Watching roundup, courtesty of Swiss Air
We are back home. I'm catching up on ~3.5 weeks of comments, some going back to my birthday, so don't be surprised if I respond to some very old comments or comment on some old posts. (I'm definitely not commenting on everything, and doing it haphazardly, and also not sure how long the backlog will take, so, like, bear with me.)
I watched several things on our transatlantic flights -- Swiss Air has a very nice entertainment library!
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves -- I've wanted to watch this ever since seeing mostly-positive reviews when the filmfirst came out, and it was definitely enjoyable and very charming. My knowledge of D&D is by osmosis from friends who play and Order of the Stick, but I mostly wanted to see the movie for Chris Pine, whom I find movie-carrying-ly charismatic in most things (Wonder Woman being the exception). And ChrisPine was fun and charming, but actually my favorite thing about the movie ended up being Holga the barbarian lady (my first time seeing Michelle Rodriguez in some thing, I think, though I was aware of her as an actress). spoilers from hereI loved the character, and the platonic chemistry between her and Pine -- and appreciated the fact that is stayed platonic, and that they and Pine's daughter were a family despite the fact that the two adults were emphatically not a couple. I also enjoyed Hugh Grant's antagonist, who was a very Hugh Grant character (and I liked Hugh Grant a lot back in the day) while also being terrible. Oh, and the deadpan paladin dude was quite funny, and his dynamic with Pine's character led me to wonder if they were the dominant ship to emerge from the movie -- and indeed they are, by >10x; like, I don't ship it myself, but I absolutely see why the fandom does (and by "don't ship it myself" I mean that I read a couple fics but I'm not, like, invested). The other characters were OK; I enjoyed some of the physical comedy with the sorcerer kid, and the shape-shifting special effects with the druid girl (although I have to agree with lunasariel that the movie didn't seem to know what to do with her, since she doesn't get an arc of her own, unlike everyone else, and what tiny bit of arc she does have is basically so that the sorcerer can get what HE wants, now that he's leveled up in confidence. And the red priests were creepy but pretty generic.
The humor worked for me quite well, especially the "interrogating the dead" scenes, and the failing illusion of the bard made me giggle aloud. Also Holga's halfling ex and his new lady was pretty funny but not in a way that felt mean-spirited. Actually in general I appreciated the way the humour was woven in with the emotional moments, like when Chris Pine's character delivers his apology about prioritizing trying to return his wife over what Kira actually needed not to Kira herself but to someone who looks like her. Even humour aside that arc worked pretty well for me, even though,as lunasariel pointed out, Kira herself is less of a character and more just another Macguffin, like the help and the tablet and whatever. I did think the late reveal that Edgin felt responsible for leading the red priests to his house because he'd stolen something explained the monomania, the dream and the perspective that just because his wife had died did not mean she was not existing on a different plane helped set up/justify that he was chasing the wrong goal, and using the tablet on Holga because that was what Kira actually needed more -- this was not a shocking twist, but the pathos felt earned. The action scenes tended to drag on for me a bit, but that generally happens when watching a movie on a tiny airplane screen, so I can't hold it against it.
So, yeah, that was fun! And I think this is currently my favorite movie I've seen in 2023, although that is admittedly a pretty short list.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 -- I heard mixed things about this movie when it first came out, although not in the usual way -- a lot of people loved it, thought it was the best Marvel movie of the last two phases and/or one of their favorite MCU films overall / their favorite Guardians film, but I also heard that the movie went kind of hard on the animal harm. That was enough to convince me not to try to watch it in theaters, but did leave me curious enough to watch it at all, which is something, considering I skipped Thor: Love and Thunder, Wakanda Forever, Quantumania, She-Hulk, and Secret Invasion, still have not bothered to catch up on Black Widow or Eternals, and have not watched a Marvel thing since Ms Marvel's finale over a year ago.
The animal harm was actually not too bad, compared to what I was braced for, though it probably helped to go in spoiled for which critters died and which did not. But while I enjoyed the movie to a reasonable degree, I didn't love it -- it is my least favorite of the three. Though, admittedly, it's also the one I watched in the least optimal way. When the first Guardians came out, the trailers made it look like not my thing, so we waited to watch it at home, and then all of us were pleasantly surprised by how much we loved it. So then we went to see GotG2 in theaters, and really liked it too. But it's probably not entirely fair to compare a movie I watched on a small entertainment screen on a 12 hour flight to those experiences. And probably even more impactfully, I'm in a different place with the MCU now -- the first two movies were kind of at the crest/hump of my enjoyment of the MCU (Avengers to Endgame/Spiderman: Far from Home, so 2012 to 2019), while this is emphatically not the case anymore. But also, I think it's just less my kind of movie, because this sub-franchise I prefer to be funny, and I specifically prefer Rocket (my favorite Guardian) to be funny, and he really wasn't here -- SPOILERS from here the present-day Rocket I like was mostly in a coma, and baby!Rocket was adorable (if a little improbable in what words he could pronounce correctly), but not funny. Drax and Mantis were still funny, and so weremy favorites this time around, especially Mantis, who had also been my favorite thing about the second movie. Nebula is usually my least favorite of this ensemble, and she certainly was here; Peter starting to flirt with her from Gamora withdrawal was amusing, but not because of her. Speaking of Peter and Gamora, I'm very glad that Gamora was allowed to not get together with Peter and continue to maintain she was a different person than the GotG1/2!Gamora, with relationships of her own, and did not need to be fixed by becoming her. Peter continuing to pine after her for most of the movie is very believable, and I like that she comes around on the Guardians as a unit, as symbolized by her learning to understand Groot, and Peter as a person, but does not stay with them. I mean, the door is certainly left open for eventual Peter/Gamora, but it doesn't seem inevitable, and it wasn't instant, and I'm already glad about that. The OG Guardians going their separate ways, and a new team coalescing around Rocket and Groot, worked OK for me; I do like that Drax gets to be a dad, and Mantis goes off on her own with her horrible monster critters, and Peter returns to Earth to get some closure -- all of that made sense (and Nebula will build a society, which, good for her, even though I personally don't care).
Of the newly introduced characters/characters in expanded roles, the MVP was definitely Cosmo. It's only taken MCU 32 movies to crack the code of casting in a Russian-speaking role an actor who can actually pronounce the language (I know Bakalova is Bulgarian, and not sure if she actually speaks Russian or can just pronounce the words properly, but this was so much better than ScarJo/Bucky/dude from Iron Man 2/etc nonsense). And points for using "mudak" in dialogue -- dunno if they also hired a Russian writer or if this was an ad lib or what, but this might have been my favorite "Russian character in a big movie" thing since Anton Yelchin (:((() as Chekov. (This probably means I should watch the holiday special?) The whole "bad dog" thing between Cosmo and Kraglin was pretty juvenile and one-note, but still amusing. I was also reasonably amused by Adam Warlock while he was on screen, although I kept forgetting about him whenever he wasn't.
The antagonist I found boring and his motivations just kind of... smudged. None of the stuff we could see him doing/having done could plausibly lead to his stated goal of evolutionary perfection, but when Rocket delivers the "you just hated things the way they are" line, it also rang false to me, because it felt like the antagonist had no coherent motivation at all -- he just did stuff that would suitably tug at the heartstrings in the past or put Our Heroes in jeopardy in the present. I kind of liked that his underling turned on him and tried to get some sensible actions going, through it didn't work out well for her. And Nathan Fillion in the security role was just kind of eh; I usually find him amusing at worst, but not here.
Randomly: Teefs the walrus was apparently voiced by Asim Chaudhry (whom I know from Taskmaster s6), who just keeps showing up in things (like Sandman, although that did also have Munya, so it wasn't AS random) and surprising me there.
Free Guy -- I remember seeing the trailers (was this really 2021??? it feels like this was just happening, but what is time) and thinking this looked charming, on account of Ryan Reynolds. And, indeed, the movie is charming on account of Ryan Reynolds. In general I liked the part of the story that was set in the video game world, Reynolds' interaction with spoilers from here the other characters showing growths (e.g. the barista and the bombshell), and the Dude was basically one-note but still made me smile. Out in the real world, Taika Waititi was also really entertaining as the evil tech guy/terrible boss. And one of the first actors I clocked was Mouser the tech support guy and I was like, "it's Jay from [US] Ghosts!" -- and he was also reasonably entertaining, although I kept waiting for him to have more of an arc than he did. I actually did not realize until the credits that the same actress was playing Milly in the real world and her avatar in the game, so that was impressive.But while I enjoyed the video game world (despite not playing video games myself and not having any interest in them), the things happening in the real world worked a lot less well for me. First, I just didn't like Keys -- I didn't find him believable as an MIT grad/game developer, I didn't feel any chemistry between him and, well, anyone, but most problematically Milly. I mean, it's difficult to compete with Ryan Reynolds, but if you are going to structure your movie so that the girl ends up with someone other than Ryan Reynolds, that person better be able to match him in charisma, and, just, no.
I totally get that you can't have the movie end with a human girl/AI video game character (that she helped create) romance, and that's fine -- I actually don't need/want Guy/Millie (a bit too Pygmalion anyway), I'm OK with her just being the catalyst to Guy's and then transitively the other NPCs' awakening. But Guy's arc works just fine without an endgame romance, with the arc's completion being reunion with Buddy and the blossoming of the NPC community within the new game. I would've been absolutely fine with Millie's arc being a mirror of that one -- reconnecting with Keys platonically, creating something new together as part of a community. And it is kind of happening also, but as an offscreen afterthought, taking a back seat to the romance part of Millie/Keys that I wasn't feeling at all. It is certainly foreshadowed with that early interview where the reporter asks (very unprofessionally) if they are an item and they both deny it (he in a doth protest too much way), and Guy being a "love letter" from Keys to Millie is on paper a clever solution to the part where the script needs her to switch her affections from one guy to the other, but I just find it kind of icky rather than romantic as a concept, programming a character to find irresistible the girl you like. And it also makes Millie look like an idiot that she never noticed how Keys felt about her and also that this is all it takes for her to start thinking about him the same way. Like, I get that these are standard romance tropes, but I don't like them to begin with, and having them shorthanded like this for a "twist" ending with no effort to justify them makes me dislike them even more.
In general, I think,the movie had a bit of an issue due to mixing the over-the-top, Rule of Cool zaninenss of the in-game sequences with the real-world stuff. The real-world stuff worked fine for me as long as it was being played for laughs -- so, pretty much anything Taika Waititi was doing (except for the bit where he was hacking at the servers with an axe and I kept thinking, but surely you have backups stored offsite, like any normal company, although admittedly I cannot see Antwan being terribly interested in BCP or listening to people who are), most of Mouser's schtick, Blue Shirt Guy becoming a worldwide phenomenon (the little Japanese boy dressed up as him was very cute) -- but any time it tried to engage with something more serious or emotional or real-world (which was infrequently, to be fair), that just snapped my suspension of disbelief -- Keys and Millie, as mentioned above, Millie talking about the swings, the movie for some reason raising the question of why Keys is working in the Soonami tech support department, which I was rolling along with happily until Mouser asked that question, and then was like, wait, why is he, the answer that he has MIT student loans or whatever makes very little sense if he and Millie sold their game to Antwan, but even if they got screwed in that deal, developers generally don't have problems finding jobs, and if he's doing it for the money,then why not take the higher paid position Antwan keeps offering him? I can come up with elaborate explanations about burnout and feeling like he can only work creatively with Millie, but I wouldn't have to if the question had never been raised. And then I also wouldn't have to boggle at Mouser's response wherein student loans are apparently a white privilege problem? IDK... The other thing about the real world component of the movie, though, is that other than Millie and Keys, and Antwan's antagonist, everyone is just really passive. I kept expecting the "art nerds" to do something, or the Soonami security guards to be inspired by Buddy and take the axe way from Antwan, or something, but nothing like that happened. If that's an intentional message about corporations turning real people into NPCs, that's bleak, but I guess I can respect the artistic vision, but I didn't get enough of a sense that it was this, vs just a lack of interest in the non-game background cast...
Random thoughts:
One of my favorite moments was Guy using Captain America's shield and a lightsaber in a climactic fight (and the Chris Evans cameo) -- I guess that's the upside of Disney owning everything these days, although it did also make me wonder how it was explained in universe that lightsabers and MCU stuff were available in Free City (and I guess all the video game stuff that I just didn't recognize. I mean, it doesn't matter how, because it's funny, but I did wonder.)
Because I'm not in the world of video games, I didn't recognize any of the real video game people in the cameos, but I could tell they were references, so it still kind of worked.
Well, anyway, this was cute if uneven. A good airplane movie!
80 for Brady -- a thing I care about even less than video games is American football, which means I care about it a negative amount. Also, I am specifically annoyed by Tom Brady because of the Hertz EV commercials which YouTube keeps throwing at me, and they are so stupid and also did not impress me with Brady's acting ability. But I was seeing the trailers for this on YouTube, and it actually looked really cute, and I have a lot of residual fondness for Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda from Grace and Frankie, plus it's just kind of neat to see a movie where the leads are four women over 75 (Rita Morena is 91! O.o) so I was curious to check it out once I ran out of my more usual fare. And actually surprisingly enjoyed it, purely on the strength of the actresses. The script has a lot of hijinks and things that are sort of set up to be funny, and I didn't find any of them all that funny, but the leads are just really fun to watch even with a mediocre script. My favorite ended up being Betty, played by Sally Field, whom I don't remember from other things (though I know I've seen her in some), but I enjoyed her math nerdery and spoilers I guess the arc she had of getting her absent-minded professor husband to be less dependent on her. I also enjoyed Jane Fonda's character's quirks (although the idea that you could publish erotic RPF professionally is... interesting XD) and Rita Morena's character's gambling prowess (she played poker so she could win money back for her late husband to be able to keep playing). Lily Tomlin's Lou reminded me a fair bit of Frankie, just toned down a bunch, but that's not really a complaint. I fell for the thing at the end where it's set up to imply that maybe Lou is no longer there to celebrate with the others, which seemed kinda cheap, but I was glad to see the lot of them still around. The actual football scenes were both incomprehensible and boring to me, but that was a fairly small portion of the movie. I also find it kind of weird that Tom Brady produced this movie in which a bunch of people talk about how hot and amazing and inspiring he is, but, *shrug* The movie says it was "inspired by a true story", but looking it up later, the extent of the true story is that there was a group of ladies over 80 who got together to watch Tom Brady games, and did indeed call themselves the "Over 80 for Brady Club", and the grandson of one of them pitched the movie idea; attending a Superbowl and of course the assorted hijinks are completely made up.
Strange World -- I started watching this on the flight to Europe, actually, but either fell asleep or ran out of time, I can't remember. I was not impressed enough to go right back to it on the return flight, but once I finished watching all the things I was more interested in, I did decide I might as well finish. And, meh. First, I guess we are continuing the generational trauma sequence of Disney movies, only with father/son relationships this time. I liked it a lot less than Encanto (which had a more nuanced story, cute critters, and a songs), and less than Seeing Red (which had a cute critter and some funny bits). I did not find any of these critters cute (with good reason, but still), and I found the messages preachy and simplistic -- both the generational trauma message, which was just kind of dumped straight text with no nuance or storytelling finesse, and the environmental message, which was just really heavy-handed, with implausible outcomes (I'm sure spoilers if society were just to give up electricity we would all be living in harmony with nature with the aid of some hot air balloons and tiny wind thingies). I did like the way Ethan being queer was handled -- not just the matter-of-factness of the way his crush on a boy is introduced, but the way his father is overly earnestly trying to bond with Ethan's crush, and his grandfather doesn't bat an eye at Ethan's "sweetheart" being a fellow but tries to give terrible relationship advice. But on the whole this was forgettable and kind of annoying.
I also watched the first five episodes of Our Flag Means Death, which was reasonably fun but I don't feel hooked. I liked Stede (character and costumes), and it was really weird to see Taika Waititi a) with a giant beard and b) playing a pretty different character than I had just seen in Free Guy). I don't have much to say about any of the other characters. I guess I liked Jim best of the secondaries? And apparently Guz Khan was there? but I totally did not recognize him.
I watched several things on our transatlantic flights -- Swiss Air has a very nice entertainment library!
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves -- I've wanted to watch this ever since seeing mostly-positive reviews when the filmfirst came out, and it was definitely enjoyable and very charming. My knowledge of D&D is by osmosis from friends who play and Order of the Stick, but I mostly wanted to see the movie for Chris Pine, whom I find movie-carrying-ly charismatic in most things (Wonder Woman being the exception). And ChrisPine was fun and charming, but actually my favorite thing about the movie ended up being Holga the barbarian lady (my first time seeing Michelle Rodriguez in some thing, I think, though I was aware of her as an actress). spoilers from hereI loved the character, and the platonic chemistry between her and Pine -- and appreciated the fact that is stayed platonic, and that they and Pine's daughter were a family despite the fact that the two adults were emphatically not a couple. I also enjoyed Hugh Grant's antagonist, who was a very Hugh Grant character (and I liked Hugh Grant a lot back in the day) while also being terrible. Oh, and the deadpan paladin dude was quite funny, and his dynamic with Pine's character led me to wonder if they were the dominant ship to emerge from the movie -- and indeed they are, by >10x; like, I don't ship it myself, but I absolutely see why the fandom does (and by "don't ship it myself" I mean that I read a couple fics but I'm not, like, invested). The other characters were OK; I enjoyed some of the physical comedy with the sorcerer kid, and the shape-shifting special effects with the druid girl (although I have to agree with lunasariel that the movie didn't seem to know what to do with her, since she doesn't get an arc of her own, unlike everyone else, and what tiny bit of arc she does have is basically so that the sorcerer can get what HE wants, now that he's leveled up in confidence. And the red priests were creepy but pretty generic.
The humor worked for me quite well, especially the "interrogating the dead" scenes, and the failing illusion of the bard made me giggle aloud. Also Holga's halfling ex and his new lady was pretty funny but not in a way that felt mean-spirited. Actually in general I appreciated the way the humour was woven in with the emotional moments, like when Chris Pine's character delivers his apology about prioritizing trying to return his wife over what Kira actually needed not to Kira herself but to someone who looks like her. Even humour aside that arc worked pretty well for me, even though,as lunasariel pointed out, Kira herself is less of a character and more just another Macguffin, like the help and the tablet and whatever. I did think the late reveal that Edgin felt responsible for leading the red priests to his house because he'd stolen something explained the monomania, the dream and the perspective that just because his wife had died did not mean she was not existing on a different plane helped set up/justify that he was chasing the wrong goal, and using the tablet on Holga because that was what Kira actually needed more -- this was not a shocking twist, but the pathos felt earned. The action scenes tended to drag on for me a bit, but that generally happens when watching a movie on a tiny airplane screen, so I can't hold it against it.
So, yeah, that was fun! And I think this is currently my favorite movie I've seen in 2023, although that is admittedly a pretty short list.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 -- I heard mixed things about this movie when it first came out, although not in the usual way -- a lot of people loved it, thought it was the best Marvel movie of the last two phases and/or one of their favorite MCU films overall / their favorite Guardians film, but I also heard that the movie went kind of hard on the animal harm. That was enough to convince me not to try to watch it in theaters, but did leave me curious enough to watch it at all, which is something, considering I skipped Thor: Love and Thunder, Wakanda Forever, Quantumania, She-Hulk, and Secret Invasion, still have not bothered to catch up on Black Widow or Eternals, and have not watched a Marvel thing since Ms Marvel's finale over a year ago.
The animal harm was actually not too bad, compared to what I was braced for, though it probably helped to go in spoiled for which critters died and which did not. But while I enjoyed the movie to a reasonable degree, I didn't love it -- it is my least favorite of the three. Though, admittedly, it's also the one I watched in the least optimal way. When the first Guardians came out, the trailers made it look like not my thing, so we waited to watch it at home, and then all of us were pleasantly surprised by how much we loved it. So then we went to see GotG2 in theaters, and really liked it too. But it's probably not entirely fair to compare a movie I watched on a small entertainment screen on a 12 hour flight to those experiences. And probably even more impactfully, I'm in a different place with the MCU now -- the first two movies were kind of at the crest/hump of my enjoyment of the MCU (Avengers to Endgame/Spiderman: Far from Home, so 2012 to 2019), while this is emphatically not the case anymore. But also, I think it's just less my kind of movie, because this sub-franchise I prefer to be funny, and I specifically prefer Rocket (my favorite Guardian) to be funny, and he really wasn't here -- SPOILERS from here the present-day Rocket I like was mostly in a coma, and baby!Rocket was adorable (if a little improbable in what words he could pronounce correctly), but not funny. Drax and Mantis were still funny, and so weremy favorites this time around, especially Mantis, who had also been my favorite thing about the second movie. Nebula is usually my least favorite of this ensemble, and she certainly was here; Peter starting to flirt with her from Gamora withdrawal was amusing, but not because of her. Speaking of Peter and Gamora, I'm very glad that Gamora was allowed to not get together with Peter and continue to maintain she was a different person than the GotG1/2!Gamora, with relationships of her own, and did not need to be fixed by becoming her. Peter continuing to pine after her for most of the movie is very believable, and I like that she comes around on the Guardians as a unit, as symbolized by her learning to understand Groot, and Peter as a person, but does not stay with them. I mean, the door is certainly left open for eventual Peter/Gamora, but it doesn't seem inevitable, and it wasn't instant, and I'm already glad about that. The OG Guardians going their separate ways, and a new team coalescing around Rocket and Groot, worked OK for me; I do like that Drax gets to be a dad, and Mantis goes off on her own with her horrible monster critters, and Peter returns to Earth to get some closure -- all of that made sense (and Nebula will build a society, which, good for her, even though I personally don't care).
Of the newly introduced characters/characters in expanded roles, the MVP was definitely Cosmo. It's only taken MCU 32 movies to crack the code of casting in a Russian-speaking role an actor who can actually pronounce the language (I know Bakalova is Bulgarian, and not sure if she actually speaks Russian or can just pronounce the words properly, but this was so much better than ScarJo/Bucky/dude from Iron Man 2/etc nonsense). And points for using "mudak" in dialogue -- dunno if they also hired a Russian writer or if this was an ad lib or what, but this might have been my favorite "Russian character in a big movie" thing since Anton Yelchin (:((() as Chekov. (This probably means I should watch the holiday special?) The whole "bad dog" thing between Cosmo and Kraglin was pretty juvenile and one-note, but still amusing. I was also reasonably amused by Adam Warlock while he was on screen, although I kept forgetting about him whenever he wasn't.
The antagonist I found boring and his motivations just kind of... smudged. None of the stuff we could see him doing/having done could plausibly lead to his stated goal of evolutionary perfection, but when Rocket delivers the "you just hated things the way they are" line, it also rang false to me, because it felt like the antagonist had no coherent motivation at all -- he just did stuff that would suitably tug at the heartstrings in the past or put Our Heroes in jeopardy in the present. I kind of liked that his underling turned on him and tried to get some sensible actions going, through it didn't work out well for her. And Nathan Fillion in the security role was just kind of eh; I usually find him amusing at worst, but not here.
Randomly: Teefs the walrus was apparently voiced by Asim Chaudhry (whom I know from Taskmaster s6), who just keeps showing up in things (like Sandman, although that did also have Munya, so it wasn't AS random) and surprising me there.
Free Guy -- I remember seeing the trailers (was this really 2021??? it feels like this was just happening, but what is time) and thinking this looked charming, on account of Ryan Reynolds. And, indeed, the movie is charming on account of Ryan Reynolds. In general I liked the part of the story that was set in the video game world, Reynolds' interaction with spoilers from here the other characters showing growths (e.g. the barista and the bombshell), and the Dude was basically one-note but still made me smile. Out in the real world, Taika Waititi was also really entertaining as the evil tech guy/terrible boss. And one of the first actors I clocked was Mouser the tech support guy and I was like, "it's Jay from [US] Ghosts!" -- and he was also reasonably entertaining, although I kept waiting for him to have more of an arc than he did. I actually did not realize until the credits that the same actress was playing Milly in the real world and her avatar in the game, so that was impressive.But while I enjoyed the video game world (despite not playing video games myself and not having any interest in them), the things happening in the real world worked a lot less well for me. First, I just didn't like Keys -- I didn't find him believable as an MIT grad/game developer, I didn't feel any chemistry between him and, well, anyone, but most problematically Milly. I mean, it's difficult to compete with Ryan Reynolds, but if you are going to structure your movie so that the girl ends up with someone other than Ryan Reynolds, that person better be able to match him in charisma, and, just, no.
I totally get that you can't have the movie end with a human girl/AI video game character (that she helped create) romance, and that's fine -- I actually don't need/want Guy/Millie (a bit too Pygmalion anyway), I'm OK with her just being the catalyst to Guy's and then transitively the other NPCs' awakening. But Guy's arc works just fine without an endgame romance, with the arc's completion being reunion with Buddy and the blossoming of the NPC community within the new game. I would've been absolutely fine with Millie's arc being a mirror of that one -- reconnecting with Keys platonically, creating something new together as part of a community. And it is kind of happening also, but as an offscreen afterthought, taking a back seat to the romance part of Millie/Keys that I wasn't feeling at all. It is certainly foreshadowed with that early interview where the reporter asks (very unprofessionally) if they are an item and they both deny it (he in a doth protest too much way), and Guy being a "love letter" from Keys to Millie is on paper a clever solution to the part where the script needs her to switch her affections from one guy to the other, but I just find it kind of icky rather than romantic as a concept, programming a character to find irresistible the girl you like. And it also makes Millie look like an idiot that she never noticed how Keys felt about her and also that this is all it takes for her to start thinking about him the same way. Like, I get that these are standard romance tropes, but I don't like them to begin with, and having them shorthanded like this for a "twist" ending with no effort to justify them makes me dislike them even more.
In general, I think,the movie had a bit of an issue due to mixing the over-the-top, Rule of Cool zaninenss of the in-game sequences with the real-world stuff. The real-world stuff worked fine for me as long as it was being played for laughs -- so, pretty much anything Taika Waititi was doing (except for the bit where he was hacking at the servers with an axe and I kept thinking, but surely you have backups stored offsite, like any normal company, although admittedly I cannot see Antwan being terribly interested in BCP or listening to people who are), most of Mouser's schtick, Blue Shirt Guy becoming a worldwide phenomenon (the little Japanese boy dressed up as him was very cute) -- but any time it tried to engage with something more serious or emotional or real-world (which was infrequently, to be fair), that just snapped my suspension of disbelief -- Keys and Millie, as mentioned above, Millie talking about the swings, the movie for some reason raising the question of why Keys is working in the Soonami tech support department, which I was rolling along with happily until Mouser asked that question, and then was like, wait, why is he, the answer that he has MIT student loans or whatever makes very little sense if he and Millie sold their game to Antwan, but even if they got screwed in that deal, developers generally don't have problems finding jobs, and if he's doing it for the money,then why not take the higher paid position Antwan keeps offering him? I can come up with elaborate explanations about burnout and feeling like he can only work creatively with Millie, but I wouldn't have to if the question had never been raised. And then I also wouldn't have to boggle at Mouser's response wherein student loans are apparently a white privilege problem? IDK... The other thing about the real world component of the movie, though, is that other than Millie and Keys, and Antwan's antagonist, everyone is just really passive. I kept expecting the "art nerds" to do something, or the Soonami security guards to be inspired by Buddy and take the axe way from Antwan, or something, but nothing like that happened. If that's an intentional message about corporations turning real people into NPCs, that's bleak, but I guess I can respect the artistic vision, but I didn't get enough of a sense that it was this, vs just a lack of interest in the non-game background cast...
Random thoughts:
One of my favorite moments was Guy using Captain America's shield and a lightsaber in a climactic fight (and the Chris Evans cameo) -- I guess that's the upside of Disney owning everything these days, although it did also make me wonder how it was explained in universe that lightsabers and MCU stuff were available in Free City (and I guess all the video game stuff that I just didn't recognize. I mean, it doesn't matter how, because it's funny, but I did wonder.)
Because I'm not in the world of video games, I didn't recognize any of the real video game people in the cameos, but I could tell they were references, so it still kind of worked.
Well, anyway, this was cute if uneven. A good airplane movie!
80 for Brady -- a thing I care about even less than video games is American football, which means I care about it a negative amount. Also, I am specifically annoyed by Tom Brady because of the Hertz EV commercials which YouTube keeps throwing at me, and they are so stupid and also did not impress me with Brady's acting ability. But I was seeing the trailers for this on YouTube, and it actually looked really cute, and I have a lot of residual fondness for Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda from Grace and Frankie, plus it's just kind of neat to see a movie where the leads are four women over 75 (Rita Morena is 91! O.o) so I was curious to check it out once I ran out of my more usual fare. And actually surprisingly enjoyed it, purely on the strength of the actresses. The script has a lot of hijinks and things that are sort of set up to be funny, and I didn't find any of them all that funny, but the leads are just really fun to watch even with a mediocre script. My favorite ended up being Betty, played by Sally Field, whom I don't remember from other things (though I know I've seen her in some), but I enjoyed her math nerdery and spoilers I guess the arc she had of getting her absent-minded professor husband to be less dependent on her. I also enjoyed Jane Fonda's character's quirks (although the idea that you could publish erotic RPF professionally is... interesting XD) and Rita Morena's character's gambling prowess (she played poker so she could win money back for her late husband to be able to keep playing). Lily Tomlin's Lou reminded me a fair bit of Frankie, just toned down a bunch, but that's not really a complaint. I fell for the thing at the end where it's set up to imply that maybe Lou is no longer there to celebrate with the others, which seemed kinda cheap, but I was glad to see the lot of them still around. The actual football scenes were both incomprehensible and boring to me, but that was a fairly small portion of the movie. I also find it kind of weird that Tom Brady produced this movie in which a bunch of people talk about how hot and amazing and inspiring he is, but, *shrug* The movie says it was "inspired by a true story", but looking it up later, the extent of the true story is that there was a group of ladies over 80 who got together to watch Tom Brady games, and did indeed call themselves the "Over 80 for Brady Club", and the grandson of one of them pitched the movie idea; attending a Superbowl and of course the assorted hijinks are completely made up.
Strange World -- I started watching this on the flight to Europe, actually, but either fell asleep or ran out of time, I can't remember. I was not impressed enough to go right back to it on the return flight, but once I finished watching all the things I was more interested in, I did decide I might as well finish. And, meh. First, I guess we are continuing the generational trauma sequence of Disney movies, only with father/son relationships this time. I liked it a lot less than Encanto (which had a more nuanced story, cute critters, and a songs), and less than Seeing Red (which had a cute critter and some funny bits). I did not find any of these critters cute (with good reason, but still), and I found the messages preachy and simplistic -- both the generational trauma message, which was just kind of dumped straight text with no nuance or storytelling finesse, and the environmental message, which was just really heavy-handed, with implausible outcomes (I'm sure spoilers if society were just to give up electricity we would all be living in harmony with nature with the aid of some hot air balloons and tiny wind thingies). I did like the way Ethan being queer was handled -- not just the matter-of-factness of the way his crush on a boy is introduced, but the way his father is overly earnestly trying to bond with Ethan's crush, and his grandfather doesn't bat an eye at Ethan's "sweetheart" being a fellow but tries to give terrible relationship advice. But on the whole this was forgettable and kind of annoying.
I also watched the first five episodes of Our Flag Means Death, which was reasonably fun but I don't feel hooked. I liked Stede (character and costumes), and it was really weird to see Taika Waititi a) with a giant beard and b) playing a pretty different character than I had just seen in Free Guy). I don't have much to say about any of the other characters. I guess I liked Jim best of the secondaries? And apparently Guz Khan was there? but I totally did not recognize him.