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Star Wars: Tales of the Empire (2024)
Would have been 9 if it hadn't been for... you know...
I thoroughly enjoyed this show, for the very most part.
Side characters are explored, enriching the SW universe. The story is well told. It is well done. It is well paced. The scope is neither small nor big, but focused. The techniques are good, camera and lighting and art direction and score and all the other machinations of cinematic story telling that an audience usually will not notice.
It made me feel stuff. I felt the anger, frustration, and fear. Tales Of The Empire works.
And then there is episode 5: A gender politic (singular?) out of the blue. It yanked me right out of A Galaxy Far, Far Away and into the undesireable present.
And I already feel the pressure, the need to explain myself: So, two years ago I met a person - first for me - who wanted to be addressed as they/them, and I was surprised: It didn't bother me at all. For one: Name and identity - behaviours, habitus - is anybody's choice: If I want to be addressed as "cactus", I have the right to want that. And very actual: I quite instantly realized that above mentioned person was plagued hard with psychological problems, and I thought, boy, if this is your way out, or at least some kind of help, I would be a terrible, terrible person to make it a problem. (I also think that a portion of people struggling with their social-biological identity, thanks to the media, fall for the "gender maelstrom" as a remedy (also thanks to the media), and I think that this sets them on a distracting course, and a caring therapist would be galaxies better...) What a digress.
What I do not appreciate: Disney is very consciously sabotaging my escapism. Star Wars, to me, is holy. It is a fairy tale. I don't want trade disputes in it. I don't want racial stereotypes (Ep. I, anyone?). I don't want Tatooine engineers talking about the hairyness of Jawas. I don't want conservationists joining the Rebel Alliance because the Empire uses plastics in their armor. I want to be swept away and I do not want to be hit in the face with what is trending. I also think that this is exactly what is fueling the burning divide, and that it is a huge disservice to the people struggling with these issues.
Closing thought: Me, I am a fat dude - where is my representation, where is the one fat side character Jedi? Kidding. I don't want fat Jedis. Please.
The Creator (2023)
Waste of talent and budget
On the plus side:
+ The first few minutes were engaging (to the point where the protagonist is re-recuited for "the job"). Those first few minutes really pulled me in. "If the movie continues like this, this is going to be awesome!" Oh well...
+ The actors. They were really good. And Mr. Washington especially stood out. And that standing out makes the bad stuff so much harder to digest...
+ Special effects were very good. Or as I would call it "solid", because that should be standard for a serious movie.
Moving on from the plus side to - the tone:
- The movies did not make me care for AI at all. The kid? Yes, she was emotionally engaging, but only in 2-3 scenes. In her first scenes she was quite robotic, emphasizing that her later emotions were a simulation. "It's not real" - yes, I 100% understood and FELT that. Machines were "turned off" by the dozen and I didn't care, because the movie didn't make me care.
And then the story consistency... While I can forgive 1-2 little missteps, sometimes even a bigger thing - The Creator kept filling up the nonsense-meter to the point where in the end I laughed:
- Mankind's last-hope super weapon is so expansive that if it should ever be destroyed, that's it, we will not build a second one. Game over, man!
- Mankind is at stake, you say? Send 1 aircraft with a single squad of 10. (Then have 1 single soldier defend topside against local police.) The squad then rappels down one by one into unscouted huge (and thankfully empty) corridors, armed with assault rifles. Thank god there was zero defence in the bunker. Or topside.
- Squad of 10 gets reduced to 2, no problemo, turns out the two of them are even more effective than the whole squad.
- The whole bunker setup doesn't make sense. The US knew where it was. The US had mini nukes and didn't hesitate to use them, with zero care about collateral.
- And after the 10-squad-thing / nuking doesn't work out, THEN we bring out the cityblock tanks. And various kinds of smartbombs. Better late than never.
- And so, so much more. (Skip to the end where it gets almost comical bad.)
- The end-all-mankind-weapon can't be switched off. But obviously we don't want to destroy it with, say, a hydraulic press, or a sledgehammer, so let's reach out and fly in the guy who has an emotional connection to the weapon to use a... never mind.
- The end-all-mankind-weapon is inactive, NOW is the time to incinerat it. Let's transport with a - how many guards? Zero? Good number. (Also good that the incinerator is in another part of the town, so we get to stretch our legs.)
- The end-all-mankind-weapon is about to board the mankinds-last-chance-super-weapon? Send in six guys to stop it. Wait, they didn't succeed? Too bad, six guys is all we have to protect our death star. Except for the spider robot, but we only use that for revenge killing and guarding the escape pods. And those dozens of scientists who are... growing plants on the death star?! And the technicians who run a factory for robots... This kills me.
The middle ground: +/- The concept felt interesting at first, but after thinking about it for a few seconds, I realized that I had seen this story a hundred times before.
+/- The art direction was nice to look at in the beginning, but at second sight it didn't bring anything visually or technologically new to the table.
Secret Invasion (2023)
Zero Investment
Once more, I am flabbergasted. Why do modern productions struggle so hard with being good or at least decent?
It is sad. The MCU has so much potential. It has tons of great existing as well as yet unseen characters. It has a rich world. So many stories to be told. And there should be sufficient funding available to tell it well. But Marvel - sorry, Disney - seems to "has lost it".
In Secret Invasion, there is no tension at all. I don't feel any of this. Why? Why can't the people, the professionals, who make a living of this create, write, produce something good??
- Dialogues are getting more and more bad (does anybody read this before shooting?).
- Action sequences are boring and almost feel like an obligation.
- The sets... good god... As always, they went to eastern europe, found an old industry ruin, cluttered up 3-4 rooms . Put get some skeletal tech equipment into another 2 rooms, done. It all feels so cheap, it makes you cringe.
- The acting - I don't know if it is actually bad or it is supposed to feel this flat. I guess it fits the overall tone. The villain especially - underwhelming to the point of being miserable.
- Most importantly the story. The most entertaining thing about the story is that it is so stupid, as usual. Again, end of the world - Get help to stop it? - No, because it is personal. Ah.
- The details: Security for the President, anyone? Security for the evil HQ, anyone? Professionals, anywhere? And so much more, but I'll avoid "spoilers".
- "You'll be surprised who is going to be a Skrull" - just LOL.
- Honourable mention to the effects: That end battle, those arms of the girl... I had to rewind, I didn't believe my eyes...
Please, stop the cranking.
The Swarm (2023)
Great potential (story) handled stunningly bad
I loved the book. This production gives me more abdominal pain than fish poisoning.
Not only is this shot terribly: Every scene is excessively static, worse than Disney's Volume.
(One comedic detail: People in close ups on boats and ships are CLEARLY in a studio, this looks worse than 90s b-movies.)
The production quality is backed by plain bad writing and editing.
Take the beginning of episode 4:
- The woman at the beach freaks out because of a crab: We see the crab crawling up her leg, she screams and jumps up - legit. Then the boyfriend calms her for 2 seconds and they continue smooching for 2 more seconds but she jumps up a second time, because I GUESS the crab returned or another crab crabbed up - which is not shown, so the sceen just looks off. Bad editing, and saving budget on cgi. Okay.
- Then the crab invasion (exvasion?) starts so both freak out, understandably. The crabs come pouring from the sea at a staggering slow walking speed. So the couple sprint to the motorbike, frantically trying to start it, of course it only starts at the last second, and they speed off at breakneck speed to escape the crabs waddling at 1 mph. A 5 second sequence that is shot like a chase follows, void of any sense of urgency. Then the guy hits the break FOR NO REASON so they of course crash the bike. We then see a stuntman with a totally different haircut and matching different-coloured pants fly through the air in a huge arc (comedy gold), cut to them landing .5 meters from the bike. Good God, this is insulting!
- We then return to one character who's friends have just drowned and because of her mourning she goes for a swim with another colleague. (Recurring them for her: Later when a tsunami hits and kills thousands she immediatly goes for a swim again, literally in the next scene. Terrible.)
- Next scene: This character meets with her mentor, both are devasteted and in utter shock because of the loss of the colleagues/students. The mentor was just at the phone with the parents of one of her dead students. They share a scene of silence, then our character turns to go, the mentor addresses her so she stops and turns and just has the weirdest little smile on her face (08:37) as if she just cracked an excellent joke - what is going on?!?
- Next scene doesn't add anything: The canadion characters are having a beer and one mentions that the government may be involved. Zero relevance. Doesn't matter then, won't matter in the future.
- Next scene is a video conference of the two french doctors with members of the government. The government experts (representatives?) sit in a tiny, badly lit conference room on cafeteria-quality chairs. And sure, they are the stereotypical-st idiots, the macho guy goes "you only SUSPECT that it will get worse" while the extras at the table try their best to distract from the guys performance (cringe). But they are finally swayed by the doctor's brilliant arguement "but you should". Terrible, terrible scene.
- Next scene is the french doctor, calling her family standing right next to the ocean that she just warned about. Oui, la mer.
- Next scene is that one and only science ship that our protagonist keeps teleporting to and from. It seems they keep station at the same coordinates for weeks, just waiting for the scientist to show up on the teleporter plattform. The robot operator sits is one of my favourits, he has been sitting at the same screen in the same clothes with the same expression for four episodes/a couple of weeks now. We, the audicence, are shown the sea floor - everyone is baffled, so I guess we should be, too, but I have no idea why.
- The next scene has two characters in the ship's corridor, the way they are framed they have a corridor going off in a strange angle right between them, so it looks like a split screen. Who is supervising this production??
- And I want to bring up the (!!BIGGEST SPOILER!!) tsunami in ep 5, because god, does the whole sequence fall flat. This is one of the highlight bits of the book, and I don't insist on special effects fireworks - but I demand build-up, suspense, drama! Nope, the big wave is suddenly there (at least we get two seconds of receeding sea level). And we get no sense about its scope (I vaguely remember an easily overheard radio bit about "a few coastal villages being destroyed, a few hundred people missing"); in the book it took half of Northern Europe; here it seems to mainly affect the protagonists who have lost their boy- & girlfriend #sad. But I understand that cgi costs money, which this production clearly lacks, so no blame there. The highlight of the sequence for me was that husband not waiting for two freaking seconds to pick up his wife who was arriving just few feet away when he took off. It looked hilarious. I almost threw my drink at the screen. Quality filmmaking.
Compared to this, Kenobi was good. There, I said it.
The Umbrella Academy (2019)
s1 = 7/10, s2 = 8/10, s3 = 3/10
The first two seasons were really enjoyable.
And now season 3. Good God, what happened? Actually, for the first 7 episodes of season 3, very little happens. The things that do happen make very little sense and/or are hard to watch: Terribly forced character development, terrible stupidity in almost every character's actions, terrible dialogues, and even some terrible acting (foremost Elliot Page and that Javon Walton kid - though everytime I see bad acting I give a big portion of blame to the director, I call it the "GeorgeLucas-Syndrom"). Getting through season 3 felt like a chore, though the last two episodes were a little bit better than the rest. Not looking forward to season 4 - except it can't get much worse, so there's that.
Star Trek: Picard: Assimilation (2022)
This show is written on the fly
Just take the start of this episode: BIg Boss of Evil Galactic Empire (EGC) got kidnapped. EGC goes after her with three (!) security guys. They are still in orbit at EGC headquarters. The 3 EGC guys hold our heroes at gunpoint and talk/argue. Our heroes out of nothing and with zero effort disarm all 3 EGCs in 5 seconds. The situation is under control. Then our heroes kill, well, execute all 3 ECGs. (Okay, the third EGC got a hold of gun and was about to shoot.) What the hell am I watching?!
Also, the guns, that a second ago produced a regular gunshot wound on one of the heroes now 100% disintegrate the ECGs.
Also, in the middle of this 2 minute scene, the quirky science lady hero (and murderer from season 1) is about 20 feet away, noisily dismantles a big wall panel and connects the borg. Without anyone noticing. Andm more importantly without any impact on this scene, it has nothing to do with anything in this opening, she could have just done it easily after the whole "combat" bit.
The rest is terribly written and makes no sense as well.
- Q appears for exactly two short lines of dialogue (just repeating a line he already said) and vanishes for the rest of the episode.
- A twenty second space chase sequence is resolved by the heroes shuttle firing a single charge at each of the three pursuing capital ships, destroying each one in a single hit. (Rios explicitly says "target starboard nacelle", but the charge hits the deflector dish. Do these people even know what a nacelle is, let alone what starboard means?) And after all three pursuers are dealt with, nothing more happens, no more attackers, no orbital defense meassures, nothing.
- "Hook me up to the queen." "No, that is not an option." "But you have to". "No". "You have to." "Okay."
- Raffi turns into an stupendous incredible loose canon for 5 minutes, lashes out at her friends, then that is suddenly forgotten about and she is 100% back to herself.
And. So. On.
While writing this, I actually changed my rating from 2 to 1 star.
Good god, what have they done?
The Adam Project (2022)
Too little
+ RR is just plain good and elevates everything he is in.
+ The kid is also good.
+ Garner is good, also the only believable character.
+ Saldana is good, but blink and you'll miss her.
+/- Emotions have potential, didn't work in my case, though.
- Story is super simple, also super old.
- Pacing is meh.
- Structure is weird. Like, the movie is cut in two halfs. With a blunt knife.
- Antagonist is... wait, was there even an antagonist?
- Zero suspense.
- Effects aren't good.
- Deaging effects aren't good at all.
- Production value feels very low, only six people in the whole flick, all in very few, very isolated locations. (We are told that the future is in ruins, told a couple of times, never shone though - like they cut the whole bit.)
Army of the Dead (2021)
Movie doesn't even try
We get a pretty good, promising zombie-esque opening. 5 minutes of nice.
Then we get 30 minutes of introducing the team. But without giving the characters any character.
Then we get 2 hours of utter letdown:
- Nonsense plot. No decision makes sense. Not a single one.
- Terrible plot. "Go there and do that PERIOD." Suicide Squad had better plot. Suicide Squad! Or any Resident Evil movie. Resident Evil!!
- Characters without any character. (Ecxept for the German who was anyoing but at least he was something.)
- Terrible dialogue.
- Crazybad zombie makeup (heroine zombie with tons of stuff in her face but no makeup on her legs and feet *sigh*).
- Inconsistend makeup on characters ("coyote eyes") and zombies.
- Really bad CGI.
- Boring action sequences.
- Interrupted with more terrible plot.
- And terrible dialogue.
- Exactly three scenes of humor, of which one is actually decent.
Note that in any Zack Snyer movie to this point, I found stuff that I really liked. But this? Jesus...
Also, if you want vampire-zombies, why don't just do a vampire movie?
I give it 1 star above the absolute minimum (which should be 0 stars) for Omari Hardwick, he was good.
I want my 2.5 hours of life back :(
The Terror (2018)
Season 1: 8/10 - Season 2: 6/10
First things first: Season 2 has absolutely nothing to do with s1 (except for production, I guess). I almost feels cheated, with "season 2" using an "established brand" to gain a viewership. Still, s2 was entertaining, and to me a lot more relevant with its historical subtheme - which in my eyes is the actual theme, and the ghost story is just the vehicle to give the historical events a stage and a spotlight.
The story in season 1 is quite plain, to the point where it could be one of those acted-out documentaries, making it focussed and believable. Though it did loose a bit towards the end, which is okay, nothing is perfect.
The story in season 2 is all over the place. Compared to s1, there is about five times as much going on. Also, especially from mid season on, the development of the story drifts towards inauthentic, hollow, absurd - which is especially sad in regards to the grave subtheme.
The actors were very good in both shows/seasons. I believed every single one, although in s2, some soldiers and a certain camp director felt a bit hollywood-stereotypical.
The atmosphere of s1 was perfect, while s2 was very good in some moments, but mediocre in others.
Production value was overall very good, though some ice sets from s1 felt a bit off. Ice is hard.
I'd like to note that in the very last episode of s2, a character uses a two-word quote which the actor is very known for, which took me 100% out of the show, heavily damaging my overall experience. Shame :/
The Old Guard (2020)
Surprisingly bland
+ Idea is promising (although not new) + Theron is intense (although 2 hours of straight intenseness is tiring) + The Guard are convincing + Single bits are nice, 7/10 in some instances
- Antagonist 1 (Merrick) totally uninterresting and unthreatening
- Antagonist 2 (Copley) totally stupid and non-credible
- No tension, seriously, none. Not even after Andy turning.
- Hugest plot hole ever, Guard should have been captured in the ambush right at the start
- Feels empty/bland in too many instances
- The (very few) actions sequences scream WICK at you, though they are rather far away from John Wick quality
- Painfully bad job at photoshopping the old photos
- Honorary mention: unfitting, terrible, terrible music. Worth at least 1 star deduction.
Altered Carbon (2018)
8/10 for s1, 4/10 for s2
Season 1 is a very very good show. Season 2 is not. What went wrong in s2? I am no analyst, but what stuck out to me:
- The world felt small. Everything was in walking distance. The big circle of judgement felt claustrophobic, a little bit like a ST:TNG set.
- The world felt cheap. The street sets threw me back to 90s shows.
- The Wedge was laughable. One waaay over the top silly action sequence as an introduction, followed by lots of evil eying and snarling but not actually doing anything each episode, and then they are taken completly effortlessly by Tak in the end.
- Telling not showing: Backups are being destroyed with some sort of secret weapon? I sure didn't feel the impact.
- Taks superpowers are magnetic hands. That's handy.
- Tak 1 felt lame and bland. In season 1, he was so cool. I was happy when he appeared in s2, but then the character acutally didn't do anything, and judging from his performance I guess the actor knew. Shame.
- Simone Missick was 100% Misty Knight.
- Chris Conner's character felt interesting in the beginning of the season, but after 8 episodes, his arc was plain annoying. Also highly unlogical.
- Anthony Mackie was intense throughout, or he is brooding - good performance, but not very enjoyable to behold. And definitely not likeable.
- The relationship Tak/Quel did not trigger me. Didn't feel it.
- The final confrontation didn't eminate any kind of urgency, let alone danger. I actually stopped my (planed) final binging session 30 minutes before the ending to go to bed.
- Also, quit a bag of logical wrongs.
Black Summer (2019)
Sometimes pretty good, sometimes pretty bad
The Good:
- The zombies are actually dangerous. Running and to some extent cunning (e.g., smashing in window panes, smashing through fences).
- The world is threatening, empty, depressing.
- Panic reactions are believable.
- Actors doing good jobs.
The Bad: The characters. So much of what they do is so stupid.
- Sun doesn't speak English. So she keeps on chattering in Korean all the time, without any chance that anyone will understand her. Oh, and then all of a sudden she does understand English, even quite complex stuff. (keeps on babbling in Korean nevertheless)
- Sun when she finally gets her hand on a gun, turning her into a professional gunslinger (from the way she handels that Uzi, NOT from the way she fires it).
- William is driving in a road rage duel while yelling at the other car until he hits a wall dead on because he hasn't looked at the road for minutes.
- Rose chooses her mortally wounded husband over her daughter.
- All that yelling. God.
- Not even picking up a log as a weapon (which would be a much better weapon than any gun).
- Got guns? Everybody go full auto!
Some sequences are just unbelivable:
- "Good guys" murdering a whole building of partying people to get their hands on some guns. (WHY did they all have to die?)
- The battle royal at the end may have sounded good on paper, but it was executed absurdly bad. Just painful to watch. Like telling everybody "act naturally!" and filming for 48 hours and then sorting through the material only to find that NOTHING works.
- Bombing was like "now we will simulate bombs detonating around you, but we only have 10$ of budget left, so you need to cover this with your acting skills!"
- What happend to Williams leg? When? What?
- Did anyone else hate Ryan? I guess the audience is supposed to, but his arc just felt so painfull.
- In the end, on the sky bridge into the stadium, Spears/Julius was overrun a couple of times - only saved by the director, telling the zombies "slower - hold for a sec - wait - now go again!".
- Minor nitpick: As always, guns with no "feel" to them, no recoil, no reloading, just weightless props that produce a little flash (most likely added in digitally).
Venom (2018)
Good Movie.
Very entertaining throughout. Solid production. Tom Hardy is great both as Eddie and as Venom. The whole cast is actually pretty good.
Final fight is hard to follow, too dark, cut too fast-paced.
Yes, this Venom is different from the comic book version. But so is every comic-to-movie adaptation.
The Predator (2018)
Lots of wrong.
A few very good bits: Some dialogues. Pleasant abundance of using the f-word. Sterling K Brown. Sterling K Brown's character.
Lots of terrible stuff: Most of the dialogues. Almost a comedy. Terrible transitions ("They are WHERE now?! The have WHAT now?!". Terrible leads (Hobrook, Munn & The Loonies). No sympathy for characters. Rasta dogs. Mediclorianation of Predator. Oh, and the Predator sucks.
- The whole thing cannot be taken seriously. More like a funny Predator spin-off. -
The Gifted (2017)
1 Star because Superheroes. 1 Star for Coby Bell.
+ One nice scene every 3-4 episodes.
+ Thunderbird!
- No (zero!) progression in story.
- Repetitive throughout.
- Every single actor is allowed one single facial expression & mood throughout the show. And most of the time it's Angst.
- Painful dialog every 2nd line. Over-exposition every 3rd.
- No suspense whatsover.
- Repetitive throughout.
- No involvement in characters/lack of sympathy.
- Characters switching from overpowerfull to powerless all the time ("A dog sized spider robot? Too bad we only have one mutant who can tear apart stuff with telekinesis, one who can crush stuff with telekinesis, and one who can tear holes in space. #sad")
- Bad, bad editing. Especially in closeup dialog scenes: characters who are filmed from behind/over the should almost always suffer from a complete mismatch of spoken words vs. facial movement. Well, at least in that last episode I just watched.
- Super uninterresting and uninvolving subplots, like 'dat latino drug cartel.
- Repetitive throughout.
Too bad :(