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The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022)
Burning $1B Would Have Been More Entertaining
Is this a good LOTR show? No. Would it be a good show if you removed all the LOTR names and places from it? No. This is what you get when you hire two nobodies to head your show. You make one of the most diehard fan bases in the world ratio your trailers into oblivion. I'm sorry Amazon, these aren't Star Wars fans you're dealing with...you spat on Tolkien's grave on the anniversary of his death with this clown show of a production.
The only reason I even gave it an extra star was because the scenery was well done...to bad you filled it with the most hollow characters possible. All that money and none of it went to decent actors. The woman who plays Galadriel is insufferable to listen to and her acting is subpar. At least Elrond is semi interesting but it almost feels like they are making him gay...which is weird because it has 3 children.
Costume design is garbage, Elves in Middle Earth don't wear gold, they wear silver and white. The dwarves are decent looking but Duran III and IV wouldn't be alive at the same time, Duran's are said to be reincarnated from the original Duran. Only gripe I have with Disa is she needs a beard, Dwarf women have beards...sorry. I guess this is what you get with $250m and buy the rights to basically nothing (a different company just bought the rights to all the material in the 5 major books).
TLDR: Not faithful to source, costumes are bad, visuals are nice, all the dwarves look decent except the beardless female, Galadriel literally has Elrond's job and title, and the actress who plays her isn't good at acting.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
"When I left you I was but the learner" Now this quote means nothing.
Yeah so all of that meant nothing. Not only have them seen each other since then they have fought each other twice and Obi-Wan almost kills him....again.
Leia's hologram message to Obi-Wan during "A New Hope" means nothing as well. "General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars. Now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I'm unable to present my father's request to you in person but my ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. Etc" She must have just forgot that time she ran away from home and Obi-Wan saved her from the Empire and her real father.
It's almost like they don't know how to write new story. They either just copy/paste stuff from the previous movies or they completely undo canon for no reason without even thinking about it. You're telling me with an endless amount of resources and a big team of people behind Star Wars that no one thought "mhhhm some of this contradicts a bunch of stuff from the previous movies".
Well have fun with the Reva spinoff that all evidence was pointing to. Ruin a legacy character all so they can make a spinoff for another "gray" Jedi...yeah we already have a character like that, her name is Asoka and she earned her spot in the fans hearts. Rather a show about Cal Kestis, at least he's interesting.
The Witcher (2019)
If you read the books you won't like it.
They butchered the essence of the characters. Sure you can make your own thing with the show but when you start changing the way the characters act and the motivations they have, you run into problems. Yennefer would NEVER do the things she did in the second season, the same goes for Vesemir. I still don't know why Fringilla is a main character, she says 5 sentences in the first 5 books. Her biggest contribution before the last book was she temporarily blinded Yennefer at the Battle of Sodden.
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)
It was just blah
Over used magical item grants backwards wishes movie plot point. Lackluster action sequences. Wonder Woman looking like she's basically ice skating while she's fight/running, this goes for Wiig's character too (probably due to just bad special effects). CGI needs work, at one point in time I caught a glimpse of the green screen in Kristen Wiig's glasses. Max Lord was just a boring villain. Half way through the movie everyone in the room looked at each other and asked "wtf is happening in this movie right now". The opening sequence means basically nothing in the grand scheme of the movie because the lesson it portrays to the audience is never brought up ever again. I mean I guess you can say "don't take shortcuts" when pertaining to wishing Chris Pine back from the dead (which he isn't really and it's just weird the way he's "brought back". We the audience see Chris Pine but everyone in that world sees a random guy that happens to live in the general area of Diana. Which is just odd because she sleeps with this guy), but that's a stretch. Cheetah in he final form looks horrible and the scene is shot in low light because of how horrible it looks. This movie is 2 and 1/2 hours long, there's basically 100 mins of movie between action scenes. Just name the movie Diana Prince if you have over an hour and a half of on screen time between her being Wonder Woman.
In the DCEU spectrum I would put WW84 somewhere below Man of Steel and above Batman V. Superman.
Chris D'Elia: No Pain (2020)
If You Like His Podcast You Will Hate This Special
The way Chris presents himself on podcasts is so dissimilar to how he acts during his stand up it's nauseating. If you took the video away and just played the audio from a random episode of his podcast then played No Pain, you would have a hard time believe they are the same person. Every bit fell flat, either because the material itself was juvenile or because he is constantly laughing at his own jokes. He can sometimes barely get out punch lines because he's already giggling, which is odd given the material isn't even laughable to the normal person. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that the theater was empty and they were just playing a laugh track the entire time. He dragged the growling at a baby bit for almost ten minutes and the dolphin thing had to be 15 mins long, 15 mins of torture to my ears. I'll keep watching Congratulations but I've given up on checking out this dudes standup, hope his acting career pans out because this standup thing just isn't his game.