Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[PhoneLobster]

I'll give you my attempt at a quick take on the first four episodes, trying to be minimally spoilery (like you can spoil this).

1) Bad old show knock off, maybe a hint something is (oh no) not right?
2) Bad old show knock off, maybe a hint something is (oh no) not right?
3) Bad old show knock off (now in colour!), maybe a hint something is (oh no) not right?
4) Fuck it, the audience probably can't take a hint right? They basically stopped the dumdum mystery box train for one whole exposition episode of going through and explaining it again slowly for doubledoubledumdumdumdums. They even did it in the form of literally going through the prior episodes with stand ins for the audience watching them in a tv episode format and pointing out the oh no not right. Then at the end they outright stated at the camera in the form of a simple easily digested sentence the thing the one and only thing aside from "look we can do bad old tv!" it had solidly and repeatedly implied.

Also. All the hints that it was oh no not right were when the show diverged from the highly oppressive and narrow stereotypes of sitcoms from it's eras (stereotypes even more oppressive than those actually were). When it STICKS to the limiting stereotypes of tv approved 1950s societal concepts THATS when everything is good and normal and comforting!

That's a good normal way to write this show right?

[erik]

Wow, that's terrible. Thank you for your service.

[Thaluikhain]

That seems impressively bad, thank you for watching it so we don't have to.

[hyzmarca]

Eh, I like it. Anyone who is familiar with the source material knows exactly what they're getting. It's a slow burning character drama about an all powerful woman processing tremendous grief by retreating into a sitcom-inspired fantasy world.

And Paul Bettany is clearly having a great deal of fun with it.

[PhoneLobster]

I'm old. I'm "familiar" with these old shows They were endlessly rerun when I was a kid. I watched I Dream of Jeanie when I could and avoided Bewitched like any real man has.

I'm not proud to say it, because she has far too much explaining to do, but I have even once or twice laughed at Lucille Ball.

I did not laugh at these knock off "comedies" if anything the very worst thing about these "period sitcoms" is their failure to achieve basic comedy, a thing even those dated sitcoms it's based on DID do.

Episode 2 came the closest to being, briefly, amusing, but remained a near miss and in the context of the failures surrounding it was not enough. Maybe they'll manage either better mystery/adventure content or better comedy in later episodes, but there is no reason to believe that beyond relentless hope.

[hyzmarca]

I was speaking more of the comic book source material, specifically House of M, but also Tom King's Vision miniseries.

I'm not watching it for comedy. I'm watching for the slow motion trainwreck. It's not disappointing me.

[erik]

Maybe when they finish breaking the glass I can jump back in. It sounds like right now I could miss half a season and be like, ok, now onto a proper story.

Like, I watched the first season of The Promised Neverland, and it was good and otherwise doesn't belong in this thread. By the end of the first episode they've already broken the glass and gotten on to the proper story. I have no doubt they could have done that with WandaVision too.

[MisterDee]

Yeah, the "sitcoms throughout the ages" theme is really too prevalent, or maybe not enough.

IMO it would have worked better as a 1:1 between Westview and Outside Westview, or go all in and have the actual "WTF is happening" investigation happening inside the sitcom world entirely (but then really commit to it, with an actual really funny sitcom and not just a parody/homage with a wink, and also a real investigation subplot and not just two seconds of This Is Not Normal at the end of each episode)

Like, I'm the target audience for this in theory. I like the MCU, I think it's legitimately a great storytelling endeavor. And IMO the better MCU movies are those that try to be their own stories and styles instead of just topping the previous one's action scenes. But with WandaVision they managed to perfectly straddle the "frustrating but not interesting" line.

I'll keep watching it, we're halfway done with it already and there's nothing else to watch anyways. But it's not getting a rewatch unless it gets a lot better on the home stretch.

[hyzmarca]

Maybe when they finish breaking the glass I can jump back in. It sounds like right now I could miss half a season and be like, ok, now onto a proper story.

Like, I watched the first season of The Promised Neverland, and it was good and otherwise doesn't belong in this thread. By the end of the first episode they've already broken the glass and gotten on to the proper story. I have no doubt they could have done that with WandaVision too.

I'm pretty sure this is the proper story. There isn't a villain, a big bad, or a mysterious conspiracy behind everything, just Wanda playing house with her dead boyfriend.

[MisterDee]

Well, it's stated on the show that the civilians caught in the big mindfuck are suffering something horrifying. So there's definitely a villain involved, even if it's Wanda.

It'd be refreshing if it turned out to be the case, honestly. But I fully expect Wanda will be shown to be an unwilling dupe/victim herself in the end. Disney won't face-heel a major character in a niche/experimental Disney+ exclusive between major tentpole movie releases.

[Kaelik]

Well, it's stated on the show that the civilians caught in the big mindfuck are suffering something horrifying. So there's definitely a villain involved, even if it's Wanda.

It'd be refreshing if it turned out to be the case, honestly. But I fully expect Wanda will be shown to be an unwilling dupe/victim herself in the end. Disney won't face-heel a major character in a niche/experimental Disney+ exclusive between major tentpole movie releases.

Indeed, when I first heard the premise, my understanding was that Wanda would be forcing people to live in a fake world where her boyfriend was alive, and that would be the conflict.

But apparently (I only watched two episodes) it's actually Hydra tricking her in some way, so the same old boring bad guys.

[pragma]

I just caught up to the 5th episode and it does indeed look like Wanda is imprisoning people against their will. It's been suggested that she started doing so subconsciously but that she is gaining awareness of what's going on through the series. Remarkably, this doesn't make her the villain. Instead, a trigger-happy outside investigator is being cast in that role.

I've had a lot of fun with the show. I thought each sitcom was a decent entry in its own genre, I liked identifying the sitcom DNA in each episode, and I enjoyed the slow burn of the mystery. My only beef is that the outside investigator episode felt poorly scripted and/or acted, which is weird because John Cho is great. I'm glad these are 30 minute episodes though, I think this would drag mightily if the old sitcoms were stretched any further than 10 minutes at a time.

[Wiseman]

I just caught up to the 5th episode and it does indeed look like Wanda is imprisoning people against their will. It's been suggested that she started doing so subconsciously but that she is gaining awareness of what's going on through the series. Remarkably, this doesn't make her the villain. Instead, a trigger-happy outside investigator is being cast in that role.

Elsewhere, I've seen the comparison made to someone having a mental health crisis, with the Monica being a social/human health worker trying to talk her down and get her some help and the investigator guy being a trigger-happy cop who just wants to shoot them and be done with it.

[Wiseman]

Y'know, I actually wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the "rocked" thread, because it's just so impressive at how bad RWBY has become.

[Kaelik]

Y'know, I actually wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the "rocked" thread, because it's just so impressive at how bad RWBY has become.

At least give us a spoiler block with some info for those of us who no longer torture ourselves.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I didn't expect Mortal Kombat 2021 to be good, but I was shocked at how I would (probably?) rate it below the 90s version. The fight choreography and FX are both substantially better, so if you just want to see some kind of cool fights, sure. And it actually has gore, so it's definitely more faithful to the source material. But the script is much less coherent, to the point where I think it's almost incomprehensible if you don't know the source material going in. The other problem is that there's only one actual character in the movie, and for some reason it's Kano. He has a personality (obnoxious egotist), a hobby, quirks, and is reasonably developed as an actual, if shitty, human being. Nobody else is more than one-dimensional (except maybe Sub-Zero, whose quiet sadism and menace might get there), which makes it difficult to care about the fights and of course less entertaining overall.

Honestly, it feels like it was written to be 30-60 minutes longer, got cut back hard, and just lost most of the exposition and character moments. Or maybe Cole Young wasn't in the original treatment and the studio told them to shoehorn him in unfortunately late in the process? Something like that.

[Sigil]

It really is amazing how reliably moderately big budget and larger movies manage to have completely incoherent plots.

[Thaluikhain]

It really is amazing how reliably moderately big budget and larger movies manage to have completely incoherent plots.

Yeah, must be infuriating being a small-time but hardworking and at least moderately competent moviemaker who won't ever see a tenth of a blockbuster budget.

[Wiseman]

Y'know, I actually wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the "rocked" thread, because it's just so impressive at how bad RWBY has become.

At least give us a spoiler block with some info for those of us who no longer torture ourselves.

Was getting around to that, but oh man, where to even begin?
Spoilers for seasons 7-8:

First of all, despite the fact that team evil is literally at the gates, the main conflict is between the supposed good guys. Because General Ironwood wanted to move the floating city of Atlas away from the invading army, despite the fact that the ground city of Mantle isn't finished evacuating yet. And our "heroes"... don't offer up any sort of counterplan when they dislike that plan and so instead end up just sabotaging Ironwoods plan, trapping everyone in the path of the army of monsters.

It's like, this isn't bad in and of itself, team evil shows up and team good is too busy infighting to do anything about it, except that the show has zero self awareness on this matter so our "heroes" cause more destruction than our villains and basically hand them the win and yet are praised and celebrated. Even worse, when the armies of darkness are attacking and their called on to do something to protect the people they ostensibly did all this for, they refuse to, and instead sit around in a mansion drinking tea while Atlas and Mantle burn. They literally do nothing for huge chunks of the season.

And before you might think that they face consequences for this, Oscar (who by this point has way more involvement and relevance with the plot) pulls a deus ex machina no-friendly-fire magic nuke out of his pocket and one-shots Salem as well as taking out a huge swath of her army while leaving everyone and everything else untouched.

Which brings us back to Ironwood, and their utter failure at his character. Despite the fact that our heroes (and writers) would have you believe that he was a tyrant all along, all his actions in season 7 that they condemn him for are things that the heroes agreed with and helped him with once he explained his reasoning behind him, making him instead into a genuinely good person stuck trying to do the best with what rescources and information he has (especially considering that our heroes, despite condemning Ozpin for hiding crucial information from them, hypocritically do the same to Ironwood for no reason) so naturally, come season 8 they turn him into a full on cartoon villain, shooting civilians, "dissent is treason", threating to nuke cities if he doesn't get what he wants, ect.

And then there's the Staff of Creation, which all this fighting has been over. The staff is the thing keeping Atlas floating in the air and it can only do/create one thing at a time. If it's used for something new, the previous creation disappears. Apart from this there's apparently no limit to what you can create with it provided you can supply the blueprints and schematics. Mega op.

Did i mention these rules are only explained in the same episode that everything is done with it, including exploiting a loophole in it's rules to turn Penny human (more on that later).

So basically, despite the primary threat being gone, the characters use the staff to first transform penny, and then create a network of portals to evacuate the entire population of the kingdom into another kingdom, destroying both Atlas and Mantle in the process. So our "heroes" destroy an entire kingdom, and dump it's people into the middle of the desert of Vacuo. These people now have no homes, no employment, no money, nothing but the clothes on their back and have been dropped in the middle of the desert of the most hostile to outsiders (especially Atlesians) kingdom. Despite causing mass destruction and a refugee and humanitarian crisis on an unimaginable scale, Ruby is hailed as a hero despite doing nothing but waiting and crying while everone just falls over themselves to tell her what a great person she is and she's not at fault, until deus ex machina after deus ex machina just falls into her lap.

Also, considering that the staff can do all this, and the fact that team good had access to it from the start, makes everyone, both Ironwood's and Ruby's faction into idiots.

Also, there's an undercurrent of ableism running throughout this plotline. Ironwood is explicitly called as becoming less human by the writers after having his other arm replaced with a prosthetic, and now he's the full on villain. Penny is turned from a robot girl into a "real girl" made of flesh and blood despite that never being something she expressed a desire to become and it flying in the face of everything previously written about her (and then she's killed off 20 minutes later anyways, rending all of that (and really her entire inclusion in seasons 7-8 pointless). Winter (who after becoming critically injured needs assistive braces to move and yet when she's addressing penny's spirit (penny became the Winter Maiden briefly and when she died, transferred the powers to Winter) says that she [Winter] was the "machine". Jesus christ...

Also, Penny's death: She's badly injured during the final fight, and goes out via assisted suicide via Jaune, despite the fact that he's the party healer.

Other, random shit:

Despite being hyped up as basically Helms Deep, it's entirely underwhelming. We barely see any of the fighting, our "heroes" barely participate in any of it and it all get's anticlimactically wiped away by the pocket nuke.

Ren is called out as bottling up his feelings, but when he actually expresses his feelings, it's not what they want to her, and so he gets shamed, shunned, and accused of "pushing people away". Also, all of what he said comes off as a transparent attempt to dismiss criticism that has been leveled at the show.

There are no good fights in this volume. Their either clunky, badly choreographed, too brief, or just keep getting cut away from.

And I'm done. There's so much more I can go into. The complete clusterfuck that was the ace-ops. Ruby's message to the world. The massive character bloat. How everyone is only as powerful and competent as the plot needs them to be. How Emerald (a villain who helped cause the destruction of another kingdom) is just easily redeemed yet Ozpin is shown no sympathy or understanding, the additional undercurrents of misogyny and racism, the queerbaiting, how bullshit the writers are as people and how they interact with fans, and more, but I'm done for now. Maybe I'll elaborate later or maybe someone else can please, but I'm just fucking done.

[Krusk]

Spot on about MK. I heard about the movie, got amped, then heard about some new guy named Cole who was going to blah blah blah, and was completely disinterested. Trailers came out, hardly featured him, and looked sweet. I'm re-hooked because its MK. Sit down to watch and it was alright at best. Not as good as the one from the 90s, so why even bother?

Its Mortal Kombat, so I can give the plot being nonsense a bit of a pass (someone built a robot factor to turn their ninjas into robots? sweet), but the games are at least always clear. Stuff just happens in this, and people make decisions at random and its often totally unneeded.

Kano carried the movie, Kung Lao, Liu Kang, Sonya, and Kabal were kind of interesting. But only interesting in relation to how they interact with Kano. Without him and they have nothing interesting going on. Coles boring as shit, and his power is eventually literally plot armor. He sucks at fighting, and unlocks the ability to absorb hits and I guess become unkillable? Its not clear, and you don't really care because you'd rather get back to Kano. Until Cole unlocks plot armor? He is so useless they literally tell him to go home because he isn't helping. Note they keep Sonya, who also at this point doesn't have super powers. But Raiden is like fuck this Cole guy, and I agree.

Other assorted thoughts.
They include Goro, but he doesn't do anything cool and goes down like a chump in his only fight.
Liu Kang spamming leg sweeps is phenomenal.
Random characters randomly shout words from the games without context and seemingly at random. "Fatality" "Flawless Victory" while staring right at the camera.
Nitara's death was awesome, and one of the moments I thought the movie might get cool. Its also totally out of nowhere, and not at the end of a built up fight. Shang Tsung, brings her out of nowhere, talks about how she's a hot bat lady, and then they go fight without her. He then calls her to the fight, and Kung Lao just ends her.

The biggest gripe? I didn't realize until the next day, but they didn't actually include the Tournament. This whole movie is about how these fighters are chosen to defend the earth in a tournament. They spend the whole time fucking around preparing for a tournament, that's going to happen any day now. people give them a lot of shit about how behind they are, and how they have to get ready right now. Then the bad guys start cheating in it, so the good guys stop them, and cheat in the exact same way back. Then the movie ends with them like "Now lets go get prepped for the tournament that's still happening" and the bad guy straight tells them "Its cool you killed my guys, I have legions just like them". Apparently its a trilogy, but what the fuck is that?

[Darth Rabbitt]

I honestly don't disagree with either angelfromanotherpin's or Krusk's criticisms of the new Mortal Kombat movie other than that I liked it more than the 90s one. It's a mindless action movie built around gory spectacle and honestly that's all I wanted from a Mortal Kombat movie.

[Prak]

I liked MK21, actually, in that it was entertaining and spectacle-y enough. If I saw it in an actual theatre, where I can't really dick around on my phone or play my switch while "watching," it might have been actually boring, but... well, like, I was playing phone games. So it met the extremely low bar of "entertaining enough that I did actually catch what was going on while doing so." An example of a movie that doesn't meet this extremely low bar would be Chronicles of Riddick, which I put on, and then did not actually catch anything going on for the entire movie while I was dicking around on my computer.

I feel like MK21 was only really meant to be movie one in a franchise, and vaguely introduce the setting and some concepts, which, it did. Cole was... well, he wasn't interesting as an actual character, but how the movie used him was interesting. He was basically just the usual "guy what is exposited at so we can explain shit to the audience," but also served the function to tie in Scorpion and his backstory, and, lets be honest, Scorpion is MK's, like, banner character. He's the person people show up to see, and we got all the Scorpion money shots- the "get over here," the "pull off mask, show skeletal face," the hellfire breath fatality, etc. It was a very formulaic movie that probably had a checklist like-

• Establish the tournament
• Introduce the major named characters
• Show off Scorpion and his most known moves
• Give the vaguest veneer of an explanation for the magic powers, bonus points if you can explain the cybernetics with the same thing
• Get as many catch phrases in as possible
• Establish a sequel hook
• Make enough money to justify a sequel

And, I mean, it did six of those seven things. It had a budget of $55 million, and, so far, has made $51 million. And it's been out for about a week domestically (longer internationally), so... I'd say it's on its way to doing that last thing.

Like, was it a great movie? Fuck no. To make it a great movie, you'd have to, like, take out Cole and make an established character the audience surrogate, as a start. And when they do that, they always choose fucking Johnny Cage, and... like, honestly, I give it points for not inflicting Johnny Cage on me yet a-fucking-gain. I think they could actually make a good movie with Sonya and Jaxx as the audience surrogates being jumped in, but... for some reason they never do that? But that's besides the point. It doesn't have to be a good movie, let alone a great movie. It literally only have to be entertaining enough to get people to buy a ticket for the next one.

[Dogbert]

Y'know, I actually wasn't sure whether to put this here or in the "rocked" thread, because it's just so impressive at how bad RWBY has become.

Djinn's introduction was the series' Jump The Shark episode. From that point, all you can do is wait for Rooster Teeth to finish the series as quickly as possible (the sooner, the less painful it will be).

[MGuy]

I listen to a lots of stuff on YouTube while at work since I can and my job is mindnumbing enough to allow for it. One of the things I listen to is DnD lore. One of the people I listen to us AJPickett. He does lore readings. I don't do deep dives on every random person I listen to so unless they bring it up or it gets around on the internet I don't really know the politics of the people who have channels that cover the lore of things I like. Once they bring it up though, it can really ruin the experience.

It happened with arch Warhammer who got very vocal about his anti sjw stance and now it might be time for AJ to have his arc since he apparently decided to break his 'no politics' rule to express his discontent with DnD lore being changed because of 'over sensitive nonsense'. What lore change brought him to complain? Well apparently in some product or another lore on how Xill implant their eggs into someone got omitted in a DnD product and this rustled his jimmies enough to go on a mini rant about how the hobby was going through another 'satanic panic' and how it was silly. Why was this lore important? Because apparently if you don't know that these things forcefully impregnate you when you're kidnapped and tortured by then you don't have enough context to understand what they did it for. Immersion ruined. I am less than convinced at the necessity of that information.

If someone might think that he was specifically talking about this single thing and not the more verbal stance the company has been taking against broader topics like rape and racism I can assure you he was. I rarely leave YouTube comments and I did so in this case expressing how annoyed I was and in an even rarer turn of events he actually responded to it and affirmed that this was exactly the case. His response made me no less annoyed. I really don't care one way or another about depictions of terrible people and creatures doing terrible things nor do I think corporations care too much about it themselves. It is very annoying, to me at least, to equate taking a more concrete stance and 'some' care in addressing these issues to a 'moral panic'.

He only did it in part of the video but I can safely say he lost me because of it.

[Josh_Kablack]

who got very vocal about his anti sjw stance

In online interactions, non-ironic use of the term "SJW" is a red flag that can trigger my "fuck this fascist, I'm outta here" reflex.