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KingOfHearts

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  1. Finally watched The Little Mermaid live-action remake after it came to Disney+. I thought the actors for Ursula, Ariel, and Vanessa all knocked it out of the park. For the most part however, the movie just didn't need to exist. The remake doesn't add much to the original except for runtime. It brings up some interesting concepts (like the humans' fear of the "sea gods" and blaming for them a bunch of recent shipwrecks, implying Triton has been intentionally causing them, or Ursula being Triton's sister), but it doesn't ever really explore those. I know a lot of people liked Eric getting more development but he was a little too whiny for my taste. I found Triton less likeable this time around too. Overall, the movie didn't really do anything to stand on its own (unlike Aladdin). It felt very safe and inoffensive. But of course, they had to go around fixing plot holes unnecessarily like these remakes always do. The fact Ariel couldn't remember she needed to kiss Eric felt needlessly complicated and kind of under-minded Ursula's desperation when she transforms into Vanessa. The sudden plan change didn't feel as warranted because of the memory curse. I actually liked the way OUAT split the Little Mermaid story between Ariel and Ursula - they kept the spirit of the original in different ways. I thought the remake did a decent of job of recapturing it too, but it just wasn't as good and didn't add anything, so it felt pointless. It's always weird to me when I like OUAT's version better than the sequels or remakes (as with Frozen 2). This aged pretty well.
  2. I didn't hate the idea of Zelena filling the Persephone role, as it explained why the Underworld looked like Storybrooke and did have a pretty good tragic ending. I didn't really buy into their romance, though. Realistically, Hades would've kept asking her out and she would've kept turning him down.
  3. Just finished rewatching Hercules with a bunch of friends. I really wish they would've had the Underworld arc last for a whole season. The first half could be in the Underworld where the main characters meet dead people as they did in the show, but the other half could be the gods trapped in Storybrooke. Maybe they lost their immortality and/or memories, and the heroes help them regain it in order to defeat Hades. Imagine dealing with a bunch of Greek mythological threats in Storybrooke. It could be a fun of game of the characters trying to figure who is what god or some other character in Greek mythology. Its a crying shame that Hercules and Megara were as misused as they were on the show. At least one of them couldve been reoccurring for that half-season.
  4. The first movie was good because it didn't take itself too seriously. It knew it was kind of goofy at times, similarly to OUAT in the earlier seasons. It unfortunately gets very bogged down by its own confusing universe in the sequels. I'd say Ursula's story in S4 was closer to The Little Mermaid than Ariel's in S3.
  5. Just saw the trailer for the new Peter Pan and Wendy movie... and I thought OUAT's version was bland-looking. Geez. We're at the point now where I can't help but compare the sequels and remakes to OUAT since OUAT actually did it better in some cases. OUAT's Peter Pan was unpleasant for most people sure, but at least it was different. There is nothing interesting at all about this new Disney live-action remake. It's generic as hell.
  6. I never understood why we never got more holiday or folklore characters, al a Rise of the Guardians. Like you're telling me Tinker Bell was real but Jack Frost wasn't? You know A&E would've loved a Santa Claus Big Bad. I'm not even joking. It could've been some ultra high intelligent commentary on consumerism or something. They would've totally had a scene where Regina says something snarky then punches him in the face and it would be gif'ed as a badass girl boss moment.
  7. You may have just accidentally spoiled that Abraham Lincoln was the Big Bad for S8.
  8. If there was an election, who was running against her? One of her clones/alternate timeline versions?
  9. I actually don't mind the slower pace. It's what I expected from the LoTR universe. But if it's going to take its time, it needs to spend time on the things you mentioned - worldbuilding, character development, etc. Andor has been doing a fantastic job at that though Star Wars fans have complained about it too being too slow. RoP's character conversations are just full of fluff that sounds like someone is trying really hard to write lofty literature. I still think Lost did the best at mystery boxes, but as you said - there was no reason for it in Rings of Power. Who cares... It doesn't even really feel like Game of Thrones either, which is weird. What happened to Emma was a little disheartening. She started out as a strong female heroine but over time got beaten down into a husk by S6.
  10. I saw someone online complain that there was too much singing, which I thought was funny. In the realm of fantasy tv, Rings of Power definitely does not scratch that OUAT itch. It does, however, follow the annoying Lost-style "mystery box" storytelling the OUAT writers were so addicted to. I really hate how obvious they would get holding their cards to their chest, with characters being unnecessarily cryptic, whispering when they don't need to, being interrupted by something as they're just about to reveal something important, etc. Rings of Power follows similar tropes. It's like the writers had one or two good plot twists in mind but needed to write eight episodes of story to go along with it. The dialogue for Rings of Power is also as bad if not worse than OUAT in some cases. It's George Lucas levels of horrible. The show's visuals are stellar, but the writing is very incompetent. Prequels are more about making the "how something happened" more interesting than "what happened". For example, while everyone knew little Anakin was going to turn into Dark Vader, the worldbuilding and how it transpired were both interesting. Rings of Power does not really bring a whole lot to the table in terms of expanding the parts of Tolkien's universe that have made it to the screen.
  11. Disney is really into witches cursing small town America, aren't they? I wish we had more modern references and a mix of cultures (al a Shrek 2) so it wasn't just a generic fairy tale for two-thirds of the movie. Not as realistic aesthetically as Storybrooke, but something that's more just influenced by Andalasia rather than being just a copy/paste of it. Maybe as the film gets closer to the climax, things like electronic appliances start disappearing and it's not just Giselle who starts changing drastically in personality. Now I just imagine Rumple coming back to Andalasia "politely" asking Nancy and Edward about what happened to his wand.
  12. I was thinking about the same thing. I thought they were going to go into this direction with the "Disenchanted" title. Maybe Nancy and Edward come visit, making Giselle feel jealous and jaded at her own life. Or maybe Morgan feels like she can't live up to Giselle's expectations or believe things would be better if they were a fairy tale, so she casts the spell instead. Giselle as an evil stepmother worked so much better than Snow as an evil queen in the S4 finale. The stepmother just had so many good lines that didn't make her just generic evil. I just don't see how Giselle being an evil stepmother really serves the narrative other than upping the stakes.
  13. I did hear though the original actress makes a cameo as one of the villagers who tells Giselle the festival was that night, which I thought was cool. Morgan seems much more like a main character than Giselle, but she doesn't get much agency until she ... Giselle gets a lot of screentime and focus, but she doesn't get any character development throughout the film. (Which is a major departure from the original.) She realizes she screwed up with the spell, but doesn't seem to learn the moral lesson, which I guess is similar to Ariel in The Little Mermaid. Everything that happens seems to service Morgan's character more than Giselle's. Giselle already appreciated Morgan at the beginning of the film and doesn't really learn how to interact with her better. Everything kind of just falls on Morgan, who accepts herself as a "true daughter of Andalasia."
  14. The time gap was a little jarring. It seemed more like Giselle had only been Morgan's stepmother for a matter of months or only a couple years - not ten years. Their relationship was not as established as you would think after so much time. Even though I didn't like the changes to Robert's character, it's believable he would have mellowed out after being married to Giselle for a decade. I was surprised they waited so long to finally have a baby (I didn't hear anything about fertility issues, unless I missed it). But then again, the baby is so inconsequential to the plot that it may as well have not been there. It's pretty easy to speculate why they moved to suburbia, but the movie never outright says why they do it. It seemed like a poor decision for everyone involved. We never get to see Morgan's friends or explore the life she's missing - unlike Inside Out, where we are shown what Riley misses after moving to San Francisco. We don't really get to see much of a "normal" for the characters before the inciting incident.
  15. I was expecting Disenchanted to be a soulless direct-to-DVD cash grab, but it was way better than it had any right to be. It's a crime that it didn't hit theaters. There was so much heart put into it with a great attention to detail. It kept the essence of the original but also felt like a natural progression from it. At a high level, it played less like a parody and more like a straight fairy tale story. It had the quirky charm of cheesy Disney movies from the 90s/2000s. The Alan Menken music was immaculate and borrowed cues from the original appropriately while bringing in some lovely new songs. (They weren't exactly catchy but were still pleasant to listen to.) This film does share a lot of similar story elements to Once Upon a Time. If you miss the show, I highly recommend watching it. It's even got Brigette Hales as the screenplay writer, which I thought was funny. (That might not be in its favor though, lol) Major spoilers below. Giselle basically described every season of OUAT: "Magic fixes everything... or breaks everything. But then you find more magic to undo the magic, and everything is fine again."
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