residentgrigo

I binged all of Moonrise on release and it went from ok, I guess, to the second half being borderline white noise. It all boiled down to the rule of cool and the magic of friendship. Tow Ubukata originally wrote the now-releasing hard sci-fi books before the director asked to rewrite them into Science Fantasy Shounen Action slob to make it "more marketable." OVA quality action can´t matter if the plot doesn´t matter and the characters wear plot armor. Especially if endless robots and masked Stormtroopers are the enemy. Or techno slime. The hell. Who knows who is to be blamed but Ubukata´s shows are rarely this bland. Bye Bye, Earth ain´t good but it´s never boring. The time jumping is the single worst idea, besides the Moon Blobs or the Mother Brain AI uprising or the love triangle that goes nowhere or the fake politics or the lack of a developed cast. Democracy > AI or monarchy and who needs a proper ending if the plot never gets going to begin with? War bad, friendship gud. Wow, so deep and this is the studio's 2nd AoT wannabe after the even worse Iron Fortress. Let it go, Wit. Whatever/10, so a 5.

I can´t see anyone talking about this by next month. 7 years in the making. 7 years! Yakitori: Soldiers of Misfortune (6/10) and Make My Day (7/10) are both better and shorter. Who remembers them though? Both only 2023 releases. Netflix is where sci-fi goes to die.

I liked this cut of Part 2 more than Part 1. The novelization of Part 1 was great and it is based on the director´s cut. I hope that the final films won´t lose too much of the crazy after being pushed through the MPAA to secure an R. The most impressive aspect of this film is the Junkie XL 10/10 score. The least impressive aspect is the weird timeline of events and clearly missing information. The living god engines called Kali are only introduced in the full version of Part 1 for example but also play a role here. A scene only in Part 1´s director´s cut is for example presented to have happened during the 5 days of prep the village has in Part 2 making at all seem less credible. Because it actually isn´t! A main character will also die differently in the director's cut, something Snyder revealed in a post-screening Q&A so we are once again being dealt a VERY compromised vision on release. AotD too had timeline issues but that film rocked while Rebel Moon simply plays. Well, the second half more or less rocks. Admiral Noble was my favorite character in Part 1 but is outshone in Part 2 by General Titus. The dialogue flips between very strong and exposition.txt to name something split down the middle. Kurt Johnstad & Shay Hatten are no Chris Terrio or even David Goyer but their dialogue worked well through V. Castro´s filter in the novel. Some of the cheese is of course intentional. Both Snyder and Lucas (the PT specifically) pay homage to source material and styles that were already ancient before the scripting began.

And the action and cinematography? Mostly first class and the Vfx are equally strong! The current version´s one proper action scene is 50 minutes long. 300 on spray paint and chrome! Known action scenes in flashbacks are cut to almost nothing outside of Kora´s tale. To think that the real film will have an even longer climax, other action bits with varied settings and more complex balls-to-the-wall choreography that will push the gore as hard as the MPAA will allow, with Euro comic sex scenes on top. That´s why Snyder will never be out of work. No one squeezes blood from a stone like him.

I wonder how much these films truly cost. If Snyder indeed managed to make 2 three hour films with alternative material (!) for 2 two hour cuts on top for only 80-something million apiece then he needs to win a Producer´s Guild award. 2 Rebel 2 Moon: Bigger Longer Uncut drops both parts at once in late summer to fall 2024. If it´s as good as the book then we have an all-time cult classic on our hands and this second half is already good enough. Bring on the sequels and spin-offs but I will add that the Black Axe prequel comics didn´t grab me. Part 2 gets a B- for now. Part 1 gets a C but not for long, its novel is a B+.

What we have here is Secret Invasion 2.0 as many feared but the end product is less incompetent. Echo herself continues to be rather bland, her shamanic (?) powers feel shoehorned in so that marketing can pretend that they care about Native American culture and all other characters can barely be called as such. Material was cut but not enough if you ask me. The cringy cousin, the bad CGI train, etc. The show´s editing sucks in general.

Iron Fist S1 is better than this 3-hour "film", Arrow has better fight scenes and more on top of that. Daredevil´s one scene is a random half-fight in a flashback that just stops. A delete bit from Hawkeye or a studio mandate to create a trailer shot, unlike his fun use in She-Hulk. The TV-Ma is lastly an unearned marketing gimmick. Watch Reservation Dogs or rewatch Daredevil and Arrow S2. This ain´t it and will be the last time I finish an MCU show for the sake of it. No matter how short! Marvel Spotlight (what does this even mean?) is thus a bust.

PS: The post-Netflix Kingpin continues to suck but D'Onofrio tries his best and has more good scenes here than in Hawkeye. A deleted scene was sadly the only good one there. Why am I praising She-Hulk and Hawkey...?