The movie runs along two inverse continuums, call them:

A - Accurate Wish Portrayal

B - "Compelling Movie" Score

The higher we go on A, the lower we drop on B and vice versa.

The script clearly prioritizes B, as it should. Bear getting exactly what he wished for would make for a pretty shitty movie. But any guy who's had a girl obsessed with him (who he also chose back) will tell you this movie just comes off as weird.

Regarding the consent piece... it was a creative decision, nothing more. The writers chose to have "pre-wish Nikki" and "post-wish Nikki" exist simultaneously in the same body, which is an interesting concept but definitely not original.

At its core, consent has nothing to do with the wish because we never choose what we want, much less who we love or desire. Bear's wish didn't specify how Nikki's affection for him should manifest. His wish positioned him on the receiving end of whatever treatment she gives a guy she fancies the most, which definitely isn't what her character acts out in the film.

Edit: But

(no spoilers or specifics about the new movie!)

When someone says King Arthur, we all think of a high middle ages setting of knights and castles and chivalry. None of this actually existed in 500 AD Britain. Arthur, if he existed, would have been a post-Roman Briton warlord living in the ruins of Rome. Authors simply wrote stories about the world they knew and so our current Arthurian legend is a patchwork of pagan Celtic myths updated with medieval tropes.

Yes, modern authors have attempted to make Arthur "historically accurate", but when you remove the medieval anachronisms and the Celtic mysticism, you are just left with... a tribal warrior king who raids farms. Hardly recognizable as King Arthur.

The same applies to the Iliad and Odyssey. Bronze age Greece (in which the story takes place) would be an alien civilization to Classical Greece, seperated by a 400-year dark age. These three ages, the story was oral history, being transformed and mutated every generation. On top of that, even mythology changed. Poseidon in the Odyssey is stuck between the Mycanean Poseidon and the Classical Poseidon that are very different characters.

All the traits we associate with Ancient Greece (philosophy, theater, rhetoric, the forum and the amphiteater) were not present yet in the Bronze age. The Acropolis, as far as it existed, was just a fortified hill, and not nearly the marble mountain of temples we see today.

A "historically accurate" Trojan War, a real Iliad and Odyssey, would be a bunch of bronze age warlords in bronze armor going around pillaging and looting villages. At that point, yeah, its accurate, but its just not the story we know because a big part of the story are those more Classical narrative and aesthetic elements.

In Homer's Iliad, characters are said to use iron arrows, when it was the Bronze Age. Medieval depictions of the story depict heroes in plate armor. Authors have always added their own technology to the story.

In short: the story has always been anachronistic and adapted to modern (at the time) sensibilities, even in the time of Homer. So much that removing all of that leaves the story unrecognizable. It seems arbitrary to set a cut-off, i.e., Iron Age weapons in the Bronze Age war are fine, but an early-medieval ship? No way!

Not only do mutants not work accurately as a parallel representation of oppressed groups in our world, mutant discrimination is kind of valid in the X-Men universe. I'm sure this opinion has done it's rounds on the internet and this sub but I feel like I really need to say my piece.

Many mutants gain their abilities vastly differently and a common trope we've seen be displayed is a mutant who manifests their powers and someone close to them becomes victim to their awakening. With that in mind, obviously they will be rounded up and "controlled". The government in their universe does do a horrible job in trying to control the situation but honestly it's valid as risking the existence of a random 12 year old gaining the x gene and every thought they have comes to reality is dangerous.

Also real life historically oppressed peoples have no moral justification as to why they're getting oppressed but you can't make this case for mutants. It's funny because writers will try to force this parallel like with the Kitty Pryde panel but that panel itself falls flat as it compares real world suffering and slurs to a fake made up slur with no history and pain attached to it.

Mutants shouldn't have to suffer but they certainly not safe to live with and around and their existence poses a danger to the general public.

Doom Eternal is excellent at what it's trying to do. This hardcore retro style movement shooter that makes full use of arsenal.Managing cool downs with fast pace action. It sold extremely well at the time it came out and is considered pretty easily a masterpiece by many.

But it gave the devs cart blanche to ignore Eternal's main issues that would negatively impact The Dark ages. The idea of restricting players to specific play style is something that did begin with Eternal. It was something people complained about. The devs gave their reasoning as to why as they viewed 2016 options led to "Players playing the game wrong".While you could argue if this is a good approach. It did work in Eternal . However It would lead them to essentially making The Dark Ages entire game play loop revolve around the parry shield. Which people found reppative and boring.

A elephant in the room I would like briefly discuss is they did buy into that Doom Slayer LORE HYPE and over focused on the story. The final DLCs have you fight the Dark Lord imbued with ultra energy or some shit. People online love this lore shit. As it makes for great YouTube videos to watch. So Doom The Dark ages become extremely bloated by a massive expansive story that spends itself over indulging. And this would affect gameplay by adding in Mech fights and Dragon segments. To farm aura that honestly shouldn't have been planted.

In the twilight of the DLC releasing and Id having their massive studio lay offs. There were obviously a ton of other factors that negatively affected the Dark Ages.Pc requirements/ price points exct. The game underperformend is the absolute fact. But id like to suggest one final reason. I think Doom Eternal fulfilled a lot of peoples interest in a Doom 2016 sequel and they didn't have much a reason to be invested again. But it also had smaller issues that also made them again not to keen to have another go around. Even if the game did well when it came out.

I believe this kind of falls in the "show, don't tell" in terms of writing. His writing is often very average. The movies will state that this character is X, Y and Z in some way, and then Nolan will use absolutely brilliant cinematography to make you feel it.

Oh, the character is sad? Every single thing from the lighting to the makeup to the effects to camera angle will blend harmonically to make you feel it. However, the writing to convince you why and how he is sad is often ... average at best. I feel like the writing aspect is overlooked because his cinematography makes up for it/distracts you.

In a weird way, his film often feels like I'm watching a really good instagram edit of a movie, great editing and all, but at the end of the day its just an edit, without a deeper writing to it. Or listening to a song which has a great melody to match the mood, but not the best lyrics (except writing is more relevant in films, than lyrics is to a song imo)

Granted, I didn't see "every" film of his, (yes i watched odyssey), but if you have exceptions then i'd love to see to it.

OK OK OK BEFORE YOU IMMEDIATELY DOWNVOTE ME AND YELL AT ME FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING SHIT... hear me out

First of all, this is not really my own reading of the movie, though I have come to agree with it somewhat. Full disclosure, I am Italian and here we take our classics very seriously. Latin classics obviously, but also the Greek texts that inspired them.

So what basically happened is that I saw the movie, felt it was good in some aspects, but frustratingly intent on changing stuff in others. Why was Polyphemus changed to a mostly dumb mute brute? Why are the originally triumphant moments of Odysseus recontextualized or outright removed? Hell in general, why does the mythological and epic aspect of the movie only apply to the tragic aspects and not the victories? Why are all the gods so faint in their presence that you can make a fair argument that Athena is just a vision and a manifestation of Odysseus' guilt? WHY DID AGAMEMNON WANT TO DISRUPT TRADE ROUTES, what is this, GOT?

With all of these dumb little doubts on my mind, I came away thinking that Nolan is too realism- and tragedy-pilled. He can only indulge in fantasy if that fantasy involves suffering, but can't indulge in the triumphs of greek myth. Which ostensibly devalued his work. But then I read the reviews on the papers (yes, like actual newspapers). One Italian publication basically delegated the review to two classical studies experts who talked about a lot of the weird aspects of the movies. While they ultimately came away praising the movie, they did point out a few things that stuck with me. And that is the American parallel with Odysseus and the Greeks as a whole.

A lot of the Odyssey's themes and scenes have been changed in Nolan's movie and when you consider the option that the movie is commenting on current American international politics and behavior it... weirdly fits. Like to a concerning degree.

The most damning piece of evidence for this, aside from Odysseus himself being basically unrecognizable as a character (and we'll get to that), is how the movie plays with the laws of hospitality (or Zeus' law). Because that law is a central point in the movie, but compared to the original work it is vastly different in how it is used. In the original, the law of hospitality is a recurring theme that gets shown in basically all its possible applications, both positive and negative. Positive aspects include Nausicaa and the Phoenicians, negative aspects include Polyphemus and the suitors. The film arguably makes the law even more important and central to the story than it is in the text and yet... it removes the Phoenicians completely and changes Polyphemus to not include the law of hospitality as a relevant plot point there. Instead a lot fo the movie focuses on the Greeks invoking that law as an excuse to basically force themselves into other people's homes and take what they want. That same law is then not applied uniformly towards beggars or people the house master may not like. It's basically purely subjective

Well, the movie explicitly tells us that the thematic point it's trying to make is one of ethical and moral decay on the part of the Greeks. They're the culture that created that law in the first place, but have now come to apply it only when it suits them and mainly as an excuse for what is essentially just plain old forcing yourself into someone else's home.

Similarly with the people of the sea (basically the "Sea people" which are considered or rumored to be one of the reasons for the IRL Bronze Age collapse). A force of outsiders that moves like ghosts along the coasts, dangerous and unknowable, plundering everything... and then it's revealed that those reports actually refer to the various Greek war parties returning home. The theme of fear of the outsider and the unknown distracting/hiding that the actual danger/moral decay comes from within is pretty obvious.

There's the fall of troy, in its framing closer to the Aeneid IIRC as a grand tragedy and the wiping out of a civilization. The movie frames the fall of troy as the beginning of the end, the absolute lowest point of the Greek civilization. The movie also reframes the conflict a bit. From the romantic and larger than life, but ultimately pointless tragedy of the original Iliad where the goal is getting back a single woman and killing thousands for that goal due to stupid alliances and vows of honor, the movie gives Agamemnon, supreme leader of the Greeks a newer goal that I'm pretty sure was not in the original text: disrupting Troy's control of trade routes. This plot point is extremely minor in the grand scheme of things, but aside from being just topical in and of itself, it reframes the war completely. It's now a conflict started on the basis of a slight, but kept alive due to economic interests.

Odysseus himself is also weird in this movie. I've already pointed out how the movie refuses to give him a single triumphant moment (in the classical "epic" way of just having the absolute upper hand of a situation), while being absolutely not shy about giving him mythologically fitting dramatic or tragic moments. But his characterization is probably one of the biggest changes. He's less cunning and more impulsive and rash, less fighting with the gods and the destiny they impose on him and more outright disrespecting and blaspheming them. His greatest tactical victory is reframed as his greatest moral failure and his final fight is less the work of a tactician and moreso a half-suicide attempt as his plan to beat the suitors is basically to go in alone and kill them all on his own. Granted, myth Odysseus would've done so no problem, but Nolan doesn't want to give this Odysseus that triumph. Instead the fight is a bloody, exhausting, drawn-out brawl that ends with Odysseus barely alive. All of this because the violence Odysseus perpetrates is framed as intrinsically bad (so much so that Odysseus has Telemachus not bloody his hands. There's some cycle of violence stuff going on there obviously), therefore Odysseus perpetrating violence, even against the abusers, can't be positive. In that sense Odysseus is framed more as a modern soldier, the perpetrator of endless and senseless violence, he is the arm of the Greek war machine, the final cog that puts the moral decay of the Greeks into practice by razing Troy to the ground through trickery. The only possible alternative he has then is exile. To atone and to leave behind the world he helped doom, hoping only that the new generations, untouched by the blood of his actions, can steer it better through the coming crisis than he could.

So now that I've written your eyes off with all of this, why did those experts call a parallel to the contemporary American situation?

Well, as I pointed out, there's a few thematic aspects that Nolan introduced in his movie that map very well onto contemporary America.

- The moralism and rules for thee but not for me to justify abuse of power as well as the general decay of previously held sacred moral values

- The presence and importance given to a nebulous outside threat that distracts and hides the danger and moral decay from within

- Odysseus cast as basically a disillusioned soldier with PTSD, horrified at what his actions have caused, but initially still clinging to his old ways. Arrogant, cocksure, disrespectful of other cultures or even his own (IIRC he says at one point "Thank your gods" or something, as if the greek gods weren't his as well)

- The seemingly senseless slaughter of an entire culture actually hiding vested economic and geopolitical interests

- The general sense of "end of an era" that permeates the movie that is explicitly brought about by the regional hegemon and its moral and ethical collapse as well as its war mongering and violence

Hell, I don't think it's a coincidence that the two scorned and abused wives in the movie are played by african-american actresses. Or the fact that the vast majority of the cast is Hollywood A-listers and some of its current biggest names.

There's also a general parallel between the law of hospitality and the US complicated relationship with immigration and present rejection of its once proud identity as a nation of immigrants

There's probably more that I forgot/didn't notice. What I'm saying is mostly that once I saw these parallels hinted at, it made the changes in the movie click for me. The Odyssey is basically reskinned to act as a parallel story about the fall of American hegemony and how the country is eating itself and the world alive as it falls (bit dramatic there, I know, it's late ok)

And look, I'm not even saying I fundamentally disagree with what Nolan might be saying about America here. It's just... why use the Odyssey to say this? Why twist this epic that is one of the foundational texts of western culture as a whole into a very America-centric story? Sure, it's more contemporary now, but imo way less universal. And in that sense imo also less timeless than other adaptations, because so much of it hinges on that American parallel.

If you don't have that frame of reference then the Odyssey is just straight up a bad adaptation, indecisive on whether it wants to commit to the magic of mythological Greece or not, willingly dating the events, but unwilling to commit with costuming, acting or casting, willingly cast the hero in a morally gray light, but refuse to actually have him commit the morally gray acts of the original epic and instead reframing his other actions.

And lastly... I'm just fucking tired of having America's collapse as a global hegemon being a constant recurring thing. Fucking recontextualize your own legends for that, let me have the Odyssey as a proper epic. You wanna recontextualize and modernize it? Commit to it, coward, don't limit it to just the American experience but include all of the West, make it truly international and universal

Thanks for reading (if you did, wouldn't blame if you skipped tbh). You may now hurl insults and slurs at me

I know, manga about hunting dragons and I'm talking about whaling, I must be very fun at parties.

But like, it's not really a hard connection to make?

The crew of the Quin Zaza are effectively whalers with ships that flies instead of sailing.

Dragons are basically flying whales.

Their methods of hunting is the same, only in the sky.

The spoils they take from the dragons, down to the whale oil, are the same.

You are basically reading a whaling manga, only with dragons.

And that's fun and all but at the same time, is it really? Japan has a pretty controversial story with whaling, leaving the International Whaling Commission in 2019 so they can resume commercial whaling out of "cultural tradition". They have a ton of issues like how they use research as an excuse to hunt whales. They are like public enemy number 1 of every whale conservation agency.

And then there's this manga, that portrays the act of hunting whales/dragons as this heroic, frontier like endeavor.

It's like reading a western that still glorifies cowboys as bringers of civilization to uncharted, barbarian lands.

The protagonist, Mika, is this autistic dude that basicalyl only cares about two things, hunting dragons and eating dragons.

And it's portrayed as this quirky but still somewhat aspiring way of life, in which that his way of life is one that respects dragons for he is a man that is completely okay with dying and being eaten as well. Almost like dragon hunting is a competition between equals that mutually respect each other.

Mika way of like is pretty much endorsed by the narrative in ways that inspires other characters to be better, including the younger members of the crew.

But like, the dragons never really consented to being hunted, y'know? They don't want to eat Mika, they don't care that he sees them as their equal, they just don't want to die. Mike is just a guy that really likes killing and eating these wild animals and is ascribing these human traits to them.

The story reinforces this connection between Mika and the dragons that just.... isn't there.

And it's not like dragons are these major, societal issues. Sure every now and then the Quin Zaza is commissioned to hunt troublesome dragons, but their bread and butter is basically just hunting them for profit.

Oh but sure there's a conservationist attitude about it. Killing dragons and not eating them is seen as this heinous act, and you shouldn't kill them when they are with children.

But at the same time Quin Zaza has shown to target dragons specifically because they are rare.

The latest arc was about hunting an legendary arctic dragon.

Did they need to hunt it? Was it causing problems?

No, they just wanted the clout. The first arctic hunters, the crew that hunted a legendary dragon (not even their first, but the previous one was in fact causing problems).

And they plan to hunt the remaining legendary dragons. Which again is portrayed as this heroic declaration of bravery.

The problem isn't even portraying these things. It's just how the manga unambiguously endorses it as this cool thing. It's reading reading Spanish comic that tries to convince you that bullfighting is actually cool and based and totally not needless cruelty disguised as cultural tradition.

Dragons are these wild creatures that have been out paced by technology, their meat is mostly sold a luxury item, not a necessity. And by the latest arc they have introduced tranquilizers so that you don't even need to kill every dragon that cause problems anymore.

And guess the one character that seemly had an issue with it? Yep, same Mika.

I just hope that this doesn't turn on an excuse to show how "these new methods are actually more harmful and we need to continue stabbing them with spears to death for their own good."

And that's my rant on Drifting Dragons and why despite how cool hunting dragons is, the manga still leaves me a bitter taste.

I dunno man, I'm going to play something that makes me less morally conflicted, like Monster Hunter.

It’s genuinely such a fun and interesting game that reignited my love of Superheroes and beyond that it breathed new life into characters with little to no shine like Peni Parker and Luna Snow.

A friend of mine whom did not give a rats ass about marvel posted the other day about wanting more Peni Parker comics purely due to Rivals. I’m still on the edge of my seat waiting for Sentry and Hyperion to be playable. Honestly, it doesn’t even sound real when I say it out loud. It sounds like a fever dream that would be left on the cutting room floor, I damn near wanna kiss whoever pitched the idea. And I think projects like this are why marvel is kicking DC’s ass in the public eye right now.

Not gonna make this long but I find it so weird how there's such a lack of team battles in One Piece where the entire crew battles the main opponent instead of it just being "Usopp/Chopper fight weak member" or "Nami and Robin fight..girl" of the villain group while Luffy,Zoro and Sanji fight the big bad and the 2 strongest henchmen.

The reason the weaker members look less useful is cause their overall powers and skillsets are reserved for more support roles and situations but we would never know cause Oda never writes a fight in which he actually has to utilize them in said roles and no wonder the weaker members end up looking less useful in fights cause Oda constantly writes them in 1V1 fights in which their support role powers are less useful in direct combat and the only time we see the Straw hats battle one opponent was back in goddamn Thriller Bark.

I also feel like Robin and Jinbei are characters that should be way stronger then they actually are but Oda refuses to let them be strong cause you know, it's the Monster trio shows in battles and for a series that's meant to be majorly a battle Shonen,the fights should not be lackluster or this sloppy and a good amount of the times,the fights are very slow and lacking in choreography and just offscreened and I dunno if it's cause Oda is getting Old or what but Jeez.

This is something I would arguably say Fairy Tail does better cause they do a lot more team battles with Team Natsu and people like Wendy and Lucy contribute hugely to said fights and battles and more often it's Team Natsu vs one powerful opponent and its not always saved for Natsu 24/7.

(Like Natsu and Gray vs Mard Gear,Natsu Gajeel and Wendy vs Faust, Team Natsu vs Hades,etc).

And I feel like for a battle Shonen,the fights shouldn't be this lackluster and sloppy.

Powerscalers will often not discuss wall or building level characters and instead go for talking about standard OP guys or lower street tiers, but I think in the middle of both of these classifications is where the real fun begins. Some of the coolest fights have the characters throwing each other through buildings, tearing apart houses as they throw punches that put craters in the walls, and fight at superhuman but still not super OP speedster speeds.

Someone already talked on this sub about how lower level superhuman feats are more impressive because it is easier for us to see how powerful they really are due to scale compared to our real life material sciences and tech. We know concrete is exceptionally durable in real life, you need specialized equipment just to meaningfully damage it. So when you see a guy punch concrete hard enough to put a fist sized hole in it, or enough to create giant spider-web like cracks in it, you realize "Whoa, this guy is really strong." Knocking down a building with one blow? That is almost unstoppable. You'd need the military to get involved if a guy like that existed in real life and his durability scaled to his strength, because police weaponry would be completely ineffective. And with wall level characters, they can still use the environment to fight in believable ways with each other. A big steel rebar can still easily be used as a club by one wall level character against another and do damage in a believable way. Building level is a bit harder to do in that regard, but it can still be done. What I mean by this is that it is much harder to believe that higher tier characters would be affected by things like a relative equal hitting them with something like a car, or a tree when held up to scrutiny. You can see a city level character get hurt by a car and think, "Okay, how does that work? This guy can tank a nuke or a railgun round, but a car hurts him?" Now, other powers can make this explainable, maybe the villain can make things more durable so they survive being used offensively, maybe the hero's durability is better at no selling stronger attacks, but it is much more plausible for a building to wall level character to be able to use these techniques on an equal and not feel like they are just being nerfed for stakes. The coolest thing to me is punching someone through multiple walls or even buildings, because we can picture how powerful that is. Walls are incredibly strong in real life, especially concrete or brick, or metal, or really any industrial material. So seeing these characters smash each other through them, use things like cars and trees as weapons, and fight hand to hand makes for great opportunities in choreography.

So hey, Dragon Striker. It's a fairly new cartoon and I'd say it's pretty good! If you haven't seen it I'd recommend it. To simplify things let's just say it's a fantasy story about super powered soccer playing, in other words every player has some kind of magic power they use to play their position.

Fun animation, fun characters, and all that... Just uh, I got a problem with the season finale.

You know how stories sometimes need the hero to do something dramatic and so they have them get provoked or pushed to their limits repeatedly? And then they when they finally break and go wild everyone just ignores the thing that pushed them to the edge in the first place and blame the hero for everything? Like they simply decided to be a jerk that day? Well, that's what happened here.

First off, why doesn't anyone react to the attempt on the hero's life?

Long story short, the hero (Key) is playing against the Bards, a team that's menaced his through the entire season and is coached by a guy who absolutely hates Key because his mother and him were enemies back in the day. Key's team starts to win so the coach gets so pissed off that he runs to the sidelines and shouts, "Take him off the field, permanently!"

Note that while you're allowed to block, disrupt, etc with your powers in-game it's against the rules to directly attack another player. Let alone attempt to inflict a terrible injury or death on them.

Regardless, one of the Bards decide to take him up on it and uses magnetism to lift Key into the air and then slam him into the ground hard enough to make a crater while shouting, "You want to be like your mother, well she's dead! Why don't you join her!!!!!"

Okay so the Bards have now just attempted to murder their competition in front of a crowd while screaming their intentions the whole time. How does everyone react?

-The other coaches say nothing.

-The rest of the Bards don't react.

-Heck, you don't even see a reaction from Key's own teammates and friends. They don't respond in the slightest to an assault on their friend.

Why? Well, because that'd get in the way of what happens next!

Why is everyone so much more horrified by the hero accidentally injuring the guy who just attempted to kill him?

Fortunately for Key, his powers activate on instinct, mitigating the damage and also amping him up. And so he... takes a shot at the goal instead of retaliating on his assailant and scores. However it turns out he put so much juice into it that he ends up injuring the guy by accident.

Now THAT suddenly provokes a reaction from everyone. The coaches look on in horror. His teammates stare at him like he's a menace to society. The guy who tried to kill him looks at him like he just can't believe the hero would do that to him. Key himself runs off in tears and no one attempts to console or at least calm him down.

The only person who follows him is the coach who ordered his death in the first place and Key's father who himself was horrified by what he saw (but didn't react to the attempt on his sons life).

Okay, here's the thing...

-Does it make sense for Key, a character who has a good heart and struggled to control his powers the whole season to be horrified upon learning he accidentally injured someone? Yeah, it does.

-Does it make sense for the villainous coach to ignore logic and condemn him, and for the distraught hero to wonder if he's right? Yeah, makes sense to me.

-Is it weird that the attempt on his life was used to instigate this conflict only for everyone to not react to it, as though it never happened? Yes, very much so. It's pretty important context.

-Is it weird that everyone has the same reaction? Yes, why did neither his teammates nor his father react with horror when Key was attacked but suddenly gasp in horror at him. Why are none of them more concerned for HIS health given they might not know he didn't take much damage from the attack?

What I'm trying to say is, this conflict COULD work, if people reacted to events with some level of consistency. If an accidental injury is considered horrifying than an attempted murder should be even more horrifying to them. It should also cause some to decide the injured party had it coming or that Key did the right thing. The hero can still have the same conflict without everyone else acting dumb.

He didn’t attack until the end of Ragnarok. He needed at least Ego and Odin to die. They could have stopped him.

First, he gets the Power Stone by decimating the Nova Corps, the galaxy’s main law enforcement organization. He gets a potential obstacle out of the way AND becomes top dog in raw power, so he could bulldoze his way to the others.

Then he gets the Space Stone, giving himself quick access to the other stones AND eliminating Odin’s sons.

Then the Reality Stone at Knowhere, which could tip the scales against the tricky Time and Mind Stones, which his minions were going after anyway. No amount of raw power can protect you from THOSE things if they're used properly!

With his minions after those, he might as well get the Soul Stone now.

Very good execution.