Matthew Knudson

Apparently, someone from the show didn't like my review since it was taken down here and on Rotten Tomatoes. Guess I'm hitting a little close to home! Dragon Age Absolution is forgettable. It's already been consigned to the mass grave of rushed, poorly written, and forgotten animated adaptations that started in the early 2000s and are still filled with new bodies, judging from the mixed reception and the black void of any advertising and viewership. For the new viewer with little to no info on Dragon Age, this is the most generic fantasy show they will ever see. Nothing is introduced. The story just starts in the middle of all this drama and never explores or fleshes out its setting and story, outside of HEAVY exposition. Most of the main cast has 1 dimension personas and 1 gimmick, mainly that being another snarky Josh Whedon quippy copy job, save the main character whose "depth" is a slave flashback. Any backstory and fleshing out is glossed over or done with exposition. It feels like the writer's sole reference to fantasy was Marvel and Critical Role. The pacing is so rushed that it's impossible to get invested. For the fans of Dragon Age, if you are completely starved of content, and desperate enough to gaslight yourself, then I think the show is worth glancing up from your phone for the fight scenes. The show fails to use anything from DA that fleshes its world out, it just wears it by dropping names, and iconography, and Meredith comes back like Emperor Palpatine in a desperate move from the producers to generate some fan buzz. By resurrecting a npc boss. You would be forgiven for forgetting this is a DA show and not another generic fantasy show. Overall, not worth two hours to finish unless you're a desperate fan who is willing to tie a cement block to their standards at the bottom of a river. Watch Arcane or Edgerunners for good adaptions.

If you are in anyway familiar with fantasy, this will not stick with you. For the first two episodes, its a very familiar but oddly convoluted story so far. The visuals are impressive ( except when they have to CGI anything up-close), and they really do try to emulate the Jackson films in style and scope as much as possible. But man they really dogpile the exposition in the worst way possible. Feels like your being baby fed the story with how unnatural the dialogue and exposition is. Every action, every event, has to be meticulously described with characters speaking in such an exaggeratedly flowery way, that it really grinds the story down and you just feel like your waiting for the next flash of CGI to pick up the pace. The elves suffer from this the worse. The film's kept that prose for dialogue without making it feel like your time was being tested. Next, the characters. Most of them are appropriate for the tone and setting. Harfoots are whimsical and aloof, some weird bursts of modern phrases in there but whatever. Elf ranger(?) Arondir and his romance's plot do some solid characterization and help the explain the setting of Mordor and the different race's relations. Galadriel is by far the worst character because she does not feel like a person. Her lack of emotion coupled with the overly complicated prose of her dialogue, rushed plot and baffling decisions ( jumping ship to swim across an ocean by herself) and scenes of bloated dialogue really feels like their spreading the butter too thin with her. Nothing feels paced properly with her and everything feels like they can only have her repeat " Sauron is here" and for emotion, clutch her dagger for symbolism. So far, eh. I would recommend waiting for more episodes to come out if you haven't seen it, not missing out on anything here.

Arcane is a show most people, myself included, went in expecting a well animated marvel-esque romp, a decent adaption on League, with jokes, quippy characters and flashy action. After all, its a video game adaption right? Shove in fan service and its all it has to do. The show knows this as well, with the opening episodes being very well animated with intimate moments about sibling, family and light commentary on the class struggles of Piltover, the shining city of progress and technology and the Undercity, where the working and lower classes live in squalor and crime, ignored by Piltover. This is where the main characters Vi and Powder struggle to survive in. It plays out like an aged up cast of Goonies, and despite darker moments, it feels safe and familiar. Like a Disney film. Then episode 3 happens. The shift in tone is huge. The story and world suddenly becomes much more grim and dark, as the consequences of past episodes culminates in some of the most raw and emotional displays of shock and grief as rising tensions between the two cities explode. At this point the show makes it clear that is is not the safe, fan pandering schmaltz soap opera it was pegged to be. Violence is realistic and has impact, and is used sparingly but powerfully. The relationships are nuanced and emotional, never feeling like cheap soap opera, and never afraid to talk about mature topics. The hand animated expressions are a huge part of this, detailed to a point where the show can use silence and subtle visuals to detail emotions and thoughts without it being explicitly said. The world and characters are built from the ground up, toning down the high fantasy and end of the world stories for the rising class struggle between the two cities and the intimate and personal stories of their inhabitants, and how their actions affect others. This is how Arcane appeals to both fans and non fans, by making its world and story rooted in a sense of realism, even when it becomes fantastical. Choices and events feel realistic and reasonable to past and current events and stimuli. There is a real weight and consequence to a characters interactions and decisions. The show gets surprisingly explicit, but its never gratuitous or sleazy, with that level of intimacy becoming another way to explore a character rather than leering at cheap nudity. Admittedly, there are some pacing issues, debatably, especially when it comes to a central romance, and a hastiness in the last couple of episodes, resulting in some forced drama and contrived moments. Even with that, it still doesn't feel like a detraction from the whole, and given how the show juggles so many complicated plot threads at once in just 9 episodes, these feel like its within a shows margin of error. Arcane is masterfully woven story that is already being viewed as one of the best shows in recent memory, easily one of the best adaptations. I disagree. It is the best. No adaption matches its care or quality. And its quality puts it as one of the best animated shows period. Its confidence and style in its visuals rivals that of spiderverse, with some of the most realistic animation you will see. Only pre season 5 Game of Thrones has reached this level of world building, grit, tone and multiple plot threads. BTW please dont play League if you enjoy this show. Save yourself.