NietzscheCookie

@zevvion: Just saw it. I think I liked it. There's still a lot to process.

I thought the twists were great and everything in the last act was solid. The opening action scene was strong.

But boy was it bloated in the middle. Everything with Finn, Rose and Del Toro's character felt pointless. Ghost Yoda's dialogue was kinda bad too. I feel like there's a great film in there if you cut out the middle.

I saw it over the weekend and honestly loved it. I don't want to ruffle feathers but it was, to me, so much better than the original Blade runner. I love the original too but my own 80's nostalgia glasses have been shattered by Villeneuve. Aside from the interesting layered religious themes of being the 'replicant New Testament', I thought it was really well done that the story is actually the redemptive arc of the villain, but told from the villain's perspective.

My only criticism is the cast of female leads. Much like Tarantino's the Hateful Eight, this film has a representation problem that isn't solved by making Luv super strong and killing lots of people. I thought Joi is ultimately not sentient. The clearest evidence to me being that she loves being K's slave, which is her manufactured design.

The film does a fantastic job of bypassing the original's '101 philosophy' as Austin Walker said and diving into better questions. Digital or bio-organic or bio-synthetic, it doesn't matter. We're truly alive when we stop looking for meaning in the wrong places (fake love with a slave wife, having a name and specialness and thinking we're the replicant chosen one) and instead choose to not be automatons by thinking things through on our own and doing the right thing for once-that's why K finally enjoys life dying in the snow.

I now want to play Nier again.

My thoughts on Abby are best summed up by Jeff Bakalar's well known signature phrase, she's fantastic.

@vanek: I sent a request. I like the banner a lot. PSN is Stevemcqueen89

It wasn't just that they cut the incest scene together with Sam waxing on about the Targaryan family tree. It was that they put a ridiculous uplifting musical piece behind it all.

Like, what is the message here? Is incest good now?

I thought it was the best episode so far this season. The extra run time helped. They completed a full story without a terrible cliffhanger. The Sansa and Arya stuff was somehow even worse than the last episode of course. I'm hoping Litlefinger's big play happens in the next episode or all this will really be for nothing. I think the books are pretty badly written after the third one so I'm enjoying the show doing its own thing. Fast flying ravens and fast magic dragons don't bother me so the timing stuff of this episode made sense to me. And the journey seemed more about the fact that Bran and the Hound had visions that this is where they had to go. It was cool for Jon to finally see his uncle. They may have lost a dragon to the other side but now Dany is 100% on board and that's the bigger win than convincing Cersei to join the cause.

This annulment twist seems very off book. We just had a lesson in the medieval severity of the faith of the seven in season 5 and 6. How could the annulment be legal in Westeros law? I haven't read the books in a while but I think both the show and books have said Rhaegar's previous marriage was mostly happy, not made under duress or anything and they had a few children together- who the Mountain later killed. Not that any of it really matters of course but it still feels like inconsistent writing.

It was really good on the entertainment front. Ben and Abby did great.

With games less so, but I think a lot of cool stuff was there but didn't get a spotlight on it. Ni no Kuni II in the sony pre-show? Devolver having a fake press conference despite having a great list of games? More than any E3 I felt like I had to work to find out about cool upcoming games. Now I have a good grasp on things like The Sword of Ditto, Moonlighter, Dauntless, Absolver, Battle Chasers Nightwar, Lost Sphear I feel good about the show.

I just saw it. My first thought is that this movie is all over the place. Overall I liked it about the same amount as Captain America 1, so an ok 3/5 stars. But where Captain america was a 3 star film all the way through this oscillated wildly between great and cringeworthy.

The good: The romance plot had heart, the humour mostly worked, the crew of soldiers were well developed, the ending was kinda cool looking.

The bad: Those plot twists were bad. Why have them if you're going to make it so obvious? And as many others have said, these aren't Nazis, many of them were in fact German Jews, who would later suffer Nazis. Also Ludendorff was a real person, I'm not saying he wasn't a bad dude, but giving a version of history where general Erich Ludendorff had super human strength is kinda weird, right? Its also very odd in this movie how Diana flips between taking germans out without a thought and then saying she's trying to save them from themselves. Crossing no mans land was uncomfortable. Like I get that they have to tell the story from one side but when there are examples of things like the Christmas truces in no mans land, demonstrating Diana's supposed stance on peace and heroism could have been done in a much less confusing way.

The ugly: That Justice League guitar riff is the absolute worst, it instantly ruins any scene over which it plays.

Shaolin monks was genuinely pretty good. I was going to say MK XI but now I'm thinking more about a Middle Earth fighting game. Ok sure, Tolkien would roll in his grave but that never stopped anything before. There's a wide variety of fighting styles among the core cast that would translate well to a diverse cast of playable characters is all I'm saying. Scrawny grapplers, invisible hobbits, wizards with magic projectiles, arrow projectile guy , axe dwarf, regular sword dude, berserker orc. Throw in a 'men of the mountain ghost' and a Nazgûl and you've got something.