Nob0dy Reviews

Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021–2024)

Started well

[6/10 · 27 April 2024]

The show started well but deteriorated into tedium and now with season 3 lobotomizing levels of monotony. It started with an angle that is not new, clones questioning orders, but looked at it through a finer lense, rather than having clones be perpetual sidekicks, if not to dictatorship then to bland self rigtheous jedi, instead it was clones acting of their own free will alongside and for other "defective" clones, it gave a tired angle more personality, as much as it could given the fact they are clones and of course voiced by one man.

Season 1 was good,a solid foundation for the premise and was entertaining throughout.

Season 2 was hit and miss, some episodes were good, others not so good but still served a purpose in progresing the story.

Season 3, painfully boring, hemlock is the most boring villain I have ever seen, a one dimensional walking ego who perpetually talks like he's trying to do ASMR, is not remotely intimidating and is just a boot licking sycophant who thinks he's intelligent but constantly make idiotic decisions and is outplayed by a literal child. On top of that a huge chunk of the screen time for the final season is utterly wasted. The first 2 episodes literally nothing happens, omega walkig back and forth across the same 4 bland backdrops with no story progression, no world building, no character development. The one and only purpose that could possibly be argued as a purpose for those episodes is to show time passing, but instead of wasting 2 entire episodes that could be done in a single line of dialogue "we've been searching for omega for x days", "crosshair has been uncooperative for x days", "project necromancer has been made no progress in x days". It's als extremely odd that in the final season hunter,wrecker and echo, the 3 most consistent members of the "bad batch" are sidelined into irrelevance being treated as nothing more than chauffeurs for the adventures of omega, which further makes the time spent showing how long they spent searching for omega carry no weight whatsoever, season 3 could have had omega travelling with any random, unnamed clones and it would play and feel exactly the same as it does now.

I can only draw the conclusion that when it was revealed season 3 would be the last one the studio decided to put zero effort into delivering said season. Season 2 ended on a huge event and then in season 3 the only remnant of that is a 2-frame shot of some broken glasses sitting near hunter at a console, so not only has the weight of the events of season 2 been completely dropped but they purposely waste screen time, padding with the same backdrops in the same boring facility over and over and over again. It is not over yet at the time of writing this, there is one episode left to go and so far you could watch 5 minutes from episode 3 and then skip right to episode 14 and not have missed anything important, interesting or entertaining. Ultimately the final season is the shortest, objectively and irrefutably noticeably had the least effort put in to writing, animating, screenplay and pacing and instead of embracing the end and going out with a bang the final season is by far the weakest the show has ever been and is comprised almost exclusively of dead air. Honestly unless the final episode is a masterpiece of story telling I would argue that it would have been better to let the show die on the cliff hanger of season 2, rather than dragging it through the mud for a season that retroactively makes previous events meaningless whilst deliberatly avoiding anything of substance, if you would like one very specific example of this that is not a spoiler because I am referring to something that does not happen, echo,wrecker and crosshair do not even get endings, they are treated as any other unnamed background clone, materialized out of the ether as a deus ex machina mechanic and th moment their plot armour presence is not pushing the story forward they are dropped, none of their experiences over the entire 3 seasons come to any fruition, nothing they go through has any resolution, none of it is even mentionedm they are in one scene and the next it's as if they never existed to begin with, the entire premise of the show and the titular squad are rendered utterly meaningless through the entire final season and effectively erased from exisence all together in the finale.

Road House (2024)

Is this supposed to be satire?

[2/10 · 23 March 2024]

An inexplicably rich woman can afford to offer a stranger 5k a week despite her only business being one that is destroyed and has all potential paying customers leave on an hourly basis. Then after serving as a very thin, zero story means of exposition to set the scene the bar owner is so rarely seen and does absolutely nothing that she may as well not be in the movie.

The protection job is so easy that gyllenhaal spends most of the movie sitting at the bar doing squat while 2 of the scrawniest, least intinimdating bouncers you could ever imagine handle things and the cloest thing to guidance they get from the seasoned fighter is " when he pulls a knife step back" because self defense is that simple.

Gyllenhall's background makes no sense as a motivation or explanation because it goes nowhere, he does something that would undoubtedly left him serving jail time yet instead he is a free man who had a 6 figure job yet with no explanation for how he avoided jail or what he did with his money, we see him for some reason living in his car, scraping by and feeling sorry for himself.

At the start of the movie he welcomes violence, including allowing a man to use a weapon on him without fighting back yet when he is employed as a bouncer he sits at a bar casually drinking waiting until the entire place is destroyed and then tries to have a "humourous" conversation to get people to leave.

The "plot" of this movie is a spoilt rich son refusing to destroy a bar despite having the law in his pocket and enough money to have bulldozers on sight within an hour. At one point in the movie "keys" are talked about, obviously meaning cocaine, yet nothing ever comes from that path, it's not a "mystery" because it is a well constructed, weaving story leaving the viewer theorizing what will happen, it is a "mystery" in the sense that they never explain anything. Do you know how the bar owner is rich enough to offer 5k a week? Do you know what role "keys" play in the story? Do you know why the millionaire son pays drunk bums to slightly annoy a bar owner hoping it will result in her abandoning it? Do you know who McGregor's character is, how he's a skilled fighter, how he can travel cross country and even cross continent assaulting everyone he sees with facing zero repurcussions? Do you know how a man can get stabbed in the kidney, have internal bleeding and be perfectly fine by slapping some tape on it? No? Well neither do the "writers" of this movie

The "romance" has dialogue so bad I have no doubt it was AI generated. A woman shouts at a stranger because she has to do her job > they have the wierdest conversation in cinema history talking about conchs > they hook up > nothing happens past this point and the "connection" between the 2 of them is never relevant again

The special effects are pathetic, the entire budget must have went into McGregor's pocket because there is no way any went into the effects, I have seen more convincing effects in direct to tv syfy originals made on a shoestring budget.

There's the worlds shortest workout montage which plays out very similarly to a family guy episode where they poke fun at Michael Bay's over the top style.

The "villain" has the entire state's police on his payroll yet instead of simply sending a bulldozer to take the bar down his "strategy" is to send a bunch of out of shape unemployed guys to go to the bar and throw a tantrum, which is moronic from every angle, not least of all the fact that as mentioned above even without the incompetent thugs there are fights in that bar literally at least once an hour.

Speaking of the thugs, they are barely in the movie and still are so poorly written it's impossible not to spot it. One of them likes to have casual conversations after having his arm broke or seeing a dead body, between the big black guy and the slicked back hair guy there are 5 different times in the movie where they are either standing face to face with someone or standing outside a place with weapons in hand but the screen cuts to another scene so in this supposed action movie they cheaped out and skipped as many action sequences as they could.

The original movie isn't a landmark in story telling but at least it makes sense, it is set in a dive bar, with down and out folks and has earned a rough reputation because of that which in turn draws in more of the same crowd. This movie is set on an easy living tropical paradise where somehow the entire population is unemployed yet they have enough money to drink all day and night, they start fights over literally nothing, destroy the bar, the bar is miraciously repaired at zero cost to the owner and this cycle repeats on an hourly basis. I'm all for dumb fun action now and then but this has little action, effectively no good action and has all the dumb in the world but none of the fun. " hey fellow smiling middle age white guy living in a tropical paradise wearing hawaiian shirts and day drinking lets throw tables and chairs at each other because after dancing to this song I have now decided I no longer like this song".

Small point but I think another factor in pointing to it being chatgpt is the naming scheme. The bar is called "road house" Gyllenhall lives on a boat called "The boat", the only other named business/place we see is a book shop in Glass key and it is called "Glass Books". That level of "creativity" is too mind blowing for humans to have concocted it

I was not even born when the original came out, but I have seen it and it is a good, dumb fun action movie. This one is frankly an insult, it should not be called road house, there is not a single argument to be made for it to be almost 2 hours long and it's an insult to the original to use the same character name, albeit same surname different given name, it does not have good action sequences, it has one decently choreographed fight the rest are slop that no named characters are even involved in and the "humour" is painfully bad. This has to be a chatgpt generated script and screenplay, there is no other plausible explanation for how a movie with such a basic formula to draw from was made so dumb and so bad that by comparison it makes 2017's Baywatch look like such a milestone in cinematography and story telling that it should be preserved in a museum for future generations to marvel at.

Snowfall (2017–2023)

Ungrateful idiots: The show

[3/10 · 20 February 2024]

This is a tricky one, because the show starts out so strong, but later seasons disintegrate so drastically I can't justify giving a positive review.

It was supposed to be an "ensemble show" but that premise goes out the window by season 2 and from season 3 onwards has been removed entirely, it is the Franklin show, occasionally guest starring Teddy.

Oso: A character who starts out with personality, ambition and loose morals but he does have some form of code "no families". But when the ensemble show premise was removed Oso became a character devoid, personality devoid lap dog who blindly does what his overlords tell him to. One of the best characters in the show and he is utterly wasted.

Villanuevas and Gabriella: Wasted potential. The show was at it's peak with interwining stories from different perspectives playing out. But after season 2 the Spanish element of the show completely dissapears, Oso has about 6 minutes of screen time per season, there are a couple of guest characters who appear in 1-2 episodes but Stompers men, Gabriella, the entire expansive Villanueva influence are never seen or even heard from ever again. The writers could have easily had Oso step up to keep this perspective relevant but instead he becomes a pet female dog and multiple cross borders crime families as well as their presence in LA simply vanish into thin air

Teddy: Teddy is a good character in the sense that the role makes sense, he is not likeable because he is not supposed to be liked. He is a pyscopathic, self important lunatic he deludes himself into believing his own hero complex by telling himself he isn't some scumbag flooding the streets of his own home with drugs, no, he is a "patriot", he isn't doing bad things, he is doing what uncle sam needs him to, because if he doesn't do illegal things leading to deaths on home soil in order to do more illegal things causing deaths in foreign nations he has less than no business being inolved with then the world will stop spinning, right? So i do understand the character, but I can't help wish there was more to him than a generic arrogant tool.

Franklin: A kid, a teenager at the start of the show, who single handedly makes everyone in his life multi millionaires, but he is surrounded by disgustingly ungrateful morons. Even after he makes millions and hands them all lives of luxury it is never enough, every single adult in his life runs to him to demand he fix any and all problems they have, they judge him for how he gets the money but that doesn't stop them gladly accepting and spending it, oh and while this painful level of hypocrisy is going on they also do not stop to take a breath from putting Franklins life in danger. I am not even going to give his family their own bullet points because they are all the same, worthless people, horrific role models, irresponsible, greedy, self absorbed losers who put the weight of the world on their youngest family members shoulders, while at the same time doing everything in their best to undermine and sabotage the choices he makes that has massively benefited their lives. At one point Franklin nearly dies and when he comes to does he get sympathy? Empathy? Compassion? Does his "family" offer to take the load while he recovers? No, the exact opposite, they demand that a severly injured guy in his early 20's who can't even breath comfortably does all the work that a collective of 40 something year olds can't. They are pathetic.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One (2021)

Batman for people who don't want to watch batman

[1/10 · 9 February 2024]

Have you ever seen or read anything batman related and thought that he is too smart? Too observant? Too capable? Then this is the movie for you. What this movie does is takes batman and removes every single thing that makes the character.

Firstly he is the dumbest version of batman ever created, even when things are spoon fed to him he is still left scratching his head.

Secondly, he is so bad at any and all forms of combat that it would be more accuracte to call him a punching bag than an opponent, there are characters who I won't name to avoid spoilers, but characters who do not even have hand to hand combat as part of their abilities who embarass this batman.

Third he has no guard whatsoever, the majority of the screentime is spent with him being outplayed, outsmarted and outright manipulated by every D-lister gotham has to offer.

Finally, in addition to not having batmans intelligence, or detective skills or combat abilities or rigid defense or contingencies ontop of contingencies, this batman also has no morals. When he finally manages to read the spelling in front of his face and figures out babies first mystery how does he react? He listens to the culprit monologue, openly admitting to a whole host of crimes and then with no explanation whatsoever batman walks away leaving the person to get off with a multitude of crimes with zero repurcussions.

Personally I am not a fan of batman, his whole "i refuse to do any actions that will actually lower the crime rate because of a nonsensical slippery slope cop out I cling to" is long past boring so I am all for different iterations of the character, but I have no idea who this batman is supposed to cater to. Personally I have never watched or read anything DC related and though to myself " you know what would make this better? If the protagonist was a knuckle dragging, morally devoid simpleton who stands for nothing, accomplishes nothing, gets slapped around and then the story is brought to a flat unceremonious end"

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One (2021)

Batman for people who don't like batman

[1/10 · 9 February 2024]

Have you ever seen or read anything batman related and thought that he is too smart? Too observant? Too capable? Then this is the movie for you. What this movie does is takes batman and removes every single thing that makes the character.

Firstly he is the dumbest version of batman ever created, even when things are spoon fed to him he is still left scratching his head.

Secondly, he is so bad at any and all forms of combat that it would be more accuracte to call him a punching bag than an opponent, there are characters who I won't name to avoid spoilers, but characters who do not even have hand to hand combat as part of their abilities who embarass this batman.

Third he has no guard whatsoever, the majority of the screentime is spent with him being outplayed, outsmarted and outright manipulated by every D-lister gotham has to offer.

Finally, in addition to not having batmans intelligence, or detective skills or combat abilities or rigid defense or contingencies ontop of contingencies, this batman also has no morals. When he finally manages to read the spelling in front of his face and figures out babies first mystery how does he react? He listens to the culprit monologue, openly admitting to a whole host of crimes and then with no explanation whatsoever batman walks away leaving the person to get off with a multitude of crimes with zero repurcussions.

Personally I am not a fan of batman, his whole "i refuse to do any actions that will actually lower the crime rate because of a nonsensical slippery slope cop out I cling to" is long past boring so I am all for different iterations of the character, but I have no idea who this batman is supposed to cater to. Personally I have never watched or read anything DC related and though to myself " you know what would make this better? If the protagonist was a knuckle dragging, morally devoid simpleton who stands for nothing, accomplishes nothing, gets slapped around and then the story is brought to a flat unceremonious end"

Reacher (2022– )

Budget Frank Castle with none of the pay off

[1/10 · 7 December 2023]

I have now watched both seasons and both have the same shortcomings almost frame for frame.

Tl/dr: His ethos is the same as Frank Castle and has no problem mutilating grunts and hired help, but for some reason every time he comes face to face with the big bad responsible for hurting people close to him Reacher loses all of his bite, gives the most merciful, painless ends possible and walks away without a care in the world.

Main: I think the best way to talk about and give spoiler free examples is to talk about the seasons to date as they are both basically identical. The things I touch on here are present in trailers and/or the amazon synposes so I will not be spoiling anything.

Both seasons open up establishing the motivation for reacher being that someone he use to be close to but has not spoken to in years has been hurt by some cliche, one dimensional, corrupt big money scumbag.

Both seasons then spend 7 episodes, totalling almost 7 hours of screen time sparing no graphic detail showing us how the big bad is not a nuanced character, they are not flawed but endearing, their goals are not relatable, they are simply 100% evil 100% of the time and we are shown over and over again the gory specifics of what they subject people, including civilians and even pregnant women to.

While this is going on Reacher is stomping around the place gurning and talking about what he's gonna do when he gets hold of the people responsible.

But when episode 8, the final showdown rolls around all of that build up and all of that talk was for literally nothing, in both seasons the main villains get the most merciful, painless, anticlimactic deaths in the entire story. The first season villain is technically in a position that should cause some much deserved pain but inexplicably succumbs to it in less than 2 seconds and in the second season the guy we watched and to a certain extent Reacher himself first hand witnessed torture people, skin people, break bones for 7 episodes gets the single most pain free death out of both seasons. There are disposable unnamed grunts who are in 1 scene who get more spectacular doses of karma than the big bad we watch get built up and hyped up for 7 hours of our lives. Both seasons now have had endings so pathetically limp that it retroactively ruins the show because it renders reachers motivations completely moot, evidently he did not care about the bad things that happened and inarguably he was not angry at all because he dealt the guys in charge literally the most pain free conclusions possible, plus it is the literal most anticlimactic conclusion after 7 episodes of building and teasing a dose of justice.

As said above his ethos is the same as Frank Castle, he is not law enforcement, he goes after bad people who deserve some comeuppance and for one reason or another the law are not equipped or perhaps prepared to pursue it, but when the inevitable final face to face happens Reacher is so disinterested and so divested from the situation that all the build up culminates to less than 8 seconds of screen time and an utterly flat outcome followed by reacher strolling off into the sunset without a care in the world. I am not saying that we need a 3 episodes of drawn out fight scenes and a slow execution of the villain, but if you're gonna spend 95% of the screen time showcasing how utterly evil they are and how personally invested the main character is supposed to be the conclusion should have some weight to it, my niece is in her peppa pig stages and I have seen more cathartic endings in that than we get in either season of Reacher.

Another aspect of the poor writing leading to dissapointing ends is the fact that Reacher expressed willingness to end things straight away, but decided against it because he wanted to "dismantle" the entire villain organisations, to make their world crumble, hurt them and then end them, which is the principle that leads to the bare minimum story being dragged out across 8 episodes, however he never does this. The conclusions end with fire, destroyed properties and a mound of bodies, he neither uncovers or leaves any evidence of wrongdoing so when the law inevitbly get drawn to the commotion the only evidence they would see would be bullets, bodies and Reacher's fingerprints over all of it, so not only is all of his talk about methodically dismantling the enemy never delivered but things end with him looking to be in a lot of trouble with the law gunning for him, instead of giving him a pat on the back and watch him awkwardly strut down the road.

Side note: Reachers design I may be in a minority here, but Tom Cruise's physique made far more sense for the character. He is supposed to be inconspicuous, he is supposed to be able to move around without drawing attention to himself, supposed to be subtle, supposed to be able to easily blend in with a crowd and is supposed to be unimposing enough that it makes sense for people to understimate him. A 6ft5 230lbs walking steroid advert makes no sense in any of those context. Throughout both seasons he is referred to as "hulk,giant,gorilla,big guy,monster" yet every 5ft8 out of shape guy and 110lbs soaking wet teenagers strut up to him to pick a fight and whenever he is being chased or followed he slips away so easily, as if he wouldn't stand out in a crowd, it's painfully stupid.

Invincible (2021– )

Dumbest character you'll ever see

[2/10 · 2 December 2023]

There are countless superman clones, this one with an "evil" take on superman being an agent rather than a being following his own will and who faces off against his own son, could and should be interesting, but unfortunately the aliens and superpowers are not the elements that need you to suspend disbelief, you will have to do that to ignore the fact that every single character has been lobotomized.

Cecil: Nobody, some insignificant government suit who for some reason all the "good" super powerd beings put on a pedestal and revolve their entire existence around pleasing him with nothing in return and no discernable reason for doing so. Not only is his position insanely idiotic but he is the dumbest character in a show with only dumb characters. He has a being who is a literal god, a being who can change reality with a thought, on speed dial, but instead of calling them and asking them to turn omni man into a powerless mortal or a harmless marionette, he sends fighter jets against superman.

Eve: ^ this brings me on to Eve. In the comic it is explained she is not the most powerful being in existence because he powers do not work on organic matter. In the "atom eve" special episode this line is said, but the special ends with her removing the "mental lock" and freely using her powers on organic matter, on top of that she has spent most of her time in invincible using her powers on plant matter, so she could end omni man and all viltrumites with a flick of her wrist, instead she is living in a treehouse and doing nothing. The special episode also makes her incredibly stupid, in it she learns the fat, abusive, morons she lived with were not her parents, yet for some reason she still puts up with them insulting and harassing her every single time they are on screen, there is not 1 single reason for her to ever see them ever again for any other reason than disintigrating them, yet she does, it serves no purpose, adds nothing to the character, means literally nothing for the show, just 100% dead air.

Immortal: In the first season he had very little screen time but it seemed there might be a character in the show who has a modicum of integrity, but right away at the start of season 2 we learn otherwise. He doesnt have morals or ethics, in season 1 he was just throwing a tantrum because he was outgunned and in season 2 his main focus is on dipping his wick in any teenager he spends time around.

Dupli-kate: A character who literally only exists to be the superhero bike that everybody gets a ride on. Her entire "personality" and the entire role she fills on screen is being an easy shag for any male who gets within 50ft of her.

Omniman: Where to even start with this window licking mongoloid. Destroys his existence on earth, calls debbie a pet, then flies away and starts having sex with Flik from a bugs life in less than 1 earth summer holiday. Which has all kinds of issues, we saw him end season 1 conquering the flaxans, yet now in season 2 it shows him leaving earth and just aimlessly drifting through space, so which is it? Did he drift through space and then decide to engage in beastiality and somehow have a child with a creature that could not be any more different biologically in less than 2 months? OR did he conquer the flaxans, then decide to marry an insect and again, somehow pop out a cross breed child in a matter of weeks? Also how tarded can a character be when his introduction in season 2 is literally "hello son, last time we saw each other I tried to commit genocide and beat you to death with my own hands, I am not even going to say sorry, but come look at this, I abandoned your mother after breaking her heart and called her an animal, now come meet the literal insect I am giving it to and your groteqsue abomination of a half brother, I didn't replace you but I lied to manipulate you into travelling cross galaxies to rub it in your face about how quickly I replaced you"

Mark: The protagonist of the show. A character arrogant and egotistical enough to dub himself "invincible" yet spends the bulk of screen time moping around, feeling sorry for himself and getting his ass beat without ever improving. Obviously season 1 finale being exagerrated and adding in scenes that werent in the comics to play up the gore was supposed to mentally impact him, but in season 2 he isnt mourning, he's just dumb, running back to the same above mentioned impotent mortal who failed to even scratch omni man or protect even a single person, the guy who lied to him and his mum for years and inexplicably mark runs back to him and dedicates himself wholly to bending over backwards to please him, mark could save more lives in 5 minutes than cecil could in his entire life, but for some reason mark chooses, consistently, to be cecils dog.

All of the new guardians. I cannot think of a single redeeming thing to be said about any of them. The middle aged failed z-list "hero" with a chip on his shoulder and the attitude of a spoilt child. Rex whose entire personality is loud and dumb with nothing beneath the surface and he isnt even useful as a hero. Female ant man who is so pointless I can't recall her name. Female child hulk whose entire reason for existing is to be a balancing element to robot, and robot aka ultron, thats all there is to say about him, nothing remotely interesting, just a 1 dimensional trope. Between the lot of them there is less character and less depth than a henry stickman flash game.

I am aware a lot of the characters are teenagers, they aren't supposed to be emotionally mature, mentally stable characters, but they do not come across as teenagers, as young naive people making mistakes but learning and growing, they come across like idiots, the same as the adults, every character in this show is painfully stupid 100% of the time. I like the premise, I like some of the action scenes, I like that it isnt strictly limited to comic panels, that they are ok with embellishing some stuff to make it translate better to video, but its so painful I have now stopped watching it. Whatever your preference, DC or Marvel, take that, remove any sliver of depth the characters have and give every single one of them the same insufferable, bland personality of skyler white and the combined iq of a shoelace and you get invincible.

The Killer (2023)

Worlds worst hitman, civilians beware

[1/10 · 17 November 2023]

• An incompetent hitman is hired for a job we never get the reasoning for
• He fumbles it
• There are repurcussions for being incompetent
• For some reason he has a woman who we don't know, don't get to know and have literally zero attachment to or information on stashed in his supposed "safe house"
• The woman gets in the way of said repurcussions
• Fassbender goes on a path of revenge about a character who we have zero reason to feel invested in
• He inexplicably connects people together with nothing more than a code name he somehow gets their exact country, state and knows specifically which restaurants they eat at
• He buys a fob toy from amazon which inexplicably gives him a magical key that opens any and all electronic locks, barriers, gym lockers, doors to high tech fancy apartments, you name it.

• He spends the entire movie regurgitating "rules" which not once does he abide by and 99% of the time those "rules" do not even apply to what is happening for example constantly talking about only doing what you are paid to do, while he spends the entire movie past the first 10 minutes doing things that are purely personal and nobody is paying for
• He kills his way up the chain of the people holding him responsible for his incompetence, on the way does not hesitate to kill mutliple civilians like taxi drivers and secretaries but when he comes face to face with the person paying for Fassbender to face consequences for being the worst hitman ever, he reveals his intentions, reveals his identity, shows his face to multiple security cameras and then just walks away.

So, what was the point in anything that we watched? A monumental idiot goes on a path of revenge over a relationship that gets less than 60 seconds of screen time, then with absolutely zero logic stops short of the final target and the credits roll. Saying that this movie has a poor story would be a compliment, because that would be inferring there is a story.

The Sandman (2022– )

Was good, then episode 5 happened

[4/10 · 9 November 2023]

This will be difficult to leave a review avoiding spoilers but I will try my best. Episode 5 is so bad I can't continue the show, easily one of the worst episodes of any show I have ever seen.

First, it is one of the longest episodes of the season 55 minutes compared to 37-44 for the bulk of them and 45 minutes nohting happens and I don't mean it is a slow burn building tension and leading to something, I mean it is so boring and so little happens that you could skip those 45 minutes and not miss a singl story beat

Second, the 10 minutes where there is actual story it completely ruins the protagonist, before this episode it has already been established he does not hesitate to kill people who never did anything wrong, he has no qualms killing out of sheer pettines. Yet when he comes across a psychopathic, innocent torturing mass murder he effectively gives them a kiss on the head and lets them go completely scot free, facing literally zero consequences for their horrific actions. He was so incomprehensibly stupid in this episode that it instantly made me completely divested from him as a protagonist, anything bad that happens to him from that point forward is 100% his own fault and similarly we are left with 0 reasons to root for him.

Gaiman was involved in the show, so I can only presume it was a faithful adaption of his story and I know he of all people knows that mythological beings have never been infallable creatures so having them make idiotic choices is fitting. However it is just so poorly done, 1 episode where the character is so hypocritical, so dumb, so self sabotaging that it removes any endearing factor there may have been up to that point. Imagine watching die hard but the movie ends with Bruce Willis shooting the hostages, reloading the gun and then handing it to Alan Rickman, that is the same principle as episode 5 of this show.

Gen V (2023– )

Lacking everything that made the boys work

[1/10 · 14 October 2023]

• The most one dimensional characters you will ever see

• Characters are not only one dimensional but utterly insufferable

• Humour more needlessly perverted and childish than blue mountain state

• Feels more like a terrible american pie rip off than a supposed gritty look at a world with super humans.

• They chose great songs, but the worst versions of them ever recorded, who wants to listen to a metallica song being butchered by a moody tween who thinks she's "depressed" because she cant get the new iphone the day it releases.

• Mere minutes into the first episode we have this billion dollar scumbag company on their soapbox engaging in self mastubatory moral stancing, meanwhile they're employees are working for less than minimum wage and not even allowed the legally obligated bathroom breaks

The so called "writers" of this show do not know how humans react, do not know what effects marijuana has, do not know how to flesh out characters, do not know how to write a story, do not know how to write relationships, do not know how to write compelling "villians", do not know how to portray manipulation. This should could not possibly be any more out of touch or any more disconnected from the the appeal of the boys.

It is simply awful, no self awareness, no subtlety, no depth, no substance whatsoever. I have seen some people negatively commenting saying it is "woke" and on the other side I have seen people say they will watch it despite not liking it just because it "triggers" people. Both sides give the show far too much credit, inferring that enough thought went into it to have any kind of agenda is factually wrong, it is not handholding or mollycoddling, it's just laazy and poorly written. You could gather people who don't speak each others languages, who have never seen any of the boys and ask them to write a show a terrible show involving super heroes and they would not be able to concoct something worse than gen v, it is remarkable at how they have 100% missed every single step that makes the boys what it is.

Mortal Kombat 1 (2023 Video Game)

Single worst fighting game in existence

[1/10 · 5 October 2023]

Where do I start?

A full price £60 game that launched with no basic features like crossplay, riddled with black screens, desyncs that ruin every game mode is probably a good place.

Let's do a short comparison SF6 during pre launch beta + Full crossplay + Flawless netcode +Wifi filter +practice while searcing for matches + handful of bugs were found and were fixed within 48 hours

MK1 on full launch -no crossplay -worst netcode in the gaming world bar none

• no wifi filter, forcing you to accept ranked matches with connections bad enough to guarantee drops

-massive bugs, including a bug that gave player 1 a gigantic advantage because people in player 2 position's characters were bugged in a way that prevented their combos from connecting as they should. Nrs gave a time frame to fix this, failed to fix it in that time frame and in total took around 9 days to fix this one single bug, all the rest are still there

• microtransactions included on launch, you cant play against other platforms, you cant have 1 full match without disconnecting but you can spend £20 to buy a helmet that is a slightly different shade of silver for 1 characte

...... it's a joke

They also completely ignored all of the feedback that 11 got because they kept the 2 worst things ever to be implemented in any video games ever.

1: Fatal blow, a cheap mechanic that rewards people for losing by granting them access to a cinemtaic, therefore unbreakable 30%+ attack. Pre launch they lied and said that the armour wasn't instant so they werent free win buttons like in mk11, but between the beta test and full relese they buffed fatal blows so they are exactly the same as 11.

2: Towers of time, this is inexplicably how cany anybody, let alone a company that has been "developing" games for 3 decades think it is a good idea to take video games, a purely visual form of escapism and put "modifiers" in it that make the screen completely black so the player cant see whats going on? Well nrs have done just that yet again, but it's even worse than it sounds. In 11 there were monotonous rotating towers, in 1 there is "invasion" mode which is those same monotonous, modifier ruined towers but now you cant just enter a tower, you have to control a low quality flash game looking sprite of your character, run around an empty world, stuck on rails and play what can only be described as a mobile game in between getting to towers Also on this same point they have made the modifiers even dumber than mk11 because they are more consistent, in mk11 blindness was common, in 1 it is constant as is giving the ai armour so you cannot even make use of the tedious matches to practice combos and timing because it is literally not possible to combo the armoured enemies, even if the screen wasnt black.

There are so many things worth mentioning I am struggling to decide what to write in the given character limit in this site.

• Graphics are a massive downgrade from 11
• PS4 didn't get it but switch did, even though 95% of nrs player base are on ps4
• PC port was outsourced as cheap as possible and given to the same company who in 4 years never fixed any of the bugs in mk11 on pc
• it runs at 30fps and has frame drops, it factually has worse performance and runs at worse frame rates than psp games
• there are no rooms, so trying to coordinate matching with people you know/frequently play against is much more difficult than it needs to be
• They removed the ability to pin moves to the screen so if you are labbing a new character you constantly have to pause and scroll through 1 menu and 2 sub menus to find the move

-They use the exact same painfully boring KL system, guaranteeing there will be no character variety at any point in this games lifecycle

• the frame data is hidden in the movelilst and there is no option to save it to open by default, so every single time you open the menu you need to unhide frame data
• at the moment the claimed frame data in the moveslist are wrong across the board
• you cannot practice while waiting for matches, which combined with nrs cheap servers means you will spend on average 15 minutes watching a loading screen for every 3 minutes of actual gameplay
• it is a 96gb install but 95gb of that is locked on the server side, which means when the cheap servers go down, which they do every 5 minutes you lose access to 99.9% of a game that you paid for
• there is no crossplay at launch
• no crossplay for pc ever
• even without crossplay the servers cant even handle the low amount of traffic and game drops are very very very common
• "customisation" is a blatant lie, only 2 items can be changed per character outfit and weapon and even then what nrs call an "outfit" is actually just a slight colour palete change
• ^ in order to get those "different" cosmetics you need to grind for hours in the invasions mode, then go to the "shrine" which is a loading screen where you use 1000 tokens at a time and each time you do you have to watch a 45 second loading screen of a dragon statue slightly lighting up and then generating 1 rng item. You cannot speed this up, cannot spend more than 1k at once, cannot auto spend, you need to do it manually
• the playable characters are watered down and utterly one dimensional, there is no variety whatsoever, raiden for example has 1 string which serves every purpose, it opens people up, launches, extends combos, ends combos, punishes and is safe on block so there is no reason to ever use any other string he has so both playing him or playing against him is already so boring it's not even fair to classify it as "gameplay"
• it is objectively the most unbalanced fighting game in existence, as always the nrs dev favourites got loaded with every possible strength ( fast attacks, safe strings, high damage, versatile specials, long range punishes, easy combos, easy conversions etc etc) while the rest of the characters got few to none of those.

• it has less gameplay and less creativity than the games nrs were producing in 2002, fewer game modes, no mercy, no animalities, no babalities, the fatalities are the worst they've ever been, just skeletons left right and centre no detail in the models or animations at all, no motor kombat, no create a fighter.

It is objectively and easily proven to be a worse game in every measurable manner than games from 21 years ago from this same company and there isn't any justification for it, they are just lazy and dont care. Ed boon hates mk but won't drop it because it's guaranteed profit but at the same time neither he or his employees will even pretend to care enough to put in any amount of bare minimum effort, resulting in what we have here.

Expend4bles (2023)

How to butcher a simple recipe

[2/10 · 24 September 2023]

The reason the first 2 movies were successful is because they were throwbacks, in the best possible way. In a time where everything coming out in cinema was people head to toe in lyrca talking about multiple realities, aliens, super humans and robots, a time where every single release was filmed in a single room because everything was green screened in, the expendables came out and it wasn't subtle, didn't pull any punches, it was a good old fashioned dumb fun action movie. A movie where action takes the spotligh and the story serves it's purpose to move things along but safe to say was never going to win any awards and it doesn't take itself too seriously along the way, it is pure escapism.

3 and 4 utterly destroy the entire appeal of the franchise. Instead of casting recognizable action actors 3 had some big names but the bulk of the screentime was focused on people that nobody recognizes, so they don't fit the whole throwback ethos, nor are they competent actors so they didn't contribute anything to the formula, the result was a movie packed with action yet remarkably stayed boring throughout, it was so bland that I guarantee 99% of people who watched it forgot what happened in it within 5 minutes of it ending

And now with 4 they have done the same thing again, they cast rappers and eye candy. Don't get me wrong, Tony Jaa and Iko Uwais are both insanely talented, but 50 cent and megan fox have no business whatsoever being in this movie.

So again they are diluting the entire concept that made this franchise work in the first place. I am not saying they should just do constant remakes, reboots and remake expendables 1 with slight story changes over and over but they need to decide what this is supposed to be and what audience it is supposed to be for, 3 and 4 are neither an homage to old school, unapologetic action nor are they good vehicles to put young talent front and centre, the result are movies with some big names, plenty of action, but it is all wrapped up in a very limp, very middling, utterly forgettable package, so confused about it's own identity that the end product is not catered to anybody.

Biohazard: Death Island (2023)

Written by a toddler

[2/10 · 28 August 2023]

I will be referencing some events here, but the only thing I will touch on that is relevant to the main story will be something that you learn just from the synposis or trailer, I will not divulge any actual spoilers. Suffice to say this movie had to have been written either by a toddler or a first gen version of chatgpt, there is no way a collective of human beings wrote this, thought it was ok, presented it to directors,producers,execs etc and that collective of humans also agreed this was well executed. The games aren't exactly known for bulletproof scripts and incredible story telling but this is ridiculous, disjointed, self contradicting, idiotic and with worse power scaling than low effort anime pulling the "power of friendship" card. This may sound melodramatic but I can say with complete honesty this is the single worst piece of resident evil media I have ever witnessed.

1: The main big bad in this movie is a random grunt, a nobody. A guy with zero knowledge of umbrellas shady shenanigans. This guy also has zero background in biochemistry or biochemical engineering or anything remotely scientific. Yet we are to suspend disbelief and not question how this one grunt single handedly does something that the billion dollar umbrella has never been able to do and refined the virus in such a way to give a level of control that nobody else in resident evil's lore has ever been able to do.

2: The big bad's motvation makes no sense whatsoever. They are holding a grudge over something they chose to do, again I won't be too specific to avoid spoilers but their backstory or more accurately lack thereof is a situation where they literally had the power to simply walk away, they chose not to do so and then spend roughly 95% of their screen time monologuing about the world being unfair.

3: There is a certain character who we have less than zero reason to empathize with. They are someone who sells their own nation out to international terrorists and then proceeds to go and aid a domestic terrorist to expand his plans to an international stage. Yet the "good guys" treat this scumbag like they are some kind of heroic figure.

4: In a certain scene a character is fighting an enhanced person. This person displays superhuman strength, ability and durability and is dominating the fight. Then after getting slapped around for a while the "good guy" somehow inexplicably becomes so strong that they are able to over power their nigh indestructible opponent with a single hit.

Martyrs (2008)

Zero story "movie" for deranged people

[1/10 · 16 August 2023]

The title basically tells you everything there is to know about this movie but there is now a character limit so I will reach it, which incidetally will mean I have put more effort into this review than went into the "writing" for this "movie".

Tl'/dr This is not a movie where you can make arguments, personally I would argue it isn't a movie at all given the utter lack of story, but undeniably this is not a piece of medfia you can argue differing views of , it is not a simple case of some people misunderstanding the other perspective, because there's nothing to understand, this *is* torture porn with nothing at all beneath the surface.

If it had any iota of story whatsoever then maybe you could argue it is graphic but the gore serves a purpose, it progresses the story and ties in to character's motivations, but there is no story and there are no motivating factors, just a very very loose pseudo-religious premise which is never explored, it is simply used as an excuse for the mindless gore. It isnt deep or complex or thought provoking, there are no subtle themes or concepts to dissect, there are no grey areas, no morality challenging ideologies , no characters who you disagree with but can't help find endearing, theres simply nothing at all outside of catering to a very specific fetish for people who share a very specific fetish.

It immutably *is* gore-porn and low hanging fruit shock value start to finish. I have no issue with horror movies, nor am I opposed to graphic scenes, but there's a monumental difference between watching gory scenes that progress the story and watching gore for the sake of gore. The one and only plausible explanation for anyone at all liking this is that they are mentally damaged, the kind of people who as children hurt animals for "fun" and as adults have a sick fetish for hurting women, that may sound harsh, but that is objectively the only possible reason, there are no other plausible justifications, because not for a single moment during this creation is there anything even resembling substance, plot, character development, rational, logic, reasoning, motivation, it is utterly utterly vapid. I have seen colour by numbers images on my nephew's cereal box that has more substance to it.

Draw a stick man, write any one line from this review in a text bubble beside him and you will already have a more fleshed out character, a more cohesive narrative and a creation that took more thought and effort than this entire production.

The Dragon Prince (2018– )

Self sabotaged by 2 major flaws

[2/10 · 13 August 2023]

This show was made in a time where 4k hdr high frame rate content was already common place, yet for reasons that defy semblance of logic they decided to animate this at 12 fps. Apparently it was "inspired" by old cartoons, but that makes no sense, old cartoons don't have their aesthetic from the frame rate, it comes from the hand drawn art styles, which this doesn't even attempt to replicate, so what we have is something that is very clearly a modern cartoon yet watching it is miserable, at best it is like watching a slideshow and at worst it causes eye pain watching the constantly disjointed, animations, it is like watching a cutscene in a game with severe lag.

The second issue is that it doesnt know what it wants to be so it ends up being nothing. It is very much a cartoon, not an "adult animation", it has plenty of jokes that are clearly intended for a child audience yet it also has betrayal, death, assasination, paralysis, torture, but it neither blends them well or focuses on one more than the other. The result is a show that has dark themes and plots but they never feel serious or have any weight to them, while at the same time doesn't embrace the over the top, very cartoony jokes. What should be impactful scenes and storylines feel flat because they will inevitably be interrupted by a fart pun and light hearted moments often feel out of place because they'll be laughing at synonyms while plotting how to murder children. It seems like they had 2 concepts for 2 very different shows and decided to just mash their scipts together without bothering to blend the contrasting themes of them.

Evidently it is doing well so I guess I am in the minority on this one, but it just doesn't work.

Justice League: Warworld (2023)

Impressively bad

[3/10 · 13 August 2023]

Yet more proof that my perspective is correct, all DC animated content has been pathetic since flashpoint paradox which is a decade old now. It's a remarkable drop in quality. I would be able to summarize how poor this is in about 4 lines but this site now has a character minimum because apparently quantity matters more than quality, but in essence here is this movie summarized

It is 1 hour 29 minutes long and in that time has less story, less character development and less world building than the "DC Showcase" shorts which on average run for just 12 minutes.

It is a 2023 release yet objectively has significantly worse artsyle and animation than superman doomsday, which was the very first full length DC animated movie and was released in 2007.

I do not get it. If you could travel back in time to 2013 and assume a head position of WB you could hire people and make their sole purpose in the company be to ruin the animated media, the last good thing DC has going for it and they would not be able to ruin things as quickly, comprehensively or as drastically as WB have done. The flash based henry stickman animations have both more depth to them and more care put into them than this insult.

Arcane (2021– )

Meh

[5/10 · 12 August 2023]

Decent but sloppy story, overall the story is ok and interesting enough to keep you watching but the pacing is poor and it is very disjointed. I will avoid spoilers but there is a time skip in this season and seemingly the only thing that happens during that sizeable portion of time is that everyone abandons their goals. After the time skip people are in different positions than before and seemingly the same people yet they have not taken a single step towards the goals they talked about before the time skip and that they continue to talk about afterwards.

Horrendous music. I can only draw the conclusion that netflix were under the asumption that only 12 year old 1st world middle class girls would watch this. Imagine dragons left right and centre, including a self insert in one instance which 1: is a terrible music choice ruining the scene audibly 2: having the band inserted into the show for gratuitous ego stroking ruins the scene visually. I don't care if you are the most obsessed imagine dragons fan on the planet, the objective fact is that their songs are out of place in most of the instances they are used, evidently netflix didn't bother to hire any profesionals to produce or co-ordinate the score so they just milked the rights they bought to one generic pop band and throw their songs all over the place,regardless of how disjointed they are from what is on screen.

Overall it's alright, but it isn't something I can ever see myself revisiting. I have not played the game I admit, so I am sure there will be some references or throwbacks that are lost on me, but this easily had potential to be a great show regardless of anyones history with LoL but it has some glaring issues that hold it back, with each episode running around 40 minutes there is absolutely enough screen time to handle things better than they have so far.

Watchmen (2019)

Promising start, anaemic, nonsensical end

[5/10 · 3 August 2023]

Episodes 1 through 5 are good. Well paced, the story has plenty of acid trtp levels of weirndess but they are handled in a way that leads you to theorize about the story and what will come. It is a good mystery with some elements of sci-fi, absurdity and action in the mix.

Episodes 6-9 however are awful. I will not give any specific spoilers but will touch on some aspects to give examples of what I am talking about

Summary: If I did not know any better I would guess that epsiodes 1-5 were written by one team and then they had a falling out with HBO so HBO tasked a handful of unpaid interns to cobble together an ending in the span of a single week to allow HBO to hurry up filming and churn out the episodes while cutting costs as much as possible. There's more consistency, character development, story telling and resolution in the crayon scribblings of a toddler with ADHD. Which is such a shame because the build up is great, especially in this time when spandex wearing, one dimensional hero shows are churned out every week, but the ending is a drawn out, constantly self-contradicting, unsatisfying, unresolved, lazy heap of nonsensicle gibberish. To say this show went out with a whimper would be a compliment.

Main review:

Dead air: The first offense is how much nothingness there is in these few episodes. The overwhelming vast majority of the screen time revolves around flashbacks but it is handled so poorly that it is simply dead air. The flash backs can be summarized in one of two categories 1: Flashbacks that are entirely pointless as they show things we already know at this stage in the story 2: Flashbacks that do fill in some gaps but they are extended to a needless length, the entirety of the relevancy covered in the flashbacks could easily be handled in 10-15 minutes, dedicating 2 full hours to them was just blatant padding

Inconsistencies: There are certain things towards the end that make no sense. The most obvious example involves a time frame. A certain character specifically talks about an event that takes 5 years to reach. However that event then happens not once but twice in the span of 3 years. So there is no plausible explanation for it.

Or in another instance there is a scene involving a mammal, this scene is considered weird even within the confines of the shows reality yet nothing, literally not a single word is ever said about it. The character sees this incredibly weird sight, acts clearly confused and repulsed and then less than 20 seconds later is face to face with the person who set things up and doesn't bother to mention it.

1: Either the character who set the time frame somehow had the ability to see the future,set things into action ahead of the time frame they talked about and then directly contradicted themsevles multiple times in the last episodes as they again talked using their original 5 year turn around as the basis 2: The initial event did indeed take 5 years to happen, but then inexplicable and without a single word being said about it they manage to do that exact same event, with an extremely specific piece of equipment which itself would take years to fashion and somehow build that equipment and then complete 2 legs of a 5 year journey between 2017 and 2019

Stupidity: Bit on the nose but this is the most apt word to describe the events. In the lat 2 episodes in particular there are events that happen which could have very very very very very easily been stopped or avoided all together, but with absolutely no reasoning at all the characters who could stop those events just say " nah mang, let the crap hit the fan, lol". Ambiguity has it's place in storytelling and in an absurd story like this leaving room for interpretation would be fine, but that is not what we get, we are not left theorizing, we are left asking "why did they allow that to happen"? And there is no reason at all, the events themselves aswell as the inevitable repercussions have no justification, it isn't a case of look at the bigger picture, it is just characters making blatantly stupid choices when they had every tool, every capability and every opportunity to do things better.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Slightly above average marvel slop

[6/10 · 31 July 2023]

First things first I have not tagged this for spoilers as I will talk about the core story but won't divulge any information that isn't given in both traielrs and posters.

Tl/dr: As some braindead escapism marvel have most definetly churned out worse than this, but if you go in expecting a single shred of story telling, character development or even just consistency within it's own story you will be dissapointed.

Premise: The core premise of this movie is that a version of wanda who can only fairly be described as mentally impaired, slaughters her way across multiple realities in the pursuit of children who never existed to begin with. All the while choosing to ignore the blatant and inescapable truths that 1: she is not and never was a mother 2: The only possible way for her to become a mother of the specific children she wants is by killing another version of herself, robbing the kids of their real mother. It is incredibly dumb, the movie is roughly 2 hours and 6 minutes long and we spend all of it watching wanda be the dumbest creature in multiple realities

Sloppy writing: -A certain character divulges their motiviation is to find someone important to them, they have the ability to very very easily make this happen yet with no discernable reason whatsoever abandon this mission and goes off to do inconsequential tasks instead.

• The entire premise of this movie is the multiverse, an infinite number of realities with infinite number versions of each character and infinite possibilities. There are some differences between the realities but the main characters remain constant, they talk to each other on multiple occasions and to "prove" who they are talk about memories from their past they don't share with anyone. So which is it? Are the realities different or are all versions of the characters on a set in stone path and have the same childhood, same trauma, same adult life, same professional life, same abilities, same knoweldge, same relationships with the same people etc etc

Continuing on this point, not only does it make the movie contradict it's own premise every 2 minutes but also completely undermines wandas motivation, because if the realities and main characters are as identical as this movie shows them to be then there are only 2 possibilities. 1: No version of wanda would be a muderous lunatic trying to break reality in pursuit of fictional children. 2: Every version of wanda would have snapped and there would be a horde of reality hopping/dream walking/projecting wandas having a war betwen themselves.

The movie tries to have it both ways, but since the story has less consistency than the scribbles of an ADHD toddler the end result is a disjointed, self contradicting mess with absolutely no semblance of story telling taking place.

Hellraiser (2022)

Insult to the franchise

[1/10 · 29 March 2023]

I wanted to like this, fresh hellraiser content after so many dissapointing sequels over such a long span of time, I dared to get my hopes up this could do the name justice, unfortunately it does not.

I could fill this box of reasons why it is a let down but I know nobody wants to read an entire anthology . However I can sum up the biggest and dumbest thing this movie does, which is to utterly destroy the lore. The themes have always been about desire, people getting their hands on the puzzle boxes and inadvertendly summoning things they can't understand. This movie completely removes that, instead the puzzle boxes are now simple weapons, 5 of the 6 configurations involve some form of needle or sharp object protrudiung from the box, anybody who gets cut by this will be sentenced to an eternity of torture, there are no themes of morality, no themes of desire, the cenobites aren't drawn to specific people, they do not interact with different people differently, simply a cut from the box's now inexplcable arsenal = you becoming a cenobites play thing. It's just dumb, why even bother with the context of the puzzle boxes or pretending to keep the lore of the cenobites, the leviathan if every shred of lore there has ever been about them is simply ignored and it boils down to a movie about a demon summoning knife that condems whoever you cut with it?.

One other thing I will mention is the new pinhead, the design is awful. The head is basically impossible to go wrong with, but everything else is so bad, it doesn't look like flayed, mutilated flesh, it looks like a low effort sci fi cosplay, really takes away from the immersion when the big bad of the movie looks like a poorly fitting first attempt at a home made sci-fi undersuit cosplay.

One last thing I will touch on quickly as I wrap this up. At the end there is a certain scene involving a certain character and it too is really dumb. It involves a transformation of sorts, one that never has been and is not supposed to be a fast or easy process, it is supposed to be literal hell, enduring unspeakable horrors, being tortured in creative ways that target that particular victims vices and flaws, yet the character in this scene is completely silent and completely calm. A horrific thing is happening and the character is more relaxed than they would be if they were asleep. It completely trivializes what is happening in the scene, what has happened to other characters before this point and also diminishes what this scene means for the character involved, because it plays off as something so mundane and calm, characters getting a cut on the palm are played out as a bigger deal than someone being personally tormented by an omnipitent being in the depths of hell itself.

Chainsaw Man (2022)

Reddit: The Virgin Chronicles Anime

[1/10 · 13 February 2023]

Maybe I missed something, but I do not understand the hype around this show at all. Most times if something is hyped up and I don't agree with that I can at least see where that perspective comes from but with this I cant, there is nothing here. The most simple and most accurate way I can describe this show is this: Imagine a what-if scenario where jujutsu kaisen's script was stolen, shared around and edited on r/virgin and the resulting fantasy riddled, perverted mess was pitched as an anime, that is exactly what this is. A scruffy guy without much world experience who has supernatural power in him which he uses to fight against other supernatural beings of the same ilk. A brash, loud arrogant female who uses blood magic, an uptight, pompous, guy with long hair who summons spirits to help him fight, these "misfits" are overseen by a government funded organisation with questionable and manipulative people at the top pulling the strings........sound familair? It literally is a poor ecchi-fied jujutsu kaisen rip off.

It is essentially a redditors wet dream in cartoon form. Within a handful of episodes a dynamic is established where groping is fine, within the first 5 minutes of said episode another character reinforces that it is perfectly fine and within 15 minutes a 3rd female character also joins the bandwagon and again reaffirms that this takes place in a world were boys can expect to be "rewarded" for any actions they take by any female in proximity allowing them to cop a feel and vice versa it is a world where boys in most cases are portrayed as lazy and unmotivated yet they don't hesitate to risk their lives for the sole purpose of touching boobs, oh and it's only fair I mention the fact that one of these female characters who takes part in this extremely weird groped-as-motivation scenario is a corpse, that's right, it isnt "just" groping, it isn't just any and all female characters willing to barter their bodies at the drop of a hat, it is also groping the corpses of people who obviously are no longer around and whose family are not there to notice and comment on just how sick it is, ps that is not a spoiler, this is something established literally in the very first scene of the first episode. It's just sad

The only thing that makes this pitchable as an anime is the over the top powers, if it wasn't for the cliche, predictable over the top anime action sequences this would literally be nothing more than a typically tragic "copy/pasta" from reddit that ends up doing the rounds online after being shared for how painful it is to read. As far as can tell the target demographic is exclusively reddit, other than people from that cesspool vicariously living out their fantasies via this creepy show it has nothing to offer, it does nothing new and the stuff it does do are all watered down, one dimensional cliches that were simply the vehicle for the writer to use to carry his groping and submission fetishes. You would find a better sense of humour, more rational thought, less perviness and hear less of a fixation of testicles and boobs in a frat house populated exclusively by people who were only accepted into the school in the first place thanks to daddies credit card and some good old fashion nepotism.

Tl:Dr

• blasé voice acting
• almost total lack of story
• genuine complete lack of character depth or growth
• a stupid amount of incessant hornball moments in any 5 minutes that it makes ecchi anime look like the pinnacle of plot and character development.

• every character is one note
• it is crystal clear what was going through the writers( using that term very loosley here) head and it wasn't telling a story.

Legion of Super-Heroes (2023)

What a surprise, hiring a random 1 hit wonder doesn't get you quality.

[2/10 · 11 February 2023]

For years the DC animated universe was the best thing DC had going for them, shows like the batman, leading to the justice league, leading to young justice to name a few were some of the best pieces of work DC has ever created. The movies use to also meet this standard, every animated movie prior to flashpoint was better than both DC and marvels entire live action catalogues but with each movie since flashpoint it becomes harder and harder to ignore the fact that the studio isnt even trying anymore.

1 movie, just 1 movie with james gunn at the helm and already we get utter crap, complete immutable dung. Who would've thought hiring a one hit, one note exec and instantly giving him complete control over DC properties and letting him turn DC into marvel-lite, making movies on a completely tarded "phase" system, where instead of focusing on telling good stories they intentionally create the most bland, generic turd possible so that they have plenty of room to splinter of 50000 other pieces of crap from that original and milk the same generic, bland, lack of story for years and years. It's disgusting and the lack of effort is inarguable. This 2023 movie made by a huge multi-million dollar company who didnt even have to write a story, all they had to do was choose any plot from the 80+ years of DC history and flesh out it to make the story flow in a self contained movie but instead what did they do?

They seemingly left the entirety of the animating to some unpaid interns who only work on weekends.

The script was evidently writen in the span of about 20 minutes and got zero proof reading.

The fight scenes are so poorly animated and choreographed that they are blown out of the water by early 2000's stick figure flash animations.

I am avoiding spoilers but here are just a few examples of proof of zero proof reading and effort.

• In one scene supergirl has access to a computer command that makes zero sense for her to have access to
• A "lock" that is described as the most unbreakable security system in the known universe is shown as a simple colour matching puzzle that any normal 4 year old could figure out.

• Timber wolf is wolverine, unlike the 2006 cartoon, this movie put zero effort into character design and some characters, with timber wolf being the most blatant example are undeniably marvel knock offs.

• In one scene batman stops an attempted robbery, this takes place in a room where there is only 1 thing of value yet batman ends the scene by saying " I do not know what they were after" because apparently this interpretation of batman has brain damage and instead of the greatest is the worlds dumbest detective.

• In some scenes so little effort was put into the characters facial expressions that their eyes don't even line up, instead of giving them arched eyebrows to portray an expression, they have an entire eye drooping, which would be considered for a primary school art project, nevermind a paid movie from a million dollar conglomerate.

I could go on, but this is already too long for anyone to care to read, but those are just a few off the cuff examples of the thousands of bits of evidence for how little effort or care went into this.

So now, in a move that can only be described as the dumbest thing to ever happen to DC, WB have handed complete control of a guaranteed money making machine to an unqualified person who has already destroyed footage of a guaranteed success live action move that had the most beloved actor on the planet (brendan fraser) as firefly, literally taking months of work and millions of dollars and destroying a completed movie that was guaranteed to net a profit and the first animated movie released under his name is the single worst animated piece of media DC has ever churned out. Sad state of affairs, I will never again pay for any DC media and I strongly recommend you don't either, if they can't be bothered to write a story or spend any money on the animation they don't deserve your money. If anyone is old enough to remember Rolie Polie Olie, that 90's toddler focused cartoon puts this 2023 feature length film to shame both in terms of animation and story.

Day Shift (2022)

Bland

[2/10 · 10 February 2023]

This movie, unfortunately is bland.

1: "Story" There basically is no story, it sets up an ambitious vampire power grab scenario then does literally nothing with it, there is one conversation at the very start of the movie and 1 10 second phone call and then this entire plot point is dropped, never to be expanded on or even mention again.

2: Poor action sequences Unfortunately this movie does not compensate for total lack of story or substance or character depth by having dumb-fun action, every fight is the same, evidently someone in a position has some kind of fetish for women doing the scorpion pose because every single female character in every single action scene ended up in that pose, regardless of what was happening. Shotgun blast to the torso? Somehow the body ends up in the scorpion position, punched?= scorpion, kicked? =scorpion, thrown?= scorpion. The fight scenes very quickly became predictable and just silly, even given the context and light hearted take on a potentially dark subject the fights just felt out of place.

3: Poor writing So we have already established there is no plot but even what little plot there is evidently there was zero proof reading done.

1: The henchman vampire could smell bud's blood from 1 blood drop on 1 piece of glass yet was unable to track that scent or even find his vehicle yet somehow that sent led them on a roundabout way to bud in the sense that it led them to a place where bud had been hours prior,. How does that make sense? We are supposed to suspend disbelief and think that a shop bud stood in for 5 minutes has more of his scent than his car or his flat?

Heather, according to her she wasnt even a familiar, just a random person that Audrey turned for the hell of it, which already is completely out of character given that Audreys entire screen presence tries to portray her as a conniving fraudster rather than a loud, brash, actions before thoughts character. But on top of that despite heather being nobody, just a random civilian Audrey decided to turn on a whim, somehow Heather knows about Audrey's past, about her personal life, about her family, knows her headquarters and even knows the layout of her secret tunnels beneath the facade of the headquarters, which was guarded by dozens of heavily armed vampires.

Also the entire point of the movie is set up that vampires are essentially animals. Some of them are intelligent and operate like gangs but for the most part they are just violent creatures chasing the need to feed, which is why the "union" was set up to hunt them. Yet when Seth get's turned he retains all of his personality and in the span of 5 minutes this milquetoast character has got over the hunger for blood and is able to retain his humanity whilst accessing the vampire abilities, so even in the movies own lore there is no consitency at all.

Last point I will make, the "sunscreen" is established as a plot point, Audrey views it as a game changer and her way of seizing power over the area, a few times bud makes remarks commenting on it and how bad it could be, but like everything else it is simply dropped. We see that it works, we see that the vampires have a ton of it, we see one vampire run out in the daylight after being shot and the matter is just ignored, it carried no weight, had no repercussions and no bearing on the movie at all.

I didn't go into this movie expecting some mind blowing storytelling, but I thought it might be a dumb-fun bit of escapism, but even in that regard it falls flat, inconsistent writing, constantly dropping potential plot lines, zero proof reading, action sequences that make a little britain sketch look serious and meticulously planned by comparison. Overall it simply isnt very good.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light (2021)

Lazy, inconsistent, sloppy

[1/10 · 5 January 2023]

This movie manages to insult almost the entire cast of the show. There will be no specific order to this, I will touch on the characters as I think of them and explain as best I can how they were diminished.

Meliodas: He has always been a powerhouse, that is his character. But in this movie he is like Schrödinger's cat, which is a comparison I never thought I would make talking about anime, he is both strong and weak at the same time. In one scene he gets slapped around by a being who has never been mentioned before and even after giving him a tiny backstory he is established as being a lesser fairy king, yet meliodas needs to tap into his rage power mode to try and fight back. Yet later on meliodas with no rage power, no demon king power, no purgatory power, just season 1 base level meliodas manages to beat the "supreme diety" with zero effort. It took all of the sins, including escanor using the last of the sun grace power to beat the demon king, yet meliodas smacks down a being equally as strong as the demon king with nothing more than a base level sword attack.

Zeldris: Almost identical to meliodas above. On one hand he get's knocked around by mindless puppets and frankly embarassed. Then mere moments later with no training or even rest, without even having access to the power that failed to scratch escanor he overpowers the supreme diety also with zero effort.

Supreme diety: I am sure you can see where this is going. One of the 2 omnipotent beings in the lore, a literal god who the demon king himself over thousands of years was unable to overpower, after 3 seasons a mini season, a handful of movies and 8 years of content she is finally seen on screen and she is pathetic. A season 1 red demon gave the sins more trouble than this god did, complete and utter waste of the character. It takes all the sins + zeldris + escanor sacrificing his "life energy" to face the demon king but 2 swings of a sword from depowered meliodas and poof, the supreme diety is gone.

Mael: The strongest of the goddesses, a being powerful enough to single handedly strike fear into the entire demon forces, a being powerful enough that even without the source of his power ( the sun grace) is still stronger than anything on the demon side and strong enough to stand up to the combined forces of the entire seven deadly sins. In this movie he gets a tiny amount of screen time and he spends it running away and crying like a little b. He doesn't want to fight his own kind? Ok fair, but that doesnt and shouldnt render him unable to defend himself, he is the strongest single fighter and has the single strongest source of power but suddenly he is unable to knock out/restrain a handful of unnamed, canon fodder nobodies? That's dumb.

Merlin: Merlin is in the movie, but she may as well not be. She gets just 2 scenes, 1 she is standing with arthur, the scene sets up an action sequence about to take place but we dont get to see it, the scene ends with nothing happening. Throughout the remaining 99.9% of screen time Merlin does literally nothing then in the closing few seconds she get a scene where for some reason she is floating by herself, nt helping her friends or arthur, she says one line of dialogue to herself and then leaves again. Utter waste of both the character and animation time. You as a random person reading this review play a bigger role in the movie than merlin does. An immortal, untouchable mage with knowledge of dieties and a ridiculous arsenal of magic at her disposal and she does literally nothing.

Arthur: Again, does less than nothing. He has 1 single scene, which sets the stage for an action scene but instead it cuts to a different scene and arthur is never seen or heard from again. Merlin, who betrayed everybody for the sake of babysitting Arthur leaves him on his own with no rhyme or reason, displays no concern for how he is holding up without her, says nothing about leaving him.

Humans: May as well lump these together. The humans have never been top of the power chain in this show, but they have been able to hold their own and with training throughout the seasons got stronger. At this point in the story gilthunder and griamore are high ranking senior magic knights and howzer is the commander of the entire holy knights order yet the second a weak enemy shows up they run away like they are in a looney tunes skit. Dreyfus and Hendrickson are retired, seasoned knights, dreyfus has indomitable will and retains some of fraudrins demon powers, hendrickson is both a holy knight and a druid, having knowledge of the gods and access to powerful magic, yet they do nothing. They get maybe 2 lines of dialogue and then the second enemies show up they vanish from existence, they should be able to do a lot of damage but instead are wiped from the roster with no explanation. Jericho and Guila are also useless, jericho has her speed and guila has her fire magic, yet they are intimidated and run away from a couple of fairies and the only thing they do in the entire movie is get slapped to the ground.

It is such a poor movie. Like all anime the power scaling has never been consistent in this universe, but in this movie it's outright insulting. Most of the characters are made weaker than they were in season 1 and hten proceed to do less than nothing in the movie and the only 2 characters who win any fights are zeldris and meliodas, who lose to weak enemies and then despite having access to almost none of their anime-series powers effortlessly slaughter the most powerful being in their universe. It's not just dumb, it is not just typical anime, power of friendship dumb, it is painfully and inexcusably dumb.

Dragon Age: Absolution (2022– )

Dragon age: The pandering chronicles

[2/10 · 31 December 2022]

Have you ever played the dragon age games and thought that the fantasy was too interesting, that characters too well written. Have you ever played through the games and though they were too exciting or interesting? If so maybe you will like this show, because I do not know what other target demographic it could possibly be for.

A franchise with a story dating back over a decade, with 3 games and more on the way and somehow the writers of this show managed to take that world and drain it of anything remotely interesting. We get "relationships" that serve no purpose, do nothing for the story, don't add anything to the characters, happen so fast that nobody can argue against them being forced for the sake of cheap pandering. We get the most bland party the dragon age universe has ever seen, the worst protagonist in animated media history and a story so rushed that it feels utterly impotent. What this show is, is more proof that bioware died when EA took control and the quality has been non existent since the ME2 days, this is just EAware whoring out a once great franchise to ring every last cent they can out of bioware's initiallt great creation before they inevitably move on and destroy another company. The parasitic leech of the multimedia world strikes again.

Tl:Dr -Protagonist is the most boring character in dragon age history.

-Protagonist is not only one dimensional but also insufferable

• Miriam's resentment to Rezaren makes zero sense, which she herslf concedes

-Hira's actions make zero sense -The protagonists motivation makes no sense -Actions scenes make no sense, even within the fantasy setting -Action scenes are poor, vox machina is a fantasy show based on DnD, which started out as a comedy skit and it has better action scenes than this.

-In a cameo scene with no dialogue, lasting less than 2 seconds, Leliana, a fan favourite character who was developed over all 3 games had her entire character dragged through the mud and her entire personality and character arc bastardised.

-Characters form "relationships" within saying 5 words to each other, for the clear and irrefutable purpose of pandering -All of the main characters have zero depth to them Almost none of the 14 years of established lore are even touched on. Everything fun and interesting throughout the dragon age saga is ignored and we are left with a middling, boring creation that wastes the source material and spends almost the entirety of it's screen time pandering rather than developing characters or telling a story.

Very clear cut and very dissapointing case of wasted potential.