Old School Hollywood, Washed Up Hollywood

 

            Hello hello. This is another one of those posts where I think I’ve talked about it before but can’t find it so sorry if I’m repeating myself. It’s also not about videogames but about movies. Not exactly one theme, just my thoughts that I’ve been harboring forever now. Now I don’t watch a whole lot of “movies” per se or maybe the correct term is “films.” I watch a lot of crap with not a lot of depth which is what I’m looking for in movies. The things I watch are not “great works of art” but they do have a ton of problems that could be trimmed out that would make the movie a whole lot better and I don’t know who is to blame. The writers? The director? Both?

            One issue I have with these movies and shows is forced love interest. I swear half the time they put these bits into movies because they need to drag it out to a certain time limit and they are just too lazy to think of anything else besides “uhhhh romance!” Transformers for instance. The first three movies I can kind of give it a pass, you need a way to introduce the robots, kid trying to impress a girl makes sense, whatever. But by the fifth movie fucking move on. In the middle of the movie Wahlberg’s character has a “romantic” dinner with some girl who just showed up and it’s like “why? Why the fuck are you showing me this, I don’t fucking careeeeee.” I come to Transformer movies to see giant robots do cool things, not humans, I see enough of those assholes. I shouldn’t have to go to Cybertron to watch a movie called “Humans” by Michael Baybot to see an actual Transformers movie. The end of the newest Transformers was real great. A G.I. Joe tie in, just what we need, no what that means? More fucking humans. Jenna Ortega was right to not want Wednesday to be in this dumb love triangle. It’s such a waste of time, Wednesday is such an interesting character that the time you’re using on romance could be put to better use. Bruce Banner and Black Widow in Age of Ultron, why? There was no need for that at all. It added nothing to the movie. Peter Parker and MJ is a staple, it’s part of Peter’s arc, you HAVE to have it at some point. It’s like since these movies are more geared towards kids, and don’t try to tell me they are not, why are you putting in romance for romance sake? It’s either they think this will keep the parents interested in the movie or it’s just a form of brainwashing that they’re trying to imprint on kids. “Make babies kids! It’s the right thing to do!”

            Another thing that bothers me is blatant propaganda or agenda the company producing is trying to push. In, what is it… 4, 5, 6… 123… soo episode 8? Star Wars episode 8, whatever it’s called, has this whole planet of a bunch of rich assholes talking about profiting off the galactic war and how one company is making both TIE fighters and X-wings, if I remember right, and just you know, being rich assholes, like the real world. I don’t want to see this. I know this is how the real world is, I come to these movies to escape from this shit reality, not have it shoved in my face in a different way. The newest Transformers movie; about a struggling (I’m going to get this wrong, I’m sorry I just don’t pay attention to peoples ethnicity, take that however you want, I just see people) Hispanic family in the ‘90s or something, whenever it takes place and it’s like “yeah, I know that was probably more a thing back then, everyone has struggles, I know, I get it.” Like, in my opinion there’s a way to do these things right. You put it in in such a way that the people who need to see it will see it. Across the Spider-verse for instance. There’s a lot of trans rights imagery in Spider-Gwen’s dimension. First time watching it I didn’t notice, I wasn’t looking for it because it’s not for me. People in that community probably recognized the colors of her world and were looking around for things where as I would never have noticed until someone else pointed it out. In the scene where Miles is running from all the Spider-People I was looking and spotting characters left and right, because that’s what I know. I don’t think it’s ever been explicitly said from the directors if she is or isn’t trans and I don’t think it matters. For the people that need her to be trans, she is, and for everyone else, she isn’t. Schrodinger's cat sort of thing but instead of a box it’s her pants and instead of a cat it’s a penis. I was thinking though, back in the first movie when she bumps into Miles and he says “we both just transferred here, that’s something we have in common” and she says “that’s one thing,” you assume she’s talking about spider powers but I thought it’d be funny if she was talking about penises. But her life is also quite different to Gwen Stacy’s I’m familiar with. I don’t know if her family set up is the same in the comics or not but where’s her mom? Where’s her brothers? Maybe in this world she didn’t have brothers, maybe she’s an only child, maybe she was a boy and is transitioning. Unanswered questions are fine, fun even. I found Durarara a whole lot less interesting when they started explaining every aspect of each character. Something I see as propaganda is the military being involved in fucking everything. Tranformers, military, Jurassic World, military, fucking Monster Hunter, MILITARY. Why? Again, are you just that fucking lazy or think the general public is too stupid to understand anything unless you put Uncle Sam in? You’re probably not wrong but cut it out. I feel like it’s subliminal messaging, or desensitizing in a way.

            One thing I’m tired of hearing is “go woke go broke.” First of all, if you use the term “woke” I feel like you’ve missed the point and you’re just intolerant. I never hear anyone being like “I’m woke!” The only people I see use it are the right/alt-right who are just a bunch or racist assholes. You have all these morons who must be part of the “chronically online” crowd complain about children shows and movies. Live action Little Mermaid has a black Ariel, people losing their god damn minds. There seems to be two camps to this, one that just doesn’t want a black person playing the character and the other just doesn’t want “their” story changed. So to explain the latter, it’s another case of not being able to make everyone happy. I watched it recently and as far as I could tell the story basically followed the animated movie with minor differences so you’ve got people that are glad the story is the same and you have people that are upset that it’s not different. The former camp is either just racist or will claim “she wasn’t like that in the original so blah blah bleeekccjkcek.” People were complaining about when a black guy was going to play Johnny Storm in the worse Fantastic Four, “he’s not black in the comics,” people complaining during a rumor that Mary Jane Watson was going to be played by a black girl, people complaining about a new? Newer? April O’neil that’s black and fat. Like this stuff harkens (is that the right use of this word, harkens…) back to my very first post on here. During Andrew Garfield’s time as Spider-Man there were talks about Peter “exploring his sexuality” and maybe casting MJ as a guy and people were losing their shit. For me, personally, if you’re gonna have Peter question himself the character you use is Black Cat. Black Cat is my favorite fictional character, probably my first “cartoon crush” BUT in my mind, if you were going to do this you’d make Black Cat a femboy. Either played by a femboy or a transgirl or a “ladyboy,” or something. I don’t think Hollywood even has femboys? There seems to be some confusion between “effeminate” and “feminine” when I searched for “Hollywood femboys.” Most of what I got were men with beards wearing eyeliner. Not what I’m looking for. A feminine man, someone who can pass as a girl. You see it all the time in anime but obviously it’s easier to do in anime and manga, like Prunus Girl. Aikawa is a boy that just looks like a girl and dresses as such cause it suits him. He still goes by he/him but can easily pass as a girl. Okay, true story time. When I was in high school I played soccer and when I was a junior or senior one of the freshman looked like a girl. He was short, the freshman were always small, don’t know if just our area or that’s everywhere, and he had long straight hair. I had a real hard time not staring at him but I was confused, I wanted to know! I didn’t have feelings for him but if you would’ve told me he was a girl I’d have believed you. But that’s what I would do, Peter can be dating an MJ or a Gwen or whoever then this person comes into his life who is very flirty. He can’t tell if it’s a guy or girl but at some point it just doesn’t matter because he’s attracted to this person. Hollywood usually seems to think “hm we need to put some gay in here, how about two bearded men kissing? Perfect!” And again, Black Cat is my favorite character, do I want to see her done justice on the big screen? Absolutely. But at the same time, I have “my” Black Cat. My Black Cat is from the 90’s Spider-Man cartoon where she puts on a mask that’s soaked in super soldier serum (or something) and then she gets buff. I don’t even know what or if she has any powers in the comics or how she got them if she does. All I see is her power is “bad luck.” I don’t even think in the games it’s ever said, she’s just nimble and that makes her good for thieving. But anyway, do I want every iteration of Black Cat portrayed the same way? No! How fucking boring would that be? They changed April O’neil? Okay, I wouldn’t have known, I still think of her as a busty red head. You still have “your” April and “your” Ariel. People have been freaking out that the new Power Rangers show, Cosmic Fury, is having a girl as the leader/red ranger, amongst other things, and it’s like really? The Little Mermaid, Power Rangers, this isn’t meant for you. This is for kids. For the kids that NEED to see a black mermaid or a girl in a leader role, they’ll see it, for those who don’t, they won’t care and focus on the story and have a great time because I can tell you as a kid I wasn’t watching Power Rangers for the plot. I was watching it for the bright colored people doing karate on the grey people and jumping into giant robots. There was a video I saw of a guy looking into Disney’s movies and if “go woke go broke” held up as so many claim and he found it really doesn’t. It’s just that Disney hasn’t been making very good movies. Probably due to bad writing… I’m sorry, I just don’t think very highly of writers for most of these shows and movies. I saw somewhere the guy who played… the white ninja, can’t think of his name, in the Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, did it, in the Snake Eyes movie knew it was going to flop. He said something like “you have these interesting characters that you can do anything with and Hollywood just does the same thing over and over again.”

            I’ve been hearing a lot of crap about the actress playing Snow White. Firstly, I don’t know what the beef is, I don’t really care, I’m not following it, the things I have seen of her though, yeah, she seems a tad conceited but whatever. People are complaining because she didn’t like Snow White as a kid. Who fucking cares? Not everyone is a Ryan Reynolds or Henry Cavill that love a character so much they mold themselves into them. She doesn’t like Snow White, who cares? It’s a shit movie for children. Do kids care that she doesn’t like a movie that’s like 40 years older then them? I highly doubt it. Have they seen it? Even less likely. Move on people.

            I’m going to rant about Star Wars now. I feel like the people in charge of Star Wars now don’t really understand it but even for episodes 1, 2 and 3 I would change some things. Oh, to start, I had been painstakingly trying to get a theatrical version of the original Star Wars movies. I had the VHS tapes a long time ago, that were theatrical versions as far as I know, but times were changing and a DVD set came out so I got it. Watching it I started seeing different scenes, CGI, ick, “what is this?” I hated it. If you’ve read some of my other stuff you’ll know my first experience with things is what I latch on to. So later I was looking for theatrical versions and I found one that said that’s what it was. Cool. I put it in, see a weird scene, must just be misremembering, but at some point I notice it’s wrong. I think it’s when there’s storm troopers riding some sand lizard. Or that’s the part I thought was weird. So anyway, not right, go to the menu, the theatrical version is in a different spot, okay fine, push play, and it shows up in this tiny tiny TINY ass screen that you can barely see and it’s like “what the hell is this????” Ugh… Finally, a few years ago I stumbled upon some blu-rays someone made. They’re called the “Despecialized Edition” and they’re as close to original as we’re gonna get. They ain’t cheap, if I remember right, but they’re worth it. To me. So, you have episodes 4, 5 and 6 as the base, okay. So, changes I’d do to 1, 2 and 3 I guess. First, less CGI and more puppet stuff, like the originals. I love the puppet stuff, it’s what makes Star Wars unique to me and why I sought out unaltered versions of the originals. The droids kind of make sense for CGI and they don’t look bad to me but I remember seeing Jar Jar for the first time and was disappointed. On the topic of Jar Jar, I truly love the fan theory of him being a Sith and it just makes so much fucking sense! I’ve seen that George Lucas had changed his plans for Jar Jar since people didn’t like him much but I would have LOVED to have seen a fight between Yoda and Jar Jar. Someone had made the point of how when Luke first meets Yoda he acted like this weird little hermit and that it was him acting like Jar Jar. Play the fool so people don’t suspect you. Just another bullet point for the case of a Darth Jar Jar. I didn’t like Yoda fighting Palpatine and Palpatine flying around and shit, not how I imagine him fighting. I would’ve liked it much more if his identity remained a mystery to Yoda and Obi-wan while they went into exile. Also order 66 didn’t really do much huh? Got Jedi all over the god damn place. Another thing I don’t like is R2-D2 and C-3P0 being in the movies, they didn’t need to be there at all. All it does is make a plot hole in episode 4 when Obi-wan doesn’t seem to recognize them at all. Sure he never “owned” R2-D2 but still. Umm what else? Jango went down like a bitch. That was lame.

            I guess I’ll shift gears here a bit and talk about some of the older games that are considered “legends” now. “Legends” are my “cannon,” sorry Disney. I really liked how the games showed and/or explained things in a little more depth like Jango being chosen to be the donor for the clones because he killed Count Dooku’s rogue apprentice in Bounty Hunter or that the rebel army existed because Vader told Starkiller to form it to distract the Emperor in Force Unleashed. Like that is wild to me! I love it.

            I don’t like the new movies much at all. I don’t like how they use the force or how they think it works. It was like, because Kylo Ren was so strong in the force that when he fell to the dark side the force had to balance out and just picked a random person, that person being Rey. To my understanding, she was not force sensitive prior to this, her parents weren’t anyone special, not Jedi, not force sensitive but for some reason when Kylo became bad the force had to give someone else a whole bunch of force points and hope they didn’t fall. But even if Rey did fall to the dark side too then the force would’ve just picked someone else and give them a shit ton of force potential. I don’t enjoy how force users just seem to be everywhere right now either. It was supposed to be this gift that was hard to harness and even harder the older you were but meh, it’s fine. Got people that never showed any sort of force sensitivity at all floating through space and stopping light sabers. I watched episode 7, was kind of turned off by it, had no interest in seeing 8 but my friend convinced me to go, it was awful, still haven’t seen all of 9 but I hate the half hour I’ve seen. Palpatine is still alive, dumb, then he pulls out a shit ton of star destroyers and it’s like “bro what the fuck even? Who’s even going to fly those things? I do NOT believe there are enough people in the whole Star Wars fucking universe to pilot all of those.” It’s so stupid. The prequel type movies just make more plot holes. Half the Disney+ shows are okay, the other half are bad. It’s just like, how can you be so out of touch? And using characters that have died in previous movies/games/shows. Are you that bad at writing new characters you have to pull one that people already know and liked? And what is it with every piece of media be it show, movie or game having to make a NEW droid and at least one NEW alien race. Do you not have enough?? Probably the biggest thing I disliked with 7, 8 and 9 was that they still were relying on Luke, Han and Liea. Like pick some fucking other people for fucks sake. The Old Republic CGI trailers are far better and cooler than anything that’s been out recently. I’d gladly take a show or movie based on any character in those trailers.

            Marvel. Marvel, Marvel, Marvel. What can I say about Marvel? For the most part I really like the start of their movies but by the middle I don’t care anymore because they go down the same old plot points. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 as an example. The beginning was great, it was so wacky and looked like it came right from the comics then in the middle of the movie they pull the whole “I never played catch with my dad T_T” Like are you fucking serious? That’s what you’re going with? My dad was around and I can’t remember if we ever played catch or not. Wanna know why? Because it’s such a moot point in the course of childhood! Whew man, I gotta tell ya, the times playing catch with my dad changed my life. No one fucking says that! Shut up! Get better material. Christ. One problem for the Marvel movies is they just use names from popular comic events but the scale is just so much smaller. It’s obvious why but it still doesn’t do the story justice. I don’t know, for the most part I like the Disney+ shows more than the current movies. People complain about them, like they complain about everything else, but I enjoy most of them. Sure there’s things I wish were a little different but what can you do?

            I don’t know, that’s my gripe for now. I think I had more to talk about for Marvel but Star Wars just took it all out of me. Thoughts? Got any actual movies to recommend me? “Films” huh? Let me know below and I’m gonna go away. Bye-bye!

             @AztecSauce