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Kung Fu Panda 2 is Identity Crisis: The Movie
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The serious plot elements are good and the comedy is good...individually.

I'm the kind of person who loves surprisingly dark themes in children's media. This movie should be a slam dunk for me. Why is the humor so funny and the plot elements intriguing but feel like oil and water clashing?

Simply put, this movie barely ever knows when to let tense scenes speak for themselves. It feels like it pays lip service to the idea of serious themes, which truly baffles me because the first 20 minutes very clearly want to go for a more somber tone and do so excellently - the humor feels natural there. But then the movie keeps going and almost always undercuts its serious scenes with jokes, that, while funny, grow increasingly overplayed. Oh my goodness, this movie has genocide, it's so dark, wait no let's have our climax preceded by a joke where the at peace hero and murderous psychopath villain can barely hear each other. Stuff like that is wonderful occasionally, but it just feels like the movie ultimately wants to have its cake and eat it too. Either be a dark movie with occasional comedy or be a overly comedic movie with occasional serious bits (like the first movie). Trying to go back and forth constantly utterly wrecks my immersion and investment.

"It's a PG movie, you're 27 and expecting too much" - The Prince of Egypt and Megamind were also PG movies by the same studio that knew how to let darker moments breathe. If you're gonna have the guts to bring up PTSD, genocide, and parental abandonment in your movie, then go all the way with it and don't make funny haha zany quip #597. It just feels kinda insincere.

It's such a shame too because I think all the elements for an amazing dark story with good jokes ARE there in Kung Fu Panda 2, heck I think it's still a good to great watch in spite of its incredible tonal inconsistency. I just hate the way it's told.
 
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Daredevil Born Again, more like Flopdevil the Same Story again lmao gottem

Me complaining about current MCU is not anything new, in fact I'm not even following it rn, but I liked the Netflix show, and with this being advertised as the continuation I had to watch it. But now we're at the halfway point of the season and all I can say is "maaaaaan what a downgrade". It's just really difficult to care about Matt giving up on being Daredevil and his "is it ok to kill or not?" when we've already seen a lot of this stuff in the previous show. The action scenes don't pack the punch they used to, and I don't know if this is to blame on the direction or the troubled production (or both?). Also episode 5 REALLY sucks, just a padded bank heist with constant "connected MCU" reminders. (Episode 3 innocent, but I'm not really trusting Disney in concluding well that storyline)

If you told me like 1 year ago that it's going to be the Agatha show which clears all of the new Marvel shows I wouldn't believe you lol
 
I don't think the movie "Hoodwinked!" has bad animation.

Like yeah if you're comparing it to Pixar or DreamWorks it might look a little odd. But on its own merits I think it looks just fine.
 
Despite Smogon having a pretty big social media presence, being increasingly known by even very casual Pokemon players on the internet, and being used and shown by many many big Youtubers

It still has one of the most insular competitive scenes I've ever seen where between the same tourney each year it's 90% the same players, and most of the tournaments also are those same players

And it's not even that many relatively speaking to other competitive games
 
I do have to wonder, though, if the glazing of the 3DS games that will surely be upon us soon will really match the glazing of the DS games. I know people who got into these games as adults, and they pretty much share the current consensus that gens 3-5 are the best, so I wonder how much the incoming nostalgia from gen 6/7 kids will be able to counteract that.
Update 3 Weeks Later: Yeah... about that...

It might already be happening...

So one night I opened YouTube and a short autoplayed from a Gen 5 fan, so I check the comments...

...They're actually divided...


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It was either Genfivers, People sick of genfivers, or gensixers and genseveners.


People are starting to getting sick of Genfivers now, and with PLZA around the corner, 3DS Era glazing might soon be upon us.
 
Update 3 Weeks Later: Yeah... about that...

It might already be happening...

So one night I opened YouTube and a short autoplayed from a Gen 5 fan, so I check the comments...

...They're actually divided...


View attachment 729331View attachment 729332View attachment 729333View attachment 729334View attachment 729335


It was either Genfivers, People sick of genfivers, or gensixers and genseveners.


People are starting to getting sick of Genfivers now, and with PLZA around the corner, 3DS Era glazing might soon be upon us.
I mean, I would probably call the Unova games my favorites, but it's not like I don't get it. Even as someone who shares the general feeling that something was lost in the transition to the 3DS, the constant beating of the "Everything went downhill after the DS games!" drum has just gotten really tiring for me at this point, and it's not like subsequent games are totally without merit — I could even offer a lukewarm defense of X/Y! I also understand exasperation with the social media nostalgia circuit for these games. If you engage with Pokémon content on YouTube or other social media platforms in any capacity, you will be inundated with uncritical glazing of the older games and exaggerated, performative bashing of the newer ones from people who just want some easy engagement. 3DS glazing is at least a more novel opinion.
 
I unironically think USUM could have been the best pokemon game of all time if it just came out as USUM instead of being a functionally changeless predecessor with the only real difference being slight changes to (albeit above average difficulty for the franchise) a handful of bosses, a handful of new pokemon and a complete assassination of every single driving factor behind the game's storyline and character arcs for the side characters 80% through the story.

fuck usum bro i had such high hopes that it would fix the issues SM had. it kinda did but then it replaced those issues with a somehow even bigger issue it's genuinely ridiculous
 
I mean, I would probably call the Unova games my favorites, but it's not like I don't get it. Even as someone who shares the general feeling that something was lost in the transition to the 3DS, the constant beating of the "Everything went downhill after the DS games!" drum has just gotten really tiring for me at this point, and it's not like subsequent games are totally without merit — I could even offer a lukewarm defense of X/Y! I also understand exasperation with the social media nostalgia circuit for these games. If you engage with Pokémon content on YouTube or other social media platforms in any capacity, you will be inundated with uncritical glazing of the older games and exaggerated, performative bashing of the newer ones from people who just want some easy engagement. 3DS glazing is at least a more novel opinion.
pokemon discussion on the internet being insufferable tribalism is more likely than the sun rising tomorrow. this really shouldn't be news to anyone.
 
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