Usually I’d do a number of posts on Sonic when something new out of Sonic arises, primarily because now we have this situation where Sonic Twitter (where the fuck else?) is going hog wild over the idea that, yes, Sega commissioned a shoddy port of Sonic Colors for all current/last gen consoles in a rushed attempt to put out SOMETHING for the anniversary season (hell, for all we know, this WAS intended to be the damn anniversary game since Sega has shown unwarranted love toward this shit) despite evidence that Sega has fucked up ports in the past (Sonic Genesis comes to mind)… but… Idk, I always have this thing about not revisiting old shit unless I’ve never played them or rebought them myself. Like Saints Row 4, I would never have talked about that again if I didn’t think the PS4 version would’ve made the game better (it didn’t, that was me being spoiled by how much better the PS4 version of RE6 was), and really… IT’S SONIC FUCKING COLORS!!! You know!? 😛
It’s fascinating to me. I think I’m actually at a point where I’m losing interest in Sonic! Could also have something to do with the Tyranny going on in Washington that’s obviously of a higher concern because “so long income”, but at the same time, they haven’t given me anything to look forward to that says “Hey, we care about our long time fans!” So far, we’ve got Idris Elba as Knuckles and all I can say is “Damn, what a waste of talent!” It’s gonna be for an inevitably shit sequel so they’re daring me to “prove my loyalties” so to speak. But it’s like… damn. Sonic Colors is NOT worth talking about outside of laughing at all the plebs who are desperately trying to defend it’s rather lackluster port. Again, only in the magical land of Sonic Fandom is something like this ever possible. Just… how many people honestly care about “PORTS” of decade old games to go this hard to discredit people that are claiming that this shit is buggy and glitchy? Like every user who reports this is exclusively showing this from an emulator? Granted, a few (Keyword, FEW) people have come out and said they were indeed playing this on an emulator, but suddenly, “EVERYONE was doing so”? Not only are they claiming that no one in their right mind is going to spend money on this shit (which is reasonable), but at the same time, exclusively claiming that it is all SWITCH emulation as well. That’s desperation if you ask me. Switch ports have a bad habit of being straight ass! Lets be honest! Just like with the Wii, developers do not put in their best efforts when making ports to Nintendo platforms. Historically, even. Whether they use the “weaker hardware” as an excuse or not, they aren’t going to do it. The hardware excuse shouldn’t even exist since, as a port of a decade old game FROM NINTENDO HARDWARE, the Switch should be capable of running the damn thing with ease. Nevermind that people are reporting issues from across all platforms. One thing that I wouldn’t believe is the guy that claims the game shot his entire PC to hell, Sega isn’t generally known to create games that damage hardware (they barely take full advantage of any console they’re on) unlike those fucks over at Koei or Netherrealm Studios, but hell, what do I know of Sega’s efforts on PC, right? The idea of Sega making an ass port/remaster is not hard to believe at all. As far as I can tell, it definitely was a rushed port. Usually, Sega announces a new Sonic game at least a year in advance. Or at the very least more than 7 months. There’s usually a large gap between when a Sonic game is announced and when it actually releases. The time frame between when SCU was announced and when it released was about 4 months. Something tells me the pandemic fucked their original plans and they had to give us SOMETHING since Japan cares waaaaaaay too much about anniversaries. The same month that we find out this mythical anniversary game was pushed back… is the same month they announced SCU, they had to have rushed it out. I would find it plausible that they rushed this game out to make the anniversary, which would explain all of these bad results.
What I don’t find plausible is the desperation to defend Sega over this. Again, these could be shills… actually, fuck it, they’d HAVE to be shills to go this far! Anytime a Sonic game has bugs and glitches, it was always Sega’s fault, no exception. Now all of a sudden, people are just trying to defame Sonic Colors by any means necessary!? You shittin me!? Let this be a port of Sonic 06 and you mother fuckers would LIGHT… IT… UP!! You assholes go to sleep DREAMING about tearing a Sonic game apart! Or is this the new age of Toxic Positivity where we give everything a chance unless it’s “daaaaark” and “serious” and “edgy”? Usually something like this would get written off as just a shoddy port. But oh no! Now it’s just bad emulation! So maybe it wasn’t High Voltage’s fault that Zone of Enders 2nd Runner on PS3 ran like total shit. That wasn’t because it was a bad port, it was just me using an emulator! The patch from Hexadrive was just a figment of my imagination, all I did was actually buy the real-ok you get the idea.
Who made the port? Blind Squirrel? Yeah that joke writes itself. Could be that they were too busy with the Mass Effect Legacy Collection to give a shit about Sonic (since… you know, Mass Effect is actually a big deal), there’s a strong possibility that had something to do with the bad results. Anyone think about that? No, just poor emulation? How many times in the past has “Emulator” ever been used to excuse a shit port of an old game? This is the first time I’ve ever heard this as an explanation. Can anyone logically deduce why anyone would care so much about Sonic Colors that MULTIPLE USERS would pull a fast one, use emulators, or deliberately force glitches in the game to prove a PORT is shit? Sonic fans have a history of finding bugs in Sonic games and posting vids of them over and over and over again. It’s something of a pasttime ever since 06 came out. People were doing this with Sonic Boom. In all instances, no one claimed they were using emulation. What makes “now” so special? What makes “Colors” so special to people?
Then you got this fool here: “So I almost spent a full week trying to figure out whatwent wrong with SCU, and everyone’s still blaming the IP’s curse, and not looking at the wider picture of ever-increasing standards leading to toxic work environments”. Magical in-bred thinking rears it’s ugly head yet again! First and foremost, Toxic work environments have absolutely nothing to do with the demand for higher quality entertainment. You’re essentially saying that to “do better” is to make life hell for the people that develop the games. Making games is hard, yes, but making a GOOD game doesn’t lead to a toxic work environment. A toxic work environment depends on the people working on or overseeing the project. And often, the mindset isn’t on higher standards, it’s on short term profit. If the people are shitty (which… yeah, Sega are), then THAT leads to the Toxic Work Environment. I’m willing to bet the people over at Platinum aren’t working in a toxic environment, and they crap GOLD! They live up to the standards expected out of modern games, and they did so by getting OUT of a Toxic Environment (Capcom). The indies ain’t working in Toxic Environments, and they’re… moderately better as of late (Or so I can assume. No one’s doing any expose’s on their work environments). Secondly, how toxic does a work environment have to be to FUCK UP a port/so-called remaster of a Nintendo WII game!? That should fall on the overall skills of the people doing the work. Believe me, Sonic Colors is NOT a high standard game. People pretend it is because there aren’t too many elements present that don’t sit well with people. Essentially what they were supposed to do was be the Christian Whitehead for Sonic Colors. Difference is that Whitehead developed his code for Sonic ports way before Sega gave him a phonecall for CD. As far as I can tell, Blind Squirrel (So dumb…) is just like High Voltage Studios. They’re the random guys people call in to port their games to different systems, I doubt they have the skills necessary to rework the overall physics AND make the shit work on new hardware at the same time. The hell does any of this have to do with “Ever-Increasing Standards!?” This is SEGA we’re talking about! They NEVER have standards in regards to Sonic! Hell, Sonic doesn’t even get a BUDGET anymore! That’s why we have this lazy cash grab of a failure on store shelves.
Sonic Colors is only special in the fact that people didn’t outright hate the game, but it’s only for the reason that it kept the basic premise of Sonic without too many gimmicks. It didn’t have the multiple playable characters that Sega would inevitably use for gimmicks, it didn’t have werehog, it didn’t have a whole lot of motion controls… it didn’t have bullshit no one wanted. That above all else is why the game got the reception it did. When you don’t shove bullshit into people’s faces, you get much better reception than usual. People only like Sonic when they’re able to blast through Zones at their own pace, without having to do some extracurricular nonsense designed by Takashi Izuka in order to do so. But as a result, people ignored the problems the game DID have. The poor, piddly physics, the short levels that relied on 3D platformer “logic” rather than be a straight up Sonic game, lousy content, horrible dialog that people wouldn’t celebrate if this were 2004, shitty powerups that for SOME REASON will never go away, Rogic, and an overall emptiness after completing it. It feels like a game made for babies, which makes more sense today now that we know it’s SOJ’s target audience. Not insulting kids, first of all, just pointing out the gact that they want IDIOTS to play their Sonic games. Well, the age group might be wrong, but they sure as shit got em if these excuses are what constitutes as an actual defense of SCU.
Even this is deeply rooted in SOJ’s sheer arrogance. Rather than admit they have a problem with how they develop Sonic games, they instead blame their target audience for being hard to please. The mentality behind Sonic Colors was a giant middle finger to longtime fans of Sonic. Always has been, always will be. It doesn’t deserve all of these would be defenders. But alas, here we are. When a game that was literally made for babies garners this much support, what more can we expect from Sonic games than toddler fodder?
“Bastard Devil Biden”, more like “TYRANT DEVIL BIDEN!”
Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge is best described in the 90s as “wack“. It is a film that is confused as to what it wants to be, so much so that it literally destroys it’s own premise with a promise to be about one character while being about multiple characters that get shafted in favor of that one character.
In other words, it’s one of the main reasons I despise the MCU, but primarily because this animated feature was handled by people who clearly had a bias for certain characters over others. The movie spits in the face of Mortal Kombat lore in order to shill the likes of Scorpion and Johnny Cage, so much so that Liu Kang, the Champion of Mortal Kombat, gets his shit kicked in by Goro, and only Scorpion could save him from being torn to shreds. FUCK THAT MOVIE!!
That being said, I was intruiged by the sequel which decided to put Liu Kang up front as the main character this time around. It’s actually rather shocking. Liu Kang hasn’t been the main character of Mortal Kombat since MK4. Even back then, Liu Kang didn’t take so much priority away from other characters that they never had the chance to shine (to my knowledge). But ever since John Tobias left, it felt like Raiden, and then Johnny Cage took center stage of the games, and the transition didn’t feel natural at all. Raiden was just the mentor character to the characters, and Johnny Cage is the comic relief. Besides, why would a GOD become the main character of something called “Mortal Kombat”? I suppose the latter case is just another aspect of the 2010s where the sarcastic rich dipshit has to be the star of the show nowadays. Thanks Iron Man, you’ve ruined entertainment more than you’ve ruined Spider-Man. You know there’s a problem when everyone’s favorite parts of the last 2 Mortal Kombat films were the comedy (Cage from Scorpion’s Revenge, and Kano from 2021).
I’m going to take a minute to ramble about how much I’m sick of seeing this fucking trend. I absolutely HATE the idea of the sarcastic quippy, sometimes rich asshole being the main character of shit. I hate it, I hate it, I absolutely hate it. I feel like the last decade has literally trained people to be drawn to the worst aspects of American society, so much so that a literal sociopath can be everyone’s favorite character so long as they’re funny.
Yes I like Deadpool, but that’s aside the point. He’s not an unbearable shit like Iron Man.
Anywho, before I start this off, I would love to give a very special “FUCK YOU” to Warner Bros. for making this sequel exclusive to Blu-Ray and digital. What balls you have to demand I pay more just to watch a sequel that is only marginally improved upon the first film. Yes, I have a working PS3 and PS4 to play Blu-Ray, but fuck paying extra because of the format it’s on. This shit is a good reason to pirate. 😛
But yes. “Marginally” better is the appropiate description. Mind you, it is a clusterfuck, but it seems to have been handled by a mind that thinks “ok, just because I like Scorpion the most doesn’t mean everyone else does, and that maybe the original main character of the franchise deserves some shine as of late.” Of course, the way they go about this is contrived as shit, it’s better than what they did in the last film. This… unfortunately comes at the expense of one of my favorite characters, and I will DEFINITELY get into that later!
I realize I never really had a post on Scorpion’s Revenge, so here’s a refresher on what that shit stain did. First, it’s opening sequence where Human Scorpion fucks up the Lin Kuei is the only good scene in the whole movie, and it really… REALLY makes you feel for Scorpion when Quan Chi murders his son right in front of him! So automatically, you want Scorpion to get his revenge! Unfortunately, The next few scenes introduce you to Liu Kang, Sonya Blade, and Johnny Cage. This is the movie’s way of telling you that we have to care about these people as well, but gives us no meaningful reason to unlike Scorpion. Cage is being a douchebag to women and his agent sets him up for Mortal Kombat. Sonya Blade is fighting in the back alleys only to get information about Kano who is working for Shang Tsung for Mortal Kombat. And Liu Kang has a sparring session with Raiden in preperation for Mortal Kombat. Then we cut back to Scorpion who is in hell, and fucks up Moloch and several other Netherrealm demons before being comically twisted up like a pretzel by Quan Chi. Quan Chi forces Scorpion’s to find a key that looks like Shinnok’s amulet, which is located on the island where Mortal Kombat takes place. From that moment on, Scorpion literally gets sidelined for the other characters as we get bombarded by references to past games before we do the obligatory maiming of Jax Briggs by Goro. Then the Tournament begins where Cage defeats Baraka without actually fighting back, Reptile jobs against Sonya while having the most flawless design ever seen in MK (FUCK he looked awesome!), and Liu Kang doesn’t hurt women which is why he doesn’t beat the literal shit out of Kitana. Scorpion just goes around dusting Lin Kuei ninjas with no effort. Then Shang Tsung cheats and uses the Black Dragon to kill off Earthrealm fighters because he’s a douch. Scorpion rapes the Black Dragon, then has a friendly conversation with the 3 main humans while Sonya kicks Cage in the nuts, because for some reason I’m expected to care about Johnny and Sonya’s relationship just because it happened in MKX. Then the 4 badasses rape the Black Dragon. Sub-Zero randomly appears, kicks Kano’s ass, and then Scorpion and him fight in a battle that lasts in half a minute. For a rivalry as celebrated as this one in Mortal Kombat, they did fuck all to make it anything other than anticlimatic. After killing Subs, Quan Chi reveals he murdered his family and clan, and Scorpion, who was also impaled, gets the will to kick more ass. Sonya and Johnny go after Kano who is holding Jax hostage. Fuck this movie for humiliating Jax twice. I was convinced the writers had a hate boner for the character. Strong female character gets destroyed and is saved by stupid funny man Cage because we’ll be damned if our Tony Stark Stan gets immasculated 3 times. Then Liu Kang gets dusted by Goro because we don’t care about MK lore anymore than we care about making Scorpion awesome. So Scorpion kills Goro, then forfeits to Liu Kang so that Earthrealm wins Mortal Kombat. FUUUUUUUUCK!!! Then Scorpion fights and kills Quan Chi in an anime fight that’s been more impressive than every other fight in this movie. Liu Kang then whines about being too shit to beat Goro, and Raiden tells him that it was his destiny to beat Shao Khan… while MK fans shit themselves with laughter as to how that could happen since Goro is practically second to Shao Khan in terms of raw strength.
There, all caught up! So without further adeu, lets get on wit it!
The film begins with a prologue for Liu Kang’s backstory to let you know that he’s the main character this time. Because Liu Kang has less fans than Scorpion, this backstory isn’t done well enough to make me care about Liu Kang’s parents. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Show us who these characters are BEFORE they’re murdered off, and THEN we care that they died. We at least got to see some bonding between Scorpion and his kid. We see NOTHING for Baby Kang and his parents. Eitherway, they’re turned into a cherry salad before Raiden randomly appears and saves Liu from being eaten. It begs the question of why he didn’t do the same for the Shirai Ryu when Quan Chi was murdering their asses, but Raiden has shown the world what an incredible fuck up he is.
So we come to the present where the outworld invasion has already begun, and we get to see MAH BOI KUNG LAO!!!
YEAH!!! OH YEAH!!! Man he’s gonna kick SOOOO MUCH ASS IN THIS INTRO, I JUST KNOW IT! LOOK AT HIM GO!!! YEAH BABY, KICK DAT ASS-Oh know, he’s been slammed to the ground by a big demon… Oh well, not everyone can be damn near flawless like the 2021 version. Anywho, he has to be saved by the fucking special forces. Ja has his metal arms, and for some reason, Striker is in this movie, and for some reason, he’s made to be more impressive than Kung Lao… and Lao’s been fighting against demonic shit FAR LONGER than Striker has! …. I think….
Anywho, they managed to make Jax annoying in this movie. He always has this shit eating grin, acting like he’s the coolest shit in the world even though a single movie ago, he was crying like a little bitch throughout the entire shit. It feels… jarring, to say the least. ALSO, because the writers decided to low ball the entire cast for some reason, he’s limited to strong arms and machine gun fire. No plasma fist, no ground shaker, not even those fast hands he has in MK11. Just… machine guns. How lame is that!?
Anywho, we cut over to the main camp of Outworld, and for some reason, Kitana is the general of the Outworld Army even though fucking Reiko is right next to her.
FYI, Reiko is only in this movie to die. Sure he was a generic henchman in 2021, but his actor made that character hilarious! His overacting was incredible, seeing Reiko’s big fuckin eyes pop open for literally every reason was worth the price of admission… if I was actually allowed to go to theaters. >_> In this movie, Reiko is literally a waste of space. I don’t remember if he has any lines of dialogue, even.
Anywho, it’s revealed that Johnny Cage was spying on them while sitting in a tree, and my suspension of disbelief had to take a moment to decipher what in the fresh fuck I’m supposed to accept. How the literal shit does Outworld’s army NOT detect that Cage was in their camp for hours!? Even Cage calls bullshit on this script! This was, of course, all a set up for future gags that I’m all but tired of seeing. After Cage comically falls out of the tree and busts his ass, he’s immediately surrounded by Outworld soldiers. Then he comments on Kitana’s outfit because this is a thing now. After a minute of stupid shit, Sonya Blade starts sniping soldiers within the enemy camp shortly before the rest of the Earthrealm assholes show up to dust everyone. After a while of cheaply animated fighting, Shao Khan shows up. Liu Kang IMMEDIATELY kicks him in the face, and then gets swung into a tree because the writers want us to see just how strong this guy is. Increase the tension and what not. It’s not necessary seeing how Goro whooped Liu’s ass in the last movie, but I suppose that wasn’t convincing enough, so lets hve Liu Kang get swung into a tree with no effort. I’m certain the final battle will be made all the more convincing because of it! I’m annoyed how Liu Kang is made more of an idiot in these films. Like in the last movie, he picks a fight with Scorpion without knowing that he’s actually on the side of Outworld and assumes right off the bat simply because… Scorpion looks scary. Here, he just lashes out and attacks Shao Khan without any real idea of how to deal with him. At least in the 90s film, there’s at least some reason given to why Liu Kang is something of a dolt, but here’s, Liu’s just an idiot! Im sitting here literally thinking “Oh amma, I hope they don’t make him look inferior to Cage for the second time, like Cage could come out with that Shadow energy bullshit and totes pwn the Emperior of Outworld.” It’s the Iron Man vs Thanos fight all over again where Thanos has more respect for Iron Man over Doctor Strange, and the excuse being “well Thanos first appeared in the Iron Man books!” or “Well Iron Man actually drew blood unlike Hulk!” Yes, I need to stop rambling.
Get used to seeing the Earthrealm warriors as inferior to those of Outworld. This movie is a one sided mess!
Shao Khan, bitch that he is, demands a “final Kombat” because he’s a sour ass that couldn’t handle losing the last time. Though… I think he’s perfectly justified seeing as how Earthrealm practically cheated. I mean… Scorpion was supposedly fighting on Outworld’s side, then he turned on them thanks to Quan Chi, killed Goro before he could officially defeat Liu Kang, and then threw the final match to Earthrealm. Hell, I’d feel cheated too! So he and Raiden go to pay the worthless Elder Gods a visit.
BUT FIRST… We have to see what’s cooking with the most overrated Mortal Kombat character in existence…. because Ed Boon pulled an Inafune back in the day and gave Scorpion all the importance, so much so that, because Gamers are a simple lot, they went along with the shilling hype and only loved Scorpion for the same reason they love Zero from Mega Man X! Anywho, Scorpion has a nightmare of his family burning to death before awakening in the Netherrealm… because he was crushed by debris in the last movie. So Shinnok…. WAIT… I SMELL BULLSHIT!!!
Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok ok. Maybe I should rewatch the last movie… but there was some implication that Shinnok was imprisoned or… some shit. Quan Chi was in control of the Netherrealm in the place of Shinnok, and had Scorpion on a mission to retrieve an object in relation to Shinnok. Quan Chi failed to get this “key” because Shang Tsung discovered Quan Chi’s plot before he could enact it.
The idea was that Shinnok was DEFINITELY locked up… or something… so…. HOW THE FUCK IS HE HERE NOW!?
Well, as the writers (who by this point clearly have stopped giving all the fucks they have) try to explain, the key was actually not for Shinnok’s prison… but for the dungeons which housed the Kamidogu, an idea that was ripped off of the Infinity Gems since those trinkets are the body parts of Nemesis. Just like the Chaos Emeralds being body parts of Perfect Chaos. So… Shinnok already has 5 of the Kamidogu, and he needs the one that’s located in Earthrealm. However, the key became bonded to Scorpion’s soul… or some shit. Translation, because Scorpion is the franchise mascot and most popular character, we need to give him something to do for all the 12 year olds watching because they believe that if he is NOT front and center in Mortal Kombat, those same 12 year olds will run and cower in fear of his blasphemic absence! So obviously, Shinnok wants to keep Scorpion around in order to achieve his objective. Scorpion, predictibly, says “bite me” and runs away. But instead of following him, Shinnok decides to have the Lin Quei do his dirty work.
Enter Kuai Liang, the younger Sub-Zero. And BOY, do I have words for how they fucked his character! So you guys know that Sub-Zero is a pretty rational and mature guy when compared to angry boy Scorpion, right? It kinda shows that while Sub-Zero resents Scorpion for killing his brother, he lets it go and tries to focuson mending their conflict and doing all he can to defend Earthrealm while fucking up Sector and his Temugin assholes? Or w/e the hell was going on in Armageddon’s story mode? Yeah well, lets toss ALL of that out of the window and completely focus on the only thing we saw of Sub-Zero from MK9 as the vengeful younger brother. Now… let me clarify something (Oh dear, I sound like the asskissers of the MCU with that statement!). Having Sub-Zero as the vengeful brother here is fine in and of itself. It is only natural for him to want revenge. And as I can understand it, since the movie is based on MK2, that was his primary reason for entering the second tournament. But… here’s the problem. After Sub-Zero and Smoke’s little training session, the Lin Kuei Grandmaster summons them for the task of finding and killing Scorpion. Naturally, Subs is eager to complete the task.
BUT… here’s where they fucked up. The Grandmaster reveals the Cyber Initiative. Here, he shows that Cyrax and Sector have already been mind/Body fucked. So… they fight. Subs manages to escape, but Smoke gets the… well… “smoke” and is captured.
So what happens through the rest of the movie is that it cuts back and forth between MK2 and the Sub story (pun intended) of Sub-Zero and the Cyber Ninjas chasing Scorpion all across the world. That’s… literally all they do for Scorpion’s story. Sub-Zero’s character is VERY much ruined as he is hunting Scorpion… WHILE being hunted by the Cybers. The Cybers… then seem to ignore Subs and goes for Scorpion, Subs freezes the Cybers momentarily, then chases Scorpion, trying to kill him, rinse and repeat. There is little change in what happens in the sub plot, but one thing to note is that Sub-Zero becomes almost exclusively a one-note character. He’s just “Angry” and irrational for the whole damn movie. You’d think he would lament more on the fact that his best friend was turned into a robot, but he’s pretty just “Oh well, them’s the breaks, bitch! I’ve got to murder this guy!” As expected, when Scorpion tries to reason with Subs (this shouldn’t really be a thing), Subs won’t listen and will just try to kill him. Usually it’s the other way around, but a big part of shilling a character is to make all others seem far more irrational than he or she. So in order for Scorpion to look good, Sub-Zero MUST be inferior. It’s how they did it for Tommy Oliver way back in the 90s, it’s how they’ve been doing it for X-Men, especially after Schism between Wolverine and Cyclops, it’s how they did it by turning Captain America into a Hydra agent so that Iron Man’s actions in Civil War were justified, and in many ways, that’s how it’s happened between Liu Kang and Johnny Cage. So for the entire movie, Sub-Zero is just a rage induced murder boner.
Back to Raiden and Shao Khan, they both request of the Elder Gods (or at least Raiden does as Shao Khan despises the idea of having to ASK for anything… which is fitting, actually) to hold a new tournament in Outworld. The Idiot Gods agree, but then Raiden also requests to take part. Shao Khan is pissed over the prospect because it’s called “Mortal Kombat”. But… there’s a flaw in his logic… as well as the very aspect of the tournament itself. Shao Khan isn’t “Mortal”, technically speaking, but he takes part in it. Scorpion isn’t Mortal, he is a Wraith, but he takes part in the first tournament. Mortals don’t typically have the ability to survive death… which is something that Shao Khan has done plenty of times before. And quite frankly, given that the fighters of Outworld have such supernatural powers and abilities that put them on par with gods and demons, I don’t think it’s unfair for Raiden to take part. Afterall, the games, even the reboot, states that Raiden’s godhood is nullified in Outworld. He can still use his powers, but he isn’t immortal like in Earthrealm. I wonder why this factoid wasn’t utilized in the movie. But eh, the Elder Gods decide to strip Raiden of his Godhood in order to have him participate in this movie… which is stupid. But it gets to a very… VERY big problem with this movie.
Earthrealm is fucking LOW BALLED for the sake of tension and suspense. Infact, ALL the heroes are low balled here. Remember when Scorpion would teleport often in the last movie? He doesn’t do that AT ALL here! They don’t even give a reason for it, he just doesn’t teleport anymore. I already mentioned that Jax’s capabilities are reduced to being strong and machine guns. Liu Kang barely uses his fire attacks. Johnny Cage, a character that massacered an army of demons in the last film, gets dusted by D’vorrah despite actually using his Shadow Kick abilities. Que angry fanboys raging that D’vorrah beat up another legacy character… except it’s Johnny Cage, who cares? But don’t worry. Girl power is in full effect so that Sonya Blade can come off like a complete badass expert fighter that easily destroys D’vorrah. Fuck power scaling, who cares if D’vorrah completely demolished a character that destroyed an army of demons that even she couldn’t defeat. Actually, no. That isn’t girl power at all, it’s the fucking shipping between Cage and Blade that I don’t give 2 worthless fucks about. Because after every fight, Sonya has to remind everyone that Johnny Cage isn’t his boyfriend. Infact, her character has been reduced to a goddamn tsundere. I can’t believe Sonya fucking Blade is just a random Tsundere waifu character in this film!
Mind you, I didn’t like her character in the last film, but at least she HAD a character! “Don’t underestimate the power of a strong female character who randomly kicks guys in the balls because that’s female empowerment” is 20x more acceptable than “I didn’t do that because I like you or anything”. Fuck this movie, and fuck the new interest that people have in exploring the love life between Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade. This literally wasn’t a thing back in the 90s, that much I do remember, but ever since fucking MKX, we all have to stand up and cheer for these 2 jackoffs. This is Neo-Trinity, Cyclops-Jean Grey, Tommy-Kimberly, and Spiderman-Mary Jane all the fuck over again, and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being told to give a shit about the relationship between 2 characters when neither party is a character I like. I don’t like modern Comic relief Johnny Cage. I don’t like Sonya “I am woman, hear me roar” Blade. Even the relationship between Liu Kang and Kitana wasn’t shoved in our face like these 2. Unless you only remember the 90s movies and Defenders of the Realm. Speaking of which, Sonya Blade was a pretty cool character in the cartoon, and I honestly think the change in actress helped to make her a more likable character in Mortal Kombat Annihilation, especially since she would go on to kick David Hasselhoff’s ass in Nick Fury. Go go post-MKX Sonya Blade! May your badassery live on for all eternity!
Actually, now that I think about it, 2021 Sonya Blade was pretty cool too despite having no real arc. Fuck Legends Sonya Blade, and fuck the Legends Shipping! Holy shit, why am I ranting about a character that was never a particular favorite of mine!?
Anywho, most of the battles against Outworld go off without a hitch. The Earthrealm fighters, despite being underpowered as shit, completely destroys Outworld. So all that time spent trying to create fake tension has gone out the window. Later, the Earthrealmers get some rest and relaxation, we get MORE bullshit shipping for Cage and Blade in which I’m hoping one of you can bullshit me on why this cocksucker would care about pussy when they’re in a fight to save their world from being destroyed by a mad man. Actually, don’t answer that. It’s actually pretty realistic to want sex if the world is going to end. 😛
Liu Kang is worried about Raiden because he’s mortal now, is stripped of his powers for some odd reason, and actually desires food and sleep like a regular human, but Raiden keeps smiling and telling him not to worry. It’s like the movie can’t help but spoil the plot before it can finish, stop foreshadowing his death for crying out loud!
But then we get to Striker vs Shang Tsung, and holy shit, Shang Tsung just rapes him. Well obviously, no one I know actually likes Striker except the Proud Boys. But I must say that, aside from Jax, no one from Earthrealm ever uses fatalities on Outworld. I guess they have to be Reptile in order to be fatalitied because all of a sudden, we’re supposed to hate Reptile. Fuck that. Reptile is one of the coolest MK characters, and I will be damned if I get conscripted into looking at him as a lesser being than Modern Johnny Cage. Or Kano for that matter. No I don’t care if his 2021 counterpart is the only good character in that movie, Kano in general is ass!
But speaking of fatalities…. sighs….. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK… this next part!!!!
So MAH BOI KUNG LAO… hasn’t had a single fight the entire tournament, ok? I mean… literally, does not fight at all… until this point. Kung Lao’s opponent?
FUCKING SHAO KHAN!!
Right then and there, I said to myself “FUCK THIS MOVIE! FUCK IT IN THE ASS, IN THE THROAT, FUCK THE WRITERS WHO WROTE THIS SHIT, FUCK THE FANBOYS WHO WILL INEVITABLY SUCK THIS OFF BECAUSE 2021 WAS SO BAD, JUST FUCKITY FUCK IT!!! FUCK!!” HOW does this happen!? Kung Lao only appears in the beginning invasion scene and does barely fuck all to save the shaolin temple, he doesn’t have his teleporting abilities, and he doesn’t fight in this tournament… until SHAO KHAN!? The writers have a raging hate boner for Kung Lao or something to fuck him over this badly!
So… the fight is short because… it’s Shao Khan, but lets go over this. So… Kung Lao does a jump, right? Shao Khan evades him easily, so Kung Lao dashes toward him and delivers multiple punches to his abdomen which does fuck all, then finally with a kick that Khan blocks, so Shao Khan counters with a massive overhead punch that Kung Lao dodges with ease. However, Khan runs up to Lao and leg sweeps him into the air, then follows up with a straight punch. Lao gets knocked halfway across the arena… and appears to be out of commission. Khan slowly marches up to him and tries to step on him. Lao immediately jumps out of the way, and does his signature hat toss. Khan catches the hat with his bare hand, then tosses it back at Lao. Here, Lao fails to capture his hat….
Lao… fails to capture his hat… doesn’t even… try.. to catch it. I… sighs
I really… honestly, as a person who wasn’t even ALLOWED… to get invested into Mortal Kombat at such a young age, I shouldn’t be so upset over this. Hell, I barely even got to know Kung Lao since all the MK Media I could look at were the 90s movies, the 90s cartoon, and now. All that shit I watched back then never had Kung Lao. The first time I could actually play Mortal Kombat was on the N64 with that Trilogy shit, and I didn’t know who most of those characters, but knew my sister would always pick Liu Kang because he screams funny. Didn’t ever use Kung Lao once, never even fought him in the arcade mode… I don’t even know if he was in the game.
I did not come to like or care about Kung Lao… until MK9. When I was looking at the few gameplay trailers and whatnot, I said right then and there… that “He’s going to by my fucking main”! And indeed he was! Kung Lao is the literal PIMP of Mortal Kombat! He’s the coolest mother fucker there is in this series! He’s got so much style and finess that you’d be crazy to ignore his pimpability! He is the definition of Rule of Cool. And his moves were damn near FLAWLESS! The very rare times I went online, I managed to get… at least 3 wins with this guy as my pick. Yeah, screw you guys, people had lag tactics up the ass! YEAH, THAT’S THE REASON >>, << I was FURIOUS that they nerfed him in MKX, but unlike Jax, he still had some fight left in him, and due time, I was whoopin ass once more! Sure I didn’t MK11, but I’m pretty sure he’s still the same old badass he usually is! Hell, the game’s story spelled it out for you! How he just said “fuck the Shaolin traps, I have THIS” and just tosses his hat to fuck up that whole trap, GODDAMN HE’S SO COOL!!!! And dude, you know I loved how 2021 put some respect on his name! No longer was he the jealous rival to Liu Kang, he was a mentor to a couple of idiots, provoking the funny man to get his Arcana, and was so damn pimp that he dusts the Vampire bitch with ease!
“Flawess Victory!” Wipe
HELL YEAH!!!
So… lemme tell you all… that when I saw… Shao Khan throw his hat right into Kung Lao’s chest, and he just stood there with no effort… or any real fucking intent… to catch the damn thing…. I shut the whole fucking movie off! I cut that shit off for the whole damn day! I was losing my mind, I was pissed beyond belief! I was sitting here thinking “They did NOT just disrespect mah boi like this!” I said cut this shit off, I don’t give a fuck! Just… NO!! NO! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!! What kind of fuckery is this!? They straight up DISSED him! They said “lets just put the original G of Mortal Kombat in this movie just to kill him off! We know people only care about Scorpion being awesome, and Cage getting sexy time with Blade, so no one will mind”. Just no respect at all! They just put him in the movie TO DIE!! Why the fuck am I watching these movies when my 3 favorite characters are always getting fucked over!? Either Reptile jobs, Jax gets maimed, or Kung Lao just dies. Why the fuck do I bother!? Everyone only cares about Cage and Blade sex bonding so fuck everything else! Sure Liu Kang gets his respect back, but now it’s like no one else in this series MATTERS anymore! Somebody get Tobias back because it’s clear Boon is screwing around with the characters at this point.
Yeah, that’s something that’s been on my mind lately. It seems that the only real shred of lore that people only enjoyed from the series goes up to MK4. While people mention 5(DA), 6(D), and 7(A) a few times, the only pieces of lore they do enjoy comes from the first 4 games, and these games all involved John Tobias (or did he leae before MK4? I don’t recall). That would make sense considering he’s the one who created all the lore for the series to my knowledge. Plus, DA inexclipibly had Shao Khan alive for some reason even though he was pretty much dead after MK3 with Reiko seemingly taking over the reigns of Outworld Emperor, something we have yet to see in this series because “HERP HERP, REIKO NOT SHAO” or some shit. So it stands to reason that the lore of the series was no longer important to the rest of the creative staff of Mortal Kombat as several things were just changed outright. While it’s true that MK9 was a reboot of the series (though technically Shaolin Monks made all the retcons beforehand), but it did so as a time traveling concept, meaning that some elements of the original canon (yes) NEEDED to be maintained instead of removing whatever depth the characters had in the first place where they are just changed into these very generic characters with no meaning to their struggles. I’m getting all kinds of info from the fans. How Mileena dresses sexy because she feels ugly thanks to her mangled face, or how Kung Lao is actually a pacifist who wants nothing to do with Mortal Kombat, but still harbors a grudge against Goro, or how Sindel was actually a loving mother instead of a generic golddigging bitch they turned her into for Aftermath… just because it’s easier for them to make shit up as they go along instead of giving these characters proper stories or arcs that at least live up to, coincide with, or have a shred of goddamn respect to the source material! Thus, Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms is based on Final Destination 4 logic. No one cares about these characters, they only care about the fatalities. Which is the logic behind dusting Kung Lao like this. He’s treated like a nobody, some random character that apparently no one is supposed to like. It’s an inconsiderate logical fallacy in which the writers ASSUME my tastes right off the bat. This is another problem with entertainment today. You’re not allowed to have preferences for jack shit. You’re only supposed to be invested in the spectacle, not the substance. And for some reason, audiences are ok with this mindset. Movies are no longer a medium for telling stories in spectacular ways, it’s just a theme park attraction that costs more than the price of admission.
sighs. So… going back to the descecration of Kung Lao, after getting his chest split, Shao Khan pulls the hat out and proceeds to do his signature fatality. Fuck you, writers! Then Shao licks the blood off his fingers like his Mileena, Vega, or fucking Skarlet because, again, the spectacle is the most important. Then he says “Fatality”, and we’re supposed to stand up and cheer because “OMG IT’S JUST LIKE IN THE GAMES!!!” Fuck you, writers!
So next up, Shao Khan dusts Jax and a couple of other Earthrealm fighters, but he doesn’t KILL them like he did Kung Lao because special forces is more important than Kung Lao, and because we still need to do more shipping with Cage and Blade. Then we get to Kitana vs Raiden. Now… this here is a moment that pissed off quite a few fanboys as Kitana practically defeats Raiden with ZERO EFFORT! Raiden does not land a single blow during the entire fight and gets steamrolled as though he were a common chump. I would, like most normal people would, assume that Raiden threw the fight because he was trying to get Kitana to betray Shao Khan, which she does seconds later… but, and I shit you not, people were bitching that Kitana being able to beat Raiden’s ass was, are you ready for this?
A POLITICAL GESTURE!!!
WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK!?
A political gesture! Kitana beating Raiden (while THROWING THE FIGHT) is POLITICAL! I shit you not, this new generation of fans are retarded now. I knew it. You can’t do shit that isn’t white male oriented without it being “political”, the mind fucking is real! People who are not idiots would NEVER assume this to be the case. I mean hell, Raiden wasn’t even TRYING to fight Kitana. But this… oh noes, Kitana is beating Raiden with zero effort, it MUST be political! Yeah right, dumbass. And the very next scene, she’s getting bodied by Shao Khan after trying to kill him. Where’s the politics in that!? Let that be Jade whoopin Raiden’s ass, these people would lose their ever loving minds! But yes, after pinning Raiden down, she tosses her fan into Shao Khan’s chest, and declares that she forfeits the match. As rightful ruler of Edenia, she claims that Earthrealm wins so that the merging of the Realms do not happen. Then Shao Khan gets up and… basically says “Silly bitch, your weapons cannot harm me, do you know who the fuck I am, I’m the Juggernaut!”
That’s actually hilarious, Shao Khan plays dead while Kitana gasses herself up. Then he wakes up and beats her senseless.
So after that OH SO POLITICAL SCENE, we get the Liu Kang vs Shang Tsung fight. At first, I figure Liu Kang would crush Shang, but the sorceror actually puts up a good fight, just destroys Liu Kang. And then he “curses” Liu’s arm, rendering it disabled for the remainder of the fight. This… means nothing as it was only done to create tension. You know why? Because then Liu Kang just steamrolls Shang Tsung for the rest of the fight! After kicking his ass, Liu Kang doesn’t even kill the bastard and declares that he should live in shame knowing that he got his ass kicked, and that the battle… “wasn’t even close”. Wasn’t even close? Perhaps I can chalk that up to Liu getting his head caved in to the point of amnesia.
So now we get to the climax of the film… which is what everyone thought when they get to this scene. Raiden vs Shao Khan. If you couldn’t tell before, Raiden gets killed here, so no need to go into detail. But immediately after this, Liu Kang flies at Shao Khan in a murderous rage. As is typical of a final battle, Liu Kang gets destroyed. Keep in mind that his cursed arm doesn’t matter one bit in this battle as Liu fights normally. After his pummeling, Liu Kang then powers up to Ultra Instinct Gold and completely murders Shao Khan as though he were a Saiyan Warrior. It’s fair to say that this fight looked like Dragon Ball.
So then, the Elder Gods come out of their cave to declare that Liu Kang is the new Champion of Mortal Kombat. BUT OH NOES! It’s not over yet! Why? Well lets check in with Scorpion and Sub-Zero as their sub plot was more important to the movie than MK2!
So Scorpion makes it to the area where the Earthrealm Kamidogu exists, and Sub-Zero is STILL being an angry asshole with a murder boner, but after quite a few scenes, Scorpion manages to get the idiot Ninja to calm down and see the bigger picture, about how the realms are in mortal danger, and that they should live to settle their differences another time. So after 4 scenes, Sub-Zero lets Scorpion go, but OH NOES! The Cyber Ninjas come in and capture Scorpion, forcing him to open a door because he’s the key… shit, I’m talking about events out of order. That’s how little of a shit I gave about Scorpion’s story since most of it boiled down to a basic chase sequence that’s split into 5 parts (or scenes in this case).
First, Scorpion evades Sub-Zero’s capture at some military base while getting knocked around by the cyber ninjas. Then, he makes it to a temple gate, and is forced to open it by the Cyber Ninjas, but then Sub-Zero freezes the Cyber ninjas and chases Scorpion inside to fight in some ice caverns as though it were a reference to their battle in MK Annihilation, but Scorpion evades Sub-Zero and the Cyber Ninjas. Next, they make it to the shrine of the Earthrealm Kamidogu, and Scorpion talkes some sense into Sub-Zero, telling him to piss off and let him save the multiverse, and Subs just lets him. But then the Cyber Ninjas beat them both up and take the Kamidogu with them.
So now Scorpion takes Sub-Zero down to the Netherrealm to save the universe!
While in the Netherrealm, Shinnok has five Kamidogu in preperation to ressurect the One Being, with the Lin Kuei Grandmaster coming down to give him the final piece. But after stupidly realizing too late that Shinnok wants to ressurect the One Being, Shinnok has him and his Cyber Ninjas all killed. Then Scorpion and Sub-Zero show up… FAIL to prevent Shinnok from performing his ceremony. So now… I guess, Shinnok merges with the one being, turning into his final form from MKX, and fucking up all the realms!
NOW we go back to Liu Kang where the Elder Gods give him even more God Power so that they can defeat the One Being… by turning into a giant dragon.
Now we have Godziliu Kang vs Shinnokong! Yes, this movie is still going on, yes you’re watching a literal kaiju fight, yes this is basically Endgame with no cohesion whatsoever, yes this is just another excuse to ship Cage and Blade for the last fucking time, yes Scorpion literally comes in at the last minute and saves Godiziliu Kang from getting his ass kicked, then he turns into Golden God Liu Kang and crushes the One Being with his bare hand, and finally, he goes into outer space and splits the 6(5 shown) realms back apart. Wow, this final battle went on far longer than what I described.
And then… something stupid happens.
Sonya Blade… turns her cap backwards and kisses Johnny Cage. No, not the lip locking, but the turning of her cap backwards. What the hell is that supposed to symbolize or insinuate? That she’s loosening up? Letting go? It’s.. dumb.
Then Kitana sucks face with God Kang, it’s just everyone getting horny after the hell that broke loose. Scorpion and Sub-Zero disappear from the scene altogether, and it’s implied that Raiden is still alive after the shitstorm was finished… and that’s the end of the movie.
Boy… that was… weird.
It’s impossible for me to be upset at this movie as I’ve lowered my expectations thanks to the last 2 fuck ups in MOrtal Kombat moviedom, but… this shit is a massive clusterfuck! The ending battle left be bewildered, confused, and bored out of my mind as to what the hell was going on. It feels like for this film, they tried to fit in several different MK games. You have MK2, MK Mythologies: Sub-Zero, you have UMK3 with all the realms getting merged, you have MK4 with Shinnok and Reiko, you have Deception with the whole One Being, and you even have MK Annihilation mixed in there. The plot is not structured well at all as you essentially have 2 different movies going on with no particular focus, and again, it DOES seem like Scorpion takes the most important plot point again. Compared to Scorpion’s Revenge, it would be a lie to say that I did not enjoy this more. The problem is I don’t know exactly why considering what they DID to Kung Lao, but I suppose it’s because the movie did not underwhelming like the first one did. It’s likely because the beginning of the film wasn’t compromised in favor of doing a Mortal Kombat Tournament. The beginning of the film states the main point of the movie is a Tournament, and it doesn’t try to dissuade you from caring about it. Scorpion’s Revenge started off making you care about… Scorpion’s Revenge, but then throws the first Mortal Kombat Tournament in your face which makes you forget about that Revenge. Now I care more about the tournament than Scorpion’s Revenge. I don’t think people really care about Scorpion as a character, but rather as a mascot of adrenaline bad assery. He’s basically the Batman/Wolverine of MK where you only care about him doing all the ass kicking, but he doesn’t matter as a character, and that’s where the disconnect lies. Nevermind that Scorpion is barely in the damn movie as it were, so the director didn’t even care if the title character got sidelined. Might as well be one of the Russo Brothers directing “Captain America: Civil War” where Captain America got sidelined in favor of Iron Man. While Liu Kang is passed off as the main focus in the very first scene of the movie, he really isn’t as he’s given the same level of focus as everyone else… which is nice, I suppose. No one character is treated as being more important than the other… to an extent. Yes, the movie does have characters that are only there to die or get their asses kicked (mainly Kung Lao GRRRRRR!!!), but you’re never under the impression that one character is getting preferential treatment.
But that’s only a comparative analysis with Scorpion’s Revenge. On it’s own, Battle of the Realms is just really stupid. Too many plot threads and focus on stupid shit that I, and hopefully many others, don’t care for, namely the FUCKING ROMANCE between Cage and Blade. The amount of times the plot of the movie stopped to ship those assholes is astronomical for something called Mortal Kombat. Even going so far as to have Jax tell Johnny Cage how to get women. Why the fuck is this in Mortal Kombat!? You’ve got dumbasses bitching about Kitana beating Raiden as being political, but not ONE of these dipshits talks about why so much of this movie has a hard on for this ship! The action is fine for the most part, though the most revered gore of the series claim to fame is… honestly dissappointing. Aside from 2 fatalities, the gore in this film that people swear is of utmost importance… is outdone by the last film and 2021. It’s actually quite sad that there was more blood and guts from 2021 than there was from Battle of the Realms. Characters are… actually kind of boring because, again, they’re only in this movie to die for the most part. As I’ve said before, Jax is just cocky for some reason, and doesn’t act like a commanding officer of the Special Forces. Sonya was turned into a Tsundere, Johnny Cage is just as unfunny as he was in the Scorpion’s Revenge even when the movie tries desperately to convince you he isn’t (he randomly yammers on before he fights D’vorrah for some reason…), Kung Lao has 2 line of dialog which tells us nothing, Striker is supposed to be the guy we’re supposed to relate to even though he just dies off, Kitana is generic and boring, Raiden is… actually an improvement, Scorpion is boring and low balled, Sub-Zero is ruined, Shinnok is barely in the movie… the characters aren’t really good to say the least, because again the action and gore was given emphasis. It goes without saying that this is a movie, and spectacle only lasts the first time. After that, there needs to be something that sticks with you from the movie… but damn, even the spectacle is shit!
I don’t want to do another Spoony, but there are a FEW things that Scorpion’s Revenge right in terms of Spectacle. The gore and action was top notch, but characters and story fell flat. Battle of the Realms, the gore and action is inferior, but the characters and story aren’t that much better. So… why did I enjoy this more than Scorpion’s Revenge? ESPECIALLY after what these bastards did to Kung Lao!?
Perhaps I’m not giving the characters and story enough credit because it’s still poorly done, and I still probably have some baggage leftover from Scorpion’s Revenge… and Kung Lao’s death. I like… that Liu Kang and Raiden are more than just blocks of plot wood. Even if the tension is cheap, forced, and artificial, I do like that it’s there as it DOES make the movie a bit more interesting. I do like the fact that Sonya isn’t the generic “Strong Female Character” trope that’s gotten old real fast (even if what we have now is WORSE!), I do like that Jax isn’t a punk bitch like the last time (even though he’s now more annoying than usual), I do like that Scorpion is not a one-dimensional bad ass and actually has guilt over what he did to Bi Han and how he tries to reconcile with Kuai Liang over it, and while it’s not particularly well done (much like MK11 before it), I do like that Liu Kang is once again the hero who saves the day. Immense baby steps, but it’s there. Overrall, I still wouldn’t recommend the movie. Too much stupid shit going on, and if I’m being honest, it kinda drags. The movie feels LONG, and not for good reason.
Perhaps this is a sign that people now only see film as a mere theme park attraction. Things that we used to care about (story, characters, lore) is no longer important to making an enjoyable film. It is 100% about spectacle.
So, I'm playing #SonicColoursUltimate on the PS4 and in Act 1 of Aquarium Park, the game decided to freeze. Since I couldn't do anything, I had to close the game entirely. You know what have happened? The game decided to remove it's existence from the console. pic.twitter.com/fKaZkz27KH
So a decent bloke found these on Twitter. This shit is happening on all platforms, and I’m looking for shitbirds who’re going to try and ass kiss Sega regardless of the current fuck up they have going on. “EET R STILL BETTA DAN OHHH SEEEEX!”
Join me, my audience of 3, as I LAUGH at all the cretins who believed THIS nonsense was worth the effort of rehashing in HD! I guess wanting a Generations remake/hash would’ve been for naught as well.
But goddamn Sega. You have the worst track record when it comes to remaking games for newer systems. Allegedly SADX is worse, Sonic Genesis was absolute SHIT on GBA, and you needed that Aussie to make SCD mildly better with a neutered Japanese Soundtrack. Stick to porting the games like you usually do. Your mild updates only seem to destroy the whole damn thing. Colors wasn’t even good to begin with, but WHOOO Boy, did you do a bang up job making it undesirable!
Oh well, the Brazilian Team was pretty lousy back in KOF14 (Because China), but I’d take them over the reappearance of Ash Crimson, probably the second worse main character in the series. Blue Mary returning has peaked my interest.
Wait…. 2022!? SON OF A BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Delayed again. Oh well, better stick with Fighting EX Layer till then…. 😦
I started off this little series talking about X-Men for a good reason. While I love Spider-Man to death, I have a much longer history with the X-Men series. I’ve honestly invested more time in the X-Men series than I did Spider-Man. So if I were to be completely honest, I think Fox has a better grasp of the X-Men series than most people give them credit for.
X-Men is not your typical run of the mill super hero series. Infact, when it was just mindless super hero comics like the rest of em, it sold like complete ASS! It took a little guy named Claremont to really turn the X-Men into something profitable. Chief among them being the more dramatic and darker storylines such as the Dark Phoenix Saga. The series became more dramatic, more serious, and deeper than anything Marvel could cobble together in the next few years, so much so that X-Men ended up being the only Marvel comic that was selling in the 90s (or so I’ve heard). X-Men is a property that NEEDS to be taken seriously. The stories the X-Men have are some of the most dramatic shit you will ever read. The characters go through a lot of traumatic shit in their stories, and that’s something that needs to be preserved. For the most part, Fox had it right. The movies were taken seriously. The stories were very dramatic. The characters go through untold traumas and develop accordingly. While the characters are never 100% accurate to their sources (or recognizable at all, mind you), the basic idea of X-Men is preserved. They exist in a world were prejudice against mutants causes the most strife. From mutant terrorists to Sentinels, Purifiers, U-Men, Morlocks, etc. All of these factions come from the “racial tensions” produced by humans and their hatred of mutants. Everything serving as an allegory for real world discrimination which, lets be honest, has FAR more relevancy in the last 5 years than it ever did between the 80s and 2010s. It’s such an intricate, yet convoluted series that constantly intrigues me and others.
Because of that alone, X-Men is not something to be taken lightly. It NEEDS to be dark. It NEEDS to be serious. It NEEDS to be dramatic. Demanding that should be stripped away because you want superficial bullshit like flashy costumes and big dumb superhero fights is horribly shallow and would do far more harm to the X-Men series than you’d give it credit for. Save that shit for the Deadpool movies, but X-Men proper should not be held back for superficial desires. People see the MCU as “being faithful” to the source material and seeing the comics come to life, but this is done on surface level. Characters and stories are strip mined to be more shallow, safe, and forgettable in time for people to ignore tha plot of the movies and focus on the easter eggs and promotional bullshit for the next movie. If they can ruin Mandarin, ruin Ultron, ruin Spider-Man, ruin Civil War, ruin Ragnarok, and for all intents and purposes ruin the Infinity Gauntlet Saga, there’s no telling what they would do to X-Men in it’s entirety. Afterall, they did screw up Dark Phoenix to promote Captain Rape Victim.
I say this because from the trailer of Spider-Fan 3, they’re already coming up with the newest gimmick of “taking the Sam Raimi villains and putting them in this movie” (MORE GIMMICKS, FUCK!). But then I started thinking “what if they use the precious Multiverse of Madness as their key to bringing in all the movie franchises that they never made?” They could use that to bring in the X-Men characters so that Hugh Jackman can stop whining about not being in the MCU, and cement them as part of the MCU without any real care as to how to truly implement them. They could ruin the X-Men, and the fans would not care so long as it’s not handled by Fox. And everyone would come out of the woodwork to go “HEY, DEADPOOL IS A COMEDY, SO WHY’S IT WRONG FOR THE REST OF THE X-MEN TO-” I don’t need that shit. I KNOW what I grew up watching and reading. We wouldn’t have awesome shows like “The Gifted” if Disney handled it.
The bar has been lowered so significantly that “mere inclusion” is all it takes to be highly praised. I do not want X-Men to be raped as Spider-Man was, yet it appears to be inevitable at this point. MCU fans are blinded by their superficial desires, and will demand ruin before demanding substance and respect. If that is what “Multiverse of Madness” or w/e nonsensical plan they have in the future entails, then consider me a Marvel fan no more. I’ve got enough problems dealing with the ruination of Sonic and He-Man alone, and I wasn’t even a fan of the latter.
I’ve rambled far too much for own good about what the MCU did to Spider-Man, though I’ve admittedly never explained in detail as to what I truly found appalling about how he is portrayed in these movies. I will… attempt… to be as civil as possible.
I’ve already gone on at length as to why I love this character to death, so that isn’t necessary. But I’ll start by saying this. I WAS indeed… excited to see Spider-Man make it into Civil War. I WAS excited at the prospect of Spider-Man meeting all these different Avengers, and becoming a part of the team!
And then… I watched the movie.
Needless to say, my excitement quickly evaporated the moment I find Iron Man recruiting him. Well, “recruit” is a strong word. Like I said before, Tony Stark actually BLACKMAILED Peter into fighting for his side by threatening to expose his identity to his Aunt May. Peter KNOWS this, and yet for some reason, he still worships the son of a bitch in the first 2 Spider-Fan movies. But… that’s aside the point (somewhat). The moment it’s revealed that his trademark Spider-Man suit was infact… NOT created by Peter Parker himself, but was instead manufactured by Iron Man out of thin air… I wanted to vomit! The moment I hear “Sorry, but I really gotta impress Mr. Stark!”, I wanted to toss a brick at the theater screen! The moment he answers to Captain America “That you’re wrong, you think you’re right, and that makes you dangerous” like a little brainwashed chimp who cannot think or ask questions about a situation far beyond his station or comprehension (being that Peter Parker is known to do SOME detective work on his own!), I wanted to punch all the bastards that were cheering for this little fraud! Everything about him was “Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark!” Suddenly, the movie that I was enjoying so far felt INCREDIBLY sour! I felt nauseous watching it. This to me was a desecration of one of the greatest Marvel Super Heroes ever created… by making him the Robin to Iron Man!
I admit, this probably wouldn’t have stung if he was eager to appease Cap (yes, I am that biased and petty), but I feel justified knowing EXACTLY what Iron Man has done throughout the MCU up to that point as well as the kind of person he really is. This becomes even harder to stomach when back at Pete’s apartment, he IMMEDIATELY questions everything Tony Stark is doing! Why he lied about Peter applying for a scholarship and all. Peter KNOWS that Tony basically blackmailed him into going to Germany to fight the rest of the Avengers. And yet… throughout the entire fight, he expresses, without hesitation or un-assuredness, that his entire motivation for being there, rationale for fighting the Secret Avengers, and even TACTICAL ADVISE against Cap… completely hinges on Tony. It’s like watching Samus exposit about Adam in Other M, Spider-Fan’s thoughts are zeroed in on Iron Man exclusively. It was disgusting! Much like the Guan babies of Dynasty Warriors, Spider-Fan only existed to be an extension of, and to be a mouthpiece that praises glory all to Iron Man.
Now granted, there is a precedent for this in the comics, but that’s a very short time and for completely different reasons. Sometime before Civil War begins, Peter becomes an “employee” to Tony Stark. These 2 have had very few team ups in the past, but I don’t quite recall if Spider-Man looked to Iron Man in a manner of admiration or a father figure. Infact, the most interaction I can recall outside of the comics that explained their almost non-existent relationship is this remark in Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
That short and subtle jab showed some level of resentment towards Iron Man for being rich. Which would make sense. Spider-Man’s had nothing but money trouble in his life (amongst other traumatic things), so to be around a guy who flaunts his wealth would likely be sickening to him. I mean come on. This guy crashed the Human Torch’s birthday because he was jealous of all the positive attention he was getting, including all the bitches he could ever want. Why would he want to be around Iron Man? The only reason I could see is because Spider-Man, historically, has always admired super geniuses. From Kurt Connors to Otto Octavius and Reed Richards, give Peter a science wiz, and he’ll walk barefoot into hell to get their approval. But… that wasn’t the case either. He (and his wife Mary Jane) just worked for Iron Man as his right hand man. Thus we come to this conundrum where Spider-Man and Iron Man are allies in the Civil War Comic series…. at first.
See, because Peter Parker isn’t a mindless drone like his MCU counterpart, he started seeing the error of his ways after revealing his cherished identity to the rest of the world. He started seeing all the flaws of Iron Man’s Pro-Registration side. All the measures they were taking to punish those that didn’t go along with it. He instantly decided to change sides. Now Iron Man, douchebag that he is, gave him the overrated Iron Spider Costume after egging him on to reveal his identity in support of the registration act. This was a trap, basically. The suit was gathering all the data he could get on Spidey, showing how much he cared >_>. When Peter decided “man FUCK this shit!” after a clone of Thor kills Goliath (black dude dies first 😦 ), Iron Man, douchebag that he is, SENDS IN HIS GOON SQUAD TO BEAT THE LITERAL SHIT OUT OF SPIDER-MAN! That settled that relationship rather well, what with Peter going on to create his own company that competes with Stark Industries and Alchemax (Miguel O’Hara baby!).
That’s as far as the respect to the source material goes. Spider-Man’s brief time as Iron Man’s ally is a convenient excuse to destroy his character by making him entirely dependent upon Iron Man to have anything resembling a story. I would probably have enjoyed seeing a Spider-Man movie that took place BEFORE Civil War. That way, we’d get a taste of this Tom Holland dork before becoming a one note “notice me Stark Senpai“. Homecoming, “I want to be just like you!” Why don’t you just shove Kevin Feige’s balls in my mouth while you’re at it!?
*sighs* “Civil”, Heru..
Far From Home, “How can I be as great as Iron Man?“, like… dude, what happened to your sense of independence!? You started off wanting to get Iron Man out of your apartment, or going through your things. Hell, you should’ve been pissed off that he was literally SPYING ON YOU when you didn’t even notice! Invasion of privacy, deception, blackmail, where the hell is this literal WORSHIP coming from!? His entire character hinges on Iron Man, and it is sickening! The once independent character that refused to join even the Fantastic Four because there was no money to be gained… is falling on his sword to go “PRAISE BE TO LORD STARK!!!”
But getting away from that, Spider-Man’s inclusion in the MCU is purely simple. It’s salad dressing to increase the MCU’s stock price. Heighten it’s value. It honestly did not matter how they included him or how they portrayed him. Spider-Man’s image is there. Spider-Man’s likeness is there. The Optics of the web slinger was all it took, but it’s easy to understand why.
When Marvel fans looked to the MCU, they treated it as a massive crossover series. All of these different Marvel characters interacting with each other in live action on the big screen is appetizing the everyone’s fantasy. But there was only one problem. All of the characters involved were all closely tied to the Avengers above all else. They were all set up to be a part of the Avengers from the get go. Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, by themselves, they weren’t much to care about, but as a part of the Avengers, that’s where their bread and butter lied. Aside from Hulk and Iron Man, stand alone Avengers characters weren’t exactly popular (I don’t think anyone even cared about Iron Man even if he did have his own cartoon). And when you get right down to it, the Avengers by themselves didn’t have the best storylines. Infact, with ethically questionable plots like Ms. Marvel being brainwashed and raped by High Evolutionary or Immortus (I’m drawing blanks at the moment) and them not really doing shit about it, or Hank Pym abusing Janet and creating Ultron, the constant infighting, or everything involving Iron Man including Galactic Storm, it’s safe to say that the Avengers were pretty shitty people to boot, especially after screwing with the X-Men over Hope Summers. So having all of these different films like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America… there isn’t a whole lot of meaning to them because these characters were already well established as members of the Avengers. If anything, I think the creation of individual films just to acclimate people to the Avengers movies actually hurts the Avengers movies themselves as the appeal of these characters in one movie is lessened by the old adage of “I’ve seen these people already, they’re not all that interesting now“.
The thing is… the X-Men movies were not built up to be a part of the Avengers. The Spider-Man movies were not built up to be a part of the Avengers. The Fantastic Four were not built up to be a part of the Avengers. Ghost Rider was not built up to be a part of the Avengers. Daredevil, Elektra, Blade, none of these characters or franchises were built up to be a part of the Avengers. The core Avengers that people know of are Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man and Wasp, Black Panther to some extent, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel. Several more obscure ones like Tigra, Swordsman, Hercules, Luke Cage, the Black Knight, Jack of Hearts, Mockingbird, etc. On temporary occasions they would include the more familiar Spiderman, Wolverine, Beast, select members of the Fantastic Four. But overall, the Avengers already have established team members, most of who have already appeared in the Avengers films. The MCU was a gold mine after the first Avengers movie because it honestly did feel like watching the old cartoons. It felt like there was a large scale battle taking place against aliens and Loki. There was good reason to be excited for the future of the MCU, at the time at least. But it was around this time that people were pretty upset that the likes of Spider-Man nor the X-Men could be a part of it. Especially after the dismal reception of X-Men 3 and Spider-Man 3. People thought the studios were holding these characters back (especially Fox), and weren’t going to bother making it where any of these superheroes fight in spectacular battles on the same scale as Avengers. So people desperately wanted Spider-Man and the X-Men to be handled by Disney if only to have them both in this massive and epic battles. And, of course, because of Fox’s stubbornness in sticking to their guns when people were already spoiled by one Avengers film alone, they practically cemented their fate. It was clear to Marvel fans that Fox and Sony couldn’t be “trusted” to give them their epic Superhero battles, instead choosing to focus on character depth and more grounded superhero fights where mutants just throw basic powers at each other.
Yes, it IS underwhelming.
So yes, I get why people throw caution to the wind and will support anything this studio does with (or rather “TO”) Spider-Man as we get to see him be a part of all these epic battles with the rest of the Avengers.
Unfortunately, for me it seems, the fans did not bother to name their price. They didn’t care about what it would cost to bring Spider-Man into the MCU, and what machinations they would put him through. They didn’t care. All they wanted was to get Spider-Man away from Sony after Amazing Spider-Man 2.
This is how we get to people saying (with unapologetic idiocy) that Tom Holland’s version of Spider-Man is the best and “most accurate” version of Spider-Man to appear on the big screen. Now, I’m not going to discount the possibility of shills. It is virtually impossible for every single MCU movie to have nothing but glowing praise. Phase 1 and Phase 2 had a large plethora of detractors, but they seemed to have “phased out” after Phase 3. With the exception of Captain Marvel, late stage MCU was swelling with unbridled (and often unwarranted) praise. So pardon me if I see the almost unanimous praise of Spider-Fan as being a little overblown.
And OVERBLOWN IT IS! I have to wonder what’s going on in the world of Comic Book fandom when Organic webbing ruins Peter Parker’s character as it takes away from his scientific prowess, BUT THE VAST MAJORITY OF HIGH TECH GADGETS HE ORIGINALLY CREATED WHICH IS NOW SIMPLY GIVEN TO HIM BY IRON MAN DOES NOT TAKE AWAY FROM HIS SCIENTIFIC PROWESS! Oh Spider-Man made the spidy signal, but that was given to him by Iron Man. Nobody bitched about it then! Spider-Man made his own little spidey drones, but the one he uses comes from Iron Man! Spider-Man made his own costume, but the one he made in the comics comes from Iron Man in the movie! His stupid eyes opening and closing that coincides with the comics and cartoons!? Wouldn’t be possible without Iron Man! His Spider Armor Mk4… which is what his MCU Iron Spider suit looks to be taken from… again from Iron Man! Practically everything but those webshooters that made Spider-Man special is simply not possible without Iron Man there to give it to him, taking away from Peter Parker’s own scientific ingenuity and creativity, but we’re going to let that shit slide because “OH SPIDER-MAN IS IN THE MCU YAY“!?
What trips me out is that… you’ve had plenty of people, chief among them being Nostalgia Critic, bitching about how Sony got the Venom movie entirely wrong (which… yeah they did >_>) and declared the movie to be absolute shit as a result… but these same people will praise Spider-Fan to the end of time!? These tools didn’t even know who Tom Holland was, but his cock should be a dried husk from how much it gets inhaled. This tells you that these so-called critics and fans are holding all these studios to completely different standards when regarding accuracy to the source material. It is impossible to see their praise as anything but fabricated noise to hoodwink people into thinking it’s good. 100% accuracy to the source material is not a requirement to be a good adaptation, but anyone with an IQ that’s 3 degrees ABOVE whale shit could tell you that these people are morons for suggesting anything Spider-Fan is or does is accurate…. for merely having eyes that open and close on his costume. They would have to be shills to dare suggest such nonsense.
The alleged “quality” of Spider-Fan has nothing to do with the character being any good. It has everything to do with his inclusion in the MCU and nothing more. Because, apparently, the MCU can do no wrong. The MCU can completely destroy a character, and people will find no problem with it. I talked with a few guys that said that Starlord is 100% wrong in personality and abilities, which makes sense. We all know what happened to Thor. Infact Thor is pure proof that Disney has absolutely no respect for these characters, and knows they can pretty much do anything with them, and virtually no one would care. Because “hey, who cares about Thor, right?” Nevermind how a God can get fat despite not having the same biology as mere mortals. I could see them taking every risk imaginable with obscure Marvel characters because no one is going to know or care enough about them to raise hell over them. But if what they did with Spider-Man raises no eyebrows or causes a ruckus, then clearly there is no limit to how many liberties Disney can (and will) take as the people have blatantly told them “we don’t care ourselves about the most popular and well known Marvel character of all time, just please keep him in the MCU”. It shows how much Marvel fans have devolved into whores. “Just put them in the MCU, we don’t care how they’re portrayed so long as they get to fight against cosmic threats like Thanos”.
If they can turn Spider-Man in a whiny fangirl of the most morally bankrupt Avenger in the series and ruin his character… imagine what sins they could commit to the X-Men…
Justice League is the single most hated DCU film to ever exist because they didn’t do exactly what Marvel did and waste years making you sit through several feature films just to acclimate yourself to the fucking Avengers. This despite the fact that not everyone is going to bother going through each and every movie produced by this studio just to keep up with all the details that come about because not everyone who likes the shitty Iron Man movies are going to sit through a movie about a character they don’t give a shit about (Thor) just to keep track of every little detail that comes about. As a person who couldn’t give two fifths of a fuck about most DC characters, you couldn’t pay me to sit through a Wonder Woman movie, an Aquaman movie, a Flash Movie, or another goddamn Batman movie just so I can acclimate myself to the Justice League. The only DC movie I liked in the last few years was Shazam, but that’s because Shazam is more interesting than Wonder Woman, and I absolutely DESPISE Aquaman!
And if we’re being completely honest, that’s why these movies have lasted well over a decade.
The MCU is a franchise built upon gimmicks, not substance. It’s about time we started to acknowledge it. As I’ve said before, the primary motivation people have had to see nearly every film is to gather more clues into the Infinity War and Thanos. But beyond that, each and every film is built up as a means of product placement rather than to be enjoyable standalone movies. The point of each and every film is to just get you hyped up for more advertisements. Because they are serialized, superficially mind you, they are only meant to be consumed once and then trashed in time for the next marketing gimmick.
This is not a revelation, of course. Most of the MCU’s critics have pointed out how each film is recyclable consumerism distilled to it’s most basic format. But in doing so, the creators have a horrible HORRIBLE habit of outright ignoring character details in favor of the gimmick. These things often cause holes and break logic that was established in earlier films.
For instance, take Hank Pym. In the beginning of Ant-Man, Pym made it clear that he was not a fan of the Stark family, mainly because Howard wanted to take/steal the Pym Particles. That as well as calling the Iron Man suit “cute”. It’s safe to say he doesn’t have a high opinion of Iron Man or his parents. Flash forward to Endgame. Now… Iron Man’s funeral is meant to be a rather narcissistic tribute to the MCU itself with every character grouped into their respective movies. This would confuse me because HANK PYM is present! What the fuck!? If he was there to spit or piss on his grave, it’d make sense. I know I know “herp derp why would you disrespect the man who single handedly saved the universe from a genocidal maniac?” Who, Ant-Man? Oh you mean the asshole who basically stole the show (as usual). I mean… if it wasn’t for Ant-Man’s idea to use the Quantum Verse to fix time, an idea that Iron Bitch outright rejected in the first place, half the rest of the universe would not have come back from the brink of extinction. Regardless of the reasons, I do not see it in Pym to attend his funeral. Hell, nor do I see the GotG for that matter. Or Doctor Strange. As far as these groups are concerned, they were NOT friends of Stark’s. Hell, they practically knew him for a day at most. Did…. did Black Panther even interact with Iron Man throughout the MCU? I don’t recall. Far as I’m concerned, they’ve never met! Airport scene be damned. Actually… hell, they’ve never interacted at the airport even though they were on the same side!
“Well so what!? Do people have to know or be friends with the deceased before they decide to attend their funeral!? Maybe they just want to honor a fallen hero!”
It’s an argument I’m expecting. But I’ll use another. I’ve heard claims that these movies were “Trying to be more realistic“, or maybe those were the bullshit arguments people used to justify why Flash Thompson is just a talkative little dork instead of an actual bully. If that’s the case, then realistically, not that many people would show up to Iron Man’s funeral. LEAST OF ALL THOSE WHO HATED HIS FUCKING GUTS! I don’t recall if Scarlet Witch was there, but if so, that would prove my point. She originally blamed Stark (or at the very least, their weapons) for the deaths of her parents. Not to mention the fact that Iron Man practically had her trapped in the Avengers Mansion AGAINST HER WILL, and was imprisoned at the Raft by Stark as well. I do not see any reason for her to pay her respects to a man that she’s only ever known to be a rat bastard all her life. Tony has done absolutely nothing to rectify shit between them. There is no reason for her to pay jackshit.
But that’s essentially the problem. The characters are written for the sake of the plot/imagery/gimmick, not because they would “realistically” do these things.
Take Civil War… again. I’ve harped enough about Spider-Fan, but again, he is essentially blackmailed into helping Iron Man fight against Cap, Bucky, and anyone else helping them. I’m aware no one was paying attention as they were too busy salivating over “a” Spider-Man being in the MCU, but the scene is just a wee bit tone deaf. Peter Faker is a “kid” being pushed into a fight that has nothing to do with him… just because he has powers. Keep in mind that this whole movie, the Sokovia Accords and whatnot, all happened because of one bad mission… or several. People were complaining that the Avengers were causing too much collateral damage. Jepordizing lives, taking lives, destroying city blocks. The accords were created as a treaty of sorts where the governments of the world would reign in metahumans. Something that Iron Man agreed with just after being chewed out by Sharpe. He felt guilt over getting a teen killed which pushed him to go along with it. Now… logically speaking, what he did with Peter Faker goes against his actual mission statement, and go against his guilt. Hell we can go back to the first Iron Man film for this. As well as Phil Culsin. Iron Man has caused a LOT of grief. Why… the… fuck… would he forcefully recruit a highschool student for a mission in which he could be killed or seriously injured!? Keep in mind that War Machine was PARALYZED on this mission! What sense does it make for Iron Man to put a KID in this situation!? It should reasonably go against his character especially after what Sharpe had told him about her fucking son! You know why!? Because that wasn’t important to Disney! They wanted to sell people on the Civil War, so they had to throw in as many gimmicks as they possibly could to get some eyeballs when it wasn’t even necessary. People madly wanted Spider-Man in the MCU, so now people have him in the MCU. Who cares how he gets in there, just get him in there! But in doing, you’ve damaged Iron Man’s character much more than you did in Age of Ultron. If you thought he was irresponsible before, this moment should’ve sickened you. But no, just get Spider-Man into the MCU. Fuck how it was done, just get it done. As a result, we have Iron Man who literally endangers the life of a minor who is still very inexperienced with actual combat…. and LITERALLY NO ONE calls him out on this! This was just plain tactless!
Expanding on that further, the first Spider-Fan movie has said Spider-Fan doing heroic bullshit, right? This piece of fuck film takes place AFTER CIVIL WAR, a movie that had the Sokovia accords established. That metahumans are not to make a move without the explicit approval of government officials. Or is that strictly the Avengers? That would be horribly horribly ass backwards to limit these orders to ONE superhero group when other heroes were allowed to be heroes. This film above all else disregards EVERYTHING that Civil War had built up. This leads me to believe that Civil War wasn’t actually meant to be “Civil War”, and was just supposed to be a Captain America movie about rescuing Bucky and dealing with Helmut Zemo, but OH HOHOHOHOHOHO they’d get FAR MORE attention if they slapped on the name of probably the most popular and controversial Marvel Comics storyline ever made! I know this because even fucking Iron Shit was doing heroics in order to fix up Spider-Fan’s fuck up, and he did this WITHOUT government approval! WITHOUT the go ahead from Ross! The Civil War film is entirely pointless because these assholes will act regardless of whether they’ve been ratified or not by this point, and neither Spider-Fuck or Iron Fuck face any consequences of their doing so. But again, that wasn’t important. What was important was making a Spider-Man movie to fully ingrain “a” Spider-Man into the MCU, and nothing else.
Another example would be Scarlet Witch in Infinity War. During the course of the film, Ross makes it abundantly clear that Cap’s secret Avengers were still wanted fugitives judging by his order to War Machine that he should take them into custody. Yet for some strange reason, Wanda and Vision can stroll about through town on a date? Now it’s quite possible that he made up some sort of excuse that he had Wanda under his protective and secure custody, but that would bring up another question of why she or anyone else in Cap’s group would trust him after the Airport battle. He was still a robot designed by Stark, and there’s no telling what he really programmed him to do at this point. But why let details get in the way of a cheap attempt to get Scarlet Witch and Vision shipped to all hell in the movies because herp derp “Well you guys wanted us to do like the comics, right?” Sure, and the lack of Wonderman is just… oh so accurate to why she fell in love with Vision, of course!
Thor discovering that his god powers were within him all this time… just to spend the next movie making another hammer JUST BECAUSE it’s based on the hammer he has in the Ultimate series feels like a slap in the face. Then he gets fat, so Ragnarok feels pointless regardless of explaining where Hulk went off to.
I could go on all day about Ant-Man, but the sequel basically knows Scott Lang was an idiot for joining Cap’s Secret Avengers without his permission, so I’ll give em that much.
And hell, the ENTIRETY OF ENDGAME was one, giant, overly long gimmick of pandering to fans of the source material even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense in context. I actually remember some news articles talking about how Endgame would please Comic Book fans most especially, and if cheap ass references were what they were talking about, it shows what little respect they have to long time readers.
The point I’m trying to make is this. Making people watch several movies based on several different characters feels meaningless when character motivations and personalities can be changed on a whim, and important events are outright forgotten because they’re inconvenient to future plots and only existed as a marketing gimmick. These “stories” aren’t so well developed that they all factored into the main Avengers movies so much that I absolutely needed to watch them. I didn’t need to the watch any of the Iron Man movies or The Incredible Hulk to get the full gist of Avengers 1, just Thor and Captain America. I didn’t need to watch Iron Man 3 or Guardians of the Galaxy to get the full gist of Age of Ultron (unless you knew nothing of Infinity Gems before hand), just needed Captain America and Thor 2. I didn’t need to watch ANYTHING from Phase 3 outside of Civil War and Doctor Strange, but I’m not destroying my braincells to watch Ragnarok ever again. Very little of what the studio produces is essential to understanding most of the events that occur in the Avengers films, mainly because most of these movies were made for the sake of gimmicks or marketing nonsense. That being said, why should I care that Justice League came out before establishing movies for each and every member of the team!? We didn’t need individual movies for Hawkeye, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, Vision, Falcon, Black Panther, or Spider-Fan before we accepted them with open arms. They were all treated as relatively minor characters in everyone else’s movie with zero development on their part. Hawkeye was just an EASTER EGG for all he mattered! But… OH NO! We hold DC to a COMPLETELY different standard and say that Justice League was outright ruined because they didn’t have individual films for each and every character in the movie! Not that they would need to since Justice League is not some obscure team unlike the Avengers. People know the Justice League far better than they know the Avengers. Everyone knows who BatMan and Superman are, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, etc. They may not know their stories intrinsically, but shit, no one needed to know who HAWKEYE was before the first Avengers movie! The Avengers is filled to the brim of the most obscure and least popular characters in existence that are not named Wolverine and Hulk. The X-Men are more Justice League than the Avengers. Besides that, do you really want to sit through several individual DC movies before getting to the “main event” films? That would be a monumental waste of time as these individual movies would vaguely connect to everything else anyway. Most of what the characters do in the MCU barely factor into the main events they take part in. What was so important in the entire Iron Man trilogy aside from making his Iron Man suit that factored into any of the Avengers movies? Just the mere introduction and establishment of Iron Man, War Machine, and Black Widow? The only real connecting threads between any of these films had everything to do with the Infinity Gems. Without that, these movies are useless on their own as the events and “character development” factor into absolutely nothing… with the exception of Ant-Man. That’s why you have all these Marvel tv shows popping up to try and tie up every loose end they left unchecked in the movies, and doing a poor job of it. Did they ditch the Sokovia accords in Endgame? I can’t recall if they were ever mentioned.
Stuff like the complete destruction of Asgard should have more consequences than just some mere refugee shit on Earth where Thor gets fat and bitches out people over Fortnite (Amma, he is the most fu-). But if the characters and stories are just window dressing to pad out their resume, then why should I care if a Justice League movie had prior films to establish characters beforehand? It seems like that’s all they fucking did for the MCU! Every character they crammed into these films are just as poorly developed and explored as those in the X-Men films if we’re being completely honest. Investing into the MCU for meaningful stories and characters feels like an utter waste of time. What kills me the most are all the excuses. When you actually challenge the claims that people make about the MCU to argue why they’re better than Fox and DC movies, here come the excuses. Most notably the “turning off of the brain”. If you have to be brain dead to enjoy this shit, then what does that actually tell you about the quality of the series? That they’re treated as mere marketing gimmicks with no substance to add to their name. People calling them “objectively good” without ever going into detail as to why, and then getting pissed off if you so much as despute their often baseless claims.
And that, my audience of 3, finally brings me…. to Spider-Fan
What I meant to discuss before I went on ranting because the MCU makes me rampage so damn much, was this almost religious glorification of Iron Man after Phase 2. In the original Iron Man trilogy, we don’t see this pathological need to make him seem like this guy who can do no wrong. In fact, we see him as an incredibly flawed person from the get go. He’s insanely rich, dabbles with sex like it’s a hobby, jokes about how peace would put him out of a job, that kind of shit. It’s acceptable here because it is presented as a flaw of his character. It isn’t until he gets captured by terrorists and finds the only friend he ever had in that situation get gunned down by the weapons he creates… does he actually evolve as a character. He shuts down weapon production, hides all of his new little toys for himself, and wants no part of war profiteering anymore. In essence, he doesn’t want to be a part of the problem. He doesn’t want to cause people anymore harm. And that’s good writing there! You have an obnoxious bastard who gets his as soon as the film starts, and he quickly starts rectifying issues as soon as he gets home. It’s a very quick transformation, but it makes perfect sense.
What does NOT make sense is him putting a KID in danger for a situation that’s far too complex for him to understand! Yes, I’m talking about Spider-Fan, but I’ll get to that little fucker in due time!
Iron Man’s character amounts to a light switch. He is whatever the writers want or need him to be for whatever movie he is in. Thus, his inconsistent character is far more irritating than most people would care to give him shit for. You want to protect the people and not create things that could bring them into harms way, yet you don’t take any kind of responsibility for Ultron AND you repeat the process that created Ultron for the sake of Vision. If this was the same Iron Man from the first movie, Iron Man would be overcome with guilt! He would mutter to himself that he only wanted to help, but instead he created a monster that is now killing people! He would likely not want to lift a finger to help because he created a problem. Then the other Avengers could probably uplift him, tell him to get over it, he was just trying to help, and maybe man up and fix the problem he caused. That was the entire reason he got rid of his Weapons R&D department in the first place, etc, etc. You know, make Iron Man 3 actually mean something. But NOPE! We have a manchild who makes excuses over his actions, constantly argues with others over his decisions, REPEATS THE SAME EXPERIMENT THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE, but is allowed to walk unscathed even though his actions led to the destruction of an entire country. He is unapologetic about everything he has done, and often projects and deflects his own flaws onto other people. He is condescending and conceited to the core, so much so that he doesn’t second guess the fact that he BLACKMAILED A TEENAGER TO FIGHT AGAINST THE AVENGERS (seriously, rewatch the scene where he first meets Peter Faker and tell me I’m wrong). This was an irritating realization when we get to Civil War where everyone just flat out ignores that Iron Man was actually responsible for Sokovia. Hell he doesn’t even think about Sokovia until Miriam Sharpe reminds him of it. Shows how uncaring he is about something HE caused. Where’s the character development!? You know, all that “good writing” people talk about!? You imagine something like that should’ve weighed heavily on his conscience, but he has a little power point presentation about his dead parents because we needed that plot twist more than we needed character development.
Though he off handedly admits that Ultron was his fault, he puts more emphasis (and blame) on the REST of the team when Thunderbolt Ross comes in with his ultimatum. I brought this up back when I first reviewed or ranted about Civil War, but this goes into the whole “Karma Houdini” aspects of Iron Man’s character that irks my goddamn nerves. It’s as though the movie tried to demonize Captain America while doing everything it could to make Iron Man seem as though he was in the right. Even when they’re fighting in the airport when Spider-Fan explained what Iron Man told him about Captain America (“That you’re wrong, think that you’re right… and that makes you dangerous” like the little non-thinking clod that he is), Cap is all “well he might have a point!” NO HE FUCKING DOESN’T! Iron Man didn’t bother to investigate the actual bombing of the building, nothing. He just TOOK ORDERS like a bitch. Yeah, that’s something people seem to skim over. Remember how he had this thing with not wanting to take shit from government organizations and officials like Shield? Yeah, that seems to have gone out the window when it came to Ross. No one sees any issue with that? I guess not. MCU can do no wrong. Again, the character’s experiences in previous films do not matter because the writers have a different intent for the plot, or because Disney imposed some bullshit on them that they couldn’t get around. It’s sad but true. This is why you can have Tony Stark, a grown man, fiddle around with things in the Sanctum Sanctorum just for some stupid gags and not because it’s a part of the plot.
The problem is that because they wish to preserve the status quo of the characters, they actually damage the characters in the process. Iron Man isn’t allowed to develop and grow as a character throughout the course of a decade’s worth of films. He’s not allowed to mature. He’s not allowed to take things seriously. He’s not allowed to be apologetic about anything he does. No, he has to see a joke in everything that happens, even when the world is burning all around him. He has to fabricate conflicts that didn’t need to exist. He has to start fights over insipid and outdated details such as his failed drones program from Age of Ultron. He has to be a dick to everyone around him, and rarely does anyone call him out on his bullshit, or if he is ever made to pay for his douchebagness. Him dying at the end of Endgame was a public service to the rest of the MCU, and the characters don’t even know it.
In the comics, he was intended to piss off readers before getting to a point where the readers could actually enjoy his character. Well, the MCU got one part of Iron Man right. He is an unlikable jackass. The problem is he never truly grows out of it because people have a fatal attraction to jackasses. Maybe it’s the result of an age of decadence, but when the worst of humanity is given a pass so long as they’re presented as cool or as funny (Handsome Jack, Wolf of Wallstreet, etc), we are in for some growing pains in the future.
For a while, I’ve been lingering on this theory that the MCU’s worship of Iron Man was a glorification of Big Tech. Almost a new trend was starting to spring up after Iron Man where the “Big Tech Rich guy” was presented as “too cool for everyone else”. I say “almost” because so far, I’ve only seen 2 examples of this. The main antagonist of Ex Machina comes to mind. Ryan Reynolds character from 6 Underground also comes to mind. They sorta tried this with Batman from Justice League (and failed miserably). All in some attempt to acclimate people into trusting the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos as being the “Cool Big Tech Rich Guys”. Why else would the MCU go so far as to make Iron Man a karma houdini that is worshipped by the single most popular Marvel character of all time? Because the kids are supposed to see themselves in Spiderman, and must see Iron Man (Big Tech) as a father figure that will take care of them in the future. This shouldn’t be a crazy theory. Afterall, seeing how Thanos was portrayed as a sympathetic villain with dreams of population control (like Bill Gates), it’s not out of the question that Disney dabbles in social engineering. The gender war in Black Panther is also another example. If this were not the case, the MCU wouldn’t be so hellbent on trying to make us glorify Iron Man the way that Endgame did. Never once did they try to punish Iron Man for his flaws and conflicts. Everything he does is washed away without so much as a repercussion. Infinity War was just plain vomit inducing in how they tried to make him look perfect… at least until he got fucked up by Thanos.
Getting away from that, it gets more difficult to pinpoint why he does what he does in the movies. He only feels like a hero in the first Iron Man movie, mainly because of what’s been through and what he’s seen. He legitimately wants to make good on his past sins and help the people that were put in harm’s way thanks to his own weapons. That’s fine. What doesn’t make sense is him being a part of the Avengers. This was a problem in the Ultimate Avengers movies years ago as well, but when you get right down to it, Iron Man is NOT portrayed as a team player. If anything, he should feel bogged down by having to work with and cooperate with a team. In Ultimate Avengers, he doesn’t exactly have a good reason to rejoin the team after their failed mission, he just does so spontaneously. The same problem occurs here, not for the better or worse. We’re never given any real indication as to why Iron Man wants to be a part of the Avengers, we’re just told he does without explanation. It wouldn’t go along with his character at that point to do so anyway. By now, we should know the problem as the studio just wanted to advertise the Avengers. They didn’t care if anything Iron Man didn’t make sense, or even if he had any real motivations. They just wanted you to know that the Avengers was coming. We don’t get any indication from the character himself that he felt that joining the Avengers would’ve worked better for his goals of keeping the world safer. We get nothing like that. AND when he first meets the team, he is hostile to all but Bruce Banner. Whether or not that was all Loki’s doing with the Mind gem or w/e bullshit excuse the fanboys could cobble together, the point stands that the main source of strife within the Avengers comes exclusively from Tony Stark himself. Now what could possibly make the most sense was that he was just trying to figure out what Shield was really up to since what he was doing was poking through the Helicarrier’s network to find their secrets. If that was the case and his hostility came about from trust issues, where was this suspicion throughout Iron Man 2!? His distrust of Shield honestly came out of nowhere! He certainly didn’t seem to have much of an issue with Phil Coulsin and Happy Hogan luming over his shoulder all the time in the second movie, that despite them being around his home, his own facilities, his premises etc. Shield could’ve gotten all sorts of information and secrets from Iron Man just from Black Widow alone! But… he didn’t care then! What made him so suspicious of Shield in the first Avengers movie at the time!?
The debacle between Iron Man 3 to Age of Ultron is obvious enough and has been discussed in length by various people thus far, but warrants mention that a guy who decides to torch all of his suits just to immediately make another set of suits including the fucking Hulkbuster thanks to fan demand (this was admitted in a sneak peak of Avengers 2) is entirely inconsistent. Iron Man doesn’t actually have a reason to rejoin the Avengers after the first movie. Neither does Thor or Hulk for that matter. Avengers was a project formed by Shield, though they were (publically) dissolved after Winter Soldier. Whatever obligation Tony would have to the team was nonexistent by that point. He’s just… there. It stands to reason that Iron Man is only in the Avengers movies because he was one of the founders of the team back in the comics, and we’re just supposed to accept it. Again, where is the “Good Writing” that people swear exists in these movies?
Also again, in the beginning of Civil War, he had to be reminded of the fact that he fucked over Sokovia. Miriam Sharpe was a white woman in the comics iirc. Eh, details, but… just why did it take this woman to remind Tony of his own actions? He seems to have moved on and thought nothing of the events of AoU to the point that he’s casually clearing all student loan debt with a power point presentation of his parents to earn sympathy points in doing so. It’s both manipulative and self-centered, but hey, it’s all for a good cause, right? But it never occurred to him that any of those kids he doing favors for could’ve ended up in Sokovia and died for any number of reasons, namely because of his own creation. This is a HUGE problem and marks the character as an apathetic sociopath. Granted, he’s pulled some nasty shit in the comics too, but at some point, there’s some fucking remorse for his actions! He is a bastion of apathy in the MCU which contributes to my utter hatred of his character! The worst part is this is entirely the fault of the studio involved because for them, the GIMMICKS of the movies mattered more than the continuity and development of it’s characters and stories. Because of this, it reflects POORLY on Iron Man himself. But we still give him a pass because “he’s funny”.
He’s also emotionally unstable, what with trying to kill Cap and Bucky despite being savvy enough to know he’s being manipulated by Zemo, but I suppose I should be like the rest of the audience and completely side with the murder happy weapons developer who was willing to let the villain walk so long as he got his sweet, sweet revenge. The plot of Civil War was contrived all to hell, but again, I’m supposed to root for Iron Man in a fight that should never have happened… because of things that were outside everyone’s control!? Cap couldn’t control the fact that Bucky was a mind controlled slave of the Russians and Hydra, Bucky couldn’t control the fact that he was a mind controlled slave of the Russians and Hydra. Yet, he cosigns them both to oblivion over this fact. Blind rage is right. The writers tried so hard to get around how much Tony was in the wrong by having Cap admit that he knew who was responsible for the deaths of Tony’s parents… but there was never a situation in which Cap NEEDED to relay that info. Actually, hold up. You mean to tell me Iron Man never once had the time or care to investigate the deaths of his own parents!? With all the resources at his disposal, you’d think this would be at the top of his priorities, but I guess he’s supposed to care when the writers do AND because it makes for good shock value. Iron Man isn’t above doing some detective work as seen in IM3 and in Avengers when he’s digging deep in the Shield Helicarrier’s database for their weapons. Why did he never think to investigate his parents deaths? Because it wasn’t important to the studio or the audience.
But again, it’s impossible to put the blame on his character. Writers for the MCU are consistently terrible, and there’s no sharing of notes so that these people can keep up with details of what these characters did in previous movies to coincide with sequels. In a sense, they’re treated like episodic movies rather than a series of distinct films that build up to something. That in itself is a can of worms that everyone gives a pass to.
As Phase 4 gets ripped apart by even the most diehard morons that have sucked all of the MCU off, I figure it’s time to finally have a go as to my own perspective as to why the MCU is absolute shit.
Recently, I went and rewatched the Pryde of the X-Men pilot, and thinking to myself “Fuck, this shit is amazing! I wish this series happened“. X-Men isn’t my most favorite franchise from Marvel (it will always be Spider-Man), but it’s right up there. My first introduction to the X-Men was the 90s cartoon, while the Sega Genesis game “Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s revenge” was my first taste of Spider-Man. If anyone was a huge fan of X-Men, it was my mother. She was fucking HOOKED on X-Men! Or at least Wolverine and Storm. But she knew enough about shit like the Dark Phoenix to absolutely despise X-Men 3, a movie that… after years of reflection, doesn’t get enough credit for being more of a Superhero movie than the first 2, and was mostly hated for killing off Cyclops and Jean Grey… which is understandable, especially since I actually like Cyclops.
When you really think about it, X-Men certainly is one of the most, if not the most, dramatic and complex of all Marvel franchises. Spanning so many different spinoffs and nigh universe changing events that effect the very core of the characters to an extent that rivals that of Spider-Man himself. It’s a series that anyone can look at and take seriously. It’s context, it’s very nature demands respect in some regard. It’s not something to be handled lightly.
“The Gifted” is one of my favorite shows for this very reason. It’s intricate and sophisticated plot involving former X-Men and 2 human families as they deal with Sentinel Services, Morlocks, Stepford Cuckoos, and the Hellfire Club is extremely well done, and does a much better job than the movies to tell an X-Men story. Which… is problematic for many reasons. On the one hand, you had “The Gifted”, a very well crafted and “Mature” series that handles the strife and stress that these X-Men go through dealing with a world without the core X-Men team or Xavier to look to where many of their members start to lose their way (Polaris joining the Inner Circle for one)… and on the other, you have Loki getting stuck in some time loop where he gets his balls kicked in over and over again. Yet I’m supposed to believe THAT is a superior show to The Gifted. That’s not an exaggeration, I have read claims like this in more recent times.
The 2010s certainly have created the worst movie going audience in the history of cinema and story telling when standards have sunk so low that they’ve literally been reversed. Now the Junk and the trash is considered “high art” while the national treasures of the medium are considered “too serious” to enjoy. I’ve never once in my life seen such obnoxious backlash against something that would dare to leave an actual impression on people while they try desperately to elevate heaps of dung with slogans like “good writing” which are just fancy ways of saying “I like this better because it makes me laugh”. Trixie’s words from Fairly Odd Parents are starting to make sense. “That Comedy is the lowest form of entertainment.” It’s telling when turning a Norse God, the single most powerful Avenger, into a whiny and moronic buffoon is “superior” to the Justice League. By devaluing someone like Thor, a character that actually deserves some respect here and there, into some moronic, insecure dolt, the MCU has basically stated how little respect they have for any of these characters.
Case in point. Fucking… Spider-Fan. Now… Bucko posted a trailer for Spider-Fan 3. Though I tried to contain my vomit, I have to ask the question… what is the MCU’s obsession with making this version of Spider-Man so incompetent and lacking in self-assuredness… that he always has to have a fucking mentor figure!? Not in sciences and engineering… but in being a fucking hero!? What is this!? Do we not know a thing about Spider-Man having to do all that hero shit ON HIS OWN!?
You guys know I bitch about Spider-Fan a little too much for my own good… but y’all have to understand. Spiderman… was my boy. It’s kinda weird saying that now because… I wasn’t really all that big into Spiderman when I was first introduced to him in the 90s. Like I said, Spiderman and the Xmen in Arcade’s Revenge, I was more focused on the X-Men characters. I kept asking “who the fuck is this dude in the red suit, and why isn’t he in the X-Men show!?” When the 90s cartoon came on, I casually watched it while waiting for X-Men to come on. If I’m being honest, the Spider-Man cartoon…wasn’t really all that good. Consider me spoiled by the X-Men cartoon as it was just more interesting. Better pacing and better writing too. It also looked better, visually, with the heavy ink outlines that defined the show and Spider-Man Unlimited. But yeah, 90s Spider-Man cartoon was pretty ass imo.
It wasn’t until the 2002 Movie that I fell in love the character and the series! I got to see a completely different side to the character that was never really touched upon in the cartoon to my memory. As I’ve said before, 90s Spider-Man TAS had the archtypical hero build spidy that looked like Patrick Swayze, and never really felt as though he was struggling through life aside from one scene where his Aunt May was in the hospital, he had come from doing some superhero work that he couldn’t reveal, and he gets chewed out by the doctor who was tendingto may in the first place. So you didn’t really think a whole lot about the character as he just fit the mold of every other hero around. Plus it always seemed weird (and stupid) that his webs didn’t come out of his body, but instead he could always run out of web cartridges, thus hindering his fighting capabilities during critical fights. Like a cheap way of building tension so that the episodes came off better. So… when you see the 2002 movie, and you see this nerdy Peter Parker that deals with all manner of bullshit from people, bullies, and wrestling fans, transform into this “Amazing” hero that goes above and beyond the call of duty all on his own, all in the process of losing his loved ones which becomes his greatest motivation to do so… it leaves a grandiose impression on you. Life is hard, people are inconsiderate jackasses who sometimes just exist to make you miserable, but you cannot let them bring you down. It’s what I would call one of the most inspirational and influencial movies in my entire life. All the way up to 3, I didn’t care. I absolutely loved these movies, I loved the stories they weaved, I loved how the characters interacted with each other, everything felt authentic… well… aside from Kirsten Dunce, she was just there to have a nipple shirt in the rain and be vaguely cute, but would pale in comparison to whoever played Gwen Stacy in S3 (GODDAMN she was fine!), but I loved the sense of humanity these characters all had. While they did make some fancy speeches here and there, they felt like real people you could care about… except Dunce. So when the big action scenes came about, you CARED about whether they would live or die, you cared whether they win or lose, you cared more about their success. When Harry Osborn dies in Spider-Man 3, you feel that shit! Sure he was an anti-hero, sure he tried to kill Spider-Man 3 times, but you at least understand why and you have a hard time rooting against him. He’s been through trauma, his father died leaving Oscorp in his hands at a young age, forcing him to grow up and take on more responsibilities in order to preserve the company. He goes through his own stress filled life, and the only person he thinks is responsible is Spider-Man as he has no other conclusive evidence to go on. So you understand why he’s so angry and filled with vengence, especially after he regains his memory and realizes that Peter Parker, his best friend in the whole world, kept secrets from him. Everything was built up properly over the course of 3 films, so everything feels ingrained, everything makes sense, the characters act and react accordingly. That… is what you call “good writing”.
But… oh no! None of that mattered because Spider-Man lacked the fucking webshooters! None of that mattered because Venom in Spider-Man 3 was a laughable farce! Everything good that came out of the Sami Raimi trilogy was just not good enough anymore because of a few scant details that were off the mark. But… Disney… fucking Disney… fucking “we don’t care about Power Rangers enough to give that show a higher budget even though we totally could” Disney, fucking “We’ll sue your asses if you give your son’s grave a Spidey tribute” Disney… these corporate TYRANTS… can make a Spider-Man so unrelentingly alien to what Spider-Man ever was, all the way down to a half pint little shit who literally worships the most obnoxious and unbearable asshole to ever grace superhero cinema, and he’s somehow the best representation of Spider-Man ever to grace the theaters!?
I’m almost certain that Disney has assloads of shills everywhere on the internet to blot out all the logical criticism the MCU deserves because anyone who alleges that the vast majority of these movies have anything resembling “Good Writing” has to have a few quarters short of anything resembling good taste. It took 10… fucking… years… for people to start wising up to this, and yet whenever anyone goes on to call this out, they always have to preface their rants by saying “I’m not against the MCU” or “I don’t hate the MCU” or “I actually think (put MCU movie title here) is a great film with that oh so “great writing”.
You see this pattern of behavior over and over again, it starts feeling like a prequisite of doing a review or a rant rather than be a legitimate opinion. It shows their fear of reprisal. They don’t want to get chewed out because they know MCU fans are a CANCER!! They are currently the #1 worst fanboys in existence BECAUSE they lie endlessly about the greatness of these films, and only find that validation in the revenue they make. Remember, their only argument for why Disney should buy out Sony in order to maintain the Spider-Man license for the MCU… was because of the MONEY those movies generated, NOT THEIR QUALITY!!! That’s the key take away from their insanity. They only go by the MONEY! And yes, I know I and many others have made a big deal about profits being more important than quality, being indicators of behavior and what not… but at some point, we gotta start asking questions of what we’re actually advocating for. (especially since with that Sonic movie, such sentiment is biting us on the asses 😛 ) But again. They wanted a monopoly to gain an even GREATER monopoly by buying out another major media powerhouse… for ONE… FRANCHISE! If these people are legit fans and not shills of Disney to try and steer public opinion towards a certain direction (which corporations and monopolies constantly do), then whatever opinions they have of the quality of MCU films is null and void. They don’t think. The movies don’t require them to think. They’re pumped out, consumed, and then forgotten about so that people can focus on what little product placements they have in the after credits, and show off their limited knowledge of the Marvel Comics they have on youtube.
Honestly, that’s the biggest problem I have with the MCU. It’s a powerhouse that’s built on gimmicks rather than actual substance. This includes hiring on big name actors for roles they clearly weren’t built for, like Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Fifer or whoever played Mama Wasp in Ant-Man 2, Lawrence Fishburn, The Fox Quicksilver for that piece of shit Wandavision show, etc., because Disney knows that Star Power still works on people. And it shows because all these high profile actors end up doing jackshit in every movie they pop up in. But if we’re advocating for revenue, then we must praise the gimmicks. The MCU’s gimmick is constantly hyping up the audience by putting out some foreshadowing gimmicks in the movies and tv shows. One of the things that people tend to ignore when it comes to sucking the dick of GotG is the whole hype of “this movie contains important details about the Infinity Gems, and Thanos makes an appearance!”. This one aspect is ignored and is something I am absolutely positive is the reason people went to see this piece of shit in droves. When it first came out, there was more negative attention given to it. Even the shills from Honest Trailers considered it to be a movie crafted by a studio that’s drunk on their own power, calling out it’s bullshit with reckless abandon. I suppose Age of Ultron was so bad that GotG looked as though it was worthy of an emmy.
I really shouldn’t be quick to assume why people are drawn to these movies, but I have to just laugh when they say they have “good writing!” Everyone’s favorite movie in the whole MCU is Guardians of the Galaxy, but the MCU has “Good Writing”, and they all say Guardians of the Galaxy is their favorite movie, but the MCU is supposed to have “good writing” ack ack ack ack ack. I can’t help BUT assume what the real reasons are for them being drawn to these films because there isn’t a shred of asses luscious enough for me to kiss to EVER fabricate such total nonsense in the first place! It couldn’t be that people were sold on the prospect of Thanos and the Infinity Gems since his reveal back in the first Avengers movie that FOMO kicked in, and Disney used that to their advantage to sell us shitty movies based on the very gimmick of “these bullshit films will tie into Thanos and the Infinity Gems… “somehow”, so you need to watch ALL of them so that you don’t miss a beat!” And a lot of that was the fault of Comic Book fans because they (well… “we”) couldn’t help ourselves when Thanos first popped up in the after credits. We hyped up these terrible movies ourselves by fangirling out over Thanos being in the movies in the first place! To us, Thanos was a fucking big deal! So when we kept talking nonstop about Thanos and the Infinity gems, Disney didn’t have to do anything but leave it to us to sell people on the MCU for a whole decade. We were the advertisers for this crap, and they knew it. What we didn’t know was that Disney was going to DRAG OUT these movies for 7 more years and continue dangling Thanos in our faces for all it’s worth, creating filler movies that had nothing to do with Thanos at all, just to make as much money off of the audience who were sold on Thanos and the Infinity gems, WHILE ALSO MAKING GAMES THAT FEATURED THANOS AND THE INFINITY GEMS AS WELL! TaleTell GotG, Super Hero Squad and the Infinity Gauntlet, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite which was just MSH with Capcom characters, etc. All I needed with the roms of MSH and MSH:War of the Gems, and I would be set with as much as I needed to know. Disney’s shoehorning of this bullshit was deadset on knowing exactly why people were coming to see these movies in droves, but they DRAGGED IT OUT FOR YEARS to get the most amount of profit as they can from thirsty fans who were being starved of what they wanted! I KNOW this because of the absolute LACK of enthusiasm that people have of the MCU now that the Infinity Saga is finally over with. Barely anyone talks about the MCU aside from Spider-Fan, and that’s only because it’s a vague and incorrect interpretation of the single most popular Marvel character of all time. And that’s sad because without “a” Spider-Man, Phase 4 would get zero attention whatsoever.
Disney knew that the very thing holding the MCU together was the baited breaths of people who didn’t want to miss important details leading up to the Infinity War, and without it, there wouldn’t be much interest after it. You think anyone gives a rat fuck about Shang Chi, the Master of Kung Fu? The only thing that was ever interesting about him was that he could beat super powered foes with just martial arts alone. Now the only thing holding the MCU together is Spider-Fan because for some odd reason, the complete dessecration of Spider-Man’s character is what they’ll pay money to see… over the Amazing Spider-Man 2. Yeah I said it, AMS2 is better than Spider-Fan’s movies in every sense of the word. At least in those movies, Spider-Man fights his own battles and solves his own problems with minimal outside assistance, rather than whine to his own suit’s computer every ten minutes about what he should do next, or whining about how he can’t seem to measure up to the infinite asshole that is Tony fuckhead Stark!
Whew! Again, I went on a ramble! Spider-Man shouldn’t get me so riled up, but to think infinitely about how they fucked his character completely to coincide with Iron Man is just disgusting, and these movies kept giving that one asshole a mile no matter what, and it’s sickening. But maybe I should explain why as this is more of a “personal taste” than it is objective, though the latter certainly has merit as well.
Currently, I’m watching a sentai series called “Zenkaiger”, but lately, I’ve been debating on whether or not I should drop it and wait for the next one to come out. I don’t enjoy dropping a series as it feels like I’ve invested my time into something that turned to shit. The premise and team dynamic of this show, aside from being an anniversary season, is that you have a single human ranger on a team of 4 robots who were designed to morph into miniaturized versions of Megazords that had appeared in previous sentai series. While many sentai fans thought this was stupid, I actually liked the idea! It felt refreshing and new, it was more interesting. The characters had their own quirks and antics that are… well… dumb, but… idk, I guess because they’re robots that it kinda puts a fresh new coat of paint on an old idea. And it is a funny show if not repetitive and redundant on occasion.
BUT THEN… THIS ASSHOLE SHOWS UP!
Meet Zox/Twokaiser. He’s the 6th ranger of the team who came from another dimension, and is based on the Gokaigers. Now for those who don’t know (and care), the Gokaigers are another anniversary team that came out a decade ago. They were pirate themed and had the ability to transform into other ranger teams from previous seasons. This concept made them far less unique to themselves as it meant their own unique abilities and tactics were overshadowed by their insipid need to become every other ranger in existence. But… another problem I have with the Gokaigers were that they were ASSHOLES! They were of course actual pirates so their main goal was to acquire (steal) treasure from across the galaxy. The only thing they couldn’t steal were previous Ranger powers, they had to earn them. However, on many occasions, they had a bad habit of thinking they’re entitled to the properties of other people simply because they were able to steal it anyway.
For some reason, of course, the Gokaigers became extremely popular, so much so that they have more movies and movie appearances than any other sentai team aside from the Gorangers (because they were the first rangers ever created). They reappeared in another team’s anniversary season as well, AND they’re getting another fucking special this year or next. Hell it might already be out. These guys are overrated and overexposed, but it’s made worse by the fact that they are ASSHOLES! Far be it from me to claim that Japan has a sick love affair with asshole characters, but their level of popularity speaks volumes. I don’t have to speak of Seto Kaiba… or Vegeta (you all know I DESPISE him!). Gai from Jetman, an older Sentai series, was the most popular character of the show, and was kind of a douche.
So when Zox shows up (at just a mere 8 episodes), he, his sister, and 2 twin robot brothers (they’re all assholes in their own way, mind you)…. they start taking over the show! They’re dicks to everyone, they do whatever they want, they tried to rob the main characters, they’ve stolen technology, tried to injure people to get what they wanted, caused someone’s sister to be kidnapped and THEN had all the fucking gall in the world to tell off the brother when he was at fault in the first place… and despite their CONSTANT asshole tendencies, the show writers have them coming out of every single engagement unscathed! They win every single battle they’re in, succeed in getting everything they want, and despite EVERY bout of trouble they’ve caused for the heroes, the heroes praise and cheerlead their efforts regardless! This is Japanese writing 101, every asshole character you produce MUST be a karma houdini! They must NEVER be forced to pay for their bullshittery, they must NEVER lose a bout, they must NEVER change or grow as characters. If they do, they should DEVOLVE into comic relief instead of actually being made to pay for their crimes! And whatever fans exist of Zenkaiger, they can’t make any excuse for this. Zox practically took over the fucking show. He gets most of the focus, does most of the asskissing… hell, one of the characters even complains about how Zox is stealing the show! Even HE knows this is some bullshit! Zox’s very presence, and the fact that he does not get his comeuppance whatsoever, has made the show damn near unwatchable. The whole dynamic of the show has changed, and not for the better.
This might not seem relevant but… the way I see Zox in Zenkaiger is EXACTLY how I see Iron Man in the MCU! The only difference was he came first, and that’s the only reason he gets cut some slack. But for the MCU to revolve around Iron Man as if he’s a god, and for the fans to worship him as if he is the most powerful Avenger, and declaring that he is the single most smartest bastard in all of the MCU, shows just how much of his ass is kissed by the writers and the fans. At first, I wrote off Iron Man as just the asshole character of the group. It wasn’t until Age of Ultron that I started getting sick of him! I mean… to be responsible for the creation of both Ultron AND Vision was a lot to stomach! Certainly, writers have played around with the idea of Iron Man being the creator of Ultron for some time now. The old “Next Avengers” movie certainly didn’t help. But as it were, Hank Pym was the original creator of Ultron… which made sense because by that point, Pym was pretty much a villain anyway (Domestic abuse and all). But I suppose it’s just “more believable” to have overrated ass Iron Man to do so. But… I was willing to let that slide… because it DOES make sense. But Age of Ultron felt like they were making Iron Man far more important than he was. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch wanted revenge on Iron Man because his weapons contributed to Sokovia’s wars/the death of their parents. He was derided in the same movie because his creation of Ultron led to the Avengers being attacked in their own home, prompting them to relocate to safe houses, one of which would put Hawkeye’s family in danger. Captain America rightfully calls him out on this bullshit while Tony constantly tries to make excuses for it.
And then he goes and makes Vision in nearly the same exact way. Only this time, Vision doesn’t try to kill them. And even though Stark’s actions led to the destruction of an entire country… he’s NEVER made to pay for it! His fucking robot caused the destruction of a friggin nation, and he faces no penalty! The Avengers go about their lives as though everything was back to normal! You have an entire population of people that are FUCKING DISPLACED, YOU JACKASSES! That’s a major refugee crisis all caused by Stark’s own robot! YOU DESTROYED A NATION!! That should be treated as a fucking war crime or something! But no! Nothing comes out of this! No one acknowledges Tony Stark’s hand in the destruction of a country, or the chaos that erupted in the urban district of Wakanda of the same movie! In the following film, the fucking Superhuman Registration act is NAMED after Sokovia! But does anyone get on Tony Stark’s ass about it!? No! Not ever! It’s just that single moment when he creates Ultron, and NOTHING ELSE!
Nothing Iron Man did in Age of Ultron had any lasting repercussions, btw. BUT… *chuckles*, Scarlet Witch tries to whisk Crossbones away from a crowded street before he could blow up a city block, and knocks out the side of a building… and THAT’S WHEN PEOPLE DRAW THE FUCKING LINE!? ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME-I can’t-… I need a break! I need a fucking… OH!!!
The Narc was just approved. We are royally fucked now.
Now see? This is what I’m talking about! We all know that Nintendo had a massive hate boner for fans of Super Smash Bros. Melee, doing absolutely everything to ruin their fun, even going so far as to shut down charity events simply because Melee was used. It was also clear that Nintendo wouldn’t budge, and their asshat fanboys weren’t going to stop sucking them off for doing so. “EET DEY PROPOTEH!”
So these guys calling themselves “Angry Mob” (How fitting! :P) decided to make their own original Project M so to speak. “Brawlout” (because Smash Bros. Brawl, get it?) is an… “ok” knockoff. The creators definitely don’t try to hide their intent with mechanics that are so heavily geared toward the tourneyfags of old (we can still use that term, right? I mean the FGC turned out to be a bunch of whores for corporate bastardry, I figure no one would mind). They even mentioned “wavedashing” in their description iirc! But that’s fine. They figured if Nintendo won’t let them have their fun, they’ll make their own! This kind of shit needs to be ENCOURAGED! We need more Bloodstaineds!
I got this game mainly because of the “Beheaded” as they call him. You may recognize him from Dead Cells, a game that can be summed up as near perfection. Unfortunately, he’s not all that good, and takes a backseat to the Drifter from Hyper Light…. Drifter. He’s definitely the Marth of this bitch!
At first, I thought this was going to be a bunch of indie characters in a Smash Bros. knockoff, and I figured “wow, this is a genius idea! Maybe they could work in Shantae or Copen or… hell, maybe Miriam from Bloodstained“. But I found out they only have up to 4 indie characters, and 6 originals which…kinda drags down the appeal a little. They’re not badly designed, mind you, but you figure since Smash Bros. is a collection of Nintendo’s finest (up until the Fire Emblem obsession) along with 3rd Parties that got out of hand, Brawlout would be the same idea. Though I suppose for an indie studio themselves, that would’ve been more of a hassle. So for what we have, we’ve got Dead Cells, Drifter, that Guacamelee wrestler you guys kept mentioning, and Yooka Laylee. Ain’t they supposed to be the Banjo Kazooie knockoffs?
You’d think they would shove in Shovelknight since the internet loves it so damn much. 😛
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Gameplay wise, I think it’s a little too fast, like the controls feel sort of loose? Maybe it’s because I’m using a particular kind of controller that only has a D-Pad for input, and the game is clearly designed with a Control Stick in mind since… you know… Melee couldn’t be controlled without one, but the physics make every character feel like Fox from Melee with only 3 exceptions, the 3 big mother fuckers Olaf Tyson (Awesome name, btw), Paco the four armed wrestling frog, and Guacamelee himself. Everyone else just FLIES all over the goddamn place, it’s almost difficult to keep track of each player. Course, after getting this shit patched, the pacing doesn’t give me strokes anymore, and the bird is good for a change.
Overall though, it’s not a bad idea. Just a few rough patches here and there, but this is definitely something we need more of. Indies actually being competitive against the big fucking AAA asswipes of the industry. Hell, we already got some Bomb Rush Cyberfunk to get that Jet Set Radio fix, we’ve had Bloodstained, tons of people trying to pick off Pokemon (good luck), everyone’s trying to do an F-Zero racing game with… minimal success. I thought this Xenon Racer would be it, but it’s more Ridge Racer than F-Zero, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Axiom Verge practically shitted on Metroid (and Praise Amma it’s sequel is coming to PS4!) Spark the Electric Jester got it’s 3rd game out so we can damn near say fuck Sonic and Sonic Twitter… We need more of this! MUCH more! Damn sure need a Phantasy Star knockoff right now…
But… what we don’t need any of… is this.
Imagine, if you will, a game with a story that involves some sort of jar that contains the power to…. lets say “preserve one’s journey up to a certain point”. But as it is a jar, it only has but so much space. Thus, you cannot preserve your journey any further because the jar is full. But you cannot empty it! To do so would erase your entire journey, thus putting you back at the beginning of said journey. In order to move on, you must pay tribute to the God who created said jar. The tribute would be real world money.
That’s… not… what occurs in Brawlout, don’t get me wrong. But considering that this is NOT the first time I’ve played a game where your actual progress is held hostage by your internet connection (Redout was the first), I do not see such a scenario as being too far’fetched. They might as well have made a save system as anti-consumer as what I described. See, I don’t understand the logic of requiring an internet connection to save your progress. In this game, you can unlock different skins and avatars and all other dumb shit via the acquisition of spendable in-game currency. You can also increase the rank of individual characters for the purpose of unlocking character specific content, yadda yadda yadda. Did I mention the character skins come with their own unique variations of the original characters? So that’s loads of replay value all unto itself! Well… only if you have internet. You can’t increase character rank, you can’t earn bank, you can’t unlock anything else without internet. This is incredibly arbitrary and is a major deterrent to playing this game. I suppose only for me because “it’s just expected that everyone have internet”. Well that would be nice if the shit was free and not controlled by Verizon and Comcast. But no, this is not something we should condone. Design like this is… well, for lack of a better word… discriminatory. That those with the money are allowed to enjoy the fullest extent of your game. Never been a fan of game developers who try to tie in certain features of a game to the internet for some half-assed “social interaction and synergy” like joining some local guild or crew to get a specific reward when all it does is cause people to beg to be let into a group until they get their prize and then they bounce, but this shit is insanity. You can’t unlock anything without internet. I would love to know the monetary incentive they have to locking progress to internet. Maybe save files are stored on the cloud, and the more people using their cloud service,the more profit they get or… something, idk. But… no, this level of bullshit? There’s zero benefit to the player in doing so. Could you imagine if this was the 90s and we all still had Dial-Up?
“Oh wow, I finally reached character Rank 4, now I can get my Silver Sk-…WHAT!? CORRUPTED SAVE FILE!? MOOOOOOM!! WHY’D YOU PICK UP THE PHONE!? I’M PLAYING BRAWLOUT!”
“Sorry dear! I have to take this call!”
“I WISH PHONES NEVER EXISTED!”
Goddamn that would’ve been a double edged sword! It’s like… the more powerful technology becomes, the less freedom you have with it. Ironic, no? Probably the idea, it’s much more difficult to repair machines today than it was years ago as the manufacturers construct them in a way that is impossible to repair JUST so you have to go back to them and get it fixed for a nominal fee. Probably why Sony has so many Firmwares that break their consoles.
Anywho, I legitimately believe that indies are improving vastly from when they burst onto the scene years ago, but Brawlout is proof positive that we can’t rely too heavily on them to provide anyone with something 100% bullshit free. At some point, people need to start drawing the lines on what is acceptable because this shit is getting out of hand. So far, I’ve only seen this in the 2 games I’ve played (though I recall Bomberman Act Zero had the same nonsense). People have probably accepted this as “awesome” because they’ve been sold on Cloud Storage years ago. Yeah sure, lets trust random strangers with our data because we’re too lazy to manage our own shit. Gah, rambling…
I mean you really have to ask yourself what kind of asshat thought this was a good idea.
