jamvetzal

Let me just establish first that i grew up in the revival period of Star Wars, i watched the original VHS tapes, i vividly remember the special editions coming out, i remember there being no star wars games, then suddenly Rogue Squadron and Shadows of Empire being a large part of my childhood, i grew up knowing what the sith are, who Jorus C'Boath was, that Leia had twins with Han and that Luke starts a new order, the majority of my books are either physics texts or Star Wars/Lucas reference books. even in school, many lessons were taught with star wars references, from philosophy to english.

i own virtually every different full edit of Star Wars, original theatre, original special edition, bluray saga (cause the first home releases were significantly shortened to fit tapes of the day, i dont have those) even including the radio drama which portrayed all the deleted scenes from the original trilogy.

and this was entirely what i was hoping to see from episode 8, it was damned near perfect.

i wont delve much into plot details, but i do need to talk about what other people are complaining about and why that's an exceptionally silly complaint for Star Wars film.

1. star wars is about the heroic cycle, both individually and in society; this is why episode 1, 4, & 7 are all essentially identical, this is literally intended for the bloody message of the Star Wars saga, that problems repeat.

2. Star Wars is completely an opera, which is to say not only is sound design the most important component here, but every line of dialogue is written to be part of the music, lines that repeated in each movie are repeated for the same reason the star wars main theme is used AND that the plot is supposed to be fantastical relying on coincidence and luck to save the day (which isn't bd writing when a major point of the series is how coincidence and luck are the driving force behind everything)

3. Rey's supposed parentage only aligns with the past trilogies & core messages of Star Wars in that change is always made by collection of nobodies at the end of the day, heroes are nobodies until suddenly they are heroes for doing something that they couldn't have imagined not doing.

Luke himself is nobody, there's Luke the Legend whom literally is nobody real, and Luke the person that chooses to be nobody because he's seen himself destroy the balance his father created.

4. a lot of people are complaining bout how it embraced the jedi order too much, didn't focus on "grey jedi" being the real path...only the movie explicitly was explaining that jedi isn't anything, it's not a tradition, it's a way that will always exist and ideally the jedi need to accept the balance instead of only embracing the "light side", Yoda's scene (which tied off his Clone Wars storyline) is explicitly explaining this.

5. disney is trying to recreate the feeling in star wars where we have no clue where things re going or what will happen next, one drawback of the prequels was knowing that certain characters must survive and others must do X, even though i love the prequels to, this is certainly something that took away from the suspense....while the new trilogy is throwing a wrench at the way people expected things to happen & catching people off guard like paternal revelations.

6. Luke's path in this new trilogy is like every master he's known before himself, and importantly emphasizes that change needs the help from older generations that have given up on trying to change things, Luke readily accepted his shame and decided to leave the galaxy be since he's only made things worse, this aligns with Kenobi, Yoda, Vader, and crucially doesnt align with Qui-Gon (who has been established as a truly wise grandmaster as he teaches Ben & Yoda the truth) as he knew even his death would serve purpose in the force with both good and bad consequences.

that's all i can think of now, and to underline my passion here, my "a" is pretty busted and almost every single "a" in this page needed to be manually added, that's how strongly i feel this needed to be said, cause SOOOOOO many people have completely not paid attention T.T

I remember first seeing the trailers and thinking that this may redeem M. Night after having bombed Last Airbender so incredibly hard, well actually, i thought it looked pretty good until finding out M. Night was attached and my expectations took a huge dive bomb down. i remember when it opened and i had absolutely no intention of seeing it as the reviews had not been so bad for a sci-fi film in a long while, i assumed it was crap and left it on the list of 'never see' until i was waiting around in a cruise ship bedroom, killing time with the TV, one of the only movies on was After Earth, which i happened to catch from the very beginning, assumed i wouldn't want to finish it, then found myself surprisingly pulled in.

three things were clear to at least me about this movie after watching it, 1. it was marketed as containing way more action and seemed to mostly focus on such action in the trailers, 2. it was actually a psychological science fiction film concerned almost entirely with a broken father/son relationship, something i've found rarely pays off when connecting to the audience that it most concerns. most importantly, 3. that the biggest pints of contention for this film like every single supposed 'plot hole' is yet another example of common people having no clue how to think about what an actual plot hole is. every claim about how this movie handles evolution comes from people who must not have actually watched the movie, it's stated that humanity has been gone for a thousand years and everything there evolved to kill humans, nowhere is it stated that this evolution occurred DURING that 1,000 years absence and although 'to compete with humans'would have been more correct, it's not so entirely wrong that it can't even be explained by Will Smith's personal point of view about life around him, to him perhaps this ability to compete with humans is akin to having evolved to kill humans.

more importantly, there isn't really anything known to science that would completely annihilate all life on earth permanently, short of something occurring that essentially would leave no earth left, life would only require time to bounce back from a catastrophic climate failure that would have forced humanity to leave. as a matter of fact there are 5 confirmed periods of history where almost complete annihilation of life occurred and currently it's believed that the diversity of life now is in turn among the lowest it's ever been. even total nuclear devastation would likely see life come thriving back eventually as is evidenced by Chernobyl where the plant life entirely adapted and animals there thrive while being near extinct elsewhere.

the exact time scale of such events may not be exact, more likely this would take tens of thousands of years, however given that it's neither known what the catastrophe was and exactly what aspect of this forced humanity to leave, we can hardly attempt to state an actual correct timeline for the revival of life, for all we know it was a relatively sudden change in plant biology that once again shifted a change in the gas contents of earth, as in the far distant past, oxygen was indeed toxic to life and did not primarily compose the atmosphere until some plant ancestors started doing things differently and exhaled oxygen.

this could also explain why the oxygen content was low and required the gel despite so much vegetation, though an abundance of oxygen in the atmosphere would also be dangerous to breath in.

most importantly though, this movie is not about Jaden vs. Earth or jaden vs. the ursa, it is a movie without a true antagonist in the sense that the protagonists are their own enemies, which is largely (imo at least) the point of this movie, not the sci-fi, not the action, it's the philosophy of acting that drives the story. jaden's character needed to learn control and trust and to forgive what happened to his sister, which was more important in explaining the character's motivations and how they respond to the crash more than the actual crash itself, every mistake jaden makes is precisely because he feels his father constantly under-rating like everybody else, while will's character would actually rather see himself die and his son survive than see his son die trying to save his father.

so it's not a perfect movie, very few movies are, but it's something that needs a re-examination as there's tons of smart little stuff and wise messages, from why the door opens and closes instead of trying to seal around a body (if it tried sealing without a perfect seal, it would likely burn out the climate control) to a ring Will wears that when touched to the hull treats the ship as a particle detector, which is how he 'sensed' that there was impending trouble.

people nit pick and generally tend to will fully misinterpret sci-fi sometimes, this is definitely one of those times, not flawless but not terrible.

some episodes are utterly brilliant pieces of animated comedy that have non stop jokes about the television industry, it feels entirely meant to be this little cheesy spin off that is cancelled after a largely forgettable run where it's constantly poking at it's own inception, process and delivery.

people need to understand that the family guy universe is like monty python where it's about catching people off guard with horizontal humour, it absolutely doesn't make sense that there's a Spanish inquisition in modern day London or a telemarketing bear named Tim that's afraid of the woods. comedy is a pleasant surprise, not always the logical path, that's boring because because people that know comedy see every joke coming where family guy and cleveland show catch you constantly off guard. it's mostly a funny show if you realize that it's intended to be ridiculous and if you know your television, not just sitcoms but process and general history of how things were made from scripts to on television or film because all of it's best jokes are meta references

the second episode of the second season of Cleveland Show (which is the first live airing of the taping of an animated series) is one of the funniest animated episodes of anything ever. (i can entirely see it being conceived as a Family Guy episode and adapted for Celeveland Show but it was still brilliant)

First off I'd like to say a lot of reviews here are missing points or focusing on way wrong things or must be still butt-hurt and scared about it being a reboot because as a pretty big spider-man fan, seen every show (most episodes of some, all episodes on the 90's and onwards) watched every movie several times, played almost every game (that n64 one ruled) and have digital copies of every single issue. Spiderman is my morally compass, I often stop and ask myself when faced with a challenge or adversity, what would spider-man do? So when I say I loved this film, know that it's coming from a pretty passionate fan. And now I'll get on with it. Basically I found this movie felt like the first 2, but done better to more what spider-man is like in the comics and Andrew did a great job as spider-man/Peter and was way more convincing visually as a nerdy teenager. The acting was all around good, effects were great (especially loved how good lizard looked) and from what I read the director wanted to use as little cgi as possible and one of the results of this was filming somebody actually swinging and followed him with a specially rigged camera, which looked great in the movie. The story may actually be the weakest part but largely just because a lot about his parents was left in the air, however what they didn't answer is suppose to carry on into the next film. And with every adaptation ones changes, for the most part I prefer this over the first movie. Web shooters are awesome and he never actually does catch the guy that killed Ben which is different but I like how they transitioned spider-man originally starting the crime fighting just solely to catch (and probably kill) the guy that killed his uncle to stopping lizard. There was a big change in the origin with him never starting as an entertainer (though it is sort of included to be the inspiration for the mask) where in the comics it was TV and wrestling, he was already a celebrity by the time he started crime fighting which you're probably realizing now they already greatly downplayed his entertainer career from being a lengthy exploit to a 2 minute fight, too falling into a ring from the roof. This was all good IMO.

Next is the villain, I've read some complaints about lizard's appearance and motivations being less than reputable quality but lizard looked very much like that (face wise in particular) in his first appearance, while the plot of wanting to turn the whole city into lizards, well he's tried it at least once for sure so no stretch there from source. As for his motivations, he's a mutated giant lizard, he pretty much went insane and animalistic while maintaining his intelligence and parts of himself, that's the bloody point of the character, he attacks Manhattan trying to make everyone better because Connors in him is a good guy trying to do good, but he attacks the city because he is the lizard and has suffered mentally from the changes, when somebody deteriorates mentally you don't really need a logical explanation (no he wasn't really helping people or making them better but he thought he was) and this is made quite obvious through the movie even going as far as him like immediately having this "oh sh!t" moment about what he did immediately after saving peter's life which was immediately after he was cured and no longer had the lizard eating at his mind. I'd also like to note I was very impressed with the combat also, very, very acrobatic and filled with witty remarks which vividly reminded me of spidey from the comics. The spider- sense was well done too and shown a lot more and if I remember correctly during the training scene it shows him using it to web swing (which is made almost entirely possible by his spider sense) All and all I'm happy with it and will likely consider it my favourite (have to re-watch 2 to be sure) with the only real disappointment being the backlash I've read on this film and that lizard (while cool) isn't one of spidey's all time greats

First I have got to say the reason I am writing this is the gut wrenching feeling I got in my stomach of all the bad written reviews of this film by people who just quite frankly don't know comics, understand and from the sounds of it is just the wrong person for anything comic related. This is a comic book movie based on one the oldest marvel super-heroes, a character that was created during the war by one of the legends because she was an exceptionally patriotic man and figured the best way for him to help the effort was make comics about super-heroes and the war. So far most of the bad reviews I've read on this movie focus on a few things which make me face palm. As follows 1. Wtf is this Hydra?! Where are the Nazis?! And similar complaints about red skull being a bad character with no backstory given (even though sufficient backstory is given to his creation) and the movie explains that hydra is a nazi science division, this is not only straight frm comics but straight from the established origin, without hydra there isn't really a captain America 2. Technology too advanced, characters unbelievable in abilities. These people clearly missed the point that this is a marvel comic book movie where the evil villain's plot revolves around a very powerful Norse god energy source....why do you expect realism with that? And really all the weapons did was release that energy in controlled bursts, they didn't develop this new energy source, they found it in the first 10 minutes of the movie. And captain America is a super hero, a super human, that is the point of him, he has unbelievable strength and speed (for a human) if you don't like that, see another movie 3. It's just another America flag waving feel good movie, LAME! seriously I'm a Canadian, and captain America is in my top ten all time favourites, I love my country, my people and I'm not entirely fond of the American military or government, but I love the cap, mostly because he isn't about blind patriotism to the stars and stripes (anymore) and stands for the ideals of the flag, not the flag itself (despite being a walking flag, he more recently went completely against the American government during Marvel's Civil War because of ideals) back during the war this was very much more blatant patriot propaganda basically and very much he was the patriot and if the movie followed that same format I would agree with them , but the movie tries very hard to establish that what makes cap great is his heart, not the flag that's strapped to him and shows the whole captain America thing is literally marketing to sell him. The movie is called captain America, there's a lot of history to the character, respect what he was during the war (also the first comic book movie which was made during the war)

Now that I'm done with why not to listen to most the other bad reviews.

This movie was great, Im a big fan of movies and comics and know that the two won't visually mix well in modern times, so Im fine with slight changes to costumes and designs of characters for the purpose of fitting better in a real world and loved the new cap costume for the movie, it was practical and maintained the classic basic patterning of the suit. Hydra had the biggest change also but if the comic hydra appeared on screen, well it would be bad they are actively mocked for their look in comics, but they still kept key hydra elements in the costumes and I love that, they did an excellent design job. The story was pretty true to cap, probably a biggest change being the addition of stark (tony stark, his father and iron man didn't exist at all though, captain America came decades before him) and Bucky, who was little more than a gun crazed young teenager sidekick, something however Stan lee didn't like cap having, thinking a kid sidekick was reckless and irresponsible and simply unbelievable, so he was killed off in the comics, in the movie they made him older and kept most of the rest which is understandable and fine. And of course there is the great job they did connecting captain to the other movies and the avengers. Basically I'm just saying, this is a comic book movie revolving around a super soldier fighting a fictional force of evil with a fictional literal god power source, if you somehow find that stupid because it's not realistic (even though it never tries to pretend to be) look the other way and find a different movie. This movie is a great comic book movie and in my opinion one of the best comic book movies, a classic character, classic setting, at the very least captain deserves some respect for the history of the character.

stumbled upon this on netflix, it's based around a bumbling Canadian spy team that often succeeds because the villain is even more incompetent. it's pretty goofy, it's a comedy first so don't come to it looking for realism on how agencies really work. however being Canadian is probably required to fully get this show because there is a lot of local jokes in there or jokes that really appeal to Canadian nationalism (Canada secretly has the powerful army for instance) i don't intend to insult anybody but Americans for instance might not get the jokes about Canadian art counsel or CBC, so if your canuck i recommend, everybody else though you might find it meh

the worst thing this show had going for it was the fact that it was spawned from a geico commercial, literally everybody i knew, without seeing anything else assumed "worst thing on television and exactly whats wrong with television today," i myself went a couple years before knowing the show was actually made, and gotta say, actually pretty funny, it's not fart jokes or random gags though, it's very wry, sarcastic, and generally you do need to thinking about it for at least a moment to get it. and also, aside from staring cavemen, i have yet to literally see any link in it to the car insurance company, i believe the closest it got was one episode they got a car :/

I did not know what exactly i was going into, I was ready for a flop follow up to Revenge of Fallen, but kept in mind it could be great, and it was quite that, wicked, wicked action scenes, the plot was mostly pulled straight from the show, and certain things were predictable, but only because that's how it should have happened. However it was also filled with an incredibly obvious amount of "America! eff YEAH!" but is overlook able for the rest of the music. I'd have to say truly the movie's biggest set back was the song(s if the ending credits song is a different one) by Linkin Park in it, there are very few songs that were as cringe worthy as that, and i felt my ears just might bleed...luckily it was only played once during the actual movie, also Carly, was way better than Fox's character(who they bash fairly hard in it) and actually did something in this movie that was worth a damn (other than awesome eye candy shots)