Rabbits Full of Magic

Some reviews of recent media I have consumed.

Matrix Resurrections - I admit that the first 1/3rd of the movie, with all the meta stuff, was fascinating. But soon you realize that none of the new characters are well done because none of them matter, this is going to be yet another postmodern deconstruction of the hero. Which means the entire movie is going to obsess about Neo and will hate the viewer for it. Note to postmodernists: if you are going to destroy work, you need to have something to replace it. All the jokes making fun of bullet time were great, until you realize there is nothing to replace it, and in fact, the jokes about the creators of the Matrix having no imagination were not jokes at all, they were tells. The greater story itself is terrible, but that is because the writer is a technocrat who is pro-Matrix. Throughout the movie we see millions of humans still enslaved, but are told "Some just don't want to leave", which is kind of anti-human message a machine would craft. The original movie was written in a time when living isolated in your pod was seen as bad. Nowadays, there are bluepill people all over who want this kind of life. They hate humans. This was a pro-Matrix movie made by the machines. Also, the last half was godawful. As for the "getting rid of the red pill" the writer talked up so much in interviews, they did pull it off. Trinity is the first person to escape the Matrix and she did not need a pill, she just needed to hate her husband enough to physically attack him. She didn't like her life as a mother so much she freed herself. It's the kind of lame plot twist a male feminist would write. Do we learn anything else about Trinity's life other than she is a mother who hates her husband and child? Does she have any friends? Does she do anything other than ride motorcycles? Does she exist outside of this male feminist construct? Of course not! There is no need for her to. She is a "milf" (the movie itself says this in the most cringey line of all time) who hates her family and wants to jump on a motorcycle with Keanu Reeves and kill a bunch of people. That's good enough for feminism. The movie ends with them bragging about "changing the color of the sky" in the Matrix, as if the ability to control the hue on the enslavement device is some victory. It's like if a prisoner was bragging about his jail cell. Drop dead dumb and anti human. D

Ghostbusters Afterlife - This on the other hand was good stuff. Cheesy? Corny? Yes. Like the Matrix 4 it also steals from what came before, but this time, it approaches it with genuine emotion, rather than distain for the audience. The kid actors were great. Yeah everyone joked about Stranger Things Ghostbusters, but that is a damn good show, much better than the 2016 movie, where our "heroes" witnessed multiple people die right in front of them, one of them directly as a cause of their actions, and it didn't matter at all, because Hollywood is so broken it doesn't even respect life. This movie does. Best part of the whole thing is when Finn Wolfhard calls Ray on the phone and gives him the bad news.  That's the kind of gut punch we can all relate to. Chalk one up for art that looks outside itself. B

Elden Ring - Currently playing this right now. I was beyond hyped for this game and it has beyond lived up to the hype. Now I am a fan of fantasy, it is my favorite genre of all time, and From Software excels at crafting fantasy worlds that are so intricately thought-out and detailed that it is easy to get lost in them. Where other companies like to crap out sequel after sequel, From instead like to spawn entirely new universes, whether it be a Lovecraftian nightmare Victorian England (Blooodborne) or the historic battlegrounds of ancient Japan (Sekiro). This world is more epic than any they have made, a world full of gods and legends, living myths, secret forbidden cities, and many interesting characters and creatures. The titluar ring is somewhat metaphorical, it stands for the Golden Order, some kind of holy morality or hierarchy upholding the world that has been since destroyed. From games often have this theme, of the character living in a fallen world that was once whole, of trying to return to that place. It is very Christian. Residing in the fallen world, trying to bring justice to a place ruled by Satan. At this point I have 80 hours put into the game and am maybe 3/4 of the way through? It is absurdly huge and will be remembered as one of the GOATs. Easily. Get you a copy. S+++++++

posted by Adam  # 4:55:00 PM