daemonxhun Reviews

Loki (2021–2023)

I generally don't really like MCU stuff... yet this became one of my favourite shows

[10/10 · 8 July 2021]

I'm generally not a fan of the MCU movies. I saw a couple of them but for the most part, to me they felt like homogeneous, fairly bland, and forgottable movies with no real artistic vision behind them - they felt more like well-crafted products than actual art (what a movie is normally supposed to be).

I value movies such as Superman, Superman II: The Richard Donner's Cut, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, some of the X-Men movies and Shazam much more - the only real exception is Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which managed to evoke the same kind of magic that I felt while watching those other movies.

Why I like these movies? Because they have heart - they touch me on a deep emotional level. Because these movies have a strong artistic vision and it shows. Because these are first and foremost character-driven movies that focus on the everyday struggles and problems of the characters and are just secondarily superhero movies.

---

And this is the reason why I love Loki too. It's a series that is part of the MCU, yet it feels like anything but a part of it. It feels like the very best that superhero stories can offer. It feels authentic, it feels genuine, it feels heavily artist-driven.

Action generally takes a backseat and instead every single episode focuses on building characters, character relationships, and the strange world of the series itself which ultimately makes the series so much better than practically anything you can see in the MCU (although GotG2 is a brillant movie).

The main trio of the characters are fantastically realized, loveable and relatable. There are a lot of wholesome, sweet, and truly human moments in the show that remind me of the old Superman movies and the Raimi Spider-Man movies that I mentioned previously.

The show also has a great amount of intellectual depth, not just compared to other MCU stories, but in general too (especially in the earlier episodes), exploring interesting concepts such as the existence of free will or pre-determination in a visual way and through cleverly written dialogues.

Both the emotional and intellectual scenes serve to build the characters and what is fantastic is that these moments play out effortlessly and naturally, in a very believable manner. The cameran doesn't cut away, the creators are not afraid to make things slower.

They smartly let these scenes fully play out, this way making it possible for viewers to fully soak in the moment and for the actors to fully embrace their characters and get the most out of these scenes. This is when this series shines the best and I've only really seen scenes like this in independent, heavily artist-driven, lower-budget movies.

On the top of these, the story, the pacing and the overall thematical and logical consistency of the series are also excellent. The story is constantly moving forward without any padding or filler, in fact, so many meaningful things happen in the span of a couple of episodes that it would have taken multiple seasons for other TV shows to tell the same story.

Loki is a modern gem that perfectly captures the magic of the greatest superhero movies. I can't recommend it enough.

Mortal Kombat (2021)

Absolutely abysmal, the '95 original seems like a masterpiece in comparison

[3/10 · 23 April 2021]

I feel like I lost like a million of my brain cells. I cannot even comprehend how it was even possible to make something as bad as this. I feel sorry for the actors/martial artists who have signed on for such a terrible, truly terrible script.

I don't even know where to start it's such a big trainwreck. Well, let's start with this one. It doesn't even feel like a MOVIE even though it claims to be one. Even when I occasionally see some bad movies, at least I can still say about them that they were actually structured, paced, cut, and directed like a movie.

As for Mortal Kombat, well, not so much. It has a barely passable first act that ends with a 3-page long exposition dump from Sonya Blade about the mysticism and history of the Mortal Kombat tournament. Because of the context and line delivery, this feels so cringeworthy and unbeliavable that I was waiting for either her or Cole to burst out laughing. Right before that you see her, Kano and Cole fight against Reptile... wait, an actual reptile... WTF...

Anyway, then the second act comes in which pretty much nothing happens just random characters get introduced in an extremely anticlimactic and lame way, then they occasionally fight and say things only Timmy Wiseau would wrote (maybe the screenwriter of MK is his relative).

And... where's the third act? It's pretty much also non-existent. Just suddenly Shang Tsung comes in again for the 5th or god knows which time and the bad guys and good guys fight, we get a little fan-service and then THE END.

Basically, here's the summary of the movie:

There's no tournament. Characters do random stuff in roughly the first third of the movie. In the second third of the movie, they do random stuff and say really bad lines in a lame cave. In the last third, they do all the same things as in the previous two thirds, but this time in the city AND in the cave. WOW! Oh, and Shang Tsung and his buddies appear every 20 minutes or so because they are impatient and want to kill the champions of Eearthrealm.

The fighting scenes are not that interesting or engaging, I've seen much better in tons of other movies. The soundtrack sucks (e.g. It's not fitting at all and so bad that right after Hanzo's family gets killed, a low quality rock song kicks in when Hanzo starts fighting against the attackers, instead of something more orchestral, adrenalin pumping and emotional that would help convey to the audience Hanzo's inner rage and feel of sadness).

The scenes transition into each other in an extremely abrupt way, scenes get cut very randomly, there's no flow at all to the entire movie, a high-school fan-film is much better thought out than this.

The original MK movie from 1995 compared to this seems like a masterpiece because it actually had a good flow, a perfect balance between seriosuness and self-reflective comedy (which helped a lot), memorable characters, interesting world design and fun fight scenes, with a badass soundtrack. Yeah, it was a cringey movie, yet it still did pretty much everything better than the 2021 film, aside from the cinematography and visuals (the original still had much more varied environments though).

I would rate MK2021 a 3 out of 10. I do not recommend watching it at all.

The Witcher (2019– )

Junk, but the good kind of junk

[7/10 · 30 January 2021]

Look, this show is basically Xena/Hercules in more ways than one, but with a much less consistent and thoughtful narrative, coupled with very jarring jumps in the timeline that makes it really hard to follow and understand certain character choices, motivations and their overall development.

Yet... I love it. It's fast food, but a very tasty one. The show is simply so much fun, it knows when to and when not to take itself seriously. Henry Cavill is amazing as Geralt and simply chews every scene he is in. Geralt's sidekick, Jaskier (played by Joey Batey) is also brilliant, he brings an incredible amount of energy and fun to every scene he is in.

The show works the best when these two characters are on the screen together and they are the main reasons to watch The Witcher. The dynamics between these two characters/actors are simply fantastic, their friendly connection reminds me of some of the best movie duos, like Riggs and Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon.

I definitely recommend watching The Witcher. While it's nowhere near as cleverly written in terms of story and characters as the really popular The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt video game, it manages to make up for it in certain ways and it's one of the most fun shows going on right now.

The Witcher (2019– )

Junk, but the good kind of junk

[7/10 · 30 January 2021]

Look, this show is basically Xena/Hercules in more ways than one, but with a much less consistent and thoughtful narrative, coupled with very jarring jumps in the timeline that makes it really hard to follow and understand certain character choices, motivations and their overall development.

Yet... I love it. It's fast food, but a very tasty one. The show is simply so much fun, it knows when to and when not to take itself seriously. Henry Cavill is amazing as Geralt and simply chews every scene he is in. Geralt's sidekick, Jaskier (played by Joey Batey) is also brilliant, he brings an inredibly amount of energy and fun to every scene he is in.

The show works the best when these two characters are on the screen together and they are the main reasons to watch The Witcher. The dynamic between these two characters/actors are simply fantastic, their friendly connection reminds me of some of the best movie duos, like Riggs and Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon.

I definitely recommend watching The Witcher. While it's nowhere near as cleverly written in terms of story and characters as the really popular The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt video game, it manages to make up for it in certain ways and it's one of the most fun shows going on right now.

Parasite (2019)

A great movie, but it also lacks something (for me) (only minor spoilers)

[8/10 · 1 January 2020]

Parasite is a great movie. It's very well paced and structured, and has an interesting and constantly evolving narrative. From a filmmaking standpoint, it's on a very high level.

In the end though, I still felt it left something to be desired. I felt that the movie didn't have as much of an impact on me as I had hoped. The ending wasn't as cathartic to me as to others and I quickly forgot about the movie shortly after I watched it, even though I usually think about movies like this for days after I watched them.

Maybe this can be attributed to the fact that I found it genuinely hard to really sympathise with the characters for different reasons and I didn't form a strong emotional bond with them - and without it, how am I supposed to care about their fate?

It's sad what has happened to the hiding guy and his wife, but they were introduced so late in the movie and their characters didn't really get fleshed out.

The big family (who the title probably refers to) got fleshed out quite well, but the more I learned about them, the more distant and unlikeable they became.

As for the rich family, they are somewhere between the previous two. They had some character development, but not much, and they were neither liekable or unlikeable - so basically, I didn't care about them at all.

Overall, I would still say that it's a pretty strong movie, but it lacks some kind of soul that would elevate it to a much higher level and make it truly stand out.

Therefore I also think that the 96/100 Metacritic and 8.6/100 IMDB scores are undeservedly high. This movie is an 8.0-8,5/10 for me, which means that it should be somewhere around 80 on Metacritic and somewhere between 7-8 on IMDB.

The Mandalorian (2019– )

Competent, but also overrated - TL;DR at the end

[7/10 · 2 December 2019]

Villains of the week

After I've watched 4 episodes, I'm finally starting to figure out what kind of series this really is. The Mandalorian doesn't really feel like it has a constantly evolving story, unlike most other modern TV shows that have a finite end. It rather feels like a corny "villains of the week" type of show from the mid-90's that can go on forever, it feels like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Xena: The Warrior Princess.

What differentiates it and makes it better in some ways though is that it is more professionally made - it has a stronger technical (and possibly artistic) background. The cinematography is excellent for TV show standards and the blend of practical and CGI elements work very well here. However, in almost every other aspect - aspects that really count in presenting an enjoyable experience that will be stuck with the viewer - The Mandalorian simply underdelivers. Not just compared to the other two shows I've mentioned but in general.

But just to stick with my two examples, Xena and Hercules, yes, they are corny as hell, yes, they are tongue-in-cheek, but they are actually fun to watch. They have real, well-defined characters, humorous and self-reflective dialogues that often work really well, and enjoyable little stories throughout the episodes. Both series are simple and you can criticize them for a lot of reasons, but I feel like they were made by passionate people and in the end, it shows.

Emotional sterility

The Mandalorian is clearly a better-made show but it also lacks some kind of spirit and heart that would make it truly resonate with me. It often feels emotionally distinct and sterile, just like Rogue One. For example, most of the dialogues feel artificial instead of natural. Therefore, in the rare moments when someone wants to express their emotions, it feels like if a robot (in the conventional sense) would try to act like a human - it just comes out wrong and feels wrong.

This kind of almost autistic approach to emotions also shows in other aspects of the show as well, such as the soundtrack. It feels like every time it takes a step in the right direction, it immediately takes two steps back. From an emotional standpoint, the show is just as conflicted as Darth Vader was in Return of the Jedi and overall, it's one of the main reasons that hold it back to become something better.

It feels like the creators feared to make the series emotional because they wanted to create a gritty and serious story - again, just like Rogue One. Why? Possible because in this postmodern world of ours, the masses simply love and praise everything that has nihilism and darkness in it. However, through writing and shooting, they also realized that a story without emotions and relatability is not worth telling, so they stuck in this eternal conflict between gritty+serious and fun+adventurous and they failed to balance the two sides out - even though it would have been entirely possible, just look at The Empire Strikes back.

Overarching Conflict

Unfortunately, the series is just as conflicted and messy in other aspects as well, such as character-development, pacing, narrative and storytelling, general structure, etc. Sometimes I feel like a really simple story without any worthy world-building and character-building is drawn out for 40 minutes. In other times, I feel like the given story would require more screentime to be explored thoroughly, but instead, we jump between different scenes in a fast and erratic manner. Sometimes nothing is happening for tens of minutes, and sometimes important scenes don't have enough time to breath and the viewer doesn't have enough time to take them in. This makes it really hard to care at all about what's happening on the screen.

A good example for all of these is the latest episode, in which basically after three sentences, the Mandalorian and the woman with the child almost act like they have fallen in love together, without any previous relationship development between them at all, while the whole "teaching the locals how to fight under two minutes" part was just as laughable and cheesy. These type of scenes worked a million times better in the A-Team 30+ years ago. Moments like these can't work without proper build-up or without hitting the required tone for the series - the suspense of disbelief is immediately shattered when they try to do these in a show that they also want to be taken seriously.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to tell strong stories in which you start to care about the characters in a short amount of time - it's totally possible, but the creators behind this show are simply not talented enough for that. Or at the very least, they would need to write the dialogues better in order for them to be more expressive, and they should also manage the timing of the script better so it could be more effective. It can be done, The End of the F***ing World is a great example. In that series, every moment, every scene, every dialogue has a meaning and it constantly builds towards something, while you also start to care about the characters after a very short time.

Conclusion

If I want to say a video game analogue, I think that the episodes of this show feel like secondary side-missions from above-average open-world/RPG titles. They are passable and sometimes have their fun moments - but that's all. Go there, do this, bring me that, etc. But at least, in the world of games you also have the presence of interactivity that can elevate even a simple story to greater heights.

Now this all may sound very negative, but just to be clear, I'm not saying that The Mandalorian is bad. I'm just saying it's not very good either and I think a lot of people would definitely need a reality check here. In the past years, a lot of bad things came out in the world of Star Wars and I think a negative side-effect of it is that now whenever a mediocre or slightly above average, competent work comes out, people automatically tend to overpraise it. And this is the case with The Mandalorian as well.

TL;DR: The Mandalorian is a competently made show that has its moments, but overall, there are far better TV shows to choose from if you really want to watch something - even in its genre. The Star Wars name alone won't make anything instantly unmissable.

Mr. Robot: 408 Request Timeout (2019) Season 4, Episode 8

This has to be one of the best and most satisfying TV show episodes I've ever seen

[10/10 · 26 November 2019]

When Dom pulled out the knife from her lungs, stabbed the guard, picked his gun, and then shoot down him, the other guard, and Janice, I started screaming "Oh my god" (for at least 10 times), then I stood up from my computer and started jumping like a mad man for at least a minute straight.

I mean believe me, I really, really, really wanted that unbearable psychopath Janice to die. Yesterday after I've watched the previous four episodes, I fantasized in my head about different ways how I would like Janice to be finally killed. AND IT HAPPENED!

It was one of the most satisfying and awesome moments I've ever seen in a TV show. It reminds me of Through The Looking Glass from LOST, Felina from Breaking Bad, Hardhome and Battle Of The Bastards from Game of Thrones, or "A" from The Walking Dead (it's the season finale of the fourth season).

It's also an episode that was filled with tension and suspense, with great acting, amazing ambient soundtrack, excellent pacing and a heavy dose of feelings - the whole episode was emotionally impactful, especially the ending. It made my shake, it made me cry.

This show is freaking masterpiece.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (2019 Video Game)

A New Hope

[9/10 · 15 November 2019]

I'm someone who was really burned out of Star Wars thanks to the many movies with questionable quality that came after the original trilogy, and thanks to the low-effort games that EA has released in the past couple of years.

But this game is a breath of fresh air. It's exceptionally well made, it combines a lot of gameplay elements wonderfully from some of my favourite genres, it's truly a joy to play and it reignited my love and hope for Star Wars again. This is my New Hope.

You can really tell that the many artists, developers and writers put their heart and soul into making this game. These people actually understand what was so special about the original movies and in general, about Star Wars. This game is a work of passion.

The atmosphere is strong, the soundtrack is mesmerizing and evokes the same feelings as those old movies did with their own music. The characters are well written and likeable, the world is rich and full of mysteries and interesting places waiting to be explored.

In terms of gameplay, the best way to describe Fallen Order would be that it's a lovechild between Uncharted and Sekiro, coupled with a Metroidvania-style level-design and progression. The exploration is rewarding, the combat is tactical, deep, fast-paced, and satisfying, and there's always a strong sense of progression.

Buy this game, or rent it using Origin Access Premiere (like I did). It deserves it, we should support great games like this.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

Emptiness

[6/10 · 11 October 2019]

When I watched the last episode of Breaking Bad roughly two years ago, I felt a huge amount of emptiness. First, because I finished one of the greatest TV shows of all time and I felt like I lost something at that moment that was very dear to my heart. It was hard to let it go.

Second, because I felt that Jesse's storyline was left unresolved and unfinished. As much as I loved the Breaking Bad finale - after all, it was cathartic, satisfying, and deeply impactful on an emotional level - in the past two years I kept wondering what happened to Jesse after his escape. I always felt that this story would be well worth telling.

It looks like this lingering question was in Vince Gilligan's head too the whole time since he finishied his (near) masterpiece of a series, but he only decided to answer it 6 years after the show's original run has ended. Now, after finishing El Camino, there's one question I asked from myself. Is this story really needed to be told, and if so, was this the right way to tell it?

Because the thing is, I thought that after I'll watch this movie, I'll get a real closure, I'll have a fullfilling, meaningful, and deep cinematic experience, I'll get a definitive end to a character's life and to a brilliant series. I thought that if we get a 2 hour continuation to Breaking Bad in the form of a movie after all these years, there's has to be a strong reason for that.

I thought that I'll see something in the veins of Drive (to give you an example) - a movie with a high level of tension and suspense, an artistic piece of cinematic work about a person with a troubled life who is seeking for personal redemption and ultimately, is looking for an escape from his past.

I expected a lot of things but I have not expected the feeling of emptiness to hit me for the third time after finishing the movie. But this is exactly what I've got. El Camino felt like a mostly pointless and lukewarm epilogue to a brilliant series, instead of something that would have elevated its brilliance to even greater heights.

It was a two-hour feature film, yet it felt like there's so little happened in it. It was a movie that was almost completely devoid of any real tension. It was a movie basically about nothing. The whole script can be summed up in one sentence. Basically, Jesse went to some places to grab some money and then he travelled to Alaska. Literally, that's it.

There are so many ways this story could have been told and/or expanded, there are so many interesting plotlines that could have been explored. Or at the very least, we could have gotten a razorsharp, tightly focused suspense thriller/drama/action movie with minimal dialog and with a high focus on building tension and atmoshpere. Kinda like a crossover between Breaking Bad and Vanishing Point (or think about any great escape movie).

However, what we've got instead is a movie with a lot of unnecessary padding and filler. We've got a lot of scenes that while are often good and quite tasteful, they don't really move the story forward in any meaningful way and they don't really deepen the characters any further than we've already seen them on the show. They are just there to extend the run time of the movie, in order to justify it to be a movie in the first place.

Expectations can be harmful, however, I'm not actually disappointed because the movie didn't went the way I thought it would. I'm disappointed because I expected a meaningful and memorable movie that will be a worthy continuation and closure to Breaking Bad. But what I've got instead is something that while good enough, at the same time, nearly pointless, and again, it left me with a huge amount of emptiness.

Game of Thrones (2011–2019)

Meme of Thrones

[7/10 · 14 May 2019]

This series had the potential to become something truly great by the end and open a new chapter in the world of television. Sadly, the eighth season completely ruined the whole series, including its characters, its world and its story.

I won't mention any spoilers here, but if you really want to watch this series, be prepared for a gigantic disappointment at the journey's end. You'll watch one of the greatest series burn down in huge flames.

If I have to rate each seasons individually, here's how I would rank them:

Season 1-4: These are definitely the most complex, most layered seasons with the highest level of scriptwriting. Excellent dialogues, pacing, character developments, narrative twists, etc. Mainly because at this time the writer of the books was still involved in the making of the series and the series were heavily build upon the books. The absolute best is Season 4 because it had the best character interactions and story arcs and it also had some of the most memorable moments in the series.

Season 5 is a mixed bag. It has the heavily disliked Dorne plotline and overall, most episodes in it while are okay, they don't move the story forward in any meaningful way, they often just feel like fillers. But at the same time, the last four episodes are extremely good and interesting, mainly Hardhome, which is arguably one of the best episodes in the series (and also my personal favourite along with the ninth episode of the sixth season).

Season 6 is fantastic and in some ways, it's maybe the best along with Season 4. But it's hard to properly judge it, because despite some of its darker moments, it feels rather optimistic and uplifting, and maybe because of it, for some people, it won't really feel like Game of Thrones. But everything that happens in this season happens for a reason and everything is earned, twists and moments don't feel cheap or forced, they feel natural, there are no filler episodes and the overall pacing is great.

Season 7 is a mixed bag, similarly to Season 5. One half of it is great, the other half is not so much. But as opposed to Season 5, in this case, the first half (first three episodes) are the good ones, and the later episodes are the bad ones. The first three episodes are very dialogue-heavy and character-centric and they feel very well written and satisfying, they feel a natural continuation of the story and quality of Season 6. But after that, the logic gets completely thrown out of the window, everything starts to happen so fast and basically, Game of Thrones' real downfall starts from here.

Season 8 is a monumental disappointment. It subverts your expectations in the worst possible ways, things happen purely for shock value instead of happening because of the natural progression of the story. Character arcs get thrown completely out of the window, there are tons of deus ex machina moments, main characters wear plot armor and they are practically invincible. Things happen way too fast therefore there isn't enough time to really build up certain scenes in an intelligent and beleivable manner and scenes that are supposed evoke a certain feeling from the viewers (for example, sadness) evoke a totally different feeling instead (they make the viewers laugh). There are a lot of forced and artificial drama, the episodes are extremely inconsistent in a lot of ways, not just compared to the previous' seasons episodes, but compared only to other Season 8 episodes too. The biggest victim of Season 8 is Game of Thrones itself.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

It's the same as every other generic CGI-fest movie that comes out of Hollywood every week

[19 May 2018]

Really, there's nothing special here. Solo: A Star Wars Story is just another movie in the ocean of bad ones that tries to aim for the lowest common denominator in order to bring some bucks for the studio behind it, while it also shamelessly tries to capitalize on the Star Wars name that seen better days.

It doesn't have a clear vision - hell, it doesn't have any at all. The pacing of it is all over the place. The story is cliched, weak, it lacks a strong direction. The jokes most of the time fall flat - most of the time they do not work or feel inappropriate and forced. Also the movie's tone is quite inconsistent, while the actors don't really do a convincing job portraying their characters either.

This movie sums up perfectly what Star Wars has become. What once was the holy grail of pop-culture and a shining beacon of hope that showed how mass-appealing movies can carry just as important messages as art-house movies and dramas, turned into something that's anything but reminiscent of Star Wars. It feels like a 4 days old dry burger from a fast-food restaurant that was halfly chewed and spitted out.

There's only one good thing in this movie that leads to my two star rating: as much as it tried through it's entire runtime, it wasn't able to spin SW in the mud the way The Last Jedi did. This movie just wasn't able to be as disrespectful to the world and characters of Star Wars and to it's fans as The Last Jedi was. Because making such an unbelievably bad and insulting movie takes true talent - that the 'masterminds' behind Solo (fortunately) did not have. Or maybe it just wasn't able to make things worse, because Rian Johnson already killed the Star Wars movies, at least in my eyes.