"Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms" Review (Spoilers)
Also reviews for the latest episodes of Marvel's What If...?, Chip 'N' Dale: Park Life, Pixar SparkShorts, Stargirl, and Supergirl.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms
I liked it, but I don't think I liked it as much as the first one. Liu Kang's mother getting brutally murdered in the opening scene REALLY turned me off, and the movie never fully won me back. Seriously gruesome and downright loathsome stuff.
Stryker's horrible death was not a surprise, but perhaps but Kung Lao and Raiden's deaths were. I think what bothered me most about Kung Lao's death is that it was comically gruesome. You want to play Stryker's death that way, that's one thing. To do that to Kung Lao is too much.
Joel McHale as Johnny Cage remains the franchise's MVP. As dark as things get, McHale is always making things tolerable. Cage died at some point in the games, but if the animated franchise is smart, they'll ignore that bit of canon history for the cartoon movies. I don't think any of these movies could work without him.
I am always fascinated by the fact that Scorpion is a good guy in these movies, and was really pleasantly surprised he made some sort of peace with what turned out to be the real Subzero. It was really cool.
The opening WB logo with Shaggy was fun too. Matthew Lillard was even billed in the credits.
Liu Kang turning into the Mortal Kombat dragon at the end sort of made me say "Aha!"
It was good, but it made some choices that I was not on-board with. ***1/2.
Kombat Gags: Gag Reel:
It's not an animated gag reel (which I would have loved) but animated outtakes of Joel McHale riffing. Him mentioning Community is weird because it seems like he's name-dropping it. His career is hardly dead enough that he needs to do that. He's not Mickey Rooney. Yet. ***.
Marvel's What If...? "What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?"
I didn't like this one. At all.
I understand the premise of "What If...?" is explicitly designed to ponder the worst-case-scenario to every time that question is asked. But that's a fault in the premise. The worst case scenario is never the most LIKELY scenario. And the most likely scenario is that neither Tony Stark nor Wakanda are ever dumb enough to fall for Killmonger's nonsense here. In order to build up Killmonger (who is if you ask me an underwhelming screen villain) they had to made the leaders of Wakanda and Tony act completely out of character and dumber than they actually are. I get that is the entire conceit of the premise. It's also why I was skeptical of the idea of this show going in.
We get our first full look of the Watcher here. He's white... Which is... weird considering Jeffrey Wright voices him.
Add to that another frustratingly unresolved ending, and I'm very unhappy. And I'll tell you the worst thing. The Watcher himself points out that Thanos can't be defeated without Tony Stark. I feel like both the Battle of New York, and the Snap box things in on the show entirely. Depending on when things go wrong, this means either Loki will wind up winning or Thanos does. The fact that the MCU has such a light canon compared to the comics, and that so much of that canon is of the Earth-shattering variety, means that there is little actually variety to the end points for all of these stories. Which is another reason I think the show was ill-advised. The actual answer to every What If...? question that's asked is "Thanos eventually wins.". That's not a very interesting variety of fates to hand the Universe and the characters.
I haven't dug an episode of this show since T'Challa was Starlord. It's turned out to be one of my least favorite MCU projects. *.
Chip 'N' Dale: Park Life "The Ghost / The Imperfect Crime / Nut Soup"
The Ghost:
The ending was weirdly dark. ***.
The Imperfect Crime:
This is essentially Weekend At Bernie's with a puppet. Chip and Dale are a little bit TOO dumb during it. **1/2.
Nut Soup:
The music is kinda funky. The ending is kinda gross. ***.
Episode Overall: ***.
Pixar SparkShorts "Twenty Something"
A female character of color is the lead? Interesting. 2-D cartoony animation? Interesting, Clearly adult-skewing tone? Interesting. All outside of Pixar.
And I'll tell you why the short failed. It's because of the one thing that IS Pixar. Pixar is always Pixar, and refuses to ever shut it off. No matter what the short or subject, Pixar will give it a high-concept allegory, and more often than not it sides less on the end of confusing and more on the end of incomprehensible. Without fail. There is a sweet short buried underneath the flashy premise here that is in reality nothing but an extended dream sequence. But Pixar refuses to explore adult issues, and instead goes with the Pixar high-concept. It can't help itself. After Bao I stopped giving the company the benefit of the doubt about shorts like that (and now this). Sometimes there isn't a deep meaning to an adult feeling like three children at once. Sometimes that idea is just confusing and makes no sense. *1/2.
Stargirl "Summer School: Chapter Six"
The ending of the little kid laughing and walking to the center of town was absolutely terrifying.
On some level, I'm relieved Mike is bait instead of Cindy's new recruit. By on another level I'm really annoyed. Because that's not what was set up in the previous episodes. It's a cop-out and the show is not playing fair with the viewer because of that fact. It was making us worry for nothing, which is uncool. I don't like that.
The fight between the heroes and villains was very well choreographed. It was quite excellent.
It was also neat to see Shade in the top hat and sunglasses.
Eclipso is a pretty nasty piece of work. Him making short work of the team of villains shows how powerful he is without handing the good guys the major loss. To be blunt, I think the villain kids super suck. Isaac and Artemis attacking Pat two-to-one out of his armor, at his lair no less, is completely dirty and out-of-bounds. I shed no tears for those kids and their various horrible fates.
Isaac is certainly dead. I don't think Artemis or Cindy are. At least not yet.
Surprisingly solid outing. Maybe I shouldn't be, but the show has sort of had me losing faith in it earlier in the season, and I'm glad to see things are back in shape. ****.
Supergirl "Mxy In The Middle"
This is going to be a negative review but I need to do a mea culpa before I start slamming it. In all honesty, if I liked the show, even a little bit, I would give that specific episode the benefit of the doubt. I would not give it an amazing review (for obvious reasons) but I don't think I'd cynically think it completely missed the marked. I'd accept it and move on. Since I've come to the point where I hate the series now, I need to readjust my expectations for what is and isn't an acceptable story here.
Lena's stuff. Absolutely unacceptable. Even if I liked the show, this is the one plot element I would hate unreservedly. Why? "It's Always Something With Lena." And it's always something stupid. And she is a very annoying character for that reason.
Mxy's musical number is something Thomas Lennon seems game for, and he did his best. It still doesn't work. Supergirl is NOT the show that can pull that moment off. It doesn't commit to it, it doesn't make me believe in the reality of it. It feels entirely cringe instead.
This goes for the giant cat defeated by the laser pointer too. Ordinarily that would be a hilarious idea. But for some reason there is nothing humorous about it when the show does it. Again, if this were a show I liked, I would be excusing those two things, if not delusionally claiming I liked them. It just doesn't work instead. This is not the show that can make those things work. And it never was.
12 Monkeys has done similarly crazy stuff with Jennifer Goines and always rocked it. Because it committed to the crazy. Here the cast themselves can barely keep a straight face. I get the appeal of Jimmy Fallon on SNL with his mugging and cracking up during sketches. I don't personally find him all that funny for it.
If this was good show I would accept that. I might even be crazy enough to defend it. Because the show sucks I recognize that failure for what it actually was instead. **.
Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle Of The Realms
I liked it, but I don't think I liked it as much as the first one. Liu Kang's mother getting brutally murdered in the opening scene REALLY turned me off, and the movie never fully won me back. Seriously gruesome and downright loathsome stuff.
Stryker's horrible death was not a surprise, but perhaps but Kung Lao and Raiden's deaths were. I think what bothered me most about Kung Lao's death is that it was comically gruesome. You want to play Stryker's death that way, that's one thing. To do that to Kung Lao is too much.
Joel McHale as Johnny Cage remains the franchise's MVP. As dark as things get, McHale is always making things tolerable. Cage died at some point in the games, but if the animated franchise is smart, they'll ignore that bit of canon history for the cartoon movies. I don't think any of these movies could work without him.
I am always fascinated by the fact that Scorpion is a good guy in these movies, and was really pleasantly surprised he made some sort of peace with what turned out to be the real Subzero. It was really cool.
The opening WB logo with Shaggy was fun too. Matthew Lillard was even billed in the credits.
Liu Kang turning into the Mortal Kombat dragon at the end sort of made me say "Aha!"
It was good, but it made some choices that I was not on-board with. ***1/2.
Kombat Gags: Gag Reel:
It's not an animated gag reel (which I would have loved) but animated outtakes of Joel McHale riffing. Him mentioning Community is weird because it seems like he's name-dropping it. His career is hardly dead enough that he needs to do that. He's not Mickey Rooney. Yet. ***.
Marvel's What If...? "What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?"
I didn't like this one. At all.
I understand the premise of "What If...?" is explicitly designed to ponder the worst-case-scenario to every time that question is asked. But that's a fault in the premise. The worst case scenario is never the most LIKELY scenario. And the most likely scenario is that neither Tony Stark nor Wakanda are ever dumb enough to fall for Killmonger's nonsense here. In order to build up Killmonger (who is if you ask me an underwhelming screen villain) they had to made the leaders of Wakanda and Tony act completely out of character and dumber than they actually are. I get that is the entire conceit of the premise. It's also why I was skeptical of the idea of this show going in.
We get our first full look of the Watcher here. He's white... Which is... weird considering Jeffrey Wright voices him.
Add to that another frustratingly unresolved ending, and I'm very unhappy. And I'll tell you the worst thing. The Watcher himself points out that Thanos can't be defeated without Tony Stark. I feel like both the Battle of New York, and the Snap box things in on the show entirely. Depending on when things go wrong, this means either Loki will wind up winning or Thanos does. The fact that the MCU has such a light canon compared to the comics, and that so much of that canon is of the Earth-shattering variety, means that there is little actually variety to the end points for all of these stories. Which is another reason I think the show was ill-advised. The actual answer to every What If...? question that's asked is "Thanos eventually wins.". That's not a very interesting variety of fates to hand the Universe and the characters.
I haven't dug an episode of this show since T'Challa was Starlord. It's turned out to be one of my least favorite MCU projects. *.
Chip 'N' Dale: Park Life "The Ghost / The Imperfect Crime / Nut Soup"
The Ghost:
The ending was weirdly dark. ***.
The Imperfect Crime:
This is essentially Weekend At Bernie's with a puppet. Chip and Dale are a little bit TOO dumb during it. **1/2.
Nut Soup:
The music is kinda funky. The ending is kinda gross. ***.
Episode Overall: ***.
Pixar SparkShorts "Twenty Something"
A female character of color is the lead? Interesting. 2-D cartoony animation? Interesting, Clearly adult-skewing tone? Interesting. All outside of Pixar.
And I'll tell you why the short failed. It's because of the one thing that IS Pixar. Pixar is always Pixar, and refuses to ever shut it off. No matter what the short or subject, Pixar will give it a high-concept allegory, and more often than not it sides less on the end of confusing and more on the end of incomprehensible. Without fail. There is a sweet short buried underneath the flashy premise here that is in reality nothing but an extended dream sequence. But Pixar refuses to explore adult issues, and instead goes with the Pixar high-concept. It can't help itself. After Bao I stopped giving the company the benefit of the doubt about shorts like that (and now this). Sometimes there isn't a deep meaning to an adult feeling like three children at once. Sometimes that idea is just confusing and makes no sense. *1/2.
Stargirl "Summer School: Chapter Six"
The ending of the little kid laughing and walking to the center of town was absolutely terrifying.
On some level, I'm relieved Mike is bait instead of Cindy's new recruit. By on another level I'm really annoyed. Because that's not what was set up in the previous episodes. It's a cop-out and the show is not playing fair with the viewer because of that fact. It was making us worry for nothing, which is uncool. I don't like that.
The fight between the heroes and villains was very well choreographed. It was quite excellent.
It was also neat to see Shade in the top hat and sunglasses.
Eclipso is a pretty nasty piece of work. Him making short work of the team of villains shows how powerful he is without handing the good guys the major loss. To be blunt, I think the villain kids super suck. Isaac and Artemis attacking Pat two-to-one out of his armor, at his lair no less, is completely dirty and out-of-bounds. I shed no tears for those kids and their various horrible fates.
Isaac is certainly dead. I don't think Artemis or Cindy are. At least not yet.
Surprisingly solid outing. Maybe I shouldn't be, but the show has sort of had me losing faith in it earlier in the season, and I'm glad to see things are back in shape. ****.
Supergirl "Mxy In The Middle"
This is going to be a negative review but I need to do a mea culpa before I start slamming it. In all honesty, if I liked the show, even a little bit, I would give that specific episode the benefit of the doubt. I would not give it an amazing review (for obvious reasons) but I don't think I'd cynically think it completely missed the marked. I'd accept it and move on. Since I've come to the point where I hate the series now, I need to readjust my expectations for what is and isn't an acceptable story here.
Lena's stuff. Absolutely unacceptable. Even if I liked the show, this is the one plot element I would hate unreservedly. Why? "It's Always Something With Lena." And it's always something stupid. And she is a very annoying character for that reason.
Mxy's musical number is something Thomas Lennon seems game for, and he did his best. It still doesn't work. Supergirl is NOT the show that can pull that moment off. It doesn't commit to it, it doesn't make me believe in the reality of it. It feels entirely cringe instead.
This goes for the giant cat defeated by the laser pointer too. Ordinarily that would be a hilarious idea. But for some reason there is nothing humorous about it when the show does it. Again, if this were a show I liked, I would be excusing those two things, if not delusionally claiming I liked them. It just doesn't work instead. This is not the show that can make those things work. And it never was.
12 Monkeys has done similarly crazy stuff with Jennifer Goines and always rocked it. Because it committed to the crazy. Here the cast themselves can barely keep a straight face. I get the appeal of Jimmy Fallon on SNL with his mugging and cracking up during sketches. I don't personally find him all that funny for it.
If this was good show I would accept that. I might even be crazy enough to defend it. Because the show sucks I recognize that failure for what it actually was instead. **.