I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which in turn gave me a false sense of hope for the sequel.
Jumanji: The Next Level is bad in such profoundly misguided ways that I find it really fascinating. Like, there's no way the last act was written by the same person as the first one, because they combine to tell a story whose message is "if you've got a compulsive yearning for something that is definitely bad and dangerous and could kill you and the people you love, go ahead and chase that one last fix, because once you get it, it will solve all your problems."
And that's just one of many baffling decisions this movie makes! Along with "Let's have Jack Black play the black guy" and "Remember how funny Karen Gillan was in the first movie? Let's not give her anything funny to do in this one."
I can't stop thinking about it. This might turn into a blog post.
Let's all go to the movies~
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
"Remember how funny Karen Gillan was in the first movie?
The best part is, during her flirting scene, she uses her Nebula voice.
So now whenever I'm watching the MCU and Nebula speaks I just giggle.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
Went to see Snake Eyes with a friend, actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Starts pretty bad but gets good, then jumps the shark and remains fun in an "X-Men movie late game" sort of way. Sorta the same structure as The Wolverine that way - pretty good at the mid-point, then becomes a clownshow in the late game.
It was like everything I feared at the start, then they get on a plane and fly to Japan, after which point it's a straight-up good, enjoyable movie, with some pretty cool action scenes on the streets of Tokyo. Then then mega-anaconda show up, and, well, it goes off the rails in a pretty fun way. The unexpected team-ups go a long way toward smoothing over the fact that the story is in shambles.
This movie is really carried by its casting for a lot of the runtime. The guy they got to play Storm Shadow rules.
I'd say it's worth a watch via torrent or on a plane.
It was like everything I feared at the start, then they get on a plane and fly to Japan, after which point it's a straight-up good, enjoyable movie, with some pretty cool action scenes on the streets of Tokyo. Then then mega-anaconda show up, and, well, it goes off the rails in a pretty fun way. The unexpected team-ups go a long way toward smoothing over the fact that the story is in shambles.
This movie is really carried by its casting for a lot of the runtime. The guy they got to play Storm Shadow rules.
I'd say it's worth a watch via torrent or on a plane.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
Checked out Wily's Wonderland and..it is a thing. Cage just insisting on his break when the beeper sounds is just perfect.
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beatbandito
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Re: Let's all go to the movies~
Just saw The Suicide Squad (and took a nap, but the point is I haven't seen any other takes yet). This wont get specific, but very spoiler heavy. tl;dr: it's not bad but it's not very good. And the ways the exact story they want to tell could have been told better are so obvious and easy to correct that it's almost painful at times.
It had an incredible first 15 minutes, that do a great job of referencing the mess of the last movie. Then spends the next 30 going "okay, but yeah we're still doing a generic intro" while still trying to stretch out the same joke from the pre-title scene too.
There's a few decent moments, but outside of scene-to-scene stuff the overall writing is really weak, and the story just falls apart. There's a lot of "man, this would all make a lot more sense if they just didn't make that character the same kind of snarky asshole that everyone needs to be for some reason" and similar.
The jokes are pretty weak. There's a decent amount of standard call-and-response and callbacks to earlier jokes, but again, other than maybe a single shot or line nothing made me laugh. There's a scene about midway that starts as an action set, then it quickly becomes obvious that they're building this classic AIRPLANE!-style joke where the building action is going to have an incredible payoff. And then the joke just stops building, and then it pauses for more little snarky jabs between characters, then it becomes a slightly different joke. And ultimately the original punchline just kind of sits there lazily when they finally circle back around, it was such a waste.
Harley Quinn is done pretty dirty here. I generally just don't like her in the DCCU, but this is a worse character than existed in Birds of Prey. A lot of her scenes are a bigger issue where for some reason there's a number of short scenes that look like they're specifically trying to call back to the mess of character intro trailers from the original. And they're kind of cool looking, but not really for the biggest budget franchise in the world right now, ya know?
The characters all act pretty "naturally" for their personalities and settings until about the 3rd act when, hey, they're all friends now. You know this because there is one scene that they enter as acquaintances and end as friends. Then, hey, in the 4th act now there's reasons for them to infight. Reasons that made a lot more sense before they all suddenly became friends, but hey, now it's more meaningful, I guess? Somehow? Because that's what the writing says it should be? There's also a secondary cast that just absolutely acts completely outside their own interests and against their previous cynical characteristics with no development of consequence. And there's like 4 other ways the situation could have been resolved that would make more sense and could have been done with ADR and cutting shots. Not even taking the easy way out development-wise.
I don't actually know how acts work but I'm saying it's the 5th act after all the established plot points and characters have been dealt with, but now they need to have the huge million-dollar fight that is completely out of these character's leagues. It's taken care of when the character who clearly had the most overpowered ability they never really used all story uses their ability and immediately solves the last conflict, once enough action has happened.
It had an incredible first 15 minutes, that do a great job of referencing the mess of the last movie. Then spends the next 30 going "okay, but yeah we're still doing a generic intro" while still trying to stretch out the same joke from the pre-title scene too.
There's a few decent moments, but outside of scene-to-scene stuff the overall writing is really weak, and the story just falls apart. There's a lot of "man, this would all make a lot more sense if they just didn't make that character the same kind of snarky asshole that everyone needs to be for some reason" and similar.
The jokes are pretty weak. There's a decent amount of standard call-and-response and callbacks to earlier jokes, but again, other than maybe a single shot or line nothing made me laugh. There's a scene about midway that starts as an action set, then it quickly becomes obvious that they're building this classic AIRPLANE!-style joke where the building action is going to have an incredible payoff. And then the joke just stops building, and then it pauses for more little snarky jabs between characters, then it becomes a slightly different joke. And ultimately the original punchline just kind of sits there lazily when they finally circle back around, it was such a waste.
Harley Quinn is done pretty dirty here. I generally just don't like her in the DCCU, but this is a worse character than existed in Birds of Prey. A lot of her scenes are a bigger issue where for some reason there's a number of short scenes that look like they're specifically trying to call back to the mess of character intro trailers from the original. And they're kind of cool looking, but not really for the biggest budget franchise in the world right now, ya know?
The characters all act pretty "naturally" for their personalities and settings until about the 3rd act when, hey, they're all friends now. You know this because there is one scene that they enter as acquaintances and end as friends. Then, hey, in the 4th act now there's reasons for them to infight. Reasons that made a lot more sense before they all suddenly became friends, but hey, now it's more meaningful, I guess? Somehow? Because that's what the writing says it should be? There's also a secondary cast that just absolutely acts completely outside their own interests and against their previous cynical characteristics with no development of consequence. And there's like 4 other ways the situation could have been resolved that would make more sense and could have been done with ADR and cutting shots. Not even taking the easy way out development-wise.
I don't actually know how acts work but I'm saying it's the 5th act after all the established plot points and characters have been dealt with, but now they need to have the huge million-dollar fight that is completely out of these character's leagues. It's taken care of when the character who clearly had the most overpowered ability they never really used all story uses their ability and immediately solves the last conflict, once enough action has happened.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
beatbandito wrote:I don't actually know how acts work but I'm saying it's the 5th act after all the established plot points and characters have been dealt with, but now they need to have the huge million-dollar fight that is completely out of these character's leagues. It's taken care of when the character who clearly had the most overpowered ability they never really used all story uses their ability and immediately solves the last conflict, once enough action has happened.
it's squirrel girl
like it's literally just james gunn saying "well they haven't done the joke of squirrel girl taking a cosmic threat down in the mcu yet so i'm gonna do it here"
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beatbandito
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Re: Let's all go to the movies~
Niku wrote:beatbandito wrote:I don't actually know how acts work but I'm saying it's the 5th act after all the established plot points and characters have been dealt with, but now they need to have the huge million-dollar fight that is completely out of these character's leagues. It's taken care of when the character who clearly had the most overpowered ability they never really used all story uses their ability and immediately solves the last conflict, once enough action has happened.
it's squirrel girl
like it's literally just james gunn saying "well they haven't done the joke of squirrel girl taking a cosmic threat down in the mcu yet so i'm gonna do it here"
It seems obvious that the next movie will have Bloodsport and Peacemaker back with Harley as primary characters. I would accept the resolution of the ending of this movie if in the next one they frame it as Rat Catcher 2 getting all the attention and now being a big name mainstream hero, while BS, Harley, and King Shark were forgotten and can still serve in their clandestine(in narrative intent, at least) roles.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
Matrix 4 looks fun. Really hoping they lean into Morpheus's death being in a short lived MMO that very few people played and that nobody can play today
signature
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
I assume they'll be making a play to take the pills back from those forces that corrupted the meme.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
you take the red pill in
you take the red pill out
you take the red pill in
and you rabbit hole about
you take the red pill out
you take the red pill in
and you rabbit hole about
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
mharr wrote:I assume they'll be making a play to take the pills back from those forces that corrupted the meme.
It didn't escape my notice that one of the first words in the trailer is "triggering", another term that's been coopted by shitheels.
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Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
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Re: Let's all go to the movies~
They hate you but they also want to be like you.
Re: Let's all go to the movies~
I watched The Sparks Brothers, going in with basically no knowledge of the band.
They remind me a fair bit of Frank Zappa, not just in how they sound but because they're an LA band that found more success in Europe than the US, have often been dismissed as a novelty act because they write funny songs, and have often alienated fans by shaking up their style and doing what they want rather than what's sold in the past.
I enjoyed the movie -- I've yet to see a bad Edgar Wright movie -- and I've been bouncing around their catalog over the past few days. It can be daunting to pick a place to start since they've got 26 albums; I think 1997's Plagiarism is as good a place to start as any, since it's something of a greatest-hits album. (Not a compilation, though; they recorded new versions of their past songs.) Or you could do worse than hopping on their official videos playlist.
They remind me a fair bit of Frank Zappa, not just in how they sound but because they're an LA band that found more success in Europe than the US, have often been dismissed as a novelty act because they write funny songs, and have often alienated fans by shaking up their style and doing what they want rather than what's sold in the past.
I enjoyed the movie -- I've yet to see a bad Edgar Wright movie -- and I've been bouncing around their catalog over the past few days. It can be daunting to pick a place to start since they've got 26 albums; I think 1997's Plagiarism is as good a place to start as any, since it's something of a greatest-hits album. (Not a compilation, though; they recorded new versions of their past songs.) Or you could do worse than hopping on their official videos playlist.
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Mongrel
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Re: Let's all go to the movies~
I watched that yesterday, and in a very unfortunate surprise, that trailer turned out to be was profoundly, if inadvertently, depressing (I mean more so than usual).
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beatbandito
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