Category: opinion

Why I’m Not Excited to See ‘The Rise of Skywalker’

Yesterday morning, Lucasfilms released the newest trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The trailer has brought about quite a bit of excitement for the film, which is expected to be released December 20 of this year. I can’t say I fall into this same boat.

My disinterest in the newest episode, which will wrap up the new sequel trilogy, isn’t because the jedi is a woman, or there is “too much diversity”, whatever that means. It’s more the fact of just how disappointing the trilogy has been up until this point. The new trilogy, when first announced, had so much potential to be good and unique, and actually bring something new to the Star Wars series, but fell short on so many points.

The biggest problem I saw was just how copy-paste the story line for both Episodes 7 and 8 were. Episode 7, which which kicked off the new trilogy, was mostly taken straight from Episode 4, with a sprinkling of Episodes 5 and 6 in there. It was unoriginal, but the production value and potential that existed in each of characters made it forgivable.

Episode 8, however, was unforgivable. It was literally Episode 5 in reverse, with an attempt at an original plot line that had ultimately no purpose other than to build a half-baked “romantic” relationship between Finn and Rose. It was an unnecessary waste of an entire hour.

The other unforgivable aspect was how they turned Rey into a Mary Sue. For those of you who don’t know what that is, a Mary Sue is pretty much a basic female character that is insanely overly powerful, and is instantly an expert at whatever they do. Rey, who had the potential to become a really good jedi, was wasted as she practically became a master jedi in about two weeks, rather than the months and even years Luke spent training. The jedi, canonically throughout both the original and the prequel series, spend years mastering their jedi capabilities, but apparently that’s not actually necessary cause Rey is suddenly just became a master. It ignores everything that’s been established about the jedi until that point.

Episode 8 as a whole was a pain to watch, and the series is bad for wasting so much potential by being unoriginal in order to “appeal” to people and make money. And its not like it’s because they can’t make original plot lines that are good. They 100 percent can, and did, with Rogue One. It’s just pure laziness. They simply want to push out “canon” content that will make immediate money, and don’t quite care how its done.

No, I Don’t Want to pay $40 for one Awards Show

So last sunday was the Grammys’. I’ve never actually seen the Grammys’ before, and figured that I this year might be the year to try watching it. Some interesting performers were up for awards, so I was intrigued.

Except, whenever I tried to figure out where it was streamed, I realized I could access none of the listed sites. Under my Dad’s account, I have access to DirectTV, CBS, and Hulu. But were they showing the Grammys’ on any of these sites? Nope, you have to pay $40 a site just to access their special “live” versions. Even when I tried looking it up directly on DirectTV (on my laptop), the Grammys’ couldn’t play because of copyright law. Copyright by who? Who even knows.

It annoys me to no end that these companies want you to by their “special” subscription just to be able watch something that you won’t really have access to again, just to boost subscriptions. No one wants to subscribe to “Hulu Live”, or something like that, they just want Hulu. Stop making this more difficult than it needs to be.

And, as for DirectTV, they had it on their special “on the go” subscription, but for some reason copyright prevented it from having it on their regular site? Even though I could look up the Grammys’, and get all the way to the “watch now” button before it’s a problem? Ridiculous.

Now, I could have technically gone downstairs and watched in on the TV itself. My landlady lives in the house I stay in, and has a TV set that has access to CBS. However, she had people over, and was in the living room with those people, which would have made it rather strange to just walk in and change the channel. So, while technically I could have done something, in reality it would have been socially unacceptable.

No One Wants to Play with a Sore Loser

Playing video games, and games in general, can lead to hours of extreme fun. That is, if you’re not playing with a sore loser.

What is a sore loser? A sore loser is someone who has a nasty competitive streak with anything game related. They can’t just relax and have fun, they have to win, or they won’t stop playing until they do. When they don’t win, they throw a fit and ruin the whole atmosphere. And that’s just if there’s only one person with a competitive streak.

The reason I’m talking about this can all be traced to my winter break from school and two of my younger cousins. I had had problems with these cousins before, as they have a tendency to antagonize each other to the point where it gets out of hand. This antagonizing behavior transfers rather miserably over to video games.

You see, the older brother (who is seven years older than his brother, mind you), has a Nintendo switch, with games such as Mario Party and Super Smash Bros. Fun games, right? Not with them. They are incredibly competitive, especially with each other, bickering and making nasty comments towards each other. They can’t play a game for the sake of having fun. It got to the point where I couldn’t play with them all that much, because their behavior dragged down the rest of the group and make the game stressful. They had to win, and when the younger one got second place in something, he would whine about being a loser that no one liked. Just about myself and all older cousins have called the two out for their behavior, but that didn’t seem to change anything.

Anecdote aside, I think it’s safe to say that no one likes playing video games with overly-competitive people. They make the situation tense, and it doesn’t get any better when they win/don’t win. They suck the life out of playing the video game, and then wonder why no one wants to play with them.

Now, let me just say that it doesn’t hurt to be competitive. Just about anyone can be competitive, which can add to the fun (no one wants to play with someone who doesn’t care enough to try, either). But it’s important to understand that the best way to make that competitiveness work is to understand when a game is just a game, and you won’t lose anything from it (unless you’re winning 10,000 dollars). Overly-competitive people just don’t know how to do that.

The Realism of Detective Pikachu: What I Liked vs. What I Didn’t

The new trailer for the live-action pokemon film Detective Pikachu dropped this week (completely eclipsing the Toy Story 4 teaser trailer and the Dumbo trailer), leaving fans and general audiences alike with mixed feelings. Some thought taking pokemon to a realistic level helped bring us one step closer to imagining pokemon in our world, while others thought the realism was both weird and unnecessary. I can’t say I lean either way, but I can say that there were some renditions that I liked, and some that I thought were God-awful.

Likes:

Pikachu- I have to say, they did make Pikachu look really cute, though I didn’t quite imagine him being that tall. He looks like his original depiction, but fuzzier, with cute wide eyes and small little arms. Even though his rendition might not be that difficult to transfer to live-action, I still thought they did a good job. I just wished Danny Devito voiced him.

Bulbasaur- In the trailer they have a pod of Bulbasaur crossing a river, and I have to say they all look pretty spot on. They’re cute, they’re reptilian, and I couldn’t find something inherently wrong with their rendition.

Charizard- We only get a quick shot of one trying to eat Pikachu in the trailer, but I thought they did a pretty good job depicting him as a fearsome dragon pokemon (though he is flying and fire type). From what I could tell, they did a good job in translating him over.

Don’t Likes:

Psyduck- There’s nothing exactly wrong, save for the fact that he looks like he’s seen some shit. Which, isn’t exactly an issue, especially as his cartoon form looks kind of the same way. But there’s just something about the live-action version that is just so much creepier.

Mr. Mime- I don’t like his skin. While I wouldn’t like him fuzzy, either, I just don’t like the way his skin is. His face, also, looks like someone took a Teletubby face and slapped it onto him, which I feel looks so much weirder. I never really liked Mr. Mime to begin with, and I especially don’t like his rendition in live-action.

Jigglypuff- Oh boy. What isn’t wrong with this one. First off, he looks almost exactly like this one meme made years before, where someone drew Jigglypuff as more “realistic”, and everyone laughed about how strange it looked. How horrified we were to find a shockingly similar image play in the movie trailer. Everything from his eyes, the tuft of hair, to the body in general just screams off.