KingOfHearts
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Posts posted by KingOfHearts
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9 hours ago, Camera One said:
Well, all they needed was a "wouldn't it be cool" if Hades and the Wicked Witch rode a bike together on a date.
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.
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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.
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On 4/4/2023 at 1:14 AM, Camera One said:
I watched the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" tonight and last night. I didn't expect much... a movie from an amusement park ride seemed scraping at the bottom of the barrel.
It was more entertaining than I thought it would be.
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.
QuoteThough I guess with "Once", they didn't change much of The Little Mermaid, beyond inserting Snow and Regina
I'd say Ursula's story in S4 was closer to The Little Mermaid than Ariel's in S3.
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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.
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On 12/23/2022 at 12:54 PM, Camera One said:
I still think "Once" should have had a half season devoted to Christmas/winter solstice.
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.
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On 12/23/2022 at 12:15 PM, Camera One said:
How does Regina stack up against the American presidents? Will they play dirty? Tune in to Season 8.
You may have just accidentally spoiled that Abraham Lincoln was the Big Bad for S8.
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10 hours ago, Camera One said:
I seriously wonder how they all came to "elect" her without Regina knowing there was an election? And how all those realms agreed to become "united" in the first place. I would have liked to see the debates about that. Especially since they were all moved to The World Without Magic against their will. Surely, there would be border disputes if ogres from the Enchanted Forest started venturing into Oz.
If there was an election, who was running against her? One of her clones/alternate timeline versions?
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9 hours ago, Camera One said:
That is exactly what I thought of "Rings of Power" too. It was disappointingly underwhelming and I agree it has some of the same writing flaws as "Once", relying on a twists and spending more time teasing than character development, logical plot or worldbuilding, despite its beauty.
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.
QuotePersonally, I still love "Lost", but none of the mystery boxes wannabes that have come after have compared to it. "Rings of Power" had Tolkien's world. Why did it need to rely on mystery boxes is beyond me.
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...
Spoiler... who Sauron is?
It doesn't even really feel like Game of Thrones either, which is weird.
QuoteI am still impressed how "Once" created such a strong female character as Emma, who was tough in the pilot but not in an abrasive way and with vulnerability (though a lot of credit also goes to the actress).
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.
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On 11/22/2022 at 8:06 PM, Camera One said:
I've listened to the songs a few more times now and they're growing on me. I expected slightly more impressive lyrics from Stephen Schwartz, though.
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.
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17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:
The other thing this movie reminded me of was Wandavision, which was also about an unhappy person turning a whole town and its residents into her own fantasy world. Except there, although Wanda was presented with some sympathy, she was clearly in the wrong for messing with other people like that, and it showed the horrible impact on other people in the town to be turned into pawns in her fantasy. It wasn't just "everyone thinks they had a funny dream."
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.
QuoteI was just thinking what "price" Rumple would extract from Giselle to give her that wand and scroll, LOL. He would have loved extracting all that magic from Andalasia, maybe to power the Hat so the stars would align?
Now I just imagine Rumple coming back to Andalasia "politely" asking Nancy and Edward about what happened to his wand.
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3 hours ago, Camera One said:
Maybe the story could have shown Giselle acting like a "normal" human after years of being in New York, and she saw herself as middle aged and couldn't handle it, and that could be why she casted the spell, which would turn her not back into the young carefree princess, but into a jaded stepmother?
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.
QuoteThe evil vs evil song was the highlight of the movie for me, Amy and Maya were just having an absolute blast being evil. The line about how no one wants a fairy tale with Maleficent AND Cruella made me laugh out loud. Yeah, its almost like having a million villains in one story is really annoying and clogs up your story or something. I will never complain about seeing Cruella though, the most gloriously evil villain we ever had.
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.
Spoiler(Which they did twice later - "Oh no! Now Andalasia is dying!" and then, "Oh no! Now Giselle is dying too!")
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8 hours ago, Camera One said:
But now I know they picked a younger actress since they needed someone who could pass as a teenager.
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 ...
Spoiler... gets banished to Andalasia.
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."
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4 hours ago, Camera One said:
It was hard to believe in Giselle's optimism after so many years. The bratty teenager trope was a little annoying. Though I'm also not sure what I would have done to fix this.
It was a little jarring to see everyone looking a bit older (seems to be par for the course nowadays with so many revivals). On the one hand, it's nice to see "old friends" but at the same time, it's hard to avoid being distracted by the sad passage of time.
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.
QuoteIt sounded like Giselle was the only one who wanted this. We never really saw "normal" for her and Robert, so we still don't know how that relationship works, what they have in common, what they talk about, what they want, etc.
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.
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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.SpoilerI respected the Giselle/Morgan relationship being the emotional lynchpin of the movie. It was very reminiscent of the Snow/Emma relationship, down to Morgan constantly complaining about wanting to go back to New York (lol). Giselle and Robert having a new baby and Morgan feeling like she's not the "real" daughter of a fairy tale princess reminded me a lot of Emma and Snowflake. Giselle trying to relate to Morgan but failing felt very much like Snow. The scene at the end where Giselle calls Morgan a "true daughter of Andalasia" and sings to her made me wish we had more scenes like that with Emma/Snow.
The actors were having an absolute blast as their "fairy tale" selves. Amy Adams totally killed it as the evil stepmother and did a great job switching between her and Giselle. I do wish they hadn't spoiled this in the trailers. The camp worked remarkably well. Amy also sold the hell out of Giselle's death scene.
Maya Rudolph was a bit of a miscast here. Some of her lines are funny, but her character is never that believably evil. (Maybe that was the point?)The villain song battle was completely unexpected but awesome. Loved them fighting over who followed the villain tropes better.
Robert gets sidelined quite a bit, unfortunately. His character is very bland now. It's pretty clear the writers weren't sure what to do with him.
Physically stopping the clock from striking the last stroke of midnight was clever. Very fairy-tale-ish to find a loophole like that.
Ruby was channeling the same energy as Karen from Mean Girls, and it was great. I enjoyed the knock-off Plastics in this film.
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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On 11/2/2022 at 10:14 PM, Camera One said:
Hopefully some of us will be able to watch it and review the movie here.
Now that it is released, you can expect my 10-page critical essay within the coming weeks.
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On 11/12/2022 at 3:32 PM, Camera One said:
I must say Edward's line in this short teaser/trailer was very apt, and works for "Once Upon a Time" too! Minus the word "smart".
I was happy to see it's a full musical with music by Alan Menken.
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20 hours ago, Camera One said:
The plot in the trailer sounds a bit like a mess, so I hope it actually makes sense
Yeah, not really a fan of having both Giselle and Maya Rudolph's character both be villains. I'm sure we'll see the prince and Idina for five minutes at the beginning. Everyone is going to be so disappointed when they see how little of the budget will inevitably go into showing an animated Andalasia.
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This looks like the opposite of the Dark Curse - instead of cursing the denizens of a fairy tale world into a small town, it's "cursing" real world inhabitants of a small town into a fairy tale. Giselle seems to be like a "nega-Regina" here.It's also nice they're letting Idina finally sing in it.
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2 hours ago, Camera One said:
Well, doing "anything" would have been better than what we got. Her character was used to fill time or service other characters (eg. Regina) or provide some lame "hope" speech to show how hopeful this series was. Writing properly for Snow doesn't necessarily require more screentime, just better use of what she had.
I think giving Snow moments like her conversation with Emma in Lost Girl would've been rewarding. Quality over quantity and making good use of her limited time. Maybe tie some loose threads by giving her small interactions with random townspeople. Have her and Granny briefly reminiscence and talk to her about how Ruby is doing. Have Zelena apologize to Snow for kidnapping Snowflake. Show a scene with Snow and Geppetto showing they're in a much better place in their friendship now. Having Snow go on an unofficial tour catching up with the various side characters would've been good build-up for when they ask the town for help with the sleeping curse later.
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23 hours ago, Camera One said:
It didn't help that the overarching Evil Queen plot was uninspired.
I think it would've worked for me if they had gone with the "Evil Queen" not actually being evil, but it being vanilla "Regina Mills" all along. I would've liked it if Clone Queen was sick of Regina constantly blaming her for her problems. It would've been a way for Regina to learn to take responsibility for her own mistakes than blaming them all on a persona she adopted. Clone Queen shouldn't have had a body count. (The only person she killed was the Oracle, and that was pretty unnecessary.) This would've all made the "you need to learn to love yourself" lesson a lot easier to swallow. It's funny how they basically said you should the love the part of yourself that slaughters villages.
QuoteSnow was getting no character development by this point. I'm not sure whether the "Emma anticipating Hook moving in" had any good character moments.
I think it would've been good to see more than 5 minutes of Snow being a teacher again or Emma going to therapy. I still hate everything they did with Emma in S6, especially after the writers made her a punching bag through pretty much all of S5.
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On 10/2/2022 at 11:42 PM, Camera One said:
I watched "Hocus Pocus" for the first time. The movie was alright, though I can't say I enjoyed the witches enough to warrant a sequel. I wonder why these 3 witches weren't in the Coven in Season 7, though.
There were so many B- and-C-list witches they could've used for the coven. What about Madam Mim from Sword in the Stone? Morgana le Fay? The Witch from Brave? What if instead of a random alternate Blind Witch for the Zelena episode, why not use one of the nameless witches from Oz? (East and North)
I really like the idea of villain team-ups and the Coven was really not a bad idea at all. I just wish they didn't end up being the Coat Hangers. -
On 9/9/2022 at 11:41 PM, Camera One said:
The other reason is the writers' room just loved to write love/hate banter. I suppose we got to see Regina and Zelena's closeness in S7. Thank goodness for that final season, eh?
I think Regina and Zelena living together could've created enough "love/hate" banter. The sisters would have to juggle the awkwardness of what just happened in the Underworld, what happened to their boyfriends, and then baby Robyn being there too. Neither of them really needed something like Clone Queen there to rip them apart. I actually thought it was super sad in S6 that Zelena was made to live in the farmhouse all by herself with the baby while all the other villains were cozied up in town in their mansions. No one stopped to think maybe leaving Zelena alone might not be a good idea. They wouldn't want her to go all evil because no one ate her green lasagna.
I also just think Regina and Zelena being roommates would've been comedy gold. They actually had some sisterly chemistry when they worked together in 6B and S7.-
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5B's handling of the Mills family was weird. I don't think Cora would've let Zelena come over to EF so Regina could have a playmate. Why would she even think of risking it being discovered she had an illegitimate daughter she gave away? There was also the weird mirroring between Regina/Zelena as kids and Snow/Charming. I don't believe it was implied ever elsewhere that Regina was like Snow before the incident with the stable boy. The "Sisters" episode had a pretty heartwarming message but Cora, Regina, and Zelena didn't seem to even be the same characters in it. That just made it all the more retcon-y. Then after all that, Regina blames Zelena for her boyfriend killing her boyfriend even though Zelena killed her own boyfriend to save everyone, like... K. I don't know why the writers went all the way trying to make those two besties only to yank them apart for most of S6.
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I don't think having a character who is bitterly jealous of Regina is a bad concept. Who wouldn't be jealous of her? She had literally everything handed to her, an insane amount of power both politically and magically, and could get away with literal murder. She didn't have to work for anything. She lost her teen boyfriend and that was sad, but the harsh realities her subjects were forced to live with every day were so much more disheartening in the long run.
I thought the "green with envy" idea for the Wicked Witch was a nice cheeky way to explain the green skin, but making her cartoonishly evil and so petty kind of ruined the "right to be jealous" thing she had going. She was portrayed as in the wrong for pointing out how spoiled Regina was. At the same time, she hadn't even met her before. She was off in Oz and had no real reason to blame Regina for anything. At no one point does Regina self-reflect and go, "wow maybe Zelena is right and I did get everything handed to me." Addressing her entitlement would've been a good character beat but the Wicked Witch of the West was a poor choice to do it with. (Although I highly doubt the writers even wanted to address it.)
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OUAT vs. Other Fairy Tales: Compare & Contrast
in Once Upon A Time
· Edited by KingOfHearts
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.