Alita: Battle Angel Brings The Salt

Originally, this was the second half of my previous Post about Alita: Battle Angel's promising box office numbers and the laughable response it's getting from Rotten Tomatoes' idiotic critics, the half where I talk about how Alita is apparently a sexualised character and look at a few articles making that case. The problem is, like everything I write, it got long, really long, so I figured it was a better idea to split the thing in half and post the two separate topics as two separate posts, so here is the half where I accuse a pair of women of projection while laughing at their articles, and since I'm such a goblin, and recently discovered how to crop the backgrounds out of pictures, I decided I'd give my header a bit more character.

Previously, I rambled about Alita: Battle Angel's moderate box office success and laughable critical response, while I, rather angrily, tried to make the point that there's a pompousness and idiocy to RT's critics, one that shines in the chasm between their views and the views of normal people. That's only part of the story though, another part is obviously ideology; critics having hard-ons for films that stroke their egos and confirm their biases. But I'd at least have thought that Alita: Battle Angel, who has, to use their terminology, a woman of colour in the lead role, would get a pass from them precisely because Alita is a woman of colour, never mind that she's actually a likable, fun, badass, vulnerable character as well. However, like Kisonak from Vermont in my last post, I never considered that a CG woman in a film having big tits would be a problem to people, something I feel kind of bad to admit because, in hindsight, it's so obvious, she's an empowered woman, but she's also beautiful, and obviously her being beautiful would be problematic to someone, somewhere. One such person is one Molly Freeman of Screenrant, whose article; "Alita Has A Design Problem (But It's Not The Big Eyes)" has been doing the rounds on a lot of anti-SJW YouTube channels. Since Alita: Battle Angel is my new favourite film, and since there are SJW types going after it, you know that I'll gladly take a stab at one such article, so let's get stabbing.

https://screenrant.com/alita-design-problem-big-eyes-body/

Our author doesn't waste any time with her introduction, getting to the root of the problem in the first sentence of her article. "But the film fails to compellingly explain why her android body conforms to a sexualized "ideal" body type." Our author then gives us a rundown of the film's events, one that includes a few too many details, so, spoilers, you've been warned, I'll be explaining why our author's wrong by talking in detail about the film, but here are the important parts, she finds a URM cyborg body, she gets ripped apart in her fight with Grewishka and Ido puts her back together using the URM cyborg body, something he promised that he wouldn't do. There is a lot going on with his decision to not connect her to that body in the film however, as Alita says, he knows more than he is telling her, and she, and the audience, eventually learns that she is a Berserker, an URM soldier from The Fall, and given that the URM ended the world, and Alita was an URM soldier, hooking her up to the most powerful and dangerous weapon on the planet wouldn't be a good idea. This also ties into his desire to shelter her; there's a lot of meaning in Ido connecting Alita's core to his dead daughter's body, maybe he wants to find peace over his daughter's death, maybe he can't bear to not have a daughter anymore, either way, he rebuilds Alita, gives her his daughter's name and body, and does as much as he can to keep her in the dark about who she really is, and connecting her to the URM body would destroy that for him. Of course, the opposite happens, Alita becomes the woman she is meant to become, and while Ido feared losing his daughter again, by the end of the film, she has embraced him as a father figure. This dynamic between Alita and Ido was one of my favourite things about the film, and Alita's transition isn't just into the Battle Angel, it's also into being the daughter Ido lost.

But like Kisonak, our author doesn't seem to see the meaning in that body, finding the film's explanation of said body's curves "eye-rollingly bad." Firstly, our author states that her sexy design is the product of the original Manga's visuals, which, to me, is a good enough reason on its own. There is nothing wrong with being faithful when adapting a story into a new medium, and as someone who loves Godzilla and has a Netflix account, I've had enough of people changing things for the sake of changing them. If Cameron and Rodriguez are as huge fans of the Manga as they claim to be, then the decision to recreate the visuals of the Manga makes complete sense, and that literally is all the reason you need for her design. Our author even recognises this in her article, talking about the effort that went into her eyes. But here we have the root of the root of the problem, and that's that our author doesn't respect Alita's agency. Now, obviously a fictional character does not, in a direct sense, have agency, a character's agency comes from the power they exert over the story and world that they inhabit, which is all within the mind of the storyteller, but in that regard, Alita has a lot of agency, she's gonna change the world in the sequel, or burn it down, one of the two. But here's where our author slips, she seems to think the explanation of it being how Alita thinks she should look is the film makers trying to cover their sixes because they knew the design would be problematic. It's here though that I have an issue with our author's stance on this design, how it changes from the URM shell to "the sexualised feminine body." This is classic SJW thinking, here, because our author has, fundamentally, confused the words sexy and sexualised, and considers them both to be negative attributes of a character's design. She makes the point that it's odd for a rebel like Alita to conform to how other people think of her, which isn't the case at all, it is literally Alita's mind informing the body on how to look. But this next bit is a gem; "it also doesn't make sense that any woman having the opportunity to transform their body into that of a warrior's would enlarge the breasts and trim the arms, waist and legs." Ha, bullshit.

Are you telling me, author, that if any woman was given the choice of having a masculine body or being sexy, they'd take the masculine body, I don't believe that, not for a single second. I'm no Jordan Peterson, I'm not a behavioural psychologist, but I don't need to be, I just need to walk into my local Boots or Superdrug to see that you're wrong on this. Cosmetics is a billion-dollar industry, one that is indulged in by far, far, far more women than men. Women wear makeup so much that occasionally there'll be a social media challenge where they don't, and that's the challenge, and even with endless social justice pressuring to let it grow, let it grow, plenty of women still shave. Plenty of the women I work with wear makeup to work, which makes no sense at all to me because it's a dusty, sweaty warehouse, but they do it. And lets be really real for a second, you say that if a woman was given the chance to have bigger tits or bigger guns, she wouldn't take the bigger tits, darling, boob jobs exist, and they're frighteningly popular, far more popular than they would be if you were right. And about your example of She-Ra as a warrior woman, ha, bullshit, again, She-Ra is a terrible example of what you're trying to say. She-Ra was once a warrior woman, then Netflix made a show about her and removed all of her feminine characteristics, Alita meanwhile has feminine characteristics, she is also a very feminine character, far more feminine than someone like Captain Marvel. Wonder Woman is another bad example because she too has a very feminine appearance, as well as a costume that accentuates her appearance, she's gorgeous, and it's ok that she is, a woman can be strong and still be a woman, unless you'd rather they all be like Netflix's She-Ra, rather they all look like boys, that is unless you think it's wrong to be feminine because boys are naturally better, you misogynist.

Usually I keep personal attacks to calling the authors I talk about morons and idiots and occasionally bigots if need be, but when a female character is problematic because she's sexy, it's usually worth the time to have a look at the author, because I shall now propose an explanation for this article's existence, Molly Freeman is jealous of Alita. I did some thinking about why a woman would find it a problem that another woman, a fictional one, even, is sexy, but it makes a lot of sense if our author, Molly Freeman, isn't much of a looker herself, and lo and behold, she isn't. That matters, but not as much as how she perceives herself and Alita, and since we can't see inside her head, we don't know how she sees herself, but she has given us her perception of Alita in this article, and she finds Alita's URM body to be thin with a small waist and big breasts, and that this conforms to a sexualised "Ideal" body type. Our author isn't specific on who's sexualising standard Alita is conforming to, and while that may seem insignificant, it, to me, looks like projection. Alita is conforming to what our author deems to be sexy, a standard that she doesn't think she meets herself, Alita is sexier than she is and that gets under her skin. And this is very clear in her little final paragraph, where she asserts that it's a disservice to Alita: Battle Angel's female viewers, how is it? how is a woman in a film being sexy a disservice to women in the real world, because it sets a beauty standard, oh no. The sad thing is that the beauty standard Alita conforms to is a very real and achievable standard, minus the eyes obviously, a slim, lean body with a nice rack and a thin waist isn't an impossible body type, hundreds of thousands of athletes, actresses, singers, models and health enthusiasts have builds like that, but Molly here doesn't, so she projects that insecurity about her own body, saying that it's an unfair and problematic standard that poisons girls' minds, only because it bothers her that she does not meet that standard herself. So at the end, when she projects that insecurity onto the masses by calling the film a disservice to women, that's all it is, an insecure woman projecting her jealousy and insecurity onto whatever she can, and trying to tell us that we should feel bad for liking a nice body, only because deep down, she doesn't like her own.

This Screenrant article is a joke, it reminds me of the good old days of 2012 to 2015, at the height of Feminist Frequency's infamy, when it was a problem that a video game character was too sexy, when it was a problem that Catwoman had a big ass, and when it wasn't a problem that someone who opens dislikes and is openly ignorant of video games was taken seriously as a critic of them.
https://news.sky.com/story/sky-views-hollywoods-sexualised-portrayal-of-young-women-has-to-stop-11628398
The weird thing is that this Screenrant article isn't the only one; there are more people complaining that Alita is sexualised, like one opinion piece from Sky News that, again, complains that Alita's design is "unnecessarily sexual." The same issues as the Screenrant article pop up here too; the "impossibly tiny" waist and big tits, and the author expresses confusion that a film made for a teen audience would make its female lead so sexualised and objectified, as if sex isn't a brilliant way to sell something to teens. But this author takes it a step further by saying that "cultural homage," as in being faithful to the Manga, isn't a good enough excuse, way to belittle Japanese culture you xenophobe. They then say, "We have simply got to stop portraying women and girls like this," like she's anyone to make such a drastic ultimatum, because, and this is amazing, "[she] would love Alita's body and costume to not be in the slightest bit important." This, coming from the one who's thankfully short opinion piece is all about how problematic her design is, very consistent, oh but we need to think of the children, because they might look at Alita and want to be like her, heaven forbid a young girl would have a badass cyborg superhero with a heart of gold as their role model, heaven forbid she aspires to be a hero like Alita.

But she's not done being an idiot, because apparently sexy women in film and TV gives impressionably people the idea that sexy women are objects and not people, wow, that's a sweeper, isn't it. It's an absurd thing to say, because, contrary to what our author seems to think, boys aren't mindless meat heads, teenage boys maybe meatheads, I know, I was one, but they too have brains that they can use to discern an object from a human, and I, frankly, find it deeply sexist that you'd even imply that we men have no ability to recognise the humanity of sexy women, like we're all your misandristic bogeyman of  sexist, mansplaining, cat-calling, sexually harassing, rape-apologist scum. But here's the fun part, well, the other fun part, apparently it's not enough to empower them through the narrative, which really shows how fucking sad you are, author, because it'll never be enough, nothing will ever be enough, you have a girl who is literally unstoppable, who is the deadliest weapon in the world, but who is also principled and morally righteous, but that isn't good enough because she's sexy, and sexy is bad, probably because, like poor Molly, you aren't all that sexy yourself, and feel insecure and jealous of a CG cyborg girl because she's prettier and cooler than you. Cameron and Rodriguez should have known better, eh? and, again, who are you to say anything like that, who are you to make moral judgements about how entertainment should be. Tell me, if you were given the power to stop them from designing Alita the way they did, would you have done it? because if you had, you're exactly the wrong person to have that power, that'd be a very scary power to want, because you don't get to decide what other people make, like and watch based on your delicate sensibilities, no matter how controlling and zealous you are.


Some things just never change
I get the feeling that in a few weeks, Alita: Battle Angel will be getting compared to Captain Marvel a lot, and I'll probably be one of the people making the comparison, because I'm sure it'll be a much more feminist friendly film. But one thing is for certain, Alita: Battle Angel is the film that countless SJW's want Captain Marvel to be; an empowering, meaningful film about a badass woman, but as ever, it isn't enough to be just that, it can't challenge their narrative or insecurities, and unfortunately for Alita, she does, because she's sexy and displays vulnerability. There's another thing that Alita has on her side, and that's that she's a complete darling, she's adorable and innocent, something Captain Marvel, no matter how good the film ends up being, will never be, and it's something that the people currently complaining about her design will never allow themselves to appreciate in the way that they really should, and that sucks for them.

Alita: Battle Angel Saves the Day, kind of

If you haven't read my review of Alita: Battle Angel, one; why are you so mean, and two; in that review I made the point that the film made the mistake of promising a sequel, since American adaptations of Manga and Anime very rarely do well, see the example of Ghost in the Shell, which opened in third on its opening weekend and grossed an abysmal $40 million domestic, despite, I felt, being a solid adaptation of the Anime, or at least a very visually faithful one with a bit of added popcorn value. That film also got one hell of a beating critically, with an RT critic score of forty three percent. Now, I give Rotten Tomatoes a lot of shit, and I will be today as well, but to be fair, the audience score isn't much higher, sitting at just fifty one percent, so clearly Ghost in the Shell did not land for audiences, because no one went to see it and the ones that did were split as to whether it was any good. Ghost in the Shell had another problem around its release too, that being the controversy surrounding Scarlett Johansson's casting in the lead role, which a lot of idiots thought was problematic because whitewashing and representation and buzzword buzzword buzzword. I've talked at length about the concept of whitewashing and how I think it's bullshit; a non issue propagated by progressives with no real love or understanding for the film industry. It occurred to me while writing my review for Alita: Battle Angel that maybe the film escaped any widespread whitewashing allegations because the lead actress; Rosa Salazar, isn't white, never mind then that she wasn't Latin in the Manga either, which technically makes this brownwashing, but since when have progressives been principled. As it turns out though, Alita: Battle Angel hasn't managed to escape the ire of the Progressives after all, what a surprise, but more importantly than that, it's doing something Ghost in the Shell never did, and that's do well at the box office, or at least wellish. But what exactly does that mean for the film, and for Anime and Manga adaptations in general, and will Alita: Battle Angel get the sequel I and so many others think it deserves but will never get, we shall see.

Let's begin with the film's box office numbers, which are far higher than I was expecting them to be. The film opened in first place on its opening weekend, dethroning The Lego Movie 2, which sounds really good, doesn't it, but when you look at actual numbers, the situation gets more complicated. The Lego Movie opened at number one in 2014 with an opening weekend gross of $69 million, which are some pretty solid numbers, the sequel however, while still opening in first, only grossed $34 million, half of what the first film did. I don't know why The Lego Movie 2 grossed so little in its opening, but I do know that this is consistent with the franchise's financial downward trend, being $14 million higher than The Lego Ninjago Movie's rather sad $20 million opening, and $19 million shy of The Lego Batman Movie's $53 million, which, itself, was $16 million shy of The Lego Movie's opening, that's a lot of numbers. When going up against an underperformer like The Lego Movie 2, you'd think a film with James Cameron's name on literally all of the marketing would be a killer, but despite being "From the Producers of Avatar and Titanic," the film was expected to come in at $25 million in its opening week, putting it in the same camp as Ghost in the Shell, which flopped, and also cost a lot less money to make than Alita: Battle Angel. The film has exceeded those predictions however, though not by much, taking its opening weekend's top spot with $33 million. For perspective, this time last year, Black Panther was crushing the box office with a $200 million opening, yet on the same holiday weekend, one year later, the number one spot isn't even making a sixth of that, woof.

So Alita: Battle Angel isn't hitting Black Panther numbers, that's not exactly comparing apples to apples though, with Alita: Battle Angel lacking the built in audience and supposed cultural significance of Black Panther, especially when you consider that Black Panther wasn't tracking to be such a hit and was in fact an overperformer. I have talked in the past about Anime and Manga's audience, specially about how the size of that audience was a factor in the failure of Ghost in the Shell, and that's simply because Anime and Manga, while adored by the fans, doesn't have the same massive appeal was something like Marvel or DC. Its built-in audience is far smaller, making adaptations of them in the west a much bigger risk for studios, because there is no Anime adaptation equivalent of Iron Man or Spider-Man; no film has broken that audience and cultural barrier and gone big in the way that many of the Marvel films of the 2000's did. Does the fact that Alita: Battle Angel exceeded expectations mean that said barrier has been broken, and that films like Ghost in the Shell will finally have mass appeal in the west, I still doubt that as one moderate success doesn't indicate a trend, nor would Detective Pikachu releasing and grossing a shit tillion dollars, as Pokémon is a different beast entirely. What this means right now is that Alita: Battle Angel has found an audience, people want more Alita: Battle Angel and that extra $10 million at the opening, while far from mind blowing, is a testament to that.

There is a problem though, and that is competition; Alita: Battle Angel might have taken the crown in its first week, but a $34 million opening still isn't massive, and it'll be facing some serious competition come the release of Captain Marvel, which is still expected to open to $80 million dollars despite its lead star being a detestable egomaniac with the expressiveness of a table. Even with the controversy swelling around Captain Marvel and its increasingly unambiguous feminist agenda, the film will still at least do ok, it could come in under $50 million, a disaster by MCU standards, or it could come in with Wonder Woman numbers, $100 million or higher, either way, it'll be curtains for Alita: Battle Angel. That's also assuming it manages to keep up with How To Train Your Dragon 3, which is projected to gross $40 on its opening weekend. This is the primary reason I still worry for the future of Alita on screen, because while it's top dog now, it's king of a very small hill, and there are some big hitters on the way, films that'll crush Alita: Battle Angel with ease. That being said however, Bumblebee, my favourite film of 2018, opened with a pathetic $21 million, and is, in no uncertain terms, a domestic flop, but found a stronger footing internationally, carrying it to a few million shy of half a billion dollars worldwide. Alita: Battle Angel's fate will probably be very similar, middling domestic numbers, but saved from being a flop by international success, something already observable in its box office numbers; grossing almost twice as much internationally as it has domestically, the film also has yet to be released in China and Japan as of me writing this, two countries where its chances of being successful are pretty good. So for once, A Manga adaptation might actually get a sequel, which would be awesome because Alita: Battle Angel is awesome, seriously, that thing's happening again, I'm getting obsessed.

Alita: Battle Angel is in a tight spot, it's grossed higher than expected and has yet to be released in one of the largest cinema markets in the world, but Stateside, it's time in the top spot will be very brief, what with How To Train Your Dragon 3 and Captain Marvel on the horizon. The film might end up making sequel numbers yet, we'll know in time. But now it's time to stop talking numbers and start looking into the other topic of the day, the more fun topic, Alita: Battle Angel pissing off the SJW's and the critics. Unlike Ghost in the Shell, Alita: Battle Angel's RT audience score is good, very good, even, sitting at ninety four percent, which is a damn solid number, unlike its critic score, which sits at just fifty nine percent. Once again, there is a noticeable disparity between the RT audience and critic score, and while its usually the critics raving while the audience aren't fans, like Venom, Alita: Battle Angel is reversed, audiences love it while the critics hate it. What's weird however is what the critics are saying, or rather what they think they're saying, you'll understand in a sec. One top critic for example, one Joe Morgenstern of the WSJ apparently "[can't] get past the film's brain." I'm not a WSJ subscriber so I can't read the full review, but I'll take a guess that he finds the film to be inconsistently and poorly written, it's the wording of the comment that I find odd though, "-the film's brain." A lot of critics also talk negatively about the film's mystery, with one comparing it to a homework assignment, as if it wasn't Cameron and Rodriguez's idea to leave a load of unanswered questions. You could go and do the homework, read through all the volumes of the original Manga, which is something I myself might actually do, but why not enjoy the mystery too, mystery is a great way of building a world, and Alita: Battle Angel does that really well. If you already had all the answers in the first film, why would you need a sequel, but Alita: Battle Angel makes you need that sequel through its very controlled delivery of answers, and its blatant sequel set up ending, but that's not the point.

One review stood out to me though, and that was by one Rick Kisonak of Seven Days, a newspaper from Vermont, who gave the film one star out of five in his review titled; "There's nothing new under the dystopian steampunk sun in 'Alita: Battle Angel'." As usual, it's better that you take that link and read the full review, because I won't be addressing all of the points in it and it's better if you have the other side of this rebuttal so that you, you know, understand what's going on.
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/alita-battle-angel/Content?oid=25960899
There's a little problem with this review right out the gate, and that's the author's referring to the film as steampunk in his title, which is such a massive oversight in his view of the film that I question if I'm even reading it right, because Alita: Battle Angel is not steampunk. Alita: Battle Angel is set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic far future where society has broken down, where the law is enforced by cyborg bounty hunters instead of police, and where a massive number of the population have augmented themselves with cybernetic parts, it is, completely and unapologetically, cyberpunk. This oversight is a bit more serious than you'd think because it comes from someone who hated the film, and shows, in painful clarity, that he didn't understand it, that he doesn't even know what genre it is when it is telegraphed so loudly that the URM can hear it. Our author really isn't off to a good start in his review, he's dropped the ball in his title, god only knows what the rest of the review contains.

Our author then does something I genuinely didn't expect, he compared the film, Alita: Battle Angel to the First World War, quoting some pointless philosophy as if it's at all applicable to this film, which he seems to think it is. His comparing this film to WWI however is, frankly, fucking ridiculous, seriously, what on Earth is he talking about. His point is that Alita: Battle Angel and the war are the same in that they're pointless, which I'm sure sounds very smart to him, and doesn't at all make him look like a tool, and as with our moron who hated Ghostbusters last time, this moron is free to dislike the movie, he's even free to nonsensically compare a Cyberpunk film based on a Manga to WWI, but he's wrong, he's wrong that Alita: Battle Angel is devoid of meaning, he's also factually wrong about the film itself, because he seems to think that Iron City's population also includes robots, which, like the film apparently being Steampunk, demonstrates that he has no idea what he's talking about. Iron City's population is not a mix of human and robot, nor is Zalem a District 9 or Elysium ripoff, given that the Manga Alita: Battle Angel based on predates both of those films by twenty years, and this idiot also doesn't remember that for the entirety of the film we only see the underside of Zalem, so his assessment that Zalem is a Nostromo ripoff too is wrong, as is his assessment that people would only want to live there because it's the future, because, again, we never see Zalem up close, life on Zalem is something we do not see, which is deliberately the case.

Like I said in my review of the film, Zalem is portrayed as a heavenly, unobtainable paradise, a place beyond the reach and even the comprehension of the lower classes down in Iron City, and we, the audience, know as much about the place as the characters in the film, which is to say we know nothing, that's the point. I Struggle to comprehend his next remark about Alita being a cartoon, I honestly can't believe someone would miss the point of a film's main character like this guy does, his comment that the URM body she gets later in the film has bigger tits is true, but what's also true is that this reflects a transition in her character, as does her change in clothes, something our moronic author clearly missed, kind of like how the film isn't Steampunk, god, my head is starting to hurt. I'm starting to get a vibe from this guy, because he then references an artist, which at least makes a bit more sense than his referring to a French philosopher, given the context, but I get the distinct impression that this guy thinks he's clever, that he thinks comparing the film to WWI and quoting a philosopher makes him a smart boi, but unfortunately you can't be a smart boi if you're a moron. It's rather fitting that he uses the phrase "appallingly dumb," to describe the film, because his review is appallingly dumb; he compares a film to WWI and quotes philosophy like that means a damn thing, like it excuses his confusing of Steampunk and Cyberpunk, his referring to possibly the best fully CG character ever put to screen as a cartoon, and his missing the point of the bigger tits. I also find it insane that he'd think Alita: Battle Angel is ripping off Elysium when it's twenty years older than Elysium, he does mention that the film is based on a Manga, but that doesn't negate his clear absence of understanding of said Manga, or of how time works, or of how Steampunk and Cyberpunk are different, I don't have time for this, fuck it.


Moral of the Story: Go Watch Alita: Battle Angel!
Got a bit heated from that review, but what can I say, I like cinema and I love Alita: Battle Angel, so a review from an idiot who thinks Steampunk and Cyberpunk are the same thing is going to piss me off a little. There's a pompousness to film critics on Rotten Tomatoes that I cannot stand, and it's getting more and more apparent every day, but what's also becoming more apparent is that no one gives a shit what they have to say, not when a film like Venom makes $850 million, and not when Alita: Battle Angel finds the audience that it really deserves, despite them not being able to get past its brain, whatever the fuck that means. Do you know what pisses me off more though, in a twisted, sadomasochistic sort of way, SJW's, and originally, this post was going to feature a pair of them, individuals who find Alita's design Problematic, but this would have been a stupidly long post, so it's getting its own post. But the moral of today is simple, don't listen to RT critics, and go see Alita: Battle Angel, it's a film that deserves the sequel it still might not get, but it's a great film and it deserves your money, so for the love of god, go see it.

Alita: Battle Angel movie review

Here's what you need to know; born into the cyberpunk dystopia of Iron City, Alita longs to know the truth about her past, who or what she is. But while searching for that truth, she finds herself in the sights of a sinister and mysterious puppet master, one who knows the truth about what she is and would rather she never knew, because Alita isn't a normal girl, she's the most dangerous weapon on Earth.
Above all else, I'm surprised that this film hasn't been given its lashings for the hideous crime of whitewashing, I mean, it's an adaptation of a Manga, which is Japanese, and yet the film isn't very Japanese at all, so where is the backlash this time. You know that I'm taking the piss, the whole idea of whitewashing is something I've always found rather pathetic, and while the striking visuals and cyberpunk setting gave me some real Ghost in the Shell vibes, I actually really liked the way Alita: Battle Angel looked, then I saw that Odeon were giving away exclusive promotional material on the film's opening weekend, and I was sold. That promo poster has, in fact, taken the place of my framed IT promo poster, but does that reflect the film's quality, or do I just really like film promo material, let's find out.

Alita: Battle Angel grabs you right out of the gate with its presentation, usually I talk about characters and story first, but it has to be said, this is probably the best CGI I've ever seen. The setting of Iron City is wonderfully brought to life with a beautiful blending of practical and computer effects, and an attention to detail that rivals the visual fidelity of Avatar. Very much like the setting of Ghost in the Shell, Iron City is a beautifully realised world, one that's believable and lived-in, with old world ruins scattered about below a massive flying city, and reminders of what people in this film call "The Fall," an apocalyptic war that left the Earth in ruins. You also don't get much of a look at that flying city, which I feel really adds to both the mystery and inaccessibility of the place, as well as the reality of the city below, as if Zalem (the flying city) is some kind of mythical, heavenly place, one that literally hangs over the consciousnesses of everyone in Iron City. So the film has gorgeous scenery, but none of that matters if the star of the show has doll eyes, right? But once again, the CG in this film is insane, and in particular, the CG used on Alita's face is Grand Moff Tarkin levels of good, it took some adjusting to seeing a woman with eyes as big as oranges, but once I did, I had no trouble at all believing that I was looking at a real human face, it was weird, but in a very good way. And, like Ghost in the Shell before it, Alita: Battle Angel goes nuts with the Cyberpunk; with most of the people of Iron City walking around with cyborg limbs, and a bar full of cyborg bounty hunters, one of which being Francis from Deadpool, or rather, his shit eating face on a robot body. The film's visual effects team really had fun with the film's presentation and design, and it is gorgeous to look at from beginning to end.

Ok, now we can talk about characters and story, and where the film's visuals and storytelling work very well together. Let's start with Alita, who is absolutely adorable; from her very first scene, to her first interaction with Ido, to going outside and seeing Iron City for the first time, it's just so sweet, and the film completely nails getting you to like Alita. It's here where her eyes become an important piece of visual storytelling; as Alita has no idea who, what or where she is, and is seeing everything for the first time, she is innocent, completely and incorruptibly so, and has trouble understanding the world for the dangerous and misleading place that it is, which is reflected in her design. Her big eyes reflect the child-like innocence of her mentality, as well as reflecting the notion that the eyes are the window to the soul, which Alita has in abundance thanks to her SpongeBob levels of optimism and innocence. But it doesn't stop there as later in the film, when she gets her hands on a new, more powerful robot body, that body takes on more mature feminine features, reflecting her development and growth from sweet, innocent girl to a more mature woman. Alita really is the heart and soul of the film, she is intolerably cute; a ray of light on a dark, dystopian world, and being the meanest weapon in the world and not even knowing it, she is a badass. There is a lot of mystery to her character; you learn a lot about her, but even more things about her and the world are left unexplained, which makes me hope that this film doesn't flop, because Alita and her world are things I'm dying to know more about, but what you do get is very intriguing, and it's something that I'm not going to spoil. There is a risk when making a character that's practically unstoppable, especially a female character; but what stops Alita from falling eyes first into Mary Sue territory is her emotional journey, as she starts out as an innocent, playful and adventurous spirit, before slowly realising that she has far more power than she thought, and that with that power, and this is the important bit, comes responsibility. At that point it's less about who and what she is, and more about how she fits into the world around her, what she does with the power she has.

I know this will piss a few people off, but she's basically a better version of Wonder Woman; an unstoppable tank with a warrior's spirit but a childish and simplistic outlook, whose ark becomes learning the ugly truth about the world around her and learning to accept that truth, only this is cooler, because Cyberpunk. And like Wonder Woman, Alita gets a love interest, and here's where the tables turn, because this guy is no Chris Pine. I get what they wanted to do with this character, and on paper, it works very well as Hugo is effectively Alita's introduction to the real world, with all its beauty and all its horrors. The pair have some really good scenes together too, like when Alita tries Chocolate for the first time or when he introduces her to Motorball, but when the film tries to show that they love each other, it felt less that they were in love, and more that a young, dumb girl was in love with a pretty boy. There is an emotional conflict that Hugo faces, that being his love for Alita and his under the table dealings with the film's villain, the issue is that I just never bought that he was in love with Alita, it was a bit cheesy, just a bit. What I had a much easier time buying was Alita's relationship with Ido, the doctor who rebuilds her. Without going into spoilers, Ido's motives for rebuilding Alita are pretty heavy, and those motives blossom into an adorable father-daughter relationship, only one with the added spice of the father being a badass bounty hunter and the daughter being a cyborg super-weapon. Ido's desire to protect and shelter Alita is one of the film's most human elements, and I loved the relationship the two of them had, far, far more so than Alita's and Hugo's mutual crush. Then there's the film's villain, Vector, who is just one of Nova's puppets. This is one of the areas where the film really slips in my opinion, because Vector isn't a very threatening villain at all in this film, despite being a shady, sinister, black glasses wearing villain, the film's efforts to set up a sequel completely undermines any villainous presence that he has because he is constantly overshadowed by a bigger fish, this film has a puppet master, one who never speaks and who you don't see until the very end, and for all the build-up Vector gets, he's nothing more than a puppet in the end, and that's kind of weak.

Something that Alita: Battle Angel does unbelievably well, as I've already said, is worldbuilding; with a beautifully realised dystopia filled to the brim with little details and some of the best CG ever produced. But this isn't just apparent in the beauty of Iron City and Alita's face, in fact it's most apparent in the film's action sequences, oh boy. Alita's action sequences are crazy, and awesome. And there's a few on offer in this film, including a pretty sweet bar fight, a completely badass Motorball sequence that was way cooler than I thought it would be, and a few throw downs with this big cyborg mother fucker that were also super cool. One good thing about everyone in the film being a cyborg is that the film can be as violent as it wants and not have to worry about all the blood, and holy shit this film is violent; People are getting decapitated, ripped and sliced limb from limb, blown up, crushed, stabbed, but it's all BBFC friendly because the blood is blue. That makes the handful of scenes when the blood isn't blue rather extreme in comparison, especially for a 12A, but you know me, when have I ever complained about a film being too violent, I complain when it isn't violent enough. The film's action sequences are an interesting thing in this film, as they should be, they're all fast, violent clashes of metal, but they're all very exciting and fun, there's just one problem. You'd expect a film like this to have some kind of epic final showdown to end the film on an epic note, but it doesn't and in that regard, the film's ending is a little anticlimactic. There's the awesome Motorball sequence, but then the film winds down for some reason, giving us a brief fight with a room full of spider tanks that was over way too soon, and an even briefer final fight with the big guy. The film's ending really doesn't do it any favours, setting up a sequel that, if the track record of American Manga and Anime adaptations is anything to go by, will probably never happen. It does kind of suck that the film made the decision to not only set up a sequel, but promise one by deliberately leaving its story open at the end. Alita: Battle Angel's ending would make me excited for a sequel if I had any confidence that a sequel was coming, but I don't and so the film just feels incomplete in its finale which, for some reason, features a time jump, and doesn't provide any substantial emotional payoff, just a promise that next time will be awesome, a next time that we'll be very, very lucky if we get the chance to see.


It's the loneliest feeling, not to know who you are
Alita: Battle Angel is, you guessed it, not a perfect movie, in fact it's very far from perfect, it gets a lot of things wrong, like its main villain and romantic subplot, not to mention its anticlimactic and unsatisfying ending that will probably never get the payoff it needs. But here's the thing, I loved this film, I can look past even its most glaring issues because at the end of the day, I love Iron City, I love the film's visual effects, I love its action sequences, and I adore Alita. She makes the film, her character and her relationship with Ido, and the mystery of what she is that gradually unfolds over the course of the film. A film can be flawed, a film can make mistakes, but at the end of the day, if the film is fun, and if it has the feels, I'll probably like it, and Alita: Battle Angel nails both of them. I cannot wait to watch it again, and it's definitely worth watching.

Ghostbusters: Alive Again

A few years ago, Sony tried to breathe life back into the Ghostbusters franchise, and I, as a huge fan of said franchise, should have been very happy about that, but through a long and unfortunate series of events, the Ghostbusters film I'd hoped to see seemed doomed to never happen. I wanted Ghostbusters 3, just as I'm sure many others did, and just as I know Ivan Reitman did, but after many years of development hell, convoluted studio politics and the death of Harold Ramis, that dream was effectively dead, and in its place was a reboot, written and directed by Paul Feig and starring an all-female cast. I'm sure you know my feelings towards that film, but if you don't, I wasn't a fan, to put it nicely, but the gold mine of frustration and comedy came more from the endless controversy surrounding the film before, during and after its disastrous release, because the film's marketing and media reaction was a spectacle; the film was turned into a symbol of feminism and female empowerment, the franchise's credibility be damned. This wasn't the Ghostbusters anyone wanted, but naturally, it quickly became a lightning rod for a swarm of new Ghostbusters 'fans' who loved it and thought it was hilarious and amazing and were determined to protect it from the misogynistic man-child backlash, because if you didn't like the film, you hated women, no exceptions. The politicisation of the film might have been the second biggest factor in its failure, behind it just being a very forgettable, mediocre and completely unwanted reboot which, in the shadow of the 1984 film, might as well have been the worst film ever made. The film bombed, losing Sony millions of dollars and, I feared, killing the Ghostbusters franchise once again, ensuring that we'd never get Ghostbusters 3, and that whatever form the franchise took moving forward would be unrecognisable and mediocre. Whatever happened in the future, it was certain that for long-time fans of the series like me, the reboot would forever be an open wound, a thing you wouldn't want to bring up for fear of an earful.

If my blog still exists in 2020, I'll be going back and looking at the 2016 film again, looking at both the controversy and the film itself in greater detail, but before that, there was an announcement in January of 2019, and it was a good one. Even before the 2016 reboot released and bombed, the studio and director were already talking about a sequel, either as a result of delusional confidence in the film, or a desperate effort to get more people in seats by promising a sequel in advance. Either way, it didn't work, and Ghostbusters was cast back into obscurity, a dead brand that had been Frankensteined back to life and killed again by corporate greed and political agendas. Then in January 2019, a fifty second teaser for a Ghostbusters film appeared online, and it, at first glance, appears to be everything I wanted from a twenty-first century Ghostbusters 3, at first glance; rumours have naturally been circulating and I hope to god that not all of them are true. Now apparently, Dan Aykroyd has been letting slip that a Ghostbusters film was in development for months, but since I don't keep up with the day to day of Dan Aykroyd, I hadn't heard a peep, so when I saw the trailer, on IGN's YouTube channel, incidentally, I was taken completely off guard, and as you'd expect, tumbled into an intense state of excitement. Very little is currently known about this film, though it's being directed by Jason Reitman, fittingly, and will ignore the 2016 reboot entirely, which has me very excited, but also has another faction not so happy. You probably already know where this is going, with the amount of venom surrounding the 2016 release on both sides, the announcement of a sequel that ignores that film's existence would inevitably bring out some of that venom once more, and this time the shoe is on the other foot, which is going to make the build up to this film's release an absolute blast to watch, because now the SJW cunts who ruined everyone's fun three years ago can get to know how it feels. Now I'm going to discuss a few articles on the topic from a handful of outlets, I'd highly recommend you check these articles out because, with the way I write, you'd only be getting half the story if you didn't.


The Cost of Progress

So let's take a look at a couple of articles written by salty people who are mad that their precious movie's being tainted by deranged bigots, what a familiar feeling, I get it, I really do. Since the final vote on the EUCD and Article 11 were delayed, I feel comfortable supplying a link to the article in question, but I'll also include the details because I'm not a fool; the first article comes from the Hollywood Reporter from one Kyle Zizu and is titled "'Ghostbusters 3': Why Ignore the All-Female Reboot?" It's not hard to find with a google search:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/why-is-ghostbusters-3-ignoring-all-female-reboot-1177318
The article starts like most articles do, with an introduction to the topic; talking about how the 2016 film "battled online trolls" and "sparked debate" before it "fizzled" at the Box office. That's a very nice way of looking at the situation, isn't it. "Sparked debate," it started an internet war; people on both sides were at each other's throats for months, with the progressive media belittling all their enemies as man-baby sexist trolls and losers, while the other side expressed their anger that not only had Ghostbusters 3 been killed, but that it'd been replaced by a film whose very existence was motivated by greed and ideology. And "Fizzled?" what I think you mean to say is bombed; it lost Sony tens of millions of dollars, becoming a gold standard example of the 'Get Woke Go Broke' phenomenon. Our Author then links to another article by one Hannah Woodhead titled "An Open Letter to Jason Reitman." An article where Woodhead talks about the "fierce innovation" of Ghostbusters (2016), and that the crew weren't just Ghostbusters, they were 'women', which I don't think she realises was kind of the problem; nobody wanted a Ghostbusters film with four wamen in the lead roles, the issue wasn't that they were all women, the issue was why they were all women and what they did with it, but that's a distinction that every defender of that film happily ignores. Case in point, Woodhead then talks about how the film pissed off men, yeah, because no women were mad about it, none, it was all men, that way you could chalk it up to sexism and nothing else, ignoring the real issue.

Her open letter then rambles on about how innovation can be mistaken with tokenism, which only shows how shallow and stupid their "innovation" is, and how Jason Reitman isn't the man for the job because of his "nostalgia for a better time... when movies were movies," obviously unaware of how bad that actually sounds; like movies today aren't just movies. This is a bit of a funny statement since some of the best films ever made were films that had something to say, films that reflected the culture of the time, my go to example of which being Godzilla (1954), a story about the horrors and evils of nuclear warfare at the dawn of the Cold Wa told through the lens of a Monster Movie. The problem with Ghostbusters 2016 is that it isn't saying anything; its defenders may say it's important and meaningful, but the only thing Ghostbusters (2016) is saying is "Wamen," and that isn't quite as deep and meaningful as the horrors of nuclear warfare. What's even richer though is that this is new for Ghostbusters, the original films were not meaningful and deep, they were, as Reitman puts it, just movies, it was Feig that tried to make Ghostbusters deep. Our author continues talking about Woodhead, who says; “I think we suffer from this collective sense of nostalgia in film, where we're always looking to the past rather than the future," and “The past is safe. The past is easy.” This sounds eerily like the 'the future is female' mantra that's been used to justify this kind of behaviour by film and TV producers, that we "suffer" from nostalgia and that it blinds us to a better future. Yeah, right, if it was a better future, we'd be getting Ghostbusters 2 from Paul Feig, instead Jason Reitman is directing Ghostbusters 3, probably because the Sony big heads freaked out at the financial failure of Feig's film and didn't want to risk another bomb, while making a sequel to Ghostbusters 2 and hiring the son of the legendary Ivan Reitman to direct would bring back some good will and maybe, just maybe, not bomb at the box office. If the future is woke, it'll also be broke, that's a reality of entertainment, one that's contributed to the collapse of a British TV icon and the largest film franchise in history.

Your clinging on to it is just delusion at this point, people don't like woke entertainment, and you come close to admitting that yourself because of course they'd look to the safe and easy past, they took a big risk in 2016 and it failed miserably. Luckily our author then gets back to the point and talks about the 2016 film's Fresh RT score, like that means a damn thing, before bringing up the racist attacks against Leslie Jones, which, you know, racism sucks, it isn't nice, but I'm not going to be sympathetic to poor little Leslie,being on the receiving end of racism and bigotry doesn't excuse you for also being on the giving end, and would you believe it, Leslie Jones has quite the collection of skeletons in her closet. There's a Breitbart article out there that isn't hard to find called; 'Double Standards: Leslie Jones' Racist Twitter History,' and should you read it, you'll see a nice little collection of all the times Leslie Jones has been a piece of shit on Twitter.
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/07/20/double-standards-leslie-jones-racist-twitter-history/
But what's even worse than racism is incitement of abuse, and would you believe it, Leslie Jones has done that too, what a shock, it's almost like she's a massive hypocrite, it's almost like she's a complete piece of shit. But we ain't done talking about her today, that comes later.

Our Author then quotes someone else, one Drew McWeeny who probably has a lot of fond memories from his school days. McWeeny says; "I think it's a really entertaining movie that was doomed simply because it wasn't the film a certain very loud percentage of the audience wanted,” and minus the really entertaining part, which he's free to feel, I agree; it was doomed because it wasn't what a certain group wanted, the issue is that that group wasn't sexist man-babies as the media insisted it was, it was the fans; people who loved Ghostbusters and didn't want a politicised all-female reboot. The quotes keep rolling in with this one as next we get one Chris Sutcliff of Cracked who, interestingly, thinks that ignoring the reboot for Ghostbusters 3 is "A victory for all the wrong people," and a "creative step backwards." I got two issues with these quotes, issue one is obvious; the wrong people? what, the fans? the Ghostbusters fans? because I don't see a problem with them winning personally, so guilty as charged you cunt. And about the film being a creative step backwards, there was nothing creative about the 2016 film; its comedy was safe, its visuals were poorly done and over the top, its characters were hollow, lifeless archetypes and its villain was an insult to "the wrong people." Ghostbusters (2016) was about as safe as you could get from a film making perspective, it was, and I'll say it again, mediocre. And the things that killed it; the relentless assault on the critics, the douchebaggery of the cast and crew, the mere fact that it existed, wasn't so much creative as it was moronic.


The Getters Get Got

We're cutting that article a little short for now since we've got so much to do, but it goes on to talk about the online abuse faced by Star Wars actors and the nonsensical notion that Ghostbusters 3 will be a Spider-Verse style crossover. But now it's time to discuss something I'd hinted at earlier; the creature known as Leslie Jones had some things about this new Ghostbusters movie that she wanted to say, and while trying to find articles to talk about today, the vast majority of what I found were articles talking about her tweets, and agreeing with them, of course. I meanwhile do not, and rather than taking an article, we're just going to be looking at tweets themselves, because I've got a Mary Sue article lined up today and I don't want this to go on forever.  Her first tweet is the more fun one because of all the venom in it; "So insulting. Like fuck us. We dint count. it's like something Trump would do." There's a lot to say about this, firstly being how she felt the need to bring up the orange demon like he at all matters in this situation. The reason is quite obvious however; to the Progressive left, Trump really is evil, he's literally Hitler, he's every ist and phobe in the book and he wants to grope all the women and deport all the Mexicans and take America back to the dark ages. With the amount of hysteria surrounded Trump in the past few years, as well as the unfortunate coincidence that the film became embroiled in his election because of, you guessed it, Feig and co., it's no surprise that she'd compare this to him, because Trump is a synonym of bad.

A few choice Reitman quotes from Entertainment Weekly's story on the new film 

More interesting than that though is how she finds it insulting; "Like fuck us. We dint count." Gotta be honest, it's kind of nice to see the shoe on the other foot, because guess what, you don't count Leslie, you and your pussy squad have probably been consigned to history to avoid confusion and box office catastrophe, and since you and McCarthy and Feig couldn't keep your mouths shut about how everyone who didn't like your movie were sad, lonely, basement dwelling misogynists, I can now feel quite comfortable in saying; Fuck you, fuck all of you, now you're the losers, it sucks doesn't it. I do agree with you in one way however, a soulless movie studio abandoning something you love while cruelly keeping the brand alive to make money off of it, that is a dick move, and so is that studio shamelessly screwing over all the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into that brand to make it what it was, such a dick move, why would they do such a thing to Reitma- I mean you. But it would be interesting enough if one of the cast went on a Twitter rant about how shitty Ghostbusters 3 is, and have the entire MSM and Paul Feig condone her bullshit, all while Jason Reitman is being admirably diplomatic about the whole thing in his Entertainment Weekly interview, which really shows which side of this war is the more fragile and insecure, once again, shoe's on the other foot now, sucks to be them. But then Leslie did what most people on Twitter do after getting called ou- I mean abused; she backpedalled, hard, the backpedal was actually more interesting than her initial rage.

Firstly, "it's very sad that this is response I get." Leslie, darling, large swathes of the Ghostbusters fanbase are currently doing the Crab Rave (YouTube it) because the film they always wanted is finally getting made, then in crashes you, the hulking, graceless beast of a woman that you are, to join in on the MSM's efforts to ruin our fun, don't play innocent when you get kickback. That's not what's fascinating however, what's fascinating is her next comment; "if they make this new one with all men and it does well which it will." How do you know that it will, Leslie? I mean, we all know that it will, but why do you in particular, who is definitely not reading this, not a chance in hell, feel that it'll do better. Does this reflect a secret lack of confidence in your film, or does it reflect a belief that everyone else is a sexist that'll go and see it just because it's all men and women suck. The truth is somewhere in the middle, it will almost certainly do better than the reboot financially, critically is another story, it'll probably get panned simply because it's not a sequel to the reboot, but financially it'll be a win precisely because you dint count. The people who wanted another Ghostbusters movie didn't want the one they got, they wanted a sequel, and (2020) is that sequel, whatever it ends up being, your movie was not. I'm actually willing to bet it's insecurity however because of the next bit; "It might feel that "boys are better"it makes my heart drop." No Leslie, that's how it'll feel to you, and Feig, and Rotten Tomatoes, and the Mary Sue, and all the other ideologies and shills, because you're all bigots, and I mean that, to still insist that the film failed because of sexism, and then to imply that a Ghostbusters 3 will inevitably do better because "Boys are Better" speaks both to the low regard with which you hold men an your own insecurity about the movie and your own ideology, remind me, who's the fragile and insecure one again?


Revenge of the Man-babies

Getting back to the articles, I did enjoy a Forbes article by one Scott Mendelson titled "Jason Reitman is Directing 'Ghostbusters 3,' And It's All Your Fault." The reason I'm not on that however is because this is already long and my other main article is a Mary Sue article, and given my track record with articles from that rag, two and a half articles and a salty tweet will be more than enough. Our rag Sue article comes from one Kate Gardner and is titled; "We're Getting a New Ghostbusters, But Not With Paul Feig's Cast." The article's title is nowhere near as salty as Mendelson's, but this is the Mary Sue and we're talking about Ghostbusters, so I'm sure the salt is in there, we just have to dig for it:
https://www.themarysue.com/new-ghostbusters-jason-reitman-no-paul-feig/
The article doesn't start off on a good foot at all with "In the world of unnecessary, “didn’t we just reboot this” reboots." Well then, fuck you author; this sentence really annoys me purely because of how unaware it is. Yes, Ghostbusters (2016) was a reboot and it was only three years ago, but it's a reboot no one wanted, and this film is not a reboot, it's a sequel, in fact it's the sequel everyone who wanted another film wanted, not a reboot, and especially not a reboot with a gimmicky gender swap and forced politicisation. And you know this isn't a reboot because you say as much, it's not a sequel to Feig's film, it's a sequel to Reitman's film, it's a sequel, though, given we're on the Mary Sue, I'm guessing it isn't the sequel you wanted, but that's just too bad. Our author gives us some padding about the film itself before getting back to the nonsense; still calling this 2020 film a reboot, and calling it unnecessary because it was rebooted in 2016, author, please stop making that mistake, I know that you're trying to spin the existence of this film as unnecessary because you don't like it, stop that. Our Author then stated a truth, kind of, saying that the 2016 film "did not perform incredibly well," and that it was because of the angry fans and the all female casting which, once again, is only part of the story. The two biggest reasons the film bombed were that no one wanted a reboot and that the film was turned into a political tool by the people making and promoting it, suddenly it wasn't just an unnecessary reboot, it was a symbol of women's empowerment, a symbol of the changing world, and the barometer on whether you were a good person or a Nazi, there was no in-between. The film bombed because the people making it thought turning it into a political statement was a good idea, it wasn't.

I will at least concede how odd it is that Sony is so quick to return to Ghostbusters, given that the brand took a pummelling at the box office and significant damage to its respectability, but this is Sony we're talking about, they're not exactly printing money with their film division, and Ghostbusters, despite the damage done to it by Feig and co., is still a beloved brand that can still be milked, only this time with more caution and consideration, because starting a war didn't end well for them last time. But this next bit is cute, "it is unlikely that the film will focus on four women," you could say that. Making a sequel to Feig's Ghostbusters would be box office suicide and Sony knows it, but making another all female Ghostbusters runs the risk of being even worse, because then there's the association with the 2016 film as well as the possibility that they could double down on the 2016 debacle and make the film even more woke, which, at that point you might as well make a sequel to (2016) and commit box office suicide. Either way, it's a commitment to a failed idea, and it doesn't matter how much you may like that idea, because it still failed and it would be a waste of time and money to pursue it again. Oh and here comes some salt from our author, back patting Reitman for making strong women in the past, but then saying what we're all thinking, just from the other perspective; that Sony is trying to appease the crying raging fanboys and giving them what they want. Once again, the 2016 film was not hated exclusively by raging fanboys, nor was it because of the women cast, it was hated because of the decision to reboot and make it a political statement, saying that the only people who hated that film were losers and sexists isn't even spin, it's an outright lie, but it's a lie that confirms our author's biases so it must be true. I'll tell you one thing though, I'm glad they're giving the fans what they wanted, both as a fan of Ghostbusters and as an enemy of Social Justice, to hell with your Go-Girl Ghostbusters.

Oh but apparently Twitter is right in pointing out that it feels like appeasing the vitriolic masses, and I suppose that is what it looks like to you, Mary Sue author, but then our author brings the salt by talking about Reitman. Reitman, as I mentioned earlier, was very diplomatic about the announcement of the film, saying he loved the 2016 film, but that just isn't enough to our author because now the franchise is going back to the days of male domination, what a classic Feminist argument, reminds me of the good old days. Do you know what else reminds me of the good old days; feminists not being diplomatic, but hey, at least our author isn't so salty and obnoxious as to compare this to the doings of the orange demon, Donald Trump, she's just salty enough to insult the franchise, a franchise she's apparently a big fan of. I do at least agree with the "abandoned" part, and thank god for that. Our Author then starts calling the film unnecessary again, while saying that it could still be good and, like it matters, inclusive, and once again, the whole 'Inclusive Ghostbusters' thing was never the problem, it was the fact that it was a reboot and that it was woke, and on a side note, what's inclusive about all women? especially with three of them being white, where's the Asian representation, that's not very inclusive is it. But like Diversity is progressive code for anti-white, inclusive in this context clearly means anti-male.


And to round out our article, our author puts a real belter of a statement on the table, "it seems for every step forward, we are taking two steps back in Hollywood," before, shockingly, making an argument against tokenism while also unconsciously admitting that her side of this war are a bunch of cunts. The golden bit is of course the whole bit about white men and one person of colour and one woman; way to belittle the likable, relatable black guy from the first film, you racist, but isn't it just gold that a progressive is now saying that tokenism is bad, because they love representation so damn much, so much even that they're more than happy to let it destroy franchise after franchise through their progressive disease, yet tokenism, no, that's bad, we need representation but not if it's tokenism, like those two things aren't the exact same thing. It's bad, full stop, they're the same thing and they're both bad because despite what you believe, the western world isn't infested with racists, or at least not the ones you think, people don't care as much about diversity and inclusion as you think, they care when what they're watching sucks, especially when they loved that thing already, and the issue with forcing inclusion and diversity into entertainment is that is comes with so many other progressive ideas, fundamentally, it is built upon the progressive stack, which justifies all kinds of racism and sexism out of historic injustice and concepts like "male domination." The ideology you hold and support is broken, corrosive, and warps reality to justify itself, and no one wants that in their entertainment, especially when they're being told they'll never amount to anything good because they have a dick or because they're white, Ghostbusters abandoning your bullshit is the best thing for it, regardless of how good or bad the film ends up being, and that's because, frankly, it is bullshit.


For the Sake of Comedy

Got a bit ill tempered in that last bit, and I did say that this was already long but there's this article I found not long after finishing up with the Mary Sue article, and I thought it'd really piss me off, but just from reading the first line, I actually feel kind of sad for the author. This won't take long but I will include a link so you can see it for yourself, it comes from Newsweek from one John Walters and is titled; "Why the Original 'Ghostbusters' Was Awful."
https://www.newsweek.com/why-original-ghostbusters-was-awful-480673
It's an older article, published in 2016, and I'm not wasting five paragraphs on breaking down everything wrong with it, firstly because it's not actually a  relevant article, it's just for fun, and secondly because there isn't really anything to gleam from it. Clearly our author wrote this article around the height of the Ghostbusters 2016 war in the hopes of belittling and dismantling the original film, but his method of doing so is so absurd and funny that I struggle to believe it isn't a fake article. He claims that he won't see the reboot, right before clarifying that he isn't a misogynist, because that actually is necessary with Ghostbusters now, thanks Feig, but what's gold is what he has to say about the '84 original, specifically that he believes that it sucks, that is isn't funny or clever or original, that it isn't funny, that people only found it funny because it had funny people in it, and that it isn't funny. I would break down everything wrong with this article, but I got the gist in the first few paragraphs, our author hates Ghostbusters, he has for more than thirty years, he doesn't care about the reboot, and that he thinks that the original isn't funny. And do you know what, while I don't care that he's of this opinion, I also don't care what he has to say, not caring about Ghostbusters, it strikes me as odd that a Sports writer would even bother writing about it, but the level of pissiness on display is just so bizarre that I can't help but be confused. The author tries to break down what he thinks is wrong with the film, but all I'm reading while I'm reading it is 'I Hate Ghostbusters, I Hate Ghostbusters' and it comes off as a bit too try hard for someone who really does hate the film, almost like he's over-compensating for guilt. This isn't important to the current controversy, but it wasn't all that relevant to 2016's controversy either, it appears to just be our author writing about something he doesn't give a shit about so he can get himself some notoriety with an inflammatory title and a bafflingly venomous article, or maybe that he sees shitting on the original as a virtue signal and isn't quite as honest as he wants to look, call me a cynic.


Almost Too Good to be True
Ghostbusters is something I hold very close to my heart, which is why the feelings run deep with me when it comes to the 2016 film. Because to me, (2016) wasn't just a controversy, it was a war; Ghostbusters had been turned into a weapon in a war that it was never meant to be involved in, a war in which I'd already chosen my side. I'm naturally very excited for this 2020 film, though I'm not an idiot, just because they've got Reitman's son to direct and it has the old Ecto-1 doesn't mean they can't fuck it up again, and so little is known for sure about it that anything is possible at this point, an all kid team would be a terrible idea, and since the 2016 film actually did come into existence somehow, I know that, while I want to be embrace my blind excitement for Ghostbusters 3, it failing is still a very real prospect. Ghostbusters 3 is still too far away to say anything for sure, it could be everything I wanted, or it could be dogshit, which would make this next eighteen months of fire and venom pointless, but you know what, until that day, I'm going to enjoy myself. Not only is Ghostbusters alive again, but so is the thing that killed it, and this time, it's the progressives tasting defeat. Because make no mistake, to them, Ghostbusters 3 is a defeat; it's a defeat of everything they believe at the hands of everything they despise, but I haven't got even a lick of sympathy, this film needs to happen, not because we need a Ghostbusters 3, but because they need to lose, this is a war that they started in 2016, and while 2020 will not the killing blow (unless Trump wins again), it will be one hell of a hit.

Aquaman movie review

Here's what you need to know; a war is coming to surface, Atlantis, tired of the surface world's arrogance and abuse of their ocean home, is mobilising its forces for an attack that will kill billions. Standing between the world of Man and certain annihilation is Arthur Curry, a drunk, antisocial superhero with the unusual ability to talk to fish and a birth right he is reluctant to claim, but when the looming war comes knocking at his door, Arthur is forced to embark on a journey that will either get him killed or see him become the King of Atlantis.

The DCEU has had a very rough existence; having struggled to get off the ground since its inception, with quality as all over the place as its box office returns, and with a reputation as a mediocre MCU knockoff. Wonder Woman seemed to steer the ship in the right direction when it blew everyone's minds back in 2017, only for Justice League to flop just a few months later. Unlike Justice League however, Aquaman's production didn't spiral out of control, and with it also dominating the box office and becoming the highest grossing film in the DCEU to date, it looks once again like the DCEU is in for smooth sailing at last, but how much did I enjoy Aquaman personally, in a word, or two, laser sharks, let's go.

Like most prologues, Aquaman's establishes Arthur Curry's origins as well as the film's primary conflict, as we see Arthur's dad finding Queen Atlanna washed up by his lighthouse. This scene has an unbelievably funny gag in it, one I most certainly appreciated more than anyone else in the cinema, but this sequence does provide a mushy montage and narration as they fall in love and have a kid. Things pick up when the Atlantian army comes for Atlanna in an awesome action sequence, and I truly mean awesome, I could watch that shit all day. Naturally the film then kicks off with another action sequence as Arthur Curry retakes a hijacked submarine from pirates, which sets up a later conflict with the Black Manta, a completely wasted villain, but let's not rush. In fact, let's; the sequence at the beginning of this film with the pirates and the hijacked submarine sets ups what could be an awesome conflict, one that Arthur reflects on later in the film, about how he had a choice and ended up making an enemy. The mid-credits scene set up Black Manta as the villain of the inevitable sequel, but this film gives him such a great set up that when he's only in about four scenes in the whole film, it's a shocking waste of potential, even more so since the one scene that he's actually in the Black Manta suit is a really cool scene. But the film seemingly has bigger fish to fry because despite the great setup, Black Manta takes a backseat to Orm, Atlantis' maniacal, war hungry king who wants revenge on the surface world. And saving the world from Orm is Arthur, who is everything I expected him to be. Jason Momoa's Aquaman was one of my favourite things about Justice League, and while this film does a considerable amount of retconning from Justice League, Arthur Curry is still very much the same wise cracking, hot headed arse hole. An alcoholic, cynical superhero may not be a new concept, but this is the first time I've seen it, not including Into the Spider-verse, but like Peter Parker in that film, this is my kind of Super hero, I like him.

Arthur's journey to the throne doesn't take any massive twists and turns, in a way, it's like Black Panther but in reverse, as an outsider must prove himself as king to save the throne and the world, unlike T'Challa who wasn't the outcast, but still had to prove himself as king and save the world. Though it was interesting how the villain of the film, Orm, has dedicated his entire life to Atlantis, wet is the unworthy king with genocidal intentions. I can also see a lot of progressives becoming confused and siding with Orm in this film thanks to his ultra environmentalist motives, saving the ocean from humanity and its pollution, while Arthur, despite being the one true king, wants to save the surface world, indirectly condoning their pollution of the oceans, but you know what, this is Aquaman, this film has Sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, I think I'm overthinking it just a bit. Arthur's love interest in this film is Amber Heard, who is face meltingly gorgeous as ever, and this is one of those rare examples where the hero gets the girl in the end, since you know that's something that's been bugging me for a few years now. But with all that being said, her ability to bend water is really cool, especially in the fight with Black Manta where she turns wine into spears and throws them at her enemies, but this film doesn't pull a Mad Max and have the hero's female counterpart overshadow him in his own movie, making the inevitable romance feel more genuine and earned as they scour the world looking for the McGuffin. This film also has Willem Defoe and Dolph Lundgren, just in case you didn't know you were watching a film that exists purely to be fun, the very essence of a comic book movie.

That's really what Aquaman is, of the DCEU so far, this film is the most comic book-ish, even down to its visuals, and though it's not even close to Into the Spider-Verse in terms of embracing its inspiration, this film, unlike other DC films, is colourful and light-hearted and fun, even more so than the already colourful and fun Wonder Woman. But like Wonder Woman, my previous favourite DCEU film, it's not perfect. Wonder Woman kind of fell apart in its finale for me, a brilliant build up led to an underwhelming payoff with a corny, over the top duel between Diana and a big CGI metal man, one that completely undermined the moral ambiguity the film had previously and brilliantly established. This film's a little different however, because while Wonder Woman went off the rails at the end, Aquaman takes too long to get on them. There is a point in this film where I really start enjoying it, and that's when they go on their quest for the Trident in the Sahara, but until then, the film's a bit boring if you ask me. That's even with seeing Atlantis, seeing literal sea horses and our villain riding around on an armoured Mosasaur, but even with all that, the film drags until they leave and go on their quest. Then they go on their quest, and this film turns into Uncharted, it really does; they're exploring ancient ruins and solving puzzles and making revelations while rambling expositionally about history, before an action sequence where they're running along roof tops and throwing down in a scenic little Italian town, it's Uncharted. The film really kicks into high gear for me at that point, and the madness has only just begun, as they later have to survive an attack from an army of demon fish monsters in a surprisingly scary and effective sequence, one that shows off James Wan's horror expertise. Not that he's a slouch in the action scenes either, because they're all great too, in fact they're the best in the DCEU, even with the warehouse scene from BVS and the village scene from Wonder Woman in mind. And whereas Wonder Woman fell apart in the end, Aquaman's finale has a huge war between crab people and people with underwater space ships and Sharks with laser beams and giant crabs throwing lava bombs and Orm and his armoured Mosasaur chomping their way through the front line, it's insane. It's so insane in fact that it's kind of hard to believe a film this silly even exists, let alone got made on a $200 million budget, this is Pacific Rim levels of awesome, and there's even a giant Lovecraftian Godzilla monster to top it off. My only issue with it is how cleanly it ends; but to explain that would spoil the film, like I haven't done that already by telling you how awesome the Trench and the Brine are.


I am the protector of the deep
Aquaman is the best film the DCEU has offered so far, having not only dethroned Wonder Woman, but blown it out of the water. The two films offer different things, and as good as the first two thirds of Wonder Woman are, Aquaman's last two thirds give me so much more. Its hero hits a sweet spot for me, as does his love interest, the film takes a bit too long to get going and wastes a perfectly good villain in favour of a tyrannical environmentalist, but the film's outright madness and indulgence of its own silliness is just so much fun to watch. It's got amazing action, stunning visuals, some surprisingly effective horror, and dinosaurs, and laser sharks, and a kaiju, what more could a big dumb man child like me want. Aquaman is a lot of fun and I'd definitely recommend it.