Oh noes!

Yes, I’m watching a super-hero movie again.

Wow! It’s I Zimbra on the soundtrack!

And now it’s… Liquid Liquid!? I’m so aboard with these New York Downtown music choices.

I’m enjoying this movie so far, but it’s like… it should look better than it does? It’s so… digital. It just looks so digital. From 2002. You can’t actually see the pixels, but it feels like you should. I’m guessing the shot above is mostly rendered? For no particular reason? If it’s not, they’ve managed to make real shots look really fake.

This is quite amusing.

OK, it’s a bit slow now, but amiable.

Now it’s kinda boring?

Spoilers!

There’s now been an hour (at least) of “character development”. I’ve never been so bored in my life.

I mean, I do like some bits of this. And it’s really a perfect fan service movie — people nostalgic for … well, everything… are getting what they want.

But… there’s like nothing interesting in the plot? It’s like they forgot to write a plot? And there’s so many boring scenes inbetween the fun ones? It’s like… if they had written a proper movie, and had the Spider-Men fun stuff be like a third of that proper movie, then it would have been awesome. Instead it’s just like those fan service bits, and not much else.

Spider-Man: No Way Home. Jon Watts. 2021. ⚂

Whatever studio Disney’s using for the special effects and compositing… It just looks so cheap and weird all the time. I mean, even in simple shots where this guy is supposed to be standing in front of some trees.

It’s very 2020.

Did they really have to spend ten minutes introducing his parents’ backstory? Seems weird.

Weird colour grading. Everything is desaturated except the reds.

Oh! He’s Chinese! Red! Such symbolic!

OK, that was a fun fight scene. Marvel fight scenes are usually so … bad … just uncoordinated people posing, but that was pretty exciting.

But it wasn’t over!

That was definitely the best action scene of any Marvel movie! Wheee!

OK, I’m resetting my expectations. Perhaps this is a really cool movie? I like the actors, too…

This is a lot of fun. All the flashbacks are holding back the narrative, though. And none of the flashbacks really seem … necessary?

OK, not this movie is really really boring.

So much exposition. That doesn’t really seem necessary at all.

It’s a schizophrenic movie. There’s a bunch of scenes that are really fun — the action scenes are on a totally different level from other Marvel movies (which are mostly about actors striking awkward poses and waiting for somebody to CGI in some energy bursts, or striking awkward poses waiting for the director to tell them to make a “I’m totally hitting this CGI monster now” pose).

The action scenes here are really fun.

But then there’s the other stuff, which is pretty dire.

Hey, isn’t that… I think it is?

OK, I’ve lost all interest in this movie now. There was like several hours of training? And character building? I don’t know; I zoned out.

I’m just disappointed. It started off so well — funny and exciting and interesting. But then the last nine hours (training camp and boss fight) were brutally tedious.

Without that bus and scaffolding scenes I would have given this a ⚁, but:

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Destin Daniel Cretton. 2021. ⚂

Sure sure.

Ooo. That’s a nice green.

Cersi?

Man, London is very green.

Uhm. Is this copy wrong? I think it might be?

THAT”S LESS GREEN

Is that Jon Snow?

Oh yeah, monsters.

But I like these scenes. It really looks like it’s on location, and not a green screen extravaganza.

Yeah sure.

Man, this is kinda boring? I mean, every scene is just … some info dump and then “character building”, but we don’t care about these characters (yet), so it’s just not that fascinating.

Yeah sure

Have they gotten the same video game designers to do all of these?

Cosmic!

That’s some nice matte painting I mean computer rendering.

I realise that this is supposed to be all “heh, this sure is amusing! I am most amused!” but it’s just please no.

You read so much about Evil Movie Studios getting all up in movies and making horrible edits… but watching this, it’s like… Studios don’t care any more? If this had been in the 80s, they’d have cut an hour and it still wouldn’t have been any good.

Like… it seems like they’re fighting some random monsters? In a forest? For half an hour? And I don’t even know why? And that doesn’t make them seem very Eternal? Like what? What’s that all about?

Except having half an hour in a dark woods so that the CGI would be cheaper?

Perhaps the thing Disney learned from the Star Wars movies was — let the directors do what they want? At least Disney won’t be blamed for anything, and anyway there’s no way to save a movie?

Because this is the stereotypical movie that would have been re-edited down to half an hour, and then Alan Smithee would film 60 minutes more to splice it into the movie, and it would still bomb.

I mean, even skimming the script, it had to be clear that this movie didn’t really work. On any level.

Teh movie biz is weird.

But there are some nice visuals in here. So it’s got that.

Eternals. Chloé Zhao. 2021. ⚁