Example; the Legend of Zelda: BotW and TotK weapon degradation system. At first I was annoyed at it, but once I stopped caring about my “favorite weapon” I really started to enjoy the system. I think it lends really well to the sandbox nature of the game and it itches that resourcefulness nature inside me.
Almost every case of movie purists. The Hobbit trilogy was great. The new Star Wars trilogy was great. The old ones are great too.
I have similar issues with music and video games. I almost always love the most hated albums or games in a series based on the loudest commentary online. I also find the most popular entry to be kind of meh. I think average people have boring taste or just follow a crowd or something.
Whenever certain keys words are thrown around to criticize something, you bet it’s actually not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. I went through the entirety of The Last Us Part II and she-hulk just because of the hate, and boy was the hate overblown.
Felt the same about Ms Marvel, you’d think it was some crime against humanity. There were a couple cheesy moments (and I love cheese) for sure but I enjoyed it.
I’m right there with you on Eps 7 and 9 of Star Wars. TFA was loads of fun, and goofy though some of it was, I still loved TRoS.
Hated TLJ though, for what it’s worth :-)
Everyone is on fire in this thread. Every comment legitimately interesting and well thought out. Upvotes abound. (Apologies for the meta)
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
I enjoyed the ending to the Battlestar Galactica series. I know there were some missed opportunities but the writer’s strike had an impact.
I didn’t read the GOT books. That said, I enjoyed the show through to the last episode and wouldn’t have thought twice about any of it if the fans weren’t so angry. Idk why but I just don’t have the ability to be critical of (or follow very well) story or writing, or anything really. Maybe I’m just too good at suspending disbelief?
I thought the general broad strokes of what happened were fine (IE with
spoiler
Daenerys being the big villain and stuff
), I just thought it was rushed and done in a kind of sloppy way. I really didn’t like
spoiler
Bran becoming the king though
'cause I fucking hate that character lol.
Yeah, the broader plot points would have been totally workable if the execution hadn’t been so rushed and half-arsed.
While I understand people’s criticisms of Sucker Punch, I still really enjoy the movie. Not to mention the soundtrack is really good. I also don’t know how many people actually know what’s going on
I heard a lot of complaints about the twins in borderlands 3.They’re shallow, they’re obnoxious, they remind you of wanna be tiktok influencers, on and on.
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. Guys, Handsome Jack was bottled lightning. He was a masterpiece of good writing, good design, well placed improv, and just plain dumb luck. They were never going to pull that off again. You’d need to open a real vault to find that level of treasure.
The Calypso’s are exactly what they say on the tin. They’re all those obnoxious, unfunny things I mentioned because sometimes villains aren’t well thought out, complex characters. I fucking love shooting Troy in his smug hot topic weeb face. I don’t need to consider the complexity of a man driven to an extreme or the show erosion of one’s moral character in pursuit of power, they were two shitty kids on an ego trip with no regard for the damage they did. It is plain, and simple, and easy.
Are there problems with the rest if the story? Absolutely. Are there some awful plot-holes? Oh my fuck, yes. But are the Calypsos the thing that ruined the game? Fuck no, they’re fine and perfectly shootable as a bad-guy needs to be.
Just gonna chime in to say I bought Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands cause it’s on sale right now for like $12 on steam (the season pass is only $5 too) and MY GOD IS IT AN ABSOLUTE BLAST TO PLAY!
I’m just having straight up fun with this game, and I’m already wishing there was a sequel coming out tomorrow so I could dive right in when I finish this one. The bright vibrant world is fun to explore, the enemies are entertaining to fight with their quips and banter, the new mechanics (spells instead of grenades, new dedicated melee weapons and inventory slot, enchanted rings/amulets/armor to change that can all act as individual class mods to switch up your play style a bit) feel right at home in the fantasy setting.
I’ve heard about the lack of endgame and DLC stories, but I don’t care. I’m just having fun with my bowguns and magic missile launchers.
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.
I really liked it too, and was deeply disappointed that it was cancelled prematurely.
TBH, it seems like Netflix cancels everything that I really end up enjoying, and dragging out shows that should have been a limited series (e.g., Stranger Things).
Yea, if anything my main compliant about the show was that they took away too much levity.
Cowboy Bebop had some really stark messages about family, relationships, and the impermanence of time - and it delivers that through characters that live life fully in the moment and run from their fate. In the live action version the characters were too willing to fall into morose reflection and focused too much on their eventual fate - for me the seriousness of the show really undercut how serious the underlying message was.
I wholeheartedly agree. I also loved the live action and I usually hate live action. It definitely isn’t because of nostalgia.
Forspoken is low key incredible and like, exactly one sound bite sealed it’s fate, once it became a meme, people already made up their mind about it.
It was one of the best games I played last year and I found the story to be compelling and the gameplay fresh.
I think it’ll be regarded as a hidden gem in the future unironically.
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!
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?!
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.
Been feeling some FOMO about the books, FOMO gone!
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.
Thank you.
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.
I enjoyed it a lot. The only parts that annoyed the hell out of me was the constant singing and the overly long ring council. The rest I have only fond memories of. Granted it was a long time ago.
I remember as a kid I was really into fantasy things and my dad told me about LOTR and thought I’d like it. I’d read the hobbit for school already and really enjoyed that… But LOTR was painful, I didn’t even complete the first book
I would probably say that FOTR is my least favourite of the LOTR trilogy, TTT and ROTK are both more enjoyable IMO.
That said, I saw the movies before I read the books, so that might be a factor, I’m not sure.
Personally, my favorite book of his is the Silmarillion, he’s in his element and is writing a text book about cool fantasy stuff he dreamt up.
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’ve tried so hard, multiple times (years apart) and just can’t read the books. I read the hobbit fine, that’s a great book, but the trilogy I just found myself skipping pages to my favourite movie parts. It just went on and on. It’s a shame really, I’d love to have read them.
Meanwhile I read the books as an artful evasion of an english assignment as a child but the movies just seemed too long for me to digest.
Maybe if they were packaged as a TV show but not at all changed in terms of content I could manage to get through it all in a day or so
I started with the Hobbit really wanting to finally read the Lord of the Rings but I couldn’t get into it
People have a boner for Simpsons seasons 3-8, the Conan years.
The Simpsons were excellent pretty much through season 12, much of seasons 13 and 14 are still legit.
I don’t disagree that most of the best episodes are in that era… But Trilogy Of Errors is forever my favorite Simpsons episode, and that’s S12E18.
I woukd go as far as to say that seasons 9 - 13 all contain at least one ‘top 30 of all time’ episode.
The fall off was not swift with Conan’s departure.
At the time I thought there was a noticeable drop as of the movie. Never really pinned down what season that is to watch either sides of to see if my theory stands, but, that’s what I recall.
Between season 18 and 19 was when the movie came out it IMDb’s dates are correct.
The truth is there are SO MANY great episodes of The Simpsons. Even the current seasons have a lot to offer.
I also think that the earlier seasons get an advantage because they’re the episodes we’ve all seen dozens of times.
Obviously I won’t deny that the earlier seasons have 10/10 episodes. Maybe there are fewer 10/10 as you go along, but even a “bad” episode will have some great jokes in it.
In fact the “I’m a sign, not a cop” meme/macro, that’s a season 20 episode.
Omg I love that episode too. I quote that grammar robot so the time “shuddapa yer face” “shut up your face”
I also am a software developer and use 123 fake street for testing forms all the time.
I’m surprised at how late it was, would have assumed it was pre double digits
The newest season has a nicer animation style I’ve noticed. It feels almost season 8ish, and has none of that digital gloss that pervaded in the last ten seasons. I’m genuinely interested to see if they stick with the classic almost hand-drawn style.
Yeah I think seasons 4-12 are the kind of ‘safe’ era, but you can go a few seasons either way and still get some bangers, it’s just a little more patchy.
Joker: Folie à Deux.
The first movie was not about Joker, it is about Arthur. Joker is the unfortunate identity he takes on as a result of the events of the first film. But at the end of the day, he was just a guy. He was delighted but bewildered at the people rallying behind him.!Folie a Deux picks up is after the police inevitably apprehend Arthur. He is on medication, and speaking to a mental health professional regularly. He doesn’t want to be Joker, but everyone around him expects him to be. The tragedy of the ending is that Arthur rejects the love and admiration he has earned, knowing it will not redeem him to the people who hate and fear him now. He chooses to be completely alone and powerless to stop hurting people.!<
As far as the musical numbers went, they were infrequent and clearly a representation of the connection between Arthur and Lee. There was at least one scene where we view Arthur from the perspective of onlookers after he finished singing and dancing, but all they saw was him staring at a TV or something. I always felt like the songs added to character development, but even if they weren’t your thing they were brief and heavily outweighed by scenes with just dialogue.
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.
