#it was exactly as CGI heavy as i expected

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

215. Dracula Untold (2014)

[rings-of-power-realm]

I've been a fan of Tolkien for over 40 years, read everything he has published and read The Hobbit and LOTR a half dozen times over those decades. I loved the Rankin/Bass animated versions of the story as a teen and I thoroughly enjoyed Peter Jackson's take on the tale and appreciated the artistic license he took to round the stories out for film. I had no expectations going into The Rings of Power, positive or negative. I hoped it would be a beautiful expansion of a world I love and wanted to see more of. I saw the usually people already complaining about this and that, assuming they knew what was best for the works and of course knowing exactly what Tolkien would want and dislike (eye roll) and tried to ignore these trolls completely. They seem to like to ruin any and every journey before it gets a chance to begin and I would not want to spend one moment with these joyless creatures. All that being said I sat down with a snack and refreshments release night and watched the first episodes of The Rings of Power and was dumbfounded. What did I just watch I said to myself. It certainly wasn't anything like the trash mob of negative internet trolls said it would be. It was glorious. From the moment Galadriel's opening voiceover began to the second she plunged her brother's dagger into the ice wall I realized I had leaned forward on the couch and was smiling from ear to ear. The world had faded away and I was enthralled by the beautiful cinematography, the vivid colors and the sheer breadth of the opening shots, the Tolkienesque dialogue...I watched it again. Nope not me imagining it. I watched the rest of the episode and was so tickled I watched it again. I then watched the second. I was so happy, it's indescribable. They struck all the right notes and I was in that world again, like I was reading the books or watching the movies... immersed in Middle Earth and it's tales. Somehow they took the charm and detail of Jackson's movies, added a heavy dose of Tolkien lore, some artistic license and flawless creative CGI and created something fresh but familiar. I knew this place but it was like seeing it with new eyes, the inhabitants and places the same but even more vibrant. So far I'm thrilled with what they have done. If the story pans out and it continues on this path they may have something fantastic on their hands. Something to be celebrated by TRUE Tolkien fans and lovers of Middle Earth. "But it's not Tolkien's story." Well he's not around to create any more content, and it is based on the world and characters he created. If you don't want to watch something he didn't actually write tune out, but don't ruin it for the rest of us. What's wrong with more stories from Middle Earth even if they aren't written by the man himself if they're done well and in his spirit? "Why did they cast so diversely?" Well I don't know how to help you with your "problem" but the way I see it, the only people taking umbrage with that probably have questionable character. Tolkien created a large world with many races, species, etc. I don't remember him ever writing specifically that they were all white. Naturally in a world that big there would be many beautiful types of people, races, ethnicities and cultures. The expansion of this in the show only adds to the richness of the story. If not it would a pretty vanilla tale indeed. If you find yourself complaining about diversity you should probably take a long look in the mirror and ask yourself the real reason you have a problem with it. Lastly I want to address once more the groups that like to mass negative review things. You reveal yourselves when you give a negative review to something before it's even been released in its entirety. I'll be the first to edit this if it turns badly later, but I'll give it it's due first. It's seems like some kind of sickness, the need to try to ruin something just because they don't agree with how it's done or who's in it. It really invalidates all your reviews because you're not reviewing a thing on its content, you're reviewing it on your prejudice, you're reviewing according to your hateful opinions. You won't even give it a chance because "I hate this, and don't like that...oh the wokeness!" Not one of you will be able to look past any of your personal hang ups to give the story and it's presentation a chance to stand on its own, therefore your reviews are meaningless and should be treated as such. I hope that that's taken into account when the time comes to invest in more chapters, seasons and stories if this pans out. If you don't like it go away and let the rest of us enjoy it without having to listen to you try to ruin something without giving it a chance. Gandalf would disapprove. "May dawn take you all and be stone to you!" More Middle Earth is a Good Thing! by redkingisalive imdb 10 star review

[canmom]

L'Aventur de Canmom à Annecy - Mercredi 4: WTF 2023

WTF (read 'what the fuck' in a heavy French accent) seems to be a kind of annual collection of weird online shit. Titmouse is involved in some capacity, although I don't think they're necessarily the ones who picked the films. And while I did recognise one selection (umami had a film) most of it was new to me and there were some crazy good ones...

... but most of all the atmosphere of the late night screening was amazing. I got in at the last minute and somehow ended up in a reserved seat for Titmouse, since I guess they didn't show? Which meant I had one of the best views in the house. The theatre was completely packed and full of excitement.

So then this guy comes out in the skintight purple vest and cape and rainbow stockings. The boss of Titmouse comes on stage and picked up one of the paper planes to invite whoever threw it to come and bite a balloon in half (which would have been a better bit if the person actually did it).

Then came the directors of the films, mostly to tell jokes ("there's too much business and not enough fucking at Annecy" declared one director, instructing us to have sex tonight). After these guys... some Gobelins instructors came out to throw shirts into the crowd, people went absolutely nuts for these shirts. Then: films.

Actually a bunch of these are available online so... here, watch along x3

To open we had this stop motion earworm, Du vélo à St-Malo, du kayak à St-Briac. By the second chorus, the audience was singing along. The images are a bit lolrandom but I can't deny it's infectious in its editing.

Next up came the debut of David by Patrick Ward, about a seriously injured footballer confronting his rival framed through the story of David and Goliath. Lots of little visual jokes that made it flow even if the overall thrust of the story remained a little opaque to me.

Umami's Safe Mode was a natural fit; if you've seen an Umami film you know what to expect. Surreal character designs and a guy with a monotone voice. Looking forward to more of this series.

The Rubbings of Trajectories by Cheng-Hsu Chung from Taiwan took things in a rather Adventure Time direction in its drawing style, full of wild perspective shifts and morphing. I was a little too caught up in the visuals to take a lot from the voiceover lol.

Insomnie by Paul Utkay leaned on Stable Diffusion interpolation for its surreal shifting visuals. This was I think the only time, besides the one after this, I've seen AI in the festival, and right now the main use of AI seems to be like this, a visual effect.

Following this came Two Gracious Uncles Smooched To The Beat (currently password locked so I can't embed it) by Jon Dunleavy, a completely frenetic sendup of the whole AI art 事件. Rather than being made by AI it's mostly deliberately janky cgi, rapidfire jokes, and wrong subtitles as an extra layer, which made for a fun watch. The thesis was maybe something like, "this is all a bit silly". As a programming move, putting this right after the AI film was kind of genius.

A Kind of Testament by Stephen Vuillemin was simply fantastic, absolutely the highlight of this collection. The framing device is that a woman stumbles on a website created by another older woman with the same name as her, consisting of incredibly elaborate animations based on her social media photos. As we watch more, we learn more about this mysterious animator, who died shortly after the protagonist contacted her. Ultimately though this framing device is just a vehicle for some really tight imaginatively grotesque shorts that gradually start to connect up more and more. I hesitate to call it ero-guro because it's not exactly ero, but it definitely put me in mind of e.g. shintaro kago. the framing device works just right, linking the shorts and providing a certain frame for interpretation - the animator is terminally ill, so jokes about foot killing parasites and regrets make sense - without being overbearing. honestly just a really great film, the perfect level of enigmatic. i hope i can show more than the trailer some day.

Internet Gaga by Reinhild Bidner slammed into a much faster pace, a pastiche of Radio Gaga by Queen with the music video consisting mainly of cutout animation and AI deepfake animation of memes. Two minutes was about the right length for this lol. But yeah, haha, the internet, what a mess amirite

Todo está perdido by Carla Pereira Docampo and Juan Francisco Jacinto Prados was a fascinating oddity though. Stop motion, with these wildly distorted models - built in forwards or backwards slants and birdlike eyes. The story concerns a suburban nuclear family where the mother lays eggs, which they mostly eat, but decide to fertilise one one day, resulting in a baby with a wrinkled head hatching. The B plot concerns their other child who gets a rat inside her skin by accident during surgery. As you can imagine it went for the squick reactions. I can't find an online video of this one but here's a previous project by the same directors.

From this point on things got pretty wild. First up we had Uncle Babysitter 2 by Tung Yin Ng aka Tungwood.

as far as toilet humour goes? This was actually great, just relentless gleeful escalation. I got to chat a bit with Tungwood and his friends after the films, and funnily enough he was very shy and would run up to people saying 'souvenir' and give them a card for the film. It was very funny talking to a group of animators, which in my eyes is like the peak of the world's professions, and have them act impressed when i say I'm a game dev.

Anyway, this was a really fun short about a baby's adventure inside a man's stomach as the man desperately tries to pull him out. The breakneck editing really makes the stupid jokes work, it's kinda Imaishi in that way.

Granny X by DD Sheahan relaxed the pace only barely, telling the story of an old lady in a nursing home having a vivid lesbian fantasy that in the waking world leads to her careening around strangling nurses and stuff. It was fun visually, although the humour seemed generally a little meaner.

Monsterfuckers by the Tohu Animation Collective led by Ori Goldberg was something like a multi animator project with loops contributed by different animators around the vague prompt of monsters having sex. So this one's like, straight up porn but weird porn so it gets to be in here lol. The editing to the music was tight and many of the clips were really creative - but no sign of it online as yet so I can't show you.

We were really on a roll at this point. The final part was the music video for Cool Party by Simon Medard for a band called Cocaine Piss, which pushed the jank factor to maximum. It didn't do a lot for me but it kept the energy going. After that we spilled out onto the lawn outside Bonlieu and everyone gathered in small groups. Not really wanting to just walk away, I inserted myself into conversations here and there, said some nice things to the showrunner, met Tungwood... and then at last time to go home, packed on the last bus like sardines.

Honestly, even if it could have been a little weirder to be truly 'what the fuck', this event was a blast. I mean you know how much I like this kind of thing lmao.

As for Thursday... haha god it's 2am. I'll write about it tomorrow... or maybe on Saturday... but the very short version is that I saw Art College 1994 (solid, donghua with a realist style and richard linklater energy), Kensuke's Kingdom (impressively elaborate adaptation of a Michael Morpurgo story, had a bit of an Iron Giant feel visually), White Plastic Sky (a very compelling scifi dystopian drama from Hungary in a rotoscoped style similar to A Scanner Darkly), stood in line for two hours for Mars Express and still didn't get in, watched a bit of Perspectives block 1 (mostly bad, it's the block for serious social issues rather than compelling storytelling) and then tried Graduation Films 3 (sadly could not live up to Graduation Films 2). So a bit of an unfortunate end to the day but that's how it be sometimes...

Tomorrow I've got another packed day so I'm gonna end up really behind on these writeups but stand by lol. Annecy is amazing, I don't want it to end...

[staringdownabarrel]

Okay, so I've just seen Rebel Moon, Part Two: The Scargiver. It did pretty much everything I was expecting it to, which is primarily wrap up the story and have a sequel hook. Beyond that though, I have some mixed thoughts, which are contained below the cut.

On one hand, this is still one of the best movies Zack Snyder has ever made. I wrote that when Part One came out and I was hoping it'd still be true for this one. It is. This has avoided that kinda grating style over substance feel a lot of Snyder movies have, and it continued to have an interesting visual style.

It also manages to stay on point basically the entire time. I feel like a lot of the time Snyder movies will try to have certain elements to them where they're never really wrapped up in any satisfying way or they're just forgotten about halfway through. That didn't happen with the Rebel Moon movies. Everything gets wrapped up in a way that more or less makes sense.

Still, I think this is an easy thing to do when the entire plot of the movie is Seven Samurai in space. That's a pretty durable plot that can be done in most genres and still work. So while for the most part I did enjoy these movies, I'm not exactly gonna run off and become a Snyder cultist because of it.

For the most part, what Rebel Moon does well, it does very well. It looks very pretty, the special effects are good, the action sequences are good, and this is a setting with an interesting visual style.

The action sequences really are what this movie does best. I wouldn't say they're original because "set traps to defend the poorly armed village against the coming invaders" is a pretty well mapped out style of action sequence, but it does do that very well. The defense of the village is basically the entire second half of this movie, and it manages to do that while keeping the tensions high and the fighting interesting.

I know these movies do get a fair bit of flack, and I think some of it is deserved, but this aspect actually is impressive. There's a lot of movies where the final battle is mostly just there and it gets a bit dull after a while. This is especially the case nowadays when people aren't as impressed by heavy usage of CGI as they were twenty or thirty years ago, so it's not like a lazy filmmaker can just sit back and rely on CGI explosions everywhere the same way Michael Bay would.

The example of this that I'd give is Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Seven Rings. The final battle has a similar set up: the bad guys are attacking a village, the good guys are defending it, and the main protagonist has run off to have their face off with the main village. The difference is that the battle over the village in Shang-Chi clearly hadn't been thought out beyond the fact that it needed to be there to give the supporting cast something to do, so it was mostly just shots of a busy-looking battle with no discernible major strategy or tactics being employed by either side.

That isn't really what happened with Rebel Moon Part Two. Both sides of the final battle had their goals, their strategies, and their tactics. So while it would have been easy enough for this to just be a mess of CGI, it ended up working well.

I think also, having a movie like this where the visual style is a mix of retro-futurism and cyberpunk is pretty cool. It's a compelling visual style. It would have been very easy to just go with some generic dystopian look and fall back on, "Well, at least it's not another Marvel movie." Instead, the visual style allows for some real wonder, which is an important thing for a sci-fi movie to have.

All of that being said, my actual issue with this movie is twofold. One, I don't think it really needed to be in two parts. I think it would have been fine to edit out some parts of this and have Rebel Moon just be a three or three and a half hour movie.

My issue with the two-part movie is that I really wish this trend would stay dead. It's the kind of trend that made sense at a particular point in time with a particular style of film. That point in time was the late '00s to the early '10s, and that style of movie was YA book adaptations. It's a trend that should have died down completely as younger Millennials graduated high school. It doesn't need the resurgence it's been getting in the last few years.

Plus, it's not like Rebel Moon had a particularly complicated plot. Nobody's going to get lost and wonder what the overarching story of these movies is going to be. I get wanting this to be a fairly long movie because that's how the source material was and the action scenes in these movies were generally pretty good, but I would have preferred to just have the long movie.

The second part of my issue is that I don't think these movies have really done anything thematically interesting with the format. This is a waste of the format because there is a lot of room to be adding some stuff thematically to it. I think it also just needed to do it if it's going to have any diehard defenders for longer than a year or two.

Let me give you an example of what I'm thinking of. Avatar--as in the James Cameron movies, not the cartoon that people on this site are so fond of--gets a similar criticism. Usually detractors of the Avatar movies will take the line that they're just Dances With Wolves or Pocahontas in a science fiction setting.

There is some merit to that criticism, but Avatar is also doing some interesting things thematically as well. Along with the criticism of colonialism and genocide of native peoples, which it shares with these earlier movies, there's also a criticism of corporate greed and environmental destruction. Humanity's interest in Pandora isn't a matter of setting up a colony there; they could dump a colony basically anywhere with a breathable atmosphere in that setting. It's a matter of getting unobtanium, which limits the places they can go a great deal.

Now of course, you can debate back and forth whether or not the Avatar movies do a good job of leveling that criticism. I take the position that while they aren't exactly philosophically sophisticated movies, they generally do a good job in that regard.

That isn't really the case with the Rebel Moon movies. There isn't a whole lot here that you can make a similar thematic defense of. Yes, it does have themes of self-organised people fighting off a major empire, but plenty of science fiction movies do that and do it better.

Plus, a lot of the thematic weight of this movie gets bogged down in its sequel hook. The reasons why the King wanted the Princess dead aren't fleshed out in these movies; only that it happened. That leaves room for the reason to be either she wanted to abolish the monarchy and democratise the empire, or that she wanted to usurp him and be the one on top.

Obviously the intended takeaway is the former, but that's just the implication. The next movie could still do a fake out where it's revealed she really is a would-be usurper but with surprisingly good PR for a monarchist.

So what we're left with is a pretty straightforward genre swap of Seven Samurai that has some very bare bones thematic development, but is mostly just the plot. That's fine and I like it for what it is, but I don't know if there's really enough there for it to be the new sci-fi megafranchise that Snyder and Netflix apparently want this to be.

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2023

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

I watched Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny (2023)

Thank you James Mangold for doing what Steven Spielberg failed to do.

Indiana Jones finds himself chasing down the other half of an artifact created by Archimedes, believed to be able to time travel.

I'm a huge Indiana Jones fan since childhood. I'm also one of those annoying fans who will take any opportunity to talk about the sacrilege that was Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. So, rather than do the typical type of review I do, I'm going to basically just list what I don't like about this film and what I do like about it. But overall, I stand firmly in the camp that this 5th entry into the series is a solid film that does the series and character justice.

WHAT I DON'T LIKE:

First off it's a little too long. While I never found myself bored, at 2 and a half hours it could have lost maybe 15 minutes. But that's it. There wasn't much to cut, but a few things could have been tightened up.

Second, I'll always feel slightly uncomfortable with CGI in Indiana Jones movies, but that is just a very nerdy old-person reaction. Some of it just looks extra fakey. Plus, there are reasons I love the CGI as well, which I'll get to later.

Those are my biggest problems with the film. That's it. I know, you'd expect there to be a lot more, but no.

WHAT I LIKED:

First, James Mangold as a director knew exactly how to make an Indiana Jones movie. Certain aspects of the direction and editing, hit the right beats, tone and overall structure. This was, without a doubt, an Indiana Jones movie from top to bottom.

Second, The cast and characters were fantastic. From the old cast members to the new additions the whole thing works in a way that KOTCS couldn't pull off. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Milkkelsen are perfectly placed to hold up the story and are welcome additions.

Third, the story is fantastically told. The whole Dial Of Destiny thing is a fine artifact to chase, but more so the overall story and relationships work really well. Indy dealing with turmoil and family trauma is touched upon without interfering with the adventure or the action. It's all very organic. Also, the use of CGI and de-aging to help tell a decades long story really makes for a fully rounded adventure, which deals with an aging character. Sure the De-aging works better in certain shots than others, but to get a classic Indiana Jones opening with a young Harrison Ford fighting Nazis is more than worth a few rubbery moments.

Throughout, the film is action packed and paced beautifully.

Finally, let's talk about the elephant in the room. Can an action/adventure movie work with an 80 year old man as the hero? Overall, yes it can. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character does come in to do some heavy lifting action, but she never takes over for Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones. He's running, jumping, driving, fighting, and using his head to solve the case, and it's believable and fun to watch him go. The adventure never slows down and therefore neither does Indy.

For a movie that I was so ready to dislike, I was more than pleasantly surprised to find a movie I'd be happy to own next to the original trilogy. I'll probably watch it again soon, just to treat my inner child who has been so beaten down by disappointment.

(And as an added bonus, the way they deal with KOTCS's Mutt character gives him both dignity and pleases the fans like me who hated him so very very much. Hard to do, but they pulled it off.)

[nahaspicks]

Jack the giant killer budget

Oxford Guide to British and American Culture English vocabulary Jack the Giant Killer is also sprinkled with homages to other fantasy films such as Pendragons transformation into a winged dragon which references the climax of Walt Disneys Sleeping Beauty (1959), the one-armed torch holders mounted on Pendragons walls are a direct nod to Jean Cocteaus Beauty and the Beast (1946), and the solarized demons. JACK THE GIANT KILLER - ➡ Jack and the Beanstalk.Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English JACK THE GIANT-KILLER - Jack and the Bean ‧ stalk /ˌdʒæk ənd ðə ˈbiːnstɔːk/ BrE AmE ( also ˌJack the ˈGiant-ˌkiller ) a ↑ ….More meanings of this word and English-Russian, Russian-English translations for the word «JACK THE GIANT-KILLER» in dictionaries. Linguistic-cultural dictionary Great Britain.Jack the Giant Slayeris predicted to get a DVD and Blu-ray release in July 2013. Were you one of the people who saw Jack the Giant Slayer in theaters last month? Did it deserve better numbers than it got? Share your thoughts in the comments. The film has received middling-to-good reviews, with Screen Rant's Ben Kendrick describing it as " surprisingly entertaining," and the majority of our poll voters rating it between 4 and 5 stars. Jack the Giant Killer has been touted as 'an adult look at the Jack and the Beanstalk legend' about a princess being kidnapped and how that threatens a long-standing peace between men and giants. It's worth noting, however, that critic and audience responses were somewhat more positive than the box office intake. If the estimated numbers hold, Jack the Giant Slayer's overall losses will fall somewhere between those for 2012 disasters Battleship and John Carter, making it an early contender for 2013's "Flop of the Year" award. The film's plot was conflated from different sources, with the magic beans and beanstalk derived from the classic fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk", and the title and royal love interest (Eleanor Tomlinson) drawn from the Arthurian folk tales of "Jack the Giant Killer." It featured Nicholas Hoult in the lead role and was produced and directed by Bryan Singer, who will hopefully make a recovery with next year's release of X-Men: Days of Future Past. This will leave Legendary Pictures (who financed half of the film's total budget) with losses of between $125 and $140 million, and Warner Bros. Despite a worldwide marketing budget of over $100 million, on top of the production budget of $200 million, Yahoo reports that the film has so far only earned only around $157 million since its March 1st release date, with THR predicting that it will top out at just over $200 million. Legendary Pictures hasn't been so lucky with its big-budget, CGI-heavy fantasy adventure Jack the Giant Slayer. Personally, I blame Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which was one of the few fairy tale success stories at the box office, earning a worldwide gross of over $1 billion. This weekend’s dismal performance of Bryan Singer’s much-anticipated Jack the Giant Slayer may have seemed familiar to those who recall the sad fate of Disney’s John Carter almost exactly a. It is a mockbuster of Jack the Giant Slayer. A modern take of the fairy tales Jack the Giant Killer and Jack and the Beanstalk, the film stars Ben Cross and Jane March. Jack the Giant Killer is a 2013 American fantasy film produced by The Asylum and directed by Mark Atkins. For whatever reason, live-action reinventions of classic fairy tales are incredibly in vogue right now. For the big budget film from the same year, see Jack the Giant Slayer. Next year we can expect to see Maleficent, a live-action origin story for Disney's Sleeping Beauty villain, and Guillermo Del Toro is planning another Beauty and the Beast adaptation with Emma Watson as the heroine. The fairy tale trend is not over yet, though. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and Snow White and the Huntsman both did well enough overseas to compensate for their lukewarm domestic gross, and it was more or less the same deal for Snow White and the Huntsman's rival, Mirror Mirror. "Beauty and the Beast in high school" romance flick Beastly was almost universally scorned by critics, though it managed to earn a modest profit off its relatively low production budget. Legendary Pictures hasnt been so lucky with its big-budget, CGI-heavy fantasy adventure Jack the Giant Slayer. It seems that Hollywood just can't get enough of reinventing fairy tales, though the audience and box office response to them has been mixed at best.

[nightswithkookmin]

VMIN'S ETERNAL FRIENDS

I love how everyone is busy praising Jimin or fighting over whom to credit because Marvel put Friends as OST in Eternals but here I am busy trying to find the ratings for the show and how it's been performing to see if they are trying to use Jimin and BTS for clout

It's coming out in November????

Chilee I thought they were on to two seasons already! Turns out it's a two hour plus film? And BTS? Way to generate buzz and guarantee higher viewership on release date.

They better must have paid my man some hefty sum for this cos they sure aren't doing us no favors😭

A 200 million dollar budget? Ayayaya they have to pull another black panther level success else that would be the biggest flop in Marvel history since the Hulk.

They are pulling out the Big names for this promo and now BTS is on the list... mmmkay.

Also I love how the director of the film has several awards and Academy awards to her name but they aren't pushing her name that much to sell this project because they are afraid the movie will ne banned in China😊

Love how someone slipped me the "don't worry about China and their crackdown on KPOP they aren't really targeting the boys" but Marvel out here being sexist towards this female director because they fear China will ban the movie😌

As far as the source material goes I hear it's graded C-level in terms of popularity. Nnnkay.

Personally, I love Marvel and Thanos and Angelina Jolie- is there a black famous actress in there I missed?

Not gonna lie, the only thing that's exciting me right now about this film is Jimin's Friends, Lizzo and the fact this was directed by the same woman who directed Nomadland.

I saw the trailer for Nomadland and I've been trying to ditch my family ever since to live an ad hoc life with no shoes on- as long as the IRS can't find me.

It's giving me very much a generic fantasy tv series than film and for some reason I expect complex characters with heavy plot more so than the fantasy magical aspect of it- their costumes and CGI isn't giving me much hope. That alien spacecraft looks like something I'd find in my parent's junkyard.

May be throw some wandavision in there as a token. But really I ship myself with the scarlet witch. Vision can fuxk himself.

Yummy

I feel it's a bit different from the Marvel cinematic universe I'm used to and have come to love and expect from Marvel.

Also is that Bucky and the guy from Doctor strange on the poster???

I'm not as invested in this universe but I know Thanos was an eternal and so I'm excited to watch him in diapers trying to Arvada kedabra his nanny.

Already it doesn't look like a film I'd go to watch twice and I'm a sucker for fantasy Marvel movies 😫

They look too vanilla 80's heroes in those plain ass costumes and the setting is too familiar I feel I'll see them walk by house anytime soon. They look like Superman's family come to earth on tortilla chips.

They better give me a villain who's gay and badass and Angie better be a villian too cos there's no coming back from Maleficent

Ok where's my gf I need to Marvin Gaye it up in here right now👅

I don't care what anyone says but Michael Jordan's character in Black Panther is bisexual and I won't hear nothing else.

I like Guardians of the Galaxy because they funny. Dr strange is smart. Iron man is both smart and funny. I don't know bout captain America but I like Chris Evans so... meh.

Also Nebula is a lesbian and I call dips😊

Did I cosplay as her that one time? You bet your sweet behind I did.

Fingers crossed.

If this turns out to be as great as their other projects whew that's a lot of people who are gonna hear Friends😭😭😭😭

I love Marvel for this and also if they can cast Jungkook as spiderman sometime- just putting it out there into the universe.

Again congratulations to Jimin and V and BTS for this. A lot of artists blew up after they got exposure such as these.

BTS KEEP GOING HIGHER AND HIGHER

WE LOVE TO SEE IT.

The power this man has!

Please listen to his iconic bridge in Disease and hug yourself for this gift of life because you exist at the right time.

Love,

GOLDY

[onlydylanobrien]

Dylan O'Brien - NME Magazine Interview

Dylan O’Brien: “I was in this transitional phase – close to a quarter-life crisis”

From YA heartthrob to legitimate leading man – how the 'Maze Runner' star hit his stride after a whirlwind decade

Definitely!” hoots Dylan O’Brien when NME asks if he still has to audition. “I’m not Tom fucking Hanks, bro.” He’s clearly amused by our question, but forgive us for thinking the 29-year-old actor gets cast on reputation alone. A decade into his career, and he’s making an impressive transition from teen TV star and YA franchise hero to charismatic leading man.

New York-born O’Brien cut his teeth on MTV’s hit Teen Wolf series, before landing the lead in the Maze Runner film trilogy based on James Dashner’s hugely popular novels. Leading a band of bright young things that included ex-Skins tearaway Kaya Scodelario, Game Of Thrones’ Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Will Poulter, he honed his craft while racking up nearly a billion dollars at the box office. “My career is a constant acting class,” says O’Brien. “To be able to do the Maze Runner movies simultaneously with Teen Wolf was amazing in terms of getting in reps and working my [acting] muscle.”

Now for the sometimes tricky bit. Many actors struggle with the post-breakout period, but O’Brien is making it look easy so far. This year’s Netflix hit Love and Monsters proved he can carry an old-school family adventure, and new film Flashback (out next week) reveals an appetite for weirder, more cerebral work. He stars as Fred Fitzell, a young man reluctant to buckle down to life as a nine-to-fiver with a boring corporate job and a long-term girlfriend (Mindhunter‘s Hannah Gross). When he runs into a freaky-looking acquaintance from his teenage years, Fred becomes obsessed with finding an old high-school friend he used to drop a mind-bending experimental drug called Mercury with. It’s difficult to say any more without entering spoiler territory, but Flashback is a wild ride underpinned by the idea that we can exist in several realities at once. Even if you follow every plot twist, you might not fully understand the end. “Oh, it’s definitely a headfuck,” O’Brien agrees. “There’s not totally an answer to figure out. There’s a lot of different things that people can take from it.”

Speaking over Zoom from his LA home, O’Brien is bright, thoughtful and really good fun to talk to, especially when he relaxes into the interview, but he clearly knows where his line between public and private lies. When he first read the Flashback script, written by the film’s director Christopher MacBride, his “mind was blown” by just how much he related to Fred. “I felt like I was in this transitional phase of my life that was, you know, sort of close to a quarter-life crisis type thing,” he says. “For whatever reason, it was like me and this script were meant to be. I remember reading it and thinking: ‘I am this guy right now.'”

“There were a lot of things in my personal life that were neglected for a while”

When we ask why O’Brien felt as though he had reached a “transitional phase”, he gives an answer that’s vague but not exactly evasive. For understandable reasons, he doesn’t mention the incredibly traumatic motorcycle accident he sustained while shooting the final Maze Runner film in March 2016. O’Brien suffered severe trauma to the brain and said in 2017 that he underwent extensive facial reconstructive surgery after the accident “broke most of the right side of my face”. Tellingly, he’s never really revealed what happened on set or how it affected him.

Today, O’Brien dances around the details of the accident and other issues he was dealing with at the time, but doesn’t shy away from discussing his inner conflict. “You know, it was a lot of personal things combined with at-a-point-in-my-career things,” he says after a brief pause. He says he’d have been going through some of this stuff anyway, simply because of his age, but it sounds as though success intensified it all. “It was like this whole fucking storm of shit,” he continues. “I was simultaneously so fulfilled and happy about these, like, otherworldly and surreal things that I had experienced in terms of where my career had brought me. I had all this confidence and fulfilment and beautiful people [in my life] – such amazing things to experience at a young age. But at the same time, there were a lot of things in my personal life that were unchecked and sort of neglected for a while.”

O’Brien says that in time, he realised he had to “stop for a second” and “re-explore how I wanted my life to look going forward”. In fairness, you can see why he needed a breather: his career took off while he was still a teenager. After his family moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles County when he was 12, O’Brien contemplated a career as a sports broadcaster – his Twitter bio still bills him as a “no longer suffering Mets fan” – then began posting YouTube videos as moviekidd826. A funny, slickly edited skit titled ‘How to Prepare for the SAT in 45 seconds’, shared when he was just 17, shows he was a born performer and storyteller. YouTube success led to him getting a manager, but his breakthrough role in Teen Wolf still came out of the blue. At the time, he was treading water at a local community college and taking auditions on the side.

Still, he has since taken a rather fatalistic view of this career-making moment. “It’s totally weird because, when I think about it now, I don’t see how it could have happened any other way. I can’t picture myself doing anything else now,” he told Collider in 2011. “It was really sudden and a little random, and not provoked by anything. It was just out of nowhere. It wasn’t my intentional doing.” Today, O’Brien summarises his skyscraper career trajectory succinctly. “I guess I just graduated high school and started acting,” he says. “And then I felt like I was just flying by the seat of my pants and never got a chance to stop.” Thankfully, straight-out-the-blocks Hollywood success hasn’t taken away his sense of perspective. When I say how easy social media makes it to compare yourself unfavourably to others, O’Brien jumps in: “Yeah, that’s very true. I was watching the Billie Eilish doc the other day, and I was like, I’ve done nothing. I’m not an artist at all!”

“No one thought ‘Love and Monsters’ was going to be good!”

O’Brien is also self-deprecating when he talks about being cast in Flashback, suggesting it happened because he had such an intense connection with Fred. “I was honestly like, ‘Who is watching me right now?’ That is the best way I can describe how I was feeling when I came across this script,” he says. “Chris [MacBride, director] and I had this conversation that went so well in terms of [my] understanding this script that I think he’d sent around a lot and [that] very commonly wasn’t understood. I think Chris has even said that the night before shooting, he suddenly had this thought, like, ‘Wait, do I even think he’s a good actor?'”

Though O’Brien has firmly ring-fenced elements of his private life, he’s actually pretty frank about his acting vehicles. He readily admits he was expecting a snobbish response to Love and Monsters, a CGI-heavy hybrid of post-apocalyptic action and romcom that dropped on Netflix in April and topped the streamer’s daily most-watched list. “It means so much that Love and Monsters has gotten the response that it’s gotten,” O’Brien says. “No one thought this movie was going to be good.” His blunt honesty makes me laugh out loud. “No one did though!” he says in response. “And so, fuck that. You know, most of the people who say something to me about the movie, they’re like: ‘I watched Love and Monsters, and it was… good?’ And honestly, that just cracks me up.” For obvious reasons, we hastily decide not to share our response to the film – namely, that it was a whole lot better than expected.

In Love and Monsters, O’Brien plays Joel, a survivor of a so-called “monsterpocalypse” that has bumped humans to the bottom of the food chain. Though he’s known in his colony as a bit of a coward, Joel sets off on a treacherous 80-mile journey to find his high school sweetheart Aimee (Iron Fist‘s Jessica Henwick), which means evading the hungry clutches of various supersize grizzlies including a giant monster-frog hiding in a suburban pond. It’s a simple but pretty out-there premise that wouldn’t work if O’Brien’s performance was even slightly condescending. Instead, his unselfconscious sincerity really sells a film that has as much in common with the family-oriented Robin Williams movie Night at the Museum as darker fare like The Walking Dead.

His obvious affection for the project really comes across during our interview today. “When I read the script, I just thought it was so sweet and funny and smart and unique, but at the same time reminiscent of all these movies that don’t really get made any more,” he says. That’s a fair point: Love and Monsters is neither a fail-safe superhero movie nor a slice of classy Oscar bait. “And when they were talking about how to market this movie, it was so funny hearing all these conversations like, ‘How do we actually get people to watch it?'” he adds. “But that’s a big part of the reason I wanted to do this movie: because it felt like something I missed seeing.”

“I’m lucky to be surrounded by people who want to make something out of love”

So in a way, Love and Monsters was a risk for an actor seeking to establish himself outside of a bankable movie franchise and a hit TV show. O’Brien has only made four films since his final Maze Runner outing in 2018, and insists he hasn’t been tactical with his choices. “I don’t have anyone saying, ‘We need to get you in an Oscar vehicle’, or any of that kind of shit,” he says. “I’m really lucky to be surrounded by people who think like me: that you should do what you’re drawn to, and make something out of love.”

He’s recently finished shooting a mysterious crime thriller called The Outfit in London with Mark Rylance. Directed and co-written by Graham Moore, who won an Oscar for his screenplay to Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, O’Brien calls it “quite possibly one of the most special pieces of writing I’ve ever experienced”. He first read the script on a plane and says he “actually stood up and clapped” when he got to the end. Considering O’Brien probably wasn’t flying Ryanair, this reaction presumably attracted a few baffled glances.

Anyway, it must be pretty intimidating walking onto set with Rylance, a multi-award-winning actor revered by his peers – Al Pacino once said he “speaks Shakespeare as if it was written for him the night before” – but it sounds as though O’Brien took it all in stride. He says he’s confident in his abilities, but admits to having a slight wobble whenever he begins a new project. “I’m always sort of re-questioning everything – like, ‘Can I even act?'” he says. “But I think there’s something very natural about that. I think even Rylance could relate to that feeling. Acting is like starting a new year at school every single time.”

At this point in his career, O’Brien has made peace with the fact that some people will have preconceptions about him based on what he’s known for: Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. “People will put you in a box no matter what,” he says. “There was definitely a time when that would get to me, especially when it felt like somebody had a perspective on me that in my soul, I just felt wasn’t accurate.” Still, there’s no doubt he wants to show us what’s really in his soul with more films like Flashback. “If anything,” he adds bullishly, “it just makes me think: ‘Right, I’m really gonna show them now’.”

‘Flashback’ is out on digital platforms from June 4

[discotreque]

LwD 2.05: An Embarrassment of Dooplers

So I was a little nervous about this one! I hadn’t heard any spoiler-spoilers, but screeners have been out for weeks now, and I’d heard a bunch of individual, vague, non-spoilery hints about (1) big character moments, on the scale of a mid-season finale even though the show’s not taking a mid-season break; and (2) an ending that would make me cry.

I guess I imagined something relatively serious and dramatic, like “No Small Parts”? This show makes me cackle with laughter and giggle with nerdy glee and “d’awww!” at heartwarming friendships every week, but it’s only ever made me cry once—and then I was impressed that they were going to get there from the wacky hijinks we saw in the brief teaser.

The lack of a cold open made me apprehensive too—in my experience, that’s typically a sign that there’s so much plot in the rest of the episode that they need that extra scene—but after ~21.5 minutes of aforementioned hijinks, I was having so much fun that I’d completely forgotten about the alleged tear-jerker at the end…

…and they were not the tears I was expecting.

I didn’t think I’d be smiling and crying!!!! That was wholesome as SHIT!!!!!

I almost can’t believe they earned that—but they totally did.

After a Mariner–Tendi episode and a Boimler–Rutherford episode, we’re back to the “usual” Season 1 pairings… except the relationships between these characters have changed since Season 1. Mariner still feels thwacked in the abandonment issues by Boimler bailing for the Titan, and Rutherford’s having a tiny little existential crisis about losing an entire year of his life.

Both of which are extremely understandable and very heavy situations—and both of those situations get resolved because everyone in them is vulnerable with each other and honest about their feelings—AND that honesty and vulnerability brings both pairs of friends closer together. Are you kidding me?? I would watch SEVENTY seasons of that shit. Put it in my veins.

Onto the notes:

So basically Dooplers are Tribbles, but for cringe comedy instead of slapstick? Ohhhhh boy.

Look at Ransom the diplomat, tossing his own fork on the floor! I like that he’s actually a pretty competent Starfleet officer, despite also being a completely ridiculous person.

Wait a second, is that—OH HOLY SHIT, THE DOOPLERS ARE VOICED BY RICHARD KIND.

It makes sense that B. Boimler would find William annoying—who likes seeing their own flaws reflected back at them? And who could be a better reflection of one’s flaws than one’s literal duplicate?—but most interesting to me is that it implies on some level, Bradward knows the stick up his butt is a flaw. (Does William?)

Why does the Cerritos model have working phasers?!?!

I’m loving hot pink as the currently en-vogue colour for “dangerous sci-fi energy” in animation (cf. almost every previous episode of this show; Into the Spider-Verse; other stuff I can’t remember right now). As a former child of the 80’s, I’m living for it… but as a former teenager of the 90’s, I can’t help but wonder if it’s going to age as poorly as the harsh neon green of The Matrix, every Borg appearance on Voyager, and like 80% of the websites I made in high school…

SKANTS! SKANTS! SKANTS!

That fake-out joke with the fly-by over the Cerritos model was in the season trailer weeks ago, and I was so enthralled by that handsome lady that the sticker coming into frame still got me good 😂😂😂

BECKY Mariner????? omg yes

Some top-quality Boimler screams in this one. Poor Jack Quaid must drink gallons of throat-coat tea when he records.

One of the great things about Star Trek to me is that you never know what you’re going to get from any random episode. A murder mystery? A road trip? A spooky thriller? A cheesy romance? Broad comedy? Body horror? Didactic political screeds shrouded in tissue-thin science-fiction metaphors? Brain and brain, what is brain??? And after this many years of watching, you’d think I’d be hard to surprise. But if I ever told you I thought I’d see a Blues Brothers–style car chase through a frickin’ shopping mall on an episode of Star Trek, I would have been straight-up lying to you. I loved it, it worked for me, my jaw was on the floor and I was clapping with joy—but I’m definitely comfortable calling this one “unexpected.”

It’s CAPTAIN SHELBY!!! And an ancient babydyke crush rose from the depths of my childhood subconscious… (Also I think her Number One is based on the original makeup—eventually deemed too complicated—for Saru? Now that’s a deep cut.)

In 20th-century Trek, you almost never got to see what was going on inside a starship from the outside. Even after they switched from physical models (where it was next to impossible on a single episode’s budget) to CGI (which was still in its infancy, still not exactly cheap, and still broadcast in SD anyway), it was a rare thrill to see any meaningful interior details in an exterior shot. Disco’s modern VFX have given us some tasty, tasty treats in that department, but nothing quite as sublime as all the pink Doopler light glittering through the Cerritos’s windows.

Mariner says she’ll take her contact Malvus down with her, and threatens that they’ll end up “in the same cell.” Malvus is a Mizarian, a species introduced in TNG’s “Allegiance,” in which Captain Picard is held in a mysterious prison with one. I think I see what you did there, McMahan?

Bartender… so hot… lesbian circuits… overloading…

The Tendi and Rutherford C-story was, well, a C-story within a 22-minute episode, so there wasn’t much to it, but the one scene that mattered actually mattered a lot. I’m ambivalent on whether they should end up romantically involved—I’d prefer they don’t, but they’ll be one of the cutest couples in Trek history if they do—and as long as they keep that pure, sweet friendship between them at the heart of whatever else happens, I’m on board.

Carol Freeman was already one of my favourite captains before this season, and she’s been steadily moving up the list. The quiet throughline about her ambition to be on a better ship has been fascinating so far, and it’s starting to actually make me feel a little conflicted: I’m of course rooting for Captain Freeman to recognize her worth, make Starfleet recognize her worth, and become the ass-kicking captain of a hero ship that she’s clearly ready to be—but that almost surely means she’d be kicking ass off-screen, because LwD isn’t about those kind of adventures, and I’d be devastated not to have Dawnn Lewis on the show every week. So I’m kind of on the edge of my seat about this one!

I had so many favourite jokes this week I put them in a separate list:

“Even the replicated water on the Titan tasted better” is a low-key brilliant dunk on people who can’t shut the fuck up about the cooler places they used to live.

“Ooooh, they have a Quark’s now! That used to just be an empty lot where teens would make mistakes!” ← That’s literally me every time I go back to where I grew up. I felt so Seen™ I almost hid under a blanket.

“I would never go down the stairs!” (evil grin) (goes up the stairs)

The “well, shit” expressions from Mariner and Boimler as their crashed car sank right into the water… which started to bubble innocuously… and then the bottles of Data bubble-bath popped up, paying off a joke I thought had already been paid off—that was the one that woke up my poor cat this week. Just exquisite timing.

“YOUR PAGH IS WEAK, AND IT DISGUSTS ME!” “I don’t even know what that is, but I don’t like your tone!”

“Okona’s in there? He’s not even Starfleet! This is outrageous!” made me shout “NO!” at the screen like I was scolding my cat for scratching furniture. (She did not wake up that time.)

Best background joke: the neon sign at the dive bar advertising FREE SHOTS & BEERS. (Get it? Because they’re on a Federation starbase? Where nobody uses money?)

And of course Quark merchandised DS9.

This wasn’t just a standout episode of Lower Decks, this was a brilliant episode of Star Trek, period. The Dooplers, though extremely silly, are nevertheless also a clever sci-fi metaphor for real and relatable personal/interpersonal issues, and an effective plot catalyst for meaningful character growth from all four of our ensigns and the captain.

The jokes were hilarious, the action was kinetic, the A-, B-, and C-plots linked up thematically, the visuals were consistently and thoroughly gorgeous, the character beats—between Mariner and Boimler, Tendi and Rutherford, Mariner and Capt. Freeman—were all genuine, heartfelt and wholesome, and the references to other Trek canon were both deep and deeply affectionate.

Only 15 episodes in, and this series knows exactly what it is, exactly what it wants to do, and knows that it can knock our socks off doing it. Mike McMahan has said in recent interviews that the back half of S2 (and the apparently almost-fully-written S3) is a straight line uphill in quality from here—which surprised me at first, because McMahan seems like a pretty chill dude who doesn’t normally brag about his own work like that.

But then the Prophets sent me a vision of my space dad Ben Sisko, who reminded me of the words of 1930’s baseball player Dizzy Dean:

“If you can do it, it ain’t bragging.”

[Thanks to cygnus-x1.net for the screenshots this week—I was too lazy to do my own.]

[teshadraws]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Seekers of Soul

[Chapter 1] (32 Pages)

<< First | < Previous | Next >

A lost soul wakes up in a very strange world. Maybe she’d be a bit less terrified if the giant orange lizard she’s trapped with would stop insulting her.

-

It’s warm, sunlight harsh against her closed eyes. She tucks her head away from the glare, only half-conscious under a heavy haze of sleep.

“—ou wake up already?”

Is someone talking to her? A hand shakes her, and she bats it away with a whine. Her alarm hasn’t gone off yet, so she should still have time to sleep. 

The voice speaks again, sharp with annoyance. “Look, I need to make sure you aren’t dying or something. It’s protocol.”

Dying? She lifts her head with a squint, and the question on her tongue vanishes like morning mist. Standing above her is...a lizard. A big orange lizard—no, a huge orange lizard, standing on two legs and glaring down at her. It’s as big as her! She blinks, hard, trying to decide if she’s dreaming. She has to be dreaming.

The lizard rolls its eyes, grumbling, “Finally.”

She jumps, suddenly wide awake. She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen the lizard form the word with his own mouth, but he talked. It sounds like a he, at least, voice young and raspy but a bit masculine—

“So you’re okay?” The lizard asks, looking as if he’d really rather be anywhere else. “I don’t want Maggie tearing me a new one for leaving you here if you’re hurt.”

She stares in response, gaze moving from the lizard’s blue eyes to his orange skin and cream belly. He has a bright red bandana around his neck, and a worn satchel slung over his shoulder. Something about him seems too alive, like what she’s seeing could never be accomplished by puppets or CGI. Maybe it’s the faint scent of smoke wafting off him.

“If you don’t answer I’m gonna assume you’re fine and go. I have a job to do,” the lizard says.

He keeps speaking, but his voice fades into the background as she focuses on the other sensations she can feel, and why exactly they feel so real. This is a dream. Why can she feel her heart pounding against her ribs, the heat on her shoulders, a slight breeze against her face? Her eyes dart around, somehow expecting her bedroom, but no, this is a lush, grassy field, with patches of wildflowers and a ceiling of deep blue sky and walls of green forest. She can smell the nature around her, sharper than usual. Why is she...outside? Where is she?

She moves to sit up, but looks down in confusion when her legs feel...wrong. Clunky. And those—those are not her legs. Those legs are glossy black with fur, all backwards knees with paws like a dog’s. She’s a person, she is 100% a regular human being, so how..? She reaches out to touch them, dumbstruck, and instead a blue hand—paw?—responds, flinching back with surprise. What happened to her?

She tries to reign in her panic, but blood is roaring in her ears as her throat tightens. She’s just dreaming, right? But she doesn’t lucid dream, and how could she know how it feels to have dull claws at her fingertips? Or be wondering about this in the first place? If this was a dream, wouldn’t she just go along with it like every other weird thing that happens in dreams?

But she has to be asleep. Numb with shock, she looks at the soft pads on her inner hands. She’s a human, she knows she is, she has no idea where she is or what she is now but this isn’t her! Hot tears spring into her eyes and blur her vision.

“All right, fine. Maybe Maggie can get you to talk,” The lizard grumbles, reaching out a hand to grab her arm.

The panic boils over.

“No!” She shrieks, shoving him away and scrambling to her feet. Too close, he’s too close and she doesn’t know who he is or what he is or what she is so she—she needs to get away. Maybe if she does she’ll wake up.

She runs.

“Hey!” The lizard yells after her, and now he does sound angry, oh no oh no—

She trips over her feet (paws?) and stumbles. The rush of fear tells her to go go go so she kicks off again and bolts for the forest, crashing through brush and ferns and blindly dodging around tree trunks, hopping roots and rocks with ease.

The lizard shouts something from behind her, but even if she’s stumbling, unused to these legs, they’re long and strong enough for her to stay ahead of him. She gasps and pants and focuses on running, on doing something she can control as she weaves through the forest until her lungs burn.

The lizard yells something again, and she risks glancing behind her. Her heart jumps as she sees a flash of orange. Even on his much shorter legs, he’s racing after her with a fierce expression.

“Stop!” He gasps, sounding out of breath. “Dungeon! There’s a dungeon!”

Dungeon? What is that even supposed to mean?! She looks ahead but sees nothing but forest. Fear spikes even sharper in her gut. The lizard yells again, and suddenly he sounds much closer, more panicked. Then a heavy weight is slamming into her, and the two of them go rolling across the forest floor.

When they stop, the lizard pins her down, lips pulled back into a snarl to show sharp teeth. “Stop running! By Entei’s fire, what’s wrong with you?”

It’s too much, the fear choking her lungs and the anger being thrown at her, and the sob sitting in her chest finally rips free.

The lizard pulls back. “Are you crying?! I was trying to—ugh!”

The lizard shuffles off of her, and she curls in on herself. She tries to sniff back her tears, and looks up. The lizard is quiet, looking around the forest with a frown. Then his face pales, hunched shoulders falling.

“We passed the boundary,” he breathes. Then he turns on her. “Why didn’t you stop?! You ran us right into a mystery dungeon, you idiot!”

She flinches away from his anger. “I-I’m sorry!”

“She speaks! Wonderful. Wish you would’ve done that five minutes ago.” The lizard huffs, and for a moment she thinks she sees smoke (steam?) wisp from his mouth. She sniffs and wipes away more tears so she can see clearly.

Of course, that’s when she sees his tail is on fire.

“Your tail!” She yelps, slapping her hands over her mouth and looking around frantically for some water.

“What about my tail?”

She blinks, terror fading under her confusion. She looks back to his tail, where a small flame burns at the tip. Then she looks at his face. He seems annoyed, but not in pain.

“It’s on fire?” She offers.

He rolls his eyes. “You act like you’ve never seen a fire type before.”

Fire type? She sniffs, hesitantly shaking her head.

He stops. Then gives her a suspicious look. “Where are you from?”

She swallows, looking around the forest. It almost seems...narrower than before. Like the trees and plants have closed in on them or something. She must be imagining it.

“I-I think I’m lost?” She says, finally getting her crying under control. “I’m a human, so I don’t know why I look like this o-or where I am.”

“Human?” The lizard scoffs. “Yeah, sure. And I’m Moltres.”

“I am!” She protests, weakly. She manages to stand again on shaky legs, giving him a pleading look. “Really! I-I don’t know why I’m blue or have weird dog legs but I am human! I just thought I was dreaming all of this!”

The lizard snorts. “Well, you aren’t dreaming. We’re in a dungeon now thanks to you.”

“Dungeon?” She echoes, looking around at the forest.

He gives her another glare. “A mystery dungeon.” He must see the confusion on her face because his glare falters under a baffled look. “You really don’t know.”

She shakes her head. He seems like he still doesn’t believe her, but a distant cry of something birdlike makes him glance nervously into the undergrowth.

“All you need to know is that we’re stuck in this place until we make it to the exit, so we need to find it fast and get out.”

“E-Exit? But it’s a forest. Don’t we just need to retrace our steps?”

“Look around. The dungeon warps the environment, so even if we went back the way we came the terrain would be totally different.”

She blinks, looking again at their surroundings. She hadn’t been imagining the trees and undergrowth closing in on them. The trunks and plants have changed to form a wall-like barrier boxing them into something vaguely like a hallway. It’s still open, though, with leaf-dappled blue sky above them, and she can kind of see beyond the undergrowth, further into the forest. She steps closer to the “wall” and jumps back with a squeak when the undergrowth moves, twisting and interlocking into something more solid.

“You can’t break through the walls,” the lizard says, watching her. “The only way out is to find the exit.”

“O-Okay,” she whispers, stepping closer to the lizard. He may be sharp and aggressive and alien, but he’s all she knows in this place. “So how do we do that?”

“We have to find the stairs,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “C’mon, we need to keep moving.”

“We’re looking for s-stairs? Like steps?”

The lizard grunts an affirmative noise.

She swallows back more questions despite her nerves and follows him forward. Okay. This isn’t so bad, right? Sure, she’s in some strange world with talking lizards (who are on fire), and she’s...also a weird animal now, she guesses? A dog? But the forest is soothing and even if he clearly doesn’t like her, the lizard at least knows what’s going on and isn’t leaving her behind. Her heart slows a bit at the thought that at least she isn’t totally alone.

The undergrowth rustles ahead of them, and the lizard stops. She tries to peek around him.

“Is it someone else?” She asks, quietly. “Are they lost too?”

“Shut up,” the lizard hisses. They stay still and silent until the rustling moves away. Then he sends her another glare. “Probably a feral.”

Well, that’s not a calming term. “Feral?”

The lizard groans and pushes his palms into his eyes, muttering something under his breath. Then, he takes a visible inhale before turning to her. “Ferals are Pokémon who get caught up in mystery dungeons and become mindlessly aggressive. If we run into them, we’ll have to fight.”

“F-Fight?!” She yelps, distantly registering the strange sensation of ears pressing against her skull. “I don’t fight people!”

“Well you’re the one who got us stuck in a mystery dungeon so you’re gonna have to!” He snaps back. “We’ll avoid the ferals when we can, but if we get attacked you won’t have much of a choice.”

“I don’t know how to,” she whimpers, tucking her hands close to her chest. “I-I don’t think I’ve ever gotten in a fight in my life.”

Has she? She can’t remember right now for some reason. But she does know she’s not the fighting type—the thought of it makes her physically cringe.

“All Pokémon know how to fight,” the lizard protests.

She opens her mouth to argue, then closes it again, her curiosity winning out. “Pokémon?”

The lizard’s mouth closes with a click. “Pokémon,” he says, slowly, like he’s explaining a very simple concept to a child. He sweeps a clawed hand between the two of them. “What we are?”

Oh! Like instead of saying he’s an animal, he calls himself a...Pokémon? And she’s one too? All right, that...kind of makes sense. They have different names for things then.

“Okay,” she says. “S-So we’re both Pokémon?”

“I’m a charmander,” he adds, still staring at her like he’s trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with her.

“Charmander,” she murmurs, looking again at his orange skin and long, lizard-like body. So that must be like his...species? “You do kind of look like a salamander.”

“No idea what that is,” he huffs, then turns to move down the hallway. “C’mon, we need to go or we’ll run into ferals for sure. If you’re going to be useless in a fight we should avoid them.”

She winces at that, but can’t really argue either. She doesn’t know anything about this place or what she is, and she definitely doesn’t want to fight. They walk quietly down the hall, the lizard—charmander?—peeking around the corner before they step down another hall. She looks around at the interwoven roots and plants and at the sun dappling the mossy ground, admiring the beauty of it all. It doesn’t seem so scary. It’s actually kind of peaceful, even if the moving plant life is unnerving. Maybe they won’t run into any ferals.

Of course, that’s exactly when they step into an open room where another animal—Pokémon—is rummaging through the moss. It’s a...bug? Short and compact, with a white body and an orange and yellow helmet-like head with little pincers. It’s bigger than any bug she’s seen, almost half her size, but it’s weirdly...cute?

“A grubbin,” The lizard mutters.

“It’s adorable,” she coos.

The bug turns to them with blank white eyes and chitters aggressively, before shooting some sort of weblike string at them. The lizard dodges, but she yelps and falls as it tangles around her arms and legs. Okay, less cute.

“W-What is this?!” She cries, pulling at the sticky string. It’s unusually strong and hard to break, like some kind of tape or plastic.

“String shot!” The lizard barks, running at the bug.

A flare of light distracts her from her struggling, and she’s stunned to look up and see the lizard spitting a small cloud of embers at the bug, like a dragon. She isn’t sure whether to be awed by the magical feat or concerned about the bug he’s burning to a crisp.

The bug squeaks and shuffles away from the flames, then braces itself and scoops its tiny legs into the dirt, flinging a clump of mud at the lizard and knocking him away with a hiss. It isn’t even muddy, the forest floor is dry and warm, so how did it do that? She hurries to free herself from the string, stumbling to her paws.

“Riolu, duck!”

Riolu? She glances up at the lizard’s shout, just in time for mud to slam into her face and send her sprawling again. The lizard growls something as she swipes at the mud, spitting it out of her mouth. Gross! That actually kind of hurt. As she shakes herself free, the lizard spins to slam his tail into the bug. The little creature tumbles away and falls still.

“Is it dead?” She gasps, suddenly feeling a lot less calm about being stuck with this fire lizard in the middle of some crazy magic dungeon.

“Of course not!” The lizard snaps. “It’s just knocked out.“

“Is that any better?!”

The lizard rolls his eyes. “Battling is normal. And if we lose, we might not make it out of here, so take your pick.”

She pads to his side to look at the bug herself. It’s a little charred, clearly unconscious, but it doesn’t look as bad as she expected it to after having fire breathed directly on it. Huh.

“Let’s keep moving,” the lizard says, a puff of smoke snaking between his teeth. He heads down another hallway, and she follows behind, trying to decide if she wants to ask the questions dancing on the tip of her tongue. He clearly doesn’t like her, but...he just breathed fire! How is she supposed to stay quiet about that?!

“S-So...you breathe fire.”

The lizard spares her an irritated glance. “And?”

“So magic is normal here?”

He snorts. “It’s not ‘magic.’ I’m a fire type. My body’s made for flames just like a water type’s would be made for water.”

She blinks, then looks down at her paws. So types are kind of like the magic system? “Do...I have a type?”

“Apparently it’s the type that won’t shut up,” he growls. She winces. After a beat, he adds, “You’re a fighting type, if I remember right.”

“Fighting type?” She echoes, unsure. “B-But...I don’t like fighting.”

The lizard groans, lashing his tail and making her hop a step back from the flame. “You don’t have to fight! Arceus. Pokémon fight for fun sometimes, but no one’s going to force you unless it’s your job as a Seeker or something. Fighting type just means your moves will have like. Fighting energy to them. So they’ll be strong against normal types and stuff.”

She stays silent, biting back a hundred more questions. Fighting energy? ‘Moves?’ Seekers? Why couldn’t she have gotten stuck with someone more friendly? She’s dying over here!

The two of them turn another corner, stopping when they emerge into another small room. A set of ivy-covered stone stairs sit in the middle of the room, going up a few steps before stopping at nothing in mid-air.

“Are those the stairs?” She asks.

“No, it’s some other set of stairs in the middle of the woods,” the lizard says.

She tries not to feel hurt by his tone, instead stepping closer to peer at them. “When you said stairs I was expecting them to go, uh. Down, I guess. Or at least to lead to something?”

The lizard ignores her, stepping onto the first stair and then pausing to wait for her. Seeing her surprise, he rolls his eyes. “If we don’t go together we might get separated. You wanna fight your own way out of here?”

She squeaks and shakes her head, hurrying to follow him up. When they reach the top step, the world seems to tilt and blur for the briefest moment. Vertigo makes her dizzy, and her stomach flips with nausea and—

Oh. They’re standing back on solid forest floor, her stumbling and trying to regain her balance. She grabs the lizard’s arm to steady herself, and he’s quick to shake her off.

“Aren’t riolu supposed to be tough?” He sneers.

When she doesn’t think she’s going to throw up, she squints up at him. “Riolu?”

He stares back at her with a look that implies she is perhaps the stupidest person he’s ever had the pleasure of meeting. “You. You’re a riolu.”

She blinks, then looks down again at her strange dog legs and blue arms with a mound of...bone? On them. There are still a few tiny bits of webbing stuck in her fur, and she takes a moment to try pulling them free. “Oh. So...like, my species is called a riolu? Like how you’re a...”

“Charmander.”

“Y-Yeah. That.”

He sighs, rubbing at his face. “I can’t tell if you’re really this stupid or if you’re just dedicated to not telling me the truth.”

“Why would I lie?” She asks, offended. “I don’t know anything about this place! I’m human!”

“Sure,” he grumbles. “Whatever. Let’s just get out of here already.“

The lizard sets off again, and she follows behind him, looking around. Their surroundings look incredibly similar, all dappled sunlight and lush foliage woven into strange hall-like structures.

“This looks exactly the same,” she mumbles.

“It’s how dungeons work,” the lizard says, distracted as he scans the halls. “The different floors usually look alike.”

She glances at him as he picks a direction to follow. “So do you go into a lot of these?”

The lizard snorts. “Nope. I’m not stupid enough to go charging into dungeons for fun. Maggie’s going to kill me for this little stunt.”

She blinks, torn between a couple different questions. He seems so confident and he knows a lot, which makes her wonder how he knows so much if he doesn’t come into dungeons often, but...

“Maggie?” She asks.

“I’m sure you’ll meet her when she chews me out,” he grumbles.

She swallows back her nerves about that. One thing at a time. “Is her species called a...Maggie?”

The lizard actually barks a short laugh. “Her name is Maggie. She’s a meganium.”

She isn’t sure whether to feel proud for making the grouchy lizard laugh or embarrassed about such a dumb question, so she ignores both impulses.

“W-Wait, so do you have a name?”

“Of course I have a name.”

She waits in silence as they walk, the only sound the rustling of the wind through the forest and distant animal-like sounds.

“Um. What is it?” She asks.

“What’s yours?” He asks back like a challenge.

She opens her mouth to answer, then stops in her tracks as her stomach falls to her toes.

What...what is her name?

She desperately tries to think, can feel the knowledge deep in her mind, but it’s like something is blocking her from reaching it. How can she not know her own name? She thinks harder, tries to remember her human life, but—

Nothing. It’s all locked away. She knows she used to be human, that this canine body is all wrong even if she can’t quite picture her own face. She knows that the plants nearby look an awful lot like ferns and that the sky is just as blue as she’s used to it being. But when she tries to think of who she is, her name, where she came from, who she might have left behind...

It’s all gone.

“Hey!”

She snaps out of her thoughts, surprised to find herself kneeling on the ground, the lizard nothing more than an orange blur through her tears. She’s crying again, harder, a painful ache like homesickness, like heartache, tearing at her chest and choking her throat.

“Why’re you crying?!” The lizard asks. It sounds like he’s trying to be angry but instead only sounds panicked. “Stop crying!”

“I d-don’t know my own name!” She gasps. “Why don’t I remember my name?! I don’t remember anything!”

“Uh.” The lizard leans away from her, sounding uncomfortable.

She cries harder, curling into herself. It’s hitting her all over again that she’s not dreaming, that this seems awfully real and she doesn’t know how she got here or who she is. What is she supposed to do? How can she get home? She doesn’t even have her own body!

She doesn’t know how long she cries, but by the time she feels her tears slowing, her nose is snotty and stuffed up, her head pounding with the beginning of a headache. She lifts her head, wiping at her eyes. She’s surprised to see the lizard still sitting nearby, looking out into the halls. He didn’t leave her?

He glances at her, expression unreadable. “You done?”

“Yeah,” she rasps, sniffing. “S-Sorry.”

“C’mon then,” he says, getting to his feet. She stumbles to her own feet to follow him as he heads down a hall, still wiping at her eyes.

After a few moments of silence, he says, “Until you give me a name, I’m calling you Riolu.”

She tilts her head at his back. But isn’t her species a riolu? That seems...strange. Like calling a pet “Hamster” or “Dog.” But she supposes if they don’t have anything else to call her it makes sense.

“Should I call you, uh...Charmander, then?”

“Tobias.”

She blinks. “Tobias?”

“No one else calls me Charmander, so you might as well follow their lead,” he grumbles almost too low to hear. Tobias it is. And for now at least, she’s Riolu. She wishes she could remember her actual name.

The two of them find the set of stairs in the next room, and take them up to the next floor. Riolu fights off another wave of nausea and is careful not to grab onto Tobias again.

She glances around at the forest scenery. “How many uh. How many sets of stairs will we have to find to get out?”

“Depends how many floors there are,” Tobias answers. “Hopefully—“

He cuts himself off as they step into another room and find two more feral Pokémon. Riolu steps closer to Tobias as the short acorn-like creature and the purple rat turn to glare at them with blank white eyes.

“Great,” Tobias growls. He shrugs off the satchel looped around his shoulder and shoves it into her chest. “If you aren’t gonna fight, then hold this.”

She takes it, watching with wide eyes as the rat darts forward with a hiss, aiming to bite Tobias’s arm. The lizard snarls in turn and tackles it, the two of them rolling across the ground.

Riolu‘s starting to suspect Tobias has some anger issues to work out.

The little acorn creature turns to Riolu, and she stiffens with a squeak, holding the bag up in front of her like a shield.

“P-Please don’t hurt me!”

The acorn launches itself at her in response, and she dives out of the way, trying not to crush the satchel under her. When she looks behind her, the acorn is already moving to attack again. She stumbles to her feet and runs away from it, a glance over her shoulder telling her that the creature is following on its stubby little feet. How is it moving so fast without legs?!

“Tobias!” She wails, running a lap around the room as the acorn chases her. “What do I do?!”

“Kinda busy!” The lizard snarls, still wrestling with the vicious purple rat. Panicked, Riolu looks around for help. She doesn’t want to leave the room and risk losing Tobias or getting lost, but all that’s around her are the strange walls of roots and vines and—

Oh. Duh.

Riolu slips the satchel over her head and launches herself up at the wall, scrabbling to get a foothold on the shifting branches and plants as they interweave tighter to keep her from escaping. After a moment she manages to hook her dull claws between some branches, panting hard. She glances down. The acorn is hopping up and down trying to reach her.

“Boy am I glad you don’t have arms,” she huffs, risking a smile. She squeaks and almost loses her grip as a sudden cloud of embers consumes the little acorn and leaves it a dazed, crispy heap on the ground.

Tobias huffs a cloud of smoke as he pads closer, nudging the acorn with a foot to make sure it’s out cold.

“I-Is it okay?” Riolu asks.

Tobias rolls his eyes, looking up at her with an unimpressed expression. “They’ll be fine. Thanks for the help, by the way.”

“I don’t wanna fight anyone,” Riolu protests, feebly. She yelps as her foothold slips and she falls hard onto the mossy ground.

Tobias snorts. “Good, ‘cause I bet you suck at it. Give me my bag.”

Riolu wrinkles her nose at his comment but hands it over, and only then does she notice the blood running down his arm from a gash at his shoulder.

“You’re hurt!” She gasps.

Tobias huffs and digs through the satchel with his good arm. “And you’re observant.” He pull out a round, bright blue fruit. It’s not anything Riolu recognizes, but Tobias stuffs it in his mouth to chew it up, shivering when he swallows.

He turns his head to eye his arm, and Riolu watches in awe as the gash seems to stitch itself up in real-time, stopping the bleeding and scabbing over. The small scrapes littering the lizard’s skin seem to vanish too.

“What was that?!” She asks, fighting back the urge to reach out and touch the injury, just to make sure she’s not seeing things.

“Oran berry,” Tobias says, scooping his bag back onto his shoulder and moving towards the nearest hallway. “C’mon.”

“Did it...heal you? That quickly?”

“‘S kind of the point.”

“That’s amazing,” Riolu breathes. “That’s definitely some kind of magic.”

“It’s not ‘magic,’” Tobias growls, shooting her an annoyed glare. “Now shut up so I can listen. We need to find the stairs, and the more ferals we can avoid the better since you won’t fight.”

Riolu swallows back her wave of questions and nods, looking around nervously at the dungeon walls. After being in a battle herself, she’s not in any hurry to start another one. Luckily, between her silence and Tobias’ caution, the two of them avoid the nearby ferals and make it to the next set of stairs without any issue. This time, when they reach the top of the steps and teleport, it’s clear that something’s different, though Riolu can’t pin down exactly what.

“We’re out,” Tobias sighs, slumping with relief.

Riolu blinks, looking around herself. It takes a moment to be sure, but yes, the forest around them is normal again, no more strange dungeon walls. Instead, she can actually see into the forest beyond the ferns and foliage in front of her, and the ground is more uneven and somehow more natural underfoot.

“S-So where do we go now?” Riolu asks, nervous. Tobias won’t ditch her just because they’re out of the dungeon, right?  She still has no idea where she is or what to do next.

“We find Maggie before she loses her petals,” he grumbles.

That’s when Riolu hears a distant voice shouting. It’s feminine, and after she turns her head and strains her ears, she thinks she can make out Tobias’ name.

“I...I think I hear her? Maybe?”

Tobias gives her a skeptical look, but his eyes follow her gaze before he moves to march deeper into the forest. Riolu hurries after him, and within minutes it’s clear that she was right. A woman is calling for Tobias, sounding worried.

“Tobias? Tobias!”

Riolu stops as they arrive at the edge of a clearing—maybe the same one she woke up in, even. There’s a lime green dinosaur standing in the middle of the field, with bright pink petals wreathing her neck like a mane. The creature is tall, noticeably much taller than her or Tobias even from a distance, with a long, slender neck. A large satchel, clearly made to rest on either side of her broad back, is stuffed to bursting with plants.

“Maggie’s a dinosaur,” Riolu says, shocked enough that her tone loops back around to flat. “Of course she’s a dinosaur.”

“She’s a meganium,” Tobias corrects. He huffs out a breath and moves forward with his hands cupped around his mouth. “‘M right here, Maggie!”

Maggie whips around, and even from a distance Riolu can see the dinosaur’s pinched expression smooth out to aching relief. She bustles towards them, and Tobias moves to meet her in the middle while Riolu stays behind at the treeline. As Maggie gets closer, Riolu can see the creature is oddly beautiful, with large, honey-warm eyes and the slightest of wrinkles lining her face.

“Are you all right?” Maggie asks immediately, voice almost motherly as she cranes her neck down to get a good look at Tobias. To Riolu’s surprise, a pair of vines slip out from under the dinosaur’s flower to better tilt Tobias’ head and lift his arms for inspection.

“I’m fine!” Tobias says, pulling away from her. He sounds embarrassed.

Maggie matches his fiery tone, leaning back to give him a gentle bop to the head with her vine. “Good! Don’t scare me like that. I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

“Because the forest is suddenly so dangerous.”

“No, but it’s unlike you to wander off like that and not answer me.” Maggie sighs. “I was afraid something had happened.”

“Well this idiot got us dragged into a dungeon if that counts,” Tobias growls, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

Maggie looks alarmed all over again, eyes making a quick sweep over Tobias, but then they follow his movement to where Riolu is hidden in the shade.

“Oh,” Maggie says, voice soft. She takes a tentative step forward. “Hello there, dear. Are you all right?”

Riolu should probably be more wary of this stranger who could crush her with a single step, but something about that warm concern being pointed at her makes her eyes water. Riolu swallows hard and steps forward. “U-Um. Yeah. Sorry, it was my fault we got stuck in the um. Dungeon.”

Maggie’s gaze flits over her too, and then she gives her a warm, comforting smile. “Well, it looks like no harm was done. I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before.”

Riolu laughs, nervously. “Uh, no, I-I’m not from...around here.”

“Fen needs to check her for a head injury,” Tobias scoffs. “She keeps saying she used to be human.”

“I am!” Riolu argues, stung by his disbelief. “Or I w-was, at least.”

Maggie stares at Riolu with wide eyes, something about her expression looking almost stricken. Before Riolu can panic about it, the dinosaur quickly blinks it away. “You’re...a human?”

Riolu nods, desperately hoping Maggie will believe her. “I know I don’t look like it now, but I am! I don’t know how I got here or where here even is but...”

The meganium’s face softens. “Do you remember your name?”

Riolu swallows back another wave of sorrow at the loss of memory sitting like an open wound in her mind. She shakes her head, blinking hard. “N-No. Tobias said I’m a riolu? So...”

“Wait. Maggie, you aren’t saying you believe her?” Tobias interrupts, clearly incredulous.

“I certainly am,” Maggie scolds. “Do you have a reason not to?”

Tobias throws up his arms. “Aside from the fact that I have a working brain?!”

Maggie sighs. “Tobias, we’ll discuss this later. Right now all that matters is that we make sure she’s all right.”

Tobias huffs out a wisp of smoke before stalking a few feet away and pointedly plopping himself down with his back turned. It would be funny if Riolu wasn’t such a mess.

Maggie gives Riolu an apologetic look. “Don’t worry about him. He takes a while to warm up to you.”

“I’m still here, y’know!”

Maggie ignores the comment. “Did he explain anything to you about this world?”

Riolu blinks up at the dinosaur. “U-Um. A little? He said you guys are...Po...Poke...”

“Pokémon.”

“Yeah.” Riolu gives her a grateful smile. “And that there are dungeons and...types?”

Maggie laughs softly. “Don’t worry about getting it all figured out right away. You’ll catch on quickly enough. I’m guessing you don’t have anywhere to go, if you’re from the human world?”

Riolu slumps, looking down at her feet. Her paws? “No.”

“In that case, how about returning to the guild with Tobias and I?”

Riolu’s head snaps up. “What?”

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to,” Maggie says. “But I’d at least like for you to get a health check-up and eat some food. We have a place for you to rest for the night, and resources about the Pokémon world as well, if you’re interested.”

Riolu tears up again. “That would be great. Thank you.”

Maggie smiles, warm and open. “Of course, dear.” She turns to call to Tobias. “You coming too, stormcloud?”

Tobias pushes off the ground and walks by without looking at either of them, arms crossed and grumbling all the way. Riolu shoots Maggie a nervous look, but the dinosaur just looks fond of the prickly behavior.

“Come along then,” Maggie says, moving to follow Tobias into the forest. Riolu hurries after them, keeping close to Maggie.

As they enter the trees, Riolu takes a moment to once again look around, calmed by the tall trunks and endless maze of foliage painted with dappled sunlight. She isn’t sure, but she thinks some of the plants look...familiar? Like maybe they‘re the same, or at least similar, to what she’s used to. Everything feels a bit...tall, though. Like Riolu is smaller than she’s used to being in her own skin. It’s strange.

Even more than that are the sounds and smells. Once again familiar—the rustling of leaves and distant birdsong, the smell of fresh air and nature—but everything feels a bit...sharper. More distinct, and almost a little overwhelming. She felt ears on her head earlier, and she has dog legs, so she guesses she’s basically in a dog body? Maybe that means she has a better sense of smell and hearing too. That’s pretty cool, at least. Like a superpower!

“You aren’t the first human to pop up in the Haven, you know,” Maggie says eventually. Riolu jumps at the sudden sound.

“R-Really?”

“Mhm.” Maggie’s gaze lifts up to the trees, a sad smile gracing her face. “I was quite close with one, actually.”

Tobias looks sharply over his shoulder, brow furrowed. Riolu blinks, excitement and hope curling like a tiny flame in her chest. “Was? Did they get back to the human world?”

Maggie’s expression drops. “No...unfortunately not.” She turns her head to give Riolu a soothing smile. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way!”

“Haven’t ‘humans’ been showing up for decades now?” Tobias growls, turning forwards again. “You’d think if there was a way back they would have found it by now.”

Riolu’s heart drops. Decades?!

Maggie frowns. “Well…yes, but with more and more humans showing up, surely together they’ll find a solution sooner or later.” Maggie ruffles her petals and gives Riolu a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry, dear. One thing at a time! Humans like you are certainly a rarity, but not unheard of. You aren’t alone.”

Riolu tries to smile back instead of breaking down crying. She doesn’t even know how to feel. She’s relieved, of course, that there are others like her, that this isn’t the first time this has happened to someone. And that she ran into someone as kind as Maggie. But she also can’t get rid of the blooming fear at the thought that she could be stuck here for years until someone figures out how to get back to the human world. She doesn’t remember her life as a human, but there’s an ache building in her chest when she thinks of it, a longing for something or someone she doesn’t remember but already knows she misses.

She needs to get back home.

“Sure, you aren’t alone,” Tobias mutters, breaking Riolu out of her thoughts. “But no one likes the humans.”

“Tobias!” Maggie snaps. “Even if you haven’t met a human before, you know that isn’t true. Most of them have settled here just fine.”

“Yeah, but no one trusts them anymore, either,” Tobias says, turning to give Riolu a cold look. “Not since everything really started falling apart.”

Riolu’s shock elevates into real fear when Maggie doesn’t immediately respond, looking conflicted. The dinosaur sighs, a vine slipping out from her petals to touch lightly at Riolu’s back. It feels almost protective.

“Unfortunately,” she says, “He...does have a point. I suppose it’s only right that I warn you now. There have been some...unfortunate things happening in our world over the last few decades. And some have theorized that the increase in humans could be the cause.” 

Riolu swallows, wide-eyed. Maggie‘s vine moves up to settle over Riolu’s shoulders.

“Fortunately, most of us at the Haven have enough sense to realize how ridiculous that is,” Maggie soothes. “You shouldn’t have any issues around here, but you should be aware, especially if you end up traveling away from this area.”

Riolu forces herself to nod and breathe, beating her panic back with the mental equivalent of a baseball bat.

Maggie squeezes her shoulders with the vine. “Of course, we will help you any way we can, even if no one is entirely sure of how this transformation happens to humans, or why. But until you decide what to do next, the guild should be a safe place for you to stay.” 

Riolu blinks back tears and tries to collect herself. She can sort through her emotions and thoughts later. For now, she should learn everything she can about this world, and about what she has become.  “S-So we’re going to this...guild?“

“Ooh, careful Maggie, she’s a sharp one!”

Maggie sighs. “Tobias, be nice.”

Tobias barks a laugh. “When am I ever nice?”

Maggie’s vine leaves Riolu’s shoulder to pull Tobias back against her leg. The dinosaur cranes her neck down so she can nuzzle him. “You’re sweeter than you let on.”

Tobias yells, embarrassed, trying to push her away as his cheeks flush red. Riolu can’t help smiling. It feels good to smile. When Tobias frees himself and stomps forward again, Maggie and Riolu follow.

“To answer your question,” Maggie says, “The Lexym Guild is where Tobias and I live and work. Considering it’s housed in a tree many stories high it’s usually easy to spot. When the leaves are less full, you can see it in the forest from miles around. It’s a wonderful place. Busy, but the Pokémon are lovely.”

“‘Lovely’ my tail,” Tobias grumbles.

“On a wider scale,” Maggie goes on, ignoring Tobias, “The forest we’re in is called Bethoc’s Haven, named after the same eldegoss who founded our branch of the guild. The territory spans half of the forestland on this edge of the continent, with the Lexym Guild at its heart.”

Riolu nods, confused but trying to look like she understands. Bethoc the…eldegoss? A Pokemon, she guesses. She wonders what kind of creature that is and if she’ll see one herself. 

“Many of the Pokémon at the guild are types acclimated to the forest environment,” Maggie continues. “Grass types like myself, as well as bug types. But thanks to the Seekers division, we have quite a variety of other types wandering around as well! No other riolu, unfortunately. Having an aura expert around would be ideal for you.”

Riolu peers up at Maggie’s face. “Aura?”

“Aura is a kind of...energy. With a little practice, your species can harness it to do amazing things. I remember it being rather important for young riolu to learn to control their own aura.”

Riolu looks down at her hands again, hardly able to believe that she could use a power like that. “What does aura do?”

Maggie hums and looks up into the trees. “You know, that I’m not sure of. I know it’s related to your emotions, and that it can be used in battle. I think you’ll have to ask Alastair or Tawny about that down in the archives.”

Riolu perks up. Archives? “Like a library?”

Maggie must see the enthusiasm on her face, because she laughs. “Yes, exactly. We have quite the collection of texts at the guild. As long as August is all right with us housing you then you can peruse them all you like.”

“Like August would turn anyone away,” Tobias says. Riolu can’t decide whether the lizard is saying it as a positive thing or not.

Maggie smiles, looking down at Riolu with a twinkle in her eye. “August seems scary at first, but he has a soft heart. He’s the guild’s leader, so you’ll meet him today.”

Riolu nods, nervously twisting her fingers together as Maggie and Tobias guide her deeper into the woods. They don’t seem to be following any path that the riolu can see, but they lead her confidently, weaving through tree trunks and thickets of plants with ease.

“Almost there, dear,” Maggie says eventually.

Riolu blinks, looking around for...something. Maggie said the guild was housed in a tree, but is it literally just a tree, or will there be like...structures built onto it? Like a treehouse? So far they—Pokemon—seem as intelligent as humans, but she doesn’t want to assume anything either.

It’s not much longer before their group stops by a tree, its roots twisted and arched above the dirt and creating a small space underneath. Is this…the guild? It doesn’t look like there’s anything here. Just a hollow and some dirt.

“Guild members Magnolia the meganium and Tobias the charmander returning,” Maggie announces.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, the ground under the roots bulges, and the top of a flat, hippo-like head emerges from the crumbling dirt as if it were as thin as water. Riolu can’t help stepping back behind Maggie’s leg, wide-eyed. It’s huge! And hippos are really dangerous, right?

The creature blinks red eyes at the group, then lifts its head further and smiles with blocky teeth. “Maggie! How was the haul today?”

Riolu is surprised to hear the voice is deep but friendly.

“Hello, Abana. We found plenty of the herbs we were running low on! And we brought back a little something extra.” Maggie shifts her leg to reveal Riolu, still cowering.

Abana’s nostrils flare with interest. “Oh! And who’s this little thing?”

“A human,” Tobias says, in a mocking tone. Riolu winces. She isn’t surprised by now that he doesn’t believe her, but still. Ouch.

Abana’s tiny ears perk up. “Oh? Well that’ll be sure to shake up the guild. Come on in, scrap, I won’t bite.”

Riolu swallows, unconvinced, but Tobias moves first. He slips under the roots and steps up onto the hippo’s gray head. Maggie ducks and follows him in, crouching to the side of Abana and urging Riolu forward with an encouraging smile. Riolu hesitantly steps after them, joining Tobias on top of Abana’s wide head. She feels rude literally stepping on someone, but if that’s what she’s supposed to do…

“All set up there?”

“Looks like it,” Maggie says.

“Then down we go!” Abana crows.

Before Riolu can ask exactly what is about to happen, they drop into the earth. She screams at the top of her lungs, squeezing her eyes shut and scrambling to cling to the first solid warmth she can find. The sound of earth rushing up around them is deafening, and Riolu gets the distinct feeling that her stomach is flipping like she’s on a rollercoaster.

This is how she dies, on the back of a magic hippo.

But then they’re slowing and coming to a stop, and Tobias’ voice is sharp in her ear.

“Get off!”

Riolu peeks her eyes open, and all she can see is orange. She leans back, and realizes that the warmth she’d ducked into was Tobias’ shoulder.  “O-Oh! Sorry!” 

He gives her a cross look and turns away.

Wait. Riolu realizes she can see. Underground. She turns to look around, marveling at their new location. “Oh...wow.”

They’re in some sort of underground tunnel, ceiling of earth closing up from where they must have come barreling down. Roots and traces of leaves are everywhere, intertwined within the rocky walls, and patches of surprisingly lush grass dot the ground. Most impressive of all are the light sources—bright blue-green cuts of crystal, some as small as coins and some as large as her. They’re everywhere, jutting up out of the ground and imbedded in the walls, glowing bright and beautiful. Even the leaves look luminescent, like some kind of fantasy movie!

“Is this the guild?” Riolu asks, turning to see Maggie finishing up a quiet conversation with Abana. The hippo nods to Maggie and winks at Riolu before digging into the wall as easily as if it were melted butter. The rocky wall closes up behind her, surprisingly stable.

Maggie walks over, no longer having to duck in the spacious tunnel. “In a way. The guild is one central area, mostly within the trunk of the Lexym Tree, but there are many entrances to reach it. Quite a few are tunnels like this, branching out under the forest.”

This is just a tunnel into the guild? Riolu knows that Maggie mentioned how huge the guild is, how it can be easily spotted from miles and miles away even amidst the other trees of the forest, but it’s still hard to imagine.

“This is amazing,” Riolu whispers, feeling like she should be quiet in such a magical space.

Maggie smiles. “It is, isn’t it? Sometimes we forget, with how used to it we are.”

“You know what really sounds magical?” Tobias grunts. “Food.”

“Agreed,” Maggie laughs. “We’d better get moving then, so we don’t miss out!” She turns and heads down the tunnel, Tobias following. Riolu hurries to catch up, feeling her curiosity begin to override her unease.

Well...while she’s here, she may as well try to enjoy it, right?

[kuh-boose]

Out of curiosity, if the murderbot diaries were to get a TV show what would you expect from it? Like, animated? Real with cgi?

Personally I think the biggest challenge would be figuring out a way to have multiple 'inputs' on screen without it being too confusing. Especially because those multiple inputs would make it rewatchable so you could watch for details, and make it clear that secunit is doing shit normal people cant keep up with. SO much of the murderbot diaries are what's going on in it's head and it having like a minimum of five things happening at once all the time, and that's hard to translate over to film. I think some heavy narration/internal dialouge would be in order. And if they went with actors I think they'd have to be selective of who they pick to be secunit. They'd have to be big/tall, comfortable with prosthetics and hair changes, good at subtle acting, and presumably fairly androgynous. Side note, I kind of wish that, with having Threes pov and Mensahs pov that we had a better idea of what exactly secunit looks like. I'm sure it's something that Wells is kind of purposefully leaving out either to emphasize the unimportantance of its appearance or to let the reader self project some. But I wanna know what the murder child looks like, ya know?

Also! If there's ever an adaptation they had damn well better stick to what character description we have, especially in the case of personality, but also in appearance. Wells is vague enough that there is no excuse for them to not meet already established character descriptions.

[battlestar-royco]

okay entonces. i've watched it 3 or 4 times now, discussed with some old tgt friends, and let every detail soak in. the trailer shock has passed. i did not expect to get so emotional over this! i'm very much in the "soc is bardugo's best work" camp, but tgt does hold a special place in my heart. seeing scenes that have been in my head since high school visualized made such an impact on my friday morning. the fold! the keftas!! the skiffs! the carriage and the tent! the little palace!!! and the score made me feel things!!!! 😭😭

i'll hold off on cgi judgment until we actually get the show because usually trailer cgi is rough, but i was expecting alina's light powers to be a little warmer in color, like the sun. costume design, hair, makeup etc looks okay. a little bit too clean to feel realistic for a war camp but i can live with it. genya's wig was hideous though.

something that really took me out of the trailer, though, was how they tried to cut in crows shots to string along duology fans. it just came off a little disingenuous because literally everything else was trilogy stuff. it seemed like them saying "hey crows stans you're gonna get ur content too ;) but we're not gonna give you any context or anything other than a 2-second flash ;)." like. maybe they should've waited and dropped a crows teaser next week or smth? idk. i'm very content with the first season/trailer being trilogy-heavy because the books were alina's before the crows existed, but this particularly felt a little cheap. other than that, i'm pretty excited! nothing was exactly as i imagined, which is par for the course with adaptations, but it looks like it'll capture the spirit of the books so i really can't ask for more at this juncture.

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Watching Snyderverse Part 3 - Zack Snyder’s Justice League

After BvS, I was honestly not particularly looking forward to Justice League. For me, it was obvious that Snyder’s versions of these characters and his overall doom and gloom approach was not something I was particularly enjoying despite some promising elements in both MoS and BvS. Then we saw exactly how JL production went down. Despite the happy face they tried to paint, the fact that there was going to be a 2 hour mandate, the fact that Whedon basically reshot a bunch of Snyder’s film with the film being a mishmash of two directors who couldn’t be any more different in their sensibilities, and that that the actors, specifically Ben Affleck, looked like they couldn’t wait to be done with this movie and this role, made it obvious that the movie wasn’t going to turn out well. So my expectations were rock bottom for the theatrical cut. As it happens, that was a good thing. The theatrical cut of JL is a thoroughly unremarkable movie. I don’t abhor it but it is so obviously a patchwork job and a studio mandated film that there is no passion or vision in the movie at all. I mean, I didn’t like BvS much at all, but there was a vision there. Theatrical cut of JL seemed like a film that felt like WB just felt they had to put out there and then move on. And then years later, we get Zack Snyder’s full version of Justice League. I watched it in one sitting, which was maybe a mistake because it is heavy viewing for 4 hours. Without a doubt it is a better movie than the theatrical cut. Its a little tough to judge this film because this is no way a movie that would have been released theatrically. But its also impossible to judge on what it may have been if it was edited down to a 3 hour length. So best to just judge it on its own merits.

Firstly, the positives. This is definitely a more coherent and clear movie. The plot is not rushed and every sequence, be it a character moment or an action sequence, is fully realized without any weird edits. The film does have some more humor than the previous two Snyder films. Mainly courtesy of Ezra Miller and Jeremy Irons. And the humor is not awkward like in the theatrical cut. Ezra Miller in particular benefits from that because some of his cringey lines from the theatrical edition are cut. The special effects are largely impressive and definitely an improvement over the theatrical edition. On a character level, definitely Cyborg gets the most benefit out of all the characters. As we get a full and thorough backstory for him. We get insight into his relationship with both his parents. Steppenwolf also gets significantly more screen time and his motivations are definitely more clearly defined in the movie than in the theatrical. Miller and Momoa also get some more scenes to flesh out their individual characters. What does surprise me is that the film contains a lot of scenes which are essentially just alternate versions of scenes from the theatrical cut. The film isn’t radically different from the theatrical version, but the scenes included in this version feel a little more real. Like a scene with the entire League discussing Superman’s return in the theatrical cut made it obvious that the actors weren’t in the same room together, whereas the original scene in this movie has them clearly in the same physical space. The Superman scenes are also infinitely better without the CGI upper lip. Thankfully, Snyder doesn’t do what he did with the previous two movies and gives some breathing room between action sequences. Probably a bit too much time, but that’s better than no time at all. the tunnel action sequence and the climax set piece is definitely pretty cool. Flash actually having an active role in the climax was a big improvement. My favorite action sequence is still the Superman vs the League because it shows just how powerful Superman can be. Also, the color palette is a lot more consistent and better than the weird bright and red color palette that is used in the theatrical cut.

When it comes down to the performances from the cast, nobody really stands out. They are all fine, but unlike in BvS, where Affleck stood out. Everybody here is just motoring along. In the theatrical cut, Affleck looked completely checked out. I was hoping the original cut would beef up his performance. While it is slightly better, he’s still just a bit too restrained in the role and doesn’t leave the type of impression he left in BvS. Everyone is at their most dour self. Gal Gadot’s WW is more serious and therefore does not get to show her more radiant side in Patty Jenkins’ movies, Momoa is also similarly more dour and serious and not quite as fun as he was in Aquaman. Ray Fisher is decent but its a role that requires him to be very robotic for large chunks of the film. So its a little difficult to assess his performance. Cavill is in far too little of the movie to give much of a performance. He’s perfectly fine in the handful of scenes he has. Miller is probably the best of the lot, even though he’s still more Peter Parker than Barry Allen. Some of the supporting cast actually fare a little better. Irons is a delight whenever he’s on screen and Affleck is also at his best when they have scenes together. That dynamic works. Joe Morton is surprisingly affecting as Silas Stone, as is Billy Crudup in his brief scenes as Henry Allen. Its always nice to see more of Willem Dafoe, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, and JK Simmons. Simmons as Gordon was great casting and its a pity we won’t get to see more of him in that role. Amber Heard for some perplexing reason has a British accent in this film as Mera. Given Dafoe and Momoa both speak in their normal voices, that must have been a choice. It did feel a bit funny. Jared Leto and Jesse Eisenberg are back as Joker and Lex and neither of them particularly improve on their performances. I mean, they have a scene each so its no harm done, but the Joker scene particularly drags on for too long. Amy Adams has a small role and she does manage to make to get some emotion out of a handful of scenes.

The film has more than its fair share of issues. Firstly, it is just way, way too long. The pacing is glacially slow at times. And I mean that in the most literal manner. There is so much slow mo in this movie, its crazy. I swear, if you removed the slow motion, you might lose 20 minutes of the run time. Snyder is clearly in desperate need of an editor here. The film has the exact opposite problem of the theatrical cut. Whereas in the theatrical cut, it always felt that every scene was just edited a little too short, in this movie there are scenes that are going on for far too long. There are some very strange edits. Like an entire scene where women in the village are singing hyms when Arthur leaves and smelling his clothes. There is a meet cute between Iris and Barry which is completely unnecessary and is frankly slightly creepy where Barry is caressing her face while she is in the process of being thrown out of her car. Some music choices in these scenes are also a little bizarre. Everything involving the Martian Manhunter is not necessary. I mean, his involvement in a crucial Martha and Lois scene actually takes away from the emotion of that moment. And then he has a very tacked on final scene which is kind of awkward. The Knightmare scene also drags for a bit too long, especially given they are supposed to be in danger while being out in the open. We still have no more clarity as to why Bruce is having these visions. The slow pace does make things boring at times as well. While I am glad that Cyborg’s backstory gets beefed up, there is a bit too much of Cyborg being angry at his father. After a while, it gets monotonous. The film takes too long to get the team together and the first JL action sequence doesn’t happen until over 2 hours into the movie. The film should have spent a bit more time with the team interacting with one another. That’s what made the Avengers movies work and some of the best parts of this movie are also the team together. There are some Snyder tone deaf moments as per usual. While WW’s entry action sequence is very cool, I do find it funny that they have her comforting a girl and the girl wanting to be just like her after she basically obliterates the terrorist into dust. Given her abilities shown in that sequence, there is no reason she wouldn’t have been able to disable him. But instead she just obliterates him. Its all very Snyder. I do also have to wonder about that sequence. I still don’t get exactly how terrorists feel that blowing up a few city blocks will bring down the modern age. I thought this was a weird Whedon thing but it turns out to be a weird Snyder thing. Also, for all the hype about the black suit Superman, its really nothing more than an aesthetic choice for no rhyme or reason. I honestly prefer the Blue and Red if the black suit doesn’t have a point, like the restorative factor from the comics. Also, for all the blame people put on Whedon about the skimpy outfits on Amazons and the weird backside shots of WW, turns out they were all Snyder. There are a few select things that the Whedon cut did slightly better. For example, there is no real major debate or conflict within the team other than minor objections from Arthur over the implications of using the mother box to bring back Superman. Also, a sequence in the theatrical cut where Bruce admits that Clark was more human that he was, is a better version of a similar scene in this movie. Also, while not perfectly executed, the theatrical cut did acknowledge that Bruce was a human fighting amongst superpowered individuals. Also, most importantly, while Steppenwolf is an improvement over the theatrical cut, this is still a movie where the plot involves a villain trying to find three boxes. Steppenwolf is still pretty boring and the main story is not interesting at all. The Darkseid angle of this story is also overhyped since he’s barely in the film. 

In the end, it feels that there is a pretty decent 3 hour movie hidden in an ok but dragged out 4 hour film. I’m glad the Snyder fans got to see it. I have had my issues with Snyder’s vision. While I feel he has grand ambitions and a sense of scale and scope, he hasn’t really got the sense of story and script to really make it work to a degree where the audience at large would appreciate it. I have seen his old storyboards and read his recent interviews about what he was going to do. It sounds very grand and very cool, but with a big potential of being a gigantic mess. Who knows what will happen in the future but at least it right now seems that they are moving on from Snyder’s vision. For this film, I am right now landing at about a 6/10, which is the highest mark out of all the Snyder DC movies. I’ve only watched it once and watching it again is a big endeavor so I won’t do it anytime soon, but maybe revisiting it will make me either like it more or less.

[a-pirate-my-hearties]

Brotherhood of the Wolf (a review? Furious posting? Who knows? I know that film is 19 years old but anyway, #spoilers ahead). Buckle up for a long post!

Yesterday I watched “Brotherhood of the Wolf” for the first (and probably last) time. It definitely looked like my type of thing - period drama, XVIII century, horror elements, I knew some of the cast are good actors, so I decided to give it a try.

According to Wikipedia:

“Brotherhood of the Wolf (French: Le Pacte des loups) is a 2001 French period action horror film[3][4] directed by Christophe Gans, co-written by Gans and Stéphane Cabel, and starring Samuel Le Bihan, Mark Dacascos, Émilie Dequenne, Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. The story takes place in 18th-century France, where the Chevalier de Fronsac and Mani of the Iroquois tribe are sent to investigate the mysterious slaughter of hundreds by an unknown creature in the province of Gévaudan. The plot is loosely based on a real-life series of killings that took place in France in the 18th century and the famous legend of the beast of Gévaudan; parts of the film were shot at Château de Roquetaillade. The film has several extended swashbuckling fight scenes, with martial arts performances by the cast mixed in, making it unusual for a historical drama. The special effects for the creature are a combination of computer generated imagery, as well as puppetry and animatronics designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop.”

So while the martial arts (of which I’m a big fan, everyone who knows me well knows that) and animatronics seemed atypical for such a film, I decided to watch anyway. And it was good fun while it lasted (2 and a half hour is waaay too long, by the way, at least for my taste), but then I was finished, which left me sleep deprived (now I know it wasn’t that worth it), and so it begins.

There’s too much of everything stuffed into that film. Swashbuckling fight scenes, period drama, horror, Gothic themed scenes (and a lot of them, which made my little creepy heart happy), martial arts, Native American rituals and beliefs, an animatronic beast (??? I mean, at least they could have made it CGI, for crying out loud), a dangerous religious sect, and way too much unnecessary violence towards innocent wolves (I know they weren’t innocent in the eyes of those who killed them, but the film makers could at least decide not to show it explicitly). So much going.

And I’m fuming, because it could have been so easily a wonderful Gothic horror kind of film! With better writing and less fiddling about the plot it could have been something like “Jane Eyre” or "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", or “Crimson Peak”, but no. Nooo. They had to make it sell, hence a lot of special effects and unnecessary (in my eyes) fight scenes.

So what did we have that could have made “Brotherhood of the Wolf” a great, believable Gothic horror piece of cinema?

the protagonist (Grégoire de Fronsac) and his loyal, mysterious friend (Mani), that is much more interesting than the protagonist really (and is a Native American from the Iroquois tribe, who possesses magic powers? He’s got that powerful connection with nature and spirits. Idk how that’s supposed to fit into the Gothic, but eh, Mani was an awesome character and I’m not going to let him out of this)

the feisty heroine (Marianne de Morangias)

the disabled/disfigured antagonist with tragic past ( Jean-François de Morangias, THANK YOU VINCENT CASSEL)

the mysterious, badass courtesan (bowing down to Monica Belucci for this one)

the horror story AND the space for the horror that’s unravelling (the beast killing people in the province of Gévaudan, the province itself + the castle)

the (almost tragic) love story (de Fronsac + Marianne)

the duality of good and evil (kinda) in one character (Jean-François being all cute and easy on the eyes and more-less civil before he reveals his disfigurations to Marianne and oh boy. I’d love to say Jekyll&Hyde, but it wasn’t a thing until 1886, so let’s say a two-face kind of situation, because doppelgänger would be a stretch here.)

incest/incestous attraction -  (I know, it’s fucking horrible, but it was quite common in XIX century literature  - vide writings of François-René de Chateaubriand (for example René , 1805), and, unfortunately, in life, so you can look up Byron and his sister, and it was used in “Crimson Peak” as well

a lot of sexy banter and intellectual talk in general (one should never underestimate the tension it creates!)

Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls™ 

So yeah, this sums up more less what could have been...

Now what went wrong.

Grégoire de Fronsac is boring. Just plain boring, at least in my eyes. I appreciate that he went straight up berserk to avenge Mani though. That was Good Shit.

Marianne de Morangias. Feisty and stubborn, yes. Intelligent, without a doubt. Sensitive, still a bit naive and putting on a shield because she’s growing up in an unfavourable environment. But I have a feeling that she wasn’t exactly written well enough and she’s ends up being at least a bit of an annoying, privileged, poutty child. So there’s that, maybe I’m nitpicking.

Jean-François de Morangias. Simply a wasted character, because Vincent Cassel’s acting was GORGEOUS. He could have been a great antagonist/villain if given a chance, and it was ruined by too much protagonist, running around aimlessly, swashbuckling and kicking through the scenes. Him being the commander of the beast wasn’t explained well enough (because the beast had a commander). And they ended up giving Jean-François the weirdest weapon in the final fight with de Fronsac, which ruined his image entirely and just. Didn’t stick, just what the fuck was that? What the fuck was that nunchaku-sword made of bones????

That beast. It was just laughable. I’m sorry, I was sympathizing the fuck with it, it was a tortured animal put into heavy armour and trained to kill, but just. Wtf was that armour?? Who made that thing and decided it was good to put that into the film???

Too much martial arts, again. What was that for?

I feel like, besides Mani, most of the Native American/POC were depicted in a racist manner, like they weren’t even talking, just fighting, drinking, partying, not talking AT ALL most of the time but growling at each other or others, laughing like maniacs, acting agressive, like animals, even the sexual behaviours shown on the screen were vulgar. I don’t know if it was supposed to show POC through the lens of the white people of that time, but it was awful anyway.

Scenes pointlessly fading one into the other. Probably made to look artistic. Didn’t make sense most of the time.

The plot was full of holes. Just wear a bullet-proof vest next time.

If I can sum this up in any way... Watch it for the beautiful pictures, music, costumes, Vincent Cassel, Monica Bellucci and Mark Dacascos. And don’t  expect too much from the plot.

[spaceorphan18]

Marvel Movie Nights: Captain America The Winter Soldier

The problem with the good ones is that I don’t have a whole lot to say.  

Iron Man, Iron Man 3, and The Avengers are good superhero films.  Captain America The Winter Soldier is a good /film/.  I do remember watching it for the first time -- not really being a big fan of Cap, and catching up on the first two Cap films before Civil War -- and being kind of amazed at how much I really enjoyed this one.  

Kind of like how the first Cap film subverted the whole Superhero genre by being a WW2 film, this one does as well by being a political thriller. This film does tension really well, and is less about huge CGI messes, and more about people being caught up in a giant conspiracy that they need to outrun.  It’s fascinatingly fresh for a superhero concept.  And while Iron Man 3 definitely has some similarities in terms of stripping away the costume from the hero, this film feels like it comes together just a little bit more solidly.  

The other thing I mentioned to my brother while watching -- it’s able to be a good sequel to the first film, a good follow up in a post-Avengers’ world, lay foundation for future stories, while being a solid stand alone.  Iron Man 2 faltered a bit trying to focus on those things.  Avengers 2 is going to be a mess trying to balance all of it.  But Winter Soldier kind of layers everything in -- so if you’re a fan of these movies at this point, there’s something much juicier here than you might expect. 

So... things I really like about this film - 

The action sequences are full of tension and captivating.  The car chase scene with Nick Fury, the Elevator Scene both genuinely had me on the edge of my seat, and I have a better appreciation of good action films because of this film.  

The story is very grounded in character.  Something in general that Marvel does pretty well across the board, and I think doesn’t get enough credit for.  Cap’s arc is turned on its head from the first film, but done in a great and realistic way. 

I love Cap paired with Black Widow here.  I love that it’s definitely not romantic.  I love that that there’s humor to it.  I love that they end up becoming unlikely friends -- and that their differences play against each other in different ways.  

People complain about MCU’s villains -- but I think Robert Redford does a great job of being a normal guy kind of villain, which is kind of a refreshing change of pace when it’s compared to all the arch-villains of a lot of earlier films. 

The Winter Soldier is genuinely a scary entity when coming in fresh. 

The whole film is really well produced, written, and directed.  This is just a well crafted film all around.  

There isn’t really thing that I have to complain about here.  I like Falcon’s inclusion, but his role is somewhat (understandably) limited.  Sharon Carter is a bit underserved -- but I think looking back not even a necessity.  The plot is a little confusing at times -- I’m still not sure who exactly did what to make the opening sequence happen -- but I’m okay with that.  And Nick Fury’s faked death I don’t think isn’t that heavy, which somewhat gives away that he’s not actually dead.  But I’m being nitpicky over very tiny things.  

Final Verdict: Honestly, this is a really good film -- and even if you’re not big on superhero films, I think it works as just a good film on its own.  

Next Up: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 -- which is gonna be a mess compared to this, isn’t it? Lol.  

[wehavethoughts]

Zack Snyder's Justice League Review!

Zack Snyder's Justice League dir. Zack Snyder (2021) Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Atlas Entertainment and The Stone Quarry Science Fiction, Action, Superhero Movie

Rating: 3.5 Waves

Summary: Tormented by visions of a dark future, Bruce Wayne aka The Batman attempts to gather a team of superheroes to defend the planet. When alien tyrant Steppenwolf arrives on Earth seeking a long forgotten technology, this group of heroes must do everything in their power to keep him from locating all three Mother Boxes and destroying the world.

Content warnings: Violence, Death, Body Horror, Gore

This review DOES NOT contain spoilers for Zack Snyder's Justice League

A bit of background for those of you thinking “Didn’t Justice League come out years ago?” You are exactly right! Justice League was released in theaters in 2017 and is the fifth movie in the DCEU (DC Extended Universe). The same company that produced Justice League then funded Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) which is a different version of the story that was released in 2017. Zack Snyder was actually the original director of Justice League (2017), but he stepped away from the project during post production and the film was handed over to director Joss Whedon. Whedon’s creative decisions led to rewrites, heavy editing and a notorious reshoot that required removal of Henry Cavill’s mustache via CGI. Therefore, Justice League as it premiered in theaters in 2017 was Joss Whedon’s vision of the story. As some of you might remember, Justice League (2017) was considered a “flop” as it lost the studio ~$60 million overall and was received by fans with mixed to negative reviews (6.2/10 IMDB, 40% Rotten Tomatoes). But since Zack Snyder had left so late in the project, there were rumors that his version of the film had been nearly finished and there was hope that the movie Snyder filmed was actually better than what Whedon had created. Fans took to social media to demand that Warner Bros release the “Snyder Cut'' of Justice League and in a move I personally find baffling, Warner Bros actually gave Zack Snyder another $70 million to finish his version. Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) which was released on HBO Max is the final product.

While understanding the context of how this movie came about is neat and honestly pretty hilarious, I never got around to see Justice League (2017) so I cannot give any commentary on whether this new film is any better. For those who are curious, my fiancée who has seen both says that the movies are extremely similar in plot, but there are significant changes to characterization and pacing. This review will solely be on the merits and shortfalls of Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) in a spoiler free context since the movie was released just over a week ago (if you want to talk spoilers DM me I have So Many Thoughts).

Honestly, I was surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. My expectations were quite low considering what I heard about the original 2017 version and the fact that I’m more of a Marvel fan. The most surprising thing for me was that I sat through the entire 4 hr and 2 min runtime (for reference the runtime for Justice League (2017) is 2 hrs). Aside from Lord of the Rings (Return of the King runtime 4 hr 11min), I usually don’t indulge in movies that require me to block off an entire day, but I was curious and I love bandwagons.

The highlight of this movie are the characters. Each of our main characters had a deep, solid backstory that drew me in and made me invested in what was happening in this world. One thing lacking in a lot of ensemble superhero movies is balanced screen time between the main cast, but Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) uses its time wisely to give each character depth and critical purpose in the narrative. Even the villain had compelling motivation as to why he is on earth doing dastardly deeds, and while I wasn’t rooting for him, I respected his motivations. I also appreciated that the writers of this movie made the characters intelligent. Sure, some decisions were driven more by emotion than logic, but the way defenses are set up and how our heroes use their unique powers left me incredibly impressed.

The characters’ interactions with each other was also very enjoyable. Snyder took the time to include scenes centered around the team chilling with each other in ways that were refreshingly low stakes and mundane. The story was interspersed with scenes like Wonder Woman and Alfred making tea, Aquaman and Wonder Woman musing over cultural differences, and Cyborg and Flash digging up a body where you could really see the characters grow from strangers to teammates to friends. These scenes also peppered in some light humor that kept the movie from becoming too dark without distracting from the tone.

Since Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) is technically an action movie and it is rated R, I feel like I should touch on the action sequences. Overall, the action was incredibly fun to watch! It was made for the big screen so watching the epic battles for the first time on my TV at home was a bit underwhelming, but the well choreographed, high stakes fights were still visually pleasing. For a rated R movie there was not as much gore as there could have been, which I appreciated and the level of violence was pretty much what I expected from a comic book movie.

The action scenes also do a fantastic job with power escalation. By that I mean the action illustrates the limits of one character’s power clearly in relation to other characters’ powers. This way you are aware of exactly how impressive the characters and their powers are on their own and so when someone or something stronger shows up we have context for how big of a threat we are dealing with. The clean way the story shows us everyone’s respective powers and their limits makes it so the stakes feel more tangible and it's not just unfathomably strong characters beating the shit out of each other with the winner decided by chance.

There are a few reasons the movie didn’t get a full five waves from me. First was that the Amazon’s outfits were very clearly made by horny men based on how much skin they were showing. I, a bisexual, personally love to see superheroes in less then full coverage, but when the Amazon warriors have their entire stomachs and cleavage out of their armor for no reason it exhausts me. What happened to the tasteful and stylish armor from Wonder Woman (2017)? This feels like a step in the wrong direction.

The next concern I have that has kept me from recommending this movie to people is the overall pacing and length. While there were some great uses of the extended run time like the action sequences and team bonding I mention above, there were so many scenes that were way too slow for me to stay engaged. I found myself editing the movie in my head, like did we really need 2 full minutes of Bruce Wayne and his horse climbing a dreary mountain? I don’t think so. This was a narrative where I needed to pay attention lest I miss critical pieces of the story, but the random scenes that dragged on too long had me going to get snacks and checking my phone throughout. If I could rate the movie by halves the first half would get 2.5 Waves because of how it dragged and the second half would get closer to 4.5 Waves since the story really picks up and fun things start to happen.

The final part of this movie that kept it from getting a higher rating was how closely it was tied to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In fact, the first scene of Zack Snyder's Justice League is the final scene of Batman v Superman. There were many plot critical tie-ins to previous movies that left me feeling confused until I googled my questions during the slow scenes. If you have never seen Batman v Superman or Man of Steel then you will miss a lot of this movie, which I thought was unfair because other DCEU movies came out before the first iteration of Justice League like Wonder Woman and Suicide Squad and while events in those movies are mentioned in passing they are not nearly as important as the Batman and Superman-centric films. If the DCEU is going to pick favorites, the least it can do is pick movies I actually like (Wonder Woman (2017) remains my favorite DCEU movie to date). In general, superhero movies seem to be trending toward sagas and I prefer movies that you can just watch and enjoy without needing to see a bunch of other movies first.

Overall, I did very much enjoy this movie, but based on the run time alone it is not going to be for everyone. Measuring movie success during the pandemic is trickier than looking at box office numbers and labeling it a success or a flop, but it does appear that Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) is doing well as far as critical reception and viewership. I hope that this success will allow the DCEU to explore all of the fun nooks and crannies of the universe Snyder pulled together. In fact, half of the epilogue of this movie felt like set up for future movies. I hope they come to fruition because there were some pretty compelling teasers at the end that I would love to see played out on the big screen.

As I mentioned before, I’ve never seen the original cut of Justice League, but Snyder’s version left me fulfilled and satisfied with the narrative, so I am happy to have seen this newest cut first. This is a movie for people who love DC, love superhero movies or are just really invested in the hype.

~TideMod