2. Chaos Reigns - I don't really know how to describe this movie other than completely chaotic. Like, it's just chaos from beginning to end. The plot, the dialogue, the action, the CGI, the villain(s) - it's just one big ball of chaos. Some of it's decent, some of it's confusing, but most of it could have been done better. And I sort of expected that? I enjoyed the first one (way more than I even expected to), but, critically speaking, it had a lot of issues, mostly with consistency - some of it looked terrible and some of it looked great. When that happens - it's clear to me that it's a director issue. And not that Patty Jenkins is a bad director (hardly), but she's still so new and she's learning, especially with big blockbusters like this. The problem is that everyone overlooked the problems in the first one, so...why would she bother fixing them with the sequel? And now, she's suddenly being held to a higher standard. I don't think this sequel is a bad movie - it's just...a lot. And it's very inconsistent. Gadot and Pine do a fine job, and have lovely chemistry, but Pedro Pascal felt like he was in a different movie. I'm LOVING the adoration I see for him (between this and The Mandalorian, it feels like he is everywhere now and it is well-deserved), but I didn't love his performance here. Kristen Wiig is great until she turns full-blown Cheetah (please stop making cat/human hybrids in movies - my eyes still haven't recovered from Cats). I also feel like it should have been a lot more fun with the play off of 80s nostalgia. Maybe it's passed its prime, and has already been done to death (we've moved on to 90s nostalgia - Clueless remake imminent), but I still think it could have been done better.
3. The Response - I'm not sure why the response to this became such a big deal seemingly overnight. From what I could gather, the critics that got to see it early gave it fairly good reviews - which left a lot of people disappointed in the results. And then people started to gang up on these critics for pandering to the studios (and possibly getting paid to review favorably). The whole point of studios releasing to critics early is to build "hype" for a movie, so obviously this happens to a degree, but I fully believe that most critics stand by what they write. And I think a lot of critics were probably just super happy to be watching a blockbuster movie after months and months of delays (and a worldwide pandemic happening) and they let that effect their thoughts. This is what happens when you let anyone with an opinion and a keyboard write movie reviews. Honestly, "professional" critics are a thing of the past. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing - it became such an elitist, self-aggrandizing profession and personally, I would rather read reviews from my twitter buddies who put their own personal thoughts into movies (like myself). However, there is now a shit-ton of people writing about film, who actually know nothing about filmmaking. You can't hold them to the same standards, anymore. And if they felt joy and hope while watching this and decided to write in their reviews, what's the big deal? Anyway, there is also a whole weird focus (mostly by men) who are "disturbed" by the body swapping plot and actually have the audacity to complain about consent - first, maybe do some research on power dynamics within heterosexual sex and then...um...shut your face. Second, the whole plot point is obviously a play on the very questionable plots within 80s movies (I mean, there was a movie in which a guy falls in love with a fucking mannequin for fuck's sake). It's called commentary and it's supposed to be a little "icky" you dumb fucks. Everyone got one thing right, though, and that is that this would be forgotten within days. That's definitely a result of releasing films on-demand - the shelf life for discussion is two days max.
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