#second to last one... is such a tragic scene. but i gotta say the cap makes me laugh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

why-this-kolaveri-machi · 3 years

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i’m an idiot. i screw everything up.

Titans 3.03

still here, still doing this. these reviews take a fair bit of time that i cobble together across days (like, ten minute chunks during breaks, etc) and i tend to struggle to keep up with episodes as they come out. this means that by the time i’m done with one, most of my stuff is jossed (or geoffed in this case? idk) or outdated and the post sinks like a stone into oblivion. so! i’m going to change things up a bit with this one and write as i see the episode rather than collecting my thoughts later. in my experience with spn, that was a faster way to get them done.

anyway. let’s see how it goes! *shadowboxes*

SPOILERS ahead.

1. an auspicious start with some grave-digging!

digging up a grave and breaking open a coffin is some serious, back-breaking work--that dick did it on his own, likely straight after that fight with red hood, is a testament to the sheer intensity, stamina and discipline that he’s capable of. like, we like to joke about dick cooking cauliflower crust pizzas and making gar and rachel spar and memorise sun tzu--and despair at the obvious consequences of some of bruce’s parenting skills--but imagine crime-fighting almost daily without any superpowers, performing some of the most intense parkour in bulky, uncomfortable armour, doing detective work, pushing through every last barrier of exhaustion and then getting up to repeat it all over again the next day. dick probably thought he was going extra-easy on rachel and gar.

1.5. then again, dick probably had a hundred different easier ways to confirm whether jason was still buried or not, from using equipment to merely asking connor to have a quick look with his x-ray vision. but, no, he’s too caught up in confusion and terror, not really having come to terms with jason’s death in the first place, leave alone the possibility that he could be alive after all. he can’t possibly let the others know until he’s confirmed it himself, even if it means digging all through the night until his arms are jelly, thinking over and over again about jason’s eyes, jason’s voice, from behind that red mask.

... besides, dick has good reason to believe that he could’ve been hallucinating. wouldn’t be his first psychotic episode, after all.

that just imbues this sweaty, desperate, fingers-scrabbling-in-gravedirt scene with that much more poignancy, and a fair bit of bone-chilling terror. dick is horrified to realise that jason’s grave is empty, but a part of him is also probably relieved.

1.75 (... also it’s curious that we’re never shown any of the team asking to see jason’s grave after they come to wayne manor. i guess it’s because the writers--and the audience--know that jason is actually alive, but these people don’t know that. i don’t know if it’s sad or infuriating or both that they’re barely shown mourning him.)

2. oh GOD the sheer TENSION in kory saying, “i don’t want to say it, but--” and dick quickly interrupting, “it was jason. i saw him,” and hank giving him this loaded sidelong glance. i love how dick’s precarious mental health from last season is still this big elephant in the room but at least nobody’s blowing up in his face and questioning his every decision yet

2.25. i love the relative matter-of-factness with which they’re discussing a possible resurrection. and, of course, ra’s al ghul is brought up and quickly dismissed

(still wouldn’t put it past this show to bring him up at the very last second as the real real mastermind)

2.5. “maybe they can bring donna back” OH KORY

2.75. didn’t they have this same conversation about killing/not killing rose last season? man, the og titans make me tired.

and i don’t know if it’s just hank, but there’s a definite in-group/out-group vibe going on with the og titans, where they’re not only ready to consider killing anybody who threatens the group but makes it difficult for new people to fit in. donna and kory got along well with each other, but the dynamics between hank/donna/dawn and gar/rachel/rose were somewhat strained, and with jason, they were really fucking terrible. it makes sense when you think about how the titans started and how they broke up the first time--both were fairly disruptive events, i’d imagine, in that they probably got together to break away from their mentors and strike out on their own, and when they split up, it was the first time they felt directly responsible for the loss of an innocent life.

but the titans that dick is leading now is explicitly about mentoring a young generation of heroes, about second chances and found family. dick definitely wants to reach out to him first, and i have a feeling he’s going to be forced to make some sort of terrible Choice later on in this episode.

2.8. (honestly tho, this also seems like hank struggling with his own guilt re: jason; if red hood is not the kid that he failed, it’d be easier to fight him.)

HANK NO

4. honestly this season is already ticking off so many things on my wishlist, but i really wish dick would sit down with the newer members of his team and trust them with important information the same time that he’s telling them to the other members. gar searching for help and reassurance from a man who just dumped all of his responsibilities on his son overnight and went AWOL is a sad sight

4.25. has it only been just 48 hours????? wow! jason’s definitely been planning the red hood gig for a long time now...

5. ezekiel, my man! shady looking guy gets into your cab without a destination in mind... no problem, get right in! said guy gets a call to go to the observatory when he’s barely even looked out of the window so far at gotham... yep, a damn tourist! i want more ezekiel in this show.

5.25. (of course jason has upturned table lamps all along the floor... we have to *gritted teeth* balance the TEAL with the ORANGE don’t we?)

5.5. “dick’s a fucking psycho--he could be following you right now.” hank... has no objection to that lol

5.25. hank, hank... this is bad-decision-palooza. i can’t imagine that hank actually thought that jason was reaching out to him for help, given that the last time hank and jason had any substantial interaction hank had been one of the people accusing jason of sabotaging the team. but for him to go seek out jason and go along with his demands without any backup, weapons or equipment? not the best idea he’s ever come up with.

(add to that getting into the swimming pool of a condemned gym... oh yuck.)

((yes, i have enough self-restraint to not cap his ass.))

(((cap his ass! HA!)))

5.5. do you think jason has bugs/monitoring equipment planted in wayne manor to monitor the titans, or remote access to the cave’s systems? wouldn’t put it past him.

6. oh man, hank came back before dick and the others could meet ezekiel! this is TRAGIC

6.25. i mean, it’s plot-convenient that connor was able to give so much information about the bomb from just looking at it once, but i also like to think it’s the luthor-side of him coming to the fore. it also reminds me of that (in)famous scene from the new52 run of Nightwing comics, where a bomb was attached to nightwing’s heart and luthor disabled it by killing nightwing (temporarily). it’s a neat little callback.

6.55. “where i come from, you go after family? there’s no mercy.” BUT THAT’S THE PROBLEM ISN’T IT

6.75. i mean, dick’s making sense: this is a game, and they need to get it off playing out on jason’s terms. but having a member of his team in his face, doubting his reasoning and every decision? a very familiar sight.

6.8. krypto with an a+ sense of humour? also a very familiar sight.

7. wayne enterprises... providing the military with... bombs that can be implanted in humans? a BIIIIG yikes. i guess it’s not too many steps above developing clandestine intra-dermal trackers and implanting them in your own sons, and bruce probably thought they could be used as part of negotiation tactics, but still... YIKES.

7.5. on the other hand, conner being asked to build a deactivation advice seems part of a growth arc that started from last season... he knows so much, but part of growing is learning, and part of learning is using what you know to create something new.

8. oh man, my heart broke at hank going “i’m an idiot... i screw everything up.” like. for him to go like this, after being brought down to such a low last season? struggling with pain and addiction and his relationship with the love of his life? it’s so sad.

9. oh, oh, oh! ronnie from schitt’s creek! i love her!

9.5. “one of jason’s minions” took his body out of the morgue... how deliciously morbid that he planned out his own death like this!

10. TALK TO HANK, DICK

honestly, tho, i’m quite impressed with dick here. trying to think beyond just the most alarming part of the crisis at hand, keeping his cool, delegating tasks, frequently touching base with different members of his team... well done.

10.25.... whoops, spoke too soon. i’m genuinely confused here, tho. where did the van full of gold bars come from? why did they stop there and get out? how did dawn even know about this?

on the other hand, it’s cool to know dove has bulletproof feathers!

10.5. eh... curran walters isn’t really selling red hood’s menace to me so far. but then again, if titans version of red hood is vulnerable-kid-with-father-issues-trying-to-overcompensate, then yeah! yeah, it makes sense.

11. “when bats have sex, they gotta have something to hang from” OH GOD HANK

... because i want smiley!gar on my blog :)

11.5. awww. i feel sorry for hank but NONE of these fuckers deserve gar except maybe kory

12. ohhh FUCK! look at jason being exactly one step ahead of the titans at every turn. nice.

no really, i love the building stakes and the building mystery - i feel like the deathstroke arc from last season should’ve been more like this. the flashbacks about jericho and rose came too late and after too much build up, which resulted in a very underwhelming and confusing season throughline.

13. HANK AND DIIIIIICCCKKK

“you’re doing your best by me. always have.” WAILING HERE

it also kills me to think that hank thinks that his imminent death is because of his failure to keep the team together (when he was clearly struggling with his own issues and was spiralling towards rock-bottom) and his fear that he will once again be the cause of the team falling apart.

also:

14. “i grew up... you can, too. you just have to face your fear.”

yep, got scarecrow’s grubby little fingerprints aaaaalllll over this.

14.25. nightwing’s got specialised batarangs! yay! (somehow i can’t see this universe’s dick calling them “wingdings”)

15. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

oh man, that was devastating. well done, show. fuck, well done, jason.

this is going to bring up all sorts of “if onlys” for the team. i can’t wait for some fucking aftermath.

#titans #titans spoilers #dick grayson #hank hall #dawn granger #garfield logan #conner kent #jason todd #a tragic jalebi #meta

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stormsbourne · 6 years

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uhhhh with spoilers tho why was infinity war bad?

spoils + long post under cut

so I think the single scene that caps off how bad infinity war is is that thanos has captured gamora and forced her to tell him where the last infinity stone is. thanos, if you’ve forgotten, took gamora from her home – there’s an earlier scene that shows him grooming her as he kills half her planet – and spent her entire life pitting her and nebula against each other for his amusement and to “make them strong” in pretty much textbook abusive ways. but for some goddamn reason, the movie then shows thanos being a fucking whiny baby about gamora’s hatred of him.

gamora: [referring to thanos’ throne] I always hated this chairthanos: yes, I’ve heard that beforegamora: and I hated this roomthanos: you have said as muchgamora: and I hated youthanos: *sad baby face* :’(

anyway thanos and gamora are going after this stone. it’s about halfway through the movie at this point

double hitler red skull shows up as the guardian of the stone and also a weird dementor and tells thanos that in order to get the stone he has to sacrifice something that he loves more than anything. gamora starts laughing. she tells him that this is his just deserts, that the universe has put up a wall here to thwart him because he is incapable of loving anyone or anything so the stone will never be his. he turns around to face her and he’s crying. “tears, really?” she demands. “they’re not for him” doublenazi red skull says

there’s a very long sequence of thanos grabbing gamora by the wrist in a deliberate parallel to the earlier scene where he took baby gamora by the hand. he yanks her over to this cliff edge and throws her off, crying the whole time. poor sad abuse man. has to kill his victim. it must be hard. we see her fall. then we get a loving fucking 30 second money shot of her dead body at the bottom of this chasm just to really drive home how tragic it is.

(baby gamora is later used at the end of the movie once thanos wins to reassure him it was worth it)

I knew this movie was gonna be a problem before then but this was The Scene where I knew it was the second worst movie marvel had made.

in addition to all of this here are some other points

Thanos’ “sympathetic motivation” is stupid. if you haven’t been spoiled on this yet his motivation is that he wants everything to be “in balance” and he’s motivated by overpopulation, which is a racist + classist myth perpetuated by those in power to promote xenophobia. thanos’ goal is to eliminate half of every sentient species in the universe to ensure nobody is ever poor or suffering again, somehow, and also to ensure that the universe doesn’t run out of resources

oh but it’s ok! the genocide is random! no racial or class overtones here we just flip a coin for everybody! random genocides are the best genocides!

I don’t want to sound like one of those people who soapboxes about how narratives have to tell us the badguy is bad but I honestly don’t think the movie does enough to communicate that thanos is wrong and also fucking crazy. there’s a few people like “oh thanos how can you be sure” and “thanos we make these choices and that’s what matters” but almost no one ever hears his plan and tells him “you are crazy and that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever fucking heard, you delusional fucking weirdo”

he wins btw which wouldn’t be bad taken on its own but like, why does he not use his magical glove macguffin to make resources infinite and the universe an actual utopia instead of killing half of everybody

two significant, named characters die in the first 10 minutes before the opening screen even shows up, without any sort of buildup

the soul gem plot even without all the ooh sad abuser shit is such a fucking nothing burger, you have all these weird and intricate things that involved entire plots of movies and weird shit that’s only barely a gem at all like the aether from thor 2 and then you have Fantasy Trope 101 oh you gotta kill somebody to get the rock! you gotta do it! but it’s sad and this strange dementor not-hitler is here to make sure it’s sad!

the black panther cast is in it for approximately 20 minutes total out of the like, 3 hour runtime. (aside: I actually saw BP and IF on the same day and holy balls was that a high to low sliding scale)

the movie ends with roughly 2/3 of the main cast being turned to dust by thanos winning but because we know none of it is going to stick because they have sequel movies and this is comics-based, it just feels pointless. it feels like a waste of time. it feels like they dragged out into 2.5 hours what could have been done in 20 minutes

speaking of thanos winning it is exhausting to watch. it feels like the movie is kicking you over and over and every time it starts to let you get up a bigger dude comes in and kicks you instead. nobody likes to watch a movie where the villain wins over and over and over without so much as a setback. thanos starts OUT too powerful for anybody to stop so the entire movie just becomes him stomping all over everybody over and over and over again. we start out the movie with him doing it. we end the movie with him literally undoing an emotional climax moment in order to make sure he wins. oh you destroyed the mind gem? no big deal I’ll just rewind time zoooooop ok we good! I win! *little kid voice* you can’t kill me I rewound time and actually I won 10 minutes ago!

ok this one is kind of petty but someone pointed out valkyrie isn’t even in this movie and now it’s consuming me, you give ant-man and hawkeye one-off lines about why they’re not here but you can’t even be like “oh yeah valkyrie took some of our people and escaped” (we’re gonna come back to this in like 2 seconds keep it iin mind)

random annoyance: peter quill peacocking over gamora because thor is hot and he feels threatened, I hate peter quill

other random annoyance: thor your ship got fucking blown up, how did thanos only kill half your people, are the other half on his ship now?

I honestly just like, cannot fucking stress how bad the thanos and gamora shit is, how fucking horrifying it is, how we’re expected to feel sympathy for this man who literally fucking disassembled nebula to torture her to get gamora to do what he wants. oh it’s ok though. he loves gamora in his way you see. it’s fine. it’s fine! it’s fine. it’s fine. i t s f i n e : )

does the rest of the world just not realize how horrifying that is?!?!?!?!?!?!?

the vision/scarlet witch ship is like an emotional crux of the whole movie and it just. it just doesn’t work. it just doesn’t.

the plot thread with the hulk is probably going to be resolved in avengers 2019 since iirc bruce survived but as it is it feels unfinished and dangling

speaking of survivors we gotta have that man angst, we’ll turn a 17 year old boy to dust but tony’s gotta look sad about it

like fam I love tony angst but he has had ENOUGH jesus CHRIST rdj only barely wants to be involved with this franchise anymore anyway let him be free. maybe he’ll actually die in avengers 2019

it feels like it undoes a bunch of things from the previous movies which on one hand who cares! it’s all gonna be rewound anyway! but on the other hand FUCK you. the asgardian refugees are all fucking dead now. black panther’s cast exists for like 20 minutes and its setting is there pretty much just so the aliens can fuck up someplace that isn’t new york for once. rocket’s epiphany at the end of gotg2? who cares we’ve got snark to dispense! can’t have him act like he learned anything, that’d take away from his ability to be a dick to peter!

uh I think I’m out of steam for now but that’s my list of why I hated the movie. it had some good moments and a lot of the character interactions were great, especially literally every scene involving spiderman, but you could have fucking jewels and if you bury them in shit they are still going to stink

#Anonymous #infinity war spoilers /#asks

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talking-head-productions · 6 years

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Things I noticed while re-watching The First Avenger

Please, no spoilers for Infinity War in the comments.

The Hydra weapons make the same exact sound as Iron Man’s repulsors. Makes sense, they’re both based on tesseract technology.

Captain America really freaking killed people in this movie. Like, damn. He was totally ready to murder Red Skull in the final fight! Speaking of...

I always say that The Incredible Hulk has the most brutal fight scene in the entire MCU, and it does. But the final battle here is a close second. Both of them were trying to kill each other, they were tackling each other into the walls and shit, it was hardcore. I kind of overlooked that in the past.

There’s a scene, you probably remember it, where a guy gets shredded by propeller blades. Fully onscreen. That’s gotta be one of the goriest things in the MCU.

The plane crash is still poorly handled. Especially because this time I noticed an out: if they’d edited the fight so that Cap and Red Skull crashing into the controls was one of the last moments. After that, the two could rebound into the tesseract housing, which would cause it to eject. Red Skull would grab it out of the air, get vaporized, and then the cube could fall out of the plane because some debris hits it or something. Then Steve would of course try to stop the dive but then he realizes the controls are damaged and there isn’t time to get to the back of the plane before the crash. So he sits down, radios Peggy, and faces what he thinks will be his death with dignity. Boom, perfect ending.

Forget what I mentioned earlier about the final fight, the first time he meets Yohan Schmidt, Cap reaches for his gun. Damn.

Poor Bucky has just had the shittiest life. He goes to war, leaves his best friend behind, gets captured, tortured, and is then rescued by his best friend- who is now the more physically fit of the two, and all the ladies want him. Bucky then gets roped into fighting again, and this time winds up falling out of a train, losing his arm, and nearly dying. Then he’s rescued- by Hydra. They mind control him, turn him into a living weapon, and force him to carry out despicable acts for 70 years, on and off. Then he meets up with Steve again in modern times and has to fight his best friend. And then when he gets his memories back, he’s suddenly the world’s most wanted terrorist. In the middle of that, he gets mind controlled again and nearly kills everyone he cares about. And then his name is cleared, but suddenly he has to relive one of his most tragic kills, and now Iron Man is trying to kill him, and then he has to go into even deeper hiding in Wakanda. At least the ending of Black Panther hinted he was more at peace, but still. I’m not sure there’s a bigger woobie in the MCU.

#marvel #captain america #infinity war #mcu

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