my arm that I couldn't use for six months. And like, that's definitely not the same as like a permanent disability. But like, I thought a lot about what it means to like, lose the use of one of your limbs. And I wish they had handled this differently.

PAZ: Yeah, um, another good point that came up on a thread I was looking on the same forum as last time. What was it again? WCRPforums.com, which is like the most active big Warriors forum right now, there was a thread about Warriors Cat ableism, and this was a post made by a deleted member, but they made a really good point. I'll just read part of it.

"I think this is the thing that's forgotten a lot when adults argue about this stuff. These are books for kids. The cats already have superpowers. There's already magic out the ass with StarClan sending mystical prophecies that foretell the future and manipulating the weather. And saying that there wouldn't be physically disabled characters with positive life as a warrior because it's an unrealistic is just oof.

I think people forget just how much positivity good rep brings into the life of kids, and good physical disabled rep in popular kids media isn't common enough for my liking. A three-legged warrior will not break my immersion. A warrior without a tail shouldn't break my immersion. Blind and Deaf warriors are not immersion breaking for me. If kittens talk fairly well when they're a month old, I can easily buy lip reading.

With all the series has thrown at us--" here's a great list. "With all the series has thrown at us-- ghost badgers, super powers, future telling prophecies, cat Heaven and Hell invading the real world, being able to kill ghosts, magic spirit weather, miracle plant medicine, cat farming, cats amputating with rocks, magic water that lets you visit the afterlife and talk to ghosts, cats literally dying and coming back from the dead and more-- I can live with disabled characters. And I'm not sure why it's such a big deal that would absolutely destroy the immersion for other people."

But yeah, the main point in this that like, this is a kid series and like kids are reading this and seeing this stuff, and how like that could like negatively impact a disabled kid reading this is like, really important to think about.

LIZ: I don't know. I like--

JULIAN: And--

LIZ: Oh, no, go ahead.

JULIAN: Oh no, it's OK. I think like, there was-- a lot of the Twitter threads that we're talking about have come out of a hashtag. I think it's #warriorcatsableism?

LIZ: Mm-hmm.

JULIAN: And there was a recent discussion of something that happened in like one of the most recent books, and it does sound like someone wrote a letter, and Harper Collins said that they would like work on doing better in future books.

PAZ: I think they actually like, edited a line out in like future like, releases, whatever book editions you said. Gosh, I wish I could find that again.

JULIAN: I think it was, like... yeah.

PAZ: I don't know where the fuck I saw it when I was reading all this stuff. So, I mean, the hashtag is great. And I think it has brought some awareness of the issue hopefully. So I'm hoping the series like improves on that front going forward.

LIZ: Yeah, it's, it's so much a thing that's like... it's been going on for so long. It's still so popular. And it's still a pretty recent, like, fumble or just thoughtlessness that's happened, and that it's even recently corrected. They must have the budget now for like, a sensitivity reader. I don't know.

PAZ: Yeah. Yes. I sincerely hope they--

LIZ: Better to catch that early.

PAZ: --they find one.

LIZ: Find several, please.

JULIAN: You know, it's already like... it's a team book already.

LIZ: Yeah, exactly.

PAZ: Another point transredtail made in his video was that like, just like have more disabled characters so that representing like, a plethora of experiences means like, if a disabled character dies or something, if there's a lot of other disabled characters, it's less egregious. But the fact that like, there's so few disabled characters, and they frequently go through like the same sorts of plot points, yeah, it's like not... it's bad. It's not good representation. And it needs to be fixed.

JULIAN: Like, if you have multiple disabled characters, you can show characters having conflicting ideas about their own disability and like, you know, you have-- because there is a diversity of like, how people feel about their own disabilities, like within the disabled community. And if you have a lot of cats, then like, if one of them dies, it's not, well, that was the only disabled character who had any agency and now they're dead.

PAZ: I mean, it's a similar principle as like writing the queer characters. It's like, if you have, if you have more than like, one or two of like, the minority group you're representing then like, you can just represent more experiences that way. And they don't have to carry the whole group on their shoulders. And it's just realistic to have a variety of characters.

LIZ: It would also be good to have like, disabled characters talk to each other instead of just having them only talk to abled characters and be their comforting, like soothing whatever.

PAZ: I feel like that might happen in A Power of Three, but it is not necessarily done well.

JULIAN: Oh.

LIZ: Okay...

PAZ: We'll see when we get there.

LIZ: Rough times ahead. Oh god, there's an airplane flying.

PAZ: Oh no.

LIZ: Do you hear it?

PAZ: Yes.

JULIAN: Yeah, I do.

LIZ: This is where I live. I am sorry. Oh, my God, my Audacity waves. Go away.

PAZ: I'll silence them with a stroke of my mouse.

LIZ: I'll mute. This is terrible.

PAZ: Okay, and another point transredtail brought up was the fact that like, a lot of disabled characters are forced into the medicine cat position, and then like, that's a position where you aren't allowed to have children.

LIZ: Yeah.

JULIAN: [gasps] Aw geez.

LIZ: I forgot about that.

PAZ: Which is a very-- like, it's definitely unintentional, but like, the parallels to real world eugenics and like, how like real world disabled people like, often have trouble starting a family because the way the government like, doesn't provide good like support or money. And like you kind of can't marry--

JULIAN: You can't get married. You'll lose your benefits.

PAZ: So... yeah, the fact that like, no children kind of happens to a lot of disabled characters through this medicine cat position is... yikes.

JULIAN: It also-- like you were talking about where it's like the disabled character takes on this role of like, comforting the abled character about their own disability is like... the medicine cat role is in some ways kind of an extension of that where it's like, okay, well, you have to be the caretaker now for everyone. That's your job. Like, oooh.

LIZ: It's so patronizing and also just bitter, because we won't provide you the care that you need. But please give it to me.

PAZ: And this is in later books, but Jayfeather, like being a blind protagonist, lots of people have also raised the point of like, you also get the weird disabilities as like superpowers or like the trope of disabled character whose like disabilities, quote, unquote, like... God, what is the phrase I'm looking for? My brain is empty. It's like counteracted. Counteracted by their supernatural abilities.

JULIAN: It's like, oh, he's blind. But oh, don't worry, he's not really blind. He can still see via the magic of StarClan. And it's like, well, cowards.

PAZ: Yeah. There's also-- I can't remember if it was just in Twitter threads or in the YouTube video of like, blind cats hunting flies, which was very cute. So like, screw realism, because these books don't have realism. But once again, like, cats with disabilities are very capable.

JULIAN: Yeah, I mean, the realism argument feels a lot like the same kind of discussions that come up any time that like, there's characters of color in like fantasy, or like, medieval novels, where it's like, oh, it's not realistic. And it's like, God, there's dragons.

PAZ: And also, like, it is realistic.

JULIAN: And also Black people existed in medieval Europe. But like.

PAZ: Yeah, it's literally the same exact same sort of...

JULIAN: Yeah, it's the same thing where it's like, A, it is realistic. And B, it shouldn't matter if it's realistic or not, because magic.

PAZ: Were you gonna say something else, Liz?

LIZ: Um, yeah, just on the subject of realism, like, it does matter a lot that there are, like Julian said, people of color in medieval settings already existing and people in so and so places already existing, like, in actuality. And, like, it sounds silly to talk about cats, but like, yes, disabled cats are like real. And they're doing fine. Whether it's like, even stray cats versus like, you know, domestic cats. And if you're gonna take the metaphor of the cats in the books being people, then of course, disabled people are just out there living their lives. And I don't know, it's also patronizing the way that the books have done it so far.

PAZ: Yeah. But, yeah, unfortunately this will probably be discussion that keeps coming up because it is an issue that keeps coming up in the books to this day, so.

JULIAN: God, there's one, like-- I know we're moving on. There's one like throwaway line where Cinderpaw says something about like... or like, I think Fireheart mentions that-- oh, he's like, when did you get so smart? Because she is like, angry at the other apprentices' cat racism. And she goes, "suffering can do that to a cat."

LIZ: Ugh.

JULIAN: And it's kind of a joke, but it's also like, the whole trope of like, oh, she's stronger because of what she's gone through. And it's like, awwwww.

LIZ: It's also interesting, because suddenly she has the emotional intelligence of an adult. And she has to comfort another adult because she has suffered, and that means the adult doesn't have to do anything for her?

JULIAN: Yeah, it's like her disability erased the fact that she's still a child. And she's suddenly like a little, little wise adult.

LIZ: A little wise adult who also doesn't get the privileges of being an adult, which is, you know, choosing what you want to do with your life, or having like bodily autonomy.

PAZ: Yeah, I wish she was like, allowed to be like angry, like, at the people around her for treating her so poorly. But.

JULIAN: I wouldn't even like-- you know, I'm glad that she's like still... she's always been like a very like kind of spunky, like, I'm going to do it no matter what kind of character. And so it kind of sucks to see her completely give up on being a warrior so quickly. But also, like, I wish that we did get to see her be upset, or more upset about like, her life path completely being cut off by the people around her.

PAZ: I mean, the really weird thing is like, that didn't happen on screen, like that conversation.

LIZ: Yeah, exactly.

PAZ: She was just like recovering and like, not awake. And then we skipped to her like, being awake. And it seems that conversation, to her, has happened somewhere offscreen, which is really weird.

LIZ: I think what it says about I guess the writing is that we didn't see it, because the authors didn't think it was important to see it, which is [heavy sigh].

JULIAN: I mean, it kind of feels like we do see it though, because she's like, oh, when am I going to go back to training? And Fireheart's like, uhhhhhhh. And then she goes, Oh, I'm never gonna be a warrior. And that's like, the sum total of the conversation.

PAZ: Yeah. I kind of read it as like the final conversation on that topic.

JULIAN: That makes more sense.

PAZ: Um, it's still weird. And there's no real, like-- Fireheart doesn't have much like internal thought going on in that moment, so he doesn't really offer much perspective on that choice.

JULIAN: Yeah, and like I get, you know, it's Fireheart's POV or whatever. But a lot of the other characters clearly have so much going on internally that like, we do kind of see through Fireheart's eyes that it's... I don't know, it's weird that we don't know what--

PAZ: If you want to your POV character to be in the scene, you just do it. You make up any excuse.

LIZ: We saw, um, Sandpaw for like, a much shorter amount of time. And like, it was easy to get a sense like, oh, she's really unsatisfied with what's happening to her. And why hasn't she been cat promoted yet? And she's really frustrated. And that didn't take very long at all. And you get-- there is a sense of sympathy there. And he sympathizes with her. And he doesn't really do that for his own apprentice who he's just-- he's known for much longer, or I mean, known more, I guess, like closely.

JULIAN: Yeah, like, he's very sad, but it's all like guilt. It's all about him.

LIZ: Yeah. It's not frustration for her. It's like, oh, I fucked up.

PAZ: Yeah. I really think it just comes down to like, the writing was thoughtless. And it was like, not a proper way to handle a disabled character and leads to this kind of, like lack of care given to her arc.

JULIAN: And then we get the cat racism.

LIZ: Double whammy.

PAZ: Yeah. I guess we will be moving on from that topic for now. Because yeah, then it goes right into the cat racism.

LIZ: God.

PAZ: Which I-- it's handled a bit better, because it's actually intentional is what I will say.

JULIAN: Like, it's intentional and it's framed as bad, even if it's like a little, you know, it's cat racism in a kid's book.

LIZ: It is the metaphor that the kids will understand.

JULIAN: Um, I wrote like three different times, "Cloudkit is a child." In all caps.

PAZ: Yeah, they're being like, really cat racist, like worse than we saw with like, Fireheart, honestly.

LIZ: He's just a baby.

PAZ: I'm like, this is a two week old baby.

LIZ: Listen, since it is-- I know it's cat racism. But I do think it's very funny that these British ladies wrote about-- made a metaphor about racism, and had it be like racism against the white cat.

PAZ: Oh god.

LIZ: Just a fun little note.

PAZ: That's extremely funny. I guess they were trying to be like what coat colors would a house cat have. Oh my god.

LIZ: It could have been like a fancy one instead of... like white stray cats are pretty common too.

PAZ: You know what I was thinking that whole time? I'm like, Yellowfang's a Persian cat.

LIZ: Yeah, what the fuck?

PAZ: I'm like, why? I don't think--

LIZ: Yellowfang's a purebred cat.

PAZ: I know. Oh my god.

LIZ: She's an escaped show cat. That's the secret.

PAZ: It's so funny.

LIZ: Yellowfang's living like the Anastasia movie or whatever.

JULIAN: Oh my god.

PAZ: Oh, my God. I was just picturing my cat Kip though.

LIZ: Mm.

JULIAN: Just a little guy.

LIZ: Just a little guy.

PAZ: Just a little fluffy guy, but everyone is like, I want this child to die.

JULIAN: I am glad that we do get to see-- I mean, obviously it's not great. But I'm glad that we get to see Tigerclaw back at it again with the kit murder, the threatening to kit murder.

PAZ: Yeah, that's like a couple chapters away but--

JULIAN: It is.

PAZ: Damn.

LIZ: I love the scene where he shows up cause it's so like just over the top, and it's the fucking funniest thing I've ever seen.

PAZ: I was like, this rules. Wait, I should go find it.

JULIAN: He's like twirling his metaphorical mustache.

LIZ: Oh, you didn't know? Tigerclaw has been a mustache cat this whole time.

PAZ: I'm still trying to find it.

JULIAN: It's in chapter 24 at the very end. You're right. It is an evil leg.

LIZ: The way he shows up is you just picture, like, stage lighting, and the spotlight shows up, and like a leg just sticks out from behind the curtain.

[ominous music]

PAZ: Okay, I found it. The scene is Cloudkit playing with a little moss ball, which is very cute.

LIZ: Adorable.

PAZ: "He rolled onto his back, threw the ball up with his four paws, and kicked it away with his hind legs. It landed next to the nursery. Cloudkit scrambled up and scooted after it. He crouched a rabbit leap away, his hind quarters bunched in the air. Fireheart watched as the kit prepared to pounce. Suddenly his fur prickled. A long dark foreleg was reaching towards the moss ball from behind the nursery. 'Cloudkit,' Fireheart called. 'Wait!' Shadowy images of rogue cats were still fresh in his mind. Cloudkit sat up and looked around at him, puzzled."

[drum roll, dramatic organ music]

"Tigerclaw emerged from behind the kit, holding the moss ball between the teeth. He carried the ball over to the kit and dropped it by Cloudkit's fluffy white paws. 'Be careful,' he growled. 'You wouldn't want to lose such a precious plaything.' As he spoke, the dark warrior stared at Fireheart over Cloudkit's head."

JULIAN: Literal like children's cartoon villain out here like, oooh.

PAZ: It's so funny.

LIZ: You'd better not lose your moss ball. [evil laugh]

JULIAN: Like literally the mafioso like, [deep voice] nice kit you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.

PAZ: This is the next little part. "Fireheart shivered. What did Tigerclaw mean by that? He seemed to be talking about the moss ball. But did he really mean that Cloudkit was a plaything?"

LIZ: Yes.

PAZ: Yeah, he's threatening your two days old nephew.

LIZ: You know he loves baby murder. He's trying so hard.

JULIAN: He loooves baby murder.

LIZ: He's gonna send your nephew to snake hell.

JULIAN: Well, and then there is the whole plotline of like Fireheart suspects that Tigerclaw was responsible for like Cinderpaw's accident. So he's really up on the the child murder or attempted murder.

LIZ: His rate of success is so-so, but boy is he determined. Yeah, it's not for lack of trying. Do you think like Tigerclaw goes back to his den every time he fails? It's like [clicks teeth] if it weren't for those darn kids. Next time I'll surely succeed.

JULIAN: That meddling kittypet.

LIZ: All I need is a big cliff and a long trail of Temptations treats. And when Cloudkit has the final treat, then I'll appear. Okay, I think of all the cats that I could see standing twolegged, Tigerclaw could be one, because that seems like the most evil. He's walking like a man towards--

PAZ: I think he should be one of his cats whose like, fur patterns make it look like he has a little mustache.

LIZ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Um--

JULIAN: God. Sorry, go ahead.

PAZ: I was just gonna say, but like, yeah, like other cats in the clan are also just being like, I want this child to die. Because like Longtail says at one point like, when Cloudkit gets a fever like, he won't last through Leafbare, like, happily.

JULIAN: They're like, joking about how long this child is gonna survive.

LIZ: Hey, y'all have a low birth rate, low infant survival rate. Shut up. Jesus.

JULIAN: It's like, are they so numb to child death? Like does it happen so often that they're just like, whatever?

LIZ: This is like the cat xenophobia.

JULIAN: God. Speaking of-- this is a terrible segue, but speaking of bad leadership decisions, what's up with Bluestar?

LIZ: She's so--

PAZ: Yeah, the scene with Sandpaw.

LIZ: What happened to her?

JULIAN: The scene even right before Sandpaw, where Fireheart is like, oh, I want to go to the gathering, cause I want to like see how WindClan is doing. And she's like, I don't need reminding of what you did for WindClan. It's like, what? She sounds like she's like, she thinks he's trying to like curry favor with her or something. And it's like, no, he's like, being normal. What's your damage?

LIZ: I guess like, is this gonna be a plot point?

PAZ: Is she that upset about him bringing a kitten when she's been saying over and over again, we don't have enough warriors?

LIZ: She's the one who brought him in for that express purpose.

PAZ: Right? He was just going by example.

JULIAN: And like, do I think it was a good idea? No. Do I think he should have checked? Yes. But also like, you deal with what you're given.

LIZ: There's been many worse decisions made in this clan recently, too. This isn't the worst one. It's just, well, it's a baby. We did need one.

JULIAN: ThunderClan is a smorgasbord of bad decisions.

LIZ: I wouldn't want to be there.

JULIAN: No, if I had to choose a clan...

PAZ: WindClan.

JULIAN: I would choose WindClan. They seem normal.

LIZ: They seem fine.

PAZ: This is jumping ahead again. But at the gathering like, Tallstar is like, we've been minding our fucking business. Like I don't know what all the rest of you are doing, but. We're just chilling. Leave us out of this.

LIZ: Tallstar is just like, he gets there late with like Starbucks or whatever. Sorry. That's an old meme, but he's like, hey, what's happening?

PAZ: The room's on fire.

JULIAN: Tallstar like, we're really busy hunting rabbits. Y'all figure this out yourselves.

LIZ: Like, I have to go now. My mom's calling me. Bye.

PAZ: But, um, yeah, there's a scene with Sandpaw at the end of chapter 22 that was nice. I like them building up the relationship between Fireheart and Sandpaw, since he like, saved her life. I like that it's like playing out over the long term. It's also cute that Fireheart keys to being like surprised, like why is she being so nice to me?

JULIAN: It's very fun.

LIZ: I think it's also good that he's like--

JULIAN: I also--

LIZ: Oh, no, go ahead.

JULIAN: No, no, no, go ahead.

LIZ: No, he's like, why haven't you been a warrior yet? You're like, so competent.

JULIAN: Yeah, Graystripe is a warrior. Mr. Chucklefuck himself.

PAZ: Yeah, can he be demoted and like, give it to Sandpaw?

LIZ: Yeah, can they switch?

JULIAN: I also do like that Sandpaw like, criticizes Bluestar's decisions.

PAZ: Yeah. She is right, too.

JULIAN: Also, she's nice about Cloudkit, which gains her points.

LIZ: It is.

JULIAN: She's like, oh, he's gonna be fine and his fur is really thick, so it's really helpful in the winter.

PAZ: Yeah, she's like, oh, he'll blend in.

LIZ: He's so fluffy, he'll be-- he'll never be cold.

JULIAN: Ugh, the gathering is just a mess.

PAZ: Yeah, so then the next chapter is the gathering. It is indeed a mess.

JULIAN: I have written on three lines in a row, "Graystripe, oh my god. Graystripe please."

PAZ: Graystripe is gonna cause like an international incident. He's caused like two indirect manslaughters, and now he's going to cause a war. He is, this one cat.

LIZ: He's not doing anything to hide it either.

PAZ: No.

LIZ: Cause he has no plans to stop. He's not even like, oh, I'm gonna roll in some garlic so they don't know it's me or something.

JULIAN: Right? He's not even trying to disguise his smell.

PAZ: I cannot believe that.

LIZ: That's the only thing you guys got. You're cats. Do something. Oh god, there's another airplane.

JULIAN: It's like he's trying to sneak into a building, but he's using his employee ID badge to do it.

LIZ: They'll never know it's me. How? It could be another Graystripe.

PAZ: Yeah, all that anyone has to do is come up and like sniff him a bit.

JULIAN: Like, why did he come to the gathering? They're gonna smell him.

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: Why did he come? He's clearly not interested. He's like so checked out. He's just... he's wifeguy (derogatory.)

JULIAN: We also-- and I know this is partly like Fireheart POV. But like, because we don't see anything of like the relationship between Graystripe and Silverstream, we don't see them interact ever, it really is just like, why is he doing this?

PAZ: Yeah, it's like I don't... why are you so like, adamant about this, bro?

LIZ: We have seen a lot of Graystripe, though. And if I was Silverstream, I wouldn't be risking it all for this guy. I don't know.

PAZ: Yeah, Silverstream also sucks in this instance, frankly.

JULIAN: No, that's true. We see Graystripe sucking directly, but she is also like putting her clan at risk, and...

PAZ: It takes two.

LIZ: At least they are with each other so they don't have to be with anyone else?

PAZ: Thank God, they're out of the dating pool.

JULIAN: I know this would cause more problems. But how come she never comes and visits Graystripe?

LIZ: Yeah.

PAZ: There's already RiverClan cats on ThunderClan territory, apparently.

JULIAN: It wouldn't even cause an incident.

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: Why are they meeting each other in like one territory instead of like starting to meet like somewhere neutral? It seems really short sighted.

JULIAN: Why don't they go meet in kittypet territory? No one will care.

PAZ: God, right?

LIZ: Yeah. You just go back home, and Bluestar is like why do you smell so much like catnip?

JULIAN: Like, oh, Yellowfang told me to go get some. Boom. We're so much smarter than Graystripe.

LIZ: Graystripe, why do you smell like garlic? Oh, just love the taste.

PAZ: Aside from Graystripe, I have to put an alert on our Fireheart/Onewhisker watch.

JULIAN: Oh, I forgot about that.

PAZ: Yeah, we're on Fireheart/Onewhisker watch.

LIZ: Oh, it's real.

PAZ: It's going, it's happening. It's out there. It's real.

JULIAN: Onewhisker does glance at Fireheart with an amused gleam in his eyes.

PAZ: You wanna talk about cross-clan romance blooming.

LIZ: Where's the Fireheart/Onewhisker marriage of convenience--

PAZ: Oh my god.

LIZ: --to cement the allegiance between their two clans?

PAZ: Liz, you're so smart.

JULIAN: [typing] Archiveofourown.org.

PAZ: Yeah, I think Onewhisker like comes up to Fireheart during the gathering, and they're just like excited to see each other again. It's a cute scene.

LIZ: Isn't he also like oh, wow, Deadfoot said hi to you. What an honor. So like clan dad approval or whatever. You've met my family.

PAZ: Deadfoot's the dad who wears the shirt like, you can't date my daughter.

JULIAN: Great news.

PAZ: Oh yes?

LIZ: Oh?

JULIAN: There's 25 works.

PAZ: Oh fuck yes.

JULIAN: In the tag, which is kind of a lot. There's not like that that many Warrior Cats fics.

PAZ: Damn.

JULIAN: There's 3000 of them. So 25 for like a pretty obscure rarepair is not bad. Um, the first fic, or the most recent fic in the tag is a Peter Pan crossover.

LIZ: Huh.

PAZ: [snorts]

JULIAN: In which Fireheart is Peter Pan.

PAZ: Okay.

JULIAN: I don't know which character Onewhisker is. This is orphaned.

LIZ: Is it because he has red hair?

JULIAN: Maybe? Um, oh boy. Warrior Cats lemons. Discontinued until further notice.

PAZ: No...

LIZ: My god. No!

PAZ: No, you can't do that.

LIZ: No.

JULIAN: Oh my god, I think um, whoever wrote the Peter Pan-- who orphaned their Peter Pan account, I think they probably wrote this other one too.

PAZ: Oh no.

JULIAN: Because this seems... no, no, no, not the lemon. It's not the lemon This one that I'm about to describe, which is a Warriors/Cyrano de Bergerac crossover.

PAZ: A what crossover?

LIZ: Oh my god.

JULIAN: Cyrano de Bergerac, which is the... it's like She's the Man type of like, uh, story where it's like, oh, this person has a crush on the other guy-- or on a girl and I'm going to like write letters.

LIZ: Oh, it's a Half of It situation, Paz.

PAZ: Yes, okay, I see.

JULIAN: Yes, not She's the Man. That's a different...

PAZ: Maybe this person has a big brain, I think.

JULIAN: I think this person has a gigantic brain.

LIZ: I'm so happy for them. What a great, completely unexpected AU.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't know what else happened in the gathering besides Graystripe being the source of all conflict.

JULIAN: Tigerclaw was being pretty aggressive and like, making things worse than they needed to be. And I wish Bluestar would tell him to shut up.

PAZ: Yeah, was he about to like fucking attack clan leaders or something?

JULIAN: He like... I don't know if he like got close to attacking, but he got close. Like he's definitely doing a lot of yelling. I'm glad that StarClan sent a cloud to defuse the situation.

PAZ: Thanks, StarClan, I guess.

LIZ: You know cats hate clouds.

JULIAN: I mean, listen, my cat Chickpea has spent the last two days like hiding under various objects because she hates rain so much.

LIZ: Aw, Chickpea.

JULIAN: Aw, her traumas.

LIZ: StarClan sends one cloud to pass over the moon. All of the cats, all of them, they just like fluff up. They're like, ah fuck, we gotta go home.

PAZ: Cute.

JULIAN: Yellowfang is right. They shouldn't be fighting among themselves, especially during Leafbare. They should be worrying about keeping their clans safe.

PAZ: Yeah, she's right. Yellowfang has like the one brain in this whole book, maybe.

LIZ: Yellowfang should leave and join a better clan. It's real fucked up here.

PAZ: Yeah, just go make your own clan, Yellowfang.

LIZ: Maybe she should make like-- okay, here's a clan where you can have more than one doctor so I can like sleep once in a while.

OLIVER: [yowl]

LIZ: I'm so old. I'm a cat. I'm so old.

PAZ: Oh hold on, Oliver wants to go out. Be right back.

JULIAN: I think it's really good when our podcast is interrupted by our actual cats.

LIZ: Yeah, it's a little bit of flavor, I think. Makes you think like, hey, who's the real kittypet? Oliver, Chickpea, or us?

PAZ: Okay, I'm back.

LIZ: Hi.

JULIAN: Hello.

PAZ: Hello. Um, I don't know. I guess the next like, stuff that-- we've already talked about the evil leg scene. So the next stuff is like the ShadowClan stuff. I think that was all chapter 25. It was a really fun chapter to read.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's like very fast-paced. Oh, I thought there was a nice little detail. When they find the rabbit bones that they're like, oh, this is ShadowClan, there's a bit about like "Clan cats normally buried the bones of their prey as a sign of respect for the life they had taken." Which is you know, that's a nice little world building detail. I'm sure it will never come up again.

PAZ: Yeah, I'm like, wow, this showed up out of nowhere and just for this one plot beat, but okay.

LIZ: You know, there's like 100 more books. Might show up again.

PAZ: Maybe.

LIZ: Would be nice. Would love to know about, you know, burials and... what is the relation between like, animals that aren't cats and aren't other carnivores?

PAZ: I don't know.

LIZ: And what's the spectrum of like sentience and respect there? I don't know.

JULIAN: Like I knew we talked a little bit way back when about how dogs are maybe semi-sentient in this universe, but this is not a Redwall situation.

PAZ: I think badgers are also sentient? I don't 100% remember.

LIZ: Badgers are always sentient in any animal thing.

PAZ: So true.

LIZ: They're just like fun guys.

PAZ: Yeah, cause I'm pretty--

JULIAN: They really do have like an outsized impact in children's literature for how many badgers actually exist.

PAZ: Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen--

LIZ: I've never seen one.

PAZ: Yeah, not even like in a zoo, I don't think.

LIZ: Mm-mm.

JULIAN: When I click on the Wikipedia page for badgers, which we've done before on the podcast, one of the suggestions is List of fictional badgers.

LIZ: It's very big.

PAZ: Yeah, so the ShadowClan stuff is like Tigerclaw gets all gung ho about rushing off to deal with ShadowClan, leaves the camp completely undefended. And it turns out it's not ShadowClan. It's like Brokenstar and his posse, who basically just set up like a ambush.

LIZ: They're his friends. Please, the text calls them his friends.

PAZ: Sorry. Brokenstar's polycule.

LIZ: [laughing] No!

PAZ: Sorry, sorry. Okay, I just had to get that out.

JULIAN: No, you're... listen, who's to say? Who's to say it couldn't be?

LIZ: You're right. Just completely got me-- just threw me off. Not just the track, but just like the region. I'm in another area code.

JULIAN: Hard left.

LIZ: There's a part where it's pointed out that no one is telling Bluestar before they go attack. And then Tigerclaw's like, well, you go tell her, to Fireheart. And I don't know. I think it brings up an interesting like question like, how much of this is Tigerclaw just acting the way he wants because he thinks that's like the right thing? And how much of it is like pre planned or part of his like, grand evil, usurping murder scheme?

JULIAN: Yeah, it is-- because like, it is very clear that like he thinks he's acting in the best interest of the clan. But also it happens to be that he thinks that the best interest of the clan is for him to be in power absolutely. And like, I think that's a good point. Like, how much of this is him scheming and how much of this is him being like, well, I know what's right, and I'm not gonna listen to anyone else?

PAZ: Yeah, I mean, that's something we will presumably find out.

LIZ: I am kind of surprised like, at almost the end of the book, how much he's been like an enjoyable antagonist because he does like seesaw between like, I'm your mean teacher. I'm your comically evil teacher. And then I'm your comically evil king killer.

PAZ: He's so fun.

JULIAN: Tigerclaw really is like, he's a great character. Like, he does some wild shit later. Uh, but he's one of like, you know, I didn't read a lot of the later books, but he's one of my favorite characters in the series.

PAZ: Yeah, I'm excited to be reading and like actually seeing him on screen because I mean, he's mentioned a lot in later books. But here he is doing his thing.

LIZ: Doing his evil leg reaching out to take your basketball.

JULIAN: You know, I guess the Brokenstar like reveal is... cause we were talking in the first book that we were like, yeah, the Brokenstar stuff seemed to get resolved like way too quickly.

PAZ: It wasn't resolved.

JULIAN: And I guess this is why.

LIZ: Makes sense.

PAZ: Which makes sense. Yeah, cause he wasn't killed or anything.

LIZ: No, he just got Team Rocket blasted off. He's back now. He's here to steal your Pikachu.

PAZ: Yeah, I mean this chapter is just like good, like, rising tensions and then also like Fireheart like making like decisions on the fly. And there's like a scene where he like gets on top of Highrock, which was fun. Kind of had to take like de facto leadership in like this situation where literally everyone else left.

JULIAN: Yeah, One-eye, great name, the oldest ThunderClan cat--

PAZ: Okay, One-eye's name is like One, and then there's like a little dash, eye. Why is he allowed to...

JULIAN: I guess he has a hyphen because otherwise it would be two E's in a row, which is awkward to read.

PAZ: Maybe. Maybe.

LIZ: Or maybe it's his surname, and he double barreled with...

PAZ: Why does he get a special name?

LIZ: He's the oldest one.

PAZ: Okay, true.

JULIAN: When you get old enough, you get bestowed a hyphen.

LIZ: Yeah. You have to-- with every decade, you get access to one more piece of punctuation.

PAZ: Oh shit.

JULIAN: But he goes like, oh, what do you think you're doing up there?

LIZ: Well, he is very old, so it would sound like [creaky voice] What do you think you're doing up there, young man?

JULIAN: You're right. I'm sorry. I didn't do a good voice. [creaky voice] Warriors these days.

PAZ: Could be a little bit of foreshadowing, you could say.

LIZ: You could say.

PAZ: You could say. Well, you know, at least Sandpaw-- okay, I said everyone was gone. But Sandpaw is still there.

JULIAN: That's true.

PAZ: Even though Bluestar refuses to make her a warrior for some reason, she's very competent, so.

JULIAN: When one girlboss falls, another must rise to take her place.

LIZ: It's like, oh, god, that's the episode title.

PAZ: It's very long.

JULIAN: The law of conservation of girlbosses? Is that shorter?

PAZ: Yes, thank you.

LIZ: Is there cat sexism?

PAZ: I don't think so. I don't really remember that.

JULIAN: I don't think so.

LIZ: Maybe not. Maybe there's like--

JULIAN: There's not really in-world sexism aside-- like there's not sexism. There is like un... the role of queens is...

LIZ: The biological essentialism.

PAZ: But yeah, there's not like, like, like, sexism really. I feel like--

JULIAN: No one's like, oh, Bluestar's a girl.

LIZ: No.

PAZ: I feel like there's a lot of male leaders but I think-- I don't know, that's just like, what happened, I guess.

JULIAN: I think that's the bias of the authors and like not any intentional in-world...

LIZ: That's an author.

JULIAN: And like, you know, the authors are all women. But, you know, we live in a society.

LIZ: Yeah. It is very funny that like, girl character, plucky girl student character does not get promoted, just as a consequence.

PAZ: I need to know if there's an explanation for why this is happening, because it's so funny.

LIZ: There has to be because it keeps getting pointed out.

JULIAN: I think we're gonna get to it. There's certainly an explanation for like, why Bluestar is, um...

PAZ: Yeah, I sort of know about that.

LIZ: Well, I don't cause I haven't read this yet. But okay.

JULIAN: Sorry to be like heh heh heh.

PAZ: That's the basis of our podcast though.

LIZ: It is.

JULIAN: Girlboss starts to behave weirdly. You'll never guess what happens next.

LIZ: Can I give you some theories?

PAZ: Oh, sure.

JULIAN: Yes, please.

LIZ: Um, so have you ever seen Men in Black?

PAZ: Yes.

JULIAN: Yes.

LIZ: So you know the alien that's like a guy, but it's actually a very little guy in a human guy suit.

PAZ: Yes.

LIZ: I think Bluestar, in the middle, was abducted for political reasons, and they replaced her with a little Bluestar replicant.

PAZ: Damn.

LIZ: Another reason may be that she's being mind... well, actually that's the same thing. I was gonna say like by a weird cat parasite, but that's kind of the same premise. Evil twin?

JULIAN: I was gonna say Bluestar's toxoplasmosis. But um.

PAZ: Yeah, they do that to us, not.

JULIAN: Yeah, I don't think it goes the other way around.

LIZ: Yes, that's it. I think that's it.

PAZ: Great, thank you.

LIZ: Evil twin or teeny alien.

PAZ: That's the only explanations. I don't know. I don't know if I have much else to add.

JULIAN: Yeah, I think we really kind of, we covered it.

LIZ: Join us next week to see Fireheart flush out the alien controlling Bluestar's politics.

PAZ: I'm trying to decide if we'll just finish out the book next time or what.

LIZ: I think it's five chapters, right? We could just finish it.

JULIAN: Yeah, I mean, if it ends up like... it's five chapters. If we go through it chronologically and it ends up being like a super long episode, we can...

PAZ: Roll with it or do something. I don't know.

JULIAN: Yeah it seems like we've hit the--

PAZ: Climax, kind of.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: Okay. Well, yeah.

LIZ: Just be special extra long for a finale.

JULIAN: Yeah, there you go. Big finale episode.

PAZ: That's what we planned.

LIZ: FATT-style, join us for a four-hour long finale.

PAZ: No. Yeah, I don't have a segment planned because I knew we were gonna have a long discussion this week.

JULIAN: Yeah. I think we kind of talked about a lot this week.

PAZ: Did you-- did you have something?

LIZ: [emphatically] No.

PAZ: Okay. Well then.

LIZ: We could plan out some more of my Onewhisker/Fireheart political marriage of convenience AU.

PAZ: Yeah, you wanna end on that? You wanna give us some thoughts?

LIZ: I mean, just going from canon characterization, I think Fireheart's going to spend a lot of time being like wow, Onewhisker's really friendly and competent. What a good acquaintance.

PAZ: Oh no. Fireheart oblivious in this case.

LIZ: I also think he'll have some sort of major political social faux pas in the middle.

PAZ: Of course.

LIZ: Which is the crux of the conflict. But he's so darn personable because he's got that protagonist personality.

JULIAN: Onewhisker and his charming himbo spouse.

PAZ: Tallstar orchestrates this, of course.

JULIAN: Yes, of course.

LIZ: Tallstar's like okay, you guys need to have a conference about fish trade right now. The two of you only, in the idyllic meadow. Here's a picnic basket.

PAZ: Oh my god, there was only one cat bed.

LIZ: There was only one pile of leaves.

JULIAN: Oh, I love it.

LIZ: There was only one emergency rat sewer.

JULIAN: Oh. Fireheart trying to prove that he's gonna be a good member of his new clan and just hunting a lot. Bringing back a lot of rabbits.

LIZ: Onewhisker finds just like, oh my god, what's something comically large? Like a deer at the foot of his door or whatever. What do you do with this?

PAZ: Okay, is there cat royalty in this au? Or what's the political situation?

LIZ: We could go--

JULIAN: Onewhisker is the deputy, so he's like the heir. Not really, but you know.

LIZ: Maybe they're just like high ranking diplomats.

PAZ: I see.

JULIAN: Yeah, it's like Tallstar can't marry a cat from another clan because that would be too, like, too much.

PAZ: Also Tallstar still pining after his star-crossed romance with Jake, of course.

JULIAN: Of course.

PAZ: He sees--

JULIAN: So two reasons.

PAZ: He sees himself in Fireheart and Onewhisker's relationship.

LIZ: Oh, I see. Also, Bluestar is a lesbian, despite her girlbossification.

JULIAN: Yeah. Lesbians can be girlbosses.

LIZ: You're right, you're right.

PAZ: That's so true.

LIZ: It's equality.

JULIAN: We can be just as bad as straight people.

PAZ: Heard it here first, folks. Proud of it. Maybe Bluestar's parents were killed by dalmations. That explains--

[laughter]

That explains her situation.

LIZ: God.

JULIAN: I think Tallstar should get to have a good heart to heart in which he explains to Fireheart that Onewhisker is in love with him.

PAZ: So true.

JULIAN: Cause Fireheart is too dumb to see it himself. And Tallstar is like this can't happen again. We can't have another Jake.

PAZ: Fireheart's like, surely there's no feelings here because of our arranged marriage. Oh, I'm so sad.

LIZ: How can Onewhisker possibly fall for me, a protagonist cat with anime hero hair that everyone admires, and who's extremely accomplished, and apparently friends with everyone unless they super hate me?

PAZ: No, but he's a kittypet, Liz.

LIZ: You're right. He's like, but I'm just a kittypet.

JULIAN: Does Onewhisker also have anime bangs?

PAZ: Of course.

JULIAN: Okay, good.

LIZ: Oh, they're in the other direction. So it's like parallels.

JULIAN: Oh, so they match.

PAZ: I see.

JULIAN: [laughing] So when they kiss it forms a perfect bowlcut.

PAZ: Wow. Love is real.

LIZ: You complete my stylish fringe.

JULIAN: I'm imagining like, I don't know if y'all have seen Taemin's like perfect circle bowl cut from like, early Shinee era.

PAZ: I feel like I remember seeing it.

JULIAN: You may have seen-- I think one of our friends has posted pictures of it. It's just a real circle.

LIZ: Oh my god. I see it.

JULIAN: Yeah, if you just search Taemin bowlcut, it'll come up.

LIZ: Oh my god, it's seamless.

JULIAN: Yeah, just a perfect orb.

LIZ: I'm just gonna paste it in chat.

JULIAN: That's what I'm imagining when they come together.

LIZ: This is a child. It's a young lad.

PAZ: Oh my god. It looks fake. It looks fake. That cannot be his real hair.

LIZ: It's a mushroom.

JULIAN: Sorry, for people who are not in our Discord server, Liz has just posted this in our critiques-to-read channel.

PAZ: Makes you think.

JULIAN: It really does make you think. Also I'm sorry if I'm blowing out the audio by laughing too hard.

PAZ: Yeah, same. Ooh, boy. Maybe we should call it there.

JULIAN: What a note to end on.

PAZ: Thanks for joining us this week, everyone. As always, you can listen-- wait, you're listening to the show right now. You don't need to know how to do that. You can find the show @staircast on Twitter.

LIZ: Well, what if they want to switch apps?

PAZ: Yeah, we're on other apps. If you want to switch it up, go ahead. You can find the show @staircast on Twitter. You can send questions and stuff to stairwaytostarclan@gmail.com. Join us next week. We'll be finishing out Fire and Ice. Who knows what will happen? But until next time, may StarClan light your path. Bye.

LIZ: Bye.

JULIAN: Bye.

PAZ: [outro music]

LIZ: Need to Photoshop this onto Fireheart.

JULIAN: Please do so that we can tweet it.

LIZ: It'll be really easy. It's just one shape.

PAZ: Let's clap.

LIZ: No gaps.

JULIAN: Should I have Craig join?

PAZ: Oh yeah, maybe.

JULIAN: Just in case.

PAZ: Yeah, we can see how it works, too.

JULIAN: Yeah.

PAZ: [startled] Ah!

JULIAN: Oh, geez, hi Craig.

LIZ: Oh my God.

PAZ: Craig, that is scary.

LIZ: I think Craig's gonna betray us because he's an evil AI.

PAZ: Yeah we're about to be in 2000: A Space Odyssey.

JULIAN: Craig was Tigerclaw this whole time.

PAZ: Oh shit.

LIZ: Oh god.

PAZ: What if Tigerclaw's name was just Craig?

LIZ: That has like evil manager energy.

PAZ: That's basically what he is in this book. That is his vibes in Fire and Ice.

JULIAN: Craig-- or Tigerclaw, loudly: if you have time to lean, you have time to clean!

PAZ: God.

JULIAN: Enemy of the people, Craig.

LIZ: Craigslist, but it's his list of murder victims.

PAZ: Well, his list of attempted murder victims would be pretty high, pretty long.

LIZ: God.

PAZ: Okay, but I will do the intro.

JULIAN: Oh, should we do time.is?

PAZ: Oh fuck.

[pessimisticpleasure]

The Walking Dead - A Few Thoughts On Rick Grimes

I’d like to start this opinion piece by stressing the word OPINION, giving you a spoiler warning for episodes up to and including ‘Still Gotta Mean Something’, and asking you to bear in mind that I love the character of Rick and that I’m writing this out of genuine confusion and sadness about the direction of his character recently.

Contrary to most fans, I’ve quite enjoyed the latest season of the Walking Dead, or parts of it at least (I mean, compared to last season we can’t really complain). There’s been some stand-out episodes and action but the one thing that is bothering me at the moment is some of the character choices that the writers are making. This includes the total sidelining and lack of development for Daryl, killing off Carl right when his character was finally flourishing and, the basis for this post, the hugely questionable actions of Rick which are never addressed in the show.

The first time I felt genuinely uncomfortable with the actions of the main group was back in season six when they killed the Saviours while they slept. At the time I questioned the actions of the so called ‘good’ group because that seemed like a very not good thing to do because, well, it isn’t, but I reminded myself that within the confines of the world they live in which is to be fair, ruthless and cutthroat that maybe it could be reasoned away.

And just as I tried to mentally justify that I have tried to condone Rick’s actions because up until recently I adored his character but towards the end of last season and this whole season  I’ve been really uncomfortable with the ‘good guy’ killing people who really don’t need to be killed. As Rick said himself ‘only one person has to die’ (and then, you know, killed like four people in the next scene). I have so little faith in him now that when he found the baby at the saviour base I was honestly surprised that he didn’t kill it. I think the expectation in any media is that the ‘good’ side kills as few people as possible outside of a designated ‘battle scene’, and perhaps if it was more cleverly written I might commend the show for turning that expectation on its head but the issue is that it isn’t and with Rick especially it seemed without much cause that this was his policy one minute and then suddenly, it wasn’t.

When Carl died I really thought that would be Rick’s turning point for him to think ‘yes, I have been a bit trigger happy of late, let’s maybe only kill people if we have to’. Instead they had Rick lie to Carl as he was dying and carry on the way he was and maybe you could argue grief if he hadn’t been doing that way before Carl died. Weirdly, instead of using his death to re-humanise Rick the writers seem to have put Negan on that path and while I’m enjoying seeing his human side (because he was starting to wear really thin on me) it feels so backwards.

Please don’t misunderstand me - I understand that Negan is bad, I am well aware he is extremely flawed. However viewing it objectively, he is actually better than Rick AT THE MOMENT (because Negan has definitely been evil forever whereas Rick’s fundamental character was not always like this).  It really bothers me that I’m meant to root against a character who actively attempts to kill as few people as possible while supporting Rick and his never ending murder spree of anyone who’s ever seen Negan. One key difference I will admit is that Negan seems to enjoy killing people whereas for Rick it is a genuine means to an end but for me that’s not enough of a distinction to condemn one while supporting the other, the intention is irrelevant when the action and the consequence are the same.

The thing is, I’m never sure if we’re supposed to question this sketchy element of Rick’s character because so few fans actually do. To have him allied with Morgan in his actions last night feels significant because Morgan is a character who is going crazy and having a crisis of conscience, so surely having Rick on the same killing spree is meant to force fans to second guess him? The latest episode is also called ‘Still Gotta Mean Something’ which to me implies that morality and honesty still have their place in the world despite Rick’s actions to the contrary. It also seemed significant that Rick’s most questionable action to date occurred in an episode with Negan at his most vulnerable and human. And yet many fans don’t even blink at what Rick does and I think a large part of that is that the writers are scared to call Rick out on committing horrible acts even when we see them play out on screen in case of fan backlash because, while people usually have other favourites, Rick has always been likeable and a good, sturdy protagonist and flipping this is a risk. They don’t even go so far as to have other characters question him on screen, not even Carl while he was there as the moral compass truly did. They’ve also kind of backed themselves into a corner because without a big event having him flip back seems nonsensical, really using Carl's death would have been perfect.

I see all the time arguments between Rick and Negan fans where the Rick fans defend him by saying ‘well, he’s good’. But I can’t buy that for a lot longer, no he’s not as bad as Negan but that doesn’t make him good, and without starting to back up that claim with evidence the writers are going to have an uphill battle because while some diehards will defend any of his actions to the death, I imagine that more people will begin to question where we draw the line between good and bad because it’s becoming more and more like the only difference is we haven’t spent the last 8 years watching the Saviours and we care about the characters we know rather than the good and bad being separated by different actions, goals, and values like they should be.

I understand that for a lot of people the primary draw of The Walking Dead is the action and having a protagonist who fuels this is what drives the show but from early on, this show set itself apart with the fantastic and rich characters who were a part of this action but also principled and well-developed. Rick was always someone who partook only in what violence had to occur, defending the prison, fighting his way out of Terminus, biting a guys neck out to save his son (I still sometimes fondly remember how badass that scene was) while also seeming to have a moral element - he fought Shane in season two when he displayed the same tendencies towards uninhibited violence that Rick has far surpassed now, kicked Carol out when she murdered their people even though she felt she was justified, and importantly believed in people enough to take them into the group even when they might be a danger, distinguishing himself from past villains he was pitted against.

I’m sad to say that the Rick I loved might be gone - either the writers have really lost their way or this long, confusing path is leading somewhere I don’t want to go. A one-eighty turn seems unlikely at this point but I’ve still got my fingers crossed - c’mon Rick, your son begged you on his deathbed to be how you used to! When they say ‘we’re taking the show back to season 4/5′ they better mean that literally, like everything that happened since was a dream and all the characters get a reset because my heart cannot take this any more.

[this-ginger-has-no-soul]

Ocean Soldier (Part 3 out of ?)

(A/N): Haaaaa, this one is so bad and it changed perspective between (Y/N) and Bucky a lot so I'm so sorry about that...

Summary: (Y/N) happens to come across a rather friendly mermaid

Warnings: none

Read Part 2: X

(Tags at the end)

    You were frozen with shock, your face completely numb as Bucky speaks his first words to you.

   His blue eyes bore into yours and you swear you can see a smudge of guilt in them, or perhaps that was your wishful thinking.

   "B-Bucky," Your voice shakes so much you can barely get the words out but Bucky's soft coos gently begin to soothe you, enough to the point your tears began to dry and your breathing evened out and you could finally speak properly.

   Even with your now calmer state, the dry cheeks, the steady breaths, Bucky keeps his hand on your cheek, his thumb gently swiping along your skin.

   "Where did you go?" You ask softly, not so brokenly anymore, just sad and distraught.

   "I-I panicked, I didn't know what to do. I-I shouldn't even be here right now, it's against the rules and-"

   "Bucky, you're not making any sense," You look at him with furrowed brows and a cocked head, showing your confusion. Bucky sighs gently, the cuts on his neck puffing in and out as he does so.

   "(Y/N) I can't keep visiting you, it's dangerous, for both of us. That's why I was so scared the first day, the day you rescued me. I'm not even supposed to be by the docks, much less caught in a net. I was afraid someone of my cove was going to come and-"

   "wait...a cove? Like a- like a cove of a fish?"

   "I've said too much already..." Bucky's hand slides from your face, leaving you feeling more hallow and alone than you had felt in a long time. "I should've just stayed away-"

   "Bucky wait-" You slide to the end of the dock, desperately trying to cling onto him. "Where are you going?"

   "I can't tell you...you know too much already-"

   "Bucky I hardly know a thing-"

   "They'll hurt you if they find out I've been up here?"

   "Who's 'they'?"

   "(Y/N), I really cant stay-"

   "Bucky please don't leave me-" You stop short when suddenly two hands cup your cheeks, the same slimy, cold ones that you had grown to love but what truly takes you off guard was the fact there was another pair of lips pressed to yours. Bucky was kissing you. He was finally kissing you.

   His lips were soft, wet, cold, but they were oh so perfect, they felt like they were made to fit directly with yours, like two pieces of a puzzle.

   You sigh against his lips, scooting a little closer as his lips move against yours so sweetly and so softly you could almost weep but before you could Bucky was pulling away and disappearing into the water once again, leaving you all alone.

   You sit there dumbfounded for a few minutes, staring a the spot he had just disappeared to but no matter how much you stared at it you simply couldn't make sense of what had just happened. A man you had known for a total of three weeks just kissed you after he went on and on about how dangerous it was to even be talking to you, and then suddenly he disappears again? You hadn't seen him in three fucking weeks, he shows up for a minute and then leaves again? You groan angrily as you flip back against the dock, staring up at the sky as tears burn at your eyes. Only this time you knew that a certain dark haired man wasn't going to show up to wipe them away.

(Bucky’s p.o.v)

   Bucky watched from afar as (Y/N) packed up their things, angrily wiped their tears and stomped away, limping on their still shredded feet. He felt horrible, of course he did. He'd grown to love- no, not love, love wasn't permitted among his kind, only survival and lust- he'd grown to care for (Y/N) very deeply and to see them so hurt over something he had done truly hurt him. Watching them those three weeks was absolute hell, he could barely stand to watch from a distance, to watch them sing and play whatever they had been playing, to watch them give up on drawing, to watch them slowly lose that smile they always held. He had to do something- he had to apologize, tell them what was wrong-

   "Bucky-" A sudden voice hisses to him, making the merman flip around.

   Floating just a few feet beyond him was the all too familiar face of Natasha, the most cutthroat fish in the sea. Nat was a part of his cove, as was a number of other mercreatures, but she by far was the scariest. Not even Steve, the leader and commander of the cove was as fear inducing as Nat.

   "What the hell are you doing up here?" Her gills fluttered as she breathed in angrily, making her much more intimidating than usual.

   "Nothing," Bucky whispers back, hoping that she wouldn't notice that he was lying.

   "Rogers will kill you if he finds you up here, it's broad fucking daylight,"

   "I know that Nat, Bucky mutters through gritted fangs, restraining himself just enough so he didn't end up ripping Nat's throat to pieces.

   "What if someone sees you? What then?"

   "I know Nat, I just needed some air, I'm still human after all,"

   "Yeah," Nat mutters in disgust. "I know. Now lets get going before Steve has both of our asses," Natasha sucks under the water, her shimmering red tail surfacing from the water for only a moment before disappearing back under the rippling waves.

   "Neither of us even have asses," Bucky grumbles as he takes one last look at the docks, at the place he once used to be happy. He'd find a way to apologize to (Y/N)- he just needed time.

(Your point of view)

   You knew coming back to the docks was wishful thinking, Bucky had told you he wouldn't be coming back and yet every morning you found yourself drawn to the same dock.

   For weeks, much longer than the precious three, you rose at sunrise and came down to the docks, sat on your designated piece of wood and waited. You'd sing, draw, maybe read a little bit but no matter what you did Bucky never came back. You even tried at night and still there was no sign of your friend. After weeks of waiting you were starting to lose hope again, no matter how hard you tried to hold onto those last glimmers of it it was just slipping away.

   At this point it was pointless to even wait for Bucky anymore, it was obvious we was never coming back and yet you kept on coming. Perhaps your persistence would pay off in the end? Maybe Bucky really would come back, he'd apologize and explain why he'd left and then the two of you would go back to being Friends? You scoffed as you walked down the docks for who knows what time. Wishful thinking hadn't gotten you anywhere so far so why should it suddenly start now-

   Your train of thought stops immediately as you stop at your dock, the dock. You didn't know what you were expecting but a large, white seashell most definitely wasn't it. You furrow your brows as you stoop to pick the shell up; It was shiny, pearly white, and absolutely gorgeous. You smile softly as you run your fingers along it's smooth layers, nearly shivering at it's cold temperature. It must have just come out of the ocean- You stop once again, looking down at the shell in shock. There was only one person who could have done this; Bucky.

   You knew it was a long shot but you couldn't help but think that your ocean loving friend had left a little present for you. You smile as you hold the shell close to your heart, being careful not to break it.

   "Thank you Bucky," you whisper to the ocean, hoping your dark haired friend could hear you and it may have been your imagination but you could've sworn your heard the ocean whisper back, "You're welcome," From that day on every time you came to the docks there was a little prize waiting for you, a pearl here, some cool knickknack there, maybe a plant of some sort another day.

   That’s when your truly knew it was Bucky, who else was considerate enough to Leave little trinkets for you to find, no one.

   Your collection was really starting to grow, you'd been accumulating quite a bit of sea treasures form your mysterious friend. You did feel a bit guilty, he kept bringing you all these amazing gifts and yet you had nothing to give him. You could draw him something, maybe write him a song, bake him some food, anything would suffice. You thought about it for a bit as you sat on the dock on particular day, listening to soft waves of the ocean as you plucked at some strings on your guitar.

   Your parents had always had some more- eccentric kind if foods. Perhaps you could bake him a little something and bring it by, that is if the gulls and fishes didn’t get to it first. You smile victoriously as you pack your guitar up, a new kind of determination running through your veins. Millions of ideas raced through your mind as you walked back home, perhaps a nice bread, maybe some form of desert or pasta? You figured it had to be something that didn’t spoil easily, something that could withstand the poor beach temperatures.

   An idea came to mind and you smiled as you scurried home, wasting no time in baking your little surprise.

(Bucky’s point of view)

   Bucky looked up at the rippling water, the sun shimmering through the deep blue. He missed the surface- he missed having legs, being able to walk around, eat natural foods, he missed being able to interact with a species that wasn't so vicious. Bucky sighs, or sighs as well he could as a mermaid could in the ocean. His lungs burned slightly as he tried to breathe in, as he hated to remind everyone, he was still partly human.

   Years ago, back in the 1940's he had been a soldier for the US military and one day a mission ended up going poorly and he found himself stranded in the middle of the ocean. He was freezing, his crew was dead, he was the only one left, just floating in an endless expanse of hell. Luckily (or so he thought at the time) a blonde haired man came to save him (again, or so he thought at the time). The man had looked so kind, with blue eyes and a warm smile but Bucky quickly realized that it was no warm smile, it was full of hunger and malice but before he could truly find time to be scared the man pounced upon him and dragged him down below.

   There was a sharp sting in his neck and Bucky realized that the deranged man was biting him, he was fucking biting him. He remembered struggling but the man was far stronger, he kept on dragging Bucky down until he couldn't breathe, until his lungs ached and burned, until he thought he was going to die of the pressure.

   His world was slowly fading to black, he could see the sea above him slowly fading, he could feel his entire body go numb but just as his body was close to giving in to the comforting dark everything suddenly snapped back to life. He could suddenly breathe, he could see the rippling sea and the pieces of wreckage floating above, he could see the blonde man swimming, no, floating, beside him except Bucky quickly realized that it was no man. Not a single man Bucky had ever met had a tail and yet this man did. It was shimmering silver, just like his eyes; It was long and thick, just like he was and it gently flicked back and forth through the water, helping the man float. Then Bucky remembered looking down at his own body and seeing a tail just like the man's only blue, shimmering blue. That's how Bucky came to be what he was today, some kind of ocean freak. Only there was one small setback, he was still partly human.

   Steve, the mermaid that day, hadn't bitten him correctly, leaving some wiggle room for his human form to creep back in. That meant that at any given moment he could change back into a human. He had wanted to do it a billion times but every time he so much thought about it his cove would threaten him into staying, they'd intimidate him, beat him some more, make threats that sent shivers down his spine. In the end he decided it wasn’t worth it to try and be human once again. Since he was a mutt, as so gently put by the Cove's second in command; Sam, He wasn't like the other mercreatures, they were pure breads, he was a mutt, a filthy piece of bottom feeder scum who amounted to nothing in sea life.

   Other members of his cove often liked to remind him of the fact that he was partly human, that he was a disgrace to their cove. They treated him poorly, he was abused, starved, left to fend for himself half the time. His cove hated him, the people who had damned him to this life hated him. (Y/N) had never hate him, never treated him poorly, they made him feel wanted and safe, they made him feel like he mattered. They were sad for fucks sake when he disappeared, that's more than his cove had ever amounted to.

   (Y/N) was something special, that's why he couldn't be with them, that's why he had to stay away. If anyone from his cove found out that he was talking with a surface dweller it would be the end of them, and it'd be all his fault. He couldn't risk losing (Y/N), he'd do anything to keep them safe, even if that meant going against his every instinct and leaving them alone. Thankfully he had some way of staying connected with them, the little prizes he left them every night. (Y/N) still came to the dock every morning even though Bucky had stopped coming. Every morning they'd stop, smile at the small gifts he'd leave them, then utter a quiet "thank you" to the ocean and every damn time Bucky would respond with an equally quiet "You're welcome."

   Bucky's grip unconsciously gripped the small necklace he held in his hand, the next gift he had for (Y/N). It was his dog tags, the ones from the war. They had his name printed on them, his position, and his number. It was the only thing he had of his old self but he wanted (Y/N) to have it, they'd benefit from it more than he ever would.

   Bucky's eyes roamed up to the watery sky, it was almost pitch black but luckily he could see as though it were broad daylight, one perk to being a merman. It was night, maybe midnight or sometime later. It was illogical that anyone would be out at such a time but as Bucky rose to the surface, his head popping up from the dark depths he was more than surprised to see someone sitting on the docks; aka (Y/N).

   Bucky bit his lip as he surveyed them, shivering, a blanket of some sort wrapped tightly around their body. Soft lights twinkled around their body and it was impossible for him not to swim closer. He knew he shouldn't have, he had just told them he couldn't ever return and yet he found himself venturing closer and closer until suddenly his webbed hands were upon the dock and he was staring up at (Y/N)'s face.

   "You came back," (Y/N) whispers, almost in disbelief if Bucky thought about it. Bucky nods softly, biting his lip as he stared at the dock sheepishly.

   "I wanted to thank you for the gifts," (Y/N) suddenly smiles, a smile Bucky had longed to see for weeks, nearly months. Bucky smiles softly, his pale, wet cheeks dusting a soft pink.

   "Did you like them?" He asks quietly, meekly.

   "I loved- love them, especially that shell," Bucky smiles, his blush only growing.

   "I thought of you when you found it. I remember thinking how beautiful it was, just like you," Now it was (Y/N)'s turn to blush, their cheeks dusting a rather dark red.

   "Really?" Bucky nods, smiling softly at the fact that he- a filthy human as stated by his cove- was able to make (Y/N) blush and smile.

   "I never thought I'd get the chance to tell you in person..." Bucky whispers as he stares at his hands, at the web in between his fingers.

   "I think you're beautiful too," (Y/N) whispers back, their tone soft and full of a kind of fondness that Bucky hasn't experienced in years. Bucky looks up from the dock, his eyes wide and full of surprise.

   "You really think so?" (Y/N) nods, smiling at Bucky in a way that had his stomach up in knots. "From the moment I laid eyes on you," Bucky could feel his entire face heat up, straight to the tip of his pointed ears. (Y/N) thought Bucky was beautiful, the most amazing thing he'd ever laid eyes on thought he was beautiful.

   (Y/N) looks to their hands, biting their lip as a wide smile threatened to overtake their features. Bucky had distracted them so much they had almost forgot about the "gift" they had brought him. Almost.

   "But um- I wanted to thank you for the gifts by giving you one of my own," (Y/N) slides a plate of something towards Bucky, smiling at him gently. "Unfortunately I don't have any cool little knick knacks like you do but I sure as hell can cook so I figured why not bake you something?" Bucky looks at the plate of food longingly; it'd been so long since he had a proper human meal and since he was the weakest link in the cove he was rarely ever fed so having something so tantalizing placed just a few feet before him was pure torture. "I wanted something simple so I just made some fish. I uh- I hope you eat fish..."

   "Wait...I'm allowed to eat this?" (Y/N) chuckles softly, nodding their head once again.

   "Yes Bucky, I made them for you,"

   "...It's really okay?"

   "Yes Bucky," (Y/N) nudges the plate closer. "It's really okay," (Y/N) gives Bucky a reassuring smile as he reaches a webbed hand out to the plate, casting one more glance at (Y/N) before gingerly picking a cooked fish up. It looked...different from how he remembered but god- he wanted to eat it so fucking bad. He raised it to his lips and took a tentative little bite. Almost immediately flavor burst in his mouth, something he hadn't had the pleasure of eating in years (the sea didn’t offer many spices). A soft moan of delight pushed past his lips as he took another bite and another and another until all the fish was gone.

   "Does it taste okay?"

   "Oh my god yes," Bucky moans, nodding immediately. "I haven't had food like that in years," (Y/N) smiles victoriously, proud of their own little accomplishment.

   "Tomorrow I'll have to bring you some other food, that is, if you're still here..."

   "With cooking like this hell yeah I'm coming back," (Y/N) smiles and laughs, making Bucky's heart warm within his chest.

   "Glad I've persuaded you to stay, I've really missed you,"

   "I've- I've missed you too..." Bucky whispers as he licks his lips, looking up at (Y/N) with a fond look in his eyes.

    "I'm sorry I scared you away...hopefully the food makes up for my mistake,"

   "no, it was my fault really, I shouldn't have left so abruptly, I should've given you an explanation first."

   "Was it-" (Y/N) sighs, looking at their hands as they do. Their mood had immediately dropped, going from happy and bubbly to nervous and remorseful. "Was it because if what I asked?" Bucky knew it was coming. He knew sooner or later he was going to have answer their question. He was constantly in the water, he had gills for fucks sake, he was surprised (Y/N) hadn't asked earlier but now they were and this time he had to tell the truth.

   (Y/N) was the only person- both on land and sea- who treated him well, it was time he started doing the same. Bucky nods softly, casting his gaze down towards his webbed hands.

   "I'm so sorry Bucky- I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable,"

   "No," Bucky whispers, interrupting (Y/N) before they could say anything else. "The answer to your question is no," (Y/N) falls silent for a moment, obviously taken aback by Bucky's intrusion. It takes a few moments for it to click but when it does (Y/N)'s eyes widen and their lips part in shock. They gently clear their throat, closing their lips and blinking a bit to compose themself.

   "Can you- can you tell me what you are then? You don't have to answer, I don't want to scare you off again-" No. Bucky needed to tell the truth. He needed someone to know who he was, what he was, what had happened to him, he needed to let someone in, he needed to stop hiding and he needed to start telling the truth.

   Bucky sighed, opened his mouth to answer but before he could the water around him became frantic, as though swarmed with a million fishes. The water crashed against the dock wildly, making it impossible to see a single thing. Bucky ducked under the water, in. No mood for the waves to smack him against the dock. The strange thing was underneath the water he could barely see a thing either, the sea was dark and murky for once and it was impossible to even see his own hands. Eventually the waves settled and Bucky rose back to the surface, shaking his wet hair out of his face.

   "(Y/N), are you okay?" Bucky asked as his eyes adjusted to the not murky atmosphere. He squinted as he looked around, trying to spot his land walking friend only there was a problem; they were no longer there. The waves had settled and when they had (Y/N) was no longer sitting on the dock....

@rejecteddesire, @saradi1018, @jessevans, @floral-and-fine, @notsoprettykitty, @yo-yo-bro-bro, @nobody8990, @softwhispers, @ficbucket, @iamwarrenspeace, @ruby-rose789, @captainbuckie, @lobathenerd, @taylorjacksonandtheolympians, @bloo-moon-freak, @seriouslynotfunny, @satanic-lemons, @ok-ladies-lets-get-in-formation, @damnbuckyishot, @therealme3, @vibraniumdoll, @princessofthalia, @admerxin13, @wingtaken, @brbenton22, @ohmyfricklefracklesjensenackles, @mariathedorkydragon,

(Please tell me If I’ve forgotten to tag you, I promise It’s not on purpose! I’m just extremely forgetful!)

[survivor-switzerland]

Rites of Passage (Pre-Jury)

It is time for the Rites of Passage. Take this time to reflect on your journey in this game as well as the people who left for you four to be where you are now. Right now, we are only releasing pre-jury Rites of Passage. The jury Rites of Passage will be released after the season is over. Please play the audio and enjoy your experience.

Signing up for this game I knew it was going to be more cutthroat then other seasons (with being voted in and everything). Mentally I just wasn't in a place to rise to the occasion like I wanted. I wish everyone good luck and to have fun. xoxo Steven

Ashley Daisy Trent Steven Ci'ere - sorry I never had opportunity to know any of you but there's always another game!! I think you guys were robbed and should get a third chance but that's just my opinion

Brett I didn't get to meet Steven, but I thought it was rude to vote off the person with the worst finish first. Very Francesca. But the joke's on them, Steven, because you at least advanced your placement! Not everyone here can say that!

Dom Hi I don't really know you at all but you got rocked out of your first season and first boot on this season. That's really ugly and I'm sorry that you went home first boot. You seemed nice though!

Ian I never got to know you which kinda sucks. Your vote out was savage and it served as a testament on how savage people are in this season.

I'd like to thank the hosts for putting together an incredible season and a special thanks to everyone who voted for me and was rooting for me. I'm so sorry to disappoint you. I let you all down but mostly I let myself down. I don't know if I could have done anything differently, I don't know if I could have saved myself. To the few people who I did connect with, I'm rooting for you. Make me proud and do what I couldn't do! (Insert Mari Salty video because it just needs to be there lmao)

Ashley ROBBED KING!!!!! Your time was cut way too short!!!!! You should have slayed this game!!!

Brett My original #1 and partner in crime! I was devastated when he left and I told myself "No one who wrote your name down is going to win this game." I'm glad I could honor him. I hope everyone here gets to know him better because he's one of the most fantastic humans I've ever met.

Dom I've heard wonderful things about you from Brett. You were definitely so robbed and it's so ugly that you got second boot.

Ian I love dogs so you’re good in my book. You were robbed and I have heard nothing but good things from you.

Coming into this game, I wanted to play differently and be a lot more aggressive when it came to decision making. My tribe targeted people I wanted to work with and I didn't like that and when I don't like something I'm not gonna just sit there and eat my rice. I'm not a sheep, I'm a KWEEN. I tried to take a risk by planting seeds in the minority's head about a player having way too much power and control so that we could take them down, but someone screwed that up huh. You could say I was too smart for my own good. I'm so thankful to the hosts for giving my flop a$$ another opportunity to play and to everyone that voted for me on the ballot! <3 P.S. Drew, when are we going on our key lime pie date? :]

Ashley Daisy Trent Steven Ci'ere - sorry I never had opportunity to know any of you but there's always another game!! I think you guys were robbed and should get a third chance but that's just my opinion

Brett My hometown hero! I was bummed our Long Beach hearts weren't paired together on the same tribe.

Dom MY FELLOW ARABIA!!! We didn't get to play in Arabia together so I was really looking forward to playing with you this season. Unfortunately, your tribe voted you out so we didn't get that chance. You're super cool though!

Ian Your vote out had me shook. We talked briefly during the voting of the community and I really liked our short conversation! I wanted to work with you in this game but sadly we weren’t able to.

well i had a nice quick run! honestly these people were sucky, whoever wins is probably gonna be very boring. i wish i could say i had more regrets but i played headstrong, and almost turned things around for me once we swapped. if only i hadn't had a life for a night!

Ashley Daisy Trent Steven Ci'ere - sorry I never had opportunity to know any of you but there's always another game!! I think you guys were robbed and should get a third chance but that's just my opinion

Brett The fact that we weren't swapped together KILLS me. I think the world of him. Congrats on graduating this week, too!

Dom I don't know you but you seemed cool.

Ian I never got the chance to talk to you but I think the shoes you sent during the endurance challenge were nice!

My time in Switzerland was kind of a rollercoaster honestly. I felt like I was at the top of an alliance for a while but something totally out of my control screwed that up for me. I respect everyone's decisions for voting me out. It probably made sense for a lot of your games (except one or two people, who I won't name but... you know who you are. I would've been loyal as fuck). The only thing I still don't understand, is whoever told me I was too paranoid in their voting confessional. I had every right to be paranoid. I was voted out, so clearly there was something to be paranoid about. But anyways. Here I am. I hope whoever the jury votes for is a deserving winner!

Ashley Daisy Trent Steven Ci'ere - sorry I never had opportunity to know any of you but there's always another game!! I think you guys were robbed and should get a third chance but that's just my opinion

Brett Daisy wears lipstick.

Dom Ahhhh daisy I think we were on a tribe together at the start. You definitely got screwed over and I'm so sorry that happened to you. You are such a delight.

Ian Another person I never got the chance to talk to. Your lipstick looks nice though :)

Me, rising from my bed to look at the rest of this season: wait what oh yall are cute i guess hope u had fun tru

Ashley Lily- we didn't have long enough to get to know each other well but you seem cool and maybe we'll get a chance to play in the future!! 

Brett Thank you for enouraging my crimes more than anyone here!

Dom Ahhh Lily hi. You were SO robbed. I was looking forward to working with you because you're just such an icon.

Ian You were interesting to talk to. I was shocked that you were voted out. In any case, I loved that time during the selfie challenge where we were kinda the only ones up and you tried staying up until the sunrise and you couldn’t handle it anymore.

the only one-Justin Bieber ft. Chance the rapper.mp3

Ashley Renee - you seemed to be a fierce competitor so I'm sad we didn't get much time to play together. You seem nice and I really hope we have chance to actually work together soon.

Brett I liked her a lot! It just wasn't smart to let her go any further. But the first thing I told her when I met her at swap #2 was that she had a brilliant audition tape and she looked beyond cute in Monte Rosa 2.0's music video. The star of that tribe for sure!

Dom You voted yourself out. ICONIC. You're super sweet and I think you're wonderful!!

Ian I’m writing this last because you deserve an essay, heck even a paragraph for this because you don’t know how sorry I am for voting you out. The moment I saw you in the voting pool I knew I wanted to work with you. The moment you got cast, I knew I really really wanted to work with you. The moment we finally got into a tribe together I was pumped, overjoyed and excited to finally be able to work with you. I picked you first because I wanted the chance to finally re-write our story that had an ending we didn’t want in Bora Bora. The moment we lost that escape room challenge, I knew you were in trouble. We tried figuring something out, and I told you to try and talk to people. However when I woke up the next day, everyone was saying your name. It was gut wrenching having to see people message me that they only heard the name ‘Renee’ on who to vote out. It killed me not contacting you, because I couldn’t do a thing about it. Maybe I could have done something to save you but either way I didn’t do anything to save you. Voting you out was one of the most painful thing I had to do because I essentially was responsible for you being voted out because I picked you on my tribe. During the tribal council call, I don’t know if people noticed but I was really crying at that time or I had just finished crying. I can’t really remember. It’s my fault that you got voted for out and for that I wanna say that I’m deeply sorry and I hope that once this is over we can still chat from time to time.

I’m mostly just bitter about getting the same placement I did on my first season, but at least I didn’t do worse, right? If the 2 who said they couldn’t save me had tried, I would have lived. Also my fuck you was filled with irony, there’s really only hard feelings to one of you, and to that one, I have this: 

Ashley Logan - robbed!!!! Stupid swap !!! You should have come back to us!!! At least we avenged you!!! You know you deserve so much more!!! You are the best and  I will always look forward to games with you!!

Brett When he got voted out, I just wanted him to STAY. A MINUTE. JUST TAKE. YOUR TIME. THE CLOCK. IS TICKING. If I could describe Logan as one word, it would be "brave." He came to me early in the game with some things he had heard before the game started and he made me promise I would come to my own conclusions about him and I'm glad I held up my end of the deal. Dom OH MY GOD YOU WERE THE MOST ROBBED PREMERGE BOOT. I LITERALLY WAS SO UPSET THAT YOU GOT VOTED OUT!!! YOU AND NICK WERE MY CLOSEST ALLIES I'M SO SORRY THAT PEOPLE ARE UGLY. I HAVE NOTHING BUT LOVE FOR YOU <3 Ian Coming into this game I was scared of you tbh. You literally had connections with almost everyone in the cast. I’m sorry for calling you a “her” or a “mother” on several occasions lol, thanks for taking the time to correct me. Also I’m still waiting on that tarot card reading you were gonna give me.

Okay so. This wasn’t the worst season I’ve ever played but y’all seriously need to up your social games. I had a lot of fun with my OG Monte Rosa mates, but in the end, most of the players of my last tribe made no effort to talk to me, were completely sloppy in their attempts to blindside, and generally killed the vibe for me. I always love making friends in these games, so thanks to the few of you I can say I connected with. But as for the rest of you, good luck with your future ORG careers and I wish you much improvement in the social and subtlety departments (y’all were projecting wanting me gone since day one of that swap let’s be real), and also like. You know, fun :P

Ashley Maximilian- you were amazing!!! I wish we had talked more cause you are talented and seem like a great competitor!! Our time was so great together and sadly the swap led to your vote out but we avenged you!!! I hope to see you in other games!!!

Brett Thank you for editing that music video.

Dom You were really shady to me when we were on the same tribe. When you got screwed over on the tribe swap, I was upset because you're actually super nice and fun.

Ian You were always an enigma in this game. I couldn’t really get a proper read on you, but you were the first person I talked to in the tribe so that’s something hahaha. Good luck with your films!!

[captainditrag]

Worst Movies Of 2016

If it’s a New Year, then that means it’s time for my annual surveys of the year’s best and worst movies. As is usually the case, I’m starting with my worst of list first, almost like a child having to eat the healthy food on their plate before getting to the tastier food that they love afterward and man, I have a lot of bad movies to deal with from 2016.  Some of the films here are ones that many other critics also hated, but I also have a group of movies that were critically acclaimed that I just couldn’t stand, which makes for a more interesting list in my eyes, given my need to explain why I hate films that others love at the same time that I pile onto the more widely-loathed stinkers.  

As is my custom, I have my 10 worst films in order of how much I despised them, followed by my 10 dishonorable mentions in no particular order.  Also, as is my custom, I’m going to use this time to highlight some of the most visibly disliked films of the year that were not among the 72 films I saw in 2016, just to provide the answer of “I didn’t see it” to the question “why is [insert movie here] not on your list?” As such, if you’re expecting to see films like Gods Of Egypt, Warcraft, Assassin’s Creed, Collateral Beauty, Norm Of The North, Fifty Shades Of Black, Zoolander 2, London Has Fallen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Max Steel, Allegiant, Boo: A Madea Halloween, God’s Not Dead 2, Inferno and Nine Lives here, I’m sorry to disappoint you (and there are likely even more so-called bad films than those that I couldn’t get to).  Then again, I’m comfortable with the 20 movies I picked, as they were all deeply unpleasant in their own ways, and some in similar ways that kind of emphasize some pretty bad trends that hopefully, we won’t have to deal with in the year 2017 (or at least, not deal with as much).   Also, one more thing.  I usually put a screenshot of each movie in question above each of the entries on both of my lists, but Tumblr apparently is deleting this entire essay when I try to do that now. Maybe this list is too long and there’s a memory constraint or something, but because of that, I made the tough decision of not including them this year. So sorry if this looks bland without them, but hopefully, it won’t diminish the lists or the films I’m discussing. With all that said, let’s dive in: 

1. The Boss Melissa McCarthy is the female equivalent of Adam Sandler.  I’m sorry I have to say that, because I do think she’s a talented actress and comedienne, but even so, and as I’ve said countless times before, it’s been 13 years since the only movie with her in it that I recommended, The Life Of David Gale and, I’m getting sick of it.  Oh sure, she was good TV’s Mike And Molly and in near-miss films like The Heat and Bridesmaids and, to be fair, she was in a movie I liked this year, Central Intelligence, even though it was just an under 2-minute cameo (so I’d argue that it doesn’t really count), but outside of that, I’ve been just about ready to give up on her in the movie world and, after her hateful, crass, lazy and never-funny comedy The Boss, enough is enough, hence why I’m comparing her to the much reviled Sandler.  It’s a pretty apt comparison when you really think about it; like the worst films of Sandler's, McCarthy is creatively involved with this one (she co-wrote it with her husband, Ben Falcone, and he also directed it, which was also the case with 2014’s 3rd worst film, Tammy, a terrible film that is, amazingly, better than this), the movie is put together in a slapdash fashion that shows nothing but contempt for her audience, it uses a licensed soundtrack for no reason except to waste money that should have went to writing jokes (it took me months to listen to Foreigner's I Want To Know What Love Is again without being painfully reminded of the horrible scenes in this movie that used it as a punchline and on-the-nose plot reference), it paints her horrible lead character as a messiah, despite the fact the that she treats every character that isn’t exactly like her like garbage and then, in the grossly hypocritical third act, it has her character playing the victim card and crying/moralizing to the audience about how “family is important.” Oh yeah, and like Sander’s worst efforts, it’s also the worst movie of the year; can’t forget that detail.

McCarthy stars as Michelle Darnell, a self-made multi-billionaire character that came from McCarthy’s days with the Groundlings comedy troupe who, as the movie opens, we see as a young girl who was given up by her parents and, every few years, the families that adopted her toss her back on the steps of the Catholic orphanage.  I guess it’s supposed to be funny that no one wants Michelle, but the film has no explanation as to why this is and repeats this joke in bad sitcom fashion about 4 times, making it cruel and sad.  As an adult, Michelle has tossed family and her “tragic” past aside to become the 47th richest woman in the world and expresses that in her group of self-help books and to her fans in sold-out Chicago stadium appearances.  This catches the eye of her corporate rival, Renault, played by Peter Dinklage, while meanwhile, Michelle’s long-time assistant Claire, played by Kristen Bell, is a single mother who’s still waiting on that raise Michelle promised her, despite Michelle ignoring and berating her for it and despite Claire’s undying commitment to her.  That ends up falling by the wayside after Michelle is arrested for insider trading, resulting her going to jail for a little while and having all of her assets seized when she’s released.  At that time, her lack of family, friends and funds mean Michelle has nowhere to go, so she convinces Claire, who’s now working a new cubicle job, to let her stay with her and her daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson).  After a meeting with former colleagues ends with Michelle telling them off and then, her falling/rolling down the stairs (because it just wouldn’t be a Melissa McCarthy movie without cheap fat-shaming somewhere in it, right?), she tastes some of Claire’s homemade brownies and gets an idea. Considering Rachel is part of her school’s Girl Scouts equivalent, the Dandelions, and that they make a lot of money for charity off of cookie sales, Michelle thinks that she can turn the making and selling of Claire’s brownies into a business for herself and then, use that to get back on her feet.  This sets off a war with the Dandelions and one of the mothers, Helen (Annie Mumolo), while also getting Renault’s attention, who schemes to keep Michelle from getting her riches back.  Meanwhile, Claire starts showing interest in Mike (Tyler Labine), the one person at her work who’s not a total jerk.

Now that’s not a terrible setup for a comedy on paper, as it does introduce many opportunities for satire regarding the business world, both big and small, life of a single mother and Girl Scout culture, particularly as it relates to mothers becoming more dedicated and cutthroat about it than their children.  This movie, though, has nothing insightful or funny to say about any of those things and its attempts to do so are cheap, perspective-free and hateful. Take the scenes with the Dandelions, especially when Michelle goes to their meetings.  What’s the angle?  Because Michelle only cares about herself and money, she’s appalled at the idea that they do good non-profit work for people and that the girls get life experience from it, so she goes on a bunch of those trademark Melissa McCarthy rants with overly elaborate and vulgar parallels to people and situations to ridicule and shame them, particularly after Helen says “we can’t trust Michelle with the brownie business idea because she’s a convicted felon.”  I think we’re supposed to hate the admittingly bitchy Helen, but she does raise a valid point there and, when combined with Michelle’s threats of violence and her cartoonish/hateful attacks (including cruel mocking of the leader and her recently deceased cat and some homophobic/sexist predictions about some of these innocent young girls who haven’t done anything wrong), sorry, I’m siding with Helen.  The former is something Michelle acts upon in what’s the most disgusting and shameful scene in any movie this year (and, given the cinematic garbage I saw in 2016, that’s saying a lot), where Michele and her group of scouts get into a violent street fight with Helen and her girls. It’s supposed to be a satire, I guess, of drug turf wars, but we’re literally watching a 46-year-old woman leading and helping her young workers beat the ever-living hell out of 10-year-old girls by punching them, kicking them, slamming them onto the ground and into cars, which we see happen in slow-motion while we hear the audio relishing in the sounds of their cracking bones and screams of pain.  I’m sorry, but there is NOTHING funny about that, especially with how it’s handled here, and anyone who thinks it is and thinks that the girls deserved to be assaulted for standing up against Michelle may want to get a mental evaluation.

Then again, that scene doesn’t matter anyway in the grand scheme of things because it’s never referenced again.  You’d think that a violent assault of young Girl Scouts would at least lead to a news report of the streets literally running with blood and fire from that, Claire asking about the bruises that her daughter and former boss have or, perhaps, Michelle going back to jail for that, but no, and that’s because that scene, and for that matter, most of this film’s scenes, are freestanding from the plot, drag on forever (thanks to the endless and repetitive back and forth riffing by the cast, especially McCarthy) and don’t add anything to it.  Even in a coarse and broad glorified sitcom like this, you need to have some consistency but, and again, this goes back to the Adam Sandler parallel, they’re only in here because McCarthy thought they were funny and was too lazy to care if they actually fit into the damn movie in the first place.  If they actually were humorous, that would have been one thing, but since they’re not, all we notice is how many holes this simple story has in it and how the characters’ behaviors and outlooks between scenes change for no reason other than because the movie demands it, the latter of which make it really hard to like, believe or care about anyone here, especially with a third act that’s asking us to do that with its liar-reveal trope and the aforementioned emotional pleas by McCarthy.  To say we’re not buying either when they come is a massive understatement or, to put another way, I hated McCarthy’s character so much in this film that, in the scene where she orders fugu and we find out it was incorrectly and perhaps fatally prepared, I was strongly rooting for the fugu.  

As far as the other problems with this movie, the supporting performances are flat (Tyler Labine is dull and lacks chemistry with Kristen Bell as the love interest and Bell does her uptight and sexually-repressed workaholic bit again), annoying (Annie Mumolo and Peter Dinklage, the latter of whom, between this and Pixels, can’t catch a break in live-action comedies) and/or wasted (Cecily Strong and Kathy Bates, the latter apparently willing to jump into any garbage comedy for work nowadays, between this, Tammy and, apparently, Bad Santa 2), the pacing is bad, even with the film being only 99 minutes, the script is awful, the direction is poor and, if it wasn’t already obvious that this film was slapped together, the atrocious editing will remind you with its abrupt scene transitions and jump cuts, which is most noticeable in the scene with Michelle and Rachel riding the El Train (I swear, the jump cuts in that scene to show a passage of time seem to happen at random, as if it were a bad made-for-TV movie and that’s an insult to direct-to-TV movies).  The only positive of this movie, which it can’t actually claim responsibility for, is that, because I had enough points on my AMC Stubs card, I actually got to see this atrocity for free.  Even then, I still feel like I was ripped off and, after suffering through this, it’s going to take one hell of a comeback vehicle for McCarthy to cinematically redeem herself in my eyes, especially since, between this and another awful 2016 comedy she was in (which you’ll be seeing later on this list), it’s clear she hasn’t learned her lesson.  I guess, like Sandler, she’s settling for dreck and just happy that she has another box-office semi-hit with The Boss, but soon enough, she’ll have to learn the hard way that there’s a difference between a movie making a lot of money and the reaction of the customers who gave said money to a “financially successful” film.  To Mrs. McCarthy, I ask this; you and your films are profitable, but what’s your reputation worth?  To me, I’d say about a buck fifty now, and I’m being nice.

 2. The Nice Guys

OK, I know I’m pretty much alone on despising this critically praised period crime/buddy comedy hybrid from co-writer/director Shane Black, whose previous credits include Lethal Weapon and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but I had the absolute worst time watching The Nice Guys and I felt completely unclean after sitting through this meaningless, insufferably self-satisfied, never interesting, never funny and often gallingly vile and immoral piece of garbage.  Listen, I know that’s exactly the kind of puritanical response to a film like this that would make the filmmakers and its fans point and say that there’s no value to my opinion (which is kind of the tactic used against some of the vocal critics of the supposed immoralities of Black’s 1991 film, The Last Boy Scout, unseen by me), but I have no problem with violent, dark and even darkly humorous boundary pushing films similar to this when they’re done well, as was the case with many of Quentin Tarantino’s films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction or, thinking back to this year, similar films like Deadpool and especially Keanu. But I’m also not made of stone, so when a reprehensible movie like this comes along and tries to hide itself in its own self-importance and being “just a movie,” while having no care for the quality needed to justify the touchy subject material it’s trafficking in, I deal with it on both the grounds of taste and good filmmaking that it’s violating (and on the level of taste alone, this is amazingly an even more despicable and horrible film than The Boss was).

The film is in 1977 Los Angeles and opens with the death of a fictional porn star named Misty Mountains. Enter recently widowed private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling), who’s hired by Misty’s aunt to find her, despite Holland saying that Misty’s death is common knowledge and thinking that the aunt mistook her for Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a teenage girl who’s hired a private law enforcer named Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) for protection. Jackson learns from Amelia that Holland is searching for her, so Jackson goes to Holland’s house to make him stop his search, namely, by deliberately breaking Holland’s arm (because temporary paralysis is so funny and deserving of cheaply making fun of people over, right Hollywood?).  After this, though, Amelia goes missing and Jackson is attacked by a group of thugs also looking for her, after which, he Holland again and realizes that they share the same goal and reason for wanting to find her.  So, the two team up to find Amelia, with Holland accompanied by his young daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice), who’s more grown up than she seems, given her earlier interactions with Jackson and her learning how to deal with her father’s rampant alcoholism.   The rest of the movie involves their search for Amelia, which reveals a complicated conspiracy and crime-ring related to the Department of Justice, the auto industry, the California air pollution/gas shortages of the time and the adult film business that Misty was involved in, done as a hybrid of a dark buddy-cop comedy, a noir crime thriller and a serious drama, the latter involving Holland’s past and his bond with Holly, specifically how she’s rapidly growing up and wanting to be involved in helping her father with the case, even given the seedy and dangerous nature of it all.

Since I’m obviously going to be tearing into this movie pretty extensively, let me get its two positives out of the way quickly.   First, I do think Russell Crowe is giving a good and dedicated performance here as Jackson, playing the straight man of this duo in a way that didn’t feel as pushy and annoying as his co-star comes off as (more on him and the other cast members later) and he gives me the sense that he could have feasibly worked comedically in a better movie with a better screenplay.   The other positive is its sense of time and place, as it has a pretty transporting and almost obsessive attention to detail regarding the feeling and atmosphere of 1977, from the costume designs, to the cars, to the visual filters.  That being said, it’s still not obsessive enough, given that it has a couple of pretty clear mistakes that, when combined with everything else this movie does wrong (which is literally everything else) were strong enough to break me out, particularly regarding the licensed music.  There’s a scene at a party with Earth Wind & Fire present, apparently, and they’re playing September while later, at the same party, we hear Kool & The Gang's Get Down On It.  I love both those songs, but remember, the movie’s set in 1977, a year before September existed and four years before Get Down On It came out and, considering how much Shane Black clearly loves this time period and is obviously trying to avoid the usual time period anachronisms everywhere else, an obvious oversight like that is kind of inexcusable.  Then again, it’s part of a movie that, unless you’re a Shane Black acolyte who’s willing to give him a pass for everything and willing to abandon your sense of morality for 2 hours, is already totally inexcusable.  

As you can probably tell from the plot summary, there’s some pretty seamy subject matter in this film and some clearly boundary-pushing elements of violence and sexuality that makes the execution of it and attitude towards it all the more vital to the film’s success, especially when you’re asking your audience to find any part of it funny or relatable.  If The Nice Guys was going to work at all, it would need to show a sense of intelligence, complexity and a lack of vanity about itself to justify the material it’s trafficking in, but not for one second does this movie show any interest in paying those dues, which results in everything it does coming off as stomach-churning, appalling and in no way entertaining.  This is a downright hateful movie, with a level of brutality and sleaziness that it likes to think is a tribute to the hardboiled and cynical aura of the time, but to me, it feels like it’s playing the cynical Anchorman game of “it’s a 70s-period piece, so it’s instantly acceptable, funny and inoculated against any possible modern social criticism.”  Oh yeah? Even in the context of the time this film is set, I still say it really crosses the line with its quite ugly and unmotivated streaks of homophobia, racism, misogyny and ableism that the movie has no attitude about and is in no way insightful, intriguing vis-à-vis the story or funny regarding.  Even more offensive to me is the exploitative way it uses Holly, in that it wants her to be this strong young female character who’s a willing participant to the depravity Jackson and her father are involved with in the case, while she’s also cynically used as a child-in-danger prop threatened with violence/death when the movie needs it and a fake semblance of morality to an otherwise immoral film.  

Regarding the former idea of Holly thrusting herself into the case, yeah, we get scenes where Holland tells her that she’s too young to handle it, gets mad when she stows away with him in the trunk of his car and has her asking basic questions that help out the search for Amelia, but they all feel like quick screenplay additions to justify the galling and unfunny scenes with her involved, the most disgusting being the one at the porn film premiere party, where Holly’s taken into the back room, shown the blue film, is told by its stars of specific sexual practices in graphic detail and is told she may have potential as a porn star.  Remember, Holly’s 11 or so years-old, a detail that made me feel even more unclean by the scene, which is played as funny and light, because child exploitation is funny and light in this film’s eyes.  As far as Holly being threatened by the bad guys, it’s nothing but a lazy third-act conflict that requires Holland to be more careful about wantonly killing the bad guys (and for that matter, a lot of innocent bystanders; I haven’t seen a buddy film like this as badly disdainful of innocent lives since Bad Boys 2) and regarding Holly being this pure and touching sense of good in the film’s warped world, it’s only shows just how tonally out of control the film is, as well as being clear, insincere and offensive proof that this movie really wants to have its cake and eat it, too.  Oh, we see Jackson brutally killing a bunch of people throughout most of the movie, but that’s OK, because when Holly sees him about to do it on two occasions and is able to succeed in convincing Jackson to spare their lives, that automatically makes Jackson good and absolved of everything else bad that he’s done while Holly hasn’t been watching him (not to mention that we never see him even contemplating mercy on the people he kills after Holly asks him the first time not to kill people).  Oh, Holland is an inattentive father to Holly and a drunk that she is forced to clean up for at her young age, but that’s OK, because she’s “growing up” and they’re both in pain from her mother’s death, despite Holland seemingly always being an emotional basket-case and despite that angle just briefly explored and, even then, it’s not convincing or believable for a second.  

If those last two situations didn’t give you an idea, I don’t like or care about any of the characters here, and, though I said I was fine with Russell Crowe’s performance, none of the acting here, including from him, changes that or adds extra depth or chemistry to them.  Ryan Gosling is clearly supposed to be the more neurotic and comedic of the guys as Holland, but I found his performance here to be quite awful, as he’s pathetically mannered and mugging throughout the entire thing without ever taking it down a notch to make us believe him as such a person (also, to take it back to the morality issue of this movie once more, Gosling in real-life went out and argued about how big an issue hatred of women is nowadays, a lecture that he has absolutely no right to be making considering that he starred in this vile and misogynistic movie with no moral objections).  As far as the rest of the cast is concerned, Angourie Rice is just OK as the young Holly, and the supporting cast, including people like Margaret Qualley, Beau Knapp, Keith David, Lois Smith and Kim Basinger, add little to their ancillary roles and don’t stand out as much as I think they’re intended to. Also, the film is all over the place regarding its labyrinthine story which, when we finally do get a grasp of it all in the third act, doesn’t give us that “aha!” moment and sense of satisfaction of everything coming together regarding the plot and its connection to the characters, the action scenes are not exciting or well-shot (maybe they shouldn’t have had most of them set in the dark of night or, at the very least, have a better cinematographer to capture those night scenes), the pacing is awful and makes the almost 2 hour length feel twice as long and not only is this movie not at all funny, but its jokes are repetitive to the extreme, as they belong to the same obvious and unfunny "oh, here's a joke at a tonally inappropriate time to cut the tension" category every time.  Again, I can see some being able to enjoy this, despite all I said about it, but I’m sorry, it made me completely miserable and violated.  But apparently, I may not be alone since, though this was quite liked by critics, it was a flop with audiences at the box office, which kind of validates my excoriation of it and signals that maybe American audiences actually do have a semblance of taste, even for films like this.

 3. Me Before You

I kind of hinted at this with The Nice Guys, but I’ll make it clearer now; 2016 was the year that Hollywood openly admitted their complete and utter hatred of people with disabilities. Except for Finding Dory, every other movie I saw this year that had characters that were either explicitly shown as having one kind of disability or another or were heavily suggested as having one had said characters ridiculed and shamed without mercy. Warner Bros. is the studio that was the worst offender of this trend this year and, in the contest of “what’s our most ableist movie?,” with their strong contenders like The Nice Guys and The Accountant, Me Before You barely won that dubious distinction.  This is based on a young adult novel by Jojo Moyes that was controversial when it came out because it was construed that this story about the relationship between the quadriplegic son of a rich British castle owning couple and his assistant caregiver was arguing that the former, because of his plan to commit suicide based on the depression of him losing his ability to walk and function, was better off dead.  Sadly, the film, which Moyes herself adapted the screenplay, doesn’t make that charge any less valid, as it shows that, despite the defense that both the film and book are poignant tragedies about the mindset of someone in a situation like that and the harsh reminder to those trying to talk him out of it that you can’t always change people, the movie is psychologically, emotionally and disgustingly simplistic, ignorant and dishonest in its attempt to explore his disability and his relationship with the caretaker, not to mention that the caretaker is one of the most loathsome female lead characters in any teenage melodrama like this.  In fact, I’ll go on the record now and say that this is more two-faced, pandering, shameless and rage-inducing than every Nicholas Sparks film adaptation I’ve seen, and I am not joking (in fact, my favorite one, Dear John, also explored a character with a disability with more honesty and respect).

The film stars Emilia Clark from Game Of Thrones in a role that makes me glad I still haven’t started watching that much talked about TV show. She plays Lou Clark, a young woman living in the economically stressed small-town of Pembrokeshire in Wales who was just fired from her job working at the local coffee shop because they’re going out of business.  Out of a job and with little education, Lou looks for another job to help keep the unemployed family she lives at home with alfloat, including a mother, father, sister and said sister’s out of wedlock child, so she goes to an interview for the caretaker of Will Traynor (Sam Claflin), a now bitter and cutting man who became a quadriplegic after getting hit by a motorcycle and, along with losing his ability to walk and participate in the extreme sports that he used to, also lost his fiancé, who has since found someone else and is now planning to marry them.  Will’s parents, Camilla (Janet McTeer) and Stephen (Charles Dance), are the richest people in town as the owners of the Pembroke Castle and, after they meet with Lou, despite her being easily flustered and ripping her stockings (because Lou is clumsy and awkward in bold, italics and underlining, like female love interests in all bad romance movies are), they give her the job in the hopes that she can assist and cheer up their son.  However, Lou is only Will’s caretaker by day because, at night, his nurse, Nathan (Stephen Peacocke) takes over and, because he has actual medical experience, he knows how to handle Will.  Lou, on the other hand, is in over her head, which isn’t helped by the prickly digs that Will makes towards her, yet after enough time, she starts to break through and the two begin to like each other.  However, that apparently doesn’t mean much, because Will is still planning to commit assisted suicide, so Lou tries, on the pleas of his parents, to convince him that his life is still worth living, while meanwhile, her feelings for Will grow into love, as does Will’s feelings for Lou, to an extent.

Now, based on that description, you might be thinking, “well, the movie is about the relationship between Lou and Will and they are explicitly dealing with the idea that Will wants to die and that Lou is trying to change his mind, so how can you say that the movie is arguing that Will is better off dead?”  Simple; because that sentence is just what the film is about and not how it’s about it. Yes, the movie does look at the dichotomy of Will’s depressed state of mind and Lou trying to reverse it, but it refuses to level with us about his perhaps changing state of mind after meeting her. All we see of Will are the usual treacly disability movie clichés with him being depressed, lashing out initially for reasons that are not clear until later and then having his heart warmed up by the woman who “just won’t give up on him, damn it,” but it all feels so empty and devoid of passion and authenticity.  That latter point also extends to why he wants to kill himself, because although the movie does show us his feelings of being useless and wanting to give up, it’s all surface with no interest in probing deeper into his psyche. We learn that the drivers of his desire to die are because his fiancé left him and because he can’t be independent anymore, but the way the movie presents both is shallow and perfunctory at best and, at worst, insulting, especially because the film seems to take sadistic joy in seeing him suffer under the false pretenses of elaborating on those things (while, again, underscoring the idea that the film is also arguing for his “sweet release”).  

For example, Will’s fiancé is remarrying, which leads to a really cruel scene where she comes back to visit Will when Lou is there and explicitly tells him “I’m going to marry this guy; I hope there’s no hard feelings.”  I got really angry watching this, which, I guess, is supposed to be the point, but I was more mad because of how obviously manufactured and tone-deaf the whole scene was and how the fiancé character only exists to be a self-awareness-lacking prop to further his pain, instead of actually looking at how such a difficult and painful situation like that would actually play out with the characters in the real world that this movie claims to exist in (case in point; despite that, Will and Lou accept her wedding invitation anyway and the emotions behind it are only given lip service and even then, not very much).  Same goes with him having to sit in a chair all day and have other people help him, which I know is the reality for people with disabilities like that, but I’ve seen many movies before that depict that life honestly and with the bitterness, depression and, sometimes, cutting and wry mordant humor sometimes present in it, such as the great Rory O’Shea Was Here from 2005.  By comparison, this feels totally phony and mean-spirited by how much it revels in that suffering, especially when throws cheap, unmotivated and clearly insult-intended My Left Foot jokes at Will, ultimately revealing this as one of those “we care about people with disabilities, but not really" films that’s more interested in getting a cheap emotional reaction out of us at the end and not at all about the people it claims compassion for.  

As such, I don’t care about what’s going to happen to Will, which is bad enough, but even worse, I absolutely hate Lou here.  Again, it’s because the movie basically makes her into an empty cypher to deliver the pathos with, but she’s worse, because of how much of an emotionally immature, selfish and irresponsible brat she is.  First off, she should not be taking care of Will because of her lack of experience, which we clearly see when she makes multiple mistakes that put his health in jeopardy, which the movie brushes off as letting Will “live a little” and being able to be an adult again (yeah, not when your immune system is compromised so that going outside in the snow makes it easier to contract pneumonia and potentially die from it, it’s not). Second, even though she’s taken the job to help her family’s financial struggles, that subplot never ends up amounting to anything for them and only benefits her by the relationship she gets with Will, not to mention that we see her in tons of overly colorful and expensive dresses and outfits that said money problems should not allow her to have.  Third, when she finds out that Will wants to die and her attempts to try to convince him otherwise seem to not be working, she lashes out against him by pretty much accusing him of being selfish, irresponsible and immature which, coming from Lou, is quite rich, considering those words describe her to a tee. And finally, Emilia Clark’s awful performance does not make me feel for her whatsoever and actually, with her overacting outbursts, cringe-inducing forced clumsiness and horribly fake/unnatural smile, I actively hated her, to the point where, when Will sarcastically calls her BS attitude, idiocy and social faux-pas about his disability out early in the movie, I was completely on his side, which I don’t think was intended.  

Actually, for that reason, I kind of liked Sam Claflin as Will and wished he had a better movie to play a character like this, but he also contributes to what is unintentionally, the best part of the movie for me. You see, Will loves foreign films, which Lou scoffs at, so he demands that she watch a foreign film with him (he picks 2010’s Of Gods And Men), resulting in her adoring it.  Later, Lou goes out to the movies with her boyfriend (sorry, I forgot to mention that she has one before Will, who’s an inattentive and selfish wannabe runner, but he’s not interesting or believable, either, so yeah) and she suggests a foreign film over the new Will Ferrell comedy, but to no avail. Now, here’s the kicker; the film she wants to see is 1999’s All About My Mother, directed by Pedro Almodovar. That doesn’t seem like a big deal, but if you know Almodovar, you also know that the movie he made after that one was 2002’s Talk To Her, which just so happens to be a film (and a really good and wonderfully avant-garde one) about two paralyzed women that are taken care of by their doting caregivers and, by that association game, it only further reminded me of how this film’s look at disability and the romantic bonds that come from it are totally fake and shameless.  I bet the makers of this movie are now looking back and wishing they didn’t make that connection, though, to be fair, they’re also probably thanking their lucky stars that, of all of Almodovar’s films they could have chosen to name drop, they didn’t pick that one to make a direct link.  

Adding insult to injury, the pacing is unbearably slow, the romance and drama are completely empty, Clark and Claflin have little chemistry together, the music choices are embarrassingly literal, the supporting performances and the side characters they play add little and not even the Wales setting adds any atmosphere or sense of time and place to compliment the already failed narrative elements of the film. That, and it offended and angered me so much with its hypocritical attitude and offensive trifling attitude about its subject material which, as you’ll also see more evidence of later on in this worst of list, it disgustingly and despicably seemed to be open season on in the movies in 2016.

 4. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice

Yeah, I know this film is on pretty much EVERY 10 Worst of 2016 list out there, but Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is just so deserving of it that I have to jump in with my own take on why it really is that atrocious.  As you likely know, 2016 was the year that DC Comics, in conjunction with Warner Bros., took their boldest steps to follow in the cinematic footsteps of Marvel Comics and their Marvel Studios film division, with the attempt at having big-budget blockbusters of famous DC Comics characters and books that would please the legions of comic fans, please casual moviegoers and create a connected cinematic universe for DC, much like Marvel has.  To say that DC’s attempt failed is the understatement of the year, that is, unless you think them having a reputation of putting out a group of bloated, endless, idiotic, hypocritical, hateful and cynically sequel-baiting pieces of garbage that despise half the human race constitutes success.  And to think, Batman V Superman was just the first such vile movie we got this year, along with, apparently, Batman: The Killing Joke and certainly… well, the next film on this list.

Anyway, the setup of this movie, to be fair, sounds interesting on paper and, of course, the idea of having the two biggest DC Comics stars in the same film would make you think/hope it’d be great.  The story takes place a year and a half after the last Superman movie, Man Of Steel, which, if you recall, ended with massive destruction coming upon Metropolis and seemingly untold numbers of innocent people getting injured or dying inadvertently at the hands of Superman during his battle with General Zod.  One of those victims is Wallace Keefe (Scoot McNairy), a worker at Wayne Enterprises whose legs were crushed during the fracas by falling metal girders (because we just have to get a 9/11 parallel into these Superman-related films somehow) and who is taken care of by Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck), the latter of whom sees Superman flying in the sky and blames him for the destruction.  From there, with the assistance of his butler, Alfred (Jeremy Irons), Bruce plans to exact revenge on Superman using his various detective skills, gadgets, his persona as Batman and some additional information provided by Diana Prince (forced meme actress Gal Gadot), AKA the subject of the next big DC movie coming out (of which this film should not make you confident of that one’s quality, even with Monster director Patty Jenkins making it).  Meanwhile, Clark Kent (Henry Cavill) has been feeling the weight of being the now societally controversial Superman, as well as the current strains in his relationship with fellow Daily Planet reporter, Lois Lane (Amy Adams), but also finds out about Wayne’s plan to put a stop to Superman, resulting in Clark writing articles intended to expose and smear Batman as a hypocritical vigilante because, yeah, working at a newspaper clearly means that you get to write about what you want after your boss tells you “you’re on sports today” (which was even more noticeable when this movie first came out, as it was less than a month after Spotlight, a really smart movie about the newspaper business, won the Oscar for Best Picture). As Batman/Bruce Wayne and Superman/Clark Kent are in the middle of their heated debate, if you will, about what makes a man a vigilante and/or a self-designated protector, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is scheming to use General Zod’s dead body and the Kryptonian cove that holds it to destroy Superman, which he then sets into motion by kidnapping Clark’s mother, Martha (Diane Lane) and offering to release her if Superman kills Batman, the latter of whom recently stole Kryptonite to weaponize for use against Superman.  And thus, we get the epic battle of Batman versus Superman that should be a dream come true to viewers, but in reality, ends up being more of a nightmare.

As I said, there is an ambitious attempt at social commentary about the nature of superheroes in this comic book movie and it’s not just an endless action extravaganza. Then again, so was my best film of 2008, The Dark Knight (a far better film also based on a DC property), not to mention that you have to wonder if this film’s director, Zack Snyder, the misogynist hack who also directed Man Of Steel, and writers Chris Terrio and David S. Goyer (the later of whom also wrote Man Of Steel) only made the story of this one the way it is as an apology for what that 2013 film did with its third act. There was a lot of destruction and collateral damage going on at the end of Man Of Steel, which was both mind-numbing and, to a lot of people, out of keeping with Superman, given the fact that he didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that he was unintentionally killing innocent people as he fought Zod.  That led to justified charges that Synder was showing a complete disregard for innocent lives and, given that, as well as Synder’s insane defense of it by arguing Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens was more hateful because more innocents died with the planet destruction in that movie (even though that one was actually acknowledging those deaths and how terrible they were, unlike Man Of Steel), it seems as if the plot of Batman V Superman is his direct cinematic answer to that criticism.  Fair enough, but Synder totally destroys the potential of the premise (and the effectiveness of his personal argument) by still lovingly reveling in the death, destruction and suffering that the characters cause (unintentionally or not) and, as far as the moral quandaries at the center of it all, all we get is a bunch of brief, didactic and surface speeches about how right or wrong Batman and Superman think each specific dilemma is, but without any attempt to dive into the potentially thought-provoking guts of it (and considering Goyer also wrote The Dark Knight, which actually did just that, the lack of it here is totally inexcusable).

As far as the narrative explorations of Batman and Superman’s characters are concerned, the film does a pretty bad job of balancing between the two characters and, of what we do get of the two, it feels empty, emotionally inert and like rehashes of some of the more famous/infamous details related to the characters in the comics and other movies.  In Batman’s case, I really felt that his reasons for wanting to stop Superman so badly, aside from seeing one of his co-workers get paralyzed, were really murky, as was his backstory.  I get the idea that Batman/Bruce Wayne is a loner who tries to hide his pain, but the film mostly focuses on his attempts at revenge on Superman, with a few embarrassingly dumb dream sequences thrown in (come on, Batman shooting at Superman’s soldiers in a desert with a gun?!) and, despite the valiant effort of Ben Affleck in the role, he’s not able to make us feel for Wayne/Batman on his own and without the movie helping him.  Actually, the movie is hurting Affleck’s role, because of the issues with his character, as well as that computerized Batman voice of his that was enough to make me nostalgic for the Sean Connery-inspired voice of Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, all of which might explain why Affleck is now directing himself in his own Batman film (which will hopefully be better). The scenes with Superman don’t fare much better, particularly because Henry Cavill is empty and shows none of the lighter charm in the role that even the also dramatically minded Man Of Steel allowed him to flaunt, his struggles are unbelievable and uninteresting, he has no chemistry with Lois Lane (despite the presence of their sex scene in a bathtub, which is easily the most head-shaking and uncomfortable sex scene in a superhero movie since Watchmen which, ironically, Snyder also made) and the idea of society torn as to whether Superman is a hero or a menace doesn’t have the presence and weight that it should.  When the two are brought together, their battle and the reasons for it are basically the comic book equivalent of Idiot Plot syndrome (you know, the idea that it’s based on a simple misunderstanding that one simple discussion between the characters would solve) and the resolution to it is even worse, and clearly, I’m not alone in thinking that, given how the “maternal” angle of it has since deservedly become the biggest laughingstock within DC, comic and online culture.

Regarding the supporting characters, they’re generally too insignificant to mean much, even with heavy-hitting actors like Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane and Lawrence Fishburne in their just OK roles, and of the important ones, Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, they don’t have the intended impact on the film.  Luthor isn’t particularly interesting as a villain, given his stupid plot and lack of gravitas and it’s likely quite inaccurate to the character in the comic books.  Then again, even the great Kevin Spacey couldn’t make this character work in Superman Returns a decade ago and, despite that, I didn’t mind Jesse Eisenberg in the role, if only because at least it gives this overly oppressive and dark movie a brief shot of levity via Eisenberg’s admittingly out of place, but still comparatively appealing fast-talking psychotic madness.  Regarding Lois Lane, unlike Man Of Steel, she’s back to being the damsel in distress that the character is often stereotyped as being (even with Amy Adams playing her), but because this is a Zack Snyder film, the attitude about her, and for that matter, every other woman character, goes beyond just the usual insulting female tropes and into the far worse and more offensive realm of rank misogynistic hatred.

Every time I think Snyder is going to stop his cinematic War On Women, he just keeps doubling down with his next picture and, with the exception of his “pedophile’s dream movie,” Sucker Punch, this is his worst film on that front.  Lois and every female character in this movie are endlessly sexualized and endure or are threatened with violence, suffering and death in scenes that are repulsively taking joy in their pain (the scenes with Mrs. Kent crying as she’s threatened with being burned alive with a flamethrower and the opening that lovingly relishes in the brutal murder of Bruce’s mother as those pearls of hers and her body fall to the ground in slow-motion are particularly vile).  That’s offensive enough as it is, but I was even more enraged by the film’s cynical attempt to justify it all by pretending that it actually cares about its women and that it believes that they’re strong individuals.  In reality, it doesn’t care in the slightest, with the two clearest examples of this being Lois Lane and, despite what many are arguing, Diana Prince and her alter-ego.  Both characters are initially shown to be proactive in their goals, with Lois putting all the pieces of Luthor’s scheme together herself and then, trying to push back against Luthor and the senators tied to him, while Diana gets most of the information that Bruce ends up using by herself via her cunning and wiles. So, OK, they’re girls doing it for themselves, which is nice, but the third act reveals that they really can’t do it themselves and punishes them for their attempts.  Lois ultimately is punished for her proactivity by becoming the weak and useless damsel who needs to rely on Superman to be saved (even for things that she doesn’t need his superpowers for), while Diana’s so-called “wonderfully feministic contribution” is just barely assisting the two male leads who, without giving too much away, end up finishing the job she helped to start and taking all the credit.

On top of that, the movie is horribly directed by Synder, the pacing is unbelievably slow, making its over 2 ½ hour running time feel torturous (especially with all those false endings and pathetic attempts to set up sequels and the other characters’ movies, with one scene doing the latter by literally stopping the movie) and even the action scenes aren’t any good, thanks to their overly loud audio, choppy editing, ugly/dark look and incomprehensible nature.  Thankfully, even though this film became a big box office hit, it ended up not mattering because DC Comics fans are actually willing and able to be objective when their properties are turned into horrible movies (that’s something that the Marvel fans might want to start doing), so even they knew this was a massive disaster worthy of heavy derision which, along with critics and other burned moviegoers like me, they applied to this film full force to give it the lousy reputation that it deserves.  Too bad that DC didn’t seem to care that much about our dissatisfaction, as they so aptly proved with their so-called “comeback” movie that is my next worst of the year selection…

 5. Suicide Squad

Hey, lookee here; DC Comics is back to steal our money and insult our intelligence, taste and will to be entertained with yet another horrible 2016 comic book movie. Seriously, at this point, you have to wonder if DC is trying to destroy their fan-base, while also alienating outsiders and, of course, women (since rank and rampant misogyny seems to be the MO of the DC Comics film adaptations).  To be fair, I’m pretty sure that DC and Warner Bros. (wow, almost half of my worst of list now consists of junk from that studio) were trying to pivot from the disastrous reaction to Batman V. Superman with Suicide Squad, given that this one underwent a couple of reshoots, some minor rewrites and a rating change (from its originally promised R to PG-13, all the better for cynically making more money) before it released this past August. Some people I’ve talked to think this is a case of cynical studio meddling, which it clearly is, but they also think director David Ayer got screwed over here, which is wrong, given his recent insistence that, even after all the edits, the film’s final cut is all his, not to mention that this hypocritical, misogynistic, incomprehensible, clichéd, dull, badly made and thoroughly unpleasant junk also shares the same negative attributes of Ayer’s past failures that didn’t have studio involvement.  Either way, there’s a lot of blame to place for this one and it’s further evidence of how creatively and morally adrift DC is in the movies nowadays and how they need to clean up their cinematic act and fast.

The film takes place after the ending of Batman V Superman, which went early 1990s on Superman, if you know what I mean, resulting in a secret government agency lead by Amanda Walker (Viola Davis, who’s likely glad that she has Fences out right now to make people forget she was slumming it in this), looking for a new method for keeping the US and the world safe from villains.  Apparently, getting Batman involved isn’t something she’s open to (and yes, Ben Affleck does return here in that role), so she decides to recruit a group of locked-up supervillains, many of whom Batman has fought, and bring them together to fight against evil forces.  You may be wondering why Walker thinks it’s a good idea to trust a group of villains who could feasibly band together, escape and cause even more havoc, but she has a backup plan; she puts them all under the watchful eye of hardened commander Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and she has implanted a nano-bomb in each of them, which Flag is ordered to detonate should any of them go rogue. Speaking of those villains, they consist of Deadshot (Will Smith), a hitman with a proficiency with guns and a young daughter he wants to support, despite his murderous tendencies, El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a now seemingly pacifistic former LA gangbanger with pyrokinetic powers and a troubled past, Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), a thieving scumbag who, surprise surprise, attacks with a boomerang, Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) a genetically mutated man with bodily features and attributes much like a crocodile, Slipknot (Adam Beach), a highly specialized assassin with rappelling skills and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the psychotic, highly sexual and emotionally battered former psychiatrist to The Joker, the latter of whom is also in this film in a much hyped, but completely inconsequential, microscopic and nothing role (he’s played by Oscar winner Jared Leto).  The plot shows the growing bond, if you want to call it that, between the supervillains, as well as how one of the intended recruits is possessed by the Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), who is seeking revenge on the world for imprisoning her and her brother’s souls in ancient artifacts years ago, resulting in the supervillains having to band together to stop her and save both Midway City and the world.  During it all, the film also wants to have an acerbic and dark comedic edge mixed in with the heavy action and drama, as well as a penchant for using famous licensed tunes, ala Guardians Of The Galaxy.

I have to admit that I didn’t like Guardians Of The Galaxy when it came out in 2014 (though I’d probably have been kinder to it if I knew even worse all-star cavalcade comic book movies like this would be following it), but at least that movie had a sense of chemistry between the team (despite some serious credibility issues I had with their overall relationship).  Here, we get no concept of the bond that these “heroes” share, since they all seem out to serve their own interests and also, because they don’t have very good chemistry to make their contrasting personalities and goals effectively play off of each other.  We see that definitively in the scene when they basically stop the plot of the movie and go have drinks at a bar, but that’s the only attempt at comradery that we get, and even then, it’s nothing but the parading of a bunch of hoary old clichés and them emphasizing how humorously off-beat they think they are with the old “I’m not really as bad as society says I am” trope. At best, this, as well as all the other attempts to sell us on the idea of this team coming together on an emotional and/or comedic level, is pedestrian and doesn’t give us a rooting interest in the characters, but at worst, I’m not buying it for second and they induce feelings of anger and disdain over what they and film want us to instantly accept.  The key examples of this is are the stabs at familial pathos with Deadshot’s daughter and El Diablo’s backstory about his family; the former thread is cloying and cheap, the latter is about something so horrible in his past that there’s no way that most people in the audience will believe he’s moral and let that go so quickly and, in both cases, they’re just tired and offensive plot devices to try and cynically soften these characters, as opposed to honestly developing them so we believe that, even in their seemingly seedy and/or nigh-irredeemable natures, that they have the capability of being good or, at the very least, are interesting enough to follow to the end (ala a Terry Zwigoff film like Bad Santa or Ghost World, both of which had similar outcast leads that were well-developed and darkly funny).

Before we get the team together, though, we get their solo introductions, which comprise a majority of the film’s first 40 minutes, give or take, but those don’t do a much better job of making us care about the characters, as they’re flatly expository, aggravatingly self-conscious, tonally schizophrenic, and, for some characters, incomprehensible.  For instance, I had no idea what to make of or feel about Killer Croc, who’s an interesting villain based on my knowledge of him from the Batman enterprise, but the film seems to rush through his story (as well as some others, like Slipknot) because it wants to focus on the characters played by the biggest stars here, namely, Smith’s Deadshot and Robbie’s Harley Quinn, most of which is all about flaunting their strange behavior, the muted neon color look of the film and, of course, those damn licensed songs that are so obvious, lazy and on-the-nose that their presence made me angry (Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son, The Rolling Stone’s Sympathy For The Devil, Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me and The Animals’ House Of The Rising Sun?! REALLY?!).  As far as the film’s look at Quinn, this is the first depiction of the character in a movie and my God, does it want to have it both ways tonally speaking, by trying to look at her twisted mental state as appealingly humorous and erotic, while also being dark, disturbing and serious.  If the movie played fair with that, like the Batman: The Animated Series that introduced Quinn did, then no problem, but there’s something uniquely ugly about the portrayal here, as the movie sexualizes and glamorizes her mental state, as well as her abusive relationship with The Joker, while tossing in some token heavy moments to try and hide that this movie is grotesquely trivializing her mental illness and psychological suffering by making it look “fun,” “sexy,” “funny” and “empowering,” which it isn’t, especially how this film treats it.

Then again, that’s in keeping with the hacky attitude of the whole movie which, despite the studio interaction, is all on co-writer/director David Ayer, because he falls down here in the same ways he did on the so-called “pure” pictures he made.  His End Of Watch refused to pick a style and go with it, while his Fury (a film that, amazingly, is even worse and more despicable than this) oozed with leering sexuality and suffocating for its own sake claustrophobia, and this one does all three, as it uneasily straddles the line between dark comedy and heavy drama/action, but without doing any of it well, it hates women, as I emphasized with Quinn as the most obvious example, and the film gives off a really oppressive aura that doesn’t fit the movie and makes it dull and extremely depressing to watch.  In addition, the action scenes are badly lit, choppy, quickly cut, not exciting and incomprehensible (could it be because of the cut to a PG-13?), the CG is awful, the pacing is slow, the writing is poor, the story is stupid, Ayer’s direction is distractingly chaotic, and the performances are empty and wasted, either because they’re bland, as is the case with Jai Courtney, Jay Hernandez, Joel Kinnaman and the usually magnetic Will Smith, or they’re trying too hard, as is the case with Cara Delevingne’s painfully over-the-top vampy act as the Enchantress, Margot Robbie’s pushiness as Quinn and, of course, the much ballyhooed role of The Joker by Jared Leto who, though not trying to copy Heath Ledger’s legendary turn as the character in The Dark Knight, is one-note, unpleasant and a real turn-off (but at least he’s only in the film for under 10 minutes, so at least the pain of his presence here won’t hurt you for too long).  

Look, I know DC wants to try and be a cinematic fanboy/fangirl powerhouse like Marvel is, but soul-draining and empty garbage like Suicide Squad is not doing them or the fans any favors, nor is it making outsiders like me willing to jump on board. Also, this was supposed to be the one that would get them back on track after Batman V Superman, but it just ended up driving them into the ditch even further, suggesting that maybe they should either go back to the drawing board again, or perhaps quit while they’re ahead. Some are arguing that Wonder Woman next year will save the DC movies and maybe it will, but on the back of the two we got this year (or three, if you count The Killing Joke), if your expectations for that one now are anything but subterranean, well, I’m sorry, that’s your problem.

 6. The Neon Demon

Man, what happened to Nicholas Winding Refn?  He seemed like a pretty interesting and gutsy avant-garde filmmaker with the mixed-bag, but interesting enough (and very well-acted by Tom Hardy) 2009 film, Bronson and especially his 2011 masterpiece, Drive (which I had on my 10 best list that year), but something happened after that latter 5-year-old film of his and he’s clearly let success and the critical arguments of his directorial grandeur go to his head with his last couple of films.  In 2013, he made Only God Forgives, a particularly empty and vile piece of trash that was my clear pick for the worst movie of that year, and here he is once again with The Neon Demon, a film that’s, at the very least, a slight improvement over that one, as you can at least get some understanding of what he’s trying to do with this one.  Then again, that’s little consolation in my eyes, as it’s still an unbelievably thin, pushy, pretentious and insufferable waste of time and talent that, like any bad art-house film, uses its sanctimonious auteurist form to pretend that Refn’s the best filmmaker ever and that he’s crafted some great, profound, disturbing and shocking look at its themes and subjects, when it’s just proof that he may not be as good a filmmaker as he thinks he is and has the most embarrassingly literal interpretation of old-hat concepts regarding show business, modeling and the female sexuality often tied into both.

The film is centered around Jesse (Elle Fanning), a 16-year-old blond girl from a small town who’s come to LA looking to become a model.  She’s just had her first photoshoot with Dean (Karl Glusman), an aspiring photographer she met online who offered to take shots of her to shop around town and, after the shoot, she meets Ruby (Jena Malone), a makeup artist who, in between her part-time work as an assistant at the morgue, has connections in the fashion industry and thinks Jesse has potential.  Ruby introduces Jesse to two models that Ruby often does makeup work for; Sarah (Abbey Lee) and Gigi (Bella Heathcote).  Both Sarah and Gigi emphasize the idea of sexuality and/or plastic surgery as the most effective way to get ahead in the LA modeling world, while seeming a bit dismissive of the more reserved aura and appearance of Jesse.  This, as well as encouragement from her wavering between friend and boyfriend Dean, inspires Jesse to go for an interview at Roberta Hoffman’s (Christina Hendricks) renowned modeling agency, who are looking for new girls to sign. Despite Jesse being underage, Roberta allows her to fudge her age and the parental consent form, allowing Jesse to be signed, with the thought by Roberta that her looks and style will make her a star.  As you’d likely expect, the shoots Jesse is tasked with doing are highly sexualized, especially with Hoffman’s top photographer Jack (Desmond Harrington) being so taken by Jesse that he demands closed set nude shoots for her to do.  This helps Jesse become a quickly rising talent in the industry, to the point where many of the other big fashion icons are instantly smitten with Jesse and want a piece of her, but this creates tensions with Sarah and Gigi, who aren’t used to being rejected and losing contract work, as well as with Dean, who knows Jesse’s underage, but has still developed feelings for her and fears she’s drifting away from, and with Ruby, who also is starting to view herself as a protector of Jesse’s and, perhaps, something more. Meanwhile, we get a group of bizarre and twisted developments regarding Hank (Keanu Reeves), the violent and pedophilic owner of the Pasadena motel that Jesse is staying at, as well as attempts by Sarah and Gigi at revenge against Jesse.

Director Refn (who uses his initials NWR throughout the opening and closing credits, I guess to tell how deep and important a director he thinks he is, though he really hasn’t been showing it recently) has stated that this movie was intended to be a tribute, of sorts, to Russ Meyer’s 1970 film, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.  To say it, in my eyes, misses the point of Meyer’s cult classic goes without saying, but I can at least see what Refn was trying to do here, which is to paint a surrealistic, supernatural and grotesque metaphor about our concept of beauty, fashion, celebrity and the industries associated with all three ideas.  Specifically, through Jesse, it’s challenging the idea of female beauty/sexuality, the life of models (particularly those who, like, her, are of the barely legal and Lolita small-town runaway varieties), the vapidity and looks-obsessed industry and, of course, her modeling peers in Gigi and Sarah who will do anything to be the best and stay relevant, while also having its elements of jazzing those themes up with Refn’s signature mind-tripping scenes tied to Jesse and the other characters.  Too bad for Refn that he’s two years too late with this film, since in 2014, Jonathan Glazer made Under The Skin (my 8th best film that year), a similar mind-trip that explored many of the same concepts and perceptions of female beauty and eroticism as this, but was infinitely better and more engrossing.  In addition, Under The Skin also had interesting, consistent and well-developed characters, better thought-out and more intriguing messages and avant-garde detours that worked as inherently watchable and interesting cinema that tied to the narrative without feeling aggressively pushy, unpleasant or boring.

The Neon Demon has none of those things, starting with its concepts about Jesse and the fashion world it’s depicting.  In a sense, my typing the next passage you’ll read is kind of a spoiler of the movie, (which I almost believe was done on purpose to shield the film from this criticism), but it needs to be said; the movie’s look at it topics is ultimately nothing more than forming a literal interpretation of the concept of the high-stakes world of celebrity, fashion and beauty eating you alive.  I won’t go too far into exactly how the film does that (because it does it in many ways that I won’t reveal), but it’s a massively lazy, arch, pathetic and ugly cop-out that undoes Refn’s argument of giving us this brave, unique and thought-provoking twist on these familiar themes and archetypes. Some may think “oh, this is just a great twist concept,” but it can’t even do that right, because the movie telegraphs that concept so obviously by telling us the same idea, so that I could easily predict it going in that direction and, when it got there, it was just ugly and disgusting shock value that lacks any hint of intelligent or interesting commentary or filmmaking.  Also, by that point, I had long stopped caring about the movie or any of the characters in it, since we don’t get to know enough about the characters to be invested or make the film’s points resonate, especially regarding Jesse.  She’s supposed to be the protagonist here, obviously, so why is it that I feel that I didn’t learn anything about her aside from being a young, naïve runaway looking for stardom in LA’s fashion industry?  Maybe it’s supposed to be a commentary of how the industry often seems to idolize good-looking, but empty-headed cyphers as the next big thing, but I doubt it, because that’s what Sarah and Gigi represent.  By comparison, Jesse is not the most attractive looking model we see, but they respond to the fact that she’s natural in her appearance and persona, which is subverting the cliché of the fashion world never seeing beauty as anything but skin-deep.  So why can’t we get a good sense of who Jesse is, too?  That would have also helped Jesse’s change in motivations after she begins her industry rise not feel like they’re completely random, particularly given how she quickly becomes cold and vapid (especially in regards to Dean, who then just disappears from the movie completely).  Same goes for the other characters, especially Ruby, Sarah and Gigi, as we don’t get enough of a concept of how they reached their changed perspectives, as if the film is missing scenes.

Then again, I guess Refn would justify that by his seeming idea that we won’t care about how skimpy the film’s narrative is, because we apparently love his bizarre and interludes, complete with his trademark gaudy colors, wide and antiseptic rooms/hallways and punishing synth-heavy music.  In his films like Bronson and Drive, I have no problem with it, but here, they stop the plot dead in its tracks, are suffocating, dull, aggravating and embarrassingly on-the-nose in how they tangentially connect to the narrative and made me feel like he’s self-consciously trying to make the movie seem more deep and profound than really it is.  In addition, the dialogue is arch and obvious (and it can’t be passed off as "oh, this is a reflection of how empty-headed models/people in the industry are" when every character not connected to it is the same way), the film’s way too long and draggy at 2 hours and the performances are all merely passable, even by usually interesting and underrated actors like Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Desmond Harrington and Jena Malone.  Again, I don’t know what’s going on with Refn as a director, because he’s certainly daring and has talent, but that just makes this one even worse and proves that when talented filmmakers fall, they go down hard and the results are often not pretty.

 7. Nocturnal Animals

2009’s A Single Man was a pretty excellent debut film by former fashion designer Tom Ford, looking at the insular life of a 1960s English professor struggling with the death of his male lover and his societal alienation relating to the real-life events of the time (specifically, the Cuban Missile Crisis) and his semi-closeted homosexuality.  It was a film that somehow felt realistic and dream-like at the same time and it had Ford’s assured direction, a tangible atmosphere, a lack of pretension and some excellent performances (most notably by its lead, Colin Firth) to make it all work. Here we are 7 years later with Ford’s second film, Nocturnal Animals, and let me tell you; “sophomore slump” doesn’t even begin to describe this one.  It has similar ambitions of giving us an ethereal atmosphere and exploration of sexual hang-ups, as well as intentions of giving us deep and profound perspectives on the characters that make up this psychological drama/thriller hybrid, but this is an empty, painfully obvious, insufferably pretentious and extremely ugly disaster that represents a massive comedown for him and the amazing cast he assembled, as well as 2016’s Exhibit A of awful and sanctimonious films with awards season hopes that fooled some people into thinking it’s a profound and artistic masterpiece, but not me.

The opening shot of this movie shows us two fully naked and obese women (which the soft-focus camera ogles every inch of) gyrating in a performance art display, a clear sign of the film announcing itself as self-satisfied and embarrassingly "artsy" from the word “go” and diving further down the rabbit hole from there.  Anyway, this sight turns out to be the latest project for an art gallery by curator Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), an insomniac woman who lives in a fancy house with her new husband, Hutton (Armie Hammer).  Susan gets a package in the mail from her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal), which contains a manuscript entitled Nocturnal Animals, which is the result of him finally writing a book after telling Susan and others for years that he eventually would.  When Hutton leaves town for business, Susan starts reading Edward’s work and becomes deeply engrossed in the story, which we see acted out in between the scenes with Susan.  The story of the book follows Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal) who, while on a road trip with his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher) and teenage daughter India (Ellie Bamber), is harassed by a group of lowlife reckless drivers, led by Ray Marcus (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who eventually knock Tony’s car off of the road and psychologically torture him and his family.  This results in the men kidnapping Laura and India, while leaving Tony alone in the Texas desert.  Tony eventually is able to find his way to town and gets in contact with Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), a hardened police officer who teams up with Tony to try and find Ray and his accomplices, while also, hopefully, finding Laura and India. In addition to this, we get flashbacks to the days of Susan and Edward’s relationship, starting with their first meeting and going through the moments in their marriage that would eventually bring an end to it.  This is because Susan has these memories awakened as she reads the book, recognizing that it’s a clear metaphor for their failed marriage.  From its themes, topics and characters, as well as the concept of it making Edward a heroic and proactive defender of himself and his family which, in their marriage and through most of his life, he was not, it’s a case of art imitating life that Susan is strongly reacting to, while also perhaps revealing that her current marriage and existence isn’t as great as it seems and the possible regrets that she may have over leaving Edward.    

I feel like Tom Ford was trying to emulate David Lynch with this one, given how the latter often uses surreal and sometimes shocking imagery to effectively tap into the dramatic intrigue and, sometimes, extremely twisted humor related to human taboos and our personal demons/mental baggage.  Indeed, the cinematically rare form of nudity in the opening that I snidely dismissed earlier is the kind of thing that I’ve seen Lynch do, but in the case of his best films, they take similar material, as well as other even bleaker concepts than we see here, and make them amount to something dramatically, while also drawing the audience into the off-beat, yet still authentic universe of its story and characters.  I get that the point of this movie is to dive into the guts of relationships and emphasize the regrets, second thoughts, neuroses and emotional baggage that often connect to them, but unlike the aforementioned Lynch’s Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive (the latter of which I’ve heard this one ludicrously compared to in a favorable context), the narrative content here is pathetically shallow and obvious, while the bizarre stylistic touches are overcompensating, self-conscious, grotesque just for the sake of being grotesque and full of cynical, empty and insultingly on-the-nose symbolism that tries and fails to make the movie come off as more intelligent, profound and vital about its story and characters than it really is.

Ooh, Edward’s book is him airing out the dirty laundry of his marriage by writing himself into the role of Tom because he was a weak man when he was married to Susan and guess what?  He’s weak here, too, but with an arc that gives him a chance to not be impotent (likely in more ways than one), while also emphasizing the Freudian mommy issues he’s working out by the treatment of Laura and India (who clearly are reflecting his marriage to Susan), as well as emphasizing how much of an empty progressive closet basket-case Susan is (which, in all honesty, he is correct about).  Isn’t that clever?  No, not really; it just seems like an empty, self-aggrandizing and ridiculous passive-aggressive game that Edward’s playing as an answer, I guess, to the same tactic Susan used when they were married, the latter of whom is now drawn into the book and wondering if maybe she was wrong with how coldly she treated him.  Regardless, it’s not interesting or investing, because Susan and Edward are not sympathetic or particularly engrossing characters, there are multiple loose ends that waste time and add nothing to them or the plot (specifically, the infidelity of Hutton and what she saw in him to make her want to marry him) and also, because the structure of bouncing between the main plot, the flashbacks of Susan and Edward together and the story of the book make it so there’s no stakes here.  We already know that their relationship is over and, no matter what happens in the book or the flashbacks, nothing’s really going to change in the main story because of their massive physical distance from each other (I believe she’s in California and he’s on the East Coast) and their now totally different lives. You’d think that the ending of the film would be the key to making everything we see matter regarding the trajectories of Susan and Edward, particularly in connection with the book, but it doesn’t, as it boils down to simplistic moralizing in an unfulfilling and abrupt open-ended close that feels as if it’s only like that so it can claim that it’s not a quick and tidy resolution and that the movie has “depth” and “layers,” which it doesn’t.

As far as the story of Edward’s manuscript is concerned, it’s pretty clichéd and predictable pulp revenge crime fare with some really repulsive and exploitative narrative spice to really force its sense of menace.  Specifically, I had a big problem with Ray and his goons, who are so over-the-top with how repugnant they are, both in terms of their appearance and actions, that every scene with them took me out of the film.  Yet, the movie relishes in them and their exploits, to the point of kind of sexualizing them, particularly as it relates to their treatment of Laura and India and even to a bizarre and (allegedly) darkly comedic scene where Ray is using a toilet that he has on his front porch and is asking permission to wipe before he can talk to Bobby, who came by to investigate.  Also not helping is the performance by Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ray, since he’s just an empty creep who’s unctuously trying too hard to be threatening and only succeeding in spots because of the inherent seediness of the material and who, again, is such a massive turn-off that I couldn’t stay invested (not that I was drawn in much anyway).  I constantly get into arguments with friends as to whether Johnson’s worst acting was in 2014’s Godzilla (which I say he was fine in), but his role here is the one I’d give that dubious distinction to, and I’d like to think that those who hated him in Godzilla would be begging for that role again after seeing him here.  

Come to think of it, most of the acting in this film is sub-par or the actors are just wasted, despite some pretty big talent on display here.  Amy Adams as Susan is stilted and dull, but not for a good story reason or in a particularly intriguing way (unlike, say, her far better role in the recent Arrival), Johnson, as I said, is awful, Armie Hammer is bland and pushy as Hutton, and Isla Fisher, Jena Malone, Michael Sheen and Laura Linney contribute so little to the film that they’re only worth mentioning to remind people that “hey, they’re in this” (Linney is only in one scene as Edward’s mother, where she adds less weight and importance than her turn in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out Of The Shadows, of all things).  The only performance here that I liked is from Michael Shannon as Bobby, especially because he has a semi-interesting (if not kind of stock) arc and some good rapport and chemistry with Jake Gyllenhaal, the latter of whom is only of note in the scenes he shares with Shannon (outside of that, he’s mannered to a distracting and off-putting degree, while making me depressed that, after his career-best performance in Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal’s lost his touch badly given this, Demolition and Southpaw).  Actually, I could see those two actors working well in a movie that’s just in the style of the story of the book here, as they’ve shown before that they’re up to the task and their scenes also have a few jump scares that did work on me.  Then again, I’m basically saying that Ford should have ditched most everything here and made a completely different movie than what Nocturnal Animals ended up being, which if it turned out not being the slick, talent-wasting, vile and pretentious junk that this is, would have been fine by me.  

8. Ghostbusters

Oh yeah, I’m goin’ there. We all know about the Ghostbusters movie we got this year from Bridesmaids director Paul Feig, which ignited a firestorm of controversy over the fact that it was not a continuation of the story from the two 1980s films, but a new one with 4 women in the lead roles. The announcement of this resulted in outrage and worry over its trailers from hardcore fans of the originals, some of which was repulsively sexist, while we also got screams of sexism from social justice warriors convinced this it having women in it would make it better than the earlier films, some of which was also beyond the pale, most notably the debate-destroying rhetoric coming from director Feig himself, who went on Twitter tirades against fans and critics that are much too vulgar for me to print here (even against some people who were being reasonable and not sexist in their skepticism over the film and yes, there were those who were against this picture before its release without being misogynistic about it).  Too bad for Feig then, that the early suspicions of his Ghostbusters were totally justified, because this is a slapdash, immature, draggy, unfunny and warmed-over disaster that’s less interested in being a funny current-day twist on an 80s classic than being a politically correct apology for it and the era that saw its release.  Not to mention, in the most ironic of twists, this awful film is sexist as all get out, proving that Feig, the massively overrated (seriously, I haven’t recommended any film of his) and so-called “most female-friendly male comedy director,” is a massive hypocrite with even more massive deflection issues.

Like the original, the film opens with a paranormal attack and then, shifts to Columbia University, where this time, Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is currently on the tenure track and is reminded of a book she once published that supposedly contained evidence that ghosts are real.  Erin’s former colleague, Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy), tipped off another publisher about the book, because Abby wants her and Erin to reunite and get back to proving that ghosts are real, while Erin wants to bury it all, fearing it’ll jeopardize her chances at tenure.  After the dean of Columbia, Harold Filmore (Charles Dance), finds out about Erin’s past via a Youtube video of her and Abby apparently seeing a ghost, Erin’s fired, as are Abby and her new partner, Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon), so the three women steal some equipment from Columbia (because theft = feminism, right?) and open up their own paranormal studies shop.  They’re particularly curious about a group of reported sightings of ghosts around New York, despite the claims of a famous ghost debunker, and they get a particularly strong lead when they meet Patty (Leslie Jones), an African American MTA subway worker who claims she saw a ghost on the tracks. Using Jillian’s ghost-catching equipment from her uncle and an old hearse, the four women, including Patty, begin seeking and busting ghosts all around town, while their dim secretary, Kevin Beckman (Chris Hemsworth), holds down their headquarters, located above a Chinese takeout shop.  Meanwhile, a male loner named Rowan (Neil Casey) seems to be connected to all the ghost attacks happening and the recent sightings have caught the eye of Mayor Bradley (Andy Garcia) and his assistant Jennifer Lynch (Cecily Strong), who balance between wanting the new Ghostbusters’ help and keeping the public calm.

There are a few things I want to explain up-front before I go on.  First of all, though I love the original Ghostbusters film from 1984, I didn’t first see it until 2004 and I still haven’t seen 1989’s Ghostbusters 2, so I don’t have a nostalgic horse in this race when I say this new movie’s junk.  Second, I don’t hate this movie because the new Ghostbusters are female and, even though it’s a very sad statement on American society that I even need to say something as obvious as this, I’m not against the concept of female Ghostbusters. Indeed, it’s possible to make a more feminist take on a popular 80s series that also captures the so-called testosterone-fueled aura that it originally became a hit for, which was the case with last year’s Mad Max: Fury Road. That film was my pick for the best movie of 2015 for, among other things, emphasizing its new feminist angle in a wonderfully organic way via the Furiosa character, which wonderfully dovetailed with and was effectively balanced between the more machismo angle of Max, both in context of that movie and in that series’ past 3 installments. Ghostbusters’ feministic approach is not organic and, like Terminator Genisys last year, the movie’s push for it gives off the aura that there’s something morally unacceptable with the 1984 original not having women in the lead roles.  If the earlier films were hateful in some way, that would be one thing, but both The Terminator and Ghostbusters showed stronger female portrayals for the time than they’re given credit for, the former due to Sarah Connor’s strong and active female presence alongside John Connor (along with her basically being the savior of the galaxy) and the latter due to both Annie Potts’s Janine and Sigourney Weaver’s Dana, who had dimension, depth and a personal drive separate from the male leads that still stood out.  So, if these two movies are arguing that the originals were sexist, which I say they are, they don’t know what they’re talking about, not to mention that neither of these modern versions show any gratitude to their classic inspirations because, let’s be honest; they’d never exist without the originals.  

Meanwhile, this Ghostbusters movie is sexist, and I’m not talking about the way it paints its male characters (I guess you could argue that by how it makes Kevin such an obvious and unfunny idiot and Rowan a walking, talking, self-aggrandizing self-commentary on the film’s pre-release controversy, but it’s more pathetically cheap and lazy to me than hateful). We were told that the idea of the female Ghostbusters movie was to break the patriarchy by subverting the usual Hollywood female character clichés, but shockingly, it’s actually reinforcing those stereotypes by the insulting way it draws its leads, which was the last thing I expected.  Outside of their science knowledge, which is just thickly laid on for expository purposes that aren’t interesting, logical or humorous, Erin, Abby and Jillian are just quip-machines with no personalities or interesting development, except for the aforementioned female character stereotypes, which the film repeatedly bombards us with like a bad sitcom and which none of the actresses can overcome.  Erin’s supposed to be a strong, independent woman, but that’s undone by how film portrays her as the typical meek and quiet nerd who’s suddenly and unbelievably attracted to the first hot guy she sees (Kevin) and, in a later scene played for cheap and unearned pathos, tells us she was bullied as a child.  As far as Abby and Jillian are concerned, Abby’s a rehash of the now beyond tired Melissa McCarthy fat-shaming shtick with her constantly falling down, yelling and being obsessed with food, (the Chinese place is constantly getting her dumpling order wrong), and Jillian’s a pushy, endlessly free-spirited, reckless and empty science girl-power wizard who thinks she’s funnier than she really is.  

Yeah, with tropes like those, these characters aren’t exactly empowering or breaking the mold by how they’re depicted (certainly not like Furiosa in Fury Road) but worst of all, they’re not funny either, despite the past talents of Wiig, McCarthy and McKinnon.  Also, director Feig makes the same mistake here that he did with Bridesmaids; he thinks these actresses are so funny and that every line they speak is comedic gold, that he lets them riff on and on in every so-called comedic scene, which drags them out way past the point where they might have had a shot at being funny, kills the pace of the film and made me resent the cast and crew for their unwillingness to show some restraint (the scene set to Debarge’s Rhythm Of The Night is a perfect example of that and there are many others begging for a good editor).  As far as Patty’s concerned, she’s also a stereotype and, on paper, a potentially racist one, given her constant attitude, street smarts and jive-talking, but to be honest, she’s the character I liked the most here because, unlike Wiig, McCarthy and McKinnon, Leslie Jones is able to rise above her underwritten role.  Jones’s delivery and cynical outlook was refreshing and better in practice than I expected from what we saw of Patty in the trailers, to the point where I did smile a couple of times at some of her cracks (which, interestingly enough, make me think of her as this new team’s closest equivalent to Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman from the earlier movies, as opposed to some arguing Wiig’s Erin does that) and where I wished the whole movie was about her.  The idea of a character I already like (more than any of the other leads) in a working-class job who has the talents and knowledge of New York City and the subway system that Patty has getting involved with the paranormal herself, I think, would be a great idea for the Ghostbusters enterprise. It could fit in with many of the themes of the series, while also changing it up on the angle of being a solo paranormal warrior/entrepreneur and also, being an African American woman breaking through to success, perhaps by learning about the technological stuff on the internet and buying the old Ghostbusters’ gear on eBay (almost like Nightcrawler if it were a comedy). But now, I’m just giving free advice about the film I’d like to have seen instead of the one I actually saw.  

Even with Jones making a good impression and with this being a slightly better Melissa McCarthy movie than The Boss (a low bar to clear, as I specified earlier), none of that is enough to save the film, or make up for its other issues.  The film’s humor, along with just not being funny, is frequently desperate and, at times, crude in a way that doesn’t work and doesn’t fit with this enterprise (hit to the groin jokes? No thanks), the Ghostbusters fan service, with one globular exception, is flat and pathetic, the special effects are bad (and not in an “I’m paying homage to the past” way), the villainous Rowan is just creepy and not an interesting or memorable antagonist, the movie’s way too long at 2 hours and the editing is atrocious, with scenes that transition abruptly, lack cohesion and/or drop earlier subplots entirely, as if the film wasn’t finished or, more likely, was cut down from an R rating to a "family friendly" PG-13.  Thankfully, despite Feig and Sony demanding we like/accept this and vilifying/labeling us if we didn’t, America saw that this Ghostbusters was just an unfunny and bad cash-grab that was cynically riding on the gender twist on its previously beloved male creation that can’t even do its social justice angle right and refused to support it.  Now, where else did we see that deservedly happen in 2016? Hmm…

9. Ratchet & Clank

Ahh, the video game to movie adaptation.  Since the 1990s, movie studios have taken popular video games series and turned them into movies in the hopes of getting long-time fans of the franchises to buy a ticket, while also convincing newcomers to do the same.  Too bad that, with the exception, I’d say, of Hitman (the first one) and a few cases of guilty pleasures, like Dead Or Alive and some of the Resident Evil movies, there really hasn’t been a good video game movie adaptation, as they’ve failed as films, first and foremost, and also, failed to capture the essence of the game in question.  This year, we got 4 movies based on video games (the others were The Angry Birds Movie and two I missed; Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft), but the one that got my attention and anticipation the most was Ratchet & Clank. This series, going back to the PlayStation 2 days (and continuing even today), was a fun and funny cartoony platform shooter with an appealingly sly and knowing sensibility about itself, so the idea of a CG animated movie based on the series sounded like a perfect fit and, when I heard it was co-written by T.J. Fixman, who wrote the scripts for the PS3 and PS4 Ratchet & Clank games, and was directed by TMNT director Kevin Munroe, whose first gig was directing a 2003 video game called Freaky Flyers, I thought this one couldn’t possibly fail.  Yet, it turned out to be the worst animated film I saw this year, as well as a disgrace to this great series, but most ironically, it was a bad game adaptation that, amazingly, did capture the spirit of the franchise, while somehow still missing the point and screwing up.  

The film is a loose retelling of the story from the original 2002 game, with the galaxy being taken over by Chairman Drek (Paul Giamatti), starting with him and his henchmen, the Blargg, destroying an abandoned planet.  The attack gains the attention of the galaxy’s main heroes, the Galactic Rangers, led by their pompous and self-absorbed, but apparently beloved leader, Captain Quark (Jim Ward), who put out a talent search for a new face to add to their team to help fight and defeat Drek.  Enter a young and orphaned lombax (think a bipedal bobcat and you get the idea) named Ratchet (James Arnold Taylor), a junk-shop mechanic’s assistant who’s a huge fan of the Galactic Rangers and dreams of making the cut and going on space-faring adventures with them, much to the dismay of his boss, Grimroth (John Goodman).  Meanwhile, Drek has learned of the intended plan of the Rangers and breaks Quark’s arch nemesis, Dr. Nefarious (Armin Shimerman), out of jail to intimidate them and build a robot army to stop them, but not before one of the rejected robots they make hears of Drek and Nefarious’s plans, escapes from the factory and crash lands on Ratchet’s planet.  Ratchet finds the robot, named Clank (David Kaye), and brings him along to try and join the Rangers which, because of Clank’s information, he’s able to, and the rest of the film follows Ratchet, Clank and the Rangers’ quest to stop Drek and Nefarious, as well as showing Quark’s jealously of Ratchet’s increasing popularity with his group and with the citizens following Ratchet and Clank’s successful rescue of the city from Drek’s initial robotic onslaught.

All the while, the movie has the same knowing and sly sense of humor as the video games, including the scene-setting text that skewers the self-important aura that usually comes with such displays and some of the smile-inducing PlayStation in-jokes, with references to other cartoony Sony game series like Sly Cooper and an audio cue that’s actually the boot-up jingle of the original PlayStation console.  Finally, after years of video game movies not capturing the spirit of their subjects, Ratchet & Clank is one of the few that actually does it, yet I hated this movie, felt totally miserable watching it and all those things I mentioned that worked so well in the games fail terribly in this film translation. Considering how accurate it sounds like it is, how did that happen?  I think it comes down to two things, both of which reflect my now shifted opinion that a video game movie being accurate alone is not enough to make it work.  First, like Zack Snyder’s 2009 film translation of the graphic novel, Watchmen, it’s too accurate for its own good, to the point where it’s so obsessed with being a great movie version of the original source material, that it, ironically, doesn’t realize that it’s lost touch with the meaning of what they’re adapting.  

Yeah, we have all the voice actors, characters, set-pieces, and narrative methods and beats of the Ratchet & Clank enterprise, but what of it?  I didn’t feel any connection to this world or its inhabitants, even with my previous knowledge and fandom of the games, the jokey asides quickly get aggravating and repetitive in a way that the games never did, there’s a surprisingly mean streak here with the smart and nerdy characters being constantly mocked and shamed (hey, filmmakers, this series and the video game world it belongs to is always viewed with those stereotypes, is kept going by people who'd be pigeonholed into that cultural box and were clearly your target audience here; how stupid can you be by attacking them?), and the movie makes a big miscalculation in its depiction of the two main characters.  In all of the games, Ratchet and Clank are inseparable from each other and the stories have both of them in the center of all the action and plot developments.  The film, however, almost completely sidelines Clank by focusing on Ratchet and his clichéd arc of the passionate and talented nerd who keeps pushing for respect and his dreams, even as he’s getting smacked down in life.  I don’t mind that the film starts with that approach, since it is consistent with developing Ratchet and Clank separately before bringing them together, just like the first game did, but I do mind that the movie tosses Clank aside after that, because the stuff without him isn’t interesting enough to make me forget it, what little development we do get of them together is poorly defined and lacks consistency (and even being a fan of the games like me doesn’t help that) and it ultimately squanders a great opportunity that the movie had to capture the main narrative strength from the games; the great chemistry and byplay between Ratchet and Clank.  That, and it’s false advertising; I paid money to see Ratchet AND Clank, people.

The second main element that makes it fail, I think, is the filmmakers’ lack of understanding of the differences between the medium of cinema and the medium of video games. After seeing many films based on a work from a non-movie source over my years, I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to compare the success of a film to the success of a video game or, for that matter, a book, a comic, a stage play, a written play or any other medium you care to choose, because they’re intrinsically different art forms.  What works in a video game may not easily translate to a film, just like the elements that make a movie work might not always be as effective in a game, because one is a passive medium and the other is an interactive one. Considering that director Kevin Munroe has worked in both mediums before, it’s surprising that he wasn’t able to imbue this film with the tricks he learned from his game experience or, for that matter, from his past movie experience. I kept thinking of his underrated 2007 film, TMNT, which kind of played like a fun mix of a movie and a game by giving us the characterizations that an animated film can bring, while also delivering some technically impressive looking and executed action scenes that we love having in a video game, which is best shown in that great courtyard fight scene that looked like something a game could have done, but adding cinematic flair to it, namely by impressively staging it to play out in a 5 minute long unbroken shot.  

Ratchet & Clank, by comparison, doesn’t blend the two well because, despite its great voice cast (including the game’s cast, as well as usually dependable talents like Paul Giamatti and Sylvester Stallone), they’re wasted, not funny and they don’t make the characters interesting to grab us like a movie should, while on the game side, the action is badly staged and dull, the CG animation is shockingly bland (and doesn’t even look as good as the decade old PlayStation 3 Ratchet & Clank game, Tools Of Destruction, let alone the most recent PlayStation 4 one) and despite its stabs at capturing the spirit of the enterprise, it still fails to make us embrace, enjoy and accept it on that level as a representation of the series.  The good news is that people mostly avoided this movie (though clearly, I didn’t) and it seems to have not had a negative effect on the game franchise, which is still the best way to get yourself acquainted with these great characters, especially since the cost of one of the old PS2 or PS3 games is likely cheaper than either the original ticket price for this or its now bargain-bin destined DVD/Blu-Ray.

10. The BFG

Wow, this was an awful year for live-action fantasy adaptations based on books because, out of all the ones I saw in 2016, not a single one was good.  The BFG, to be fair, is probably not as bad a movie in that category as the other two that I’ll be tearing apart in my 11-20 list, but the reason that this made the list over those is because its badness is more upsetting and unacceptable to me.  Let’s be honest here; when you scroll down and see the names of those other two similar films, I guarantee that, if you really think about the recent pedigree of their series and/or directors, the appearance of their lack of quality to me will not at all be surprising to you, regardless of whether you agree with me or not.  However, The BFG, even more than the also crushing Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, is the book-to-movie fantasy this year that sounded like an obvious home run, given that it’s based on the famous Roald Dahl novel (which, for once, makes this a film based on a book where I’ve actually read the book), it was written by the late scribe of E.T., Melissa Mathieson, it’s shares the same director as E.T., Steven Spielberg and the title role was given to the great Mark Rylance, who deservedly won an Oscar last year for his role in Spielberg’s previous film, Bridge Of Spies (my 10th best movie of 2015).   In fact, this sounded so great to me that, of all the major movies that came out last summer, this is the one I was looking forward to the most, which made it all the more painful and rage-inducing that it ended up as an empty, dull, emotionally inert and off-putting style over substance mess that's as bad a movie from Spielberg since, ironically, the last film he opened on 4th Of July weekend, 2005’s War Of The Worlds.  

The movie opens just like the book does, with young orphan Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) suffering from insomnia and finding herself awake yet again at 3 am at the London orphanage she lives at.  She calls this time “the witching hour,” where she goes out to her balcony to look out and see if any monsters, like those she reads about in her books, happen to show up. One night, she hears a noise and, when she looks out, she sees a giant running around the streets and, when the giant spots her, he takes Sophie away and back to his home in Giant Country. Sophie, having read in books that giants tend to have a penchant for eating children, fears for her safety, especially when the giant tells her that she’ll need to live with him forever to prevent the secret of giants from being revealed to “human beans,” as he calls them, but the giant turns out to be friendly and not interested in eating her. Actually, the giant, who Sophie then starts to refer to as BFG, or the Big Friendly Giant (played by Mark Rylance) has the power of capturing and disseminating dreams, with a particular interest of providing good dreams to children, hence his frequent midnight runs around London.  That’s in direct contrast to a group of bigger and meaner giants, let by Fleshlumpeater (Jemaine Clement), who constantly harass the BFG and like nothing more than eating children, traits of which are intensified when they believe that the BFG is harboring a child.  As the BFG tries to protect Sophie, she suggests that he fights back against the bullies, resulting in a scheme to manipulate the dreams of the Queen of England to keep both of them safe, as well as protect other children as it relates to potential death by consumption at the hands of the giants.  

If you’re familiar with the book, like I am, you’ll be able to tell that this is actually a pretty faithful cinematic translation of the story, what with the setups, characters and lines of dialogue, particularly the made-up words (like snozzcumber and frobscottle) and the BFG’s different ideas of human terms and concepts.  Also, the film certainly looks beautiful and appropriately other-worldly, thanks to some pretty vivid art direction and use of color (most effective in the scene in the realm of dreams), seamless CG of the giants, good cinematography by Janusz Kiminski and a convincing sense of scale between Sophie, the BFG and the other giants.  Also, the lead performances by Rylance as the BFG and Barnhill as Sophie are expressive and did seem accurate to characters (though Barnhill is playing that stereotypical wide-eyed young "wise prior to her years" British girl trope a bit too heavily for me).  So, if I like the way this film looks, enjoy the lead characters and are saying that it accurately captures the book’s story and atmosphere in the film, why do I hate it? Well, because like Ratchet & Clank, this is one of those “they know the words, but not the music” situations, where I didn’t feel any heart, humanity or connection to the world and characters that I got out of the book, effectively nullifying any of this film’s positives and its surface accuracy to the original source material.  I say that the accuracy to the book is “surface” because, though it looks and seems to get everything right with its setup and technical elements, it fails to capture the underlying feelings related to them, specifically the bond between Sophie and the BFG.

It’s not that the movie rushes through or cuts down the scenes developing the relationship between the BFG and Sophie, because it doesn’t.  The characters (and by extension, the audience) do get the time needed to talk, get to know each other and establish themselves and their bond, unlike too many other family films, including book adaptations like this, which tend to overcompensate and show their lack of audience trust by just throwing endless frenzy at us.  Sounds perfect on paper, but in practice, I didn’t feel that their relationship was growing at all and I didn’t get a sense of the strange wonder and/or magic connected to this world.  Maybe it’s because the film’s structure is so repetitive, as it’s mostly just going from Sophie and the BFG talking, the mean giants causing trouble, Sophie and the BFG escaping, a fantasy scene to solve Sophie and the BFG’s current problems and back again until the end.  Some may wonder if I’m being hypocritical by criticizing this movie for the same story structure as the book while  trashing the former and praising the latter, but this goes back to my “movies are a different medium” argument, where what comes off effectively in one medium doesn’t automatically work in another, and vice versa.  This movie may be accurate to the book narratively speaking, but unlike the book, I am not feeling engrossed or touched by the film and, I’m sorry, that includes the usage of the made-up words which come off in the movie feeling like nothing but self-consciously precious shop-talk to cover up its failure to draw us into the world and its characters, its failure to tell this story in a way that doesn’t make me feel like it’s flimsy and repetitive and to elongate the movie’s length to 2 hours.  Speaking of the length, I think that may be the other issue here; the pacing is way too slow and draggy and, since I’m not feeling the bond between Sophie and the BFG and, thus, I’m not caring about them in the way I should be, that becomes a negative, even knowing that a more deliberate pace should fit this story.

I couldn’t believe how uninterested and uninvested I was in this movie and, about halfway through, I could almost feel my stomach sinking as the realization came over me that “this movie isn’t ever going to start clicking with me” and that my most anticipated film of the summer was crashing and burning in front of my eyes.  At this point, I started to mentally check out of this, as did the restless, talkative and, in one case, iPad using kids at my screening (suggesting that even kids might not like this, while also suggesting they’re incapable of common audience courtesy at the movies), but it was as the film entered its third act that it went beyond a massive personal disappointment into a never-ending time-waster that I actively resented in a soon rapidly growing fashion. I suggested earlier that the film wastes our time with the book’s fake words that it should have been able to use for character and world-building, but it really does that later on when the plot literally stops for that awful scene when Sophie and the BFG have breakfast at the palace.  This is a 10-minute scene where literally nothing plot-related happens, despite the previous scene having them cement their plan to fight back against the giants, and the forced whimsy, overproduced production design and the self-consciously twee dialogue on display here drove me insane.  And what’s the big payoff of that scene?  A massive, pathetic and unfunny fart joke.  Which reminds me, this film has a litany of scatological and crude humor that I don’t remember from the book (or remember being a turn-off), which is just unpleasant, ugly and desperate, including the other fart jokes induced by the BFG’s beloved frobscottle fizzy drink and the hits to the crotch that the mean giants take (hmm, maybe this movie doesn’t respect the intelligence of the audience after all).  

Also, the evil giants themselves have nothing interesting going for them, except how repulsive they are, the only reason I care about the BFG and Sophie defeating them is so they’ll go away and also, regarding that plan they have to stop the giants, it actually exudes a pretty unintentionally awful moral to the story.  Without giving too much away, the movie is telling us to follow our dreams at any cost, but when you think about how Sophie and the BFG use dreams to gain the assistance of the Queen to help them with the giants, it’s telling us that we should never give up on our dreams, even when they’re rooted in violence, ignorance and delusion as they end up being, a message that, considering the kind of world we’re living in now, isn’t something that anyone should be condoning, especially like this. So yeah, The BFG is a pretty awful movie coming from people who really should have known better and, after being so horribly crushed by this, it’s enough to make me more careful about anticipating films that seem, on the surface, to be a sure thing, as well as justification to write the following on the epitaph of the awful summer movie season that this came out during; "At least we got Finding Dory and Pete’s Dragon."

Now, for the 11-20 worst films of the year, listed in alphabetical order:

 The Accountant

If you go by the review scores I gave to the films in this worst of essay, this crime thriller/drama from Miracle and Warrior director Gavin O'Connor about a world-wandering autistic Illinois accountant with a secret penchant for armed and unarmed combat, espionage and finding himself involved in corruption and murder plots is the one I liked most, given that I gave it 2 stars out of 4 (the other 19 films scored less).  However, I also said that “I’m being a bit nice with that score” when I reviewed it, due to how impenetrable, uninteresting and empty it is and also, because of its quite ugly elements, especially its two-faced and ultimately hateful attitude towards people with autism.  After thinking about The Accountant a little more and also, seeing how its offensive outlook at people with mental disabilities fits a pervasive and hateful pattern in modern films, I realize I was definitely being too kind to it and I can feel myself resenting it one more and more with each passing day, so it’s now on my bottom 11-20 list.  

The movie stars Ben Affleck (who really had a horrible 2016 at the movies between this, Batman V Superman, Suicide Squad and, apparently, his own Live By Night) as Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant who’s brought in by John Lithgow’s Lamar Black to find the source of a multi-million-dollar leak in his robotics company’s bottom line, which was noticed by the company’s in-house account, Dana Cummings, played by Anna Kendrick.  Meanwhile, because of Christian’s double-life between his local financial consulting and shady dealings with foreign criminals, he’s starting to be noticed by Treasury Department financial director, J.D King (J.K. Simmons), who wants more information about who Christian is and blackmails young analyst Marybeth (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) to help him.  After figuring out where the leak is in record time, Christian is stopped by Lamar after the CFO of the robotics company mysteriously dies,  but he was actually murdered by an assassin for knowing too much about their complex embezzlement/conspiracy plot against the company and soon enough, Christian and Dana’s lives are also threatened but, because Christian is such a capable fighter, they’re able to survive while Christian heads off to stop the people behind the scheme, all while J.D and Marybeth are closing in on him and while Christian takes his cues from the voice of a mysterious woman.  

OK, first off, this story is way too jagged and throws so much information at the audience that we end up scratching our heads, but less in the “hmm, I wonder where this is going to go and I’m intrigued to see where it ends up” way than in the “I’m lost and I just don’t care anymore” way.  Eventually, the movie also gives up on itself when J.D and Marybeth reach Christian’s now abandoned house, resulting in a scene where the story literally stops for 15 minutes as we sit there and watch J.D. explain everything to us that the movie should have been making clear to us before that point.  From there, the film pushes towards its contrived, ridiculous and insulting ending and bombards us with choppy, uninteresting and, especially in the scenes set at night, incomprehensible action scenes that sickeningly relish in the suffering of the innocent victims and, at times, have the nerve to try and make that cruelty funny (the scene with the CFO and a local farming owning couple are particularly galling), all while showing us how Christian deals with the happenings around him and how his autism comes into play.  

That latter point is where this movie really offended me because I myself have a form of autism and, though I understand the idea of giving a deeper psychological angle to the characters on paper, in practice, the autism material is full of logical holes and adds nothing but an excuse to stereotype Christian and, by extension, all autistic people as obsessives with a potential fighter/killer in them who are sometimes really funny with their inability to understand every social cue that so-called normal people claim to be able to pick up on instantly. Considering all the modern-day finger-waving we get from bleeding hearts (including many people in this cast and crew) about how we need to show respect to everyone who’s different, it’s disgustingly hypocritical that this film is taking that approach regarding Christian (as is the late-film moralizing about it and the reference to autism experts in the credits, who are either 1988 mentality quacks or, more likely, had their input ignored by the filmmakers) and, even worse, the film blows its obvious openings to actually do something dramatically interesting with autism in the context of the story.  For example, when Christian and Dana first meet, she’s really nervous, has her own repetitive patterns and is constantly stuttering, which had me thinking “Great! She’s showing signs of less severe autism, which should add a unique dimension to their involvement in and bond during the conspiracy plot!”  But no; she’s not autistic and, after the scene in the hotel, she totally disappears and their relationship ends up going nowhere and adding nothing.  The acting and pacing are OK, I guess, but I don’t care about anything or anyone here and it’s offensive, so don’t waste your time.

 Alice Through The Looking Glass

I didn’t see the 2010 live-action Alice In Wonderland film directed by Tim Burton, but it was apparently a tepidly reviewed box-office smash that eventually triggered a massive internet-fueled backlash against it.  As such, we got its probably not so anticipated sequel, Alice Through The Looking Glass, this year, which Tim Burton skipped out on directing (he was busy making his own junky 2016 film that you may also soon be hearing about from me) and, as my introduction to this interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s stories about the girl who fell down the rabbit hole into a magical world without logic or consistency, it makes me even more glad that I missed the original, because this follow-up is a totally uninteresting, empty, soulless and pathetic excuse for a family fantasy movie.  Apparently, audiences agreed, because this was a massive box office bomb and also, apparently, Disney themselves knew they had a disaster on their hands, as you can see signs all over this that even they didn’t have faith in it being worthwhile.

Don’t believe me on that last sentence? Well, in theaters, before the film began, we got the bewildering music video of Hearts On Fire by P!nk (a talented musician who has also shown great acting potential in the underrated Thanks For Sharing, but she's served poorly on both fronts here) that’s themed after the very movie that we’re about to see and even contains many of its big plot revelations.  I get and like the idea of short subjects before Disney family movies, but music videos that spoil parts of the movie we paid for?  Anyway, when the actual movie begins, we see Alice Kingsleigh (Mia Wasikowska) back in the real world as the captain of her father’s ship, The Wonder (that she’s able to be in a position of power like that in 19th century London is more of a fantasy than the Wonderland material, but never mind). When Alice returns to her home in London, she finds out that her father’s company and, by extension, the house of both her and her mother, was bought out by Hamish Ascot (Leo Bill), a man still bitter over Alice apparently refusing to marry him, but who agrees to give the deed to the house back if Alice turns over the ship to him.  Alice refuses and, when she retreats to a room, she sees an old friend in Absolem the caterpillar, who’s now a butterfly (he’s voiced by the late Alan Rickman) and decides to follow him back to Wonderland.  When Alice returns, she sees her other old friends, including Mirana (Anne Hathaway) and the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), but quite tellingly, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is not among them.  She’s told that the Hatter is in a deep depression and, when Alice visits him, he tells her that he’s come to think that his family somehow survived the attack on them by the Jabberwocky and begs Alice to help find them.  To do this, Alice is told that she’ll need to travel through time, much to the chagrin of, well, Time (Sasha Baron Cohen), who controls it via his Chronosphere and who has a new girlfriend in the form of Alice’s old enemy, The Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).  Alice steals it and travels back to find and save the Hatter’s parents, all while Time is trying to stop her from ruining the space-time continuum and while The Red Queen sees the opportunity to use the Chronosphere herself to become the legitimate queen she’s always dreamt of being and to reverse a childhood battle over tarts with her sister, Mirana, that’s about as pathetic a misunderstanding/third act conflict resolution element in a major release since that infamous “Martha” business in Batman V Superman.

Despite everything potentially interesting going on in this plot and its fantasy world setting of Wonderland, this movie is dead in the water the entire time and has nothing interesting on either a visual or narrative level to make us care about anything that happens.  Regarding the film’s look, despite some decent use of color and special effects, there’s a lifeless quality to it all that keeps you at a distance from this supposedly magical setting, to the point where all I came away with was how much money was tossed at this production design that, at the end of the day, means nothing (that, and the film is too dark in many places, and I saw it in 2D; I’ll bet the 3D version was even worse on that front).  In addition, the action scenes are dull (though at least they’re shot coherently enough) and the direction by James Bobin is flat and indistinguishable from any other pedestrianly directed live-action fantasy film. The film is even worse regarding its story and characters, starting with its time-travel elements that, like most movies about that, is just ridiculous, even as a fantasy, and is littered with stupid and unfunny time puns, as well as gaping loose ends and inconsistencies. I’ve had some people who actually liked this picture argue that "there's no reason for consistency in a Lewis Carroll adaptation” and, to their credit, their more recent familiarity with the book than me and claims that it’s an accurate translation of what’s often considered a daunting book-to-film subject is a valid point.  

Even so, of what I remember from the Alice books, they still had their own twisted logic behind them that they dutifully followed to set up the stakes of the story and its characters and had us invested in the eventual outcome, while also making the heavy narrative lifting they asked of us feel worthy of that commitment.  This movie asks us to just accept this lunacy at face value and shield itself in a lazy “come on, it’s Alice In Wonderland; nothing here has to make sense!” defense, even though the jokes aren’t funny, the plot is boring and has no respect for our intelligence, the film’s message of only being able to learn from the past and not change it is completely contradicted by the fact that they then change the past anyway with no effects on the future, the characters aren’t intriguing or likable and the performances are either just passable (Mia Wasikowska as Alice, but between this and last year’s Crimson Peak, she really needs a new agent) or just aggressively shrill, mugging and embarrassing (in particular, so-called “fantasy film maestros” Sasha Baron Cohen, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and especially Helena Bonham Carter are so terrible here that even the no-name kid actors playing them as youths are acting better than them). The only positives are a late scene that gave me unintended joy over the possibility that all hope was lost for the forces of good (but I wasn’t supposed to feel that way and it’s soon nullified anyway) and the fact that this tanked massively enough to prevent a third Alice film, but they’re not enough to redeem this empty mess.  Then again, I guess it does continue an annual pattern with Disney releasing live-action family film bombs on Memorial Day weekend after last year’s Tomorrowland, but even that massive misfire was infinitely better that this.

 Captain America: Civil War

I really let DC Comics’ film division have it this year, given that I put both their Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad on my 10 worst list, but to all you comic fans gloating that Marvel Studios did better than DC did in 2016, you may want to get off your high horse, because they honestly didn’t do much better themselves.  I’ll admit that Doctor Strange was decent enough, despite its refusal to commit to anything, but Marvel also had their own equivalent to Batman V Superman this year in Captain America: Civil War, the third film in their series about the patriotic plucked-from-the-1940s superhero and, as someone who loved the first two movies about Cap/Steve Rogers and his adventures in both the past and present, this was a dull, bloated, cynical and crushing misfire that robs this series of its defining attributes and characters and reveals its true colors as a shameless cog in both this now going too far Marvel Cinematic Universe business and, ultimately, the Disney/Marvel fanboy/fangirl money making machine.  

You may think I’m being out of line by even mentioning Batman V Superman in the same sentence as this, but the narrative parallels here are obvious and undeniable.  After Captain America (Chris Evans) and his new band of Avengers end up causing unintended collateral damage and death as they fight against group of villains, there’s a push by the world governments and Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) against it that leads to a 2 ½ hour ethical debate about superhero morality/vigilantism in which Cap thinks that the world wants and needs superheroes’ help and are prepared for the unintended consequences and in which Stark argues the opposite viewpoint. This ultimately leads to a group of many Marvel Comics characters coming together and battling it out both intellectually and physically, including not just Iron Man and Cap, but also other figures with future individual movies being made about them, including Black Panther and Spider-Man and, in the third act, the big battle between Iron Man and Cap is tied to the mother of one of them.

Seriously, how is that not the exact same movie as Batman V Superman? Well, to be fair, this is better than Zack Snyder’s film, as it lacks that one’s hateful and misogynistic rancor, there are a few scenes that are decent and, though it does nothing to make me hate the narrative needlessness of them or the shameless plugging of their future movies, the introductions to the new characters, particularly Spider-Man, are interesting and kind of fun, unlike the literal walk-ons of the ones in Batman V Superman.  On the other hand, at least that movie was up front about the idea that it was going to simultaneously be a Batman film and a Superman film (even as it did it badly); Civil War, on the other hand, is selling itself as a Captain America movie, but it’s mostly sidelining Cap, his story and the ancillary faces related directly to his series in favor of giving more attention to Tony Stark (whose character in this film, unlike the others with him in it, is so one-note in his righteousness that I kind of hated him), as well as cramming in all of the hasty character introductions, sideplots and the future films it’s shamelessly trying to set up.  Honestly, this feels more like a bad Avengers sequel that lacks focus and has no concern for anyone in the audience who hasn’t seen every single Marvel Studios movie (and I’ve seen most of them, aside from the last two Iron Man films, and I still felt lost by some of the stuff here), which not only alienates newcomers, but also people like me who paid money to see a Captain America movie with him and his exploits as the primary focus.  

Even if I were able to look past all of that, the film still wouldn’t be interesting or entertaining, because the story is all over the map, the changes in the characters' motivations are completely random, the villain, like most Marvel films, sadly, is forgettable and has a pathetic scheme that’s made even more pathetic by the idiotic reasons for it and the unearned stabs at empathy, the attempts at humor fall flat and, most shocking and unacceptable of all, the action scenes are atrocious.  Seriously, this film shares the same directors and crew as the last Captain America film, The Winter Soldier, which had some of the most tense, well-shot, well-constructed, exciting and exquisite action scenes of any major studio release in the past few years, comic book film or otherwise, so why do the ones in this movie fall into all of the traps that the previous film avoided, particularly its endless and headache-inducing quick cuts and those laughably bad and sped-up special effects?  Also, despite my pacing problems with Winter Soldier, at least that one only dipped in the last 30 minutes; this one’s dull throughout and it runs even longer.  I don’t know what happened with this one and I was really surprised at just how much I disliked it, but even so, because it seems that few people are willing to say that “the emperor has no clothes” with these Marvel Studios films, this still made tons of money and was loved by comic fans. Good for them, but for me, this is exactly the kind of cynical comic Marvel movie product that Deadpool so effectively lampooned, and it’s damaged (hopefully just temporarily) probably my favorite Marvel film series.

 The Edge Of Seventeen

Have you ever wanted a John Hughes style coming-of-age teenage comedy/drama for the snowflake culture (of which we’ve seen and heard from a lot of over the past few years, let alone the past few months) that pretends to be an honest, darkly funny and intriguingly authentic look at teenage life, but is actually completely ignorant and fraudulent of basic human nature and psychology related to teenagers, while also failing to be investing, funny or credible in any way?  I haven’t, but that’s what we got out of The Edge Of Seventeen, a film that a lot of critics liked, as they’ve argued that it’s a great progressive and feminist genre-twist and authentic look at young female life/growth that many teenagers, especially young girls, will be able to easily relate to.  Well, as someone with a concept of mental illness, words this movie religiously refuses to ever let cross its lips, I say that this doesn’t know what it’s talking about and it’s also a long, predictable, painfully mannered, inauthentic and regressive effort, especially in comparison to an infinitely better, similar and deeply underappreciated animated film from last year ironically led by the same actress that plays the protagonist here (more on that later).

The film is about Nadine Franklin, played by Haile Steinfeld who, as the movie opens, we see entering the office of her Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson) and telling him that she’s going to kill herself.  We then go back in time to see how Nadine got to the point, starting with her childhood where she was never as popular as her brother, Darian (Blake Jenner), was often picked on by the kids at school and seemed distant from her mother, Mona (Kyra Sedgwick). However, she still had her father, Tom (Eric Keenleyside) and her then new best friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) to keep her happy.  As Nadine grows up, Tom dies of a heart attack to the tune of Billy Joel’s You May Be Right (because apparently, we didn’t have enough heart attack deaths set to Billy Joel in the movies after The Hangover Part 3 did the same thing using My Life), which devastates her and her family and now, at the age of 17, Nadine finds out that Krista is in love with Darian and that they’ve slept together, which sends her over the edge.  In response, Nadine refuses to talk to Krista, is angry, defiant and mean against basically everyone close to her and begins to get the hots for Nick Mossman (Alexander Calvert), a boy who recently got out of reform school for his bad behavior.  Meanwhile, Nadine starts a tentative bond with the awkward, but still kind boy, Erwin Kim (Hayden Szeto), while Mr. Bruner tends to be on the receiving end of Nadine’s sass, which he often takes and then, dishes back out at her tenfold.  We also get a subplot about Mona trying to date again, along with the stories of Krista and Darian, the former wanting to make up with Nadine, the latter basically holding the entire family together, especially with Nadine being how she is now, and both trying to balance their healthy and loving relationship with their bonds to Nadine.

The film wants you to believe that this story is about a teenage girl struggling through hard situations that are exacerbated by being a moody 17-year-old, but that’s a lie.  In reality, it’s actually about a hateful, smug and selfish girl (even by teenager standards and even with her baggage) with clear psychological problems that the movie bends over backwards to avoid honestly dealing with.  This movie is set in 2016, a time when increasingly destructive, self-loathing and hateful behavior from teenagers like Nadine, which includes her mean-spirited and delusional putdowns towards most everyone, the threats she makes towards others and herself (including her claim that she’ll kill herself) and her push for a sexual tryst with Nick, are no longer viewed as just “part of being a teenager,” but as a sign of serious mental health issues. On the home front, Mona’s lack of help with Nadine and, for that matter, Darian, isn’t believable or emphasizing enough that she’s not mentally capable to help her daughter (perhaps because her husband suddenly died, but they fought a lot anyway and she’s pretty quick to try and become sexually involved with a man who turns out to be married, so I don’t feel it) and, at school, the lack of Mr. Bruner calling up a guidance counselor or even Mona after a barrage of troubling comments by Nadine is totally false (in 2016, a public school that, in a post-Columbine world, is likely trained to spot the signs of psychological issues, would not just ignore Nadine’s obvious issues).

How this so-called realistic look at modern teenage angst thought it was OK to try and bury the clear evidence that its lead is psychologically disturbed is beyond me, as is the fact that it’s justifying and glorifying Nadine’s behavior every step of the way without holding her accountable for what she does.  It would be one thing if this film had at least introduced the possibility of mental illness (outside of a token line about her taking anti-depressants and the ending that sweeps even a hint of emotional honesty about Nadine’s mindset under the rug completely), because when mental issues are involved in relation to bad behavior, there has to be a balance between what can be said for the person to have be held responsible for doing and when the illness is talking.  But even then, we’d still need to have a rooting interest in Nadine and believable development of her to make her earn my sympathy and understand for her struggles, which we do not get.  I’m sorry, but as portrayed here in Steinfeld’s pushy performance and with this ignorant and self-conscious script, she’s an unctuous, unpleasant, unfunny (just like the film, by the way) and selfish person who brings everyone around her down to her level of depression and self-hatred if she doesn’t get what she wants and someone who I sided against every time a character in the movie correctly tells her something along the lines of “you’re wrong; get over it.”

Flat out, this movie doesn’t play fair with its lead character and the obvious realities about her and the real-world she’s living in, which sinks the entire thing, despite a few positives in the few scenes between Nadine and Erwin, as well as the lack of high school teenage movie clichés, particularly from Blake Jenner, quite good in the surprisingly not stereotypically jockish sports star role of Darian.  Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig publicly said this film is intended as a John Hughes tribute with a more modern spin on it, which only proves how phony, ugly and both comedically and dramatically deficient this film is, as Hughes often looked deeply at the psychological angles of his young characters, while contrasting the different worldviews of youths and adults and showing how they can meet in the middle (Jennifer Grey’s similar character in Ferris Buller’s Day Off comes to mind).  Also, going back to that animated film I mentioned that’s a lot like this, perhaps Craig should have paid attention to Hiromasa Yonebayashi's When Marine Was There, which was also about a mentally troubled and depressed teen girl with family tragedies and had Hallie Steinfeld voicing the lead and giving a better and more believable performance, and you should see that one over this overrated and insulting junk.

 Hail, Caesar

The 1950s Hollywood golden age throwback movie is a sub-genre that’s really been languishing in a sorry state over the past year with such pathetic recent excuses for reliving that era such as Trumbo, Café Society and… well, another film I’ll be roasting at the end of this 11-20 list.  Sadly, the usually reliable and interesting Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, only kept that trend going this year with their contribution, Hail, Caesar, a movie that was generally well-liked, but to me, was a really dull, empty, inexplicable and, honestly, kind of masturbatory exercise in Hollywood style and star power that I kept hoping would get me invested or click with me regarding its meaning and purpose, but it never did.  

The movie is a heavily fictionalized look at 1950s Hollywood studio fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who works in this film for Capitol Pictures, a studio all about uplifting and high-class cinematic entertainment.  Two of the biggest films being currently filmed on the lot are Hail, Caesar, a biblical epic similar to Ben Hur and starring the studio’s biggest contract star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), and Merrily We Dance, a Broadway play translation starring and marking a stylistic change for Western star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), much to the chagrin of its director, Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes).  Both films run into troubles, the latter due to problems with Hobie’s performance and the former because Baird has been kidnapped by a group of former screenwriters turned communists called The Future, who attempt to recruit Baird to help them and later, send a ransom demand to Eddie.  Elsewhere, DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is revealed to be pregnant out of wedlock, threatening the image of the studio and two twin columnists, Thora Thacker and Thessaly Thacker (both played by Tilda Swinton), come calling to Eddie for different reasons, all of which add the multitude of situations that Eddie needs to handle, while also dealing with his own issues with his home life and his sense of personal failings that sends him to confession at his Catholic church to a degree that even the priest says is far too often.  In between, we also get some side-stories (if some of them even qualify for “stories”) with Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), an actor in a musical about romance-seeking sailors on a brief shore leave, C.C. Calhoun (Frances McDormand), the editor of Merrily We Dance, Arne Seslum (Christopher Lambert), the director with a connection to DeeAnna, Carlotta Valdez (Veronica Osorio), an actress that Hobie is set up with to manipulate his image and Joe Silverman (Jonah Hill), a notary worker who works on the side to help Eddie fix his specific problems.

There’s a lot going on in this movie and, if I had to guess, I think this is intended to be similar to Robert Altman’s 1992 masterpiece, The Player, which was also a comedy/satire about the assorted happenings at a Hollywood studio with one major character surrounding a group of sideline vignettes and other characters.  To be honest, though, I’m not sure if I’m reading the point of this film correctly, but even if I am, it’s nowhere near as interesting or funny as The Player was and I found it so boring that I found myself having to fight really hard to stay awake while watching it, and I was totally awake when it began. Also, though I understand that there’s the overarching plot following Eddie, I didn’t feel that he was connected nearly enough to everything and I felt as if the movie was just bouncing from one scene and/or movie set to another without much cohesion and without enough intriguing narrative material, social commentary or entertainment value to make me feel like anything important was happening.  It’s kind of surprising that I felt that way, given how many massive talents make up the case of this film, but with the exception of newcomer Alden Ehrenreich as the Gene Autry-esque Hobie, I thought all the other actors were either wasted (people like Jonah Hill and Frances McDormand only get one scene), just merely OK (Clooney and even Brolin) or mannered to the point of extreme irritation (I’m thinking of Ralph Fiennes, in particular, as Laurentz, whose line reciting scene with Hobie is aggravatingly repetitive and may forever have me recoil if I ever hear the phrase "would that it were so simple" again in my life).

Having said that, the production design of this film is pretty impressive, as it gives a great sense of time and place to 1951 Hollywood, with great replication of the aura of movie studios of the time and the related camera angles, visual filters, film set accouterments.  Also, I do like the idea of seeing the creative process behind Hollywood studio film genres that were popular at the time, including expensive epics, westerns, musicals and fantasies with Busby Berkeley-style choreographed women in and out of water, and there are a couple of pretty funny scenes that pointed towards a better film, particularly the premiere of Lazy Ol’ Moon, a Western comedy about a drunken cowboy having slapstick accidents and blaming all his troubles in life on the full moon on display at night and an early scene when Eddie meets with a rabbi, a Protestant rector, a Catholic priest, and an Eastern Orthodox minister about the depiction of Jesus Christ in Hail, Caesar (the film within the film, of course), with the hopes to earn widespread religious support for the movie while balancing between all four religions’ different views of Jesus.  Outside of those scenes, though, the rest of the movie drags, even at just over 100 minutes and there’s not enough punchiness to the script and the performers to make enough of the scenes work even nearly as well as those two highlights. Not to mention, as I said, I feel as if this is a film that everyone but me seems to understand the point of, and it’s not interesting enough to be entertained as I try to figure it out or to make me intrigued enough so that I even want to understand it, which is something that the Coens often do quite well, especially in the case of their great Inside Llewyn Davis (a film that, honestly, you can apply some of the same criticisms towards that I’m making on this one, but they fit that film’s narrative and characters much better so that it wasn’t a problem to me there).  Maybe if this film went all the way at trying to be a style throwback (ala The Artist), was a series of unrelated vignettes (like Paris, Je T'aime, a collection of short subjects that the Coens contributed to) or just tinkered the script and direction to better emphasize its surrounding elements and players in relation to Eddie, I would have liked it more and gotten into it, but as it is, it’s probably the weakest film of the Coens so far (even more than The Ladykillers remake to me) and a waste of time, talent and money in my eyes.

 Hello, My Name Is Doris

Every year, we get one or two low-budget independent comedy/drama hybrids that are led by an older and legendary actress and, in the worse cases of them, they seem like they’re specifically designed to attract older and/or less discerning viewers who wish they'd see said elder actress in more modern movies under the notion of “hey, I love ”insert famous actress’s name here” and I’ve missed not seeing her in anything recently, so this is certainly going to be great and I can’t possibly miss it!”  Reading that, you may think I’m making an awfully mean and elitist statement that’s suggesting that I think such audience members are stupid and can’t discern the quality of a movie when it has a performer in it that they love, but in actuality, I’m saying that the movie thinks that, as does its creators and especially big Hollywood studios who pick up junky films like Hello, My Name Is Doris from a small film festivals (in this case, South By Southwest) and then, put it out for its target demographic to be suckered into seeing without showing any respect for their taste or intelligence (not to mention giving Hollywood an excuse to pretend that they're not disgustingly ageist regarding older actresses, even though they totally are).  

Then again, I was also suckered in by this, because I love Sally Field and, after seeing her be the best part of the awful The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I was open to having her lead a new film, but not a tone-deaf, tonally schizophrenic, noncritical and insulting one like this.  Field stars as Doris, a 60-something Staten Island data entry worker with a hoarding problem and a recently dead mother that she looked after for years.  On her return to work after her mother’s death, she meets the company’s new and personable art director, John (played by New Girl’s Max Greenfield), who she becomes quickly smitten with and, after combination of an “I’m possible” mantra of a motivational speaker (Peter Gallagher) and some assistance from her lifelong friend, Roz (Tyne Daly) and Roz’s technologically savvy granddaughter, Doris tries to go after him romantically, despite her age.  Meanwhile, Doris’s brother is getting on her case for her hoarding and insistence to continue living in their mother’s house and, despite gaining more social acceptance than she expected in her pursuit of John, there are details about him that complicate things.  

What I can say in favor of this movie is that Sally Field is doing what she can in the lead role and, for a few scenes, the film is approaching its intended mix of authentic human interaction and semi-broad comedy, particularly from the byplay between Doris and Roz (where Field and Tyne Daly are quite good and have believable chemistry as these lifelong friends) and Doris and the granddaughter and also, in a few scenes that acknowledge and attempt to subvert some of the tropes of stories like this.  Too bad, then, that the script by Michael Showalter (who also directed this) is mostly free of laughs and insight while being mostly full of ugly condescension and hypocrisy, particularly regarding Doris.  Even though she’s supposed to the character we’re intended to feel for, the movie is mostly making fun of her, as it broadly draws her as a pitiable quiet and shy reclusive cat lady who can't let go emotionally or physically and makes her the butt of an endless parade of cheap and mean-spirited jokes about her age and personality... that is, until the inevitable and totally dishonest scene where she cries and opens herself up about her feelings about everything up to that point.  

This movie really wants to have it both ways about every part of it, to the point where, even with that poorly prepared for and preachy third-act pathos, not only do we not buy it on its own (especially since the film totally glosses over the guts of her related psychological issues and hoarding), but we also don’t feel for Doris because, as much as the movie seems to have it out for her, she herself commits a pretty unconscionable and unforgivable action against someone that destroys our sympathy for her (also, it’s completely unrealistic regarding its connection to Facebook, as that plot point is not how Facebook works). Even worse, the movie refuses to call Doris out on it and, without giving too much away, justifies it by abruptly changing into a feminist lecture by painting John as “an emotionally limited little boy,” which he admittingly is, but not for the reason the film is arguing.  Furthermore, there aren’t a whole lot of laughs here, the scenes with her becoming an unexpected fashion/music inspiration are pushy and needlessly vulgar in ways that don’t match the rest of the film and, by the movie’s unwillingness to commit to its more serious subjects in favor of quickly and unrealistically wrapping everything up to have a semi-happy ending, it’s really betraying and spitting in the face of its premise and its target audience, which deserve better than this.  The film, to be fair, isn’t total junk, but I think that’s worse here, since it had the chance to be something special and also, given how angry its rank cynicism made me (and still does as I now think back on it).  

 Independence Day: Resurgence

Remember Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day?  Well, if you don’t, it was a big-budget 1996 alien invasion/B science fiction movie that, for its time, was a gusty, unique and memorable exercise that, despite its higher focus on spectacle and mass destruction special effects than plot and character development, had a tangible energy, forward momentum and sense of urgency that still makes it a fun watch, along with giving us just enough investment in its appealing cast of characters to keep us involved.  Also, if you don’t remember that movie, rest assured that its debatably “long-awaited” sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, will be reminding you of that 20-year-old hit every 3 or so minutes, to the point where you’ll wish you could smack the movie and tell it to shut up already.  Sadly, that obsession with the original film epitomizes everything that’s wrong with this rehashed and pathetic nostalgia-milking sequel, which is content with just hitting all the bulletpoints of its predecessor, but without adding anything new or doing anything old well, making it a waste of time and money that’s even more inexcusable in a summer that also gave us a great decade plus sequel in Finding Dory, which, unlike this, captured the qualities of its preceding film, while also expanding upon and even improving it.  

The plot takes place 20 years after the original movie and has the aliens that ravaged Earth coming back to unleash a massive superweapon.  For some reason, now ex-President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) knew they were coming back, but everyone else didn’t, so most of the characters look to him for assistance here, including many returning characters from the original like David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum), David’s father, Julius (Judd Hirsch), General Gray (the late Robert Loggia) and Dr. Brakish Okun (Brent Spiner). Will Smith’s Steve Hiller is dead now (because he signed onto Suicide Squad instead, and we all know how good a decision that turned out to be), but his wife Jasmine (Vivica A. Fox) is still around and now, their son Dylan (Jessie T. Usher) is grown up and is fighting against the aliens alongside President Whitmore’s now grown daughter, Patricia (Maika Monroe) and her fiancé, Jake (Liam Hemsworth).

So, it’s basically the same film as it was 20 years ago, but now, we get a “where are they now” perspective on some of the characters along with it and, to be fair, I do like that most of the cast is back (aside from Smith and, for that matter, Ross Bagley and Mae Whitman, who played Dylan and Patricia in the original, respectively; would it really have been that hard to get them back, too?), but they all just seem tired and uninteresting this time around, and their delivery of the plot exposition and the lighter moments are forced, awkward, desperate and lack the knowing verve that served the first one well (same goes for the new characters, who are mostly just a grab bag of dull stereotypes).  Also, the story lacks the urgency of the first film and stretches itself out too much with its incoherent subplots which, unlike the original, makes the lack of development of the aliens here impossible to ignore or forgive.

You might be thinking, “OK, the plot and characters aren’t great, but the action and destruction will pick up the slack, right?”  Wrong.  Although we do see places like Paris, China and London get annihilated, it lacks the weight, investment in the characters and the surprise that made similar scenes work so well in the original (like the “what about Boomer?” moment here, which was way better in 1996) and, though the special effects for them look OK, they’re all boring and feel like they’re trying to make lighting strike twice which, ironically, only reminds how better they were before and makes them even worse here.   I guess if you loved Independence Day and need to have more of it, this won’t hurt you too much, but that’s far from a ringing endorsement and honestly, why did we need this movie? Was it just to make a quick buck off of our nostalgia and so Emmerich could try and make us forget he made Stonewall? Based on the results, it seems like it, but thankfully, this tanked at the box office so, despite its insultingly presumptuous sequel-baiting, chances are good we won’t see an Independence Day 3 in 2036… or ever.  

 Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children

Tim Burton dodged a bullet by not directing Alice Through The Looking Glass, but that was nullified by him diving directly into the path of another bullet with the movie he did direct this year; Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. Let’s face facts, people; Burton may have undeniable style and talent and he may have made great films like Batman, Ed Wood and his last masterpiece, the nearly decade-old Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street, but he’s one of the most inconsistent filmmakers who still has a fandom (and, as Dark Shadows and Alice In Wonderland proved, that goodwill is clearly starting to run out) and, as great as his career highlights are, his increasing number of lowlights are often a special form of painful and inexplicable junk that are bad enough to nearly obscure his past successes.  Of the films I’ve seen of Burton’s, I’d be hard-pressed to think of one worse than this ugly, endless, empty, pathetic and incomprehensible disaster that’s both the most obvious sign that Burton’s hit rock bottom and the most unpleasant supposed family-fantasy film since last year’s disastrous Pan.

The movie is based on the Ransom Riggs novel about a Florida teenager named Jake (Asa Butterfield), an isolated recluse whose only true friend seems to be his grandfather Abe (Terrance Stamp), a World War II veteran who told him stories as a youth about a home in Wales for children with unique and societally peculiar traits.  Jake’s father, Franklin (Chris O’Dowd), didn’t like Abe that much doesn’t believe his stories, but Jake kind of does and is more convinced when Abe has his eyes ripped out and is killed by a white-eyed man named Barron (Samuel L. Jackson) that Abe claimed was going to eventually threaten the lives of the children at the home, as well as their shapeshifting and omniscient caretaker, Miss Peregrine (Eva Green).  After being given Abe’s old journal that specifies where Miss Peregrine and the house are located, Jake wants to go to Wales to find it, which his parents reluctantly agree to when Jake’s therapist suggests it could help his mental state after his grandfather’s death.  Franklin accompanies Jake, seeing it as a good opportunity to ditch his grieving son and do some birdwatching for himself (that’s grade A parenting right there), while Jake, against all odds, finds the house and meets both Peregrine and the strange children there, a girl who can control fire, a boy whose body is basically an active beehive, a boy with the power of invisibility, a girl with a carnivorous mouth on the back of her head and, most notably, Emma (Ella Purnell), an air-bender light enough to float away if she doesn’t wear mental boots who remembers Abe and who is drawn to his young grandson.  Jake soon finds out that the house and its inhabitants live in a time loop that keeps repeating the same two days in 1943, as Miss Peregrine keeps turning back the clock just before the house is about to get bombed by German planes, but he also finds out that the warnings of Abe about Barron were true, as Barron and his cronies are seeking the children because their eyeballs help give them immortality when they eat them. As such, Jake leads the children in a battle against Barron to protect them and allow the children to control their use of the time loops to allow them and, by extension, Jake, to have a safe future.

You’d think a story like that would be a slam dunk with Burton at the helm, since it’s packing many of the themes and subject matter that we often associate with his work, including strange/socially ostracized characters with otherworldly abilities, social commentary against bad parenting and the idealized idea of what life in suburbia should be like, and macabre subject matter and imagery with a genesis in German expressionism.  In fact, for that reason alone, I know some defenders of this movie have considered this a “return to form” with echoes of Beetlejuice and especially Edward Scissorhands. However, outside of a few of the supporting performances (Terrance Stamp and Allison Janney) and the film’s technically sound and time period appropriate production design (the latter of which doesn’t really count as a positive, since Burton can do that in his sleep), there’s none of the bizarre intrigue, resonance or joy that we’d expect to get out of a film like this and it all feels so aggressively repellent and uninteresting.  The plot, despite my synopsis, is mostly insultingly incomprehensible babble that overexplains everything while somehow, never making anything about the time loops and twisted antagonists make sense, the characters of Miss Peregrine and the children generally have no personalities or development outside of their one defining trait, the bond between Jake and Emma is empty, poorly developed and awkward (especially their needless and contrived love story, which comes about from Emma transferring her feelings for the young version of Abe onto Jake), the father-son relationship between Jake and Franklin is unbelievable and, at times, rage-including (the horrible, yet one-dimensional and pushy character and Chris O’Dowd’s awful performance as Franklin adds to that) and there are plot holes everywhere.  

I guess the latter is to be expected in a time-travel fantasy movie, but even by its own logic, the time loop material raises big veracity questions, as does the fact that Miss Peregrine somehow is unable to know about specific threats against her and the children, even though Jake and the audience are told by the children that “she knows everything,” even before they happen.  In addition, there’s some really lame and horribly out-of-place stabs at humor (including the beat-boxing punks that’s as much of a tonal whiplash as the licensed songs from Pan), the acting is flat by most everyone involved and the darker elements of the story don’t add anything meaningful to it and come off as just gross and boundary-pushing for the sake of being gross and boundary-pushing, especially the stuff with the eyeball eating, which I had enough of seeing happen once in The Neon Demon this year, let alone multiple times here, and in a movie intended for families, no less (yeah, this being a “family film” is a real joke). If you’re a Burton fan/apologist, you may still want to check this one out, but I don’t think you’ll like it and, for everyone else, watch any of Burton’s good films instead.  Actually, just see any of his other movies, because they’re all better than this, and yes, that does include his now second worst film, Mars Attacks.

 Money Monster

Three months before Hell Or High Water came out and gave us a great drama about the current American economic malaise and the way it can drive people to crime, we had director Jodie Foster’s stab at a similar idea with Money Monster.  I was curious about this one, given big names like George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Giancarlo Esposito and Dominic West in the cast and especially since Foster's past films behind the camera showed her ability to dive into the guts of real-world issues and come out with pretty impressive complexity, clarity and understanding about them, my favorite being her deeply underrated 2011 look at psychological and mental issues in a family and marriage, The Beaver.  Unfortunately, this is just a dull, simplistic, ridiculous, pedantic and slanted political lecture about “income inequality” and how it hurts lower class citizens, but, at best, it’s not smart or interesting enough about it to entertain, help us empathize with and psychologically explore the complexities and situations of said people’s frustrations or change any minds, and at worst, its significant failures and illogical elements unintentionally reveal the significant and fatal fallacies of that entire concept.

George Clooney stars as Lee Gates, the host of the top-rated cable TV financial show, Money Monster, which has him delivering flashy and easily presentable, yet apparently economically in-depth and credible analysis/advice regarding the stock market, company financial patterns and good stock buys (if you’ve ever seen CNBC’s Mad Money, hosted by Jim Cramer, this is basically the exact same thing).  On today’s show, he’s planning to discuss the Ibis corporation, a company that he once called a safe buy, that has now seen its stock price plummet, resulting in the company and its shareholders losing $800 million. Lee is planning on interviewing the company’s CEO, Walt Camby (Dominic West), but he cancels on them, so Lee’s seemingly dedicated studio director, Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts), quickly books Diane Lester (Caitriona Balfe), Ibis’s newest CCO.  After the show starts, a strange delivery boy walks onto the stage, pulls a gun on Lee and forces him to put on a bomb vest that the man will detonate live on national TV if Lee and the crew don’t follow his orders, which include them keeping the cameras rolling.  The man, a working-class millennial named Kyle Budwell (Jack O'Connell), claims that he’s doing this because he saw Lee’s tip about Ibis stock being a good buy, which ultimately resulted in Kyle’s entire life savings being wiped out.  When news of the hostage situation gets out, the police and SWAT team arrive, led by Marcus Powell (Giancarlo Esposito), to try and bring it to a non-lethal conclusion, while Lee follows Kyle’s demands as he and Patty try and think of a way to escape. Meanwhile, after news of the crisis and its connection to Ibis reaches Diane, she begins to dig deeper into what’s really going on in the company, including investigating the algorithms that were claimed to have caused the stock crashed like it did and trying to find and get answers out of Camby, who claims to be on a plane from Geneva and can’t be reached.

So, the movie is a hostage thriller where the social commentary is provided by Kyle, whose argument boils down to the usual lines about how the 1% on Wall Street and in big corporations are able to lazily get rich while screwing good and hard-working people like him who are still struggling to survive on the minimum wage they make.  The first issue with the film’s argument is that, in the world of this movie, the minimum wage that Kyle and others like him make is $14. That’s the same amount that, in the real world, it’s often argued that the minimum wage needs to be raised to in order to allow people like Kyle to have a decent living without having to suffer, but clearly, he still is struggling and he and the movie are still arguing that it’s not enough.  Second, even with Kyle’s plight, I never got enough of a sense that he’s really at the end of his rope or that I could understand his point of view or the desperation that led to him being ready to kill for economic satisfaction and compensation.  Part of this has to do with the script, which, with the exception of a scene where Kyle’s girlfriend, rightly, tells him off for his own bad choices and mismanagement with their money that also played a role in his downfall, blindly deifies Kyle with no pushback on his entitled, elitist and empty self-righteous platitudes (which are just as bad to me as the worst examples of the 1%ers he’s decrying), and the other part has to do with the Razzie-worthy performance by Jack O'Connell, with his embarrassingly mannered speech patterns and expressions (including that eternal gaping) that show him trying way too hard to be authentic, tragic and manic.  As such, I don’t care about Kyle, I don’t side with him and I see him as a black and white eternal victim who, with no gray areas to him here, is just using his stock loss as a scapegoat for his own personal failings.  

As far as Lee, Patty, and the TV crew, aside from the brief opening and some brief and quickly ditched asides about Patty potentially looking for another job, we don’t learn enough about them to get invested in seeing them live or die and, despite this top-flight cast, all of them, including leads Clooney and Roberts, are just OK and lack the crackle that I know they can bring and that director Foster is often good at helping to bring out.  Speaking of the direction, it’s pretty flat and lacks tension, while the action scenes aren’t gripping, the gaps in logic with the show being continually broadcast during the crisis and the attempts at police involvement are too large to ignore and, ultimately, don’t add anything to the story, the film’s portrayal of its Russian and Asian characters is kind of racist and hateful (I guess those are the two ethnic groups you’re still allowed to bigotedly stereotype without any consequence in the movies nowadays), the stabs at feminism with Diane and Patty are rushed through and too on-the-nose.

And then, there’s the tone of the film. It’s clearly supposed to be a mostly serious drama/thriller, but we also get this weird and out of place attempt at humor, which was a terrible miscalculation, as they clash badly with the rest of the film and aren’t funny, the worst of which has to be the sex scene (yeah, I was taken back by that, too) which is the most needless and gratuitous one in recent major movie history.  In the film’s slight defense, it’s not an unwatchable disaster and it is short enough, but given the talent of Foster as a filmmaker in the past, the cast and the great potential of looking at the American economic system with depth and intrigue, while wrapping it in a familiar movie narrative shell, this really should have turned out better than it did and, especially in a year that delivered the definitive example of that concept in Hell Or High Water, the failure of Money Monster is even more obvious and unacceptable.

 Rules Don’t Apply

This long-time passion project of co-writer/director/star Warren Beatty (who last directed a theatrical film with 1998’s Bulworth and last starred in a movie in 2001’s Town & Country) is a hybrid of a Howard Hughes dramatic biopic and a golden age Hollywood-style love triangle romantic comedy… and it’s also the only other 2016 movie aside from The Boss that I gave a 0 star review to. You’d think that would have guaranteed it a spot in to the worst 10 list, but it didn’t for three reasons; first, as horrible as this movie is (and it is), it didn’t anger me quite as much as the other 19 films I highlighted, second, I’ve actually already forgotten about it, despite seeing it less than a month ago, and third, this self-indulgent epitome of Hollywood legend narcissism and talent wasting has already publicly answered for its crimes against cinematic humanity by having the worst opening weekend of any major release in 2016 and becoming a well-deserved box-office flop.  So, yeah, I’m technically showing some mercy to this one, but it’s still such a uniquely uninteresting, terrible and kind of ugly film completely lacking in intrigue, involving story/characters, perspective and even halfway decent filmmaking that I need to deal with it.  

Beatty stars as Howard Hughes, the Hollywood billionaire circa 1958, when his eccentricities, obsession with barely-legal contract starlets and obsessive compulsive disorder were approaching the boiling point.  Enter Marla Mabrey (Lily Collins), a fictionalized religious young woman who comes to Hollywood to attempt to become a movie star under Hughes who is continually given the runaround, as is Hughes’ new limo driver, Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich).  The two fall in love, breaking Hughes’ rule forbidding his contract actresses from dating his other employees, resulting in their strained relationship, especially after Hughes seduces Marla and forms a love-triangle that changes by the minute because of how psychologically messed up Hughes is.  I’ll give the movie this; the idea of taking a larger than life real-world figure like Howard Hughes and connecting his true story to those of fictitious characters isn’t bad and, with Beatty directing it and having such a star-studded cast, including supporting players like Annette Benning, Matthew Broderick, Ed Harris, Candice Bergen, Martin Sheen, Oliver Platt, Paul Sorvino, and Dabney Coleman, this sure sounded good on paper.  

Yet, by making a movie about Howard Hughes, Beatty is directly inviting a comparison with The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s now seemly forgotten and underrated 2004 film also about Hughes that had the verve, investment and craft that’s completely missing here. True, this movie is telling a different story about Hughes than Scorsese did, but both Beatty the director and Beatty the actor fail to make it even halfway interesting, because the movie pathetically and repetitively keeps hammering us over the head with his crazy nature, while providing no attitude about him at all.  Basically, the film uses Hughes’ condition to justify its abrupt tonal shifts between its empty and surface human drama, its desperate, unfunny and, in terms of mining Hughes’ paranoia for laughs, cruel comedy and its supposedly whimsical moments that are embarrassing at best and, at worst, skin-crawlingly creepy (I’m sorry, but seeing the 27-year-old Lily Collins having sex with the now 79-year-old Beatty, while the movie has no perspective about it, just made me feel dirty). Regarding the fictional characters, Frank and Marla’s relationship totally lacks chemistry, passion or plausibility and their bonds to Hughes only mean that they constantly have the same shocked and/or disgusted reaction shots to him and his exploits, none of which are funny and none of which work as interesting or credible drama, especially when they still stand by Hughes when he completely goes off the deep end.

The film’s story and character development issues also aren’t helped by perhaps the year’s worst editing (scenes just randomly and abruptly stop before shifting to the next), the glacial pacing that makes the over 2 hour running time feel like an eternity, the overdone low-key lighting, the horrible plane CG/special effects, some pretty obvious discrepancies regarding the time period and the religious angle of Marla and her mother (they’re Baptist, but they say grace in one scene using "Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we're about to receive from thy bounty," which is a Catholic prayer; oops) and the really flat performances from this totally wasted cast.   Seriously, there’s not one single redeemable aspect about this movie to even justify it as an eventual video rental or Netflix watch, so do what most everyone else did regarding it in theaters, completely ignore it, watch The Aviator and, then, forget this ever came out.

OK, we’re done with the worst of 2016.  Come back next time for the best!