This is actually why I enjoy Warhammer 40K so much. It's obviously not a concept that is consistently applied in the universe, but when it is and is applied well, it's quite fun. The idea that a world can be forgotten by the government, fall into anarchy, revert to a primitive feudal system with middle age technology, get discovered again, then become a cyberpunk dystopia is completely possible when you're talking about a time scale of possibly 10,000 years.
Movie, TV, Web Series, and Music Hot Take(s).
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This mostly applies to anime, but if your characters are in high school or some other institution with some form of hierarchy, make sure that the characters actually fucking go through that hierarchy. I find it incredibly stupid that series like My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen are already in their final arcs and yet the main characters are all still in their first year of high school. Way to make all the growth and development your characters have had look dumb when it all seemingly happened in a single year. Demon Slayer has sort of the same problem, where a ranking system was established early on and yet the characters jump from the first level to the final by the end, with barely a passing mention of the ranks they skipped over. We don't even meet other characters from the middle ranks, it's literally only Level 1s and Level 100s.
I guess this is partly due to mangakas never really knowing when their manga could end, so they'd need to be quite confident to concretely establish the passage of time in their stories. But I can't help but think how much more impactful these stories would have been if they had progressed time as realistically as something like Harry Potter.
I guess this is partly due to mangakas never really knowing when their manga could end, so they'd need to be quite confident to concretely establish the passage of time in their stories. But I can't help but think how much more impactful these stories would have been if they had progressed time as realistically as something like Harry Potter.
For all of RWBY's problems, they actually bother to age the characters for more than a year. I'll give credit to anime/manga like Berserk for aging the characters appropriately. Most the characters in the Band of the Hawk start off in late teens or early 20s, to mid or late 20s, to late 30s and early 40s. Digimon Adventure and Digimon 02 (for all it's major issues with story and plot ending structure) did something with aging the original cast or having them change and develop in ways that makes sense. Even Dragonball to DBZ aged Goku and the rest to develop properly. Dragonball of all things. As said before, this a problem with many long running shounen or shoujo manga, and most can't escape it. Even Shaman King suffers from it no matter the version. Most of the main cast characters are of high-school or late middle school age. At least it bothered to show the skills of some intermediate or middle powered classes of shamans. Shit, as much as I dislike One Piece, even the Straw Hats grow in power, age, and character.
Dragonball had the good sense to engage liberally with time skips. I maintain that most shonen anime/manga set in a high-school would be better served if it wasn't. Like, very few of them ever engage with the school aspect in any serious way to begin with, usually making sure characters have dead/absent/missing parents if parents are mentioned at all to give the characters freedom in ways they'd never have it otherwise.
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Yes. Yes. I may even have already posted a rant to that effect somewhere. It's meant to sound all epic (oooh big numbers) and it turns out idiotic (oooh Knights of the Old Republic is happening 4000 years before Star Wars, the technological, cultural, design changes are staggering).
Post-apocalyptic worlds are particularly funny with that, because they don't even try to be consistent. Society suddenly collapsed, so now you have people who remember civilization (so 20 years later?), coexisting with tribes of barbaric cannibalistic mutants (so 200 years later ?), coexisting with giant mutated animals that have "adapted" to the new environment (so 2'000'000 years later?), in a world that looks like our abandonned cars, radios, cities, haven't been cleaned for 2 weeks...
Ah yes, Fallout. Where people still haven't bothered to sweep the rubble out of their home 83 years after the bombs fell.
To be fair, there's some people who would go barbaric cannibal if the internet went down for 2 weeks, though don't know how many count as mutants.
As usual, China and it's government can screw off, but I'm not mad at them for this. All I can say is that for the actual Chinese Spider-Man and fans of Miles that actually exist, y'all are good people. Enjoy the movie. I cannot wait for next week!
And this is exactly why I have appreciation for movies with shorter run times. At least for The Batman, at least the movie served its actual purpose, and not stretching things out for the sake of it.
www.escapistmagazine.com
Why Are the Disney Live Action Remakes So Damned Long?
All of the Disney movie remakes in live action pad their runtimes and become too long for no reason, like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.
www.escapistmagazine.com
I don't hate The Incredibles 2, but I don't care for it much either. What we have is another case of Ghostbusters 2 sequel reset. That said, certain YouTube critics and those on the online sphere went way too hard on their hatred. The first movie is still the best obviously, but I really have no need to watch the sequel again.
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The criticism of Signs that it's dumb that aliens would attack a world filled with H2O, their big weakness, is stupid. The ridiculously extreme and deadly places humans choose to live in, shows that.
True to an extent, but given rain is a thing, making the 30% of the planet that's not water potentially inhospitable at any given moment, it does follow that attempting to attack a planet that's over 70% the thing that kills you doesn't make much sense. I mean, they have the capability for interstellar travel; surly they might have passed a more convenient celestial body for their purposes at some point?
Then, we don't KNOW their purposes, do we? Maybe they weren't planning on living here or even staying very long; maybe it was a resource grab.
Then that begs the question, why risk ground ops surveillance, and risk being sloppily spotted (as they were) or a pop-up shower that'd kill you immediately?
Then further, it's a movie. If a writer wrote it, then it happened within the confines of the film, so these kinds of discussions will never end satisfactorily, so it's best just to enjoy a film or not. If the nonsensical is why you don't like a film, chalk it up as a bust and move on.
You actually illustrate my point pretty well, or my deeper one. Often times in movies there are things that are just not explained in much depth, but that doesn't always mean that it's a plot hole or anything, sometimes things just lack enough to go on to come to conclusions about them.
Yet the broader, "intellectual" viewership loves to dwell on the "coulda, would, shoulda" and take the fun out of the escapism of cinema. Killjoys, the lot of 'em. I accept that a lot of what goes on in films I love makes no logical sense, but I enjoy my time with them; that's what matters. Raking them across the coals of reason and logic defeats the purpose. As far as I'm concerned, in any work of fiction, the words as penned are the rules, facts, logic, and reason in a world that doesn't exist but for my enjoyment. If the rules, facts, logic, and reason of the REAL world don't mesh and interfere with my appreciation, maybe I should just turn it off and turn on the news or "reality" TV.
Think, @Xprimentyl, think! What would they have if they didn't do all this? What have they done wrong, except be spineless waste of space with not much better to do for their entire lives?
I don't have a major hatred for Signs, but I don't give a rat's ass about it either. The twist is still stupid, but I don't harp over it too much. The movie is just a sad and boring bore, that and twist gob smacks ya back to boomerang stupidity. Also, I would still take that movie over 99% of reality TV. At least there's some stuff I can point and laugh at. Reality TV gets nothing more than my scorn, hatred, and complete apathy.
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I've not thought much of Signs since I first saw it a billion years ago, just as I don't think much of any movie I see beyond my thoughts on this forum for conversational purposes. I do have my opinions about the lazy state of the industry (in reality,) but you won't find me arguing the merits of any individual plot point much beyond "yeah, I don't care; that's what happened in those worlds that don't exist." It doesn't have to make sense here to be entertaining there.
One of my favorites is how the Ocean's 11 gang managed to get the flyers for prostitutes down into the vault before packing up the cash and slinking out to that celebratory lounge jazz soundtrack. Completely inexplicable, and I don't care. The movie is brilliant, and I love it. As far as I'm concerned, they DID it, and the bad guys got their comeuppance. You could literally pick apart every movie and find holes that "ruin" the experience, but I'd rather try to enjoy what they gave us. That doesn't mean I have strong opinions on every movie I watch, but I'll readily keep them to myself for those I do. They were a miss for me, but if anyone found joy beyond where I found fault, I won't argue with them.
(Except Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. My last breath will be used to curse the 2.5 hours it wasted spinning my tires to go absolutely nowhere, but still got all those Oscar nods! I will fight you.)
Saw that movie twice, and that was it. I've only seen all of the sequels once. Good movies, but not my favorites.
Here's one of my favorite action movies:
This is one of the few times I will defend CG blood, because the movie fucking earned it! They're going for a gory 90s anime/manga asthetic, so it more than works. This movie deserved a sequel. The good news is that Ninja Assassin's ending is open-ended, so it can work either as a stand alone, or have a potential sequel.Hateful 8 was the last Tarantino movie I ever saw, and I actually can't stand most of his works nowadays. Been that way for a long while now. I pretty much sold all DVDs I had available of his filmography.