Movies are awesome

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Shockwave
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Re: Movies are awesome

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Sparky Prime wrote: Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:36 pmTechnically he is Noob Saibot. That's what Bi Han becomes after he's killed in the games.
Was that in one of the recent ones? I have all of the MK games except like, 3: the last two MK IX and MK X I think and the MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero (which I have actually played, I just don't own it).

I mean, I get what you're saying, but he was clearly meant to be the "blue ice ninja" guy, so a blue outfit as a visual signifier would have been helpful.

And since they are clearly hoping to make this into an ongoing thing, I think the MCU set up would have worked better, especially if they weren't going to show the actual tournament. Start with the ninja's story, then do a separate movie for the special forces stuff and then another movie for Johnny Cage and have Raiden be the Nick Fury character getting everyone together. It's like they tried to speed this along too quickly. For me, that's a small complaint, I still found this entertaining and I would watch it again.
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Sparky Prime
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Re: Movies are awesome

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Shockwave wrote: Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:31 amWas that in one of the recent ones? I have all of the MK games except like, 3: the last two MK IX and MK X I think and the MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero (which I have actually played, I just don't own it).
The only time Bi Han was Sub Zero was in the first Mortal Kombat game... and a little bit of the 2011 reboot. Scorpion kills him in the first tournament and he becomes Noob Saibot. From then on his younger brother, Kuai Liang, is Sub Zero.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but he was clearly meant to be the "blue ice ninja" guy, so a blue outfit as a visual signifier would have been helpful.
The chest and shoulder parts of his armor were blue, albeit a muted blue, which had the tendency to blend in with the black of the costume. I'd agree they should have made it more apparent.
And since they are clearly hoping to make this into an ongoing thing, I think the MCU set up would have worked better, especially if they weren't going to show the actual tournament. Start with the ninja's story, then do a separate movie for the special forces stuff and then another movie for Johnny Cage and have Raiden be the Nick Fury character getting everyone together. It's like they tried to speed this along too quickly. For me, that's a small complaint, I still found this entertaining and I would watch it again.
Yeah, if they weren't even going to show the actual tournament in this one, they should have taken a much slower approach in general. This movie did feel rushed, and a little unfocused. I get the impression Cole's character was to try and tie things together, but it just didn't work IMO.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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Godzilla vs. Kong - maybe the stupidest big movie ever, this thing was hilariously dumb but also insultingly lazily-written.

Mortal Kombat - hoo boy, this is a mixed bag at best. I'll elaborate...
Spoiler
The opening scene feels nothing like Mortal Kombat, at least not the spirit of the series, I haven't played any of the newer games so maybe it's gone a wildly different, more serious, slower direction, but that would be defeating the soul of the franchise if so. This was an interesting scene, well made and compelling, just not very Mortal Kombat-y. Then we get to the present day and it just cannot keep that level of quality going as it adds more and more characters, but the worst has to be centering the whole film around a new-to-the-franchise character in the form of Cole, whose power is... he doesn't defend himself. He's a charisma-void and it really drags it down. The whole film is set-up for the tournament that we never get, and that's a real shame because when we finally get to the end of the film and a version of Techno Syndrome (the original '95 film's theme) starts playing, I asked my gal "I wonder what about this totally average fight in the beginning of the third act justifies this song" and then the film ends -- the film ends on what feels like the start of the movie's big push instead of being the culmination, and it's a real head-scratcher. "It's over? That's it?!" What a wet fart. Literally the only character who feels like the spirit of Mortal Kombat at all is Kano, that was a delight in every scene until the end of the second act when they change what he's about, and even then it's still in-character, we just don't get to spend much time with him as a character afterwards. Part of me appreciates the lack of big name actors in this, part of me rues the loss of acting talent as it always feels like it's hitting the wall.
Hobbs & Shaw - it was new to us, we enjoyed the big stupid fun of it, but the last act felt woefully tacked on.

Fast and Furious 1 and 2 - hilariously stupid movies, VERY stupid, but it was plain to see why the first film resonated and the second film didn't, it's not just the characters, it's the tone and the scope that are missing in 2 Fast 2 Furious.

In advance of Mortal Kombat 2021, we watched 3 more fighting game movies: Street Fighter the Legend of Chun-Li, Tekken, and The King of Fighters. Chun Li was meh, it had a few hilariously terrible effects and a total void at the center, but mainly was offensively bland rather than good or bad. Tekken tried so hard to be about lore and worldbuilding and I hated every minute of it, it was like visual teflon always keeping my eyes slipping off the screen. But The King of Fighters? That was the gold standard for bad movies, my gal and I loved every single silly moment of it, there's not one shot in the film that doesn't have some type of weird incompetence that's just amazing - for example, nearly every shot is a dutch angle, some tilting from one dutch angle to the opposite.

Gemini Man - I think Hollywood can rest easy worrying about CGI characters replacing the real actors, as nothing here was terribly convincing. Maybe a smarter script might have helped, but ultimately it just was an inoffensive big budget time-killer rather than horrible or fantastic, and that's fine for finding trash on a streaming sub but not $20 a head theater tickets.

Pacific Rim - finally after 8 years got around to seeing this, my first attempt scuttled at bad advice from a friend to see Man of Steel instead. PacRim ultimately doesn't fail or deliver, it's neither Robot Jox nor is it Real Steel, but it's also not a Gundam or Jurassic Park level of next-level improvement over prior genre entertainment. There's a lot of worldbuilding but the world gets a bit too stupid at times, and the story ultimately is simpler than it should be. It's one of those movies that I can't say I hated but it also had way too little impact.

Cars 2 - ok, hear me out on this, I liked Cars 2, it's not a big Pixar emotion-pumper, but it is a fun movie that moves well and has laughs. I liken Mater to this generation's Goofy, and this film uses that to its success thanks to a lot of silly stupid coincidence and presumption and dumb stuff, but it works as a light James Bond as a car parody.

Talk Radio - amazing film, probably my favorite Oliver Stone flick, had no idea it was gonna be this good and it's so simple.

Detective Pikachu - adequate movie, enjoyable, simple story but fine.

Zack Snyder's Justice League - why is this so lonnnnnnnnng? I was shocked to see how much of the stupid humor was from this cut and not Whedon's doing. There's nothing about this that is better than the theatrical version, it's just different, and some is worse. Watching a superhero beat the hell out of a villain and the other heroes stand around enjoying the beating was grotesque.

Coming 2 America - a limp sequel that nobody asked for, amusing to return to this world but a smarter script and better production value would have paid off far better. Neither terrible nor great.

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey - insultingly incompetent. Frustrating that anything can have so many wrong choices in it, foundational issues, story issues, pacing issues, characterization issues, everything. It's a waste and the worst part is it's a fairly pedestrian waste.

Aquaman - big and silly and dumb and it knows it. Not great and not terrible, just unfocused.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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JediTricks wrote: Sat May 01, 2021 11:43 am Godzilla vs. Kong - maybe the stupidest big movie ever, this thing was hilariously dumb but also insultingly lazily-written.
My fiancée asked who I thought would win before we watched this... I said
Spoiler
These types of movies always end where their fight is interrupted by another threat they'd have to team up to defeat and they end off with an uneasy truce. And that's essentially what happened (even if Kong nearly died).
It was very predictable.
Mortal Kombat - hoo boy, this is a mixed bag at best. I'll elaborate...
Spoiler
The opening scene feels nothing like Mortal Kombat, at least not the spirit of the series, I haven't played any of the newer games so maybe it's gone a wildly different, more serious, slower direction, but that would be defeating the soul of the franchise if so.
The games pretty much wrote themselves into a corner with MK:Armageddon.... So with the reboot in 2011 and subsequent games, there has been more of a slower, somewhat more serious focus on the story. I wouldn't call it defeating the soul of the franchise though. The series really needed to be reinvigorated, and the new direction with the reboot helped accomplish that.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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Sparky Prime wrote: Sat May 01, 2021 5:12 pm The games pretty much wrote themselves into a corner with MK:Armageddon.... So with the reboot in 2011 and subsequent games, there has been more of a slower, somewhat more serious focus on the story. I wouldn't call it defeating the soul of the franchise though. The series really needed to be reinvigorated, and the new direction with the reboot helped accomplish that.
Compare '95 MK to '21 MK, one is all energy and bounce and rudeness, the other is slow, full of lore, but gory.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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JediTricks wrote: Mon May 03, 2021 3:27 pmCompare '95 MK to '21 MK, one is all energy and bounce and rudeness, the other is slow, full of lore, but gory.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here... These are all elements in the games that makes MK what it is. Personally, I wouldn't exactly call either movie the best adaptation of the games. Both films gets parts right, and parts wrong.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, slow storytelling and deep lore aren't its strong points.


We watched Aladdin 2019, why did this sell a billion in tickets? It's so slow and bland and full of autotune - both male leads are autotuned beyond comprehension, the audio equivalent of removing all the brushstrokes from a painting. Speaking of painting, this film is shot terribly flat, so all the color just feels like noise. Will Smith is no Robin Williams, his only real go-to riff is an overboard effeminate schtick, the only actual risk in the film. And they tacked on half an hour while removing story beats from the animated classic. This wasn't even "so bad it's good" territory, just nearly 2 hours of "eh".


Gave Soul a watch finally, that was really good. There is a sense that the black experience is a bit missing, but otherwise it's a very impressive tale about finding out that who you are and what you are ain't the same thing.


Watched Big Top Pee Wee for the first time since theaters, I liked it a lot more this time, probably the lack of hype from being the spiritual sequel to Pee Wee's Big Adventure. It was weird seeing Pee Wee Herman get romantic, but overall this was an enjoyable movie, a little thin here and there but fun overall.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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JediTricks wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 10:38 am Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, slow storytelling and deep lore aren't its strong points.
I'd have to disagree with that. The game play of the early games may not have had a focus on story and lore (given cutscenes weren't really a thing in those days), but if you took the time to read all of the character bios and endings and what not... It's actually always had quite a bit of storytelling and deep lore to it. And as cutscenes became more of a thing in video games, they did put more of a focus on story telling and lore within the gameplay of the modern games. Look up the cutscenes for MK 9 just as an example, it's around 2 and half hours worth of content.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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The Suicide Squad

Honestly, I had no plans to see this movie. But where I work every year likes to treat us to a big blockbuster film as sort of a reward for all the work we do (and those that opt out get a gift card). We didn't do it last year for obvious reasons but they decided to resume it this year. Regardless of the film, it beats working a full 8 hour shift for a day. But I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised, I really enjoyed this film. I haven't seen the 2016 Suicide Squad, but other than Harley greeting Captain Boomerang, I don't think they reference anything from the first film. From what I could tell, this film really stands on its own. Most of the characters, I'd never heard of before. But I guess that's kinda the point, since they're not really expected to survive the mission. And James Gunn seems to really enjoy using really obscure characters. I don't really want to get into spoilers. There's some genuinely good twists in the film that I'd rather not give away. So overall, it was a good film. Little overly violent at times for my taste, but I'd say it was one of the better DCEU films, which ironically has very little to do with the DCEU.
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Re: Movies are awesome

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The Suicide Squad, we watched it on HBO Max and loved it. James Gunn getting to do absolutely bonkers stuff straight from his Troma roots while telling a story that felt true to the Ostrander comics was a delight, my gal and I were smiling ear to ear with this one. Honestly, I enjoyed this more than most MCU films, and definitely more than any DCEU film by a large margin. I'm a little sad that it's not making money at the box office, I hope Warner keeps their faith in it though, I intend to buy it on Blu Ray for sure, even considered buying a ticket to the film even though I'm not going to the theater.
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