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Invincible (2021)
Hinging on an undercooked premise and an dramatically ambiguous superhero
Spoilers!
Invincible is not a bad watch, but the premise of the series is very shaky imo.
For context, I watch series/movies almost entirely for the story. If the story sucked, but the visuals, sound and music were godlike, the series would still suck for me.
The series starts off its first episode quite tediously, and I even had a second there after half an hour where I was about to give up on it. However, I bit through and the episode ends with a major opener: Omniman, the most powerful superhero on the planet, and savior of the earth on countless occasions, does something incomprehensibly horrible.
Now, I thought, ok, here we go, we're in gear, and I immediately watched the second episode.
It turns out however, that I needed to wait until the 8th episode before any of Omniman's actions were explained...and seriously, that explanation fell flat.
Omniman is from a planet where everyone is just as powerful as he is, who are conquering the universe (already 1000s of planets conquered), but then as they start to spread themselves too thin, decide to send 1-man missions to weaken singular planets in preparation of invasion...
Here's what bugs me:
1. The interesting part of the story was Omniman's actions and why he did them. However, it takes apparently the rest of the season to get to that in the last episode.
I abhor that kind of storytelling. Stringing along your viewers with the promise of something special only to make it last forever to get there, and then to have the payoff fall flat. (f u "Lost")
I keep hoping, that one day in this lifetime, some writer is going to open a series with a bang, just like this, but is going to follow it up with one nuclear blast after another during the rest of the series. (and not drop the ball in the last season, friggin' GoT)
2. Seriously? The race of Supermen need to "weaken" planets before invasion? Earth can't even handle one of them. They could've sent 2 or 3 Viltrumites and mopped up in 30 minutes flat.
3. Omniman's actions, at least in this series (I haven't read the comics its based off), are weird. Why would he kill all of the superheroes in one go? He could've easily sniped every single one of them covertly, IF his aim was not to reveal himself. (Dramatic purposes, I know, so forgivable)
Why doesn't he reveal himself? If I'm to believe him in the last episode, he doesn't give a flying superf* about any human. Why the wait? For his son? But is that really how you would go about it? You have a secret agenda, you're trying to get your son involved in, but you let him out of the loop for his entire life and then just spring it on him: "Hey, btw, humans are puny insects and I crush them without remorse, wanna join me? For Viltrum! You know that place I've never told you about..."
And then in the end he almost kills his son, but leaves all weepy like...
I get that Omniman might be conflicted, but that is not shown well at all in this series. He's quiet, brooding, denigrates earth's superhumans to himself.
He admonishes his son at the start of the series, for making too much collateral damage...but secretly doesn't give a f*...and also doesn't really want his son to give a f*...
He's had an apparently great love relation with his wife, but she's his pet...
He keeps friendly with the tailor who "knows" what he did, but doesn't give a damn about the insect earthlings...
So, unless he's a schizophrenic, I don't get that character's mindset. He's all over the place.
It's like the plottwists just happen in his brain.
I would pick "The Boys" over this one any day of the week. The main characters there are really well developped.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Mourning the loss of the writer's craft.
I'm not really a fan of any particular franchise, but I've seen all of the Star Trek seasons, except for Discovery, which I felt did its own thing outside of the franchise's spirit.
One can argue the quality of Star Trek over its past iterations, but one thing seems to become apparent in modern day series and movies, and that's the decline, no per se in quality, but in the craftsmanship of writing. There don't seem many artisans left in this trade, or maybe there are just too many productions and there is no time or willingness in this next you-tube generation to dedicate themselves to this craft.
It's all left to the craft of the movie-makers to turn the blank spaces on the page into meaningful screen-time.
I love Patrick Stewart, a high quality actor, but unfortunately even he can't lift this series off the ground. The script is very slim, almost to the point I thought this was originally written as a movie, and got rewritten into a series.
The series is slow, because many scenes live long past their existential reason. Emotional exposition is painstakingly lingered upon and there is a distinct lack of interesting interactions between the characters. There's an overarching story, and everyone floats about the current. Instead of looking for engrossing the viewer into the intricacies of its world and characters, it chooses gratuitous action to counterbalance its otherwise bleak canvas.
This series needs an infusion of side plots and deeper character exploration leading to more meaningful moral, political or interpersonal conflicts, the latter remaining very shallow in current episodes.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
The movie loses its plot way too often.
The first Blade Runner was a master piece.
I've watched 2049 now for a second time and apart from the visual aspect of the film, it doesn't have the impact of the original by a landslide.
The only reason I see for this is because the movie fails to hold on to its plotline, whichever one that is. Even at the end of the movie I'm not so sure what the story was.
The original Blade Runner had a simple story. It's a movie about a blade runner, hunting down skinjobs (with their own dramatic need), falling in love with one of them. That's it. The fact that there is a major philosophical undertone in this movie is what elevates it from an ordinary action flick to one of the ultimate cinema classics, BUT at no point during the movie does the movie deflect from what its plot is, a blade runner hunting skinjobs, falling in love with one of them.
Every single scene in the movie is in service of this plotline. Either Deckard is following a clue to get to his mark, or the marks are following their dramatic needs, or the love interest is established.
It does not go off on tangents to explain how this world works. It does so through scenes that at their core are serving the plot.
Priss charms Sebastian and we get to know about his disease and off-world and whatnot, BUT these scenes are in service of the plot. They want to get to their creator. Charming Sebastian is a way forward in their dramatic need.
This is exactly what I missed in 2049.
Too many scenes do not drive the plot. Sure enough, it's because the plot itself is all over the place.
The movie is a visual wonder, but the story is severly lacking.
The scene with K and his "girlfriend" at home, serves 0 plot function. It was just there to fill in an aspect about the world.
Story mechanics, the way to write a screenplay, all the rules and do's and don't to construct a story are important. They are as fundamental to screenplay writing as are the rules for writing music.
Sure, you can string along any number of notes from amazing instruments in any way you like, but the resulting cacophony will not attract a lot of people.
For music this seems obvious to everyone, because we are all used to hearing songs (and subconsciously all the rules that come with music), so we naturally feel when something is off.
With movies, it seems a bit more difficult somehow.
Friends with Money (2006)
...and in the end she gets the money too...
I don't know what the intentional message was for this movie, but it started off as an unlikely friendship between four friends who all moved into their own direction in life. One is very rich, two of them are well off and the last one is poor. The movie tries to get into the difficulties in understanding each other from their respective perspectives, but doesn't really get very far into it and leaves the most interesting social aspect of its premise as a thin blanket over the whole, as it prefers to delve into the hardships of the (surely interesting) marital relationships.
SPOILERS:
Where the credibility breaks is when we get to know that the unlikely single poor friend (Anniston - she is after all very beautiful) gets hooked up with a shabby, seemingly slobby man who unexpectedly turns out to be a very wealthy man.
I also found it poor writing and in moral poor taste that the happiness of the ending needed to be gold coated, as if there is no redemption possible without money.
One scene that was particularly hard to swallow was where the guy "apologizes" for negotiating an already low salary to even less when she was his cleaning lady, and writes it off as "having issues", as if we'd call any rich guy trying to stiff a working person out of 15 bucks anything else than a douche.
END SPOILERS
All in all pretty good performances but a script that fails to deliver any poignant statements, ending up as an unlikely slice of life.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Either manipulated reviews or no clue
This movie is not good.
It's plot's interesting (somewhat ripped from The Last of Us), but what the writers have done with it is absolutely dreadful.
It steals scenes from other horror greats and braids together this insufferable, nonsensical, cliché ridden flick.
Suspension of disbelief is no longer needed, because apparently 10/10 reviewers will believe about anything, and they're proud to broadcast their clueless reviews made possible by the internet's "everyone's opinion on anything counts" policy, and the fact that superlatives has been worn out to the stub, leaving them to rate everything on par with the greatest movies of all time.
Who Is Alice (2017)
Characters that act as if they are in a children's program
To be fair I only watched the first half hour, since by then I was convinced I was watching something awful. Some of the "supporting" characters are caricatures, whose performances would be more suited if played opposed Tinky Winky and Laa-Laa. If it's meant to be a comedy...well, I didn't laugh the whole first half hour...
Allied (2016)
Pitts poor french
I just laughed at Marions line "your French is good, but you're Parisian accent isn't..." Brads French is so bad, no real French speaking person would ever mistake him for a native speaker. It's basically on par with his Italian in Inglorious Bastards. There is no room for subtlety in their encounter, no finesse in their romance, just because of that. I have nothing against Brad, but not the actor for this role. But, they chose a bankable actor over a believable one, and still the movie lost money.
Warcraft (2016)
Sensible review from a movie-lover and long time wow-player
Once you've plowed through all the tens and zeros fans and haters brand on frankly any movie these days, you might be looking for a sensible review if you haven't thrown your arms in the air yet by now.
Well, let me make an attempt. As a movie, Warcraft fails on a few levels. As a fanpiece there's enough there to make you smile and enjoy the world you're already very familiar with...except there where the lore takes off in a direction I can't for the life of me remember happening that way.
The movie suffers somewhat from an all too familiar ailment when making these epic multi-character stories. Not enough investment in the characters leads to you not caring for them at all. The story centers largely around Lothar, Garona, Khadgar and Durotan. Now for people who are familiar with Warcraft lore, there's not a lot to fill in for you. You know these characters and what their feats have been, you have already an emotional investment in them even before the movie started. For people who are not familiar with them however, the movie largely fails to deliver on that front. I went to see with a friend, who is not familiar with the universe, and at the end he admitted not caring for any of the characters in the movie. There is no real exposition of who these characters are and what they believe in, except maybe for Durotan, who gets a little more color. They were also looking for a female lead and I guess Garona was it, for lack of any other alternative. She gets a bit pasted onto the story, and gets more screen-time than her character actually deserves story-wise. Good stories are either plot driven or character driven. It becomes a bit of a mess if the story can't really decide which one it wants to be, which is the case in Warcraft. It tries to tell us who these character are, but we don't get deep enough into any of them for them to drive the movie; and the plot is not really all that impressive either, there is no intrigue or suspense, just a lot of clobbering, the occasional spellcast and a bit of character parading. Stories are driven, because they should literally move you emotionally from one place to another, be it through a fear, an anticipation, through experiencing a characters emotional change, etc. None of that was present in Warcraft.
The acting is not very good. In fact the acting of the cgi orcs was far better than most human performances. The human side lacked a bit of presence, while the orcs are quite impressive. Travis and Paula do what they can with the little they have. Again due to a lack of character development, which even a romantic nudge between the two and the storyline with Anduins son can't help, they remain very two-dimensional. Seasoned actors will often fill that void themselves with what they believe should be the character, but that's not a given when working with a fairly young cast. I've seen better performances from most these actors in other movies.
The music is one of the better things in the movie, from Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi. The score definitely felt Warcraft. The cinematography is not bad, and manages in this cgi heavy setting to deliver some awesome pictures. Fans will smile at accurate depictions of familiar settings...even flightpoints in Stormwind.
Overall, this is a fanfilm. You'll enjoy the familiarity of it's settings and you'll fill in the blanks with your own knowledge and in the end you'll find it OK. For movie-lovers without any warcraft knowledge however, this movie will not entice you at all.
Mr. Robot (2015)
Strong pilot, very poor second and third episode
*Spoilers - first three episodes*
I had high hopes for this series after the pilot. It promised an interesting protagonist and a clash of corporate vs hacker world. All of this collapses in the second and third episodes. The character development of the main protagonist is odd. He started out with an interesting life philosophy (the scene in the pilot with the psychiatrist) that since hasn't gone anywhere. There is just ad nauseam repetition of him being paranoid and awkward. I still have no idea who he is and what he wants, or what his problems really are.
Other than sexual preference, there is also no character development for any of the other characters neither.
All of this might have been overlooked if the story was interesting, but there again, nothing is happening. There's a group of hackers, an evil corp...and that's about it. The plot at this point (or how little of it there is) is getting buried under a mess of shallow scenes with no clear destination. It feels like the creators haven't fleshed out their characters and don't have enough material to make a compelling story.
The Leftovers (2014)
Another Lindelof wild goose chase?
While most people search for answers, I have the distinct impression that Lindelof makes a career out of just embellishing the questions, and just bury whatever answer you hope to get under a ton of more questions. You'll never get any answers, period.
This is "Lost" all over, I bet he's even earning money from sociologists who are interested in seeing how you can dupe millions of viewers a second time by feeding them the same hopeless chase for answers.
Oh, and after 8 seasons, he'll probably give you one answer in the final episode. God did it! He really works in mysterious ways...