The Marci Rating System

Hahahahahaha I have now watched KPop Demon Hunters, heck yeah!

all the songs on youtube

My thoughts, in no particular order:

*KITTY! KITTYKITTYKITTY

*yeah, the tiger's my favorite

*IT'S A MUSICAL

*LOL

*okay, that was genuinely very fun to watch

*also the songs are great

Okay, I have ALSO now watched (parts of) X-Men: Dark Phoenix (thanks, starandrea!), and I am ALARMED at their lack of post-mission safety checks. EVERYONE should get a post-mission medical* check**, right?

(*PS: I do not think Hank is that kind of doctor.)

(**PPS: I did laugh that a genetic scan is part of the 'basic' checkup. LOL he probably IS that kind of doctor by that point in movie canon.)

(haven't they ever read comics before? going into space and coming back is a CLASSIC way to wind up with an alien passenger, an alien symbiote, exposure to unknown space radiation, etc, etc, etc)

(STORY TIME: Many years ago, I wound up in the hospital. I was asked again and again if I'd hit my head. Every time I said "no, I didn't hit my head; my head is fine." I had no memory of hitting my head! I was SURE I hadn't hit my head! It wasn't until DAYS LATER, and I was trying to figure out why brushing my hair hurt, that I realized I had a pretty large bump on my head. I DEFINITELY HIT MY HEAD. The shock of the entire experience meant I didn't remember hitting my head, and it genuinely felt fine when they asked (thanks, adrenaline). Luckily I was not in space, so no aliens or space radiation.)

ANYWAY the point is that I am fully supportive of believing people when they say they're fine, but also sometimes they have no idea what they're talking about.

Yesterday, as I was driving back from the grocery store, I decided that I actually DID want to watch Independence Day 2, which led me down an absolute rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to do that. (Hint: it's NOT the thing preloaded on macs that has 'movie' in the name.)

ANYWAY finally the internet revealed to me that I should be looking for the "Apple TV" app on my computer, which seemed wrong to me in multiple ways, but was in fact correct, and there were my movies! All five of them.

And in a charming turn of events, I found that if you watch ID2 without expecting it to A) make sense relative to the first movie, or B) make sense relative to itself, AND you make sure to remember that with the advances in technology the movie shows that everyone is definitely fine and not dead, it's a rollicking good time! I enjoyed it very much. Two thumbs up as a way to celebrate the holiday!

*In my opinion, the least fun Marvel movie I have ever watched. It's SO lacking in fun that I may actually watch the second half, like a sort of curiosity factor. It can't ALL be unpleasant, right? (It's TWO HOURS and FORTY MINUTES long! It has to be some sort of statistical improbability for me to dislike all of it!)

*Okay, so I have TWO main issues with the movie. The first is plot-related, in the sense that I don't like it. I don't feel the MCU has made very interesting choices about integrating comic-book-type people and situations into the world. Virtually none of the aspects of the plot I've seen so far make any sense.

*My second issue is presentation-related, in the sense that I CAN'T SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING WHEN IT'S SO DARK ALL THE TIME and also I CAN'T HEAR THE DIALOGUE BECAUSE IT'S SO QUIET. I assume the CGI and graphics are impressive, but I don't know for sure because I can't see them. Is it a whale? A submarine? A dark blob? I CAN'T TELL!!! It felt like I spent the whole time squinting at the screen.

(There was a PARTICULARLY unlit scene in which I was taken completely by surprise when the subtitles told me elephants were trumpeting. I COULDN'T SEE ANY ELEPHANTS! The characters were looking in alarm at SOMETHING and I was like 'there's nothing there! just a dark screen!')

(The subtitles are somewhat the star of the movie, actually, because they describe the emotional tone of the music in each scene. ~suspenseful music playing~ or ~uplifting music playing~ or ~eerie music playing~ It's fascinating to me that the movie appears to depend on these subtitles to do 100% of the emotional labor.)

*In conclusion: there are hints of a much more interesting and well-lit movie hiding in this movie! Enough to maybe motivate me to watch the second half.

*I enjoyed it! It was what I was expecting when I watched 'Red Notice' -- deliberately over-the-top, didn't take itself too seriously, plot made zero sense at all, but it was funny and that worked for it.

*Some bonus points for making the setting a tiny island instead of "deep in the jungle of South America," and for the "treasure" reveal.

*This movie had a surprising amount of similarities with "Dora and the Lost City of Gold," which made me laugh a lot, and absolutely increased my enjoyment of both movies.

*Did Channing Tatum get a haircut before the final beach scene? I was so confused! Was it my imagination? Was he filming another movie? Was it a joke that I missed?

*Overall: fun; would be willing to watch again.

I enjoyed it very much! I like it much better when movies have some kind of magical component, because it keeps me from stressing out so much over the things that don't make sense. I can just be like, 'well, it's magic.' It's an AU!

Storyline: Relatable, and significantly less creepy than I'd feared when the internet told me 'the uncle that disappeared and that no one talks about is still living inside the walls of the house.' (Yikes.)

Songs: Sing-along-able, a key metric!

Overall: I'm glad I watched it AND would watch again!

(Favorite moment: Antonio telling the jaguar "Don't eat that," and thus proving that even when granted the magical ability to understand and speak with animals, you'll wind up spending a certain amount of time trying to get your cat to not eat things that will be bad for them.)

(PS: The internet tells me the jaguar is named Parce, which is Columbian slang short for parcero/parcera, and means 'friend.' Awwww!)

There are So Many Things I would like to do today, and that it seems like I *should* do today, it's overwhelming. And it's tempting to just not do any of them, except I know I will feel better at the END of the day if I've made some sort of an effort.

HOWEVER! It is the FOURTH OF JULY, which means it must be time for my annual Independence Day rewatch! Lots of options for the rewatch this year, so it will be interesting to see how it fits into the day. Or tomorrow! Also part of the holiday!

I thought about watching it when it buzzed around tumblr in 2020, but the moment was never quite right. And then this week I wanted to read the furniture restoration AU, and I thought 'you know, it would be more fun to watch this story in my head if I knew which one of them was Joe and which was Nicky,' so I figured the moment must be right.

Some random thoughts in no particular order:

*The dreaming thing was an A+ fanfic trope. I loved that in general they didn't explain anything. 'Why are we like this? Why does it start? Why does it stop? Why do we dream about each others' lives until we meet and then not afterwards?' Eh, IDK. Who knows? That is some excellent fertile ground for fanfic. (And, I think, pretty realistic -- how would they know?)

*I feel like I read an article at one point that said the movie had to be more character-driven because it didn't have the budget to do things like big special effects explosions or car chases or actually showing Paris. That was excellent; I liked it; let's have more conversations about snacks in all movies.

*I haven't read any fanfic except the furniture restoration au at this point, but I would like to imagine there are at least eight million stories about all of them (including Quynh, of course!) happily chatting about snacks and going to therapy and enjoying their lives as a found family.

Yesterday I re-watched 'Independence Day,' which holds up surprisingly well for a movie that came out in 1996. (Which was TWENTY FOUR YEARS AGO, what?!?!?)

Which means now it must be time to watch 'Independence Day 2,' which was a hot mess of a movie whose biggest achievement was probably that it pretended so hard that it didn't contradict the first one in So Many Ways. (Or, I mean, that the characters managed to say things like 'the aliens want to extract the Earth's molten core,' and look 100% serious about it.)

(The great thing about fanfic is that it makes movies like 'ID2: Even More Independence' so much more fun to watch! The first movie was a pretty self-contained story. The second movie was not -- it made no sense! It referenced things that were never explained! It left dozens of things unresolved by just never mentioning them again! Which is PERFECT for fanfic!)

I liked it! Way more than I thought I would!

Clearly I don't have a ton of coherent analysis thought up. Or any.

*I liked the deserter stormtroopers.

*I liked the hug. (Okay, all the hugging.)

*Hahaha good thing we didn't have to factor travel time into any of our plans, because that would be a wacky adherence to logic that these movies Just Don't Need.

*On the topic of logic: what?!?

*Love the totally fake promotions they give each other in the Resistance. ("Thank you, by the way.")

*DROIDS RIGHTS.