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Civil War (2024)
A Colossal Letdown
Having watched the trailer I was expecting a lot more from this film. It ended up being an over hyped "The Revenant" (2015) and "Almost Famous" (2000) love child. Those are the first movies that come to mind when watching this. I hated both and to be honest they were better than this slop.
Most of the scenes just seemed pointless and the entirety of the movie did not reflect how a civil war would likely pan out in this country. Just off the bat, if the military is involved to any degree, none of the cities depicted would still be in anything close to the state they were in. A couple burning buildings and such just isn't it.
I've seen better writing and storytelling from video games about war. I really don't even want to give it two stars, but at least the production quality was okay. But, from the beginning of the movie until the end I was left disgusted with how bad this film was.
If you are looking for fever dreams about the life of a war photographer, here you go.
The Winter King (2023)
And We're Walking...
10 full episodes to go pretty much nowhere. This only gets 3 stars because some of it was okay. Onto the bad.
This show is constructed with so many fillers you would think this was cheap pet food. There are a few scenes that almost feel like they belong in some low budget late night soft core flick, but just the dialogue parts. This show could have been rolled up into a 90 minute movie and I doubt you would have lost anything.
From beginning to end the writing is just bad. Do you want to know what will happen from scene to scene? Just think about the worst action each character can take and there you have it. I could never tell what exactly this show was aiming to be. The closest I can guess, is teen drama.
Not Dead Yet (2023)
Better than I Expected
I wasn't initially expecting much from this show. I decided to give it a watch out of boredom and was surprised it was actually pretty good.
Not a huge fan of the main characters, but the side characters have all been fantastic. Nell (Gina) can be a tad over the top annoying at times, but is tolerable for the most part. Lexi (Lauren) is almost a carbon copy of her character from Superstore. Sam (Hannah) is probably the only character that seems okay.
The episodes have been well written for the most part, even with some annoying parts sprinkled in. As a whole, I look forward to watching this show now.
So Help Me Todd (2022)
Have you met Ted?
Only a couple episodes in and I get vibes of Psych meets How I Met Your Mother. The show is almost a clone of Psych, but the main character acts like Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother.
The characters feel almost forced into stupid reactions to push the "comedy", but it just comes off as bad. Even side characters in the episodes are written in a way so as not to seem normal.
Not quite sure which direction the show is headed as far as what it wants to be yet. The plots in the episodes I have seen are pretty average, no huge twists or anything that would be outside of your standard TV Sitcom.
It's a show, maybe it will get better.
The Ark (2023)
When you accidentally hit send.
I just can't believe how anyone in production looked at the final product and thought it was good enough to air.
I would say the show suffers from some of the worst writing I have seen in a long time. The acting of the main characters is okay, but some of the background characters appear to be modelled after really bad video game NPC's.
Every single character is written so poorly as to make none of them even remotely likeable. They are all supposed to be some of the brightest in their fields, yet obvious solutions either cause drama or are outright resisted.
I see people bashing the CGI, I had no issue with it since I came in expecting network level programming. I also see people saying it would benefit from less dialogue and more pauses and artsy shots. Dear God no. If there was one thing the show had close to right, it was the pacing.
Into the Badlands (2015)
Brought Down By Bad Writing
Season 1
Short and sweet, not too bad for what it was. First time I watched this show I turned it off because of the discount choreography. I get the style they were going for, but it was a little slow and lacked fluidity. Decided to give this show a second chance, with the mindset that is was a low budget cable series. The choreography did improve a little as the show went on. The story is nothing truly special as it seems to follow the plot progression of so many other shows.
Season 2
Could have been better, but did continue the story okay. Biggest problem was the death of Veil, how many death blows did Quinn need? Felt like watching an infomercial at the end.
Season 3
Starts out as many other shows, with the new big bad, this time a religious zealot. Frankly as soon as I saw the opening scene I was instantly reminded of the Ori from Stargate. Typical plot lines ensued, people mindlessly flocked to the new power figure and turned themselves from slaves of one owner into slaves of another owner. Winning? It didn't get real bad until the end of the season. So many scenes that just happened like, WTF.
The Widow captures The Witch in order to lure Pilgrim to fight. The Witch is made a prisoner in the most luxurious and witch stocked chamber possible. Left alone so she can work her craft. Only after she gets it done, do they decide to move her to an actual cell.
Pilgrim shows up with boards to cross a trench that was literally just made, while he was bringing his army to battle.
Pilgrim goes from coughing up blood for every use of his stolen gift to being able to mass produce soldiers. A chamber that needed 'The Catalyst" to enable, didn't need it the second time cause that wouldn't fit the narrative. Why build a system with a password if powering it off keeps it logged in?
When the good guys counter attack the Temple, there is a scene where The Witch is fleeing on the slowest moving boat ever and about 15 feet off shore, but Nathaniel, with his dart shooting gauntlet just shouts at her. Then turns to shoot darts at the soldiers coming his way. His entire reason for being there was to kill The Witch with no regard for his survival...
Some scenes were so poorly written, it is as though they were told to make it happen regardless of how bad it looked.
Conclusion, I may bash the writing, but the actors did a pretty good job and the fight scenes did get much better. The story left much on the table as I think they really spent too much time on some of the lesser drama and fight scenes. Set design and locations were all pretty good, even if they kept reusing the same shot any time then went to "The Monastery" I was okay with seeing how things went into season 4, until they hinted at an even bigger bad on the way. So original. If a season 4 ever happened, I might watch, but my expectations wouldn't be much.