Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
Based on how bad the CG and special effects work is in this season of the Mandalorian, I think the explanation for why Bo Katan is taking over as the main character is that Disney looked at the last of us and decided Pedro Pascal was going to be too expensive going forward and this is all part of a broad attempt to cut costs. I will be shocked if, in the event there is a next season, Din Djarin is still the main character.
9 - 3
Okay I watched the first two episodes of Kenobi over the weekend and I have some thoughts before I watch the next episode. First of all, I quite liked it. It is hugely, hugely helped by Ewan McGregor who one of the best if not the best actor in all of Star Wars history. He’s got incredible presence on screen and every time he’s on camera the scene feels good.
The directing on the other hand is…sloppy at best. The shaky cam in the first scene has already been rightly memed on, but there are other problems like weird blocking choices, for example when they chase Leia through the woods the kidnappers just kind of…throw their arms out and stupidly run in to stuff. It looks to me like the editor did the best they could but the footage they shot on the day was really bad.
The child acting was a little rough, but considering how hard acting is for kids I think Leia did an incredible job, leagues above Anakin. Still, I think going down the child acting route in things that are trying to be serious is probably always a questionable choice, and though she is very cute it was definitely rough at times. There is some other mediocre acting but nothing worse than what shows up in even the best star wars movies.
There are a couple of storytelling contrivances that bothered me: picking Owen out of the crowd seemed comically unlikely, maybe she's supposed to have really good instincts and like the mind-reading is her legit power or something, but then why didn't she just read his mind on the spot instead of threatening him? Kumail Nanjiani’s heel-face turn seemed a little... un-earned? Fast? There was something a little off about it, I think his little redemption arc didn't land quite right but I'm still thinking about why. I also thought it was a little silly to have Obi-Wan refuse to go after Leia. Prevaricating, hesitation, those I would understand. But I think they were hewing a little too closely to the Hero’s journey by making him literally Refuse the Call. We don’t really need that in this story because Obi-Wan has an existing characterization, we don’t have to reaffirm his initial identity the same way we would with a brand new character doing the HJ.
That said, I think the storytelling was overall quite solid. I think the biggest macro problem going forward is that the tone seems a little uneven. There's these fairly dark and gritty scenes like cutting off the lady's hand, threatening Owen, sad Obi-Wan, etc. etc. but on the other hand Leia's whole kidnapping is comically PG. The kidnapping of a child should be genuinely horrifying, but instead of like grabbing her while she screams it's loony tunes jukes into bag-on-the-head, oh no her robot gets hurt! This seems like mostly a directing problem, but it might be coming from the child acting problem.
To sum up: the writing = solid, directing = medium, but I'm genuinely excited for more.
However I am quite worried about one thing: there are a lot of parallels to the Mandalorian. Reluctant Hero ends up saving a child and they fly off together after the initial set-up episodes where they unexpectedly bond and the villain yells at them how they can’t get away while they get away. I’m worried that this might mean that, like the Mandalorian, it’s starting with this relatively strong base to suck you in before immediately transitioning to pointless time-wasting wheelspinning until the last couple of episode because they know you are invested enough to watch it through now.
But on the other hand Obi-Wan just got some serious news, the third sister should be right behind them once she finds out where their automated ship is heading, and he still hasn't had the will to turn his lightsaber on yet which can hopefully lead to some strong drama in the next few episodes instead of being put on the shelf until the climax. If the next episode doesn’t start with the third sister being instantly on their tail though I think we will be in serious trouble.
Anyway, what did you think of Kenobi so far?
7 - 4
Hey all, I started a playthrough of Knights of the Old Republic to collect footage for a future video and I figured I might as well stream it, you can check out the VOD below. I'm going to do these once or twice a week on Sunday/Monday nights for now. I may change the schedule, but as soon as I have the next stream planned I'll schedule it. Let me know if this interests you or if you have any feedback for the first one.
1 - 0
Phrases I have heard a lot in my life:
5. How are you?
4. Is it raining?
3. What should we have for dinner?
2. Did you remember to empty the dishwasher?
1. I am Malenia. Blade of Miquella.
9 - 1
I was pretty skeptical about the FF7 Remake for a bunch of different reasons, but honestly as soon as I climbed down this ladder and got to see such an iconic shot beautifully realized in full 3D with the classic music still in the background I was sold. And so far the game has been way better than I ever thought it would be considering I haven't really loved one since FFX. They've finally figured out how to make the ATB combat fun and the writing/VA work is way better than I thought it would be. Though if I could delete everyone's anime reaction noises, especially Cloud's, I would.
61 - 19
I had quite a lot of fun working on the Fallen Order video, and it was a huge relief not to have to play mother-may-I with the copyright system like I do on my other videos since video game footage is basically never copyrighted on YouTube. As I plan my next few projects I'm thinking of doing a few more game related videos in the near future. Is that something you'd like to see?
18 - 1
If you watched Arcane, do you actively play League of Legends?
5 - 1
What did you think of Dune 2021?
6 - 3
What video length do you prefer? Length will always depend on how much I have to say about a particular topic but this will help me prioritize different topics.
7 - 0
I make analytical videos about games/books/movies etc.
twitter.com/ThingPlays
www.tumblr.com/blog/plays-the-thing
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