Change Your Image
vargva
Reviews
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)
All the people who went into this expecting the Godfather, Shawshank or Citizen Kane should stop watching movies
The ones whining about how the story is so uninspired, how the characters are basic should or whatever else made-up criticism they spew out should really reconsider why they even watch movies in the first place.
It's called entertainment, if the movie is entertaining than it has served its purpose. This movie aims to give you an awesome, balls to the wall 3-way smack-down between a giant radioactive dinosaur, a the biggest gorilla ever and a savage, cruel and lean orangutang with a spinewhip. And that it delivers, along with an absolutely colossal ice drake twice the size of Godzilla himself.
The action never feels worn out of repetative. It takes breaks to let the viewers breath but then it gets right back to the good stuff. There are several big fight scenes in the movie with the final clash of the titans.
The movie is also absolutely stunning. The scenery and visuals are beautiful and in my opinion almost rival that of Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005 (the greatest Kong/huge monster movie ever). The scenes with mini-Kong and big Kong are also surprisingly wholesome and the 2 form a very nice bond throughout the film.
House of the Dragon (2022)
Not what I expected
Ok so I've seen a lot of excitement about House of the Dragon. Everybody seems to be enthralled with this new flame breathing hype, and I am to, to an extent. But it feels like there are several faults with the series which just seem to be overlooked. I believe many fans are blinded by their love for the original show. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, or HotD and GoT as I will now be referring to them from here on out, have two very different ways to progress the story and plot forward. HotD feels like it has to throw in so much unnecessary filler. This is the problem with trying to adapt The Dance of the Dragons into a show format. There is way too much nothing happening until the king finally dies and the war starts. You can't spend 5 episodes getting to know Rhaenyra as a teenager, then jump forward to when she is in her 20s, and then again when she is in her 30s before you actually start the main story. It works in the books because there, it is told from a historical point of view, not something happening in real time. HotD season 1 really does feel like a 10 hour long prologue, which is crazy considering that it even started with a prologue.
GoT season 1 on the other hand slowly but surely introduced the viewer to the world through how the characters behaved and interacted with one another. While at the same time faithfully adapting the source material from the books. But the show also added fenomenal original scenes which we would never be able to get in the books. A perfect example of this is the "War Stories" scene where King Robert Baratheon (played by Mark Addy), Barristan Selmy (played by Ian McElhinney) and Jaime Lannister (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) each recount their first kill. Meanwhile in HotD we get half an episode of the king Viserys (played by Paddy Considine) hunting a white stag as new original content to fill in the blanks. Now am I saying there aren't good scenes in HotD? No, there definitely are. But there is too much filler for it to feel like anything else but filler, not the "calm before the storm" feeling they're going for.
The deer hunt also nicely transitions into my other major point. HotD always feels the need to clarify things which simply don't require clarification. When prince Aegon is celebrating his second birthday, king Viserys holds his infamous white stag hunt in the prince's honor, this is seen as a sign by many due to the white stag being seen as a symbol of the monarchy. Yet they never find the animal, so Viserys instead opts to skewer a regular brown stag. But right before everyone heads home, the white stag shows itself to princess Rhaenyra, really beating in the fact that Rhaenyra is Viserys' rightful heir like a hammer to the viewer's skull. This is simply not needed. We don't need to be told that Rhaenyra's the true successor, anyone watching could've told you that.
HotD outright tells you Rhaenyra's sons are not Laenor's instead of leaving it ambiguous. Why tell us this? It really doesn't matter if they're bastards or not, the only thing that matters is if people think they are bastards or not. Because if they are bastards but everyone thinks they're legitimate then Rhaenyra is fine, but if they are legitimate but everyone thinks they're bastards then Rhaenyra is in a terrible spot. The series also introduced the "Song of Ice and Fire" as a prophecy that Aegon the Conqueror only conquered the seven kingdoms to unify them against the coming night. This is a popular fan theory but it never needed to be confirmed. It is kind of insulting that HotD can't go a single episode without treating its viewers as 10-year olds who can't think for themselves. I'm also personally not a fan of how they made the Valyrian steel dagger that was first used in the assassination attempt on Bran in GoT and then the knife that Arya used to kill the Night King to some massive heirloom tracing all the way back to Aegon the Conqueror.
I also think the cast of HotD is really lacking. GoT had one of the most colorful and diverse cast of characters I've seen in a television series aside from something completely colossal such as One Piece. In HotD I don't really have a favorite character, not because I hate all of them, but more so because the vast majority of people in the show are so bland and basic. Daemon Targaryen (played by Matt Smith) is cool sometimes but most of the time he's just an edgelord who always does the most morally questionable thing possible to impress Rhaenyra and annoy his enemies. This however becomes very predictable after a time and he too, fades into the background. Prince Aemond "One-Eye" (played by Ewan Mitchell) is also definitely a likable asshole type character, but he just isn't around enough. I've seen some call it a Soap Opera with dragons and I'm ashamed to say I agree.
I do not hate the show. It is visually stunning at times and the dragons at least look cool, although the show majorly screwed up the scaling for the dragons. Pretty much every dragon in the show is the same size even though some are vastly older then others, aside from Vhagar who must have been fed a unique diet of whale-class growth hormones and elephant steroids.
I am fairly certain that when season 2 comes out there's going to be an even more massive wave of praise for the show now that The Dance of the Dragons has well and truly started. But I feel like a lot could've been done to improve its opening. I will watch season 2, but not with any big expectations.
One Piece: Wan pîsu: Straw Hat Luffy! The Man Who Will Become the King of the Pirates! (2022)
It's at times like this when I'm not afraid to admit i prefer the One Piece anime over the manga
First let me clear up the title, I'm not saying the anime is objectively better then the manga, but I do think the emotional as well as the super hype and badass moments reach higher and connect in a more impacting way.
And this episode defines that, it plays on the emotions of 1015 episodes and everything everyone has gone through.
The episode is mostly just Yamato and Ace connecting and speaking to each other but it's done in such a beautiful way. You really feel how much Ace believes in Luffy when talking about him, and Yamato is adorable 'cause of how much she's in awe of Ace and his soon-to-be pirate brother.
And the parallels that Yamato sees between Luffy (the future PIrate King) and Roger (the previous PIrate King) is god damn phenomenal. It shows that from birth Luffy was the only one with the right mindset to actually achieve that goal and become PIrate King.
That is what Whitebeard ment when he told Blackbeard the he isn't the man Roger has been waiting for 500 episodes ago, because Teach doesn't have that mindset.
And when you cut to The Worst Generation arriving at the roof of Onigashima. The Supernovas standing in defiance of the 2 Yonko, Big Mom Charlotte Linlin and King of The Beats Kaido. The characters are moslty hyping themselves up in one way or another.
But not Luffy, because he sees Kinemon and the other red scabbards lying behind the Emperors, half dead and bleeding because they tried to fight the Strongest Creature Alive.
And to Luffy the lives of his friends are more important then beating up his enemies. This infuriates Kaido because he thinks Luffy isn't taking them serious, so he attacks. Luffy quickly tells Law to teleport the scabbards blow the roof so they don't get killed. But unlike their first fight, Luffy dodges Kaido's clup and pummels him with a new attack "Gomu Gomu no Red Roc"!
The godlike animation and Toei Animation's decision to add an instrumental version of the first opening WE ARE during this perfect scene was absolutely genius and just pushes all of them buttons to get One Piece fans screaming with hype and love for their favorite show.
I wont spoil what is so special about it, but to sum it up. This new attack Luffy preforms is proof of how much he's grown as a person through out the entire story.