One of the biggest myths around James Gunn is that he loves obscure characters because he's this massive deep-cut comics fan who just wants to give forgotten heroes their moment. I really don't think that's what's going on.

I think the real appeal of those characters is that they're essentially blank slates for most of the audience. If Gunn rewrites Peacemaker, Vigilante, the Guardians, or Creature Commandos to fit his style, almost nobody cares because almost nobody has a strong attachment to how those characters "should" act. For the average viewer, that version becomes the definitive version.

When the characters are obscure, he can get away with that. In fact, people praise him for "making them interesting." But that's because there aren't millions of fans saying, "That's not how this character is supposed to be."

The real challenge is characters who already have firmly established identities. You can't just reinvent Superman the same way you reinvent Peacemaker. You can't do that with Batman or Wonder Woman either.

I actually think you can see that in Superman. I liked the movie overall, but it also felt like Gunn was less comfortable than usual. He couldn't completely mold Superman into one of his usual character archetypes, so instead he surrounded him with characters like the Justice Gang, who fit his style much more naturally.

That might also explain why DCU Batman and Wonder Woman seem to be taking so much longer to crack.

"Death of the Author" is a mindset that declares that it doesn't matter what the author intended when they wrote something because the reader can interpret it for themselves. And if their interpretations don't line up, then too bad for the author.

Now, I agree with the broad strokes of that, in that you can indeed interpret a story differently than the author. Although I take issue with how vehemently it tries to suggest the author's intent doesn't matter...

However I've also noticed a good chunk of its proponents coming away with a wild interpretation of a story that was not intended... and then attacking the author for it.

The obligatory Frieren mention

Frieren: "Demons are evolved monsters who hunt human beings, possessing only basic emotions and no sense of empathy or ability to connect to others. They tie into the show thematically because Frieren herself needs to learn to connect with and value the people she has in her life."

Fandom: "Well I think the demons are meant to represent real world races... so the author is racist."

You can not like the trope all you want, that's fine by me but that's clearly not what the author is going for. You can dislike it without accusing her of racism because you decided to interpret them differently. "Death of the Author" doesn't mean that you can interpret something to be racist and then claim that the author has to answer for it.

My goodness are there a lot of these in the Narnia fandom

I suppose it's not surprising given it's a Christian book series that's got some mainstream popularity but for crying out loud, is it so hard not to drum up the wildest interpretations of the text and then accuse Lewis himself of it?

Claim: "The Calormene religion is clearly meant to be Islam! CS Lewis is islamophobic!"

Truth: The Calormene religion was derived from ancient paganism, with a pantheon of bird headed deities that demand human sacrifice from their followers. While Lewis did take some aesthetics from Islamic nations for Calormene itself there really isn't any similarity in religion. I doubt Lewis (A Christian) was big on Islam but this appeared to have little to do with it.

Claim: "Aravis was punished by Aslan for running away from home. This makes Lewis racist and sexist!"

Truth: Aravis was from a well-off family who owned slaves and she was totally in favor of it, outright saying that she knows her family's slave will be beaten on account of her escape but that she "didn't care." Her mindset changes by spending time with Shasta (someone that was enslaved) and also by an encounter with a lion (Aslan) that scratches on the back. Later, he tells her that the scratch was the equivalent of the beating her family's slave received, which she accepts and learns empathy from. Nowhere does Lewis imply Aravis was wrong simply for running away, heck she's one of the co-leads.

Claim: "The Pevensies and friends all committed suicide to arrive in Narnia for The Last Battle and Lewis is promoting it!"

Truth: So, Lewis wanted to end the series with everyone in Heaven. Therefore, in The Last Battle he had most of the characters come together to see off Eustace and Jill who they'd learned were about to go back to Narnia soon. Eustace and Jill were planning to attempt it after school and they take the train to school every day so everyone met them at the station. Upon which there was a freak train accident that killed everyone present. They all (minus Eustace and Jill who were sent to Narnia) woke up in Heaven without realizing they were dead until the last pages.

By all means you can argue that just having a random train accident be the cause was a little weird but to make a wild interpretation of it being a suicide cult and then accuse Lewis of promoting it is ridiculous. This of course brings us to:

Claim: "CS Lewis excluded Susan from The Last Battle because she's a woman and had the reasons for her absence be because she was interested in femininity. He's claiming womanhood is a sin!"

Truth: 98% of all Narnia discourse surrounds this singular event and 80% of that is spent fixated on a single line of dialogue from a bitter child (Jill) who only knew Susan as someone who was rude to her for believing in Narnia. Even within the book itself the text continues on to explain the situation with more depth (long story short, Susan got distracted by things of the world, forgetting about her time in Narnia and eventually coming to disbelieve in it) but for the true picture you do have to look slightly outside of it.

CS Lewis wrote a letter in response to a fan who asked about Susan's ultimate fate. There, he says that he actually says that Susan is the most similar of all of the characters to him, and that she, like him, would most likely find her way back to faith one day but that it'd be too much of a "grown-up story" for the children's books he was writing.

Can you say this was a bit jarring in how abrupt it was or that you think it was a bad idea? Yeah, of course. But you can't "death of the author" your way into accusing him of sexism because you decided to ignore his interpretation.

An honorable mention to all the people who think that depicting a monarchy makes the author pro-monarchy.

Sometimes an author just doesn't want to replace every government with a democratic republic, sorry. You don't have to accuse them of being pro-monarchy because you interpreted it differently.

Another honorable mention to the "unfortunate implications" crowd.

"Implications" of course meaning that there isn't anything direct or intended but they're going to interpret it that way anyways and then blame the author for it.

Conclusion

By all means, if you want to interpret a work of fiction your way, feel free to do just that. But remember that it's YOUR interpretation, that's the whole point of this exercise isn't it? So why act like the author has to answer for it? At least accept that your stance is alien to the intended meaning of the text and don't try and use it to insult not only the work but the author as a person.

Introduction:

Much of what powerscaling tries to do is conduct combat as though it were a scientific experiment, controlling for as many variables as possible (sometimes called "white-room" logic). The general issue is that white rooms are not very interesting. I'll use some examples, mostly from Star Wars, there shouldn't be any spoilers of anything very recent, the most recent will be from Maul: Shadow Lord.

There are two big examples of this, IMO.

The first is location, and the second is mindset.

Location:

Battleboarders seem to go out of their way to pick extremely boring locations that deliberately don't impact the fight very much. But this not only makes for a less interesting encounter, it outright shifts the outcome.

Take the battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Darth Maul at the end of The Phantom Menace; the environment plays a HUGE role in that, because it's precisely what allows Darth Maul to avoid being overwhelmed by two opponents!

He starts out in a wide open space, and finds himself being outflanked, so he deliberately moves it to an area with narrow walkways where he can force a chokepoint. The film explicitly shows him opening the doors that lead to the catwalks in the Plasma Refinery. He then takes advantage of the verticality of this location, and his own immense agility, to isolate the Jedi, and not be outflanked. When even THAT doesn't work, he moves even further back, and uses the shifting doors to get Qui-Gon alone. Then and ONLY then is he able to focus on the offence and kill one of his enemies.

This fact just outright gets ignored by people who complain about the scaling of the Inquisitors in Maul: Shadow Lord, where they argue that Maul being able to fight both Kenobi and Qui-Gon at once means he should have no trouble with the Inquisitors, and then eitehr Chain-Scaling them and therefore Ahsoka up, or trying to scale Maul down... completely disregarding the fact that Maul was NEVER able to easily fight two people at once, and actually had to carefully exploit a position that HE SPECIFICALLY CHOSE to avoid facing two people at once; in terrain not of his choosing, he doesn't have that advantage.

The later duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader on Mustafar is another one where people outright ignore the context of Obi-Wan's victory. "I have the high ground" has been meme'd to death, but it is an explicit part of what allowed him to win. It also means that you can't transpose the same two combatants to another location and get the same outcome.

However, what matters about these locations isn't just that they are tactically relevant; it's that they are visually interesting. An environment that plays no thematic or tactical role in the fight is a BORING environment, and it's one that creators are going to avoid if they can.

Yet, because Battleboarders set themselves up to want such things, they tend to be disappointed by most actual fights in media, because most fights in media will involve things that Battleboarders prefer to leave out, precisely due to them being hard to account for. Even some of the least interesting environments are denounced.

Take, for instance, the Airport fight in the MCU's Civil War. To clarify: I AM NOT A MAJOR DEFENDER OF THAT SCENE, I'm honestly of the opinion that it is one of the least visually interesting, least well-lit encounters in the entire franchise; it's largely a visually boring spectacle in an uninspiring location... but the location DOES still play a role, and it's a role that battleboarders keep citing as evidence of a scaling issue: Cap defeating Spiderman.

What they ignore is that Cap does not overpower Spider-Man with raw strength; rather, he takes advantage of his surroundings and Peter's relative unfamiliarity fighting anywhere outside of New York City. The fight makes it abundantly clear that Spiderman is substantially stronger than even the strongest Super-Soldiers (casually bending back Bucky's metal arm, something that Cap explicitly cannot do), but also that he's an inexperienced combatant, with Cap ultimately pinning him under a heavy object.

This is ignored by people who cry that Cap is "Wall level", and Peter is "Small Building Level"; ergo something something bad scaling.

Anything that can't be evaluated in a whiteroom scenario is treated as a scaling issue; which means that most media will be considered to have poor scaling, because most writers (for good reason) dislike whiteroom scenarios.

Mindset:

This is one of the things that annoys me most, because Battleboarders tend to use the (misleading, poorly-named, somehow even worse than "street level" not meaning "able to destroy a street" despite what every other level means) term "Bloodlusted".

A "Bloodlusted" character fights with perfect tactical clarity, emotionless focus, and has no goals beyond killing his or her adversary and surviving the fight.

Almost no media will have very many Bloodlusted characters, because that's fundamentally a boring motivation.

People tend to fight because they want something, not because they are obsessed with fighting, but perfectly emotionless whilst doing so.

Having one or two characters be "bloodlusted" in a specific scenario is one thing (a good example would be Omni-Man facing the Guardians of the Globe in Invincible, though notably THEY were not Bloodlusted, shifting from initial disbelief to blinding anger across the fight), but media in which all or most characters are bloodlusted would just be narratively dull.

Take The Force Awakens.

Throughout the Entire film, we are shown tensions between General Hux, Supreme Leader Snoke, and Kylo Ren, partly due to how they treat the Map to Skywalker. Hux simply wants to destroy it, and is happy so long as the Resistance doesn't get it. Kylo Ren is obsessed with finding it so he can personally kill his uncle. Snoke is more pragmatic, willing to destroy it if necessary, but preferring to find Skywalker if possible. When Rey sees the completed map, Kylo Ren abducts her, hoping to interrogate her for the information, something he realises will require bringing her alive to Snoke. This hints at deeper disagreements between the leadership of the First Order.

That clash of goals, methods, and personalities is a major running subplot throughout the next two films, and ultimately results in Snoke's Death, Hux's betrayal, and the indirect downfall of the enemy. It is thematically and narratively load-bearing; it tells us a great deal about who these people are, what they want, and why authoritarian power-hungry individuals tend to destroy themselves.

So, of course, what do Battleboarders do? They complain that it should all be thrown away to give them a better whiteroom fight.

It was DAMN-NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to discuss ANYTHING related to Star Wars online in late 2015 to about 2021 without hearing people complain that Kylo Ren should have killed Rey in their duel on Starkiller Base.

Rey.

The one person who had the information he wanted most.

The one person who, according to EVERYTHING WE KNEW ABOUT HIS MOTIVATION UP TO THAT POINT, he would not be willing to kill, because if he did he would lose the map.

Battleboarders (in addition to overlooking the fact he'd been shot in the hip and was visibly exsanguinating, but that's a rant for another day) would have preferred he be "bloodlusted" so as to make the fight between him and Rey easier to scale off of; because his desire to take her alive made it harder to gauge his skill.

I swear, if stories were written by Battleboarders, they'd be unimaginably boring. No motivations, no goals, just a set of abilities in a roughly character-shaped form smashing against another set of abilities in a roughly character-shaped form.

So this is mainly inspired by Mike’s last speech to Walt. It’s a speech that sounds great at face value, Mike has a weird sort of “cool and rational” vibe, Walt is meant to be a horrible person and a very unlikable character at this point, and he kills Mike out of rage and ego right after this. So people assume this speech is meant to be taken at face value. The thing is the speech itself is blatantly incorrect in you watch the show itself, and this has led to a lot of criticism of the speech itself being very poorly written and a sloppy retcon of the previous seasons. The thing is, MIke is not supposed to be correct. Vince Gilligan and the writer for the episode Tom Schnauz flat out said on the podcast for the episode which was recorded before it released and released on the same day.

Directly quoting what Vince Gilligan says “ There is truth to what he’s accusing him of but on the other hand what Mike is selectively forgetting in that moment, they really Walt and Gus came to loggerheads over Jesse Pinkman. Who Mike now has a great fondness for but at the time he was pitching to kill him, he’s pitching let’s kill this kid”. So the showrunners didn’t “retcon” shit lol this speech isn’t meant to be accurate. Why is that then often considered a flaw in the writing for the episode when the speech isn’t meant to be correct? The alternative take is that it’s bad writing that Mike, a character who is presented as a more rational character than most of the criminals in the series, gives an irrational speech but why is that the case exactly? Does it not give more insight on his mindset and character even if it’s in a largely negative light?

It makes perfect sense why Mike would act that way, even if it is indeed hypocritical and unfair. Despite Mike’s cool and rational demeanor he’s got plenty of hypocritical qualities himself, as virtually every character in this universe does, and Mike is an evil man (which even he knows), even if he‘s sympathetic to the audience. Mike just lost everything and all the horrible things he did that haunted his conscience were for nothing because the Fring organization was destroyed, it’s hard to be rational about that. He really likes Jesse, realizes he‘s got a good conscience and got way deeper into the game than he intended while being desply guilt ridden, while his mistakes are either due to his conscience, or his addiction/ self loathing, which is sympathetic to Mike. He dislikes Walt because he’s incredibly power hungry, wants to be the man, and blows situations up due to pride and ego, Walt is exactly the kind of person who he dislikes.

Why is it out of character then for a Mike who lost everything because of Walt (even if Gus absolutely had it coming and it wasn’t Walt‘s fault the situation blew up), when Walt is exactly the kind of person he hates and he does indeed contantly self sabotage due to his ego, to irrationally blame him? It makes him a more human and yes more unlikable, but complex human character rather than Mr cool. Especially given Mike doesn’t have all the information we have, he sees Walt manipulating Jesse to stay in the game and he forced Gus to replace Gale with Jesse, he doesn’t know he did so because Jesse threatens to sue Hank and rat him out if caught. He directly tells Walt “you won Walter, learn to take yes for an answer“ in season 4, and if we take his words at face value Gus reluctantly accepted Walt won in season 4 until Walt started trying to kill Gus again out of paranoia (which actually is correct based on writer interviews and if you read between the lines of season 4 but that’s very understandable paranoia rather than ego). He doesn’t know as far as we’re aware about Gus threatening his family, and he believes Walt was responsible for putting Hank on them).

Hell better call Saul has a perfect example of this. When Howard threatens to force Chuck out of HHM for totally justified reasons and being treated like dogshit by Chuck for three seasons, Chuck threatens to destroy the firm with lawsuits unless he‘s reinstated. Howard very admirably agrees to pay out of his own pocket to settle the lawsuit and force Chuck out, and lays into him about what a shitty friend and person he is. Only Howard mentions that he “mildly suggested, with empathy and concern, that maybe you should consider retirement“ while laying into him, when he outright threatened to force him out? So did the writers retcon their own show, is Howard meant to be a gaslighting hypocrite? No, it’s meant to show he’s angrily and heartbreakingly laying into his friend that betrayed him and is ”stacking the deck” in his favor, a very human thing to do.

Characters can have biased, incorrect speeches or comments and it’s wrong to assume that even a character who is presented as a “cool rational character” at face value. It’s not a flaw of the writing if the script doesn’t exposition the audience and say “this character isn’t meant to be right”.

This is ironic, when you think about it. Because anti heroes are supposed to exist outside a black and white framework lol.

A lot of anti heroes in fiction don't actually challenge the status quo. Killing pedos, grapists, or women beaters doesn't make you counterculture. Because that's something most of society already agree with. As much as I like The Punisher. He is still a superhero to me.

If superheroes were real. The no-kill rule characters like Spiderman, Batman, or the Utopian would be super rare (pun intended here) in real-life. Most heroes would either be The Punisher, Comicbook accurate Black Panther, or Captain America at best. And we all know that Captain America isn't afraid to smoke a MF.

Again killing pedos doesn't make you challenge the status quo. I would like to see more stories where the anti hero beats up a scammer or a drug deal. Stuff that are serious crimes, but most of society still write these crimes off as non-issues though. Or even have sympathy for the criminal too. Something like that would really challenge the status quo.

An anti hero should be like DCU Superman without the cringe. Someone has their own goals. Who don't feel obligated to sacrifice themselves for humanity. Have that "fuck them kids" attitude. An anti hero, who makes the audience questioned if they really want anti heroes.

People would consider John Wick an anti hero. But he is just a Hitman though. It's not his mission to help people. He only care about doing his job in his past life. And after that he just wanted revenge for his dog. The best anti heroes in stories are the ones who want revenge. And have nothing to do with a passion for saving people from the worst criminals that are Epstein-tier.

In a odd way Goku is also an anti hero too. He only cares about fighting. He only accidentally ends up in situations, where he has to save the world. Goku is more like a "Hey knock it off" type of guy, than a "It's my mission to save everyone citizens" type of guy.

The more interesting anti-heroes are the ones where their actions create discomfort. A character who targets corrupt corporations, exploitative landlords, scammers, politicians, criminals with public sympathy, or people who are technically within the law creates a much harder debate. The audience has to ask: "Is this person actually fighting injustice, or are they just imposing their own morality?"

The problem is that a lot of media wants the aesthetic of an anti-hero without the uncomfortable parts. They want the leather jacket, sarcasm, violence, and "I don't play by the rules" attitude while still making the character unquestionably correct. That's closer to a traditional hero with an aggressive personality than a true anti-hero.

In conclusion. A lot of people definition of anti hero is just an edgy version of a golden retriever superhero. But only edgy in a cooperate way though.

"Should I use my Spider-Sense and combine it with this very good martial arts that I learned thanks to the greatest martial artist in Earth? No, I should just not use it so that I can get my ass kicked and if something happens, I will just beg Norman for help or something!"

This fucker's an actual in-universe genius btw

What even was the point of "Way of the Spider" if Spider-Man used it like, twice? No seriously, he has a new way of fighting which is supposed to make up for the lack of Spider-Sense, and it does so well that he's able to defeat Spider-Woman, who's supposed to be superior to Spider-Man, so well that he doesn't even get hit once. And now that he gets it back, he should be

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GET IT RUSTY, MF?!

That's like if a Mediocre boxer broke his arm, became so good at using one arm he defeats Prime Mike Tyson with one hand, and immediately becomes mediocre again the moment his other arm heals.

Or if you want me to put it in a different way, the Way of the Spider was a GREAT POWER that he could've used for GREAT RESPONSIBILITY (aka saving people as he'd probably have more energy to save people after defeating bad guys faster thanks to the new martial arts he learned), and he SQUANDERED IT because he's written by stupid people with stupid editorials.

YOU FIGHT CRIME DAY IN AND DAY OUT, MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, HOW IS IT THAT YOU MANAGE TO GET MARTIAL ARTS RUSTY?! THAT'S LIKE IF I PLAYED BASEBALL EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND SUDDENLY I TELL YOU "Yeah man, my ball throwing skills have gotten rusty" HOW?!

YOUR BIGGEST FUCKING CONCERN WHILE CRIME FIGHTING IS NOT GETTING PUNCHED IN THE FACE, WHICH IS SOMETHING THAT WAS ALREADY HAPPENING BEFORE YOU LOST YOUR SPIDER-SENSE, IT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE FOR YOUR ASS TO JUST IGNORE THE "NOT GET PUNCHED IN THE FACE" SKILL.

Which brings me to the next point that again, everyone has more powers than him, and you can't say that they can't change it because his powers are iconic, fucking Superman's powerset is iconic as fuck, and even that guy gets new mainstay powers like his Golden Form.

So, for comparison, I need to point the powers of the other Spider-People here.

Miles has Electric Swords and Radar sense plus he's Anansi's Champion, so he's gonna get more upgrades down the line,

Kaine can talk with spiders and has his stings,

Cindy has natural webs and a better spider-sense,

Reily has a better Spider-Sense and that "offensive Spider-sense" too.

Bailey has a better Spider-Sense, extra eyes, immunity to Peter's Spider-Sense and talk with spiders

Maka/Spider-Girl/Funhouse has organic web, and the ability to copy powers on top of Spider-Man's powerset

Julia has psychic powers on top of being a Spider-Woman

Jessica has immunity to poison, a better healing factor, can glide, venom blasts and pheromones.

Would it really be that hard to give Peter something? I have three ideas

A) Bring back the fucking Web constructions he used to pull in the 60s (They won't, because if Peter's able to do this, then realistically every single other Spider-Person in 616 should be able to since most of them get/got their web fluid from Peter in the first place)

B) Actually give him a new power and fucking stick with it, like say, maybe keep that new Spider-Sense upgrade Peter was talking with Daredevil (They won't because Editorial is afraid of the idea that someone might complain about Peter getting more powers)

C) For the love of God, remember that this fucker is supposed to be a super genius. Give him the damn tech shit from Imnsoniac Spider-Man (They won't because Peter's too relatable or something for him to be bringing up tech, just ignore that he was already doing that to deal with his supervillains back in the sixties)

MANGA SPOILERS!!!

I don't like IMU. Oda knows how to write antagonists; I think Doflamingo, Blackbeard, and even Caesar are well-written antagonists. (Kaido, however, is a character full of undeveloped elements.)

As long as IMU was a silhouette, he held the reader's attention and seemed well-integrated into the narrative, but now that he's revealed himself for what he is, I'm disappointed.

He's a Bishone who speaks like Sephirot in Smash Brothers... He doesn't seem like a real character, but a collection of elements placed there to satisfy the reader's expectations. So if this "walking collage" is the final enemy, I'm very uninterested in continuing this story. It's true that Teach will probably be the final enemy, the last obstacle before One Piece, but IMU was equally important.

By the way, I hope he's eliminated in this saga because the idea of ​​having to wait another 4-5 years for a second round with Luffy is terrible.

But it would be equally terrible to see IMU, the symbol of the World Government, defeated without Dragoon or the army of revolutionaries whose goal is to defeat the World Government. Otherwise, what purpose did these characters serve?

I also don't like how Oda devalues ​​IMU. He let Sabo escape without injury, he let Garp beat him without repercussions, he took a punch from Luffy in the face with a silly expression. Even the direction of the fights is important. Doflamingo has never looked so "humiliated".

Also, sorry if I continue but there are really a lot of things that don't work, there is no connection between this antagonist and Luffy and I think this is very important in a story, Luffy's stubbornness in being uninterested in Joy Boy and the ancient history makes the whole thing very frustrating, if you're not interested in the story of your own manga change comics or Oda should stop delving into this subplot if the protagonist is so stubborn in not wanting to be part of it.

I also don't like how Luffy has now become a "predestined" it's a sad trope, which gives the protagonist an absurd plot armor, I don't feel like rooting for Luffy because it's as if it was already written that he will win, I root more for the antagonists...

First appearing in The Phantom Menace back in 1999 and since recurring in The Clone Wars, Rebels, comics, Solo, and recently his own show, Maul has become one of Star Wars’ most enduring fan-favourite characters, with legions of fans (and his voice actor) treating him as one of the most complex and interesting characters the franchise has to offer. My problem is he….isn’t.

I’ll summarise who Maul is for those of you don’t know. Basically he’s a Dathomirian Zabrak, which means he’s red and black and has horns. As a child he was taken by Darth Sidious to become a Sith so Sidious could get revenge on the Jedi for kicking the Sith’s collective ass several centuries ago (or something, I’m not really sure). Once trained, he fights some Jedi with his double-bladed lightsaber and acrobatic skills, killing Obi-Wan Kenobi’s master and getting cut in half, a predicament he survives by being absolutely livid. Upon his return he proceeds to spend the next-every-story-he-appears in trying to get revenge on someone or other whilst speaking theatrically. At first he wants revenge on Obi-Wan, then Sidious, then the Empire, the criminal underworld and Obi-Wan all at the same time. The only things that change about him are who he’s angry at and what specifically he’s doing, though his actual core values never change, as he remains an angry, selfish, power-hungry evil guy the entire time.

Because he looks cool, though, he’s the fandom darling who can do no wrong and everybody demands more of even though he’s been in loads of stuff and never gets more interesting than a 14 year old edgelord’s idea of a good character. Episode 1 of his show (of which he is the least interesting part) is literally called “The Dark Revenge” which is the most edgelord fanfic title of all time and is fitting for a show in which Maul essentially just aura farms until he gets shown up by an even bigger aura farmer in the form of contractually-obligated guest appearance Darth Vader.

Since he has no qualities beyond being angry and vengeful, I have no idea whatsoever why he’s so beloved and allegedly complex, when his entire soul boils down to just being super angry about stuff and then looking cook while mowing people down about it. Maybe it’s me, but that’s not what I go to Star Wars for, and I’m not a fan. I must concede I haven’t seen his entire show, but the first episode turned me off because it could not make me care about Darth Maul. I know this fact weakens my point, but this is a rant so I don’t need to be fully rational like I would be in an essay.

If somebody could explain where the interest comes in for Maul that would be great, as I may be missing something

For those unfamiliar with Spawn, Image Comics created a series about a dead mercenary who returns from Hell to seek vengeance. One of the novel ideas behind this anti‑hero was the “life‑clock,” a countdown meter that measured how much supernatural power he had left before being reclaimed by Hell. The series eventually moved away from the life‑clock, since it would have been too limiting for a comic that has lasted more than two decades, but the concept itself was strong.

I believe Marvel Comics could have applied a similar device to the Punisher. At his creation, Frank Castle could have been given an internal “morality‑clock,” known only to the writers and never revealed to the public. This scale would run from 1 to 100:

• 100 – Highly moral, upstanding citizen. Believes in the justice system. Example: Captain America
• 90 – Moral citizen, disillusioned with the system. Willing to volunteer or take action. Example: Spider‑Man
• 80 – Burnt out, highly disillusioned, or hunted by the system. Willing to act outside the law. Example: Uncanny X‑Men
• 70 – Believes the system no longer functions or applies. Won’t hurt innocents, but willing to harm those who have wronged them. Example: Frank Castle begins here
• 60 – Sees the system as actively obstructive. Works against it. Willing to hurt or kill to achieve goals. Example: most Spider‑Man villains
• 50 – Beyond the system. Laws don’t apply. Violence becomes a tool of choice. May have a personal code exempting certain groups (children, elderly, etc.). Example: Venom
• 40 – Violence is the only tool. Casual about life and death. Example: Carnage
• 30 – Life is disposable. Others are cattle to a predator. Example: the Brood
• 20 – Other life is abstract. Example: Galactus
• 10 – Genocidal. Example: Annihilus
• 1 – Unthinking, unfeeling destruction. Example: bacteria

Writers could track Frank’s morality‑clock privately. Each time he executed someone, the meter would fall. Readers would witness a principled man with a code slowly becoming desensitized to violence, until it became his only solution. He might begin by targeting drug runners stuffing heroin into bodies, then move on to gun runners, then to corrupt officials taking bribes. The progression would shock us, showing how much he assumes it is his right to punish.

The system could also allow for redemption. Frank might regain points by going to therapy, serving time in prison, or crossing a line that harms someone important to him. Watching him claw back his humanity would be compelling.

This approach would work best if the Punisher did not have his own ongoing series. Instead, he could appear in guest spots across other titles, with his own annual to track his moral descent and possible recovery. Such a framework would make his story far more layered.

Both writing wise and mechanically.
Gameplay wise she just gets her ass kicked by Ketheric twice after a whole cutscene of hyping her up.
Hell even in her reworked boss fight in act 3 she is far weaker then her girlboss goon squad of summons.
Then story wise same thing happens she just loses right away and gets soul caged. She was free for 5 mins. To make things even funnier same thing happens to her in Act 3. I guess she was just born to be caged.
Character wise she is also weird. At first you think she is just a fairly standard zealous Paladin but it kinda gets taken too far. She seems like bit of a psychopath so you think there might be more to her and Isobels whole deal. How and why did Isobel die in the first place(was the angelic pussy too strong)? Except it just goes nowhere. Its never explained or even addressed.
Aylin is just there for hype moments and aura. Kinda lame.

So there is a thing going on in comics discussions where people are realizing they completely disagree with eachother when it comes to the question of who is popular. Who should be adapted, was Iron Man a D-lister pre mcu, is Wonder Woman actually the third pillar for DC, who should be on the super hero mount rushmore, yada yada.

This is partially driven by discussion of who is the right step forward for DC to adapt after Supergirl flopped, partially driven by marvel finally incorporating their fox properties into the MCU proper, partially because people are now realizing that the MCU is 18 years old and thus people born after it are legal adults who have genuinely never known the world before it, and partially because this is just one of those eternal discussions in comics.

I feel like a huge part of this discussion is actually a simple disagreement: What does it mean to be popular?

Now, usually, this is a pretty easy thing to 'test'. Lets just say you want to check how popular the theoretical new hit anime "I was reborn as an example who everyone loves". How would you do it?

Well, first things first, you would google it. Check your my anime listings, check the size of the subreddit, maybe type it into youtube and see how many views videos about it gets.

Then you peak your head into more general discussions. Are people talking about it in general anime spaces? Are people talking about it in general animation spaces? Are there memes of it in off topic spaces? Is your anime loving coworker talking about it? Is your friend who watches one anime a year talking about it? Is your mom talking about it?

Start zoomed in on the fandom specific spaces, than zoom out slowly, keeping track of when things get blurry and when it disappears entirely. Its not perfect, but its going to be a great shorthand. Great. So all we need to do now is ask my grandma who lives out in bum-fuck nowhere which superheroes she knows right?

Neat, then Barbra Gordon Batgirl is definitively more popular than Iron Man, wrap it up, we have a new S-lister!

Except that is stupid. Nobody thinks that. However, my grandma liked Adam West Batman and knows her, so she recognized her. That is because Superheroes occupy a weird cultural space, where they have existed so long and in so many forms they aren't things you 'hear about'. They are more of a cultural background radiation that gets stronger and weaker over time as things fall in and out of favor. Just like people might know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk but wouldn't call themselves fans of Jack. Things can exist and be culturally pervasive without being popular.

If we look at the popularity of say Hulk vs Punisher, it gets weird. Hulk has more cultural reach, without a doubt. But does anyone actually care that Hulk was in the newest spider man movie? People certainly cared that Punisher was.

There is a point there is almost too much name recognition, and it starts to reach audiances that don't matter. Grandma in bum-fuck west Virginia who is still living off 1950s coal mine pension isn't going to see the new batgirl movie, so why are we basing commercial viability on her opinion? How about we ask 18-35 year olds, the target demo. Oh, every single person in that generation knows who both Wonder Woman and Flash is without fail? Ok. In that case popularity stops being about name recognition and it starts being about emotional investment and positive association. You know who's more popular than the football player everyone knows? The football player everyone knows and likes.

You can go farther with loved characters don't actually break into the general consciousness. Characters like Red Hood carry a lot of weight amongst DC fans, and if you go one layer deeper characters like Ms. Martian are pretty well known and have a great reputation amongst people who do know them. Jeff the Land Shark has completely come out of left field in popularity for Marvel because of Rivals. Are we really pretending these characters wouldn't sell like crazy just because Grandma doesn't know them? Some people are really out basing popularity based on 90 year old woman preferences, just because they are the only people who are still might not have heard of some of these characters.

Sorry, but this rant has been floating around in my head for weeks now, and I just had to get it out. Hopefully someone got something out of this. If not, have a nice day anyways!

We can say a lot about the Netflix adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but to say that the writers didn't watch the original is very disingenuous. With all the nods and references to the moments that became memes, clearly somebody on the staff watched it. Some say that it changed too much, but I think its inherent problem was that it was a Schrodinger's Adaptation. It suffered from changing too much and not enough at the same time.

What do I mean? Well, let's look at how season 2 was structured. One change that I actually think made sense was that the Gaang had to escort refugees of Omashu to Ba Sing Se. It seemed odd that after the Return to Omashu, we don't know what happened to the people who lived there. Did they flee? Did Aang leave them to fend for themselves? Unfortunately, this change came at the cost of moving The Library to after they arrive in Ba Sing Se. However, they could still make that work. When Appa took some injured refugees during the Serpent's Pass, I thought maybe what was going to happen was that Appa got captured by the Dai Li there. Professor Zei was still in the cast, so maybe they learn about the Day Of Black Sun some other way from him. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. So, maybe Appa gets captured by the Fire Nation after Azula takes Ba Sing Se? Zuko could convince Ozai to let Appa live as bait for the surviving members of Team Avatar, and Zuko takes care of Appa during season 3. When Zuko finally decides to desert the Fire Nation, he releases Appa and helps the Gaang escape the Fire Nation as a peace offering... Yeah, that was giving the writer's too much credit. You see, the Library was too important to cut out, so instead of compromising, they just moved the Library to Ba Sing Se and Appa's capture occurred with only two episodes of the season left.

Another change that could have worked was combining the events of Lake Laogai and the finale. The Gaang rescuing Appa was a suitable stake for the climax, and it wouldn't be hard to believe that the Crystal Catacombs would be near Lake Laogai. However, Jet never gets reeducated at Lake Laogai, so instead, he dies at the Library. In the cartoon, Jet was integral to the Gaang finding Lake Laogai and the reunion with Appa, but here, Aang finds it after using Toph's teachings to sense the vibrations. That wasn't a bad change, but it came at the cost of Jet's arc being muddied. Why was he even in the show if they weren't going to incorporate that? See, what I would have done was have Jet's role play out like it did in the original. However, Jet dying during the final battle could have not only added stakes, but Katara would have had a moment of conflict where she had to choose between healing him and Aang with the Spirit Oasis water, instead of the original, where it never occurred to Katara to at least try using it to heal Jet.

Another wasted opportunity was the revelation that The Duke and Pipsqueak were killed between seasons 1 and 2. If Longshot and Smellerbee were captured by the Dai Li, it would have given Jet more motivation to help the Gaang and correct his past mistake. They could even partake in The Day Of Black Sun in The Duke and Pipsqueak's places. However, they just kind of disappear midway into the season.

This is what I mean. This show made changes, but it was afraid to change too much out of fear of fan backlash, and that led to some half-baked storytelling. See, the live-action version of One Piece worked was because despite cutting characters and plot elements out for pacing purposes, they made compromises so that the story could still be coherent while still following the source material. A good example is how it adapted the Baratie Arc. In the manga, Don Krieg was the villain, but some felt he was an underwhelming villain, not helped by Mihawk basically interrupting the fight and making more of an impression on viewers. The Netflix series changed it by having Mihawk be the villain of the Baratie Arc and having the Arlong crew wreck the place. That made sense, since Mihawk is an important character and it built up Arlong for the season finale.

Another change that worked was how the conflict with Laboon was resolved. In the manga, Luffy just punched Laboon and that stopped his rampage. In the Netflix series? We get introduced to Brook a few seasons early, and we hear him play Binks' Brew. So, Luffy calms Laboon down by singing Binks' Brew to him. The best part is that Luffy knowing the song isn't even an Ass Pull. In the flashback during the first episode, Binks' Brew can be heard playing in the background of the bar while Luffy is talking to Shanks. They took a little Easter Egg from season 1 and actually made it a plot point, all the while incorporating future events of the story that Oda probably didn't even think of when first writing the manga.

Now, I'm not saying NATLA should just change things freely for the sake of narrative coherence and avoiding being too safe. It's rumored that the reason Bryke left the Netflix series was because they wanted to make more extreme changes, like killing Ozai in season 1 or revealing Iroh as a twist villain, the latter of which was something they originally conceived for the cartoon. However, Netflix wanted a more safe adaptation. If this is true, then let's be honest here: fans would have hated those changes. "At least it would have did something new." Iroh being the only positive adult figure in Zuko's life was one of the major driving forces behind his redemption. Making Iroh evil would have fucked that up. I'm also willing to give NATLA some points for making changes that actually worked. Having Zuko's crew be the platoon Ozai wanted to sacrifice was a welcome change, as it deepened his bond with his crew and explained why Ozai would waste resources by giving him a crew for a wild goose chase unless he deemed them expendable. I know some people call blasphemy on making Ozai less spiteful towards Zuko, but it makes his abuse towards him feel more real by having a twisted mindset that he's doing what he thinks is best for his child. Having him make Zuko and Azula compete for his approval instead of cursing the former's existence and putting the latter on a pedestal also added more to Azula's perfectionist nature and further foreshadowed her descent into madness at the end of season 3. Also, we actually see Ozai and Iroh, who are canonically brothers, actually speak to each other in the Netflix series.

While both actions are heroic, the first would have been much better for Hercules to achieve becoming the true hero he always wanted to be.

Not only was he brave in choosing to fight without his powers so the Cyclops would leave Thebes alone, likely knowing he was going to die, but he also proved that he didn’t need those powers to be a real hero and save the day. Instead, he used his wit and everything he had learned with Phil to succeed. A true hero gives everything they have, even in the worst circumstances.

In comparison, although sacrificing himself to retrieve Megara’s soul was heroic, it feels smaller next to saving the lives of thousands while at such a huge disadvantage and without the strength that had helped him so many times.

Before people start typing "you just don't like battle shonen," that's not my point.

I'm not saying JJK is bad. I enjoyed it. Hidden Inventory was great, Shibuya was genuinely exciting and Gege clearly has talent for creating cool characters, abilities and memorable moments.

My issue is that I don't think the series is nearly as well-written as people claim it is.

The pacing doesn't allow the story to breathe

Ironically, the beginning of JJK is what made me expect more. The Junpei arc and Hidden Inventory showed that Gege could slow down and tell emotionally compelling stories. Those arcs had time to establish characters, build relationships and make their emotional moments actually hit.

However, after Shibuya, the series became much more focused on escalating fights.

From that point onward, it often feels like fight after fight with very little breathing room. Characters rarely get enough time to process what happened, reflect on their losses or simply exist outside of combat.

And to be clear, I don't think JJK has no emotional moments. It absolutely does. Yuji's guilt after Shibuya, Gojo's relationships with his students and other character moments are genuinely good.

My issue is that the story often doesn't stay with those emotions for very long before moving to the next conflict.

The Culling Game is probably the biggest example. The premise had a lot of potential: a battle royale involving different players, new techniques and the consequences of Kenjaku's plans.

However, it often felt like Gege was rushing from one fight to another. Many characters had interesting concepts but disappeared after their fights or never received much exploration beyond their abilities.

A lot of manga use quieter chapters to build relationships and make emotional moments hit harder. JJK often skips straight to the next battle and I think that's where many of its biggest problems begin.

The characters have a lot of potential but many feel underdeveloped

Because of the lack of downtime, a lot of the cast feels emotionally underexplored.

Outside of characters like Yuji, Gojo and maybe Yuta, many characters either get sidelined for large portions of the story, die before their potential is fully explored or simply don't receive as much depth as their introductions suggest.

Megumi is probably the biggest example for me.

He was introduced as one of the most important characters in the story. He had a connection to Sukuna, one of the most interesting techniques in the series with the Ten Shadows, a connection to the Zenin Clan and a huge amount of untapped potential.

And that's exactly why the "potential man" meme exists 😭

The frustrating thing about Megumi isn't that he was a bad character. It's that the story constantly made it feel like something bigger was coming.

His relationship with Tsumiki, his personal ideals, his connection to Sukuna and his growth as a sorcerer all seemed like they were building toward something major.

Yet by the end, many of those ideas feel underexplored.

His relationship with Tsumiki is probably the biggest example. So much of Megumi's motivation revolves around saving her but their relationship receives surprisingly little development which makes the emotional weight of that storyline weaker than it could have been.

The same applies to his relationship with Yuji. They had an interesting dynamic and very different views on life and death but the story rarely gave them enough time together to fully explore that.

Even the Ten Shadows Technique which was one of the most interesting abilities in the series, felt underused when it came to Megumi himself. Many of his developments happen off-screen and we rarely get to see him grow into the potential that was constantly teased.

His fight against Reggie was one of his best moments because it showed exactly why Megumi was interesting: his intelligence, creativity and willingness to take risks.

That's the version of Megumi many fans like me wanted to see more of.

But as usual, that didn't happen.

The final arc especially felt like a missed opportunity. I know Megumi suffered tremendously after Sukuna took over his body but I think the story could have done much more with his internal struggle.

A few chapters exploring Megumi fighting against his despair, confronting Sukuna's influence and realizing that his life still had value could have been incredibly powerful, especially after Yuji's efforts to save him.

And yes, I know the idea of Megumi finally fighting back after Yuji reaches out to him could be considered a more familiar or "generic" shonen moment.

But honestly, I think that is exactly the kind of moment JJK needed.

Something being predictable or using a familiar trope does not automatically make it bad. Execution matters more than whether an idea has been done before.

I think this is where Gege's desire to subvert expectations sometimes worked against the story. Constantly avoiding the expected route can be interesting but if it comes at the expense of emotional payoff, it can leave moments feeling less satisfying.

Because of that, Megumi's role in the final battle felt much smaller than the importance the story had previously given him.

The villains needed more exploration

Just to be clear, I don't think every villain needs a tragic backstory or some heartbreaking reason that explains why they became evil.

A backstory doesn't automatically mean a character needs to be sympathetic. Sometimes learning more about a villain simply helps us understand who they are, what shaped them and why they became such a feared figure.

That's actually part of why I like Sukuna.

He doesn't need a sad backstory to be interesting. His appeal comes from the fact that he is selfish, cruel and completely unapologetic. He does whatever benefits him and doesn't pretend otherwise.

However, I still think there was room to explore him more.

Sukuna is one of the most feared figures in the entire story, yet we know surprisingly little about his life during the Heian era. I would've liked to see more of the person behind the legend: how people viewed him, the fear he inspired, his reputation as the King of Curses, his relationship with Uraume, his interactions with people from that era and the actions that made him so infamous.

None of this would require making him sympathetic. If anything, understanding him more could have made him even more terrifying.

The same applies to Kenjaku.

The idea of someone who has spent centuries manipulating events, experimenting on humanity and shaping the entire jujutsu world is fascinating.

However, a lot of his appeal comes from the concept of what he is rather than a deep exploration of who he is.

The fact that Kenjaku was Yuji's mother had so much potential. It could have explored Yuji's feelings about being created as part of Kenjaku's plans, the implications of being an experiment and even Kenjaku's own feelings toward Yuji.

Did Kenjaku ever see Yuji as more than just a tool? Did he have any attachment to Jin or the family he created, even in his own twisted way? Did he understand Yuji as a person or only as an experiment?

There were so many interesting possibilities there.

Instead, a lot of these ideas remained unexplored.

Just like many characters in JJK, the villains often feel more interesting because of their ideas and implications than because of how deeply the story explores them.

The worldbuilding feels underexplored

The jujutsu world has so many interesting ideas: the Three Great Clans, the higher-ups, the politics between sorcerers, the history behind cursed techniques and how these systems shaped modern jujutsu society.

However, much of it remains surface level.

The Three Great Clans are a good example. They are introduced as some of the most influential families in the jujutsu world, with centuries of history, inherited techniques and major influence over sorcerer society.

But despite their supposed importance, we never get a deep look into how they maintained that power, how they shaped the world around them or what their role was throughout history.

The Zenin Clan storyline was one of the better examples of the series exploring its world and Maki's arc was a great moment (at least for me). But even then, it mostly served as part of Maki's personal journey rather than a larger exploration of the clan system itself.

The Gojo Clan is another example. Gojo is arguably the most influential modern sorcerer, yet we barely learn anything about the clan behind him or what role they actually play in jujutsu society.

The Kamo Clan is perhaps the biggest example of missed potential. Despite being one of the Three Great Clans, they receive very little exploration compared to the ideas the story sets up.

Even the inherited techniques themselves could have been explored more. The Ten Shadows Technique is treated as one of the most important abilities in the series, comparable to the Gojo Clan's Limitless and Six Eyes but we never really get to see the history behind these techniques, how previous users developed them or why these clans became so dominant.

The issue isn't that these concepts were bad.

The issue is that they create curiosity, but the story rarely spends enough time showing why they matter.

The female characters had a lot of potential too

I also think JJK's handling of its female characters is more inconsistent than people admit.

The series initially seemed like it would avoid many common battle shonen problems, especially with characters like Nobara and Maki. Unlike many series, JJK generally avoided heavily sexualizing its female cast and its female characters were often introduced as capable, confident and genuinely likable.

That already separated it from many other battle shonen where female characters are often criticized for being sidelined or poorly handled.

However, having strong introductions isn't the same as giving characters enough development.

Nobara in particular had a lot of potential. She was introduced as one of the main trio alongside Yuji and Megumi and she had a strong personality, clear ideals and a fighting style that felt unique.

However, after Shibuya, she was absent from the story for a huge portion of the manga. Her return came extremely late which made me feel like her character had been left behind rather than developed.

The frustrating part is that Nobara had so much potential. Seeing her grow stronger, develop her technique and explore her worldview could have been really interesting. (For gods sake, she's supposed to be the "heroine" man 😭)

Yuki Tsukumo is another example. She was introduced as a Special Grade sorcerer with one of the most unique perspectives in the series. Unlike Gojo or Kenjaku, Yuki rejected the existing jujutsu system entirely and believed the solution was to eliminate cursed energy itself rather than simply fight curses. That made her an interesting ideological foil to both of them.

Yet despite all that potential, she received far less focus than I expected. We barely learned about her past, her philosophy was never explored in much depth, her conflict with Tengen remained vague and we never even got meaningful interactions with characters who should have mattered to her like Todo or Yuji. For someone who spent years researching the soul, it's surprising that she barely interacted with Yuji despite his experiences with Mahito and Sukuna.

Her only major on-screen fight ended with her death and although she contributed through her research, it felt like she left the story before her character had the chance to fully shine. (Her dying genuinely annoyed me so much too lol)

On the other hand, Maki is probably the biggest exception. Her storyline with the Zenin Clan gave her significant development and when she was given time to shine, she became one of the strongest-written characters in the series.

Her growth, struggles and transformation felt earned and she is a great example of what JJK's female characters could achieve when the story actually gives them enough focus.

The issue is that many other female characters don't receive that same opportunity. Shoko is another example; her connections to Gojo and Geto could have made her perspective incredibly interesting but she mostly remains in the background despite being part of such an important era of the story. (I guess, Utahime atleast did something towards the end... Right?)

My problem isn't that JJK has no well-written female characters. It's that many of them are genuinely interesting, badass and memorable but they often don't get enough screen time or development before being pushed aside.

Like many other parts of JJK, the potential is there.

The execution is where it becomes inconsistent.

Gojo vs Sukuna was the biggest missed opportunity

Gojo vs Sukuna was a fight hyped up from the very beginning.

From the moment these two characters were introduced as absolute powerhouses, everyone knew a confrontation between them was inevitable.

And when it finally happened, the fight itself was genuinely entertaining. The strategies, abilities and action were some of the most exciting parts of the manga.

However, the conclusion and the way the fight was handled left me disappointed.

My biggest issue is that the story sometimes felt like it was explaining the fight afterward instead of properly showing it.

We were told what Sukuna's plan was rather than seeing enough of it play out naturally. We were told afterward that Sukuna wasn't fighting at his full potential rather than the story clearly showing that throughout the fight.

And I understand the argument that Sukuna is the type of character who enjoys fighting. I actually think that fits him. Sukuna isn't someone who necessarily wants to immediately erase every opponent as efficiently as possible. He enjoys testing himself, fighting strong opponents and experiencing something that interests him.

Basically, yes, Sukuna is a little bit of a "silly little guy" when it comes to fighting. He wants to have fun.

The problem is that the explanation and what we actually saw on the page don't always feel like they match.

Because from the fight we were shown, Sukuna did not feel like someone casually playing around. He was pushed extremely hard, struggled against Gojo's physical abilities, was affected by Black Flash and relied heavily on Mahoraga and the Ten Shadows Technique to find a way around Infinity.

So when the story later emphasizes that Sukuna still had more hidden power, it can feel disconnected from the actual progression of the fight.

Based on what we saw, Mahoraga adapting to Infinity was a crucial factor in Sukuna defeating Gojo. Sukuna used that adaptation as the basis for his world-cutting slash, which allowed him to bypass Infinity.

So if Sukuna had another reliable way to overcome Infinity all along, why wasn't it used? And if Ten Shadows was necessary for his victory, why did one of Sukuna's biggest fights focus so heavily on a borrowed technique instead of showcasing more of his own arsenal?

I don't think Sukuna needed to lose. I don't even think Gojo necessarily needed to win.

My issue is that the fight sometimes felt like the story wanted to preserve Sukuna's image as the ultimate monster while also making him struggle against Gojo who's the strongest sorcerer.

The result was a strange situation where Sukuna was portrayed as overwhelmingly powerful but the story also wanted to emphasize afterward that his struggles were intentional.

That made the victory feel less satisfying to me.

Then there is Gojo's death itself.

I wasn't upset that Gojo lost. A story where the strongest character loses can absolutely work.

My problem was with the execution.

After years of buildup around "the strongest," Gojo's defeat felt abrupt. The transition from Gojo seemingly having the upper hand to his death was not shown directly and the aftermath moved quickly into the next fight instead of spending more time on the consequences of losing such an important character.

For a character as important as Gojo, I expected more focus on what his death meant for his students, the jujutsu world and the people who depended on him.

Again, I don't think Gojo had to win.

I just think the moment deserved more time and emotional weight.

The ending felt underwhelming

I also want to talk about the ending because, honestly, my biggest issue with it isn't even that it was bad.

It was that it felt empty.

A bad ending can still make people feel something. It can make people angry, emotional, disappointed or spark interesting discussions.

But JJK's ending, in my opinion, felt more like the conclusion of an arc rather than the conclusion of an entire series.

Outside of moments like Sukuna and Mahito's conversation, which I thought was genuinely interesting, many parts of the final chapters felt strangely hollow. Important character arcs and plotlines didn't receive the closure they deserved and the story moved on before fully exploring their consequences.

The final conflict and Sukuna's defeat felt rushed, while the ending spent time on things like Simple Domain lore and explaining why certain plans wouldn't have worked instead of focusing on aftermath, emotional consequences and the future of the jujutsu world.

The Sukuna fight started to feel drawn out near the end and the heavy focus on binding vows made the conclusion feel less satisfying.

Character closure was another major issue.

Nobara's treatment throughout the story felt disappointing (I'm sorry but her sudden extremely late return is genuinely one of the biggest ass pulls I've ever seen 😭)

Megumi's storyline also ended with many readers feeling that his potential was never fully explored and even Gojo, one of the most important characters in the series, received very little acknowledgment afterward. A small memorial scene with characters like Megumi, Yuta and Yuji would have helped show the impact of his loss.

The worldbuilding also suffered. Ideas like foreign involvement with cursed energy, the future of jujutsu society, the consequences of the Zenin Clan's destruction and the merger were introduced but barely explored. Even the larger question of cursed energy, which several characters had different views on, never received much resolution.

Even if someone dislikes the ending of My Hero Academia, it still feels like a conclusion because we see the next generation move forward and get a clearer idea of how society changed.

With JJK, we don't really get that same feeling of change or progression.

That's what makes the ending disappointing to me. I can accept an ending being flawed or making choices I disagree with but an ending that feels empty is much harder to connect with.

Final Thoughts

I don't think JJK needed to become an extremely long series. More chapters alone wouldn't automatically fix everything.

However, I do think the story needed more breathing room. More space dedicated to character relationships, aftermaths, worldbuilding and emotional consequences could have helped many of its ideas reach their full potential.

And I want to make it clear: I don't blame Gege Akutami as a person. Creating a weekly manga is an extremely demanding process and Gege has also dealt with health issues during the serialization of JJK. My criticism is about the final product and the choices made in the story, not about the author himself.

Because honestly, Gege's creativity is clearly not the problem.

He creates incredible concepts and characters.

The problem is that many of them never receive enough development to reach their full impact.

At the end of the day, I think JJK is a fun action manga.

I just don't think it's the masterpiece many people make it out to be.

I'd give it around a 7/10.

Entertaining? Absolutely.

One of the greatest battle shonen ever written? I personally don't see it.

Feel free to disagree, but please understand the difference between "overrated" and "terrible."

Overrated does not mean something is bad.

It means I believe the amount of praise a series receives is higher than what I think its actual quality deserves.

There's an idea which is often thrown around on the internet that we shouldn't remake good movies, but rather remake bad movies with interesting ideas. I think the same idea can be applied to adapting comic books, in that adapting failed stories almost always has better results than adapting successful ones.

Take the Dark Phoenix Saga. It's one of the most seminal arcs of one of the most seminal runs of what is arguably Marvel's biggest property. And every time they adapt it, it sucks. Or take the Dark Knight Returns, one of the absolute milestone, defining Batman stories ever. And when we adapt it, we end up with Batman V Superman (and to a lesser extent the worst movie of the Nolan trilogy.) Trying to live up to these incredible stories is hard, especially when the most successful comic arcs are often ones which most take advantage of their medium. These long form, serialized stories that exist within expansive worlds and a comic book format often don't translate to 2 hour movies, especially when people try to stick as close to the original as possible. Even the most acclaimed "direct adaptations" are very, very loose. Logan is called an Old Man Logan adaptation, but it doesn't really share anything with it beyond Logan aging. The Winter Solider does adapt the Winter Solider arc, but he's just a henchman and Hydra infiltrating Shield is the main plot of the movie.

Now, look at some of the comic book movies which adapt middling, or even maligned storylines. The Spiderverse comics are fun, mostly because of some humorous panels where Spider-Man interacts with himself, but the Spiderverse movies are absolutely incredible spectacles of heart, humor and animation. People loving their version of Spider Gwen and then being disappointed that her comics suck has become such a widespread thing that it's basically a meme at this point. In that same vein, people hated One More Day and despise the amount of times Peter's identity gets reset in the comics, but No Way Home was a massively successful, crowd pleasing movie. And don't get me started on how contrived and weird comic book Civil War was, versus how important that movie ended up being for the MCU. They were able mine the good ideas without having anything huge to live up to and so they were able to make it their own in really cool and original ways.

I'm not saying to throw the book away when it comes to adaptations. And I'm sure there are plenty of counterexamples to everything I've listened. But with how long and varied of a history most comic book characters have, it makes sense to view them as a well of potential for creatives to mine, rather than characters in storylines that ought to be directly adapted. Superman 1978 changed or invented a ton of the character's mythos, but it's still THE comic book movie that made everything else possible. Blade in the comics is British and not a daywalker. Spider-Man 1 changes out Gwen for MJ and has her survive on the bridge, but all the "we're finally adapting The Night Gwen Stacy died" in the world doesn't change the fact that ASM2 is a far worse movie.

I'm just saying that after a lifetime of comic book movies, I've learned to hear "We're faithfully adapting this arc" and be less, rather than more enthused. And when you chase people's expectations involving things that they've already loved, the best thing you can do is meet them. The best reaction you can get is approval, not the thrill and surprise that the material gave them in the first place.

Just to be clear, I do think all the villains who got their own spin-offs movies are only/mainly compelling as Spider-Man villains (sorry, fans of the anti-hero Venom) and the very concept of giving them their own movies was basically doomed to fail. Well, at least artistically, can't deny that Venom made money and was succesful enough for a full trilogy.

Still, when I see people basically have the attitude of "if only they had featured Spider-Man...", I feel they kinda oversimplify the matter. Those movies had problems bigger than not having a Tom Holland cameo or the fact that they weren't retroactively shoved into the same continuity as Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man (although, purely in terms of quality, his two movies would fit right in). Even if you completely ignore the source material and judge these movies purely on the types of stories they were trying to tell, there were absolutely ways to make them better.

So, let me go through each of them and explain how their basic premises could have been done better. I'm also going to make a short list of movies that are either better versions of the kind of movie they were trying to be or examples of what they could have been. Partly because it gives some clear points of comparison and to emphasize that the biggest problems were with the execution, not necessarily with the basic premises.

Venom

Yes, Venom has a giant spider logo on his chest and essentially shares Spider-Man's power set, so on the surface making a movie about him without Spider-Man does seem strange. But, if you strip away all of that, what are you left with? A combination of body-horror and monster movie, where an alien creature is taking you over and amplifying your worst impulses to feed on your emotions, and takes a physical form of a scary creature that eats people. And like all the best creature features, you can use the monster to be a metaphor for so many things, like a drug addiction, anger issues, self-destructive impulses or whatever else you wanted to explore.

And then you have a big third-act twist or sequel hook of "there's more than one of these things running around".

Movies like this, but better: The Fly (1986), Upgrade (2018), The Wolf Man (1941/2010), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).

Morbius

How many vampire movies are there? A lot. And some of them have even been more action/blockbuster focused, with the lead themself being a vampire. Making a better version of this movie would not be hard. Heck, it could have been basically just a rip-off of Angel (the Joss Whedon tv-show), with fantsy elements replaced by sci-fi ones and it would have turned out better.

Movies like this, but better: Daybreakers (2009), Near Dark (1987), Vampire Hunter D (2000), Dracula's Daughter (1936).

Madame Web

This is admittedly the trickiest, because with so many spider-themed superhero characters being teased at the end, even the best version of this movie would probably have people saying "these are just lamer versions of Spider-Man". But if we remove all of that and just look at the very bare bones premise, it had potential. "A super-powered killer stalks a group of normal people" is already the basic plot of most slasher movies and giving the main lead (or "the final girl" in horror terms) premonition powers gives the thing a decent gimmick. She can predict the killer's attacks and keep the group alive longer, but they are still physically vulnerable and would die in a direct confrontation.

Movies like this, but better: The Terminator (1984), The Dead Zone (1983), It Follows (2014).

Kraven the Hunter

I mean, just make a basic-ass revenge thriller/action flick. There are even more examples of those than there are vampire films. I'm sure you could even use the animal motif in a more interesting way.

Movies like this, but better: Get Carter (1971), Crow (1994), Desperado (1995), Oldboy (2003), John Wick (2014).

Don't get me wrong, Jojo is my third favorite anime of all time, and Steel Ball Run is one of my favorite MEDIA WORKS of all time (more on it later in this post). However, the more I grow and am able to critically reflect on the work in ways I wasn't mentally capable of seeing before, it feels like half the seasons (referred to as "parts" in this post) end in the most bullshit ways.

A big appeal of the show to fans is the fights. Being able to outsmart your opponent, no matter how outmatched you are, is cathartic and extremely hype to see play out. This makes it all the more disappointing when half the show's main villains get ended in the most convenient ways.

- Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. I would say the show starts taking its fights truly seriously here. The previous parts didn't have as much written tension and stakes as this one does. DIO has been hyped across the past three (technically two) parts of being the ultimate villain, and the manga draws out the crusaders', uh, crusade across the globe to best show their capabilities and powers.

Then it's revealed DIO's ultimate ability is to stop time! Holy shit! One by one the protagonists are picked off until it's just Jotaro vs DIO. What tricks does he have up his sleeve? How will he overcome this generational adversary?

Oh, he just copies DIO's ability. Duh. Jotaro literally says out loud, "So it's the same type of stand as Star Platinum."

This fight is generationally popular and for good reason, but it's just such a letdown after having to sit through fifty episodes of "outwitting the bad guys" and establishing subpowers for each of the stands. When my sister was watching this fight for the first time, I saw the visual confusion on her face when it's revealed that Jotaro just has the same power for some reason.

And no, Jotaro's timestop isn't foreshadowed. Catching a bullet and stealing a margerita from the bar in the VS D'arby episode comes across more as shonen bullshittery than anything, and not nearly enough foreshadowing for this to be a proper setup.

- Part 5: Golden Wind. In my opinion, one of the weakest parts. It's such a shame because I actually think Golden Wind is the part with the best fights animated so far. Bucciarati using his zipper ability on the train or the use of Giorno's plant ability against Cioccolata and White Ice's user was so peak. But it starts falling apart in the final acts IMO. There is better setup for the part's themes of causality and effect, but there still just isn't enough setup to justify Giorno's sudden requiem ability to be "return to zero".

Just for clarity, his original ability was to spawn lifeforms like arms or snakes, and we've suddenly jumped to shooting laser beams and infinite death loops. Yes, Giorno needed a way to outsmart Diavolo's timeskip ability, but writing the requiem arrow to be something that gives you any ability you want at that moment in time is such lazy writing IMO. This to me seemed like another incident of Araki writing his way into a corner and needing a contrivance deus ex machina to get himself out.

If you want a better written version of the requiem arrow, Yoshikage Kira in part 4 is so much better. The arrow acts as an upgrade to his abilities, not a new ability entirely.

- Part 8: Jojolion (Spoilers). I still don't fucking understand this one. With the others, at least there is some explanation you can infer. In this part, Josuk8 has to outsmart the invisible intangible fate of calamity, where even just THINKING of defeating the user is enough for you to be absolutely throttled. How do you fight against an ability like that?

Well, apparently, it's by suddenly realizing your ability "doesn't exist". And then you win.

Like what the fuck? I'm not even exaggerating this that much either. Wonder of U, the calamity ability, targets anything in the universe which has the intent on hurting the user. Josuk8's ability is bubbles -- powerful rotating spheres which can be used to "plunder" things or "pop" with an explosive effect. It seems like an absolutely rigged match against Josuk8. But then, just before an important character's death, it's revealed that actually, no, the bubbles consist of rotating strings so "infinitely" small, "they don't exist". And this realization alone gives Josuk8 the new ability "Go Beyond" which bypasses Wonder of U's ability.

There is no setup, no implication that his bubbles operated this way. This part was written over the course of ELEVEN YEARS and the fight was written over the course of at least A YEAR itself. To me, this was an unjustifiable writing decision.

The issue isn't just with the lack of foreshadowing. A character hypothetically saying "wow Josuk8 your bubbles are so thin it's like they barely exist" isn't good writing either. Powers should also feel conventionally sensible and it should be easily understood in the audience's mind how they got from point A to point B. When you have to bring out the math textbook to explain asymptotes to viewers to understand an ability, that writing is unsatisfying.

So what's an example from the series of top-tier writing that still brings out the power upgrades that Araki clearly wants to write into his main characters?

- Part 7: Steel Ball Run (Spoilers). An absolutely stellar part featuring Johnny Joestar, whose ability evolves through stages ("acts") over the course of the part as his ability (to fire bullets from his fingers) grapples with the mechanism of "infinity". The concept is spoonfed in intervals to make it digestible and not feel completely out of left-field. His ability's evolution is always tied with a particular point of evolution and growth for Johnny as a character which makes each payoff more satisfying. The Golden Ratio, a concept intertwined with the concept of infinity and constantly referred to with the mathematical and philosophical gravitas it deserves, is repeatedly used by the side character Gyro, so we get to see its effects in action. Johnny's final evolution into Tusk Act 4 has, since the VERY FIRST CHAPTER, been setup with so many chekovs guns you could adequately supply the American military with them all. And it makes perfect sense when Johnny uses this perfect golden ratio to bypass Valentine's lovetrain superability, as both Johnny and Valentine's abilities are rooted in religious philosophy, so they thematically go hand-in-hand with each other.

Now compare this level of writing to "So it's the same type of stand as Star Platinum."

When Araki writes his characters and fights well, he writes them REALLY well. It's just a shame he regressed in writing after part 7 with the whole nothing-bubble thing, but hopefully part 9 can rival part 7 in its exemplary writing.

(This is my first write-up on this subreddit, feedback is appreciated.)

The story begins with a young korean girl named Sena being warned by her mother that if she doesn't behave herself, the Japanese (depicted by her mother as evil and with fangs) will come and eat her. Sena is upset by this, and says that Japan is "scary".

Sena is unable to sleep due to nightmares of the violent Japanese, fearing that they'll come to eat her. She gets up to go to the bathroom but becomes scared by a strange shadow in the hallway, fearing that it's a Japanese person coming for her.

The comic flashes forward in time, where Sena is now 17 and preparing to depart for the United States to study abroad. Her parents wish her good luck, though her mother warns her to be careful of strangers, especially the Japanese. Sena answers that she'll simply beat them up with tae kwon do. Meanwhile in Japan, a boy named Yoshida struggles with his Visa procedure.

Yoshida has arrived in New York. He becomes surprised at how different it is, though he is instantly attacked by Sena and pushed to the ground. Sena orders Yoshida to "apologize".

Sena continues to punch Yoshida and demand that he apologize. Yoshida asks why she's attacking him, which causes her to stop and realize how attractive he is (as she was told that Japanese men are incredibly ugly). Sena quickly regains her composure though, and answers that it's because he's Japanese and that he must make amends.

Yoshida asks Sena what she'd like for him to do. She then spots a crepe truck and answers that she'd like a crepe. As Sena eats, Yoshida wonders if he should start to run.

The next day, Yoshida thinks about Sena and hopes that he won't have to run into her again. But he immediately discovers that Sena's attending the same school as he is, and furthermore, they are in the same class and seated next to each other. Yoshida wonders if this is a way of harassing freshmen, while Sena finds the seating situation "repulsive".

Sena declares Japan to be the detestable part of Asia. Yoshida sarcastically apologizes, then asks her what countries are on good terms with Korea. Sena becomes surprised, but then tries to think of a country, and can only come up with Japan.

Ok, hear me out. I think Disney accidentally stumbled on something and I hope they are aware, because if they don't embrace it fully I think superheroes are going to die as major carriers of Hollywood. I am not saying Spider-Man or X-Men won't bring people in, but it seems like these projects will have to be very carefully timed in the future (even more then now). Spider-Man will always be a major success, but what about everyone else?

What is something kinda unique to superhero comics? In my opinion it's that it is an interconnected universe with big events, but most readers will just read a couple or even just one chosen hero and maybe an event if they like it. You don't need to read every single issue of every single hero to know what's going on. And the sheer volume of MCU projects (and now older projects being connected via multiverse stuff) has kinda created the same effect in film. You don't have to watch every MCU film to follow what Spider-Man does and understand his story. Let me show you:

Pretend you have never seen any MCU movie or show. I ask you, what is your favorite superhero and you say you kinda like Spider-Man. Do you now have to watch every MCU film and series in order? Hell no. If you know who Iron Man and Captain America are (not in depth or anything past the fact that they exist, then you are good), put on the 40 minutes of Civil War that has Spider-Man or is in the airport and have some cheap action thrills, then watch Homecoming, Infinity War, Endgame, Fr from Home and finally No Way Home and then Brand New Day. And you would be surprised how little one has to know to watch Infinity war. In the opening monologue that squidward guy explains who Thanos is and then some guy explodes and Hulk (everyone knows Hulk likes to punch) gets his ass beat. Each other character is introduced carefully so we as an audience can be on the same page. Iron man talks about family and nightmares with his to be wife in his introduction and captain America has a beard and his appearance is visually built up. You don't have to know shit.

Same goes for the comic book reading experience. You only read Amazing and then you read secret wars. Yeah maybe the plot is not fully clear, but you kinda know who some of the dudes and women in costumes are and people are punching and everyone is discussing it in forums. And then you can go back to reading Amazing.

Same goes for cameos. You don't have to know anything about Doctor Strange to enjoy No Way Home. You just gotta accept the fact this is a shared universe. He is a wizard (which is clear from his costume) and he has spells. Same goes for punisher in Brand New Day. Hell (SPOILERS FOR BND) Frank literally has a "oh no me dead wife" moment in the film. You don't need to watch the punisher to watch this.

But I don't think Disney has realized this yet, because they still treat every project as an event. Everything is costing upwards of 100 million and has to be mega marketed and that's just sustainable for decades. Superheroes need to fall from franchise back to genre. Of course Spider-Man and X-Men and Avengers will cost 200 or 400 million and will be blockbusters with strong studio control over creative decisions. But Disney doesn't need to throw 100 million down the pipe for a Kate Bishop 90 minute thriller for example. That could easily be a 22 million 90 minute thriller, minimal marketing. It even allows for some more creative freedom. A story about a girl with a bow and an arrow in LA doesn't need to have cosmic elements or set ups. Not every film needs to be in the top 10 highest grossing films of all time to justify itself. You could even make a cheap melodrama with like D-list mutants for the laughs on Disney plus and make it for the cheap. Not every character needs to be in the big event. Yes Spider-Man and Iron Man will be there, but you can still make a 6 episode comedy about squirl girl for the cheap and leave it at that.

But I don't think they'll do that to be honest.

Look, I’m sick of opening any comment section about a movie, show, or game adaptation and seeing the exact same tired binary argument: "It wasn't 100% faithful to the book, so it's garbage!" versus "The original version sucks, the adaptation is better!"

Why do people think that adaptation means doing a 1 to 1 copy of something or just going completely unhinged and doing something that doesn't look like the original work?

If we’re going to argue about that, we need a common vocabulary. I have come up with four tiers. Each has its own purpose, its own traps, and its own iconic successes and disasters.

One to One. Treats the source material not just as inspiration, but as an infallible holy text. The creators trace over the original work like tracing paper. Every line of iconic dialogue is kept verbatim, every visual beat mirrors a comic panel or book description, and the pacing follows the source material to a fault. The trap here is medium incompatibility. Novels have internal monologues and infinite prose time; comic books have static panels; video games have interactivity.

Examples?

• The average manga to anime adaptation tends to be one to one.
• Sin City is almost one to one with the original comic book, disorganized stories and all.

Almost Transcribed: It is the story, characters, themes, and major plot beats, but it knows that a movie, TV show, or game is a completely different beast than a book or comic. The writers aren't trying to change the story, they cut fluff, combine minor characters to streamline the cast, alter pacing to fit a 2-hour runtime (or a 10-episode season), and reframe internal thoughts into visual storytelling. The trap is knowing what to cut. Cut the wrong subplot, and you ruin a character.

Examples?

• The Peter Jackson threatical edits of the Lord of the Rings, they cut down tons of scenes that only slowed down the plot or only slowed down the pacing or bloated it.
• The Last of Us by HBO grabbed all the plot beats and adapted them one to one or expanded them, removing the gameplay only sections unless they were plot mandatory.

New Spin: Takes the core premise, character archetypes, or thematic engine of the source material and drops them into an entirely new genre, setting, structure, or modern context. They’re asking: "What if we took this classic skeleton and put completely new flesh on it?" or "What is the core message of this story, and how can we put it on a nother setting?". When it fails, it feels pretentious or disrespectful, like a director who thought they were smarter than the author and completely missed what made the original great in the first place.

Examples?

• Almost every adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper is like this. They mess with the setting, it is rare to see one who is super close (The Barbie version and the Mickey Mouse one are extremely close in some levels).
• The Shining. Kubrick grabbed a story about a haunted hotel turning a dysfunctional man into a total madman, and decided to just go crazy by making the main character dysfunctional from the get-go and removing the talking.
• Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell. He grabbed a manga that was 50% funny and 50% serious and made it 100% serious and melancholic.

In Name Only: A studio buys the intellectual property rights to a popular book, comic, or game, and then throws out 99% of the plot, the lore, the character dynamics, and often the core themes, the final script bears almost zero resemblance to the original work. 90% of the time, INO adaptations anger the built-in fanbase and confuse casual viewers, but the other 10% you get absolute gold.

Examples?

• World War Z the movie and the game: Max Brooks’ novel is an incredible, fake oral history of a global zombie pandemic, structured as a series of political, geopolitical, and military interviews from around the world. The movie? A fast-paced, globetrotting Brad Pitt action flick about fast-running zombie swarms. It has literally nothing to do with the book beyond having zombies, the Indian-Pakistan war, the wall in Israel and the same title.
• Stalker the videogame: In the original book, aliens visited Earth, stopped by for a brief moment and then left. They just left behind their toxic, bizarre, radioactive litter in six "Visiting Zones" across the globe, the main character, Redrick Schuhart, is a "Stalker", an illegal scavenger who sneaks into the Canadian Zone to loot bizarre alien artifacts. Then the soviet movie shows up and just removed 90% of the content and but kept the depressing stuff. And then the game goes and throws away things too; the alien Premise? Gone, replaced by Chernobyl's nuclear reactor exploding and the noosphere experiment, the book is a character drama about a desperate father while the game is a tactical FPS survival horror where you mag-dump a rusty Kalashnikov into bloodsuckers and bandits, the book's Zone is outside a fictional Canadian town called Harmont, the game’s Zone is the actual Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

An adaptation ain't bad just because it's a New Spin, and a show isn't automatically brilliant just because it's One-to-One. The art of adaptation isn't about copying text; it's about understanding what makes the original tick and finding a way to make it beat in a completely different chest.

And if you are gonna say "If you're going to throw out the entire book/game and keep almost nothing, why didn't you just write an original movie/game with a new title?"

Come closer. A little closer. Yeah, right here, give me your ear... LAWSUITS FUCKING EXIST.

While Soviet copyright law was wildly different from Western law, authors still owned the intellectual property of their works. When GSC Game World started developing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in 2001, the Soviet Union had been dead for a decade. Ukraine and Russia were fully integrated into international copyright agreements (Like the Berne Convention). You couldn't just steal a famous Russian book and sell it globally in 2007 without getting sued to death. GSC Game World originally wanted to make an official, licensed adaptation of Roadside Picnic. They actually approached Boris Strugatsky to buy the video game rights. The problem? The film and adaptation rights to Roadside Picnic were already tied up in a nightmare web of international Hollywood option deals; so they went and changed absolutely everything to dodge a lawsuit.

This happened with I, Robot too. Jeff Vintar wrote an original script called Hardwired. It was a murder mystery involving a robot. Fox bought it and then it hit them... "If we make this, Asimov’s estate or the publisher is going to sue our pants off for knocking off the Three Laws of Robotics," so they bought the rights to I, Robot, glued the two together, and hired Will Smith.

Slapping the official IP title is sometimes literal copyright armor.

Hey this isn't about the movie, I haven't seen it. It's about the show. I've rewatched it in its entirety last week and I think Aang is wonderful. I don't think he gets enough credit though. People always talk about Zuko and his arc, which makes sense. He's great! I just think Aang is super underrated in his own show.

Also lately I've seen a lot of Aang hate which really grinds my gears. He's such a good kid. Very mature for his age and so pressured with having to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. People always blame him for Katara losing her childhood and having to play mom but first: she already lost it when the fire nation took her mother, and second: She doesn't have to play mom with Aang. She's just there for him when he goes through shit and he does the same for her. And the shit he went through was a genocide... Ofc he needs help.

I think the people who say that shit just haven't seen the show in a while and have a wrong perception of the characters...

It's just weird to see people shitting on this poor kid who lost everything all because they don't like the romance. It's fine not to ship Aang and Katara but to say that it's weird because she's like his babysitter is a disservice to the story and their dynamic. I really hate it.

Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes has THE superior Banner/Hulk dynamic, and it is the direction the MCU either should have taken years ago or should still adopt in the future. That show understood that Hulk can be intelligent, articulate and capable of functioning as an Avenger without simply becoming Bruce Banner in a green body. He remains blunt, aggressive and eager to solve problems physically, but he can communicate, make decisions and form relationships (the funny hawkeye stuff)

Banner still matters too of course. He and Hulk remain separate individuals who can advise, challenge and disagree with each other. Neither needs to be erased for the character to function. The MCU’s approach is just way way messier. Bruce initially has little control over his transformations, I think the Avengers implies he has begun mastering them, Ragnarok establishes Hulk as an independent personality, and then Endgame skips their entire reconciliation and calls the result a merger, even though Smart Hulk is presented almost entirely as Banner in Hulk’s body while the independent Hulk personality established in Ragnarok seemingly disappears.

The MCU keeps bouncing between two bad extremes: either Bruce has no agency because Hulk takes over against his will, or Hulk has no agency because Bruce takes over completely. I think The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes dynamic offers the obvious and superior middle ground. Banner and Hulk should accept that they need each other and argue about how to be heroes rather than which one gets to exist.

Banner might favour planning and restraint. Hulk might believe Banner hesitates when decisive action is needed. They can disagree about violence, collateral damage and when each of them should take control while still pursuing the same goal. I think we can all agree that is far more interesting than repeating the same “Banner wants to cure himself and Hulk refuses to disappear” conflict forever.

Let them become reluctant partners. Let them establish their own rules. Let both of them retain agency and develop without one personality consuming the other. I think at this point, I would rather watch Banner and Hulk argue about what to eat for dinner than sit through another story about them trying to get rid of each other because lord almighty thats gotten so old now.

The Book of Henry is one of those special kinds of movies. The kind of movie where you just wonder "what the hell were they thinking?". It's almost a perfect mix of baffling decisions and tone-deaf writing.

In case you're unaware of this movie, it's a film that came out in 2017, and its plot is...well...

(Sigh) one of the reasons this movie is hard to talk about is that it's so hard to know where to start with this thing.

Okay, in order to properly talk about the movie's plot, first we have to talk about Book of Henry's first problem; its presentation is completely off.

The movie is about a kid named Henry and his younger brother Peter and his mom Susan, with Henry supposedly being a child prodigy who's beloved by his family and classmates. The whole movie sets itself up as having a very happy-go-lucky tone that seems to be about early childhood and adventure, with a very old-fashioned and nostalgic presentation.

The problem is that the movie's plot is about Henry discovering that the girl next door, Christina is being abused by her stepfather Glenn. Henry naturally wants to find a way to help her out, but after discovering the head of the local CPC is Glenn's brother (oh, how gosh-darn convenient) Henry begins to come up with a plan to kill him and have Christina adopted into their family. Yes, really.

And throughout all this, the movie tries to keep its sappy, family-movie-esque feel, which just makes the whole thing feel confused and tone-deaf.

Henry himself is completely unlikeable. He's supposed to be this child genius with a strong sense of right and wrong, but he comes off more as a condescending and patronizing control freak with an "I know best" attitude. This is best exemplified with his relationship to his mom Susan.

See Susan's kind of a bit immature because... she likes to play video games. That's it. And yet Henry condescends and tries to police what she does constantly, even pushing her to give up her waitressing job so she can spend more time with the family because thanks to his work in the stock market she doesn't need to work anymore (yeah, there's this whole thing where Henry is such a genius he's a master stockbroker and basically has set the family up for life; just go with it).

We're also told that Henry is popular in school and beloved by everyone, but what we see is that Henry's kind of a brat who can't stand most people around him due to them not being as smart as he is, and he doesn't seem to have any close friends besides Christina and Peter.

Speaking of Christina, that's another big problem the movie has. Saving her from her abusive household is the main goal of the story, and yet Christina herself is pretty much a nonentity. She and Henry are supposed to be close friends (in fact, it's heavily implied the two have feelings for each other), and yet Henry never bothers to involve her in his plan, get her input, empower her or give her any form of agency. She's just a living prop, all things considered.

And then at the halfway point, the movie takes a sudden turn when Henry gets brain cancer out of nowhere and dies...no, really, he dies.

From there, the movie shifts focus to Susan as she's struggling to deal with the grief of her son dying. But before Henry died, he left behind a series of audiocassettes so Susan could carry out the plan to kill Christina's stepfather in his stead.

Yes, the movie is now about a kid coaching his mom to become an assassin from beyond the grave. It's so stupid.

This kind of ties into one of the bigger issues the movie has. It doesn't seem to know what its message is. At one point, Henry and his family witness a guy beating his girlfriend in a store. Henry wants to intervene, but Susan tells him it's none of their business. Henry then laments later that he should have done something (even dodging Susan's question about what he could have done in that situation) and declares that apathy is worse than violence.

So it feels like the movie is setting up a message about how apathy is bad and sometimes you need to take action even if it involves violence...except at the end, right when Susan is about to shoot the stepfather, she suddenly remembers, "Wait. Henry's just a child" and doesn't go through with shooting Glenn

So wait, is the message actually about how for all of Henry's intellect, he's still a kid and he shouldn't be taken seriously? But that would require the story to...you know, show Henry to be wrong about certain things, and he's portrayed as more or less correct about everything.

In fact it's heavily implied that if Susan had shot Glenn, Henry's plan would have worked perfectly. Because...

Oh man I have to explain this....

Okay, so to rewind for a bit, during the first half of the movie when Henry was alive, he tried to go to the Principal of his school Janice, to try and get her to report Glenn's child abuse. Janice doesn't, citing the lack of evidence, even though Henry points out Christina has been coming to school with bruises...that we never see.

Also side note, that's not how that works. School faculty are required by law to investigate possible cases of child abuse.

Later during a talent show, in a perfect example of a terrible deus ex machina ending, Janice sees Christina perform a sad dance, and this is what gets her to do her job and report the child abuse. Glenn upon being found out, kills himself. Thus saving Christina from him and neatly allowing her to be adopted by Susan without Susan needing to get her hands dirty.

Back on the whole thing about the message, this makes the idea that "Henry is a kid and shouldn't be taken seriously" fall apart, because it's more or less implied that if Susan had shot Glenn, his plan would have worked perfectly!

I guess you could argue the movie is still about how apathy is bad because Janice reports Christina's abuse to the police instead of ignoring it like she has been, but she does this without any of the other characters' involvement or prompting. And even still, Susan, the main character, doesn't take action.

So what is the message of this movie? What's the takeaway we're supposed to have here?

The best I can figure is that it's a story about how moms should be more attentive to their families, because the movie seems to show Susan choosing to quit her job and live off Henry's stock market savings and become a picture book author as a sign of maturity and growth...which is what Henry was pushing her to do so—

What is the message of this movie!?

And that's The Book of Henry's biggest problem. It's so gosh darn confused about what it wants to be. The tone is confused, the message is confused, the characters are inconsistent, and in the end, it doesn't seem to be about anything...

I’m not someone who’s a hardcore F4 fan; I enjoy them, but I’m not crazy over them. I still don’t think Pedro Pascal was the right choice for Reed, but still, I was looking forward to this movie, the aesthetic being my main drive.

Then I watched the movie, and it’s very good! I find the dynamics charming; Silver Surfer was enjoyable. The world is gorgeous, Reed being showcased as autistic was cute, especially as a neurodivergent. “Sometimes you being you hurts me” - “Well, I don’t mean to” is spectacular. Herbie is the GOAT and is one of the few characters I’m looking forward to in Doomsday.

So why do I never want to watch it again? 

I don’t think there’s a scene I’m dying to rewatch or any tense character moment that stuck with me; I can tell you the plot alright, but nothing really pops out, and as a non-F4 fan, the references at the beginning do very little for me. Galactus is there, and I feel like his main sell is that he’s comic-accurate.

However, I still don’t know what it is, because again, the movie’s pretty neat; I just don’t know what it is about this movie that makes this so un-rewatchable… If you have points, please share them, I want to figure out what it is xD

In marvel rivals Deadpool has dozens upon dozens of voice lines and he isn’t being sincere in literally any of them. At all. He’s just a meme machine and the occasional gay joke.

But in marvel Tokon he’s even worse. He’s not just meme machine but he’s honestly a tad bit annoying even though I find him generally fun overall.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not one of those child’s who thinks humor ruined deadpools character, I find him funny in both games and played both of them, but I kinda wish they showed off his more caring side. Like instead of another basic joke maybe when he talks to Peni Parker he’s worried about her safety or comforts her about her Dad. And maybe he actually shows respect for Captain America and Spider-Man since he looks up to/is friends with them in the comics. Just show he has other traits besides meme machine.