Day 25: Saddest death
I’ve always thought his name was spelled Nephlite, but apparently it’s Nephrite. This episode of Sailor Moon still makes me cry to this day. Not because I necessarily like Nephrite but because Molly deserves love and she really gave her heart to him.
There were a lot of things missing from this film, things that a big company like Disney should have recognized and fixed and because they weren’t the film feels amateurish.
The biggest problem was that there really wasn’t much of a story. Here’s how the film went:
We meet Maleficent and Stefan — and then we flit flit flit through the development of their relationship — and then Stefan betrays Maleficent and she gets revenge with the curse on Aurora — and then we flit flit flit through Aurora growing up with Maleficent watching after her from the shadows — and then the curse happens and Maleficent undoes it and they all lived happily ever after (except Stefan).
Key moments and themes are left unexplored and shallow. Like the evolution of Maleficent and Aurora’s relationship.
There were 2 key moments when things change for them. The first was when Aurora was little and almost walked off a cliff and Maleficent makes the decision to save her. This is a very defining moment for her, however, all the emotional depth/tension is virtually non-existence.
This scene should have been the start of Maleficent’s trialing journey of personal rediscovery, but that theme of defining one’s self as good or evil is not examined. It’s just *poof* now she’s evil *poof* now she’s good.
The second moment is when Aurora asks Maleficent about her wings. Since the film fails to make a real bond between these two what should have been an important set up scene between 2 friends is instead a minor conversation, with the later pay-off being boring/ predictable.
Aurora is a big cliche nothing because she’s missing a personality. Screenwriter David Freeman says that a character should have 3 to 5 traits in a non-cliche combination. That’s her problem, anything that makes up her personality is utterly cliche.
But she’s not as bad as Prince Phillip. He is a throw away character, totally useless and unnecessary. Someone might say “he’s the reason Maleficent had to go to the castle.” Not true, her love for Aurora is more than enough reason for her to go to the castle and try to undo the curse herself. And because he is so useless it pissed me off that he shows up when Aurora is being crowned. This is a beautiful moment for women so you stay away Phillip with your ugly little girl/page boy hair.
As a personal judgement, I think Maleficent should have died for a Sweeney Todd like ending where everyone who has done wrong dies. And also I think on this key point Disney should have stayed true to their own original movie.
OR at the very least she should not have the use of her wings back because she ends up unpunished for the mistake she made and we the audience learn nothing from it.
I will say that I liked the idea behind the story. The mirroring between Aurora and Maleficent and the Old King and Stefan. And the film looked beautiful, Jolie looks ageless due to her own beauty and the style of her character.
This film is both bad and good at the same time. The deaths are pretty clever considering they’re done by a teen on the fly. There’s a nice sense of nostalgia.The story is layered well and explores the drama of having both gender and sexuality confusion, while being forced to go to camp at the very location where your family died.
But at the same time most of the acting is bad or overdone or both but in a weird way I kind of enjoy it, like it gives the film character. Also it’s obvious the killer is Angela but the big reveal at the end is still a surprise because most people don’t guess that Angela is really a dude.
Click this sentence to see a clip from Robot Chicken that basically sums up the ending
I mean, how hard must that be to know you’re a boy but you’re forced to be a girl, and you might be falling in love with a boy, but also might be falling in love with a girl (is that why Angela kept staring at Judy?) and knowing that your parents were gay before one of them died (I’ll elaborate later). And all this while camp at the site of your family’s destruction and everyone is being a HUGE jerk to you.
Seriously you end up having no sympathy for anyone who dies because they all did something to Angela. Like the cook, he was a child molester!
Some people might say Paul didn’t do anything to her/him, well, he didn’t do anything for him/her either. He cheats on her/him and always leaves before she/he is going to be bullied. If he stuck around and stopped Meg and Judy from dumping her/him in the lake where his/her life was ruined she/he might not have snapped and gone on a killing spree that night.
Let’s begin with my definition of a bro. A bro is a close minded, dim witted, entitled person. His promiscuity is usually paired with cheating. He will use lame, possibly cliche, lines to either pick up women or attack someone verbally, most threats being all talk and no action. His lines can be either homophobic or homoerotic.
Starship Troopers Invasion, I’m assuming, is made by bros, for bros, and contains bros galore. Every character in this film was a bro, even the women; also the dialogue, the fake looking 3D boobs, and the phallic symbols tell me this is a bro flick. Everyone talked in an unoriginal way that revealed the characters to possess one of the qualities of a bro.
This is an actual quote from the film
Since the main focus of the film is the fight scenes with the bugs, dialogue and character development is lacking. The film is chock full of very cliche characters so that the filmmakers don’t have to do much to help the viewers get to know the characters, but then the film lack originality. This Starship Troopers film wasn’t political or as critical subtext the rest of the series had, except for maybe movie 2.
OK, now, I understand that it is tradition to have nudity in Starship Troopers films but I can’t help but be bothered that all the boobs in this film look like fake implants. Maybe it’s because the animation was created by a program commonly used for video games, it certainly looks that way, but I think the filmmakers could have splurged a little on the budget to make some realer looking boobs.
I counted three phallic symbols in this film: the huge gun, the bug that looked like it had a penis sticking out, and the fact that the space ship looks like a penis from above.
On a serious note, I realized that there is a theme throughout the Starship Trooper series that you can’t be a hero if you live. At the very least you can’t be a hero soldier if you live. What made me see it was at the end when Jenkins says “Cheer up, Johnny, you’re a hero” and Rico replies “No, I’m not, but I met one.” Rico is talking about a character named Hero who dies trying to help save everyone.
It’s like the tale of Achilles: if he doesn’t fight and die then he will never be famous but if he goes to war and dies then he will be infamous. If the war with the bugs ends and Rico never dies fighting would he honestly be remembered? He’d end up in a history book but that doesn’t mean he’d be remembered. He wouldn’t end up on a war memorial because those are for soldiers killed in battle. A more modern example could be Martin Luther King, I wonder if he would have been as famous if he wasn’t killed. Rosa Parks and Malcolm X are famous for civil rights but we don’t get their birthdays off from work and school.
Sweet n Sour Reviews 