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Have you read the Wayside School books? I haven't.
Have you watched the cartoon that was based off them? I actually have. And idk, I actually kinda liked it. To me, this is the fun type of "junk food cartoon". A fun time waster if you will.
Maybe one day I'll grab one of the books to really figure out if they're that better than the cartoon adaptation. Maybe the latest one (Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom) will wow me.
I enjoyed the ending to the Battlestar Galactica series. I know there were some missed opportunities but the writer's strike had an impact.
Ariel in Disney's A Little Mermaid doesn't drop everything for "a man".
She is clearly interested in land culture from the opening of the film, spending her time collecting shipwreck items and trying to learn what they are. She also isn't interested in the hobby her father wants her to do, singing.
King Triton is abusive when destroying Ariel's collection of artifacts, which makes you think of what else is going on with how he parents her.
So, Eric shows up and seems like a way out. It isn't a lot of information to go off of for adults, but it is something solid for a teenager.
And what did she give up to gain her legs? Her voice. People interpret it as her giving up being able to speak for herself, but it is her giving up the thing that her father cares about.
In the original cartoon, it is explicitly shown that Triton does not like, or enjoyed or wanted to harm or hurt Ariel by destroying her collection. He wanted to protect her from her own follies and didn't know what else to do. At worst, flawed but well intentioned.
This is obvious on the shot of his face, showing his sad expression, hurt and regret as he looks back at her and as she starts crying, as he leaves. This important nuance was completely cut out from the live action film. Doing so recontextualised the entire scene.
Which in the film does make him look like a crazy asshole father, do not know why this was done as it just unnecessarily vilifies him without reason and removes previously shown emotional depth and context from the cartoon. My guess was because he = man, and man = bad, which went along with some people working in the film and some others saying that she had dropped everything for "a man."
It is still an act of violence against things she loved. It may be well intentioned, but we wouldn't condone that behavior in real life.
Also I can't look past the fact that there's absolutely no way that they wouldn't establish a form of nonverbal communication. ASL? Enthusiastic head nodding?!
It seems like a lot of people complain about Doctor Who not really having any canon or rules, and contradicting itself constantly (sometimes within the same episode) but I don't think that's necessarily a failing because it's not trying to do that at all.
The trend these days is for a lot of shows, especially sci-fi ones, to be sort of 'internet-proof' and be designed to withstand the people who go through frame-by-frame looking for little errors and contradictions to pull apart, and Doctor Who ignores that completely and just aims to be big fun campy dramatic nonsense, which I think it mostly succeeds at. I think the only cardinal sin for that show is don't be boring, which IMO it pulls off more often than not.
And it's fine to not like that of course, but I don't get it when people try to call the show out for not doing something it's never really tried to do, at least since it came back in 2005.
The Van Gogh scene is amazing, and it made me think that I understand the purpose of the show
While I understand people's criticisms of Sucker Punch, I still really enjoy the movie and its soundtrack.
One of the most common criticisms I see is that their outfits have sex appeal. It's a totally valid criticism, but at the same time, I see this as Babydoll choosing an outfit that is the exact opposite of the unsexy hospital gowns she's forced as a way to escape her reality. I would do the same to be honest.
The lack of interpersonal conflict in Star Treks overseen by Gene Roddenberry is a good thing. Humanity got their shit together, made Earth paradise, and went exploring the galaxy and other frontiers in life. Shoehorning conflict and darkness into the newer series destroys what made it unique.
Seen shows where the writers --as they recalled-- originally removeded about this. Made writing harder, since it was more difficult to write plots, but fuck that, it made them think outside the box, which made for some excellent episodes Re: grander ideas and nuanced takes on many subjects. Most, if not all, have come around to seeing Gene was definately ahea of his time and came to agree, too.
However DS9 was excellent, even though it diverged from Gene's formula.
I couldn't quite pinpoint what I didn't like about the newer series, but you've nailed it - the hyper realistic tone it now has really clashes with the explorative nature of the old series.
There are some ways in which the newer shows like Discovery are realistic, but there are also ways in which they are stupid.
For example, two federation officers in a life or death situation where they have two minutes to solve an urgent crisis, and they decide to spend 60 seconds of that having an emotional heart-to-heart.
If that was in TNG, they'd have got the job done like professionals, and then had the friends chat later in ten forward. Because that's how people with jobs get their jobs done.
TNG era was quite cheesy in some ways, but it kept characters real in that they always acted appropriately for their role and position, not just like a bunch of emotional oddballs who get to be in charge of a spaceship for some reason.
Discovery was trash. Lasted until season 2 but the plot holes and inconsistencies and bad writing was too much for me. Not to mention the 'member berries. And the key jangling, and tech ahead of its time breaking all manner of canon. Agreed the over emotional stuff came off as trite and out of place for what was essentially a space navy.
So, they can detect anomalies all over the milky way? In real time? Writers said that Klingons represented Trump supporters? Why? Or, with the baddies destroyed they didn't have to travel in time. So why did they? Capital ships manoeuvring like borderline fighters? Plot contrivance from the writers? Okay. TNG or DS9 had their flaws but it was superior writing and seemed to be written for adults or did not insult its audience's maturity, regardless of age. Discovery seems to have been written for kids or emotional teens. Lots of pew-pew action, too.
Well said. Discovery was more about individualism and the "rich tapestry" of family histories to show that these characters have inherited their greatness and that no one else is equipped to be in the singular intense situation they are now in.
TNG was more about the mission. Sometimes family history came into it, but most of the team was just doing the best they could given the circumstance and their characteristics were more quirks that helped the overall effort. At least that's how it felt. Not one single character was more special than another.
No particular heroes, just professional heroics.
Sonic Adventure 2's mech stages. I actually loved those stages and was really surprised to learn that so many people didn't like them, I always found it so satisfying getting good combos!
In the last season of The Crown, Princess Diana's "ghost" makes an apperence to Charles and the Queen. People were super upset, saying that it's offensive to speak for her in that capacity.
That show is not fantastical, and they have never shown "ghosts." I took it as those characters having a mental conversation with her, like, technically talking to themselves, as part of their grieving process, and not that the actual spirit of Diana came from the afterlife to tell Charles it's cool.
Memory or not, they're putting words in the mouth of a deceased woman to make a survivor feel less guilty
I guess, but wouldn't that complaint apply to the whole show? I took the scene(s) as them being so far removed from Diana that they couldn't even conjure her memory properly. Her kids didn't have scenes like that, and I can't imagine her "ghost" not seeing them. I think it's because they didn't feel guilty, at least not like those two, so they didn't have manufacture an apology, they had nothing to apologize for. ~~I'm also reading way, way, too much into it.~~
Lord of the Rings (the books) are terribly written by modern novel standards and while the story is amazing their value purely as literature is quite low. I will always defend people who loved the movies and couldn't get into the books.
Yeah, I stopped reading The Two Towers halfway through when it switched to Frodo's and Sam's perspective and I knew it'd just be a slog to get through.
Yea - the endless stair case is what I think of whenever I recall Tolkien's writing style.
I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree completely. They are written in a different style than we're used to today, but they're masterfully done. To me, the movies are largely good adaptations, but the books are far superior.
But that's the nice thing about taste: everyone's entitled to their own.
I've read the Hobbit and the fellowship a few years ago. I absolutely adored the Hobbit, genuinely think that is an awesomely written book. Fellowship however, is not a fun read, despite the content in the book actually being good. But the act of reading it is not.
The Hobbit is far better than LotR. It's no contest.
Dark Souls 2 gets so much hate for a few things that I don't see as a big deal, or gets blamed for things that are present in the other games in the series.
They tied a stat called Adaptability to your dodge, so you have to level up that stat to get the same number of invincibility frames as the previous game. I did not notice at all until I read complaints about it. I never felt entitled to a certain number of i-frames. I can see how it might be annoying to someone with more experience from DS1, but it's far from a deal breaker for me.
People complain about hitboxes, as if DS1 isn't full of nonsensical jank in this category.
They complain about enemy spam, as if there aren't 12 undead crammed in a small room before the Gargoyle boss who will body block you if you don't deal with them. Or 8 Taurus demons followed by 6 Capra demons in a row. Or 40 crystal undead that hit like trucks in the Duke's archives. Or another 12 undead in one room in The Depths.
Then there's the magic bullet - Miyazaki wasn't that involved. Ok, well does that mean the rest of the company is useless? Maybe he should create the entire games all by himself just to make sure those pesky colleagues don't screw it up. It's so disrespectful to the rest of the team to imply they aren't shit without him.
People cry "development hell" when you point out the very unfinished second half of DS1, but crucify DS2 which had a massive change of direction and redesign halfway into development.
One that always stood out to me was the ending of the Tom Cruise war or the world's movie.
Now to be clear, this is not a good film and I don't recommend that anyone bothers to go watch it, but a criticism I regularly saw was that the ending was bad - the aliens all just die suddenly.
That was literally the only thing that film got right from the source material. They changed literally everything else in an attempt to modernise it, it didn't work but they at least kept the ending and that's the bit people didn't like.
Yeah. It's a movie about surviving. Not winning. And the opening sets up the end.
Everyone is on fire in this thread. Every comment legitimately interesting and well thought out. Upvotes abound. (Apologies for the meta)
A big complaint I saw about the live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation for Netflix was that the acting was too cartoony/over-the-top.
Personally, I thought the acting was spot-on for what they were trying to accomplish. It was meant to be a live-action anime, so it was never intended to be 100% tethered to reality to begin with. The characters are meant to be characters, and I thought they did a great job with it. Spike, Faye, and Jet were all perfectly-cast, IMO, and they all felt like their original characters felt from the animated series. There are so many times where you can just close your eyes and listen to them talk to each other, and it feels exactly like it felt watching the anime on Adult Swim back in the early 2000s as a kid.
I honestly loved the live-action adaptation and thought it was amazing. I'm still immensely disappointed that the reception was so poor that Netflix decided to cancel it halfway through the story. There are so many characters I wanted to see that didn't appear until later in the original series. I would've loved to see a live-action Toys In The Attic or Heavy Metal Queen.
The movie Tomorrowland. I don't understand why anyone could not like it. Maybe because I watched it in German, but I love this movie. It has character, it has character arcs and development, it has fun gadgets and delivers more than once a great message, that's motivating and gives you something to think about. It has an amazing fantasy world and I enjoy the dialogues too.
Sure they could've shown more of the high tech society and some lines are a bit cheesy, but I never saw the audience to be 18+ and more on being also entertaining to kids.
There are dozens of us!
The Zelda complaint is extra bullshit considering other open-world games like Just Cause do exactly the same thing by giving the guns limited ammo, so you constantly have to switch weapons based on what the enemies drop.
I mean if I run out of RPG ammo in GTA I can buy more for a universal currency I don't have to keep beating crime lords down with a big stick until one of them drops a fresh one.
Considering in prior Zelda games you didn't have to worry about your sword being unusable or your shield breaking (inb4 "what about...", there's like three circumstances in a dozen plus games, cmon.), I can understand why folks weren't so keen on it in the new ones. Yeah you could run out of magic, arrows, or bombs, but that boomerang wasn't going anywhere.
BotW is just not a Zelda game at all. It is a very mid outdoor walking simulator with fetch quests. I don't care about the breakable weapons, even. I want the collection of tools, the long dungeons with puzzles using those tools, and the bosses vulnerable to those tools.
It has dungeons: The four divine beasts.
IMO It put a lot of the "Use a particular tool for this" puzzles into the shrines to scratch the puzzle solvers itch, (along with some of the Korok seeds.) but even those still gave leeway to not having to use those tools at all.
I think there would have been less issue with the Zelda weapon system if they started you with a bigger inventory space or made the tree guy who expands it someone you talk to and learn where to meet them later at the beginning of the game.
I think if you're comparing open world games to open world games then yeah, BOTW doesn't do anything too terribl differenty, but when you compare BOTW to other Zelda games then it's very different and that's where the criticism comes from.
Personally I feel BOTW is a very competent open world game, probably one of the better ones I've played but I still didn't gel with it because I was already strongly feeling fatigued from too many games becoming open world and not making that leap particularly well (Mass Effect Andromeda and FFXV coming to mind for me personally), what I wanted was a more traditional Zelda game and that's simply not what BOTW was.