2024 New Year's Eve Recap
Happy New Year everyone 🥳, I hope you have a safe, responsible, and wonderful night tonight, and if you're reading this after New Year's Eve (which is most of you) then I hope you had a good time and weren't too irresponsible. All you drinkers 🥴 and gun and firework owners 🎆 know what I'm talking about. You might notice that I'm posting this early, about two days early, and the reason why is I'm not sure what we have planned for New Year's Eve, and I want to post this now in case I'm unable to post it on the actual day. I hope that's okay with all of you. What I said before still applies, I want you all to have a fun and safe New Year's Eve. I know a lot of people drink 🥂 and party, and then set off fireworks 🎆 or shoot your guns in the air, and I just want you all to be careful and not hurt yourself or others. Safe and responsible is the word for this holiday.
No New Year's resolutions for me for next year, no one ever keeps their resolutions. I guess I did keep my resolutions from 2022 to create my own website or blog, even if it took me almost an entire year to do it. My only resolution for next year will be to review Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (AKA Godzilla x Mechagodzilla) before Brandon Tenold does. He just reviewed Godzilla vs. Megaguirus (AKA Godzilla x Megaguirus: The G Annihilation Strategy) earlier this month, so the next film he has on his list is Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, better known as GMK. Then after that, he'll review the two Kiryu Saga films, Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo SOS and then he'll be done with the original 29 Godzilla movies, including Godzilla (1998), before the MonsterVerse and before the Reiwa series of films and TV shows (really just one ☝️, Godzilla: Singular Point).
He's done a pretty good job of spacing his Godzilla reviews out, and reserves them for special occasions like Christmas 🎄 or episode milestone celebrations, or whenever a new Godzilla movie is out, which is more often than it used since there's more Godzilla stuff being made now than at any point in history, so long as the franchise has been around. So, there is a chance I could beat him to the punch and review Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla before he does. But if I don't, and he ends up reviewing it before me, then I missed my shot, what I can do about it 🤷♂️? Can't exactly reset time to where I could post my review before he does, I don't have a time machine I can use to do that. Time machines don't exist, and probably never will exist at least not in my lifetime. I'll still review even if Brandon reviews the movie before me because it is a childhood favorite of mine and it means a lot to me because it got me into Godzilla.
It and the 98 movie did that for me, and I will always be thankful to them for that, and they will always hold a special place in my heart ❤️ for that reason for being my first Godzilla movies. I might consider reviewing Godzilla: The Series, the tie-in animated series to Godzilla (1998) that acted as a sequel to that film and continued the story from where it left off, and is generally more well-liked by the fanbase than the movie itself. Why not 🤷♂️? As well as post some of the old notes that I wrote in my Notes app about Godzilla (1998) as well as the original 1994/96 version of the film that written by Ted Elliot & Terry Rossio (the same writers as Aladdin 1992, The Mask of Zorro 1998, Shrek, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films to name but a few) and was set to be directed by Jan de Bont (the same director as Speed, Twister 🌪️, Speed 2: Cruise Control 🛳️, and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life).
If you're new to my content, welcome 🤝, I hope you like what you see. Every year I do this annual thing called a New Year's Eve Recap where I recap all of the movies that I've seen that year and tell you what I thought of them. I've been doing these since 2022, and I've really enjoyed doing them. It allows me to not only keep track of all the movies I've seen in a single year, but it allows me to elaborate on things that I didn't really talk about or talk about that much in the full reviews. It also allows me to write little short and condensed reviews of movies that I don't feel like dedicating full reviews to. You'll see some of that here, the ones that don't have links to a full review are the ones that I wrote specifically for this and didn't feel writing a full review for.
I wasn't particularly looking forward to 2024 because it was an election year 🗳️, and everything gets all political, and I thought it was going to all messy, chaotic, and vitriolic. I thought it was going to be a bit like 2016 or 2020, where everyone was arguing and bickering at each other, maybe even getting violent towards each other because of political differences. But that wasn't the case. Crazy stuff still happened this year, some of that crazy stuff was related to the election 🗳️, but it wasn't what I was expecting it to be at the end of 2023. I don't remember if I spoke about politics in my New Year's Eve Recap for 2023, but that was thinking 2024 was going to be like going into it and leaving 2023 behind in the rear view mirror.
I think with the incoming administration, there might be more arguments about politics, there will be more political confrontations and some of those political confrontations may become physical just like in 2017 the year Trump took office for the first time. 2017 was more violent and chaotic than 2016, it was after all the year Charlottesville happened. Do I think another Charlottesville will happen in 2025? Maybe. I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did because Trump being president gives people (both on the Left and the Right) permission to be more violent towards each other. They think it's okay or acceptable to use violence to solve their problems or sort out their political differences. I mean, it's already happening now, there isn't just an increase in open racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry as a whole, but there is an increase in political violence what with the Luigi Mangione thing, or the Daniel Penny thing which was largely ignored by the media. All of that, and Trump hasn't even taken office yet, he is still the president elect at the time of this writing. It's almost like it's a preview of what's to come in the next four years, a bad omen if you will if I personally didn't believe in omens being an atheist and all.
Notice how there were no major violent incidents like Charlottesville while Biden was in office. Sure, there was January 6th, but that was still technically when Trump was still in office, he didn't officially leave office until January 20, 2024 after Joe Biden took office. But once Biden was in office, no major political violence like Charlottesville or January 6th took place. It's like both sides of the political spectrum just retreated to their corner, and went on with their lives, going to work, going to school, eating lunch, coming back home, eating dinner, going to bed, doing all the things they always do on a daily basis. And keeping political arguments verbally behind a computer screen 🖥️💻, behind a desk rather spilling out into the real world into a physical confrontation. Everything was quieter and more peaceful in this country during the Biden years than they were in the Trump years, or first Trump years since Trump has been re-elected this year and will be president again. That just goes to show you the differences between Trump and Biden. Trump inspires and even directly incites violence while Biden does not. I will talk about Trump's second term and what might be in store for us, but for now, I'm going to talk about what 2024 was like for me in terms of movies.
Compared to last year, I really didn't see that many movies this year and I didn't see that many of them in theaters. I can probably count on one hand 🤚 the amount of movies I actually saw in theaters. It's just that I either didn't have the time or the money 💵 to see these movies in theaters. Going to the movies has become really expensive, even more than was last year, and it's probably going to get higher once Trump gets into office and if he implements those tariffs and other disastrous economic policies that will just make prices go even higher on everything. More on him later. We were a lot of strapped for cash 💵 this year compared to last year, and we had to be even more frugal about our spending choices.
So, when we do get the chance to see a movie in theaters, we have to be really choosy about what we choose to see. And frankly, a lot of the movies this year weren't really worth spending the money 💵 it costs to go the theater to watch them. Only the ones on this list were the ones that I deemed worthy of a theater going experience, and not all of them were released in theaters. Not all of them were even released in theaters worldwide and some were only released in a few select countries. As for what my favorite movies of this year were, I would say Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is my favorite and Bad Boys: Ride or Die is my second favorite. Nothing came close to reaching the level of enjoyment I got from watching those two movies this year. They're the only ones that I've seen more than once (once in the theater and once at home 🏠 on Blu-Ray 💿), and I'm glad I got the chance to see them both in theaters.
My biggest disappointment this year was definitely Twisters 🌪️, the legacy sequel to the 1996 disaster movie classic Twister 🌪️. I was initially skeptical at first because I didn't think Twister 🌪️ needed a sequel, but then after saw the trailer, I was hooked. I had high hopes that it would be good, maybe even great, but it was a letdown 😞, it wasn't very good at all 👎. It was just a really bland and forgettable movie, like I won't remember it in a few years and I doubt anyone else will, even the people who liked it. Even if I'm pretty sure the movie will probably get a sequel or two, turning Twister 🌪️ into a full on franchise, which it was never meant to be and never should've been. In the end, I was right to be skeptical of Twisters 🌪️, I should've just trusted my instincts.
But yet, everyone else seemed to like it. It got rave reviews from critics, it has a 75% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes 🍅, and it was a box office success, grossing over $371 million 💵 at the worldwide box office against a $155 million budget 💵. I just don't see it, I don't get it. What did everyone else see in this movie that me and my grandma didn't see? 2024's Top Gun: Maverick this definitely was not 😒 at least in my opinion. I'm glad I didn't see it in the theater, and I saw at home on VOD (video on demand) because I would've felt ripped off after paying an exorbitant amount for all the concessions and the cost of just driving down to Albuquerque to see the movie.
I'm not particularly looking forward to 2025 😒, mostly because of the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency. If you read my post reacting to the election results 🗳️, you'll know why I was upset about him winning 😞. I supported Joe Biden and then I supported Kamala Harris when Biden dropped out and she took his place on the Democratic ticket. Apparently, she is planning to run again in 2028, but this time in a more competitive Democratic primary. So far, she's the only Democrat who has announced their intentions of running for president in 2028. I guess she still hasn't given up on her aspirations of becoming president, she's tenacious and persistent, you gotta give her that. If she does run, I'll support her, depending of course who else runs in the primary, and if she comes out of such a primary on top, she will have my vote. But of course, this is all assuming that we still have presidential elections in 2028, if Trump doesn't cancel them and make himself president for life or something like that.
Which brings me to my fear going forward going into the year 2025. No body knows for what the next four years has in store for us, and if anyone tells you that they know they're lying to you. All we really know is that it's going to be bad. Little to nothing good will come from a second Trump presidency, we know that, that's what we were trying to warn everybody before the election 🗳️, and hardly anyone listened or took it seriously. We've been through this song and dance before, and it didn't go well the first time, and yet enough people went along with it or chose to do nothing to sit this one out, and voted for the guy ♂︎ anyway.
All those young voters who were still children (teenagers) when he was voted in the first time in 2016, and all those people who are all nostalgic for that one specific year and think it was the "last good year," have no idea what's coming. This time he will have no guardrails, no adults in the room to tell him "no," and he will be surrounded by yes men will do whatever he tells them to do no matter how crazy or dangerous it is. This will be Trump unfettered and unrestrained, and that prospect should terrify everyone and I find not enough people are terrified. I mentioned the tariffs earlier, and those will do a lot of damage.
If Trump implements those tariffs, then inflation will get worse and prices will go even higher, and those combined with other economic policies will bring the US 🇺🇸 to the brink of an economic collapse worse than the Great Recession and almost as bad as the Great Depression potentially. Then there's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), Elon Musk's fake new department that he plans to use to cut funding to government agencies and government programs, and also likely embezzle money 💵, steal money 💵 from the American coffers 🇺🇸 to enrich himself 🤑 and his partner-in-crime (I mean that in a pretty literal sense) Vivek Ramaswamy. They will steal your taxpayer money 💵 and pocket it to make themselves even richer 🤑, and they will use DOGE as a front to do it.
DOGE is also just a way for Elon Musk to be in a position of power where he could influence Trump's policies in a way that benefits him and his own interests and control the Republican Party in Congress like a puppet master pulling the strings from the shadows. We saw this most recently with the government spending bill to keep the government open during the holiday season which Musk torpedoed by threatening any Republican who voted for the bill with a primary. He was willing to cause a government shutdown just to flex his muscles and show everyone who's really in charge, who's really the power behind Trump. JD Vance, the actual Vice President elect, despite initial fears certainly holds no real power or sway over Trump.
Dr. Oz, the con artist, has been placed in charge of Social Security and Medicare. We could see cuts to things like Social Security, SNAP (EBT), and Medicare, all things my family relies on to survive. So our lives will become even more difficult if that happens. And if RFK Jr. is confirmed as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, we could see all kinds of bad things happen. Vaccines 💉 could be banned under RFK Jr.'s leadership and diseases that we had previously eradicated thanks to vaccines 💉 will reemerge. Thousands or even millions of kids will die from preventable diseases that their parents and grandparents never had to deal with.
Then of course, Trump placed Linda McMahon in charge of the Department of Education, and with her, he will try to complete dismantle the Department of Education or at least weaken it to where it is completely ineffective and can't help anyone. No kids will benefit from her being at the top of the Department of Education. Governor Kristi Noem, the puppy killer 🐶 herself, has been picked by Trump to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is not good. I mean, do we really want a woman ♀︎ who bragged about killing her own dogs 🐕 including a puppy 🐶 and dumping their bodies in a gravel pit in her own biography to lead the department that handles terrorism and immigration?
The DHS was created in the wake of 9/11, making it one of the youngest US government agencies and departments 🇺🇸, to be the US 🇺🇸's preeminent counterterrorism apparatus. Specifically, foreign terrorism, or international terrorism I guess the proper term would be. 9/11 was an attack by a terrorist organization from outside the country, done largely by foreigners. Domestic terrorism is more of the FBI's wheelhouse. It also replaced the US 🇺🇸's previous immigration agency, INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service), ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is under DHS's jurisdiction. So, DHS handles terrorism and immigration, and it's going to be led by Kristi Noem if she's confirmed, which would be really bad as you can imagine.
Not only is she not qualified for the job, having no experience in either counterterrorism or immigration, but she just seems really insane, completely mentally unstable. Like, the reasons she gave for why she killed her dogs 🐕 are completely unhinged and wouldn't make sense to any rational person regardless of whether they were a dog owner 🦮 or not. If you read that part in her book 📖 where she talked about killing her dogs 🐕, you'd come away with thinking she was a crazy person, which she is. She doesn't seem like she has the mental capacity nor the temperament to lead a department that is so high risk, where the risk of things going wrong are high and the consequences of them going wrong would be severe.
Hopefully she doesn't get confirmed, but I have a feeling she probably will unfortunately. There are enough Republicans who like her or at least don't hate her and tolerate her that they'd vote to confirm her. Did you know that nearly all of the Indian reservations in South Dakota recently banned her from setting foot on their reservations earlier this year? It happened after the news about her admitting to killing her own dogs 🐕 came out, though the reasons for these tribal governments all banning her have very little if anything to do with her comments about her dogs 🐕 in her book 📖. They seem largely have to do with her leadership and her policies which may have negatively impacted these reservations (maybe some failed promises she didn't deliver on) as well as many some comments she may have made that offended these Native American indigenous tribes. Perhaps some racist anti-indigenous white supremacist type comments? I don't exactly know, I'm just assuming.
How bad of a governor do you have to be that nearly all of the Native American reservations in your own state all agree to ban you from even stepping foot on their lands? It speaks to Governor Kristi Noem's character, how she's governed the state of South Dakota, and how she'd lead as the DHS Secretary. I hope that my reservation (the Acoma Reservation) and every other reservation in the country does the same thing to Trump if he proves to be as bad of a president (the second time) as we're all predicting he will be.
Then there's Tulsi Gabbard, and if she is confirmed to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), she will in a position to cause all kinds of damage. With her as the DNI, we could see an abandonment of all of our key allies including Ukraine 🇺🇦, Taiwan 🇹🇼, Japan 🇯🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, Australia 🇦🇺, Mexico 🇲🇽, and NATO as a whole, and cozying up to countries that we once considered our adversaries, namely Russia 🇷🇺, North Korea 🇰🇵, Belarus 🇧🇾, and potentially China 🇨🇳 and Iran 🇮🇷 as well. Trump claims he's anti-China 🇨🇳 and he was hostile towards Iran 🇮🇷 during his first term, and yet he likes Xi Jinping (admires him and wants to be like him) and has business ties to China 🇨🇳, and Iran 🇮🇷 is an ally of Russia 🇷🇺 and they did interfere in the election 🗳️ alongside Russia 🇷🇺 to help him get elected. So really how tough on those countries is Trump really going to be? Not a whole lot if Tulsi has anything to say about it. I'm just glad Syria 🇸🇾 has been taken off the table, because we all know that she would've done everything she could to keep Assad in power. Maybe even go as far to supply him with American weapons 🇺🇸.
There's also the fact that Trump has now threatened to invade and/or annex three countries and one overseas territory. He's also said that he wants to invade Mexico 🇲🇽 under the pretext of fighting drug cartels, something that is both in Project 2025 and something he wanted to do in his first term but couldn't because of those lauded "adults in the room," he's talked about making Canada 🇨🇦 a US state 🇺🇸 like he's referred to it as the 51st state multiple times and has referred to Canada 🇨🇦's prime minister Justin Trudeau as Governor Trudeau. He's talked about annexing Greenland 🇬🇱 and making it a US territory 🇺🇸, which is something he wanted to do in his first term, he wanted to buy Greenland 🇬🇱 from Denmark 🇩🇰 but Denmark 🇩🇰 said "no."
Then, most recently, he's talked about invading Panama 🇵🇦 in order to regain control of the Panama Canal, which did once belong to the United States 🇺🇸 until they gave it to Panama 🇵🇦 in 1999 following a series of treaties and agreements and the abolishment of the Panama Canal Zone in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. I learned about from watching a video by a British political channel 🇬🇧 on YouTube called A Different Bias. Needless to say, it is pretty disturbing that an incoming president is already talking about invading four other countries and annexing their territory especially since he'll be in command of the world's most powerful military.
All those comparisons to Hitler over the years are pretty apt, but I also think Putin is another good comparison. He wants to become an American Putin 🇺🇸 and wants to do to North America what Putin has been trying to do to Eastern Europe. He's basically talking about consolidation of all of North America into one country, an empire essentially. He wants to create a Greater US 🇺🇸, or Greater America 🇺🇸. Anyone who was under the impression that Trump was anti-war or anti-imperialist was sourly mistaken. I mean, they were wrong about that during his first term, but they'll be even more wrong about it in his second term.
If Trump does go forward with his plan to invade Panama 🇵🇦 at the very least, it will be the second time that the US 🇺🇸 has invaded it. It invaded it once before in 1989 during George H.W. Bush's presidency, and that invasion was meant to remove the country's dictator, Manuel Noriega from power. Once this time, the US 🇺🇸 would be invading Panama 🇵🇦 for an even less noble reason than removing a dictator from power, it'll be to seize the Panama Canal and reassert total US control 🇺🇸 over it which it already agreed to give to Panama 🇵🇦 decades ago. So, Trump would violating all those treaties and agreements with Panama 🇵🇦 if he seriously went through his plan to seize control of the canal. The US 🇺🇸 would pretty much be making the same mistake the UK 🇬🇧 and France 🇫🇷 made in the 1950s when they invaded Egypt 🇪🇬 to try to retake control of the Suez Canal. The Suez Crisis was enough to end Britain 🇬🇧 and France 🇫🇷's empires and status as superpowers. Could a "Panama Crisis 🇵🇦" do the same to the US 🇺🇸?
Invading Mexico 🇲🇽 is also a really bad idea, I don't see that one going well for the US 🇺🇸 at all. A war with Mexico 🇲🇽 would make the Iraq War 🇮🇶 and the War in Afghanistan 🇦🇫 look like cakewalks, it would make them look like walks in the park, and it would be on America 🇺🇸's border, which would make it even worse. It would only make the drug problem even worse, by strengthening the cartels and putting them in a position where they could actually assume real political power inside of Mexico 🇲🇽, like they could actually take over the government just like the gangs in Haiti 🇭🇹 did after that country's government collapsed.
If that happens, if the US 🇺🇸 invades Mexico 🇲🇽, topples the government, creates a power vacuum that is then filled by the cartels, and the cartels take full control over the country and establish their own regime, then Mexico 🇲🇽 would pretty much become a full on narco state, a drug empire the likes of which we've never seen before. Even more drugs would flow across the border than ever before, not to mention weapons. Gun smugglers would have a field day in the event of a war with Mexico 🇲🇽, supplying weapons to cartels and rebel groups fighting against the US 🇺🇸, and then gun smugglers in war torn Mexico 🇲🇽 smuggling weapons into the US 🇺🇸 with no oversight due to the US 🇺🇸 being distracted by the war.
And if Trump invades and annex Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱 because let's face it, he'd have to invade these places if he really wanted that territory. Canada 🇨🇦 is not just going to willingly become a part of the US 🇺🇸 and Denmark 🇩🇰 is not going to sell Greenland 🇬🇱 to the US 🇺🇸 or surrender it willingly. Trump can't just taunt or strong arm these countries into giving up their territory or giving up their sovereignty completely in the case of Canada 🇨🇦, he's going to need actual military force to make any of this happen. The only way he's taking Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱 is if he invades them. Then he'd be putting to NATO in a pretty precarious situation where they'd have to go to war against one of their own members, a founding member no less because Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱 are NATO members. Canada 🇨🇦 is a NATO member, and Greenland 🇬🇱 is a territory belonging to or in association with Denmark 🇩🇰, and Denmark 🇩🇰 is a NATO member, so Greenland 🇬🇱 is NATO territory.
Article 5 of NATO's founding document states that an attack on one is an attack on all, that's why NATO participated in the War in Afghanistan 🇦🇫. America 🇺🇸 was attacked on September 11, 2001, America 🇺🇸 is a member of NATO, so NATO was obligated to join the war and help the US 🇺🇸 by the treaty. It's supposed to be a defense alliance, meant to deter aggression and prevent war, not invite it. But what if that attack comes from another member of NATO? What if a member of NATO attacks another member or multiple members? What does the alliance do then? Does Article 5 not apply? Does it become null and void?
Maybe this is why Trump wants to pull out of NATO, so that this won't be an issue, and so the US 🇺🇸 won't be beholden by the treaty or the rules of the alliance. But even if he did manage to pull the US 🇺🇸 out of NATO, that wouldn't stop the other members from standing up to them and coming to the defense of Canada 🇨🇦 and Denmark 🇩🇰, preventing the US 🇺🇸 from annexing Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱. In fact, they'd have more of a reason to do that because they'd be going against a non-member, a former member at that point. And then bam! We're in World War III.
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Trump could very well start World War III by trying to expand the US 🇺🇸's territory by trying to taking Canada 🇨🇦 and Greenland 🇬🇱. Needless to say if any of these invasions were to happen, if any of those wars were to occur or all of them happen, no country would ever trust the US 🇺🇸 ever again. That is, if he is serious about any of this, which I think he is. We should all take him seriously when he says things like this, we shouldn't just write off as a joke or as a bluff, that's how he's able to get away with so much stuff because no body takes him seriously and always thinks that he's joking when he's clearly not. If he is to go forward with these plans of expanding the US 🇺🇸's territory with military force, he'd need a compliant loyalist Secretary of Defense willing to do whatever he wants to do militarily, and that's where Trump's next cabinet pick comes in.
Pete Hegseth, the one of the worst picks of the bunch, totally unqualified to be the Secretary of Defense. Our military will become weaker and stupider under his leadership if he is confirmed. Luckily, there is a slim chance that he won't be confirmed because his skeletons are falling out of his closet, and he is becoming increasingly unpopular with the Senate including even Republicans. If he does get confirmed despite all the scrutiny and backlash he has faced since being picked by Trump to be the next Defense Secretary, then I guess no more women ♀︎ in the military then because Hegseth has talked about banning women ♀︎ serving from combat roles in the military.
He only talked about women ♀︎ in combat roles, yes, but I feel like he wouldn't stop there and would try to ban all women ♀︎ from serving in the military altogether even in non-combat roles. The only role that women ♀︎ would probably be able to serve in Hegseth's military would be nurses, that's it. Nurses, secretaries, and assistants, purely subservient, subordinate, submissive roles because he's a misogynist pig who's stuck in the 1950s or 60s, maybe back further than that like 1910s or 1920s. Also no more LGBT people 🏳️🌈 in the military either, no more gays ⚣⚢, trans 🏳️⚧️, bis, pans, whatever, you can say goodbye to all those people if Hegseth is put in charge of the military. He'll do this until the US Armed Forces 🇺🇸 is an all cis straight (possible white) male force ⚤♂︎, at least on the combat side of things.
Don't be surprised too if they try to reintroduce the draft, forcing all able bodied men in the country to serve in the military for a certain amount of time and be required to go fight in any war the US 🇺🇸 if called upon to do so. Just like how it was in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳. Don't be surprised if Hegseth and Trump try to do that, especially if Trump does decide to start any of those foreign wars (those foreign invasions) I was talking about earlier, he'll need as many troops as he can get if he's going to start wars with four different countries. But look, even if Hegseth isn't confirmed, he'll just be replaced with another Trump loyalist who doesn't have nearly as much baggage but will still carry out the tasks that he lays out before them.
As was the case with Matt Gaetz, who withdraw his name from consideration for Attorney General because of all the renewed scrutiny he was facing after his nomination by Trump to be AG, and he was replaced with Pam Bondi, who was a complete unknown before any of this happened but has since made it clear that she will carry out Trump's agenda to the fullest extent that she can. She will carry out Trump's revenge, his retribution, and go after his political opponents. Same story with Kash Patel if he is confirmed by the Senate to be the next FBI director, he will enact Trump's revenge. Him and Pam Bondi will work together to prosecute Trump's enemies. Double trouble.
Pam Bondi has even talked about the possibility of confiscating every gun in the country which is actually something Trump tried to do in his first term but the "adults in the room" prevented him from doing so because it would've been a direct violation of the Second Amendment. But as stated before, there will be no "adults in the room" this time around, so there will be nothing stopping Trump and Bondi from doing this. So all you gun owners out there, all you Second Amendment advocates who voted for Trump, you screwed yourselves. Kari Lake, the failed Republican candidate for governor of Arizona in 2020 and failed Republican candidate for Arizona senator this year has been selected by Trump to be the next director of Voice of America 🇺🇸 (VOA 🇺🇸), the state-owned media company that broadcasts around the world, to turn it into a propaganda network for Trump. He's essentially making her his propaganda minister. She will be his Joseph Goebbels.
And of course, there's Trump's new border czar, Tom Homan who has pledged to carry out Trump's mass deportation plan (which many human rights organizations say amount to ethnic cleansing), and has said that he will deport all immigrants, including legal ones who are US citizens 🇺🇸. Doesn't matter, if you were born here, if you have parents who are illegal immigrants and you're not old enough to take care of yourself, your ass is gone. Trump said in an interview with Meet the Press recently that the whole family will be deported including the children. He plans to completely do away with Birthright Citizenship. It's crazy to think that Marco Rubio being picked to be the next Secretary of State is the least bad pick of all of Trump's picks following his election victory. That just goes to show just how insane, corrupt, and frankly moronic the next Trump administration is shaping up to be.
I still fear that we could be heading towards another civil war under Trump's second term, a Second American Civil War 🇺🇸 if you will. I actually had a dream 💭 recently that a civil war did break out in this country. I usually don't have dreams 💭 like that, so I was caught off guard when I did. I'm not saying that it's definitely going to happen in the next four years or eight years, I'm saying that Trump's re-election as president has only increased the risk of a civil war happening in this country in the future if only a bit slightly. And I do think that the conditions for a civil war will be set if a few things occur in the next four or even eight years.
If Trump does indeed become a dictator as he keeps threatening that he will and his most hardcore supporters want him to be, if Trump does in fact use the military on American soil 🇺🇸 to quell any and all protests 🪧 against him or protests 🪧 that he just doesn't like especially if they use live ammunition and not rubber bullets and tear gas but also gunning down protesters 🪧, if he uses the military in his mass deportation efforts, and even if he goes forward with his plan to confiscate all guns held by civilians in the country and uses the military to carry that out, then the conditions will be set for a civil war to take place in the US 🇺🇸. When a leader of a country wants to use the military for anything related to domestic politics that isn't disaster relief or pandemic response, it's usually not a good sign, in fact it's never a good sign. Especially if it's law enforcement, if the military is used as a law enforcement tool instead of actual police. If the military becomes the police, then that's not a good sign, it means that country is becoming a full-on police state or garrison state.
Another thing that could trigger a civil war in the US 🇺🇸 or at least create the conditions for one is if Trump starts any of those foreign wars I was talking about earlier, invading Mexico 🇲🇽, invading Canada 🇨🇦, invading Greenland 🇬🇱, and invading Panama 🇵🇦, and if any of those happened or if all those happened and they went badly, if America 🇺🇸 loses those wars, I could see that angering people so much that they'd be willing to take up arms against the US government 🇺🇸.
Don't forget, the Algerian War 🇩🇿 led to a military coup in France 🇫🇷 (at least an attempted one) and the collapse of the French government 🇫🇷. A new government had to be formed, a fifth French Republic 🇫🇷. It was a bit different because despite Algeria 🇩🇿 being a French colony 🇫🇷, it wasn't treated as if it were just a mere colony, it was treated as if it were a province of France 🇫🇷, so it was technically a war on French soil 🇫🇷, in France proper 🇫🇷. It would sort of be like if Alaska or Hawaii declared independence, and then the US military 🇺🇸 went in there and waged a war against them to prevent them from seceding.
So wars, foreign wars, can cause political crises inside the aggressor country's borders. That's why Ukraine supporters 🇺🇦 want Ukraine 🇺🇦 to win so badly and Russia 🇷🇺 to lose. They don't just want Ukraine 🇺🇦 to win and regain all of its territory (including Crimea), they want Russia 🇷🇺 to lose because they believe that it'll cause a political crisis inside of Russia 🇷🇺 and lead to collapse of the Putin regime. Of course, such a thing could easily lead to a civil war inside of Russia 🇷🇺 (a Second Russian Civil War 🇷🇺), which further proves the point I'm trying to make about Trump's foreign wars potentially leading to a civil war inside America 🇺🇸.
Plus, you've got an increase in political and vigilante violence, what with the recent murder of Brian Thompson at the hand of Luigi Mangione and the recent murder of Jordan Neely at the hand of Daniel Penny, and the normalization and widespread support and celebration of those sorts of things (especially the Mangione thing), and you got blue states (states run by Democratic governors and largely Democratic legislators) trying to "Trump-proof" their own states so that they won't have to carry out his most insane and illegal acts and they won't suffer as badly under Trump's policies as red states (states run by Republican governors and largely Republican legislators) inevitably will.
I actually unsubscribed from a transgender YouTuber 🏳️⚧️ I was subscribed to recently called Ramada the Femme after I saw that she posted a YouTube Short talking about how sexy she thought Mangione is and how she wanted to go out on a date with him after he's released from prison or if he's acquitted. But, I think he'll probably go to prison. I just found that weird and gross, so find it weird and disturbing how much people are praising Mangione for what he did, laughing about it 🤣, and even developing an actual crushes on 😍, and it just makes me think the US 🇺🇸 is becoming a more violent country, a more dangerous and unpredictable country, and American society 🇺🇸 as a whole (at least on social media) is cooked, as the kids say.
Speaking of YouTubers who I don't watch anymore, I noticed recently that the political channel Beau of the Fifth Column (pronounced Bow of the Fifth Column) has changed its name to Belle of the Ranch. Beau's wife Belle has been running the channel since July since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala Harris joined the race and became the Democratic nominee. Some of his fans initially thought that this was a conscious decision on Beau's part to reflect the change in the election 🗳️, how the Democratic side shifted from a man ♂︎ to a woman ♀︎. So, he put a woman ♀︎ in charge of his channel, specifically his wife, who luckily for him shares nearly his same exact political beliefs. The only difference between the two that I can see that Belle is maybe a bit more foreign policy focused than Beau was, to the point of having an entire playlist on the channel dedicated to foreign policy. But now, it's not so certain. Now, it's been made official, and the channel is no longer called Beau of the Fifth Column. It is now called Belle of the Ranch.
What's going on? Will we ever see Beau again? Has he just retired from YouTube completely altogether, and had his wife take over the channel? It's weird that they made such a drastic and lasting change to the channel like that without really telling their audience why. Belle herself hasn't really adequately explained what happened, why her husband decided to step down and had her take his place as the host of the two channels, Beau of the Fifth Column (now called Belle of the Ranch) and The Roads with Beau (now called The Roads with Belle). She's been very cryptic about it.
I mean, it's their business, they don't need to tell us anything if they don't want to, but it would've been nice to have an actual explanation for Beau's absence and to know when or if Beau will ever come back. It's not that I hate Belle or anything, she does a fine job, but still it would be nice to see Beau ever now and again to hear what he has to say about the current political goings on. He was the one who started the channel originally from what I understand after all. And it was unfortunately the man ♂︎ who won the election 🗳️ this year, not the woman ♀︎.
There was also the political crisis in South Korea 🇰🇷 recently where the president Yoon Suk Yeol tried to declare martial law and become a dictator but was stopped by the opposition party in the National Assembly who voted down his martial law order and forced him to call it off. Then he was impeached, and now there's talk of whether or not he'll be arrested and put on trial for any of this. I fear that something similar or worse could happen here, and that won't end nicely as it did in South Korea 🇰🇷. It seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems as if we're heading into some dangerous waters 💦 these next years, a lot more violence will occur and a lot more people will die, and something could happen that just causes a massive explosion 💥 that directly leads to a full-on civil war.
I hope it doesn't happen, but so long as Trump is in office that risk will be there especially if he does indeed stay in office long after his term expires. Presidents, under the constitution, are forbidden to hold office for more than two terms, but as we all know by now, Trump doesn't care at all about the constitution and has even threatened to terminate the constitution once he's in office. So, constitutional restrictions won't stop him from staying in office past a second term. He will try his damndest to stay in office this time around, especially since he failed the last time with the 2020 Election 🗳️, the Big Lie, and the January 6 insurrection (all of the participants of whom are likely going to get a pardon from Trump once he gets back in office). He will have the tools and conditions to actually succeed this time, and that's the scariest thing. The US 🇺🇸 is becoming a powder keg, let's hope that it doesn't go off (at least in our lifetimes).
I also worry about what Biden's legacy will be once he leaves office and hands the reigns over to Trump. Biden's presidency has been distorted or tainted by misinformation and disinformation, lies by omission by both the Republican Party and the mainstream legacy media, and the Biden team for the most part allowed it to happen by not pushing back in a more forceful way. So, as a result, people across this country had the wrong impression of him and his administration, and his vice president Kamala Harris lost the election 🗳️, and Trump will return to the White House in January. I fear that people will just see Biden as a failure, no different from Jimmy Carter or Warren G. Harding (who was the one who coined the term "normalcy"), and see his presidency as a failure even though by all measures his presidency wasn't a failure. It was one of the more successful presidencies we've had in the past 20 or even 30 years. Even though I didn't vote for him in 2020 (I voted for the Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen), I'm genuinely impressed with his performance as president these last four years.
He accomplished so many things, he passed some historic legislation on infrastructure and the economy. He improved infrastructure around this country and improved the economy. He brought down inflation, though granted not even for most people to perceive it, but he did bring down inflation. He helped get us out of the COVID pandemic 🦠😷 after Trump screwed it up so badly and got so many people killed. He improved our relationship with our allies after Trump ruined a lot of them by simply being Trump. He pulled us out of Afghanistan 🇦🇫, which was a good thing despite how chaotic the withdrawal was and despite the Taliban taking over.
But those were more of Trump's failings, Biden was just handed a bad deal, he was dealt a bad hand, and kind of had no choice but to carry it out. It wasn't his fault that the war ended the way it did, it was Bush and Trump's. He stopped Putin, he prevented him taking all of Ukraine 🇺🇦, and has put him in a much weaker position diplomatically. Russia 🇷🇺 has become isolated on the international stage that it had to turn to countries like Iran 🇮🇷 and North Korea 🇰🇵 for help to fight its war against Ukraine 🇺🇦. Thanks to Biden, Ukraine 🇺🇦 was given a fighting chance against Russia 🇷🇺 and still has its own independent government and most of its territory, and it is becoming more and more integrated with European institutions 🇪🇺 each year the war goes on.
The only place where I'd say he was lacking was China 🇨🇳, as the relationship between the US 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳 only got worse during his presidency and he kept a lot of Trump's tariffs in place which I'm not crazy about. But hey, at least he actually promised to come to Taiwan 🇹🇼's defense should China 🇨🇳 invade, no more of that "strategic ambiguity" bullshit, and for what it's worth, Biden did add new tariffs on Chinese goods 🇨🇳 specifically on Chinese tech 🇨🇳, only he did in a more targeted, strategic, and surgical way compared to Trump to where it wouldn't hurt Americans 🇺🇸 and American businesses 🇺🇸. Biden's "de-risking" efforts were far more successful than any of Trump's tariffs. He also made Europe understand the threat China 🇨🇳 poses, and the threat that a Chinese-led world order 🇨🇳 would pose to them and their interests.
He also improved the alliance with the Philippines 🇵🇭 and formed closer ties with Vietnam 🇻🇳, and made them understand the threat that China 🇨🇳 poses to their security and territorial integrity. The Philippines 🇵🇭 was already a US ally 🇺🇸 before all of this, so this could be in the category of "improving relations with allies," but the Philippines 🇵🇭 was moving away from the US 🇺🇸 and more towards China 🇨🇳 under Duterte, and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ("Bongbong") helped bring it back and Biden played a significant role in bringing the Philippines 🇵🇭 back into the fold. But it was also China 🇨🇳's own actions, encroaching on Filipino territory 🇵🇭 that drove the Philippines 🇵🇭 back to the US 🇺🇸's sphere of influence.
There's also the border, but that isn't as big of an issue for me as it is for other people (including my grandma and my aunt and my uncle), and to his credit, he did try to pass border legislation until Trump torpedoed it so that he could run on immigration during the election 🗳️. Immigration policy and border security need to be reformed and improved, and Biden did try to take steps to reform our immigration system and improve border security for all those border hawks in Congress and in the American population 🇺🇸. It was usually Trump and the MAGA Republicans 🇺🇸 who stood in his way of actually improving the system and making it much more efficient and much more safe for everybody, immigrants and natural born citizens. Why? Because they wanted to use it as a campaign issue to win elections 🗳️ and make Biden and the Democrats look bad. So, if there's any who you should be angry at when it comes to border it's Trump and the Republicans because they blocked nearly every effort to reform immigration laws or improve border security. They're the ones who didn't take the issue seriously and made a game out of it.
Biden was by no means a failure, and yet the majority of people in this country will forever perceive him as one because they bought into the lies of Trump, the Republicans, and the media as a whole. But, he'll also be viewed a failure by the anti-Trump Left and by certain people in the anti-Trump pro-democracy movement because he failed to stop Trump from retaking the White House, failed to hold him accountable, and failed to turn the page on him and move America 🇺🇸 past the Trump era. A lot of those failures that people blame Biden for were actually on certain people within Biden's administration and not on Biden himself. All of Biden's achievements (and they were real achievements) will either be undone by Trump, or Trump will take credit for them and Biden's involvement in them will be forgotten or erased from history.
Ultimately, people will just look back at Biden and he'll be remembered as a frail old man ♂︎ who failed to get anything done in the 4 years he was in office, failed to help the country recover after COVID 🦠, and failed to stop Trump from become president again after his attempted self-coup. Ukraine supporters 🇺🇦 will also view him as a failure for failing to help Ukraine 🇺🇦 win the war and defeat Russia 🇷🇺, for not giving them weapons they needed in a timely enough manner. Palestine supporters 🇵🇸 will view him as a monster for supporting Israel 🇮🇱 and funding their war in Gaza, by supplying them with weapons, equipment, and money 💵 to carry it out, and failing to secure a ceasefire if the current efforts to broker a ceasefire at the time of me writing this intro fail which I think they will.
Not because of Hamas (they've already said they would agree to a ceasefire deal) but because of Netanyahu because he's a genocidal warmonger, corrupt politician, authoritarian, wannabe dictator, and just overall arrogant stubborn ox who thinks the smartest guy ♂︎ in the room when he's actually the dumbest. He thinks he knows what's best for Israel 🇮🇱, when he very clearly doesn't. This war he's waging across the Levant is not good for Israel 🇮🇱 at all, it's bad for Israel 🇮🇱 in every conceivable way. But Secretary Antony Blinken can't exactly say that otherwise he'll upset all the Israel supporters 🇮🇱 in the public and in the foreign policy space. Israel 🇮🇱 has one helluva lobby in Washington, influencing US policy 🇺🇸 towards Israel 🇮🇱 and Palestine 🇵🇸 every step of the way.
And military and foreign policy people as a whole will view Biden as a failure for allowing the Taliban to take over Afghanistan 🇦🇫 and for how the withdrawal was handled. Even if I think that all the hatred and criticism directed at Joe Biden is largely unfair. The Afghanistan one 🇦🇫 especially because it wasn't even his fault that the war turned out the way it did and ended the way it did. It was largely the failure of both Bush and Trump, it was Bush's failure for invading Iraq 🇮🇶 and diverting crucial men ♂︎ (and women ♀︎) and resources away from Afghanistan 🇦🇫 and towards Iraq 🇮🇶 instead and giving the Taliban the chance they needed to regroup, reconstitute their forces, and attack US, NATO, and Afghan forces 🇺🇸🇦🇫, becoming stronger each year the war went on, and it was Trump's failure for making a deal with the Taliban and delegitimizing the US-backed Afghan government 🇺🇸🇦🇫, pretty much allowing the Taliban to sweep away that government with ease and reassume power in the capital Kabul.
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As for Ukraine 🇺🇦, he tried his best. Was it always enough? Was it always on time and when it was needed the most? No. But at least he tried. He did more than Obama did, and he did more than what Trump would've done. And look, Ukraine 🇺🇦 is still standing, it still has an independent government, and Russia 🇷🇺 still has not won, at least take solace in that. And as for Israel 🇮🇱 and Gaza, he was dealt a pretty awful hand. That war couldn't have happened at a worse time, and it played a role in tanking his chances for re-election and for Kamala Harris's chances of election for the first time as President of the United States 🇺🇸.
How significant of a role did it play in ruining Kamala's electoral chances? I don't know, no body really knows for sure (anyone who claims they do is lying to you), but it did play a role. It's why so many Arab-Americans 🇺🇸 and non-Arab Palestine supporters 🇵🇸 either sat the election 🗳️ out or voted for Jill Stein, who is a lot more radially pro-Palestine 🇵🇸 than Biden or Kamala are (or at least she says so), and went out of her way to court the Arab vote 🗳️ and the Palestine supporter 🇵🇸 vote 🗳️. She's also pro-Russia 🇷🇺 and pro-Putin, but that's beside the point.
For me though, I will look back at Biden's presidency as a brief return to what America 🇺🇸 used to be Trump came along, to what the American government 🇺🇸 used to be before Trump came along. And it was brief albeit faint glimpse (a ray of light or glimmer of hope) of what the US 🇺🇸 could be if it were led by people who not only cared about the American people 🇺🇸 but also knew what the hell they were doing. For me, Biden being president meant that I didn't have to think about politics as much as I will have to in these coming years, and that I could focus on the things that I'm really passionate about, which are movies, TV shows, and video games. And also books 📖, although I'll admit I haven't been reading a whole lot lately. More like, I haven't been reading at all 😅.
Sure I did start thinking more about politics once the invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦 happened, but that was geopolitics, that was foreign policy, it didn't feel as close to home as dire or I guess political (I guess). This might sound F'ed up, but because it was happening over there, it still somewhat felt like escapism to me, and didn't feel like I was getting into real world stuff even though I clearly was. I guess you could say it felt like a game or like a movie in some cases, even though it wasn't, it was a real war where people were dying. Still are dying since the war is far from over.
Never did I feel as if any of what was happening in the world could happen as I do. I didn't have a sense that our country could succumb to authoritarianism, succumb to dictatorship, or that we could have a civil war here on our soil like I do now. And any foreign wars that happen in the future in the next four years that aren’t already ongoing may include American troops 🇺🇸 and will not be for the most noble or just cause if Trump has anything to say about it, if he gets his way. Which is ironic because Trump wants to invade Panama 🇵🇦 to take the Panama Canal, and the last time the US 🇺🇸 invaded Panama 🇵🇦, it was called Operation Just Cause.
Not just because the Bush administration (Bush Sr., not Bush Jr.) believed the invasion was for a just cause, but because Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, and Deputy National Security Advisor at the time, wanted the operation to have a name where reporters would have to admit was for a just cause. Like everything they referred to the invasion by its operational name, they’d be saying it was for a just cause. That was he thought in his mind. But it backfired because when people saw the name Operation Just Cause, they took it to mean just cuz, like the US 🇺🇸 did it just cuz, because they could and no one stopped them or could stop them, rather than just cause as in it was justified, no.
No body made that connection, and it was not the slam dunk or humiliation for journalists that Colin Powell was probably intending that name to be. If anything, it was a self-own on his part. This is also where the video game series, Just Cause got its name from, and it uses the more ironic meaning that people associated with the name. So, if there is an Operation Just Cause 2 under Trump, then it will be the just cuz meaning rather than the just cause meaning if you know what I mean, if you’ve understood what I’ve been explaining to you.
It was a short but much needed break before we go back to the insanity that is Trump. It was fun while it lasted, and I will be forever thankful to Biden for the things he did in the four years that he had. Even if the next four years are going to be pretty bad for a lot of us (all of us non-billionaires) because of Trump's presidency, all we can do is try to make the best of it. I certainly will, I'm going to have as much fun as I can with my family in the next four years. I will cherish them even more than I already do, I will need them more than I do now and they'll need me. We'll help each other out whenever we need it. We'll all get through this, together 🤝.
There isn't even anything to look forward to 2025 in terms of movies, at least not that I've seen so far. There's 28 Years Later, I haven't seen 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, so I have no interest in seeing that despite the awesome and creepy trailer. The boasts about it being shot on an iPhone 15 📱 don't impress me in the slightest 🙄. There's that vampire movie 🧛♂️ with Michael B. Jordan called Sinners, that kind of looks interesting. There's that fantasy somewhat stoner comedy movie, Death of a Unicorn 🦄 with Jenna Ortega and Paul Rudd, that movie looks pretty stupid and not in a good way. There's Thunderbolts, no interest in seeing that. There's Captain America: Brave New World 🇺🇸 not a ton of interest in seeing that. There's Wolf Man 🐺, no interest in seeing that despite the fact that I like the 2010 Wolfman 🐺 movie with Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. There's Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, no interest in seeing that. There's the live action How To Train Your Dragon movie, no interest in seeing that. Dido on Disney's Snow White.
There's A Minecraft Movie, not a ton of interest in seeing that. Any interest that I have in seeing that is more to see what the reaction will be to it. People are already hating on it and are predicting that it's going to be bad just based on the two trailers that have been released so far. They're already saying that Jack Black has been on a losing streak lately for being in the Borderlands movie this year, which was a critical and box office disaster, and for being in Dear Santa 🎅 this year, where he plays Satan 😈 because this boy ♂︎ accidentally wrote his Santa letter 🎅✉️ to Satan 😈 because he's dyslexic and got the letters mixed up, and then Satan 😈 actually shows up after being summoned by that letter ✉️ and he tries to act like Santa 🎅 and make this boy ♂︎'s Christmas wishes 🎄 come true.
It was directed by the same guys ♂︎ who directed Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Me, Myself & Irene, Osmosis Jones (yes they did direct that), The Three Stooges (2012), and Dumb and Dumber To just to name a few, the Farrelly Brothers. If anyone's having a losing streak, it's them by making The Three Stooges (2012) and Dumb and Dumber To before this movie. Three bad movies in a row, shame on you Farrelly Brothers! That's three strikes and you're out! This is just yet another mediocre 2024 Christmas movie 🎄 along with Red One 🎄🎅. But yeah, if A Minecraft Movie proves to be bad, or if it isn't that bad and people hate it anyway, it'll just be another movie people will is apart of Jack Black's losing streak and will say that he needs a new agent. I just to want to see all those naysayers be proven wrong.
There's Warfare which looks interesting, a new Iraq War 🇮🇶 movie and one co-directed and co-written by an actual veteran of that war? Cool. But it's being co-directed and co-written by Alex Garland, the same guy ♂︎ who wrote and directed Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) and I've heard mixed things about that movie and heard things about it that kind of turn me off to it despite it having an interesting premise. So I'm not sure if Warfare (2025) will be any good. That's also why I have reservations about 28 Years Later too because Alex Garland is involved with that too, he's the writer of that movie.
So yeah, Alex Garland has made two war movies back-to-back that will be released a year apart. Except, he's going from doing a science fiction movie about a hypothetical war that asks the question "Hey what if there was a civil war in today's America 🇺🇸? What would that even look like?" to doing a historical war movie about a real war in America 🇺🇸's history, a foreign war that many people in retrospect say was a mistake even though the majority of Americans 🇺🇸 supported it when it first started and supported it in the lead up to it.
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That is something is overlooked, or ignored, or even scrubbed away by revisionist history about this point in American history 🇺🇸, the fact that the majority of Americans 🇺🇸 supported the invasion of Iraq 🇮🇶. They believed the Bush administration's claims about WMDs and about Saddam Hussein supporting al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11. And they were all for the war when it was going on at first, they cheered it on with jingoistic fervor. It wasn't until the war started going badly that majority of people turned against it, and demanded that Bush end the war and bring the troops back. Of course Bush would not end up being the one who ended the war, it was Obama who ultimately did, leading to the rise of ISIS in both Syria 🇸🇾 and Iraq 🇮🇶, and the US 🇺🇸 having to go back in to support the Iraqi army 🇮🇶 and help them defeat ISIS.
Everyone nowadays likes to pretend that they were against the war from the very beginning, but come on, you all supported the invasion, you supported the war at least at first, don't lie to us and don't lie to yourselves. It's okay to admit that you were caught up in jingoistic fervor, that you were so filled with such anger 😡 at what happened on 9/11 that you were calling for genocide across the entire Arab world, and you went along with Bush's lies just to get that revenge you craved so much. It happens, hell it's happening right now to the Israelis 🇮🇱 after they had their 9/11 moment with the October 7 attack back in 2023.
There's Karate Kid: Legends which attempts to tie the original Karate Kid movies in with the 2010 remake that no body liked, and has even brought Jackie Chan back to reprise his role from the remake, pass on that one. Then there's Superman (2025) which was written and directed by James Gunn, the same guy ♂︎ who wrote and directed the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and The Suicide Squad (2021) as well as the series Peacemaker which was a sequel to The Suicide Squad (2021), no interest in seeing that, pass on that one. I have no interest in watching in any film in James Gunn's new DC cinematic universe. This new Superman movie he cooked up just looks like more of the same, he's just doing the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve thing again, even going as far as to use the same exact theme John Williams did for the Richard Donner and Christopher Reeve Superman movies, the first two, the ones that people over 40 (maybe 50) actually like, not the third one or the fourth one made under Dovemead and Cannon Films respectively.
Say what you want about Man of Steel, but at least Zack Snyder had the balls to do something different, to do his own take on Superman, instead of just repeating what came before and what Boomers and Gen Xers like. In the words of George Lucas when describing Star Wars: The Force Awakens, they made a retro movie, and I don't care for that. I know that James Gunn and the rest of people at DC Studios right now wanted to make a retro movie that harkened back to the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and I know that’s what all these film reviewers online wanted because all of the things that did videos on the trailer that was recently earlier this month described it as "bold" or as "this is what DC needs right now," or "this is how Superman should be."
Even though it's just a nostalgic repeat of what we saw in the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve Superman movies, there's nothing really new here. James Gunn is even kind of stealing things from Zack Snyder, there's a shot in the trailer that eerily similar to a shot in Batman v Superman where Superman is being surrounded by these people and being worshiped as a god. Except here it's people booing Superman I guess and throwing stuff at him as if this were a cartoon or a Disney Channel original movie.
To I don't know, symbolize the decay of America 🇺🇸 or whatever nonsense James Gunn came up with for that scene to symbolize, whatever excuse he'll use to try to explain what that scene means, or what's supposed to mean and what it's trying to say or supposed to say. I'm not confident in James Gunn's ability to convey a complex theme or metaphor like that without it coming across as pretentious or trite. You know, this feeling of been there done that, like we've already seen this before in Man of Steel and BVS, Superman being used to explore the current condition, the current political climate of America 🇺🇸. Except when Zack Snyder did it, these people hated it 🤬 and said it was an insult to the character and was even a betrayal of the character. But when James Gunn does it, they love it 😁, they cheer and clap for it 👏, and say that it's profound.
It’s not they hated Snyder's DC movies because they weren't comic book accurate, it was that they hated them for not being like Christopher Reeve, for not being like Superman (1978) or Superman II (1980). And also because they just have a bias towards James Gunn, and against Zack Snyder. They love everything James Gunn does, and hate everything Zack Snyder does regardless of whether the work those two men ♂︎ make are actually good or bad. I like Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad (2021), but I'm willing to admit James Gunn is not perfect, far from it. He's made some mistakes and probably made some bad movies that I probably wouldn’t like.
Plus, I'm just sick of James Gunn's humor, I see it everywhere, everyone trying to replicate it, him just repeating his same shtick every single time on every single project he makes. I'm sick of how everyone praises him endlessly and worships him as a god and says that he's one of the greatest filmmakers alive today and he should be the only one making superhero movies. It's the same shit you hear from Snyder cultists when talking about Zack Snyder, and how he should direct every DC movie from now until the end of time (until the day he dies). I'm a Snyder fan, not a Snyder cultist, and I am willing to criticize a movie of his that I don't like and criticize aspects of his movies that I didn't like. I'd like to like I'm pretty reasonable when it comes to my love for Snyder's work and him as a person, and by all accounts he is a pretty nice person, everyone who has worked with him will attest to that.
Well now, we have Gunn cultists, and they're just as bad if not worse than Snyder cultists, even they themselves don't want to admit. I almost fell into the trap of becoming a Gunn cultist, just I did almost become a Snyder cultist, but like with Snyder, I'd like to think that I'm reasonably when it comes to his work. I like what I like, and I don't like what I don't like. I have no devotion to him beyond that, and I will go out to bat for him or defend everything he does. Same thing with Snyder, although by all accounts, Snyder is a better person than Gunn, just saying.
I'm just sick of James Gunn in general. He's become oversaturated in my opinion, and how’s grown too powerful, in too high of a position at DC, a company owned by Warner Bros.. I hope his cinematic universe fails honestly, just to see the looks on these people’s faces, and to see them get what they deserve. It was the fan reaction to BVS that caused the DCEU to fall apart, if people hadn’t overreacted or if Warner Bros. didn’t try to haphazardly course correct and throw Zack Snyder under the bus even though he was the main architect of the DCEU, none of this would be happening. We'd have a full Justice League trilogy by now and more coherent cinematic universe.
James Gunn is just an opportunist, he took advantage of a bad situation at DC, took the job after his job at Marvel had fallen through because of his old tweets (or Xs I guess they'd be called now), and now he's just giving all the fanboys, all of the Snyder haters everything they wanted, which is just more of the same, just nostalgic garbage. Why try anything new, why do your own unique take if you can just do what worked before 🙄? That is why I am against Superman (2025) and Gunn's entire DC cinematic universe and why I refuse to watch any of it. And finally Avatar: Fire and Ash 🔥, hard pass on that one, assuming that it even hits its intended release date and doesn't get delayed like Avatar: The Way of Water 💦 did.
The only other thing I'm kind of interested in next year besides maybe Sinners is Ballerina 🩰 or From the World of John Wick: Ballerina 🩰 🙄. That kind of looks like it'll be good, even then, I'm kind of getting tired of the John Wick franchise, and the fact that John Wick himself is in it despite him dying in the fourth movie kind of decreases my interest in it. Maybe it's a prequel set before John Wick: Chapter 4, but still I am kind of getting tired of John Wick, people overhyped and overrated those movies too much to where it's hard for me to enjoy them, and I'm ready to just move onto something else.
Oh, and there's also The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants 🧽, but that doesn’t come out until December of next year, and I don't know if I'll even see it in theaters or see it before the year ends. I'll probably end up watching it in 2026, just how I'll probably end up watching Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) in 2025 because that movie came out earlier this month (it was a December movie) after I cut off my 2024 movies list and completed this recap, and didn't want to review anymore movies for 2024. But I will watch and review Search for SquarePants, if it looks good from the trailers. I skipped out on The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run 🧽 because it didn’t look that good from the trailers and it got bad reviews (mostly from the fans). But hopefully, this next movie will be better. I mean, it's being written and directed by Derek Drymon, a writer, storyboard artist, and director who worked on the first three seasons of the show, so it might be good. I'm sure I'll find something next year that will truly catch my eye, it'll just take time.
Truth be told most of the movies that I'm actually excited for and are interested in it come out in 2026, like the second Super Mario Bros. Movie. The next MonsterVerse movie following Godzilla x Kong won't be out until 2027, and it seems like it's going to be a direct sequel and will likely feature both Kong and Godzilla together once again. So, no Godzilla solo movie in case you were one of those fans that wanted another MonsterVerse Godzilla film without Kong. But who knows? It's all just rumor at this point, I haven't any reputable sources talk about the next MonsterVerse movie and what it's going to be about. At least I'll have Season 2 of Monarch to hold me over until then. Oh, and Grant Sputore (the director of I Am Mother) has been selected to be the director of the next installment of the MonsterVerse, to give update on what I said in the Godzilla x Kong segment of this recap.
On the video game front, I don't even know what games are coming out next year because I don't keep track of new video game releases or know about them in advance as much as I do movie releases. I kind of just find out find out about new video games whenever the trailers for them are released, or whenever I go to the store and I see whatever's on the shelves behind the glass because all of the video games at Walmart are behind glass (just like all the movies are behind glass). In Target, they don't even have the games physically on the shelves, they just have pieces of paper on display with the game cover on them. I'm sure when you go to buy a game at Target, the employees have to go get the game for you from the storage area at the back of the store. Best Buy's the only major retailer that I can think of that has the games on the display shelves without any glass coverings. They just have the games in those plastic containers that the cashier has to remove for you when you buy it. Just like Walmart does with the new movies they have on display that aren't behind those glass coverings.
But regardless, of how I find out about new games, I'll probably find out about them as they come out next year and I probably won't be able to buy them right away as they come out. Video games are expensive, $60 💵 each at full price. There's also DLC which costs extra, anywhere from $20 💵 all the way to $40 💵. Some DLC expansion packs and season passes are sold at full price, $60 💵. And like I said before about the movie theaters, if Trump puts all those tariffs on all Chinese imports 🇨🇳 when he gets into office, video games will become even more expensive. Prices for new releases may go up to $70 💵, maybe even $80 💵 😫.
Gaming is a rich person's hobby, not the hobby of someone like me living paycheck to paycheck, or I guess Social Security check to Social Security check in my case. It's largely because of my aunt and my uncle (her fiancé) that I've been able to play as many games on the Switch as I have, and I don't even have the biggest collection. My Switch collection is bigger than my PS4 collection, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have way bigger Switch collections than me. I know it. I will have to wait until some of these games drop in price, if they drop in price. Some of them don't, or only by a little bit. Super Mario Odyssey is still being sold for $51.99 💵 at Best Buy and at many other retailers, even though that game came out in 2017 and is now 7 years old at this point.
Then of course, supposedly Nintendo is going to unveil their new console next year, which many people think is just going to be the Nintendo Switch 2, like just be the Switch again by slightly updated and slightly better. I don't know, there's been so many rumors about the next Nintendo console that I don't know what to believe. I kind of don't believe any of it. I don't know if there is going to be a big reveal or announcement regarding the next Nintendo console next year or not. I don't even know the next Nintendo console will be the Switch 2, or if it'll be something else entirely that no body ever thought of. I hope it is more the latter because what's the point in doing a new console if it's the exact same as the Switch? That would just show me that Nintendo is losing its creativity. Which might make sense if that's the case because there's already rumors now that that Nintendo's next console following the Switch will be their last, and they will leave the console making business just like Sega did in the 2000s after the Dreamcast was a complete failure.
But, I am going to try my best to grow my Switch collection even more, and buy the rest of the games on my list. I recently added Metroid Prime Remastered to my list because that's the cool first person shooter one that was originally released on the GameCube back in 2002, so it's another game that I missed during my childhood because I didn't own a GameCube (I wasn't in the Nintendo sphere at that point in my life) and my cousin (my aunt and uncle's only son) didn't have the game in his collection despite owning a GameCube. Plus, I think Samus Aran (the main protagonist of the entire Metroid franchise) is just really hot 😍, especially all the fan art that's made of her over the years.
I don't know if we see her outside of her suit in Metroid Prime, I doubt it, but I have seen what she looks like when she isn't wearing her signature robotic space suit with the gun arm and is just wearing her blue jumpsuit, and she looks smoking 😍. A beautiful blonde babe, can't go wrong with that, especially one that's a strong, independent, and intelligent woman like Samus is. From I've seen and heard about the Metroid series, I think it would make for a good live action movie, I'm kind of surprised one hasn't been made yet, but that's a discussion for another time.
At least I can finally cross SpongeBob SquarePants 🧽: The Patrick Star Game off my list since I got it for Christmas 🎄 from my aunt and uncle. I didn't get Princess Peach: Showtime! which was the game that I really wanted to get this year, so I guess I'll just have to get it on my own or wait till next Christmas 🎄 and hope that they get it for me. But, at least I have The Patrick Star Game and I can finally play it and see what it's like and if I like it or not. Everyone who's reviewed that game said that it was like Goat Simulator 🐐 but with SpongeBob 🧽 characters and it has no actual plot (it has no story), and I've never played Goat Simulator 🐐, so I'll guess I'll see how much of that open world sandbox gameplay I can tolerate, if I have fun with it and get really invested and keep playing it or I get tired of it after awhile. The game's association with the SpongeBob 🧽 franchise might go a long way in increasing the replay value for me.
Speaking of things I got for Christmas 🎄, I got a PS5, which is pretty exciting 😁. It means I can finally get the Resident Evil 4 remake and play it to see if it was worth all the hype. I can also finally watch all those 4K UHDs 💿 that I've bought over the years, since the PS5 has a built in 4K player (just like the PS2 had a built in DVD player 📀 and the PS3 and PS4 both had built in Blu-Ray players 💿), and I now have more of a reason to buy 4Ks 💿 even if they do cost more than regular Blu-Rays 💿. I think from now on, anytime there's a multi-platform game out on the market, like a video game that's released on all the major consoles and on PC and Mac 🖥️ 💻, I think that I'll get the PS5 version of that game as well as buy any exclusives for the PS5 (which there aren't many as far as I know), and only get games on the Switch if they're exclusives for the Switch, like all the key Nintendo franchises, Mario, Legend of Zelda, Splatoon, Pikmin, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Kirby, Animal Crossing 🐶🐾, and of course, Pokémon. That was going to be my strategy for the PS4 once I got my Switch, but they don't make games for the PS4 anymore so it'll be the PS5 from now on.
Finally the last thing that I want to say for this intro, all of segments in this recap were written well in advance before the big day. I wrote them often right after I saw these movies and wrote the full reviews of them if I wrote full reviews for them. Even this intro was written in advance, about a week in advance. The reason why I do this is so that I'm not spending all day writing these recaps and I end up missing my deadline on December 31st, and so that I write these when my memory on these movies is more fresh and isn't all fuzzy as I try to remember them months later. It's way simpler and easier for me to do that way. So, if I refer to things that have already happened or didn't happen, that's why. Please enjoy.
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The Beekeeper 🐝
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Full Review
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I already wrote a dedicated review of this movie, and posted it here on the blog, so I'm going to try to keep this one a bit shorter, and not go over the same things I've gone over before. This was the only movie I was looking forward or had any sort of interest in watching in the month of January. January isn't a month that's particularly known for having the best selection of movies to watch in theaters. I didn't get to see this movie in theaters, which you'll know if you read my review. I ended up having to watch it on VUDU, now known as Fandango at Home. Even then, I didn't use my own account to watch it, I used my aunt's because she rented it on there.
But, regardless of how I watched it, I really did enjoy it. It was a kick ass action movie. Everyone was kind of doubting this movie, especially in the wake of Expendables 4 (AKA Expend4bles) which also starred Jason Statham. It was also written by the same people who wrote Expendables 4 according to this Zombiesnyder guy who always comments on JoBlo Originals's videos. He has a Rick and Morty profile pic, so I don't know how trustworthy he really is. I'm wary of anyone who uses Rick and Morty characters as their profile pic on YouTube. Plus he's just really obnoxious and too much of a negative Nelly in my opinion.
Plus, if that wasn't enough, it was also directed by David Ayer, who is a director who is somewhat divisive and had a lot of movies that were received mixed or negatively. Like, with the exception of movies like End of Watch and Fury, a lot of his movies have been received mixed or poorly. Whether it's the 2016 Suicide Squad movie, or Bright, or Sabotage, or The Tax Collector. Suicide Squad (2016) really wasn't his fault since that movie's quality was more the fault of the studio. I also blame Max Landis how Bright turned out, David Ayer's direction had very little to do with it, it was all Max Landis's terrible script, that misogynist sexual abuser. But, The Tax Collector? That was all on him since he had a lot more creative control on that movie than he did on Suicide Squad (2016). Sabotage was kind of Arnold Schwarzenegger's fault because he didn't want to play a bad guy. And here I'm wondering how the hell they were going to make Face/Off work if that had stuck with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone in the lead roles.
If Arnold's so against playing bad guys, then who the hell would Sly have played in that movie? Because of the two, Stallone fits the Sean Archer role while Schwarzenegger fits the Castor Troy role. Of course, that would be before their faces got swapped, and they'd essentially be playing each other's parts. Besides, Schwarzenegger already has played a bad guy in a movie, the role that really made him a movie star, the Terminator. Sure, the T-800 was pretty much turned into more of a heroic character as the series went on, but in the beginning the T-800 was the bad guy, and at a few other points in the Terminator franchise, the T-800 was also an antagonist. So why was Arnold so against being a villain in Sabotage if he was so okay with it in the Terminator movies? It makes no sense. So, people had reasons to doubt this movie and assume the worst.
But, the movie turned out way better than anyone was really expecting it to be. Sure, there were still people who criticized it for being dumb, and there are people who like it in a guilty pleasure kind of way as a "dumb fun" movie, but for the most part, people genuinely liked the movie for what it was, myself included.
It's always cool seeing phone scammers get what's coming to them, those people are scum of the earth as far as I'm concerned. Even if some of them are human trafficking victims, and were forced to scam people out of their money 💵 to make their captors a quick buck 🤑. But, most of those cases happen in Asia, in the war-torn country, Myanmar 🇲🇲 where criminal gangs (mainly in Shan State) kidnap people from China 🇨🇳 and force them to work in phone scamming operations among other illicit activities.
But, most of the phone scammers in America 🇺🇸, they chose to do that, and the phone scammers in this movie also chose to do what they did, and they knew that they were hurting people and didn't care, in fact, they enjoyed it and reveled in ruining people's lives, including elderly people's lives; since elderly people are the ones most at risk of phone scams and computer scams. So, they deserve to get killed by Adam Clay (Jason Statham). The phone scammers, not the seniors.
I also liked the lore they kind of created for this movie. I know a lot of people who reviewed this movie when it came out made fun of the lore, and that was one of the things that made them say that the movie was stupid. But, I really thought the lore was genuinely interesting. I want to learn more about the Beekeepers 🐝 if this movie ever gets a sequel, and perhaps even introduce a similar animal themed secret agency or secret assassin program that rivals the Beekeepers 🐝.
I suggested a bear-centric program 🐻 in my review since bears 🐻 are kind of the natural enemy of bees 🐝 (besides wasps of course) since bears 🐻 eat honey 🍯, and often attack bee hives 🐝 to get to the honey 🍯. And often fail to get the honey 🍯 because the high number of bee stings 🐝 is usually too much for a single bear 🐻 to handle. Of course, if they went with a bear assassin program 🐻 as the villains for the sequel, it'd have to be Russian 🇷🇺 since bears 🐻 are mostly associated with Russia 🇷🇺. But, then people would say the movie's even more of a John Wick copycat since the bad guys in John Wick (2014) were Russian 🇷🇺. And the bad guys in other Wicklike action movies like The Equalizer (2014) and Nobody were also Russian 🇷🇺. So, it's kind of a double edged sword.
I was also surprised at how much this movie escalated. You know, it starts out small with Clay's friend and land lady, Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad) getting scammed on the phone by a bunch of sadistic and greedy tech bros 🤑 who steal all of the money 💵 she had to her name, and leaving her with nothing, driving her to suicide. Then, Clay uses his connections to the Beekeeper program 🐝 to find the people responsible for scamming Eloise, and goes to their office and kills them all, and burns the building to the ground 🔥. But, when the ring leader of this entire phone scamming empire, Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson) retaliates against Clay for destroying one of his facilities, Clay continues his revenge path, and learns just how high up this goes.
It turns out that Derek is the President's son, and he had used the money 💵 from his illegal phone scamming operations to fund her campaign. So, this brings Clay in direct conflict with the President of the United States 🇺🇸, even though he doesn't end up killing her and only kills Derek, and only when Derek threatened to shoot her to save his own ass. So, even though Clay is a former government assassin who came out of retirement for revenge, and is a killer, he was still a hero in the end, who did the right thing and saved the President's life, from her own son no less, her criminal son who tried to murder her.
Besides, he isn't seeking revenge for himself, he's seeking revenge for his dead land lady ♀︎. He's trying to avenge her death throughout this whole movie, and he definitely succeeds at that, while also saving the President's life. In fact, throughout this whole movie, Clay goes out of his way not to kill anyone who doesn't deserve it and who he doesn't need to. Like, when he fights those FBI agents outside of that phone scamming building in New York, he beats them up sure, but he doesn't kill any of them, and only uses non-lethal attacks on them.
And in the third act, when he goes to kill Derek, and put this whole thing to an end, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the shady mercenaries that Jeremy Irons's character, Wallace Westwyld hired to protect Derek, all descend on him and try to stop him. Because they're all convinced that he's going to try to kill the President as well because of something he said about "replacing the queen." He mostly speaks in bee metaphors 🐝 if you couldn't tell. Even though of course, he had no intention of killing her, just Derek.
But, as he's making his way through the mansion and the FBI and Secret Service agents go to confront him and stop him, he doesn't kill any of them. He mostly just pushes them aside, or when he's going up the stairs, he just throws them off, not even trying to shoot them or stab them. The only ones he kills in that final fight are the mercs, including Lazarus, the guy wearing the yellow jacket with the prosthetic leg 🦿which he claims he got from a previous encounter with a Beekeeper 🐝. That's how badass and deadly Beekeepers 🐝 are that this guy lost his leg in a fight with one in the past.
He has an accent, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what kind of accent he has. It's definitely from the Anglophone family of accents, but I'm not sure from what country. It sounded the most to me like a South African accent 🇿🇦, like an Afrikaans accent (which I know is a distinct accent from the Anglophone South African accent 🇿🇦 but it did sound like that accent a bit), so I'm going with that. He's like the final boss of the movie (to use a video game term), like he's there so that Clay has someone to fight at the end, since neither Wallace or Derek can really fight. They're the talkie bad guys, whereas Lazarus is the fighting bad guy. Of all the mercs present at the mansion at the time of Clay's arrival, he's the only one that actually puts up any sort of fight against him. Plus, as I said, he's wearing a yellow jacket, get it? Yellowjacket? Yellowjackets are wasps, and wasps are a natural enemy of bees 🐝? They were really clever with that one.
I did not expect this to lead all the way to the President, and end in a confrontation at the President's mansion. That was something that was completely unexpected for me. She's totally in deep trouble over this too BTW. Like, even though she obviously wasn't directly involved in any of these crimes committed by her son, and was unaware of them until the very end of the movie when Derek confesses and tells her that he used these phone scams to help fund her campaign, she'd still face some legal fallback from this. Or at the very least, face public backlash for it. Considering the world we live in today, and the way our domestic politics are now, there's no scenario in-which this doesn't become a major scandal. The President would probably be investigated, be subject to inquiries, and probably be impeached.
And since she's a woman ♀︎, there'd be even more pressure on her and the criticism for her would be even greater. And if she was a Democrat, oh, boy, you definitely know that she'd be grilled like a shish kebob, and wouldn't hear the end of it from the other side. I mean, the Republicans have been trying to impeach President Biden based on things his son did, without any evidence of wrongdoing from him or Hunter Biden. They literally tried to impeach Joe Biden based on nothing just because they don't like him. So, imagine what would happen if Hunter Biden had done half of the things that Derek Danforth did in this movie.
But, if President Danforth was a Republican, then I'm sure they'd let it slide, including the media. I mean, Donald Trump's being indicted 91 times, and has a whole bunch of felonies (I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot), and the Republicans couldn't care less. In fact, they endorsed him as their nominee for president in this year's election. And while the media does cover Trump's legal troubles and his criminal activity, they don't cover it nearly as much as they should, and they don't push back on Trump's criminality and Trump's lies as much as they should. So, if this fictional president, President Danforth was a Republican, I'm sure she'd be fine. The Republicans have become a lot more tolerant for crime in recent years, specifically white collar crime. So much for being the party of "law and order."
But, politics and election talk aside, it was pretty progressive and forward thinking of them to have a female president ♀︎ in the movie. Even after all these years, the United States 🇺🇸 still has not had a female president ♀︎. Almost every other western country or western adjacent country has had a female leader ♀︎ by now. The only one who hasn't is Japan 🇯🇵. They still haven't had a female prime minister ♀︎, so they're right in the boat with us. And also Canada 🇨🇦, they haven't had any female prime minsters ♀︎ either as far as I know. And also Australia 🇦🇺, can't forget the Aussies 🇦🇺. France 🇫🇷 too if I'm not mistaken, they've never had a female president ♀︎ either.
But, the UK 🇬🇧, Germany 🇩🇪, Finland 🇫🇮, Estonia 🇪🇪, Latvia 🇱🇻, Lithuania 🇱🇹, South Korea 🇰🇷, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and New Zealand 🇳🇿, they've all had female leaders ♀︎ by now, whether they be presidents or prime ministers. I mean, when Liberia 🇱🇷 has already beat us to the punch as far as having a female president ♀︎ is concerned, then you know something's wrong. Of course, it isn't just having a female president ♀︎ though, it's the quality of that female president ♀︎. If she's a Republican, and is all MAGA'd out, then she'd be no good.
So, a female president ♀︎ would have to be a good leader with good policies that make the country better and more prosperous for everyone, not just be a woman ♀︎. I mean, all of our presidents have been men ♂︎, and plenty of them have been pretty bad despite them being men ♂︎, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump to name a few. Even South Korea 🇰🇷's first female president ♀︎, Park Geun-hye didn't turn out that well since she was involved in a horrible corruption scandal, and was impeached and sentenced to 24 years in prison for her crimes. So, the quality of our leaders matters, not just their gender.
Anyway, I'm way off track with this. It's a good movie, it's a lot of fun, and it's worth watching, especially if you like action flicks, and revenge movies specifically. And I hope there's a sequel one day. But, even if there isn't, it still works perfectly fine as a standalone movie. It easily has one of the best opening title sequences for a modern-day blockbuster outside of the MonsterVerse. I mean, you look at that opening title sequence, and tell me that it doesn't remind you of any of the title sequences in the MonsterVerse movies.
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Note (Tuesday May 14, 2024):
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I rewatched the movie recently at the time at the time of me writing this note, and it kind of made me change my prospective on the President, and her culpability in her son's crimes. While, she was not directly involved in her son's criminal activity involving the phone scams and that data mining program that Westwyld stole from the CIA and gave to him to use in his criminal activities, it is pretty obvious from watching the movie again that she is a tad bit corrupt. Like, President Danforth is definitely not completely innocent, and the movie makes no mistake about that, like it doesn't try to convince you that she is innocent. Like, considering the kind of relationship she has with Westwyld, and she hired him to do, which was to protect her reputation as well as protect her son, it's obvious that she's done some shady shit herself.
It's very strongly implied, not even implied, it's pretty much stated that she helped Westwyld get into the CIA. He only became the CIA director because of his personal connection to her, not because of how he tried to paint it where he got there through merits or through "climbing up the ladder 🪜" or anything. And it seems like it was like a sort of quid pro quo type of situation, like I scratch your back, you scratch mine type of deal.
Adam Clay even tells Westwyld that he used to be a good man ♂︎ until the Danforths bought him, which confirms that Westwyld sold out, and that the Danforth family used their money 💵 to control him, and make him do what they wanted him to do, including while he was in. So, clearly, it isn't just Derek Danforth who's the criminal in this family. It had to have also been the mom and the dad too, although we never see the dad because the dad died long before the events of the film.
I mean, why would she need to hire Westwyld to protect her reputation and her image if she was completely squeaky clean and had nothing to hide or be ashamed of? That's something a corrupt and criminal person would do. Or maybe, she wasn't as ignorant of her son's criminal activities as she seemed to be leading on in the third act. Maybe, she did know that her son was up to no good, she just didn't know the full extent of it, and she didn't know that he used CIA software to do it.
But, she didn't dig into it or pursue any legal action against her son because hey, he was making money 💵, and keeping the family business, Danforth Enterprises alive while she was president. Plus, she has Westwyld there, who she has a "special relationship" with (bought and paid for), to cover both their asses, keep him out of jail, and keep him from embarrassing her in front of politicians and foreign dignitaries with him obvious drug addiction and debaucherous behavior. She only gets mad at him at the end when whole thing blew up in his face, and he not only got caught, but also incurred the ire of a former Beekeeper 🐝, the deadliest assassin that the US government 🇺🇸 has ever produced.
So, yeah, I think the Danforths are criminals and are all shady people, and President Danforth herself deserves any legal repercussion she might faced after the events of the film, including impeachment. She's a corrupt politician with a criminal son who stole millions of dollars 💵 from thousands or millions of innocent people and endangered our own national security to do so. And she benefited from those crimes directly not just that money 💵 were used as campaign funds, but also because the family business still got to stay on top, and she and her son continued to live a life of luxury thanks to those ill-gotten gains. Of course she deserves to be impeached. This adds to what I said in the main text about the quality of our leaders mattering even more than their gender. Female leaders ♀︎, female politicians ♀︎ can be just as bad as male ones ♂︎.
I do still think it was smart on them not to reveal what her partisanship was because not only was that detail not important to the story, but it also kind of drives home the fact that any politician from either party can be corrupt. It's not that all Republicans are corrupt or that all Democrats are all corrupt, politicians from both parties are capable of being corrupt, and being criminals. Although, the Republican Party is more likely to still embrace a criminal among their ranks rather than reject them and push them out like the Democratic Party does. Think of all the alleged criminals and corrupt politicians among the Republicans' ranks that still have high positions and are still embraced by the party.
When the Democratic senator, Bob Menendez was indicted for corruption, almost every Democrat in Congress called for his immediate resignation. George Santos is the only Republican lawmaker in recent years that was pushed out, and was asked to resign by many in his own party. But, that's really only because Santos was so unpopular nationwide that keeping him on would've been more politically disadvantageous to them than throwing him out would be. He's the exception that proves the rule. So, it's clear which party is more willing to ignore or embrace criminality among their ranks, and even reward it.
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Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭
This is one that kind of slipped under the radar. While, everyone was talking about Argylle and Madame Web 🕸️, this little movie came out, Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭. I really don't know how well this movie did considering that so few people talked about it when it came out on February 16, 2024. So, I'm just going to assume that most of you reading this haven't seen it. The movie's basically about this US Army Delta Force team 🇺🇸 that's sent to the southern Philippines 🇵🇭 to rescue a CIA agent who was captured by the local Islamic militant group ☪️, Abu Sayyaf.
But, the mission goes wrong, most of the soldiers in this team are killed or captured, and there's one guy left, Liam Hemsworth's character, Sergeant JJ "Playboy" Kinney. He's an Air Force TACP (Tactical Air Control Party) officer attached to the Delta Force team as their JTAC (Joint Terminal Attack Controller).
That basically means that he calls in and directs airstrikes on enemy targets. He's the guy who handles the air support, the thing that every soldier or marine on the battlefield wants, but can't always get or get in a timely manner. The air support in this case, are mostly drones, one of which is piloted by Captain Eddie "Reaper" Grimm, Russell Crowe's character, who is very unorthodox and has very colorful language to say the least. The movie becomes a race against time as Playboy must get to landing zone, or LZ, to be flown out of there, before the Abu Sayyaf militants can catch up to him, and kill or capture him.
Now, I hadn't even heard of this movie. I didn't see any trailers for it, I hadn't seen any reviews of it. I literally found about it when I was trying to find a movie for me and my grandma to watch, because we wanted to see a movie in the beginning of March, there just weren't that many to choose from. There was no way I was going to have us watch Argylle, or Madame Web 🕸️ 🤮, or Dune Part Two, mostly because I knew my grandma wouldn't have really liked any of those, and I really didn't want to see any of those either. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire wouldn't come out for another three weeks, and both Boy Kills World and Monkey Man 🐒🇮🇳 wouldn't come out until April.
So, this was the movie I picked because it was an action movie, and it seemed like something both of us would enjoy, would justify the amount of time and money 💵 it takes to go to the theater. Because we live outside Albuquerque on the Acoma Reservation, and it takes us nearly an hour to get to Albuquerque, and of course seeing a movie in the movie theater is expensive, not just get tickets, but to pay for concessions, popcorn 🍿 and soda 🥤. The usual stuff. Luckily, we normally don't have to worry about buying tickets, since my aunt buys them for us, but we do have to pay for everything else. We have to pay for gas ⛽️, pay for lunch/dinner, and of course, we have to pay for snacks and drinks when we actually go to the theater.
So, if we do see a movie, it really has to be worth it, and it has to be something we can all enjoy. In this case, it was worth it. We went into this movie pretty blind. Neither me nor my grandma knew what to expect from this movie, if it was going to be good or if we were even going to like it or not. Because the movie had a 6 out of 10 rating on IMDb. But, luckily we did because this movie was a blast. I think it deserves a higher rating on IMDb, at least a 7. If I was speaking for me personally, I would give it an 8 out of 10 rating. It was that good to me.
It was a lot more intense than I was expecting. I was expecting something a little more fun and lighthearted, but no, this movie is pretty dark and very intense. Things don't go so well for our hero throughout most of the movie, as his situation just gets worse and worse. It goes from bad to worse to even worse. This is definitely not a movie where the hero gets out of it completely unscathed or is completely invincible. This was as different from The Beekeeper 🐝 as you could get.
While, The Beekeeper 🐝 opted for a much more lighthearted and silly tone and silly plot, with a main hero who was pretty much unstoppable, Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭 takes itself a bit more seriously and tries to be a little bit more realistic. The Beekeeper 🐝 reveled in its ridiculousness, while this movie strives to be a bit more grounded, and more gritty. It does this by having its protagonists be regular humans, who are well trained, yes, but are still human and can be hurt and killed by the bad guys.
Speaking of the bad guys, if you read my 2023 New Year's Eve Recap, you'll know that I watched and reviewed an action movie called Plane ✈️🇵🇭, a movie that was about an airliner ✈️ crash-landing in the southern Philippines 🇵🇭, and the most of the crew and passengers are taken hostage by this local militia group. The only one left to do anything about it is the plane ✈️'s captain and a prisoner who was hitching a ride on the plane ✈️ along with a Mountie escort (who gets killed in the crash).
Yes the guy who was escorting Louis Gaspare was a Canadian police officer 🇨🇦, apart of the Canadian national police service 🇨🇦, the RCMP/GRC (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), or Mounties as we refer to them here in the US 🇺🇸. I just barely found that out recently. Luckily for the captain, the prisoner he gets stuck with was in the French Foreign Legion 🇫🇷 at one point and he has some skills that will be useful in surviving in the Filipino jungle 🇵🇭🌴, and rescuing the hostages.
It's funny how both 2023 and 2024 started out with action movies that take place in the Philippines 🇵🇭. I wonder if there will be another action movie set in the Philippines 🇵🇭 at the beginning of next year, in 2025. Maybe, a World War II movie set in the Philippines 🇵🇭 about the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines 🇯🇵🇵🇭, or the Allied liberation of the Philippines 🇺🇸🇦🇺🇲🇽🇵🇭. That would be interesting.
Now, the bad guys in Plane ✈️🇵🇭 were never specified. They never explicitly say if they're Islamic militants ☪️ or not. It's kind of inferred given the island 🏝️ that the movie was set it in, Jolo, and given the tactics of the bad guys and what they do throughout the film. But, you can easily watch that movie without thinking that bad guys are Islamic militants ☪️. It never gets into the politics of the Philippines 🇵🇭, and the weird situation that the southern islands are in compared to rest of the country.
This movie does specify who the bad guys are, and it does get into the politics why they're doing what they're doing. It doesn't get into detail, but it certainly delves into it more than Plane ✈️🇵🇭 ever did. Abu Sayyaf is a real Islamic terrorist organization ☪️. They are an Islamic fundamentalist Salafist jihadist militant group ☪️ with strong ties to ISIS. Such strong ties in fact that some consider Abu Sayyaf to be ISIS's affiliate in the Philippines 🇵🇭, their foothold in that country. They're based in Jolo, and active in many of the islands 🏝️ in the southern half of Philippines 🇵🇭. Their goal is to conquer the entire Moro Province, and make it an independent state under their rule, their brutal, strict, and regressive interpretation of Islamic Sharia Law ☪️ as in all areas controlled by ISIS or ISIS-affiliates.
That lines up perfectly with the religious makeup of the country, as the northern half is more Christian ✝️ and secular, and the southern half is more Islamic ☪️ and more religious. And the ethnic group known as the Moros has been waging an insurgency on and off in the southern islands for hundreds of years. It's just now, in recent decades, the insurgency has taken on a more religious dimension, with many Moros joining al-Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and the main ISIS organization itself. The Philippines 🇵🇭 was a major battleground in the Global War on Terrorism for this reason. There are many parts in the southern Philippines 🇵🇭 that the government in Manila no longer controls because they've fallen into the hands of Abu Sayyaf.
The Abu Sayyaf leader, or torturer rather, talks about some of this. He even mentions the Japanese occupation of the Philippines 🇯🇵🇵🇭 during World War II, and how the Moros violently resisted it. Both the Moros and the Japanese 🇯🇵 violated the Geneva Convention on multiple occasions during the war, especially when it came to targeting medics ⛑️. They both killed medics ⛑️ during the war, which is a no-no in the Geneva Convention. You aren't supposed to kill medics ⛑️ on the battlefield during wartime, even if they're on the enemy side.
In addition, the Moros not only fought the Japanese 🇯🇵 during the war, but they also fought against the Filipinos 🇵🇭 and the Americans 🇺🇸, and sometimes fought all three at once. Because they really weren't fighting for the Allied cause, they were fighting based on their own ethnic and religious tensions with the Filipinos 🇵🇭, and they were fighting to secure their own position in hopes of perhaps gaining independence from the Philippines 🇵🇭 and creating their own state or just gaining more autonomy, which they de facto have currently.
They saw the Americans and Japanese 🇺🇸🇯🇵 as foreign invaders and colonialists (which they were), and wanted them both out. Because in case you didn't know, the Philippines 🇵🇭 used to belong to the United States 🇺🇸 before the Japanese 🇯🇵 invaded and occupied it in 1942. The Americans 🇺🇸 gained control of the Philippines 🇵🇭 from the Spanish 🇪🇸 after they defeated the Spanish 🇪🇸 in the Spanish-American War 🇪🇸🇺🇸, and they held onto it for 44 years until 1942, when the Japanese 🇯🇵 invaded and occupied the territory following their attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. And after the Allies liberated the territory from the Japanese 🇯🇵 in 1945, the US 🇺🇸 granted the Philippines 🇵🇭 their independence the following year in 1946, and it became its own sovereign country.
So, the Moros really didn't like the Americans 🇺🇸 or the Japanese 🇯🇵 because they saw them as foreign occupiers treading on their land. And they didn't like the Filipinos 🇵🇭 either because they had their ethnic and religious differences with them, and wanted to break away from the rest of the Philippines 🇵🇭 and have their own state. Or at the very least, have more autonomy. So, they fought against all sides, and were in the fight to achieve their own goals.
It's sort of like how the FURLO (United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races) fought against all sides in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳. They fought against the North Vietnamese 🇻🇳, the Việt Cộng, the South Vietnamese, and the Americans 🇺🇸. They even continued fighting against the Vietnamese 🇻🇳 after Vietnam 🇻🇳 was unified, right up until 1992 when the organization finally dissolved. The FURLO was made up of various ethnic minorities with both Vietnams and the unified Vietnam 🇻🇳, indigenous peoples that wanted more autonomy, such as the Montagnards, the Chams, and the Khmer Krom.
Anyway, the point is the bad guys in the movie are Abu Sayyaf, and Abu Sayyaf is made up of mostly Moros, an ethnic group that has been at odds with the central government in Manila for hundreds of years. This movie is a bit more political than Plane ✈️🇵🇭 for that reason, although it isn't that political, so don't worry.
Liam Hemsworth is pretty good in the movie. I've seen a lot of people hate on Liam Hemsworth over the years, saying that he's the lesser of the two Hemsworth brothers, and isn't as good of an actor as his brother, Chris Hemsworth. And I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who confuse Liam Hemsworth with Scott Eastwood, Clint Eastwood's son. But, I thought he was pretty good in this. He did a great job playing this very vulnerable protagonist who constantly gets put in a worse and worse situation as the movie goes. Like, he kind of gets the short end of the stick, and just when you thought things for him couldn't get worse, they do. You just feel sorry for him, and want to see him get out of there alive. And when he does kick ass in this movie, and he does a few times, you totally believe it.
I think the reason why so many perceive Liam Hemsworth as a bad actor, or not as good of an actor as Chris Hemsworth, is that he's been in quite a few bad projects over the years. Whether it's the forgotten Independence Day sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, or even the more forgotten paranoia, corporate espionage techno-thriller, Paranoia. These were not projects that showed off Liam Hemsworth's acting abilities, or indicated that he was any good in the first place. But, I think with this movie, Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭, he finally has a movie that he can do this, and it shows that he can be as good as his brother if he's handed a good project to be in.
And of course, Russell Crowe is really good in this movie. He's so likable as this grumpy drone pilot that complains about everything, and wants everything done in a specific way, but is really competent and awesome at his job. I really do like characters that in movies, especially in action movies. You need a character like this, who is really good at their job, and is awesome to be around and have a conversation with. I was just as invested in him, as I was Liam Hemsworth.
If this is a movie you missed out on this year, check it out. It's only available on Amazon Prime and on DVD 📀. It was not released on Blu-Ray 💿 here in the US 🇺🇸. It was apparently released on Blu-Ray 💿 in the UK 🇬🇧, and in other European markets 🇪🇺, meaning that it's only in Region 1. So if you don't have a Blu-Ray player 💿 that plays Region 1 discs 💿 or is Region Free (meaning it can play discs 💿 from any region), then you're fucked. Which is a huge let down, I wish that I could've owned this movie on Blu-Ray 💿 because I prefer watching movies in 1080p HD rather than 480p SD, which is what DVD 📀 is. I'm still a believer in physical media, and I try to get my movies on physical media whenever I can. I mean, you don't need Wi-Fi 🛜 to watch a movie on Blu-Ray 💿 do you? So, it is disappointing that this movie was only made available on DVD 📀 and not Blu-Ray 💿 or even 4K Ultra HD. But, that's the case right now at the time that I'm writing this. Maybe, it's different by the time that I actually post this on the blog.
BTW, the patches that Reaper and the other Air Force personnel in this movie wear sort of looks like the Ukrainian flag 🇺🇦, like it has those colors, with the blue on top of the yellow. I doubt that it has anything to do with Ukraine 🇺🇦 or the Russo-Ukrainian War 🇷🇺🇺🇦, but it is kind of an interesting detail I noticed. Is that an actual patch people in the Air Force wear, or people who are specifically drone pilots wear? If you're in the Air Force, if you were once in the Air Force, and if you are or were once a drone pilot, please let me know in the comments, I'd really like to know. Oh, and if you're Filipino 🇵🇭 or if you're really familiar with Filipino history and politics 🇵🇭, and you're reading this, please let me know if any of the information I talked is correct or not.
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Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
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Full Review
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This is just a really cool movie. I loved it from start-to-finish. This was one of those movies that my kid self would have loved 🤩, and probably would've watched over and over again. Everything about this movie was awesome, including the villains. This is the first MonsterVerse film since Godzilla (2014) to not have human villains, and only have Titan villains, or a Titan villain in this case. The two villains in this movie are the Skar King and Shimo.
But really, the Skar King is the only bad guy here since he was just controlling Shimo, and making her do all those bad things, like cause an ice age 🧊 in the past (presumably during the Pleistocene), giving Kong frostbite 🥶, breaking down the Iwis’ barrier, and of course try to start another ice age 🧊 in the present day. She wasn’t in control of her actions, as she was heavily under the Skar King’s influence (he was hypnotizing her basically 😵💫), and once she breaks free from his control, she immediately turns on him and freezes him 🥶, allowing Kong to smash him into a million pieces.
However, despite Shimo not really being evil, I do appreciate how they gave Kong and Godzilla two monsters they could fight together and individually, with each of the two antagonists being suited to their skill sets and strength levels. Kong is perfectly suited to fight the Skar King since he’s giant ape too just like he is (they’re the same species unlike Godzilla and Shimo if I’m not mistaken), only he has a whip made from a spinal column instead of an axe made from the spike and femur of a member of Godzilla’s species like Kong does. Although the Skar King does steal his axe at one point. And Godzilla is perfectly suited to fight Shimo since she’s a giant bipedal reptile that has a beam ability like he is, only hers is an ice breath 🧊 instead of an atomic breath ☢️ like Godzilla’s.
I also like they each gave Godzilla and Kong their own upgrades to deal with the threats they’re facing in this movie. Kong gets the BEAST Glove developed by Monarch thanks to the frostbite 🥶 Shimo gave him on his right hand. And Godzilla absorbs Tiamat's energy as well as solar radiation ☀️ (which is what Tiamat's energy was derived from) to become Evolved Godzilla, twice as powerful as he was before, completely with new pink spikes on his back. This really is a buddy action movie, but with kaiju. It’s like those buddy action movies you saw in the 90s and early 2000s, like Rush Hour, Bad Boys, Double Impact, Double Team, Knock Off, Cradle 2 The Grave, Simon Sez, Exit Wounds, and Half Past Dead, just to name a few.
I know those last three, Simon Sez, Exit Wounds, and Half Past Dead are not very good movies, and have the worst duos (Simon Sez has Dennis Rodman and Dane Cook, Exit Wounds has Steven Seagal and DMX, and Half Past Dead has Steven Seagal and Ja Rule), but they are examples of buddy action movies. But, this movie is more like Double Team and Cradle 2 the Grave where the two action heroes are equally as badass as each other, and start out hating each other, but ultimately have to work together to fight a common enemy.
Okay, Dennis Rodman and Jean-Claude Van Damme’s characters in Double Team, Yaz and Jack Quinn respectively didn’t hate each other, and actually liked each other and got along throughout. So, that movie doesn’t completely abide by the buddy action movie formula. But Jet Li and DMX's characters in Cradle 2 the Grave, Su Duncan and Anthony Fait respectively did start out hating each other, and had to put aside their differences and work together to defeat a common enemy. They even go up against multiple bad guys just like Godzilla and Kong do in this movie.
So, I’d say Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is like a kaiju version of Cradle 2 the Grave. It was so cool to see Godzilla and Kong have their action movie team-up, just like Leon and Chris in Resident Evil: Vendetta to use a more recent example. In fact, I kind of sort of called this because leading up to Godzilla vs. Kong I believe, I imagine that the two would team up at some point to fight another monster.
I even pictured a poster similar to the one for Resident Evil: Vendetta where Leon and Chris are standing side-by-side with each other, looking all serious. I imagined that for Godzilla vs. Kong. But, we finally got something like that, but for this movie. It fulfilled the promise of actually making the monsters the main focus of the film, and not centering on the humans so much. There are long stretches of this movie that don't feature any human characters, and only feature the monsters, the Titans, and those are probably some of the most entertaining and memorable scenes in the entire movie.
I mentioned in my full review of this movie that it's a Kong centric movie, and yes, it is. I remember the YouTuber reviewer, Jeremy Jahns said in his review that this was a Kong movie guest starring Godzilla, but I don't entirely agree with that. While yes, Kong is the main character, the main protagonist, and the movie focuses on him a lot, there still plenty of Godzilla sprinkled throughout to let you know, "Hey, this isn't just a Kong movie, it's a Godzilla movie too." In fact, of all the monster action in this movie, Godzilla gets the majority of the fights. He fights Scylla, Tiamat, Kong, and of course the Skar King, and Shimo, although he mostly spends the final fight fighting Shimo and leaving the Skar King to Kong.
In addition, Adam Wingard has said that if this movie was successful enough for the MonsterVerse to continue after this, and if he was once again hired to direct it, he would focus the next movie more on Godzilla. He said that he would take a "different approach" with it than he did on this movie, just like how this movie was very much a different approach from Godzilla vs. Kong, the previous MonsterVerse movie he directed before this one. He also said that if there is another movie after this one, and he gets the chance to direct it, he'd explore Godzilla's perspective just as this movie explored Kong's perspective.
So, for all of you who complained that the movie didn't focus enough on Godzilla, don't worry because Adam Wingard heard your complaints, and has vowed to focus the next movie more on Godzilla if there's another one and if he's brought back to direct it. I'm sure he made those comments before any reviews came out, and before any critics or Godzilla fans made those complaints, but I'm sure after he did see them, it made him more resolute in his decision to center the next movie on Godzilla and his perspective if he's given the chance to direct the next one, become the first director to direct three films in the MonsterVerse in a row no less, which I'm sure he will be.
This movie was fairly successful during its theatrical run. It made over $571.2 million 💵 worldwide, making it the highest grossing movie of the MonsterVerse so far. And that was despite all of those idiot critics comparing it to Godzilla Minus One and saying that Minus One was better, despite the fact that the director of Minus One, Takashi Yamazaki actually likes Godzilla x Kong, and said that he doesn't mind the direction that the MonsterVerse has been going in. In fact, he said that he liked it, stating that the more fun and psychedelic approach that Legendary Pictures and Adam Wingard specifically has decided to take with the MonsterVerse is just as important and integral to the legacy of Godzilla as the more serious and allegorical approach he took with his movie.
He was basically saying these things can co-exist, and we don't have to choose between one or the other. We can have these more fun and colorful Godzilla movies while also having the more dark, serious, and existential Godzilla movies. They're both equally valid. And I wish more people would see that, and I wish that all of the critics that compared this movie to Godzilla Minus One and said it wasn't as good as that movie could've seen that, and had judged this movie on its own merits and saw it for what it was, rather than compare it a movie that it has almost nothing in common with besides the fact that they're both Godzilla movies.
They are both Godzilla movies, but they're completely different kinds of Godzilla movies, and shouldn't really compared to one another or judged based on each other's merits. They should be judged on their own merits, based on what they set out to do. For me personally, I think Godzilla x Kong succeeded at what it set out to do: be a fun and cool-looking movie. Just pure escapist entertainment. I mean, if Yamazaki could see that, and just accept the MonsterVerse and just let them do their thing, then I don't see why these professional film critics couldn't do it.
Anyway, enough ranting about the critical reception of this movie, and annoying tendency of film critics here in the West comparing this movie to Minus One when they're two totally different movies doing totally different things, let's get back to the point I was trying to make. Given how successful the movie was, there's no doubt that it will get a sequel, in fact, it's already been announced that they will make a sequel.
And given that the success of both this movie and Godzilla vs. Kong happened under Adam Wingard's watch, while he was at the helm, I'm sure that Legendary will bring him back to direct the next one. They trust him, he's brought them two major successes in a row, and he clearly still has the passion for it. They'd be crazy not bring him back. He'll become like what the Russo Brothers became to the MCU, only way better than the Russo Brothers in my opinion.
Besides, even though Kong is the main focus for most of it, I don't really mind because I like the MonsterVerse version of Kong. He's such a cool character, and so lovable too. It's hard to root against the guy. That's why, even though I was Team Godzilla going into Godzilla vs. Kong, I still found myself rooting for Kong instead of Godzilla, and I kind of became Team Kong as the movie went on. Even on my most recent rewatch, I was firmly on Team Kong, though I knew of course he was going to lose. I mean, Kong was the protagonist in that movie too, while Godzilla was firmly the antagonist, until Mechagodzilla showed up.
But in this movie, Godzilla is definitely a good guy again…kind of. He's more of an antihero now as he only fights to protect his own territory, starts fights with other monsters even if they aren't attacking him, and doesn't care at all about humanity. Those were all traits the MonsterVerse Godzilla already had before, but this time, he isn't simply passive towards humanity, like he doesn't just brush them aside and ignore them like he did in the 2014 movie and in King of the Monsters (2019), he's actively fighting them.
Like, he will swat down fighter jets and drones, and stomp on tanks if they're firing at him, which is what he does when he attacks that nuclear power plant ☢️ in France 🇫🇷, which is also the first time that he's attacked a human-made structure, a building without being provoked or destroying it accidentally in a fight with another monster. Even in Godzilla vs. Kong, when he attacked the Apex facility in Pensacola, Florida, he was doing it because he sensed that Mechagodzilla part that was admitting a signal that was provoking him. But here, he just attacked this nuclear power plant ☢️ unprovoked.
Sure, you might say that he was only doing it so he would be powerful enough to take down Tiamat, and absorb her energy so that he'd be powerful enough to take out the Skar King and Shimo. But, still, he wasn't provoked. He's just way more aggressive now than he ever was in either the 2014 movie or King of the Monsters (2019). He's kind of a big bully, a schoolyard bully who likes beating up the other kids at the playground just to assert his dominance and prove how tough he is.
I mean, the first thing he does when Kong resurfaces in Cairo is fight him and try to kill him. Like, he just hates his guts, and can't stand the sight of him, and will rip him apart with his claws, and/or incinerate him with his atomic breath ☢️ when given the chance, and he does. He does almost kill Kong again, and it's only when Mothra intervenes, and breaks up the fight, that he finally stops and gets to working fighting for the greater good. In some ways, he kind of is like the Skar King a little bit, only there is still good in Godzilla, and Godzilla will still do the right thing in the end even if he causes a lot of destruction and kills a lot of people in the process (not that saving the humans in particular was even his main goal in the first place), whereas the Skar King is just pure evil and has no redeeming qualities.
Some might say this sort of turn is a betrayal of the character that was established for Godzilla at the beginning of the MonsterVerse in the 2014 movie, but I think it's a natural progression given what has happened so far. I mean, he defeated King Ghidorah, and was definitively and literally crowned King of the Monsters, and nearly all of the Titans that once served Ghidorah now bow before him, and submit to him.
So, he's the new Alpha Titan that all other Titans better watch out for. That power just got to his head, and inflated his ego to the size of the Moon 🌕, or perhaps even bigger. So, he's just very egotistical as a result of him being the Alpha Titan, and his increased aggression is the result of his ego. And also the result of him losing Mothra, the Queen of the Monsters, and him being very angry about that and not being able to get over it. And he hates Kong because he can’t control him or make him submit, despite his best efforts to do so. Kong is just a stubborn brawler who not only doesn’t go down without a fight, but doesn’t give up, and keeps getting back up even after he’s beaten down.
I also didn't point this out either in my original review, but this movie is technically the first time that Godzilla has attacked or fought in European cities or towns. I mean, there have been Toho kaiju that have attacked European cities, like Rodan attacked Moscow in Destroy All Monsters, Rodan also attacked London in Godzilla: Singular Point, and I'm sure there were monster attacks on European cities and towns in the Monster Planet continuity, in the prequel novel 📖. All of the cool monster destruction happened way before the main events of that trilogy, and we never get to see any of it, which is what makes it so awful.
But, this is the first time (to my knowledge) that we're seeing Godzilla himself in Europe. So, if you ever wanted to see what it would be like if Godzilla fought another monster, and walked through the streets of Rome, and took a nap in the Colosseum, or see what it would be like if he roamed the French countryside 🇫🇷 to get to a nuclear power plant ☢️, then this is the movie for you. Godzilla makes a pitstop in Gibraltar 🇬🇮, which is where he hears Kong call out for him all the way from Egypt 🇪🇬, and he swims across the Mediterranean all the way to Egypt 🇪🇬 just to try to kill Kong again. We also get to see Godzilla and Kong in Brazil 🇧🇷, in good ol' Rio de Janeiro, the same place Fast Five and that animated movie by Blue Sky Studios, Rio took place. That's where they have their final fight with the Skar King and Shimo.
I would say that it's pretty new and unique, but Godzilla's been in Latin America before. The 98 Godzilla crossed into Panama 🇵🇦 to get to the Caribbean and then to the Atlantic to get to New York, and his son, Godzilla Jr. (or Zilla Jr. if you prefer) fought a bunch of other monsters (which were referred to as "mutations" in that continuity) in the Caribbean and in various Central American and South American countries.
The first episode of Godzilla: The Series, which was a two parter, took place partially in Jamaica 🇯🇲, and had Godzilla Jr. fight a bunch of giant squids 🦑 and a strange cephalopod mutation called C-Rex, which stands for Crustaceous Rex. C-Rex is like a mixture of a crustacean and a cephalopod, having characteristics of both. Then, in a later episode (also in Season 1 I believe), Godzilla Jr. faces off against a giant worm mutation called El Gusano Gigante in Mexico 🇲🇽. And I'm sure that there's some other examples from that series I'm forgetting. But, this is the first time that Godzilla's been in Brazil 🇧🇷 specifically.
This is the second time that Godzilla's been in North Africa or the Middle East. The first time for the MonsterVerse was in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, where Godzilla was sleeping in Algeria 🇩🇿 in for some reason 😴. The first time to my knowledge that Godzilla was in Egypt 🇪🇬 overall was also in Godzilla: The Series, where Godzilla Jr. faced off against a giant sphinx looking creature with wings. Like, it was like a living statue made of metal or something, and it fed on oil 🛢️. It needed oil 🛢️ to keep itself lubricated and keep itself from rusting. even though Egypt 🇪🇬 doesn't have oil 🛢️ as far as I know. I might be mistaken on that. Please let me know in the comments.
If the sphinx didn't get oil 🛢️ from Egypt 🇪🇬, then it probably got it from some other North African or Middle Eastern country that has oil 🛢️ like Libya 🇱🇾 (which was still under the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi at the time the show was made), or Algeria 🇩🇿, or Iraq 🇮🇶 (which was still under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein at the time), or Syria 🇸🇾, or Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦. It's been a long time since I've seen that episode, so I really don't remember where that sphinx got oil 🛢️ from.
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There was also that fictional Middle Eastern country in Godzilla vs. Biollante called Saradia, which was basically a stand-in for Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 or the UAE 🇦🇪. Even though, Saradia is actually a republic, and not an absolute monarchy like both Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 and the UAE 🇦🇪. But, Godzilla never appeared in that country at any point in that film, so I don't count that. So, for all intents and purposes, this movie is the first time in a long time that Godzilla has been in Egypt 🇪🇬, and the first time that he's been near the Pyramids of Giza. It is the first time that Kong has been in Egypt 🇪🇬 for sure, and it's also the first time that Mothra has been in Egypt 🇪🇬. First time for everything.
Like, imagine you're an Egyptian 🇪🇬 just minding your own business, or you're a tourist visiting Cairo, and looking at the Pyramids and the other sites, and then all of a sudden, a giant ape wearing a mechanical glove rises from the ground, and then starts doing battle with Godzilla, and then a giant moth shows up and breaks them up. I don't even know if the Egyptians 🇪🇬 would even know that it's Kong or Mothra. They'd probably recognize Godzilla because he's a common occurrence throughout the world, and everyone probably knows who and what he is at this point in the MonsterVerse timeline. It was pretty cool to see Godzilla, Kong, and Mothra in a more desert setting, even if it was only for one scene.
It's kind of weird to me that Godzilla hasn't really been in Japan 🇯🇵 all that much in the MonsterVerse, even though Godzilla originated from Japan 🇯🇵. That's where the whole thing started. Like, Godzilla (2014) is the only movie in the series that actually has scenes that take place in Japan 🇯🇵, and none of them involved Godzilla. It's weird that they've never had any fight scenes in any Japanese cities 🇯🇵 like Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, Sendai, Sapporo, Fukuoka, or even Naha in Okinawa. They've had Godzilla and the other Titans appear in almost every other big city around the world, except Tokyo. Maybe they're saving that for the next movie, who knows?
Also, Mothra's in this movie in case you didn't know by now. She's the secret Toho character in this movie just like Mechagodzilla was in Godzilla vs. Kong, and I said this in my review, but she had a much bigger role in this movie than she did in Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Like, she gets way more to do in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire than she did in King of the Monsters (2019), and she's actually more important to the plot.
Because you see, the reason why Jia gets dragged into this, the reason why the humans go down to the Hollow Earth 🌎 is that there's this secret Iwi tribe that was living deep inside the subterranean realm behind a barrier that protects them from the many dangerous creatures inside Hollow Earth 🌎. And they summoned Jia down there so that that she could wake up Mothra, so that she could convince Godzilla to work with Kong to defeat the Skar King and Shimo. And that's exactly what she does. She makes Godzilla put aside his hatred for Kong to work together with him to defeat this common enemy. She also protects the humans along the way too.
Which is kind of funny because they say that Kong’s species were the protectors of humanity, and yet, Mothra saves more humans in this movie than Kong does. Kong kills way more humans than he actually saves, in both this movie and the previous movie, Godzilla vs. Kong. Unintentionally yes, but he still killed a lot of people and caused a lot of destruction during his battles with Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, and of course Skar King and Shimo. But, Mothra doesn't just tell Godzilla to chill the F out, or protect the human characters from crashing their hover craft during that anti-gravity battle, she also does some fighting too, mostly during that same anti-gravity battle. She shoots web at two of the Skar King’s ape henchmen.
I notice that the MonsterVerse gave Mothra more naturalistic abilities that an actual moth or insect would have, rather than any of the energy based beam weapons she had in the Heisei series. She’s definitely not shooting lasers out of her antennae in this series. This brings her more in line with her Shōwa counterpart. The most outlandish things she’s done in the MonsterVerse so far is give Godzilla her energy, and allow him to turn into a fire version of himself 🔥, as well as reincarnate herself back to life. This is probably the most badass that Mothra has been in a very long time.
This movie also has the distinction of being one of the few movies that Mothra's been in where she doesn't die. In pretty much every other movie that features Mothra, she dies before the end, but was one of the few times where she didn't die. The other times being the original Mothra movie from 1961, and Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth 🌏 known in Japan 🇯🇵 as simply Godzilla vs. Mothra. Oh, and the Rebirth of Mothra movies as well, even though it was Mothra Leo in those movies, and not the actual true Mothra that we all know and love. The real Mothra dies in the first Rebirth of Mothra movie, and then it's her son, Mothra Leo (who's technically just a reincarnated version of her) that takes over from there.
I also liked how they tied the Skull Island mythology to the Mothra mythology. That was a very unique direction to take, since until this movie the Skull Island stuff and the Mothra/Godzilla stuff was always kept separate. But, now they're taking full advantage of the fact that in this series at least, they're all apart of the same universe. So, now Jia is serving the same role that the twin fairies 🧚♀️ always did in the Mothra movies or the Godzilla movies with Mothra in them, which make up the majority of Mothra's appearances on film. All this time I thought that those two twin Monarch scientists from King of the Monsters (2019) was going to serve that role, it seemed like that's what they were setting up. But, no, it's Jia, and I'm perfectly fine with that because I like Jia.
I'm probably in the minority on this, but I actually like the human characters in this movie, and in most of the MonsterVerse. The only movie where I didn't like the human characters was the 2014 movie, but that was only because the human characters in that movie were just so boring and unmemorable. Except Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), he was the only character besides Ishirō Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) that was worth a damn in that entire movie. Bryan Cranston knocked it out of the park. He should've been in the whole movie. But, the human characters in the MonsterVerse movies that came afterwards are pretty fine in my book. I like it when they have human characters from the previous movie return in the current movie. In this case, all of the returning human characters are from Godzilla vs. Kong. No characters from King of the Monsters (2019) are left.
Not even Madison is mentioned when Dr. Ilene Andrews meets up with Bernie again, and he talks about he and her met in Hong Kong 🇭🇰, and saved the world from Mechagodzilla. Dude, you didn't save the world with Dr. Andrews. You saved it with Madison Russell and her friend, you barely interacted with Dr. Andrews in that entire movie. Like, these two were literally completely unaware of each other's existence until the very ending after Kong defeats Mechagodzilla, and everyone meets back up with each other and celebrates.
But, it was cool to see Dr. Andrews and Jia again, and even Bernie, who's the movie's comedic relief. I kind of didn't like him in Godzilla vs. Kong when I first saw it because it felt like the movie was glorifying conspiracy theorists, and it also felt like his subplot with Madison and her friend was kind of pointless. Like, that subplot only existed in the film to set up Mechagodzilla, and explain where he came from and why he's there.
I guess the writers must've felt that if they didn't have subplot dedicated to solving the mystery behind Mechagodzilla and Apex, and just had him appear at the end out of the side of that mountain, people would just be confused, and ask where Mechagodzilla came from, and why is he here? But, Bernie did grow on me. Not just in this movie, but also in Godzilla vs. Kong itself after I rewatched it recently. He's pretty entertaining.
I also like the doctor dude, the Titan veterinarian, Trapper, who was cool. He's even crazier and weirder than Bernie if that's even possible. Also, his name is just Trapper. They never actually say if that's just a nickname or if that his real name, and the actor who plays him, Dan Stevens is just listed in the credits as Trapper. You might think that's weird, but Avatar: The Way of Water 💦 literally has a character named Spider (just Spider, nothing else), so Trapper isn't that weird of a name of this character.
Some people might say that the human subplot in this movie, Godzilla x Kong was unnecessary, but I disagree. It was pretty integral to the plot. It's through them that we learn the Skar King and Shimo's names, and we learn what the Skar King's motives are, as well as his connection to Godzilla and Kong. We wouldn't have Mothra at all in this movie if it were for the humans going to the Hollow Earth 🌎. Nor would we have the awesome anti-gravity battle since it was because of the Hollow Earth 🌎 Iwis' anti-gravity technology that the gravity gets all messed up, and everything that starts flying in the air.
The CGI effects in this movie were great. This movie had a $135 million-$150 million budget 💵, and all of that money 💵 is on screen. This movie had some of the best CGI in any big budget Hollywood blockbuster in a long time, not since Godzilla vs. Kong really. Yes, I know that Godzilla Minus One won an Oscar for its CGI effects, and yes, they do look pretty impressive, especially for the amount of money 💵 the movie was made for (which was $10 million-$12 million 💵), but I'm mainly talking about big budget movies, movies with budgets larger than $100 million 💵. Speaking of Oscars though, I do hope that this movie does get nominated in the Best Visual Effects category because the effects in this movie truly were impressive.
Plus, none of the MonsterVerse up until this point have been nominated in the Best Visual Effects category as far as I know. Maybe the 2014 movie was, and maybe Kong: Skull Island was, but certainly not Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), or Godzilla vs. Kong. So, now is the chance for the MonsterVerse itself to get its first Oscar nomination (if it didn't already have one) with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which looks fantastic. But, even if it doesn't get nominated for an Oscar, it doesn't take away from how impressive this movie is on a technical level. Or from how enjoyable it is overall.
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Update (Sunday June 16, 2024):
It turns out that Adam Wingard will not be directing the next MonsterVerse movie. Legendary confirmed that he will not direct the next film in the series due to scheduling conflicts. I watched a John Campea video where he talked about how Adam Wingard is apparently going to be directing a movie for A24 called Onslaught, which I couldn't find it anywhere on his filmography, I did find it listed on A24's in-development films list on Wikipedia.
There is no Wikipedia page for that movie as of yet, as of the time of me writing this, but I imagine it will be one of those things where it will get its own page once it gets close to its release date, which it doesn't have yet. That means that I have no idea what it's going to be about. But, given Adam Wingard's track record outside of the MonsterVerse, I imagine it'll probably be a horror film. Onslaught sounds like the title of a horror film. It sounds like either the title of a horror movie or an action movie, and I'm betting on it being a horror movie rather than an action movie. But, I could be wrong.
A24 has been dipping its toes into more action-oriented fair more recently, especially with this year's Civil War 🇺🇸, which was much more action-packed compared to A24's other offerings. Which if you've seen Civil War 🇺🇸, you'll know that's not really saying a whole lot. Plus, they're making a Death Stranding movie, which, while is more of a weird avant-garde existential art piece disguised as a video game, it does still have action elements within it.
Even Hideo Kojima, as artsy and deep as he wants to get with his video games, especially his post-Konami ones, still can't resist than to put some action in them. Even when most of the gameplay of this "game," consists of a guy ♂︎ walking around a desolate wasteland (which looks a lot more like Iceland 🇮🇸 rather than the United States 🇺🇸 like it's supposed to be) with a baby inside of a tank full of amber colored amniotic fluid strapped to his chest carrying several crates full of packages and supplies on his back to deliver to people and reconnect their Internet 🛜 for several hours. People joke about Death Stranding being a walking simulator for a reason. It's like The Postman but grayer and more depressing. Sam Porter's pretty much a glorified Internet technician 🛜. But, A24 making a Death Stranding movie makes all the sense in the world. Of all the video games that they could adapt, it makes sense that it's that one.
It's a video game that definitely fits their sensibilities, and definitely coincides with their brand as being a studio that specializes in more artsy, prestigious high-brow type of movies that appeal to film critics' delicate and discerning tastes and tend to win awards or be nominated for awards. I'm just wondering how much of a role if any will Kojima have in the film's making.
Will he be more hands on, be more involved in the creative process to make sure they're doing it right, or will he be hands-off, and let the filmmakers do their thing, and just be an executive producer or something? It is obvious that he wants to make movies rather than make video games since a lot of his games feel like interactive movies rather than true video games that prioritize gameplay, so maybe it'll be the former.
One thing's for sure though, the Death Stranding movie will be the most expensive movie that A24 has ever produced. You need at least a $100 million budget 💵 to do everything that's required to bring that movie to life, and also pay the big name actors' salaries who were already in the game and will probably reprise their roles in the movie adaptation, including Norman Reedus, Mads Mikkelsen, and Léa Seydoux. I wouldn't be surprised if the movie ended up having a $136 million production budget 💵 or even a $150 million budget 💵 or something even as high as $197 million 💵. Maybe, $200 million 💵 if A24 was willing to go that far 😬. But, whatever the budget ends up being, I'm sure that it will be a big one. A24's going to go for broke on this one.
Anyway, back to what I was saying about Adam Wingard and the MonsterVerse. Despite these scheduling conflicts, Legendary is still moving ahead with a sequel without him. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire was a massive hit, a bigger hit than anyone, especially at Legendary, was really expecting, and they want to make a sequel as soon as possible. They want to strike while the iron's hot because I guess the people at the Legendary and the producers behind the MonsterVerse are thinking that if they wait too long than they'll just end up with what happened with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).
It was a good movie, the fans really loved it, but it wasn't a huge hit. It lost money 💵, making only $387.3 million 💵 at the worldwide box office against a budget of $170 million-$200 million 💵, making it by far the lowest grossing MonsterVerse movie so far. And one of the contributing factors to why King of the Monsters (2019) did so poorly at the box office is that they kind of waited too long to make another Godzilla movie. There was this huge gap in-between King of the Monsters (2019) and Godzilla (2014).
There wasn't a huge gap between Kong: Skull Island, but there was a huge one with Godzilla (2014). And I guess a lot of general audiences lost interest or they forgot about it, and that's why they didn't flock to see King of the Monsters (2019). I'm sure there other factors as to why King of the Monsters (2019) was a flop, but that was a huge factor, it was too long of a wait, there was too long of a gap in-between the movies. You have to keep in mind, people hadn't quite caught on to the fact that these movies were part of a shared cinematic universe yet except for the hardcore fans.
So, I'm guessing that Legendary, this time around, wants to avoid that sort of thing by making a sequel to Godzilla x Kong as soon as possible, even if that means doing it without Adam Wingard, the man ♂︎ who brought them two of their biggest hits. They must figure that what helped Godzilla x Kong was that it did come out in a more timely manner after Godzilla vs. Kong.
But, it does beg the question? If Adam Wingard isn't going to return for a third go around, who will get to direct the next MonsterVerse film? Will they have another director return and make another movie for them? Will they bring back Michael Dougherty? He seems like he'd be a good choice given that he seems to be the biggest Godzilla fan out of all the directors the MonsterVerse has had so far, given how many references, obscure references, he managed to seek in to King of the Monsters (2019) that only the most hardcore Godzilla fans would understand and recognize. So, if anyone could deliver a Godzilla centric movie, it's him. But, if not him, if they don't bring him back or any of the other directors back, and just go with a new director, who would it be? I don't know, I don't have anyone in particular in mind.
Whoever they bring on to direct the follow-up to Godzilla x Kong, it has to be someone who is a fan of Godzilla and a fan of kaiju movies. If they bring someone on who isn't passionate about the character or the genre, then it's not going to work. And I think Legendary knows that by now. They've been good at hiring people who are passionate about this stuff, and are genuine fans rather than hired guns who are just there for a paycheck.
It could work if they bring in someone who's a fan of Kong, but they've made two Kong-centric movies in a row, and I'm sure they want to give Godzilla fans more of what they want to see, and what a lot of them want to see is a greater emphasis on Godzilla rather than on Kong, even if these past two movies have made more Kong fans out of Godzilla fans. So, that's why I'm saying that if they don't bring back one of their previous directors and just go with a new one, they'd have to be a Godzilla fan.
One of the critic quotes that the Wikipedia page on Godzilla x Kong featured suggested that Takashi Yamazaki should come in and direct the next MonsterVerse movie given his work on Godzilla Minus One that was critically acclaimed pretty much across the board. But, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Yamazaki has any interest in directing a MonsterVerse movie himself, and is more content with just letting it do its own thing and watching it rather than be behind the camera directing one.
Plus, I think it's more likely that if he does direct another Godzilla movie, it'll be a sequel to Minus One rather than an entry in the MonsterVerse. In fact, he already teased a sequel to Minus One while he was on the press junket promoting the movie. So yeah, he's making a sequel to Minus One, especially now it's the most successful Japanese Godzilla movie ever made 🇯🇵. Though I'm sure if he did direct a MonsterVerse movie he'd do a good job since he does understand the MonsterVerse, and understands what it is, and I think that he would understand the assignment enough to make a movie that was more fun and psychedelic than Minus One.
I mean, on the Honest Trailer for Minus One, there was a comment in the comment section that said that Yamazaki was known for making "Michael Bay-style" action movies before he made Minus One. So if that's true, then it seems that he does have it in him to make a movie that was "dumb fun" rather than a movie that tries to be Oscar bait. Even if I do kind of try to avoid using the term, "dumb fun" because it comes across as a backhanded compliment.
So, yeah it would be interesting if they brought him on, but I don't think it's very likely that they would. I think it's way more likely that they'll bring in an American director 🇺🇸 since these are American movies 🇺🇸, and they don't want to have to deal with interpreters and the director not being able to communicate with the cast and crew as effectively as he could if they were speaking his native language. But, despite Adam Wingard not coming back to direct the MonsterVerse movie immediately after Godzilla x Kong, Legendary has expressed interest in bringing him back for a future project down the line. So, Adam Wingard isn't gone from the MonsterVerse forever. He will be back, just not right now. He's got some business to take care of with A24 first.
I do think it is important for Legendary to keep in mind that these MonsterVerse movies are not a sure thing. They can lose money 💵, and they can be disappointments or even straight up flops like King of the Monsters (2019) was. So while they are riding high on the success of Godzilla x Kong, I do think they need to keep in mind that the next movie may not be the massive hit that they’re hoping for. So they have to try not to fly too close to the Sun ☀️, not let Godzilla x Kong’s success get to their heads, and just continue making each MonsterVerse movie as if it’s going to be their last because you never know if it will be or not. All it will take is one box office bomb 💣, and then it’s over, this franchise is finished.
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Full Review
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I've already written a full review of this movie on my blog, so I'm going to try to keep this one short, or at least short by my standards. I really liked this movie, I thought it was a really fun and cute movie. I had no idea that this movie was going to come out until the month of April when the first short preview or promo was released, and I no idea what I was going to make of it, but I really did enjoy it. And I think a large part of my enjoyment of this movie, as I alluded to in my review, comes from Myrtle. This movie delved even more into her backstory than even the episode, "Pop-Pop the Question" did, and that episode laid the groundwork for this movie.
It proved how much of a badass she truly is, and how much she deserves her own spin-off. If they ever made a spin-off series or a spin-off movie focused on Myrtle during her spy career, I would watch it. And even though I'm not crazy about Lincoln as a character, I think this was a good showcase for him, and probably the best that he's ever been, based on the stuff I've seen of this movie. Like I said in the review itself, I haven't seen the first Loud House movie, The Loud House Movie, so I can't say anything about how Lincoln was portrayed in that movie.
But, even if I did see it, I have a feeling that I would still prefer this one. I mean, this isn't a musical 🎵, which is a huge improvement to me. Luckily this time, I wasn't alone in my feelings about this movie because it did receive some positive reviews from critics, and the fans seemed to be like it well enough. Maybe not as much as The Casagrandes Movie, but still way more than The Loud House Movie or any of the live action Loud House movies that Nickelodeon has been shoving down our throats. I don't know if I can speak for everyone, but I don't want to see anymore live action Loud House stuff. I just want the animated stuff.
Speaking of animation, I really didn't talk at all about the animation in my review. I try not to focus too much on animation whenever I review an animated movie or an animated series because I feel that people get too hyper fixated on the animation, and they don't talk enough about the other aspects of the movie or show, like the writing or the characters. So that's why, whenever I review a cartoon or an anime, I usually avoid talking about the animation altogether. Yes, animation is a big part of an animated movie, but it's not the only part, or even the most important part. It's like reviewing a live action movie, and only talking about the cinematography, or focusing more on the cinematography than the writing or the acting.
But yeah, the animation in this movie is good. They didn't overdo it with the shading. In fact, there's only one scene in the entire movie if I'm not mistaken that uses a lot of shading, and that's the prologue scene where we see Myrtle's mission to take down Dr. Rufus. But, the rest of the time, it looks exactly how the show usually looks, which is how it should look. I guess they learned their lesson from The Loud House Movie, whenever complained about the shading.
I still don't really know what people's problems were with the animation in that movie because the Wikipedia page says that one of the big complaints people had about The Loud House Movie was the animation. What about the animation in that movie was so bad that people had to complain about, and make it big aspect of their critique? And what about the animation in this movie are they fine with that they don't even really comment on it.
Whenever a cartoon show like The Loud House gets a movie, whether it's a theatrical movie or a made-for-TV or made-for-streaming type of thing, they always that it feels like an extended episode of the series. People said that about the SpongeBob 🧽 movies on a few occasions, especially the first one, people said that about The Simpsons Movie, people said that about Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show, and I'm sure people said the same thing about the Rugrats movies, especially the first one. And I'm sure people said the same thing about The Loud House Movie too. They've said that about a lot of cartoon-based movies. But, with No Time to Spy, I never felt as if it was just an "extended episode of the series."
It truly felt like a movie, it felt like a cinematic experience, or at least as much of a cinematic experience as a straight-to-streaming movie can feel. This movie was actually aired on TV and released streaming simultaneously. It was aired on TV first, and then it was put on streaming. Studios and networks have been doing that a lot lately since everyone released the streaming model doesn't actually work and isn't all that profitable. It's why studios have been releasing a lot more of their movies exclusively in theaters first, and then going to streaming rather than released them just straight to streaming or streaming and theaters simultaneously.
That's why Warner Bros. had to start airing My Adventures with Superman on Adult Swim as well as on Max because it wouldn't have reached as wide of an audience or made as money 💵 than if it had been just a Max exclusive. That's how much these streaming services are hemorrhaging money 💵. And a big part of the reason why they're hemorrhaging money 💵 besides the fact that streaming model is inherently flawed, is that they keep raising prices.
I understand that they have to raise prices a little bit to make up for the cost their movies and shows cost to make. Some of these shows that they make in house, and have as exclusives cost as much as theatrical movie would cost. The Disney+ Marvel show, Secret Invasion was made with the same amount of money 💵 that a typical Marvel movie released exclusively in theaters would cost. It had a budget of $212 million 💵.
Most Marvel movies (as in MCU movies) have budgets in the $100 million 💵 and $200 million 💵 range, with Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame being the exceptions with budgets that exceed $300 million 💵. So, the more expensive movies and shows get on these streaming services, the higher the subscription prices will be. But, I think I speak for a lot of people who think that while that is an understandable reason to raise prices, I think they've gone way too far with it. This is price gouging if I ever seen it.
It's gotten to the point where some people can only afford one streaming service. They can't afford multiple streaming services anymore like they used to when they all had pretty low prices. Like, Disney+ started out with a monthly subscription cost of around $6 a month 💵, and other streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max (before it became just Max), Peacock 🦚, and Paramount+ even all had similar price ranges.
But now, they can't. Now they cost $30 a month 💵. It's becoming just bad as cable. Although with cable, at least you were paying for one package from one company, rather than several services from multiple companies as is the case with streaming services. So, while these streaming companies may say that they're only raising price to cover the costs of these really expensive movie and TV productions, the more they do raise prices, the more people they'll turn away and the more they'll keep losing money 💵 on these streaming services.
Honestly, streaming companies saying that they only raise prices to pay for the high production costs of these movie and TV productions is just an excuse. It's a plausible excuse, but still an excuse. I think that they're also raising prices because they're greedy 🤑 and they want more money 💵. So, they're going to keep raising prices, and keep charging for every little thing in order to squeeze as much money 💵 out of people as they can 😮💨.
That's what I also think fueled Nickelodeon's decision to air No Time to Spy on actual TV as well as put it on Paramount+. They just wouldn't have reached as many people, or have made as much money 💵 than if they just put it on Paramount+, and didn't air it on regular TV first. And the big reason for that is as I've explained, streaming services are not actually that profitable, and they have to both raise their prices, put in ads, and air their shows on regular TV and on streaming almost simultaneously to even remotely turn a profit 💵. Even though, a big reason why they aren't making money 💵 is that they keep raising prices and turning people away because of it.
I should also mention real quick that since No Time to Spy was inspired by a Season 6 episode, timeline wise, that likely means that it's set sometime during Season 6 or in-between Season 6 and Season 7. I'm guessing that it picks up where "Pop-Pop the Question" left off. That's why the movie doesn't address the whole "Lori living in Mr. Grouse's garage" thing that was established in the first episode of Season 8.
In fact, they don't explain why Lori is there at the house at all. This was before she decided to take a break from college, and live outside of a dorm room, which again, was something happened in early Season 8. So, why is she already there, if she was still in college, and still living in a dorm? My only guess is that she drove over from Fairway to stay the night to join the family before they packed up 🧳 and traveled to that tropical island 🏝️ for Al and Myrtle's wedding 💍.
Oh, and there's no more thing that I'd like to mention about the movie. I love how they managed to sneak in the Paramount logo at the very beginning. Like, the mountain 🏔️ that Myrtle climbs in the flashback scene at the beginning—you know, the prologue—looks exactly like the mountain in the Paramount logo. The only thing that's missing is the ring of stars ⭐️ over top.
I love it when studios sneak their logos into their own movies. It's kind of like how the Paramount logo in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, turns into a prairie dog mount that gets run over by a bunch of teenagers driving a car that looks like it's from the 1930s, or like how in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), they used Universal logo music for when Lucas Lee (Chris Evan's character in that movie) is first introduced.
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die
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Full Review
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I don't know if I have anything new to say about this movie. I said pretty much everything that I wanted to say about this movie in that review, which you go read by clicking on this link, and I don't know if I anything more to add. One thing that I like to do with these short reviews in these New Year's Eve Recaps is talk about things that I didn't get to say in the main full review. And I just don't know if I can do that with this movie. But, I'll try, but don't be surprised if it ends up being the shortest review in this entire recap. Spoiler alert ⚠️, it's not, the next review after this one is.
It's a great movie. It's a lot of fun. The action is amazing, the comedy is hilarious, the story is pretty good, and the on-screen chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence is still rock solid. They're probably the two things that make these movies work, and they're the reason why people keep coming back to watch these movies when a new one comes out. Which is why I wonder if a Bad Boys spin-off without either Will Smith or Martin Lawrence would even work. The foundation of this franchise was built on their chemistry. It was because they were cast in the roles as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett that Bad Boys became what it was.
The script for the first movie, Bad Boys (1995) was apparently so bad, that when Will Smith and Martin Lawrence were cast, Michael Bay apparently told them to improvise all of their dialogue, and that's how you got a movie that was truly dynamite 🧨. It kicked off a franchise that is still going strong 29 years later. And you wouldn't have that if Will Smith and Martin Lawrence hadn't been cast or had been allowed to improvise and add their own qualities to the roles.
Don't forget, the characters were written as white men ♂︎👱🏻♂️ initially, and Will Smith and Martin Lawrence just took those roles, and made it their own. They made the roles "more black" for lack of a better term, and made it more like what two black cops 👮🏾♂️ who were best friends outside the force would really be like, how like they would actually talk to each other. Of course, not all black police officers 👮🏾♂️ are like this obviously, but these are.
So, when the franchise is so defined by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence and their chemistry together, how can you even do a Bad Boys movie without them? They've already done a Bad Boys spin-off TV series. It was called LA's Finest, it focused on Marcus's sister, Sydney "Syd" Burnett (played once again by Gabrielle Union) as she leaves the DEA or gets fired, and is transferred to LA to become a detective for the LAPD, and is given a partner named Nancy McKenna (played by Jessica Alba). So, it was trying to replicate that buddy cop formula but with two female cops ♀︎, one black and one Latina👮🏾👮🏽. But, it failed, as no body really watched, and those that did, didn't seem to really like it all that much, and it was canceled after 2 seasons.
So, if a Bad Boys TV show without Will Smith and Martin Lawrence didn't work, what makes them think that a Bad Boys movie without Will Smith and Martin Lawrence would work? To be fair, they haven't actually announced what their plans are for the sequel after Bad Boys: Ride or Die. These are just some speculations that I heard about what a sequel to this movie could be from reviews of this movie on YouTube.
And I think those people are way off the mark when they suggest that the next Bad Boys movie will be a spin-off focused on one of or all of the side characters introduced in these two latest movies, whether it be the younger AMMO crew members or Armando, or even Reggie, even if Reggie isn't technically a new character since he was introduced all the way back in Bad Boys II. I think it's more likely a Bad Boys sequel will still have Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in the lead roles. I think they're going to keep doing these movies until they decide that they don't want to do them anymore, until they really get old and just can't do it anymore or don't want to do it anymore.
Everyone who's worked on these films recognizes that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are what make them work. Without them, they'd just standard and frankly boring buddy cop films and no body would watch them, which is likely a huge reason why LA's Finest didn't work. So even if I really don't know what the next Bad Boys movie after Ride or Die is going to be like, I'm pretty confident and sure that Will Smith and Martin Lawrence will still be in it.
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Full Review
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I know that this is technically a 2023 movie, but just like with Boy Kills World, this movie only just barely got released here in North America, and in other parts of the world. The only place it got a theatrical release or any release really, was France 🇫🇷. So, I'm counting it as a 2024 movie. I was under the impression that this was a crowdfunded movie, like I remembering it hearing about it awhile back, seeing some of the early work of it because it was all online.
The filmmakers themselves documented the movie's development, updating people on its progress, right up until it was finished and ready to released in France 🇫🇷. And when GKIDS start putting out trailers and other promotional material for it, I kept thinking that was a crowdfunded movie. But, it wasn't. It is an independent movie, but it was not crowdfunded like say, The Glassworker, that Pakistani animated film 🇵🇰 that's set to come out this year, and probably has already come out by the time I put this out. That movie was crowdfunded on Kickstarter, and is one of the few Kickstarter funded movies that actually got made, and wasn't a total scam.
This movie was kind of a letdown for me. I was so interested in it after I saw the trailers for it, and after I saw all those interviews that GKIDS did with the director, Jérémie Périn, talking about how this movie was inspired by RoboCop and by indie games apparently. I saw the movie, and I still don't know where those supposed indie game inspirations played in. What parts of Mars Express were actually inspired by indie games? I'd like to know because I saw nothing in that entire movie that was anything like an indie game. But then again, I don't play that many indie games. In fact, I don't think I've ever played an indie game in my life. Unless you count Skull Island: Rise of Kong as an indie game 🤮. That game was so low budget, and so hastily put together that might as well be indie.
Anyway, it looked like it would be a cool movie. And while there is cool stuff in it, unfortunately didn't quite stick the landing for me. It was that ending man, the ending killed it for me. Just like the final episode of Season 2 killed Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. I was willing to overlook the flaws in that show (and trust me, there were many) if it ended it a satisfactory way, but it didn't. It just left me frustrated. The ending of this movie didn't leave me frustrated, it just kind of left me cold, like "That's it? That's how it ends? Okay 😒."
This just goes to show you the power of endings, in how it can make or break a movie. Everyone says the beginning of a movie is the most important part, and while it is indeed important, I would argue that the ending of a movie is even more important because it contextualizes everything that came before, brings everything to a close, and hopefully, leaves you satisfied. Doesn't have to necessarily be a happy ending, but a satisfactory ending, an ending where you walk away feeling as if you didn't waste your time or money 💵 and feeling as if it was all worth it 👍. That's how it is for me, and this movie didn't deliver that for me 👎.
There's nothing more than I can say about this movie. I said everything else that I could think to say about this movie in that review, which you can go read for yourself. I address the thing that I talked about and asked questions about in my review, about whether the character, Aline was a human or an android or not. I think it's pretty safe to say that she is human, with maybe some cybernetic enhancements. Maybe, the reason why she's able to see all that text on the screen as if it were an augmented reality computer interface is that she's wearing cybernetic contact lenses.
Maybe the reason why everything denies her alcohol 🥃 automatically without even really asking her (until she manually removes the restricts preventing every establishment from serving her alcohol 🥃) is that personal info including her alcoholism already inside every computer database. No body has privacy in this world anymore, all of their personal data is kept, stored, and monitored by the powers that be for money 💵, or for control, or for both.
So obviously, every computer and robotics system on Mars and on Earth 🌎 would automatically know that Aline is an alcoholic and that she's in AA, because they've kept records on her. They know her personal history. And maybe she has cybernetic implants in her brain 🧠, which is she's able to have those mind conversations with Carlos and Beryl (the AI makes all the robots and androids decide to up and leave Earth 🌎 and Mars to go live in space on a bunch of servers on a spaceship for all eternity) that were ripped straight out of Ghost in the Shell.
Or maybe she has like an earpiece that lets her do that like the live action version of Togusa did in the 2017 Ghost in the Shell movie. You want to know how I know that Aline is in fact human? Because when she gets shot and dies at the end (either by one of Royjacker's goons or by Carlos accidentally), she bleeds red blood 🩸. She also bled red blood 🩸 after she got cut on her hand during the opening scene. Androids in this movie's world have this purply blue blood.
And also because she pees, like after she gets arrested for breaking into the police station, and tampering with Jun's android duplicate's body to get information out of her, they lock her in the interrogation, and she starts banging on the door, trying to get them to let her out. And one of the things she says is, "I gotta pee!" And then in the next shot, we see a water bottle filled with yellow liquid, pretty showing us that she did actually need to pee and that she peed in that bottle. Androids don't pee as far as I know.
Chris Royjacker, the main villain of the movie is not a human though, I do believe that is something that I did get wrong in my review. He's not an android exactly, he's just been enhanced with those organics, the new technology that they've developed to replace robots and androids, which is why he's able to shapeshift, and why he goes to try to murder Jun himself in both the opening scene and the strip club/brothel scene.
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Full Review
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I wasn't even sure if I was going to be able to review this movie this year in time for my New Year's Eve Recap, but I did it, and I'm glad that I did because this movie kicked ass. Sure, it got mixed reviews from critics, but has that ever stopped me? The story is a bit basic, maybe a little bit too basic for my taste, and there's a serious lack of lore or worldbuilding, although the movie does leave some details, some bread crumbs that could be expanded upon in supplementary material. This might end up being one of those franchises where the lore is fleshed out more in the tie-in material than in the actual movie. And yes, it is a franchise now.
They released a video game that was essentially the in-universe video game that the main character, Boy and his little sister, Mina played as youths. They took that game, and made it into a reality. I wish that they would do that with Eels and Escalators, SpongeBob 🧽's version of Snakes and Ladders 🐍🪜. I'm sure people would love that, I'm sure that they would love to play Eels and Escalators as a real board game.
They also announced that they're making an animated series out of Boy Kills World, but they gave no further details about it. They didn't say if it would be a prequel to the movie or a sequel to the movie. I expressed in my review my preference for it being a prequel because it would give them the opportunity to really flesh out the backstory of some of the characters and flesh out the lore of this fictional universe that the movie introduced us to.
Like, how did the Van Der Koys get into power and establish this dynastic dictatorship that they lead? How much do they actually control? Do they just control this one city that the whole movie took place in, or do they control a lot more than that? And also about Basho and Benny, how did they meet? How did they form this resistance? How long has this resistance been around? And what exactly happened to it, and what happened to Basho's girlfriend and/or family?
I mean, we do sort of get the basic gist of that based on Basho's facial expressions and his reactions when Benny tells him whatever he told him, but again, we don't know exactly Benny told him because well, all of his dialogue is in gibberish due to Boy's inability to read his lips. I guess Benny's a mumbler, so it's hard to for Boy to decipher his words based on his lip movements. So, he often reads his lips wrong, and we the audience hear what Benny is saying as nonsense because we're hearing it purely from Boy's point-of-view. This whole movie is from his perspective, and his perspective alone, say for a few scenes when we focus a little bit more on the Van Der Koys themselves.
Speaking of the Van Der Koys, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see Sharlto Copley's character, Glen Van Der Koy fight, like we really don't much of an action scene involving him. All of the action and the fighting happens around him, and then he just gets killed by Basho accidentally dropping a heavy electronic device on his head due to his sweaty palms. But, I get it, that's not the character that he plays in this movie. He plays the talky bad guy, the bad guy who talks, but doesn't fight.
It's clear that Glen is supposed to be really weak man ♂︎ who married into the Van Der Koy family, and who's only real value to the family and to the regime is to be the public face of it, to be the figure head that the Van Der Koys could present to the public, and the public could project whatever feelings about the regime they want onto him because he has no identity of his own, he has no ideas of his own, and he's completely useless outside of his role as a propaganda tool.
Everything about his public image was crafted by his wife, Melanie, and nothing about it is remotely real other than that he's a remorseless killer willing to shoot protesters 🪧 and laugh about it 😆. And if what he says to Boy and Basho is to be believed, it's clear that he, on some level, recognized that and he tried to break from the control that the family and most importantly his wife imposed on him when given the chance. He and Melanie very clearly have a very toxic relationship, their marriage is not one of love or of equals, but is in fact, of subservience and control.
He tells Boy and Basho that Melanie controls every aspect of his life, including deciding what clothes he wears. He has no say in any of this, according to his words. Though, even if that's all true, he is still a bad person, who did a lot of bad things, and shows no remorse about it, and even what he says is true, ultimately they are just excuses and justifications for his shitty behavior, and his complicity in the crimes of the regime. He was a cog in the machine, and was more than happy to be a cog when it benefited him, and the moment it didn't, he immediately fled and changed sides. Not for long since he immediately dies after deciding to betray the Van Der Koy family and help Boy and Basho kill Hilda.
But, Glen isn't the only Van Der Koy family member who we don't see fight, Gideon also doesn't fight because Melanie shoots him the back with a shotgun after he refuses to carry out an order that she gave him, and even then, it's clear that he probably wasn't capable of fighting nor was he interested in fighting. He's one of those guys that rather someone else to do the fighting on his behalf.
He's more of an artist, a writer, and that's really what he wants to do. He doesn't really want to kill people, or rule over people. He hates The Culling, since they've already killed all of Hilda's political enemies, and are down to just killing random people that they scoop up from the streets. But still, he was apart of this system, and was a mostly willing participant in it for many years up until the events of the movie, and isn't really that remorseful about it, so he deserved to die too. They all did.
The only Van Der Koy family member that we do actually see fight, and participate in the action scenes is Melanie ironically enough, and she's kind of the de facto leader of the regime because they've been hiding Hilda in a bunker for many years and keeping her out of the public eye due to her deteriorating mental state. So, she isn't really in charge of anything, and Melanie's the one who's really running the show at this point in the story. She's been the de facto leader for many years up until the events of the film when the whole thing comes crashing down due to the actions of Boy, Basho, and Benny.
She's presented as the real power behind Hilda, the one who's really running the city from behind the curtain, and is the only one who's really trying to preserve the regime and keep it going. Everyone else in the Van Der Koy family has either given up on the regime, and no longer cares about preserving it, and more than happy to let it die, or they're so crazy and too far gone to really care if they're still in power or not.
But, Melanie is pretty evil in her own right, and is arguably the most evil out of all them besides her sister, Hilda. She's a real bitch, and her death is pretty satisfying, especially since she's killed by having a TV camera shoved into her face. It's a fitting end because she was so obsessed with the media, and controlling the narrative, and controlling how the public perceives the regime and the Van Der Koy family themselves.
Besides the issues I had with the movie regarding its basic plot and its lack of lore and worldbuilding, and the lack of an action scene involving Sharlto Copley's Glen, everything else about it is amazing. The action is spectacular, it's well shot and choreographed, and it's bloody 🩸 as hell. This is one of the bloodiest and goriest action movies 🩸I've seen in a while, and I love it.
It has better blood and gore 🩸 than a lot of horror movies these days in all honesty. The acting is pretty good as well. This movie had a pretty awesome cast, and they all do a good job, with Bill Skarsgård being the stand out as he was able to express so much emotion with just his facial expressions and his eyes. He has some of the most expressive eyes I've ever seen on an actor. But, other actors like Femke Janssen, Sharlto Copley, Andrew Koji, Yayan Ruhian, and Michelle Dockery also do an excellent job.
One thing I didn't mention in my main review is that there's theme about what's real and what's not. There's a bit of ambiguity about what's reality and what's just a drug-fueled hallucination by Boy because the movie makes it clear that in the years since his "tragedy," Boy's mental state has deteriorated and he is unable to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially thanks to the Shaman giving him copious amounts of drugs throughout the remainder of his childhood up until adulthood. This is most exemplified in the fact that he keeps hallucinating and seeing his "dead" sister, Mina as he remembered her, as a child.
His mind constructed her as a coping mechanism from the fact that she's dead (or at least, he think she's dead), and is unwilling to fully accept that, and she kind of acts as his conscience, saying all of things that he's probably thinking in that moment, but doesn't want to say in his inner voice. She says and does all of the things that he knows are stupid and reckless, but are things he secretly wants to do himself since she's a figment of his imagination, and is a manifestation of his inner thoughts, or at least his intrusive thoughts. She often interrupts him while he's in the middle of a stealth mission or while he's in the middle of fights, and she's often the reason why he loses because she distracts him and she won't leave him alone, no matter how much he tries to think her away. Like, she prevented him from killing June 27, and is the reason why he gets captured and put into The Culling.
But, as it would turn out, it's actually a good thing that he didn't kill June 27 because she was actually his sister, Mina the whole time. Maybe that's the reason why the fake Mina appeared and distracted Boy the moment he removed June 27's mask. That brings to the big plot twist of the movie that Hilda was Boy's real mother and June 27, the masked assassin with a midriff and a helmet that lights up and says words was his sister the whole time. They were never dead, they were just his perceived enemies, the ones who he falsely believed were the ones he was supposed to kill.
He was brainwashed into hating them by the vengeful Shaman, who crafted false memories for Boy, by making him think his mother and sister were two completely different person entirely and that Hilda was the one who murdered them. He distorted his sense of reality and self by giving him hallucinogenic substances throughout his childhood while he also training him to be a stone cold killer. All so that he could revenge on Hilda on the Shaman's behalf for killing his family. Although, as the flashbacks show, it was technically Boy who killed the Shaman's family as he was the one who pulled the trigger and shot them. It's a little convoluted, but it is easy to understand once you break it down.
I did not expect this movie to have a plot twist, and it was one that genuinely shocked and surprised me. Well done, filmmakers 👏. And it isn't like this twist comes out of nowhere or doesn't make sense, it makes perfect sense and they do probably set it up as they leave little clues and hints that things are not as they seem and that Boy's recollection of the events that lead him to be a vengeful killer is not actually correct, and there's more to the Shaman and to Hilda than either of them are letting on.
I do like that after this twist is revealed, that Hilda is not spared or redeemed and she still dies, but not by Boy's hands, but June 27's hands. Lesser movies would've had Hilda be redeemed or instantly forgiven and let off the hook for all the bad things she did simply because she's Boy's real mom, but not this movie. This movie makes it clear that Hilda is still an evil dictator who's responsible for thousands of innocent people's deaths, and is just a crazy bitch all around. She deserved to die.
But, the movie also doesn't make excuses for the Shaman either, even though he's arguably more justified in his actions than Hilda is. He's still evil too. He still kidnapped, mutilated, tortured, drugged, and starved a child several times, and shaped him into a killer so that could use him as a weapon to kill the woman ♀︎ who wronged him, and on top, he used her own son to do it. Although, Boy is ultimately not the one who kills Hilda, June 27 is. Instead, Boy ends up being the one who killed the Shaman, as he was the one who suffered under his cruelty and is thus the one who should kill him, and he does.
But, not before the Shaman puts up one helluva fight, and proves to be a much tougher opponent than either Boy or June 27 can handle, even together. I mean, the Shaman almost kills June 27, and he severely injures Boy, the point where either of them are in remotely fighting condition after they kill the Shaman. Which makes the end credit sequence all the more funny, as we see Boy and June 27 working together as a team, a true sibling duo, killing whatever is left of the Van Der Koy army if the end credits sequence is anything to go by. It's also funny because Boy wears a red vest for most of the film, and June 27 wears a black and yellow jacket, which are the same colors that Deadpool and Wolverine wear in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie. But I got to say, of the two ketchup and mustard duos of this year, Boy and June 27 are the better duo.
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Twisters 🌪️
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Full Review
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One of the biggest disappointments of the year for sure. I had high hopes for this movie, I was willing to give it a chance even when there were people out there doubting it, and I even kept saying to myself that it would be the Top Gun: Maverick of this year. But alas, I was wrong. This was a huge letdown like you could never believe 😔. I know there are people out there who genuinely love this movie 😍, and think it's just as good as the first one, maybe even better, but I am not one of those people. In fact, my family and I are pretty much in agreement that it's inferior to the first movie in almost every way that matters.
Which is why it is so surprising to me to that movie seems to have garnered almost universal praise from critics, praise that this movie did not earn in the slightest. The consensus seems to either to be that it's an entertaining blockbuster that's a fun time at the movies, but isn't as good as the first one, or that it actually is better than the first one and is one of the best summer blockbusters ever made. For the latter, Twisters 🌪️ is the Top Gun: Maverick of 2024.
The negative reviews that I've seen are pretty lackluster and leave a lot to be desired if I'm gonna be honest. Like, this girl ♀︎ named Britney Crabb, who claims to be a huge die-hard fan of Twister 🌪️, made a negative review of Twisters 🌪️ on her YouTube channel where her only real gripe seemed to be that it didn't have enough easter eggs, references, and callbacks to the original. She didn't like that none of the characters from the first one made appearances in this one.
But, that was one of the best parts about the movie, the fact that it didn't feel need to constantly reference the first movie, and have all of these dumb easter eggs and callbacks, and didn't treat Bill and Jo as if they were Luke and Leia, or perhaps Leia and Han since Leia and Luke were siblings and Bill and Jo were not. Treating the characters as if they were more important to the world than they actually are, or acting as if everyone knows who they are or what they did.
The only real reference to the first movie is Dorothy, and it makes sense why Dorothy is used in the context that it's used in this film. It's an open source technology that anyone can use, and the people who do use it don't necessarily know who invented or care. Do you really think these Millennials or Zoomers would care who Bill or Jo are? So, I never had a problem with the movie just being its own thing, and not being so beholden to the first movie that it feels the need to constantly remind you that is a sequel by throwing in easter eggs, references, and cameos every 5 minutes. Treating the audience as if they're a bunch of idiots or a bunch of nostalgia obsessed losers.
And basing your entire criticism off the lack of callbacks and cameos seems kind of stupid to me. Britney's video was not good. Then I watched this other review of the movie from this YouTube channel called The Oscar Expert, run by these two hipster douchebags who think they're way smarter and more refined than they actually are.
Their review wasn't really negative, but it was more critical than most of the other reviews from YouTube reviewers who heaped this movie with undeserved praise. Their biggest complaint was that the movie lacked a vision, it lacked a voice, and didn't have enough of the director's unique flourishes. Just the kind of thing that I would from a couple of film snobs who run a channel called The Oscar Expert, and review Oscar bait nonsense and so-called "arthouse films." Please…🙄.
And Geekin' with James Hancock's review was boring as all hell with very weak criticisms, and even weak praises. James Hancock's videos are not very good if I'm going to be very honest, and you'd be best to avoid him. Even Adam Does Movies' review was pretty lackluster, and he was one of the few people who actually brought the heat to Godzilla Minus One.
Yes that's right, he was one of the few people who I've seen actually give Godzilla Minus One a negative review, when everyone else showered that movie never-ending praise and called it a "masterpiece," and called it the "greatest Godzilla movie ever made." But, his review of Twisters 🌪️ was pretty low energy, and weak on criticism. He basically said that it was okay and perfectly serviceable blockbuster. That's the gist of his assessment of the movie. Weak sauce man, weak sauce 😑.
The only negative review that I felt actually nailed it, and actually explained the real problems with this movie without making excuses, and that isn't just boiled down to "muh easter eggs," was The Flick Pick, which isn't a perfect channel, and he has indeed said about of stupid stuff, but his review of Twisters 🌪️ was good and I agreed with it.
He articulated all of the problems that I talked about in my own review, and many more that I didn't even though. The only flaw with his video is that referred to the movie as a remake, when I explained in my review that it isn't. It is a sequel by nearly every standard and definition. It's just a standalone sequel, meaning it stands on its own and does its own thing without being beholden to the previous movie. Other than that, his video was great. I'd highly recommend you watch it.
The tornado scenes 🌪️, the main attraction, and the things we mainly came to see are pretty cool. They're pretty exciting and imaginative (most of the time), and the tornadoes 🌪️ themselves look amazing. The CGI has improved significantly since 1996, so, they were able create tornadoes 🌪️ that look even more real than the ones in the first one. Though that's not say the CGI in the first movie was bad or anything, it wasn't.
It was really good and pretty groundbreaking for the time, and for the longest time, no body had done CGI tornadoes 🌪️ that looked half as good as the ones in Twister 🌪️, except for maybe The Day After Tomorrow. But, this movie managed to do that, and create tornadoes 🌪️ that look pretty photorealistic in some scenes. Usually, it's the smaller tornadoes 🌪️ that look real, whereas the bigger tornadoes 🌪️ do look more obviously CGI, and big tornadoes 🌪️ are mainly what we get in the second half.
I will say that my favorite tornado scenes 🌪️ are not the storm chasing ones, but the ones where the characters are actually in danger, and actually trying to run and hide from the tornado 🌪️ and help others get to safety. Like, the EF-5 that shows up at that rodeo place that Glen Powell's character takes Daisy Edger-Jone's character takes to, and the two have to hide inside of an empty swimming pool with this mom and her daughter, was pretty cool, it was really intense.
Though there is something funny to me about that scene. Before they go to that rodeo and before that tornado 🌪️ show up, Glen Powell tells Daisy Edger-Jone that she's seen the worst Oklahoma has to offer after dug into that greedy businessman 🤑 that's trying to buy up land and take advantage of tornado survivors 🌪️, which is why Anthony Ramos and his guys keep talking about insurance.
So, Glen Powell offers to show Daisy Edger-Jones the "best" Oklahoma has to offer, and that's when we get that rodeo scene. When that dialogue exchange happened and that rodeo scene came on, I could only think to myself, "Well, there are people out there who think that rodeos are inherently immoral and cruel to animals, so these would still be the worst Oklahoma has to offer in some people's eyes."
Or the scene at the end, where that other EF-5 shows at that town, and all the storm chasers on both teams converge on that town to help everyone within get to safety, and they all end up hiding in that movie theater that just happens to be showing the original 1931 Frankenstein movie, since it's a Universal movie and this is a Universal movie.
That was a really thrilling scene, and I would say that it was a decent way to cap off the movie, one last grand finale before we get our epilogue scene where all the characters say goodbye to each other, Glen Powell makes his move on Daisy Edger-Jones. It's a lot like the Shining scene in the first movie, where an EF-5 tornado 🌪️ destroys a drive-in theater that's showing The Shining, and everyone has to go inside of a warehouse for safety. But, they make it different enough to where it isn't the exact same thing.
It's everything around the tornado scenes 🌪️ that suffers. The characters are pretty forgettable and unmemorable. The fact that I'm referring to them by their actors' names and not their character names should tell you that. Usually, I try to go the extra mile and refer to characters by their character names rather than their actor's names, but here, I just don't care to learn any of these characters because they are that bland and uninteresting. None of them really stood out to me, and I really didn't like any of them.
The thing that made the first movie a true classic and not just a fun 90s disaster movie was the characters. The characters in that movie were memorable and likable for the most part. The character who wasn't likable was Jonas, but that was only because he was the main antagonist. He was supposed to be an asshole, who you wouldn't really feel that sorry for when he dies.
This movie has a character who's supposed to be like the Jonas equivalent, except he doesn't die, at least not on screen. He just gets dropped off of the side of the road, and gets left behind by Anthony Ramos after he decides to go help Glen Powell and Daisy Edger-Jones in that town get everyone to safety. But, he just doesn't hit as hard as Jonas did, he isn't memorable at all. I don't even remember his name nor do I know his actor's name. That's much of a nothing character that guy was.
The story isn't that great either. It's pretty the same as the first one, but a worse version of it. They kind of did this thing where the plot was kind of a reverse of the first movie's plot, where the Jo equivalent is working with the corporate storm chaser team that's motivated by money 💵 and fame, and is all wearing matching uniforms, all have headsets, and use fancy equipment, and the Bill equivalent is initially presented as the antagonistic rival team, who's motivated by money 💵 and fame, despite being more rugged and "low tech."
They aren't that low tech since they're all YouTubers, and they fly around a drone, and Glen Powell's truck has rocket launchers that he can use to shoot flares and fireworks 🎆 and has drills to anchor himself to the ground so that he doesn't get sucked up by the tornado 🌪️ when he inevitably parks right next to one. But, they still use car radios to communicate with each other like Bill's team in the previous movie. Once Daisy Edger-Jones gets to know Glen Powell better, she realizes that she was working for the wrong side and that Glen Powell and his team are the real good guys, even if they are YouTubers and influencers.
Apparently, Daisy Edger-Jone's character was originally going to be Jo's daughter at some point in the scripting process, leaving a door open for Helen Hunt to return to reprise her role as Jo. But they scrapped that idea early on, and they just made Daisy Edger-Jone's character a completely new character with no relation to Jo or any of the characters from the previous movie. I am honestly glad that they didn't go in that direction because it would've felt too Hollywood, it would've felt too legacy sequel-y, and it would've felt a little too convenient and too neat. Like, "oh, this blonde girl ♀︎ who wears a white tank top, brown cargo pants, and is really passionate about tornadoes 🌪️ must be Jo's daughter because there's no other way that she'd be this interested in tornadoes 🌪️."
But, still, they just made Daisy Edger-Jones a Jo equivalent or a Jo stand-in. She's pretty much the same character. She wears very similar clothes throughout the movie, she has a similar passion for the work, she can sense tornadoes 🌪️, and she has a similarly tragic backstory. She's basically like if you took Bill and Jo, and combined them into one character.
It didn't really work for me, it just came across as pretty hollow, and it was missing that spark, that magic that the first movie had. I know that may sound cheesy, especially coming from someone like me, but that's kind of how I feel and how I can describe how I feel. Another thing that really did kill this movie for me, even some of the tornado scenes 🌪️ is that god awful country music they kept playing throughout the movie 😤. I hate country music so, this was one movie where I absolutely hated the soundtrack 😡.
I know the argument will be, "Well, they included all that country music to make it feel like Oklahoma." Well, the first movie didn't feel need to add any stupid country music to make it feel more authentically Oklahoma, and the songs they did feature were actually good. Can't exactly beat Van Halen, can you? So, the music definitely affected my enjoyment of this movie in a negative way.
It just took me out of the movie whenever that music came on because it just threw everything off, it thew off the tone and made the tornado scenes 🌪️ less cool. It's why like the two EF-5 tornado scenes 🌪️ in the second half because they don't have any stupid country songs in them. If you took out all that country music out, it would automatically make the movie 10% better. But as it is, the movie's not very good, and it's one that most people will probably forget even existed two years from now.
Given how successful and well received it was, I'm sure there will probably be a sequel. The director, Lee Issac Chung has expressed interest in doing another one, and Anthony Ramos (the actor this time) has stated the script for this movie intentionally left most of their story unfinished. I probably won't see any sequel that they churn out, but there are enough people who like this movie that they will be an audience for that sequel if one ever gets made, even if this movie is forgettable as all hell and isn't deserving of a sequel in my opinion. Just because the cast and crew are interested in doing a sequel, doesn't mean that there will be one. Look how many failed franchise startups we've in the past few years, and you'll see the Twister 🌪️ franchise's future may not be as certain as you might think.
Also, one last I'd like to address that I didn't address in my review was the question over the film's scientific accuracy. For most people, most scientists and most journalists who written about this movie's scientific accuracy for sites like The New York Times, have said the movie's fairly accurate, but there are some implausibilities here and there, and they question the method that Daisy Edger-Jone's character uses to dissipate the tornado 🌪️ at the end of the film, saying that it's impossible and would never really work as it's shown in the movie.
But, that's typical for a lot of Hollywood films. Movies usually don't get the science 100% right, and scientists, science communicators, and journalists will be more than happy to pick them apart for the faintest bit of scientific inaccuracy. Where the conversation really gets spicy is when you factor in (or rather don't factor in) climate change. A writer for The New York Times, Margaret Renki criticized the movie for not mentioning climate change and leaving out the link between climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of tornadoes 🌪️.
The script was originally going to mention climate change, the screenwriter, Mark L. Smith wanted to include it, but Lee Isaac Chung in all of his wisdom (sarcasm there if you couldn't tell) decided not to include it. He didn't want the movie to feel like it was giving a preachy message. This is a trend that I've started to see a lot more often with blockbusters. Where the filmmakers decide to avoid certain touchy subjects to avoid alienating audiences who make disagree with the message being presented, and making the movie feel too "preachy."
This is the same thing Alex Garland did with Civil War 🇺🇸. He specifically made about a movie about another civil war breaking out in America 🇺🇸 over political polarization, and yet to avoid upsetting either left-wingers or right-wingers, he chose to not actually delve into the actual political issues that people in this country are actually polarized about. Imagine being so afraid of offending fascists that you end up handicapping your own movie's political message about polarization.
I really don't understand why Garland was so afraid of his civil war movie being too political when making a movie about a civil war happening in this country especially, and trying to use that to comment on how bad political polarization is, is inherently political. A Second American Civil War 🇺🇸 is a political issue in this country that mostly right-wingers harp on about. They're the ones who are always saying they want another civil war in this country to break out so that they can get rid of those dirty leftists and commies ☭, and of course, get rid of all the black and brown people. That's how deranged the American right 🇺🇸 has become under Trump. He's made them even crazier and stupider than they were before he came onto the scene.
There was another movie that came out recently, this year in fact, that was also criticized for doing the same thing, trying to not to be "too divisive," or "too political," or trying to "both sides" it. I don't remember which one, but it is there. Civil War 🇺🇸 is not the only movie this year accused of doing that. It's all apart of this bigger trend that I've been seeing in 2020s cinema where filmmakers are too afraid of saying anything that they end up not saying anything at all. And that's what Chung's decision to leave out any mention of climate change in Twisters 🌪️ and his justification for doing so comes across to me as.
No body would've thought your movie was preachy mentioning the link between climate change and the ever-increasing intensity and frequency of tornadoes 🌪️, Chung. It's just a fact, like "No duh climate change makes tornadoes 🌪️ worse," and most people would've been perfectly fine with it. It wouldn't have taken away this movie's feeling of being a fun crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster. Most people would've just been like, "Whatever" 🤷♂️🤷♀️.
The only people who would've complained about the movie mentioning climate change as cause for tornado outbreaks 🌪️ are the kind of people who's opinions really don't matter, and shouldn't matter to anybody with a functioning brain 🧠. Climate change deniers, and political pundits who have nothing better to do than complain about every little thing that offends them online like a bunch of little snowflakes ❄️.
These are the kind of people are going to sit there and say that your movie's woke simply because it has women ♀︎ and minorities in the lead roles. So, not including any mention of or discussion on climate change really wouldn't have made much of a difference when it comes to right-wing pundits like the likes of Ben Shapiro or any of the fuckwits at The Daily Wire, and other right-wing media networks. With them, you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Especially Ben Shapiro since he kind of has a personal vendetta against Hollywood because he used to be an aspiring screenwriter, but after he was rejected again and again, he gave up and completely turned against the industry that he once admired and tried so hard to get into. So, anytime Ben Shapiro complains about Hollywood, or gives a Hollywood movie a bad review, it's driven entirely by grievance and by resentment. He hates Hollywood because Hollywood rejected him, and he's jealous of all people who actually made it big in that town and in that industry.
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Full Review
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This was one of the movies this year that I was intrigued to see. I wouldn't say it was one of my most anticipated movies of 2024, because it wasn't. I was kind of in this weird contrarian phase where I thought the reboot Planet of the Apes movies were kind of overrated, and I didn't want anything to do with them. And when I found out this one was coming out, I was like, "Really? They made another one 😒?" But once I actually learned more about what the premise and plot of the movie really was, and learned more about the main villain, Proximus Caesar, my interest peaked.
I was willing to go this in this theaters if I happened to go to the theaters when it was still playing, and I had decided then that I would review it for my blog. But, that didn't happen. I didn't get to see this movie in theaters. Mostly because we didn't have any money 💵. So, like a lot of the movies on this list that I'm writing about for my recap, I ended up having to watch it months later on either streaming or on Blu-Ray 💿. In this case, on streaming, more specifically, Hulu.
Watching it on Hulu wasn't bad, it ran okay for the most part say for a moments where the movie stopped to a bad Internet connection 🛜 on my end. I would say the worst part about watching this movie were the constant interpretations by ads. This movie had at least five different ad breaks, maybe even more. And they were same exact ads every single time. I wouldn't have as much of an issue with the ad breaks (as annoying as they can be on their own) if they had played different ads each time, but they didn't. It was all the same ones.
They played that same Aflac commercial 🦆 about three times, they played that same hotel commercial, I think it was Hilton (I don't remember exactly) every single time, they played the same Enterprise Rent-A-Car commercial every single time, and then they played this other commercial, I don't remember what exactly it was for, but they repeated it at least two times. This is what annoyed me so much about having to sit through ads on Paramount+ before they gave you the option to skip ads entirely.
They just played the same exact ones, as if they didn't have enough ads to play each break, so they just kept repeating the same ones. Usually, whenever I'm watching something on a streaming service that has ad breaks, I use that break as an opportunity to check my phone 📱and watch some YouTube videos until the ad break is over. Maybe catch on some long ones that I hadn't finished yet.
Another thing about watching this movie on Hulu that annoyed me was watching it with subtitles on. You, see whenever I watch movies, I like to watch them with subtitles on, even if they're not in a foreign language that I don't understand and can't speak. The reason is why is very simple. I like to use it to learn how to spell certain words that I don't already know how to spell, or even learn new words entirely that I could then use in my writing. But other times, it's genuinely because I can't understand the characters are saying on screen, even if they're speaking English.
Sometimes you'll have someone mumble their words, or they'll speak with a really thick accent, or their speech will be so distorted and garbled that you won't be able even understand what they saying at any given time. This is an issue that people had with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, or really any post-Dark Knight Nolan movie. But, regardless of the reason why I personally do it, this means I'm part of the statistic of the growing number of young people who watch movies with subtitles on. This will be one of the weird idiosyncrasies that my generation, Generation Z (or Zoomers as we're sometimes known as, though I personally don't like that nickname, even if I did use it in a blog post once) is known for and will inevitable be made fun of for by other generations, including the following one: watching English-language movies with subtitles on.
But anyway, the thing that annoyed me about the subtitles in this movie were that there are points in the film where the ape characters communicate with each other using sign language, similar to how Caesar did in the previous movies, and how King Kong did in the Adam Wingard MonsterVerse films. And similar to when Caesar would use sign language to communicate with the other apes in the previous three movies, whenever the apes from the Eagle Clan 🦅 communicate with sign, there's subtitles within the movie itself provided to show what they're saying since not everyone can understand sign language, me being one of those people who doesn't understand.
But on Hulu, the close captioning that Hulu provides covers up the subtitles for the sign language. So, most of the time, when the ape characters speak using sign, I have no idea what they're saying because the stupid Hulu subtitles covered it up to say, "(in sign language)." Yeah, real helpful there, Hulu 🙄, I could've figured that out on my own, now can you actually show me what they're actually saying in sign language instead of hiding it, please? What they should've done was put the subtitle for "(in sign language)" on the top of the screen, so that it doesn't obstruct what the in-movie subtitles are saying whenever the apes speak in sign language.
But, besides the unskippable ads that repeat over and over again, and the subtitles that cover up the other subtitles for the sign language scenes, watching this movie on Hulu wasn't that bad. But, I will try to get my hands on a physical copy of this movie, because despite Disney saying that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, would be the last film they would ever release on physical media, they gave Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes a physical release.
They released it on DVD, Blu-Ray, and 4K 📀💿. I'm going to try to get the 4K/Blu-Ray combo pack 💿 because I am pretty sure the 4K release does come with a Blu-Ray disc 💿, unlike the 4K release of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which didn't come with a Blu-Ray 💿 and only came with a 4K disc 💿 and a code for the digital copy.
So, what did I think of the movie itself? Was it any good? Did I like it? Well, I certainly liked it a lot more than Twisters 🌪️ that's for sure. The movie had a great simple story, some great characters including an awesome villain, it had some really great action scenes even if this isn't really an action movie per se, and it's even thought provoking in some instances as a Planet of the Apes movie should be. This was cerebral science fiction at its best. And there's nothing quite like intelligent apes that can talk in a post-apocalyptic setting, looking at all the stuff we invented, coming up with their own names for them, and trying to figure what they were actually used for.
Also, unlike Twisters 🌪️, I would actually feel comfortable recommending this movie, not just to fans, but to non-fans as well. Despite being the fourth film in the series, this movie is incredibly accessible to any newcomers since the events of this movie are not tied to the events of the previous movies. It takes place 300 years in the future, far removed from the events of what Planet of the Apes fans have dubbed the "Caesar trilogy."
The movie even opens with some text that perfectly and concisely explained what happened in the 300 years leading up to this that lead the world looking the way it does in this movie. So, you really don't need to have watched those other films to understand this one, though are certain things that you would appreciate a lot more and would be a lot more rewarding if you've been watching this movies from the very beginning. There are references to the previous movies in here, mostly in the form of references to Caesar and his teachings, and what they mean for ape society in this future world, and what Caesar himself means for ape society in this future world. But, the references are not so constant, and they're not so specific that they'd be alienating or incomprehensible to a newcomer.
This is something I didn't really touch on in my initial review, but the CGI in this movie was great. This movie genuinely has some of the best CGI I've seen in a movie this year. All of the apes look fantastic, there some shots where they do look absolutely real, and the performances from the motion capture actors shines through, and the apes emote, and you tell what they're feeling at any given moment.
Even the environments, a lot of the environments in this are CGI (though they did also use a lot of real location shooting), because this is post-apocalyptic Earth 🌎 and it's 300 years in the future, they had to make San Francisco look like a jungle. Even those were pretty great. There's not a single weak spot when it comes to the effects, no wonky shots, no scenes that look unfinished or like they needed "more time in the oven" as Cody from PointlessHub would say. It's as close to perfect as you can get.
That has always been one of the main selling points of the reboot Planet of the Apes movies is that the CGI and the motion capture always looks great, and only gets better with each film as the technology obviously gets better. So, it was good to see that Kingdom kept up that tradition, and didn't skimp out on the effects or the motion capture. Obviously there was no Andy Serkis since his character canonically died in the previous film, and it's hundreds of years in the future anyway, so his character wouldn't be alive anyway. But, all of the actors who played apes in this movie, and did motion capture did a really good job, with Kevin Durand and Peter Macon being the two standouts.
The reason why I didn't include a section in my original review about the CGI was that I couldn't place for it that it would fit organically within the review without it feeling forced. So, I decided to save that discussion for the Recap, as well as talk about other things that I didn't have room to talk about in my review if I had any. Plus, I tend to value writing and story a lot more than effects, so I like to focus on those more than the effects and other technical aspects.
That's why I usually don't talk about things like cinematography unless it's like really good and really stood out, or if I don't have a lot to talk about on the writing front, and I need something to fill out the review. It's also the same reason why I tend not to talk about animation whenever I review animation, whether it's cartoons or anime. If I reviewed more video games more often, I probably wouldn't talk that much about the graphics. I would focus a lot more on the story, the characters, and the gameplay. The three most important things when it comes to a video game, at least for me.
I guess I would also talk about the music, which is the one technical aspect of a film, TV show, or video game I value as much as writing, because music is part of the story. It helps tell the story just much as the visuals, the acting, and the dialogue do, and they help you feel what you're supposed to feel in that moment. Like, good music in a movie, TV show, or video game can really get you hyped, or make you feel sad, or even make you feel, uh, horny. All of the emotions you can think of, great music can make you feel. So, I do talk about music in my reviews, if it stands out, and I actually have something to say about it. Like, how I lambasted Twisters 🌪️ for using shitty country music in its soundtrack in this recap 😡.
The closest thing to touching on the effects in this movie that I got in my review was talking about how I think it will get nominated at the Oscar's next year for Best Visual Effects and might even win if the Academy doesn't just hand it to Dune Part Two, or even worse, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. If there's any movie that doesn't deserve to win Best Visual Effects at the Oscar's, it's Furiosa. I do still stand by that, I do still think Kingdom has a good chance at winning the Best Visual Effects Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards, and it would be fully deserved.
Obviously, the big stand out, the character who people probably remember the most is the main antagonist, Proximus Caesar. He was the one character that the marketing focused the most on, more than the main protagonist, Noa. Probably because Proximus Caesar is a charismatic and somewhat over-the-top villain, and he has really cool look and a cool voice, but also because Noa himself is kind of bland and not all that interesting as a character of his own. He's meant to be the audience surrogate more than anything else, and audience surrogates tend not to be the most interesting characters in the story.
And Proximus I would say lived up to the hype, even if he really didn't have as much screen time as the trailers made it seem. He doesn't even show up until the halfway point, and keep in mind this is a 2 hour and 25 minute long movie, so we do have to wait for him for a long time. Noa actually spends a lot more time fighting that gorilla 🦍, Sylva than he does Proximus, and he interact more with Sylva, and Sylva is a lot of a personal threat than Proximus is. In fact, the Skar King in Godzilla x Kong arguably has more screen time and shows up a lot sooner in that movie that Proximus does in this movie.
In fact, they are kind of similar characters. I did kind of point out the similarities between this movie and Godzilla x Kong in my review, with how the plots of both movies have to deal with a tyrannical ape king enslaving a bunch of other apes, and then this outside ape has to come in, and kill the evil ape king and liberate the enslaved apes. In Godzilla x Kong, it was Kong, and in Kingdom, it was Noa. The Skar King and Proximus have pretty much the same personality, where they're these evil tyrants, who just want to take over the world and rule everybody, and they don't care at all who they hurt in the process, as long as they get what they want.
The only difference being that Skar King is over 300 feet tall and doesn't talk, whereas Proximus is the size of an average chimp (or bonobo, whatever he's supposed to be) and does talk, and is able to articulate what he's thinking and what he wants. Skar King is also a lot more of a Saturday morning cartoon villain than Proximus is, but Proximus is pretty much being one himself. That is one thing I appreciate about Proximus compared to the antagonists in the previous movies, is that they don't try to explain or justify his actions.
They don't try to give him some tragic backstory to explain why he is the way he is, like they did with Koba, who is the character who people have compared Proximus the most too. Nor do they try to redeem at the end. He's a bastard to the very end, I love it. His death scene was pretty wack though. He gets killed by a bunch of birds pecking at them after Noa and other Eagle Clan apes 🦅 summon a bunch of them by singing one of their traditional bird songs, and then he just falls off a cliff presumably to his death.
His death is a lot similar to Koba's in Dawn, where they both die from falling from great heights. I actually saw that scene on YouTube months before I saw the actual movie. Like, someone recorded that scene in theater and then uploaded it to YouTube, and when I saw how Proximus dies, I was like, "That's it? That's how he dies?" I just wish his death scene was something else.
Make it something more brutal, have him get stabbed in the heart 🫀by a knife or dagger, or have him get impaled by a pipe, or maybe his neck get snapped, or maybe even burned alive 🔥. Anything other than him just getting pecked by birds and then falling off a cliff. I saw some comments underneath that video on YouTube, saying that Proximus isn't dead, and he'll be back in future sequels. I don't see how, a fall like that would kill anyone (human or ape), and we saw Koba fall from a great height too and he never came back. So, he's dead you guys 💀, he ain't coming back. If he does end up coming back, then that would be really stupid, and would show me that the writers were incapable of coming up with another cool bad guy, so they had to just bring back the one from the previous movie. Bringing Proximus back, and having him survive that fall would be a serious jumping the shark 🦈 moment for an otherwise rock solid series.
Also, there's an apparently an after credit scene that I had no idea before about until after I watched the movie. Okay, I should clarify, it isn't not really an after credit scene, it's more like an audio cue that plays after the credits stop rolling. It's sound of an ape breathing, murmuring, and making some other sounds, indicating that one of the two presumed dead characters may have actually survived. Those being either Raka or Proximus. Most sources I've seen (mainly IGN) have speculated that it's likely Raka, and I think that makes the most sense.
Although, I'm not completely sold on the idea of Raka surviving since it takes away from the stakes, and makes so that no characters really die (unless they're Caesar), there is a way that he could've conceivably survived. Like, it isn't as unbelievable as the idea of Proximus surviving. Raka just fell into a rapids, whereas Proximus fell from a cliff, a pretty high cliff, like at least 100 feet high. Although, surviving from being swept up by rapids would pretty difficult given how strong the water currents 💦 are, and the rocks, someone could conceivably survive that and swim their way back to shore. So, until it's confirmed either way, I'm going with the theory that it was Raka's breath and murmuring is heard at the end.
I still stand by my statement that Proximus shouldn't be brought back in anyway, and that he should stay dead. Maybe, he can appear in a vision or a dream 💭 of Noa's or something, but not actually alive in the flesh. It would completely break the realism and groundness that these films have strived for, and it would take away from Noa's triumphant moment, the moment when he came into his own, and became the leader he was meant to be.
Speaking of dreams 💭, apparently, they did something similar at the end of Dawn, where you could hear the sounds of Koba, which made people think that maybe he survived and that he'd be back in the next movie. But then, when the next movie, War, did come, it turned out that he wasn't actually still alive, just alive in spirit, as a vision or a nightmare haunting Caesar's dreams 💭, and it was just a dumb little teaser to throw people off, or make them think a certain way.
So, we shouldn't make too much of a big deal out of the ape sounds at the end of this movie, since like with ape sounds at the end of "Dawn," they could easily just mean nothing. It doesn't necessarily mean that a presumed dead character's actually still alive or that they'll return in the next movie. This could just be the filmmakers trying to mess with us, or perhaps give those characters one last send off by having them make noises after the credits stop rolling.
One last thing I want to touch on before I close this out, Inside Out 2 is out of theaters now, or at least, it's reaching the end of its theatrical run, and it is still the second highest grossing animated movie of all time. It didn't many more money than $1.650 billion 💵 at the worldwide box office, and it didn't beat The Lion King 🦁 (2019) unfortunately. The Lion King 🦁 (2019) is still king as far as highest grossing animated movies of all time are concerned, and it isn't even as well liked as Inside Out 2 is.
However, Inside Out 2 is the fastest animated film to cross the $1 billion mark 💵, and it is the highest grossing Pixar film of all time, so there is that. I just wanted to give an update on Inside Out 2 and its box office performance since I did talk about how much money 💵 it made compared to the other top grossing animated films in my review of Kingdom at the very end. That was part of the section where I talking about the Oscar's and whether this movie was in contention. I mentioned Inside Out 2 in that section, and that lead me to ranting about how it will probably be nominated for and win the Best Animated Picture award at the Oscar's next year, and ranting about much money 💵 in comparison to Frozen II ❄️ and of course, The Lion King 🦁 (2019).
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Rebel Moon – Chapter Two: Curse of Forgiveness
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Full Review
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I know that this one came pretty late, and I apologize for that. It's already past the point where Rebel Moon is even a remotely relevant topic anymore in the movie world, or in social media in general. But, one of the benefits of waiting so long to watch and review Part Two (or rather, Chapter Two) is that I was able to watch the longer R rated director's cut rather than settling the shorter and neutered PG-13 version which was called Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver. I even watched the R rated director's cut of Part One that simply went under the title, Rebel Moon – Chapter One: Chalice of Blood 🩸, so that I could get caught up with the story since it been so long since I saw Part One, and I wanted to refamiliarize myself with the story and the characters when I watched Chapter Two, and had some sort of basis to go off of when I started writing my review. And yes, the director's cut is way better, not that I hated the PG-13 version of Part One. I was one of the few people who actually reviewed the PG-13 version of Part One positively when it initially came out back in December 2023. But, the director's cut is the far superior version, and I'm glad that I watched the director's cut of Part Two, instead watching the PG-13 version. It was great 😁👍.
I would recommend anyone who is thinking of watching Rebel Moon to just watch the director's cuts. Don't even bother with the PG-13 versions, they're not worth your time, and you'd be doing yourself a disservice by watching those instead of the R rated director's cuts. Yeah, they're long, Chapter One clocks in at 204 minutes (3 hours and 24 minutes) and Chapter Two clocks in at 173 minutes (2 hours and 73 minutes), but they are more representative of Zack Snyder's vision. They are the movies he wanted to make, and the movies he wanted people to see.
I don't know why Zack Snyder likes to make long movies, but he does. That is something he shares with James Cameron. James Cameron hasn't made a movie under 2 hours since The Terminator. But, I still like Zack Snyder more than James Cameron, both as a filmmaker and a person. Peter Jackson was also a guy ♂︎ that liked making long movies too before he switched over to making documentaries. I mean he made a 3 hour King Kong movie, something that some would argue didn't need to be 3 hours, that should show you how much liked stretching things out as long as possible. Michael Bay too, he likes making long movies, except he doesn't go as long as either Snyder, Cameron, or Jackson. The only 3 hour movie he's made in his career so far is Pearl Harbor, and that movie was specifically meant to capitalize off the success of Titanic (1997), a movie that Cameron directed.
In my review of Chapter Two, I questioned the discussion of releasing PG-13 versions of the movies when they could've just easily released the R rated versions right from the very beginning, and after watching some interviews, podcasts, and Q&As that Zack Snyder did after the release of the director's cuts, it seems the decision to do shorter PG-13 versions came directly from Netflix themselves. He said that it was part of their deal that they would let him make his movie the way he wanted, but in exchange, he would release shorter, more condensed PG-13 versions first before releasing the R rated director's cuts.
The reason for this Snyder claims is that Netflix wanted more commercial versions of these movies available for anyone who didn't want to see Snyder's more violent, sexual, and esoteric versions, especially since the prologue scene in Chapter One (that's absent in the PG-13 version) was so violent that it got the movie slapped with an NC-17 rating, and they had to edit it down just to get an R rating. The part that did it was the scene where Noble forces Aris to kill his own father by bashing his head in with a stick that once belonged to the king of the Motherworld. That scene is pretty hard to watch already, but it was apparently even longer and even more gruesome, and for that scene alone, the MPA slapped the movie with an NC-17 rating. So, they had to trim that scene down to get an R rating, which meant shortening the parts where Aris actually bashing his father's head in with the stick, and shortening the part where Noble scoops out Aris's father's brains and shows them to Aris.
So, Netflix did have concerns about the rating, and that's they made Snyder create those PG-13 versions. But, their strategy might've backfired on them because everyone hated the movies in their shorter compromised states 😡 that they didn't even want to give the R rated director's cuts a chance. The PG-13 versions of Part One and Part Two got hundreds of millions of views, while the R rated director's cuts only got 50 million or so views each. So, it was a pretty steep drop off. Had Netflix grown a pair, and just released the R rated versions of the movies from the very beginning maybe some of this backlash and viewership drop could've been avoided.
I mean, there would've still been people who hated the movies, as there are people still hate the movies even with the director's cuts and in fact think the director's cuts made them worse, but there would've people who would've appreciated the movies for what they were, and what Snyder was trying to do, and might've stuck around to watch more since Snyder does want to continue the story past Chapter Two if that cliffhanger ending is anything to go by. Perhaps you could get more rewatches out of them because as it is now no one who has seen Rebel Moon is rewatching Rebel Moon. Netflix, knowingly or unknowingly, sabotaged this movie by doing this. But regardless, I'll still probably rewatch these movies from now and then, and when I do, I'll watch the director's cuts. They are my preferred versions.
Another thing I did question in my review was why the titles of the two parts were changed, even down to them being called "chapters" instead of "parts," and I learned from watching those interviews, podcasts, and such with Snyder that he felt these new titles were more representative of the story he wanted to tell. The way he explained it was that the PG-13 versions of the movies were more focused on Kora/Arthelais, like it was more of her story and that's reflected in the titles. A Child of Fire 🔥 and The Scargiver both refer to her.
But with the R rated director's cuts and all of the scenes added back in, it becomes more of a story about Princess Issa, the supposedly dead princess and heir to the throne of the Motherworld, and that was what Snyder had intended all along. Kora is really just a supporting player in that wider story. In addition to that, because of the director's cuts' greater emphasis on Princess Issa, the story is more of a fairytale, a dark fairytale (a really dark fairytale 😨), but a fairytale regardless. And that needed to be reflected in the titles for the movies, and that's why the director's cut of Part One is called Chalice of Blood 🩸 and the director's cut of Part Two is called Curse of Forgiveness. I thought that was really interesting, I didn't really think of it that way until after I watched the movie, and heard Snyder explain it. It's kind of like how when you watch the Star Wars prequels and then watch the original trilogy, it becomes more of a story about Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker than a story about Luke Skywalker. Luke becomes more of a supporting character in that wider story about Anakin's fall to the Dark Side, his transformation into Darth Vader, and his redemption and transformation back into Anakin thanks to his son Luke.
In addition to being inspired by Star Wars and Seven Samurai, Snyder also credited Heavy Metal magazine as a major inspiration for Rebel Moon. He said that Rebel Moon was his attempt at trying to do Heavy Metal in live action, that's why it's so violent and sexual because that's how a lot of stories featured in Heavy Metal were like that. I haven't read a single issue of Heavy Metal magazine, but I have seen the Heavy Metal movie from 1981, and yeah, I can totally see that. It totally feels like a Heavy Metal story brought to life in live action and stretched out to feature length. Beyond feature length really since combined, the director's cuts of both parts clock in at about 6 or 7 hours. If you were to watch parts together back-to-back in one sitting, it would take you 6 or 7 hours to complete it.
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Full Review
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I honestly didn't think that I would get to this one this year, I thought I was going to have to wait until next year to review it, but I managed to squeeze it before the end of this month. I really enjoyed this one, it was a good action movie, a really fun time I would say. It was just like that one comment said on the first trailer, it really was a throwback to late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s action movies in the best possible way. Like I said in the full review, had I seen this movie in theaters, I think I and my grandma would've enjoyed it a lot. We would've had a really good time and it would've been worth the price of the trip down to Albuquerque, the price of admission, and the price of all the concessions, the popcorn 🍿 and the soda 🥤. My grandma still hasn't seen it even though I keep recommending it to her. She's just interested in watching The Killer's Game, that's the one that she's really into and wants to see. I do too, but I also wanted to see this.
I mean, hey, watching this is way better than going out and seeing Kraven the Hunter, am I right? I had no interest in watching Kraven the Hunter, just like I had no interest in watching Madame Web, and I'm not surprised that Kraven the Hunter is bombing 💣 just like I wasn't surprised when Madame Web bombed 💣. People just don't care anymore if they ever cared at all. The only part of Sony's Spider-Man Universe (SSU) that people actually liked and was actually financially successful was the Venom trilogy, but even then a lot of the people who like the Venom movies only like them in an ironic way just to laugh at them 🤣. But there are people who genuinely like the Venom movies unironically and think that they're good movies, at least the first two. The third movie Venom: The Last Dance kind of faltered a bit, and even people who liked the first two didn't really like The Last Dance. They thought that it was a disappointment.
But there are people who liked The Last Dance and thought it was at least as good as the first two. I wouldn't go as far to say that they think it's better than the first two. I don't know where I'll fall on that spectrum when I actually sit down and watch it. I don't think my aunt has that movie yet on her Fandango at Home account, but I imagine that she will get it soon because she likes the Venom movies. There's a better chance of her getting The Last Dance in a timely manner than there is her getting The Killer's Game. So, I'll probably end up watching The Last Dance on Fandango at Home, and if I like it, then I'll buy it on Blu-Ray 💿.
But, because the Kraven the Hunter failed at the box office, it seems that the SSU is finally over. Sony said that if Kraven wasn't a financial success, that they end the SSU and any projects that had planned for it would be canceled. As if there was any chance, any possibility, that Kraven was ever going to be successful and be anything more than a box office bomb 💣. So, no more Silk movie, no more Silver Sable movie, no movie Black Cat movie, and most importantly of all no more Sinister Six movie, if those projects were even still in the pipeline by the time Kraven came out. It ended in a whimper just like the DCEU did with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. But I hesitate to even call the SSU a cinematic universe. Unlike the DCEU, the SSU was barely a cinematic universe at all. The movies themselves barely connected to each other, they didn't have a cohesive continuity or an overarching storyline, and they often contradicted each other.
Really, the SSU movies felt like stand alone movies, existing in their own universes, their own realities. They didn't really feel as if they were part of some larger universe and part of a bigger story. The Venom movies don't feel as if they're in the same reality as Morbius (except for that "We are Venom" line that was randomly thrown just to have a Venom reference and give off the illusion that it's part of the same universe even if it made no sense for Morbius to actually say that since he never canonically met Venom and Eddy Brock in the SSU or was even aware of their existence), Madame Web didn't feel like it was in the same reality as the Venom movies or Morbius, and Kraven the Hunter didn't feel like it was in the same reality as any of those movies. They all felt self-contained, too self-contained to really honestly call it a cinematic universe.
It seems like Avi Arad was just planning on connecting these movies via the multiverse, which is how he tried to connect the SSU to the MCU when he did a Vulture cameo in that after credit scene for Morbius which looked and felt it was filmed after the fact and was a post-production decision. Jared Leto and Michael Keaton didn't even look like they were in the same space, like it looked they filmed their parts of the scene separately and never interacted with each other on set or location. Vulture was in his suit and was all CGI, so it's certain that Michael Keaton was not actually there on the day of the shooting of that scene. He likely just recorded voice lines in a recording booth, saying "I'm not sure how I got here. Has to do with Spider-Man I think. I'm still figuring this place out, but I think a bunch of guys like us should team up, we could do some good," and then just called it a day, got his paycheck and went home. While Jared Leto was just standing in a field somewhere reacting to nothing, talking to thin air, saying "Intriguing" and that's it. That's all he had to film on that day.
That's another thing too, these movies (most of them at least) were really incompetently made. Even these movies did actually good filmmakers attached to them, they did have talented people work on them, but they all ended up coming out as very amateurish. The ADR work on these movies was bad, so obviously that was ADR, and it ruined the immersion and took you out of the movie. The Venom movies once again felt like they were the only ones in this whole "cinematic universe" that were made by professionals. They're the only SSU movies that felt like they were competently made. And the writing was bad across the board in a lot of these films, and the acting suffered as a result of the bad writing and the bad direction despite these movies having pretty good actors and good directors (most of the time). It really was the writing and producer interference from Avi Arad and others that let these movies down.
Now, just because the SSU is over doesn't mean that Sony will lose the rights to Spider-Man and the other characters associated with Spider-Man. Sony will still continue to own the rights to Spider-Man at least partially via the agreement they made with Marvel Studios at Disney. They will still continue to make SpiderVerse movies, which are the only Spider-Man or Marvel related venture that has really worked out for them besides the Venom trilogy. In fact, they already have a new project set in the SpiderVerse world in the works, it's a Spider-Noir project starring Nicolas Cage, it's going to be in live action. I don't know for sure if it's going to be a movie or a TV series on streaming, but I do know it is going to be in live action as opposed to animation as the SpiderVerse movie have been and Nicolas Cage is going to reprise his role as Spider-Noir, a Spider-Man variant from another universe encountered in the first film, Spider-Man: Into the SpiderVerse. So, the SpiderVerse isn't going anywhere.
When people say the SSU is over, what they really mean are these live action movies that star Spider-Man villains or Spider-Man side characters and don't actually feature the web-swinger himself, and kind of just allude to him or dance around him. That's what's ending. The SpiderVerse is a separate thing entirely, it wasn't really connected to the SSU, except for that cameo from the character Mrs. Chen from the Venom movies in the second movie Spider-Man: Across the SpiderVerse. This is what I mean when I say that Avi Arad was just planning on connecting these movies via the multiverse when we all know that the multiverse is not the end all be all fool-proof solution to making a cinematic universe thrive and function. The multiverse can actually work against you making a cohesive cinematic universe and make it difficult for you to tell a compelling story that people will actually be invested in across multiple films.
There is a reality where this could have worked, making movies about supervillains isn't an inherently a bad idea. It could worked and been good, if Sony had assembled a bad team of writers (and perhaps editors and ADR people), and just let these filmmakers do their thing rather than interfering and undermining every decision they made. Or just found a better producer, Avi Arad is not a good producer and shouldn't be allowed to make anymore movies. He was one of the main factors for why these movies failed and why the SSU as a whole failed. If they found a direction and stuck with it, this could have been something good.
And if they just let these villain characters be villains instead of trying to turn them all into antiheroes or heroes. One of the reasons why I was so disinterested in Kraven the Hunter was that Kraven wasn't a bad guy in that movie. He wasn't even an antihero, he was just a straight up hero, and if know anything about Kraven the Hunter (and I know very little) you'll know why that doesn't work for him. Makes you wonder how they would've even turned him into a villain who went up against Spider-Man if they ever got to that. Sure, he kills, but so does every other superhero nowadays. The "no killing" rule across the board has pretty much been thrown out the window as it has been found to be completely unsustainable for the kinds of stories the writers of these films want to tell.
Not every villain can or should be turned into antihero or a hero, it works way better with certain characters than it does others, and some characters just work better when they are just villains. The reason why it worked with Venom is that Venom has already been kind of turned into an antihero in the comics, especially when he became Anti-Venom, a white version of Venom who is more virtuous and heroic compared to the regular black Venom that everyone is more familiar with. But with Morbius, Madame Web, and Kraven? No, it doesn't work at all. Those characters are villains and have always been villains, and once you take that away and make them heroes, you take away the thing that made them the most interesting. Even though I've never seen The Penguin, I have heard nothing but good things about it and a lot of people name it as an example of a villain centric story done right where the villain character in question isn't compromised, who remains a villain throughout despite us rooting for him, and never gets turned into an antihero or a hero.
So, it can be done, they just decided not to do it with these movies for whatever reason. I guess Avi Arad was too afraid to commit fully to the idea of doing villain movies and thought that audiences will only root for a villain if they act heroic and go against someone worse than them. He wants to keep these movies clean and family friendly even though Kraven is rated R, but it's more of a soft R from I've heard. And it's not just Sony who made this mistake it's also Disney too, they've done this too where they've turned villain characters or villain adjacent characters into heroes for very little justifiable reason. They did it with Loki in the Loki series, they did it with Maleficent in the Maleficent movies, they did it with Cruella de Vil in the Cruella movie, and they did it with Boba Fett in the Book of Boba Fett series.
Even if it does sort of work with Boba Fett since they did show hints that there was good in him in Star Wars: The Clone Wars when he was still a child and he was not a completely morally bankrupt bounty hunter and cold blooded killer, but I and many people still like the idea of Boba Fett being a bad guy, it's what we prefer. Like, have him actually be a scary crime boss taking over Jabba the Hutt's empire, instead of him trying to straight up and clean up the streets and avoid crime altogether. That's boring. Had this been a storyline in the old Expanded Universe (what is now called Legends), then they would've made him a crime boss, they would've had him engage in actual criminal activity, and do pretty evil shit. The Penguin, from what I've heard, sounds a lot more like what The Book of Boba Fett should've been but Disney was too afraid to commit to. DC, or Matt Reeves specifically, are the only who have done this right, making a villain movie or series (in the case of The Penguin), doing a villain centric story and keeping the villain a villain. So, in the end, the SSU was a failed experiment, to use a term that Captain Midnight would use even if I hate the guy. An exercise in corporate greed 🤑 just to hold onto the rights of these characters so that they wouldn't go to Marvel Studios.
Like I said in my review, this movie didn't really need to take place in Taiwan 🇹🇼, it didn't need to take place in Taipei. The plot didn't really require it to take place in Taipei, like there's nothing about the plot that was dependent on the Taipei setting and wouldn't have worked if it had been set in a different city in a different country. It could've taken in any Asian city in any Asian country really, I mentioned a few in my review like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong 🇭🇰, Singapore 🇸🇬, Bangkok, and one I didn't mention, Kuala Lumpur. And also maybe even Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Phnom Penh, Vientiane, Manila, and Jakarta. But the fact that it was set in Taipei makes it unique and makes it stand out from the rest, considering that not a lot of movies set or filmed in Taiwan 🇹🇼 for the reasons I talked about in my review. It's because it would get banned in China 🇨🇳, and a lot of studios, producers, and directors don't want to lose access to the Chinese market 🇨🇳.
But, the people who made this movie, Luc Besson and George Huang, weren't trying to get into the Chinese market 🇨🇳, they didn't care, so they were fine with making a movie that was guaranteed to get banned in China 🇨🇳. It was only released in three countries: Taiwan 🇹🇼, France 🇫🇷, and the United States 🇺🇸. Which happen to be the same countries that Luc Besson and George Huang, Luc Besson is a Frenchman 🇫🇷♂︎ and George Huang is a Taiwanese-American 🇹🇼🇺🇸. He was born in Taiwan 🇹🇼, probably lived there for a while, and then moved to the US 🇺🇸 and became a US citizen 🇺🇸. He really made this movie and set in Taipei because he was passionate about it, and he probably grew up there, he grew up in Taipei and wanted to pay tribute or respect to it by setting a movie there even a crime action movie like this with an international cast and crew.
I was surprised at the romance elements ❤️, I was surprised at how much the movie leaned into the romance aspect ❤️. This is an action romantic comedy ❤️, it even has a schmaltzy ending where the two main characters John Lawlor and Joey get together and start a family, raising their son Raymond as well as the new baby that Joey gives birth to who is heavily implied to be the main bad guy Kwang's baby. She had his baby, and now her and John are raising that child themselves since Kwang has been arrested and thrown in prison for his transgressions. They even show a photo montage in the end credits where they're all taking family photos together after the baby has been born. It is kind of like the ending of Face/Off in a way where the main good guy takes the child of the main bad guy and then raises them as their own. Sean Archer took Caster Troy's son at the end of the movie and basically adopted him into his own family, pretty much acting as a replacement for the son Caster had killed years before. If that all sounds appealing to you, then go ahead and check this movie out.
I did go on a long tangent talking about Black Lagoon in my review, just as I went on a long tangent about Kraven the Hunter, Sony, and Marvel in this recap. That wasn't because I didn't want to talk about the movie, it was just something that I really wanted to talk about for a long time and I wanted to get off my chest, and that review seemed like it was the perfect place to do it because it was a movie that takes place in Taiwan 🇹🇼, a crime movie that takes place in Taiwan 🇹🇼.
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