James Kinard

I thought it was going to be stupid, but the movie was surprisingly good.

I found the sequel to be very satisfying. I liked it better than the first honestly. It's the most emotional MCU movie I've seen by far, and it's a little slower than the first. I love the introduction of the Sub Mariner; that's a hard character to really transition into the big screen, but it was pulled off in the best way possible. Deviating from his original story arc of originating from Atlantis, I thought it was brilliant to make him ancient Mayan instead. This movie seems to divide critics at least on YouTube, but for me I thought it was one of the better MCU movies of the phase, and really in general. It's personally my favorite MCU movie to date. Shout-out to the soundtrack as well! Wakanda Forever has a pretty stellar one.

As always, the Avatar movie is visually stunning. I felt the story plot of the first movie was better. It was an okay plot. Some storylines I felt fell flat because it was given enough time to develop, but overall it wasn't a bad plot. It was quite entertaining! Kept me into it!

The irony of this is in the antagonist of the game managing to have a more compelling, and a slightly more humane story arc than that of the protagonist. I know a lot of people hate this game because they’re forced to play with the Abby character, but I’m going to have a hot take on the situation. This game will truly be incoherent had Naughty Dog chose not to do this. Granted, I was not a fan at all with what she did to Joel, and so realizing I was playing with my favorite character’s murderer really upset me. However, like I said before… though I didn’t like Joel being killed… it did make sense. Even before I understood the deeper connection behind Abby’s desire to off Joel, it still felt earned for them to do him in. Truth be told, Joel’s decision to save Ellie in the first game was super selfish… but we excuse this away because we genuinely loved both of these characters by that point. This supposed noble deed cost the world their only chance at a cure, and not to mention… Joel also did a number on the fireflies. This militia paid a high cost to have that one chance at saving humanity… and Joel took all of this away from them. It would be foolish to think that they wouldn’t come looking for him, and so Joel’s death, though disappointing… it wasn’t out of place. So, people will be mad at this and hate the game off this one premise, and it’s their right. Yet, I feel this is a rather reactionary response to a very emotional moment, and to be fair… this isn’t the first time The Last of Us eviscerated your expectations. It took me a solid day to continue playing the first game after getting so invested in Joel’s daughter, only for her to be killed off before the game title even showed. I was livid. In the end though, it became my favorite game of all time. So, my peace is said in this area. Did it live up to expectation? Not really. I still give the game four stars for the entertainment value, strong start of the game, good mixture with the Abby character, and stellar graphics. Having a tighter story arc, and rich character development for Ellie would have made this game so much better. Because the storyline was so predictable for our protagonist, it made it a weak concept. I pretty much had the plot figured out for Ellie three hours before the switch to Abby, and that’s often never good. High on the action, and weak on development makes The Last of Us 2… merely a respectable play.

The last season was okay... entertaining at least. Story plots previously setup were abandoned this season for a hasty wrap up that needed a few more seasons to do convincingly. The earlier seasons were amazing. Season 1-4 were well written, grounded in realism, and established the pace of the show. Seasons 5-6 took more liberties than the previous seasons, which sort of took the believable element away; still well written up to that point. Season 7 was entertaining... but a tad over the top with it's departure from the norm story lines. That season setup story plots that season 8 was suppose payoff... only a handful of them did. GoT had an amazing run, but didn't really finish that strongly. A couple more seasons would have did this show justice.