Late to the trend but these are all the movies I watched during the quarantine. I just went back to work this week so I saw that as more or less of the end of the quarantine for me. Rated the movies on a scale of 1-10 with a short review of each movie. Hope you enjoy it and sorry for any grammar errors I wrote all of the reviews today so I went through them fairly quick.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Great start to an amazing franchise 9/10 (Rewatch)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Another good entry to the series but definitely not as good as the first or third 8/10 (Rewatch)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: In my opinion the best Indiana Jones movie, Sean Connery is great in this 9.5/10 (Rewatch)

The Great Gatsby: Interesting movie, I really enjoyed how grand everything felt but would have been much better if they used music that fit the time rather than Jay z songs 7.25/10

Burnt: Enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would with it being about cooking 7/10

Memento: One of the most mind bending movies I have seen. Great movie 9/10

Saving Private Ryan: Had meant to watch this awhile ago and I'm glad I finally did. Definitely live up to the hype 8.75/10

Zodiac: Really good movie with some great acting. Crazy to think they came to close to catching him (allegedly) 8.25/10

Days of Thunder: Entertaining but the plot is really all over the place and seem very just slapped together 5.5/10

The Running Man: Classic Arnold movie cheesy but in the best way possible 8/10 (Rewatch)

Rocketman: Was very disappointed with this movie I was not a fan of the more musical style rather than biopic. I really enjoyed the Queen movie and was hoping for something similar but I was very wrong. Although Taron Edgerton is very good as Elton 5.5/10

The Fighter: Christian Bale almost never seems to disappoint and Mark Wahlberg is good as well. Very inspiring story 7.75/10

Lucky Number Slevin: Really interesting movie seems predictable at first but catches you off guard 7.5/10

True Grit(2010): Heard a lot about this movie and was not disappointed at all 9/10

Whiplash: I had the impression I wouldn't like this movie but by the end its hard not to be amazed by the performances. Also the the cinematography was surprisingly good 8.75/10

Clear and Present Danger: Decent movie with a good cast although easily forgettable 6.75/10

Old School: Hilarious comedy movie I had never heard of until recently, give it a watch you wont regret it 8/10

Looper: Really enjoyed the plot of the movie and the whole time travel aspect. The Joseph Gordon Levitt CGI on his face to look like Bruce Willis just felt weird though 8/10

A Night At the Roxbury: Very dumb comedy not necessarily in a bad way. A lot of better comedies out there 6/10

Death Proof: I know this is a popular opinion but my least favorite Tarintino movie. You don't really care about any of the characters and their is little to no actual story being told 5.75/10

Jackie Brown: Again definitely one of my least favorite Tarintino movies but much better than death proof. Really loved Samuel L Jackson in this one 7/10

Kill Bill: Great Tarintino flick with amazing action and an awesome cast 8.5/10 (Rewatch)

Kill Bill vol 2: Good follow up to the first and has a satisfying ending, not as exciting/fun as the first 7.75/10 (Rewatch)

Equilibrium: You can tell how hard this movie tried to be the matrix. Still has some redeeming qualities 6/10

The Hunt for the Red October: Another Jack Ryan movie, I liked this one better than Clear and Present Danger. Good story and very suspenseful 7.5/10

Casino Royale (2006): My favorite Daniel Craig Bond movie so far and great start to a new era of Bond. Also Mads Mikkelsen is great as Le Chiffre 8.5/10

Quantum Of Solace: Extremely disappointing movie after how great Casino Royale was. The villain barely feels like a villain and the editing/ camera work in this movie is one of the worst I have ever seen 5/10

Skyfall: A return to form after Quantum of Solace. Much better and cohesive story and with a compelling villain 8/10

Goldeneye: My favorite Bond movie I have seen so far (all the ones i have listed here). As much as I enjoy the Daniel Craig movies I have always like the gadgets and a bit campy vs the very realistic Craig 8.75/10

12 Monkeys: Had never heard of this movie before but It was awesome and quickly became my favorite time travel movie. If you haven't seen this movie watch it asap! 9/10

Star Wars The Phantom Menace: Started a Star Wars Marathon and got sidetracked but I have to admit I have always loved the prequels having grown up with them even though im well aware of the issues that plague these movies. Duel of the Fates is Tied for best lightsaber duel of all time 7.5/10

Star Wars Attack of the Clones: For sure the worst movie of the prequels imo but still a lot of memorable parts and another good duel with Count Dooku, Obi Wan, Anakin and Yoda 6.5/10

Star Wars the Clone Wars (2008): I love the clone wars tv show but you can easily tell this movie was just episodes of the show put together to movie length. Also the animation in this movie and the beginning of the series in pretty poor but thankfully it only goes up in quality 5/10

Dune: Ok Movie but does not hold up well at all. Its obvious the plot of the book was far too much to contain in one movie. I'm looking forward to the remake of this and that they are going to do it in multiple movies rather than just one. As much as people shit on remakes this one movie that really deserves another go especially with modern special effects 5.5/10

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood: Might be a bit of a hot take but my favorite movie of all time! I loved every moment of this movie and the connection between Dicaprio and Pitt is pure gold. I could watch this movie every night and still enjoy it just as much as I did when I saw it for the first time in theater. 10/10 (Rewatch)

Donnie Brasco: Not a bad mob movie Depp and Pacino are both good but it follows all the typical mob tropes 7/10

Ace Ventura Pet Detective: Jim Carrey is always great and Ace Ventura is no exception. Solid comedy 7.5/10

The Lord Of The Rings The Fellowship of the Ring: An amazing beginning to one of the best film trilogies of all time 9.25/10 (Rewatch)

The Lord Of The Rings The Two Towers: My personal favorite of the LOTR movies you just can't beat when Gandalf shows up at the battle of Helms Deep 9.5/10 (Rewatch)

The Lord Of The Rings The Return of The King: Another amazing movie and a great ending to such a great film trilogy also with one of the best battles ever filmed 9/10

Spy Game: Entertaining and fairly suspenseful movie not a bad watch 6.75/10

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: First Jay and Silent Bob movie I have seen, was a fun movie and I liked all the cameos 7.25/10

Total Recall (2012): Not a terrible movie but the original with Arnold is much more memorable and a lot more fun than the 2012 version 5/10

Constantine: Bit of a weird movie but was still entertaining and has a great dark tone. Hard not to love Keanu 6.75/10

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Very dark movie but I absolutely loved this movie. Great murdemystery along with great performances from Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Must watch if you haven't seen it 8.75/10

Sin City: Really interesting story and has a very different style to it. Makes you feel like it has been pulled right from the comic book. Also a really awesome cast 8.25/10

From Dusk Till Dawn: This movie really caught me off guard. Very campy 90's style but I had a blast watching this movie and would definitely watch it again. Seeing Tarintino as a main character in a movie is weird but also hilarious 7.75/10

Team America World Police: Really dumb movie but it is still pretty funny 6.25/10

American made: Another movie its hard to believe that its a (mostly) true story. Tom Cruise is really great in this 7.75/10

Live Die Repeat / Edge of Tomorrow: One of the most amazing concepts for a story I have seen in years and they manage to pull it off in an amazing way. Both Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are great in this movie. Loved the dark humor and quirkiness of all the characters 9/10

Blade Runner: Amazing movie that still stands up today. Such a great story and the atmosphere of the blade runner world is like no other. RIP Rutger Hauer 9.5/10 (Rewatch)

Blade Runner 2049: A great sequel to the original Blade Runner. 2049 is one of the most beautiful moves I have seen with gorgeous cinematography from Roger Deacons. One of Ryan Gosling's best performances 9.25/10 (Rewatch)

American History X: An important story about how even smart people like Edward Nortons character can be convince into an evil cult like mentality. This movie also breaks down the race tensions and shows how nobody can really be too far gone to be changed for the better 8.25/10

The Ninth Gate: Easy to watch movie with a interesting story. Nothing special but still enjoyable 6.75/10

Fury: Really good WW2 movie, you get really invested into all the characters and shows what the war was like towards the end 8/10

The Chronicles Of Riddick: Enjoyable action movie looks pretty good for an early 2000s movie since they used a lot more practical effects rather than the typical shitty cgi at the time 6.5/10

Sicario Day Of The Soldado: Pretty bad sequel. The first half of the movie is decent but the second half is slow and boring. The story just ends up really going nowhere and is just a letdown 4.5/10

The Prestige: I can't believe it took me this long to see The Prestige but holy shit is it an amazing mind bending movie. Both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are amazing in this. Chris Nolan is such a great director and I can't wait for Tenet to finally come out 9.5/10

The Bourne Identity: Good and Entertaining action movie. Matt Damon is a great Jason Bourne 7.75/10

The Bourne Supremacy: Another good action movie that's fun to watch throughout 7.75/10

The Bourne Ultimatum: I feel like Ultimatum really took the Bourne franchise to another level. Really great action and intriguing story Best Bourne movie for sure 8.25/10

Knives Out: Really fun murder mystery with a great cast. Only gripe is that they wouldn't have given away so much so soon. You know most of what happened like 30 min into the movie 8.25/10

Murder On The Orient Express: Another really funny murder mystery. All the characters are very quirky and unique which makes the whole movie a lot of fun. The ending is also very satisfying how it all comes together 8.5/10

Layer Cake: Good movie but I cant help feeling like this is a Guy Ritchie movie without the Guy Ritchie flair to it 7/10

Wind River: I really liked Jeremy Renners whole tracking aspect in this movie rather than the typical Detective stuff you see in most murder mystery movies. Also you really feel and understand the pain some of the characters go through 8/10

Let me know what you think!

/r/popheads Album Of The Decade #9: Lorde - Pure Heroine (preferably the Extended version!)

You guys know who this is, but I'm still gonna try some background.

BACKGROUND

There’s so many narratives one could pull out from the background of this record. The first one’s a bit vapid: Lorde as the up-and-comer, the alt-pop rebel, the Soundcloud breakout, all while she’s only 17! The Love Club EP dropped in 2012 on Soundcloud, and started gaining buzz across the blogosphere. An early Reddit post feels symbolic of the beginning of her rise: “Lorde, a 17yr girl from NZ has a new EP which is definitely bringing the next level future pop zef.” Never mind the flagrant misuse of “zef,” but it’s a perfect summary of who she was at one point: a budding artist with a keen ear for beats and some great capabilities with a pen. A comment on a different post hints at the narrative that’s more accurate, yet more exhausting in 2019: “It's too manufactured in a way, you can really tell they're going for a specific scene and vibe with her. Like Lana Del Rey but they're being more subtle about it.” This is true: Lorde grew up in a privileged NZ neighborhood, and she’s been signed since she was 14, cultivating an image for herself. Yet deriding her, Lana, or any one artist for being supposedly planted is blatant posturing - at the very least, it sure as hell has no place in judging the music on its own merits.
“Royals” eventually blew up off the EP to ridiculous buzz, and months later it was officially released as the lead single to her debut. Its popularity consistently had the air of "teen genius" around it, which worked mostly to the detriment of Lorde who was inevitably shat upon by the holier-than-thou for writing songs that dare to be violently teenaged. Think-pieces recall how gestures like this could be mobilized as political statements – see NYT: “Lorde’s ‘Royals’ is Class-Conscious.” Nowadays, a song like this would receive more vocal pushback – see USA Today: “Taylor Swift has angered many people with her 'You Need To Calm Down' release.” Yet the post-“Price Tag” teen sanctimony of “Royals” was lauded, landing a spot at #2 on Pazz and Jop’s best singles of 2013. Following “Royals,” Pure Heroine dropped in September 2013, almost a year after its independent distribution and months after its official label-backed release. It was great. Note that poptimism wasn’t quite in full swing, and liking Lorde wasn’t really a hip move – after the tragic critical reception of Born to Die, it’s a miracle it was beloved by any publications at all.
Nowadays, Lorde is seen as a pop artist, less a symbol of the cynical mainstream industry and more a songwriter in her own right. The disappointment comes with the narrative that surrounds her transition into crit-adoration, the idea of maturity over the trajectory of her career and that her first record was simply the boring teen pop she had to break out of. Often the narrative centers Jack Antonoff, and even haters tend to aim their disdain towards his efforts rather than Lorde. It’s never a good sign when people seem to treat pop music with the women songwriters as secondary to the apparent geniuses that are working in the soundbooth. Pure Heroine may owe a lot to Joel Little, but when many of his most recent works have failed to capture what Pure Heroine did, one realizes that the album itself was likely a great one because of Lorde herself.

THE ALBUM

You’re not going to learn anything new from this writeup. Yes, the “don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk” / “let em talk” bookends are very cool: a bit of neat conceptual aspiration that was fully realized later on Melodrama. Sure, “Ribs” is some sort of adolescent house party (both genre and location) anthem that totally gets the feelings of growing up down to a T. Hey, this did kickstart the airy boom-clap beats (Charli reference being intentional and purposeful - her only solo hit sounding nothing like the True Romance era nor anything that came after is indicative of something) that define much of the decade’s hits.
There’s plenty of better, more educated writers who could tell you loads about Lorde’s influence and influences. If you’re reading this, you probably understand the streamline between Lorde’s mainstream reception and the sudden birth of young acts determined to reach out to the teens as an alternative, a symbol of authenticity among what’s deemed vapid chart music. Perhaps this was the one negative impact of Pure Heroine - the retreat back into tired tropes of singesongwriter supremacy that was witnessed with 21. 2015 brought the class of Alessia Cara, Troye Sivan, Halsey, and Melanie Martinez to the forefront: each carried the mantle of relatability (Melanie less so, but the surrounding narrative scope of Cry Baby and her presence on The Voice were helpful towards establishing her as a real artist), yet none can really be said to have matched the quality of Pure Heroine. What gives?
That question’s best answered using a review of a song on Frozen. One of my favorite closers to a review is in Brad Shoup’s review of “Let It Go”: “to a four-year-old this must seem like the biggest music in the world.” Age that by about ten years, and you’ve got Pure Heroine. Its sonic palette has obvious and non-obvious influences. An initial comparison is Lana, whose debut seems to set up a downtempo, lyrically dense precedent for some of the songs on Pure Heroine. But further comparisons are necessary: Gotye and Kimbra have the geographical proximity, and their 2011 records Vows and Making Mirrors layer vocals over often minimal alt arrangements that contain echoes of Joel Little’s pristine aesthetic. Yet the most prominent influences were in the underground: Purity Ring’s Shrines has similarly electronic bombast, iamamiwhoami and Grimes can be heard in shades. That’s not even counting the works of rap and EDM producers that undoubtedly played a role here - think Flume or Clams Casino. One could argue Pure Heroine came into existence from the necessity for the mainstream to co-opt the underground’s sound eventually: Soundcloud’s finest transmuted into its marketable shapes. And it’s so brilliant.
I haven’t been able to arrange my thoughts on this record in any elegant fashion. I was considering just a series of hot takes, but then I realized I would piss people off. Here’s some assorted bullet points that I couldn’t figure out where to go with:

“Tennis Court” doesn’t even wait to highlight what the main draw of the album is: Lorde’s voice. That pitch-shifted “yeah” was made to highlight EDM remixes, and guess what, it was! (see: Flume) That video is still iconic -- just her standing in a fucking room doing whatever. It’s probably the only video from this era I actually remember. I have more to say on the following song -- but make no mistake, those steel-pan-adjacent synths are lovely.
“400 Lux” is in the typical tracklisting space usually used to highlight the lead single. While it’s not a single at all, it also happens to be absolutely the best song on the album, so good work on part of Lorde! Production like a warm midnight foghorn and string sections underwater, lyrics that settle on “I like you” two years prior to CRJ really really liking you. Her best love song, one where she doesn’t speak for anybody except her and you. “You buy me orange juice” is the meme, but my favorite line is “you pick me up and take me home again” -- repeated for both emphasis and confirmation of how fucking great it is to be alone in a car with just somebody else.
“Royals” begins like Feist’s “Brandy Alexander,” with an elegant arrangement, yet instead of settling into light fare becomes akin to AWOLNATION’s “Sail” - an underrated bit of pop that undoubtedly had just as much impact - in its electronic buzzes. Perhaps Ryan Tedder plays a big role in the softening that pop experienced in the 2010s. Not her best, but not bad and definitely still amazing.
You’ve heard enough about “Ribs.” Conan Gray’s Corny Ass (one I adore very much, and yet another post-Lorde artist, though given his obvious parallels to Troye perhaps he’s more post-post-Lorde) mentioned it on Twitter to get dragged by the true Lorde stans. But hasn’t it always been a universal Gen Z sad song? Even for those outside of the target demographic it works its spell; see the Pitchfork review of Pure Heroine concluding with a commendation of “Ribs” as the mature work it is. People kind of forget that it’s literally a dance song, though -- easily the most danceable in her discography? Tell me there isn’t an analogue between this and Robyn’s “Honey.” And I think this might be the most explicit cultural reference on the album, to Broken Social Scene’s “Lover’s Spit,” a name-drop more intelligent than what songwriters influenced by Lorde would do in the future. (see: Arlo Parks’ invocation of Gerard Way and Courtney Love). The only other example I can think of is a subtle, perhaps unintentional one: the name-drop of “wicked games” on “Tennis Court.” Perhaps a use of a good cliche, yet the sonic palette would make intentional allusion probable.
“Buzzcut Season” precedes “Glory and Gore” in its dystopian YA novel film adaptation glitz, less trailer music and more the credits sequence. The almost-vibraphone melody is the prettiest sound on the album, and the postponing of the hook is a clever songwriting quirk. When you’re younger, you really do convince yourself of how hellish life is. In 2020, a line like “explosions on TV” is a different, more real kind of frightening. Some of the best harmonization on the record.
“Royals” was the big hit, but “Team” was the song I heard every day on the morning car ride to school. The intro is Lorde’s best: a mantra pitch-shifted until rendered mute. The production is some of Lorde’s best, akin to cuts on the lighter The Love Club EP - more on that later. Like “Royals,” there’s a worrying anti-pop sentiment, present in “I'm kind of over gettin' told to throw my hands up in the air,” but I enjoy the possibility in the phrase being a statement against giving up -- perhaps a stretch, yet one I enjoy as a lyric that contradicts ideas of Gen Z as humanity’s laziest.
“Glory and Gore” probably couldn’t exist without “High for This.” House of Balloons was murky and ugly, and “Glory and Gore” is the murkiest and ugliest Pure Heroine has to offer. Melodrama explored the uglier parts of Lorde’s vocal timbre, but “Glory and Gore” was an early example of her as sheer raw force -- just hear that “and the choir goes out!” No wonder Lorde was asked to curate the soundtrack to a Hunger Games film when she can so easily utilize violent metaphor, writing songs about teenage drama as if she’s been reading up on dystopian YA fiction. It worked then, works now.
Beginning with some excellent vocal panning and stereo effects (compare to alt-J’s “Bloodflood”), “Still Sane” is Lorde’s most underrated. “I’m not in the swing of things” serves as an excellent summation of adolescent lethargy; “not in the swing of things yet” is a lyric I never registered as positive until now. It feels like an acknowledgment of possible hypocrisy in “Team” and “Royals,” that she knows that as a popular artist she’s likely going to be corrupted by the system she indulges in.
Wait, fuck, I forgot about “White Teeth Teens.” Now that’s underrated. Marching band percussion (best rhythm section on the album!), wonky ‘50s radio vocal sampling in the back, that bridge where she just talks shit about herself over a trap beat, FUCK! The fact that the final section is that one vocal loop and the pre-chorus is great. Perhaps the most beautiful section on the album outside of “Ribs.”
Or outside of “A World Alone.” I was both wrong about “White Teeth Teens” and “Ribs” in that this is the most beautiful on the album and the most danceable. The xx guitar riff is the only bit of remotely acoustic instrumentation on the album. Had the album sounded entirely like this, a song like this wouldn’t stand out at all, and the album would’ve sucked. But given the journey Lorde takes through the darkest, dirtiest bits of synthesized squalls, “A World Alone” is a song that’s deserving of the title of shiniest, prettiest song on the album. A revelation.

Oh, damn it, I ended up writing on every song anyways. The only non-song bullet point I had was that it’s less likely that there’s any sort of “indie girl voice,” and more likely that most people don’t have the capacity to distinguish vocalists that are women. Well. The extended tracks are great, too, but I’m kind of running short on time here. Just remember that “The Love Club” is the best song Lorde has ever made, “Million Dollar Bills” is in her top five, and that her EP honestly has production like Grimes’s Visions, right? And don’t get me started on “Bravado” being an elegant dramatic piece and “Biting Down” being so underrated as her spookiest track and “No Better” being amazing the first time I heard it in my sister’s car and “Swingin Party” being the closest Lorde has sounded to St. Vincent’s “Champagne Year.”

CLOSING NOTES OR WHATEVER(?) (there's more on the legacy of this above)

Is Pure Heroine a classic? To the discerning critic, that title would probably go to Melodrama – more arcane structures, more conceptual, more of a statement. But I found Melodrama too fussy a record. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Pure Heroine is a classic. Now that I’m at the end of my high school career, too many records I loved growing up don’t even make me feel that much anymore. Blonde turned from a gorgeous comeback into a mushy songwriting mess. 99.9% is too summery for its own good, the sonics of Kaytranada now ubiquitous on the Pollen playlist. Telefone has “Yesterday” and “Bye Bye Baby,” but everything else rings a little twee now. Vampire Weekend went dad pop. Sufjan’s been cried into too much. I was honestly scared to listen to Pure Heroine for this. Would I hate it? I turned it on and immediately realized, haha, no. Still fun. It's been seven years. Pure Heroine soundtracked my entry into the year I discovered teens could be mean; it's now going to soundtrack the year I leave teenager-dom and have to make do with the real world. Still fun, still larger-than-life.

A Look at the Prominence of Sequels, Remakes, Adaptations, and other Derivative works in film (1999-2018)

[I copy/pasted this from an email I wrote, so I apologize for any formatting issues, including weird double-spaces]
A friend of mine this morning remarked that he was angry about the terrible writing on the current season of Game of Thrones, and was bemoaning the fact that many films and TV series spend millions upon millions on actors and CGI but can't seem to find a competent writer to proofread them. My response was "Why should they?" The show is ending and everyone is talking about it. The last episode had upwards of 18m viewers; the writing does not need to be good to accomplish its purpose of generating revenue for the broadcaster in this, its final season. They certainly do not need, as petitions have asked, to remake the entire eight season, relying on the notoriety of the name to keep it going. The conversation then devolved into a discussion of the theory of making film adaptations of other works, which I shall mercifully spare you all.
This anecdote sparked a long-restive line of questioning in my head of "How much does name recognition actually matter?" A large number of very successful films and series have just been sequels of previous films, re-makes of old films, adaptations of popular books, comics, TV series, and even toy lines (looking at you, Transformers). Obviously, this line of complaint about novel storylines in film is nothing new, as I quickly found this article from 1989 exploring the abundance of summer sequels (for those of you agog at the price of a movie ticket 30 years ago, $6 in 1989 is about $12.40 in 2019 dollars). There was also an intriguing article (one of a series) by Stephen Follows in 2015 looking at sequels in a statistical analysis. I found other articles as well, but none looked at the datums exactly how I wanted, so I did my own analysis!

Methods: I took the top-10 US-grossing films of each year for the past 20 years (1999-2018), and categorized whether they were sequels, remakes, and/or adaptations. I used boxofficemojo for the raw data on box office gross and my own judgment and research in the categorization (discussed below in excruciating detail).

Results: Of the 200 films (10 highest-grossing for each of 20 years) I looked at, 162 (81.0%) were a sequel, remake, and/or adaptation of other media. For the past 10 years (2009-2018), the number is even more egregious at 88.0%. Breaking down the individual categories, 101 (50.5%) were sequels, 29 (14.5%) were remakes, and 125 (62.5%) were adaptations of other media; obviously, there was considerable overlap among these categories.I noticed interesting trends even among the 38 films that were based on original plots. Of those 38 films, eight (21.1 %) were Pixar films (relying on that name recognition to promote them); this trend is also indicative of the general trend of "original" films: 42.1% were children's animated films, 10.5% were Romantic Comedies, 21.1% were other adult comedies, and only 26.3% were dramatic films. Even more interestingly, of these 38 "original" films that were successful, 17 (44.8%) later went on to become a franchise themselves, inspiring sequels and/or reboots...so far. A prime example of this phenomenon is Despicable Me, an original film which spawned two direct sequels (Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3), as well as one spin-off (Minions) which all made the list. Milk that cash cow for all it's worth!
The tables of results are available as an Excel spreadsheet upon request. Feel free to poke through it at your leisure and yell at me about how you disagree with my categorizations. I did not triple-check the data, so it's possible there are some straight-up errors in there as well.

Conclusions: The question I asked was not "How much are common themes reiterated?" but rather "How much does success rely on name recognition?" The overwhelmingly noticeable phenomenon is that in an era of increased production costs and more internet-based media consumption, film producers seem unwilling to invest huge amounts of money in making a film that will not have the draw of immediate name recognition, or perhaps such films just simply do not have the wide appeal necessary to generate revenue to the same degree that films of well-known material can.
Notably, zero of the top-10 films from 2018 and 2017 were based on original stories and characters, and you have to go back to 2013 to get a successful original film that is not a children's cartoon (Gravity). Looking forward to the 2020s (assuming humanity and the film industry continue to exist), we can expect this trend to become even more pronounced. Why invest in uncertainty when there are sure bets that can rake in the dough?

Minutiae of Methodology and Titillating Tidbits (Presented in no organized way whatsoever)

I counted every Marvel Cinematic Universe film after 2009's Iron Man as a sequel (as well as adaptations), since they had tie-ins, a reliance on a common cast of characters, and numerous inter-film references to a substantial degree. Of the 200 films on the list, 24 were films based on Marvel characters
All eight Harry Potter films made the list, but only six Star Wars movies made the cut. The widely panned Han Solo film did not.
Other series of note: DC comics adaptations (11 films), Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit (6 films), Twilight (5 films), Hunger Games (4 films), James Bond (4), Fast and the Furious (3), and Disney "main line" films (12, including "classic" Disney adaptations of fairy tales [e.g. Tangled], Disney "flagship" properties [e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean], and live-action adaptations of classic films [e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent, etc.]).
When you factor into account that Disney also owns Pixar (13 additional films), Marvel (24 additional films, though some (the original X-Men and Spider-man films) were produced by other entities), and Star Wars (6 additional films), it is very apparent that Disney's habit of "buy the Intellectual Property Rights to EVERYTHING" is going quite well for them. It is very likely that a number of other less-obvious films were also produced by Disney, but I did not feel like checking the production company of every single film on the list. Sorry.
Of the 200 films, 71 fulfilled only one of the criteria (sequel, remake, or adaptation); 89 fulfilled two; and only two films fulfilled all three. Those two films were Casino Royale and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Biography films (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody) and historical films (e.g. Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk) were counted as adaptations: even if there was not necessarily a single book, series, or other piece of previously-produced intellectual property that could be pinpointed as the one from which the film was adapted, they are still adaptations based on people or events that already have name recognition.
It's worth noting that some of the adaptations' final plots ended up rather different from their source material. Fans of Frozen will note that it bears little resemblance to Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (an incredibly religious tale about the love between children), and my criteria even include films like Shrek (very loosely based on the book). Regardless of how close they were to the source material, these stories were first-degree derivative works of other media and at least partly reliant on inspiration from that original work as well as the public's familiarity with it to boost their profile ("close enough for lawyers"); thus they were counted as adaptations.
A couple other interesting judgment calls on my part include The Mummy (which was preceded by a 1932 film of the same name) and Scary Movie. The latter was particularly difficult as it is not itself a sequel, but it relies incredibly strongly on the visuals and audience familiarity with the Scream film franchise, as well as the tropes of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Thus, I counted it as a derivative work.
The downside to these investigations was that I was forced to search to see if the Adam Sandler film Big Daddy had spawned any sequels. I was incredibly grateful to discover that it had not.
Every James Bond film was counted as an adaptation of Ian Fleming's books, despite the fact that those books are far outdated and bereft of material for the number of Bond films that have been made; regardless, the character is derivative.
I managed to resist counting James Cameron's Avatar as a remake of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves, as my focus was on franchise name recognition, rather than thematic similarities. I really wanted to, though. :-P
One of the films that took me down quite the rabbit hole was Chicago, the 2002 musical film, which was based on a stage musical (first produced in 1975); however, a the same story was presented in the 1927 silent film Chicago, which was based on a 1926 play of the same name, which in turn was based on the true story of Beaulah Annan, who killed her boyfriend in the house she shared with her second husband in 1924 (she was acquitted of the crime, but died in 1928 at the ripe old age of 28 due to tuberculosis, after going through another husband and a half). Alas, Chicago did not get extra points for being ultra-derivative. I guess stories about uxoricide never get old.
The abundance of children's movies makes a certain kind of sense, as children have not yet been inundated with media to such a degree that new stories are lost on them.

Anywho, I hope this has been as interesting for you as it has been for me (unlikely).
Have a good weekend, folks!

[TOMT][UNSURE][2000s?] Tragic movie?/book?/show? in which the male MC's love interest goes 'evil' in order to protect him/because she's forced to

A Look at the Prominence of Sequels, Remakes, Adaptations, and other Derivative Works in Film (1999-2018)

[I copy/pasted this from an email I wrote, so I apologize for any formatting issues, including weird double-spaces]
[I also posted this in flicks and I have no idea which one is correct/appropriate.]
A friend of mine this morning remarked that he was angry about the terrible writing on the current season of Game of Thrones, and was bemoaning the fact that many films and TV series spend millions upon millions on actors and CGI but can't seem to find a competent writer to proofread them. My response was "Why should they?" The show is ending and everyone is talking about it. The last episode had upwards of 18m viewers; the writing does not need to be good to accomplish its purpose of generating revenue for the broadcaster in this, its final season. They certainly do not need, as petitions have asked, to remake the entire eight season, relying on the notoriety of the name to keep it going. The conversation then devolved into a discussion of the theory of making film adaptations of other works, which I shall mercifully spare you all.
This anecdote sparked a long-restive line of questioning in my head of "How much does name recognition actually matter?" A large number of very successful films and series have just been sequels of previous films, re-makes of old films, adaptations of popular books, comics, TV series, and even toy lines (looking at you, Transformers). Obviously, this line of complaint about novel storylines in film is nothing new, as I quickly found this article from 1989 exploring the abundance of summer sequels (for those of you agog at the price of a movie ticket 30 years ago, $6 in 1989 is about $12.40 in 2019 dollars). There was also an intriguing article (one of a series) by Stephen Follows in 2015 looking at sequels in a statistical analysis. I found other articles as well, but none looked at the datums exactly how I wanted, so I did my own analysis!

Methods: I took the top-10 US-grossing films of each year for the past 20 years (1999-2018), and categorized whether they were sequels, remakes, and/or adaptations. I used boxofficemojo for the raw data on box office gross and my own judgment and research in the categorization (discussed below in excruciating detail).

Results: Of the 200 films (10 highest-grossing for each of 20 years) I looked at, 162 (81.0%) were a sequel, remake, and/or adaptation of other media. For the past 10 years (2009-2018), the number is even more egregious at 88.0%. Breaking down the individual categories, 101 (50.5%) were sequels, 29 (14.5%) were remakes, and 125 (62.5%) were adaptations of other media; obviously, there was considerable overlap among these categories.I noticed interesting trends even among the 38 films that were based on original plots. Of those 38 films, eight (21.1 %) were Pixar films (relying on that name recognition to promote them); this trend is also indicative of the general trend of "original" films: 42.1% were children's animated films, 10.5% were Romantic Comedies, 21.1% were other adult comedies, and only 26.3% were dramatic films. Even more interestingly, of these 38 "original" films that were successful, 17 (44.8%) later went on to become a franchise themselves, inspiring sequels and/or reboots...so far. A prime example of this phenomenon is Despicable Me, an original film which spawned two direct sequels (Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3), as well as one spin-off (Minions) which all made the list. Milk that cash cow for all it's worth!
The tables of results are available as an Excel spreadsheet upon request. Feel free to poke through it at your leisure and yell at me about how you disagree with my categorizations. I did not triple-check the data, so it's possible there are some straight-up errors in there as well.

Conclusions: The question I asked was not "How much are common themes reiterated?" but rather "How much does success rely on name recognition?" The overwhelmingly noticeable phenomenon is that in an era of increased production costs and more internet-based media consumption, film producers seem unwilling to invest huge amounts of money in making a film that will not have the draw of immediate name recognition, or perhaps such films just simply do not have the wide appeal necessary to generate revenue to the same degree that films of well-known material can.
Notably, zero of the top-10 films from 2018 and 2017 were based on original stories and characters, and you have to go back to 2013 to get a successful original film that is not a children's cartoon (Gravity). Looking forward to the 2020s (assuming humanity and the film industry continue to exist), we can expect this trend to become even more pronounced. Why invest in uncertainty when there are sure bets that can rake in the dough?

Minutiae of Methodology and Titillating Tidbits (Presented in no organized way whatsoever)

I counted every Marvel Cinematic Universe film after 2009's Iron Man as a sequel (as well as adaptations), since they had tie-ins, a reliance on a common cast of characters, and numerous inter-film references to a substantial degree. Of the 200 films on the list, 24 were films based on Marvel characters
All eight Harry Potter films made the list, but only six Star Wars movies made the cut. The widely panned Han Solo film did not.
Other series of note: DC comics adaptations (11 films), Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit (6 films), Twilight (5 films), Hunger Games (4 films), James Bond (4), Fast and the Furious (3), and Disney "main line" films (12, including "classic" Disney adaptations of fairy tales [e.g. Tangled], Disney "flagship" properties [e.g. Pirates of the Caribbean], and live-action adaptations of classic films [e.g. Beauty and the Beast, Maleficent, etc.]).
When you factor into account that Disney also owns Pixar (13 additional films), Marvel (24 additional films, though some (the original X-Men and Spider-man films) were produced by other entities), and Star Wars (6 additional films), it is very apparent that Disney's habit of "buy the Intellectual Property Rights to EVERYTHING" is going quite well for them. It is very likely that a number of other less-obvious films were also produced by Disney, but I did not feel like checking the production company of every single film on the list. Sorry.
Of the 200 films, 71 fulfilled only one of the criteria (sequel, remake, or adaptation); 89 fulfilled two; and only two films fulfilled all three. Those two films were Casino Royale and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
Biography films (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody) and historical films (e.g. Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk) were counted as adaptations: even if there was not necessarily a single book, series, or other piece of previously-produced intellectual property that could be pinpointed as the one from which the film was adapted, they are still adaptations based on people or events that already have name recognition.
It's worth noting that some of the adaptations' final plots ended up rather different from their source material. Fans of Frozen will note that it bears little resemblance to Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen (an incredibly religious tale about the love between children), and my criteria even include films like Shrek (very loosely based on the book). Regardless of how close they were to the source material, these stories were first-degree derivative works of other media and at least partly reliant on inspiration from that original work as well as the public's familiarity with it to boost their profile ("close enough for lawyers"); thus they were counted as adaptations.
A couple other interesting judgment calls on my part include The Mummy (which was preceded by a 1932 film of the same name) and Scary Movie. The latter was particularly difficult as it is not itself a sequel, but it relies incredibly strongly on the visuals and audience familiarity with the Scream film franchise, as well as the tropes of I Know What You Did Last Summer. Thus, I counted it as a derivative work.
The downside to these investigations was that I was forced to search to see if the Adam Sandler film Big Daddy had spawned any sequels. I was incredibly grateful to discover that it had not.
Every James Bond film was counted as an adaptation of Ian Fleming's books, despite the fact that those books are far outdated and bereft of material for the number of Bond films that have been made; regardless, the character is derivative.
I managed to resist counting James Cameron's Avatar as a remake of Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves, as my focus was on franchise name recognition, rather than thematic similarities. I really wanted to, though. :-P
One of the films that took me down quite the rabbit hole was Chicago, the 2002 musical film, which was based on a stage musical (first produced in 1975); however, a the same story was presented in the 1927 silent film Chicago, which was based on a 1926 play of the same name, which in turn was based on the true story of Beaulah Annan, who killed her boyfriend in the house she shared with her second husband in 1924 (she was acquitted of the crime, but died in 1928 at the ripe old age of 28 due to tuberculosis, after going through another husband and a half). Alas, Chicago did not get extra points for being ultra-derivative. I guess stories about uxoricide never get old.
The abundance of children's movies makes a certain kind of sense, as children have not yet been inundated with media to such a degree that new stories are lost on them.

Anywho, I hope this has been as interesting for you as it has been for me (unlikely).
Have a good weekend, folks!

Fault in our stars review

Intro:
.
When the original Take A Stand was released, it quickly became noted as one of the best Zootopia fan-fic’s, often coming at the top of recommendation lists.
I wasn’t as keen, considering it a B+ Fic. It was a good read, but it wasn’t great. It had fun moments, but also faults. I said so in my review once it had ended.
Almost immediately after, Take A Stand: Stars of Ceartais was started, and like the original it has been updating weekly. This alone is impressive, given that each chapter is 5,000-6,000 words. For comparison, while my main stories did update twice weekly, that was only after I got 60-70% of the first draft done beforehand. I have written faster than Crewe during NaMoWriZo (50,000 words in one month), which resulted in poor quality and left me drained afterwards, though I have managed to write unproofed chapters at his rate.
Anyway, looking back over a year after its release, the reception seems much more tepid. I’ve seen people rant and decry about it, others saying that while they loved the original, they couldn’t get into the second. I myself was willing to give the idea a go, and have been following the story ever since though better moments and worse.
The question is, though, why does this fic have so many negative reviews? Why, when it should be promoting an awesome concept like superheroes in Zootopia, does it happen to leave a sour taste in the mouth of many.
Initially, my opinion of the Take a Stand series was that it was good but, due to silly mistakes, not great. I thought that removing the in-sentence authors notes (AN: Hey, it’s J-Shute-Norway here: Just giving one of you all an example of how hideously jarring and distracting those things are), cleaning up the grammar and ending the infuriating and unnecessary translations of British English/ sayings into American English would be all that was needed. Looking back now, it’s obvious that there are much more in-depth issues with the fic. I think it’s worth examining them all, so that everyone reading can learn and improve on them. I myself have learnt a bit from doing this analysis, so hopefully my future fics will benefit.
While I only looked into the Take a Stand discord once, I often lurk on Crewe’s tumblr, which has been interesting. From it, I’ve seen that he takes a ton of influence from superhero comics. He’s also reblogged game of thrones stuff, and I assume that this is an influence on the way he’s tried to set out TAS 2 (I’ll be using this as a reference point). I learnt that he does plan out his chapters in advance, and advises on giving new characters big intro’s (which gave some new flavour to some of my planned criticisms). He’s also consulting a lot with his discord in planning out the next story, though I don’t know if he did so with this one. If he did plan this story with them, it would be interesting to find out what kind of things they suggested, and whether they overall had a positive or negative effect on the story.
I also learnt that he’s dyslexic, something I didn’t know on the numerous occasions when I attacked the fic’s poor grammar. As a result, I’d like to apologise now for any hurt that I caused, and state that I’ll avoid being harsh on him over it.
A few final things that I’d like to say before we get started. Firstly, I’ll be comparing this story to the original film, as well as to other films (Star wars and star trek ones, along with some superhero ones). Anime such as attack on titan, and books/ tv like game of thrones will also be points of reference. I may talk about some of my fics, and I’ll definitely be looking at Kittah’s ’Familiar Fire’ which is an excellent superhero fic.
A lot of what I’ll be going over should be considered less as rules, more as guides. There is no perfect way of creating a story, and it would be boring if there was. Treat the things I say as the pillars of a bridge. Removing one is fine, but the more you take out the more talent/ planning you need to keep the whole structure standing. I myself will have likely failed to meet all of these in my stories, as will pretty much every writer. If anyone is offended by what I say, feel free to do your own review of this style for my main stories (Zootopia: the original plot, Coming to reward them, and Lead Role in a Cage (maybe Christmas carols or evacuated/ the evacuee as well)). I’ll be interested to read what comes up. (As for my two earliest stories, I know they’re bad and admit as much, just as Crewe does with his first).
.
Tell me mistakes. Tell me sweet little mistakes
.
First off, silly errors, starting with in-story author’s notes. AVOID
If you want to clarify something with an author’s note, stick it at the bottom of the chapter. There are many better ways to get info across, as I’ll now show. I’ll give you an example of one of these authors notes that he did in TAS1 (not exactly copied), and then show you alternative methods.

Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and starting some bubble and squeak for Judy (AN: Hey, it’s Crewe here. Bubble and squeak is a delicious British dish made up of leftover mashed potato and roast vegetables, which you fry up and have with breakfast)
Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and starting some bubble and squeak (leftover roast veg and potatoes, fried up crispy) for Judy.
Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and started some bubble and squeak for Judy. She quickly retrieved a roasting tin full of crispy vegetables leftover from the night before and, mixing them up with mashed potatoes, she dropped them into a ripping hot pan, watching as they slowly turned crispy.
Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and adding some ingredients to it. “Bubble and squeak,” she explained, smiling. “It’s just leftover veg and mash fried up, but I’ll tell you what. It’ll sort that hangover out, dumb bunny.”
Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and started some bubble and squeak for Judy. It may have just been fried up leftover veg and mash, but if this bunny was anything like her son, she’d love it.
Marian smiled, turning down to the pan and started some bubble and squeak for Judy.

Note I didn’t offer any explanation in the last one. Why? Sometimes you don’t need to have any. People can look it up. People are able to figure that the bonnet of the car is the front bit, and don’t need to be informed that it’s the hood. Calling someone a billy-no-mate’s is self-explanatory, we don’t need a definition. Crewefox, either join me and don’t apologise for your dialect of English, or just write American style.
As for the grammar, I’ll cover sentence structure when we look at fight scenes. But for now, I’ll advise Crewe to hand his chapters over to a google docs folder linked to his discord, so his close followers can go over it for a week preparing it for release. Again, the fact he’s dyslexic makes this far more forgivable, and I’d like to apologise for the times where I was previously overly harsh.
.
The Plot Weakens (part 1: Structure)
.
Before any of you react and call foul, let me say that I’m not a 3 act structure nazi. I’ll be focussing on it a lot, but I’ll let other structures have a limelight.
What is a three act structure?
Simply put, it’s a story that has a beginning, middle and end. Ask yourself, does TAS 2 have a beginning, middle and end? Where are they? Think about this, as we’ll return to it later.
In more broad terms, a three-act structure is a framework which you use to set a story out. It has three sections: the introduction, the development, and the resolution. These sections are usually distinct and have an ending in which things can’t be taken back. Many stories also have a notable high point/ turning point in the middle of the second act.
Think back to Zootopia. Does it have a beginning, middle and end? It does: Pre- Judy taking the case (ending in the point of no return, with the deal); Nick and Judy working together up until the press conference (point of no return); post press conference. It’s worth noting that there’s a distinct midpoint in the centre of the second act, Nick defending Judy and revealing his story. This acts as a culmination of his character development up to this point, and show’s that he is not the fox we met at the beginning.
In here, the acts are not so much defined by location (Star wars: a new hope, and the empire strikes back, being prime examples of this) but by the relationships the characters have with each other. This puts it more in line with films like The Wrath of Khan where the acts are defined by the power dynamics between characters.
Back to TAS 2. Where would you say the beginning, middle and end are? In my view, the most likely situation is that the intro arc ends in the chapter before they go out on patrol, chapter 10. When does the second act end? I’d be tempted to say the opera house attack, when the team’s identities are revealed to their parents (Chapter 36), but I’d put it a bit later. Chapter 38 and chapter 39. Here the dust settles, the team signs up as deputies, and the origin of the drowned is revealed. However, many things don’t match up, as I’ll now explain.

Let’s look at the Luna/ Alice subplot, the biggest by far. Their first act ends when they sleep together (chapter 25). As for when the second act ends? You either have the point when Alice’s time in Zootopia is put in peril/ Luna tries to confess (chapter 42), or when Alice and Luna are found out by the rest of the team (chapter 47) and then her family (chapter 48). Then, in 52, Karasushiro is introduced and in 53 he takes Alice away. That’s loosely a three act structure, but it’s pulled down by Karasushiro being introduced so late on and then taking her the chapter after his intro. Having him talked about much earlier on, building his reputation up in the first and second acts, would have done much to fix this. Instead, he just seems to exist to put a spanner in the works right at the end, acting like a Deus-ex-machina.
The next biggest subplot is Rattigan. He appears in chapter 15. Where does his intro end? In chapter 20, Basil and Dave are shown spying on him, while in chapter 24 he parlays with Judy. I suppose you learn of his plans there, but nothing changes. Arguably his intro act ends when he beats up Blake, putting Olivia on the warpath. That’s in chapter 44, so he’s still in his intro phase while the two main plotlines are entering their ending. He then gets chased down by Spitfire, and then killed in chapter 47. He doesn’t really have a proper story, does he? He arrives, a big fuss is made of him, then he goes too far, gets captured and is killed by two characters who he hasn’t hurt at all (at least in this fic) and who haven’t shown any inclination of wanting to kill him. Blake recovering and waking up, arguably a wrap up scene, occurs in chapter 51.
Camelot are first introduced in chapter 7, and end up in an alliance with Ceartais in chapter 23. They then almost loose Aleks in chapter 37.
Kiara is introduced in chapter 2, gets splatted in 4, spotted in 11 and only reappears properly in 14. She’s hunted sporadically up until chapter 20, then gets recruited by the drowned. She’s first seen in action in chapter 29, and then appears sporadically until being defeated in chapter 48.
The status of other characters and their relationships tend to go at various rates and levels.

.
As you can see, while there tends to be a fairly large act transition around the opera house, before that it’s unclear. You have the middle of Ceartais’ story being interfered by the intros of Alice and Rattigan. He’s still waiting to do his thing during the opera house, and then a few chapters after the end of his first act he’s dead. Overall the act breaks, rather than lining up and complimenting each other, throw each other off and lessen the impact. One of the biggest examples of this clashing might be the scene where Blake wakes up in chapter 51. This would be the kind of scene to end Rattigan’s story on, as it adds a sense of finality. Yet it occurs before the final.
It also doesn’t help that these are very weak ‘act breaks’. In many cases (such as with Alice getting in trouble with the yakuza) the events aren’t that much different than the rest of their story. There’s no big dividing line, and the before and after still don’t seem that different. Compare this to The Empire strikes back. All three acts have distinct locations, despite there being multiple plot threads. Alternatively, in The Wrath of Khan both sides get built up in an intro, and the middle part of the story begins when they first come into contact/ combat. This ends when one seems completely victorious and the other totally defeated, only for Kirk to pull out the ace up his sleeve, thus throwing us into the final act.
A Game of Thrones is a book that manages to pull off a three-act structure very well, despite having multiple character threads and viewpoints. The main story is split into three parts (before arriving at kings landing, between there and the coup attempt, after the coup attempt). I’ll use the episode numbers to show this.

Arya and Sansa’s story is directly tied to this (episode 3 for arrival, episode 7 for the coup)
Jon arrives at castle black in episode 2, and he takes he oath (immediately finding the bodies) in episode 7.
Tyrion arrives at castle black in episode 2 with Jon, he then gets taken to the eyrie and released in episode 6, before helping his father on the battlefield.
Catelyn stops the catspaw assassin in episode 2, takes sees Tyrion released in 6, then goes to aid Rob.
Bran wakes up just after the catspaw, in episode 2. Osha arrives in episode 6. *Daenerys finds she’s pregnant in episode 2, and her brother gets his golden crown in episode 7.

As you can see here, the beginnings, middles and ends of each plot thread line up very closely. This makes things less confusing and improves the flow of the plot. Unlike TAS2, where the story beats clash and conflict, in Game of Thrones they line up and complement each other. Moreover, either the location changes or the power dynamics change. Jon goes from a bastard, to a recruit, to a sworn brother. Tyrion goes from the wall, to the eyrie, to the Riverland’s. Daenerys goes from a scared girl being sold and tormented by her brother, to a powerful queen, to letting her brother die at her husband’s hands.
Compare this to Robyn. She’s a bi girl with anger problems who lives in Zootopia, gains superpowers, becomes a vigilante and then… Her parents find out about it, and she carries on as is... Then? It’s pretty much the same with Hannah, or the rest of the team bar Luna. Nick does become mayor, but then what? (Though he does react well when he finds out the truth). I’ll cover this later when looking at characters.
Another issue is that, after the end of the introduction, the second act of the story is very long and meanders a lot. There is no real sense of where or when it will end, which isn’t helped by all the out of sync subplots. In Zootopia we kind of knew that the second act would involve them finding out the truth about Otterton. In star wars, it was leaving the death star with Leia. Familiar Fire is dominated by its intro arc (you could consider it a two arc story), but that does have a set endpoint (the characters 18th birthday). You progress towards it at a slow but steady rate, and when you get there you have a huge surge in action, a big transition/ change and a namedrop for the big bad, letting you immediately know that the second arc will end when he returns.
Finally, in terms of the final act, this is where you want the least distractions especially if you’re going for action. In Zootopia, Judy finds out the truth, reconnects with Nick and then goes straight off to find the criminals. In Empire Strikes Back we have a tiny respite for Han and Leia before dinner with Darth and things picking up again. Wrath of Khan has Kirk transporting back up to the enterprise and then we have the battle of the Mutara nebula. In TAS2, the other act transitions create a distraction, as does the Bunnyburrow visit. It’s not a bad set of scenes, but there’s no sense of urgency or tension which is what’s needed for your final act. Gistech’s Waking Death does this right by having his Bunnyburrow arc as the mid-point/ second act of the fic, the characters then returning to Zootopia for the climax.
.
As promised, a quick look at other plot structures. The first one is the 5 act structure, used by Shakespeare (the usual go to is Romeo and Juliet) and, more recently, in Star Wars: The last Jedi. The acts are: exposition/ set up, complications/ increasing tension, climax/ the tension releases, falling action/ picking up the pieces, catastrophe/ resolution/ denouement... wrapping it up either well or badly. Aka. The third civil brawl, Romeo and Juliet fall in love, Romeo attacking Tybalt, Romeo in exile and Juliet getting betrothed to Paris, the suicides. Or: The base evacuation and dreadnought battle and Rey trying to get Luke to start training; the run from the first order and Po’s mutiny, Finn and Rose’s mission, Rey’s training; the evacuation and ram attack, Finn and Rose vs Phasma, Rey and Kylo vs Snoke; the defence of the Kryat base and the rebels ‘defeat’; Luke’s return and last stand.
The five-act structure could be considered a three act structure, with the second act split into three. It works for some stories better than others. The youtube channel Lessons from the screenplay argued that the Avengers, while it could be classed as a 3 act story with a big central break (the hellicarrier being attacked), could just as well be a 5 act story (act 1 and 1 line up. Act 2 and 2 and 3 line up. Act 3 and 4 and 5 line up).
.
Finally, the multi-act story, for which I’ll use both Attack on Titan and* Kill Bil*l. It works as each act/ arc is distinct. For the former, each arc operates as a 'crisis', which rightfully pulls everyone’s attention to it, away from other issues, until said crises is resolved. In addition, each arc can easily be named and usually has a unique place, name, foe and ending. Fall of Shinganshinka, training, Trost, survey corps training, female titan, Stohess, Utgard, clash of titans…
The main conflict of each arc is resolved at end, though open threads are still left (e.g. the beast titan). In effect, most arcs operated as individual stories, often with their own 3 act structures.

Trost: Battle up until rogue titan appears, battle with rogue titan in play up until reveal, rogue titan plugging the wall.
Female titan: Female titan catching up with eren, female titan captured and escaped (super short arc), female titan revenge then titan clash and then defeat by Levi.
Stohess: infiltration (up until big reveal), battle pt 1 (up until rogue titan transforms), battle pt 2 (up until end, with defeat of female titan).
Utgard: Reacting to titan invasion. Battle of/ ride to utgard. Ymir reveal.
Clash of titans: Reveal and battle by wall. Both sides licking wounds. Battle in the field and the coordinate reveal.

.
Kill Bill meanwhile also had a multi-act story along with a non-traditional flow. Just like Attack on Titan, each arc has its own enemy and setting. It’s distinct. It doesn’t matter that you’re going backwards and forwards in time, you know exactly where you are. Compare that to TAS2. Once they go on patrol it’s just battling bad guys over and over again in the city, even if there are separate arcs (e.g. rose thorn, opera house, the stadium). With these arcs though, you could take a scene from one, put it in another, and it wouldn’t seem out of place.
.
All in all, TAS 2 is a long story, and it would sorely benefit from distinct parts, with the characters progressing through their plotlines at similar rates. However, that’s lacking, so it feels more like a jumbled mess with the characters doing the same motions over and over again.
.
.
The Plot Weakens (part 2: themes and story threads)
.
Looking at game of thrones, the plot seems very complex. Just like TAS 2, it has tons of characters doing different things, with their own motives. However, in my view, TAS 2 is far more complex than GOT (the book) is, and this is one of the things that gives it its structural issues.
Let’s look at themes first. GOT is simple, it’s a deconstruction and criticism of traditional medieval/ fantasy stories and tropes. Additional themes are politics and realism.
Likewise, Familiar Fire is a deconstruction of the fantasy school fiction/ tropes, e.g. Professor X’s academy and Hogwarts. You also have the theme of regret and issues stemming from a lack of communication and trust. These are two themes that can easily be woven beside each other in a story.
Now look at the original Take a Stand first. Its themes can be split into groups: reconnecting with family, both known and unknown; lgbt awakening and lgbt rights; love in the face of adversary... and: vigilantism, supervillains and crime. TAS was able to wed the vigilantism into the family/ love side of things, given that it had split Nick’s family up. This was kept going until the end, when separate endings were given for each set of themes. Not that bad by itself, but I’ll get onto the big issues of the originals ending later. TAS2 has all those themes, along with: revenge, mental health, religious cults, disaster recovery, terrorism, underworld assassins, public relations and rabid shipping. Far more unwieldy, far harder to tie together, far more jarring and distracting when they clash (e.g. dessert tasting after the opera house battle).
Themes are most notably expressed in plot threads, with some threads specifically used to express a certain theme (Book readers, remember Quentyn? Adventure sucks). Also, while GOT (book) had many characters with their own threads, they were interlinked and 90% of them fell into various camps based on one central conflict. The Starks vs the Lannisters. Their plot threads are thus linked to this common ground.
When looking at superhero films, good ones follow the same principles. In The Dark Knight, the Joker created Two-Face, the secondary villain, as a weapon against the hero as well as a way of proving that everyone could be corruptible (a personification of the themes the Joker represented). Before this, Harvey Dent had been a key figure in fighting the Joker, and a key ally of the hero. The two main villains and the hero were interlinked, you can’t have on without the other. This is what separates multi-villain stories into good and bad. Even Batman vs Superman made the secondary villain a creation/ weapon of last resort of the primary one. The Avengers was a team-up movie that brought together established characters and pitted them against a sole unifying threat, Loki. One core plot point, thread and aim, learn to work together and stop Loki, shared by all of th*em. Guardians of the Galaxy *vol1 is similar, but also handles origin stories (and is likely the closest thing to what TAS2 was trying to emulate). Think back. Simple 3 act structure, characters unified throughout by one goal (which did evolve, dependent on situation), a core unifying villain.
In TAS 2, there are multiple plot threads made out to be the main one or core sub ones (Ceartais vs drowned, Ceartais vs Rattigan, LunAlice, Robyn and Hannah, Phelps, Alice vs the underworld, Sasha’s photography, Nick being the mayor, Camelot vs the drowned, Kiara, Basil and Dave vs Rattigan, Blake’s parentage…). These plot threads are often unlinked, independent of each other, and often don’t get the justice they deserve. Lots of things get put on hold while LunAlice is sorted out. Near the beginning Kiara was a key focus, but isn’t brought up for ages unless being used as a heavy by the Drowned. Then she suddenly reappears, right after Rattigan’s death (taking away most of the levity of the moment), for a battle against Roar which she loses in the next chapter. Speaking of Rattigan, he has no link with the Drowned and no reason to share a fic with them. Same with Alice, she could be hired by any other bad guy. This is why I was so happy when Phelps and the drowned were shown to be working together, they had a reason to be in the same story. By and large, if some characters have no reason for sharing a story, they shouldn’t be sharing a story. Just like too many cooks ruining the stew, all these independent stories distract and take away from each other, rather than adding.
.
Endings
.
When we get to the ending(s), Rattigan is wrapped up first (with a whimper rather than a bang) in chapter 47. The main plot threads we have established with him in this fic is his rivalry with Olivia’s family, his control over Blake’s, and how Ceartais and the cops know he’s a criminal. None of these are used, instead we have Finnick and Fru-Fru come in and murder him in his bed, retribution for the death of Mr Big in TAS 1. Finnick, Fru-Fru and Judy Big meaningfully appeared Twice in the 45+ chapters preceding this. Once attacked by the drowned (another plot thread that wasn’t acted on) and once to get Ronin to act against the yakuza (The Big’s vs Yakuza thread was spirited into existence, I’ll explain more about why this was so bad later). While I understood why Fru-Fru had it done, remembering it from TAS1 when brought up, if this was to be Rattigan’s fate it should have been brought up sooner. A meeting between Fru-Fru and Basil, where she explains her need for revenge. Or what about when Alice met with her? Or even better, scrap Fru-Fru all together. How about Basil confronting his long-time nemesis, and he being the one to beat him using his wit and cunning.

Kiara’s ending in 48 is better handled, given that she’s pacified by the two characters most invested in her (Kion and Ray), with help from Andraste. I also like how Andraste used her powers intelligently and creatively to stop her. However, removing her reduced the threat of the drowned (and made itself less powerful) by doing this early.
The LunAlice ending (also 48), when Luna comes clean to her family, was perfectly reasonable plot wise, though I felt that it was more ‘average chapter drama’ at the time. It didn’t so much feel as an ending, but more a tying of loose ends, and felt very weak as a result.
Then, we get a standard chapter for 49, with people doing stuff. It’s not a bad chapter by itself, but the fact remains that it’s doing ‘beginning of third act’ stuff for both Kiara (her beginning to recover) and Alice (her finally infiltrating the drowned base). Those kinds of things would have been better served right after the opera house (with Alice tagging along with Phelps for his reveal, and Kiara being caught as the one victory after the drowned attack), instead of those much-maligned desserts.
Chapter 50 has Robyn make peace with Luna in a complete heal turn with no reasons for the change given (deeply unsatisfying) and Phelps is killed by the drowned in an even worse send off than Rattigan. It was poetic justice, but it was written very matter-of-factly, and there was no sense of fight or struggle and no satisfaction.
Chapter 51 does open with a very good, very tense, raid by Camelot on the drowned. They take their base, but find that the troops are already gone. We then get standard (but admittedly well written) character moments (even though they should be panicking at the suddenly missing army), plus an introduction to Karasushiro.
In 52 Karasushiro, with next to no buildup, takes Ronin (in a fairly tense scene), and that’s it… Also, the drowned start the final stage of the master plan. At the very least, we see that the good guys were trying to do something about the drowned beforehand (hack their files and uncover their plan), even though it seems to be far less than you’d expect given the magnitude of the problem.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with chapter 53. This is what all chapters at this stage of the fic should be like. Everyone’s at their battle stations and things are moving at a fast and tense pace. The same can be said for chapter 54, it does its job and does it well, wrapping up the main plotline with the defeat of the drowned.
Chapter 55 and 56 (the epilogue) are yet to release, but I presume 55 will be letting the dust settle and 56 will serve more as a bridge between this and take a stand 3.

To sum up, the climax of the story is spread over 7 chapters, i.e. 1/8th of the story length. This would be fine, but the way Crewefox wrote it has some serious issues. The key one is that all the individual plot arcs are revolved one at a time, each taking their turn to do so. While these resolve themselves to various levels of satisfaction, there isn’t that much of a level of triumphalism to them. To understand what I’m talking about, I advise watching this video on the endings of Casino Royale vs the Matrix. In short, the ending of the matrix is so good as the four main plot arcs (Neo vs Smith, Neo being the one, Trinity’s relationship with Neo and the machine attack) are resolved within minutes of each other (the equivalent of one chapter) before quickly wrapping the story up after that. There’s still the equivalent of the 7 chapters of climax before that (the whole rescue operation for Morpheus), but it’s building up the action to the true climax.
TAS2 meanwhile gives you smaller climax after smaller climax resolving themselves in a neatly ordered package. Worse still, most of the plot threads that are wrapped up are weak to begin with. Rattigan is the biggest example, even before the wrong people kill him. Kiara too, given that it was the weakest of the plotlines and little was done about it. Robyn and Alice coming to terms happened for no reason, while Karasushiro had no buildup. The only eventful plot threads that got resolved were, in my opinion, LunAlice and Ceartais vs the drowned. The only one with a truly good wrap-up was the latter and even then there were faults, mainly with Fuli. She was caught mourning a character we’d never heard of before trying to take out two team members. What exactly was resolved here? What did she win? What point did she prove? What did she learn in her last moments? What internal tenant of hers was enshrined or destroyed? How was her character arc resolved?
It wasn’t. It almost seems that her dying was required by a box ticking exercise. The same can be said for all characters and factions who either survived or died that day. Now, uber spoilers ahead and this is more a pet peeve, so anyone who hasn’t read the fic should skip ahead….
Let’s look at the big death’s…
.
Robin and Marian (presuming they are dead, the blast may have only torn the front half of their train carriage off. I wouldn’t put it past Crewe).
I was sad to see them go (and would love to see them survive), and their last goodbye was brilliantly written, but they were still side characters in this fic. Their death was a culmination of what exactly?
I don’t know.
Maybe, to fix this, they could have been pressing throughout the story that Zootopia needed heroes willing to sacrifice things for it, using this defence against Nick (which only added to his fury), before dying as an embodiment of their ideals?
I probably wouldn’t be pressing this point if it weren’t for the fact that their sacrifice seemed completely unnecessary. To recount: After infiltrating the train, hacking it to detach most of the carriages and fighting the last few drowned they are badly injured and have lost their bomb stopping macguffin. With the main bomb wired up on a pressure plate to stop it being moved, they choose to detonate a secondary bomb, presumably killing them and stopping the chemical weapon before it can reach Zootopia.
Now, I can see them choosing to go out with a bang if they’re both mortally wounded. But from the description, it seemed that Marian was in serious need of medical attention but could hang on while Robin had bad cuts to his neck (with no indication the jugular was hit). Ronin had previously lost an arm and survived, so Robin (with some quick handiwork) should have at least been okay until spitfire could get there. If you wanted them to die that day, it could have been made clear that Robin’s jugular was cut (with him trying to hold it shut, but blood shooting out fast). As for Marian, in a callback to Ronin’s first clash, have dark blood pouring out of her. Her liver pulverised, she also knows she’ll bleed out.
To me, their injuries in the real scene seemed to show that they could hold on for a bit and, as I saw them go, I couldn’t help but have the emotional moment ruined by one thought.
Why don’t they stop the train?
If Marian could use hacking to decouple a carriage in mid-journey, something you’d need an angle grinder for in reality, then she can surely turn on the brakes? Stop the train there and then, and get spitfire to pick them up. It’s not like their tech to do so is gone, how else do they put up the livestream at the end? I’m not aware of a speed-type thing going on.
I was thinking about this today, and there are so many missed opportunities.

They could call the driver, getting him to stop the train.
If he’s a cultist, they could break into the front cabin and put on the breaks (peanuts compared to Ronin’s escape).
In the livestream they could ask the team to contact the signalling control. Trains like that would automatically stop if they passed a red light.
Better yet, being in an earthquake zone, there should be a remote system for stopping the trains (like on the bullet train, something Robin might have experienced in Japan).
Or get them to divert the train onto a line that avoids Zootopia if possible.
Realistically, the previous two should have been implemented as safeguards as soon as the train departed bunnyburrow.
Assuming the drowned have a cultist controlling the signal, and Marian’s hacking tool was destroyed, they could at least give diffusing the bomb themselves a go?
Or move the C4 charge next to the chemical weapon (which we didn’t see in their carriage IIRC) and retreat as far as possible. At least improve their chances.
Better yet, do the above but only use a bit of the C4 since it has the consistency of playdough and can be torn/ shaped. It took me reading up about this to learn it, but they might have a better knowledge of this stuff. But the best plan of all, sabotage the train right as it leaves the station, or as soon as the plot is discovered at the absolute latest. Hack the engine. Hack some of the breaks to come on. Maybe mess with the points as it comes into the station so that it derails. They had at least on hour, very likely 2+ to talk over all these strategies and come up with something. Heck, even when Marian detaches the previous carriages, she could have put on some of the breaks to stop them.

Robin and Marian were at the top of their game, so these plotholes seem huge. At the very least, show them fighting. Show them trying. Or show that death’s coming whatever they do, and they choose to go out with a bang. Maybe even have another arc with these two, being that people think they’re cocky and will end up rushing in and getting someone killed, that someone ultimately being them (and having them reflect/ lampshade their error before pulling their trigger).
As for the final two chapters. I presume that the next one will have Robin and Marian’s funeral and/or return from the dead. We’ll get a closer for the drowned with Bunga, along with the first cultists being deprogrammed. Probably some stuff with Kiara, along with Kion introducing Jasiri to his parents… Potentially a postcard for Luna from Alice. Finally, of course, Hannah will propose to Robyn, with their marriage in the epilogue. Maybe someone being pregnant in that too.
Any plot points that come up will be unlikely to affect my main issues here, though they could (potentially) learn from them (e.g. the funeral scene using some tips I put in later).

The Indiana Jones series should have been more like Bond, or why I think people hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I love the Indiana Jones series. Raiders of the Lost Ark is easily in my top 10 favorite films ever. It’s hard to think of such a perfect action movie that balances action, adventure, thrills, exotic locations, ancient history, modern history, and a rather deep religious/theological goal. (I still think the fact that the Ark burns the Swastikas off the box containing it is a poignant scene that no one remembers, but say a lot.) While I’m not a huge fan of Temple of Doom, I love Last Crusade. Bringing in Indy’s dad, especially when he’s played by Sean Connery, was a stroke of genius, and helped to add another layer to the Indiana Jones character and mythos.
I also love the James Bond series. From Dr. No to Skyfall, Bond has been around for 50 years, and as one critic I heard say recently, he’s less of a franchise at this point and more of an institution. And honestly, part of the reason I like the James Bond series is because of quantity. There are a lot of phenomenal James Bond movies. (Most of the Connery ones, Casino Royale and Skyfall.) There are a lot of pretty good James Bond movies. (Some of Brosnan’s ones, some of the Moore ones, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and The Living Daylights.) Then there are the really not-so good Bond movies. (Most of the later Moore outings, License to Kill, and Die Another Day...) But honestly, with 23 movies, a storied past, and 50 years in as a prominent part of our cultural consciousness, the bad ones don’t really seem so bad. Yeah, the Moore stuff, particularly Octopussy, Moonraker, and A View to a Kill, are pretty corny, over the top and filled with dumb moments. At times, they’re also kind of boring. But there are plenty of better Bond movies to help fill the void. I’m sorry Die Another Day sucked, care to watch Casino Royale? I’m sorry Quantum of Solace was underwhelming, care to watch Skyfall? The Bond franchise is constantly reinventing itself and creating new and interesting scenarios for Bond. Yes, some of the movies suck, but a lot of them are pretty damn good, and that helps to balance out some of the lesser movies in the series.
With that in mind, let’s get to my main point. You see, Indiana Jones was a trilogy until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out. This isn’t unlike another popular 80s movie franchise that George Lucas helped create, Star Wars. But Star Wars kind of needed to be a trilogy. That series is much more in the tradition of something like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. Like those stories, it follows the Joseph Campbell model of the hero’s quest. We follow the same characters as they rise, and eventually conquer, an evil threat. There’s a clear beginning and introduction to the universe and characters (A New Hope), a dark middle chapter (The Empire Strikes Back), and a climactic resolution (Return of the Jedi). Star Wars is like modern myth. The Star Wars universe is big, yes, but its scope is limited, as it should be. The original trilogy, and hell, even the prequels, follow certain thematic and character arcs, meaning that these aren’t stand-alone adventures. They are all connected as part of one larger story. The Palpatine revealed in Episode 1 is the Emperor that Luke confronts in Episode 6, and so on and so forth.
It’s this distinction I want to make clear, because I think a lot of people compare Indiana Jones and Star Wars as the “holy trinities,” when only one of them should have been. I’ve always thought Indiana Jones should have been something more like James Bond: a series of stand-alone adventures that, while having some of the same characters, tropes, and motifs, mostly follow the titular hero in a new mission. And yes, I am aware of The Young Indiana Jones TV show, but most people know Indy from the big screen, and Indy needed to be on the big screen more than he was.
You see, it is this idea of Indiana Jones as “The Holy Trinity” that I think made people judge KOTCS too harshly. It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but it’s good. There are movies far more deserving of hate, but Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seems to be one the Internet’s most hated movies ever. And while I can understand the criticism for something like the Star Wars prequels or anything Michael Bay has ever directed, KOTCS seems like it isn’t as deserving. Maybe its just me from my frame of reference as a Bond fan, where walking into the theater you don’t know if the movie you’re about to see will be stupid or fantastic, but I thought I was going to be happy if all I got was another fun adventure with Indiana Jones. And you know what? I wasn’t, and still to this day am not terribly disappointed by it! Was nuking the fridge dumb? Oh yeah. The gophers and monkeys were also pretty damn stupid. Aliens... eh. (Not as big an issue for me personally as people make it out to be.) But I got an entertaining Indiana Jones movie. I was never really bored watching it. It didn’t have Willie Scott screaming, or Short Round being annoying for two hours. Was it perfect? Hell no. Was it flawed? Oh yeah. Were parts of it incredibly stupid? You bet. But was I entertained? Yeah...
You see, I think the built up expectation made people think the movie was going to be worth the wait. That’s why you see the hatred for KOTCS but not to the same extent for movies like Lethal Weapon 4 or Live Free or Die Hard, for example. (Both of those I picked because they were much delayed fourth installments of beloved action series from the 80s, like KOTCS...) But in my opinion, there should have never, and I mean NEVER been a 20-year gap between Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Indiana Jones should have been like James Bond, making more movies that focus on standalone adventures. The “Holy Trinity” are essentially three standalone movies, connected only by the Indiana Jones character. There should have been more of these movies simply because the possibilities of the character, what situations he finds himself, what bad guys he encounters, etc. are limitless.
Now, part of the reason the series was left abandoned was because Spielberg wanted to move on to bigger and better things, and he did for the most part. (Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, etc.) George Lucas also wanted to start working on those pesky prequels. Harrison Ford was the biggest star in the world by the time Last Crusade was released, and was getting a lot offers for a lot of exciting movies like The Fugitive and the Jack Ryan movies he was in. But Lucas/Spielberg should have done what Lucas is doing now with Star Wars: put it in the hands of other capable directors and writers. Spielberg and Lucas could have still produced and served as creative consultants for the series, but essentially give the reins to someone else. The only constant should have been Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones is much less like Batman, Jack Ryan or even James Bond in that he is identified by a single actor. Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones the same way Bruce Willis is John McClane, Clint Eastwood is Dirty Harry (ANOTHER precedent for what the Indy series should have resembled), and Matt Damon is Jason Bourne. You can’t imagine another actor playing that character ever again.
I just imagine Ford and whatever director coming together once every 5-6 years or so and doing another Indiana Jones movie, up until 2008 or around then. (More on that later.) And the good thing is the spinoff canon (novels, comics, video games, etc.) had a lot of cool ideas for other Indiana Jones adventures. The Fate of Atlantis, a point and click adventure game, could have been turned into a really cool Indy movie, as is the same case with The Iron Pheonix and The Spear of Destiny comic books. The fun thing about the franchise is that it could have dealt with historical issues as time progressed (The main part of World War II to be sure, but also the beginning of the Cold War.) But it would also have all the standard bits of an Indy movie: Indy girls, exotic locales, important artifacts, references to Indy also being a professor, his fear of snakes, climatic action scenes, etc.
I could see someone like Frank Darabont, fresh off his success with The Shawshank Redemption, directing an Indy movie in the mid-90s, especially since he helped write some of the episodes of the TV show and a script that eventually became KOTCS, he had connections to the franchise. After that, I see someone like Jan de Bont, hot after Speed and Twister, directing a more action-oriented Indy movie in the late 90s. Finally, someone like Martin Campbell, who directed Goldeneye and Casino Royale, could do another Indy movie in the early-to-mid 2000s. However, these names are just what come to mind given the context of the times. Hindsight tells us we could have stuck in a newbie director that have subsequently proved themselves, like Kathryn Bigelow or Alfonso Cuaron. Think, dear reader, on the aborted possibility of a Christopher Nolan-directed or a Joss Whedon-written Indiana Jones movie
Now, let’s get back to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. One of the things I really do like about the movie is that it does seem like a conclusion to the series. You have the introduction, and implied passing on of the legacy to Mutt. You re-introduce Marion Ravenwood, the original Indy girl, and she and Indy finally settle down. Also, Harrison Ford is getting up there in years, and eventually, you would have to stop somewhere. So, in my hypothetical universe, I bring back Spielberg into the director’s seat to make things come full circle, revise the script, but keep a lot of the major plot points and have KOTCS be definitively the last Indiana Jones movie ever. That scene at the end where Mutt almost tries on the hat? Call me crazy, but I think it works remarkably well, and serves as both an end to the Indy character, as well as a wink to the audience about a future full of adventure for Mutt.
I never believed Indiana Jones should be just 3 or even just 4 movies. Like James Bond, Dirty Harry, or Star Trek, Indiana Jones should have been put into different, exciting situations, under the watchful eyes of new directors and screenwriters. How awesome would have been to actually SEE Indy fight in World War II and not just reminisce about it with Mac when he’s in his 60s? I understand the franchise was Spielberg and Lucas’ baby, but they should have quit for a while and allowed other directors to take risks with the character the same way Lucas is doing now with Star Wars. This would have allowed the possibility of the series growing over time. One can only dream about the possibility of more Indiana Jones movies at this point, I guess....
[edit]: TL;DR: There should have never been a 20 year gap between Indiana Jones movies, which I blame as a big reason people hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which couldn't possibly meet a 20 year buildup of expectations. The franchise should have made more movies with different directors and screenwriters throughout the 90s and 2000s to have more of a quantity of standalone theatrical Indy adventures.

casino royale tv tropes video

Directed by William H. Brown Jr.. With William Lundigan, Barry Nelson, Peter Lorre, Linda Christian. American spy James Bond must outsmart card wiz and crime boss Le Chiffre while monitoring his actions. The pre-credits scene, filmed in black-and-white when the traitor Dryden says "Don't worry, the second is..." BAM!. Bond puts one silenced round in his chest killing him instantly; and then finishes his sentence for him, "Yes. Considerably." Several people in the theater who didn't even know each other turned to one another and said, "That is James Bond!" In the opening title sequence: "You ... File:Casino royale sm 6371.jpg So you want me to be half monk, half hitman. Ian Fleming sold the rights to his first James Bond novel separately from the rest of the films, which is the reason that it took so long for a proper adaptation of the first novel. A description of tropes appearing in Casino Royale (1967). The one that's a complete parody. The second adaptation of Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, released … During Vesper's (clothed) Shower of Angst, Bond comes in to check on her. He sits down next to her, in the shower (probably ruining his tux) and asks if she's alright. When she says she can't get the blood (of a dead man) off of her hands, Bond sucks on her fingers (!) before asking her if she's cold. He adjusts the shower faucet to make the water warmer, and simply holds her. After Bond wins ... The one where it all began — again.. Casino Royale is the twenty-first film in Eon Productions' James Bond film franchise, the third Live-Action Adaptation of the very first James Bond novel, Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, and the second film to be directed by Martin Campbell in the series, introducing Daniel Craig as James Bond. It came out on November 16, 2006. The film is in fact the third (and certainly best) production of Casino Royale. Its predecessors were made by companies other than EON. Neither can be considered in any way canon, and both took a lot of liberties with the story and character (of course, true to form, this film took its own liberties): The 1954 version, a live TV episode of Climax!. Welcome to Casino Tropez! Since 2001, we’ve served as the premier online casino destination for gambling enthusiasts from around the globe. Try your hand at one of over 350 casino games, including slots, blackjack, roulette, video poker and more.

Casino Royale (2006 film) All The Tropes Wiki Fandom

casino royale tv tropes

casino royale tv tropes - win

All Movies I Watched During Quarantine With Reviews