Rate the latest movie you've seen.

[Blackleaf]

These guys actually make some interesting points about Luke in the Disney trilogy. I actually felt a similar way after watching the movies. I didn't feel that Luke was acting out of character at all. I still question how Leia didn't realize Luke wasn't really there, though, given the reveal that he was Force projecting himself. At least the final movie of the trilogy shows that passing objects to others through the Force is a thing, which explains how he gave her those dice if he wasn't actually there.

Imagine if a power like that was taken full advantage of. Got a powerful McGuffin the villain wants? He's about to take it from you? Just use the Force to pass it to someone on another planet. It's the universe's biggest game of Monkey in the Middle. Or maybe you've snuck into an enemy's base and found their plans. Pass it off to your allies, so they can take immediate action. It seems implied that the power is exclusive to Force users with a strong connection, like Luke and Leia, or Rey and Kylo Ren, but that kind of power could easily be exploited in creative ways.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Leia knew Luke was going to die there. Their bond was that tight.

[Hydra009]

that kind of power could easily be exploited in creative ways.

That's why writers need to be very, very careful about doling out superpowers.  A lot of powers can be used in creative ways and it'll wreck your story if you don't account for that.  Especially if they could plausibly use the power to get out of a dangerous situation and don't.

[Blackleaf]

That's why writers need to be very, very careful about doling out superpowers.  A lot of powers can be used in creative ways and it'll wreck your story if you don't account for that.  Especially if they could plausibly use the power to get out of a dangerous situation and don't.

You mean like DBZ and the Instant Transmission? Fans often asked why Cell couldn't transport away when Gohan was obliterating him, especially considering Goku demonstrated earlier that the whole finger on your forehead thing was not necessary. When he teleported in the middle of a Kamehameha, that made the Instant Transmission so incredibly overpowered. So why didn't Cell save himself with it? Same goes for Buu at the end of the series, since he also learns how to do it...somehow.

Fortunately, in these situations, there is one explanation that often applies. They were under pressure. It's easy to fumble when you're taken off guard. Ki control and the Force are both similar in the sense that it takes concentration and a clear mind to make the most of your abilities.

Heck, this isn't even limited to super natural powers. Remember when Palpatine told Anakin to kill Dooku? Fans often ask why Dooku didn't immediately blow Palpatine's cover right then and there, since he no longer had anything to lose. Why did he just sit there? Well, because he was in shock. Not only because he just suffered a major injury in battle, but because his closest ally just stabbed him in the back.

[Blackleaf]

I just came back from seeing...


I was pleasantly surprised. I know reviews for this movie have been mixed, with audiences typically liking the movie and critics dunking on it, and I wasn't totally sold on it after seeing the trailers myself. I did not like Chris Pratt's Mario voice, and I didn't like that he was from "the real world." However, when I actually sat down and watched the movie, neither of those things bothered me at all. The execution was really well done. We even see at the start of the movie that Chris Pratt could do a stereotypical Italian accent if he wanted to, but the director must have thought it would be better to go with a more realistic Brooklyn accent instead.

The voice cast in general was very good, and generally an improvement over the games, which isn't saying much. Listen to Toad's game voice and tell me you'd want to listen to that for an hour and a half. Or listen to Bowser's voice in Super Mario Sunshine and tell me Jack Black wasn't so much better. The only game voice I'm attached to is Charles Martinet, who thankfully does get a small cameo in the movie.

Typically when there's a "real world" and a fantastical world for the hero to be thrust into, the real world portion of the movie is the weakest part. You just sit through it, waiting for the hero to get to the fantasy world, so it can get good. The real world stuff was actually well done, though. I was never bored during any of it.

I find it funny how certain people complain about Peach being a "girl boss." People who make that complaint show how shallow their experience with Mario is. I have a pretty casual relationship with Mario games, but even I know Peach has been a playable character since Super Mario Bros. 2. Her being a capable badass is nothing new. Even in games where she's the damsel, she's still sometimes using her brains to aid Mario, like in Paper Mario.

As for Mario, some were concerned he would basically be portrayed as this incompetent idiot who can't do anything right. I figured from the start that he'd start off weak and grow to be powerful by the end of the movie, since starting him off as powerful would be boring and leave little room for growth. Well, neither prediction was right, actually. Right from the start, Mario is platforming around Brooklyn like a natural. It's only when he's introduced to the strange Mushroom Kingdom that he is shown to be lacking. Which, to be fair, nothing in the real world could prepare you for floating brick blocks, magic mushrooms, and man-eating piranha plants. After only one day of training, Mario has mastered the obstacle course. It basically equates to a short training montage. Anyone complaining about this, I suspect, has some serious political goggles on.

And then there are people complaining about Bowsers motivation, like it isn't consistent with basically every single Mario game ever made. Why do these people think Bowser is constantly kidnapping Peach? He even lied to his son Bowser Jr. and told him Peach was his mother. Come on, people. Pick up a controller. That being said, I never realized Mario was basically cucking Bowser this whole time. It makes sense, but since the games don't typically have much dialog, it never occurred to me that Bowser would see Mario as his romantic rival. I just figured he hated Mario because he always ruins his plans, same as why Eggman hates Sonic.

Speaking of Sonic, people always seem to be comparing this movie to the two Sonic movies. I don't consider them to be in the same ballpark. The Sonic movies were incredibly loose with the source material. They basically created their own canon, which is fine. I don't mind alternative canons, but the movies are so held back by their live action medium. They basically went the same route as every cartoon turned live action movie, with the animated character tied to a real human babysitter. In the second movie, they tried fix this by pushing the human characters off to the side with their own side plot, but they couldn't help but go with that really confusing bridezilla side plot. The Sonic movies are fine at their best, but are weighed down by their more questionable decisions. I would honestly rather they start over with an animated movie series than continue down the road they're currently on.

By contrast, the Mario movie is more like what I wanted for the Sonic movie. It's animated, for one. Second, it respects the source material. It's not one-for-one the same. The Mario bros are from Brooklyn, and I'm pretty sure there was no Kong Kingdom in the DK games, but aside from that? It's very Mario. The characters have the right personalities and motivations. The world's rules are exactly what you'd expect after playing the Mario games. It's basically a Mario game brought to the big screen, minus the shrill and annoying voices of the games. The sad thing is, Sonic games typically have a lot more emphasis on story and lore than Mario games, and yet it is the Sonic movies where they decided to just ignore the original canon and make up their own.

I'm glad Miyamoto kept such a close eye on Illumination. I'm sure that kept it to a high level of quality, and I hope he continues watching them like a hawk for the sequels and related projects. That being said, there are some Miyamoto-isms which bleed into the movie, which aren't positives. Miyamoto famously ruined the Paper Mario series. It's likely because of him that the Toad character of the movie is just named Toad. Like...every other Toad in the kingdom. That's like me calling other people Human. It's a minor complaint, which doesn't affect the movie too bad, but I do wish Miyamoto would knock that shit off.

[Hydra009]

Remember when Palpatine told Anakin to kill Dooku? Fans often ask why Dooku didn't immediately blow Palpatine's cover right then and there, since he no longer had anything to lose. Why did he just sit there? Well, because he was in shock. Not only because he just suffered a major injury in battle, but because his closest ally just stabbed him in the back.

True.  But in fairness, sith backstabbing is so pervasive (one of only two ways to get promoted from apprentice to master) that it's not that much of a shock.  Though Dooku might not have known that or it might've happened far sooner than he anticipated or whatever.  So that gets a pass.

But when you introduce game-changing stuff like force healing or hyperspace ramming, it creates all sorts of questions about why these techniques weren't used in other situations and it eats away at a show's internal consistency.

The solution a lot of shows come up with that imo works best is that such boons are due to some external intervention or one-use item or other such contrivance and are thus a limited time opportunity.  That way you can do something super cool without breaking the show's internal consistency.

[Hydra009]

I find it funny how certain people complain about Peach being a "girl boss." People who make that complaint show how shallow their experience with Mario is.

I suspect that it's from conservatives who caught a sneak peak of Peach in a non-princessy attire and assumed the rest and leveraged the fact that the audiences typically do very little fact-checking and just eat up whatever's on offer.

[Blackleaf]

I suspect that it's from conservatives who caught a sneak peak of Peach in a non-princessy attire and assumed the rest and leveraged the fact that the audiences typically do very little fact-checking and just eat up whatever's on offer.

Oh my god! What did they do to Peach? She doesn't dress like that! They're trying to make her more masculine to be appealing to the woke mob!



...Okay! So she wore that exact same outfit before. But what about the halberd? Peach has never used weapons before!



God damn it! Why won't this video game character conform to my narrowminded view of what femininity is?

[Hydra009]

Yeah, and the Super Princess Peach video game has her in a starring role rescuing Mario.  Definitely part of the woke mob that cropped up recently.  Oh, that game was released in 2005?  Hrrmm...

[the_antithesis]

Moviebob notes that those conservatives walked back their criticismsof SMB when the movie became a hit. That and none of them said much about the most woke movie this year, Cocaine Bear.

Moviebob himself is a bit of a controversial figure, I guess. So take that for what it's worth.

[Hydra009]

Moviebob notes that those conservatives walked back their criticisms of SMB when the movie became a hit.

Go woke, go broke.  Or not.  Mostly not.

[Hydra009]

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 out of ten.

It kills me to type this, but it was bad.  Like really bad.  I don't recommend seeing it, especially if you liked the first two.

I went into it expecting a wacky action comedy with a gang of misfits who also love each other like family.  That's the formula.

The third movie was basically Schindler's List, both in tone and substance.  Way way WAY too dark and gruesome and cruel.  So many scenes were gooey and disgusting and kinda gruesome and morbid.  It was super messed up in ways that the "controversial" mutineer action scene in GOTG 2 never even came close to touching.

The whole experience was like expecting Weekend at Bernie's and getting The Reanimator.  Or expecting Air Bud and getting Old Yeller.  Or expecting Thing from The Adams' Family and getting Stephen King's The Thing instead.  This movie is like that teleporter accident Star Trek The Motion Picture.  Almost all the lightheartedness is gone and replaced with something seriously repugnant.  They veered way too far off the tried and true formula.

Almost all the new characters are unlikable, with the notable exception of the best friend a man could ask for.

The songs - normally fairly apropos and meaningful to the point of sometimes being a part of the plot like Brandy - mostly didn't mean much in this movie.

I don't know what happened, it's like the creative team just gave up or phoned it in and it shows.  And I'm just now looking it up, an audience score of 95 on Rotten Tomatoes.  Who TF are these people??  Are they bots?  Or pod people?  80% from critics which is somewhat more realistic, but even that is much more than it deserves.  The CGI was good, some of the action scenes were fairly good, maybe two songs were good, and the ending was decent, that's it.

And I know this is a weird nitpick, but since we're in Game of Thrones Season 8 territory here what the hell - they didn't even save the galaxy in this one!  It's in the frickin' name!

[Hydra009]

I'm watching a review and it seems the main problem was too many irons in the fire - too many characters to handle (don't tell GRRM!) and thus even some core cast are barely in this movie, let alone the secondary or tertiary characters.

The reviewer said that Marvel was considering a stand-alone film for Rocket and Groot which would focus on Rocket's backstory while GOTG3 would deal with - no spoilers - the character introduced at the end of GOTG2.  That would work much, much better and this film would be a lot less crowded.

Hell, almost anything else would have been better.  Honestly, I would've gone a completely different direction - start off with some hijinks and bickering in some minor job, they meet this new character, get sucked into their whole deal, the situation deteriorates and becomes literally galaxy-destroying, some action scenes, some character growth.  Since this is the last hurrah for these characters, maybe they have some valiant last stand against some multiversal threat or something.  Simple, easy, very formulaic and predictable, but it can be tweaked to have some twists and turns.

I mean, the first one was basically an Indiana Jones MacGuffin ripoff with scifi substitutions and a cameo from Thanos.  And the second one is basically Saturn Devouring His Son with two sideplots - a sibling rivalry/reconciliation and a pirate mutiny that ends like The Odyssey.  I love these movies, but the basic plotlines aren't super duper complex.  Simple isn't necessarily bad.

Just crank out another simple plot again with a lot of heart and emotional growth and you're golden.  Simple.

[the_antithesis]

I don't know what happened,

What happened? James Gunn got fired for stupid reasons and it took Disney way to long to fix that mistake and by the time they did, he'd gotten a job at DC fixing the fuck out of that dumpster fire. But they managed to bring him back to finish the trilogy which got all the ideas he was going to do in future movies into this one, where they would fit, I guess. That and he may have been a bit salty at how the mouse treated him, so here we are.

[Hydra009]

And yet...