A Good Movie, and A Not-So-Good One...

I went to see Zootopia today, and... it's pretty great. One of the greatest "sins" for a movie in my book is to take me out of the story - whether it's boggling over a plot hole or finding dialog clunky, if I'm forced to sit back and think about the movie as a movie, that's a form of failure in the storytelling. Zootopia absolutely didn't do that. The characters and story work well. I love that the message isn't simple, and the themes of inclusion feel timely. Really, what's not to love? It's good as a "buddy cop" movie. The animation is technically great. I can't think of one complaint at the moment.

On the other hand, I caught Desolation of Smaug (the second Hobbit movie) on TV last night. The CGI wasn't so bad as Scifi Channel original movies or anything. It's great and detailed, but almost too much so - it still feels fake to me. Watching elves battle orcs, it felt like people jumping around in front of green screens. A lot of the lines sounded totally scripted and unnatural in the way they were delivered. Watching Thorin "raft" along a river of molten lava was facepalm-inducing. And on top of that, the whole thing felt bloated with extraneous plot lines (yes, I know they were pulled from other Middle Earth sources, but they were unnecessary here). Overall, the movie felt like everyone making a movie because they "had" to rather than because they "wanted" to. As such, it all comes across pretty bad in my book.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventures in Rokugan (ongoing)

 So, yeah, I'm terrible at keeping up with between-session conversations and all the piles of possible channels/servers in Discord - especially when work gives me some time to think, but not Discord access. I believe a question was posed about thoughts on the state and future of the Adventures in Rokugan game, though, so here goes... In general, I'm enjoying the time and look forward to it more than feel burdened by it. The start time is a little earlier than ideal, but I don't mind making it work on Saturdays. So, net positive overall. I'm a touch "meh" on the mechanics of AiR. I like the familiarity of D&D, but the Rokugan-specific stuff doesn't feel very rewarding. Granted, this may just be my pick of a shadow acolyte, but I feel like I'm getting more functional mileage out of the sharpshooter feat than all of the special class abilities and level-ups haven't been particularly exciting. I've been tempted to multi-class into something els
Read more

Harbinger of Chaos (Godbound)

 Last night seemed to be the climactic finale of the ongoing Godbound game. I have some thoughts. The previous session ended with a couple PCs and a shadowy person in the special chamber with access to divine realms and their vacated thrones (in the campaign, the gods were sorta kicked out of their positions, making things up for grabs). Once PC had already claimed a throne. All the others were waiting outside. At the moment the session ended, no one seemed aware that the shadowy figure was Beryn, big-bad threat of the campaign. This is where I feel weird about things, because that little detail came up OOC and it changed everything. If the PCs had been aware at the time, they probably would have started a fight outside the chamber when they saw him. That didn't happen. But suddenly because the players were aware, they wanted to be able to plan before the conflict (with downtime glossed over previous) so they could go into the next session guns-blazing and as prepared as possible.
Read more

RPG Desires?

 So I was asked last night what I actually want in an RPG game/campaign. I came up with a few points, but that's a question I find hard to answer on the spot. It's easy to point at things in an ongoing game that I don't like, and a little harder to point at things I do (darn negative-focused psychology), but making generalizations is more difficult still. It does, however, give me something to focus a little on and ramble about for a time... Story I like a narrative through line - not usually to the point of "railroading," but I want more connective tissue than just returning to a job board after each mission. Sometimes that develops as things go, with character goals shaping things. Setting an end goal at the outset ("defeat the demon lord!") can have ups and downs. However it comes about, I really like to feel there is some forward momentum toward something, though. Consistency This one gets sub-points!  As far as setting, I sort of stopped using the t
Read more