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The Marvels

The Marvels

The Marvels is the sequel to Captain Marvel, directed by Nia DaCosta. It follows Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), who due to Kree shenanigans caused by their new Supreme Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) ends up entangling her powers with Captain Monica Rambeau aka Photon (Teyona Parris), her ‘niece’ as well as Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Imani Vellani), her greatest fan. The three must work together to stop Dar-Benn creating new, unstable jump points into the universal teleportation network, which would overload and potentially destroy it, threatening everyone. 

Oh, and Nick Fury is there. 

This movie was a mess. It was a lovely, entertaining, funny mess, but a mess nonetheless. There are so many structural problems with its plot that I almost wonder if this film was shot without a script. It is still, and I cannot stress this enough, fun. I had a good time. There are 2 excellent action scenes, the power-entanglement was a very cool concept that the filmmakers used to its full potential, the dance scene was very fun, as was the subplot with Goose’s kittens. All the actors are great, especially Imani Vellani as Kamala, and while I had many problems with this movie I still think you should see it. You will have a good time. 

If you have seen it, or you don’t mind SPOILERS, let’s talk about it. 

The TV Shows

The first thing, right off the bat, is that Marvel set this movie up to fail. Yes, it did come out at the tail-end of the SAG-AFTRA and WAG strikes, meaning that none of the cast or crew could promote it. Yes, it came out after a historically bad summer blockbuster season, in which every large superhero film underperformed. It also didn’t help that Marvel themselves did next to no promotion for this film, releasing only 2 trailers, the second of which barely contains any footage of this film. 

That’s not what buried this movie, and at the risk of sounding naive, I also don’t think it’s the small but vocal minority of sexist and racist pundits who are now rejoicing at this film’s lowest opening weekend numbers. No, what buried this movie is the same thing that’s buried every single Marvel project in Phase 4: terrible scripts, unfocused plots, inconsistent worldbuilding and most importantly - HOMEWORK. 

I have said this time and time again; I even talked about it here as a separate issue. Marvel’s insistence on connecting their film universe to their TV universe is a rake they inevitably keep stepping on. 

I know people are countering this by saying that you don’t need to watch the shows to understand the movie. First, as I’ll demonstrate here, that’s not ALWAYS true. Second, the lone fact that one MIGHT have to have watched hours of TV to be able to enjoy a movie is enough to deter most people from going. 

Marvel simply can’t decide how their shows fit into this universe. They can’t tell audiences which projects stand alone and which don’t, because then no one would watch the shows unless they are fans of that specific character. And seeing as these shows have budgets upwards of $212 million dollars, they NEED everyone to watch them. But how is it fair to expect a regular person to devote 21 hours of watchtime between 3 separate shows just to be able to follow the plot of this film? 

Everything about the marketing of this film highlighted that this isn’t Captain Marvel’s movie: from the title, to the first trailer which heavily involved Photon and Miss Marvel, to the Secret Invasion show heavily involving both Nick Fury and the Skrulls. 

There is nothing wrong with introducing new characters in a franchise. There is nothing wrong with introducing really popular characters into a franchise, without doing their origin story either - one of the best decisions the MCU did was to introduce Spiderman in Civil War as an already established character. 

The problem is that the Marvels isn’t introducing the AUDIENCE to Ms. Marvel and Photon; it’s introducing Carol Danvers to them. This isn’t the same thing. Not only is Carol not this movie’s PoV character, but she already has a complicated history with Monica, history that the audience isn’t privy to unless they watched Wanda Vision.

The Problem of Monica 

Captain Monica Rambeau is the daughter of Captain Maria Rambeau, Carol Danvers’ best friend and pilot partner. She was introduced in Captain Marvel as a child, but we meet her as an adult for the first time in the Wanda Vision TV series. 

In the show we learn that Maria was suffering from cancer, and died while Monica was blipped. When Monica came back, she got involved in Wanda’s scheme in Fairview which is how she got her powers. 

If you hadn’t seen Wanda Vision, the last time you saw Monica she was a kid. She didn’t have any superpowers, and she certainly wasn’t working with Nick Fury. It takes the movie over 40 minutes to get around to EVEN telling us that Monica was blipped. It doesn’t help that the scene we learn this in, is a very contrived bit where she, Carol, and Kamala have to share their memories in order to track down Dar-Benn. 

This should be the emotional core of the conflict between Monica and Carol. Her mother was sick, and Monica missed 5 years of life during which her mother died. Carol, her aunt, the closest person to her and Maria, wasn’t there for any of it: Maria getting ill, Monica disappearing, Maria dying, or Monica reappearing and putting her life together. 

That’s the real reason why Monica is mad at Carol. It isn’t as the movie implies, because Carol made a promise to her when she was 10, and a fully adult Monica is simply choosing to hold on to it out of spite. It’s because after everything, after knowing Maria was sick and Monica came back from the dead, she still wasn’t there for her. But because to know any of this, we would’ve had to have seen Wanda Vision, Monica’s character comes off as incredibly immature and juvenile for the full first act of the film.

Her and Carol have a clear animosity that we have no context for, and the movie expects us to have it, but how could we, when in order to know any of this, we needed to have watched a separate show where she wasn’t even the MAIN CHARACTER. 

As for Ms. Marvel, her introduction isn’t the issue; it’s that after she’s introduced, she has nothing to do for the remainder of the film. Let me explain. 

Kamala gets an animated stinger (which unintentionally comes off as a cheap ripoff of Miles’ introduction in Into the Spiderverse, especially because it’s never once used for the rest of the film), which introduces her and her family. However, because none of the other characters know who she is, nothing that happens in her show is at all mentioned or relevant to the events of this film. All that we learn is that Kamala has inherited a golden bangle from her grandmother, which is part of an ancient set of Kree bangles that Dar-Benn is after. 

How Kamala’s grandmother got to be in possession of one is never explained, which sucks in a movie that revolves entirely around these stupid bangles. If it’s explained in Ms. Marvel, it’s never mentioned here, and if it isn’t, then that makes the only interesting aspect to them nonexistent. 

It’s not that watching Ms. Marvel would materially change my understanding of Kamala’s character or her powers; it’s that I, as a viewer, have to gamble with my time because of Marvel’s inconsistency with its own properties, and that hurts my experience of this film. I shouldn’t have to be a superfan to be able to watch the sequel to a film I’ve already seen, just so I can understand the character relationships. It’s a bad way to go about stories, and it’s what made many people not want to see this film. 

Kamala Has Nothing to Do

Multiple times during the film, I turned to my friend and said ‘it sure would’ve been nice if we saw that!’

For the majority of the film, I felt like I was watching the sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist, but I’d rather be watching. Somewhere between Captain Marvel and now, Carol flew back to the Kree homeworld of Hala, and SINGLE HANDEDLY destroyed the Supreme Intelligence, the AI which rules and controls the Kree Empire. This plunged the Kree into a devastating civil war which depleted their resources into ruin; their sun is dying, the water has evaporated from Hala and the air is no longer breathable. 

Doesn’t that sound like a super interesting direction to take the character? Isn’t that something that would give Carol some much needed moral complexity? Maybe even examine the way in which superpowers interfere in the politics and structure of cultures they don’t understand or are a part of, leading into a cycle of violence and turmoil that is then blamed on said culture? I sure would like to see that!

Instead, this movie takes place after all the interesting things happened. Our villain isn’t Yon-Rogg, Ronan, or even Carol, but a new character who has no connection to Carol outside of just being Kree. Dar-Benn is after the bangles, because she wants to use them to open portals into other worlds and siphon their resources back to Hala. 

How is this the plan she came up with? Wouldn’t opening literal jump points into Hala’s atmosphere allow immediate access to any army that wants to attack the Kree? Not to mention there is no guarantee that the same way the resources are siphoned to Hala can’t be siphoned back to the original planet. 

But it becomes even stupider when we talk about the bangles. Dar-Benn’s meddling in the teleportation network is bad because the more jump points she creates, the more unstable the network becomes until it collapses entirely. I am completely unsure how finding both bangles would in any way prevent this from happening, or why Dar-Benn would need both bangles when she succeeds in what she sets out to do with just the one. 

I am not joking. Using just one bangle, Dar-Benn manages to get both water and air, and even starts stealing the Milky Way’s sun. Once she gets both bangles and uses them, all she does with them is open a hole in space and time which kills her, and allows a different reality to seep into ours. WHY DOES SHE WANT TO DO THIS? 

Dar-Benn’s only stated motivation for this entire film is saving Hala. Even her desire for revenge against Carol is secondary. So then why on God’s Green Earth would Dar-Benn want to a) destroy the universe in which Hala is located or b) want to kill herself and leave her people without a Supreme, and therefore once again leaderless? 

Moreover, why does she need both bangles? Even the film forgets she’s supposed to want them until about ⅔ of the way through at which point Dar-Benn learns that Kamala, the girl she’s fought with, who was on her ship, actually has the second bangle. By this point, she has already siphoned the air and the water from the other two colonies, and is able to do the same to the Earth’s sun!

Dar-Benn doesn’t need the bangles; hell, Kamala doesn’t either! It’s made pretty clear that Kamala’s powers don’t come from the bangle; she could’ve easily left it on Earth. The film tries to explain that it’s because the trio needs both to close the jump points Dar-Benn is opening, but if that’s the case, why not just leave the one Kamala has behind, and come back for it once they have the second one? Dar-Benn has no idea Kamala has it, it’s not stated or implied that the bangles can find each other, and by this point Dar-Benn has already sucked the air from the Skrulls; it's not like things can get worse!

Poor Zawe Ashton; she is having a blast with this role, but she has NOTHING to work with. Everything we know about her character is her acting the shit out of this blank slate; what’s in the script actually makes her worse. Did she know Carol before Carol destroyed Hala? Did she know Ronan? How did she learn about the bangles? Why does she think this is the best way to go about saving Hala? WHY DOES SHE ATTACK CAROL AFTER CAROL PROMISES TO RESTORE HALA’S SUN?

This terrible plot bleeds into Kamala’s character as well. It makes no sense that Kamala’s powers become entangled with Monica and Carol’s; she wasn’t touching the light energy they were. She was nowhere near either of them. Moreover, because Kamala’s only utility to the plot is her bangle, until the bangle becomes relevant, she has nothing to do. Carol and Monica don’t treat her as an equal, she is always sidelined in fights and action scenes, she isn’t involved in the personal drama between them, and she isn’t even there to provide any emotional conflict for either. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t attempts to give her a conflict; it’s just that this film is allergic to it. 

No Conflict Allowed

There’s this growing mindset in fandom that I really don’t like; I call it the Coffee Shop AU syndrome. It’s this idea that any conflict, especially between characters that are ostensibly on the same side is ALWAYS bad. That people aren’t allowed to disagree or have different ideas on how things are supposed to be run. And this movie falls for this hard. 

Kamala is the most obvious victim to this, but Carol suffers for it too. 

Kamala is Carol’s biggest fan; Carol is her idol. After they meet, Carol insists that Kamala leave behind Skrull refugees because the ship is full and they need to take off, an objectively horrible and callous thing to do, especially for someone who can fly, is super-strong, and can BREATHE IN SPACE. Kamala is hurt by this; it’s clear this act of Carol’s is shattering the image she had of her, and Carol isn’t what Kamal imagined her to be. 

It’s a very simple set up. Kamala is young and earnest, and she is there to remind Carol that Carol isn’t fighting for the vague concept of peace, but real people. Carol is there to teach Kamala that even heroes are flawed humans who make mistakes and get overwhelmed. 

The arc of this film, if you can call it that, is that Carol, can’t, shouldn’t, mustn't make decisions alone. Her insistence on solving the Kree problem by herself is what leads to the Kree’s civil war and their subsequent targeting of the Skrulls. Her insistence that she can see through the Kree’s intentions during the peace conference, and her meddling is what gives Dar-Benn the excuse to attack the Skrulls. Her repeated favoring of grand ideas instead of the actual people who have to live with these ideas are the reason she’s willing to leave refugees behind. 

Instead of the film doing anything with this,  immediately after the Skrulls are shipped off to New Asgard, Carol apologizes to Kamala for yelling and all is forgiven! The issue wasn’t that Carol yelled at Kamala, it was that she LEFT PEOPLE BEHIND TO DIE. 

You’d think that in a movie that clearly sets Kamala and Dar-Benn as ideological opposites, as two extremes to Carol’s personality, that Kamala would have a much clearer conflict with Dar-Benn. Dar-Benn loathes Captain Marvel, the Annihilator; Kamala adores Captain Marvel, the Avenger. Both see Carol as an idea instead of a person, and both represent ideas: Dar-Benn is militaristic, vengeful and selfish. Kamala is earnest, idealistic, and naive. Through their conflict, Carol is supposed to change.

Instead, Dar-Benn has no idea who Kamala is for 90% of the movie, their only interactions revolve around a fucking gold bangle, and their conflict boils down to ‘good guy punches bad guy’. 

Where in the World is Carol Danvers?

Marvel doesn’t know what to do with Carol Danvers. They can’t agree on anything about her character, which is why she’s so inconsistent over the 3 films she’s appeared in. The best version of her is still Captain Marvel; there Carol is confident, funny, and determined. She knows her abilities and her powers. Her struggle is internal; the Kree have stripped her of her memories and are trying to control her by constantly undermining her worth in a parallel to the U.S. military undermining the female pilots. Carol coming to terms with the fact that she has been lied to and used, but that she has a real home and people who love her is what allows her to come into her powers fully. 

In this sequel we learn that Carol has apparently taken all the wrong lesions from the first film. She has once again rejected her family, she is still hunting after old memories instead of building new ones with the people she loves, and she still is fighting first and thinking second. 

Like I said, this is an interesting direction for the character. Carol getting worse isn’t the issue; it’s that the film refuses to commit or develop any of these ideas.

Is Carol a flawed character who needs to grow? Or is she perfect as is, and it’s the rest of the world that needs to see her be vindicated? Objectively, deciding by yourself with no input from the people who will be the most affected by your decision, to destroy the Supreme Intelligence is a bad thing. Meddling in peace talks between the Kree and the Skrulls when neither side wants you there is a bad thing. On a personal level, running away from the people who love you and rely on you because you know they won’t approve of your actions is also a bad thing. 

Instead of dealing with this, the film contorts itself in pretzels to justify Carol at every step. Sure, Carol fucked up by killing the Supreme Intelligence, but she did what she had to! The Kree themselves are just genetically predisposed to war and destruction so much that they destroyed their own planet! Yes, Dar-Benn is objectively right to want to save her planet, but we have to make her so cartoonishly, stupidly evil, that she’s willing to make insane decisions just so she can hurt Carol. Yes, Carol did abandon Maria and Monica, but she felt bad you guys! It’s ok! 

No one is allowed to confront Carol on her bad decisions; hell outside of one single scene no one is allowed to acknowledge that Carol made bad decisions at all! Everytime the film seems like it’s going to introduce an actual conflict it undercuts itself. Kamala and Carol fight? Carol immediately apologizes. Carol puts Kamala and the rest of the universe in danger by wanting to prove that she’s a better pilot than Dar-Benn? She just felt so guilty for failing the Skrulls, she had no choice! She abandoned Monica because she was afraid Monica would hate her for being a war criminal? Guess, she was wrong, because Monica immediately forgives her! 

Because the film can’t decide what kind of character Carols is supposed to be, she’s the worst kind of character: confused, unfocused, empty. She stands for nothing and she cares about nothing. If this is how she’s being treated in her own franchise, we can’t blame the Russos for ‘running’ her in Avengers. 

Conclusion 

Yes, the film isn’t good. But that’s not the real problem. It’s that it’s a distillation of everything Marvel has been doing wrong for years, even before Endgame. It’s a movie about nothing, told through characters who serve only to dump exposition and move the plot along. It’s at moments really pretty to look at, but that just makes it worse. Seeing this many talented people working so hard to produce such a soulless, empty project, genuinely pains me. I hate that this is the bar that’s deemed acceptable to release, and I worry what it means for the future. 

Oh, and Nick Fury was there. 

#marvels #captain marvel #marvel #moni talks #film review

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Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water is the sequel to James Cameron’s Avatar, finally out after 13 years in development. It follows Jake Sully (Sam Wortington), now fully integrated in Na’vi society, living at the rebuilt Hometree with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and raising a family. When humans return with a massive army as well as plans to terraform Pandora and make it humanity’s new home, Jack is forced to face everything he thought he left behind, and make some tough decisions about how best to protect his family. 

I was never a huge fan of the original Avatar; I found the story predictable and unoriginal, most of the characters boring and underdeveloped, and the only real draw for me was the world of Pandora. Even 13 years ago, as derivative as the Na’vi were of an amalgamation of various Native American tribes, I genuinely enjoyed the world and hoped that if there ever were sequels they would build it up even more and explore the other clans. 

In preparation for this sequel, I rewatched the first film, and I’m sad to report that I was in fact wrong about several things. For one, not all the characters are flat; Jake, Commander Quaritch (Steven Lang) and Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) are actually developed characters with their own goals, motivations, and personalities. Jake especially, gets a lot of internal struggle, and his journey from a jarhead whose only motivation is to get paid and get his spine fixed, to someone who deeply connects with the forest and with the Na’vi way of life is very well done, even if Wortington’s acting leaves a lot to be desired. 

My main gripe with the first film really is the plot; the white savior narrative is the main driving force of the film, and there is something so intrinsically insulting about Jake being a random alien nobody who is not only someone who wants to help the Na’vi, but who is blessed by their goddess Eywa herself to be Pandora’s savior, not to mention how easily he beats the humans and unites the many clans. Just simply becoming Toruk Makto and uniting the clans could’ve been a full film, and yet Avatar squanders it in less than 20 minutes of screentime. 

The Way of Water suffers from many of these same problems, while introducing a whole host of new ones. Before I get into my long list of complaints, let me say some positives first. 

Visually, the film is gorgeous. CGI has come a long way since 2009, and the attention to detail is staggering. I love everything about the Na’vi designs, from their bioluminescent skin to the way they move and their animal-like mannerisms. The new clan introduced in this film, the Metkayina look amazing, especially the way their bodies and arms are adapted to water. Likewise the designs of the tulkuns are beautiful, as these truly massive, deeply intelligent creatures. 

Generally, all the designs from the animals in the water, to the locations new and old, like the Cove of Ancestors, or the Hallelujah mountains are beautiful. The CGI combined with the film being shot and cut with 3d in mind makes the experience of watching it in the cinema worth it, even if it ends up being more of  spectacle rather than a compelling story.

While I didn’t love how Quaritch was brought back, his design was very well done. I loved how his squad still clung onto the human way of dressing, walking and hunting even in their new Na’vi bodies. There was also generally a better integration of the characters who were meant to be humans in Na’vi bodies into said Na’vi bodies; in the first film both Jake and Grace looked very close to the uncanny valley, especially their faces. This film avoids that; Jake and Quaritch look a lot better. Kiri is the only character who sometimes looks awkward which is ironic because her face is the one on all the posters. 

Now let’s get into some gripes. 

The first one is the plot. There isn’t one. This film is 3 hours and 15 minutes of vibes. Stuff happens, but one cannot call it a plot, since there’s no real progression of events or even a heightening of tension. To explain this I will have to go into SPOILERS, so if for some reason you don’t want this film spoiled, skip this section. 

The film starts with Quaritch and his squad waking up in Na’vi bodies. In the last film, supposedly, they gave their DNA and memories to scientists on Earth who have somehow fused them (?) with Na’vi DNA and now they are all Na’vi. The new squad remembers everything the OG people remembered up until the point where they handed off their DN, but they are not actually those people. 

Here we run into problem nb. 1: why would Quaritch, a man who was so racist and hostile to the Na’vi, so determined to exterminate them from Hometree by any means necessary, so dedicated to the survival of the humans, agree to give his DNA to this type of project? And if this new Quaritch has enough of the OG’s memories and personality, so much so that he cares about Spider enough to risk his life to save him twice (we’ll talk about Spider later) why isn’t he more conflicted about this? 

General Ardmore (Edie Falco) tells the Na’vi squad that their mission is to find and kill Jake Sully because apparently he’s what’s stopping them from relocating the Na’vi and terraforming Pandora. I don’t understand how Jake’s guerilla strikes are doing any damage to the insane amount of military power these humans have, especially because in the first film, the humans on Pandora had been there for years, and had one base. Here, they have a massive compound and have made rail tracks into the forest and spread all the way into the ocean. How would Jake, even with his successful attacks stop them?  

Quaritch is the luckiest man in this movie, because Jake’s kids chose this very moment to explore so both groups end up at the compound where Jake and Neytiri killed OG Quaritch. Jake has 3 kids with Neytiri: Neteyam, Lo’ak and Tuk, and he has also adopted Kiri who is Grace’s daughter, born out of her avatar body after Grace died. Jake also semi-adopted Spider, who is in fact Quaritch’s son. Spider was born before Quaritch died, but because he was a child, he got stranded on Pandora since he couldn’t be put in a cryopod. 

The two groups fight and eventually Quaritch captures Spider. Afraid that Spider would betray their location (and not even once considering rescuing him from his deadly enemy) Jake decides to quite literary ABANDON the Na’vi and even worse, force Neytiri, their literal Tsahik and LEADER to abandon them as well, under the excuse that Quaritch would come for them and put the clan in danger. 

I have NO idea why suddenly now Jake is afraid of Quaritch; he doesn’t know about the terraforming plan and he killed Quaritch once before, and that was before he was even fully Na’vi. What’s so different about Quaritch now that makes him more of a threat? He doesn’t have an army, he has a squad of 10 people!  

So at this point, one might assume that Jake’s kids would maybe rebel and go after Spider? Nope, Spider is entirely forgotten about; Kiri mentions him once. 

Ok, maybe Jake realizes that he can’t run from the war and must convince the new clan he’s hidden himself among into helping him win the war? Wrong. Jake actually is the one who convices the Metkayina not to fight, which leads to Quaritch capturing the leaders’ children. 

So what is the plot? Well, there isn’t one. After Jake and co arrive at the Metkayina village, he and Neytiri drop out of the film and we follow the kids learning to swim, breathe, ride, speak and hunt underwater, for 2 hours. 

In those 2 hours we are introduced to a dozen subplots which either lead nowhere or grind the film to a halt. I am not kidding when I say that most of this film felt like a Fallout 4 playthrough; sure I am in a rush to find and save my kidnapped child, but why don’t I spend several hours doing side-quests in Boston harbor or customize my settlement?

What doesn’t help is that none of the new characters are interesting, entertaining or at all developed. The two new adults we have are Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal (Kate Winslet), the leaders of the Metikayina clan. They have a collective 15 minutes of screentime as stock characters: Ronal is feisty and doesn’t trust outsiders and Tonowari is strict, wise and good at fighting. That’s about it.  

For the kids we get Tsireya, Aonung and Rotxo. Tsireya is the beautiful princess who falls in love with one of the outsiders, in this case Lo’ak, and the one who is kindest and most easily charmed by the newcomers. She is actually the best character out of the 3, because the 2 boys are interchangeable; they are both assholes, and are both mean to the Sully kids, especially Aonung who takes it to a whole new level by literally trying to murder Lo’ak and leaving him stranded in a bay full of dangerous, carnivorous fish.

Jake’s kids fare no better: Tuk is an annoying cold who only serves to tag along and needs constant rescuing; she could be replaced by a lamp and nothing would change. Neteyam is the older brother who is Jake’ favorite and supposedly perfect. He has no personality and serves to take the fall for every stupid thing Lo’ak does, and dies. I would call him the Boromir of the group, but that would be a huge insult to Boromoir. Lo’ak for his part is extremely stupid, annoying and whiny. He has a strained relationship with Jake which could be half-interesting if the film ever actually committed to exploring it. 

As it stands, Jake comes off as a wildly incompetent and abusive father, but Lo’ak consistently makes every wrong decision ever, in order to justify Jake’s abuse. 

The only remotely interesting characters are weirdly, Kiri and Spider. Kiri is interesting because no one knows who her father is or how she was born; she also seems to have a very strong connection to Eywa; she can hear her, she can control nature, she can breathe underwater longer than anyone else, and sometimes goes in a trance that seems to be caused by Eywa. At one point, while bonding with Metkayina's version of the Tree of Souls, she manages to speak to Grace, but before we get any answers, she suffers some kind of stroke. The film seems to suggest she has epilepsy (?) but it never follows up on it, adding it to the list of dropped plot points. 

Spider is similarly interesting because he’s a human raised by the Na’vi. He ends up developing a relationship with Quaritch, seeing him as a second chance to have a father. Quaritch for his part also cares for Spider and takes his advice, and later his please seriously. The issue with Spider is that the film tries to have him teach Quaritch’s group how to become Na’vi, and suggests that he’s bonded with them, and might actually betray the Sullys. However, Spider never once falters in his beliefs; even at the very end when Neytiri quite literary threatens to kill him, and actually hurts him, his sole priority is saving Kiri, so at no point did I or anyone believe he would turn to Quaritch, especially because what Quaritch is doing is so painfully, obviously wrong. 

About 2 hours in, the film introduces more characters and a subplot that turns into the main plot. In the first film, the human mission on Pandora was to mine unobtainium. The reason they wanted the Na’vi to move was because Hometree was on top of the largest quantity of the metal on Pandora. This film never once mentions unobtainium; instead there’s a new Mcguffin, which is the fluid extracted from tulkuns which stops aging in humans. I don’t need to explain how bad on a story level this is; instead I think they should just invent a new expensive thing that the humans are after in each subsequent film, and pretend like the previous things were never mentioned. 

The way the substance is extracted is by elaborate tulkun hunting, which Quaritch uses to lure Jake out after torching Na’vi villages along the coast didn’t do the trick. 

In one of the many subplots, Lo’ak, as mentioned, is stranded by Aonung. A banished tulkun, Payakan saves him and befriends him. Because Payakan is banished, when Jake tells the Metkayina to send the tulkun away, to save them from Quaritch, Payakan doesn’t know so he gets tagged by the hunters. In incredible dramatic irony, Quaritch once again captures the kids and forces Jake to come out of hiding. 

There is a very stupid fight between Jake and Quaritch, during which all of Quaritch’s squid and Neteyem die, and the fight ends in a stalemate as Lo’ak saves Jake and Spider saves Quaritch. 

In the end Jake realizes what he should’ve known from the start, BEFORE a bunch of Na’vi, including his son died for NOTHING, which is that no place is safe while the humans are on Pandora. Except this film can’t even do that right, because in the end it’s not like Jake returns to the Forest with Metkayina reinforcements. 

Once again, it makes NO sense that Jake a) ran and b) actually believed that Quaritch wouldn’t find him or wouldn’t hurt his kids to get to him. Moreover the fact that Neytiri, THE best hunters on Pandora, and literal leader of the Na’vi agreed to let Jake do this is ridiculous. She already killed Quaritch! She is able to destroy whole planes with one arrow! 

Moreover, if Jake ran because he was worried Spider would be used by Quaritch to find him, why wouldn’t he try and save him? 

The thing that really gets me is that the film is on Jake’s side. No one ever stands up to him, and even when people challenge him, the movie contorts itself to somehow make him right in the end. How do you take a character whose whole motivation was that he was the chosen one, who changed into a different alien race to protect the people he met, the people he was so devoted to he LITERARY died for them, and makes him a coward that selfishly runs and hides? And for what? Because the man who he already killed once is back? 

Jake Sully deserves better than this. His arc in the first film was so simple, yet so effective; he was self-involved, he was reckless, he was selfish, and he learned how to become a leader, he sacrificed everything to help right the wrong he recognized humans were doing. 

This film takes that character and downgrades him back to being selfish and self-involved, and worse, makes him a coward. Jake Sully from 13 years ago would never use civilians as a shield between him and Quritch. The Jake who learned what Hometree means, and why the Na’vi have to fight, and can’t just move, would never tell the Metkayina to send their tulkun away. And worse, this time the movie thinks he’s right. 

The Way of Water is a case study in how not to make a sequel. It retreads the original, but it also devalues it. Watching it made me yearn for the simple yet competent storytelling of the first. This is just a mess. 

If you only care about the visual splendor of Pandora, maybe go see it. If you care at all about the story, stay far far away. 

#avatar: the way of water #avatar #moni talks #film review

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables: The Final Cinderella

The Final Cinderella is the fifth game in the series, and it was the first game that I actively disliked while playing for the first time. Having now replayed it, I was probably too harsh, but it’s still one of my least favourite games in the series, with a banger opening, a really convoluted middle, and an incredibly disappointing ending. 

More than any of the other games, including TRRHS, this one feels rushed. Blue Tea’s desire to mix and match fairy tales never really worked for me, but here it especially doesn’t as the tales they chose are more incompatible than ever before. 

We open with a cutscene of a woman stepping out of a mirror to look over a ball. She is searching for a Cinderella, a maiden of pure heart, and she thinks she’s found it in the form of Cyrilla. At the stroke of midnight, the poor girl turns to glass and her sister disappears in the crowd. 

You arrive that same night, in a palace in Italy. Your mission is to find and protect Cyrilla’s stepsister Katherine from this evil Godmother and figure out how to stop her. As soon as you enter the castle you see the Godmother poofing in and out of existence and in the yard, you see a second glass maiden. Before you can help her, a massive, wooden Golem grabs her, and she disappears. 

Inside the palace you find yet another glass maiden who gets kidnapped, as well as Katherine herself. She tells you she saw the Godmother go through the mirror and wants to go after her. You find a balcony that overlooks the ballroom, from which the Godmother had been spying on the dancers. She also has a dressing room where we find something new for this game: small figurines of the previous Cinderellas. 

In this version of the tale, Cinderellas are magical girls who are pure of heart and soul. They are born every few decades, all over the world, which is a neat way of explaining why so many disparate cultures have a version of this very fairytale. The dressing room has Agnes Koch, the second Cinderella, who, we later learn, is the Cinderella who married the Frog Prince, James. 

With Katherine’s help, you activate the mirror. The Godmother grabs Katherine who tosses her purse to you, with all the clues she found, including a map of the gardens, and poisonous smoke, as well as the Golem knock you out of the ballroom. 

Outside you can unlock the garden gate and find the Golem searching for someone. You also find the carriage that the first Cinderella, Ella Bloom, used to get to the ball, as well as an explanation of the 6 traits a girl must have to be a Cinderella. 

One thing I will give this game props for is that it doesn’t rely on the parables to tell the story, like TRRHS did. The story of the Godmother, handmaidens and the Maiden Goddess are much more organically woven into the plot, and you can figure out exactly what happened without having to collect and read the parables. 

Once you complete the mural in the garden you find Pinocchio cowering from the Golem. You use a crossbow with a javelin you set on fire to chase the Golem away. Pinocchio tells you to use the mirror in the fallen tree to enter the dream realm, which is where the Godmother has taken Katherine. 

Inside the mirror world, we find the skeletal remnants of a pirate crew who were all executed for attempting to steal the piles of treasure littering the world. We also see Katherine trapped in a tree. She reacts strangely when we set her free, not at all like the Katherine we met in the castle, which brings me to my main gripe here. 

In TRRHS, I will admit, the first time I played the game, I didn’t realize Eldra was the Wolf Queen so her betraying me and taking Ruth was genuinely surprising. On replay, it’s pretty telegraphed, but still, it did get me the first time. 

Here, this Katherine acts nothing like the Katherine you met; you immediately can tell something is wrong, and yet the game forces you to be stupid, and go along with the deception. You HAVE to hand her the glass slippers, or you can’t progress. I’d buy this in a roleplaying sense, but even there, it just makes the Detective character dense as a brick, if she’s so easily fooled. 

Regardless, Katherine gives you a series of tasks that require you to find a pair of glass slippers. During all this you get separated from Pinocchio and are surprised to see the inert Golem, as well as a grove full of corrupt logs and branches blocking your way. 

Katherine takes you to the glass wasteland, where you find dozens of girls, all turned to glass. You give ‘Katherine’ the shoes like a dumbass, and she turns into a puppet and drugs you. You wake up in a wooden cottage with Pinocchio, who lies that he has no idea who the Godmother is. 

Inside the cottage you realize that Geppetto was the Godmother’s husband and Pinocchio's father. He has become consumed with trying to create a doll just like Pinocchio and has died; the Godmother blames Pinocchio for his death. You find a letter that apparently psychic Geppetto wrote to Pinocchio, telling him his death wasn’t Pinocchio's fault and Pinocchio agrees to let you out of the cottage and save Katherine. 

You sneak into the castle where you learn that Geppetto has gone mad; he is trying to raise an army of puppets and take over the world, going so far as to create a puppet assembly line. The visuals are quite creepy, as we see discarded dolls hanging on hooks and a giant incinerator burning them. Inside the workshop we also learn that Pinocchio has a built-in Cinderella detector, which mimics the Godmothers’ soul detectors and tracks down Cinderellas. 

Each Godmother has a different type of magic, and Amelia, the Godmother’s, is clothes. She tricked Katherine and Cyrilla into coming to the ball, by gifting them new clothes. Kathrine was saved from becoming glass, because their uncle stole Cyrilla’s clothes and Katherine gave her her own. 

On the tower roof, Pinocchio runs to free the bound Katherine, only for his heart to glow. Amelia appears yet again, throws Pinocchio through a hole in the roof, ignoring his pleas to stop her madness. She blocks your way with crystals, which leaves enough time to see a life-like doll of Geppetto lying in a tomb next to the crystals. 

Once you break the crystal you get to see Katherine turn to glass, and her soul be swapped for Geppetto’s. The doll of him awakes and he steals Amelia’s soul detector, Without the gem, Amelia is weakened, and we follow her to her sewing room and back to the ballroom, as Geppetto sends his army of puppets after us. 

Inside the ballroom Cyrilla wakes up and gives you a bowtie, while asking you to save Katherine. You enter another balcony where you find more puppets which Amelia used to spy on the girls at the dances. In her changing room, she has hidden herself in her wardrobe and before she dies, she tells the Detective to find the magic wand and stop Geppetto. 

This series has always tried to redeem the villains in their games, and I’d say for Snow and James specifically, has done a decent job. Eldra never really got redeemed, more like she just died, but here, I hate how the game tries to redeem Amelia. 

She was so in love with Geppetto and so desperate to bring him back that even though she’s a centuries old magical person, she was wilfully blinded by what she was doing in killing girls to find the right Cinderella. She also HATES Pinocchio; she blames him for Geppetto’s death (even though it was Geppetto’s own idiocy that got him killed, and it was Amelia herself that brought him the wood from the Sacred Grove). Even when she’s dying and no longer under evil Geppetto's influence, she shows no concern for her son, and I simply hate that. 

You set off to the gardens yet again, where you open the Maiden Goddess temple and find Pinocchio. He is determined to save Katherine, and you indeed find the glass wand there, as well as an explanation as to who Godmother is, and how she lost it. 

The Maiden Goddess picks a handmaiden, a magical helper for the Cinderellas, and when one dies, another one inherits the mantle. Amelia is the latest and final Godmother, because once the Maiden Goddess saw how evil Amelia had become, she refused to anoint another. Like I already explained, Amelia was desperate to get Geppetto back after he was killed by the villagers. The reason he was killed, was because Geppetto, in an attempt to make another Pinocchio, spent too much time in the Sacred Grove, an got possessed by the souls of the murdered pirates. He then started raising his army of sentient puppets, and built Pinocchio a giant, dangerous Golem. So, what I’m saying is, the villagers had valid reasons to be afraid of him, and no, Pinocchio did nothing to him. 

Armed with this mess, you find a way to the pumpkin carriage and head back to the mirror world. Inside, Geppetto sends more puppets after you, and you realize the only way to defeat him is to burn down all the trees. One of the areas in the Grove you find is a beanstalk leading up into the heavens, a hint to the next game. 

You set the grove on fire, and with it, so dies Pinocchio, since he was made from the same wood. You race back to the tower, defeat the Golem with an insultingly simple puzzle and then kill the Puppet master with the glass wand. Geppetto’s spirit, purged of the pirate influence, questions what he’s done, and then Amelia shows up comforting him that everything turned out fine in the end. LADY, YOU ALMOST KILLED ME 3 TIMES. What do you mean everything turned out fine? 

Katherine, no longer a glass statue, brings Pinocchio and Amelia and Geppetto use their souls to revive Pinocchio, Star Wars style and he turns into a real boy. The best (best, derogatory) part of the game is that much like Anakin, even though Pinocchio appears to be about 10 and Katherine at least 16, she agrees to take care of him, and in the epilogue, they are shown to be a couple. What? 

I don’t like this game, if you couldn’t tell. There are good parts. Like always, I love the clothes, designs and art direction. I like the collectable element of dressing the other 4 Cinderellas, I liked some of the locations, and the idea that the pirates’ souls corrupted the trees in the grove with their hatred. 

However, the Puppet master Geppetto twist, Amelia’s entire motivation being not just reviewing her evil dead husband, but then being surprised that he’s evil, I hated. I hated the evil-Katherine bit, I found Pinocchio rather annoying, an especially pale comparison to Kay or Gerda, and found myself not caring about any of the characters or what happened. Hell, the two things I was most excited for were the Crooked Man and the Crooked Cat stinger and the teaser for the next game!

Like the previous 2 games, there is no secret room or bonus for playing on hardmode, so let’s talk about the bonus adventure. 

Bonus Game: The Oriental Cinderella

That title. Yikes. 

I didn’t think racial politics would become a part of this retrospective, but here we are. For what is worth, Blue Tea is a Hong Kong-based studio, and I sure won’t police them on what they will call a Chinese variant of Cinderella, but still.  

In this bonus game we play as a prince who has come to marry Princess Shan Mao. Shan is a Cinderella, but she has been kidnapped by her stepsister Chi, who wants you, the prince for herself. In the parable it’s explained that she’s the daughter of a powerful spider witch and you are part of a powerful Tang dynasty who knows the secret to immortality, but in the game, I guess you are just that hot. 

You head to Shan’s grandmother’s house, except it’s not really her grandmother; it’s Amelia, Shan’s godmother. She tells you that if you want to marry Shan you must save her (I’d like to think Amelia is just messing with you and could kill Chi with a finger snap), and to do that you first have to find Shan. You end up finding Geppetto instead, wrapped in a web, and after freeing him, he tells you he has created a fan that could extinguish the eternal lava river that leads to the Blazing Mountain. 

You find the fan and Amelia beats you to the mountain, where Shan, turned into a kitsune, is trapped in a cage. You end up having to face Chi, who is now a spider-human hybrid and to do so you have to forge a sacred sword. So, you let Shan free, you forge the sword, and you kill Chi, and Amelia and Geppetto get married. Hooray. 

There is nothing wrong with this bonus story, but it’s just not very good. I was hyped to play a Chinese version of Cinderella, but it’s just the regular version with spiders. It’s almost shocking to me that an Asian studio would be better at retelling the European versions of fairytales than their own, and yet here we are. 

The only funny thing about this tale was realizing that Amelia’s house is literally just Geppetto’s cottage painted red. 

Overall, I would genuinely say that out of the 7 Blue Tea games, this one is my least favourite, rivalling for the last spot with CoBR. Luckily, things pick up with the next game, which is:

Jack and the Sky Kingdom

Introduction

#dark parables #dark parables: the final cinderella #moni talks #video games #casual games

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables: The Red Riding Hood Sisters

This is the fourth game in the series, and I have mixed feelings about it. If I had to describe it, I’d say that it’s ambitious, but not entirely successful. 

I remember liking the game a lot, especially the first half which I found to be very strong, but being severely let down by the ending. Now, having replayed it for this retrospective, I actually found it to be quite underwhelming. It’s shorter than RotSQ and TEP, which is weird because it covers so much lore and introduces so many characters. Unfortunately, nothing that it introduces feels fleshed out, and the parables which in RotSQ were a fun bonus feature, are really used as a crutch here. 

So let’s get into it. Our opening cutscene shows a little girl being chased by wolves. She gets saved by a Red Riding Hood Sister, Theresa. Before the girl’s eyes, the Wolf Queen appears and slashes Theresa across the back. 

You start the game 3 days later in France. You are sent to investigate who the Wolf Queen is and how to stop her; to assist you this time, are the Red Riding Hood Sisters who guard the forest. Immediately, a wolf attacks you, and no sooner have you gotten up, you are attacked again, but saved by Ruth. 

Now look, I don’t want to harp on Ruth too much. She has a neat design, and a really good voice actress, but her character is legitimately the most incompetent person in these games, and that’s saying something when you’re playing a character who gets captured about 8 times per game. Nothing she does ever goes well for anyone, and in this game alone she needs to be rescued twice. Her introduction is her failing to kill the wolf and getting poisoned so YOU have to find her an antidote. 

The antidote needs moonflower, which you learned in the previous game, is a rare, gentle, flower that blooms in moonlight. You have to fandangle some branches to get it to bloom. There is a really good moment here, as you run around the forest, Ruth gets progressively weaker and sicker, putting pressure on you to get the flower faster. 

Once Ruth is cured, she’ll give you a key to the Sisters’ hideout, which is at the top of a hollow tree. 

The hideout was built by the Hunter, who saved the first Red Riding Hood, Isabela from a wolf attack that killed her grandmother. Isabella decided to train with the Huntsman and after he was killed (also by wolves) she started training other orphan girls to become Sisters themselves and protect the forest and the surrounding region. 

Ruth takes you inside the hideout, explaining that she was scouting the forest looking for the wolves, which is why she is as shocked as you are to find the hideout destroyed and the sisters gone. 

This is where we get to my first big pet peeve of the game. This series is light on the gameplay; that’s why the genre is called casual game. You mostly solve puzzles and even the very brief and generously titled ‘combat’ scenes are disguised puzzles. So obviously, you don’t need the NPCs to do much. The way RotSQ got around this was by having most of the NPCs be children, and the only adult character keeps dropping in and out of the game, handing you objects to help you when he’s there. The kids helped, sure, but they mostly hid, and let you, the adult, deal with the threats. 

Here, Ruth and all the other Sisters are trained hunters; even the non-Sister character Rafael is the last surviving member of a long line of master hunters. And yet, as soon as Ruth sees that the hideout has been attacked she tells you, the Detective, to go around and search for clues while she waits for you. She doesn’t come with you, she just stands in one room, waiting for you to do all the work. 

When you met her, she at least had the excuse of being poisoned, but here, she’s completely healthy, yet you have to be the one who talks to the Mirror, you have to collect all the orbs, you have to venture into the Mist Kingdom BY YOURSELF, and Ruth just waits. They don’t even give her a lame excuse like oh, there must always be a Sister in the hideout, she’s just like, K, here’s a cape, go fight some wolves. 

So, winging notwithstanding, you explore the hideout and learn more about the sisters. Theresa, the sister you saw at the start was the Eldest Sister; the leader of the Order. She was tied neck in neck with her friend, Eldra, according to the scoreboards. You also find out that the Truth Mirror is in the possession of the sisters, because Snow White gave it to them as a gift for saving her son from a wolf attack. 

I presume Snow had done this before Gwyn was injured, since the statue they have of him appears to be the same age as Gwyn when you rescue him, which is kind of ironic; James’ guards must’ve been the most incompetent in this universe and Gwyn the unluckiest prince if he was almost killed by wolves, TWICE. 

The Mirror tells you that the same time you were attacked, the Wolf Queen appeared in the hideout via some kind of portal and kidnapped all the sisters. She took them to the Mist Kingdom, which is a fabled Kingdom that hasn’t been seen for centuries (5 centuries as we later learn). Ruth explains that the Kingdom appears when there is a moon phase, and the orb we have been carrying around can be used to activate a machine the Moon Goddess left to the Sisters to call the Kingdom from the lake in which it has been sunk. 

So I have a question. How in hell can the characters breathe underwater? The Wolf Queen and the Wolf King, fine, but Eldra? Rafael? The kidnapped sisters? Also, speaking of, if you have the orb and the sisters didn’t, how did Eldra or Rafael get inside the Kingdom? 

You call upon the Kingdom from the lake and go in. You immediately see a man watching you, but before you can follow him, you see the wolves take the sisters inside the castle and raise the moat. You end up going to the town square; all the citizens seem to have perished at once, and judging by the goodbye note you find in a sculptor’s workshop, in an agonizing wolf attack. 

In the townhall you end up meeting Rafael. He asks you who you are since you aren’t a Sister, but you are wearing a Sister’s robe (Ruth gives it to you so the wolves can’t track your scent). He explains that he has been searching for his friend Eldra who too was a Sister but has been gone inside the Mist Kingdom for years. He agrees to help you translate a cypher that can bring the moat down, since his family was originally from the Mist Kingdom. 

Inside the castle grounds, Rafael leaves you to find the other sisters, while he looks for Eldra. 

Rafael is a mixed bag. At first I was put off by his unnecessary hostility, and I also didn’t understand why he wasn’t more useful; outside of killing a wolf (which you have to find an arrow for) and translating the cypher he really doesn’t do anything. He has potential; he’s the last member of a long dead, but proud family, his family protected the royal house and monarch which led to the Mist Kingdom’s demise, he lost his best friend. He has reasons to be glib, but he’s just not interesting enough for me to care. 

You find the sisters in the prison, but Jessica tells you they are too weak to go through the gate; they will definitely attract attention. She tells you there is  a way to open a portal right next to the hideout. You soon find the fountain through which you can open the portal and also Theresa's dead body. 

I have to say, when I first played this game, finding Theresa shook me. This series has done death before, but never like this. The thief isn’t a named PoV character, but Theresa is; we saw the opening through her eyes. She’s succumbed to the poison, but has left you a recipe on opening the portal. You follow it and right before you close the portal, Rafael and Eldra come through. 

Eldra tells you that she had been captured and tortured by the Wolf Queen. Ruth mentions a moon temple in the woods that the Elder Sister had access to. You find it and learn about the moon prism you have been carrying. 

The Moon Goddess left mankind 7 moonstones with which they can control the length of night. However, if the 7 moonstones are joined they can plunge the world into eternal darkness. You find a moon prism in the temple, and shockingly, shady Eldra is in fact the Wolf Queen and steals it. Rafael and Ruth attack her, but ofc, Ruth is useless and gets captured, just as you get reinforcements; Briar Rose herself who has now become a Sister. 

Her vines destroy several of the wolves, but Eldra easily stops them from harming her and takes Ruth. Once again, you, the Detective, have to bring the last stone to the Kingdom if you want to see her alive. 

Rafael is shocked that Eldra would betray him (which, uh, she didn’t. She betrayed her sisters, and he isn’t one) and Briar Rose tells you to find the Centaur Bow, which can destroy the Queen. So off you go, into the Mist Kingdom again, this time alone. You find the anvil to forge the bow in the chapel, and test it on a guard wolf in the castle. 

This is a good time to talk about why this game is so underwhelming for me. If you haven’t been paying attention, I talked about 3 separate characters who are all full of potential. I already covered Rafael, but we also have Eldra and Theresa. As we find out in the castle, Eldra and Theresa were childhood friends, who always had a friendly rivalry, until it became clear that Theresa was going to be the Elder Sister. To prove herself, Eldra went into the Mist Kingdom alone and killed the Wolf King, but before she could destroy his talisman it possessed her, using her ambitions and insecurities against her, turning her into the Wolf Queen. But unlike in RotSQ or even TEP, we don’t learn any of this organically, through dialogue or even notes in the world. We learn this through the parables, which once again, are optional, collector pieces. 

What we have instead is a truly uninteresting focus on the Mist Kingdom and the Greedy King who brought the Wolf King into the world. This is absolutely not the interesting part of this story; the King was rich and greedy, and he wanted more loot. The only semi-notable part of this story is the Queen’s chamber, where we see the Queen herself, locked inside, lying on her bed, alone, dead and miserable. The fact that Eldra slept in that room and never considered like… moving the Queen’s skeleton is quite disconcerting. 

Inside the castle we get many hints about the next game: Cinderella. Like RotSQ this game doesn’t have a secret room on hardmode, nor the really clever tie-in like CoBR or TEP did; it’s just a carriage and a glass slipper and I’m still not sure how they ended up in the Greedy King’s treasury. 

Eventually, you end up lifting the barrier from the throne room, and through the portal you enter the Wolf King’s realm. It’s beautiful and entirely magical, like the mirror realm in RotSQ, and you find Ruth held in a cage. As soon as you free her, Eldra appears and steals the moonstone (WHY WOULD YOU BRING IT WITH YOU??) and all the sisters gather for one last stand. 

The final puzzle requires you to move bridges to shoot wolves according to colour, and then we get an unnecessarily flashy action cutscene during which the wolves clash with the Sisters, and before you can shoot Eldra with the bow, a wolf knocks you out. Raphael takes the bow and shoots the prism from Eldra’s hand and the world starts collapsing. 

For whatever dumb reason, Eldra can’t simply escape with the others, even though she isn’t wounded, and for an even stupider reason, Rafael decides to stay with her. If I had a better grasp on these two’s relationship, like if Rafael felt guilty that he didn’t succeed in finding Eldra before she was cursed, or if he reciprocated her romantic feelings, this scene might have had an impact. As is, when Eldra says I’m glad you are here with me, all I could do was scream “you mean you’re glad he’s pointlessly dying with you even though you both have functioning legs?? Fuck you, lady!”

The game ends with Ruth getting elected as the new Elder Sister (WHY, when she’s so BAD at this) and the sisters deciding to adopt some wolf pups to raise them as allies rather than enemies. 

Bonus Game: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Weirdly enough, this bonus level made me care about the Mist Kingdom even less than I did in the main game, and it takes place on the day the Kingdom was destroyed. It’s a twist on the boy who cried wolf, but it’s a weak one. At no point in this game does the moral make sense, since the kid you play as could have been the most obedient child in the world, who never lied and the Mist Kingdom would have still been destroyed. 

We start with the dad locking his son in the basement for playing pranks on the villagers. When you open the trap door, you see your father passing out from being beaten by the King’s knights for not disclosing the location of the wolf talisman. The father asks you to get help and you set off, using a secret passage behind a shelf to get out. 

I find it imminently hilarious that this child lives next to a witch and has just never noticed, but he sees a mermaid trapped in a pond in the witch’s yard.  The mermaid promises to help you if you set her free, so you do. At the same time, to distract the guards from your house, you blow a hole in the King’s palace, and free a griffin.

You use the orb the mermaid gave you to knock the guard out and then make a potion to rouse your father, but as soon as you do, the King returns and demands you give the talisman over. You can’t, since the talisman has bonded to you, so the King kidnaps both of you to get you to open the portal. As you do, your father apologizes for being an absent father. The wolves attack, and kill the King, while the griffin swoops in, saves you and your father and you watch the Mist Kingdom disappear into the lake. 

Much like Hansel and Gretel, this level is fine, but not very memorable. The character you play is cute; he’s funny and also has the same questions I do, like how is the mermaid going to escape from a pond. The King is as uninteresting as a villain as he was in the base game, and I do not care at all about the ‘absent’ dad.

I feel like had I not replayed RotSQ and this back to back, I would have been kinder to this game. It still has gorgeous art direction and puzzles, and in this one especially, they really did their best to have different models for at least 5 of the sisters. But I think the money that they spent on the 2 action cutscenes would have been better spent on shorter scenes fleshing out the trio of Rafael, Eldra and Ruth, and on crafting a tighter story. The Mist Kingdom is just an accidental backdrop; nothing about its history is actually relevant to the present story, the wolves could’ve attacked from anywhere and the end result would’ve been the same. Ironically, by making the Detective a more active player in the story, the Sisters suffer because they end up being superfluous or just incompetent, when you alone have to do all the work. 

It’s a case of too much and not enough; too many disparate ideas, and not enough focus. 4 games in, and we are already recycling things, like having Briar Rose appear, having Gwyn and the Truth Mirror as part of Red Riding Hood lore, and having yet another villain controlled by an evil artefact. 

Unfortunately, the next instalment makes most of these missteps, even more. 

The Final Cinderella

Introduction

#dark parables #dark parables: the final cinderella #video games #casual games #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables: Rise of the Snow Queen

The third game in the series, and it is by far my favourite one. This is really where Blue Tea Games hit their stride; the art direction and aesthetic of the series became solidified, it has the best written story, excellent level design and a really good bonus game. It’s also the first game that introduces Parables, which provide another collector’s incentive, and add to the lore. 

I both think that Snow White is the most complex and interesting character, and that this is the best best written story in the series. It’s an emotional and dark tale, while also tying in with the previous game. It also has the most satisfying ending. It’s also the only game in this series where the exploration and puzzle solving really are designed so that you slowly piece together what is happening in the castle. There is no Briar or Ivy telling you to go to a specific part or find a specific thing; everything you learn you learn organically from exploring the castle, and even when the other characters give you information, they have gotten it from the same clues you have. 

Speaking of characters, this is the first game that has proper NPCs. Marie and the bodyguard did exist, but here, the characters are present throughout the whole investigation, and actually contribute to your quest. Unlike Briar Rose or Marie who you had to rescue, Kay, Gerda and Noah are proactive members of this tale, and even the other children we meet impart information or clues. It made this world feel so much more realized now that we know other people live in it, and when we have characters we care about at stake. 

So let’s get into it. Like before, the game starts with a cutscene, this one of two children playing in the snow. The Snow Queen appears before them, and hypnotizes them with a golden apple; a moment later a beast takes them away. 

Once again, you are the fabled Fairytale Detective, this time traveling to the Mountain or Snowfall Kingdom in Switzerland. During a snowstorm, all the children from the nearby villages have disappeared. Your guide, Noah, takes you to the gates of what was once the Mountain Kingdom, and asks you to find his son Kay who has also disappeared, giving you a photograph of him.

The first thing you find is an envoy from the Underground Kingdom, (before it was, you know, underground). James has sent his soldiers to capture the Snow Queen, but the soldiers were ambushed and killed. I wonder if James knew at this point who the Snow Queen was, but even if he didn’t, I really like this detail. It shows us that James was willing to fight to get his child back and hadn’t just given up on him. 

Inside the castle, you see statues of the Queen and the Mountain King. This is odd, since the Queen isn’t exactly a positive figure for the locals. You also see a blonde child running around the castle grounds. She leads you to a crypt where you find 2 children who warn you that there is a beast around, and the other children are in the palace. You also see a memorial to a young Prince, seemingly, Snow Queen’s child. 

The beast is indeed watching you, and after you find a piece of an emblem that can get you inside the palace, he creates a snow wolf to keep you away. Defeating the wolf nets you an ice stone, which is going to be rather useful. Sidenote, if you thought James was a dick for letting you die in the caves, the beast tries to kill you 3 separate times, one of which involves putting you in a freezing cell with an already dead body. 

Inside the palace you follow a soft humming to the Snow Queen who has found Kay. She sees you, and erects a wall of ice, preventing you from reaching Kay. While looking for a way to the Queen, you run into the blonde child again, whose name is Gerda. She is Kay’s friend; when the Queen took all the children she hid, and has been trying to rescue him. She tells you she can sense magic radiating through a door, which requires a golden apple to unlock.

Looking for the apple takes you to the astronomy room, where you find a statue of the beast which morphs back into the Mountain King, as well as, many tomes on something called the Silver Moon which happened to coincide with the children’s disappearance. 

You find said apple, and just as Gerda tells you she has figured out how to tell when the beast is close (the air becomes warmer), she gets taken. Inside the room you find a golden tree, full of apples. Eating a golden apple puts the person under a trance during which they don’t remember what they did, and the Snow Queen has been feeding the apples to the children, trying to find a Golden Child. 

A Golden Child is blessed with the ability to be immune to all magic, and lift curses and charms with their tears. Their powers manifest during a Silver Moon, and the Snow Queen has been trying to find one for centuries. Just thinking about how many children have died in her search is a somber thought. 

In the workshop you find notes on a balcony the King requested be made for the Queen, that can only be opened by a pendant. You use it and witness Gerda push the apple away from Kay. The apple reverts back to being ordinary; Gerda is the Golden Child, not Kay. The Snow Queen grabs Gerda, while the beast knocks the detective out. 

You wake up in a cell, next to the previously mentioned dead body. Remember that ice stone? This is where you use it to escape, but not before you learn from your jail mate that the False Mirror is responsible for turning Snow White into the Snow Queen, and the King into a beast. If you have been reading the notes and paying attention, you already know that the King has ordered the real False Mirror be hidden in the treasury (there is a replica in the workshop). The False Mirror reflects and amplifies the worst qualities of the person; even its own creator was afraid of its power. 

Armed with this knowledge, you find the treasury and where the kids are being held, locked in an ice cage. A girl tells you the Queen has Gerda, and Kay has escaped yet again. He is actually hiding in the vault, and you manage to activate a portal that takes you to the edge of the Kingdom. 

Kay tells you that he stole a pendant from the Queen; he thinks it has to do with the crypt. Noah promises to return with supplies and rescue the kids, while you go explore. Inside the crypt you find the sleeping body of Snow White and the Frog Prince’s son, Prince Gwyn. 

The following is more or less the story of how we got here: Snow White was the daughter of the Mountain King. Her father married the Wicked Queen and bought the Truth Mirror as a gift. The Mirror showed the Queen that Snow White was the fairest and the Queen cursed her. Prince James saved Snow White from the curse and took her to his Underground Kingdom, while the Wicked Queen, cursed herself, escaped. 

James and Snow had a son, Prince Gwyn. One day while playing, Gwyn was attacked by a monster, and James’ guards weren’t fast enough to save him. On the brink of death, Snow White fed him a golden apple, placing him in eternal slumber, neither dead nor alive. No one James called could help the child, and blaming him for his fate, Snow White took him and stole away, back to the Mountain Kingdom. The King, already feeling guilt over failing to protect Snow once, tried his best to help Gwyn, but couldn’t. Whether James altered his curse in an attempt to save his son, or Snow White herself cursed him, is unclear. 

Desperate, Snow White heard about the False Mirror, the Truth Mirror’s twin and found it. The mirror, using her desperation, tricked her into wearing a shard, and giving her father one which cursed both, reflecting their worst qualities: overwhelming grief and cold in Snow and rage in the King. The Kingdom fell apart, the King murdering his council after they tried to execute Snow, his  most loyal of soldiers freezing to death, and the rest of the subjects escaping. The Mirror told Snow White that to get Gwyn back, she needs to fix it, and the only thing that could fix it is the tear of the Golden Child. The Mirror’s real intention is to reflect her grief and despair onto the world, plunging it into an eternal, frigid winter, as revenge for being locked away. 

Noah returns and tells you to use a headlight on the watchtower to show him where the children are being held. Again you are attacked by the beast, and you use the tower bell to shatter the mirror shard, freeing the King from his curse.

Noah helps you break the children out, and gives you an ax, passed down through his family that can cut the magical vines in the solarium. Inside, you find the Wicked Queen’s cottage, and the true power of the False Mirror. You also learn that there is another portal in the astronomy room, which takes you to the Mirror’s hiding place, where you find Snow, Gwyn, Gerda and the King, gathered around the False Mirror. 

Snow White forces Gerda to cry, ignoring the King’s attempts to reason with her. The Mirror rains a snowstorm on the castle, and the wounded King tells you to find pieces of a magical hammer that can destroy the mirror. He helps you forge it and you use it to shatter the mirror, releasing Snow White from her curse. 

Overcome with guilt for all she has done, she cries for her son; Gerda cries with her, and her tears wake Gwyn. Snow White and the King thank you, and you and Gerda depart. 

Bonus Game: Hansel and Gretel

The bonus level is the first one where you play as someone other than the detective; as this is Hansel and Gretel, you play as Hansel. All my praise for the base game translates to the bonus level too; my only issue is that it’s just very, very simple. 

We start with Hansel and Gretel being abandoned by their stepmother in the Ogre Woods. They stumble onto a Gingerbread House, where the Evil Witch takes Gretel. Hansel has to find a way inside the house. 

After you help an injured ogre, you get the key and inside you find Gretel trapped in some kind of glass box. The Witch’s servant, an imp asks you to free it and he will help you save Gretel. To do so you must first defeat a giant spider and find a potion from the Moon Goddess. This is also the second appearance of the Blue Tea Thief, this time having perished via said spider, Sheelob style. 

The imp tells you about an eternal sleep potion you can make which requires several ingredients. You also learn that the Witch tricked the Fairy Moon Goddess into drinking a potion that leeched all her magic and then was trapped in a statue in the forest. After you put the Witch to sleep, the Goddess returns and makes you, or rather Hansel, the first Golden Child. 

Overall, this game is good. The story is engaging, the gameplay is tight, all the characters are complex and likable, the magic has rules and there is some clever subversion of fairytale tropes. The idea that a mother’s love can blind someone so much that they can destroy the world for their child is very fairytale-esque, and I really liked that both King and Snow acknowledge that they have done terrible things to protect each other and save Gwyn. 

The only minor complaint I have is the fairytale logic of the Mirror being evil because it grew angry with its creator for being locked away, but like… it’s a mirror. Why does it have feelings?

With a smash hit under their belt, and 3 successful games, it was time for Blue Tea to step up their game in the ambitious:

The Red Riding Hood Sisters

Introduction

#dark parables #dark parables: rise of the snow queen #video games #casual games

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables: The Exiled Prince

The second game starts with a cutscene in which we see Marie, the daughter of the Chancellor of Germany, walking through the woods with her bodyguard. Marie talks about a cursed frog prince who lives in the forest (if no one who’s seen the prince has ever lived to tell the tale, then where does the tale come from, Marie?), and after it becomes dark, the duo realizes they are lost. The bodyguard points at a shadowy figure who might be able to help, and we cut to the title. 

Once again, you are the Fairytale Detective, except this time you are tasked with finding Marie and her bodyguard before it’s too late. You start in the forest where you find Marie’s book, next to a frog statue and explore. 

Immediately, there is a drastic improvement in the game. The scenery is significantly more lively, the game has that very distinct, soft feel that I associate with this franchise, and there is a lot more interaction between the characters in the story and you as the Detective. The first thing you’ll notice are the frogs and ravens which react if you click on them. 

The opening of the game is rather straightforward; you find a key that leads you to a small cottage and you see Marie in the window. Unfortunately taking the key from the frog statue alerts the titular Frog Prince, James that you are here, which causes the frogs to become threatening, their eyes glowing yellow and the fog to intensify. Once you try to open the door of the cottage, James appears and in what will become classic Dark Parables fashion, throws you into a pit underground. 

In his mild defence, he thinks you are a thief, and it becomes clear why, once you look around the cave you are in. There is another man inside; the skeleton of a thief who was convinced he could find the underground kingdom. This is another recurring character in these games, dubbed the Blue Tea Thief. It’s the same face model for any corpse in these games. 

I won’t lie; the very first time I played this game I was really shocked that there was an actual dead person, who had a name and a backstory and not just random skeletons. 

As soon as you get out of the cave, you run into James again, who accuses you of trespassing and uses some kind of magic to block all the exits with vines, similar to the ones in the previous game. He hints that he bears some kind of curse, and leaves you to die. 

One thing that’s never explained and for whatever reason really annoyed me was how James was able to summon the vines. As far as we know, he has no magical abilities, not even with the curse (unless you count immortality as a ‘magical ability’). Later we learn about Ivy and Briar, and they can control plants, and yet here he is, channelling his inner Poison Ivy for no reason. 

Regardless, you find a way to dig through the cave wall and enter the underground kingdom. We learn a bit later on that James built it to hide himself from the world, and he has built a sprawling palace that is essentially a shrine to his 5 wives. 

An apparition, much like Briar in the previous game, of Ivy, her sister, appears. She was the Princess who broke James’ curse and turned him back to a human with her kiss. While they had a happy life, Ivy grew old, while James stayed young and when she died, he turned back into a frog. His curse is immortality; he is doomed to repeat the cycle over and over again, and he already has 5 separate times. Ivy asks you to help break his curse, because that’s the only way to save Marie. 

James’ wives were Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, the Swan Princess and Snow White. Before Ivy disappears she hints that you should go to the greenhouse; of course, to do so you must first explore most of the castle. It’s almost all different shrines James’  built for his wives; after all he had a 1000 years to live. In each part of the castle you find a crown, one for each princess that you are to place on a pedestal in front of a row of statues representing each of them. 

You find out through exploring the castle that James has been experimenting with alchemy, trying to create a potion that turns humans into frogs, as well as vice versa. In the greenhouse, you find an entrance to an underwater shrine, where you find a potion that turns frogs back into their original creature; you test it onto a frog in the kitchen, which turns back to a pig. Throughout the castle you can find notes which talk about an immortality wand, as well as a more powerful potion that could act on humans, which should give you a hint of what happened to Marie, and everyone else who’s disappeared into the forest. 

Ivy appears again, and explains what you have sort of guessed; James’ last wife was Snow White. After meeting her, his curse changed; instead of turning back into a frog, he would stay human but every living thing he touched would become a frog. Because of this, he exiled himself into this underground kingdom, and has been trying to find a cure ever since. 

The wand requires a transmutation circle to work, and through wandering around the castle,  you can find a way above, back to the forest. In the cottage, you find that Marie and her bodyguards have been turned to frogs, so you really need to lift the curse, asap. 

Once the wand is ready, James appears. Somehow he knows you are a detective(?) and wants to stop your meddling, which makes NO sense. Ivy appears, and tells him the only way to join her is for James to let you kill him with the wand. I’m not sure why James can’t use the wand on himself, but you assist in his suicide, he joins Ivy and gives you the locket to get Marie and her bodyguard out of the weird contraption he had put them in. 

You free Marie who tells you a person with white eyes appeared to her, and she felt cold like nothing before in her bones. She has no idea what it means, but I have an idea; it’s the Snow Queen. 

The bonus level in this game is a room inside the waterfall in James’ palace which shows us the location of our next adventure: the Snowfall Kingdom, which is also the 

Bonus Game: The Frozen Lair

The Frozen Lair starts with James’ ghost telling you that he has used the magical fire powers, which he now has, to free a section of the castle that was blocked off in the main game with a thick sheet of ice. This place has Ivy’s tomb, as well as a beautiful statue of James and Snow White, which is kind of an odd choice if you ask me. 

While exploring we end up learning that Snow White actually left Prince James, and we find a mirror shard which shows us that Snow White has become the Snow Queen. The shard is so cold it hurts the Detective when she touches it, and placing it on the pedestal causes snow to start falling  inside the bedroom. 

Eventually, you open a portal that shows you Snowfall Kingdom, and we are off on the third adventure. 

While not my favourite in the series, The Exiled Prince is definitely one of the better entries, it sets the tone for much of what follows. We have the classic “hurl and/or trap the detective in a predicament,'' the main character doubling as the villain, at least for a portion of the game, the first appearance of the Blue Games Thief, and connections to further entries in the series, as well as the Curse of Briar Rose. Like in that game, there is no parable here; we just get the retelling of the Frog Prince in the game itself. 

James has become a twisted, corrupted version of himself, due to his curse, and in his anger and loneliness has become a monster to anyone who happens upon his kingdom. He’s still redeemable though, since he was trying to find a way to break the curse, which makes him an interesting character to follow. This is another theme with the latter games, starting with the next entry, The Rise of the Snow Queen. We never learn who cursed James in this game, but it’s heavily implied that Snow White, his last wife, changed his curse.

This game is in a way a nexus point for all future entries: not only have we set up James, and his relationship to both Ivy and Briar Rose, we are also introduced to 4 other Princesses whose fairy tales we would be exploring next. 

So with that, let’s talk about my favorite game in this series

Rise of the Snow Queen

Introduction

#dark parables #dark parables: rise of the snow queen #video games #casual games #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables: Curse of Briar Rose

The first game starts with a short cutscene which retells the tale of Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty. In this version, Briar Rose was cursed by a powerful Godmother to prick her finger and die. As always, the other fairy godmothers mitigate the curse to be instead a death-like sleep, for Briar and everyone else at the castle, which was then enveloped by thick vines. 

A Prince came to the Castle and kissed Briar Rose, but while the curse was lifted from everyone else and the vines disappeared, Briar Rose remained asleep. One by one the people from her family passed away, while she slept, forgotten by the world. 

A thousand years later, in a “modern day” Edinburgh, the Fairytale Detective, gets called to the castle to examine a curious case of vines. They seem to be sprouting from the castle base and slowly enveloping everything. If you don’t find a way to break the curse, the entirety of Edinburgh will be enveloped in 7 days. 

Even though this is the first official game in the series, for me it almost feels like a beta version. Many of the series staples aren’t in this game, and one of the most jarring is right at the start: the Detective makes his way into the castle completely unscathed!

If you haven’t played these games this will make no sense to you, but if you have… what the hell, right?

The animation for the cutscenes is likewise different; it doesn’t quite have that beautiful, soft polish that the other Blue Team Games have, especially in the opening cutscene, which lacks the personality which distinguishes this series from other HOP games. However, where this game excels is the beautiful location it takes place in. 

This game has the best layout for its castle out of all the games in the series. Here, it feels like the Detective is exploring a proper, medieval castle; it has several bedrooms, an armoury, a treasury, a kitchen, servants quarters, stables, and a menagerie. Every area feels well thought out and the way you travel between them is likewise logical. It even has a chapel and an astronomy tower, and both make perfect sense for this type of establishment.

Once inside the courtyard, you are met by Briar Rose herself, in what appears to be some kind of astral projection. She warns the Detective that the Godmother has returned and she will try to prevent the Detective’s quest, which doesn’t make a lot of sense with what we find out later. For now, Briar Rose asks the Detective to follow her inside.

The way to stop Godmother and the curse is to wake Briar Rose up, and to do so, the Detective needs to make a potion. The way you get to this conclusion isn’t exactly intuitive; you just explore each area of the castle and eventually you stumble upon a lab. If you read your journal regularly, the Detective does comment on what your next objective is, so it’s not unreasonable to assume you’d have to make some kind of potion, it’s just not exactly explained that even an option let alone the right one. 

There are areas of the castle that are more interesting than others; one is the graveyard where the Detective wonders what happened to Briar Rose’ parents. Another is a pantry where there’s just a massive spider on the wall. It’s not hostile, but it’s still… yikes. 

In the graveyard we do see  black crow with red eyes, and the Godmother cackling that you won’t stop her. This is the first of those common elements that show up a lot more in the later games: animals and shadows which follow you around and warn you of danger. 

After exploring the castle you end up crafting the potion, and must find a way to Briar Rose’ resting place. It’s not actually in the castle; it’s in a room underground, under the graveyard called the Rose room, which explains how no one has stumbled upon her body in the 1000 years since the curse was lifted. You end up having to fight the spirit of the godmother, and once you beat her in a rather simple puzzle, Briar Rose wakes up. 

This is where we find out 2 things which make no sense. The first is that the godmother woke up when the curse became active again, and she actually wanted you to find Briar Rose’ body, because she was going to use it so she herself could get a physical form. So why did Briar warn you that she will try and stop us from lifting the curse? Wouldn’t she want us to lift it so we could find Briar’s body?

The second thing is the sequel bait. Briar Rose gives you a crown and tells you another curse has awoken, and the Frog Prince will want to submerge the world in water. Having played The Exiled Prince, I can tell you at no point does James want to submerge the world in water; he’s just pissed that you trespassed in his kingdom. 

 We likewise never find out what caused the curse to become active again. It’s not Godmother, because she woke up with the curse, and it’s not Briar because all she could do was appear to us as an apparition. So what then? 

The other thing that made me tilt my head is that when you play the bonus level you find out about Ivy, so presumably the developers already knew she would be Briar’s sister so why not… incorporate her in the game. We don’t even see her room, let alone her in the cutscene.

There are 2 bonus locations in this game. If you play on hardmode, you start the game with a rose, which you can place next to a door you find inside the well you have to climb down. There isn’t much in the room; just a statue of the frog prince and some lovely concept art. 

The second bonus location is actually the entrance to the bonus level, so let’s talk about it.

Bonus Game: The Spindle Room Secrets 

This is  by far the simplest, most straightforward bonus level in all of the games.  It’s 3 rooms; the spindle room, some kind of wardrobe/clothier room and a balcony. The balcony houses the tomb of the Prince who tried to wake Briar, who happens to be… dun, dun, dun… James’ brother. 

This only works as a reveal if you’ve played The Exiled Prince and then returned to this game. As is, it’s just this Prince has a brother who we will meet in the following game. Great. Thanks. 

Also, sidenote, James’ brother was Briar Rose’s true love and James was Ivy’s? That’s a bit weird. 

Regardless, all you find out in this level is that the brother passed away shortly after he attempted to lift the curse (from grief I imagine) and that’s it. You don’t even get anything after you solve the last puzzle, just a “Congrats, you finished the game”. 

Neither of these 2 bonus locations are worth playing on hardmode imo, though having replayed the game on hardmode for this retrospective, I can say it’s not like the game is very difficult. You can also use the strategy guide if you get stuck. 

Overall, this is by far one of my least favourite games in the series; I’d put it close to the bottom. It’s too simple and uneven, and while I have nothing against Briar’s character we know nothing about her. We don’t even know if the Prince who tried to wake her knew her before she became cursed; it’s not even a great departure from Sleeping Beauty’s fairy tale. Briar does appear in the latter games, but we’ll talk about her more when we get to them. 

For now, we can move onto what I think is the real start of the series: 

The Exiled Prince

Introduction

#dark parables #dark parables: the curse of briar rose #casual games #video games #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Dark Parables

Introduction:

Dark Parables is a series of casual games created by Blue Tea Studios, and later taken over by Eipix Games. The series is still ongoing; the first game, Curse of Briar Rose came out in 2010, and at the time of writing, the latest game, Portrait of the Stained Princess came out in 2019. There are 16 games in the mainline series, and 2 spinoff games. 

The series is set in a fictional, fairytale world, where well known fairy tales are given a darker, twisty spin as the title suggests. The games are connected, with various characters and plot points running through the series, though each game is a standalone, individual mystery. 

Gameplay:

As the title suggests, these are casual games, meaning most of the gameplay is delivered through two things: point and click (PoP) and hidden object puzzles (HOP). Though the games are by no means RPG, you do play  a character, the Fairytale Detective. The Detective is a silent protagonist, well known in the game world. The characters refer to the Detective’s more ‘well known’ cases, and express relief and happiness when you arrive to solve whatever mystery you’re called to solve. Though originally genderless, in the later games the Detective is canonically revealed as a woman, so I will be referring to her by she/her pronouns.

The cases vary depending on the game, but they include rescuing kidnapped children, breaking curses, solving murders and even toppling entire cities from the sky. Each game starts with a briefing from your boss, who gives you the conceit of the case and you take over from there. 

In the beginning, HOPs were the main puzzle of the series, but as it progressed, it relied significantly less on them, and more on other types of puzzles. However, the HOPs themselves are different from other games in this genre, as you aren’t looking for specific objects in a set piece, most of which won’t be useful, but rather to find pieces of an object and put it together. Sometimes it’s an artifact, sometimes it’s a weapon, and sometimes just a stylized version of everyday appliances. 

This was personally what drew me to the series; I really like that you complete an object instead of tracking down 30 random things your character will never need. It makes the HOP a lot more relevant to the character and lets the designers make the HOP puzzles as organic sections of the environment itself, instead of non-diegetic interruptions. 

The other puzzles in the game vary, but they are all activated by the Detective opening locks, chests, completing murals, windows and similar environments. Like the HOP they are usually organically tied into the location you are exploring, and oftentimes they explain things in the story, like backgrounds on key characters or events. As an example, you will often encounter some kind of interactable painting or collage that will tell a story, and by solving it, the Detective will learn a key aspect of the case that lets you progress. 

Each game has 3 modes of play: easy, normal and hard. On easy, the hint button recharges quickly, there is no penalty for clicking on the wrong object in a HOP, and you can skip puzzles quickly. On normal, the time for skipping and hint recharging is longer, and there are penalties for randomly clicking around the HOP screen. On hard, there are no hints, you can’t skip puzzles and the penalty kicks in after 3 wrong tries. 

The first 3 games only let you unlock hard after playing through the game once on easy or normal, and also have a bonus for the hardmode. The bonus is usually an object the detective starts the game with which unlocks a separate room that has something interesting, like a hint to the bonus story or the next game in the series. From The Red Riding Hood Sisters on, the series discards the hardmode bonus and the hidden rooms. 

All of the games have additional puzzle and collector pieces. The first one is the Cursed Objects: objects in the gameworld that shapeshift into something else. Finding each helps replenish your hint bar, and collecting all 20 gives the player an achievement and sometimes a reward. 

Achievements are something that was introduced in the spinoff game Cursery: The Crooked Man and the Crooked Cat, and are a collectors award; you can get achievements for anything from solving a HOP without hints, to solving a HOP with no wrong clicks, to finding 5 objects in 5 seconds, and so on. 

The third game, Rise of the Snow Queen introduced Parables. Parables are items you can find in the game world which you can collect. When you collect a certain amount you unlock a story, which is usually a retelling of the fairytale or an aspect of the fairytale from the main game. They explain the backstory and lore, and are fun to collect. 

The final Blue Tea Game, The Ballad of Rapunzel introduces Flowerstones, which like Parables are collectable items you can find in the game world. Collecting 20 can net the player an item which unlocks a different ending not accessible in the main game. 

Standard vs. Collector’s Editions:

All of the games in the series have a Standard and a Collectors edition. The Standard Edition contains the base game and only that; the Collector’s Edition contains the base game, a bonus game, bonus materials and a strategy guide. It’s also more expensive. 

 Now, I personally think that the Standard Edition isn’t the complete game, and don’t ever recommend getting it. The base game by itself is just not nearly as entertaining or good without the bonus game and materials. Yes, you still get a complete game, and you can still unlock all the Parables and achievements, but you are missing out on the extras and the bonus game which are usually great. 

The bonus games vary; in the first 2 games, Curse of Briar Rose and The Exiled Prince, the bonus games are just a separate bonus level in the game; in the case of CoBR it’s literally just a room, with 2 appendages. But from Rise of the Snow Queen on, the bonus games are entirely new stories, where you play as a character other than the Detective, and you learn something new; it could be the backstory of a character, an enchanted object, what happened to a place or just an additional adventure after the main one is over. 

The bonus materials are usually the same: there is concept art, wallpapers, a movie gallery where you can rewatch all the cutscenes, and download the music and wallpaper files.

The strategy guide is basically just a walkthrough. It contains all the solutions to all the puzzles, along with screenshots, as well as all the locations of all the Cursed Objects, Parables and Flowerstones. It’s not necessary, but it is useful if you are a completionist, or you are playing on hardmode and you get stuck on a particular puzzle. 

Art Direction:

This series is most well known for its gorgeous art style and direction. It is simply stunning; all the locations are beautifully crafted, there is an incredible amount of detail put into each scene, the animation in some of the games is amazing considering these are casual games, and I love the designs of the characters and the costumes. 

Each HOP is a joy to solve because the games are so beautiful, and some shots are downright stunning. The only issue is sometimes the voice acting which is uneven. 

Story: 

There isn’t exactly an overarching story in all the games; more like common elements. For example, characters you meet in earlier games come back later and you can see what’s happened to them in the meantime. They also comment on stories or react to events, so you do get a sense that all these cases are happening in the same universe. The way I would describe it, is that the games share a world, while the individual standalone adventures are their unique, contained stories. 

Blue Tea:

The Curse of Briar Rose

The Exiled Prince

Rise of the Snow Queen

The Red Riding Hood Sisters

The Final Cinderella

Jack and the Sky Kingdom

Ballad of Rapunzel

Spin-off Games:

Fabled Legends: The Pied Piper

Cursery: The Crooked Man & the Crooked Cat

Eipix Studio:

Little Mermaid and the Purple Tide

Queen of Sands

Goldilocks and the Fallen Star

Swan Lake and the Dire Tree

The Thief and the Tinderbox

Requiem for the Forgotten Shadow

Blue Tea (the Return):

Return of the Salt Princess

The Match Girl's Lost Paradise

Portrait of the Stained Princess

#dark parables #moni talks #video games #casual games

[thesffcorner]

On Classics

Yesterday, I saw a video about fanfiction, and like anything to do with fandom, it's already become controversial. However, there was one specific argument parroted by people that really made me think and I realized I have quite a lot to say on the subject.

To simplify, the argument is as follows: Fanfiction is oftentimes BETTER than classical literature, because fanfiction is free, accessible and diverse, while classical literature is dense, boring and bad. 

There were 3 specific variations of this argument:

Uncritically stating that classical literature boring and bad because it’s inaccessible to modern readers.

 Classical literature is inaccessible to most people, because without access to higher education, those people don’t have the tools to understand and enjoy it.

Fanfiction is an accessible medium of storytelling and it allows its writers and readers to see themselves in fiction which for most people who are not white, male and specifically Western (European/North American) isn’t true. 

All of these are bad arguments and I disagree with them strongly. Let’s start with nb. 3 first.  

What is and isn’t considered part of the Western Canon is subject to change based on who you talk to. Where I’m from, which is Macedonia, most academics include Russian and South American literature, but exclude most Canadian and American literature (most. We still get to suffer Mark Twain). So the argument that only white European men are in the literary canon is absurd if you live anywhere that isn’t specifically the USA, Canada and the UK. 

Even in Europe, the argument that Europeans can read a classic and see themselves in those works is bullshit, and simply shows that whoever thinks this knows nothing about Europe. 

There are no works by Macedonian authors in the canon, nor by any author from the Balkans or even any Southern Slavic country. Russia and the Czech Republic are the closest and even still, depending on who you talk to, they might not be included in the “Western” canon either. If South-east Europe does exist, it’s simply a backdrop for someone else’s story. 

If I had to ask for representation in classical literature I would be able to find none, and I am indeed white and European. 

That doesn’t mean I, or anyone else can’t see themselves in the characters of these works. You can absolutely relate to people who have nothing to do with your lived experience; in fact, that is a good thing. 

One of the best arguments to promote reading diversely is to seek out works that enrich your life by bringing you new perspectives and showing you how different and yet how similar you are to someone who lives on the other side of the world or in a completely different time. Reading diversely promotes empathy, makes you a kinder, worldlier person, broadens your vocabulary and your capacity to understand different cultures, experiences and concepts. 

It makes you a better rounded person. 

Now, this isn’t to say that you should only seek to read outside your cultural experience. It is not my place to tell someone who isn’t white and cis to just suck it up and force themselves to find relatable things in someone who is. People deserve to see themselves in fiction, especially people whose identities have historically been pushed out of literature. Queer people, immigrants, people of colour, native people, working class people, disabled people, we all deserve stories that speak to our unique experience and we all deserve to read stories about someone else’s unique experience. 

But like I said, classical literature is a finicky concept. There are authors of many marginalizations in the canon and you could conceivably find someone of your cultural and racial background if you just look a little. 

And while yes, people do read for comfort and for pleasure, and happy stories about marginalized identities are incredibly important, especially because queer and racial pain has historically been the only way to get published, not everyone writes or reads for the warm fuzzies. 

It’s ridiculous to demand that all art conform to this notion or to claim that only art that is uplifting or gentle is accessible. Art is meant to make you feel and process all kinds of emotions and experiences negative and positive. Maybe reading about the horrors of slavery or the Holocaust or the Aegean Exodus make you feel uncomfortable and sad, but sometimes you should feel uncomfortable and sad. That’s how you grow and learn as a human. 

This goes doubly for people who are not marginalized and have the luxury of never having to learn any of these things first hand and their only access to these specific emotions is through media.  

Being an adult means understanding that the world is complicated. Why should the art only present a black and white kindergarten level morality? People are flawed, complex, layered, sometimes outright bad. Fiction should be allowed to represent all these facets of the human experience, and the classics often do. Yes, this type of literature can be challenging, but you should demand more from your stories other than “good cowboy, bad cowboy”.

Classical literature can be dense and can be boring. But not only is this NOT true for the vast majority of works in the literary canon, the notion that the ONLY way general audiences can understand it is if they’ have a lit degree is ludicrous. 

To start, classical literature incorporates everything from Gilgamesh, and the Bible to The Great Gatsby and Beloved. It’s a selection of works that covers the entirety of written language and in cases like the Iliad, before it. It incorporates works from different times, different countries, in different languages and in varying stages of the development of said languages. 

Are there works like Don Quixote which are dense and impenetrable for a modern reader especially a modern Spanish reader? Of course; it’s a novel written when Spanish didn’t exist as a codified language. But does an average reader need a dictionary to understand Pride and Prejudice or the Great Gatsby? No, absolutely not, which is why in many schools, both of those works are read and taught in freshman year of high school!

Yes, most people would probably need footnotes or a guide to read Shakespeare. But do you need to understand every word, every pun in Romeo and Juliet to understand Romeo and Juliet? No, you don’t and claiming that you do, does come off as privileged. 

Most modern literature is published in English. Even the works that aren’t, to have any chance of selling globally, have to be translated into English. For countries like Macedonia who aren’t huge book markets this means that if I want to read a book that hasn’t been translated into Macedonian, I HAVE to read it in English. Most people here don’t speak or read the language well enough to know every word. And yet somehow my parents, friends and complete strangers I see in bookstores manage to do it. So why can’t you even make an attempt?

My primary school was a public Macedonian school where everything we read was in Macedonian. I had to read Heart by Edmondo DeAmicis and The Old Man and the Sea in fifth grade, Huckleberry Finn in seventh and Oliver Twist and the Call of the Wild in eight grade. My entire class of 37 people did. 

And guess what? We could all understand the books even though none of us had any context for Victorian England or Pre-unification Italy and we were reading translations of books published several centuries ago. I didn’t love all of these books, but to this day I love Heart and Call of the Wild and I read those books in a translation on top of them being classics written in 1886 and 1903 respectively. 

Of course like most of my peers I preferred books that were written by Macedonia and Serbian authors, who weren’t translated and spoke about teenagers like me who shared mine or similar cultural experiences. But most if not all of us still managed to not just read but understand these classics and this is elementary school. This was between the ages of 11 and 14. 

I went to a private English speaking high school, and the first book I had to read in freshman year was The Picture of Dorian Gray. It was the first book I had to read in English, in an academic setting and it was published in 1890. Did some things go over my head by virtue of English not being my first language? Yes. But did that somehow prevent me from liking and understanding the novel? Of course not! 

I understand people who complain about badly translated classics: a bad translation of a work that’s already written in a dialect or a specific type of a language can genuinely destroy the experience. But most people on this app and on Tik Tok and Youtube speak English as their first language. You almost never have to struggle through a translation. 

The argument is bad. You don’t need higher education to understand, read or like classical literature. For some classics you don’t even need to put in any more work than just simply reading a modern, recently published book. Most people are perfectly capable of understanding and enjoying the classics, just like any other type of work. 

If for some reason you’ve convinced yourself or been convinced that you can’t, I encourage you to try and read some classics. I can even compile a list of classics I’ve read that I think would be good starting points for a modern reader. But simply claiming that reading classics is an issue of accessibility?

No. It’s a bad argument, and it does nothing but discourage people from trying.

#classics #literature #classical literature #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Thor: Love and Thunder

Thor: Love and Thunder is the fourth installment in the Marvel Thor franchise, written and directed by Taika Waititi. It follows Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey of self-discovery, following the events of Endgame. After saving Sif (Jamie Alexander) from a powerful being who wields the Necrosword: Gorr, the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who, uh, slays Gods. Gorr’s next target is New Asgard where Thor is reunited with Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), as well as Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), now wielding a reconstructed Mjolnir and calling herself the Mighty Thor. Together, the trio + Korg (Taika Waititi) who has been traveling with Thor, embark on a mission to kill Gorr, rescue the children of Asgard from being kidnapped and preventing him from reaching Eternity. 

If that plot summary sounded convoluted, trust me, that was my best effort to streamline it. I haven’t even mentioned Thor’s travel with the Guardians of the Galaxy, or the other Gods in Omnicity or even the reason Jane has Mjolnir. This is by far the most convoluted and bloated Marvel film, and in a post No Way Home/Multiverse of Madness world, that’s saying a lot. 

This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the film: I daresay I laughed out loud at multiple points during it, and didn’t notice the near 2 hour runtime. It’s popcorn entertainment through and through, with lots of cool visuals, a kickass soundtrack and a very Masters of the Universe aesthetic. The issue is that it’s style over substance, comedy approach really doesn’t fit the story and it’s darker themes, and the film struggles to maintain a consistent tone and vision because of it. 

This review will contain SPOILERS, so if you haven’t seen the film, pause your reading, watch it and then if you came out as conflicted as I did, come back to this review. 

What I liked:

There were a few things I really enjoyed in this film. First off, it’s genuinely, very funny. There are tons of gags from small things like Valkyrie advertising Old Spice, to running gags like the screaming goats, to massive set pieces like Thor’s conversation with the King of Gods, Zeus. There is barely a single moment where there isn’t some sort of joke on screen, and while that does definitely hurt the film in the long run, you can’t say it doesn’t make for an entertaining viewing. 

Waititi has a very “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to his comedy, which means that while not every gag will land, there are so many, and they come so fast that you barely register the ones that don’t. It’s an uneven experience for sure, but in terms of comedy, I’d say this film lands more than it flops. 

Another major component that I loved was the film’s visual style. It’s maximalist: bright colors, busy frames, ridiculously epic costumes and long, elaborate action scenes. There is an inspired section of the film where the heroes track Gorr down to his dimension of darkness that is so desaturated it borders on black and white, which is also where Waititi plays with scale and space. The planet is at once tiny and massive, close and far, and it feels like a bad-trip version of Wonderland. 

The scenes where Gorr is using his shadow powers to attack the heroes, especially during the Asgard attack and the aforementioned Dimension of Darkness, are truly haunting and border on horror. I wish Marvel would just buckle and make a proper horror film already: between this and Wanda’s scenes in Strange they could pull it off, if they would just let their directors commit. 

The acting is likewise stellar as usual. Though everyone is given a limited range of emotions (which is a major issue of the film I will talk about) they work well with what they are given. Chris Hemsworth has been playing Thor for over a decade now and he lives and breathes in this character. It’s at this point second nature to him. 

Valkyrie and Jane do well with their material, the former as an alcoholic who’s torn between her roles as politician and warrior, and the latter as a workaholic who is coming to terms with her own fragility and mortality. Once again, because of the film’s tone we don’t go nearly as in depth as I would’ve liked for any of these characters, but that’s not the actors’ fault, and they still manage to wriggle some pathos of what are otherwise shallow roles. 

The standout however is by far Christian Bale. He is amazing, equally tragic, horrifying and funny. He manages to strike a balance between the pathos and tragedy of his role, and the comedy, especially when he’s given scenes to lead. I desperately wish he got to play Gorr in a different, better movie, because his character has the potential to be as emotionally engaging as the best Marvel villains like Loki and Killmonger. 

Unfortunately, this brings me to: 

Ragnarok:

Thor: Ragnarok is one of my favorite Marvel films; it’s funny, it’s subversive, it turned a pretty one note villain like Hella into a very entertaining and at times justified character and it gave some much needed personality to Hulk. 

The main strength of Ragnarok was that in spite of having dozens of worlds and characters, it maintained a consistent tone and throughline, and used its comedy to advance the plot and arcs of its characters. 

However, my big gripe with Ragnrok, was that it often discarded the prospect of its characters processing the events and emotions of what’s happening in favor of jokes. Thor loses an eye, loses Mjolnir, loses his best friends, and later loses Asgard his literal Kingdom and home he’s known his entire life and he never gets a moment to just talk about it. Even Loki, who actually does get two scenes where he realizes that in spite of everything he loves Thor and Thor loves him back, and Odin never stopped thinking of him as anything but his son, isn’t given any real space to deal with everything that’s happened to him. 

In spite of it, Ragnarok still managed to be emotionally impactful, and funny. In this film, the comedy dominates, to the point where the characters are barely characters and have almost no development throughout the film. It’s overwhelming how much the comedy interferes with the story, pulling you out of the experience and deflating every moment of pathos with jokes that are unnecessary, overlong, or just plain dumb. 

These characters DESERVE to have their issues explored: Thor has literally lost everything; he doesn’t know who or what he is without being Prince of Asgard or fighting in wars and doesn’t know how to cure the soul sickness which he masks with humor and bravado. 

Valkyrie is a King, and now has to manage and protect literally every living Asgardian, along with a bunch of refugees, but she’s still dealing with the loss of all her sisters and her lover. She still intends to die in a battle and go to Valhalla to join them, even after becoming literal royalty. 

Jane Foster we learn has cancer, which will more than likely kill her. In spite of all her intellect and fame, in spite of dating a God and advancing science, she is alone and mortal. My personal gripe is that this film makes no effort to connect her cancer to the Aether that possessed her in the Dark World, but instead cribs Starlord’s backstory of her mother dying of cancer (something which, incidentally Jane would’ve been aware of before this film, and would’ve been something to tell Thor in their years-long relationship). 

And finally, Gorr, the God Butcher, hands down one of Thor’s, if not Marvel’s most interesting villains. Gorr is a man who lost everything to his fate: his wife, his daughter, his people and then learned that his God is weak, corrupt and evil. He was given a purpose to kill all the Gods and reach Eternity which would grant him one wish. He has every right to despise the Gods, seeing as in this very film most of them are shown to be cruel, cowardly and uninterested in the lives of those who worship them. 

I just described the characters in more depth than the damn movie. The movie even lampshades the fact that it keeps its characters so superficial,  by having Korg provide ‘humorous’ backstories and even LITERALLY spelling out Thor and Valkyrie’s motivations and internal conflict. It’s the most bizzare violation of “show don’t tell” I’ve ever seen, and it serves nothing other than to deflate what otherwise would have been an emotionally engaging scene. It’s so gratuitous it borders on Joss Whedon at his very worst. 

Which leads me to:

The Tone Problem:

Look. I know tone is hard. It’s hard to keep it consistent and even harder to switch between a lighthearted adventure film and a horror/drama dealing with child death, mass murder, religion and cancer. But it can be done and even done by Taika Waititi himself! He made Jojo Rabbit, one of the arguably best recent tragi-comedies that nails the humor as well as the horror and tragedy of its subject matter. 

So what the hell happened here? 

The comedy overshadows everything, to the point where it actively interferes with the story. The film is full of gags, most of them catered to children: lots of slapstick, lots of quips, Korg’s narration and even Thor and Jane’s romance, which feels very juvenile. 

But this isn’t a kids film. It’s a film that opens with the heartbreaking death of Gorr’s daughter from dehydration, and Gorr crying and screaming, covered in sunburns and calluses. 

We follow that up with the brutal murder of a God who absolutely deserved it, and even still when Gorr kidnaps the children of Asgard he torments them by breaking the neck of  snake-like creature and throwing the dead body at them. 

So what is it? Is this a horror-tragedy for adults or a funky comedy for kids? Kids love horror and tragedy too, don’t get me wrong, but the horror in this film will fly over kids’ heads and the comedy makes ose elements in this film remind me more of the inconsistent tone of Shazam rather than the Secret of Nimh. 

This inconsistent tone kills any ability for this film to be serious and truly explore the motivations and actions of its antagonist who is and could’ve been even more sympathetic. There is no room for genuine grief or anger when the film has to balance Russel Crowe’s Zeus with the worst “Greek” accent I have ever heard, and Valkyrie begging the Gods to save her sisters on the battlefield and her pleas falling on deaf ears. 

Gorr and Jane Don’t Belong Here:

What it comes down to the most is that Gorr, the God Butcher’s storyline isn’t a comedy and simply doesn’t work as a comedy. Gorr is a man who lost everything for his faith, only to learn that his God is immoral, corrupt and weak. He is killing ALL the Gods, and even if he changed his mind and asked Eternity for a different wish, he would still die, still leave his daughter alone and potentially in a much worse world than the one she died in. You simply can’t have the motivations and actions of such a character in the same movie with an extended gag of Thor fighting Heimdal’s son because he changed his name to Axl.

This same issue hits Jane. She makes a great addition to Gorr’s storyline: like him she too was gifted a weapon by the Gods that is slowly killing her, she too lost people because of the Gods, she too is a mortal who’s ascended beyond the abilities of mortals. The one scene in which Gorr and Jane are allowed to speak was excellent at juxtaposing these two sides of the same coin, but that’s all we get. 

Imagine instead if the story engaged with these themes: Jane being angry at being given all this power and all this might that is literally killing her. Her being resentful of tHor treating her decisions only in a way which affects him, ignoring her own wishes. Maybe even Jane agreeing with Gorr that the Gods cause more suffering to the mortals for no reward, or just the fucking commradery with someone who has the power to kill God but not bring his family back. 

There is even a brief scene where Jane seems to entertain the idea of getting to Eternity first so she can ask for a wish instead of Gorr, but we never get any follow up on this, and it’s never mentioned again. 

This leads me to another big problem:

No Consequences for Massive Actions:

Have you ever heard of the phrase “set up and pay off”? Or “every action elicits an opposite and equal reaction”? Well this movie hasn’t. 

Massive things are set up and never paid off. Who created the Necrosword? What’s its goal? We never learn. Why did Eternity speak to Gorr? We also never learn. 

Jane and Thor both learn that Eternity will grant a wish to the first person who opens its gate. They know Gorr needs Thor’s Stormbreaker to open the Bifrost and get to Eternity. So why don’t they open the gate, get there first and ask for the Necrosword to disappear? Or ask for the kids to return safely to Asgard? Or for Jane to be free of cancer? Or even for Gorr to get his daughter back? 

Instead, once they get to Eternity they ask for… nothing. Thor just hopes that Gorr, who was under the influence of the Necrosword and hates the Gods, remember, will just do the right thing and not kill every single God. Or destroy the world. Or give himself superpowers. 

Side-question. If all it took to get to Eternity was to find the gate and use the Bifrost to open it, and Eternity didn’t create the sword and didn’t ask for Gorr to kill the Gods to get to it using the sword (the sword itself is the one who wants the Gods dead), then why did Gorr even bother fighting any of the Gods? Why didn’t he just track Thor or Jane down, kill just them and get Mjolnir or Stormbreaker and get to Eternity?

Thor wants to gather an army to fight Gorr, and to do this the gang sneaks on Omnicity. When the Gods, namely Zeus, refuses to help them, Thor straight up kills Zeus and steals his lightning. He just… kills the King of all the Gods, in front of every powerful God, not just from Earth but from other planets too, and NO ONE, not a SINGLE person reacts! No one goes after the gang, Thor isn’t arrested or ambushed, literary nothing happens!

Yes, we learn in a post credit scene that Zeus isn’t dead, but even that scene is played as comedy, not as something that in every other film would get Thor and the gang EXECUTED. 

I already talked about how none of the characters are allowed to react to anything that’s happening to them. Thor lost everything, but no, he’s hung up on breaking up with Jane 8 YEARS AGO. 

Thor and Jane:

Speaking of, boy do Thor and Jane get the short end of the stick. First off, their romance feels incredibly juvenile. The way they act towards each other makes no sense for two adult humans in any reasonable sense of the word. Thor isn’t concerned that Jane can suddenly reform and lift Mjolnir, which for a long time was a source of his power, but that she is wearing his clothes? Jane doesn’t want to know what happened with Thanos? Where Thor was for all these years? If Asgard has magic that can cure her, like they showed they did in Dark World? No? She wants to know if he has a girlfriend? Really??

Also how many times will Thor learn the same exact lesson? I thought Ragnarok was where Thor realized he’s more than just the Prince of Asgard and Mjolnir, where he learned who he was and what he wanted? But now we are back to even pre-Ragnarok with Thor acting more like Starlord than himself. 

Thor was never emotionally dense, he was never unintelligent in that department: he was brash and arrogant, but he loved freely and openly in each film. In fact that was his main flaw, that he loved Loki even after Loki kept betraying him time and time again. He never once ‘closed his heart’; he deeply loves both Valkyrie and Korg, and he even loves the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Avengers. This sudden character flaw is not only stupid, but it actively contradics the very core of Thor’s character. 

I believe that Jane buried herself in work to get over Thor, and ‘closed her heart’. I believe that Thor still loves her and would do anything for her. I refuse to believe that Thor of all people holds others at arm’s length or refuses to love fully. That might be Starlord, but it’s definitely not Thor. 

The Length:

My final point is more of a gripe, that unfortunately feeds into the rest of the issues. Too many scenes in this film are bloated, overlong and unnecessary. 

The Guardians for example. We didn’t need them: we could’ve achieved the exact same effect if instead of 20 minutes of Thor fighting with them on a random planet, they just dropped him off somewhere and we got the montage of him training and fighting. You could even strengthen Thor’s dumbass character arc, by being “I have to do this alone” as the reason why he left them. 

Then instead of the stupid distress call lineup, Thor can get a vision of Siff while meditating, be shocked that she’s even alive, go rescue her and maybe we could’ve gotten a scene of Gorr killing the God and chopping Siff’s arm off. That way Thor actually has a personal reason to go after Gorr instead of just “some of the Gods he killed were nice”. 

The entire midpoint with the Gods was pointless. Instead of the Omnicity bit Thor could’ve gone to Olympus and spoken to Zeus. Maybe even Zeus fought Gorr or whoever wielded the sword before him and defeated him, which is why Thor needs and wants his help. 

What I’m saying is that a solid 30% of this movie could’ve been cut and replaced with shorter, but better executed scenes and the film would be much better for it.

Conclusion:

It’s a movie that, much like its protagonist, doesn't know what it wants to be. It wants to be a comedy. It wants to be a serious drama. It wants to be a horror film. And yet, it commits to none of these, and as a result it’s unfocused, messy and feels like a first draft. I am very disappointed in the final result and am worried what that would mean for the future of the franchise. 

It’s still a fun film, but definitely one of the bad ones. 

#thor #thor love and thunder #marvel #moni talks #film review

[thesffcorner]

The Batman

The Batman is written and directed by Matt Reeves, and stars Robert Pattinson as the titular Batman. In this ‘gritty’ reimagining of the DC character, it’s been 2 years since Bruce Wayne took up the mantle of Batman, fighting Gotham’s crime. On Halloween night, 20 years after his parents were killed, current mayor and mayoral candidate Don Mitchell Jr (Rupert Penry Jones) is found brutally murdered in his apartment. The killer, dubbed Riddler by Gotham PD, is leaving cryptic messages addressed to Batman; if he solves the big puzzle, it might reveal the corruption and crime at the very heart of the city.

This review isn’t for those who haven’t seen the film. I want to discuss the story in detail, and lay out exactly why I’m so conflicted about it. To do this I will necessarily have to SPOIL most of the film, so if you haven’t seen it, please don’t read this. I will say that generally I enjoyed the film, and if nothing else, it’s given me a lot to think and talk about, which is more than I can say about any of the Batman films that have come out so far.

Introduction

As these things go, I should lay out my bonafides so you have an idea of what I like and what I am looking for in a Batman film.

I grew up on the Tim Burton Batman films, which are to date my favourite ones. In my opinion, though they differ significantly from the source material, they are the only ones who seem to capture the mood and tone of the comics, as well as the careful interplay between Bruce Wayne and Batman’s personalities. They nail why he does the things he does, they have the best on screen romance between him and Selina Kyle and generally do the things I want to see in a Batman film.

I greatly dislike the Nolan films; I don’t like their politics, I don’t like their villains, the characters’ motivations, and I especially don’t like their tone and aesthetics. Nolan’s Gotham has more in common with an episode of 24 than anything from the comics, and I especially dislike the way these films have left a stain on what people expect Batman to be like.

Though we never got to see the Batman film, I did enjoy Snyder’s Batman in JL and BVS. I liked Affleck a lot, especially as a wizened, older Batman, but I never really found his Gotham to be that engaging.

As for the comics I have read my fair share: my favourite by far is Hush, and I also really enjoy the Streets of Gotham. While I like a lot of Batman Year One, the Long Halloween and the Court of Owls, which are the basis of this film, I do have some issues with them.

But we’re not here to talk about comics; we’re here to talk about this film. So let’s start with the things I liked.

The Aesthetics

This film is gorgeous. It has, outside of the Burton films (which admittedly could get a little cartoonish) the best Gotham we’ve seen so far. The city feels like a massive, sprawling and decaying place. There are plenty of modern skyscrapers and buildings, but they are contrasted with decaying gothic hospitals, orphanages, a police station that is overcrowded and falling apart, a filthy subway, old tunnels and catacombs. This Gotham is most similar to the one we saw in Todd Philips’ Joker; streets overflowing with trash and grime, worn down buildings, and crime around every corner. It’s genuinely one of the best versions of the city I’ve seen, and I’m so glad Gotham finally gets to feel like a proper gothic city instead of the ugly, modern city the Nolan films presented.

What helps a lot is the direction and cinematography of the film. It’s not filmed like a typical action film; there aren’t many fights, and even when they happen, they show a more realistic look at violence than usual, with groups attacking Batman from all sides, trying to flank and overpower him.

There aren’t many sprawling shots either; a lot of this film is slow, tight, and deliberate. We hold on characters’ faces or objects, the camera stays fixed when something important happens, and it’s usually from far away or in a blur. All of the more gruesome scenes are like this, which while an obvious way to keep the film’s rating PG13, helps build the horror and tension, much like the shadows scare the criminals in Gotham.

One example is a second act car chase where Batman is going after the Penguin. The sequence builds the tension perfectly; we never see drone shots of the cars weaving through the Gotham streets. Instead we are kept tight and close to the characters faces or their rearview mirrors, experiencing the tension and terror with them. As the stakes get higher and more and more people get hurt, we are kept even tighter, claustrophobic, inside the vehicles.

A lot of this film is told visually; we learn a lot of information from images, newspaper clips and headlines and maps stuck up on walls or floors. There’s a lot of detail and character in every frame; in many ways the visual style of the film reminded me of Brian Bolland’s art on the Killing Joke.

This isn’t to say it’s all great, there were things that bothered me. One is the several truly unnecessary, gratuitous and lingering shots on Selina Kyle’s (Zoe Kravitz) body, which serve no purpose other than to maybe let the audience know that Batman is horny creep. There is also a scene towards the end of the film, which while cool is ripped straight out of Rogue One.

Another thing I liked were the makeup and costumes. The story is set in Batman’s early days, and as such his costume isn’t perfect. He has gadgets that malfunction, pieces of the suit that aren’t fully finished and in general he looks rough and even awkward in the suit (especially with the black makeup running down his face when he takes the mask off).

Selina’s leotard is just a skin-tight biker suit, and she wears a regular sock as a mask, which admittedly does look stupid, but also makes sense since she’s still improvising. I also appreciated that when she’s in the suit, she’s either wearing very small heels or no heels.

The makeup is by far the best on Penguin (Colin Farrell). He’s unrecognizable under the prosthesis, but the makeup is subtle enough that one can see why he’d have a nickname like the Penguin without veering into uncanny valley territory like the Burton version.

I even liked the regular makeup; Selina wears a lot of sparkles and bold lips, which though definitely inspired by Euphoria, fit her character nicely.

Characters

I think the strongest part of this film are the characters, especially the villains. Let’s start with Paul Dano as the Riddler. Now, this isn’t the Riddler from the comics; he’s not very funny nor entertaining, and though it’s clear that Dano relishes every second of the role, this is a much darker version of the character. The Riddler here is a loner, a social outcast and recluse, who retreats into puzzles, riddles and the toxic side of social media to finally feel like himself. There were points where I thought Dano maybe overdid it a bit, especially towards the end (when will directors and actors stop coding their villains as neurodivergent), but overall he was a good foil to Pattinson’s Wayne.

Next we have Carmichael Falcone. First off, can I say how nice it is to finally see John Tuturo in a big budget film again. He plays Falcone and he’s stellar in the role. He brings the right amount of swagger and bravado to the role, and while never outright threatening or physically imposing, he exudes a presence that makes everyone’s fear of him believable.

Penguin was by far my favourite. Colin Farrell steals the role; he’s equally annoying and funny, equally thuggish and classy, and I really bought his cunning, duplicitous nature.

Selina Kyle is a bit of a mess. On the one hand, Zoe Kravitz does the best she can with the material she’s given. She’s equal parts warm and comforting, as she is cunning and vengeful. She’s also very attractive, which is a trait the movie really tries to play up. I’m not sure it really succeeds at sexapeal, mostly because every character that Selina interacts with (especially Bruce) is extremely stiff.

The issue with Selina comes down to her motivations and her revamped backstory. She suffers from what I like to call Ray syndrome, which is that every important character must be revealed to be related to another important or powerful character. So this film, makes Selina Falcone’s bastard daughter, which is both a contrivance to justify her stealing (we’ll get to that) and a convenient way to keep the character in the film, after a reveal in the second act. This honestly doesn’t help because Selina is still absent for large sections of this movie and her impact on the story is non-existent.

Commissioner Gordon suffers a similar fate. Jeffry Wright is giving it his all, as one of the very few ‘good cops’ in Gotham. But bless his heart he’s got nothing to work with. He gets a few funny lines, and is in the movie a lot, but for most of his screen time he’s reacting to what Batman says and does, and has only 2 scenes where he does something proactive: shoot at Falcone and Penguin and save the new mayor after she gets shot.

He simply has no personality; we learn nothing about him, not that he has a wife, or a child and even the one thing we do learn, that his partner was killed by Falcone, doesn’t seem to have made any impact on his character. Even the way we find it out is in a random scene where he uses it to intimate Penguin.

Alfred is the same; Andy Serkis is trying, and he brings a lot of warmth and pathos to the role in the very few scenes. He also looks like he could’ve been a Secret Service Agent before becoming a butler. But he has nothing to do in this film, and is even conveniently written out for a majority of the plot.

Both he and Selina suffer the two dumbest scenes in the film, one of which made me actively angry, but we’ll talk more about them later. If you noticed someone missing from this list that’s because he gets a whole section:

Bruce Wayne

Robert Pattinson is fine. He’s a good Batman. He has the right charisma, he has the right amount of skill and experience to a role where he’s still learning the ropes. He is not a master detective; he’s young, he’s angry, he improvises, he makes mistakes and he’s trying his hardest and that’s all fine. The problem isn’t his Batman. It’s his Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne is a component that most filmmakers get wrong, and this film is no different. Unfortunately their solution was to just write Bruce out of his own film.

Outside of his 2 interactions with Alfred, Bruce has 1 single scene in the entire film, and he spends most of it glowering silently, and passively observing the plot. The film establishes early on that Bruce has become a shut-in; he’s using his father’s money to finance his crime fighting, but isn’t showing up to board meetings, isn’t meeting with accountants, isn’t investing, fundraising or donating. He’s such a recluse, that when he shows up to the murdered mayor’s memorial, everyone, including Falcone comment on how rare it is to see him out in public.

Yet this never comes into play in any meaningful way in the story. Bruce never has to face consequences for disregarding his Wayne obligations, he doesn’t lose the company or any property, he never has trouble doing things as Bruce Wayne. It’s almost like the filmmakers forgot that Bruce being a well connected and beloved billionaire might help him out in situations, like instead of sending Selina undercover in Minus 44, he could’ve gone instead. He even does this very thing in a later scene in the film, which we will discuss later.

In the few scenes that Bruce is allowed to exist, he’s whiny, passive and very much a dick to Alfred, the man who raised and took care of him since the age of 10. Alfred has done nothing but try to help Bruce and Bruce keeps reminding Alfred that he’s not a Wayne, so he shouldn’t be wearing Wayne branded cufflinks, that he’s not his father even though Alfred has raised Bruce longer than his actual father has. He dismisses every single one of Alfred’s concerns and never thanks him for any of his help.

The movie tries to have a scene where Bruce realizes how much he cares for Alfred, and how much he’s afraid of losing him, but it falls flat because Bruce never apologizes to Alfred about the way he has been treating him, nor acknowledges how much Alfred has helped him. In fact it’s Alfred who apologizes to Bruce because he couldn’t be as much of a father to him as Bruce’s father was (I guess, fuck Marta ammirite). And since after this scene Alfred disappears from the film, we don’t even see if Bruce has changed his ways at all!

This leads into a much bigger issue, which is that Bruce is just not a likable character. Batman was never an approachable or affectionate person, and he has in the past used other people for his own gain, but he always has contingency plans and he never just risks the lives of random civilians for selfish goals. This Batman? Does it all the time.

Let’s start with Selina. Bruce follows her home, creepily ogles her then forces her to take him back to her apartment so he can speak to Annika, a battered, terrified woman who is hiding in Selina’s apartment. When Annika is kidnapped, he uses Selina’s concern for her to have her spy at the Minus 44, a club full of people who could very easily kill her, and genuinely has no regard for her safety nor any kind of way of getting her out of the club in case things do go south. He ignores Selina’s stated goal of looking for Anika and gets mad when she abandons his mission.

He never apologizes for this, never tries to make things right by looking for Anika, and spends the rest of the film trying to sabotage Selina’s desire for vengeance because if she kills the people who hurt her and her friend, he won’t be able to get to the Riddler.

Sidenote, but it always annoys me when writers write a world where the whole justice system (judges, cops, lawyers) are so corrupt and so in the pocket of one man, and then they write their characters to refuse to kill said one man, even though they KNOW he will never be actually sentenced or see a day of prison. Hint, hint.

The worst scene comes after Selina robs Falcone. Bruce accuses Selina of sleeping with Falcone and/or his men to set up her heist. He quite literally asks her how much of her soul she had to sell by working at the Minus 44. He then tells her her friend Annika, the woman who was photographed with a bruised face and was brutally strangled by Falcone, had it coming and deserved it because she dared to be a prostitute and slept with the wrong man. Once again, this is a woman whose passport was stolen by a man who very well could’ve been the one who gave her the black eye and bruises but she deserved to be brutally murdered because she MIGHT have been a sex worker.

The worse thing is that Bruce says all of this because he’s jealous that Selina may have slept with Falcone, not because he actually gives a damn about prostitution; if he did he wouldn’t have sent Selina into Minus 44 to spy for him in the first place!

What pissed me off even more is that Bruce only apologies to Selina after he learns that she’s Carmichael’s child, and EVEN THEN the movie has to have Selina affirm him, by telling him that assuming the worst of people is a good trait to have.

Maybe “assuming that someone is a sex worker” might be “assuming the worst”. Implying that sex workers, especially ones who are clearly coerced or trafficked, deserve to be brutally murdered, because they slept with the wrong people, or that they are ‘selling their soul’ for money is a DISGUSTING opinion to have, especially for the lead of the film, which I remind you, is supposed to be the good guy.

Moreover, the fact that Bruce apologies only after he’s learned that the money that Selina stole are actually hers, since Carmichael owes her an inheritance, aka he only validates her when he finds out she’s actually rich by birth-right is infuriating. The logic here is stealing is wrong, even when you are stealing from murdering, sex trafficking, drug trafficking mobsters, unless you are their child, in which case that money should’ve been your inheritance, so it’s fine. Absolute dogshit of a plot point.

The Politics

As you might’ve sensed, this film has some fucked up politics. When it’s not advocating for the murder of sex workers, it tries to have some kind of commentary on systemic issues like corruption, greed, police brutality or exploitation. I say tries, because as Suicide Squad so aptly proved, simply depicting or acknowledging that something is problem doesn’t mean anything unless you have something to say about that problem.

The film wants to be smart and progressive by having a subplot about how even good projects like a public infrastructure charity being used to launder money by corrupt actors hurts the poor and disenfranchised, but like most Hollywood fare stops just short of critiquing the source of all these problems: the rigged system. It does what every movie does these days: claim that the system is great, it’s just the wrong people who are in charge. No, it’s not that the justice system unfairly targets the already marginalized, and exploits the poor, no; it’s that the DA is corrupt.

Simply presenting a corrupt and unjust society without exploring the real reasons is bad, actually In the opening section alongside a man robbing a bodega and a literal gang of delinquents who randomly beat up subway passengers, we also get people spray painting BROKE on the side of a bank and breaking windows. Not only does this film imply that all these are equally bad crimes, it never bothers to ask what the banks as institutions represent to the poor people who vandalize them, or how they contribute to the rampant corruption in Gotham.

The Riddler is an orphaned child who grew up in terrible conditions, was left behind by society both financially and socially, and the only way the film can think to make him evil is to have him kill lot’s of random civilians (at the very end), because if you really look at the people who he’s murdering you might not think he’s all that wrong. In a system where the rich literally control the courts, the DA, the prisons and the police, how is anyone supposed to enact justice on those who exploit the city? Isn’t that kind of the whole point of Batman’s vigilantism?

I don’t expect a big budget Hollywood production to deliver a truly radical message, even though Joker proved that it can be done. What bugs me is that even the wishy washy liberal message of the film is muddled.

Time and time again the film wants you to believe that it cares about the ordinary citizens; in that same opening sequence, Batman saves a random dude from getting jumped in the subway. But that’s the ONLY time Batman saves anyone who isn’t already rich and important for the rest of the film, until the very, very end.

The movie gives Selina a speech about how no one in Gotham cares about anyone who isn’t rich and white (in fact that is literally Riddler’s whole motivation, being forgotten by everyone even though Thomas Wayne’s Renewal Fund was started primarily to help his orphanage). The problem is that the film itself doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t rich and white.

Annika, gets brutally murdered, and outside of needing her to tell him what she knows about Don Jr, Batman doesn’t remotely care for her; according to him, she deserved to die anyway for daring to be a sex worker.

Selina doesn’t count since she’s expandable up until the moment we learn she’s the daughter of someone rich and important, and even then Batman only really wants to stop her because if she kills Falconi before he catches him, he might not find the Riddler.

We spend so much time trying to save the DA, a corrupt, cheating drug user, who admits to taking bribes to not prosecute certain cases, and who picks up girls at the Minus 44. The film starts with the extremely sombre murder of the Mayor who is literary photographed with probable trafficked sex workers! And yet the entire Gotham PD works on his case and he gets a public memorial that the film spends a huge section of it’s runtime glorifying.

Even Bruce Wayne isn’t immune; a major plot point of the film is finding out that his father Thomas hired Falcone to kill a reporter who was going to uncover lots of unsavoury secrets about his mother while he was running for Mayor. Every single important character in this film is a rich white man.

During the aforementioned chase scene, Batman and Penguin kill over 3 dozen civilians in a chain car crash and then a massive explosion. No one bats an eye; it’s not even on the news. There’s no scene of Bruce introspecting on the damage his actions are causing to ordinary people. Hell, even at the start, when he’s beating up the goons at the Iceberg, he throws them over the railing onto innocent clubbers under him.

When Riddler floods Gotham, and thousands of people die, we don’t get a single line about how it was literally Batman’s presence in Gotham that gave the Riddler the idea and the strength to go on this rampage. Even more glaring, the only 2 people Batman saves in the flood are Don Jr’s son and the new mayor.

The film likes to think that it cares about social issues, but it doesn’t; civilians die left and right and all we focus on are the rich white men who kill them.

Story

The reason I was focusing so hard on the politics of the film, is that the story is so convoluted and badly told that it was distracting. Let’s start with the obvious; this film has no guts. It tries to play around with the Batman mythos like Joker did, but has no desire to actually be transgressive like Joker was.

A perfect example is Thomas Wayne. We learn that the story the reporter Edward Elliott was writing, was that Martha Wayne’s mother murdered her father and then herself, and the Arkhams covered it up. Moreover, Martha was an in and out patient at many institutions, including Arkham.

Bruce then confronts Falcone who confirms that Thomas wanted the reporter scared, and when that didn’t work, he had him killed. When speaking to Alfred however, we learn that sike! No he didn’t! According to Alfred, Thomas Wayne had nO iDeA that Falcone would kill the reporter and when he found out he threatened to confess. I have to stress that these two conversations happen literally MINUTES apart.

To make things worse, the film tries to have a cute little ‘we don’t know if Falcone or Maroni had Thomas killed’, as if that changes anything in the actual story! We already know Falcone is a bad guy, and we never ever SEE Maroni.

I’m not saying that you have to make Thomas Wayne as corrupt as everyone else; I actually think that does a disservice to Alfred’s character seeing how much he idolizes Thomas. But if you’re going to do it, trying to downplay or excuse what he did, is not only stupid, it makes Thomas WORSE, as now he’s just an idiot who didn’t realize that hiring a mobster to intimidate someone might result in murder! Plus, it makes the whole reveal pointless in the first place; why waste so much screen time on a plot point about Thomas being complicit in murder, if you are going to immediately walk it back and have it have 0 impact on the story?

Speaking of mobsters, like the Long Halloween, this film too heavily deals with Gotham’s crime families. We have the Waynes, the Arkhams, the Maronis, the Falconis, and even the Penguin, but the issue here is that unless you are already familiar with these names, the film makes very little effort to get you up to speed. I saw this film with my boyfriend who is a casual fan of Batman, and he had no idea who any of these people were. If you’re not already a fan of the comics and have read the Long Halloween and Batman Year One, you will be lost.

But even the story we do get, feels like the second part in a trilogy, of which no one saw part 1. The whole plot hinges on a mass arrest that happened years ago, when all the characters targeted by the Riddler pulled the largest drug bust in history, and took down the Maronis. We never see any of this; we don’t even know if Maroni is alive. Characters talk about this all the time, and it’s crucial that we understand how and why all of this happened, but we never once get to see what happened.

I shouldn’t have to explain that in writing terms, telling people what happened instead of showing it, is uh, bad.

Because the entire plot hinges on events that happened in the past that Batman had no part in, it has the unfortunate consequence of making him feel like a passive character in his own story. Everything just happens around him, and at most he reacts to it.

There is no point in this movie when Batman doesn’t just follow Riddler’s plan exactly as Riddler intended it. He never gets ahead of Riddler, he never solves anything before Riddler expected him to, or reacts in a way that Riddler didn’t account for. Not once does Batman mess up Riddler’s plan or force him on his back foot; he’s always 3 steps behind.

The movie wants me to think that Batman foiled Riddler’s plans, but he didn’t; Riddler did exactly what he set out to do. Gotham is flooded, thousands of people die, and all the people involved in the Maroni case are killed. The only person Riddler fails to kill is the new mayor, Real, who was a secondary target. So his screaming meltdown in Arkham makes no sense; people did remember who the Riddler was and he did accomplish the chaos he wanted to. He won.

Moreover, the fact that Batman is so behind the curve actually costs him lives. We spend a good chunk of the film chasing down a lead in Spanish, only for the Penguin of all people to tell Bruce that he got the hint wrong. This causes Bruce to be an hour late to a crime scene, which almost kills Alfred. Even in the very final reveal, Bruce figures out just minutes before it happens, so he’s unable to prevent the flood, and costs thousands of people their lives.

The other issue is that many times the plot is driven by convenience. Gordon conveniently brings Bruce to the crime scene at the start; if he hadn’t Bruce would have had no idea he was part of a puzzle. It’s convenient that Annika was hiding out at Selina’s place, it’s convenient that the one police officer on duty at Riddler’s apartment happened to have an uncle who’s a carpenter and knows what a tucker is. It’s even convenient that the Penguin speaks Spanish!

My issue with this isn’t that Bruce doesn’t crack the case in the first 5 minutes, it’s that at no point do his actions drive the plot forward. Riddler would’ve killed the same people, and released the same documents regardless of whether Batman solved his riddles and he would’ve flooded Gotham regardless. Nothing Batman does impacts the story; he just jumps from one puzzle piece to the next, never once getting ahead.

So we have a complicated, but badly delivered story with a dozen characters who end up being unimportant because they are tied to a case that happened 20 years ago. We also have an unlikable main character who never outsmarts the villain or foils his plan, and isn’t even connected to the main mystery, outside of being a witness for Riddler. It’s just not… a good story.

Conclusion

I’m not saying this film is bad. I’m not even saying I don’t like it. But it’s just squandered potential; it has a great cast, a great setting, beautiful cinematography and a genuinely interesting idea, but it never lives up to any of its promise. It’s disappointing, but hey. At least it made me think about it.

#the batman #review #moni talks

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I don’t know how I feel about the Dune film. On the one hand, it has some excellent directing and cinematography, but on the other, if you’ve never seen the old film/mini series or read the book… would you even be able to understand what is happening?

It seems like one of those films where going in without prior knowledge, like, legitimately harms your viewing experience.

In the same vein, I think this material would be much better suited for a TV series. Imagine the fall of Atreides after 5 to 6 episodes of getting to know all the characters like you did in say, GoT.

#dune #moni talks

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#goodreads #reading stats #reading 2020 #goodreads wrap up

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Eight Perfect Murders

Eight Perfect Murders is a thriller written by Peter Swanson. It follows Malcolm Kershaw, a bookseller who specializes in murder mysteries. Years ago, Michael wrote an article going over his 8 perfect murders in literature: murders so clever and well executed that if someone were to commit them in real life, they would never be caught. Now someone seems to be using Malcolm’s list to actually commit the murders. An FBI agent drafts Mal into helping with the case, but what follows might unravel all of Mal’s secrets, and the lives of those he cares about at risk. Ever since this book was announced I wanted to read it, because it sounded so up my alley. It’s a murder mystery that has to do with famous murders in crime fiction, and if you’ve read any of my other thriller reviews, you know I love a good whodunnit. I’m pleased to say that this book was both better than I expected and somehow not what I expected at all. It starts of well enough; the FBI agent named Gwen ropes Mal into helping her with the cases, there are a lot of summaries and analysis of the novels Mal wrote on his list, and at first this book had the tone of a rather classic thriller: something Jo Nesbo, or even Robert Gallbraith might write. I even saw this book compared to Anthony Horowitz, and I’m not sure I’d agree. The way the plot evolves does have some thematic similarities, but the tones are wildly different. This is where we get to a caveat about this novel. While it still is, at its heart a whodunnit, it’s not really the fun kind of murder mystery. I don’t mean to come off as glib, but it’s not really an Agatha Christie/Sherlock Holmes/Knives Out type mystery; the murders aren’t satisfying, there aren’t 10 red herrings and wild twists. It’s much more a character study of our narrator Mal, which is fitting since he is literally our narrator. He’s telling us the story, to come to some measure of closure, or perhaps even for posterity, since I don’t feel like it’s much of a spoiler to say that he isn’t as unrelated to the cases as it may seem at the start. As such, when I finished this book, I was overtaken by this dull sense of grief, that I’ve only gotten twice before: with M L Rio’s If We Were Villains one of my favorite books of all time, and Donna Tartt’s Secret History which, while not a favorite is a book that I still vividly remember leaving a big impact on me. This book isn’t really in their caliber; it’s not even the same genre really. Peter Swanson is a good writer, he manages to convey a real sense of loss and futility to his characters, but he’s not as good as the writers he’s referencing; at least not as good as Tartt, that’s for sure. But the book did leave me with a very strong feeling, which is more than I can say for a lot of modern thrillers. It’s not graphic, it’s not shocking; the twists that it does have are predictable if you are an observant reader or a fan of the genre. I don’t even think they are meant to be big twists, as Mal himself points out where he omitted things and where he planted evidence as to what is happening. But unfortunately that made it pretty easy to tell where the plot was going. I didn’t guess who the real killer was, but on recollection it had been pretty obvious: really there were 3 possibilities, and the killer was the one which seemed most obvious. I don’t have much to say about the plot; I also don’t want to get into spoilers. As for our characters, there is only really one that I connected with and that was Mal. Mal was a bit of a cliche of the genre: lonely, isolated childhood, distant/abusive parents, failing or nonexistent relationships. He’s really interested in books, has some niche hobbies, has a romantic relationship that is central to his character. But he was also compelling in how utterly pitiable he was; when I finished the book, I wasn’t angry or glad at how his character had developed: I was just sad. There were a few things that I want to note that aren’t really issues, just things to note. The first is that there is a weird element of cuckoldry that… I really, REALLY wasn’t a fan of. It’s just… such an inherently problematic concept, especially in a book that has 3 prominent female characters that really have no real agency, outside of how they relate to Mal or to the men that have abused them. There’s also barely any examination of gender or sexuality, and the murders themselves are really… uninteresting and pedestrian. Mal has both Strangers on a Train and the Secret History on his list, two books and authors who explore precisely themes of power, gender, sexuality, eroticism, secrecy, and yet this book uses them in the most superficial, CSI Miami way possible. I haven’t read The Drowner and yet even the description that Mal gives seems to have a lot to do with repression, sexuality and gender, and again… none of that is relevant to this book. Overall this book was just fine. It has an interesting concept, and I liked elements of it. But for the most part it’s just a straightforward, albeit rather depressing mystery that does nothing to engage with the works it name drops. I can’t imagine you will dislike it but… I also can’t imagine you will be very satisfied either.

goodreads

#eight perfect murders #eight perfect murders review #book review #moni talks

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Magic for Liars

Magic for Liars is a fantasy murder mystery written by Sarah Gailey. It follows Ivy Gamble, a PI who gets approached by the Headmaster of Osthorne Academy for Young Mages to solve what the Headmaster believes was a murder on campus. There are really only 2 problems: 1. Ivy Gamble isn’t magic, and 2. her estranged sister Tabitha teaches there. The plot summary of this book made it sound like everything I’ve ever wanted: a female PI sent to investigate the murder at a magic high school? Hell yes! Unfortunately, this book was a huge disappointment, and we can start right there with world-building. This school is a completely normal boarding school, except there are mages inside. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of illusion charms or magic protecting it from the outside; it’s just a school. Moreover, in this world magic is ‘secret’ but not really, because Ivy, her parents and even random strangers like the bartender she spoke with just know that magic exists, and yet they… don’t care? The government doesn’t care? These kids can turn markers into butter sticks, and yet their parents and siblings aren’t even a little bit impressed or afraid of that? Say what you will about Harry Potter, but the world in that series made sense. Humans wouldn’t just not care about magic; in a world where real magic exists, and it’s not a secret people would not be like the people of our world. They would be irreversibly changed; wars would be different, national security would be nonexistent! Even the Magicians, a show which I hate got this right! Speaking of the Magicians, that’s what this book reminded me off but in all the wrong ways. That show (at least season 1) has some of the most dull and unlikable characters I’ve ever seen in a show, and this book was exactly like that. I didn’t like a single person in this book; everyone was either completely uninteresting or an asshole. I don’t even want to go over each character, because that’s how little I cared for any of these people. The only 2 that are even worth mentioning outside of Ivy are her sister Tabitha and the woman who uncovers the murder, Mrs. Webb. Mrs. Webb was not interesting as a character, but more as a representation. Several times in the book, people mention or rather insist that she is the best healer in a generation. There is some really shitty and uninspired excuses as to why, as impressive as that statement sounds, she isn’t actually capable of healing anything more serious than like… an infection, but even still, you are telling me, that this woman who is supposedly the best healer in the WORLD just… happens to hang out at a wizard high school as a secretary? She has nothing better to do? I HATED Tabitha. From the moment she appeared on page I knew she was going to be implicated in the murder, and she was just an awful person all around. Yes, we get the story from Ivy’s perspective, and Ivy has a bad relationship with her (which is imo 100% justified), but the book makes no attempt to endear us to her. She is secretive, condescending, rude and evasive and generally a bad person, even before we get the big reveal with her character. She was what I imagine Petunia thought of Lilly in Harry Potter; a completely insufferable and out of touch character, that wasn’t worth any of Ivy’s efforts. Speaking of Ivy, I didn’t like her either. I have a really hard time connecting or liking characters who abuse substances, be they drugs or in Ivy’s case alcohol. I will say, unlike many books I’ve read, her alcohol abuse has actual consequences here, but it didn’t endear me to her character. Then there’s the issue of her age. In a scene with Tabitha, she mentions that she has been a PI for 14 years. If she became a PI right after high school, that would make her between 31 and 32 years old. That’s a long time for her to have lived and worked without magic, so the way she acted in the school made absolutely no sense. She pretends she has magic to win a date which goes badly for her, but also kind of because the plot contrives around it to make sure the other person takes what she says in the most bad faith way possible. Then there is her constant saying that she doesn’t want to be magic, juxtaposed with her clear longing to fit in and be in this world. It was just so infuriating to read about this grown woman grovelling for the approval of her terrible, terrible sister, constantly seeking for love and validation with no resolution. I think, more than anything that’s what pissed me off the most about this book. I could have overlooked the dumb world-building, the unlikable characters. But on top of that there is no real ending; solving the murder is predictable, Ivy doesn’t expose the killer to anyone and had she not taken the case, nothing would have materially changed. What was the point? She started the book sad and lonely and she ends the book also sad and lonely, she just now grovels at someone else’s door. Also the violent robbery at the start? What was that all about? Padding? In a book that was already in desperate need of some actual world-building? I don’t recommend this. The Magicians deals with an ‘adult’ magic school better, and probably any of Jim Butcher’s books are a better choice for a murder mystery. Don’t waste your time on this non-story.

goodreads

#magic for liars #magic for liars review #book review #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Get a Life Chloe Brown

Get a Life Chloe Brown is a romantic comedy, written by Talia Hibbert. It follows Chloe Brown, a freelance web designer from a wealthy family, who one day has a near death experience. This shakes her profoundly, not just for the obvious reasons, but also because she realizes that if she were to die, she would have nothing to show for herself; no friends, no boyfriend, no adventure and no interesting events. In an effort to change that she makes a list of things to do, and meets a person that just might help her do it: Redford, her new superintendent. I was interested in this book ever since I heard it was coming out, because the premise, for whatever reason reminded me of a mix of two things: the profoundly stupid, yet profoundly watchable film What’s Your Number, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s story-line in New Years Day. This book is neither stupid nor silly; it’s one of the funniest, well written rom-coms I’ve ever read, and not since Red White and Royal Blue, have I liked two characters this much. Let’s start with the writing. I didn’t know Hibbert was British, but one page in and this book was so British it hurt. From the jokes to the banter, I felt like I was watching an episode of Bad Education, and I laughed out loud more times than I can count. Both characters are very snarky, and Chloe especially has a rather dry sense of humor that comes off as rude to others, because it’s so stiff. I found it hilarious, though the real standout for me was Red, because his internal monologues had me in stitches. Let me give you a sample of the jokes, here are a few. “We definitely have bears” “We don’t. If we had bears, it’d be in the news all the time. You know. Fine upstanding British man attacked by a bear. EU to blame. Brexit now.” Gigi appeared helpfully on her shoulder and said “Don’t mumble, darling. Nice big words. Repeat after me: ‘I want to ride you like a stallion.’” “Red snorted: ‘Who are you, Dr. Phill?’ ‘Ah, don’t start that manly crap. We talk about our feelings in this house, boy.’ ‘Can I talk about my feelings for your wife?’ ‘This bowl would be a great hat on you’” This couldn’t be more up my alley. Outside of the humor, the writing on the characters was equally well done. Not only do we get a very good sense of both Red and Chloe as individuals, but Hibbert makes the chemistry between them palpable. I believed that these two people could barely hold off from ripping each other’s clothes off, and later, when they became more emotionally invested, I believed in their romance. All the characters are well written; from Chloe’s family, especially her sisters, to Red’s friend Vic and even his mother. Because we get POVs from both Chloe and Red, I was worried they might sound the same, because both are such snarky characters, but they didn’t; they have very different personalities and ways of approaching their problems, which I found was translated quite well. The plot wasn’t particularly complex; it mostly just follows Chloe making a deal with Red so he can help her tick off things on her list, and slowly getting an understanding of what is actually important to her and what isn’t. The book does also follow Red coming to some realizations of his own, notably what he wants to do with his life, now that he’s escaped an abusive relationship. Which leads me to two points of caution for this book. The first is that the cover and the synopsis might mislead you into thinking that this is straight up comedy, which it is, but more in the vein of How to Be Single or Trainwreck. There are some really heavy topics discussed in this book: there is the aftermath of an abusive relationship, disability, trauma from loss, PTSD even, and a very brutal verbal fight that doesn’t pull punches. It’s a funny book, but it has surprising depth, and Hibbert really touches on some heavy and complicated topics, while maintaining an overall light tone. There’s even a warning on the first page of the book about some of the triggers, so tread lightly. The other point are the sex scenes. Now, readers of romance, and those who are familiar with Hibbert’s other work, will probably know that this book has sex scenes. I’ve heard from other people that they either found them extremely hot or completely over the top. I fall in the former category; the sex is explicit, but I think the scenes are paced well, are genuinely engaging and steamy and actually explore the characters, and their growing attraction to each-other. The only critique I do have is that the characters, especially Red do sound a bit OOC in them, because there’s a lot of dirty talk that is a bit much even for him, but honestly, outside of laughing at it, it didn’t personally bother me. Let’s talk about characters. There aren’t many, but each gets a moment to shine. Out of the supporting cast, my favorite was Vic, though I can’t wait for Evelyn’s book, because she seemed like a hoot too. Out of the leads, let’s start with Red. Redford, who I imagine is named after the dog, being a ginger and all is a charming, attractive and confident man, who has been through a really abusive relationship that has made him spiral into bad decision making. He has quite a few flaws, the most notable being a chip on his shoulder about being treated as a spectacle, or a commodity, by people who are richer than him and can therefore buy him in many ways; buy him for his looks, his time, his talent or just simply observe him like some kind of circus animal. I found all of his quirks understandable and well written; he does make some stupid decisions, and he seems to be incapable of saying no. But he was the better adjusted lead out of the two, which was nice. He did veer off into being a little too perfect and considerate at time, which was just a tad unrealistic, but I really liked his personality a lot. Then we have Chloe who I adored, even though she falls definitely in the tradition of quirky, type A female protagonists. She is obsessed with lists, organization, planning out her days and her life, and there’s a good reason for that: she suffers from fibromyalgia. I will admit; while I do know two people in my life who have, fibromyalgia I knew very little about the disorder. I didn’t know that it seems to be caused by trauma for one, nor did I know that it leads to brain fog or short term memory loss. I think the way the illness was described in the book, and the way it impacted Chloe’s life was presented very well; I can definitely understand and sympathize with how she had developed her coping mechanisms, the healthy and unhealthy ones. Chloe is a very strong character; she is funny, she is smart, she is witty, and what I liked most was she knew her limits, knew when to push and when to take a break, and was actively fighting to live a life she would be proud of, in spite of fibromyalgia. I really liked how well Hibbert explored both what it’s like to live with an invisible illness, and the toll it takes both on the person and those around them, but also how having an illness or a disability doesn’t mean that the person can’t take care of them-self or live a perfectly good life. I’m not disabled, so I can’t speak to that representation, but as just a humble reader who wanted to learn a bit more, I was satisfied. One other thing to note is that Chloe is both plus size and black. In terms of race I appreciated the conversation she had with Red about privilege, and I think perhaps a bit more could have been explored on that front. In terms of weight, Chloe’s weight is mentioned at several points, but it’s not really a factor. I kind of liked that; Chloe gets to be a fat girl who is content with her life, and it’s not even a factor. It was nice. Overall, this book was great. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s very sexy, and it tackles some deeper issues and topics like class and disability in a nuanced and lighthearted way. If you are looking for a good romance with some substance, I highly recommend it.

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#get a life chloe brown #get a life chloe brown review #book review #moni talks

[thesffcorner]

Silver in the Wood

Silver in the Wood is a fantasy novella by Emily Tesh. It follows Tobias, a man who lives in a small cabin in the woods, and he might be the mythical Green Man of the area's folklore. When the new estate owner Henry Silver appears on his doorstep, dripping wet and spends the night, the two start an unlikely friendship that might put Tobias’ entire life in danger: both figuratively and literally. I feel like my description made this book sound a lot more intense than it actually is. This is not an action packed, fast paced book; this is a slow, familiar, whimsical stroll through the life of a curmudgeonly forest hermit, and the beautiful rich boy who comes to ruin his life. It’s also a book about fey, ancient curses, the Fey Lord of the Summer and being part of an ancient forest, but even though danger is present in the story, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with lower stakes than this one. To start off, I’ve read this story already, and I frankly thought it was better in those two books: if you want a fey romance, involving the Wild Hunt and a fey Lord of Summer, read An Enchantment of Ravens. If you want a story about a forest making a bargain with some queer characters, read Strange Grace. If you’ve read both of those, and just want a very wee, slow story, then read this. There’s nothing objectively wrong with this book, I just didn’t connect with it. Everything felt detached, and slow and none of the really dangerous and serious things felt threatening. Even the relationship felt very one-sided, because it takes over ⅔ of the book for Tobias to reciprocate, and by that point, it’s too late. Individually, the characters are fine: Tobias is a curmudgeon, he’s very big and intimidating, has been alone, feared and hated by the villagers for 4 centuries, and has a lot of trauma to work through, courtesy of said Lord of Summer. Silver was a cheery, very tropey character; he’s young, he’s pretty, he has no stomach for violence, is almost a bit too delicate, and kind of childish. I kind of hoped that maybe there’d be more of a twist with him, but no; he’s just… the love interest. My favorite character was his mother. She’s a bad-ass. I want a whole book about her and Tobias working through their grief by traveling around the world and putting down monsters, ghouls and ghosts, Witcher style. Please, please make that happen. Will I read the sequel? Yeah. I am curious to see what sequel there could be with the ending we got. But do I think this book is the next great queer romance? Not really, no. But it is short and sweet, and will make you smile.

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#silver in the wood #silver in the wood review #moni talks #book review