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Messages - honk

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1
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 26, 2024, 03:40:14 AM »
Also, isn't his networth increase due to Truth Social going public and the initial expected stock surge which will likely drop like a stone to its true worth soon after?

Yes. It's paper wealth in perhaps its most extreme form. Trump can't realize it and it's not going to help him pay his debts or cut any deals with financial institutions.

2
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« on: March 25, 2024, 01:31:38 AM »
The Arkham games have always struggled the most of any series in trying to balance their high-stakes plots with their open-world formats. It's not helped by how inane and convoluted their plots end up being. It's so unnecessary. The main draw of these games has always been playing as Batman and fighting his famous villains. There was no need to pair that up with an apocalyptic plot with a breakneck pace in which everything happens over the course of a single night. My big takeaway when I first played through the series was that the games would be so much better if they loosened up and took a more episodic approach, just letting you play as Batman as he encounters and faces off against his villains as he goes about his business.

It's a shame that you didn't like Dragon's Dogma, Crudblud. I'm enjoying its new sequel so far, though.

3
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Now Playing (the Video Game Version)
« on: March 19, 2024, 01:44:26 AM »
Speaking of stealth, the MJ/Miles sections suck ass. Yeah I really want to have the character who can run up walls and cover all of Manhattan in a matter of minutes by swinging from skyscrapers taken away from me so that I can slowly fumble around as an ordinary person while armed guards with extremely selective cones of vision and radii of hearing fart about in silly obstacle courses like a bunch of potatoes with legs.

You just don't understand the vision.

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One final complaint is that for an open world game it feels super on-rails a lot of the time. Sometimes you finish an objective and then have nothing to do, but then literally one minute or less later someone will call you and tell you where to go next. I'm not sure what a good solution to this is, since there's nothing worse than having to complete minigames and sidequests to get the next piece of the main story, but it feels as though Insomniac didn't quite know which direction they wanted to go in with some of this stuff.

I have a solution - put a marker on the map with each new story mission, and whenever the player arrives at that marker, then they get a phone call from whatever character wants them to do something next.

4
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Superhero Movies & Comics General
« on: March 18, 2024, 04:16:26 AM »
Snyder is once more in the news, due to an recent interview with fellow chucklehead Joe Rogan:

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Snyder said that he “tends to get in trouble” with comic book fans “because I do take a deconstructivist point of view. Because I care, I want to take [superheroes] apart.”

“People are always like, ‘Batman can’t kill.’ So Batman can’t kill is canon. And I’m like, ‘Okay, well, the first thing I want to do when you say that is I want to see what happens,'” Snyder continued. “And they go, ‘Well, don’t put him in a situation where he has to kill someone.’ I’m like, ‘Well, that’s just like you’re protecting your God in a weird way, right? You’re making your God irrelevant.'”

Snyder found it much more interesting to put Batman in a situation where he has to kill, taking inspiration from Frank Miller’s comic book “The Dark Knight Returns.” He said fans often don’t want to see their hero in a “no win situation because we don’t want to see him lose,” but that’s not story he wants to bring to the screen. Snyder isn’t interested in a superhero who “has to maintain this godlike status.”

As I said some posts back, I don't think that Snyder actually knows what deconstruction is. Simply ignoring the fact that Batman canonically doesn't kill (because Snyder thinks that the idea of a superhero who doesn't kill is childish and overly idealistic) and instead portraying him as a killer is not deconstructive of anything, at least not in and of itself. It's literally just doing something different. To put it in Snyder's terms, if he wants Batman to kill so that we can "see what happens," then we do in fact need to see what happens. There's nothing textually, visually, or thematically significant about the fact that Batman is a killer in BvS. He simply uses guns and kills people in the same way that a standard action hero in a standard action movie would use guns and kill people. Further proof that Batman being a killer wasn't meant to be deconstructive can be seen in the big Batman fight scene near the end of the movie. Despite the fact that this scene takes place after Batman's confrontation with Superman and the completion of his arc, Batman still kills a number of his enemies. The fact is that Batman's arc was never about not killing in general; it was specifically about not killing Superman, and to a lesser extent not branding criminals, although the fact that it was Lex who arranged for the branded criminals to be killed muddles the issue of why exactly Batman branding criminals is treated by this movie as being so deeply wrong, especially when compared to all the other things he does.

And like I said years ago, Batman does not kill in TDKR. There is one ambiguous scene in the comic, which I'm pretty sure was meant to be a fake-out to make the reader think that maybe Batman really did kill someone, only to be reassured later on by comments from both Batman and the police pointing out that he actually hasn't killed anyone. TDKR is full of little fake-outs like that to make us think that Batman is about to go too far, like Batman producing a rifle which fires a grappling hook and the Batmobile opening fire on a bunch of gangsters with non-lethal rounds. Snyder was clearly far more interested in TDKR's imagery and occasional snatches of dialogue than he was in its actual story. To be fair, though, Snyder is far from the only Batman fan who apparently interpreted TDKR as a straightforward story about Batman being awesome rather than a deconstruction - an actual deconstruction, not Snyder's incorrect idea of one. It's not as egregious a misunderstanding of the text as it for Watchmen.

Anyway, I've watched Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the final film in the DCEU before Gunn's new Superman movie presumably soft-reboots the whole thing. It's neither great nor a complete disaster. I guess the first thing I should say is that I was wrong about my "guarantee" of Momoa's performance being a major flaw in the movie. He still isn't what I'd call a good actor, but I'll credit him with putting a lot more effort into emoting and playing his role as more than just a chill dudebro than he has in previous films. Amber Heard has a much smaller role in this movie compared to the first one, and while I think she got a raw deal in the Depp trial and the discourse surrounding it (don't @ me), I can't really blame the filmmakers for not wanting to wade into the controversy surrounding her by giving her a big role again. She's never been a particularly good actress, anyway, lending their decision a bit more artistic credibility. So I wouldn't find this situation to be quite as unjust as, say, how Kelly Marie Tran was only given about a minute of screen time in TRoS to cater to the toxic vocal minority who hated her in TLJ.

The main problem with this movie is that it seems to be cramming two unrelated plots together for its main story. One is that Black Manta from the first movie is back and determined to exact his revenge on Aquaman, and the other is an absolutely shameless ripoff of LotR, complete with an underwater Sauron, an underwater Mordor, and an underwater One Ring in the form of a trident. I actually enjoyed how audacious the movie is in cribbing from LotR both visually and thematically, and I assure you that I'm not just reading too much into it or anything. Just one look at this underwater Sauron will show that there is zero chance this was unintentional. The issue is that none of it is necessary and just takes focus away from what should have been the movie's main conflict. Black Manta already hates Aquaman, and he's already dangerous enough to pose a serious threat to him. He doesn't need to be corrupted or mind-controlled, nor does he need an ancient evil weapon or an army of monsters to attack Atlantis. He's a successful pirate and treasure hunter, so presumably he's already got a gang, and it's not a stretch to suppose that he could have some new technology that Aquaman isn't familiar with. This doesn't need to be explained or justified within the movie. In fact, by keeping the threat that Black Manta poses as being entirely the product of human civilization, it could add a new dimension to the relationship between Aquaman and Orm, because Orm might consider it to be vindication for his plan to wipe out humanity in the previous movie.

The highlight of this movie is the return of Patrick Wilson as Orm. Like an absolute champ, Wilson refuses to let the fact that he's in a stupid and ridiculous movie hamper his acting, and he gives every scene absolutely everything he has. He delivers goofy exposition with a straight face that Adam West would approve of, he has great comic timing, and he makes Aquaman feel like more of a rounded character by playing the straight man to Momoa's wild exuberance. Speaking of the dynamic between those two, I've got to say I didn't like a brief gag where Aquaman sarcastically calls Orm "Loki." He's not making a reference to Norse mythology. It's very clearly a shout-out to the MCU, and it's very clearly for the benefit of the audience so they can see the inspiration. And it's so unnecessary! The MCU did not invent the idea of two brothers fighting over who would get to inherit the throne! It's unnecessary self-deprecation, like the filmmakers felt the need to sheepishly shrug and say, "Yeah, we're ripping off the MCU, so let's pay tribute to them in a weird bit of dialogue aimed at the audience," when it really isn't a ripoff of the MCU and no tribute was needed or owed. I know this is a nitpick, but something about that line really rubbed me the wrong way.

One thing that definitely is a ripoff from the MCU is the ending, where - look, I'm just going to say it, because this really isn't giving anything away about the story, and that's kind of the problem - Aquaman reveals the existence of Atlantis to the rest of the world. Yes, Black Panther had a similar ending, but in that movie, it was the result of the movie's actual themes and story. It was a logical and satisfying ending. In this movie, Atlantis being hidden from the rest of the world has fuck all to do with the themes or story. It's literally just there because Black Panther.

Here's my updated ranking of the entire DCEU:

1. The Suicide Squad
2. Wonder Woman
3. Shazam!
4. Birds of Prey (A-tier, genuinely good movies)
5. Blue Beetle
6. Aquaman
7. Wonder Woman 84 (B-tier, enjoyable despite their flaws)
8. Zack Snyder's Justice League
9. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
10. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
11. Black Adam
12. Man of Steel
13. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (C-tier, bad movies with some redeeming elements)
14. The Flash
15. Justice League
16. Suicide Squad (D-tier, utter shit)

5
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 14, 2024, 03:25:32 PM »
Comedy routines involving "random" ordinary people saying stupid things should never be taken as a representative sample of anything or in any way meaningful. It's a very real possibility that these interviews were entirely scripted and these people were paid to take part in the charade. And if they weren't scripted, they were almost certainly carefully selected from dozens of other interviews. If you spend hours and hours talking to lots and lots of people, you're bound to eventually run into someone of picturesque stupidity.

6
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 07, 2024, 03:57:25 PM »
That's a great response. I like how you posted a bunch of facts and made some very reasoned arguments to support your position. I'm totally convinced.

7
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 07, 2024, 02:23:17 AM »
No one here said election interference is okay

Yes, because instead you deflected from it by trying to talk about the DNC's corruption instead.

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...it's just that the DNC did nothing about the corruption at all. They just let it slide, just as you are, because the bad people exposed it. Corruption is only bad if good people expose it!

...

That's called... not caring.

None of this is true. I don't have to discuss the subject of the DNC's corruption with you if I don't want to, just as I don't have to discuss any number of irrelevant subjects with you if I don't want to. You can't draw any meaningful conclusions about what I do or don't condone from me simply choosing not to discuss an irrelevant subject with you.

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Here's the thing though, the "Putin wants Trump" propaganda is... a lie. It didn't happen. It doesn't exist. Hillary made it up as a smear and it persists despite a complete lack of evidence.

That's really interesting! Someone should tell this guy, because he seems to think differently.

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Also, it's not a coincidence that Roe v Wade meets its end under a Catholic president, but I'm sure you think it's still Trump's fault!

You're going to have to put more effort into your bait than this.

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It's like if someone doesn't explicitly explain every fine detail of politics to you, you miss the plot entirely! The concept of Biden being a conservative, which he is, probably doesn't compute because he keeps doing conservative actions while saying liberal words.

You say I am "both sides"'ing you, but surely you've noticed Biden is farther right than Obama, who was already a centrist! You've been tricked into voting between two conservatives and you don't even mind!

There is no conflict between acknowledging that Biden is far from a leftist - or even a liberal - and arguing that he is vastly preferable to Trump. There might be more validity to what you were saying if it were a standard Republican rather than Trump who was running against Biden, although Roe being overturned would almost certainly have happened with any Republican in office - there's no way a lifelong womanizer like Trump really has any kind of special animosity towards abortion, after all. But Trump is a special breed who's uniquely unsuited for office, which he proved time and time again during his four years in office.

It was "Republicans" backed by a Democrat activist organization. While it's a common clever tactic to say "uhm ackshully it was Republicans that brought the case", it's transparent to anyone who has bothered looking more into it that it was a bunch of Democrats searching for someone to mask their tactics.

I haven't seen any mention of this organization in any of the media coverage of this case. I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, only that this information definitely isn't so obvious or "transparent" as to not even merit being supported with a citation in an article blaming Democrats for pushing this case.


8
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 06, 2024, 04:31:35 PM »
First of all, it wasn't Democrats who brought the case to kick Trump off the ballot; it was anti-Trump Republicans. That's a very basic fact about this case to get wrong, and it doesn't bode well for the rest of the article.

Dilanian and Edwards both offered entirely reasonable commentary about the role of the Supreme Court in the election and how public perception will likely regard it. Neither of them even said they actually disagreed with the ruling. The articles from the NYT and WaPo, meanwhile, were both written several days ago, which is kind of a giveaway that neither of them were criticizing this ruling. They were criticizing the Court playing along with Trump's insane "the president should always be immune from any and all criminal charges" argument and giving him the lengthy delay in his trials that he wants so he can wait out the clock and be reelected before he faces justice.

Even if this article had cited four excellent examples of prominent Democrats whining about the Court not kicking Trump off the ballot, it would still only be very weak anecdotal evidence, but it's interesting that this garbage website apparently couldn't even do that.

9
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 05, 2024, 04:17:34 PM »
The case was about whether or not the states had the right to take it upon themselves to remove Trump from the ballot, not whether or not Trump was guilty of insurrection. It was a perfectly reasonable decision, and I'm not surprised that it was unanimous.

Incidentally, I really don't care that Keith Olbermann said something stupid in response to the ruling, and I don't feel any need to defend him or otherwise take responsibility for what he said. If you want to play this tit-for-tat "look what someone on your team said!" game, I'd argue there are far more Republicans who say stupid shit publicly every day than Democrats, and unlike Olbermann, many of them are actual elected officials. For a recent example, here's GOP Congressman Mike Collins boosting an openly racist and anti-semitic Twitter account and agreeing with an openly anti-semitic tweet. This from the same Republican party that's so quick to label anyone who makes entirely justified criticisms of Israel as anti-semitic.

And not that it really matters, but the NYP's characterization of the article in question is deeply dishonest. The author only briefly mentions in passing that America was built on stolen land, and doesn't try to justify or excuse shoplifting at all.

10
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: March 04, 2024, 03:13:31 AM »
I didn't notice this when it was first posted, my bad.

Ah, yes, corruption in the DNC is irrelevant. What is relevant is how the corruption was revealed!

Correct, corruption in the DNC is irrelevant to the seriousness of a hostile foreign power interfering in our elections for their own gain. Election interference does not become okay or justified if genuine corruption ends up being exposed any more than murder becomes okay or justified if it turns out that the victim was a bad person.

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It's like when you catch someone cheating on you and they get mad you were looking at their phone. The DNC was, and still is, corrupt, but you do not care about that. They rugpulled Bernie Sanders, a politician you supposedly liked, but still, you do not care. It's fascinating, really. When given blatant evidence that the people you voted for rigged the game so that you have to vote for them, you don't mind all that much.

I never said I didn't care. I said it was irrelevant to the seriousness of Russia interfering in our elections, which it is.

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You see, we've successfully bamboozled the American public into voting between two old-ass neocons. Trump? Biden? You won't notice the difference. It doesn't matter who you vote for, you're getting an old neocon either way! Face it, the elites have checkmated America in a way so fabulous that it can't help but be lauded. Even given evidence of them doing it, you still won't care. It's a masterpiece of political engineering.

It's always conservatives who cry both sides! in online discussions, and it's always simultaneously (and seemingly paradoxically) in support of a conservative politician or agenda. If there were no difference between Biden and Trump and it didn't matter whom we voted for, then Putin wouldn't have gone to all that effort to get Trump elected in the first place. He knew that Trump had no real understanding of or interest in international politics and certainly no deeply-held political positions, and he knew that Trump's policy decisions would come down to Trump's personal whims rather than any non-existent political or ethical philosophy. Trump is no less shallow and ignorant now than he was in 2016. If Trump returns to office, he will once again base his decisions almost entirely on his own personal whims, and Putin will take advantage of this to try to flatter and manipulate Trump into turning on Ukraine. If Trump's constant fawning over Putin in his first term in office is any indication, he'll almost certainly succeed.

Incidentally, it's a strange time to make false both-sides equivalences when it was just last year that we had the momentous - and extremely unpopular, let's not forget - Supreme Court decision striking down Roe. That would never have happened if it had been a Democrat in office, given how all three of Trump's nominees formed half of the majority opinion in that case. That's not both-sides business as usual, that's specifically the conservative agenda supported by Republican politicians at work. The voters can and should punish Republicans (especially Trump) for this in November, although sadly I don't expect them to.

11
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: February 19, 2024, 06:02:38 PM »
As I pointed out a couple of years ago, the Corn Pop story has been corroborated. Intuitively you feel that it isn't true, but the evidence shows that it actually is. Not a great start if that's Exhibit A of Biden's supposed mental incompetence.

12
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: February 17, 2024, 01:29:08 AM »
Well, you said it made sense for Biden not to drop out. It doesn't.

13
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: President Joe Biden
« on: February 16, 2024, 04:47:08 PM »
Sitting presidents generally aren't primaried at all, to say nothing of the unique degree of loyalty and devotion that Trump's fans show him, so it makes no sense to compare this to other primaries to begin with. Obviously this is a unique situation. Your other point seems to be more concerned with some imaginary game of saving face rather than winning the election. Refusing to address an obvious weakness simply because your opponent has already identified that weakness and you don't want to admit that they were right is insanity.

14
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 13, 2024, 11:15:03 PM »
Oh my God, Dave, just let it go. These tête-à-têtes with him never go anywhere.

15
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 12, 2024, 05:27:17 AM »
Oh no, they publicly displayed the DNC's very weird emails where you learned that the DNC was corrupt! Good thing you made sure to just get mad at Russia about it instead of trying to fix any corruption.

That's completely irrelevant and you know it. Putin did not target the DNC and release their emails out of a sense of altruism or opposition to corruption. He did it to pursue his own political agenda, one that happens to be deeply hostile to America and its interests. That's election interference. The fact that you personally don't care about it and don't think it should be a crime (something that you have in common with Trump) doesn't change the fact that it is a crime and it is something that this nation takes very seriously.

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The bummer is that Biden doesn't have immunity to send Seal Team Six to assassinate traitorous insurrectionist who collaborate with enemies to subvert our democracy.

The cool part is that Trump's idiotic argument got shot down and he only has a couple of weeks to find a lawyer and mount an appeal to the supreme court.

The final form of the propaganda lemming: I should be able to KILL politicians I don't personally like!

Very sane and normal, lmao.

He's obviously making a reductio ad absurdum argument about Trump's claim that the president should have full and total immunity for anything they do while in office. If you want to laugh at anyone, laugh at Trump, because it's his argument. Not that Trump seriously expects this argument to prevail in court, of course. It's clearly just a delay tactic for him, and so far it seems to be working quite well. All he has to do is hold out until he's reelected, and then he can make the federal charges go away and safely ignore the state charges.

I'm starting to like Nikki Haley.
Apparently Trump made a jab about how her husband isn't with her on the camapign trail.  To which she replies:

“Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about. Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.”

I'd love to see those two on a debate stage.  She'd eat him alive.

Also, Trump's research team needs to step up their game cause they should have told him before he said it (if that was possible).

I'm sure Trump knew perfectly well where Michael was. He's just playing to his base, who love it when Trump goes low. They love it when he's cruel, when he's petty, when he's selfish, when he's racist, when he's misogynistic, and when he attacks people who are far more principled than him. And while you might say that you like Haley now, it's only a matter of time before she, like all the other Republicans who once criticized or opposed Trump, pledges fealty to him, kisses his ring, and does everything in her power to defend Trump, shield him from accountability, and enact his garbage policies. And Trump will reward her for this the same way he rewards all his allies - by publicly stabbing her in the back and using her as a scapegoat the moment he thinks it'll be to his advantage to do so.

16
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 07, 2024, 08:13:04 PM »
Of course America has sent tons of aid to Ukraine overall, but the point is that in recent months, the GOP have suddenly become opposed to sending Ukraine further aid. It's not a coincidence that this radical shift in opinion is occurring as Trump is once more capturing the hearts and minds of Republican voters. The GOP are abandoning Ukraine so they can appeal to Trump, and Trump's opposition to sending Ukraine aid is, as his political opinions usually are, an entirely personal whim on his part rather than an informed decision. Putin flatters Trump and caters to his fragile ego, and so Trump decides that therefore America mustn't do anything against Putin's interests, and the GOP promptly follows suit.

17
Arts & Entertainment / Re: Just Watched
« on: February 05, 2024, 03:36:26 AM »
Rebel Moon (Zack Snyder, 2023)

Zack Snyder's latest auteur piece begins with this fantastic image, and I immediately knew that I was in for a treat:



Rebel Moon, or to give it its full title, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is a fascinatingly bad movie. From a screenwriting perspective, it does everything wrong. Every line of dialogue is weird, stilted, and inhuman. Every line of exposition is clumsy and ham-fisted. Every character is a stock archetype. Every plot event is a cliché. Every individual scene appears to essentially be a pastiche or a blatant rip-off of a scene from another, better movie - and to be clear, being derivative isn't inherently a bad thing. Star Wars, Snyder's biggest influence for this movie, is famously derivative. But if you're going to take it to such an extreme that you're putting a scene from another movie into your movie, then there should be a good reason why you need that scene in your movie. The scene should contribute meaningfully to making your movie better in a way that wouldn't have been possible if you hadn't used that scene. Snyder's thought process, however, seems to have begun and ended with, "Hey, this was a cool scene; it'll be a cool scene in my movie too," and that's just not good enough. It makes the movie look less like a cohesive whole and more like a patchwork quilt of lifted scenes.

It isn't just the screenplay at fault here, though. The movie is shockingly ugly for a director whose movies you could always count on to at least look good. Snyder did the cinematography for this film himself, and the result is that while his visual style is still present, what used to look provocative and stylish now just looks ugly and out of focus. Another one of Snyder's strengths that ends up diminished in this movie is the action, mainly because of Snyder's constant use of slow motion. I don't know why Snyder keeps using slow motion more and more in his movies. In his earlier movies, he understood that it could be used effectively to emphasize impacts or other key moments. Nowadays, he just seems to think that the more slow motion he adds to any given scene, the better the scene is. As a result, virtually every action scene in this movie is mostly in slow motion. Someone falling is in slow motion. Someone firing a gun is in slow motion. Someone running is in slow motion. It's surprisingly difficult to mentally keep track of how an action scene is playing out when everything is slowed down, and more importantly, if everything is emphasized, then nothing is really emphasized. That seems like a really basic concept of directing to me.

Another baffling decision for this movie is how Snyder handles the flashback scenes. The main character, Kora, has a dark and troubled past as a soldier in this setting's brutal Warhammer 40K-style military regime (they even call it the "Imperium"), and a couple of lengthy flashbacks show what her life was like back then. All well and good - but then for some reason the movie apparently forgets that it's already showing us what's happening and Kora just starts talking over the flashbacks and explaining her life story to the audience in the most dull, undisguised exposition imaginable. Again, we are already seeing these flashbacks, we are already being shown the relevant information, and then Snyder just goes, nah, we can't trust the audience to make sense of what they're seeing, better add some commentary to spell it all out for them. This is such bad, bad filmmaking. You don't do that! You don't sit the viewer down and fucking talk at them for minutes on end for no better reason than to deliver some exposition, and especially not when you don't even need to because you already have a scene that's showing the viewer the relevant information anyway! This is very obvious, very basic storytelling. Show, don't tell. It's so elementary that it's a cliché. How does Snyder not know this?

The basic plot structure of the movie feels like a video game, and that's not a compliment. The heroes travel throughout the universe looking for people to join their rebellion against the Imperium. Every person they meet has their own unique little scene, either an action scene where they show off what they can do or a dramatic scene where they reveal more about themselves, before they join forces with the heroes and then more or less fade from the movie altogether, only emerging for the occasional group shot or odd line of dialogue. I'm reminded of nothing so much as playing a party-based RPG and only seeing the characters that you don't put in your party in between missions. A relatively minor change would have made the setup much, much better - just have the heroes ask each character they recruit to meet up with them on the planet they were protecting at a certain time, they go their separate ways, and then the conclusion where the characters arrive at the planet would also be a reunion, ending the movie and setting the stage for the next part of the duology on a much stronger, more dramatic note. It would still be a bad movie, of course, because of all the other shit in it, but we'd at least be spared the awkwardness of the new recruits tagging along after the heroes with nothing to do.

I've said before that focusing on "plot holes" or general sort of "why did they do this/why did this happen" critiques is inherently very weak, very superficial film criticism, and its rise in popularity in recent years is genuinely one of the worst things that the rise of social media and the increasing prominence of fandom has done to film. I can't resist pointing out that there are plenty of bewildering examples of inexplicable plot events and character decisions in this movie that'll jump out at you even if you're not looking for them, but fair is fair - they're trivial nitpicks in comparison to the movie's fundamental, material problems, and so I won't dwell on them. The one nitpick I will focus on simply because of how incredibly distracting I found it is how obviously young this movie's Palpatine analogue is:



Zack, if you're going to insist on casting an actor in his thirties to play the adoptive father of a character played by Sofia Boutella (this actor is in fact a few years younger than Boutella), then you've got to do a better job with makeup. Giving this guy a silly fake beard with gray flecks in it just isn't convincing when we can clearly see his babyface underneath it. I know this is the nitpickiest of nitpicks, but it's so amateurish and distracting.

There are not one, but two scenes of sexual assault in this movie, and this is genuinely one element of the movie that I didn't enjoy even ironically. It really feels like Snyder is well behind the curve on this subject. In a time when high-profile films and TV shows are putting more and more effort into treating the subject of sexual assault more delicately and responsibly, such as by putting the emphasis on the victim rather than the hero who saves her or avoiding depicting it onscreen when possible, Snyder comes along like a bull in a china shop and whips out the old trope in exactly the same hacky, dated way that he always has, the same way that pop culture has largely moved past by now. I'm not going to preach or lecture to anyone, but a depiction of sexual assault in this day and age that's as nasty and prolonged as this one comes across as deeply insensitive, and I can't help suspecting that it was deliberately provocative on Snyder's part, as doubling down on controversial elements of his movies in an attempt to defiantly ram them into his critics' faces is something that he's done in the past on more than one occasion.

That last detail aside, I actually really enjoyed Rebel Moon. This might actually be Snyder's first so-bad-it's-good movie, at least for me, because he gets everything so perfectly wrong. Unlike in his previous movies, there are no good acting performances or striking action scenes to dilute the badness on display. It's just a pure, unfiltered disaster, and I was riveted from start to finish. I don't know if anyone here would really be interested in this movie based on what I've said - are Crudblud and Snupes still watching bad movies together? They might like it! - but for me, I honestly can't wait for the upcoming second part and extended version of this movie.

18
Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 03, 2024, 04:47:28 AM »
If you mean by "successfully manipulated" he avoided doing anything while Trump was president. Putin repeatedly said he didn't want to perform any major actions while Trump was president because he felt Trump "didn't understand the details of geopolitics". In other words, Putin watched Trump kill an Iranian general in response to a single American death and knew Trump would overreact to Ukraine. Putin waited until a weaker leader like Biden got into office, then invaded Ukraine, knowing Biden wouldn't do anything.

...

inb4 "Biden giving old outdated weapons to Ukraine is definitely doing something!" and "Putin planned the invasion while Trump was president!" even though the buildup didn't start until after Biden won.

It is beyond sophomoric to try and boil foreign policy down simply to whether or not one country went to war with another. Most countries are not currently at war. Most countries very seldom go to war. It's a very poor exclusive metric for studying foreign policy. Neither of us can know for sure what Putin's long-term plans are or how they've changed over the years, but for you to assume that Trump's multiple public instances of taking Putin's side over his own agencies and soaking up of Putin's flattery meant nothing to how either of them conducted their foreign policy and that it was only Trump's strength (lol) that kept Putin from invading Ukraine is far-fetched on the face of it, and sounds like speculation calculated to show Trump in the best possible light.

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Yes, Trump said Putin was very, very smart. He also said Kim Jong was very, very smart. He also said Ted Cruz was very, very smart. Trump says it about literally everyone he wants something from.

He says it about literally everyone he gets something from. It's not a negotiating tactic on his part; it seems to be how he genuinely feels about anyone who butters him up or does him a favor, at least for a short length of time. And that's not a good sign for any leader, or any regular adult, for that matter. We do not want a president who's this susceptible to flattery. Who knows what Trump has told or given to Putin in their secret meetings that other people weren't allowed to attend, and who knows what he'll continue to tell or give him if he's reelected?

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Trump
« on: February 02, 2024, 02:44:11 AM »
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1226626397/trump-defamation-trial

Winning bigly.

Trump is actually winning 1 - 0 on these sex lawsuits after all appeals are concluded. As I recall you guys spent years gloating over this person.



Now this is clever. You bring up Stormy Daniels in general terms, and then post a screenshot regarding her defamation lawsuit against Trump being dismissed. In this way, you're implying - not outright stating, but very heavily implying - that all the hubbub about Daniels can be chalked up to this one lawsuit which has been dismissed. It's extremely disingenuous on your part, but it is clever, so I'll admit I'm impressed. Anyway, in case anyone here needs a reminder, the big deal regarding Daniels isn't her defamation lawsuit, it's the illegal hush money payment to her that Trump is currently being prosecuted for, and that Michael Cohen has already gone to prison over. Trump probably won't be convicted of it, because politicians have a long history of successfully blaming crimes that benefited them and that they almost certainly ordered or at least were complicit in on their underlings. To be sure, Trump's story that Cohen apparently chose to spend $130,000 of his own money and break the law entirely for Trump's benefit, but Trump himself knew nothing of this, is laughably untrue, but the way trials work is that the prosecution do have to present the evidence that proves the defendant guilty and can't just say that the defendant is guilty because obviously the defendant is guilty, even if everyone knows that the defendant really is obviously guilty. That's how George W. Bush got away with blaming the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent on Scooter Libby, and how Chris Christie got away with blaming the deliberate blocking of a highway of a mayor who didn't endorse him in an election on two staffers who undoubtedly had no idea that their boss would throw them under the bus if and when their crime eventually came to light. Anyway, assuming that Trump will be acquitted, this prosecution will still be a nice permanent stain on his record. Anyone can file a lawsuit, but a full-blown criminal prosecution is the kind of thing that clings to you even long after the fact.

So, everything regarding the entire story of RUSSIA. RUSsia, russia, is equivalent to a blade of grass behind a pane of glass.
I dunno.
Trump really likes Putin.  And Putin loves Trump.

Let's be clear on this point, especially given Action80's response to this. There is no genuine friendship or camaraderie between Trump and Putin. Trump probably thinks there is, but to Putin, Trump is nothing more than a useful idiot, someone he can easily twist and manipulate into saying and doing what he wants through flattery and favors. He successfully manipulated Trump many times while he was in office, and if Trump is reelected, he'll undoubtedly do so again.

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