The zone of interest is an incredibly creative new take on a topic that has been part of the cultural consciousness for decades. I have to applaud the filmmakers for showing the unimaginable horrors of the hollocaust without actually showing it. Instead, we follow the family of Rudolf Höss, the man in charge of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and how they go about their daily lives. They live in a spatious home, with a beautiful garden that happens to be located right next to the concentration camp. Like one of their garden walls is literally the prison wall. Throughout the movie, we never catch a look insight of the camp walls, but while the children enjoy a summer day in the family pool, we hear the occasional shots in the background throughout the movie. We hear screams of prisoners and guards alike. And of course, we see the constant flames and the smoke coming out of the ovens in which the bodies of thousands of people are turned to ashes. It creates a surreal but captivating atmosphere of happy family life right next to torture and death, that they are in a major part responsible for. The only criticism that I have is that the movie doesn´t really have a plot that advances the story, so it just becomes 100 minues of drawing out the same idea. It is still a good movie, but as a 30 or 45 minute short film, it would have worked perfectly.
Reviews
5 Reviews
The Killer
(2023)
Something 's missing
4 November 2023
This movie is perfectly fine. It is so perfectly fine, that I can´t think of a single explicit point of criticism at all. However, i can´t think of anything that made it particularly great either. It is too clean. Meanwhile that is the point of the movie. It is about a man whose entire life revolves around minimizing errors, being in control, and following a set of internalized rules without emotions ever coming in the way. And it is an interesting idea to see a hitman treating the profession of violently murdering people as just another repetitive 9 to 5 job, that you just have to get through day after day. But when it comes to telling a compelling story, that is a bit of a problem. Because what generally makes movies stand out - even thrillers like these - is the ability to get people emotionally invested, to have them feel with the characters. This is explicitly not, what is happening here. There is not a single emotion in this movie. It is kind of about revenge but not really. You are just watching a man go through his perfected way of getting his job done and this job just so happens to be killing people who show varying degrees of innocence. We don´t even know anyone´s name. There is however one amazing fight scene that has one of the best choreographies that I have seen in Hollywood in a long time and which had me at the edge of my seat for at least five minutes. Irnoically, this is also the only scene where the character decides to not follow his set of rules and ignores the fact that he might be a little bit too emotional to perfectly execute his task. And it is the most gripping scene of the movie. Maybe that means something...
7/10.
7/10.
The Creator
(2023)
What a mess
22 October 2023
Nowadays, if you want to watch a movie on the Big Screen, you mostly have to chose between a bloated, repetitive installment of an already existing franchise or a small budget arthouse flick, that often (while definitely of higher quality than the former option) focusses too much on having artistic value instead of appealing to a mainstream audience. What has become increasingly rare are movies that are both high budget (great production, good actors), but that are also able to tell original, intelligent stories that make you feel something, and keep you engaged long after the movie has ended. The Creator had the potential to be one of those movies. It wasn´t.
While having an intriguing premise of Human Beings bein forced to overcome an enemy, that they themselves have created, but that has become more and more similar to ourselves over time, the story itself quickly turned into a random "good guy has to escape other good guys that are actually bad, while saving a bad guy that is actually good" type of story. We can´t have more than two minutes without anyone shouting "RUN!" or "Watch out!", followed by just another soulless shootout, or chase sequence, with characters that I couldn´t care less about. The emotional motivation of the main character of trying to find his supposedly not dead wife is not explored any further than him watching old videos of her from time to time and the supposed relationship that develops between him and the AI child that he has chosen to protect, never feels natural or emotional at all. We are TOLD that they start to care about each other, but we are never given any actual reason why they do. Every character is just a carbon cutout stereotype (Evil and indifferent general, wise father figure, brual army guy, helpless villagers) that spew out lines that ironically sound like they have been written by Chat GPT. The only positive aspect was, that they created some beautiful setpieces and visuals, almost entirely without CGI but they are not impressive enough to justify a soulless, boring, irrelevant story, that I had basically already forgotten about, the moment I left the cinema.
3/10.
While having an intriguing premise of Human Beings bein forced to overcome an enemy, that they themselves have created, but that has become more and more similar to ourselves over time, the story itself quickly turned into a random "good guy has to escape other good guys that are actually bad, while saving a bad guy that is actually good" type of story. We can´t have more than two minutes without anyone shouting "RUN!" or "Watch out!", followed by just another soulless shootout, or chase sequence, with characters that I couldn´t care less about. The emotional motivation of the main character of trying to find his supposedly not dead wife is not explored any further than him watching old videos of her from time to time and the supposed relationship that develops between him and the AI child that he has chosen to protect, never feels natural or emotional at all. We are TOLD that they start to care about each other, but we are never given any actual reason why they do. Every character is just a carbon cutout stereotype (Evil and indifferent general, wise father figure, brual army guy, helpless villagers) that spew out lines that ironically sound like they have been written by Chat GPT. The only positive aspect was, that they created some beautiful setpieces and visuals, almost entirely without CGI but they are not impressive enough to justify a soulless, boring, irrelevant story, that I had basically already forgotten about, the moment I left the cinema.
3/10.
Oppenheimer
(I) (2023)
Easily Nolans worst work
29 July 2023
The problem with Christopher Nolan movies is, that no matter the premise, people will always enter the theatre with incredibly (and sometimes unrealistically) high expectations. I don´t think, many people would get overly excited about watching a 3 hour biopic about Robert Oppenheimer, but put Christopher Nolans name on it and it becomes one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. I am a huge Nolan fan as well but tried to limit my excitement as much as possible, remembering very well that in 2020, I left Tenet kind of disappointed because of my unrealitstically high expectations - even though it was overall a very good movie (after the second viewing that is). For Oppenheimer, it didn´t make it easier, that movie theatres were immediately sold out for days and initial critics (even the ones that were not generated by Chat GPT) were showering it with praise. I finally managed to get a seat in a rather small theatre tonight and have to say: Even with neutral expectations, this movie was a disappointment.
Don´t get me wrong, with a 100 Million dollar budget, it will obviously still provide you with incredible imagery, flawless acting, a great soundtrack (there is a BUT! Though) and an original story that still manages to give you a blockbuster feeling, something that has become very rare in Hollywood these days. But I will still not watch it again. Here´s why:
Christopher Nolan movies have often stood out from the crowd, due to 1. Big spectacle, that was held together by 2. An emotional story at its core, with 3. Some kind of twist considering the narrative structure. Oppenheimer completely neglects the emotional part and tries but fails to deliver on both the spectacle (with one obvious exception) and the narrative complexity. The narrative device of telling the story over three different timelines delivers one (maybe two) exciting twists at the very end but otherwise almost feels like Christopher Nolan just HAD to use different time periods because...that´s his thing. Telling the story through retrospective court hearings is not new and most of the scenes do not really add anything. The Social Network for example did a much better job of incorporating this narrative device. If you are expecting big spectacle, you have to be aware that 95% of this movie is pure dialogue. There´s nothing wrong with that per se, but Nolan has never been famous for his great dialogue writing skills (except for some memeable Joker quotes I guess) and this movie is no exception in that regard. There are like 5 witty one-liners (most of which already given away in the trailer), the rest is basically characters explaining the different plot points to each other (minor exceptions apply). The spectacle is provided by the Nuclear bomb explosion scene and I am not gonna lie, this scene is spectacular and very satisfying to watch, amplified by the fact that the almost 120 minutes leading up to it have been very underwhelming (more about that in a second). Nolan reportedly was very proud of this scene, being shot completely without CGI, which is undeniably an incredible cinematic achievement, but if you are expecting to be blown away (pun intended) by a 150 minutes visual, action-packed extravaganza ala Inception, the dark knight, or Tenet, be aware that this is a completely different movie. The emotional component is completely absent, the relationship between Oppenheimer and his wife is reduced to maybe 10 minutes of shared screentime, with Kitty Oppenheimer being a voice of reason and concern about Mr. Oppenheimers scientific, political and romantic endeavours, and him barely reacting to it. Oppenheimers affair and the rather unfortunate ending to it is also not given enough screen time to have any emotional impact on the viewer. All of the other characters (except Lewis Strauss) are mainly reduced to Cameos anyway, without any insight into their emotional site whatsoever. Which brings me to the main point, why this movie fails:
For the first 120 minutes, up until the nuclear explosion, the movie has NO ACTUAL SCENES. I´m sure I´m not the only one, who occasionally gets stuck on youtube, browsing multiple, 3-4 minutes long clipped out scenes of my favorite movies. I dare you to try clipping out memorable scenes of the first two hours of Oppenheimer. It is an impossible task. No scene can actually breathe, it is a just constant cutaway of Oppenheimer meeting a certain character, sharing 10 seconds of dialogue, moving on to the next location, the next character, the next scenery, the next "plotpoint", with dramatic music CONSTANTLY playing in the background, trying to create an artificial sense of urgency. In the beginning, I thought this would be just to get through the first stations of Oppenheimers life quickly before the actual plot can kick off, until it dawned on me, that the whole movie is cut that way. What doesn´t help is the neverending CAMEO parade of A-list Hollywood actors, that makes you wonder "oh wow, what are they going to do with this character?", before you realize that you will most likely never see him again. In that sense, the atomic bomb explosion scene is a huge relief, because the movie finally STOPS. Takes its time to develop a scene. Shows characters emotions. When the music stops for these couple of seconds, I even breathed out a sigh of relief. And after this scene, the movie actually takes a turn for the better. The scene of Oppenheimer mentally checking out in front of a cheering crowd is great. The meeting with Truman scene is great. Even the final congressional hearing scenes and a few of the final court testimonies are great. Because Nolan finally takes some time to develop some actual character interactions, instead of just rushing over them. The ending scene is great. But if the first two hours of the movie are rushed, a good (but also not perfect) last hour can´t really save it. At least not for me. For me, this is by far Nolans most disappointing film, but even if it had been done by a different director, I still would not consider it to be a good film. So if you are craving a blockbuster, that does not contain superheroes, video game characters or toys, jump onto the hypetrain and watch it, but if someone asked me for a list of 200 movie reccommendations, Oppenheimer would probably not be on it. 5/10.
Don´t get me wrong, with a 100 Million dollar budget, it will obviously still provide you with incredible imagery, flawless acting, a great soundtrack (there is a BUT! Though) and an original story that still manages to give you a blockbuster feeling, something that has become very rare in Hollywood these days. But I will still not watch it again. Here´s why:
Christopher Nolan movies have often stood out from the crowd, due to 1. Big spectacle, that was held together by 2. An emotional story at its core, with 3. Some kind of twist considering the narrative structure. Oppenheimer completely neglects the emotional part and tries but fails to deliver on both the spectacle (with one obvious exception) and the narrative complexity. The narrative device of telling the story over three different timelines delivers one (maybe two) exciting twists at the very end but otherwise almost feels like Christopher Nolan just HAD to use different time periods because...that´s his thing. Telling the story through retrospective court hearings is not new and most of the scenes do not really add anything. The Social Network for example did a much better job of incorporating this narrative device. If you are expecting big spectacle, you have to be aware that 95% of this movie is pure dialogue. There´s nothing wrong with that per se, but Nolan has never been famous for his great dialogue writing skills (except for some memeable Joker quotes I guess) and this movie is no exception in that regard. There are like 5 witty one-liners (most of which already given away in the trailer), the rest is basically characters explaining the different plot points to each other (minor exceptions apply). The spectacle is provided by the Nuclear bomb explosion scene and I am not gonna lie, this scene is spectacular and very satisfying to watch, amplified by the fact that the almost 120 minutes leading up to it have been very underwhelming (more about that in a second). Nolan reportedly was very proud of this scene, being shot completely without CGI, which is undeniably an incredible cinematic achievement, but if you are expecting to be blown away (pun intended) by a 150 minutes visual, action-packed extravaganza ala Inception, the dark knight, or Tenet, be aware that this is a completely different movie. The emotional component is completely absent, the relationship between Oppenheimer and his wife is reduced to maybe 10 minutes of shared screentime, with Kitty Oppenheimer being a voice of reason and concern about Mr. Oppenheimers scientific, political and romantic endeavours, and him barely reacting to it. Oppenheimers affair and the rather unfortunate ending to it is also not given enough screen time to have any emotional impact on the viewer. All of the other characters (except Lewis Strauss) are mainly reduced to Cameos anyway, without any insight into their emotional site whatsoever. Which brings me to the main point, why this movie fails:
For the first 120 minutes, up until the nuclear explosion, the movie has NO ACTUAL SCENES. I´m sure I´m not the only one, who occasionally gets stuck on youtube, browsing multiple, 3-4 minutes long clipped out scenes of my favorite movies. I dare you to try clipping out memorable scenes of the first two hours of Oppenheimer. It is an impossible task. No scene can actually breathe, it is a just constant cutaway of Oppenheimer meeting a certain character, sharing 10 seconds of dialogue, moving on to the next location, the next character, the next scenery, the next "plotpoint", with dramatic music CONSTANTLY playing in the background, trying to create an artificial sense of urgency. In the beginning, I thought this would be just to get through the first stations of Oppenheimers life quickly before the actual plot can kick off, until it dawned on me, that the whole movie is cut that way. What doesn´t help is the neverending CAMEO parade of A-list Hollywood actors, that makes you wonder "oh wow, what are they going to do with this character?", before you realize that you will most likely never see him again. In that sense, the atomic bomb explosion scene is a huge relief, because the movie finally STOPS. Takes its time to develop a scene. Shows characters emotions. When the music stops for these couple of seconds, I even breathed out a sigh of relief. And after this scene, the movie actually takes a turn for the better. The scene of Oppenheimer mentally checking out in front of a cheering crowd is great. The meeting with Truman scene is great. Even the final congressional hearing scenes and a few of the final court testimonies are great. Because Nolan finally takes some time to develop some actual character interactions, instead of just rushing over them. The ending scene is great. But if the first two hours of the movie are rushed, a good (but also not perfect) last hour can´t really save it. At least not for me. For me, this is by far Nolans most disappointing film, but even if it had been done by a different director, I still would not consider it to be a good film. So if you are craving a blockbuster, that does not contain superheroes, video game characters or toys, jump onto the hypetrain and watch it, but if someone asked me for a list of 200 movie reccommendations, Oppenheimer would probably not be on it. 5/10.
Not the show changed, but the viewers did...
15 September 2019
Warning: Spoilers
This is going to be my first review on IMDb, but I´m visiting this site pretty much everyday, checking on recent movie and TV ratings. Most of the time, the ratings are pretty accurate and do fit my opinion and even if they don´t I usually understand them, considering the reviewers perspective. But this time, I feel like I have to write one by myself, just to make clear, that the current ratings on the Walking Dead are just a misrepresentation of this - to this point - still great TV-Show. It is a big issue to me, because all these recent negative ratings almost lead to me leaving the show I followed for years, because I was afraid, season 7 would ruin my view on one of my favorite shows. Finally, I gave it a shot, more than 2 years to late, but MAN, LUCKILY I DID. This season didn´t ruin the show, maybe season 8 will, but that s up to another review; For now I´m going to explain, why I think, most of the reviews are misleading and misrepresentating the quality of The Walking Dead season 7.
I love all of the seasons of the Walking Dead, because they were all different on their own, showing of different perspectives of this future world each. I love Season 1 because of the never ending tension in every single episode and the flawless introduction into this world of horror and the characters dealing with it; each one differently. I love season 2 because of the great character developments and the fact, that it shows us, that there are no pure good and evil characters in this world. Everyone can get corrupted by this new way of living, being able to turn on each other every minute. I love season 3 because of the Governor, being one of the best TV villains of all time, the BIG deaths, that showed us that no one is safe and the revelation, that not the walkers are the big threat in this world - humans are. I love season 4 because it has probably the best written Episode of the entire show with "Too far gone" but especially I love it for the second half, where you can follow each character surviving on their own. They never had to do that before, and it´s amazing to watch them rising and fighting and crying, just to finally be reunited again. I love season 5 because in this one, the differences between good and evil disappear completely. It throws big moral questions at the viewers, seeing their beloved characters becoming close to everything they were fighting against up to this point. And then, trying to adapt to something which comes close to "The world before" again. I love season 6 because in my opinion, it has the highest amount of awesome episodes in it. Sure, the last episode is just bull, but the first four are just insanely good, followed up by more great ones like "No way out" ore "Not tomorrow yet". Also, this one is not about finding a new shelter anymore, but about binding together as a society, creating a new way of living. AND FINALLY I LOVE season 7 because it shows us a complete new approach. It s about the different ways people started to live in this world. The way of just wandering around, hoping to survive somehow is over at this point. People have to stick together in societies and it´s very interesting to see, how everyone does it differently. And of course, there are people who are trying to take advantages of this, in this case the so called "Saviours" who promise safety and peace for some kind of taxes and respect. Seems plausible to me. When you watch the ratings of IMDb, you see a steep decline in ratings after Episode 7x01, and there are different reasons why but I´m trying to explain now, why I think, that this is not necessairily due to a lack of quality of the show. I´m going to take the seasons finale as an example, but the review is about the whole season in general. If you would just watch the episode without having heard about anything about TWD before, you sure wouldn´t get what is going on, but you would see an action packed, intense hour of television full of twists, fighting, betrayal, death, shocks and a amazing CGI Tiger killing a bunch of people. Sure, the realism is not perfect in this one but you would probably agree with me, that it was entertaining as hell. So why is this episode currently at a rating of 7.6 while no episode in season 2 has a rating as low as this, even if season 2 is considered kinda dull by many viewers containing a lot of episodes with NO action, NO deaths and nothing important happening in particular? I think, it´s because the expectations of the people, watching the show have changed over the years. When TWD started in 2010, streaming services like Netflix, Amazon etc. were in their bay shoes so people relied on cables like AMC, HBO etc. to release new episodes of your favorite shows every week or so. Today, there are millions of other shows just a click away, so when you get bored for only about 10 minutes, you just click away and watch sth else. So in the shows released today, every episode has to be action-packed from start to finish.There s no more slow storytelling, because most of the people watching are no more interested in that. Considered masterpieces like The Sopranos or The Wire would have no chance on Netflix anymore and would probably be canceled after 2 seasons. So what happened with TWD? When I watch the reviews of the season 7 episodes, most of them are about the slow pace. People don´t like the storytelling of showing a few people only each episode. I think that is interesting in particular, because you can understand different motivations, emotions and actions of each character this way, before all of the storylines are wired together in the final episodes of each season. Sure, some of these so called fillers are less interesting ore intellingent as others but guess what, every classic TV-show has stronger and weaker episodes. Even the first 6 seasons of GoT (don´t get me started with season 7 and 8) have fillers which slow the story down a little and which are supposed to make the characters more interesting. And TWD has always had them, but people didn´t complain as much about them as they´re doing in season 7. But why? I think many people just want the show to be bad and turn on the TV thinking "Yeah, it´s going to be bad, so I´m going to complain later on the internet, because that´s the trend now" because they are frustrated about the season 6 cliffhanger (which SURE was bad). No matter how good the episode was, they´re going to tell themselves it sucked. When there was a calm episode, reviews were full of people saying "Man,so boring nothing happened, i wish they would fight more!". When they got a lot of fighting like in this one, the reviews were all about "This kind of fighting is boring, they didn´t kill Negan, main characters don´t die bla bla..." When a main character dies they say "Why do they kill them of just like that?" and so on. Over the last seasons, many complained, that the plot always followed the sime kind of story about searching a safe haven which eventually gets destroyed somehow, In this season, they came up with an entirely new approach for the story and they kept complaining about that as well, instead of acknowledging this for once. They re never satisfied, because they don´t want to be. If you take this episode, the whole season built of to this climax and it is resolved perfectly in my opinion...in earlier seasons, this episode would have probably gotten in the 8.5+ ratings, considered how many episodes got these ratings before. When people complain about the writing, they often compare it to GoT, which is a pretty unfair comparison in my opinion, considering that the writers of GoT can choose from some of the most complex fantasy books of all time, while the writers of TWD have to relie on Comic Books (they re good though). The writing of GoT is ingenious in the first seasons, but you saw what it came to, when they ran out of book material. So I think the TWD writers did a pretty good job in general. Sure, the fighting in this one seems a little bit to easy for the heroes, being outnumbered etc. but when you think about it it´s not that poorly written: The Saviours purely and stupidly follow their leaders orders, so when he is attacked by an unexpected walker, it s reasonable to me that they have a short moment of insecurity, which the group of Alexandria can use for their andvantage. The trash people on the other hand don´t like Negan any more than they like Rick. They just care about being on the winner´s team. So when the people of Alexandria start getting the "high ground" their will to fight to the death is broken by the circumstances. The fact that the tiger can distinguish good people from the evil ones comes in handy of course, but considering that Ezeekiel is able to train it to walk next to him like a dog makes it much more believable that he can train it to fight certain people as well. And come on, in the end this is still entertainment, based on a comic book so I think it´s fair to turn the realism down a little for the sake of entertainment.
I think that does it for me, all I want to say is that I loved Season 7, I loved this finale in particular and I hope that the reviews of season 8 are even as misleading as the ones of season 7. Don´t let the negative reviews scare you into stop watching like they did scare me for two years. I always watched on DVD and I´m gonna buy the season 8 DVD just tomorrow, because I´m thrilled to find out how the story will continue. Thank you very much for reading.
I love all of the seasons of the Walking Dead, because they were all different on their own, showing of different perspectives of this future world each. I love Season 1 because of the never ending tension in every single episode and the flawless introduction into this world of horror and the characters dealing with it; each one differently. I love season 2 because of the great character developments and the fact, that it shows us, that there are no pure good and evil characters in this world. Everyone can get corrupted by this new way of living, being able to turn on each other every minute. I love season 3 because of the Governor, being one of the best TV villains of all time, the BIG deaths, that showed us that no one is safe and the revelation, that not the walkers are the big threat in this world - humans are. I love season 4 because it has probably the best written Episode of the entire show with "Too far gone" but especially I love it for the second half, where you can follow each character surviving on their own. They never had to do that before, and it´s amazing to watch them rising and fighting and crying, just to finally be reunited again. I love season 5 because in this one, the differences between good and evil disappear completely. It throws big moral questions at the viewers, seeing their beloved characters becoming close to everything they were fighting against up to this point. And then, trying to adapt to something which comes close to "The world before" again. I love season 6 because in my opinion, it has the highest amount of awesome episodes in it. Sure, the last episode is just bull, but the first four are just insanely good, followed up by more great ones like "No way out" ore "Not tomorrow yet". Also, this one is not about finding a new shelter anymore, but about binding together as a society, creating a new way of living. AND FINALLY I LOVE season 7 because it shows us a complete new approach. It s about the different ways people started to live in this world. The way of just wandering around, hoping to survive somehow is over at this point. People have to stick together in societies and it´s very interesting to see, how everyone does it differently. And of course, there are people who are trying to take advantages of this, in this case the so called "Saviours" who promise safety and peace for some kind of taxes and respect. Seems plausible to me. When you watch the ratings of IMDb, you see a steep decline in ratings after Episode 7x01, and there are different reasons why but I´m trying to explain now, why I think, that this is not necessairily due to a lack of quality of the show. I´m going to take the seasons finale as an example, but the review is about the whole season in general. If you would just watch the episode without having heard about anything about TWD before, you sure wouldn´t get what is going on, but you would see an action packed, intense hour of television full of twists, fighting, betrayal, death, shocks and a amazing CGI Tiger killing a bunch of people. Sure, the realism is not perfect in this one but you would probably agree with me, that it was entertaining as hell. So why is this episode currently at a rating of 7.6 while no episode in season 2 has a rating as low as this, even if season 2 is considered kinda dull by many viewers containing a lot of episodes with NO action, NO deaths and nothing important happening in particular? I think, it´s because the expectations of the people, watching the show have changed over the years. When TWD started in 2010, streaming services like Netflix, Amazon etc. were in their bay shoes so people relied on cables like AMC, HBO etc. to release new episodes of your favorite shows every week or so. Today, there are millions of other shows just a click away, so when you get bored for only about 10 minutes, you just click away and watch sth else. So in the shows released today, every episode has to be action-packed from start to finish.There s no more slow storytelling, because most of the people watching are no more interested in that. Considered masterpieces like The Sopranos or The Wire would have no chance on Netflix anymore and would probably be canceled after 2 seasons. So what happened with TWD? When I watch the reviews of the season 7 episodes, most of them are about the slow pace. People don´t like the storytelling of showing a few people only each episode. I think that is interesting in particular, because you can understand different motivations, emotions and actions of each character this way, before all of the storylines are wired together in the final episodes of each season. Sure, some of these so called fillers are less interesting ore intellingent as others but guess what, every classic TV-show has stronger and weaker episodes. Even the first 6 seasons of GoT (don´t get me started with season 7 and 8) have fillers which slow the story down a little and which are supposed to make the characters more interesting. And TWD has always had them, but people didn´t complain as much about them as they´re doing in season 7. But why? I think many people just want the show to be bad and turn on the TV thinking "Yeah, it´s going to be bad, so I´m going to complain later on the internet, because that´s the trend now" because they are frustrated about the season 6 cliffhanger (which SURE was bad). No matter how good the episode was, they´re going to tell themselves it sucked. When there was a calm episode, reviews were full of people saying "Man,so boring nothing happened, i wish they would fight more!". When they got a lot of fighting like in this one, the reviews were all about "This kind of fighting is boring, they didn´t kill Negan, main characters don´t die bla bla..." When a main character dies they say "Why do they kill them of just like that?" and so on. Over the last seasons, many complained, that the plot always followed the sime kind of story about searching a safe haven which eventually gets destroyed somehow, In this season, they came up with an entirely new approach for the story and they kept complaining about that as well, instead of acknowledging this for once. They re never satisfied, because they don´t want to be. If you take this episode, the whole season built of to this climax and it is resolved perfectly in my opinion...in earlier seasons, this episode would have probably gotten in the 8.5+ ratings, considered how many episodes got these ratings before. When people complain about the writing, they often compare it to GoT, which is a pretty unfair comparison in my opinion, considering that the writers of GoT can choose from some of the most complex fantasy books of all time, while the writers of TWD have to relie on Comic Books (they re good though). The writing of GoT is ingenious in the first seasons, but you saw what it came to, when they ran out of book material. So I think the TWD writers did a pretty good job in general. Sure, the fighting in this one seems a little bit to easy for the heroes, being outnumbered etc. but when you think about it it´s not that poorly written: The Saviours purely and stupidly follow their leaders orders, so when he is attacked by an unexpected walker, it s reasonable to me that they have a short moment of insecurity, which the group of Alexandria can use for their andvantage. The trash people on the other hand don´t like Negan any more than they like Rick. They just care about being on the winner´s team. So when the people of Alexandria start getting the "high ground" their will to fight to the death is broken by the circumstances. The fact that the tiger can distinguish good people from the evil ones comes in handy of course, but considering that Ezeekiel is able to train it to walk next to him like a dog makes it much more believable that he can train it to fight certain people as well. And come on, in the end this is still entertainment, based on a comic book so I think it´s fair to turn the realism down a little for the sake of entertainment.
I think that does it for me, all I want to say is that I loved Season 7, I loved this finale in particular and I hope that the reviews of season 8 are even as misleading as the ones of season 7. Don´t let the negative reviews scare you into stop watching like they did scare me for two years. I always watched on DVD and I´m gonna buy the season 8 DVD just tomorrow, because I´m thrilled to find out how the story will continue. Thank you very much for reading.
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