On the one hand fuck Joss Whedon poisoning dialog. On the other hand Warwick Davis getting a victory lap center frame starring role is perfect.
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This American Vandal followup show âPlayersâ is just weird.
Its again a mocumentary, this time about a fake league of legends esports team, but its completely played straight. I feel like Iâm just watching a higher production version of those 5 hours youtube âdocumentariesâ about a videogame.
Its not really trying to be funny, i guess its amusing at times. American Vandal season 2 was sort of the same way, but it had a bit more convoluted plot and interesting twists. This is ultimately a typical sports team story just in the esports realm
also i know very little about league of legends, but the shows attempt to have me take it as a sport seriously (with in game âsport replay camâ moments) had the opposite effect
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people who enjoyed the less overtly jokey parts of american vandals may like the new netflix show about fake orange county activists chad and jt go deep. itâs kind of like if bill and ted hosted nathan for you
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This Rings of Power show is really boring and spreads itself very thin as each episode is split between like three or four different character groups with their own drama. It will be like a whole season before these threads come together, the geographical distance is enough to assure that.
It also has that horrible problem all popular fantasy and âsci-fiâ has where the thingâs major conflict lamely takes the shape of some modern political argument, providing a really shallow and probably conservative gloss of the real thing as it vamps as progressive and compellingly written. The latest episode has some real hamfisted drama about human xenophobia towards elves, with people yelling about elves living in the human city and taking jobs away from the humans (this is literally a joke South Park did 15 years ago guys).
All this while the rest of everything else greedily takes as much time as it wants to do fucking anything.
I might keep watching just to see how it develops, but Iâm pretty much settled on figuring this as just more unremarkable franchise bullshit. I think the reason Iâm watching it is that itâs kind of a fun way to build lore connections to the world of the books, which Iâm reading at this moment. I could read a wiki but I could also watch this once a week and go, âah, yes. this will lead to the Balrog.â
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it wonât, balrogs already exist and have for millennia in the time period of the show.
You can, at best, expect some backstory on Arnor and Gondor and a lot of the political mythology underpinning those kingdoms.
You wonât get anything else, the 2nd age is the most boring age. 1st age and the years of the trees had a bunch of excellent stories and myths to them, but 2nd age is a lot of âthings slowly get worseâ without many explosive events until the akallabeth, which is what the tv show promises to cover. However, this only refers to one of the subplots, and all the others are pretty much made up by tv execs, which is why they feel so generic
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Yeah I think 4 episodes in, Rings of Power is mostly âjust okayâ. Nothing amazing outside of how much money was spent, and not really the massive trainwreck the Internet buzz would have you believe. I think I heard theyâre intending to make this 6 seasons, so expect the Akallabeth to take that long to happen.
Funny how many people Iâm seeing saying that Tolkien would be turning in his grave, when heâd have already started doing that with the Peter Jackson films. This series would only add a few extra RPMs on top of what heâd be getting from Shadow of Mordor with its gleeful reveling in gory violence, torture and orcish swears.
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Given what youâre saying about The 2nd Age, seems like the perfect space for mediocre writers trapped within a conservative production system to thrive in. Even if they had The 1st Age to work with, I doubt anyone in this production would be brave enough to tackle it.
But, point of clarification, it does seem like we will see the dwarves discover and unleash the Balrog. Which could be cool but probably wonât beâŚ
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DWARF 1: woah youâre back from The Mines of Moria early
DWARF 2: minesâ haunted
DWARF 1: what?
DWARF 2: issuing forth clad in black armour; standing, iron-crowned, like a tower; and with vast shield, sable unblazoned, casting a shadow over DWARF 1 like a stormcloud minesâ haunted
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This is all modern television drama as far as I can tell and I hate it
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this will literally happen, and itâs gonna hurt to watch
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weird
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house of the dragon is so good!! I really wasnât expecting much after game of thrones and after the first episode and after jeff bezosâ deeply mediocre lotr show occupied so much of this seasonâs overproduced genre imagination, but they really hit this one outta the park
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I donât think I can ever be midbrow enough to enjoy a GRRM product, fantasy has to be either slightly worse or slightly better than GRRM for me to care
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this one actually has good intrigue and good personalities and good editing though, unlike GoT. to their credit it is a lot more like watching succession with occasional battle scenes
Iâve been relatively high on House of the Dragon so far but tonightâs new episode felt like the weakest of the season so far. Part of that is to be expected given the ten year jump requiring both many new characters and new actors taking over for established characters, but I thought the new actress playing (looks up how to spell) Rhaenyra was a big downgrade although the rest of the aged up characters got handed off fairly well. All the new kids seem more annoying than interesting so hopefully that gets sorted out in the coming episodes.
idk I thought it was jarring for maybe 10 min but I felt like all the new actors were pretty good by the end, even Rhaenyra. I do miss young Rhaenyraâs mischievous grin, but it makes sense for that character that it faded away in the intervening years.
The characters all have nice backstories and complicated relationships now, and Iâm more excited for the next episode than I was for most of the earlier ones. Feels like thereâs more narrative momentum now.
I couldnât get past 2.5 episodes of house of the dragon, too dry to even hate watch like game of thrones. I suppose the new one is exactly what GoT fans wanted, itâs more of the âGoT experienceâ, the âgood partsâ concentrated. Exact same sets, exact same tone, exact same soap opera tensions taken way too seriously for a show with a marginal connection to reality.
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his take on Beauty and the Beast was trasjy enough for me as a child
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best thing he ever did
Sometimes I wish his Doorways tv series was picked up instead of the risible Sliders