Some movies I watched
Oct. 9th, 2023 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkGoing through my half-finished drafts: I watched a few movies in the last couple of months, which compared to previous months is a lot.
Across the Spider-Verse:
I enjoyed it a lot! I liked the art (though it was a bit OTT flashy at times, that must be a pain for people sensitive to flashing lights) and the chase/fight scenes and the characters and the pacing. The biggest twist was the "To be continued" at the end – I'd had no idea it was a part one of two! Neither did most of the cinema, judging from the reactions. The other big twist, Miles ending up in the 42 universe, also worked very well for me, it was the good kind of twist where you could have realized what was going on in advance but not doing so didn't make me feel stupid either. I liked the Spider-Man!Miles – Prowler!Miles reveal/confrontation :)
Another more minor twist was the chase scene in the spiderpeople HQ, I kept wondering why Miles didn't just go invisible so finding out he was leading everyone away on purpose so he could sneak back in made it make sense. Got us a fun chase scene with Spider T-Rex xD
The interdimensional spiderpeople organization is an interesting idea, and villains like Spot – genuinely scary powers! – nicely showcase their area of operations. The narrative inevitability aspect of it, oof. I can see why they think it's necessary, I assume they've done plenty of testing, but accepting members who haven't been through these canon events yet and expecting them to just accept them? Though I'm a little confused, clearly Gwen knew but apparently Pavitr didn't? And Gwen was so relieved to learn that her dad had resigned because clearly she thought that not being a captain anymore would save his life from that narrative inevitability. But if it's that easy, there have to be other ways of working around it?, there's no way a solution like that hasn't been discussed before? (I'm ignoring the fact that these canon events seem slightly ridiculous after the "anyone can be Spider-Man" previous messaging – an uncle (or similar) dying, okay, but a police captain close to Spider-Man dying because Spider-Man couldn't protect him is, uh, extremely specific. What about worlds that don't have cops? (And with how varied all these different dimensions are, there's no way all of them have cops, and captain equivalents.) Also, what happens if a mutated spider bit someone who doesn't have people who fit these roles? Someone familiar with various AU Spider-Man comics could say more about how closely they all followed that formula.
More important for Miles, however, is that he's an anomaly – the "original" anomaly according to Miguel iirc – because Spot transported the mutated spider from Earth 42 to Miles' Earth-1610, leading to Miles becoming Spider-Man after the original Peter Parker from that world died. So the hope here is that him being an anomaly will allow him to escape that narrative inevitability and save his dad, as I understand it.
I was a bit surprised by the reactions I saw to Miles & Gwen, because the way I interpreted it was that Miles has a crush on Gwen while Gwen cares a lot about Miles but not necessarily in a romantic way, and I actually liked that a lot. We'll see how that develops I guess.
Barbie:
Barbie was one of those movies that I had heard good things about but I was skeptical and deliberately tried to keep my expectations low, which was good. It was an entertaining and occasionally very funny movie. I wouldn't call it a great movie especially if you look at it more closely but it was entertaining and that's what I wanted.
Nimona:
Very pretty! I read the webcomic years ago and liked it a lot; unfortunately I remembered just enough to prefer some of the details of the comic to the movie, even though it's very clear why they had to make these changes to fit a whole story into one movie. Same with the epilogue, of course they didn't have the time to put the whole story of how they get back together and repair their relationship after everything that happened into the movie but it did seem a bit fast. Overall I thought they did a very good job and I enjoyed the movie. I also thought they did a great job with the worldbuilding and setting: very modern, sci-fi even, but with a good enough reason to hold onto the knight imagery.
(I only looked at AO3 briefly and it seemed to mostly focus on Ballister, either with Ambrosius or Nimona, while I was mostly interested in Nimona herself, who's not a kid or a teenager but centuries old.)
Space Sweepers:
That was very good and fun sci-fi action entertainment. I liked the whole crew, especially Captain Jang and Bubs the trans robot. I did not actually expect them to kill off Kot-nim's dad on screen (I thought it would have happened off-screen) but that was very effective. Another one in the "giant corporations led by men who claim to be the genius saviors of the human race are almost certainly evil" column.
I also wanted to watch Oppenheimer and Blue Beetle, but the latter is already no longer in cinemas and the former probably won't be once I get back from vacation at my grandparents'. I also have so many shows I want to catch up on, like Wheel of Time s2 and live-action One Piece and Good Omens s2 and Castlevania: Nocturne... I've already made plans for some of those, it's always more fun to watch with a friend and that's currently harder because DD is still not back home.
In the meantime I'm watching a lot of Hermitcraft, there's a lot of content right now because at least half the server is addicted to Decked Out 2. I'm delighted that basically the entire fandom and at least several of the Hermits agree that the dungeon is sentient. (And has a crush on Etho.) I'm really looking forward to level four of the dungeon being unlocked once all the easter eggs are found! I also found it funny how sad even many of the Hermits were when Tango's Cough died even though Tango's Cough was by far the deadliest of the ravagers (I have the slight suspicion that the reaction to the theoretical death of One Eyed Willie would be different though, he's ended so many promising runs.)
Across the Spider-Verse:
I enjoyed it a lot! I liked the art (though it was a bit OTT flashy at times, that must be a pain for people sensitive to flashing lights) and the chase/fight scenes and the characters and the pacing. The biggest twist was the "To be continued" at the end – I'd had no idea it was a part one of two! Neither did most of the cinema, judging from the reactions. The other big twist, Miles ending up in the 42 universe, also worked very well for me, it was the good kind of twist where you could have realized what was going on in advance but not doing so didn't make me feel stupid either. I liked the Spider-Man!Miles – Prowler!Miles reveal/confrontation :)
Another more minor twist was the chase scene in the spiderpeople HQ, I kept wondering why Miles didn't just go invisible so finding out he was leading everyone away on purpose so he could sneak back in made it make sense. Got us a fun chase scene with Spider T-Rex xD
The interdimensional spiderpeople organization is an interesting idea, and villains like Spot – genuinely scary powers! – nicely showcase their area of operations. The narrative inevitability aspect of it, oof. I can see why they think it's necessary, I assume they've done plenty of testing, but accepting members who haven't been through these canon events yet and expecting them to just accept them? Though I'm a little confused, clearly Gwen knew but apparently Pavitr didn't? And Gwen was so relieved to learn that her dad had resigned because clearly she thought that not being a captain anymore would save his life from that narrative inevitability. But if it's that easy, there have to be other ways of working around it?, there's no way a solution like that hasn't been discussed before? (I'm ignoring the fact that these canon events seem slightly ridiculous after the "anyone can be Spider-Man" previous messaging – an uncle (or similar) dying, okay, but a police captain close to Spider-Man dying because Spider-Man couldn't protect him is, uh, extremely specific. What about worlds that don't have cops? (And with how varied all these different dimensions are, there's no way all of them have cops, and captain equivalents.) Also, what happens if a mutated spider bit someone who doesn't have people who fit these roles? Someone familiar with various AU Spider-Man comics could say more about how closely they all followed that formula.
More important for Miles, however, is that he's an anomaly – the "original" anomaly according to Miguel iirc – because Spot transported the mutated spider from Earth 42 to Miles' Earth-1610, leading to Miles becoming Spider-Man after the original Peter Parker from that world died. So the hope here is that him being an anomaly will allow him to escape that narrative inevitability and save his dad, as I understand it.
I was a bit surprised by the reactions I saw to Miles & Gwen, because the way I interpreted it was that Miles has a crush on Gwen while Gwen cares a lot about Miles but not necessarily in a romantic way, and I actually liked that a lot. We'll see how that develops I guess.
Barbie:
Barbie was one of those movies that I had heard good things about but I was skeptical and deliberately tried to keep my expectations low, which was good. It was an entertaining and occasionally very funny movie. I wouldn't call it a great movie especially if you look at it more closely but it was entertaining and that's what I wanted.
Nimona:
Very pretty! I read the webcomic years ago and liked it a lot; unfortunately I remembered just enough to prefer some of the details of the comic to the movie, even though it's very clear why they had to make these changes to fit a whole story into one movie. Same with the epilogue, of course they didn't have the time to put the whole story of how they get back together and repair their relationship after everything that happened into the movie but it did seem a bit fast. Overall I thought they did a very good job and I enjoyed the movie. I also thought they did a great job with the worldbuilding and setting: very modern, sci-fi even, but with a good enough reason to hold onto the knight imagery.
(I only looked at AO3 briefly and it seemed to mostly focus on Ballister, either with Ambrosius or Nimona, while I was mostly interested in Nimona herself, who's not a kid or a teenager but centuries old.)
Space Sweepers:
That was very good and fun sci-fi action entertainment. I liked the whole crew, especially Captain Jang and Bubs the trans robot. I did not actually expect them to kill off Kot-nim's dad on screen (I thought it would have happened off-screen) but that was very effective. Another one in the "giant corporations led by men who claim to be the genius saviors of the human race are almost certainly evil" column.
I also wanted to watch Oppenheimer and Blue Beetle, but the latter is already no longer in cinemas and the former probably won't be once I get back from vacation at my grandparents'. I also have so many shows I want to catch up on, like Wheel of Time s2 and live-action One Piece and Good Omens s2 and Castlevania: Nocturne... I've already made plans for some of those, it's always more fun to watch with a friend and that's currently harder because DD is still not back home.
In the meantime I'm watching a lot of Hermitcraft, there's a lot of content right now because at least half the server is addicted to Decked Out 2. I'm delighted that basically the entire fandom and at least several of the Hermits agree that the dungeon is sentient. (And has a crush on Etho.) I'm really looking forward to level four of the dungeon being unlocked once all the easter eggs are found! I also found it funny how sad even many of the Hermits were when Tango's Cough died even though Tango's Cough was by far the deadliest of the ravagers (I have the slight suspicion that the reaction to the theoretical death of One Eyed Willie would be different though, he's ended so many promising runs.)
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Date: 2023-10-09 05:41 pm (UTC)I loved Space Sweepers. <333 Unsubtle, yes, but in ways I like. And ditto for the Barbie movie, which I really enjoyed but which is, you know, the movie that it is, giant Mattel commercial and all, and extremely fun as long as you accept that going in.
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Date: 2023-10-10 07:27 am (UTC)Yeah same, it was very cool but it also took a bit to get used to. And apparently they changed his appearance a bit for the DVD?
Tbh right now I would prefer it if Gwen doesn't reciprocate Miles' romantic crush just because it would not be the most common/expected thing to happen of the male and female lead getting together, but I might change my mind if the second movie develops it really well.
Space Sweepers was a fun space adventure that didn't try to be more than it was and it did what it did really well (and that was probably made easier by the fact that I had very few expectations going in.)
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Date: 2023-10-10 07:39 am (UTC)<3
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Date: 2023-10-10 04:54 am (UTC)Nimona was great fun! :D
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Date: 2023-10-10 07:41 am (UTC)