MovieChat Forums > JakeSWITCH > Replies
JakeSWITCH's Replies
Season 1 was a lot like 'The Killing' or 'Twin Peaks' (a small town crime, people dealing with grief, escalating weirdness). But, by Season 4, the series reminded me of Joss Whedon's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' more than anything.
I'll play Devil's Advocate for the terrible screenplay: the Illuminati underestimated the huge difference in power levels / abilities between the Wanda from their own dimension and the Scarlet Witch (using the Darkhold) from Earth-616.
Mr. Fantastic had no idea that the Scarlet Witch could transmute his and Black Bolt's flesh, Captain Marvel didn't know Wanda could drain her cosmic energy powers in battle and Xavier was totally unprepared for a lethal psychic counterattack once he had entered Wanda's mind.
If the Illuminati had been aware how outmatched they were, they either would have kept their distance or struck Wanda down immediately, without giving her a chance to surrender.
I don't dislike Portman as performer, but she is hit-and-miss. Sometimes she's great, sometimes it seems like she's acting in a TV commercial.
Hughie needs to get revenge for A-Train murdering his girlfriend and has only recently received Compound-V, which would allow him to stand a chance against A-Train, one-on-one.
The Deep is comedy relief. Starlight also needs to get revenge on him at some point.
Even though these characters are going through their own personal struggles (allowing the writers to explore the nature of celebrity) and display some sympathy towards the black community and sea creatures, respectively, both of these guys are evil.
All of the references to McKidd's potential casting refer to Donald Blake.
A lot of things hadn't been a part of the Thor comic when they made the first movie. Donald Blake was still a huge part of the character's history, though. And although Thor stopped transforming into Blake in 1984, he would magically switch places with Eric Masterson, an architect and single father, until the 90s. Thor hasn't existed as his own entity on Earth for at least half the span of his comic book history.
The movies sidestep this by not having Thor live or fight crime on Earth at all - he's just someone who visits on occasional adventures. He protects the planet because he has a love interest here. His longest stretch of time spent living on Earth was in a house playing video-games with an alien all day, between beheading Thanos and the final battle of 'Avengers Endgame'.
That Donald Blake story sounds like it was written by someone trying to imitate Alan Moore.
What a sad end for the character.
I believe the original pitch for 'Thor' was for Dr. Donald Blake to be played by Kevin McKidd, who would also transform into Thor. It was revised until Blake was merely name-dropped as Jane Foster's ex-boyfriend in the first film.
I really miss that aspect of Thor. Having the God of Thunder share a body with a crippled human doctor - plus, only being able to transform by stamping his cane on the ground - made the character more interesting. I guess it would be hard to include it now, since 'Shazam' and 'Black Adam' use a similar transformative concept, and 'Doctor Strange' is also about a medical professional / superhero.
Doesn't Kenobi basically say "pretend we never met" at the end? Also, Leia inherits Tala's gun holster in the finale.
I agree that Reva was not integrated particularly well into the series and the conclusion of her character arc shouldn't have been inserted into Obi-Wan and Vader's duel.
In 'Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones', Tusken Raiders kidnap Anakin Skywalker's mother, Shmi Skywalker. Anakin eventually finds her, but she is mortally injured and dies in his arms. Seized by a violent rage, Anakin slaughters the entire tribe including the women and children. In 'Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith', he totally embraces the dark side to save Padme, slaughtering the Jedi children.
Reva survives the youngling massacre, becomes an Inquisator and committed all kinds of atrocities for the Empire in order to get close enough to Anakin to extract revenge. She realises that she can't overpower Vader, but gets the chance to kill Luke and inflict the ultimate revenge, the death of Vader's son. However, unlike Anakin, this is the line she won't cross.
As opposed to Anakin, who becomes an unrecognizable monster, obsessed with vengeance against Kenobi, Reva shows that it is possible to turn away from the dark side and that the cycle of violence and retribution could be broken.
It seems to establish that:
a) A motivated Obi-Wan is capable of defeating either Anakin or Darth Vader. He beat him the first time due to landing on the "high ground", despite being evenly matched in lightsaber skills. He beat him the second time, because Obi-Wan developed an even stronger connection to the light side of the Force after his exile on Tattooine and spiritual journey.
b) However, Obi-Wan will always be incapable of destroying or redeeming Anakin, no matter what kind of atrocities he commits. Luke is the only one who can get his father to flip on the Emperor.
But, yes, I agree that the more clashes Obi-Wan has with Anakin, the more it hammers the audience over the head that he threw the fight during their final showdown.
Just my opinion.
I'm guessing Steve or Jonathan will die. They no longer serve any purpose and either of them could be replaced by Eddie Munson.
There have been a ton of dreadful Stephen King movies since 'The Green Mile', but I thought 'The Mist', 'Gerald's Game', '1922', and 'Doctor Sleep' were all pretty great.
If I was up to me, I'd have Frank Darabont, Rob Reiner, Mike Flanagan and Zak Hilditch handle all of King's films, since they are the only directors who seem to be able to adapt his writing.
Agreed.
I remember watching this in a cinema and being taken completely off-guard when Ethan's likeable covert ops team are executed. By the same token, I was also very non-plussed by the third act twist.
[quote]As soon as anything becomes popular these days, the woke types weasel their way in immediately, you can't even get a few decent seasons without things getting tainted. They just can't help themselves can they? [/quote]
The show has a murderous villain who is an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez analogue...
The pistol has an inscription reading: "Raphael Adolini 1715".
There was a comic that explained the entire backstory - Raphael Adolini was a pirate and the captain of a pirate galleon who encountered a Predator off of the Guinea Coast, Africa, in 1718.
I would have loved to have seen a sequel to Predators ... I thought staging the action on an alien planet was a great idea.
Where these movies inevitably fall down is when they try too hard to explore Predator society: the war between the Super Predators and Jungle Predators, the training ritual using Xenomorphs, the Predators attempting to improve themselves with the DNA of humans, the Predator-killer armour, etc. We don't need to know that much about the monster.
[quote]If/when you get the time/inclination, I'd be keen to see what recs. you might have that sparked your last opinion.[/quote]
Just off the top of my head: 30 Coins, Archive 81, All of Us Are Dead, Beyond the Walls, Black Spot, Black Summer, Chapelwaite, Castle Rock, Dead Set, Firebite, From, Ghoul, Hellbound, Lisey's Story, Marianne, Midnight Mass, Servant, The Outsider, The Haunting of..., and Wolf Creek.
I also really enjoyed the first three seasons of Fear the Walking Dead, before they rebooted it with the exact same tone as The Walking Dead.
I loved this series, too - I thought it was a great adaptation of Dan Simmons' enormous novel and that it substantially improved upon the source material. The writing, acting, music, and production design were top stuff.
I'm baffled that they decided to turn it into: a) an anthology series, using b) a story that wasn't adapted from Simmons' other novels. It was weird way to try and recapture lightning in a bottle.
Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I think horror TV / streaming series are starting to pull ahead of films in terms of overall quality (particularly in Western nations).
I think the best Predator films are easily Predator (1987) and Predators (2010).
I also thought Alien vs. Predator (2004) was quite fun and has aged well, despite the fact that it creates problems with the continuity of the Alien films.
Predator 2 (1990) had a better premise than execution, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007) was badly made and The Predator (2018) had obviously been hacked to bits in the editing room.
[quote]Sounds like present day.
To make it more authentic, they should speak Comanche and have subtitles…like Mel did with Apocalypto. [/quote]
The film was shot in English and Comanche. On Hulu, there will be a Comanche dub of the movie, so you can watch the entire movie in Comanche with the original actors returning to perform their roles.
[url]https://www.slashfilm.com/886791/prey-will-give-viewers-the-option-to-watch-the-film-in-the-comanche-language/?utm_campaign=clip[/url]