Review of Venom (2018) + little rant

I just finished watching Venom, its the first movie I've watched in a while, and not to say it was bad, but it reminded me of why I lost interest in cinema. I'll get to that later, for now, let's focus on the movie.

Venom is a decent movie, I wouldn't say it's bad, but I also wouldn't say it's good. I don't know if it's because I've been watching very expressive shows lately, but watching venom made me feel like I was staring at a white wall. Every shot is so clean and stable and smooth, I would understand that in peaceful scenes, but the entire movie is like that, which is kind of jarring. To be fair, the fight scenes had some better camera work, but there were always so many cuts, that it made the fights look strange as well.

Most scenes felt rushed, almost all of them felt meaningless. For the most part, it didn't really feel like I was watching a movie that had a purpose and a story to tell, it mostly just felt like a generic superhero movie that was doing the things it was doing for no narrative reason, but more so because that's what it's supposed to do as a superhero movie.

What I'm trying to say is that it's a very safe and bland movie, perfectly engineered to be watched and loved by the masses and whoever just wants to turn off their brain and watch violent fight scenes. I'm not judging or trying to be disrespectful, I just personally didn't find much to be enjoyed in the movie myself, but I have found time and time again that most people wouldn't agree with my taste.

One thing I did very much enjoy, was the dynamic between Eddie and Venom, and it's quite sad we don't get to see much of it. If it were me, I'd shorten the boring fight scenes and chase scenes and have more moments where Eddie and Venom get to talk with each other. Though I think that should be a very easy thing to figure out, its a movie about them coming together, doing things together, and coming to accept and respect each other, if that were to be the core of the movie, my suggestion would sound obvious, which leads me to believe that that was not the purpose of the movie. Like I said, it doesn't feel like the movie has a story to tell, just an audience to appeal to.

Now, the thing that I believe brings the movie down the most and, like I said, reminded me of why I lost interest in cinema, is the timing and build-up. Movies can be good and can use all of their time perfectly, I personally find it limited since you can do it well, but not much of it. So in movies like Venom, where time is not used well and the build-up is not good, it is no longer a limitation, it is a problem, most of the scenes in venom feel like they could be edited out since most of them don't serve any real purpose.

Just to make it clear, Movies are a very good and interesting media format, but it's very limited in their storytelling, in a way that isn't an issue in longer media, like series. Just like Live action is limited compared to animation, movies are limited compared to series, that isn't to say that any of them are bad, but I personally appreciate media a lot more when there's more nuance to it, more things to analyze, break down and ultimately love or hate.

On the other hand, every now and then, there are movies that manage to accomplish so much with so little time, and that definitely feels impressive and special. But it's not every day we get movies like that, and Venom certainly wasn't one of them. I wouldn't really recommend this movie to anyone who isn't a fan of superhero movies, but I wouldn't stop anyone either. It's not a bad movie, just bland and boring.

Sincerely, Spoon.

Thoughts on Arcane

As of right now, I've rewatched each episode a handful of times and ill probably rewatch more.

I was really excited about reviewing this series as I watched it, but when I finished it I realized this is a show that I don't have anything to say about.

It's perfect, that's pretty much all I'm able to say. Everything is just so good, the writing, the animation, the choreography, the special effects, the dialogue, the music, the sound effects, the themes and approaches to said themes. It's all just outstanding.

By now it shouldn't surprise us that riot would make something on this level of quality, they have never been shy about investing money into anything. They have branched out into music, comics, and now a freaking TV show. They have always made impeccable animated cinematic trailers for the game, but it's a big leap, going from 5 minutes to 360~ minutes. And yet, most people would argue it's even better than the trailers. It may not look "realistic" like a lot of their trailers, but I think Arcane's animation is much more beautiful and satisfying to watch. And finding out all these little details, like how the characters are animated on 1s and the special effects on 2s. Just brilliant.

I also really love the characters, they are amazingly written and very well explored. Powders descent into being Jinx is really well done, the trauma was there from the beginning, but seeing it progressively get worse is incredibly sad and intriguing.

It would be hard to choose a favourite character, all of the protagonists are amazing in their own way, but putting champions aside, my favourite character would definitely be Silco, everything about him is so good, and he is the embodiment of doing well, not doing much. He is a busy man so most of his interactions with other characters end up being very short, but the dialogue is good, Silco manages to get his point across very quickly with minor effort.

Something I found strange was how so many people called the ending a cliffhanger. To me personally, I found the ending to be a very satisfying conclusion. Everything went full circle and (almost) every character fulfilled their purpose (I'll get to that in a second).

I can't move on without spoiling so here's your spoiler warning.

To go over the main characters of this season of arcane, we have Vi, Caitlyn, Jinx, Markus, and Silco. Ekko, Heimerdinger, Viktor, Jayce, and Mel are propper main characters but they don't have a role to play in the "main" conflict of this season which revolves mostly around Jinx, Vi, and Silco. I imagine they will have more important roles in season 2 given that season 1 perfectly concluded its themes and conflicts.

Vi has always been who she was meant to be. the trauma for her made her grow up fast in order to protect Powder and provide whatever she would need, her purpose was to be a callback to the past, a memory, and a symbol of hope that things could go back to what they were, given that she had already grown a lot in act 1 and was in prison without much contact until act 2, she wasn't meant to get much development. the only development she needed was realizing her way of dealing with things isn't good nor bad, she just needs to find the right time and place.

For Silco and Markus, despite having a very different dynamic, their journey is very similar, as both try to do what their predecessors did, try to do it differently in hopes of doing it better, doing it wrong, and then trying to fix the broken by doing what their predecessors would have done, only for it to be too late at that point.

Caitlyn was there.

(JK, I love Caitlyn and her purpose as a character is very dear to me, but not relevant enough to elaborate here)

Jinx is, in a strange way, almost the protagonist of this season, as most of the stuff that happens is almost directly connected to her. And yet she gets the least development throughout the show, we mostly just see a poor broken girl trying to be what she always hoped to become while trying to disassociate from the repercussions of such. We don't really see her change throughout, and that's the point, she never grew up, she is still the little girl she was in act 1. That becomes evidently clear during the climax scene when Jinx prepared the most important confrontation in her life as a colorful tea party, but it's hinted at many times before as well.

Arcane has crows in a bunch of scenes with Jinx. Crows are a symbol of change and transformation. After testing hextech and having flashbacks of that tragic day in act 1, Jinx decides to go back to where they used to play. there she finds a crow that essentially screams at her. A call for change, she needs to change, she can't be the same little girl anymore, but Jinx shoots the crow, not wanting to change. The next time a crow appears is when she meets Vi for the first time after many years, a confrontation that makes her realize things are not the same anymore, everything is changing.

And it all builds up and back, back to where it all began. During the climax, there are dozens of crows outside, this is an important moment for Jinx, a moment where she is bound to change, a moment where she can't run anymore. and after all is said and done, Jinx finally accepts change, takes a seat on the chair with her new name, a chair decorated with crow feathers, now ready to reject everything she ever wanted, and embracing everything she ever feared.

Jinx's Journey is one of tragedy, one that the way it was handled, explored, and concluded made me see arcane as a perfect show that wouldn't need another season. That is, until an hour later when I remembered Ekko and Heimerdinger aren't quite where they are supposed to be yet, and Viktor is very far from it. I'm really curious to see where those stories will go. But, for now, arcane has left me full and satisfied, this was a lovely show and I hope to see more things on this level of quality in the future.

Sincerely, Spoon.

Review of Star wars: A New Hope

This is the start of a great journey. I watched the first 2 trilogies as a kid and a few of the new ones when they came out, but I'm now going through the whole franchise to better understand its origins, its evolution, and what it all lead to.

I watched the first movie and asked for feedback on whether I should write individual reviews, or just compile my thoughts of the whole franchise into 1 big review when I'm done with it. Several people asked for individual reviews, so that's what I'm going to do.

To get started let us first go through the context:

George Lucas is a garbage director and he had no idea what he was doing with star wars. Star Wars is just the classic farmer turned to the knight who rebels against an evil oppressor story, its put into a sci-fi universe and has magic in it for no reason, that combined with the awful structure, lack of direction, 2-dimensional characters, and very boring story, Star Wars had all odds stacked against it.

But because of the very talented people that worked on the music, the costumes, the props, the sets, and the CGI, the universe of Star Wars looked so unbelievably intriguing, most scenes look so full of movement, energy, and life. Even tho the action is bad, the hints of romance worse, and the overall story very boring, Star Wars still managed to be quite funny, sometimes the movie is the joke itself with how bad it is, but when the movie legitimately tries to be funny, it actually does a good job and I find some rewatching value in it with how enjoyable things like the chemistry between C3PO and R2D2 are, they were very funny on their own and even funnier together, I just don't get tired of them.

Now, even tho Star Wars is "so bad that it's good", it's still bad and that should be addressed. As I said, the core ideas are all bad and/or uninteresting and the direction was awful, which lead the actors to perform badly, tho I still think this story could have worked better if it had taken more time. I know the movie is 2 hours long, but it tries to do too much in too little time, for what the movie was going for, the proper build-up, development, and exposition to make the scenes not feel as forced as they are would make the movie at least double of its length.

I want to finish with a disclaimer, I actually really like what Star Wars has become. Yes, the movies are bad, they always will be. The games are bad, they always will be. But this universe that was created from pure chance by an incompetent director has grown into something so interesting and gathered such a large fanbase because inspired people worked on it. Star Wars is far from ever being a masterpiece no matter in what form it comes, but with every new title, I and the other fans always get excited to once again dive into this rich universe and learn more about it. Now that I think about it, star wars could be a really good MMORPG. Has that ever been done? If not, I'm copyrighting that idea.

But back to this particular movie: It's bad, but it looks good, has good OSTs and good sound effects, the audio of the actors speaking has a lot of issues, but it kinda helps with the funny setting. This movie looks like something my classmates would make as a school project and recording it all with a phone. It's a very entertaining movie when there's dialogue and a very boring movie when there's action.

Overall, I would recommend it, it's a great movie to watch if you're alone and bored and possibly even better to watch with friends and have everyone make jokes during the movie.

This feels different. Making a review with such a happy and approving tone. It's legitimate tho, I did have fun. I would not wish for everything to be like this since I do have a lot of fun complaining, but it feels nice to watch and review something fun every now and then. After I upload and share this review I'll start watching the second movie right away but don't expect a review until tomorrow around the same time.

Sincerely, Spoon.

Review of Naruto

I watched Naruto.

I watched it as a kid, didn't like it, just finished rewatching it as an adult, still don't like it.

Here's the thing tho, Naruto is a waste.

And I don't mean just a waste of time, no, it's a waste of a lot of good ideas.

Naruto's world-building is either great or trash depending on what you look at, everything about ninjas is very well written and, for the most part, very well explored, but one of its biggest issues is the setting it's trying to pull. Naruto wants to be ninja times, but also XXth century and also XXIst century, and it just doesn't work, to the point where it's very immersion breaking. For example, how do they have computers, x-ray machines, vending machines, etc, while everyone is communicating with scrolls and birds?

Although Naruto's world is very interesting and having very interesting rules, it's constantly sabotaged with these huge plot holes that could have been easily avoided if the show wasn't so greedy and ambitious.

Moving on to the characters:

I gotta say, I love them, they're great, they are deep and well-written characters for the most part. The main cast has enough backstory and the ones that don't either don't need one or are purposefully left out so it can build up on the mystery, which is good.

However!

There's an exception.

Naruto.

He is the worst character in the show.

And that's another thing that brings it down, the show focuses heavily on Naruto, and him being the worst character in the show just ruins everything.

About the story:

Despite the show focusing more on Naruto, he is not the only important character. I'd say the most important characters are Naruto, Sasuke, and Orochimaru. Which I think is a very interesting idea, to have these 2 very compelling sides seducing Sasuke. That's why Sasuke should be the main character, a la star wars prequels style, seeing the Child with so much potential slowly being taken by evil. But no, it's about Naruto, the guy whose whole script sounds like a copypasta of inspirational nonsense.

Other writing stuff:

Funny moments, bad;

Fanservice, awful;

Inspirational moments (with Naruto present), appalling;

Inspirational moments (with Naruto absent), decent;

Editing wise:

So bad, the shots, the cuts, the filters, the structure, it's all so bad, especially with fights. The fights could be so much better, they are choreographed very well, but they manage to ruin every fight with the editing.

Another problem, the sound design:

The voice acting, sound effects, OSTs, are very bad in the first few arcs. so bad that every scene that could possibly be good or at least decent is completely ruined by them. That's not always tho, around the episodes 40-50 it stopped being that bad, I don't know why or how but it improved a lot, not for good, mind you, but for decent. And, I don't mean what they used is bad, that's hard to tell that. I mean how they used them is bad. The sound Direction must have been very incompetent.

The designs were good for the most part, some are just decent and only a smaller few were bad, overall the show looks nice. It's more so when they ignore proportions to be funny that the show looks ugly. And the visual style is nice too, nothing special about it, in my opinion, but it works and looks good.

The Animation was decent, it looks lazy which is normal for older animes That had lower budgets and worse equipment, but it's not like the Animation was what made the show bad. There are only 3 fights That I remember having actually good Animation, but I'd be lying if I Said 3 fights. What I should really say is 1 episode per each of these fights. The first was Sasuke vs Orochimaru, the second was Orochimaru vs Sarutobi and the last was the final fight between Sasuke and Naruto. 3 episodes with good Animation, everything else was decent, apart from a few which were basically PowerPoint slideshows, like team 7 vs Haku and Zabuza which was the most upsetting one. The fight could have been a lot better if it had better Animation, they did improve the art quality on that episode so it's not that bad, but I would have directed the effort elsewhere.

The Ops and Eds;

Most of them were uninteresting, some of them were surprisingly good tho, I will most likely add some to my playlist.

Final thoughts:

Naruto has a lot of really good Ideas, impressively good, but there are way more bad things than there are good things, I don't rate things based on what they could have been, I rate them based on what they are, and Naruto is a bad show. It's inconsistent, has an awful sense of timing, doesn't know its own strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately wastes all of its own potential.

Will I watch Shippuden?

Yes.

I'm most likely going to enjoy it even less, I know it's very poor compared to Naruto, but the way Naruto ends with the setup for the sequel, I have to watch it. I'll take a break, watch a good anime, rest my tortured soul, recharge my masochistic energy and then I'll sit through Shippuden.

Now you may stop telling me to watch naruto, I did it, it wasn't good and I'm done for now.

Sincerely, Spoon.

Update (I'm Back)

Heyo

 Sorry, guys, I haven't been present at all. School has been tough lately, but exams aside it's over and I have more time to dedicate to my personal projects like writing reviews. All the reviews I mentioned in the previous post are still going to come and I've had more ideas of what to write about. Don't worry, I will work on 1 review at a time and try to be consistent with how often I post, this is just to say I have enough Ideas to keep me entertained for a while.

These are the reviews I plan to write:

-Death Note (Netflix Movie Adaptation)

-Pacific Rim

-Far Cry 3

-Watch Dogs

-Voltron Legendary Defender

-Galactik Football

-Coraline

-Neon Genesis Evangelion (All Content)

-Star Wars (All movies 1 at a time)

-Yakusoku no Neverland Season 2

-Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin

-Detroit: Become Human

-Beyond Two Souls

Another thing I would like to make clear is that I will most likely never review something that I think is perfect, there's no point in me going on about each detail of any media if I'm gonna say the same thing about everything and then call it a review, and it would also be dumb to say something like "this is perfection, if you're not doing this, you are wrong" because I think everything has the right to be different and try something new and maybe even be better than what we previously thought was perfect. 

One more thing before saying goodbye, I've been having a lot of fun editing videos, you can see my YouTube Channel by clicking the link to your right. If I'm not working here, trust that I'll be working elsewhere. I've also been trying really hard to come up with a format to turn these reviews into videos so that it can be more accessible and maybe reach a bigger audience. 

That's all I have for you now, let's hope my next post is a review and not another fucking update excusing the lack of reviews.

Matane

Update for future content

 Hey, hope you're all doing alright, I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to and I apologize for that, both to you and to me, I wanna be more active and consistent with this blog but I haven't been, I'll try to change that, I really like writing these, even when struggling to enjoy anything else, having this platform to express my appreciation, as well as disappointment, feels really nice, doing research on both the things I review and in reviewing itself, trying to find the best ways to express my thoughts through text, it's a challenge, but a very fun one.

 That's what I have to say about activity, but for actual content, I have news for that as well.

 As I said in my second DS2 post, I will probably be giving more updates as I progress through the game and maybe eventually a full review, in the meantime, I have a bunch of notes from playing Watch Dogs and Far Cry 3, I can probably use them to make a decent review, I played them not that long ago so my memory is still a kind of fresh.

 I also ended up never making a post about the last episode of Yakusoku no Neverland which I  made seem like I was gonna do and I did plan on doing it, but the episode ended up being so much worse than I could possibly expect, for a while, I thought about doing a post about the whole season, but since I had been watching it as it was released I didn't remember the first few episodes as well and would probably have to rewatch them which I kept delaying because I just didn't want to go through this again.

 As for things I plan to do but haven't started, I plan to rewatch all of Evangelion again and carefully take notes to break it down a bit more, and then watch the movies. I had this idea when I was told the movies aren't recaps but instead reboots of meta-commentary of the devs shitting on the garbage fans the original show had. I've seen this done before in the internet series by the name of Llamas with Hats and I think it was written very well, I'd love to see how the creators of Evangelion handle it.

 On a similar note, there's another show I want to rewatch what I've watched and watch the rest of the content is Voltron, back in the day I used to watch it every time a new season came out, it was never good but the characters are amazing and kept everyone going. When season 6 ended though, I was tired of the nonsense and gave up on the show, there are 2 seasons I've never watched, but what I heard It's just as bad as the previous ones + some insultingly bad queer bait. Can't wait to consume all that garbage and write about it. I think the reason I wanna watch it so much is so that I can say I finished what I started and also because I liked the characters so much, I wanna properly say goodbye to them.

 That's what I have planned for now, as I said before, I'd love to get suggestions for what to write about next.

That's it for now, have a good night. Sincerely,

Spoon.

Update on Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin

  Been playing more Dark Souls II Scholar of the First Sin and it's been a mixed bag: there are some concepts that are unique to this, at least compared to DS1 (I haven't played DS3 yet), and with innovation comes risk, ups, and downs.

  To be honest, I don't see any issue with most new things, but they're all very specific and niche, I don't really use anything new but I can see the appeal, most of the time it's just DS1's concepts explored even more, which is quite interesting, while others are original.

 But even though this game is deeper, overall these changes don't change the game. What does change the game is the new enemies, areas, and bosses, and I think those are a major step down from the first game, there are so many bosses, and yet they feel very weak, not in strength because the game relies a lot on that, but in actual content. all the bosses I've killed so far felt empty, boring, and annoying more than anything else.

 In DS1 each boss fight felt unique and epic, each death would make you feel teased and excited for the next attempt and each victory felt rewarding and earned and made you wonder what the next challenge was going to be. Here, each boss only has a few moves, with bad hit-boxes, forgettable music, and uninspired designs.

 There's a lot of core mechanic changes as well, but I feel like they were only used to make the game artificially harder, like giving most enemies fast attacks, lots of poise, more I-frames, and fast recovery from stagger, making most of the player's attacks slow, making parry super slow, taking I-frames away from rolling, not giving any I-frames after being damaged allowing for the player to be stun-locked without any escape.

 This game also suffers from the same issue as Bloodborne, it tries to be surprising all the time, which is just not possible, but while Bloodborne tries to be dark all the time, DS2 tries to be an asshole all the time, by placing enemies around every corner, having traps everywhere, etc. Every time, it never surprises me that an enemy is there, it's surprising how even me knowing, the game always manages to be broken and hit me even with me taking every precaution.

 I'm not the best DS player in the world, but I'm not bad at the games, I know what I'm doing, and yet I seem to struggle every step of the way. Both DS1 and Bloodborne managed to make it feel like every time I died it was my problem, I either didn't do well enough or didn't try hard enough, but 85% of the times I die in DS2 it feels unfair, it feels like I'm not playing the game, the game is playing me. it's exhausting, trying just to be met with an unfair failure, it's disappointing and not fun, it doesn't make me question my ability, it makes me question whether or not it's worth playing.

 Now, this next part is just speculation, I was basically a baby gamer when DS1 came out, I'm not familiar with its history in marketing and how it was received, all I know is DS1 was well received by Demons Souls players and got very popular with other people as well, and I assume it's when Fromsoft got the reputation of making hard games and in an attempt to hang on to that fame they made DS2 "harder" and longer, and that's clearly evident with the achievement "This is Dark Souls" which you get when you die for the first time, it's such slap in the face, why would anyone want this achievement, it's funny, but just for the devs, it means nothing, it's just an attempt at humiliating the player.

 I love DS1's narrative, a story that continuously gives you hope just to rip it away and make you question yourself, your goal, and your methods, it's a beautiful adventure that I'll never get tired of praising. but here, the act of pushing you down is not a test, not a challenge, it's just trying to humiliate you, which I would get if all DS players were the "GIT GUD" type of players, but we're not all like that, and it feels tiring being such a great fan of the first game for giving me an excellent balanced experience and then having the second game spit in my face as if I'm being punished for something I didn't do.

 And that's my main issue with the game, it tries too hard to be hard but it ends up just being annoying, playing this doesn't feel fun most of the time, it feels like a chore which is not what playing a game should feel like and that's a big issue.

 That's all I have to say, for now, I'll keep playing until I've killed every boss and finished the game, I might write more updates regarding this game in the future and possibly a review when I finish it, but I'll figure it out later.

Have a good night. Sincerely,

Spoon.