fantastic_four

Or almost any year since the Oscars began. The Academy mostly only nominates films that are art, i.e. contain some sort of underlying theme that improves the human condition. Sci-fi and fantasy RARELY get nominated because they usually focus on entertainment, not art, and you can count the number of sci-fi or fantasy films that have been nominated for Best Picture on your fingers and toes. If it doesn't speak to some unique and compelling humanistic theme then it has to raise the bar and move the goalposts SIGNIFICANTLY to get nominated. Previous examples include: Star Wars--changed film editing forever, and critics knew it even in the moment. Raiders of the Lost Ark--defined a crossover fantasy/action drama that barely existed before, and has barely existed since that was at its level of quality. Weak nomination that never stood much of a chance even though it's one of my favorite five films ever made. ET--humanized alien life to an extent no film ever had. Prior to this the possibility of alien life seemed hostile and threatening, but ET made people believe it was possible for it to be cute and cuddly. If we get invaded and enslaved perhaps we can point to it as humanity's downfall, but hey, it showed us a possibility film hadn't until then. Lord of the Rings (all three years)--not art, but the novels defined an entire genre and Jackson's interpretation was so spot on Academy voters couldn't resist honoring it. All three nominations--and the win for Return of the King--are arguably in the top 50 least-deserved nominees, and it's right in the running for least-deserved win. Even Tokien's peers thought he was slumming it by writing children's books in the 40s and 50s, so it's oddly nostalgic that 3-4 generations later critics raised on them respected them so much. But it's understandable, and since I've seen each film 5 to 10 times obviously I agree about their quality, although not the deservingness of the films. The books? Yes, they defined a genre. The films not so much despite how awesome I think they are. Mad Max: Fury Road--film editing, nothing else. Star Wars on meth. It was never going to win, but the nod makes sense since it went to a place no film ever has (and many or most viewers never wanted to be in). The Shape of Water--didn't see it so no idea Arrival--wonderfully complex, well-crafted, and one of the most realistic depictions of what alien first contact might be like. Black Panther--culturally significant for a vision of what Earth's most subjugated people on its most colonized continent might do if a fictional element like Vibranium existed. I don't think it deserved a Best Picture nod because it's far more about entertainment than art as all Marvel films are, but I understand and empathize with the progressive mindset that led to the nomination. This is also the film that started a controversy within the Academy trying to distinguish art from entertainment, and it directly led to the proposal to create a completely separate Best Picture category for entertainment-based films. That category was originally set to begin next year but has been postponed indefinitely. Joker--no comment because I don't see how it had anything to say about the human condition any more than Alan Moore would ever think Killing Joke ever did. The Joker is the embodiment of a self-absorbed, random killer--which Christopher Nolan intuited and depicted his Joker to be, as all popular incarnations of the character had been before and how I saw the character in that film--and I don't see how elevating that helps anyone. But I've only seen it once so I could be wrong, and I welcome a case for how much it says about the human condition. I lean towards the opposite idea that it has more destructive than constructive influence.

I can't come up with one angle from the source material the Academy would consider art. Seems insane.

What the heck would make him think that--just because Chloe Zhao directed it? It's a sci-fi superhero movie of a concept that even comics fans were at best lukewarm on. That's nowhere near the usual high art the Academy votes for so his expectations were more than too lofty.

Meh, it was easier to Google my questions than it was to type them. The answers are Herbert doesn't show any sapient aliens in any of his Dune novels so yes, the Fremen descended from Earth. And the spice gives people the ability to look into the past and future, so it enables interstellar travel by allowing someone to look into the future and foresee a path between places that doesn't slam ships into other objects.

Listened to a few reviews that stirred up some questions. I've never read the novels and didn't see the Lynch movie, so I have a few story/plot questions: Are all the humanoids we see in the film originally from Earth, or are we to assume some of them are alien? I listened to two different reviewers who were assuming the Fremen were alien, but I assumed they were Terrans who colonized Arrakis at some point in the probably-distant past. My own assumption stems from the unlikelihood that another species would evolve to look exactly like us on other planets, but of course there are so many examples of authors either overlooking or just ignoring that fact that I suppose one can never assume that all humans we see descended from Earth. What exactly is the spice used for in interstellar travel? I assumed it was some kind of fuel, but I heard a reviewer say it was used to put people into some kind of elevated state to help ships with navigation. If they showed that I must have missed it.

No kid young enough to know how that could be offensive could possibly be offended by that, so I can't decide what I like more--the clever word play, or the fact that they're offending people too dumb to know that they have no reason whatsoever to be offended.

The 3 1/2 stars is in the image I posted under the review title to the right. I read the review and, while not glowing, it was generally positive. So far, about 4 or 5 "rotten" Eternals reviews should be "fresh" IMO. But you're right. When I clicked on your link, the star rating is gone. I don't know, it was there when I clipped the image anyway. Maybe reviewers have to upload their reviews to RT, and when they do they're required to enter a numerical score.

Where do you see him giving the film a star rating? I don't see one in his review: https://substreammagazine.com/2021/10/eternals-review-caught-between-the-mcu-mold-and-a-chance-to-break-free/ What does RT even do for reviewers who don't give numerical ratings? Or do they require it to include a reviewer in their results?

The timing isn't to beat DC, it's Feige's path to introducing the X-Men into an already-established universe. He had Eternals queued up for years and let it rip as soon as he had good reason to believe the X-Men were coming back into the MCU fold.

For keeping steady on the ground I'd use a Can of Beams hex base: https://www.canofbeams.com/shop/ Flight stands come and go. All of my favorites are currently out of production, so for now I'd either get the ones from Hasbro ( https://hasbropulse.com/products/hasbro-poseable-action-figure-stands-pack-of-3-hasbro-pulse-exclusive ) or if you want to support larger figures, i.e. sixth scale or BAF figures, then one of the knockoff larger scale stands ( https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002362953215.html ).

Really? That's interesting, because to me, I think it'll blow past it. It's up to 4100 backers on day two, so yea, looks like you're right. I thought this one would go the way of Cookie Monster, but yep, clearly there's a market I wouldn't have guessed exists.

Bring up the new Mr. Sinister on the Pulse site. Right-click the page in Chrome and choose "View page source". Hit CTRL-F to find text in the page, and search for the term "inventory". Skip the first few instances until you find some text that looks like the below: js-product-inventory="-5463" js-inventory-quantity="13950"> Most sites that use a standard, off-the-shelf software package called Shopify to do their commerce like Hasbro does will have inventories inside the page. Sometimes it differs as to where the counts are, but on Pulse it has always been in there somewhere. In the example of Sinister you're seeing two numbers--the first is the number sold, and the second is the total available.

I can't imagine that proton pack gets 7000 backers. It's SO niche. The GI Joe Cobra Officer looks great. I know how to look in the code to see how many they make available and how many have sold--they're making 7,500 available, and they've already sold 6,147. It's selling like hotcakes and will be gone quickly after general sales open at 8 PM.

What's there to hate about Zendaya? Whatever it is must be carried over from either who she is or some previous show or film she was in.

Every DC movie is whatever the director wants it to be for the most part with no single creative controller behind them like Feige. So what is it they're even talking about? Between Nolan, Snyder, Whedon, and all the rest I have no unified feel for what a "DC movie" even is.

Actually I guess I was worried about this from the start just based upon the number of characters in the group. Think about the setup leading to the Avengers--we had Hulk, Iron Man, Cap, and Thor movies, then here come the Avengers. And there are only six of them, whereas there are ten Eternals--there's NO way to cover that many characters in much of a satisfying way. Then there's the multitude of Celestials and their highly complex goals. Man, I hope they focus on the Celestials. But I realize if they do that most people will probably hate the film and be bored, so I'm also aware that's something they can't do. But screw everybody else, I hope they did it. There's just not enough time to get fans hooked on ten Eternals, but I bet they tried anyway--and it sounds like they largely failed. Comparison--remember when Sam Raimi left the Spider-Man trilogy because Avi Arad made him cram three villains into one film in Sandman, Venom, and Green Goblin Jr? Here we have Chloe Zhao tasked with INTRODUCING ten heroes, plus half a dozen or so Celestial gods, plus Deviants. There's just no time for all that.

I can see how this movie would be "overstuffed" just based upon the source material. Kirby originally wanted to focus on the Celestials with his comic series, but later decided to focus on the Eternals and back into the Celestials. If the film focuses on the Eternals and only glosses over the Celestials, or tries to split time between the two then yea, it could easily feel overstuffed. Kirby was hoping he had dozens or hundreds of issues and many years to explore everything, but fitting all that into 2.5 hours is ambitious. I was hoping they'd split time between the two groups and we wouldn't get a ton of Eternals coverage, but I bet they short-shrifted the Celestials. I'd prefer more Celestials coverage to understand their motivations, but I bet we don't get it.

How can we be sure how integral and intertwined it will be? I would think MCU fans could ignore the role the Celestials and Eternals play in the greater universe just as easily as the vast majority of comics fans have for decades. You could easily ignore the Eternals without missing much besides what the group itself offers, and you could also dismiss the role the Celestials play as trivia. I don't dismiss them in that way, but I can easily see how most people would--and it's what I would expect. I'm hugely interested in evolution and the idea of genetic engineering so the Celestials and their creations are massively appealing to me, but I'm aware that most people find it boring.

Whenever Hasbro releases a figure that's not a Pulse exclusive the quantities available via the Pulse web site appear to be very, very limited, usually to well under 1000 units. I assume they do that so as not to compete heavily with retailers selling their product. Additionally it seems as if Pulse gets their product last or close to last as compared to other retailers, which again I presume is intentional to service their retail customers first. Because of this I barely know what they're thinking with that Pulse Premium membership thing. I have yet to see one reason to subscribe to that anymore, particularly since they've made con exclusives far easier to get the last two years. Those used to sell out in minutes online, but in 2020 and 2021 that hasn't happened at all.

Yep, it's really a Golden Age of superhero cinema. Even 20 years ago this film probably would have crushed the top ten, but the volume of quality films over the last two decades is overwhelming. Though the fantasy elements turned me off that's a highly personal reaction based upon a bias for better fighting in film. I'm probably going to have to watch this another time or two to get an objective feel for its quality. But I still stand by that bias from a subjective perspective. How was the fighting cinematography anything less than incredible in a Shang-Chi movie?!?! The fighting scenes don't come CLOSE to any from the Matrix, and that's a surprise.

As well you should. It's the second-best superhero film ever made. Finally saw the film today after weeks of schedule switching due to everyone who wanted to go being busy. I had no idea how much fantasy this movie would be...wow, the whole last third was all magic. Didn't expect that from a movie based upon a comic character inspired by Bruce Lee. Wanted more martial arts action, got Dr. Strange light. It was fine, kept me entertained. Loved that train fight scene, but I had already seen the best parts of it in the trailers. Most of the other fight scenes were either too darkly-lit, close-in to enjoy much or had too much magic involved to appreciate the martial arts skill like that shown by Simu in the train scene. I need to bump the top superheroes of all time thread and update my list, but I doubt this film makes the top 25.

Is there a history behind the Skystriker? Reading the Haslab campaign text it appears to be referring to a previously-released version. Is that the case, and if so how did it compare to this new one? I can only assume this new one blows the old one away just based upon this one costing $230.

I haven't read the books, didn't see the David Lynch movie, and am pretty much only familiar with the story with the bits I got playing the first real-time strategy game "Dune 2" back in 1992. I generally enjoyed it. The cinematography was amazing, the performances were great, but you can see where George Lucas thought he needed to speed things up a bit with Star Wars to keep people's attention because it's a bit slow. I enjoyed Villeneuve's film "Arrival" more than this one because it was closer to our reality and far more thought-provoking, but I did enjoy it and will watch the next one.

I love panspermia stories so that means I liked Prometheus, so that's a great comment to hear. The story of the Celestials isn't exactly a panspermia tale where life from one planet is seeded onto another, but it is similar with the Celestials changing the course of life on planets so the parallel definitely makes sense.

I thought my favorite figure of 2021 was going to be the Mafex Superman Hush, but I just got the Mafex Gambit in and WOW, I think he takes it. He's absolutely perfect, and while I usually dislike cloth goods his cape is HELLA fun to pose because it has bendy wires all along the edges allowing you to position it in almost any way you'd ever want. It's like having two action figures in one where you can pose both Gambit and separately the coat into incredibly dynamic poses. Mafex just makes ALL the best twelfth scale action figures now; every release ends up being the best available version of that character. Also picked up the Age of Apocalypse Magneto, and while I would prefer a classic version the figure is just phenomenal.