dmshrmed

I enjoyed watching this for the most part, but it often felt like watered down Adventure Time fan fiction. There's a good chance that that's what Fionna and Cake is supposed to be, so I'm not going to be too harsh on it. I just didn't feel as much of a connection to it as I wish I did.

Adventure Time is one of my favorite, if not my favorite, animated shows. I remember seeing the first few commercials for it ages ago on Cartoon Network and honestly thinking that it looked stupid. But when I watched it, I realized just how wrong my perception had been. The show undisputedly had a soul, and was unlike anything I'd seen up to that point.

Fionna and Cake, however, seems to be lacking some of that soul and imagination. It's not totally without it by any means, but it isn't able to match Adventure Time. It also feels strangely depressing in a way that is hard to describe. It's like it knows that it's depressing, but doesn't want to admit it. Maybe that feeling is intentional, but I can't say it improved the experience for me.

I feel like I'm going to get a lot of hate for this, but it also needs to be said. There is almost nothing redeeming about this show. Nearly every single aspect of it is subpar.

I have never watched a live adaptation of an anime, so it makes me question just how incredibly awful other live adaptations must be for this to be considered a good one by so many.

I'm not saying that there's no passion or effort behind this show, but it really doesn't show. All of the fun, energy, and thoughtfulness present in the anime's visuals and Japanese voice acting is just no where to be found here. The visuals are cheap and amateurish, while the acting is stale and unconvincing.

Animation and live action are two equally great but very different mediums. They are both visual and auditory experiences, but the way to make each convincing is not the same process. Bridging the gap is no easy task, so I respect the attempt, but in the end, this show just doesn't work.

I didn't expect much better, considering the quality of some of the recent Disney Star Wars shows, but I'm still ultimately disappointed.

I feel like there was no heart behind this episode, like no one involved, aside from the cgi artists, actually cared about what they were working on here. The cinematography, costume work, pacing, writing, and editing, were all let downs.

Each shot was very unimpressive (especially compared to the concept art shown at the end). The quality of most of the alien costumes immediately distracted me from the story (I swear it's somehow significantly worse costume work than the original Star Wars, like Lucasfilm is pretending poor costume work is a stylistic choice, in order to cut costs). The grass pirate guy looked especially laughable. The pacing was erratic at best, making for an awkward experience. The writing, in terms of story, was questionable, as too many different side quests were thrust upon Mando too quickly (and that monster attack scene at the beginning felt poorly implemented, like Mando just needed a cool looking entrance, and this random scenario is what the writers came up with). The editing was really distracting throughout the episode, but especially in the monster attack scene.

The two Mando episodes embedded in The Book of Boba Fett were very good (the rest of The Book of Boba Fett was awful), so I was hoping that some of what made those so good would have carried over to the third season of The Mandalorian. Unfortunately, only the questionable alien costume work (the low point of those episodes) appears to be the only thing that made it to season 3 of Mando.

I am not convinced, yet, that this season will be a loser, but this was not a good start.

I was really looking forward to this film! I haven't been a huge follower of Del Toro's work but I am a big fan of stop motion. The character designs, the animation, and the concept of a darker take on Pinnochio were all very intriguing. And considering that pretty much every Pinnochio film is questionable at best (except for the old Disney one) and animated films had been in a bit of a rut, everything seemed to line up for a great experience.

But in all honesty, Del Toro's Pinocchio really wasn't anything groundbreaking. It was better than most Pinnochios, but that's not saying much. I appreciate the quality of the stop-motion, but the pacing was questionable, the music was (mostly) awkward, and it was annoyingly juvenile despite its extremely dark themes. By juvenile, I'm not referring to Pinnochio's childishness or lack of understanding; that makes perfect sense for the film. I mean that the writing overall just didn't seem very well thought out. Things just sort of happened, and then someone would start singing a questionably written musical number. It just felt very flat in that regard. Much more thought and effort was clearly put into the aesthetic, and it shows.

Guillermo Del Toro's Pinnochio seemed much more interested in being weird and different than actually being a competent story. It was a light in the dark for animation, but not a particularly bright one for storytelling.

The dictionary definition of "mess" should be officially changed to "The Rings of Power." What an absolute travesty of television. The show runners may as well have hosted an Amazon sponsored book burning of Tolkien's works and saved themselves the $500,000,000.

The structure of the show is contrary to effective character development. While there are plenty of examples of good shows and movies that jump between different plot lines, it is no easy task. This show does not give enough time for the audience to become invested in the characters, and that's not to say that it's too quickly paced. It's actually very slowly paced, and yet somehow feels simultaneously rushed. I think this can be attributed to wasted time. This "slow rush" could be compared to a one-sided conversation where the speaker goes on and on but without ever giving you enough detail to keep your interest. They speak like their idea is big and epic, using long words and pauses, but there's no rhyme or reason to these attempts at enhancing their point, so it just becomes boring and uninteresting, though aesthetically pleasing on a very basic level.

Further denigrating the mired structure, however, are the unconvincing caricatures that never become actual characters. The characters are perhaps the greatest shortcoming of this show. The majority of them are flat and uninteresting. There is no subtlety to any of them; nothing that makes them feel like more than just a set of notes given to an actor. For example, if a character in this show looks out into space, it doesn't feel like they're pondering something, it feels like the director just told the actor to stare blankly like they're pondering something. It's like these actors weren't given enough to work with, but it could ultimately be a product of poor acting as well. To put it simply, I'm just not convinced by the characters or the performances. I most often feel like I'm watching a boring stage play. I very rarely feel like I'm actually in this world. The only exceptions to this have been with Durin and Elrond. Those characters and their performances have at least somewhat made me feel like I'm watching a mediocre Lord of the Rings spin-off, and not a big budget, low effort fan fiction.

It really seems like the budget was lost in some inefficiency along the way, and this is evident even with the visuals. I have seen a lot of talk about the cinematography and visuals, and how they are apparently top of the line, but these aspects are honestly nothing to get excited about. The visuals try to be big and epic, but they always feel like they have nothing to say. It's like the visuals just exist to be pretty, without ever really portraying anything more than just that. The big sweeping shots of cities and landscapes make me feel nothing, because that's all they really are. These visuals are like a golden, bejeweled Easter egg with no candy inside, because even a polished shot is nothing without something more underneath. And, in all honesty, a golden-bejeweled Easter egg may be too generous, because there are plenty of issues with the cinematography, vfx, and action choreography.

For me, the nail in the coffin for this show was contained within the episode, "Udûn." This episode was the climax of all of the problems that have plagued The Rings of Power. Two sets of uninteresting/flat characters and their slow-rushed plot lines finally convene during a boring, questionably choreographed, poorly planned battle sequence that was trying to mirror the battle of Helm's deep. Five episodes of attempted development lead to a battle that struggles to hold your attention on any level other than, "yay, fire and sword fights," and to cap it all off, it turns out that even Mount Doom needs a half-baked origin story. It was impossible for me to find any investment in this battle, or its aftermath, because nothing leading up to it had drawn me in; and even if something had drawn me in, the battle and volcanic origin story were both incredibly dumb and contrived.

It is practically a guarantee that certain parts of an adaptation will differ from the adapted material, but this show is an excellent example of going too far with the changes. It just feels very unnecessary. Important characters that should be present are nowhere to be found, the timeline is utterly broken, the elven rings are the first to be built apparently (unless all of the others Sauron has already constructed, though Celebrimbor was supposed to have assisted with them, except for the One). It's unclear how any of these changes actually serve Tolkien's themes and not just the show runners' fan fiction. The saddest change of all relates to just how empty the Rings of Power world feels. The show runners stated that they wanted this world to feel lived in, but they utterly failed in that respect. I assume that the many other kingdoms will be introduced at some point in the next season, considering how the rings are related to them, but the writers, for now, seem more interested in callbacks to things that we saw in the Peter Jackson films than showing what's really important during the Second Age.

To summarize: I don't care about the characters, the action is unimpressive, the visuals are hollow, the plot offers nothing; it's all just a massive mess of disappointment that only leads to higher increments of disappointment. This show has no recollection of what it was trying to say, what it was trying to be, or what it was originally based on, assuming it was ever anything more than a two-bit, effortless cash grab to begin with.

"Adrift" has given me some hope that the show's bore of a start won't reflect the entire series, but it also planted the seeds for a plot line that seems fundamentally destructive to Tolkien's work.

The Dwarves really carry this episode. If they were not present, it may have been as uninteresting as the first. Everything about how they were introduced to how Elrond gets through to them, was fun, satisfying, and true to how Dwarves have been presented in Tolkien's works. The Men, Elves, and Harfoots (Hobbit predecessors) on the other hand, feel like facsimiles of Tolkien's work, rather than even somewhat faithful screen adaptations; they just seem boring and incredibly generic, like you could find them in any random fantasy world.

The major step down (though I guess one could argue it really started at the end of the previous episode) is with the introduction of what one could only assume is a Maiar. My guess would be that it's Gandalf from the not so subtle hints (whispering to bugs, standing tall and creating shadows etc.). This would make the Hobbits important to the greater dealings of Middle Earth thousands of years earlier than in Tolkien's works, which erodes much of their narrative impact in LOTR and The Hobbit. Originally, Gandalf came to enjoy being around Hobbits not because they were the first people he met in Middle Earth, but because they were simply a pleasant people. This episode's plot serves only to artificially and pointlessly recontextualize and nullify that by making his connection to the Hobbits a much more ancient one (the only reason the Harfoots and Gandalf would be in this show is to make money, plain and simple. It's just to make it more recognizable as part of LOTR, rather than actually telling a good story). I do think, however, that if this Maiar is actually Saruman, something new, interesting, and mostly faithful to Tolkien's themes, could surface from that, though my issues with the bland Harfoots may still stand (and the timeline will still be deeply broken).

As a side note, the visuals were still nice this episode, but not impressive by any measure. Honestly, the cinematography is extremely plain as I see more.

Considering the lore that this show is sitting on, it still has a lot of potential, but so far, it has been mostly boring and generic fantasy.

I haven't been this disappointed by an MCU film since Captain Marvel. Random, poorly paced, nonsense, low effort trash. What an absolute waste of a concept.

At least it was funny... not because it was written well but because it was impossible to take seriously. I laughed hysterically at every gruesome death, every lame attempt at horror, and every nonsense, pointless cameo.

I would accept this movie as a masterpiece if it was made purposely as a joke. It's like someone gave a $200,000,000 budget to a fan fiction writer.

This is the most painfully generic sci-fi show that I have ever seen. Not a grain of personality or vision, and it squanders everything that it borrows from the Halo franchise. Go watch the Expanse instead.

The horrors of war are often sidelined, in Stargate, for the sake of lighter themes. That works most of the time, given the show's mostly lighthearted and adventurous atmosphere. If every episode tried to dive deep into the true face of war, it simply wouldn't be the same show. This episode, however, using the previous episode as a necessary stepping stone, perfectly redirects a fairly typical Stargate plot into a masterpiece on the ugly chaos of war. It goes even further in asking how that side of war should be remembered, and whether it should be remembered at all. This was an episode that truly plays with your expectations, leaving nothing in exactly the place that you thought it would be, and doing so with genuine care and concern for the topics it's addressing. While I'm certainly up for more adventure, and will be watching and enjoying the rest of the series, this episode felt almost like a thematic finale for all of the horrors SG-1 and the SGC have suffered throughout the series.

What a weird, pointless, and boring episode. "Ascended" alien stalks Carter and fails to comprehend how wrong that is in human culture. I have no clue why an "ascended" being would be so careless. Considering the alien's desire to look human and act human, you'd think it would try to find the least creepy approach to interacting with Carter, and yet it does the exact opposite. Then Carter starts to like the alien because the writers said so I guess.

Also, I'm getting kinda tired of these episodes that offer humanity a way to defend itself and then immediately take that technology away. I understand that the show's going down the "with great power comes great responsibility" route, but it's getting repetitive. And when there's nothing else to make the episode interesting other than stalker alien love story, it really is just a pointless retread of a concept we've already seen in the show countless times.

SG-1, trying to save an entire people from the unfavorable conditions of their old home, bring them to the only planet in the Stargate system capable of supporting them. However, another species, far more ancient and advanced, began terraforming the planet before the people were resettled. The terraforming species also requires the unique conditions of the planet for the success of their terraforming process, and their civilization is otherwise completely lost outside of their terraforming ship. So what do you do in such a lose lose situation? Do you save the people that you promised a new home, and in the process destroy the last remnants of the advanced terraforming civilization, or do you condemn the people you brought to a fiery demise and allow the terraforming civilization to make its return?

Ultimately, at a surface level, the sequence of events is fairly predictable. The being on the terraforming ship (a messenger made by the terraforming civilization in the image of the people SG-1 brought) does not budge from his programming and refuses to compromise. O'Neill, forced to find a drastic solution, chooses to set up a bomb to destroy the terraforming ship. Carter and Jackson have difficulty choosing a side in the situation. Jackson reasons with the messenger and finds a compromise at the last moment. However, the incredible stakes and the fact that there is no remotely easy solution to this situation makes it extremely interesting to watch. It appears to be a choice between genocide and genocide. What a horrifying set of options. Ultimately the actual solution is very satisfying and does not result in the destruction of either group, and it was just unexpected enough that I honestly didn't know if the show was going to kill off one of the groups.

All in all, while I did know what was going to happen on a very basic level, I was engaged with the fact that I didn't know how the show was going to actually make that basic sequence of events occur. A story doesn't need a morally ambiguous question in order to be engaging and intriguing, but this episode uses a very gray situation to take the characters to the extremes of their beliefs. Great episode.

Every episode directed by Robert Rodriguez in Boba Fett and The Mandalorian has been subpar. All perfect examples of how bad directing can ruin good ideas. Just look at the concept art in the credits for an example of how even just competent cinematography could have vastly improved everything in the episodes that he's directed. Lazy, cheap, and incompetent; Rodriguez should stick to Spy Kids.

You may not agree that it's the best Marvel film, but it is at least the best of the Thors. The poor writing and lackluster characters that held back the previous Thor films are either done away with or remastered to a much higher quality.

Much needed humor is injected into the world of Thor. The previous two Thor's took themselves far too seriously. However, that does not suggest a lack of serious themes in this film. They take center stage when they need to.

You'll probably enjoy this film as long as you're not a pretentious man-child still clinging to comic books as if they're some kind of infallible scripture. Not every super hero film needs to be directly transcribed from a specific comic story. Get over yourselves.

The action sequences these last few episodes have been incredible. Really, it's been a marvel to watch. The buildup to whatever comes next has been extremely powerful. It's a perk I feel like the show has been lacking for a few seasons. The positives of this episode are fairly general, which is overall, a good thing. The cons are smaller, but still important. Some of the character decisions haven't made as much sense as they could. I guess there was some kind of romance that I missed between Qrow and Clover. Qrow's reaction to Clover's death felt over the top, especially since it wasn't clear that there was any extraordinary bond between them. Also, the fight did not feel like it was set up in a way that really made sense. Qrow and Clover's decision to fight each other, rather than focus on Tyrion, did not feel in character. On a plot note, it does bother me how one sided the show is being. It's obvious that the RWBY side is going to be right in the end, but it would be better if we didn't know that. It would be far more interesting if the tough decision (Ironwood) and the kind decision (RWBY) were not seen as so black and white by the writers. I get it... it's the battle between orders and personal feelings (a little cliche), however, it doesn't feel like Ironwood's huntsmen are just following orders. It seems like they actually believe in that course of action, so it's a bit unfair to say that their decision to back Ironwood is mindless. Overall, this was a good episode. Not as great as the one that came before it, but it was good. The problems mentioned are relatively minor in the grand scheme of season 7.

This episode felt real. All other episodes deal in plausible hypotheticals, but this one went as far as to be set in the present (past really). The acting was incredible. This was one of few pieces of media to ever bring a tear to my eye. It wasn't incredibly thought provoking (at least not in the same way past episodes have been) but it didn't really need to be. It wasn't displaying some semi-dystopian future. It gave us the "now", that which we experience every day. While it hit differently than past episodes, it certainly hit harder than most. There seem to be two main points this episode was trying to display. The first is the more obvious and the more central to the plot. Social media has negative effects on many people. These negative effects are generally born by built in addictive properties expertly constructed by social media companies. Perhaps when a grave mistake is made in association with social media use, its addictive properties are somewhat to blame. The episode gave us a guttural approach to how social media can break a normal person. The second is not as easy to notice (it might be difficult to catch if you focus too much on the song that plays at the end). It's there to add another (and yet equally important) gut punch to this already emotionally costly episode. The tragedy that occurs is nothing more than a phone notification or quick glance. After everything the lead goes through to say his piece, it means less than a like on a dog photo to the majority of people. This episode didn't have to dig too deep to make us think. It took things we already knew and, through excellent acting, created an emotional connection that is often lacking when we see a quick notification on our phones. I'm not wishing for another episode like this. This felt like a one-off thing and it probably should be. The one disturbingly real episode lodged deep into the series. It creates a greater impact through contrast. By being alone amidst futuristic dramas, this episode deliveries an impact that no other in the series is able to.

I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what it is, but this film is severely lacking in something the first one mastered.

Let's start with the easy stuff. There are way too many references and bad puns. Some reviewers would call these references "jokes the adults can understand", and while that is true, they aren't funny. They're just kind of there. They are references that exist for you to say "I get that". There is no "ha" preceding that. Yes, the original also had references and bad puns, but they were used well and there weren't nearly as many.

The first LEGO movie was very self aware, but it had a soul that really seemed to care about what it was saying. The second LEGO movie was so self aware that it was very difficult to take seriously.

There was an obvious message about how growing up should be about learning to work with different people, but it kind of fell flat beneath the veil of "play with others even if you don't like how they play". It honestly made me a little angry. Maybe it wasn't intentional, but the film seemed to suggest that traditionally masculine things are incapable of being used in an imaginative way. I couldn't help but feel a pinch of modern social politics biting for my throat.

The first film felt very apolitical, and I believe that's fitting for a film about a franchise of toys that cradled our imaginations before we cared about politics. This film certainly didn't "ruin my childhood" by any means, but it was a disappointment.

The majority of the film can be summed up with one word: meh. The rest of it is a little more complicated. Brie Larson's acting ranges from passable to unfitting. Many of the major plot drivers are loosely defined or borderline nonsensical. Cap'n Marv's power is all over the place. One moment she has difficulty fighting off a couple unpowered individuals. The next she annhilates a spacefaring warship by effortlessly propelling herself through it. The story itself is interesting, but it ultimately could have been told better. There are a few instances of arguably preachy feminism (the "cockpit" comment is the most laughable), but overall it takes a back seat to a wider statement about humanity's strengths as a whole. The pacing was strange, often fluctuating from too fast and too slow. I'm disappointed that the Skrull seem like they won't be big players like they are often depicted, but the films interpretation is ok even if a little cliche. Talos and the other Skrull are fun characters, but the actual villains are a little stale. Samuel L. Jackson successfully plays a younger, less experienced Nick Fury, and his exchanges with Goose the cat are some of the comedic highlights of the film. However, the overwhelming positive attention Goose has received when compared with characters who aren't just for comedic relief, says something bout the film as a whole. Considering the late addition into the MCU, I hope that Captain Marvel doesn't hoard too much of the spotlight from the characters we've been following for years in Avengers: Endgame. With that said, hopefully the character is improved by the Russo brothers before she inevitably takes the lead role in Phase 4 of the MCU.