Saturday, September 13, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
PRJF02 - Welcome to the Jungle, Part 2
Welcome
to the Jungle, Part 2
- Boring
font choice is boring.
- Too
drawn out morphing call is too drawn out.
-
Jungle BOOM. Seriously? Even in a fucking martial arts season?
- It
was nice of Casey to announce his backflip.
-
“Jungle Fury, Red Ranger!” That’s an odd thing to yell after defeating someone…
- I
am just so insanely not a fan of this premiere so far. The pacing is really
weird, the writing is dodgy, and the acting is just… eh. Everything feels so
rushed and forced.
-
…Why did Camille have to transform after hearing Mantor’s plan?
- Hi
again, obviously not Theo.
- No
matter how effective they can be, I will always find nunchaku to be extremely
silly.
- Oh,
that’s why Camille had to transform. Okay, but why split the scene up like
that?
- Aw,
Fran is a super sad character.
-
Unlike the Rock-Porium, at least RJ gets a steady amount of customers so I can
buy that he can afford to hire more people.
- I
don’t think the rock explosion was necessary for the training sequence.
-
Aljin reminds me of Archie Kao, but without the charm.
-
HAHA THAT REPORTER’S MICROPHONE.
- The
Power Rangers universe has got to be the most expensive fictional world to
repair.
-
Someone tell Anna Hutchison to stop sucking on that helium.
- It
may be too early for a proper aesthetic assessment, but these fight scenes are
just fucking wonderful. They’re replacing great Gekiranger fights but doing it
in a way that works, without all the stupid slo-mo and explosions. Just
legitimate good choreography and great angles to work with. The suits are also
really nice, a unique addition to the universe, and the villain designs are
some of my favorites.
- And
then we get to another stupid fucking CGI attack sequence.
- On
one hand, I feel like the team merely needing to be in balance to use the
megazord power is good enough, and on the other hand I feel like they should
have had to work for it a bit more.
-
Also, the megazord? Goddamn gorgeous.
- Oh
no… Not this… Not Flit! Just… fucking leave Kelson Henderson out of my seasons,
seriously.
- Why
do we need a fucking megazord commentator? Seriously!? I know it was in
Gekiranger but they could have easily chosen to not use it. It’s just such a
fucking distraction and just totally takes me out of an otherwise great fight.
And megazord fights are rarely good anymore, so when you ruin one that is…
Shame on you.
- The
Savage Spin would be cooler if we saw it actually make contact with the
monster.
-
Thank you so much for shutting that little bastard up.
- Oh
look, Dai-Shi is Jarrod! They… actually kept that hidden fairly well.
PRJF01 - Welcome to the Jungle, Part 1
Welcome to the Jungle, Part 1
- The Jungle Fury theme song may not be a masterpiece but damn it is catchy.
- “We’ve been sitting here since last night.” I… did you eat!?
- In some shots it’s raining and in others it’s not…
- Calm down Theo, Meteor you ain’t.
- I feel like using your spirit animal in a fight like this should be cheating.
- Damnit, we finally get a Jared in Power Rangers and they spell it the stupid way.
- That whole scene between Casey and Jarrod happened way too fast.
- It’s being implied here that Jarrod has had problems like this before… so why wait until now to expel him? Hell, why even put him in the running to protect the planet if he’s such an asshole?
- Also, had Casey not been chosen in Jarrod’s place, would he still have been the red ranger, or would he have been a black ranger?
- “They were able to seal the Dai Shi in this box that we for some fucking reason never sealed."
- So it’s the Forbidden Room and Jarrod can just walk into it? Pai Zhuq sucks at security.
- Maybe Master Mao should have put down the box before he started fighting Jarrod.
- …Mao gets thrown to the ground and suddenly he’s dead? This premiere sucks so far. It’s way too rushed and nothing is being properly explained. We’re supposed to feel sorry for these kids even though we know fucking nothing about them.
- If he was a better actor, I’d think Jarrod was played by Benedict Cumberbuns.
- …Wow, these teens are racist as fuck.
- WHY DO THE RINSHI HAVE TO HOP.
- Hi, LeeLee! Hopefully you’re less annoying this season.
- Camille just stood against that wall for ten-thousand years?
- Okay, wait… is Lily implying that she and Theo lived at a school on a mountaintop?
- I’m getting really tired of the recent trend of the red ranger joining last because of –insert reason here–.
- Wow someone please make Fran go away.
- …RJ just had three uniforms sitting around?
- Solar Morphers. Mother. Fucking. Solar. Morphers. Fuck this.
- And our first big explosion for the season is used on a goddamn walking shot.
- The morphing sequence is nice but it would be a lot better if it wasn’t so obviously NOT FUCKING THEO.
- That was actually a pretty awesome first fight scene.
- You think Casey knows he couldn’t morph because he got the morphing call wrong?
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Friday, September 5, 2014
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Power Rangers Dino Thunder - Retrospective
I typed out a pretty harsh first paragraph for this season but I figured it's best saved for that other worst season ever...
When Dino Thunder first aired, I was twelve years old. I had just come off of my love for Ninja Storm and then I saw advertisements for DINOSAURS. Dinosaurs are like that one subject that nobody hates. It's always perfect. Well, I mean I did see Kyoryuger... but we'll get to that another time.
Needless to say, I was excited. This was also back when I liked Tommy (we all make mistakes) so his return was another reason I was hyped. When the show premiered, it all payed off. I loved it. At the time, I loved it more than Ninja Storm. So after I actually ended up enjoying Ninja Storm more than I did when I was a child, I was ecstatic at the idea of getting back into this season. I popped in the disc, started it up...
...Fuck Dino Thunder.
As always let's start with the rangers. Conner was... well, Conner was different. Conner started out kind of like Shane last season. He was flawed, he was kind of a jerk, and he also had this unique quality of really wanting nothing to do with being a Power Ranger. He had plans and didn't want to give them up. That was something I was looking forward to being a plot point... but it's addressed and taken care of all in one episode (which will become a pattern for the rest of the season). For the remainder of the season, Conner kind of just goes through the paces. He has his jerk moments but he's never a truly bad person. He doesn't really develop, we're just told he does. He has a sudden change of heart in the finale with his date at the prom but nothing really builds up to it. Seeing a ranger totally disinterested in being a ranger would have been nice but they squandered the opportunity and just gave us a red ranger who's just kind of... there.
Ethan... well, I don't much care for Ethan. You know how we're told that Conner is a jerk? I think that title should have gone to Ethan. I think the intention throughout the season is for him to come off as snarky, awkward, and kind of cocky... but he just comes off as a self-righteous asshole who always needs the final word. But the thing is, just like Conner, that personality isn't there all the time. Sometimes he's super nice, sometimes he's really rude. On one hand I feel like that works, it's a bit more believable, but on the other hand it just feels so inconsistent. He starts off the season as this awkward nerd who uses his (albeit rude) wit to mask his insecurities, but he never truly outgrows that. Seeing a ranger who was shy and had to slowly find new ways to deal with that shyness instead of being a dick would have been kind of nice but they squandered the opportunity and just gave us a blue ranger who's just sort of... there.
Kira, what can I say about Kira... No, really, I'm having a hard time thinking of things to say about Kira. I don't think there was more of a "just there" character this season than Kira. Her main characteristic is that she's super friendly, although she has an "edge", and by "edge" I mean she's occasionally... not super friendly. She suffers from Ethan's awkward snark but for a different reason, in that she's... seriously, fuck if I even know. Kira lacked any discernible character outside of her music (and sudden right-the-fuck-out-of-nowhere interest in a TV internship) and her interest in Trent. I can at least kind of see how people could say Conner and Ethan might have changed by the end of the season (even though I disagree) but Kira just firmly stayed the same. She didn't have any real problems to overcome nor any major setbacks with her personality... She just kind of wandered throughout the season and did whatever the season asked of her.
There is quite literally not a single thing to say about Tommy's character this season. It's Tommy. He says things that have the underlying hint of "I'm fucking awesome" and he gets stuck in a suit. He doesn't change, he has no character arc (his rivalry with Zeltrax doesn't count) and he's not even in half the fucking show except in his damn suit. Adding a tiny bit of backstory that he went to college and found the gems adds nothing to his character. Tommy just existed.
Trent was, hands down, the best character of the season because he actually fucking did stuff. Maybe not a whole lot, maybe it was inconsistent, but he did stuff. He got sucked into a world he didn't know, he struggled being the evil white ranger, he opposed everyone on the show, he struggled to gain his friends' trust, he struggled to keep his dad's secret (even though that was pointless), and by God he did more than just exist. He may not have necessarily changed, but Jesus he actually participated in events that weren't just killing time until the fucking finale. He had a missed opportunity in a rivalry with Zeltrax, but honestly that's the only major misstep in his character that I can think of. He's still not a great character, he was forced into a repeating role after turning good of only ever showing up when it was convenient, but he was still this season's best.
As for the villains... Good fucking lord. Mesogog was the shining example of a bad fucking villain. He's just the epitome of not doing a goddamn thing. He never comes up with a plan on his own, never gets involved in any of the action or story for that matter (Anton's story with Trent doesn't count) and constantly whines about his minions not getting anything done even though he never fucking does anything about it to make it better. He doesn't even get remotely interesting until the finale when he finally takes matters into his own hands and that's only when he and Mercer split from each other. Combine this with that fact that everyone feared him for whatever goddamn reason... Mesogog was an awful villain.
As was Zeltrax! But not because he didn't do anything, because he had potential to be better. He starts off as a formidable opponent, with an odd obsession with Tommy, but along the way he just... became another villain. After it was revealed that he was really Smitty (a revelation that came right the hell out of nowhere) he just stopped being interesting. He was suddenly into Elsa out of nowhere, and for pretty much no reason that I can recall (and trust me, I tried to find one) he wanted to defeat Mesogog. He became an anti-villain for no good reason. He started off as a character that was a bit mysterious with a mysterious past but he just stopped being interesting. The only thing keeping him above Mesogog was that he actually did shit throughout the season.
Then there's Elsa. I can't really put my finger on what Elsa was except for angry all the time? She's kind of like Kira in that she doesn't really have a discernable personality, she was just... evil? Her little stint as Randall didn't make any sense either because I assumed it was to keep tabs on the rangers, but she never actually uses it to her advantage. She never provides any ifnromation about their personal life, she's just there all the time. Outside of that, she has no personality. She merely exists because... two villains wasn't enough?
Dino Thunder wandered. Dino Thunder never knew what it wanted to do. It had a lot of interesting dynamics that would have been fun to watch, but were never followed up on. It had a lot of characters that could have been more interesting, but they were fumbled. So many things were introduced and resolved in the same episode. Things happened merely to make other things happen, never to work with the plot. It was a season of missed opportunities, sloppy writing, odd pacing, strange storytelling, and a feeling that the writers were just going through the paces at times. It is, ultimately, a disappointment, and because of the missed opportunities, the boring characters, the terrible villains, and the mundane writing, it is... my second least-favorite season.
The worst? Oh, we'll get there.
Best Episode - Fighting Spirit
Fighting Spirit was a spectacle. I had such a hard time picking a best episode because so many of the episodes this season tended to make me want to smack the writers upside the head. So this episode comes along and just gives us a lot of cool action, a bit of nostalgia, some great scenes with the powerless rangers having to fend for themselves... It's not a great episode by any means but outside of Thunder Storm, which still had flaws, it was the best the season had to offer.
Worst Episode - A Test of Trust
This was also a hard choice. There were so many bad episodes this season. But this was the worst because it was so fucking pointless. There was no reason for the rangers to suddenly doubt Trent just because of his secret, and then we spend an episode of him trying to prove himself by doing the exact same shit he's been doing for half the season. It was just a time-wasting episode until the finale, even more than the rest of the season had been.
When Dino Thunder first aired, I was twelve years old. I had just come off of my love for Ninja Storm and then I saw advertisements for DINOSAURS. Dinosaurs are like that one subject that nobody hates. It's always perfect. Well, I mean I did see Kyoryuger... but we'll get to that another time.
Needless to say, I was excited. This was also back when I liked Tommy (we all make mistakes) so his return was another reason I was hyped. When the show premiered, it all payed off. I loved it. At the time, I loved it more than Ninja Storm. So after I actually ended up enjoying Ninja Storm more than I did when I was a child, I was ecstatic at the idea of getting back into this season. I popped in the disc, started it up...
...Fuck Dino Thunder.
As always let's start with the rangers. Conner was... well, Conner was different. Conner started out kind of like Shane last season. He was flawed, he was kind of a jerk, and he also had this unique quality of really wanting nothing to do with being a Power Ranger. He had plans and didn't want to give them up. That was something I was looking forward to being a plot point... but it's addressed and taken care of all in one episode (which will become a pattern for the rest of the season). For the remainder of the season, Conner kind of just goes through the paces. He has his jerk moments but he's never a truly bad person. He doesn't really develop, we're just told he does. He has a sudden change of heart in the finale with his date at the prom but nothing really builds up to it. Seeing a ranger totally disinterested in being a ranger would have been nice but they squandered the opportunity and just gave us a red ranger who's just kind of... there.
Ethan... well, I don't much care for Ethan. You know how we're told that Conner is a jerk? I think that title should have gone to Ethan. I think the intention throughout the season is for him to come off as snarky, awkward, and kind of cocky... but he just comes off as a self-righteous asshole who always needs the final word. But the thing is, just like Conner, that personality isn't there all the time. Sometimes he's super nice, sometimes he's really rude. On one hand I feel like that works, it's a bit more believable, but on the other hand it just feels so inconsistent. He starts off the season as this awkward nerd who uses his (albeit rude) wit to mask his insecurities, but he never truly outgrows that. Seeing a ranger who was shy and had to slowly find new ways to deal with that shyness instead of being a dick would have been kind of nice but they squandered the opportunity and just gave us a blue ranger who's just sort of... there.
Kira, what can I say about Kira... No, really, I'm having a hard time thinking of things to say about Kira. I don't think there was more of a "just there" character this season than Kira. Her main characteristic is that she's super friendly, although she has an "edge", and by "edge" I mean she's occasionally... not super friendly. She suffers from Ethan's awkward snark but for a different reason, in that she's... seriously, fuck if I even know. Kira lacked any discernible character outside of her music (and sudden right-the-fuck-out-of-nowhere interest in a TV internship) and her interest in Trent. I can at least kind of see how people could say Conner and Ethan might have changed by the end of the season (even though I disagree) but Kira just firmly stayed the same. She didn't have any real problems to overcome nor any major setbacks with her personality... She just kind of wandered throughout the season and did whatever the season asked of her.
There is quite literally not a single thing to say about Tommy's character this season. It's Tommy. He says things that have the underlying hint of "I'm fucking awesome" and he gets stuck in a suit. He doesn't change, he has no character arc (his rivalry with Zeltrax doesn't count) and he's not even in half the fucking show except in his damn suit. Adding a tiny bit of backstory that he went to college and found the gems adds nothing to his character. Tommy just existed.
Trent was, hands down, the best character of the season because he actually fucking did stuff. Maybe not a whole lot, maybe it was inconsistent, but he did stuff. He got sucked into a world he didn't know, he struggled being the evil white ranger, he opposed everyone on the show, he struggled to gain his friends' trust, he struggled to keep his dad's secret (even though that was pointless), and by God he did more than just exist. He may not have necessarily changed, but Jesus he actually participated in events that weren't just killing time until the fucking finale. He had a missed opportunity in a rivalry with Zeltrax, but honestly that's the only major misstep in his character that I can think of. He's still not a great character, he was forced into a repeating role after turning good of only ever showing up when it was convenient, but he was still this season's best.
As for the villains... Good fucking lord. Mesogog was the shining example of a bad fucking villain. He's just the epitome of not doing a goddamn thing. He never comes up with a plan on his own, never gets involved in any of the action or story for that matter (Anton's story with Trent doesn't count) and constantly whines about his minions not getting anything done even though he never fucking does anything about it to make it better. He doesn't even get remotely interesting until the finale when he finally takes matters into his own hands and that's only when he and Mercer split from each other. Combine this with that fact that everyone feared him for whatever goddamn reason... Mesogog was an awful villain.
As was Zeltrax! But not because he didn't do anything, because he had potential to be better. He starts off as a formidable opponent, with an odd obsession with Tommy, but along the way he just... became another villain. After it was revealed that he was really Smitty (a revelation that came right the hell out of nowhere) he just stopped being interesting. He was suddenly into Elsa out of nowhere, and for pretty much no reason that I can recall (and trust me, I tried to find one) he wanted to defeat Mesogog. He became an anti-villain for no good reason. He started off as a character that was a bit mysterious with a mysterious past but he just stopped being interesting. The only thing keeping him above Mesogog was that he actually did shit throughout the season.
Then there's Elsa. I can't really put my finger on what Elsa was except for angry all the time? She's kind of like Kira in that she doesn't really have a discernable personality, she was just... evil? Her little stint as Randall didn't make any sense either because I assumed it was to keep tabs on the rangers, but she never actually uses it to her advantage. She never provides any ifnromation about their personal life, she's just there all the time. Outside of that, she has no personality. She merely exists because... two villains wasn't enough?
Dino Thunder wandered. Dino Thunder never knew what it wanted to do. It had a lot of interesting dynamics that would have been fun to watch, but were never followed up on. It had a lot of characters that could have been more interesting, but they were fumbled. So many things were introduced and resolved in the same episode. Things happened merely to make other things happen, never to work with the plot. It was a season of missed opportunities, sloppy writing, odd pacing, strange storytelling, and a feeling that the writers were just going through the paces at times. It is, ultimately, a disappointment, and because of the missed opportunities, the boring characters, the terrible villains, and the mundane writing, it is... my second least-favorite season.
The worst? Oh, we'll get there.
Best Episode - Fighting Spirit
Fighting Spirit was a spectacle. I had such a hard time picking a best episode because so many of the episodes this season tended to make me want to smack the writers upside the head. So this episode comes along and just gives us a lot of cool action, a bit of nostalgia, some great scenes with the powerless rangers having to fend for themselves... It's not a great episode by any means but outside of Thunder Storm, which still had flaws, it was the best the season had to offer.
Worst Episode - A Test of Trust
This was also a hard choice. There were so many bad episodes this season. But this was the worst because it was so fucking pointless. There was no reason for the rangers to suddenly doubt Trent just because of his secret, and then we spend an episode of him trying to prove himself by doing the exact same shit he's been doing for half the season. It was just a time-wasting episode until the finale, even more than the rest of the season had been.
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