Mob Psycho 100, Season 1
An unassuming middle-schooler, Shigeo Kageyama, has superpowers that go into overdrive when he’s irritated enough to reach 100%. The anti-shonen shonen series: Mob has no interest in using his powers for world peace, or being the best, or other such lofty nonsensical goals. His greatest struggle is probably running to keep up with the rest of the fitness club he just joined, or putting up with his after-school work boss, who is something of a slick charlatan who uses Shigeo’s abilities for financial gain. It’s one of the only series in recent memory where the final boss(es) are effectively insulted, and more or less defeated, by a deuteragonist. In a way, the series is a different take on the “superhero deconstruction and realism” storytelling trend that’s been going around.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Except for the “spirits” part of it, this didn’t feel so much like a Final Fantasy story, as most franchise installments up to that point were some mix of high fantasy and technological fantasy. The world of Spirits Within was futuristic sci-fi. Whatever. A lot of big names did the voice acting for this, but I don’t know if that helped. It was a decent story with a laughably naughty antagonist. The protagonist was supposed to be pregnant with the “final” spirit at the conclusion, but that was removed because it didn’t “focus group” well for American audiences, or some nonsense. It would’ve made the ending a little more coherent and impactful. Focus groups are the worst.
Modest Heroes
Three stories about everyday people just tryin’ to get by. That’s misleading, because the “everyday people” are tiny aquatic humans, a child who will die if exposed to eggs, and an invisible, weightless scooter enthusiast. I preferred the first story, with the weird water people. There was no dialog except for the characters names being spoken; that element paradoxically added something to the setting. The other two stories I’m sure had a deeper meaning, but I couldn’t find it because I’m a dumb American.
THX 1138
This was much more hard sci-fi than what Lucas did with Star Wars, and it was actually very well done. It was poetic in the sense that the plot structure spanned maybe a half hour/45 minutes of film time, where the rest of the films runtime was taken up with little disconnected vignettes of the functions of the society. If I didn’t like it, I’d be calling it “filler,” but it was an effective was to establish setting outside of dialog and info dump scenes.
Atlas Shrugged, Part 1
So this was supposed to be the big deal depiction of Ayn Rand’s fictional manifesto, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the lead roles. All of that got, shall we say, “railroaded” (hold your applause), so they settled on no-names for the cast. But I have to say they weren’t bad actors; certainly the best batch of them out of the trilogy. Taylor Schilling, who played the Dagny Taggart role, really nailed her cold and determined personality, and she played off well with the Grant Bowler in the Hank Rearden role. But it goes downhill from here…
Atlas Shrugged, Part 2: The Strike
Atlas Shrugged: Who Is John Galt?
While the first film was okay, but these two bombed harder than a certain housing project in another Rand novel. Both movies had complete recasts, so every film in this trilogy had different leads and supporting members. Galt? was like a Lifetime movie but with a bit more action and danger. The depiction of Galt’s Gulch (named “Atlantis” in the series; less kitschy but unimaginative) made it like a weekend farmer’s market jaunt than a separate, more advanced society bereft of the annoying moochers. It really should’ve been more like Wakanda but without the tribal monarchy, ethnocentrism, as Rand’s depiction in the source material would require an update for modern audiences. Wooden acting, but at least we have Gary Cooper’s courtroom speech if we want an emotional Randian outburst. Just kidding—Cooper was kind of weirdly robotic there, but it was appropriate, given Roark’s character.
Omniscient, Season 1
A woman has to sneak around to figure out who murdered her father in a world where drones record everything. Some echoes of Psycho-Pass and Black Mirror episodes. Interesting ideas on how an engineer worker bee could infiltrate classified areas. Once or twice an episode I would really listen and try to parse out if the cast was speaking some form of Spanish or some form of French. This was before I knew this was a Brazilian series, so naturally they were speaking Portuguese. I’ve heard it spoken before, but not to that extent. Language is a weird thing.
The Ninth Gate
There was probably a good supernatural thriller in this, but there was too much running around the world to solve the mystery for that to happen. Maybe it deserves a rewatch, but I have a personal rule of never watching a Roman Polansky movie more than once. It’s a rule I just made up.
Gladiator
Here’s the thing with the Commodus, the villain: everyone knew he was kind of a scumbag, so there was no love lost when he was defeated at the end. Ridley Scott should have posed him as a popular ruler, but one on the decline as presides over a failing empire. Maximus, as in the movie, would be the only one who knows Commodus murdered Marcus Aurelius, but since video recording and drones weren’t invented until the Medieval period, Aurelius should have made a written and officially-sealed declaration as a way for Maximus to prove he, not Commodus, was to become emperor after his death. As the movie progresses, Commodus starts to lose popular support, though not because of his evil mustache-twirling ways; the Roman folks still think he’s a decent fellow, just a weak ruler who made a few mistakes while in office. Maximus, as per the original story, slowly gains support. That way, near the end, they are near equals, but killing an emperor is not a popular idea when he’s not hated. Aurelius’ document would tip the scales in Maximus’ favor, in a very big way, in the common Roman man’s eyes. Maximus should still die at the end, though, since Maximus mission was to avenge his family, not become emperor.
2 Comments
I saw most of THX1138 and felt like I understood it, until I read reviews later and realized there was a ton of crap in it that I didn’t really care about. It was better without the reviews. I was amused when the chase stopped because it cost too much.
I didn’t see the whole of Gladiator, either — missed the first part. I still managed figured out what was going on, even though I didn’t even know about the part where Maximus was supposed to succeed Aurelius. Yeah, it needed a declaration on that.
I didn’t see any of the rest of your list. I avoided reading Rand because I already knew and hated objectivism when I heard about it.
I’m curious about the reviews you read (of THX1138), but I don’t want to go read any of them for fear of spoiling my view of it.
The decision to let Maximus take the throne I think was impromptu, because the discussion that lead up to it, but they could’ve worked something official in.
Rand needed an editor, for sure. 🙂