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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    IMO, that speaks as much to the lack of visually distinctive characters in comic books and comic book movies as it does to the "Who?" aspect of this minor secondary character from Spider-Man. It's hard enough to tell the various generically handsome and muscular brown-haired superhero/villain characters apart without their silly outfits. It helps not at all that the trailer doesn't even make this look like a comic book movie. It just sort of looks like a Russian John Wick. The rumor that "ghetto Joker" was Leto's idea is also false... codirector David Ayer was the one behind that decision. He added the tattoos and the grill to Leto's Joker to give the character a "modernized gangster look".
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Remember when teasers were supposed to tease the audience with the content of a show or movie? This looks like an almost Harmony Gold Convention Tour-level effort... they hastily edited a reflection of Earth onto stock footage of the xenomorph and for three seconds and cut to a title card so basic it probably took the intern who made it longer to find the official franchise font in the Adobe AfterEffects fonts menu than it did to make it. The real irony is this teaser uses the one thing that likely won't actually be in the show, since it's set 30 years before the Engineer ship is discovered on LV-426 in the original movie. English! 🗣️ The Engineer who designed it was dwelling perhaps a bit too much on what his species had lost. 🤣
  3. Seto Kaiba
    In what way is that a spoiler? It's a bloody interquel set between Alien and Aliens. 🤣 That it'd be connected to the others is basically a given because it's an interquel and the alien had to come from somewhere. There's only two options at that point in time, and that's a tie-in to the first movie or the second. It's not like the slobbery git showed up uninvented of its own accord in response to a WY lonely hearts advert in the space papers. Never mind the franchise's obsession with each new chapter having to tie into the others somehow. Even Alien: Isolation wasn't free of it and that was a video game about someone whose only film appearance was as an archival photo in Aliens. That's just SOP for the franchise.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    What'd he do that earned him everyone's ire, anyway? Considering the flaws in his prior comic book movie appearances - Suicide Squad, Justice League, and Morbius - were down to failures of writing, direction, and visual design I can't imagine him being in a movie like Kraven the Hunter would have a material effect on its quality in and of itself. It's actually kind of impressive his professionalism didn't permit him to show up and sleepwalk through each scene once he realized the kind of scripts he had to work with.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It's mentioned in Alien: Resurrection directly... though as with so many things in that film it's painfully dumb. Ripley-8 is a clone and shouldn't have any of the original Ripley's memories. But she does. When the scientists on the Auriga notice this, they hypothesize that because her DNA ended up a jumble of Human and Xenomorph due to the cloning process that the clone inherited the xenomorph's genetic memory. Apparently the gestating chestburster gets a bit more than just physical traits from its host. So Ellen Ripley's memories were preserved in the xenomorph's genetic memory. The blood she left on Fiorina 161 was tainted by the xenomorph's DNA, so the clones created from that blood sample inherited that genetic memory and thus part of Ellen Ripley's memories too. It was the Resurrection's way of almost-but-not-quite bringing Ellen Ripley back from the dead for the sequel. Ripley-8 can talk and act like Ellen Ripley and even remember events from Ellen Ripley's past despite technically being a totally separate person who never met the original because she has Ellen Ripley's memories via her xenomorph side. So, in theory, you could do this with other people too and clone anyone who'd been facehugged back to life as long as you had a sample of their blood from during the gestation process. The only problem is they might be a tiny bit sociopathic and have spicy blood thanks to the xenomorph DNA. 🤣
  6. Seto Kaiba
    This just in, Jared Leto has officially beat the allegations of being in Kraven the Hunter. 🤣
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Considering they were able to clone Ripley back to life using "genetic memory" from the xenos, I kinda suspect they don't even need to invoke "the multiverse" for that.😵‍💫 Maybe we'll find out that thanks to the black goop and the xenos everyone who's ever been got by one exists in a massive telepathic shared memory like the victims of the mold in Resident Evil 7 and 8. I'll get to see this movie either later this weekend or next weekend, depending on how things shake out. My hopes for horror are not high, but I'm trying to remain at least cautiously optimistic.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how many pieces of Alien media have shown the xenos are perfectly fine spacewalking without any kind of protective gear, I doubt that's enough to kill it. Annoy it, sure. Piss it off? Probably. Starve it? If it's left to drift for long enough. Kill it outright? Not a chance. Bumping into it's gotta be a one-in-a-trillion shot, but that's a hell of a destructive space speedbump to run into. That probably means the two that Amanda Ripley ejected from the Torrens are floating around near KG348 (or may have fallen into the gas giant). Considering she "disembarked" the Sulaco as it was leaving orbit of LV-426, Queenie probably made an unassisted return to the planet's surface after falling from orbit... which is to say, she probably fell out of the sky and went "splat" in a distinctly unsurvivable manner.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    You sure about that? He's not on the cast list on IMDB or mentioned as being in the film by any news source I can find. The only context I can find in which he's even mentioned in connection with Kraven the Hunter is statements by sites like ScreenRant and IGN that Kraven the Hunter is the newest film in what's being called the "Sony Spider-Man Universe" (or "SSU"). That Sony-owned shared universe setting somewhat counterintuitively contains zero Spider-Man films but it does contain the two already-released Venom movies, Morbius, and Madame Web, as well as the soon-to-be-released Venom: the Last Dance, Kraven the Hunter, and an as-of-yet unrevealed Summer 2025 film that may or may not be Spider-Woman or The Sinister Six. Leto's own filmography does not list him as being involved in Kraven the Hunter either... the only two projects he's listed on after Morbius are Haunted Mansion and Tron: Ares.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It never ceases to surprise me how many people don't understand the difference between "subjective" and "objective". There are a lot of disappointed grade school science teachers out there. "Objective" means "not influenced by personal feelings or opinions". Objective measurements are quantitative. Measurable. Not dependent on individual perception. An objective statement about a movie is something that can be demonstrated as an irrefutable fact like "It was made in <year>", "it was directed by <person>", "it made "x amount of money" at the box office". "Subjective" means "based on, or influenced by, personal feelings or opinions". Subjective measurements are qualitative. "Good" or "fun" or "enjoyable" are qualitative value judgements based on individual criteria and arbitrary scale and therefore subjective by definition. There's no unit of "fun" or "good" or "enjoyable" you can measure. It's based on individual perception and individual value criteria that are not universal or necessarily shared by any other person. Large numbers of people can come to the same subjective value judgement of a movie - like that Morbius was bad or that The Godfather was good - but that doesn't make that mass subjective value judgement objective because it's just a consensus opinion based on individual arbitrary criteria not something measurable. The closest you can get to an objective measure of "good" in a movie is its profit margin... but the quantifiable extent of its commercial success does not necessarily translate to audience enjoyment or artistic competence. For a great demonstration of that reality look no further than the Star Wars movies produced under Disney. Almost all of them made substantial profits, but are nevertheless judged to be bad movies by many fans. By the same token, people can go to a movie they find "bad" and still have fun with it because it's "bad" in a way they happen to find enjoyable. That's all subjective. Now now, don't blame the actor for the crimes of the writer and director. Even the very finest actors can only do so much if the script is an incoherent mess or the director's creative vision is in dire need of corrective lenses. Doubly so if they're stuck in the unenviable position of playing a character half a dozen other actors already have, with each director having a separate and distinct vision for them. Looking at the director, J.C. Chandor, he seems to be a relatively green but also relatively celebrated new director. He's only directed four prior films (Margin Call, All is Lost, A Most Violent Year, and Triple Frontier), but his work does seem to be pretty well received when it comes to film festivals and small-circle sorts of critics awards. He seems green enough that he's almost an unknown quantity. The writers... are less inspiring. Richard Wenk's filmography boasts writer credits on The Equalizer, The Expendables 2, Vamp, American Renegades, and the remake of The Magnificent Seven. Art Marcum and Matt Holloway (credited together) aren't particularly inspiring either. They worked on Iron Man, Punisher: War Zone, Transformers: the Last Knight, Men in Black: International, and Uncharted. Comic books are clearly not foreign territory to them, but the presence of titles like The Last Knight and Uncharted does not inspire much hope. I'd call it a coin flip whether Kraven: the Hunter will be fun or just funny looking.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Has anyone seen anything corroborating the rumors that the story involves the original Big Chap? I saw that while browsing and haven't been able to find a source.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    People watched it because it's fun... it's a tongue-in-cheek action comedy that's not afraid to take a few shots across the bow of the excessively serious MCU. Which makes it the perfect break from the MCU. "Good" is subjective... and what we see with audience fatigue is that people get less willing to tolerate "more of same" even if it's something they would normally enjoy. My favorite example of this is Star Trek: Enterprise, which went down in flames ratings-wise because it was more of the same product audiences had been getting for almost 15 years by that point. People came back to it years later and realized it was actually pretty good TV, but it was so much like what preceded it that audiences just didn't want it so it was judged "bad" at the time. Nah, I think a lot of folks got tired of Spider-Man pretty quick. He's not a very deep character - most superheroes aren't - but once you exhaust his 2-3 iconic villains (Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and I can't think of a third) and he gets the girl there's not a lot left for him to do. The movies can't exist in the same kind of eternal status quo the comics do, so he can only have a certain amount of character development before he stops being interesting. From what I understand, the comics keep doing this to him too... resetting him over and over because he gets boring once he's married, lands at least moderately stable employment, moves out of Aunt May's house, etc. I think Kraven here is something like an attempt to do something with the property other than just endlessly rehashing Peter Parker's formative years. They picked a decidedly un-super villain from Parker's rogues gallery, and seem to want to develop in a very un-cartoony direction. The trailer feels very John Wick to me, with the implication that Kraven is a badass quietly passing the time until someone ruffles his feathers... then it's everyone else's funeral, literally. It's enough that I'm actually kind of curious to see what direction it's headed in. It really doesn't look like a comic book movie even though it is one. I'll probably go see this one when it hits theaters, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else. (It'd have to struggle quite hard to be worse than Borderlands, and I voluntarily went to see that in theaters.)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    He did. We've got multiple pieces of official art of the wedding. They even had a kid together before Megaroad-01 went missing in 2016.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    In all honesty, I don't think Deadpool in any way disproves that the superhero movie genre is suffering severe audience fatigue. I'd argue its success is in no small part because of that fatigue. Most superhero movies are high-stakes serious business stories where the fate of the city/country/world/universe/multiverse depends on the heroes. Doing that all the time, without a break in the middle to de-escalate things, makes subsequent escalations less impressive and burns the audience out more quickly. Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and now Deadpool & Wolverine are that de-escalation. They're a breather episode that isn't afraid to poke fun of how grimly serious the other titles are. Sony's Spider-Man is a great, and related, example. They've never been able to get more than three movies out of Spider-Man before audiences get bored with the character. They have the rights to the series in perpetuity as long as they put out a movie every six years, and through that they have the rights to his rogue's gallery and supporting characters, so here we are with a movie about a member of Spider-Man's rogues gallery coming out three years to the day after No Way Home seemingly reimagined as Great Value John Wick rather than doing a more typical superhero story or supervillain origin story. That's the thing, though... those (bad) movies and the multiverse shenanigans are being done because audiences are getting bored with the most mainstream superheroes. The studios want to keep this gravy train going indefinitely because they paid a fortune for those acquisitions. So they're hitting up less widely known superheroes and trying to move into different kinds of stories because you can only sell the spandex brigade punching space monsters so many times in a row before audiences are just bored with the whole bit. Three movies seems to be the limit for any given superhero or superhero team... even extremely well-received ones like Guardians of the Galaxy.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's good all the way through. A title that solid is a rare prize indeed. The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's Army Was a Human continues to underwhelm. Honestly, the 3D CG animation in this looks SO BAD that it actively detracts from the action. It's really bad when the CG animated monsters have to talk, because they make almost no effort to match the lip flap. My Deer Friend Nokotan has kind of fallen off into a "well, let's just do nonsense" approach, and it's not really funny anymore because they only really have one joke now.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Sounds like the reviewers agree that Romulus is very much in the mold of the original, but just can't agree whether or not it's a good thing. For what it's worth, that makes me a bit optimistic about the film's prospects. I'm still worried it'll go too heavily towards the Aliens route and make the xenos unscary. I'm gonna wait 'til next week to go see it myself, my local theater suuuuuuuuucks, but I'm cautiously optimistic for this one.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I've never been a fan of American comic books, but looking at film industry-wide trends it looks to me like comic book movies and streaming originals have exhausted a lot of the novelty of the recognizable flagship comic properties and the law of diminishing returns has kicked in. The studios are branching out in the hopes of finding something fresh that can keep the money coming in, because audience fatigue is a thing and they (and every other corporation) made unrealistic promises of unlimited growth to their shareholders. That's how they hide the really bad CG and cheap set design in IMAX... make it too dark to see a ****ing thing.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Wow. You say he was a B-list villain, but surely with an outfit like that he was surely the kingpin of sartorial crime. I assume he wasn't always quite this... killy? This fellow is wearing a green fur-lined vest, leopard print tights, a tiger-print belt with fangs or claws on it, tiger-print arm warmers, green leopard-print exercise bands, and what appear to be either khaki pointe shoes or slipons. Put about a pound of concealer and eyeshadow on him and he's ready for RuPaul's Drag Race. I'd call the movie version a substantial glowup. The movie version of that costume looks like it was nicked from the set of Kevin Sorbo's Hercules: the Legendary Journeys, rather than looking like someone mugged Roy Horn at an Elton John-themed Halloween party.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    So this is... basically just Marvel's John Wick or something? (Not being a smartarse, I literally have no idea who this character is.) It looks like it'll be solid as a summer "popcorn" action flick, if nothing else. "Violence isn't an answer, violence is the question and the answer is 'Yes'."
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Why would they advise someone to watch Alien 3 or Resurrection? There are only two Alien movies. Three if Romulus turns out well.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Definitely haven't kept up with Transformers in the... wow that's a long time... since the original cartoon went off the air when I was a kid. This looks so much like the cartoon I remember from childhood that I'm getting a little nostalgic just from the posters. I might go see this just for nostalgia's sake. Maybe take the nieces and nephews. Everyone's a bit smoother, but even the chiseled corners on the faces are still there a little bit.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Not totally... but it's seldom wise to trust the critic scores because many news outlets that employ critics are owned by parent companies or subsidiaries of one or more of those major studios, and when it comes to franchises a lot of reviewers are not fans so their priorities tend to be very different to what fans are looking for in a franchise movie and they score accordingly. Audience scores are more reliable, but not the immediate audience scores because franchise stuff often ends up having its initial score tainted by agenda-driven review bombing (e.g. The Acolyte) and it takes a while to filter out the noise and get enough legitimate audience scores to truly reflect the quality or lack thereof of the work. Siskel and Ebert were no different, art in all its forms has always been political and art critics of every stripe have always waxed lyrical about it. People just didn't pay attention to it back in the day because art critics are longwinded nerds. It only gets attention now because people've discovered they can make money off of clickbait if they pretend to be angry about literally everything that doesn't fall neatly within their very narrow comfort zone. There doesn't seem to be much info about what it'll actually be about, but 30 years before the first film would tend to preclude any xenomorphs... which means we're likely back to the same "AI is the real monster" bone they were worrying in Prometheus and Covenant. That bar's a trip hazard in Satan's wine cellar... and considering how the last few installments went, I'd still be inclined to bet on them hosting a limbo contest.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies continues to be a fun little parody of the magical girl genre.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Ossan Newbie Adventurer has apparently decided it's bored with being One Punch Man: Fantasy Edition and now wants to be a boxing anime.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    He's certainly distressed enough... all he needs is a pretty dress and a prince. If it both is and isn't the Razor Crest, does that make it the Spaceship of Theseus? The Schrodinger's Razor Crest? Since it's got "razor" in the name do we start with the shaver jokes? Is it the Razor Crest Quattro Titanium? The Razor Crest Hydro? Maybe just call it the Gilette?
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