Reactions to Things

[anthimeria]

There will be a few spoilers for the Hunger Games movie and The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

 

A con, a movie, and a cartoon below the cut.

 

 

FOGCON: Continued to be awesome on day two, will do brief panel write-ups when I have my notes on hand.

 

Hunger Games: Saw the movie, it was good. The costume designers must've had a ton of fun, though I feel like they went cheesy a little too often--a lot of the Capitol fashions reminded me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, the 70s movie, instead of some crazy wealthy future fashion. It was like they were trying to be more ridiculous than beautiful, and while the Capitol is definitely ridiculous, I'd've liked more beautiful. Plus, I was sad that their flaming clothing got transformed into just flaming capes--c'mon, Katniss is The Girl Who Was On Fire, have a little more actual flame! Especially since it's a special effect. That said, I loved Seneca's wave-pattern beard and Cinna is The Best Ever, as usual. I really liked the choices they made for the other tribute's actors. And RUE! That was a shock. I didn't cry at the books (though I haven't gotten my hands on book 3 yet), so when Rue died and I unexpectedly burst into deep, uncontrollable sobs, I did not see it coming at all. I cried through the whole scene, though District 11 rioting, for several minutes afterward. No idea why. But I did. Definitely looking forward to the others.

 

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: My reactions to this are VERY MIXED. On the one hand, I love Jan and, hey, Hulk! I don't like Hulk as a general rule, but he is definitely my second-favorite (after Jan) on this show. Tony's fine, obviously based on Downey's Tony, Hank Pym swings wildly back and forth for me, from, "I'm glad someone's espousing nonviolence, even if nobody's listening." to "God, Hank, stop trying to control Jan's life! You're a narrow-sighted moron!" Captain America, so far, is a lantern-jawed authoritarian jerk, which I am not pleased with. He comes across as a bully, and the whole point of Steve Rogers is that he doesn't like bullies. That attitude is one of the reasons I liked the movie, and it's totally missing from this character so far.

 

The show itself also has some issues. It's a mix. On the one hand, I love the obvious racial variety of the background SHIELD agents (even if they seem to be the good guy equivalent to storm troopers--they can't hit the broad side of a giant robot and the Avengers have to swoop in and save the day--no Phil Coulson here). Asian, black, white, all around! I do not love that THE ONLY uniformed female SHEILD agent we've seen is Maria Hill, who gets yelled at a lot. There was a scene where she got knocked out by a duffle bag, and Fury got knocked out by the ceiling falling on him, and HE woke up first. WTF, show?

 

And then there's the episode I just watched. Called Panther's Quest. I don't even know where to start. Let's just say: "subtle" "modern" "neo"--whichever prefix you want to use, followed by racist.

 

As for reasons I'm still giving the show a shot, I love that the supervillains are SMART. So often if you're facing team like the Avengers, you feel like the writers are reaching for a way to even challenge them, but there are layers on layers of building plotlines and ongoing background arcs for the villains, and I am quite pleased.

 

On a similar note, there have been a lot of--I wouldn't call it multi-episode arcs (so far I've just watched the one, Breakout parts I and II)--but Levitz Paradigm stuff. As much as I hated Panther's Quest, it was a culmination of a lot of side-plots or scenes from previous episodes. We'd seen Panther in two or three previous episodes, mostly as one-off scenes or sneaky background stuff, the ep defeated a villain who'd shown up a few times, and there was a final scene that was obviously the beginning of the next arc that is also the culmination of other short scenes from previous episodes. That's the kind of writing you don't see very much anywhere, and I love it.

 

So: it's a mix. The dialogue veers wildly between funny and hilarious (mostly Jan and the Hulk, sometimes Tony, Hank, Jane Foster, or Thor) and Excessive Melodrama (unfortunately most of the time . . .). There are race wins and race oh, damns. There's Jan, Widow, and Jane, who are kickass and fantastic, and there's Maria Hill, The Only Girl In SHEILD. There's awesome, interesting, ongoing plotting and wafer-thin justifications for long battle scenes. The animation is growing on me but it isn't spectacular (everyone else misses B:TAS, Batman Beyond, Justice League and XME, right?). I love how they've powered up Jan but I wish there was another regular girl on the team.

 

In short, eleven episodes in, I could take it or leave it. But it's been recommended to me several times, so I'm going to try to at least finish the first season. We'll see if I make it.