that flicker and gleam back and forth.
Catching up on everything I've seen since before Yuletide:
My parents saw Edge of Tomorrow in theaters, and then I think my mother got Oblivion via Netflix. My mother doesn't usually have particularly strong feelings about media; pretty much everything she watches is "good", unless a) she couldn't follow the plot, or b) it was something like 300, guts and death everywhere. My dad thought Edge of Tomorrow was BRILLIANT, and didn't much care for Oblivion.
I didn't much care for either of them.
I do think Oblivion is a worse movie by certain objective standards-Edge of Tomorrow's central conceit is way easier to grasp, and as long as you're willing to accept that single and fairly clear fundamental premise, the rest of the movie can be a perfectly fun ride. Oblivion has a lot more pieces of shaky logic that you need to choose to accept before anything makes sense, and that alone loses it points. (Really minor and yet most egregiously obvious, for me, was the repeatedly-mentioned detail that the destruction of the moon is what caused the cataclysms that supposedly rendered Earth's surface uninhabitable-followed by the lovingly-rendered CGI showing that the moon broke into pieces, 95% of which are seemingly still in the same place. Isn't that gravitationally pretty much the same as having a whole moon??? If the moon were gone, or had been reduced to a ring of dust, that would be enough for my suspension of disbelief. As it is, WOW DID THAT ANNOY ME A DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT.)
But, of course, where both of these movies failed the most for me was the ladies. I ended up feeling like Oblivion didn't really know who Vika was and didn't much care-except that she didn't like football and wasn't like Jack, didn't ~understand~ him, didn't care about the things he cared about, blah blah blah not actually his ~true love~. :P Seems to me like any professional astronaut willing to stop and take a selfie right before the most critical part of a mission can't possibly be a rule-bound fun-sucker-but that's what 90% of the movie needed from Vika, so that's who she was, inconsistency be damned. Julia was a cipher, which is bizarre considering she was the only one of the three major characters who actually had more than five years' worth of memories-we should know the most about her, really, but we don't. Instead, she's the token held up to explain just how fucking special Jack is; and then the one decision she actually makes is undone without permission or explanation, deliberately, while she's unconscious and can't object. GOOD. And then the ending was just-the two Jacks we meet are Jack 49 and Jack 52. What happens to the other fifty??? What happens to the other fifty Vikas? I would have forgiven this movie a LOT if there had been a Vika in the crowd of refugees who showed up at the lake, but-well, if there was, I didn't see her, though I should probably double-check just in case. And for Julia, it was so very Tenth Doctor-I get it, I do, all the Jacks remember her and are in love with her and are the same person, their cloned love is so true! But I still say there's something creepy about handing her off to a spare Jack, assuming she'll be just as in love with him as she would be with any other Jack. There's no Watsonian reason for there to be only one Jack with the refugees! But the Doylist reason, I suspect, is because there's only one Julia to reward him with. Bleh.
And Edge of Tomorrow-I like Groundhog Day, both the movie and the trope, and there were a lot of fun and funny and awesome things in this movie. But a fundamental thing that I appreciate very highly about the original movie, in retrospect, is that Rita remembers the last loop. Not much, compared to the sheer number of loops Phil goes through, but it's something. Edge of Tomorrow!Rita doesn't even get that. And she could have, so very easily-hell, she could have remembered all of them. Just throw another rule on the pile that says anybody who's been connected to an alpha before remembers loops even when they aren't connected anymore; chuck the stupid angst about how ~hard~ it is for Tom Cruise that she never knows him any better than she did the first day, and give her the mystery of realizing somebody else is looping but not knowing who it is, needing to find Tom Cruise so she can explain it to him and get his ass in gear. They can both fall in love over the course of ten thousand of the same day; Rita can still be the one to tell Tom Cruise it doesn't matter how many times she dies, and can get her own angst because she remembers all her deaths just as well as Tom Cruise does. Have the ending gutpunch be more Wall-E than Source Code: does Rita remember, or is all of that lost? And then she does remember, says the last thing he said to her before the omega's death back to him, and they laugh/cry/hug while everybody around them wonders what the hell is going on. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO FUCKING EASY. DAMN YOU, EDGE OF TOMORROW. I liked 98% of that movie, but I am so goddamn bitter about the last 2% that I basically dislike the entire thing. Bleh.
And continuing the sci-fi, I also watched Guardians of the Galaxy. Which I liked very much! But in kind of a popcorn way. I liked the tone of it, that it was never taking itself too seriously and was willing to punch holes in its own most dramatic moments; I liked all the characters; and of course I'm so easy for the island-of-misfit-toys found-family thing, people who dislike each other at the start learning to work together and consider themselves a team. I guess mostly I felt like it kind of fell down on some of the characterization stuff-for Gamora especially, who's the linchpin for the transition from Orb-as-potential-source-of-profit to Orb-as-moral-duty except that I can't figure out when she made that transition herself. Her backstory is a good foundation, but she has been working for Thanos all the time since, presumably killing a great many people without flinching; it's not that I can't buy that destroying a planet is a way bigger deal and/or the last straw, just I didn't feel like the movie tried to sell it to me very coherently? Also, considering how comics-y everything else was, the Collector was unexpectedly awful; I was cheering for Carina to take the Orb and kill him, though I wish she hadn't had to die screaming to do it. But! Overall I enjoyed it and would totally watch it again. And have, in fact.
Not caught up on Sleepy Hollow; nothing to say about Major Crimes except oh, the Christmas episodes of Closerverse shows are SO RIDICULOUS AND DARLING. ♥ And the canon review I did for Yuletide has set off some kind of incredible Babylon 5 renaissance in my soul, just in time for babylon5-love's 2015 mini-rewatch! (The mini-rewatch episode list is here, for any interested parties.) I actually just finished marathoning Crusade (oh, god, the sfx and HI DANIEL DAE KIM), but luckily they're going chronologically, so I'll have a chance to work my way back around before watching Well of Forever again.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]
My parents saw Edge of Tomorrow in theaters, and then I think my mother got Oblivion via Netflix. My mother doesn't usually have particularly strong feelings about media; pretty much everything she watches is "good", unless a) she couldn't follow the plot, or b) it was something like 300, guts and death everywhere. My dad thought Edge of Tomorrow was BRILLIANT, and didn't much care for Oblivion.
I didn't much care for either of them.
I do think Oblivion is a worse movie by certain objective standards-Edge of Tomorrow's central conceit is way easier to grasp, and as long as you're willing to accept that single and fairly clear fundamental premise, the rest of the movie can be a perfectly fun ride. Oblivion has a lot more pieces of shaky logic that you need to choose to accept before anything makes sense, and that alone loses it points. (Really minor and yet most egregiously obvious, for me, was the repeatedly-mentioned detail that the destruction of the moon is what caused the cataclysms that supposedly rendered Earth's surface uninhabitable-followed by the lovingly-rendered CGI showing that the moon broke into pieces, 95% of which are seemingly still in the same place. Isn't that gravitationally pretty much the same as having a whole moon??? If the moon were gone, or had been reduced to a ring of dust, that would be enough for my suspension of disbelief. As it is, WOW DID THAT ANNOY ME A DISPROPORTIONATE AMOUNT.)
But, of course, where both of these movies failed the most for me was the ladies. I ended up feeling like Oblivion didn't really know who Vika was and didn't much care-except that she didn't like football and wasn't like Jack, didn't ~understand~ him, didn't care about the things he cared about, blah blah blah not actually his ~true love~. :P Seems to me like any professional astronaut willing to stop and take a selfie right before the most critical part of a mission can't possibly be a rule-bound fun-sucker-but that's what 90% of the movie needed from Vika, so that's who she was, inconsistency be damned. Julia was a cipher, which is bizarre considering she was the only one of the three major characters who actually had more than five years' worth of memories-we should know the most about her, really, but we don't. Instead, she's the token held up to explain just how fucking special Jack is; and then the one decision she actually makes is undone without permission or explanation, deliberately, while she's unconscious and can't object. GOOD. And then the ending was just-the two Jacks we meet are Jack 49 and Jack 52. What happens to the other fifty??? What happens to the other fifty Vikas? I would have forgiven this movie a LOT if there had been a Vika in the crowd of refugees who showed up at the lake, but-well, if there was, I didn't see her, though I should probably double-check just in case. And for Julia, it was so very Tenth Doctor-I get it, I do, all the Jacks remember her and are in love with her and are the same person, their cloned love is so true! But I still say there's something creepy about handing her off to a spare Jack, assuming she'll be just as in love with him as she would be with any other Jack. There's no Watsonian reason for there to be only one Jack with the refugees! But the Doylist reason, I suspect, is because there's only one Julia to reward him with. Bleh.
And Edge of Tomorrow-I like Groundhog Day, both the movie and the trope, and there were a lot of fun and funny and awesome things in this movie. But a fundamental thing that I appreciate very highly about the original movie, in retrospect, is that Rita remembers the last loop. Not much, compared to the sheer number of loops Phil goes through, but it's something. Edge of Tomorrow!Rita doesn't even get that. And she could have, so very easily-hell, she could have remembered all of them. Just throw another rule on the pile that says anybody who's been connected to an alpha before remembers loops even when they aren't connected anymore; chuck the stupid angst about how ~hard~ it is for Tom Cruise that she never knows him any better than she did the first day, and give her the mystery of realizing somebody else is looping but not knowing who it is, needing to find Tom Cruise so she can explain it to him and get his ass in gear. They can both fall in love over the course of ten thousand of the same day; Rita can still be the one to tell Tom Cruise it doesn't matter how many times she dies, and can get her own angst because she remembers all her deaths just as well as Tom Cruise does. Have the ending gutpunch be more Wall-E than Source Code: does Rita remember, or is all of that lost? And then she does remember, says the last thing he said to her before the omega's death back to him, and they laugh/cry/hug while everybody around them wonders what the hell is going on. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO FUCKING EASY. DAMN YOU, EDGE OF TOMORROW. I liked 98% of that movie, but I am so goddamn bitter about the last 2% that I basically dislike the entire thing. Bleh.
And continuing the sci-fi, I also watched Guardians of the Galaxy. Which I liked very much! But in kind of a popcorn way. I liked the tone of it, that it was never taking itself too seriously and was willing to punch holes in its own most dramatic moments; I liked all the characters; and of course I'm so easy for the island-of-misfit-toys found-family thing, people who dislike each other at the start learning to work together and consider themselves a team. I guess mostly I felt like it kind of fell down on some of the characterization stuff-for Gamora especially, who's the linchpin for the transition from Orb-as-potential-source-of-profit to Orb-as-moral-duty except that I can't figure out when she made that transition herself. Her backstory is a good foundation, but she has been working for Thanos all the time since, presumably killing a great many people without flinching; it's not that I can't buy that destroying a planet is a way bigger deal and/or the last straw, just I didn't feel like the movie tried to sell it to me very coherently? Also, considering how comics-y everything else was, the Collector was unexpectedly awful; I was cheering for Carina to take the Orb and kill him, though I wish she hadn't had to die screaming to do it. But! Overall I enjoyed it and would totally watch it again. And have, in fact.
Not caught up on Sleepy Hollow; nothing to say about Major Crimes except oh, the Christmas episodes of Closerverse shows are SO RIDICULOUS AND DARLING. ♥ And the canon review I did for Yuletide has set off some kind of incredible Babylon 5 renaissance in my soul, just in time for babylon5-love's 2015 mini-rewatch! (The mini-rewatch episode list is here, for any interested parties.) I actually just finished marathoning Crusade (oh, god, the sfx and HI DANIEL DAE KIM), but luckily they're going chronologically, so I'll have a chance to work my way back around before watching Well of Forever again.
[crossposted; original at Dreamwidth]