The response to this movie makes zero sense to me. Most people liked the first one and they think this one is better, while I thought the first one was mediocre and this one is even worse.
They really got away with making the exact same movie again. No glance into an urban city, or more info about the aliens, no explanation why Lee and Evelyn decide to have a replacement baby in a world where you have to be quiet. There was nothing further explored plot or character wise. Just more slow walking through New York, characters acting impulsively and making dumb decisions that constantly put them in danger but that doesn't matter because they got huge amounts of plot armor. They added 'evil' people for no reason. No explanation, at all! Why was the message on the radio some cryptic code? The aliens can't speak English.
Scary monster screams very loud, has beyond hypersensitive hearing, and kills people out of shot, and it just takes a 13 year old girl to find out that maybe a high pitched sound could possibly defeat the aliens. The parallel editing was obnoxious. Like, we get it! They don't have to do that for the entire second half of the film.
Maybe in the third and fourth movies, that will get green lit, they can cut the closeups of feet or brooding eyes and pull together their fictional universe into a coherent, functioning world.
I hated this movie, not because of what it represents, but because the jokes were not funny at all, and the scenes that were supposed to be emotional didn't make sense because the characters were so bland and so I couldn't get attached to them at all.
Also, I loved Taika Waititi's scene in The Suicide Squad but he does a really terrible performance as Hitler. This movie tries too many times to be both serious and funny and I think that is why I couldn't enjoy it. I don't usually give a 1/10 to a movie, especially when it has such a good IMDb score, but this is the exception.
Also, it is very stupid that every time someone dares to post a negative review about this movie, they get attacked and downvoted to oblivion. Comedy is subjective, this is also why there are a lot of people who don't like movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The fans of Jojo Rabbit kind of remind me of the toxic fanbase of Rick and Morty who will always tell you that if you don't understand the jokes, it's because you have a low IQ.
And, the thing is that I knew just 20 minutes in that I hated this movie but because of all the hype, I forced myself to finish it, and I never should have done that because it was a complete waste of time. From now on, if a movie doesn't hold my attention enough for the first 20-30 minutes, I'll just move onto the next one. I could have been watching way better stuff during that time instead of this garbage.
I wonder how long they're gonna milk the Captain America association... And yeah, I get that he was a direct part of the main character's story and whatnot, I just feel like being "that guy" for some reason. Maybe I'm a bit bitter Marvel can't share any Avengers with their tv counterparts, in this case it could have worked as a flashback or something.
In all honesty I really want to like this. I'm crazy about MCU and I suffered through Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and the first season of AoS because I'm dedicated dammit, but it's like the worst for me when I can't relate to any of the characters. And this is exactly my problem with AC. The inevitable stereotypes and sexism of that time don't help too, that's for sure. And seeing a character that is supposedly breaks the notion of a stereotypical female use her "womanly wiles" or "female problems" to get her way, or running on hills (what sane person even wears those calve-breaking ridiculous things?) is kind of disappointing. That being said, I understand the concept of getting things done by whatever means necessary or more like with the help of your best weapon at hand, I just don't particularly want to see that on screen. Too overly utilised and beaten to death behaviour. It just makes Carter appear as a female agent, not just agent, and there should be no gender in that kind of job. In the circumstances they've put her in the pilot what she did was indeed the best way to handle things, but no one actually had to put her in those particular circumstances in the first place. Okay, this is getting overly long, and it's not like anyone's gonna read it anyway. I'm just annoyed I can't get into another part of a great universe. I'll give this show a second shot though and watch another episode. But either way, I don't think it will lose a lot by not getting me as a fan, so.
Woof. This was pretty awful. Basically every scene where Jessica and Luke talked to each other in this episode made me want to put my face in my hands. It was painfully overwrought, with soap opera level dialogue and acting through most of their quieter moments. The close ups of their hands, whether it's passing along money, or a handshake, or wrapped around his waist on a motorcycle ride, were cheesy as hell. Everything was just laid on way too thick.
Plus the whole Antoine thing felt like it was a leftover plot from Burn Notice, replete with the generic loan shark guy who gets outsmarted and beat up. I just can't take the guy they have playing Luke Cage. Maybe it's the writing, but he's just so milquetoast and bland. He comes alive a little bit at the end of the episode, but his lines are just so cornball ("Out of time." "I was wrong, you are a piece of shit") that I can't take it seriously. The Jessica-Luke stuff was the meat of the episode, and it was really really rough sledding, both in terms of the writing and the performances.
The only thing keeping the thing from being a complete dud were the two minor sidestories in the episode. Hope being pregnant and wanting to get rid of anything Kilgrave left her is a really interesting angle. The fact that Hogarth is trying to study Kilgrave and figure out if his power can be replicated is another interesting twist to the story, which they foreshadowed a bit earlier. At the same time, Kilgrave wanting to get something without commanding it (bolstered by his poker game) is a very interesting avenue to take the character. I can't help remembering Lisa's admonition to Homer in the Stonecutter episode of The Simpsons that getting everything you want all the time would leave you joyless, and I think that's a cool tack to take with a character who, in a short time, has already become one of Marvel's most intriguing villains.
But yeah, this is easily the worst episode of the season by a significant margin. While I still like the plotting, and the concept of Jessica admitting it was her who killed Luke's wife when she thinks the bus driver is going to be killed over it, the execution is so ripped from a bad action movie that what should be a huge moment in the series had next to no impact. This episode should have gone to a different writer and director. Again, woof.
(Edit: Holy crap! I just looked up the director on IMDb, and he directed a bunch of episodes of Burn Notice! No wonder!)
Season 2, in my opinion, was just a little bit too much of everything. Too many twists, too many side storied, too much violence. On the other hand it lacked in mystigue. The implied story of the evolution of an AI into independence degenerates into the old story of the search for immortality. With the upper echelon having the upper hand because of their money. As for the violence in this season: I don't think it was nessessary. In S1 the violence shown by the guests towards the hosts made sense to underline that human thought of them as toys, as a lower form of existence. After all, a host can't die so what do we care. Now it seems violence is just there to be there, everything has to be bloody. And we have a load of muscle packed, stupid security that gets shot down at every instance.
While watching further and further I wondered how this could ever generate into a third season. To be honest I am totally fine if the ending of this season beeing the end of the show. A kind of open ending where you can let your imagination fill in the rest. We know that a third season is already confirmed and the post credit scene of the final episode layed the foundation. But I am not sure it would be a direction that interests me.
