Jump to content

WWWatching


TheLastWolf
 Share

Recommended Posts

I decided to start watching The Last of Us finally. I think I'm about to start episode 7. I am enjoying it so far, but I have to say that I do kind of get the few critical comments I saw about it up thread. It's nothing new and I expect a lot of the hype about the series comes from people who haven't seen 28 days later yet or who are over nostalgic about the game on which it was based.

That being said, we might have had a lot of zombies in our pop culture over the last 20 years, but at least this series so far executes the tired tropes excellently. The difference with something like The Walking Dead is palatable palpable 

EDIT: One thing I don't get is how they keep on fussing about how special Ellie is. There really is no indication in my mind that she's more clever or better able to lead than any other rando in this series, but they just keep on obsessing about how special she is... 

Spoiler

She's already immune to the virus, what more do we need? J.K. Rowling didn't make her chosen one the smartest or the one with the most ginger hair. She had other characters for that.

And if you were to write a character that is overly blessed, than please show the behaviour instead of having everyone else tell us about how she's a natural leader and intelligent and all that bullshit.

 

Edited by Veltigar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/8/2023 at 1:06 PM, Ran said:

Agreed on this. Good, solid fun with a sense of time and place well-evoked, but not phenomenal. Ditto Pugh.

I thought of you the other day when I was listening to a BAFTA screenwriter podcast series and there was one from Celine Sciamma. I enjoyed the Robert Eggers one as well. 

 This is a link to Spotify but I m sure you can find it on other platforms as well

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I decided to start watching The Last of Us finally. I think I'm about to start episode 7. I am enjoying it so far, but I have to say that I do kind of get the few critical comments I saw about it up thread. It's nothing new and I expect a lot of the hype about the series comes from people who haven't seen 28 days later yet or who are over nostalgic about the game on which it was based.

That being said, we might have had a lot of zombies in our pop culture over the last 20 years, but at least this series so far executes the tired tropes excellently. The difference with something like The Walking Dead is palatable. 

EDIT: One thing I don't get is how they keep on fussing about how special Ellie is. There really is no indication in my mind that she's more clever or better able to lead than any other rando in this series, but they just keep on obsessing about how special she is... 

  Hide contents

She's already immune to the virus, what more do we need? J.K. Rowling didn't make her chosen one the smartest or the one with the most ginger hair. She had other characters for that.

And if you were to write a character that is overly blessed, than please show the behaviour instead of having everyone else tell us about how she's a natural leader and intelligent and all that bullshit.

 

Sorry, what is the difference? I'm not seeing any difference. TWD did the 'we are the monsters' trope pretty fucking well, with plenty of fleshed out and convincing examples. (Also, do you mean palpable, rather than palatable?). Fully agree that we are shown little evidence of Ellie being special. I did a genuine LOL when she was described as a leader. Technically one can be a leader of one's self, yes, but it's not that easy to observe leadership in a person who is alone. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Isis said:

I thought of you the other day when I was listening to a BAFTA screenwriter podcast series and there was one from Celine Sciamma. I enjoyed the Robert Eggers one as well. 

 This is a link to Spotify but I m sure you can find it on other platforms as well

Spotify is my go to, and downloading 'em now!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Veltigar said:

One thing I don't get is how they keep on fussing about how special Ellie is. There really is no indication in my mind that she's more clever or better able to lead than any other rando in this series, but they just keep on obsessing about how special she is... 

I don't think the TV show does any of that, except

Spoiler

When you get the evil cannibal pastor, but he is trying to butter her up so he can rape her.

Maybe they do it in the after-episode specials or whatever, but I went through the whole season thinking she's just an inexperienced, feckless teenager, fairly archetypal as one, and that obviously the idea is that the events of the show will be pretty formative.

Edited by Ran
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Isis said:

Sorry, what is the difference? I'm not seeing any difference. TWD did the 'we are the monsters' trope pretty fucking well, with plenty of fleshed out and convincing examples. (Also, do you mean palpable, rather than palatable?). Fully agree that we are shown little evidence of Ellie being special. I did a genuine LOL when she was described as a leader. Technically one can be a leader of one's self, yes, but it's not that easy to observe leadership in a person who is alone. 

Not to mention that most characters who describe her as such have spent like 5 minutes in her company, although I have to admit that at least in

Spoiler

episode 8 it made some sense in hindsight since David, the community leader was basically grooming her. I disliked it when he first started hyping her up, but after seeing the end of the episode, telling a victim that they are super special and chosen and all that jazz seems rather credible from a sexual predator.

You're right by the way, I did mean palpable. Corrected that in the original post.

I do disagree with your take on TWD however. Admittedly, I dropped out after season 4 or 5 so perhaps it got better afterwards but to me in the seasons I watched, TWD never really broached the subject with any sort of complexity. The performances were almost uniformly terrible, the villains were idiotic and it was rather too focussed on shock value and action instead of giving the world and the characters time to breath and develop.

I also hated the slow ambling zombies. It's ridiculous that they would be a problem, so at least in The Last of Us the fungus has created several types of antagonists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't think the TV show does any of that, except

  Reveal hidden contents

When you get the evil cannibal pastor, but he is trying to butter her up so he can rape her.

Maybe they do it in the after-episode specials or whatever, but I went through the whole season thinking she's just an inexperienced, feckless teenager, fairly archetypal as one, and that obviously the idea is that the events of the show will be pretty formative.

As to the spoilered comment, I just wrote a comment in response to Isis that acknowledged that as well. You were just a bit quicker ;) I wrote my initial comment after I was in the midst of that episode. Having finished it now, I do indeed think it's quite a good set up from the writers in that episode. 

They do however also hype up Ellie in the episode before that

Spoiler

The school leader tells her almost the exact same thing as the sexual predator. That she's very smart and a natural leader, but so far her behaviour in none of the episodes have born that description out. Scrappy and courageous yes, compassionate as well, but intelligence and leadership is something her character hasn't really displayed yet in my opinion.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Amsterdam

I don’t understand this movie at all. Stellar cast top to bottom; top notch production design; similarly great costumes and sets; great/good performances; Pretty good script and some great scenes. The cinematography isn’t remarkable but it’s competently shot and cut together. It’s subject matter is even something I’m interested in.

So why don’t I love this movie? It took me three sittings to get through it just because it was so uninteresting. 
 

Make this make sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

how the f'ck has super mario brothers made $1.16 billion?  

A familiar IP for people from 5 to 50 that isn’t tired because of endless sequels and reboots and shared universes. But yeah this is getting stupid. The movie isn’t that good but apparently it gives the right dopamine hit to people in a specific age group.

Even more baffling question: why did my niece (who’s 17) see it twice; in the theater?!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Amsterdam

I don’t understand this movie at all. Stellar cast top to bottom; top notch production design; similarly great costumes and sets; great/good performances; Pretty good script and some great scenes. The cinematography isn’t remarkable but it’s competently shot and cut together. It’s subject matter is even something I’m interested in.

So why don’t I love this movie? It took me three sittings to get through it just because it was so uninteresting. 
 

Make this make sense.

The movie is trash, but it's hard to explain why cause of the things you listed. Idk anyone who has seen it and liked it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

how the f'ck has super mario brothers made $1.16 billion?  

I said the same thing. Was at the theater a few weeks ago and it was busy as hell, vast majority were there for this movie.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

A familiar IP for people from 5 to 50 that isn’t tired because of endless sequels and reboots and shared universes. But yeah this is getting stupid. The movie isn’t that good but apparently it gives the right dopamine hit to people in a specific age group.

Even more baffling question: why did my niece (who’s 17) see it twice; in the theater?!?

My best friend has 3- and 5-year-old daughters. They've been twice and are haranguing the parents to bring them back. The 3yo has a conniption if she hasn't heard Jack Black's song Peaches every 20 minutes. The 5yo is very much in her Disney princess phase so a flashy, fun Princess Peach was very appealing. Neither has any interest at all in the video games (yet).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Amsterdam

I don’t understand this movie at all. Stellar cast top to bottom; top notch production design; similarly great costumes and sets; great/good performances; Pretty good script and some great scenes. The cinematography isn’t remarkable but it’s competently shot and cut together. It’s subject matter is even something I’m interested in.

So why don’t I love this movie? It took me three sittings to get through it just because it was so uninteresting. 
 

Make this make sense.

I think there's just too much going on, it felt like multiple better movies all squashed together into one film.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The movie is trash, but it's hard to explain why cause of the things you listed. Idk anyone who has seen it and liked it.

See, I wouldn’t even call it, “trash”. That would be interesting in its own right. I could understand it if it was shit. This is just baffling. 

3 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

My best friend has 3- and 5-year-old daughters. They've been twice and are haranguing the parents to bring them back. The 3yo has a conniption if she hasn't heard Jack Black's song Peaches every 20 minutes. The 5yo is very much in her Disney princess phase so a flashy, fun Princess Peach was very appealing. Neither has any interest at all in the video games (yet).

Wow! OK, there’s clearly something going on here. Subliminal messages maybe? Do we need to bust out the “They Live” glasses?

it’s particularly baffling considering how many animated films got hammered last year. DC: League of Super Pets and The Bad Guys were both much better than this. Puss in Boots 2 is a masterpiece compared to this. Even Lightyear and Strange World hold up pretty well compared to this. None of them come close to Mario’s box office success and some of them were bonafide bombs.

2 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I think there's just too much going on, it felt like multiple better movies all squashed together into one film.

Maybe. It’s definitely kind of messy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh I agree that Puss in Boots 2 was a far superior family animated movie, but Mario just has that momentum at this point. It's odd that these little gals, who are mostly obsessed with Bluey, are mad for a franchise they knew nothing about. My guess is the constant bombardment of colors and cute critters is hypnotic to them. And, possibly due to their dad's love of heavy metal, they are obsessed with the corny Jack Black song. They seriously had a little dance routine and the 5 year old knows the entire damn song - he has some app that lets them view Youtube videos he's tagged so of course they have it on replay until the iPad happily dies. The film's only been out like a month, right! 

As the adoptive uncle, I'm very excited to start showing the older one some truly great kids films beyond their Disney+ addiction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, I tried to get through more than 2 episodes of that Amazon mega-series Citadel. You could see the budget, they made sure of that. But Madden just doesn't have it, man. Didn't find him physically imposing in the action bits, nor charismatic in the family scenes. I've not watched any of Chopra's Bollywood megahits and am aware that she's well-regarded, but frankly I thought she was even worse than Madden. Is it just the chatGPT script? Is hero-with-amnesia the least interesting plot device in Hollywood by a long shot?

Anyway I might make it through the season, especially a late night unsober view perhaps, but it sure is weird that it's a huge hit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Argonath Diver said:

I might make it through the season

You're stronger than me.  I quit slightly before the first ep concluded.  It is BORING.  Writers evidently aren't being given the time and resources to actually devise interesting stories and characters by AP or, way too often, NF.  It takes someone of the stature of Shonda Rhimes to escape that suffocating enclosures put on the writers perhaps.  And there aren't that many, alas.

AI is going to make it worse, vastly, VASTLY FAR WORSE. We mere humans will be reduced to talking with each other again f2f for entertainment presumably.

Edited by Zorral
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I finished The Last of Us. It's definitely not as great as the hype surrounding it, but I did have a very good time watching it. The series was not as sophisticated as I was expecting (A 28 Days Later It is not), but it is excellent in the sort of wish fulfilment/power fantasy that is the hallmark of a lot of compelling post-apocalyptic storytelling.

In other words, I do get where its popularity comes from. As a younger person you can watch this and emphasise with the plight of the chosen one, as we all think we are fated for exceptional lives at that age. And as a slightly older person, this series makes you dream that no matter what horrible things you do or that happen to you, one day there will be a chance for you to redeem yourself by letting your inner badass run wild and spent a whole lot of time tearing your way to a bunch of disposable red shirts with nefarious intentions (so all the violence is okay, because your the good guy).

Add some great performances, nice (and threatening) creature design and a good soundtrack to it and you have a winning recipe. I actually think that's one of the ways it is substantially better than say The Walking Dead. I was a lot younger when I first watched that one, but I never saw myself in Carl for instance. And Rick is quite whiny and petulant compared to Pascal's Joel (cue the infam.

One thing I did find rather strange and did not really appreciate in the last episode was the antagonist's plan:

Spoiler

It's not egregious yet, but this show does have a habit of dumbing down antagonists at convenient times. The last episode had at least 6 lot of these moments like:

1. Waking up Joel before the operation was done
2. Telling Joel their real plan
3. Allowing Joel to live
4. Not exploring any alternatives to scraping Ellie's brain. What if anything goes wrong? They might have killed their one hope of a cure... Seems like you'd have to be careful and first explore alternative options before embarking on such a risky prospect.
5. Not asking Ellie's consent if it turns out that brain scraping was the only possible option. The way I see it, if Ellie had said yes in the presence of Joel they would have had zero problems with him going berserk. It's one thing to make the choice for an unconscious Ellie who had been tricked into almost losing her life, but Joel would not have gone against her directly if it had been her wish to sacrifice herself on the operating table. 
6. Marlene putting her gun down at the end was also cringe. She must have realized that trust was broken between Joel/Ellie and herself. How could they ever rely on her to respect a bargain after her prior actions towards Ellie. I'm not as vindictive as Joel, but shooting her seemed like the only rational action as soon as she put down that gun.
 

Anyways, a few critical notes, but overall I am looking forward to a second season. Not sure yet whether I'd watch this on a weekly basis or save it up for a binge though. I feel the latter suits the series a bit better.

I also watched Renfield yesterday. Some good jokes, some bad action but all in all there is not much that can be said about it. I had high hopes for this when I saw the trailer, but the eventual film is just kind of there. Not a complete waste of time, but it's more something that you watch when it eventually hits the streaming platforms instead of going to the theatre for.

Edited by Veltigar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...