Milo

Starting the new year with some stuff actually related to Sonic. A few selections of some level gimmicks I came up with for a conceptual airport-themed Sonic level (Adversary Airline Zone)l. I may return to this with some more ideas. A Rose Gone Rogue "You're not getting any of these files until you give me my jewels!" Based on this Sonic Adventure 2 game mod by Speeps Highway that's been making the rounds on Twitter over the previous week. I liked the concept enough to jump on the trend.

I saw the movie earlier today. ...oof. That was kinda mostly bad. And not in the so-bad-its-good/fun-to-watch-bad I was hoping for when the (more) vitriolic reviews come out, it's just mostly-weird-and-kinda-uncomfortable bad. It looked like had the chance to go the former route because the first-third is honestly kinda surreal with some of the performances (although that's marred by some really painful cat puns and attempts at slapstick with certain characters), but that melts away into a kinda fun second-third, and a final third that has one actually good performance but comes full circle into a bizarre fourth wall-break packaged into a final song that was hard to sit through. The CG/appearances of the cats I was mostly able to tolerate (although I think my screening was the original, I'm pretty sure I saw plenty of hands that were missing fur textures in the cut that I saw), the bigger culprit was that this crew literally tried to film a stage play (a near-ceaseless string of assorted songs without much, if any, of an underlying story) as is and projected that on the movie screen. There are some attempts at some sort of arc (Victoria/the new cat wanting to belong) and conflict (Macavity wanting to become the chosen Jellicle cat and ascend, and kidnapping other characters to achieve this goal) but none of them are honestly developed beyond their most basic motivations. It feels like the most literal and worst-case example of taking something from one medium and bringing it to another without making any meaningful changes to properly translate it. This is like if Robert Zemekis's mo-cap animation studio didn't die after Mars Needs Moms! bombed at the box office and a musical was their next project. Somehow it made the new Star Wars film look like a competent movie just for the sheer fact it tried to tell a story, even if it was a completely scattershot and thrown-together-at-the-wall story. Maybe there's a way to make an entire film that virtually has no real story and make it work, but Cats definitely wasn't it. In regards to ratings, this movie is just barely skimming by on a rental; some of the songs/performances and the sets are just barely keeping me from dismissing it as trash.

I saw the movie last Thursday, and the main thing going on in my mind once the movie ended was "...what the heck even was that story and that plotline?" Like I said in the status updates, I spent my dinner that evening writing down notes about the movie, specifically the script. The writing just feels....so slapdash, it's somewhat befuddling to me. Pre-emptive fandom disclaimer incoming that I'm only vaguely familiar (and haven't watched in full, only clips) with the OT, haven't seen the PT or Solo, I found R1 okay; and despite their problems, I generally like both TFA and TLJ. - The general plot feels like an early script or draft of some ideas, that at best needed a lot more refinement/development at best, and at worst should had been completely rewritten more than once. In concerns to the past films, very little carries over from TLJ storywise. I know some people aren't fans of what TLJ did with the plot and characters as a sequel to TFA, but I do feel that TLJ did at least make the effort to do something with them; whereas TROS feels like they virtually dropped the vast majority of developments like a bad case of malaria. Not even consciously rewriting or contradicting it, but just outright ignoring them like they never happened. From there, the few concepts that are carried over from TLJ are used to introduce new plotpoints that feel completely thrown in out of nowhere. There's not any existing development to these properties (or even any real hints towards their existence) in even TFA, let alone TLJ, so --for me-- the end result is that these new properties doesn't really feel meaningful to the broader narrative. Some of these concepts/plot elements also feel entirely throwaway, or ultimately inconsequential to the broader narrative either. The resulting mold of this movie feels like this was a conclusion to a somewhat different version of the sequel trilogy that might exist in maybe some parallel dimension, but doesn't exist here. And for me that absolutely hurts the film overall in terms of the emotional beats they have, because most of them to me don't feel earned at all, and instead feel forced/mechanically inserted. - Beyond issues with the overarching handling of the narrative and plot, the dialogue here feels like its trying way too hard to have witty banter between its characters, it doesn't really fit the existing relationships/personalities the characters have and instead feels like they were crammed in with a crowbar. It feels like the type of script people would write and accuse Marvel movies --and blockbusters following in their ilk-- of being (partially as a joke, but also partially as a genuine complaint). There's also one or two points in the story with Rey that I feel she performs certain actions done strictly to take the story where the writers wanted it to go. I imagine with better writing this could had been handled well, but here it goes against common sense to the point that it feels blatant. The story/screenplay overall just feel amateurish, slammed together without the necessary skill/talent to make it work. - Again, I haven't really watched anything with the OT, but I am familiar with certain scenes and certain elements from them to recognize when they're being references or called back towards. And in this particular point (nostalgia, being derivative, fanservice, et al.) it feels like Abrams and the rest of the writers doubled down on this (despite having been criticized for this for a fair amount of his movies). For me it's bizarre, with the film not only doing parallels to certain concepts from RotJ, it feels like it even verbatim copies elements from the immediate past movies in TFA and TLJ. It feels super indulgent overall. - Moving away from the writing, I did feel that the action scenes weren't as strong as those from TLJ and TFA. There were some good bits, but I felt the general execution could had been better. The editing I felt was also a mixed bag to me, with some transitions and incorporation of settings really well-done; but the first-third of the film also having really awkward, jarring cuts between scenes. From here I do have some positives about the film. While the locations are conceptually familiar to what we have seen before, I do feel the settings and the cinematography of the film are both beautifully done, as are the visual effects. Some of the concepts done with the movie I do also like, albeit with the caveat that it did make me wish that they were paired with a better screenplay. The cast I feel generally give passable performances (I don't think anyone here is outright bad, they're doing the best they can with the script); although I do feel Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine was able to do more with his role and thus give more of a memorable performance. Likewise, I feel the same with the music (it didn't really grab me, but it didn't stick out as terrible either. I don't want to be too harsh here as I do also feel I haven't really paid much attention to the scores of these movies either). Overall I wouldn't say I hate or even strongly dislike the movie, but it just feels like that was something that came and went. It doesn't really feel like an ending to a saga in any capacity; and in comparison to other film releases of 2019 that I've seen, has easily the weakest writing of them all. In terms of ratings, I'd honestly say this is at the lower end of a rental.