I haven't seen the Force Awakens, but I saw The Last Jedi. TFA just didn't get my attention, and I love Star Wars.
Given that I wasn't actively influenced by the first movie, my general thoughts were "Eh. Not bad."
I mean, the entire plot of TFA pretty much was a rehash of the OT, with a few twists I've had years to learn about, but nothing outside of Han made me think I missed anything by not seeing the first movie in this one.
I can appreciate many of the complaints (Snoke, Reys family, Luke fucking off) of TLJ, but not be that influenced by them. Which, maybe makes me luckier than some, since I'm not going to be that invested in 'Jesus, all this build up about snoke, to kill him off", etc. And I won't feel trolled, since, pretty much even the film itself tells you it's going out of its way to be a subversion, not give answers, etc.
So, I'd say it was okay--at least on it's own merits--but I feel like it was shades of ESB. I like the themes it was going for--and I would maybe say it's the most overt in that sense-- but, I think if you take the movie by itself, it was fun, but nothing really amazing from most standpoints, although it was different from your 'traditional' SW, which I consider both good and bad in some senses.
I'd honestly put it beneath Ep III---Which I think gets no respect, and ranks pretty high on my Star Wars listing--and Rogue One, which I thought was really damn good.
Admittedly, I half expect the next ep to be like "PSYCH, THERE ARE ANSWERS TO STUFF" and then have to revise my estimate.
I mean, I kinda wonder what the plan is now, since the entire resistance is down to like a hand full of dudes, but I do feel they would have to do something amazing to cover this in like two hours, or have a bunch of supplementary material, or go for hit squad or something.
I did find DJ to be one of my favorite characters, though. That dood is mah boi.
But, I digress.
Last edited by Miburo; 09-18-2018 at 03:59 PM.
So, I feel more positive about the Avatar adaptation. Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino are showrunners and they said in a press release that Netflix is committed to their artistic vision. They want to "go deeper," and realise the series on as cinematic a scale as possible.
They've also said no whitewashing, the cast will be culturally appropriate.
I am so much more receptive to this series now.
I am just worried about the special effects. In live action series they usually try to have powers that don't require a lot of CG or special effects. I am not sure practical effects will work with any bending other than air and fire. For air all you need is wire work and a large fan for the most part. Not so much water or earth bending. Firebending at least can use flamethrowers. Then you have that almost all the animals are specifically different to the point a normal bear was considered weird by the Gaang. It just seems like the worst kind of series to make live action because it's not low fantasy by any means.
While Bryan and Michael are talented, I feel the absence of the other guy who was one of their head writers (I can't remember his name) on Avatar might hurt the live action version, much like his absence hurt Legend of Korra. Not that they don't still do good stuff mind you.
Coincidently Dragon Prince (by the aforementioned writer), is currently up on Netflix right now and is pretty damn good. Best way to describe it is Avatar in a more western, talken esque setting.
an almost scientific breakdown of "rap devil" and "killshot".
I stumbled upon Yukito Kishiro's (Battle Angel Alita) Youtube Channel by accident recently.
Watching the guy craft a page is something to behold. I thought his inks were digital since Last Order, turns out it's just been the shade and texture fills.
However, this being Yukito Kishiro, there's only a handful of process videos uploaded, the rest are blogs of his pet pugs.
Kishiro is so damn talented.
Also the story telling the Mars Chronicle has been really good as well recently.
Budget for the move was 150 million in 2010. That's a bigish budget but it's not earth shattering.
Huh, through looking that up, I also found out that the movie was a financial success worldwide. Go figure.
But the problem with that film was not how they tried to CG the effects, it more based on how they choose to shoot them.
The camera work and editing in TLA is some of the more bizarre things about that film. If they'd constructed their scenes better and given the editors and VFX guys good stuff to work with, the film would not have been as terrible.
You'd still have terrible casting, a bad script, woeful performances and pacing that was all over the place, but the fights would have been decent.
Crossposting this here:
Ichigo: What even *are* you?!
Kenpachi: Some say my mother was a train. Some say that I'm a rejected Godzilla monster too strong for the series canon. But everyone says: I'M THE KEEEEENPACHIIIIII!!!!
Nice to see HxH get so many reps, I think there's no way that DBZ and Naruto get less than 4 at this rate.